#that is part of the reason he was so ok with his name being changed. it reminded him too much of his dad and old life

[falmerbrook]

TES Summer Fest Day 1 - Forbidden

A 7 year old Vanus "Trechtus" Galerion stays up late one night reading with his dad.

[spookypete-94]

Pregnant by Proxy

SimonRileyxPregnant!Reader

Have had this idea in my head for many, many months. Finally just decided to do it- even if it seems strange to some.

Triggers for medical inaccuracies, language, minor angst, still born mentioned

What triggered it all is you not showing up. Being Laswell’s right hand while she was Watcher, given you the opportunity to assist Task Force 141 on multiple missions. So much, they considered you a part of their team.

Here instead, Simon Riley stood back watching you from afar. He had hunted you down and located you in your hometown. Something he was never ever supposed to do. There was a no contact rule for them outside of their work. Price enforced it for safety reasons. But Simon just couldn’t stand not knowing where you were or what had happened. That was unsafe for him. He needed to see you, needed to make sure you were alright.

“I can’t tell you much, just that she will not be attending this mission.” Laswell spoke from the computer screen during their video call meant to be a mission brief for the 4 of them.

“She ok at least?” Price asked, looking up over the stack of papers in his hands up at the camera.

You had made your mark on all of them… but maybe not as dark or inflicted as you had on Simon.

“Medical emergency back at home. I know you guys are worried about her, but I really can’t disclose anymore.” Laswell’s voice firmer, protecting you.  “She deserves privacy and her time off.” Something you had earned away from them.

Simon couldn’t help but pipe up. “When will she be back?” You are an asset to this team, as much to his spirit.

A heavy sigh from Laswell, “We need to focus on the task ahead.” She was putting up a wall. How dare you leave without relaying some sort of word to him…

What had happened to you?

That was the moment Simon knew he needed to find you. You were at risk, something had happened. Did you get sent somewhere without him and hurt? Are you bruised and bloody? Had someone laid hands on you? Dangerous as you were… Simon couldn’t help feeling that you were fragile. He had seen you in the most intimate of ways on more than one occasion. Perhaps that had changed his perception of the clarity of body. Fragile like clay figurine, porous and breakable. Skin smooth, even though littered with scars in places. Special, is the way to describe you to him. You understood him. An extension of his peace.

So, he finished the mission. Angrier than he had ever been at the end of one. Days drawn out, even though it only took them a week to find their target and take him into custody. It was a success, a record in apprehending someone capable of such violence. Little did the Task Force know, Ghost’s unbridled rage of procrastinating the ability to find you, the result of such a feat.

Price knew something was up when Ghost had turned down the interrogation of the suspect. This was his forte. One of his best qualities of finding intel was beating a man into submission. Glancing with a side eye filled with suspicion, Price then closed it. Halfway knowing what Ghost was up to, the fact that Simon now needed this. He needed to know you were alive.

There were a few times you would tell him stories of your hometown and family after you would connect and lay naked together. He enjoyed it. It distracted his mind while his brain would close his eyes and imagine it. Never once did you tell him where you from or the name of the town… but he had seen it so many times in his mind’s eye, he had just an inkling of where it was hidden.

Imagine his surprise when had finally found you outside your favorite coffee house. A small coffee in your hand… and a swollen belly round in front of you as you slowly waddled away from him. He had stood back near the corner about 3 buildings away from you, following you ever so slowly.

Shock had filled his system. He could walk away now… in fact he fully wanted to bolt and sprint in a different direction. He knew you were safe, alive and clearly thriving… but he had more questions now then when he did about your absence.

Feeling like you were being watched made you turn around. Eyes instantly locked on the black shadow that was following you.

“Simon?” Your sweet voice called to him, filled with confusion and happiness.

“Wanted to see you…” Was all he could mumble out as he approached.

Awkwardly you tried hard to lurch to him, hard to do so when your counterbalance was way off.

“I’ve missed you so fucking much,” a rushed hiss to him, as you tried to lay your head into his chest. It was difficult with how round you were, the babe pressing you away.

His finger guided under your chin, lifting it up so he could see your eyes. Tears welled in them that he brushed back with a thumb. Fucking hormones.

“Missed you,” you repeated. Somehow even through all your emotions, the glow on you was so strong and intense. How beautiful.

Simon remained quiet, while he tried to decide how far along you were. The time frame… seemed possible, but he wasn’t entirely sure. The time away from you seemed so much longer. He wanted to ask, he needed to know this now. Sure, he wanted to run at the same time, but you were important to him. This was important to him.

“Is it mine?” He asked his palm spreading over the circumference.

You stood there unable to speak. It was such a long story. Words hindered, closed off. Instead, you shook your head with a slow no. Regret written all over your face.

Instantly, the rage returned to him. Of course he wasn’t good enough for you. That’s why you left. That’s why everyone eventually does. How dare you be so important to him….

Turning on heel, he pushed past the crowd of people nearby trying to get away from you. Anger blinding him, deafening your calling out.

“Simon!! Wait!! She’s not mine either!!” Trying your hardest to run after him.

What?

He stopped dead in his tracks, unable to turn to look at you yet. The same tears that had stung yours now been transferred to his. Had he really wanted this with someone so bad before?

Your hand pressed into his back letting him know you were still there.

“She’s my sisters… it’s a really long fucked up story, but she is my sister’s.”

Abstract. This whole thing was completely abstract and fucking strange. You were being a surrogate to it all.

“What?” Simon said again, finally turning around, his head looking to the side, still not fully able to look at you yet. He needed clarification, needed to comprehend you hadn’t betrayed him.

“I went on leave because my sister was pregnant and went into labor at about eight and half months…but something had happened. She got this blood infection in her uterus causing a still birth. And when it did, it made things happen to her reproductive organs so she would never be able to carry a baby again…They had to take it all out.” A heavy breath left you, as you started to explain, a shake he could hear in your voice, one that and couldn’t ignore.

He turned back around, finally able to look at you again. To you, it was like the break of dawn and the sun greeting the Earth for the first time. He was listening to you. This whole time you were fearful of losing him… but here he was standing before you. Shining like the sun every morning, a wordless pact.

“My sister… she lost her baby and I saw what it did to her. This is all she has ever wanted was to be a mother, and her chance has been taken from her. So, when the doctor said they had saved some of her eggs…I knew I had to do this for her.” Taking his hand, you placed it back on your belly, sprawling his long fingers over it. “This baby isn’t yours… and she isn’t mine. That doesn’t make her any less important though. Just know I had to do this for her.”

His hand was warm. Radiating warmth into you. It gave so much into you, like you had just spewed out back to him.

Did he doubt you?

“I was on my way to an appointment. Why don’t you come with me and maybe that will help you understand.”

A compromise. Let me make this right.

Sliding his hand across your belly, over to your hand he took it and gripped it, squeezing once in awhile. His quiet assurance. So, you led the way. The sail to his boat, teaching and guiding him.

The room was white. White bed, white paper covering it. White walls. White Floor. So much white it hurt for him to look at. Carefully, he stood next to you, letting you climb on the bed to lay down.

“Where is your sister?” A valid question. He would think if this was her baby, she would want to know details, right?

“Work. I think it still hurts her to come sometimes… She has come to a few in the very beginning, but as it gets closer it scares her.”

A valid response.

“You been coming by yourself?”

A slight shrug of your shoulders. “I have…” That hurt him to know you were doing a majority of this alone.

“How did you…?” He said looking down and looking back up at you.

“Conceive?” Unsure if that was what he was asking or not. “Artificial. They planted the embryo after it was fertilized."

Oh, thank God. The relief written on his face makes you laugh.

“Don’t worry. No one else has been inside me in that way. I would never let anyone, let alone my brother-in-law.” Still chuckling.

“Better not.” The only words he could say in his embarrassment of thinking so.

In walked the doctor, who looked over at the mountain of a man.

“Well, hello. Is his him then?” She pointed to him and looked back at you.

“It is.” A smile radiating back at her, truly at your happiest.

The doctor glanced back over at him. “She has talked about you quite a bit and how much she wished you could be here. It’s hard, what she is doing for someone else, but I’m glad her person is here with her now. Your girl’s quite brave.” Rolling across the floor of the room on her stool.

Simon was dumb founded; you had talked about him to someone else? Did he really mean that much to you too?

“Now let’s have a look.”

Rolling your shirt up, exposing that smooth skin to him one more time. It’s been so long since he had last seen it, and here it had changed so much but remained stunning to him.

The doctor measured it before pulling out the doppler to hear the heartbeat. A soft whooshing noise was instantly recognized, making you close your eyes and smile. It was so surreal to Simon. Like he was on the outside looking in. He had the opportunity to see you in this light… and somehow it still was that way for you too. Knowing you were carrying this baby… but it wasn’t entirely yours either.

“Your niece is looking wonderful. See you at your thirty-six-week appointment. Will be once a week starting then.” Niece… A reminder that you were grateful for this baby, but a deep part of you wished it was daughter.

Somehow, he had made it to the checkout desk with you and hadn’t even realized it.

“Can I list you as an emergency contact?” the question that brought him back to reality. Your eyes were looking up at him, pen and paper in your hand before you wrote his name down.

“Sure,” he said taking the pen and paper, scribbling his number down next to his name. Who said anything about no contact outside of work again?

Ending the day, you brought him back to your home. Allowing him to see more of your personal life. Baring it all to him today. His fragile figurine, safe and protected now that he had found her once more. Never again would you be out of his sights. He will see to fix that, all on his own.

Two hands started at your hips before snaking around, his arms fully embraced you from behind. He lifted up on your heavy belly, taking the weight off your hips. A pleasant groan emitted from you. How good did that feel.

“Such a nice thing you are doing for your sister… but next time, the baby in there is going to be ours.” His mouth hot and heavy next to your ear, before running his tongue from the bottom up. It made your skin run hot and cold all at once, goosebumps in the wake on your skin.

“Going to be such a good mother,” his hand trailing down your belly and onto your thigh before squeezing it. “I want this to be safe and healthy for you all, but as soon as you can… I’m fillin’ you with my own. As many as you’ll let me.” Grinding into you, imagining you swollen with his seed making him aroused.

“I missed you.” You whispered out the thrice time today.

Simon "Ghost" Riley Masterlist

[euphorajeon]

trippin' over, gettin' lost on you | jjk (m)

— pairing: jk x f. reader

— genre: fluff, smut | college au, slight coffee shop au (?)

— word count: 12.4k

— warnings: pov change after the first part (its kinda obvious.. i hope), sleeveless jk, jealous jk, like really jealous, side character yoongi, cameo jimin and hoseok, they work tgt in a coffee shop, boxer!jk is back to his nature (he's boxing again, at last), cocky jk (but he's hot so its ok), usual banter between jk and oc, also banter between oc and jimin, mentions of cuts and bruises from boxing, references to the movie Real Steel, uhh what else i dont rmb anything else this thing is GIANT for me, smut in the form of: kissing, marking (hickeys), making out, an attempt at dirty talk, dry humping, cumming in pants, hint at unprotected penetrative sex at the end (don't do this!). [pls lmk if i missed smth]

— summary: a visit to the coffee shop you work at rewards jeongguk not only with a cup of coffee and a plate of brownie, but also with something else simmering deep in his veins. a challenge is issued, and all hell breaks loose.

— author's note: okay first of all full disclosure i started this in sept 2022 and just finished it today ^_^ i tried to edit it as best as i could, so if you see any mistakes, pls kindly... ignore... thank you... ^_^ that aside, i also feel the need to disclose that this is only my second time attempting to write smut so pls.. be kind.. hehe. okay! i hope you enjoy this absolute giant baby of mine!!

masterlist | boxer!gguk masterlist

There’s an advantage to knowing someone for years. Jeon Jeongguk can attest to this fact from first-hand experiences he’d had with you throughout the many years you both have known each other. He’s seen you cry after you almost drowned when you were ten and you’ve seen him throw up his breakfast after drinking skimmed milk when he was twelve, where both life-threatening experiences had been deemed not serious by young-you and young-Jeongguk who used both experiences as means to roast each other. (Though growing up, your hands automatically grabbed the whole milk carton when grocery shopping with him and he’s never let you go within a five-meter radius of a swimming pool without his supervision.)

Years of friendship with you has also given him the advantage of being familiar with your likes and dislikes, from trivial ones like how you don’t drink coffee because it upsets your stomach to more serious ones like the type of boys you would date in your teen years. He’s never had a problem with the former, instead using it as another mean to annoy you (“You can’t drink coffee? What are you? A child?”), but the latter had always bugged him for reasons unknown prior to his big epiphany a little over a year ago. (Spoiler alert: it was the first time he came home with piercings on his eyebrow and lower lip, when he tempted you into kissing him stupid.)

Now he’s confident that the type of a boy you’d date would be someone who is handsome, tall, has a great smile and tattooed bulging biceps on the side. Add a lip piercing (and a fake tongue one!) as well and he’s sure you’re never going to look at other boys ever again. If you do, well, he’d just make the piercing on his tongue a permanent one, even though that means he wouldn’t be able to kiss you for weeks after. But as said earlier, he’s confident that you only have eyes for him alone.

With that same confidence, Jeongguk struts through the glass door of the coffee shop you’re working at for the summer, going up to the counter with a grin painted on his features. Said grin goes unnoticed by you, though, as you’re busy taking the order of the person in front of him. His lips stay tilted upwards as he watches you work, writing the customer’s name on the cup with your big, round, cute handwriting. Only when you’re done taking the order and the customer’s cup has been given to your coworker do you notice his presence, eyes lighting up at the sight of him.

“Hi, what can I get you today?” you greet him in your customer-service voice and smile like you do any other customer that has come before him. Jeongguk gives you an amused smile, making you chuckle as you key in his order even before he says it himself. He eyes the small screen in front of him that displays his usual choice of beverage, making a sound to stop you from ringing him up.

“Actually,” he says when you hum in question, “could you add milk to that? Make it a latte?”

“You want a latte?” you emphasize the last word, making sure you didn’t hear him wrong. “Like, with milk and foam on top?”

“Uh-huh,” Jeongguk confirms, leaning his elbows on the counter to stare at you as you change his order from an americano to a latte. “Can I also order you on the side? Look too good not to be devoured,” he adds, a sleazy smirk on his lips.

You scrunch up your face at his innuendo, his words hard to believe when you’re wearing a murky brown apron and a matching cap on your head. “I’m adding a brownie,” you deadpan. “That would be seven dollars.”

“You don’t want anything?” Jeongguk asks as he straightens up, hand reaching for his wallet to take out his credit card. “No coffee though, babe.”

“Nope, I’m good,” you answer as you accept the card Jeongguk hands you, swiping it through the card reader. “Yoongi said I can try the new menu in large for free! I’m saving calories for that so no sugar allowed for now.”

His forehead creases upon hearing the new name. “Yoongi? Who’s Yoongi?”

“Him,” you tilt your head towards a mint-haired guy who’s busy making all the drinks, hands skillfully moving from one cup to another. It’s a wonder how he doesn’t spill even a drop of liquid. “I’ll introduce you later but now you have to move, there’s a line. Shoo.”

Jeongguk gives you a playful pout as a protest but complies with your request to move, sliding down to the pick up counter as you greet the next customer in line. There are two people lined up after him, barely a line like you made it sound like, but he figures because it’s an hour before closing that you consider any amount above one person a line. He also notices that you and the mint guy (Yoongi, was it?) are the only ones manning the counter, so it’s not like you have any spare time to deal with him given the amount of work that has to be done.

“An iced latte and brownie for Jeongguk!” Mint guy shouts as he slides the drink and dessert on the counter, lingering for a second when he sees Jeongguk’s hands reaching for his order. Mint guy’s gaze trails up his arms to his face, eyes meeting Jeongguk’s confused ones. Recognition bleeds into his cat-like eyes as his mouth forms into an O shape.

“Kiddo’s boyfriend?”

The low baritone of his voice is unexpected, though that’s not the only thing throwing Jeongguk for a loop. ‘Kiddo’? He has a nickname for you??

Mint guy—Yoongi!—doesn’t take his lack of response personally, instead opting to turn around and talk to you who have just finished taking orders from the customers. Jeongguk can’t hear what words you and Yoongi are throwing around, but from the way you glance at him, it looks like the mint-haired guy is just trying to confirm the answer to his two-worded question directed at Jeongguk earlier.

Your response to Yoongi’s inquiry makes the guy give you double pats on your cap-covered head, triggering a laugh to come out of both of you. While Yoongi’s laugh looks like he’s teasing you good-naturedly, yours looks like a shy one if the pink dusting your cheeks are any indication. It prompts a scowl to appear on Jeongguk’s handsome visage, furrowed brows and clenched jaw. It is not in your nature to get shy.

As much as he wants to stay rooted to the pick-up counter to keep you and Yoongi in his close watch, he has to move his ass somewhere less crowded to avoid getting eye-fucked by the girl next to him who has been staring at his tattoos for the past five minutes. Prior to dating you, anyone who displays interest in his tattoos would make pride swell in his chest, an ego-booster guaranteed to make his day a thousand times better. He used to subtly flex whenever he caught someone looking at his sleeve tattoos, an equally subtle wink on the side if that someone is a girl he found attractive. But after dating you, he realizes that the only attention he wants (and matters) is yours. Now anyone staring at his tattoos with the intention of flirting or getting in his pants just makes him shiver in disgust.

Though, in this particular instance, Jeongguk admits it’s his own fault by showing up to the coffee shop in a sleeveless shirt. It wasn’t intentional, he just grabbed anything within reach when he packed for the gym earlier in the day, but the way he left his hoodie in the car is definitely intentional. He thought he would give you a distraction surprise by baring his sleeve when you’re working, but you seemed unaffected even when he leaned on the counter to flex his muscles. Which is weird, considering you never missed any chance to ogle his inked bicep whenever he’s boxing.

As Jeongguk plops a small piece of brownie into his mouth, he just realizes that your roles are reversed now, with you doing your thing and him doing the staring. His eyes never leave your figure as you ring up three more customers since he sat down, transferring plastic cups onto Yoongi’s never-ending queue of orders. He watches as you take the last two cups by yourself, re-reading the order before moving to grab the ingredients needed for the drink. Your hands don’t work as fast as Yoongi’s, the muscle memory not yet settling in, but Jeongguk can tell that your help is appreciated by the way the mint guy smiles at you while patting your shoulder.

When the orders are all done, you go up to the glass door to flip the sign so it shows the Sorry, we’re closed! side. A glance at the clock tells him that it is thirty minutes until closing time, meaning thirty minutes until you can get out from behind the cashier and into his waiting arms. He hasn’t seen you all day today and all he wants to do is kiss you breathless the second you get rid of that horrendous apron and cap. Jeongguk starts counting down from the thirty-minute mark, hoping time would tick by faster.

Behind the counter, Yoongi is still busy making one more drink while refusing your offer to help. It’s weird seeing your kindness being offered to someone that isn’t him, but Jeongguk supposes this time it’s strictly work-related as he knows Yoongi has been making all the drinks (except the last two that you did) ever since he sat down with his order. Though, it seems like the drink in his hand is not an order at all, because he gives the plastic cup to you instead of putting it on the counter for a customer to take. There’s an almost childish grin on your face as you sip on the drink, eyes lighting up as you shoot Yoongi a thumbs up. After you exchange some more words with Yoongi, Jeongguk watches as you skip happily to his table with your drink in hand.

You place said drink next to his cup of latte on the table before your hand reaches for his drink to steal a sip. “I just have to clean up and wait for everyone to leave, then we’re good to go.” You steal two more sips of the latte just because you can.

“Okay, babe, but I still want my latte, you can put it down now,” Jeongguk chuckles, watching you do as he says with a guilty smile on your face. But then your hand takes the little spoon that came with the brownie to cut a sizable chunk from his half-eaten treat, quickly plopping it into your mouth. “Finish your brownie so I can take the plate away to wash it.”

“Are you just here to steal all of my food?” Jeongguk jokes, no menace behind his words as he reaches up to thumb away a stray piece of brownie from the corner of your lips. “And you said you didn’t want anything when I offered earlier.”

“I didn’t,” you confirm, “stealing from you is just too hard to resist.”

Jeongguk would’ve continued the banter if not for Yoongi calling your nickname from behind the counter, signalling for you to get back to your job.

“Boss calls,” you say, sneakily stuffing some more brownie into your mouth. “Should get back. Bye!”

“He’s your boss?” Jeongguk asks incredulously, glancing at the mint-haired guy who’s still busy moving around behind the counter. “That young guy is your boss??”

“Yeah, I’ll explain later,” you wave your hand dismissively, turning to leave. “Don’t steal my drink!”

In true Jeongguk fashion, of course he steals a sip from your drink. He does it just to be petty that you won’t explain anything about Yoongi, but he’s also curious what the new menu tastes like. He doesn’t remember seeing any banner for a new menu when he entered the shop earlier, so he’s guessing it hasn’t gone on sale yet.

He scrunches up his face the moment the drink touches his taste buds, tasting the bitterness of coffee among the layers of other flavors. It’s not as strong as the americano he usually has, but he can still feel it linger even after he swallowed the drink. Definitely not the type of drink you’d order on your own, though, so why were you so excited to try this new menu?

Looking around the shop, Jeongguk’s gaze falls on Yoongi. You did say he was your boss, didn’t you? Could it be that this free drink is just a plot to use you as a guinea pig for his experimental weird recipes, knowing that you can’t refuse your boss? Was that why he refused your help earlier? So he could make the drink taste as bizarre as it is right now?

His eyes continue following your and Yoongi’s figures behind the counter, squinting them in distaste whenever he sees you laughing at something the mint-haired guy said. Your smile, your lowered gaze, your shy demeanor, all remind him of a feeling he thought he had buried a long time ago—the same feeling he got whenever you got a boyfriend in your adolescent years. Suddenly, Jeongguk feels fifteen all over again���a clueless doe-eyed boy who donned t-shirts in every color of the rainbow every day of the week and strutted like he owned the school just so you can see that he was cool, only for you to deny him of a Sunday together.

Those years have become a core memory for him that it inspired him to get one of his tattoos: Rather be dead than cool, because he realized the way to your attention was not by being cool, it was by just being himself. (Yes, the ‘him’ who showed up unannounced at your doorstep after two years and ended the day with you on his lap stealing all the breath straight from his lungs.)

Anyways, all of that doesn’t matter because currently, your eyes are not on him but on your mint-haired boss who’s busy grinning while washing some equipment. Why are you both smiling so much around each other? Do you have some kind of inside joke that’s so funny you can’t stop laughing? What is so pleasing about Yoongi’s presence that you keep beaming at him?

Jeongguk chews the straw of your drink in anger, not realizing that he has inhaled almost half of the cup’s content despite claiming that he hates the taste. Sipping on your drink has become an afterthought as he was busy analyzing how wide your smiles are while working with Yoongi and how friendly the shoulder and head pats you give each other are. It’s sickening.

Eventually, everyone else in the coffee shop left and you’re in front of him once again to get rid of the brownie plate from his table, whining when you see the half-empty cup in Jeongguk’s hand even as you’re chewing the rest of his brownie in your mouth. Fair trade, he says as you walk away with the plate and spoon in hand.

Not even five minutes has passed since you left his table, yet Jeongguk feels tired of being patient, taking your and his coffee cups in each hand before coming up to the counter. It seems like Yoongi senses his presence, because he looks up from the calculator app on the tablet in front of him to give Jeongguk a curious glance. Their eyes meet for a split second before Jeongguk moves his gaze past Yoongi’s shoulder to you, who’s still busy wiping down the counter. A knowing smile curves on Yoongi’s lips.

“Hey, Kiddo,” Yoongi turns towards you, the nickname still irritating to Jeongguk’s ears. “I’ll finish closing up, you can go. Great work today.”

“No it’s okay, I can help you mop the floor after I’m finished with the counter.” You don’t even look up as you wave him off, oblivious to Jeongguk’s presence and his increasing impatience in front of your boss. He clears his throat comically loud, making you turn around to see a frown etched on your boyfriend’s face and Yoongi tilting his head towards him with a small, almost teasing smile on his face.

“Oh.” You pull your lips into a thin line. “Okay then. Sorry about him, Yoongi.”

“No worries, Kiddo.”

Yoongi’s nonchalant response is laced with a chuckle, which for some reason, upsets Jeongguk even more than the nickname he keeps calling you by. Is Yoongi not scared of him? Of his tattoos, of his muscles? Is he not intimidating? Can’t he feel the piercing stare Jeongguk keeps giving him ever since he walked into the coffee shop?

“You.” Your stern voice tears his hot gaze away from the mint-haired guy, whose focus is back on the calculator on his tablet to count the sales they made today. “I’ll clock out first then we can go. Please don’t do anything weird in the five minutes that I don’t have my eyes on you.”

Jeongguk follows your figure with his eyes until you disappear into the backroom, leaving him alone with Yoongi. Yoongi, the guy with the mint hair, whose surname he doesn’t even know, who is your boss that strangely have an endearing nickname for you. Things that stream steady questions into his head, about your initial meeting with Yoongi to the extent of your relationship with him. It’s the nickname he can’t seem to shake off of his mind, the way it rolls easily off Yoongi’s tongue, as if he’s been calling you that for years. Has he known you for years like Jeongguk has? Been through near-death experiences with you like Jeongguk has? Has he deserved the right to call you by a nickname like Jeongguk has?

“You can stop shooting daggers at my head, you know,” Yoongi’s low drawl almost makes Jeongguk think that he’s talking to himself, but the sentence is clearly directed at him. The older guy finally looks up from his tablet to look at Jeongguk in the eyes for longer than a second, no coffee orders to complete to interrupt their interaction this time. “Kiddo’s boyfriend, Jeongguk, right?”

As Jeongguk gives a nod to confirm Yoongi’s question, a hand is extended towards him to complete the introduction. “I’m Yoongi, Kiddo’s coworker-slash-boss.”

Jeongguk grips Yoongi’s hand with more strength than necessary, unintentionally flexing his muscles too. He thought that would be enough to tell Yoongi that Jeongguk is your boyfriend and he has no business being so friendly with you, but Yoongi only glances at his tattooed arm before letting go of his hand with a comment about how strong his grip is.

“Thanks, I do boxing,” Jeongguk mutters curtly, upset at the degree of nonchalance Yoongi is showing. He starts glancing at the door to the backroom where you currently are, wishing you would emerge right this second so he can go and doesn’t need to face Yoongi’s mint hair ever again.

“Yeah, Kiddo might have mentioned that a few times, just like she won’t shut up about your sleeve tattoos,” Yoongi says, going back to his tablet. “I used to box too, by the way.”

If you asked Jeongguk what Yoongi used to do, he wouldn’t be able to answer at all as he chooses to focus on the part where Yoongi said you won’t shut up about his sleeve tattoos and tune out the rest of his sentence. “My tattoos? What about them?”

“She said you have tons. Shoulder to fingertips. That’s how I recognized you when giving your order,” Yoongi answers lightly, which piqued Jeongguk’s interest even further. Wouldn’t it be fun to use this coworker-slash-boss of yours to get information about what you’ve been saying about him at work? What else does Yoongi know about him other than he does boxing and has a sleeve tattoo?

“Really? Does she gush about how hot they are to you, too?”

It’s not a question meant to be answered, its sole purpose to show off that you indeed gush to him about how hot his tattoos are. Though, if one thinks about it, why would Jeongguk need to boast to Yoongi about the compliments you give him about the strokes of ink on his arm? What business does Yoongi have knowing about it?

Yoongi seems to be unaware of Jeongguk’s inner dilemma as his face breaks out into a grin. “I think she’d be mad at me if I told you half the things she gushes to me about you.”

So you do gush about how hot his tattoos are to Yoongi. Interesting.

The fact that Yoongi insinuates there’s more to that is both endearing and terrifying to Jeongguk, because while he’s giddy that you talk about him with other people with so much enthusiasm, too much of it could end up in you sharing something about him that you should not have. Not to mention you’re sharing it with your boss, someone you should keep at an arm’s length when it comes to sharing about your significant others. One wrong move and he could use it against you.

Jeongguk is just about to ask Yoongi to elaborate further on his statement when you step out of the backroom, now out of the murky brown cap and apron and in a white t-shirt that looks like it belongs to Jeongguk. All thoughts of Yoongi knowing all sort of things about him evaporates right away, his mind focusing on how cute you look instead. If only Jeongguk doesn’t know basic human decency, he’d pull you by the waist to taste the mouth he’s been deprived of for the whole day, not giving an ounce of care about your boss watching the whole thing.

No, he’s a good boyfriend so he opts to pull you by the shoulders instead, letting your arms go around his waist before squeezing you in his arms. The kiss he drops on your cheek is chaste yet lingering, like he wants to let you know just how much he missed you. You tighten your arms around him in return, wordlessly saying the same thing back.

“Ready to go?” Jeongguk mumbles into your hair, not yet letting go of the hug.

“Ye—oh, wait!” You pull your face away from its initial position on Jeongguk’s chest. “You haven’t met Yoongi yet.”

“We did, Kiddo,” Yoongi waves you off. “You’re free to go. Your boyfriend here has been waiting long enough.”

“No,” you say, pulling away from Jeongguk’s hold. “I mean I haven’t introduced you two properly.” You gesture to the both of them back and forth as you say their names. “Yoongi, meet my boyfriend, Jeon Jeongguk. Jeongguk, meet my boss, Min Yoongi. His family owns this coffee shop.”

“That’s what you mean by proper?” Jeongguk says to you as he takes Yoongi’s hand for the second time that day, regular grip this time because you’re watching his every move like a hawk. “I didn’t know you own the shop. Nice place,” he nods to the older guy, releasing his hand.

“Thanks. It’s my dad’s, though. I just help from time to time,” Yoongi shrugs.

“You ‘just help from time to time’ but willing to dye your hair mint in honor of the new menu.” You nudge his elbow playfully. “Speaking of the new menu, did you finish the whole cup, Jeongguk? I’ve only had a few sips.” You frown as you bring the cup to your eye level, examining just how much of it is left. It’s an exaggeration, obviously, as the cup in your hand is still half-filled. But Jeongguk plays along, saying the reason why he inhaled your drink is because he’s tired from having just gone back from boxing.

“You have your own latte,” you point out, finally taking a much-deserved sip from your free drink. It still tastes okay, so you stop grilling Jeongguk about stealing your drink (even though you kinda stole his too, in the middle of your shift nonetheless.) “Oh, and did you know Yoongi also—”

Yoongi clears his throat loudly before you can finish your sentence. You look up from your drink, alarmed, afraid you might have said something wrong. Your eyes meet Yoongi’s and he gives you a tiny shake of his head, one Jeongguk doesn’t notice because he’s busy taking sips from his own cup of latte. (And because he’s more focused on you than Yoongi.)

“He knows, I told him I used to box too,” Yoongi says.

“You did? I didn’t catch it,” Jeongguk averts his eyes from you, turning to look at Yoongi. “Wanna have a match? I could use an opponent for my session tomorrow.”

“I said I used to, Kid,” Yoongi re-emphasizes on the two words. “I have a shoulder injury. It’s healing, but I still shouldn’t do too much to it.”

“Oh come on, I’ll go easy on you.”

“Jeongguk!” A slap lands on his bicep courtesy of you.

“What? He said it’s healing!”

It’s only now that Jeongguk witnesses the exchange between you and Yoongi using only your eyes, yours looking frantic while Yoongi’s looking as cool as a cucumber. Maybe he should dye his hair a shade of green resembling a cucumber rather than a mint.

After watching you and Yoongi have a silent conversation for a minute, Jeongguk lets out a sigh as he takes the final sip from his latte. “It’s okay, babe, I was just kidding. It’s fine if Yoongi doesn’t want to have a match with me.” He throws the empty cup into a trashcan nearby. “It just means that he backs down easily from a challenge.”

You physically face-palm at his sentence, missing the way Jeongguk throws a challenging smirk Yoongi’s way. The older doesn’t seem fazed at all, instead letting a small smirk take over his features as well. “That’s not a really nice thing to say to someone you’ve just met,” he drawls.

Jeongguk shrugs. “Just stating the truth.”

“Jeongguk, please stop,” you whine from behind your hands, still facepalming because you don’t want to become a witness in case this coffee shop becomes a crime scene.

“Alright, I’ll have a match with you,” Yoongi says finally, tone resolute. You peek out from the cocoon of your hands, glancing back and forth between your coworker-slash-boss and your boyfriend who are having a staring contest, both refusing to back down. “Tomorrow after my shift works? Kiddo here can take the same shift so she can watch us too.”

“Sure,” Jeongguk agrees without a pause. “It ends at three, right?”

“Yep.”

“Cool. See you then.”

Then Jeongguk puts his arm around your shoulders, pulling you away from the counter to finally go take you home as it’s the reason he came here in the first place. You hastily give your coworker a wave goodbye over your shoulder, getting a wave back accompanied with a laugh. Jeongguk uses the opportunity to steal yet another sip from your drink.

“Stop it! You’re gonna finish it all!”

“What even is it? It tastes really weird.” Jeongguk scrunches up his face.

“It’s mint mochaccino, you ass.” You pull the cup away from him, who chases the straw with his mouth while grinning wide. “Stop or I won’t kiss you until tomorrow morning.”

“Always withdrawing kisses when I need them the most,” he pouts, retreating from your drink to let you finally finish the cup yourself. “Can I kiss you in the car or should I wait until we get home?”

(Does not matter what you answer is, because he grips the back of your neck in the car to make out with you for five minutes, and then finish what he started in the safety of his room, under the blankets.)

“Are you sure you want to fight with Yoongi later?”

You and Jeongguk are back in his car, on the way to the coffee shop for you to start your shift and for Jeongguk to get his americano to kick off the day. His nod to your question is firm.

“Yeah. My coach said it’s good to train with an opponent sometimes.”

“You could’ve fought with your coach instead, then,” you point out.

“True, but—” Jeongguk tilts his head, sucking in a breath. “He’s the one who trained me, so he knows my fighting style and pattern. It’s good indeed, but it’s missing that element of fun.” He drums his fingers against the steering wheel. “Besides, I want to know what your Yoongi is made of.” He casts a glance at you to see your reaction.

“What ‘my’ Yoongi, what are you talking about …” You heave a sigh, massaging your temple. It’s not even 9 AM yet but you can already feel a headache coming. Sometimes you wonder why you’re willing to date this childhood friend of yours, knowing all of his flaws and bad habits like this. Though it’s given you the advantage of being able to read between the lines of his actions, often you wish he’d just say things outright without you having to dig it out of him.

“You know, the Yoongi you work with? The Yoongi who gives you head pats? The Yoongi who has a nickname for you?” Jeongguk’s tone gets more annoying near the end of his sentence, almost as if he’s trying to get a certain reaction out of you.

“The Yoongi who owns the cafe I work at, which is the sole source of income I have?” you reply instead, refusing to give in to Jeongguk’s silent provocation. “Also, the Yoongi who used to box. I think you should keep that in mind when you fight him later.”

“Yeah, yeah. Bet he wasn’t even that good.”

You manage to arrive at the cafe unscathed, only losing a tiny piece of sanity because your boyfriend couldn’t keep his mouth shut about Yoongi and his non-existent boxing skills (Jeongguk’s words, not yours.) It doesn’t help that the Yoongi in question is already standing behind the register, greeting you with a smile and throwing a lopsided smirk your boyfriend’s way. You don’t like the thick tension between them at all so you quickly slip into the backroom to let Jeongguk be a big boy for once and order his own americano for the day.

Stepping out of the backroom in your mandatory work apron and cap, you’re kind of relieved when you see the shop is still intact, not thrown upside down courtesy of your boyfriend and his inability to control his strength (and emotion) in the face of a threat (read: Yoongi.) Upon seeing you, Jeongguk pushes himself off the counter he’s leaning against before reaching for your waist despite your boss standing just a few feet away. The cup of americano on the counter tells you that you took too long in the breakroom, which if anyone asks, you’d justify with adjusting your work attire. In reality, you just don’t want to face your boyfriend and the sour look he has whenever he so much as glances at your boss.

“You can always cancel the fight with Yoongi, you know,” you murmur, biting your bottom lip in worry. “You could hurt him, he could hurt you … it’s not ideal.”

“Hmm.” Jeongguk purses his lips. “What’s not ideal is your boss having a nickname for you.” There he goes again, always having something to say about Yoongi. “Aside from it being highly unprofessional, it’s also inappropriate since you have a boyfriend and that is me. Jeon Jeongguk. I am your boyfriend.”

“Jeongguk, he knows,” you groan, fed up with the back-and-forth about this whole Yoongi thing. You don’t even know why your boyfriend is so threatened by the older guy when he’s a whole lifetime ahead of him. “It’s not even a nickname. You’re just seeing what you want to see.”

Jeongguk’s reply never makes it out of his mouth as he’s interrupted by Yoongi clearing his throat, making you both look at him tapping on his wrist to signal the time. It’s a reminder that you’re here to work, not to continue the argument that sparked in the car. Your boyfriend rolls his eyes at your boss, sharing a hard stare with him before deciding to do something one should not do in front of their boss: dip down to kiss you, using your surprised gasp as a way to slide his tongue inside your mouth. In the five seconds he manages to tangle his tongue with yours, you completely missed the sound of the glass doors opening and the low whistle that came after, along with Yoongi’s chuckle and greeting to the person who just came in.

Shoving Jeongguk away by your hand on his chest, you try to cover your burning face with your other hand as an attempt to save your dignity in front of Yoongi, though you doubt it’s working at all. Jeongguk licks his lips then winks at you, squeezing your waist in his grip before stepping back to grab his cup of americano, now full of condensation sliding off the plastic cup. He takes a sip to taste test before scrunching up his nose.

“Could’ve been better,” he sneers, making you glare. “Alright, I’ll let you get to work. See you later, babe.” Then, after a second, turns to Yoongi to add: “you too.”

When Jeongguk disappears into his car, you put your head in your hands and let out the loudest groan known to man. “I’m sorry, Yoongi.”

The mint-haired guy only gives you a gummy laugh, eyes turning into crescents as he shakes his head. “Your boyfriend is really something, Kiddo,” he muses. “A really … fun early morning entertainment, you could say.”

“Entertaining it was!” You hear the voice first before you see the person, the one who must’ve come in when you were rather preoccupied with your boyfriend. Park Jimin, your other coworker, slides behind the counter in a brown apron identical to yours and Yoongi’s, just minus the cap. Good, that means he doesn’t have a bad hair day today and can take the position at the register instead of you. You could use some more time to learn to make the drinks, anyway.

“Didn’t know you and your boyfriend were such exhibitionists, Kim,” Jimin taunts you, his eyebrows wiggling suggestively. “Although, if my boyfriend were that hot, I would have wanted to exhibit him too…” He purses his lips in an exaggerated manner of faux thinking, obviously trying to rile you up. “Lucky you, Kim.”

“Shut up, Park,” you seethe through your teeth, slapping him with a dish rag while he cackles happily. “We’re not exhibitionists. You just have terrible timing.”

“Oh, it was perfect I’d say, just in time to catch sight of his tongue going into your mouth—”

“JIMIN!”

When Jimin continues making fun of you by making gross kissing sounds, you turn to Yoongi for help. As the oldest amongst you three, he must have a sound solution to get Jimin to stop making those awful sounds and put you out of your misery. Although, your trust in him is probably misplaced as Yoongi just chuckles and tells you something your own mom would tell you whenever you’re telling on Jeongguk: “Just ignore him, Kiddo.” The sacred word of ignore. “Go prepare the breakfast pastries now.”

So much for sound solution.

You go about your shift as usual, with Jimin manning the register like you planned to. Time goes by quickly when you’re busy working (and when your coworker is Park Jimin) that you didn’t realize it’s almost time for your shift to end. You glance at the line in front of Jimin and see that there are still three more people he needs to serve, while you and Yoongi still have about five tickets to finish before you can clock out and leave. Scratch that, might be eight tickets to go considering the workers who have their shift after you aren’t here yet. It’s gonna be a while before you can see your boyfriend and be a witness to an unnecessary fight between him and Yoongi.

“Hey, Kim, where’s your boyfriend? Didn’t you say he was gonna pick you up from work?” Jimin nudges your elbow when he finishes taking one customer’s order, sliding a plastic cup into the queue in front of you. “I want to see just how hot he really is,” he continues while wiggling his eyebrows.

Before you can slap the guy with your dish rag again—it’s looking more like your weapon rather than a cleaning tool at this point—Yoongi pipes up from his position in front of the sink. “Just look for someone with a tattoo sleeve. He loves brandishing it.”

“Ooh, a hot guy with tattoos,” Jimin whistles. “Add some piercings and I might steal him away from you.”

“Jimin, quit drooling over my boyfriend,” you sigh, taking the next cup in line as your coworker turns back to the register. He’s already starting to greet the next customer when you decide to give him a taste of his own medicine, sliding next to him to brew the espresso needed for the order you’re making. “He has one on his lip, but he’s mine. Note that, Park,” you whisper to him while he’s keying in an order, earning a light chuckle from the man.

“He’s just messing with you, Kiddo, don’t mind him,” Yoongi chuckles from beside you, eyeing Jimin whose focus is currently on the cup he’s scribbling a customer’s name on. “He has his eyes set on someone else already.”

“Gossiping, aren’t we?” Jimin turns to you and Yoongi with a sleazy smile. “Careful now, unless you want Hoseok to know about your hot boyfriend too, Kim.” He gestures to the glass doors, where Hoseok from the next shift just walked through. He’s a great guy, but you’ve only shared a couple shifts with him, so you think you haven’t got to the point of sharing about significant others.

With the mention of Hoseok, you and Yoongi move to finish the orders you have left before handing over the shift to the aforementioned man. When all your orders are done and you’re ready to head to the backroom, you turn to ask Jimin to go with you only to find him still rooted in front of the register. “Jimin, you’re not going?”

“Oh, I’m actually covering for Eunbi.” Jimin shrugs, sliding a cup into Hoseok’s line of orders. “Go, Kim. Have fun with your boyfriend,” he grins, sending you a teasing wink.

Hoseok, a clueless witness, looks at the both of you with a scandalous stare. “What, what, what did I miss? Why are you winking like that, Park Jimin?” he says, urging Jimin to elaborate while pouring drinks into a plastic cup.

“You should ask her, Hobi,” Jimin snickers into his hand as he turns to greet a customer. Hoseok turns to you, his expression hopeful that you will shed light on the reason behind Jimin’s wink.

“My boyfriend is about to fight with our boss and I don’t know how to talk him out of it,” you say through your teeth, giving an overly-sweet smile to a confused Hoseok. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to meet him and make sure he’s not gonna bite Yoongi’s head off.”

“Bye, Kim,” Jimin sing-songs, waving his hand to you. “Say hi to your boyfriend for me!”

You’re already walking away, turning to tell Jimin off when you bump into Yoongi who’s just came out of the backroom, void of his work apron and ready to go. He grabs your shoulders to turn you around, pushing you into the backroom to prevent anymore banter between you and Jimin. “Let it go, Kiddo.”

In the backroom, you catch a text from Jeongguk saying that he’s already in the coffee shop, ready to go when you are. You emerge from the room after clocking out, moving your feet to the dining area of the cafe while waving to Jimin and Hoseok behind the counter. Scanning the room, you search for a familiar mop of black hair that belongs to your boyfriend.

It’s easy to spot Yoongi’s mint hair amongst the sea of other natural-colored hairs. What’s not easy is believing your eyes when you see the person sitting in front of Yoongi waving wildly at you, grinning like a mad man. It’s your boyfriend, the person you’re supposed to see after work, the person you’re supposed to supervise when he fights your boss later, alright, that part you know. The part that you don’t know and have a hard time believing is:

Jeongguk’s hair is mint.

Not black, not brown, not the experimental half-half he tried in high school. Mint.

The exact same shade as Yoongi’s.

It feels like you’re on autopilot when your feet carry you to their table, jaw on the floor while your eyes are stuck on Jeongguk’s freshly-dyed strands.

“Hi, babe,” your boyfriend has the audacity to say, lips stretching impossibly wider. He reaches up to run his fingers through his mint hair, an act so deliberate even Yoongi sighs at the sight of it, but it makes your heart skip a bit nonetheless. “Do you like my new hair?”

The light green strands previously tangled with his fingers fall back to cover his forehead and frame his face perfectly, the light hue somehow blending well with Jeongguk’s skin tone. It also accentuates his jaw more, making it appear sharper when the grin on his lips morphs into a smirk once he notices that you can’t stop staring. Oh, that smirk. Usually hot with his previously black hair, it is now lethal with his mint hair, toeing the line of playful and dangerous at the same time.

You want to scream at the obvious and cheesy question.

Yoongi, the third person who’s been watching the entire interaction unfold before his eyes, clears his throat. “If you’re done eye-fucking your boyfriend, can we go now? I have somewhere else to be after this.”

“Yoongi!” you whisper-shout, half scandalized, half disbelieving that your boss can say something so crude in the middle of his own buzzing coffee shop. Maybe he’s been hanging out with Park Jimin too much. (Or maybe he’s just sick of you drooling over your boyfriend time and time again … yeah, maybe that.)

“Can’t wait to lose to me, Min?” Jeongguk snickers, taking your hand in his as he follows Yoongi—who pointedly ignores his taunting question—towards the glass door of the coffee shop.

You catch Jimin’s eyes as you’re stepping out, his eyes rounding in surprise before a sly smile takes over his features. Have fun! he mouths, giving you a wink. Ugh, you’re gonna face a lot more questions the next time you have a shift together with him.

After another futile attempt at talking Jeongguk out of fighting with Yoongi, you’re seated where you usually are, on the sidelines of Jeongguk’s gym, this time with heightened anxiety out of fear that your boyfriend and your boss could hurt each other. You’re worried less about the physical part—boxing is a very physical sport, after all—and more about the mental part.

Boys are full of pride, full of ego. They pride themselves on their ability to box, delivering punch after punch until their knuckles bruise. They pride themselves on their muscles, bulging biceps that took years to build and maintain. They pride themselves on their strength, how they are able to hold you up against the wall when you’re busy sucking air off each other’s lungs.

Oh, and in case it’s not clear, by boys you mean Jeongguk.

You have a lot of faith in your boyfriend, of course, but knowing Yoongi’s boxing skills, no matter how long ago it was, the outcome of the fight today could just be the one that would hurt Jeongguk’s pride. The possibility of it happening is so high that you’re already preparing yourself for when Jeongguk comes back to you with his ego bruised. God, you can only hope Yoongi won’t hit too hard.

You’re too busy thinking of the many possible outcomes of this fight that you don’t realize when Jeongguk is back from putting his gloves on and warming up, now standing in front of you. “Wish me luck?” he says, along with a toothy grin your way.

“Yeah, good luck, Ggukie,” you reply, lacking your usual sarcastic bite. Jeongguk seems to pay no mind to it, though, ducking down to peck your lips before turning around to face his opponent for the day.

You catch Yoongi’s eyes when Jeongguk has his back to you, quickly mouthing don’t hurt him! to your boss, which he only responds with a smirk. All the blood drains from your face. Looks like your worries about someone getting his ego bruised won’t be just worries after all.

When the fight has started (Jeongguk’s coach started it—you’re grateful he’s there because then you don’t have to worry too much about Jeongguk and Yoongi beating each other to a pulp), you can’t help but watch. You just realize, in the years you’ve known Jeongguk and watched him box, you’ve never actually seen him fight anyone else other than his coach. He’s said before that he only took boxing as a way to work out, not to actually fight, so you guess that makes sense.

You don’t watch boxing matches a lot (actually, you don’t watch them at all), your only knowledge of boxing you get from watching Real Steel, a movie about boxing matches for robots, set in the far future when human boxing is not interesting anymore due to the limited brutality. You’re not sure how much information you retained from the movie, and how accurate they are, but you’re pretty sure you don’t need much boxing knowledge to know that right now, Yoongi is playing defensive while Jeongguk is playing offensive.

Alright, you admit, you have no idea if the terms you’re using are right, but it’s the simplest ones you can use to describe the sight in front of you. Since the start of the fight, Jeongguk has been throwing punches continuously, while Yoongi has had his gloved hands covering his face the entire time. Okay, not the entire time, but he’s only thrown one punch compared to Jeongguk’s one hundred ones.

As the fight goes on, Yoongi starts throwing punches here and there while still dodging Jeongguk’s aggressive fists. You’ve never seen Yoongi move this much in the entire time you’ve known him, and it surprises you how agile he is. The way he ducks under Jeongguk’s arm and throws him off balance is admirable, sometimes a little bit funny (just a bit, you promise) because it shows just how calm he is compared to Jeongguk’s aggressive, almost-angry boxing style.

When Jeongguk’s coach declares a break, your boyfriend walks back to you with his brows furrowed, tearing off one of his gloves so he can remove his mouth guard and grab his water bottle. After chugging down half of its content, Jeongguk heaves a frustrated sigh.

“I can’t grasp his fighting style,” he grumbles to himself. His eyes are set on Yoongi, who’s on the other side of the room, drinking from his own water bottle. “Who the fuck ducks all the time while boxing?”

“Maybe it’s because you keep throwing angry punches at him, babe,” you say, initially to keep his frustration at bay, but instead it makes him raise his eyebrow at you in a duh way. You backtrack immediately. “Okay, okay. But it’s just your first time fighting him, isn’t it? Be patient, Jeongguk, and maybe let up your punches a little bit?”

“Baby, it’s boxing,” he says exasperatedly. “Someone has to throw some punches.”

“I know, but you just seem so … angry. Yoongi’s only ducking to dodge that. I’m saying maybe you can tone it down so he could stop dodging, so then you can see his fighting style better.” You’re saying this while gripping his biceps, hoping your words can go through his seemingly-clouded mind. “When you see his fighting style, won’t it be easier to figure out a way you can beat him? Isn’t that what you taunted him with at the cafe?”

You know it’s not even remotely possible to learn one’s boxing style just from a single fight, let alone “figure out a way to beat him”. Somewhere in his fogged mind, you believe Jeongguk stores this fact as well, he’s just currently too deep in frustration to place it in the front of his mind. You’re not even sure your suggestion to learn Yoongi’s fighting style is registered well in his head, considering your boyfriend is now back to eyeing your boss with fire in his gaze.

“Jeongguk?” You give his shoulder a firm grip as he puts his mouth guard back on. “Tone it down. Yoongi could just be waiting to punch back. You don’t want that.”

Jeongguk parts ways with you with an absent-minded nod and two pats to your head with his heavy gloved-hand. On the other side of the room, Yoongi looks ready to go back into his fighting stance. You sigh internally. Jeongguk is so going to punch him aggressively, again.

The next thirty minutes of the fight goes like a blur in front of your eyes. Jeongguk throws a hook that Yoongi dodges, Yoongi retaliates with a jab to Jeongguk’s side which makes you wince, rinse and repeat. Maybe you’re wrong about your boyfriend for once, you think, seeing his calmer fighting style now. With the way he left your conversation minutes prior, you really thought he was gonna continue raining punches on any part of Yoongi’s body he could reach. You’re relieved that that’s not the case.

Although, perhaps your relief came too soon because a boxing match isn’t over until it’s over.

Watching Jeongguk fight with Yoongi is like watching a cartoon character with an energy meter atop his head, except for Jeongguk, it measures his patience instead. As the minutes went on, you feel like you could see the patience meter above his head depleting until it’s all gone, and that’s the moment he went back to his initial fighting style: aggressive and angry. You almost pull your hair out in frustration because you just know that this is what Yoongi has been waiting for ever since the fight started.

The next thing that happens reminds you a lot of one fighting scene in Real Steel, where Atom was waiting for his opponent to run out of energy so he can fight back. In the movie, Atom knocked the other robot down with a final uppercut, gaining him a win and advancing him to the next round. Well, uh, in this case, just replace Atom with Yoongi and the other robot with Jeongguk.

Yoongi’s clean uppercut wiped your boyfriend out, who’s now lying on the ground clutching his face—which you’re sure is beginning to swell right now. Despite already knocking Jeongguk down, Yoongi is still in his fighting stance, never lowering his guard even as Jeongguk’s coach counts to ten. Your boyfriend remains immobile, though, and the second the count is up you’re running towards Jeongguk’s limp body.

“Gguk, are you okay? Baby, look at me,” you say hurriedly as you try to pry his arms away from his face. He doesn’t budge, and for a second, you’re scared that Yoongi has maimed your boyfriend for life. “At least let me know you’re alive,” you continue when his silence becomes concerning.

“Hmmph,” Jeongguk grunts. You heave a huge sigh of relief.

“Okay, good.” You run your fingers through his sweaty hair, trying to offer some comfort even though you know he had this coming. Gigantic ego, big talk, cocky as shit? Yeah, you understand that Yoongi would want to knock him down a few pegs. But now is not the time to launch into an ‘I told you so’ spiel, not when Jeongguk is still freshly bruised—both his body and his ego.

So instead, you lash out at your boss.

“I told you not to hurt him, Yoongi,” you snap-slash-whine, a frown on your lips. You thought, as the oldest among all of you, Yoongi could be trusted to knock some sense into Jeongguk’s mind without physically hurting him like this. As it turns out, all boys are the same.

The older guy just shrugs. “Probably wouldn’t get my point across if he weren’t knocked down.” He shakes the sweat out of his hair as he starts taking off his boxing gloves. When he sees you’re not impressed, he chuckles. “Relax, Kiddo, I didn’t even hit him that hard. He’ll be okay.”

“Really, Yoongi?” You roll your eyes. “You gave my boyfriend an uppercut just to prove a point!”

Yoongi just continues laughing as he chugs from his water bottle. His nonchalance about this is starting to piss you off. Maybe it’s your turn to put on the boxing gloves and sock him in the face, give him a taste of his own medicine. You scoff to yourself, picturing your own body lying next to Jeongguk if you really did that.

“Just tell your boyfriend here that there’s no need to be jealous of me, Kiddo,” Yoongi says, picking up his bag. Just then, Jeongguk’s coach appears with an ice pack in his hand, offering it to you so you can place it against Jeongguk’s swollen jaw. Despite your attempt to coax him out of his arm cocoon, he still refuses to move.

“Yoongi, look at him, you really broke him.” You’re flat-out whining now, kicking your feet like a child. It doesn’t even occur to your mind that you’re all still in the middle of a public boxing gym, with other people around you, being witness to this ridiculous scene.

“Oh my God,” Yoongi laughs before crouching down at Jeongguk’s legs. “Hey, Jeongguk, you hear that? Your girlfriend is worried about you,” he says, nudging Jeongguk’s leg lightly. “She only has eyes for you and your tattoos, too, you don’t need to be jealous at all.” You smack him on the shoulder for that.

Jeongguk finally removes his arms from his face at Yoongi’s words, his doe eyes menacing. “Go away,” he grits out at the older male, his scratchy voice making him sound less threatening than he intended. Despite that, Yoongi still holds his hands up in surrender.

“I’m going, I’m going,” Yoongi relents, standing up while adjusting the hold he has on his bag. “Was gonna go anyway, I have a date to get ready for,” he throws a grin your way. “Alright, I’ll be going first. Take care of your boyfriend, Kiddo.”

Yoongi retreats with a wave towards you both.

Jeongguk lets out a groan, shifting your attention away from your boss who’s already backing his car out of the parking lot. “Quit your job tomorrow,” he says. “I hate your boss.”

“Stop moving around!”

“It hurts!”

You’re both back at Jeongguk’s house now, with you sitting atop his outstretched legs on the bed, attempting to take care of his battle wounds courtesy of his fight with Yoongi. Aside from the swollen jaw, Jeongguk has a cut on his eyebrow and a split bottom lip. For a boxing match, you’d say these are minor injuries—proving Yoongi’s words right, he didn’t hit Jeongguk that hard—but your boyfriend is acting like a baby. He keeps jerking his head away every time the alcohol swab comes in contact with either of his cuts, it irritates you to no end.

“You have a goddamn full sleeve of tattoo and a lip piercing, quit acting like this hurts more,” you hiss, pressing the cotton in your hand to the cut on his lip as Jeongguk hiss back in response.

“At least when I got my tattoos and piercing, the artist didn’t do it while yapping my ear off,” he lisps through the cotton. “What happened to the caring girlfriend at the gym? Did she go away too, alongside Yoongi?”

“Oh, shut up, if I yapped back there Yoongi would’ve stomped on your ego more than he already did, do you want that, Jeongguk? Huh?” Your words are harsh, but you try hard for your hands to be the opposite, gentle as they cover the cut on his eyebrow with a band-aid. Jeongguk’s forehead is still damp from his quick shower earlier, beads of mint clinging to his skin. He might look smoking hot with his newly dyed hair, but the way the color rubs off on anything is starting to get onto your nerves. You wipe lightly at the color to make sure the band-aid sticks to his skin and does not come off the second he jumps around again.

“My ego is fine, you don’t need to protect it like this,” Jeongguk grumbles, adjusting the ice pack he’s holding to his jaw as you press a new cotton ball on his lip, discarding the one stained crimson red to his bedside table. “Maybe if you care about me as much as you care about my ego, everything would’ve been better.”

The way he’s rambling like he got his sense knocked out of his head as well makes you roll your eyes to the back of your head. “Don’t test me, Jeon. If I didn’t care about you I wouldn’t be here sitting on your thighs patching your minuscule injuries like they’re fucking wounds from a war.”

“Maybe,” Jeongguk half-agrees, a pout on his lips. “But you haven’t kissed me even once ever since the fight ended. Do I not deserve a kiss because I lost? Do you not want to kiss me ever again because I can’t beat Yoongi in boxing? Do you think Yoongi is way better than me now? Do you want him to be your boyfriend instead of me?”

With every nonsensical question, his pout deepens, and his eyes droop to stare blankly at nothing.

“Hah, ‘my ego is fine�� my ass,” you mumble, mostly to yourself as you turn the gears in your head on how to stop the bleeding on Jeongguk’s lip. It keeps gushing out blood, and you can’t exactly stick a band-aid to it like you did his eyebrow. At last, you just hold a cotton ball against it and hope it stops bleeding soon.

“Yoongi was right, you know,” you say clearly now, the tumble of Yoongi’s name out of your lips making Jeongguk glance up and focus his sight on your face. “You don’t need to be jealous of him at all. Heck, you don’t need to be jealous of anyone, Jeongguk. I’m your girlfriend and will always stay your girlfriend, no matter what. You don’t need to beat anyone in boxing or dye your hair the exact same shade as anyone for me to stay. You, Jeon Jeongguk, are enough.”

Jeongguk’s eyes, gazing into yours, are glassy with unshed tears. You don’t know if they are there because he’s touched by your words or are leftovers from crying over his bruised ego from the fight with Yoongi. Either way, it throws you off balance. Next thing you know, you’re being tugged down by the nape for a kiss.

Jeongguk’s lips are warm, like usual, but the tinge of metal you taste on your tongue is making you worry. Before you lose yourself in his kiss, you pull away to thumb at his lip lightly, seeing streaks of red on your skin. You’re about to continue pressing the cotton ball in your hand to his lips and stop all forms of kissing immediately, but your boyfriend has a mind of his own as he instead sucks your thumb into his mouth, wrapping his lips around the digit delicately as he holds eye contact with you.

Gone is the trace of any tears from his eyes, now replaced by something you can only identify as lust. As flattered as you are that Jeongguk finds you desirable in your current situation, it also makes you confused. He’s hurt and the only thing in his mind is getting his dick wet? Unbelievable.

The ice-cold feeling on your waist tears your attention away from Jeongguk’s dark eyes as you yelp, hand instinctively prying the cold thing away. The ‘thing’ turns out to be his hand, which was previously holding the ice pack to his swollen jaw. He’s sneaked his fucking cold hand under your shirt to hold your waist when he should’ve kept holding the ice pack to his jaw—his swollen jaw!

Your boyfriend has a swollen jaw, a busted lip and a cut eyebrow. This is not the time to be screwing around.

Pulling away your thumb out of Jeongguk’s mouth at the speed of light, you attempt to climb off his lap, but he’s read your mind even before they are conjured up in your own brain. His hands are back on your waist—yes, the cold one too—and they hold you firm in place. The side of Jeongguk’s lips turn up into a sickeningly sweet smile, before he tugs your body towards his, making your hips come in contact with his crotch. He’s hard. Oh, fuck.

“You know, I never really understood why you’re so bratty whenever you’re horny and I can’t tend to you right away, but I think I get it now,” he says right by your ear, making a shiver run down your spine. “I’ve been trying to will away my boner ever since you sat on my lap, but your weight on it is so damn distracting, it’s hard.”

“So,” he punctuates the word with a kiss on your neck, “I started saying anything to get my mind off it, but the way you care for me just … turns me on even more, if that was even possible.” He noses his way down your throat, coming to a stop at your collarbone. “And then all that talk about how I am enough ��� holy shit, I lost it. All I could think about was how I want to kiss you and fuck you into next week on this very bed.”

You can barely hear the last few words Jeongguk is saying, because he’s mumbling them into your skin as he peppers kisses and nips there. His fingers are now pressing into your back, pulling you closer and closer to him until there is no space left between you. You crane your neck so he can have more room to splash reds and purples onto your skin, sighing to the top of his mint head.

“You know, for someone claiming to be horny, you’re doing a terrible job at dirty talk,” you jab at your boyfriend, earning you a bite on your neck and a tightened grip on your body, making you close your eyes with stuttered breath.

“Easy, babe,” Jeongguk chuckles. “You talk as if you won’t be a moaning mess by the end of this,” he continues with much confidence. “But also, my lip is still kinda bleeding and my sides are still throbbing from the bruises. Kinda debating should we continue or just go to sleep.”

“Jeon Jeongguk I swear to God if you leave me high and dry—”

“Maybe you should kiss them better,” he cuts you off with a suggestion, his lips still trailing butterfly kisses on your neck and collarbone. The hands still on your back sneakily climb up and up until they’re reaching for the clasp of your bra, easily opening it to free your breasts from its confines. Your sound of protest gets stuck in your throat as a strangled moan comes out instead when Jeongguk massages your breasts tenderly with his fingers.

“Maybe I would—fuck—if you get rid of your shirt,” you say, tugging on the offending piece of fabric still covering your boyfriend’s gorgeous body. It’s not fair that he’s got you half naked already and he’s still fully clothed.

Jeongguk parts himself from your body long enough to tug his t-shirt off from the back of his neck in one smooth motion, exposing the golden expanse of his skin to your hungry eyes. If you thought his mint hair was smoking hot with his shirt on, it’s literally burning a flame of desire deep in your belly with his shirt off. You’re tongue-tied as you marvel at the sight in front of you, you almost jump when your own shirt and bra are taken off your body.

Now both bare from the waist up, Jeongguk wastes no time leaning back in for a kiss on the mouth, this time open-mouthed so he can slide his tongue inside. You keen happily, slipping a sigh in between as he slowly lowers you to the bed. Jeongguk anchors his hands on your hips, teasing at the waistband of your sweatpants as he keeps your mouth busy with his own. In contrast, your hands are everywhere, from his broad shoulder to his firm back, from his bulging biceps to his rock-hard abs. You even tease your fingers past his waistband, grabbing onto his ass and squeezing, making him groan hotly into your mouth. It’s only when your fingers brush against his sides that he winces, reminding you of his earlier request.

“Flip around,” you whisper against his lips, “so I can kiss your bruises better.”

“Hmm?” Jeongguk hums, your words a murmur in his head. “But I like having you like this. Under me, naked, panting, wet,” he says, slipping his hand beyond your sweatpants to prove his words right—you’ve soaked through your panties. He drags a finger slowly up your center. You shudder.

“Yeah? I can be naked, panting, and wet on top of you as well.”

“Ooh, tempting.” Jeongguk licks his lips. He flicks your clit with a cheeky smile dancing on his lips, before settling his hands back on your waist. “Alright, I’ll flip over.”

The next second, you’re staring at him from up top, admiring how his mint hair looks against his dark grey bed sheets. Although, his hair is the least of your concern right now, as you’re tugged back down for another bruising kiss. Now that you’re on top, Jeongguk takes the opportunity to return the favor that is slipping his hand into your pants to squeeze your ass, but his version involves pulling your hips down while his thrusts up, creating a delicious friction between your body that makes you exhale a moan into his mouth.

You move away from his lips, down to his jaw where you take care to land a kiss light as a feather, before moving to his neck and collarbone where you have your own share of bites and licks. Aside from your infatuation with his tattoos and biceps, you actually have another one with his collarbone, this one you keep secret from him lest he goes around the house shirtless more often just to brandish his clavicle. But maybe he’s already noticed from the way you always make sure to cover that body part of his in blooms of red and purple, taking care to trace each and every bite mark slowly with the tip of your tongue.

While you’re busy with his collarbone, Jeongguk keeps dragging your crotch steadily over his, like he can’t get enough of the feeling and wants to keep chasing it. The delicious pressure on your center is a bit distracting, so you smooth your palm across his chest to pinch at his nipple in warning. Jeongguk lets out a broken whine from his throat.

“Stop humping into me, do you want to cream your pants?” you chide, fingers still giving tiny pinches to his nipple to keep him on his toes.

“Was trying to get you to cream your pants,” Jeongguk grins guiltily, his hips snapping up yet again to collide with yours. Even if you roll your eyes at his antics, you still continue your journey of kissing down his body, making sure to suck and lick on his sensitive nipples. You love the moans and groans that slip out of his throat every time you do things to his nipples. He likes it so much that his hips keep chanting up, searching for friction, that you have to pin them down so you can slide down to pepper kisses on his abs and waist.

Jeongguk works really hard to maintain the body he has, clearly evident in the eight pack he’s sporting on his stomach and the tiny, minuscule waist that’s way too slutty for a man to have. Sometimes you’re jealous of how nice his body looks, how firm it is to touch. You told him this one time, along with your regret that you couldn’t give him a similar experience, but he’d only laughed and said that admiring and appreciating him was enough, before proceeding to show you how he admires and appreciates your soft body (he kept biting into your inner thigh as he was eating you out, coaxing you into four orgasms back to back that day.)

And so, you admire his body by kissing the taut muscle one by one, tracing the lines outlining them with your hot tongue, caressing his bruised waist with the pillow of your lips and the feather of your touch. You know he’s hurt, but you can’t hold yourself from nipping on his slutty waist, gifting him another bruise that’s not a result of a punch. From the choked sob that rips out of his throat and the jump of his dick somewhere on your stomach, you take it he likes the bite.

“So,” you say as you mouth at the seam of his waistband, hand massaging his hard cock through his pants. “Do you want to cum in your pants, in my hand, in my mouth, or—?”

“Fuck, in you, please,” Jeongguk begs, eyes glassy from your ministrations. “But can we go back to dry humping for a while? Kinda like the friction on my sweatpants,” he breathes.

“Like this?” You move your hand up and down his cock, dragging the material of his sweatpants with it, paying special attention to the head. With every rub of the sweatpants against his head, a bead of precum comes out, with Jeongguk throwing his head back in silent pleasure. “Yeah, fuuck, that feels good.”

“But babe, want you, on top,” he demands, making grabby hands at you. “Was serious when I said I wanted you to cum first,” he continues, sighs in content when you oblige, resuming your position on top of him and lining your clothed crotch with his. He starts dragging your hips against his, building the pleasure up the faster he goes. “Want to fuck your swollen pussy, dripping with cum. Oh, I’ll slide right in, no problem, so wet, warm … fuuuck.”

The grip Jeongguk has on your hips is bruising, you have no choice but to let your body be manhandled by him. Slowly but surely, the band inside your stomach begins to tighten as your hold on his shoulders does as well. You’re so close, just one more move to tip you over the edge. When Jeongguk sucks one of your nipples into his mouth, the band inside you snaps and you come with a jerk of your hips and a whine from your throat.

Jeongguk slows down his move, taking care not to cum before being inside you, before stopping altogether and wrapping his arms around you to bring the both of you into a sitting position. Your limbs feel like jelly, still trying to come down from your high, when Jeongguk pecks your cheek before carefully lying you back down on the bed with your face down. He then maneuvers himself behind you, lifting your hips off the bed. You’re starting to have an idea what position he wants you in when he spreads your knees and slowly peels back your pants and panties to reveal your bare ass and pussy.

He takes his time caressing the globe of your ass, inching his fingers towards your pussy lips before spreading them apart, tearing a low whine from your chest. You guess he’s admiring the way cum still drips out of your cunt, because he’s silent, immobile for almost a minute.

“Gguk…” you whisper out. “You gonna fuck me or not?”

Jeongguk scrambles to get his pants off. “Fuck, yes, of course, baby, you just look so beautiful like this, I want to stare all day long,” he breathes, lining up his dick with your entrance.

God, I’m so thankful you’re mine, is his last warning before he slides home in one thrust.

Later, when you’re both freshly showered and cuddling on Jeongguk’s bed—with blue bed sheets this time, because you forced him to change the sheets as the grey ones smelled gross after your activities—you ask him a question.

“Are you still jealous of Yoongi?”

There’s a three second pause before Jeongguk’s answer comes. “Maybe a tiny bit,” he says, nearly connecting his thumb and forefinger together in a ‘tiny’ motion. “Of his boxing skills only. Amazing how he could still move like that with an injured shoulder. I want to be like that too.”

“You want to injure your shoulder?”

He gives you a flat look. You giggle.

“His shoulder is actually healed, you know, so he’s still actively boxing until now. He trains the boxing club at my campus whenever our coach can't, that’s where I know him from and how I’d gotten the job at his cafe.”

Jeongguk purses his lips. “So he lied to me.”

“Hmm,” you agree. “I figured it was to ‘teach you a lesson’, that’s why I asked him not to hurt you before your fight. Did you, though? Learn your lesson?”

“What? To not be jealous of him?”

You pinch his waist. “To knock your ego down a peg and stop feeling insecure whenever I interact with other men?”

“Baby, the guy had a nickname for you. My insecurities were valid!”

“You mean the ‘Kiddo’ one?” you ask. Jeongguk nods. “He calls Jimin Kiddo. He calls Eunbi Kiddo. He calls you Kiddo. He calls everyone younger than him, Kiddo.”

More silence ensues.

“So … my jealousy was for nothing?”

“Yes! What I’ve been saying!”

Jeongguk giggles. Then he kisses you. Then he giggles again, while still kissing you.

“How about an apology?” he offers.

“In what form?” you challenge.

“Round three?”

“No.”

Well, at least he’s not jealous anymore.

a/n: thank you for reading!! please let me know what you think of this, i literally almost cried in the process of writing it and when i finally finished it :') and yes this started because of that one mint jeongguk in memories 2020/2021, i think? the one with him in a black sleeveless and a pair of sunglasses, hahah. wish he'd dye his hair mint again (he looks rly good in it ugh)

→ request is open for my 1k folls celebration!

[uracutieraka]

Bakugo Katsuki who finally gets a date with his support course crush!

find part one here!

*.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.*

Bakugo Katsuki started acting completely different after he met you. His once perfect (to his standards at least) reputation was now ruined. The reason? Midoriya's cute support course friend.

Ever since you waltzed over to him with your sweet smile, and oh so pretty eyes, he finds himself nearly bewitched by you. It was driving him absolutely insane!

What was even more insane though, was watching this all unfold from and outside perspective.

Denki found himself nearly throwing up anytime you were even brought up in front of his friend, not because he thought you were gross, in fact it was the opposite. He found how down bad Bakugo was for you down right disturbing.

The normally mean and arrogant man seemed to do a 180° personality change when you came around, or even got mentioned in passing.

Denki especially hated it when you had now found yourself a regular member of their little lunch table. It just meant 40 minutes of watching Bakugo mindlessly nod his head with a glazed over look in his eyes, every. time. you. spoke.

"Gross." Denki says aloud as he bites into his sandwich. Eyes squinting as he watches the two of you like a hawk.

Sero looks over at his electric friend with a knowing smirk.

"You are so jealous Kaminari."

"Am not!"

The ruckus on the other side of the booth has you and Bakugo breaking away from your vicious flirting to study the source of the commotion.

His friends are sitting across from you arguing back and forth as Kirishima continues eating as if all was normal.

"Is everything okay?"

The boys now look over at the sound of the worried voice to see you. You have a concerned look on your face as you dart your eyes back and forth between them.

Denki looks over at his friend to see what his reaction will be to the boys interrupting you and him. To his dismay, bakugo has that stupid dopey smile on his face as he watched your every move.

Ok so maybe Denki was slightly jealous, but like, who wouldn't be? You were pretty and obviously attentive, smart but not arrogant, and worst of all, you liked Bakugo of all people.

Maybe he wouldn't be so upset at the situation if you liked Kirishima or literally anyone but the brooding Blond. It's not that he didn't want his friend to be happy, it's just that he didn't want him to get a girlfriend before he could.

So yeah maybe he was a bit jealous, but it wasn't that crazy.

Sero is quick to tell you everything is fine and to go back to what you were doing and you're quick to flash him a smile and nod of acknowledgment before turning back to the boy you were originally sat over here for.

You watch from the corners of your eyes as his friends go back to arguing but this time they're whisper yelling at each-other. You yet again lean slightly past Bakugo to see the red head sat behind him.

Kirishima only takes his eyes up from his tray of food when he hears his name being said. He looks up with a mouth full of food at the sound of your voice in his ears.

He takes a moment to hurriedly chew his food and swallow before responding.

"So, I was thinking, what if we just added some horns to your head gear instead of you always having to style your hair?"

Bakugo watched you interact with his classmates and feels himself pout a bit at the lack of attention.

You quickly glance at him through your peripheral vision and can see his bottom lip poking out as his eyebrows are furrowed together.

You decide to leans ever so slightly closer to the side of him so your knees are no longer the only parts of you touching.

He flushes and you feel him take a deep breath once your hip and leg is completely flush with his.

You now use your hand on his upper arm to support yourself as you look at Kirishima.

You and Kirishima share a few ideas back and forth with each other about the schematics of his hero costume.

You only end it when you see Bakugo roll his eyes.

You're quick to check your watch and stand up to excuse yourself.

Bakugo feels himself grow disappointed at the idea, a sad frown crossing his face to prove it.

You shoot him that intoxicating smile and ask him if he'd like to walk you to class.

"It's just awfully far and the walk is so boring by myself."

Bakugo yet again giggles at the invite and cleans up his lunch. He take the tray from your hands and you silently laugh at the way he puffs out his chest when you thank him and call him a gentleman.

Once he properly disposes of the trays you grab his wrist and quickly make your exit from the crowded area. He allows himself to be dragged off by you with a wide smile and soft eyes, chuckle bubbling out of him at your eagerness to leave.

If you told Bakugo a month ago that he'd be acting like one of those corny shojou manga guys he probably would've tried to fight you, but here he is now. Eyes never leaving the back of you as you lead him through the vast halls of UA.

After a few minutes of walking you slow down and drop his wrist, coming instead to stand at his side. He's kind of sad at the loss of contact with you but its quickly dissipated when you lean into him and nudge him slightly with your shoulder.

He looks down at you with a smile on his face and you give him the same expression as you two continue dow the halls towards your classroom.

Before the two of you turn down the hallways to your class, you stop him and lean your back on the wall.

He gives you a suspicious look and you tuck you hair behind your ear before talking.

"I don't want my teacher to see us yet.," a dry laugh comes from you before you decide it's best if you maybe actually looked at him while taking. He swears he can feel his heart stop (ifykyk) when you look back at him with a blush on your face and big doe eyes.

"I just wanted to say that I think you're super cute and wanted to know if you were maybe free tonight?"

He can feel his chest tighten at your words and he inhales at the sudden pit of anxiety in his abdomen.

He was free tonight, as he was most nights anyways.

"Yeah, are you?" He cringes internally at the dumb question, obviously you were. You wouldn't be asking him if you were busy. He feels a sense of relief when your siren like giggle swims around in head, ringing in his ears.

"Actually, I'm pretty busy tonight. I'm hanging out with this guy later then have some work to do on his friends costumes." You're tone is flat and he takes you seriously.

You watch as heartbreak over takes his face.

You playfully scoff and swat his chest.

"I'm talking about you Katsuki!" Another heavenly laugh graces his ears and he almost cries tears of joy from the sound alone.

"Oh." He says, heat creeping up his neck and ears as he awkwardly rubs the back of his neck.

"Pick me up at my dorm at 7:30?"

Normally, if you were anyone else, he would shut them down with s 'no' and the fact he goes to bed at 8 p.m. sharp every night. Though he quickly hears a desperate 'yes' tumble out his mouth before he can say anything else.

"Perfect!" You say, standing on your tippy toes to lean up and give him a soft peck on his cheek, something you had been doing since the day you met him. Though today you wore lipstick, something you normally skipped due to the inconvenience of it.

The dark red color stains his skin and you giggle before turning and walking off to class. The bell chimes and you turn around to holler at him.

"You have 10 minutes before you're supposed to be on the training course by the way Kacchan!" a mischievous smile tugs its way on your face as you wink and blow him a kiss before disappearing into your classroom.

He watches you with a fascinated look before he fully registers your words.

'Shit.' He thinks before bolting off to his class.

*.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.*

"You're late Bakugo." Aizawa dead pans as he walks up to the rest of his class on the platform.

He rolls his eyes and goes to respond before he's cut off again.

"Hey, what's on your face?" Midoriya asks, pointing to his cheek.

A few other students crowd him to get a look at the mysterious red mark.

"Is that a lipstick stain! What were you and that support course girl doing?!" Mineta pipes up.

Bakugo goes to hit him but is stopped when Mina goes to wipe it off.

He shoots himself up into the air and away from all of them.

They all watch in shock at his quick reflexes.

"Don't touch me idiot!"

Mina rolls her eyes and finally Denki chimes in.

"Bakugo, dude, get a grip it's just makeup."

Him and Denki ended up fighting so bad that he has to call you with the other boy to explain that he'll be there at 8 to pick you up instead, due to the fact him and Denki had to help Aizawa grade papers and clean the dorm showers as punishment for the disruption in class.

You giggle when he finally does come around to get you later that night. He has his hands shoved into his pockets and a nervous look on his face that seems to subside when you come out the front door and yet again leave a small kiss to the side of his face. He swears that you must have secret powers because of the way he gets so flustered anytime you even just breathe in his direction.

He hadn't heard the end of it in weeks, his friends constantly making fun of him for his rapid change in behavior. He didn't care though, which he even found weird himself, though he would never admit that to anyone.

He admires your cleaned up appearance, though he found it cute when you had your hair thrown up messily and grease stains on your face from whatever project you were currently working on in class.

"So, Katsuki," The sound of his actual name causes his ears to perk up and another woozy smile to sit on his face. "There's something that I want to show you."

You reach out and place your hand gently on his shoulder and run it down his arm, fingers lazily intertwining with his. You study how he reacts to your touch. You would be lying if you said you didn't throughly enjoy watching the notoriously angry man fold underneath the slightest bit of attention from you.

Though, you also can't help how it seems like your brain just turns off when you talk to him, a ditzy side of you that you didn't even know existed seeps out of you. It's like you can't help yourself. The desire to see that lovesick grin cover his face is all consuming.

You watch as he eventually gives you a few slow nods, showing you his approval to seeing whatever it is you want to show him. His eyes never leave where your hand is connected with his.

He thinks that this is probably the most amount of affection he's ever shown or accepted for anything.

You two walk in silence as you lead him to the school building, only when you scan a card to get in does he stand firm in his place with a weary look on his face. You turn back with a small frown at his solid stance.

"What's wrong?"

"Why are we at the school?"

You let go of him and turn around with and eyeball and a sigh, he knows it's just you poking fun at him due to the way the corners of your lips twitch up a bit as you speak.

"I don't know if you know this but support course students have 24 hour access to the school."

He in fact did not know this. You watch as his face contorts in confusion so you explain why as you rescan your ID card and open the door for him.

"Well for starters, our teacher is always here. He practically lives in the work room." He watches as a small snort leaves your body at the idea of your teacher living at school. "And it's also hard to stop us from working on our projects outside of class. The principle decided it was best to give us full access after a students dorm almost caught on fire when he plugged in his power saw." You continue to mindlessly ramble about how dumb he was for even attempting to do something like that in a small dorm, and how it's frustrating to have to walk all the way here in the middle of the night just to tinker around with small gadgets you could work on in bed.

He doesn't really hear anything you're saying though as his eyes are focused on the way your lips move and eyes seem to glimmer in the florescent lighting of the school halls.

He now fully takes in the way your hair is neatly styled and laid over your shoulders, and the way you have makeup on. He feels a since of pride at the idea of you getting all dolled up just for him to see. Though he quickly feels his knees buckle when you suddenly stop and push yourself up to him and wrap your arms around his neck before giving him a quick hug.

When you pull away you turn your head in an attempt to shy away from his gaze before you start talking to him.

He watches as you mess with the hem of your awfully short summer dress.

His face flushes at the way he can't tear his eyes off where the hem of the dress sways around your thighs.

You finally stop your gentle swaying and take a deep breath.

It's only when the flowy material stops moving completely that he looks back at you, he has to take in a harsh breath at how you look.

Sure you had looked at him head on before, and sometimes you had even bit your lips and blinked up at him! But this? This was something else. You had a wavering smile on your face as your cheeks were now full blown red. For once you were the overly flustered one.

"So uhm, Katsuki, I've been working on this for a couple weeks, and uhm, I'm really nervous to show you," You give him and awkward close eyed smile as you wipe your hands on the sides of your dress, because of this you miss the way he physically swoons at how adorable you look right now. "and it's not like its super amazing or anything! So don't make fun of me, okay?"

"No promises." A cheeky grin now hung on his face, it's the most confident you've seen him act around you, but like always it's cut short by you laughing and rejoining your hands to keep pulling him to your classroom.

You open the door and cringe at how squeaky it is. You turn back and put your finger up to your lip, signaling for him to be quiet.

"Mr. Majima?" Your voice chirps and echos through the metal work shop.

Bakugo wonders who you're calling out for.

He looks around the space, eyeing all the different things in wonder. He's shocked he's never been down here before. He looks back when he hears a loud crashing noise and sees someone pop around the corner.

"Oh! Y/n! Hi! I see you brought your, what'dya call him? Oh that's right! Your friend boy." A teasing tone is laced in the young teachers tone as you loudly groan and flick a lose nail up at the metal gear on his head.

"Bakugo Katsuki!," The teacher he now knows is Power Loader makes his way over to the blond. He watches as the man walks around him and inspects him a bit. Mumbling under his breath. He now turns back to you. "Interesting."

Bakugo feels like a bug getting crushed under someones foot at the choice of words.

"Whatever, Higari. Why don't you go tell my dad about how you nearly blew me up this morning with your stupid new invention." An eye roll and scoff has the older man backing off. Mumbling under his breath about how you were a spoiled brat.

Bakugo watches as he quickly leaves from the way you two had just entered.

"So you know him personally?" His voice holds a slight tremble at the new idea of how completely alone you two were.

You dryly chuckle and begin digging around, what he assumes, is your work station.

"Yeah, him and my dad have been friends since like forever ago. He's actually the one who convinced me to come here to UA. My top pick was a sister school in America."

Bakugo takes in the new information and stores it in his brain under a big fat file with your name on it.

"Wow," he shoves his hands back deep in his pockets. "America? That's far." He wants to slam his face into the wall for being so awkward.

You let out a frustrated huff before turning back to him with a laugh.

"Yeah it is!," you pout your lip out and tap your chin for a moment, lost in thought. "That means I wouldn't have met you! I guess staying has some perks." You send him a small smile before your more focused and frustrated scowl causes your brows to furrow close together, turning back to searching for whatever you had been looking for to begin with.

His eyes scan over the papers lazily tacked and stuck to your wall.

Sketches of Kirishima's costume are laid at the top of all papers. He steps forward to get a better look as you continue throwing drawers open and rummaging through them.

He slides the papers over and now realizes you had sketches of most of his friends costumes, with notes about what you could take away and add. He smiles softly before his eyes catch on a paper tucked underneath all your other ones. He sneakily glances at you through the corners of his eyes to make sure you're still preoccupied. His hand quickly shoves the paper to the side and double checks you didn't hear.

When he's 100% positive you're still busy he allows himself to fully look down. He feels his eyes get wide as he's greeted with the image.

Heat rushes up in his face as his eyes scan over it. Your name is scrawled all over it, but that's not what has him all giddy inside. His last name is written so prettily next to it. He thought his last name was so simple and boring but seeing it like this. In your handwriting? He's convinced it's the most beautiful name ever written, ever.

You stand up quickly and he jumps away from the desk, like he had gotten caught doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing.

Your eyes quickly fall onto where he was just standing looking down at, and widen. Heat shooting all over your body in embarrassment.

You jump over and shove papers around to cover it up.

You're apologizing to him frantically, but he doesn't care. He's looking at you like you just hung the stars up in the sky. The idea of you sitting there and doodling that over and over again yet again bring a cocky since of pride over him.

He takes the moment of clarity to show his true self a bit.

"So? Y/n Bakugo, huh?" He sees you deflate in on yourself and he suddenly feels bad for teasing you. He stutters in his head before deciding to say something else.

"It, uhm, it's a good fit." He was definitely going to make Kirishima punch him in the face later.

He watches as you now tilt your head and give him a confused stare.

"Our names...together..."

Oh my god why is he so nervous?

He watches as you bring your hands up to cover your mouth as you stifle a laugh. After a moment of fighting it you finally let it out. He watching with curious eyes until you stop and look at him, now putting your hands on your hips and standing up straighter.

"This is so awkward." The remnants of a chuckle slowly die down after you're done talking.

He feels slightly relieved at the fact you think so too, and that you also were nervous.

Bakugo hadn't spoked much since you met him, which always perplexed you for a few reasons.

He was known for being a loud and obnoxious student.

He was extremely talkative over text.

And lastly, he just overall seemed like the type to like hearing himself talk.

You hummed and motion for him to follow you. As you're walking you begin talking again.

"Ok, so like I said, you can't make fun of me for this, it's not my best work but I can always tinker with it later."

He's so busy looking around that he doesn't see you stop, causing himself to bump into you slightly.

He lets a sorry out under his breath as he goes to stand you up straight.

You tell him its okay before telling him to close his eyes.

"Why?" You can tell he's unsure about this but he reluctantly does it anyways when you tell him he'll see in a moment.

You walk around and place your hands on his shoulders guiding him forward a few feet. He feels cold when you let go of him.

He listens as you rummage around for a moment, he pokes his eye open but you're quick to run over and put your hands over them.

"Hey! No peaking!" You slightly uncover his eyes by sliding your fingers open. He has them screwed shut now.

You pull away from him and continue setting up.

"Okay!" You chirp out after a moment. He opens his eyes hesitantly.

He looks around for a moment before his eyes land on a pile of fabric neatly folded on a table.

"Well, aren't you gonna look at it?" You use your arms to motion between him and the present.

He walk towards it, slowly and unsure. You sigh and step forward, extending your hand out to him. He takes it with no hesitation. You guide him to stand over what he now notices as the base for his costume.

He gives you wide eyes.

"Is this..." His voice trails off as he brings his fingers to run over the soft material.

"Yep! A completely new type of fabric that's never been invented before!"

He was looking between you and the clothes in awe and shock. Did you really go out of your way to do this for him?

You clear your throat and begin to tell him about the process.

"So basically it's completely flame resistant while simultaneously feeling like 100% cotton. It also traps the sweat on your skin in the arm area, since that's how your quirk functions."

He had mentioned a brief complaint about the material of his costume to you in passing while you two were texting after his training one day.

He hated the feel of the current flame proof material that the support company had provided for him. It was stiff and itchy. But he couldn't wear his regular cotton shirts due to the fact they burned right up when he used his quirk.

"Oh and also.." You reach behind you and pull out a box, it's wrapped in cute pink wrapping paper with unicorns on it. He chuckles at the girly design as he grabs It out of your extended hands.

"Sorry, it was the only kind I had on hand." You shrug slightly and he laughs quietly and nods 'no'

"It's cute, very you."

You blush at the idea of him perceiving you enough to think something was 'very you'.

He stares at it for a moment.

"Open it." You whisper and he briefly flickers his eyes up at you. You have a soft smile on your face but your eyes are bright and excited.

He's gentle opening it. Using a quick finger to slide under the tape and carefully pull the paper off. You think it's cute the way he's so delicate and coordinated. He slides the top of the box off and can feel a familiar lump in the back of his throat, he's quick to swallow it down and look back up at you.

"Did you seriously make this? By hand? With your own brain?" You laugh at his boyish excitement.

You teasingly tap your temple and spout off a witty remark.

"All me baby. 100% the real thing too."

He looks back down in the box. They don't look like anything exciting or crazy but they were in fact the opposite.

To anyone else they would look like regular earplugs, but to you and him they were the invention that could potentially save his hearing in the long run.

"They tune out loud explosions, and any smaller ones. There's a small bracelet like band in the long sleeve I made you that can detect the size and estimated impact of an explosion by the temperature of heat that radiates on your body therefore calculating important information that then gets sent to the earphones to effectively muffle the sounds of the blasts."

You're so beautiful when you talk smart.

His eyes widen as he realizes he said that out loud and not in his head. For the nth time tonight alone he feels his face flush in embarrassment.

You stop your rambling as you turn to look at him.

"What?" Your voice is sweet and a teasing smile plays at your mouth.

He decides that if there was anytime to stand his ground it was now, but as he goes to talk the words seem to suddenly be stolen straight out of his mouth. You had taken his moment of weakness to close the distance between the two of you. Your hands wrapping around both of his biceps, giving them a slight squeeze as you push your face up into his.

"You think i'm beautiful?" Your voice is in a low whisper as you look at him with hooded eyes.

He stutters over his words at the proximity.

"Y-yeah," he take a deep breath. "of course I do."

You let out a quiet titter and lean in. Pressing a quick and chaste kiss to his mouth.

You pull back quickly though, because the doors reopen.

You both look across the large room to see a few of your classmates with your teacher.

"Aha! So you are with Bakugo Katsuki!" An accusatory finger points at you as your friend yells across the room at you.

Bakugo looks at you and you give him a nervous shrug.

"I told her that I wasn't seeing you tonight," you drop your voice low and lean over with a hand covering your mouth. "She doesn't like you because of what you said at the sports festival that one time."

He internally kicks himself for being such a douchebag back then.

"Whatever!," You shout back, making your way towards the man that was hidden behind your three friends. "Higari! You seriously went and snitched on me?" He watches as you stomp towards your dads friend with an annoyed look.

The man is quick to shuffle even closer behind the small wall of your friends, a sign of fear.

Bakugo chuckles as he looks back down to the box in his hands, then over to the clothes on the table. He now realized he had a new life goal, one that was far more important than becoming the number one hero. Bakugo Katsuki was going to marry you one day.

[desireangel]

Dark Cherry [4] | Aemond Targaryen

Aemond Targaryen x Fem!Reader

Summary: after months of a marriage that hardly harbours the passion that you'd dreamed about, you stumble across the reason for your husband's indifference and decide enough is enough. Aemond will learn just exactly what he's been missing out on.

Word Count: 5.5k

Warnings: MDNI 18+!! canon divergence!!! I fucked the timeline and nigly bits bc this was an impulse fic ok soooo it was mostly unplanned, almost smut, angst, let the grovelling happen babyyy, unedited, mention of alys x aemond but not in a good way :((, infidelity, talk of sex, guilt, mentions of Aegon x reader, hmmm I ramble, little vulnerable Aemond, bad language, let me know if I've missed anything!

Author's note: y'all I was never done with that man like there's no easy out for him :llll. Anyways I wrote most of this instead of studying which I needed to do. Perhaps I'll have my hand at another idea I'm cooking before part 5 but I'm alsoooo unsure about how keen we are to keep this one going - like is it getting too much??? either way, I enjoy writing this. and idk how to shut up, clearly, because I love that internal mind talk shit. Drop your thoughts in my inbox or PM me because I love to yap!!! xoxo, kisses!!! <3

Masterlist

-

He was a fool. A spoiled, arrogant and entitled fool. You often thought about whether Aemond actually recognised the effect of his actions on anyone else. It was always ‘I did it for us’ or ‘I did it because I had to do it’.

So after your confrontation the day before, it had surprised you that Aemond had truly believed he was forgiven. Maybe it shouldn’t have. You had, after all, sat beside him and laughed with him. Shared a moment as if things were better. But it was nothing more than a lighthearted acknowledgement that whatever game was being played was entirely ridiculous yet you could feel how something had changed. There was a newfound intensity between the two of you and Aemond had clearly understood that he had made a mistake

But that wouldn't be enough for forgiveness. Things would never really be the same. You will never forget. The nameless woman had made a home in your unconscious mind and everything would remind you of the woman your husband had chosen to take to bed over you. She was beautiful, she was experienced and free of burden. Based on that alone a part of you could see why she could have been a better choice–a part of you that ached and pained ceaselessly. 

And you weren’t sure you could carry on as if Aemond hadn’t thrown your entire world into the pits of ruin. Because that is exactly what he may as well have done. All you had was your marriage to him–a fact that was as painful as it was true. If it all fell apart because of him only you would suffer from it. 

Your name, your family’s name. A Lady born to a house of remarkably lowly nobility with little more than your marriage to the prince. A charity case marriage to tell the realm’s people that the Crown was not so prejudiced as to be above uniting with the likes of your house. That the Lannisters and Baratheons were important but they were not everything. A fabrication only made necessary to cover up the fact that it was a lie–the Targaryens (and even the Hightowers as you had come to realise) really did believe they were of better blood. 

A failure to fulfil your duty to the Targaryen crown as Prince Aemond’s wife would destroy your family name. And you would have no prospect of happiness after it. What else did you have aside from this?

Aemond would never understand that. Because not only was he a man but he was a prince. A privilege, a safety and a security he had inherited through birth. 

Aside from the pressures of society, he had hurt you. Badly. 

Despite your own confliction about it, you did have love for Aemond–how could you not? Love came from many things and while yours may have come from your dependance on his word, on the duty he performed to be your protector as he was to the Crown and its subjects, on his polite affections as limited as they were, it still found its way into your heart. Perhaps it was foolish to allow it entry into your existence when you had already known that there was no love to come from Aemond. 

It didn’t change anything. Betrayed your trust, taken you for granted and destroyed the sanctity of a husband’s loyalty as if he were as dishonourable as any other Lord. 

You would never say it out loud but it had broken your heart. And heartache is a consuming, suffocating and painful thing to feel. A constant lump in your throat, something always weighing your chest down, a disastrous, aching discomfort in your belly. Tears had stained your pillow at night and dried by the morning, the fabric of the linen acquiring the same unphased facade that you would wear as you plastered on a mask of ignorance so that you could continue to live through your day. 

All because you had wanted him. Aemond, who was doomed to disappoint and destroy merely because that is all that princes do. 

For him to have mistaken your truce–the end to the back and forth game that had been wreaking havoc in its wake-as forgiveness was infuriating. He had no idea. 

Well, maybe he did. Now that he had seen you with another just as you had seen him. And you recognised your own experience in the moment he had realised what was happening. 

Aemond’s call to breakfast made you want to laugh. But you had turned him down for afternoon tea just the day before only to be found swallowing his brother’s seed. You winced at the shamefulness of your thought, muttering a quick prayer for the sake of your piety whether it was genuine or not. 

He was seated lazily in the chair he favoured, an array of food spread across the table. There was a book in his hand. The same one he had taken from you the last time you had shared your morning meal together. Aemond had a smirk playing on his lips. 

You cleared your throat, curtsying before sitting down at the other end of the table to him and with as much distance between you as you could muster. “Good morrow, my Prince,”

“Formalities, I see,” He looked at you through his lashes. It was odd seeing him so relaxed, the tension that was always in his shoulders had been lost and there was a playful glint to his eye. You wanted to smack it out. “I believed we were past titles and distance for the sake of propriety, my sweet. As well as rigid greetings.”

All you responded with was a stare. 

Dropping the book to his side, Aemond sighed and leaned forward, pouring tea into a cup. He stood, taking a couple steps forward to hand it to you. “We have fixed-”

“We have fixed nothing.”

“I am trying to turn a new leaf,” he commanded. You took the cup and saucer from his hand, the warm waft of vanilla and rose giving you a slight reprieve from the threat that rolled off his tongue. “If you do not recall, dear wife, I as well have every reason to resent you. The image of you sucking on my useless brother’s cock is not one I can easily bare. Yet I have chosen to let it be. I could have easily decided otherwise.”

“That would make you a hypocrite.” You glanced at him over the rim of your teacup. 

“It does not matter much if I am a hypocrite, does it?” Aemond sat, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. He wasn’t bothered with the food in front of him, focused solely on you. “I hardly see how that would change anything.”

You squirmed under the intensity of his stare, picking up a cherry from the bowl of fruits and rolling the stem between your fingers. “It matters to me. Certainly, it matters for your reputation among the smallfolk. Nobody cares for a selfish prince, my dear.”

Aemond hummed, smirking at the venom you spat at him. You noticed the coin that he rolled between his fingers, nimble and thoughtless as if it were like breathing. Not so much a nervous habit but a thoughtful one. 

He couldn’t lie and say that he didn’t enjoy your confidence. It was refreshing. But there was a dip in his gut at the thought that there was no hope for the two of you. Aemond, ever logical, knew he had no one else to blame but himself with his lack of foresight and failure to see beyond the now and here. 

Because Aemond had not even considered how things would go on should you not forgive him. He had assumed that you would if not merely on the basis that there was little lost from a relationship that hardly existed in the first place. You had love for him and he was so convinced that such a thing would be impossible that he didn’t consider that it would cause you heartache beyond slighted offence and jealousy. 

A violet eye lingered on the cherry that remained between your fingers. Aemond was good at putting on an act. He thought for a moment that he would rather take lashes to his back than have you know that he had no idea how to love someone properly. A part of him was persuaded that he was incapable of being a good lover. The lashes seemed like a blissful gift compared to the self-loathing that simmered in his belly at the probability that he had ruined any chance your marriage had of recovery.  

It crossed his mind that it was his ignorance towards you right from the beginning that had damned your relationship. 

Either way, it did not help that you had turned to his brother for intimacy. Aemond felt his blood scorch whenever that invaded his mind. He wanted to crumble the walls of this fortress when he wondered if Aegon had enjoyed your womanhood. Jealousy did motivate him well, he realised, and Aemond had the murderous urge to feed Aegon to Vhagar. 

Nonetheless, he feigned amusement. “It seems as if you care for one.”

You ate the cherry. It was sweet and rich. All you replied with was an upturn of your chin as you gracefully held a small embroidered towel to your lips.

“So I am not forgiven?” Aemond had to break the silence before it cut him open. “Are we not even?”

Narrowing your eyes at him, you held back a surprised laugh. “You never apologised. Not that it would make any difference.”

“That does not answer my question.”

“Of course you are not forgiven,” you sighed. The tea cup hit the table with a clang. Your disdain for his actions and his ignorance gave you an unfettered confidence around him which you weren’t accustomed to. It made it very difficult to control yourself. “And no, we are not even, my Prince. And since you have brought it to my attention, I am of half a mind to find Aegon and offer him a meal between my thighs. You see, I have often wondered how it would feel and I expect that our King would be happy to indulge my… curiosities.”

Aemond sneered, a silent one that was more visible in his intake of a breath, the curl of his lips and the hardening of his eye. Bullseye. 

It took him less than a couple seconds to be on his knees in front of where you sat, a strong hand tightly gripping each side of your thighs over the thick fabrics of your dress. He had shoved the table aside, unphased as tea spilled and fruits and cheeses toppled to the floor. Something in the look of bewilderment on your face had Aemond ready to both grin at your clueless innocence and frown at your shock.

Aemond didn’t let himself dwell on the fact that you had given up on expecting such pleasures from him. He was your husband; nothing about what he was clearly intending on doing to you should surprise you. Cursing himself to perdition would not be enough for how he has failed you. 

“I feel obliged to remind you that we had agreed,” he grazed his nose across your knees, looking up at you through his eyelashes, jaw clenched tight as he all but growled his words. “That there will be no more of this foolishness. Not from you and not from me.”

It was an onslaught of different things that had rendered you still and silent. The way Aemond looked at you like you were the only satiating force for his eternal hunger, the wordless mixture of desire and anger in how his fingers dug into the flesh of your thighs, the desperation in his voice, strained by the fear that you would. Or was it the overwhelming feeling that Aemond was finally taking some accountability and that maybe he recognised not what his actions were but the meaning that they carried?

For a moment Aemond just looked at you, conflicted and fragmented and unguarded. The sight of him like this reminded you of a vulnerable child. But it didn’t last long before the menacing, cautionary glint was back in his eye, his posture becoming rigid as shuffled the fabrics of your skirts. 

A new kind of anxiety overcame you. Not like the insignificant nervousness you had felt that night when you had wandered into his chambers or used his leg to make yourself peak and not like the clueless apprehension with Aegon. It formed a ball in your chest and made it hard to breathe. 

There was no chance he would ever admit it but you could see Aemond’s vulnerability and desperation within the hardened facade he had perfected. He wanted nothing more than to seem strong and powerful at all times, worthy of acclaim and reverence. But here he was, willing to stay on his knees and worship you forever, all under the pretence of rageful infatuation. 

It was too hot. Even with the cool of the shadows cast by the dark net curtains that only let in enough daylight to see clearly and not enough to cause Aemond irritation from sensitivity in his eye, it was so warm you worried you would have to rip the sleeves off of your dress.

You were snapped out of your thoughts when Aemond let out a soft, dark groan, running his fingers across the expanse of your legs over your stockings, your skirts already bunched at your hips. Skin burning at his touch, you couldn’t help the way you whined and squeezed your thighs together, squirming under the intensity of his gaze. 

His voice was heavy with the burden of lust and regret. “I will be better. In all the ways that I have failed you and more. Your forgiveness, I realise, is not as easily granted as I presumed but I will show you that I am worthy of it.” 

There was a moment of weakness in your mind before you caught yourself. You didn’t quite believe him. It had clearly been too easy for him to give you empty promises and there was no reason why things would be different now. 

It was odd. Seeing Aemond weak like this. 

What would it mean if you let him continue? It was clearly different this time. You couldn’t put it into words exactly but there was a rawness, a blitz of different emotions that set things ablaze and made you want to both weep and mewl for him. 

You couldn’t spare a thought about why it was different. Aemond was right there, a weaponised Prince on his knees for you, a lowly Lady with nothing more to offer him than yourself. Since when did you hold all this power over him? 

That night in his bedchambers and last night when you had shared a laugh despite everything that had unfolded felt detached in a way. When you had allowed yourself release over his leg it was simply that. A way to ease the tension he had put in your body and a way to leave him wanting.

Aemond’s eye swam with a tenderness you had not seen from him. He continued to look up at you waiting to gauge your response. It was a slight nod of your head which had his hands tearing at the soft fabric of your stockings, his lips instantly meeting the skin of your knees before you had the chance to even gasp. All the while, he kept his eye on you as if his heart would cease to beat if he could not watch the way you reacted to him. 

It became increasingly harder to breathe. There were so many thoughts, so many sensations that you struggled to put it all together. Your flushed with anticipation, your cunt throbbed at the wet plushness of his lips on your hot skin and your hips squirmed at what was to come. 

Your mind, however, flashed with the image of Aemond, exactly as he was now, between another woman’s thighs. A woman who didn’t flinch at the unfamiliar touch, who didn’t jerk away at the foreign feeling of being pleasured. You wondered if he would be so angered at the prospect of another man’s mouth on her womanhood, if her skin felt softer or more rough on his lips and if he looked at her with the same heated need.

It made you feel sick. 

Aemond let himself enjoy the way your thighs tensed, pulling your smallclothes off of you as much as carefully as he could under the restriction of your skirts. There was an urge to rip the entire dress off but he knew it would be a step too far. He couldn’t help the low sounds that left him, sounds he couldn’t recognise. The expanse of your thighs and the sight of your flushed, hot cunt in front of him made his mouth water with a hunger that would have shocked him had he not been so distracted by your scent. 

Without complete vision, Aemond had learned to train his sense of touch, taste, smell and hearing to make up for the disadvantage he was stuck with. They were always slightly heightened compared to those who never needed the compensation of senses but in the cloud of desire and lust, he was sensitive. 

You whined at the way his tongue glided over your skin, biting down hard but not hard enough to be painful on the flesh of your upper thigh so close to where you needed to feel him. But Aemond was always remarkably patient and he merely made way to your other leg, repeating his ministrations and licking you from your knee to where he bit you at your thigh. 

The haze that had possessed you made you lose track of your thoughts so easily. Still, they fought their way to the forefront of your mind at every chance they could and you were reminded of her. 

Aemond’s mind was overwhelmed by you. There was no power in the realm that could make him think of anything else, not with the way you were trembling under his feathered touch and making such beautiful sounds for him, and not when he desired for anyone else apart from you. 

A heavy breath of shame and excitement tumbled out of you at how lewdly he dragged the tip of his nose across your thigh, pressing it into the flesh that sat above your slick, aching cunt and inhaling. You clenched around nothing, your clit twitching at the sound of Aemond’s unabashed groan. 

He grasped at your hips and your legs, his fingers burying into your flesh and tugging as if there would never be enough of you in his hands. It would have driven you into a similarly desperate state had things been different. 

The prince between your thighs was a sight to behold. Aemond’s skin was flushed pink, his eyepatch slightly out of place and his hair tousled from the way your legs clenched and unclenched against his head. He was almost drooling, mumbling about how good you smelled and how perfect and pretty your cunt was for him. His cock had never been so hard, constricted by the stiff leather of his training attires. 

Aemond enjoyed being a tease but there was only so much he could handle himself. While he wanted you to crave for him the way he was craving you so unbearably, Aemond needed to taste you. He needed to make you feel the blinding pleasure he should have been giving you at every chance he had since the night you were married. He needed to show you the ways of unbridled human desire and to show you all the ways your body could come undone and fall apart only to feel completely whole and fulfilled. 

There was no changing the past but Aemond would make up for how completely inattentive he had been. He would show you all the more fervently. When Aemond placed an open mouthed kiss just above your slit, letting a string of his spit glide off of his tongue onto your sensitive pussy, you shuddered.

All at once your mind was once again taken over by unsavoury thoughts. It had your eyes welling with tears, a familiar lump lodging in your throat, threatening to come out in a devastated sob. There was a ringing in your ears and you were back at Aemond’s door, peeking in only to see him giving that woman the same touch he was giving you right now. He had seemed so enthralled by her and the way she must have tasted. It was as if he’d been there before, indulging in her with so much passion it rivalled how eagerly touched you in this moment. 

Did her smell fill his veins with fire as yours was? Did her scent alone make his cock as painfully hard as yours did? Did her cunt drip for him the way yours did? Was the hunger in his eye shining for her too?

It was terrifying to consider. 

Aemond would spend hours here, he had decided. His duties for the day could be damned to the hells for all he cared. There was a rumbling in his chest for what he saw in front of him, inviting him to indulge and filling his mind with senseless ardour. Aemond let himself enjoy just the scent of you, his eye fluttering shut and his nose gently resting above your folds as he breathed you in, caressing your thighs softly with his hands. As if he were starved for years, Aemond salivated and with no patience left within him, he brought his lips downwards to meet the precious cunt he had been dreaming of. 

With a whimper that you couldn’t hold back, you jerked away from him. Aemond pulled away in surprise, his gaze full of confusion and lust and insecurity. “Wait, my love—“

You had slipped free of his grasp, a strangled cry escaping no matter how hard you tried to keep it in. There was one tear that slipped free, followed by countless more and you couldn’t look at him anymore, couldn’t bear to see that he was hurt before scrambling away from him. 

She was stuck in your mind. The memory of Aemond’s little trysts with her replaying behind your eyes no matter how hard you tried to shut it out. It was clear that there was nothing you could do to get ahold of yourself because everytime you looked at him, so enthralled in you and your sex, she was there. 

Laughing at you in the back of your mind, as if she had taken residence in a permanent place in your head, enjoying the state of despair and madness she and Aemond had led you to. 

But she couldn’t be in your head. Not really. Not in the way it felt she was. 

You barely glanced back at Aemond through your tears, struggling to even your breathing and calm the rapid beating of your heart. He hadn’t moved much; just simply stayed there frowning at the space that you had once occupied on the chair. 

There was nothing he could do to change things. Aemond knew that as well as you did. But there was a pain in your heart at the way he looked so defeated, so guilty that it almost seemed like he would melt into a puddle of remorse. A far stretch from the usual stoic warrior that you had known him as.

“My prince, I–” you swallowed, your voice catching when he looked up at you with a wide eye and furrowed eyebrows. For a moment you remembered that he had no right - but he was trying, was he not? “I cannot continue with this knowing that you had touched her like this. It angers me and it upsets me and it pains me to think of it but ‘tis beyond my control.”

He stayed silent, observing the way you hid yourself from him and struggled to meet his gaze. There was a sullen look to you, one you had not entered with and it stuck needles in his flesh to think that he had been the cause of it. Aemond’s entire body felt hot and he was itching to tear off his leathers. He wished the gods would strike him down as he was for hurting you so.

You had turned away, disappearing from his quarters swiftly. You would never forget the image of how you had left him there–it was both satisfying and devastating. 

Aemond, still on his knees for the ghost of you, his expression tortured and his shoulders tensed. It was a pathetic sight, should anyone stumble upon it, but you considered it beautiful. Beautiful in a lethal, catastrophic manner. Not unlike himself; a weaponised source of destruction who had a tendency to bring torment upon those he loved. 

The rest of your day had been spent alone in your chambers. You hadn’t cried so much over any of it until now. The tears and sobs that you had held inside of yourself for weeks had forced themselves out, along with the emotions you had pushed down until you could no longer. 

Aemond had a certain control while you were sitting in that seat, skirts bunched to your stomach and quivering for him to have his way. Regardless, the power was still yours and you knew that it was Aemond who was wrapped tightly around your finger at that moment. He would have listened to anything you had said–done anything you had told him to do. 

Perhaps you had become too stubborn in your anger to have let yourself feel anything else. A retributive anger; one that sprouted from the lack of love that existed in your marriage and reached a climax at Aemond’s brazen adultery. And it only grew stronger in whatever back and forth Aemond had encouraged by dangling his whore in front of your face. 

Whatever it was, you were feeling so much more now than you had before. 

Or perhaps it was because you could see that Aemond was remorseful. He would never yet admit it but you knew from the way he had behaved since you had visited him in his bed. It was no act of redemption and definitely no apology but it was impossible to ignore the change in him. You had never seen Aemond the way you had seen him this morning. 

Vulnerable, gentle, tormented. 

A knock on your door had you sniffling and wiping away any tear stains that may have lingered on your cheeks. You had stopped crying for some time but the need to wallow and lament had stayed. When you called out to ask, the guard at your door notified you of the Dowager Queen’s presence. 

Oh, seven hells. 

There was really no chance you could refuse her so you merely let her in and called a servant to bring some refreshments. Queen Alicent sat herself down but remained tense, carefully watching you as you took a place beside her. 

“Have you been crying?” Her concern was comforting. “I believe I know why.”

You straightened, not meeting the eye of the woman who reached a tender hand to your knee. Hiding behind a forced smile, you let out a breathy laugh. “I am certain the entirety of the Red Keep knows, Your Grace.”

“It has been known for some time,” Alicent was gentle, her cautionary gaze telling you that she was apprehensive about bringing her son’s misadventures up. You held your breath. “Since the first time he had summoned that Alys woman-”

“Alys? Is that her name?”

“You do not know?” There was a tense silence. Alicent couldn’t meet your gaze, pity swimming across her features. Aemond was her son and there were many things that she had let her sons get away with but her heart pained at the broken quiver in your voice. 

Alicent had noticed the change in Aemond since the night that you had found him with Alys. The second time. He had never paid much attention to you aside from what appearances required yet Alicent knew her son far more than he would be willing to accept. She had known that there was something in his heart for you, no matter how small and no matter how it dwindled until set alight. 

Aemond had done the wrong thing. She had no doubts about that. Alicent would have words with him once she figured out what to say to him. But he was her son and there were certain misdoings that she knew she had to defend them through. To protect his marriage, his image and his happiness. The Queen Dowager cleared her throat and reached for your hand, eyebrows furrowing at the way you stared down at your lap, the anguish you felt in your heart written clearly across your face. 

“I understand that you are hurting, my dear. Although my husband remained faithful to me until his death and I cannot quite imagine the pain in your heart–I see how you have love for my son, even if you nor him have known it, I do understand,” Alicent took a breath, closing her eyes. “This is the way of men. And princes–”

“Please, Your Grace, I mean this with utmost respect for you but I do not wish to hear your excuses,” you whispered. There was a prickly, breathless worry that had settled in your gut. What did you not know? Was this Alys someone who mattered? “But I would like to know what you are withholding from me about this woman. I believe I deserve that at the very least.”

Alicent stared at you for a moment, examining you. She could drive her son further into the ground with what she was about to say. “Aemond had a paramour–at least it was rumoured, he never spoke of such things with me. Alys Rivers, a wetnurse and servant woman from Harrenhal.”

“A paramour?”

“It was before you were married,” Alicent was quick to clarify. “I had assumed that Aemond wanted nothing more to do with her when she left–at his order, I believe. Some say she was a witch. Perhaps she enchanted him.” 

You couldn’t look at her. She was more than just a whore? Had he lied to you right from the beginning? Bile rose up in your throat. There was a thrum in your ears, the sound of your own heartbeat and you feared that you would be sick from the drop in your gut. 

“Did he love her? Could he still?”

Alicent sucked in a breath. “I do not know, my child.”

All you could do was nod pathetically. Alicent was a woman of great strength and dedication; you had once wished to be much like her one day. But as you sat beside her now, you wished she had been a liar and a cheat and a meddling gossip. That you could find a way to fault her words but you could tell it caused her great difficulty to speak of Aemond’s actions honestly. 

Ever poised and elegant, Alicent only leaned forward to you, her posture straight as a needle and her touch soft as linen. “I did not mean to upset you further. I only meant to speak with you about returning to Courtly activities, with the other Ladies and Helaena has been asking for you. And the Ladies speak–”

“They speak terribly of me,” you scoffed, allowing a humourless laugh. “I understand, Your Grace. I will return to spending my days in company other than my own.”

Alicent hated to pry but she felt that she must, now that she had dealt her cards against Aemond’s fate. “Perhaps you should speak with Aemond. He cares for you deeply. It would be a shame for your union to fall apart over such misunderstandings.”

If not for formality, you would have rolled your eyes. Again, you simply nodded, your mind reeling back to the woman that Alicent had given a name to. You would ask Aemond about her. It would be the less damning option rather than turning to Aegon once more but the idea of speaking to Aemond about a woman he may once have loved still made you want to crawl underneath the sheets of your bed and disappear. 

You thought of the woman who you had seen through the crack in the door and wished you had taken extra care in looking at her. There was little you could recall other than the darkness and length of her hair, the paleness of her skin and the perfection in her curves as she pleasured Aemond and as he did the same for her. 

As if she was familiar with all the things that made him weak. All the things that made Aemond weak. How she had touched him like she was an expert in his body. And you thought of Aemond, bare and comfortable with her. Aemond with his sapphire glimmering under the lamplight instead of an eye, a rawness and trust that you had never seen of him until that night. 

He trusted her.

Alys Rivers. 

.....................................................

Tagging: @padfooteyes @thedyingwriter @mamawiggers1980 @queenofshinigamis @ewanmitchellfanatic @nurtargaryen

[bubblegump-1-nk]

Like Real People Do

Mattheo Riddle x fem!reader

Summary: You and Mattheo have been best friends for as long as you can remember, and these feelings may no longer be platonic. But when someone else also realizes this, he will make decisions in a jealous rage that will forever change the dynamics you’ve known for ages.

- Ok so Ik I should be writing Theo’s portion of Promises Are Meant to be Broken but I’ve been randomly consumed with a Mattheo obsession and I NEED to write this, so please enjoy :)

~~~

“Hey Matty, can you pass the pumpkin juice please?” You asked the boy who was sitting across from you at the breakfast table, using the nickname he reserved solely for you.

“Of course, princess.” He responded, grabbing the bottle and serving it in your cup for you. You smiled at each other as he did so, appreciating how caring he always was of you.

“Does anybody know Snape’s middle name?” Enzo asked, piquing your interest.

“Um, why?” Theo responded, looking up from his plate for the first time since he sat down. He had attempted to make conversation with you, but you had been enthralled in a story Mattheo was telling and hadn’t noticed.

“No reason, just need it for something.” Enzo said, extremely suspiciously, causing the group to laugh.

“Ugh, I have to go. Flitwick needs me in class early today.” You said, looking down at your watch and remembering what the teacher had told you the day before.

“I still have no idea why you’re taking that class.” Pansy said, referring to the 7th year Charms class you were taking, regardless of being a 5th year.

“Because I’m advanced.” You said, smugly, causing her to stick her to tongue out at you.

“I’ll walk you!” Theo said, practically jumping from his seat before trying to recover and feign indifference.

“Thanks, Theo.” You said with a smile, packing up your stuff.

“See you lot later. And you owe me an ice cream!” You said, the last part specifically for Mattheo who had told you he would buy you ice cream if you helped him practice a new trick for Quidditch. He doesn’t know you would have done it even if there was no incentive, and you don’t know he asked you just so he could show off (he had already mastered the skill).

“It’s a date!” He called out as you walked away with Theo, causing you to giggle.

As you walked out of the Great Hall, you and Theo spoke of the Ravenclaw party this weekend, taking the usual path you two took every time you had Advanced Charms, since his class was right next to yours.

“So, how are you liking ghoul studies? Mattheo and I loved it when we took it last year.” You stated, changing the topic.

Theo’s jaw clenched. “It’s good, pretty interesting.” He said, hoping you hadn’t noticed.

“Oh that’s great! I was really hoping you’d say that because I’d have felt to bad if I forced you into a class you didn’t like.” You said sweetly, not picking up on his micro aggression.

“There’s never anything you could pick that I wouldn’t like.” Theo said, smiling down at you.

“That’s cause I’m an Angel.” You joked, as you separated from him to enter your room.

He smiled to himself as he watched you enter the room, meeting with a group of Hufflepuff girls. You were his Angel, despite his Atheistic beliefs.

~~~

As the school day finally came to a close, you were happy to finally be able to go to the common room and settle down with your friends. As you turned the corner, you heard Mattheo’s voice and immediately smiled, you had missed him throughout the day since your schedules barely aligned today. Except, your smile dropped as you heard a girl giggle at his words. You sneakily looked around the corner, and saw him talking to a Ravenclaw girl, looking all too cozy. She was pressed against the wall, and he was standing in front of her, his arm on the wall adjacent to the one she was leaning on. You grimaced, and you felt your stomach drop. How does he even know her? You asked yourself, wondering if he had told her a joke he had once told you to make her laugh. You forced yourself to detach from the wall, and took a different way to reach your common room.

Your feelings for Mattheo had grown even stronger in the past few months, but you were doing everything you could to push them away and pretend like they didn’t exist. Except, it was getting increasingly difficult to forget them since practically every girl at Hogwarts was throwing herself at him.

“Hey, I saved you this sugar quill.” Theo said, as you made you way to the couch your friend group had conquered in the Slytherin common room.

“Thanks, Theo.” You said smiling, taking it out of his hands and then rummaging through the giant candy pile on the coffee table to find a licorice wand.

You said down next to him on the couch, as you unwrapped the red candy. You couldn’t help but acknowledge that Mattheo would have saved you a blue one, knowing it was your favorite flavor.

“Can you help me on this.” Pansy asked, kneeling beside you, her head in her hands as she started down at her Divinations homework.

“Of course, but Draco you have to help me with my potions after.” You said, giving him a pointed look.

“Anything for the Slytherin princess.” He said, referring to you by the nickname the boys had given you due to your popularity among the boys at Hogwarts. You made a face at him because he knew you disliked the nickname (only slightly, but you had to at least pretend to be humble).

After a few hours, the candy on the table was mostly gone, and you were sprawled out on the couch, your head on Pansy’s lap and she braided your hair, engaging in the boys conversation about a fight that had happened recently.

“How rude to not have saved me any good candy.” Mattheo said, walking up to the couch, his satchel hanging loosely from his shoulder.

“Look who finally decided to show up.” You said, looking up at him.

“Happy to see me doll?” He asked, smirking down at you.

“Just surprised is all. You seemed pretty cosy with that Ravenclaw girl earlier.” You said, bitterly.

“You’re spying on me now?” He said, hoping you weren’t truly upset at him.

“Nope, you were just standing in the middle of the hallway.” You said, rolling your eyes.

“Well you looked pretty cosy with Dean Thomas earlier.” He said defensively, the jealousy he had felt earlier rising again.

“We’re partners for a project!” You said, exasperated.

“Oh yeah? What’s the topic? Human Anatomy?” He said, sassily.

“Merlin you’re so immature.” You said, sitting up from your position.

“I’m going to bed.” You stated, before anyone could say anything else, and you quickly collected your belongings.

“Fine.” Mattheo said, looking down at you.

“Fine.” You repeated, looking at him before turning away and heading towards your dorm.

“God, you two are pathetic.” Draco said, once you had walked up the stairs.

“Pathetic? What the fuck are you talking about?” Mattheo said, angry with himself for letting his jealously take over, and for having given you the illusion that he was interested in any other girls.

“Nothing mate, just forget it. You have to see it on your own.” Draco said, looking back down at his essay.

Theo, who had been selfishly smiling due to the argument between you two, looked down at his hands, trying to figure out what Draco meant by his statement. Do they see it too? Is it really possible that you actually liked Mattheo? He thought to himself, brows furrowing in worry, a frown now taking over his smile.

“Whatever, I’m going to bed.” Mattheo said, his worry that he had pushed you away consuming him. He wished for nothing more than to be yours, only yours, but his fear of rejection and pushing you away from him kept him from doing anything about the matter. He sulked up to his room, wondering if he would ever be man enough to at least try.

~~~

As you walked into the Great Hall for breakfast the next morning, you felt a hand on your forearm, and you were pulled away from Pansy. You yelped at the sudden movement, but relaxed when you saw that the hand belonged to Mattheo. You hardened again when you remembered you were mad at him.

“Y/n, please don’t be mad at me. I’m so sorry for getting angry at you yesterday, it was completely undeserved.” Mattheo said, as held you outside of the bustling dining room. His eyes pleading, filled with remorse.

“Do you like her?” Not being able to stop yourself from asking the question that had been eating at you.

“No, no it wasn’t like that I swear!” He stated, hoping to get rid of any uncertainty you may have held. “She was asking me about Enzo. We have a class together and I guess she thought I was the best inside source she could get.” He said, smiling down at you as he realized that you were no longer angry at him due to the way yours eyes lightened and the way your lips were curling up into a small smile.

“Well tell her that she can just as a girl next time.” You said, playfully rolling your eyes.

“Why, are you jealous?” He said, a cocky smirk spreading over his face.

“Absolutely not! Just looking out for her because you would probably enjoy ruining her chances with Enzo.” You said, cheeks turning red at almost being caught. He continued to smile at you, obsessed with the playful look you wore on your face whenever you rambled on about something.

“Skip class with me.” He said suddenly, clearly not much thought being put into the careless action. “Let’s go do something, just us two. No Ravenclaws and certainly no Dean Thomas, because I’ll beat the shit out of him if he ever even looks at you again.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal pretty boy.” You said, laughing and shaking your heads at his last comment. He blushed at the nickname and put his arm around your waist as he led you down the hallway. An entire interaction that didn’t evade Theo’s notice.

~~~

Saturday have finally rolled around after what felt like an eternity. You entered the bustling Ravenclaw common room with Pansy, flashing blue lights and booming music engulfing you. Your short black skirt and corset top hugged your figure perfectly, making you feel confident and bold. You reached the bar alone, Pansy having gone off to find whoever was the “love of her life” at the moment, and you waited for whatever 3rd year they had working to mix your drink.

“There’s my pretty lady.” Mattheo said as he came up to you, hugging you from behind and just barely kissing your temple.

“How’s the party so far?” You asked, craning your neck to look up at him.

“Much better now that your here.” He said, clearly already intoxicated.

“You’re drunk.” You said, playfully rolling your eyes. Your heart felt a little heavier because you wish he could say these words to you while sober.

“Not enough.” He joked, as he reached for the drink the 3rd year was handing some Hufflepuff. He was about to complain, but Mattheo shot him a glare that sent shivers down your own spine, causing the boy to spin around as fast as his heels would let him, leaving without anything to drink.

“Follow me, Angel.” Mattheo said as he grabbed your drink and after your hand to lead you through the crowd.

“Do you even know my name?” You joked due to his excessive use of pet names.

“Uh, Cornelius right?” His response left you giggle behind him as your reached your friends, all standing around near the dance floor.

“There’s my principessa!” Theo said excitedly, hugging you out of Mattheo’s grip.

“You lot are so exclusive! Why don’t you mingle with some other people?” You say to the group, as Theo’s arm find its way around your shoulders. You can almost swear you saw Mattheo’s jaw clench.

“And risk talking to a mud blood? No thank you.” Draco said.

“God you are so annoying.” You said, shaking your head at him. He simply shrugged as he smiled and returned to his conversation with Blaise.

“I’m gonna go find more fire whiskey.” Enzo called over the loud music, detaching himself from the group.

“Come dance with me.” Mattheo said, leaning down to talk in your ear.

“Lead the way.” You replied, smiling as you detached yourself from Theo and took Mattheo’s hand.

“We’ll be right back.” You called out to Theo, who looked at you two with a mix of contempt and sorrow.

As you finally reached the crowded dance floor, Mattheo took your arms and placed them loosely around his shoulders, grabbing your waist and swaying you to the music.

“You look really pretty tonight.” Matt said, smiling down at you.

“As opposed to every other day?” You said, a playful smile on your lips.

“You’re impossible.” He said, lightly laughing.

“Thank you. You look very handsome as well.” You said, your stomach flipping around.

Mattheo and you continued to dance and talk, enjoying each others company. Your emotions were high due to the mix of alcohol, movement, and Mattheo’s arms around your body, putting you into a euphoric state. The blur of the seductive music leaving you yearning for nothing more than his lips. As the music progressed, Mattheo spun you around, your back now to his front, and your arms holding him by his neck, tugging his hair with your fingers. His breath was hot and heavy in your ear, your hips grinding together to the beat of the music causing your own breath to hitch.

As much as you wanted to allow yourself to get lost in the moment, you felt a pair of eyes burning on you, causing an uncomfortable feeling to rise in your stomach.

“You ok?” Mattheo asked, his voice husky and low.

Before you could even respond, you felt a pair of strong hands ripping you from Mattheo, dizzying you and causing you to fall onto the ground. Disoriented, you struggled to realize the sight in front of you.

Theo had punched Mattheo square on the jaw, his head spinning back and losing his balance. Theo was relentless as he took the opportunity to mount his body and throw continuous punches. Mattheo attempted to fight back but the surprise of his best mates attack mixed with his physical and mental impairments caused by the alcohol and weed prevented him from protecting himself as well as he would’ve on a regular day.

“Get off of him!” You yelled as you finally realized the situation, a ring already forming around the boys.

“Stop, stop!” Enzo said to you as he grabbed you as you attempted to run towards the boys, holding you back.

“He’s killing him! Get the fuck off of him!” You yelled, attempting to break free from Enzo’s strong arms, which proved to be impossible after only a few seconds.

“Mate get off him!” Blaise yelled over the music, as he and Draco attempted to pull Theo off of Mattheo.

Mattheo had managed to throw some good punches despite his condition, Theo’s bloody nose dripping down his neck, his now black eye quickly swelling shut.

“What the fuck is your problem?!” Draco asked astonished, grabbing onto Theo with the help of a few other guys.

It took half of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team + Blaise and Draco to finally rip Theo from Mattheo’s bloody body, grabbing him and throwing him onto a nearby couch.

You ran to Mattheo’s body as soon as Enzo loosened his grip, blood masking his precious features.

“Matty, can you hear me?” You asked, tears welling in your eyes at the sight, your hand lightly running through his hair.

No response.

“Mattheo?!” You asked louder this time, shaking him.

No response.

“Enzo help me! He’s not answering!” You said frantically, he rushed to your side and shook Mattheo, attempting to get his attention.

“Help me lift him.” He said to you, before looking over at you and seeing your tragic state.

“Draco, get over here!” He yelled, never taking his eyes off of you. Did you actually love him? He thought to himself, always just thinking your flirty nature was a joke.

“Grab his arm.” Draco said as he made it over, pulling Enzo out of his thoughts.

The boys grunted as they lifted Mattheo’s body, blood pouring down his face as they straightened him up.

“We have to get him to the Hospital wing.” You said hysterically, your heart pumping to loudly you could no longer hear the boisterous music.

Everyone around staring in disbelief, whispers and gasps filling the room.

Blaise rushed over once he was done with Theo, grabbing Mattheo’s legs and helping the boys carry him out of the party, rushing to the hospital wing.

“He’s alive right?” You asked, worry consuming your entire body.

“This is Mattheo we’re talking about, it’s gonna take a lot more than a few punches to get him.” Enzo said, reassuring you.

After a few minutes of rushing around the castle, you finally reached the Hospital Wing, pushing the big doors open and calling for Madame Pomphrey.

She came around the corner upon hearing your voice, rushing towards the group at the sight of Mattheo’s body.

“Is he conscious?” She asked immediately, leading the boys to a bed.

“No.” Enzo responded as they laid Mattheo down onto the bed Madame Pomphrey had assigned.

“Alright, thank you for bringing me the boy, but I need you out. I’ll send for you when he’s awake.” She said, immediately pouring some liquid onto a rag and dabbing it on Mattheo’s broken face.

You began to protest, but Enzo dragged you away, leaving the room and shutting the door.

“He’ll be fine. We need to let her do her job.” Draco said as he noticed you about to complain again.

You whimpered at the thought, burying your face in Enzo’s chest, who held you tightly.

“He’s going to be fine, I promise.” He said, rubbing your hair.

Suddenly, you heard someone clear their throat, causing you to break free from Enzo’s chest to see who the noise belonged to.

Theodore.

“You! You foul coward! What the fuck is your problem attacking him like that?! You almost killed your best friend!” You yelled, tears spilling from your eyes as you lunged towards Theo.

“Y/n please, just hear me out.” He said desperately.

“What is there to hear? I can barley even look at you right now I’m so disgusted!” You yelled, fighting every urge to slap him across the face.

“Y/n please, I’m sorry! I just-“

“You just what? You just fucking what?” You yelled again, the boys behind you watching the scene unfold with awe.

“I never meant to hurt him, I just couldn’t stop.” His voice was seeping with desperation, his eyes filled with anguish.

“I actually can’t even look at you.” You said at his stupid claim.

“Y/n you wouldn’t understand but I had to! I couldn’t watch any longer I was just consumed with rage, I barely even realized what I was doing!” He rushed out, attempting to explain a hopeless claim.

“You’re fucking crazy.” You spit at him, the image of Mattheo’s body getting bloodier and bloodier cycling around in your head.

“Y/n I’m in love with you! And seeing him hold you like that, I don’t know what took over me but I just couldn’t contain it!” He exclaimed, his hands in his hair.

Suddenly everything stopped, your head spun so fast you were sure it was going to fall off your neck. The boys behind you had their jaws on the floor and Theo held his breath. After what felt like centuries, you let out a breath.

“I need you to get the fuck out of my sight right now.” Was all you said as your rage began to eat at you.

“Y/n please don’t, just talk to me!” He begged.

After you didn’t respond he pleaded again.

“Mate, I think it’s best you leave.” Enzo said, as he made his way over to Theo.

“No I’m not fucking leaving! We’re in the middle of a conversation!”

“She’s made it painfully clear that she wants nothing to do with you.” Enzo said, grabbing Theo’s arm and pulling him away, disappearing down the hall.

Draco and Blaise squeezed your shoulder reassuringly before following in Enzo and Theo’s path.

You suddenly felt so dizzy and walked over to the infirmary’s door, letting your body slide down until your knees were to your chin.

You held your shins as you sobbed, your brain struggling to find solace.

Mattheo was in the hospital wing and you had no idea if he would recover or not, and you couldn’t even recognize Theo anymore. What the fuck was happening?

—-

After what was probably hours, the doors opened, Madame Pomphrey kindly informing you that Mattheo was now awake.

You took a deep breath, afraid of what you might see, and followed her inside. After she reminded you of the bed where he lay, she walked towards the back, giving you two privacy.

You slowly walked up the bed, hesitantly opening the curtain to see the boy.

“Hey princess.” Mattheo said groggily, his face covered in bandages and bruises

“Oh my god.” You said, your hands flinging to cover your mouth as tears sprung back into your eyes.

“Hey, hey it’s ok. You should see the other guy.” He said reassuring you, smiling lightly at his joke.

You laughed through your tears, sitting down at the little stool next to his bed.

“Does it hurt?” You asked, holding onto his hand.

“Not one bit.” You knew he was lying because of the way he grimaced every time he even slightly moved, but you appreciated the sentiment.

“Merlin I can’t believe this is happening. I’m so sorry.” You said, your heart cracking at the sight of him.

“It’s not your fault y/n. And I’m gonna be just fine, Nurse said so herself.” He said, his own heart breaking seeing you so upset.

“I just wish there was something I could do to help.”

“You could kiss me better.” His signature smirk plastered on his face.

“Oh yeah? Where does it hurt?” You asked, smiling at his antics.

“Right here.” He said, pointing just above his right eyebrow with his left hand.

You leaned down and lightly kissed his cut, a sound of pleasure releasing for Mattheo at the touch.

“Here.” He said, now pointing to his nose.

You leaned down and kissed him again, lightly at risk that you might hurt him.

“Here.” He said, now pointing to his cheekbone. You repeated your earlier steps.

“And here.” He said, his finger now coming up to his lips.

Your eyes widened once you realized what he meant, your heart growing in size at his miniature confession.

You slowly leaned down, until your lips were hovering just above his.

“Are you sure it hurts here?” You joked.

“More than anything else.” He responded, before leaning up and finally meeting his lips with yours.

The kiss was romantic and sweet, yet a deep hunger was slowly taking control.

His hands reached up to your hair, yours going to cup his cheeks.

His tongue tickled your bottom lip, slowly entering as he explored your mouth. You moaned at the sensation, your hands running through his hair.

“Please don’t make that noise or I won’t be able to control myself.” He said, as he slowly pulled away, a lovesick expression painted all over his face.

“Maybe that’s been my plan all along.” You joked, kissing his temple.

“Remind me to never let you plan anything again, it took too long for my liking.” He smiled, looking up at your big (color) eyes.

“Noted.” You said, before you kissed him again, all your worries disappearing as you lost yourself in his being.

[zorange13]

— enhypen as boyfriends

enha x fem! poc reader (only rly jay's part but not many other descriptors)

did this on a whim, i just wanted to feel something idk. i’ve been starving you guys so hopefully y’all fw this til i pull myself together!!

2.5k words; not proofread sigh…

cw: suggestive content (only for hee at the very end), humane flaws, that's it i think lmk if i missed something!!

 lee heeseung

protective

heeseung isn’t controlling, not at all. he’s never going to try to get you to not wear what you want. nor is he going to get jealous of guys liking your posts. he’s very big on knowing who he’s with and not trying to change a baddie. he respects your independence!!

still, he knows that some people are weird and that not everyone has your best interest. so he will always do his best to ensure that you’re safe. holding your hand extra tight in crowded areas, having you walk next to or in front of him at all times, always looking your way when you guys are apart but in the same room—just to make sure you’re comfortable.

very masculine—but very secure

this might sound crazy, but heeseung is like one of the straightest men i’ve ever seen. he genuinely loves women so much—namely, you—that nothing pleases him more than being an equal counterpart for your femininity. you don’t touch doors, you don’t carry things, your feet don’t touch anything wet, if your feet hurt he either gives you his shoes or carries you.

he buys you perfume to match his cologne so you’ll turn heads together. he’ll let you paint his nails and do face masks and swatch makeup on him because that’s what he’s there for. why not? he’s never going to tell you no.

however, heeseung is…

prideful

don’t neglect what i said about him being very masculine; what comes with masculinity—a lot of the time—is pride. 

heeseung hates being wrong, hates looking stupid, and if you guys are arguing and you start making sense then he just goes quiet…because really what can he do? you just ate him up!! but he’s wrong. but he’s gonna pout, cross his arms, smack his teeth, clench his jaw, nodding like he’s really minding what you’re saying. but it’s not like he’s not hearing you—he just doesn’t want to catch an L because that’s really hard for him to do for some reason. and don’t let you hear him shut down and you be like, “oh, ok…that’s what i thought.” 

it would take everything in him to not crash out but it’s ok!! give him a minute and he’d apologize. it would kill him to admit it but, when you’re right…you’re right. and he knows that you would do the same thing if it was the other way around. “i’m sorry, you were right and i love you.” because as much as it wounds his pride, he cares more about making things right with you. nothing matters more than you. once you accept his apology, he’s pulling you in for a hug and taking you out or even making it up to you in other ways…

park jay

thoughtful

jay is always thinking of you—for everything. he’s always considering you and has you in mind for everything he does. if he sees that your curl cream is running low, he’ll get it the next time he’s out. he sees your glass of water getting empty, he fills it up. but also just things that can make your life the slightest bit easier, he’ll pick out your outfits, help you do your hair the night before—he tries but most times you’ll just tell him you got it because he really has no idea what to do. but he’ll sit and watch you do it so he can keep you company. besides that, he makes decisions with you in mind and wonders how it would affect the relationship. if his friends want to hang out, he’s like, “does she need me for the night?” if he’s making plans for the weekend, he’s wondering, “would she enjoy my little itinerary?” he just does this because he wants you to be happy at all times no matter what.

so loyal

this man is as loyal as can be, he only sees you. the thought of being with other women repulses him and he does not entertain that shit. if he sees some girls in his comments doing a lil too much he is not scared to block, delete a comment, or even let you comment if you feel so bold. 

“raw and deep juseyo” “ntm girl…” 

but yes, jay does not play. although it’s not like he’s disrespectful to other women. he’s nice to strangers, he’ll hold doors and help if he sees someone struggling but not to the extent where he’s going to let it go inappropriately further. just don’t disrespect him or his relationship and he’s good. 

however, jay tends to…

internalize and compartmentalize

he is way too good at being calm and rational. so much to the point where he struggles to be vulnerable or even address things that bug him. if you do something like make a joke he doesn’t like, he won’t say anything to you to correct it. then you keep making that joke or something within the same subject matter, soon during an argument—or even during some type of conversation, he just snaps. or he’ll throw it in your face and you’d just be confused. 

“why are you so upset?” “i don’t know” he does. he’s just been holding it in for 3 months. he’s there for you emotionally, no problem. as you are for him, but when it comes to dealing with his own emotions, he’s just not totally there yet. 

sim jaeyun

such a genuine sweetheart

everything that he was when you met him is who is now. jake doesn’t change up, doesn’t try to do anything to make you second guess him and his intentions. he loves on you so hard and genuinely will sit and write you a list of what he did for the day and all of the moments he’s thought about you during it. not to mention just how warm he is, he feels like such a ray of sunshine for you that there’s no amount of happiness to replicate how you guys feel with each other. it’s disgusting…

shows you off

he posts you, comments on all of your posts just so people know who he’s lucky enough to have pulled. being a boyfriend is a full-time job and it pays well, so with that he’s always talking about you. even when he’s not physically with you, he's talking about you. “you said you liked my shirt? yeah my wife got it for me.” “jake, you’re not even married.” “not yet but like…”

he just loves you so much and feels so honored to be in your world. it would honestly be a disservice to not show you off to the universe and remind God of the beauty He created.

however, jake is…

too trusting for his own good

jake genuinely tries to see the good in people. he believes that the whole world isn’t totally plagued with losers and weird people but sometimes that’s not the case. he’ll give everyone the benefit of the doubt—even people who clearly don’t deserve it. you could be like, “babe, don’t you see it? he’s using you.” “no…he’s just going through a rough time.” it’s so sad seeing him be so naïve but he usually doesn’t realize until it’s way too late. even then he’d still try to see their side, “yeah he might have stolen all of my money and got a foreclosure on my house but, maybe he deserved the money more than i did.”

park sunghoon

consistent and forthright

sunghoon doesn’t do weird situationships. if he likes you, he likes you and that’s it. he’s going to put in the effort, remind you of who you are to him and you’d see what he feels that way. no unnecessary jealousy, no breadcrumbing, no trying to make you “earn” him—because he’s the man wtf. none of that, he just enjoys you and spoiling you. he loves showing you his affection in the ways that he can.

actually funny, but never intentionally

hoon isn’t much of a talker. even jake said if he were to go on vacation with a member it’d be him because he doesn’t say much. but when he’s in a playful mood, hoon will express that. also sometimes he’ll just say things with a straight face and you just burst out laughing. sometimes his reactions to things will even make you laugh. like if you trip or something he’ll just look at you and be like “damn that’s crazy…you alright?” and reach his hand out to help you and make sure you aren’t hurt. just the walking embodiment of “this life thing is happening to him” rather than him just doing life.

however, sunghoon…

struggles with verbal affection

like i said, he’s not much of a talker. so the best way for him to show love and affection is through acts of service and physical touch, anything else sort of makes him uncomfortable. so if you’re the type who needs verbal affirmations to sustain your end of the bargain then you might be frustrated. granted, there’s no doubt in your mind that sunghoon loves you. you know that for a fact, but sometimes he just assumes that and that you just know because of what he does for you.

he might not go on for long speeches about how much he loves you, but he always wants you to know—and you do—how you’re safe, loved, and cared for when you’re with him.

kim sunoo

social butterfly

everyone loves him. family, friends, strangers, it doesn’t matter. he makes you feel so comfortable to be around him to the point where if you guys are at a function and you feel awkward, just stick with him and you’re good. this is so important because it can help when you’re feeling overwhelmed and he’ll just subtly tell you to go decompress, especially if you’ve used up your social battery for the night. 

expressive and affectionate

he’s not afraid to love you out loud. hand-holding, social media praise, hyping you up, giving you physical affection, anything that he can do he does it. “you’re so gorgeous…it’s almost making me sick. how dare you?” love to him is to be expressed in a kind way and it’s meant to be shown and felt and you guys do that for each other all the time. 

however, sunoo can be…

a little too honest

ok so he doesn’t always mean to do this. but he’s never been the type to lie, which comes in handy for when you do in fact need the cold, hard truth. but in normal interactions, you’d be like, “be honest, do you like this outfit?” and he’s just standing there, blinking. “i mean…it’s not your best.” it’s never meant to be mean, but if you’re sensitive, it might hurt. if he notices your mood drop, he’ll immediately be like, “WAIT, i didn’t mean it like that! you still look cute!!” but sometimes the damage will already be done, and you would have to have a talk with him about his delivery.

yang jungwon

reliable and responsible

you’ve never met someone more reliable than this guy. when you’re in a pinch, he’s there. when you need to get picked up because you missed your bus, he’s either sending money for a cab or driving you himself. he just handles things and even though you worry about him taking on things that he isn’t technically responsible for, he wears it with pride. to him, having a boyfriend means he should encourage you to stay on top of your shit. reminding you of appointments, deadlines, or making a plan when you’re both lost in the middle of nowhere (because, unlike you, he actually read the directions). he just gets it done and he never makes you feel like a burden.

playful, but he doesn’t do too much

when jungwon laughs, he laughs. with his entire gut and it can feel good when you’re making him laugh. but not when he’s laughing at you. either way, won is quick, witty, and just the right amount of annoying. so he would poke fun at you and not in a way that hurts your feelings, just in a way that you be like “shut up,” and try not to laugh at whatever he’s saying. he loves to make you flustered though, if he does then he’ll for sure lean into it because he’s usually always the one smitten by you.

however, jungwon can be…

too self sufficient

he’s so independent and used to taking care of others that he just doesn’t know how to ask for help. being so used to handling his own stuff makes him feel better because it means he’s not burdening you. but…that’s what you’re here for! to be there for him when he needs it. but sometimes when he’s stressed or upset he’d keep it from you and it’s not because he doesn’t trust you, he just doesn’t want to add to your list of things to worry about. which can cause some friction sometimes and you truly just wished he would let you in more. 

nishimura riki

actually your best friend

i see riki wanting to actually build friendship and camaraderie with someone before anything. so when you guys do get there and things turn romantic, it’s the best thing ever to have a boyfriend and best friend in one. you want to watch the new season of love island with someone? you’re having a sleepover. one of you guys did some shit for the plot? immediately a 3-hour debrief session. he’s such a ride or die and nothing gets boring with him around. so if you ever want to go on a spontaneous adventure, or make a ridiculous joke, you always turn to him. riki is your man but he’s also your stupid ass best friend and that makes life so much more enjoyable.

flirty, even when he’s got you

the chase doesn’t stop once he gets you and you love that. the fact that he still makes you feel so wanted so deep into the relationship is honestly the glue. if anything, the flirting has cranked up a notch and that only makes things exciting, it keeps things fresh. even after the honeymoon phase, he’s still kissing you, pulling out the red carpet, bragging about you, complimenting and praising you. this makes y’all’s dynamic so much more fun and intimate when you guys—especially him—are still showing interest in each other. 

however, riki can be…

a little too nonchalant

though i firmly believe he was a nonchalant dreadhead in his past life, riki sometimes can come off as nonchalant when he’s really just easygoing. it’s not that he doesn’t care, he just can’t always gauge whether you’re being serious or not. he’ll laugh things off when you say you want to have a serious conversation and while he thinks he’s cheering you up, you just want validation in whatever it is you’re feeling. it’s a way he protects himself from getting too deep or emotional, but it’s not always the best approach for handling the serious stuff between you two. sometimes you have to call him out on it for him to realize that not every situation can be brushed off with a laugh.

Copyright: © zorange13. 2024. All rights reserved. Do not repost, copy, or distribute without permission.

[moonshapedbox]

swan shaped heart

arthur morgan x preacher’s daughter 

a/n: whew! this story is finally leaving the confines of my drafts and i’m so happy!!! it’s longer than I anticipated it would be but ultimately decided that this will be a series. longer chapter to start with to set up the storyline. extremely self indulgent bc i want a man like this. reader is pretty freaky but we’re all adults here okay sdfjkf special shoutout to @dilf-luvr-4evr who wanted me to tag her, tysm to u and to my other dear moots for hyping me up and encouraging me to write !!! ok i think that’s everything! :D

tags: reader is in her twenties, lots of fluff, hint of age gap, ton of romantic tension. no blasphemy bc i’m religious <3 hands..lots of hands (you’ll see) no smut but heavily suggestive, lots of religious themes throughout obviously, no use of y/n (I wrote in 3rd person hehe), read at ur own discretion !!!

wc: 6.5k

part one

He arrived in a little town 15 minutes outside Valentine– couldn’t remember the name of it nor did he care. Hell, he didn’t know why he was riding there or what he was going to do when he did get there, but he was exhausted from casing banks and stores, or sizing up the potential jobs in the area, he needed a place to rest.

He looks up at the sky, the sun had just gone behind the mountain; he was too far from camp to head back now, there was no reason to risk being caught in any attacks from rival gangs if he were to travel during the night. The slight breeze was cool and wet, there was rain coming. He needed to find shelter–and quick.

The town hardly changed at all since he last visited 4 years ago, maybe a fresh coat of paint on the post office or the new signage on the general store–it was like time stood still. As he rode into town, there were a few people who knew him, giving him subtle nods as he rode past, others not at all. He found some lodging to stay in overnight and took inventory of his saddlebags, counting all the things he lacked. He decided it was smart to make a run. Soon enough, he secured his horses outside the general store, only buying a couple things before he left town again in the morning, enough food to last on the trip and a new pack of smokes.

He got what he needed and packed his saddlebags– when his eyes met with the church. He wondered how she was doing, what she looked like now, if she even remembered him at all—the preacher’s daughter. He heard a lot of stories about preacher’s kids; lascivious, wild and unruly. Although she was different– an honorable woman, who took everything her father taught her to heart, and tried to be her best when the Bible instructed it. Her even-tempered and friendly demeanor was like a calming balm on his aching soul. It was something so refreshing, so sweet in comparison to the life he was living. If life was a long and painful drought, then this woman was the rain– and he needed rain desperately. 

“Mr. Morgan?” a voice broke him out of his train of thought. Mr. Morgan. That voice–he’d know that voice from anywhere. He looked back and sure enough there she was, standing there with her ruffled white dress, burgundy boots with laces wound up snug against her ankles, and a dainty swan pendant necklace that adorned her neck, glimmering in the western sun. 

He inhales into a small grin, “Well, I reckon I know you from somewhere” he smirks. “How you doin’ little lady?” She squeals loudly and hurries over to him, wrapping her arms around his neck in a friendly embrace, “I can’t believe you’re here I thought you’d never come back,” she says, holding onto him for a moment longer before he pulls away. “Can’t have you be huggin’ me like that in the street or else people’ll think we’re sweet on each other” he jokes. She finally steps back to look at him and there’s a beat of silence, so short that if you were to exhale you’d miss it, but Arthur picks up on it. It’s awkward, in a sweet way. She looks down for a moment before looking up at him again, “Town missed you Mr. Morgan, where you been?” she asked. 

He felt guilty at the question. He’d been robbing, scheming, hurting, killing. Although he couldn’t tell her all that, she’s a preacher’s daughter. He felt so surely that if she ever found out what he did for a living she’d shun him for the rest of his life, “Uh, work mainly. You know how it is darlin’,” he replied, putting a lit cigarette up to his lips, taking a drag. 

“How long you plannin’ on stayin’ for?” she questioned, looking at his face for any clues to why he’s here. He shrugs, honestly he wasn’t planning on staying for long at all but since she’s standing right in front of him, with big glossy eyes and the hint of her sweet orange and vanilla perfume catching every now and again with the slight breeze– he couldn’t say no. 

“Not long darlin’, just for the night and then I leave in the mornin’,” he explains, that should give him enough time to visit without raising suspicions. She flashes him a melancholic smile and nods, wishing that he’d stay longer. She never got a chance to spend any time with him when he came to visit for the first time. 

Arthur Morgan–what a man, it would be an honor to get to know him behind his mysterious and aloof nature. To know what he was thinking, what he was feeling, she wanted to be the one to break his walls and scoop into his soul. Her mind starts to race with thoughts as her eyes gloss over his features: warm dark blonde hair, big blue eyes and scruffy beard–he was perfect.

He gets even more handsome than the last time I’ve seen him. He must have a girl–there’s not a woman on earth that hasn’t claimed him for herself yet. I wonder if he thinks I'm pretty…Lord, he’s so much older, so much more experienced– what am I thinking I ain’t got a chance. 

“You okay darlin’?” his voice broke her train of thought, she watched him put the cigarette back to his lips. She nods, “You was always an inquisitive one.” she teases, trying to change the subject. He raises his eyebrows and scoffs playfully, he never thought of himself as the inquisitive type. “I could say the same for you missy…’sides why’s your Daddy lettin’ you in town all by your lonesome?”

“I’m just going to get a couple things, we ran out of some food back at the house,” she explains, kicking some of the dirt on the ground with her foot. Arthur nodded slowly, he was nervous. Why was he so nervous? Words not coming to him with such ease, that beat of familiar silence encompasses the air again. She looks over at the entrance of the general store, “Well, I guess I must go now, it was nice seeing you again, Mr. Morgan.” she softly bows her head and turns away. The sight of her leaving pains him, even if it’s just for a moment. There is something stirring in Arthur. Something big and explosive —yet strangely familiar. Before he can even think about what he’s saying, he hears the words leave his mouth, “Wait– I’ll go in with ya.” he says, stamping out his cigarette and catching up beside her, “it ain’t safe… a young lil thing like you by yourself.”

She stops and looks up at his big looming figure standing next to her, “I can manage just fine Mr. Morgan, but I will not turn down your company.” She quietly thanks the Lord under her breath and enters the store with him. She greets the shopkeeper while he follows her around, making mental notes of the stuff she’s buying, looking over her shoulder for trouble so she doesn’t have to.

“Y’know Mr. Morgan, you were our hero 4 years ago…helping us round up all our missing cattle that those awful Montgomery boys stole from us.” 

Hero? A title that he rarely heard attributed to him. Her words transported him back to that time. He couldn’t believe it had already been 4 years since a trembling, fresh faced, beautiful young woman begged him to take care of some seemingly rotten men. Men that did nothing but terrorize the town by fighting, stealing, and getting into all sorts of debauchery– including looting and descrating her father’s church. As the tears ran down her soft and supple cheeks, she didn’t know that the man she was pleading to help save them from misery– was planning to rob her townsfolk and shoot them dead if needed to. A plan that would inevitably fail, all because his heart got the best of him.

He blinked back out of thought, “It was nothin’ really. It was nice spendin’ the week in only one place for once– speakin’ of them boys; they been givin’ you any trouble lately?” he exhaled, scanning over her features. “No, you must have scared them real good Mr. Morgan, ‘cause I haven’t seen them since.” she replies, checking the pears for bruises.

Of course, because he shot them dead. 

“Well…maybe they moved away.” he gestures vaguely. She smiled politely and continued to shop for the ingredients she needed. She fidgets with her swan pendant necklace and he picks up on this small habit too–trying to etch every aspect of this woman in his mind so he’ll never forget. When she had gotten all she needed, he offered to pay for her groceries. A gesture that restored her faith in man. She insisted it wasn’t necessary but Arthur paid for them anyway. As they walk back out, they loiter around the front of the store for a moment.

 “Thank you for courting me Mr. Morgan, y’know you really didn’t have to.”

“Oh sure, I wanted to, really.” he smiles softly. 

They gaze at each other for a moment before she smiles back, “It was nice seeing you again Mr. Morgan. God bless you.” 

He nods and smiles back, watching her walk away, wicker basket of groceries cradled in the crook of her arm. He sighs to himself, it was all so soft and so sweet, truthfully, he needed this. As he began walking over to his horse, thinking over the interaction, a soft ping of metal reverberated against the wood paneling on the steps. He looks down by his foot and a glimpse of something bright catches his eye, he picks it up and studies it. 

It’s her swan pendant necklace. 

“Shit…” he mumbles to himself. He looks around the building to see if he can catch up with her but it’s too late. He sighs and gives it another look over. The picture of the elegant swan on the pendant with gold trim perfectly catching the sunlight stared back at him. It was a beautiful pendant– while her family wasn’t dirt poor, he knew her folks were certainly not rich, especially given her father’s profession. There was no way she could have the money to buy this on her own–this must have been a family heirloom. He shoves it in his pocket for safekeeping.

That evening, the rainstorm he predicted was currently pounding against the glass of the window in his room. He shuts the door behind him and thuds himself down heavily on the side of the bed. He starts to rub his eyes, watery from exhaustion, with his index finger and thumbs. The events of the day weighed heavy on him, from having to stay overnight, to having to go back to camp empty handed, it was like a weight of stress was congregating in his chest. Despite all of this, the image of her stayed in the back of his mind. She looked well off and healthy, getting to see her after so long was pleasant to say the least. He sighs deeply and kicks his boots off. 

He lays on the bed, adjusting his weight to the mattress to get comfortable. He feels something in his pockets that prod at his hip, before reaching back in only to pull out the preacher’s daughter’s necklace. While he knows it’s just an object, he shares a moment with it— reminding him of its owner. Oh how pretty she looked today, like an angel. She smelled so sweet, her smile so soft, she was divine in so many ways. He thought of how the cool enamel of the pendant would touch her warm skin. His mind starts to wander, thinking about her only wearing the pendant, how it would glimmer under the low light of a bedroom, as he caresses her soft, untouched skin. Guilt stops him for a moment, and he curses himself for thinking such a thing– this was the preacher’s daughter he was thinking about. It would never work and he knows it, she’s forbidden fruit–but there’s something that courses in his veins, something that makes his mouth water for just a small bite.

He lovingly caresses the pendant with his thumb, the ghost of a smile visits his lips. Strangely enough, he found himself dreading to give it back to her. The pendant was expensive enough that he could have just sold the damn thing and went on his way–or at least that’s what Micah would insist him to do. Although he would never inflict such cruelness on this innocent daughter of the Lord. No–he didn’t want the pendant for monetary gain, all he wanted a little memento to remember her by. He closes his eyes and places the softest kiss on the enamel of the pendant before opening his eyes again. 

“The preacher’s daughter, of all women–,” he mumbles to himself, “you sure know how to pick ‘em…don’t ya?” He exhales as he rolls over, before placing it on the nightstand. He stares at it once more before putting out the candle.

“Goodnight girl.”

The next morning, Arthur finds himself on her porch, the sun barely cracking the sky open. He knocks a rhythmic pattern on her front door, and clears his throat. He’s nervous–strangely enough. He sniffs a few times and clears his throat again. He looks down at his hands and takes another glance at the pendant, he’s shaking just a bit. He should have been back on the road by now, but here he was, waiting for the preacher’s daughter to answer the door. What was taking her so long? Maybe this was a sign from God that he should just leave and take the pendant with him–the door swings open, he shoves the pendant back into his pocket before she can see, her eyes widen at his presence.

“Mr. Morgan!” she smiles with bewilderment. Arthur looks her over– she’s stunning even for so early in the morning. He takes his gambler's hat off and holds it against his chest, “Morin’ little lady,” he responds, “I–uh, found something yesterday,” he reaches into his pocket and extends the pendant out in his hand, “I think it might be yours.”

She audibly gasps and places her hand on her chest before clutching the pendant, “Oh my stars, I have been looking for this everywhere I was sure it got lost forever!” she beams with excitement, “Praise God you found it! Where was it?” 

“Outside on the steps in front of the general store,” he replies. She lovingly stares at the pendant before looking back up at Arthur. She pauses and opens her mouth to say something, before closing it again. He cocks his head at her in confusion, she exhales and starts over, “You want to come in for a bit?”

Arthur grimaces and shakes his head, before exhaling, “Ah, I don’t know about that darlin’, I’ll gotta be gettin’ a move on. Besides I ain’t wanna intrude on y’all’s activities.” 

“Oh I insist! I know, Papa would love to see you,” she explains. Her father would love to see him? He mentally rolls his eyes at her naivety. While it was true that the preacher didn’t actively hate Arthur, he wasn’t fond of him either. She frowns at his disbelief that laid evident on his features, “Really Mr. Morgan! I’m serious, let me repay you for finding my necklace.” 

“Just a little bite before you go,” she smiles and sways her hips innocently. “I’m sure you’ll have a long journey back and you gotta eat, right?” 

He sighs and smiles softly in return, “Okay. I guess I do gotta eat…just as long as I ain’t intrudin’.” He shifts his weight on one hip.

“Not intrudin’ at all. Breakfast is almost ready, come on in and make yourself comfortable.” she stands by the door and watches his big and broad figure walk through the threshold, “You’ll have to forgive Papa for his temporary absence, he’s in his room finishing the last part of his sermon. so I’m afraid it’ll be just us for now.” she says, closing the door behind them as she leads him into the kitchen. He was more than okay with that. It was already nerve wracking enough sitting alone with her, he didn’t need anymore stress from her father picking him apart in his head, cataloging all the sins that he’s riddled with.

He looks around the living room as he follows her into the kitchen. The house is quaint yet congenial–just how he would imagine a pastor to live. The scent of breakfast wafting through the air was wonderful, he hadn’t had a proper meal in days. He does what she says and makes himself comfortable at the table as she returns to the stove to gently stir the contents of the pan before joining him. 

He sees the Bible open on the kitchen table, assuming she was reading it while she was cooking, “Didn’t mean to interrupt your routine,” he gestures to the table. She adjusts herself at the table and meets his eyes, “Nonsense, you’re not interrupting anything,” she picks up the Bible, and quietly continues to read, “I just like to read a little bit of scripture in the morning to get my day started. Let me finish this passage real quick.” 

Arthur didn’t mind, he sits and fidgets with his lighter for a moment. After a few beats of silence, he puts his arm on the table and leans, trying to see what she was reading on the page, “So what’s it say?” 

She giggled at his curiosity before clearing her throat, “It says, ‘Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you,’ that’s Esphesians chapter four, verse thirty-one and two.” She smiles softly. 

Arthur nods, it all sounded lovely to hear. Although bitterness, wrath, and anger was all he was filled with– he couldn’t remember the last time he felt any differently. He felt like his whole life was one big sorry situation, tired of the ache of ruminating over the things that had gone wrong, people he lost, and regrets that plagued him. He was mad at everyone and everything. In Arthur’s case, forgiveness felt like water that was just out of reach for him. The thud of her closing the Bible jostles him back into the moment, he watches her get up and place the book back on the shelf in the living room.

“Y’know, you’re good at that.” he calls out to her, adjusting himself in the chair, his hips bucking forward a tad to get comfortable.

“What. Reading?” she calls back from the living room before walking back to where he was.

“Sure. If I was guaranteed you’d be the one preachin’ then maybe I’d start goin’ to church.” he smirked.

A rosy pigment of blush spread across her cheeks, “Now Mr. Morgan, what exactly is that supposed to mean? I’ll have you know Papa has wonderful sermons.”

That’s not what he meant– her obliviousness to his gentle flirting was endearing, he chuckles to himself. “I don’t doubt it darlin’” he mindlessly fidgets with his lighter again. 

“--Hey, that’s a wonderful idea. Why don’t you come to church with me this morning?”, she inquired, “You can sit next to me the whole time.”

His eyes widened before grimacing at the idea, that really wasn’t the best move considering who he was–although she was none the wiser, “I don’t know ‘bout all that, darlin’...” He hadn’t stepped foot in church since–well since the last time he saw her 4 years ago. “Why not?” she asks innocently, her big eyes gazing back at him. “If it’s about how you’re dressed the congregation won’t mind.”

He looks down at his attire and exhales a chuckle through his nose, mentally rolling his eyes at her assumption, “It ain’t about the clothes… it’s–” he sighs in between his words, “you know church..ain’t my thing,” he rubs his jaw, thinking over how awkward it would be to sit at one of those pews. 

“How do you know if it ain’t your thing if you don’t try?” 

He scans her soft features, “I been around a lot longer than you, trust me on this.” 

She gazes back at him and nods, walking back to the stove to finish preparing breakfast. There was a significant amount of silence that unaccounted for, Arthur who usually didn’t mind the stillness of the morning, grew restless in his chair.

“So…uh..whatcha makin’?” he asked, trying to find something to talk about. 

“Biscuits and gravy” she replied, stirring the gravy in the saucepan to keep it from burning. 

“Sounds good, ain’t had biscuits and gravy in a long time,” he taps his fingers against the table rhythmically.

Arthur was never good at small talk– he wasn’t like Dutch in that respect. That man could talk his way out of a death sentence, and God did he wish he had Dutch’s silvertongue right about now. Instead, he silently watched her cook, as a warmth spread in him. She’s wearing her Sunday best– and he notices the way her dress hugged her body and her bodice cinched her beautiful figure, how concentrated she looked when she was taking the biscuits out of the wood-burning oven, it strangely felt like home. For a moment, he forgot he was some outlaw, but just a simple man in the kitchen with his beloved. 

“Mrs. Hawthorne was askin’ about you yesterday. She saw you ride into town” her voice snapped him out of his trance, he grunted an acknowledgement, “The lady who was convinced her dolls were talkin’ to her?” he replies.

“Well she– now wait there Mr. Morgan she certainly does no such thing,” she explains, “That was just a rumor.”

“Ain’t a rumor if I seen her do it,” he laughs, “Sometimes she talks back to ‘em. Gives ‘em funny voices.”

“That’s not funny Mr. Morgan,” she frowns, trying not to laugh, wooden spoon still in hand, “Besides it’s not right to gossip.” 

“What’d I say?— Oh so it’s not okay to gossip but it’s okay to laugh at her expense? I get it now…” he jokes. She turns away, hiding her face from him. He stands up and saunters over to her, “Don’t think I ain’t seein’ you fight back a laugh. You think it’s funny too.” He chuckles. She eventually bursts out in laughter, the original joke not even that funny, it was something about his tone that tickled her. Suddenly, they both erupt in big laughter together.

The atmosphere in the room is light and airy–like both of them could breathe for once. “I think the gravy is done, you wanna taste?” she asked, her voice easing from laughter into a normal speaking pattern, wiping tears with the back of her wrist. Still grinning, he nodded in response, and leaned his hip on the side of the counter. She pulls open the silverware drawer and sighs, “Oh darn, I thought I had a spoon but I guess they’re all dirty.” she shrugs and fixes the issue by innocently tapping her finger into the saucepan, holding it out for him to taste. In her mind, she thought he would have a quick taste and tell her his opinion. Oh to the contrary. 

His heart jumped at the sight of her outstretched hand, slowly but surely he wrapped his lips around her finger, licking the sauce. The pent up desire that was bubbling deep inside of him started to rise to the surface, and before he could catch what he was doing, he began to deliberately yet gently suck on her finger. The feeling of his tongue wrapping around and in between her two fingers, made her lightheaded, electricity ran through her body and caused a heat to pool in her stomach. After licking her fingers clean, he pulled away and gazed into her eyes for just a moment.

“It’s perfect,” he murmured, his voice low and slightly shaky. She gazes into his eyes for a moment, before responding with a small and trembling voice, trying to pretend she wasn’t affected. “You sure? Does it need more pepper?” 

He knew exactly what she was doing, whether she realized it or not; and he couldn’t help but find her innocent curiosity endearing. A small smile appears on his face, “I don’t know, let me taste it again.” 

A justification to have her fingers in his mouth.

Without a second thought, she taps her two fingers in the gravy again and holds them out for him, this time her hand trembles at the thought of re-experiencing the feeling. His big, calloused hand wraps around her soft wrist to steady her fingers for him. He takes them in his mouth again, gently caressing them with his tongue, silently wishing to himself that he could kiss her with this much fervor and passion. He looks into her eyes before closing them, letting out a soft groan of contentment before pulling away. “Tastes amazing.” he says, wiping the corners of his mouth with his fingers.

Her fingers miss his mouth, they feel cold and incomplete without him. She felt lightheaded and breathless. There’s that beat of silence again, but this time it's longer than before. She pants ever so slightly, and he notices, “You alright?” he smirks. 

“Fine…breakfast is ready then,” she replies, her voice trembling with this new feeling coursing through her body. It was warm and soft, unlike anything she had ever felt before, she turned away and faced the stove again, “Go sit down, I'll fix you a plate.” refusing to make eye contact with him. They finally sit down to eat, although this time it’s different. She stares at him while he eats, trying to figure out this newfound warmth pooling in her, why everything he does makes her heart race. 

“Missed your cookin’, forgot how good it was.” he says, before taking another bite. “It ain’t that good, I appreciate your kindness though.” she replies, pushing her food around with her fork. “Compared to the stuff I gotta eat, this is like society folk’s meals.” She flashes him a small smile in return, her thoughts are loud and her heart is racing, “Society folk, huh?” her voice warbles, she tries to continue the conversation, but her thoughts are clouded by him. The way he ate was almost bewitching to her, she stares at his hands and looks away trying not to get caught. Her own fingers twitch watching him take bite after bite, reminding herself of the feeling of his mouth around her.

“When you leavin’ town?” she asks, not really wanting to know the answer. The soft early morning light starts to peer through the kitchen window. The atmosphere is still, yet full of meaning. He puts the cup up to his lips to drink long enough to ponder her question, before swallowing the warm liquid and placing the cup back down. “In a couple hours, most likely. Why you askin’?”

She shrugs and continues to eat, her left hand resting on the side of her neck. Her eyes refused to meet his, scared that he might see the disappointment in them. He exhales, something is off about her, “Somethin’ botherin’ you?”. She shrugs again and stares at her food, moving it around with her fork once more, “Why you leavin’ so soon?” she asks in an exhale, worried that she might be overstepping. 

He sighs, she didn’t need to know the real answer. “Work, darlin’...I’m on a...business trip,” he gestures vaguely. She doesn’t meet his eyes purposefully, trying to hide the tears in her eyes, it wasn’t fair that he made her feel things she never felt before, only to walk out and leave her forever. She prided herself to not be one of those girls that cry over boys. She always believed there were bigger and better things to fuss over–yet here she was. But what was the crime in missing someone? “Business trip…” she repeats under her breath before clearing her throat.

“What? Do you not believe me?” Arthur scoffs incredulously.

“It’s not that…you ain’t given me a reason to think otherwise but…” she pauses, trying not to overstep. “...But what?” He crosses his arms over and leans in closer against the table, the buttons of his work shirt pulling from the broad of his chest, she can’t help but pan down for a glance, her heart rate picks up at the sight of him. He was such a man– in the best ways possible. It was in his essence, his scent, the way he walked and talked, it drove her mad— it was so heavenly it agitated her.

“I don’t know, I ain't see why you gotta hightail it outta here. It’s been 4 years since you last been here and I mean for pity’s sake you just got here–”

“--And that bothers you?” he interrupts, slightly cocking his head at her.

She stammers, “I-I mean I feel like it’s not polite–”

He scoffs loudly, “Sorry I didn’t know you looked at me and saw the pinnacle of manners,” he places the cup of coffee back down,“Tell me what’s actually goin’ on,” he was starting to get to defensive. What had she heard about him that was making her so skittish?

The bantering conversation dies down and there’s a shared, intense silence between the two of them. 

Oh. Oh.

He felt like a fool for not realizing it sooner–or more accurately making a wrong assumption about how she felt and potentially wrecking a beautiful friendship. He stares at her across the table as she continues to eat.

“You gon’ miss me when I’m gone?” he murmurs low, studying her face, his voice shattering the silence in the air. His words suspended in the air like a fruit ready to be plucked. “We’ll all miss you,” she replies softly, trying to avoid what he’s implying. He shakes his head and grunts loudly in response, “I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout them... I’m talkin’ ‘bout you.”

She nods silently, before looking back up and meeting his gaze. For a moment, just a single, solitary moment–he forgot about the war raging in his mind of whether he was a bad person, or feeling like he wasn’t good enough for her. It was just him and the preacher’s daughter, sharing a meal and a loving silence. 

“Mr. Morgan–”

“You ain’t gotta be so formal with me hon, just call me Arthur.”

“Okay, Arthur, can I ask you something?”

He perks up at her statement, his curiosity giving her permission to ask. “I know you ain’t comfortable goin’ to church and I respect that,” she pauses to search for any discomfort for where the conversation was going, there was none, so she continues, “but I was wondering’ if you’d come to our annual picnic, this week. If you’re apprehensive about it being a church event– it's not. The whole town is gonna be there. It’s a town event, but I thought you'd like a bite to eat before you leave.”

He exhales and grins, “First breakfast and now a picnic? You’re really worried I'm gonna miss a meal huh?” he jokes, but she stares back at him, searching his face for an answer. His thoughts all align and he prepares to explain his reasons as to why he can’t come and that he’ll be back on the road in a couple of hours, but his words betray him, and he hears himself say something unlike him, 

“I’ll be there.” He looks at her free hand resting on the table, and gently envelops it in his.

“I’m glad, it means a lot.” she murmurs, a sparkle of joy in her eye. She stands and starts to clear the table, placing all the dishes in the sink.

There is a deep well of feeling and connection between the two of them, one could cut the chemistry with a knife. It pounds in his chest and he doesn’t know if he should act on his instincts–but dammit if he wasn’t going to at least try to do something about it.

He rises from his seat and approaches her, standing as close as he can to her. Feeling his presence, she laughs, “ain’t they ever taught you about personal space?” She looks over and he’s smiling back, but there’s a seriousness to him. She does a double take of how close he is, her smile faltering a bit, realizing he’s not kidding.

“I reckon you ain’t ever been this close to a man before, huh?” He ghosts the side of his finger against her chin. She shivers, goosebumps rise on the back of her neck and down her arms, before shaking her head.

“Why you tremblin’ doll? I ain’t gon’ hurt ya.” he murmurs. 

“I know,” she pauses, trying to find the words, “I just—never been looked at in this way before.”

He scoffs playfully, “Oh you’re more naive than I originally thought,” he looks over her face and down her body once more, “Men are definitely lookin’--  they just ain’t sayin’ nothin’ ‘cause you’re the preacher’s daughter–and they have a hell of a lot of sense to not say anythin.” he leans closer to her. 

“Well…what does that make you then?” she shifts against him.

“A fool–probably. But it ain’t stopped me from sayin’ anythin’ before,” he exhales and continues to gingerly stroke her chin, admiring her beauty. 

His voice becomes low, “You ever think ‘bout a man lovin’ on you baby?” The question vibrates in his chest. Her heart rate quickens, a beautiful shade of crimson spreads across her cheeks at the idea of something so scandalous, “Lovin’ on me?” she repeats. 

“Yeah, you know, what married people do.” 

For the first time in her life, she didn’t know what to say. She often would imagine in vivid detail, what she would do if she found herself in a scenario such as this. It was essentially drilled into her mind from a young age– that a man making advances was to strictly be condemned. That her purity was to be intact for her husband and only for her husband. The script of her imagination playing in her head, she’s seen it a hundred times–”sorry sir, I’m flattered but I ain’t interested”. It’s all she had to say…although for some reason she was rendered speechless, hanging onto his every word like her life depended on it.

in this moment– in some sick and twisted game of life, it was almost as if Arthur was forcing her to pick between which sin to commit– lying: claiming to not be interested in him; when in reality, the curiosity was gnawing in the pit of her stomach, or lust: throwing caution to the wind and letting him carry her bridal style to defile her in the bedroom that she grew up in.

She decides lying would weigh less on her soul.

“Mr. Morgan this ain’t proper…it’s immoral. I-I don’t entertain thoughts like that. I ain’t got a reason to.” she denies, refusing to acknowledge something so foul. It pained her to lie, she felt the guilt starting to creep in. Arthur smirks at her response, he doesn’t buy it, although her defiance and naivety makes his own pulse quicken. “Mmph, I see. So you don’t ever think about what your wedding night would be like? To finally have a man to warm your bed? Touching you all over and keepin’ you satisfied?”

Her breath hitches at the idea, never considering that a thought so filthy could have a moral loophole; but she dismisses the thought as soon as it comes, she continues to shake her head. The improperness of the conversation and her willingness to lie starts to make her feel sick with guilt. She shouldn’t be talking like this, not with a man no less. The mix of good and bad emotions swirl in her stomach like a bittersweet concoction about to boil over. As for Arthur, that insistent attitude of hers turns him on even more, and he can’t help himself to gamble how far he could go, “Oh c’mon darlin’, not even how it would feel? To have a man take his time with you and run his hands up your–” 

He found her limit, she cuts him off before he can finish his sentence. “No Arthur!” she barks, “I don’t wanna talk about this anymore! You will not bring this–this debauchery in this house; especially with my Pa in the next room, have you no shame?!” 

He knows he should take her seriously but the way she’s yelling at him is getting him even more worked up. He laughs a hearty chuckle, “yeah for somethin’ so repulsive to ya– ya sure are flushed!”

“Stop it Arthur it’s not funny.” She frowns, the guilt washes up in her like a shoreline. This must be what Papa was warning about on Sundays, the sin that drives a person crazy, to commit crimes and all sorts of deeds all in the name of passion. Arthur was creating new emotions she had never experienced before, the only cost of receiving it was with a backing note of remorse. Although, there was a cadence to Arthur that beckoned her to his presence. Like a siren beckons the sailor out to sea–only she was the sailor.

They gaze into each other’s eyes, unwavering and raw, “Arthur,” she exhales, leaning softly into his touch. He grunts in response, gazing lovingly back at her, his index tracing down her neck, making its way down to her collarbone, the other hand resting gently on her hip. She squeaks at the sudden weight of his hands on her, newfound warmth spreading in her. He scans her face for any hesitation, when suddenly she finds the words she’s looking for.  

“I’m waitin’ til marriage…”

He figured as much. What was he even doing? He knows this already. Lightly removing his hand, his palm hovers over her hip. He treats her like glass, scared he was gonna break her if he touched her at all– what a delicate little thing gazing up at him. He blinks and clears his throat, staggering a couple steps back. “Right. I know…I don’t know what I was—I’m sorry if I’ve overstepped, miss.”

She crosses her arms and as if she is trying to warm them, her fingers finding a way to the pendant Arthur rescued for her, fidgeting with it between her fingers, “You didn’t…I’m not upset… I just– I think– it would be best for you to leave now. For both of us.” she murmurs, “I’ll give Pa your regards.” He nodded in response, pressing his lips into a fine line, “Okay” he says barely above a whisper.

“Mr. Morgan?” his heart sank at her sudden formality— a fear that he ruined everything between them began swirling behind his chest, he came to a halt at her words.

“You still coming to the picnic?” 

He stands by the backdoor, loitering around the frame, before looking back over his shoulder, he exhales and gives her a small, sad, smile, “Thank you for the meal, darlin’. It was nice seeing you again.” The door hinge squeaks before he walks outside, the sound of boots shuffling against the gravel becomes quieter and quieter before it dissipates completely. She’s left with the burn of his shadow haunting the doorframe and the ghost of his touch printed permanently on her frame.

thank u sm for reading it means so much to me truly <3 hope you all enjoyed part one !!!

[lu-is-not-ok]

two in one theory... i am listening very intently if you ever feel up to share it!!

Alright, so this is gonna be... as close to an Abridged explanation of the theory as I can make, because if I went off on everything about it I would end up writing a whole dissertation or five hour video essay script on this shit.

There are gonna be three main sections to this post - Hong Lu's Daiyuisms, Hong Lu's Themes of Identity and how that connects to the concept of Two in One, and the Daiyu-Baoyu theory itself.

Strap in folks.

Hong Lu's Daiyuisms

If you know anything about my theories in the earlier days of Limbus, you might know that I'm one of the very few people who was convinced Hong Lu is actually Daiyu, due to some evidence I found personally compelling. This has not changed, as we've only gotten just as much extra evidence to this as we have to him being Baoyu. So let me just speedrun through some of these points.

The Fucking Jade Eye

Ok hear me out. This is maybe the least important piece of evidence but I can never stop thinking about it. Hong Lu's jade eye? Not actually fully blue! If you look closely on most of his sprites, you can see that he actually has sectoral heterochromia, meaning his jade eye is both blue and black.

Daiyu's name, quite literally, translates to blue-black jade.

Now, you could claim that this is merely meant to be an easter egg reference to her, but... is that really Project Moon's style? After all, when people speculated on Don Quixote being Sancho or a Bloodfiend partially based on her appearance all the way back since near launch, they turned out to be right.

Hong Lu's Father

As of now, there is only one instance of Hong Lu referencing his Father in Limbus, and it's a voiceline from his Base Identity:

Now, if you know anything about DOTRC, this should already be raising some flags, because if Hong Lu was just Baoyu, he would not fucking talk like that about his Father.

In the book, Baoyu is consistently shown to be afraid of his Father, for a good reason mind you, as he's his main abuser. Baoyu would not be looking forward to introducing his friends to that man.

Even if Hong Lu was trying to downplay the abuse he's recieved, this would still not fit his pattern of behavior. When topics that genuinely bother Hong Lu come up, such as what could make him distort or how rich people would enjoy gifts made of humans, he immediately pivots and tries to avoid the topic at all cost. He would not bring up his main abuser in such a lighthearted manner, he would avoid bringing him up at all cost.

However, there is a character in DOTRC which does in fact have a more positive relationship to her Father, and would likely be the one with an opinion such as that - Daiyu. Daiyu loves her Father, and when he dies she completely disappears from the story for a bit to attend his funeral. If there was anyone who would be excited to introduce their friends to their Father, it'd be Daiyu.

Lasso Hong Lu's Corrosion

I made a whole seperate post about this, but I might as well mention it here as well for the sake of completion. The design choices made for Hong Lu which are missing for Faust are very, very Daiyu-coded.

For one, not only does Hong Lu completely turn into a flower, unlike Faust, his horse also gains a flower in its mouth. For those whose knowledge of DOTRC is zero to none, Daiyu is a reincarnation of a Flower given sentience due to being watered by the Jade. I don't think I have to be the one to connect the dots between those two pieces of info for you.

The second is how the halters become a noose for Hong Lu. This, too, is a very Daiyu thing - Rose Hunter as an Abnormality represents the inability to escape one's fate, and Daiyu's fate is to die - the Jia Family arranging a marriage between Baoyu and Baochai leads to Daiyu falling deathly ill, which in itself could be considered a part of her repaying her Debt of Tears - the debt she swore to repay to the Jade/Baoyu when she was still a Flower.

The hilarity of the fact that this E.G.O came out in the same update as Hong Lu being called Baoyu in-story is not lost on me.

Rose Sign Abnormality Log

The third Log for Rose Sign ends in a very peculiar way.

There's multiple ways one can tie Hong Lu's odd reluctance to talk about flowers and the petals. One is the obvious "he's being reminded of Daiyu because she was a Flower" connection, but there's another one.

One of the most commonly potrayed images of Daiyu relates to a scene in DOTRC where she buries fallen flower petals, weeping for and lamenting the mortality of the flowers and herself. Hong Lu's reaction here to his fellow Sinners being reduced to nothing but petals upon Rose Sign's death feels like a notable parallel to Daiyu's flower burial scene.

Like literally everything about Kurokumo Hong Lu

The title for this is a bit of an exaggeration, but at the same time. I'm serious. Kurokumo Hong Lu is perhaps the most Daiyu Identity out of all the Hong Lu Identities we have, and the way he is designed to stand out among them further makes me go insane.

Kurokumo Hong Lu's most defining trait is his attitude - he often complains about his position and how authority treats him, though he doesn't really act out against them in any major way outside of making snarky or sarcastic remarks.

This is, frankly, an extremely Daiyu thing to do. Daiyu is one of the few characters who audibly complains about her treatment in the household. For example she complains about not being given as many opportunities to show off her poetry skills as her male peers are, and she recognises how, when all the girls in the family are given flowers, she's the last one to recieve them and thus is stripped of the ability to pick, being only given the leftovers.

Then there's the whole. Everything about Kurokumo Hong Lu's visual design. Because once you realize just how Daiyu-like the Identity is, you realize just how weird he is compared to other Hong Lu Identities. I mean just look how he compares to his other Identities.

He's the only Hong Lu Identity with a blue tint to his hair in the combat sprite rather than the usual purple.

He's the only Hong Lu Identity whose hairtie is a ribbon rather than a jade ring (Liu Hong Lu technically has the ribbon in his post-uptie art, but he doesn't have it in his combat sprite so I'm not counting him).

He's the only Hong Lu Identity to not be smiling in his combat sprites.

And he's the only Hong Lu Identity (and one of only four Identities in the game) whose Idle sprite has its body facing away from the opponent rather than facing towards them.

All of those combine to make him stand out like a sore thumb in a Hong Lu Identity lineup in a way that makes it feel intentional, especially since he's also the only Hong Lu Identity with that kind of notable attitude towards authority. Other Hong Lu Identities are either obedient, don't express any opinion, or just straight up are the authority.

The Baoyu reveal is framed in a very weird way

This is, admittedly, less of a Daiyuism and more of a not-Baoyuism, but I thought it'd be important to mention nonetheless.

There are a lot of things about Canto 7's reveal of Hong Lu's name being Baoyu that are very strange, especially compared to how the Canto frames Don Quixote's own reveal of actually being Sancho.

For one, the timing itself - why is such an important piece of info being revealed so early? Again, compare to Donqui - she was revealed to be a Bloodfiend in the Intervallo right before Canto 7, and the Sancho reveal only came in the second half of the Canto.

For two, the framing - Donqui's reveals are treated as what they are, Major Reveals. The Baoyu reveal on the other hand happens in a single off-handed line, with nobody reacting to it in any way. Neither Hong Lu nor the other Sinners seem to hear it after all.

And mind you, it's not like Limbus is opposed to giving us important information in off-handed lines - far from it in fact. Project Moon loves shoving little bits of foreshadowing and reveals you don't realize are reveals until way later in these kinds of off-handed lines. But the way those lines are treated is still very different to how the Baoyu reveal is treated.

Usually, when there's foreshadowing in off-handed lines, it's usually either vague enough to be something a character could say regardless of context (see Yi Sang getting hung up on the Sedatives bit in Canto 2 or Ishmael's comment about Syndicates pretending to be Families foreshadowing her own history with the Middle via Queequeg) or something that is in the middle of a scene that distracts from what is actually being said (like Hong Lu's distortion foreshadowing being in the middle of an important infodump or most of everything in Canto 2 being surrounded by a comedic tone).

None of this is present for the Baoyu reveal. There's nothing to distract you from this information, as the scene is already focused on discussing Hong Lu, meaning you're already likely to be paying attention to what is being said about him. There's also no vagueness about it, there's no way you can brush it off since not only are Wei and Xichun newly introduced characters, but it's a whole ass clearcut namedrop.

The only way I can justify that reveal being there in the form it takes is that it in itself is the distraction. Think about it. Didn't I point it out earlier that this reveal came in the same update as the E.G.O with an extremely Daiyu-coded corrosion design? Wouldn't it make sense for that reveal to be there to lower your guard, make you think you resolved that mystery, only to later on reveal it wasn't the whole story after all?

Hong Lu's Themes of Identity

So this section is a bit more vague than the Daiyuism section, because Hong Lu is the type of guy to just Say Shit all the time. It's basically just. Anything that I find relevant to the idea of Hong Lu's Identity being more complex than him just being a random guy using a pseudonym, with some (but maybe not all) of them directly tying to the idea of Two in One.

"Which one is the real you?"

There are currently two seperate scenes where Hong Lu muses on the idea of someone's identity being in some way vague or obscured.

Is Dante the person or the clock? Is the dreamer the one in the dream or the one who wakes from it? Which you is the real you? Does it even matter if that you will flutter away in the end?

This idea of there being one true self. That even if there are two, there is only one of them that is actually you. Curious, right?

Face-changing dance

During the Canto 2 scene where everyone gives their reasons for whether or not they'd be a good pick for being the one to dance, Hong Lu says this.

Bian lian is a kind of dance literally translated as "face-changing". It involves rapid changes between various masks and make-up to represent different emotions or characters.

Now, it's no secret that Hong Lu is a great actor, as we see in Canto 4, and Canto 7 shows how the comparison to theatre and actors can be used to symbolize one's performance of identity, as it does for Sancho and her Don Quixote persona.

Mind you, this reveal comes in the same scene as Sinclair's dance invoking the image of a bonfire burning all through the night according to the Mariachis, a clear foreshadowing to Canto 3 and the Literal burning down of Sinclair's home.

Hong Lu knowing bian lian could be further foreshadowing to his own skills in deception, and how he too is a sort of actor, not unlike Don Quixote. On the other hand however, it could also be a more literal foreshadowing, that he (Baoyu) Quite Literally changed his face. We won't know until Canto 8, but it is an option you know.

The HamHamPangPang dish(es)

For those who don't know, here is a list of the Sinner-themed dishes that were available at HamHamPangPang.

Now, chances are, not all of them have deep meanings. I don't think there's much of a deep meaning to Heathcliff and Ishmael's dishes, I think PJM just legit don't know much about British/American cuisine so they just picked something recogniseable.

However, not all of them are meaningless picks either. Ryoshu, likely a mother, has a meal literally called "parent-and-child donburi". Don Quixote, a Bloodfiend, has a garlic-based dish. These were clearly done on purpose.

So, what does it say that Hong Lu's dish is actually two different dishes? That he's the only one whose dish is two different dishes? And it's not like the two are in some way inherently connected, since they're of completely different cuisines. Japchae is a Korean dish, not Chinese like the Mandarin rolls.

And just in case you weren't convinced that Hong Lu's choice of dishes is purposeful - another name for Mandarin rolls is flower buns, and one of the special occasions japchae is commonly served for is weddings. If you had read through the Daiyuisms section and somehow have no idea what the significance of that is, I don't know what to tell you.

The Daiyu-Baoyu Theory (finally)

So. I gave some evidence for why I think Hong Lu could still be Daiyu despite being revealed as Baoyu. I gave some evidence for why I think Hong Lu could be a Two in One deal, or that at the very least there's something more complex going on with his identity. But let's discuss the theory itself, how it would recontextualize certain things, and why I think it's an extremely fitting an thematically resonant direction for Hong Lu's Canto to go in.

The Theory

Here's what I speculate is going on.

Daiyu, just like in DOTRC, is someone who was taken in into the Jia Household rather than born in it, and who strongly connected with Baoyu upon meeting him. The two would end up forming a bond strong enough that they would be willing to die for one another (or, if they're in particularly argumentative moods, to kill themselves just to force the other to have to live a long life grieving over them - this is an actual argument they have in DOTRC and I pray to god this is adapted into Limbus because it's too fucking funny).

At some point, Baoyu either dies or is brought to near death, likely through the same circumstances as in DOTRC - being beaten by his Father. To save him, his memories and consciousness would be transferred to his eye, a process not dissimilar to the one Xichun brings up in Canto 7, and implanted into Daiyu's body, causing them to become a vessel for Baoyu. This would be how Hong Lu as he is now is created.

All of the above is the main basis for this theory. Everything else that I might speculate about, such as the exact nature of the two's relationship, Daiyu's more exact background and personality, how their pre-reincarnation lives could be adapted - all of those are things that are purely speculative and ones that I don't really expect to be actually fulfilled. The only bits that I am sure are likely to be true is what I laid out above.

So... what does it all mean for the future? I'm glad you asked!

The Recontextualization

Here's a collection of just a couple of things that Hong Lu has said or is depicted as that would be heavily recontextualized if this theory ends up being true.

Hong Lu surviving despite claiming he didn't fight back when his siblings first tried to kill him: With the context that he used to be two seperate people, the answer to how he survived is made very simple. Baoyu is the one who wasn't fighting back. Daiyu, however, could have still protected him in turn.

The red ribbon on Hong Lu's weapon: There is only one other Sinner who has a similar decoration on their weapon - Ryoshu, who also has a red ribbon on her sword, which could be easily connected to Yuzuki and her death. With the context of Hong Lu being Baoyu occupying Daiyu's body and thus effectively rendering their self non-existent, the red ribbon could be a parallel symbol - a symbol of Daiyu and their 'death'.

How Hong Lu treats his weapon in his base E.G.O: The way Hong Lu holds his weapon in the illustration is more like he's cradling another person. This could be a representation of how he feels about Daiyu's situation. Likewise, in the attack animation, he's not really attacking with the weapon itself, is he? He's simply using it to direct a ribbon (which in itself is missing in the illustration), the part that is actually the attack. If the weapon in the base E.G.O represents Daiyu, this could be a parallel to how Baoyu feels like he's merely directing Daiyu's body to attack, rather than being the one actually attacking.

The duality of Hong Lu IDs: There is a notable pattern among Hong Lu IDs, and that is the focus on his attitude to violence. When he's in a situation where he's obedient towards his Family, he's either uninterested in violence, bored of it, or otherwise given no other choice but to use it as a reprieve from boredom. However, when he's in a situation where he's disconnected from his Family or otherwise questioning the status quo, he's shown to not only be much more aggressive and violent, but to outright enjoy it. With the context of Hong Lu being composed of two people, this duality could represent each of his components - the obedient and violence-averse being more Baoyu-like, while the questioning and violence-favoring being more Daiyu-like.

So, there's a bunch of stuff that would be given new meaning under the premise of this theory being true. But now, what about the future? What would this theory mean for the themes and ending of Canto 8?

The Resolution

I believe this is how the Daiyu-Baoyu theory will affect Canto 8.

At some point, whether before or during the Canto, it will be revealed that Hong Lu is both Daiyu and Baoyu. There will be an attempt to seperate the two, perhaps to implant Baoyu into a more fitting, more Jia Family-approved Vessel. Perhaps because the 'arranged marriage' from DOTRC could be adapted into something more... let's say Fear and Hunger kind of marriage rather than traditional marriage.

This will leave Hong Lu to be returned to their state as Daiyu, who will be revealed to be a very different person to what the Sinners knew Hong Lu as. There is a non-zero chance that Daiyu will be unable to hear Dante or be revived by them due to the one who signed the contract being Baoyu, and so they could end up acting as an uncontrollable ally unit not unlike Xichun in Canto 7.

The climax would then be Daiyu and Baoyu reuniting and being unwilling to part with each other again, even for the sake of returning to being the fake persona that is Hong Lu, leading to a potential duo boss fight/distortion boss fight/duo distortion boss fight.

The ending would be the two of them deciding to embrace their new identity as Hong Lu and truly becoming one, discarding their pasts and the selves that had been forced on them by the Jia Family. This ending would have a twofold meaning regarding how it connects to the DOTRC adaptation.

One - it would be a direct parallel to the ending of DOTRC where Baoyu leaves to become a monk. By becoming Hong Lu and discaring his previous identities, he'd be leaving behind the earthly attachments inherent to being Baoyu and Daiyu and become spiritually whole.

Two - it would be a reflection of the major theme of DOTRC, that being "Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true. Real becomes not-real when the unreal's real." Hong Lu, as a person, is a 'fake' persona used by the 'real' Baoyu and Daiyu. However, by discarding those two identities and deciding to just be Hong Lu, the fiction of his existence becomes the truth, while his former real selves become not real.

Conclusion?

I could honestly just keep going with this post, but I think I'm going to stop myself here before I'm forced to find out what tumblr's character limit on posts is. Believe me, I was trying to be brief, and still this post is. This fucking long.

I hope this explains why this theory has been the subject of my brainrot for the past however long, and why I feel like it's surprisingly plausible despite being as deranged as it is.

Godspeed and godbless, I have classes tomorrow and I'm spending my time on this.

[fawninthesnow]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐞: Part 2

Part 1,

𐙚 Emperor Geta x Fem Reader! 𐙚 18+

Summary: You are the daughter of General Marcus Acacius. After gaining your fathers blessing to join in at the palace, you run into a familiar face.

Warnings/contains: dom fem, f4m, teasing, pinning, size kink, praise, idealization, obsession, not proof read

Word Count: 2.5k

More on my Master list!

follow & like pls

“[Y/n], I would like to speak with you.” Your mother knocked upon the open door of your bedroom. You sighed aloud, taking off your jewels from the day. She moved behind you in the mirror, undoing your bun and undoing your small braids. “I will not ask why you are restless. I want to apologize to you. I know that…we *may* be more protective of you than-“

“I would call it absurd. This is absurd.” You turned to her, “I may not shop on my own! I may not take a walk by myself. Even as we speak, mother, a man watches!” You point to the guard that stood by your bedroom door. “I seem to never leave this place!”

“I know you are angry, but this is for the best!” You squinted with annoyance, throwing yourself onto your bed. “You are a beautiful young woman, [Y/n]! Moreover, you are our daughter! There are people who will want to hurt you.”

“I am aware of your worries, mother, but It is hard to believe the people of Rome know of my name, let alone what I look like!” You rolled over onto your back. Your father, General Marcus Acacius, now leaned on the post of your bed near your mother. “Now, I love you both dearly, but your words do not match your actions and I am tired of being left here to wait and rot! I am not one of your statues, Mother.” You stood in front of them now, your arms folded, and a crossed expression rid your gorgeous face.

To your surprise, your mothers’ hands clasped, and she sadly smiled. Her eyes welled, “Ahh, I am sorry. Y- you are just- you have grown so much.”

You tried not to fold under the pressure. It seemed whenever she got emotional, you found it hard to stand your ground. “Yes, yes, I have. And I want the freedoms of a woman. You say you want me to marry but the only men I have seen in the past few years were your guests, these brute guards and men of the Senate.” You said straightforward, avoiding your mother’s gaze, instead, looking into your father’s eyes.

The man sighed, holding his face in his hands. “What is it that you want?” He asked, officially surrendering to you. In that moment, you wondered if you had done this before on your 19th or 20th birthday.

“I want to follow you, Father.”

“Me? W- no! You cannot. It is too dangerous! Far too dangerous!”

You crossed your arms again and glared at him. “I barely see you as is! You will not let me join your army! You will not let me even speak in public! I want to be called your daughter. I want to follow you!”

Your Mother looked at her husband. She knew you had a point. You had a good reason to be emotional. “I do not know, Lucilla. This is dangerous.” She said nothing.

“That is all I want.” You said softer, close to your parents. “…for now.” Your father sighed.

“I will speak to you again in the morning.” He rubbed his forehead before leaving the room.

You balled your fists, looking away from the door, “Honey.” Your mother took your hand into hers, “It will be ok.”

“Does he hate me?”

“No. No, he could never. He is just tired. Do not stay up too late, ok? I love you.” She let go of your warm palm.

“I love you too.” You said as she left your bedroom. “Will you watch me change as well?!” You asked the guard who bowed his head and quickly left the bedroom.

The next morning, you were awakened by a servant with a tray of dyes for your makeup, with sage and frankincense for your perfume; separated into small bowls. “My Lady?”

“What is this?” You asked, moving the sheets from your body.

“Your father would like you to get dressed. I will do your hair today.” You tilted your head for a moment, rubbing your eyes. Another servant brought in a dress from your mother’s wardrobe from her youth.

“He said yes!?” You jumped from bed and dashed down the hall. The two servants continued to prepare you for your day as you pushed open your parents’ bedroom door. “Oh! Thank you! Thank you!” Your arms wrapped around your father’s waist. He kissed the top of your head.

“You should dress. We leave soon.”

*

Outside the home, you were helped onto your horse. “We will take the main streets.” Your father spoke, “Be sure to stay close to me. It can get crowded very quickly.” You nodded as the two of you, and a few guards who followed, entered the city. The last time you were here, you were being scolded. However, that was two weeks ago, and you never went this far in.

Your eyes flickered around at the stores and market. Children chased each other and women gathered water from fountains. Along side streets, men gambled and shouted. Inside of a cheap jewelry store, a mother bargained. Upon seeing your fathers face, people gathered around the horses, slowing down the group. “Keep your horse forward, [Y/n].” Your father spoke over the crowd. The city was rather overstimulating, and that was obvious. These people were obnoxious in your eyes. To you, this was just your father. Sure, he’s a decorated general, but this was the man that taught you math, dressed you in the mornings, learned how to braid your hair, collected flowers with you, and laid beside you when you fell ill. He was a man. Not a god. “[Y/n]?”

“Where are we even headed?” You asked as guards cleared the way for you and your father.

“To the palace.” He directed to the northeast of the path.

“The palace? Why?”

“I have business with the emperors.” You smirked. Something you adored was snooping. What a place to do so! “After, we can go wherever you please.”

“Sounds like a plan, Father.” Emperor. You hadn’t heard that title in a while. It had been weeks since that clown of a man called himself one to you. You remember that day like it was yesterday. That arrogant, short man. Just the thought him nearly made you laugh aloud. There was no way he would ever be emperor. That scrawny excuse of a man?

When you and your father arrived at the palace, he helped you off your horse; he held your palm, leading you up the steps.

A short man with his arms open greeted your father. Something about his face looked familiar, however, you had never seen him before; for sure. “Acacius! Haha! Hello, my friend!” Your father bowed to him, and you followed suit. “Ahh,” He held his own hands, admiring the face of the young woman standing beside his general. “And who might you be?”

“This is my daughter, [Y/n].”

“Ahh!” The man yelped with excitement. It was then you noticed the small animal on his shoulder. What is that? You wondered. “She is quite beautiful…mhh.” His eyes fell on your curves.

“Should we speak inside, Caracalla? And find your brother?” Your father asked, interrupting the thoughts of the emperor.

“Yes!”

He led the two of you inside, moving rather awkward without his brother. You looked at your father. “There is two, yes?” You whispered. He nodded.

You stayed outside the room as your father spoke to Caracalla. You leaned against the wall, listening in as they planned on a map. It was mostly your father speaking, and Caracalla feeding his monkey while nodding.

In the hall, the sound of loud shoes moving across the floor caught your attention. You looked over your shoulder. “Do not linger outside of there, servant.”

You frowned, turning your body to the sound of the familiar voice, “Do I look like a servant to you?” You asked, stepping closer, as did he. You face shone under the sunlight. The man stepped back and caught his breath.

“It is you! Yo-“

“Oh, shut up!” he gasped, “What are you even doing here?” You stepped closer and he moved back.

“I am an emperor! Of Rome!”

You laughed as he spoke with a nervous undertone. “Be honest, *you are* a servant, no?”

“I am the emperor! Are you ill?! Can you hear me?”

For a moment, you thought aloud, “But, isn’t the older brother supposed to be…bigger…” You circled around him like prey. He wondered if you had gotten taller since your last encounter. “…more commanding? This is rather disappointing…”

“I have had it with you. What is your business here?! Hm? Who even let you in?!”

You push him into a room across the hall. “Shut up. My father is right in that room!”

“Acacius! General Acacius!” You pulled him with you behind the door and covered his mouth, your other hand on the front of his throat.

“Say another word and I will snap your neck.” You said into his hair. “I guess you are the emperor…but that means little to me. For if my father finds out what you did in that garden, he will have your head.”

“Ahg! I did nothing. It was you!”

“Ha! You stained my dress, tiny! Even so, you speak if he’d believe your word over mine.” It was true, he most likely would not believe the emperor. You had your way with words. You had your way with threats. “Now, what to do with you…” He bit your hand before dashing from the room. You chased him down the hall and stopped him in his tracks. He gulped, looking up at you. “And where are you going?”

“Y- you cannot intimidate me! Not in my own palace!” You leaned down and held him by his chin. “T- these guards! They will stop you!”

“You are mistaken. They do not work for you. They work for my father.” The man gulped before wiping sweat from his brow. “I can do whatever I want with you. We can keep playing chase, sure.” You step out of the way, and he ran down into the field of grass, surrounded by fruit trees and such. You laughed at him, chasing him into the field before cornering him and pinning him to the grass.

“This will not work on me! Very soon, your father will catch you!”

“Oh really?” Your knee pressed between his crotch, pushing on his balls.

“Y- yes.” A feathered moan left his lips. “I- I want you t- to let go! Let go, I say!” You let go of his hands, however, he does not move.

“It seems you like this.” Your finger found its way on the wet tip of his penis, coated in precum.

“I d- do, no, I-” He said rather softly. “A- n- you are a bully! A rude woman! No man will ever have you!” You continued to tease and rub his tip, making it hard for him to speak.

“Is that so?” He bit his lip and looked down at the mess he made on your fingertips. “Look in my eyes, you pervert.”

“I am not a pervert.”

“You are a pervert.” You lean down into his ear, gently kissing and suckling on the skin. “Only a pervert likes getting bullied by a woman in broad daylight. Only a pervert likes having his body exposed in an open field…under a woman.” Your hair dangled in his face; your bosom pressed on his chest as he hyperventilates.

His eyes opened wide, and he rose from under you. “I will not entertain you any longer.”

“Come here…Geta, was it?”

“I-“ He stepped away from you once more.

“Geta.” You say, inching closer. “You are too small; you will never escape me.” He held his crotch, trying to stop his throbbing shaft from its movement. The emperor fixed his toga, only for his crown to fall off his head. He groaned, growing flustered. “Do I make you nervous or something…?” You twirled his laurel crown around your finger. You looked heavenly from his view. He felt as if he had come face-to-face with Venus herself. “This crown means nothing, you know? Do you even feel like an emperor when you wear it?” He did not reply but you knew the answer. As you moved closer, your purple dress held onto your hips and swayed with every step. You placed his crown on your head, “Do I look pretty?” You knew he would agree. You are stunning, how could *anyone* deny that? And with that gold crown over your head? It was hard to believe the gods did not hand deliver you to your parents. “I know what you are feeling…why so shy?”

“Leave me be, woman!”

“Come here, little boy.” You tilt your head, offering your palm, “I will make you feel better.”

“I- I am…the emperor…”

“Sure.”

“I wear the crown.”

“Fine, take it.” You tossed it back to him. For some reason, it seemed to lose its meaning. It did not feel as heavy as before. It felt cheap, pointless, useless. Was it really a symbol of the gods if a goddess denies it?

“Acacius…he will not be happy.”

“My Father will not know.” You giggled, twirling his hair.

“See?! I knew it! You are a deceiver!” The emperor took off his shoes and ran back into the palace before turning into the room where General Acacius and his brother leaned over the table. He caught his breath. You stood behind the man and caressed his side. He jumped, and whined, “S- she’s-“

“Oh! Emperor Geta.” Your father bowed to the man, and you did the same, smiling at him. “Good morning.”

He looked between you and your father; the resemblances were undeniable. You squinted at him as if daring him to say something to your father. Geta moved away from you. “…proceed with the meeting.” You went back to your place by the pillar, watching him from afar. He felt uncomfortable, hot under his collar. The general spoke of invasion plans to the north of India. Although you should have cared, your attention was set on the nervous mess in front of you.

The meeting carried on faster than you would have expected. The two emperors walked you both to the entrance, exchanging pleasantries. You lean towards Caracalla, and he happily kisses both of your cheeks. Towards Geta, he resentfully kisses your right cheek, “…I will see you again very soon…” You whisper.

He froze in shock, “No. No, you will not.” You smirked and he groaned, kissing your left cheek. “Stay away from me…”

“It was delightful meeting you, emperor Geta.” You spoke so condescendingly, he felt so small, like a peasant when in comparison to you. When you pulled away from him, and climbed on your horse, Geta adjusted his garments, his cock stayed hard throughout the morning. He had to admit that you were some form of a goddess; maybe it was your figure, or your personality, but something within him felt as if this connection had to be holy, divine. His hips ached, and his tip was wet with lust. He would never admit it to you, that would only boost your ego.

Part three

Part one on my Master list!

follow & like pls

[moonisreading]

Meeting Again;

“Horrible things can be happened to anyone, no matter how bad it is. The world will continue, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Neglected Reader with Batfam | Uncertainty

Previously

You wish your existence is not to portray solely of someone that focus only to be them, does this happened a lot? No, but the thoughts sure wanted you to remind your place, your individuality the reason that you still live because of them.

Is it bad that you just wanted to have an independence from the manor you reside in your whole life? Why is it hard to be a child of billionaire who are to busy being hero to Gotham a father and a mentor to your other sibling?

Oh wait scratch that, he is a billionaire.

People want to bag a money to the most wealthiest man that known in this God awful place, you just wish they didn’t choose to kidnap and use you asking for a ransom. It happens all the time, with you the only one in the family didn’t choose to be part of the family business, you know the threat that loom over you if you happened to choose the life of fighting and saving the people.

Does that make you selfish? Yes.

However in terms of choosing to be alive than dying by fighting is better.

The choices you make is your own responsibility, you know that when your nearing adulthood, and it reminded you how much you have a lot of privilege when a corrupted policies tried to gain some money on you when he “found” a drug on your car.

From you what you remember, a commissioner handle your predicament and manage to put the light to the corrupted police who wanted money from you. You remember the disappointment when you got home, its not like you expect them to check up on you and this and that.

You have the privilege that some of your step siblings doesn’t have before Bruce Wayne adopted them, so maybe that’s why their is a gap between you and your step siblings. Despite having privilege, Bruce and Alfred are too busy to manage the city only your thoughts and money is what you have being left behind the close doors.

Alfred did his best, but your feelings to him are just neutral you knew he’s a busy man, its not his fault after all when your Father need him the most. You are just someone who suddenly appeared in front of them, a mistakes that Bruce hesitated to acknowledge, it’s actually funny realizing that mistake is can easily be manageable when ignoring it.

So that happens, and thoughts barge in your mind, be kind is what your heart tells you - be kind to your siblings, they had it rough before they are adopted. So you did that, helping Dick to adjust to his new normal, transitioning from circus life to ordinary school boy are lot harder than what it looks. You welcome Jason when he suddenly adopted by Bruce, you remember his face looking in awe when he saw the stack of bookshelves in the manor’s library.

But it soon change when one of them disappeared, and that leads you hear being caught in a crossfire.

Being use as entertainment, becoming a punching bag and became someone who is now punching the other. Fighting tooth and nail, punishment and another punishment when the boss of the arena is dissatisfied to your performance.

You can feel the stung from your back just from remembering it, being forgotten is ok, people other than you had it harder so there’s nothing to complain or to fight when your beaten black and blue. So you stay, its not like you have other choice, no one teaches you to fight and defend to escape, your just you who is living normally with no trauma and no upbringing (that’s what you tell yourselves in a broken mirror staring in your reflection.)

At least people doesn’t associate you as Wayne, the arena stripped you with anything but a name that is given by the boss, that are known by the underground as one of them. However your surprise to remember your name when you hold the little guy by his collar.

He suddenly appears out of nowhere with sword in hands with your body reacting on instinct holding him in the air, glaring at him. When he suddenly utter the name that no one ever call you after the incident and living the life as a underground fighter, you are so use being call a weapon so when hearing your name is a bit alien to you in your steed.

But your so glad you met him.

Despite the sudden murder attempt here and there, a piece of you is finally found, it was small yet it greatly impacted you to finally reform.

A name that is stripped from you is now finally in your hand or maybe your heart, a sense of humanity restore some part of your soul hearing your name once again. You are so glad Damian come into your life, you never been so relief meeting one of your siblings, (which another part of you reminded that you have a life before.)

People sometimes forget to not reminiscing the past, although some people had a valid reason they don’t wish to remember their past, no one wants to look the bad memories and resurface unwanted thoughts they took themselves to heal or grown from it. You took a lot of time to decide if you should took Damian from his mother who you guess associate from dangerous organization, you want the kid have a life outside other than train and kill people his only purpose.

Good thing you have a lots of friends a friends that doesn’t talk or judge you, who give you attention and affections. Animals, it just came after another, remembering the time walking aimlessly with no destination in mind, feeding a stray dogs leading to adopt more of their siblings, helping a cats ended up bringing their kitten in your feet.

Another good decision you made is bought (which the money is from you earned in underground fighting) the cottage in quiet mountainside with the town just a walking distance tract down the mountain, fixing some holes the roof and then your done. Some townspeople are kind enough to show you some ropes to farm and how to take care of the dogs and cats, they even give you a house warming gift.

Adapting is not that easy, but you manage.

So you hope while watching the Damian is leaving with his mother - you hope that he’ll find someone an anchor to his life. Someone who will show him there is something out there worth to be learn, interested and find joy while existing .

It’s been a year when you last seen him, there’s no ambush here and there so maybe he didn’t see you as a threat anymore? You sure hope, Ms. Cole the calico cat is in the porch sitting there with her babies who mewl for her attention, You huff at the sight from the kitchen window holding the tray with freshly baked breads.

Clearly she’s waiting for Damian, the kid sometimes give her treats when your not looking so she’s favorable to Damian than yours.

“Ms. Cole get inside.” You call from the window, not turning around to see whether she obey or not, the cats have their own independence so it didn’t bother you if she’s not obeying you.

It’s three months after new year Damian return, but with someone else, the sight of him almost loosen your hold at Damian when you hug him.

You remember Dick Grayson is only inch shorter than you - or maybe your the one is shorter than him? Can’t remember, he probably won’t remember you that much, Dick always with Bruce so your interaction on him are limited beside the time when you both are young.

Despite being the same age he change, he’s body is bigger and something about him are calm and easy going unlike the time with Jason and Bruce. You can’t be sure though, he’s look you upside down when you introduce yourself.

“Name [Name].” You nod at him as greeting.

Dick smile and about to offer his hand for you to shake - which you immediately wave yours in the air, “Yeah - uh no handshake.”

You can see the slightest change on his smile, yet he immediately fix it with a laugh, “Not fan of handshake I see, my name is Dick Grayson, its a surprise Damian is comfortable being hug by you other than me.”

Hearing that you chuckle, “Maybe its the age?”

”Seems unlikely, the first time he met me is to kill me.”

Huh, you look at him with a smirk, “That also happened to me as well.”

That made the two of you laugh, free and at ease you took note, which it shouldn’t be the case at all, in his eyes you’re a civilian but he didn’t utter both of your mishap. Maybe, he knows who you are but.

Your laugh soon calm down, hands on your back, you two watch Damian being circle by cats and dogs.

If Dick knows who you are, which one is it?

Eyyyy, part two.

[mossyscavern]

Not spies, just a bit incompetent

Part 2

_________________________

“… what?”

Bee squeaked, breaking the silence before tapping soundwave’s shoulder pad to whisper in his audible. “What is starscream talking about?” He asked, the blue bot turned and whispered back. “Conclusion: We believed you’ve possibly been captured.”

Soundwave answered, as starscream gave his speech to both the high guard and prisoners.

“… no, i wasn’t captured, they found me. I lived in sub-level 50 back at Iacon.” He told the mech, shrugging his shoulder pads before kicking his peds back and forth.

“Question: who had ‘found’ you?” Soundwave asked and bee pointed to both the blue helmed mech with the red chassis and the silver mech. “They did before we found the map and got our T-cog’s from alpha trion.”

… this concerned Soundwave to the point he scanned bee’s electrical impulses. Every word he said is true.. even the T-cog part is true. “Primus what had sentinel done to you?” Shockwave chimed in, just as concerned as Soundwave.

All before starscream had yelled. “Hey! What are you doing?!” Starscream yelled. ‘Aww, we missed the whole speech.’ Bee thought, pouting.

Then it changed to concern, seeing that D-16 is the one that stood up. “Doing what you’re not.” He first says, turning to the winged mech.

“I’m going out there to make an actual difference. I found out that Sentinel is rotten and I’m going to make him pay, today!” D-16 yelled, fury on his faceplate. “You think you can just insult me and walk away?”

Starscream questions, walking up close to the silver mech. “Nobody leaves unless I say so.” He threatens, invading his space. “Is that so?” D laughs mirthlessly, licking his denta.

“Well how can you say that? With my head in your teeth.”

He says, rearing back and knock his helm full force into Starscream’s. The winged mech stumbles, caught off guard as sparks fly. “Dee!” He hears Orion scream, but doesn’t pay much mind to it, he has optics on his opponent.

Starscream was about to fly kick right at D-16’s head, but the mech caught it, resulting a face full of plasma from the heel Strut.

It was all happening too fast for bee, that and the amount of times soundwave tries to shield bee from the violence, but bee has to see if D is alright. From the looks of it he was about to lose..

Everything became quiet when bee finally struggles out of soundwave’s arms, looks up and saw that D has the upper hand, and he looks… terrifying, scary even, with that huge canon pressed against starscream’s face on his forearm…

“Dee!” Bee shouts, desperate. D-16 stopped, his features softened and he looked up, blue meeting orange.. were they orange?

Immediately he let starscream go, went and knelt down, arms stretched out to bee. Shockwave stepped forward before being stopped by Soundwave, letting the young spark approach and the silver mech hug. “You ok bee?” He asks.

“Uh huh, but… that was really scary.” Bee mumbled, burying his helm in D’s chassis. “it’s okay.. it’s okay.” He says, hugging bee tight to ground both of them.. but mostly himself, he needed this.. both of them needed this.

Before anything, he asks bee to go back to Orion and elita and cover his audibles. Once he does the tasks he shouts to the high guard, loud and clear.

“Bear witness! This is the only time I show mercy to those who play king of thrones! Decide now: You can stay here in hiding, bowing before your pathetic leader, or follow me as we march to Iacon and take down sentinel! Once and for all!”

The high guard cheered, chanting his name loudly. Orion stares back at his friend, the voices and chanting fades in quiet as he stares more.

He turned back to bee audibles still covered like how d-16 instructed.

Orion felt like he was about to loose D… but bee had kept him grounded.. sparkling’s keep them grounded.. it’s a reason to fight for.

The distant chanting didn’t last very long as there was a sudden explosion and laserfire. “Bee hold on!” Orion yells, transforms into vehicle form to get bee to safety.

They can make it! They have to make it…

_________________________

Ok, part 2 is done. It’s a bit sloppy but, eh.. I just wanted it to be finished.

So yeah.. part 2 is done! Forever. And for those who hadn’t seen part 1 yet, don’t worry I’ll just direct you to it.

(Prev) <- it’s here, right there… I hope you all enjoy. If uh… you want to hear the aftermath? Go here -> (aftermath) @yuukirita drew/wrote it best… I’m sorry.

[punkpandapatrixk]

👑Your Destined Person’s Anima vs Persona ♦︎ Timeless Pick A Card

According to Carl Jung, the anima is a man’s feminine (Yin) aspect, and thus unconscious in him. Correspondingly, the animus is a woman’s masculine (Yang) aspect, and thus unconscious in her. The anima is the Masculine’s hidden psychology, essentially.

In the grand scheme of the Cosmos, the Yin is the dark, the magnetic, the VOID—the empty space where all creations are first dreamt. In this dark space, it is up to the Masculine individual whether or not he wants to succumb to the allure of Lilith the Destroyer. In Jungian psychology, apparently, they have this thing called The Devouring Mother LMAO

All things considered, in the name of character development, it is up to the man—if he ever so chooses, which, one must first always make a choice for things to go a certain way—to make the unconscious conscious.

When the Yin and the Yang in a person are united and fully realised, that person becomes what we call Divine~ Man or woman, this person then becomes a more complete Human being. He or she then becomes the master of his/her own Destiny~⛵️

GNOSIS: A Man's Anima Reveals Itself In Sexual Fantasies as explained by Marie-Louise von Franz (entertain the comments section, peeps~)

SONG: Say You Love Me by EXO KAI

MOTHA: Kim Kardashian plays a SAVAGE version of herself in AHS Delicate 😩 by Offensive Tea

deck-bottom: XVIII The Moon Rx, Red Geographer (Marco Polo) & Priestess of Illumination

[PAC Masterlist] [Part 1] [Part 3]

[Patreon] [Paid Readings] [buymeaboba]

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 1 – Evil Fuck vs King

‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.’ – Carl Jung

VIBE: Reason by EXO KAI

anima – XV The Devil

Look, babe, we keep it real in this household, OK? XD We don’t know if your Destined Person has Mars/Pluto in the 8th or 12th House—or possibly—Neptune itself in the 5th or 8th House, but essentially, your DP is a person who’s deeply fascinated by SEX and all the taboos surrounding it. They could struggle with having a lot of improper thoughts, quite often, at inappropriate times and places, deep inside.

Your Destined Person most likely watches a lot of porn or indulges themselves in those types of activities/media, and on top of that, prooobably has some mummy issues. At the very least, they could have a strange/unhealthy relationship with their mother figure or have a difficult time accepting/integrating the Yin aenergy inside of them.

Overall, this strange combo of Scorpion/Neptunian qualities in them lends to your Destined Person’s macabre fascination with all things ‘dark and sexual’. Be that as it may, this doesn’t automatically mean that your Destined Person is simply a depraved piece of fuck. Don’t be surprised to know that things changed drastically for them by the time they graduated their 1st (or 2nd if they’re slow LOL) Saturn Return~

persona – 9 of Cups

There is something about the way sexuality is expressed in this Human world that feels strangely fascinatingly depraved, which is genuinely incredibly foreign to your Destined Person’s Soul XD If they’ve felt inexplicably drawn to it, it’s because they want to UNDERSTAND fully what makes ‘sex’ in the Human world so…icky and disrespectful. 9 of Cups here is literally indicating that your Destined Person’s Soul is incredibly pure and altruistic.

And that is exactly why they are endlessly perplexed by the darkness—the sickness is more like it—surrounding SEX in this wicked world which they realised is almost completely deprived of Love. The sheer lack of a soulful cosmic connection in most sexual activities in this world puzzles the living shit out of your Destined Person!

It may take some maturing from your Destined Person until they finally understand that this dark fascination is actually quite common for people with their kind of natal configuration or let’s say, psychology. Their Saturn Return phases will play (or have played) a critical role in their awakening to a Higher Truth that eventually liberates them from the chains of a strange addiction to… yeah…

Divine Human – Queen of Pentacles Rx

At some point in Life—most likely after their, at least, first Saturn Return—your Destined Person understood why some things simply don’t add up for them when it comes to how Humans connect with each other to enjoy these…worldly pleasures; which then led to a great spiritual liberation from all the deceits they’d been told about sex and sexuality in this…mortal world.

Your Destined Person is somebody who’s quite inexplicably cosmic, you know. Either they feel to you like an alien or a fairy. They simply can’t fit into the expectations of ‘normalcy’ in most of Human societies. The depraved things people so take for granted, none of that feels ‘normal’ to your Destined Person. This is someone who’s actually incredibly decent and polite.

Your Destined Person is not the type that wants to hurt you in intimate situations. They probably don’t even prioritise the sensual sensations more than how they connect with you on an emotional level. This is a person who wants to ‘fill you up’ spiritually through a divine sexual activity, which, now that you know, explains why they’ve had to learn to unlearn the lies of sex and sexuality in their younger years ^^v

WHAT IS LOVE🔻💜

honey? – Priestess of Solitude

poison? – Priestess of Faith

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 2 – Many Dreams vs Unworthiness

‘One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.’ – Carl Jung

VIBE: Amnesia by EXO KAI

anima – Knight of Pentacles

There is a chance that your Destined Person has some significant Virgo-Pisces bullshit going on in their birth chart. This is the axis of sacrifice and self-undoing of the zodiac wheel and this in itself could cause a person to ‘self-sabotage’ out of a fear of becoming happier than everybody else. It sounds crazy, right? But people with a harshly afflicted Virgo-Pisces connection tend to be somewhat of a martyr.

In practice, where your Destined Person is concerned, this affliction plays itself out in the form of endless rumination, as well as a sense of not being worthy of what they’re actively daydreaming about. This is almost giving me that main character from the movie Parasite. This guy dreams and plans a lot, but fucks everything up in the end because he’s simply not…capable enough?

OK, that’s a bad example but this aenergy is almost similar to how the guy is portrayed by the very end of the film XD This afflicted Piscean aenergy especially, is making your Destined Person, most likely subconsciously, afraid of letting themselves happy. So then, as a means to reaffirm this ‘belief’ their brains ‘course-correct’ by fucking up whatever nice bit of Reality they’ve manifested…

persona – 5 of Swords Rx

After experiencing the same kind of bullshit for some time, could be a number of years for some, too, your Destined Person could’ve become dejected. This is a very normal human response, right? They could’ve developed some kind of inertia within themselves. Always frozen mid-air when thinking of actually jumping into the next breakthrough or any other sense of adventure. They tend to not take action towards liberating themselves from either boredom or a dead-end of a situation.

A lot of people who interact with them regularly probably only know them as a mild-mannered person who’s quite pleasant to talk to. But deep inside, your Destined Person is raging chaos, waiting to murder someone. They’re sometimes possessed by this strong feeling of wanting to destroy something massive or ruin another person’s Life completely. All because they’re superbly frustrated by the lack of action or excitement in their own everyday Life…

At minimum, this is a person who could struggle quite a bit with regulating envy or jealousy upon seeing another person’s success, freedom and happiness, but most of all, another person’s sense of advancement in Life. This isn’t to say that your Destined Person is simply an evil fuck of a devil incarnate; actually, quite far from it! It’s just that this person has dealt with, really, quite a bit of systemic letdowns from the Universe itself…

Divine Human – Page of Pentacles Rx

Life rarely feels fair when someone’s Virgo-Pisces axis has harsh afflictions. Then again, this is quite literally your Destined Person’s ultimate test of strength and of character. That’s precisely why their Soul chose to be born with such afflictions in the first place. To see how their Human Avatar would navigate this type of crazy in their psyche~★ I promise you that you aren’t destined to marry an actual psychopath LMAO But, let’s see…

In the beginning, your Destined Person could’ve struggled with looking into the depths of their own disturbed psychology. This could be a fear from within themselves and so they refused to do so, but especially if your Destined Person is an XY, this could also be their environment/society’s wrong reinforcement when they say, ‘Boys will be boys, riiight?’ as a means to excuse your Destined Person’s refusal to learn and grow from their failures and mistakes *smh*

Whether XY or XX, your Destined Person’s mother could’ve been a pick-me or straight up a narc; and due to this lack of proper guidance, structure and discipline in your Destined Person’s childhood, they could’ve grown up to embody somewhat of a dark triad personality. In actuality, your Destined Person wasn’t allowed the chance to grow up emotionally or psychologically—honestly, whoever their mother figure was, she failed them.

WHAT IS LOVE🔻❤️

honey? – Priestess of Abundance

poison? – Priestess of Love

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 3 – Lazy Escapism vs Mahoroba

‘People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.’ – Carl Jung

VIBE: Blue by EXO KAI

anima – 7 of Wands Rx

Your Destined Person is out with lanterns looking for themselves~ Doesn’t this picture make you think that? ^^ Your Destined Person is a walking paradox to say the least; they are the type that may not always be honest with even themselves. I sense it is because they feel this burden from all around them to be the highest-achiever or the best-mannered or whatever else. Other people have put such high expectations on them that they originally thought they too had to think precisely that way.

In the beginning, your Destined Person might not have known who they were at the core of their Soul. They had only known themselves through the lens of other people’s perception and expectations. Though they might have thought this normal when they were small, at some point in Life—possibly when Saturn made its last aspect at around age 21—your Destined Person was nudged by the Cosmos to go on a Soul-search.

During this time—and all through their first Saturn Return—your Destined Person realised for real for the first time that they are quite a rebellious spirit, and when met with the wrong situations, can honestly be quite vengeful XD At this point, they may have developed some bitter feelings about how they had allowed others to murky their own perception of themselves! This Soul-search could’ve been quite world-shattering for your Destined Person…

persona – 3 of Swords

Most people don’t seem to notice this but a self-denial kind of issue is actually really quite painful on an emotional and psychological level. Like this feeling of not knowing themselves, not embracing their inner child, not allowing themselves more freedom, all of this, upon being realised, broke your Destined Person’s heart so horribly. It was such a deep psychological issue that they may not have found any person to confide in.

Some of their friends, even closest friends, might’ve perceived that your Destined Person was distant from them. They sometimes felt standoffish or simply…well, distant. Not quite there with the rest of them or they could also have avoided hanging out too much with even those closest to them. They became somewhat of a loner. To process their feelings, your Destined Person often disappeared into the dreamscape.

In many ways, I think your Destined Person became quite deluded, if not delusional XD The dreamscape, their escapism, provided so much more comfort and excitement than real life. In the daydreams, they could be so much more real than what they’re allowed to be in the real world… So when you realise the reason, it’s really quite sad and poignant.

Divine Human – 6 of Pentacles

Your Destined Person is truly a Divine Human in that they do truly have such a generous, charitable heart. If this is your main pile, a common ground here is that your Destined Person is so much more kind and gentle than appearances may give—even if they’re already perceived as kind and gentle~ It’s almost unbelievable that someone as pure as this still exists in today’s world, especially if your Destined Person is an XY LMAO

This person, all they wanna do in Life is to be good and to love people and share good times and promote good deeds. Alas, that was very childish of them tsk tsk tsk… It took them a real smacking on the head to realise they’ve been victim to so much gaslighting practically their entire Life. Because in this wicked world, ‘goodness’ is weaponised by bad people to victimise actually good people.

A total mindfuck, yeah, took them a while. As they grow older, your Destined Person learns to balance between what is ‘fake short-term good’ and what’s ‘divinely good in the grand scheme of the Cosmos’. All in all, whether or not they have the technical knowledge, your Destined Person is actually a WITCH. Some of the most powerful witches out there—an alchemist of the highest order😉

WHAT IS LOVE🔻💚

honey? – Priestess of Inspiration

poison? – Priestess of Energy

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

[PAC Masterlist] [Part 1] [Part 3]

[Patreon] [Paid Readings] [buymeaboba]

[tyunn1ngz]

hueningkai nsfw alphabet

cw: gn!reader i think ? to the best of my ability anyways and no gender is stated regardless

a = aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

total softie!!!!!!:( wants to be held and wants to hold u and its just oh-so delicate and tender just two lovers in ur own little safety bubble— giggles w hushed pinky promises that u will meet in ur dreams that night

b = body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

on himself his lips and his fingers— his lips on urs, his fingers in u; his fingers in ur mouth, he’s obsessed w it all, he likes it so much

on u ur thighs and tummy!!! marking u up all over and squishing the skin under his fingertips, rubbing over ur tummy when hes inside u just to watch u squirm and gasp .. ( ；∀；)

c = cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

his cock gets so wet when hes hard n he cums a lot its so cute really especially cuz he’d get so shy abt it <3

d = dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

gets off to ur voice sometimes— like listens back to voice notes u’ll send him even if all u r doing is talking abt ur day and gets himself so hard out of nowhere he loves hearing u

e = experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

a big virgin w no idea what hes doing before u but thats ok!!!!! thats what practice is all abt !!!!!!! more fun for u especially bc hes such an eager learner <3

f = favourite position (this goes without saying)

spooning or riding — spooning is so intimate and he can feel up ur thighs and tummy so nicely that way, or dip his hands to bring u more pleasure to ur sex; and u riding him means u can take the reins and he’s very into that! use him to get urself off honey!

g = goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

silly for the most part, its more relaxing and comforting that way, sex isn’t some performance between u two. but sometimes it feels like his brain just melts and pours out his ears so thats when it’ll seem more serious, bc u’ll have just a soft big eager puppy on ur hands then :<

h = hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

for my own personal bias. No shaving. all his body hair in tact. everyone listen to me bc that is SEXY. his happy trail ohhgod

i = intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

very intimate, has to be touching u at all times it’d be like chopping a limb off if u told him he wasnt allowed to touch u. loves rubbing his cheeks against urs idk thats just a thing in my head

j = jack off (masturbation headcanon)

cracks knuckles what do u guys know abt PLUSHIE HUMPER kai who steals sprays of ur perfume or lets u cuddle a specific one so it’ll smell like u when he fucks it later and cries ur name softly … what do u KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!

k = kink (one or more of their kinks)

nipple play. make this boy cum from just playing w his nipples i swear to god. and when hes more on the dominant sides of things definitely dacryphilia imo

l = location (favorite places to do the do)

just the bedroom !!! but maybe a quickie in the bathroom at a party could be up his alley too whos the say ;p

m = motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

watching u get changed or get ready in general, defo also gets so hard when u do smth as simple as sit in his lap and move a little too much hes just too easy !!!!!!!!!!

n = no (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

nothing too rough and violent, and not heavy on the degradation either. just a tiny bit sometimes but hes more abt praise!! dont b too mean to him he’ll get stuck in his head :( not too fond of too much degradation towards u for this reason too! just a little if its what ur into but he prefers being nice to u its just in his nature no matter how bratty u get w him </3

o = oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

a giver, bc it means he can make u feel good and also be between ur thighs which make for great earmuffs! not very good at it sometimes but his eagerness makes up for it!!!! other times he’s absolutely expert w his tongue its insane

he does love receiving tho!!!!! as much as he won’t admit it bc he thinks it’ll make him selfish for some reason Σ('◉⌓◉’) loves when u take him especially deep— rly makes his thighs shake and u have to keep ur hands on his hips to keep him from practically fucking ur throat >_>

p = pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

gentle but kinda fast ? he gets so desperate and pathetic that he needs it to be faster but he can’t hurt u so he’s gentle by nature. he’ll get a lil rougher when he’s closer to cumming tho or if u rly push for it<3

q = quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

don’t happen often but when they do they’re the hottest thing in the world. he either goes so dumb hes basically melted into ur arms and pleading, almost in tears or! he’s finally treating u like u won’t break and just taking what he wants, whispering how good u feel and how a little part of him wants someone to walk in and see u breaking in his hold :3c

r = risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

a little! nothing crazy but if theres a more tame fantasy u wanna try he’d defo be down, and he’s happy to tell u his own fantasies, even if his face burns up w embarrassment w every word. not too fond on risks, not big ones anyway but little thrills r always fun!!!! ฅ/ᐠ. ̫ .ᐟ\ฅ

s = stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

doesnt last long the first round especially but he’ll go as many rounds as u want. obsessed w how u feel when u cum on his cock so if u orgasm once and its not w him inside u ur gonna be going again and even then it might not be enough he’ll be overstimulating the both of u to the heavens— just be aware of that !

t = toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

lowk vibrator obsession, loves watching u use it, loves using it on himself, loves using it on u, u using it on him— u both using at the same time, pressed up against either side of it and crying into each others mouths .. could also see him loving the idea of having a fleshlight. Gulps. ＿|￣|○

u = unfair (how much they like to tease)

teases u a lot when hes in charge just to see ur glassy eyes and pretty lips form a pout, but hes pretty hypocritical bc he doesnt like to be teased and he’ll get so pathetic when u do .. sigh

v = volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

louder when hes closer to cumming, whimpers and gaspy moans that grow louder and higher in pitch the closer he gets, probably likes to stuff his face in a pillow or plushie to keep himself quiet bc he gets so embarrassed but he sounds so pretty :((((

w = wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

never really puts u in ur place when u act bratty but one time he just snaps and ur legs were trembling for a good two days after; good thing he was back to his little angelic self and carried u everywhere

x = x-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

big hes hung asf. personally im a little more interested in the 50 pounds of ass he carries around but ig his cock is also important in this category

y = yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

HIGH! .. once he gets a taste of sex— of you, he is insatiable woooo boy

z = zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

hes not conking out until ur asleep first!!!!!!! so however long ur awake for after all is done, he’s up too!!!! no matter how hard his eyelids try to droop closed ok and if ur not sleepy hes not either (he is but just keep talking ok he’ll keep fighting it off)

[always1star]

the time we were together

toxic!sukuna x fem!reader (although can be read as gn?)

tags: angst, college au, cursing, arguments, use of y/n, alludes to sex (but nothing explicit, i dont write smut), cheating, yearning, closure, happiest ending i could make tbh, no part 2 im sorry

a/n: i didn't mean to write this but for some reason it just happened so enjoy my first fic lol. also this is NOT PROOFREAD

WC: 2.7k

You and Sukuna have been going out for some time now, maybe about five months. You met him at some random frat party. You had just been broken up with by your boyfriend of two years, and so you went to a party and took anything and everything anyone gave you. You were feeling super sick and all you really wanted was solace. After a while of sulking in the corner of this random disgusting frat house, you decided it was time to go home, as at this point you were high and drunk completely out of your mind. You gathered your things and attempted to stumble your way to some kind of exit. On your way out, you accidentally ran into this huge hunk of a man with bold tattoos. You started sobbing when he caught you, tears staining and fists clenching his shirt. He was absolutely bewildered and as people had begun to stare, he grudgingly took you home. After that night, you kept running into this random man you sobbed to on campus, and the rest was history. 

Although you and Sukuna have been going relatively steady for a while, you had hit a point in your relationship in which all you did was argue. And it is generally understood that after the honeymoon stage everyone often disputes with their partners, but Sukuna was terribly vicious. He often brought up how insecure you were, how it was your fault you were raised the way you were, how easily he could replace you. To say the least, Sukuna was an ass. He damaged your core like no one else could and it desperately hurt you to be with him. Still, you stayed by his side because you loved him, and hoped he felt the same way. You hoped because he would hold you as you cried, kissing away your tears, and whispering how sorry he was. You always forgave him, even if he did it time and time again. 

During the first stages of your relationship, Sukuna welcomed your presence. You two hung out often, and although not ordinary dates (he often took you to race on his motorcycle or would take you to sketchy parties), you had fun and were happy because he was there with you. Sukuna never was really into speaking reassuring or affirming words, but instead showed his affection with his actions. His hands would always be roaming your body, and you liked feeling the warmth of another person. He did things without you asking, like buying something you mentioned you liked or holding you even when you swore you were ok. While you smiled brightly and thanked him, he would just grumble “it’s whatever.” You would always laugh and giggle with him, and even though he never really laughed back himself, he entertained it. Sometimes you would catch him staring, and there was a look in his eyes that you couldn’t quite name. There was no doubt that he held a sentiment of adoration for you, maybe he even loved you. But now? His eyes only seemed to hold disappointment, anger, and annoyance. 

You had known from the second you met him that it would not be easy to be with him. He’s got a difficult, harsh, and cruel demeanor. You had hoped that maybe he wasn’t really like that, and that maybe he just had this bad-boy delinquent front to cover his vulnerabilities. Well, you were right, to say the least. But is the Ryomen Sukuna really going to be vulnerable around you, some random girl he met a few months ago that he just likes to use as a bed warmer? Hell no. You meant absolutely nothing to him and he couldn’t seem to get that message through your head. All this time, you thought that maybe he was just being difficult but that didn’t change the fact that he still maybe held a passion for you. 

One night, a particularly bad argument came up. It started as something that was completely meaningless. Him coming home a little late, you telling him you were too busy to cook dinner and that tonight you guys should just go get takeout, him mumbling that he was too tired to go out and that it’s nothing you can’t do on your own because you were a big girl and could handle these things. You apologized but said you, too, were too tired, and therefore did not want to cook. Sukuna’s temper just kind of blew up. “Are you fucking kidding me? You can’t even do this one little thing? You aren’t fucking helpless, Y/N. I’ve spent all day studying and working for you, and how dare you still expect more shit from me? Haven’t I given you fucking enough?” He threw his hands up in irritance, shouting at you, the previous exhaustion in his voice seemingly gone. “I’m sorry, I was just busy tod-” you tried to reason, but he quickly interrupted. “Busy? You were fucking busy? How the hell do you think I feel, huh?” He was walking towards you, and you were being backed into the kitchen counter. “Are you useless? No! You can’t even do small shit like this. How unloveable can you possibly be?” He continued to ramble and yell into your face, but you stopped listening. You rapidly tried to blink your tears away and to calm your shaky hands. Did he really just say that? You’re unloveable?

Eventually, Sukuna left the apartment with nothing but his coat and his car keys, mumbling something about how this is fucking unbelieveable under his breath as he slammed the front door shut. Your ears were ringing due to the newfound silence, the only thing being heard was your staggered breathing. 

A couple of days later, Sukuna still had not returned to your apartment. You assumed he had gone back to his. Neither of you had spoken a word to each other in two days, and you were becoming restless. You had to apologize to him, whether you were at fault or not. You texted him you were on your way as you started your car. You noted that as you were on your way, he never replied to your message. You approached his front door and rummaged through your purse to find the spare key to his apartment. As you unlocked the door, you took a deep breath in and recited your apology in your head. 

When you opened the door, the apartment was relatively cleaner than it usually was, save for the clothes littering the floor. Your brows furrowed as you noted a pink camisole and bra on the floor. Those definitely weren’t yours. Your heart was rapidly thumping, the sound filling your ears. You felt like you couldn’t breathe, and stormed off to find Sukuna.

You burst through his bedroom door to see a naked Sukuna and some girl you’ve never seen before. You watched as her eyes widened and as she scrambled to find some way to cover herself. She ran out the door past you. You were still standing in the doorway, frozen in shock. You held your mouth slightly agape, unsure of what to say or do next. Unperturbed, Sukuna sighed as got up from the bed to find his shorts somewhere on the floor. He ran his hand through his sweaty, almost drenched hair. Wasn’t he being way too casual about this? You found the strength in yourself to speak up. “How could you do this to me?” you weakly spoke, sounding as fragile as your now shattered heart. Sukuna put on his shorts and looked at you without shame, an agitated look painting his face. “I don’t owe you an explanation.” He continued to find his shirt. “What? We’re dating Sukuna. You can’t just-” you stammered, and he stopped you right there. “I’m not your boyfriend and you’re not my girlfriend,” he articulated every word like it was the most obvious thing ever. Your heart dropped. “And clearly, you didn’t think that. I liked what we had, Y/N. But if you’re going to be all possessive like this, then we should end things.” What was he saying? “What? Suku-” He deeply sighed and his voice began to rise. “Get out! Don’t make me say it again.”

Ryomen Sukuna had broken your heart. Really, he stole it from your chest and smiled at you as he crushed it in his hands. The next week after the “break up” for you was absolutely terrible. You skipped all of your classes, meals, and sleep. You just wallowed in bed, wondering what could possibly make you so unloveable. To think that he never really loved you – wait, did he really never love you at all? You recalled that you never said I love you. Those three words held a heavy weight, but you were thinking about how you didn’t need to say it to prove your devotion to him. It kinda made sense now. You should have never assumed your place in a man’s heart who didn’t have room for anyone, let alone you.

--------------------------------

Five months later…

Sukuna found it nice to be freely sleeping around again, finding himself at parties, clubs, bars, always having a girl on his side. Sukuna always woke up next to a new girl every morning (girls he never remembers the names of), quickly kicking her out so he didn’t have to deal with whatever she thought was between them. He would go on late night rides with his friends (that you never really liked) and would come home to drink a cold beer wearing only his boxers. Life was good to him.

But as Sukuna came home one night after a thrilling night out, he thought it just wasn’t as fun as it used to be. He plopped down on the couch and cracked open a beer and turned on his TV. Still, he felt something was missing. Maybe he missed the thrill of making it home and spewing lies to the girl in his bed. Maybe he missed the heated arguments and sorry's just to repeat the cycle. . Maybe he missed coming home to a home-cooked meal. Maybe he missed the warmth of another person. Maybe he missed hearing a certain voice. Maybe he missed waking up to a familiar face. Maybe, he missed you. Wait, what? That’s not true. He shook the thought away, thinking that he just missed having authority over someone. 

He was obviously lying to himself. Sukuna wondered what could fill this odd feeling in his heart. It was evident that the sex, drugs, and alcohol was no longer doing its part for him. He stopped going out and now spent his time in silence and solitude. He began to think about you, and he wondered what you were doing. He wondered how you would react if you saw him again. He wondered what you did after you lost contact with him. He wondered what you looked like now, if you were just as beautiful.

He needed to find you, whether it was for the closure for his flaming conscience or that needed to know if you still felt the same in his arms, he didn’t know. What was he feeling bad for now? Sukuna was never one to have genuine apologies or have feelings of guilt in shame. What was it about you that made him feel this way? Sukuna wanted – no, needed to put a label on this aching feeling, and then throw it out. 

It was a new semester, and Sukuna hadn’t seen you around campus. He realized that he still really wanted to see you, but he knew you wouldn’t react well. He didn’t care too much though, he just wanted to fix whatever was wrong with him. 

One day, Sukuna saw you on campus in the courtyard that was in front of one of your major’s buildings. You looked the happiest he had ever seen you. A smile was plastered on your face as you laughed with some friends. The same smile that he struck off your face. Sukuna used to think he liked your crying face more than anything, he thought your stupid smile was childish, but now he thought you looked so beautiful smiling. He silently watched you, something holding him back from approaching you.

Sukuna often spotted you in front of your building, and he longed to talk to you again. If he was watching you so often, of course you were going to see him too. One day, you spotted him. He tried to play it off by clearing his throat and looking away, but when he looked at you again, you smiled. You… smiled? Even after all the humiliation and suffering he put you through, you smiled at him. You seemed to wave off to your friends and began to speed walk to him. He panicked a little.

“It’s nice to see you again! I hope you’re doing well,” you greeted and waved to him. It hurt him to see that you were still kind and genuine even after all that he did to you. “Hi, um… it’s nice to see you too… How are you doing?” he awkwardly replied. Sukuna was always one to hold pride and confidence, but upon seeing you he seemed to lose all of it. “I’m really good! This semester is kind of kicking my ass but I’m still trying to stay positive, haha,” you beamed. He nodded once as a reply and a silence enveloped the both of you. He stared at you, and you really did look happy. He sighed and spoke up, “Y/N, I never really got the chance to say sorry. I know that I have done so much wrong to you, but please, can you forgive me? I feel like what I did to you is burning a hole through my heart, and I just can’t bear to think that I could do that to someone as pure as you,” Sukuna began to beg. It was odd to see a guy who never bent down to anyone, who put himself on a pedestal ranging miles higher than anyone else, beg. 

You thought for a second, taking in the unfamiliar sorrow gracing his strong features. You eventually spoke, “Sukuna, I loved you, did you know that?” His eyes slightly widened and he nodded slowly. You continued, “The whole time I was with you, I wasn’t sure if you loved me too. It hurts to be around you.” He nodded again, breaking eye contact to stare at his shoes. “I can’t quite forgive you for what you did to me, but I want you to know that if you find your happiness, then I will always be cheering you on for it. Don’t mess up next time.” Although your words held the heaviness of your feelings, you still smiled at him. Sukuna felt a throbbing in his chest. God, what did he do to you? What had he done? He desperately wanted to say, “my happiness is with you” but he felt that he didn’t have the right to. Sukuna felt tears in his eyes, all an unfamiliar feeling to him. He nodded once again to you, whispering a thank you. Not because you were offering your understanding, but because he wanted to thank you for being there for him, even when he couldn’t be there for you. Sukuna went off apologizing once again, clenching his fists to resist reaching out and hugging you. And, as if you read his mind, you quickly pulled him into your embrace. The two of you held each other, tearing brimming your eyes. The feeling of closure the two of you longed for was gained, and for a second all the resentment and pain was let go of, all that was left was love and understanding for each other. 

Sukuna watched you from afar sometimes. He had been hearing around that you were in a relationship… good for you. He hoped that whoever that weird tall white guy haired guy you were dating was, was treating you with all the love and respect that you deserve, all the love and respect that he couldn’t give you. And as he watched you laugh with some guy that wasn’t him, smiling ear to ear, he realized that happiness looked so good on you. To pay his repentance and to pay his final act of love to you, he gave a small somber smile at your radiating face for the last time, and turned around and walked away, now truly realizing the weight of his mistakes.

[ollieolliewrld]

How The DMC Men Enter Relationships (SFW)

How your relationship with the Sparda Trio start~ gn!reader

1.4k words

Dante 

❥ How you meet

♡ You meet Dante late at night 

♡ You were both lonely and looking for a body to ease that pain

♡ He has no intentions of having feelings for you, and you were not looking for a relationship

♡ At first, all that is exchanged are first names and phone numbers 

♡ Conversation is limited to simple greetings and partings 

♡ The interactions are mainly physical 

❥ How the relationship begins

♡ As time goes on Dante begins to miss you when you leave and starts asking you to stay the night

♡ He starts to ask you about yourself, questioning about your hobbies and favorite foods

♡ As much as he does not want to admit it, he is starting to develop feelings for you

♡ He doesn't outright ask you to date him instead he asks if you would like to leave some things at his place 

♡ Late-night phone calls turn into him inviting you to dinner 

♡ After some time Trish refers to you as his s/o in conversation and Dante is taken back

♡ He hadn’t thought of it that way but you two are doing all of the relationship things, but more importantly, he really enjoyed hearing you referred to as his s/o

♡ A few days later Dante is lying in bed with you when he asks if you would like to put a label on things 

♡ He explains that he would like mutual commitment and to pursue a future with you but he understands if you want to keep things more casual

♡ Although he has no interest in anyone else and would not be ok if you were seeing other people no matter if there was a label or not 

♡ When you do agree to put a label on things Dante becomes a little cocky about now bringing you up specifically as his s/o in most conversations

❥ Early relationship dynamics

♡ Dante would want you to stay at home more, not locked in there or anything but more just not overworked

♡ He likes to come home to you, it brings him peace of mind and motivates him

♡ Small disagreements take place when you move in with him, Dante has never had a long-term serious relationship so he is unsure of how to split up housework and tasks like cooking

♡ Nothing ever gets too heated as he comes to an agreement with you pretty quickly

♡ He wants to be in charge of breakfast and dinner when he is home, but would really appreciate it if you could make dinner when he comes home late and you are already home

♡ It’s decided that you will both use Saturday as the day to get all of the house cleaning done together

♡ It takes about a month for you two to settle in together but once the adjustment period is over you two work fluidly together with very few arguments

Vergil

❥ How you meet

♡ He comes into your work by accident, he had no reason to be there but the rain outside was terrible and he wanted to find reprieve for just a moment to get himself together

♡ You very kindly offered him your umbrella seeing the state he was in

♡ Not being used to this kind of kindness he simply stares at you unsure of how to respond

♡ Silently he takes the umbrella and walks out 

♡ After this, he happens to wander into your workplace more often hoping to see you again

❥ How the relationship begins

♡ Vergil does not start the conversation but rather you do as you come up behind him

♡ You jokingly ask if he’s stalking you and his demeanor changes to be very flustered with a slight blush appearing across his cheeks 

♡ He stops coming to your workplace after this but you catch him reading a book in a park not too far away about a week later

♡ This time he begins with a simple hello

♡ To his surprise, the conversation flows very naturally and learns that you actually missed his random appearances at work

♡ Never did he expect to be able to talk to anyone like this, casually and freely

♡ Not knowing who he was and what he had been through allows him to start fresh not feeling any levels of judgment

♡ You two stay as friends for a while, he never makes a move as he does not want you to leave when he opens up to you

♡ After a few months, Vergil cannot keep secrets from you anymore and he finally tells you about who he is and what he has done expecting you to be scared and leave

♡ But you are not scared and when he turns to see your reaction you lean in to kiss him

♡ The feeling of your lips on his sets him free, he can finally be his entire self around you without fear

❥ Early relationship dynamics

♡ That day was the start of your romantic relationship, but Vergil does not like to refer to you as his s/o preferring terms like “My light” and “My love”

♡ You two would move in together shortly after that first kiss 

♡ A lot of time is spent teaching Vergil the ways of average human life 

♡ He enjoys taking care of the home and finds a passion for cooking 

♡ Doing things like furniture shopping brings him a lot of joy and finds it to be a very important time with you

♡ He likes to take you on dinner dates at nice restaurants and to museums 

♡ Overall the beginning of your relationship is pretty smooth the only potential issue being that Vergil is a bit reclusive not liking to be in very high-energy areas like a concert or club 

Nero

❥ How you meet

♡ Nero is still young and has not gotten the hang of relationships fully yet

♡ The dating world is still pretty new to him

♡ He meets you in the most cliche way, you were carrying boxes in your hands and Nero was sprinting around the corner knocking into you and sending the boxes to the ground

♡ Dropping what he was doing he cleans up your mess while apologizing and then turns to help you up but when his eyes met yours, the ability to speak the English language left him

♡ Stumbling over words he attempts to introduce himself not making a lot of progress

♡ With a smile you tell him your name and that he can make up for the incident by buying you a coffee

❥ How the relationship begins

♡ He is very nervous around you at first, before getting coffee with you the first time he changed his outfit three times and brushed his teeth twice

♡ Despite the nerves, he was able to talk to you and your sweet demeanor helped to calm him down

♡ You were kind and confident and that combo worked on him as he asked when he could see you again right after you both finished your drinks

♡ Nero is a very sweet guy making sure to hold doors open for you and following the sidewalk rule

♡ His age shows though when he tries to show off in front of you by doing things like attempting to do tricks on a random skateboard despite him having zero experience 

♡ Or telling you very over-the-top embellished stories about his Devil May Cry work

♡ After going out a few more times he asks if he can start calling you his s/o

♡ You agree and the smile that forms on his face tells you how long he has been waiting to ask you that

❥ Early relationship dynamics

♡ Neither of you are in a rush to move in together 

♡ Instead, it’s a lot of sleepovers and him tagging along to run errands with you

♡ Nero discovers that he enjoys going to stores like Target not looking to buy anything and instead just looking around

♡ He also loves to binge shows with you

♡ If you watch any level of reality TV, Nero will become the biggest fan but will deny it if you ever ask him

♡ Finds it romantic to know all of your orders at your favorite food places, Nero likes to surprise you with them whenever you are feeling sad

♡ Some fights happen when he has to leave for work, you don't want him to go and he doesn't want to leave you and because he is young the emotions are a little hard to navigate 

♡ But with proper and open communication these problems fade away

Author's note: This was so cute to write! I had a lot of fun taking my time with this and really feeling the characters out and I hope you all have fun reading it!