#this has been your angst for the day tyvm

[ouchiis]

          THE FIXER UPPER .     

⇢   ❛⠀✦    OUYE  DOESN'T  KNOW  HOW  TO  NOT  SAVE  PEOPLE. ⇢   ❛⠀☾    HE  NEVER  had  someone  to  save  him  as  a  child.  it  seems  that  ,  since  his  birth  ,  tragedy  was  written  in  his  blood.  perhaps  that  is  simply  how  fate  has  it.  it's  cruel  ,  yes  ,  but  after  so  many  years  of  misfortune  after  misfortune  ,  he  eventually  learnt  how  to  handle  it  ,  how  to  romanticise  it  and  find  beauty  in  it  ,  even  in  the  strangest  of  places.  and  he  heavily  sympathizes  with  the  poor  fools  who  experience  tragedy  just  as  often  as  he  does.  he  knows  what  it's  like  to  have  your  heart  broken  ,  time  and  time  again.  all  he  wishes  to  be  to  broken  ,  beaten  people  like  him  is  a  source  of  solace  and  remedy. ⇢   ❛⠀✩    AND  THAT'S  PRECISELY  HIS  PROBLEM. ⇢   ❛⠀♡    OUYE  FINDS  himself  naturally  drawn  to  people  who  are  broken  and  believes  that  ,  somewhere  ,  somehow  ,  there's  something  good  in  them.  that  they  aren't  beyond  redemption.  and  while  this  hope  does  break  the  harsh  exteriors  of  some  people  ,  what  about  those  who  won't  stop  hurting  him  ?  those  who  merely  seek  to  take  advantage  of  him  ?  those  who  refuse  to  change  ,  no  matter  how  hard  he  tries  ?  those  who  don't  even  need  to  be  fixed  ?  OUYE  gets  to  know  someone  ,  and  he's  immediately  analysing  them  to  figure  out  what  damage  has  been  done  to  them.  he  has  a  soft  spot  for  notably  hurt  people  or  people  susceptible  to  hurt  like  children  ,  but  .  .  .  what  about  everybody  else  ?  he  can't  even  imagine  such  a  thing. ⇢   ❛⠀⊹    TRUTH  be  told  ,  he  focuses  so  much  on  other  people's  damage  to  neglect  himself.  he  doesn't  need  to  be  fixed;  in  his  eyes  ,  he's  already  been  damaged  enough.  he's  sad  ,  it's  as  simple  and  tragic  as  that.  he's  long  accepted  that  fact.  all  he  can  do  is  save  other  people  before  the  damage  gets  worse.  but  .  .  .  he  focuses  so  much  on  helping  other  people  that  he  can't  help  himself.  he's  not  okay  ,  and  it's  as  simple  and  tragic  as  that.  he's  so  focused  on  protecting  other  people  and  helping  them  heal  that  he  refuses  to  accept  his  own  hurt.  in  fact  ,  he's  made  peace  with  it;  he  hasn't  rejected  it  ,  he  merely  accepts  wounds  as  they  come.  and  if  he  continues  waiting  until  the  sadness  eventually  breaks  him  .  .  .  well  ,  that's  bad  news  no  matter  what  verse  he's  in. ⇢   ❛⠀☽    OF  COURSE  ,  this  seems  like  such  a  petty  issue  to  analyse.  he's  a  savior  in  some  senses.  however  .  .  .  i'd  much  more  compare  him  to  a  martyr.

[eldrith]

˗ˏˋ A Golden Cup ˎˊ˗ Jacaerys Velaryon

jacaerys velaryon x targtower fem!reader [part four of a golden cage series.] words: 14.2k. synopsis: The chains of faith are not so easily cast aside. notes: we are soooo locking in to trauma in this chap. we are soooo drinking from teacups and gossiping with our friends. we are sooooo going to an awkward dinner party. we are sooooo teaching our boyfriend how to pray. we are sooooo scared & sooooo miserable! this is sooooo unedited! but sorry to the people who are here for smut bc there is none in this chapter. enjoy the plot <3 xoxox (pretend i didn't disappear for half a year tyvm) warnings: emotional complexities. unreliable narrator. maybe premonition. canon-typical violence/blood/injury, angst. character death. religious trauma, all kinds of trauma, inner monologues, kissing and some fluff. doubting religion AND the crown. foreshadowing if that's a warning requests closed. this is for my irl roommate & personal kissing mannequin @dipperscavern . & for the loml & other kissing mannequin @systraes . you are the void i shout to. fate into flesh or whatever they say idk. febu previous. series masterlist. masterlist.

PEACE FINDS YOU IN THE MOST BIZARRE OF CIRCUMSTANCES. 

It has followed in every step of life – the moment a foot slips from a stirrup, a smile in the first drop on dragonback. Quiet prayers whispered through the torrential downpour on the night your brother slayed Lucerys; Patient words under the scrutiny of the Queen’s entire court. A hand, unwaveringly gripped around sharp steel as your betrothed pointed his sword down your nose. 

Perhaps it is a simple and base instinct, some quiet mechanism within the folds of your skittish mind – or, even more likely, a small cry out for mercy to the gods who watch upon those simply caught in the trappings of circumstance. 

You were just a young girl, barely old enough to steadily hold yourself upright, when they’d placed the babe in your arms. 

Such a small creature. Fresh from the womb, the Septas had pressed him to your chest, murmuring you would be fine for a few minutes; that you had the wisdom of the Mother already, although you'd hardly seen three name days pass yourself.

His skin was so very soft – wisps of those paled curls, the very same that grow from the crown all your siblings, glinted so gently in the muggy heat of afternoon; little shining threads of gold caught in the glaze of sunbreath. 

And that violet gaze, locked up at you; an innocence so premature, so unassuming. 

It had arrested you, that gaze: Devotion, love, those pure things which he only just learned and had yet to truly understand. All because he knew not any other way; a warmth that had entrapped you within your mind, reeling to recall any similar expressions of affection from your mother nor father at any point in your small life. 

You’d come up with scraps: A half-prideful stare from your father, the whisper of Rhaenyra on his breath; your mother’s approving glance when you turned your nose at the presence of the boys wearing cloaks of blue and curls of deep umber. But Daeron - so little, so loving; it had sent such distraction through you that you noticed not as his skin grew rather flushed against the blanket, as his wails grew louder by the short-passing moment. 

Your mother wrapped him herself – that, you’d noticed; in lovely cerulean stitching, etched with small embroideries of towers and dragons – but in your admiration of such needlework, his cries became shallow gasps and wails. 

You’d known not what to do; entranced in such a calm, paralyzing shock – you’d never seen such light go out of a gaze, never heard such wails taper into pitiful whimpers. 

Fear slapping your spine rigid, a solemn beat of your heart as you stared helplessly, flooded with an arresting, unnatural calm. 

The Septas returned not moments later, and you still thank the Gods to this day that they did. 

Daeron’s breath had been faint – and later that night under the blanket of dark, you’d wondered with tears in your eyes if he’d gone and met the Stranger while still in your hands, if just for a moment. 

But the Septas returned.

The blankets had been ripped away and you’d remained in the corner, hands frozen still in the shape of his little bundle, eyes wide and fingers trembling. There’d been nothing within your mind as you watched the Septas scream for the Maesters, as they rushed to cool the expiring soul of your young brother – a wash of calm, in the fear that’d gripped you so tight. 

You’d not understood until much later - only when the Septas whispered while you hid behind curtains thicker than your hair. He’d nearly died. 

After all, one should know better than to trust children with children. 

“Princess.” 

And her voice comes to you in a song; or perhaps, a warm memory of silkspun silver tresses and a dreaming gaze – of gentle hums, of clicking legs, of fingers tracing delicate wings through golden cages. 

“Princess.” 

You swear, you could feel her fingers trace your spine now- 

“Princess.” 

Your eyes open; less than startled, though your inhale is sharp from your nose. 

The tub is warmed with water, and you are bathed gently within it. Your sister is beside you, her gown a deep charcoal; a shade of burnt ash, of rusted spikes somewhere far below where you sit.

Her vision swims in the reflection of your bathwater; You suck in a breath. 

“Helaena.” You whisper, blinking away the smudged drops of bathwater from your face.  

A quiet moment. 

“Pardon me, my Princess?” 

Your blink is languid – water sticks to your lashes, clotting your vision until your sweet sister beside you nearly looks like a spider; then, she is a snake – a strike of fear, and sharp spokes which jump up towards you at the end of a long path, and you’re falling – another blink, and you jolt. 

Helaena is gone; instead sits Elina, your handmaid. She watches with widened eyes as she tends to your tresses with a comb and soft hands. 

A gentle shake of head, the motion snagging a tangle within the spokes of the comb – but you do not wince, eyeing the girl beside you with a bizarre stare. The world is cloudy; not only the skies above, but your own vision, your foggy mind. 

“I’m–” You blink again, fighting a sheepish fluster from your cheeks – two other girls in your chambers attend to you, as well. One, scrubbing your nails, the other across the way, preparing evening tea – and they too have paused, hands slowing as they turn to watch you with owl-eyes. 

Your lips flounder for only a moment. “Pardon me. I thought… I was recalling memory, I suppose. Of… the Red Keep.” You admit dreamily – you’re unsure why you admit such foolish delusion, though the two girls beside you keep their eyes focused nonetheless. 

The maid across the way quickly turns her head away when you seek her; and with quick fingers, she pulls her sleeves over a glimmering spider’s silk scar. An inkling of recognition, slipping away in the afternoon breeze; she measures a dark red herb into a small steeper before the ridges of her spine straighten slowly. Outside, a bird calls. It sounds like a cry. 

“Have you slept much as of late?” Elina wonders from beside you, a wisp of blonde peeking from her tied hair. She is a sweet girl – the fondness you hold for her is one tinged with only a piling guilt these days, one which adds in each passing moon. You clear your throat, unoccupied fingers trailing through the ripples upon the water. 

A spiced aroma grows within the steamed room – the handmaid has begun pouring your tea, and it bleeds a crimson colour into the teacup. A flash of familiarity in the sweep of her face, though you blink and it is once again gone; It is not often you do not particularly recognize one of the members of household, though perhaps as of recent, such politeness has gotten away from you. 

“Forgive me,” your voice is a dream of a far away land. “The Queen’s council has left me…weary this evening.” You admit, sighing.

In the quiet passing of time, eventually your nails and body are cleansed; your mind troubled with thoughts of marriage – but more so with lips, cherry and bitten, with a voice low and murmuring; with a warm gaze turned sharp in the fall of eve; of whispered words and promises in a room floating with ancient dust.

With a quieted voice, you dismiss the maid to your right.

Only moments before the tea is set for you, its tendrils curling up viciously and out towards your open window; the scent is spicy, foreign. “Is this a new blend?” You wonder aloud - the girl with skittish eyes nods, a small squeak from her throat, “Yes, Princess.” She affirms. “A gift from the Queen herself. In congratulations.” Her voice warbles, fingers twitching – a vision of nerves in court, of fingers against a dress of gold.

And there, in the mirror of her anxiety, is that phantom limb once more; a memory lost to a life that is far gone now. 

You hum, transfixed on the steam which curls out in spools over the stone table beside the tub. A peculiar gift from the queen – the tea swirls opposite the steam of your bath, and its scent tethers you to the heavy pull of your spine. Your stomach rumbles in interest.  

She bows and takes her leave; it is not until you are once again alone with Elina that you speak once more. Through the peace of eveningfall, you ask her of her love again – and as always, she flushes like a rose. 

The island breathes in green, slowly blinking a sunset of orange and pink; Elina whispers of the boy she loves as tendrils of scented oils climb into your nostrils and soothe the aches in your muscles. It is a tale she has amused you with many times but one you have not grown weary of either. 

A fisherboy from the east coast of the island – a sweetheart since her age of ten, if there ever was such a thing; he has brown curls, an upturned nose, and a laugh like the raucous sea. 

Though times have indeed changed, perhaps just as much for the common folk as for you in your ivory castles; with the influx of wartime supplies to the island across the sea, she must only dream of him now; and her tales of youthful kisses and chivalrous walks upon a shoreline grow melancholy as you stare out the window before you, Moondancer’s shadow echoing in the rippled waves of the tides far away. 

In the dawn of her tale, she murmurs gently, eyes glancing to the shore. “He says he’ll marry me after the war’s end.” 

It is quiet for a long moment. You find nothing to say to her words.

It does not last long – after the final whispers of his name die on her tongue, she clears her throat, endeavoring to wrangle through the knots and tie back your hair. “Something troubles you, Princess.” There are more words waiting on her hesitant tongue; she does not release them. 

It is a moment of gathering thought in which you decide she is far more friend than anyone else upon this rock – and that, even without her station, perhaps she’d endeavor to listen to your troubles anyways. “It was decided this evening,” You inform her in a rather formal tone, “that I am to wed Prince Jacaerys after all. Our marriage will be quite soon, and before all of the smallfolk on the Island.”

And then, an afterthought as you gaze to the peeking wander of ships headed west, “perhaps Driftmark, as well.” 

Her hands slow in your hair, breath puffing upon the crown of your head. “-That is… quite wonderful news,” She agrees, though her tone bleeds through false words; she knows you all too well, it seems. “A royal wedding will bring a much welcomed recess from the times we live, my Princess.” 

Her words fall hollow into the empty chasm of your wounded heart. Sardonically, you smile to your sullen reflection in the pooled bath below. A wedding… while the kingdom prepares to bleed. 

Words, those buzzing pests of voices from the council not an hour past: “-And we are to assume that a royal celebration might distract the masses from the acts committed? From the war that brews?”

There’d been sharp looks shared at the news of you and Jace’s resurrected betrothal at council this afternoon; half-surprised, half-concerned glances from both your cousins across the Painted table, though you could not bring yourself to return their gazes. For Daemon’s stare, much too hot and much too amused, burning into the side of your visage; the slippery serpent he is, eyes glancing between you and Jacaerys, taking in the rigidity of your spines with a mirthful glee. 

It would have been more excruciating yet had not the discussion been propped by more relevant topics to discuss, as to the efficacy of your union having any effect at all on the tides of war. 

The realm watches, Lord Corlys had assured, many lords await the wind to tip the scale. Their marriage is not about turning heads. 

Indeed, it is not - and such a burden even in youth, your betrothal was: A thin bridge held together by the grasp of youthful hands that did not wish to touch, an abyssal gap fractured into splintered verdant and carmine shards. 

And in these more forgiving moments, when you may wish to let yourself down easy; what an inconsolably crushing weight on shoulders no older than ten and two. For all of those nights you spent lying awake upon sheets of down, wondering up at the swimming dark of the ceiling why the gods had chosen you as your mother’s branch of olives - as your father’s forgotten dove, the small creature who’d always been seen as the shadow of others. 

This marriage is not about turning heads, Lord Corlys is correct. Now, it is about swaying swords. 

And the thought had been floated – a fickle thing, some brush by way of wind through the chamber doors – boats, they’d said. Tidings. 

“-to cause a shift. The Sea Snake’s blockade at the Gullet strangles the trade routes. King's Landing starves, yet Aegon dines easily in the Keep.”

Indeed even now, in the syrupy aftermath of the council, you must admit it is a clever move. 

“Along the wedding celebrations, we send boats – as far as the Capital.” Though it’d been your own voice speaking such words, there coils such gripping guilt within you. And there’d been Queen Rhaenyra, nodding solemnly. The boats, to be laden with food - grain, salt, preserved meats; a gift from Dragonstone, tidings from a fruitful green and black union. 

Their rightful Queen’s heir; a gift from him and his new wife, the Prince and Princess of Dragonstone. 

In recollection, your brows furrow. “There is much more to be done than attend some wedding. It surely is not of much interest to the smallfolk in these times.” You sniff, brushing hair from your face in the swirling quiet. “Especially for the Usurper’s sister.” 

The hand within your tresses pauses at your words; for a moment, only the sea breathes.  “But the smallfolk love you.” She sounds nearly startled by your words, as if the sheep of thought had yet to cross her mind’s pasture. 

You’d laugh, if you had the gall - the smallfolk? The smallfolk have never had the luxury to hate you, nor to love you; never truly had much power to do anything but bend beneath your heels. It is how it has always been. 

In youth, a procession had spurred your urge to reach towards a commongirl who had called your name. The sun was high in the sky, and she, a girl of your age – it was then that your kinslayer brother had ripped you back into the cart with a sharp glance. They do not love you, he’d snarled; They are dogs at the foot of a table. Grateful, for scraps discarded from the hands that feast. 

As it is, you are incredibly discomforted by Elina’s words, and perhaps it shows on your face – for she falls silent, instead beginning a series of braids from the crown of your head. 

“The smallfolk endure us.” You murmur, “Because they have to.” 

She does not much respond, and in the silence you hear the voices of the council, reverberating in the breaths from your lungs. 

“In every tavern, at every hearth from here to Stoney Sept - the people will speak of your union, of your generosity. The Queen’s heir and his wife – gifting the smallfolk with life.” 

Perhaps it is the most prevalent way to avoid bloodshed – noble bloodshed, that is – though it sits incorrectly in your chest. “A gracious gift – the masses will surely remember the ones who saved them from the crimes of war.”

Moondancer flies across the setting wildfire of eve, and you grow more pensive and dreadful by the minute. 

“Your tea grows cold.” Elina observes with a concerned glance. 

You cannot help the faint smile that befalls your visage at her concern; though you have no interest in its contents, you see her lingering stare, the interest in a pursing of lips. Steam spills from the saucer – it smells of wonderful spices from Essos.

“You have it,” you decide after only a moment, eyes fluttering shut as she finishes the braid upon your left temple. 

You feel her hesitation in fingers, hear it in the surprised giggle she belies. “Oh, no, my Princess, it is for you.”

You smile at her uncertainty, keenly aware of her similarities to the golden-locked sister you left across the sea. “I insist, Elina.” You nod, gesturing to it, eyeing the tendrils of steam which rise from your heated skin. “Go, now. You must have it, it smells much too pleasant to be wasted.” 

Her grin is bright when she gives in – and with a giggle that you nearly reciprocate, she lifts the teacup to her lips; a long sip, one which heats her cheeks perhaps at the action of using utensils higher than her station. Her flickering eyes and giddy cheeks are endearing – the tea is red upon her lips for only a split moment as she pulls it away.

She enjoys her cup while you leave the bath – a preparation she aids you with while still reposed by the table upon your insistence; supper has been called, and you must meet your family once more for a rather excruciating celebratory feast. 

Despite your trivial woes, the evening falls in serenity; you, Elina by your side, sipping gently on tea and whispering about the beasts in the sky. 

YOUR GAZE FINDS HIM BEFORE HE IS EVEN AWARE. 

Jacaerys, with a templed posture down the flickering hall, a soft clinking of fine leather and metal. A set jaw, one that turns in his sweep – and then eyes of amber find yours. There is a light within them you can still yet see, like feathery papered wings, drawn to your own flickering flame. 

A less hurried stride – though no less purposeful than your own – Jace slows his pace when your eyes lock, far enough that his tousled curls blur around the edge of your vision. 

Beneath the sleeves of your mahogany gown, your fingers pluck at skin; you still your own pace, swallowing under the weight of silence heavy around you.

There’s a brief moment of recognition, some momentary breath from both parties – and yet after a glance from both pairs of skittish eyes, the hall is deemed empty of lingering stares. 

And quite rapidly, the distance between you and your betrothed shortens. 

It is bizarre, your pull – and yet you stop only a step away, closer than you’ve been since the Painted Table this afternoon in such heated fervor.

A twitch in his hands, a shift of his weight – he is rather awkward now, and you bite your lip as you both hover in the middle of the stoned floor. Your hands ache to feel his heat, though you linger in your yearning, waiting with baited breath and heated cheeks.

Your name, syrupy and unsure, is the only thing to fall from his lips. 

The Prince’s eyes flicker between your own, head declined just enough to stare straight into your own gaze. You’re arrested only momentarily before you snap back to the present, clearing your throat – a rush of heat through you at the soft turn of his gaze, the downturn of his brows that more than likely mirrors your own expression. 

There is so much to say. 

“Hello.” You select dumbly; though it is received with a small flicker of amusement, some repressed grin that yields a soft turn of dimple in his grin. 

“Hello,” He echoes, and it is too much at once – his soft echo of your own awkwardness, the huff of amusement you share. Your face turns hot under the memories of activities held in common between you just hours ago, at the stupidity of your hushed tones, the odd giddiness as if between childhood lovers finally permised to embrace: But that is, as ever it could have been, not the case. 

And then, in the groaning whispers of falling nighttime, in the empty hallway, you and your betrothed reach an understanding. 

Dark eyes turn upon yours and you sway just so upon your feet, unsure if speaking would worsen this feeling that dances on the tip of your tongue.

And when he is quiet, when he is just as unsure of what to do as you are, he is so very handsome. 

A curved jaw, the turned slope of grace he shares with his mother; and a fire within his gaze that sets you warm. Are you truly of the opinion that my actions are driven by nothing more than desire?

Your lips press tight as you cast your glance away, the chiding ramble of your mother in your mind: Rather hypocritical. You sin. 

Your inhale is sharp; the amber that flickers over your face, a look twisted in pity – you clench your teeth, clearing your throat. “Jace.” You perhaps plan on guiding your foolish jolts towards conversation in a certain fashion; though his brows lift, a flash of concern through his stare. 

His lips, glossy upon the light of torches, press together in some twistedly alluring mix between a smile and a frown. 

A hand finds yours; palm warm, soft against your own, and it sends your mind reeling; so delicate a touch. Your brows lift only slightly, fingers lacing with his own after your eyes flick over his tailored shoulder warily. 

“Are you…” He does not continue for a brief moment, instead urging closer with half-step — your spine straightens, swept in the woody scent of the forested Dragonmont that accompanies his presence, towered by his imposed height, charmed by the searching warmth in his eyes. “-are you alright?” 

He finishes his canvassing in a bent whisper, with knitted brows and pouted lips. After all, it is an odd question — one you’re unsure how to answer; and it lingers, heavier than perhaps it was proposed. Yet Jacaerys waits patiently, teeth worried within the cushion of his bottom lip.

The sting of embarrassment — of a hawkish stare from the rogue prince, the shame, the stupidity of limbs tangled in the dusty light of day — a spoil of some war of bodies upon a table, of fingers knotted in desperation. 

And your answer comes easy as ever in a nod and a forced, falsified fable, a lie so often told through your teeth. “I’m fine,” You murmur, “Are you?” 

Perhaps it is this moment it hits the prince before you; with a gaze that trickles in a slow leak to the floor separating your pointe shoes from his own boots, he hesitates. 

“…I’m not sure.” 

It’s a vulnerability; a gaping wound, putrid flesh forgotten in the sun, that festers with each passing day — I don’t know, you agree — I don’t know, but I am scared. 

It has never done well to reopen a wound not yet healed. 

Your thumb runs over roughened knuckles, his fingers twitching within your grasp, jolting at your very faint touch, though you pretend not to notice. 

He seems to find words to fill the absence of sound in the halls. “It’s been some time, but I… tried speaking to them.” His eyes flick away as red lips press together. Your stare must be a breath too blank, for he continues, “–The gods,” He elaborates; your brows raise at his candor. “I suppose for some guidance.” He decides. 

His words find you with surprise; not particularly due to what he says but rather for the sheepish way in which he delivers the information, as if unsure how you’ll react. He searches for something, you realize; perhaps the same very thing absent in your own heart. 

His eyes are wide, specks deep through a ring of ambered honey – though some twisted thing, that same seed that unfurled and sprouted within your older brother; that envy – it blossoms in your chest, unruly and vicious. 

“The gods don’t listen,” you retort swiftly, a sardonic grin flickering miserably across your smile. 

His head tilts slightly, eyes narrowing in faint surprise; it’s only now that you register your previous words, a slithering lick of shame curling up your spine. 

“No?” Jacaerys wonders – a flicker of surprise that you are not foolish enough to believe is any semblance of disagreement; rather Jace’s preconceived notion that you ring true still among the devout. 

Your cheeks are warm, and his eyes are low upon your face. Does he see your mother staring back at him? 

A clearing of your throat as you nod, “Not to me, at least,” the edge of your voice is mercifully smoothed by something almost playful; your fingers shift within his grasp, brushing over the calluses on his knuckles. “Perhaps you’ll have better luck, my Prince.” You smile – and though he delivers a less than skeptical look, you’re thankful for his restraint. 

And of course, the very dimple of his you so admire blossoms upon his smile when he looks down in the scarce light. “Let us hope then, Princess.” 

And despite yourself, a jump within your stomach at his tone, a skip in your heart. Some giddiness, perhaps in reaction to the dread which surrounds the castle, leaks through your chest.

As though deciding within his mind, he looks back to you, clearing his throat. “I know that– that we’ve not had much time to ourselves,” He starts, “Though I’d hoped we could–” 

But as his mouth opens once more, footsteps: A sharp laugh muffled only by the separation of stone walls; and then your cousins round the corner, their smiles bright. 

Perhaps through some instance of habit, your hands drop each other immediately – you, pulling back and Jacaerys taking a half-stagger towards the wall at the startle as if mere children caught stealing bread from a feast table – both of you glancing down the hall with burning visages. 

A weak breath from your lips as you clear your throat uncomfortably, nodding to them as they wave down the tunneled hall. 

But Jacaerys’s invitation, half-swallowed by the ignominy of unexpected company, still draws necessity from your gut. “We should, Jacaerys,” you agree with a murmur, sending him a small nod as you turn to him once more. 

He need not elaborate; you know well enough he wishes to speak in private. “Perhaps on the morrow?” You suggest, fighting the tension of strained courteousness. 

A press of his lips in a concealed, tight-lipped smile brings forth a dimple to the curve of his cheek; a flutter at the sight as he casts his gaze down once more, awaiting your approaching cousins as their conversation tampers to greet you. 

DINNER AWARDS NO REST OF TENSION FOR YOU AND JACAERYS. 

The hall’s table is set in a long stretch; The scrape of dishes against forks, the crackle of the hearth – you drown in it, not well used to such calm manners of gathering; more oft than not since you arrived upon the island have the feasts with the crowned family ended in sharp tongues and bitter stares. Such instances are, momentarily, absent from the dinner tonight. 

Candles drip tallow slowly from their silvered limbs across the walls, backlit and outshined by the bright licks of peat flames – and you, sewn together by the numb acceptance of change, resign quietly in your chair to be gawked at in some form as plans are proposed, rather casually, for the location of your upcoming union to Jacaerys. 

At the head Queen Rhaenyra sits – and with a fold of her hands, nods towards a proposed setting. “Perhaps we hold the ceremony here on Dragonstone," she suggests, “Once more, a Targaryen marriage on Targaryen soil.” 

It is a thought you’d given little attention – spare for this afternoon as Elina had sipped upon your tea and you’d laid your eyes to watch the free churn of silvery purple wings against the sun in the distance. 

And a voice from aside Queen Rhaenyra, slumped in the frame of his chair. “I might remind you that the sept here isn’t exactly grand. It gathers dust with each day.” 

The mention of the Sept bristles you; There is a rippling agreement through the table, though with a spare glance to your side, you find Jacaerys fixated upon the vegetables before him, eyes far-off and consumed. Rhaenys carries the same bemused practicality as you’ve always known within her as she begrudgingly agrees with your uncle. “Nor has it seen a ceremony in years. It could hardly hold enough folk for our intentions.” 

And the thought of the sept – its cold, hardly adorned walls which whisper in echo to your own quiet prayers; a place uninhabited by any besides the Septas and your own festering thoughts. 

The goblet in your hand is gilded with curves of thorned flowers along the base of the cup, your visage corrupted and warped in the golden reflection. You can only stare back at your warped countenance in hopes the conversation will soon end.

It is your cousin’s voice from across the way which gains your attention next, as the contents of your cup slip into your stomach. “It may gather dust,” Rhaena agrees rather gently, casting a quick glance at you, “But it’s hardly abandoned.” 

And if the many pairs of eyes were not already upon you, they find you then; Lord Corlys, sitting at the far end of the table, hums. 

“There is but one person who keeps that sept from falling entirely to ruin.” His eyes land on you not unkindly – and perhaps in desperation, you find some kind of warmth in his words, as if to acknowledge a quiet dedication he perhaps admires, or simply acknowledges. Your cheeks burn in the shadow of the woman left across the sea, who sits dowager and whispers prayers into the wind of your dreams. 

Though in turn of their intentions of setting you at ease, the thought sends a new wave of guilt swirling through you, well-aware of the true purpose of visiting the sept so habitually.

A faint smile curves on Baela’s lips, and she leans forward. “Perhaps it would be appropriate, then? Breathe new life into it, make it…” Though it seems any hope leaves as she trails off, aware of the tepid spirit that surrounds the wedding, of the uncomfortable breaths that fall in tandem from your lips and Jacaerys’.

 “...Sacred again, in a way.”

The thought is wholly unpleasant to you; perhaps in your mother’s stern voice in the back of your mind, whispering sharp daggers of criminality into your veins. 

Daemon chuckles softly, a sardonic smile tugging at his mouth as he glances at Rhaenyra. “Forgive me, but the future king and queen marrying in a sept nearly swallowed by time is hardly a fitting legacy.” His gaze flickers to you, as though assessing how you might take such a slight; you level him with a stare mirrored in equivocation. The king consort lifts a shoulder. “We’d hardly want it to feel like a funeral.”

A needle carefully placed to sew a new line, red and thin. He aims for the eyes with his sharp point; some stirring amusement within his stare that causes your stubborn proclivities to roar, but you know better than to let temptation unravel you. People much worse than him have tried. 

We’d hardly want it to feel like a funeral. 

“If it were more frequented, perhaps it wouldn’t feel as such.” You choose instead of the lash of tongue you reign in; the words are sharp and whipped relentlessly – a vision of your mother in green, spilling her words from your tongue as easy as letting a breath into your lungs. 

The table falls quiet at this, and in a cold wash of shame, your eyes fall back to the table.

Around you, wary eyes flicker; in a sickness bouting through your stomach, a youthful Jacaerys’ words follow your echoes: It’s like she opens her mouth and her mother speaks through it. 

It is a moment in which shame floods the features of your face; and you, awkward as a newborn doe, swallow back your pride. 

The room is quiet, but through your embarrassment you register a sudden pressure against your leg; A warm surprise of pressure against your calf. 

It is, in a moment of breath, merely a boot sliding against your gown and pressing against your leg under the table. A gesture of reassurance. It is your nature when your gaze flicks momentarily to the prince sat beside you – his jaw remains terse but his gaze has grown quite warm when he returns your glance. 

A small nudge from him in the quiet moment; and with a swallow of affinity, you nudge Jacaerys back. His lips twitch just so; you pretend not to notice. 

It is only a breath of a moment after that you realign your face into a more serene expression – and with that, you feel a tinge of pride, breathing through the ravaging sea of spite that crashes against the cliffs of your heart. The blood of a Hightower is thick in ambition, you’d once heard Lord Corlys say; perhaps, he is correct. 

The smile upon your face might be plastered, but it is radiant. 

“Apologies. Though I appreciate the dramatics as always, Daemon,” You address the man with a thinly veiled tone of respect, “Perhaps we should find somewhere… more large. Alive. To gather a larger crowd of folk.” 

It is the smallest of gestures — a soft victory within some inlaid battle of words — but you sense Daemon, for all his sarcasm and derision, recognizes it as such. His mouth curves slightly, but the tilt of his eyes does not soften, nor does the rest of Jacaerys’ foot against your own slide away.

There is a brief silence at the table as the meal is served; roast lamb, stew with wild rice, fish – and a few more cups of wine for you and your intended both – in which Daemon proposes a toast. 

“To the realm’s future,” He lifts his cup; the others follow suit, as you lift yours with a stare burnt into the man’s jaw. “And to the union of our future King and Queen. May you have a long, happy marriage.” 

The words from his lips have scarcely fallen before you see the tense ridge of Jacaerys’ spine, one which straightens your own in a rise of hackles. It is a harmful thing, really – and with a practiced grace, you and Jacaerys both receive the toast with smiles and kind words.

And it would be a lack of verity if you said you did not feel a growth of warmth through you when Jacaerys turns his cup to you, sharing a small glance and smaller grin. 

It is a private thing, a quiet moment: A hand, reaching across a tumultuous river. You grasp it back with a clink of your goblet to his own. 

The dinner rolls on; the sun is well past its set into the horizon, and even with the light of candles brings you a breath from the oppression of daylight. The food is hearty, enjoyable – it is unlike the many times you’d sat at this very table, surrounded by eyes which saw you a serpent. 

And the poison which drips from certain cups this evening is not that of distrust; nor those of old wounds well festered and sored: No, they are instead some foolish urge to prod a slumbering beast, to dangle a fool by his ankle atop a spire and laugh. 

In a shimmering glance away from your warped reflection in the boat of gravy before you, a voice brings you to the surface. “I’d assume it would,” Daemon agrees half-heartedly to some forgotten sentence from his daughter; he sits forward, “Though there is much to plan for beyond merely the smallfolk. We must gather arms from the Houses, as the Prince reminded us at council earlier.” 

At the mere mention of his title, a stiffness grows once more in Jacaerys’s gaze, though he tamps it down with a measured exhale; a rather thin line to thread now, as you stir your tea and watch its tendrils of steam crawl from its cup.  

 “All is merry to plan a wedding. Though perhaps some of us will find some plans to put our passion to good use beyond the Painted Table.” a glance to you and Jacaerys both, his eyes mirthful, “Yes?” 

A moment too late you register your own irritation; the gall of your uncle to believe he has any right to dangle such foolish deeds over your heads – as if he himself is any vision of the Father. 

The thread has been pulled; Jacaerys unravels shortly. 

“–If you have something to say, Daemon,” Jace’s voice is controlled in that threadbare way it can be, and his jaw is clenched sharp enough to reflect the light of the hearth behind you. “–then speak plainly,” His voice is low and volatile, “We all tire of your riddles.”

In a rush of shock – or perhaps worry, should Daemon take Jacaerys’s challenge in its face-value, your hand flies to the side.

You find yourself grasping Jace’s forearm below the table, a warning or comfort - Perhaps something in between. 

His hand flexes just beneath your grasp, though he does not shake it off. 

Murmurs and clink of silver slow around the table; your eyes meet the Queen’s, and with a helpless blink, you look away. In the wake of Jacaerys’ hiss, Daemon’s brows lift, eyes flickering deviously between you and Jacaerys. “Dare I?” He wonders, the sparred bounce of gazes at the table alarming you. “I merely remind us all, there are matters to consider besides the wedding. After all, some bonds are forged long before vows are spoken–”

“-Enough.” You snap; it is a sharp whistle of wind over a peak, though it does enough to quell the tension that courses through your betrothed’s muscles. 

“Right,” A voice deep from down the table, and Lord Corlys shifts upon his seat, “There are more pressing matters at hand than whatever game you’re playing.” 

Daemon chuckles under his breath, lifting his goblet again in mock surrender towards you, murmuring into the rim, “Pressing matters indeed.” 

Your blood boils; but in lieu of any burst of emotion, Jacaerys simply turns to you with a gaze more molten than honey atop a boilpot; an exasperated glance, one of disbelief and a vague sense of panic.

You respond with a subtle, helpless shake of your head – an acknowledgement of your shared misery, one that nobody else in the room is keen to. And then in some exasperated moment, a flicker of amusement in his stare, shared only with you. You share it in return. 

An odd thing, to keep close the simmering truth, a thing so wrong and iniquitous. Jacaerys takes your hand and squeezes it gently under the stone table before dropping it to reach for his cup. 

And though the conversation around you carries on rather rocky, you bathe in the silence for the remainder of the dinner. 

JACAERYS ACCOMPANIES YOU AFTER THE FEAST. 

Though not explicit, you see the glint in Rhaenyra’s eye when he offers his arm to you – and it is not until you’ve rounded the corridor away from the stone drum do you and Jacaerys drop the masks woven onto your visages, the tense square of shoulders – and your hand uncurls from the crook of his elbow as a cat would wake from slumber. 

A memory from a time so recent, though it feels ages ago – Jace and you, walking quietly towards your chambers; though tonight, you have warm cheeks from wine and not from the remnants of his lips.

It is not until you approach your doors, with your swordsman posted outside, that you slow to murmur, away from wandering ears. 

Your hand stops at the crook of Jace’s elbow, coaxing him a step closer as you sigh. “Daemon is…a vexing character.” You put it rather lightly, some form of apology or complaint lodged within your throat. “I often wonder if he lurks in corners merely in hopes of stumbling into matters that are not his,” You attempt a joke – though your heart thumps oddly at the word matters, and you ignore it steadfastly. 

Jacaerys huffs, clearly just as thorned as you are by the entire evening, though a direct tick of his lips lets a breath pass before his murmur. “Like flies to shit, that one.”

His bluntness chips away at the emotions swirling within you; and a surprised laugh escapes your lips, bubbling into something warm. 

Laughter pools from you before you can stop yourself.

Jacaerys, perhaps startled by your reaction, looks to you; at the sound his own face lights up – a genuine, bright smile. A smile which softens his features, which gives way to those boyish looks that are so often concealed beneath princely decorum and furrowed brows. 

And in a soft mix of laughter, Jacaerys’ chuckles murmurs as unfeigned as your own giggles – in the fading of the harmony, your eyes catch the sight of the guard at your door; his eyes flick away, and you swallow back the heat rising in your chest. 

There is a mountain of words unspoken between you and Jacaerys. Though it is a late hour, and there are many things to be done in the morrow; so Jacaerys, with a hesitant touch, takes your palm into his grasp swiftly, eyes glancing to the stone beneath your feet. 

A thumb brushes over your knuckles – and then he bends, his lips ghosting over the back of your hand; an earnest gesture, perhaps, as it heats your face more so than the wine did at dinner. 

Your hand falls to clutch your skirts when he steps away, amber pools of honey taking in your own gaze, searching perhaps uncertainly for your response. You smile in a poorly concealed heat of awkwardness, clearing your throat as if that might ease the moment. 

“Sleep-” He clears his own throat, “Sleep well, Princess.” 

You nod as he turns, watching the glint upon his glossy tresses in the torchlight. It is only as he’s taken a step away that you respond, calling to the rich slope of his shoulders. “–You too, Prince Jacaerys.”

THE PRESENCE OF YOUR DREAM IS IMMEDIATE. 

The wind is sharp in the lick of shadows; and you know you’re not in the realm of the living, no – you’re melded to the ground upon which you stand, stranded in a field of bones. A figure stands just ahead – a girl with pale hair that drips over a gown of gold; your sister turns to you.

Helaena’s eyes, painted in a flickering violet stare as you stagger; paled lips crack open,  though no sound escapes - only the flutter of wings, delicate, fragile, frantic. 

A butterfly, circling above her head. 

A deep unsettle leaks into your subconscious as the sky above, an inky chasm, shifts just so – and the butterfly flutters; climbing frantically upwards, yet looms above a monstrous, scaled form that growls with ancient breath. You cannot seem to warn the butterfly of the impending jaws above, and it strikes fear through your quivering breast. 

It is not until you’ve pulled your legs from the gnarled roots of ricages and spines which litter the ground that you reach Helaena; her eyes, slipped as dying stars anchored on a bright heat that rumbles in breaths high above. 

Wings turn to ash above you; they find your inhale, seeping into your lungs in one quick gasp. The butterfly is gone – its papery embers burning away into your blood. 

Hands, cold and spectral, shove you back into the darkness; you fall upon bones which crack in whispers of your name below your weight, and Helaena steps forward, her lips still moving in whispers you cannot hear. 

Her hands hold a chipped teapot; an old one, with etchings of flowers and dainty ladies washing against a peaceful brook.

It is cracked, though. And with her absent stare, you watch in horror as out crawl spiders from the teapot’s fissures – into her palms, skittering down her arms, crawling up her neck.

Your scream is silenced by an echoing crack of ancient stone; a tower in the distance, cracking in half as a shadow falls from high above where it kisses the clouds, a thunderous plume in the wake of its descent. The ancient breaths from above grow hot with unrest as ashy wings of butterflies fall to bless the decaying ground around you. 

“The girl,” Helaena mouths, her voice swallowed by the rising wind. There is a searing pain in your eye - the glint of a knife, a breath forever held by the crashing of some distantly cold waters. “The girl.”

You wake with a gasp, tangled in your sheets, the remnants of the warning still burning in your ears.

The girl. 

A jolt to the living realm brings a trickle of clammy sweat down your chest; the hearth across the way is surprisingly stoked and well alive.

And then, a strangled noise – a groaning mewl, some doe struck by a hunter’s bow, awaiting the mercy of a quick knife. 

The edge of the room stirs with movement and you’re jolted with shock – you blink sleep from your eyes with the gust of wind upon dust-blown streets, sitting up with a thickening pulse. You leap out of your skin when your vision adjusts to the light of the hearth in the room, a gasp flying from your lips in fear. 

At the foot of your bed, a spectre of a girl  – hair loose, her skin ashy in the moon’s whisper; a gasp from a mouth much too crimson as she sways upon uneven footing. 

“Elina?” You croak, heart within your throat – but that gasp, again; and she is doubled over, breathing in sharp gasps. Unease awaits you in the cavern of your chest. 

“What’s happened?” You ask quickly, rising from the sheets with a shaky fear. 

There is no response: but the girl stumbles forward, her throat beginning to pulse unnaturally – you leap to your feet, wider awake than ever before. 

“P-princess,” she chokes out, her body trembles - fingers fall against the post of your bed frame, her voice weaker still than her hallowed visage. “I– didn’t–” but her breath is not correct; it heaves out laborious, sickly. 

Her eyes meet yours, and your heart sinks below your stomach; a drop of crimson rolls from her nostril, and then a cough full of wet blood that sputters into her palm, darker than you’ve ever seen.

“S-something’s wrong.” her voice, desperate. Bare feet slap against stone as your hand grasps her arm; skin yields clammy. Panic pulses through you – her lips are a frosting purple, marred only by stretch of bloody string which pulsates from her nose and has begun to drip its way upon her dress. 

Your chamber doors are heavy, though you rip them open and spit into the hallway, shaking as the dredges of murky sleep are wiped away by alarm. 

Your shout is sharp as a dying hound, “Fetch Maester Gerardys!” You tremble as you nod to the guard, “Now! And alert the Queen– tell,” You look down the hall, unsure what to do, breathing ragged and sporadic, “Tell Jacaerys, tell–” 

A yelp, startled as a kicked kitten from behind you and you can only stop yourself, snapping back to your maid’s side, letting your chamber doors remain open as the guards rush down the corridors. 

Elina’s frame collapses as you reach her; you fall to your mattress, pulling her into your arms with shaking breaths – and she, with weak effort, presses her hand into your own. 

There is no such moment for you to do anything but sit; and so you do, a sense of numb calm washing over you as you coo to her, wiping hair away from a sheened forehead. Her head lolls heavy against your shoulder, tears soaking the sleeve of your nightgown – veins protrude, purple and ghastly, from her eyes and forehead, spreading down her chin under a trail of blood. Any offer of water is slapped across the stone floors of your bedchamber. 

“I’m scared,” she whispers, her voice trembling as she curls closer to you, her breath coming in shallow, pained gasps. “It hurts.” 

Your throat tightens – her eyes are wide, terrified; a gasp of striking resemblance to that haunting stare from your dreams.

You can only hold her tighter, cradling her head against your chest as if you could shield her from whatever is eating away at her from the inside; though she has begun a series of horrifying convulsions, and you scramble to remember any such prayer for the sick in the recess of your cobwebbed mind. 

“I can’t… I can’t remember-” You mutter helplessly, fingers shaking as you stroke her hair, whispering useless comforts as her body shakes against you.

Her hands are tight; wrapped in a clutched embrace, her muscles spasm and kick, marring you with short bursts of pain as you hold onto her, your own tears falling onto her face as a violent foam of bloody saliva begins to brim through her paled lips. 

“No-” You hiss, palm cupping her cheeks – but the blood spreads, it taints; eyes have rolled back, her body convulsing as blood pours in a leak from her nose, drips of crimson tears from the corners of vacantly yellowed eyes. Trails of it foam over your grasp from her mouth – choking, she’s begun, and you’re helpless to watch, your breaths eerily calm in the wake of her gasping gurgles. 

Maester Gerardys enters first; followed closely by three pairs of feet slamming against stone, but still you rock gently, a horror encasing your mind as you stare at the girl, stilled in your arms. 

Your lips are still mumbling, though your chest burns in the need of breath that will not come; the small bird of a girl in your arms, her blood staining your pillows, her heart stilled after a rapid acceleration and a heaving rattle of breath through blood-stained teeth. 

You do not let go of her when Maester Gerardys arrives to your side; with a wail and a panicked grasp, you shoot daggers towards the man with a snarl; a cornered hound. 

Your name rolls gently from hesitant lips, though, and it arrests your panic. 

Jacaerys is just beside you – clad in a sleeping tunic and trousers, cheeks flushed, eyes wide in concern. Your grip loosens around Elina at Jace’s whisper; And when you back away, his arm is around your waist, pulling you away gently. 

Queen Rhaenyra, hand over her breast as she watches; and Daemon, eyes dark as he stares from the girl upon your bed to the blood that stains your hands. In the light of the hearth, Jacaerys lights the few candles beside the bed, and you watch with a hitched breath broken only by the sound of your quiet sobs. 

 Maester Gerardys pulls back from her figure, his voice laced with a gentle, perturbed sorrow. “She’s with the Gods.”

Time escapes you.

Your fingers shake in the fabric of Jacaerys’s tunic as he holds you steady, easing you onto the settee across from the hearth; he remains as Daemon and the Queen repose in succession. 

And when Rhaenyra’s palm finds the stillness of your knee, as your stare smolders into the roar of flames before you, Daemon’s voice is shockingly gentle, quiet. “What happened?” He asks – and you stir only then from your halted fear, glancing to where Maester Gerardys and the guards gather the body from your sheets. 

Your lashes flicker, and though the press of Jacaerys’ thigh upon your own is warm, you cannot look away from Elina’s stained blonde hair, tresses marred by a thick paint of blackened blood as it sways in the arms of the guard passing by. 

The girl, you hear your sister’s voice whisper. You swallow thickly, shaking your head faintly.

“I…” You croak, shaking your head, “She… woke me. Elina. She’d helped me prepare before I went abed – she acted rather normal, though she’d mentioned a stomachache…” Your brows furrow as a distant memory strikes you. “Her pupils were the size of saucers.” 

They had been, truly. Pupils blown wide, her lips slick with saliva she wiped with a sleeve – and a whisper, once more as she undid the hair she’d braided into place just hours before – we’ve kept the chambers quite sweltering this evening, haven’t we, My Princess? 

“Did she act any differently?” 

Your mind stumbles in its tirade down a dark staircase of trivial moments through the day; And then, some horrifying thought that pierces your stomach, paranoia rippling through you. 

“Tea.” You murmur, shaking your head, “The tea you gifted me, that’s all,” You murmur, eyeing Queen Rhaenyra. A blank visage flickers in the lick of flame beside her, though her countenance furrows in unfamiliarity. 

A slight shake of the head, a bewildered breath from her breast – she need not say it; the tea that was served was not from her. Three pairs of eyes watch you, though in your panic, you jolt upright, only aware of the sleepgown you wear once Queen Rhaenyra places a blanket upon your shoulders. 

“-I was served a new tea this afternoon,” You glance at the table in the corner of your chambers, where the odd girl had prepared it. “I- I was told it was a gift, from the Queen–” in a sickening memory, you exhale, “she drank it this afternoon. Elina. It was prepared by a new handmaid who said she’d come from the kitchens, though I swear I’d–” 

And it is as if the storm breaks.

In a flash of a moment, memories flood through you in a pounding horror; the girl with her wrist scarred, flickering eyes behind doors of the Hand of the King. 

A sea away, and moons ago yet – a green gaze that ducked away when you and your siblings haunted the halls of the Red Keep, and young, dutiful ears which listened to each word uttered by you and your kin. 

“She was there. The Red Keep.” You utter, eyes burning a hole through the stone table, mouth open. The shoulder that brushes your own tenses; a shared glance between the three that you nearly miss in your dissociation. 

Daemon is upon his feet within moments, voice barking at the men who crowd the room – an order of the kitchens to be torn apart in search of a tea, red and spiced; and to find the girl with the scar on her wrist. 

THE MORNING COMES. 

It always does; despite it all, the morning comes – and this time, it kisses your shoulders with a chill, seeping into bones weary and plastered heavy to foreign sheets. 

Not foreign, particularly – for you know the softness upon you as though a touch of a familiar palm, the quirk of a familiar boyish grin. And you wake slowly, eyes heavy enough to keep you asleep, but you wake smelling of him. 

You are not sure what weakened part of you reaches out – to find him, in the chasm of darkness that returns as you do to consciousness; but your hand drifts over the empty space where he should be, only to find a soft crumple of parchment left in his place.

Before your eyes open, you already know.

His absence does not surprise you, nor does the cold weight of realization that settles upon your chest. 

The girl. A poisoned cup; the last shuddering rattle of breath from a sweet friend. Dreams of the sister you left, of a thick thread that wound your wrists and tethered you to hands that wanted nothing; a murder of an innocent because of… 

Your eyes are weary, and they burn. 

Jacaerys brought you to his chambers last night when your shaking slowed; after Maester Gerardys checked upon your tongue, tracked the flickering motions of your eyes, heard the beats of your heart. Jacaerys had not followed Daemon out the doorway upon some warpath once the whisper of poison fell from Maester Gerardys’ lips – he’d remained instead with a hand hovering over yours, his eyes upon his mother, who had taken you into her side as a mother would a hurt child. 

You recall, as you stir under his sheets, how you’d heard his heart beat beneath your ear last night - too steady, too forced.

The rhythm, a caged fury for the sake of a girl who’d barely looked at him without baring her teeth; a buzzing regret for the unripened detestation harvested towards her over fields of youth past. Guilt can be a fickle thing. 

And it is indeed a frequent visitor at the doors of your mind; it slides in through the cracks when you sit up in bed, head pounding, aching for sustenance though the thought of food leaves your stomach hollowed in fear. 

The note is unfolded slowly; Jacaerys’ hand is scribed with no lack of care, though they are quick, speaking of duty and matters with Daemon.

Though he says nothing explicitly, you know. The handmaid who prepared your tea yesterday - they search for her, or worse, they have already found her; and what is left now is that cold calculation of the Father: of justice.

With a shiver, your fingers twitch to your sternum - some odd remainder of a habit formed in youth, watching your mother clutch her seven-pointed-star round her neck in times of strife. You come empty-clutched instead - a seven-pointed chain that’d been casted into the ocean  along with the ring your mother gifted you for your nameday many moons ago, now. 

Jace’s request sends a strike of warmth through you as you blearily read the scrawled words to send Ser Steffon to fetch Jacaerys when you wake. 

Maester Gerardys, too, is mentioned, and the thought of him fussing over your health makes your chest tighten; there is no such relief in the notion being tended to, not now – not when your heart crawls up your throat; a creeping spider up the spout of a teapot, a coil of serpent wrapping around your neck. 

Blood still clings to the gown you’d held Elina in, as it sits rumpled and untouched upon the floor of Jacaerys’ chambers – you wear a simpler one now, retrieved from your boudoir by the hands of your betrothed.

You leave the mound of furs and sheets behind in a slow slide towards the window upon Jacaerys’ far chamber wall. 

The fog still clings stubbornly to the sea, curling like a serpent over the rocks, refusing to retreat beneath the morning light. 

It is not the attempt on your life – that itself has yet to soak through the surface of your ever-porous skin – but rather the absence of the voice which rouses you from slumber each morning, who combs and styles your hair; who bathes you, who laughs with you, who whispers. She is gone. 

Along the distance, the fog eats at the fishing villages; mere dots, no larger than gnats even when you squint. You wonder where Elina’s love lies, and if he woke with the same emptiness in his heart that you did. 

Below Jacaerys’ window lies a glance at the Sept of Dragonstone; a pierce in your chest that calls upon the emptiness of your heart. 

You do not heed your betrothed’s wish to seek him when you wake; instead, you pull round the cloak draped along the table beside you, tying it doubly to account for its larger size; and you slip past Ser Steffon, who watches and trails behind you at a measured pace. 

IN SOME LINGERING SHAME, YOU’RE KNELT BEFORE THE GODS BEFORE DAY FULLY BREAKS. 

It is not until you step out into the bailey, wrapped in a cloak that is not your own, does the sky split and begin to weep. It laments its sorrow upon the walls as you blink hard ahead, hoping to cease the endless churning of torment spiraling in your mind. 

When you find yourself within the dry stone walls once more, the cloak remains upon your frame – a comfort, in its lingering scent; or a repentance, in its damp chill upon your shoulders. 

The gods watch as you kneel in silence; the storm blossoms, cackling at some ancient jest in the sky, and you keel over in your grief, sinking to the soil buried far below the stone.

The Maiden’s face watches you – and in her, you see Elina; in that sweet laugh, the ceaseless effort to remain your handmaid, your friend – despite it all. And the reward she was given for such trust, such loyalty: To die on a mattress of the one she served, one final breath sacrificed for the truth:

It hurts. I’m scared. 

“Elina,” You whisper with watery words, watching the candle before you light in flame. Your throat constricts. That sacred little lamb, taken upon the altar of your very own mattress. 

Innocence, a token offered to gods who never answer – and, mutedly, you wonder. That death was sent for you, after all – so how would you look, eyes wide and unaware of the sharpness of a blade descending towards you?

Across the hall, someone slinks through the shadows. Smoke swirls. A candle is lit with shaky hands. 

And there is the blue lamb, too, you think - the one I could not save either. Fingers shaking, pressing the flame against the wyck beside it; it catches with only an extra breath. 

“Lucerys,” You whisper, watching the candle flicker.

And nothing changes. 

The rain falls outside. The pit lingers within your stomach.There is a scuff – perhaps a Septa, crossing somewhere behind you. A heavy door drags open from the Bailey outside, and in a breeze of the world’s breath, someone enters. 

You duck your chin in prayer, that way you did in childhood under the watchful gaze of your seven-pointed mother. 

Today, you worry. 

Like some favored cup that you’d grasped too tight, afraid it would fall from your clutches and break into thousands of shards – and how instead you’d watch it shatter in your protective, ignorant grasp. Red rivers of disbelief from a trembling palm; pain, that naive version of love. 

Father - you look upon his statue, disbelief in your heart. I worry that love is merely a mirror of violence. 

That pathetic something – that yearning, an empty chasm that blossomed even in the days of your youth – with cheeks still cherubic and eyes still bright; five children, white of hair; youthful play, ruddy cheeks, fattened legs. Giggles and breathless yells from behind curtains – from a time when whispers were nothing more than a playgame. 

The Crone remembers – and you wonder, then, as you look upon stone shrouded in a cloak. What has become of them, now? Of any of you? 

And who are you, but the sister who fled? Who are you, but the one who haunts the halls of the Black Queen, with blood of emerald and a dragon that could turn on them in a moment’s notice? 

Fingers grasp the stone before you, and white wax drips in slow tears. Crone – you gaze into eyes carved in sorrow, of sagacity unreachable. I worry that wisdom comes only when it is too late. 

In your youth, you’d been gifted a plant in an achingly beautiful painted Braavosi pot; the joy of your nameday, you’d insisted upon tending to it. It’d been hours – each day, admiring its pebbled leaves, bursting with budding fruit from within. Hours curbing away the prying, destructive hands of your elder brothers and cousins, of sitting in awed silence watching the leaves change in the sunlight with your sister.

And then came the day you’d woken to its dead leaves. In your devotion, obsession, you’d given it too much water. Mother – you look upon her statue, disbelief sewn far into the creasings of your heart. I worry that my care only brings ruin. 

The face of mercy watches you, and it brings nothing but a tremble of hatred through you. 

A flash of your own resentment – and of the tarnished beauty which once beheld your own visage, marred by the presence of you upon his side. Despite efforts taken by others to ensure otherwise, you will still remain forever haunted; forever wondering how you could dare stand with Jacaerys when you so taint the memory of his lost brother. 

It is a horrible thing, the chain of fate. 

A fate written long before you two were placed into cradles as babes, far before you two were given each other’s name as a promise, then as a threat, then as a promise once more. Smith – your heart aches, and it aches for what is to come. I worry that I cannot shape what I wish to mend. 

It is the most difficult perhaps, to regard the young woman etched in stone to your left. 

In her face is each that you’ve ever come to know. Baela, the first and best of your friends upon this island; Rhaena, the girl whose company you seek with the knowledge that she will regard you as kin, not adversary. 

The humming of your sweet sister in her chambers; in quiet harmony with the buzzing of insects, needles pricking her fingers and singing softly to the blood that beads from her flesh. You’re nothing like Helaena, your mother said. And what tragedy, you think as you consider the draped innocence of the Maiden aside you, what a regret that is. 

 And your mother, for all that she isn’t – for all that she is. For the girl she lost in her youth; for the distaste, perhaps, in the aspects of you that much too echo the girl she once called friend – through some the absent admiration of a father who held you close, who whispered Rhaenyra instead of your own name when he spoke of his love and admiration. 

That name, too – still after these years a stinging sore of regret, jealousy; Rhaenyra, the name you cannot help but reach toward, hand forever extended into emptiness. Rhaenyra, the one you’d picture when you watched yourself in the mirror as a girl, tilting your chin as if there were already a crown upon your head. 

Rhaenyra – you’re just like Rhaenyra, your father would whisper, proud; and it is, indeed, why your mother watched you with serpent stares, why your family turned chin upon you each time you dared speak her name in years after.  

Perhaps there is no particular malice in the end. 

You are no fool to believe that Rhaenyra resents you for what has been done by the hands of your blood; but knowing you are bidden forgiveness is not the same as accepting it. And in that festering void within your breast, the one which vies for affection, for the love of a mother’s touch, for acceptance – there lies one small residual pool of envy. 

 Rhaenyra, Helaena, Alicent, Baela, Rhaena, Elina – your throat, tightening as you consider then your very own name, that cursed name that falls from lips spitting and serpentine; what are you, to them all? 

To the girls here on the island who wear red and black maid uniforms and speak with you like you are one of their own, just to die by the hand whose grasp searched for your own throat? 

Maiden, you wonder with worried eyes, I worry I will swallow the women I love. 

There comes no such reply, but still you remain in folded grief for some time.

The rain falls outside the stoned walls of the Sept, but in here you remain dry. The island is drinking – or perhaps it cleans itself.

It is a pity you are not there with it. 

A candle burns out, and in a shaky lump of grief, you move to relight the wyck. 

The doors behind you scrape against the stone, and a wet onslaught finds your ears as you shiver in the breeze. Your fingers shake against the stick, watching the flame dance. 

“Lucerys,” You say once more, voice less of a whisper and more a plea. 

The clink of metal behind you startles your focus – you turn to face the visitor with an open mouth and wide eyes. In a breath of panic, you start. 

A boy, shrouded in the swimming shadows of the Sept’s rounded columns – waterlogged breaths, curls that breathe with his chest, alive, sinking, but alive – and the slip of water rushing around him, swelling like the tide as he moves from the shadows. 

Luke, you almost call out – but the black of the tunic catches with the silver scars of a wettened sun  – and there, a familiar face, searching eyes, the lick of a tide in the slope of his nose. 

Jace. 

The pearls of lost memories sink to the depths and you are no longer with that ghost – but instead alone with the Gods and with your betrothed. 

There is no greeting, but instead the locking of your eyes to his in acknowledgement – and he approaches you as you turn back to the altar, hands clenched to avoid their shake. 

“–Do they listen today?” He wonders, breaking the shell of silence; a tentative thing carried through the space of the Sept, a ripple on a calm pool. And though he delivers the query with all intentions of seriousness, you cannot help the small blushing of warmth that floods your cheeks at his recalling of yesterday’s spite. 

The gods don’t listen.

You crack the first smile, toothless and small – but he almost eagerly follows suit; and in the small grins shared between you, there is a breath of peace. 

“Not any more than they have before, I’m afraid.” You affirm, brushing invisible dust from your sleepgown; it is only when his eyes dip over your frame do you register the cloak you still don, its embroidered sigils of red and black upon the nape of your neck and boyish scent still clinging in the aftermath of the dampened path to the Sept. 

You have made no motion to rise to him; though he indeed, still as a pole, has remained without effort to sink to you either, and so you stare up at him. Jacaerys clears his throat, eyes flicking to the two lit candles before you and back to your gaze. “I’d hoped you’d send for me when you woke.” He whispers, some kind of warmth blossoming upon his cheeks. 

You watch the flush stain his skin with some assurance; a live boy stands before you, swaying upon his feet, hands perched upon the pommel of a sword and eyes lit with some hesitant kind of hope. You nod absently, “I didn’t much feel like being poked and prodded.” 

You’d meant by Maester Gerardys; though in a moment, you see something almost like amusement reflect in Jacaerys’ eyes – though he nods, concealing his dimpled grin and a small laugh. “I cannot hold you to blame for that.” 

In the silence, a gap of beamed gray sunlight finds his tresses; and streaks across one amber eye of his, melting in warmth as he watches you warily. You swallow down the part of you that blossoms at a face so beautifully made, and you wonder how he sees you now. 

“Why do you come?” His question strikes you once more in the quiet walls. 

Perhaps a Septa crosses the way – though your sights are anchored on Jacaerys and his wandering tongue as he glances towards the stony faces staring down at you. He, with an absent voice, continues: “If it’s not for them?” 

You swallow hard, fingers knotted like roots within your lap. A ruminating silence, until your voice finds its quiet whisper. “The chains of faith are not so easily cast aside, I suppose.” 

His gaze follows your own to the statue of the Mother, looming before you; a shift upon his boots as rainwater slides down the leather to kiss the stone floor. 

“And I know here no one will disturb me.” You add as an afterthought, some attempt at humour in the dreary silence, “Some say this Sept is gathering dust these days.” 

Your words achieve their desired effect: The prince gives you one of those rare smiles, hands held in some mocking surrender. “I am not some.” He defends; to which you nod with a rare smile of your own. 

“No, you are not, Jacaerys.” 

It comes much warmer from your lips than expected – the moment passes thickly between you. A rusty memory, to converse so casually with each other – a talent perhaps still being honed, though you feel a birth of warmth in his presence, against the shell of cold that this day has woken. 

Still he steps closer, hesitant in footing but deliberate in air, and you tilt your head, curious. “Still,” he speaks, “I hope you might… Let me join you.” 

In the moment following, his gaze flickers to the altar; then rises uncertain back to you. His words are awkward, falling hesitantly from his lips, yet still genuine; with their insistence strikes within you a tenderness that must have been absent for far too long. An effort.

“You wish to pray?” you wonder, brows suspended in your surprise. 

He merely nods, fidgeting with the edge of his sleeve; a boyish vision despite the burden of his station weighing around him – and your heart skips. 

“If you’d show me how,” he says, quieter yet; and a half step towards the altar so that you are nearly in line, you on your knees and he wavering in his height. “I’ve never been quite… good enough at it. Septa used to take me by the ear and scold me when I was young.” 

It’s a memory faint but easily recalled in your mind – Jacaerys and Lucerys, with youthful smirks plotting across the altar. A shove, a snort concealed in hands folded to prayer – a pious posture from you, though your eyes flickered so often to their whispered snickers, pressing your lips together when the Septas struck across the back of their heads. 

You take in the sincerity of his expression, the slightly placated feeling that has spread from the rare childhood memory so lacking in strife; and how he stands before you, as if asking permission for something far more intimate than prayer. 

Slowly, you incline your head, gesturing for him to kneel beside you. “Alright, then. Come.” You instruct shakily. 

The sword lies first upon the stone; then comes the sinking of his knees, slow to drop; you resist a squirm, the sight of him joining you sending a quiet warmth through your chest. 

It is quiet when he finds himself knelt aside you, hands loose and lips bitten. His tunic brushes your cloak – though you piously fold your hands, looking forward once more if only to avoid the heat that has inconspicuously grown upon your cheeks. 

A beat, then two. Slowly, through a glance, his hands fold like yours, though they shake in the reflection of the dreary sunbeams. 

Outside, the rain ravages the walls; your breaths fall in quiet releases, echoing each other in the dust. 

“I’m not sure what to say,” his voice is rough as it interrupts the silence; a cascade of shivers involuntarily tumble down the ridges of your spine. You’re struck with some spare memory of hands, warm against the line of your back as sleep took you last night; hands that have taken their own time to slide over planes of goose-prickled skin, that have held, and wished, and reached. 

Your eyes fall to the candles, unable to meet the gaze searing into your profile – it strikes you, the peculiar kindness of it; the bittersweet, stilted understanding that ties your heart to his own. 

There is that lingering feeling – that knowledge that, should last night have gone peacefully instead and you’d woken to Elina with comb in hand, Jacaerys would not be here; But still, he’d still have such warm, open eyes – such pouted lips, such a face carved by worry and patience. A change, rung through the effort made to be by your side; You scrub the thought from your mind and clear your throat. 

“I often start with a blessing,” you whisper into the air before you, “These days, it’s been for the realm.” At this, he says nothing; harboring a rather absent stare into the flickering candles. 

His hand drifts to the light; and soon, it wavers with the flickering flame of an incense stick. His hand suspends, hovering in apprehension, but then his voice comes in a quieted whisper. “For the realm,” he echoes your words. 

You do not dare glance at him; though in the corner of your vision sits his profile, softened by the gentle glow of flame and backlit in the torrential gray leaking from outside. Vulnerability drips from plush lips as he moulds over the words he endeavors to speak; and a moment of silence yourself as you shift, the emptiness in your chest warmed by the presence of his heat. 

He whispers his prayer quietly, and you do not wish to impose; you remain beside him, blinking hard against the rising guilt that crawls up your throat, that reminds you of soft girlish smiles and gentle boyish laughs. 

You do not hear his words, but you feel the gentle rumble of them from his chest to your own as you begin a silent whisper of prayer, Elina’s name falling from your lips.

And then comes the song of your voices, hushed and solemn in the Sept; it is in its way just as similar, just as reverent to choruses sung by your lips shared in the past – though for instances much different than now. 

“–For those I’ve failed,” his voice washes into your consciousness, head bowed low and words whispered for none other to hear. Your eyes open at this; pulled from the depths of your own swirling grief, your head bowed in a beat of regret and vision flashing with a blue lamb, submerged in the cold sea. 

Palms, damp and shaky, press to the stone altar. Your eyes find his, open and wettened with memory; it strikes your heart. “Now, I’d pray for the future,” Your voice, so quiet, faint. “That it might be more… kind than the past.” 

His swallow is silent, but you see his chest expand with a breath. The air, so heavy in the weight of shared grief. “For the future,” he echoes once more; and his gaze, though still fixed on the flickering candles, seems distant – seeking out a vision only he can see. 

His tongue swipes over his parted lips, brows furrowed in a soft emotion; you cast your gaze to the candles burning before you. He hesitates, his voice faltering before it firms again, quiet still in the empty Sept. “That I might be worthy of it. Of the realm, and–” His voice tapers off only momentarily. “ –And of those who are beside me.” 

It is in the breath that his small confession catches your breath almost imperceptibly; your chest tightens at his struggling tension of jaw, of that countenance so often set with the sternness of duty. 

There is a softening in his glance to the side, not nearly reaching you, but perhaps trying – something so close to vulnerability that it makes your heart lurch.

His gaze meets yours after a final moment, and in them you see your own reflection, your own yearning heart that beats against the restraints of awkwardness, of regret, of grief and of disdain. 

His gaze is yours, and it feels like it has been for some time. 

“That’s–” Your voice comes choked, uneven; you take a moment to gather yourself once more, cheeks flaring as you hold his stare. “A noble thing to wish for.” 

The tension between you hums into the heavy silence of the Sept. You should look away — ought to, even — but you don’t; for it is a miraculous thing, to gaze into one’s eyes and feel yourself stare back. 

Perhaps his hands fall first, but yours fall just after – and in the silence, your heart slams in your throat, mind hazy with the feeling of being seen and known. A furrow, gentle and longing, of his brow as he watches you; a ghost of his hand upon your arm, trailing along the cloak’s embroidered sleeve. 

Perhaps you lean first, or perhaps he does. 

It is not until your breath brushes his lips and his warms your own that you give in to the ache in your breast; And it is clumsy when your mouth finds his own. A kiss born not of passion but of some grief, some shared loss, some unbearable weight of what cannot be undone and what looms in the weight of crowns upon your heads and a war of fire and blood upon the weeping horizon. 

There is some hesitancy that, if ever before, has grown between you; a soft caress of his neck with your quaking palm, a warm presence of his hand upon your hip, turning you towards his kiss. Your hands grasp without thought, without purpose – a search for life in a crumbling plane of ruin. 

Salt upon your tongue, your nose slides upon his own; a fragile solace, this connection is. 

But the haze of such vulnerable intimacy is dissolved in a breath: Jacaerys stills completely, and his warmth is gone from you in the very next moment. 

“Jace,” You murmur as he shakes his head gently; a wet gaze between you, though you’re unsure whose it is. Perhaps both. “No,” His voice is strained in that quiet, pained way you recall – from early days finally released from your cell below the castle, from nights when the agony persisted in heated glares and serpent tongues.

He does not look at you before he rises, movements slow, deliberate – and you take the moment to gather your own mind, to swallow down the rush of surrealism that has fallen into lead upon your stomach. Seven stony faces watch you as you rise beside your betrothed at the altar, a slump in your shoulders that mirrors his own. 

“I shouldn’t have,” He admits, shaking his head as his hand tentatively grasps your own; his palm is moistened with the tremble of regret, and you swallow down whatever stab of guilt rushes up your throat. A squeeze in return; a flush of embarrassment upon your cheeks as the remnants of his lips linger upon your own in some dizzying breath. 

You shake your head as you brush nonexistent dust from your nightdress. “I shouldn’t have, I-” 

“Please,” He murmurs; a plea, true and genuine – and he tugs your hand just so. “I am sorry.” 

It is surprising to see such earnesty from him, though his words bring about a warmth to your chest. It goes unspoken, as so often things between you do – now is not a time for such recklessness; and though Jacaerys might perhaps be a sole comfort while the world weeps, you know now is not the time to escape in such securities. 

Your nod is gentle, as is the kiss you deliver to his warm cheeks. They grow even more red in the absence of your lips. 

“It's alright,” You agree, clearing your throat at the sudden memory of his lips, plump and warm, against your own. 

Though with his words dissolves any distraction you’ve sought in the previous moments: “There is something else,” He explains, “I come with word from the Queen and Daemon.” 

Despite his hand in yours, dread welcomes you once more into its embrace. 

“They’ve found her?” You wonder; and there once more crashes a bout of anxiety into your ribs. His eyes swim – pity, perhaps, hiding in the folds of gold, of reverence, of verity. 

He nods only slightly, eyes searching between your own.

“Yes.” 

A breath catches in your throat – some odd angst of mourning for your adversary, then; to the girl she perhaps was before your grandsire wrapped his talons tight around her. Jacaerys lifts his hand, and soon your hair is brushed behind your shoulder. 

“You do not need to go.” He promises, “I can have the dragons readied, or tea sent to the library. Or I could have a bath drawn–” 

Kind suggestions; though you shake your head sharply, glancing to the Father and then meeting Jace’s stare. “No,” You protest, hand dropping his own to gather yourself. “But will you–” A cleared throat, biting your lip at the pain that echoes through the empty caverns of your chest. The words do not come commonly; an odd thought, some secret in front of the gods - and so you whisper in that tongue you both share. “Kessa ao māzigon lēda nyke?” 

Will you come with me?

His lashes tangle in a slow blink, though he acquiesces immediately to your request. “Of course. Hēnkirī.” 

Together. Your swallow is thick, and the pit of your stomach eats at you. It is a slow march to prepare your leave; the beating of a heart not your own, faced upon the gates of some shadowy fate – but the hand in yours warm and guiding, and his voice is slow and quiet. 

Bells ring in the near distance, and in their warbled way, they sound of wedding bells. Some part of you blossoms reborn, a bud at the first breath of spring after years of winter; Jacaerys sends you a smile, and it is soon mirrored upon your own visage.

Fate is a peculiar thing, yes - but you are relieved that Jacaerys is the name of yours.  

And even when you and your betrothed pull up each other's hoods in preparation for the rainfall, you do not realize that you’ve just risen from below the watching shadow of the Stranger. You do not realize that the shrouded figure has watched over your every prayer; and when you turn, you do not notice as its shadow follows the train of your dress. 

You do not notice the snuff of the two candles, blown in the wake of your leave - and you do not feel as the Stranger watches you leave the Sept, arm in arm with Jacaerys. 

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[imraespace]

HONESTLY, I SHOULD'VE BEEN THERE..

Friends with someone like him came with certain prices, one was by choice and one was by fault. You told him one day that it's never his fault yet he still blames himself and say that he should've been there..

SUGURU X READER

genre: angst, fluff (I think..)

WARNING: death..(sorry), mentions of a disease, bullying.

imraesnote: my summer rn is sad so you too, feel sad with me tyvm also guess what movie this was based of its really easy!

<- 1K SPECIAL

"SUGURU, GOOD MORNING!"

Those are normally the common words everyone hear as soon as the male enters the classroom every morning.

His signature smile, a smile that brightens everyone's life for that moment, is also another common thing in the morning.

But for you, your common thing in the morning is the small hug he gives you, before making his way towards his friends.

.

.

.

A hug! followed with a bright smile.

Those were the common actions both you and him did everyday. In pre-school, in middle school.

The way his small arms wrapped around your smaller body every morning and when it was time to leave and meet up with your parents, those same arms found themselves right back around you.

Same way he got taller, slightly bigger yet the actions stayed the same. In the morning, his slightly bigger frame is cuddling yours, and in the afternoon..

His arms wrapped around you and you did the same. yet that time you felt the need to pull him closer and hold on tightly. Maybe you're scared that he might run away. Would he? Or would you?

.

.

.

What about you? What's common for you?

The half hug you gave and the weak smile you framed. That seems about right.

Yet for some reason he just didn't get it. It never got to him. Maybe because he's too focused on his new life. Are you even in there?

.

.

.

Your school life isn't anything interesting, you're just there really. You wake up, get ready, go to school then go back home. Yep that's it.

Maybe these girls thought that, hey your life seems a bit dull! Why not make it worse.

So as you closed your locker, it wasn't a big surprise to see that the same trio who won't keep themselves out of your life, right there, next to you.

Naturally, you've learnt to block them out. You don't care about their faces yet the words always seems to hit you the most.

It's mostly.. partly.. actually. It's mainly about the one and only.

"Suguru..."

Suguru this, Suguru that. If you want him so much then go find him yourself, not make my life a hell. That's what goes through in your head everytime you hear his name from these girls. Its either using you to get to him or lashing out on you for being too close to him.

You sighed, zoning out until they left.

.

.

.

Now you're home, alone. Like normal.

Taking off your school shoes, making your way towards your room and taking out whatever assignment you got, maybe trying to forget everything that happened today, just like you did for the previous day and the day before.

Your eyes landed on a certain paper, and stared at the mark on it.

You got a bad mark.. This wasn't usual.

The frown that was creeping up whole day, had finally made its way onto your face.

And with that, you just landed on your bed, shoving your face deep into the blanket hoping that maybe everything will just go away.

.

.

.

"Y/N? Y/N!" His voice.

Before you could react, a ball landed right on your forehead.

"ow.." You mumbled, rubbing the pain away.

His short legs ran towards you with a small pout as he glared at the other kids on the playground.

"Try aiming somewhere else next time!" he yelled at the random boy and all he got in response was a tongue out from the boy.

Suguru rolled his eyes, rubbing your forehead.

That's right, Suguru has always been there to help you.

So right now, the notifications from your phone, reminding you that he's not here to help you anymore, he's out there with them, enjoying his life.

.

.

.

Your phone rang, waking you up from your sleep. You don't remember falling asleep..

Maybe you did when you tried to disappear into your blanket before, oh well.

It was a call from your mother.

"Y/N. Did you take the medicine I left on the counter?"

Medicine..

You didn't reply back instantly, you just rose from the bed and made your way towards the kitchen.

"I found it. Thank you." You mumbled, hanging up the phone.

You took them. As usual.

It was 2:00am, and at that time, you decided to take a shower.

.

.

.

"Are you okay?"

"No."

Suguru eyes was glued onto his screen.

His white haired friend sighed as the brown haired girl turned towards their direction.

"Maybe you're trying too much. Give her some space." She said.

But it didn't help him.

"I should be there for her."

His eyes didn't look away from the thousands of messages he sent you and not once he got a reply. Of course he noticed that weak smile and half hug he got in return.

But he didn't speak up, he didn't wanted to ruin the small, weak relationship you both are hanging onto right now.

Something deep down inside him, he feels that you're hiding something, maybe you have a reason for pushing him away.

.

.

.

Taking showers at odd hours like this was one of your favorite activities. It helps wash away the worries and thoughts that lay heavy on your shoulders throughout the day.

You turned on the tap causing the water to burst out the shower head, turning from ice cold to the warm temperature you wanted.

The water that hit your body drowned out all sounds from outside. You closed your eyes, enjoying the feeling of the water as it ran off you. It seems your mind has it own will as it ran off to memories you don't really enjoy..

.

.

.

" -..Are you listening?"

If you're gonna be honest you stopped listening as soon as you heard it.

A disease.. Heart disease..

You felt as if maybe you might die in that moment, maybe tomorrow, who will know?

You disconnected yourself from the conversation, focusing on your fingers at that moment. The first thing you thought of was..

"What will Suguru do if he found out?"

.

.

.

Pitter. Patter.

Suddenly the sounds of the shower was back in your head. Now you felt cold, as if you've been in there for a while.

How long were you in the shower?

The sad memory made you remember something important. After the 3 years of being aware of your disease, you have yet to tell him.

You turned off the shower and let out a sigh.

Maybe tomorrow you will tell him but right now, you really want to sleep.

At 3:05am you decided to drift off in the dreamland.

.

.

.

Suddenly a small milk box appeared in front of your face. Strawberry infact.

You look up from the table and towards the person infront of you.

None other than..

"Good morning.." You mumbled.

Suguru's smile widen as in return to your words he gave you a hug. A warm one that gave you life. The life that's on a gamble right now but that's not on your mind right now, what's on it is..

"Suguru." You let out, with a smile.

He pulled away from the hug and gave you the same smile he had from before.

He grabbed his chair from behind him and sat right infront of you.

"How are you feeling?" He asked you, turning his head to the side.

You followed his actions, causing the both of you to giggle.

"I'm okay actually.." You replied. Yet it caused him to raise his eyebrow in confusion.

"Okay? Yesterday you were amazing, why is it different today..?" He mumbled.

You masked it up really good.. is what you thought.

"I'm turning a new leaf." You joked.

But he didn't like it. His smile dropped a bit, which caused yours to drop completely.

But.. when he took his fingers and guided it towards your face, taking his pointy fingers to bring back your smile, the genuine one to found its way back.

His fingers then made its way towards yours, intertwining them while pulling you a bit closer.

"Now copy my words."

"Today I'm feeling amazing.."

You decided that maybe if you moved your lips the same way he did, it will be easy to lie through your teeth infront of the one you love. Maybe.. if you lie this one time, you can repay it by giving yourself a small bit of punishment later but right now..

Wait right now you're crying.

The smile he brought on your face were faltering, the tears were falling and you couldn't believe what you were thinking. Lie to him?

Lie to the boy who gave you life and offered his love to you in different ways he could? Why think like that?

"Why are you crying..?"

Why are you him? Why are you the way you are?

.

.

.

That, sadly, was your breaking point. You didn't wanted to lie to him.. but you didn't have the heart to confess about your problem. You knew that he should know but soon you notice that he hung out less with you and met new people.

But you can't blame him..

Yet he blames himself. Everytime he hung out with Shoko and Satoru all he thought of what went wrong that day?

All he knew was that he should be there for you.

He tried to, he continued to give the hugs, the smiles and the good mornings but it seemed like you didn't want them anymore.. So he tried another method, maybe you would rather talk online instead.

No. He was wrong again, but he didn't give up. He lost count on how many times he tried to make you open back up that it felt numb to give up.

After three years who would?

.

.

.

Now rest Suguru, in his bed up at 3:05am, staring at your contact name. He wonders if he should call you..

His thoughts went on until 3:34am when he finally decided to call you, but he doesn't hear your voice. It just goes to voice mail.. Why are you ignoring him?

He wonders if you're over with his desperate attempts, trying to force his way back into your life.

Maybe he is desperate, he just want everything to go back how it was 3 years ago, the day before that one when you broke down right infront of him.

Oh how he knows how much you wanted that as well, how the feeling of hiding from him and pushing everyone away were eating you up from inside.

The last thing that was in your mind, was finally opening up to him. Forget those girls, forget your words. It was enough and you've finally made up your mind.

But sadly.. Your life just decided that it was too late.

Those unanswered phone calls, the desperation he felt, was all for nothing as in your sleep you finally gave up on life.

.

.

.

The first few messages you received from him, you noticed them but you pushed it away.

You already made up your mind on your life and out of sadness, feeling that the world is unfair to you, you decided to write out your feelings in a book. How you wanted to tell him that you had very dear feelings for him and how you always wanted to tell him but you couldn't, because you won't be here for long.

You remember a few words that stood out in that book, that you always reminded yourself that it wasn't his fault.

Each time a word was placed in that book the more the tears came falling down. You ended your small confession with two simple words.

"For Suguru."

.

.

But now it wasn't only your tears on that book. It was now decorated with his own, it kept on falling as he read the words.

It was his fault for not realizing that something was wrong with you and it was his fault for not trying hard enough to figure out your feelings.

He knew that he should've been there yet he wasn't.

It was unfair to you.

A few days have passed, could be a month, he doesn't care. All he cared about was that honestly.. he should've been there.

Yet now here he is, laying in that same bed he was in trying to call you when at that time you chose to sleep on for a long time.

Here he is reading over those words again and again.

How he wished he could've known your real feelings.

[danpuff-ao3]

🥝 and 🍐 for the ask meme! 😃

Hiya Lissia!! Thanks for the asks!

🥝 What’s your favorite trope/AO3 tag to write?

Oooh! So many! Enemies to lovers is a big one, though I don't always tag it...the ships I ship often fall that way, aha! Getting together, angst, unhealthy relationships, age gaps...all the fun stuff! Ooh and there's the spice, too...first times are a special love. And parseltongue kink...my oh my.

Though I guess stripping away all of the more general type stuff, I really love writing infidelity, or other betrayals. I like it best when my OTP is cheating with each other, but some days I'm in a particularly brutal mood and search for them cheating on each other.

In some ways, that I hate to admit, part of it is just...a testament to the strength of my OTP, the irresistibility of their connection. My great love of all things angsty and wrong.

A lot of it, though, is just working through how deeply impacted I've been by infidelity. My father has never been faithful in his life. And in a truly twisted decade long period he dragged his entire family into a very toxic relationship. My dad and his partner cheated with each other, and then on each other. And even once they broke up and he married his now-wife, I don't think it truly ended until...well, let's just say it had no choice but to end.

I was once engaged, and cheated on. I've seen how cheating has impacted so many people in my life. And it's so...selfish, and terrible, and I don't condone it in the least.

...unless it's fictional and getting my boys together, dang it.

🍐 Is there anything in canon that you absolutely hate and love to fix in fics? A wrong choice made, a fuck-up in characterization, a misunderstanding never cleared up, a conversation never shown onscreen, etc…

SEVERUS SNAPE DID NOT DIE I REFUSE, I 100% REFUSE, IT DIDN'T HAPPEN, FIGHT ME ON IT.

Also he's gay af and anyone who thinks he had romantic feelings for Lily is just deeply confused. People can have very intense friendships, tyvm.

Those are the big ones. Stop doing my man dirty like that.

ALSO: Harry Potter is not an Auror, wtf bullshittery is that?? Jk if you like it, cool, that's gravy. I just can't wrap my head around it. Hasn't he fought enough evil for one lifetime? Can't he go teach at Hogwarts or play Quidditch or own an antique shop or something?? Let the man rest, dang it!

Fruit Asks!

Answered: 🍒; 🥭; 🥝, 🍐

[bambisnc]

impurities [ft. h.yj]

pairing : yunjin x winter's sister!reader genre : fluffyy w tiny sprinkles of angst cw/tw : kissing + use of caps/swearing + reader gets sister-zoned by yunjin like once ;-; wc : 1k !!

sister's bsf!yunjin mmm

she's been besties w minjeong since forever and your sister is very possessive of her

not to say that she isn't possessive of you !

she just wants the 2 main girlies of her life not making heart eyes at each other tyvm

but how can yunjin help herself from falling for you? you're so sweet, so cute, so pure well at least that's what she thinks; extremely different from her ditching classes, being stuck in detention 24/7, playing in a rock band self

you've always been her biggest supporter - always been there to cheer her on, to wipe her tears because she can't help that your presence makes her want to show all parts of her to you - the good, the bad and the ugly

so she drops in some a lot of flirty remarks around you, teases you in the hopes of seeing your oh so adorably flustered face as you struggle to respond to her way too suggestive quips

yunjin is always quick to keep winter's annoyance at bay however by also making sure to gush about "this gorgeous girl she's been talking to who she met at one of their band's concerts"

you're pretty fed up of this hot and cold behaviour of hers, to be honest

because how can yunjin go from looking at you like she could see entire galaxies in your eyes as she follows you around like a lost puppy to coolly ignoring your attempts to make conversation with her, droning on and on about how she has to get some other girl's number? and there's also the millions of times she's referred to you as the sister she's never had... :/

obviously winter ends up finding out eventually bc come on. yunjin really isn't that subtle with her ogling

but gasp gasp? she's actually really supportive! she gives you both her blessings to "finally fucking make out or something the tension is killing me ugh"

absolutely letting no time waste, yunjin decides to properly confess and get a chance to woo you how you deserve to wooed :( &lt;3

but,

seems like there's trouble in paradise!

because you're apparently going out w someone?! yunjin physically feels her heart breaking when she sees you hug a pretty girl w long black hair and her then kissing your cheek TWICE and calling you 'darling'?? she's never seen her around before and you couldn't already be this close with just a friend???

completely dejected when she explains this situation to her bsf, minjeong goes :O and then her face turns a rather angry (or flustered?) shade of red on hearing your alleged lover's description

she apparently knows who that girl is and she can definitely confirm that you're not dating her

minjeong sus. yunjin will confront her suspicious behaviour another day. but right now you're more important; if you were not romantically involved with that girl.. why would you pretend to be..?

as she sees you walk towards where the 2 girls were sitting on yunjin's bed, winter immediately shouts something about "needing privacy right now and claiming that you both must not enter the room at any costs and leave RIGHT NOW !!!!!" yunjin is pushed out the door to an equally shocked you

"isn't that your room.." you very cleverly point out "i've learned not to question your sister's strange, strange ways.." yunjin mutters back

she knew what winter wanted her to do, she could practically hear her menacingly excited laughter

so yunjin fixes a charming smile on her face and offers a little walk, just you and her &lt;3

you nod, despite there being visible hesitance written all over your awkward figure

the "little" walk ends up going on for rather long, seeming longer than it actually was, in fact, due to neither of you saying a word to each other

but finally when you decide to attempt some small talk, yunjin interrupts you, "why did that girl kiss you yn."

... this, quite validly, offends you, "oh i'm sorry am i obligated to tell you about each and every single person i'm romantically into?"

"uh no! of course not it's just um how could you just.." she's at a loss of words because such hostility from you makes her confident persona crumble so fast that at any other moment you would've laughed. a lot.

"i don't want to be talking about this with someone who thinks of me as their sister" you bitterly spit out, ready to walk away from her before the tears threatening to spill over your waterline make their way down your now heated face

as you turn, however, yunjin grabs your wrist and pulls you back, forcing you to fall into her arms as you desperately clutch her shoulders to not fall

"yunjin ??? WHAT do you think you're doing???" before you can push yourself away from her she brings her face so, so close to yours that you can smell the sweet, fruity fragrance of her lip gloss and forget running away, all you want to do at this moment is connect your lips to her ever so kissable ones

ignoring your question, her attention remains focused on her original goal, "can i.."

you move one of your hands to cup her cheek and and finally steal a peck from her but before you can let yourself completely drown in the feeling of her warmth, she pulls away and with a finger on your lower lip and continues, "can i please know why you were with that girl?"

dazedly you let the truth slip out, "minji's .. friend.. she isn't.. i'm not with her or anythi- mmph!" and just like that yunjin finally kisses you like she's wanted, hell, like she's dreamed of for ages now and you're more than happy to let all her previous actions be forgiven - as long as she keeps holding you just like this &lt;3

notes : for the ppl waiting for the yunjin/yn/rina fic mwah <3 + [m.list]

[alberivh]

devotion (ROYAL AU) — pt.1 : realization.

Butler! Diluc X GN!Reader . Royal! childe (as supporting character), butler! Kaeya (supporting cast ; in pt2 story line)

contains : heavy angst, comfort/hurt, isolation, arranged marriage, major character death, mentions of blood, injuries, execution, abusive relationship, abandonment, ‘consumption’, false accusation, blades

summaries : arranged marriage has always been one of your family ruthless tradition. You were allowed to love them you couldn’t reach, yet the feeling of being abandoned once and for all by those who you truly treasured was more than numbness could ever describe. Diluc who’s your lover need to accept this tradition, yet he, himself need to get his life down for your future sake.

A/N : thank you for 100 followers!! It has been a wild ride since i’ve just joined this community. Thank you very much and as a rewards, here’s a token of heavy angst for y’all. I have a really bad writing block right now, so this might took more than you think hehe. So once again, thank you very much! ( i actually hate this, tyvm)

“Your majesty…please allow me to hold y—“

“No. I simply do not have time for people pleaser, please let yourself be out from here..” , you cursed your future-husband out of from your bounties. It startled all of the maids and butlers in your room, it even make your somewhat-fiancé looked awful. You were pissed by him, by the structure of his eyelids, the heavy breathe from who-knows-where and many more part of him you don’t even want to recognize.

There’s no reason to deny that you hate this, all of this, Known as the maiden of the family, you were nothing but their only pry. It pissed you, it really does. How come you are holding the throne at the age of 25? Aren’t you supposed to check your garden instead taking all of your well-behave throne and the awful arranged marriage your family has made? No? What an unlucky person you are, the butlers thought.

“Diluc please guide master tartaglia to the upfront door, i have no intention to see him now. If you already had brought him downstairs, get back to my resident immediately.”

“this is the main reason why everyone despis—“

“Please leave Immediately. My master have no further interest to speak with you, master tartaglia.” Diluc shouted your internal response to the group of scums in front of your sight. He heard enough of this small talk your future-husband has been talking about. Diluc wasn’t jealous, he was simply too disturbed with your disgusted face everytime tartaglia walks around your residence. just how much pressured you had been under to make you act so ruthless in front of the man you’ll called husband in no time?

he silently observing him down the hall. Not wanting to have a talk with a scum like him, he avoid any sights of his ‘particular’ interest. After all, in his eyes, tartaglia doesn’t deserve any part of you. He acts too normally, there diluc suspicion of your fiancé grown. There must be something behind his motive. Tartaglia have recognize diluc’s gaze for a while now. Though, he pretend none of those bothering suspicion triggered his rage. And so, he fired him up with a quick straightforward awareness. Or as the citizen say, A threat.

“mr. Butler..stop loving my future partner or tomorrow you’ll have the consequences..got it? And do not touch them..i’ve warned you when you were alive, i like my future partner to be a virgin ins—“

“master tartaglia i have no relationship with the majesty, how come you assume such a thing from a humble butler like me? I was just simply following orders, hope you could understand, master tartaglia.” , answering his rage. Tartaglia found his emotion drains wild. It look like those bothering emotions he hide finally show diluc their true intention to spoiled you. Diluc’s eyes met your fiancé terrifying visions, the murderous aura in it explains his true intention. Diluc could only plea inside, let my majesty be safe.

“don’t you dare say anything to your master, mr butler. My partner has been mine all along, stay away from our relationship or tomorrow would be your last day…”

“Though, i simply wouldn’t mind, ajax.” , he gurantees tartaglia’s eyes.

The night came. the breeze flew through your open windows, leaving chills through your spine. it was an unsurprisingly beautiful night, you quoted. Diluc was preparing your bed, as you humm through the southed area of your room. The melodical sound of your humming have always soothes his grudge from afar. It was always been his favorite sound.

“ your majesty, the bed has been done. You may rest peacefully now..so please excuse m—“

“Diluc…stop making it seems like i’m the only one who loved you..just stay here, i missed you a lot..” , in a sudden your arm was attached to his body, his dirty and ordinary body. You embraced him so tightly, as if diluc were going to some place you wouldn’t want him to cross. You were scared of losing him. You don’t want any of this marriage, you don’t want tartaglia to even acknowledge your presence. You just want diluc to stay by your side, even if you both have considered how selfish it is.

You clunge onto his chest, pressing gentle kiss on his cheeks. Not wanting him to leave nor to leave you behind. So desperate of you to feel this way.

“you’ve been doing great darling,i’m proud of you..”

“please stay like this for a while, i love you. So please, don’t go..don’t go..” , diluc watch your flattering smile turns into a small-sobs, it cracks him, he doesn’t want to let you go either. He was simply following your fiancé awareness, he doesn’t want anyone to harm you, even if it meant for you to see him in agony. Diluc Carries your figure into your bed in return, not wanting to bare any of his emotions. Feelings are fragile and so do he. giving soft and gentle kisses to your forehead as he wiped your tears, whispering a ‘goodnight’ before he left you again. If he was being honest, he wants to be more selfish, he wants to be with you, forever.

“hmm..i’ll be waiting for you, goodnight my beloved..”

“What’s with the inconvenience…?” The loud atmosphere greet you with chills. What time is it? You don’t even know. All you know is the sunrise have yet to grown out from the wave of the clouds. but why must all of your maids gather themself on your room, something important? But why must them gather at the edge of dusk..? Did your mother fucked up again? But actually, what happened?

At the same time, you mumbled a form of question. Where’s diluc? You asked yourself.

“Y-Your majesty! d-diluc have now been courted by the queen, i-i don’t know what happened but please stay put i shall help you! Yes! I-i—“ courted? In sudden, you dropped your glasses. The broken piece of the glasses shard scarred your leg. It was painful, but you didn’t care. The blood shed of your scars leave the carpet of your resident turn into a red motives of blood. What did diluc do to make himself courted by your own mother? All he did was to love me, mother. The maid beside you were in all panics, trying to brag your arm from leaving the room. Although you declined the embrace of it, you were still running in pain, it made the maids panics turn into vomits.

Rushing through the open corridor of your resident in sweats and blood shed, You found diluc. His hands tied with a rope, a slight red bruises covered his face. He was Courted by your mother because of an unknown letter that has been sent to the queen herself, it was dumb for her to court an innocent person like him. Though, at last, you found yourself screaming his name. The pain which hold onto your consciousness leave your body in a second. diluc was aware of this, Everything. His hands wanted to touch you and lead you to rest. but he couldn’t, the execution would be in front of his eyes in no time.

“you did harm my child don’t you? Look at those blood on their legs! How come a butler like you harmed my precious child..?! They are unconscious because of you filthy butler. Know your degree, h—“

“you abuse them, your highness. You abuse them, ever since their father die, you abandoned them and break them to pieces. How come you only care about them dying when their time to hold the throne came? They were dying because of you, those consumption they witness are all because of you. And you dare to tell me what to do when all i did was just to love them?!” He quoted every single words you wish you could say to your mothers face. You wished you have the audacity to tell her the truth, yet your weak body refuse it’s urge to make diluc out of the execution lines. I’m sorry, i’m really sorry.

silence fill the room. You were laying in pain, as you heard diluc’s defense and your mother’s lies. You realized once more, you were nothing to them. Just a pry for the throne. none of the guards have pitied you either, they are too focused on never-letting diluc’s eyes or hands meet your figure in this state of time. Those scarred glasses on your legs have made you lose too-many bloods, it scared diluc. After all, as a lover he is, he has devoted himself to protect you in all cost. let them be safe and take me away. It’s his last hope for you to stay awake for him.

“no execution needed. I have no reason to pay attention to fools like you. so isolation it is. This is all because of you, my child is dying and you’re the one at fault. Noticed how they haven’t even called your name again? They died because your lack of responsibility.” , spitting her mucus in diluc’s knees. You could barely saw diluc chills which you usually saw in his eyes. He’s about to cry..you think.

“Guards, please take my child away and let them rest in their bed. And so for this butler, put him in the isolation room, make sure to let him eat only once in a day, understood? Ah..don’t let my child see him, i don’t want them to see an abuser like him crawling out their life’s on my window.” , orders from your mother are none to first. They couldn’t be disobey and you understand them. You understand how ruthless it is, you understand it. But why must diluc? Why him? You saw the sight of him, blades are all over his neck. For what reason actually? To let him never see you again.

carried by the guards to your room and diluc was gone from your vision. He is not wrong, your highness. So why must those who loved me left my side, mother? Why won’t these bruises you add to my flawless skin never leave me? Is it because i’m a procession of your own sin? It was a cursed to fall in love with those you could barely reach.

PART 2 : COMING SOON

this is shitty, really shitty in fact. Though, thank you very much for reading this. Part 2 will come soon, if i had some energy to write the readers mother personality without getting pissed off. But anyways, see y’all soon at part 2 <3

[mrkcore]

𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐎𝐍 - 𝐡.𝐫𝐣

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: huang renjun x reader

𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬: fairy(faerie)!renjun, human!reader, academia aesthetic, royalcore, medieval setting

𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬: you meet renjun one night. from that time on, you wait patiently for him every night.

𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: fluff, angst

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠(𝐬): none

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 2k

𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨: talking to the moon - bruno mars

𝐚/𝐧: renjun fic because it’s his bday :3 (i researched a lot about faeries and fairies, but none of them fit the concept i planned, so i kinda just merged some stuff i saw, so this probably isn’t the most accurate, and it is fiction so yeah) i tried to be a lot more descriptive in this one (cuz i’m really bad at that), so pls gimme feedback that would really be appreciated tyvm <3

a part of @nakamotocore​​‘s cliffhanger collab!

(comment here to be added to the taglist!)

another day has come to the end. you’re finally back in your room, sitting at your desk, trying to finish the work you didn’t finish from your classes.

you sigh. even after lighting all of the candles in your room, you’re still feeling unmotivated to continue your language work.

so you pull up your mythology textbook, and take a sneak peek at tomorrow’s topic: fairies.

“fairy, also spelled faerie or faery, a mythical being of folklore and romance usually having magic powers and dwelling on earth in close relationship with humans. it can appear as a dwarf creature typically having green clothes and hair, living underground or in stone heaps, and characteristically exercising magic powers to benevolent ends; as a diminutive sprite commonly in the shape of a delicate, beautiful, ageless winged creature dressed in diaphanous white clothing, inhabiting fairyland, but making usually well-intentioned intervention in personal human affairs; or as a tiny, mischievous, and protective creature generally associated with a household hearth.”

reading on, you’re slowly feeling your eyes droop, tiredness flooding your system. before you know it, your eyes close and bring you to a quiet slumber.

something is tickling your nose, and more is tickling your arm as well. 

did you forget to close your window? or is it the dust from your shelves coming to haunt you for not dusting them for over a month?

you get up drowsily, trying to find the source of the disruption.

your candles are still lit, but it’s still dark outside, so it’s probably not morning yet. you turn around to grab the shawl you discarded on your bed, and put it on.

you reach out to close your window, but to your surprise, there’s a boy. sitting on the ledge of your window. 

and he has wings, sparkling transparent wings.

you’re in awe. from this angle, the moonlight shines just right for his beautiful wings to glisten as they flutter. 

you don’t realize, but you’re slowly walking towards him. your body gravitating towards the strange but stunning creature. 

he hears the floorboard creaking underneath your feet, and turns around to look at you.

you’re shocked by his appearance. 

he’s heavenly. his round, gentle doe eyes are iridescent, sparking while he’s staring at you. dainty, plump, parted lips, and a button nose. you’ve never seen anyone’s features as pretty as his. 

“oh, you are awake now.” his mouth turns upwards into a smile. you’re baffled. “i hope i was not the cause that woke you, how did you rest?”

the creature turns around and flies right next to you. you instinctively sit down on your bed, and he follows suit. 

“i-, i slept well?” you answered hesitantly. you check your watch discreetly, displaying the time, 1:35 am. the boy–or being, sitting besides you catches the action, and leans in to view the interesting gadget. 

he scares you a little bit, and you quickly scramble to put it back into your pocket. he looks at you with great curiosity.

you wonder if he’s ever been in contact with humans before.

“so uh, what is your name?” you try to strike up a conversation now that you know he is able to speak. 

“i do not really have one, but you can call me renjun.” he beams. “and you? what should i call a beautiful lady like yourself?”

you’re blushing with how polite, charming, and poised he is.

“my name is y/n.”

and that’s where it all began. 

renjun came to your window every night when the moon comes at its brightest. it became part of your routine, and thankfully you didn’t have a roommate, so you stay up every night just talking to him.

for some reason, your lack of sleep did not affect you as much as you thought it would. the headmaster, teachers, maids, they always told students to get a full night’s rest so you’d be at your fullest learning capacity. but you’ve never felt better. you never asked what renjun was, it never came up during your late night discussions. you knew from his appearance that he was somewhat like a fairy, but you never asked him about anything, even though you were always curious. 

renjun’s sudden arrival into your life made you feel so bubbly and warm every single day. all of the girls in your class have noticed, so has your homeroom professor. 

“y/n! y/n!” they called to you during lunch break the day after your first encounter with renjun. “you seem so happy today even though we had an exam, what are you smiling so brightly about?”

you wanted to keep him as your little secret. so you just smugly smirked at them.

“none of your business.” you bite back before turning around to walk away.

they all squealed. 

“it’s a boy!”

“definitely a boy.”

“nothing else would be as exciting!”

whispers went around the classroom, and the girls were happily gossiping amongst themselves. your teacher even giggled a bit when she thought the class wasn’t looking. your classmates ask every single day, but you don’t cave. still pleased with the spectacle you’ve stirred up.

but it’s true, you’ve been much happier. strolling the school grounds with a skip in your step, a cheerful mood during class every day, and finishing your homework (renjun insists you do it before he visits so you are free to talk).

you’re so excited for your late night chats with him that you rush to your room to finish your work for the day. surprising all of your teachers of your newfound burst of productiveness.

you feel over the moon.

until he disappeared.

renjun stopped showing up at your window one day, out of the blue. no explanation, no nothing. it’s not like you had any other form of communication with him. so he completely went off the grid. leaving you by yourself.

for the first week, you didn’t accept that he just left. so like usual, you patiently waited for his arrival with the moon shining brightly.

but he never came. for weeks and weeks, you’d wait to no avail of his presence. 

you know he’s somewhere out there. somewhere far away. you want him back. 

your neighbours think you’re crazy. 

sitting at your open window, staring at the moon, and barely getting any sleep.

but they don’t understand. 

no one had ever listened to you as attentively as he did. no one cared to listen to you talk about your hopes and dreams, how your day went, what colour you found the prettiest (if you were wondering, it is green, renjun’s wings are a pretty light green), what pastries you enjoyed stuffing yourself with, your comfort book, no one. 

he’s all you have.

so like a hopeless, smitten, lovestruck girl, you sat quietly with the cold breeze blowing into your room at night from your window.

weeks go by, and you’re still waiting for his visits. at night, when the stars light up your room, you sit by yourself, talking to the moon. trying to get to him, in hopes he’s on the other side, talking to you too.

you’re feeling like you’re famous, the talk of the town.

your bright spirit you had before was gone, and you kept your head down at day. 

everyone was talking about how you got dumped, or got your heart broken by the boy you were head-over-heels for. they say you’ve gone mad; yeah, you’ve gone mad.

but they don’t know what you know.

‘cause when the sun goes down, someone’s talking back.

around 3 months later, you’re sitting at your desk, finishing work. you look up, and suddenly, the moon starts lighting up brighter, flashing.

you’re in disbelief, did the moon just, blink at you? 

then, a shadow of a figure with wings appears, and waves at you. 

that familiar figure, renjun.

was this renjun reassuring you that he hasn’t abandoned you? 

this ignites that spark inside of you. not thinking rationally anymore, no longer somber, you instantly get up to scramble to the window to sit down.

while you’re speaking, the moon blinks, as if he’s talking back.

so again, at night, when the stars light up your room, you sit by yourself, talking to the moon. trying to get to him.

until that stops too. 

the moon stops responding to you. no signs of anyone, and the moon looks more dull than before.

you wonder to yourself, “am i a fool, who sits alone, talking to the moon?”

you still stay up to mindlessly talk to the moon, in hopes he’s on the other side, talking to you too. does he ever hear you calling? ‘cause every night, you’re talking to the moon, still trying to get to him.

then, one night, you fall asleep again. 

trying to study for your project, your mythology textbook is still open. you don’t mean to, but school has been tiring, and you couldn’t help it.

but you wake up to the familiar tingling sensation on your arm. you open your eyes, and see renjun’s gaze on you. head rested on his hands, with his arms on your desk.

is this a dream? you feel faint. is this really happening? was he really in front of you? 

your eyes roam renjun’s face desperately. his eyes, his hair, his moles, his nose, those kissable lips. all the same like you remember.

“you’re awake.” he says. “i’m sorry i was gone for so long, i had some complications and was unable to travel.” 

renjun smiles, apologetically.

“i’ve missed you, sweetheart. how have you been?” 

your eyes zoom in on his lips.

“kiss me.” you blurt out before you can stop yourself. renjun seems surprised as well.

“sweetheart, are you sure you want th–” 

before he even finishes, you crash your lips onto his. 

they’re as soft as you imagined. his lips taste sweet, like the nectar of the beautiful flowers in your school gardens. 

he deepens the kiss, and you let him. feeling over the moon.

when the both of you pull away, things go back to normal. renjun is diligently listening to your rambles, and you’ve never felt better.

when the moon starts to disappear, you realize it’s time for him to go.

“you should probably go home.” you said, sadly. “you said you had some important things to do, so i must not distract you from your work.”

“oh sweetheart,” renjun chuckles. “but i’m already home.” he says with a eerie smile that makes you stop.

“pardon me?” you reply, slightly terrified by his change in tone.

“you heard me little human,” he licks his lips menacingly. you flinch when his hand travels up to your face to caress your cheek. “i’m already home.”

tears are flooding your eyes as renjun’s fingers grow longer into claws and he wraps them around your airway.

“you humans think you can just come into our homes and destroy our land, families, our lives.” he growls. “YOU TOOK EVERYTHING AWAY FROM US.” 

renjun screams, his hand forcing you to look at him. his eyes are no longer the soft doe ones you knew, filled with rage and hurt as he poured his emotions onto you.

“now we’re taking it back.” he snickers. “this stupid building you built upon our old home, it will be gone.”

his hand squeezes tighter on your neck and you’re quickly losing consciousness.

“and we’re starting with you.” renjun taunts, his normal hand coming up to your face to caress it again. 

“it’s a shame thought,” he shrugs, seemingly defeated. “i kinda liked you.”

he drops you on the floor, and you’re gone. 

tears still flowing out of your eyes as renjun walks out of your room.

“unlike the fairies, faeries are considered to be evil, horrid, and mischievous creatures. the faeries are evil, unfriendly, and cruel spirits. the faeries are a bit dangerous also. humanity destroying most of their lives, they seek revenge to take back what once was theirs.”

©mrkcore, 2021.

[imerdwarf]

It's A Bad Day, Not A Bad Life

Requested by anonymous: Hello my love! Could I send in a request please where Bucky and reader are just friends and he's like her big brother, she has a breakdown one day and just crumbles in his arms? Preferably with beefy!Bucky because I love how soft you write him tyvm 🥰

Pairing: Beefy!Bucky X Reader

Warnings: Slight angst, bad days, soft cuddles, soft beefy Bucky 🥰

Word Count: 1,117

Author's Notes: Thank you very much dear anon for this sweet and soft request! I hope you like it and let me know if you want me to change anything 💜 thank you so much my dear friend @jobean12-blog for the wonderful ideas and for reading this over for me 🥺💜

It's just a bad day, not a bad life. That's what everyone kept telling you today, what they failed to understand however, it really did feel that way. It just seemed like it was one of those days where everyone had decided to pick you to yell at and call you endless names the entire day. Everything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong, today of all days.

It started with work. You were running a good five minutes late but you did apologise when you arrived at the office, your boss immediately summoned you to his office where he proceeded to lecture you about the importance of time keeping.

Then, when were allowed to sit down at your desk, your computer was broken and you had to do everything by hand. Ron, the coffee man spilled hot black coffee over the files on your desk which prompted another lecture from your boss about clumsiness. Of course, it was all your fault because it always was according to your boss.

If work wasn't good enough, you and your best friend Wanda ended up getting into a huge fight over something stupid during lunch. She wanted you attend her engagement party but she had picked a date and time you just knew your boss wouldn't give you the day off for. You had to decline, which angered her and then started to call you the most careless friend in the world. That was like a stab wound straight to your heart.

"It's a bad day, not a bad life. Don't cry dear." A dear old woman said to you as she passed you in the street. You nodded and walked back to your workplace with your head hung low and furiously wiped the tears away.

It was just so difficult to keep the escaping tears at bay during the rest of your workday. Nobody checked on you to see if you were okay and you honestly couldn't tell if it was for the best.

Those three simple words, 'are you okay', can break down a dam in seconds and you certainly didn't wish to start crying your heart out in the middle of the office.

Just before the day was over, the storm clouds rolled in and heavy rain drenched the city. It was just your luck that today of all days you had forgotten to bring a jacket.

It was just perfect. Now all you needed really was a nice big bird to fly over and drop a shit on your head.

Work was finally over, and you wasted no time in packing up your things and heading out of the day without saying goodbye to any of your colleagues or boss. You just wanted to go home, you needed to go home.

You knew at home your best friend, your defacto brother would be there waiting for you with a hot pan of soup heating up on the stove and making sure the apartment was nice and warm for your return. Bucky always took care of you, he was simply someone you couldn't live without.

The walk to the apartment seemed to happen in slow motion despite only being a couple of blocks away. The heavy downpour soaked through your clothes which made them stick uncomfortably to your skin. The rain puddles splashed up against pants with each step you took, soaking your soaks and making little lakes in the bottom of your shoes.

Bucky had just finished the cleaning before he warmed some hot soup up on the stove. The rain was pounding down by now and he was concerned for you because your jacket was still hung up on the coatrack by the door.

He made sure the apartment would be nice and toasty before you got in and he turned your electric blanket on.

His senses picked up your thundering footsteps on the stairs. The nearer you got, the louder they became that they became almost deafening.

You turned the doorknob and pushed it a bit too hard that the doorknob put a hole through the wall.

"Hi." Bucky chuckled at the wall, pulling the door away and inspecting the damage. "I'll repair it, again." He joked with a smile which fell off his lips when he saw the state of you.

Your shoulders were slumped and your clothes weighed heavily on your body as you slipped your two ponds off your feet, water seeping out from the bottom and puddling on the wooden floors.

"Sorry." You whimpered before bringing your hands over your face and crying into the palm of your hands. A warm body engulfed you from the front, Bucky pulled your hands away and you wrapped them around his waist instead. Your wet clothes soaking his, but neither of you cared about it right now.

Bucky's large hands rubbed your back and you cried into his chest. He kissed your wet hair and sighed.

"It's okay doll. I'm here, I'm always here for you." Your grip tightened and so did his.

You don't know how long the two of you stood like that for. It could have been for a few minutes, a few hours, but when you were in his arms it seemed like time had stopped altogether.

You pulled away with a sniff and a wet chuckle when you looked at the state of his shirt.

"I'm sorry about your shirt," your voice came out gravely from all the crying you did. Though it didn't solve anything, it still felt good to have that weight lifted. "I just had the worst day and my boss yelled at me twice and I just- I'm sorry."

"Doll," Bucky turned serious and grabbed your hands, "stop apologising. It's not your fault, you don't have to apologise for everything. It's almost as if you're apologising for being human. Your boss is a jerk and you wait until I see him..." Bucky balled his left hand into a fist and shook it slightly, "that guy isn't gonna have any teeth and he'll be apologising to you." You laughed and shook your head, thankful to have such an amazing friend and brother figure.

"Thank you Bucky, you're the best."

"Of course I am. If there was an award for the best roommate-slash-friend-slash-brother, I'd win it."

You agreed, "Of course you would!" You gave him a smile and your world seemed to be a better place.

"There's that smile I like to see. Listen, go and take a hot shower, throw on some dry clothes, we'll eat and watch movies in your bed with your electric blanket, sounds good?"

"Sounds amazing!" You grinned and started to walk into your bedroom to grab some dry clothes when he called your name, "yeah?"

"What's your boss's number?"

[meowzfordayz]

Can I please request an angst/fluff one shot with Sanemi in which reader is a hashira and they don't usually get along until one day news comes that she's been injured during her mission and for a long time she refuses to be seen and he finally finds out it's bc she's covered in scars and decides to help her, not understanding that scars on a woman don't mean strong but mean weak/ugly instead; he has always lowkey liked her and it's time for him to show that? Tysm, sorry if it's too long!

Hii. ☺️ Your request is wonderful. I wish I could write it. I even brainstormed song inspo for it. Unfortunately, it's... too grand (??) for me atm, so I can't commit to that rn. 😆 If, in the future, you feel like rerequesting it, then I'd be honored to actually and completely fulfill it.

*Hii anon! Idk whether you’ll see this update, but tyvm for your kind reply to my declining your request. 😭 I’m highkey a ppl-pleaser-softie, so your patience and understanding lowkey made me tear up (in a good way!). 🥺 Imma leave your Ask in my Inbox so I can ~someday answer it w/ your fulfilled request. 😌 #sending hugs 🤍

[malecftw]

The flayed try to get to you but Billy saves you.

SPOILERS FOR SEASON 3 AHEAD! DON’T READ IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE FINALE

A/N: So I’m putting a spin on the scene in the last ep. Just imagine that the flayed didn’t all turn into jelly monsters and are still humans tyvm

this is the first fic I actually choked up on whilst writing oh my Billy Hargrove really did me dirty

Word count: 1803

Warnings: angst, cursing, mentions of injury and blood, major character death, spoilers for season 3

Masterlist.

Requests are open!

Taglist: @editsbyjenny

His whole stance was different. Your boyfriend always was rather arrogant and unafraid to show it, but this was different. He looked... Evil. The glass cracked beneath your shoes as you stood on the first floor of the mall, looking down at Billy and the flayed as he took in his surroundings looking for El. He walked confidently between the people he’d been able to turn into the mind flayer’s minions. It was clear he was their leader, they all stood inhumanely still and waited for his signal.

Your lungs started to burn as you subconsciously held your breath, careful not to make a sound since you were in plain sight if anyone decided to look up. You knew it was a bad idea, coming out of your previous hiding place behind one of the benches yet you felt compelled to stand up. You’d heard how Billy was acting and what was happening but you hadn’t seen it yet for yourself. A part of you hoped it was all a stupid lie made up by some bored teenagers, but that hope was quickly shattered when your eyes found him.

All of a sudden a piercing scream filled the mall and a big dark shadow was visible on the glass ceiling. As you looked up, however, you forgot that you were out for the entire mall to see. In response to the echoing scream of their creator, the flayed and Billy looked up as well and in turn noticed you.

‘Y/n get down!’ Steve whispered urgently, noticing what had happened before you did, your mind consumed by the thing above you. You looked at him questioningly and he shot you a terrified look but it was too late. You followed his gaze down and looked straight into the eyes of Billy. His face showed no sign of happiness or any other emotion. It’s like he wasn’t even there, disconnected from it all. He nodded and the flayed sprung into motion. There were at least 50 of them and they were all coming for you. You turned your body towards Steve, Dustin, and Robin who were the ones who previously shared your hiding spot. They all noticed your shift in behavior which could only mean one thing. You’d been found out. ‘Run.’ You say, oddly calm. Calm enough for everyone to freak out and make a beeline to the exit. As they took off, you started running in the other direction. If you knew Billy as well as you thought you did, you knew even his possessed side would prefer to get to you rather than anyone else. 

You knew that Billy was a fighter. If you were gone, he had no reason to put up a fight anymore against the mind flayer. He’d just give in and let it wash over his entire being. Erasing any trace of his former human self. If you were going to die, you sure as hell would do anything in your power to help your friends in any way, shape or form which is why you opted to distract the flayed from them and focus solely on you. However, you drew the short straw with the direction you were going in as you were soon stranded between two escalators. Both of which had people running on, trying to deliver you to the mind flayer. 

Everything seemed to slow down as you locked eyes with Billy again. He watched as the crow was nearing you, no intention of stopping them whatsoever and you felt broken. You swore to yourself you would die for him but you’d never thought he’d deliver you to death himself.

‘Billy please.’ You shouted, your soul in agony as you were being grabbed by several people. Their nails pressed down on your skin so hard they broke the surface, drawing blood to which they smiled evilly. Billy blinked and ignored your please before turning his back to you, acknowledging the monster behind him that had fallen down from the broken ceiling. 

Your knees were being scratched as you were dragged down on the escalator, the flayed not budging as you put up a fight, struggling to break free. It probably took them all of 2 minutes to get you down but to you, it seemed to go by in a matter of seconds. Billy put up his hand, signaling for them to halt so he could take you from them but they continued marching towards the monster, completely ignoring his command. This startled him, he created them, how were they not following his orders? What he didn’t realize, was that they only took his orders when the ugly, slimy mess that took over their bodies wasn’t around. The creature was superior to his commands and it was their one true master, this, Billy found out soon enough as he watched them take the love of his life to get flayed as well.

‘Billy!’ You shouted once again, this time louder and more pained than before as the mind flayer hooked its claws into your sides, breaking through the barrier of your skin.

Your cries for help soften when you hear the heavy steps of his boots crunching the glass beneath his feet as he walks over to you. He grimaces when he hears you yell out in pain as the mind flayer draws back its claws from your body, leaving you bleeding on the floor with several gaping wounds. An eerie silence takes over the mall and for a second you’re back in your bedroom with Billy. 

You’re trying to study for a calculus test but he can’t stop messing with you. Jokingly pulling your ponytail, leaving kisses all over your exposed shoulders, completely achieving his goal of getting your attention. You roll your eyes and briskly turn around, pushing him onto his back and his eyes widen in surprise not having seen your action coming. ‘For the love of god, Billy Hargrove let me study.’ He laughs and cups your cheek, pulling you closer towards him until your foreheads touch. ‘You’re so smart already if you get any smarter I’m going to be marrying Einstein 2.0 one day.’ At that you gasp and pull back, slapping his chest. ‘Are you proposing Hargrove?’ You say jokingly, knowing he would not propose to you on your bed on a random Tuesday evening with no preparation whatsoever. He smirks as he eyes you up and down before sitting up, wrapping his arms around your waist, allowing you to fall into him. He supports your body and pinches your waist as he kisses you deeply, passion seeping into every fiber of his soul. ‘All in good time firecracker. All in good time.’

In a split second, you’re back on the cold floor of the Starcourt Mall. Billy has crouched down in front of you, observing you carefully as the monster behind him is stood still like a statue. ‘You’re okay little firecracker. You’ll always be okay.’ He says oddly comforting, not using the same cold tone as he had been the last couple of days. His hand reaches out and touches the corner of your bottom lip tenderly, wiping away some blood. You lean into his touch but the connection abruptly gets broken when Billy pulls away and turns around, now facing the monster again. He walks up to the mind flayer, no hesitation or fear evident in his steps before you hear him say loud and clearly: ‘Not her.’  After that, it felt like you were watching a dream.

The mind flayer acted immediately, not giving Billy a chance. Two tentacles pierced his sides, just like they did with you previously only with Billy they seemed to go deeper. The mind flayer wasn’t planning on turning Billy like he did with you. It only had one goal. To kill. You screamed, trying to get up but your severely injured body prevented you from doing so. You saw all life drain from Billy as another tentacle pierced his chest, completely ending all chances of survival.

You don’t know if you screamed, you don’t know if your voice gave out, your eyes and mind were on Billy and Billy only. You didn’t care that you were left defenseless as Billy’s body hit the glass-covered ground, back towards you as he fell on his side. You didn’t care that the mind flare could take you then and there if it wanted to. But it didn’t. The only reason it was even interested in you in the first place was to be able to take over Billy completely. But that was no longer an issue. The mind flayer had grown powerful enough to go after El without another addition to his army so it did.

The flayed ignored you as they walked passed you, following the mind flayer out of the mall in search of El. You knew you had to warn them, you knew it was the right thing to do, but your eyes were glued to his body. You cried loudly as you dragged your body over to him, glass cutting your arms yet you didn’t feel a single thing. All pain was overshadowed by the gaping hole in your chest, resembling the one that Billy had, only yours was internally.

You turned him over, and he groaned, his breathing pained as he tried to focus on you. ‘Billy look at me you’re gonna be fine okay.’ You took in the sight before you. He was drenched in his own blood and a puddle was starting to form. It was clear he wasn’t going to be fine and you were lying to his face. You let out a cry of despair when you saw his smile. Not a happy smile, just a it’s-gonna-be-okay-smile. He wasn’t okay physically, but he was finally free from that monster. He’d done horrible things. He knew he didn’t deserve the ending he was given. He deserved far worse. But here he was, he was going to die in the arms of the only person that mattered. And that was far more than he could have ever asked for. He struggled but managed to bring a hand up to the back of your neck, gingerly pulling you closer. He pressed a long kiss to your forehead, the feeling of your tears falling onto his neck paining him. His eyes filled with tears, knowing it was time for the goodbye he was never going to be ready for. As he broke the kiss, you lifted your head, looking at his face as you hovered over him. ‘Thank you for loving me firecracker.’ He whispered. The light in his eyes started to dull only seconds after he finished his last sentence.

Billy Hargrove didn’t die a villain. He also didn’t die a hero.

Billy Hargrove died loved.

[curanonemu]

ateez as angels

tags/warnings: slight angst, very slight violence in jongho's part (not against reader i promise), very sappy things, second-person reader, lowercase, DISCLAIMER: im sorry for making some things up jdskgfk idk angel lore.

word count: 2,733

notes: big thanks to @stray-lids for listening to me cry about this and supporting me ♡ they are spectacular go give them love tyvm now on to the post

-

hongjoong - ✧ dominion ✧ 

dominions preside over the lesser angels, regulate their duties and ensure that God's wishes are carried out.

it’s hard watching over angels, but hongjoong likes it. it may be tiring, it may just be a routine by now, but it feels equally rewarding at the end of the day, when everything is peaceful, in heaven and on earth, nothing out of place.

after all, he could have it worse; he could be a power or a guardian, and those seem much more tired than he ever feels.

being a dominion, he knows all angels, even if they’re not under his command. it’s necessary to know them all, each one of them is important to heaven, and to him as a result.

that’s exactly why it comes as a surprise when he sees one that he’s never met before. he’s on earth for once, and he’s not sure he even knows which one of his comrades you serve.

he’s about to float right over to the stranger, ask questions when he stops in his tracks.

you’re a human.

he feels the telltale rush of blood as his face warms, and he scolds himself for making such a mistake.

are you really so heavenly as to cause such a misunderstanding?

he shakes his head, looks again. it’s still the same.

you still look like the prettiest, most ethereal being he’s laid his eyes on in all the time he’s spent on earth and in heaven. you still are the prettiest.

and hongjoong feels very human when he looks at you.

he wonders if you’d feel the same, were you able to look at him. maybe not. you probably won’t be surprised; hongjoong is an angel, of course. but maybe he won’t be the prettiest being you’ve laid your eyes on.

after all, you must be in possession of a mirror. surely?

(other members under the cut!)

seonghwa - ✧ principality/ruler ✧

principalities rule over other angels and send them on missions in order to accomplish their protection role.

seonghwa has a problem.

he assigns his subordinates to take care of people. entire groups, that is.

he doesn't have to think about individuals.

he shouldn't have to.

but he does. there's one that he can't stop thinking about.

you.

you are so annoying.

he's not a guardian angel, he's a ruler, for heaven's sake. he's not your personal wingman.

(no, that's not how the word is used, is it? he wants to be more than your wingman.)

there's exasperation within him. exasperation at his desperate antics. he's above them, yet he continues to indulge in such things.

desperation. another emotion warring within him, which largely makes up his thoughts. he wants you a lot. so much that he's starting to experience other feelings, like those of nervousness, fear, and he pines.

you're making him feel human emotions, act like a little guardian instead of the ruler he is, and he is. not. happy.

he is more than happy, being the fool he is.

he's convinced you are more powerful than all of his brethren combined. isn't that the only reason why he is so smitten with you? how you have him wrapped around your finger like it's nothing, living your life like you don't know a thing about the predicament seonghwa is in. well, it's precisely because you don't.

that's why, when he needs to assign angels to protecting your town, he stations them all as far away from you as he can.

and then, happily neglecting all his obligations, duties, his very nature, he skips off to protect you himself.

and if he somehow gets to interact with you, that'll be the feather on top.

that is his goal now, come what may.

yunho - ✧ virtue ✧

virtues bring God’s blessings to earth in the form of miracles, and are associated with acts of heroism and bring courage when needed.

it hurts to watch people when they're sad. yunho doesn't like seeing crying children, crying parents, young or old. he's especially not enjoying seeing you cry.

just a while back, you'd asked for courage and now you're crying, regretting standing up to people who were - in yunho's eyes - undeserving of the importance you give them, with the pain they brought you.

"do you really care that much?" he wants to ask, but it's obvious that you do, and he can't ask you.

he'd give anything to talk to you, tell you that it's not worth it, you are so much better than the things holding you down. all he can do is watch you cry.

well. there is something he can do.

he wills a flower into existence, petals soft against his palm where the bud rests, and yunho looks back at you.

you can't see him, but you'll be able to see the flower. that's enough for him.

the window to your room is open, and he tosses the flower inside, the breeze carrying it to you.

you lift your head, looking confused before noticing the flower.

you turn it around curiously, frowning. and then you smile through your tears, and the flower's beauty pales in comparison.

you get up slowly, then go out of your room, leaving the door ajar. with the flower in your hand, you're most likely looking for some water to preserve it.

from his place outside the window, yunho allows himself to smile too.

he hopes the message reaches you.

gladiolus.

yeosang - ✧ virtue ✧

virtues bring God’s blessings to earth in the form of miracles, and are associated with acts of heroism and bring courage when needed.

you're finally done for the day, which had been so hectic, and you're exhausted and irritated and feeling absolutely dead, wishing you were for real too.

'please, just get me away from here now,' you think, hoping that any deity of the world is kind enough to listen to you.

yeosang's the one that hears you, and that's when he first meets you. he manifests himself a little ways behind you, frowning as he wonders if you're serious. he hears such prayers on the daily, and half of them are tossed out casually. he's never acted upon any, though. his job is to give people hope, not tear it away from them.

he watches you for a minute, then decides to let himself look into your soul.

it's. unexpected.

under the cover of weariness, it's bright, insanely so. it leaves him breathless for a moment; a feeling he's not familiar with because he's never needed to breathe, born an angel. but the pressure is there, a feeling welling up inside him which makes him take in much needed air.

it's the first time that he's seen such a bright soul. it makes the grace of some of his brothers pale in comparison.

you're just tired. he doesn't like that.

for now, you may want to go. but you definitely don't need to.

and yeosang will do all that he can to make sure that you stay where you are, on earth. if that means stepping out of bounds with his duties, that's fine. he will do his best to drive away the forces that plague you. it's in everyone's interest. your soul is unique, a work of beauty and he doesn't wish to see it tainted. it's only natural. he's the embodiment of miracles, your soul is a reflection.

heaven doesn't need you yet, nor does heaven need you broken beyond repair.

that's why he needs to protect you.

that's all there is to it.

san - ✧ archangel ✧

archangels are the chief angels, guardians of people and all things physical.

san is an archangel, for crying out loud. he's strong, majestic, fierce and all things big. his wings are beautiful, sharp yet soft feathers, and as him. he's not... a butterfly. he's not a tiny creature, smaller than his own little finger and wildly colourful.

but there he is, having resorted to pretending to be a butterfly of all things, just so he can solve his latest problem.

the first time had been a necessity, and that was what led to the whole mess.

he loves flowers, and he loves how many varieties earth has. it's a habit of his to turn into bugs and enjoy said gifts of nature. (it scares that baby angel mingi as well, which san finds insanely amusing despite adoring the other.)

except, the one time he turned into a butterfly and sat atop a pretty flower, you'd passed by, stopped, backtracked and stood in front of him, eyes wide.

he doesn't know if you like butterflies or not, if you're scared of them or not. your expression didn't give away any of that. it wasn't even the emotion behind your eyes that he was drawn to. it were your eyes themselves that reeled him in, left him reeling.

they're so beautiful, magnetic and all things gorgeous, and he wants you to look at him. you can't see his true form, but you can see him like this, when he's a tiny, harmless creature, and not the intimidating archangel he's meant to be. he never really understood the idea behind some of the other angels' posturing, who, like him, had once been humans that ascended to heaven. now, more than ever, he doesn't see the point of it.

he's strong, yes.

but his interest in you is stronger.

he shouldn't have to try and be a big, bad angel (not that angels are meant to be bad) and go against his heart's desires.

so he doesn't.

he lets himself enjoy your presence, flitting about you often in the hopes that you'd see him.

but you never do.

whenever he's trying to get your attention, there are other matters that you need to attend to.

it's all so well-timed he's starting to think someone's messing with him on purpose.

last month? he'd almost caught your attention before someone asked you a question, and then you just up and left without so much as a glance in his direction. last week? pretty much another distraction that hindered him from being noticed.

he doesn't like this at all.

is someone pranking him? it could be another angel. san's never been unsuccessful for this long.

should he resort to serious measures?

what was it, go big or go home?

that's it. if being a butterfly doesn't work, then he's going to be a BETTERFLY.

he's going to be the best of the best, and he'll be big, not a teeny tiny innocent pretty creature. san's going to get your attensan one way or another.

soon.

mingi - ✧ guardian angel ✧

guardian angels stay with their human throughout life, dedicated to helping them navigate and make the most of the journey.

mingi likes helping people. fellow angels, humans, and the odd demon, he's helped them all. the last was unintentional, but he doesn't regret it. the demon turned out to be nice, anyway, so mingi did nothing wrong by helping him.

but sometimes, he feels like no matter how much help he gives, it's not enough.

presently, it's not in the negative sense wherein he feels he's not enough to aid them.

what he feels right now is just. he wants to help you.

he wants to do all that he can for you, because he adores you.

you're the charge to his guardian angel; you're his charge. that means he's allowed to help you as much as he can, right?

it's normal for random notes to flutter down to the ground next to your feet, inspiration quotes calling out; it's normal for you to stumble upon a reminder in your phone to drink water. you think your friend left it. that's fine, he can be a nameless friend too. you don't need to know.

when you're sick, he'll nurse you back to health all night, make sure no wayward germs try to attack you. a 'miracle,' you call it when you wake up refreshed the next day. he's no virtue, he's no miracle-maker, but your existence itself is a miracle and he's the one who's blessed.

it reminds him of his human life, his inclination to fawn over his loved ones and living off of their appreciation.

the gratitude makes him thrive. being a guardian angel makes him happy.

he's happier being your guardian angel.

he just has one more wish, and that's to let you know just how much he loves you.

he's not sure how, but one day he'll tell you. till then, he'll stay with you like this.

wooyoung - ✧ guardian angel ✧

guardian angels stay with their human throughout life, dedicated to helping them navigate and make the most of the journey.

wooyoung doesn't like his charge.

you're clumsy, forgetful and always getting into all sorts of situations that he has to wrestle with in order to keep you intact and alive.

you get into trouble, one problem after another and he has to push it all out of your path as you go on with your life, blissfully unaware of all that he's doing.

he dislikes it.

he dislikes you.

he dislikes how he likes doing things for you which he would never want to, were it not his duty. he dislikes how you give him a purpose, how you're much better than the other human he was stuck babysitting while the human drove himself right off the virtuous path and into satan's lap.

and then at times, he dislikes how lovely you look and how whipped he is for you.

he's meant to be your guardian angel, not a loverboy stalker. but you make it so hard, because you smile at the small things - flowers, sunlight, whatever - and your laughter is like light itself; searing and precious and everything wooyoung cherishes.

you're so cute, he hates your little habits and he hates how much he loves them too. his days are full of you, your smile, your everything.

nights are spent hoping you're not plagued by demons, fighting them off if one tries to creep into your dreams.

he's tired of how you're taking over his mind, how his job to guide you has become a pastime, his favourite thing?

he's tired, and he wants to do something.

he needs to do something.

but should he? can he? can he really throw away everything just because he's found a human that make emotions well up in him?

can he disregard heaven, go against it all for a mortal who doesn't even know he exists?

the scariest thing is, as days go by and he watches you, the answer he gives himself is increasingly close to yes.

jongho - ✧ power/authority ✧

powers are the most loyal of all angels; warrior angels who fight demons.

jongho was called down to fight demons that had invested a town and were leeching off of people’s spirits.

he’s busy doing that, killing demons left and right with two fellow Powers, when one of them shouts something and gestures behind jongho. he turns around, fully intending to break a demon in half, but is faced with a human instead.

you.

your hand half-raised, as if you planned to touch him. that wouldn’t have ended well.

“are you alright?” is what he hears, and he stills, not sure how to respond. he allows himself a second to glance back at his comrades, who have almost finished off the demons in the area.

his skin itches, the feathers on his wings ruffling. everything in him is screaming to break skulls, but if he leaves there’s no knowing what the human will do. jongho can’t sense any dark aura from you, so you’re not a demon. but you still unsettle him.

you shouldn’t be able to see him. he’s an angel, just as powerful as the rest of them despite not being born as one. he’s probably more powerful than most of his brethren.

“is there a reason why you’re punching air?”

you think he’s punching the air, and not creatures from hell out to get humans. beautiful. this is what he gets for his hard work.

he’s about to open his mouth and reply, affronted, when the temperature suddenly drops and his feathers tremble. then he’s acting on instinct and slashing at the demon behind you.

face pressed close to his neck, you can’t see anything, and ideally you should be able to, but it’s as if there’s a soft curtain over your eyes preventing you from doing so. a moment later, he lets go and places you back on your feet, and you’re staring at him, wide-eyed.

eyes flitting away, he looks at a point behind you, and you turn around suspiciously. there’s nothing there, it’s all spotless, but you can’t help but feel that something had been there.

he needs to get away, you’ve not given any indication of seeing the other two powers, which means there’s probably something up with him. and he needs to fix it. you’re the first human who’s been able to see him, and he doesn’t even know if you have anything up your sleeve.

“it was a fly,” he makes an excuse, and pulls away as quickly as he can.

he absolutely ignores your look of… something and walks to the other side of a building, before teleporting back to heaven.

absently, he allows the thought to enter his mind.

it’d felt nice holding you.

-

-

well that was my first attempt at writing ateez! i hope you guys liked it ♡♡ thanks for reading!!!!!! ♡♡♡♡

[chase-the-windandtouch-the-sky]

Lindseyyyy is it too late for this? lol I wish you would write a fic where it took so long for the gang to figure out Clarke wasn’t Clarke, that when she did return(maybe saved herself somehow—I’m such a sucker for your fics when C is her own friggin’ savior tyvm 🙌🏽 lol) major angst ensues. Sorry, I’m feeling lots today😬😂☺️

Looooooove! No, no! Not too late - I’m having way too much fun with it!

Clarke felt everything.

She felt the moment her breathing slowed, when her brain started toshut off. It was excruciating and terrifying, and something she wouldn’t wishon anyone. Then, she had to watch her body be used for horrifying acts, againsther own people, against her family,without them realizing it.

Perhaps that’s where they were. Where she stood with everyone. Theycouldn’t put it together, they couldn’t separate who she was from whatthey did. There were days when she wanted to give up – to succumb to the hellthat became her mind as she was locked away. But then… then she thought of whatshe would say to them if she had another chance. How she would approach itdifferently, how she would lean forward with herself, no longer keeping peopleat arm’s lengths.

So when she can see the horror in their expressions, Josephine still incontrol, Clarke knows she has to do something. She has to save them, even if itmeans saving them from herself.

“No,” Bellamy breathes, taking a step away from her. “I-It can’t be.”

Josephine tilts her head in a murderous way. “Is it really so hard tobelieve, Bellamy? That she’s gone?”

“You’re lying!” Murphy spits to Bellamy’s left. “Clarke is one toughbitch who wouldn’t be taken out by someone as pathetic as you. You can’t kill—”

“A cockroach?” Josephine asks. “Sure you can, John. You just have to paralyzeit.”

Bellamy’s expression is one that Clarke wishes she never had to see.The heartbreak. The despair. She’s seen it before – even worse, she’s seen itdirected at her – and all she wantsto do is cry out. But she knows he can’t hear her, he can’t see her. He can’tsee how she’s fought to get back to him, to back to all of them, only to be behindglass. It’s as if she is back atMount Weather, but she never escaped.

“No,” Bellamy swallows. “No, Clarke can’t be—”

“Dead?” Josephine taunts. “I assure you, she can. Because this is allmine.” Josephine gestures to Clarke’s body. “It was kinda a drag at first, butI learned that I can get over all the baggage if people listen to me all thetime. I mean, you guys bitch so much,I don’t know how she hasn’t just murdered you all yet because it makes life somuch easier, but you know. C’est la vie.”

“Josie,” Russell warns behind her. “Don’t be cruel.”

“I’m right and I should say it.” Josephine says, gesturing at them. “They’vebeen super annoying.”

Bellamy still looks at her as if she’s shot him. His eyes are widerthan Clarke has ever seen them and they glisten.

“Actually, I think turning them into – what do you call it,nightbloods? Super catchy, not going to lie,” Josephine says. “And then we justbreed them so we can bring all the primes back. And just keep them so we canhave endless nightbloods and we’ll live forever. It’s the perfect plan.”

“Josie!” Russell exclaims, eyes wide. “That is sociopathic. We can’t—”

“Actually, I wasn’t asking.” Josephine says, nodding to guards behindhim.

“Hail Josephine, hallowed be her name.” People say behind her, theireyes glazed over.

“Josephine!” Russell cries when people restrain him. “This is not whatwe agreed on!”

“No, but as usual, I need to make the decisions because yours are soweak.” Josephine sighs. “Tie them up. We’ll start the procedures immediately.”

Clarke watches in horror. She wants to scream. So wants to reach out tothem. “I bore it so they didn’t have to. I killed so they didn’t have to. I did everything so they didn’t have to!”Clarke screams. She puts her hands on her head. “I didn’t want to do it. I didn’twant to do it!”

Clarke takes her hands off her head. “I just want to protect them. It’swhat I’ve always wanted.”

Josephine flicks her fingers. “Bring them—”

She stops.

Everyone stares at her as she looks around. “My lady, everythingalright?” Someone asks.

“I—”

Clarke knows.

She never wanted more blood on her hands. She never wanted to killanother person. But they are too important. They are all so important.

Clarke will not apologize forsaving those she loves.

Everything comes back in pieces. It’s like someone turned a television,but the signal isn’t fully available. It’s fuzzy and in pieces, and at onepoint she feels something sharp against her back. It feels like she’s drowning –her head hurts, her body hurts, and she can’t breathe.

When she comes to, people are surrounding her. She’s vaguely aware ofsomething wet on the back of her neck. Her head lolls on the ground and someoneprops her up. “Josephine!” They cry. “Josephine, please!”

Clarke’s eyes flit open, her body trembling.

“Josephine!”

“Try again.” Clarke manages, her cheeks dragging across the ground asshe tries to stabilize herself.

People recoil.

Clarke brings her hands in front of her, hoisting herself on herforearms. “Clarke?”

Clarke moves her head to the noise, seeing Bellamy’s face yards away. “Bellamy?”She breathes, her lower lip trembling.

His face breaks into something mixed between relief and sorrow. “Oh mygod, Clarke.”

There’s a few clicks and Clarke looks up to see weapons pointed at herheads. “What have you done with Josephine?” Someone asks. A piece of metal ispressed against her head. “What have you done?”

Clarke brings her hands to the back of her neck. Her fingers are wetwith blood. Open flesh.

Clarke rummages around until her hands scramble against the Mind Drivethat’s on the ground next to her. She grabs it, taking it in her fingers. “Takenback what’s mine.”

No one stops her when she stands to her feet.

Clarke steadies.

She stands in the center of everyone, still. Sure. Her family is off tothe left, Russell and his on the right. The people of Sanctum filling inbetween.

She stands.

Mind Drive in hand, Clarke looks at her family. She sees the pain ontheir faces. Losing her and regaining her all at once.

Her body doesn’t quite feel like her own. It’s foreign and strange.Like putting on an outfit that you haven’t tried in years. It doesn’t fitright.

The guards blink and stare at Clarke. “W-What?” Someone asks, staringwhere Clarke is. “H-How are you… they are gods. They are immortal!”

Clarke shakes her head. “No.” She responds. “They are humans, just likeyou. Just like us. The only difference is, we try to save each other.” Shemoves and places a hand on one of the Sanctums’ guards faces. “The differenceis, we don’t take each other’s lives under the guise of faith.”

***

It ends like it started.

Quietly.

Except instead of being paralyzed, Clarke is surrounded by a bubble.People who are afraid to talk to her, people who are afraid that she isn’t her.Clarke learns to ignore it, settling back into the loneliness she was used to.

“What are you planning on doing with Russell?” Clarke asks, barginginto a meeting where everyone is circled. A few people jump. Someone even movesaway from her. Clarke would be lying to herself if she said it didn’t hurt, soshe looks to the ground.

“Why?” Emori asks suspiciously.

“I’d like to speak with him.” Clarke answers. “And I’d like to takeresponsibility of him.”

“Sounds like something Josephine would say—”

“I wish you would treat me like I hurt you on purpose.” Clarke states,her eyes watering. “I never wanted to hurt you.” She lets out a hollow laugh. “Doesn’tmatter, though, right? All I do is apologize and then do it again.”

Raven recoils. “Clarke, I—” she clears her throat. “This is different,someone stole a body, you didn’t have a choice—”

“And I did before? It was the only choice.” Clarke asks, shutting her eyes. She hears Bellamy’s intake of breath. “I was told youguys or Mount Weather, I chose you guys. I was told Grounders or you guys, Ichose you guys. I was told you guys or the City of Light and I chose you guys.Enough.”

Clarke clears her throat. “I am no longer going to apologize for savingthe ones I love. And I wish you would stop asking me to.”

Clarke turns to leave, whirling around. “Clarke,” Bellamy reaches outand grabs her arm. “I—” He looks around to the room. “I can’t believe I wasn’tthere again.”

She closes her eyes. When she does that for sleep, she sees thenightmare. When she opens them, the nightmares remain. “It’s not your fault,”Clarke says, blinking. “I would never put that on you.”

He shakes her head. “You don’t have to bear it anymore. That’s why I’mhere. We can bear it.”

“Bellamy, I—”

“You don’t have to be alone anymore.” Bellamy insists. “I’m here for you, do you understand? I’m here.”

Clarke pauses. His words reverberate again and again, and it clicks.

The world is so lonely. It doesn’t mean you have to be alone.

Clarke sucks in a breath. “If you’ll excuse me.”

Moving throughout Sanctum, she moves quickly so no one can stop her.She doesn’t stop until she’s at Russell’s cell, trying to find the anger towardhim she expected.

He’s crumpled against the cell, his hair disheveled and clothes dirty. Whenhe catches her eye, he scoffs. “Come to finish the job?”

Clarke doesn’t respond. Instead, she looks to the guard, who gives herthe key. Unlocking the cell, Clarke moves toward him. “I understand your pain.”She states, eyes watering. “People leaving before you’re ready for them to doso. People leaving because of decisions youmade. I understand.”

Whatever Russell expected Clarke to say, it clearly wasn’t that. Hestares at her, eyes incredulous, but doesn’t respond.

Kneeling in front of him, Clarke places a hand on his knee. “I used tobe afraid of dying. That I would die young. It seemed like I was destined forit, you know? So much had happened. You cannot prevent death from happens. Itis all around us. It is like air. The people we love, they leave us. Peoplenever realize being left behind is so painful.”

Clarke moves in front of him. “I realize, I’m afraid of dying alone.Surrounded by nothing but my demons. The faces of those I killed. Of those Icouldn’t save.” She squeezes her eyes shut. “I’m not afraid of death, Russell.”

Sucking in a breath, Clarke smiles at him. “I realize that you havenever had to face death. You’ve been postponing it for so long, I thought youmay like some company. Because I wouldn’t want to die alone. I can’t imagineyou would want to either.”

Clarke pulls something out of her pocket and shows it to him. Russell’seyes widen. “I am to be publicly executed for my crimes.”

Shaking her head, Clarke says, “Not if you don’t want to. And if you’reafraid, I’m here for you.”

Russell stares at the pill in her hands. She’d grabbed it in the lab duringone of her lucid moments, ready to take Josephine out if it meant the end ofher. He takes it from her, holding it close. “Clarke—”

“I know.”

Russell squeezes his eyes shut. “I just wanted to make up for theeclipse. I never meant to hurt anyone.”

“I know.”

Because she does.

“I’m here.” Clarke says as he places the pill in his mouth. “I’m here,so you don’t have to be scared.” She reaches out and grabs his hand.

“Why are you doing this?” Russell asks. “I-I killed you, I took yourbody.”

“You don’t have to apologize for trying to save the ones you love tome.” Clarke says, eyes watering. “You never had to face death before. There wasalways another body, another host. This is uncharted territory. I’m not sayingwhat you did was right. But I’m here for you anyways. Because I’d like to thinkin the grand scheme of things, we’re not alone.”

“You’re not.”

Clarke frowns at Russell’s statement as he slumps against her shoulder.His weight grows heavier against her. She looks up to see a throng of people standingoutside the cell. Bellamy, Murphy, Jordan, Raven, Madi, Emori and Echo. Theyall stand before her as she holds Russell’s hand. “Don’t be afraid. We’re hereto help you.”

“I’m so sorry, Clarke.” Russell states, his words slow.

She squeezes her eyes shut and a tear streams down her cheek. “Don’t beafraid, I have you.”

Staring ahead at the people she always called family, Clarke takes abreath. “In peace, may you leave this shore. In love, may you find the next.Safe passage in your travels, until our final journey to the ground.” Clarkelocks eyes with Bellamy, who stares at her like he’s afraid she’ll disappear. “Maywe meet again.”

Bellamy closes his eyes. He mouths it, as if just for her.

“May we meet again.”

[rrxnjun]

from here ;

hmm i haven't really listened to dynamite and tbt i don't really want to bc butter was v disappointing djkfhgf i had only been in book fandoms since the beginning bc i got a yt/gmail acc only after i turned 12. i gave western music a ‘serious’ listen from then and after that i got into the wild place that is k-pop. ngl i don’t regret it bc the insanity >>> but oml there was a time when i used to read like 2/3 books in a week and now it’s regressed to like 1 in 6 months i genuinely feel bad for not being able to make the time to read 😭😭 (are we counting fanfiction tho hmmm). it was fun reading all those ya dystopian fiction with crazy amts of angst lol. are you into any specific book/author these days?

omg do you play the flute ?? and noooo sticker is nuts but I really like roadtrip from the album it’s so pretty as a song dkfjgd

FDSDGH so i’m pretty sure yangyang said the same ab cat food so bye bye #bar and renjun soulmate agenda hihi #bar and yangyang childhood rivals to complicated relationship with messy feelings (enemies ?? ) bc you’re both grown up now but he’s still a p(r)etty, overthinking idiot [affectionate] to friends of weird sort to smth more wink wink??

YESSS GIVE EXO A TRY their group music is so good literally all of them are bops i can’t stress enough on how good they are 🤧 omg i love their solo stuff too kyungsoo’s solo songs literally have me shedding tears haven’t still recovered from empathy. love shot ikfjgd it's one of those songs which makes loving exo so damn easy it’s the song which got me into them, that and overdose <3 and the choreo🧎🏾‍♀️love how we all collectively went batshit crazy over love shot oh gods i absolutely loved watching other idols trying that iconic love shot move the feeling of unitedly obsessing over them is unparalleled. here’s the exo playlist hope you like it omg had to use up all of my self control from adding entire discographies. 

I LOVE BAEKHYUN’S VOICE even when the man’s screaming which is like always lol <3 that compilation video of byun baekhyun screaming in youtube my beloved. cry for love is beautiful and un village was the first baekhyun solo i listened to so it’s special <3

the worst part is how superm won’t be active in the next few years bc of the enlistments we’re losing god tiered music makers to the war </3 kjdgf ALL OF THEIR VIDEOS ARE HILARIOUS YESS those vids where they quiz each other is sm chaos lmaoo. jfgsdf have you watched this video where they react to their as we wish scenarios?? sheesh that amt of clowning and slandering is >>> ohhh fave superm song hmm hard to choose but i’ll go w dangerous woman (ten’s ‘what’s wrong with you part’ is just too cute) wish you were here, infinity and tiger inside.   

ALSO LOVED THE PARX PLAYLIST haven’t listened to it fully tho but for now my faves are easy to hate and i felt younger when we met omg i love most of the songs from fandom <33

and oml tysm i really needed to see that 😭 i’m literally so scared bc lord it’s my last year in school and my last year as a minor ahhhhh 🤧 stem is extremely hard and puts me through sm pain <3. the only reason i’m sticking w it is bc i like learning it <3 getting the opportunity to study what you like is actually such a rare thing + almost the entirety of my country’s population is obsessed w getting their kids major in stem subjects (bc of the asian stereotypes surrounding those fields) but we don’t have that many good unis so the competition is really tiring </3

p.s. i haven’t really used tiktok so idk 💀 and the yangyang brainrot is doing a little too bc of your fic 😵 feeling sm things after reading i’m not angry anymore (well, sometimes i am) bc yangyang's character <33 need a few weeks to recover from that tyvm 

oof i get you w butter it was so disappointing🤧🤧but oh well. everyone has different taste🤷‍♀️ i dont really get solo armies but i guess im not the one to judge.

i get you with book fandoms!!! i wasnt in many book fandoms, since i didnt really know they existed 💀💀 but i am a massive bookworm! i too used to read like 3 books a week once and now im happy if i do 1 every three months😭 but im busier now and also have other hobbies, so i guess that's why i dont read as much anymore! what are some of your favorite books? 🥰 im a big fan of john green books (dont judge. i copy his writing style /j) and j.d. sallinger! i love me some good YA and dystopian books hhh. im currently reading this crime book i stole from my grandma but im too lazy to look up the english name 😭😭😭 are you reading anything atm?

SJSJSJ i dont play the recorder 😭 i mean,, i have it at home and i can play when i look up the simplified version of notes with the drawings,,, like the sheet music they do for elementary school children 💀💀 i knew how to play the titanic song lmaoo i play the guitar tho! do you play any instruments?

your yangyang childhood rivals to complicated relationship with messy feelings (enemies??) bc you're both grown up now but he's still a p(r)etty overthinking idiot [affectionate] to friends of some sort to smth more wink wink is so specific i might just take some inspo from this wink wink

OVERDOSE >>>>>>> I FUCKING LOOOVE THAT SONG@!!! also i listened to the playlist and found out that i knew more than half of the songs you added 😭😭 i loved the ones that were new to me tho!!!! espeCIALLY going crazy! i think that one was my fav out of the new ones! i might just need you to help me stan them or something bc the playlist slAPS

dont remind me of superm military hiatus when i miss them the most :(( also no i havent seen these!!! gotta catch up sjsjsn

FANDOM IS MY FAV PARX ALBUM!! its very dear to my heart!! also our fav songs match🥺 i felt younger when we met is probably my most played song of this year smh 🤧

oh so youre 17?? enjoy it i romanticize that age so much i feel like the last time when i was truly happy was when i was 17 💀 but no trust me its all gonna be good! i know it seems scary but as your self proclaimed older sister figure, i promise its less difficult than it seems and you'll do great. you can always come to me and vent whenever things get hard! i am glad you are fortunate enough to study what you want to, its truly a privilage some of us tend to overlook

p.s. the yy brainrot is still going in me as well i listened to miracle today on repeat and i swear his parts make me feel a different type of way😭 also make sure to tell me more abt your thoughts and feelings on that fic if you want to!

[starsrshiney]

Team Stars Groupchat Semi-AU: The part where they (most of them, at least) actually chat.

>StarTippedArrows has logged in.

>sexyRecon: Aww man, there goes my 10 gold

>IvyHearts: I told you he’d get in before Jimi

>StarTippedArrows: Hi to you two as well. Anyone else here?

>DancingButterfly: Hi Stars!

>StarTippedArrows: Hi Rose.

>StarTippedArrows: Wait, Rose?

>sexyRecon: And that’s my 10 gold back!

>StarTippedArrows: Not to be rude, but how?!

>DancingButterfly: Chax helped me get here.

>ChemLab: Jimi and T-Takky would be here too, but they decided to t-try on their own

>IvyHearts: and before you ask

>IvyHearts: I said BEFORE you ask, I can see you typing Stars

>IvyHearts: Von is using a speech-to-text and text-to-speech program while he does work in his lab.

>StarTippedArrows: Wait, that’s an option? I mean, I can use a typewriter well enough, but these keys feel so. . . flat.

>GunsNSkulls has logged in

>GoggledBlade has logged in

>ChemLab: I can show you l-later, after I get these potions chilled to their p-proper temperatures.

>GunsNSkulls: Why are ya typing ya stutter?

>IvyHearts: Scroll up

>GoggledBlade: I can’t see anything from before I logged in.

>GunsNSkulls: Me neither

>IvyHearts: hold on, let me see if I can do that copy and paste thing we were taught. . .

>IvyHearts: IvyHearts: Von is using a speech-to-text and text-to-speech program while he does work in his lab.

>sexyRecon: 9/10, but you didn’t need to copy your username as well

>IvyHearts: shut up.

>RufflesInFlight has logged in

>sexyRecon: FUCK

>IvyHearts: WOOHOO

>RufflesInFlight: ???????

>StarTippedArrows: Judging from my entrance, you just caused Chax to lose a bet

>sexyRecon: I HAD 30 GOLD ON JASMINE LOGGING IN BEFORE CRYSTAL

>RufflesInFlight: You bet how much on WHO getting on before me?

>GunsNSkulls: Jazzy’s helpin Aaron log on.

>RufflesInFlight: Anniey, I hope I get a cut of that, since its because of me you got it.

>IvyHearts: You can have all of it if you want, I just want to make chax lose at bets

>sexyRecon: RUDE. But fair.

>sexyRecon: Hey wait-

>FrostLizard has logged in

>sexyRecon: Rude but fair is my schtick! How’d you like it if I started being the priestess with a temper?!

>IvyHearts: Hands up if you think I have a temper?

>sexyRecon raised his hand

>GunsNSkulls rasied his hand

>GoggledBlade raised his hand

>RufflesInFlight rasied her hand

>StarTippedArrows raised his hand

>FrostLizard: I raise my hand

>sexyRecon: I never thought I’d see the day Sal makes a funny

>IvyHearts: Oh come on,even my brother and Sal?

>IvyHearts: Rose, you’re my only friend in this chat

>GunsNSkulls: Anniey, your temper causes pipes to burst. An who do ya think is the one fixing those pipes?

>IvyHearts: Aaron

>GoggledBlade is dying laughing

>sexyRecon is dying laughing

>IvyHearts: But I get your message

>StarTippedArrows is dying laughing

>GoodTwin has logged in

>BetterTwin has logged in

>BetterTwin: I have arrived, no need to thank me

>sexyRecon: Glad to see that Jasmine recognizes Aaron is the better twin

>GoggledBlade is dying laughing

>IvyHearts is dying laughing

>FrostLizard: is dying laughing

>GunsNSkulls is dying laughing

>BetterTwin: I’M JASMINE YOU UNPASTEURIZED NUMBSKULL

>StarTippedArrows has sent FrostLizard a private message

>sexyRecon: Unpasteurized because I’m already bacteria free, tyvm

>ChemLab: I can ash-sh-sure you that isn’t true

>sexyRecon: malignant bacteria free

>ChemLab: Sure, that w-works.

>BetterTwin: But yes, it did take a while to get Aaron to choose a non-depressing screen name

>GoggledBlade: Which you then proceed to put down with your own.

>BetterTwin: . . .

>GoodTwin: I think you just broke her.

>GoodTwin: Give her a bit of a break, she’s been getting better at that.

>StarTippedArrows: I think I can help with this.

>sexyRecon: What was with that private message earlier anyway?

>FrostLizard glares at sexyRecon

>IvyHearts gives FrostLizard a thumbs up

>StarTippedArrows: Testing some of the admin functions, like so

>StarTippedArrows has changed BetterTwin’s username to LuxuryLightning

>sexyRecon: Oh, you taught Sal how the actions actually work

>LuxuryLightning: When I take over the team, you shall be in charge of all naming.

>StarTippedArrows: I think that’s the first time you’ve ever said you’ll keep me around after taking my leadership.

>StarTippedArrows is pulling up a list- Online Users

               -sexyRecon

               -DancingButterfly

               -ChemLab

               -IvyHearts

               -StarTippedArrows

               -GunsNSkulls

               -GoggledBlade

               -RufflesInFlight

               -FrostLizard

               -GoodTwin

               -LuxuryLightning

>StarTippedArrows: Where’s Mahn? And Briar for that matter, but Mahn is usually punctual even if he thinks things are ridiculous

>TeamCoach has logged in

>IvyHearts: Oh Nilofer Damn it

>sexyRecon: Not only do I break even, I get 20 gold from Anniey AND Von!

>ChemLab: I really d-didn’t expect Mahn to be last.

>StarTippedArrows: Yeah, this is too suspicious. Don’t blow up your large communicators while I’m gone

>StarTippedArrows has gone idle

>sexyRecon: They’re computers Stars! You’ve traveled to enough Earths to know that.

>IvyHearts: Given the circumstances, he’ll have to drop the ignorance-by-choice thing he has about knowing interdimensional terms.

>TeamCoach: . . . I haven’t even been here 2 minutes and I’m already confused.

>RufflesInFlight: About the chat in general, or about chax and anniey’s (and apparently von’s) bets?

>TeamCoach: both, but reading that caught me up enough on the bet thing.

>StarTippedArrows is no longer idle

>StarTippedArrows: Mahn broke his monitor.

>sexyRecon is dying laughing

>StarTippedArrows: Not even 2 hours into this new training course and I already have to talk to the Community about replacing broken equipment

>sexyRecon: Oh hey, it looks like the community gave my account admin privileges too

>sexyRecon has kicked StarTippedArrows from the chat- take your broken equipment angst elsewhere

>FrostLizard has gone idle- I need to stab Chax

>sexyRecon has gone idle- You need to find me first

[rebeccaheyman]

reading + listening 08.10.20

When I say that my book consumption this week swung from the best 2020 has to offer so far to the absolute worst, I am not exaggerating in the least. Another wild ride from start to finish...

Love is a Rogue (Lenora Bell), ebook, ARC. Full review on NetGalley. LOVE IS A ROGUE was my first Lenora Bell book -- but clocking in at a solid B, it won't be my last. Beatrice is an able-enough heroine, distinguished by her love for etymology, books, and the etymological dictionary she's planning to write once she achieves full spinster status. All she needs to do is fail one more season with the ton to circumvent her mother's plan's to make an advantageous marriage. Ford, our dashing hero, enters the scene as a carpenter whose role overseeing the renovation of the duke's estate brings him into Beatrice's path. They collide with flirtatious results, and the fun continues when Beatrice hires Ford to renovate a bookshop she just-so-happens to have inherited from a dead aunt. Unbeknownst to Beatrice, the property brings Ford's past directly in-line with her present, and they unite to overcome the challenges posed by society, their personal demons, and Ford's dastardly grandfather. 

For me, Beatrice's status as the duke's sister undermined the urgency of her final season in society; she doesn't have to marry to save the family fortune or escape a cruel family situation, and in fact, Beatrice quickly decides to play along and appease her mother, all the while knowing she'll reject any proposals and retire to the country in due course. So the stakes are not especially high from a cultural perspective, which deflated the conflict somewhat. Likewise, Ford's inner demons don't hold the same power over him that might seriously impact his actions; he's set to return to the Royal Navy any day now, but decides with zero fanfare that actually no, he'll decline another tour and stay land-locked, tyvm. How realistic would it have been to back out of military service? I can't say -- but it seems like this would have been a serviceable point of separation for Ford and Beatrice, that would have prolonged the third act and provided valuable tension. Because it's the third act that keeps LOVE IS A ROGUE from ascending higher in my estimation. 

The Midnight Bargain (C.L. Polk), ebook, ARC. Full four-star review on NetGalley.

I unequivocally adored THE MIDNIGHT BARGAIN, the first I've read from author C.L. Polk. It's a little tricky to categorize this standalone fantasy romance, which takes place in a decidedly other world, but still calls on the culture of Regency-era England -- so to call it "historical" is misleading, but readers who enjoy historical romance will surely find the cultural mores in THE MIDNIGHT BARGAIN both familiar and compelling. Beatrice Clayborn is in town for her last Bargaining season -- a time for male sorcerers to find powerful wives whose magic will serve them once the marriage is sealed. Because in this world, women aren't allowed magic and marriage simultaneously; the danger of a spirit taking over an unborn child is too great, so women are collared, literally and figuratively, to keep this atrocity from happening. Beatrice has plans to study magic in secret and become a full-fledged Mage, which would render her ineligible for marriage and destroy her family's social and economic standing, but secure her rights to her own power and body for the rest of her life. All she needs are the secrets hidden in one particular grimoire -- that's stolen right from her hands by the Lavan siblings. Powerful, and with ambitions and secrets of their own, the Ianthe and Ysbeta and Ianthe complicate Beatrice's plans by drawing her into their lives; Ysbeta as accomplice, confidante and friend, and Ianthe as all those things plus potential lover and love.

Polk's writing is fluid and charming, with careful attention to detail. Her evocative world-building and subtle magic system is never forgotten, but it also never overwhelms the distinctly human motivations that move our characters through time and space. THE MIDNIGHT BARGAIN was compulsively readable, full of lovely language and delightfully unassuming turns of phrase. Beatrice is intrepid and brave; Ysbeta is fierce and loyal; Ianthe is the profoundly romantic, feminist hero we all need. A delight from the first page to the last, THE MIDNIGHT BARGAIN is a tightly-woven, beautifully-rendered fantasy romance that will make you a C.L. Polk fan if you aren't one already.

Midnight Sun (Stephanie Meyer). eBook + aBook. Perhaps like me, you thought a little nostalgia and escapism would revive the dregs of this terrible, pandemic summer. Maybe you thought a throwback to simpler times -- the year 2005 to be exact -- would make you feel young and carefree again. Bella and Edward’s angsty bullshit would be fun to revisit, and maybe Edward’s POV would reveal something interesting about a story we might not all have loved, but definitely loved to hate. Well, 2020 is here to set you straight again: this year absolutely blows, and no amount of sparkly vampires can save it. I can say with perfect clarity that MIDNIGHT SUN is the worst novel I (or anyone) will read this year. The degree to which MIDNIGHT SUN fails as a novel is so extreme, it’s actually hard to qualify which aspect of the book is worst: the writing, the narrative development, the unadulterated laziness of retelling a story from a POV that adds literally nothing to our understanding of that first narrative. Fail, fail, fail. In no particular order, here are my thoughts:

The writing is as bad as you think it’s going to be. I don’t know what Stephanie Meyer has been doing for the past 15 years, but it’s not working on her craft. Purple prose takes on newly virulent shades in this trash heap of lazy language. 

While I understand that the story itself was restricted by an established plot, there was an opportunity to leave behind some of the language that simply hasn’t aged well. “...[M]y own personal brand of heroine” was cringe-inducing the first time, and no effort was made to allay a scene that is frankly embarrassing to read. Perhaps worst of all, though, is that language on the same plane of egregiousness is introduced to the narrative with no precedent from the original text. Bella’s claim that she’s “so clumsy that I’m almost disabled” (245) doesn’t feel like something that should have passed muster in 2020. Did no one flag this for blatant insensitivity? Yeesh.

The original TWILIGHT was just shy of 500 pages. MIDNIGHT SUN is 675 pages. Six! Hundred! Seventy! Five! How does a story that was overlong at 500 pages stretch almost 200 MORE pages, you ask? Easy, when you commit to narrating every scene in painstakingly slow detail. The infamous baseball game you remember? It takes nearly fifty pages for it to unfold in Edward’s slow, tedious narration. At one point, when Ed & Co. are trying to throw James off Bella’s scent, Edward starts articulating individual footsteps. It’s... stunning, how god-awful boring this book is. 

Dear Reader, you know -- have always known -- that Edward is an obsessive sociopath with stalker tendencies and a serious control problem. Your conscious mind has elected to allay your concerns about the health of Bella and Edward’s relationship because it’s fun to watch two kids being dramatic and self-centered, yearning for each other with the kind of intensity that only comes with the blinders of young love. Dear Reader, you will STRUGGLE to maintain this elan for toxicity if you read MIDNIGHT SUN. Edward’s murder-fantasies, which extend to all the kids in Bella’s science class and later, to the school secretary too busy salivating over a child to recognize how unhinged he is, are difficult to stomach. The constant litany of “it hurts but I like it” is incredibly off-putting and, again, boring as dry toast. 

I can’t keep going. It was just so, so bad. It wasn’t fun or nostalgic or even funny. Just pathetic. I know this was a cash-cow slam-dunk for Meyer and her publisher, which is all the proof we’ll ever need that money is the root of all evil. Rarely have I ever felt this way but here it is: I wish this book didn’t exist. Don’t buy it. 

The Poet X (Elizabeth Acevedo), eBook. I admit, I started THE POET X months and months ago, and had 50 pages to finish that I just didn’t get to until this week. I was floundering after M*dnight S*n, and knew the only remedy short of bona fide brain bleach would be an infusion of thoughtful, beautiful, elegant language. Finishing this novel-in-verse started the process of reviving my faith in the written word. Acevedo never trades pathos for angst, and allows Xiomara’s complex emotions and experiences to shine with subtlety and heart. THE POET X occupies that top-tier of novels-in-verse that, for me, has since been limited to BLOOD WATER PAINT (Joy McCullough).

These Ghosts are Family (Maisy Card), aBook narrated by Karl O’Brian Williams. I love a multi-generational narrative, especially when a well-earned comp to one of my favorite novels, HOMEGOING (Gyasi), indicates a globe-spanning, culturally complex, deeply human story that hinges around one decision that ripples through time and space. When Abel Paisley assumes his dead friend’s identity, the consequences of his choice reverberate through the family he left behind in Jamaica and the one(s) he forms in New York. With Abel’s life fast coming to an end, his desire for closure brings the truth of his deception to light, and that decision, too, has far-reaching consequences. This is a beautiful debut from Card, and the narration from Williams is exemplary. If you read and adored ALL ADULTS HERE (Emma Straub), dive into THESE GHOSTS ARE FAMILY for an even more poignant family portrait that still capitalizes on a strongly-braided narrative and multiple POVs.

Migrations (Charlotte McConaghy), eBook. If M*dnight S*n is the worst book 2020 has to offer (and it is!), MIGRATIONS is undeniably the finest. I’m calling it right here: This is the best book you’ll read this year, full stop. As of this writing, on Monday morning, I’ve already gifted MIGRATIONS twice -- and I only started reading it on Saturday night. That’s how quickly it drew me in and wove itself around my heart. 

Franny Lynch is on a mission to follow the last of the world’s Arctic terns on their epic annual migration. For all that she’s following the birds, Franny is also running from her past, and speeding toward her own planned end. In a narrative that moves through time as fluidly as a dorsal fin cutting through the water, McConaghy slips in and out of the present to multiple eras of the past -- each as compelling as the next. How Franny came to be on her mission is a story of love and passion and wandering and heartbreak, and how a girl who has always belonged to the sea manages to make her way through the world on land. Like STATION ELEVEN (Emily St John Mandel), MIGRATIONS paints into being a future that is eerily possible and terrifyingly probable, but never sacrifices the propulsive character study at the center of the work in favor of grand-standing about issues. And the language... oh my soul, the language. I was spoiled for choice when it comes to excerpts, but here’s one that slayed me in Act III:

“And I am done with the universe between us. It is so perilous, this love, but he’s right, and I will have no cowardice in my life, not anymore, and I will be no small thing, and I will have no small life, and so I find his mouth with mine and we are awake at last, returned to a land long abandoned, the land of each other’s bodies.” (275)

Give yourself the gift of this novel, and then give the gift of this novel to someone you care about. Then find me on Twitter so we can talk endlessly about how wonderful it is.

Okay, on the docket this week:

The Ten Thousand Doors of January (Alix Harrow)

Sweet Sorrow (David Nicholls)

The Garden of Small Beginnings (Abbi Waxman)

Perfect Little World (Kevin Wilson)

The Vanishing Half (Brit Bennett)

[malecftw]

Hiking’s fun and all that - Brother Billy x reader x boyfriend Steve

A/N: That gif melted my heart fr even tho Joe looks like a creep lmfaooo I miss being able to talk to him someone ship him over to me tyvm. Hope you like it!

Word count: 2700

Warnings: angst, cursing, reader x injury, cliffhanger

Masterlist.

Requests open!

The sun was tanning your skin and the dust was flying around as you walked down from the mountain you’d just hiked. Your boyfriend Steve was a couple feet in front of you. His shorts clinging to his muscular legs as his hair bounced up and down, feet planting themselves heavily caused by the steepness of the walk down. Although you loved any and every contact with him, today was just too hot to be all over each other in the middle of nowhere. It was more likely that you’d suffer from heat stroke than that you’d get to enjoy his presence that little bit more.

Hawkins has always had nice summers, but this one really hit it out of the park. A constant layer of sweat coating your skin, no matter how many times you’d shower. The only comfort was that there was no exception. Everyone was aching for the weather to cool down. A couple of days ago you’d gotten the notice to start being cautious with drinking water as the forecast didn’t predict any improvement any time soon.

This heat also gave you the perfect excuse to keep your boyfriend and brother from attacking one another every time they saw each other. It just was too hot to invest any energy in anything other than trying to cool down and after a couple of months of dating Steve, they were starting to become more tolerant towards each other.

Billy didn’t like Steve, Steve didn’t like Billy. You had no intentions to be the main figure that’d change that but... Shit happens? The only reason they didn’t tear each others heads off, was you. Both loving you more than their wish to hurt the other.

The sun was slowly starting to set, which gave you an impeccable view of the small town you’d started calling home. You basked in the feeling of a slight gust of wind passing by, anything and everything that was the tiniest bit cooler than your skin brought you relief.

You’d gotten to the part of the trail that was surrounded by high bushes that came up to around your knees, all on the brink of catching fire you felt like. Steve stopped in his tracks and looked back at you. ‘You wanna walk in front of me or would you rather stay behind me?’ He asked, knowing you weren’t a fan of not being able to see the ground you’d plant your feet on. ‘Can I just walk closely in front of you?’ He nodded and waited for you to catch up, not being able to resist touching your waist as you passed him.

He always found little ways to touch you or show you his affection. Right now it was carefully guiding you down this damn hill you’d grown to resent in the last couple of hours. He took his hand in yours so you were assured he’d catch you if you fell. Your balance was probably one of the strangest things about you. It’d fluctuate so much. One moment you’d be perfectly fine and the next you’d be sat on your ass on the ground cause it decided to be like: ‘Naaaa not today.’

Your body was turned slightly as you started walking again. Instead of walking straight, you’d walk sideways causing more friction between your feet and the ground causing you to be more steady. Something you’d learned a long time ago when your family went hiking in the mountains when you were young. A time that you’d consider the best time of your life many years later. Back then, everything was simple. You had a loving mother, a loving father, and a loving brother. After the divorce, everything changed. Billy had started growing cold towards his father, feeling betrayed for giving up on his mother. The only thing that didn’t change was his love for you.

Out of the blue, a sharp stinging pain made it’s way up your leg starting at your ankle. You winced and stopped walking, slightly bending down in pain. ‘What’s wrong y/n?’ Steve asked worriedly, one hand on your back comfortingly as he held your hand tightly. ‘I don’t know. I think something bit me. It really burns.’ You groaned as you tried to stand up straight again. All of a sudden a wave of dizziness came over you and if it wasn’t for Steve’s arm around you, you definitely would not still be standing. ‘Woah easy, can you walk?’ You nodded grimacing, trying to focus on keeping the tears that were threatening to roll down your cheeks at bay. ‘Okay hold on to me, we’re not too far from the end of the trail.’

After about 5 minutes of hiking you halted Steve, really not being able to walk any further. The heat, dizziness and now nausea was starting to get too much. ‘Steve I literally can’t walk anymore. I’m so tired and I feel sick.’ Your weak voice said, struggling to reach the needed volume for Steve to hear you clearly. Thankfully he did cause he was stood so close to you.

He didn’t say anything but he bent down slightly, guiding your arms towards his neck and grabbing your thighs. You got what he was trying to do and in any other situation, you would heavily deny the gesture. However, right now you were genuinely feeling unwell so you obliged.

He quickly made his way down to the parking lot of the trail where his car stood parked in the shade of some trees. He carefully placed you into the passenger seat and turned on the car, allowing you to listen to some music as he observed your ankle. Two small, identical punctures were visible, small droplets of blood coating your ankle in a line down the rest of your ankle and foot.

‘Y/n?’ He asked when he didn’t get a response to him slightly palpating the hurt area. You vaguely responded to your name and groaned out some incoherent words. That’s when he knew this wasn’t just a normal bite. 

He kissed your forehead softly, muttering he’d be back soon and stalked over quickly to the phone booth a couple feet away. He silently thanked you for forcing him to learn his number in case anything was ever wrong. 

Anxiously tapping the device as it rang he cursed him for not picking up faster, he let out a sigh as he heard him pick up. ‘Billy, it’s Steve. You need to get to the hospital. It’s y/n.’ The other end of the line was quiet for all of 5 seconds before a worried, already on edge Billy spoke. ‘What? What the hell happened Harrington.’ 

‘We were hiking and she got bit by something. I’m sure it’s not a big deal but I’d just rather be safe.’ He lied through his teeth. Billy didn’t need to know how much Steve was freaking out. Especially with Billy’s reckless way of driving, Steve needed him to get to the hospital in one piece to be there for you. Plus, he figured maybe Billy would react better if he thought Steve didn’t know the severity of the situation and he let the doctors explain. After all, it’s not like he could’ve done something. Right?

Billy sighed and Steve heard him grab his keys. ‘Alright, I’m on my way. Take care of my sister Harrington.’ Billy said, being forced to put his trust in him. ‘Always Billy.’ Steve said reassuringly before hanging up and running towards his car. Your face was covered in sweat, a pained grimace on your face the entire ride to the hospital. Steve assumed Billy would get there first, considering the hiking trail was a little bit out of town.

Steve’s screeching tires came to a halt right in front of the door of the emergency room and he noticed Billy immediately coming over from his spot next to the door, awaiting his arrival. He never even looked at Steve, straight up going for the passenger door, eyeing his sister worriedly. He crouched down enough to be able to look at you directly. ‘Hey, y/n. It’s Billy, don’t worry okay I’m here.’ You groaned in response, squeezing your eyes as you tried your hardest to open them. You managed to look at him through hooded eyes and you started to cry a little. ‘It hurts so bad. I can’t breathe.’ You whispered with great effort. Billy swallowed, trying to stabilize his voice before speaking. ‘It’s okay baby, we’re going to make it all better.’ 

He kissed your forehead as he picked you up, carefully minding your head as he took you out of Steve’s car. With Steve hot on his heels, he ran into the hospital where a bed was already waiting for you, thanks to Billy telling them Steve was coming with you. As doctors began to run all kinds of tests, Billy and Steve were forced to wait outside of your room. Steve was sat down on one of the plastic chairs that were placed against the wall, fatigue coming over him as his adrenaline levels evened out, Billy was pacing around. Too nervous and worried to be still.

‘I’m sure she’s going to be okay Billy.’ Steve said, fiddling with a bottle of water as he took in Billy’s complexion. ‘You don’t know that.’ Billy said harshly. He still didn’t like Steve and sure as hell wasn’t going to pretend that he did right now. Steve looked down in acceptance of Billy’s answer. A tremendous amount of guilt washed over him as he started talking. ‘I’m sorry.’ Billy looked at him, eyes rolling and arrogance evident on his face yet he didn’t say anything and motioned for Steve to continue. ‘It’s my fault. I suggested we go hiking today. I asked her if she wanted to walk in front of me. If I hadn’t, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten hurt.’ Steve’s voice cracked and he rubbed at his irritated eyes, looking down again like a beaten dog.

Billy looked up at the hospital ceiling, not sure what to do with this apology. He knew what you’d want him to do with it though so he decided the answer that was the most abnormal for him. ‘It’s not your fault Harrington. I know she’d been bugging you for weeks to go hiking. It could’ve been anyone.’

Steve looked up in surprise but kept quiet, not wanting to push his luck. Even more to his surprise, Billy walked over to him and sat down. ‘I may not like you Harrington, but my sister loves you enough for the both of us, and that’s something I can respect. I’m not gonna make her hate me cause I can’t accept you. Hell, if you are good to her I might even consider not kicking your ass at basketball next time.’ Billy smiled. This was odd, something he could’ve never predicted, but it felt good. Knowing his sister would be proud of him. All he ever wanted was for you to be proud of him. Proud to be his sister.

The door creaked open, a significant noise but not loud enough to wake you. Your breathing was still heavy, your expression still looked pained but less so than before. Both boys quietly made it into your room, taking a seat on each side of you. Steve carefully rubbed circles on your hand, trying to comfort you in your medicinal haze. Billy, on the other hand, didn’t touch you. You seemed so fragile. Like you could break at any given moment. The two boys straightened their back as the doctor came in, speaking in a mellow voice. ‘So I have been informed that you are miss Hargrove’s brother? Are you comfortable having this man in the same room when I inform you about her condition? Billy looked at Steve quickly before nodding yes to the doctor.

The doctor took a seat at the edge of your bed and started talking once again. ‘So after a couple of blood tests, we can confirm the bite was that of a snake, more specifically a timber rattlesnake. Now, the venom is lethal but considering we were able to treat her moderately fast it’s very likely that she will recover with no lasting side effects. However, we do need to keep a close eye on the coagulation of her blood (blood clotting). She’s scheduled to have another dose of the antivenom and we have hope that she will respond well to that.’

Both Steve and Billy let out a breath they didn’t realize they were holding. ‘Do you know when she could be discharged?’ Steve asked, knowing how much you hate hospitals. The doctor shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. We’ll have to see how she reacts to the second dose first but right now there are no talks about being discharged. She’s young and strong but her body still took quite the hit. The next 24 hours will determine the process of her recovery.

After answering a couple more questions, the doctor left the room, leaving Steve and Billy alone with you. Your mouth was covered by an oxygen mask and your arms were littered with bruises, nurses having to try numerous amounts of times to find a decent vein to give you an IV. All they could do now was wait.

White. White with black spots. White turning into a light brown. A light brown with a strong light in the middle of it. You squeezed your eyes, pain searing through your body as if you’d just run a marathon without breathing. You felt tired, deprived of oxygen. As fast you’d come to your senses, as fast would you be able to fall asleep again you felt like. But you fought. You wanted to ask what had happened. How long were you out for.

You winced and slowly opened your eyes, seeing both your brother and boyfriend on each side of you. And you were thankful to have them, considering your parents had left on vacation with Max a couple of days prior to this. ‘Steve?’ You croaked out and he looked up from playing with your fingers. ‘Hey stranger.’ He said, eyes red and filling up with tears a little bit. ‘I love you.’ You said immediately, not knowing what came over you to say that in front of your brother but you didn’t care. He kissed the back of your hand, squeezing it lightly as he mouthed ‘I love you too.’ Probably not wanting Billy to beat his ass. Billy, however, saw the exchange between you two and couldn’t help but smile. You really had Harrington wrapped all around your little finger.

‘You both make me feel sick.’ Billy exclaimed, not being able to wipe the grin off of his face. You jokingly glared at him but the nurse walking into your room stopped you from making a snarky remark. ‘How are you feeling sweetie?’ ‘I’m okay thank you. Still a bit tired but I’ve been worse. The boys and the nurse all smiled at your response, you’d just been bitten by a poisonous snake yet here you were taking it like a champ. ‘So this is the second dosage of the antivenom.’ She said as she started injecting the medication into your IV line. 

As the nurse was taking your vitals you started getting an itch in the back of your throat. Steve started pouring some water for you but the nurse stopped him, keeping a close eye on your behavior as the coughing got worse and worse.

You felt like your lungs were on fire and all the oxygen available was being used to fuel the flames. You zoned out, not really sure what was happening other than the horrifying feeling of the life slipping out of you. The boys were ushered out of the room as the nurse called out into the hallway: ‘CODE BLUE.’ 

Immediately all available nurses stormed into your room, leaving the two boys out in the hallway traumatized and terrified. 

Panic and terror visible on their faces as they witnessed another nurse push in a crash cart.

But the doctor said you were going to be fine?

Taglist: @constellationsolo @synonymforlame