#with so much in an urban fantasy setting

[kotaerukoto]

Oh yeah, just a small detail for Makoto's regular modern/urban fantasy verse, he's not actually a student at Hope's Peak Academy there! He's either at Dusk High School, or in his first year of university. Probably somewhere like University of Tokyo, considering how in his canon verse he managed to get into an über prestigious school too. The inspiration of this was the scrapped extra ending of DR where, upon seeing a secret NG+ scene, it's revealed that the whole plot of DR1 was just a wacky daydream Makoto had, and he ultimately decides to not attend after all. But frankly, since it's Makoto, he's not going to have a normal life for long-- especially in the urban fantasy version of it. I imagine eventually his life becomes similar to the life of the MCs of those long-running light novel series, like Toaru Index or Monogatari, in the sense of getting into situations to handle all of the time. His inability to not try and help out when other people are in trouble combined with how his misfortune gets him near those situations anyway/attracts them to him, make it really hard for him to live a normal life.

[sasquach-scratches]

Remembered the "modern" AU I did like one thing for then never thought about and this image of Alois in the AU would NOT leave my mind so I had to scribble it out real quick

I kinda wanted to play up the loser angle he has in Skyrim (which is moot in a land that thinks vagabond dudes that go around killing things are the coolest thing ever) so AU Alois lives in a trailer in the woods, usually unemployed but when the cost of living shows up he'll take some temp jobs or do some foraging out in the wilderness (which is still pretty dangerous in spite of urbanization pushing out monsters not integrated into greater society)

Like in Skyrim, he's actually pretty good at magic and could have gone to med school if he applied himself but dropped out of college because he hated the environment. What magic he does know is mostly practical stuff that can be done with technology here

He is currently dating a handsome laborer that may or may not push him to be more responsible.

[lichensings]

🌲🐺🍁🌕 for dillard?

okay so the funny thing is that dillard is the name of the town that my yearlong motw campaing was set in. second funny thing is that this campaign had its finale session five hours before you sent this ask in.

original character? no. original CITY. its heavily inspired (directly lifted) from the town i live in so i'm gonna be vague as hell about some things on here, and might just go on tangents about npcs when applicable.

🌲 - Do they have a favorite location to hang out in? Given that Dillard is a location itself i'm just answering this for the party. they would visit one member's arcane library (grad student office) every session to research the monster that week. my favorite location as the game master was the deep cavern under the city where a great dragon slumbers <3

🐺 - How does this oc deal with solitude? choosing to answer this from some npc's perpectives. first off the npc The Coyote bc of the wolf emoji for this question: likes it fine but CAN work with people. i just think its funny how when they went evil for a bit they were just hanging out and living in a mad scientists lab. there was a sitcom there off-screen i know it. also answering for another npc, destiny sr.: she doesn't like it. she's a professor who's been monster hunting for decades, and knows that safety in numbers is tried and true. when her last monster hunting bud was hospitalized she immediately recruited the party to try and help her. despite this, she is bad at talking to people and drives away everyone who cared about her who WASN'T in on the monster hunting (including her ex husband and daughter). she really should've gotten into rock climbing. it wouldn't have saved her (she totally died) but it would have been funny.

🍁 - What is this oc’s favorite season? since it's literally just the town i live but with magic and an excuse to make up buildings, MY favorite season there would be winter. summer so hot it kills you spring so pollen it makes your head explode. fall alternating between stupid hot and stupid cold. yes winter also sucks but its the most tolerable

🌕 - If this oc was an animal, what kind would they be? (if my city was an animal there is a clear answer but its so clear its personally identifying. so i shan't say.) OKAY SO. a dragon. listen in the worldbuilding dragons existed, but went exinct in the permian 250mya, and are insanely magic due to other worldbuilding (magical diseases and symbiotic organisms). one crash landed into the ocean, and the impact formed a cave where the dragon has just been hibernating for millennia, and throughout tectonic activity that area is now the town of Dillard. to me the dragon is the soul of dillard - its why there is so much weird supernatural stuff going on in there. and also if it ever wakes up and emerges that WOULD trigger the apocalypse. shoutout to the great beast pendragon ig

(this also makes the question below that one, "Very serious question… are they more like a dragon, or a unicorn?" very funny.)

[oldtvandcomics]

Happy Queer Media Monday!

Today: The Lights of Prague by Nicole Jarvis

Another highly personal one.

(My copy of The Lights of Prague, flanked by two of my bat plushies. Picture taken in Old Town Square, after dark.)

Prague, not long after the introduction of gaslights on the street. The guild of lamplighters doubles as elite monsterfighter squad, whose job is to keep the normal population safe from the numerous beings active at nighttime. Meanwhile, said monsters have their own hidden society. Both worlds get thrown in disarray by a series of experiments, that, if successful, would let the pijavice, vampire-like creatures, go out during the sunlight hours. Lamplighter Domek and pijavice Ora get sucked in the middle of the conflict, struggling to keep up with the conspiracies as well as their feelings for one another.

The reasons why this book is so special to me are personal more than anything else, but I still feel that it would serve as a good example for changes in the fantasy genre.

This was the first thing I bought when I arrived to Prague for my one year in film school. Then it took me almost two years to read it, because I was reading everything but this book. The thing is, this is the EXACT kind of story I would have LOVED as a teenager, but apparently, I grew out of it and kind of lost interest. The book itself is good, and I really regret not getting to it ten - fifteen years sooner. It is also, all in all, not really that special or different from the ones that I did read back then.

What did stand out for me was the casual queerness. I bought it because of the Prague connection, and was fully expecting it to be completely straight, like the books I used to read as a teenager. It wasn’t. Ora is bisexual, having had two major relationships with women, as well as multiple with men, and Domek’s friend Cord (as well as his mystery boyfriend) is gay. It is all treated very casually, but it is very visibly there.

As I said before, I know this exact kind of book. I used to devour them around 2009 - 2012 (ish). Back then, this kind of casual queerness just didn’t happen. It did not.

Following the progress of queer representation is often frustrating because of how slow it is. It feels like it should be so normalized by now, and yet we are still stagnating and waiting for crumbs to drop. However, the progress becomes very visible the moment you look at the bigger picture in history, and compare media we have today with the way things were even ten years ago. Once upon a time something comes along that hits you over the head with this progress, and I feel like it’s a good thing to stop for a second and appreciate it.

So yeah, that is what The Lights of Prague symbolises to me.

Here is Nicole Jarvis’ personal webpage. About the pijavice, I only found this entry on the Monster Wiki.

Queer Media Monday is an action I started to talk about some important and/or interesting parts of our queer heritage, that people, especially young people who are only just beginning to discover the wealth of stories out there, should be aware of. Please feel free to join in on the fun and make your own posts about things you personally find important!

[blujayonthewing]

doing a bunch of unnecessary homework for the sake of a silly little sketch I thought might be nice, as usual

[iamthedukeofurl]

Scott Pilgrim is, I think, the best example I can think of for establishing a setting's Nonsense Limit. The setting's Nonsense Limit isn't quite "How high-fantasy is this". It's mostly a question of presentation, to what degree does the audience feel that they know the rules the world operates by, such that they are primed to accept a random new element being introduced. A setting with a Nonsense Limit of 0 is, like, an everyday story. Something larger than life, but theoretically taking place in our world, like your standard spy thriller action movie has a limit of 1. Some sort of hidden world urban fantasy with wizards and stuff operating in secret has a nonsense limit around 3 or 4. A Superhero setting, presenting an alternate version of our world, is a 5 or 6. High fantasy comes in around a 7 or so, "Oh yeah, Wizards exist and they can do crazy stuff" is pretty commonly accepted. Scott Pilgrim comes in at a 10. If you read the Scott Pilgrim book, it starts off looking like a purely mundane slice of life. The first hint at the fantastical is Ramona appearing repeatedly in Scott's Dreams, and then later showing up in real life. When we finally get an explanation, it's this:

Apparently Subspace Highways are a thing? And they go through people's heads? And Ramona treats this like it's obscure, but not secret knowledge. Ramona doesn't think she's doing anything weird here. At this point, it's not clear if Scott is accepting Ramona's explanation or not, things kind of move on as mundane as ever until their Date, when Ramona takes Scott through subspace, and he doesn't act like his world was just blown open or anything, although I guess that could have been a metaphor. there's a couple other moments, but everything with Ramona could be a metaphor, or Scott not recognizing what's going on. Maybe Ramona is uniquely fantastical in this otherwise normal world. And then, this happens

Suddenly, a fantastical element (A shitty local indie band finishing their set with a song that knocks out most of the audience) is introduced unrelated to Ramona, and undeniably literal. We see the crowd knocked out by Crash and The Boys. but the story doesn't linger on the implications of that, the whole point of that sequence is to raise the Nonsense Level, such that you accept it when This happens

Matthew Patel comes flying down onto the stage, Scott, who until this point is presented as a terrible person and a loser, but otherwise is extremely ordinary, proceeds to flawlessly block and counter him before doing a 64-hit air juggle combo. Scott's friends treat this like Scott is showing off a mildly interesting party trick, like being really good at darts. The establish that Scott is the "Best Fighter in the Province", not only are street-fighter battles a thing, Scott is Very Good at it, but they're so unimportant that being the best fighter in the province doesn't make Scott NOT a loser. So when Matthew Patel shows off his magic powers and then explodes into a pile of coins, we've established "Oh, this is how silly the setting gets". It's not about establishing the RULES of the setting so much as it is about establishing a lack of rules. Scott's skill at street-fighter battles doesn't translate to any sort of social prestige. Ramona can access Subspace Highways and she uses it to do a basic delivery job. It doesn't make sense and it's clear that it's not supposed to. So later on, when Todd Ingram starts throwing around telekinesis, and the explanation we're given is "He's a Vegan" , you're already so primed by the mixture of weirdness and mundanity that rather than trying to incorporate this new knowledge into any sort of coherent setting ruleset, you just go "Ah, yeah, Vegans".

[sungbeam]

𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐞

dragon shifter!park seonghwa x f!reader

just because you're both dragon shifters doesn't mean this courtship thing is easy.

▷ 6.1k words, pg-13, f2l, dragon shifters au, urban fantasy, swearing, mentions of a big roach/insect, shoulder kiss, seonghwa goes shirtless once (1), mentions of courtship/mating traditions, the boys are implicit in shenanigans ofc, love in the form of jewelry, very mild jealousy, pining

a/n: this au idea was like ,,, 3 months in the making but i reopened the draft yesterday cuz i was tired of rotting 😭 anyways... i think shy, romantic seonghwa is cute ! (also very much hoping this isn't too boring jsfnkdnf)

Park Seonghwa was pretty sure he fell in love with you the day you met. 

It wasn't something he openly admitted to, especially since his attraction had come first when he saw you across the dormitory common room, and was struck dumb by the curve of your smile and the way the sunlight hit your irises to make them glint like jewels. While it was stereotypical to think that dragons only cared about appearances, it didn't come from nothing. It was part of the reason why Seonghwa didn't like saying it was love at first sight; it technically wasn't, by all definitions. He just thought you were beautiful. 

It wasn't until he finally worked up the courage (thanks to his best friend Hongjoong's encouragement (shoving)) to introduce himself to you that he realized what you were—a dragon shifter, just like him. It was no wonder he felt a pull toward you; dragon shifters were a dime a dozen, especially in the city where you both attended university. He told himself his fast friendship and bonding with you came from his excitement of being the same species, as well as learning each other's cultures and traditions, as you came from different clans. 

Though, that didn't account for the amount of times he daydreamed about adorning you in his family's jewels, as it was customary in courtship traditions to wear one's mate's gems. Neither did it account for the way his heart beat faster whenever you were around, the purring from his chest after that one time you fell asleep on his shoulder… It was complicated. 

“Everyone, let's load up the cars! Quick—off your asses. Let's move, people!” Hongjoong hollered like a drill sergeant, his hands cupped around his mouth before clapping too loud for six in the morning on a Saturday. 

Who in their right mind would be crazy enough to wake up so early on the Saturday of their last spring break? Only one demon in particular, and his name was Kim Hongjoong. 

Seonghwa was still half asleep, his eyelids droopy and his limbs even droopier. He nearly flopped face-first onto the pavement outside the apartment complex. He slung his duffle bag over his shoulder and slumped over to the passenger side of the SUV. It had taken all of his willpower to not trudge out in his Lego Movie pajama set.

“—and for goddess's sake, where is Yn?”

He jolted upright. “Yn?” He blubbered, head going on a swivel. 

Hongjoong peered at him weirdly with his hands on his hips, and Wooyoung snorted, then scurried past to avoid Seonghwa's scowl. “Yes, Yn,” Hongjoong said. “Are you awake, Hwa? We literally talked about Yn coming on the trip with us last night.”

Oh. Right. 

Seonghwa blinked his bleary eyes open and nodded sheepishly. Thank goodness he wasn't in his Lego Movie pajamas. “Y-yep, of course I remember!” 

He glanced away, nostrils flaring as he caught onto a familiar scent coming down the street. He could pick out the smell of apple blossoms, tangerines, and your particular musk from a mile away if he was more awake.

“Sorry, I'm late!” Then there came the voice. Your voice simultaneously jump-started his heart and made his heart swoon. If he was about to faint, it probably wasn't going to be from sleep deprivation. 

He couldn't believe he nearly forgot you were coming to the lake with them. 

Your form came into view, your hair a windswept mess and a sheepish sort of smile on your face as you wrestled with the duffle on one shoulder, your backpack on the other, and a paper grocery bag. 

Seonghwa practically fell over himself in order to drop his own bag on the sidewalk and rush over to you. “Here, I got it,” he murmured, taking the grocery bag and duffle bag away from you so he could hold them. 

Your smile widened at him, and he swore the soft morning light was purposefully making your eyes glow right now. “Thanks, Hwa. Very sweet of you.”

“Of course,” he said with a humble nod, pointedly ignoring all of the looks he was getting from his friends. 

“You're just on time,” Hongjoong greeted you with a small smile. “How were exams for you?”

You brushed a hand through your hair, a tired laugh falling from your lips. “They were… alright,” you opted to say. “Glad they're over now, and I'm so ready for this trip.” You gestured to the grocery bag Seonghwa held. “Oh! I brought snacks, by the way.”

Mingi stuck his entire upper body out of the passenger seat of Yunho's sedan. “Yn-ah! You're riding in our car, right?” 

Seonghwa's expression molded into something sour. “Where did you get that idea from?”

“Mingi, you should just give up now,” San chuckled. He sent a wink over to Seonghwa, then glanced back at the naiad who's head Seonghwa was currently trying to glare a hole through. “We’ve already claimed Yn for our car.”

You looked on in confused amusement. “I'll split the snacks between the cars, guys. And plus, the SUV will have more room than the sedan.”

“Exactly,” Seonghwa piped up. He marched over to the back doors of the SUV to safely deposit your things within. There was no need for you to be squished between Yeosang and Jongho in Yunho's comically tiny car, when you could be in the same car as him—no, wait. That wasn't what he meant—

“Well, this is just favoritism,” Yunho jested as he slammed his trunk shut. He shot you a sunny grin that made Seonghwa glance over at you for your reaction. Yunho's being half-siren always made his voice and gestures a little more silken and sweet than the rest of them. “Are you sure it's 'cause of the extra room and not because Wooyoung's cat is gonna be in that car?”

You chuckled, shrugging. As if on cue, a lithe feline in silky black fur trotted out from the bushes. She strutted over to you, purring as she wrapped her tail around your calf. “Okay, maybe you caught me,” you said, crouching down to pet Wooyoung's cat familiar. 

Seonghwa was not going to be jealous over a cat. He was absolutely not. Some sleep would screw his head on straight—yes, sleep did sound nice. He didn't know what was up with himself this morning. 

“Pretty sure she loves you more than she loves me,” Wooyoung pouted as he stuck his head out of the SUV's back window. 

You picked the feline up with your hands, and she gave a crooning meow as you held her up to her witch through the window. “I wouldn't mind adopting her if she wasn't permanently bound to you.”

Seonghwa's eye twitched at the same time he and Hongjoong made eye contact. 

The demon's mouth curled into a knowing, teasing smile—I see you. Seonghwa could feel the heat lift to the surface of his skin as he ducked into the car. He really needed a nap.  

The remainder of the time was used swiftly as everyone finished packing things into your respective cars, including your bodies. About an hour later, you were well on your way out of the city. 

As this was all nine of yours last year of university, this spring break needed to be a memorable one. Yeosang had heard talk through the grapevine of a collection of interlinking caves overlooking a small lake. It was located a few hours out of the city proper, but it would pose as a peaceful getaway for the week. Each of the small caverns were open facing, peering over the water's surface, and each was designed to be like rooms in a house. There would be enough for the boys to sleep two to a bed, with you getting your own. 

The drive out of the city was an easy one. Seonghwa slept nearly the entire time, only waking up to a near-quiet car, save for Hongjoong's choice of music playing softly from the radio. 

“'Morning,” Hongjoong murmured, taking his eyes off the road for a brief moment. 

Seonghwa yawned and turned his eyes up and outward at the world around him. Concrete jungle had become emerald green trees speared with beams of buttery sunshine. He bet it smelled glorious. “Morning,” he said back quietly. “Are they still…” 

His voice trailed off as he twisted around in his seat and took in the middle row behind him. You, San, and Wooyoung were squished arm to arm, thigh to thigh; Wooyoung's black cat familiar laid fast asleep in Wooyoung's lap, with Wooyoung's head against San, San's head against you, and your head against the car window. Seonghwa cooed to himself at the sight, carefully snapping a picture with his phone, before returning to face the front. 

The remainder of the drive was swift, and as you approached the site of your home for the next several days, you all slowly began to wake up. Seonghwa rolled his window down and braced his arm over the open sill, a smile breaking onto his lips as he greedily inhaled the clean, crisp air. 

His eyes flickered to the side mirror, locking gazes with you. For a moment, he held your eye contact. He watched your mouth curve into that pretty smile of yours that made his insides flutter, before you looked out at the forest again. 

When Hongjoong's and Yunho's cars broke out of the trees and into the next clearing, everyone's breaths stole away. 

“No way we scored this good,” San whispered in giddy excitement as he shoved his body between Hongjoong and Seonghwa to peer out the front windshield. 

Before you stood a wide lake, its waters so clear that one could see straight to the bottom. The caverns that you would all bunker up in were on the far shore, stacked atop one another in two layers with four openings on the bottom and three on the top. A waterfall curtained off two of the cavern rooms as it flowed from the rocky outcropping that loomed over the lake, and into the lake itself; the sound was not thunderous, but a dull sort of roar that was almost muffled. 

With the sun rising higher into the sky, its beams reflected off the cascading spray of water to create a small rainbow in the mist. Suffice to say, the view in front of you deserved its own magazine. 

“Let's get our spring break on!” Wooyoung hooted as Hongjoong pulled the car around the shore of the lake to reach the base of the caverns. 

As the day sank from late morning to early afternoon, you and your friends transferred all of your belongings from the cars and into the caverns. Rooms were decided by an efficient round of Rock Paper Scissors—you luckily scored first, and chose the most private room behind the waterfall for yourself. 

Once everyone was settled, it became a race of who could get into the water—

“WAAAAHOOOO!” SPLASH!

—first. 

Seonghwa peered out from the living room cavern on the second floor to see the bodies below take a running start into the lake. He chuckled to himself, leaning his hip against the wall with a can of soda in his hand as he watched his friends break the surface of the lake, one by one. 

“You're not swimming?”

Seonghwa nearly fell forward and out of the open cave, down into the water. His hand slapped against the wall to catch himself, his heart practically tumbling out of his chest anyway. 

To your credit, you looked apologetic, grimacing through a smile as you came to stand next to him. “Sorry. You didn't hear me come in?” 

You had changed out of your T-shirt and shorts from earlier into a cropped tank top and loose skirt, a silver waist chain winking up at him from where it linked around your belly. 

The thought shoved itself into his brain—that you would look terribly divine in his jewelry.

He swallowed, dragging his eyes up back to yours. “I didn't,” he admitted sheepishly. “Guess I was too focused on watching everyone else. Have you settled in alright?”

You had chosen the cavern bedroom right next to the living room, but it was the only bedroom on this level. 

With a nod, you turned your gaze outward at the ocean of emerald green trees surrounding this little oasis. “I have,” you said pleasantly. “You?”

“Same here.” He carded a hand through his hair. “It's really quite beautiful here.” But not as beautiful as you. 

You glanced over at him again, and he wondered if he could concoct enough things to say to keep your attention on him. “Oh, I definitely agree; it's a perfect paradise, really. The waterfall” — you inclined your chin to your left — “I think it'll be most beautiful at sunset.”

He lifted one of his brows and pushed off the cavern wall. “Oh? Why do you think so?”

“If the sunset faces us,” you explained, gesturing your hand out to the eastern horizon in the distance, “then it'll reflect its light against the waterfall. As the sun sinks down and lights the sky on fire, so too will it set the water aflame.”

Seonghwa could envision your words in his mind's eye as he took in the waterfall careening into the lake below. Its crystal blue waters were so clear that it undoubtedly would reflect the shades of the sunset, and become illuminated as you said—where water turned to flame. 

A soft smile came to his face. What a gorgeous image. 

“I bet it'd look incredible from the skies.” Your words drew him back to your face. You were already looking over at him, and his heart gave a loving lurch. 

Seonghwa cleared his throat. “I agree. Have you been able to stretch your wings recently?”

You hummed, tilting your head from side to side. “Not super recently because I was locked inside to study for the last week or two. You?”

“Same,” he chuckled and reached behind his back to scratch at the nape of his neck. Usually, he tried to shift into dragon form at least twice a week to keep his wings strong, but when life got busy, it was difficult to find enough time to take to the skies. “Would—would you like to take a flight with me sometime?” He stammered, fumbling over his words. “Just, y'know, like a casual thing.”

Excellent, Hwa. The spitting image of confidence. 

He sipped on his soda, already hearing Hongjoong's exasperated sigh in his ear. 

Your smile softened at the corners. “I'd love to. After dinner, maybe?”

His shoulders loosened in relief. “Sounds like a plan.”

“This is your chance! It's a sign!” 

Seonghwa frowned at his reflection in the vanity mirror as he played around with his dark curls. Tied up? Kept down? It really didn't matter; he was literally going to be a dragon for the majority of the time, but it never hurt to appear well-groomed before a potential… ahem, friend. A friend. 

Hongjoong slumped down on the foot of their shared bed, a deadpan on his face when Seonghwa continued to ignore him. “Park Seonghwa, so help me, I will plant one of your anklets in her jewelry box—”

“And if you do that,” Seonghwa drawled as he gave up on his hair and reached for the tube of lip gloss on the vanity top, “I will tell that elven girl you've become so fond of about how you—”

“Okay, I got it,” Hongjoong cut in with a scowl. “Aish, so touchy. I'm just saying that this trip is the perfect opportunity to let her know how you feel, and to court her.”

Seonghwa knew that; of course, he fucking knew that. The thing was that if anything went poorly, you would practically be stuck here with him until the end of the trip. He cringed to himself at the mere awkwardness of that potential outcome. “It's just a wing stretch,” he reasoned aloud to himself. He grabbed one of the bottles of cologne on the table to spritz around his scent glands. “It's not like I'm going to offer her a necklace.”

“Yes, because you need to smell nice for a wing stretch.” Hongjoong fell back onto the bed with a grumble under his breath at Seonghwa's stubbornness. 

Dinner had finished up about fifteen minutes ago, and while everyone departed to do their own activities, you and Seonghwa agreed to reconvene at the tops of the caves in five minutes for your planned flight together. The days were growing longer as spring waltzed toward summer, and thus, the sun reigned the skies for a lengthier period of time. The two of you would ideally circle back in time to watch the sunset hit the waterfall.

Seonghwa left Hongjoong to their quarters as he made his way up to the rocky outcropping at the top of the waterfall. 

You were already waiting for him, your bare feet standing in the shallow end of the river leading down to the waterfall. You still had on the top and skirt from earlier, and as a light breeze wafted past, it blew through your hair and your clothes like a dream. 

You glanced up at him. “Ready?”

“Whenever you are.” He grinned as the anticipation and excitement of breaking his wings free slowly bubbled up into his chest. It wasn't only being able to spend time with you, but simply the thoughts of being his dragon self that made him so giddy. 

You hopped out of the river and padded across the soil toward him. 

Once you were in line with him, Seonghwa flashed you a wide smile and sprinted toward the cliff edge. Your laughter followed him as he dove off toward the water below, eyes falling closed as he relished in the wind whipping past his skin. 

When he opened his eyes, he skimmed the water's surface with the edge of a veiny, membranous wing, before swooping back up toward the ripening sky above. His humanoid features had fully transformed into that of a creature nearly five times his human height. Scales of obsidian, gleaming a dark blue in the light, rippled across his back, his skin. He huffed steam from his nostrils and searched for you. 

A body of iridescent white, so pearly that you appeared a shade of light purple in the burning gold light, blurred in his periphery. 

He whipped his head in your direction, watching you soar around him in a loose circle. You wrapped around him and grazed the end of your tail against his, a caress. 

He didn't want to think too much about that. 

And then your irises, blue-purple in this form, were blinking at him. Northward? Your snout gestured in that vague direction. 

Seonghwa huffed his agreement, and the pair of you took off into the skies. 

A dragon shifter's courtship traditions were different from other shifters’ cultures. For one, the value of wearing a potential mate's jewelry was equivalent to acceptance of courtship; additionally, wearing one another's jewels essentially spelled out a long-term partnership. It was similar to humans’ exchanging of rings. 

Dragons dressed their mates in their own jewels as dragons were ruthlessly protective of their hoards of treasures, and a mate was even more precious than any jewel one could acquire. There were other rituals, too—such as dousing one another in dragonfire, performing a certain mating dance, consuming meals made by their mate—but the jewels had always been emphasized in Seonghwa's clan. 

It was why he stiffened when he saw a slim, silver chain wrapped around your ankle this morning. 

The piece of jewelry looked awfully similar to something he owned, except the one you wore was studded with an amethyst on the tail, whereas the one he owned was studded with sapphire. He struggled to swallow as he stepped into the kitchen, eyes pinned to your ankle. 

The way the light refracted off the gem made the article appear so much like his own jewelry; his heart could not take a scare like that so early. Perhaps scare wasn't such an accurate word—he simply hadn't had the time to mentally prepare. 

It didn't matter how long he'd fantasized about it. Seeing the real thing would likely bring him to his knees regardless. 

“Hwa,” your amused chuckle greeted his ears as you peered at him from over the rim of your coffee cup. “Good morning.”

He tried for a smile and forced himself to look at something, anything, other than your ankle. “Hi. Good morning.” Seonghwa grabbed a cup of his own to pour a helping of the brew into. “Sleep well?”

You rolled your shoulders back, followed by your neck. But as he blew on the hot coffee, he failed to notice the way your eyes watched his movements regarding the coffee. “Mhm, way better after we flew last night.”

Seonghwa hummed warmly. “Yes, same here.” Last night was a blissful night of deep sleep. The tension between his shoulder blades had lessened considerably. 

He took a gentle sip of his beverage, and the rich bittersweetness hit him as an alluring wakeup call. You were still watching as he took a larger gulp. 

His eyes met yours. “Something wrong?” He asked, licking his lips. 

Your eyes widened. “Nope,” you squeaked out. You coughed, setting your mug on the table to lace your fingers together. “Uhm so… thoughts on kebabs for lunch? I was gonna go hunting later.”

“Mmh.” Seonghwa drained his cup of coffee. “That sounds good. I can go with you—if you'd like,” he added swiftly. Sometimes hunting could be a therapeutic solo trip and he hoped he wasn't encroaching. Though, going hunting just the two of you sounded nice, too. 

“I'd love the company,” you said. When you smiled, his own widened. 

The brief moment of peace the two of you shared shattered as two bodies barrelled into the room, followed by another set of thundering footsteps behind them. 

“YAH! Choi Jongho, I know this was all your idea!” Wooyoung appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, drenched from head to toe with dark and damp bangs hanging in his seething eyes. A puddle was beginning to form beneath him as he glared at the two giggling imps cowering behind the opposite end of the counter. 

You and Seonghwa connected gazes across the chaos. Good grief. 

From behind Wooyoung's calf, another creature poked her head out to hiss at the perpetrators. Wooyoung's cat familiar looked akin to a wet rat, the poor thing. 

“Seonghwa hyung, do something!”

Seonghwa's eyes drifted over to Jongho and Yeosang, who flashed him a pair of sheepish smiles. “Aye… both of you. Now.”

“We didn't get water on San,” was what Yeosang offered with a shrug. 

That seemed to not be the answer Wooyoung was looking for. If the witch was a dragon instead, Seonghwa was sure he would be blowing steam out of his ears. “Are you kidding me? I am going to hex you so badly, you will never know a day of peac—”

Jongho suddenly yelped, startling everyone as he leaped a couple feet in the air and ran to crouch beside you at the breakfast table. 

“What, what? What is it?” 

Yeosang's eyes had widened to the size of globes, too, as he scurried backward to the edge of the cavern. His stare was still pinned to something on the other side of the counter. 

Seonghwa peered over the ledge and swore sharply. “That is the biggest fucking bug I have ever seen in my life,” he said with his hand pressed to his face, stressed. 

Wooyoung had magically disappeared, and his cat had retreated alongside him. If even the cat didn't want anything to do with the big hunk of insect—

“AH-AH! HYUNG, IT'S MOVING!” Jongho screeched and grabbed the back of your chair to hide behind you. 

Seonghwa paused at that action, but snapped out of it when he saw the legs peek out from around the corner. “Can someone get Yunho?”

“Ohhhhh, I'm too young to die,” the youngest whispered toward the ceiling, his face contorted in fear and anguish; it was a rare thing to see from Jongho. “Yn, please, flame its ass or something!”

You sputtered, curling your feet up onto your chair with you in case the bug came scuttling toward the table. “Uh no. Yunho would literally flame me if I did!”

“Screw what he thinks. He's not here right now.”

Seonghwa clambered up onto the counter and peered over the edge again. He slapped a hand over his mouth after seeing the bug for another time. “Okay,” he said carefully, “on the count of three, we're all going to run for the edge and jump into the lake.”

Three nods from around the room. 

“One…” Everyone shifted an inch toward the cave opening. “Two…”

The fuckass bug moved. 

The countdown was abandoned—Jongho ran for the opening and tackled Yeosang into the water. Seonghwa leaped over the remainder of the countertop in time to swan dive into the lake beside you. His body sliced into the water like a hot knife through butter, and the lake's cool temperatures engulfed him in a refreshing embrace. 

Your head popped up right beside him and you shot him a laughing grin. “Well, that's definitely one way to start off the day.”

He laughed alongside you, slicking his wet hair back and out of his face. “I mean, we were gonna end up in the water at some point,” he mused. 

“True.” Your eyes zeroed in on something just below his jawline. You swam a little closer, and Seonghwa's heart catapulted into his throat. “You have a little, uhm, watercress…”

Your fingers brushed over his collarbone as you gently plucked the strand of watercress out from the links of the necklace sitting on his sternum. You lifted the plant up as if to say, 'Ta da,’ before pausing at your physical proximity. 

Seonghwa watched as a drop of water dripped down the middle of your face, down the slope of your nose, and slipped over your plush lips. Woah…

He had half the mind to reach out and thumb it away. 

“Two dragons, a fae prince, and a water mage couldn't handle a fucking roach?” 

You and Seonghwa jolted away from each other like similar poles of a magnet, heat rushing up to the surface of your skin. You both tilted your gazes up to the caves and saw Yunho appear at the mouth of the kitchen, a wide grin on his face as he held the bug up between his two fingers. 

“That sounds like a joke I've heard before,” San laughed as he walked up next to Yunho. He waved down at the lot of you in the water, a twinkle of mischief in his eyes. 

Wooyoung peered out from behind San. “Instant karma!” He hollered. 

“Come down here, and we can talk about instant karma,” Jongho threw right back up at him. He flicked his wrist and sent a jet of lake water up to the cave mouth, hitting Wooyoung square between the eyes with scary accuracy. 

San howled in laughter as his friend hissed from the friendly fire. 

Seonghwa loosened a warm chuckle before turning toward you—wait. Where did you go? He twirled around in the water, eyes scanning the lake for where you'd gone. 

“Hwa!” You were by the far shore, raising your hand up to wave him over. 

He didn't hesitate to swim over toward you. The two of you swam over to the furthest edge of the lake, far from the others. The morning sun had not yet crested high enough to penetrate through the trees here, and that left you both in a patch of dreamy shade where long leaves dripped into the water like Mother Nature's curtains. 

Seonghwa clambered out onto the bank and yanked the hem of his shirt up and over his head. The material had stuck to his skin like glue, and he was a lot more comfortable without it on. 

Behind him though, he swore he heard your breath hitch. 

The corner of his lips curled upward in satisfaction. He continued to feign ignorance as he wrung his wet shirt out, arm muscles flexing as the water trickled out of the fabric. “You coming up, love?” He asked casually, peering over his shoulder at you lingering in the water. 

You cleared your throat as you pulled yourself onto land. “Y-yeah,” you said, covering your stammer with a breathy laugh. 

“Cold?” He teased, finally turning his body to face you in full. 

You passed him an expression of playful exasperation. “Freezing,” you jested back. It was difficult for dragon shifters to be cold; the amount of heat either of you generated on your own was enough to keep you warm all the time. After all, you did spew fire from your mouth on occasion. 

Seonghwa whipped his shirt out in front of him and blew a breath of steam through it. The fabric dried up fast, but instead of putting it back on, he slung it over his shoulder. 

An idea plunked itself into the forefront of his mind. “Shall we hunt?” He asked and extended a hand out to you. 

He saw the flicker of blue-purple in your irises—like lightning—as you brushed a lock of hair from your eyes. You took his hand, your fingers and palms slotting together like matching clasps of a chain. “We shall.”

Seonghwa sat at the vanity table in his and Hongjoong's room. The world beyond the mouth of this cavern was a dark sapphire, embroidered with small diamonds in its fabric—the night sky and its stars. The muffled rush of the waterfall nearby played in the background as he sifted through his traveler's chest of jewelry and gemstones. Hongjoong had half fallen asleep in the hot spring somewhere behind him, so Seonghwa was taking this time to pick out what he wanted to wear to… tomorrow…

His hand movements stilled as something caught his eyes in the chest of shiny stones. He held his breath, carefully withdrawing a silver chain out by its amethyst stone. There was no question about what it was and that it didn't belong to him. 

Your fragrance still lingered on the metal, though cool from being away from your body heat for a while. 

Seonghwa breathed out loudly through his nose as he stared at the article in his palm. 

He could hear Hongjoong emerging from the hot spring pool. “Something wrong, Hwa?”

“Did you” — Seonghwa's brows furrowed and he twisted around on the vanity stool — “steal her anklet?”

Hongjoong frowned, wrapping a towel around his waist before coming to stand beside his friend. He peered down at the article, reaching out to touch the anklet. 

Seonghwa moved his hand away and his chest rumbled with a low growl. 

A soft huff of amusement fell from Hongjoong's lips, and he settled his hand on Seonghwa's shoulder instead. “No, I wouldn't dare. I don't want to face a dragon's wrath for stealing from their hoard, thank you very much.”

“Hmph.” Seonghwa considered the article in his palm once more. If Hongjoong wasn't pulling his leg, then the logical answer was that you put your anklet in his jewelry chest. But why would you do that, and when did you? He would have smelled your scent lingering in this room if you had, and he couldn't pick up on any of his friends’ scents either. 

A flower of hope blossomed in his chest as he thought about the implications of this gesture further. Maybe it didn't matter how it got here, only what you thought about it being here in his possession.

“It's a sign,” Hongjoong giggled, squeezing his shoulder. He trudged away to go find his sweatpants to sleep in. “Your move, Park!”

Seonghwa slowly wrapped his fingers around the chain, a small smile flitting onto his face. In the mirror, his cheekbones burned the color of the rubies in his jewelry case. 

His move, indeed. 

In the morning, Seonghwa rose before day broke the dawn. 

It had come to him like a strike of lightning last night as he laid in bed, staring up at the ceiling, weighing the option of wearing your anklet like a lovesick fool or returning it to you in the morning. What he'd remembered, instead, was something you told him about your clan's traditions. 

While his family held a lot more emphasis on adornment for mating traditions, your family clan put more importance on the act of making a meal for a potential partner. Consuming said meal was an acceptance of courtship and love. 

As he hunched over the kitchen countertop pouring over a recipe on his phone, he marinated on how to go about this. Presenting you with breakfast—that he only made for you, might he add—was not a subtle move in the slightest. Perhaps slipping your anklet into his things could be interpreted a couple ways, but it wasn't a glaring neon sign like this gesture was going to be. 

Nonetheless, Seonghwa got to work. He was counting on his friends to stay the fuck asleep. 

About an hour later, he was just finishing up when he picked up on the sound of your bare feet padding across the hallway toward the kitchen. Your perfume followed next, carrying into the room on an invisible breeze. Seonghwa drummed his fingers against the countertop as you strolled into the room, eyes wide and bright when you saw him there with food made. 

“Well, something smells yummy,” you said warmly. “Should I go wake the others?”

“No!” He laughed nervously, breaking into a bashful smile. “No need. This—this is just for you. I mean, I made breakfast for you.”

Your eyes seemed to grow even wider. “Break—breakfast for me? Just me?”

He nodded and wrung his hands in front of his body. “Just you… if that's okay.”

“Of course, that's okay. More than okay, really,” you murmured, eyes turning shy. The implications were too blatant not to miss or deny. 

Seonghwa gestured for you to take a seat at the breakfast table and presented you with the hot and fresh plate of breakfast he'd just made. He claimed the seat across from you with his own plate, but didn't touch it yet. His nerves made his hands shake beneath the table as he watched you take your utensil and fork a bite into your mouth. 

Something warm burst in his chest as you swallowed, then took another bite. 

“It's really good,” you said to him between bites. Your mouth was pursed into a wide smile, a tenderness swimming in your gemstone irises. “I think though,” you murmured after swallowing, “that we need to talk.”

Seonghwa's stomach tightened, but he nodded. “Agreed. I, uhm, I found this in my jewelry case last night.” He pulled out the strand of silver and amethyst from his pocket. The metal and jewel glistened in the soft morning sunlight pouring into the open cavern. 

“Oh, you didn't wear it?”

He went doe-eyed. “I wanted to—I just wanted to be clear about intentions first, just because if I wore this…” He stammered, “Then you'd be mine and I'd be yours.” 

The wording of it made your pulse skip, but it was exactly what you wanted. All of this stumbling around each other, falling over yourselves, was for this purpose. 

“Is that right, love?”

You nodded, as the two of you shared a smile in the glow of early morning. “That's right.”

He would be yours, and you would be his. 

Breakfast was dined upon in peace with quiet murmurings exchanged between the two of you, accompanied by light laughter and loving gazes. It was a marvel none of it was interrupted by the other occupants of the lakeside getaway. 

There was another thing that had to be done in order to seal the deal, however. 

When breakfast was finished and cleaned up after, Seonghwa barged back into his and Hongjoong's shared bedroom. His demon best friend was nowhere to be found, but it was no matter. Seonghwa went over to the vanity table and carefully picked up the necklace he had laid out last night. It was white gold studded in fat, glistening rubies—his prized possession, and one of the few pieces he had saved for only his future partner to wear.

That giddy excitement curled in his stomach again as he took the necklace with him up to your bedroom on the second floor. You were there waiting for him, your foot braced on the vanity stool to fix his sapphire chain onto your ankle, as your amethyst one laid around his. 

“This,” he murmured as he came up behind you in the mirror, “I've been saving for someone special.” He locked eyes with you in the looking glass, a sweet smile playing on his lips as he draped the heavy gems over your sternum. 

Blood rubies were precious and harder to come by these days, which was why Seonghwa coveted them. It only made sense that they should rest now on a person he would also come to value even more. They sat perfectly upon your collarbones, like a tiara upon your head… like it was made for you. You were yourself a treasure. 

Seonghwa could hardly contain his contentment at the sight. He wrapped his arms around your middle as he pressed a kiss to your shoulder, smiling against your skin. “Perfect.”

a/n: don't forget to reblog + comment if u enjoyed!

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[hoseoksluna]

LADY BEETLE | knj

pairing: non-idol!namjoon x oc

genre: situationship au ; sex playhouse ; glory hole  / smut, fluff

word count: 10.4k

summary: when you came to seoul's hidden sex playhouse to forget about namjoon, you didn't think the anonymous mr. kim would actually be namjoon.  

pin: lady beetle / taglist: join / discord: join

warnings: sex club setting, oc struggles with her feelings towards namjoon, glory hole but with hoseoksluna twist, engaging in sexual practices with a person you don't know, commitment issues, heated conversations, dirty talk, patience game, counting down (for my neva play girlies), oral sex (f. & m. receiving), deepthroat, face fucking, nipple play, unprotected and rough sex, teacher namjoon, spanking, praise kink, size kink, choking on fingers, rough treatment in general, aftercare, oc and namjoonie smoke together.

note: i daresay this is my best work. :D fuck my life, guys. i need this namjoon like i need air to breathe. if i see any of you wearing panties... TAKE EM OFF NOW. sldjflskdjfsl jk, jk. THE SUPRISE IS REVEALED. GLORY FAWKING HOLE. my babies, enjoy this filth. stream neva play. imagine that deep voice of his.... yeah. yeah....... faaawwkwkjsdlfjsdlfjsdfjslfjsls. ENJOYYYYY. LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK. MY ASK BOX IS OPEENNNNNNN.

The building looked ordinary from the outside view. Like any other building in this part of the city. Long and tall, coalescing with the evening heavens and with its freckles of stars—very much like those upon your skin. McDonald’s was just down the road, a to-go coffee stand perfumed the whole street with its coffee beans, and a bookstore stood right next to this peculiar piece of urban architecture, unaware of all the sins that lurked behind its walls. 

It may pretend to be pure, with its grand hall, its sophisticated reception and even graceful employees—dressed in the finest of fabrics that glinted beneath the opulent chandelier—but it was just that. 

An act. 

They smiled at you, but in their heart they knew what you were here for. 

In this seemingly normal, ordinary building all your sexual fantasies flare out. In the simplest of words, you come here to get fucked out of the norm that is considered vanilla. You fill out an online application, set the date, the time—and depending on your desire, you even get to see who your dream fulfiller is. 

In your case, you were going into this blind. 

And so was he, your dream fulfiller. 

While you opted to stay anonymous, the only detail you knew about the man was that he was from the cursed Kim clan. Another male that bore the last name like the one who wrecked your nerves to the point that you had to bite the bullet and try this out as nothing else was working. It was a newfound obsession of your best friend, who gifted you a voucher to this place on your birthday. And you weren’t sure if Kim Namjoon had the sixth sense and somehow knew about this, although you’d believe he was very much capable of possessing one, just to piss you off even more. 

You have been crushing on this man since the day you met him at your mom’s small ramyeon restaurant you are working in for her. Since the moment, in fact, you glimpsed at his vintage black Cartier watch with a matching singular bracelet adorning his wrist that he kept calmly on the table while he was on a work call, growling and snapping into the phone. Your mom curled her lips, swatted her eyelashes as she grew hot in the cheeks, chopping green onions for him from her cooking station while you were watching over the noodles. It was her who noticed him at first—and it was her who told you to do your best and seduce him. 

And when you lifted your eyes, saw that thick mane of his cloudy hair, the cleft of his cheek as he gritted his jaw and then that picturesque hand of his, you sensed that unfamiliar, magnetic pull towards him that made you blush. And you never looked more like her than in that moment. 

For some reason you knew better than to not listen to her and do as she says. You felt it was the right decision, the right move and so you fixed your hair, swiped your flower clip through a half of it while your face-framing wisps fell naturally in front of your pink face. Your mom tossed you her lip gloss from the pocket of her apron and you brought him the ramyon she cooked for him. 

Smiled at him. Batted your eyelashes at him like your mother taught you throughout your girlhood and it worked. 

Namjoon told you were a breath of fresh air when you sashayed towards him after such an important, yet aggravating phone call, apologized for the inconvenience, bowed slightly. Balanced, most delightfully, respect and flirting. Leaned more towards the latter when he would steal glances at you and smile at you at every opportunity that your gaze would connect to his. 

Your heart hammered once he came to you to pay for his meal. Your mother stopped whatever it was that she was doing just to beam at him and he personally gave her a huge tip in cash—right into her right hand that he held. Turned to you and asked you if you’d like to have dinner with him sometime. 

And you agreed—without knowing he would get on your nerves in the long run. 

Namjoon was not a serious man, not as he appeared to be. Although he showed you the side of Seoul you would otherwise never have the option to see and feel with your entire being by taking you to luxurious dinners, cafés, art exhibitions and work events—the things he would say and the things he would do did not reflect those settings by any chance. 

He took you from rags to riches and you paid for it by being a victim of his odd form of cute aggression. 

The man would get you tangled up in your sentences because he simply enjoyed the view of you getting flustered. He found pleasure in revving you up enough for you to curse at him and growl at him, be it by bugging you with tickles, pokes or be it by making fun of you until you yourself laughed. 

There was nothing sexual about your relationship, if you could call it that. He didn’t hold your hand, he didn’t regard you hungrily as so many men do in his place, but he did look at you with the rawest form of purity. At your freckles—ones that made him give you the adorable nickname Lady Beetle—at your butterfly tattoo on your ankle that your dress would always expose from its natural criss-crossed position. The things he would say did not contain any hints of this leading into the bed. And he never kissed you, even though there were many occasions, where he looked like he was about to do it. 

He always held back. And while it, and everything else, made you pristinely fall for him, it also angered you so much that there was nothing else you wanted to do but to grab his head and kiss him madly. 

And the other day, you did. 

Leaned in after the heft of your shared tension grew too big for you to hide it in your hands—only for him to turn his head, slightly, and let you merely kiss his cheek. 

That was the final straw. And so you stopped agreeing to his “date” invitations until you stopped replying to his messages altogether. You thought he wasn’t going to have any part of you if he wasn’t willing to properly date you. 

And in your anger, you dwelled in the hole he left behind. The hole that was asking for his fatherly attention that caused you so much extraordinary joy. Your mother must’ve sensed it with her motherly instincts that he would occupy that place in your life, which your father didn’t. Your body missed laughing with him until your tummy hurt—and you missed him. And the more you did, the more your anger blazed. 

You couldn’t get rid of it. 

You tried exercising. You tried running around the block, only to never do it again because you couldn’t catch your breath and you thought you had almost died that day. You smoked a pack after pack, and that didn’t help either. 

Neither did abusing your cunt until you couldn’t go on anymore. Your anger burned down your bedroom and once you groaned and whined, punched the pillows and kicked your legs, your eyes fell upon the voucher you had pinned on your corkboard  

Your remedy was in front of you, and in the worst of your anger—you gave it a go. 

You filled out that application in the middle of the night, one that made you even hornier. And because you didn’t want to see any other man but Namjoon while you were getting your brain fucked out of your head, you chose the only option there was for that case. 

Glory hole. 

And the idea of it made your anger falter ever so slightly. You could imagine it was him pounding you through the barrier. The wall would only help your imagination.

Friday. Seven PM. You had to come two hours early because it was a necessity for you to shower at the place after you signed the contract. You also had to quickly think of a safe word, it was the only thing you foolishly forgot to fill out that day, as lost as you were within your flight of fancy. And because the employee standing in front of you made you anxious, you wrote down the first thing you thought of. 

Beetle. 

Your heart pounded, and when you let go of the pen, the gravity of the moment hit you. You truly were about to swim in a pool of sin only because the man you desperately wanted didn’t want you back. At least not in the way you wanted him to. 

The employee led you into the room, where your own personal sin would uncoil. A grandiose, large space, plucked out of a French chateau, with dark antique furniture, an easel with a painting you were quick to skip to in order to ogle at it. Your kitten heels clicked on the old, parquet floors that creaked, scuffed against the carpet that cost more than your yearly salary. It was a room that Namjoon would like—and it was a room that took your breath away. 

And the painting paused your blood flow. 

The Unequal Marriage by Vasili Pukirev.  

A painting of you, essentially, because you can’t have the man you yearn for. 

Your heart shrinks, painful pinpricks digging deeply into the flesh. You lift a finger and trace the despondent face of the bride, acknowledge yourself with that secret, yet vivid piece of your agony eternalized within the thickness of the brushstrokes. Her silver flower crown, the gossamer fabric of her veil, and finally her delicate hand. And in your soul, you hold it. 

You peek at the elderly groom and disgust seizes you. Because of the poor girl’s fate, because of your own. It feels as though you’re about to sin with that very man and you regret ever coming here. 

An emotion that you hurriedly shake off because your best friend paid a huge amount of money for you to experience a good time. Like she did. 

Your hand slaps back to your side. Your emotions, too. You will them to hide their starlight just for this one night. Hide their love for the man they can’t have. 

You turn around and glimpse upon a table with bottles of both champagne and wine. Think you need one at this moment; think your dream fulfiller would appreciate it if you poured him one, too. But having one sip of that dark liquid, you say fuck it and finish his glass as well. 

Undress. Take a shower. Weep under the stream. 

And the same employee waits for you when you emerge out of the bathroom in your robe. With manicured hands folded over her stomach, her eyes have softened a little bit, and abruptly, you realize how glad you are that a woman is accompanying you on this strange journey. If a man stood in her place, you would’ve already walked out and wasted your best friend’s money. 

“Mr. Kim wishes for you to be naked,” she says, her voice light, but firm. Your skin prickles with goosebumps—you bought a lacy red lingerie for the occasion, to help your imagination do its job to the fullest. A certain wisp of sadness clutches you that you won’t be able to wear it. 

Or… 

“What happens if I disobey?” you ask, gripping the thick lining of your bathrobe at your chest for mental support. The seriousness of the situation inches nearer and nearer and your stomach knots. 

She inhales, straightening up, as if she was about to leave this room. “Mr. Kim is not a regular, so I don’t know anything about this temper, but I would suggest respecting his wishes.” 

And she does, making space for your thoughts to whirl, and your eyes trace the flowers on the red Persian rug underneath your slipper-shod feet. 

He’s not a regular, so that means he’s not anything like the disgusting groom in the painting. He may be an ordinary person just like you, trying your luck in an unusual setting. Perhaps young, perhaps older—but normal. Not a lecher about to feast on your purity. 

Your stomach relaxes as do your muscles and you walk over to the bed to grab your make-up bag. Set yourself into the doll version of you that enjoys a male company with your eyeliner and glitter. Finish the process with a red tendril of lipstick over your mouth—just to leave behind a pleasant trace if the man ever decides to up the fun a little bit. 

Will it be fun? Or will you regret every second? 

An unanswerable question for your doll brain. You shake it off. Sit down at the edge of the bed and wait. 

Wait for him to fuck not just your anger, but your feelings out of your body. 

The woman emerges out of the bright light of the hall as if she was a housekeeper coming in to clean the hotel room. To a naked eye, it is not far from reality. This time, her softness has deepened so much that she bears a smile on her face. One, that you’re unsure of what it means. And one that relaxes your system to its finality. 

She raises a hand towards the double doors, in the direction of the easel with the painting, and nods, her smile unwavering. 

“You may proceed, miss, through this door. You can take off your robe now and get on the bed through the back of the cubicle. Mr. Kim will join you in five minutes.” 

Your breath shivers as you exhale. You thank her and she clicks the door shut behind her. Scurrying onto your feet, you gather as much bravery as you can. Your bathrobe plops down onto the bed. You give one last look to the unhappy bride in the painting before you open the door. 

You sense her encouraging you to go on—to live a life full of emancipation that she never got to grasp with her fist. And that, you find, is your bravery. 

The dimmed room, in size, mirrors the one you just walked out of. And it stares at you head-on. 

The cubicle the employee spoke of faces you to the right. A black-painted wooden little structure  with a hole in the middle, covered in leather that is cut into long fringes. The lower half of your body will stick out of it and you reckon it depends on Mr. Kim himself what he does with your legs—whether he pins them up using the restrains on the wood or if he holds them. 

The unknown lengthens and for the first time during this night, a small ribbon of excitement begins to swathe your chest. 

Next to the cubicle, in the far corner of the room, is a dresser. You believe the drawers are filled with toys, but the top is lined with dark bottles of alcohol that you recognize. European—Jack Daniel’s, Jim Beam. Suits the play house’s style, you guess. 

And on the left, a monumental bed that takes up the rest of the room. And it’s hung up from the ceiling.

You don’t have time to ogle it as time ticks, but while you run to the back of the cubicle like you were advised, you do notice that there are no paintings embellishing the walls. No person from the old age of time to witness the unfolding of your so-called dream. Sinful, sinful dream. 

Maybe that was done on purpose. Maybe you’re supposed to live this dream with the anonymous Mr. Kim in some way. 

The mattress inside the cubicle is made out of leather, but it is the strong scent of fresh wood that hits your nostrils. It is decorated with twinkle lights all around, giving it a comforting feel. One pair of restraints is installed into the walls as well, but you think it’s more for leverage than for the wishes of the dream fulfiller. Milky and silken, they stand out from the dark tones of it all, and you gaze at them for some kind of comfort as you strengthen your legs through the hole, the cold tassels drifting along your bare body sending sparks of strange delight up your stomach. You bite your lip at the sensation, scooching up to an awkward, almost sitting position so your legs don’t dangle out, but the backs of your knees press against the edge of the mat. 

You cross your ankles. 

And you wait, all over again. 

Wonder if you should touch yourself or if you should give the honors to Mr. Kim to make you ready for him, but the tassels, the sight of your hip bone tattoo that says angel… your nipples perk up on their own and maybe you’ve come to like the act of waiting for him. Or maybe you like the view of your nakedness at a peculiar place such as this. Of your angelic form bare and about to be taken back to heaven. 

Your stomach swarms with anxious morsels at that thought and you take a deep breath. At your exhale, you hear the door creak open and close with a certain tenderness that you immediately know it was used in order not to startle you. 

One point up for Mr. Kim. 

Maybe the Kim clan has good manners and thoughtfulness engraved in their DNA, but they’re men and disappointment always awaits you eventually—

His footsteps lead towards you, carrying that same tenderness. The sound of the muted thuds grow more and more distinct, no ounce of hurriedness lodged in them. A small fire begins to burn in you due to his evident patience, awakening your body, and you’re so, so surprised to detect such gentle arousal just from the energy he’s brought in. 

That, alone, causes you to curl in your coyness, but when you hear him huff out a gentle laughter, you instinctively squeeze your thighs first before you bury your face in your hands, your cheeks hot to the touch. 

Why is he laughing—

He places a large, warm palm on your knee. You flinch and his touch becomes heavier as if he was telling you not to be scared, its warmth begins to descend down your shin—and then lips. His breath wafts over your skin and he presses his lips against it as a way of greeting. 

It is the rule of this sexual practice—no speaking between the partners. And now that it’s unfolding in action, you find yourself absolutely enthralled by it.

You flutter all over, the apex of your inner thighs slick with the liquid expression of your arousal. Your heart pounds, touched by that unusual but kind gesture, and you’re curious for more. 

He rubs the place he kissed with his thumb and then… coldness. He must have withdrawn, straightened his posture, and a great oddity begins to take form in you. 

Your knees tremble, sensitive from his benevolence. 

And you wonder if he’s watching his creation, taking his time as he is for the next move. You long for it, timid, unsure of what to do with your hands. You flex them and unflex them on the leather, your lower limbs gaining momentum, and you feel your wetness trickling down onto the mat. You do well to stifle the mewls gathering in your throat and you yearn for those considerate hands of his to touch you everywhere—

He yanks you forward and, remarkably, the yelp that is flung out of you is hushed, not heard by his ears. At least you hope so—you don’t want to get in trouble, turn that kindness of his around. You’d regret that, and you’d regret that very much. 

Mr. Kim spreads your legs apart, but your femininity is concealed by those suspended tassels that tease your core, your clit, and your hip bones, the most sensitive and vulnerable parts of you. A great dose of pleasure surges through you from it and from the way those fingers of his glide upon the inner of your thigh. He reaches as far as where your shiny stain is. A low, deep breath is exuded from his chest when he feels it and he smears it along your pelvic bone and a little bit on one of your folds. 

He heightens your tremor by doing that. 

You feel bad for reacting like that, but you can’t help it—neither can you stop it. You try to keep your body still and through the opening you can see him propping his hand on your thigh, watching you do so, as if he won’t continue until he knows you’ve regained your composure. And something about that, in its own way, helps you, and it helps you tremendously. 

With his palm flat, he caresses your flesh in a circular motion to praise you for it, lifting his hand upwards and beyond your sight. Your stomach undulates and it is now that you notice the navy blue of his dress pants, the growing tent that takes shape in the middle, and owing to the calmness and the sense of safety he’s installed within you, you do the boldest thing you’ve ever done, save for leaning in to kiss Namjoon nearly two weeks ago. 

Turned on from the sight of his arousal, you grab a hold of the tassel and you begin to provoke him, deciding that you want his manhood to grow. Because of the way he treats you, you deem he deserves it. 

You move, smooth, the leather strip along your cunt, collecting your slick. You shift your hips in circles, the fabric cool and sensual in a way you never thought it would be. Your breaths come out whiny the longer you do it and when you change the direction and move up and down, you can hear his breaths, too. And maybe the blackness of the walls are messing with your mind, but you could’ve sworn, his secret noises have become whiny just the same once you pressed the tassel against your swollen clit. 

And it isn’t until you naturally feel the back of his leg with the ball of your foot that he lets you see how much your little show advanced his arousal. The print of is cock is prominent, thick in the tightness of his pants, and you want it. 

You no longer want Namjoon’s. You want his. 

The plan worked. 

And with a smile of a winner gracing your features, to celebrate you start to make yourself feel delightful. You rub your clit, still with the strip, biting your lips in order to suppress your moans, the pleasure more vivacious this time around. He’s not palming himself, he’s not doing anything at all but watching you, his hands by his sides, and perhaps to reward him—you let go of the tassel. 

You let him see your pussy. 

Shiny, swollen and needy, asking for a man you haven’t seen and won’t even see. 

How sinful, how titillating. You can’t wait to have a cigarette after this. 

His cock twitches and it beguiles you, the way your hand, without your conscious knowing, extends out and reaches for it through the hole. Your femininity, your sexuality—brazen and alive, unafraid and illimitably splendid. 

And in this situation, it is a thing of absolute sublimity, the act of him inching forward and letting you touch him, feel your own creation the way he felt his. You want his number, you want to make him come. You want him to take you out and you want to show it off on your Instagram story, hiding everyone else from seeing it except for Namjoon. A devilish laughter pricks at your throat, desperate to be heard. You sense how heavy his cock must be, how strong, how hard. It’s impossible for you to suck it as he’s not allowed to see your face, but you know the idea of it will haunt your daydreams—

He grasps a hold of your wrist, silencing your thoughts, and you hold your breath. He slides his grip down to your hand and he makes you squeeze him, his length, his balls. Your hole clenches, even your features scrunch up in need, and with your other hand you begin to help yourself, but he stops you. 

Pins your hands down on the leather. Maneuvers to firmly grapple both of your wrists on top of your tummy and uses his free hand to push you forward a little bit. Your legs dangle out, uncomfortably, and he’s so attuned to you that he notices. Leads your leg to wrap around him, the other one two, and if it weren’t for the mattress jutting out, you and him would be flush to each other. 

Body to body. 

He sucks in a breath at the first contact of his thumb and your clit. He must feel how swollen it is and he dips down to your hole, circling it there, gathering your arousal before he returns to that needy flesh, continuing his circles there. Slow, slow circles that make you writhe on the mat, the leather creaking. You lament that he can’t attach his mouth to it, regret that you chose this option because of your foolish feelings, and despite the fact you thought your plan worked and Mr. Kim alleviated your anger, the emotion bursts within you. 

Your muscles tense, your lips flatten in a tight line, your fists in his hold clench, and you’re angry. Angry, angry, angry. Hateful of your life, hateful of your body, of your heart. And in the middle of the explosion, you make a mistake. 

You growl. 

He stops his circles. 

Time beats two times before you’re yanked out of the hole, your feet landing on the parquet floors with that familiar gentleness the man bears. 

And the man… 

The man is no other but Kim Namjoon himself. The source, the epitome of your anger. 

And you feel nothing. Your shock evens out through every fraction of your nerve endings, paralyzing you. Time ceases its beats here—while you stare up at him and he stares down at you. Namjoon isn’t seized by the shock like you are, though. He begins to laugh, darkly, hushedly, humorlessly. Slides his hands into the pockets of his pants and takes a step back. 

Embeds life into time. 

“I fucking knew it was you,” he rasps, that laughter melting into nothingness until the gravity of this situation spreads across this sinful room. Heavy, heavy energy. You should feel ashamed at this very moment, you should cover yourself up, but you don’t. You don’t do anything. “I read your safe word. I thought it was a coincidence, life making fun of me. And then, I saw your butterfly tattoo, but tattoos can lie to me and it was too good to be true. But that growl… that growl of yours can’t lie to me. I know it like I know myself.”

Your growl was your response to his never-dying teasing. If he tickled you, nudged you, bugged you, the only way you would make it stop was by letting out that vexed noise of yours—and it would work. He’d laugh to himself and withdraw his hands. 

You part your mouth, but you can’t say anything. Your shock rises in you like a tidal wave that submerges in you and you drown. 

Then, a perplexing song of a mockingbird breezing through the wind outside sounds out within the room, saying things your body is unable to. 

Namjoon blinks, taken aback by your lack of retort. No words, no growls. Merely the song crooning along the spaciousness of the atmosphere. He licks his lips. 

“Why did you stop replying to my messages?” he asks, and you find it obscene that he’s inquiring about this when you’re all bare, trembling, and with your arousal dripping down your inner thighs. If anything, he should be asking you what you’re doing here, but it’s like the fact isn’t news to him. 

And what you don’t know is that he pours life into you with his bizarreness. 

Your first reaction is to scoff. Your second is to bash your fists against his chest, pushing him a step back. And Namjoon… he smirks. As if he succeeded in his plan—pulling you out of your state of shock into a blooming garden of your emotions, where you can run, where you can scream and where you can inflict violence. 

Where you can speak. 

“Why did I stop replying to your messages?” you throw it back at him, your voice rising in volume, and Namjoon straightens, delightfully watches you be full of life. “You think you can share your life with me, take me on dates, pay for me and leave it at that? Turn your head when I try to kiss you? Do you think I’m some kind of lady companion—”

“No,” he interrupts, tilting his chin up, his dominance on full display with the deepness of his voice, the width of his shoulders and his powerful stance. You drip for him, but you’re as powerful as he is. You’re equal—equally tangled up in the same sin. “You’re my Lady Beetle, aren’t you?” 

Your breath hitches, your nipples hardening, and your wetness is so, so uncomfortable, trickling down your flesh. And he provokes the pressure of your arousal in your core by that nickname, even more so when he lifts a finger and traces the freckles upon your right shoulder, the meaning behind that term of endearment, from his distance. Even more so when he sinks his fingers into the hair on the nape of your neck, uttering his following words. 

“Get back inside the cubicle.” 

But you’re not obeying. You don’t know his temper either, but you are getting yourself into trouble. And you’re not getting fucked until you know that he reciprocates your feelings. 

And you know what to do. 

“Kiss me,” you murmur, crossing the distance, inching towards his face. Namjoon tilts his head down, his lips nearly brushing against yours, and that’s all he does, nudging your anger. “Kiss me, Namjoon, or I’m walking out of this room.” 

He lets the tension simmer, unblinking, consuming your eyes from this close proximity. And when he opens his mouth, you think he’s about to kiss you, but you’re mistaken. Deadly, deadly mistaken. 

“Did you come here to forget about me?” he whispers, inching even closer until your nipples graze against the soft material of his sweater, hums in question when you don’t answer. Lifts your chin to make you look at him when your eyes stray away, your anger bubbling in you. He perceives the real you, always has, and you don’t have to say a word. Only a person intertwined with your soul could be able to do this; why won’t he act on it? 

“Did you come here to look for me?” you whisper back, pressing your torso against him until your breasts squish against his hard chest. His still hard manhood pokes you in your tummy, harder than it was when you touched him earlier, and wrap your arms around him, your hands traveling all across the width of his back until they wander down his loins, even lower to his buttocks. 

He pants, but his voice is not affected by the whirlwind of his emotions. Delicious, delicious whirlwind.

“Yes,” he says, firmly, flattening his lips and growling when you squeeze his butt. You enjoy those selfish touches so much that your grin illuminates the room, a ball of light amidst all this darkness. Your anger watches on, stunned. “What do you think? If I wanted to move on, I wouldn’t have chosen a fucking glory hole out of all the options. I’m not like you. I don’t give up. I’m patient.” 

“Patient…” You taste those words on your tongue, dwelling on them. They’re bittersweet, and you stand in the middle of your decision whether you like them or not. “What are you waiting for?” 

He sighs, lifting his hands and digging his fingertips into your ribs, holding you to him. You mirror his movements, and you let out that strained breath of yours when he bends his head and places a singular, wet kiss onto the side of your neck. 

You had asked him to kiss you, even though you didn’t specify where, but you didn’t expect your body to tingle this much and grow boneless in his unfailing hold. You cling to him with all your might—there’s nothing left for you to do. 

You’re his. Have been his since the moment you saw his watch. 

And you can’t believe you haven’t noticed that Cartier adornment when you were ogling his manhood. 

He brushes away a wispy strand of your hand before returning it back to its rightful place. “You deserve the world and I’m not there yet to give it to you. And you’re not gonna look for it elsewhere, I’m not letting that happen. I’m gonna give it to you.” 

Honesty is here at last, the explanation to his distance. You hide the fluttering joy that opens in your chest, but you do let him see the smile that begins to curve your lips. He likes you; you can live at peace now. No more anger, no more daydreams. 

“Kim Namjoon,” you breathe out, moving your hands to his sides. “Is that a promise I hear?” 

He nods, tilting his head to the side as his pupils grow large. “Yes, that’s a promise. The last relationship I was in fucked me up, but I’m gonna get right, and I want you to hold onto that promise.” 

You hum. “What does that mean for us right now?” 

He smirks, that cheek cleft enchanting you all over again. “If you want kisses, then kisses is what you’re gonna get.” 

Your smile lengthens until your cheeks hurt, heated. “I want kisses. Lots of kisses. On different places of my body, too.” 

Namjoon retreats back to your neck, peppering kisses along that column. You whimper, hands hurrying to undo the button of his pants, desperate and arbitrary. But with a disapproving noise, Namjoon stops your hasty movements. Pins your hands behind your back.

“Patience,” he whispers, gliding his lips across the kisses he left behind. Your skin prickles with goosebumps against him, your nipples so stiffened that they ache, and, most unfortunately, you moan softly in impatience. “You’re gonna learn what true patience is, little beetle.” 

Color heats your cheeks and as you grin, you bite your bottom lip. “Be my teacher, Namjoon.” 

He chokes out a groan, dizzied by the idea, one that fades into your yelp when he unexpectedly turns you around and pushes your back against his chest, your arms long and criss-crossed behind you, hands flat against his cock. 

Something tells you this lesson will be one of great difficulty for you. And of great pleasure. 

Namjoon cups your jaw, swivels your head to face him a little. “Where do you want those kisses?” 

Your quivering breath fans out across his big hand. “On my nipples.” 

At your quick answer, he makes a sound of approval and with a feathery-light touch he sails his knuckles down the right side of your chest, from your collarbone down to the beginning of your supple breast, where he stops his voyage to study your reaction. As much as you’d die for his fingers to go a little lower, you keep your tremors in tact. Even your fingers remain obedient, relaxed in their position and not tempting his temper. You close your eyes, try your bestest to hold it while you wait it out, and your slick by now creates a pool between your feet. Namjoon’s cock twitches at your goodness and he sighs a little praise into your ear, just for you to hear. It roots deeply in your gut, where it stirs the butterflies that are painted in the color of his eyes. 

His knuckles descend lower and lower, stop at the apex of your nipple, and the nearness is enough for you to stoop in your desperation. 

Something you shouldn’t have done.

Namjoon slaps that pointy flesh, coaxing such a filthy moan out of you that it reverberates through the room. The harshness, intertwined with the swift stimulation of your nipples spreads a buzzing sensation down your body, settling in your aching clit, and the loud noise you let out echoes in small whimpers, wordless pleas for more. He becomes harder in your hands, as if he could translate them, and the temptation croons at you again, telling you to squeeze him. This time, you can’t really hold back. This time, you want him to do it again.

On the other breast. 

You squeeze him, the weight of his cock an inexplicable experience that drives you to a point of carnal madness. You slide your palms along that thick length and the way he’s quiet, unspeaking, unbreathing, puzzles you and alarms you simultaneously. 

You look behind you. Catch his features screwed up in such pleasure that you whimper again, announcing that you’ve seen him in his weakest. And Namjoon is brought back into his teacher mode. He allowed himself that fraction of time for his own pleasure, perhaps for yours, too, and you’ve never discovered something so imposing. 

Your sexuality and his, interwoven, a thing of glory more magnificent than this playhouse itself. 

“Little beetle, you’re just so naughty, aren’t you?” he rasps into your ear, pressing you against him with both of his arms wrapped around your chest, nuzzling his face into your neck. He kneads your breasts hard before he slaps them, both at the same time, and you make such a mess. “So impatient, so desperate to touch and be touched. What am I gonna do with you? Can you even learn, hm?” 

Knead. Slap. Namjoon tweaks your nipples, circles them with his fingers, filling your body with such pleasure that your knees nearly give out on you. And he holds you to him by your neck, a firm grip that conveys to you that from now on, he won’t be very nice. 

And you don’t really mind. 

“Get back inside the cubicle so I can deal with you accordingly,” he mutters his order, tracing the shell of your ear with his puffy lips before he latches onto your earlobe, sucking it into his mouth briefly, making you cry out. “Do you know what happens to girls who can’t be helped?” 

Your voice is strained, impossible to use. “No.” 

“They get spanked and fucked so hard that they forget who they are,” he reveals, sailing his hands back down your body, flicking your nipples on the way, before his palms anchor at the V-shape of your private parts. He plays with your folds, stimulating your clit in that way without touching it. You grind your hips into his movements, seeking more, but he slaps your pussy for it, halting you. “That’s the only way they get salvaged.” 

And then he lets go of you. And the look he gives you is so lecherous, so dirty that your legs are jelly as you scurry to the end of the glory hole cubicle, thinking that this entire moment is speckled with glory that will haunt you for the rest of your days. 

You get back into position, your legs dangling out, and Namjoon repeats his voyage. Sails, sails down your tummy before anchoring at the mound of your cunt, but this time he doesn’t gratify you with any delight. He continues down your wet thighs and, abruptly, he turns you over, pushing you forward so your bum shows fully, your tippy toes touching the floor.

The tassels are warm and saturated with the dew of your arousal, tickling the small of your back. 

“Now listen to me,” he says, his fingers wandering all around your flesh, but not where you want him the most. “I’m not Namjoon at this moment. I’m not your teacher. In your mind, you’re gonna go back to who you thought I was before I showed myself to you. Mr. Kim. And you’re gonna address me as so, do you understand?” 

Your brows furrow and you curve your body to the side in question, not understanding this sudden change of the play. You may have wanted this fictional Mr. Kim more than you wanted Namjoon but that was before you found out that he felt the same way as you. 

“Why?” 

He massages the round, graceful cheeks of your bum, propelling you to rest your torso flat on the mat, comfortably. “Because you deserve it. Because your Namjoon isn’t where he’s supposed to be yet. So I’m not fucking you as Namjoon, I’m fucking you as Mr. Kim. This is the only time you’re getting fucked before I get right, so I suggest you enjoy every second.”

You gasp at his words, but your hole reacts first before you do, opening and closing all for his eyes to see—and they do. And he likes the view so much that he takes his thumb and perseverates the brief motion, your center coating his digit in sopping wetness. Your hips follow him and this time, he lets you. He gives you a moment to comprehend your future full of pure possibilities and kisses and you detect in your soul no disapproval. Because you’re rewarded with his heart in the end, it’s worth it. 

His heart is one of gold, one that won’t perish. 

You’ve seen it in the way he treated your mother, in the way he would stop his teasing when you had enough. In the respect he has towards you because he isn’t ready for a relationship. In the promise he gave you, even though that gold is scratched. 

You love him, and because of that you shall play his game. 

“Yes, Mr. Kim.” 

He kisses the fleshiest part of your bum, wetly, humming into your skin—another reward. 

“That’s a good girl,” he praises, nibbling the place he gave love to. “Try staying one.” 

You mewl, grinding into his face, desirous for a release. “Yes, sir.” 

He draws back and chuckles. “Look at you, so good all of a sudden when you’re all spread for me. You’re still getting spanked, little girl.” 

You whine, pretending that you don’t like what awaits you, when in reality you can’t wait. “Can I get another kisses after?” 

His laughter roars through the room. “Where do you want them?” 

“On my pussy, Mr. Kim.” 

He growls, swearing, his hands nowhere to be found on your body. “You’ll get lots of kisses on your pussy if you take these spanks well. Can you count them down for me?” 

You nod, but you quickly realize that he can’t see you. Your dusky world pirouettes and you’ve tumbled into a state of haziness, needing his firm hand, his dependable stability. “Yeah, I can.” 

Namjoon coos, his palm back on your bum, fondling it. “Good. Do you remember your safe word? You’re still getting those kisses if you use it, darling.” 

You dissolve into the leather, your body limp, but you do remember the magic word of utmost adoration. “Beetle.” 

A kiss on your flesh. “That’s it. Perfect. Does someone you know call you by that nickname?” he asks and you giggle, the comfort and the safety of the moment almost lulling you to sleep. “From ten, little beetle.” 

And he rouses you from your sleepiness by landing a sharp spank on the cheek that he made so tender. The pain is so acute, so good that you almost forget to utter out the number, swimming in the sensation as you are, but Mr. Kim isn’t upset by it. No, he helps you. 

“What number was that?” 

“Ten.” 

“Ten, that’s right. You’re doing so good.” 

Mr. Kim’s kindness enters you all over again, liquifies between your legs, and you moan out. The following sting of his palm is greater than the previous one and your chest arches off the leather, but you like it. Even though he doesn’t alleviate the spank, lets only the air make it better, you still like it—so much that you don’t make a mistake and count it down. 

“Nine.” 

And he repeats it after you, spanking you again and again until the skin of your left cheek is inflamed, burning red, and the perception of the pricks is too much for you to handle. But taking after him, you don’t give up. Grit your jaw, flex your fists, scream out the numbers until you reach one and that side of your bum feels numb. 

And Mr. Kim praises you for it so lasciviously that you can only whine in response, your little noises muffled by the leather. 

“Good girl. You took your punishment so well. Your ass is so prettily red, oh my God. You’re gonna get those kisses now. So, so many of them until you come all over my tongue. Spread your legs even more for me.”

You do as he says, mind blank, and you hear the thud of his knees hitting the floor. That alone makes you drool, the sound of his submission, let alone his satisfied groan when he attaches his mouth to your pussy lips.

And you can’t voice out the surplus of your emotions, the unrestrained joy that you feel because you’re being eaten out by a man that you love, but because of their boisterous nature, they come out nonetheless. Out of your tear ducts, out of the corner of your mouth in the form of drool and little muted noises that are impossible for anyone to hear but you. And you fail him. You can’t imagine a fictional person sucking on your clit like that, that feels as though your soul is being yanked out of you like you were so many times upon this night. No, only Namjoon can do this to you—and so, privately, you bask in it. In Namjoon’s tongue swirling circles on your clit; in Namjoon’s lips sucking them so hard that you lose track of time, surroundings and your own being. In Namjoon’s hands shaking your bum in his face; in his fingers rubbing rapid side-to-side motions on your wet clit from the front when he fucks you with his tongue from the back. 

You’re transported to a place that is neither heaven nor paradise. A place he, himself, must have brought into existence by the energy of his utter devotion for you. And you make it real when you come—sprinkle him with the fountain of your essence that contains the molecules of the universe he created for you. And you float, you float, you float. And he seizes the gravity by praising you for squirting for him, for coming so well and making the best of your so-deserved kisses. 

And then his pants flop to the floor, his sweater—until the only things he’s wearing are his watch, his bracelet and his affection for you. You turn your body halfway so you can see him, the wholeness of his manliness that is aching for you, dripping for you like you’re dripping for him, and his cock is so hard that it points up to his abdomen. You’ve never seen anything like this before and you grow so savagely hungry for it that you begin to suck on your index finger.

Purposefully loudly, smacking your mouth. 

Namjoon chuckles, darkly, and the warmth of that expression of his pulsates in you. “Oh, you’ll be sucking on this cock, too, don’t you worry, my beetle. I just need to feel your pussy around me.” 

Oh, the slip-up. He feels this on the same wavelength as you—no Mr. Kim, no anonymity. Only Namjoon and you. If you were unsure of his feelings before, you can’t be unsure now. The universe he created palpitates around you and you’re so drunk on all of this new knowledge that when he buries himself inside your heat, you can’t let him in. Your walls are compressing so tightly with your still-yet growing arousal that you clamp down on him, but at the sound of his torturous moans, you suck him in. 

And he doesn’t go easy on you. 

With his hard, hard, and long shaft he begins to fuck you, violently. He rams into you without any mercy, lifting your leg onto the mat and entering you more deeply, curling his hips to kiss and kiss your cervix again and again. His strokes are reverberated throughout your whole body—your nipples rub against the leather, your head rocks against it in a way that turns you feral, you gag on your finger, your clit is teased with those relentless pounds. You’re helpless, but also boundless, being fucked like that, and you realize, with your dumb, blank and empty brain, that you’re extensively getting your best friend’s money’s worth. 

And Namjoon elevates your experience. 

He reaches through the hole and roughly captures your hair in his fist, popping your finger out of your mouth. Decides it’s not enough, decides you’ve had enough of the hole time and he pulls you out, all while still being inside of you. Straightens you against him, grasps your jaw while his other hand slips down to your clit. 

And the side-to-side motions are brutal. Mean. So dominant in the way he keeps the contact light, barely stimulating you, but stimulating you, regardless. 

“You think you can gag on your little finger and that it does nothing to me?” he scolds, pinching your clit, and your growl is scratchy, raspy, so fucked out. He’s reprimanding you, but his words don’t reflect his actions. Namjoon kisses you everywhere he can reach. Ear, cheek, jaw, neck. So frantically, so impatiently. “Have you learned nothing?” 

You pant, your orgasm so awfully close from being bound but unbound at the same time, fucked slowly and torturously as Namjoon begins to move, grinding against you. But he has to stop—because if he doesn’t, you’re gonna come all over his cock, right in the center of this room. He’s teasing your build-up, just like you imagined he would, letting it rise and letting it fall in short intervals. 

But he has pity on you, stemming from his affection. A cold, cold pity that you need for the heat rippling through you. 

“Get on the bed. On your knees.” 

He pulls himself out of you and urges you forward—towards the hanging bed. And you don’t care to ponder if it will move under your weight. All you can think about is his dick as you crawl onto that bed that does not wobble at all, but remains perfectly offset. You sit back on your folded legs and wait for him—watch him take those leisurely, effortless steps like he did at the start of this evening. Only this time, you get to see it with your eyes. His tall height, his swaying shoulders, flat abdomen and that hard cock, glistening with your slick. Carmine, aching. 

You lick your lips. Prop yourself on your knuckles in front of you, back arched. Realize he kissed you everywhere, but on your mouth. And so you pout—and you make puppy eyes at him. 

He smooths down a flyaway on your sweaty hairline, endeared. “What’s wrong?” 

“You haven’t kissed me on the lips.” 

Namjoon smiles down at you, dejectedly. Curls your hair behind your ear, grabs you by the back of your neck, calls to attention all the butterflies in your tummy. “I’m sorry.” 

And he captures your mouth. As Namjoon, as a golden-hearted man that longs to give you the world, and you can vividly feel it. Mr. Kim doesn’t exist anymore and Namjoon seals that fact in when he prods his tongue inside, toying with yours before retreating back, moaning into the kiss. 

A kiss that was more than a kiss. 

And you have to kiss him again when he takes a moment to breathe. You have to devour him, clasp your hand around his wet cock as you do so—and Namjoon has to push your head down, fucking your mouth until your tears freely escape from all directions. He grips your hair tight, holds you to him from the side, plunging in and out of your throat however he pleases, your gagging noises encouraging him to possess every inch of you. Your mascara zigzags down your face in clumps—and once Namjoon’s pity flickers in him all over again, he lifts you and kisses you so nastily that you fade into nothingness. 

Then, you’re on your back and he pounds that nothingness. Uses your thighs as leverage as you’re just laying there, a hole and nothing else. Perhaps the cubicle changed your life to such an extent that you’ve become it. You shall never forget it—even now it is scattered all across your vision as you’re fucked into oblivion, the skin-slapping sounds and your pussy squelching around him accompanying your memory of the dark wood, the fairy lights, the restraints you never used.

The sex was too personal, too intimate for you to do so. Even before you discovered that Mr. Kim was Namjoon. Your body recognized his, your mind too blind, too preoccupied with your anger that is now healed. 

As if Namjoon could read your thoughts, he pumps into you with a hard thrust, eternalizing it. 

“Focus on me,” he growls and you squeak, hiccuping into every movement. It feels as though he’s blocking your throat with how deeply he’s ravaging you and you can only nod. 

You can only moan his name. 

“Namjoon. Yes, yes, yes—oh, Namjoon.” 

He laughs, that articulation of his joy abating in your mouth as he bends to kiss you, fully buried in you. And then he pulls out, presses his heavy cock on your cunt, lifts your head by grabbing your hair, consuming your mouth as if you were everything he ever lacked in his life. 

“Grind your pussy on it, it’s yours, my little beetle.” 

You whine, pucker your mouth against his, spinning your hips in circles, his cock so wet and so sticky from your happy juices. 

“Joonie, Joonie bug.” 

He closes his eyes, moaning all in your face, the principle of you softening and connecting his persona to yours absolutely ruining him. He tightens his grip on your hair, sinks himself inside you with his other hand and then sticks those soaked fingers inside your mouth. All four of them, gagging you. 

“Little beetle and big Joonie bug, hm. How do we taste?” His tone is so low that it penetrates your skin, paralyzing your senses until only one remains. Until all you know is the bitter-sweetness of his precum and the tanginess of your slick. And he doesn’t draw his fingers back, he continues to control your gags until he paints your face in another set of pretty black tears. “Tell me. How do we taste?” 

You growl around him, the sound he knows, and he pounds you for it, a thrust that hurts but feels good at the same time. You suck on his fingers, a trail of your drool trickling down from your connection, and Namjoon grunts. Slides his fingers out of your mouth and places them right on your clit. 

Rapid, rapid rubs. And equally rapid strokes. 

“Come,” he orders, and it’s like he flicked his fingers and made your body come. You didn’t have to do a thing. “Good. Finally. It feels so good, doesn’t it? Coming around my cock after all this time. Joonie bug is right there with you. Just a little bit more.” 

He’s given life to your orgasm by his words. A storm erupts, clearing out everything negative that was ever seeped throughout your soul. Your body quakes, submitted to him through and through, at his disposal to make himself come—until your orgasm is so milky that you can’t see. Your vision is dotted with white, with tiny glazing stars that must be hung up in the sky just like this bed. And Namjoon brings you to him, lips to lips, needing you as he fucks you through your mutual release, and those stars splotch him with their dust. 

You squirt all over him, for the second time around. And you don’t stop, the twitching of his cock, the warmth of his cum as he keeps stuffing you full of it, the unfaltering hardness of his thick shaft roll in your tiny orgasms, those little fountains of boundless pleasure that drench him, give him the likeness of those stars. He’s turned on your squirting ability and there’s no way back. No, no way back. 

Namjoon is exhausted as he pulls out—and you already feel so empty, so lonely. His cum streams out of you, staining the bed, and it saddens you so much that you reach into your heat to collect it, plunging your fingers into your mouth, eating him. And you moan, at his male taste, for the last time. 

“Fuck, don’t do that. I can’t go again.” He wipes down his face, a gleaming man that has your entire identity woven into his veins that run all across his arms, and you love him. You love him so drastically that you can’t get on your feet on your own, can’t make a decision of your own, can’t live without him. 

He fucked you so well that he attached you to himself. 

A wave of strange emotions engulf you. 

“Namjoon,” you whimper, tears burning each corner of your eyes, and you don’t know what to do, you don’t know what is happening. He lifts his head, round eyes blinking, and he’s so quick to cradle you into his arms, letting you cling to him, letting you wrap your legs around his torso like a baby. And that’s precisely how you feel—like a baby. 

“Talk to me,” he encourages, caressing your back in circles, and you moor your face in his neck, inhaling his individual bodily scent. So masculine, so heady, so intoxicating. You sob, running your fingers through his misty, blond-streaked hair, needing to be even closer to him than is physically possible. 

Namjoon shushes you, kissing your shoulder, giving you the strength to speak, giving you the identification of what you’re feeling. 

“This was so intense,” you croak out and Namjoon hums, halting his touch to focus on you wholly. “Emotionally. I feel much closer to you. Too close.” 

And he’s not running out of things to give you. He gives you kisses on your neck that bear no sexual context—romantic, reassuring kisses that ease up your muscles, that part the raging thunder of your emotions. And he gives you such comfort that you feel as though you’re floating upon an open body of water, as free as a human being can be. 

“What we did was intense but it was right. What you’re feeling is normal. I’m feeling it, too. We’ve been hiding our feelings for so long and we let them out just now, so it’s overwhelming. It’s okay. You’re good. Such a good girl, my good little lady beetle, tiniest girl beetle in the whole universe. I will protect you from the other bugs. Let’s get this make-up off, hm?” 

You nod, sob and laugh softly at that solace. Namjoon carries you into the shower. Lets the cold water streak down on you while you shield yourself from it, nearly slipping off his grasp. Namjoon chuckles, hoisting you higher, taking a step back to wash you completely clean. You scream and his chuckle deepens, getting you away from the iciness by pressing you against the tiles. 

He truly won’t stop teasing you. 

The water turns warm by the time he fetches the make-up remover. Pouring some on a large cotton pad, he cleanses the remnant of your sex tears, the physical memory of how good he fucked you and how he bound your soul to his. He’s careful around your eyes, focusing so intently that his lip is caged between his teeth. Once he’s finished, he kisses you—with Mr. Kim’s gentleness. 

Washes you clean, especially thoroughly between your legs. Embraces you in the shower and lets you feel—creates a safe space for your feelings. 

And then he’s dressing you in the clothes you came here in. A dark green dress that ends at your ankles. He makes sure to kiss your butterfly tattoo as he smooths down the skirt and you think you’re ready to marry him. 

You want to meet his mother. Not now, not after what you’ve done together. But someday soon. And you want your mother to meet his. 

“I need a cigarette,” you comment as he’s scrunching your hair with a towel. He himself has changed into a pair of clean black dress pants and a plain white shirt, almost oversized. An outfit that made your mouth water. “Like right now. And at least two.” 

He huffs out a laugh. “You can smoke on the balcony. I’ll have one with you. Do you want a drink?” 

Your eyes light up. Your whole body, too. 

Placing a bathrobe around your shoulder, he gently slaps your butt and guides you forward to the balcony. He grabs that bottle of red wine you had opened and joins you.

Two chairs, one small round table in the middle. The view of the entire Seoul city and a fucking statue in the corner of the balcony. 

A beautiful girl, half dressed. The fabric of her forever garment falls off her chest and you’ve never seen a more spectacular sculpture in your life. You enkindle your cigarette and touch her cool face, feel yourself immersed in her seductive beauty. One day you shall be just like her—once Namjoon comes to collect you. Not a doll, but a girl. 

“Take a picture of me,” you say, getting into position, only to realize that Namjoon has been snapping pictures of you while you were acknowledging yourself with the statue. With a cigarette hanging limply in the corner of his mouth. 

You can’t love him any deeper. 

You pose with her. Mirror her body language, even shake off your bathrobe and let your straps fall off your body like her. Private pictures just for him and for you—a reminder for what awaits you. 

A future full of pure possibilities. And sex, lots of and lots of sex. 

𓂃 ౨ৎ LOVE-KISSED BABIES: @tkslovechild , @jjk7k , @parkinglot-nights , @bethvar , @Sexytholland , @yoongibaybee , @crystaleah ,@fennecnco, @lil-kpopstan , @euphoricmyth , @jungkoock , @cinmmongirl , @hoseokkie-caeks , @kam9404 , @fr0ggieth1nk .

© 2024 hoseoksluna, all rights reserved.

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[avelera]

Sometimes in genre fiction stories, you’ve got magical characters talking about their magical lives in public or wearing their superhero costumes out in the regular world.

Often times, the magical characters feel they need to hide or whisper about things like magic or immortality or fighting demons or like pretend they’re going to a convention to explain their superhero costume.

These are often lovely and charming scenes but let me be clear:

Nobody in a major city would give a fuck.

Just as one example of many, I was literally in line for a book signing in NYC and a man walked by stark ass naked wearing only body paint and basically after the initial surprise, no one did or said anything about it.

The amount of crazy you encounter on any given day walking around a major city makes you basically immune to surprise or taking any kind of action about weird shit happening around you.

If I heard someone talking about their magical powers next to me at a cafe back when I lived in NYC, I’d assume either 1) they’re rehearsing for a play, 2) playing/discussing D&D, and/or most importantly 3) it’s none of my fucking business.

I’m always curious what exactly people think would actually happen in the real world if a supernatural or magical character was overheard by someone who wasn’t actively hunting them or who wished them harm.

If you overheard a time traveler or an immortal or magical person in general candidly speaking about their life at the table next to you, what would you actually do about it?

Would you call the police?

Tell the whole world you just sat next to a real magical person and your evidence is that you overheard their conversation?

Report them to their nemesis? How would you even find them??

Seriously, besides telling your friends about the weird conversation you overheard at lunch or the strange looking person you saw, what exactly would a normal person do even if they really did overhear someone like a time traveler speaking candidly about their travels for anyone to hear?

I ask because I see so many stories set in a superhero or urban fantasy setting worrying about being NOTICED. Noticed by WHO? With what result?? What do you actually worry is going to happen? What would any average person actually do besides shrug and go back to whatever they were doing?

I’d accept that maybe in a smaller town you could become a topic of conversation and even widespread notice.

But let me assure you, friends, in any major city, no one would fucking notice much less say anything about any level of weird shit they saw. The whole point of a big city is that everyone basically ignores the weird shit happening around them at any given point.

So let the fairies and ghosts and time travelers of your fantasy story relax. If they’re in a big city, they could literally fly around downtown with rainbows shooting out their ass and the only comment they’d probably get is from people wondering what movie is being filmed nearby.

[theminecraftbee]

i'm still thinking about the fae zedaph prompt so much that i have. an entire au in my head now. that i am now sharing, in case others are interested.

so the setting of the au is an intentionally kind of anachronistic blend of sci-fi and fantasy, and those things often come into conflict, with a lot of magic interacting badly with technology and technology interacting badly with magic. a vaguely earth-like setting from the near future, where there are robots and space travel and cybernetics, but ALSO a vaguely earth-like setting where there are portals you can slip through that will drop you into the feywild and there are magcial creatures lurking beneath the surface. the idea is like, if an urban fantasy had the 'urban' part set in a sci-fi world.

anyway, so zedaph is an ancient fey creature. a wild fey no longer really associated with either court, but at one point having belonged to the seelie court, zedaph mainly just courts chaos. he's PROBABLY some kind of archfey, but it's worth noting that even other fey aren't fully certain what zedaph is supposed to be at this point. see, in a move that makes almost no sense to a human, zedaph has started to get bored of the games of fair folk. he finds them too... predictable! and sure, to HUMANS the fair folk can seem chaotic and without rules, but to zedaph? he wants something NEW AND EXCITING.

too bad that these days, even if he IS invited into the human realm, it is a bit dangerous to navigate for a fey such as himself. his own deep connection to nature and the natural world makes it so he has some trouble when he's in the tall metal cities of the human realm.

enter: tango.

tango is an android built for... some purpose. he's not really sure what his purpose is, or if he still has one, which is kind of distressing, because his creator either died or abandoned him before tango was turned on. he likes building zany contraptions, sure, but he also sort of wants to search for SOME kind of meaning in his life, since androids aren't really built to be purposeless and that lack of purpose is starting to wear at him. and in another setting, this is a great start to a cyberpunk story about what it means to be human, but in THIS setting, tango accidentally proves he must be developing a soul when he stumbles through a portal to the feywild by accident and fails to find his own way out.

the good news for tango is also the bad news: he's not built for a natural place like the feywild. see, his creator had made him largely out of cold iron, and that, even more than any specific technology, repels fair folk magic. so the good news is that he is largely immune to fey shenanigans! the bad news is that the feywild itself is rejecting him, putting him in immense danger.

enter: zedaph, who is FASCINATED to discover that these days the humans are making machines with souls. zedaph, eager to discover something new, makes a bargain with tango: tango guides him in the human world so zedaph doesn't die of metal poisoning, and in return, zedaph guides tango whenever he stumbles into a dangerous supernatural hotspot. look, zedaph's even making a fair deal and everything, since he can't just like, steal tango's name and force him to, on account of not even tango knowing what his true name would be! the two of them shake on it, and as such, a bargain is struck between both android and archfey.

they both find each other surreal and baffling but are ALSO each other's best friends in an equally baffling and surreal world.

impulse comes into this story later--after whatever the first few adventures tango and zedaph have are, exploring both realms together to try to find something new and exciting for zedaph and something to give tango purpose, the amount of magic tango's being exposed to finally takes its toll, and tango starts to malfunction. zedaph panics as he realizes all at once that he has a friend (thing he didn't know he even could get?) and that friend is in danger. also, uh, more importantly that deal. right. that.

naturally, he then kidnaps the first software engineer he can find. this is a proportionate response, right?

luckily the first software engineer he finds is impulse, and impulse is hardly like, normal, either. like, yes, he's a fully mundane human with only the world's most minor cybernetics, he's normal that way, the way he's not normal is that he gets kidnapped by a terrifying and awesome fey to fix a paradoxical android and goes "this is so cool. hi my name is impulse it's nice to meet you! aw, geez," and acts like everything is normal. neither tango nor zedaph are quite good enough at the idea of 'normal human' to dispute this, and a friendship is then born.

impulse serves as the fixer for a lot of their problems that neither tango nor zedaph are equipped to handle, but he's also like, he'd theoretically be the everyman if he wasn't busy going "every man gets whisked away by the plot of a philosophy major's dream every once and a while right" and going with the flow on things NO SANE PERSON SHOULD GO WITH THE FLOW WITH. he's just chilling in the world's least "just chilling" scenario.

so... there you go there's the ENTIRE TEAM ZIT AU that my brain spawned from the prompt "fey zedaph" i hope you enjoy,

[trek-tracks]

Okay, hear me out. TOS 4 is the time travel movie. So AOS 4 is the time travel movie, but it's not about whales.

It's about a conversation AOS Spock had with TOS Spock before the latter died, when TOS Spock mentioned that things didn't really go irrevocably wrong in his universe until Admiral Kirk disappeared with the Enterprise-B. AOS Spock wonders what repercussions this has had on his own, somewhat more distressing universe, and when the AOS Enterprise bridge crew finds itself assigned to protect Earth by examining an unstable temporal ribbon that seems to be crossing through the galaxy--well. Spock wonders. Is this the Nexus? They find out soon enough that it is. And since Spock's the first one in, technically, the Nexus gives him what he wants, which is what the Nexus has--the ability to cross universes as well.

Now everyone, out in two groups on separate missions has to resist succumbing to the temptations of the world of the Nexus while they try to rescue Admiral Kirk, making sure his mission is still completed (so as not to destroy anything for the TNG folks' reality) but that he survives, so that they can figure out how to get through the Nexus and pop him back in his universe right as he's supposed to leave on the Enterprise-B. AOS Spock is sure he can figure out those calculations somehow. Some of the temptations are funny, some are sad, but we find out where Uhura and Sulu and Scotty are in their lives, and where they want to be.

Like Spock got to meet TOS Spock, TOS Kirk gets to meet Kirk (and Spock, and McCoy, and eventually the rest of the bridge crew). AOS Kirk learns that the life he's been envious of all this time didn't turn out well in the end because TOS Kirk ran toward duty alone despite what he had, and TOS Kirk learns that a) he could have suffered so much more loss, b) he's just one of a set of infinite possibilities, just like AOS Kirk is, and c) he's been wasting eternity exploring those other possibilities of happiness in the Nexus when he could have been content with what he already had.

He finds out what happened to TOS Spock, and it's agonizing. He sees this weird young Spock and Bones, both of whom could bench-press him, and he misses his Spock and Bones so much that the Nexus starts trying to change the fantasy world, to their detriment. It's only when the crew sticks as close as possible together and all concentrates on wanting the same thing that they're all able to shift the Nexus to their goal. Then Picard shows up. Things get complicated.

We hear, from Generations: And in the end, what did it get me? An empty house...Not this time.

and from Star Trek V: I knew I wouldn't die because the two of you were with me.

I thought you said men like us don't have families.

I was wrong.

TOS Kirk decides that, yes, he wants to leave, and he wants to go back. But they're not entirely sure how to line up Picard's plan and TOS Kirk's plan and the AOS plan and have it all work. It's a lot to figure out.

To simplify things, AOS Kirk decides he's going to volunteer to go die in TOS Kirk's place so that they can return TOS Kirk and at least one of them will have a decent ending, because his own life still feels so uncertain. This seems like it's going to work until his Spock and Bones both read him the riot act. But it's Bones who really goes off.

Karl Urban gets a great speech as Bones about how both Spock and Kirk met their counterparts, a chance which he will likely never be afforded and neither of them learned anything from it. Spock went off and punctured the walls of a universe even though TOS Spock indirectly destroyed AOS Vulcan through it. Kirk is trying to run away and die again because he doesn't know what to do with himself, even though TOS Kirk had an unhappy ending to a good life because at the end he ran away and tried to die again. Bones just tries to pick up the pieces. You don't fix things by tearing them apart, and you don't fix them by tearing yourself apart. You fix them by healing the rift. AOS Kirk's eyes light up. They're going to fix the rift.

They're going to give this random meaningless villain what he wants, throw him into the Nexus, he can have infinite joy, then they're going to seal it and heal it.

After all, AOS Bones says. He had a drink with TOS Kirk at the man's insistence, even though the Saurian Brandy didn't taste like anything, and Kirk told him he could cure anything from a rock to a rainy day. The tasteless brandy? Apparently Bones is the person who can actually perceive that nothing here is real, so he doesn't want anything except for everyone to remain safe.

From Beyond: Better to die saving lives than to live with taking them. 

Bones says: Better that no one dies at all. This time, no one dies.

So TOS Kirk and the Bridge crew go with Picard to subdue Soran and honestly, it's not that tough with all of them. Nobody had to die. And as they fix the rift, with TOS Kirk and Picard's Enterprise about to be thrown back into their universe on one side and the AOS Enterprise into theirs on the other, Picard suddenly realizes that he never clarified how they were getting Kirk back to his own time. And how will they explain his status?

TOS Kirk grins. Good thing I know how to slingshot around the sun, he says. And when they report me missing, I'll just say I didn't go in the first place. Clerical error. Who are they to argue with an alive man?

AOS Kirk has so many questions, but the two of them merely salute each other, and then they're thrown back.

Back in his own time, TOS Kirk walks into a Starfleet Academy apartment, and hear him say:

Bones, I heard you got laid up with Andorian flu and Spock was taking care of you, and this I just had to see! How many hypos? Don't let him talk you out of any, Spock. They're all important, every single one, even ones he hasn't heard of.

A pause.

Yes, I know I said Starfleet needed me. I just thought maybe you two needed me more this time.

Back in the AOS universe and Spock's calculations are totally off in getting home, because he didn't account for the gravitational pull of--

Vulcan. The planet that apparently still exists.

TOS Spock still came into their universe--he was always going to live longer than his ties to his Enterprise family. But his actions had been tempered, less destructive, which had clearly resulted in the Enterprise being able to save the planet. They were going to have to find out how.

Not everything had changed, of course. Nero had still been Nero, they had still come together. But Jim only vaguely remembers dying, now, as though it had happened to somebody else. He feels more settled than he ever has before. Some of that's the time travel revision, and some of that's the meeting with his alternate self, and some of that's Bones' yelling. Spock feels a sense of closure. Bones is just relieved that nobody died this time.

Uhura suddenly and quietly alerts them to the chronometer. It's a week before they left, which means there are now two Enterprise bridge crews on Earth, and that they need to lie low for a week to avoid running into themselves.

What should we do, Captain? she asks.

Jim smiles.

Let's go to Yosemite.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Why I Dislike PbtA Games, and How Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is Their Opposite

@tender-curiosities

It is no secret that I hate PbtA games.

Though due to a recent misunderstanding regarding another post, I’m going to preface this post by saying that this is going to be a very opinionated post and

I do not seriously think that PbtA games are inherently bad, though I may sometimes joke about this.

While I do often question the taste of people who make and play PbtA hacks, I do not think poorly of their moral character.

While I am going to call for PbtA to be used less as a base for games in the future, I’m not saying that the whole system and all games based on it should be destructified. It’s good for what it’s good for, but unless you’re doing that, I really think you should use something else.

Now that that is out of the way, here’s what I have to say about it.

My first experiences with PbtA games were pretty rough. Monster of the Week was not the first, but it was one of the first ‘indie’ TTRPGs I played after having previously played mostly only D&D3.5e and 5e. I really appreciated that the use of 2D6 over a D20 meant that the dice results would be more predictable, and I really liked the various “classes” I was seeing. (At this time, I didn’t really understand that they weren’t really “classes” at all, though I think I can be forgiven for this because many people, even people who like PbtA games, still talk like “classes” and “playbooks” are interchangeable.)

I was very enthusiastic to play, until it came time to start actually “making” a character, and found that I couldn’t “make” a character. I wanted to make a nuanced, three-dimensional PC who was simultaneously stereotype-affirming and stereotype-defying, with a unique backstory and dynamic with the other characters—but when I went to actually fill out the character sheet for basically any “class”, I found that most of the backstory and most of the personality for my character was being set for me by the playbook. It felt like the only thing about the character I really had a say in was their name, and that two PCs of the same playbook would actually turn out to be almost identical characters. At the time, I thought this was very restrictive and very bad design.

Later, now that I understand the design intent behind it, I still think of it as very restrictive, but I think of it as very bad design for me, not inherently bad.

When I play a TTRPG, I want more freedom in who my PC is. That doesn’t mean I want less rules, in fact having more rules can often increase freedom, but that’s a different post. I want to create original, unique characters, that I won’t see anywhere else. If it’s a class-based system, I want that class to barely touch the details of my character’s backstory or personality, so that I can come up with something original and engaging for why and how this “Fighter” fights. This means that two level-1 Fighters, despite having almost the same mechanical abilities, will potentially be very different people.

PbtA games don’t let you do that. In a lot of PbtA games, you’re not playing your own original character, you’re playing someone else’s character, that every other player that has picked up the same playbook before you has played. It’s more like “character select” than “character creation.” I think I could liken it to playing Mass Effect or The Witcher. Every player may pick a few different dialogue choices in those games that change the story, but we’re still all playing Shepherd or Geralt. No one is going to experience a new never-before-seen story in Mass Effect or The Witcher, which is very much a factor of them being video games and not TTRPGs, and therefore limited to the amount of code, writing, and voice-acting that can go into them.

This anonymous asker who sent a message to @thydungeongal seems to feel pretty similarly to me about PbtA games, and @thydungeongal's response is a very good response about how people find this appealing.

I have more respect for PbtA now than I did, but I still don't like it because to me it seems to play so much against what I consider to be the strengths of TTRPGs as a medium, much like how video games like The Last of Us and David Cage games play against the strengths of the medium of video games, and I will never like it. But other people clearly do, so to each their own.

Then another reason I don’t like it is because I think it’s oversaturating the TTRPG space. I’ve referred to PbtA before as “indie D&D5e”, and i do think that’s a reasonable comparison, because in much the same way that you always hear “D&D5e is a system that can do everything”, I think a lot of people seem to be under the impression that the PbtA system is a system that can do anything. It’s kinda the système du jour for indie TTRPGs right now, and many iterations of it make it clear that many designers do not consider how PbtA differs from more traditional TTRPGs, and how it is specialized for different types of TTRPG gameplay. Just like how I feel PbtA isn’t playing to certain important strengths of TTRPGs, I think that many—maybe even most—PbtA hacks don’t play to the strengths of PbtA. But this isn’t really PbtA’s fault, that comes down to any individual indie TTRPG developer on a case-by-case basis. And the cure for that is something I’m always saying: If you are going to be a writer, you have got to read lots of books. If you are going to be a director, you have got to watch lots of movies. If you are going to be a video game developer, you have got to play lots of video games. And if you are going to be a TTRPG designer, you have got to read and play lots of TTRPGs. That and you have to understand that TTRPGs are specialized. Even "agnostic" systems like PbtA are somewhat specialized, and therefore might really not be a great fit for the game you’re trying to make.

That and, to get more subjective again, there’s like an ocean of them, and I don’t even like the ones that are actually good.

Now that I’ve talked about how I don’t like PbtA games, I’m gonna talk about a game I do like: Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. Obviously, I like it because I’m the lead writer for it, but I would also like it even if I wasn’t the lead writer for it, because it’s just my kinda game. Eureka is the opposite of a PbtA game. I wrote it to play to what I feel are the strengths of the TTRPG medium.

Eureka’s character creation uses personality traits as a mechanical element of the character, but it does so in a deliberately freeform way. You build your character’s personality out of a list of traits, so who your character is is very much linked to what your character can do, but we aren’t just handing you a pre-made character.

Eureka is designed to incentivize organic decision-making by the PCs, most often by the mechanics of the game mirroring the world they live in. Every mechanic aims to create situations wherein “what will the PC do next?” is a question whose answer can be predicted - it doesn’t need to be ordained by a playbook.

One of my favorite examples of this is, rather than a “Fear Check” forcing the PC to run away if they fail, or “Run Away from Danger” being a “Move” on their character sheet, Eureka opts for the Composure mechanic. The really short version is that one of the main things that lowers a PC’s Composure is encountering scary stuff, and the lower a PC’s Composure, the more likely they are to fail skill checks, and the more likely they are to fail skill checks, well, the less brave they and their player probably feel about them standing up to this scary monster. So if the PC has low Composure, they are more likely to choose to run away. The lower their Composure, the better idea that will seem.

This system really really shines when it comes to monster PCs in Eureka. Most monsters benefit a lot more from having high Composure, but have fewer ways to restore Composure than mundane PCs. Their main way to restore their Composure is by eating people. The rulebook never says “your monster PC has to eat people”, but more likely than not, they’re going to be organically steered towards that by the game and world itself. Sure, they could decide to be “one of the good ones”, and just never eat people, just like you reading this could decide to stop eating food. You technically could, but when your body starts to fail, how long would you? (This is a big part of the themes of Eureka and what it has to say about crime, disability, mental illness, and evil. People don’t just arbitrarily do bad things, it is often their circumstances that leads them down that path until they see little choice for themselves in that matter, and “harmful” people are still just as deserving of life as people who “aren’t harmful”, but that really deserves its own post.)

It has been said that Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually arrives at much the same end as the PbtA game Monsterhearts, and I actually don’t disagree, but it gets there from an entirely different starting point and direction. The monster PCs in Eureka are very likely to eat people and cause drama, but it won’t be because they have “Eat People and Cause Drama” as a “Move” on their character sheet.

Monsters in Eureka have a lot of abilities, which they can use to solve (and create) problems as the emergent story emerges organically.

(Oh and Eureka is about adult investigators investigating mysteries, and sometimes those investigators are monsters, not about monster kids in high school, to be clear. The same “end” that Eureka and Monsterhearts reach is that of the monsters being prone to cause problems and drama due to the fact that they are monsters, though this isn’t the sole point of Eureka, just one element of it.)

You can pick up the free shareware version of this game from the download link on our website, or the full version for $5 from our Patreon.

And don’t forget, Eureka is fundraising on Kickstarter starting on April 10th, 2024! We need your support there most of all, to make sure we hit our goals and can afford to make the best version of Eureka we can make!

Interested in branching out but can’t get your group to play anything but D&D5e? Join us at the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club, where we nominate, vote on, and play indie TTRPGs, all organized by our team with no strict schedule requirement! Here's the invite link! See you there!

We also have merchandise.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Fantasy

The Fantasy Fiction Continuum

Fantasy - as a genre, begins when the author inserts an element of the impossible into his/her conceit, making it a fantasy conceit.

Fantasy Conceit - what the creator intends to explore in the world, it is where the constructed world deviates from the real world, usually in the form of geography, biology, physics, metaphysics, technology, or culture.

Fiction set in the modern age sits closest to Non-Fiction since it shares the existing real-world setting. Audiences understand and identify with the modern setting, and therefore the author does not need to inject as much imagination into explaining the world around the characters.

Historical Fiction - edges a little further into the realm of Fantastical. The author must describe a past world that modern readers are unfamiliar with by painting mental pictures of times, locations, customs, and cultures that no longer exist.

Overlaid Fantasy - the Fantasy Conceit and real world comingle. A major component is that it is plausible, which is to say it still adheres to our real-world natural and societal laws with the exception of the Fantasy Conceit, at which point it diverges. Subgenres: Urban Fantasy and the Superhero genre.

Historical Fantasy - requires more fantastical elements than its modern Overlaid Fantasy counterparts and therefore sits a little more to the right on the spectrum as the author applies his/her Fantasy Conceit to a bygone age.

Secondary Worlds - stories where we have left our modern reality so that our story takes place in a setting that is decided not-Earth. At this point all plausibility that existed in our Overlaid Fantasy is out the window in that the audience no longer has the anchor of the modern world with only the Fantasy Conceit being different, but must literally discover a new world. This subgenre should always be logical, as in they adhere to their own rules established at the beginning and remain consistent to them throughout. These stories contain pretty much all the subgenres that don’t explicitly take place on Earth, but may be grouped into Low Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, and High Fantasy.

Low fantasy - set in the real world; includes unexpected magical elements that shock characters, like the plastic figurines come to life in Lynne Reid Banks’s The Indian in the Cupboard (1980).

Sword and sorcery - a subset of high fantasy, it focuses on sword-wielding heroes, such as the titular barbarian in Robert E. Howard’s Conan pulp fiction stories, as well as magic or witchcraft.

High fantasy - in comparison to the above two subgenres, high fantasy contains the most magic and has more additional races.

Magical Realism and Nonsense - when logic disappears yet fantastical elements remain.

Sources: 1 2 ⚜ Writing Notes & References

[deconstructthesoup]

I think the reason that Dimension 20 really scratches all those itches in my brain is that it really shows what you can do with D&D---and TTRPGs as a whole.

Fantasy High, by itself, is an incredibly compelling concept. What would D&D look like in a semi-modern setting? What would a high school that's all about teaching teens how to be adventurers look like? And the way it's done is beyond inventive, especially if you look at all the encounters in the first season---we've got a literal food fight, a high-speed road chase with tiefling greasers, a nightclub brawl with zombies, vampires, and werewolves, a skating match with a bunch of dwarven middle schoolers and a concrete golem, a high-stakes game of football (ish) with undead jocks that give off major teen slasher vibes, a fight done in an arcade where characters can get trapped in the consoles, and the final battle is done at prom. PROM! How cool is that?

And then we get to the Unsleeping City, which takes the urban fantasy elements that Fantasy High already had and elevates it. The way the D&D lore and magic is interpreted in a modern New York setting is excellent, as is the whole take on the "American Dream," magic literally coming from dreams, ideas, and the imagination. I know that I need to actually finish the UC saga, but from what I've seen and experienced, it is truly fantastic.

And the same energy carries through to the other seasons---my personal favorite outside of Fantasy High being A Court of Fey and Flowers, just because I'm a sucker for any Fey Realm content and I've been raised on Jane Austen---where the genre mashups shine through in the best way possible. I'll admit, I haven't seen A Crown of Candy, purely because I know how heartbreaking and devastating it is and I don't think I can physically handle it, but the concept of Candyland Game of Thrones is so beautifully bizarre that I totally get why people love it so much. Escape from the Bloodkeep hitting that workplace comedy vibe that we love to see in villains. Misfits & Magic being a love letter to the "magical boarding school" genre while also calling out all the weird contradictions inherent in it. A Starstruck Odyssey literally being an homage to Brennan's mom and exactly the kind of madcap and unhinged energy I need from my sci-fi. Neverafter perfectly encapsulating the true horror of fairy tales. Mentopolis hitting my noir-loving heart and personifying hyperfixation in the best way possible.

I'm not even kidding when I say that, if it weren't for Dimension 20... I probably wouldn't have even started my own campaign. I'd had snippets and ideas ever since officially getting into D&D and joining a game with some old friends (and getting back in touch with them in the process), but after I saw the Mentopolis trailer, I realized just how much variety TTRGPs had to offer. I could do a time-blending, history-meets-future campaign. I could go out-of-the-box. I could have endless amounts of options available to my friends and still tell the story that I wanted to tell. And when I sat down and watched Fantasy High---and when I got that Dropout subscription so I could consume whatever I wanted---it felt like the show was actually giving me advice. It's fantastic.

Also it helps that the episodes are usually only roughly a couple hours instead of being, like, an entire afternoon long. And that each season is 20 episodes, tops. No offense to Critical Role, but the sheer amount of content literally makes it impossible for me to get into it.

[cavegirlpoems]

Hello, new follower here! I saw you mentioned you worked on several RPGs, may I ask what those were? I'm always looking to find new cool RPGs!

OK so, off the top of my head: TTRPGs: -Wolfpacks & Winter Snow (osr weird fantasy paleolithic with too much historical research) -Dungeon Bitches (PbtA dyke-punk dungeon-horror full of sex and body horror) -Esoteric Enterprises (osr modern-day occult gangsters/urban exploration) -Haunt/Hearts (romantic lyric game about a lesbian ghost) -The Yellow Curtain (experimental metafiction King In Yellow/RevStar) -Deep Morphean Transmissions (dreamscape conspiricy noir surrealism in a setting kept secret from the players ooc) Modules/Settings/Adventures: The Gardens Of Ynn (whimsical fantasy in a ruined extradimensional garden, procedurally generated osr) The Stygian Library (whimsical fantasy in a haunted extradimensional library, procedurally generated osr) Dead Girls In Sarkash Forest (feminine horror with tragically undead protagonists, mork borg for riot grrls) Wounded Hungry & Forgotten (a mini bestiary for Dungeon Bitches) Black Lung (Dungeon Bitches in the industrial revolution, again with too much historical resarch: out any day now i promise) Wargames: The Dolorous Stroke (experimental detailed skirmish game based on medieval romances with knights going on quests) Black Death Walking (narrative campaign skirmish game set in the 15th century with zombies and satan) Currently In Progress (in various stages of done, titles subject to change, may or may not actually get finished): Black Death Rising (osr religious horror with zombies, fascists and satan all trying to kill you, same setting as Black Death Walking) The Bleeding Gullet (a body-horror OSR setting in a giant mutant-filled chasm that makes you violently ill if you try to leave it) In The Black Cloister (experimental solo wargame where you explore a ruined nunnery/vinyard full of weird monsters) Sunset Seas (nautical osr adventure where you sail around exploring various increasingly weird islands on the edge of the world)

[jazzyblusnowflake]

OKAY SO

since yall wanted me to talk more about this Demon!Uzi and Hunter/Exorcist!N,V,J au I'm just gonna write down my ideas here just to get them out of my head-

thanks to @purrple-bat for helping with some of the ideas :D

some details may be nsfw cuz i mentioned it previously so that's your content warning🔞

also there may be plot holes and its not fully complete or whatever im just trying to get this out of my head 😭 main ship is NUziV // ViolentBitingBiscuits

the Au is an urban setting- not a forest and fantasy dnd kinda thing-

Tessa is the leader of several groups of teams that are demon hunters and exorcists.

J, V and N are in the same team and those are their codenames.

Uzi is a halfie, with Khan as the human parent and Nori as the demon parent. they are referred to as "Changelings" too.

Uzi cannot be exorcised from her demon side or she will become a mindless unresponsive zombie. methods have still not been found on how to exorcise these demons and disabling their powers without killing them, mostly due to the lack of anyone caring.

Demons feed on different things related to humans, mostly their emotions, with a heavy preference on fear, pain, anguish and etc

some more bolder demons will kill or drink blood of humans but even in the demons society that's a taboo and if any leads are traced back to you being a demon, you will be eliminated by your own kind before the humans can get to you.

Uzi was caught by accident, fully blended in as a human.

She's cheeky and likes making humans miserable and playing around with them, but she's not really one of the threatening ones, she doesn't want to or care about hurting them.

Doll is a full demon and is kinda like a sister figure to Uzi [but not really cuz sometimes they f-], always advising her to get away from humans and she might end up getting hurt or some shit.

Nori has multiple lovers, she feeds off the love and lust but she considers it a just a treat, she's actually one of the most powerful demons around and absolutely loves feeding off of nightmares, trauma, horror and dread. she does have a soft spot for khan tho as her only human lover. khan is generally just dumb for loving a demon as his wife. smh

Nori is a high ranked demon meaning she could share her energy with other demons if any of them would want to pass as normal humans and just live in society. also could send out demons to capture or punish one of their own for breaking rules.

Uzi starts out weak but upon capture, bluffs a lot about how powerful she is and that she likes to play around with them.

They keep Uzi to get information out of her about other demons.

On attempts at getting away she does end up getting closer to N.

Uzi likes feeding on misery and angst but the genuineness of Ns affections made her thirsty for more.

She ends up also getting closer to V from bantering and sometimes talking about stuff and etc and sometimes sparring and fights when she attempts to escape. N saves V at one point before Uzi did some real damage. V grew to actually respect her more after that.

Uzi was let go after a while since they checked and she wasn't really at a power level to threat anyone [much to Uzi's resentment that she could be powerful if she wanted to >:( ]

Hunters and exorcists have magical seals hacked into their bodies for protection. their arms have these symbols that can be used as weapons that appear in translucent shapes like claws and shields and swords. 5 pair of vertical eyes appear above their heads and a glowing X marks their face when they are using their powers- marking that the demon cannot get into their heads. their eyes glow gold once using their powers despite the original color of their eyes.

the same kind of powers and seals appear on demons but they don't hack it into their bodies, they gain it with ranks. demons have human forms and demon forms, changelings are just weaker from the beginning. unless they are possessed...

V and N start giving Uzi "treats" whenever she helps them out in catching more dangerous demons. this ranges from kisses, bites, their blood toooooo more intimate stuff :3 at first this starts out as an idea to get her to talk but after a while V couldn't help but to feel affection towards this pint sized little gremlin.

Uzi gets overwhelmed when she is showered with affection by being in the middle of V and N, she is touch and affection starved and she gets easily addicted to it, wanting to claim the two as her own.

V and N putting seals on Uzi that makes her enjoy their touches and intimacy more but edging her and keeping her from releasing until she gives them the info they need. Uzi probably would tell them the info anyway- she just likes to see how far she could handle the two before she breaks into a begging, pleading mess.

Uzi purrs and does everything in her power to keep anyone from finding out...

Drinking demon blood makes Hunters gain more power, and drinking human blood makes demons feel pleasure and ecstasy as well as gaining more power, especially if the human is a hunter/magic user.

Uzis wings are sensitive and she likes to clean them with a wet cloth. N and V like to help her with this. and her tail mouth too lol.

The demons have a hellish demon sect that even they all fear... i think you can guess who the head of it is...

Aaaaand i think thats all for now idk. bye- //exploads