#Alexithymia fic

[carmyboobear]

ALEXITHYMIA CH 1: onions, weed, and pizza

Roommate AU: Carmy Berzatto x Reader (R18)

ao3 link ch 2 ch 3 ch 4

Summary: Carmy can’t put into words how he feels about his roommate. It’s only been a couple months, but here he is looking forward to going home and sharing a smoke with them. That’s all it is, though. There are no underlying feelings, none at all, even if everyone around him has something to say about it. 

Or: Carmy is repressed as ever, but through the combined power of vulnerability, weed, and the horny, Carmy too can find love. 

Tags: hurt/comfort, friends to lovers, mutual pining, slow burn, cursing, yearning, repression, SO MUCH REPRESSION, angst, mental illness, canon-typical imagery, unresolved tension, for now, virgin carmy, use of weed, alcohol, all that good stuff, carmy character study, eventual smut, gender neutral reader, nonbinary reader, up to you

A/N: HI I've never posted fic on tumblr before but i deeply love Carmy...please enjoy!!!

CHAPTER 1: onions, weed, and pizza

It always stays the same. 

This is the thought that Carmy has when he wakes up, gasping for a chance to just catch his breath and keep it. It’s a kitchen knife twisting like a lock and key in his chest. It fits just right, as all awful and familiar things seem to do.

No matter how many times he wakes up, he’s never anywhere different. That drowning feeling suffocates him in his sleep and follows dutifully into his waking hours. He can’t remember when that haunting started, only that it’s always been with him.

He hates feeling like a drifter, like he’s lost (even though he is both of those things), so he picks a goal and runs after it like a monster. He’s an animal, hunting and working and bleeding until he fucking makes it work , because that’s who he is, and that’s who he’s always been. He can’t not make it work. Because if he can’t do it, then…then what was it all for? 

What is he even for?

These are the thrilling thoughts that serve as the background music to the swirl of his cheap morning coffee, oils rotating in a slow circle. He thinks about getting a nicer brand next time he goes grocery shopping. But that would mean change. That would mean less money on the restaurant, too.

Yeah, so it tastes like shit, but it doesn’t matter. Even if it mattered once. Less and less matters to him these days.

Mornings in Chicago are not technically quiet by definition, but when compared to other times of day, they are. Especially when most of his day is spent in the kitchen wringing out his throat. It isn’t bad to have a quiet morning by normal means, but for him…

The quiet is dangerous.

It’s not silent, but it’s not enough. There’s distant beeping of impatient cars. The whirring sound of the old AC unit. He tries to listen to them, but his rampant thoughts nonetheless rise above them all, buzzing everywhere with nowhere to land. 

A brief analysis of his thoughts reads as such:

Beef sandwiches eggs flour shipment Michael cigarettes smoking sore throat late shipment so tired not sleeping Michael Sugar Mom coffee tastes bad it’s too early my stomach hurts Michael fucking hates you Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael you piece of shit you fucking ki—

“Mornin’, Carmy.”

Until his roommate wakes up, that is. 

When he moved back to Chicago, there was a fact, plain, simple, and unchanging. He wasn’t gonna make rent on his own, not with the restaurant. Not with everything. So maybe he didn’t need to deal with a new roommate, but it’s not like there was a choice. It seemed bearable, survivable enough.

He keeps waiting for the thing that’ll make him grit his teeth, make him regret not getting a place on his own, but it never comes. They’re easy to live with. It’s so easy, as a matter of fact, that it feels strange. The difficulty that he was so certainly expecting just isn’t there. 

If anything, he looks forward to being at home. For someone who lives at work, that feeling is completely foreign.  

They don’t steal his food (not that there’s much). Instead, they cook him food, leaving heated leftovers on the stove on late nights. In Carmy’s case, that’s most nights. They don’t bring over obnoxious company and keep him up with the noise. Rather, he basks in their company, and they make a ruckus between their laughter. Their presence doesn’t stifle him, it soothes him, just like the candle they leave lit in the kitchen for him when he comes home.  They’re not just easy to live with, they’re good to live with, and that’s…

That’s been a hard adjustment, Carmy would say. It’s too much of a good thing that he’s not sure what to do with himself.

On those late nights, they’re usually fast asleep by the time he’s home. But as he sits and eats the leftovers they’ve kept for him, he wants to say something. Something about how a long time ago, there was once a Carmy who cooked for himself, who looked after himself, but that he’s not that Carmy anymore. That it doesn’t matter that he’s a five star chef and they’re just some guy in the kitchen, as they would put it, because he’s…

He’s grateful. Incredibly so.

And yet, the words will never come out. He feels the words tingling on his lips, but it feels scary. He can thank them as many times as he likes (which he does) but it will never capture what he’s really trying to say when he says thank you . There’s too many words, and it just can’t…it just can’t—

It always stays the same. 

“You’re up early,” he says to them when they enter the room. It’s a rare sight to see them up at the early hours he frequents. He sees the morning drowsiness in their mussed hair and big t-shirt stained with hair dye. They yawn back at him, nose scrunching.

Cute , he thinks, and he stamps it down as soon as it flashes through his mind. 

“Randomly woke up.” They fall into the empty seat next to him on the couch, and they rub at the crust around their eyes. “About to head off to work?”

“Unfortunately, yeah,” he replies. There’s a certain sentiment that lies on the tip of his tongue, something about how he wishes he could have a slow morning with them instead. Of course, he can’t voice it. He can’t even come close.

“The plague of the working man,” they sigh. “Well, I got an idea that might cheer you up.”

“...And that would be?”

“Let me paint you a beautiful picture,” they start. They clear their throat and gesture widely with their hands. He notices their chipped nail polish, the writing callus on their middle finger. “Imagine this—you come home from work, tired. You need to relax —something you need to do more often,” they add with a pointed look.  No comment. “And I have dinner ready. Some sort of soup, pasta maybe. I need to check the fridge.” They pause with a yawn. “And before we eat, we smoke a big, fat joint.”

He snorts as they finish, unable to hold back a laugh. 

“That’s a nice picture,” he admits. He doesn’t remember when he started smiling. “Y’know, I was wondering when the joint was gonna pop in.” 

“You fucking know me, man,” they reply, blooming with his interest, his smile. Not that he can perceive that. “So? Thoughts? Haven’t done that in a while, right?”

“Right, right,” he echoes faintly. His mind is already sorting through the pile of tasks on the schedule. “Well, I gotta go over this new recipe with Marcus, today,” he mutters, partially under his breath. “But before that, ingredient orders. And those invoices before the end of the day—and that, that toilet guy was supposed to come today…I think?”

“Dude, I do like, one task, and the day’s over for me,” they say sympathetically, and the look on their face is so serious that Carmy struggles to hide his smile. “You’re crazy.”

“I, I’ve seen you do tasks,” he argues. 

“Name one,” they argue back.

“You did two loads of laundry and did the dishes all before lunch time once,” he says, the memory clear and instant. “And when I woke up, you were vacuuming the whole place.” The immediacy surprises him, and it seems to surprise them, too. 

“Damn, I said name one , but I guess I’m just that good!” They laugh, a breathy, exasperated sort of thing. “Well, point taken. Anyway, it sounds like you’re not gonna be home early tonight.” 

“It is a Friday,” he says, “but…”

“But.”

“Can’t make promises I can’t keep,” he sighs, and shame melts over him like butter on a stainless steel pain. This isn’t anything new. 

“I know, I know,” they say, gracious as ever. “It’s okay. Such is the life of a business owner, yeah?” He searches for some thinly veiled shred of disappointment, frustration in their expression, but he doesn’t. No matter how many times he lets them down, the explosion he’s waiting for never comes. They remain patient, collected through it all. 

Says more about him than them, he supposes. 

“Yeah,” he mutters, “such is the life.” 

“C’est la fucking vie,” they say, and he laughs with a shake of his head. 

It can feel strange to laugh. He worries that the lightness in his chest will expand like a balloon, and he’ll float away. It’s uncontrollable, foreign. It should be scary, how his emotions lead him when he’s around them, not the other way around, but it’s not. 

It’s not scary to loosen up around them, and that’s the scary part. There are no words to describe why. All he can see is that the fear exists, stubborn and persistent. That fear is what makes him snap out of it, makes him look at the clock. He holds back a sigh. 

“Time to go,” he mutters, and they nod.

“And time for me to go back to bed.” They salute him. “Best of luck with your day, brave soldier. And just shoot me a text if you do end up coming back early, ok?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll try. And, thanks. You, you too,” he gets out. He stands up, readjusting the waistband of his pants. “I’ll, uh, see you later.”

“See you,” they say through a yawn, waving at him from where they’re lying down. They’ve taken his spot, sprawled across the couch, tangled hair flayed out on the pillows. 

Cute , he thinks again, and hearing the thought in his brain makes him wanna panic. 

He doesn’t wanna panic, doesn’t wanna think about it at all, so he nods, shuts the door, and heads out to work with a cigarette hastily lit in his mouth. 

By the time it’s Carmy’s lunch break, he swears his vocal cords must have snapped by how tight he was wringing them. 

The soreness has never stopped him from lighting a cig, though. As he stands outside in the back, finally forced to go on his 30, he smokes rather than eating. There’s a sandwich in his pocket, one that was bearing the brunt of test ingredients. He can feel the aluminum wrapping at his fingertips. 

Eventually, he does eat, though, because he sees the way his hands are shaking when he flicks his lighter. He doesn’t wanna shake when he uses a knife, so he eats. He tastes it, but he doesn’t really taste it.

In truth, he wasn’t even planning on taking his lunch break at all. Most days, he forgets about it. The kitchen’s always busy, there’s always something missing, there’s always something that hasn’t been prepped that’s ruining everything, the lights in the hallways keep flickering because they need to fixed, Fak’s supposed to fix them, but he can’t, because Richie’s still out getting the replacement bulbs, the pile of papers on his desk are bigger than he remembers, he doesn’t have enough fucking time—

But then he’s in the middle of chopping an onion, and the cutting board slips. The half-chopped onion and its sliced offspring scatter on the floor with the cutting board. The sound of its fall draws Sydney in like a whip. 

“You okay? Need a bandaid?” Sydney’s already kneeling by him, helping him pick the onions off the floor. 

“I, I’m fine, didn’t drop the knife,” he explains, and it feels like an ocean current is rushing by his ears. “Fucking, I just—such a stupid fucking—” He sucks in a breath and goes silent. 

His entire body feels tight, wound like a spring. He can barely fucking breathe. 

“Hey.” Carmy turns his intense stare from the onions to Sydney, and when he sees her searching expression, he remembers himself. “Maybe you should go take your lunch break.”

“No, I’m fine, really,” he repeats, and he feels like he’s heard this before. From someone else. He can’t remember. Who was it? “The onions—we’re behind on onions—”

“I can handle onions for 30 minutes,” she interrupts, decisive and firm. “Seriously.”

Carmy’s about to say something, but then he’s looking at the onion half in his hand. His hand is shaking. 

“Okay,” he sighs after a beat. “Okay, yeah. Sorry. For fucking up.”

“It happens. We all have our moments.” She shrugs. When he keeps standing there, she makes this shoo-ing motion with her hand. “Go on. Take your 30!”

So here he is, taking his lunch break a whole hour later than he’s supposed to. Although it’s better than most days where he doesn’t take it at all.

She wouldn’t have had to tell you to take a break if you didn’t fuck it all up, he thinks to himself, eyebrows knitted together. When the last time I’ve fucked up something so fucking easy?

He thinks about his dream from last night. A familiar sight of red fire and flames up to the ceiling, crackling so loud it sounded like screaming. The only good part is that when he woke up, he wasn’t at the stove burning his place down. It hasn’t happened at this apartment yet. Carmy hopes it never happens. 

Just get it together, he thinks. He aggressively taps the ash out onto the decrepit ash tray they have in the back. It’s full. You’re supposed to be at this shit. So just be good.

“Cousin.” Carmy snaps his head up, and Richie’s at the door, stepping out. His presence yanks him out of his inner whirlpool, a quickly descending spiral. “Gimme one.”

Wordlessly, Carmy hands him a cigarette. Richie plucks it out of his hand like a flower.

“You had a lighter, but no cigarette?” Carmy comments, squinting at Richie pulling a busted up red lighter from his jean pocket. 

“Shut up,” Richie mutters, but there’s no heat behind it. “Got the wrong damn light bulbs,” he explains unprompted. 

“Alright,” Carmy sighs. He has so little energy that the frustration bypasses him completely, diving instantly into deflated acceptance. “Just return ‘em.”

“Can’t,” Richie says, and when Carmy gives him a look, he elaborates, “no receipt.” 

“ Dude .” Carmy opens his mouth, but then he shuts it again. It’s just not worth it. “Thanks anyway, cousin. We’ll get it done.”

“Don’t fuckin’ thank me, you asshole. I didn’t do shit.” Richie nudges him, but like before, it’s not an angry thing. “Also, toilet guy’s not comin’ today.”

“The fuck? Why ?”

“Canceled,” he replies simply. 

“Fucking hell,” Carmy mutters under his breath. “Did he say when he could reschedule?”

“Not yet.”

“Great.”

“Yep.” Richie tilts his head up, blowing out a slow stream of gray cigarette smoke. “Might as well wait for Fak to get his ass back in town at this rate.”

“I guess.” Carmy sighs. He thinks about all the things he still needs to do. “I dropped this onion I was chopping, earlier,” he mentions out of nowhere. 

“Okay.” Richie gives him a look. “And? You bitches chop those things up faster than I could cut one in half.” 

“I dropped it on the floor,” Carmy tries again, but Richie’s expression remains unchanged. “I never do shit like that.”

“Well, cousin, you did.” Carmy feels something in him deflate. “What’s the big deal?”

“Nevermind,” he replies, because he’s a coward. “Just—just forget it.”

Silence. The spark of a lighter. 

“I’m gonna leave early,” Richie says, like he can just do that. Which…he can, Carmy supposes. “If no one’s gonna show up, what’s the point?” He slaps Carmy’s back, and Carmy doesn’t watch him as he heads back inside. 

Guess all I need to do later is get rid of those papers on the desk , Carmy thinks to himself, idly moving the shortening cigarette between his lips. Then that’ll be it, I guess.

He doesn’t remember the last time he’s gone home early. It’s hard to even imagine what he does on days like those. Sleeping, probably.  There’s nothing much else for him to do, not with how tired he is—

Shoot me a text, okay?  

He hears them in the back of his head all of a sudden, and he remembers. 

Oh, he remembers, hands moving to take out his phone. Almost forgot.

“Sorry to bother you, chef.” Carmy’s not sure how he didn’t hear the door opening. Marcus’ head pops out, nose covered in flour. “Just wanted to let you know that we’re gonna need more flour for tomorrow.”

“Order’s not gonna come for a couple days. I thought we had an extra bag left,” Carmy tries, but the guilty look on Marcus’ face explains it all. 

“Dropped it,” Marcus grimaces, and Carmy’s already fucking over it. 

“We’re all fucking up today, chef,” Carmy replies, and the day goes on. 

. . . . .

It’s a strange, delightful miracle, but he manages to get out of the restaurant before the sun sets.

Considering their collective track record, the fact everyone was able to leave early was cosmic intervention. It helps that the toilet guy didn’t come, in an unfortunate way, but still. Standing outside of the restaurant in the evening like this feels…weird. 

It’s not that Carmy’s complaining about a nice thing, it’s just that he wasn’t prepared to have anything good today.

Shower, dinner, and weed, he thinks absentmindedly on the way home. He juggles the three around in his brain. Just the thought of it feels like relaxing. A little.

With company , his brain helpfully adds, and his stomach squirms. 

Self control, he thinks. He needs more self-control. He can’t just keep thinking of them so indulgently. He’s not allowed to think of them that way, because it’s not fair to them. Even if no matter how many times he chastises himself, it never works. Even if they remain in his brain like sun-spots in his vision. Even if it’s not his fault that he just can’t help it.

The thing is, though, it always is. Even when it’s not his fault, it actually is. Always.

You dropped that fucking onion , his brain helpfully adds for no particular reason. Fucking loser.

Fuck off , he thinks back as he approaches his front door. Predictably, it does not stop.

Just as his fingers search for his keys in all of his pockets, he hears something that makes him pause, hands stopped on his waist. It’s music, distant and muffled. They’re probably listening to music in the kitchen. He stands, trying to place the song, but he doesn’t recognize it. 

He does recognize the voice that’s singing over the music, though.

Oh, he realizes. That’s them.

The way their voice clumsily layers over the music shouldn’t make him pause like this. He shouldn’t be doing this, standing in the doorway and listening rather than opening the door. The keys are in his hand. This, this is a breach of privacy, he tells himself, feeling a little dizzy with distress, he just needs to just—

There’s an abrupt, loud clang, and he shoves the door open.

Concern is on the tip of his tongue, but it dies there. The source of the noise lays face-down on the floor—a pan sitting in what seems to be tomato sauce. The matter next to it is what makes the words evaporate from his lips, like they were never there at all. 

They’re kneeled down next to the pan, paper towels in hand, but all they’re wearing is an apron. 

His mind blanks. He thinks he stops breathing. He’s never seen so much of their skin at once. He needs to look away, he thinks, but his eyes keep traveling, traveling, and traveling. It just happens so quickly. He doesn’t mean to look, he doesn’t, but they’re right there and he can see right down their—

“No, I—I’m sorry! I didn’t know you were coming back early!” They exclaim, quickly crossing their arms over their chest, and that’s what makes him tear his eyes away. 

“I—I thought I texted you,” he says quickly, hot face turned to the side, “on my lunch—...“ He stops there, the memory reconstructing itself. 

He forgot.

“It’s fine, I just feel bad about dinner, and, uh—okay, I’m just gonna change real quick, and then I’ll clean this up,” they reply, words rushing out. In the corner of his vision, he sees their bare legs dart to their room.

It seems wrong to just stand here staring at the tomato sauce slowly expand outwards on the floor, so he cleans it up. A couple paper towels later, he’s gotten most of it, and they’ve returned with a change of clothes.

“Sorry,” Carmy starts right as they also go “I’m sorry”. He pauses, meeting their eyes. It’s a lot easier now that they’re wearing leggings and a t-shirt as opposed to, well, nothing. Not to say he doesn’t appreciate the leggings. 

“Sorry you had to see me like that,” they sigh. “I don’t—I don’t usually walk around the place naked, I just—I didn’t think you’d be back—“

“I should’ve texted,” he interrupts. He struggles to not think about them walking around the living room naked. “I forgot. But it, it’s fine. You’re fine. Really. Sorry for not texting.”

“Okay. Cool.” They exhale, a tired noise. “And it’s okay. It happens.” They look at the floor and make a sound of surprise. “Did you clean this up?” The look they give him has far too much gratitude, and it feels like a searing hot iron.

“Yeah, uh.” His hands are moving like he’s trying to explain something, but no words crop up. “Felt weird not to.”

“Well.” They smile, grateful. “Thank you. That was gonna be dinner, but…” They trail off, looking at the floor with a sour expression. “I fucked up.”

“It’s just that sort of day today,” Carmy mutters.

“Shitty day for you, too?” 

“Yeah. Lots of shit went wrong.” Especially me, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it. “You?”

“Gotcha.” They shrug. “As for me—yeah. Really not my best day. It was just, uh, some family shit. You know how it is.”

Carmy makes a sound of acknowledgement. “That sucks.” He doesn’t know much about their family other than that they’re fairly shitty. It’s the same the other way around, too. 

“It’s whatever,” they say, even though it really isn’t, and he knows it. They look at the floor one more time before looking up at him. “Do you just wanna order pizza or something?”

“Yeah, I do,” Carmy replies, his words coming out much more despondent than expected. 

They settle on some pepperoni pizza from a place down the street. It’s a tried and true method—they deliver, it’s cheap, it’s oily, it’s cheesy, it’s good. Just talking about it makes Carmy taste it on the tip of his tongue. 

“You can go and shower if you want. I’ll get the door when pizza comes,” they offer. They’re standing at the sink, sleeves rolled up. 

“Okay, thanks.” Carmy pauses then, gears turning. He’s vaguely worried his memory is going to shit. “Did—did I just say I was gonna shower?” 

“Oh, no, you didn’t, you just always shower when you get home from work, right?” They say it like it’s the weather, like it’s familiar, and that’s when Carmy realizes because it is. After several months of living together, of course they’ve picked up on his habits. It doesn’t need to be a thing. There’s no reason for it to be a thing.

“I do,” Carmy replies faintly, and for some reason, that’s all he can say. 

“Thought so.” They look at him for just a moment, but it makes him feel like his body’s gone transparent. “I notice these things, you know.”

“Yeah.” Carmy looks at them when they turn back to the dishes, back facing him. “You do.” 

He tells himself he’s not gonna think any harder about any of it. He’s not gonna think about the singing, the apron, the way they just notice these things, but then he does. 

He’s in the shower, and he thinks about everything.

The water pressure is pathetic, but the warmth still feels nice. Between that and the sound of the running shower, it’s usually enough to quiet his thoughts. This time, though, it doesn’t. To his credit, he does try to think about anything else. 

He thinks about work, because he always does. He thinks about flour, about onions, about knives. He thinks about the shampoo lathered in his hair. He thinks about those lightbulbs they still need to get. He thinks about food. He thinks about them. He thinks about pizza. He thinks about the way they sing when no one’s around. He thinks about the way they know him. 

He thinks about them, knees on the floor only in a—

He thinks of bashing his head into the tile wall until he explodes.

“Shut the fuck up,” he whispers to himself, rivulets of hot water trailing down his forehead and dripping off his lips. “Shut the fuck up.”

The soreness is still present in his body, but that never quite goes away. He does feel a bit better now that he doesn’t have sweaty, sticky skin, though. It gets even better when he puts on a clean white t-shirt and his favorite sweatpants. It’s a nice surprise from his past self who did his laundry for him. 

This amount of niceness is okay. This is what he’s used to—a shower and comfortable clothes when he’s home from work. That’s enough.

He steps out into the kitchen with a damp towel on his head. He finds them sitting by their one shitty window that opens, pizza box in front of them and joint lit. It casts an orange glow to mix with the golden light from the window. 

“Hey, pizza’s here!” They slap their hand on the greasy cardboard box. “Just got this joint started for us, too.”

“So you weren’t gonna smoke it all on your own?” He doesn’t mean to tease, but he does. He slips into the seat across them, arms resting on the table they placed by the window. 

“I couldn’t smoke this whole thing even if I wanted to,” they protest. “Besides, joints are made for sharing. Here—now you get to take it. Isn’t that nice?” With their elbow propped up on the pizza box, they hold up the joint to him. The lit end of it sizzles a bright orange, emitting a thin trail of smoke up to the ceiling. 

“That is very, very nice,” Carmy agrees, taking it carefully from their fingers. Their face spreads into that contagious grin of theirs, and he’s far from immune. Sometimes he smiles so much around them that his face hurts, rusty and unused. 

Sure, he can blame that on the weed, but if he’s being honest with himself (a rare occasion), that’s a complete lie. Obviously the weed lessens the tension, the stress that winds him up tight. It’s not just the weed that gets him to relax, though. 

It’s them. There’s something disarming about their presence, something that makes him loose-lipped around them. Even when he’s sober, he finds himself feeling comfortable. He’s not quite sure how that happened, or if that’s ever happened. He supposes that isn’t a bad thing. Just something he’s noticed. 

He wonders if they’ve noticed. 

“You like the new rolling papers?” They tuck their knees under their chin, propping their feet up on the chair. 

“Hm.” Carmy lowers the joint from his mouth to give it a good look. He rotates it around in his fingers. “Strawberry?”

“Yeah, it’s strawberry,” they confirm, poorly hiding the excitement in their demeanor. Not that they were trying to. “Can you taste it?” 

He pulls from the joint, the edges of the paper sizzling red with the weed. It’s an even burn this time. He rolls his tongue around in his mouth after he exhales a cloud of smoke. 

“Still no,” he decides after a beat, and they sigh. 

“I don’t know why I ever get my hopes up.”

“I do taste something else in this, though.” He takes another hit, stews on it. “Lavender?”

“Shoulda known you would’ve gotten it on your first tray. Yeah, it’s lavender. I found some lying around.”

“You made this one pretty nice,” he observes, eyes tracing the shape of the joint. “Between the lavender and the new papers, I mean.”

“Well, y’know.” The smile on their face is small and shy. “I don’t smoke joints often, so I wanted to make it nice, and I, uh…”

They’re paused for so long that Carmy interjects. 

“And?”

“And I—want that joint,” they finally say, outstretching their hand. Carmy has a strong feeling that they weren’t originally going to say that, but he hands over the joint nonetheless.

“Strain?” He asks curiously. He can feel the body high creeping up his shoulders, fluid and light.

“The strain that gets you high,” they reply with a grin.

“Oh, thank god,” Carmy sighs in relief, and the way that makes them laugh… It makes his chest tight. 

“To actually answer your question, though—I dunno.” He likes watching the smoke drift from the tip of the joint as they talk, thin gray wisps in the air. “I think it’s a hybrid? Not sure if it’s more one way or not, though…”

“As long as it’s not the weed that puts you to bed.”

“Um…well, if you smoke enough of it, it can.”

They sit together like this for a while, just sitting and taking turns with the joint. It’s an easy, fluid exchange, flowing between them like smoke. No matter how much they both try to blow it out the window, it always comes back in. The smell of weed is strong in the air, earthy and pungent.  

Although he would never describe himself as a talkative person, sitting stoned across from them makes the words come out. Sometimes, he thinks he likes himself better when he’s high—his mind isn’t running circles around itself, and the soreness of his body just floats away. He feels more like a human than a poor imitation of one like he usually does. 

This weed smells kinda good, he thinks, and when they laugh, nose scrunched up, he realizes he said that out loud. 

“That’s literally what I’ve been saying,” they agree, a bright grin lingering on their face. “That’s how you know you’re a fuckin’ stoner!” 

“Feels weird to call myself a stoner,” he muses. He plucks the joint from their outstretched hand. It definitely looks shorter from when they started a moment ago. “But I guess…”

“If you like the smell of weed, you’re too far gone,” they say with a grave expression. “It’s so fucking over for you.”

“Fuck,” he whispers, equally as serious, and then they’re both bursting out into laughter. He likes the sound of their laugh—it’s unabashed, fills up the space. 

“Dude, I’m high,” they whisper after they both calm down, like it’s some sort of secret, and Carmy can’t stop himself from laughing all over again. “Oh my god. Are you high?”

“I—I think I might fucking be,” he gets out between laughs, and that sparks them straight into another cackle of laughter. He’s not supposed to be able to make others laugh, he doesn’t even make himself laugh—but then he’ll say something, and they’re lit up with laughter. 

“We need to eat this pizza now, ” they yell, projecting over their combined noise. They flip the pizza box open, and it smacks Carmy right in the face. 

“Oh,” he reacts mildly.

“Shit, I’m so sorry—”

“It’s fine, it’s not like you punched me in the face,” he reasons, but their guilty expression persists. “It didn’t hurt, it’s just cardboard.”

“I’m sorry, I’m high,” they sigh apologetically. 

“I know,” he replies with a little smile. His eyes drift down to the pepperoni pizza sitting before them, glorious in its perverse amount of oil. “So, we’re gonna eat this, right?”

“Oh my god, yes we are,” they gasp, and the moment is forgotten. 

When he tears off a pizza slice, the cheese stretches in thin, gooey strings. They grab the slice adjacent to it to snap the strings in half, but they’re both leaned back in their chairs, pizzas in hand, and the cheese is still connected. 

“This doesn’t seem right,” Carmy mutters, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “We should’ve just cut it.”

“How could we have predicted this?” They pull their pizza further back, and the string still doesn’t break. “Wow. I’m honestly impressed. I don’t think it’s ever been this insane before.”

“I think we’d remember.” He’s not sure why he’s still talking and not just running his finger across the string to break it. 

“I think we would, too.” They snort, shaking their head. “This—this is some spaghetti type shit.”

“What? Spaghetti?” He’s genuinely perplexed.

“I—I mean like—that fucking disney movie. With the dogs.” They pause for a moment, mouth silently moving. “Fucking—lady and the, the truck—”

“Uh.” He has to hold back a laugh. “...The lady and the tramp?”

“ Holyshittheladyandthetramp ,” they blurt out in a rush, and the cheese string finally snaps in half. “…Well, I guess it’s not exactly like the lady and the tramp, then.” They take a large bite of their pizza, and it reminds Carmy exactly how hungry he is. 

“You mean lady and the truck,” he corrects, and he can’t stop himself from smiling. Especially not with how good this hot pizza is, delightfully salty and greasy in his mouth. 

“Shut up, I was trying,” they grunt through a mouthful of food. 

“How exactly is this like the lady and the tramp, again? Or, uh, not like it?” 

“Well, it was just like it, but then the string broke.” Somehow, they’re already halfway through their slice. “Could’ve been a beautiful spaghetti moment.”

“Spaghetti moment,” he echoes under his breath, holding back a laugh. “Remind me how that scene goes?”

They go quiet for a moment. It’s like he can see the gears turning in his head. If he’s being honest, he already remembers how that scene goes, but…he wants to hear them say it. He needs to hear them say it. 

“Uh, well, they��re…eating spaghetti. The titular lady and tramp.”  Their eyes are fidgety, flickering back and forth between their pizza and the window. “And they’re sharing the plate, the two of them. They’re eating together, and, um…” 

“...And?” 

They meet his eyes, mouth hanging open, and then they close it. 

“Um, I don’t remember, actually,” they say, shaking their head and blinking. He sees it for the blatant lie that it is, and yet. “Do, do you remember?”

As he stares back at them, unable to look away, he wonders. He wonders about what this really means. About if this really means anything at all, about if he’s going to find out if it does. 

“I don’t remember,” he answers quietly, cowardly, and neither of them say anything else.

Out of the two of them, they’ve always been better with recovering from awkward moments, so they do. They start talking about something else, and the world keeps turning. But in the back of his head, Carmy remains in that moment, unwilling to let it go. 

Why did you say that you didn’t remember? He wants to say. Why didn’t I say that I remembered how it went? Because I remember. They kiss—they fucking kiss. Is that what you wanted to hear? Is that what I wanted to hear?

But because he’s Carmy, he doesn’t say anything. He just eats.

He’s so hungry that the pizza disappears in minutes. It’s delicious, but he’s so high he’s not completely sure he can taste it. Somehow, it remains the best thing he’s ever eaten. 

The rest of the night is a blur. He remembers getting onto the couch at some point. They both decide on a random movie he doesn’t catch the name of. They finish off the joint on the couch together, sinking into its cushions. It burns hot in his throat as it reaches the end. 

And as it turns out, the weed he smoked is the one that puts him to bed. 

“...Ca…Car…” Someone’s calling him. “...Carmy, c’mon. You’re gonna complain about your neck tomorrow if you keep sleeping here.”

“Mhm,” he replies helpfully. He turns his head into the cushion. His body feels like an abstract blob, perfectly molded into the couch cushions.

“Okay, you made a good point. But. ” They laugh quietly, under their breath. “Movie’s been over for like 20 minutes now.”

“Mhm,” he repeats, nearly inaudible. He doesn’t wanna get up. Whenever he falls asleep, it always feels like he’s never gotten an hour of sleep in his life. There’s nothing he needs to think about, worry about. He’s warm and comfortable, and he doesn’t feel like letting that go just yet.

Everything goes silent again for a moment, save for the cars on the road. He begins to drift away again, slipping back into his dreamless sleep. 

But then there’s a hand on his shoulder, and it’s like a smoking brand on his skin. His eyes fly open and he jolts awake, jerking upright. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” they apologize, fretful. Between the dark of night and haze of sleep, they look pretty different. The blue light from the television is streaked across the blurry planes of their face.

“It’s fine,” he replies, drowsy. Speaking feels…heavy. Begrudgingly, he adjusts to sit up. “Didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“Weed,” they say with a shrug. 

“How, how long was I—?” He cuts himself off with a yawn, wide with condensation in the corners of his eyes. 

“Only like, 30 minutes.” They yawn back. Typical infectious yawning. “End of the movie sucked anyway.”

“Oh.” Pause. “What was the ending?”

“Love interest died,” they state plainly. “He told her about how he felt, got rejected, and then she died in a car accident. Pretty tragic.”

“Huh.” Carmy makes a face. “That does suck.”

“Yeah, a bit.” They’re idly fiddling with the remote, scrolling through Netflix without reading anything. “I feel like the movie was trying to say something profound about the unpredictability of life or something, but the writing was shit.”

“I guess it’d be too perfect if they got together,” he muses.

“I guess,” they echo. They turn off the tv, and the room goes dark. The only light is from the yellow street lamp right outside their window, wonderful in its inconvenient placement. It illuminates the shape of the back and leaves their face in shadow. “I think I remember how that scene went,” they say suddenly. 

“Oh.” Carmy’s heart feels stuck in his throat. “And how does it go?”

“Well, they’re—both eating spaghetti. Like I said.” They’re not facing him, leaving their face shrouded in shadow. He’s not sure if he’s imagining the shake in their voice or not. It’s beyond him why there would be any shakiness at all. “They somehow get the same noodle, so they, uh, kiss.”

“They kiss,” he repeats for some unknown reason.

“Yeah.” They let out a quick laugh, but it doesn’t sound like they actually find this funny. He wishes he could see the look on their face. 

“I don’t think pasta works like that,” he hears himself murmur faintly. For some reason, he can’t help but think that was the wrong thing to say. But he’s already said it. Maybe it’s the same reason as to why his heart is beating so urgently. 

“No, I, I don’t think so either,” they mumble. He refuses to place the way they’re feeling. 

I can’t fucking do this.

The thought resounds like a gong, hit with a mallet right next to his ear. 

“It’s late, I gotta head to bed.” It feels like someone else is speaking for him, moving his body for him. He can’t stop them. When he stands up, he avoids their face.

What the fuck are you doing?

Another thought resounds. He doesn’t respond.

“Right, I—didn’t even notice the time.” He pretends he doesn’t hear the strain in their voice. No, he didn’t word that right—there is no strain in their voice. “G’night.”

"Night,” he murmurs back.

This is enough, he tells himself as he falls into bed. His sheets are tangled. This is enough , he repeats, and it’s not because he’s scared, afraid, anxious, or any other stupid synonym. It’s because he believes it, needs to believe it. 

He tells himself, this is enough , even though he wonders, what is supposed to be enough? He doesn’t listen. He stamps down the protests, the thoughts that are out of line. The high usually helps with that, but it’s worn off, now just leaving him in a weary, sleepy state of things. 

This is enough, he thinks, and he falls asleep looking at their shrouded face behind his eyelids.

[smoft-demons]

Envy

_______

Auva is curled up in a nest of soft things on the floor of Levi’s room. Pillows, blankets, plushies, possibly a beanbag chair or two—all piled high on the floor in front of a big screen.

Levi is there too, of course. Sitting just slightly out of arm’s reach, reclining in the blanket nest with his Ruri-chan body pillow. Relaxed as she’s ever seen him. He’s hugging the pillow like it’s his best friend as he and Auva marathon TSL for quite possibly the 15th time.

At this point, Auva knows these movies so well she could speak every line along with the characters. So, as much as she enjoys the story, it’s not exactly keeping her focused.

‘I’M his best friend!’ Auva can’t stop herself from thinking, as Levi watches peacefully. She mentally side-eyes that passing thought as soon as she notices it.

Envy is not a familiar feeling for Auva. Sure, she’s felt short flashes of mild jealousy before—small moments of it that are easily acknowledged, dealt with, and released. Quick and simple.

That’s… not what this is. She tries to push it down, for further examination later. She pointedly thinks of how peaceful this is, what a good time she’s having watching movies she likes, how nice it is to see Levi being so relaxed and open…

She holds out for about a movie and a half. But then, a scene where the Lord of Shadows gives Henry a hug has the twisting unpleasantness she feels in her gut suddenly roaring back to life. It burrows into the front of her mind. The unfamiliar feeling intensifies from the low, very ignorable twisting it was before, like pouring gasoline on a fire. It burns, insistent and cloying under her tongue.

Auva zones out in that moment, confused and distressed. Trying to identify whatever the fuck this is.

Simultaneously, Levi snaps out of relaxed TSL fixation mode. He feels the explosion of envy in his friend. It’s doubly palpable to him, not just because he’s attuned to feelings of envy as the avatar of it—especially in Auva through his pact with her—but more because he has NEVER before felt so much of it from her before!

“Uh—!? Whoaaaa… Auva??! Are you—do you wanna talk about it??” Levi sputters.

Auva freezes, looking away. She’s figured out what caused the bad feeling, but not what the bad feeling is quite yet. In order to find the cause, she has tracked the start of the feeling to when Levi joined her in their blanket nest, but chose to sit too far away from her to touch, to cuddle with a pillow instead of his best friend.

She’s embarrassed to realize this. Fruitlessly, she tries to hide it. She doesn’t want to lie to him, but… she can’t say it! “No, no! It’s nothing, don’t worry, I’m good! Everything’s fine!”

Levi shoots her a flat look. “Stupid normie, I can FEEL it! Did you forget what I am? There’s no point lying!”

Auva groans, burying her face in her hands. ‘??? He can feel it—OH. Oh. Envy. So that’s what that feels like then. Fuck, okay.’ She thinks, cringing at herself.

“Nooo… Levi, really, it’s nothing! It’s so dumb!”

“But I wanna help! WHY won’t you tell me? That’s SO not fair..!” Levi exclaims, looking stressed, worried, and a bit hurt. “Of course you wouldn’t trust a gross icky otaku like me…”

‘Fuuuuck, of course he’d take it personally!’ Auva mentally groans to herself.

“No! No, you know I don’t think that! You’re not gross, Levi! I… it’s just—umm, well…” she trails off. Can’t say it.

She huffs, frustrated, and flails for a moment before taking her DDD out of her pocket. She goes to text him instead.

> ruri pillow gets hugs and I don’t >:[ Henry gets hugs and I don’t >>:[[[ I want hugs too >:[ >:[ >:[

Levi’s text tone goes off. He reads her message.

He freezes awkwardly. Buffering…

Auva cringes, shoving her DDD away from her. She hides her face in her hands again. “I told you it’s dumb…” she mumbles.

“N-no! No, it’s fine! I just. I, was, uh—! Y-you… you really don’t think I’m too gross?” Levi stutters.

“Obviously not! We’re friends, we’ve BEEN friends, you know I love you—Why do YOU think you’re gross?! Is it because you’re a snake, do you think snakes are gross?! I like snakes!! Is that it? I don’t get it, Levi! You’re NOT gross, I’ll fight you about that if I have to! Is that really why you don’t touch me?” Auva rambles, her hands flapping frantically. “You keep telling me it’s okay if I touch you, you said you’re not uncomfortable with it in general, but then… you’ll sit next to me and hug a pillow but you won’t ever hug me, and I don’t get WHY! I keep telling you you’re not gross! Do you not believe me, or do you just…”

Auva cuts herself off. ‘do you just not love me’, she was going to say. She thought better of it. She knows he does. She knows. It would be unfair to him to scold him for not believing her and then to immediately turn around and not believe him. She knows he’s shy, too. It isn’t a problem if he’s uncomfortable with touch of course, but he keeps telling her that’s not the case, so..???

Levi seems to know where she was going with that. He flails, stuttering his rebuttal just as frantically. They never resemble each other more than when they’re panicking at each other like this. “I..! It’s NOT like that!! It’s not that—that I don’t l-love… you, o-or anything..! I just..! It’s just… I’m gross, I don’t think you’d want ME so close to you!”

“But I do though! I really do! You’re NOT gross! Levi… Levi, you’re not gross. You’re my friend. My friend is not gross. Please believe me?” Auva says, her agitation quickly dying down into just sadness.

Levi’s energy simmers down to match hers. With a sigh, he steels himself. Dismissing his ever-present shyness as best he can. He puts the Ruri pillow down in the pile next to him. He fixes his gaze into a far corner as he sticks out an arm in Auva’s direction, shyly gesturing for his friend to close the distance.

Auva rushes to comply before he can change his mind. It’s about half a second until she has ducked under his arm and moulded herself against him, shifting until she’s comfy and as close as she can get. She ends up draped over the left side of him. Her fingers tangle into the fabric of his shirt, clinging, as if to prevent anyone from removing her. Her cheek smushes against his shoulder. Her glasses get knocked off as she presses her face against him. She doesn’t care.

“Stupid noodle… y’r not fuckin gross…” she grumbles to him, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

“…if you say so, I guess…” he mumbles back. He puts his arm down across her shoulder blades. His hand wraps carefully around her right bicep. His other hand retrieves her glasses, then places them on the floor where they’ll be safer. He turns his attention back to the movie to distract himself from his self-consciousness.

As for Auva, she’s fully ignoring the movie in favour of committing this absolute gift of a moment to memory. Every detail. The rhythm of his breathing and heartbeat, the sounds of his joints shifting with each minute adjustment he makes, the cool temperature of his skin, the unscented soap and ocean scent that sticks to him, the gentle pressure of his arm draped over her, the feel of his thumb absently rubbing over that one small strip of skin on her arm and occasionally fidgeting with the hem of her short sleeve. She blissfully soaks in every detail.

Her heart is warm, and she LOVES her friend. She’s relaxed, boneless. Very comfortable and happy to be held.

As the next movie plays, Levi ends up absentmindedly pulling her into the same position he had the pillow in before. Reclining fully against his chest, more or less in his lap as both his arms wrap securely around her back. She couldn’t see the screen like this if she were trying to. She’s not though, so this is more than fine with her. She’s seen these movies so many times by now that the audio alone is enough to have the visuals projecting in detail from her memory on the back of her eyelids.

Auva stays still and quiet, carefully relaxed, trying not to draw attention to herself. Hoping he’ll stay distracted until the entire series is over, so it’ll take as long as possible for him to get awkward and push her away again. Fuck, she dreads the idea of being pushed away.

Hours later, the story ends. Levi’s distraction is over. Her fingers clench in his shirt again, clinging. She doesn’t want him to let go. Doesn’t want him to make her go…

“Auva..?” Levi softly calls, having noticed her tension returning. “I… it’s okay, you know. You don’t—I’m not kicking you out. If you’re sure you want to be here. I’m not uncomfortable, or anything, is what I’m saying. Is that, um… that’s what you’re scared of, right?” he sighs. Pulls her a bit closer, so he can lean down to comfortably bury his face against her shoulder without dislodging her. “We’re gonna have to talk about this, aren’t we…”

“Mm. Probably… ‘s important. But… tomorrow, though? I’m comfy...” Auva mumbles.

She yawns. He nods, agreeing to have a real conversation about this tomorrow. They cling to each other a bit tighter for comfort, as they both try not to think about how scary that is.

“Hey, Levi?” Auva whispers.

“Hm?” He hums inquisitively.

“I really love my player one. SO much. I hope you know that.”

He inhales sharply, quickly squeezing her as he takes in her familiar words. She has told him so many times before, but it hits him in the heart just the same every time.

“Yeah. I know.” He whispers back. “And I love my player two. So much. You know that,” Shy as always, even though he has said it before too.

Auva nods. She gives him an affectionate squeeze too, before relaxing again. Intending to go to sleep right there.

The upcoming conversation still scares them, but just a bit less now. They’ll have each other, after all. They’ll help each other.

They’ll be fine.

_______

[minjoonalist]

Alexithymia. | JJK +18 [ 1 of 3]

Pairing: Demon!Jungkook x Reader 

Rating: Mature +18

Genre: Angst, smut, SoulmatesAU 

Word count: 17.8k

Description: Jungkook always had a pull to you. An unexplainable connection that brings him to your side daily, like a permanent routine. Is it a hobby? An obsession? Or was the centuries old prince just bored? No… boredom doesn’t make his heart race. It’s not supposed to make him lose his own self control, or fill him with blinding rage, and it certainly isn’t supposed to have him hallucinating the strangest things until it drives him back home for answers. Maybe he just cares too much for you and he thought that it’d be better to wait than to give in, but the longer the prince spends his time away, the more he realizes he has absolutely no Idea what emotions have been festering since the very beginning. What if he could just turn them off? 

Warnings: Cursing, explicit language, mentions of blood, near death experience, some good ole fashion violence, mentions of killing, light smut, Eventual smut, hallucinations, Nipple play, pining, a very pissed and jealous Jungkook.

Song Inspo: Pretty- The Weeknd, Waves- Normani, Softcore- The Neighbourhood, Middle Of The Night- Elley Duhe

Author’s note: This will be a mini series of three parts due to the high word count lol Also In no way am I an expert on demons, all of this is from the top of my head or made up honestly. It’s more of an angsty self-indulgent plot to write demon JK for (several months) so please enjoy and if you want leave your thoughts on it as well! :)

Masterlist | 1 2 3

I. Emotional Arousal

He’s pissed, he was blindingly pissed.

He shouldn’t have been gone for as long as he was and it wasn’t like him to be this stressed about you, running around like a mad man on the hunt. 

The problem is… Jungkook, a high ranking demon with much bigger priorities is worried because he isn’t able to feel you anymore. That’s right, the prince could no longer sense the random human girl or her location while he was working and it was driving him crazy. Sneaking off once again like he’s done multiple times to come find you, but you were no longer connected to him. 

“Angel, where are you?” He growls loudly out into an empty space while simultaneously ripping your front door open and trying to ease down the anxiety filling him.

The loud bang of the white wood smacking into the wall would be loud enough to scare anyone half to death, had they actually been inside. But that was the problem, there was no one here- meaning you were lost, out into the night where anyone or anything would be able to get their hands on you. He had warned you plenty of times about the night life being far more dangerous when it came to the ungodly creatures lurking around and yet still the only evidence that seemed to be left of you anywhere in your entire home, was only a slight indication of your sweet almond scent marking everything you touched. 

Your front door, your kitchen, even the hallway that leads to your living room, it's almost as if you hadn’t been here in days.

Wait...

Noticing something completely off, Jungkook opens his nostrils again. His heightened sense of smell takes in an out of place scent as he walks closer into the cozy space of your living room. It was almost so faint that he nearly missed it in his frantic search. However, It's as if he could see it before he smelt it, another aroma rising from one particular spot on your couch, a spot way too close to where you’d usually be sitting and he’d pop in next to you while you were reading one of those pointless romance books.

It's where he should have found you exactly at this time or at least he knew you’d be studying.

Jungkook couldn’t shake it, the other scent wafting up his nose and taking over yours so much that it began to make his stomach sick and he’d hate to ruin your nice creamy carpet, but now that he was thinking about it, the demon couldn't believe he didn't notice the smell from your front door in the first place. It’s everywhere, following him with every step he takes and it’s so hard to place whatever the hell it could be. 

Maybe…it belongs to another person.

He easily concludes this in his investigation, stepping back from the space and glaring at the spot that holds the unwelcomed presence of someone he couldn’t place. Beyond annoyed, Jungkook tries to rid himself of it, needing to badly follow yours and get a sense of where the hell you could have gone off to so late. 

He does exactly that, turning back down your dark hallway that leads towards the jarred door that was the opening of your bedroom. Your scent was strongest here, driving up his nose blanketing him in a sweet cocoon of you. The sensation drives him wild almost every time, reminding the powerful demon of the human he’d randomly taken a liking to while surfacing from his home one day. 

He couldn’t tell you what made him leave it after a total of only 100 years had passed by, considering he was fairly entertained. He just wanted a change of scenery, tired of the same old routine of tortured souls and being confined to miserable ‘yes men’ serving him just to save face. He needed to roam, move around to new places, even if that meant walking amongst the strange and despicable lives of those who still held them. 

Humans.

He’d only been in your realm for a total of two days, before he’d found himself just as bored as being back with his family. 

Nothing excited him, the weather was unpredictable, sunny one second and pouring down on him the next. The humans were rude, ruder than his clan somehow and he wasn’t sure how many times he would have to hold himself back from easily wringing the life out of anyone else who wanted to call him an e-boy- minus the hundreds of girls, who for some reason, kept mistaking him for a random k-pop idol. 

Jungkook planned to leave within the next moments, having had enough for another century or two, until one day he’d seen something or rather someone.

It was you…trying to open your cheap umbrella in the continuous downpour of rain. What compelled him to rush across the street, nearly getting wrecked by three cars to help you, he once again had no clue and he still didn’t to this day, but as if a magnet had been pulling him along, he ignored every alert of the goosebumps rising on his skin while drawing closer.

Without thinking, Jungkook froze getting near you, a deep shock in his abdomen as his fingers connected on yours once he instinctively reached for the contraption in your hold. As if like magic, Jungkook had taken it and fixed it for you- the tall, raven haired male towering your fair height almost twice and holding out the umbrella you’d  damaged trying to open a few minutes prior. 

“Uh- Here...you’re getting wet.” He comments carefully while holding it over your head, though with how drenched you’d gotten, you honestly didn’t need it anymore. 

You would blink up at him, awe struck with wide sparkling eyes as he stood with hard droplets of rain pelting all over him. “Oh! Thank you… you didn’t have to.” 

He’s seen how your eyes roamed all over him in curiosity. All black attire that began to cling to his body, multiple oddly shaped metals pierced into the pale skin of his ears and bottom lip. He has big almond eyes and shoulder length raven hair pulled half way up into a ponytail, or at least from what you could tell as the rain had matted it down to his head.

From the corner of your eye you could vaguely see the small pieces of ink flowing up his neck that you sure lead to the rest of the hand holding out your umbrella.

The intimidating man with the baby face, radiates a powerful aura you’d never experienced from anyone before. It was almost inhuman, as if you were supposed to fall to your knees the second your eyes landed on him. It made your stomach jump and with that goosebumps eroded your skin as well. Bringing in not only an unknown feeling in you, but also filling your soul with unease, as if you were in a horror movie and you’d inadvertently discovered he was the killer.  

Well, you weren’t that wrong…In no way, was he to be considered innocent, hell you’d probably be horrified in learning everything he’d done, but Jungkook never had any intentions to harm you. In fact even as he walks away from you- the demon could very well say that there was not much else he found himself thinking about besides you after that day. Your cute expression with your light filled eyes, your attractive pouty lips pulled into a shy smile as he fixed the object for you and then... the sharp spike of arousal inside of you the moment your eyes had connected and you replied with a simple thanks.

That was the first time he sensed you, your sweet scent punching him in the nose so hard he almost began to feel dizzy and it brought him a new high with a light buzz, also making his vision darken in effect. It was like having a bucket of fire thrown upon him, his own skin and body heating up uncontrollably from his fingers to his toes. He’d never experienced anything like that before and along with that thought came the excitement he'd been waiting for.

Jungkook discovered something new.

Something that made him crazy enough to purposely run into you a week later while you were struggling to carry a few groceries out to your car or even the next two days after that since he couldn’t wait that long, where he ran into you at the mall, standing in front of you at the food court in a coincidental encounter. 

When he thinks about it now it was almost too obvious and he can’t believe you’ve never asked about that...He was really a full on stalker.

Jungkook always thought about you, bringing you up to his brothers and constantly wondering what you were doing or what you were really like in your daily life. It almost took him too long to realize his obsessive behavior, leaving his duties unattended and finally noticing this craving to have you around all the time. It just kept bringing him back, for more and more- until eventually Jungkook had taken the opportunity to get to know you, fully understanding everything about you as a friend.

He didn’t have many friends…at least not human ones. But, apparently he found you. A random girl with a heart of gold and a soul so pure, it’d actually made him question himself on whether or not he should continue on. It probably would have been best to leave you alone, you didn’t need someone like him in your life and especially not if he would only end up possibly corrupting you later down that line.

...Obviously that idea didn’t last too long. 

It was selfish, but Jungkook still came around more often, your small talks turning into heavy conversations. You both began to hang out and eventually you’d begun to notice how much of himself he didn’t reveal to you or that you never knew much of anything about him as he did you and with that, you’d begun to get wary of him. The mysterious man you’d always had a great time being around, seemed a bit too closed off than you would like and to that extent...reluctantly—Jungkook made the risky decision to reveal the most important part of himself. 

Who, or rather what he is.

 Although the demon was well aware, you weren’t ready to see the unworldly elements of his appearance, he still took to showing and explaining to you the bare minimum of him. Somehow, it wasn’t enough for you to believe him and Jungkook wasn’t sure if he should be relieved or disappointed, because the last thing he wanted to do is to show you his true nature when he barely knew you.

Jungkook huffs, shaking his head at the lost memories as he pushes your bedroom door open. Just thinking about the hardships of your rocky beginning had him cringing before stepping inside, searching around for you. 

He still remembers the rough 6 months it took to get you to come back around, how you were skeptical of him at first and figured it was all a joke until you realized how serious the man was. Fear had suddenly become the only emotion you felt for him and you proceeded to think of him as some crazy asshole. 

Much later down the line, Jungkook can understand why you’d think that. 

He then had to admit that as funny as he found it, he was a little hurt when you told him to stay away from you, threatening to call the police if he so much as breathed in your direction again. Jungkook was not put off by this, because even if you did- the 100 year old demon could easily kill them all within the first five seconds of their arrival but of course you wouldn't know that and he’d never want you to.

Jungkook never wanted you to be afraid of him.

It was just strange however, that while you told him such a request, he could still feel your disappointment in the damaging reveal that resulted in the loss of a new friend. But as you requested… Respectfully, Jungkook went away—at least from your eyesight.

 Of course he was still around, the demon couldn’t keep himself away from you even if he tried. It was physically draining at that time and he didn't notice it like he does now. He was always around, watching over you and seeing you interact with others who weren’t him. For the first time in his life, he’d actually experienced sadness. He wanted to talk to you, interact normally with you, and smell that faint scent of yours that used to give him such an amazing high whenever you were together. On the other end, Jungkook wasn’t going to force you and he would wait for you to come around, somehow knowing that on your end...you kind of missed him too.

He just didn’t realize that day would be more than 2 months later and not in the way he hoped.

By then Jungkook had actually gotten busy back at home and while you were still on his mind, he’d grown to always keep another sense for you- which he didn't know he was capable of. Anytime that the demon had crossed your mind- he knew and he saw all of it. Your relieved thoughts wishing him good riddance, your bittersweet memories of the laughs you shared and even a few dreams he’d managed to sneak a peek at. Some of them were formed from your memories, others were concocted from your fears, and the rest-...well lets just say the demon will never understand why your dreams were perfectly timed to stop whenever you and a faceless man had begun to inch too close to each other. Rarely did you ever have them though and sometimes he wondered what could ever be the cause of them…Though, now he has a pretty good idea. 

There was also another sense, one he always hopes you would never have to use again. One day you fell...hard. A terrible accident of you slipping in your shower and breaking your arm while also creating a lethal blow to the back of your head. In fear you laid on the shower floor, hot water spraying over your injured figure and you couldn’t call for help, hell you were barely conscious enough to.

 Jungkook didn't know how, but he could feel it, something was wrong, you weren’t okay and wherever you were, he needed to be there and fast. The whispers slithering around in his head and an unclear image of you popping up behind his eyelids. It could have been from the silent pleas in your head or the pure emotion of terror pulling him to you, but Jungkook had found you, Appearing out of thin air in a steamy blur of your bathroom and ultimately scaring you half to death in your pitiful state. When he found you, he was so horrified that he didn’t pay attention to your scent causing a dangerous reaction to him and his body. 

His vision went dizzy and his mana began to seep from his fingers, but none of that was too big or too important when he was watching you slowly die in front of his eyes. 

He remembers the tears slipping down your beautiful face and mixing in with the red water flowing down—…red…water? The blood, Fuck, you were bleeding so much!

Jungkook could still remember his panic after noticing the crimson liquid being produced from the back of your head- coating the strands of your wet tangled hair. His breathing became labored as something shifted in him and you were still conscious right up to the point where you could see the shocking changes to his features. Deepening veins crinkle around his face connecting to his pitch back eyes…skin turning a sickening gray as his teeth poked to the top of his lip.

You were holding your arm, the life in your eyes dimming out by the second while looking confused and more terrified than ever as you silently pleaded for this not to be your end. You truly thought He was going to kill you and that realization overwhelmed you completely.

 Needless to say you passed out as soon as you saw whatever was happening to him, eventually leaving him in a hasty and awkward situation to gather you up from your position and covering up your bare body. 

Jungkook’s hands shook unknowingly, feeling your life force fade by the second and he moved quicker, suddenly concentrating enough to heal you and bring you back to your normal state. Which actually might’ve been something you would have wanted to be unconscious for, because there was no way you’d want to experience the smoky black essence that had begun to slither out from Jungkook’s hands and into your head. It was never a pretty process, at least not in the rarest of times that he’s had to use it. It pained him to watch you groan and cry in your sleep, but at least they were signs of you still being alive.

It took a lot of his energy to bring you back from the brink of death, but Jungkook did it anyway, exhausting himself in the end. So much that when he was done- the black blood dripping from his nose, he collapsed next to your unconscious form and waited with you, just for a couple of minutes and then he would leave when he felt you were okay.

He overestimated his impulsiveness, those minutes slowly turned to hours as time passed and it was purely unintentional, he couldn’t find it in himself to leave you. The more Jungkook stayed by your side the more he had begun to feel comforted by you and the less he felt panicked by your sudden injuries, nor by the idea that you would slip away permanently.

When you came to, in your bed later that night, you’d tried to write it off as a horrible dream. However it wasn’t and  you quickly came to that realization, because he was still right beside you on your bed, watching you and holding your healed figure so tight you were sure it would eventually cut off your air intake. 

He felt your inner turmoil, the anger, the relief, and another feeling he couldn’t quite decipher. All he knew was that your heart was beating way too fast for him to keep up and that your scent had gotten just a little stronger.

He wondered if you could smell him the way he smells you, reveling in it and inhaling as much as he could before you’d eventually push him away again. He knew it was coming any moment, Jungkook could feel the fear and the confusion, knowing that you were aware of the dull pain emanating from the back of your head and your arm. You still had your memories and it was baffling how quick you came to the realization that absolutely none of that was in your mind and Jungkook was actually something that wasn’t meant to be a part of your mundane life.

Yet, by the look of the crimson blood staining his shirt and your bed sheets…there was some explaining that needed to be done.

Jungkook knew you had many questions and were probably still too shaken up to figure out which one you wanted to ask. Not to mention that he was still the last person you wanted to see, so he didn't mind your uncomfortable state in his arms. It wasn’t until time slowly passed again that he’d heard you speak to him for the first time in months with your actual voice. He couldn’t help but hold his breath to your soft tone, so small and precious…it made him melt inside. 

“The last thing I remember is… my shower.” You hesitate, well aware how much stiffer he’d gotten as it connects to his ears. Jungkook’s body froze intensely from hearing you and although he was excited, he couldn’t bring himself to answer because he refused to think you actually wanted to speak to him. He wondered if that was all you truly wanted to say, still feeling the huge mix of emotions, because you had to have noticed the blood over his shirt.

“Is that…my b-blood?” You had so much fear asking that, lip trembling at the thought as your eyes zoned in on the out of place stain.

 “Unfortunately, it is Angel.” He swallows.

Your eyes water, scoffing at the ironic pet name. “Am I dead?”

He frowns and shakes his head, even though you couldn’t see him. It’s probably best if he answered you honestly. “You… were half dead when I found you. You almost didn’t make it if I hadn’t helped…”

You peered at him lost. “How did you know?” 

 He shrugs with you still in his arms “I heard your voice call out for help, it was so sad that I followed it and… it led me here. I managed to stop the severe bleeding to your head, but your arm may hurt for a couple of days. I’m sorry, I didn’t have enough energy to heal it fully.” He then cautiously explains it to you as simply as he could and you try your best not to let your tears drop in front of him from the recent thoughts. 

“Don’t apologize, I-It's not like you had to help me.” You say more embarrassed than anything.

You nearly died and you were actually saved by a self-proclaimed demon. The same one who’d transformed into something horrifying right before your eyes, but is also holding you close to him for dear life, as if you were his only comfort. 

Jungkook…the man or thing you insulted and told to stay hell away from you and he’s the very reason you’re still breathing. What does he want from you? He didn’t have much of a connection to a random person like you. Is he watching you? 

“I know, but I wanted to.” Jungkook hesitates after another long silence...anxious to ask you something that's got him on edge. “Are...you scared of me?” 

You nod, making his chest burn in response and at the time Jungkook didn’t understand why he cared so much. 

“I was at first when I thought you were here to kill me or that I imagined you before dying.” You sniffle, your weary voice then following. “b-but, I think I’m just confused more than anything. I don’t understand why or how you helped me.”

I don’t understand you. Is what you were truly thinking and Jungkook could very well say the same thing.

You were beginning to think you were going crazy, letting yourself feel safe within his arms and allowing some unworldly creature into your life under that title. But in the moment, underneath all your fears and doubts, you were actually happy to have someone there who cares for your well being-even if he wasn’t human. 

You live alone and your estranged family is miles away from you, making it highly doubtful that no one else but Jungkook could have found you before it was too late. There was no telling what could have happened to you if he didn’t and that thought had stuck with you even within the next couple of weeks that the man had disappeared again.

 There wasn’t much else you’d seen of Jungkook and whether you noticed it, you had begun thinking of him more often once he was gone. He always saw that night replaying over in your mind continuously even while he was too busy with his duties. There were a few times he swore he heard you call out to him again, but every time he ignored his urges. Watching the images of you in his head and keeping a safe distance until he’d heard you again within a desperate rush. 

Why the hell does he keep hearing you like this? And Jungkook never stops himself from following it.

When he found you, this time it was you and your co-worker Min Yoongi being held up by what looks like a hooded man pointing a weapon towards both of you. He could tell you’d just come from work, that hideous uniform making its first appearance to him and he mentally swore one day he would burn it.

Which Jungkook definitely did. Twice.

He takes his time to assess the situation and the look of concern coming to his friend’s face. He really needed to act fast, before it all goes wrong, the both of you being in serious danger. Well at least not for long, not after he’d taken the liberty to come behind the robber too fast for you to comprehend. It didn’t take more than two seconds before the both of you heard a sick crack of the man’s neck, followed by the clatter of his gun. In the next second Jungkook was gone as well as the robber, leaving you and your friend baffled in silence.

“What the fuck was that?” Yoongi frowns, stepping from in front of you to make sure you’re alright. You shake your head feigning innocence while also willing your heart to stop the erratic beating as your mind replays the whir of a tall and dark figure appearing and disappearing with what you assume to be the now dead offender. 

“I don’t think I could give you an answer for that.” You swallow, still processing the moment.

You tried your best to push away the panic after that event, but something deep in your gut was telling you it was possible and for some reason you hoped that was the case. Was that? No way...You would immediately think of only one possibility which of course would lead back to the only abnormal thing in your life and that was Jungkook. 

He saved your life again, you quickly realized and from that moment, there wasn’t a day that passed by and you didn’t think of him. Sometimes he could even feel when you wanted to call out to him again, your questions still left unanswered as to what happened that night and why your friend suddenly couldn’t remember a thing the next day.

As much as he had tried to ignore you like before- your cries had become stronger than ever by the day, beckoning him to you- especially when he’d begun to feel a deep sadness in you as time had passed on. 

Jungkook didn’t like this, he’d never sensed it on you before and it was so strange to feel it from you so often. He’d gone back to watching over you himself, seeing you be so lively in front of all your other friends and masking down the unknown pain you’d been feeling for a while. 

You felt alone.

Apparently you’d felt that way for a very long time. When you were by yourself, he felt your true emotions- even when you took it upon yourself to go out one night to a bar. 

Jungkook couldn’t stop himself from following you, watching in the background once again ( truly not his proudest moments.) and seeing you drink yourself to the point where you couldn’t tell your left from your right. At first he didn't think too much about it until he heard your slurred words leaving softly from your mouth, though they should normally be swallowed by the deep bass of an upbeat song blasting throughout the dark scene.

Jungkook felt his body go cold, your face stricken with despair. It was enough of an image to tug on his emotions, which strangely had been harder to keep a control on. 

He kept on watching you drink consistently, more and more as if you were trying to drown within them. Being drunk wasn’t a good look on you and especially not when so many others were watching you with ill intentions. By others, he means...the rather unmerciful creatures hiding amongst your kind. The ones who could easily be drawn to the purest part of your soul and would then run off with you somewhere else to devour you without batting an eye. 

Unsurprisingly, that disgusting thought had Jungkook caving, knowing any of them could easily be apart of his bloodline.

It had become unbearable to watch you continue on like you did and without much more thought, he’d left from his dark corner, hiding him well within the crowded space. The demon maneuvers around the multiple bodies on the dance floor, making his way across the lively building and heading your way once he’d notice an unpleasant scent of another too close to you. 

Jungkook searched, his enhanced eyesight flitting around the dark scene until he saw it standing beside you and leaning comfortably against the table, blocking any way out for you. A sick grin is plastered on its face as it talks nonsense in your ear and it was disgusting to see the murderous intent hidden well behind its eyes, but not from Jungkook. He could see well within its blood driven thoughts, if not, what would even be the point of his high ranking if he can’t see every move of the underlings.

“She’s mine. Fuck off…” Jungkook growls deeply under his breath in a menacing manner. It's all he has to say to have a horrified look replacing the creature's smug expression. 

Those murderous eyes, flit around the room and towards him with nothing but fear dancing behind it’s pupils. He’d barely put any effort or authority in the command, but it had heard him enough as if he was standing right beside it. Jungkook’s dark essence encased the creature within it’s head and it swore it nearly saw the prince ripping the life from its body.

Just like he wanted…honestly they always had the weakest minds to access.

The creature had conveniently taken the form of an attractive human male, most likely looking for its next meal. He didn't give a damn what it had planned for you but what he does know is that if it isn’t gone by the time he was walking up to you- the creature would never have a chance to blink before Jungkook would have fulfilled exactly what was seen in it’s head.

The creature was smart when it took off afterwards. It disappeared within the next second, no questions and especially no hesitancy within the prince’s presence. You’d frown, wondering where the random guy had run off to, before a familiar scent of mint burned strong in your nostrils and your blurry eyesight was able to make out a familiar face standing right beside you out of nowhere.

“Boo.” He whispered and your body was stiffening. Suddenly you could hear your heart beating rapidly in your ears and it felt as if someone had knocked all the air out of you as you flinched back.

“Jung-kook…?” He could barely make out through your grumbled pronunciation.

He sighs at the unfortunate situation. “You should be home, Y/n-”

Before he could finish, you’re letting out a strange giggle that was swallowed up by your extreme intoxication. Your eyes half lidded when you slam your hand down to make your point and you swung it towards him. “You are wat-ching me. I-I knew it…I felt it.” 

He grimaces from the hearty burp following those words and the redness of your eyes staring somewhat in his direction. Of course he was watching you, he never stopped …and you knew that? You couldn’t have.

 “Y/n, how many do you see of me?” Jungkook goes on to ask, waving an inked hand in front of your eyes that you definitely weren’t following.

You then squint as if you were thinking hard about the question. “Ummmm...di- you always h-have a twin?” You hiccup.

The man suddenly frowned under all the ruckus and music...There was no way you were getting home without him.

 How are you suddenly this reckless?

Irritated, Jungkook grabs your hand without warning and leads you out of the area with haste, before anyone or anything could target you again. He then leads both of you out of the club and onto the sidewalks of the dark, empty street. 

You tried your best to keep your stomach down, groaning as the big scary man walked both of you out of sight and into a dark alley beside the busy building.  Thankfully you were too drunk to comprehend much, that meant Jungkook didn’t have to go through the miserable task of walking you home. Instead, all he had to do was keep you beside him- an arm grabbing you and pulling you so close, anyone would assume both of you were just an average couple. 

You two are most definitely not…well you were pretty normal, Jungkook was the one that just couldn’t stay away from you. 

He doesn’t know if it was because of how pissed he was or maybe he was just too focused to pay attention to your heartbeat speeding up from the close proximity, but he definitely missed your audible gasp from the move.

It clearly didn’t matter, the one goal he had for that night was to make sure he got you home safe. Which, technically... he did- but it wasn’t as quick and simple as he’d foolishly hoped it would be.  

The only way to describe your sudden transition, would be as if the both of you were just walking casually down the alley way of the city and when he hugged you closer, a two second blur passed over your eyes and you were suddenly walking through the entrance of your apartment. There was no sound, no sparkles or magical effects to signify the inhuman move...just him.

Jungkook immediately removes himself completely from you, stepping away to another part of your living room as if he couldn’t stand to be any closer. 

“Go to bed.” He then suggests, with a somewhat disappointed gaze. 

Somehow... that hurt both him and you to say.

You pout suddenly trying to sober yourself up and you didn’t want him to go away again. You wanted to know more, you couldn’t understand why when you shut him out and clearly wanted nothing to do with him.

“ But I-...you...?”

Normally there would have been more fight in you from the command, but with the after effects of all those drinks, your body felt as if it was ready to shut down any moment.

Even Jungkook could sense your low energy, watching your uneven stance  as you were swaying side to side but ultimately trying to keep yourself awake enough to say something to him. The man was seriously starting to question why he even had such a strong pull to you- but the second he noticed your body swaying a bit too far for his liking, all those thoughts had shot out the window. 

 Jungkook had sprung forward from the distance he tried putting between both of you– catching you within  unreal speed before your entire body could collide with the floor. Instead you had landed safely within his arms, the man groaning in exhaustion that he now had to walk with you all the way to your bedroom, because there was no point using up more of his energy to teleport both of you there when it was only a few feet away. Still, it was never supposed to go this far and you definitely weren’t supposed to meet him again after the last time he helped.

Why were situations like this becoming so damn hard?

It was too late to make sense of it, even in your intoxicated state and you’d just be dumb to think this was a dream. Jungkook, a man who is a demon...and has saved your life so many times that it might as well be a cliché, had taken you home from his own volition and brought you to bed with absolutely no complaint. 

Towards the very end of that encounter, once again you’d managed to thank him like before, drowsy, half-way conscious. You then panicked because when you finally had the opportunity to see him again, You blew it. Drowning yourself in alcohol to avoid the obsessive thoughts you always had of him and the small hunch in the back of your mind telling you that he is always near. 

He’s not dangerous...in-fact you’d know better to think he actually cares about you, but Jungkook didn’t know that you were beginning to understand that, putting your theory about him watching over you to the test and Jungkook had passed with flying colors. 

Meanwhile Jungkook, feeling stupid enough to let you see him again, was ready to leave as fast as possible. He remembers setting you down gently onto your bed and slightly missing the feel of your body in his arms, but it was a small emotion that he could easily bury to the back of his mind. He was ready to let go and maybe even ignore the odd pull to you once and for all until something soft had grabbed weakly for his hand when he’d begun to turn away.

Again, he overestimated his impulsiveness.

He flinches in the process, his guard crumbling so easily and he’s looking down towards his wrist to see you staring up at him with those wide starry eyes he’d first met you with. 

“Please…stay.” Jungkook’s face screwed up in confusion, you were barely able to finish that last sentence before slipping into unconsciousness and letting him go as you passed out with slumber. 

Stay? No, absolutely not. He shouldn’t– he can’t…Jungkook won’t.

He breathes in, encouraging himself to leave and to move his feet, but that never quite worked out. In-fact Jungkook has become comfortable watching you sleep peacefully, your dreams of a faceless man again coming up and he watches them like a movie. Your smile bright as ever, leaning into someone with raven cropped hair and a toothy smile. You both looked perfect together and some part of him envied that even while it wasn’t real.

He’d laid beside you, plenty of space apart, going over every last feature and detail of your face. He was content, the bored void inside him faded and Jungkook never realized how dangerous that feeling was so easy to become addicted to. 

He didn’t know that's where it all began.

Skipping over the next few months of your developing friendship, Jungkook had begun to pop in and out more often whether you wanted him to or not- kind of like this moment and after the past few years, You’d gotten accustomed to it, no longer jumping out of your skin at the sight of a gorgeous demon appearing in your home or at your side to talk to you at any moment. You’ve grown to not be scared of him, you wholeheartedly trust Jungkook with your life and he could say the same. Spending hours of your free-time together, talking and teaching him about the latest trends or simply enjoying each other's presence.

You became a safe haven for him. When Jungkook was stressed, he came to you, when he’s tired he comes to you, and if he was just bored from working…he spent the rest of his time with you. Under all that consistency, there's no one else who could bring him the same kind of peace. He respected you and cared for you, but at some point Jungkook knows it’s grown to be more than that.

 He loves having you around, it’s exhilarating every time, making his heart beat faster than usual and he had to admit the thought of your body against his brought unspeakable, filthy ideas to his mind, but Jungkook had never entertained the idea of truly being with you before and maybe that was because of his inability to think you’d never want to be with anyone else than him. 

 Clearly that had changed.

He realizes that maybe he’d taken that thought for granted, because he really doesn’t want anyone other than you. He’s definitely unable to skip the idea of confessing to you the second he sees you, thoughts of knowing someone was here not too long ago, sending him into a fearsome state and if that wasn’t enough then maybe it was also the pure anger that he couldn’t only smell you anymore but that putrid scent he was beginning to loathe. The mixed smells waft around your bedroom and it’s enough to almost have him losing control, because no one else should be able to touch you.

You are his and his only-... wait, no you’re not…you’re actually just friends, because Jungkook is a dumbass who never made his move. Still that didn’t mean he couldn’t hope you weren’t sleeping with other people.

It feels like Jungkook was walking on a thin line- balancing himself from tipping over. Too much is going through his head, his jealousy and anxiety on your well being confusing him more than ever. Something about this situation is completely off to him and he was more possessive than usual, so worked up that he can’t seem to let himself feel any different as if an invisible force was playing around with him. 

Jungkook can’t think straight.

“I’m getting too worked up over nothing. We’re just friends.” He whispers silently to no one, feeling as the mana lowers as well as his anger. The only problem is, it feels like his body won’t listen to him anymore.

Trying one more time, Jungkook begins to think of you. He closes his eyes, taking in a long breath as the whispers in his head begin to fill the silence. He focuses on them, a blurry vision attempting to get a hold of his usual connection to you, only to fizzle out moments later with no progress. Jungkook goes back in again and tries so hard to reach you, that the energy from it actually triggers a freakish spark to your room and hallway lights, dimming them out completely and leaving him there pitifully within the dark silence.

He never thought feeling nothing could ever be so terrifying. 

Suddenly, his chest begins to tighten and he can't breathe as something overcomes him. A highly noticeable sharpening comes to his vision as Jungkook lets out a powerful wave of frustration. In the dark, while his eyes are being covered in pitch black, the veins in his face surface with the same color. His skin then turns a lighter shade of pale gray and immediately Jungkook panics, closing his eyes briefly before shutting them tight then intaking a deep breath of air.

If you came, you wouldn’t want to see him like this…then again, what if you had someone else with you and you were still with them? What if you brought him back and Jungkook lashes out at him, you’d definitely hate him afterwards. Fuck, his thoughts just went in a huge unreasonable circle.

He shouldn’t be this possessive, but something was clearly telling him otherwise. Jungkook just can’t shake those thoughts. He doesn’t want you to be scared of him again.

You’re allowed to hang with others besides him and Jungkook knew that, you were never alone-albeit you did have few friends including Yoongi, but you were still a highly likable person. He didn’t have the right to question who you were into, but damn if it didn’t have him seeing red or better yet-black at the possibility, especially being that he has absolutely no idea who it could possibly be.

He opens his eyes as his vision begins to get back to normal, his gaze landing on the small but open space of your bedroom. 

Like many times before he’s seen the familiar baby pink shade to your walls, the various bots of random plants he had no clue the purpose of. The cute white vanity on one side of the room and a tall glass mirror on the other where he constantly finds you getting ready. Lastly in the middle- your neatly made up queen sized bed with cream sheets, a thousand plushies and too many matching baby pink pillows to count. He’s seen all of this before and even laid there with you while watching some kind of princess movie called Disney? Whatever, that's not what's important right now and it's not like he was actually paying attention anyway.

Not with you so close to him.

Jungkook couldn’t seem to get the image out of his head- the memory of both of you cuddled together, his arms wrapped securely around your waist and you lying comfortably on his chest as the light from the screen highlighted your soft features in your sleep. A feeling of absolute content washes over him and there was nowhere else Jungkook would rather be than there. He loved the position mostly because it allowed him to feel your heartbeat, and more so the way it would speed up or skip whenever you felt him shift under you as if you were hyper aware of his very presence. It was the kind of feeling where Jungkook would actually think maybe he had that same effect on you like you did him- except you just never showed it and you were surprisingly good at it for someone whose mind is easily accessible. 

Though there have been times where Jungkook would get a glimpse of your thoughts and he had to admit, the shocking images that would randomly sprinkle in once in a while of him—he would immediately regret ever taking a look, abruptly springing up and removing you from him to hide his sudden horniness.

You can’t imagine how frustrating it is for him, when you’re showing him thoughts like that, but he can’t sense your feelings towards him and he gets even more antsy when he can't sense you at all.

Just like this moment.

Jungkook hasn’t seen you in almost an entire month, part of that mostly being the prince’s fault. He’d gone home, a while back, atoning for his neglect over his reign. It was only right, leaving to attend to important matters and clearing whatever he had left undone. However, was that really the only reason? 

Jungkook felt like a coward. Shame entering his chest whenever he found himself around you before that. He couldn’t stop thinking about it, a strong urge inside him whenever he gets too close to you. He’ll never know what triggered this strange behavior, but he does remember the exact day it had begun.

1 year and a few months…

He came just before you did, hearing you huff out a weary breath as you stepped through your bedroom door. When you do, your eyes instinctively scan the space, not disappointed when they fall towards your bed to find your friend waiting in a very comfortable position against your headboard like always.

You pause to adjust, a line coming over your lips to hide your tired smile at the scene of him playing with your pink bunny plushie. In a way, it oddly reminds you of him- cute, but mischievous as he tosses it in the air and catches it to bend the arms gently.

for some reason he always chooses that specific toy.

“You know. If you like Cooky so much you can keep him.” You say walking in further and bending forward to slip your nude heels off of your feet to get comfortable. “I mean he’s practically your twin, except with all the redeeming qualities of course.” 

Jungkook’s eyes snap from the little character and over to you as if he hadn’t been expecting you to walk through the door. You knew he could sense you very easily, so you doubt he didn’t hear you arriving home on a Sunday afternoon. 

You were right, however, Jungkook could always tell when you were close and that was because he could always hear your thoughts whispering to him at random. Like how relieved you were to see him after a long day of faking your social life with a group of your old college classmates you clearly didn’t care for. 

What Jungkook wasn’t expecting, was to see you walking in with a much different attire than he was used to…

“Just because he’s fluffy and incredibly handsome  doesn’t mean you get to compare him to the original.” You hear him say while also hearing movement from your bed as he shifts to face you.

You turn to make a face at him. “He is the original.”   

Jungkook fakes being hurt with a hand to his chest and then tosses Cooky down, back into the spot you had him before. He watches you silently with a curious gaze, as if thinking hard about what he’s seeing and you realize that the second he looks your way, he hasn’t looked anywhere since. That was evident enough when you walked over towards your mirror only to meet his unwavering gaze in the reflection. 

He gives you a once over, face blank of any thoughts and you’re silently trying to distract yourself from the way it had begun to make you squirm. They follow slowly down your back, arching a brow when your dress stops only a few inches above mid-thigh. 

 “I’ve never seen you in a dress like that before.” He comments, but from his expression you can’t tell whether it was good or bad. 

It was definitely good.

“That's because I only wear it when there's actually people around to impress.” You tease and Jungkook then hears you clear your throat from his silent response. Your arms reach up and bend back attempting to unzip the back of the fitted silk dress when a nervous thought enters your head. 

Your fingers were beginning to fumble, suddenly feeling under fire from the Judging gaze and it was strange, because you never truly cared whether or not anyone had approved of the way you looked. Apparently, that kind of mentality didn’t matter when it came to the prince. Then again, nothing about your friendship was normal since the beginning.

After attempting to unzip for an embarrassing amount of time, your eyes are meeting Jungkook in the mirror again, an amused smile being held back as he nibbles on his lip ring from your clumsiness.

“You’re enjoying this aren’t you?” You ask slightly annoyed.

“No, don’t mind me. I’m just watching you at your most impressive.” He nods while folding his arms, feigning innocence. 

You’re immediately rolling your eyes, landing on the inky bulge of his bicep under the oversized black graphic tee. You then realized the kind of rockish look he’d gone for- his long hair, styled half-way back as usual and he was also wearing a pair of black cargos bunched at the chunky soled boots.

He then arches a brow, patiently waiting for the inevitable. You frown, not at him, but more so to yourself for noticing. “Shut up and just help me already.” 

“I didn’t say anything…” He chuckles with a shrug.

“You didn’t have to.” You then grumble as your face heats up. You honestly have to stop giving him opportunities to let his arrogant side through. It feels like the longer you know him, the more aware you’re becoming of it.

Jungkook suddenly laughs, moving to stand from his position when he decides to put you out of your misery. Honestly, it was really easy to get you flustered sometimes and Jungkook always enjoyed that a little too much. 

Suddenly, when he prepares to take a stride towards you, something shakes Jungkook to the pit of his stomach. He’s only one step in when his world turns abruptly and the laugh begins to die on his lips from your reaction.

What…the…?

You didn’t notice his sudden expression within the mirror, dipping your head low to allow access at the top and under your hair while also hiding your slight embarrassment. 

Something had reached Jungkook’s nose…your scent…He- can smell you again, but it’s different. This time it's incredibly strong, wafting into his senses as he takes a step forward and Jungkook frowns  from the odd amount. Each breath becomes labored when he comes closer to your awaiting figure, trying his best to play it off in his hazy state. It was like inhaling a poisonous gas, except every pull became more addicting than the last and Jungkook felt like he was losing more of himself within it.

You’re completely clueless, staring off to wherever your mind has gone, probably keeping yourself preoccupied with whatever wasn’t Jungkook. Meanwhile, his body was becoming  exceptionally hot stepping behind you and he held his breath, casually reaching for the lodged metal trapping you within the soft material of such a beautiful dress.

A sudden image of him taking it off of you comes to him and he frowns from the rush of the sight- adrenaline flowing through his hands. Where the hell did that come from? He thinks a bit worriedly and brushes it off as fast as it had come. Jungkook then tries to focus and fiddles with the zipper, successfully freeing the material that was caught in between and on accident, exhales in relief only to breathe again. 

Now, Jungkook felt really weak.

 A light buzz fills his head when he allows himself to smell again. Something within his vision then blacks out, causing him to blink multiple times as his eyes darken in effect to adjust. He grips to pull on the object fully until he’s mildly aware of the sudden movement within your reflections. At first it’s too subtle, but his hyper senses had his skin prickling with unease and there's suddenly a deep chill up his spine.

Jungkook tenses further, slowly looking up to find that you’re staring straight into his eyes un-moving and almost lifeless. He’s stuck, unable to free himself of whatever creepy trance your pointed gaze had him in and all the heat within his chest had begun to move down into the pit of his stomach- creating a fierce hunger inside. 

“Is something wrong?” You tilt your head, a strangely confident look flashing in your eyes as if you were silently taunting him. Your face hides an unknown emotion, egging him on to continue and its shocking shift from your personality before. Almost terrifying. 

“Jungkook-?”  

His heart nearly plummets from the way you say his name.“-No everything is fine.” He barely mumbles, unable to look away within your stare. 

 “Then why did you stop?” You ask, interrupting him. To Jungkook your voice sounds much different. Thicker and lower as if you were purposely making it that way and completely different to the normal lightness it usually had. 

“Should I keep going?” He asks, confused.

 It feels like a strange tension had fallen over the both of you so suddenly and with the way Jungkook couldn’t ignore your sensual pull, his breath is once again caught, watching you cutely bite your bottom lip and say.

“Touch me…”

When those words fall from your lips, your eyes are slowly being  covered in pitch black as your innocent smile turns into one of seduction. He notices by the way you both stand there closer to each other, how much your chest had begun to rise harder and there was no mistaking the lust behind your intentions.

This can’t be real.

A desperate look then falls over your face and expression becoming hooded, making his own eyes widened in shock. He then flinches, eyebrows dipping when your body inches closer to his.

“Y/n? Fuck, why are you looking like that?” Without thinking, he lifts the inked hand, pressing to the middle of your back and holding down the silk material- but something stopped him from moving, like a red siren flashing back and forth inside his head. 

He swears it was meant to hold you in place, but the contact of you against his hand burns, shooting all the way up his arm.

“Please, Jungkook.” Your hands fall onto the mirror in front of you, purchasing there while moving your ass back onto him impatiently. You were then pressing your thighs together, a fucked out expression on your face that he’d never seen on you before.

Why does this turn him on? He shakes his head, but the movement feels like he hasn’t moved an inch. However, that soon becomes another case when he’s moving again. Like a mind of its own, Jungkook’s hand slowly began to lower the zipper without his doing, it was like he was having an outer body experience.

He breathes harder, watching the peaks of your soft skin as your dress slowly begins to unravel from your torso and he’s pretty sure he’s harder than ever- stifling a groan as your ass rubs against his crotch, burning him wherever the both of you touch.

He couldn’t think, slowly giving in to your soft whimpers whispering within his ear and your dress was beginning to fall down further, revealing the swells of your breasts. Your nipples are hard against your bedroom’s air, the visual tipping Jungkook closer over the edge and he can’t help himself but to do exactly what you’d asked of him.

“Touch me now Jungkook.”

“Okay.”

This shouldn’t be happening. Jungkook’s body was bending to meet yours, his hands slipping forward and underneath what was left of the silky material covering you. Instantly, he hears your voice coated in sugar as a moan falls past your lips, feeling his large inked hands palm your chest and pressing your back into him.

His mouth instinctively lands to the column of your neck, your head leaning further to allow him full access and Jungkook takes advantage of it, placing wet kisses here and there, sucking as his hands begin to knead at your supple breasts. He tugs at your nipples, hearing a squeak from your end and feels his mouth water, wondering what you would sound like if he was actually fucking you in this moment. Would you scream his name if he had his cock buried inside you, your hands gripping his hair between your legs?

He wants to experience all of it, the dark desire of ripping off your panties and rolling his hips against your ass over and over just so he could watch the both of you in this mirror until you were cumming around him with only his name in your mouth.

“Jungkook...it’s too hot.” You’re gasping, arching your back and he loves the way it falls helplessly from your lips, so gentle and sweet.  

Jungkook feels one of your hands reaching back for his hair, fingers searing his scalp as they tangle within it. He nips, sucking on the skin and biting down as a shiver racks through you. 

 “I’m fucking burning.” He agrees and continues through the sweet burn of your skin on his mouth, trailing behind your shoulder and down your spine- listening to the sweet melodies of his name coming from your mouth just as one had starts to leave your dress and caresses up the skin of your inner thigh.

So close, he’s so close to feeling you and he didn’t know he wanted to this much.

“Jungkook, please.” 

“Yes, Angel.” He gives a kitten lick to the small of your back, fingers finally reaching towards the top as he was nearly drooling to tug your dress off. 

Just a little more–

“Jungkook?” You frown at your daydreaming friend.

“—Huh?” As if suddenly jolting awake, Jungkook sees you lift your head with innocent eyes, nothing compared to what he’d just been through in the last few seconds. Your scent isn’t as strong to him as before and you were definitely still fully clothed, waiting patiently for him to unzip the back of your dress just like before.

What? How did he get right here? His heart races to understand.

You scoff. “Were you seriously not listening to me all this time?”  

Jungkook’s mouth opens slightly, speechless when you’re rolling your eyes in the reflection as a playful glare makes its way onto your face. “If this is your way to act cute from what I said, it’s not working. Are you going to unzip me or am I going to have to call Yoongi over to help?”

Jungkook tries his best to recover, unable to form any words or thoughts after whatever was just imagined in his head. He had you, your breasts, your body writhing within his hands, begging for him and none of that was real- but it sure as hell felt like it. The worst part is that he suddenly really wants it to be and there's no denying it from the slow tightening in his pants.

Jungkook then releases a shaky breath, trying to come up with any kind of solution as to why he saw that, but nothing comes to mind. All he knows is that he wants to get far away from you as possible right now.

He clears his very dry throat. “Sorry, something came over my thoughts. What were you saying?”

Jungkook watches your eyes snap to him again in a blank stare, instant fear shaking him to his core at the Deja-vu of the gaze. This is until you had a beautiful smile gracing your features and your eyes shining like stars instead of that chilling black, showcasing a smug humor within your gaze along with a small amount of something behind it.

A different emotion Jungkook would continue to push down from then on, but first he needed a long and cold shower.

He feels utterly helpless.

What kind of a dumbass leaves for an entire month and can’t find the one person who anchors them to the closest thing they could call love. Your connection to him was too weak to track. It made him worry, like a dark cloud was falling over him without seeing you as much and he’d almost begun to feel the emptiness of his existence again.

He suddenly sighs to himself in the middle of the silent room, but he was sure there was nothing silent about the way you actually had his emotions bouncing off of the walls. Jungkook still couldn’t control his anger and he definitely couldn’t shake the dark paranoia of you being with someone else while he was gone. 

Is Jungkook too late? Did he miss his opportunity too many times?

The man had been gone for a while...but, at least he warned you first. He actually took the time out of his day to tell you that he would be going back home for a few days. 

Then again, those days slowly turned into weeks and the weeks turned into a full month of no communication, because at some point those thoughts of you had begun to feel so real and with no warning. They were uncontrollable and Jungkook figured having some time to himself could help, but that's his fault because he blames himself for ignoring his growing feelings. 

Now he just couldn’t control them…

“...Jungkook?” 

 The black blood inside of his veins freezes over his body as the familiar voice of someone that wasn’t you, sounds within the thin walls of your bedroom, followed by a very familiar scent. He doesn’t want to turn around, even with his high level of mana but odds are he would be greeted with someone he didn’t want to see and now really wasn’t a good time.

Not while he couldn’t think. 

“Hyung, what are you doing here?” He asks hesitantly. 

“What do you mean what am I doing here? I’m checking on you as always.” The silver haired King speaks up from his stance. “I hope you have a good reason to be standing in the middle of your girlfriend’s bedroom, aren’t you supposed to be home right now?” 

“She’s not my girlfriend.”  Jungkook slowly turns his head, his back stiffening in effect of his anger still residing within him. Right there within his smaller stature Min Yoongi’s coal black eyes stare away at the Demon’s face.

 The shorter, but much stronger man walks in skeptically and Jungkook doesn’t say anything, while staring at him like a wounded animal in the dark. “You can spare me the consistent bullshit on how you’re just friends with her for once. I watch over the both of you all the time, I’m not dumb Jungkook.” 

As if he’d just noticed something odd, Yoongi feels a powerful surge completely out of place and radiating from his tortured friend. It’s almost enough to have his full body going on alert, his concentration centering on one conclusion and Yoongi isn't sure how he couldn’t have sensed Jungkook before he got here. 

“You-…why do you look like you’re ready to rip someone’s throat out?” He then points out, not as a question but more of a statement. 

“Because I am.” Jungkook turns towards him. He breathes, trying to get a grip on himself for his friend’s sake. “I came here to see Y/n, but I can’t get a handle on her. I’ve been getting this terrible sense that something is wrong and…I can’t feel her anymore.”

“You want to see her looking like that?” Yoongi points to him as a scowl comes to his face. Jungkook’s eyes were pitch black, skin pale and fingers shaped into claws. He looks like a creature straight out of a horror movie. Not to mention, that Yoongi can sense a ridiculous amount of Malice coming from his friend. “...-I don’t think that's the best idea right now.”

 Jungkook stares at him lost. “Why not?”  

“You mean besides the murderous energy around you? Or was your deformed figure not enough of a giveaway?” Yoongi asks with an arched brow.

“Hyung. I'm just trying to think.” Jungkook replies.

“Think about what? How not to look like you’re ready to slaughter your girlfriend? You can barely control your thoughts, let alone your body.” Yoongi seems to ignore what Jungkook had just told him- concern uncharacteristically filling his eyes as the room grows incredibly colder, literally. “Jungkook how long do you think you can keep this up? If you go see her while you’re like this, there's a good chance she won’t be safe.” 

Yoongi could then see all of Jungkook’s energy rolling off him in unnatural waves, the dark aura slithering and seeping out of his body all around your room. Even he isn’t sure he’ll leave here unscathed, realizing he stepped into a complete shit show…Dammit Yoongi might actually be too late.

“Relax. I’m pissed, not blood thirsty. ” Jungkook clips, a frustrated hand running through his long raven strands as if he was feigning, Yoongi could tell it was quite the opposite.

He then scoffs, “We both know that doesn’t mean anything when it comes to someone like her. She’s not one of us Jungkook, with the state you’re in- you’d be lucky if you don't consume her within the first minute.”

Jungkook’s stomach suddenly churns from the fear firing within the pit of it, chest puffing from the irritation that the man across from him was causing. He inhales deeply, the image of your face coming to his head and somehow that not only calms him, but makes him even more frustrated than before.

He’s aware of the possibility within his control, but there was no way he was going to get any work done if he couldn’t tell whether you were actually safe or not. All he’s been able to concentrate on is you, even though he wasn’t around you for an entire month.

So in conclusion his distance from you has only made things a lot worse.

Jungkook finally huffs in denial. “I wouldn’t think about hurting her.”

 “Then why do you suddenly look so afraid?” Yoongi steps closer warily. “You’re losing control of yourself, aren’t you? You should have listened to me last time when I suggested you go see Hoseok. Instead, you keep brushing this off…sooner or later you won’t be able to. ”

Yoongi isn’t dumb and he knows how badly Jungkook wants to see you, but he can’t let that happen, at least not yet while Jungkook wasn’t in control of himself. The man doesn’t realize how big of a mess he’s made, not only for himself- but for you as well and as infuriating as it is, Yoongi is trying his best to diffuse the situation before he has to explain to everyone how he let the youngest member destroy his only relationship.

Jungkook exhales, attempting to release some of his anger once again, but it feels like nothing is working. Not only that, but the more Yoongi tries to convince Jungkook, the more he’s finding this entire situation so odd and completely infuriating. He just wants to see you, that's all and he can control himself, he's sure of it…so why the hell is it such a big problem? “I look like this, because I don’t know where the hell she is. Hyung, if you’re going to make things worse, just leave.”

“Well you may not remember this, but you already dragged me into your petty situation. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t taking that seriously, unlike you I take care of my responsibilities Jungkook.” Yoongi deadpans the obvious. “You wanted me to protect Y/n, this is me doing that...Even if its from you.”

Jungkook sighs dismissively as something begins to thin in his patience. 

“You don’t have to protect her from me. What part of this seems like I don’t care? Because as far as I am concerned- there's nothing more important to me than seeing her and witnessing with my own two eyes that she’s safe and not out there with some random asshole.” He spits with a nasty venom at the thought, his calm façade cracking with a wild look. 

It’s not like his friend couldn’t tell how he was really feeling anyway...

“-What?” Yoongi blinks before narrowing his eyes as he tries to come to terms with what he just heard. “What do you mean by random exactly?”

Jungkook pauses from his mistake and he curses himself. “N-Nothing. Just forget it.” 

He can’t concentrate the more Yoongi talks to him and as much as the king doesn't want to be affected, he can’t help his own confusion from Jungkook's behavior…he seriously thinks you’ve moved on from him?

“Jungkook, please don’t tell me you’re here right now because of your possessive impulse to Y/n’s life.” Yoongi asks in a desperate manner and trying to mask his own sudden anger.

“If I say no will you go away?” He rolls his pitch black eyes in return.

Yoongi frowns bemused. “We both know I can't make it that easy.” 

Jungkook then sighs, turning completely away from him, but Yoongi refuses to let him brush over this.

 “Look I don’t know what the hell is going on in your head but one thing I highly doubt is that Y/n is seeing someone else- I would know. Not to mention that you’re the one who left for a month and apparently you both aren’t dating.”

“I didn’t have a choice.” Jungkook replies, but he purposely ignores the other part of what was mentioned. He knows that you’re not together, but that reminder always seems to stir something crazy in him every time.

“You do now...Jungkook, You've been coming here for years straight. Everyday you spend either with her or waiting to speak to her and you’re so blinded by the thought of her you can’t even tell what you want anymore. You don’t find that slightest bit odd, your deep obsession with her in your life constantly?” He then steps forward and Jungkook’s chest rises harder as his right eye twitches. “You can obviously see the way you feel about her, what I don’t understand is what made you so damn scared that you’re driving yourself mad because of it.” 

Jungkook’s eyes go cold, clearly beginning to tune Yoongi out, but his words hit a nerve way too delicate, setting off an unwanted reaction in him.

“Fuck off.”  Jungkook clips as he inhales.” I don’t need you to play therapist Hyung.” 

Yoongi frowns standing strong, watching something flash within Jungkook’s eyes. 

“There it is, That same fear you keep ignoring. That's the cowardice that sent you running home weeks ago. If you’re going to keep on this way, you might as well–” Before Yoongi could even finish his remark, the next thing he knew, there was a booming smack to his back-knocking the air out of his chest and a thunderous crack of your bedroom’s wall. 

“Fuck-!” The King growls out in thunderous anger and pain before his fists are balling up and his patience for Jungkook was quite literally knocked from his body. “So this is the route you want to take? Fighting me so you can keep ignoring your problems?” He suddenly stands from his position- glaring daggers at Jungkook as his eyes turn to an endless void of black- mana stretching unbelievably from his body.

“You keep pissing me off, so that makes you a problem to deal with.” Jungkook only seethes in return and the two have a lethal stare off. Neither of them calming from their chaotic temper.

Yoongi swallows the blood wanting to rise in his mouth. He motions towards Jungkook- beckoning him with an invitation. “Don’t forget that this problem can easily kick your ass. Try me.”

Before Jungkook knew it, he was once again lunging towards Yoongi, willing to to pour out his pent up frustrations. However, Yoongi was too quick for Jungkook to comprehend, stepping out of Jungkook’s way and slamming a calloused hand to Jungkook’s chest. Yoongi’s inhuman speed was always something that could catch Jungkook off guard. While the man acted and thought like a sloth- He was probably the fastest of the clan’s bloodline.

Jungkook’s hands then claw at Yoongi’s arms, slicing through his skin with only one strike and ultimately putting the shorter man’s patience below zero. Yoongi brings his arms back ignoring his pain and quickly coming back full speed towards Jungkook’s chest as his fists connect with a lethal crunch to his breaking ribs. 

“Ugh!” The prince suddenly cringes, feeling the incredible force of Yoongi’s assault. 

The King then roars, those hands slamming against Jungkook’s broken ribcage when he sees Jungkook getting ready for his next strike. Yoongi then closes his eyes, driven by rage and he’s lifting the bulky demon up- slamming his back down onto the floor so hard that Jungkook is sure he’d shattered his spine and crushed his lungs all at once. Honestly its amazing he didn’t fall through from the force, let alone damage the hard material.

Eventually feeling a numbing cold spread from his legs and to his head. Jungkook was close to passing out, but the pain won’t let him. He then coughs violently, the pitch black blood in his chest bubbling from his lips as he barely stares up at his friend with an overdue sense of clarity. For a moment, something flashes behind Jungkook’s eyes, an unclear image of a beautiful face smiling and walking up to a familiar figure without a care in the world, Just like you always did in your dreams.

No.

Before Jungkook could form a thought, or bring himself to comprehend the small visual he’d been trying so hard to grasp, that connection was gone within the next second he’d opened his eyes to a pissed but still concerned friend.

Yoongi just brought him to the brink of death… 

His hand is pressed above the area where Jungkook’s heart resides as he watches a sad look wash over Jungkook’s suddenly broken face. Whether it was because of what just happened or not Yoongi couldn’t tell but there was no way he was going to forget about what just took place.

Fuck, what the hell just came over him? Yoongi thinks as he tries to inhale a deeper breath and gather himself from his unleashed anger. It would have been so easy, he could have simply ripped out Jungkook’s heart if that's what he really wanted…but it’s not and that's only because Jungkook is someone valuable to him.

 “...I’m not going to kill you, even though it sure as hell would make me happy right now.”  The elder man threatens while watching Jungkook blink and attempt to stay conscious. Yoongi stays kneeled beside him, his hand on high alert as the black veins running over his skin begin to disappear. 

Yoongi then slowly feels Jungkook’s mana lower as well and he hates that it took him this far to calm him down. Jungkook’s labored breath reaches Yoongi's ears, which lets him know that his lungs were quickly healing themselves. 

“Even if you did, it won’t change anything. Go ahead.” Jungkook abruptly coughs again. 

The moon light from your windows shines down onto Jungkook’s face where the liquid had also begun to drip from his nose. Instantly, Yoongi feels an immense amount of guilt- but it had to be done, he had to restrain Jungkook. The only thing that made him feel worse about losing his own temper, were the words of his brother at that moment.

 “What did you just say?” He then questions with a horrified look, watching the defeat in Jungkook’s eyes.

With an unbearable amount of pain filling his body, a very familiar scent fills Jungkook’s nose, causing a shitty feeling to come to him at such an inopportune moment. He doesn’t smell that disgusting scent with yours anymore…it's just your sweet almond floating alone within the space other than the two residing injured in the dark. He then shifts, feeling his bones pop back into place and bringing structure back into his spine.

The problem was, nothing hurts more than the thought of losing you to another and simply because he didn’t know how to navigate around his own feelings. So much that Jungkook isn’t sure why he’s completely overwhelmed by the weight lifting off of his chest when he wasn’t able to pick up on the foreign scent he’d been smelling all this time. 

“My chest hurts…” Jungkook croaks.

 “I mean…” Yoongi’s brow arches as he looks him over. “ I just caved it in with my fists so that's bound to have some kind of damage.” He jokes.

Jungkook shakes his head, a humorless scoff garbled in his throat. “No. I mean it hurts because I can’t feel her…Part of me is so upset, because I can’t shake the feeling of someone else being involved in her life while I was gone- the pain makes me want to die for giving up.” 

Yoongi doesn’t answer that for a while as he stares down at Jungkook with nothing but confusion. The gears in his head turn when a deep scowl abruptly comes over his face and he’s truly understanding the full extent of the situation. 

“You must be out of your goddamn mind telling me that.”

 Jungkook frowns, clearly offended. “W-What?”

 “I truly hope this girl is worth it, because I don’t know what else could make you act like this much of suicidal dumbass. I knew you triggered your bond, but I had no idea you were this late into rejecting it and you’re only just now coming to terms after you tried to kill me.” He doesn’t mean to but the words come out harsher than he intended. “Like I said I’m not going to kill you, but if you think you’re going to continue on like this- then I can promise that will change. I have to get you to Hoseok.” 

Jungkook’s brows furrow as he tries to stay focused. “What are you talking about? You think I’m bonded to Y/n?” 

“You just said you would rather die if you couldn’t have her, I think that stands within the category of a soulmate.” The smaller man shrugs bitterly.

“I told you before that my connection to her isn’t like that Yoongi Hyung.” Jungkook groans skeptically when he feels his bones shift in his back again and lock into place- healing is such a bitch.

“So you’re telling me that you always stalk the women you have hallucinations of?” Yoongi asks, staring straight down towards him only to see the shock in Jungkook’s eyes from his comment.

So that's it.

“...How did you know about those?” He then questions horrified with a freaked scowl.

“I didn’t, but now I do- which confirms that  the real reason you went home is because they’re scaring the shit out of you right?” Yoongi smirks, knowing he just hit the bullseye. “That's how it starts...”

“You… don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jungkook goes to move, but honestly everything still hurts and he didn’t like the nasty feeling coming to his chest at the sudden realization of his friend’s confession. There hasn’t been a day that's gone by where he wasn’t obsessed with being closer to you and that includes this very moment where he was craving to be around you again.

Yoongi shakes his head in disbelief at Jungkook's denial. “I know exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve been thinking about Jumping your girlfriend’s bones for a while now and instead of acting on it, like a coward, you hid at home within your work. Now you’re an obsessive ass, with an unstable temper that's going to get you killed.”

Jungkook’s head was swimming, trying to take in the information. Something in the back of his mind was warning him as his body no longer felt cold and numb- his labored breaths becoming normal again. “She’s…not… my girlfriend.”

“Jungkook-Do you know what happens when you trigger your bond with someone and you reject it? It fights back.” Yoongi suddenly mumbles as a more serious tone begins to fill his voice again and the sound honestly puts Jungkook on edge as he lays idle on your bedroom’s floor.

“We don’t have one.” Jungkook swallows hard, the taste of blood still evident in his mouth but he couldn’t focus on that. Not with the sour taste accompanying it as Yoongi begins to explain more into his theory. 

“Hey, I know you hate to be wrong, but I think it's time to understand that everything you’re feeling is not okay. Having a connection like this to someone is not a common phenomenon for us. In-fact it's both equally terrifying and liberating.”  Yoongi says with more annoyance to Jungkook’s obliviousness.

He then blinks, definitely taking his current position into account. “Maybe, it could be from the intense pain I’m currently feeling, but hypothetically, if we were to have a connection with each other. I’m having a hard time understanding how any of this could possibly be liberating.” Jungkook starts. “I’m still not sure how you’ve come to that conclusion when I’m swallowing my own blood right now.” 

Yoongi sighs thoughtfully after he finally removes his hand and it runs through his snowy hair. “Scent, warmth, and an unexplainable obsession with the other. No matter how bizarre or plausible- these are all signs of the Alexithymic bo–”

“ –Alexi-… what?” Jungkook cuts him off.  

“Alexithymia, it's where you can’t express your emotional arousal. Therefore an Alexithymic bond and considering how oblivious you are I’d say its a perfect title.” Yoongi answers, arching a dark brow.

He huffs, not believing how this suddenly sounds interesting. 

“Hyung, my spine just cracked itself back in place and you’re giving me a vocabulary lesson.” Jungkook winces, watching Yoongi roll his eyes again and stand from his position crouched over him. The King strides across the dark space giving Jungkook room to get up. His back should be healed by now, but judging from the congested cough- his chest still isn’t fully recovered.

“I’ll crush your lungs again, if you don’t let me finish.” Yoongi suddenly threatens and leans back onto his heel to concentrate. “Our bonds are rare but more common the higher ranked you are. It's like a new obsession, constantly thinking about that person day and night- nothing else matters. However, it's considered a curse for a reason. The second you begin to ignore any pull it creates between you and that person, it will punish you in a very ugly way. You’ll see and experience things you’ve never felt before and it’ll only drive you mad until you’re triggering the darkest part of you to rid it.” 

“Has that ever worked?” Jungkook tries not to ask too curiously but Yoongi knows that hint of fear laced within his question. Jungkook was definitely scared of whatever was going on with him, including how he wasn’t sure if he’d been imagining a new scenario of you running off with someone else based on a nonexistent scent.

“…Well…you can ask Hoseok that. He ignored his bond to Jiminie because he refused to think anything other wise. Eventually, Jin had to step in and restrain him in the process those few years back. We had to take him away.” 

“Hobi Hyung?” Jungkook repeats one of his brother's names when something finally registers in his mind. “ Do you mean the incident where Jimin Hyung got hurt? I…thought he was just sick.”

Yoongi’s eyes show the pain behind them as the memory plays fresh in his mind of the situation, an almost traumatizing thought to think of. “-Technically speaking, he was…but somehow Hoseok found a way to eventually keep it under control. I think the thought of hurting Jiminie again must have triggered something rational in him. He wasn’t the same for months, but eventually the two worked through it. just like I’m sure you and Y/n can.” 

Something in Jungkook resonates with such a horrible fear of hurting someone like you. In a way, it was actually strange considering that the thought had never entered his mind before, but now…He wasn’t super certain of his feelings towards you. Jungkook would love to believe everything is alright, but tonight has only ever shown him the opposite.

Dammit Yoongi was actually getting to him.

Maybe the grumpy man for a friend was actually right and Jungkook wasn’t the one in control after all. For the last couple of months, it's true that the thoughts he’s had when it comes to you have been worrying him. They always came at random and whenever they did, it was not only an inconvenience, but distracting as well.

All that being said, Jungkook still can’t shake the edge he feels not being near you. He’s held out long enough and there wouldn’t be any harm in him seeing you-even if it were for just a second, honestly what's the worst that could happen?

“You could kill her.”  Yoongi suddenly chimes at perfect timing and Jungkook is looking at him with a deeply confused scowl. “You’re wondering what would happen if you stayed right? I can see that look you’re getting again after all I said and you should know how wrong this could go.” 

“Yeah, I do.” Jungkook then suddenly groans from the pain and moves to stand feeling his body continue to heal and get back to its original state. He nearly stumbles back down before balancing himself again and he’s sighing from the entire ordeal. He looks up, taking in a reluctant breath before he stares at Yoongi head on once again. “I’ll leave after I see her and after that I won’t come back until I can fix this. Hyung, please if I go now, it’s gonna drive me crazy and all of this would have been for nothing.”

“Jungkook…” Yoongi starts for the last time until he’s realizing how much energy this is really taking away from him. Honestly they both have better and much more important things to be doing right now, besides wondering how he was going to get his friend laid.

Jungkook’s eyes glisten with a desperate shine, puppy eyes staring directly at Yoongi and he tries hard to keep his stoic expression back towards the other. Yoongi feels the slight guilt from before crawling back into his chest and hates how much influence it has on his next decision.

 “...Fine. If you want to risk your girlfriend’s life, be my guess, I knew I should have stopped you when I first suspected something.” He huffs in miserable defeat, knowing that if he stays- Yoongi is worried he’d actually end up killing Jungkook out of his own irritation.

He really hoped it wouldn’t turn out this way.

“Hyung, for the last time she’s not my girlfriend.” Jungkook steps forward, ignoring the pain that shoots up his spine and it looks as if Yoongi was getting ready to leave. He pauses after pushing himself off of your door frame with a wary look on his face as Jungkook comes closer.

“Seriously, Do you want me to break your back again?” Yoongi asks, rolling his eyes and still trying to push down the part of him that doesn’t want to leave a highly unstable Jungkook behind. However he knows exactly how this might play out and if it was anywhere near what he hopes is the best outcome out of the worst- Jungkook will come back home for help and you will be safe.

Again…Hopefully.

Feeling an end to this conversation, Jungkook begins to consider his options when Yoongi’s presence with all of his mana was gone in the blink of an eye and Jungkook was once again alone within your bedroom- waiting until the moment he could hear you coming through that front door.

He doesn’t know how long he’s stood there waiting for you, but it felt like hours had passed when suddenly a subtle scent hits his nose and he’s inhaling. Sensing a familiar presence that has his heart hammering in his chest, he’s very aware of your front door opening within the next couple of minutes.

 On instinct he moves, thick boots clunking across the hard floor- a shot of adrenaline speeding through his veins when his teeth grow longer and his hands are itching to grab you. He thinks about how he wants to hold you again, inhaling your scent as much as he could. Jungkook could see himself squeezing you closer and nipping on your skin while leaving hickeys all around. He wants to taste tugging on you harder until his fingers were digging into your sides deep enough to- No…he thinks to himself, immediately remembering his unstable form and ultimately stopping himself from coming to you. 

Not only that, but something didn’t feel right…Jungkook’s intentions suddenly felt unclear- just like Yoongi had warned him. He sighs before taking another breath and closes his eyes as your scent hits him even stronger towards your bedroom just like all those times before. The sound of your light footsteps draw near and are drowned out by a rapid heartbeat within Jungkook’s ears.

Yours or his? He didn't know. 

What he does know is that It’s extremely hard when he feels his body going haywire the closer you get all over again. He tries to avoid the darkening within his vision and before you could even sense someone else inside. Jungkook has half a mind to come into alert a few seconds too late before bringing himself back from over the edge. He inhales seeing you, but then opts for holding his breath so that he couldn’t be drawn into you further.

You however hesitate, calling out his name into the dark and waiting for no response. It’s too dark, for you- but he can see you perfectly within it. A pain in his chest from the hope in your eyes as you unknowingly stare directly into his. He wants nothing more but to reach out and hold you, though he knew that couldn't happen just yet. First he needs to calm himself and quickly find that it needs to be done sooner than later, because whatever Jungkook was thinking about a second ago no longer felt normal.

It felt ravenous...

“Jungkook?…Is that you?” 

If there was anything more relieving than clocking out of your final shift for the week- then it was knowing you wouldn’t be doing anymore doubles for a very long time. It wasn’t usual for you to take on so many at your job, but with all the recent call-outs and you needing some extra cash to save on the side, you’d been working your butt off for the past few weeks. 

You sigh tiredly, your entire body screaming of exhaustion and your feet aching in your  shoes by the time you were heading out for the day. Walking out into the night air, you quickly found yourself shivering and felt goosebumps eroding your skin. 

Although you had been running around like crazy, your body easily succumbed to the cold wind breezing by even as you were walking to your car. When this happened, you always blamed it on the hideous uniform you were forced to wear every shift, cursing the cheap fabric that was no help when it came to protection.

Suddenly, you giggled to yourself while thinking of a certain someone who always made it a point to announce how much he hated seeing it on you. “That shirt is too tight, you look like you’re freezing and suffocating at the same time.” Jungkook had once said this to you before, draping his cozy jacket over you afterwards and leaving himself bared to the night as well. At the time, you weren’t aware of the man’s unworldly nature and even now you still felt like a fool when you scolded him for acting so recklessly.

 Originally, you thought your friend to be at least 3 years younger, making it natural for you to be concerned about his health, even if he was much bigger than you. But as time had gone on, you’d soon found out that the sweet boy was not only a demon within his human form, but that he was also a good few 100 years older than you. 

 Oddly enough he just never acts like it...Jungkook was like a arrogant brat in your eyes, but one you’ve come to adore over time. 

Speaking of…You had begun to pout while letting yourself into your car, wondering when your friend would return from his schedule back home or if he would return at all. It's been so long since you last saw him and once it passed the week timeframe he had given you, a deep unease began to form in the pit of your stomach a while back. Is he avoiding you? You’ve wandered over and over with a deep rooted fear overtaking your mind, but then there were times where you could feel Jungkook in the back of your head like before and you knew he was watching over you somehow. You just wished that it would include him physically being here with you and not wherever he’d gone off to. 

You never thought you would be this bothered without Jungkook around, feeling irritable every now and then to the point where you definitely weren’t your normal self. You had trouble sleeping and like now, after getting off of work, you drove home in your car fast and a bit recklessly if you were being honest with yourself. It was as if you were racing against time, a deeper part of you hoping that tonight he’d at least pop in before you went to bed, especially since this would be the first night you actually planned to stay in without him there.

It’s been a while since you allowed yourself to actually wait for him, giving up a while back on his visits but still holding on to the hope of his presence.

 The more you didn’t have him around, the more you had begun to feel yourself get antsy. Why exactly you weren’t too sure and for some reason you couldn’t bring yourself to ask. All you knew was that, it felt like you were wasting time- like you actually needed to see him soon before something bad would happen. 

But even when you had made it home in one piece. Rushing up the elevator impatiently and finally arriving before your front door, you were disappointed to open it and be met with a very lifeless apartment.

Out of nowhere, your heart sunk in your chest. Nothing but darkness and silence filling the space until you thought you heard shuffling  and whispering in your bedroom. Immediately you thought them to be heavy footsteps, possibly belonging to a man you knew could produce them with his heavy shoes. Is he back? If he is, you have no doubts Jungkook would be confused to not find you here at this time. You were always home by now and if you weren’t catching up on your studies then you were hanging around with him.

Without thinking, your body was on autopilot, immediately closing the door and walking further along the open space of your living room and down the hall towards the now freezing area which held your bedroom. 

Shivering, you frowned wondering why it had suddenly gone so cold when you always kept your house on a casual 74 degrees, not to mention that you specifically remember keeping your hall light on by accident while leaving in a rush earlier. But as quickly as you were beginning to question those thoughts, your curiosity vanished the second you stood in front of your bedroom’s doorway. 

Suddenly, your body freezes- swearing you were standing only just a few feet away from a large silhouette. You frown, a deep breath being taken as if your presence had a surprising effect as it had on you. You feel your heart pounding in your chest, butterflies from not only fear but the familiar scent of mint hitting your nostrils just as it does whenever he is around. Like the first time you’d ever seen Jungkook, there's a jump in your stomach that came with unease from the intimidating energy you felt while in front of him.

Maybe he’s in there…? You think of biting your lip at the foreign shiver that snakes down your spine. You stood staring into the room for about five seconds, letting your imagination run wild until his name was rising up your throat.

“Jungkook?” You whisper with barely enough sound to leave your mouth. “Is that you?” 

There's no response and part of you should have expected it, you had to be a lunatic to feel so secure that a demon was possibly standing in the middle of your room waiting for you. Then again you were used to the possibility and it was strange to think he’s actually avoiding you. Somehow, that thought doesn't stop you from stepping in closer, your fingers inching towards the switch on your wall to reveal if everything you’d been witnessing was true. With a quick flick you wince, letting the warm ceiling light cast down upon you and to your dismay, find the spot where you swore he had been standing, to be empty. 

You weren’t happy, but you also weren’t disappointed- not as much as the beginning of your week when you’d first been expecting the return of your friend. 

“Oh…”  You sag visibly, a shameful emotion of how much you’d actually felt your heart skip a beat at the thought of seeing him. You then scowl deeper, suddenly feeling the beginnings of fatigue catch up with you and it wasn’t until about  30 minutes later after getting your things settled in, that a sorrowful huff leaves your mouth as your gaze burns through the white tiles of your master shower.

“I’ll be back, just give me a week.” You bitterly remembered him saying this to you as you closed your eyes and imagined him with his bright smile. He seemed so warm and didn’t give off the vibe that something could be wrong, so you were at a loss as to why this had been the umpteenth day you haven’t seen him. 

Maybe he’d gotten bored of you…That couldn’t be it, somehow you could still feel him around, but you do remember how much he had begun to space out while being right beside you. It started out small about a year ago, but eventually you had begun to notice the way Jungkook couldn’t focus or that he wasn’t paying attention to anything you would say when you came near him. It was almost like he’d lost interest in you, but it wouldn’t explain why he would continue to pop in or even tell you he was planning to come back.

Unless…Could someone else be taking up his attention?

 That seemed to be another question plaguing you and the thought not only made your heart sink but whatever emotion was clawing at your chest had spread to your body-ultimately exhausting you in the end. This had been the same thought process you’ve had for days now and there was no describing the consuming despair that overtook you because of it. 

While you got ready and slipped into your bed, you could swear that you were somehow aware of his presence within your home. Without him here, it felt empty and lonely. Whereas other times, you’d be laid up next to him watching some kind of kid friendly movie and having him wrapped around you. You're not sure when the both of you had gotten so comfortable being within such an intimate setting, but it had easily became a second nature that you took advantage of.

You toss and turn in the coldness of your bed. The darkness of the room was now a bit scarier to you and again like many nights before- you found yourself restless. It might have something to do with the fact that your mind was used to the thought of sleeping next to someone else for comfort. But still, why was it so hard to sleep? To relax and let your worries melt away? You’ve certainly earned it after working so hard and if anything you should be ready to knock out at any moment.

“Ugh…” You groan, kicking around in frustration before laying flatly on your back.

You were stressed and somehow more distraught than what would feel normal. Were you seriously this upset over him? He’s only your friend…right?

It’s no secret to anyone who’s ever met him- how undeniably attractive Jungkook is. Long raven black hair that was soft to the touch, piercings on his lip, and earlobes. He was the complete opposite of you, dressed in mostly black while being covered in what you thought were tattoos but turned out to be his natural markings inked beautifully into his skin from his hands, all the way to his chest and back just to signify his bloodline. You only knew that last part because you’ve noticed through the few times you were able to catch the small slips of skin under his shirt, your eyes immediately zoning in heavily towards those areas and there had been plenty of times you’ve wanted to run your hands across them.

You swallowed and brought yourself back from the unusual thoughts of your friend. Quickly, you sit up from your position and there's an enormous amount of guilt brushing along your chest when you realize that you were actually getting turned on by the thought of the demon again.

 Why? It was so sudden....but slowly as those thoughts were beginning to triumph your mind more frequently, it was becoming apparent that it truly wasn’t and there were numerous times, you found yourself thinking of the man. When you would stare at his big smile- tongue dragging subconsciously across those pink lips and the way his eyes would have those small crescents as he did so. He was much taller than you and whenever you hugged him, you had to admit the impressive build of his frame against yours. You never really cared for mint, but whenever you smelled it on him, you felt like you could dive into an ocean of it.

Seriously, what was so special about him? Well besides the fact that he is clearly nowhere near human…and that he’s literally royalty within his family.

Jungkook was always just a friend to you, but one that can easily light up your day with just one look. He’s kind and considerate, two traits that completely contradict what someone would think about a dark creature of his stature. But for some reason he’s always had an attachment to you and it’s so obvious that even you couldn’t miss it…The way he looks at you… when he holds you, his entire body tenses up and he gets all giddy just from you calling his name. He also gets jealous whenever he sees you leaving work with your male coworkers. However, something tells you that even Jungkook doesn’t realize his own strange behavior when it comes to your connection with him. 

What if you were the same way? From the beginning, Jungkook was nothing but a stranger and someone who couldn’t keep himself away while knowing absolutely nothing about you. In a way, while you so openly cherished having him here in your home, you still knew next to nothing about Jungkook other than what he allows and yet…He’s the most important person to you in your life.

 As your breathing begins to take a deeper turn and an overwhelming wave of warmth washes over you, there's two things that are starting to become very clear. First, you can’t stop thinking about Jungkook. You haven't been able to since you walked through that front door and secondly, the problem wasn’t that you were too stressed to sleep-you were just incredibly...unbelievably sexually frustrated and it's fair to say that you’re pretty sure he’s the cause of it.

Two long years since you met him and a little longer since you last had a crush on someone or even just an attraction. Everything that you ever thought you liked in a partner had been completely washed away and that was no thanks to him. A man that thinks Disney is actually the name of a movie, acts like a cocky brat and you were pretty sure his job was to torture souls for a living.

Jungkook. You have a crush on him—Great.  

If anyone could see you, they’d wonder why your eyes had widened to the size of saucers. It was hot and you turned yourself over onto your stomach while instantly hiding your face into the fluffiness of your pillow. Hoping you could drift off into deep darkness of shame.

How the hell did you let him get under your skin?

...

Tag List : @thisartemisnevermisses @vampyjk @taeilmom @outro-kook @bishuthot @mwitsmejk @irissilujm @vickyboo @awesomebabyyoda @hanzyyme @gerim-1995 @i-dont-give-a-fok @hwangheiress @hollyverday @seajae @oishee09 @jolinaprincess @yoongibabs

[voltstone]

LYCOS | tacet anima mea | (wenclair)

Wednesday is waning. In her dreams, or by touch, she has been locked to one moment. Her visions know no peace. There is Enid, beneath moonlight, skin a dying shade. Then there’s herself, between the trees, drenched in blood, with the knife at hand… Her true nature writhes. This is just what happens when someone like herself snaps. It’s happened before, will happen again. Because Enid and Ajax have been together through several moons. And he knows his way around her heats. And Enid seems…happy, until she isn’t, and Wednesday has to put her back together. Enid has been stuck in a heat for a while now. And she smells good. She smells really, really good, and Wednesday will kill for it.

or, wednesday still doesn’t know what to do about enid, and enid’s biology really doesn’t help matters. she is going insane. (there will be bodies.)

— — —

hi wenclair fandom. im a shit updater. my last account bonked itself to death i guess. so i'm trying to rebuild on this one. this be the fic i'm working on now.

anyway uh. yeah. um. don’t be scared of omegaverse. i write it not how it’s done typically, if that's…a comfort. anyway. there’s angst and hurt/comfort and aro!wednesday and alexithymia to explore. :D

and  m u r d e r.

Okay, I am actually going to be genuine here. This is an explicit story, and I don’t just mean like, oh it has some smut. It does, but that’s not really why. This is a darker fic, with a lot of the focus being on (and through) Wednesday’s perspective.

Because Wednesday is fucked in the head. Which, like, no shit. But it is beyond what the show has for us since I’ve removed a lot of the sanitization.

Which explains this tag in particular.

Yeah. Dead Dove solely because of Wednesday. Dark, angsty, and everything in between. But also just bizarre. It gets weird because Wednesday is a freak, and Enid becomes a consenting one. Sorry, but also not really. I find these kind of stories cathartic to write. Lol. 

(The rest of the tags from AO3 will be with the first scene down below. The first “chapter” of the fic is an A/N that also reiterates this, and kinda explains more as well.)

Also, this will be available on only AO3 because this story is very much designed to be read using a skin I made consistently throughout. (Essentially, it’s supposed to emulate Wednesday’s typewriter.) The catch is, I also utilize the default in some instances for specific reasons. 

ah well.

hope you enjoy!

:)

— — —

(read more for the first scene, and the AO3 tags.)

AO3

SCALDING | moon | Pt.1

“…you’re not doing this to, like, try and mate with her, are you?”

enid is in heat. ajax tends to her. not well. not good enough. wednesday can do better, and when the boyfriend slips one too many times, she does just that. 

— — —

She bleeds wine. You expected something lighter — rose, or ruby. Like the hue to her lips, or what has bloomed across her face, then her ears, to a moment’s obscure discretion. Yet, perhaps it’s the wolf which dwells beneath her moonlit skin, and the nectar of its hide merely dreams to serve the full moon its bounty. 

As wine — the godly, goat’s blood incarnate.

Her hand reaches for a shadow between the trees. She’s broken. She’s weeping. Nevermore’s breath is a cold, dismal fog. It sticks to her as dew. The moon, ever the melodic sun, steams what life escapes her. Scalding moonlight, waning before her very eyes.

With the shadow, there’s a glint. Stained by red. Like blurry agony.

She screams of day. 

Reaches for the shadow.

For you.

And you’re calloused. A face like the Devil. Eyes as lit oil.

And you’re painted by Enid’s godly incarnate. Leeched to your clothes, down your hands. As for your lips, smeared across.

You bleed too — the Addams’ velvet. Though with each step forward, you can’t tell where velvet ends, and wine flourishes.

“Will it hurt?”

You don’t answer. Your eyes, lit, crack to glass, and the glass within them force a cruel swallow.

“W-Will it hurt…?!”

Again, you don’t answer.

Across your blade…

Wine gleams melodic sun instead.

continue: AO3

[quietwingsinthesky]

Hello! Could i request Lucifer and Sam being together and Sam is having a giant nightmare and he literaly SCREAMS Lucifer's name then i guess i'm letting your imagination works! Have a lovely day.💙 Thank you!

💙💙💙 this one actually stumped me for a few days, I have no idea why. However! It is written! And quite deliciously full of hurt/comfort! I hope you enjoy it.

WC: ~2500

Lucifer is never going to be used to this, no matter what Sam says.

Their nightly routine is supposed to calm him down. Tell his body it’s time to sleep. It never gets the message. It clings to wakefulness with a stubbornness he’d be proud of if he wasn’t the one who had to suffer through it. He’d never felt how long a night was before he had to lie beside Sam, still and silent, and hope that his eyes would finally shut and let him escape. Some motels they stay at have little electric clocks on the bedside tables, flashing in the room with more regularity than the headlights of passing cars. There’s one in their room tonight, green numbers divided across a simplistic screen, a button on top to stop the whine of the alarm in the morning. Lucifer listens to the buzz of the socket it’s plugged into. He hates how quiet his existence can get now.

He rolls over. The pillow under his head is lumpy. Sam had looked at him apologetically and said something about how the money for a better place to stay the night went to gas instead, as though that meant anything to Lucifer. They pass around plastic cards and sheets of paper like they’re worth bartering, and Lucifer’s just supposed to accept that those things have value. (Among the things Sam has placed up on the high shelf of ‘off-limits discussions because they only end in arguments’, basic economics lies somewhere between biblical literalism and whether or not Lucifer should be allowed to drive the Impala.) The outcome of all of that is that Lucifer discovers he enjoys the taste of cheap fried rice from the place down the street and hates pillows that make his neck hurt.

Sam can sleep anywhere, it seems. He’s dead to the world, flat on his back with one hand curled on his stomach like he fell asleep mid-scratch and the other sprawled across the mattress closer to Lucifer. Lucifer takes that hand in his. Sam’s palm is warm, and Lucifer maneuvers it around slowly so as not to wake him in order to press it against his own cold cheek. Sam’s fingers flex in his sleep, rubbing Lucifer’s cheekbone. Lucifer sighs.

He scoots closer. He’s spent long enough watching Sam that he knows what every stage of his sleep looks like. He knows that Sam snores when he sleeps on his right side but not on his left and only quietly on his back. He can hear it every few breaths, like the hum of an engine, nowhere near as noisy as the first time Lucifer heard him snoring and jolted up so fast that he hit his head against the wall. Now, the sound is soothing. It makes it easier for Lucifer to match his own breathing to Sam’s.

This works sometimes. Focusing on Sam. Listening to him. Wondering if his heart is beating in the same rhythm as Lucifer’s. Lucifer shuts his eyes and waits.

A dozen minutes later, he opens them. It was worth a try.

He’s ridding them of the already small distance between their bodies, inch by inch. He doesn’t want to wake Sam up, and he knows how easily he might.

He also doesn’t want to be alone. His chest clenches uncomfortably. It does that a lot, and he can never control it. It’s why he can’t be relied on to go into small, enclosed spaces when he’s allowed to join them on hunts. Something in him makes him freeze. He hates it. He was never subject to his body’s whims as an angel. His own mind never tried to lie to him about where those dark spaces led, what bars would close in on him if he entered... His breathing has fallen out of sync with Sam’s, and he forces it back.

The inches become centimeters. Lucifer squirms to where their pillows meet.

Sam is dreaming. It’s hard to see in the dark, but Lucifer has sat there long enough squinting at shadows that his eyes have adjusted. Sam’s skin and hair seem a dismal gray, varying shades dividing where strands fall across his face, occasionally disturbed by his breaths. Lucifer traces the slope of his neck up from the thin shirt he wore to bed, pausing on the bandage Lucifer applied earlier under Dean’s instructions. (He’d earned himself a slap on the back that made him turn on Dean with a scowl until Sam placed a restraining hand on his arm and explained that Dean congratulating him, not trying to hurt him. Lucifer hadn’t relaxed, but he also hadn’t followed through on his first instinct to hit Dean back. As Sam would put it: progress.) It wasn’t a deep wound. The bandage hasn’t bled through in the hours since Sam laid down, and seeing that gives Lucifer some comfort.

He finally gets to be with Sam, and still, every other week, he has to risk losing him.

But he would never try to take this life from Sam before he’s ready to leave it. He’s seen the peace it brings him to save people. If the cost of that is Lucifer anxiously waiting back at the motel room to hear the Impala roll back up, already having cleaned their weapons thrice over, reorganized their research, checked their back-up phones, laid out the contents of the first aid kits in order of what they use the most often, then that’s a price he can pay. He raises a hand and gently brushes the bandage with his fingertips. Sam grimaces in his sleep.

His gaze slides up the shape of Sam’s chin. He tilts his head slightly to see Sam’s parted mouth. Sam says that Lucifer talks in his sleepz Sometimes snippets of conversations that, when they’re repeated back to him, bring Lucifer back thousands of years. More often, he says names. Lucifer finds the tip of Sam’s nose, smiles, and follows the bridge of it towards Sam’s eyes. He yawns. His own eyelids seem heavier than they were a minute ago. Under his, Sam’s eyes dart back and forth to search for dreams. (More things Lucifer doesn’t understand the purpose of, but at least these were something God had a hand in. That counted for something, even if they still made no sense at best and at worst...)

Sam huffs out a breath. Lucifer’s eyes shut. He’s crowding Sam’s pillow, but it’s comfier than the one Lucifer got. Maybe tonight. Maybe he’s finally going to-

Sam’s body goes rigid. Lucifer’s eyes snap open.

Sam twists away from him, and not thinking clearly, Lucifer tries to stop him. His hand closes around Sam’s arm. Sam chokes out an awful noise, like he wants to say no and is too scared to, and then, so loudly it makes Lucifer let him go, Sam screams. It’s shaped like Lucifer’s name, his real name, his true voice’s pronunciation, and it tears across Sam’s all too human vocal cords without mercy.

Sam curls in on himself. Lucifer reaches for his shoulder, but before he can even touch him, Sam retreats further. He trembles, and worse, goes still like he doesn’t want Lucifer to see his fear. Lucifer’s chest is clenching up again, worse, like there’s something stuck in his throat. He coughs to try and release it, and all that does is make Sam whimper quietly. Lucifer gives him space, sitting up in the bed and massaging his neck. He can’t get rid of the obstruction. It feels like it’s growing. He sucks in a breath, looking over at Sam again, and blinking twice to stop his eyes from stinging.

Lucifer swings his legs off the side of the bed. Sam twitches when he hears Lucifer’s feet touch the floor, and his breathing stutters in panic as Lucifer walks around the bed. Lucifer makes no secret of where he’s going. When he rounds the bed, he sees that Sam has squeezed his eyes shut. His hands are both drawn in close to his chest, clasped together. Lucifer approaches his side of the bed slowly, and before he’s near enough to loom over Sam, he gets down on the floor. The wooden boards are scuffed. He sits.

“Sam?” He has to force the name out through his blocked-up throat, and it makes it sound scratchy.

“Please, don’t,” Sam whispers. The tightness in Lucifer’s chest becomes painful.

It’s a terrible thing, to love someone so much and to be what he fears most.

The headlights of a car perforate the curtains Lucifer drew over the window after he laid the salt line that would keep them safe. The dimmed glow illuminates Sam’s terrified expression. His chest surges violently as though he can’t get enough air.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Lucifer whispers. He rests a hand on the mattress beside Sam. He wants to touch him, to comfort him, but he won’t be able to endure seeing Sam flinch from him again.

“What do you want?” Sam’s words escape around the rush of a sob. “I’ll do it.” Lucifer doesn’t have time to say a word before Sam is cringing away. “Not that, not that, anything else. Please, don’t make me do that again.” Lucifer feels something hot drip down his cheek. He touches his face, and his fingers come away wet. He wipes it away.

“Sam,” he tries again, “open your eyes.” Sam trembles. He looks too small. If anyone had hurt Sam like this, he would have torn them apart, slowly and painfully. He would redefine cruelty. Instead, there are no hands holding the tools that carved Sam open. There are only wounds, and Lucifer slowly learning to treat them. Sam forces his eyelids apart. His gaze recoils from Lucifer, but Lucifer is patient. “Look at me. Don’t be afraid. Look.” Sam swallows, and he drags his eyes back to Lucifer’s face.

Lucifer’s other cheek flares with heat. Sam frowns in confusion.

“What...” he whispers. His hands unclasp, and one reaches out, unsure. Lucifer holds very still for him. Sam’s fingers slide up his face through the trail. He follows it up to the corner of Lucifer’s eye. Lucifer blinks as his eyelashes are grazed. “Are you crying?” Sam asks. He sounds lost.

Lucifer should be better at recognizing his own body’s reactions by now.

He almost reprimands himself for his lack of control again, but then he sees Sam’s eyes widen as more tears wet his fingertips. He uncurls a little. “I don’t-” He finally looks around, and recognition of his surroundings shows on his face. Sam lets out a breath and sits up, his hand pulling away from Lucifer. Lucifer misses it immediately. “Shit,” Sam says. He covers his face.

Lucifer grips the mattress and pulls himself to his feet. His knees ache in retaliation. He’s surprised by Sam’s hand on his shoulder helping him up, but he tries not to react beyond a glance, in case he triggers a spiral back into panic. He settles onto the bed next to Sam. Their shoulders are almost close enough to rub together. Sam scrubs his hand down his own face one last time. “I’m sorry,” he says. His voice sounds hoarse, carrying the stress caused by his earlier screaming. “I freaked you out. I’m-”

“Don’t apologize, Sam.” Sam shakes his head, and he opens his mouth to do it anyway. “Don’t.” Lucifer insists. Sam looks down at his dropped hands in his lap. His thumb slides over his palm, but he doesn’t press down.

“I...” He looks at Lucifer. “This is real, right?” Sam doesn’t trust his own eyes or his own pain. He looks at Lucifer like he holds the entire world in his hands, and if he so chose, he could shake it to pieces. Lucifer cradles the truth like glass and gives it back to Sam freely.

“This is real,” he promises. He lifts a hand, and with the tilt of Sam’s head as invitation, strokes the long strands of his hair back behind his ear. “I’m real. We’re both free.” Sam shuts his eyes, letting out a long, deep breath. He opens them again calmer. When he looks at Lucifer, it’s like he’s seeing his lover, not a monster lurking in the dark.

“You’re still crying,” Sam tells him. He reaches down for the sheets and uses the edge of them to wipe off Lucifer’s face, gently stroking under his eyes and nose, along his cheeks, until his face is dry and clean.

“I don’t know why it’s doing that,” Lucifer says.

“Why you’re doing that,” Sam corrects, folding the sheets into his fist so that he can rub his thumb along Lucifer’s cheekbone. He smiles weakly. “Do you need me to pull out-”

“I don’t need an emotion wheel,” Lucifer grumbles. His throat feels clearer than it did earlier. His chest is still tight, but it’s relaxing with time and the reassurance of Sam’s touches. He looks Sam over twice, making sure he can’t find any distress left. When he’s satisfied, he leans into Sam, and Sam’s arm winds around his back to hold him. He rests his head against Lucifer’s, nosing at his hair and breathing in the scent of the shampoo they share.

“Whatever you say,” Sam says. When he breathes in, so does Lucifer. They breathe out in unison. Lucifer hears Sam say, softly, “The real you gets scared.”

“And tired,” Lucifer adds. It makes Sam chuckle. Lucifer feels him look back towards the clock.

“You’ve been lying there awake for three hours?” Lucifer nods and yawns. Sam hears that because he turns back to Lucifer.

“It’s better than nightmares.” Lucifer would take one over the other any day.

But if he has to have them, if Sam has to, he’s glad they know how to help each other. Sam rubs Lucifer’s side. Lucifer lets his eyes droop shut.

“Crying yourself to exhaustion,” Sam murmurs over Lucifer’s head. Lucifer hums back at him. “Hopefully we can find a better way, but... if it works for tonight.” Sam shifts. “Lucifer, you have to lay down.”

“No,” Lucifer insists, “not without you. I won’t let it happen again.” Sam presses a kiss to his lips, and Lucifer’s eyes open for a moment to catch him pulling away. Sam nudges Lucifer further back onto the mattress despite his protests.

“They’re nightmares,” Sam says, as if that’s all they are. They both know he’s lying, but it’s easier to pretend sometimes. “You can’t stop them.”

“I can.” This is Sam’s pillow. Lucifer can tell because it’s comfy. He shuts his eyes again, reaching blindly to pull Sam close.

“No, but you’re here when I wake up. That’s enough.” Lucifer tugs on him again. “I’m coming, don’t worry.” When Sam lays down beside Lucifer, he rolls over and wraps around him, only content when he’s pressed as near to Sam as he can be. Sam chuckles again, a little stronger than the first.

“I’m real,” Lucifer mumbles against him, “I’m real. I am. I’m yours.”

He doesn’t remember saying that last one, but Sam tells him he did in the morning and he believes it.

[rachel-rxth]

ok guys, i have to say something

i miss the guy :(

[hopelessromance21]

╔═══════════════╗

𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐬/𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: sʟɪᴄᴇ ᴏғ ʟɪғᴇ,

ᴇxᴘʟɪᴄɪᴛ ʟᴀɴɢᴜᴀɢᴇ, ᴀᴡᴋᴡᴀʀᴅ ᴅᴀᴛᴇ ɴɪɢʜᴛ,

ᴍᴜʟᴛɪᴘʟᴇ ᴏᴄ ᴄᴀᴍᴇᴏ, ᴘʟᴏᴛ ᴡɪᴛʜ ɪᴍᴘᴇɴᴅɪɴɢ ᴘᴏʀɴ,

ᴇᴍᴏᴛɪᴏɴᴀʟʟʏ ᴄᴏɴsᴛɪᴘᴀᴛᴇᴅ ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀ

[ᴜɴᴅᴇʀᴛᴀʟᴇ ᴏᴄ] 𝐋𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝐱 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

“𝘼𝙇𝙀𝙓𝙄𝙏𝙃𝙔𝙈𝙄𝘼” (1/3)

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 4,093

╚═══════════════╝

so, uh. some context? this is a fic i wrote for christmas for my bestie. 11k words of purely self-indulgent simping for her own character :) annnd yea, i got her permission to post it here as well.

(Ialsomightveprintedandbookbounditsoshehasaphysicalcopybutthatdoesntmatterhaha)

June, Lune, and Ruebris belong to @simpymf

Sorel and Ange belong to me :)

Enjoy part one~

THE SURFACE

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐈𝐓𝐘

[𝟐𝟒 𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐓𝐇

𝐎𝐅 𝐌𝐓. 𝐄𝐁𝐎𝐓𝐓]

21XX

[ᴘ ᴀ ᴄ ɪ ғ ɪ s ᴛ]

You met Lune at the same time that monsters joined the world. Well, correction: you met June. Lune you met a few nights later, as you ran up, expecting to be greeted by the bubbly, cheerful demeanor of June and instead met by a sour face and look of indifference.

As first impressions go, Lune never made good ones. When you asked her, mistaking her still for June, why she looked so sour, you got a snappy remark and scowl. The next day June called you in a panic, and explained everything at lunch later that day.

But you got over it, introduced yourself properly next time you encountered Lune and invited her to get coffee with you, at whatever time she liked.

She scoffed at you with this look of disbelief, taking your kindness as something degrading and demeaning. A form of pity and attempted inclusion. It took her a while to get used to the idea that your kindness was only that; kindness.

Five dates in, she still met your interest with doubt and pessimistic dread.

Standing in front of the mirror, Lune hated that you made her dress up nice for dinner. Nice for Lune was a short black skirt and a small black shirt with some lace on the shoulders— not that anyone would see with the leather jacket dwarfing her top.

She kicked on her platform boots reluctantly, scowling as her pink hair got in the way of her vision.

‘Quit acting all grumpy! We’re going to see her tonight!’

June, as peppy as ever, scolded Lune within her mind. Her tone dripped with a sappy puppy love that made Lune grimace.

“Ugh- can’t believe you’re making me do this…”

‘Wh-! You like seeing her too! I know you do!’

If she could stand in front of her right now, Lune knew that June would poke at her chest indignantly, her cheeks puffed with insistence. Lune would roll her eyes and shove her away.

Instead, Lune just struggled to tune her out as she left her apartment, June yapping incessantly about how Lune should be lucky that she keeps getting dates with you.

It was late in the evening as Lune walked down the street, knowing the way to this classy, upscale restaurant that you didn’t ask, but told her to meet you at. You learned to give her no choice in the matter, only telling her where and when she had to be there.

Even if you had given her the choice to say no, June would bitch in Lune’s mind until she had to say yes, for her own sanity’s sake.

Though there was a bit of chill in the air, Lune’s jacket shielded her from it, and her black tights kept her legs warm. She knew how to dress for the weather, unlike some people…

‘Why are you walking?? Get a cab, or an uber!’

‘It’s a seven minute walk. And it’s cheaper, since we’re dining so extra tonight.’

Lune barely felt the tickle of impatience that ebbed from her shared SOUL with June. She ignored it, rolling her eyes at how hopeless her alter was.

June’s chattering seemed to die down as they grew closer to the restaurant. The glow of the neon lights could be seen on the street, a bright orange-red spelling out MTT RESORT II. Lune scoffed.

From afar Lune could see you standing outside the front doors, looking around expectantly. She had a thought to ditch you, as much as June would bitch about it later. But you looked down the street and saw her, your face brightening so obviously. Lune sighed as she continued forward.

“… hi,” she greeted you flatly.

“Hi,” you replied with a smile, stepping closer.

Lune saw your silent offer for a hug, and permitted one, though stiff and from the side.

“I’m so glad you could make it! I had to make this reservation a week in advance. I guess it’s pretty popular.”

“Mm.”

Sensing that the outside conversation was hitting a dead end, you flashed another smile as you let your jacket slip off your shoulders and stepped towards the door.

“Let’s head in.”

As you stepped away, Lune looked you over, her eyes devoid of obvious interest. You wore baggy whitewashed jeans and a pink shirt with a strawberry print scattered across. The neckline was low, accentuating your chest.. Your coat was unimportant; a cream white and long, reaching your knees.

Inside the restaurant, it was warm and bright. Basically the same layout and colors as the first one. Lune found it even uglier than she remembered.

A human stood at the hostess podium and quickly found the reservation under your name. She gathered two menus and utensils before leading you and Lune into the dining room. You reached behind and grabbed Lune’s hand, walking in with her.

Lune stiffened as your hand gripped hers with certainty. She stared at your back as she followed you, eyes narrowed with suspicion.

The hostess brought you to an intimate table for two, set with a tablecloth, dishes, and a centerpiece of candles. Faint jazzy music played, filling the dimly lit room with a cozy aura. Lune grimaced.

‘Smile!!’

‘No one likes my smile and you know it.’

‘Th-that’s not true! People just need to… t-to get used to it!’

Lune rolled her eyes, taking her seat unceremoniously. You seated yourself across from her, shrugging your jacket off completely and letting it drape over the back of your chair.

Lune slouched back into her seat, letting her eyes wander around the room. Other tables around them were occupied by two or three, and across the room was a loudly chatting party of five people. A bunch of monsters listening to a tall skeleton tell an animated story. Lune subtly tugged her jacket collar up.

“So, what have you been up to this week?” You asked, opening your menu and passively looking over the options. What in the world was a Glamburger?

Lune avoided looking at you, studying her menu as well. Her eyes glanced over the listed options, nothing looking appetizing in the slightest.

“Uh… worked. That’s it.”

She could see from her peripheral that you smiled and looked at her over your menu.

“Oh yeah, June told me you started a new night job. How’s that going?”

Lune grit her teeth, overcome with irritation that the little blabber-mouth told you about her new position as a dressed-up cocktail waitress. It was not a job she wanted to brag about, and she explicitly told June not to say anything.

“Yeah. It’s fan-fucking-tastic. I get groped every night for tips.”

Your expression wilted noticeably, and for some unknown reason it brought Lune’s gaze to flicker upward.

“Really? It’s that bad?” You asked, your concern weighing on your face with your frown.

Lune sighs, sensing June’s inner urging to console you.

“No, it’s not that bad. I give off enough of a vibe to keep the creeps off of me. It’s just a seedy joint. Not a place you’d be into.”

At this, you perked up, grinning in a way that Lune still couldn’t decipher in the few times she’d seen it.

“Oh really? You don’t think I’m the type to go there?”

“Pffft,” Lune snorted, taking a drink of her curiously bedazzled water. “No way.”

You kept your next thought to yourself, keeping control of your smile as you looked back down at the menu.

Lune had no appetite for any of the listed items on the menu, but she obliged with a Glamburger while you ordered The Show Stopper Salmon.

The idle minutes spent waiting for your meals were spent with you doing most of the talking. You told her about your job and how it was going, some of the annoying customers you handled in the past week, your excitement for the first Monster Comedy Special premiering soon; every mundane detail you shared was something Lune couldn’t care less about, but sat there and listened with brief head nods or gruff “mhm… uh-huh…”s.

‘Don’t act like you’re bored!! You’re not doing anything for this conversation! You’re making her do all the work!’

‘Well she seems to be doing just fine! All she’s doing is talking about herself!’

‘Because you barely answered any of her questions!!’

Lune grimaced at June’s accuracy, though you read it as dread for this ongoing conversation— promptly alerting you to how much you talked about yourself.

“Oh- I’m sorry, I’ve been talking too much-!” you laughed at yourself and waved your hands.

Lune’s eyes passed to glare at a corner of the room, her lips pursed in reluctance.

“Nah, it’s fine. You’ve got a nice voice.”

‘!!!’

Your eyes grew wide, face flushing a noticeable shade as you stared at Lune.

“O-Oh-! Uh- th-thank you!”

“Mhm..”

Seconds ticked by in silence, punctuated as the waiter arrived with your plates. You thanked them politely as your meal was set before you, readying your utensils to dig in.

Lune unfolded her napkin slowly, watching you begin to cut into your dish.

“… I wouldn’t mind seeing that Monster Comedy,” she spoke up, taking a bite out of her burger immediately after.

You paused mid-slice with your steak knife, looking up at Lune in momentary shock. If you were reading into it right, and you hoped you were, Lune was proposing a future date…

Your eyes lit up with anticipation, watching her chew her burger with an expression of bewilderment directed to her meal.

“Yeah? I think the local theater is showing the premier next Tuesday. Do you wanna. . .”

You trailed off in the hopes that Lune would ask you outright, a clear sign that there was something here, some progress being made and some effort being put in by her.

“Yeah, sure. I can come get you at six.”

Her tone was only apathetic, borderline disinterested in the notion of another date. But watching her, you could swear you saw her blushing.

Your smile reappeared as you cut into your fish and took a bite, ignoring the odd, tingly sensation that spread across your tongue from the edible glitter, and the fluttering in your stomach from the woman across from you.

“So, tell me about your first day at work…”

𝐓𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐃𝐀𝐘

‘I’m so proud of you!!’

“Shut up,” Lune muttered between her teeth.

“Hm?” You asked, walking down the street on Lune’s arm.

“Just talking to June.”

Lune caught the slight surprise that crossed your face, not expecting her to admit to speaking to her other half.

You knew she did, and that June did the same when she was out. But Lune never admitted it or outright ignored you in the past when you caught her mumbling. You took to assuming her irritated expressions were directed internally about 50% of the time.

“Oh, okay,” you laughed sheepishly and tucked yourself closer into Lune’s side.

Lune grimaced as she looked down at you, her face turning a slight red.

“What are you doing?”

You looked up at her, feigning innocence only to give yourself away with your flustered smile.

“I’m cold,” you answered and shrugged your shoulders underneath an obviously warm coat.

Lune scoffed in dismissal, clearly seeing through your ruse. You had appeared warm and comfortable enough when she arrived to pick you up, greeting her at the door in a cozy sweater (that June had lent you and then forgot about-) and form-fitting leggings.

However, she put her arm around your body, pulling you close as you walked along.

“Should’ve layered up.”

You couldn’t help but laugh.

“Yeah, I should’ve.”

Stepping into the theater that was several degrees warmer than outside, Lune removed her arm around you to pay for the tickets. You busied yourself with buying popcorn and two drinks, feeling Lune step up behind you after her transaction was finished.

You turned to her and handed her one drink with a smile.

“Ready?”

“Yep,” she answered, handing you your ticket stub.

You took the paper from her, before taking her hand in yours to hold as you both found your theater room.

‘You’re blushinggg~’

‘Shut the fuck up.’

You both walked into your theater room, up the carpeted walkways until you reached your seats. You sat down and settled in, waiting for the rest of the theater to settle and the show to start. Around you people whispered in conversations of excitement as they took their seats.

“NYAH-HA-HA! I CANNOT WAIT!”

‘Oh my God-’

“I know Papy, but we have to be quiet! We don’t want to be kicked out, hehe-!”

“Do you want some

popcorn, Rueb?”

“Oh… sure…”

“‘scuse me, don’t mean to make a production over here- ererer…”

“Oh my God-”

You were about to ask Lune about the mutter of dread you just heard from her, but were interrupted by a shrill gasp before you could speak a word.

“Oh, Lune!!”

“Shhhh-!”

“SHH-!”

“Shhh!!”

“Shh!” “Shhh!”

Grimacing in her seat, Lune attempted to slump lower to hide herself. But even in a dark theater, her bubblegum-pink hair was unmistakable.

“Lune!! What a small world, hehe-!”

You turned in your seat, viewing a familiar mossy green monster looming over Lune’s seat. Coils of her willow-branch hair dangled over Lune’s sour expression, the monster’s bright yellow eyes glowing in the dark as she stared down at your date.

“… hhey, Ange,” Lune greeted her begrudgingly. You saw the monster’s elf-like ears begin to flutter.

“It’s so nice to see you out! I didn’t know you enjoyed comedies!”

Lune stared forward with a look of regret, her face blooming with a red hue. You couldn’t help but grin at how helpless and disgruntled she looked.

“Yeah… trying something new,” Lune muttered through her teeth.

“How wonderful! It’s always good to broaden your horizons! Even if you don’t enjoy it, you still tried it!!”

“That’s true!” You chimed in. The moment your voice met her fluttering ears, Ange turned her head to stare at you. Her eyes widened and grew brighter in recognition, her ears turning to green blurs on either side of her head.

“Oh!! Lune, I didn’t know you were on a date!”

You laughed at Ange’s sudden shift in attention and smiled up at her. Lune stared into the middle distance with an expression of wishing she was anywhere else other than here.

“What a coincidence, we’re on a date too!”

“Oh God…” Lune groaned. You smiled at her with sympathy.

“We’re on a double date with Sorel and Rueby!”

“… mhm…” Lune mumbled in hesitant acknowledgement.

“What if we made it a triple date?!”

“That sounds like fun!” You answered, holding Lune’s hand and giving it a gentle squeeze.

Ange kicked her feet excitedly, bounding back to her seat where Papyrus, who you had met briefly in the past, sat. She leaned close to whisper to the flustered skeleton. In reply he bellowed, in what you could only assume was his lowest voice, “WHY, THAT IS WONDERFUL ANGE! WE WILL SOON HAVE A COUPLE ARMY!”

“ey, i don’t mean to make a scene over ‘ere…”

“Oh my fucking God-”

Craning her neck to see the short, pudgy skeleton that continued to crack movie-themed puns, Lune glared venomously at Sans, who only grinned back smugly.

“but the show is starting so… we need quiet on the set…”

“Fucking die.”

“Lune!” You laughed, pulling her back into her seat. You curled your arm around hers, feeling her reluctantly settle down beside you.

“Tch- he’s so fucking annoying…”

“Don’t worry, I’ll fend him off,” you joked. Lune only rolled her eyes, the theater falling into silence as the show began to play…

𝐓𝐰𝐨 𝐇𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬 𝐋𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫…

As the comedy show concluded, you laughed along and grinned at the jokes sprinkled into the ending. Occasionally you turned to glance at Lune, viewing her either stone-faced or allowing the occasional chuckle or huff of amusement.

Once the lights brightened the room, everyone stood and began collecting their things. You gathered your bag and trash, Lune standing behind you and watching you collect yourself. Once you stepped out into the aisle, Ange rushed up to Lune, leaping up to hug her tightly.

“Hi Lune!”

“Eh… hi…”

“I’m so glad you enjoyed the comedy show! I heard you laugh three times!”

You caught the way Lune’s face flushed with shame, her eyes looking left and right to see if anyone else saw this embarrassing display.

“Yeah… wasn’t horrible.”

“YES, I BELIEVE MOST OF THE JOKES WERE TOLERABLE. FAR BETTER THAN MY BONE-HEADED BROTHER’S!” Papyrus chimed in, stepping into the conversation as Ange released Lune from her hug.

“ey, c’mon now bro, i think i’m pretty.. humerus.”

You snorted at the play on words and heard Lune scoff at the same time.

“AHEM- ANYHOW… SINCE YOU ARE A PART OF OUR COUPLE ARMY, YOU MUST JOIN US FOR SOME ICE CREAM!”

“Oh yes!” Ange squealed, clapping her hands excitedly. “Please join us, Lune!”

Lune made no reaction as all eyes landed on her, only turning to glance back at you. You smiled at her and shrugged; willing to join them or to leave if Lune wanted.

She sighed, turning back to the eagerly awaiting monsters.

“… okay, fine.”

“Oh goodie!” Ange cheered, hugging Lune once more.

Now absorbed into the party of monsters, you and Lune walked out with them into the lobby of the movie theater. Ange chatted excitedly with everyone, asking their opinions on the jokes since she didn’t understand any of them. You made friendly small-talk with Sorel, you and him seeming to mirror each other as you both had stoically silent partners on your arm.

Lune cast her eyes out on the collection of monsters surrounding her, all the while feeling the warmth of your touch around her arm. Everyone’s voices clamored around her in a jumble of irritating noise as the group traveled down the street.

“OH YES, MY SWEET ANGE, THAT WAS A VERY FUNNY JOKE—”

“Ohh, so that’s what it meant??”

“and then i said to him, i said, ‘that ain’t a scientific prop, that's my mom!’ ereererer—”

“Heh… that is

very funny, Sans….”

“So, are you and Lune having a good night?”

“Oh yeah, I think so!”

Hearing your voice ring out with tentative hope, Lune glanced down at you as you continued conversing with the Screenface.

“Last week we went to the MTT Resort. It was pretty nice despite the wait and all…”

“Oh! That-that’s really nice!”

“Mhm!”

“… D-Did you enjoy the Resort, Lune?”

Lune stiffened as she was caught by Sorel, who didn’t spare her for eavesdropping on their conversation and instead invited her input.

Lune frowned as both he and you turned to look at her. She looked away, searching for her opinion of last week’s date.

‘Tch- I didn’t really care either way—’

‘It seemed like a shitty restaurant, especially with those insane prices—’

‘I dunno why she insists on dragging me out every weekend or whatever—’

“It was fine, I guess. They fucked up hamburgers, which I thought would be impossible.”

You and Sorel laughed at Lune’s dry and genuine criticism of the restaurant, Lune looking at you both with a blank face.

Sorel sighed, leaning into Ruebris’ arm. “Yeah, I never did get the Resort’s food. Whatever sells I guess…”

Ruebris’ brows knitted together as he thought back to a memory. Through his mandibles he muttered; “there was even glitter in the water…”

You laughed as you slipped your hand down to hold Lune’s hand. “Yeah.. I still had a good time, though.”

Lune felt your eyes settle on her, staring in apparent admiration. Though she kept her gaze fixated ahead, her features unmoving, her cheeks did glow with a subtle pink. She blamed June… somehow.

“Ooh! We’re here!” Ange exclaimed, clapping her hands.

The party stopped in front of an idyllic ice cream shop, looking warm and cozy inside while it remained frosty and cold outside. No one wasted any time stepping in, the party of seven filling the somewhat small store.

“WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE, MY DEAR SWEET ANGE?” Papyrus asked the short Moss Maiden with tender sweetness, leaning down to meet her face. Lune grimaced as the two brushed noses in affection.

“Mint chocolate chip, please!”

“ONE MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP FOR MY LOVELY MOSS MAID!”

Queuing up in the line, Papyrus stood with his brother to make his order. Ruebris and Sorel stood together behind them, with Sorel reading the menu that hung above the cashier while Ruebris squinted blindly.

You parted from Lune’s side, taking out your wallet with one hand.

“What would you like?” You asked her.

Lune stood in silence, considering refusing to let you buy her ice cream— but she wouldn’t buy herself any either, and she figured the group would complain about her lack of participation.

“Hh… whatever’s cheap.”

You blinked in surprise, the questioning clear in your eyes. But you just smiled and nodded, stepping into the line behind the other monsters.

Lune expected to just stand around in wait, boredly watching the line shuffle along. However, her mundane plans were ruined with Ange pulling her to a table in the corner. Lune found herself sitting across from the energetic and always-cheery monster, and already felt like she fell into a trap.

Her ears fluttered softly as Ange stared with bright yellow eyes. Lune’s sour gaze stared back, blank and dull.

“I’m so happy to see you out, Lune! Normally we only see you if you’re spending time with us!”

Lune glanced left and right, shifting in discomfort in her seat.

“Yeah…”

“And it’s so nice that you’re going on dates with _______! It seems like you’re having a good time with her!”

Lune blinked, struck with slight surprise at Ange’s words. She almost didn’t believe her— how could she look like she was having a good time?

“I-… I do?”

“Mhm! Well- I mean, obviously you can’t very obviously show that you’re enjoying yourself, but you are acting warmly towards her! Letting her hold your hand or lean on you! I see that as you enjoying yourself— otherwise you would just leave!”

Lune shifted again, her discomfort growing as she found herself stuck in one of those introspective, emotional talks with Ange.

“Mm… I guess…”

Ange tilted her head at Lune, propping her head in her hands. “What, is that not the case?”

Lune glanced from Ange to you still waiting in line. She frowned in thought, always finding it difficult to be introspective about her entirely absent feelings.

“I guess I just feel obligated to stay… if I ditch, it’ll make her upset.”

Looking back at Ange, Lune’s frown worsened as she read that Ange was delighted by her words.

“Oh Lune, that’s wonderful! That means you care about her feelings! I’m so happy for you!”

“Wh- I… no I don’t— tch-”

Ange giggled softly, shaking her head and making her willow locks shuffle around her shoulders.

“Well, you care about my feelings, don’t you? Or- you’re aware of them. Isn’t that why you agreed to join us here, even though it wasn’t in your plans? And I’m just your friend!”

Lune stared pensively at a spot on the table, her gaze so intense it almost appeared she was trying to burn a hole into the patterned surface.

“… yeah, I guess.”

“All I’m saying is I’m happy to see you doing things without us. I want you to have a life and interests outside of me and Sorel and Papy and Sans! It’s good for you!”

“— ONE MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP FOR MY LOVELY ANGE!”

Arriving at their table suddenly, Papyrus swooped to Ange’s side with a waffle cone topped with bright green ice cream speckled with chocolate. Ange gasped in surprise and took the treat, her ears fluttering happily as she kissed Papyrus’ cheek.

“Oh thank you, my sweet Papy!”

“Ugh-” Lune groaned, rolling her eyes to the right. As she did, you fell into her view, walking up with two separate cups of ice cream.

“I got you vanilla,” you said, taking the seat beside her and passing her the ice cream.

Lune looked down at it in contemplation, a mound of creamy white with a spoon stuck into it. She glanced at you as you ate a spoonful of ice cream— also a cream white, but blemished with frozen mounds of edible cookie dough.

She huffed as she draped her arm around the back of your seat, taking a spoonful of her ice cream. From the corner of her eye, she saw you smile.

“Thanks…”

[gay-otlc]

writing emotions as someone with alexithymia = 👎

giving your characters alexithymia so that you don’t have to describe emotions using the Proper Feeling Words = 👍

Just hit all those characters with an alexithymia laser!

[brain-depositary]

“If you can’t describe your emotions how the hell are you a writer”

Well you see Im only allowed to express an emotion(tm) under 5 layers of obfuscation and metaphor in a notebook that I hide whenever anyone enters the room and I must also pretend that it will one day be exchanged for money to survive this capitalist hellscape. In any other context having to Speak Their Cursed Names will cause me to Die Instantly,

[mp100ficrec]

alexithymia by applejuicesoup

Fic can be read HERE.

Post-Canon, Mild Angst, Mob-centric, Fluff. Completed. Rated: G. Word Count: 2818

Pairings: Hanazawa Teruki/Kageyama ‘Mob’ Shigeo

Trigger Warnings: None

“Feeling things isn't anything new to Mob. Expressing them is.”

[suguriin]

Deck Of Wonders: Alexithymia

Hi! This is the Chishiya Fic Rec for all u Chishiya luvers that still exist

Warning!- There will be a section that contains smut fics so if you are uncomfy pls do not go over that area! (Especially those who are not mature enough to read) I’ll just add it into the end :)

I’ll be putting emojis that represent the genre:

Angst - 🌊

Fluff - 🍭

Series - 📚

Personal Fav - 🦢

I’ll be tagging the creators so give them the love they deserve! Thanks again for checking this blog out!

Game Of Hearts 📚🌊🦢- @missyasf

end of the line 🌊🦢- @honeyfict

deception cuts through the wounds 🌊🦢- @rainsoughtflowers

dying in your arms 🌊🦢- @poisonedprose (my lovely moot)

Invader 🍭- @syntheticfoxfire

Akamegami 📚🌊- @nessinborderland

yes to heaven 🌊🍭- @stllite

Glimpse Of Us 🌊- @24hlevi

That’s my girl 🌊(?)🍭- @werelosingdaylight

Familiar Hearts 🍭- ⬆️

You’re so precious to me 🌊🍭- @bangtaninborderland

Always Forever 🌊- @missymisha

Easier 🌊🦢- @szallejhscorner

The Million Dollar Fiancé 🌊(?)🍭- ⬆️

Strawberry Kiss 🍭- ⬆️

at my disposal 🌊🦢- @omismicrowave

The Loudest Silence 🌊- @beewolfwrites

White Day 🍭🦢- ⬆️

The Only Thing That Matters 🍭(?)- ⬆️

Now it’s time to say goodbye 🌊- @littlewriterfullofwords

His will to live 📚🌊🍭- @boohbear19

Peaches 🍭- @surshica

Stay Home ! 🌊🍭- ⬆️

Betrayal 🌊- @arisuinhell

Insecure 🍭- ⬆️

Hide 🌊🍭(?)- @sery-chan-13

bitter sweet 🍭- @kkurades

Died to love you 🌊🦢- @iaminlovewithnijiro

As much as you want 📚🌊🍭🦢- @daidonzo (another lovely moot of mine 💗)

Enemies 📚🌊🍭- @daffodildelight

Love me or leave me📚(2shot)🌊- @skzfelixity

Panorama 🌊- @inariizaki

the apricity of your touch 🌊🍭(?)- @inanisomnia

Words that shouldn’t be said 🌊- @fluffyf0x

mine 🌊🍭(?)- @j1rosan

Hurt 🌊🍭- @drama--universe

the other woman 🌊- @weronikasstuff

a little thing called love 🍭- ⬆️

Something Is Missing 🌊🍭- @kssources (another lovely moot 💗)

Did He Just… 🍭- @oqlixsreads

WARNING: This section contains SMUT fics (those who are uncomfy avoid this section!)

thank me- @pocoyo-yo

Just A Little Longer !- @ravereina

Ride- @homeslices

Mirror Mirror on the Wall- @homeslices

sleepy- @poisonedprose

drunk- ⬆️

God That Was Amazing- @smut-slut69

his way- @dracoscum

anonymous bidder- @chaileaf

Little Talks (pt. 2)- @chaileaf

Dare 📚- @chishiyaisasnack

That Girl Is Poison- @rlvslouis

[Scrubs_MD]- @anonymouschishiyaimaginesandmore

NSFW (HCS)- @aliceinborderlandsquidgame

Uncanny, Re-Union- @cheshire-silent-cat

Desparate- @lunaasolstice

Quiet, They’ll Hear You- @melinoelliones

lost in the fire- @p00pdev1l

Busy- @iaminlovewithnijiro

[carmyboobear]

ALEXITHYMIA CH 2: alcohol, garlic, and lipstick

Roommate AU: Carmy Berzatto x Reader (R18)

ao3 link ch 1 ch 3 ch 4

Summary: Carmy can’t put into words how he feels about his roommate. It’s only been a couple months, but here he is looking forward to going home and sharing a smoke with them. That’s all it is, though. There are no underlying feelings, none at all, even if everyone around him has something to say about it. 

Or: Carmy is repressed as ever, but through the combined power of vulnerability, weed, and the horny, Carmy too can find love. 

tags for this ch: alcohol use, throwing up, semi-permanent lipstick, accidentally embarrassing carmy in front of all his coworkers

Chapter 2: alcohol, garlic, and lipstick (8k)

He doesn’t get to see them for a couple days after that night on the couch.

This is more the rhythm he’s used to—early mornings and late nights, out of the house so long he never sees them. The next several days blur together into what feels like one very, very long day. When he sleeps, he doesn’t dream. It often feels as if he didn’t sleep at all. 

Their past exchange haunts him. He catches himself slipping, lost in thoughts as he watches the pot simmer. They’ve never had any sort of conversation like that before. Sure, they didn’t really talk about anything, but…

But in that same vein, Carmy can’t stop thinking about it. He wonders if they’re thinking about it, too. The thought feels like a tangled ball of yarn in the pit of his stomach, writhing and messy. He shouldn’t be thinking about it—they’re just roommates, after all. 

He’s restlessly worried about that moment on the couch, and yet, he can’t even muster up the words as to why. 

Because if you finally say it, it’ll all be real, he thinks vaguely, somewhat hysterically to himself, and that’s where it always ends. 

Wednesday evening, he comes in from home exhausted as ever. Nothing new. He feels the strain in his wrist when he shoves his shitty front door open—obviously overdid it in the kitchen. After shoving his sneakers off, he flicks the lights on in the kitchen, and he spots a bright pink sticky note on the counter. 

Now that’s new.

He walks up to it, squinting at the pink that’s almost neon under the fluorescents. It’s a note from his roommate. 

hey carmy, it reads, scribbled on in pen. im going out with friends tonight, so I won’t be back until later + leftovers in the fridge if you want any :)

Carmy makes a small noise of acknowledgement to himself. Picks up the note, puts it back down. 

Running a hand through sweaty hair, he opens the fridge. It’s full of ingredients, perhaps far too many for a guy who barely cooks for himself. Ironically enough, it’s the one who doesn’t cook for a living who keeps the fridge stocked. There's a lot of miscellaneous sauces, near empty coffee creamers, and mysterious tupperwares.

He spots a new tupperware that has another pink sticky note on it, so he grabs that one out of the fridge. 

He pops it open. There’s condensation on the inside of the lid, and it drips onto the floor. Inside sits pasta, potatoes, chicken, onions, and peppers, all cooked into a cheap, yet harmonious meal. It’s a familiar instant pot recipe. 

It tastes familiar, too. The ingredients together taste like home. He’s not sure if it even tastes like his home, although surely his mom cooked something like this. As he stews over the flavors in his mouth, Italian seasoning, garlic, and black pepper, he wonders if maybe this apartment is starting to feel like home. 

The thought is so ridiculous he shakes his head to himself, but…

It feels warm coming home to someone. He can’t deny that he likes that feeling. Maybe he’s settling into this place more than he thought. Maybe he’s…getting more used to having a roommate than he expected.

Maybe I’ll see them tomorrow, he thinks as he stares at his dark bedroom ceiling. He’s so sleepy he can’t even help himself from thinking about them. The lethargy always goes full blast as soon as his back hits the mattress.

Graciously, he doesn’t dream when he sleeps. Unfortunately, he wakes back up again in only a matter of hours. 

When he reluctantly wakes up and squints at his phone, he sighs. 1:14 am. Slapping his phone back down on his side table, he stubbornly shuts his eyes in an attempt to go back to bed. It would’ve been too nice if his body let him sleep throughout the night. 

Then, there’s the sound of the door opening.

He listens to the familiar sound of their footsteps against their old hardwood floor. It’s admittedly a little strange—it’s usually the other way around, with Carmy coming back home so late they’re already asleep. Except for this time. 

They’re in the kitchen, he deduces, carefully listening. It’s easy to hear everything, especially in the quiet of night. As he closes his eyes again, listening, he imagines them. 

The sound of the fridge opening. No, the freezer—it always squeaks when it opens. It shuts. Yes, now that’s the fridge door. He imagines them looking into the fridge just like he was a couple of hours ago, tilting their head thoughtfully to the side. He’s not sure if they know that they do that. 

By all means, it should be disruptive, the way they’re opening and shutting cabinets in the kitchen. And yet, as he lays there, snuggled drowsily into his sheets, it starts to sound like a lullaby. He listens to them, thinking of them cooking, and he begins to drift to sleep.

“Fuck—fuck! Shit shit shit—”

There’s a sharp yelp, and Carmy’s jumping out of bed. 

If he’s being honest, he probably wasn’t actually going to fall back asleep so easily anyway. He rarely ever does. 

He stumbles into the brightly lit kitchen, dressed in sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt. The lights are so bright that he’s squinting, struggling to adjust. 

“Sorry if I woke you up, there was a roach,” they explain meekly before he can think of what to say. They’re standing there, bottle of roach killer in their hand. 

Carmy looks down. As expected, there’s a big dead roach, sitting in a pale pool of roach killer. 

“I…see.” He yawns, a big one that makes the corners of his eyes tear up. “You didn’t wake me up, I was already awake. You just got back?”

“Mhm,” they reply, reaching for some paper towels, and that’s when Carmy really notices their outfit. Black, flashy, clearly meant for a night out at a bar. Dark colors always looked good on them. Their makeup matches, dark and smudged around their eyes. Seeing them dressed up like this makes it nearly impossible to deny how much he likes looking at them. 

He in particular likes the plunging neckline on their thin shirt, dipping right down their chest.

Stop stop stop, he thinks suddenly, tearing his eyes away. He’s lucky they’re not looking at him, instead preoccupied with throwing away the roach corpse on the floor. He looks around almost a little frantically to find something, anything else to talk about.

“What’s this?” Carmy asks, peering into the pan on the stovetop. 

“I, like, really want garlic bread right now.” They lean onto the counter, looking at the pan with him. “So I was making garlic bread. But then that fucking roach came and killed my vibe.” 

This is when Carmy notices that they’re rather drunk.

“Huh,” he says. “Isn’t this, uh, just a piece of bread?”

“Oh.” They pause, lifting the bread gingerly with one finger. “Um, this is so totally a piece of bread. No butter. No nothing.” They start laughing then, leaning harder onto the counter and covering their face. “Fuck, that is so  dumb.”

“You were getting there,” he comments, unable to resist an amused smile. 

“I couldn’t find the garlic powder,” they admit, face turning into a frown. “Or, like, anything else. But I need garlic bread, Carmy. I need this.”

“We have garlic cloves,” he points out.

“You cannot expect me to mince a fuckin’ garlic right now,” they retort, motioning at him with their arms so aggressively they stumble towards him. Instinctively, he puts his hands on their shoulders, and tries not to think too hard about it. 

They’re warm, and they smell like perfume, weed, and alcohol. 

“I think you should sit.” Carmy suggests, an eyebrow raised. He doesn’t think he’s seen them this drunk before.

“Hm. Yeah. Imma do that.” They trudge over to one of their bar stools at the kitchen island, slumping onto it. Their shirt droops, revealing more skin, and Carmy pointedly looks away. There’s the sound of their forehead smacking against the counter, and then a groan. 

“Uh, you ok?” 

“I’m drunk and I want garlic bread,” they whine, flopping their arms across the counter. “But I can’t find the garlic—the garlic powder, and…I’m too stupid to make it right now,” they end in a miserable mumble. 

“I could make you some,” Carmy hears himself saying.

“...Really?” They tilt their head up to look at him, eyes big and full of wonder. “You would do that for me?”

“It’s just garlic bread,” he tries, instantly stricken with embarrassment. He hopes he’s hiding it well enough.

“But you’re making it!” They make a contented noise. “Imagine getting the best chef in the world to make you garlic bread.”

“I can do a lot better than garlic bread. Just so you know,” he says, entirely in an attempt to hide the way their praise makes him feel giddy. 

“I know.” His attempt backfires—their response is so genuine it makes him feel worse. “You could definitely do a million times better than garlic bread.”

“Maybe not quite a million, but somewhere around there,” he says, and then he starts working. 

He starts with a clove of garlic, mincing it quickly on their small wooden cutting board. He stands at the kitchen island with them, eyes flickering between the garlic and their watchful gaze. They’re still strewn across the counter, cheek pressed against the surface. 

“You literally mince garlic so good,” they mumble, eyes glued to his knife. “I wanna do it like you.” 

“I could teach you.” The garlic is chopped thin, and then scraped against the edge of his knife. “Just takes a lot of practice, really.”

“Teacher Carmy,” they say, almost like a song. They’ve got this big, dopey smile on their face that makes Carmy’s heart hurt. “Mr. Berzattooo,” they add, their smile growing more mischievous.

“I don’t think I like the sound of that,” he admits, words tinged with amusement, and they laugh. “I think we should just stick to chef.”

“Yes, chef!” They salute unnecessarily, and he chuckles. 

He takes out the butter—their nice butter, not the spread stuff. Heats it over their pan, scrapes the minced garlic into the hot butter, creating a delicious sizzle.

“You, uh, go out to a bar?” He asks, because he’s curious. It’s easier talking to them with his back turned to them, forced to face the pan. 

“Yeah, just went with a couple of friends. I wasn’t scheduled for tomorrow, so I thought a little fun would be nice. But I must say, bars are not exciting on Wednesday nights.”

“Seems like you got to have a good time anyway.” 

“Mhm, yeah. They had cheap drinks. I got so many.” They laugh. “They honestly didn’t taste that good.” 

“And you kept getting them?”

“It’s just ‘cause they were strong. Sometimes you just wanna get fucked up, y’know? Oh my god, it smells so fuckin’ good right now. What the hell are you doing?”

“It’s just butter and garlic,” he answers honestly. 

“This is the best thing ever. You are literally so nice.” The sincerity in their words is so palpable that Carmy feels his stomach twist. “Anyone would be so lucky to be with you.”

Fuck, Carmy thinks distantly. He adamantly refuses to acknowledge how this comment makes him feel.

“I dunno about that,” he replies, a safe neutral even though he can’t help the embarrassment. 

“Really?” They blow a raspberry at him. “Well, I like having you as my roommate. That’s something, right?”

Carmy’s glad he’s not facing them. He’s not sure what his expression looks like right now. 

“Well. Lucky for me, I guess.” He pauses, listening to the sizzle of the garlic. for a moment. “You’re a good roommate, too. I…didn’t know if I would like having one at all.”

“Oh yeah? You never had one before?”

“Not since culinary school, and they weren’t good.” He sighs at the memory. “But this…I like this.”

“I like it too,” they agree, almost a bit dreamily. “It’s nice not having to be by yourself all the time.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “It is.”

He turns around then, garlic bread plated and in his hand, and they gasp, hands over their mouth. 

“Carmy,” they whisper. “Oh my god. Oh my god.”

“You’re definitely drunk,” he says, smiling in endearment.

“Um, yeah. And you just made me garlic bread. To a drunk person, garlic bread is the next coming of Christ.” They slide the plate towards them, staring at it with big eyes. “And you put cheese on it!” 

“Should I not have?”

“Of course you should have!” They exclaim. “You could’ve put some shit on this I’ve never heard of and I would still eat it. You’re a wizard in the kitchen.”

“Well.” He laughs. Shakes his head. “I’m flattered?”

“You should be,” they whisper. They take a huge bite of it, resounding with a satisfying crunch. “Fuck.” They shake their head from side to side as they eat. “This is so fuckin’ yummy.”

“Good, good.” He nods, pleased. He props his elbows up on the counter, gauging their reaction.

“You are so talented,” they gush, continuing to eat urgently. “And so nice.”

Carmy knows he can’t hide the way his ears go pink. 

“Well.” He gives them a shrug he knows looks as half-hearted as it feels. “I do nice things for nice people,” he says finally, mostly because he can't just take the damned compliment.

“I'm nice people?” They repeat, so genuinely earnest that Carmy almost laughs. “That's a relief. I’m, like, so glad you think that, because I can be an annoying piece of shit sometimes.”

“Annoying?” The self deprecation surprises him. They don’t usually talk like this. “I don’t—I don’t think you’re annoying. Have I ever, uh, seemed like I—?”

“Nonono, it has nothing to do with you,” they interrupt with a hiccup, waving their hands. “I just, like, have issues.” They laugh, although Carmy’s positive there’s nothing funny about this. “And I really like you as a, as a roommate,” they stutter clumsily. “So I don’t wanna fuck it up.”

“I, I don’t think you would fuck it up.” There’s something a little unsettling about all this, something that’s putting Carmy on edge. 

“I always find a way! I just do, because, I’m—I’m not good at being a person,” they blurt out, and then there’s tears spilling all over their cheeks, streaked with black mascara. 

Shit, Carmy thinks. 

“Hey,” Carmy says softly, gentle and careful. He looks up at them, concerned eyes searching their watery ones. He wishes he had the words, but they're talking again. 

“I just can’t do anything right,” they sob, bottom lip wobbling. He’s also not sure if he’s ever seen them crying so hard. Their face is scrunched in pain, skin drenched in tears. “I, I, I can't even fucking make garlic bread!”

“You're drunk,” he reminds them, carefully. “Very drunk.”

“I'm drunk, too,” they wail, and Carmy wonders if he said the wrong thing. “I'm a drunk fuck-up! I, I'm too damaged…”

“Damaged?” He echoes. Their own brutality towards themself takes his words away, and all he can do is repeat their cruelty in disbelief.

“My whole life, I've just,” they whisper, and something about it nestles into his chest and stays there. The feeling of it is familiar. “My—my whole life, I—oh, god—” 

They stop with a sharp inhale, slapping their hand on their mouth. It’s a movement that Carmy would recognize just about anywhere.

“Shit,” he curses, and he rushes them to the bathroom. 

They’re still crying as they throw up into the toilet, apologizing profusely. Carmy tries not to look, just focusing on holding up their hair. 

“I’m sorry,” they apologize again before shoving their face back into the toilet. 

“It’s okay. It happens.”  He absentmindedly notices that he’s never touched their hair before. It’s soft—must be well taken care of. “You’re doing great right now, okay?” 

“Thank you,” they sob, tilting their head to the side to rest their cheek on the toilet seat. He lets their hair fall behind them, instead just keeping one hand on their back. “I’m really s-sorry,” they say again, eyes watery and red. 

“It’s okay,” he repeats, because it's all he can say. They seem grateful enough.

I haven’t thrown up like this since college,” they tell him miserably. “I don’t like it.” 

“Nobody likes throwing up,” he reasons, and they make a weak noise of agreement. 

“Last time, I threw up in my roommate’s bathroom—” they pause, as if fighting a wave of nausea, but it seems to pass. “And I barely missed the toilet,” they whisper, like it’s some sort of dark secret. 

“Damn.” Carmy’s not sure if he should be smiling, but he is, just a little bit. “Sounds like you were shitfaced.”

“So shitfaced,” they echo. At least they’re smiling back at him. That’s a good sign. “It was such a mess. I felt so bad.” 

“Were they mad?”

“No, they weren’t. They even cleaned it up for me.” They groan. “I felt soooo bad, Carmy. So bad. I was worried they would forever hate me for that.” 

“Well, if they weren’t mad at you, I’m sure they wouldn’t hate you for it.”

“I just really didn’t want them to hate me,” they say, and they’re looking so intently into Carmy eyes that it feels like he’s bearing his soul to them. “Are you gonna hate me?”

“I'm not gonna hate you because you're throwing up.” Their hair’s falling into their face, and he moves to tuck it behind their ear before he can think about it. Their cheeks are hot to the touch.  “Would I be doing this for someone I hate?”

“Good point,” they mumble. Carmy’s hand lingers behind their ear before moving back to the middle of their back, rubbing little circles. The touch is guiltily electric on his end. “Sometimes I just…think people are waiting for a chance to hate me.”

“I think it’s a bit too late for me to find an excuse to dislike you,” Carmy says. “But…I get it.”

“...You do?” 

“Yeah,” he says, even though he’s not sure what else to say. They’re still looking at him, clearly waiting for him to elaborate. “I’m not used to anyone caring much about me.”

“I care about you,” they whisper. “I care about you a lot.”

Silence settles between them as any words Carmy had disappear on the tip of his tongue. They just keep looking at him, their eyes gentle and searching, and he can’t tear his gaze away. He can’t tear his hand off their back, either. 

“You shouldn't,” he whispers, strangely honest. “I'm not worth it.”

“Too bad.” He can't look away from their gaze, their eyes that are infinitely knowledgeable. “If I can't care about you, you have to stop being nice to me.”

Carmy opens his mouth to protest, but he can't. They seem to know it, too, with the way a knowing smile creeps up their face.

“I don't wanna do that,” he replies finally. 

“Thought so.” Their face glows brilliantly with a smile, and it should be infuriating, but it's not. “So deal with it. Me caring about you.”

He laughs at that, because it's so stupid. 

“Stupid,” he laughs, and they laugh back, their giggles echoing into the ring of the toilet. “Y'know, I fucked up today at work.”

“Oh yeah? What happened?”

“I was cutting onions. I've done it a million times, but for some reason, I fucked it all up. Onions got all over the floor, and I had to redo it all. Well, my sous had to redo ‘em.”

He's not sure why he's mentioning this to them, or why he's even mentioning it for a second time, but he is. 

“I haven't fucked up like that in forever,” he continues, reliving the memory in the back of his brain. The knife hitting the floor, metal against linoleum. “It was stupid. I hadn't done something so fucking, stupid like that in—god knows how long.” 

That can't be the point, he thinks to himself. He can't just bring up him messing up onions just to complain about messing up onions. That's not worth anything, to him or to them. They're drunk, anyhow. Why is he bringing up his issues like this, right now?

“You're allowed to mess up on onions,” they say with surprisingly clarity. Their words carry a measured gentleness that doesn't seem possible from a drunk. “It would be crazy if you never messed up, y'know. Like, ever.”

“But it's been years,” he protests. There's a pressure building. “Years since I messed up like that. And someone had to clean up after my shit. They shouldn't have had to do that.”

“Hm…” They make a thoughtful noise. “It's not like you did it on purpose, right?”

“Of course not.”

“That's what friends are for,” they murmur. “And coworkers. Sometimes. It's ok that you messed up.”

“...” A part of Carmy wants to continue protesting, but it feels futile. “I shouldn't have brought it up, you're still drunk anyway,” he says, mostly to himself, but also because he can't stand to acknowledge it anymore.

“I don't care,” they whisper. “I like it when people talk to me about things.” Carmy feels something twist in his stomach, palpable and physical. 

“I’m probably being annoying,” he mutters, and as soon as the words come out of his mouth, he wants to bash his head in for saying something so childish. 

“No. You’re not.” They respond before he has a chance to take it back. “I want to know you, Carmy.”

“You already know me.”

“Not as much as I would like,” they mutter, eyes fluttering shut, and Carmy has no choice but to swallow the heavy truth. 

“You shouldn't fall asleep here. If you're feeling better, we need to get you into your bed.” He knows it's unfair, changing the subject like this. But he can't bear to look at it anymore than he already has. 

Luckily for him, they relent without any protest. They lean up against him as he helps them to their room. It's a bit difficult to wade through the piles of clothes on the floor, but Carmy's no better. 

“I really didn't mean to get this fucked up,” they mumble once they're laid back in bed. 

“No one does.”

“Maybe not no one,” they mutter, mostly to themself. No comment. They sigh. “What time is it?”

“Uh…2:35,” he says after a beat, searching eyes landing on their bedside analog clock.

“Motherfucker. I'm sorry. Don't you have work tomorrow?”

“I do. But…it's fine.” It's very much not fine, he has to wake up in a couple hours, and yet. Here he is, at the end of it. 

“You're sweet. You really are.” 

“I'm…not sweet,” is all he can get out, voice quiet. 

“Well, I think you're sweet to me. Taking care of me like this.” They outstretch their arms all of a sudden. “Come here? Please?”

He knows what they're asking. They've never hugged before. He’s only a hugger when it comes to family. He's seen them hug friends before, maybe, but him? Never. 

He shouldn't get closer, he really shouldn't. But he ends up doing it anyway, because he tells himself he likes the way they say please.

“Can I hug you?” They ask.

“Um,” he says. He nods.

They smile again, as brilliant as ever, and bring him into a tight hug. They smell like the mint mouthwash they insisted Carmy retrieve for them, along with their perfume.

“Thank you for taking care of me,” they say. He’s never heard their voice in his ear like this before. They wrap their arms around his neck then, and Carmy’s heart feels like it’s in his throat. 

“No problem,” he gets out, feeling a bit breathless. 

Before he can even form the next thought, they’re pressing a sleepy kiss on their cheek before flipping back down on their bed. 

Carmy feels like throwing up, but…not in a bad way.

“Good night,” they mumble, so sweet. “And thank you.”

Something in his brain shuts off after that. He walks to his room like a zombie, and he falls asleep nearly instantly. 

It turns out that going to bed at 2:30 am the night before work is not so fine at all. 

“Sorry I’m late, couldn’t sleep,” Carmy says groggily when he comes in, and everyone’s eyes are on him. They’re staring so intently like there’s something on his face. “What?”

“It’s, uh,” Sydney starts, but Richie swiftly cuts her off.

“Must’ve been a long night, eh?” Richie says with such a shit eating grin that makes Carmy pinch his eyebrows. 

“Fuck’s your deal?” Carmy bites back, gesturing at him. The length of his fuse matches the amount of sleep he got—slim to none.

“Nothing, cousin,” Richie replies, even though he’s still grinning like a mad man. “You better be telling me about it later though, got it?”

“Whatever,” Carmy mutters. It’s too early in the day to be dealing with this shit. “Just catch me up on what I missed.”

The day starts off rough, but he gets through it because he has to. Throughout the day, though, he can’t help but get the feeling that people keep looking at him when he’s not looking. Maybe it’s just his typical paranoia, but… 

“These look good,” Carmy praises. “Really good,” he reiterates, turning the delicate dessert around on its circular plate. Marcus beams, clearly pleased. It’s a small matcha cake with carefully placed layers of ganache and fruit. Carmy takes a bit of it with a fork, rolling the earthy and tangy flavors around on his tongue. 

“How is it?” Marcus asks, eyes firm on him.

“A little crumbly,” Carmy answers honestly. “Did you take my advice from last time?”

“I did,” he replies, frustration evident in his voice. “Think it’s the oven?”

“Maybe. Probably.” Carmy takes another bite. “Try a lower temp. Other than that, though, it’s excellent.”

“Thank you, chef,” Marcus says. “Means a lot.”

“Wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.” He claps Marcus on the back, short and quick. “You’ve been working hard. That’s all.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I have.” He pauses then, staring at Carmy. Just like how everyone has been all damn day. “Uh, Chef?”

“What?” He feels the impatience bubbling up in him, frustrated and confused. “People have been staring at my goddamn face all day like I got some shit on it.”

“You do,” Marcus says. “It’s not shit, though. Looks like…lipstick,” he says after a beat. 

“Lipstick?” A rock drops in his stomach. Carmy raises his hand to his face, searching. 

“On your left,” he clarifies. “By your ear.”

He rubs aggressively there, but he pulls his fingers back without any color on it.

“Did I get it?”

“Well, I thought you did.” Marcus makes a noise, thoughtful. “Guess it’s one of those permanent ones.”

“Permanent?” Carmy repeats, a little hysterical. 

“Semi permanent,” Marcus clarifies. He seems amused.

Carmy rushes into their small, shitty bathroom, getting close to the streaked mirror. He angles his head to find the stain. Sure enough, it’s right here on his cheek. It’s a dark, reddish color, in the smeared but recognizable shape of a kiss mark.

“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath. His head feels hot. It must’ve happened last night, when they kissed him right before falling asleep. 

Semi-permanent, he hears Marcus say in the back of his head. Of course it is.

With a wet paper towel, he scrubs at the mark so hard it hurts. Even so, it remains, still clear on his pale, reddened skin. He wishes his hair was long enough to hide it.

“It’s not coming off,” he says, stressed upon returning to Marcus’ station. He hopes he doesn’t sound as hysterical as he feels. Sydney’s there too, chewing on the matcha pastry Carmy had earlier. “Why the fuck isn’t it coming off?”

“You’ll probably need a makeup wipe. I think I have some in my bag if you want one,” Sydney offers. Carmy swears she has a halo around her head. “Just a warning, though, they’re old as fuck. I haven’t worn makeup in a long time.”

“It’s fine. Can I take one?” Carmy runs a stressed hand through his hair. “Can’t believe no one fuckin’ told me. I—I fucking greeted customers like this!”

“It’s cool, Carm. At least it wasn’t a hickey,” Marcus reasons, and Carmy thinks his ears go hot. 

“Thank god,” he replies, sarcastic, and they have the nerve to laugh at him. “Shut up,” he tries, but there’s no real heat behind it. Sydney leaves and comes back with a semi-dried up makeup a minute later. 

“Don’t get mad if it doesn’t work,” Sydney states, a cautionary disclaimer. “It might be one of those that has a specific remover.”

“Are you serious?” The sigh that comes out is full of disdain. “Fuck me.”

“Day’s already almost done, if it makes it any better,” Marcus notes with a cheeky smile, and Carmy just shakes his head.

The makeup wipe doesn’t work. Carmy tries not to get mad, but maybe he does. Maybe just a little bit.

“It’ll come off with enough washes,” Sydney reassures him. Tina’s standing with her now, too, eyeing him like a spectacle. Everyone seems to be enjoying his misery. 

“Just ask your girl to get rid of it for you,” Tina says, an eyebrow raised. She raises a thumb to his cheek, rubs at the mark like a mom. “Damn. Shit’s on there.”

“They’re not—it’s not like that,” he sputters. He’s been trying to get through the day without anyone asking about it, but now that there’s some down time, there’s no stopping anyone. 

“A one night stand?” Tina guesses, eyes widening. She laughs and smacks him on the arm. “Didn’t think you had it in you, boy!”

“It’s not that, either,” Carmy stresses. He knows he’s getting overly flustered about it, but he can’t help it. His eyes flicker towards the clock. They’re closing soon. “Just forget it, okay? Please.”

He can tell from their expressions that neither of them want to forget about it, but by some stroke of luck, they’re considering letting it go. Just for now. That’s enough of a victory for now, so he’ll take it.

At least, it would’ve been a victory if Richie didn’t take that very opportunity to step into the kitchen. 

“Been trying to find you all day, bastard!” Richie hollers, slinging an arm over Carmy’s hunched shoulder. Carmy sighs, expressive in his annoyance. “Looks like this baby’s finally growing up, huh?”

“I’m 30, asshole,” Carmy says, tiredly, but that never works. Richie’s still talking, anyhow. 

“So? Do I know the chick?” Richie’s grin makes Carmy want to punch him.

“No,” he replies, flatly. He’s so tired. “And it’s not what you think. It was just, they’re, uh…”

“Oh shit, cousin!” Richie’s laughing, obnoxiously loud in his ears. “Didn’t think you were capable of—“

“It’s not a one night stand. Already guessed that,” Tina interrupts him. 

“What?” He sounds annoyed, like he has the right to be more irritated than Carmy himself. “Then what’s the secret third option? Or are you lying to my face?”

“They’re my roommate,” Carmy explains, finally.

There’s a beat of silence. And then, uproarious noise.

“You have a roommate?” Is Richie’s first question. The second: “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

“Is, like, dating a roommate a good idea? No offense,” Sydney says, hands raised in defense. “Just wondering.”

“It’s not,” Tina answers for her, sharp eyes narrowed at him. But strangely enough, she’s smiling nonetheless. 

“They’re my roommate, we’re not dating, and I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d be weird about it!” He shouts over the noise, directing the last one at Richie. “Look—they were just drunk, and I was helping them because they were fucking throwing up. Happy now?”

“And they kissed you,” Richie points out. He’s grinning like he knows some big secret.

“Fuck, okay, can we stop fucking talking about this now? It was just an accident, it’ll be gone tomorrow, and we’re never gonna mention this shit again!”

Carmy gets saved by some distant catastrophic noise in the back, somewhere around the freezer. He leaves without a word. Behind him, he hears raucous laughter mostly to Richie’s tune.

Before he leaves for the night, he stops by the bathroom one more to try and get it off. Predictably, it remains stubborn and stalwart through soap, hot water, and scrubbing. The skin under it is red with irritation, and Carmy knows that he's getting nowhere. If anything, he's making it worse. 

His eyes linger on the blotted lipstick on his face. It's smudged, but he can see the cracks and the shape of their lips. His gaze follows the lines of it. 

The memory burns bright in his head for a split second. It bursts in like a flashbang, intense and unavoidable. There's a phantom sensation of their lips on his cheek, the smell of their perfume, the warmth of their embrace, and it's, it's just—

Carmy shuts the lights off and heads out. He needs this lipstick mark gone by morning. 

When he gets home, the apartment is dark. Unoccupied. As he flicks on the lights, he searches for them. They're usually home before him most nights. However, it seems tonight is an anomaly. He walks down the hallway past his room to theirs, and their ajar door reveals an empty bedroom.

“Fuck,” he mutters to himself. Just his luck. 

He opens his phone then, a last resort. He has his messages pulled up, but his thumbs hover over the keyboard and stay there. 

How the hell does he even word this?

Hey, I need lipstick remover. 

No, that isn't enough information. Who knows how many types of remover there could be? What if it isn't the right one? He needs to be more specific. 

Hey, I need lipstick remover for the lipstick you were wearing last night. 

That sounds even stranger. Too specific, although it's the truth. That's what he needs. But he can't just…type that, can he? No, there's no way. 

Is there any way he can get out of saying that there's lipstick on his face from last night and not make it weird? He wishes they were here so he could just show them. Words have never been his forte. There's little hope for him now. 

Please come home right now, he briefly considers typing. It's by far the worst one out of all of them. 

After pacing for a solid five minutes, he decides to send a hopefully neutral message. 

Hey, you out for the night?

It's still pretty weird. Carmy is not a texter. There's not much he needs to talk about that can't wait until he sees them next. They're usually the one texting him, and it's usually only about groceries or bills. However, he tells himself it's fine because there's no note left on the counter. They always leave a note when they go out.

…They always leave a note when they go out. 

This thought resets his pacing around the apartment, frantically looking for the square shape and vivid color of a sticky note. That's how they usually do it, and it's typically on the kitchen counter. So, it's honestly a futile effort to be looking around the whole place, but he does so anyway. 

He looks at his phone. It's been almost 10 minutes, and still no response. 

This isn't unnatural by any means. They always end up responding eventually, but the prickling anxiety is getting pricklier by the second. 

They've got to be so hungover. There's no way they're out again tonight, he thinks to himself, and he's positive it has to be true. 

They're missing, and you're not ever gonna get this shit off your face, his brain adds helpfully. 

That's what finally kicks him into gear and forces him to press the call button. 

It rings for a long time. The more it rings, the longer he stands there in the kitchen, the stupider and more anxious he feels. It's a pitiful feeling to be consumed by, but here he is, unable to resist. 

However, when they finally pick up, he's not sure if he feels completely relieved. A different part of his anxiety is spiking now.

“Carmy?” Their voice carries a trace of static through the phone speaker. 

“Yeah, hey. You see my text?”

“Oh, oops. Sorry, I missed it. Is everything ok?”

“Where are you?” He asks instead. 

“I'm just gettin’ a drink from the corner store. Why? You want me to grab something for you?”

The absolute nonchalance in their voice humbles him, reducing him to complete embarrassment.

“Uh, no, I don't need anything. I mean, uh, I do actually need something from you, though,” he amends hastily. 

“Sure, what's up? I guess it must be important if you're calling, right?”

“I, um—yeah, kinda important,” he says with attempted tranquility, completely ignoring how much he was freaking out earlier.  “So…you got, uh, lipstick remover?”

“Lipstick remover?” Their surprise makes him shrivel. “Well, I have a couple types of makeup remover…”

“I think it needs to be specific?”

“You think it needs to be specific? What exactly are we dealing with here?” Their voice carries bewildered amusement.

“It's, uh…” He swallows. He can't tiptoe around it anymore. “It's…yours?”

“...Huh?”

“You got some lipstick on me last night, and it's not coming off,” he says finally, mortifyingly, and the line goes silent. 

“Fucking—I'm so sorry, my memory is spotty from last night and I, I thought I imagined that, and, uh—” They awkwardly clear their throat. “I'm sorry, I really am. It's not supposed to transfer like that, but I guess it just…”

“It's okay,” he says, despite how hysterical it made him earlier. That part isn't their fault. “It's just, uh, really staying on there.”

“Shit. Of course. It's this super resilient lipstick I use for when I go out drinking, because it's not supposed to come off like, at all, so it comes with this specific remover—I'm sorry, I don’t need to be rambling like this.” They laugh nervously. “I'm on my way home now, but it should be on my desk if you wanna look at it. It's a black tube, which…isn't very specific, I guess. And my desk is really messy…”

“I'll start looking,” Carmy decides. 

“I'm sorry,” they reply miserably. 

“It's okay. You said you were coming home now?”

“Yes. Yes, I am. I'll see you soon, okay?”

“Cool. See you.”

The call ends. Carmy just stands there for a minute. It's like a tidal wave just rushed over him, and now the water is slowly settling to a stand still. 

Black tube, he thinks. How hard can that be?

Very hard, it seems. 

Their room is comfortably messy. Definitely not as messy as his. There's some clothes on the floor, jackets on chairs, underwear he turns his gaze away from (don't imagine them in that lace one lying in the corner or the flowery one or the fucking thong he didn't see anything), but that's about it. Nothing outside of typical clutter, in his opinion. 

The desk, though. The desk. 

He doesn't think he can even see the surface of it. There's just lots of little things scattered across it, from piles of jewelry to stacks of papers and books. It's like an ispy book. 

He stares at it, trying to find a black tube. He quickly realizes how much of a futile effort it's going to be. 

In this moment, he thinks about how he's never spent much time in their room. The two of them usually hang out in the living room. Besides, he's not one to go snooping around in someone's personal space. Until being pushed to his limits and being given explicit permission, that is.

He leans in, peering closer at the scattered items. There's a little bit of everything. Receipts, make-up brushes, scissors, paper scraps, empty water cups, hair ties, empty candy wrappers, lipsticks…none of which are black tubes. 

Maybe it's not on their desk. Maybe it's on a different shelf. 

They said it was on their desk, a voice in his head says, but he’s not listening.

The next closest thing is their nightstand. It's a little messy, but nowhere near as bad as their desk. There's a melatonin bottle, some lip balm, a bedside lamp. He squints, seeing what might be more pills or maybe skincare until a dark tube catches his eye.

When he picks it up, he realizes it's not black, instead being a dark blue. Also, it's not a tube, it's more of a bottle.

The text on it also reads as lube, not lipstick remover. 

…Lube?

It's lube, his brain repeats, helpful as ever. 

I can see that, he thinks back.

“Hello? Carmy?”

A familiar voice has him scrambling to put the lube back. He moves it back to the night stand more quickly than he could have ever expected of himself. 

“Hey, I'm in your room,” he calls back, hoping that his fabricated nonchalance comes off as believable. He steps out of their room into the hallway, and they appear at the end of it. 

The first he notices is how much better they look when he saw them last. To be fair, the last time he saw them, they were sobbing and throwing up into the toilet, drunk out of their mind, but still. It's still an improvement. Their cheeks are flushed from the cold, and their hair is mussed from being outside.

“Hey. Did you find it?” 

“I couldn't find it,” he admits. He steps out of the way to let them through, and then he follows them back into their room. 

“Yeah, sorry, my desk is a fucking nightmare,” they mutter darkly, making a beeline for their desk. “I swear I took it out and put it right here…Ah, yes!”

Miraculously, they pull it out. It looks like a lipstick in itself, and when they uncap it, it just looks like a white lip balm. 

“So, do I just…rub it on?”

“Well—yeah, you should, but it emulsifies with water, so you just use water and then use a cotton pad…” Carmy supposes the confusion isn't too well masked on his face. “Can I see where it is?” They ask tentatively. 

Wordlessly, Carmy turns his head. He supposes they're just glad they didn't see it immediately.

“Oh.” When he turns to face them again, their cheeks are dark with color. It's not a look he's used to seeing on them. “I'm sorry,” they say again with a downturned head. 

“It's okay,” Carmy says again, and he means it. He brings a hand to his cheek subconsciously. “I just…”

“Let me take it off,” they insist, guilt knitted in their expression, and that's how Carmy ends up seated on the toilet seat. 

“Now I'm the one getting patched up on the toilet,” he says quietly. He wonders if it was the wrong thing to say, but it makes them laugh.

“So, um, when did you notice?” They ask. The tube uncaps with a small pop.

“A couple hours ago,” he admits. The balm feels smooth and oily against his cheek. “I had no idea, but my coworkers, uh…”

“Oh my god,” they mutter under their breath. “I just don't think I'm ever gonna stop apologizing for this.”

“It's fine, really,” he insists, even though he was manically scrubbing at his skin earlier. “It was sorta funny,” he adds, even though he was freaking out while everyone else was laughing. They don't need to know. 

“That's good, at least.”

“Yeah. It was—uh…”

He feels their thumb rubbing circles into his cheek, and the words disintegrate like sand in the wind. 

“Sorry, this is just one of those things that takes a little bit of work to get off.” Their tone projects a casual indifference to it, but their voice is so quiet that it feels unfairly intimate. 

“I didn't know lipstick could be this…intense,” Carmy hears himself say. He's far away, still trapped in the feeling of their hand on his face. 

“It's what you need for an intense night out,” they reply with a small smile. He looks up at them then, meeting their dark eyes, but they're concentrated on the spot on his cheek. When they catch him looking, though, they don't look away.

“Are you feeling better?” He asks quietly. He can’t stop looking.

“A lot better. Yesterday was rough, but I'm feeling okay now.” 

“Good.”

“Yeah. Um…” They lean back, breaking eye contact, and Carmy feels a pressure releasing. They grab a wet paper towel and carefully drag it across his cheek. “Thanks again, by the way. For putting up with me last night. I mean, it was more than just putting up, but…y'know.”

“Sure,” he says, much softer than intended. “It happens.”

“I think you're just nice,” they tease, fully intended to be light-hearted, but because Carmy's the way that he is, it weighs heavily in his chest. 

“Sometimes,” he mumbles, because that's all he can bear to say.

Because last night, they looked him in the eyes and whispered that they wanted to know him. That they thought he was sweet, he was kind. They spoke with such earnestness that for a split second, Carmy considered believing them about everything, even though that’s always the wrong thing to do.

Because once he believes them a little bit, he’ll start acting like he’s a good person. He’ll fool everyone around him, even himself. 

Then, the inevitability that is his self-destruction will arrive like it’s always promised. He will mess everything up like he always does, sharp-edged flaws unfurling from the inside out. They’ll slice everyone he was able to fool into getting close enough.

The least he can do is try and give some kindness back before it happens.

“Just take the compliment,” they say with a small grin. “Y'know, I don't remember everything from last night. There's bits and pieces I know that're missing. But from what I do remember…” They make one final wipe at his cheek. “You have to let me be nice to you.”

He remembers, too. 

So deal with it, they had said. Me caring about you.

“How could I forget,” he tries to joke, but his laugh comes out sounding far too breathless. Luckily for him, their laugh, much more tangible and believable, joins his own. 

“I said some crazy shit last night, I know.” They take a seat next to him on the edge of the bathtub. “But I meant it. I like being your friend, Carmy. I hope I didn’t say too much.”

“You didn't say too much. You were just drunk.” He feels a bit stunned. 

“Okay,” they accept after a beat. “I mean, you're right. I was just drunk. Um…” They gesture towards his face. “I got the mark off, by the way.”

Carmy stands up and checks his face in the mirror. Sure enough, it's gone. He feels relief wash over him like a breeze, and another feeling he can't place. It's…It's…

“Thanks,” he says, and they nod. 

“It's the least I could do.” They stand up, too, and walk out of the bathroom. They stand in the doorway for a moment before looking at him. “I'm gonna smoke. You wanna join?”

It's…

“Yeah, for sure. I'll be just a sec.”

Then it's just him in the bathroom, the door shut as he stares at his reflection. The harsh fluorescent bathroom light casts harshly down the planes of his face, creating dark shapes on his face. He stares at the spot where the lipstick mark used to be. The longer he stares, the more the unnamed feeling stretches outwards. 

When it drops in his stomach, that’s when he realizes.

The feeling is disappointment.

~

@zorrasucia

[olderthannetfic]

Daily accs have ruined the fandom experience.

Fandom is just generally so boring and I'm speaking as someone who's queer, ND, disabled, and POC. "Headcanons" now lack flavors. Headcanons now are limited to just making the characters non-white, cis, straight, neurotypical, and abled. Where's the plot? The elaboration? And I don't just mean "I hc him as autistic and he has alexithymia."

As someone who's autistic and alexithymic there are lots of experiences that come from being alexithymic that no one person who's alexithymic experiences the same way even when there are common traits. In fact, most of the time I don't use the medical terms and just describe the character having these traits AND THEN describe how it's relevant to the plot bunny and maybe even use canon sources to elaborate why I think this character can be or is [identity]-coded. I don't just make posts generating various labels everyday or every HOUR: "this character is [x]." and call it a day.

Not to mention lots of people are saying these HCs are the only acceptable kind of HCs because the others are problematic or harmful. They always put it in the bio, "no harmful or problematic HC," "proshipper DNI", "no [link to a card with a list of headcanons lots of people are doing].

There are open antis who are constantly making "reminders" or "hot takes", and there are covert antis who act as if they are making "content" but they are literally just spamming posts like the one I told above and attacking people in the comment section or up-ing other people's call-out posts by engaging or reposting. Antis have been creating an environment where even wanting to Headcanon is scary. It also conditioned people to like only these types of HCs and I would've been elated for some rep a few years ago but the lack of nuance is just irritating and disappointing. Ironically, I can not relate with any of these headcanons because homophobia (which was a popular tag on AO3 because it's relatable to a lot of queer folks like me) is problematic (literally had someone tell me about an AO3 tag statistics, "homophobia shouldn't be a popular tag). The lack of media literacy has people saying making an x trope is endorsing.

I keep finding anon fics or private fics on AO3, going into fandoms where people are more comfortable sharing fics thru discord servers, DMs, linked write/as posts, because my ships keep getting harassed or scrutinized by antis (even when they are not minors, don't have age gaps, incest, or are rivals), and I keep seeing more and more people say they are discouraged to engage in fandom activity at all.

Somehow this is familiar as a queer person who was in the closet and had to hide all my poetry because ofc my own people (I assume they are mostly queer like me too cuz a lot of them identify as one and put it in their bio) makes me feel unsafe LOL/sarcasm

--

[minjoonalist]

Alexithymia. | JJK [Teaser]

Pairing: Demon!Jungkook x Reader [Ft.ot7]

Rating: Mature +18

Genre: smut, light angst, fluff, SoulmatesAU 

Description:  Jungkook always had a pull to you. An unexplainable connection that brings him to your side daily, like a permanent routine. Is it a hobby? An obsession? Or was the centuries old prince just bored? No, boredom doesn’t make his heart race. It’s not supposed to make him lose his own self control, or fill him with blinding rage, and it certainly isn’t supposed to have him hallucinating the strangest things until it drives him back home for answers. Maybe he’s just been stressed and he thought that it’d be better to wait than to return, but the longer the prince spends his time away, the more he realizes he has absolutely no Idea what emotions have been festering since the very beginning. What happens if he could just turn them off?

Song Inspo: Pretty- The Weeknd, Waves- Normani, Softcore- The Neighbourhood, Middle Of The Night- Elley Duhe

 “Y/n, how many do you see of me?” Jungkook goes on to ask, waving an inked hand in front of your eyes that you definitely weren’t following.

You then squint as if you were thinking hard about the question. 

“Ummmm...di- you always h-have a twin?” You hiccup.

The man suddenly frowned under all the ruckus and music...There was no way you were getting home without him.

 How are you suddenly this reckless?

Irritated, Jungkook grabs your hand without warning and leads you out of the area with haste, before anyone or anything could target you again. He then leads both of you out of the club and onto the sidewalks of the dark, empty street. 

You tried your best to keep your stomach down, groaning as the big scary man walked both of you out of sight and into a dark alley beside the busy building.  Thankfully you were too drunk to comprehend much, that meant Jungkook didn’t have to go through the miserable task of walking you home. Instead, all he had to do was keep you beside him- an arm grabbing you and pulling you so close to him, anyone would assume both of you were just an average couple. 

You two are most definitely not... well you were pretty normal, Jungkook was the one that just couldn’t stay away from you. 

He doesn’t know if it was because of how pissed he was or maybe he was just too focused to pay attention to your heartbeat speeding up from the close proximity, but he definitely missed your audible gasp from the move.

It clearly didn’t matter, the one goal he had for that night was to make sure he got you home safe. Which, technically... he did- but it wasn’t as quick and simple as he’d foolishly hoped it would be.  

The only way to describe your sudden transition, would be as if the both of you were just walking casually down the alley way of the city and when he hugged you closer, a two second blur passes over your eyes and you were suddenly walking through the entrance of your apartment. There was no sound, no sparkles or magical effects to signify the inhuman move...just him.

Jungkook immediately removes himself completely from you, stepping away to another part of your living room as if he couldn’t stand to be any closer. 

“Go to bed.” He then suggests, with a somewhat disappointed gaze.

Somehow... that hurt both him and you to say. 

You pout suddenly trying to sober yourself up and you didn’t want him to go away again. You wanted to know more, you couldn’t understand why when you shut him out and clearly wanted nothing to do with him.

“ But I-...you...?”

Normally there would have been more fight in you from the command, but with the after effects of all those drinks, your body felt as if it was ready to shut down any moment.

Even Jungkook could sense your low energy, watching your uneven stance  as you were swaying side to side but ultimately trying to keep yourself awake enough to say something to him. The man was seriously starting to question why he even had such a strong pull to you- but the second he noticed your body swaying a bit too far for his liking, all those thoughts had shot out the window. 

 Jungkook had sprung forward from the distance he tried putting between both of you– catching you within  unreal speed before your entire body could collide with the floor. Instead you had landed safely within his arms, the man groaning in exhaustion that he now had to walk with you all the way to your bedroom, because there was no point using up more of his energy to teleport both of you there when it was only a few feet away. Still, it was never supposed to go this far and you definitely weren’t supposed to meet him again after the last time he helped.

Why were situations like this becoming so damn hard?

 COMING VERY SOON. 

Also if anyone would like to to be tagged for the release, Just comment or shoot me an ask!

[eternal-kosmo-ghoul]

ur iv fic was so good 🥺 could you do some comfort with vess? idk reader had a really bad day n he basically spoils them n gives them love? <3

❝alexithymia❞

➵ “sometimes, even the darkest of spirits can prove to be the most welcoming in dire times” —❤︎

pairing: vessel x gn!reader

theme: fluff ✿ , slight angst ❦

a/n: this is just pure, tooth-rotting fluff w vessel. it’s a complete contrast to my first smut fic w him lmao. also i hope you’re doing well anon!

cw: reader is bad at expressing emotions. overprotective vessel. lots of comfort and fluff

┅✦┅

sometimes there was comfort in the dark.

only sometimes. tonight was one of those few exceptions.

prior to that, you were curled up underneath the bed, cobwebs and dust scattered everywhere, but none of that mattered. there was only a handful of soft and plus items that you could cling to, at least to try and soothe your pain.

what a mess you were. curled up in fetal position like a weak kitten, only having your own arms to comfort yourself and try to create some sort of warmth.

but there was barely anything warm in the abysmal coldness that swelled in your heart.

as you silently sobbed to yourself, an alluring darkness peeked underneath the bed, observing you with the utmost curiosity.

“bad day?”

you looked up from where you were curled up to observe where the voice came from. a commanding, yet enchanting presence was observing you with a curious, yet slightly concerned look. you couldn’t see his face, but his aura emitted his emotions strongly enough for you to say.

“mmh.” you hummed back quietly, voice slightly crisp from your silent crying.

the dark one frowned underneath his mask. vessel has been a being that had popped up every now and then in your bedroom, the sleep entity who was known to visit people at the strike of midnight and consume their everlasting dreams. he was one to be feared, but you’ve grown used to his presence.

for some reason, he kept on visiting you frequently, and you grew less scared of him, more so tolerating his presence. however, you’ve never seen him be.. tender, or at least show one basic empathetic emotions.

vessel just sighed and stood up, looking away from underneath the bed. you thought he was going to finally leave you alone.

that was until you felt a surge of darkness from underneath the bed scoop you up from under the bed and into your mattress, making you squeak from surprise. you sat up to look at the dark, almost alluring being looming over you.

“y/n.” vessel stated firmly. “tell me, what’s going on?”

you didn’t know what to say. i mean— this incredibly powerful, almost otherworldly being, was asking how you were doing? you felt like you were in a novel.

it was kind of sweet knowing vessel had the heart to ask about your mental state.

but at the same time, you didn’t want to open up, at least not yet. you were too caught up in your storm of emotions.

sighing and turning your head, you faced the wall against your bed, and you could hear vessel’s disappointment in his sigh. but nonetheless, he understood.

“i see.” he started out.

vessel thought to himself for a moment. how could he comfort this mere mortal? and more importantly, why was he doing this? no human has ever drawn his attention like this. no, he was too good for that. anyone who dares to even be within his vicinity should bask in his presence.

whatever it was, vessel was going to have to worry about that later. the sleep entity just groaned and disappeared for a moment, before coming back with a pile of stuffed animals.

“here.” he spoke. “take these. if you’re not gonna talk, at least take my help.”

you looked up at him confused, almost mind-blown. was this real? if you weren’t so deeply rooted in your own mind, you would’ve asked vessel what the hell he was going.

noticing your hesitance, vessel sighed. he wasn’t too good at this human, comforting stuff. but he was going to try.

“well?” he asked again, his tone slightly more firm.

noticing his urgency, you just nodded before taking the stuffed animals in his arms. as you looked through the pile, you realized that all of these plushies were of your favorite animals and brands. there’s no way this could’ve been a coincidence. vessel must’ve been paying attention to your interests during the times he stalks you in your sleep.

noticing how your eyes gleamed a bit, a slight chuckle escaped his lips. “yeah, i knew you’d like these ones. i know you’re not much of a talker, but i know what you like.”

he didn’t know what force of satan compelled him to do this, but vessel shimmied around to sit himself behind you, and hug you from behind, drawing you to his cold, firm chest. your eyes widened from the contact, but you didn’t protest.

“just relax, y/n.” vessel spoke in a more soft tone. “whatever it is, i’ll do my best to comfort you. even if i don’t understand any of this human shit.”

you couldn’t help but chuckle at his words. that certainly made you feel a little bit better. smiling softly, vessel sighed and rested his chin on the top of your head, drawing you closer to his body.

his body was cold, and his hands were calloused and dark. but there was a strange comfort in his hold. subconsciously, you intertwined your fingers with his. vessel didn’t protest, he could feel your body start to relax and your emotions start to calm down.

a strange surge of protectiveness overtook vessel’s body. he’s never seen a human this distressed, and this desperate for comfort. you looked so little compared to him, and you just curled up in his form. vessel, the dark entity of sleep, was comforting a mere human.

he didn’t want to see you like this anymore. even if it went against his values, he was going to keep you safe and protected. vessel didn’t want to see you hurt like this again.

maybe it was the tike you both spent together that softened his empty heart.

he liked it.

and for the first time in a while, he felt warmth in his chest.

[kaeyapilled]

What are some fics that you think are must reads for kaeya fans?

TEEHEE okay i think i have rec'd most of these before when i was asked for fic recs some time ago but its ok. here are the most kaeya fics ever in my opinion !

clouds in a lake by VelleRue

“Pot of butter,” Kaeya mumbles beneath his breath, eyes roving over the words. Alone, the words wouldn’t be very special. The shapes and sounds don’t scare him as much anymore, not like they did when he was new and wore shoes with torn soles and only knew how to say, My father told me he was going to buy grape juice.

Together though, they sound like the orange-yellow light of the oil lamp flickering in the corner. They sound like sticky fingers and bread rolls. Like a dinner table of three.

Cake and a pot of butter.

this one is so bittersweet and melancholic and i love all the headcanons in it and the way it's written oughhh it's a great read!! short but really good

stubborn roots by alexithymias

Kaeya’s plan to end his life is interrupted when Rosaria asks him to take care of a plant for a few days.

this one is heavier so definitely pay attention to the tags but, oh my god. this rewired my brain SO violently. i adore the concept and the characterization is really on point. it is so painful in all the good ways i like stories to be painful. i really recommend it!!

I'm gonna miss your love when it's gone by imaginarypasta

A selection of scenes from Kaeya's childhood related to his relationships with his fathers, and all they have led him to be.

im pretty sure ive rec'd this before but this is like, one of my favorite portrayals of kaeya and his bio father ever. its just so good. so delightfully sad. a breath of fresh air from the common headcanon that his father was an evil asshole. the kaeya & crepus bits are also really good and i like the author's hcs about khaenri'ah/the abyss SO much

not bad for a walk on death's doorstep by b_attery

Fear is a knife’s edge. Fear is a killer. Fear is how you know you’re still alive. Kaeya Alberich, not yet Ragnvindr, knew how to fear before he knew how to talk. As the heir to the regency of a dead kingdom, a spy-in-training to be sent to the surface world, as the last hope of Khaenri’ah – there were many things to fear. And later, as the Cavalry Captain of Mondstadt and a traitor no matter what he chose, Kaeya Alberich ex-Ragnvindr knew that as long as he lived, he would be afraid.

i have definitely rec'd this one before. but i just really love it!!! my comment on the bookmark says "literally the best kaeya character study i have ever read" and yeah that still holds up. shaped a lot of my kaeya hcs. i love this author

Hundred-Watt Light by pepperjuice

The first time the thought occurs to Kaeya he is eleven years old. Well, that’s not exactly true. It had been twisting in the back of his head for a long time, already. Formless and unspoken, an ever-present awareness, a whisper. But the first time it rings in his head, put in words, bright and shiny and just behind his eyes—

He is eleven. *** A story about ten years of contingency plans and holding your own hand. (Because how else are you supposed to live with a weight too big to hold all alone?)

OH I MUST HAVE REC'D THIS LIKE THREE TIMES BUT THIS IS REALLY A MUST READ. first of all heed the tags because it touches quite heavy topics! but this entire concept is SO interesting to be explored in kaeya's character and this author does it SO well..... this is one of my favorite fics, like, ever, lmao. absolute kaeya must read To Me

Lamellae by scripturient

A slowish movement in a discordant key, wherein Kaeya has bitten off rather more than he can chew and needs significant help; meanwhile, malady exposes buried memory and dread. A limited plot from a limited point of view which dabbles in themes of pain, trust, angst, conflict, and betrayal. Not quite a character study.

the writing style in this one is SO cool, i love it! non-linear narratives are my thing, i never get tired of it. and the whump in this is so good.. i like whump fanfiction, lol. the combination of characters in this is really fun as well, though everything is told from kaeya's very disoriented point of view. anyway, amazing exploration of his character!! the next work in this series, The thaw that comes in springtime (plus the next next work!), is also really good and i loved it, particularly the ragbros bit lol. another must read!

undertow / oversight by MercuryPoisoning

In which Kaeya gets by with a little help from his friends.

another one i feel ive rec'd before, but i love it. really good characterization!! especially his relationship with diluc!!! really good read. i love this author's stuff a lot lol. (bonus by the same author, and another one i consider a must-read even though it's still in progress and also way heavier than most of the previous recs: sleeping marble lion! i really like the writing style and the concept!!! pay attention to the tags but trust me it's a delightfully gut wrenching one<3)

whew. i think i have a few more i could have added here. i just went through my bookmarks lol i have read a decent amount of kaeya fanfiction. hope these are to your liking!!! fic rec'ing is one of my favorite activities