#I WILL PARSE MY THOUGHTS AFTER FINALS

[mcdynamite]

Kissing has never done all that much for Steve, if he’s honest.

It's just not really something he's ever given much thought to before - the way someone kisses - despite the fact that he's locked lips with plenty of people. For him, kissing has always been something nice, but not particularly special. It's never been earth-shattering. Never taken his breath away, the way people talk about in movies and books. It's just a way to be closer to someone, and it's nice, but it's never anything more than that.

Then, Steve kisses Eddie for the first time, and suddenly he gets it.

They're high when it happens, laying side by side in Eddie's unmade bed while the weed sinks into their bones. Steve loves the way it seems to slow down the world around them - makes everything syrupy and sweet, so he feels every brush of Eddie's fingers against his own in every inch of his body as they pass the joint back and forth.

The casual contact makes him long for more, and when he's high, Steve just...gives into the longing. He lets himself drift closer until they're pressed together so closely that Eddie can hide his face in Steve's uncharacteristically messy hair when he's trying to cover up a snort of laughter in response to Steve's deranged weed-induced musings.

Tonight, they meander their way through a directionless conversation - as they so often do when they get high together - until the joint is so small it nearly singes their fingertips. When Eddie finally sits up to stamp it out in the ashtray on the bedside table, Steve tries not to miss the feeling of Eddie's body against his own too much, knowing it'll be back soon enough.

"I'm thinking of handing over the DM throne to Will for the next oneshot, after we finish this campaign," Eddie says, speech slow and thoughtful as he puts out the blunt. "Think he'll be good at it."

Steve just hums, eyes heavy-lidded, gaze fixed on the curls he wants so badly to run his fingers through, just to know what it feels like. He's high enough to not care about the consequences when he decides fuck it, and reaches out to feel the soft ringlets beneath his fingertips.

"You're good at it," he muses - a delayed response to Eddie's comment. If Eddie is bothered by the way Steve is carefully petting his hair, he doesn't show it. Instead, he turns back to look down at Steve with a soft smile that makes Steve's insides feel all gooey.

"Yeah?" Eddie asks, a hint of a smirk overtaking the softness. "You ready to admit that you like watching me play my little nerd game, Harrington?"

Steve blames the quiet whine that escapes his throat on the weed, along with the way he honest-to-God pouts in response to Eddie's words. He tugs on a lock of Eddie's hair petulantly. "Don't like it when you call me that."

Eddie's face does something strange then, and Steve can't quite parse out what it means with the weed making his brain all foggy. He looks...surprised? Fond? Maybe both?

"Sorry, Stevie," he replies, teasing but somehow genuine at the same time. Steve smiles dopily, an expression that Eddie returns. "That better?"

Satisfied, Steve nods. Hums in affirmation. "Yeah. I like that one."

And it's true. Steve loves when Eddie calls him Stevie, because Eddie always sounds so fond when he does, and it makes Steve's heart feel too big for his chest.

"Oh, yeah?" Eddie asks, still grinning as he leans down until he's propped up on one elbow, hovering just over Steve on the bed. "What else do you want me to call you, hm? Stevie? Steve? M'lord?"

The last one makes Steve laugh and close his eyes, happy to bask in the sound of Eddie's voice as he floats along with their conversation.

"Sir Steven? Sweetheart?" Eddie continues, and Steve's heart jumps just a bit at the second one. Then, Eddie murmurs, "Baby?" 

And Steve's eyes fly open.

Steve stares at his friend with wide eyes - lips parted as a soft, punched-out oh escapes him - and it's weird, is the thing. Because Steve has been called baby before, lovingly by his grandmother when he was still a little boy causing mischief while his parents weren't watching, meanly by boys on the playground when he cried over something silly like a scraped knee…and when he got older, teasingly by the girls he took on dates.

It's not a new name for him, but it feels groundbreaking nonetheless.

Because the word sounds so much better coming from Eddie's mouth than anyone else's. It's soft, and fond, and knowing, and...

It's longing.

"Yeah,” Steve croaks. "Yeah."

"Which one? Sir Steven?" Eddie asks playfully, cocking his head to the side like a puppy. He grins maniacally when Steve huffs and shakes his head in disappointment. "No? Which one was it, then, that you liked the most?"

"Eddieeee," Steve complains, burying his flushed face into the pillow and avoiding his friend's gaze. "You know which one."

Eddie shakes his head in an almost scolding manner and Steve is convinced he must've moved closer, because Steve can feel Eddie's breath against his skin, and the air in the room feels about a hundred degrees hotter.

"Nuh-uh, Stevie," Eddie says, poking him playfully in the ribs. "You gotta tell me which one."

Steve hesitates, feeling more and more self-conscious by the second. He sort of wants to hide, but he also really wants Eddie to call him that again. It's probably thanks to his intoxicated brain that he allows himself to answer truthfully. "Baby," he murmurs, uncharacteristically shy.

"Yeah?" Eddie says, voice and smile softening in tandem. "You like when I call you baby, Stevie?"

Steve stares up at him with wide eyes, hardly able to believe this is really happening, and nods. "Yeah. That one."

Eddie is so close, now, that Steve can feel the warmth that emanates from his skin; can see the flecks of gold in his eyes amongst the molten chocolate brown. He's got freckles - Steve realizes. Tiny little dots across the bridge of his nose and the apples of his cheeks that form constellations on his skin. Steve thinks, maybe a bit deliriously, that he would be perfectly happy spending hours tracing them, the way astronomers of old once traced the stars.

"Eddie..." he breathes, heart pounding as he begins to feel more and more desperate for...for something. Anything to let him know that he's not the only one succumbing to the gravitational pull between them.

Eddie blinks slowly, and his eyes widen as though he's just realized something important. Steve watches his throat bob nervously before Eddie finally whispers, "Yeah, baby?"

Steve inhales sharply through parted lips - a soft, plaintive gasp that draws Eddie's eyes to his lips, and-

Oh.

That's what Steve wants, isn't it?

"I-" Steve tries, helpless to stop his own gaze from falling on Eddie's lips - pink and parted and just a little bit chapped, and so, so close.

"Baby," Eddie says again, and this time it's different. Unintentional. Like Eddie said it without meaning to. And maybe it's just the weed, but Steve swears he can feel the word burrowing its way into his chest and settling around his heart like a blanket. It makes his whole body feel warm - something only made worse by the hot coal of desire that begins smoldering low in his gut.

He's so lost in it all that he can't even bring himself to feel embarrassed when he whispers, "Please."

Steve waits with bated breath until finally, any remaining nervousness retreats from Eddie's eyes, and Eddie smiles in that way that makes Steve's stomach flutter. It's such a pretty smile. Steve can only watch as it grows closer, going cross-eyed for the briefest moment in his quest to to stare at Eddie's lips until suddenly his eyes are fluttering shut, because...because...

Because Eddie kisses him with lips still curled into a smile, and Steve thinks - utterly nonsensically - that feeling Eddie's lips against his own is so much better than just looking at them. The thought makes him giggle, just a bit, and he finds himself grinning into the kiss, too.

They part for a moment so Steve can let out another quiet giggle, and Eddie seems to pause for a moment, smiling down at Steve with poorly concealed affection. "Baby," he murmurs reverently, and then he's leaning down to capture Steve's lips in another kiss.

This time, Steve is ready for it, but it draws a muffled whimper out of him nonetheless. His nose fills with the scent of weed and cigarettes and cheap cologne - the smell of Eddie - and it's so overwhelmingly good. He lets his lips fall open on a gasp...doesn't close them when Eddie tentatively brushes his tongue against Steve's own. He shuts his eyes, because the press of Eddie's hand to his cheek and Eddie's chest to his own feel like so much more like that.

Eddie breaks the kiss to gasp in a breath, and inexplicably, that's what really sends every last bit of restraint in Steve's brain packing. It's so simple, so ordinary - the soft, quick sip of air Eddie takes in. It's a breathy little sound that Steve has heard from countless others before, but maybe that's why it puts him in this unfamiliar chokehold of wanting.

This isn't just anyone.

This is Eddie.

And Eddie is making those quiet, lovely little sounds because he's kissing Steve, and Steve is very rapidly realizing that he is utterly incapable of being normal about any of this.

He feels his cheeks go hot as he forces his heavy limbs to move so he can tangle his fingers in Eddie's curls, holding him close (because Steve thinks he might die if Eddie stops kissing him, now). And it's bliss. It's addictive. It's ruinously tender, and Steve feels himself unraveling from within. Feels the knots in his heart - left behind by absent parents, cruel friends, and distant girlfriends - turn to dust at the gentlest brush of Eddie's lips.

He whimpers into Eddie's mouth and clings to him even tighter, feeling his throat grow strangely tight as his eyes sting at the corners, and when Eddie pulls away he's got a small furrow in his brow, just under his bangs. 

"Stevie?" Eddie murmurs. His eyes dart to Steve's cheeks, and when he brushes his thumb along the skin just under Steve's eye, it drags a bit of wetness with it. Only then does Steve realize...he's crying.

And Eddie is wiping away his tears.

"I..." Steve croaks, eyes wide and spilling more tears with every blink. He drags his hands down from Eddie's hair to rest on his chest, beginning to curl into himself as the embarrassment sinks in.

Christ, he's crying. And all they've done is kiss.

Eddie's frown deepens, but he doesn't pull away completely. Instead, he lets their noses brush and breathes, "Baby..."

Steve's breath hitches.

"You're shaking, sweetheart," Eddie continues, still brushing Steve's tears away with gentle fingers. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing!" Steve gasps hurriedly, because as far as he understands, it's the truth. "Nothing's wrong, I just..." He closes his eyes. Swallows the lump in his throat and admits with a trembling voice, "I didn't know it could be like this."

He opens his eyes and sees Eddie's expression soften, but the concern remains. "What do you mean?"

"I just..." Steve tries, sniffling and letting out a quiet, distressed laugh. He slams his eyes shut again and rubs them roughly with his palms, trying to force the tears back into his body. "Jesus, this is fucking embarrassing, man."

"Steve..." Eddie murmurs. He sounds sad. Conflicted. Like he's not sure what to do or how to help - if he should stay or go - and that just won't do, because Steve is certain he'll drift away on the breeze without Eddie to ground him. He's got to try to explain, even with his thoughts still feeling syrupy slow from the weed.

He wants to tell Eddie that he's kissed dozens of people before, but kissing them never felt like this. He wants to explain that he's used to taking the lead, and that it's nice having someone else set the pace, for once. He wants to tell Eddie about the way most people he's kissed have done so - frantically...lustfully. Kissing has always been a simple means to an end. And it's never made Steve feel like this.

What he actually manages to say is slightly different, though.

"No one's ever kissed me like they love me, before."

His eyes are still covered by his own hands, so he can't see what is surely a stunned expression on Eddie's face, but he can hear the way Eddie gasps in response to Steve's words.

It’s too much, he thinks. He's said too much, fast-forwarded too far into the movie. It's too early to be talking about love. Steve knows this. It's just...

His stupid, floaty little brain can't envision a world where someone kisses the way Eddie does without being hopelessly, irrevocably in love.

"Shit," Steve breathes after several minutes of silence. Or maybe it's several seconds. He really doesn't know. Time feels funny, when he's high. "I know that's, like, way too much. I'm too much. I don't know why I-"

"Steve," Eddie interrupts, and Steve snaps his mouth shut. He feels Eddie's hands wrap carefully around his wrists to pull them from his eyes. Eddie is being so careful with him...like he can't see that his tenderness is exactly the thing that’s ripping Steve apart at the seams.

Steve wants to scream. He wants to cry. He wants to drag Eddie back down and kiss him until he can't breathe. Until Eddie's sweetness becomes warm and comforting instead of feeling like the scalding heat of jumping into a hot tub after a dip in the cold waters of the pool.

"Baby, look at me," Eddie says softly.

Steve is helpless but to obey.

Eddie's gaze is sad but kind when Steve finally meets it with his own. He's got the barest hint of a smile on his pretty lips - the same ones Steve so desperately wants to feel against his own, again - and Steve feels his stomach swirl with something he can't quite describe.

"It's not too much," Eddie continues, voice steady. "And neither are you, okay? You, Steve Harrington, are never too much. Not to me."

The words settle over Steve like a blanket, and he can't decide whether it's comforting or suffocating. He just wants to stop talking about things so they can move on. He just wants Eddie.

"Eds..." he rasps desperately. "I don't- I just want-" He cuts himself off with the hitching breath of what may be a sob. He's not really sure, at this point.

"What can I do, honey?" Eddie says, and he really needs to stop with the pet names, or Steve might genuinely fracture into pieces. "What do you want?"

Steve is sunk too deep into the syrupy slow feeling of the weed - too desperate to feel Eddie pressed against him again - to do anything but tell the truth.

"Just want you," he says.

Eddie smiles - eyes crinkling at the corners - and Steve breathes the sight in like oxygen. "You have me, baby," Eddie murmurs. He's rubbing small, comforting circle into the sensitive skin of Steve's wrists now, and it's perfect. It's wonderfully, disgustingly perfect.

"I do?" Steve asks dumbly. His brain feels fifteen seconds behind everything, but he thinks that's probably okay. Eddie seems to be just fine waiting for him to catch up.

"Yeah, Stevie," Eddie chuckles quietly. "Had me for a long time, now. Just wasn't sure if you would want me the way I wanted you."

"You want me," Steve says breathlessly, more to himself than to Eddie. "You wanna kiss me."

Eddie's resulting laugh is a bit louder, a bit brighter, this time. "I do," he says. The sadness is fading from his eyes, giving way to something that looks an awful lot like elation. Steve remains still and watches, entranced, as Eddie carefully hauls himself up until he can swing a leg over Steve's to straddle him.

Still smiling broadly, Eddie leans down until their faces are mere inches apart, studying Steve with those big, brown eyes. "You gonna let me?" he asks Steve, a teasing lilt to his voice.

Steve nods, lips parted in surprise he can't quite seem to shake, and Eddie's expression softens.

"Gonna let me kiss you like I love you, Stevie?" Eddie whispers.

Steve's not sure when, exactly, his tears had begun to dry up, but he knows they must have at some point, because they're returning with a vengeance, now. "Please," he breathes.

Eddie shifts, and Steve expects Eddie to go right back to kissing him, but that's not what he does.

Instead, Eddie releases one of Steve's wrists and cups his cheek tenderly. This time, the feeling of his thumb brushing the tears away is a familiar one, and it makes Steve smile dopily.

"You know the reason I kiss you like I love you?" Eddie asks. Steve shakes his head and tracks Eddie's gaze as it drifts towards the place where his fingers are still wrapped around Steve's wrist. His lips quirk into a smile as he uses his grip to pin Steve's hand to the mattress, right beside Steve's head, and laces their fingers together.

Their noses are brushing, now, and Eddie's hips are resting on Steve's, and Eddie's hair has fallen around them like a curtain to keep the rest of the world out, and it's so much. Eddie is everywhere, and he's everything, and Steve is completely, unquestioningly in love with him - probably has been in love with him for ages, now, and just never let himself think too hard about it.

"I kiss you like I love you, Steve Harrington," Eddie breathes, and their lips brush as he speaks. "Because I love you."

And the thing is…Steve has spent his entire life wondering what it would feel like to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was loved. It's something that's eluded him for twenty years.

So it's all the more miraculous when Eddie kisses him again, and suddenly, Steve knows. He knows that Eddie Munson loves him. He feels it in the way Eddie kisses him slowly and deliberately, like it would never have crossed Eddie's mind not to. He feels it in their linked hands, in the way Eddie squeezes his hand when Steve makes a desperate, wanton sound into his mouth.

He feels it when Eddie brushes the hair out of his eyes and smiles before kissing Steve's forehead, then his nose, and then his lips again.

Feels it when Eddie's lips begin to wander down his neck.

When Eddie sucks a mark into the thin skin above his collar bone, just because Steve begs him too.

When Eddie pulls Steve's shirt over his head with careful hands, then lets Steve do the same, because Steve needs the intimacy of skin on skin.

He feels it when Eddie stops Steve's wandering hands from venturing too far south with a firm grip and apologetic eyes, because Eddie wants him - of course he does - but not when they've been smoking. Not when there's even the slightest chance that Steve might wake up and regret it in the morning.

And he hears it, too, later that night when they're laying in Eddie's bed exchanging soft, sleepy kisses, unwilling to drift off and let the night end, just yet.

Their legs are woven together - bare, aside from their boxers - and Steve has lost track of how long they've been tangled up in each other like this. He doesn't particularly care, though. He's pretty sure he could happily spend the rest of his life exactly like this.

"Love you, Stevie," Eddie whispers against his lips. They both smile into the next kiss, and Steve's heart is full to bursting, because he believes it. He knows, now, what it feels like to be loved...to be adored.

"I love you," he murmurs in reply, relishing in Eddie's sharp intake of breath. He giggles a bit, for no reason other than the pure joy that's been coursing through his body all night. "God," he laughs. "I fucking love you, Eddie Munson.

Eddie is quiet for a moment before his face splits into a grin that could rival Steve's own, and he's so goddamn beautiful that Steve almost feels like crying again.

He doesn't cry, though. He just watches adoringly as Eddie smiles and nudges Steve's nose with his own. "Yeah, baby?" Eddie teases.

"Yeah, Eds," he answers simply.

And he's pretty sure Eddie knows - is pretty sure Eddie can feel it - because Steve kisses him for the umpteenth time that night, and he pours every ounce of his heart into it. 

Steve kisses Eddie like he loves him, because he does. God, help him, he does.

And Eddie?

Eddie kisses Steve like he loves him back, and Steve gets it now, because it’s more than just a kiss.

It’s perfect.

It’s earth-shattering.

It’s everything.

--

Shout-out to @lyphyshard for the beta!

For more of my Steddie blurbs and one-shots, check out my masterlist!

[highseas-swede]

Becoming Real

Recently Good Omens Prime Twitter account posted a BTS photo of Aziraphale and Furfur and it started the gears in my head turning, trying to parse it. It's only just now that it finally coalesced into a proper thought.

I kept thinking Aziraphale reminded me of something, especially when compared to the other angels. Look at him next to pre-Jim Gabriel, Uriel, Michael... heck, even Furfur, who he's standing next to right now.

Furfur is a demon, but his outfit is impeccable, it's sleek and stylish. The angel's suits in heaven are all pressed and flawless and New.

But not Aziraphale. He's dressed in old human clothes, his waistcoat is worn and tattered and long-loved. Aziraphale is, as Michael put it, like an old sofa. Worn and comfortable. He could choose to look basically however he wants, but instead he chooses to clothe himself in actual human clothes, to eat human food, to enjoy human entertainment - books, music, plays, etc. He does this despite the fact that it actively makes the other angels dislike him and find him unpalatable.

And that's what stuck out to me. Because unlike those other angels and demons, Aziraphale doesn't feel distant from humanity. He might be odd or eccentric to humans, but they don't question his humanity. He doesn't stand out to them in the way that the other angels do when they show up.

It occurred to me that this is because unlike the other angels... Aziraphale is Real.

Have you ever read The Velveteen Rabbit? There's a scene in it where they talk about what it means to be Real:

This made me think of Aziraphale. About how the other angels are these pristine things, kept aloof from the world, and then there's Aziraphale, who is worn and shabby, who's lived on earth for millennia among the humans. He's loved and learned and experienced what being human is like and because of that he's Real in a way that the other angels aren't. Humans have personhood, a sense of agency, a sense of self. Angels and demons have only the divine plan, as Beelzebub and Gabriel noted, that's all they live for "if you can call it living".

But what strikes me the most is how potentially devastating Aziraphale's Realness will be to Heaven. They only succeed at keeping angels in line because they're undistracted from the Great Plan. We see how Gabriel - as Jim - takes to cocoa after trying it. We see how quickly Muriel becomes fascinated with books.

Now consider that this is the angel they're putting in charge of Heaven. This worn, shabby, old sofa of an angel who has an endless well of love, for Crowley, for the world and the humans in it. He doesn't seem dangerous in the slightest. He seems Fragile.

But he is dangerous. So very dangerous.

But it's not because he's a guardian, not because he's a warrior, not because he's the Angel of the Eastern Gate who leads a battalion and was issued a flaming sword. He gave all of that away and it's worth noting that this is the first actual choice we see him make in the show, the thing that sets him apart in Crowley's eyes, and it wasn't even Crowley's doing! Aziraphale made a choice to give the mortals his sword out of compassion and it is a sense of compassion we don't see from the other angels.

His deviations all stem from that initial act. It takes him from being this two-dimensional cardboard entity existing only as part of the Divine Plan and set him on the path to actual Personhood.

It doesn't happen right away, of course, because as the Skin Horse says:

"It doesn't happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But those things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

And doesn't that sum up Aziraphale? He's shabby and worn and he's beautiful to the people who understand and appreciate that being Real means being imperfect, and that every imperfection is still beautiful.

No wonder the angels mock his corporation, his flaws, all the things he enjoys that make him less than what they think he should be. We see evidence over and over that Aziraphale is essentially "ugly" to them. But that's because they don't understand.

Aziraphale's Realness, his personhood, what Crowley has helped nurture from the Wall of Eden all the way to that last desperate kiss, is what really matters. Good Omens has always been about People being fundamentally People. It's the underlying current that ties everything together, for good or for ill. People have agency. People have self-actualization. People have the ability to make their own choices, for good or for evil.

And now Aziraphale has that too.

That's the very real danger he presents to heaven.

Because we've already seen that any angel, given sufficient time and interaction with humans could be like Aziraphale. All it takes is one small opening, one bite from the apple. Whether deliberately or not, Crowley tempted Aziraphale into every step, the way he tempted Eve in the garden. He gave Aziraphale the knowledge of Right and Wrong, presented him with the option, the way he did with humanity. Were they even really human before Crowley? Did he give them free will? His actions cast them out of paradise, but did it ultimately set them free? Has he struggled for millennia to do the same for the angel he's loved so well and for so long?

Does Crowley know how horribly, wonderfully well he succeeded?

Bringing Aziraphale back to Heaven, putting him in charge, was the absolute worst thing the Metatron could have done for keeping the status quo and it's not because of Aziraphale's fighting prowess. It's because of the small Human acts of kindness and pettiness that Aziraphale is capable of. That's not going to go away when he's in Heaven. It's going to spread. He's going to infect Heaven with Humanity. It's going to be so slow and gradual that they won't see it coming until it's far too late.

It's not going to be the way that Aziraphale intends to change Heaven and yet, it will surely ultimately be what really makes a difference.

I wonder too, if maybe that's some subconscious part of it. After seeing Gabriel change, seeing Muriel change, I wonder if there's not some part of Aziraphale that realizes that Heaven is a miserable place that makes miserable people. He'll extend compassion to them that they don't deserve and don't know they're missing and he'll surely go on with whatever his own Plan - with a capital P, of course - is and he won't even realize what he's actually done.

And then, like the ending of S1, like the ending of S2, the ultimate deciding factor will not be who is the best warrior, who is the strongest. It will be about the Human element.

Metatron thought he could control Aziraphale, bring him in line by bringing him back to Heaven. He wants to take away the human element of Aziraphale and shove him back into that Obedient Little Angel shaped mold and he doesn't realize it's not possible anymore. Aziraphale's grown. He'll never fit, he'll never be that again. There is no going back anymore.

As the Skin Horse says: "Once you are Real, you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

And Real things, things with depth and purpose and will, are impossible to ever truly control.

[natalievoncatte]

There was something inherently unnerving in Superman staring at her, Lena decided. She could *feel* the weight of his gaze on her. If she hadn’t know better, she would have thought that he was trying to steal glances at her. Of course, there was the matter of Lois Lane and all that, and Lena was assuredly not his type. She was, after all, a Luthor.

But he kept staring.

Lena listened to the mission briefing, feeling a bit detached. Her work here was done; she’d worked out the math and it was up to Kara and her cousin to push the asteroid just so, to return it to its proper orbit and send it on its merry way.

It was routine, if two people with godlike powers pushing millions of tons of rock through space could be said to be normal.

There was only one problem.

Clark.

Kept.

Staring.

Lena looked away from him, then slipped out of the room, looking up at the sky. She could see the offending space rock just barely, and extended her arm, covering it with her thumb, one eye pinched shut.

“Hey.”

Kara was in the doorway, not quite emerging onto the balcony. She’d suited up in her space suit, a new design of Lena’s that outfitted her in a stark white with a glowing amber light behind the red-gold frame of her family crest. Lena was proud of her work. It carried a sufficient air supply and was shielded against radiation, just on the off chance they Kara met something up there that bypassed her immunities.

Kara had her helmet tucked under one arm and her hair up on a tight bun, and she looked absolutely dashing. Lena couldn’t help but grin like a big kid, as worried as she was.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” said Lena. “You look good in that.”

“Of course I do, you made it,” said Kara.

She broke across the balcony in three quick strides, and from the way she canted her head, Lena thought it might finally happen. She might crack that last barrier and press her soft lips to Lena’s, stealing some luck to take with her, and stealing Lena’s breath away.

Kara had stolen her heart years ago.

She didn’t, though. Rather than a hug, she ducked down and brushed her forehead lightly against Lena’s, before quickly pulling back.

“Come right back,” said Lena.

“You know it,” said Kara. “Want me to bring you something from my trip?”

“Just come back safe.”

Kara grinned her cocky grin and offered Lena a little salute.

“It’s time,” Clark said, from the doorway. Lena hadn’t even noticed his presence.

He was staring at both of them, now. Lena turned away. The pair stepped back inside, Clark speaking to Kara in clipped, rapid Kryptonese. Lena couldn’t parse it quickly enough, but she made out something about scents.

The mission was not routine.

Lena’s work was perfect. The data was not. Lena white knuckled the railing in her hands as the asteroid drifted down, skimming the Earth’s atmosphere and carving out a channel of unbound flame.

Alex was frantically demanding a status update, but neither Kryptonian answered her. There was only static. Lena watched the control room monitors, and her hands felt as cold as the steel they grasped. She felt utterly numb, on the verge of screaming.

Then the speakers crackled. It was Kara.

“I’m sorry, Lena,” Kara rasped out. “I made a mess of your suit.”

They landed a few minutes later. Kara was the worse for wear, with some of the reinforced plating melted off on her left side. She spun a harrowing tale of struggling to correct the rock’s course, Clark nodding along silently beside her. Lena locked eyes with Kara and let out a slow, agonized breath. She was okay. She was okay this time.

She’d always be okay. Right up until she wasn’t.

After, when Kara had been pried out of her suit, with her cousin’s help, and changed into a hoodie and leggings, she attacked the buffet that was laid out for the two of them in the cafeteria. Shoving around celestial bodies in as hungry work.

When Lena turned and saw Superman staring at her again, she decided she’d had enough and squared up to him.

“Okay, farmboy. Out with it. Why do you keep staring at me?”

“I was waiting for Kara to say something,” he said, “but I guess she’s too shy or she’s worried about what I’ll think. It’s okay with me if you two are together. I don’t hold your name against you.”

Lena’s brain about leaked out of her ears.

“Together?”

“Of course. I noticed earlier that her heartbeat synchronizes to yours whenever you’re in the room, and of course she’s been scent marking you.”

“She’s been what?”

Clark shifted on his feet, either from her tone or her expression or both. He looked strangely young.

“Oh, uh, I see. Anyway I need to get going, long flight back to Metropolis.”

Lena barely noticed him leaving. She stood in the same spot far too long, staring at the refrigerator. She was still standing there when Kara came up alongside her.

“Hey.”

Of course, she was devastating. Kara was in black leggings and a threadbare hoodie that was actually Lena’s, and padding around the place barefoot. Her golden tresses spilled around her shoulders in loose waves, held back by her glasses. The dashing bravado was gone and she was soft, warm, equally lovely Kara again.

“You scared me up there,” said Lena.

“You kept me safe with your suit. You always do.”

Lena looked Kara in the eye. Kara had the most lovely eyes, a gorgeous deep blue that could be as heavy as winter storm or as light as a summer breeze

“I heard what Clark said.”

Lena swallowed, her throat suddenly dry.

“He caught me red handed,” Kara added.

Lena wondered if she should laugh it off, or make a joke. Kara smiled, pulling her gaze away in a slightly embarrassed way, her cheeks turning a rosy pink.

“Does Kryptonian scent marking mean what I’m guessing it means?”

“It, um, it does.”

“This is how humans do it,” Lena whispered, diving headlong into Kara’s space.

She ducked just a little, tilting her head back, and Kara read her intentions perfectly. Their lips came together, and their first kiss was quick and soft, a promise for later, when there would be only fairy lights and Kara’s couch and soft, eager explorations full of slow, desperate intensity.

For now, Kara simply took Lena’s hands in her own, and very gently nuzzled her nose against Lena’s, breath ticking her lips.

“Take me home, space cowgirl,” said Lena.

[clockwayswrites]

A Broken Sort of Normal Part 7

WC: 1011 Masterpost

After the concussion, Danny started seeing Flash more. It was nice; it was actually really nice. It made Danny realize how alone he had been— how long he had been keeping to himself. When he could manage to be painfully honest with himself, Danny could admit that he had been isolating. He had turned down offers from coworkers and even a few neighbors to be social. It had just been too hard to fathom getting close to anyone when he was still hurting from the loss of Sam, Tucker, and, worst of all, Jazz.

Flash (the younger mostly, but even sometimes the older) didn’t really give him the chance to turn them down. Danny was sure that if he pushed that the heroes would have backed off, but Danny found that he really didn’t want to push them away. It was nice to have people who stopped to check in with him just to see how he was doing.

Questions from Flash the younger started out as post battle check-ups turned to ‘how was your day’s to whatever inane thing was running through the hero’s mind. And there was a lot that ran through the hero’s mind. (Danny tried not to dwell on the fact that he thought of that personality trait as adorable.)

“Dude, no,” Flash bemoaned, leaning against the van as Danny double checked his list that everyone on his team had fully reported in.

“I said what I said,” Danny insisted, head ducked to try and hide his smile. It was just too much fun (and too easy) to rile Flash up.

“No, I refuse to believe that you actually think Ghoulie Girls Two is better than the original game!” Flash said, gesturing wildly. As he spoke his words sped up until they were hard to follow. “The second game lost all of its soul! It was just fan service! Which, yeah, okay so One was fan service too, but it had heart! It had an actual story! Two’s story made no sense!”

“But it set up Three where the other OG creator was back on the project and Three was amazing,” Danny pointed out, tucking his tablet back in his kit.

“Okay, look.” Flash spread his hands. “I won’t argue that Three was amazing. Redeemed the series— pushed it ahead. Introduced Helena who is both amazing trans rep and just plain amazing. Lilly’s arc made me cry. All amazing. But Danny, my dude, you cannot say that because it set up Three that Two is better than One!”

Danny looked up at Flash, blinking innocently. “Well… maybe a little of it is just that I played Two first so it got me into the series… and, well, how much it offended you.”

“I— you troll!”

Laughing, Danny walked away to finish packing up with his coworkers. Being one of the early teams on the site was always hard, but it was rewarding work and Danny found he preferred it over the clean up jobs. They were lucky that there was no need for search and rescue that day; Danny would have felt compelled to stick around. As it was, Danny put out a call on his radio for his team to load up so they could head back. They would have a quick debrief, fill out their reports, restock their kits, and finally be able to head home.

Flash caught Danny before he could pile into the front seat of the van with a gentle hand on his elbow. When Danny turned to him, Flash backed off almost nervously.

“So, um, right. I had an idea? And I was wondering if I could pick you up at your place later tonight for it?” Flash asked in a blur of words.

It took Danny a moment to parse it all. “I— sure? Yeah, okay. I’m going to be a few hours though.”

“Really?” Flash asked, grinning widely. “Yeah! No prob! I’ll grab you at eight— no, nine. Bring a jacket! Bye!”

Danny was left blinking at the spot that Flash used to be, bemused by whatever had just happened.

-

Flash knocked precisely at nine. It was, in fact, so precisely at nine that Danny had to wonder if Flash had just been standing awkwardly outside the apartment for a few minutes waiting to knock or if the accurate timing was just part of the speed force.

“Hi, Danny,” Flash chirped with a nervous little smile. He was back in the separate mask, though he seemed to be wearing something not that different from his tight super suit under the large Cyborg themed hoodie. He had his Flash themed backpack again and it looked almost over filled.

“Hey, Flash,” Danny said, hoping his smile would calm whatever nerves Flash was having. “Do I get to know the plan?”

“Nope! I mean, not if you trust me? But like, if it’s bothering you to not know the plan I can totally tell you the plan so that you don’t worry, I just thought that maybe it would be a nice surprise, but maybe you don’t like surprises—”

“Flash,” Danny said, cutting off the rambling. “I’m okay not knowing.”

“Okay, okay cool,” Flash said after he took an obvious breath. “Um. Arms or piggyback ride?”

Danny glanced up from putting his shoes on. “Hum?”

“To be carried. I need to run us somewhere.”

“Oh, uh, back I guess?” Maybe it would make him feel less unsteady than being picked up.

“Okay!” Flash said. He bounced eagerly on his toes as he waited for Danny to put on his jacket and lock up. When Danny finally turned to him, Flash handed over his backpack, spun around, and crouched down. “So make sure to hold on tight! Arms and legs both.”

“Sure,” Danny said. He had no intention to even risk being dropped.

He felt a little awkward climbing onto Flash’s back, but the hero seemed perfectly comfortable with it all. Flash gave a little bounce after he was standing, as if to make sure Danny was secure, and then they were off in a blur of light and color.

-----

AN: Aaaaah these two are just so fun to write! They're just so cute. I also always enjoy writing people just being nerds~

(I'm still not very well, so I've been using this fic as my warm-up then poking at LBFD as my brain allows.)

Stay delightful, darlings!

Due to the new post editor and a few other reasons, I no longer tag people. You can be notified in much the same manner by subscribing to the master post here.

[hexonthepeach]

perfume - k.dy

pairing: f4!nct doyoung x fem!reader (past johnny x reader mentions)

genre: hana yori dango/boys over flowers/meteor garden/f4 thailand reverse harem au (mild allusions and characterization only)

warnings:

bully-to-friends-to-lovers, established relationship, polyamory, dom!doyoung, glucose father adjacent, scent kink, control over food consumption/bathing (for scent kink purposes only), gratuitous use of the l-word by anti-romantics, angst/feelings, flashbacks and history

🔞 edging, cockwarming, orgasm denial, oral (m/f receiving), passionate sex, rough sex, spanking, creampie, bukkake, consensual negotiated kink (degradation, somnophilia), anal play (f receiving)

wordcount: 20k

author's note: this is a doyoung-centered continuation of my ongoing F4 au. it can stand on it's own but i recommend reading Dive for more context. Doyoung's role in the F4 is Sojirou Nishikado/So Yijung/Ximen/Kavin (playboy control freak) so this fic incorporates elements of his secondary romance within the original/adaptations, now with y/n.

read on AO3

fic headers / dividers credit to @ saradika + please do not repost

Freshman year, Kocher International. 

Head down in your books at lunch, trying so hard to escape scrutiny from above, you pretend to be no one. 

It shouldn't be hard to be nobody, otherwise ignored and immune to whatever social contract deliberates your life. In a better world you'd be invisible. It's a superpower you'd wish for much more over the usual playground answers of super speed or control of the weather. 

Let me be unobserved, you'd thought. Let me open a door and not worry about a bucket full of dirty mop water falling on my head or the inevitable posting of a grainy video of it, posted in a Telegram channel to fulfill some checklist made up by bored, rich monsters. 

Your four-generation-behind phone with its cracked screen proved useful in some regards; you never heard about these public pillories until some kind stranger sent you a screenshot of them, usually in the context of whatever plans they'd made to torture you again.

Every notification is already a pain, driving splintered glass into the pads of your fingers. Just now you're reading a text message from your father asking you to pick up more cheap instant noodles from the convenience store on your walk home to round out whatever scraps he's picked up from the local restaurant your mother bussed tables and cleaned dishes at when she needed extra money.

"Why is Saint Kim watching you?" your friend asks across the table. She's been looking up at the room this entire time, unable to give you even a moment of her attention or assistance to finish the English homework you'd been working on. You'd been rushing all day to finish it before afternoon class, after a late morning of delivery driving for your family's drycleaning business.

"Are you sure it's not the Devil?" you ask, parsing through the lines of a book you'd bought secondhand, trying to match verse for verse.

"No," she says, shaking her head when you finally look up. "Don't react. He's coming this way."

"Shit," you say under your breath, eyes flicking to your untouched lunch. "I need you to leave now. Take these trays and dump them and I'll meet you outside of 4th. If I make it."

You don't look up from your book as you mutter, but you follow her path and her hesitancy as she internally debates whether to heed your warning or watch from a safe distance.

Your handwriting becomes a scrawl of nonsense you have to cross out in sharp lines. You begin the verse again, holding your breath as you will your entire body and mind back to a manufactured calm. 

If you can't be invisible, you can at least play your role. You're copacetic by the time you see the tips of polished black wingtips beside you, before you hear the Saint clear his throat.

“Y/N.”

He drops a familiar, school-mandated clear cosmetics bag next to your ratty backpack. The already embarrassing stash of tampons and old chapstick has a new bounty including a "used" pregnancy test stick with a second line drawn in with pink gel pen jumbled into its contents.

"You left this . . ." he says, not finishing the sentence to indicate where he'd found it. You immediately hear a titter. Your flock of spectators is growing by the second and the useful idiot at its center seems wholly unconcerned.

"Thanks," you say, not bothering to look up or to even hide the bag. You keep writing, blindly, the English words just rounded shapes flowing from your shaking hand. 

Their kind fed off attention, your only defense is to starve them of it.

The Saint clears his throat, again. Apparently he’s not just unconcerned, he’s also unwilling to leave.

"Aren't you grateful Doie found it before someone else did?" You don’t have to look up to know it's Miranda who’s asked, glimpsing her manicure as she picks up your bag, green gems shining on perfectly-tipped nails. 

"Oh this must not be hers. I didn't think she could afford this."

You think she might be diving into the stash for one of the Lilies' pointed additions but no–you watch in horror as she plucks out the bottle of perfume you'd been carrying with you since your parents had gifted you a single, tiny box last Christmas. 

"Chanel?" she says, laughing. "No wonder you smell like my grandma."

"Probably a knock-off," another of the Lilies says. Ginger, by the sound of her grating voice. Her handwriting on the board in homeroom listing out your abortions is as familiar as the pink gel pen script on the extra large foil condom with xoxo slut written on it staring at you through the plastic.

"Definitely a knock-off. You have a nose, don't you, Doie?"

You look up, finally, at Saint Kim. He's alone for once–the other one, the Devil Kim that shadows him is still up on the second level, leaning on the railing over his shoulder. You watch the Saint’s small mouth turn into a moue of distaste, nose wrinkling at the proffered bottle.

"Authentic," he says, capping it before offering it back to you. Your field of vision is obstructed by that veined, pale hand–fingernails as perfectly groomed as the rich girls who surround him.

You reach up to take your most prized possession back only to find he doesn't let go, holding tight when you try to pluck it from his fingers.

"You should know . . . " he says, sniffing slightly.

You look up at him with alarm blazing in your eyes. Every word Kim Doyoung says to you writes your next damnation. You should ignore him, run, anything–but you can't look away once you've met his assessing gaze, his tall frame limned in the fluorescent cafeteria lights like he's carrying his own personal halo. 

Even seeing him at a distance every day can't depreciate how ethereally handsome he is. You know better than to swoon at that elegant face, night-black hair pushed away from his forehead. Beneath his family’s charities and his PR-scripted concern you know he’s just another ungodly creation birthed of nepotism and curated genes.

He leans in, carefully, musical voice a whisper. 

"You should know it doesn't suit you."

The laughter that follows is deafening.

No, you think. He's just as soulless as the rest of them.

“What do you mean actually sleep?" you ask, coyly, unbuttoning your romper. "Like after we . . . ?"

"I've managed 6 hours of sleep in 36 hours, y/n–” Doyoung seems to hesitate, dark eyebrows raising, hand pushing his hair back from his pale forehead. He snaps his laptop closed, at last, shoving it to the farthest edge of the bedside table.

No–you think–not hesitation. 

Frustration.

You've seen this man before. 

All work and no play made Saint Kim into a Prince of Hell. He'd spent the first 8 hours of your date day half-present–the other in the 4 hours of sleep he's gotten since some crisis at his family’s headquarters in London that usurped your vacation. 

A whole 2 days in which he hasn't held you at all. His rules, his chance, but you can't help but wonder what has him so clenched that he's barely even touched you since your date began at 6 am Bangkok time.

You'd taken two extra strength melatonin and slept like the dead, anticipating his early-riser schedule. Only you and God had to know you'd fallen asleep next to your day tour fit ready to be fucked in it. 

You’d made yourself so pretty only to find him in the kitchen hunched over his phone, laptop softly pinging with notifications. Doyoung had still been dressed in the clothes you'd seen him in the night before, ending his conference call to laser in on you hovering in the kitchen.

"Are you upset?" Doyoung asked.

"No," you'd lied, pushing the piece of paper he'd left the staff on the counter, his English handwriting crisp and formal. "What’s this?" 

"We have a few dietary restrictions today," he’d said. 

"Are you saying I am what I eat?" You’d asked, taking a bite of a plump strawberry. "Is this some kind of prep?"

"It's for the date," he'd said, resigned. "Just be patient with me."

Then he'd smiled, disarming you with a casualness you hadn’t seen on him in a long time, rubbing his eyes blearily under his thick glasses. 

"Can we go back to sleep?"

And so you'd settled into his grasp on your made bed, scrolling Insta and waiting for the inevitable alarm–which turned out just to be Jungwoo delivering two iced Americanos in some gambit of checking your progress.

"Missed the floating market opening?" Jungwoo asked, eyebrows raised at the sight of Doyoung face first in a pillow.

You'd silently mouthed your thanks, leaving the drinks to sweat on the bedside table as you changed into your second outfit of the day, occasionally drifting in to check on your sleeping beauty.

It was a rare delight to have him so vulnerable beside you, blanket rucked up beneath his chin and his white teeth visible past the sweet curves of his mouth. Without consciousness your partner for the day is just Kim Doyoung, the gentler side of the same creature who you knew would often choose a couch to watch serial television with you over a day trip if you wanted it. 

But this was different.

Now instead of using his precious time to fulfill what you'd felt promised in his casual brushes against your back when you'd finally traveled out, or the way he'd stroked your leg at brunch under the table (every bite chosen by him, of course), you're being railroaded into lying still while he sleeps. 

Again.

You continue undressing, letting him drink in the sight of the lingerie set he’d left in your room. You knew it was custom made by the way it lifted each curve he’d already had access to, tailored for you as if every millimeter of your body was to account for.

Doyoung's cheeks are hollowed, lip chewed. He pulls his glasses down and regards you even more as you continue to undress yourself.

"You do know what the word 'nap' means, don't you?"

"I'm not the one who hasn't slept," you say. "At least let me get comfortable."

His stare pierces into you as you turn around, stripping for utility rather than give him a show he clearly hasn’t earned. You check yourself in the floor-length mirror beside the bathroom, viewing yourself through his eyes as you pluck the lace over your curves to sit just right. 

“Do you like it?” you ask.

You may as well be speaking to the floor when you turn around, finding him buried in the pillows only by the dark fall of his hair.

“You can’t be that tired,” you say. 

You're used to taking a late afternoon siesta in peak summer but you're far too excited to even consider sleep right now. For one, it's sweltering–windows open to allow the noises of hawkers and traffic not far off to drift in.

Second, you've never been more turned on in your life. 

You can still feel the tingling in your toes from when he’d slipped his hand up under the hem of your shorts, teasing at the velvety smooth skin on your inner thigh as you tried not to choke on your mimosa.

You make your way to the bed languidly, crawling up the thick white duvet with a teasing smile.

"Just stay on your side of the bed, please," Doyoung says.

"Oh," you say, collapsing on top of the covers beside him. "Well you're no fun." 

"And you're impatient and uncouth," he retorts in a way that makes you wonder if he really means it. 

"Will you at least hold onto me?"

"Too hot." He rolls on his back, flapping his half-buttoned shirt in the breeze from the fans. You sigh dramatically, collapsing into the pillows in the middle of the bed. 

"You should get naked, then.” You say. “Don't be modest on my account."

He opens one eye to glare at you, finding you relaxed and inviting beside him. His throat bobs, gaze flicking to the ceiling.

"That year of celibacy really took a toll on you, didn't it? Two hours. Indulge me."

"Please, sir," you whisper. "I've been such a good girl."

It had been a stipulation of the F4’s latest deal–24 hours for you to recover from your first night before the gauntlet began. Doyoung had been more than strict about the terms, leaving you your own set of instructions including–not surprisingly–not touching yourself.

Under normal circumstances you wouldn’t think about masturbation constantly, at all hours of the day. He may as well have told you to try not to think about a white bear for how powerful the intrusive thought had taken over since then.

"You'll get your reward. Later," he says. He's an impassable wall, stretched out beside you, so you content yourself with staring at his profile. Even under these oppressive circumstances you appreciate the light dusting of freckles on his cheek brought out by the sun, the dark lashes dusting his cheeks over the slight bluish marks of sleep deprivation.

"Yes, sir."

It only takes a few minutes for him to snap at you again.

"Stop that," 

"Stop what?" 

"Getting so handsy."

You hadn’t even realized your hand had drifted over the plane of his belly under his white shirt, too absorbed with watching the muscles in his cheek spasm as you inched nearer. 

"Can I help it when you're right there?" you ask. "I thought this was your–"

Doyoung rolls you before you can slither any closer, pressing your back into the sheets with his hands on your wrists, knees digging into your thighs. 

If the intention was to get you to stop being uncomfortably turned on it has the opposite effect: you let out a moan of pleasure, legs twisting together for friction. He slams them shut between his own, groin pressed into yours.

He's as hard as you hoped, and you lift up into him to let him know you know it.

"If you don't behave I'll have to cancel this," he warns directly in your ear, sounding as choked as you feel. "I thought you were already trained." 

"Trained to fight back," you correct, pressing against him with your own strength.

"That's not trained," he says, lifting up. "I'll blame your lack of experience and experienced partners. Nothing we can't work on. Until then you'll follow my rules or I pull you from the game. Understood?" 

You let a few beats pass, accepting there's no way out and you don't have anything to throw back at him.

"Yes, sir," you pout.

"Now that's a good girl," he says.

Just as quickly as you were taken down you're let go, inhaling deeply now that you're not being pressed into the soft bed. 

"You really don't want to play with me before you sleep?" you ask, brushing your lips against his chin as he crouches over you. You’d be a liar if you didn’t say you enjoyed the way his nostrils flare a bit, working his pink bottom lip between his teeth. Whatever arbitrary rules he’d set for your time together you can tell he’s at least regretting it right now, stiff length brushing against your bare leg as you lift your knee to test it. 

“Are you trying to make me punish you?” he asks, voice husky. 

"I thought you liked it when I was a brat," you say, cocking your head. 

Doyoung sighs, eyes half-lidded. "I do. But not when you're using it to avoid intimacy."

Your throat clenches, a hard knot forming in it you can't seem to swallow as your face gets even hotter.

“What are you talking about?” you ask. 

“I think you know what I mean,” he continues. “It’s not like we both don’t have a habit of using sex as a distraction from anything emotionally challenging.”

You gape up at him in disbelief. 

Of course you’d never been able to hide that aspect of your last relationship with him when he’d often been right outside the door. All of the F4 knew how many times your arguments with he-who-should-not-be-named-especially-not-while-in-bed-with-his-best-friend had ended in you shutting him up by any means necessary. Not that you didn’t enjoy it at the time–but rather you understood it wasn’t the most healthy template for a relationship. 

"I thought this wasn't going to be about feelings," you blurt out.

“Proving my point.”

Doyoung tsks, tapping your cheek with his fingers–nowhere near a slap but just as effective, soothing the spot with his thumb. Soon he’s brushing your tears away when they inevitably spring up and you have to turn to hide their seep into the mass of pillows.

"If I wanted therapy I wouldn't be here, Kim Doyoung," you say, trying to bury your face in the piles of soft down. 

“Shh, silly girl,” He gently pulls you out from hiding, soothing you with a warm kiss against your forehead when you stop struggling and let him hold you, releasing that surge of emotion and writing it off to hormones and the sting of rejection.

“You know I’m speaking to myself here, too,” he states softly. “Bear with me, I’m learning.” 

"Do you even really like me?" you ask, face pressed into his chest. 

It’s horrible to admit this specific insecurity but you can’t help it. Being abandoned multiple times in your life when you’d finally, finally let your walls down would damage anyone’s trust. You’d hoped this day with him would be easy and carefree and light, not dimmed by the shadows of your anti-romantic histories. 

"I adore you, actually." He settles partially on top of you, leg wrapped over yours as he props himself up on his elbow. "Which is why I want to start this right. You wanted the F4 boyfriend experience. This is mine."

"Last I checked you’ve never seriously dated anyone," you groan, sniffling. 

"Last I checked, neither have you." 

Well, that connects. You swallow your fears, relaxing into the cage of his embrace, retreating a little from the vulnerability of being exposed.

"What kind of girlfriend experience were you expecting, then?"

A lazy smile gusts across his features. You can't help but find it a bit sinister after being handled so indelicately. 

“I don’t always know what’s going on in that empty little head of yours." He accompanies his statement with a brush of his thumb across your flushed cheek, tracing your semi-parted lips in a way that sends sparks down to your core. 

"I’d like to stop guessing and actually get you to let me treat you the way you want to be treated. Have you ever asked yourself what you want?"

You panic a little, considering his words. Living with disappointment had made this question a hard one to even consider. 

"I just want a good time. Isn't that what you want, too?"

Doyoung seems to ignore your ask, drifting into a relaxed state against the pillows. His hand traces the hairline at your temple. "You know I worry about you. All the time, actually.” 

His voice is lower, a little wistful, and it’s doing just as much as the slight brushes of his fingertips to make you throb all over again. A lack of sleep must have made him delusional, you think. This is not the Kim Doyoung you know.

“You’re always thinking of how to take care of the people around you, I think you’ve forgotten how to relax and let other people take care of you.”

"Is that why you're always involving yourself in my business?" you ask, matching his tone in how breathless you are. You expect a quip, not the sincerity written on his face when he swoops in to press a gentle kiss against your lips, too fleeting to be anything but sweet and sincere. 

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do all this time? It certainly wasn’t just to get into your pants. I want you. All of you.” 

You're taken aback by his honesty. You'd always suspected his constant meddling in your affairs came from a place of interest but you'd never wanted to give him too much of a response–maybe a little afraid his fickle nature and fear of commitment would mean he’d give up on your friendship, too. 

Another thing you knew about Saint Kim: he had a tendency to run like a frightened rabbit at the first sign of emotional neediness in his partners. You'd never given him reason to believe you expected anything from him, but you'd also stopped fighting him on giving you what he desired to give.

It wasn’t just presents or expensive experiences, of course. He’d found out quickly those weren’t welcome without some cajoling. No–his art was in knowing what you needed even before you realized it, nudging it across your path. 

You’d figured out his deviousness after the umpteenth time someone was charitable at your little florist shop part time job, offering to fix your scooter in exchange for a nice arrangement for a proposal. As soon as you’d seen the fully restored bike outside and the customer didn’t return your texts you’d called Doyoung, completely unsurprised to find he was at the coffee shop next door, waiting to pick up his flowers.

“Stop being so nice to me,” you’d said. “It makes me uncomfortable.”

“What makes you think I’m giving you charity,” he’d responded, dropping a department store bag and your own custom coffee order on the counter. “You’ll wear this when I come to pick you up tonight at closing, including the jewelry and perfume. I need you to play your part again. The flowers are a consolation for the heart we’re breaking.”

He’d enlisted you as his defacto “new girlfriend” for the more difficult separations, and though you’d gotten your share of a glass of expensive wine thrown in your face more often than he ever experienced it (his type always went after the easier target) it wasn’t like he didn’t have a replacement dress ready and a nice dinner waiting after you’d cleaned off the Chateau Lafitte Rothschild. 

You have to face the fact that no matter how many times he’d treated you like his girlfriend, you’d never actually expected him to want you to be one. 

“I’ve waited a very long time for this, Y/N. Which is why I want our first time together–alone," he adds quickly. "–To be special."

It's difficult to believe him but you're spellbound all the same, watching pink dust his cheeks and his ears turn a shade darker as he most likely realizes how ridiculous it is considering him fucking you senseless the other night with the help of two other men. 

But you can empathize with his anxiety. Yesterday's Thai massage he'd arranged had helped you work out the flight or fight of anticipating being alone with him. It’s back now, but different. The way he's looking at you makes you feel infinitely naked, infinitely unlocked.

"What do you mean special?" you ask, wary, hoping to see some glimmer of uncertainty or falsehood in his gaze. You want to believe it's a lie or just some artful prank, trying to ignore your heart flip-flopping in your chest. 

It’s a mistake to let him see you squirm considering it’s Doyoung’s drug of choice–his lips twist into another menacing grin as he plays with the charm on your necklace. Another of his little gifts.

"Do you think you can handle it?" Doyoung asks, dripping self-satisfaction. “Or are you going to chicken out on me?”

You turn over so he can't see your expression, realizing he’s throwing your own words from the night before right back at you.

"I haven’t decided if I want to date you, yet,” you say. 

"Maybe not," he says. "But you'll have to pardon me for wanting to show you this good time you supposedly want while also treating you decently. Unless we're no longer friends?"

"We are," you say, biting your lip, "even if you enjoy torturing me."

"Torture?" He laughs, breathy. 

"Metaphorically speaking."

"You have no idea, do you?" You can feel the edge of his glasses as he bites the place where your clavicle connects to your shoulder, his hand snaking around your bare middle.

"You could show me," you invite, mid-gasp, as your body responds to his long-awaited touch. His fingers are almost cool in contrast to the heat in the room, tracing circles in your skin that have you squirming. 

"Is that a challenge?" he asks.

Why not?

"We don't have to have sex," you offer. "Maybe you could just–"

"Shh," he says, fingers skimming lower. "My terms. Are you going to stay quiet for me?"

You nod into the comforter, breath hitching as he touches you through the thin layer of your underwear, veined hand flexing as he molds the damp fabric to your body. It's such a delicate pressure but he's already memorized your shape, index finger sinking into your folds, gently rubbing a ring around your throbbing clit.

You're sticky and swelling with each pass, entranced by how good he is at teasing you, cherishing the way he sucks in his breath when he pushes into the indent of your hole.

“Doie,” you whine, leaning back into him, trying to get him to kiss you as he laughs into your hair. 

“Quiet,” he reminds you, kissing your cheek and teasing the seat of your underwear where they're soaked the most. "You want to take these off?" 

You shake your head, sensing it would be too easy of you to give in.

"That wasn't a question," he says, tugging down the band, leaving them trapped tight around your thighs. "I don't want you to wear them until I tell you that you can." 

You feel your core clench at the way his voice cracks, his fingers sliding back up to slowly and delicately draw a thread of moisture from your bared slit. You whine a little when he stops touching you, bringing his fingertip to your lips.

"Taste it." 

You let your mouth fall open, let him run it over your tongue, beginning from the middle and swirling over it. 

"Describe it," he murmurs. "If I like your answer, maybe I'll indulge you more." 

"Salt," you say, immediately. 

He tugs your hair, making you meet his eyes. 

"Have I taught you anything? I want specific notes. Flavors." 

You're transported back to the time he'd taken you to your first (and last) wine tasting. Spitting into a bucket and being lectured about body and tannins and soil conditions was the last thing you'd wanted to do after an hours-long trip to a vineyard but you'd indulged him, allowed one glass of what he considered the only drinkable wine on the premises. 

An unrefined palette, he'd called you. 

"Fruity and floral," you make up. "A nice lingering finish. Want a taste?" 

He looks down at you behind his glasses, equal parts amused and unimpressed. "Did you use the soap I asked you to?" 

Your brain glitches at that. Had you? You'd been in such a rush to go out–

You gasp when he palms your breast, squeezing the meat of it through the breathable fabric of your matching bra.

"I'll take that as a no," he says. "I guess you're not ready." 

He rolls off of you, leaving you in a lurch as you realize your legs are locked together by your underwear. You move to remove them, taking off your bra as well to avoid the awkwardness of being partially dressed.

By the time you're done you realize he's on his back, the hand that had been stroking you buried in his loose khakis. 

"What are you doing?" you ask, more than a little pissed off at the sight of him masturbating as if you aren't ready and willing to assist beside him. 

"Getting ready for our date. You can watch. No touching." He cracks an eye to look at you before closing it again. "Either of us."

"Are you edging me, Kim Doyoung?" Your menacing tone is entirely natural.

He hums a bit, working himself at a more punishing pace, knuckles peeking out from under his boxer briefs with each full pass over his length.

"Can't even look at me? Afraid you'll lose control?" You sidle down on the bed, beside his tensed thigh. You can smell a bit of the ozone on him from a morning in the sun, your knees knocking into his calves when you move over him.

"I don't trust you," he says, voice deeper than you've ever heard it.

"Is it touching if you finish on my face?" you ask when he finally blinks up at your presence, hovering over him with your breasts dangerously close to his clothed thighs.

"Absolutely not."

"Not touching–"

"Just. Watch," he orders.

He pulls himself free from his pants, surprising you with how dark and weeping his tip is as his thumb encircles it. Pools of white precum spatter on his lean, pale belly, your head dipping dangerously close–

"I said watch." He grabs at your hair, denied when you bend up again, showing him your dirty tongue.

He groans, fingers clenching air. "You were put on this earth to test me, weren't you?"

Still, he doesn't break his attention on the way you roll the drops you'd licked from his clean skin in your mouth, swallowing once you've fully enjoyed the taste.

"A little sweet you say," teasing him. "Drinking pineapple juice?"

"Brat," Doyoung says, but he's almost gone–eyes dark with desire, gently gripping your skull as you continue to ease in.

You're a master at following his lead, blowing a breath over the spot you'd licked, and then his length until his movements slow, cherishing the way you hold your mouth over his cock.

"If you can't give me what I want, then at least give me a taste," you say, sticking out your tongue in offering. You love the way he responds to the sight, needy and losing it when you hold eye contact, drilling into him.

"No," he echoes, weakly. He's too smart to push into your open mouth, instead driving his hips up to fuck his fist as you watch his glasses slide down his nose, eyes clenching shut. 

"You're no fun," you say. "Just a little swallow can't hurt?"

"No. Don't want to ruin it," he says cryptically, making a choked noise as you brush his fingers with your nose and he has to pull you away.

"I promise you it . . . It will be worth it," he manages. His jaw clenches as his movements relax, finally in control of you both.

"It better be," you say. 

You lower your lashes as your eyes flick between his cock and his face, stretching out your tongue to the point that drool begins to drip down your chin, splashing on his whitened knuckles and the tight stretch of his balls peeking out from his underwear. He bites his lip, breath holding as he starts to spiral.

The first thick rope of white rockets up his half-bared chest. Soon he's spurting even more, cum reaching his rucked up shirt, a little getting on his glasses. 

He's so out of it he doesn't fight as you wrest out of his limp hold. You clean up the sticky mess on his skin with your tongue, his abdominal muscles twitching under the light flicks and drags. 

"Want to give me some notes?" you ask, straddling him without resting any weight down, taking off his glasses. This time when you move to kiss him he rises weakly to meet you, lips parting to accept what you haven't swallowed. 

In truth, he tastes wonderful. Coffee, a little menthol from toothpaste and a hint of the watermelon you'd shared earlier mix beneath the coat of his spend.

He licks into your mouth until you moan, your body throbbing with unfulfilled pleasure. You follow him as he sinks back into the pillows, enjoying having him at your disposal, your core leaving wet trails on his thigh when you brush against the fabric.

"I'm going to wait until you're asleep and use you if you don't help me get off," you threaten, pressing soft kisses to his slack face. It’s no use. Doyoung has passed out again, lower teeth visible as he snores softly, forehead sheened with drying sweat.

Fuck it, you think. 

You ooze off of him to take your second cold shower of the day, and maybe get acquainted with one of the fancy showerheads in his massive walk-in while you use his special soap. 

It's not–technically–touching yourself.

Your mystery destination isn't an unknown–it's in every tourist booklet and blog you'd skimmed before your trip, thinking you'd be on your own to find a good spot to traverse to. But it still takes your breath away the moment the car door opens in the sprawl of motorbikes and delivery trucks and Doyoung takes your hand to pull you into Paradise.

Pak Khlong Talat is a bustle of energy well after dark, the time you know its treasures are delivered fresh and unbloomed, wrapped in newspaper and steeped in crushed ice. For as far as you can see the market sprawls along Chak Phet road, but even more overwhelming than the sights and sounds is the scent. 

Jasmine, roses, lavender. Thousands upon thousands of blooms strung up and tended to by night owl vendors, delicate arrangements hand-sewed by artisans streetside into garlands so well-crafted Doyoung has to tug you to keep you moving, onwards to some other unspoken destination. 

"I was worried you might hate flowers after working with them for so long. I take it you like it?" he asks, indulging you when you ask if you can take his picture at a particularly lovely hang of garlands, the purple-blue light perfect for the film you'd loaded into your father's old camera. Photography had never been your craft, but after your dad had passed you'd made an effort to capture more of your memories, cherishing what you'd taken for granted before.

“It’s perfect,” you say, admiring him through the viewfinder. "But can you look like you're having fun?" 

Your model is stiff, mouth a moue as he checks the street for other observers or a possible collision with a laden handcart. 

"Fun?" Doyoung asks, and you snap his picture on the offbeat, enjoying his look of surprise. 

“Like you've taken your date to one of the most romantic places on earth, after buttering her up with a night cruise of Chao Praya and finally letting her eat real food." 

He sniffs at a fall of marigolds, a smug look on his face that you commit to film, right before he sneezes. 

"For the record, we're eating after this. Som tam hardly counts as a meal, I just didn’t want that drink going to your head." 

You're shepherded through the vast warehouse of the main market, to an adjacent street, and into a non-descript building painted in a funereal white.

"Are we even allowed to be here?" you ask, once the key code is entered and you enter the strange business. 

"I called in a favor," he says, taking your hand, leading you up a metal staircase past a simple storefront of dried blooms and shelves laden with boxes and bottles alike.

An apothecary? An alchemist's shop? The purpose of the space eludes you.

"An atelier," Doyoung explains. "One of the most sought out in the world."

There's the distant hum of the city outside and a central air you're unused to in this climate but the upstairs is quiet–by all accounts either an office or a laboratory, or a mixture of both. The central working area is a chaotic but organized space filled with tables of glassware and dried floral arrangements contrasting potted orchids, small beakers of coffee beans littered amidst rows of labeled brown bottles.

"So this is how they make perfume," you say, inspecting a stoppered bottle labeled "Gerianol 10%".

"Not just any perfume. The best. Here." Doyoung leads you to a much less cluttered workstation, the desk arranged with the lights still on, a note detailing some instruction you can barely read before he slips it into the pocket of his slim-tailored pants. Beneath it is a notebook, scrawled with a perfect cursive English you recognize from the cards he’d included in boxes or bags whenever he’d bothered to claim their contents. 

"Sit," he instructs. You think he means the comfortable chair but before you can sit down he presses you to the desk, caging you in. 

"Sit," he repeats, hands on your hips through your slinky skirt, lifting you to the bench. You scoot back, carefully, the white blooms of some exotic flower brushing against your cheek until he can move the vase a careful distance. 

"Do you understand what we’re doing here?"

You can't possibly know what he means, eye level with the graceful column of his neck and his exposed collarbone beneath his translucent button-down, drowning in the melange of scents but most especially his clean, neutral cologne. 

"No," you say, honestly, heart beating fast. 

He picks up a corked flask from some kind of metal scale, dipping a thin thread of paper into it to waft it a fair distance from your nose.

"Before we came here--before you even agreed to this trip–I sent instructions to my friend for a specialty blend of their creation. It took quite a bit of back-and-forth–I even visited here last month to take a private class and make sure we prepared the base and middle to your standards."

"For me?" 

You feel dizzy, reaching out to take the sample and smell it again, his hand capturing your own before you can bring it too close to your nose. He wafts it for you, expectant as you absorb the details.

Indeed, it smells divine–exactly the kind of warm, bright notes that make your heart feel at ease. There’s something floral and citrus worked in, not too heavy, the finish leaving you with an impression of a lazy summer afternoon. 

“It’s beautiful,” you say. “Did you make this to match what you knew I liked?”

"Yes.” Doyoung exhales, looking almost sheepish. "I had some references. That cheap shampoo you never stop buying, the Lush exfoliator with the orange blossom, even–" he shudders a bit– "that awful Chanel you doused yourself in, in high-school."

"Coco Mademoiselle," you say. "It's been years since I–"

"It didn't suit you," he says, standing up to sample another bottle from the neat row. 

Something dawns on you, a distant memory locking into place.

"It was you," you gasp in realization. "You're the one who got rid of it. I should have known when you tried to give me that bottle of Jo Malone–"

“It had already turned. You need to store your scents away from direct light.”

“It was a keepsake!” There were very few possessions from your youth that you’d been able to hold onto–not only because your parents had been barely able to afford your school uniforms, much less gifts. What little you’d had was lost when your house was destroyed by the men your father owed money to, this small thing neglected in the destruction.

“It didn't suit you because it wasn't made for you," he continues. "You wore it because you thought it would make you fit in, when you should have made what you wore wear you–"

"Please, stop."

You have to bite your lip to the point of pain, remembering how excited you'd been to unwrap that tiny bit of luxury your parents had saved up to buy you, your mother sure the brand name would save you from another day of humiliation. You didn’t have the heart to tell them that the cutout ad from the magazine on your wall was for the model, not the actual perfume, but you felt loved by the gesture all the same.

Hundreds of thousands of won an ounce for it to only turn on your skin, well before afternoons spent on the basketball court under the thankless sun. That memento had aged from pink to a sickly rose unused on your cosmetic shelf, a totem from a time when you imagined yourself belonging. Before it had disappeared, like so many other things.

You can't remember the last time you'd worn anything, had never even gone near that section of a department store after the humiliation of being made fun of for smelling cheap.

“My dad skipped lunches and my mom worked double shifts to get that for Christmas my first year in Kocher,” you say. “Mira was the brand ambassador for that campaign, you know.”

Mira had been your idol even before you won the scholarship she’d established to attend Kocher. Perfect, beautiful, but most of all the first girl in their sphere to show you genuine kindness.

"It must be so easy for you," you say, wiping your face. You rarely cried these days but that memory was particularly painful, a reminder of how often you’d assumed Doyoung found you just as offensive. Not just your scent, you thought, but you.

Something to be tolerated. Below his regard. 

"Whatever you want, you can have. Whatever you don't like, you can get rid of. I'm sorry, I don't live in your world. I can’t just throw something away when it’s not useful."

"No," he says, quietly, abandoning his explanation. "That was thoughtless of me. I can replace it–"

“Can you?” You glare up at him. “Is this what you really want? To dress me up like your perfect doll and feed me from your hand so I’m more able to suit you?

Doyoung looks like he's going to be ill, every design in his head unraveling before your eyes. You’d feel sorry for him if you didn't know this was a lesson worth imparting.

"Don't ever offer to replace what you don’t know the true value of," you say, voice trembling.

There's a weighted silence as he considers his next words. You still haven't slipped away from him, choosing to hold your ground. How many times had you been forced to be the antagonist in some fruitless class warfare, unresolved? But then you also had a habit of finding battles in peacetime. 

You pluck the newest scent strip from his frozen hand and waft it between you, at the designated distance.

“Thank god this smells nothing like it,” you murmur. You offer him a wry smile, anger fading. “I couldn’t stand it.”

You feel Doyoung’s relief as he collapses against you, forehead against your hair as his arms wrap tight around your middle. You relax after a bit, cheek pressed to his collarbone as you breathe in his unique scent–a little like fresh laundry left out in the sun.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “All these promises and plans and stupid details and at the end of the day I really . . . Don't know what I'm doing."

"I really don’t know what you’re doing, either," you say. "But I like that you try.”

"You do?" The hope in his voice makes your iciness melt a bit. You let your hands twine around his neck, feeling the tension in his shoulders ease with the gesture.

“I know it’s not easy for me to admit but I do appreciate everything you do for me, Doie,” you say. 

He doesn’t respond in words but you savor the shift in his demeanor, like a weight has been lifted from him. You think even he didn’t know it was there. You ignore the glassiness in his eyes when he pulls back, choosing to look at his notes instead.

“Are these all the ingredients?” you ask, working out a few of the more familiar words. “What’s op–?”

“First things first,” he says, rolling up his sleeves.  "Did you touch yourself?" 

"No," you say, surprised by the shift. "I followed your instructions. No products with scents. No underwear."

You spread your thighs to make your point. His hands hike your skirt up, over the breadth of skin to your hips and then to the curl of your belly, his breath hitching as he finds you already glossy.

It had been a bit of a gambit considering your riverside excursion but he'd allowed you a lemongrass-based repellent–the scent of which is still clinging to your bare skin as he kneels down to press a kiss to where his fingers had traced earlier.

You jerk a bit, conscientious of the workspace as he spreads you, just that light touch making your nipples harden beneath your thin shirt and bra.  

“Are we allowed to–”

“Shh. Relax and try not to spill anything,” he interrupts, breath cooling your wetness. “I just need some inspiration.”

“What?” 

"You’re so good already," he says into your sex, spreading you so he can lightly tongue at your skin. “Perfect little flower just for me.”

After waiting so long, you're torn between begging and shoving his teasing licks away, hand threading through his raven hair as the notebook slips from your hand.

"Kim Doyoung–” you gasp as he spears his tongue through your upper folds, nose nudging the sensitive bud. “–if this is another round of teasing I will murd–”  

You yelp as he hunches down to wrap your legs around his shoulders, hands re-occupied by exposing you as you try to stay upright. 

“Don’t worry. You can come like this. I want to know if you taste different after.”

You don't know what he means until his mouth closes over your clit, sucking just right. You jolt, pinched on the meat of your thigh until you can relax again, making little mewls as he rolls his thumbs alongside the point of contact.

“I want you inside of me,” you beg, feeling that fluttering sensation that heralds a build-up. “I wanted to come with you inside me.” 

“Soon. Just need to be good while I sample you.” 

“Sample?” Your hand sinks into his hair in panic, tugging, but Doyoung is too lost alternating between suckling at your sex and palpating you with a circling thumb, his beautiful hands gripping your thighs to keep you spread.

“Drip for me, first.” 

“I don't think I can–”

“You giving up already?” Doyoung scoffs, smirking up at you with reddened lips, tongue-tip darting against your clit. Every brush of soft muscle makes you spasm a bit, belly tightening unfulfilled.

You shake your head, panting. “I just . . . Doie I want you inside me.” 

“You can relax and take it,” he says, tongue wrapping around your labia, sucking slightly. Your head is buzzing, every stray thought removed by his exploration of you.

“Relax. If you don't I'll just have to try until you're begging for me to stop.” 

“No, please, Doie. I'll be good,” you plead. “Just . . . need something inside. Hurts so bad being empty.”

“Hand me a pipette.”

“What?”

“The one that looks like an eyedropper,” he says, hand open to accept like he’s performing surgery. You fight to find the right glassware with his mouth still on you, efforts more focused and intense as your legs tense with each hit. You find the rubber-stoppered glass cylinder, stomach dropping. 

“Is this safe?” You ask, gripping his mussed hair tighter when he pulls away for a moment.

“If you hold still, yes,” he taunts. You seize when you first feel the tip slip inside you. The glass is cool but warms to your body heat quickly, too slim to feel anything.

“Good girl,” he says. “You’re even pushing this out, you must be so tight.”

“I am. Too tight,” you groan. “Please don’t tease me anymore.”

He ignores you, focusing on his work, pulling the instrument free when he’s satisfied.

“Not bad,” he says, dropping it on the desk beside you before he’s back on his knees with his nose buried in your cunt. “Bet you can do better than that.”

“No, please, I need you–”

“Then drip for me,” he laughs into your leg, tracing the wetness down the crease in your thigh. You tense your hold on the desk’s edge when you feel his tongue prod at your entrance, muscle breaching your hole to lick into you. He makes a satisfied noise in the back of his throat that has you plummeting just as he resumes stroking your clit through the slippery coat of your arousal. 

Finally, you think, feeling the advent of tears for how wound tight you are, how desperate you are to feel him give you just one more point of contact with the ache inside.

“Oh god, don’t stop, please don’t stop,” you repeat, the noises obscene as he drinks you in, other hand on your hip to hold you against his face. It’s not even the stimulation that makes you begin to come but the audible groan he releases as he feels you quake against his mouth, heels snagging on his shirt when the first wave breaks and those little tics inside you turn into powerful contractions around his tongue-tip taking everything you can give him. 

He keeps licking you even when you’re begging for him to stop, nose tracing down to catch a stray drop from the back of your knee with a playful dart of his tongue. 

“Was it worth it?” you ask, folding over him as he wipes his mouth clean in your drenched skirt. You know it’s just the start but you already feel wrung out and feather-light, wicking away the sweat that’s beaded on your own face despite the cool, dry air of the room. 

“Hmm?” he hums a bit, disentangling to stand up and hold your face in his hands. His pupils are blown, sweat beading on his temples, but he looks as satisfied as you hoped he would be, your arousal drying on his slender features.

“All the prep,” you say. “Isn’t that why–do I taste as good as you expected after all that?”

Doyoung looks down on you, amused. Already you feel like you’re heating up again, with how his dark eyes flit to your mouth and back up again. 

“You think I prefer you prepped?” he asks, angling his head down besides yours to whisper in your ear. “The next time I eat that perfect little pussy of yours I want it to be filthy.” 

He traces the lobe with his teeth for good measure, pulling another moan out of you. “I’ll even make sure to wait until the other two have a go at you, first.”

You feel your heartbeat stutter as he presses his lips to your pulse point, tongue darting past his lips to dab at the sweat there.

“No, precious, I wanted to make sure the perfume we make tonight matches all of you.” Doyoung’s nose brushes your ear as he breathes in your scent. “Every time I wear it I’m going to remember the way you sounded when you first came for me and me only.”

The promise of it has you feeling a different kind of heat, dizzying for how much you want it to last past this night. 

“Fuck,” you whisper explosively, eyes clenched shut to stay fixed upright, fisting the thin material of his collar as he pulls you from the countertop and against the hard planes of his body. “I need you. Now. Please.”

“I like hearing you say that,” he chuckles a bit. “But I’m going to make you earn it. You can wait a little longer. You made me wait years, after all.”

You let him guide you into his lap, in the chair, pushed into the desk as he opens the notebook to another page. And another, until you take over and explore it for yourself. In the dim golden light from the street outside you catch glimpses of colors and drawings, notes written of impressions and memories you’d all but forgotten in your haze of grief these past few years. 

There’s even photographs taped to some of the pages–ones you know well by the fact that they’d been taken on your camera. Doyoung didn’t have Jaehyun’s artistic training but he did have an eye for capturing candid moments.

November, your first year of college. You’re standing in the first snow of the season, catching flakes on your tongue. You can still feel the burn of them, hear the murmur of the city dulled in a fresh blanket of white and taste the roasted yam you’d eaten, tossing it in your mittened hands until it was cool enough to peel. 

Doyoung’s shoulder is off-kilter beside yours, unable to capture himself in the frame for all his long reach. The peek of the striped scarf you’d knitted for him in gray and blue is all that’s visible of him under his peacoat, the mismatched weave of it captured even in this poor exposure.

“Base note: cedarwood,” you read, carefully, eyes hazing a bit with emotion. Evergreen.

“I still have it, you know,” he murmurs against your temple. “I only stopped wearing it because it started unraveling.”

“I’d make you another but I quit knitting after making three scarves,” you say, wryly. “Well two and a half, actually, I ran out of yarn on Jungwoo’s and made him a hat instead.”

“I thought you were just trying to get him to hide that ridiculous military haircut,” Doyoung muses. “Keep going or we’ll be here all night.”

“Now you’re impatient?” you ask, cementing your flirtation by shifting in his lap. You can’t ignore the feeling of his erection folded against the curve of your ass, or the way he grunts when you find a better seat with it nestled between your thighs.

“Sometimes I forget you were put on this planet to vex me,” he says. You’re lifted up by the waist, a hand on your lower back the moment you’ve found the desk for support, face above the book. 

“Why don’t you try reading until I’m satisfied you know exactly what you’re getting?”

You don’t fight him, elbows bent as he rucks up your skirt. You feel your face grow warm with blood as you find yourself exposed to him again, locked in by his legs and his groping touch reaching up beneath your shirt. 

"Base notes: amber and–" you have to fight to keep your voice steady as he swats your exposed curves, hard enough to sting. 

"Ambergris,” he corrects, voice fried with delight.

“Ambergris,” you repeat. “And white musk."

"Good. And?"

"Bisabol–" you begin, corrected with another slap on your ass that hits, hard, glass jingling on the table.

"Did you jump ahead?" He asks, knowing full well your eyes are swimming with tears. 

"No sir," you say. “I didn’t think that was a real word.”

"Opoponax." He says, reaching over you to grab a bottle, dropping a thick oil on you and rubbing it into your bruising skin. "Also known as sweet myrrh. Go ahead. Keep reading."

"Source: distilled from resin from ancient groves in Somalia, bought in Mogadishu from a local orchard, all profits to fund schools and clinics for women displaced by civil war." 

"Do you believe this to be a charitable effort?" He asks, hand spreading over your buttocks. You think he might be referring more to your arrangement than whatever is written on the page.

"No," you say. Your history and political know-how might be lacking but you've seen the wrong side of kindness. "It sounds like what people write to make themselves feel better about exploitation."

"Clever girl," he answers. You feel his nose brush against your skin, testing the mingling of scent with it. "Keep going."

You turn the page, swallowing back your protests. This spread is rich with text and color, a veritable garden bursting from the page. You fix on the first entry in the upper corner, bracing yourself for another faux pas.

"Heart notes: Turkish rose," you say. "What is this, poetry?"

"Aren’t you familiar with it?"

You shake your head, lips pursed in delight at the scrawl of English. “No.”

You let out a gasp as he bites the flesh nearer your back, the sting of it surely leaving a mark by the way the pain lingers.  

"Read it," he says, dipping over you for another bottle. “You’ll remember.”

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, where oxlips and the nodding violet grows," you dictate, stumbling over every word and yet never punished for it. Instead Doyoung lets a steady drip of the bottle fall down the back of your leg to your knee, his fingers bringing up the rest to mix what he's already poured on you.

"Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, with sweet musk-roses and with eglantine." 

You end your recitation in a whisper, leather binding and paper gripped in your fingers as he massages the oil gently into your tingling skin, careful to avoid where your legs are locked together in arousal. You're heady with scent and sensation, awaiting some reminder that this isn't just a strange dream you’ve wandered into.

"There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, lulled in these flowers with dances and delight," he finishes for you as he paints the rest up your spine beneath your shirt. You let him ministrate on your body as the words settle, as time recedes and you face a version of your youth you’re not sure isn’t just fiction. 

That book beside you, the first time he’d spoken to, long forgotten.

“Midsummer’s Night Dream,” you say, turning to face him again, settling between his thighs as he fails to meet your gaze. You lift his face with your fingers, cheeks indented by your gentle hold. “You remembered that, too?”

“It was the first time you ever looked at me,” he says. “And it felt like you saw right through me.”

No, you’re not dreaming. You’re the architect of this moment just as much as he’ll claim to be a cursory observer if confronted on it. 

You take in his mismatched eyes–one folding a little more than the other when he smiles at you ruefully. Those freckles you’d never really spent time examining, a happy accident of the time he’d spent with you in the sun. His fingers catching yours for a moment when you weren’t paying attention.

But most of all, the haunted cast where he’d lost sleep managing someone else’s problems. When he’d still been worrying about yours.

“You’re always thinking of how to take care of the people around you, I think you’ve forgotten how to relax and let other people take care of you.”

“No,” you say, shaking your head. “I don’t think I ever really saw you until now.”

“What didn’t you see?” he asks, expectantly.

Six years of his careful distance from you, that coldness and disinterest just another mask for someone who was as raw and vulnerable and real as you if you managed to pry open their shell. His tendency towards control, towards the knife’s slice of cutting you so cleanly from his life no one would know your name unless he spoke it aloud.

There wasn’t another human being in their right mind who’d last that test, your only grace being that he’d thought you were untouchable. His best friend’s girlfriend, of course. But beyond that, one of his best friends. 

No, one of his only friends.

“What didn’t you see?”

It wouldn’t require money or taste or a family name to bring Saint Kim down to earth. Just time and small acts of resistance, like the beautiful shell remnants you’d spilled into his hands on that last trip to Maui together, when it had still been the five of you. Each ground down to a small disc with a perfect spiral at its center, a reminder of the beauty remaining in broken things.

You place the notebook in his hands, curling your fingers around his. The pages it’s opened to are sparsely constructed, besides the photographs nestled between. Only you two know what’s there, buried in black sands and blue waters. You can see his handwriting falter where he’s written the notes for this moment in your shared history, sketches of those shells, and flowers.

A single photograph of you watching the others playing in the surf, his shadow cutting across the stretch of your legs.

Top notes: Jasmine for sensuality. 

Orange Blossom for innocence. 

Plumeria, for admiration. a new beginning . . .

You recognize the creamy yellow-white flower he’d tucked behind your left ear when you’d fallen asleep beside him. A non-native plant to the island, you’d learned, worn to indicate one was taken. A weed, like you, now prized as a treasure.

“What didn’t you see?”

You pull back to look at him, giving him yourself without reservation. 

“That I think you love me . . .” you say. “. . . Like I think I love you, too.” 

He looks up at you, astounded, the chair beneath him creaking as he collapses. 

For once you regret being beside him when you’d heard the same words spoken to him by other people, pulled into their lives without you ever remembering their names. The difference between you, you once believed, was that they didn’t mean it. 

Now, you understand, they just never knew the true cost of losing him. 

You watch him collect himself, running a hand back through his hair and curling into his seat, memories forgotten in his lap, bedamned. You’re sure the engines of Hell are running hot for the way he can’t even look at you right now. 

He needs a way out, you think. You’d rather be drowned in other women’s wine poured over your head than be on the receiving end of his disregard again, the script already constructed in your mind before you’d found you had the nerve to sleep with him.

"You can be honest with me,” you say. “Tell me it's been fun but you're not interested in a relationship.”

“What?” Doyoung is just as confused as when you’d told him you loved him, as honest as you’ve been in both sentiments. 

“Your family will never approve of me. I’m just another fling you happened to take a more lasting interest in. It’s better this way. Cut me off, forget about me and move on.”

It's his turn to balk. You expect his pre-programmed response. Saint Kim's gospel for turning down the interested but uninteresting party: deflect, dissuade, detach. 

“No,” he says, face draining of color.

“It’s okay,” you say. “I can handle it. Really. We can still be friends.” 

“No,” he repeats, more forcefully.

“What do you mean, no?” you ask. “Isn’t that how this always ends?”

“You stupid girl,” he says, grabbing your face in his hands so you can’t escape, making you look into his warm gaze. 

"Don’t you get it? This was always about feelings.”

When his lips crush against yours you don't have to speak to respond, catching his head so you’re not suffocated by the raw emotion you can feel in every movement. You return each kiss until the breath is out of your lungs, until you're drowning in his scent as he forces you back onto the desk.

You’re impatient to feel him, everywhere, aware you’re ripping buttons as you open his shirt to gain access to his smooth chest, trailing kisses as far down as you can go, still unable to escape his tongue sliding over yours.  

“I wasn’t going to do this here, like this, but fuck it,” he says once he’s free, fumbling with his belt as he holds you to pepper your face and neck in a steady reminder of his affection. “I need you.”

“I need you, too,” you echo wholeheartedly, helping free him out of his clothing, pulling his length to where you’re still slick with oils and cum and ready for him. God, you think you’ve never been more ready to break around him, to show him what he’s brought out of you with this game.

“Please don’t make me wait anymore,” you whisper. 

You watch his face, breath held and heart stuttering as he sinks into you slowly, both of you gasping at the way your heat resists each measure of his continuous thrust. It feels like he’s barely in you when he stops, making you moan in dismay.

“Doie, please,” you say, trying and failing to wrap your legs around his slender hips to capture him deeper. You’re half out of your mind with that burning weight inside you remaining still.

“Say it,” he says, taking off your shirt to have access to your skin. He pulls down your bra, nipples tugged between his fingers as he assaults your neck with his tongue and teeth.

“It’s special,” you choke out. “Thank you, please–”

“Say it,” he corrects, twitching inside you but not moving an inch more. He curls down to nip at your breast above the lace, sucking a mark into the softest part. “Without the ‘I think’.” 

“No,” you resist, realizing what he’s asking too late. Your nails sink into his half-bared shoulder, head rolling against his. “You don’t get to torture me for that.”

“Don’t chicken out on me now.” Doyoung laughs against your cheek, hand splaying around your hip to still your squirming. “I can do this as long as it takes.”

He thrusts, just a little more, making you cry out in desperation as the contents of the desk tinkle behind you. 

“Fuck,” you breathe. “You think I love you?”

“So, so close.” He pulls out, rocking into you again to feel the seize of your entire body when you anticipate just how far he’ll go before denying you. A little more, at least, and you can feel how much it’s taking for him, see the strain in his body as he holds back.

“You love me,” you tease, this time not a question, no you think. “Saint Kim loves me.”

He sheathes himself in you fully, gripping your nape to kiss you as you clench involuntarily around him, protests in the back of your throat muffled by his tongue sliding across yours. He tugs at your bottom lip when he breaks free, fully smiling now like he isn’t buried completely in your cunt just warming himself instead of chasing his own bliss.

“What did you call me?” he asks, leaning over you to retrieve something. 

You take advantage of his distraction to snake a hand between you, slipping beneath your skirt before it’s grabbed, tight, and brought up to his lips. 

“Don’t cheat,” he says, wrapping your fingers around the cap of a bottle. 

“You never heard anyone call you that?” you murmur, opening it. 

You smell spring flowers and delicate citrus before it’s taken away, set aside when you nibble and suck at his sensitive ear to make him twitch, hands drifting across his ticklish belly down to his hipbones. He reads your intent again, stopping whatever silly task he’s doing beside you to lift your wrists to his shoulders. 

“The name is a little ironic, isn’t it?” you say, squeezing him experimentally with your thighs as you stroke his nape with your nails. You flex other muscles too–earning the grunt he makes as he feels you squeeze around his girth. 

He angles your head, pressing something wet and soft to where your pulse flutters in your neck. You’re immediately permeated with a light, airy, sweetness, the different scents revealed like a melody that ends in that richer, warmer scent from earlier. 

“Is that my perfume?” you ask. 

“An anointment,” he says, blowing across your skin to dry it and sending a shiver down your spine to where your bodies are locked together, that fullness and muted pleasure of him radiating down to your toes.

“I do seem to have a demon inside of me,” you sigh into his neck as you rest your head against his shoulder. “Do they do that in exorcisms?”

“Blessings,” he corrects, adjusting with another grunt. “We’ll find out if it worked in about an hour.”

“An hour?” you grumble. “You think you can keep torturing me that long?”

“I think I gave you the key to your own cage,” he says, checking his watch. “About five minutes ago. Does it feel like longer?”

You mumble something into his rumpled collar, making him laugh beneath you. Even just that tiny movement has you involuntarily gripping him, abdomen clenched. 

“What’s that?”

“I’llsayitifyoumakemecome,” you repeat, embarrassed enough to hide your face in the crook of his neck again. 

“You think this is a negotiation, Y/N?” Doyoung’s hands are back on your breasts, thumbing the areola in slow circles that are very much a reminder of his touch earlier on your throbbing clit. You whimper, trying to stay still so he doesn’t figure out that if he continues to do that you might have a chance–

“You trying to make me come squeezing me like that?” he asks, breath ragged. “That seems like a quick way to end this.”

“You . . . you could just fuck me,” you wheeze, feeling the way he teases your pebbled, hard nipple with lighter brushes, his mouth quirked where it’s pressed to your forehead. 

“What if I want to make love to you, instead?” he asks. He inhales sharply at your body’s response. 

“Fuck, you liked me saying that, didn’t you?”

You nod, unable to speak, holding onto him in desperation as the combination of his words and soft strokes make you melt into the pleasure of every small motion of him inside you. You realize he’s unconsciously pushing into you, too, unable to keep his hips from pressing into yours. 

Overstimulation is making you hyperaware of the scratch of his unzipped jeans against your burning thighs, the random brush of his open belt against your belly. Time seems to disappear as he holds you quietly, letting you soak up the fragrant, radiating warm reality of him.

“I can wait all night for it,” he threatens, even just his lower register making you quiver a little around him. “Count every time you twitch and moan on me until you break.”

You’d felt him flag a little while he worked but now he’s fuller inside you, stretching you wide as he twitches to life. It’s even hotter than all of this build-up, you think, knowing he can act a menace but that the idea of you surrendering to him is what’s really getting him off.

Of course, you think, mentally steeling yourself like you’re preparing for war. In a way this is something like it, up against as formidable a foe as he is. 

“Doie,” you whisper, threading your hands in his hair as you nuzzle for his lips, kissing him softly and intimately, like it’s your first time. “When did you know?”

“What?” He goes a little rigid against you, unable to hide his rapid heartbeat with how close you’re pressed to him. You blink up at him, expectantly. 

“When did you first know you loved me? Really?”

He smiles, shyly, but you see the hint of anxiety on his features beneath his arousal. There it is, you think, having to hide your own satisfaction. 

“Is this a trick question?” he asks, warily, eyelashes half-lowered.

“Not if I know the answer,” you say, smoothing his kiss-swollen lips with a touch. “I don’t think it’s in that book, either.”

“Really?” He’s intrigued, a tentative rock of his hips against you making you dizzy. “Tell me.”

You shake your head, just as playful. 

“I’ll tell you later,” you say. “After.”

He sighs explosively, nose wrinkling. “You don’t know.”

“Want to bet?” you ask. It’s always a little thrilling seeing Doyoung presented with an opportunity he can’t resist. He fumbles for the notebook beside you, almost slipping out of you when he has to reach even farther for a pen.

“Write it down,” he says, smug as a cat who’s caught something small and easily toyed with. 

“Only if you do, too,” you say.

His answer is a pained sound of agreement, adjusting himself against the desk. 

“No peeking,” you say, flipping to a page in the back. 

“Wait,” he says, grabbing the book before the nib of the nice pen touches the creamy paper. “What are the terms?”

You ponder for a moment, feeling a grin slide onto your lips. “Doesn’t our perfume need a name? Whoever is right, gets to name it.”

You can practically taste his delight as he leans in to kiss you, forcing you to pull your page closer to you. You make him wait, filling the blank space as best you can with detail as he fidgets between your legs, sending small shocks of pleasure through you both. 

“Thank you,” he says in earnest once you’ve handed him it open to a new leaf, his hand and the notebook shaking a little as he tries to write mid-air, finally resting it awkwardly atop your head in order to scrawl out his own answer.

“My eyes are closed, Kim Doyoung.” 

“You’re a cheat,” he says, shushing you with an added thrust of his hips. 

You settle back on your elbows, already enjoying your victory as you feel the tiny pressure of his handwriting, hear the scratches of his sketch. You're more emboldened than ever when the leather binding snaps shut.

“Now tell me,” you say, looking up at him coyly. 

“Can’t I just show you–”

You snatch the book from him, turning to your entry. Then, to his horror, you rip your page free and fold it shut, tucking it into the pocket of his open shirt.

“Tomorrow morning,” you say. “You had 24 hours, right? I’ll give you my answer tomorrow morning.”

Doyoung looks as if he’s tasted something sour. “You won’t tell me.”

“I’ll tell you that you won,” you say, looking down at his page. You trace the fresh ink with care, admiring his tight script and explanation. “February to April? How could I have guessed an entire season?” 

“Did you at least guess the year?” he asks, looking a little better for your affirmation of his win. 

You nod, finally feeling the discomfort of your position and resting your head against his warm chest. There’s nothing awkward about being wrapped around him like this, the late hour and strange, still space making it easier to forget the world outside.

“Hard to forget,” you say. “I thought for sure I’d never see you again after that winter holiday.”

Another break with Johnny, of course–but this one had been your choice. You’d finally felt the crushing weight of two years of contempt from the people around him, the Suh family matriarch at the center of it all, doing everything in her power to crush not only you but the people you loved. 

And then, when you’d needed him the most, Kim Doyoung had walked away from you, too. 

“I didn’t think I’d see you, either,” he sighs. “It was the first time in a long time you weren’t with us. With me. And it was my fault for pushing you away when you were just trying to–”

“It’s in the past now,” you cut him short with a finger pressed to his lips. 

The memory is painful, still–and you don’t want to sully this moment with it. You appreciate that even in his roundabout admission there’s a clear understanding for all you’d been through. You’d hoped he remembered that time from the past, when you’d first peered between the cracks in his carefully-manufactured facade.

Now you could be sure of what it meant to him. You feel like your own walls are crumbling, the light shining through. 

“So you chose the period of time when we didn’t speak to one another, at all?” you muse. “Not just one day?”

“You know what they say. Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” he says. “You were on my mind every minute and every hour of those three and a half months.”

He pauses, sigh warm against your brow. “I couldn’t tell you when I knew, for sure. I certainly couldn’t admit it, then, even to myself. But sometime then, I realized I cared more about you than a friend.”

You’d never doubted he was capable of it, never doubted it might be true. But hearing him admit it, now you know why he wants to hear it from you, too.

“Say it,” you say.

He finally looks at you again, tired but alight with amusement.

“You first,” he says.

“Who knew three simple words would be so difficult for Saint Kim?” you tease him.

“Alright. Come here,” he motions, slipping out of you with a shared groan. He pulls you to a couch under the shuttered window, settling down and forcing you to straddle him. In this position he can’t stop you from immediately taking all of him, his eyelids fluttering when you bottom out.

“You feel like heaven,” he murmurs. 

“You’re not going to last,” you laugh, delighted by the way his nose scrunches when you clench around him. 

“Says the girl who’s sucking me in like you never want me to leave.” He grabs on to your hips to roll them against his own, fingers tightening when you wriggle against him. “You’re gonna say it first even if I have to fuck it out of you.”

“Whoever comes first, then?” you offer.

“I can live with that,” he sighs, head resting back on the couch. 

You rock on your knees slowly, satisfaction warming you throughout as you force him all the way inside you. You let him hear how he makes you feel, pleading sounds and whispers every time he hits that place in your upper walls, curved inside of you perfectly. It doesn’t matter if you're in control you can’t help but hunt down that lovely rush of pleasure in your belly, twining your arms around his shoulders to steady yourself. 

“Good girl,” Doyoung praises, watching you in awe through half-lidded eyes. “You’re so beautiful. I always wanted to know what it would look like when you lost yourself with me.”

His words make you shiver, brushing his lips until he holds you against his mouth to show you how he likes it, less exploratory and more confident. It’s maddening how good he is at this, making you feel every single sweep of his tongue across yours, hand on your neck keeping you from escaping. 

“Don’t you want to–” you protest as he helps you to lay flat on your back across the length of the wide loveseat, settling between your thighs. 

“Oh god, Doie,” you whimper when he takes over, finally, finally, beginning to fuck you. It’s just as slow but at least he penetrates you fully before pulling out almost all the way, shoulders quaking as he holds himself up. 

“Promise me you'll let me dote on you for the rest of your life,” he says, not waiting for your response before driving into you again. His movements are barely controlled, grunts escaping the back of his throat when his hips snap into yours again.  

“I promise,” you hold onto him, back arching off the cushion to meet him, blissed out in the relief of each, careful stroke against your fluttering walls. That crescendo is happening whether you want it to or not, every overworked knot of muscle threatening to snap loose. 

“Promise me that no matter who you fuck you’ll always let me treat you right,” he says, voice breaking. “You’ll let me show you how I feel even when I can’t say it.”

“Yes, Doie. Yes.” You pull down on his shoulders, trying to move for you both, kissing his jaw and throat.

“Stop fighting me and take it,” he says, moving more easily with the thick coat of your cum, establishing a gentle rhythm. 

His voice has always made it hard for you to pay attention to anything else but he abuses that power now, murmuring guidance into your neck that has you tightening around him as he fucks you deep and slow. 

“That’s my girl,” he praises. “You’re taking me so well. Take all of me.”

You feel shivers up and down your body, nipples hardening tight as they brush against his chest, his hair tickling your forehead as he blindly kisses and licks at your mouth and chin. 

You’d thought he’d be concentrating on something else in his head to keep from losing himself but instead it’s you who's floating, breath captured in your lungs when he adjusts on top of you to pin your hips down, pressing your leg wide to bury himself to the hilt.

“You feel so perfect. I could really do this all night, you know,” he smirks down at you from where he’s supported on his elbow. “Is that what you want?”

“No, fuck, please,” you whine. There’s no thoughts in your head besides just how much you want that ache inside of your cunt to melt into real pleasure. 

“You want me to stop?” he asks, feeling how you begin to pulse around him as he swirls his hips up into that most sensitive part of you, his flat belly grinding into your clit. You gasp, leg locking around his, helping him work you apart.

“No no no,” you beg, face hot. “Just . . . just kiss me through it, please.”

Doyoung’s smile grows wider. “Say what you already told me.”

You twist your head against the cushion, earning his hand on your jaw as he makes you look at him while you break, kissing you between panting breaths. His confidence is written in the cocksure grin remaining on his mouth, more cruel when he bites at your bottom lip, hard, before licking the pain away. 

“Say it,” he breathes, slowing down on purpose. 

“I . . . ah,” you cry out, “I love . . . please don’t stop.” 

“What’s that?” he asks, pace punishingly slow. Your legs lose feeling, vibrations starting in the back of your thighs and tremoring down to your feet. 

“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” you repeat, nearly tipping off the edge, “I’m coming, I’m finally–”

He slows down right as you hit that crest, making you cry out in frustration. 

“Doie, I’ll kill you–”

“Say it,” he says into your lips, pulling out–too far–

“Iloveyou,” you exhale, seizing around him in time to your wildly beating heart.

“Louder.” He slams into you again, merciless.

“I love you, you stupid bastard,” you say, hanging on to his shoulders. “I love you!”

“Good enough,” he says, drilling into you until he can feel you break, orgasm sustained through the painful pressure of him losing himself in your throbbing heat, finding your mouth again, finally, to silence the repeated mantra on your tongue.

You kiss him fiercely, unloading everything words aren’t enough for, legs tied around his waist to keep him locked inside you until he’s fighting back, fucking you so hard the sound of it fills the quiet room. 

“I love you,” you repeat a final time for him, just to watch the way it makes him break, jaw slackening when he loses control, finally. 

He stutters into his own orgasm, teeth scraping against your locked lips, forehead pressed into yours as he empties inside you for what feels like forever, finally collapsing on top of you with a whimper when his arms give out and he’s as limp as his cock inside you. 

You scrape your nails across his scalp, soothing him. You don’t mind his weight, or the way you’re still pressed together with sweat and your combined spend. 

“Wasn’t so hard, was it?” he rasps, eyes dazed as he looks up at you. 

“No,” you say, shaking your head tightly. “Not for me, at least.”

“You’re not mad?” 

You know he means his inability to say the magic words but you crack a smile, just as pleased with yourself. 

“About the bet?” you ask. “No.”

Oh, it’s delicious seeing realization dawn on his face, little glimmers of surprise and horror bubbling up from his afterglow. 

“Fuck,” he says. You’re grateful he doesn’t deny it, rolling to the side in defeat. 

“Who told you? ‘Woo?”

You laugh softly, rolling over to pin him down with your leg, trapping him against the back of the couch. 

“You did, right now,” you say, relishing having him where you want him. “I had a hunch. And I know you, you’d never beg for someone to say something during sex–”

“I didn’t beg,” he corrects, grimacing.

“What was it? The first one to get me to say it? Bonus points if it’s on your cock?”

“Ah, well,” he says, perking up despite the fist pressed to his forehead in embarrassment. “Then you don’t know.”

“I’ll find out soon enough, Jaehyun wouldn’t–”

“You’re really not mad?” he asks, painfully reticent as you pull his hand away from his face and twine your fingers together.

“Not if it means I can use it as leverage,” you say, kissing his knuckles.

That doesn’t seem to surprise him, at all. 

“Good girl,” he says. “What do you want?”

A few years ago, give or take 

You’re a little too happy, an awful fact considering how much he'd missed seeing you this way.

Lately you’ve been sleepwalking through your life, all those tiny fractures and bruises finally having the time to mend–but healing is a painful process in itself. Doyoung had returned from his family’s formal Chuseok gathering in Singapore, eager to check in on you after receiving sparing responses from you via text.

You didn’t have a friend he could check in with instead any longer–not after that one girl had fled the country, the other ghosting you after their father was mysteriously laid off from a company he well knew did business with Suh International. 

He’s worried about you long before that, terrified that one last straw would break you even if by all indications you were strong enough to take it. After you’d had Johnny arrested and solicited a no-contact order you’d cut your ex off completely, moving to a tiny apartment far from where you’d grown up, changing your number. 

Only Jungwoo knew about it, and it was he who’d reluctantly offered your whereabouts to him after a few glasses of whiskey in their usual club. 

“She asked me to keep her info on lockdown. Got that hacker kid, what’s his name–Haechan? Wiped her socials off the map, so he can’t find her. He did good but you know Suh.”

Doyoung nods. They hadn’t seen him in a few weeks, probably because the idiot was combing through every civic office and apartment building in the city. Hell, he’d probably driven around until he found her by sight alone, knowing that animal wouldn’t rest until he knew her whereabouts, as stubborn about chasing her down as he was about refusing the F4’s help. 

“His mother called me to ask if the place he bought in cash was for her,” Doyoung says, knocking back his drink as he receives a text, heart sinking that it's not you. “Did you help him buy it for her?”

Jungwoo sighs. “No. I just got her rent halved with some coercion, you know? But then he goes and buys a unit in the same building with whatever stash he thought the Old Tiger didn’t know about.” 

The Devil Kim leans back, long legs akimbo as he gestures towards the server for a refill. “He’s waiting for her to go back to Chicago before he moves in. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

“I did not,” Doyoung affirms, turning away from the group of women at the bar sending looks towards their private table. “Let’s plan for when Madam Suh leaves. I can have her pull him into the London offices, considering he’s failing his courses.”

“Stone cold,” Jungwoo says, smirking. “Glad I’m not on your shit list.”

“Just don’t fuck with her,” Doyoung says. “Or fuck her.”

Jungwoo laughs into his glass. “Even I’m not that stupid.”

He’d thought he wasn’t, either. 

Not until you’d called a few days later, your speech a little slurred. He couldn’t have told you if what he was doing was important even if he was in a meeting, showing up to find you picking at a bowl of bar snacks in what he thought might be one of the nicer bars in your shitty part of town. Not as shitty as your old neighborhood, but it wasn’t a competition.

“Saint Kim,” you’d heralded him, raising an empty glass still smelling of watermelon and hibiscus. 

“You shouldn’t be drinking alone, here,” he’d said. 

You were dressed in one of your few nice outfits, a little on the revealing side for his tastes, but those had been Johnny’s you’d conformed to–animal print and thin straps, tastefully tasteless.

“I wasn’t,” you say, hiccuping. “Alone.”

For the first time in a long time fear spikes his blood pressure into overgear. Were you drugged? Was he going to have to fend off another predator who'd found you vulnerable?

You deserved the chance to move on but there was a real threat in what would happen to anyone who approached you without their permission. Johnny’s, yes, always, but the F4 had also agreed to look out for you well before your last incident at a club. 

“Who?”

“She left,” you say. He feels instant relief, reaching out to adjust the thin coverup slipping off your bare shoulder. 

“You make a new friend?”

You shake your head. “She’s nice. Met her in one of the ikebana classes work is paying for. Thought we were hitting it off but I must have said something dumb because she ran out of here, fast.”

You look up at him cautiously, too inebriated to realize he can recognize a set-up before it begins.

“You didn’t just talk about your ex, did you?” he asks, settling beside you at the bar. He orders something less ridiculous than whatever you'd been drinking, while you scroll through an Instagram feed, finger trembling over the screen. 

You look up at him, color-stained lips curving in an easy smile. “You want to see what we’re working on?”

Doyoung finds himself looking through a grid that is immediately obvious is not yours. His mouth goes dry, seeing rows of beautifully-staged floral centerpieces, the backgrounds as familiar as the back of his hand. You don’t seem to notice, going to the user’s story and tapping in vain to find the picture she’d posted.

“She deleted it already. Huh. Well, she texted me the picture–”

“Stop.” Doyoung places his hand over yours, his palm damp from the immediate flood of adrenaline. 

“So you do know Mona,” you say. You look up at him, expectantly, eyes glassy with the brand of hopefulness and naked curiosity he’s seen you charm everyone else around you with before. 

“She’s the one, isn’t she?”

Doyoung pulls cash from his pocket, not caring how much he puts down except that he’s sure it’s enough to cover the amount he’d like to drown himself in right now. Enough to go blind and burn out the phantom of that face he’d put behind him years ago. 

“Put your coat on,” he says. “I’m driving you home.”

“But I’m not–”

“Now,” Doyoung says, grabbing your wrist. He’s barely ever touched you in the years that you’ve been friends, and it sickens him when he feels you freeze in fear and confusion, that trauma response buried so deeply it's in your bones.

He wants to be kind, he wants to be patient with you. He just doesn’t have it in him to be anything to you right now.

“What’s wrong, Do–?”

“We’re leaving,” he says, dragging you out into the bitter cold evening, the streets slick with sleet, your heels catching on the pavement as you stumble in his wake.

“Stop,” you yell at his back, trying to yank your arm free from where he’s bruising your skin with whitened knuckles. “You’re hurting me–”

“You’ll live,” he says, pulling you to where he’s parked his car, the engine roaring to life the moment you manage to close your door. He can barely look at you, realizing too late that your crestfallen expression is making him more upset than the lightning strike of seeing her name again.

“You didn’t ask my address,” you say, quietly, met with his silence as he drives much more dangerously than the weather permits. He's forced to speak with you once he's slammed the brakes at an intersection, red light shading you through the windshield.

“Tell me one thing,” he says. “Did you try to set us up by having me come there?”

You’re petulantly silent now, an answer in itself.

“Answer me,” he orders, hands gripping the wheel.

“I thought you’d want to–”

“Do you think we have the kind of relationship where you can just do whatever you want and get away with it?” Doyoung’s voice is calm but he sees you flinch at his words and tone, your shoulders moving under your jacket as you begin to quietly cry. 

It drives him deeper into anger, hitting the gas with a roar of the engine the instant the light turns green. 

“You don’t get to feel sorry for yourself for this one, Y/N,” he says, already regretting every word tumbling out of his mouth. “You fucked up.”

“I just thought you could both have some closure after that–”

The car jerks as he brakes in the side lane of the service road, cars roaring past them honking their horns. Your sobs are barely audible over the idling engine and the blink of the hazards he turns on while he tries to find calm, your face turned away from him. 

“You thought that interfering in other people’s personal lives would make you feel better,” he says. “No wonder you don’t have any real friends.”

Out of the corner of his eye he can see your full body shakes still, can feel as that armor encasement you’d put together piece-by-piece over years of dealing with loveless reality falls back into place. And, years later–no, even hours later–he’ll remember how at the time he was stupid enough to think it was the right thing to say. 

You needed a reality check, he’d thought. A reminder that all the wishes and hopes in the world wouldn’t change the bleak architecture of it, uncaring by design and much easier to navigate without them. That moving on was the only path to this idiot’s dream of closure, something you knew nothing about for how often you’d let them pull you back into their world, blinded by sunk-cost and loneliness. 

All the things he wished he believed for himself, but without the benefit of your optimism.

“Fuck you, Kim Doyoung,” you say, opening the car door and slamming it shut without so much as a glance behind you. He’d waited to make sure you reached the nearest bus stop before driving off, calling Jungwoo to let him know you were here–crying in the cold. 

He'd seen you in passing.

His best friend knew a lie when he’d heard it, most especially from him. 

He wouldn't hear from you again until spring.

Kim Doyoung can’t sleep. 

He’s not allowed to. 

He can’t move either, arm going numb beneath your curled body, your breathing finally easing for the dozenth time since his trial began. You have horrible sleep habits–kicking off the covers, stealing the pillows–but tonight you’ve passed out with that same bone-deep tiredness he’d felt earlier, face beatific in the slivers of light piercing through the slatted shades. 

It’s close to dawn, he thinks, the cacophony of insects and birds outside transitioning from a quiet chorus to a full orchestral suite. Soon it will be too loud to sleep deeply. 

“Y/N?” he whispers, tentatively, not daring to move.

You don’t respond, relief rushing through him. It’s not that he’s desperate to join you in slumber but that he’s waited for you to finally surrender to REM. He needed you down. 

And you needed it, too. 

He’d negotiated with Jaehyun when you’d been in the shower, earlier, sacrificing precious moments of shared time exploring your skin and the new taste of you under the water to supplicate himself to his best friend and worst enemy in this moment.

“It’s a charter,” Jaehyun said, blinking sleep from his eyes but awake enough to be angry. “You’re not finding another one short term.”

“I emailed you the tickets. Cattle car but first class, at least,” he says. “Jungwoo agreed to give you his day, he doesn’t want to take her out until after dark, anyway. You can sleep in tomorrow.”

“Fine.” Jaehyun had slammed the door shut in his face, but he hadn’t missed the budding smile on his friend’s face. At least one person was rooting for him.

That’s how he’d earned another morning with you. As always, making up for lost time.

You’re half out of the covers, one leg sprawled over the duvet as you sleep. You’d put on one of his softer button-downs, inhaling the smell of it after he tried to steal it back. 

“Please let me wear you,” you said. “I want to dream about you.”

Being around you like this is more comfortable than he imagined, as if you’re being slotted into a position he didn’t even know there was an existing space for. He’s woken up to women in his bed but you’re the first who’s ever asked him for this, particular experience.

“I used to have this fantasy, you know, whenever we crashed at your apartment.” He’d watched you go sheepish recalling, dates omitted for a reason. “Sometimes I’d lie there and touch myself thinking about you crawling into that guest bed–maybe a little drunk or you’d forget which room. Or maybe, you just wanted me to think that. I’d be awake but I’d pretend to be asleep while you . . . used me.” 

He experiments by tracing his fingertips up your bare leg, the peek of your lace underwear beneath the hem of his shirt maddening for how it curves into the crest of your ass, presented for him. A treat dangled before him, the command to partake only that you wanted him to make it slow–you wanted to wake to it.

He sucks a breath in, erection in his sweatpants hard against the band already from just watching his sleeping beauty. He finds every mark on your leg, every fine hair, thanking Heaven above you aren’t overly sensitive or ticklish like he is when his hand slips beneath his shirt to your belly. 

He slots himself against you, carefully, as if adjusting in his sleep. He has to wait for your breathing to even out again, slipping his free hand up to your breasts. 

“Used you? Did you not get off in this scenario?”

“I mean, yes. But it’s mostly about you. You wouldn’t say anything at all, you’d just fuck me full of your cum and then you’d leave me leaking it on your sheets and go back to your room. Or sometimes I’d crawl in your bed, if you were alone, and you’d cover my mouth so the others couldn’t hear it. And the next day it would be like nothing happened, you wouldn’t even bother to ask how I’d slept.” 

He loved how much of a slut you were, when you felt comfortable enough to share that side with someone. Johnny had certainly never appreciated the subtleties of your nature–too blinded by adoration to even consider degrading you on purpose. 

No, Doyoung had known for awhile you pushed the boundaries with him to see if he’d break.

Your nipples harden even though he’s barely handling them, discovering what shape your breasts make in repose as he tries desperately not to rut into the swell of your ass. Warming himself in you earlier had been one of the hardest challenges he’d faced but it had been worth it to learn you inside and out, to know how to make you grip his cock with that delicious little cunt of yours with just a kiss or a word that pleased you.  

You don’t wake but he knows he’s gotten through to that little lizard brain of yours when your legs rub together unconsciously, pushing back into him so his cock is settled between your buttocks. The friction from the lace is like the proverbial pea under a mattress–rubbing against his cock through the layers, catching on the veins and scraping the underside of his cockhead. 

It’s already a nice ache, one he ignores as he adjusts to better continue plucking and teasing at your body beneath your shirt, until you’re used to his touch enough to truly fall back under, once more.

You're so vulnerable, completely at his mercy as he brings his hand down to test the patch of moisture growing in the fabric, that lace sticky with your dreams of him. 

Use you, he thinks. You have no idea what he wants. 

Doyoung can play with the fantasy of you crawling into your boyfriend’s best friend’s bed while he’s passed out in the other room, determined to be punished for waking a sleeping monster . . . but it’s not what he's fantasizing about now. 

He takes time in stroking you, a single finger digging in between your lips through the fabric, listening intently for your breathing to change. You sigh, one of those full exhales one does in their deep sleep, but you arc back a little, into his touch, leg falling forward crooked so you’re a little more spread. 

Doyoung wishes he could move down there and use his nose to push you apart instead of his hand but that’s not your fantasy–not this time. You didn’t want him to spoil you anymore, completely underestimating his love for it. True, he didn’t often eat other girls out, too personal or just too much of a chore to figure out what they liked, but you weren’t ever going to be with him and not come from that first. 

Just the thought of tying you up so he can spend hours fucking you on his tongue is making his cock pulse, too hard to be ignored. He quietly pulls down the drawstring of his sleepwear, freeing himself so he can replace his finger with the much wider tip of his cock, biting back a groan as he rubs into that damp, soft lace he’d known would suit you the moment he’d touched it in the display box brought to his private buying room. 

You'd never know he’d already fucked himself with it before ever giving it to you, that errant fantasy of touching you finally realized as you whimper a little in your sleep at the soft push of him between your legs. He finds where your clit is getting just as swollen as the rest of you, bouncing against warmth and the promise of unspooling that need with his help, again.

Just his precious little cocksleeve, spoiled and worshiped, showing your gratitude by begging for it even when you’re unconscious. He tests the waters of the scenario by slowly pulling the seat of your underwear to the side, easing in between the fabric and your folds. 

You twitch against him, sheets rustling. He holds still, cock jumping and balls tightening with a little anxiety. 

He only has this one chance. 

Outside in the dark and quiet of the house sleeps the man everyone knows you’re really with, the one who doesn’t have to fight for an I love you to pass your lips. You’d never understood what it felt like watching you climb into Jaehyun’s lap whenever the whim took you, pretending you didn’t know what it did to him or the other two of them watching you.

Your breathing is shallow and your hand flexes a bit, against the pillow, but that’s it. Within a minute he’s grown more confident that you’re still asleep.

He reaches over you, pressing the pads of two fingers against the front of your underwear while he slips a little deeper between your legs, eyes almost rolling back in his head at the contrast between the satiny slide of you and the rougher cling of your panties. It’s a relief as he loses himself to it, rutting from the back while he applies constant pressure to your bud.

“Mmm.” You make a soft noise, but he doesn’t pull free, choosing instead to keep a hypnotizingly steady pace fucking against you. Your hips twitch against him, seeking out more contact, but he doesn’t rush–pressing his head against the back of yours and melding with you in the softness of the pillows and sheets. 

You’re so wet you’re soaking his pants, everything he collects tickling down to his balls pressed into your ass. He’s going to stuff your mouth with his fingers, when you finally open it, make you gag on them while he fills you full from behind. 

You moan now, voice syrupy with sleep. He doesn’t care if you’re still down, not with you gently pushing back, trying to get release.  

Not yet, you little harlot, he thinks, hips going still again. He’s burning at the wait, your cunt continuing to glide against him as you act out whatever is going on in your dreams, the movement making him insane for how closely it adheres to his desire to have taken you back when you were innocent, his little virgin weed learning what her body wanted, seeking it out in his bed.

“Treat me like one of the girls you don’t really like. Use me.”

Such an unending fantasy of yours that he never wanted you, almost sweet for how dumb you are–or just willfully ignorant. He’s always liked the second one better–your little game played out that you were one of them. Dressed in that school uniform, kicking your skinned knees, sucking on a piece of candy while four college-age idiots hid their bathing-suited boners under their robes, fighting or fucking around in front of you so you could keep up that precious little illusion of immunity. 

“Johnny,” you murmur in your sleep. 

It should make his blood run cold but as with all twisted-up and tangled desires it only makes him feel ignited, pulse pounding in his head. You’re still asleep and thinking of someone else, someone not even in this house, the guilt of it passing over him faster than a cloud on a breezy day. 

He rocks back into you, this time pulling out enough that he can find your soft hole, already tight again–the only part of your body not relaxed as he forces his way past the flutter of your opening, cockhead sensitive enough to sense the more textured g-spot where he knows you’ll come fast and easy if he fucks into it. 

“Shh,” he says, finally trailing his mouth against your jaw, pushing into you softly. “Go back to sleep, baby.”

“Mmhmm,”  you reply, nuzzling into the pillow, curling into him. He pushes a knee between your legs, folding you into the bed beneath him as he begins to fuck you, finally taking you for himself and himself alone. 

You’re so warm inside, body adjusting to take him easily for how boneless you are, kitten-like mewls muffled by the pillow. It turns him on hearing the edge of pain there, the way you struggle when he pulls your underwear up so tight it sticks between your folds, clit rubbing against it the way he’d stroked himself to completion with it tied tight around his cock.

“Stay quiet or I’ll stuff your mouth full instead,” he whispers against your shoulder, feeling as always a little stupid but losing that internal cringe when you choke on a moan.

“Is that what my little slut was dreaming about? Gagging to tears on another man’s cock?”

He feels you tense at a bit at the suggestion, letting him use you in spite of the rougher handling. 

“That’s right. You said another man’s name in your sleep. Do you think that's acceptable?”

You shake your head, whimpering. 

“Such a whore you can't keep track of who's dick is inside of you. Tell me, who's fucking you right now?” 

“Doie,” you say, music to his ears. He'd always hated the nickname until you started using it. You were the only one–you were always the only one who made his chest burn with unsated desire when you said his name.

“Who owns this tight little pussy?” 

“You do,” you gasp out. 

“Are you going to forget me? Maybe I need to fuck you so hard you only think of me when you spread your legs for another man.” 

Doyoung feels electric at how easily you begin to crumble with just a few words, squeezing his dick so tight when he says something you like, even more when he makes it hurt. 

“Sleepy baby going to let me stuff every one of your holes until I’ve had enough? Use you like my own little doll?”

You nod, no longer capable of speaking except in a plaintive moan when he leaves you to shuck off his pants and pull down your ruined panties, pillow pulled beneath your belly to force your ass up. In this position he can drill into you deeper, burying you into the mattress with each thrust. 

“That’s what you get for crawling in here,” he says, fingers digging bruises into your hips to hold you down. “Keep your mouth shut and take it.”

The pleading, almost scared noises you're making have him hard and pulsing, two steps away from coming himself but in no hurry to. He pulls your hair to bring your head back, shoving his fingers in your mouth. 

“You like that?” Your cunt can't hide it, sucking him in. “Get them wet for me.” 

You drool over his knuckles, gagging as he fucks your mouth with them in an awkward rhythm to his merciless rutting. He spits into his hand when he's satisfied, fingers swirling around the tight rim of your ass so quickly it makes you buck. 

“Don't scream,” he murmurs, giving you two fingers at once. You make a noise through the pillow you're biting, gripping him tight. He's gentler with this, slowing, letting you adjust to take him.

“This is my favorite, right here,” he groans. “Feeling my cock inside you with my fingers. I'd fuck this tight little ass again but I want to feel you come like this.” 

He begins to stroke you harder, deeper, wet and sticky when his balls slap against your abused cunt. He keeps his fingers buried in you, scissoring you open as you take it.

“Come for me, Y/N, grip me good so I can fill that pretty mouth of yours.” 

It's a beautiful feeling when you begin to throb, contractions in your ring of muscle letting him know when you hit your peak. He fights the tingling in his balls, the urge to come with you painful for how long he's been holding it back. 

He talks you through it, instead.

“Such a good little hole,” he says. “You're coming so hard, baby, can feel it so well.” 

You moan, loud, as you break, loosening almost immediately, flooding him with sweet, hot warmth. He makes sure the last of those tics is gone before pulling out.

“Roll over,” he says, straddling you with a hand on the headboard, delighted by the sight of your flushed face and starry eyes. You already know what to do, tongue lolling and uvula exposed as he guides himself into your mouth, soft tongue swirling around his tip. 

God help him he's been thinking about this since yesterday, pushing deep enough to gag but not choke, fucking your mouth and the hot tightness of your throat when he hits it. It’s the sight more than anything that drives him to spill hot white ropes of cum into your mouth, pulling out to milk the last few splashes on your parted lips and delighting at the sight of you licking them with your spend-covered tongue.

“You’re so perfect,” he says, dropping down and kissing you, finally, tongues stroking each other until you finally pull free to breathe, blinking up sleepily at him. 

“You do taste different,” you tease.

“I taste like you,” he says, pressing soft kisses all over your face. “My sweet, sweet girl.”

“Did you like that?” you murmur. 

“I loved–” he pauses, watching the smile spread on your wet lips. 

“I love you, you know,” he finishes. You reach around his neck, comforting him out of instinct, but he doesn’t need it. 

“I love you,” he repeats, testing the words on his tongue now that they've flown out so easily, the tightness in his chest easing as you rise up to kiss him. 

“It's beautiful to hear you say it,” you say. “But you're right, I know.”

“I think I even know the exact time and date,” you say, reaching between you into the pocket of your shirt to pull out that torn and folded art paper scrawled with your words and an amateurish sketch.

Tomorrow morning . . .

[Unknown number] [Tomorrow morning April 13th dawn is at 6:17] [I have something to show you. Meet me on the roof of the East Wind Hotel]

Doyoung looks at the text message again, hand hanging over the railing of a dance floor, conversation with the woman by his side forgotten. With the blur of a late night and a trip to a different hotel room, with a different woman, he'd almost missed it.

Probably one of the innumerable flings he's had, Jungwoo recruiting him to get every last lick of enjoyment out of Seoul before he enlisted. His friend snatches the phone from his hand.

“No business,” Jungwoo slurs, eyes bloodshot as he focuses on the text. “I thought you weren't working hospitality anymore.” 

“It's not . . .” There's something nagging at him, like a bird pecking at his skull in time to the drone of the EM, the buzz of conversation. A sense of deja vu so strong he's forced to cycle on it. 

“Pfft. I know you don't bring girls back to your kingdom,” Jungwoo says. “Stop working and party.”

Doyoung doesn't know why he feels compelled to see the cryptic message through, doesn't know why he races across town at 5 am, reeking of whiskey and another woman’s perfume, doing his best to sober up as the designated driver talks about the change in weather, the cherry blossoms in full bloom outside the window.

The morning commute is already surging and the destination central to the city so by the time he makes it he's out of breath from running two blocks away from a jam, head pounding.

“ . . . restricted for non-guests,” someone is saying, voice recognizable as an intern he knows from his leadership program, still stuck on night front desk duty. 

“I just need a few minutes, please. I need to take a picture–” He'd recognize that voice in a hundred years if he hadn't heard it, not just a hundred days.

“What's going on here?” 

You freeze, shoulders stiffening as you turn to face him. Not much has changed–a new haircut, same ratty old sneakers–but you look different. No longer a ghost, but just as untouchable for the skittish way you hold when he approaches, only the barest relief on your beautiful features.

You don't smile, don't even say hello.

You're scared of him, again, just that thought making him spiral.

“You came,” you say, exhaling. “We need to hurry. We need to get to the roof.”

Doyoung turns to the staff. “Is the roof access still shut down?”

“Stair access only, sir.” 

Your eyes go wide at the interchange, something like embarrassment passing over your features as you begin to laugh. 

“Of course this is your hotel,” you state, smacking yourself on the forehead. “Of course, why didn't I think to check that. God, I'm an idiot.” 

“We didn’t change the name when we acquired the chain so it would be unlikely for you to have guessed that,” he says. “What are you doing here?” 

“There's no time and it's easier just to show you. We need to get to the roof, now,” you say, grabbing his wrist and tugging on it towards the stairs. 

“Y/N,” he says, holding you fixed and pointing at the elevator. “We can take it up as far as we need to.” 

You're still laughing maniacally twenty floors up. “I was going to cry if I had to go up another flight of stairs.” 

“Are you really taking pictures?” He asks, gesturing at your camera.

“No, but I started carrying it the first time someone called the police on me thinking I was going to jump,” you giggle, wiping away tears. He feels delirious from lack of sleep, so maybe you are, too, but it doesn't seem to be the case as you spring out the doors, forcing him to guide you when you're lost in the executive suite hallways.

“I managed to sneak in last time, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten this far. I'm glad you came just in time, I think they were going to kick me out.”

He's surprised at how easily things have snapped back into place between you, no mention of anything that's happened as you race up the stairwell to the roof access. 

“Will you tell me–”

“Oh thank god,” you say once your through the heavy doors and collapsed on the green helipad, growing impatient when he props the door open out of habit. He's been up here many times, nothing remarkable about the space besides the legacy sign on top, view crowded by other buildings at varying levels. 

“Stand here,” you say, pushing him into place, turning him by the arms. “Do you see it?”

“I don't even know what I'm looking for,” he says, beginning to grow annoyed. 

“Look over there, at the People's Bank. Relax your eyes, it will only take a minute.”

He feels increasingly foolish but he does what you ask, cool morning breeze clearing his muddled head. The sky is washed in a pink and blue haze, the sun cresting the more mountainous region of the city behind you to bathe the city in solid gold.

“There,” you breathe, letting out a little sigh.

“What?” All he can see is a few birds passing over the vista of crowded advertisements and neon. 

“Do you see the light?” you ask. 

“There's tons of lights–” he begins, cut short by the blinding catch of the sun's reflection on one of the characters, then another. He spells it out slowly, guided by your hand holding his to each one. 

The bank: Sa. 

The next building over, also burning brighter with the touch of the sun: Rang. 

Then an advertisement that has been up long enough most of the original message is lost. Hae.

“How did you find this?” he asks, knowing it would be impossible for him to have ever seen this without knowing the trick of the light. 

“I didn't find it. Well I did–I had to search some buildings for it.” 

Later he'll find out you climbed close to fifty flights of stairs in the last two months, had spent every waking moment not working or in school breaking into buildings before sunrise to find that exact spot, forever amused at the thought you hadn’t checked his family's flagship hotel first.

“You don't remember getting the same message from someone else?” you ask. “I was worried you wouldn't come, again.”

Again. Something tugs the memory up from the oubliette he'd locked it into, Mona teasing him about sleeping in and missing their appointment.

Mona. 

His stomach falls, checking back behind him at the door as if that particular ghost will return to haunt him.

“She's not here. I wasn't trying to set you up,” you say, recognizing the dismay he can't hide. “Honestly. And I know whatever closure you find is yours and yours alone. You were right about that, too, I'm sorry.”

You twist your hands in front of you, suddenly overwhelmed with anxiety. “I did this for me. Because I wanted to know what she tried to tell you, even if she couldn't say it aloud.”

You don't look at him, can't in order to continue. Doyoung feels like a live wire, exposed, two months of painful loneliness and a lifetime's worth of avoidance of this fact all surging through him in this moment. 

As much as he would prefer to leave he's not going to run like he did back then, when he'd ignored the hard parts to pretend like a friendship wasn't something more. Not with the stakes of losing this one.

“You once told me you were just friends, even if you couldn't be one anymore for her after you realized you loved her. How it broke you to be with someone you couldn't be with, who wanted something different.”

“Now you know. She didn't want to stay one, either,” you say. You look up at him nervously, regaining your confidence.

“I just wanted you to know that you were loved, Kim Doyoung. You still are.” 

You turn away towards the door, pretending not to have seen the tears dripping down his face under his glasses. He ignores them, too, not knowing what to say or do to make sure you never leave him again.

The spot never mattered to him, the word and it's confession forgotten in time. What changed that day was having you in front of him after so long, the way you were a reflection of him so many years ago, fighting to be by the side of someone who didn't know how to love you back, the right way.

He'd promised himself than that even if he couldn't say it, he'd show you.

“Thank you for coming. I'm sorry for interfering with your life, but that’s what friends do.”

You'd almost made it to the stairs when he'd wrapped around you from behind, the first ever time he'd held you in an embrace, unsurprised to find you shaking like a leaf as he rested a wet cheek against your hair. 

“I'm sorry,” he says. “Thank you.” 

You relax a little, squeezing his hand. In that small gesture everything is reset, everything is okay again. They won't talk about this for the next few years, even when Jungwoo asks how you'd come back into their lives so suddenly and without any indication that things had changed.

But they had. Deeply. 

“You can make it up to me by buying me breakfast,” you say, smiling up at him, wiping his cheek with your sleeve. “We have a lot to catch up on.” 

“Did I win?” you ask. 

Doyoung can only laugh, giddy, as you burrow into his side to smother him in kisses and teasing. You were put on this earth to challenge him, after all–always right there to match him in stubbornness and competition.

He presses his nose to your neck, inhaling the remnants of the scent you'd made together, one bottle for each, though you didn't have to know his formula was just a bit different.

“‘Tomorrow Morning’ has a nice ring to it, I suppose. It lingers well.”

“It was my answer, actually. I needed to see if I could break Saint Kim's vow of romantic abstinence before I made up my mind,” you say, smug as you move to get up. “Glad you were able to find out before your time was–”

You shriek as he pulls you down again, pinning you to the bed. 

“I still have a few hours,” he says, voice dangerous. “I'd like to hear you say it again.”

[bakasara]

Trying to parse my thoughts on Izzy's death and why I had a different reaction to it than I thought I would. To summarize: I thought I wouldn't like it, but also that they wouldn't do it; the opposite happened– they did it but I'm ok with it.

I'm also feeling like talking through some mourning for an amazing character, so follow along if that's you, too 😌

(I should probably clarify the following thoughts are coming from someone who deeply enjoyed this season.)

I first wondered what would be of Izzy around the end of season 1. I expected him to have a heel-face turn – which I object to calling a redemption arc and I'll get into why, because the distinction ties into his death imo. A lot of antagonistic characters' changes of heart end directly in death, but I thought they'd subvert that trope. And they... did, actually, despite Izzy dying. Not an option I had imagined.

What the show avoided is the logic, the set of tropes attached to the deaths of this kind of character. These deaths usually come as a consequence of the character's changed ethics or "redemption". My being against that scenario came from the diverging natures of traditional redemption arcs and OFMD's rhetoric.

A traditional redemption arc functions by a kind of catholic logic, if you will: the villain can become one of the good guys by balancing out his "sins"/bad deeds with enough good deeds to tip a moral scale. This often involves a purifying suffering, which acts as an agent to expiate one's faults. To the viewer, this suffering can serve to activate our empathy and make the character more sympathetic. It can also legitimize his quest: our trust in the character's good intentions comes from seeing that the character is ready to make sacrifices to become better and he isn't deterred by the hardships of doing the right thing.

The death occurring at the end of a traditional redemption arc acts as the ultimate sacrifice and/or purification. A number of ideas might be at play behind it, depending on each story: only in death can the soul become fully pure, or a final sacrifice is "needed" to demonstrate the change once and for all, or change was only possible up to a point after which there is no viable/acceptable future – the character deserves moral points for changing, but not so many that he also deserves a full life, or past crimes make him more expendable, etc.

But these are all ideas that aren't evoked in any of the crew's journey in OFMD. For starters, the show isn't interested in "catholic" redemption; its focus is on reintegration/rehabilitation into the community. Rather than appealing to the more traditional (in Western media) and more christian principle of "purification of the soul through mortification of the body", it plays with notions of restorative justice.

We see it especially this season with Ed and Izzy. Ed's arc is a whole little lab for it. We have the community being made to decide whether he can stay or should leave; catbell!Ed is made to apologize to the people affected – which he initially does abysmally, with what fandom has dubbed his "CEO's/YouTube apology". Later, he's given the opportunity to have a more honest and genuine conversation with Fang where he learns about how he hurt him. He's made to repair some of the material damage his behavior caused. Some members feel repaid by the idea that they did to him the same he did to them (Fang) while others don't (Lucius), and the show touches on what this means for each/legitimizes both feelings. Arguably, Ed using his treasure to throw Calypso's birthday party – a much needed refrain and moment of social (re-)connection within the community – is an additional form of reparation. While Stede's belief in Ed has a clear role in helping Ed change for the better, Izzy's s2 journey focuses even more intensely on the role of social support within an individual's constructive (re-)integration into their community. The show is condensed by choice of format, but the beats are all there.

With that kind of rhetoric set up, I'd never be able to accept Izzy dying in a way that feels like a punishment for his past crimes, nor in a way that should "confirm" his positive change/"purify" him for good. And he doesn't! By the time he dies, we know full well he's deeply changed, it's already established to completion. How it happens has nothing to do with proving himself – he's randomly shot in battle. It's never questioned that the time he got to live surrounded by affection mattered. The speech he gives Ed is only possible because he's changed, accessing a completely different perspective on piracy/life than before, like we see when he talks to Ricky earlier. The reason the whole crew is paying respect and crying is because he became "the new unicorn", a treasured member with a defined role. But his death itself is the show going back to the initial symbolism of Izzy as ultimate pirate. The narrative function of his death is underscoring that the age of piracy has come to an end. It's nothing to do with his change. It's posited as the "natural conclusion" (again, by symbolic function) of a character that represented piracy through-and-through, not the "natural conclusion" of a process of becoming better.

And for me, that difference changes everything. I can see and accept the logic behind it, even as I mourn Izzy as a character. It makes the grief feel like a catharsis I experience within the context of the story I'm watching, rather than a grief I feel from a show "betraying" me.

It's also a difference that completely changes how Izzy's death relates to his queerness. Izzy's change is intertwined with being able to express queer affection openly. Becoming "a unicorn" is this extremely queer imagery already – a magical rainbow creature. His role becomes akin to a mother to the crew (the mother hen!Izzy many headcanoned last season, tapping into his potential), a position that isn't extraneous to older queens, including our honored real-life mean-old-queer men. Last season he threatened another queer man for showing too much delicacy, effeminacy, vulnerability. Now, his change is a process that culminates in him singing a tender love song among the crew in drag. He's given the privilege of playing the soundtrack to our protagonists making love for the first time, which ties him symbolically to the event in a way it does no other crew member. Suffice it to say that insinuating his process of change should end in death would have been disastrous, as far as I'm concerned. Antithetical to the show's supporting ideology.

But that's not how it went. Grief occupies a big role in the queer community, but it's so rare that we get to experience it cathartically. In real life, we often have to contend with the ways queerphobia causes us trauma or even shortens our lives, or the lives of our friends. In fictional narratives, a lot of characters that get to express queerness unabashedly still die for the transgression. They're still usually the only queer character with relevant screen time or at all, at best one of two that formed a tragic couple.

We almost never have the opportunity to just mourn some motherfucker who died because they meant something else as well that was central to their character. To mourn and know we're mourning someone who wasn't ever punished for being queer-as-in-fuck-you and going all out. To mourn and not feel like it's another message of queer doom, because for once the character is surrounded by an entire crew of other queer characters that go on to live and be happy. To know the story is saying something about life, not about being queer. To know this kind of crafting was deliberate, too, because the creator has talked about working to avoid those tropes. I struggle to remember another time I had the opportunity to grieve for a queer character like they're a human being, without the implication that it's queerness itself that's a death sentence.

And honestly? It feels good. It feels like a form of catharsis I do not dislike. That I'm maybe kinda glad for. OFMD is and stays a magical world. Beyond that, in a show full of queers, one of them dies after getting some extraordinarily meaningful happiness, and it's peaceful, and I get to just be sad for the fucker without the gutting of being reminded that if you're gay, better not shoot too high. It feels like a completely different emotion that no other show, for now, would give me, but OFMD. To me, it's yet another thing it's pulled off.

As it's been known to do.

[dreamonminecraft]

Ok so u support dreamnap? Me as well but what are your thoughts bc ur extremely educated and well spoken

Okay first of all careful with the "well educated and well spoken" part. I'm 16 and trying my very best not to lose my mind. After four years in this fandom, I'm very well aware of how words can become violently misconstrued and everything is taken as the end of the world. I get it, parsing through information like this is difficult and trying to figure out where you stand is even harder- but don't take my words as final. Don't take anyone's. Consider your own thoughts and feelings against the evidence we all have and make up your own mind. That's part of the reason we're in this mess. That being said:

I think the largest factor here is that George and Caiti lived two very different experiences that night. I don't believe that George was attempting to get with her in any way- I don't think that any of the girls were invited to Dream's hotel room for any sexual reasons. I think from the first night they hung out Caiti was uncomfortable with the age gap and thought of George as weird, potentially flirty, and maybe untrustworthy. Neither Caiti or her friends liked Dream to begin with.

When they decided to go up to Dream's hotel room that night, Dream did not know how old Caiti was. Caiti says that George did. I don't know what their instagram dms were. However they interacted, they were all drunk and Caiti perceived George's actions to be sexual.

I think, based on how we know George to act when he's drunk (Sapnap's stories, Dream's stories, and the drunk banter episode) that he likely was touchy with whoever was around them that night. That doesn't invalidate what Caiti felt. She hasn't been around George much prior to this, certainly not while drunk, and she already felt like he was flirting with her. Whatever touching happened wasn't called out or even noticed by anyone in the room. Nobody remembers it happening except Caiti (and potentially George, but it's unlikely)

When she went to leave, she was already uncomfortable and then he followed her to the elevator. Benefit of the doubt, he was probably just going to walk her back to her hotel room, but she was very drunk and very uncomfortable, which he failed to recognize. The minute she told him no, he backed off and left her alone.

He likely did not interpret any of her signals that night, as she said they were all non-verbal until the elevator. He probably doesn't even remember it. We know that when George is drunk, he'll often sit on the laps of his friends (Sapnap) or hang on them (Karl) or even kiss them (Dream) but that's not okay to do with strangers.

This isn't a story about an abuse of power or age, but likely recognizing that some people just can't handle getting drunk. George is not good at reading people when he's sober, and can't be trusted not to trample on people's boundaries when he's drunk. Alcohol is not for everyone.

This is likely, hopefully, a one-off event. I believe that George's tweet yesterday was reactionary, as our first time seeing the allegations was likely also his first time hearing them. I doubt that he remembers the details of the night.

None of this is to abstract his fault. If Caiti was uncomfortable with any of his actions, he should have been able to recognize that and step away. The fact that he couldn't proves that he was too drunk and needs to reflect on his own problems with alcohol.

That being said, if what I think happened and what actually happened are the story that George explains when and if he goes live, and on the condition that Caiti believes him and accepts his apology, I will continue to support George.

I think there is a lot of growth that needs to happen in his own life. I think he's emotionally stunted, I think he uses alcohol in an unhealthy way, and I think he needs to come to terms with the fact that he hurt someone even if it was unintentional.

Lying will not get him out of this.

With all that said, I will continue to support dream and sapnap regardless of their reaction to this. Sapnap wasn't there. He has no part in this other than being George's friend. Dream didn't notice it when it happened and was never aware of any of it. He's been caught up unfairly in the allegations and I don't feel it's right to drop him over this, at least personally.

I don't think Dream or Sapnap will stop being friends with George. I think dream and George are more than friends and have completely built their lives around each other. I think sapnap's content is already mostly stand alone but dream has been his best friend for over a decade and George is such an integral part of that. I think it is naive to think George will be kicked out, and that doesn't mean that either of them are supporting a bad person, it just means they're being good friends.

Sometimes you have to be a good friend because somebody needs it. I don't know when George will go live and I don't know what he'll say, but I don't regret my time here regardless of what it is.

[ceilidho]

sneak peek at the possessive best friend Soap fic:

Where to even begin with all of this?

Your friends can’t even begin to parse out your friendship with Johnny. Half the time, they’re convinced that the two of you are secretly dating. The other half, they’re asking you for his number (“it’s not a big deal, right? If he’s single”), which you hand out with some degree of reluctance or make excuses about, telling them not to put you in the middle, that they’re grown women and can ask a man out on their own.

So what’s it mean that you hope they won’t?

You’re well into the second decade of your friendship with Johnny. These days, you think you know everything there is to know about the man. You know the way he likes his eggs, at what point the pinched expression on his face goes from mildly pissed to possibly violent when he’s arguing with another guy, his preference for coffee over tea, the particular way he sighs when he’s tired to the bone, the distinct feel of his fingertips, the texture of his hair, the way he’ll clear his throat after a drink of water—

The point being, you know this man. 

You’re not sure when the line gets crossed. It feels abrupt and somehow, entirely natural. Like you should’ve seen it coming, should’ve heard it on the telly or sirens blaring through town, but instead you sat inside with your ears plugged up. 

It comes out when the two of you drink a bit too much on a night out, huddled at a table at the back of the bar with Johnny’s arm stretched behind you like usual. You blurt it out in between two other thoughts, when your eyes are drawn to another couple sitting towards the back of the bar, pressed so closely together that their noses almost touch.

“God, I need that,” you sigh, the words coming out unbidden. 

The noise in the bar is just loud enough that he asks you to repeat yourself and you do, a decibel louder, nose wrinkling when you do. Just tipsy enough to lose most of your shame. He arches a brow, taking another sip of his beer. 

“Need what?” Johnny asks, leaning in closer to you, probably to make sure that he can hear you this time.

“To get laid.” It falls out of you like an aside, but that’s because you hardly hear yourself saying it. Your eyes are still locked on the couple across the room, envy making your stomach clench. Feeling it in your guts. 

You only frown when you realize you haven’t heard Johnny say anything in a while. When you turn back, you find him staring down at you with a peculiar intensity. Eyes bluer than you’ve ever seen before, more alert. 

“Why?” His tone is hard, insistent. “You looking around or something?” 

It catches you off-guard, the sudden interrogation. The tension rolling off him. 

“No—I—” Your mouth opens and closes, words only holding their form for a handful of seconds. His stare makes you reconsider them. “I, just…”

He must finally notice where your eyes keep being drawn to because he looks over. His shoulders relax when he spots the couple, the two seated at the back of the bar still tangled up in each other. He hums like he gets it. 

You can feel the heat burning under your cheeks. “Just forget I said anything. It’s really—this is so weird, I’m sorry.” You shut yourself up by taking a drink, looking anywhere but at your best friend’s no doubt taunting face. 

When you happen to glance up though, you find Johnny’s pupils dilated. “Y’know, I could help you with that.”

The offer makes you pause, the rim of your glass pressed to your lip where you were just about to sip. 

“Help me with what?”

“You feeling hot and bothered? I’d be happy to lend my services, kitty cat.”

You frown. “Oh my god. Please don’t say it like that.”

“Y’can call it whatever you want, bonnie. Just know I wouldn’y pass up the chance to get you naked. Can’t say I haven’t thought about it.”

The hand holding your glass shakes a bit so you put it down. “You have?” 

You wouldn’t normally keep the conversation going, but you’ve had one too many gin and tonics. There’s just enough liquid courage in you to delicately lay the question there like a snare looking for a compliment. You tell yourself it’s nothing more than that. Johnny’s your oldest friend, sure, but he’s also a red-blooded man with corded muscle, strong shoulders, and a jawline that could cut glass. Your blood practically sings when his eyes travel over you like he can see underneath your clothes.

“Yeah, kitty,” he breathes, scooching a bit closer to you. “Think about it all the fucking time actually. Can’t remember the last time it wasn’y top of mind.”

It’s incredible that the world still seems right-side up. Everything might as well be upside down for you. “That’s—are you serious, Johnny?”

“Deadly. You need proof?” The proof feels self-evident. It’s his tight, bunched up muscles and the eager look in his eyes, the hint of teeth when he speaks. You do not, under any circumstances, look down at his lap.

“No, I don’t need proof, oh my god.” You glance around in case anyone nearby overheard, but no one pays a lick of attention to the two of you. From an outsider’s perspective, you probably look just like the other couple, Johnny’s fingers twirling around the ends of your hair, his head angled towards you intimately. 

A smile breaks across his face and it’s like suddenly looking up into the sun. Blinding. “We don’t have to do anything about it yet, kitty. Just think on it, okay?” With his free hand, he nudges your glass closer to you, and you notice now the cuts and scrapes on his hands. How rough they look next to yours, more conspicuous when his knuckles brush up against your hand gripped tight around the glass. “Drink up. I’ll take you home after this one.”

[dsudis]

A Dreamling story I am not writing (today)

Hob makes a flirtatious little advance to Dream--something kind of plausibly deniable, testing whether Dream even thinks of him that way enough to notice a pass, and Dream busts out the "we cannot, it is forbidden for any of my kind to love a mortal, it can only end in tragedy and horror for all involved."

Hob Gadling, who has faked his death 73 times to exit a relationship before the otherwise-unavoidable Sad Ending could play out including twice before he became immortal, and furthermore can parse it's not you, it's me in several languages: "Oh! Wow, that must make dating difficult for you."

Dream: "I simply do not."

Hob: "Yeah! Yeah, I can see why you wouldn't. You know what would put you off the whole idea? Love Island. Have you seen--"

And then Hob just fucking drops the whole idea.

It's not like he thought it was possible, and wow, okay, turns out is definitively not possible, whether the whole "forbidden" thing is strictly true or just Dream putting a very firm kibosh on the whole notion. And Hob, outside a few limited cases which he's taken as Important Lessons in Surviving Immortality, is pretty good at not dwelling on what he can't have, so he just moves the fuck on with his life, goes on some dates, and it's fine! More new people in his life! Sometimes he gets to tell his oldest friend about them!

Meanwhile Dream is losing his fucking mind.

This is not! how! this story is supposed to go!! His old true friend who suddenly after 632 years finally makes a move is not supposed to just LET IT GO when Dream says they can't possibly be together!!! Dream wasn't actually invested in or possibly even aware of the possibility either, before that conversation, but now he is full speed ahead PINING while also being increasingly irritated with Hob for just TAKING HIS WORD FOR IT when he said it could never happen. Why isn't Hob willing to fight for him??? For THEM??????

So obviously at some point this all spills out and Hob is like "...I could? If you... wanted me to? Are we... just not going to worry about the inevitable tragedy at this time?"

And Dream, all sulky, is like, "I don't see why you should believe that would apply to you when you defied the inevitability of death just fine."

And Hob smiles, real slowly, and says, "You've got me there."

[hushhushplzzz]

An Underrated Aspect of Wednesday and Xavier

Not really underrated in a traditional sense, but one of the things that I enjoy about this ship is the way Wednesday develops an unconscious trust in Xavier. Despite her suspicions of him being the monster and believing him to be an elitist snob, she relies on him for help when she doesn’t know what to do next.

One thing that stood out to me is that Wednesday—a proven and shown outspoken young woman when she wants to be—is pretty reticent regarding her visions. She withholds confirming Weems’s suspicions even when Weems presses her about it in e2. She withholds the visions from her bestie, Enid, in e6 (via: “What happened? It looked like you were having a seizure.”). She withholds only the information about her visions from Tyler despite involving him in every aspect of her investigation and telling him all her findings (including Nathaniel’s diary, what actually happened the night Rowan died, needing the location of the pilgrim meeting house, showing him the gate, and even when she reveals she’s figured out he’s the Hyde, etc). And prior to finally making up with Morticia in ep 5, she has withheld her visions from her family since they started a while ago despite knowing her mother also has visions and can certainly help with understanding the nature of the thing.

I find it significant that in canon, aside from her mother, the only person she has freely and comfortably told about her visions, is Xavier.

When Xavier figures out that she’s having visions, this happens:

Unprompted. The only thing he asks her is when they started, and keep in mind, her default for anything regarding the visions is to ignore or deflect the question. Despite her being suspicious of him here, not only does she confirm her visions which is, to her, clearly a deeply personal part of her, but she is also freely forthcoming regarding the stuff she has seen in visions and how unsettling it feels when it happens. She doesn't withhold from him what she sees in her visions. For Wednesday? This is theeee definition of oversharing lmao.

But anyway.

What was it about him that made her freely give up that information when she’s usually largely discerning of who she tells?

My point is, she relies on Xavier on a deeper level and seems to like confiding in him. He’s a decent sounding board to help her parse out her thoughts and theories, even with all these signs pointing to him being the monster. And I think because he saved her from the gargoyle, because of his own psychic abilities, because of his innate understanding of how not being able to control the visions is affecting her, and in my personal opinion, because she knows he not only sees her, but likes her for her, she feels some sort of subconscious connection to him.

The trust in telling him she even has visions is one example of it, but also, when she finds herself stuck, stagnant, or lost, she turns to Xavier.

One huge moment of this is the Gate mansion gate vision and pic in e6. She believes Xavier to be the monster and is cold and closed off to him at the beginning of the episode when she’s trying to decipher the message burned in the grass. But… she still goes to him for information about the gate when she hits a "dead-end". When she could literally ask anyone else who has been in Jericho, even Sheriff Galpin, who she’d spoken to earlier and by that point, she was sharing her investigative results with.

Another moment is after the Tyler as a Hyde reveal in e7. She winds up expelled from Nevermore with the knowledge of Tyler’s masterful ruse, authority figures have completely shut her down, she can’t figure out how to beat Tyler at his own game, but of anybody she could have gone to, she goes straight to Xavier for help. Xavier, who is the absolute least capable of helping her because he’s physically chained up in jail. She definitely regards his insight highly, and I think it's because 1) all his warnings had proven true, 2) he’s proven countless times in little ways that he actually understands her, and 3) when he gives up on helping her (temporarily due to anger), she officially gives up for the first time in the entire series and takes heed of his words to leave.

(Which, quick aside, but that scene was so fucking hilarious to me. He’s in chains looking like hell because of her and she sees absolutely zero qualms telling him she made out with Tyler and he is so miserable 😂 Girl...).

With Wednesday, her choices always speak more substantial volume than any words she could possibly say. She’s an asshole sometimes and speaks thoughtlessly and viciously with words meant to wound, but then acts upon her instincts in the most selfless, self-sacrificial, bleeding heart, and/or Care Bear kind of way towards all the people she has come to care for at Nevermore and her own family as well.

And her actions point to some level of trust in Xavier, not just vision-related. Like telling him in the library—her suspected monster—everything she’s collected as evidence pointing to him as the monster (why she would alert her suspect to the full details of her investigation and evidence is beyond me lol); keeping the gifted phone (despite being anti-tech); him being one of the few people she allows to see more of her emotions beyond just deadpan (blinking-gate plus looking down/averting her usually steadfast gaze during conversations with him when he gets a little too close to her erected walls).

Of course, I view their dynamic as a slow burn, but romantic or not, their energies and vibes are kind of in-sync and her growing implicit trust in Xavier is an underlying aspect of their burgeoning deep friendship/relationship that I think the show did pretty well in subtly establishing this season!

[suffersinfandom]

A Summary of The OFMD Meta

Sooooo... this is part one of an incomplete summary of A Meta-Discussion Of The Subtext by meratrishoslee (Mera) on AO3 (linked to, as the author requests). I hope it’s helpful to the folks who’ve been curious about it -- heyooo @fahbee and @pushbuttonkitty -- but maybe not quite 90K-words curious! I’m not going to comment on anything; this is meant to be an impartial -as-possible summary.

It's massively long, so this is just the first eight chapters.  

“There’s every possibility you are still in your feelings as you read this, even weeks after the finale. You are in your autonomous knee-jerk reaction, adrenaline-spike, slapped across the face, feeling-so-betrayed-right-now moment. You’re valid. That’s absolutely what’s happened… on the surface. But as you take a deep breath and begin to examine logically what’s in the show and engage with the material both in its text and subtext, you will see a new concept begin to take shape.” (Mera)

Chapter 1: Overview

Some background: Mera was involved with The Johnlock Conspiracy and believes that TJLCers weren’t wrong. (If you want a fun watch, I recommend Sarah Z’s YouTube video.) Essentially, TJLCers believe that Sherlock and Watson of BBC’s Sherlock were supposed to be endgame, and this can be proved with careful analysis. This is often paired with the idea that there is a missing fourth episode to the show’s fourth season that will eventually air and confirm all theories.

Mera defines ‘text’ and ‘subtext.’ Text is “dialogue lines / Shot choices and directions / Visible actions, describable as stage directions.” Subtext is “every single other thing, as well as what is suggested by or can be inferred from the text above.”

“Whenever something doesn’t make sense in the text, it is a BEACON (or maybe even a LIGHTHOUSE) to look at the subtext. Your subconscious mind recognizes subtext long before your conscious mind parses it -- assuming it ever does.”

The rest of the chapter is devoted to short descriptions of Mera’s key assertions with links to relevant chapters and their convention experiences. They cite talking to Con O’Neill at Florida Supercon 2023 as one of their reasons for believing so strongly that Izzy Hands is alive:

I asked him for advice in a specific time of trouble, and he gave me something real that had worked for him. I asked for a hug and he gave that also. 

As I was pulling away I said "I’m glad that I gleaned one absolutely true thing from your portrayal of Izzy." 

“What’s that?” 

I said: "The character (in my original work) that Izzy inspired – when he’s out of pain at last, it’s impossible not to love him." 

That seemed to hit him on an emotional level; he couldn’t hold my gaze after that.  He said “That’s what I’ll be taking with me today.” 

This was July 1st 2023, after completion of the filming of Season 2.  I've thought about it often as the season went on, and how it must have affected him. 

We have to love Izzy so that he'll live.

Mera spoke to Con again at NYCC:

The last thing I managed to get to say to him was: "They gave Izzy Hands a Passion Play." 

"They did?" he asked. 

"Yes, they did!" I replied. 

And I watched that brilliantly swift mind again at work, because he considered it for the briefest beat -- and said in a tone of joy: "They did; yeah, you're right!" 

I remember for the minutes and hours after I was amazed: did he not know, somehow? Did the writers not tell him (and he didn't realize at any time since) that in first quarter of the series they'd given him Gethsemane, a betrayal, a crucifixion (okay, getting shot in the leg and head, but don't get stuck on the details), a burial, and then a full on canonical resurrection?

Con then said another very important thing:

"But I got over it." 

[...]

If Izzy's dead (for real and forever dead) and he knew it, then what he said to me was on a level of cruelty that I could never countenance from him. If Izzy lives, then those words are yet another piece of proof to me that Con was clever enough to be right both for someone who'd only seen five episodes, and someone who would eventually see all eight. 

Chapter 2: The Cup and Ball Trick

The chapter is an extended “game” of cup and ball (where a ball is hidden under a cup and the guesser needs to determine which cup it’s under) interspersed with pictures from OFMD at various points in season two. It ends on a shot of Izzy’s grave where his body definitely isn’t.

The important takeaway: Izzy returns from the dead once to shoot Ed during Ed’s final suicide attempt. Ed returns from the dead after the near-fatal mutiny. Why would you think Izzy’s actually dead and in his grave at the end of the show?

“I didn't cry at the finale -- I was too filled with joy and excitement. I was Mary Magdalene at the grave; I was one of the first to know the truth of the resurrection, whether or not anyone believed me!” 

Chapter 3: OUR LOVE MEANT DEATH

"..because if [Izzy] doesn't [live], with what I know now, his death is a cruelty struck at every queer individual alive or dead since 1981.”

Mera observes that almost no one touches Izzy’s bare skin and Izzy bleeds more than any other recurring character.

There are two times someone touches Izzy’s bare skin: first when his screams are being muffled when he yells at Jim and Archie to kill him, second when Ed puts the gun in Izzy’s ungloved hand during his first go at suicide.

Conclusion: "Izzy is coded with AIDS.”

Ed holding his bloody hand up to the rest of the crew away when Izzy is dying is a “warding-off gesture.” 

Izzy is pale and sickly-looking as he’s dying. “My gorge rises. In the year of our Lord Shiva 2023 -- THEY GAVE THE MOST QUEER CODED CHARACTER ON THE SHOW A FUCKING AIDS DEATH.”

Izzy touches someone else’s bare skin twice in the show, and both instances are Ed. The first is in S1E10 “where he puts his left Death-marked hand on Edward's wrist as he's choking him.” The second is in S2E8 as he’s dying “in his ex-lover’s arms” (notably, this is the same hand with the spade tattoo).

“If Izzy's well and truly dead, for real and stays dead... He is in media both the first historically and the most recent chronologically to receive a full on AIDS death.”

“Until they prove to me and all of us that only Izzy's grief and the specter of AIDS remains in the grave -- and the rest of our beloved boy, our new unicorn (oh hey do you know what Problematic Modern Culture says about unicorn blood?), our pure-hearted risen being, our self-sacrificing queer man, will get his chance to be touched, held, kissed, and LOVED in Season 3.”

Chapter 4: “The Third Was For Death”

“Season 1 was Pinocchio: a wooden puppet wants to become a real boy -- and does!  Hip hip hooray; that was pretty easy.  Wow, the cute tall young guy of the crew lost a finger and the mean nasty short grouch that some people hate and some people like (because they understand him on a visceral, subconscious, subtextual level) lost a toe -- but if that's the worst that happens, we came out okay!”

Season two is “The Monkey’s Paw.” Mera tells the story with pictures from OFMD to emphasize the connections. Importantly, there’s an instance of a couple’s son coming back wrong after a wish (Lucius). The final wish returns the son to his previously-dead state and Mera ends on a picture of Izzy’s grave.

The cast’s and crews’ interviews might not support the real narrative because they’re not allowed to say what they want to (“Ever had to develop code language to hide your queerness from your parents, your teachers, the state?”) They’re all “in distress” and trying to tell us without telling us. 

“Why does the new (old broken down) house smell like death? Why does everything we wished for that we got feel bad? Why does everything we're supposed to be happy about feel sad? How long would it take YOU to spot someone blinking out the word T-O-R-T-U-R-E?”

Mera hopes that the next season won’t tell us certain a new story: George Orwell’s 1984.

Chapter 5: Where Were We? Oh Yes, In The Pit Of Despair

This chapter is about The Princess Bride as it relates to Izzy’s story in seasons two and three of OFMD. It’s a comparison based mostly on costumes and lines; there are no one-for-one character comparisons. Vitally, the plot of TPB is used to predict the next season of OFMD. 

Season two of OFMD ends at the part of TPB when Westley is thought to be dead (Izzy in his grave). Westley is revived, soooo…

“At what point does a preponderance of evidence flip over into fact? At what point does a handful of chance coincidences become planning and architecture? At what point do you go beyond a reasonable doubt into conviction?”

Chapter 6: Birdman and Blackbeard: Or, How To Watch Media

This chapter is about analyzing media. Once you learn how, you stop being a passive watcher.

“Instead you read its rhymes and rhythms like a sonnet. You go to the media in return – you meet it halfway, like a lover. You engage with it. You find themes embedded in the subtext that, once unearthed and examined, continue to inform and expand your experience of the text.”

“The people that like things nice and easy are the ones that watched the finale of Season 2, got angry and upset and – instead of examining those feelings and sitting with them and figuring out why everything felt weird and fucky – wrote it off as bad writing and cruel showrunners, and are already onto the next piece of media to pour into their open eyes and ears.”

And that’s fine! But if you like to think, you interrogate the media and see what else it’s saying.

Mera summarizes The Hero’s Journey through the lens of Orpheus’ story.

Season two mirrors season one almost too well. “...Why are they recreating their first season almost beat by beat? Why is this “second verse, same as the first – only a little bit louder and (in many cases) worse? Then Episode 8 hit… and I realized. They wanted to make sure that, in every conceivable way, the fans had a subtextual map of the meaning of Episode 8. So the mirrors between seasons had to line up almost exactly.”

Now we go into the three-act structure and how the hero’s journey maps onto it. Mera then uses Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance) and to show how they personally analyze meta, but I don’t care nearly enough about what they’ve gleaned from Birdman to go into it here. You’ll have to go read it yourself if you want their methods.

“Remember: Everything on screen in the finished and published movie is a choice. If something doesn’t make sense on a textual level, it is often a signpost (or LIGHTHOUSE) to look at it on a subtextual level.”

Mera points to an article about three-act structure and notes that “fun and games” is both part of that author’s second act and the title of an OFMD episode. 

“Are we being fucked with? Or are we being instructed?”

Chapter 7: If You Strip Away The Myth From The Man

It’s the Jesus Christ Superstar chapter and it’s massive. I’m only including the most substantial comparisons and points.

Mera starts by linking to a gifset of Con talking about Taika saying that Izzy and Blackbeard are comparable to Judas and Jesus (and then Taika and Con sang songs from JCS while getting their makeup done). Notably, Con didn’t specify which character was which.

Blackbeard is a myth created by (of) two men, Ed and Izzy. “there's always two male bodies involved: Jesus and Judas, and both sacrifice themselves to the cause.”

It’s easy to say that Izzy is Judas, but wait -- there’s a better and deeper interpretation! Look at this picture from S1 that resembles the Last Supper and frames Izzy as Jesus! “Now I finally understood. Sure: Izzy is Judas-coded. That's plain for anyone to see. But Izzy is also Jesus-coded… from the under/reverse side.”

Izzy is Jesus-coded for all of season one (even more than Ed), and the comparison is solidified by the end of S2E3: “Izzy Hands is almost fully and directly Jesus-coded, and after Ed's own resurrection (not as an agape-love self-sacrifice for the saving of others, but through selfish personal/eros love alone) Edward is now obviously the betrayer of the whole crew who is permitted to stay aboard only on terms of sackcloth clothing and uneasy tolerance.”

Judas died by hanging himself according to the Gospel of Matthew. The only characters we see hanging are Ed and Stede, which clearly aligns them with Judas. 

Izzy is a good person. He cares about the crew; Ed never does. When Izzy’s wrong, he fesses up to it and apologies; Ed does not (or when he does, the apologies are bad). “Does he lie?  Yes, ostensibly to protect his captain and crew. Is he fairly mean to the Revenge crew until they [...] become his crew? Pretty much, although I could argue otherwise in places -- especially the fact that while Ed throws Lucius violently and bodily off the ship without any warning, Izzy carefully puts the crew on a safe island with a minor fuckery of his own to keep them calm and happy until he leaves. (It's obviously not Edward's idea, although he does permit Izzy to put himself between the deadly Kraken and the Revenge's crew in order to accomplish it.) Is he selfish? Yes, and who of us aren’t sometimes selfish about the people we love?”

Jesus and Judas have massive amounts of sexual tension (yeah, can confirm). Izzy is Jesus-coded because, while he doesn’t initiate contact like Jesus does in JCS, he’s always looking directly at Ed. Ed is Judas-coded because he has a hard time looking at Izzy and finds it difficult to touch him.

“...If Izzy Hands is a queer man who is Jesus-coded, who we see go through not one but TWO passion plays during Season 2... [near-death after having his leg removed, end-of-season death] he is conquering the death of HIV/AIDS and queer grief. He has to die so that he can vanquish that very real death, and arise again triumphant over it.”

“One direct correspondence with Jesus is that Izzy is convinced of one right way to be (whether or not it actually is), and everything outside of that offends him viscerally at this point in the series.” Izzy is convinced that there’s one right way to be a pirate, and Stede’s fucking that up.

And back to AIDS/reverse-Jesus Izzy: “Now among the lepers we're back to the reversal: no one touches Izzy. He’s desperate for it yet can never allow it. Jesus’s touch, kiss, love cures – and everyone seeks it and craves it. They demand it, they swamp and overwhelm him. Jesus's naked touch/kiss/love cures disease -- Izzy's carries and spreads it.”

“Judas/Edward makes his deal with the priesthood/King George to betray Jesus/Izzy – his price is 30 pieces of silver/Stede’s life.” That is, Ed is the one doing the betraying in season one. 

But the real betrayal happens when he cuts off Izzy’s toe and feeds it to him while he’s vulnerable. Important note for the AIDS stuff: “...Edward puts on leather gauntlets immediately prior to this assault -- he ‘gloves up.’ He doesn't have direct naked contact with Izzy's blood or flesh during this scene.” The toe-feeding scene is absolutely framed as sexual assault.

And the toe thing continues into season two. “Sit with that also for a moment: the faux consent of making Izzy remove his own clothing to bare his body parts for this violation. Is it too far a stretch to think that Ed also made him eat each one, in their own private, gristly sacrament? He did threaten to ‘feed him the rest’ after all.”

Here is the outline of Izzy’s first “passion play”:

Izzy's Last Supper: all the toes eaten before as well as the one threatened now. 

Izzy's Gethsemane, wherein he begs his God for the cup to be removed: he tries to bargain his and the crew's way out with his conversation with Blackbeard, to find an alternative to the self-destructive violence. 

Izzy is betrayed by his Judas (again): shot in the leg for the 'crime' of mentioning Stede Bonnet's name, or Blackbeard's affection toward him. 

Izzy descends into the grave: lays in a secret tunnel in what we can believe is the lowest part of the ship, while rotting enough to be smelled throughout.

 Izzy dies: he shoots himself in the head and both we and Blackbeard believe him to be dead.

Izzy is risen: he hauls himself up out of his own grave without assistance from anyone else, crawls to the main deck, reloads his pistol somewhere along the way -- and shows himself to his followers crew at last, in order to bring about their salvation.

Con himself said that this is a passion play, and it takes up a massive chunk of the first part of the season. You don’t throw something massive like that into a show unless you’ve got something bigger coming.

But Judas dies before OFMD ends (mapping OFMD onto JCS), so now who is Ed? He’s Pontius Pilate. There’s the whipping of Jesus (Izzy’s back scars), then Pilate kneels down to hold the bleeding Jesus in his arms. It’s this specific Pieta statue.

“Izzy has to die to conquer his own living death, to end the curse that has kept him untouchable and unable to be loved as he so desperately desires.” There’s the crucifixion for you. Izzy dies and is buried, and we’re still waiting on the resurrection. 

The last shot in JCS is of the empty cross; the last shot of OFMD S2 is Izzy’s grave. “If the cross in the last and arguably the most significant shot of JCS symbolizes the triumph of resurrection and rebirth... the one in OFMD S2 must also.”

Alex Sherman liked one of Mera’s Izzy Lives tweets that he was tagged in. 

Chapter 8: The Dual Substance Of Christ

Now we’re looking at The Last Temptation of Christ. This is another long and involved one, so I’m cutting a lot of minor things that don’t serve the overall meta. (I also know fuck-all about this movie, oops.)

“An argument can be made (and I will attempt it) that Judas in this instance is not only the show creators/writers room of OFMD who had to put their much beloved boy Izzy Hands through all this agony... but also we the Unseen Crew who adore him, who have suffered alongside him through all he's endured, and who want nothing more than to have him back and whole in resurrected triumph.”

TLTC presents another reason to identify Lucius with Mary Magdalene (and notably, Jesus can’t touch Mary -- because Izzy is AIDS-coded). Once again, there’s an immense amount of sexual tension between Jesus and Judas.

This Jesus is angry and this God is fearsome. Judas does a lot of slamming-Jesus-into-walls, much like Ed and Izzy in S1E10. 

Jesus confirms that he is a heart and he loves, which solidifies Izzy’s position as the heart of Blackbeard. 

In his final trial in the desert, Jesus’ final tempter appears as flames. Izzy and Ed both play with flames when they lie.

“Izzy is pretty much Jesus-coded as I explained in the JCS meta… but here also due to the timing and content of this scene, Izzy’s also Lazarus-coded.He dies, he goes into the pit of the grave, he smells of rot, then he is raised from the dead.” Lazarus and Izzy both have a rough time of being alive again and drink about it. 

Jesus says “I have to die on the cross, and I have to die willingly.” This parallels Izzy saying that he wants to go when he’s dying. Judas doesn’t want Jesus to die, which puts him more in line with Jenkins and company than any characters.

“But Izzy has to die, in order to conquer death. He’s lived with the specter of HIV/AIDS that has separated him from loving touch and the sharing of physical intimacy. He has to go into the grave to leave his disease and his queer grief behind, and to be reborn to love.”

On the cross, Jesus says, “Father, stay with me. Don’t leave me.” As he’s dying, Izzy tells Ed, “Sit with me, Eddie.” 

“I feel sick, and I think I’m supposed to. It’s supposed to hurt. Both Izzy's death and Jesus's crucifixion are supposed to be two of the realest and most awful and most beautiful things I’ve ever seen on television.”

In TLTJ, there’s an extended part of the movie where Jesus is in a kind of gravy basket. The events are all kind of odd. They involve Jesus sleeping with Mary (the reborn unicorn, free of AIDS and safe to touch). Jesus returns to his body, suffers, and dies.

TLTJ doesn’t cover Jesus’ resurrection. “We have to trust what we know of the story: that Jesus is risen, and only death itself remains in his grave.”

--

On to the next!

[drarrily-we-row-along]

Arsonist's Lullaby

As you may have guessed, this one is inspired by "Arsonist's Lullaby" by Hosier. cw: arson (as you might have deduced, no one is hurt and they're burning their own property)

Draco was doing that thing with his hands again. The thing Harry had noticed first in 8th year and then hadn't stopped being able to notice in the past five years since.

It's what had drawn him to Draco in the first place, like a moth to flame (pun very much intended). There was something completely mesmerizing about watching him snap his fingers and then cradle the blue flames in his palm absentmindedly while he talked, or read a book, or performed any number of mindless tasks. It was sexy as fuck.

"You're staring again," Draco murmured, not raising his eyes from his book as the fire danced across his knuckles.

Harry hummed, "You're doing the fire again."

"You're as obsessed with fire as I am," he said, mouth curling at the corner.

"Mostly obsessed with you," Harry replied and Draco laughed and finally looked up for his book.

He stared at Harry for a moment, the fire winding its way through his fingers the way some people rolled coins along their knuckles. "You know," Draco said, voice a hint too casual and Harry internally perked up at what was sure to be a fantastic confession, "I thought it would end."

"What would?" Harry asked after a moment when it was clear that Draco wasn't going to go on without a bit of prompting.

His silver eyes latched onto Harry and his head tilted as he looked at him, like he was trying to parse something out. "The desire to light things on fire," he said and something hot flared in the pit of Harry's stomach.

"Tell me more," Harry said softly, voice low and seductive in a way that it normally wasn't outside of their bedroom.

Draco's pupils dilated sharply, "when I was a child," he said, the fire burning brighter in his hand for a moment, "I would sit for hours and stare at the flames in the manor's giant fire place. My parents couldn't understand it, they'd find me just sitting there, doing nothing but watching, like I was transfixed."

And frankly, Harry could understand that; he could watch Draco hold fire all day.

"When she caught me, Auntie Bella would say, 'don't ever tame your demons, Draco,' then she'd wink and tell me, 'but always keep them on a leash.'"

"What did that mean?"

Draco gave him a little smile, eyes flashing, "she could sense the bit of chaos, the desire for destruction, I think."

Harry hummed, "What did you want to destroy?"

"Oh, it changes," he replied easily. "When I was sixteen, the last time she said those words to me, I wanted to burn the entire world to the ground."

A shiver raced up Harry's spine, he remembered feeling the same way at sixteen. "And now?" he asked.

"I always thought it would go away," Draco said, "after I fell in love, after I had given the fire within me permission to consume someone the way I've consumed you."

Harry made a soft noise, low in his throat in agreement.

"The way I've let myself be consumed," he added. "But there's still this desire to burn down the past, to start fresh."

He nodded slowly, "that makes sense, actually."

"What if-" Draco started before snapping his jaw shut and clenching his fist around the fire to put it out.

"What if..." Harry prompted, moving to straddle Draco's hips, looking down at his lovely face.

Draco swallowed and rested his head against the back of the sofa, staring up at him. "What if we did start over? What if we moved to the states, or moved to some muggle city? What if-"

"Yes," Harry said, leaning in and pressing a kiss to Draco's lips, fingers skimming up his neck. "Godric, yes," he said, living in the world as the chosen one had only gotten harder since defeating Voldemort.

"What if I burned down the Manor first?" he whispered.

He felt his eyebrows hit his hair line, "What?"

Draco shrugged nonchalantly, but Harry could see the tension in his jaw, the fear of being too much. "Just," he sighed, "no one lives there. It's full of dark, cursed magic and even darker, more cursed memories." He blinked up at Harry, "What if I burned it first?"

He stared at him for a long moment, just searching his face, and finding only earnest desire there. "Alright," he said finally.

"Yeah?" Draco asked.

Harry nodded and leaned in to kiss him again, Draco's palms skimmed up his back and sides, touching him reverently.

"Pack for us?" he asked when he pulled back.

"Everything?"

Draco shrugged, "not furniture."

He closed his eyes and gathered his magic for a moment, letting it pool in his gut before holding out a hand and snapping. The contents of the flat organized themselves into boxes, shrinking down until everything fit into a tote that they could easily put into the back of the beat up old Subaru that Harry had purchased and refit with magic.

"Fucking hot," Draco said, pulling his face down and kissing him soundly.

Harry let himself get swept up in the moment, lost himself in the fire of Draco's kiss, let himself be consumed as Draco's fingers slipped under his shirt, nails raking up his back.

Far too soon in Harry's opinion, Draco was pulling back, flushed and panting. "Drive us as close as we can get to the Manor?" he asked, "then I'll get us through the wards?"

He nodded and stood, tugging Draco up behind him and out the door. The Subaru brought them faithfully through the night to the Manor and Harry parked just on the other side of the wards.

They climbed out of the car and Draco reached for Harry's hand, his cloak billowing dramatically behind him. Harry took it and they were being moved through time and space to a hill where they could see the whole of the Malfoy estate, the Manor centered in front of them.

There was fire flickering in and out of the hand that wasn't clasping Harry's and he watched the other man carefully. "Are you sure about this? You don't have to-"

"No, I know," Draco said. "And there's a part of me that doesn't want to. I loved this home when I was young."

"We could-"

"But it feels all wrong now," he said, shaking his head. "Can't you feel it?" he asked without looking at Harry, "the way that the darkness seeps from this place, it's killing everything around it," he added, pointing to the forest and the meadows, even the yard was brown and dead.

Draco shook his head, "For a little while, it felt like all I had was this fire burning within me, ready to scorch the earth, to wipe out that maniac and everything he stood for. I just feel like there's something more for me out there."

He slid his fingers through Draco's, holding the hand that wasn't currently holding fire. "There is," he promised, raising Draco's knuckles to his lips.

"I don't think that you can tame your demons," he said softly like he wasn't talking to Harry at all. "And I don't think you can keep them on a leash, either," he added. "I think the only thing to do is to destroy them entirely."

Without another word, he released Harry's hand and held up both of his, letting balls of flames build in his palms before hurling them down toward the Manor. As soon as those were sent on their way, he started on two more, then two more, and so on until the entire building was ablaze, flames leaping dozens of feet in the air.

He threw one last ball of fire, then collapsed. Harry dropped with him, reaching out for him and supporting him as they watched the representation of his old life, of everything evil, burn.

What could have been minutes or hours later, they heard the sound of distant sirens and the first few firefighters apparated in, wands blowing streams of Aguamentis at the raging fire.

"Time to go," Draco said, squeezing Harry's hand and apparating directly into the car.

"Where are we headed?" Harry asked, starting the car and punching the button that turned it invisible.

Draco hummed, turning his head and staring at Harry with a thoroughly blissed out, content expression on his face.

He leaned across the center console and kissed him, "You're so," he shook his head and kissed him again, "fucking amazing."

Humming, Draco kissed him back before redirecting his attention to the open sky, "the world's ours. Wherever you want to go," he shrugged, "we're free."

And it never really mattered where they went, there were always plenty of things to find joy in if they were together.

------------------------

Read more of my fics inspired by songs

[charcubed]

Hi. I tend to forget that tumblr exists and just shout all my thoughts about The Winchesters on Twitter @CharCubed, which is a problem, but for once in my life I'm posting something here!

Here are some broad Thoughts on where I've landed of what this season 1 finale of The Winchesters offered–

• I very much want season 2 of this show SO badly. I want to see how they all continue to build their lives now that we know tragedy need not be their end! THIS IS THE HEALING SHOW. That whole cast gets to write their own story... "the only thing that's worse than how it starts for a hunter is how it ends" is no longer the case, as Carlos already said... and Dean helped to free them? That fucks.

• In regards to those possibilities: now that Dean would no longer be framing the prequel as a story he's telling, it frees the prequel up to no longer be doubling as Dean's story through revealing mirroring–which is very much what it's been doing for 12 episodes. Now the monster plots and the storylines for those characters in The Winchesters can also be diversified, so every episode no longer has to include, for example... [checks notes] a situation where a character is literally and/or metaphorically trapped and has to confront their trauma, break cycles of violence, and speak truths to be freed. It's been very Loud and very much Like This Constantly because it's Dean's story, but now it won't have to be anymore, which is an interesting thing to contemplate! (To be clear, for those unaware of my history of yelling about this show: I love that it was Like This. This show is fucking genius.)

• Initially, this finale had some alarm bells pinging in my brain but then I parsed the Reasons for those things. Mary told John she had "Something to say," right? And then she never says it. That's a Chekhov's gun that's never fired and it's of course paralleling how Dean has "something to say" to Cas too. Them not speaking that truth is a problem. In addition, we also got a montage eerily akin to the 15x19 one. But these callbacks / parallels to s15 all loudly indicate something very specific: The Winchesters is an unfinished story, and this finale (like the rest of this show) is mirroring and revealing truths about the prime narrative of SPN. For one thing, with the prequel they originally expected to have 22 or so episodes and ended up having 13 to work with. For another... this is the START of their story, not the end. So along those lines, what can we deduce about the end of season 15? (Hint: that finale is not an ending either.)

• Speaking of which: We learn that everything Dean was just doing takes place in the ~heavenly~ time period before Sam “dies." This all functionally happened right after Dean died as he drove down that road. He is restless, unmoored, grieving, and–this is key–considers his "ending" to be an unhappy happy one. He's fucking around and finding out, looking for and unpacking (through his narration) what he needs and wants for HIS happy ending to look like. He found out about the Akrida being a failsafe from Chuck and couldn't resist meddling to save everyone. It's also worth noting that Dean says to Jack something like, "If you have to kick me out of Heaven then that's fine." Between the lines is the thought of "please kick me out of Heaven, I'm causing problems because I'm grieving and I'm not done, I don't want this 'peace' but would rather have freedom." That in itself is a massive subversion of the SPN finale, to say nothing of the previous 12 episodes we've received.

Anyway. So in terms of Dean's story, we now know that this all takes place smack in the middle of 15x20 timeline-wise. This checks out because Bobby's presence connects to him being the only one we saw in 15x20. And... what I personally consider to be Jack's incredibly fucked up or ~potentially taken over by Chuck~ vibes are, in that sense, consistent with 15x19 as well. (I'm so sorry but please let me drop this cursed "Alex Calvert playing Chuck" joke by Jensen from August 2022 which haunts me.)

So: nothing about the concept that @chuckwon at the end of season 15 has been confirmed or denied in canon at this point. The idea that Chuck LOST, as Dean says here, is simply what Dean may still be thinking (which makes sense). But nothing has fundamentally changed about the state of how season 15 left things in the prime narrative yet... largely because that's not what this story is / was about.

In terms of what this finale presented to us, I think "Chuck won" potential was all deliberately left open. And I continue to Call Bullshit on the finale accordingly. A Chuck won plot line COULD be used in a future sequel to great affect, or it could NOT be used in a future sequel. That will be totally up to the future authors / team behind that potential sequel to see what story they choose to tell, and where it all may or may not go. But until then (on that front) right now it's the same shit, different show, and deliberately literally nothing about that potential has changed.

• I LOVE all of the above now that I've parsed it all in my brain. It makes perfect sense. Much like we were never going see the gay angel pop up in this show and kiss Dean (with apologies to anyone who somehow thought otherwise?)... leaving other things open like this is fantastic and the objectively correct call. Dean's story is HIS story to be furthered elsewhere, whereas this show belonged and continues to belong to its cast of characters who must take center stage. But through this story within a story narrated by Dean himself, we learned a hell of a lot about his state of mind as it actively stands in 15x20. Or more accurately: the entire show reinforces and reiterates comprehensively and repeatedly that the SPN finale was wrong and bad and not the end of the story at all, and now canonically and openly and in no uncertain terms that that's how Dean feels too.

• AND THUS: season 1 of The Winchesters works as deeply clever and layered commentary on Supernatural's ending and presents the stepping stone for a sequel continuation for Dean and his family. It's also the beginning of a new chapter with endless potential for The Winchesters' cast of characters who are not tied to fate or main timeline.

I fucking love it here.

Truly, madly, deeply: ALL HAIL ROBBIE THOMPSON.

And seriously, I really hope we get a season 2 because I adore all of the prequel's characters on their own merit and I want to see what their story can become :')

[threadsun]

Hi I've been stalking your blog and had a cute idea for head cannons with bo and jack- since jack can at least somewhat read mcs mind, and bo is always listening, what if they heard mc realize their in love with them? Like just an ordinary day and out of no where the realization dawns on them that their in love- cheesy I know but it's too cute not to imagine bo hearing mc whisper "holy shit I'm in love with a tamogatchi..." Or sunshine thinking to themselves "oh my god...I'm in love with jack..." No pressure, just figured something sweet and cute would be a nice change from the Horny™ asks-

Oh that's super cute!!! I definitely love the horny asks, but I don't mind doing something sweet for a change!!!

Content: being listened in on/having your thoughts read

Bo:

You're not sure exactly what it was that made it dawn on you. Maybe it was the fact that you'd turned down plans with your roommate three nights in a row now to spend time with him. Or maybe it was the way you blushed when you thought about him. Or, perhaps, it was just the bubbling happiness in your chest every time you closed your bedroom door behind you so you could take him out to play.

Whatever it was, the realisation seemed to creep up on you slowly, and then hit you all at once like a pile of bricks. It leaves you standing in the middle of your room, staring blankly at the wall as you try to process your feelings.

"I'm in love with him." You feel every shape your mouth makes keenly as the words come out. "I'm in love with my DachaBo... what the fuck..."

The words hiss from your throat like releasing steam, but it's loud enough for him to hear you from where you've left him face down on the bed.

You love him. You love him. After all this time, all this waiting and loving you and trying to get you to love him back... You love him.

The realisation blooms like a flower in his chest. The relief, the joy, the... euphoria! Of loving and being loved, finally, in return.

You love him.

Jack:

It's something you've sort of been chewing on for a while now. Your feelings for Jack. It's hard to parse what's friendship and what's love, what's platonic and what's romantic.

It's not easy to do. This man came into your life and changed everything. You've gotten into a solid routine, begun eating more balanced meals, started going outside more and generally taking care of yourself. How can you tell what's love and what's just immense relief and gratitude that he's made your life so much better?

The distinction comes to you clear as day. Out of nowhere, you understand. Standing in the yogurt shop, trying to imagine making a life with anyone but him, it hits you. You're grateful he's helped get your life together, sure. But you do also love him.

If you could get rid of him and keep the habits, you wouldn't. It's not the habits you love. You appreciate them, sure. But its his company. His kindness, compassion, humour. That's what you love.

Your heart softens at the thought, eyes straying for just a moment to the ghost sitting on the counter behind you before returning to your walnut chopping. You love him. You really, really love him.

Jack feels warmth spread through him, joy and comfort. You love him. You love him, and you don't want to live without him. And that's all he needs.

Because he loves you too.

[speremint]

Good Omens S2 Thoughts

OBVIOUSLY spoilers for GO S2 below, so if you've not seen, and don't wanna be spoiled, don't read!

The tl;dr of this long post is that I loved S2, it was a lot of fun, and I love that it focused more on Az and Crowley, but I also think it was a little out of pocket and a little messy in writing.

Anyway I fuckin.. am still processing all of what I watched, and am currently rewatching with a friend, too, but here's my jumbled thoughts on S2 and especially the final episode because I'm having many emotions and I need to get my thoughts out somewhere.

Listen. I would like to clarify that I loved S2 and I loved S1, and I think S2 was VERY smart to parse down on supporting characters and keep it stuck to Crowley and Aziraphale for the most part.

I'm assuming that S2 was made with S3 in mind though, esp after this post from Neil Gaiman, bc lord I will cry if there's no S3.

The focus on the story of Job I am being super optimistic in hoping that maybe it's Gaiman punching us in the throat with S2 before offering us a nicer S3... regardless though, I loved the season despite my minor criticisms.

I... do not have anything against Beelzebub/Gabriel, but holy shit was that out of left field for the ending... I just feel that, despite Gabriel having memory loss (it doesn't seem to be COMPLETE since it was kinda touch and go during scenes), they should've sprinkled in some sort of foreshadowing the his relationship or fondness of Beelzebub.

Have him at least not try to decimate that fuckin fly with books, or take an interest in books on forbidden romance, or rebellion against authority, or maybe just flat out have him be interested in Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship, or Nina and Maggie's. Just SOMETHING to set it up a little bit...

EDIT:: while rewatching, I suppose they hinged most of their foreshadowing in Beelzebub's passiveness and interest in Gabriel, but it's a little hard to have a comparison given how little they were in S1

It was only after I skimmed the GO tag that I saw people were pissed about Aziraphale's choice in E6 and I'm kinda just like ??? It's not OOC though... He's always been loyal to Heaven, and the times when he's been questioning, the biggest issue, is that Crowley was an enabler. He kept Aziraphale from REALLY facing the consequences of these decisions because he's acted as a safety net in some of the situations they're put in.

I love the added scenes of the past with Crowley and Aziraphale, they're fuckin great and I like that it continues to expand upon their relationship and "temptations", but I do think it was kinda reiterating stuff we knew from S1... even if it was good fan service, for lack of a better word. I just kinda wish they had sprinkled in more reinforcements of Aziraphale's fealty to heaven. Or, perhaps during the scene when Azira is worried he's going to become a demon, he could take that time to ask Crowley on his feelings on being a demon, and perhaps if he regrets it, just to also set up for the finale desire of Aziraphale in turning Crowley back into an angel.

Regardless though, S3, assuming there is one, will be a big wake up call to Aziraphale when he's left on his own and also under a tighter leash by heaven, especially since Crowley is gone. Also, expanding on Crowley being a high rank when he was an angel made my fuckin night, I still stick to the headcanon that he was the Archangel Raphael, don't @ me

I do think that... some of the stuff that happened in S3 did feel a little like a response to fans as well, since I know Gaiman is on tumblr and Ik the fandom has been really vitriolic over the fact that Az and Crowley didn't kiss or anything in S1... tbh I didn't think it was that big of a deal cause love is shown in many different ways, and I admit I do like that they kissed in S2, but it did also feel uhhh kinda spontaneous.

Not a bad thing, just wasn't expecting it. I did replay the scene bc I'm an angsty bitch. But yeah, I'm like ehhh.

Also Nina and Maggie randomly coming at the end to like.. sit Crowley down and be like "erm youre stupid and in love" felt very weird in a way I can't quite describe, but also felt kinda undeserved. Esp cause Crowley was like "eh I guess". I think the more subtle off handed chat he had with Nina about Aziraphale being his partner was a more elegant way of setting that up, and having him reflect on that instead would've been better. But also tbf he and Azira were being bitches and indeed messing with Maggie and Nina.

I don't like the term of describing content as "fanfic"y because a lot of fanfiction is super well written, but I think S2 was very... fan service-y... rather.

Which tbh I don't mind that much, esp given Gaiman really didn't want an S2 to respect Pratchett's passing as his cowriter. So... meh. I did genuinely dislike the ball scene at the end though. Just... it was really weird, and I'm not sure what they were trying to say with it, other than Aziraphale is fucking demented... and tbh he should've known better since the fucker's been on earth for ages, idk. After talkin with a friend, it just was a really weird scene, and if anything was OOC for him, I think it was that bc his removal of free will, speech, and even actions, was fucking insane.

Also I don't think John Hamm is attractive, so I tbh was just confused for a lot of his scenes that had interactions or alluded to him...

I liked S2, I really did. It was campy, it was a lil sloppy, but it was fun, and it gave a lot more Crowley and Aziraphale being a bitchy little married couple before their fuckin messy ass divorce at the end.

ANYWAY... I really can't wait to see what happens, and I am PRAYING that there'll be an S3. Until then, I will happily sit in my puddle of tears

[xalygatorx]

Unbound | Chapter 10, "What You Want"

Áine Ts'sambra—a wayward half-drow bard with a painful past—has her world upended when she's snatched up by a Nautiloid ship and furnished with a tadpole to the brain. In her journey to remove the infestation before it can turn her and her newfound companions illithid, she not only finds that their solution has more layers to parse through than she can count, but that a particular vampire in her party does as well.

Unbound is an ongoing generally SFW medium-burn romance based in the world of Baldur's Gate 3 between Astarion and a female OC. Any NSFW content will be marked in the Warnings section. Contains angst, fluff, explorations of trauma, spice, graphic fantasy violence, and a guaranteed happy ending.

For anything additional on what to expect (and not expect), check the preface post.

Summary: The party has reached the Grove after a stressful few days on the road from the goblin camp. The tiefling refugees and Zevlor join their camp for the night to celebrate their victory and rest up before resuming their journey to Baldur’s Gate. While making her rounds, Áine receives a proposition from Astarion. 

Pairing: Astarion x Fem!OC

Warnings: 18+/NSFW (p-in-v sex); Astarion romance scene #1 spoilers; suggestive content & dialogue; angst; trauma (intrusive thoughts, self-loathing); lightly proofread; encouraging comments welcome to assuage my anxiety over whether I could do Astarion’s inner monologue justice here hahaha jk unless

Word Count: 8.3k

Listening to: White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes, I Will Love You (Even If It Kills Me) - Too Far Moon (again)

“When I come near, your odor alone is enough to make my neck sweat and my hairs stand on end.”

Easily able to hear the conversation taking place in front of Lae’zel’s tent, Astarion snuck a glance at Áine’s expression, seeing if he could gauge her interest based on look alone. He nearly shot the piss this lot passed for wine through his nose at the sight of her impossibly rounded chocolate eyes and the polite smile plastered across her lips. His mind cemented that sight into a memory that he could only hope would enter his reverie’s nightly rotation and serve to chase at least one recollection of the horrors he’d endured back to its rightful shadows.

Then again, even if caught off-guard, perhaps she’d say “yes” to Lae’zel. He focused back on their conversation and turned his gaze toward the tieflings drunkenly mingling nearby to obscure his intrusion.

“I want to taste you,” Lae’zel was saying, her confidence palpable. It was an honest pride, unlike the sort Astarion wore at times, he realized. She truly believed these things of herself and he envied her for it. “Perhaps tonight. Perhaps later. But I want it all the same.”

Astarion listened with figuratively bated breath for Áine’s answer. He would make his final advances tonight regardless of what she told Lae’zel or anyone else. 200 years’ worth of perfecting his methods under threat of torturous punishment from Cazador would not be for nothing when he finally had a personal use for his skills. If she said “yes” to anyone else, then the plan would simply adjust rather than fail, just like when he’d thought she was seeing Shadowheart.

Not particularly to his surprise but to his benefit, Áine was in the process of letting the githyanki down gently. “I’m sorry, Lae’zel, I don’t feel the same way. But thank you. I think.” Astarion smirked, obscuring his expression behind another sip of whatever acrid brew lay in his wine bottle. 

For the time being, he let his attention wander across the party and their guests, letting the rest of their conversation wrap up without his ear. Áine seemed to be making the rounds around the camp and all its residents, regular and temporary, so she would eventually end up at his tent as well. And if she didn’t, he supposed he’d go seek her out, but Astarion had complete confidence that she’d come. Several times, if all went accordingly.

Meanwhile, Lae’zel was taking Áine’s polite rejection with as much confidence as she’d delivered its related proposition. “Your loss, I fear,” she said, still smiling. “One day soon you will wonder how my lips might have tasted. How my fingers on your skin might’ve felt… And you will wish you could return to this lost moment.”

Áine wasn’t often at a loss for words, but she was now. And yet still she admired Lae’zel’s self-assured demeanor where most would have crumbled in her place at being rejected for a post-party romp. In fact, she’d seen a couple of those responses firsthand already just that night. She was beginning to think Shadowheart may have been onto something when she’d told her all those nights ago that the majority of their camp wanted a shot at her. The idea made her more anxious than flattered. 

With Lae’zel and her steady unfazed response, however, Áine allowed herself to just feel flattered. “If that does come to pass, I know I’ll have no one but myself to blame,” she said, smiling. “I hope I’m as confident in myself as you are someday.”  

Lae’zel smiled back at her, the tilt of her thin lips no longer holding a sensual edge but one of camaraderie. “You deserve to be. I can firmly state that your only major fault that I have witnessed thus far has been your taste in mating partners,” she said. Áine laughed, content to sit in self-deprecation as Lae’zel added, “Oh, but do enjoy yourself this night. I intend to, myself. Wyll or Astarion in particular both look rather tempting...”

Áine’s brows rose, her eyes sliding toward where Astarion stood at his tent. He watched the party with an expression flitting between amusement and a glower, occasionally raising a green glass wine bottle to his lips and seeming to regret it every time. Despite the twisty faces he pulled, he was immaculate as always. Just looking at him made her chest tighten a little, as had begun to happen any time he caught her eye in the past few days. Truly, she’d felt that twinge ever since he’d kissed her that night which already felt like so long ago. 

And amidst that twinge at Lae’zel’s mention of propositioning Astarion was…jealousy? She had no right to be jealous, but she—unlike a certain vampire—could admit that she was. Perhaps he’d be taken with a proposition from Lae’zel, after all. She didn’t hold any sort of right to him and he could do whatever he liked. A simple fling was also often preferable in these times and a much easier task to manage for most, and Áine wasn’t most. As much as it ate at her, she supposed it might be best for all parties if his fancies turned elsewhere and she could start squashing the feelings growing inside her. 

“Well, I just passed Wyll on the beach for whatever it’s worth,” Áine told Lae’zel. “And you can, of course, see your other interest from here… Whatever you do tonight, Lae’zel, I hope you have a nice time.”

“And you as well,” Lae’zel said, inclining her head. Áine couldn’t help but feel heartened when she saw the githyanki’s gaze flicker first toward the beach rather than the tent adjacent to hers.

Áine made her way around the tents further back from the fire, careful to give Gale’s tent a wide berth following their own exchange earlier in the night. His advance she’d seen coming more easily than Lae’zel’s, which had come out of left field, but it hadn’t made her any more ready for it. No matter how sorry she felt and how she communicated that to him, he still tried and seemed increasingly bitter toward her responses each time. 

She’d feared something similar from Wyll, but with his new devilish appearance courtesy of Mizora’s punishment for his refusal to kill Karlach—which had come to pass during their trek back to the Grove—he was more doused in angst than anything down by the shoreline. Áine sighed to herself as she approached Halsin, her dour expression fading only to offer a smile and wave to Mol as she passed by. She hoped that Wyll found it in himself to join the party before it wound to a close. Of all the people who might judge him for his new appearance, she really didn’t think the refugees he’d helped so much would be among them.

“Halsin!” Áine greeted the Archdruid over the jubilant, but occasionally raucous party noise around them. She took in his empty hands and asked, “Can I grab you a drink?”

“Oh, no thank you,” he chuckled. “In truth, I rarely imbibe. The stuff goes right to my head and, before you know it, I’d be breaking into song or declaring love to the first person I lay eyes on.”

Áine laughed. “That hardly sounds like a detriment to a good party, but no pressure, of course,” she said. 

With all the other noise in the vicinity, Astarion now found Áine’s conversation to be out of earshot, only able to pick up the occasional dulcet note of her voice amongst the clamor. It was most certainly not because he’d grown accustomed to seeking out her voice. At the thought, he remembered seeing her by the fireside just a few nights back with tears streaming down her face, her fingers still positioned diligently against her lute strings. 

Astarion pulled a face and took another swallow of wine, which caused him to pull an even stronger face. Bleeding Hells, he wanted a proper vintage, but more than that he wanted to know what that tree trunk of an elf had just done to make her grin like that!

“But I digress,” Halsin was saying, “there are many grateful people here who want to spend time with you. Go on now, don’t waste a night like this talking to me. We will discuss your problem tomorrow.”

Áine frowned at both halves of his statement. “Firstly, it wouldn’t be a waste. But second, I thought you said we could run through some things once we reached the Grove. But we’re putting off the conversation again?”

Halsin frowned. “I understand your eagerness. However, it is something better discussed on a fresh morning, I think. Your parasite shows no further signs of turning before the morrow and a well-deserved night of recreation and rest awaits you.” He offered her an encouraging smile and waved her on. “Enjoy yourself. Seek out some wine before it runs dry—there are a lot of thirsty people around here.”

Yeah, no kidding, Áine thought, artfully dodging both Lae’zel’s and Gale’s eyes as she was dismissed from Halsin’s company. She trotted along toward Shadowheart’s tent, dodging a very tipsy Bex and some other well-drunk tieflings along the way. Áine couldn’t help the smile that formed on her lips at seeing everyone so happy. Even if they ran into trouble on the morrow, like Halsin had said, at least they had tonight.

“Everyone seems to be in high spirits, don’t they?” Shadowheart suggested as she drew closer, brandishing a silver goblet. “Can I tempt you?”

Áine paused heavily, suddenly uncertain of what she meant and opting for caution. “...With what?”

Shadowheart’s lips curled into an amused smile. “Wine and glorious friendship.”

“Yes, please,” Áine said, drawing a chuckle from Shadowheart. “Sorry, it’s been a minefield out there tonight. I’ve begun to err on the side of overcareful.”

“I told you that the others were firmly on the prowl,” the cleric said, pouring a goblet for Áine. “Even more true now than it was when I first said it. At least you’ve almost gone full circle at this point, only one or two more stops to make if I’ve paid appropriate attention.” Behind a sip of wine, she mumbled, “Only one of high importance though by my estimation…”

“What was that?” Áine challenged her with a laugh at how utterly smug Shadowheart looked after she lowered her goblet again. The bard took a sip of the wine she��d been gifted, her brows rising as the rich fruity notes graced her tongue. “My goodness, where did you find this?”

Shadowheart gave Áine an ambiguous look that reeked of mischief. “I may have nicked one of the vintages that Wyll stashed away in his tent,” she said. “But you’ll never get me to admit such a second time.”

Áine laughed. “Shadowheart, shame on you!”

“What?! You probably pilfered this bottle, yourself, before the little rat scurried off with it,” she pointed out, refilling her goblet with abandon. “He can’t steal every good wine he sees for himself, he has to share with the class. I’ve simply liberated a single bottle as a treat and you’re welcome for it.”

Áine couldn’t help the amused smirk that found her lips, the heady wine layering on top of the weaker blends she’d already taken that night—many of those pressed into her hands by happy attendees wanting to share their spoils—and making her head pleasantly swim. “Thank you for sharing,” Áine said with a sassy curtsey, a gesture returned by Shadowheart as the two giggled. “What did you mean by ‘only one of importance’?”

“You know what I meant,” Shadowheart said, taking a deep sip of her wine. “Unless I’ve missed you speaking to him, but I daresay I haven’t.”

“Astarion?” Áine asked and, at Shadowheart’s dubious look, she said, “I haven’t just yet. Not for any reason, I just—”

“Prefer to save the best for last?” Shadowheart suggested. Áine started to speak but ended up pursing her lips, silenced by embarrassment. The cleric grinned triumphantly. “Well, go on, what’s the concern? Are you worried he’ll join the list of people to ask you to bed tonight?”

“No!” Áine said but quickly recanted. “I mean, a little.” 

Shadowheart measured Áine’s expression before she slowly asked, “...or are you worried he won’t join that list?”

“I don’t know,” Áine admitted. “For all the reasons we discussed, this sort of thing is a big deal for me in ways that usually just inconvenience others. And while I felt guilty turning down Lae’zel, Karlach, and Gale, I—”

“Karlach, too?” Shadowheart asked, surprised. “I must’ve missed that conversation.”

“She was the first I said ‘hello’ to tonight,” Áine said, “and she was very kind about it. Like you were.”

“That should be the standard, you know,” Shadowheart pointed out. “Anything less than respect shouldn’t be tolerated.”

“Do you know how many people I would have had to ‘not tolerate’ if I followed that rule?” Áine sighed. “And that isn’t a ‘oh look at me, people want to have sex with me’ sort of brag, it’s just the uncomfortable truth.”

Shadowheart frowned. “I suppose. At least you don’t people-please. I would worry about you more if you did.” Áine’s heart warmed at the cleric’s protective tone. “Right, so which are you hoping for then? That he’ll ask or he won’t? Because I’m wagering he will, for whatever that’s worth.”

Áine blushed. “I truly don’t know. I suppose I’ll know if he suggests something,” she said. “That’s all to say if he even does. Lae’zel had an eye on him earlier, so who knows? He may have plans by the time I end up talking to him.”

“You’re counting on that, aren’t you?” Shadowheart asked suddenly. “Because it’s easier than facing the decision yourself.”

“You’re alarmingly observant when you’re drinking,” Áine remarked. She sighed. “It’s all been tension so far and it’s been…nice. I’ve never been interested in someone like this before and I’m afraid I’ll mess it up. By what I’m like as a person, as a partner, or by my actions in the moment. By doubting myself and the truth of my feelings.”

Shadowheart studied Áine, taking a deep breath and releasing it in a sigh. “Far be it from me to encourage you toward that rakish vampire—and, believe me, I don’t believe his intentions to be pure regardless of who he associates with—but if one of you is to ‘ruin’ whatever you have going on, it will not be you. And if you do then so be it,” she said, shrugging. She swirled her wine around her goblet, looking at its dark currents thoughtfully. “In my experience, the regret we feel at not seeking something out is stronger than that which we feel at seeking something out and finding it wasn’t what we thought.” 

Shadowheart’s gaze lifted back to Áine’s. “All that to say, at least you’ll know if you try. But do be careful. I am a cleric after all and can fashion a stake in mere minutes if need be.”

Áine gave her a tender smile and collected Shadowheart into a hug. “Thank you.”

Shadowheart hugged the bard close, resting her chin against her shoulder and gently patting her back. Over Áine’s shoulder, she caught Astarion’s eye who was attempting a surreptitious glance their way. He froze when they locked eyes, at least until Shadowheart gave him a teasing wag of her brows while she still held the object of his interest in her arms. 

Astarion scoffed and looked away with a roll of his eyes, causing Shadowheart to chuckle. Áine felt the movement of her chest against her own and asked, “What is it?”

“Oh, nothing,” Shadowheart said as they parted, sipping her wine. “Here, have one for the road,” she added as she topped off Áine’s goblet. “And, again…be careful. But also enjoy yourself.”

Shyly, Áine smiled and inclined her head in thanks for the advice and the wine. Sipping from her goblet as she turned to head back into the fray, Áine’s eyes wandered the party, but they of course settled in a predictable spot. Astarion’s vibrant crimson eyes caught hers the moment she did, snaring her attention as wholly as ever and affirming that she would indeed have to face whatever would end up surfacing between them that night. Perhaps nothing would—but the possibility of “something” unnerved and electrified her at once.

Clutching the goblet from Shadowheart in her palm like a lifeline, Áine crossed the distance to where Astarion stood waiting, contemplating his bottle and the wine within until she stood before him. “Good evening so far?” Áine wondered, measuring what was gone from the bottle he held to try to determine that.

“It is now,” he said, smooth as ever. Áine gave him a scolding look but couldn’t keep the smile from her lips. Astarion smirked and commented, “You know, I never pictured myself as a hero. Never thought I’d be the one they’d toast for saving so many lives. And now that I’m here…” 

Áine watched him pause to take a long sip of his wine before he finished his thought. “I hate it. This is awful.”

The bard laughed. “Surely it can’t be so bad? We did a good thing.”

“The tally of lives didn’t change much—a few goblins killed to save a few tieflings,” he said with a shrug. “And what do I get for all my hard work? A pat on the head and vinegar for wine.”

“Oh stop, you got to kill a horde of goblins, too,” Áine chastised him, her tone affectionate despite her scolding. “And the wine is not that bad.”

Astarion’s brows rose and he challenged her by offering the bottle. Áine rolled her eyes and shook her head, but took the bottle in her free hand, tilting it back to take a sip. When a rich, dry red wine hit her tongue, she looked at the bottle and then at Astarion, bewildered at how he could find anything wrong with the blend.

He mistook her baffled expression for distaste. “See what I mean? Awful!” 

Áine licked her lips, a motion that Astarion followed with keen interest, as she looked back down at the bottle. “It tastes relatively normal to me, but perhaps our palates differ,” she suggested, although she was wondering why he was trying to drink wine in the first place. He’d told her and Gale once in passing conversation that any food he’d tried since turning tasted wrong on the tongue, wouldn’t wine have the same result? Maybe he wasn’t ready to accept that yet. “Try mine?” Áine offered instead, holding out her goblet. She decided to withhold that it was an expensive vintage for now until he tried it. For science, of course.

Astarion took the goblet she offered, his wintry touch ghosting across her warm skin and, she thought, lingering a bit longer than usual. When she stole a glance at his face, she found him watching her with an intensity that caught her off-guard. Without breaking eye contact, he tried the wine she offered him, and she saw his throat work again before he said, “I admit it is better, but still leaves much to be desired.”

Áine wasn’t going to be the one to tell him that wine wouldn’t taste good to him anymore if even these decadent reds didn’t pique his interest. She didn’t have a death wish. 

Astarion handed her back her goblet, politely refusing the bottle when she tried to return it to him, giving up on that one completely. He sighed loudly. “All I want is a little fun. Is that so much to ask?” he griped.

Áine was occasionally sipping the wine from her goblet, resting her lips against the rim even when she wasn’t. The cool metal was a helpful grounding tool. She snorted a little, glancing toward the festivities taking place all around them. “And what do you consider ‘a little fun’?” she asked. Here it was—either he’d suggest something akin to what everyone else seemed to be hungry for that night or he’d flip her expectations and crave something else. Violence, perhaps. Mischief, most certainly. 

“By the Hells. Sex, my dear. A night of passion.” 

Shadowheart had been right. Áine paused heavily, her lips still brushing the rim of her goblet as she looked up at him and studied his expression. He had his rake mask on, not a crack in it to be seen. 

While she introspected a little at how his suggestion made her feel, she said aloud, “Ah, I see,” with a soft laugh. As somewhat of a test, Áine nodded toward Lae’zel’s tent and informed him, “I was talking to Lae’zel a little bit ago and she mentioned having half a mind to seek you out for some extracurricular. For what that’s worth.”

Astarion’s brows rose. “Is that what you want?”

Now it was Áine’s turn to be confused. “What do you mean? You said you wanted sex.”

“Yes, and you’ve suggested that I seek out Lae’zel, or let her seek me out,” Astarion said. “Is that what you’d prefer I do?”

Áine frowned at him. “I want you to do what you want to do. Always. Consider it a heads-up, if nothing else.”

There was that assertion of autonomy again. Astarion didn’t know how to handle her when conversations took this turn. He hardly knew how to handle himself and he hated that feeling. The rest of it, he craved. Dangerously. However, Astarion also craved needling her a little. “Right, now who’s jealous?” he accused with a crooked smirk.

Áine gave him a sideways look that reeked of disapproval, which only egged him on. “I am not jealous,” she declared, but she was lying and they both knew it. Instead of continuing to persist, she grumbled into her goblet and took a deep gulp of wine.

He watched her intently, gauging every microexpression in her pretty face as he said, “What if what I want is a night with you?” Her face visibly warmed over and she didn’t speak right away. He found himself filling the silence when she didn’t. “I know, me and everyone else this eve. It wouldn’t take my specialized range of hearing to guess that you’ve had such a proposition at every stop tonight.”

“Shadowheart didn’t ask,” she supplied, her lips pursing as she realized he was pretty much correct about the others. “Wyll didn’t either.”

“Shadowheart doesn’t surprise me. She already took her shot,” Astarion commented, his unanswered question hanging painfully in the air while they chitchatted around it. “Wyll does surprise me though.”

Áine shrugged and inclined her head back toward the beach. “He’s having a time. When I checked on him earlier, he wasn’t keen on joining the festivities. He’s still adjusting to his new look and he was wary of the tieflings seeing him like that.”

Astarion scoffed. “Was he, now? Oh, boo-hoo, ‘no one at the tiefling party knows how hard it is to have horns,’ now that makes complete sense,” he remarked.

“Shush,” Áine half-cackled, giving him a playful shove. “Gods, that’s not funny. You’re positively evil for making me laugh at that.”

Astarion smirked. “An absolute villain, I know,” he bantered back. He’d stepped closer to Áine after she’d given him her little shove and he was comfortably cloaked in her bouquet—the delicious, tempting scent of her blood combined with soap and mint leaves. “Did you want Wyll to ask you?” he asked, dropping his voice to a low husk.

Áine shook her head, having to tilt her head back some to meet his eyes when he was this close. “No. I was relieved that he didn’t,” she said honestly. The quiet stretched again, and then apropos of his earlier question, Áine finally gave him a slow nod. “I would say yes, by the way.”

Astarion was a little slower on the uptake, unsure if she was referencing back to his original question or if he was experiencing a form of wishful thinking. “Yes to what, dearest?”

Áine swallowed against a suddenly tight throat and replied, “To you. If what you wanted…was me.”

Astarion gave her a rakish smile. “But we’re not jealous, are we?”

Áine gave him a hard look in return. “Don’t make me change my mind.”

“Fine, fine,” the vampire said with a chuckle, raising his hands in surrender. “Once things quiet down… Once everyone’s asleep, we’ll find each other.” Astarion nodded toward the far side of their camp. “The little glade we set up in when we last passed through here isn’t far from here… That should give us plenty of privacy to…get to know each other better.” 

Still a little timid, Áine nodded back. She was nervous, but it was a nice sort of nervous. One might even call it “butterflies.” Gods, she was deep in it already. However, she’d decided she would follow what her gut told her to do this time and when he’d suggested that he wanted to spend the night with her, the thrill that had hummed through her bones and the heat that had warmed her from her belly to her heart told her all she needed to know. She wanted to know what happened next for them.

To him, she said, “I suppose I’ll see you there, then.”

Astarion smiled, the expression perfectly dashing and sensual as he murmured, “Indeed, you will, my love… Indeed, you will.”

His voice and the words he wrapped within it did funny things to her heart and Áine gave him a look before that look crumbled into a soft laugh and a smile. “Right,” she murmured, handing him her goblet. “I leave you the ‘still much to be desired but better’ wine and will now make myself scarce.”

Astarion accepted her offering and raised the goblet to her as she stepped away. In truth, the wine she’d offered him was as acrid as what was in the bottle she took with her, but it was less to choke down, he supposed. Someday perhaps he would admit to himself that wine was as much off the table as any other consumable that wasn’t blood, but today was not that day. 

He watched his little bard find her way to Alfira, greeting the other woman with a fond hug and finding herself immediately furnished with a borrowed flute. Subconsciously, he rotated the goblet against the press of his lower lip until he found where she’d rested the metal against hers, her warmth still lingering there. Astarion closed his lips over the spot, disguising his fixation with a sip of wine that nearly drained what remained in the goblet. 

As his eyes traced Áine’s movements—her dancing while she and Alfira performed, the rise and fall of her breasts as she portioned her breath between the flute and her steps, every time her hair caught the light of the fire or the moon peeking over the canopy, the joyful sparkle in her eyes that he found himself hoping he represented one small part of—he took a moment to collect himself. 

Astarion, at no fault to himself or his allure, had been almost certain that she would give him the polite “no” she’d delivered around the camp several times already that evening. He’d had competition from their allies, even from some of the tieflings, and even though he knew he was the obviously correct choice amongst them all, she’d still picked him of her own volition. He was positively preening, but he was also wary. Wary of how easily this singular woman’s “yes” had set him aflame, the “heart of a schoolboy” feeling anew yet again, and also how the personal stock he was developing in winning her over might cause him to make a mistake. 

This is a transaction, he reminded himself firmly. Sex was always a transaction, regardless of feeling. He’d learned that swift and soon and had been reminded of it every day since that first time allowed out of the kennels to prowl the streets and lure back a prize he’d deliver to his master. His former master. 

Astarion’s jaw set. This was hardly any different. He’d chosen her as a target, an easy one at that, and would follow through on executing his plan as he’d originally intended. The only difference was that he’d get to keep this prize and its benefits of protection. He’d never have to hunt, to lie, to bed for another’s gain again.

He was in control of this situation, he reminded himself as he returned his pensive stare to its subject, teaching himself to dismiss the things that transfixed him. He wouldn’t be controlled by her or by his feelings for her, he wouldn’t be tricked into a vulnerable position, into servitude, into capture by the tangential side-effects of physical intimacy. Astarion brought those additional walls down around his mind and heart, remembering his foolish attachments from those first few victims he took in Cazador’s name. The guilt, the heartache, the shreds of hope—all of it had simply added to his misery in those sparse stone dungeon rooms after he’d delivered those first ill-chosen innocent souls to their fate.

Misery would have no company from him. Never again.

It occurred to him later, while slipping off his shirt under the cloak of shadow just past the trees circling the clearing, that despite telling himself that he was in full control of the entire situation, the entire seduction, that he was awfully anxious for that to be true in its entirety.

Astarion chalked it up to how much of his guaranteed personal safety relied on this and also from the mild pressure he’d felt start to build by being the partner Áine had chosen out of several available options. It was different than seducing someone in a tavern or from a street corner. He wouldn’t be taking her to her death afterward—he’d see her the next day, travel on as usual, and likely even sleep with her again at some point if she asked or he felt a need to renew his “contract,” so to speak. And he had no doubt she’d ask. But it was something quite different to know that this encounter wouldn’t be the last he had with someone.

He worried the inside of his lower lip with the edge of one fang, firmly pushing down the anxiety rising in him that made as little sense as the foreign symptoms of desire that he’d only seen in others who looked upon him for ages but hadn’t felt within his own body for centuries. 

Astarion grumbled at his physical betrayals, setting his well-worn and oft-repaired ruffled shirt down on the grass in front of him as he sifted through his mind for some of his best lines, the ones he felt most comfortable delivering and also a few with a good track record for success. “I’ve wanted you from the first moment I laid eyes on you,” was always a strong choice. And it was a line he’d used a thousand times over as well. That would help him numb himself a bit and dissociate from what was soon to come. 

Or so he hoped, anyway. Maybe she’d changed her mind or passed out after all the wine and dancing had taken their toll on her.

He’d no sooner thought that than he heard familiar, hesitant footsteps working their way from the direction of the campsite. Astarion’s mouth twitched with a faint smile that echoed a feeling of triumph, of anticipation…and of something bittersweet. He wasn’t a monster, after all. He did feel a touch guilty for reeling her in like this. The poor thing was infatuated, just as he’d intended for her to be, but he knew quite well he’d played the rake as well as ever. Of course she was entranced by his practiced façade. He’d yet to meet someone he’d tried to seduce who didn’t end up under the spell of its glamor.

It is, after all, all you’re good for.

Astarion dropped his head forward, wincing at the voice in his head reciting something Cazador had told him so many times that Astarion had begun to hear it in his own voice, telling himself the truth of things. He heard the footsteps nearby when they crossed the edge of the clearing, and then when they stopped, too. 

He shelved the despair that clawed its way forward with incrementally more success in each attempt to overtake him again. There was no Cazador in this scenario, there would never be again. The only person he needed to worry about for the moment was growing evermore hesitant just shy of his hiding place and would retreat to camp if he didn’t show himself soon.

Roughly, lovelessly, Astarion rubbed himself through the taut leather of his pants, his jaw tightening as familiar nausea seeped into the pit of his stomach. He winced as his own touch turned harsher, hateful even. His mind recited old lines, ones he was soon to use on a surely unsuspecting Áine and ones he used on himself to ensure he would perform as he must. Remember to tell them how much you want this, he ran through in his head, his palm still grinding against his cock until his anatomy was bullied into arousal. Now stay hard until she finishes. This is your payment. This is a trade. Remember that and remember to smile.

One shuddering breath later, Astarion donned the mask as professionally as ever, all traces of self-loathing, of pain, of grief for what he’d lost neatly leeched from his exterior, nestled like a leaden ball behind his bared chest, where his heart should’ve beat. And then he stepped out into the moonlight.

Áine was still there but looked as though she was just considering heading back. She stilled her step when he showed himself and he watched her eyes trace down his torso, across his muscular arms, before they snapped back to meet his. She reminded him of a fawn, which was a far cry from the hellion he knew she could be—it made seeing her like this that much more new, that much more a secret between them. He’d be gentle with this prey, Astarion told himself, eager to hang onto this vision rather than the more dangerous alternative of looking at her and seeing her. If this endured, he would remain fully in control. 

“There you are,” he greeted her, remembering to smile. “I’ve been waiting.” Astarion inclined his head as he approached her, his gaze trailing languidly across her clothed body, noting where the fabric clung to a curve, where it draped across her toned limbs. 

He also kept a speculative eye on her expressions and how she reacted to him, body and words. Her attraction to him was consistent in how it gave her away—he could feel her heat already from where she stood, just at arm’s length, and hear her heart flutter first in nerves and then in wanting. Astarion noticed that the more of this he took in, the less nauseous he seemed to feel, perhaps because his attention was elsewhere. Áine smiled at him, either what he offered or what he’d said pleasing to her.         

Emboldened, Astarion added, his voice a calculated, sensual husk, “Waiting since the moment I set eyes on you… Waiting to have you.”

Something about that didn’t land. Áine gave him a peculiar look although her smile lingered and he wasn’t sure what had tipped her off. He’d heard himself give a flawless delivery of a line that had made many a man, maiden, all weak at the knees. 

Áine smirked as she fiddled with the ties of her shirt, rolling the tiny knotted ends between her fingertips. “Before or after the headbutt?” she asked. “Or perhaps because of the headbutt?”

Shit.

Astarion pursed his lips, already mentally lashing himself and working on a recovery. Of course she’d found that funny rather than sexy—he hadn’t accounted for how different their meeting had been from the others he’d scouted. They were no sensual brush of hands in a tavern near closing, no whispered word against the ear whose echo carried only to an inn room door, no loveless meeting of eyes in a darkened street where the fire of carnal favors were the only ones with light on offer. 

They were a dagger to the throat, an offer for companionship, a roll in the dirt, and yes, even a headbutt when he hadn’t let her go the first time she’d asked. They were a quiet conversation fireside, a snarky comment and an answering laugh, a sometimes-bard and sometimes-swordswoman with a sneak-thief archer protecting her flank, an injury and a salve in perfect alternation thus far.   

The part of the salve this night it seemed, Áine smiled at him, the crescent of her lips warm and inviting and putting the moon above them to shame. “I could always replicate our meeting,” she offered. “You don’t have me yet, you know.”

“Don’t I?” Astarion challenged her, a little unnerved by her now. She was turning the tables by flirting with him, by seducing him. He couldn’t recall ever being seduced. Never needed to be, really. And he didn’t need to be now either, but it felt…nice to have her eyes on him, to be met with a—he cursed himself for even thinking it—partner in this sense. There was no power struggle either, it seemed, which was also new. His earlier attempts to keep his mind away from Áine as a person rather than something to hunt and catch were failing one after another and the way she spoke to him felt kind and playful. She spoke to him like an equal as much as she ever had. “You’re here, after all. And…I don’t think you want to talk.”

“No?” Áine bantered back seamlessly. Perhaps his slip had been to his benefit. She seemed somehow more relaxed, more interested than before, even when his little lines had been working. What a strange one you are, he thought, still studying her as she asked, “What do I want, then?”

He was back on track. “I think,” Astarion purred, stepping closer as his hand traced the air around her, not yet moving to touch her, “you want to be known.” He smiled at her meaningfully. “To be tasted.”

Áine’s lower lip caught between her teeth. He could feel the heat coming off her skin as her blush deepened, he could smell her desire and it could only rival the bouquet of her life’s blood that he’d come to recognize without question. An alien sensation coursed through him and went straight to his cock where it still pressed against the seamed leather of his trousers. It jarred him and, were he any less broken, he may have thought that had been his own first taste of desire. But Astarion felt nothing when it came to sex. He’d been broken of that long ago. It hadn’t even taken a year.

She interrupted his internalized confusion when she turned the tables on him yet again. “And what do you want?” Áine asked, her voice hushed into a murmur that sent a shiver up Astarion’s spine. No, it was the air. A wayward breeze, he corrected viciously. She wasn’t allowed this sort of influence on him, this was what he meant to do to her. And clearly was, but…had he ever been asked what he wanted? Especially on the precipice of carnal pleasure? 

What did he want?

His hesitation did not breach his mask. “What do any of us want? Pleasure,” he reasoned simply, perfectly present while his thoughts careened down forbidden paths. The best he could do was block out his wayward mind, focus on what he had complete control over at last—his body. And yet wasn’t he just repeating its most habitual motions? Now wasn’t the time to question himself. “Yours. Mine. Our collective ecstasy.”

Astarion could see the way her eyes grew heavy with lust, the cadence of his voice purposeful and near-hypnotic. He could see her beginning to bend—he simply needed her to break. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? To lose yourself in me?”

Part of him wanted her to say “no.” Not to refuse him, but to tell him that wasn’t what she wanted. To tell him that this was somehow more than just a bit of dissociation, at least for him, more than what he logically knew it really was. And she did see something in his eyes, or so it seemed to him, that made her hesitate. 

Yet as different as she was from anyone and everyone before her, Astarion artfully derailed her train of thought with the simple gesture of skimming his fingers up the length of her arm, her skin like summer against his icy touch. Áine leaned in toward him, her lashes fluttered, and a soft sigh eased her lips apart. It was all the answer he needed, the only one he was comfortable receiving despite all his contrary wishes. Astarion smiled and whispered, “I thought so.”

Áine’s eyes remained conflicted despite their lack of focus and Astarion relied on his distractions winning out before he could discover what had her faltering. He couldn’t stop to wonder if he’d let something slip through his otherwise carefully curated façade. It didn’t matter. 

His fingertips trailed up her sleeve, tracing the sweep of her collarbone until he reached the ties of her shirt, and his carefully tended nails found purchase on one of the knots she toyed with. Astarion’s eyes flickered up to meet hers as he tugged the tie loose, taking the hem of her shirt and lifting it over her head. This was a procedure. It was practiced. He’d help her undress and then he, with her help if she preferred, would disrobe. Then he’d simply initiate with a kiss, lay her down in the grass, and uphold his part of the unspoken bargain. It was the most repeated pattern in his lifetime. All he had to do…

Astarion’s regimented thoughts, the rehearsed little moves he’d run through in his mind, all sputtered to a halt the moment he let her shirt flutter to the grass and he laid eyes on her naked body again. He’d counted on having once already seen her topless down in the river that night, thinking that this at least would have no way to distract him again. And yet the sight of her lavender skin, star-shaped scars, and perfect, pert dusky breasts all highlighted by the celestial landscape above them left him stunned all over again. 

Luckily—or perhaps not—for him, Áine was too busy minding her own clothing to notice him staring, his mask forgotten for an instant. She fumbled with her belt with nervous hands until he reached out and hooked a finger in the strap, pulling her toward him and catching her parted lips in a kiss when she looked up. Nimbly, he unfastened her buckle and untied the laces of her trousers all while his tongue explored her warm, yielding mouth. 

He felt her fingers at his waistband and smirked against her lips. “Eager little thing, aren’t you,” he mumbled and claimed her mouth again before she could snap back, causing her to whimper against his tongue and fangs instead. Astarion barely swallowed the growl that rose in his throat at this new sound of hers, surprised at himself and how tightly wound he felt. 

She succeeded in loosening his trousers but he snagged her persistent hands in his own before she could go any further. Astarion placed Áine’s hands on his shoulders and reached down to get rid of his own pants, suddenly anxious at the feeling of someone else’s hands touching his skin, his clothes, trying to strip him down to touch his cock. Memories of pawing, grabbing, chafing touches from rough, hungry hands seeped in like a sickness and he tensed against the intrusive tactile flashbacks. 

Astarion broke their kiss and swallowed thickly, opening his eyes to look at the woman before him and remind himself precisely where he was and what was happening outside his tortured mind. He could feel Áine’s hands twitch against his shoulders, but they stayed firmly where he’d put them. Trusting her to resist her obvious desire to touch him, Astarion focused on finishing the removal of his trousers and then hers thereafter before scooping her up into his arms. 

He cradled her ass in his hands and backed her against a tree, kissing her again. She kissed him back, harder and more passionately this time, and he readily followed her lead for the moment as he felt her legs hook around his hips and draw him in toward her heat. He punished her mouth with his, cursing her warmth, her intoxicating scent, her beautiful body, her kindness, all of it straight to Avernus. She was far from his first warm body and yet she still felt like a first as he smoothed his hands over her thighs, unable to help the quiet growl that surfaced from his throat this time with her satin skin laid open and bare against his palms. He felt her shiver against him, her arms tightening around his shoulders as her back arched, pressing her body needily against his while they devoured each other as if starving. 

This would get messy quickly if he didn’t check himself. He hadn’t promised an impassioned, tortured lover, after all, he’d promised the artful, cunning seducer. The patient wolf, the beguiling rake. Besides that, he couldn’t comprehend still how the first could even be happening. Astarion had warred with himself throughout every step of putting his plans for her, for them, into motion and yet it was all coming to a head with the delirium he found himself exposed to now. Everything he’d thought would resolve itself when he finally slept with her was just intensifying with each second that ticked by. As if to prove his point, she impatiently squirmed against him and he very nearly took her on the spot.

Astarion circled an arm around her waist, holding her still as he reached between her legs, finding her plenty hot and wet for him to get this wrapped up. The tiny moan that escaped her when he touched her went straight to his now rock-hard cock. Áine threatened his self-control in a way that terrified him. It was the polar opposite of the way Cazador’s power over him had terrified him, but it terrified him all the same. She made him feel as if he’d come apart from her slightest touch. A lack of control, to him, in any form was unwanted, and more frightening still was realizing that some part of him wanted her to render him helpless. It went against every single thing he’d sworn to himself during his imprisonment in the last two centuries and everything he’d sworn to himself since stepping off that Nautiloid.

Astarion took her down to the grass, allowing himself to memorize and savor her despite his fear of what she may be capable of with him. Áine met his gaze and a flash of consideration entered her beautifully lust-laden eyes before she tilted her head back and bared her neck for him. Astarion’s eyes flickered between her face and her neck, his throat beginning to burn with the rest of him as he weighed her offer if it was truly an offer. 

As if answering his thoughts, Áine nodded and temptation won out. Astarion buried his face against her neck, running his tongue along her pulse before he bit her at the same time he positioned himself to slide into her warm, wet cunt. 

The instant he did, any semblance of control he had, he lost.

Astarion maintained his clarity for the sake of not bleeding his lover dry, but the rest of his body acted with abandon. He found a rhythm between their hips, angling himself to pump against her inner walls that already clenched around him with every thrust. Swallowing the mouthful of blood he’d taken, he licked her wound closed and concentrated on his thrusts, gratified when her little moans became trembling, barely controlled mewls and her legs tightened around his hips. 

Astarion was so focused on bringing her to her peak that he hardly realized he was reaching his for the first time with someone else. He could force his body into anything—he’d learned that without room for doubt over the years—and had sorted out how to perfectly fake an orgasm if needed. Not that the vast majority of those he bedded cared whether or not he came. It was something he was so unused to monitoring during sex that when it hit him, it hit him harder than he could’ve thought possible.

As Áine muffled a cry against the back of her hand, her body shaking under him as she came, Astarion suddenly felt himself go over the edge with her, gripping her tightly as pleasure ripped through him, a quavering groan that he just barely managed to bite down rising in his throat as he flooded her with his seed. They both shivered through aftershocks in each other’s arms, but through the mind-numbing euphoria, something else resurfaced in Astarion.

That guilt again. For ever thinking of this as a chore, like something he had to do to ensure his safety. For every time he’d squashed what he felt while touting their match as something real and normal and without deception. For setting Áine up to wind up with nothing but his broken, worthless, rotten soul at the finish line when he’d wordlessly promised so much more. 

For not being able to give her something real, no matter how desperately he now realized he wanted to.

Next chapter: Chapter 11, "Old Scars"