#But rereading it... It's good man. It's good

[polkadotaspinall]

Hi, I hope you are doing well 🥰🥰

I don't know if you saw the story between Khamzat and Paulo Costa 😭 where he says that Khamzat would have DM his wife saying that she deserved a better man….

So i was wondering if you could write a story where y/n is with a lousy husband and Khamzat does this kind of thing to get her to leave her husband for him 🤭🤭

Thank you 🫶🫶

-🕺

you deserve better

khamzat chimaev x married!reader!

warnings: cheating spouse (your husband), mean husband

summary: khamzat catches your husband cheating and tells you that you deserve better

you stare at your phone almost in disbelief you felt like you were imagining the message on your phone

"you deserve a better husband"

you've reread it so many times but it still doesn't seem real and the message is from such a random fighter- your husbands a UFC fighter most fighters don't message or follow each other's wives. he doesn't even follow you and he dm-ed you this

khamzat chimaev your husband has a fight with him soon- youve never met him just seen him at some of the fights some of the events your husband works, you almost feel upset how dare he say this about your husband you almost wondered why till a photo appeared after leaving him on read

an image of your husband being unfaithful tears immedietly fill your eyes as you drop your phone on the floor a small gasp leaving your lips- its a good thing hes not home and he's doing media right now

youve been rattled since that photo and that text- khamzat followed you on insta and you followed back as your husbands fight approaches its the press conference you're sitting off to the side watching your husband on the opposite side of khmamzat your eyes drifting over to look at khamzat he's taller than your husband and he's quite handsome now youre looking at him he's sat in a chair main spread slightly looking on his phone he looks up and makes eye contact with you he smiles and winks at you- you blush and look away looking at your husband who sees you blushing and assumes it for you he blows you a kiss

you see khamzat roll his eyes at this and one of the first questions from the journalists floors you "so khamzat a lot of people noticed you followed his wife on Instagram , any comments on that" your husband immeditatly gets angry asking what and the journalist says he noticed it when he checked your page a smirk forms on khamzats face "yeah I did, I told her she deserves a better husband" he shrugs like he doesn't care your husband in disbelief as he looks over at you - you never told him about it deciding after the fight you'll ask for a divorce.

after your husband and khamzat argue on stage you hear khamzat say something that stuck with you "I'd treat her better" is all he said as your husband stood up angry trying to walk up on khamzat who sits in his chair not even finding him as a threat a lazy smile on his face "she'll know youre not worth it after the fight" he said while laughing

your husband is yanking you roughly away cussing and angry "you're hurting me" you mumble he lets go and apologizes "what's he talking about he messaged you?" you feel awkward "lets talk about it later" you insist as this makes him angrier

youre in the crowd watching the fight khamzat is beating the breaks off of your husband you're sitting quietly with your husband in the locker room hes angry "I want a divorce" you tell him which enrages him he begins cussing you out you leave in tears and bump into someone

khamzat his eyes soft and he notices your hand missing your ring he suppresses his smile wanting to comfort you "shh its ok" he says as you sob into his chest he's still shirtless he strokes your hair

its a been few months since you and khamzat started dating and life's never been better. he treats you like a princess.

[authors note: shall I do a pt.2 hmmm...thank you anon for this request!!!]

[40kmps]

SIMULACRA

patchwork creature x reader|18+|2.6k

your father is a secretive man, and a brilliant mind always locked away downstairs in the basement. he enlists the help of thief to bring things to him, and who you eventually fall in love with. one day, the thief goes missing and you gain access to the basement to unveil the dark truth below.

warnings; dark content, dubcon, brief sexual details, graphic body horror, grotesque descriptions + imagery, incestuous leanings implied (to mc), classism, drinking, mentions of grave robbing, this leans into the horror aspect, inspired by frankenstein — obviously, reposted from my deleted blog

a/n: this is one of those pieces that seldom gets noticed, but I am quite delighted with the outcome each time reread it 🙂‍↕️

if you'd like to see more work from me in the future, please leave feedback & reblog!!

Father had hired a thief to steal many small and many large things for him over the course of a year. All things he refused to confide in anyone else about but for the thief.

In exchange for the labor of the thief’s expertise, Father offered him the skeleton key for which to open every room in the house, including your own.

By the end of the first month, the thief knew the whereabouts of every item in your family home, whose footsteps sounded rhythmic, and at what time every night your father would descend to the basement when madness overtook him.

“He is a strange man. He asks me to find many strange things for him. Some of those things even I feel guilty for stealing,” said the thief, having woken you in the middle of the night to fix him a warm beverage. As part of compensation for his stay, you were told to care for him just as you would a revered guest. “He must actually be mad. There is no other explanation.”

You did as you were supposed to: fixed the thief warm milk and carried over a plate of dry biscuits to bloat his stomach. All of this, you hoped, would wear him out so you could return to bed.

“Father is a studied man. He was a doctor in town, once,” you told him, wiping crumbs off the table with the flat side of your hand. “He was one for a long time, I think. I don't actually know. He says Mother died trying to give birth to me, so he removed me from her womb himself and there was no saving her. It's always just been the two of us here, and a few servants to keep up the house.”

“It's strange to me, then, how a man of medicine and healing is so invested in the things that he is.” The thief always ate and drank steadily as though deprived of sustenance, despite all your efforts to feed him better than yourself. You continued shifting crumbs across the table, off the edge onto your apron, thinking that men of his nature really knew no manners at all.

“He used to be a surgeon,” was enough to put that part of the conversation to rest. He finished his midnight meal and handed his empty cup off to you to wash at the sink. “What do you see when you're downstairs? He always deadbolts it so I cannot get inside, even with that key he gave you.”

The thief took the lantern from the table over to you, illuminating the space in cold orange flickers and distended shadows lashing across the walls. You didn't look away from your task, but you could feel his nearness, the warmth of him, and his breath touching the side of your neck.

“Interesting!” He smiled handsomely; a good, even a smile that didn't show too much of his mouth, too many teeth, too much eagerness. “And how long have you been trying to weasel your way into his personal space downstairs?”

“Long enough,” you assured, wiping the cup dry before giving him your full attention. “Just tell me what you've seen! The old bastard is selfish and won't tell me a thing! What's happening in my own home? I think I deserve to know.”

His hand let down the lantern, resting it on the countertop, and then stroked your face with the peaks of his knuckles. Compared to everything else he touched: rotted wood coffins splintering and softening in his grip, chiseled stone doors leading into tombs shared by generations of inbred aristocrats laid side by side forever, delicate heirlooms, porous and misshapen bones still wet with meat and decay—you were the softest, and the most pleasant thing he'd ever felt.

“Actually,” said the thief, now holding you behind the jaw and in your hair with both his hands, “I don't think you deserve to know. I mean that in the best way possible because I don't want you to know what goes on down there. I don't want you to see what I've seen. Forget it and come upstairs with me.”

The house had settled into deep silence, a sort of stillness a lot like holding a breath in anticipation. You knew it was partially your own fault for that because you weren't sure you'd taken a single breath as he led you back to your room, bolted the door, and kissed you.

Father believed you were different from the rest of the young adults in town. Thought you so much greater than them that he'd never entertained the idea you'd ever want a friend, a lover, to be touched and ravished by someone as that sort of thinking aligned with the licentious townsfolk and nobles partaking in opioid induced orgies.

“Get on your stomach.” The thief shucked your bodies bare of clothes and pressed you down into the bed how he wanted before pushing his cock into you, pacing his thrusts and depth to start before fucking you down into the mattress.

It hurt. It felt good. It was humiliating being fucked like a beast, but you loved how he lost himself in the act and bit and bruised you, moaned and grunted in your ears. He was vile in the way he confessed his lifetime of sins to you, whispering against your skin as though you were the priest, the confessional, and the God who would lead him to absolution.

He really only became himself again after he finished inside of you, cock soft, his words even softer and lavishing. Whether or not he meant what he said didn't matter, because you were in love with him.

Your life continued on that way almost every night for the better part of a year. Seeking the deepest and most sacred parts of one another—yours from the desire to know him and to be known, his to pour out his sorrows, beg forgiveness, seek vengeance through thunderclaps of stinging skin that turned your eye whites bright red and appalled your waking thoughts with vicious, awful words.

But then, one morning, Father said the thief had left early, just as the sun rose and basked the valley in golden dewdrops and velvety mist, and never planned to return.

“How can that be!” you spent most of the day afterwards wretched, filling various rooms of the house with nauseating weeps and bitter resentment. “He wouldn't just leave me! I love him! He loves me! I know him better than that.”

“Oh,” sighed Father, looking somehow haggard and anxious like a hare circled by airborne hawks. You noticed the way his eyes couldn't stay put, roamed over a space again and again as though concerned anything might change without him realizing. He was particularly fixated on the door leading down into the basement. “You stupid child. A man like that could never love you! A man like that only knows thievery! He steals things! He steals people. He'd steal you away if he had the chance. Only I know how to love you!”

“I am not a child! I haven't been a child for a long time,” you said, detesting him; everything about him. “You don't know anything about love. The only thing you've ever loved is your work.”

Father restrained himself in the end, looked at you equally grievous and as though he had something else to say, but felt it was a useless argument in the end. He found his wool coat by the doorway, tugged the sleeves up his arms, and said he was leaving for the nearby village to find a new thief to replace the one who had left—your beloved thief.

Hours later, he had returned home in a renewed good spirits despite no success finding someone else to take up all the same tasks the last thief had. The aged wine he drank weighed his breath, stank up the house en route to his bedroom with sour fermentation, the sweetness of grapes.

You only emerged from your quarters once his snores tore through the walls, seemed to leach into the slabs underfoot and vibrate up against your toes as you padded across them, down the stairs, and deeper down still when you discovered Father had left the basement door unbolted in his anger earlier.

To disguise this betrayal, you tried to simulate his typical circumspection by closing the door fully after you, hearing the grind of metal as you slid the latch into place to secure it from the inside, and careened further into the depths without a light, guided only by your excitement and resolve to unveil what was always hidden from you.

“What in the world?” you asked no one, just the vast space of the basement and all of the strange things within it. The air smelled thickly of coins and rust, making your tongue salivate as if taking a mouthful of soil and copper into your mouth. It was a damp sort of scent, like being entrapped by lingering humidity after a summer storm.

The further you wandered, the odder the tabletops of implements you saw. Clear glass vessels of all sorts: flasks, beakers, tubes with dried substances inside. Piles of medical texts, some of infections and pathology; most specific to anatomy and physiology. You fluttered through the pages of one tome which seemed to exclusively discuss the organic components that made up different layers of skin and fat.

Onward still, deeper inside the basement, there were sealed vats emanating particularly repugnant odors. Some so strong you couldn't bring yourself closer than twenty feet of them without the need to turn, vomit into a crevice in the ground, and widen the distance more.

Last were the tables, some built solidly out of teakwood, others shabby metal—all of them mysteriously dark and stained—

Just then came a jutting sound, sharp and metallic, feet away from where you stood on another table you'd yet to reach. For some reason, you hadn't noticed this one right away despite there being quite a sizable mass sprawled across it, restrained.

It was human-shaped, broad-shouldered and sinewy. Even from where you stood, you believed you could see the striations arms as it struggled against thick cuffs at the wrists. You thought it looked simultaneously enormous, yet entirely malnourished, off in proportions with a complexion gray as any ash left behind after a bonfire.

“Are…” you spoke, it lurched against its restraints and made you jump. “Are you—are you alright? Who are you?!”

Suddenly, the creature’s limbs went soft, relenting to the sound of your voice as if in recognition, and instead of trying to break its shackles, it tried reaching out towards you. For a moment, you considered humoring the poor thing, alleviating it of whatever loneliness it has experienced while down in this bleak, vile place.

You got close enough to finally see upon every minutiae detail, and the horrible thing was that everything deserved thorough inspection.

“What in God's name are you?!” you whimpered and scoffed in disgust, seeing the patchwork of its body with sheets of many different skins, all some variance of color, though all entirely gray and dead. His appendages were adhered at each joint with staples, sewn with the thickest black cord you'd ever seen and coated with blood and pieces of human meat.

No part of this creature looked to be made of any single human—any one man—but an amalgam of tautly stretched, cleverly tucked pieces of many. Even his genitalia were a construction of several parts.

The creature stayed calm in your presence, repeatedly raising, lowering his head onto the hard metal to better see you. The innermost of his lips were blackened purple and he parted them with enormous effort, eventually giving you a view of his pristinely aligned teeth and tongueless mouth.

“You can't speak—oh my god. You can't speak. Where's your tongue? What are you? What are you?” but, the answer was that he was many different men. The better question was whose brain was seeing you through mismatched brown and blue eyes?

The longer he stared at you and you stared at him, witnessed his hideously lovely face cycle through a pattern of confusion to familiarity—a demented soul constantly finding miniscule pockets in coherency—the horror struck you more than the gladness and overflow of love making your hands shake.

“My—my beloved!” you said huskily, shy of bursting into tears and collapsing on top of him. Your trembling fingers felt his glacial skin, how utterly dead and stiff it was, but you didn't care. “My father did this to you?! He took your brain? He put you into this monstrosity?! But, why?”

The creature’s mouth couldn't answer, but the thief’s brain, in those brief flickers of remembrance, wanted to reveal that your father was a pervert—had witnessed him bed you for months on end before something snapped, something inside him changed and he could no longer bear the idea you loved another more than him.

That you might run away. Leave.

The thief had been cleaved alive, different parts of him not yet used stored in the vats scattered throughout the basement. His brain was brilliant, it was why he was such a remarkable thief, made him the ideal candidate to finally bring a sentient homunculus to fruition.

It worked. Your father had created something neither dead, nor alive, nor entirely human, nor thoughtless beast.

“Oh, my love,” you kissed his cold, unmoving lips and then searched your pockets for the skeleton key you'd kept hidden from your father. “Forgive him. Forgive that terrible man for what he's done. I fear he's been unwell for a long time now. A very long time. He is not right.”

But, the thief’s brain was not so kind, nor was any other part he was made up of. He only existed in agony and hatred and faint fondness when he saw your face.

Against all odds, the skeleton key fit and soon he was free of the restraints. They struck the metal tabletop heavily and with a stinging clatter, resonating through your mind in an echo that shook you with dread and despair—the foreboding of some grave consequence soon to come that you did not yet understand.

He sat astride the table for a moment, doing little besides testing his range of movement: the entire width that he could spread his arms, flexed his fingers and toes, felt all the different regions of himself and all the different men he now was. And, once he was ready to get off the table, his gait listed right a little bit onto his weaker leg.

“Please, my love, let's just leave,” you told him, curling yourself around one of his arms as he lumbered towards the staircase leading back up. “Let that man be! Let him rot all his own without us here! We can still be together, and I still love you.”

Perhaps, in what remained of his psyche, he loved you too, but could no longer understand what a dream was nor the true complexities of longing.

What he could understand was that you'd never stop trying to thwart him, so once on the second floor where the bedrooms were swallowed in black static silence, he shoved you into yours and jammed the door so you couldn't get out.

At first, your father didn't drunkenly stir awake to the sound of your voice calling out hysterically from your room, fists pounding against the wall directly above his bed. It was only when the creature had grabbed him around his head with massive hands, squeezing him like a tightening belt, thumb pads pressing into his eyes that he was truly awake.

The agonized screams of your father were only dampened by your screams of terror from the other side of the wall.

[addledmongoose]

Good Omens Fanfic Friday (18 Jul 2025)

By the time this posts, I will be sitting in the immigration office going through the process of converting my Mexican temporary residency to a permanent residency. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

don't let this darkness fool you (24K; Rated M)

Crowley is nursing a broken heart after Aziraphale leaves for Heaven when he answers his door to see the worst thing he could imagine: a Fallen Aziraphale.

I started this not intending to finish it right away and ended up staying awake until 3am to finish it.

***

How Do Clocks Work? (1K; Rated T)

Aziraphale misses a theater date with Crowley, so the demon goes to the bookshop to find out why. Cute and silly.

***

A Special Ineffable Arrangement (43K; Rated E) by @lemontart

A completed, through-the-ages series of non-canon one-shots showcasing their relationship. In turns sweet, sexy, and sad, these new scenes start right after saving Job's kids and go through the night after the bullet catch.

***

My Heart Was Always Yours (143K; Rated M) by me!

I'm neck-deep in my current WIP and needed to remind myself that I can actually do this whole "writing a book" thing, so decided I wanted to reread one of my own works this week.

This is a canon-divergent/they never met/fake marriage story where they both think the other is human.

Aziraphale has mostly kept to himself for the last six thousand years. As long as he gets his reports in on time, Heaven leaves him alone. That is, until Supreme Archangel Uriel orders him to buy Raphael's trumpet from a black market auction in New York. Armageddon is overdue, and Heaven needs the trumpet to kick it off. Oh, and he'll need a human to pose as his husband. After an incident in the 19th century, Crowley keeps a low profile from Hell. His reports are only a little late, he takes credit for the worst of humanity, and he does a bit of fomenting to keep in practice. But the almost-peaceful life the demon carved out for himself comes to an end when the Prince of Wrath, Belial (née Raphael), orders him to New York to find the former archangel's trumpet. So what should he think when he rescues the odd and very cute human bookseller down the street from a mugging only to learn the man is headed to a black market auction in New York to buy a rare book? Was this also part of Belial's devious plan? Is the poor human on Hell's radar and doesn't even know it? When Crowley finds out the man needs someone to pose as his husband to infiltrate the auction, he knows exactly what to do.

[xylatox]

The Lighthouse || psh

Had the pleasure of reading this when it was first released and I have the even greater pleasure of rereading it as it shows kipo’s growth :3 That being said, lets get into my thoughts today.

It filled you with such profound longing and want that the only thing that helped ease the feeling was to watch the way the landwalkers went about their days. 

Giggling at this line because reading Kipo’s work always makes me giddy and this brings me back to the first time i read the first version of this fic and ah, im just so excited honestly.

Landwalker’s buildings were already tall as it is, but this one was completely different. It pierced through the sky with a beacon of light shining from the top—almost like a second sun being held up.

I love that youre able to tap into the thinking of the MC and I just love how she describes everything and the way she wonders how things would feel. The wonder is truly so endearing.

Giggling even more because my brain gave MC’s dad a voice and its so familiar to like those, elderly narrator voices, similar to something youd hear in a fantasy film and it makes me so happy

Also, just absolutely love MC questioning why Sunghoon is all by himself since he stands out so much, i love her so much, shes such a cutie filled with wonder 

“He was very handsome in a landwalker sort of way”

SHUT UPPP, shes so cute (and real for that)

The reference to little mermaid made me so giggly, I love this so much

Giggling again because her reasoning to find out where the sea witch’s cave is was such a smart move on her part, I love it. Its nice to see too that her father answer’s her with no doubt until she goes a tad too far and it honestly makes so wonder more because why cant you just say why yknow?

And the merperson that came to warn her? Just adds to the tension of it all, i love it.

Also loving the divider its so cute ahhh

“In one month’s time, you must cut out the beating heart of the human you love the most and bring it to me.”

Ah. Man the price she has to pay and the consequence if she doesnt is so :((( man.

From the distance, you heard the sea witch’s voice again. This time she wasn’t shouting, but instead chuckling in satisfaction. She continued, “Either way, I’ll have a heart.”

Laughing because what else can i do here man😭

Because, unbeknownst to you, that fondness you held so deeply for him was already blossoming into something more. Something dangerous. And you would protect it with your last dying breath.

Oh my god this line!!!!

Loving how Sunghoon describes the MC, she really sounds like the most gorgeous being ever

Sunghoon’s eyes cracked open and you gasped softly, pulling your hand away. You took a wobbly step back and nearly fell onto the table if it hadn’t been for Sunghoon jumping up from his chair and quickly reaching out and grabbing your waist to steady you. You both looked at each other with wide eyes and in complete silence. You were sure that even the waves halted its chorus. 

GIGGLING!! IT HAS STARTED!!

“From afar on humans, but never this close! We don’t wear things such as this. It’s soft,”

Shes so cute😭😭😭why must this end in sadness

Giggling (in pain) because they are just so cute, i can feel and see the way Sunghoon is so awkward helping her dress yet I cant help but just feel so soft about it :( 

Sunghoon smiled brightly at you. “Now, what’s your name, darling?”

I will pass out and die on both of their behalfs

SUNGHOON IS SO CUTE 😭😭😭CTFU

You halted the paintbrush you were holding, looking at his clothes that you wore. “What? Do they not look good on me?” you giggled.

Sunghoon’s eyes widened, almost like something clicked in his head, but a smile grew on his face. He said nothing for a moment, just stared at you with a fond smile. “Of course they look good on you,” he said

No like, you dont get it. Ill pass out for real, they are so cute

“A man’s clothes!” you heard the village women mutter amongst each other. “And her hair…”

This made me laugh, back then really was a time huh?

WAIT OMG ???? WE HAVE HOPE??? KIPO PLSPLSPLSPLPLSPLSPLSPLS

Thta why she was so nice with her because she knows :( I love you shop owner lady. She is now the hopeful key to a happy end (im still being delusional over this)

The sea witch had only given me a day and a knife. I had no one but myself to rely on as I was outcasted from the sea, and I don’t want that for other young mermaids.

Oh thats crazy

“You were already beautiful,” Sunghoon replied, a bit breathlessly and flustered. You smiled and felt your face start to heat up rapidly. His ears were a flaming red that made you giggle a little. Sunghoon cleared his throat, blinking., “B-But, it’s a good hu—good look on you. Do you like it?”

Bro they cant be so sweet my heart genuinely cant take it

THE WAY SHE JUST KISSES HIM HELLO??? This is me totally not freaking out

“And what if I like the pain—the danger?” Sunghoon asked you quietly. “What if I want to get hurt by you?”

God, god, why??/ man.

But then you thought of his bloody, beating heart in your cold hands. His lifeless eyes staring up at you. You had to fight against your ripping love for him, there was no other option. You didn’t want the sea witch to have his pure heart. She didn’t deserve it. And you felt like you didn’t deserve it either.

Kipo you have me crashing out so early its actually crazy

THE MY PEARL NICKANME I CANT TAKE IT.

A permanent smile seemed planted on your lips too. Your face felt like it was on fire. “I’ll like whatever you want to call me. The only thing that matters is that it comes from your lips.”

If i were her I wouldnt be able to resist either like, this is Park Sunghoon guys

Kipo i wish you couldve heard my live verbal reactions because girl, I am going through it trust me, nothing I write here even comes close to the way I am losing it right now

You kissed him again to keep yourself from drowning. Did it always feel like this? You were sure that it didn’t, that only Sunghoon could make you feel like this—bring you to your knees with just a simple motion like it was absolutely nothing.

This sums up how I feel rn actually. We aren’t horsin around anymore.

Biting my finger because what the fuck??? They are so in love and needy for each other actually

You turned to face him and he fondly smiled down at you, causing his expression to mirror on your own face. He leaned down to kiss you. “My pearl,” Sunghoon whispered affectionately before kissing you again.

This my pearl made me tear up a bit i cant lie

A deep rooted sensation bubbled inside you and you could only describe it as fear. You had to tell Sunghoon about the sea witch’s deal, and you had to do it today. You were running out of time—with only a week left—and it couldn’t be put off any longer. You couldn’t live in this fantasy you’ve put yourself in any longer.

This was simultaneously the longest and shortest month to me oh my fuck

“I love you,” Sunghoon finally breathed. “I love you so much that it’s too much to contain. It spills out of me like uncontrollable rivers. I could tell you over and over and it still wouldn’t be enough—I love you, I love you, I love you!”

You know sometimes people get anxiety that makes them wanna throw up?? Thats how im fucking feeling rn

“I love you like the water loves the land. Like the sun loves the moon and all of the stars in the sky,” he finally concluded.

I cant do it. I cant.

I should stop reading here and just pretend they have a silly happy ever after and a bunch of babies. Yeah, that’ll fix me

But I unfortunately like causing myself pain and I will continue reading

“I love you,” you told him, like you had discovered the secrets to the world and it all lied within him.

Literally said fuck out loud

Literally how I am feeling again

“Under the sea,”

With tears welling in my eyes I paused to sing under the sea like a fool because its clearly my only way to cope

Fuck.

Bro.

Honestly, I got nothing else to say.

Let her take your heart, so long as she doesn’t touch his.

This line definitely broke me the most

Until you were nothing but a beating heart against sunghoon’s still chest.

Oh fuck

Through the breaking light of the dawn, it is said you can see two souls turn to one.

Honestly. Like literally considering their fate, this was the best well-thought ending that doesnt give them some convenient way out but makes them have what I would say is a very real end. If im being honest, I deadass thought they wouldve committed like a double suicide or something LOL, but this is such a poetic end for them. And I honestly love the end to bits because they became one with each other in a very poetic and symbolic way and the evil nasty stinky (i hate her so much) msea witch is all angry and salty.

On a softer note, Kipo I absolutely love this rewrite. Your work always blows me away as you have such a way with words and it will always amaze me. So glad I finally got to read this and shared every bit of my thoughts (even if I crashed out for a good chunk of it)

ˋ 𑁍 ⨾ THE LIGHTHOUSE

the land has always been something you desperately wished you could walk on. be like the humans and walk among them. one dark and stormy night, you are granted your wish—but, it comes with a deadly price. and you only have one month to decide if you’re willing to pay it.

❛ 박성훈 𝑥 𝑓!reader ❜ 𓈒𓈒 ❨ �� 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 ❩ 𝗌𝗍𝗋𝖺𝗇𝗀𝖾𝗋𝗌 𝗍𝗈 𝗅𝗈𝗏𝖾𝗋𝗌, 𝖺𝗇𝗀𝗌𝗍, 𝗄𝗂𝗇𝖽𝖺 𝗅𝗈𝗏𝖾 𝖺𝗍 𝖿𝗂𝗋𝗌𝗍 𝗌𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍, 𝗌𝗆𝗎𝗍, 𝖿𝗅𝗎𝖿𝖿, 𝗆𝖾𝗋𝗆𝖺𝗂𝖽!𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝖾𝗋, 𝗅𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗎𝗌𝖾 𝗄𝖾𝖾𝗉𝖾𝗋!𝗌𝗎𝗇𝗀𝗁𝗈𝗈𝗇, 𝗆𝖺𝗀𝗂𝖼, 𝗆𝖾𝗋𝗆𝖺𝗂𝖽 𝖺𝗎, 𝖿𝖺𝗇𝗍𝖺𝗌𝗒, 𝖾𝖺𝗋𝗅𝗒 𝟣𝟫𝟢𝟢𝗌 𝖺𝗎 𝗂𝗇𝖺𝖼𝖼𝗎𝗋𝖺𝖼𝗂𝖾𝗌, 𝗌𝗅𝗈𝗐 𝖻𝗎𝗋𝗇, 𝗌𝗅𝗂𝖼𝖾 𝗈𝖿 𝗅𝗂𝖿𝖾, 𝖿𝗈𝗋𝖼𝖾𝖽 𝗉𝗋𝗈𝗑𝗂𝗆𝗂𝗍𝗒, 𝖼𝗅𝖺𝗌𝗌𝗂𝖼 𝗌𝗍𝗈𝗋𝗒 𝗈𝖿 𝖺 𝗆𝖾𝗋𝗆𝖺𝗂𝖽 𝗐𝖺𝗌𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗎𝗉 𝗈𝗇 𝗌𝗁𝗈𝗋𝖾 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁 𝖺 𝗍𝗐𝗂𝗌𝗍, 𝗅𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗎𝗌𝖾／𝗅𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗎𝗌𝖾 𝗄𝖾𝖾𝗉𝖾𝗋 𝗂𝗇𝖺𝖼𝖼𝗎𝗋𝖺𝖼𝗂𝖾𝗌, 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗅𝗂𝗍𝗍𝗅𝖾 𝗆𝖾𝗋𝗆𝖺𝗂𝖽 𝗋𝖾𝖿𝖾𝗋𝖾𝗇𝖼𝖾𝗌, 𝗌𝗅𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍 𝗌𝗆𝗂𝖽𝗀𝖾 𝗈𝖿 𝗁𝗈𝗋𝗋𝗈𝗋 𝖾𝗅𝖾𝗆𝖾𝗇𝗍𝗌 ✴︎ 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩／𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩, 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘴𝘩 𝘴𝘦𝘢 𝘸𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘴, 𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴, 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘥 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘴, 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥, 𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘥 𝘭𝘰𝘳𝘦, 𝘶𝘯𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘴𝘦𝘹, 𝘴𝘰𝘧𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘮!𝘴𝘶𝘯𝘨𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘯, 𝘴𝘶𝘣／𝘥𝘰𝘮 𝘥𝘺𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘤𝘴, 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘴𝘰𝘧𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘹, 𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 (𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺’𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥), 𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 (𝘴𝘶𝘯𝘨𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘱𝘰𝘱𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘣𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘳), 𝘱𝘦𝘵𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘴 (𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘺, 𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵, 𝘮𝘺 𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘭), 𝘤𝘭𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘧 𝘯𝘪𝘱𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘺, 𝘱𝘶𝘴𝘴𝘺 𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 (𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨), 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘧 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘫𝘰𝘣 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘢?, 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘪𝘦, 𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦 (𝘰𝘯 ＆ 𝘰𝘧𝘧 𝘱𝘢𝘨𝘦) 𓏸 25,6OO ╱ 𝓶. list

( 𝓷 )。 the rework for the lighthouse is finally here aaaa!!! i hope that you love this story as much as i do ♡♡♡ hehe~~ i still very vividly remember going into a deep dive about lighthouses and lighthouse keepers and watching a four hour documentary about them lmao… i hope you all enjoy all of the new scenes and such!! ♡

͏ ͏ ͏͏ ͏ ͏͏ ͏ ͏ ͏͏ ͏ ͏͏   ͏  ͏ ͏͏ ͏ ͏ ͏  ͏ ͏͏ REBLOGS ◜◡◝ ASKS APPRECIATED!

You knew that traveling to the surface was forbidden, but you couldn’t help the way that it called to you deep in the depths of the sea. Like a moth to a flame, you swam and swam until you could feel the bright sun on your wet skin. Until you could hear the sound of the waves crashing onto the nearby rocks and the distant chatter of the village nearby.

It filled you with such profound longing and want that the only thing that helped ease the feeling was to watch the way the landwalkers went about their days. You watched as giggling landwalking guppies darted from place to place and under their parent’s legs. As people shouted to passersby about the wares they were selling and people walking arm in arm.

You made sure you were always carefully hidden behind some rocks so that you weren’t seen and that your dark blue shifting tail blended nicely with the water. Still, you watched and watched for what seemed like hours.

You wondered what it felt like to be able to walk on land, to feel the rocky surface beneath your feet. Does it hurt? How does one stay upright? Is land walking to the landwalkers the same as swimming to the merfolk? These were all questions you desperately wanted to know the answers to.

Swimming away from the village’s edge, you waded through the fog along the ocean’s surface. You were just about to dive when a flickering light in the distance caught your eye. Cautiously, you decided to see what it was.

Landwalker’s buildings were already tall as it is, but this one was completely different. It pierced through the sky with a beacon of light shining from the top—almost like a second sun being held up. Your eyes widened as you drew closer, ducking behind some rocks as you surveyed the area.

It was on a small island of its own, not too far away from the island the village sat on, but far enough that you’d have to swim for a short while to get from island to island. The building was white and a deep red color like coral on the seafloor. You stared in amazement at it, climbing up onto the rock to get a better look. A tiny building was attached to the bottom of it that looked like it had seen much better days. It was beautiful, you’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Movement in your peripheral had your head snapping in its direction. The door of the small attached building swung open and a man carrying a box stepped out of it, the hat he was wearing nearly slipping off of his head and exposing his dark locks of hair blowing in the crisp wind. You ducked down on the rock a little, making sure that you were covered by the fog. He sat the box down near the entrance of the building just as a loud sound had you jumping out of your scales.

It was a deep, almost guttural sound. You tried to look for the source of it and saw that it came from the large horn near the small building. Birds flew from their perches to a quieter place and you slid off the rock, drawing nearer to the shore.

Your father’s warnings rang deep inside you, yet you tried to push his words down. Don’t go near the surface, my child. The dangerous landwalkers will lure you in and capture you so that you are never seen ever again. They cannot be trusted. They will bottle your song and use it for their wrongdoings.

You hid behind some more rocks and watched him work. He kept disappearing into the small building and if you looked up, you could almost see him between the flickering light. If he wasn’t inside, he was out tidying the area around where he worked—stacking and fixing various things. Occasionally, he would also look out to the sea, seemingly monitoring the waves and the fog before scribbling something down in what you think was called a book. When he did, you sunk down into the water until only your eyes and the top of your head was above the surface.

What interested you the most was how the man seemed to be alone. Why was he so far away from the rest of the landwalkers? What made him different? What was this building that he was working on? You had so many questions and so little answers—and nobody to ask.

You couldn’t tell any of your people that you watched the landwalkers daily. You would get into an enormous amount of trouble and would never be able to see the surface again. You didn’t want that to happen, and you couldn’t bear the thought of it. Especially with your newfound fixation on the lonely landwalker.

Instead, day after day, you watched the man work—no longer so curious about the ventures of the village landwalkers. The more you watched him work, muscles straining against his rolled up sleeves and brows furrowed, the more you noticed him. He was very handsome in a landwalker sort of way, the most beautiful out of them you’ve seen thus far. You wondered if he had a life outside of this building on the shore. Perhaps it was back in the small house a short walk away from the shore? Was his whole life on this tiny island?

You suppose you wouldn’t mind a life of solitude if you were him. Busy life in the village seemed to be overwhelming after a while. Maybe he thought the same way you did.

Dusk fell and a cold breeze swept up the shore from the waters. You had spent the whole day again watching the man work at what you now knew was called a lighthouse. He was wiping the attached building of the lighthouse down after the recent rainstorm, frustratingly muttering under his breath.

You noticed that he didn’t talk much, only a simple, quiet word here or there. At first, you thought he couldn’t speak at all, until now.

“Shit!” he hissed as he threw the rag down onto the ground. The paint was starting to peel off of the siding on the building from the harsh winds and water. “Now I’m gonna have to paint this whole building again.”

You giggled at his reaction. Your giggle must’ve been too loud because his head snapped in your direction and you quickly sunk down behind the rocks. This was dangerous, you knew that, and it already seemed that you were getting too comfortable being out in the open. Yet, you giggled to yourself more, more quietly this time as bubbles rippled up from the water. The man’s brows furrowed but he just shook his head a little. You slowly rose to the surface just as he spoke again. “Come on, Sunghoon. Don’t start losing it now,” he murmured.

Sunghoon, that was his name. You tried his name on your tongue. “Sung… hoon…” you spoke softly before smiling. “Pretty.”

The light at the top of the lighthouse burned brightly against the darkening sky, signaling that it was past the time for you to start swimming home. You turned and began swimming away from the shore, starting your journey.

Something sat heavily in the pit of your stomach and it was beginning to weigh you down. It was that same longing and want, this time more pronounced and refusing to be swallowed and digested. You stopped swimming and stared up at the bright, almost full moon in the sky.

You would give anything to walk on land, to experience life as a landwalker does and be on land. You didn’t want to be confined to the sea anymore. You didn’t want to have a tail anymore—you wanted legs. You wanted to be a landwalker, not a mermaid.

Your heart racing, an old story your father once told you interrupted your thoughts. The story of a young mermaid trading her tail for landwalker’s legs.

It was supposed to be a cautionary tale, one to ward off small merfolk from intermingling with the landwalkers, but to you, it was an answer. One you were desperate for. The tale talked about how the mermaid visited a sea witch deep down in a cave at the bottom of the ocean and begged her to change her tail for legs.

The witch and her struck a deal: the mermaid was to sacrifice four of her pearlescent scales in exchange for a week on land. During said week, the mermaid had to find the witch various hard-to-find ingredients and bring it back to her by the end of it. If she didn’t fulfill her end of the deal after the week was up, her tail would come back and she would never be able to have legs again. Only, swimming would not be as easy or as painless as it once was.

You made your decision. You were going to find the sea witch and strike a deal with her the same way the mermaid from the story did. What were a few scales and ingredients when you could finally walk on land? Finally have your dreams become reality?

Your next course of action was to find out information on where the sea witch’s cave could be.

Instead of spending your time up at the surface, you instead kept beneath the water. You asked your family and Elders about the sea witch in subtle ways, blaming your questions on your curiosity and love of storytelling. As days passed, the information you were provided pushed you more and more into the direction you were hoping for.

You had first gone to one of your Elders, a sweet and wondering smile spread across your face. You had asked her about the sea witch and her cave and about the mermaid who made a deal with her, trying to see if there was anything else to the story.

“Why do you ask?” your Elder asked, her red hair rippling in the water. Her voice was gentle, but cautious. Her gaze flicked over to you when you asked and you saw her eyes widen the slightest bit. You honeyed your smile.

“Well, its just so many little guppies take their curiosity too far, you know? Remember that little girl in the square?” You trailed off a little for good measure, sighing softly and looking off to one of the arches. You saw merfolk swim by as they looked for the book they came to the library for. “I don’t want them to accidentally stumble upon it if the cave is close. Accidentally make a deal that they shouldn’t.”

You heard her sigh and looked back to her. She set the book she was putting away back on the stack of other unorganized books. “I suppose I’ve never thought of that before… But, there’s no need to worry. The cave is quite far away—all the way near the old shipwreck. It’s deep enough that it should be hidden and someone shouldn’t find it accidentally.”

Breathing out a faux sigh of relief, you let your body dramatically relax. She smiled at you, “Thank you for looking out for the little ones. You’d make a good addition to the council one day.”

Smiling back at her, you said nothing, but nodded. That didn’t matter. Your time in the water was limited. You gave her a flutter before showing yourself out.

The next person you had gone to was your father. It was perhaps a mistake to ask him questions about the sea witch, but if you asked another Elder, they would start to get suspicious. You had no choice but to ask your father.

He furrowed his brows at you, twisting the black pearl weaved in his hair between two fingers, as he assessed your question. He was quiet for a long while, and the more time that spanned on, the more nervous you felt. Finally, he responded, “Why do you want to know, my child?”

“Well… The sea witch cannot trick any more people into deals if the witch’s torch is not lit, right? Have you and the council ever thought of just… taking it? At least so then no more merfolk could make deals?” You nervously gulped.

Your father hummed and looked away from you, deep in thought. “That would be most helpful but unfortunately the witch’s torch cannot be unlit. It’s part of the sea witch’s magic.”

Now you are getting somewhere. Foolishly, you let your curiosity get ahead of you and the next word spilled out of your mouth before you could stop it. “Why?”

Like a hammer, your father’s gaze settled on you. He swam from his seat and came to float in front of you.

“Why don’t you go get some fresh lotus for your Mother?”

It wasn’t a question, but a demand. You cast your eyes to the floor and nodded after a moment before leaving the room.

You were doing just that, collecting lotus roots, when you felt someone swim up next to you. When you looked at them, you noticed that it was someone you didn’t recognize. They didn’t say anything, and you stopped what you were doing to see what they wanted.

They were wearing a large sewn cloak of seaweed that covered their face, but you could still see their bright, shifting orange scales. Something about their tail looked off. There were patches that were smoother than others and completely rid of scales. It almost looked… sickly.

“I hear you’re asking around about the sea witch,” they said in a hushed voice.

You held the lotus roots close to your chest. Some of the buds were already starting to open. Clearing your throat, you said, “For the safety of the little ones, yes. Is that a problem?”

The cloaked figure wryly chuckled. “It is. Because you do not seek the sea witch for the ‘safety of the little ones,’ you seek the sea witch for yourself.” Your opened your mouth to speak, but they cut you off. “My wise advice for you—don’t. End this search for the sea witch, now.”

They swam away and you remained in the lotus grove utterly confused. For the rest of the day, their words stuck with you and replayed in your mind over and over. Yet, it still wasn’t enough to stop your search. The surface still called to you, and you were determined to answer it.

It felt weird to be amongst your people again. You were so busy vicariously living with the landwalkers that you forgot how different interactions between merfolk and landwalkers were. Instead of walking or running, it was swimming and tail flapping. Instead of giggles, it was a flurry of bubbles and occasional muted speech. Unless the conversation was important enough, you merfolk spoke with your hands. Merfolk swam with their tails on top of one another and their arms intertwined ahead of them.

Strangely, you felt out of place. Everything felt so different than it had once felt before. It felt like you didn’t belong under the water anymore.

You were going over the information you had gathered when suddenly the pieces all fit together. The old shipwreck… At first you didn’t know where it was but you vaguely remember your father ushering you away from it as a guppy. It was when you were out with your mother. The Elder you visited was right—it was quite far if you remembered correctly, but you had to try. And if the witch’s torch couldn’t be unlit against her will, then she might be there for you to ask a wish from her.

You twirled in excitement. The sea witch… you finally found her! You were going to have your legs that you’ve spent so many nights dreaming of, and you didn’t want to waste anymore time.

As the light rays dwindled, you quickly snuck out under the cover of darkness and began to swim towards the location, sneaking past any merfolk who were still out of their seaweed beds. Deep, deep down you swam and swam until you could barely see ahead of you. That was, until a sparkling light appeared and guided you—the witch’s torch.

You darted towards it, a nervous excitement bubbling inside of you as you drew closer and closer. You pushed all of the warnings your people gave you and all of the cautionary tales into the furthest, darkest corner of your mind. Today was the day that your life was going to change. When you reached it, a large opening with more sparkling lights beckoned you inside and you hesitantly followed them one by one.

The swim felt like it lasted an eternity as you twisted and turned, the large muscle in your tail burning and throbbing with exertion, until you saw a bright light that almost blinded you at first look. You swam towards it and surfaced from the water inside a decent sized pool in what looked like the interior of a rocky, rundown and dingy hut.

“Ah, a visitor!” a voice said and you swung around. A woman—a landwalking woman—was in front of a shelf of various trinkets and knick knacks next to a table full of jars of spices and herbs. Her voice came out more as a rasp, a scratchy sound that sounded like she didn’t use her voice much. She turned towards where you surfaced with a bright smile that was all teeth. Her dark, shadowed eyes widened and a chill ran down your spine all the way to the fin at the end of your tail.

She wore clothes that hung limply from her body and was tattered and dirty. Her hair a wild mess. When you thought of the sea witch, this is not what you were expecting. Still, you could feel the waves of power radiating off of her, and it made your heart beat faster in a twisted excitement.

She was real. The sea witch was real.

She walked towards the pool you were in. “Don’t get too many of those anymore, especially from the depths. Must be all the stories o—your people tell of me.” She chortled and you tilted your head in confusion before realizing that she had made a joke a second too late. The witch waved her hand in the air at your silence, “I kid, I kid.”

“The depths?” you asked her.

She chortled more before giving you a bewildered look. “Hm, what are they saying to you? Yes, child. I am both the sea and the land.” She turned back to the shelf, and as she did, she muttered, “At least, before that blasted curse long ago. You would think they would have some empathy… But, I digress.”

Pushing away from the shelf, the witch stepped towards you. Her tattered dress was ripped at the hems at multiple points so pieces of fabric hung from it and dragged along the stone floor. When she moved, the shells, sticks, and pearls she wore clacked together in an alluring harmony. It reminded you a little of the sea. She bent down at the edge of the pool so she was eye level with you, her messy hair fanning around her face.

“What deal did you come to make, little mermaid?” she asked, her eyes still wide and her smile still all teeth.

You waded backwards in the water slightly, but stood your ground. You swallowed, willing your voice to speak. “Legs…” you trailed softly before licking your lips. “Legs,” you said, louder and with more confidence. “I want to trade my tail for legs. I wish to walk on land like the landwalkers do—be a landwalker like them.”

“Legs,” the witch drawled out before tsking as she turned away from you in a large, dramatic motion. She grabbed a stone bowl from the top of one of her shelves, picking here and there at spices and herbs and trinkets as she moved about the room. “Always legs,” she continued. “You all could wish for anything—wings at your back, a stony gaze, the will for revenge—but you never do. Just legs. Always a deep desire to be human, what is it about them?” She spat out the last word, human, like it was stuck on the roof of her mouth.

Your brows furrowed in worry. What if she didn’t accept your deal? What if she was too tired of giving foolish mermaids like you legs to walk on land with and denied you wish?

The witch suddenly turned towards you and you jumped. “As I’m sure you know, everything always comes with a price—and this is mine. I will accept your request, but in return you must do something for me as well.”

You nodded furiously. “Y-Yes! Anything… I’ll do anything!”

The sea witch smiled, but it lacked all of the playfulness she previously possessed. Instead, it was almost cold, like she had flipped a fin. The change shocked and scared you deep to your core. You wanted to swim further back and away from her, but her gaze locked you in place and you felt paralyzed.

“In one month’s time, you must cut out the beating heart of the human you love the most and bring it to me.” The sea witch slowly leaned away from you, her eyes remaining on yours. “If you don’t fulfill your end of the deal, you will never walk on land again and you will never swim in the recesses of the ocean again either. You will instead turn to seafoam and be nevermore. That is your price, guppy.”

The way ‘guppy’ passed through her dry lips was like a bolt of lightning through water. Her scratchy voice was plain, like she said the words so many times that she simply plucked them from her memory and presented them to you. It made you sink deeper into the water and realize how foolish this dream of yours must look to others—to the one who granted the same wish to other merfolk time and time again before you. It made you feel… small.

Your eyes widened in shock and in fear. “B-But, in the story—”

The witch swiftly interrupted you, her voice harsh and grating. She leaned down to you again so fast you had no time to process it. Her teeth were sharp and her eyes were almost fully black. “In the ‘story,’ I gave that halfwitted thing a single day and every step she took felt like standing upon urchins. Be grateful, girl, that I am showing you kindness. Now what will it be? Do you accept, or do you waste my time?”

The clacking of her jewelry sounded like a ticking clock, urging you to answer quickly. “I accept!” you blurted. Your eyes widened further and you gasped softly at your own words. The sea witch’s sharp smile grew.

She got in the water and hooked her arms under you and dragged you towards the stone floor. “Yes, child!” she shouted, her voice suddenly a wondrous melody, and smoke rose all around you out of the bubbling cauldron you suddenly noticed. “A deal has been made—one you will die for to break! There’s no turning back!” She cackled loudly as she dragged you fully onto the ground, dropping you unceremoniously. You sat up, fear flooding your entire body as you froze and shook from the sudden change in temperature.

“There’s no turning back! There’s no turning back! A debt to be made, a word on contract. The beating heart shall be mine, for all you have sacrificed will be paid!” the witch shouted, cackling to herself.

The room grew dark and the light from the cauldron shimmered off of your deep blue scales. Before you could do much else, the sea witch plucked four scales from your tail and you hissed out in pain. She dropped them into the cauldron along with the trinkets and such from the stone bowl, mixing them all together with a hearty laugh.

You began to rise in the air and your tail started to tingle before becoming so unbearably hot that you started to writhe. You screamed out in pain as the smoke clouded around you and left you blind to the rest of the room. Smoke entered your lungs and you began to cough violently as fog rose above the surface of the pool and left it completely covered. You were suddenly reminded of your father’s previous words, “They will bottle your song and use it for their wrongdoings.” He should’ve told you how it wasn’t a landwalker that would steal your song, but something else entirely.

The sea witch’s voice rang in your head as she cackled more in the background. There’s no turning back.

From beyond the smoke and fog, you heard the witch shout, “Tonight, a vicious storm will brew and take you on your journey. A month from now the same storm will return, with or without you.”

You could barely hear her between your screams. You could barely hear your screams at all from the way your blood rushed to your ears. One by one, your scales ripped from your tail and withered away into nothingness. The more you writhed in pain, the more it felt like your tail was being split in two. You rose further into the air and noticed the suspended pool of water hanging above you. Suddenly, you couldn’t breathe. Like your gills had completely closed and you were suffocating. The top of your head rose into the water and despite not being able to breathe, you screamed—a shrill sound full of unabashed fear.

From the distance, you heard the sea witch’s voice again. This time she wasn’t shouting, but instead chuckling in satisfaction. She continued, “Either way, I’ll have a heart.”

As you entered the water, you were whooshed into a current that helped you breathe again. You gasped in large breaths as you spun around disoriented. The pain you felt was unimaginable. Your tail felt as if someone was ripping a leg off of a starfish. Except, instead of growing back the same, it was growing something else entirely. Something foreign that never should be growing there in the first place. More scales ripped and withered off of you as your tail split.

You tried to think about the future. Of how worth it this will all be in the end when you have your legs and you finally walk on land, living amongst the landwalkers—or humans, as the sea witch interestingly called them.

But, a thought prodded at your mind. The bargain you made and the heart you will have to bring back.

You didn’t think you could do it. You didn’t have the stomach to cut out someone’s heart, but you had no choice. Not anymore. Who’s heart will you cut out? Will you find some unsuspecting victim and force yourself to love them until you actually do, so in the end you can rip out the heart they entrusted you with? It was all so wrong. What have you done?

The current led you to the sea’s surface and in the heart of the most vicious storm you’ve ever seen. Waves crashed against you and pummeled you back down under the surface, yet each time you emerged again and again. Harsh, stinging winds slashed across your skin, yet you remained unharmed. You hoarsely yelled out in pain and looked down at the beautiful blue tail you once had, the scales a myriad of shades. You didn’t even recognize it anymore.

Instead, what you saw was a half tail, half pair of legs monstrosity. It perfectly described where you were at this current moment—between the waves of the watery life you had been stripped from and being pushed forward to the dry land of the life you will come to know. In the distance, you heard that loud, guttural sound that you recognized so well. You turned and saw the beacon of fluttering light emitting from the lighthouse standing tall against the storm.

A dark thought polluted your mind. You weren’t expecting to be spat out so close to the village. Your mind traveled to the man working the lighthouse as you fought against the waves to breathe the cold air.

What if it was his heart you cut out?

No… you didn’t want to think that. Didn’t want that thought to be true. You pushed out the thought as soon as it came to mind. Anybody, but him. Anybody, but Sunghoon. You’ve grown too fond of him during the times you watched over him. You can’t let his already seemingly lonely life be cut short by getting his heart ripped out. You wouldn’t allow yourself to do that to him.

The tormenting waves seemed to have other plans for you. It felt as if they read your mind and sensed your discomfort. They took you directly towards the shore where the lighthouse sat with purposeful glides and you started to cry.

Shock jolted you as you felt wetness roll down your cheeks just as the rain started to pour down harder from a light sprinkling. You touched your cheeks with trembling hands. The change was all too much too fast. It was so overwhelming. You weren’t expecting it to be this way.

When you heard the story of the mermaid trading her tail for legs it was nothing like this. She emerged from the water like a graceful swan, a beautiful sunset behind her that reflected off the calm sea. You couldn’t help but feel betrayed by the lies you were told.

You didn’t feel graceful, you felt forsaken. This was a journey of death, not rebirth.

The closer you got to the shore, the more regret started to pierce deep inside you. It didn’t help that the storm clouds seemed to break so the moon’s light could illuminate just you. It all felt so unfair. All you wanted to do was walk on land, why must you endure all this? Why must you love someone deeply only to rip their heart out? And why were the sea witch’s waves so hellbent on that person being Sunghoon?

Why did the excitement still flood in the pit of your belly at the thought of the life you may live after?

A second, smaller light flickered on at the tiny island you were barreling towards and you knew it was him. You watched as the small light raced towards the shore almost as fast as you were being pushed to it. The two of you were heading towards a deadly collision and you weren’t ready for it.

The waves spat you out and you washed up on the sand of the shore. You felt weak and dizzy and something else entirely that you couldn't name or figure out. Your stomach rumbled like the thunder and your head ached. You raised your head as much as you could and looked down at your new body. You were in so much pain that you almost couldn’t feel anything at all.

Sniffling a little, a laugh spilled from your lips and the corners of your mouth pulled upwards. You have legs. They may be painful at the moment and slightly numb, but you finally had them. You felt every grain against them and dug your legs further into the sand. The last remaining scales of your former life surrounded you like glittering rocks. You were surprised that they hadn’t withered away like the rest of them.

You looked up at the full moon, glowing and huge. It looked like a pearl hung in the sky. You smiled wider before inhaling deeply. You felt brand new. Maybe the whole journey was worth it in the end. A wave of sleep hit you and you struggled to keep your eyes open.

Just as your eyes began to close fully, a warm light draped over your body. Sunghoon’s worried face appeared in your view just as another wave of sleep overcame you, the ghost of a smile on your face.

As you drifted off into the unknown, the claws of regret sank into you again and it’s almost as if you could hear the sea witch’s cruel cackling. You can’t rip out his heart, you just couldn’t. You wouldn’t. Because, unbeknownst to you, that fondness you held so deeply for him was already blossoming into something more. Something dangerous. And you would protect it with your last dying breath.

It was a strange day, indeed, for Sunghoon.

More of a strange week, actually. Firstly, his assistant keeper was nowhere to be found, so he was on the small island all alone; manning all of the work and upkeep of the lighthouse on his own. As he went on about his days, Sunghoon constantly felt watched—he even swore he heard a woman’s laugh before, even saw the apparition of her along the shore, but it was just him. Maybe it was finally his time to go mad like so many of the other lighthouse keepers that came before him.

Now a vicious storm appearing out of nowhere? After his logs over the week have only shown mostly clear skies? It was all very strange to him.

Even stranger was how loud the storm was—louder than any storm he has ever heard before. It was as if it wanted to make its chaotic presence known. It had awoken him from his dreamless sleep like an alluring song. As Sunghoon scanned the waters for any possible boats or ships, a woman, illuminated by a beam of moonlight, fought against the waves and crashed upon his shore like some holy being. The storm had come so fast he barely had time to get from his bed and light his oil lantern to go out and try to assist her.

That is where Sunghoon was now, holding his lantern over your bare body as he worriedly looked over you for any injuries. You seemed completely unharmed, surrounded by shifting blue scales with pearls in your hair and shiny skin that still clung to the water from the ocean. With skin the slightest bit tinted blue and with slightly webbed hands, you almost looked… human—but, more ethereal and beautiful than anything Sunghoon has ever seen in his entire life. You were prettier than any Gibson Girl appearance the women of the village sported by far.

Realizing that he was gazing upon a woman’s naked body who he didn’t know, Sunghoon quickly sat his lantern down in the sand as he shrugged off his wet coat. He laid it over you before hooking his arms under your legs and back to carry you back to safety in his quarters, making sure to grab his lantern to light his way back through the dark. Every few seconds Sunghoon peered down to gape at you, too entranced with your beauty. It was as if he couldn’t bring himself to look away, no matter how hard he tried.

The closer to his small house and the further away from the shore he got, the storm simmered until he was at the front of his door and the skies and sea were almost calm again. Very strange, Sunghoon thought.

Sunghoon laid you down gently onto his couch and replaced his coat for one of the thick blankets strewn across the back of the couch. You were completely out cold, and probably would be for a while. Sunghoon shook his head in wonder as he stared down at you. “What happened to you? How did you manage to get caught vulnerable and alone in the middle of a storm?”

His questions would have to wait for later. Sunghoon rushed back outside and to the lighthouse. He climbed up the narrow winding staircase to the top and ensured that the lamp was still burning. After adjusting the flame, everything was back in order and the mechanism was spinning efficiently.

Sunghoon sighed as he exited the lighthouse and leaned against the wind-worn door of it for a moment. The weather was calm again and he still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it. It felt like a storm only one would see in text of myths and legends. Thankfully, he wouldn’t have to do much cleaning up after the sudden storm. After logging everything that happened, Sunghoon ventured back down to the shore—back down to where he found you.

In the sand, he picked up some of the blue scales that had surrounded you and inspected them. They were somewhat transparent and flexible. When Sunghoon held them out to the light, they shifted from a dark blue to a deep teal color. It only left him with more questions, but he pocketed them to ask you about later.

He remembered how in the books he read, they told of mermaids and the magic that surrounded them. It said how if a mermaid were to give you one of their scales, the scale would bring you good fortune for as long as you kept it close to you. It also said how pirates would use this to their advantage to pillage other ships and take treasure for their own.

A yawn was ripped from Sunghoon’s mouth and he looked out at the moon. If his calculations were correct, he still had a couple of hours until he had to be up again for the day. Heading back to the small house near the lighthouse, Sunghoon decided to go back to sleep until either it was time for him to wake up, or you awoke. There was no point in staying awake if everything outside was calm with no signs of changing and you were asleep.

Sunghoon quickly ran upstairs and changed his wet clothes for dryer ones, making sure to bring some down for you to wear when you woke up. He sunk down into the armchair next to the couch, running his hands through his damp hair. Sunghoon glanced over to you, sleeping peacefully, with a sigh. He just hoped that nothing else strange occurred.

He got as comfortable as he could on the armchair and yawned once again. Sunghoon closed his eyes and let himself drift off to sleep.

You awoke inside a simply adorned house that you didn’t recognize. Memories rushed towards the forefront of your mind and you recalled the events you just went through. The sea witch, your new—and no longer painful—legs, the storm, and Sunghoon’s worried face. You slowly sat up and the fabric across your body fell off your shoulders and pooled in your lap.

You turned towards the window and looked out at the sky. It was still rather dark outside, but you could tell that the dawn was not too far away. The light atop of the lighthouse still flickered like a beacon in the sky and there were no remnants of whatever storm brought you here.

The surface… you were finally on it. A smile grew on your face and you turned your attention back to your new legs, flipping the fabric off of them completely to gaze upon them.

They were absolutely glorious. You giggled a little as you wiggled the tiny fingers at the end of them. They felt unusual, but you suppose you would eventually get used to the feeling. Another thought popped into your head, loud and demanding—Sunghoon.

He was asleep in the chair next to you, his body uncomfortably twisted in it. You tilted your head as you looked at him. You actually couldn’t believe it, you were finally getting a close look at a landwalker—a human. You stood on your new legs, shaking and using the couch to stabilize you. You took a shaky step towards him, and another until you were basically hovering over him and trying your hardest not to tip over and fall into his lap.

How fascinating, humans. They didn’t have any gills like merfolk did, nor the tinged blue-ish skin or shiny tail. And from what you could tell, their ears didn’t have any attached fins on them either. You touched your own ears, astonished at how different they felt. They were rounded now, and smooth to the touch. You then held out your hand and held it up near Sunghoon’s to see if there was still a difference. They were still slightly webbed, but not nearly like how they used to be. It was all so… new.

Your skin was soft and warm rather than cold, wet, and almost slick. Sunghoon’s hair also didn’t sprawl out around him like yours did when you were underwater. Instead, it covered his eyes in a dark curtain and rested softly across his cheeks.

You reached out your hand further and brushed the hair away to see Sunghoon’s closed eyes, your fingers brushing lightly across his skin. He really was beautiful. Your brows knitted together as the tips of your fingers dragged down his cheek. Did all humans look like him?

Sunghoon’s eyes cracked open and you gasped softly, pulling your hand away. You took a wobbly step back and nearly fell onto the table if it hadn’t been for Sunghoon jumping up from his chair and quickly reaching out and grabbing your waist to steady you. You both looked at each other with wide eyes and in complete silence. You were sure that even the waves halted its chorus. Sunghoon’s eyes trailed your body and his eyes widened even more before he swiftly removed his hands from your bare waist and turned his head to the side, blinking rapidly.

“T-There’s clothes on the table for you…” Sunghoon stuttered, the sleep still in his voice, as he shifted back against the edge of the armchair nervously. His eyes darted to yours before looking away again.

You gave him a confused look before turning to the table. You held up the “clothes” he was talking about in front of you and turned back to him with a puzzled look. “What… is it?” you asked. You stuck your arm through one of its various holes, confused on what you were to do with it.

Sunghoon shifted more until he suddenly fell down in the seat and he dragged his gaze up to you. You could see the way his body heated up and the redness that creeped up his neck and tinted his cheeks pink. It made him look even prettier. He took the pillow from behind him and pressed it down in his lap. “Uh… I-It’s a shirt,” he stuttered more, just as confused as you were. “You wear it?”

You lowered the shirt so you could look at him and Sunghoon looked at the ceiling. “Wear it?” you repeated. What is a “shirt” and how does one “wear it?” There was so much about a human’s life that you didn’t know. It made you excited to learn about it all.

Sunghoon cleared his throat and his brows drew together more, like he didn’t understand how you didn’t understand what he was talking about. Suddenly, realization dawned on his features and he slowly looked down from the ceiling so his eyes connected with yours. “Yeah,” he said slowly. You could see the geysers blowing in his head the more he stared at you, his eyes shifting along your face and your hair. He glanced towards the door before settling on you. “Have you seen them before?” he suddenly asked.

“From afar on humans, but never this close! We don’t wear things such as this. It’s soft,” you smiled. You then gasped, covering your mouth with your hand. You didn’t think it was wise to let him know that you were—or, use to be—a mermaid. Your father’s words came to mind again, but, as you stared at Sunghoon with wide eyes, it didn’t look like he was dangerous.

After all, he did rescue you from the storm and gave you shelter. He is even giving you some of his clothes, even if you didn’t know what to do with them or how to wear them. Maybe you could trust him with your secret before going off to the village in hopes of finding someone to fall in love with. Treat it as a farewell before you leave him to ensure your fondness doesn't grow any further.

A knowing smile grew on Sunghoon’s face and as you stared at each other for another moment, you could see him put all the pieces together himself. “Well, us humans usually wear a shirt like this,” he started, motioning down to the shirt that covered his chest. “And trousers to cover our lower half. You’re, uh, naked… right now.”

Your brows raised in shock and your fingers rose to your hair. Naked? How were you naked? Most of your pearls were still in your hair and your hair was relatively decent still. You were completely dressed.

Sunghoon slowly stood. He grabbed the shirt from you and held it in between your bodies. “I’m not sure how things work where you’re from… but here, let me help you…” He lifted the shirt and pulled it over your head through one of the holes. “Your arms go through the other two,” Sunghoon murmured awkwardly.

He then very awkwardly guided you through putting on the trousers and you quickly learned about balance and its importance.

“Thank you,” you said sincerely as you smiled at him. Sunghoon sheepishly smiled back, rubbing the back of his neck. “But, I must ask one last thing of you. The village… it’s dire that I get there as fast as possible.”

Sunghoon’s smile dropped. You leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to his warm cheek. You still weren’t used to the warmth that came with humans. You then started to make your way to the door, a lot less wobbly. The kiss was risky, but you couldn’t help yourself. Sunghoon raced towards you, his arms out. “Wait!” he called out.

He held you in place by your shoulders to stop you from leaving. “You can’t leave—not without someone guiding you, and I can’t leave the lighthouse. The villagers… they’ll eat someone like you alive up there. It’s not safe.” You could tell Sunghoon wasn’t joking by the serious expression on his face.

What were you supposed to do now? “Someone like me?” you asked.

Sunghoon gave you an almost incredulous look. “You arrived in a storm completely unharmed and alive. When I found you, you were surrounded by these scales and you wear pearls in your hair…” he trailed off, like the answer was blatantly obvious. “The villagers don’t believe, but spending time here, alone, at this lighthouse will at the very least have you questioning. Nevermind the generations of journals that my family has kept stored away with tales of fair maidens from the waters and their shimmering tails.”

Your shoulders sagged. At least you didn’t have to hide what you were from him anymore—not that you were doing a good job of it anyway. “B-But… I have to go to the village!” you exclaimed.

“Listen, why don’t you stay here for a while? I’ll teach you everything you need to know—human to mermaid—and after, you can go on your merry way and live amongst us on your own!” said Sunghoon.

“You don’t understand.” You slumped down on the couch, crossing your arms. “It’s not safe for you, and I don’t have that much time.”

Sunghoon quirked a brow, chuckling, “What? Are you gonna eat me or something?” You stayed silent. He sat down on the couch next to you. “If you were, you would’ve done so on the shore or while I was sleeping. I promise that no angry mob is gonna come rowing here after you, you don’t have to worry. And, I’ll teach you everything as fast as I can.”

You sighed defeatedly, you just hoped it was fast enough for you to still find someone else. It couldn’t be Sunghoon who’s heart you ripped out. “Okay,” you murmured.

Sunghoon smiled brightly at you. “Now, what’s your name, darling?”

You finally turned to look at him again. Sunghoon had the warmest brown eyes that you couldn’t even begin to decipher, but you wouldn’t mind getting lost in them. Everything about him was warm like the feeling of the sun on your skin. Hesitantly, you told him your name.

“I’m Sunghoon, here at your service!” You laughed and he joined in with you. You almost wanted to tell him that you already knew, that you’ve been watching him, but you decided against it. It was best that he didn’t know. You wouldn’t be staying here for long anyway.

“Sunghoon,” you repeated instead, like you haven’t already said it before, “that’s very pretty.”

“A compliment, coming from a pretty woman like yourself? Well, it must be! Thank you kindly, Miss!” He smiled playfully and you rolled your eyes. There was a pang in your chest and you inhaled. Thankfully it was covered by a loud growl, causing you to furrow your brows.

Sunghoon’s face lit up in realization again. “Ah, right. You must be hungry. Let me fetch you something to eat.”

It has been about a week since you landed in Sunghoon’s care and time was ticking down. You tried to not think about how much time you had left, instead distracting yourself by helping Sunghoon around the lighthouse, but it was near impossible. It didn’t help that since the two of you were alone on the island together, you both had no choice but to be in each other’s presence and get to know each other.

Sunghoon has taught you a lot about humans throughout the week you’ve been here and in turn you’ve told him about how things worked under the water. The two of you were fascinated by each other’s stories and that, in turn, only brought you both even closer. It was a dangerous game that you couldn’t bring yourself to stop playing.

The day was clear, and as Sunghoon said, “It holds no signs of changing.”

He had taught you how to track the weather and which signs to look for that signaled an oncoming storm. You listened diligently as he explained to you clouds and how they varied from the big, white fluffy ones to the dark grey ones that led to rain. Sunghoon stopped his painting of the side of the connected building of the lighthouse, leaning his back against the dried part to watch you and listen to you speak, when you began to tell him how you tracked the weather underwater. You weren’t used to the attention, and still not used to Sunghoon’s intense gaze either, so you had kept your eyes firmly on the task at hand as you spoke of bubbles and currents.

Sunghoon didn’t take his eyes off of you, not once. You finally raised your head to meet his stare. “There’s not really ‘weather’ underwater, for the most part,” you started. “Think of blowing into a cup of water from the surface of it, and now think of that as rain up here.” You waved the hand that held the large paintbrush up towards the clouds. “That’s how we’d be able to know if it was raining up at the surface—though, going to the surface is forbidden anyway.”

You thought back to all of the times where your Elders and you father especially forbade you from even getting close to the surface—and how you would ignore their demands anyway. Although it was such a grievance then, you thought back to your father’s voice and the warning it always carried. “Don’t go near the surface, my child. They will bottle your song and use it for their wrongdoings. Landwalkers are dangerous,” you recalled aloud.

Sunghoon took a step towards you, a teasing smile pulling at the corner of his lips. “Do you think that I’m dangerous?” he asked.

You looked over at him again, a grin across your face and one of your eyebrows raised. “If anyone here is dangerous, it’s me. No offense. But, you are the one who decided to house a mermaid with no survival instincts whatsoever.”

Sunghoon laughed and it was the most glorious sound that you have ever heard. Your eyes widened a little at the sound and watched as he threw his head back, his hat almost slipping off and catching the wind. It made your own smile brighten and you laughed a little along with him. “I can’t argue with that, sweetheart,” Sunghoon spoke, the smile still lingering on his face. He had teeth that looked like little fangs and it reminded you a lot of the merfolk back home.

“So, what did make you want to come to the surface in the first place? Especially after all of the warnings you heard?” asked Sunghoon.

You continued to paint the siding as you spoke, your voice soft as you recalled the memories from long ago. “At first, I was completely against going to the surface. I thought, ‘why go through all of that trouble to put myself into a dangerous situation’? But the more that I thought that thought, the more curious I became.”

You could see the memory in your mind so vividly, it was almost like you were reliving it. “One day, one of the guppies—children,” you corrected yourself with a sheepish grin and a brief look over to Sunghoon. His complete attention was still on you. “Got curious enough to try and swim up to the surface herself.”

The image of the child was burned into your memory. Everyone was too busy to pay attention to her and she took the opportunity to reach what she always dreamed of touching. You remembered how the ray of sunlight cast down from the surface onto her, how close she was. It had ignited a fiery inspiration inside of you and unlocked a deep, hidden desire that you didn’t know you beheld.

“Nobody, but me, was watching her. So, I watched as her little tail took her to the surface, and the way her arm outstretched to touch it…” you trailed. Hands wrapping around the child and dragging her back down flashed in your mind, and you winced a little. Her screams were so loud, her felled dream even louder. It completely broke your heart. You cleared your throat and looked at Sunghoon. His thick brows were furrowed as he put together the rest of the story without you even having to say anything. You smiled at him, but it was strained. “The more you try to keep someone from something, the more they want it, you know?” you said finally.

You quickly shifted the subject away from the little girl. “I couldn’t get it out of my mind. So, a couple days later, I decided to try and touch the surface myself, see how dangerous it really was.” You started to paint again, turning away from Sunghoon and watching the streaks of paint that appeared with each graze of your paintbrush. “My father had always said that when he was a kid, merfolk used to go to the surface all of the time. He talked a lot about these people called pirates and how we would help them. That was, before something happened and merfolk decided to stick to the sea.”

Sunghoon’s low voice startled you out of your memories. “Pirates?” he asked, and the tone of his voice made it seem like he knew what you were talking about. “I guess that’s not all that surprising. A lot of pirates weren’t good people. Did your father ever tell you what happened with the pirates?”

You shook your head. “Not at all… It wasn’t a time he recalled fondly. And the Elders refused to even answer questions about it.” Realizing that you were drifting from the question Sunghoon initially asked you, you shifted the conversation again. “Anyway, it was nighttime and I had waited for everyone to be asleep to make my grand journey. I remember when my hand first broke through the water. It was such a surreal feeling. Even though I knew there was a whole other world beyond the surface, it was a completely different experience actually seeing it and realizing that all of the stories about the surface were real.”

Sunghoon grabbed your elbow and gently pulled you away from the siding so that you could face him. He wanted to see the excitement seep through every crevice of your face and the way your eyes lit up. He wanted to experience it with you. You looked at him through your eyelashes as heat crept up your spine and along your neck until it made your cheeks burn.

“And when I dared to surface fully…” A large smile spread across your features that you couldn't stop. “I felt like I couldn’t breathe. It was unlike anything that I had ever imagined—it was like a whole other world.” Sunghoon held your hands in his as his own smile spread and brightened. It was a bit awkward with the paintbrushes, but the two of you didn’t mind. “I had to see it for myself. I knew that if I didn’t, I would never forgive myself. So, I kept coming to the surface, just staring at all of the buildings at first. Then that turned to getting close and hearing the sounds of people, then watching their daily lives from behind rocks.”

“Have you ever watched me?” Sunghoon jokingly asked. You quickly looked away from him in embarrassment, but Sunghoon just laughed that beautiful sound again and it made you feel like the embarrassment was worth it if you were able to hear him laugh again.

You said your response through a murmur, your eyes cast down to the grass below, “I think you’re the one I watched the most.” You dared a glance at him, only to meet his eyes and be locked down by his smile.

Clearing your throat, you pulled your hands from his grasp. You instead bent down to the paint can between the two of you and dipped your paintbrush into it to resume painting the side of your building. For a moment, you could feel Sunghoon’s stare on you, his sunlit smile, until he too went back to painting and it was quiet between the two of you. It was a long moment before one of you spoke again.

“What do you say we row over to the village? Get you some proper clothes?” asked Sunghoon. “I don’t think you want to keep wearing mine.” He paused from the siding he was painting again to look over at you.

You halted the paintbrush you were holding, looking at his clothes that you wore. “What? Do they not look good on me?” you giggled.

Sunghoon’s eyes widened, almost like something clicked in his head, but a smile grew on his face. He said nothing for a moment, just stared at you with a fond smile. “Of course they look good on you,” he said.

You looked away, hiding your face, as you continued painting. “That would be nice,” you murmured, before speaking a little louder. “It would be nice to see the village.”

Not soon after that, the two of you were climbing up the dock at the village together. You stuck near Sunghoon’s side, suddenly overwhelmed by the bust life of the villagers. As you walked through the streets, you couldn’t help but notice all their stares—their dirty looks. You pressed more into Sunghoon’s side and he wrapped his arm around your waist.

“A man’s clothes!” you heard the village women mutter amongst each other. “And her hair…”

You now knew what Sunghoon meant when he said that the village would eat you alive. You didn’t look how the village women looked and the difference was drastic and obvious. None of them had pearls intricately wrapped in strands of their hair or even had their hair down. Their hair was all put up, with flowing skirts and modest blouses or fitted dresses that showed the curve of their hips that didn’t match the buttoned up untucked men’s shirt and trousers you wore. It was all so overwhelming.

By the time you reached the tailors, you were practically clutching onto Sunghoon’s side, clinging onto him like you were helpless. How did you ever expect to do this alone? When you entered, every eye was on you. A human woman—who you assumed was the owner of the shop—rushed towards you. “Oh, you poor thing! Let me fix you up!” she cooed as she pulled you away from Sunghoon’s grasp.

You looked back at him with wide, fearful eyes. “It’ll be okay,” he assured you, grabbing your hand. “I’ll be right here waiting for you.”

“This will take a while,” the woman said to him, before glancing at you. At least she didn’t look at you like the other women did. It was more with pity than disgust. Sunghoon nodded, sitting in one of the chairs with his hat clutched in his hands. You didn’t turn away from him until your view of him was physically cut off by the curtain the woman pulled in front of your face and he didn’t look away either.

Suddenly, the woman had you out of Sunghoon’s clothes and in long skirts and blouses. She had you try on various ones to gauge your size, along with pulling out what she called a “measuring tape.”

Once you had on an outfit she was satisfied with, her fingers hovered over the pearls in your hair, a look you couldn’t name in her eyes. “Pearls are very beautiful, don’t you agree?” she asked as she turned to look at your face. You nodded, still a bit uncomfortable, as you cast your gaze downwards to the floor.

“All that hardship for beauty… for a simple creation,” the woman said. “I was just like you once, little guppy.” You gaze snapped to hers in shock as her eyes stared at the pearls in your hair.

The woman continued, and you saw the sadness in her eyes. She nodded her head towards the curtain, “That man out there, he found you, didn’t he?” You opened your mouth to speak but no words came out, so you just nodded. “He’s already swimming down deep for you,” she said. “It gets easier, dear. When it’s all over, you come and find me, you hear?”

She worked on your outfit, pinning fabric in places here and smoothing fabric down there. It was a tentative process and your legs started to ache from standing for so long. You took the chance to inspect the tailor for her mermaid attributes. It was very, very faint, but you could still see the coolness in her skin. When she smoothed down the fabric of the skirt you wore, you saw her slightly webbed hands and looked down at your own. She was much older than you, and you could tell that she had settled nicely into the life she had created for herself here.

There was a long silence that stretched between the two of you, one that wasn’t uncomfortable, when the woman finally spoke again. There was an air of distaste in her words. “When I was a much younger woman, I made the same deal that you did—one that certainly came with its hardships. My pearly scales were taken from me and I was sent here in a storm like you and so many others who wash up along the shores of this village. The sea witch had only given me a day and a knife. I had no one but myself to rely on as I was outcasted from the sea, and I don’t want that for other young mermaids.”

The tailor didn’t look at you as she worked. Her eyes remained downcast. Something in her voice began to break, but she quickly covered it by clearing her throat. “It’s a horrible thing, but it is necessary if you want a life out of the sea. If you wish for advice, I will not hesitate to give it and help aid you along your own journey.”

She said nothing else—nothing else about the fact that you both crawled from the deep in hopes of a new life. Nothing about how she must’ve had to sacrifice the one she loved most in order to be standing in front of you right now. Nothing about if it was worth it or not—and you so desperately needed to know.

Instead, she carefully untangled the pearls from your windswept hair and worked them into the up-do she styled your hair in. As she worked around you, you noticed the single pearl in her own hair, and your heart broke in two. It was carefully weaved into a braid along with what you were assuming was one of her scales from so long ago. Too late did you remember the infamous story you’ve heard countless times now of the naive mermaid with the pearlescent tail.

Once she was done and the curtain was opened, you all but ran back to where Sunghoon still sat, just like he said he would. As you approached, he stood to his feet as he looked over you. His eyes were wide and his mouth hung open. The woman giggled, winking at you and handing you your bags, before leaving the two of you alone.

“Better?” you asked him, glancing down at the new clothes you wore.

“You were already beautiful,” Sunghoon replied, a bit breathlessly and flustered. You smiled and felt your face start to heat up rapidly. His ears were a flaming red that made you giggle a little. Sunghoon cleared his throat, blinking., “B-But, it’s a good hu—good look on you. Do you like it?”

You thought it over for a moment, ‘There’s aspects of it that I like, some that I don’t.” You like how intricate it all looked. A lot of it reminded you of the seabed. With all of the colors, it looked like you wore a coral reef with the most beautiful and shimmering fish in it. You weren’t sure about how fitted it all felt, but you were sure you would get used to it. It bummed you that your hair was put up, but at least you kept your pearls.

“Well, you can wear it all however you like when we’re back on the island, sweetheart,” said Sunghoon, stepping towards you. He took your hands in his and smiled at you.

When the two of you walked back through the village, you still felt eyes on you—more snickers and muttering. On the row home you were quiet, which Sunghoon noticed. Your eyes had stayed on the water, your fingers reaching down to touch the surface but stopping before you could make contact. At the house, he saw how the sadness twisted your features.

He guided you towards the couch, his brows drawn together in worry. “I’m sorry,” he said softly, his voice low. Sunghoon watched helplessly as the tears welled up in your eyes as you looked at him before sliding down your cheeks. You touched your fingers to the wetness, confused.

“What is this?” you asked him.

“Tears,” Sunghoon replied. “They happen when you feel an emotion deeply—like sadness.” More tears fell down your cheeks and you buried your face in his chest. Sunghoon wrapped his arms around you and held you tightly.

After a few moments, you peeked your head out and looked at him with big, teary eyes. Your eyes darted down to Sunghoon’s lips before looking back up at him, your brows furrowing as you battled your inner turmoil. Slowly, you leaned up and softly pressed your lips to his.

Sunghoon’s own eyebrows raised in slight shock. You pulled away the slightest bit, your lips still hovering near his like you were frozen. For a second, Sunghoon was too. He then chased your lips with his, kissing you again.

Your lips worked in perfect harmony together as you kissed each other. Like the past week has been building to this moment and it’s finally here and it’s perfect. His lips felt perfect on yours and yours on his. It was as if they were made for each other and you never wanted to spend another moment not kissing Sunghoon.

His hand cupped your face and you sat up more, nearly in his lap, as the kiss deepened. You kissed each other like you were desperate. Like the waves were crashing around you—and they were. The time you had left flashed in your mind and you ran your hands through his hair to distract yourself from the thoughts and instead focus on him—only Sunghoon.

Sunghoon’s hat fell to the side somewhere on the couch and his other hand slid down to rest on your waist. You kissed each other like you didn’t need air, or water, or anything. Just each other. But you did, and you pulled away as heavy breathing overtook the both of you. Not far, but enough so that your lips had the slightest distance from his. Your thoughts came back full force, the sand in your hourglass falling and falling and in the distance you could hear the sea witch’s cackling.

You shook your head a little, eyes still closed. “W-We can’t… This is too dangerous,” you trailed off in a soft and low voice, your eyes fluttering open and meeting his.

“I don’t understand…” Sunghoon whispered. “What is so dangerous about it?” The pads of his thumbs wiped away freshly fallen tears. You shook your head again, pulling away from him fully and sitting properly back on the couch. Sunghoon sat up straighter and placed his dropped hat in his lap.

You wrapped your arms around yourself. You looked out the window towards the calm sea and felt yourself break. It was already too late. You’ve reached the point of no return, and if you continued down the path you were going with Sunghoon, there would be no going back.

“This won’t end well,” you told him, “and we’ll both end up getting hurt—or worse.”

You felt his fingers gently turn your face towards his. His face was inches from yours and he pulled you closed to him as you sniffled, wrapping his arms around you in comfort once again.

“And what if I like the pain—the danger?” Sunghoon asked you quietly. “What if I want to get hurt by you?”

You shook your head once again and turned your head away from him. “You don’t,” you replied. He didn’t know what he was asking, and you knew that someday soon you would have to tell him. Oh, how you wished that time would just freeze here in this moment and let you stay in it a bit longer with him. But, that wasn’t possible.

Sunghoon turned you towards him again, nodding. “I do,” he said.

His lips met yours again and you could feel the harsh winds whip around the two of you. The tides bent and broke and turned. You were both caught in a riptide and there was no escaping. Your fates were already put in motion and sealed with the kiss you shared.

You were a fool to think you could stop it. You kissed Sunghoon back with so much passion and wanting that you were sure it would knock the two of you right over. Instead, he kept you stable, kept both of your heads above the water as you got pushed by the tall waves hand in hand. Sunghoon kissed you back just as feverishly.

From the second you saw him through the fog you knew that your souls would be intertwined. You knew that you would fall in love with him. There was no stopping it, and you couldn’t no matter how hard you tried.

But then you thought of his bloody, beating heart in your cold hands. His lifeless eyes staring up at you. You had to fight against your ripping love for him, there was no other option. You didn’t want the sea witch to have his pure heart. She didn’t deserve it. And you felt like you didn’t deserve it either.

But the anchor has already been dropped into the water, and by the time you hurriedly pull it back up it would already be too late.

So you kept kissing him. You let everything you felt for him speak for itself through your moving lips on his and hoped that it was enough. You hoped that Sunghoon understood it all—hoped that once he found out the truth that he would forgive you for keeping it from him. You hoped that his feelings for you would change.

The woman’s words from earlier seeped between your thoughts. “He’s already swimming down deep for you.” You didn’t think it could get easier like she has said. At the end of the time you had, when it was either you or Sunghoon, you were choosing him. You just hoped that, in time, it would get easier for him.

Since you and Sunghoon shared a kiss that shifted everything between the two of you, a little over a week had passed. You tried hard to fight against your rapidly growing love for him, but it seemed like Sunghoon fought against you every step of the way. Whether it was fleeting but charged touches, longing looks, or the words he spoke, Sunghoon was determined to let the feelings between the two of you grow. He's even gotten more bolder with his displays of affection.

Slowly, throughout the time since your kiss, you let yourself feel all of the deep and confusing and complex emotions for him. Let yourself pretend that you weren't a doomed mermaid, but a regular human girl who was falling in love. There were moments where you completely forgot that you were on a timer—and those moments were filled with complete bliss before your mind snapped back into place and you were ripped from your illusion. Still, you didn’t let that change anything, even if you knew that it should.

So, you shivered at his fleeting touch, wishing for more. You hid your heated face as the two of you exchanged longing glances. You melted at his sweet and honest words, as if it was a secret only the two of you shared. And for the first time in your life, you had everything you’ve ever wanted.

“You feeling better today, my pearl?” Sunghoon asked you gently.

A couple days ago you lightly burned your hand while lighting the oil lamp. It was a mere sting, really, but Sunghoon has been fawning over you ever since. When he first called you “my pearl,” a few days after your kiss, it came as a shock.

“My pearl?” you asked him, slight shock fueling your voice. It was later in the day after the two of you finished the majority of what you had to do around the lighthouse. You and Sunghoon sat across from each other at the table with a discarded shared meal pushed to the side in the center of you both. His hand was intertwined with yours, his thumb caressing the back of it.

“Like the ones in your hair,” he said, using his free hand to motion to them. His smile—one that seemed permanent these days—grew even more and it lit up his whole face. “Unless you want to be called something different…” Sunghoon leaned across the small table towards you, tilting his head. His lips were inches from yours. In a loving voice, he added, “Like sweetheart, or darling, or baby…”

A permanent smile seemed planted on your lips too. Your face felt like it was on fire. “I’ll like whatever you want to call me. The only thing that matters is that it comes from your lips.”

Sunghoon chuckled and his head fell in the other direction before placing a sweet kiss on your lips. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I told you, I’m okay,” you started as Sunghoon looked over your wrapped hand. He glanced up at you with his brows raised before softly kissing the spot on your hand that you hurt. “There's no need to worry.” Sunghoon then brought your hand to his chest. You felt the dull thump of his heartbeat and your assuring smile faltered slightly. You pulled your hand away. “We should finish cleaning the lighthouse,” you said, looking down to your feet. You glanced back up and Sunghoon nodded. You saw the worry start to settle on his face but you moved before he could say anything else.

Later that night, a storm had rolled in. It wasn’t as bad as the one that brought you here, but it still scared you nonetheless. It had woken you up and the thunder shook you to your core. It made you remember that just because you were pretending everything was okay and normal didn’t mean that they were. Your time was ticking down and you had to tell Sunghoon the truth at some point, and it had to be soon.

You shakily slid out your bed, clutching tightly to your frilly, high-collared white nightgown, and made cautious steps towards your door. With each strike of lightning, your bedroom illuminated and you saw your shadow dance across the floor. Sometimes, it didn’t look like you had legs at all, but a tail still. The more steps you took, the more some of them felt wrong. Like you were stepping on hot coals or urchins.

Shaking your head as you slowly opened your door, you tried to calm yourself down. It was all in your head, that’s all. Everything was okay.

You made your way down the short hall towards Sunghoon's room. Carefully, you opened his door, the creaking getting drowned out by the rolling thunder. Sunghoon was already awake, staring out his window from his bed at the storm, his features drawn in complete focus. His eyes snapped to you and his slowly opening door before softening.

You felt silly, like a child coming to a parent after a bad dream. He must’ve seen how scared you were, because he motioned you over to him. You closed his door before walking over to his bed. You climbed up onto it and sat next to him, the two of you peering out his window.

The storm was even less bad than you initially thought it was. It was mainly just a little rain and a lot of thunder. The sea waves weren’t even as large and imposing as they seemed from your own window. Instead, they were relatively calm. Sunghoon had his journal out, writing down and calculating the storm into it, before he set it aside on his nightstand with his fountain pen.

“The storm should be over soon,” Sunghoon said, looking over to you, “The waves of thunder are getting further and further apart.” His spectacles caught the moonlight briefly before he took them off and sat them on his nightstand next to his journal. “Here, you should get some sleep.”

Sunghoon shifted in the bed and pulled his covers over you, urging you to lay down. Once you did, the two of you laid in silence and in the darkness side by side—besides the flash of lightning here and there that briefly illuminated your bodies. You looked over at him in the dark, watching his silhouette. “Sunghoon, I—”

Your mouth clamped shut. How do you even bring something like ‘cutting someone’s heart out’ up? How do you do it without confirming to yourself and revealing to him that you love him deeply? How would he react to it all? You didn’t want your relationship to change, but this road had to be crossed. You had let him know that your time was limited together—that you only had roughly another two weeks before you’d be seafoam.

How there is no salvation waiting for you at the end of all of this.

You decided that it had to wait another day. One where it wasn’t storming and you could see each other’s faces. Sunghoon deserved that.

“Thank you…” you trailed instead, swallowing the lump in your throat. “For all that you’ve done for me thus far. I can't tell you how much it all means to me.” You felt him shift and though you didn’t physically see his face, you felt the weight of his eyes on you.

In a quiet voice, you added, “How much you mean to me.”

The warmth of his body next to yours was suddenly too much for you. How different everything felt was, once again, overwhelming. It took everything in you not to cry.

“You mean a lot to me, too,” Sunghoon said in the same quiet voice as you. “More than you know.”

His arms reached out towards you and his touch felt like sparks along your body. They wrapped around your body and pulled you closer to him, until your head was resting on his chest and you could hear his quickening heartbeat as his chest rose and fell. It made you want to cry even more. The sea witch was so cruel. How dare she ask this horrid thing of you? You’d rather die than hurt Sunghoon—and at the end of this, you would.

“I'm glad that you came in. I actually can’t sleep that well during storms,” Sunghoon said. You looked up at him and you could almost make out his face. “And your presence is always a welcome one. Makes me feel calmer.”

You smiled to yourself, your face heating. “I think I can help with that…” you trailed. Sunghoon looked down and hummed in question. You continued, “There’s a lullaby my mother used to sing to me as a child when I couldn’t sleep. Maybe it’ll help you too.” You began to hum the start of it softly.

Like magic, Sunghoon felt his body begin to get heavy and his eyes struggled to stay open. He yawned and you stopped humming briefly to giggle before continuing. He pulled you even closer, to the point where you were practically almost on top of him. Sunghoon just couldn’t get over the way you smelled like the sea waves. It reminded him so much of everything he loves.

In no time at all he was drifting into a peaceful sleep. Sunghoon felt like the calm ripples of waves were all around him and next to him was you—the beautiful maiden who had come from the waves, capturing his heart and singing your beautiful lullabies.

Sunghoon was past smitten, was past falling, he was in deep. Deeper than he’s ever been before and the more time he spent with you, the farther down he went willingly. Sunghoon was in love with you, he just needed some way to put his emotions into words and tell you. He needed to find the perfect moment. There was doubt in his mind about you not feeling the same.

The weather had grown colder than usual, especially during the night. When you and Sunghoon weren’t working around the lighthouse, you were both in the house by the fire, talking about nothing and everything. You had just come back inside from relighting the oil lamp at the top of the lighthouse to find Sunghoon waiting for you in the living room. “It’s really cold out there!” you exclaimed with a laugh as you walked towards where he sat at the armchair.

Sunghoon has just come from lighting the fireplace in his bedroom, where you’ve been sleeping ever since that night a week ago when you came in during a storm. Sunghoon extended his hand towards you and you intertwined your fingers with his. He quickly pulled you to him and you fell into his lap with a squeal while he laughed. “Let me warm you up then, my love,” Sunghoon chuckled, pressing warm kisses to your cold cheeks.

The fire in the downstairs hearth was already merely warm embers and it was nearly time for bed. Sunghoon pressed a lasting kiss to your lips, both of your mouths moving in sync before you had to break away for air. You stared into his warm brown eyes with wide eyes, lips just a breath away from each other. Sunghoon’s hand was cupping your cheek and for a moment, it was just the two of you in the whole world. You’d do anything to stay in this moment forever.

You inhaled sharply before kissing him again, and you knew that this time you were about to cross a threshold that you’d never be able to walk across again. It was full of that same passion and want from the first kiss the two of you shared. In the midst of it, you twisted in his lap, hiking up your nightgown and straddling him as your lips worked against each other’s.

Sunghoon’s hands immediately trailed up your thighs and sat along your hips. His breath caught in his throat for a moment and he rested his forehead against yours as he tried to garner it, all the while his eyes hungrily took in every inch of you that he could. Sunghoon shifted a little, his chest rising and falling with vigor. His shaking fingers closed around the fabric at your hips and his eyes fluttered shut before he closed the distance between the two of you again.

It felt like the jar you kept all your love for him began to crack until it finally exploded, letting all the love you held flow freely. It was too much to contain—too powerful to control. There was no stopping it and it only grew more and more. You didn’t think that you wanted to stop it—in fact, you wanted it to flow more. It felt as if there was fire in the pit of your belly, making your skin hot and your head clouded. It was so dizzying, but so exciting at the same time. The river of your love flooded everything until it was only you and Sunghoon that was afloat.

You pulled away from Sunghoon’s lips just enough to speak. “Take me,” you whispered lowly. You saw the way his eyes widened and his grasp on your nightgown moved to his fingers softly digging into the skin at your hips. You didn’t care if he took you right there in the chair you both were sitting in, you needed him with a desire that couldn’t be quelled—a need that you don’t think will ever be fulfilled no matter how much of himself he gave you. It tangled together with all of your other inner desires until he was the core of them all, and you didn’t mind it one bit.

“Please,” you begged Sunghoon before placing your lips back on his with a hot kiss.

Sunghoon moved with urgency, but you could tell that he was conflicted on whether to give you your ask or not. At first, it was with his lips—they moved against yours almost sloppily, like he couldn’t bring himself to even kiss you properly if that meant his lips leaving yours for even a second. It wasn’t until you began to push him further against the soft velvet of the chair and leant his head back that he sat the two of you up so you were no longer leaning back against it at all. It seemed like it took everything in him to rip his lips away from yours, and you felt the coldness on your own when they were gone like a plunge into freezing-cold water. He stood the two of you up and you intertwined your hand with his and led him up the stairs.

When the two of you made it to his room, you let go of his hand as he stoked the fire. You pulled off your white nightgown and let it fall to the floor below. You then crawled onto his bed as you waited, completely naked. The warmth of the flames made your already hot skin feel like it was scorching. The longer you waited for Sunghoon to get the fire going, the more your heart raced and raced and you had to try and calm yourself down.

Sunghoon froze when he saw you on his bed, his eyes wide and his mouth slightly agape. You looked like an angel descended from the heavens just for him and he wondered to himself how he got to be so lucky to witness your beauty like this. He watched as the flickering light bathed you in warm hues and made your hair glitter with all of the pearls strung in it. You smiled at him shyly, your gaze casting down for a moment before looking back up at him. You looked so beautiful that it truly took Sunghoon’s breath away; and it took him a couple shaky inhales to realize he was just standing in the middle of the room and gaping at you.

He wasted no time, stripping off his own clothes before climbing onto his bed and on top of you, his lips latching with yours in a heated kiss. You had barely gotten to look over him yourself before he raised against you a need of a thousand suns, rivaling your own. It made you melt that Sunghoon needed you as much as you needed him.

You moaned against his lips as the tips of his fingers slowly slid down in between the two of you and down to where you needed to feel him the most. It shot tingles along your skin and made the fire in the pit of your belly burn brighter. With his thumb, he rubbed slow circles at the sensitive bud and made your back arch off of the bedsheets. Your breath hitched and you whimpered into his mouth, wrapping your arms around his neck to pull him closer to you.

The feeling he provided you was unlike any that you have ever felt before. With just his thumb, Sunghoon gave you a glimpse of Heaven and it made you nervous for when he eventually gave you more. The thought made you slick with arousal and needy for even more. Your hips rose towards his hand on their own and you broke your mouth away from his just so you could try and get any oxygen to your lungs that you could. It was no use—every slow and deliberate motion pushed waves throughout your body and flooded it with a deep craving. You could feel Sunghoon’s smile against the skin at the crook of your neck as his hand continued to work, your body shivering as he pressed gentle kisses against it.

You kissed him again to keep yourself from drowning. Did it always feel like this? You were sure that it didn’t, that only Sunghoon could make you feel like this—bring you to your knees with just a simple motion like it was absolutely nothing. It astonished you and upset you in the same breath how easily Sunghoon pulled emotions from you. You didn’t stand a chance against him, and he was only getting started.

Sunghoon’s thumb then traveled down farther, spreading your arousal between your folds and having you whining. The sound of wetness broke through the crackling of the flame. His warm hands sent electricity through your body and you didn’t know how much more you’d be able to take if he didn’t do something about it. By now, you knew he was teasing you and seeing how far he could bring you with just his hand alone while his other hand grazed along every inch of your skin it could reach. It sneakily rose up your stomach and to your breast while you were distracted by his thumb ghosting across your entrance. Sunghoon’s other thumb then ran along your perked nipple and you nearly jumped. He smiled against your lips cheekily and you knew that it would be up to you to put an end to this torment. You were having no more of it.

You pulled away from his lips, your chest rising and falling heavily as your brows knitted together. “I need you,” you begged in a low voice, it sounded raspy with want and that alone sent Sunghoon ablaze.

Sunghoon then slipped a finger inside of you and you gasped and held onto him tighter. He watched as your face twisted into one of pleasure as he slowly began to pump it in and out of you, savoring the way your body reacted to him and his touch. It smothered every word from your mouth until you were a heap of whimpers and soft moans. When Sunghoon slipped in another finger, curling them at just the right angle to have you melt underneath him, you swear you felt the wave take you under. He held down your hips with his hand that was once at your breast so you couldn’t grind against his hand.

“Does that feel good, darling?” Sunghoon asked you. He knew that it did, the way your moans increased in volume and you sucked his fingers in deeper was confirmation enough. But, he needed to hear you say it. He needed to hear the way your voice sounded at the height of your most vulnerable and pleasurable moment and know that it sounded that way all because of him.

You clawed at his exposed back, supple for the taking, and Sunghoon chuckled. Your voice came out hushed in arousal and breathy. “It feels unlike anything I’ve ever felt before… I need more of it. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

You’ve never felt pleasure like this before and it made you angry that you waited so long with Sunghoon. The way he repeatedly pushed his slender fingers inside you, coating them with your wetness and pressing them against just the right places, made every withering scale and the debilitating pain worth it. As long as you got to be with him, everything was worth it.

Sunghoon pressed open mouthed kisses down your neck and to your breasts, the tips of his dark hair tickling you and sending you into more of a frenzy. His tongue circled your nipple before he pulled away. You were writhing beneath him and soft moans fell more from your lips at the way his fingers moved. They only got louder when Sunghoon would curl them at just the right moment and press them up against your sweet spot.

He watched with a satisfied smile as you tried to press your legs together, a whimpering mess and your body trembling. Sunghoon pushed one of your legs away with his free hand, his fingers splaying across the back of your thigh and keeping it up towards your chest. Soon, he felt your walls clench around his fingers tighter than they did previously before you were covering them in a pretty pearly white. But, Sunghoon wasn’t finished with you just yet. He was determined to make this the best night of your life.

Helping you ride out your high, he brought his lips back down to yours as he slowly pumped his fingers inside you. Your chest rose and fell as you tried to fill your lungs up with oxygen, but you still turned the slow kiss into a deeper one.

Sunghoon trailed his kiss from your lips to along your jaw and down the curve of your neck. His kisses didn’t stop there like you expected them to, though. They circled your breasts and he moved leisurely down the soft skin of your stomach and further still. You held your breath, and Sunghoon’s fervent gaze flicked up to yours. His eyes were blown out and shadowed with desire, and the warm light blanketing him from the fire in the hearth made it even more apparent. Sunghoon pulled his fingers from out of you, much to your dismay, and pushed your other leg up to chest as well. Your release still coating his fingers shined in the firelight and spilling out of you.

You jolted when Sunghoon kissed down to your sensitive clit, despite his touch being as soft and gentle as a feather. He didn’t look away from you, and you rose onto your elbows so you could watch him better. Your brows knitted together and your face twisted with pleasure as he pressed feather-light kisses against your core. Sunghoon's lips were glossy from your release, but that didn’t stop him. He licked them clean, his eyes fluttering shut for a brief moment as he inhaled deeply, before his tongue darted out taste more. You gasped and grasped at his bedsheets.

He licked a thick, wet stripe up your core and licked his lips again before diving into you like a man who was starved most of his life. Sunghoon's eyes left yours and closed completely. He didn’t spare a single inch of your glistening folds, and if it hadn’t been for his firm hands keeping your thighs at your chest you would’ve crushed his head with them because of it. Sunghoon hummed in satisfaction and your elbows gave out weakly. He chuckled, his gaze flicking up to you for a moment, and your back arched completely off of the bed. “Oh my,” you moaned, words dying immediately when Sunghoon started to suck on your sensitive bud. You felt like you had to scream and your fingernails digging into the sheets wasn’t enough.

“I can’t…” you trailed through a broken whine, your back arching more in a futile attempt to bring Sunghoon's mouth even closer. Shallow moans pushed through your lips as he continued to devour you. There was one thing that you knew for sure as your body reached a high sensitivity that you thought was impossible—Sunghoon was absolute heaven, but his mouth and his fingers were complete hell.

Right before you were about to unravel again completely, Sunghoon suddenly stopped. You didn’t realize your eyes were squeezed shut until they flew open and looked down at him confused. “Wha-What?” you breathed.

Sunghoon kissed up your body—this time with longer distances between them—and left wet kiss marks behind him against your skin. He captured your lips with his and you tasted your sweetness on his tongue. You pulled him so close to you that your lips could barely move against his—and it still wasn’t close enough. His cock dragged across right where you needed him and you moaned into his mouth. Your arms unwrapped themselves from around his neck and dragged down his chest to the soft ridges at his abdomen that tightened with your touch. Sunghoon's breath caught in his throat and you watched the way his brows furrowed in barely concealed need before he tried to collect himself.

“Are you ready, baby?” Sunghoon asked you in a soft voice, breaking away from your lips. You nodded eagerly. You were more than ready.

You leaned forward more and reached your hand out to touch him, more curious really than anything. Your fingers trailed along his fat cockhead and down his length before you wrapped them around it completely. Sunghoon swayed, and you could tell that your simple touch alone was enough to send him reeling. This time, it was you who took satisfaction in the other’s pleasure and the corners of your mouth rose. Slowly, you pulled your hand up while gripping firmly. Sunghoon's fingers dug into the plush skin of your thighs and he breathed rigorously when you pushed your hand back down. When you did, you noticed that you dragged wetness back down his cock with you. It made your smile grow more.

Sunghoon crept a hand up your stomach and gently pushed you back down to the bed. you held onto him for as long as you could and when your hand closed around his tip, Sunghoon let out a low moan. Ever so slightly, you felt the way his hand trembled. Without him saying a single word, you could hear his voice at your ear. “Tonight is about you, not me.”

Sunghoon lined himself up with your entrance and dragged the tip of his cock through your folds and coated his tip with your arousal. Slowly, agonizingly, he slid into you inch by inch. You gasped loudly at the feeling of his cock stretching you out so deliciously and the feeling of being so full, so completely enraptured by him. Once he was fully inside of you, he leaned down to press a soft kiss to your lips. As your lips moved in sync with his, you wrapped your legs around his hips to bring him closer to you.

Sunghoon started to rut his hips forward, repeatedly pushing himself inside of you. He couldn’t stop himself from moaning at how good you felt around him, at how beautiful you looked underneath him with your pretty moans and your face full of blissful pleasure. It started to upset him a little that the fire would eventually go out and the two of you would have to stop and return to your daily life.

The two of you tried to pull each other impossibly closer. It was an eager war between you both that would have no winner no matter how hard the two of you tried—you wanted each other too much. You were sure that the only way you’d both find any semblance of satisfaction is if you both were to claw at each other’s skin and climb inside of it. You were both desperate for each other’s touch and no matter how close you were, it was never close enough.

You pulled away from Sunghoon’s lips after fighting the urge to breathe for too long, still not used to the feeling of having to battle for air, and buried your face in his neck. He pressed chaste kisses to your shoulder as your bodies moved in motion. It was like two waves colliding over and over again.

Your body felt hot and its temperature only grew and grew. Each time you touched Sunghoon, it felt like you were touching the surface of the sun. A loud drumming rang in your ears, just below the sound of you and Sunghoon’s moans, and it took you a moment to realize that it was a heartbeat. Only, you weren’t sure if it was yours or not. When you touched Sunghoon, you swear you could feel the thumping of his heart beneath his skin and how it rang in time with yours. Perhaps, both of your hearts had fallen in sync with each other—at least, just for the moment where the two of you shared everything. From your body to his, the two of you were finally one.

Sunghoon's thrusts picked up pace and it made your head spin. the pressure from the previous build-up crashed into you and full force and you felt your body lock up. Your chest pressed into Sunghoon’s as your back arched more off of the bed and your head dug into the pillow underneath your head. Sunghoon didn’t stop, his hips continued to hit off of yours and it added the sound of skin slapping against each other to the stunning symphony the two of you were creating. Jaw falling slack, waves of pretty moans swam up from your throat and filled Sunghoon’s ears.

He fell completely entranced, somehow even more than he already was by you. It was like you lit the lamp inside of his head and the sudden flood of light that illuminated everything was you. You were everything.

Sunghoon felt his abdomen tense and he knew he had to reel himself back, but he couldn’t. It felt like an unearthly task with you under him like this. How could he deny himself of this—deny you of this? It would be almost inhumane, he thinks. Your body pulled him in like he was caught in a deadly current and your legs tightened around his hips like the trap he willingly walked in to set it off and it was perfect. You are perfect. Sunghoon could barely move now, but that didn’t matter to either of you with the way you wrapped around each other.

Inside of you, you felt the rope of pleasure start to fray and begin to snap. You whimpered, breathing heavily as you looked up at Sunghoon and the thin sheen of sweat that made him glow even more. “Please,” you begged him, whining as your back arched off the bed again and your hips pathetically tried to lift towards his. “Please.”

Your head felt too clouded and it took all your effort to even say that simple word. You were so close, so-so close to seeing heaven again—this time the full thing in its divine glory. Your body never felt like this before, tingly all over and on fire. It was such a stark contrast to how it felt when you were a mermaid. Did humans always feel like this, or was this purely from Sunghoon’s actions? Your eyes opened and when you only saw Sunghoon, his face of pure bliss and his body shining and bathed in warm hues, you knew that this was the divinity you were seeking.

You weakly sat up, wrapping your arms around Sunghoon’s neck for leverage. The two of you breathed heavily in tandem, and you didn’t need to speak for Sunghoon to know what you intended to do. He leaned back on his knees and splayed his hands across your hips. A desperate need overtook your senses as you rocked your hips against his in time with the way he pushed into you and the both of you moaned at the new sudden feeling. Sunghoon leaned his forehead against yours and delighted you in the feeling of him unraveling and trying desperately to stay sane. He was losing.

“You feel so good,” Sunghoon murmured, his lips ghosting over yours. “So perfect.”

He sloppily smashed his lips against yours, too eager to kiss you properly with how good you were making each other feel. It felt like your bodies were made for each other—like the two of you were made for each other.

Soon, the rope completely snapped and you moaned loudly against his lips, body shaking as your movement halted. More whines and moans fell from your parted lips as Sunghoon kept moving your hips. You held him tightly, scared that if you were to let go you would fall apart completely or that he would get caught up in the wind from the ocean and wear away.

It wasn’t long after that you felt warmness spill inside you. Sunghoon stilled, his head falling into the crook of your neck and his breathing coming out haggard. Soft moans emitted from him and for a moment the two of you caught your breaths in blissful silence.

Once you felt like you weren’t in the clouds, a shy giggle escaped you. Sunghoon looked up from your neck, an amused smile on his face. “What?” he asked, bringing his hand up to cradle your cheek. You shook your head as you giggled more, kissing him briefly. You intertwined your hand with his other.

“That was heavenly,” you smiled, your face completely hot. Sunghoon’s thumb caressed the warm skin of your cheek before his hand trailed down to catch hold of your chin. He kissed you again with a grin. “Is it always like that?” you wondered.

Sunghoon laughed, shaking his head a little. “Not in my experience—no. Nothing close to that,” he replied. “You’re just special.”

A sheepish smile tugged at your face and you looked away from his gaze. Sunghoon pressed a kiss to your jaw and you giggled more as he pressed another to you until you turned to look at him again. “Come on,” he murmured against your skin, “Lets get you cleaned up, darling.”

After the two of you were cleaned up, you laid together on his bed beneath the covers still bare, the dwindling firelight illuminating the two of you. Your back was to Sunghoon's chest and he trailed the tips of his fingers along your shoulder and arm, sometimes softly kissing them.

You turned to face him and he fondly smiled down at you, causing his expression to mirror on your own face. He leaned down to kiss you. “My pearl,” Sunghoon whispered affectionately before kissing you again.

The next day, the air around you and Sunghoon was charged. No longer were the touches fleeting nor the two of you shared longing glances. Everything was practically out in the open now, one of you just had to bridge the gap completely.

A deep rooted sensation bubbled inside you and you could only describe it as fear. You had to tell Sunghoon about the sea witch’s deal, and you had to do it today. You were running out of time—with only a week left—and it couldn’t be put off any longer. You couldn’t live in this fantasy you’ve put yourself in any longer.

It made the fear in the pit of your stomach worse when you noticed how Sunghoon looked at you—how he always looked at you. It was full of love and hope and yearning. You could almost see the words forming at the tip of his tongue without him needing to say anything. You noticed how he would take any chance he could to touch you or be in your general vicinity, even if he was supposed to be working on something else around the lighthouse. It was something that he has always done, but now it’s different.

It made you feel guilty that you waited until the last moment to say anything.

Sunghoon couldn’t keep his eyes off of you for the whole day. He kept falling behind in his duties because he was too busy focusing on you. Too focused on the way your dress swayed as you moved, or the way the pearls in your hair glittered in the sunlight, completely free from the up-do that the women of the village wore. Or the way you smiled at him every time you caught him staring—that smile that he would do anything and everything for. Each time your skin brushed against his he was brought back to last night and the heat between the two of you. It made his head spin each time, but he couldn’t stop getting close to you.

The fire lighting the lighthouse was nothing compared to the fire that burned in his heart for you, so blinding that it was the only thing he could make out. You set him alight, made his skin hot and his cheeks rosy. Sunghoon felt like he didn’t even need his thicker, wool clothes with you around him. You made his heart race and race until he was sure it would go jumping out of his chest and into your gentle awaiting hands.

How could he not love you? From the moment he saw you it felt like something clicked into place within himself. Like you were the final piece he’s been waiting for and he was now complete. You completed him.

If you were the lighthouse, Sunghoon was the boats and ships drawn to your light with the excitement of land. For the rest of his days, his soul would desperately call out to yours until you came home to him. He was the moth and you were the flame—and he would gladly get burned by your heat if that meant he could be with you, however brief.

You were the springtime with the promise of pretty, blooming flowers. The sunlight bouncing off the ripples of the sea and the cool air that flowed up from it. You were the shadows that the leaves cast on the ground, the sun that peaked through them, and the calming sound of the remnants of waves hitting the rocks. Sunghoon could shout from the top of the lighthouse everything he adored about you, but by the time he would be anywhere even remotely close to finishing you both would be old and grey, skin wrinkled from all the times you made him laugh and smile.

Today was the day, he had to tell you how he felt. He couldn't keep it locked inside him any longer.

After the two of you finished everything for the day, Sunghoon pulled you inside and away from the chilling winds. He had to calm his heart from its rapid drumming when you giggled and smiled at him, asking what the two of you were doing. When you intertwined your hand with his, he almost spilled his words then and there. Sunghoon sat you on the couch and nervously twiddled his thumbs as he forced the words from his mouth, and once he started he found it even harder to stop.

“I love you,” Sunghoon finally breathed. “I love you so much that it’s too much to contain. It spills out of me like uncontrollable rivers. I could tell you over and over and it still wouldn’t be enough—I love you, I love you, I love you!”

He grasped your hands in his, desperately holding onto them as he stared into your eyes with furrowed brows. Nothing would be able to capture Sunghoon's love for you and it frustrated him to no end, yet, it didn’t stop him from trying. “I love you like the water loves the land. Like the sun loves the moon and all of the stars in the sky,” he finally concluded.

You stared at him with a melancholic look and for a moment Sunghoon thought that he might’ve been mistaken. That he read into you a little too much. But, all his worries were eased when you flung yourself into his arms and into his lap, making him fall back against the couch from the edge. You kissed him so passionately that it took his breath away again, but he was content with the burning in his lungs.

“I love you,” you told him, like you had discovered the secrets to the world and it all lied within him. “You paint all of my skies the most saturated colors of blue like I've never seen before. You’re the air in my lungs and the beating of my heart—oh, I love you so much!”

All Sunghoon could do was laugh joyously as he held you close to him, planting a million and one kisses onto your face as you, too, laughed. He didn't think he’d ever be this happy in his life, and it was all because of you. No longer were his days lonely and grey; they were filled with the most magnificent colors and your presence. He heard your voice in the wind and it swam all the way down to his heart. You were why he woke up in the morning, and the reason why he was so eager to go to sleep. You are everything.

You didn’t realize the tears that began to fall down your face, or how the overwhelming fear in your stomach came to the surface until you got a good look at Sunghoon’s happy face. You inhaled sharply before it was all too much and you broke down completely. At first, Sunghoon thought they were happy tears until he saw the way you violently shook and his smile faltered.

He pulled you to his chest as his hand rubbed comforting circles against your back. “You're crying, my pearl? Why are you sad?” he asked you gently, pulling you away from him so he could see your face.

You shook your head, sniffling and wiping the tears from your cheeks. “I'm happy! I'm so happy for the first time in my life and it’s because of you,” you started. “Only, I'm still that naive girl I was when I first washed up on your shore, because this can’t last…”

Sunghoon's brows drew together further. “What do you mean, my love?”

And so you told him everything. Right from the beginning. About how when you were a mermaid you dreamed of having legs like the landwalkers did, dreamed of walking on land and leading a human life. You told him how you would watch the villagers and then how the lighthouse caught your attention and you saw him from the water for the very first time and knew that he would always have your heart. You told him of the childhood story your father used to tell you of the mermaid who wished for legs and the sea witch who granted it. It was easier to tell him things that he already knew, and you knew you were just procrastinating the truth. But, you really didn’t want to watch the happiness strip off of him when you did.

Finally, you told him about how you sought out said sea witch and found her, making a wish for legs of your very own. About the precedent of the deal and how it required you to cut out the beating heart of the human who you loved the most—him. Then, you told him how you could never go through with it, how you’d rather throw yourself to the sea and become seafoam before ever thinking of hurting him. You should’ve left that very first day for the village when you had the chance. You both never should’ve fallen in love with each other, now you both are in danger.

Sunghoon sat quietly with a slight look of horror as you spoke, intently listening to every word that fell from your mouth. “Don't you see why I told you it was dangerous for us to get closer? Why it’s not safe?” you cried. “And it’s all my fault… I should've insisted that you take me to the village instead of staying. Now we only have a week left before I leave you forever.”

Another moment passed as you cried and cried and Sunghoon held you as tightly as he could, fearful that you’d crumble completely in his arms. He struggled to wrap his mind around the whole thing—around the fact that your time together was limited. He didn’t want to believe it. A part of him hoped that this was all just a test of true love from the sea witch. That she’d come up from the waves and grant you the life that you deserved fully and then you and him would run off into your new lives together, hand in hand. But, Sunghoon knew deep down that that wasn’t the case. This was it. This was the only time you both had left together. It wasn't fair—yet, if given the chance, he’d do it all again with you.

Sunghoon couldn’t bear living without you, that was the only stable thought in his mind.

It was so cruel. Sunghoon desperately needed more time with you. The two of you were supposed to have the rest of your lives together and now everything was cut so short. How was he supposed to go on after this without you? Sunghoon took your face in his hands and gently wiped away your tears with the pads of his thumbs. It broke his heart to see you so sad, so… defeated. All Sunghoon wanted to see was your beautiful smile again. To make you laugh and tell you to let all of your worries wash away—but he couldn’t.

“Why did you think I'd let you sacrifice yourself for me?” Sunghoon asked. As if he’d let you do such a ridiculous thing. He would rather carve out his heart himself and throw it to the sea if it meant you could keep the life you dreamed of.

You threw his words back at him. “Why did you think I'd let you sacrifice yourself for me? It’s not a life if you aren’t in it.”

“Because my heart already beats for you.” Sunghoon said it like it was the simplest thing ever. You shook your head at his words but Sunghoon just nodded. “It does. And I want you to have everything you’ve ever wanted, even if it’s at the cost of my own life.”

“No…” you shook your head as more tears fell from your watery eyes. “No,” you stated more firmly. “This life means nothing to me without you. I'm not giving her your heart and neither are you. It'll be hard when I'm gone, but it will get easier with time. We just have to make the most of the week we have left.”

Sunghoon just tilted his head at you and shook his head as tears of his own fell from his eyes. It wouldn't get easier, and no matter how close he held you, it wouldn’t be close enough. He pressed his lips to yours, a slow and wanting kiss, as he tried to beg Time to show the two of you mercy.

In the days leading towards the end of the month you were given, you and Sunghoon spent every waking moment together. Duties were cast aside to only its bare bones and deemed unimportant. You spent time leaving little pieces of yourself on the tiny island. You had taken some of the pearls from your hair and sewn them onto the hat that Sunghoon always wore; he even let you weave some of them into the strands of his hair.

He had asked what you were doing, and when you told him you saw his heart break.

The two of you had walked down to the dock and you stripped down to the last layer of the clothes you wore as he watched you. You haven’t really touched the ocean since you washed up on the shore from it. A part of you was terrified that if you did your tail would grow back or the sea witch would scoop you up again. So each time you and Sunghoon walked along the beach at sunset, you had always skirted around the water and stayed in the sand instead. But, this was more important than that. You just hoped that swimming as a human wasn’t that difficult and it came easily to you.

“Are you sure this is a good idea, my pearl?” Sunghoon asked you as he held your clothes in his arms. The coming summer sun beat down on him, and you finally understood why his eyes sparkled each time he looked at you. The pearls sewn on his hat and twisted between his dark strands of hair made him look ethereal. Even more beautiful than he already was. It made you wonder if there was a version of the two of you somewhere where he sacrificed his legs for a tail instead.

Your own pearls in your hair had dwindled significantly since you gave the majority of yours to him. There was one pearl, though, that you didn’t own. One that you needed to give to him before you left.

“Not exactly,” you said, “But it’s important.”

You sat down on the edge of the dock and dipped your feet into the water to test them. Even though your back was turned to him, you could feel how Sunghoon held his breath along with you. There was silence between the two of you, and after a moment of absolutely nothing, you looked back at him with a grin. As soon as you smiled at him, Sunghoon's whole face lit up. You turned back to the water and slid in.

Your head went beneath the surface and you were expecting to be able to breathe until you remembered that you weren’t a mermaid anymore. This was going to be a lot more difficult than you were initially expecting it to be, but you were determined. When you surfaced again, you gasped out for air and squeezed your eyes shut from the sunlight shining directly in them. When you opened them again, Sunghoon was at the very edge of the dock—your clothes strewn to the side—looking worriedly at you. His mouth opened to speak, but you beat him to it.

“I’m okay, I'm okay. Don't worry, my love.” you beamed up at him as you swam to the dock and held on to the edge. Oh, how you missed the salty water against your skin. “I’m gonna dive down now, but don’t worry about me, okay?”

Sunghoon smiled at you. “I'll never not worry about you.”

You laughed a little before pushing up on the dock a little so you could bring your lips to his for a chaste kiss. When you moved to turn, Sunghoon called out your name and you turned back to him in question. He gently took your face in his hands and kissed you hard. If you weren’t already above the surface, you would’ve thought that you were drowning—and you would’ve sunk down to the depths happily. You smiled against his lips and the two of you kissed until heat spread throughout your faces and you were forced to pull away.

“I love you, my pearl.” Sunghoon kissed the corner of your mouth.

“I’ll be back!” you exclaimed through a laugh. That didn’t matter to Sunghoon, though. He just needed to remind you of it—needed to hear you say it again.

“I know,” Sunghoon says. “I still love you.”

You smiled at him, bigger and brighter than before. “I love you.”

Sinking back down into the water, you began swimming down to the bottom of the ocean floor. It was a bit awkward at first, but the water was like second nature to you and you quickly got the hang of it. You weren’t sure if you would have enough breath to find the pearl that you were looking for, but you’d try and try again until you did.

And you did try. A few times you had to resurface for air and when you did, you found that you were in a different place completely and Sunghoon was just a speck along the horizon still waiting on the dock for you. You worked as quickly as you could with the timer hanging above you. You didn’t want to spend too much time in the water and away from him.

You nearly cried tears of joy when you tickled the oyster and coaxed it open. There it was, the beautiful black set of pearls that you were looking for. They reminded you of the time you snuck to the surface and saw an array of colors against the nighttime sky. It was an alluring light show that you still can’t believe you managed to witness.

It also made you remember the time your father had shown you pearls like these. They were his and your mother’s—a symbol of the purest and eternal love between two people, your father had said. He told you of how one day, you and another would exchange them on the day you were to be wed and the pearl would be the foremost adornment with all of the other pearls in your hair. You held the memory fondly, even if that life was miles away now. You began to wonder what your people thought of your disappearance, but you thought better of it. There was no use making yourself sad when this was supposed to be a happy occasion.

You swam back as fast as you could to Sunghoon, with the sun still hanging high in the sky.

When you surfaced at the dock again, you nearly scared Sunghoon out of his skin. His eyes were scanning the water and when they landed on you suddenly in front of him, he nearly fell into it. You giggled at him and he helped you up onto the dock, immediately shedding off his thin jacket to place over your shoulders. “Did you find what you were looking for?” Sunghoon asked, and you nodded ecstatically.

You took his hand and pulled him away from the sea while Sunghoon tried not to focus on the way the white cotton fabric stuck to your skin and became almost translucent. When you were in the sand again, you turned to him and held open the hand that clutched the black pearls for him to see. Sunghoon's eyes widened, and he looked down at them before quickly looking back up at you. You nodded at him, and he took one of the pearls between two of his fingers to examine it.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Sunghoon breathed as he held it up to the sunlight. He then smiles ear to ear and turns towards you. “It's almost as beautiful as you are, my darling.”

You shyly look away from him, heat creeping across your wet cheeks and your heart fluttering. “Under the sea,” you started, catching his loving stare, “a pearl like this is very special. Typically, you only receive one like it on your wedding day. It's a symbol of how your love for your partner is pure and eternal. You tie it in each other’s hair and it’s the one pearl that you never unweave.” Your eyes widened a little as the sudden implication hit you, and you opened your mouth to explain more to Sunghoon but he was already taking your hair between his fingers.

You looked at him from between your lashes as you watched him weave the black pearl into your hair. His brows were knitted together with his focus and you could feel his breath fan across your cheeks from how close he was to you. When he was finished, he held the hair with the black pearl weaved into it in his hand and smiled.

“There we go,” Sunghoon spoke softly, his voice just above a whisper. “Your turn.”

An enamored smile slowly spread across your face and you took a bit of his dark hair and began to weave the black pearl into it. Sunghoon watched you the entire time, his eyes full of so much love that it looked like it was going to spill from his stare at any moment. It felt like a warm and comforting blanket around you, and you didn’t know what you were going to do without it. After you were done, you took a moment to admire him and you could tell he was doing the same to you. You tried your hardest to commit every aspect of him to memory.

You reached your hand up and gingerly touched the black pearl in his hair with a smile. You then delicately touched his pale skin and trailed the tips of your fingers along the moles that prettied it. There was a pang in your chest and your heart began to ache. You were going to miss him.

“It reminds me of your scales—the pearl,” said Sunghoon after a while. You caught his gaze, shock written all throughout your expression. “They're more blue, but they have the same reflection the pearl has.”

In that moment, a desire hidden deep within you—so deep that you didn’t know it even existed—bubbled up to the surface and jumped out of your body. Tears sprang to your eyes and Sunghoon cradled your cheek with his hand, his brows furrowed. Never in your life have you felt seen like Sunghoon makes you feel seen. He took both sides of you—the mermaid and the newfound human—and held them both close to his soul like they were one. He loved you no matter the change.

You couldn’t even begin to express to him how you were feeling, you could barely even get your words out. All you could manage to choke out was: “You’ve seen them?”

The two of you turned to where you had washed up almost a month ago now. The scales that were once a part of your tail are long gone, swept back into the sea with the storm where they belonged to never be seen by you again. You had checked for them, but you were already too late. Sunghoon nodded, looking to you. “I had meant to ask you about them when you first woke up that day, but it completely slipped my mind. I kept some of them.”

Tears slid down your cheeks and he wiped them for you before leading you back to the house. When the two of you got there, Sunghoon dug around in his heavy coats for the one he wore that night before pulling it out. He then dug in the pockets before pulling his hand out. Sunghoon outstretched his hand to you, a couple of your shifting blue scales in his palm. You gasped and covered your mouth with your hands before reaching out for them. Your hand hovered above his before you drew it back. Instead, you closed Sunghoon's hand around them again.

“Keep them close to your heart,” you said, wiping your tears as you smiled happily at him. “A mermaid’s scale will bring you good luck.”

“Are you sure you don’t want them, my pearl?” he asked, and you shook your head. You had no use for them, and he needed them more than you did. If they would keep him safe and bring him good fortune, then that’s all you could ask for.

Sunghoon carefully placed them in the pocket of his cotton shirt under his waistcoat and it reminded you that you were practically naked in human terms. Your chemise was still damp and clung to your skin. You looked down at your clothes. “Oh,” you sheepishly chuckled. Sunghoon's eyes locked onto you and you could tell it’s been plaguing his mind this entire time. Your gaze flicked back up to him and you noticed how blown out his eyes were. You sheepishly chuckled more.

Grinning, Sunghoon took a step forward and wrapped his arms around you. “Is that all you have to say?” he teased. “‘Oh?’ Nothing else?” You shook your head, giggling, before kissing him. Sunghoon pulled back from you a little and in faux bewilderment, he said, “No? Nothing at all?” He brought his lips back to yours, muffling more of your giggles. He then backed you up towards where the hallway was as his fingers gripped at your wet chemise. Sunghoon went to pull it up, but you pushed it back down and hummed against his lips.

Breaking from his lips, you smirked at him before taking his hand and leading him to the bedroom.

A storm had begun to brew along the horizon of the sea that left everything dark and cloudy. You knew that the storm was for you—for him, and it saddened you deeply. It also filled you with a grim determination. The sea witch wouldn’t have Sunghoon’s heart. You would die making sure that was true.

It felt as if all hope was lost. Like a blanket of complete darkness covered the two of you and you walked lost through it. The rest of the week was spent as if you both were mourning each other, and you were. Sunghoon just couldn’t believe that this would be the last time he would ever see you again—he refused to believe it. It hurt too much.

He ensured that he had as much physical attachments of you two together as possible, even going so far to hire a photographer and have your pictures taken. At night, he could hear you weeping and he couldn’t do anything to comfort you except hold you. It wasn't enough for either of you. How could the two of you possibly pretend to be happy when you both knew that the end was near? That the two of you were doomed from the very start?

It was like ice replaced all the warmth inside him and froze him down to the marrow in his bones. The only spark inside him was his undying love for you and you for him. Besides his limited time with you, it was the only thing that was keeping him going. Just getting a glimpse of your face, whether if it was next to him or from one of the pictures he had framed of the two of you, meant the world to him.

It felt strange to feel such deep and heartbreaking, mournful sorrow over someone who was still living. Like his one true love was already taken from him.

How would Sunghoon live on once you were gone? Everywhere he goes he would search for you, whether that be beneath the empty covers of his bed or between the flickering light of the lighthouse. Would he see someone at the village and think that it was you, only for them to turn and he’d see that it wasn’t? Would he see the glittering sunlight along the water and think that it was the pearls in your hair—that you’ve returned home to him? He couldn’t bear it all.

But, he couldn’t do anything to stop it. The final day was here and the storm that was previously brewing in the horizon raged on, demanding to be felt—demanding the heart it came for. Unease sunk deep into Sunghoon, and as you both watched the storm and harsh winds from the window he held you close.

“Please,” Sunghoon begged, voice hoarse, barely above a whisper and half-muffled from his face buried in your hair, “Please, don’t do this. We can figure out another way, just… just don’t go.”

Sunghoon had been crying all night and the storm didn’t help one bit. Even your lullaby only barely managed to make him fall asleep. He didn't want to miss a single precious second with you by sleeping. He had the rest of his life without you to sleep. He’d sleep when he throws himself to the sea years from now and beg the water to bury him next to you. Now wasn’t the time for it.

“It’s too late, my love,” you said somberly. You shifted to face him, tears welling in your eyes. “There's no other option. I have to do this. It's the only way… You’re the land and I'm the sea—we only touch for a brief moment.”

You pressed your lips to Sunghoon’s firmly, letting all your passion and love for him seep through it. No matter how much your lungs ached and your head pounded, you both didn’t break away. If it was going to be your last kiss, it would be one you’ll both remember forever.

Only when you felt like you were about to pass out did you gently pull away from him. A strike of lightning followed by a vicious roar of thunder sounded. “It is time,” you whispered, tears slipping down your cheeks.

You stood from the couch, forcing yourself to break away from Sunghoon and the life you cherished so deeply. You bent down to give him one last hug. “I love you, forever,” you said, “And I'll miss you for even longer.”

“I love you,” Sunghoon said, his voice breaking into a cry as tears slid down his face. “I miss you.” With bated breath, Sunghoon looked up at you through his tears, "I'm sorry.”

You shook your head at Sunghoon as you stood to your full height, your hand fell from his face as you wiped away his tears. You inhaled sharply and you got one last look at Sunghoon, one last look at him to burn into your mind before you turned to seafoam.

You took in every inch of him, down to the hat with your pearls sewn onto it discarded at his feet and the pearls woven into his dark hair as he ran his hands through it. You focused for a moment on the black pearl in his hair that you both shared and you hoped that when he looked at it too he would remember how much you love him. Sunghoon was so drastically different from when you first met him, yet, completely the same all at once. It broke your heart into a million pieces to see him this way and have it be all because of you.

Inhaling deeply, you turned your back to him before he could convince you to stay. Your hand lingered near the door and you turned back to him one last time. “Goodbye, my love, my Sunghoon.”

With your last goodbye, you opened the door and faced the storm.

There was no use in delaying the inevitable. You stomped towards the water, stripping off your clothes and your last shred of humanity. Anger permeated you, hot like the flame of the flickering lighthouse.

It was so unfair. It was so unfair that you couldn’t have the one thing you’ve ever wished for. But you guess that it was no easy wish going against nature. A thing belonging to the sea cannot step onto the land without consequences—and here you were, facing them. Walking headfirst back to the sea—to your own death—like one would if they had pockets full of stones.

You barely got to your knees in the water before red-hot pain spread throughout your legs, the same pain that you felt when they formed from your tail. Soon after you were falling to the water, your deep blue, color shifting tail emerging from behind you. You dived underwater, thankful for once that mermaids couldn’t cry.

You began to swim further out into the sea, watching as more and more of your body transformed back to its original state. The entire time you thought of the sea witch, of how you hated her and her cruelness. She did this to you—she let you dream of hope only to turn the lights back out. You never should’ve made that bargain. Maybe then you and Sunghoon could still be together. He'd wait at the dock for you and you’d wait at the shore for him, and it would be enough.

Above you, you saw the water ripple like something was dropped in. You wouldn’t have thought anything of it if not for the feeling against your tail. You stopped swimming and twisted to look behind you. Shock filled you and your eyes widened. Sunghoon swam towards you, clothes flowing in the water as he got closer.

No. What was he doing here? Doesn't he know how dangerous it is for him to be in the sea at this moment? You wanted to lecture him, scream at him—but, all that filled you was the immense love you have for him.

Sunghoon reached out his hands toward your face and gently grabbed your cheeks. He swam forward and placed his lips onto yours. You should’ve known that he wouldn’t let you go alone, that he would be there with you until the very end—even if you told him over and over that it would only make the pain worse.

You pulled away and let yourself smile at him one last time—for the first time as what you truly were. That smile quickly faltered when you saw all the red start to seep out from around the two of you, the feeling of something hard puncturing your chest.

Looking down, you gasped and bubbles of air floated towards the surface. Lodged in Sunghoon's chest was a knife with blood rapidly coming from it. You shook your head at him, brows knitting together in anguish, and Sunghoon just nodded.

You refused to let him do this—to let him die. To let him die for you. It wasn't supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be you, not him. You were supposed to be the sacrifice.

You linked your arms under his and swam as fast as you could to the shore, bringing Sunghoon towards the surface and fighting against the harsh waves. Every second felt like a grain of sand in an hourglass, and you didn’t have much sand left. You now know what he meant when Sunghoon said “I'm sorry.”

Sunghoon didn’t have much time, you knew that from the way he began to cough violently. You dragged him as far up on the shore and as far away from the water as you possibly could with the hindrance of your tail. You made sure not even the waves lapped up to the two of you. The sea witch wouldn’t have him, you will die making sure of it.

You started screaming for help until your voice was hoarse, but it was no use against the whipping winds of the storm. Nobody would hear you on this tiny island away from the village anyway. “Why?” you asked him, your voice breaking as tears fell from your face, “Why would you do this? The sea doesn’t deserve a heart like yours.”

Sunghoon grabbed your hands and brought them to the hilt of the blade in his chest. “Take it… It’s yours. It will always be yours,” he said hoarsely. Blood spilled past his lips and you cried harder. “Go, be free. Walk on land and live the life you’ve always wanted. Be human.”

He violently coughed more and more blood coated his lips.

“It's not a life I want if it isn’t with you,” you cried, removing your hands from the hilt and pressing them to his wound. Your hands were stained but the blood wouldn’t stop.

Sunghoon took your hands in his, “It’s not a world I want to live in if you’re not by my side, my pearl.”

With the last of his strength, Sunghoon wrapped his hands around the hilt and harshly pulled the blade from his chest. You cried out as more blood gushed from the wound and stained his shirt red. “No, no, no!” You sobbed louder with each word.

“Kiss.. me… One last time?” Sunghoon heaved in question. His eyes started to close but he fought to keep them open—he wouldn’t waste any more precious seconds. You couldn’t believe that it was all ending like this—that it all could come to this. You stupid, halfwitted, naive little guppy. How dare you dream of a life you could never have?

You sniffled and nodded. You didn’t care that his blood would be on your lips, you bent down to press yours to his anyway. As they moved in sync you could feel the life draining from him and you pulled away, letting him get as much oxygen as he possibly can. It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Sunghoon smiled up at you and it was the last glimmer of light in the darkness as the rain poured down around the two of you. He cupped your face gently, his hand trembling. “My pearl…” he whispered, "I love you so much. I love you, forever.”

With those last words, Sunghoon's eyes closed and his hand fell from your face and into the wet sand below.

You looked down at him with wide, watery eyes. A loud sob ripped through you and you cried until your chest felt like exploding and you could barely see from the burning tears. You raised a shaky hand and placed it softly on Sunghoon’s chest where his heart resided. It no longer beat. He was gone, truly… gone.

You took the knife laying limply in his other hand and threw it as far away from the two of you as you could. You then laid your head on his chest like you did all those nights ago in the bed you shared, only, it wasn’t the same.

Sunghoon was gone. His warm body was now growing cold and his beating heart had stilled. All that was left was you—and soon, even you would cease to exist.

You felt tingling in your tail, little stabbing pains that would hurt if you didn’t feel so numb right now. You knew that you were withering away—turning into seafoam like the sea witch promised with only your bones and your heart to leave behind so she could collect it. You welcomed it, for you had nothing left.

Let her take your heart, so long as she doesn’t touch his.

Softly, you began to hum the lullaby your mother used to sing to you as a child. You hoped that it would aid Sunghoon on his journey beyond, that the storm would no longer make him anxious and instead he felt calm. That it would gently lull him to where he needed to be.

More tears slid down your wet cheeks from the lack of sound in his chest. How it didn’t rise and fall with his breathing. But, you continued humming.

The fin of your tail started to turn first. Seafoam overtook it and fell away into the sand in a pool of foamy white and bone. You closed your eyes as it spread further and further up your body. You hummed until you physically couldn’t anymore—until your entire body was seafoam and so were your lips. Until you were nothing but a beating heart against sunghoon’s still chest.

The storm began to melt away, the dark clouds very slowly rolling back towards the magic that casted them and the rain traveling upwards towards them. It is unknown how long the remnants of your bodies laid in the wet sand, curled into each other.

There was no telling where Sunghoon ended and you began.

Deep down below at the sea floor there is a rumbling. A loud, angry scream follows and it is said it can be heard for miles. The sea witch tries with all her might, but her waters are just too far away from where the two lovers lie. She is unable to take their hearts, for they are their own—they belong to each other and no one else. And soon after, your heart turns to seafoam too. The two of you, at once, were at home with each other.

While the law searches the tiny island to figure out what came of the lighthouse keeper, they find a picture of a woman with pearls in her hair—similar to the pearls found in the lighthouse keeper’s hair—and shifting blue scales. The picture and the scales were hidden in a pocket close to his chest and free from any blood. The woman was never found and the villagers have no recollection of her—despite the various photographs around the lighthouse keeper’s small home.

Through the breaking light of the dawn, it is said you can see two souls turn to one.

͏ ͏ ͏͏ ͏ ͏͏ ͏ ͏ ͏͏ ͏ ͏͏   ͏  ͏ ͏͏ ͏ ͏ ͏  ͏ ͏͏ REBLOGS ◜◡◝ ASKS APPRECIATED!

✉️   ⦂   hey…. hey… i just want to say first and foremost and i am so unbelievably sorry for the pain i just put you all through LMAO <//3 can everyone make some noise for #realyearners tho?!?!?!!? btw, if any of you wanted to see all the changes / additions i made to the rework, then here is the original version! ♡ AND THANK YOU SO SO SOOO MUCH TO @yingelics FOR THE ABSOLUTELYYYYYY BEAUTIFUL DIVIDER ABOVE AAAA!!! (づ ￣ ³￣)づ♡♡♡♡♡

𖥦 ﴾ 𝖼𝗈𝗇𝗍𝗂𝗇𝗎𝖾 𝗈𝗇 𝗍𝗈 . . . 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 , 𝗺𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 , 𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 ﴿ @innocygnet @ikeukiss @tinycatharsis @prkhaven @fangel @jaylaxies @bambiihee @xylatox @whosserina @jellymochii @minaateez @lvrs-street2mmorrow @chccnne @sunoosgfv @everythingvirgoes @beomieeeeeeeeeeees @sumsumtingz @riribelle @yingelics @yourislandgirl @milza12 @dollyyhoon @fancypeacepersona @maidens-world @hoonstrology @invsomnixa1 @hoonkishoe

© faeyun - all rights reserved. do not repost on any social media or sites, translate, or modify any of my works.

[moongothic]

Kinda started rereading Dressrosa and... Although I always chalked up the similarities between Crocodile's plan to take over Alabasta and how Doflamingo took over Dressrosa as nothing but Oda reusing similar plot elements but in a slightly different way (just to show us what could've become of Alabasta had Croc gotten away with his schemes, what Luffy helped prevent from happening to begin with)...

Robin's reaction to hearing the story of Dressrosa and HOW Doflamingo took over the country, that simple little "...!!", actually does kind of speak volumes

Like if you wanted canonical evidence to Crocodile having been "inspired" by Doflamingo, then yeah, Robin would be The Person who would pick up on that, she'd be the person who'd be like "hey, that story sounds awfully familiar to what Crocodile did", since he was her boss

Do want to note that, timeline-wise, Doflamingo only took over Dressrosa 10 years ago, where as Crocodile had been Scheming and establishing his position as the Hero of Alabasta for 16 years. Like Croc's intent to obtain Pluton and create his military nation utopia absolutely pre-dates Doffy's takeover, so that wasn't and can't have been inspired by Doflamingo at all. It's more just the plan and method Crocodile ended up going with (framing the king (through a bloodbath) and putting the country in a position without a ruler where he could just yoink it for himself with ease) where the similarity becomes more obvious. But it is also kind of where it ends. Doflamingo wanted Dressrosa because he felt like he was entitled to the island (as his family had been its original rulers and he was a Tenryuubito), and was using the island for his own gains (Smile manufacturing etc, for his dealings with Kaidou), all while having a great distain and hatred of the world and how he had been "wronged" (=Tenryuubito rights revoked). Meanwhile... yeah, Crocodile wanted to create a "utopia", only targetting Alabasta because he believed Pluton was there and because Pluton would be needed for his ideal military nation. That minor difference and Crocodile's clear and great distain and hatred of Doflamingo combined...

Yeah, I dunno, this is just interesting to me. God I need Robin and Crocodile to have a lil reunion chat

[meraarts]

I’m bored and nosy. Please reblog this with the book you’re currently reading.

[i-like-to-read-13]

Oh hot damn 🥵 This is fuelling my Remmick addiction So Well!! What is it about a sweaty, needy, worshipful monster of man, that gets me so worked up? It's ridiculously hot, and you've written it so fucking good!! I'm 1000% going to be reading this a million more times. I'm literally already craving to reread it, when I've just read it. Brb, getting lost in this fic again....

hunger stone

pairing(s): remmick (sinners) x fem!reader

summary: Hunger comes in many forms. The thing that knocks on your door in the shape of a man teaches you that. This is a love story.

words: 11.6k

cw: darkfic, explicit, smut, dubcon, piv sex, oral sex, fluids, spit play, we're eating spit and blood ok, biting, blood kink, primal kink, pain kink, sado-masochism, remmick begging and crying for the pussy, we're biting HIM making HIM moan, monsterfucking, claw action!!!!, vampire bites, scratching, dream sex, toxic!remmick, (is there any other kind), stalking, coercion, remmick is your sleep paralysis demon, coming untouched, voice kink, remmick is evil and scary but also pathetic and lame so, biblically accurate remmick, reader has never heard of a red flag, reader is a bit batshit insane tbh, yearning, animal death, minor character death, your best friend dies rip, cannibalism, ??question mark??, graphic depictions of violence, religious undertones, paganism, inaccurate descriptions of ancient ireland, dead dove: do not eat, like seriously, no beta we die like (redacted)

a/n: this fucking fic almost killed me i deadass broke a fever while writing it and you can probably tell. i spent way too much time losing sleep over the implications of fluid exchange to vampire curse ratio, and concluded based on screen evidence that what transfers the curse is a vampire BITE, and any other exchange of fluids between human and vampire doesn't count. if i am wrong ryan coogler has my permission to hunt me for sport

ALL OF MY WORKS ARE 18+ MINORS DNI

“I’m glad I met the Devil ‘cause he showed me I was weak, and now a little piece of him is in a little piece of me.” -Halsey, The Lighthouse

THEN

It began with the stranger showing up at your door. Bruised and bloodied, covered in a number of fluids that you couldn’t identify and didn’t want to think about, it looked like someone had bent him backwards over a fire pit and beaten him to a pulp. His dark hair was matted over his forehead, drenched in sweat. And when you opened the door after he’d pounded on it, he’d begged you on his knees. 

“Please,” the stranger had cried, whimpering like a kicked dog. “Please, let me in. You dunno how long I’ve been runnin’– they been chasin’ me–”

“Who’s been chasing you?” was your honest reply. You clutched your robe tighter around your body, peering out into the darkness beyond your porch. Mosquitos and mayflies buzzed in the yellow light over your door, and the trees swayed in the summer breeze. You heard nothing but the sound of the leaves rustling, and the soft noises of the stranger bent solemnly at your feet, like a pilgrim to a shrine.

“Please,” the man croaked again, instead of answering you. Tears ran down his cheeks, trailing dirt and blood like rivers over his reddened skin. His lip trembled, and in spite of everything that told you a stranger asking to be let in was a recipe for disaster, your heart ached in sympathy for him. 

“I can’t let you in,” you’d told him then, and he seemed to sag like a balloon with a leak. His hands– long, spindly fingers that looked almost claw-like in the low light– plunked onto your porch beside his knees, palms up like an outcast sinner. He breathed through his mouth in sharp, gasping inhales and shaky exhales, his broad chest heaving with the effort. You looked him over, and then hesitantly amended, “Wait there.”

Truth was, you really couldn’t let him in, and you knew it. You had company– your best friend had gone through a terrible fight with her partner, and she was currently curled up in a fetal ball on your couch under a hoard of blankets. Letting a bloodied stranger in was not a welcome idea, and gun to your head, you’d never put her in a position where she’d be uncomfortable. 

That didn’t mean you couldn’t help in some way, though. Warm washcloth and glass of water in hand, you went to open the door again. 

“Where’re you going?” your friend called, muffled from within her cocoon. 

“Fella on the porch needs some help,” you told her as you opened the door to find him where you left him, looking haggard, but sat with his head in his hands now rather than kneeling. “Don’t worry about it, stay there.” 

You met her eye and gave her a lingering look. Stay there and call for help if need be. She nodded at you once, like she got the message loud and clear. 

You left the door open when you stepped onto the porch, the screen snapping shut behind you. You set the glass of water down beside his hip, and clutched your robe to your chest like you could use it as a shield. 

The stranger looked up at you then with gleaming eyes, and a look crossed his face that made you pause. You couldn’t see what he saw in that moment, as you held a dripping rag in one hand, and your head was framed with the halo of light from over the door, the chiffon sleeves of your robe over your negligée like the gossamer wings of a faerie queen.

Vain and ancient creature that he is, he’s known kindness enough to know when to weaponize it. He knows beauty like a commodity to be molded, used and destroyed. But he’s only ever truly come across the sublime once or twice in his neverending existence, and it’s always something that makes him understand that so-called ‘fear of God’ that the people who tore his home apart talked about. It’s something that makes him feel small, if that’s ever a thing that he could be called. It’s something awe-inspiring. Terrifying.

It’s something that he felt as you loomed over him, and you touched your fingertip gently under his chin to tilt his head up, up, up, and pressed the warm, damp washcloth to his clammy forehead. It was earth-shattering in its softness. It was horrifying in the way your touch felt like the warmth of the fires of his home, seventeen-hundred years ago and counting, singing songs to the Tuatha Dé Danann and wishing for fresh rain come spring. 

And you didn’t even know it. You didn’t know the scope of his hunger, his lust, or the age of his aching heart. Your hand so close to his mouth was steady, like you’d put your hand in the mouth of a lion, trusting that it wouldn’t bite. So he didn’t. Not yet.

“Well, you’re pretty as a cool wind in the month o’ August,” he croaked softly at you, and his voice cracked with the effort to keep it low.

The stranger’s accent was odd, clunky– ambiguously southern, but didn’t flow quite right. It was as if certain syllables were from another language, another dialect. You didn’t know enough to question it at the time, though.

You tried not to wither away from his gaze, piercing as it was. His eyes glinted in the low light, almost like a cat’s shining through the darkness. You felt as though he could see the breadth of your soul with them and brand their gaze onto it, burning hot and searing. 

“Would you like me to call someone?” you asked. “A doctor? Cops?” 

“No,” he insisted, urgently. “No doctors. No cops, please.” You didn’t blame him.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you more,” you admitted with a soft exhale as you cleaned the dirt from his face. Something had hit him over the head and left a nasty cut, which seeped blood even as you wiped it from his skin. He didn’t even flinch as the rag passed over the open wound, like he couldn’t feel it. He was too busy looking at you.

“Can’t come in if you don’t let me,” he muttered. “S’not proper, like.”

“I guess your mother raised you right, then.” 

The man’s nostrils flared. You thought, perhaps, that you’d actually hurt him, what with the blood weeping from the gash in his head and the bruising on his temple and his cheek. But the truth was that he was smelling you, with your wrist so close to his teeth, and his hunger so long without satiating that it took everything in him not to turn his head and catch your hand in his maw, like the animal he is. Your scent, like roses and pinewood, wrapped around him like a gift, enveloped him like the embrace of an old friend. 

“My mama didn’t teach me nothin’ proper. Learned most of that on my own,” he admitted to you then, and it was more about himself than he’d told anyone in an age– maybe two, three centuries. Most people didn’t stay long enough to learn or listen. He didn’t have the patience for it, usually. Once he sired them and they saw into his mind, he didn’t have to reveal anything about himself.

But with you… with you, something held him back from biting. Maybe it was a morbid curiosity. Maybe it was a longing for genuine sympathy from a warm, living creature that he didn’t have control over. Or maybe it was just his greed, as it usually was, wanting to keep you alive long enough to ruin you, as he ruined most pretty things.

That must have been it, he supposed. No other reason. He wasn’t human enough for that anymore.

“What’s your name, stranger?” you asked. It was a miracle that you didn’t flinch away from him when he closed his eyes at the sound of your voice, and when he opened them again they burned red with want. He could feel his composure slipping like water over riverstones, and he searched in the dark for something to hold himself back.

His hands, his claws, folded in on themselves like paper cranes. “Remmick.” 

“Remmick?” You saw the red in his eyes. You ignored it, imagining it was a trick of the light. Maybe you shouldn’t have.

“Aye, Remmick.” You wiped away the tear streaks through the dirt on his cheeks, and he scrunched his nose in a way that made your heart hammer in your chest. He really was very handsome, this stranger, and the way he kept looking at you like you were a holy spirit was starting to make you a bit weak. “It’s Irish.”

A smile fluttered over your features, and Remmick decided that it was a bigger mistake to have looked at him like that than if you’d let him into your home. 

“Well, Remmick,” you said, and his name sounded so sweet in your mouth that he felt the ache of his sharp teeth wanting to spring forth. Saliva pooled in his mouth, threatening to spill out. He swallowed fast. “This is a really deep cut on your head. I don’t know what did this to you, but I’m not really in a position to help you.” 

“I gathered.” The thing that got to him the most was that you dropped your hand from his chin, and he wanted to surge forward and cling to your hips like a child clamoring for the comfort of a grown-up. He hadn’t felt like such a boy in a millennia.

“I’m a bit tied up tonight,” you explained to him, reaching down and pushing the glass of water into his hand. “But if you go down the street to the Joneses, Mrs. Jones is a nurse. She should be able to help you more than me.” You indicated to him the house that you meant, and he followed the line of your arm with hungry eyes, not bothering to look beyond it. 

“Right– right. I– I’m sure I can, yeah–” 

He stared down into the glass of water like it had slapped him. He held that posture for a long moment, hanging his head with his elbows on his knees, the moon reflected in the water in his cup. You were almost afraid that he’d start crying again, and you’d have to go inside and call someone for help, because his blood was dripping down his forehead again and onto his brow. 

Then he sniffed, and jerked his head away like he was trying to contain himself. He tapped his finger on the rim of the glass once, and looked up at you. He smiled at you, a grin that showcased his sharp canines. 

“Well, I best not keep you,” Remmick said lowly, and set the still full glass of water on the porch step beside him as he stood. When he reached the bottom of the step, he turned back toward you, his eyes flickering in the moonlight. “Thanks so much for your help, Miss…?” 

You told him your name, and he inhaled deeply, like he hadn’t had fresh air in years. Then he repeated your name back to you, like he was tasting each letter on his tongue. 

You should never tell a stranger your name, is what his mother taught him. Because strangers, especially ones that show up bleeding at your door, often turn out to be fae.

He was not the same as he had been when you first opened your door– desperate, whimpering, crying and near crawling on all fours, claiming someone was after him. He stood straight, his hand in the pocket of his tattered trousers, his undershirt soaked through with blood and sweat. His own blood dripped down the side of his face, eerily off-setting his smile.

You had half a mind to invite him inside after all, if only to get him a change of clothes and a bandage for his head. 

“‘Nother time, maybe,” he mused, and then began walking away in the direction of the Joneses.

And when you went back inside, you couldn’t get the flash of his red eyes out of your mind for anything, like they’d burned their mark into your soul after all.

That night, you had a nightmare. 

Or… was it a nightmare, really? You weren’t sure. It wasn’t like any nightmare you’d ever had before, but it also wasn’t like any pleasant dream, either. 

It was all dark. It was the kind of darkness that sinks into your bones and invites terror, an uncertainty of what lurks around you. There may have been stars; you may have been floating somewhere in the cosmos, for all you knew. But what you did know was that you were not alone. 

The presence made itself known in whispers, first. And then, the touch of a single, steady finger gliding gently, almost tantalizingly soft, up your spine. Your skin prickled. Your heart pulsed. 

You felt your fear physically in your body, like fingers reaching deep into your gut and mixing your organs around like sludge. What made it worse was that you couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t scream. You could think all you wanted, you could imagine the worst things possible happening to you, but it didn’t change the way your heart stuttered in your chest when a single hand gripped the back of your neck, and you felt sharp nails digging into your soft, sensitive flesh.

“I know what you want–want–want–” said the voice, which would come to haunt you both sleeping and waking for days to come. It echoed into the void around you like you lingered in an endless cavern, and each word spoken would stretch on and on into eternity. “Lovely girl–girl–girl, you need only ask–ask–ask–”

The voice sounded old, older than your bones and older than anything you’d ever known before. It had an accent that wasn’t familiar to you, something ancient and untethered to your time. Whatever this was, spirit or demon or other, you had no idea how to approach it.

The thing in the dark, seemingly sensing your uncertainty, laid another hand on your waist. The touch was almost… delicate. It wrapped around the curve of your body, long fingers spreading slowly across your exposed skin. It felt you, like it was searching, exploring with languorous curiosity. Over the soft plane of your stomach, between your breasts, over the curve of one– but only a ghost of a touch, never deigning to press in and truly grope or grab. Almost as if to show you what you could have, if only you let it.

Your nerves on high, piqued by the faintest passing of a rough palm over your nipple, your breath hitched. The fear was seeping into something worse, something primal and older than fear itself, lingering deep in your anatomy, quivering beneath the fascia. You could feel your body warm with a fever where the thing dragged its touch.

“Tell me–me–me–” the thing insisted, its voice like that of a snake slithering over cool stone, echoing into the fathomless dark. “What needs do you bury–bury–bury, what desires do you let fester within you–you–you–”

One sharp nail, or perhaps it could be more accurately described as a talon or a claw, scraped ever-so-gently down from between your breasts, over the slope of your stomach, pausing just above your pelvis. The skin there was sensitive enough that you jerked in the thing’s grip, and the hand that had held the back of your neck slipped forward to wrap around your throat. 

There was a body against your back. Should there have been? For some reason, it made sense to you– the hands must have been attached to something, the voice coming from the mouth of a creature. But it was more than that. The thing was solid but also intangible, like a presence pressing in on you from all sides. Surrounding you. Engulfing you. Devouring you.

You hated that you liked it. You were confused by your desire to let the hands roam where they wanted, do with you as they pleased. It made no sense that you wanted to press your body back against the invisible force holding you, but you did.

Its clawed finger brushed lower than before, gliding through the hair at the apex of your thighs. When you squirmed again, and you widened your shaking legs to welcome the dip of its hand, the thing laughed in your ear. 

Suddenly, you found you could speak, like its grip on the back of your neck was the only thing that had been holding you back. Not your fear or your uncertainty, no. Just its touch, like you were its puppet.

“What are you?” you asked, and your own voice sounded too loud and clear in comparison to the thing’s unearthly whisper. 

“I am your release,” it said into your ear, its tone airy enough that the darkness didn’t capture and mirror it. “I am your opus to mold to your whim, if you let. Me. In.”

“Are you the Devil?” you asked, though you don’t know why you did. You didn’t even know if you believed in the Devil. But it seemed the right question to ask, the obvious question. What else could create lust in you like this?

The creature, or thing, or man– whatever it may be– chuckled then. “Only if you want me to be.” 

“I don’t know what I want.”

“You do.” 

There was a purring. It rumbled in your chest and up your throat, reverberating in your soft palate. It came from the thing in the dark, as it pressed up against you, along the length of your spine. Its hand dipped lower, a teasing caress just along the edges of your aching cunt.

“Let me in, love,” the voice whispered its plea into your ear, and there, right there, its mask slipped. That primordial voice, the accent that you could not place– it turned human. Just human enough for you to make out the urgency, the desire, the need. 

The crack in its facade was Irish. Its bones were brittle with longing.

You felt what could have been a nose skirt the shell of your ear, and a breath on your neck. You turned your head, your eyes searching in the dark for something, anything that you could see to identify what it was. If it was man or beast, solid or spirit, you couldn’t see a thing. Except for two red embers, almost scorching in their brightness against the endless abyss. It’s breath, if that’s what it was, fell hot across your open mouth when you gasped.

“Sink your teeth in me,” you told it, your eyes focused on those two red coals within the darkness. And like a servant obeying its master, the thing did as it was ordered. You felt cool lips upon your skin before the pain of fangs in your throat, as its finger stroked once, and agonizingly slow, over your clit.

And you woke up gasping for air, drenched in sweat, in the throes of an orgasm. For a moment you couldn’t move, and it frightened you that you were paralyzed and held captive to your body’s pleasure.

You’d never experienced anything quite like it– neither the dream, nor the experience of a release with no room to move away from it. You lay there while your orgasm rushed over you in waves, and your mind raced with phrases that faded from your memory faster than you could capture them.

Are you the Devil?

Let me in.

Sink your teeth in me.

Once your orgasm ran its course, you spent a few seconds willing your fingers to twitch so that you could rouse your paralyzed body. Just before you did, your wandering eyes landed on your bedroom window, and the inky night beyond.

That was where you swore you could see two red eyes staring back at you.

Remmick watched you for days. 

He’s never been one to back down when he wants something– one of his many vices, he knows, but at this point he’s more vice than virtue. If he ever had any virtues, they died a long time ago. 

The first night after he entered your dream, he captured the smell of you on the breeze, and he thought he was going to be sick. You smell so sweet, your blood rich, your body’s natural odor like an aphrodisiac, and he was so overcome with want he nearly tore his own face off trying to keep himself sane about it. His throat stung, his eyes spilled tears that burned like acid. He was absorbed in the memory of his finger stroking through your cunt, even if it was only in your unconscious mind– it was real to him. Your orgasm was very real to you, he was certain of that.

It took an hour and his claws in the earth and a lot of dry heaving, but he managed. Don’t worry about him, he’s fine.

The night after that, you left your window open well into the evening, while you chatted with that friend of yours over wine. He watched you, holding her hand over the top of the dining table, while she sobbed into the glass. 

“I hate my life,” your friend was crying, her tears smudging her mascara. She looked like a tragic heroine from an Italian opera. 

“You don’t hate your life,” you returned calmly, to offset her outburst. “You just aren’t enjoying it right now.” 

“You say that,” she argued, yanking a napkin up to blot her face, “but just wait until you have someone throw you aside like trash right before your birthday. I’m going to be single on my birthday.” 

“And somehow, I imagine you might just survive.” You hummed and stretched, standing up to gather your two empty wine glasses, accustomed to these sort of dramatics. You’d tuck her into her cocoon on the couch and she’d be asleep in no time. She just needed to wallow before she could return to the land of the living, so to speak. 

Remmick watched as you stooped and kissed your friend on the top of her head before retreating into the kitchen. And then to quell his rabid jealousy, he snatched a squirrel out of the tree beside him and bit its head off.

He wanted to really know you, you see. He wanted to know everything about you. It’s easier for him when he can go through the world without a care other than his survival, and anyone or anything he becomes attached to is a byproduct. But you… you surprised him. You’d ambushed him with your gentility, made a fool of him with your beauty. You ripped his heart out by simply resting your fingertip on his chin. 

Remmick doesn’t deal with admiration well.

The third day, your friend left your home after dark, and it was then that his rash decision making came out in full force. 

Her hands shook when she fished her keys out of her pocket. She was walking alone, at night, through the dark woods, and… well, almost every folk tale on earth will tell you not to do that, but maybe she wasn’t familiar. It didn’t really matter when Remmick dropped down beside her from above, and clamped a clawed hand around the back of her neck.

She was too stunned to scream. She whirled around, eyes wide as saucers, and saw in his face the demon that he was.

“You got somethin’ I want,” he said, as a way of explaining himself. His voice was too friendly, though, and normally that tends to signal death. 

Then, he opened his mouth wide and tore out her throat before she had a chance to reply. And it was a good thing, too, because he hadn’t eaten in days and quite frankly, he was starving.

It’s always a little bit disorienting when he sires people, and their memories flood into his mind like a wave crashing on the cliffs of Inis Meáin. He has to sort through them like files in an archive, while he sucks the blood from his fingers and ignores the brackish tumult of the change happening in whatever-their-name’s system. 

“You’re a wee feckin’ mess, ain’tcha?” Remmick swore under his breath as he tilted his head. Your friend’s memories seemed to spin one hyperdramatic crisis into the next. She’d gone through partners like changes of clothes, and each time seemed to think her life was forfeit before a new one emerged. She was neurotic and needy, and the one constant in her life was… you.

You, who never judged her for being high maintenance. You, who always opened your door to her when she had a problem. You, who showed her love and support when she felt like the world had turned against her. She loved you like a sister.

Remmick focused on her memories of you, like flipping through his own personal encyclopedia of your quirks. You could be outspoken and loud when in the company of close friends. You talked about masturbation techniques with your friend like it was the weather. You hadn’t had a real partner in years. If your track record was anything to go by, you probably hadn’t been properly fucked in a long time, and your friend was preoccupied with changing that for you. You and she drank Kentucky bourbon until it flowed through you like warm amber, and you danced in the rain.

You reminded him of things that he loved long ago, parts of life that he couldn’t enjoy in death. The smell of morning dew. The taste of fresh honey. The touch of sunlight on his skin after a long period of rain. It hurts to miss these things, but it’s agonizing to find it in something that’s just out of reach.

“Agh, my head.” Your friend had woken up. And as Remmick sorted through your likes and dislikes, your behavioral patterns and your habits in her memory, one thing became abundantly clear to him. 

You seemed to be the kind of person who gave themselves freely to others, but got little in return for your sacrifice. He’s known too many like you. He knows that it’s a lonely life to lead. He knows that deep down inside you there must be a hunger, a longing for something more. Something to fill the hole where your bleeding heart is.

With his glowing eyes focused on the moon overhead, Remmick laughed to himself. He knew how to fill that hole.

“No, you can’t.” 

Remmick turned his bloody face and locked eyes with your friend, who had pushed up onto her elbows on the ground. She blinked at him through the dark, watching as the night bent around him like he could command it. Her new fangs flashed bright from beneath her upper lip. She curled her face into a grimace, an agonized frown. 

“You can’t touch her.” 

Remmick’s eyes glowed red, the red of blood, the red of a predator finding its prey. Your friend’s eyes remained their base white– just a fledgeling. She’d seen into his mind. She knew how old he was, how many eons he had lived and how many stretched before him like an endless road he was destined to trod. She hadn’t even tasted blood, she was nothing compared to him. And yet, she planned to keep you from him. 

“Dunna recall askin’, love. Not really up to ya now, is it?” There was a finality in his tone that, if she understood it, she ignored.

She struck out at him, a broken piece of wood from the forest floor in her hand. It was a valiant effort, he gave her that, but he could see it coming. He’s been around a long time.

Remmick’s hand, elongated with razor sharp talons that could cut like a knife, plunged into the cavern of her chest as if her ribcage was no more than a paper film. He felt her pain in his own chest– the setback of a hivemind– but it was nothing that he hadn’t felt before, one thousand times over. Remmick gritted his teeth and welcomed the agony like an old friend. 

Her heart came free in his grip, still ripe with blood. It tasted of regret. He ate it with a smile on his face.

The rain came in as a welcome reprieve in the summer heat. When you stepped off your porch at dusk, it was with a soft whisper of your skirt in the breeze, your screen door snapping shut behind you. 

In the summertime, the crickets sang so loud that the night felt alive around you, like the darkness had its own soul and consciousness. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t love it, that walking into it didn’t feel like walking into the arms of a lover. 

The pond in the woods was a well-known secret to those who lived around the woods, but you never saw anyone around there when you went, so you could always bet that you’d be alone when you wanted to sit by the water. This time of year the frogs would be croaking, and you knew that the moon would reflect on the water nicely, and the water in the soil would float up to you with the heat and wrap around you like a blanket. 

You said that you liked to be alone, especially when you went to the pond, but did you really like it when it was the only choice you had? Can you truly like something out of necessity? You didn’t know. You spent a majority of your time alone, when you weren’t tending to your best friend’s newest crisis– and she’d gone home, citing a desperate need to “work things out” with her partner. You loved her, don’t mistake that, but there was also a deep loneliness within you that you couldn’t explain.

It was a stone in the pit of your stomach that never really left, even if your hunger was sated every so often. It was always there, it was just a matter of time before it made itself known again. It was a deep longing for something more, something that you couldn’t quite name but knew was missing from your soul. 

When you sat on a rock by the water’s edge, you searched for the answer in it like the surface would give up the secret to you, place it in the palm of your hand. But you saw and heard nothing, save for the rustle of the leaves in the wind. 

That is, until the rustling of the leaves gave way to a whispering, if you could call it that. It was a breath of air falling from parted lips, a sharp exhale on the nape of your neck.

Let me in. You swore you could hear the words, you could almost feel them dancing down your exposed arms. The whispers seemed to surround you on all sides, coming from the trees, the sky, the water. Tell me–Lovely girl–What needs–you bury–

You startled at a twig snapping in the trees behind you. Heart pounding, you looked over your shoulder with a gasp.

“Whup!” It was the man from your porch some nights ago who held his palms up in the darkness. He gave you a lopsided grin that seemed too sharp to be disarming. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare ya.”

You stared at him, not really knowing what to say. He looked better than he had when he nearly collapsed on your doorstep like a martyr. His shirt and face were no longer bloody. He wore a blouse, sleeves rolled to the elbows. His face showed no sign of ever having been lacerated at all. His hands were spotless. He wore his pants a bit loose, belted at the waist like it could erase the fact they were too big for him. 

“You’re not–” you began, then stopped, searching for the right words. “No one comes out here at night.”

“You did.”

“Old habits.” You blinked, then looked away, back to the water. He was too handsome. You were too weak. “Do you just… like to wander around here, then? I thought someone was chasing you.”

“Oh, they ran off. People come and go. It’s like that, ain’t it?” There was a mirth in his voice that confused you, like it was all just a joke to him. 

“Well, I guess that’s a good thing, then. Your name’s Remmick, right?”

He sounded pleased. “You remembered!” 

“You’re hard to forget,” you admitted. “You were pretty beat. You had me worried, there.”

“Kind o’ ya.” You didn’t hear his approach, but he was suddenly closer to you. “Nah, I can handle m’self pretty well, I like to think. But there are better things to talk about.”

“Oh, yeah?” you said, matching his smirk. “Like what?”

“Like what you’re doing out here in the middle o’ the night with no shoes on,” Remmick pointed out, gesturing to your bare feet on the rock. 

You looked down. You’d been excited about the rain letting up and you had run outside without your shoes, in your nightgown. You hadn’t actually expected anyone to see you like this. “I like to listen to the frogs.”

Remmick raised an eyebrow at you. “...Frogs?”

“Yes, frogs.” You nodded at him slowly. “Y’know. In the pond. They like to sound off at night.” 

He paused for a second. “I don’t hear anything.”

“That’s because you’re scaring them.”

Remmick snorted then, turning half-away from you. He spluttered a bit. “You– you’re somethin’ else, I’ll give ya that–”

“What do you have against frogs?”

“I’ll have you know, I like frogs just fine.” He sounded a little bit too indignant about it.

“Well, they’re not gonna make any noise while you’re standing around jabbering like that,” you scoffed at him. “They have stage fright.”

“Right, right. A thousand apologies, ma’am.” He kicked his heel against the ground. “Would they be offended if I joined you for the show?”

“Sit down and see.” 

Remmick grumbled something under his breath that you couldn’t make out, but he perched on the boulder beside you, anyways. His heels dug into the damp earth while he waited beside you, and the space around him seemed to buzz with electricity, nearly singeing your skin with its closeness. He smelled metallic, like copper pounded into a flat disc, and the salt of his sweat lingered in the humid air like it wanted you to taste it. Your mouth watered. 

After a few moments, he leaned a bit toward you, opened his mouth with an inhale to speak. You shushed him before he could, and he stared at you for a second with his mouth agape and a bewildered look on his face. Then he pressed his lips together and straightened up, following your lead without any more fuss. 

You spent a number of minutes sitting in silence together, watching the fireflies blink through the trees and over the water. It was peaceful, and laced with a kind of contentment you hadn’t had before, sitting there. It was as if his mere presence, unfamiliar though it was, drew you in and warmed you like a moth to a flame. 

Then, one frog croaked in the bushes. Then two joined in, and soon an entire chorus was chittering, filling the night air with sound. You grinned, and nudged Remmick’s arm with your elbow, as if to say, told you. He turned his head and nodded his assent. You were right.

After listening for a while, you said to him softly, “You know, I’ve never been out here with anyone before.”

“The frogs’d be too afraid, I reckon.” 

You giggled at him, and Remmick shot you a winsome smile. The singing of the little animals died out slowly as you spoke, but you found you couldn’t help yourself with him. “No, I just… I hadn’t thought anyone would want to.”

“What, you never even showed your friend?” You shot him a look out of the corner of your eye, and he faltered. “The… the one that was on your couch the other night.”

You hesitated for a moment, and then grunted. “She’s not really the type to sit and listen to the ‘music of the night,’ so to speak.” 

“I’d think that anybody who cares for you would want to share in the things you enjoy,” Remmick said. He crossed his arms, seemingly deep in thought. “Tell me somethin’. When was the last time… someone did for you, and expected nothin’ in return?” 

“I don’t know,” you murmured. “That’s not really how the world works.”

“It can be,” Remmick replied, and looked you over as though he could glean all of your earthly secrets just with a glance. “Only if you want it to be.”

You gazed into his eyes, and something about his words sparked a familiarity in you that you couldn’t explain. You felt as if you’d been here with him before, on this rock, having this exact conversation. Or that maybe, you met him once in a dream.

Are you the Devil?

Only if you want me to be.

You frowned. His accent still didn’t sit right with you. It didn’t even sit right in his mouth. It wasn’t supposed to be there. “You’re not really from the south, are you?”

Remmick tilted his head at you like an animal trying to figure out a foreign object. His hands had wandered into his pockets, his posture feigning comfort, but his back was too straight for it to seem real. Something in his face made you feel like he commanded the wind in the trees. “Not originally.”

“Your name is Irish, you said. Is that where you’re from?”

His glittering eyes trailed over you again as he hesitated. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, while he seemed to make up his mind about something. “That’s right.”

You crossed your legs, sitting your full weight onto the boulder you used as a perch. “Tell me about it.”

“About Ireland?” He was surprised. Surprised enough that the southern mask slipped, and was replaced by what you guessed was his real accent.

You nodded at him. Remmick finally tore his eyes away from you, almost bashful. He looked everywhere but at you– the trees, the sky, the pond, his shoes. He sucked on his teeth for a moment, before he shifted a bit towards you again. 

“‘Twas a little village, on the east o’ the island,” he began, and the lilt of his accent slipped through like he’d lost the resolve to cover it. “The land there… It was so green. Like nothin’ ye’d ever known. The conifers could grow so tall ya thought they’d reach the sky.” He gestured with his hand, holding it up over his head. “And the bogs, they’d swallow ya if ya weren’t careful. Like there was somethin’ livin’ there that didn’a wanna be bothered.”

“It sounds beautiful,” you told him in barely a whisper.

“Aye, it was,” Remmick murmured back. “There were groves where you could go, bring the sheep and let 'em graze. You could lay there in the grass for hours and never worry ‘bout anyone disturbin’ ya. And when the clouds broke, and the sun hit ya, it was like Brigid was singin’ a song right to ya.”

“Brigid?”

“Goddess o’ fire,” Remmick explained with an indulgent smile. He peered at you from beneath his lashes, looking a bit misty in the eyes. “And in the evenings, there’d be music, ‘cause truth was, ain’t nothin’ better in the world than music that moved the very soul in ya. Me grandda could beat a drum louder than thunder. You’d feel it in here,” he touched his fingers to your chest, drawing an X right over your thudding heart. “Like it was tryin’ to break ya clean in half. But that was before–” 

Remmick stopped short, like something had wrapped around his throat and forced his words to die there. He stared blankly at his fingers on your chest, seemingly at something there that distracted him. His lashes fluttered, casting long, spiney shadows over his cheeks.

“Before what?” you prompted gently after a moment. 

He blinked once, twice. Then he glanced up at your face, and smiled ruefully. “Bah. Listen to me chatterin’ on. The world seemed so much bigger when I was a lad. Always does, dunnit?”

You opened your mouth to agree, but found that you couldn’t make a sound. You were struck dumb. His eyes. They were glowing red, and you couldn’t ignore it this time, the way you had before. 

As if in a trance, you reached forward and touched your fingers to his cheek. You could feel his hand pressing against your chest, to feel your heartbeat as it pounded against your ribcage. His skin was cool to the touch, unlike the air that hung around him, swimming with the heat of summer.

You don’t know why you did it– you weren’t thinking, that could be the only explanation. Or maybe you were overwhelmed by the fact that whatever you held in your hands was not a man, even though he talked and breathed like one. He’d even groveled at your feet like one. But, when he parted his lips and you saw the flash of sharp fangs in his mouth, you reached to drag the pad of your fingertip across its razorlike edge.

Sink your teeth in me.

“I dreamt of these,” you whispered, while the ridges of your fingertip skipped over the point of his elongated canine. He held still as you felt them, nearly trembling and staring at you wide-eyed, and you imagined yourself sticking your hand into the mouth of a wolf as it bared its teeth. You remembered the feeling of them in your neck, so real in your mind, before you’d woken up in ecstasy. “I came.”

“You did.” 

“You knew that already,” you said, and it wasn’t exactly a question. 

“I did,” he answered, anyway. Remmick’s voice was broken and rough in his throat, almost the same as it had been in your dream. 

He was drooling. A thick stream of it dripped from the corner of his mouth, down his chin. You traced it with your fingertip, gathered it up before licking it off. Its taste was saccharine, like flowers rotting in the heat. Remmick’s hand fisted in the front of your nightgown.

You were on fire. Your heart felt as though it may jump up your throat from beneath his touch. Your skin prickled with goosebumps even in the hot summer night air. You wanted to lean forward and kiss him. You wanted to know what it might feel like if you came on his cock, instead. You wanted to take him right there on the dirt floor of the woods. 

You didn’t. You brushed your thumb over his cheekbone, and you didn’t miss the way he shivered when you did. 

“It’s getting late,” you told him finally, trying to keep your voice steady and even. Maybe you failed; he didn’t show any reaction either way. He stared at you like he hung on every word you said. “Walk me home.”

Without question, he did what you told him to. He shadowed you three feet behind, like a domesticated pet. But his eyes glowing at you in the dark like two red spotlights, an indication that he was not domesticated, nor a pet. Whatever Remmick was, he belonged to something more ancient and unknowable than the night itself. 

When you came to your porch, Remmick stopped short. Like a gentleman, he stood there in the dark as you mounted the porch steps, and you got the feeling that he was waiting for your next instruction, whatever it may be.

You paused with your back to him, feeling his piercing stare following your every move. Your tongue dragged over your dry lips, parched with thirst and unable to quench it. Not without him.

Then, you turned. You found him gazing up at you, and the red in his eyes seemed less sinister, and more reverent. When he looked at you like that, you felt like you were something otherworldly to him. 

“Would you like to come in for a drink?” The words left your mouth before you could overthink them. 

Remmick raised an eyebrow at you, like he thought he’d misheard you. “If you want.”

You almost laughed. Your hands shook in want of him. His mouth curled into a smile that was too innocent and reassuring for what you wanted from him. 

“Come in, Remmick,” you said. 

So he did.

NOW

Remmick stands in your house, and honestly, he doesn’t know what to do with himself now that he’s here. A lot of the time he expects not to be let in, because more and more people are smart enough to tell he’s not an honest person.

You are smart and you are aware that he’s not an honest person, if he’s a person at all, so he really wonders how in the world he’s standing here. He stares around at your bookshelves and your couch and your tables and chairs and rugs, and he feels like he shouldn’t be here, when he can’t be more than a dog without a bone where you’re concerned. 

The place smells like you. It positively reeks of your scent, and he breathes until his lungs are full of you. He figured he’d have to be patient, have to wait for you to warm up to him. He thought for sure that you’d run away screaming when you caught him with his fangs out– most people do. But you touched them, you stuck your fingers in his mouth and you licked his drool from them, and he hadn’t bitten down. 

Maybe you’re domesticating him after all, because he’s never known himself to not bite when he gets the chance.

You watch him with a curiosity that you think must mirror his own. Remmick froze in the middle of the room and he hasn’t moved in a minute, so you’re leaning against the kitchen counter, just… observing. 

It’s an odd thing, having something inhuman looking around at your domicile, which you can only assume he had to be invited into explicitly. His eyes are still glowing, but they wander around the room like he can somehow burn every bit of it into his memory if he looks at it all quick enough.

“Remmick?”

He looks at you. He can’t decide whether you’re prettier in the light of your own home, or with the moonlight spilling over you like a veil. 

“What are you, really?” A pout touches your lip, like it’s confounding you that you just can’t figure him out.

He grins. His teeth are long, sharp, and too plentiful. You get the sense that there are more where they come from, like he’s all teeth and he’s only letting you see some of them now. “We’ve already been over this, haven’t we?” 

You don’t move as he approaches you slowly, but you feel your senses circling the drain the closer he comes. “You spoke to me in riddles.”

Remmick shakes his head. “I told you the truth. At least, a little bit of it.” He leans in close, until you feel his breath on you and smell that metallic, warm scent that lingers around him. “Have you figured out what you want, love?”

Your lashes flutter. “You,” you whisper so sweetly, almost shyly, that he fights not to lose his composure. 

It’s frightening how still he goes. He won’t tell you what he is, but it seems that the appearance of life is a facade he can adopt or dispose of when he wants to. And yet, when he leans in and closes that small gap between you, your heart pounds and your hands reach up to rest against him, your fingers grazing the gold chain around his neck. 

Remmick kisses you, chastely, right at the corner of your mouth. His nose pressed against your cheek, he lingers there, and the light brush of his mouth next to yours is torturous. 

He waits. 

The stillness drags on for a beat, maybe two. And then you break, because you aren’t as studied in patience as a never-aging being who has all the time in the world.

When you turn your head and search for the touch of his lips, he makes a sound like a purr. His gratification is apparent in the curve of his mouth, and in the way his arm circles your waist to scoop you against him, like you weigh nothing. Like you are immaterial, a drop of water to his flood. 

Remmick’s palm touches your cheek, calloused and rough. His fingers, longer than they should realistically be and curved at the ends like jagged talons, stretch up your temples and to the side of your head. His thumb traces your jaw slowly, one millimeter at a time, as though to savor the stretch of skin he feels, to take it all in. 

His tongue drags along the curve of your lip and skips over your cupid’s bow, and you could burn up. You could melt in his arms. You moan into him, a broken sound in the back of your throat, and there is no bottom to his hunger. 

Time is an endless well for him, yes. But he wants you now.

Your feet barely touch the floor when Remmick moves you, and you cling to him. You can’t let go of him for anything, and his tongue invades you just as much as his touch does. The couch creaks under you when your back connects with it, and you find yourself splayed open for him.

Clawed hands hold you by your knees. Remmick hears your heart, the way that it thuds a cacophony in your chest. He smirks at you from below, eyes blazing.

“Are you nervous?” The words fall too softly from his mouth. Sharp nails prick into your skin and threaten to draw blood, and your nightgown is bunched around your hips. 

You don’t have the mind to lie to him– the idea of it seems futile, now. “Yes.”

“You should be.” 

Remmick’s lips press cool to your ankle, and are too soft as they drag over the curve of your calf, and he kneels before you. He touches you reverently, with desire burning in his gaze that could level cities. 

“First time I saw you, I thought y’were a goddess,” he tells you, almost under his breath. “Far as I know, you might still be.”

His spit smears along your inner thigh, the corner of his mouth too wet with it. He flicks his tongue out to lave over the skin there, and his senses are accosted by you– the heat of your body, the smell of the deepest part of you, the salt on your skin. 

“Let me taste you,” Remmick begs, his voice cracking with his need. It feels tight in his throat while he tries not to take what he wants. A base part of him needs you to say it, to give him the permission to devour you. With his eyes closed, he breathes in and whispers a, “please,” that you wouldn’t have caught, if not for his lips against your thigh. 

Your hand finds his head, and his hair– no, it shouldn’t feel the way that it does, light and whispy as smoke between your fingers. It should be sharp, coarse, like everything else about him seems to be. Instead it invites you to lace your fingers through it, to tug just to hear the small noise he makes in his throat as he stares up at you. 

“I want you to taste me.” The words are feeble in your mouth. You’d been so sure of yourself, so brave, but now he pushes your skirt up over your hips, and your cunt hits the cool air, and you feel more exposed than you know what to do with.

Remmick stares between your legs like what he sees there could save him, but from what you don’t know. Himself? His existence? He’s a mystery to you, beyond your comprehension. 

Your thighs threaten to close in around his shoulders. He holds you by your hips, yanks you toward him down the seat of the couch, and you latch onto the backrest for dear life. 

Niceties are a child’s game, but Remmick is a greedy, self indulgent creature. So he takes his time. 

He guides your thigh over his shoulder, and his sharp claws scrape down your sensitive skin. You jerk in his hold. Before you realize what’s happening, the claws digging into the juncture of your thigh slice sideways, leaving a gash that drips blood across your skin, and you cry out more in surprise than in pain. 

Remmick can’t drink from you properly, not unless he wants you to become like him, and see into his mind and know what he did to your friend, and then you’ll absolutely hate him. You’d despise him if you knew what he was in his entirety. 

So, it’s for self preservation– and no other reason, mind you– that he avoids letting his poison into your bloodstream. He licks your blood from you and feels warmth rush through him, feels it stir his cock and stoke his desire all at once. 

His cheeks flush, his eyes heavy lidded, he looks like the Devil between your legs.

“You taste divine,” Remmick says, the words delicate against your skin, and you forgive him. You’d forgive him for anything, you think, when he speaks to you like that. 

Then his mouth closes over your cunt. You cry out, your breath stalling in your lungs like he stole it. 

He takes note of every soft moan and sigh that falls from your lips, every twitch of your hips. He spends a long time there, tasting you, feeling you, on his tongue and his lips and his teeth. 

Remmick tightens his grip on your hip, his other hand reaching up to press flat against your stomach and pin you down. Your cunt throbs, your pleasure mounting and your thighs flexing and tensing when his fingers stroke over the fabric, his claws scraping and tearing at the threads. 

You always were fond of delicate lingerie; that’s your achilles heel now, because his nails cut through it like butter. 

His tongue prods into you, and you gasp so loudly it startles you both. He blinks, and then does it again, slower, watching your face as it pinches in pleasure. 

You’re so warm, warmer than anything Remmick has known in a long time. Sunlight couldn’t compare, fire is a weak substitute to your heat and your presence against him. So, when your hand in his hair tightens and you rock your hips against his mouth, Remmick lets you. He lets you, because he doesn’t remember the last time he enjoyed someone using him. 

You sing like a siren when you come, chasing your release on his tongue. It’s pleasure with an edge of pain. His teeth grazing your clit and his tongue soothing it makes you spasm against him.

Remmick doesn’t mean to, nor wants to let you go, but you squirm so much you break his hold. He gasps for air as if he actually needs it (he doesn’t), painfully stiff in his pants and ignoring it. He could spend eternity between your legs if you let him. 

Then you rip your nightgown the rest of the way over your head, and Remmick is faced with your naked beauty. Open-mouthed, he gulps air like an animal. You’re a vision to him, and he didn’t expect it to make him falter, but he does. Where his mind is normally rife with turmoil, suddenly he comes up with nothing. 

He’s still long enough for you to push him back. He makes a noise in his throat– he might have been trying to object or tell you to stay there, don’t move, but it was barely even a word, and it doesn’t register on his lips. Because, you slide off the couch and into his lap, and your lips crash into his mouth before he can.

And, well. Remmick never looks a gift horse in the mouth. 

Your hands tear at his clothes. The offending things are still on his body and you’re irritated by it, you want them off. Your skin is humming and you want to feel him against you like you’ve never wanted anything in your life. 

His shirt comes undone, finally, with buttons flying through the air and ripping seams. Remmick’s responding chuckle hits you between the legs. “Eager, are we?” 

“Please,” you whisper against his jaw. “I want to eat you alive.”

“The feeling’s mutual, love.” It’s a growl under his breath, but it sings to you in a way you don’t think he could fathom. That you’d let him is a fact you don’t want to face right now. 

Your mouth latches onto his neck and he whimpers. It’s a noise that makes you think maybe he doesn’t care if you see him exposed– that maybe you could sink your teeth into him as well, and he’d be just as happy with it. 

The thought makes something inside you stir. A sleeping beast; a dormant, needy thing, with teeth and claws to match his own. You test him, draw back your lips and let them indent his flesh as far as you dare. 

Remmick, the bastard, laughs. He laughs, but it ends on a moan when you run your tongue over the impression of your teeth, like a salve on a bruise. 

He draws a hand up your back. “Y’can do better than that, sweet pea. Go on. Draw blood.”

You latch your teeth around his shoulder and bite down hard, harder, until you feel his skin give. Remmick’s hips jerk up into you while his hand clamps down harder on your neck. His blood floods your mouth in a rush of salty brine, like the sea rushes in to meet the shore.

Remmick’s cry is sinful, a delight in the way that it crackles in his throat and rumbles against your lips. His gasps are almost like moans, each loud in its obscenity. 

The pain is exquisite. Unrestrained love is something Remmick needs like a sword in the back– it would only destroy him in the long run. But pain keeps the balance. Pain reminds him of what he is.

Your lips break away from his skin with a sticky, wet noise, and remain connected to it by a string of bloody saliva. His blood oozes from the wound in the shape of your teeth, marring his shoulder. 

You can’t help yourself. You drag your tongue over it, lapping up the blood just to feel him shudder beneath you. It’s a full-body tremor that makes you wonder if you’ve really frightened him. Hurt is a different story altogether. 

But then you look at his face. 

“You can’t have enjoyed that,” you murmur in disbelief, your eyes searching him, close enough to feel his breath on your cheek. Remmick looks dazed, half drunk with how his eyelids droop. He pants like he ran ten miles through the desert. 

“Oh, I did,” he replies, his voice dark, his eyes shining. “I did immensely, believe you, me.”

“I did, too,” you admit. You debate whether you should feel embarrassed about that– in his lap, it feels like a moot point. 

The mark of your teeth in his shoulder oozes with blood, and it spills down his chest in smooth trails. You drag your hand from his unmarred shoulder, down the slope of his pectoral to the dip between his ribs, and you feel no heartbeat, nor the warmth of a living body. But he is alive, and he looks at you like you’ve hung the moon. 

He smiles as he drags his thumb across your bottom lip, bringing with it your spit and his blood. “You’ve got a hunger in there you just can’t satisfy, don’tcha? Something bloodthirsty about you,” he remarks, bringing his thumb to his mouth and sucking on it. “We’re gonna have so much fun together.”

He doesn’t kiss you so much as he licks the blood from your face, but you don’t mind it. You find that you like having Remmick’s tongue on you, as much as you like having his blood in your mouth. You must make a charming pair, really. 

Your hands tear at his pants, trying desperately to finish what you started in your haste. Remmick doesn’t stop you, but he also doesn’t try to help you. He’s more content to let you struggle, because he knows you’ll be more satisfied in the end. Never let it be said that Remmick leaves his lovers unsatisfied. 

He hovers there, a hair’s breadth away from your lips, watching you as you lift him from his trousers. Torturing you with his closeness, amused while you try to hide the surprise that washes over your face. 

“Don’t worry,” he says simply, and his chagrin is evident in his voice. “We can go slow if you need to.”

You nearly growl in your indignation. You know that he’s just trying to provoke you, just to see what you’ll do. You can’t help it, though. Lust is boiling in the pit of your stomach, crawling along your skin and coursing through your veins. 

You do not go slow. You do not go gentle, or soft, and you hadn’t ever been tempted to. You sink down on his cock with a fire in your eyes that could level his, just to spite him. He cries out like you’ve torn him in half– like your teeth digging into his flesh had been a kitten lick in comparison. 

Oh, it burns. It burns in the most wonderfully intimate way, and you’re a bit too mindless to stop. You set a pace as ruthless and brutal as his claws in your back. 

Your head bent back on your shoulders, you feel his nose skimming up the line of your throat. The flash of his fangs graze your jugular, but he doesn’t bite. You don’t know why he won’t. 

“Fuck, you’re massive,” you gasp, and it’s the truth. Remmick is so deep in you that he hits some indelible end that makes you feel as though you’re splitting open. You’re caving in, sucked into a void with no light and no meaning other than him.

Remmick pulls you to him, hard. You’re smashed against his bloody chest, encased in his arms while you rock down onto him. You want him as far as he’ll go. You want him the way a starving man wants salvation.

You’re so sensitive from when he brought you to orgasm with his tongue, and your body takes him so willingly, inviting him in as though he’s meant to be there. When you move your hips, it feels like the breath has been stolen from your lungs. It feels like you could latch onto him and never let him go. 

Remmick’s lips part with his hiss of breath, his eyes glassy as he turns his face into the crook of your neck. He’s been deprived of pleasure for too long, and for a creature that survives on hedonism, deprivation is a fate worse than death. He drowns in the flood of it, squeezing his eyes shut when his hunger burns red hot in the back of his throat. 

A tear spills out, dripping down his cheek as he shudders against you. It’s undignified, pathetic of him to need you so badly, but his jaw aches with the desire to bite down on something, and your scent is so strong there at the dip of your neck. 

He snaps his hips up sharply, and your cunt pulses around him. The rise and fall of your body is hasty, instinctual, like if you chase your release fast enough it may bring you to a conclusion more meaningful and everlasting than what waits for you: the comedown, the inevitable dissolution of what you have here.

It doesn’t have to end, Remmick thinks, and he curses in his original tongue, a language so ancient that you can’t even recognize it for what it is. 

“I can’t– I can’t–” he mutters into your skin, and you don’t know that he’s talking to himself more than you, hanging on to his composure by a thread while it’s splitting at the seams. “You are so beautiful,” he whispers, like it’s a secret. “No, I can’t.” 

He mouths at the juncture of your shoulder and neck, as if he isn’t thinking about ripping it apart with his teeth. As if you aren’t a prey animal in the maw of its very demise.

Your fingers weave through the hair at the back of his skull, and a wave of heat bursts up his spine, from his hips to the nape of his neck. He shudders and groans against you, his eyes going wide as you lift his head so you can gaze down at him. 

He’s always going to feel so small when you look down on him like that. 

“You can have anything you want,” you tell him, but then you moan into his face because he jolts his hips up into you, and he hits a part of you that’s desperate for attention. It takes everything in you to keep your eyes open. “You need only ask.”

They’re his own words, echoed back to him. He shakes his head a bit in your hands. You have no idea what he wants– you can’t possibly. In direct opposition to you, Remmick closes his burning eyes. 

“I want you– with me– always,” he tells you from behind gritted teeth, his aching jaw clenched shut. His frustration is evident in his voice, his claws digging into your lower back until blood wells on the skin.

“Then make me yours.” 

He cants his hips up into yours, a groan breaking in his throat. He can hear and feel your heart beating in your chest, pressed up against his own. If he does what you tell him to, he’ll never hear it again. He’ll taste you like this, once more, and then never again, another drop in the sea of things he’s lost to time.

“Make me yours, Remmick,” you repeat, your breath ghosting over his mouth, your tongue silver as moonlight to his senses. Your cunt squeezes him so tight, he swears he could come just from this; the heat of your breath in his mouth, the scent of you surrounding him, pulsating on him. 

You still taste like his blood when you bite down on his lip. His ensuing growl is the very sound of danger– an animal threatened in its home, a primal warning. Remmick’s hands on your hips urge you on, guide you to move faster against him. You snap your hips down sharply against his, meeting him with a slow grind that has you seeing stars. 

One hand, elongated with claws that could span the curve of your skull and reach your brow, curls possessively around the back of your neck. Remmick’s glowing eyes lock on yours, fresh with a hunger as old as humanity itself. 

It’s the essence of being– to want and be wanted.

“Come for me,” Remmick says, his voice low and rough, almost like a groan in the way it rattles in his chest. 

Pleasure licks you sweetly between the legs. Remmick watches as it washes over your face and then breaks, shattering you when your orgasm hits. You cry out, letting his hand hold your head up for you, letting him fill you when he comes. You’re wet where you connect to him, stuck to him with blood and cum, smeared with his spit and sweat. 

It’s the best you’ve ever felt.

Remmick’s moans sing to you like an admission of defeat. His sweat damp face, turned against your throat, feels like the kiss of death. His fangs in your skin are exactly that.

You slump forward, pushing your throat into his mouth while a high pitched, needy moan falls from your lips. It reverberates in his ears, urging him to give over further to the animal impulse, to rip at your flesh and drink what he can before you’re gone. 

Your blood, like golden ichor, fills him with longing. You taste of nectar, and the temporary, fleeting spell of life. He drinks until he feels sick. He drinks until he’s full of you, and even then it’ll never be enough. Never enough for the hunger that lives in him.

Remmick holds you to him until he doesn’t feel your heartbeat anymore. Until he starts to see your memories, he starts to feel his sire connection to you take hold, he keeps his fangs in you. Maybe you will hate him for what he’s done. Maybe you will curse him for eternity. 

Regardless, you will live in each other, a part of each other, until the sun dies out, and the earth stands still. You’ll spend the rest of time intertwined.

Such is the nature of a vampire.

[kettlefire]

Muscle Memory (DpxDc)

Jason barely remembered getting back to his safe house or even finding his way to bed. The night had been so tiring, so busy, and so many parts of his body hurt.

The moment his head hit the pillow, he was out like a light. Drifting off into dreamland for some much need sleep.

That was until a noise stirred him up from his sleep. It was a soft creak of one of his many loose floorboards.

It was in a flash that Jason was up, eyes still heavy with sleep, and a gun held to his thigh as he exited his bedroom. The soft light coming from his bathroom was the first hint.

When he pushed open the bathroom door, the sight before him had him holstering his weapon. Black hair, blue eyes, and blood. That's all Jason needed to see.

Jason would swear he wasn't still half asleep, that he knew this wasn't one of his brothers. In reality, still sluggish from a hard night and sleep deprivation, Jasin's brain had automatically assumed it was one of his baby brothers.

As he immediately settled into patching up the wounds, holding back questions for now. It wouldn't be the first time one of them came to him for aid when they didn't want Bruce to know they were hurt yet.

It was pure muscle memory as Jason worked. Yes, he didn't like the injuries, reminding himself to ask which rogue did this in the morning.

Now wasn't the time for an interrogation. Not with the barely concealed tears in those eyes, or the dark bags that decorated beneath them.

He barely grumbled for the teen to take the couch, reminding that there were extra blankets in the hallway closet. Dropping a few pills into the boy's hand to help with the pain he was surely in.

Jason left the mess in the bathroom, leaving it a problem for more awake him. He waved the boy off when he tried to speak, telling him they'll talk in the morning.

In the end, Jason was glad to finally face plant back into his bed. Barely bothering to curl up under the covers before sleep took over once again.

When morning came, Jason almost forgot about letting one of his brother's crash in his place. Stumbling out of his bedroom to immediately notice the lump on his couch.

He put a pot of coffee on, grabbing his phone, ready to let Bruce know that whoever came to him last night was safe and sound.

Except, when Jason moved over to confirm who it was, he finally noticed. This wasn't one of his brothers. And last he heard, Bruce hadn't taken in any new strays.

Jason stood over the sleeping boy, phone in one hand, and mind figuring out what to do. His mind replaying the half-asleep memories from last night.

It made sense, now that he thought about it. The boy had seemed so scared, so surprised that Jason was helping. The boy hadn't done anything either by the looks of it.

He didn't seem to have taken anything or even snooped. The boy seemed to have just crashed on the couch like Jason had told him to. He didn't come here to rob him or cause trouble. The kid had broken into his safe house only to raid his first aid kit.

The kid had broken into his safe house only to raid his first aid kit.

Well, Jason wasn't about to put Alfred's teachings to shame by being a horrible host either.

[pendwelling]

'...can i ever go back to the time before i've experienced such sheer power?'

[peachhoneii]

Drives me mad to think Stanford was this close to calling Stan earlier if not for Bill’s interference, and as a fucked up call back, Bill pulls the “Suicidal Phone Call to Stan” on Ford after they breakup.

Long before Weirdmageddon, Bill did not like Stan. Abusers isolate victims. It was easy with Fiddleford, but Bill knew Ford missed his brother deeply. Stan’s personality is much stronger and louder than Fiddleford’s. Stan was gonna pull Ford away if Bill allowed Ford to reach out because despite everything Bill has some understanding of interpersonal relationships.

Because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have threatened to call Stan. He knows deep, deep down inside that Ford wants his brother back.

It hurts so much to reread the lost Journal pages. Ford’s loneliness was so palpable. He was a deeply lonely man who really didn’t know how to talk to people. That’s what Stan was there for.

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

[hmmm. upon the morning reread i think the conflict needs to be drawn out for longer, and the voices should be more distinct.] “And who said you should be in charge? We’re free men now, we don’t have to listen to you!”  

Liu Bang cocked his head to one side and bit back a grin. This was good; being challenged was better than being ignored. “What’s the name of this forest we’re in?” He pointed directly at the man who had challenged him, singling him out in the eyes of his comrades. 

“I…” The man turned red, blindsided by the question and suddenly stripped of anonymity. The people around him were all staring in the direction of Liu Bang’s finger, which only increased the pressure. “We’re on the road to Mount Li!” 

“And what’s the name of the nearest village?” Liu Bang pressed on mercilessly, not giving him a chance to collect himself. “How many li is it from here?” 

“It’s, uh, behind us—the one we just passed.” 

The sound of snickering broke out from the back row, gleeful and ugly. 

The challenger flinched. “Shut up! You looking for a beating?” 

“Fuck you,” came the response, “I ain’t scared of you!” Despite his bluster, the speaker was hidden by at least two rows of people and he did not step forward. Likewise, the challenger did not go looking for him. All bark, no bite. Liu Bang had seen this a hundred times before. 

Now that he’d stirred the pot, it was time to play the mediator. “Settle down, settle down! We’re having a nice, civil discussion. Not a pissing contest.” Liu Bang stepped into the crowd and slung his arm over the man who had challenged him. It was both friendly and unmistakably forceful. The man froze, as tense as an wooden fence-post under Liu Bang’s burly arm, but he made no attempt to throw him off. Liu Bang made sure the hilt of his sword as pressed uncomfortably into the man’s hip—just a little food for thought. 

“Now, it’s no disgrace if none of you are familiar with the geography.” Liu Bang said sternly, “It’s not because you’re stupid. It’s done on purpose. The Qin dump you somewhere far away, where you don’t know the lay of the land, and no one cares if you live or die. They make it so you can’t survive on your own, even if you do escape. That’s why we gotta stick togather! I’ve travelled this part of the county a hundred times. Up, down and sideways. I know it like the back of my hand. Only a local could be savvier— but I reckon they won’t be nearly as friendly towards you lot.” 

Some of the men were nodding and muttering, “yeah, that’s true…” 

“They’ll turn us in for reward money.”

The man who had dared to challenge him had gone progressively more limp under his arm. Now he averted his eyes and grumbled, “But what’s the point of having a fucking tour guide? There’s only one road, it don’t take no genius to walk in a straight line.” 

“Yeah!” Another piped up, “Why don’t we just hide in the woods? There’s plenty of fish and fowl to hunt, and it’s so big no one will find us.” 

“And I suppose tents, blankets and clothes also grow on trees then?” Liu Bang laughed, he had hit his stride now. The men were not challenging him anymore, they were demanding answers. Testing his knowledge. Looking for guidance. “Camping under the stars loses it’s shine when winter hits and the ground is frozen! Say, what happens if a pox sweeps through, and you need to go into town for supplies and medicine? What if you get a hankering for a few jugs of wine—are you gonna grow some millet and hire a few farmers while you’re at it?” 

The wine was a highly calculated line; just the mention of it made several people start salivating like dogs. 

Someone muttered “Fuck, I’d kill for a drink,” and Liu Bang grinned. Got ‘em. 

“Like it or not, you’re all marked men!” Liu Bang spread his arms wide, “Look at you! Even the ones without tattoos have no beards! You all look suspicious as shit! Now, I don’t mean to cast no ‘spersions, but I’m the only fellow here who looks halfway presentable. I’m doing my best, but it’s never gonna work if everyone runs about like headless chickens.” 

“And who said you should be in charge? We’re free men now, we don’t have to listen to you!”  

Liu Bang cocked his head to one side and bit back a grin. This was good; being challenged was better than being ignored. “What’s the name of this forest we’re in?” He pointed directly at the man who had challenged him, singling him out in the eyes of his comrades. 

“I…” The man turned red, having been suddenly stripped of anonymity. The people around him were all staring in the direction of Liu Bang’s finger, which only increased the pressure.  “We…we’re on the road to Mount Li.” 

“And what’s the name of the nearest village?” Liu Bang pressed on mercilessly. “How many li is it from here?” 

“It’s behind us. The one we just passed.” 

The sound of snickering broke out from the back row. 

The challenger flinched. “Shut up! It’s not like you know the answer either!” 

Liu Bang folded his arms and allowed the silence to drag on until it became excruciating. The man who had dared to challenge him finally averted his eyes and grumbled, “It’s a fucking straight road, how hard can it be…?” 

Submission was met with mercy. Liu Bang did not rub his victory in the man’s face, he simply spoke over him; “I’ve travelled this part of the county a hundred times in both directions. I know it like the back of my hand. Only a local could be savvier— but I reckon they don’t be nearly as friendly towards you lot.” 

Some of the men were nodding and muttering “yeah, that’s true…” 

"They'll turn us in for reward money..."

“And how are you supposed to get around unnoticed? What if you need to go into town for supplies, like medicine or a few jugs of wine?” The wine was a highly calculated line; just the mention of it made several people start salivating like dogs. 

“Like it or not, you’re all marked men!” Liu Bang spread his arms wide, “Look at you! Even the ones without tattoos have no beards! You all look suspicious as shit! Now, I don’t mean to cast no ‘spersions, but I’m the only fellow here who looks halfway presentable. I’m doing the best I can, but it won’t work if everyone runs about like headless chickens.” 

Notes:

i've been going over the feedback everyone has left me. i think it's crutial liu bang encounters more pushback from the ex-convicts, it's a good way to show how he weilds soft power and rhetoric to gain the upper hand during times of instability

aha, you fool you've commited one of the classic blunders! never get involved in a land war in asia, and never engage in verbal ju-jitsu with liu bang when death populism is on the line!

[ohrackham]

It is not what you do for me that makes me love you. It's your kindness. Your empathy. How much you care. Just being you is enough, Colin. I do not need you to save me. I just need you to stand by me. To hold me. To kiss me.

[anjellicles]

have any of u read that one bq ballet au fic yet ? 🥹🌹

[inkedinserendipity]

rereading system collapse is so funny because murderbot's humans (and its asshole research transport) are like. illogically protective of it. some variation of this interaction happens like four times in fifty pages:

murderbot, standing around and stalling, having a mental breakdown: come on murderbot you gotta be better than this you can't just be having [redacted] do your JOB

ratthi/iris, who know this, distracting it: do those hatches look weird to you? those hatches look weird to me. murderbot, based on your thousands of hours of media consumption, do those hatches look weird to you?

and then to make it worse, feat. poor tarik:

tarik, on a high-stakes mission spearheaded by a secunit who is sending absolutely zero information back to the rest of the crew: ? status update?

iris/ratthi/art-drone, pulling out knives (/bombs): hey tarik? can you leave our murderbot alone? that's our specialest little secunit? it's got anxiety and it's doing its best so fuck off?

and then they start verbally stabbing him.

the amount of glee these scenes give me. i genuinely forgot how quickly they all rally around murderbot. and then there was that scene where murderbot went oh no, was tarik security, i don't want to take his job, and art-drone was like that was NOT his job he was NOT security and actually fuck that guy and YOU are security for my crew and if anything ever happened to you i would BOMB A PLANET

[leakypaintpen]

I love love love both books so much, but I gotta throw my hat in the ring for Superman Smashes the Klan:

Cass’s book doesn’t need a whole lot of context to get why she’s taken up the mantle, but knowing what happened in No Man’s Land is helpful to knowing who the secondary characters are and what’s going on in Gotham. SSK can be given to someone with absolutely no knowledge of comics and provide them a pretty comprehensive picture of who Superman is. There’s a reason it’s so often recommended as an intro to the character.

SSK adapts probably the best known story arc of the Adventures of Superman radio show, but from the viewpoint of a very minor character in the original broadcasted episodes who brings a great vitality to it. Roberta’s voice has a fresh innocence while showing how racism hurts more than just the victims.

Clark’s arc is tied to his Golden Age incarnation, which ngl is my favorite version, and tightly woven into the themes of identity and acceptance.

It’s pertinent to real issues and respects the humanity of nearly all the characters, even the villains. Batgirl is a groundbreaking book, but SSK has impact that goes well beyond its pages, even today.

It’s the perfect length for an afternoon sitting, which makes it great for a quick reread as well as accessible for comic newbies. I also just really like a good short story, there’s an art to it that I feel goes under-appreciated by many. I judge books by how often I reread them, so SSK wins out for me.

Oh and if you want to make a new DC fan, no better time than now with the recent release of the new Superman movie. Give them SSK, Superman: Birthright, and Waid/Mora World’s Finest (I like the 2nd volume best but really it’s all good) and they’ll be set.

[quilleily]

What if the switch in the bridge was successful?