#I thought my gender was girl+ sort of deal

[lightblueminecraftorchid]

oh no

[tgcg]

part 2 of something specific

CG: I’M GOING TO NEED TO WATCH THROUGH IT AGAIN TO REALLY HONE DOWN WHAT I THINK OF IT, BUT FUCK IT, I MIGHT AS WELL SHARE MY THOUGHTS NOW SINCE WE’RE FRESH OFF OF WATCHING IT.

CG: SO, THEY’RE ACTUALLY A REALLY FASCINATING EXAMPLE OF RED ROMANCE. I’D GO SO FAR AS TO SAY VERY SUBVERSIVE OF ALTERNIAN UNDERSTANDINGS OF THE SORT, COMPARED TO WHAT YOU’D USUALLY SEE IN FICTIONAL MEDIA. IT’S LEVELS ABOVE THE TYPE OF DYNAMICS I WOULD TYPICALLY SEE IN MY NOVELS, DISREGARDING THE QUALITY OF VACILLATIONS AND YOUR QUOTE-ENQUOTE “POLYAMORY” PRESENT. BECAUSE SAKURA’S POSITION IN THIS IS PRACTICALLY POINTLESS, BUT I DIGRESS.

CG: ACTUALLY — THAT WAS KIND OF FUCKED UP, BY THE WAY. WHY IS SHE WRITTEN SO POORLY?

TG: remember when i told you about misogyny

CG: I WILL NEVER FUCKING GET THAT. OUR MOST POWERFUL FIGURES WERE GENERALLY GIRLS. HOW THAT TRANSLATED SO FUCKING TERRIBLY IS BEYOND ME!

CG: AND HOW THE SHIT DID THE UNIVERSE *I* HAD A DIRECT HAND IN CREATING END UP BEING SO MIND-BOGGLINGLY BACKWARDS ABOUT ROMANCE?

CG: DID NOT EVEN AN ERRANT TRICKLE OF MY INFLUENTIAL THINKPAN OOZE MAKE IT THROUGH THERE? AT ALL?

TG: not even a droplet my man we decided to be equally anal about other stupid shit i guess

CG: NO KIDDING!

CG: ANYWAYS.

TG: if yall managed to get through that door and reign supreme over the human race for lip smackin eternity you know mens and womens would be macking on each other in various gender arrangements with gleeful wild abandon 

TG: itd be a goddamn utopia

CG: FUCKING EXACTLY! BUT INSTEAD I’M HERE. DOING THIS. WITH A GOD, UNIVERSE PENDING. INSTEAD OF BEING A GOD REIGNING OVER A UNIVERSE MYSELF.

CG: *ANYWAYS*!

CG: THEY START OUT WITH A RIVALRY, SURE, BUT THERE’S ACTUALLY NOTHING BLACK ABOUT IT. THEIR FEELINGS FOR EACH OTHER ARE STRICTLY POSITIVE, IF HIDDEN BEHIND A MORE AGGRESSIVE FACADE. THE VIOLENCE OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP BOTH COMES FROM THE SOCIETY THEY WERE RAISED INTO, AND SOME OF THEIR MAJOR CHARACTER FLAWS AND INSECURITIES. NARUTO IS FIERCELY DEFENSIVE OF ANYONE WHO JOINS HIS CIRCLE BECAUSE HE’S DESPERATE FOR CONNECTIONS, AND REFUSES TO LOSE THEM AT ANY COST EVEN IF THEY LEAVE SUPPOSEDLY OF THEIR OWN ACCORD. SASUKE SEPARATES HIMSELF FROM THE PEOPLE HE LOVES OUT OF FEAR – AND DESIRE FOR REVENGE AGAINST HIS BROTHER CONVINCING HIM THIS IS NECESSARY.

CG: LIKE, EVEN WITHIN THE FIRST MAJOR ARC IN THE LAND OF WAVES YOU CAN SEE THAT THEY CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER SO DEEPLY THAT SASUKE WOULD DIRECTLY SACRIFICE HIMSELF AND HIS POTENTIAL FOR NARUTO’S. AND BELIEVING SASUKE TO BE DEAD IS THE FIRST CATALYST TO NARUTO’S POWERS BEING RELEASED. THAT IS *REALLY* EXTREME. ESPECIALLY BY TROLL STANDARDS, BUT I UNDERSTAND KILLING PEOPLE IS A MUCH FUCKING LARGER DEAL PSYCHOLOGICALLY FOR HUMANS. THAT KIND OF REACTION TO DEATH WOULD ONLY BE RESERVED FOR A CURRENT OR POTENTIAL QUADRANTMATE… AND IS OTHERWISE ONLY EXPRESSED BY TROLLS WITH DISEASES.

TG: oh yeah like the friendship disease right

CG: UGH.

[tip-top-cloud-surfer]

The Danger Zone (Part 12) - Hangman

Pairing: Hangman / Fem!Bradshaw!Reader | OC

Word Count: 4.3k

This work, all my works, and my entire blog are 18+ ONLY. MINORS ARE NOT WELCOME HERE

Warnings: Unplanned Pregnancy; Military Inaccuracies; Brief and Not Really Explicit Sexual Content; Excessive Fluff; Use of "You," No Use of Y/N, No Set Physical Description

Summary: You and Jake take a new step in your relationship.

Series Master List

Master List

Jake sat across from Javy out on Javy’s back porch. Phoenix, you, and Emma were out together doing something that Jake was sure had to do with the baby, and leaving Jake and Javy to have a quiet afternoon to catch up between themselves. 

“You still don’t know the baby’s gender then?” Javy asked, causing Jake to nod. 

“She wanted to wait, and I didn’t mind.”

“But you have an idea, don’t you?” Javy prodded, knowing Jake as he did. 

“Yeah, I think that the baby will be healthy and happy.” Tapping his fingers on the table, Jake added, “But I sort of—and you cannot tell her this—want it to be a girl.”

“You want a girl?” Javy repeated, not looking surprised. 

“I’d be very happy with a boy. But I feel like a girl, who takes after her mom and looks like her mom, that’s what I keep picturing in my head.” Scratching his chin, Jake looked over at Javy. “The more that kid takes after their mom, the better.”

“How is the future Mrs. Seresin doing anyway?” Javy teased, leaning back in his seat. 

“She’s glowing these days, Javy. I swear. She’s absolutely glowing. And she says that the baby is getting more active. Nothing that I can feel yet, but they’re moving around in there. Mostly at night, which I can tell is going to annoy her eventually, but she’s just so happy every time she can feel the baby. And I mean I can see her bump getting bigger every week. I started taking photos of her so that we can track her growth. And I don’t know what it is but when I’m right next to her, I just feel the need to touch her bump and hold it and just be there.”

“Look at you,” Javy chuckled, shaking his head. “You’re smiling more than ever. You’ve got a photo from the ultrasound in your cockpit and in your locker. You spend almost every lunch break calling her. You’re always rushing home to see her.” Javy laughed to himself again. “You’ve gone soft, Jake.” 

“Fuck off, Javy,” Jake sighed without malice. 

“It’s a good look for you,” Javy defended himself. “I mean, you’re the guy who got his callsign for being selfish, Jake.”

“Yeah, thanks to my kid’s uncle.”

“He’s still not over it?” Javy guessed, reaching for his beer bottle. 

“He’ll never get over it,” Jake scoffed with a sense of finality. “Because he’s an idiot who thinks that I took advantage of her and that I’ll do something to hurt or upset her and the baby soon.” Rolling his eyes, Jake added, “He’d probably celebrate if we broke up.”

“I don’t think he’d celebrate . . . in front of her,” Javy added after a moment of thought. 

“He can fuck off for all I care. He’s not getting in between the two of us or our family. If he actually cares about his sister, he’d back off.”

“Has he at least reduced his attitude?”

“He never says anything in front of her. I’m pretty sure that Emma and or Penny would actually drop kick him if he did. And he’s not a complete moron. He doesn’t want to stress her out.” Jake took a sip of his beer. “So, he’s just an asshole when she’s not around.”

“I guess that’s an improvement.”

“Barely. I’m not going to deal with this shit when the baby’s old enough to hear his bullshit and sense the tension between the two of us. I mean, what if the baby overheard him saying shit about me? I’d fucking kill him, Javy, I’m telling you that right now. If he wants to be an uncle to my kid, he’s going to have to get over whatever stick is lodged up his ass.”

“Have you talked to her about it?”

“No. I don’t want to stress her out or pick a fight. It’s going really well right now, Javy, and I’ll never forgive myself if I fuck it up over her idiot brother.”

“She’s aware of it, I’m sure. Her and Nat talk about it, I think. And Emma.” Javy rubbed his cheek as an amused smirk tugged at his lips. “My money’s on Penny to kick his ass honestly.”

“I’d pay to see that.”

“So, you guys are talking about the future?”

“Every day,” Jake agreed. “She wants everything sorted out—or as much as possible—before she gets too far into her third trimester.”

“What do you mean by everything?”

“Getting things put in both of our names so that if something happens to one of us, the other can take care of everything and the baby. Getting our wills updated. Discussing who would take care of the baby if her family’s history repeats itself.”

“And how is that going?”

“We were looking for a house because with the cheaper loans I would get, it just makes more financial sense, and we’ll need the space. And as for the baby, it’s a little more complicated right now because we’re not married, but we’re working on it.”

“Can I make an observation?”

“Sure.”

“Why aren’t you guys just getting married?” Javy asked, causing Jake to pause. “Because a lot of this work would be done if you just signed a piece of paper at town hall. And you’d get benefits, she’d save a shit ton on medical expenses, and there’s no big fight in the hospital if something happens to one of you.” Javy added after a moment, “A huge part of why Nat and I got married was so that if a bird strike or G-LOC situation happened again, the other could actually get information from the hospital and make decisions.”

“I know,” Jake sighed, rubbing his face. “I was thinking about that.”

“I mean, I get it’s a huge commitment, but you’re already having a baby together. Getting married can’t be a bigger commitment than that.”

“Yeah, it’s not,” Jake agreed, leaning back in his seat. “I’ve been thinking about bringing it up to her.”

“Well, did you at least tell her about your family?”

“Javy—”

“—Jake, you’ve got to tell her.”

“I’m just trying to protect her.”

“Leaving her without all of the information is not protecting her, Jake, it’s setting her up for failure. At least tell her about your mother.”  

“Why my mother?”

“Because it explains a lot about you, Jake,” Javy stated, causing him to look down. “And she likes you, for some reason.” 

“Fuck off,” Jake sighed, reaching for his beer. Taking a long sip, he set the bottle down and rotated it around, lost in thought for a moment. “I’ll tell her about it. When the time’s right.”

~~~~~

You woke late on Saturday. You were never an early riser before but pregnancy made waking up early on the weekend impossible. Picking your head off of your pregnancy pillow, which Jake bought for you, you turned to see that Jake was gone, as usual. 

But when you saw a note on his pillow, you sat up. You picked it up and unfolded the paper, smiling to yourself when you saw Jake’s handwriting.

Get your rest because I made plans for us tonight. I still owe you that first date. 

- J

Practically beaming with joy, you laid back down, thinking to yourself about what Jake could have had planned for tonight. You assumed dinner, at least, but he hadn’t mentioned anything to you about where he would take you on a date. As you were rereading the note, you heard the front door open and Jake step inside. You waited for him to walk into the bedroom and smiled at him. 

“Morning. How was your run?”

“Fine. Took a new route through the park,” Jake replied, kneeling on the bed and leaning over to press a kiss to your lips. Moving your shirt out of the way, he pressed another kiss to your bump. “Any movement this morning?”

“Not yet,” you replied, running a hand through Jake’s hair as you smiled softly m. “They only start to move when it’s inconvenient for me.”

“Yeah, that’s my baby in there,” Jake joked, causing you to shake your head at him. 

“So, what are we doing later then?”

“It’s a surprise,” Jake stated, getting off of the bed. “I was thinking that we should leave here around five.”

“You’re not going to tell me anything about it?”

“Dress nicely but nothing crazy. And just make sure that you’re comfortable.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down,” you called after him as he walked into the bathroom to shower. 

“It wasn’t supposed to.”

You scoffed at his words as he closed the door. Laying down, you decided to stay in bed a little longer as Jake showered. But you sat up when you felt your baby start to move right over your bladder. It started as a little bit of a tickle and then some more discomfort and then you were shifting around, trying to find some sort of relief, and then you were frantically knocking on the door to the bathroom and letting yourself in. 

Jake turned his neck, staring at you with concern and a question on the tip of his tongue. But when he saw you making a beeline for the toilet, he had the audacity to smirk a bit. You shot him a look right back.

“The baby’s moving?” he guessed, letting the hot spray of the shower hit his chest. 

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m trying to concentrate.”

~~~~~

You checked your appearance one last time in the mirror before you grabbed your phone and walked out of the bathroom. Jake was sitting on the couch, waiting patiently for you, dressed in a nice button down tee shirt and a pair of black pants. When you stepped around the corner, he looked up and you instantly felt your cheeks warm as his expression changed and his sharp green eyes studied your figure. 

“Does the dress make my boobs pop out too much?” you asked, adjusting the strap a bit subconsciously. “Or is it too nice? Or not nice enough?”

“You look perfect,” Jake told you, standing up and sliding his phone into his back pocket. He walked over to you and grabbed your hands, pressing a soft kiss to your lips. “Ready to go?”

You nodded and Jake led you down to the car. Jake drove your car when the two of you were going somewhere because it was easier for you to get into compared to his truck. And he insisted that it was safer for you to sit in the passenger seat. 

“Where are we going?” you asked Jake, who smiled at you before turning back to the road. 

“It’s a surprise.”

“How far is it?” you asked, shifting in your seat. 

“It’s not too far.”

Jake drove a few more minutes before pulling into a long driveway. And even though you recognized the name at the entrance to the driveway, it still took you a moment to process it. 

“Why did you bring me to the place where Bradley and Emma’s wedding reception was?” you asked softly, more surprised than anything else. 

“Well, when it’s not just for hosting weddings. There’s a regular restaurant attached to it.” Jake pulled into a spot before turning off the car. “And this is where we met for the first time.” Pulling the keys out of the ignition, he turned back to you. “Is that okay?”

“Of course, it is,” you reassured him, resting a hand on his arm. “I was just surprised, that’s all.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, let’s go,” you insisted, grabbing your purse. 

The two of you walked inside and were led to your table, which just happened to be on the back patio. You could see the outdoor bar where you and Jake met for the first time from your seat. Had anyone told you that little conversation on those two stools was going to change your life forever, you never would have believed them. 

“You know, I’ve already made a list of everything I want to eat or drink after I have the baby,” you stated, flipping through the menu. 

“What are the top three?”

“Beer, salmon rolls, and pepperoni,” you listed off quickly, causing Jake to snort. 

“All in one sitting?”

“We’ll see how I’m feeling,” you mused, reaching for your water. The waiter came over and took your orders before walking off again. “Emma called me today and mentioned something about throwing a baby shower for us next month. Or a little after that.”

“Do the dads go to that?” Jake asked, causing you to shrug your shoulders. 

“I think we can just do whatever we want. I know that when one of the Kazansky kids had their baby shower, the guys went out and did something together but then they came back and everyone ate together.”

“Whatever you want, we’ll do,” Jake offered, causing you to smile. 

“Thank you. But Emma and Phoenix seem like they’ve got it handled. They said it’s returning the favor for me being their maid of honor. And I kind of agreed to let them make it all a surprise.”

“We’re not doing some crazy gender reveal thing, right?” Jake deadpanned. 

“No, I told them to not do that,” you chuckled, leaning back in your seat. Folding your hands in front of your bump, you asked, “But you’re okay with waiting still? To find out?”

“The baby’s healthy and you’re healthy and that’s all I care about,” Jake stated seriously. “And it’s not like we can control it either.”

“No, we can’t,” you agreed, nodding slowly. “But what do you think? Are we having a boy or a girl?”

“I haven’t really thought about it,” Jake lied, earning a look from you. “Alright, alright, I have. But what do you think we’re having?”

“No, because you’re just going to copy me to try and make me happy, even though I don’t care because we’re just guessing at this point and no one can do anything to change it and it doesn’t even matter at the end of the day.” Leaning forward, you added with a smile, “Just tell me, Jake.”

“I think we’re having a girl,” Jake stated quietly after a moment of thought. 

“I thought we were too, but then the obstetrician moved the monitor during the ultrasound and now I think that we’re having a boy,” you explained, causing Jake to think about it more. “Like she saw something there and moved it away before it was too obvious.”

“Maybe,” Jake agreed. “But I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

He took a sip of his drink before leaning forward with a teasing smile. You cocked an eyebrow as you buttered your slice of bread, shooting him a look right back. 

“How are you feeling now? Feel the need to walk in on me in the shower again? Because next time, you can just join me. No need to put on a show about it.”

You scoffed and tossed the crumpled up straw wrapper at Jake in retaliation. A smirk tugged at your lips as you leaned forward and lowered your voice. 

“Says the man who’s been glancing down at my chest ever since I stepped out of our bedroom.”

“I’m looking at your bump where our child is growing,” Jake insisted seriously, causing your smirk to fade and a sheepish expression to come over your face. “But, my eyes have been taking a pit stop between your bump and your eyes because that dress does make your breasts look perfect.”

You lightly kicked him under the table in retaliation, causing him to laugh. The two of you enjoyed your dinner together and talked all about your plans for the future and the baby. It was a first date on paper, but it was obvious to anyone who looked over at you that there was a long history and strong understanding between the two of you. Jake paid the tab—though you tried to grab it from him—before the two of you got up and walked out to the parking lot. 

“So, what do you think?” Jake asked as the two of you threaded your fingers together and slowly swung your hands back and forth. “Will I get a second date?”

“I’ll think about it,” you joked, leaning on Jake as you walked. 

“You’ll think about it?” Jake repeated as the two of you got closer to your car. 

“Well, it’s only the first date,” you added, shrugging your shoulders and laughing to yourself when you saw Jake’s offended look. “Maybe if you’re a decent kisser, I’ll think about it a little more.”

“Is that a challenge?” Jake asked, gently reaching up to cup your cheek. 

“It could be.”

Jake leaned down and tilted your chin up, bringing you in for a soft kiss. He started slowly, teasing you like you teased him a moment ago. And when you started to press against him, deepening the kiss, you could practically feel Jake’s smirk against your lips. Pulling back from your lips, and leaving you wanting more, Jake took a step back. 

“And my chances now?”

“I guess I can give you a second date,” you replied before grabbing Jake by the front of his shirt. 

Your lips met again and Jake rested his hand on your hips, gently backing you up against your car. He rubbed his hand over the front of your bump before raising it to cup your cheek, purposefully brushing his fingertips against the sensitive skin of the valley between your breasts. And feeling you suck in a breath and press against him further, Jake pulled your lips apart and rested his forehead against your own. 

“Any chance that we can continue this back at the apartment?” Jake whispered against your lips. 

“I’d love to,” you replied softly, before smirking to yourself. “But I can’t.”

“Why not?” Jake asked, sounding concerned.

“I have this rule,” you teased, leaning back against your car, “that I can’t sleep with a guy after the first date. It’s nothing personal, just one of my rules.”

“And if the guy already got you pregnant? Can you make an exception?”

“Hmm,” you hummed, running a hand down his chest. 

You held him in suspense for a moment, even though you honestly wouldn’t have minded if he slid your underwear to the side and done it against your car right then and there. And even though you enjoyed teasing him, you wanted him. You needed him. 

Placing your hand over his own, you offered him a genuine, loving smile. You leaned up and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. 

“Take me to bed, Jake,” you whispered to him. 

“Yes, ma’am.”

When the two of you eventually got back to your shared apartment, you let Jake pull you down the hall and into your bedroom. The two of you gently undressed each other before Jake helped you up and onto the bed. 

“You’re not going to be comfortable on your back, are you?” Jake asked as you sat back on your heels. 

“Probably not for long,” you agreed as Jake climbed up onto the bed too.

“Then come here,” Jake coaxed, laying on his back. 

You crawled over and Jake grabbed your hips, lining the two of you up. Your bump, which wasn’t so small anymore, rested against Jake’s strong chest. 

“Tell me if anything hurts or isn’t comfortable and we’ll stop, okay?” he assured you. 

“Okay.”

You let out a shaky gasp as Jake pulled your hips down. His hands were strong on your hips and he welcomed the rock of your hips against him. You were a bit worried about suffocating Jake and tried to hold up your weight, but he didn’t slow down until you practically collapsed against his chest. 

Jake gently rolled you onto your side and laid down beside you, gently running his fingers down your cheek. You looked up at him through your eyelashes and offered him a giddy smile. 

“Are you alright?” he asked softly. 

“Yeah, Jake,” you giggled, “I’m better than alright.”

“I haven’t lost my touch then?” 

“Not yet,” you mused, pressing a romantic kiss to his lips. 

After taking a moment to recover, you sat up and climbed onto his lap. Jake rested his back against the headboard, letting you set your own pace with his hands there to support you. As your rhythm started to slow until you could only rock your hips, Jake gently rotated the two of you so that your bump rested against a pillow and your weight rested on your hands and knees before he sat up behind you.  

“Tell me if it’s too much,” Jake told you. 

“It’s not enough right now,” you practically whined, pushing back against him. 

Jake rolled his hips forward as his lips pressed a searing kiss against your neck, causing you to moan. The two of you quickly lost yourselves in each other until your body tensed up again. You buried your face into the comforter as your body shook. Jake kept moving above you for a few more moments before he let out a low noise and rolled over beside you.

You smiled at him as he laid down and caught his breath. Your eyes fluttered softly in the dim lighting as curled your body into Jake’s warm chest. He could see that you were exhausted and were probably about to fall asleep. Jake leaned forward, pressing a kiss to your forehead.

“You should go to the bathroom first before you fall asleep,” Jake suggested, causing you to open your eyes and look up at him. “I can clean up otherwise.”

“Let my legs recover for a second, Seresin. Unless, you want a Bambi on ice situation.”

Jake snorted in reply, causing you to smile.

~~~~~

When Jake got called into Cyclone’s office after completing his training exercises, Jake knew that meant two things—he either fucked up or he did something incredibly amazing. And he couldn’t think of anything that he fucked up lately, so he was hoping that the latter was true. 

“Sir,” he greeted Cyclone, standing at attention. 

“At ease, Hangman. Please, sit,” Cyclone stated, gesturing to the seat in front of his desk.

Jake sat down and stared at Cyclone, who seemed relatively at ease. He shifted a few papers around his desk before picking up a folder. Cyclone held it out to Jake, who immediately flipped it open, reading through the documents enclosed. 

“Congratulations, Lieutenant Commander Seresin,” Cyclone replied, causing Jake to look up from the paperwork. His expression didn’t give away any emotion, but internally Jake was swelling with pride and joy. “It’s well deserved and I’m sure that you’ll do well in your new role.” 

“And I’m to remain here?” Jake asked, looking quickly through the papers. “In Miramar?”

“Yes, you will,” Cyclone replied, allowing Jake to relax for a moment. But only for one moment. “Though, I should warn you that your chance of being deployed in the next few months has slightly increased.” 

“How slight?” 

“I would say guaranteed at some point within the next six months,” Cyclone answered honestly, causing Jake’s joy to disappear in a flash. “Not that it would be for an extended deployment, but you’ll certainly be on a short list, Hangman.” 

“I understand, sir,” he stated, looking down at his paperwork. 

A note of silence passed between them and Cyclone leaned back in his seat, folding his hands in front of him. Glancing at photos of his own family, Cyclone turned back to Hangman, who was reading through the paperwork in front of him. 

“Hondo tells me that your girlfriend is expecting,” Cyclone continued, causing Jake to nod in confirmation, though he kept his gaze focused on the paperwork. “Congratulations.” 

“Thank you, sir.” 

“I wish that I could offer you a guarantee, Hangman. Any sort of guarantee.”

“That’s not the industry that we’re in, sir,” Jake replied simply, picking his head up. “I understand that. She understands that.” 

“The promotion ceremony is in two weeks. Saturday,” Cyclone responded after a few moments. “I look forward to meeting her then.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

~~~~~

You walked into your and Jake’s apartment building, and stopped to grab your mail. Unlocking the small mailbox, you pulled the door open and grabbed the small batch of envelopes. You walked over to the elevator as you flipped through them, mentally organizing them. 

Bill. Spam. Spam. Bill. More spam. Even more spam. And . . .

You paused, looking at the last envelope. It was blue and shaped like a card, though it wasn’t close to either of your birthdays. Flipping it over, you paused when you saw that the return address was in Texas. And the name Georgia Seresin had to be Jake’s mom’s name, wouldn’t it? 

Jake got a card from his mom. 

Though you thought it was weird, especially because Jake swore up and down that he didn’t talk to his parents, you brushed it off. It wasn’t addressed to you, so it wasn’t yours to open. You would just tell Jake about it when he got home. 

Taking the elevator up, you headed into your apartment. Setting the mail down in the corner, you walked over to the couch and flopped down, exhausted from your day. Turning on the fan that Jake set up on the coffee table for you, you laid down and scrolled through your phone. 

And then promptly fell asleep a minute later.

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[sailoryooons]

Gods of the Dark | One | myg (m)

☾ Pairing: Dream god!Yoongi x f. human!reader

☾ Summary: Don’t ask for help in the dark. It’s an old tale you always heard whispered among the people of your village. But when you find yourself dragged kicking by the man you’re to marry, you have little choice but to beg for help long after the sun has set. The god who answers your pleas promises to save you, but every deal comes with a price. 

☾ Word Count: 21,606

☾ Genre: Fantasy, angst, strangers to lovers, smut

☾ Rating: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately. 

☾ Warnings: Sexist and patriarchal society inspired by medieval europe, a lot of world building and discussion about theories/concept of dreams, discussions of morals and ethics, world building, angst, intense fight scenes, mentions/light depictions of an abusive family, discussions of gender roles and forced marriages, attempted murder via drowning, a physical fight between a man and a woman in the middle of a storm, sexual dream sequences featuring making out, biting (light), grinding, reader having flashbacks of trauma, a lot of thoughts about reader's terrible parents, a sort of power imbalance in the sense that reader is in Yoongi's realm as a part of a deal.

☾ Published: July 9, 2023

☾ A/N: It's finally here! This was originally supposed to be two giant chapters, but I cannot manage my time in a way to write to ~40k chapters and also fit all of this in a way that is not overwhelming or feels like it makes sense, so I have chosen to do this in 4 chapters of roughly 20k words! Thank you to everyone who has hyped me up for this idea, helped me work out some ideas, or listened to me struggle to write this because I was so unsure about the chemistry between Yoongi and reader at first. I am really excited to be writing this and have taken this in quite a different direction than the original idea when I had when I watched the Lilith MV, but that's okay. I heavily draw on inspiration from the Lilith MV, the song Possession of a Weapon by Ashnikko, The Sandman by Neil Gaiman, the movie The Witch, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab and the original myth of Hades and Persephone (where I got the deal/living in Yoongi's world idea from).

Special thank you to my amazing beta team who really helped make this fic what it is and make sure it was legible: @theharrowing and @here2bbtstrash

☾ Disclaimer: All members of BTS are faces and name claims for this story. This is entirely a work of fiction and by no means is meant to be a projection, judgment or representation of real-life people. Any scenarios or representations of the people and places mentioned in works are not representative of real-life scenarios.

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Tuck a knife with my heart up my sleeve

Change like a season

-

It begins with rain.

White sheets of it beating against the window in a gentle murmur, a soft leak in the corner of the kitchen dripping into the metal bucket your mother has set out. The storm brings a cool wind with it, blowing in on the back porch where your father rocks back and forth in his chair, watching the deluge. 

Shivering, you throw another log into the fireplace, pulling your shawl closer as orange embers spark and crackle, drifting up the shute. The smell of burning cedar grows and you smile, sitting down in front of the licking flames and holding out your hands to warm your palms. 

Behind you at the kitchen table, your mother pulls a thread and needle through a dress she’s been working on, stitching purple flowers into the sleeves. You wonder if she’s making it for the neighbor's daughter, a girl a few years younger than you to be wed soon. 

Mother makes some of the best stitching in the village, her practiced hands etching artful flowers and vines and designs on the sleeves and skirts of most of the village women. She’s tried for years to pass the craft on to you, but your fingers aren’t nearly as nimble and your eye for art is sorely lacking. 

What you lack in art you make up for in stories, though. Head in the clouds, swimming in worlds, places and things you’ve never seen. Lives and people who only exist in your mind, entire fantasies with more colors and sights and smells than your tiny little world contains. 

You’d write them down if you could. Writing and reading is not a woman’s craft, though, and you know better than to press your father on the subject any further than you have in the past. A terse word from him and your raw knuckles after being forced to do the wash alone for weeks kept you from bringing up the topic of learning to read and write ever again, especially when you remember the sting of his slap when you pushed too far.

Still, you have your mind. You have the ability to dream up worlds and twist fantasies together, to daze off and pretend that you’re somewhere else. That you’re living another life.

You have the days where you finish working at the inn early, sitting in the corner of the room with hard bread and cheese, listening to the town’s storyteller whisper tales and myths to the children of the village.

For now, it will suffice. 

When the rain finally slows in the late afternoon, it’s cloudy and cool outside, the perfect temperature for a walk. Pulling on a pair of linen pants and a tunic, you creep toward the door, hoping to avoid the attention of your parents as they begin to prepare dinner in the kitchen, their movements methodical and silent. 

Carefully, you slide boots on your feet. As you reach for the front door, hidden from the view of the kitchen, you hear your mother call your name. You pause, closing your eyes and grimacing as you call back, “Yes?”

“Where are you going? It’s wet and cold outside.”

“Just for a short walk.”

“You’re going to catch a cold,” she protests. Her steps move near you. You pull the door open and step into the wet air, eager to get away from her. “Come help us with dinner.”

“I’ll see you shortly, the weather is lovely!”

Before your mother can come around the corner and pin you with her disappointed stare, you’re down the slippery steps and sloshing into the yard, mud and grass sucking at your steps as you hurry. You hear your father yell something like dammit, girl but you can’t be sure, the sounds of birds and the bugs swallowing his curses as you rush through the front yard.

The world is covered in a layer of fine mist, tree boughs heavy with rain as they drip drip drip onto the forest floor around you. Thick, gray clouds hide the sun still. Thunder rolls in the distance, promising more rain through the night. You don’t mind, diving into the darkness of the trees on a well-worn path through the woods.

Water floods the path up to the ankle, soaking your boots. You grin and kick your feet as you walk, watching the ripples flow outward. Water mosquitoes dance on top of the surface of the flood and you note little tadpoles swim by, confirming that the river by your house is flooding up over the bank and washing into the mainland. 

This is common most summers. Your house is out of the way from the town, almost a thirty minute walk. This far north, you’re only ten minutes from the edge of the slow-moving river that floods yearly turning the land around your property into a marsh. 

It’s your favorite time of year. A heron startles as you wander through the trees, shaking its white wings and shedding water as it hurries away on long, thin legs. You spot a snake swimming through the reeds, rushing away from you once it senses you sloshing through. 

Closer to the river, you pause. It’s hard to tell where the embankment dips down with it flooded. You can see where the flood moves faster, powered by the depth of the river and the overflow from the lake up north. Leaning against a tree, you look around this world of water. 

It seems alien. Trees block out the sky and are reflected in the surface of the flood, giving the illusion that you stand between two worlds, two dimensions. 

What would that be like, you wonder. 

According to the high priest in town, there are other dimensions. There are the heavens for the gods of light and love, who bless the world with fire and harvest and rain and oceans, who protect the people and who will absolve you of all sin and greed if you pray to them hard enough and accept them as your patrons. Who will love you only if you are devout.

You don’t believe in them for a second. If those gods of love and light do exist, they are not entirely good. They have never answered your prayers, have never saved you from pain or from sorrow. You have begged the gods to give you a new life, to let you leave. To let you go somewhere far away.

They have been silent. They were silent when your father beat you after the first time you rejected a marital match. They didn’t help you when he burned all your materials when you tried to teach yourself the shapes and sounds of letters.

So you stopped praying to them. 

There are other gods, of course. Other places for the wicked, dark gods full of trickery and greed, who seek only to fill the world with sin and deceit, who desire to make humans suffer and lose themselves in hedonism and debauchery. Those gods have a place too, the dark underworld for those who should be punished and reminded what it is to be full of sin. 

You’ve never prayed to them either, too afraid of what it would cost you. But you wonder if they answer or if they too watch the world from a mountain so high that they cannot bother to help those who need it. 

Still, you wonder what it would be like to walk between two worlds. To see one reflected in the other, to fall face first into the cool water only to surface in another place, almost an exact replica of where you’re from. 

It would be nice. Perhaps there you wouldn’t be a disappointing daughter who has turned away every suitor in the village, much to your father’s rage. There, you would be allowed to pursue reading and writing. You’d have the agency to sail the world and see the ocean for the first time, to feel the freezing spray of the seas on your face while you hunt the coast for something lost. 

Always something lost. 

In all of your fantasies, you’re looking for something. Sometimes, you’re not sure what it is you’re looking for, you just know that something needs to be found. Other times, it’s a specific object or a person, something that, deep down, you know represents the thing you desire to find most: freedom. 

A small school of fish swim by your feet. They can’t be any larger than your pinky finger, scurrying along before they’re swept up in the suction of the flowing river. Sighing, you push off the tree and begin to head back home, swatting at your bare arms where gnats bite at your sweaty skin. 

Dark presses in as you walk back. You had stayed in the woods later than you intended, mind drifting far off among the sounds of the world around you. A cool tingle slides down your neck as you walk, water breaking around you. 

You pause. It’s the same feeling that you get whenever you spend far too long in the woods and the sun goes down. It feels like there’s someone there with you, just at your back. Slowly, you turn to look over your shoulder but there’s no one there, just the warm press of something you can’t see. 

When it happened the first time, you’d been so afraid you ran home. Now, though, you smile and look down at the ground as you keep walking. The presence, whether it’s real or something you have made up in your head, is always comforting. Always there, a gentle press of feeling. 

There are candles burning in the windows and an owl hoots in greeting when your house appears. Inside, you kick off your shoes and rush to meet your parents at the silent dinner table. Both of them look up at you, your mother’s mouth pinched, eyes weary. Your father’s gaze is thunderous as he picks up cutlery and begins to cut into his potato in saw-like motions, his knuckles going white.

You sit down without a word, bow your head to pretend to pray. Your mother clears her throat, drawing your attention. “It’s after dark. You missed your prayers.” 

It doesn’t matter. You weren’t going to pray anyway. But the way your parents look at you makes you drop your eyes down to the table, their expressions alarmed. Were you really about to pray after the sunset, when the benevolent gods were no longer listening? The only gods available to you now are dangerous. Violent. Tricky. 

Dinner is dry and too heavily salted. Still, you don’t complain. Somewhere in the world, you’re sure that there are wonderful feasts being held. Plates and platters of honey-glazed meats, roasted pheasant and charred filets. Whipped sweets and colorful confectionaries, dripping fruits and sugary drinks. 

None of those places exist anywhere that you’ve ever seen, but you like to imagine them as you chew your way through an oppressively silent meal. He says nothing, but you can tell your father is angry once again. Just as well, he at least keeps it to himself through the meal and says nothing when you’re done. 

“I’ll do the dishes,” you offer quickly when your parents finish. It’s an olive branch and they know it. They accept anyway, letting you gather plates as the soft hush of rain begins again. 

Rain washes out the night. You can’t see anything beyond the water that runs off the roof over the back porch as you dip your rag into warm water, scrubbing at the plates before setting them to dry in the stack next to you. 

Frogs croak, their loud voices blending together into the roar of the rain. Every now and again, lightning flashes above and thunder shakes the sky. You feel it vibrate through your ribs and you smile, inhaling the charged air. 

“... doesn’t have a choice!” You turn toward the open doorway. You can’t see your parents but the window is open to their room, voices coming in and out of the rain. “... force her! I’ve had… and he’s already agreed.”

You frown, stopping your scrubbing to lean further, straining your ears. “This won’t go well,” your mother says. 

“I don’t give a damn! It’s already done, woman. Enough.”

The rest of the conversation is drowned out by thunder. You frown and turn back to your task, trying to piece together what they’re talking about. You think back to your mother stitching the dress before dinner and think perhaps they’re gossiping about the neighbor again. She wasn’t happy that she was being married off and everyone knew it.

Still, she’s doing it. She’s stronger than you. It’s hard to imagine going through with something you don’t want, to live a life shackled to another person who doesn’t love you. Whose only purpose is to coexist with you and reproduce. To run a household and get through each and every day, the same as last.

It’s hard to say if your parents are in love. They are tender, at times, but you can’t ever point out a moment that your mother or father seem truly happy. Content isn’t the same as happiness. Not really. While they work together well and seem to have struck up a balance after the years, there’s nothing in the way they move through life that seems joyful. 

You had asked your mom if she was happy once. She gave you a funny look and said, I have a roof above my head and food on the table. How could I not be? 

Her response puzzles you still. To live is not to be happy. Being alive is just that - being alive. A bare minimum. But truly being happy is something else. At least, that’s how you understand it. How the heroes and characters in stories and tales live their lives, fighting for happiness. 

Later that night, you forget all about their whispers behind the sheets of rain. You’re tired and the storm is soothing, making you dream of a far away land where there are two armies entrenched in war, battling for their kingdoms and lighting the sky with storm magic. 

Another dream. Another fantasy. 

-

In your dream, a soft mouth meets yours. The kiss is slow, tongue dragging against yours, tasting of something sweet, mouth warm. It smells like clove and cinnamon, and though you don’t open your eyes to see the mouth that slides against yours, you know you are safe. 

-

It ends in darkness.

Dusk has settled around your home like a funeral shroud. Your father has been gone all day, your mother flippant when you ask about his whereabouts. Your mother is a painted picture of anxiety: mouth pinched, darting eyes that fail to meet yours, and hunched shoulders. It makes your palms sweat, the way she avoids you in the house. 

Rain comes down in patterns again, bands of storms floating by and turning the world gray. You don’t have to go to the inn with the road flooded, so you spend the day at the window instead, watching each storm flash by, listening to the frogs and watching the birds pick through bug-filled waters between each deluge. 

When the sun begins to set, you find your mother standing near the window, looking through wet glass as she chews the corner of her lip. She wipes her hands on her dress, not picking up that you’re standing in the doorway watching her.

The gown she has been stitching for the past few days lays on the table. It’s a beautiful thing, bursting with intricate flowers on the sleeves and the skirts. You don’t enjoy dresses - much less the kind for marriage - but you admire the careful needlework. 

“It’s a good dress,” you tell her. She startles from where she stands at the window, whirling around to face you. “One of your best.”

“Yes. I-” something crosses her face that’s unreadable. “Would you try it on for me? I want to make sure I got the sizing right.”

You shrug and pick it up. It’s not the first time she’s used you for sizing and you’re sure it won’t be the last. You just hope that she doesn’t make you stand on a stool for hours to place pins in the skirt, mapping where she needs to take in the seams and make the fabric fold. 

The material is a little scratchy when you put it on. It’s snug across the chest and a little bit long at the wrist, but the material ripples over you like water. Outside of your room, the sound of your father’s voice echoes. He sounds more jovial than usual, laughing loudly - another voice is with him. 

Frowning, you work the buttons on the side of the dress to secure it shut, pulling the fabric into place. It isn’t often that your father has guests over, but you can assume it’s one of his friends he has over for dinner. You make a sour face at the thought that perhaps it’s Mr. Laudermill and his son Nathaniel again, a family your father has tried to pawn you off on before. 

The list of people your father has tried to get you to marry is astounding. It’s become a joke in the town, a game of who will he ask next? At first, there were plenty of families who offered their sons to make the union. Now, after how vehemently you have protested for your right to pick your husband yourself, it’s you who is rejected when your father makes dowry offers.

It seems - much to your advantage - that the men of the town and even the neighboring villages grew tired of the girl who liked to say no. It gives you small satisfaction to know that sheer inconvenience has earned you freedom alongside your mother’s unwillingness to force you. 

Still, the Laudermills are a little persistent. Not your father’s favorite option he has ever brought up, but it was one that didn’t say no. 

You enter the main house with minor trepidation, uneager to spend the evening sighing at Nathaniel’s terrible jokes and attempts to win you over. You wonder if it’s sheer pride that brings him back this time, upset that he cannot beat the town's little conundrum. The unconquerable conquest. You get the feeling that’s why he and his father visit for dinner sometimes, Nathaniel’s pride unwilling to back down from the challenge. 

You’d respect him more if he had more admiration for the word no. 

Nathaniel and his father are in the main room of your home, speaking in laughing tones to your father. Your mother stands near the open back door, hands wringing together. There is another person in your house that you don’t expect, though. The village’s high priest nods his head along with something that your father is saying, wrinkled hands clasped in front of his robes.

Time seems to slow down. You take in the tight expression on your mother’s face, her eyes drifting over to the priest who is dressed in ceremonial purple robes, an air of professional courtesy about him. He’s nodding to Nathaniel who is speaking now, and it’s when you really look at him, dressed in nice linen pants, a long sleeved shirt and an ornate vest, that you put the pieces together. 

Too slowly do you react as your father turns to you. His smile is forced and his gaze is burning with warning when he gestures. “There’s our bride!”

The word sinks in like a blade. Right between the ribs and up, its point poking dangerous at your heart as your blood begins to roar in your ears. You’re frozen to the spot, staring at them from the threshold of your room. You can feel your pulse throbbing in your neck, your hands shaking. 

“You look beautiful,” Nathaniel says, grinning. It’s a genuine smile, a proud one. Something that says finally. “I’m so glad you’re ready, after all this time.”

“I… what?”

In a moment of razor-sharp clarity, you remember the conversation your parents were having last night, soft words whispered under the cover of the storm. You remember something about forcing her and someone having already agreed. 

No. No. Nonononononono. 

You don’t realize you’re speaking out loud as you back up into your room, the horror settling in as the rain begins to tap on the roof. Your mother looks crestfallen but remains silent as your father’s smile tightens and his face reddens. 

When he says your name, it’s full of warning. The back of your legs hit your bed and your weak knees buckle. You sit down with a huff and shake your head. “You can’t do this,” you whisper. You can’t find your voice, can’t work your throat louder. “You cannot make me marry.”

“Of course I can,” your father hisses. His smile drops and in its place is something dangerous. Horrific. The villain of all your dreams and epic fantasies. “I have given you more than enough time to choose. You have not. As the man of this house-”

“No!” you bark back, cutting him off and shooting to your feet. “I am a person-”

“You are a woman!” he roars, making the high priest flinch. “Your purpose is to grow up, get married, mind the household and provide an heir! You are the only fiendish woman in this entire forsaken village who seems to misunderstand this!”

“It is not my purpose!”

“It is, and you will fulfill it!” he hisses. “You will marry this man before the gods, with my blessing and the witness of the priest.” 

Behind you, thunder rolls. The rain comes down harder. Frogs croak loudly, bracketed by the sound of the trees bending with the weight of the wind. Your heart pounds in your chest as you stare at the people before you. Your mother with tears in her eyes, your father with fury in his face, the priest with disappointment and Nathaniel. Nathaniel with glee. With a grin. With a smirk. 

“I won’t do it,” you whisper. 

Before they can argue, you turn on your heel and leap onto your bed. Your father and Nathaniel rush at the doorway, their steps pounding behind you as you crawl through the window, your ribs slamming on the sill as you lean face forward. Rain soaks you immediately, your hands gripping the sill as you haul your middle half over the edge, intending to just flip down into the mud. 

Hands yank at your legs and you scream, a feral sound ripping through your lungs as you kick backward violently. You’re yanked back toward your room viciously, rib cage aching where you slide on the concrete frame. With another savage kick, you make contact and hear a loud shout before the hands drop from your waist. 

Pushing harshly, you throw yourself the rest of the way through the window, falling the few feet down to land with a splash. Your father is screaming inside the house but you’re already slipping to your feet, whatever he says drowned out in the rain. 

You don’t even think. You run, hands picking up the wet-leaden skirts on your dress as you tear off toward the woods. Water rushes around your ankles as you go and you hear commotion at the window as someone clambers through. You don’t dare turn around as you rush to the line of trees, unafraid of the dark but terrified of the slamming footsteps behind you.

It’s impossible to be fast in the flooded woods. You wince as your feet get cut up on rocks and sharp sticks that you can’t see. You trip over roots and kick solid things as you slog forward, biting back a cry as you try to flee. 

“Get back here, you wretched bitch!” Nathaniel screams behind you. 

It never occurred to you that he could say something so violent. It spurs you forward, mud and water sucking your feet down and making your flight sticky and slow. Rain pelts down between the leaves, the storm lighting up the treetops with purple flashes every now and again. Thunder shakes their branches and rumbles through your feet, the water rushing higher and higher. 

Nathaniel slams into you at the waist. You scream as he takes you down, his weight on top of you. Your scream is cut off as your mouth fills with water. You swallow in a panic, body thrumming with alarm as you choke, nose full of water, eyes burning. You can hear the dull roar of water, the swish of your tangled limbs on the floor. 

Clawing at him, you feel your nails rip down soft flesh and hear a muted yell. He lifts his weight off of you and you sit forward, breaking the surface and gasping for air, retching. Your lungs and nose burn as you gasp for air, fighting to get a breath in. 

Nathaniel is on you again, his hand going for your hair as he digs his fingers in hard, yanking at your scalp. Your hands fly to his wrist and you scream again, pulling at him, trying to free yourself. Tears smart your eyes from the stinging pain as he yanks hard enough that you think he’ll tear you right apart. 

“Fucking ungrateful,” he barks.

Your feet slide in the mud as he uses your buoyancy in the knee deep water to haul you back toward the house. You twist in his grip, mewling in panic and pain as you work to get your feet under you and fight back. You let go of his arm and throw a weak punch at his ribs. He grunts but doesn’t let go, even as you twist, hands shooting to the ground, digging through soaked earth and weeds until you feel the hard, rough shape of a rock. 

Grabbing it, you lift your hand from the water and bring it down hard on Nathaniel’s wrist. He screams and lets go of your hair. Your fingers ache from the blow but you don’t waste precious minutes, scrambling to your feet and sloshing away from him again. He’s already gripping at your dress, fingers ripping at the fabric to get a hold of you. 

Desperation claws at you and you scream for help. You don’t know if anyone else is out here in the dark of the woods but you don’t care. Bleeding, in pain, and terrified, you tear through the water, the rock clutched in your fingers, rushing in the dark as Nathaniel gives chase.

“Please!” you scream at the dark. “Anyone, please!” 

A thread of thought slivers through you about the gods. Praying to the gods has never gotten you anywhere. It didn’t make your father let you read. It didn’t get you out of your town. It didn’t save you from this. The supposed gods who rule with light and love had never heard you and you had long stopped believing in them.

But you’d never prayed to the gods of the dark. The gods who only listen to words whispered after the setting sun. 

“Please,” you beg, turning your head to the dark sky. Lighting flashes and thunder rumbles. Cool wind brushes against your face, wind that feels like it whispers I’m listening. “Please,” you scream again. “Help me, I’ll give you whatever you want. Help me!”

Nathaniel takes you down by the waist again. You gasp for air this time as your face slaps the water with a sting. The current is rushing faster here, pulling at you. Deeper. Colder. You’re close to the river, and you feel the suction of the force of the flow tugging at your body as Nathaniel digs his fingers into the meat of your arms. 

This time, he doesn’t pull you with him. He holds you down, shoving you deeper and deeper until you realize that he’s no longer interested in bringing you back. You kick at him, you tear at him. You slam his wrist with the rock again but his other hand grabs yours, wrenching the weapon away from you. 

Your lungs are screaming and water is rushing into your nose as oxygen escapes you. His grip is firm and you begin to panic. All you can think is help help help help. Please help. 

Bubbles escape your mouth as you’re forced to breathe out again. You’re running out of time and pain starts to build in your chest. You feel the way your lungs squeeze, needing air. You let out more air and press your lips tight, desperately trying not to inhale. 

Breathe in, your instincts scream. Breathe breathe breathe breathe. 

Agony. You’re in agony as you open your mouth in a final cry, unable to form the words. Unable to scream and ask for a higher power that you only believe in at this moment to help you. 

Water fills your mouth. You swallow it whole, feel it go down as you begin to spasm. 

You’re going to die. 

And then Nathaniel’s hands are gone. It takes you a moment to realize that there’s no crushing grip on your arms and in the brief moment of realization, you barely manage to push up. To break the surface and vomit, water coming out of you in a stinging, horrid mess. Your stomach turns and you feel your chest squeeze as you choke.

The storm is still raging around you, water pulling at you and pressing you into the rough bark of a tree. Blinking tears from your eyes, you look around but it’s too dark to see. You can hear Nathaniel looking for you, screaming your name in the dark. 

The back of your neck tingles. There’s a feeling in the air behind you - that sliver of breath that you often sense when you’re out in the woods alone just after dark. Like something or someone is there with you, just behind you. 

“What is it you want?” a deep, dark voice whispers. The hair on the back of your neck stands on end and you feel chilled to the bone. The voice is like none you’ve ever heard, sensual and dizzying. 

“Want?”

“You asked for help.” The voice switches to your other ear and you don’t dare turn around to find the speaker. “What do you want?” 

“What can you give?”

The voice chuckles. The sound makes you shiver, your eyelids fluttering. The voice purrs, “I can give you anything you dream, little lamb. Tell me: what do you want?”

You think about it. Lightning lances through the sky and for a brief moment, the world is a flash of silver. You see Nathaniel in the light, a few feet away from you. He’s bloody and heaving, his eyes snapping to where you hide against the tree.

“Freedom,” you gasp as the world falls to darkness again. “I want freedom.”

“What will you give me?”

“What do you want?” you beg, hearing Nathaniel move toward you.

There’s a soft hum and you feel lightheaded at the sound. “Your time.”

“My time?”

“Your time in exchange for freedom, little lamb. Better hurry, this offer is about to expire.” 

Nathaniel screams in a rage. Sloshes closer to you. Your heartbeat quickens. You can feel it in your chest, hear it in your ears, your pulse throbbing as he nears. 

“Okay,” you whisper, voice coming out shaky. 

“Then tell me you accept.”

You take a deep breath. “I accept.” 

There’s a brush at the nape of your neck, warm and soft. Though you’ve never been kissed before, you think that it’s the press of lips, intimate and barely there. Something inside you flickers to life, like a new instinct that has opened its eyes for the first time. You’re aware of another presence, a soft buzz that presses down on you as it stands up next to you. 

Thunder rolls and you feel someone brush by you.  A hand touches your cheek almost fondly, fingers dragging along the curve of your jaw. Blinking slowly, you lean into the touch, seeking its comfort. You don’t know who it belongs to. All you know is that just the feel of fingers on your skin has your stomach flipping, your toes curling. 

The hand drops from your face and you immediately miss the contact. Opening your eyes, you see another flash of lightning. There’s someone standing in front of you dressed in black, slick with rain. You can’t make out anything much, just the shape of a man in a dark cloak. 

A god. You know he’s a god, whoever this savior is. You know that something has heard your screams in the dark and has come to give you what you wanted. What you begged for. 

“She is no longer available to you,” the god announces to Nathaniel. It’s not the same whisper as a moment ago, but a deep, raspy voice. Dark. Demanding. “She’s mine.” 

“That’s my betrothed,” Nathaniel answers, though it comes out like a question, his voice trembling. “I– she belongs to-”

“Me,” the dark god assures. A loud clap of thunder makes you flinch. “Goodbye, Nathaniel Laudermill.” 

Nathaniel screams. You don’t know what happens. There’s just his shout of terror in the dark and a roll of thunder that shakes the trees and rattles the earth. You feel the vibration in the water from the unearthly thunder before you realize that this sound, this trembling, is the wrath of a god. 

The sound fades and the shaking stops. You feel more than see the god in front of you turn to face you, a sweeping warmth as he bends down. You cannot make out any features, your vision swimming with bursts of color in the lack of light. 

“You’re with me now,” he assures you. “And you should not be afraid.” 

Gentle hands reach out and cradle your face. You’re suddenly tired, every pain in your body weighing you down like stones, pulling at you until you’re closing your eyes and succumbing to the heavy exhaustion.

The last thing you remember is your whispered name on reverent lips. 

-

You’re dreaming. Your eyes are closed in this dream but you feel light and warm. Fingers brush over your cheek, soft and reverent. You hear a gentle, deep humming, a pleasant melody. It smells like clove and cinnamon, making you drift further into the dream. You lean into the hand cupping your face and hear a deep chuckle before drifting off into nothingness. 

-

The first thing you notice is the smell of clove and cinnamon. It’s a soothing scent that sends your heart fluttering as you roll over. The blankets wrapped around you feel divine, soft with a high loft that feels like you’re wrapped in clouds. The mattress is decadent, sucking you in further as you settle in on your side, inhaling deeply.

Then you remember hands tearing at your legs. Ripping you by the hair. Water filling your lungs and throat. The flash of lightning and the cold rain as you were dragged under a flood again and again. 

With a gasp you sit up in bed, heart hammering. You still as you look around, mouth dropping open at the opulent room. The bed is the largest thing you’ve ever seen, on a low platform swimming with charcoal colored sheets and pillows. The headboard looks like polished obsidian, glinting in the low light provided by dozens of flickering candles.

Stone walls make up the room, rough rock with sconces of flickering flames. The room is sprawling with a sitting area a step down from the bed, decorated with chaise lounges, a coffee table and high-backed chairs situated in front of a fireplace. Flames crackle on a log, orange light dancing across the room. On either side of the fireplace are bookshelves that stretch up to the high ceiling.

Across from the bed are open double doors where you can see a magnificent bathroom. From your vantage point, you can just make out sinks carved from a hewn rock and what looks like a trickling waterfall sluicing down the wall. 

Turning to the left, there is a set of glass doors, a balcony just on the other side. It appears to be nighttime outside, thousands of stars glittering through the glass and the largest moon you’ve ever seen suspended in the sky like a lone coin.

Carefully, you peel back the covers. You’re still in the wedding dress your mother made you. It’s stained and tattered and bloodied, making your stomach flip uncomfortably as you look down on it. Sitting on the edge of the bed, you place your feet on the stone flooring, expecting it to be cold to the touch. 

It isn’t. Warmth radiates from the floor through the soles of your feet, making you sigh, tension bleeding from your shoulders as you close your eyes for a moment. Though the aches and the pains from being scratched and hit and torn down are gone, you wince as you recall them. 

Your parents were going to force you to marry Nathaniel. You don’t know how you missed the signs before, how you thought that there was any other path. With your elbows pressed to your knees, you hang your head in your hands, pressing your eyes shut and taking another shuddering breath.

This time, a sob slips out. Somehow, you had tricked yourself into thinking that your parents would abide by your wishes to make your own choices. Foolish, you realize. Your father had not grown complacent. He had been biding his time, waiting to strike. 

The smallest viper has the greatest sting.

And your mother was going to let him do it. The woman who had brought you into the world screaming and bloody was going to pass you off to a man, even if it meant that man dragged you kicking and screaming to the altar. 

Disgust curls in your stomach and your hands turn into firsts, pressing against your closed lids and making bursts of colors flash in your eyes. Split down the middle, one part of you mourns the loss of the parents you thought that you had. The other is an open wound, festering with a hateful infection at the very thought of them. 

The sound of the door opening catches your attention. Your heart leaps as you sit up straight, dropping your hands into your lap as a man slips through the large double doors near the sitting area. Your breath catches in your chest as he sweeps into the room, looping his hands behind his back as he sets his dark eyes on you and approaches. 

He’s the most beautiful creature you’ve ever seen, you think. Inky hair falls into his enigmatic eyes. His skin is deep gold, a contrast to the all-black blouse that he wears tucked into black pants. You see the open collar of his shirt revealing a patch of tan skin and an elegant throat, but it’s his face that shatters your mind. 

The man - or god, you think - has a square, masculine jaw offset with a delicate mouth the color of rose petals. His nose is straight and wide and would look ridiculous on anyone else. On him, it’s the perfect balance, his cheekbones high and angular, cutting the roundness of his nose. 

“Good to see you’re awake,” he greets. The man stops at the edge of the step that leads to where the bed sits higher than the rest of the room. You stare and stare and stare at him, unable to process words as he grins at you. His voice is dulcet and warm, but not the voice that promised to save you. “How do you feel?”

“I…” you rasp out and you shake your head, unable to think of anything else.

His mouth quirks and he nods. “It sounds like you had a terrible time. How about you take a well-deserved bath and get out of that terrible dress? Sorry to have left you in it, I was under strict instructions not to invade your personal space.”

“Yes, please.” You hesitate. “Where am I? Whose instructions?”

“You’re somewhere safe with someone who wants you to remain safe.” 

“Where is safe?”

He gives you a secretive smile as he nods toward the bathroom before turning on his heel and striding away. On unsteady feet, you follow him. It helps that the floor is warm, giving you the strength you need to make it down the two steps and across the stone toward the bathroom. 

“I don’t think I’m the right person to answer your question,” he admits. “I’m just here to help you get settled. My name is Taehyung, by the way.”

“Taehyung.” You say the word, familiarizing yourself with the shape of it as you enter the room and stop. 

The bathroom is far more luxurious than you realized from afar. There is a waterfall running down the black rockface between two basins, trickling into a little fountain that drains on the floor. To the right side of the bathroom is a large body of steaming water. 

Herbal scents fill the room as you near the edge of the dark surface of the water. It reminds you of hot springs in a cave near the southern villages, a place you’d only heard of but never seen. It’s massive, surrounded by a smooth, stone edge. There is a corner full of what appears to be salts, soaps and herbs alongside flickering candles. 

Opposite the hot spring is a giant glass window that overlooks mountains and lush greenery. From the window, you can see the entire world of wherever you are stretched out in the most dazzling and wonderful display. You can’t help but feel as though you’re somewhere that belongs in the epitome of night.

“How deep is that?” you ask, turning to Taehyung with a wary expression as you gesture to the body of water. 

His expression softens. “Waist high when you stand in the middle. There is a ledge that you can sit on all the way around. It’s incredibly safe and very warm. I can stand just outside the door if anything goes wrong.”

“Okay.” 

Taehyung points to a stack of clothes resting on a stool near a cabinet full of towels and jars of things. “Those are for you to change into. The towels are for you to dry off, of course. Anything in the bathroom is yours to use.” Taehyung must sense your hesitation, because he gives you a soft smile. “You’re safe here. I promise.” 

“I’d feel better if I knew where here was.”

“Bathe. Relax. Then I’ll take you to him.” 

Taehyung does not give you a chance to ask to whom he refers. He strides out of the room and the door swings shut seemingly on its own. You blink a few times at it, standing in the middle of the warm bathroom in a daze.

Spinning, you look around the room and find yourself drawn to the window. Up close, you realize how high up you are. It’s a bit dizzying, and you look  down at the ground only to see that there is a garden bursting with purple and blue, neat rows of flowers that stretch until they meet a line of trees. 

A world of mountains unfolds beyond the window. You’ve never seen mountains but they are larger than you could have ever imagined, snowcaps stark against the night sky. It’s mesmerizing and a little too big, so you turn away from the window and head for the steaming basin of water. 

Peaking over the edge, you can see the bottom. It doesn’t look that deep, but your stomach twists as you pop the buttons on your dress. Your fingers feel stiff and disjointed as you work to undress. You look down at the ripped threads and the dirty fabric and think about how much time your mother spent stitching it.

Suddenly the dress feels suffocating and you pull hard on the garment, popping buttons from the threads and sending them clattering on the floor. You shed the dress and kick it away from you, stripping off your undergarments and lowering yourself to the edge of the water. 

A sigh leaves your mouth as you slide your feet and legs in first. The water is hot, though not scalding like you expected. Closing your eyes, you remain sitting on the edge for a moment, letting your calves soak and muscles unwind, fingers gripping the edge tight. 

Taking a deep breath, you slide forward a little, firmly placing your feet on the ledge Taehyung spoke of. For a moment, your fear spikes. You feel it sharp in your chest and you squeeze your eyes shut, gripping the edge of the basin. With a few deep breaths, you carefully slide down to the ledge proper, sinking in the hot water to the chest. 

“I’m not going to drown,” you whisper to yourself. The words come out shaky and you’re not entirely sure that you believe them. “I’m not going to drown, I am not going to drown, I am not going to drown.”

You repeat the mantra until you believe it, your fingers grasping the edge of the stone seat as you try to relax and melt into the water. It takes a while, but you finally grow too tired of remaining tense, taking a deep breath and gaining the courage to relax. 

Gently, you rest your head against the edge of the basin. Heat seeps into your skin and you feel the anxiety bleed out of you, your tensed muscles unwinding. You hadn’t realized how clenched up you were until you let go, and your body sags a little bit in the water. 

Time slips away. Thankfully, your body doesn’t hurt the way you anticipated that it would. Frowning, you press your fingers into your skin where there should be bruises and pain. There is no evidence on your skin that Nathaniel laid his hands on you the night before - the day before? You’re unsure how much time has passed, only that there is an eerie absence of your wounds.

Turning your head, you look at your dress discarded on the floor. There’s certainly evidence of a struggle spattered all over the fabric, but it makes you wonder if the god who answered your prayers has healed you.

A god. 

The thought comes to you in a snap and you stare down at the water, eyes unfocusing as you try to recall the details of what happened. You remember screaming for help, the sound of your desperation ripping through your mouth. You don’t think you’ve ever screamed like that, terrified and wild. You remember thinking about the gods, begging them to hear you, willing them to listen. 

Water had been filling your lungs. Crushing out air. You remember the rush of the stream around you as it pulled at your fighting body. Nathaniel’s hands gripping you and holding you under viciously, fingers like claws as he tried to drown you. 

Then you surfaced and choked, completely shrouded in darkness…. And you remember that quiet voice made of smoke and shadow. Thinking of it now makes you shiver, despite how hot the water is. The voice had promised you freedom in exchange for time and had taken you to wherever this place was. 

You open your eyes, unsure when you had even closed them. Glancing around the room once more, you decide there is no way that you’re anywhere close to home. You’ve never seen anything like this bathroom before, a feat of what appears to be architecture and maybe magic. 

Soaps and salts line the edges of the bathing pool. When you feel brave enough, you dart across the middle like a minnow, trying not to think about how you nearly crossed death’s bridge in a shallow body of water not long ago. 

Unscrewing lids, you smell each of the glass bottles of liquid, humming in delight. You settle on a hard bar of soap that smells like lavender and mint. It feels good to scrub your skin raw. You imagine that you’re washing away all of the memories of Nathaniel’s fingers on your skin and the scratchy dress your mother made for you.

Fingers and feet pruned and skin feeling stripped of a top layer, you reluctantly exit the bath. The towels are the softest thing you’ve ever felt. You run the fabric between your fingers, tilting your head up at the sky and sighing. Wherever this dark god has taken you doesn’t seem so terrifying, yet it puts you more on edge, these luxuries. 

The clothes Taehyung left out for you fit well enough, though it’s obvious they are not your exact measurements. He’s provided you with soft, black pants and a loose, black tunic with intricate designs that look like clouds on the sleeves and collar. 

You hesitate when you’re ready to leave the bathroom. So far, it seems that whatever bargain you’ve struck with this god has been in your favor. But you know you’ve made a deal in a moment of fear, and you’re not entirely sure what you’ve agreed to.

Time.

Though you’re nervous, you can’t stay hidden in the bathroom forever. Nudging the door open, you peek around the edge, gaze sweeping the room as you look for Taehyung. He’s standing in the sitting area, face toward the flickering fire. He looks both terrifying and beautiful, hands linked behind his back as he watches the flames. 

“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” Taehyung calls without turning around. “I mean it when I tell you that you’re safe.”

Slipping through the door, you walk toward him, regarding him warily. “Still,” you answer. “I don’t know where I am. Are you even human?”

He does look over his shoulder then, flashing you a wicked grin. “I’m not.” 

Taehyung’s answer doesn’t put you at ease, but you’re unsure what to do. Wordlessly, he gestures for you to follow him as he heads through the door and out of the room. For a moment, you hesitate. What would happen if you refused to leave the room? Is your deal with the god already in effect? What are its limitations? 

You can answer none of the questions you have, so you follow Taehyung, hoping to find answers soon. Except as soon as you step out of the room, you think you might have even more questions. 

The halls are dark and lit with flickering torches, casting an orange glow up to the cavernous ceilings. Though you’ve never been in a castle or seen one, you have an idea of how grand they are. There is no doubt in your mind that this is a castle, the halls resplendent and sweeping with artwork and fabric and statues. 

In front of you, Taehyung walks jovially with his hands linked behind his back. He hums a tune you don’t know, but it sounds smooth and warm. You follow behind him, casting your gaze around as you walk, trying to remember which turns you take and what paintings you pass. 

You reach a tall, closed set of wooden double doors. Taehyung raps his fingers against the door, looking over his shoulder at you with an excited grin. Your stomach flips and you wipe your palms against the bottom of your tunic. Your hands feel shaky and you twine them into the fabric, willing them to stop. 

Taehyung must hear someone on the other side of the door, because he opens it and steps in and to the side, gesturing for you to enter. You take a deep breath and walk by him into the room, stopping immediately as you look up, your mouth falling open. 

It’s a library grander than you could ever imagine. Your town had quite a small library at the church that belonged to the high priest, but this is something beyond your wildest dreams. The ceiling stretches higher than your imagination, filled with floating lights and stars - the entire night sky is stretched above you in swirling constellations of purple and blue. 

Three floors make up the library, each lined with books and windows that look out into the evening. You can see sprawling gardens beyond the tinted glass, but it’s the shelves of books that catch your attention. Stepping into the room further, you slowly spin, looking at the sheer amount of volumes that line the walls. There are multiple seating areas with rich, velvet blue armchairs and couches, tables full of books and papers and ink bottles and maps. 

Your throat tightens as you look at Taehyung, your mouth wobbling. The urge to burst into tears has never felt greater than this moment. You never imagined that you could stand in a room with so many books, and the desire to pull one off the shelf and delve in is cut short by the single, glaring fact that you don’t know how to read them. 

Distracted by the books upon entry, it takes you a moment to notice another presence in the room. You feel a tingle at the back of your neck, one that draws your eyes toward a long table near the fireplace. It’s the same feeling you had when you were saved from Nathaniel, an awareness that buzzes along your skin.

A man stands in front of the table, watching you with dark, feline eyes. He’s beautiful. Otherworldly, really. His round features remind you of the moon, but it’s the sharp eyes and the careful pout of his mouth that draws you in. He looks both delicate and dangerous, and you notice the quirk on his lips as he watches you watch him. 

He’s in all black. Black pants tucked into black, knee-high boots, and a black, long-sleeved shirt. There’s a layer of necklaces around his neck and you can see shapes and runes that are unfamiliar to you. The same runes and shapes are on the rings on his long, delicate fingers, folded in front of him. 

This is the face of a god. You know it in the way that there’s something ancient in his eyes and in the way he glows from within. His power is tangible, a crackling energy pressing up against every nerve in your body. 

“How are you feeling?” his voice vibrates right to your core. Soft and dark like you remember it, though a little rougher now. Gravelly. He studies you, unmoving. “Hopefully well-rested?”

“I feel…. Better.” Finding the words is hard in his presence, especially under the scrutiny of his gaze. You want to dart out of the room and hide, but you also don’t want to leave the library without exploring. “I think I should thank you?”

It comes out as a question and he smirks a little. Your stomach flutters at the sight; he raises a brow. “You’re welcome. Are you hungry? You’ve been asleep for nearly a day.”

The door shuts behind you and you startle, whirling around to see that Taehyung has left you. Your nerves fray further and you turn back to look at the god watching you. Behind him on the table, you realize it is a feast of sorts. Roasted meats and poultry, platters of fruit, plates of cheese and neatly arranged crackers, steaming pans of vegetables and things you cannot identify. 

He notices. “You must be starving. Come. Eat.” When you don’t move, he sighs. “I didn’t save you just to harm you.” 

It’s true enough. You carefully approach the table, eyeing him as he unclasps his hands and pulls out a chair for you. When you hesitate, he arches a dark brow again and you feel yourself grow warm in the face, muttering your thanks as you hurry over to the chair and sit down. 

The god’s presence is buzzing. He doesn’t touch you, but it’s like you feel him anyway, just an inch away from you. He helps you slide your chair in and gives a deep, contented sigh before he moves toward the opposite end of the table, taking the dull hum of energy with him. 

Across the table, he sits. His gaze finds yours again as you stare at him, finding it difficult to look anywhere else. Even with the smell of a divine meal, your attention on him is a fixed point. If this bothers him, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he leans back in his seat, casual and confident. 

“Have what you like,” he offers. “I don’t know what you enjoy and I didn’t want to pry.”

The table is full of options. You chew the inside of your cheek. There is glazed duck and roasted ham, creamy looking potatoes and sauced vegetables. Your stomach growls and twists painfully as you stare at your choices. 

“The duck is good,” he offers gently. You glance up. He nods towards the dish in question. “Sorry, it’s probably overwhelming.”

“A little,” you answer, but take him up on his advice and go for the duck. “Where are we?”

“In between.”

You frown as you plate different foods, fingers sticky as you do. You’re hyper-aware of him watching you and you try not to look up, feeling your hands quake as you add roasted veggies to your plate. “What does that mean?”

“Exactly what you think it does. We’re at the in-between of all things. Not a solid place in your sense of understanding. It’s not a physical manifestation of a land mass, but it is a world that contains physical things.” 

“A… dimension?”

“Exactly. This is my domain.”

“And what… are you?”

You look up at him then. His lips twitch at the corners and he tongues the inside of his cheek. “A god. But you already knew that.”

“Wanted to hear you say it.” 

Silence falls between you as you pick up a knife and fork, cutting carefully into your meat. You pop it between your lips, sighing when the duck melts on your tongue with the taste of honey and something else. You sag in the chair, not realizing until now how tense you had been to this point. The food sends a wave of warmth through you and the god watches as you take a few bites, patient as you eat.

“This is fantastic,” you say, glancing at him as you reach for a glass of water. “The flavors are like nothing I’ve ever had.”

“I assure you that all things here are like nothing you’ve ever had.” You hum in agreement, taking another eager bite. You cannot imagine anything in the real world tasting this succulent. You almost wonder if perhaps this is all a dream. “You didn’t pray before you began to eat.”

Your chewing pauses. He’s bemused, giving you a sideways grin with his brows raised. You swallow thickly and say, “Praying never got me anywhere until recently. Why did you help me?”

“Because you asked.”

“You didn’t have to, though.”

It isn’t a question. He answers anyway. “I didn’t.”

“So why did you? The other gods have never helped me.”

“The other gods aren’t me.” His voice is soft and lethal, raising the hair on your arms. “We are not all the same, and you’d do well to not make any further comparisons moving forward.” 

You lower your gaze. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Gods are fickle beings. We are quick to offend and slow to let go. You don’t know any better and are thus forgiven.” 

“What do I call you?”

For a moment, he hesitates. You think he isn’t going to answer just as he says, “Yoongi. You can call me Yoongi.”

“Is that your name?” 

“It’s one of them.” 

“How many names do you have?”

He chuckles. It’s a delightful sound and you smile, watching him lean his head back against his chair, looking up as he shrugs. “How much time do you have?”

Time. 

Suddenly, you remember that you aren’t here on this god - Yoongi’s - good graces. You’re here because you called for someone in a moment of need and he agreed to help you, but at a cost. Your time. He had asked for your time, and a sense of anxiety tiptoes its way up your spine as you think about the ambiguity of his deal. 

Swallowing harshly, you shift back in your seat. The food in your stomach feels a little heavy, far too rich for you to eat more than a few bites. You’ve only ever known your parents’ staples of meat, bread, cheese, and root vegetables. 

“When you saved me,” you begin. “You made a deal with me.”

“I did.”

“My freedom in exchange for my time.”

His eyes are glittering as he watches you, completely still. The fireplace next to you crackles. It makes shadows dance across his face, giving him the appearance of something wild and untamed. Your heartbeat quickens as you watch him, this godly being, as he stares you down. 

“That was the deal,” he finally hums. His head cocks to the side a little. “I don’t usually discuss business over dinner.”

“I’m done eating.”

He huffs but doesn’t seem annoyed. “Perhaps tea, then? It will help settle your stomach.”

You narrow your eyes. “How do you know that my stomach needs settling?” 

“I know a lot of things.” Yoongi rises and gestures to the chairs directly in front of the fireplace. You stand, following his lead. There’s a quiver of energy in the air and you pause, turning to look back at the table to see it’s completely bare, no trace of anything left. You whip around to look at Yoongi as he sits in a wingback chair. “I can do a lot of things.”

A steaming cup of tea sits on a wooden table next to the chair you sink into. The cushions are soft, swallowing you in and making your muscles melt. The cup is warm when you pick it up, steam curling off the surface. Sniffing, your eyes flutter as you inhale the smell of mint. 

“What are you the god of?” You open your eyes and look at him. Both of his feet are planted flat on the floor, his arms resting on the arms of the chair. He looks a little stiff, more so than he did at dinner. Orange firelight reflects in his inky eyes. “You’re a god of the dark.” 

“There’s no such thing,” he scoffs, and you frown. “Your concept of gods is skewed. There is neither good nor evil, light nor dark. There are just gods.” 

“So it doesn’t matter who you pray to?”

“We don’t need your patronage. If we did, we wouldn’t be gods, would we?” You’d never thought of it that way. You sip your tea, letting the warmth and sharp mint bloom in your mouth. “We’re beyond the simple classification that mortals use to understand and organize what they think our intentions are. I have been classed as both good and evil, light and dark, benevolent and malevolent.”

“But surely there are things that are inherently evil, even among the gods.”

“Of course there isn’t. Evil is a point of view. It is a word used to define the feeling one has when the opposite of their desire occurs.” 

“I… guess that makes sense. But isn’t something like murder wrong?”

“Are you not the villain of the duck you ate today?” You blanch. Yoongi looks smug as he gestures vaguely with his hands. “Are you not evil for calling down the wrath of a god on Nathaniel Laudermill?”

“He was going to kill me.”

“You rejected his hand in marriage. You did the opposite of what he desired. I believe in his eyes, you are the evil. Is Death evil for doing what he was made to do?” 

Yoongi’s words make your head spin. You gulp a mouthful of scalding tea before setting it on the table next to you, your mind reeling. The realization that you’re sitting in a library with a starry ceiling arguing over morals and the concept of evil with a god who has saved you from certain death makes you giggle. 

He seems surprised by your sudden outburst, raising his brows as you cover your mouth, your fingers pressed to your lips as you try to contain your sudden mirth. “Sorry. This seems absolutely insane. I’m arguing over the word ‘evil’ with a god in a realm that is everywhere and nowhere at all. It feels like perhaps I’m dreaming.”

“You’re not. Though your dreams are dizzying and far more colorful than anyone else I know. You should be proud of them.” You furrow your brows. How does he know what you dream of? Before you can ask him to clarify, Yoongi says, “You wanted to discuss the deal.”

“Oh. Right. What did you mean by wanting my time in exchange for my freedom?”

“It’s simple. I want you to spend two weeks each month here.” 

Yoongi’s words sink in as you look at the window behind him. Outside, the world is sinking into what you think might be night. The sky is swimming with stars and constellations, stuck in a perpetual twilight of sorts. You’re reminded that somehow, Yoongi is like the moon and the night itself, especially when you find his dark gaze on you as he waits for your response. 

“Why?”

He lifts a shoulder. “I’m often very alone. It would be nice to have some company.” 

“That’s it? You just want me to hang out in exchange for saving me?” He nods. “That seems too easy.” 

His lips curve upward. “Maybe I’m very annoying.” 

For some reason you think it might not be true. You think of all the things that you’ve heard about the gods. Yoongi tells you that everything you know about them is wrong, but you know that the gods of the dark are tricksters. They are experts in the art of luring mortals in, and you wonder if that’s what he’s doing now. 

“Does it have to be consecutive weeks?” you ask, trying to bide time to collect your thoughts and work out his intentions. “Or can it be a collective?”

“Consecutive.” 

“What… what happens when I go home? With my family.”

Yoongi’s face grows stormy. You shift in your seat. “You’re under my protection,” he says after a moment of deliberation. “You’ll bear a mark that protects you. No one will force their will upon you again.”

“Can you?”

He shakes his head, long hair brushing the tops of his shoulders. He looks haunting in the firelight, but beautiful. You avert your gaze, fixating on the books in the room instead. “You have my word, I will never control you. I promised you freedom, that includes me.” 

“But I have to be here. I can’t escape from that. Is that freedom?”

“You made that decision of your own free will. It’s your words that bind you here, not mine. While you’re here, you are able to do whatever it is you desire. In fact, I encourage it.” 

“Wording is really important to you, isn’t it?”

He chuckles and inclines his head, fingers tapping the arm of his chair. “It is. Consider the first day of your deal already spent. You slept most of it off while you healed.” Yoongi stands, drawing your attention to him. “Sleep more,” he insists gently. “Tomorrow, I’ll give you a tour.”

The thought of a tour - and seeing Yoongi for more days - thrills you. Taehyung appears at the doorway as Yoongi escorts you out. He wishes you goodnight and lets Taehyung take you back to your room, though you feel his gaze and presence as you leave. 

It isn’t until you’re back in your room that you realize you never asked Yoongi how long your deal is supposed to last. It occurs to you that while he has given you a sort of freedom, perhaps he has taken something from you after all. 

-

Tall trees surround you. Above them, you can make out a swirling sky of stars and planets and several moons, so bright that it turns the forest a shade of blue. The woods around you are familiar, and there’s a well-walked path just ahead of you that leads to the river by your home. You’ve walked among these trees and creatures hundreds of times, but never with a sky like this.

Crickets chirp as you walk through the woods now. Grass tickles your bare feet, the earth soft and damp beneath you. It smells like fresh rain, but there’s no flood or mud as you navigate by instinct. 

It’s peaceful out here. How many times have you come here to escape your father’s rage? How many times have you sat, back pressed against a tree, watching the light fade from the world until it was too dark to see where you were going? You always managed to get home safely, even with the lack of light. 

The river rushes a few yards ahead. You pick a spot to sit and watch, beneath the cover of leaves. The sound of running water and the smell of rain on the wind lulls you into a trance and you close your eyes, resting for a while. 

Here is where you find peace. Where you dream. 

Awareness creeps up on you and you open your eyes, looking upward as you sense someone approaching. Yoongi stands next to you, onyx eyes gazing at the river. He’s in black clothes like before, his hands tucked into his pockets. You smell clove and cinnamon, making you dizzy. Power radiates off of him but it feels warm and safe. Like the night air itself comes from his existence. 

“Am I dreaming?” you ask him. He looks down at you, an obsidian strand of hair falling in his face. He nods, giving you a gentle smile. “This is often where I go to dream.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

Yoongi doesn’t answer you. He looks back to the rushing river, his face becoming unreadable. He looks like he’s somewhere far away, lost in his thoughts. Absently, he says, “Your dreams are my favorite.”

“What do you mean?”

“They are bright, full of life and color and sound. You dream the way people create art, the way people create worlds. It is rare to see such magnificence among the sleeping.” 

“I just…” you shrug. “Think of places I would rather be.” 

Yoongi looks at you then and his face is shadowed, full of thunder. “You’ll never be forced to live that life again.” 

“Do you promise?” 

He opens and closes his mouth, narrowing his eyes a little before shaking his head. You feel a smile tug at your mouth, endeared by his microexpressions. “Yes, little lamb. I promise.”

-

You wake with a start, sitting up in bed and looking around. The room spins as your brain tries to catch up with your body, your physical and mental awareness completely out of sync as you swivel your head, drinking in the unfamiliar room and the soft sheets that smell like clove and cinnamon. 

For a moment, you forget where you are, and adrenaline surges through you. Your fingers twist in the sheets as you ground yourself, memories from the day before slotting into place. Letting out a long exhale, you relax, flopping backward in the opulent bed, your heart rate slowing down as your panic bleeds out of you. 

You’re in Yoongi’s home. In a place that is somewhere in between - whatever that means. The god has told you on multiple occasions that you’re safe and have nothing to fear from him and for some reason…. You believe him. Maybe it’s naive, but you can’t erase the feeling that Yoongi is being honest with you, that he has good intentions. 

Perhaps it’ll get you into trouble one day. For now, you cast off doubt and peel yourself out of bed, trailing to the windowed doors that lead to the balcony beyond. You try the handle and are delighted to find them unlocked. Slipping through the doors, you’re met with warm, balmy air. It smells like petrichor, the breeze kissing your skin gently.

Like before, the world seems wrapped in permanent twilight. There is no sun in the sky, but a vast stretch of swimming stars and the largest moon you’ve ever seen. In the distance, dark mountains loom over you, their peaks capped in snow and wreathed in mist. 

Forest stretches out toward them in a vibrant shade of green. There’s a settee on the balcony along with a table and chairs. Leaning on the stone railing, you look down to see colorful gardens and a large pond full of vibrant fish.

All of the radiance makes you smile. You’ve never seen colors so rich, and you’re unable to recall if your world was this vibrant. The garden below is bursting with violet and cerulean, the flowers unfamiliar to you. Their fragrant smell wafts up to the balcony, a hint of sweetness in the air. 

A roll of thunder catches your attention. You look to the east, noticing that one of the mountains in the distance is darker than the others. Lightning crackles in the sky around it and the mist is heavier there. You think the trees are darker too, though you can’t tell if they’re gray or if it’s the shade from the swollen thunderheads drifting over them. 

Behind you, the door to the balcony opens and startles you. Whirling around, you find Taehyung leaning against the frame, mouth curved upwards in a sideways grin. “When you didn’t answer the door I got worried.”

“I thought I was safe here? What is there to be worried about?”

He shrugs. “Maybe you took a dive off of the balcony.”

“What is that place?” you point to the thundering, shrouded mountain. Taehyung looks where you point, his smile dropping as he stares at the looming peak. “By the look on your face, somewhere bad.”

“Bad is a relative term.” 

You scrunch your nose. “You sound like Yoongi.”

“Already familiar, are we? Cute.” He pushes off the door frame and beckons you inside. “Ask Yoongi about it on your tour.”

“Are you not coming along?”

“I have things to do.”

“Like what?”

“Not give tours.”

If it weren’t for Taehyung’s playful tone and glint in his eye when he casts you a glance, you’d think you were bothering him. Instead of getting angry, he drapes himself on one of the couches by the fireplace, long legs dangling off the arm as he lounges.

Today, he’s in charcoal colored pants and a red, billowing shirt that shows off the smooth, tan skin of his chest. A dangling earring catches your attention as he leans his head back, silky hair shifting. If Yoongi is made of moonlight, you think that Taehyung might be made of sunlight: golden skin, warm energy. 

“By all means,” you mutter. “Hang out.” 

“This is my home first, human. I shall do as I please.”

You make a sound at the back of your throat and roll your eyes, walking toward a large, polished wardrobe made from dark wood. It smells like fresh cedar when you pull on the brass handle, opening the door to reveal tunics and dresses, all hung neatly. 

Rich silks, velvets and cottons greet you. You run your hand over the materials, amazed at how soft they feel. They are far better quality than your mother ever had access to. Your heart squeezes when you think of her, and you shake your head a little as if to physically dispel thoughts of your family out of your mind.

Facing them seems like an impossible task. You know that you’ll have to eventually. Two weeks with Yoongi in this strange world seems like a long time, but you’re not sure if it’s nearly long enough to mentally prepare to go back and face them after what’s happened. Will they still be angry? What will they say? Will they have been worried about you all this time?

There’s no way to know the answer. So instead, you pretend none of that exists. For once, you have stumbled into a dream and adventure like you’ve always wanted, and you intend on playing the part. 

An emerald shirt catches your eye. It’s made of a silky material, supple when you rub the sleeve between your fingers. It’s plain, save for the laced string at the throat to cinch and tie it off. You grab a pair of black, cotton pants as well, the fabric just as soft as the sheets in your bed. 

With Taehyung humming on the couch, you let yourself into the bathroom to change. You appreciate that the floor is warm wherever you go barefoot, and you quickly slide out of your clothes from the previous day and into the new ones. The measurements are a little off, but more than manageable as you pull the tie closed at your throat. Glancing into the mirror, you can’t help but smile a little.

You look so different. The shirt belongs to someone adventurous, you think. Perhaps a pirate or a huntress riding atop her horse through the woods. You slide your fingers along the material, its softness inviting and magical. 

Two weeks. You’ll be here for two weeks with Yoongi, a god who has been alive for hundreds of years, if your conversation from the night before was anything to go off of. It feels surreal and you’re a little nervous, but more than that, you’re excited.

Suddenly, the world is full of possibilities. No marriage to tie you down, no power held in your parents’ hands. 

 “Gods you’re slow to get dressed,” Taehyung announces when you enter the room. He sits up, appraising your outfit. “Green looks good on you.”

“How many are there?” he cocks his head at your question, peeling himself from the seat. “Gods and goddesses, I mean.”

“Pfft. Hundreds.”

“Hundreds?” 

“Maybe thousands, I don’t really know. There’s basically an infinite amount of universes. All anyone mostly cares about are the Eternals, the gods who remain the same no matter what name or history mortals assign to them.”

“Eternals?”

“Mhmm.” Taehyung leads you into the hallway. His hands are tucked into his pockets as he strolls leisurely. You follow beside him eagerly, looking up as he seems thoughtful. “Gods are hard to define. They are great beings with massive power. Some gods do the same thing, some don’t. They come from the infinite amount of worlds to which they are native, and somehow make it into mortal history. But the Eternals have always been here, always known. They do not change.”

“Who are the Eternals?”

“Life, death, chaos, time, pathos, dream and fate.” He makes a face then. “Fate and chaos are hard. They work in direct opposition to one another. It drives time insane, naturally.”

Seven Eternals. It makes sense, from a logical standpoint. Every world must have life and death and the passing of time. Where there exists a living thing, there exists a vessel of emotion and dreams. In all worlds there is the potential for chaos disrupting fate. 

“Yoongi is an Eternal?”

Taehyung glances sidelong at you, smug. “Yes, Yoongi is an Eternal.”

“Why do you look at me like that when I say his name?” Taehyung doesn’t answer, instead smirking as if he’s enjoying a private joke. Your fists close and open as you swallow down a demand to tell you what he finds so amusing. “Which one is he?”

“Have you no guesses?”

That makes you think. Recalling the night before, you remember the way Yoongi looks: dark eyes swimming with something magical, a soft and raspy voice, the way he appeared in your dreams. 

Though your dreams are mesmerizing and far more colorful than anyone else I know. You recall what he said about your dreams, the way he leveled his gaze at you, full of meaning that you didn’t understand. 

“Dreams,” you say, certain that you're right. “He’s the Eternal of Dreams?”

“He isn’t of dreams. He is Dream.”

You’re unable to clarify Taehyung’s emphasis on Yoongi being a deity of dreams as he opens the door to the same library as before. This time, he doesn’t knock. When you step inside, you realize it’s because the room is empty. Yoongi is nowhere to be seen, though pale light filters in through the windows. It’s still forever twilight outside, yet a little lighter. It feels like morning, even if it does not entirely appear to be morning. 

Behind you, the door shuts. You turn to see Taehyung has left without another word, leaving you entirely alone in the captivating space. 

Without hesitation, you walk to the nearest shelf housing rows and rows of books. The spines range from muted browns and neutrals to bright reds and rich blues. Velvet books, leather books, canvas, silk. There is no shortage of materials making up each one, letters painted, printed or stitched down the back of them to denote what they are. 

Each one breathes a world of possibility as you drag your finger along the shape of them. You wonder how many worlds and histories are scribbled away in the pages of this room, the very idea of it overwhelming. 

Trinkets and objects you’re unfamiliar with line the shelves as well. Your fingers trace their shape and you wonder what they are. One object in particular catches your eye in the corner of the room. It stands on three metal legs and has large, interlocking rings that spin lazily in some unknown pattern. The rings are hammered metal and appear to have markings engraved on them.

The device slowly spins of its own accord. Upon inspection, there seems to be nothing else responsible for its motion except magic or science that is beyond you. You can see that there are seven metal rings and different markings on each of them, but you cannot guess what the engravings read. 

“It represents the balance of the Eternals. Taehyung mentioned you had a vague starting point as to what I am.”

Yoongi’s deep voice makes you leap and screech, spinning on your heels to face him. Your hand flies to your chest and you can feel your heartbeat rattling wildly. Yoongi stands a few feet away from you, hands linked behind his back and eyebrows raised at your reaction. 

He’s dressed similar to the night before, though a little more casual. His black pants are tucked into knee high boots, and his black shirt is loose fitted with silver stitching around the collar. You notice that it’s in patterns of stars and moons, furthering your confirmation that Yoongi is associated with dreams in some manner. 

Yoongi’s long hair is pulled half out of his face today, tied away in a bun. The rest of his hair brushes the tops of his shoulders as his inky eyes regard you patiently. His curiosity makes you feel warm all over and you drop your hands to your sides, fingers twitching. 

“How so?” you ask. You turn back to the device. “What does it run on?”

“Our energy. Each ring represents a member of my family. The speed at which they turn represents the balance among us. When the speed is off, the balance is off.”

“What causes the balance to be off?” 

Yoongi steps closer to you. You hold your breath as he does it, but you can feel his presence like a buzzing vibration at the back of your neck.

His voice is softer when he answers, “A number of things. Sometimes some of us aren’t always performing the way we should be. Other times, we’re overperforming. Or fighting, really, as siblings are wont to do.”

“I don’t know what that’s like.”

“You’re not missing much. Especially when your siblings are as ancient and never ending as you are.” 

“How… old are you?”

You look at Yoongi to see he’s standing next to you now. He looks at you, face impassive as he lifts a shoulder. “How old is the earth? How old is existence? It’s hard to say.” 

“Where do you come from?”

“Chaos was first. Life and Death were next, twins born of the sudden whims of Chaos. I was next, for Life often dreamed. Time was always there, though no one knows if Time or Chaos came first. Pathos and Fate came later.”

You nod, though you don’t fully understand the scope of how old and fathomless the existence of things like chaos and time and dreams are. It makes your head spin, trying to conceptualize the thing next to you who looks very much like an ordinary man being something so ancient and primordial that he precedes human existence entirely. 

“You’re overwhelmed,” he notes, a bit of amusement in his voice. “I don’t blame you. The best way to understand it is that I am a living concept that can never be destroyed, so long as there exists something to dream about.” 

Crossing his arms in front of him, Yoongi clasps his hands and gives you a slight smile. He has a pretty smile, you realize. Delicate and almost shy. It makes your heart flutter and you mentally chastise yourself for thinking that a being of eternal dreams can possibly be shy. 

“How about a tour? Our deal is that you’ll spend two weeks a month here. I’d love for you to feel like this is a place you can be familiar with, if not something akin to a home.”

“Home?”

His smile grows. “If that word ever seems fitting, sure.”

Home. The word makes you think about what home means to you and suddenly you feel a pit form in the bottom of your stomach. Flashes of a flooded forest, lighting lancing across the sky, hands gripping you tight and shoving you under the water. 

“Um,” you clear your throat. “So a tour.”

Yoongi’s eyes glitter as he grins and turns, using a hand to gesture to the wide library. “This is the main library, but we’ll end our tour here. Let’s go through the gardens first, it’s nice weather.”

Yoongi starts without you, leaving you to stand staring after him as he goes. His gait is smooth and confident. He presses on a pane of glass that you realize is a door. A breeze teases the loose pieces of his hair, carrying the familiar scent of clove and cinnamon toward you. 

For a moment, you stare after him. Yoongi being a deity of dreams makes so much sense in this moment, stepping into the twilight, face tilted upward slightly as though he’s soaking up the sun. He looks radiant. Tranquil. When he turns to look at you expectantly, his rose pink mouth quirks sideways. 

“Right,” you say, hurrying to follow him. “Outside is where we start.” 

When you pass him, you get the sense that Yoongi wants to tease you further. Instead, he says nothing and leads you into the gardens. A cobblestone path leads from the door through wisteria trees, their amethyst leaves swooping down and filling the air with sweet fragrance. 

Up above, the sky is a mix of blue and purple, thousands of stars twinkling. There is a stone bench near one of the windows of the library, but Yoongi leads you away from the palace and down the path under the trees. The air is crisp and pleasant, cooling your anxious, sweat-slick skin. 

Yoongi links his hands behind his back. “This is the library garden,” he informs you, glancing at you from the corner of his eye. “It’s mostly wisteria trees, which are my favorite to walk through when I need to think.”

“They’re unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

“Much different from the woods outside of your home.”

“You know the woods outside of my home?”

“You called me there, remember?” You blanch at the memory, but if he notices, Yoongi says nothing. “Besides, I’m familiar with the woods that surround your home. Your village pays homage to my brother.”

“Your brother?”

He hums. “Life. Perhaps they don’t know that it’s him they pray to, but they do.”

Taking a left, Yoongi leads you on a looping path through the massive wisteria trees. They’re larger than anything you’ve ever seen, their bows sweeping monoliths of purple, trunks thick as boulders. A strange creature sits on the branches of one of the trees, making you stop and stare. 

A tiny, carnelian creature sits on a bough, bright against the lavender background of the leaves. It has four legs and scaled feet, sharp talons cutting into the bark as it keeps its balance in the tree. Small wings are folded on its back, bony limbs with paper-thin skin between them, a lighter red than the rest of its body. A long tail snakes around the branch, holding the creature in place as its long neck extends, head tilting to look at you curiously.

“Is that a dragon?” you whisper, staring at it.

You’ve only heard them described in stories, but you don’t really know what they look like. It has scales like a lizard and it blinks two large eyes at you, entirely black. There are small horns on its head, and a forked tongue snakes out as it tastes the air. 

“She’s a fey dragon,” Yoongi hums, looking up at the creature with a smile. “And she’s not supposed to be in the trees here, are you?”

A puff of smoke curls from the dragon’s nose as it huffs, making you take a step backward. Yoongi lets out a deep laugh that makes a tingle rattle down your spine and your toes curl. The sound is like smoke and velvet, heady in the air. 

“She won’t hurt you,” Yoongi assures, shaking his head to continue walking under the dragon’s branch. “She’s a pesky little thing, but she is incredibly sweet. Fey dragons are much smaller than their firedrake cousins and less dangerous than their basilisk relatives.”

With your eyes cast upward, you hurry after Yoongi, keeping your gaze on the large lizard as you run under the branch. Her dark eyes follow you, unblinking and fathomless. The hair on your arms stands up and you can’t help but feel that despite the dragon being small and what Yoongi calls harmless, it is incredibly intelligent. 

“There are dragons here?” 

“There is everything here.”

You frown, finally turning away from the dragon as you leave it behind. “That’s confusing. Everything as in…?”

“When you dream, you have limitless potential. You can go anywhere, be anything, see any creature. Dreams even invent things that do not exist in the natural world. Creatures, stories, songs, words, plants. The possibility for creation in a dream is limitless, and this place is the essence of dreams. It is me.”

“So you are this place and the place is you?”

He seems thoughtful before nodding. “More or less. This is a dream realm as much as it is a collection of ideas, thoughts and hopes. Everything that every living creature has ever dreamed about walks these lands.”

“Even nightmares?”

Yoongi pulls up short and whips his head at you. You bite the inside of your cheek, unable to meet his eyes under his severe expression. In the distance, you swear you hear thunder. An apology springs to your lips, but before you can give it, Yoongi nods sharply once and begins walking again.

“Nightmares too. Do not speak of nightmares here, lest they come searching.”

You think about Taehyung telling you that you were safe but being concerned when you didn’t answer the door earlier that morning. A chill seeps into your bones as you rejoin Yoongi on your walk, his pace not as relaxed now. 

“They come searching?” you try, a little curious, a little afraid. 

“Yes. They are different from dreams. Unpredictable in a way I admire and dislike.” He glances sidelong at you. “They have a mind of their own. You are safe with me always, but it’s best practice to not think of them while you’re here. This world has a way of manifesting.”

For a few moments, you walk in silence. You let your questions fall silent as you look around. The two of you exit the wisteria trees to see a large pond. A single, massive wisteria sits on its western edge with a bench underneath it. 

The surface of the pond is dark and smooth, reflecting the swirling stars in the sky. Yoongi leads you around the mirror surface and points out the mountains in the distance that you could see from your windows. 

“Mountains of Sleep,” he tells you. “It is where all beings who are ready for their eternal rest come to dream for the remainder of their existence. They are also called the Mountains of Divinity, for there are hundreds of divine immortals among their peaks.”

“Really?”

He nods. “Not all beings rest here. Some prefer their own planes and resting grounds. But this existed before those places, and has long been used for the tired and the weary who are ready to retire.”

“Are they dead?”

“No. The dead cannot come here.” He hesitates. “When they do, it is because they are not a dream.”

You get the sense that Yoongi is talking about nightmares again and you shiver as he takes you around the pond. “Don’t let anything in that body of water convince you to go swimming. They won’t intentionally hurt you but they don’t understand the concept of human life.”

“They?”

“They don’t have a name. They are water-folk who were dreamt up by someone once. I admire them and they’re beautiful and wicked smart, but they’re a bit cheeky.”

“I’m starting not to feel as safe as you said I was.”

Yoongi stops and frowns. He lifts a hand as though he’s about to touch your arm before he thinks better of it and drops it at his side. You realize you’re disappointed that he did before mentally kicking yourself, feeling a little ashamed to be so affected by a god. You’re sure Yoongi gets it often, but it makes you feel silly nonetheless. 

“You are safe.” He lowers his head a little, catching your gaze. Though his eyes are midnight black, you swear you see the stars above reflected in their dark pools. “But there are rules everywhere. This place has them just the same as your home did. You were relatively safe there, but there were rules.”

“And then I broke them and Nathaniel tried to murder me.”

“Nathaniel was dealt with and will never touch you again.” Thunder rolls in the distance and your heart flutters at the vehemence with which Yoongi says this. “The misdeeds of your family cannot chase you here.”

You don’t press Yoongi on the matter. Instead, you let him proceed with the tour, keeping your questions to a minimum as you wonder what Yoongi meant by Nathaniel being dealt with. You recall the soft, susurrated voice against your ear when Yoongi found you. The gentle brush of something like a kiss to your neck. The rage and power as he stepped in front of you to face Nathaniel when the deal was done.

It does not require much to make an assumption about Yoongi’s meaning. 

The yards of his palace are sprawling and full of color. Gardens with flowers he doesn’t know the name of but said a little girl had dreamed them and he liked them so he made more. Butterflies with colors you didn’t know existed flitting from plant to plant. Fruit orchards with the ripest, reddest apples you’ve ever seen. 

And the palace. It is the only word you have for it. The building is several stories tall, hewn from dark stone with at least five different towers. Starlight glitters in the windows as Yoongi guides you up the stairs toward the massive double doors that lead to the main entrance of the castle. On the door handle are two wrought-iron griffons with proud faces. 

Without a touch, the doors open on Yoongi’s arrival. You wonder if the building responds to his presence as the door swings open for the two of you. Inside, the foyer is as magnificent as the library, a lush purple carpet rolling over stone floors. 

In the center of the room is a massive spiral staircase. Looking up, you see that it goes all the way up the floors of the palace, dizzying circles of floor after floor. Yoongi explains there are other ways to go all the way up to the top throughout the castle but this is the easiest way, though he assures you that by the third floor you’d be out of breath. 

Each room Yoongi shows you is opulent and warm. Rich, deep wooden furniture, paintings with dark splashes of amethyst, scarlet and gold. Rooms for tea, rooms for painting, rooms for music, rooms for dancing. Yoongi has a room for everything, sometimes occupied by strange little creatures that hide when you walk in or curious things that lift their heads when they see him. 

No one else besides Taehyung seems to be there, though. You come across felines, little balls of light that bounce around Yoongi excitedly and light him up like a burst of flame, a little furry thing that you think is a fox but in a shade of shocking sapphire, and a massive wolf with eyes like ice that blink apathetically at you as you walk by. But never once do you see another person. Even Taehyung seems to be amiss. 

“Does no one else live here?” Yoongi takes you through another room empty of people and things. “It’s so empty.” 

He takes his time to answer as you leave the room and move into the hallway. It’s hard to tell which way you’re going, but you think that you’re headed toward the library again. Your legs ache from going up and down the stairs on an endless tour of rooms, and you’re eager to be in the library once more. 

“There used to be,” Yoongi says slowly. “But people don’t tend to do well in places that they don’t belong.”

“So you’re all alone here?”

His smile is sad. “I have Taehyung.” He pauses before he adds, “And now you.”

I’m often very alone. It would be nice to have some company. You think of Yoongi’s words from the night before and suddenly you’re filled with sadness. Sadness for this ancient being, who seems so gentle and quiet. Who lives alone in this giant castle with all of the world’s dreams around him and no one to share them with. 

Swallowing thickly, you nod. “How do you know I belong?”

“Pardon?”

“Do I? Belong, I mean. You wouldn’t… have me here if I wouldn’t do well, right?”

“No one dreams the way you do.” He says this firmly. Confident. Fierce. “I believe there is nothing you wouldn’t be able to find here.”

“Do you always know what I dream about?” 

“No. But you dream… loudly. Colorfully. Sometimes it’s hard to ignore. I don’t like to pry, though.” 

“Can you see everyone’s dreams?”

“Mhmm. I even make some.”

This catches your attention and you reach out and grab his wrist, stopping him. He glances down where your fingers touch his skin, your fingers buzzing where you’re connected. You flush with warmth and drop your hand, clearing your throat at how forward grabbing him was. 

Yoongi is smirking when you ask, “Can you show me?”

“One day, yes. For now, the end of the tour and lunch.”

At the mention of lunch, your stomach rumbles. His grin spreads into a full smile and Yoongi leads you back to the library. Again, the doors open without his touch and as you pass them, you study them for any sign of an auto-opening mechanism but find none. 

Yoongi’s magic appears limitless. You remember the food disappearing from dinner, the swell of power as Yoongi agreed to save you, and his sudden appearance as you were drowning. You know nothing about the god of dreams or what he’s capable of, but you’re awed at how easy it comes to him. 

“This is the main library.” Yoongi turns around to face you, sweeping his arms out on either side of him. “There are two others: one in my room and one located in the dream tower.”

“You didn’t show me the dream tower.”

“I’ll show you when you’re ready.” 

Unsure what ready means to Yoongi, you look around the library. Same as the night before, the shelves are crammed full of books and scrolls, so much paper and ink that it makes you lightheaded with excitement. It still smells of lemon and wax, though as you pass Yoongi to go to a shelf, you’re overcome with clove and cinnamon again. 

Trying to ignore the shiver that merely walking by Yoongi gives you, you brush the spines of books once again, feeling their potential under your fingertips. 

“You always have access to this library. You can read what you like.”

A pang goes through you and you drop your hand. Without looking at him, you mumble, “Thank you, but I can’t read.”

No response comes. You stare unseeing at the books before taking a breath to turn your head and steal a glance at Yoongi. You expect some sort of amusement or perhaps pity, but his face is unreadable, jaw working.

“That’s okay,” he finally says. “We will teach you. After lunch we will make a schedule to help fill your time here. Reading and writing lessons will be a part of that.”

Your heartbeat quickens. “Do you mean that?”

“Do you want to learn?” You nod your head eagerly. He grins gently. “Then we will teach you.” 

-

Yoongi’s eyes are dark as he presses forward. Your breath catches in your chest as you lay back, looking up at him with your lips parted, heart hammering in your chest. He settles his waist against you, the weight of him pressing you into your bed as you lay back. 

He is so beautiful that it puts you in a daze, staring up into his face as he leans over you. His hair is pulled back, but a few dark strands hang loose. His mouth is stained red with wine, making you want to lean forward and taste his lips and feel their softness. 

Tentatively, you reach a hand up and brush the loose strands of hair out of his face, tucking them behind his ear. You don’t stop touching him, though, hand cradling his flushed face. His eyes flutter shut and he leans into your palm as you cup his cheek, thumb sweeping back and forth. 

“Is this what you dream of?” he whispers, eyes remaining closed. “Being under me, like this?”

Dreaming. You realize you’re dreaming. You jolt and suddenly, you’re alone. 

-

“Your handwriting is terrible,” Taehyung admits, looming over your shoulder. You grip the quill tighter, nearly snapping it in two. “But you learn unbelievably fast. How many of these letters do you think you have consistently memorized?” 

Taehyung is in charge of your writing lessons today and you already want to kill him. It’s been five days of your new residency in the House of Dreams, as Yoongi calls it, and you’ve quickly learned that Taehyung is equally charming and playful as he is outright vexing. 

Instead of turning to give him a very harsh poke in the arm with your quill, you scan the shapes in front of you. There are twenty-six of them, all awkwardly slanted and misshapen where you’ve used too much ink or not enough. Using a quill and ink feels alien to your hand and your fingers struggle to remember the proper way to hold it as you draw your letters. 

“I think most of them,” you answer slowly, mentally sounding out each word on the page in your head as you go. “But there are a few of them that confuse me. The lowercase ‘d’ and ‘b’ I find nearly impossible to recall and ‘v’ and ‘u’ are rather frustrating.” 

“Whenever you see a ‘u’, think of it as having a scoop. Sc-uuup.” Taehyung points to a ‘u’ on the page and mimics the scooping motion. “Might be easier to associate the sound scoop with ‘u’ even though the word itself doesn’t have a ‘u’.” 

The desperate look you give him makes him laugh as you struggle to imagine why a word with a ‘u’ sound doesn’t actually contain the letters. You’re saved from Taehyung’s maddening - but helpful - instruction as Yoongi walks into the library. 

“You’d better not be laughing at her again.” 

Taehyung steps away from you and bows his head toward Yoongi. “I’m laughing with her. We’re just sharing amusement over the hypocrisy of letters.”  

“Yeah,” you deadpan. “It’s hilarious.”

Today, Yoongi is in a deep, amethyst colored shirt. It’s laced at the throat with the familiar moon and stars that he has stitched on much of his clothing, and his hair down and long, slicked back and tucked behind his ears. As always, he’s in dark pants and boots today, the sound of them clicking on the stone floor as he nudges Taehyung out of the way to peer over your shoulder. 

You tense. Being around Yoongi for the last five days has been intoxicating. It is bad enough that you get distracted during your lessons by the way his voice rumbles when he speaks and the way he chews his lips when working on his own things while you study. It’s worse that now he invades your dreams, whispering in your ear and hands wandering over your curves, sinful mouth brushing over your skin and leaving you to jolt awake in bed covered in sweat.

The very idea that Yoongi knows what you're dreaming of drives you to the edge of insanity. He’d promised he preferred to avoid your dreams, but you wonder if he knows. Knows that you have developed an insatiable habit of fantasizing about his hands, or about the tone of his voice. 

Gripping your quill tight, you hold your breath when he leans over you. He’s not touching you, but he’s close enough that you feel the heat of him and smell him, cinnamon and clove making your eyes flutter. If you didn’t know he was the god of dreams, you’d mistake him for the god of lust, if that was a thing.

“Why aren’t you breathing?” You peer upward to see Yoongi looking down at you. If you tilted your head back just a fraction more, you’d be pressed against his chest. Even from upside down, his moon-pale face and cosmos eyes make you want to scream. “Are you alright?”

“Nervous that I’m not performing well.”

His face softens. “You’re a quick learner. Don’t worry about progress and pace.”

“But what if I lose it when I go h- back.” 

Home. That’s what you were going to say. But the idea of home is terrifying. You don’t know what waits for you when you go back. You don’t know what splitting time between two worlds means. You don’t know what you’ll do when you have to spend two weeks there before coming back to Yoongi. 

Five days in Yoongi’s realm has been enough to make you feel like this has always been your life. You fit into the daily routines of Yoongi and Taehyung better than you imagined, and though you still sometimes get lost in the House of Dreams, you discover that you’re adapting. 

There’s always something new to discover, an adventure around the corner. You like learning your letters and the sounds that they make. You love studying the maps in the library and tracing the distances between countries you can’t name and have no idea where they are. 

Most of all, you love exploring. Rooms upon rooms of objects both normal and magical. Creatures that roam freely around the palace - including a clever little fox that has taken interest in following you around as you take breaks from studying by walking around the grounds. 

While Yoongi’s home doesn’t feel like it belongs to you, you’re more afraid to go back to your mother and father than you are to go near the pond at the edge of the wisteria garden. 

So you avoid thinking of going back.

“You’ll practice while you’re there,” Yoongi says, as though it’s the easiest answer in the world. “You have to practice every day.”

“My father won’t- he doesn’t…” You shake your head, unable to get the words out. That your father would strike you to the ground if he found you with books again. “I can’t bring anything back with me.”

“Sure you can.” You glance at him to find his expression is firm. “I told you, you’re under my protection. Things will be very different for you when you go back.”

“How?”

“It’s… difficult to say.” 

Yoongi offers nothing else. You become hyper aware of how close he’s standing to you again and you look down at your letter practicing. With a shaky hand, you dip the quill into the ink, lifting it from the inkwell and letting the excess drip before bringing it over to the paper. 

When Yoongi makes no move to leave, you inhale deeply to steel your nerves and continue tracing. He’s content to watch you as you work. If he knows how distracted this makes you, he doesn’t let on. Perhaps he has no idea that as you scrawl a shaky letter ‘k’, it’s Yoongi who consumes your thoughts. 

Even in your waking hours it seems you’re not rid of him. 

Most of your study sessions are like this, Yoongi watching you so closely that it makes your quill bleed too much ink. He is a passive teacher, letting you come to him with questions instead of correcting you constantly like Taehyung does. Even now, when you hesitate on the next letter of the alphabet, Yoongi doesn’t offer his help. Lets you figure it out. 

You dip the quill in ink and continue. 

After you finish the last shaky letter, you set the quill down, flexing your fingers open and closed. Yoongi makes a satisfied noise and steps away. You turn to see him walking toward the table by the fireplace, which is where you have started to take all your meals. Already, there are platters of food and drinks. Taehyung sits in a chair, plucking a grape from a plate and popping it in his mouth.

“I didn’t invite you,” Yoongi grumbles as he takes a seat at the head of the table. You push yourself up from your chair, legs aching from sitting so long. “Who said you can eat my grapes?”

“Ugh, I’m tired of eating alone.” 

“Let him stay, Yoongi.” The god looks at you with a glower, bottom lip jutted out slightly. It’s so cute that you can’t help but burst into laughter, hand flying to your mouth. “Sorry, I think you just pouted.” 

“He did.” Taehyung grins and leans back in his chair. “He wants you to himself.”

Yoongi hisses Taehyung’s name, shutting down the teasing immediately. You glance at Yoongi shyly as you sit down but he doesn’t meet your eyes, choosing to laden his plate with food instead. You can’t imagine why Yoongi would want you to himself, especially when all you do is ply him with questions. 

Still, a little bit of a thrill goes through you as you start loading your plate, your gaze drifting toward the deity again as he bites into a strawberry, the juice running down his chin. Your eyes track the movement as his tongue darts out, catching the drip before it escapes too far. 

Yoongi’s mouth is hypnotizing and it takes you a moment too long to realize he’s watching you stare at him. Quickly, you grab a cup and bring water to your lips, gulping the cool water and glancing up at the ceiling, feeling embarrassment bloom like warm liquid through you. 

When you put the cup down, you swear you see Yoongi smiling. 

-

Hungry lips suck at the tender flesh of your neck. You gasp, feeling your toes curl in pleasure, head spinning. Yoongi’s teeth scrape against the sensitive skin, the drag of his rough tongue soothing over the bites driving you mad. You let out a soft moan, eyes squeezing shut as you writhe under him. 

Yoongi’s large hands pin yours above your head, your fingers tangling in the sheets as he continues to ravish your neck with his hot mouth, tongue and teeth. His hips roll over you and you whine, feeling his hard-on pressing against you. 

Your parents would kill you if they knew you were here like this, trapped under a god of the dark as he sucks on your pulse point, mouth moving upward to nip your ear. Your chest is heaving and you can’t get enough breath, overwhelmed by the scent of cinnamon and clove, by the way his mouth pulls sounds from you so easily. 

Yoongi tears his lips away and looks down at you, eyes so dark and blown out that you think he might devour you, swallow you whole in one bite - 

“You’re dreaming of me again,” he whispers. “I don’t know if you mean to be dreaming of me, like this.” 

You startle, realizing this isn’t real, and the illusion fades. 

-

Twilight skies stretch above you. It’s warm outside, but the night air is cool against your skin, making you shiver as you sit down, folding your legs criss-cross. 

“Are you cold?” Yoongi asks, sitting down on the soft grass next to you. You shake your head, eyes fixed on the low table in front of you that's filled with platters of meats, cheeses and crackers. You eye a glass bottle of red liquid that you think is wine, mouth watering. “Are you sure?”

“Promise, the wind feels nice.” 

He looks doubtful as he sits down next to you, a healthy amount of space between you. 

Tonight, Yoongi has insisted on a late night snack outside under the stars. He seems eager, verging on giddy as he glances up at the sky before reaching for the bottle of red liquid and popping the cork. 

After nearly two weeks in the House of Dreams, you’ve learned that this world is forever twilight, lit up by dreams. Here, day and night don’t exist in their truest forms. There are always millions of people and creatures dreaming at every moment of existence, not limiting Yoongi’s world and power to times of day and night. 

The twilight is beautiful. You’ve grown accustomed to the purple tint to the world, the way that it gets just the barest bit darker outside during certain periods, as though even in a world where night and day don’t exist, there are still two separate halves of time. 

Yoongi passes you a glass. You bring it to your nose and sniff, delighted at the scent of cherries and something else. It’s certainly wine, though you wait for him to pour himself a glass to sip any. 

Earrings dangle in Yoongi’s ears tonight. Each lobe has a small, thin chain with a moon charm on the end that’s studded with sapphires, catching the moonlight as he sets down the bottle and sits back. His hair is pulled half-up, half-down again, leaving his full face in view as he looks at you and gives you a gummy grin that scatters your thoughts. 

“Chaos is moving through the sky tonight,” Yoongi informs you, glancing upward. “When she does, she’s beautiful to see. She doesn’t do it that often, but she’s passing us by on her way to do whatever it is she does somewhere. I wanted you to see.” 

He holds out his drink and you grip yours tight, raising your glass to clink with his like you’ve seen people do at the inn in your village. He turns away from you, bringing his wine to his lips to sip. You follow suit, tentatively tilting your glass.

Sweet cherries bloom on your tongue and you hum in delight. It isn’t just cherries you taste, though. There’s a lush sweetness too, edged with spice, filling your mouth with warmth. You look at Yoongi as you sip and see him watching with a closed-lipped smile, eyes searching your face.

“You like it?” 

You nod and set the glass down. “It’s delicious.” 

“You like sweet things.” 

“And you like salty.” He raises a brow in question. “You’re always going for the salted meats at dinner. And you have salted pork right there,” you point to the meat and cheeseboards. “Do gods get dehydrated?”

“We do not. I didn’t realize you were paying so much attention.” You shrug, picking up your wine to take small sips again. “Anything else you’ve noticed?” 

Everything, you want to say and don’t. You’ve noticed so many things about Yoongi, all of them coming to mind at once. But you don’t want to reveal just how much you’ve watched him over the last two weeks, paying far more attention than is proper. 

You could tell Yoongi how you’ve noticed that he wears seven necklaces exactly, each with a different symbol charm on them that you think corresponds to the seven Eternals. You could tell him that he has the habit of closing his eyes and tilting his face upward, like he’s absorbing moonlight. You know all of his favorite breakfast items, specifically crispy bacon and sugared strawberries. 

And there are other things you could tell him, like in your dreams his lips are soft as sin, his voice low and sultry. You could admit that most nights you feel his grip on your waist and that when you study his hands during your lessons, you can’t help but already know the shape of them. 

Perhaps two weeks back in your village is exactly what you need to get the ridiculous fantasy of this eternal being from your head. You don’t think you could bear the shame of him knowing exactly what living in the in-between realm has done for your imagination in a very unexpected way. 

“You like bacon,” you offer as an answer. “And sugared strawberries. In the evening, whiskey is your favorite. It smells a little bit like honey, but still spicy. And you must work in the dream tower often at night, because the door to the tower smells like clove and cinnamon and you always smell that way.”

Yoongi’s brows shoot up. You hide your expression with your glass of wine, taking a long draught. It hums in your veins, warm and rushing like nothing you’ve ever felt before. When you lower the glass, Yoongi watches you with an intense expression. You meet his gaze, suddenly unable to look away. 

The air feels charged as you stare. His eyes dip down to your mouth a single time, then back up to your eyes. The breeze moves strands of his hair and you smell the hint of clove followed by cinnamon, just as you always do when he’s near. Your heart starts to staccato as the silence presses on. 

A little shriek cuts through the tension like a knife. You flinch and turn around, looking at a red blur of movement burst from the wisteria trees. Tiera lands with a squawk, the fey dragon huffing as grey smoke curls from her lungs. She ignores you entirely as she normally does and skips over to where Yoongi is sitting before she settles next to him, curling like a cat and laying on her tail.

Yoongi laughs. “Hello, Tiera.” The dragon chuffs and lets out another puff of smoke. “Are you not going to say hello to our friend?” 

When the dragon pays no attention to you, you roll your eyes. “She hates me.”

“Dragons are capricious. She’s been with me for over a hundred years.”

“Not very mature then, is she?”

He chuckles again as you pluck cheese from the platter and pop it into your mouth. You’re delighted to find it’s soft and garlicky with a hint of rosemary as well. “She is still a child in dragon years.” 

“And you let her be a glutton.” 

“You could be too.” Your chewing slows and you swallow the cheese hard. You wait to see if he’s teasing you, but Yoongi watches you with a placid expression. “Dreams and desires are intertwined, you know. Desires come from dreams. It is in my nature to be indulgent.” 

“I’ve never really been indulgent in my life.”

“Do you want to be?”

“What?”

His mouth twitches. “Indulgent.”

“I think this is indulgent,” you gesture to the food. “And you’re teaching me to read and write. That is more indulgence than I could ever dream of.”

He hums and it sounds like disapproval. “I think your dreams are far more indulgent than that.” 

He knows. You think he’s going to say something, to ask about the way you dream of him. Instead, he says, “When you return, we’ll work on your indulgence. There is no shame in wanting things, you know?” 

“I don’t know. How could I?”

Light flashes above your head. You break eye contact with him to look up and gasp. The sky is full of shooting stars, hundreds of them, maybe thousands. The world lights up as you see rainbows streaking across the sky, bursts of colors and explosions of brilliance shooting through the sky. 

Your mouth hangs open as you watch, mystified into silence. You’re sure this is what Yoongi meant when he said Chaos was passing by, for the sky becomes a cacophony of color and stars and light. You blink your eyes, stunned by the display. It’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, your heart hammering with excitement as you watch it, legs crossed, head tilted up.

The stars begin to slow and there are less bursts of color, until finally, there is just a shimmering wake of stardust and pink simmering in the sky. You look at Yoongi, utterly speechless, to find him looking at you. His eyes reflect the night sky, full of constellations and stardust, glittering in the dark depths of his irises. 

Yoongi’s eyes are as wonderful as the display above, but you don’t say that. 

“That was beautiful,” you breathe. “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

His eyes don’t leave you when he hums softly in agreement. “It was.” 

Tiera shuffles next to Yoongi, drawing your attention. She snakes her long neck out, tongue tasting the air as she eyes the meat on the table. Yoongi hisses at her and taps her nose in chastisement, earning an angry croak as the dragon shuffles back to her napping position. 

The rest of your evening is spent snacking in companionable silence. Yoongi doesn’t talk much unless he’s answering your hundreds of questions, but tonight, you have none. You’re comfortable to just look at the world around you, the wisteria branches dancing in the breeze. 

In the distance, you hear thunder. Your eyes follow the sound to the same dark peak with lightning crackling through the mist. You’ve yet to ask Yoongi about that peak in particular, but you think you know what looms there. You remember Yoongi talking about how there are nightmares in this realm too, and you’re not eager to ask what that thunderous mountain holds. 

Yoongi doesn’t divulge, either. He watches you as you regard the peak and says nothing. Perhaps even the Eternal of dreams is hesitant to speak of that place, which is a good enough reason for you not to press him further on it. 

When your stomach is full and you’ve had another glass of wine, you lay back in the grass. Your limbs feel heavy with drink and your world is tilted on a slow-rotating axis. The buzz in your veins feels pleasant, though your thoughts are a little sticky like honey and they run together, untamed. 

Careful to keep his distance, Yoongi lays back in the grass with you. His face looks up at the sky, but you look at him. His features are so delicate and soft, nose and cheeks so round. His face don’t make sense in your head, so severe and terrifying yet gentle and innocent at the same time. 

“You’re staring,” he says eventually. 

“I’m indulging,” you tease back, loosened up by wine. “You said I can indulge, so let me stare.”

“What is there to indulge in?” 

“Your… earrings.” 

That makes him look at you, a brow quirked. “My earrings.”

“Yes. Very shiny. Very dangly.”

“Shiny and dangly?”

“Is there an echo out here?” you demand, frowning at him. “Yes, I am indulging in your jewelry!” 

“Would you like some earrings?”

“My ears aren’t pierced.”

“Well then we’ll pierce them.”

“Well,” you grump. “Don’t you have the answer for everything?”

He smiles then, that rare gummy smile that makes you shut right up. “I told you. I’m indulgent. Anything you want, all you need is to ask.” 

Rolling your eyes, you bite your lip to hide your smile at his words. It is insane to you that this ancient being is laying in the grass next to you telling you to only ask what you want. You don’t know what you want, but you do know that this feels like a dream. That you’re not really here, and that you’re going to wake up tomorrow and be in your bed at home. 

Dread fills you at the thought of going back to your parents. In a way, you want to see them. They’re your parents and there is… unfamiliarity without the sound of your mothers needle stitching through cloth. You could do without your father entirely. The rage inside of you when you picture his face is difficult to quell and is often followed by terror. 

Yoongi has told you that you will be safe when you return. You believe him. There is no reason not to. But more than anything, you’re terrified about what comes next. Living between two worlds is something you remember dreaming about that one day in the forest, looking at the way the world was reflected back on the mirror-calm surface of the water. 

Now that you have access to two worlds, you don’t know what to do with the other that has brought you nothing but suffering. And yet, you still want to see what is there. You’re not ready to leave it entirely without knowing. 

“Are you afraid to go back?” 

Yoongi’s question is soft. You don’t hesitate to answer, “Yes.” 

“You won’t be alone. All you have to do is dream of me, and I will come.”

You hesitate then ask, “Do you know any time someone dreams of you?”

“It’s like hearing someone call my name, but I never answer. My business is in creating dreams, not invading them. People like you are able to spin up dreams on your own without my assistance. I help those who cannot.” 

“That sounds like a lovely job.”

He hums. “It’s not without its stresses. I talk a lot about the nature of dreams, but there is more to me and to my job than that. Perhaps we will leave that for your next visit, yes?”

You nod. “Okay.” 

“Come on,” Yoongi sighs, heaving himself upward. “It is late and in the morning, you must return.” 

-

“Touch me,” you beg him, straddling Yoongi’s lap. His head rests against the back of the couch and he looks up at you as you run your fingers through his hair. It’s softer than you imagined, sliding like silk between your fingers. “You told me to ask for what I wanted. Touch me.”

“Anything,” Yoongi agrees. His hands skim up your thighs, warm and rough. He squeezes your flesh, making you moan as his hands continue their worship. Yoongi grips your hips tightly, kneading your flesh as he pulls you closer to him. “Anything. Everything. For you.”

-

When you wake up, you’re confused. The roof above your head is wood and thatch. The mattress beneath you is thin and lumpy, sweat sticking the sheets to your legs. Rolling over, your vision blurs until it comes into focus once more, revealing a tiny room with just a bed, a wardrobe and a closed door. 

Your  room. Well, your room in your parents’ house, you realize with a panic. 

You shoot up in bed as terror claws at you. Did you dream it all? Was it not real? Nothing in your room has changed and the windows are open to the cool air. Grey clouds drift in the sky and you can smell the petrichor of oncoming rain in the distance. 

Rushing to your bedroom door, you rip it open, your heart threatening to burst with how hard it’s beating. You don’t know what you’re looking for or what you expect to find, but the idea that you have just woken up from the most vivid, wonderful dream is so maddening that you need anything to tell you it was real. That it wasn’t in your head.

Your mother is sitting at the kitchen table stitching. She looks up when she hears you. She looks different, leaner and narrower than you ever remember, her greasy hair tied low at her neck. Her hands pause their stitching as she stares at you, stricken. 

“What day is it?” you ask her. The day you had been attacked had been a seventh day. You remember that clearly. “Tell me what day it is!”

Instead, your mother screams in sheer terror. 

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[antimony-medusa]

"They're honestly so sibling-coded."

I grew up in a conservative, rural area where people got married young. It was not uncommon to see marraiges happen when the people involved were 19, 20, 21, and there was this sort of expectation that any relationship you were in in your teen years had like a 70% chance of leading to marriage. More, if you were especially religious. This attitude was so pervasive that if a woman was friends with a man, or even hung out together, there was this automatic societal assumption that you were early relationship, which led into late relationship, which led into where you were going to get married, which led into babies and a family.

And I hated it. I hated it because I was aroace and didn't know it yet, but even just as a baby feminist feeling out what it meant to be a woman and how I was perceived in the world, I hated the assumption that all my m/f relationships were only worth something if they were leading to romance and marriage (and babies). The idea that men and women couldn't be friends, because men only thought about women in a romantic/sexual way, was actively taught me by everyone from pastors to helpful older coworkers. I even got told that f/f friendships were basically killing time until you got into a romantic m/f relationship, which is where you'd find actual fullfilment and happiness. It sucked.

And then I moved away, and I got out of the conservative religious circles, and then in my 20s, people kept saying the same thing. At least it wasn't saying "god made you for relationships (and babies)," but it was still saying that y'know, men are only interested in one thing, and it's cruel to lead them on, and so on, and so forth. Half of the world is going to only think of you in terms of what you're good for in relation to their relationship status, and the other half of the world is going to tell you to suck it up and deal with it.

This is still the background radiation of much of the world, still. I am getting this less in my 20s because many of my male friends are married, (or gay), but still, as soon as I meet someone new the interested looks start to pile in. As a person who doesn't plan on getting into a romantic relationship, I do not love this.

Immediately seeing a m/f friendship and going "ooooo they're KISSING" is not respectful of the guy's ability to have friendships with people he's not having sex with, but let's look at what it messages about the girl in this scenario.

A) women are only worth talking about in terms of what they can do to for men, what they are in connection with men B) friendship is unimportant and not real, women only exist to be romance options

So I feel strongly about allowing women to be percieved as their own beings and have cross-gender friendships without turning it into romance.

This is not an uncommon take on the internet! I see a lot of people talking about allowing people to be friends without defaulting to shipping.

But I don't know how to tell you that seeing a m/f relationship and saying "Oh they're siblings", when we're talking about celebrities/streamers is still sending a lot of the same messages. The core thing you're communicating is still the same. It's falling into the same traps.

I get the sense that a lot of people see a relationship they want to sort of celebrate and enjoy, and they know that shipping is bad, so they just shunt the "oh they're special to each other" to the left into a family dynamic. I will just say they're siblings, that way nobody can accuse me of shipping, and I'm good!

But what this does is still messages a) woman are reduced down to their relationship with a man, into what they can do for the man, and b) friendship is unimportant and not real, women only exist to be non-romanceable family and the rest of them, the romance options.

If the only way you can conceive of a woman as being important to a man is either being romantic/sexual with him or by saying that they're related, that's still bad. If you literally have to put one of the strongest relationship taboos in our culture in the way or you'll just default into kissing I guess, that's still messaging some really concerning things about how you're portrating women.

And once inside the family dynamics, jesus fuck, you guys. Family dynamics have such a trend to slot women into nurturing and protective roles, where the "older sister" "is the one with the brain cell" and "will take care of him" and will be there suborned to his story to be a surrogate mother figure that takes care of him. This, frankly, sucks.

I am an older sister as a fairly important part of my identity. I love being an older sister. But the way this fandom treats older sisters as tiny non-sexual mothering machines with no interiority or autonomy is not good at all, when it comes to actively respecting women as people.

Honestly, I don't like either option, but when you look at how women get treated when sisterified in fanon (older responsible figure who will take care of our precious baby boy) and how women get treated when shipped (mothering options still exist here but also sometimes they dom him), I might prefer the shipping. And I just did a whole multi paragraph about how much the shipping sucks!

I'm not even going to get into what happens when women get actively assigned mom in a family dynamic. All the worst parts of shipping with none of the fun smut.

I am aware I am talking about the worst excesses of family dynamic here, because this fandom offers lots to choose from, and there are ways to do family dynamic in a good way. Some of the most important relationships in my life are familial, and when actually delved into, you can absolutely still portray a full and nuanced portrayal within a family dynamic. This is a possibility. But god, when I look at the fandom trends and what rises to the top of my dash, oof.

And like, there's a larger trend in this fandom where people seem to be incapable of thinking of friendships as valuable and worthy, if you see them as important to each other it must be familial, but when you do it with women, damn.

Can we give seeing women as full autonomous being who are capable of their own opinions and desires a shot? See them as more than just romance options or [illegal to romance] options? Just let them be friends? Please?

[soldierkitten]

Just saw your pinned post and I am begging you I need more. I am a sucker for magical warrior (my gender neutral term for magical girl) AU's. And seeing as the warriors will be hotguy and cuteguy is making me just Squeal with excitement/joy. Now for some questions.

1) Are Grian and Scar's Warrior names actually cuteguy and hotguy because that would be awesome.

2) Can I expect the stereotypical, hotguy, and cuteguy looks for their magical armor/outfit

3) What are their weapons and magical abilities (exa. Can grian summon wings to fly. Is Scars weapon a boy and dose he get unlimited arrows.

4) You know, those like mini bosses. The ones who are in charge of collecting bad energy or whatever in magical warrior shows the. ones who make the things the warriors fight. Is Pearl and those other two whom I don't remember the name of going to become such people.

im glad people like it! that makes me very happy :D I have a google doc with the story planned out, hopefully I can get around to finishing it. here are your answers :

I haven't thought abt giving them magical names, but scar does scream hotguy when he shoots his bow (like a fancy finisher move)

since I cant stick to one design, I am considering a new design per chapter sort of deal. most likely each design will be a ref to something else

my current idea is that their powers change along with their outfits, but the one constant is scar has long range weapons and grian has short range weapons (an excuse to potentially give scar a gun and grian boxing gloves, I just think thats funny)

just pearl is spreading the corruption (muahahhahaha), everyone else around her is too head empty to realize something is up with her not-a-dog

[galene-gothic]

𝖥𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗈𝖿𝖿 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗇𝖾𝗀𝖺𝗍𝗂𝗏𝖾 𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗎𝗀𝗁𝗍𝗌

୧ ‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊ I hope this reading found you in good health, every reblog is appreciated and thank you for everything :) ˖♡ ˎˊ˗ ꒰ 🐇 ꒱

˗ˏˋ༻ʚ♡︎ɞ༺ˎˊ˗             PAID SERVICES

⸼ ۫ ︎︎⊹ ! 🪡︎ Pile 1 ꒱

꒰ Your negative thoughts ꒱

You have low-key villainized yourself, while others think that they're very kind people, you think that you're selfish and pushy. You also think that you're kind of catty and don't have an easy time making friends with women especially? You have internalised a belief that connections are not what make you truly happy. You kind of seek revenge, you might not be aware of it but you might imagine the look on people's faces when you look a certain way, have a certain amount of money or a certain lifestyle. Once in a while, you also tend to feel insecure, it could be regarding different things for different people, like for some of you, it might be when you're scrolling on tiktok and see pretty girls, for the others, it might be in regards to how much money you have, etc. For a select few of you, if someone was chosen over you by a love interest, you tend to wonder why you weren't enough. "Was I not pretty enough?", "Why would he/she choose me anyways?", etc. You have a strong belief that men or well, whatever sex/gender you're attracted to in a romantic manner, are not ready to commit (honestly, I do not blame you). You also believe that the people who you are attracted to are players, the type to leave people who they love. Most of you want people to present something tangible (like money) to you in terms of romantic proposals and relationships, etc. but rightfully, you tend to wonder if that's even possible in this generation. The people who you've dealt with in the past or have seen people in your life deal with, might've been really difficult to reason with.

The kind of people who don't apologise after doing the most soul crushing things but hold you accountable for every single thing that goes against their will. Honestly, they might have been the kind of people to go, "you do not understand me, my ex broke my heart in middle school!!" or maybe even the type of people who don't appreciate people doing household chores and are like "I bring a paycheck home so well, I do 90% for this house, all you do is stay at home all day. Household chores aren't even difficult," but are not willing to do them either and say something like "why would I cook and clean? I'm not a slave." I'm not saying that the above are the exact scenarios that you've had to deal with but the level of unreasonableness is just really concerning. Due to their unreasonableness, you think that most people are unreasonable. You also tend to worry about being unreasonable and think about things A LOT. You're the type to be like "was it necessary for me to act like that?" or "I will apologise since I was being unreasonable." You also tend to think a lot about whether the way you're acting is reasonable too. You might sometimes be like "I'm being too thoughtful in a world that lacks thoughtfulness" and feel bad though. You think that you're undergoing some sort of a negative karmic cycle. You are someone scared that you're stuck or not moving forward because maybe for some of you, you were forced to quit your school, university, job or whatever and for others, you simply feel like cycles kind of repeat in your life.

꒰ The loving truth ꒱

I think that for most if not all of you, your selfishness is just a result of resentment, maybe, you ended up being too selfless in the past and it didn't do you well. However, you guys are self serving, you like to make decisions that are the best for you and it doesn't make you selfish. Seeking revenge is kind of being heavy on you since you might end up making decisions from an ego-centric place but you're more than capable of fixing it. You're loveable for being you. Ofcourse, if someone chooses someone else over you, it's normal to be upset about it but trust me, in actuality it has little to nothing to do with you. You do not need to have a certain amount of money, certain kind of beauty or lifestyle in order to be loved. I hope that you're able to stop taking things so personally. I'm saying this from the most loving place, 'not everything is an attack on your worth.' About, people being non-committal, honestly, there are many people like that, however, some people do wish to have a loving relationship with a strong commitment towards one another.

Not all men or women are shitty, the ones you give your time to are. The right people will be willing to do everything you for you, as long as you appreciate it and wish to return the same energy to them. Trust me, you'll find people who you will be able to reason with and vice versa, people who do not victimize themselves or turn everything against you. The fact that you've dealt with unreasonable people actually has been quite helpful for you. You are able to correct your actions and face yourself in the mirror. While, you do villainize yourself, you cannot deny that you're a good person who tries to be a good person. About the karmic cycle, it might actually be true, however, everyone has negative karma and well the cycle is helping things work out for the highest good of all. I'm not sure if before, you tried to get out of toxic cycles but at this point, you're not lazy anymore, you're trying very hard to move forward and do what's the best for you. So, you're not stuck in any cycle. As I said before, things are working out for the highest good. Take good care of yourself, all love.

⸼ ۫ ︎︎⊹ ! 🪡︎ Pile 2 ꒱

꒰ Your negative thoughts ꒱

You guys tend to look at things through rose-tinted glasses and you know it. You often wonder if something is just your wishful thinking. Some of you might have gotten very comfortable with having options, if you do not make a good decision soon, you'll lose all the options (I'm not sure whether it's romantically, career wise or just life in general.) You always feel the need to refocus in life, you're always like, "what am I doing right? what am I doing wrong?", etc. while, it's quite good, it's kinda bad because you feel like it leads to you being worried about being disorganised. You wonder if people are not who they seem to be. Another thing is that you are in the spotlight and for some reason, it causes negative thoughts to emerge. You might have people who love projecting and call you ugly to your face or in another case, say that you're not all that just because you're pretty and popular. 'Prom queen' by Beach Bunny started playing. You understand that beauty is pain but most of you still continue striving for it. You might think that you're pretty because I'm not getting you being particularly insecure but there are times when you wish to look different, like, you might be Adriana Lima kind of pretty but want to be Blake Lively kind of pretty sometimes.

You really care about being popular, it seems to be something quite important to you or atleast your reputation. You do not like to look insecure, no matter how bad your day might be going, you try to look as confident as possible. Omg, the popularity didn't do you well is what I'm getting. You feel like you're tired of all the hardships in life. People love competing with you and you know it but you do not wish to compete. People try to compete with you and then accuse you of looking down on them? You're really guarded and wounded, you are aware of it too but you're not being able to stop it yet. Ofcourse, it's not possible to just switch it off but you'll get better soon, I have faith in you. Your negative experiences tend to weigh you down at times but it's only natural, it doesn't make you a bad human. You know that difficult times have made you a really resilient person but you wonder if you're being too guarded. You're aware that so many of your thoughts are simply just self fulfilling prophesies and you're trying to work through them, one at a time. I'm proud of you. You often look to the past in order to become a better person. You know that no one is coming to save you but you might overwork yourself due to that. You're really critical of yourself in general.

꒰ The loving truth ꒱

Honestly, there is a need to look at things through a realistic lens but don't become cynical. Some options are good while some aren't, that's just the way life is in general. Just try to use your discernment. You're beautiful just the way you are, you could try different looks but my advice would be to accept your body while still experimenting (as long as you're not harming yourself or anyone else). About being popular and your reputation, it is something you shouldn't worry about. The moment you start simply focusing on being the best version of yourself without caring about popularity, etc. is when you'll receive the most popularity and support, ofcourse, there'll be haters too but you get the point. Confidence is good, one more way of building confidence is through working on yourself and growing as a person. It's not your fault that people project onto you, slowly but surely, you're healing.

You shine which makes others insecure but it has nothing to do with you. While, your reputation and popularity does mean something to you, you are really scared of being the center of attention in any way at this point. My tip is to love yourself enough to not dim your shine. You are a really persistent person so you shouldn't have to worry about competitive but incompetent people trying to make you feel trashy. My tip is to let your guard down in front of certain people. Try to understand how your choices affect you without being too hard on yourself, you've always done your best and still are. It's quite obvious in the cards. Try to pace yourself in terms of work and self development. Realistically, it's not possible that you become 1% better everyday but it's possible that you try as hard as possible, not to the point of a burnout though. You know it but you're living life and learning through your experiences, I'm proud of you.

⸼ ۫ ︎︎⊹ ! 🪡︎ Pile 3 ꒱

꒰ Your negative thoughts ꒱

You've suffered the loss of something that wasn't exactly good and you know it but you're still letting it occupy your mind. You tend to have a lot of negative thoughts, like it seems like it's difficult to even keep a track. You think that people gossip about you and you don't mind it but maybe when it comes to your achievements in life, you are kind of insecure. You find yourself being jealous of people, you don't let it get the best of you ofcourse. You might feel a lot of anger, even at small things. If you're plotting something against people who have hurt you or well just plotting against someone in general, you need to stop. It doesn't need to be a great plot, it could be something like "I'm going to date ___ so that I can make her realise who the fuck I am." It doesn't need to be this ofcourse but you get it. Just don't let these people control how you live life. This plan is going to terribly backfire if you continue going. You're bitter about almost everything right now. Probably, past things still weigh heavily on you, maybe for some of you it was recent and for others, you just take longer to heal. People seem to have been really reckless when it comes to you because you seem very strong and they felt insecure. You wish to win, no matter what it takes.

You know that you need to get your mindset and life together but you don't know where to start, it's causing a lot of mental health issues for you. I feel like your emotions are making things mentally really hard for you and it's completely understandable. Emotions are normal, trust me when I see this, even people who decisively take actions in order to leave certain people and situations behind because it no longer serves them tend to cry and take time to heal. Most of you have let go of something or someone really precious to you even though they were definitely not worth it (could be multiple people) but some of you are still not being able to let go. Once, you let go, your negative thoughts will decrease. Letting go seems to be really painful for you, it's alright ! You're allowed to take your time. The changes you've gone through have been really drastic and it is scary. I feel like something is still very fresh, it still tugs at your heart, something or someone that makes you feel disappointed everytime you think about it or them. You think that you're a failure even though you're not. You just seem to be extremely disappointed at how things have turned out.

꒰ The loving truth ꒱

People do seem to gossip about you but it gives you the opportunity to become the best version of yourself to the point, people do not even believe negative things about you and if they do, it's out of jealousy. About your negative thoughts, you should meditate and write them down, process them properly and let go, little by little. You being insecure about your achievements is a clue as to you not being happy with where you are in life. You should try to accomplish things and better yourself. Also, your worth is not attached to anything outside of you, your character makes you worthy enough. Learn how to turn jealousy into admiration in order to become better as a person. Once, you start meditating, I'm sure that your anger will get better. It's okay to take time to heal but you do not have the right to hurt others just because you're hurt.

You will win, if you direct energy into yourself. Use the anger and bitterness as a source of toxic motivation. If you got involved in some sort of drama or fight recently, you need to think about what the other person/people said or did. You'll find your answers. It's alright, healing takes time, getting better takes time, building a certain lifestyle takes time. You should take time and space to consider your next steps (I feel like you're already there but you're still struggling, it'll get better if you try to be more decisive). As I said before being upset and grieving is alright ! You're allowed to take your time. Your outsides changing is simply a redirection for you to change your inside too. You'll find friends who will support you very soon. It's okay to be disappointed but you're not a failure, you have everything you need in order to move forward. Please take care of yourself, all love.

[gallusrostromegalus]

For An Elephant is Warm and Mushy, what's the deal with Ichigo and Isshin? Cause I hate Isshin, but I want to know what your take is on it. (Sorry if you've already addressed this.)

I think my thoughts on Isshin in AEIWAM are best summed up as such:

To elaborate: I think that, if he had been a father under normal circumstances, Isshin would have been a perfectly competent and even a good father.

...But he's not parenting under Normal Circumstances.

He's parenting as widower (alone) with three psychic (no how-to guides on this!) and traumatized (Especially Ichigo) children, while processing his own trauma (Again, Widower), while in a HIGHLY demanding and stressful career (Emergency care specialist/Surgeon), while technically on the run from the law (he's still wanted for being a deserter), while also in Apex Predator Central (Karkura is CHOCK A FUCKING BLOCK fulla hollows).

And BY GOD, the man is trying! AEIWAM! Isshin does his best to keep his children informed of the dangers of their world while not also risking them breaking his witness protection scheme. He works extremely hard and his best to keep them fed, housed, safe, educated and loved, and he LOVES them SO MUCH. Isshin is NEVER shy always genuine with affection towards his children! Hell, he even reaches out to who he can (Urahara, Ryukken, his neighbors, the kid's teachers) for help because he knows he's in over his head and needs help and that's a hard damn thing for a parent to do, but...

...It's not enough.

He still lies to his children. For perfectly sane and understandable reasons, but he still lies to them. He still doesn't understand his children- He gives them all the love he can, as best he knows how, but Ichigo especially speaks an entirely different love language. He's still not there for his children. Balancing three kids is ROUGH when you're a single parent and I'm afraid Isshin has some old-fashioned notions about gender that cause him to prioritize the twins over Ichigo. And worse, he's not there when Ichigo, and later the twins, start being in mortal danger from the fallout of his connection to Soul Society.

He grit his teeth and moved heaven and earth to rise to the occasion and still managed to fall well short of it.

A+ for Effort

D- for The Actual Results

So. Why DOES Isshin keep failing at healthy communication? Why DOES he make bizarre choices? Why DOES he suck at being a father?

As I was writing I realized the answer is that he was in the right time and place to accidentally learn some VERY bad habits from his friends and colleagues during his heavy involvement in the Soi Fon-Yoruichi Debacle.

This is already a very long post, so the explanation is under the cut:

To be clear: It's not their fault.

It's one of those awful "Its nobody's fault specifically, but the way human minds work means that this sort of conflict and bad behavior was inevitable" situations. The tragedy of being discrete beings.

The crux of Soi Fon and Yoruichi's relationship was that two people who had previously only moderate issues met another person whose own issues massively exacerbated their own in a continuously escalating cycle.

AEIWAM! Soi Fon is the SOLE surviving child of the Fon Clan. He five older brothers were all killed in service to the second division and the Shihon clan. Possibly under Yoruichi's direction, if I understand the timelines right. She was also raised from a very young age to ignore her own needs as a person, use violence as a Solution to her problems, largely starved of affection, and to hero-worship Yoruichi. Girl was already messed up when she walked into the Second division.

AEIWAM! Yoruichi is ALSO a sole surviving clan heir (Yushiro is conceived as a direct result to her vanishing in TBTP) and ALSO taught to use violence as a first solution, but instead of a self-sacrificing mindset, Yoruichi was raised to believe that other people sacrificing themselves for her was normal, good and even virtuous on their part. She was also sort of doted on by her parents, who were thrilled that their last-chance heir was shaping up so well (So far as they knew).

You can see how this was always going to go badly.

Soi fon is desperate to please. Yoruichi thinks this is perfectly normal and desirable behavior, and so she rewards it with copious affection, because Soi Fon responds to that well. Soi fon, receiving her first hit of positive reinforcement in her whole life, promptly falls head over heels for Yoruichi, and works even harder for her. Yoruichi, thrilled to have someone so capable, continues to reward this behavior. The cycle continues, and escalates.

Eventually, the two of them are operating in completely different worlds. So far as Soi Fon can tell, She and Yoruichi are in a Grand Romance, like a knight and her princess in the fairytale stories she used to comfort herself with as a little girl. She assumes this is a normal relationship between lieutenant and captain. So far as Yoruichi can tell, She and Soi Fon are in a Perfectly Normal And Platonic Working Relationship, because this is how every 2nd Division Lieutenant has fawned over their Shihon captain since the division's inception, and she assumes this is perfectly normal.

At some point, Soi Fon realizes that their relationship is really one-sided and she's giving 110% for maybe 4% on Yoruichi's behalf, but she's invested so much and every authority figure in her life is telling her that this is Right and Correct, that she actively chooses the fantasy over reality to cope with her circumstances. At some point, Yoruichi realizes that she's wildly taking advantage of Soi Fon's romantic feelings that she... well. She likes the girl well enough, but not romantically. But She relies so much on Soi Fon to run the 2nd Division and every authority figure in her life is telling her that this is Right and Correct that she actively chooses to play into Soi Fon's fantasy to preserve this very beneficial (for her) status Quo.

...Enter Kisuke Urahara.

Urahara has no horse in this particular race- in fact, he doesn't even know there's a race going on. He's deeply enamored of this ABSOLUTE BABE that's into his schlubby little ass, who's cool and funny and involved in the same insane workplace he is, and when Yoruichi sometimes complains to him about how crazy her lieutenant is, his only frame of reference is... Mayuri. He thinks this is normal, and the romantic relationship between him and Yoruichi continues to grow. She's his unexpected 11 out of 10, he's her fun dirty little secret. It's kinda tawdry, but it is honest.

Then TBTP happens. Kisuke and Yoruichi sorta accidentally frame themselves for treason, then someone (Aizen) very on purpose frames them for treason.

And so far as Soi Fon knows, the woman she loved, the woman she devoted her life to, the woman who (allegedly) loved her back- has lied to and discarded her.

It hurts. It hurts A Lot.

...Enter Isshin Shiba.

In AEIWAM, Isshin becomes a captain the same week TBTP happens, though he's on the other side of the rukongai when that shit goes down, so he shows up to his first captain's meeting with more than half the captains being brand new to their jobs, not totally sure what he or anyone else is doing-

-And there's Soi Fon. Alone and Miserable.

Isshin is an older brother to a younger sister (who never gets a name in canon) and an uncle to her three children, but they all live way out in the middle of nowhere so he hardly ever sees them and seeing Soi Fon at the meeting, exhausted and distraught (And maybe a little bit hungover) activates every single Big Brother And Uncle instinct he's been looking to inflict on someone.

It's VERY easy for him to hear Soi Fon's side of the story, conveniently ignore the part where she actively chose to believe in a romantic relationship she knew didn't actually exist, and cast Yoruichi as The Bad Guy Who Took Advantage Of My Poor Substitute Little Sister.

Soi Fon, who had *almost* been on the verge of being realistic about the breakup, leans into his version of the story, because, again, she's massively starved for affection and Isshin is giving her the type of love her now-dead brothers used to. So Isshin learns Bad Gender Habits here, and Bad Listening Habits, and Bad "Casting People Into Roles Instead Of Treating Them Like People" Habits, and gets rewarded for them with Soi Fon's attention and sisterly affection.

This is also probably where his decision-making skills start to decline- Soi Fon is a Trusted Colleague of his, and he goes to her for advice on Tricky Political Things, because that's what 2nd division DOES. Unfortunately, Soi Fon lives in Information Opsec Paranoia Spy Shit Hell, and gives her advice out accordingly. He starts favoring not giving out details unless he thinks it's REALLY necessary, and using bad-faith decision making. Even More unfortunately, the Gotei-13 is a hot mess of an organization and these habits serve him well.

...Enter Masaki Ishida, and shortly thereafter, Exit Isshin Shiba until he appears in the Human world as Dr. Isshin Kurosaki, and his wife, Masaki Kurosaki.

It's during the "I met a woman who is *technically* an enemy of the state, but she was so cool I fell so hard in love I decided to do a desertion and light treason" mess, Isshin becomes properly acquainted with Urahara and Yoruichi, and eventually, he hears Yoruichi's side of the story. He reverses course, now Soi Fon is the Crazy Ex, and Yoruichi was just doing what was necessary to survive in their demented military-industrial-spy-governement workplace.

Yoruichi doubles down on his "Shut the FUCK up or Yamamoto or worse is gonna come and kill us, and everyone we love" paranoia, because she's also on the run, and when he comes to her for advice on "So apparently the hollows are WAY stronger than I thought, they KILLED MY WIFE, how am I supposed to keep my kids safe?" She advocates teaching them how to recognize and hide from hollows rather than proper self-defense or the truth, because her first fear still is retribution from Soul Society. It's not insane of her- Yamamoto has a very literally fiery temper and can hold grudges for millennia.

So Isshin Tries. But he's also very burdened by paranoid neurotic behavior he doesn't even know he has, and dodgy-if-not-totally-insane advice from his friends.

And that's what I think of Isshin Kurosaki :)

[beechersnope]

loscar sexting

trans oscar, fwb, mild feminization, 1284 words

(very open to continuing this if people want!)

***

“I hate this.”

“What?” Logan asks, sounding just as smiley as ever, though there’s no way for Oscar to know for sure over the phone.

Oscar flops onto his back and sighs up at the ceiling of his corporate flat. “Not having a girlfriend.”

“I thought you liked being single.”

“I do,” Oscar replies. He’s already regretting bringing this up, knows Logan will poke and prod until his curiosity is satisfied. “But….”

“But what?” Logan asks, right on cue.

“I dunno. I guess it was just nice knowing I could get laid whenever I wanted.” He mumbles through the last bit, a flush coming to his cheeks. He hides his face in the pillow instinctively, even though Logan isn’t there to see it.

“So you don’t need a girlfriend. You need a fuckbuddy.”

Logan’s voice is muffled now, and Oscar has to roll back over to reply.

“Kind of difficult to do something like that now that we’re like, on TV and shit,” Oscar points out. “I don’t want some random girl—or bloke—posting my nudes online.”

He’d had fevered nightmares about that exact scenario on occasion, though he knows it isn’t the sort of thing his ex would do. At the same time, there was a part of him that found the idea kind of exciting, his body becoming jerkoff material for strangers, being desired because of his body rather than despite it.

Logan just laughs. “What’s wrong with hooking up with someone you already know?”

“Like who?” Oscar wracks his brain trying to think of who is even available at the moment. The Venn diagram between his single friends and the ones he thinks would actually want to fuck him is narrower than he would like.

“Like me,” Logan says, and all the breath whooshes out of Oscar’s lungs like he’s been punched in the gut.

It takes him a few seconds to compose himself. “What?” Oscar says, voice shooting up an octave higher than normal.

“What?” Logan parrots back. “I’m single, you’re single. We both have busy schedules. We can just…sext each other or something when we’re horny. It doesn’t have to be a big deal.”

Oscar doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s horny now, that this conversation has already gotten him wet and wanting, that he’s weighing the feasibility of getting a hand between his thighs and inside himself without alerting Logan to what he’s doing. But maybe Logan wants to know. Why else would he suggest something like that?

“Okay,” Oscar says at last.

“Cool,” Logan replies, sounding perfectly nonchalant about it, as though they’re just making plans to hit up a pub or something the next time he’s in England. “Anyway, I like, totally need to make dinner still and get some sleep, but I’ll text you, okay?”

“Okay,” Oscar says again, the words ‘I’ll text you’ rattling around in his brain like a bag of marbles. Does he mean texting like, texting? Or something more?

Oscar doesn’t get his answer until the following morning, while he’s in the gym with his trainer. His phone buzzes against his thigh; he ignores it until he’s finished with his reps and then pulls it out of his gym shorts under the baleful glare of his trainer, who would definitely ban Oscar from having his phone on him at all during their workouts if he could.

Oscar sees Logan’s name and nearly drops his phone. “I, um, need to get this,” he says before sprinting out of the gym and into the hallway, where he makes a sharp right and beelines straight into the nearest toilet.

It’s a gender-neutral toilet with a lock on the door. Oscar ducks inside and plants himself firmly on the seat before pulling his phone back out to read Logan’s text. He’s going to feel like a chump if it ends up being something stupid, like a screenshot of Logan’s K/D ratio in Call of Duty or something.

It’s not.

i really need to cum

hey u busy?

Oscar’s hands are shaking as he types out his reply.

no i’m not busy

He waits a minute or two, not sure what he’s supposed to do next. Finally, Logan replies.

can u send me something

A few seconds later, a picture comes through. It’s nothing particularly artistic, just a slightly out-of-focus photo of Logan’s hand framing the very obvious tent in his gym shorts. Oscar is doubly appreciative of the fact that they’re white, affording him a better view than if Logan had gone with a darker color. He wonders if Logan had picked them on purpose.

im already hard

Oscar gawps at the photo for a minute, basking in the warmth seeping down from his head to his toes, a pleasant throb making itself known between his thighs the longer he looks. Then he finally remembers that he needs to send something back.

And Oscar doesn’t really know what to send. He’s never sexted before, not even with his ex-girlfriend. She’d been content to follow him around everywhere during the F2 series, so they’d had sex whenever one of them was in the mood for it, and that was about it. Before her, Oscar had been a virgin, too afraid of being vulnerable to sleep around with anyone like all the other boys on the grid.

Oscar pulls his shorts down and stares at the wiry hair covering his crotch. He doesn’t think Logan would say anything bad about it, but it doesn’t feel like there’s much fanfare in sending someone a picture of just your pubes. He takes off his shirt instead, conscious of the softness of his pecs, his wide pink nipples, the gentle swell of his tummy where he should be flat, like Logan. Oscar doesn’t know if Logan will think he’s sexy; he doesn’t even know if he finds himself sexy, but he angles the phone camera down towards himself as he shoves a free hand past the waistband of his shorts and snaps a pic just as he strokes a finger down the hard ridge of his clit.

Oscar is too afraid to look at the photo before he sends it. He immediately goes back to the home screen as soon as the text goes through, and then he shoves his phone down between his thighs and closes his eyes.

It’s at least a minute before Oscar feels it vibrate again, the sensation coursing through him thanks to his phone’s proximity to his cunt—though he hadn’t intended for that in the moment. His breathing comes out in short bursts as he opens the newest message from Logan.

It’s a voice note.

Oscar takes one look at the door separating him from a gym full of professional athletes and makes a split-second decision. He turns the volume down on his phone almost all the way and hits play before quickly jamming the phone against his ear to hear whatever Logan had sent.

A hot thrill sizzles down his spine at the harsh breathing crackling over his phone’s speaker. There’s a hushed ‘fuck’ exhaled through a heavy sigh, then the unmistakable sound of Logan’s hand, slick with something, sliding over his cock, rough and fast.

“Fuck, your tits,” Logan groans into Oscar’s ear, and Oscar nearly drops the phone on the floor. “God, I wish I could come all over you. Fuck.”

It only takes two fingers roughly shoved inside himself under his shorts before Oscar is coming with a choking sob, and it’s only afterwards, as he slumps back against the wall and shudders through the aftershocks of his orgasm that he realizes he probably should have recorded a voice note for Logan, too.  

[shakespearean-snape]

I’m rereading OOTP right now and I find that scene between Severus and Sirius in the kitchen to be highly relevant in the context of Severus as a feminine-coded character (and Sirius as a representation of toxic masculinity). Sirius is very outwardly aggressive in this scene in a conventionally masculine way, while Severus weaponizes his sarcasm and wit in a way that could be thought of as a more “feminine” form of defence. While Harry describes Sirius’s voice as getting progressively louder and angrier, he describes Severus’s voice as “soft” in contrast (as he usually does, which is also interesting in the context of Severus as a feminine man/GNC character). Sirius gets up and tries to intimidate Severus physically, and Severus grips his wand inside his pocket in a way that reminded me of a victim of domestic violence preparing to defend herself against her abuser.

I’m not sure how much of this was intentional considering how rigid JKR’s views on gender have unfortunately turned out to be, but I can’t help but read Severus as a feminine character, especially since he’s meant to act as a stand in for Lily in the same way as Sirius acts as a stand in for James. It’s very easy to read Sev as gender non conforming and/or LGBTQ, although given JKR’s own views it’s doubtful she meant for us to read him that way (but fuck her, she’s a massive transphobe, the characters are ours now, we can do what we like with them).

Note to self, start checking your inbox regularly. These changes to Tumblr are killing me because the notifications when I get messages or asks are hit-or-miss at best.

Anyways, this is such a great observation! I'm only just learning about coding and that that is even the term for it from reading about it from other Snape bloggers like @idealistic-realism00, @raptured-night, and @professormcguire since I only took the required English courses both my undergraduate years and beyond that my major was in sociology.

So, I'm not really any kind of expert but I do have a lot of personal experience from being biracial and queer myself just with learning to read between the lines and find representation for myself where I can and I think that is the case for a lot of people from less represented, marginalized backgrounds. We have a certain instinct for these things so even without any kind of formal study we sort of know the "codes" (for better or worse depending on what the author's intent is and if it's a negative dog-whistle or something more positive to get around censorships of the time) if that makes any kind of sense.

For me, I always saw Sirius and Snape as two sides of a coin. There were some very obvious parallels and contrasts between them and this really goes to that in a lot of ways for me. Both Sirius and Snape are two men who made pivotal choices in their youths that very much define them and have led to a great deal of internalized guilt and impacted their behaviors as adults. Both Sirius and Snape find themselves confined to their childhood homes at different points, Sirius at Grimmauld Place with Kreacher and Snape at Spinner's End with Peter Pettigrew (both Kreacher and Peter are characters that also are known for betraying Harry and costing him someone he loves at different points and making a turn around in regards to Harry because of kindness or mercy he showed to them).

Where Sirius made the choice to make Peter the Secret Keeper with only James, Lily, and Peter knowing and it ultimately led to the death of the Potters and him being sentenced to twelve years in Azkaban, Snape also unwittingly delivered part of the fated prophecy that led to Voldemort targeting the Potters. Most interesting for me is that Snape's friendship with Lily and Sirius's friendship with James could be read as either platonic or a case of unrequited romantic feelings. There is the observation in SWM made by Harry that while Sirius was clearly a looker who attracted the attention of girls, his attention was fully on James and not on those admiring glances. So, when looking at Sirius's relationship with James through a comparative lens to Snape's with Lily they could be platonic friends or both Sirius and Snape could have had romantic feelings for their best friends while, ironically enough, Sirius had to watch James fall for and succeed in winning over Lily just as Snape had to do the same.

In the case of Snape and Sirius there is also a degree of regression and arrested development stemming from trauma (and both men at different points make the clear mistake of seeing Harry as a stand-in for James as a result of said trauma). Where Sirius spent twelve years in Azkaban able to hold onto his sanity against the Dementors in part because he knew he was innocent and the truth of what happened was a deeply unhappy thing for him, Snape spent decades in Dumbledore's service at Hogwarts (a place with its own unhappy associations for him having found it was not a refuge from life at Spinner's End with Tobias as he had hoped but another place where he would be bullied relentlessly, overlooked by his Head of House and housemates for being a poor half-blood with no status, subject to institutional failures resulting from yet more adult authority figures in his life not protecting him, groomed by Voldemort's followers and responsible for alienating his closest friend as a result) teaching children when clearly he does not have the temperament and, courtesy of his role as a spy, concealing his own truths and intentionally not allowing people to know the best of him. In a sense, both men had a negative public image that ran counter to the full truth about them and both of them died without being able to see those misconceptions vindicated (Sirius died still presumed by the Ministry and general public to have been the traitor who turned his friends over to Voldemort and murdered innocent people and Snape died knowing he had delivered information to Harry that would lead to his death and unsure of the outcome of the war with everyone thinking him a coward and murderer).

There's just, a LOT of parallels there between the two when you start to unpack them as characters. Even the fact that they both came from domestic dysfunction and unhappy home lives. It makes their mutual antagonism all the more of a tragedy because if not for Sirius's prejudice (which is arguably more understandable given his family and their long tradition of being sorted into Slytherin) against Slytherins and antagonism of young Snape on the train and the years of bullying and bad blood that followed, these two men had the most potential to understand each other. Alas, they do not, but it is their likenesses that makes their differences in how they clash all the more interesting because, as you noted, there are stark differences there. Sirius is all overt masculine energy; hot-headed and physically imposing while Snape is more strained, the ice to his fire.

Most striking to me was always the difference in how little respect Sirius showed to Snape's body while he was unconscious (further demonstrating how little Sirius has changed from the teenage boy who once stood with James and exposed Snape to laughing schoolmates) versus how Snape conjured a stretcher while still under the impression he was the one responsible for betraying the Potters (and the death of Lily). In that way, we get to see how Snape has developed as a person away from his past choices and learned from them. He may still regress, as he does quite plainly when forced to return to the Shrieking Shack and is confronted by Sirius and Remus there, but he isn't quite in the full state of arrested development as Sirius (but given his circumstances in Azkaban that isn't entirely surprising either; there is a tragedy to Sirius's character for all that there is as much of a darkness as there was in Snape during his time as a Death Eater and the fact so many Marauder apologists who double as "Snaters" refuse to acknowledge that outside of romanticizing the angst of it all while vilifying Snape is quite possibly an even greater tragedy, imo) which is why Sirius's death came in part due to his inability to move beyond his past and find it within himself to treat Kreacher with a modicum of understanding or empathy (in addition to his desire to be part of the action again and recapture his lost youth when it was him and James in the Order together) while Snape's death came only after he had to reconcile with the fact his original raison d'être for becoming a spy (to protect Harry for Lily as penance) ran counter to what was needed to defeat Voldemort for good and he still chose to stay the course instead of pursue his own agenda and act on his own self-interests.

In short, Sirius's death was partly due to the fact he couldn't move beyond the past. While Snape's death came as a result of the fact he had grown enough as a character to set aside his past motivations and see things through because he had become someone who conjured stretchers even for hated enemies and risked his life to save all those who he could save (including Sirius and Remus).

Thanks for the ask and I'm so sorry it took so long to respond but it gave me even more to think about. The masculine vs. feminine coding just adds an extra element to Snape and Sirius's dynamic when it was already interesting to me and I've always had a lot of thoughts about how those two were written with so many parallels and points of contrast. Love this ask!

[orbleglorb]

tumblr in the blaseball universe is part 8. this has basically become a social media fanfiction

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 | part 7

the first image is a thick black bar meant to separate posts. the second image is a thin gray bar meant to separate reblogs. they are used continuously throughout the post when appropriate. like right now

☕️ eyesinthedark11 🔁

☕️ eyesinthedark11

when will they add cloudy with a chance of meatballs as a weather type

🕳 soulscream-detector Follow

HEIHEHEIHEHAOUIHAOUIHAAAHEOAAHEOAEAAAAEAAAAEEAHEEEAHEEEAHEEE

☕️ eyesinthedark11

takes your hand in mine. What are we

🕳 soulscream-detector

Lovers if not worse

124 notes

🍪 mike-townsend-official 🔁

🍀 wheeloffortuna Follow

i love the blaseball recruitment tools that are like "we're looking for adaptable, athletic young adults to join!" no one with any sort of self preservation skills is doing this dude

🍀 wheeloffortuna

how has no one else seen this?? i can't escape it

🦮 anarchicart Follow

"blaseball players should be adaptable and athletic" wrong the only things blaseball players should be are autistic and getting a lil freaky w it

803 notes

🐶 catgirlfirefighter 🔁

🎡 boardwalkers Follow

Something I wonder if younger generations know is that no one knew about the existence of either Atlantis or the Core before the Breach. I know I'm old, I was already an adult when blaseball started and it's been some decades now, and I'm not good at keeping up with younger folks. But really, joining blaseball was how both civilizations made their existence known. Neither one was one the map before. Literally. Look at any map or globe before the breach and Atlantis isn't there. Then, both places had to build a shit ton of hotels to accommodate the incoming influx of tourists, because /everyone/ wanted to see! Atlantis had to put an official, legal block on tourism so it could build hotels and put proper citizen protections in place, not to mention enough spaces that actually have air. It was so chaotic, and I'm genuinely surprised how little I see it discussed in blaseball history.

🐶 catgirlfirefighter

i can't believe OP left out the best part: both atlantis and the core thought we knew about them and were shocked to discover that literally no one did. the only reason their governments/leaders agreed to let their teams join the ILB or whatever the process is is because they thought nobody liked them and wanted some positive PR

#i wasn't following too closely along because i was too busy trying to figure out my gender #and also deal with tillman's revival #but it was so fucking funny #was talking to erin jesaulenko after a game in season 13 and she was like 'you guys rlly didn't know? :(' #girl u are at the bottom of the ocean #we don't know jack shit about giant squid bc we only see them when they're dying on the surface

18,142 notes

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for calling my dad homophobic?

I (18f) identify as an asexual queer girl, and i live with my parents. My dad (52m) as well as the rest of my family are all devout mormons. surprisingly, my mom (47f) took my coming out fairly well. there was a phase of her telling me we could fix it and a phase of her avoiding the situation altogether, but ultimately she’s grown a lot and has become a huge ally over the past two years since i came out to her.

my dad was a bit more of an issue. he took the coming out with a grain of salt, and has since admitted that he thought i was just trying to be rebellious, and he completely brushed me off when i told him i was leaving the church, telling me and i quote “i don’t care if you leave because i know you’ll come back”, which always irritated me but i brushed it off. he’s also gotten a lot better at being respectful and while he still makes tasteless jokes sometimes, he usually seems to respect my identity and love me for who i am.

flash forward to a few days ago. i get home from work and i end up chatting with my parents as i usually do. the conversation turns to sexuality and my dad mentions how accepting he and my mom are, and i raise my eyebrows and remind him how uncomfortable they were when i first came out. i wasn’t upset at this point, rather just poking holes in his story. i mentioned how awkward he was when i came out as asexual, and my mom (who has found herself to be a bit on the asexual spectrum as well) and i chuckle about it for a second, before my dad defends that he wasn’t weird about it.

i reminded him how he COMPLETELY brushed it off when i first told him, and he told me that it means im not gay. i asked what he meant at the time, and his response was that “i consider the definition of gay to be having sex with someone of the same gender”. my sister was in a serious committed relationship with a man at this point in time, but (being mormon) they hadn’t had sex, so i asked my dad if i had that same level of relationship with a woman, if he would consider it gay, and his response was no. i proceeded to ask him if i married a woman and spent the rest of my life with her, kissing and sharing a bed and everything, would he consider it gay? he kind of scoffed at me and said “well, if you’re sleeping in the same bed, then EVENTUALLY you’re going to have sex”. that really upset me at the time, but he had only just learned about asexuality, so i cut him a break.

flash forward to a few days ago, i bring this up and rather than shrug it off and cringe the way he and my mom had been at other behaviors of theirs, he scowled and began to defend himself. he said that it didn’t make any sense to him, and why should it matter if he thinks that? i pointed out that learning to respect other people even if you don’t understand them is important, and he got a bit huffy. i mentioned the not considering me gay thing, and asked if he still felt that way. i expected a no or some sort of explanation, but instead he said “well if you’re not having sex with another woman then you’re not doing anything wrong.”

that immediately made me upset, and i responded with “are you saying that being gay is wrong?” and my mom jumped in and accused me of twisting his words. i left the room and eventually he came in and gave an awkward apology without really saying anything just before he went to bed (one of those “im sorry you got upset because of what i said” apologies rather than an actual apology), and i reluctantly told him it was fine, but i still don’t feel fine about it. i feel like he’s invalidating my identity and pretending like he did nothing wrong, but i don’t want to confront him about it if i’m actually just making a big deal out of nothing. aita?

What are these acronyms?

[max1461]

Let me start a new post, regarding some discourse, so that we can avoid bothering OP and furthermore so that we can properly abstract away from (whatever turn out to be) the irrelevant points of the initial seed of discussion.

A woman flashed her boobs to some strangers in New York. Someone on twitter said this was sexual assault. I and other commenters contended it was no big deal. However, I added:

I do think there's a relevant distinction between simply being nude/topless/whatever in public, which I think should be regarded as perfectly socially acceptable, and flashing someone, which is kind of an inherently somewhat sexual performative act. I don't think that flashing in a context like this should probably be regarded as sexual assault, that seems a bit much. In general I think that people are (for the most part) sexual creatures, and so any free society is going to feature some amount of public display of sexuality, whatever form that takes, and there's nothing really wrong with that. It doesn't seem like any big deal to me that this girl flashed these people. But there definitely exist contexts where I think it's reasonable to consider flashing alone to be sexual assault or sexual harassment, and I don't think that should be elided. And I don't think it should be determined on crude grounds of gender or sex either; it's important to have some thoughtful and conceptually robust sense of when sexual acts, e.g. flashing people, are playful and harmless, and when they are in fact potentially threatening or boundary-violating.

Here the discussion split. In one thread, @sivavakkiyar said:

I agree with the nuance of total determination, but the applicability only makes sense now. There’s very good reason to suppose a man who took off his shirt on camera would not be considered ‘flashing’, even if he was flexing his pecs or whatever: the assumed sexual component, regardless of the intent of the woman involved, has to do with the inherent sexualization of…uh…female…presenting…nipples. We’re on the same page of ‘assault’ being ridiculous in this context, but even if you were to ask this woman ‘when you took off your shirt, you knew it was sexually suggestive, yes?’ and she said ‘yeah’, it wouldn’t really change the fundamental question—-I mean that’s obvious as a part of her joke, but—-the guy with pecs might equally be ‘yeah, I’m hot.’ You know?

And I replied:

Well yeah that's part of my point. There is totally a context in which a guy flexing his pecs at you, in some sufficiently aggressive or unwanted way, could be sexual harassment. But that doesn't mean that all men flexing in public is bad, or even all men flexing at someone in public is bad. The standards one takes up for this, whatever they are, should be gender neutral—which would unambiguously mean that women showing their bare chest in public would get vastly more accepted, not less.

In another thread, @wildgifthorses said:

It seems like this is just an area where it makes sense to have sex-asymmetric norms. Trying to make a workable sex-symmetric norm about this just leads to absurdity no matter what you do.

And added the following in the tags:

Here I would like to make my reply to wildgifthorses.

I think you have implicitly invoked, here, precisely the gender-neutral distinction which is relevant: reasonable knowledge that you are violating someone's boundaries and disregard for those boundaries in spite of the knowledge. Most men can be said to have a reasonable expectation that the average woman will be bothered by him flashing her his junk, and consider it a boundary violation. Most young women can reasonably expect that a crowd of passers-by will not feel violated by her flashing them her boobs. While there are sex- or gender-asymmetric facts about society being invoked in this sort of moral calculation, the underlying principle is fundamentally sex- and gender-symmetric. And why should it not be? I can think of plenty of contexts in which a man might be made very uncomfortable by a woman aggressively showing him her boobs, however common or not that happens to be, and in those scenarios I think it is very reasonable to say the woman is in the wrong.

We get absolutely nowhere good by making needlessly gendered distinctions in our abstract principles, as (in different ways) the last 10 years and the previous 5000 before that should make evident. I think until certain follies heretofore characteristic of human society are well behind us, we should probably err very far in the direction of absolute sex- and gender-insensitivity in our most abstract ethical principles, even if it runs us into trouble sometimes.

[hiiragi7]

Related to my post the other day regarding rethinking different aspects of my identity: I've decided I'd like to try out she/her pronouns in addition to they/them.

Gender identity is... complicated. Growing up, I always felt like an imposter regardless of what gender I presented as. I was always anxious about my friends finding out I wasn't really like them. There was always all this pressure to be gender-conforming, and I never quite fit into any gender.

When I was little, I presented as a boy, and prior to final fusion most of the littles in my system were boys. Being a boy meant I could do whatever I wanted, be interested in whatever I wanted, wear whatever I wanted, as long as it wasn't feminine. I was fine with that, for a while.

Sometime in middle school, I decided I wanted to experiment with femininity and presenting as a girl, and I leaned very hard in that direction - I started growing my hair out, tried to make my voice higher, wore clothes I thought were "girly", wore cute hair accessories, anything I could to be seen as a girl and fit in.

Exploring what being feminine meant to me was a very important step forward in my life and I learned a lot about myself and what I liked, but I also faced a lot of sexualization and violence for being a girl. There was a lot of trauma that came with it. Prior to final fusion, a lot of the parts in my system from this time period and going forward were either girls or ambiguous, with a handful of very feminine boys. I learned I liked being feminine, but existing as a girl scared me.

In highschool, I came out as nonbinary and started using they/them pronouns, which I was bullied for. I didn't really know what exactly my gender was, just that it didn't neatly fit into a box. I wanted both masculinity and femininity, but I rejected being either a girl or a boy. When I was 17, I started HRT and was kicked out for being trans & on hormones.

At 18, I learned I was intersex. I then had a total hysterectomy related to hormonal issues.

Living as a multiple with DID, I had all these different lived experiences with gender that were all seperated off from each other and fragmented into parts. I couldn't even begin to imagine any sort of collective gender for myself. Everything about my experiences with gender felt so contradictory. No matter what labels I tried out, none of them ever really felt right for very long. It always felt like my attempts to describe and make sense of my gender identity were approximate at best, never quite grasping what my gender really was. (Nowadays, I find a lot of comfort in vague queer identities, ones that are broad and don't stress about the details.)

Now that I have fully fused, I have access to all these different varied experiences of gender that each of my parts held and it's been really forcing me to sit down and rethink my entire approach to my gender identity. It's rough but I can tell I've been needing this for a long time. When I really think about it, I really do want to be a girl in some form, I'm just scared of how others will react if I say that.

Along with that fear, though, is this need to live as myself regardless. If my gender shifts again sometime in the future, that's okay, and either way I can deal with how others may or may not feel about me.

This is a more personal post than usual, but I've been finding myself wanting to talk more about how final fusion has been for me, and how the ways I view myself has changed following it, and gender is a pretty major one for me.

[shsl-heck]

One thing that's had me thinking about Amy lately, is the tension between disgust and desire. She is horrified by the immensity of her desire for Victoria, but the shame and guilt over it can only ever make it worse. Fear and arousal, disgust and desire, all of them bleed into each other (we see this constantly in both porn and horror). It's like she has this splinter at the core of her being and she either cant realize or wont accept that the more and more she digs for it to try to get it out, the deeper she's driving it into herself. She cannot remove this without help from someone else. (Coincidentally, not being able to recognize that her attempts to do/be what she's supposed to are only making things worse is also what leads to the Enwretchening)

I'm aware there's a reading of Worm in which Amy's attraction to Victoria is purely an expression of a kind of morality focused ocd, but I personally think that's less interesting. She definitely experiences some level of that (the urge to fuck up a baby she's healing followed by disgust with herself is like a perfect example of an intrusive thought associated with that brand of ocd), but I think this is a case of *and* rather than *or*. My reading of Amy is that of a deeply lonely and emotionally neglected child clinging to the one person in her life that gives her any form of affection, whose attachment only gets increasingly complicated as she starts to grow up and realizes she is attracted to women.

She has never been treated as part of the family, has always felt on some level that she's only playing at being a sister to Victoria, and she is dealing with that during a stage of her life that is turbulent at best for even people raised in a healthy functional environment. There is a broad cultural taboo around sex and desire, but there's a special sort of self-loathing and fear that you're somehow predatory for finding someone attractive that a lot of queer people experience due to the stigma surrounding their sexuality and/or gender. Homoeroticism and attraction is seen as disgusting and fundamentally wrong by society no matter what. It is especially disastrous for Amy because even though she's never been able to see herself as Victoria's sister, she knows she's supposed to, and that adds a whole new layer of guilt and shame to even a passing thought about Victoria being attractive.

Then she triggers. Suddenly she not only has to pretend to be Amy Dallon the well behaved unintrusive family member, she has to be Panacea, the girl who performs miracles. She doesn't even have a secret identity to fall back on for privacy because of New Wave's gimmick. Any resentment about her role, or desire to live a normal life become more proof that she is a sick, evil person; a parasite who has wormed her way into the Good and Heroic Dallon-Pelham family and is eating away at them from the inside-out.

Even as it forces her to repress more and more of herself, Panacea also offers Amy what is seemingly her only chance to be Good like her family. Healing people isn't just something she has to do in order to avoid being a terrible person, but also how she can atone for everything else that's Bad about her. Saving people is a way to try to purge herself of the desire for Victoria, and to prove that she can be a Dallon in more than name.

Like, as awful and lesbophobic as Wildbow's handling of Amy was, there is something deeply compelling and even relatable about her to me. She perfectly captures an emotional state that I've struggled (and failed) to explain as I wrote and rewrote this post. It's the hunger, the guilt, the shame, the fear, the loneliness that settles on your skin like frost as a child when you accept that there must be something wrong with you, because if there wasn't then you wouldn't have to try so hard to be good.

[bluedalahorse]

Public perceptions of Sara as a neurodivergent in love

As far as Sara’s romance arc goes in Young Royals, something I’ve thought a lot about is how there’s this ableist tendency to infantilize autistic people, and part of this ableist infantilization comes down to downplaying or ignoring or erasing autistic people’s sexualities. Luckily, there’s more shows recently that have pushed back against that in some form—Everything’s Gonna Be Okay and Heartbreak High being among them. (Everything’s Gonna Be Okay even has an ace autistic character to nuance things all the more.) Young Royals first and foremost pushes back by giving Sara a love story in her own right, full of as many ups and downs and complex turns of character that Wille and Simon’s relationship does.

There’s a second thing that I think might be going on, and it’s subtle enough to me that I want to see how season 3 plays out before I can say “this is for sure a thing that’s happening in the show.” And that is the way that other characters respond to Sara’s potential for romantic and sexual attraction, whether they’re downplaying it or actually seeing the reality of it. Now, Sara’s Manor House pals at least acknowledge her potential to feel attraction and be in a relationship, and that’s good, but it feels sort of�� abstract? And while Sara does lack the experience the other girls have, they tend to presume a level of innocence and naïveté on her part that doesn’t quite match up with Sara’s more complicated reality. (Also, this may just be my bias speaking, but Fredrika’s comment about Sara’s virginity particularly grates on me. Fredrika plays it off as a compliment but I don’t think it’s meant to be kind.) Meanwhile, when it comes to Sara’s interactions with Simon, we see her teasing him about boys and boyfriends, but he doesn’t seem to respond to her in the same way. Not out of malicious intent I don’t think, but it was something I noticed in their interaction.

It also strikes me that Sara and August were in a secret relationship all season 2 and as far as we know so far, no one noticed. Neither of them is very subtle in how they’re texting the other one and they’re both always sneaking off “to go get a textbook” or whatever. Boys have walked by Sara as she’s walked through the halls of Forest Ridge dormitory. It wouldn’t be that hard to figure out! Felice lives with Sara and doesn’t suspect secret boyfriends or anything. I’m curious to see what the Hillerska rumor mill is like in season 3—whether anyone did pick up on the little sargust tryst like they did the wilmon one, or whether Hillerska students failed to notice because they don’t see Sara as being inherently connected to romance as someone like say, Felice is. Naturally Sara’s class background and gender play a role in that as well, but identities always interact and we can’t leave neurodivergence out of the equation.

We talk a lot about how Sara’s neurodivergence impacted the way she got into a relationship, mostly in terms of how her neurodivergent traits impact her sense of morality and the way she reads certain social signals. What I haven’t seen people talk about as much is how other people in her life perceive her neurodivergence and her capacity for romantic and/or sexual relationships. I’m curious, too, to know how intentionally the show is addressing this. As season 3 deals with the fallout of season 2, I wonder to what extent other characters might try to pigeonhole Sara as childlike or not in full understanding of her own feelings, as they try to make sense of what happened with Sara and August. And I wonder to what extent Sara will have to fight back and claim her own agency in relation to these feelings, even as she’s left this relationship behind.

What do you all think?