stllmnstr · 3 months ago
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sacred monsters: part one
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pairing: lee heeseung x f reader
genre: academic rivals to lovers, vampire au, slow burn
part one word count: 19.3k
part one warnings: swearing, blood and all sorts of other vampire-y things, semi graphic descriptions/depictions of violence, I don't know anything about publishing and wrote about it anyway, not quite as much in this part, but I want to forewarn you that while there is still nothing explicit, we do get a little ~sexier~ than most stllmnstr fics
note/disclaimer: I have been itching to write an enha vampire fic for ages because hello? the material is RIGHT THERE!! this is a story I'm super excited about, and it's definitely gotten me out of my comfort zone. in order to help build this world, I did draw from some outside sources. primarily, a lot of the vampire lore and some plot elements are inspired by the dark moon webtoon series. I did also pull some things from twilight and other well-known vampire myths. lastly, there is a section with "poetry" in it. these "poems" are translated lyrics from still monster, chaconne, and lucifer by enhypen. some are in their original form and some I altered slightly. everything else is straight from yours truly! as always, happy reading ♡
soundtrack: still monster / moonstruck / lucifer - enhypen / everybody wants to rule the world - tears for fears / immortal - marina / supermassive black hole - muse / saturn - sleeping at last / everybody’s watching me (uh oh) - the neighbourhood
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A literature student in your third year of university, you’ve been dreaming of having your writing published for as long as you can remember. With a perfect opportunity dangling at your fingertips, the only obstacle that stands in your way comes in the form of a ridiculously tall, stupidly handsome, and unfortunately, very talented writer by the name of Lee Heeseung. Unwilling to let your dream slip out of reach, you commit to being better than the aforementioned pain in your ass at absolutely everything.
But when a string of vampire attacks strikes close to your city for the first time in nearly two hundred years, publishing is suddenly the last thing on your mind. And, as you soon begin to discover, Heeseung may not quite be the person you thought he was.
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The last sip of your coffee tastes bitter on your tongue. Acidic, like it was left to brew too long. Or maybe not long enough. Your limited knowledge of coffee extends to its effects on your alertness and little else. 
Taste has always been an afterthought, something of little consequence. Besides, some bitterness is to be expected when you take your coffee black. 
Suppressing the small wince that always follows your final sip, you set the reusable thermos down on your desk. Next to your open notebook and favorite ballpoint pen, it settles in nicely with your other class essentials. 
Call it poetic or romantic or unbearably pretentious, but you actually do prefer to take your notes by hand. Partly because it feels more fitting for a literature major and mostly because your laptop is on its last leg and between tuition and rent, you don’t exactly have the funds to shell out for a new one. 
Frowning at the bitter taste that still lingers on your tongue, you feel another pang of regret for forgetting to pack your water bottle this morning. But no matter. Today is a day for optimism. The bitterness now only means that your imminent victory will taste that much sweeter in comparison. 
Because today is the last day of the fall semester of your third year. Which means that this is the last morning you’ll be sitting here in this lecture hall in the minutes preceding 9 am. 
Which means that today is the day of your professor’s long awaited announcement. You still remember the day, nearly four months ago, when he first told the entire room of undermotivated, overcaffeinated students about it. 
A publishing opportunity. A real, actual publishing opportunity. Something most literature students would sell their soul for. 
Because Professor Kim, while a rather mediocre professor who prefers to dish out criticism and bite back praise, has an excellent eye for great writing. So much so that nearly twenty years ago, he founded his very own publishing house. 
Known by the name New Haven Publishing, it’s a small operation that deals mostly in short pieces that are marketed more for niche literary circles than mass public appeal. Being published by New Haven may not be a straight shot to the New York Times’ Best Sellers List, but it’s still professional publishing. 
And a week into classes, he announced that for the first time ever, he would be choosing one of you to not only intern at New Haven the following semester, but also to publish an original piece of short fiction with them. 
You’ve been fantasizing about it for months now. You can already imagine it. A piece of your very own, marketed and edited by professionals. Published and complete with Professor Kim’s stamp of approval. 
It’s what you’ve been craving ever since you decided to switch paths and pursue literature studies at the end of your first semester. It’s everything you’re sure you need. Validation that your writing is good, that your words are worth reading. 
Hell, maybe it will even earn you the approval of your parents. 
And, perhaps most satisfying of all, you will have officially beaten Lee Heeseng once and for all. You don’t want to speak poorly of the rest of your classmates and their writing abilities, but this has always been a competition between you and him. 
Or, at least, it has been for you. 
It’s the last day of the semester, and honestly, you wouldn’t be surprised if Heeseung still had a hard time remembering that the internship was even happening. Then again, you wouldn’t exactly be shocked if he couldn't remember your name, either.  
And if you were hard pressed to choose only one thing, that would probably be what annoys you the most about him. Not the way his hair is alway somehow perfectly mussed. Not the way his writing is painfully beautiful and poetic that you swell green with envy just thinking about it. 
No, the root cause of your infinite ire when it comes to Lee Heeseung is how damn aloof he is. Like his classmates and professors and even his greatest rival aren’t worth the effort of remembering. 
And it’s not like it’s because he’s got some kind of crazy social life outside of academics. Other than mandatory discussion groups, you’re not sure you’ve ever seen him so much as talk to anyone. 
But that’s just the way he is, you suppose. 
Perfect Heeseung with his perfect hair and his perfect writing and perfect attendance record doesn’t need anyone but himself—
Wait. 
Perfect attendance record. 
Glancing at the clock mounted high above the front door of the lecture hall, you can hardly believe what you’re seeing. 
8:59. 
There’s no way. There’s no fucking way that the universe is rooting for you this hard, that the stars are aligning this perfectly. 
Despite your doubts, the second hand continues its onward march. You suppress the sudden urge to bounce your leg in a matching rhythm. 
He has five seconds. 
Four. Three. Two. One. 
And it’s official. A ridiculous amount of pent up tension drains from your shoulders as your spine straightens. You can’t believe it was that easy. 
A semester of agonizing over every word, every sentence, every assignment you handed in for this class. A semester of panicking over missed buses and waking up way too early just to make sure you always beat the clock. 
But today is the day where everything comes to a head. 
And Lee Heeseung is officially late. 
Professor Kim, at the beginning of the semester, had only two pieces of advice to offer his students that were suddenly all gunning for a shot at being published:
One: “Don’t make me read awful writing.”
And two: “Don’t be late to class. I have zero tolerance for tardiness.”
Heeseung has just broken a cardinal rule. One row down, nine seats to the left from where you sit. It’s the place that would usually be filled with an annoyingly broad set of shoulders and distractingly sharp jawline. In fact, Heeseung usually beats you here most days. Not that you’re keeping track, of course. And not that it matters. 
Because this morning, this fateful morning, that particular seat, his seat, is glaringly, gloriously empty. 
Your eyes flicker over to it again without your permission. But you can’t help it. You’re so antsy now, teeming with self-satisfied excitement. It’s almost unbelievable actually. A golden stroke of luck that he chose today, of all days, to be late.
In fact, you think the more you stare at the empty seat, Lee Heeseung is such a reliable presence that the entire lecture hall suddenly seems a bit off kilter. Tilted too far in some precarious state of imbalance. 
Your smugness is still there, yes, but now there’s also a heavy feeling beginning to settle at the bottom of your gut. Why on earth is Lee Heeseung late?
You’re so distracted by his absence, the endless loop of possibilities and explanations running through your mind, that you almost miss the second abnormality of the morning. 
Because now the clock reads 9:04, and Heeseung isn’t the only one missing. 
All at once, your attention is on the podium at the front of the lecture hall. It’s empty, too. And Professor Kim may be a hardass, but he’s no hypocrite. Never once throughout this entire semester has he ever begun a class even a millisecond late.
Frowning, you pull out your phone to confirm that the clock on the wall is not playing tricks on you. Maybe there was a power outage or something, and maintenance hasn’t had time to correct it yet. 
But your phone screen lights up, and 9:05 is the time that stares back at you. 
Glancing around, no one else seems too particularly bothered by this. There are a few titters, a few annoyed grumbles that sound like hypocrite and double standard where they reach your ears. 
But still, the clock ticks forward. 
The minute hand has fallen another two notches when the front door finally opens, Professor Kim striding in unhurried. Despite his lateness, his steps are steady, even. There’s nothing frantic or apologetic about the way he sets his briefcase down next to the podium, pulling out his laptop and a small stack of notes before clearing his throat. 
As the students around you fall silent, class begins as it always does. Other than the time, nothing is out of the ordinary. 
But your spirits are still high, and you figure you can cut your professor some slack. Maybe he ran into a bad bit of traffic or spilled coffee all over his shirt. Maybe he’s too embarrassed to draw more attention to his error and has decided that not acknowledging it at all is the best course of action. 
Oh, well. It’s no use ruminating on it now. Settling back into your seat, you do your best to focus your attention on the front of the room and not that damn empty chair. But the distraction isn’t necessary for long. 
The clock is just striking 9:12 when a second late arrival draws the eyes of the class to the front door of the lecture hall. Like your professor, Heeseung maintains a certain air of composedness as he makes his way towards his seat wordlessly. 
There’s a moment, a fraction of a second, where Professor Kim pauses, letting a sentence drift into silence. 
Twelve minutes late. It’s a rookie mistake. For a fleeting moment, you almost feel bad for him. Because surely Professor Kim is about to make an example of him. No one walks into his lectures late and leaves unscathed. 
Wincing, you remember a handful of weeks ago when a poor girl that sits a few rows behind you arrived late. Not only had Professor Kim stopped the entire flow of his lecture to draw attention to her tardiness, he had also assigned her an extra short story for homework. One on the merits of punctuality.
But the ebb in the lecture begins to flow again, the moment passing as soon as it comes. Heeseung settles into his chair. Your professor resumes his sentence. 
For the remainder of the class, you do your best to pay attention, but you’re having trouble finding a point. It’s not like he can assign homework or an exam or a discussion on the last day of the semester. 
Like you, most of your peers are fully zoned out, just waiting for him to get to what everyone has been dying to know for months. 
Who’s interning at New Haven? Who’s getting published?
But distractions in this class have never been hard to come by. More than once, you find your wandering gaze drifting to the back of Heeseung’s head. Usually, you’d be bitterly admiring how soft his hair looks. But today, there’s only one question that plays in your mind as you stare. 
What on earth happened that made perfect Lee Heeseung late?
Your thoughts are only interrupted by the sudden shuffle of small movement around you as everyone sits up a bit straighter in their seats. 
“Ah,” Professor Kim glances at the time. “That wraps up our semester, then. As promised, I would like to announce the student who will be interning with New Haven Publishing this upcoming semester. And, of course, the student that will have the opportunity to publish an original piece with us.”
He pauses for a moment, looking down at his notes. You wonder if the people sitting close to you can hear the way your heart pounds in your chest. 
Please be me. Please be me. Please be me. 
The rushing in your ears is so loud that you almost miss it. But not quite. Because the sound of your own name is something you’d recognize anywhere. 
Because it was your name that he said. Not anyone else’s. Not Heeseung’s.
You. You did it. 
You’re officially going to be interning with New Haven. You’re going to be published. 
When he asks you to stay a minute after class to discuss the details, it’s all you can do to nod. Butterflies are still scattered in your stomach. 
As the rest of the students begin to file out, you pack up your materials with hands that shake slightly. It doesn’t feel real. It feels too good to be true. You poured your everything into this all semester long, and now it’s actually happening. 
Your mind is a mess, and an erratic movement almost sends your empty thermos flying. Luckily, you snap out of it long enough to  catch it before it hits the ground. With everything packed back into your bag, you make your way down to the podium on slightly unsteady feet. 
A handful of passing classmates congratulate you on their way out, and you smile in return. 
You’ve almost made it to the front of the lecture hall when a body blocks your path. It takes a moment for your brain to register the identity of the offender. And once it does, it spits his name with venom. Heeseung. 
Oblivious and self-centered as always, he nearly knocks you over. Rolling your eyes, you move to step around him. Apparently whatever gift he was given for writing doesn’t extend to his spatial awareness or consideration for others. 
But as you lean to the left, he follows the movement, still in your path. Your gaze snaps up, eyebrows raised when you find him already looking at you. 
Oh. So it’s not a spatial awareness problem, then. He’s in your way on purpose. 
As always, his expression is infuriatingly blank. You can’t get any sort of read on him, and it unnerves you. Irritates you. Here he is, blocking your path, and the only thing he has to offer you is an empty, silent stare.
You could just say excuse me, force your way around him, and be done with it. You should. The semester is over, your professor’s decision is made, and you have no stake left in this game. 
But you’ve been biting back snarky comments and masking irritated expressions with mild indifference for months. The nerve he has to block you. The utter gall of it all. To physically stand in your way when he’s been your metaphorical obstacle to success all semester. 
When every time you look at him, you still remember that one sunny afternoon, early in the semester. The time you tried, actually tried to be his friend. When he waved you off like a buzzing fly that was nothing more than a nuisance. 
You inhale, weighing your options. His head tilts slightly at the movement, and it’s your last straw. 
There’s poison in your voice when you bite, “Oh, what? Now that I’ve proved myself, you can spare some time out of your day to talk to me?”
Heeseung’s eyes widen, lips parting slightly. It’s the most emotion you’ve ever seen from him, and he’s wasting it on shock. As if he can’t quite comprehend why the girl he’s been giving headaches for months might not want to stop and have a friendly chat with him. Not that you imagine he’d even be capable of that if you tried. 
Already, you regret your comment. In a perfect world, you wouldn’t have said anything. You’d be just as detached and cold and aloof as he was on that day you hate to think about. You still remember it like it was yesterday. Without your permission, the memory floats front and center to your mind. 
It was warmer, then. The last clutches of summer were still holding on tight. Sunlight was bright in the sky, and it felt like a good time to breach the barrier of your comfort zone. 
Class had just ended. Usually, Heeseung was one of the first to leave. You had to pack up abnormally quickly just to catch him in the quad right outside the lecture hall. 
But you did catch up to him.
And in a voice braver than you felt, you asked, “Hey, it’s Heeseung, right?” 
You’d been brighter, then. Still full of an energy you haven’t been able to muster since midterms. Not yet burdened by the weight of assignments and rejection, your disposition was as sunny as the sky above. 
Heeseung hadn’t bothered to dignify your question with an actual answer, but he had at least stopped walking, and that seemed like an invitation at the time. Now, with the power of hindsight, you wince. You should have spared yourself the regret.
You remember watching as he pulled out his earbuds, tucking them back into his pocket before turning his attention to you. Or at least half of it. Even then, you never felt like he was truly looking at you, hearing you. His mind always seemed off in the distance, preoccupied somewhere you could never quite reach. 
You recall being nervous, heat in your cheeks as you tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear. His eyes tracked the movement like a cat tracks a ray of sunlight. Lazily, intently. With an energy you weren’t quite sure what to do with. 
Instead, you had stuttered, “I, uh, I wanted to tell you that I thought your analysis today was brilliant.” The worst part is that it really was a brilliant analysis. Although you’d never admit that today, and much less to his face. 
Instead, you cringe just thinking about it. You should have taken his blank stare as a sign. You should have just let the one-sided conversation die there. With at least a little dignity and some of your pride left to spare. 
But you hadn’t. 
“I never thought about the use of sunlight as a metaphor for life. I mean, now that you’ve pointed it out, it seems kind of obvious.” The memory of your nervous giggles settle like rocks in your stomach. “Anyway, I feel like I’m rambling, but if you ever want to get together and look through assignments or review each other’s analyses, I’d love to—”
You’d heard his voice before, of course. In class discussions and presentations. But never this close. And never directed at you. 
He kept it short, his interruption, his response to your shaky offer. 
“I’m busy.”
And that was it. Two words. Two fucking words. And not even an explanation or an I’m sorry or a sheepish expression to go along with them. 
With that, you’d watched, a bit helplessly, as he pulled his earbuds out of his pocket, put them back into his ears and turned away from you before you could realize just how thoroughly you’d been rejected. 
With a sudden haze in the air and hope dying in your heart, your friendly smile slipped into confused dismay as you watched him track a steady path across the quad. 
If your cheekbones felt warm before, you were sure they must have been aflame by then. After all, it was your body’s natural response to the crushing weight of the embarrassment and thoroughly bruised ego he’d left you there standing with. 
Fine then, you’d resolved after walking as quickly as you could in the opposite direction, sending a prayer to the heavens that no one from your class had just witnessed the most mortifying interaction you’ve ever had. If Lee Heeseung wanted nothing to do with you, the feeling could be mutual. 
In fact, it was probably for the best. You were vying for that internship and if the past class discussions were anything to go by, Heeseung would be your only real competition. If he was too busy for you, then you would just have to be too busy for him. 
Too busy perfecting every assignment and acing every exam. Too busy drowning in dictionaries and thesauruses and reference materials to make sure everything you submitted was perfect — no, scratch that — better than perfect. 
Too busy to attempt another conversation or interaction or do anything but nod along politely whenever he did make an unfortunately great point in class. 
So, no. Heeseung doesn’t get to dictate your time or attention or conversation now that you���ve actually been awarded with a publishing opportunity, now that all of your efforts and dedication and late nights have paid off. 
If Lee Heeseung wants a bit of your attention on today of all days, at this moment of all moments, then you’re just going to have to be too busy to entertain him. 
Standing in front of you, still blocking your path to the podium, Heeseung has the nerve to look confused. As if you have no reason to give him the cold shoulder. As if you’re the one being unreasonable here. 
His brow furrows further. “What?” It’s the third word he’s ever spoken directly to you. It makes your blood boil. “No, I…” he trails off. You can practically see the gears running in his mind, like this wasn’t the conversation he expected to be having. Like he has no idea how to navigate it now. “I was just going to say that you should maybe reconsider.”
Your voice is ice when you ask, “Reconsider what?” 
“Well…” He’s treading in dangerous territory, and he seems to realize it too. “The internship,” he clarifies, and it’s the second most insulting thing he’s ever said to your face. 
You screw your eyes shut. Cold and detached. Blank and aloof. All the things you should be. But you’ve always run a little hot. And end of the semester exhaustion finds you more willing to throw caution to the wind. 
“You have got to be fucking with me.” Eyes reopening, you’re met with that same expression of mild shock. Brows raised, lips parted. And god, he even looks good like that. “Yeah, right. Let me guess, so you can do the internship and publish a piece of your own? If all you came over to do is insult me, then save your breath.”
“What?” He still looks so damn confused. “No, I—”
You don’t want to hear it. “I have nothing to say to you.” If he won’t get out of your way, you’ll just have to go through him. The shoulder check is maybe slightly more intense than it needs to be as you shove your way past him. He barely stumbles back an inch. It makes you want to rip your hair out. “Besides,” you add, not bothering to turn back to look at him. “I’m busy.”
It’s a dig at him, yes, but it’s also true. You are. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, and Lee Heeseung is not about to ruin it for you. 
To your unending gratitude, he doesn’t try to intercept you again. Your path to the front of the lecture hall is clear, and Professor Kim is just tucking his laptop back into his briefcase when you reach the podium. 
Ultimately, it’s a watered down version of the million times you’ve imagined this moment in your head. Even coming on the tail end of the most annoying interaction you’ve had in months. Professor Kim congratulates you again, and hands you a printed schedule of when you’ll be expected at the publishing office for the first time. 
There are also submission dates. Deadlines for you to submit drafts of the piece that you’ll be publishing. You take it all in with a beam and enthusiastic nods, mishap with Heeseung from minutes ago all but forgotten. 
That is, until Professor Kim’s gaze lands somewhere over your shoulder after he tells you he’ll also send you a follow-up email with all the information you need. 
You watch as his expression shifts, something uneasy, distrustful entering his gaze as he looks beyond you. “Something I can help you with, Mr. Lee?”
Following his gaze, you turn to look behind you. The lecture hall is empty, students cleared out from the class that dismissed nearly five minutes ago. All except for one, that is. 
Gone is the shock from Heeseung’s delicately sharp features. Instead, he wears his mask of indifference again, betraying no emotion. You must be imagining the way it looks almost strained this time, as if he’s forcing his expression into neutrality instead of it there of its own accord. 
Wordlessly, his gaze shifts to you. 
And now it’s your turn to be confused, but you won’t let it last long. At least not outwardly. You’re quick to match his gaze with nothing but pure ire, venom dripping seeping from every inch of your glare. 
Is he seriously still trying to ruin this for you? So much for being busy. 
“No, sir.” Heeseung shakes his head. He’s addressing your professor, but he’s still looking at you. A muscle ticks in his jaw, betrays a hint of tension. “I was just on my way out.”
True to his word, he begins a steady descent towards the front door. 
Your professor clears his throat, turns his attention back to you, resuming the wrap-up of your conversation. 
You’re extra grateful for that follow-up email now, given the way movement in your periphery distracts you from Professor Kim’s last few statements. Instead, your focus hones in on the even footsteps that carry Heeseung to the door, allow him to slip through it silently. 
It must be a trick of the light, must be a figment of your overworked, over irritated imagination. But you swear you see him linger there, just on the other side of the small glass window carved into the door. 
Professor Kim says his parting words, and you thank him one final time. If there’s an unnatural quickness in your footsteps as you turn to leave, you tell yourself that it’s because you’re excited to get started on your draft, not because you have the sneaking suspicion Heeseung is still standing just on the other side of the door. 
But you swear that’s his silhouette you see as you draw closer, shrouded in shadows but distinct all the same. You’re debating the merits of shouting at him or maybe accidentally shoulder checking him again as you pull open the door handle, a little more roughly than you intend. 
But the only thing that greets you on the other side of the door is a nearly empty hallway, save for the pair of students bent over a laptop a few paces away. You ignore their twin expressions of shock as you let the door fall closed behind you, much more calmly than you opened it. 
…..
The blank expanse of your notebook stares at you accusingly. 
You’d stare back, if that would somehow make words appear on the page. Sighing, you reach for your long forgotten cup of tea sitting on your desk. Taking a slow sip, you realize it’s gone cold. 
That just makes you double down on your frustration. How long have you been sitting here, waiting for inspiration to strike? 
People always talk about the merits of a change in scenery, but ever since you started your first semester of university three years ago, your favorite place to write has always been here, at the small, simple desk that sits in the corner of your bedroom. 
Back then, writing was a hobby. Something to do when the last of your biochemistry homework was finished. A way to release pent-up stress and tension from long days in the university lab and long hours feeling like you were drowning between all of the extra study sessions, TA workshops, and office hours. 
At first, it had been worth it. You maintained high grades and high spirits. Mostly because of the small sprinkles of support your parents showered you with. 
Every little You got this! that lit up your phone screen on dreary afternoons and We believe in you! that made your evening lectures a little more bearable felt like tokens of your parents’ affection. Something tangible to show for the care they held for you. 
Most of all, you cherished the We’re proud of you messages. You can’t remember the last time you received one. 
And it’s not like they were mad, exactly, when you told them you wanted to change majors. They did their best to be supportive in the ways that they knew how. 
For your father, that was concern. “Are you sure? Literature? What do the job prospects after graduation look like?”
And for your mother, that was letting you know that she thought you were capable of more. Of better. “It’s not that literature is bad, sweetie. It’s just… Well, you’ve always been such a smart girl…”
You get it; you really do. All the questions and prodding comments that felt like criticism were wrapped in nothing but love. But that didn’t do much to soften the sting. 
In the end, it was this desk that made you follow through with your change in major. Slumped in your hand-me-down chair late one Friday night, half finished lab report sitting untouched in your bag, the threat of tears burning at the corners of your eyes, all you wanted to do was write.  
To put into words the feelings and emotions and fantasies and frustrations that you could never seem to express otherwise. To commit a piece of your soul to paper and wonder if maybe, just maybe, there was someone else out there who would read it and find a sense of solidarity, of common ground. 
You submitted your official change request the next morning. You never regretted it once. 
But your parents still make comments, still share their concerns. And for the last three years, you haven’t had anything to show for it except for empty promises. But now, you have something. A real something. 
Publishing a story of your own is the exact validation that you need that your choice was the right one. And it’s the proof you need to assuage your parents’ fears, to show them that pursuing literature was the right call. That you can carve out a life for yourself with it. 
You’ve fantasized about this for years. For the chance to have your voice heard, your words read. There are a million half-baked thoughts and partially written drafts scattered in your notebooks and digital documents and on the corners of takeout napkins that have been lying in wait for a moment just like this. 
But no matter how hard you stare at the page in front of you, the words just won’t come. The more old drafts you scour, the more amateur your writing feels. The more you feel like maybe Heeseung should have won the internship over you. 
It’s a miserable cycle your brain works itself into. The less you write, the more you criticize, the more you wonder. 
What if he hadn’t been late that morning? What if Professor Kim was hoping to choose him instead? What if the reason he didn’t say anything when Heeseung finally arrived in class was because he was so disappointed that his first choice wasn’t an option anymore?
Groaning out loud to an empty room, your head falls on your desk with a muted thud. 
It’s there, facedown on your desk, where an idea strikes you. If you can’t manifest a draft out of thin air, maybe you just need some parameters. A general guide to get the creative juices flowing. 
Lifting your head back up, you push your notebook to the side and reach for your laptop. Opening a web browser, you navigate to New Haven Publishing House’s homepage. 
It’s a simple website, reflective of its simple namesake. Chin in one hand, you click the link that reads Recently Published. 
The list that pops up is modest. Unlike a larger, more corporate publishing house, your professor’s self-made enterprise is churning out new releases at a slower rate and smaller volume. 
Perusing the titles and descriptions, you note that the vast majority of the works are short form fiction. There are very few full length novels. The majority is made up of essay and poetry collections, short stories, and memoirs. 
Scanning the list again, a title close to the top catches your eye. 
The Thirst for Revenge: An Analysis of Contemporary Vampire Activity. It was published less than a month ago. 
Your cursor hovers over the link, brow furrowing. It strikes you as odd that something so… archaic would be published so recently. 
Professor Kim has always come across as a discerning man. Someone that prides himself on his well curated taste. 
But vampires… that’s hardly a headline worthy topic these days. 
While most people still practice caution walking down dark alleyways at night and some even go so far as to carry charms infused with garlic cloves, monsters of the night are by and large a thing of the past.
The entire species of bloodthirsty, ravaging immortals were hunted to near extinction almost two hundred years ago. Those that survived relocated to remote areas. Some adapted to life in the countryside by learning to enjoy the taste of animal blood. Others found humans willing to donate small portions of their own blood intermittently. You won’t pretend to understand, but you suppose it’s preferable to the alternative.  
Some still hunted in the traditional way, of course, but vampire attacks on humans are few are far between these days. After all, vampires, as a means of survival, have all but forsaken major urban areas. Population density spells demise for their species. 
You’d have to confirm through research, but if you remember correctly, the last recorded vampire-related death in your city was nearly two hundred years ago. 
Without bothering to click on the link, you continue scrolling down. Honestly, it was probably just a fluke. After all, who knows? Maybe there’s some niche circle out there that enjoys analyzing vampire literature, regardless of how outdated it is. 
The next title seems a bit more promising. Shadowless Nights. The brief description marks it as a short story published half a year ago. 
You click on it, take a sip of room temperature tea while the page loads. 
Night was my favorite time of day, the first line reads. 
I loved the stillness of it all, the all encompassing serenity. With the moon in the sky and stars in my eyes, every moment felt like a secret between me and the universe. Something we alone shared. 
I whispered secrets to the earth and held hers in return. My days felt like dreams. Distant, blurry, faded. It was only then, in the distinct stillness of midnight, that I truly came alive. 
Interesting, you think. It’s a bit more melodramatic than you expected, but maybe your professor prefers a poetic touch. 
In the night, I earned peace. And in the night, I learned fear. 
It came slowly at first, that sinking feeling of dread. The horrible suspicion that made the hair on the back of my neck feel sharp, the air in my throat feel shallow. 
But if I have learned anything of monsters, it is that they revel in that fear. That sickeningly overt reminder of mortality, of humanity. The way I couldn’t help the racing of my pulse, the darting of my eyes. 
He enjoyed it, toying with me from the shadows. Watching me become desperate, watching me become weak. 
But it paled in comparison, I’m sure, with what came next. Every story has its climax, and every beginning has its end. For him, it was the sweet, clean taste of my blood. 
Wait. Another vampire story? One was strange enough, but for the last two published works at New Haven to be vampire related doesn’t feel like a coincidence. Especially since the more you read, the more you realize it’s not as much of a story as it is thinly veiled anti-vampire rhetoric. 
The dramatized descriptions of a weak, innocent female lead being victimized by a faceless, bloodthirsty monster. It just feels… strange. Outdated. Irrelevant, even. 
Clicking back to the list, you scan over the next five entries. All of them are more or less the same. Some are more metaphorical than others, abstract in their rhetoric, but the topic is always the same. And the conclusion always affirms the immense, inevitable, irredeemable blight that vampirism is to the world. 
It’s just bizarre. Especially considering that Professor Kim never once had you analyze any anti-vampire propaganda throughout the entire semester. In fact, you were never assigned to read anything vampire related at all. 
If this type of literature is so central to his professional career, it doesn't make sense to you that he wouldn’t incorporate it into his class. Especially considering the fact that he was awarding an internship at New Haven to one of the students. 
You take another long sip of cold tea. Well… you could try to come up with something that aligns with the current profile of New Haven’s recently published works. It’s not like you’ve ever written anything related to vampires. Maybe you just need to think of it as a writing exercise, a challenge of sorts. Producing a piece that feels relevant and fresh even if the central topic is a bit out of style. 
According to the revision schedule Professor Kim gave you, your first draft issue in a week and a half. The same day that you’re set to go to New Haven for the first time and tour the office you’ll be interning at once winter break is over. It’s an ambitious timeline, but he did specify that he’s looking more for a solid concept than a well polished draft. But something in you wants to have more than just a concept. You want his approval, to impress him. 
So you have a week and a half to come up with a draft that will catch his attention, that will convince him that you were the right choice for this opportunity. Not anyone else in your class. Not Heeseung. You. 
A concept that will excite New Haven Publishing House’s usual reader base, that will maybe actually earn you some commercial success. 
A story that will prove to your parents that literature was the right choice for you. That your words do matter, that you can make a name for yourself with your writing. 
Well, you think, suppressing an internal groan, it looks like you have your work cut out for you. 
…..
Despite your admitted lack of vampiric knowledge, once you have your topic, the words start to flow. You’re not sure if it’s your best work. You’re not even sure if it’s good. But it feels a hell of a lot better than staring at a blank page for hours. 
This afternoon finds you in the corner of your favorite coffee shop. Mostly because they offer half priced lattes on Wednesdays. As you make a dent in yours, the pen in your other hand continues to fly over the pages of your notebook, occasionally stopping to scratch out a word or rewrite a sentence. 
The bare bones are there. Just like in the handful of stories you perused on New Haven’s website, your plot features a young woman. It’s a historic setting, mostly because you still can’t quite bring yourself to write vampires into the modern day when the reality is so starkly different. 
And it’s not a vampire story. At least not at first glance. Instead, you weave an enduring metaphor to symbolize a parasitic relationship between two lovers.
The woman in your draft is young, full of life and energy and optimism. And she dreams. Vivid, brilliant dreams that she clings to in order to escape the harshness of her reality as a lower class woman in the countryside. 
Her husband, however, is a brute. Older than her and with a decidedly less sunny disposition. When he learns that his health is failing, he discovers that he can heal himself temporarily by stealing these dreams from her. 
So, no. It’s not overtly about vampires. But it does fall into step with some of the more abstract anti-vampire tropes you came across in your preliminary research. 
Crossing a dark line through the word you just penned, you sigh. 
This is the fastest you’ve put a story together in ages. It’s cohesive, and the writing is solid. Your use of metaphor is strong and concise, and the prose feels true to your identity as a writer. 
But something in you withers a bit with every new word you commit to paper. It’s not that you hate your topic. If anything, it’s just that you have no stake in it at all. It doesn't feel innovative or exciting or representative of your creativity. 
No matter how easily the words flow out of you, something about it just feels… flat. One dimensional. 
You need something new. A different angle or an alternative perspective or… Or a fresh set of eyes. 
Struck with a sudden idea, you pull out your phone, plan taking form in your mind. The literature club at your university hosts bimonthly peer review sessions, and you haven’t taken advantage of them nearly as much as you should. They’re a chance for any writer, literature major or otherwise, to come together and workshop any piece of writing of their choice. 
Tapping your finger impatiently on the table, you wait for the page to load. The fall semester did end almost a week ago, so it may be a long shot. You’re not sure if the club typically holds sessions over winter break. But as you pull up the club’s calendar of events, a small smile tugs at your lips. 
Luck seems to be on your side this time. It’s written there in plain, bold font that there will be a session this upcoming Friday evening. That means that if you attend the session and get some solid ideas for revision, you’ll have exactly five days to refine your draft before you present it to Professor Kim. 
The idea of having not only a topic, as the schedule outlined, but an actual complete,  well-written draft to show him next Wednesday, turns your small smile into one that overtakes your features. 
Energized with a new vigor, you reach for your pen again. It doesn’t have to be perfect, you remind yourself, even as a turn of phrase makes you cringe. Even as a piece of punctuation feels out of place. It just needs to be written. You just need to have as much content as you can to share on Friday. 
Besides, you’re sure that a second opinion will help you fine tune this story into something you’re proud to share, something you’re excited to attach your name to.
The afternoon is quick to blur into early evening, and you’re still bent over your favorite corner table. Coffee long drained, you’re full of a new confidence. The thought of proving yourself suddenly doesn’t seem like such an unachievable, out of reach task. 
And when you do finally gather up all of your belongings and make your way back to your apartment for the night, you’re sure that this is the exact boost you needed. 
That same stroke of self-assuredness carries you all the way through a finished first draft. It’s rough and messy and littered with loose ends, but it’s tucked away in the bottom of your tote bag with a smile as you haul it to classroom number 105 in the university liberal arts building Friday evening. 
You pause at the door to the classroom, only for a moment. The inhale you breathe in is deep, full. Nodding to yourself once, you push open the door. 
You haven’t been to one of these workshop sessions since the second semester of your first year, back when you had just switched to a literature major. You remember being wide-eyed and incredibly protective over your work. It was hard to part with it, to let anyone else read over the sentences you were so unsure of. The writing you had little confidence in. 
But your partner had been kind. Another girl in her first year, she had nothing but gentle feedback to give and reassurance that your writing was worth reading. Honestly, it was such an overwhelmingly positive experience that you would have come back for more sessions if you weren’t constantly struggling to find minutes to spare in the day. 
You’re hoping that tonight will be just as rewarding as you enter the classroom, tote bag in tow. But as you survey the space around you, your face falls flat, easy going smile dropping from your lips. 
You weren’t expecting a big crowd, considering that it is winter break and most students are deliberately avoiding campus right now, but you were hoping there’d be more than one other person in attendance. 
Well, you think, deciding to look on the bright side of things. At least you’re not the only person. 
The other attendee is sitting in the far corner of the room, occupying a desk near the front of the classroom. At the sound of your entrance, they turn to face you. 
With that, your small disappointment is quick to snowball into an intense wave of exasperation. Because why is the universe so hellbent on playing games with you?
Your mouth drops open without your permission. “Heeseung?” 
Your sudden outburst fills the room and lingers long into the awkward silence that follows. You hadn’t meant to say anything, but really, what are the god forsaken odds?
If he’s bothered by your reaction to seeing him, Heeseung doesn’t show it. Instead he looks strangely… relieved. It makes absolutely no sense for him to feel any sort of relief at the sight of you, but it’s hard to put a more apt descriptor to the way tension drains from his shoulders, crease between his brows softening as he looks at you, scans you from head to toe. 
A moment of stilted silence passes between the two of you. Another. Your heartbeat feels too loud in your chest.
You exhale, a cross between a scoff and a laugh so humorless it could freeze a flame. Weighing your options, the most tempting by far is to just turn on your heel and exit the way you came. 
Heeseung seems to read your intention before you can commit to it. 
Breaking the heaviness in the atmosphere, he acts as if you’ve greeted him like an old friend, not as the source of all your recent headaches. 
“Hi,” he nods, so tentatively you almost want to let your jaw drop open in shock. Almost. 
Because what the fuck does he mean by ‘Hi?’ This has to be some kind of mind game, some way to get in your head and ruin this for you. 
“Right.” Your lips pull into a tight line. You don’t bother to return his greeting. “I’m just gonna go, then.” Hiking up your bag on your shoulder, you turn to do just that. Your first draft will just have to be unpolished. Oh, well. You’re sure Professor Kim will have better feedback for you than Lee Heeseung ever would anyway. 
Once again, Heeseung’s voice cuts across the classroom. “Wait.” There’s a command in his voice. Gentle, but firm. Insistent. So pervasive that you find yourself following without really meaning to. 
Mind made up and dead set on leaving, now you’re just annoyed. What a waste of a Friday evening.
“What?” You turn back to him. You’re not sure if there’s more venom in your voice or your eyes. 
And Heeseung, who commands a classroom with quiet grace, with his steady, unwavering presence, suddenly looks so damn unsure. As if tormenting you is uncharted territory. As if he’s never once left you in the cold with flaming cheeks and a thoroughly shattered ego. 
“I…” he trails off, not quite meeting your furious gaze. “Didn’t you come here to get feedback?”
“Right.” You scoff again. “Because I’m sure you’d love nothing more than to tear my writing to shreds. Forgive me, but I’m not interested in being the butt end of your joke tonight.”
“What?” If you didn’t know any better, the ignorance he feigns would be rather convincing. “That’s not why I’m here.” He shakes his head. “I brought something I want reviewed too.” 
Your brow arches. He can’t be serious. “Even if I did stay,” you counter, “you’re actually the last person I would want to read my work. Feel free to be offended by that, by the way.”
For a solid minute, Heeseung just looks at you. He wears that same damn deer-in-the-headlights expression he had after you brushed him off when he intercepted you in class the other day. He pauses, weighing words on his tongue. “Look, ____.” The sound of your name on his lips strikes a strange chord in you. Until now, you were certain he didn’t even know it. “Did I do something to offend—”
And no. Absolutely not. No way are you rehashing that day in the quad with him now. 
“You know what,” you interrupt. You need to go. Now. You need an out. “I’m actually, like, super tired. I think I’m just gonna head back, and—”
But then it’s his turn to cut off your train of thought. “It’s your piece for Professor Kim, isn’t it?” Heeseung takes your silence as confirmation. “Publishing is a big deal. A second set of eyes will only make your work stronger. And if you hate my feedback, it’s not like you have to use any of it.”
You hate it. You despise the way his reasoning matches your internal monologue nearly word for word. The way your thoughts align exactly. 
You pause, a decision weighing heavy on your mind. He is an excellent writer… There would probably be substance to his feedback. Real, actual, good substance that you could use to make your writing bloom into something truly amazing. He could be the exact spark you need to make your story come to life. 
You purse your lips. “What’s in it for you?”
Heeseung smiles, a nearly imperceptible quirk of his lips. He knows he’s won. “Like I said, I brought something I’ve been working on.” There’s an intention you can’t quite read behind his gaze when he adds, “I want to know what you think of it.”
Hook, line, and sinker.
With a grumble, you take reluctant steps towards where he sits on the opposite side of the classroom. And if you slide down into the seat next to him with a little more force than necessary, well, it’s just because you’ve had a long week. No other reason. None at all. 
“Fine,” you relent, reaching to pull your notebook out of your bag. “You get twenty minutes.”
“That’s not nearly long eno—”
“Thirty,” you concede. “And don’t push it.”
Sensing your disdain, Heeseung doesn’t respond. Instead, he accepts the notebook you reluctantly hand him with an outstretched hand and an open palm. The transfer between the two of you is gentle. You have the distinct sense that he’ll treat your work with care, in more than one way. 
Still, something in your heart seizes at the thought of letting your work be read. Of letting him be the one to read it. 
In return, he offers you a notebook of his own. Bound in brown, aged leather, it’s certainly much more refined than yours. Of course. 
He hands it to you still closed. Staring down at the cover, you ask, “What page?” It feels intrusive to start flipping through his writing uninvited. 
“There’s a bookmark.” Heeseung nods his chin towards the small piece of paper sticking out of the top edge that you missed at first glance. 
And then the transfer is complete. A piece of your heart is spread open on his desk, and a piece of his soul is in your hands. 
Ignoring the way your fingers tremble with a slight shake, you delicately open his notebook to the bookmarked page, letting it fall open on the desk in front of you. 
At first glance, the writing strikes you as odd. The paragraphs are strange lengths, ending at random junctures instead of extending all the way to the margins. And then it hits you. They’re not paragraphs. They’re stanzas. 
Poetry. Lee Heeseung writes poetry. 
You sneak a sidelong glance at him out of your periphery. He’s already engrossed in the pages of your notebook, pausing occasionally to jot a note down on a scrap piece of paper. His brow is furrowed, and there’s a tension in his jawline that only makes it sharper. 
Still, the image of his profile is shrouded in a distinct sort of softness. The kind of effortless beauty that feels like it should be reserved for intimate moments in the dead of night, secrets passed between lovers. It’s wasted under the fluorescent lights and patchy, beige walls of an underfunded classroom, but you waste another minute staring at him all the same. 
For a fleeting moment, it’s not hard to imagine those hands, those long, delicate fingers maintaining an even grip on a ballpoint pen to write something as romantic as poetry. 
Shaking your head, you clear the errant thoughts. Instead, you turn your focus back to the page in front of you and begin with the first poem. Forcing your eyes to focus, you read. 
As if nothing happened,
She looks at me
With shadowless eyes.
But it is me who has been 
Forgiven and reborn countless times.
You inhale. Exhale. Short and succinct with a distinct twinge of tragedy. That was… not what you were expecting. Pushing forward, you move onto the next entry. 
Even the stars in the universe
Will close their eyes one day.
Underneath their watchful gaze,
All of these moments are precious.
For memory, for regret,
I will carve them
Into the repetition of the moment.
Again, you pause, taking a moment to breathe. It’s so… melancholy, so poignant in its evocation of pain, of regret. While you’ve been familiar with Heeseung’s ability to analyze the hell out of a novella, this was not something you thought you’d find in his repertoire. And the more you read on, the more you realize these aren’t flukes. This is his identity as a writer, or at least a significant part of it. 
The world that abandoned us
Slowly turns to ash. 
But I don’t feel the pain. 
I only feel the cold.
My god. You nearly close the notebook on instinct. Without your permission, your eyes flick ove to the desk next to you. The broad set of shoulders that fill the seat. What has this boy been through? Why is he letting you read this? 
Heeseung looks up. Not at you, but the movement is enough to startle you out of your staring. Returning your eyes to his notebook, you read the last entry on the page. 
A shaded castle with no sun
The thick scent of dying roses never fades. 
In a broken mirror, I see myself. 
And my reflection whispers, “Monster.”
The breath you release is long. Audible. You’re overcome with the urge to run your fingers over his words, to feel the indents his pen made as he carved pain into the page. His writing is gorgeous. It’s beautifully, tragically haunting. Of that much, you’re certain. But you have no idea what to do with that information. 
His words feel too raw, too terribly intimate. Like something that was never meant for your eyes. You can’t understand what on earth possibly possessed him to let — no — to encourage you to read these. 
You can’t fathom any kind of feedback you could offer him. These feel like pieces of his soul, not something to be commodified or commented on in a writing workshop. Discussed in the cold, unfeeling walls of an old classroom.
Despite the discomfort that lingers with each passing stanza, his writing has an almost addictive quality. Over and over, you find yourself rereading each brief poem. You’re searching for meaning, for clarity, for something hidden between the lines that you missed on your first handful of reads. 
Thirty minutes pass in a trance, and Heeseung, true to his word, is the one to break the silence when your half hour is up. 
Mind still reeling, you realize with a sinking feeling that you have absolutely no feedback to give him at all. 
Instead, you turn to face him. Throwing a meaningful glance at where your notebook still lies open on the desk in front of him. Doing your best to not look too hopeful, you ask, “Well?”
For a moment, Heeseung just looks at you, an unreadable expression on his face. Tension pulls at his temple, his jaw. Frustration seeps from beneath his skin, and you can’t tell where it’s directed. 
“Oh, come on,” you prod when his silence extends even longer. “I know you’re dying to spill the gory details of how grossly incompetent I am and how horrifically amateur my writing is, so don’t—”
Heeseung wastes no fanfare. “This is awful.”
Your lips flatten. “Or just cut right to the chase.”
He’s quick to clarify. “But not for any of the reasons you just listed. I mean, sure, there are some craft issues here, but even those seem like a result of your concept.”
“What’s wrong with my concept?” The edge of defensiveness in your voice escapes without your permission. 
Heeseung just levels you with a look. Returning his gaze to your notebook, he reads from your draft verbatim, “...Stashing away the light from her life. Tucking it into his back pocket like extra change just for the satisfaction of temporary happiness. It was never love that bound him to her, but the promise of a never ending fountain of life. Of wishes and thoughts and hopes and dreams that he could use to sustain himself as long as he subjected himself to the numbing pleasure of existing at her side.” 
He raises an eyebrow, turns back to you. “I mean, really, ____? I’ve read some nauseatingly vitriolic vampire pieces in my life, and this just about has all of them beat. Besides, the whole vampire thing just feels so… irrelevant. Do people still read this stuff anymore?”
Your first instinct is to defend yourself, your work, even if his thoughts mirror your own. Before you can, Heeseung is pressing on. You don’t have the space to get a word in sideways. “I mean, what happened to the writing from that piece you presented back in September? I don’t remember all the details, but there was something about watching birds land on water and connecting it to the feeling of belonging but never truly fitting in.” He looks at you again. There’s more emotion, more glittering life in his eyes than you’ve ever seen from him before. “That was a fresh take and a well done metaphor.”
Your mind is reeling. It’s far too much information to take in all at once. But something stands out amongst the rest. Because that almost sounded like— 
“Was that a compliment?” It seems unlikely, but you can’t find another way to take his words. “You paid attention to my presentation?” 
You liked it? You don’t ask that question out loud, but the needier parts of you crave his answer anyway.
“Yeah, of course I did. Peer review was a mandatory component of the course.” Heeseung’s cheekbones remain the same, even, honey-tinted tone, but you swear you see a flash of embarrassment in the way he averts his gaze. 
“Well, yeah.” It’s not a justification that holds much weight in your mind. “But you don’t exactly seem like the type to really pay attention to other people’s stuff. Especially if you think it’s not worth your time.”
“I just told you your presentation was good, didn’t I?”
You arch a brow. “Yeah, right after you finished calling my draft horrific.”
Heeseung shakes his head. “I didn’t say it was horrific…”
“Oh, please. Spare us both the semantics. That’s what you meant.” You’re not sure why your mind always goes back to that day in the quad, but you find yourself still sore from his rejection, his new assertion of your work poking at old wounds. Picking at poorly healed scabs. “And it’s not like you were jumping for joy at the chance to review my work back then, either.”
Heeseung’s brow furrows. You can practically see the gears turning in his mind. You’re not sure if it makes you feel better or worse, the fact that he doesn’t seem to remember that day at all. 
In the end, you decide to spare him the effort of empty recollection. With a sigh, you spill your shame. At least this time around, you’re the only two that will bear witness. “That one day in class. Back at the beginning of the semester. We had to present our analysis of that one short story. You remember, the one about planting seeds in bad soil.” Heeseung nods, but there’s no spark of realization. Not yet. 
Continuing, it only pains you slightly to admit, “Your analysis was brilliant, and I gushed about it in front of the whole class. Laid it on thick with the compliments. And then after class, I stopped you in the quad.” Something flickers over Heeseung’s features. A memory tugging at the back of his mind. “When I asked if you wanted to review each other’s pieces for the next assignment, you completely brushed me off.”
Brow still pulled downwards, Heeseung is thinking back to that day, too. But it doesn't seem to hold the same awful, leaden weight in his mind. “I didn’t brush you off,” he argues. “I think I said I was busy.”
It takes a lot of willpower not to let your jaw drop open. “That’s brushing someone off!” Your voice is too loud for the near empty classroom, for your close proximity. “Like literally the textbook definition. Everyone knows that ‘I’m busy’ is code for ‘leave me the hell alone.’”
Almost imperceptibly, Heeseung’s features soften as he watches yours strain. The fluorescent light bulbs that fill the room suddenly don’t seem quite as harsh when he says, “Well, that's not what I meant. I was busy.”
It’s hardly a satisfying answer. But you suppose it makes little difference. If he wants to stick to his story, you’ll continue to feign indifference. “Whatever. It’s not like it matters now anyway.”
And then your mind is back on his poems. His beautiful, tragic, gorgeously phrased stanzas scribbled in his handwriting. Fragments of vulnerability that he handed to you without hesitation. 
It’s like comparing apples to oranges in a way, but there is no doubt in your mind that between the two of you, the writing he brought tonight is better. Better than your story, better than most things you’ve ever written, probably. The imagery is evocative, striking in a way you’ve never quite been able to achieve no matter how many seminars and workshops and lectures you attend. 
Not for the first time, your brain dangles a dangerous thought in a place where you can’t avoid it. What if Professor Kim chose wrong? What if Heeseung hadn’t been late to class that day? Would you be sitting here with a mediocre draft and a raging inferiority complex?
You’ll never know, not really, but you find yourself asking anyway, “Why were you late to class that day?”
As soon as the words leave your mouth, you wish you could take them back. It’s not like his answer will change anything. And it’s invasive. Far too personal to ask someone you barely know. That up until thirty minutes ago, you actively avoided. 
But maybe the universe is on your side for once. Maybe you got ridiculously lucky and he didn’t hear you, despite the fact that it’s dead silent in this classroom. Maybe—
“What?”
Or not.
Well, you’re committed now. “The last day of class. When the winner for the publishing opportunity was announced,” you clarify. “You were late. Honestly,” you add with a wry smile, “you’d probably be the one writing overdramatic vampire slander right now if you hadn’t been.”
It’s a self-deprecating joke. It might land poorly, but you’re hoping it will lighten the atmosphere. 
A dark shadow crosses Heeseung’s features. “Trust me, ___. You winning had nothing to do with me being late that day.”
If he thinks flattery will get him anywhere, he’s wrong. You can feel your frustrations bubbling in your throat, clawing at your mind. You won. You beat him. So why doesn’t it feel like it? Why doesn’t it feel like anything you do is ever good enough?
“C’mon, Heeseung.” He doesn’t deserve your anger. At least, not now. But he gets it anyway. Insecurities and inferiority and frustration all wrapped in rage. “You were practically a shoe-in, and everyone knows it.”
He’s just as insistent. Leaning towards you slightly, he looks anything but aloof now. “No I wasn’t. Professor Kim chose you to intern with him. He read both of our submissions all semester and chose you to publish with his firm. I told you, your writing is good. Really good.” Glancing down at your notebook, he adds, “Even if this one is a bit… uninspired.”
A compliment and a slight. His version of the truth, wrapped up in a bow and delivered right to your waiting ears. You don’t know whether to be furious or overjoyed. Maybe it would be best to feel absolutely nothing at all. It scares you, just how much weight his opinion holds. 
But approval from him has its way of feeling like a long sought victory, and now the air feels fraught with something delicate, fragile. Precarious, even. 
It’s early evening in a threadbare classroom. The most neutral territory imaginable. But it’s the two of you, alone, secluded. And suddenly, that frightens you. 
“Right.” You won’t tell him ‘thank you’ for the compliment or ‘go fuck yourself’ for the criticism. Both options feel like you would be revealing too much. 
Instead, you take a glance at the clock. It’s not late, but it’s an excuse. “I should probably get going.”
Heeseung exhales. Leans back in his seat. “Of course,” he concedes easily, reaching to hand you your notebook.
You do the same with his, almost sad to watch his poetry pass from your hands to his. It’s odd, the way his words already feel like something you’ll miss. 
You realize then that he hasn’t asked you for your opinion on his work. For your advice on how to make it better. In all honesty, you’re relieved. You haven’t the slightest idea what you would say. 
So instead, you busy yourself with repacking your tote bag. In your haste, you knock your pen off of your desk. The sound it makes as it strikes the thinning carpet can’t be loud, but it feels thunderous in your ears. 
As you reach to pick it up, Heeseung does the same. There’s a moment, fleeting but unmistakable, when the skin of his hand brushes against yours. 
Instantly, Heeseung recoils as if you’ve burned him. His hand is back in his own space at a speed so fast you nearly miss it. 
It was an accident, a tiny blip with no real consequences, but the way he’s looking at you with those damn eyes makes you feel like you should be apologizing. 
“Sorry.” The severity of his reaction stings like rejection. It’s not like he’s exactly your favorite person either, but at least you have the common decency to not look repulsed at the thought of touching him. At the accidental brushing of your hands. 
Heeseung frowns. Shakes his head slightly as if to clear his thoughts. “No, I…” he trails off, letting his words hang in the air for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he concludes, but it feels disingenuous. And he doesn’t bother to elaborate. Looking over your shoulder, he reads the clock on the wall. “It’s getting kind of late. Where are you parked? I can walk you to your car.”
His hands are busy putting his notebook back in his back. It’s a considerate offer, but coming on the tail end of everything else, it doesn’t hold much weight with you. His words don’t match his actions, and you decide you’d be a fool to take them at face value. 
“Don’t bother. I’m walking home, not driving.”
Heeseung freezes, hand still inside his bag. He’s not looking at you, but you feel the weight of his attention all the same. “Do you need someone to walk with you?”
The way he phrases the question makes you feel like a burden. He’s asking if you need someone to walk with you, not offering because he wants to. A subtle difference maybe, but the last thing you want is to feel like you owe him any favors. 
“No, I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?” He does look at you now, concern painted across his features. “It’s getting dark earlier these days, and—”
His words are wasted on you. You’re already halfway to the door. “I’m sure.” But before you leave, you decide one more hit to your pride can’t worsen the damage that’s already been done. At least this time, it will be by your doing. Standing under the doorframe, you turn back to him. “Thank you for your feedback. It was good to hear an honest opinion.”
Your words sink into the air. Linger for a moment. 
Heeseung nods. Something in his jaw tightens. “You know, if you do decide to change topics, I’d be happy to read whatever you write.”
It almost sounds like another compliment. Or maybe another insult. Either way, you’re sure that even if you figure it out, you’ll still have no idea what to do with it. You nod, only once, and then your back is turned again before you can linger too long on any of it. 
But his words, the sweet ones this time, replay in your mind the entire walk home. 
Maybe if you weren’t so distracted by the ghosts of compliments, you’d have noticed the pair of quiet, even footsteps that trailed after you in the distance. That only retreated once the front door to your apartment was pulled shut and locked tight behind you. 
Then again, maybe not. Heeseung has always had a knack for going undetected. 
…..
You wake up the next morning with Heeseung’s words replaying in your mind. 
Awful. Irrelevant. And of course your favorite, ‘nauseatingly vitriolic vampire piece.’
In the faded glow of morning light, you groan out loud to your empty bedroom. The worst part of it all is that he’s not even wrong. But it’s Saturday morning, and your first draft is due on Wednesday. The thought of starting a new story from scratch and writing it to completion within that time frame is enough to make you want to curl into a ball and screw your eyes shut until you can pretend the world outside your bedroom is nothing but a figment of your imagination. 
So no, you don’t think you can start over entirely. But maybe, just maybe, you can rework things. Tweak the narrative to feel less cliche, less outdated. More true to you. 
Part of you wants to abandon the vampire concept entirely, convinced it’s what’s holding you down. The other part is hesitant to do so based on New Haven’s list of recently published works. 
And while Heeseung’s criticism was the confirmation you needed that your story needs reworking, it’s not like he gave you any ideas as to what you should change. What direction you should take.
Nauseatingly vitriolic vampire piece. That seemed to be Heeseung’s biggest problem with your draft. Not that it alluded to vampirism. No, you think he disliked that it was a tired and rehashed propaganda piece on the inherent evilness of vampires. 
Everyone knows that vampires were monsters. Writing about it, no matter how many metaphors and symbolic phrases you wrap it up in, just isn’t interesting. 
That’s the route you’ll take, then, you decide. You don’t have to invent a new concept out of thin air. You just need to find a way to bring something new to the table. Something worth reading. Climbing out of bed, you switch your pajamas for clothes more acceptable in public. 
And then you make your way to the university library. 
Just as you suspected, it’s essentially empty. Between long rows of meticulously shelved books, vacant study rooms, and community computers, the only other person you see is the librarian that greets you as you arrive. Even her eyebrows raise in mild shock to see someone else during the break, and on a weekend at that.
Heading to the second floor, the first section you peruse through is historical records. But between old newspapers, reports, and journals, the content itself is quite cut and dry. Detached descriptions of vampire attacks that only contain details of the date, time, and death toll aren’t exactly riveting. And you don’t think they’ll do much for your feeble draft. 
Before long, you move away from the nonfiction section. Navigating to supernatural fiction on the third floor, you start browsing titles. Vampire stories make up a rather small portion of the texts, and from what you can tell, the vast majority align with what you found on New Haven’s website. 
From Demons of the Dark to Left in Cold Blood, you doubt that most of what you find will offer any kind of new perspective. But on your third, slightly desperate scouring of the shelf, you make a discovery. 
It’s a small, nondescript book. The muted tones and faded lettering on the spine go easily undetected amongst the much flashier copies of anti-vampire propaganda it’s nestled between. 
Pulling the book out from the shelf with a delicate touch, you flip the cover face-up in your hand. 
Sacred Monsters: A Collection of Essays on the Origins of Immortality
It piques your interest. At the very least, it seems different from all the other novels. 
Book in hand, you make your way to a nearby desk. Once you’re settled in, you pull out your notebook, opening to a new page with the intention of taking notes. 
The book you lay on the desk next to your notebook seems like it’s lived a long life, the old scent of dust and aged paper and time all contained within its pages. Flipping open the front cover, you look for an author or publication date. But there’s nothing there, not even a title page or a table of contents. 
Glossing over the slight oddity, you decide the beginning is as good a place as any to start. 
The Taste of Blood, is the title at the top of the page. 
And the first sentence begins:
It is neither sweet nor particularly savory. There is no distinct aroma, no compelling flavor profile, nothing that appeals to the eye or excites the taste buds. The only merit is the fact that it is necessary. For even those blessed with immortality know what it means to survive. And even those cursed to live forever know what it means to die. 
Frowning, you flip back to the cover, as if that will provide any clarity for the strange passage you just read. But nothing is different. Nothing new stands out. Just the same, faded title. No author or indication of any kind of publication date. 
Intrigued, you turn back and resume where you left off. 
Some are said to enjoy the act. The purity of release, of giving in to the instincts that can be convinced into domesticity but never fully silenced. I have never found such relief. The ghost of my humanity has always been stronger than the voice of the monster, even as he screams with unbounded ferocity. 
Without it, I feel incomplete. With it, I feel irredeemable. Even now, I dodge the truth, omit the profane. I have seen many moons, enjoyed their silver glow. I have stolen the very same pleasure from countless others. And yet, I struggle to call it by name. I cannot reconcile the battles waged in my bones, the war fought in my mind. 
There is no winner in either. All that remains in the taste of it. Lingering on my breath. Haunting my waking dreams. That which I cannot name. 
The taste of blood. 
In my fervor, it soothes like honey. In my regret, it turns to ash. 
And still, nothing changes. And still, nothing remains the same.
-- Anonymous
Well, if you were looking for something different, you found it. Because what the absolute fuck are you reading? If you didn’t know any better, you’d think it were written from the perspective of a vampire. 
Then again, shelved in the fiction section, you suppose it’s plausible. Actual vampires may have housed little room in their consciousness for anything outside of bloodlust, but it is an interesting idea to think of vampires as conflicted. Haunted by the brutality of their innate instincts. 
You’re not exactly sure how or if this will be able to influence your own story for the better, but something about it makes you want to keep reading. 
Alone, tucked amongst the dusty shelves of a neglected section of the library, you lose yourself between the pages of the mysterious book. 
As the title indicated, it’s a collection of essays. Most are quite short, around the same length as the first one you read. And none are claimed by an author. All are signed off with the same boldface type that spells Anonymous. There are subtle differences in the writing though, stylistic choices that make you think that more than one person wrote these essays. 
Despite that, they’re all woven together by a common thread. The first essay, as you discover, was not a fluke. Every single one is written in first person from the perspective of a vampire. 
The writing is compelling, humorous in places and deeply upsetting in others. It seems odd to you, just how much humanity is captured within the pages, within each turn of phrase. 
You feel inclined to root for the narrator in some stories and abjectly horrified by them in others. But never once does the writing make you think that vampires are incapable of self-actualization, of reflection, of morality. 
In all honesty, aside from Heeseung’s poems, it’s the most interesting thing you’ve read in ages. So much so that by the time you realize you’ve finished the last essay, the winter sun is teeming dangerously close to the horizon, and the library is nearing its closing hours. 
The notebook page you intended to use for notes, to jot down points of inspiration, is still woefully blank. But as you make your way back to the front of the library, the small, strange book comes along with you. 
Stopping at the front desk to formally check it out, the librarian frowns when she enters the number from the spine into the system. She clicks around on her computer for a moment longer before handing the book back to you. 
“I’m sorry, but the book isn’t coming up in our system for some reason. Would you mind writing down your student ID number for me? I’ll have to enter the information manually.”
You oblige her request, tucking the book into your bag before you leave. 
It’s chilly outside, the cold clutches of winter gaining a full grasp on the crisp, frigid air. After a long day in a stuffy library, the freezing air is almost soothing. Tucking your hands into your pockets, you turn towards the direction that will take you home. 
You’ve barely taken five steps when a voice calls your name from behind. Pausing, you turn to find the source of the sound. 
“Heeseung?” But there’s no mistaking it. That is most definitely Lee Heeseung, currently jogging towards you on the otherwise empty sidewalk in front of the university library. 
He catches up to you easily, no sign of perspiration or even a hint of breathlessness when he asks, “What are you doing walking alone at night?” As if you’re the strange one in this situation.
You give him a once over. The loose jeans and dark winter coat he wears are nothing special, but he wears them well regardless. You suppress the urge to sigh. “I could ask you the same.”
“Fair enough.” His tone is too light, too casual. Like he’s forcing it. Like he’s hiding something. “Are you headed home? I’ll walk you there.”
And if you weren’t suspicious before, you sure as hell are now. Why on earth would he want to walk you home? “I’m fine, thanks.” You turn away from him, heading in the direction of your apartment and hoping he’ll take the hint. 
Your wish goes ungranted. He matches your pace easily, even as you try to quicken it. “It’s after dark, ___. And there are a lot of…” He trails off, searching for the right word. “strange people out at night these days. I’m not letting you walk home alone.”
Lips tight, you don’t bother looking at him. The idea of Heeseung letting you do anything makes you want to throw things. “I’ll be fine.”
But he’s persistent. He’s all smiles and a strange amount of desperate when he says, “Either you let me walk you back or I’ll just follow you at a weird distance, which will be far more uncomfortable for both of us.”
That makes you stop in your tracks. And now you do turn to look at him. “Well, when you put it that way…”
Heeseung nods, “Exactly. So—”
You arch an unimpressed brow, crossing your arms over your chest. “It sounds like you’re the strange person at night I need to stay away from.”
Heeseung sighs, matches your eye. A strand of hair falls into his eyes, and he pushes it away with long fingers. “Are you gonna start walking or are we gonna stand here and argue a little longer?”
“You don’t even know where I live.”
“What a great night to find out.”
You stare at him a moment longer, lips tight. You don’t want to be the one to give in, to hand him any kind of victory, no matter how small. 
But it is getting late. The walk from campus to your apartment is never one that’s made you uneasy, but it never hurts to have someone at your side. Besides, you think he was serious about following you. He’s made it clear that he’ll be tagging along one way or another. 
“Fine,” you huff, arms still crossed over your chest. “But only because the streetlight a few blocks away is out.”
Heeseung inclines his head, a minute acknowledgement. There’s a hint of movement at the corner of his lips. “Naturally.”
You resume walking, and he falls into your pace with a practiced ease, hands in his pocket, eyes on the stars. It’s a cloudless evening. The sky above you feels vast, immense as the last rays of daylight lie to rest on the distant horizon. 
With a slight shiver, you pull your jacket tighter around your body. Heeseung notices the movement. Parts his lips as if he wants to say something. Changes his mind. Closes them. 
You’ve just reached the far edge of campus when he breaks the steady silence. 
“How’s your draft coming?”
“It’s…” You trail off, not sure how well honesty will serve you here. It feels vulnerable, like a blatant weakness to admit that you’ve got nothing. But something about cold air and the vast expanse of night has you wanting to tell the truth. “Not great.”
Heeseung lets your response settle. Turns it over in his mind a few times. You’ve noticed that about him. He’s careful with his responses. Weighs his words before breathing them to life. “Still looking for inspiration?”
“I don’t know if it’s inspiration I need.” It’s easier to talk to him like this, when your eyes have something to focus on, when your body has the constant repetition of steps to occupy part of your mind. Without little distractions like these, Heeseung has a way of becoming all consuming. “I feel like I backed myself into a corner with the vampire concept. I’m not sure if there's really anything there to explore that won’t feel outdated and irrelevant.” 
“Mm,” Heeseung muses. It’s noncommittal, neither an agreement nor an argument. “Maybe. You said it yourself; vampires are nothing but bloodlust. Riled completely by instinct. Nothing left of their humanity.”
Frowning, your footsteps almost falter. “I didn’t say that.”
“Forgive me.” If there’s a tinge of bitterness in his tone, you suppose it must be because of the cold. The fact that he’s wasting his Saturday night walking you home. “Heavily implied it.”
“Honestly, the only reason I even wrote that story was because there were a lot of similar ones on New Haven’s list of recently published works.” Your reasoning feels almost stupid when you admit it aloud like this. You’ve always prided yourself on your originality, your commitment to staying true to yourself as a writer. But when push comes to shove, you let your desire to impress your professor get in the way of that. “I wanted something that would align with their usual publications.” 
You’ve admitted a weakness, a poorly made choice. You’re expecting ire, more of that haughty contempt. But Heeseung’s mind is going in an entirely different direction.
He’s not questioning your abilities, not even alluding to them at all when he asks, “What do you think of vampires, then?”
His question catches you off guard. Why on earth would he care about that? “What’s it to you?”
“My bad. We can just walk in awkward silence if you prefer.”
It takes a ridiculous amount of your energy to swallow the laugh that bubbles in your throat. Since when did Heeseung crack jokes? Since when did you have to fight the urge to giggle at them like a schoolgirl with a crush? You suddenly find yourself grateful for the cover of night, the way shadows make the heat on your cheeks undetectable. 
But his question still lingers. Ruminating on it, your mind flickers to the small, odd book currently sitting at the bottom of your bag. 
Sacred Monsters. 
It feels like a strange combination of words, two concepts that shouldn’t fit together. 
“I think it’s more complicated than that,” you breathe. You don’t know if it could possibly be true, the idea that creatures of the night have a high level of consciousness, the ability to moralize, to feel conflicted. But it certainly makes for a more interesting story. 
“I mean, vampires had to have some level of base cognition, right?” You’ll never know for sure, but the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. “They were hunted to near extinction, but they put up a good fight. They hid. They fled. They tried blending in as humans. Some resorted to drinking animal blood. I guess there’s no way of knowing, but that doesn’t feel like pure biology or an evolutionary response alone. It feels like… something a human would do.”
“Wouldn’t that be worse?” Heeseung’s voice is low. If the faint hum of faraway traffic were any louder, you might not hear him at all. “For them to know what it means to be alive and still make the choice to take that away from someone else? To exist as a parasite.”
“It would certainly be tragic.” The words of the first essay come back to you. 
For even those blessed with immortality know what it means to survive. And even those cursed to live forever know what it means to die.
“It’s a fatal flaw, a cruel design. They need blood to survive. The very thing that their bodies used to create on their own. It’s parasitic, yes, but that doesn’t make it animal instinct. I can’t imagine the horror of having to experience that with the burden of human consciousness.” 
You feel the weight of Heeseung’s gaze on the side of your face. “It’s still evil, is it not?”
His words feel heavy, weighted under moonlight. Though you can’t imagine why, you have the distinct sense that your answer is important to him. 
“Like I said, I think it’s more complicated than that. Taking someone’s life is evil, yes, but that was never unique to vampires. Is a vampire that chooses animal blood still evil just because they’re a vampire? Is a human that chooses to kill another absolved of their crime just by virtue of being human?”
Your words settle into the space between you. 
“That,” Heeseung finally breathes, “would make a much better story than the one I read last night.”
This time, you do laugh, a light airy thing. It feels easy, lighthearted as some of the tension drains from the atmosphere.
“Unfortunately, I’m not so sure Professor Kim would agree. Based on everything New Haven publishes, he seems to have some weird anti-vampire vendetta.”
As you round the corner, your apartment comes into view. Nodding toward the staircase that leads to your front door, you tell him, “This is me, by the way.”
Heeseung glances at the stairs, then back at you. He shoves his hands into his coat pockets. “When is your draft due?”
“Ugh, don’t remind me,” you groan. “Wednesday.”
“Mm,” he winces, an offer of understanding. “What time?”
“I’m supposed to be at New Haven by three, so—”
“What?” Heeseung cuts you off, expression suddenly tense, voice suddenly sharp. “You’re going to the publishing office?”
“Yeah.” You nod slowly, unsure why that would possibly warrant such a strong reaction. “I’m dropping off my first draft and getting a tour. The internship starts right when spring semester does, so he told me I could come in person to familiarize myself with the space first.”
“Right.” Heeseung nods. The tension in his jaw doesn’t relax.
It’s all so strange. He always seems to be speaking in riddles, dealing with invisible problems you can’t detect. 
You’re tired and confused, and the moon that hangs above you doesn’t feel like a remedy for either of those things. In fact, it might be making things worse. 
Because despite the way you feel like you’ll never quite understand him, bathed in the shimmering glow of moonlight, Heeseung looks… 
He looks like all the things you’ve been trying to avoid calling him for the duration of the semester. Ethereal. Beautiful. Maybe even kind, at least when he wants to be. 
After all, you’re standing at the base of your staircase with company, and it wasn’t due to any insistence on your end. 
The silence lingers. A string somewhere is pulled taught. 
You’re standing still, and you’re still a little breathless when you tell him, “I should go.” You don’t want to. You’re not sure why. 
Again, Heeseung only nods. 
The movement sends shadows dancing over his features. The bridge of his nose. The plane of his cheek. The line of his jaw. Things you’ve never let yourself linger on. Things you’re having a hard time looking away from now. 
 But he’s seen you home safe and sound, and even nights under the stars have their inevitable end. 
It occurs to you then that you have no idea how he plans to get home, or even how far away he lives. 
After he walked you home,it’s the least you could do to offer, “Do you live far? I could help you pay for a cab or something if—”
Heeseung shakes his head. He smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “It won’t take me long. Besides, I like to walk at night.”
“Okay.” It feels strange, trading these bits of kindness. You’re craving some normalcy, something unwavering. So with a final wave and a small goodnight, you climb the stairs to your door. 
You couldn’t say for sure if his eyes follow you on the way up. You feel the heat of them, the weight of a steady gaze on your spine. But it’s a fickle sensation and you’ve been wrong before. And you can’t quite bring yourself to turn around and look. 
The door closes behind you. Surrounded by the stillness of an empty apartment, you release a long held exhale. It drains out of you audibly. You hadn’t even realized you were holding your breath. 
…..
Dawn breaks Wednesday morning and carries with it a certain kind of dread. 
Despite your efforts, and there have been many, your draft remains far too close to its original state for your satisfaction. No matter how many times you pour over Sacred Monsters, you can never quite seem to find a way to make your submission more interesting while also staying true to New Haven’s general themes. 
If anything, the book has been a distraction. Long hours that you could have spent editing or revising or rewriting were instead dedicated to detailed web searches with a variety of keywords and spellings that never seemed to bear any fruit. 
It doesn’t matter which search engine you use. It doesn’t matter which database you browse. Other than the copy sitting on your desk, Sacred Monsters doesn’t seem to exist. 
But the annoying, wonderful, awful thing about time is that it passes. Time doesn’t care that you haven’t found it in yourself to produce a draft you’re proud of. Time doesn’t relent just because you always feel like it’s slipping through your fingers. 
And Wednesday morning turns to Wednesday afternoon with the same steady predictability as always. 
You’d like to think that you know the area around your university quite well, but New Haven’s main office is in an entirely different part of the city. You’ll have to leave now if you want to catch the bus with a little cushion of time to spare. The last thing you want to do is be late to your first day. Especially since the draft tucked neatly into your bag isn’t one you can hand over with confidence. 
To your relief, the bus is relatively empty. You tuck yourself into a seat and thank your lucky stars that you missed the afternoon rush. 
Popping your headphones in, you’re searching for something to fill the time. There’s the draft sitting in your bag, of course, but the last thing you want to do is spend the next thirty minutes agonizing over it. For now, it will just have to be the mess of mediocrity that it is. 
Instead, you reach for your phone. Maybe some mindless scrolling will be what you need to put your nerves at ease. 
But when the app loads, the first post you see doesn’t have you giggling or rolling your eyes or scrolling on without a thought at all. Instead, your spine straightens, shoulders suddenly tense. 
Because the words you’re reading are not something you ever expected to see in your lifetime. 
Three dead in suspected vampire attack, the latest headline from your local news reporting channel reads. 
Clicking on the article, the details are hazy, but that does little to lessen the grip of fear that makes a sudden grab at your throat. Fragments of sentences capture your attention as you scan the page. 
Three bodies found near the river…
Bite marks on their necks…
No trace of recent animal activity in the area…
Eyes widening with every new piece of information, fear claws at your throat. 
Bodies completely drained of blood.
Two hundred years. Two hundred years of the belief that vampires have all but been eradicated. Shattered in one fell swoop. 
And in your city, of all places. At the river. Somewhere you’ve been. Somewhere you wouldn’t think twice about going. It’s not particularly close to your apartment or university, but it’s not exactly far enough away for comfort.
You shudder, suddenly grateful that Heeseung was there to walk you home last night. Not that he would be able to do much if you did stumble across the path of a vampire, but—”
Oh god. Oh god. 
Heeseung. 
You have no idea if he made it home safe after parting ways with you and you have no way of checking. He hadn’t made any indication as to where he lived before saying goodnight. For all you know, he could have been heading in the direction of the river. He could have been at the river. Right when the attacks occurred. 
Doubling down on your phone, you scour the article for any information you can find on the victims. Objectively, it’s probably a good thing that they’re described only vaguely. Probably an intentional choice to protect the privacy of grieving friends and families. 
But ‘three victims, two men and one woman, all in their early twenties’ does very, very little to assuage your terror. In fact, it only heightens it. 
Blood pounding in your ears and dread pooling in your stomach, thirty minutes passes in the blink of an eye, you nearly miss your stop. But as you get off of the bus, you’re spiraling. Should you even be here? It feels wrong, leaving such a terrifying loose end untied. 
But then you think it through a little further. Even if you got back on the bus, rode it all the way to the stop by your apartment, you have no idea where you’d go from there. You may have shared insults and confidence and a moment under the moonlight with Heeseung, but you don’t know anything about him. Where he lives, where to reach him, where he could possibly be right now. 
But Professor Kim might. You’re sure that student information is strictly confidential, but if you explain the situation to him, he might be understanding, might just be willing to bend the rules a bit for you. 
So with a heaviness in your heart and fire in your footsteps, you double check the address of New Haven’s office and start walking away from the bus stop. Your surroundings are not a primary area of your focus, but it does strike you as odd how deserted the whole area seems. 
Other than a few residential looking buildings, the street you walk is mostly empty lots. Abandoned houses. Not the kind of place you would consider ideal for any business. 
Despite the cold morning sunshine, the afternoon has brought a cover of clouds. Squinting towards the distance, you wonder if you should have brought your umbrella, just in case. It almost looks as if it’s going to rain. 
When you do finally find the building, you have to stop to double check the address. Not only is there no signage, but New Haven’s supposed headquarters looks just as run down as all of the other buildings in the area. 
Frowning, you reread your email. The address does match the faded numbers next to the front door, and Professor Kim seems too meticulous to make a mistake like an incorrect address. Then again, he also seems too well off to run his publishing company out of a decrepit building far away from any of the city’s major business centers. 
But you won’t bother worrying about it now. Even your dreary first draft feels like an afterthought at this point. Who cares if the building’s not what you expected, if the location isn’t ideal? Right now, you need to focus on finding Heeseung, on making sure he’s okay. 
Because the alternative…
No, you refuse to let yourself spiral there either. But the pressure of grief borrowed from the future is already pressing firmly against the backs of your eyelids, blurring your surroundings. 
As you approach the front door, you notice a small, faded placard. 
New Haven. Well, at least that confirms that you’re in the right spot. Even if it is a bit odd that they left off Publishing. 
Standing at the door, you hesitate. Should you knock? Just walk in? You take a sidelong glance at the window, scanning for any sign of movement. But there’s nothing there. In fact, it looks as if the lights are off. 
Dark, quiet, desolate. Strange, yes, but not something you’ll waste time ruminating on now. 
You knock once. Twice. The sound echoes; the only response is the whistling of the wind.
Deep in the pit of your stomach, a sense of unease begins to build. It feels off, like something is wrong. Senses on high alert, you force the feeling aside. You need a way to find Heeseung, to make sure he’s okay. Besides, the lingering unease is probably just the anxiety of not knowing if he’s safe. 
Steeling your resolve, you reach for the door handle, twisting it tentatively. It opens slowly, the hinges groaning in protest. As if the building itself doesn’t want you there. Stepping inside does little to shake the feeling. Dark and devoid of any decoration, the interior is nearly as gloomy as the sunless sky outside. 
And even the layout of the building is strange. The front door opens to a long, dark hallway with no lights on. It’s eerily quiet. Too quiet. Too empty. You weren’t expecting a welcoming party by any means, but it’s hard to imagine anyone, much less Professor Kim, even being here. 
“Hello?” You call, clutching your bag a little closer to your body, suppressing the shudder that licks at the base of your spine. “Professor Kim?” You wait a moment, but sustained silence is the only response. 
Forcing your footsteps forward, you tread tentatively down the hallway. After all, you didn’t come this far just to turn around. Especially now that Professor Kim might be your only way of finding Heeseung. 
Taking slow steps down the dark hallway, you pass two doors, both of them pulled shut. The end of the hall opens into a larger room, still empty of any furnishings. It certainly doesn’t look like a publishing house. It doesn't look like much at all. At the very least, there’s a bit more visibility here, faint traces of faded daylight streaming in through the half drawn blinds on the other side of the room. 
Turning to your left, you see another door. This one is also pulled shut, but there’s a name placard on the front. Drawing closer, you read your professor’s name. It still doesn't feel right. Ducking down slightly, you check the gap between the bottom of the door and the hardwood floor for any sign of light, of movement. But it’s just as dark, just as quiet as the rest of the strange building. 
As you stand back up to your full height, you raise a hand to knock. Just before your knuckles make contact with the door, you see it. An odd array of crimson stains near the handle. Peering closer, your brow furrows in a combination of disgust and confusion. 
If you didn’t know any better, you’d almost think it looked like blood. 
But that doesn’t make any sense. None of this does. You won’t pretend to know Professor Kim, but he’s never shown up to a lecture with so much as a hair out of place. Why on earth would he run his publishing company out of a building that’s nearly falling apart? Why would there be strange, suspicious looking stains on the door to his office? Why would it be empty at the time he asked you to come present your draft and tour your future internship location?
You have no idea what to do. Opening the door to his office and letting yourself in would feel like an inappropriate invasion of privacy, but you’re at a loss. This entire thing is so strange. 
Before you can decide how to proceed, you hear something. A faint noise, barely there, but distinct from the wind that still whistles outside. It’s disjointed, arrhythmic like the sound of hushed voices. Overlapping. Arguing, maybe. 
Inclining your head, your brow creases further. It sounds like it’s coming from your professor’s office, but how could it be? The noises are too muffled, too distant to be coming from right in front of you. 
You lean closer. Deciding you’re past the point of maintaining decorum, you press your ear to the door, careful to avoid any of the suspicious looking stains. 
For a moment, you hear nothing. Half convinced the voices were nothing but a figment of your overactive imagination, you almost pull away. 
But then you hear them again. Still muffled, still indecipherable, but undoubtedly louder than before. Which means they must be coming from behind the door. The voices pause, suspend you in silence once again. 
And then you hear another noise, different this time. Less like a voice and more like movement. Scuffling, maybe. Feet dragging against the floor. It’s punctuated by a strange gurgling noise. Something wet and thick and throaty. The kind of sound that makes you wince in a subconscious reaction. 
And then a sudden thump has your bones jolting beneath your skin, everything muscle in your body tensing as you suppress an uninvited gasp. Because that didn’t sound far away. It was loud, too loud to be anywhere but right on the other side of the door. 
Mild unease is quick to transform into sheer panic as you stagger backwards on shaky footsteps. You need to leave. You need to leave now. 
You’ll find another way to get ahold of Heeseung, to make sure he’s okay. And maybe there’s a rational explanation for all of this. Maybe this is an old New Haven office and Professor Kim forgot to send you the new address. Maybe there’s an email in your inbox now, and he’s apologizing for the oversight and rescheduling your draft meeting. Maybe he’s—
The sound of the front door you walked in through minutes ago slamming shut kills the train of thought. This time, you can’t bite down the noise that crawls up your throat. 
It’s stupid, from a logical perspective. A fatal flaw of human nature that your first instinct is to scream. To alert whatever danger surely lurks nearby of your exact location, the precise depth of your fear. 
But the terror that leaves your lips is muffled. It comes from behind, the palm that covers your mouth. The outline of a body that presses into your back, forces you into submission with a hand around your wrist.  
You thrash against the ironclad grip to no avail. Dig your heels into the ground but find little purchase in the hardwood floor as you’re dragged backwards, every nerve in your body singing with terror as you’re forced into a dark room. Even with your elbows flailing and head jerking, the grip on you remains steady, firm. 
In the end, it’s a bite that frees you. The hand that covers your mouth drops away as soon as you sink your teeth into the flesh of your captor’s fingers. There’s a muffled grunt of pain in your ear as you spin on your heel. 
Again, it’s stupid. You should be running, sprinting in the opposite direction, but everything in you is begging to know. To gain some sense of control over the situation. Eyes still adjusting to the dark and blinded by fear, you turn to find—
“Heeseung?” Your mind is spinning a million miles a minute. There are too many thoughts, too many emotions to keep up with. Relief. Fear. Confusion.
Relief, because he’s okay and he’s here, but—
“What are you doing?” You have a million questions that demand answers. “Why are you here? Why did you grab me like th—”
“Are you okay?” Heeseung takes a step closer to you, reaches his hands out as if to grab you again. Thinking better of it, he lets them fall back to his side with a slight shake of his head. There’s terror in his eyes too when he clarifies, “You’re not hurt?”
“No, I…” What the hell is going on? “I’m fine, but—”
A flash of relief makes itself apparent on Heeseung’s features before they’re morphing again, regaining all the urgency, the fear that was there before. He’s serious, gravely so when he tells you, “We have to get out of here.”
“Okay,” you stumble forward as he reaches for your wrist again, intent on tugging you behind him. “But I don’t understand. What’s—”
“I’ll explain everything later.” He’s frantic, you realize. Desperate. And so terribly afraid. Emotions you’ve never seen him wear. Not in the cool, calm mask of indifference he had in class. Not in the faint flickers of vulnerability from stolen moments under moonlight. This is different. This is so much worse. “But we have to go. Now.”
With that much command in his voice, that much fear in his eyes, you’re putty in his hands. But in the end, it makes little difference. The door to the room he’s dragged you into opens with a resounding bang before the two of you can make your escape. The sound is so loud, so frightening that you feel reverberations in your marrow as the door collides with the room’s interior wall, no doubt leaving a sizable dent.
And standing there, shrouded by the gray tones of sunless winter daylight, your professor blocks the room’s only exit. 
Instinctively, you take a step closer to Heeseung. He does the same, pulling you towards him, behind him, until half of your body is covered by his. Peering over his shoulder, the sight that greets you is one that will haunt waking nightmares for a long time to come. 
Professor Kim, who always prided himself on maintaining a neat, clean appearance couldn’t be further from that now. His clothes are ripped, hanging from his body at odd angles, adding an element of disfigured monstrosity to his silhouette. 
And his eyes. His eyes. Bloodshot and so wide they must hurt, they dart around the room, narrow in on you and Heeseung like he doesn’t see humans. Only targets. Enemies. Prey. Mouth open and snarling, you swear you see a glint in his mouth, the shape of a tooth far too long and pointed to belong to any normal person. 
But even those things you could force yourself to forget. 
What horrifies you the most is the blood. Even in the shadows, the unnaturally potent shade of crimson is unmistakable. It stains him, covers him, drips from him. Seeps from his clothes and his skin and his mouth. 
Panic clawing at your throat, you suppress the urge to vomit. 
“Get behind me,” Heeseung whispers, low. “Now.”
But a split second of averted attention is all your professor needs. Professor Kim, lover of literature, beacon of taste, a role model you’ve looked up to since the first time you stepped foot in his class a handful of months ago, pinches a tiny object between his long, bony, blood-covered fingers. And then he throws it. 
With startling precision, it whistles through the air, races through a hazy cloud of confusion and panic before it strikes its target true. 
It doesn’t hurt, not really. The hand that flies to the side of your neck is instinct, more than anything. But the fingers that linger on your pulse point don’t find the smooth expanse of your unblemished throat that they usually would. 
Because there’s something there now. An object lodged just beneath your jaw. Delicately, you draw your hand back in front of your face. There’s no blood on your fingers, but that doesn’t stop them from shaking. 
As you look over Heeseung’s shoulder, the world starts to blur around the edges. Darken, as if your eyes are closing of their own volition, against your will. You see him retreat, the terrible ghost of your professor. In the dark, he looks almost forlorn. Regretful. 
“Fuck,” Heeseung whispers. He doesn’t see the way your professor spins on his heel, runs in the opposite direction. His attention is trained fully on the space beneath your jaw. “Fuck.”
“Heeseung?” Your voice sounds strange to your own ears. Distant, muffled as if you’re submerged beneath water. You have so many questions. 
But it’s suddenly so cold. And you’re so tired. Wouldn’t it be nice to just lay down? Rest for a moment? Surely that couldn’t hurt anything. 
Your legs are wobbly beneath you, and you would collapse to the floor in an ungraceful heap if it weren’t for the two hands on your waist, supporting your weight. 
“I’m here,” he tells you. Cold. When did it get so cold? Your eyes try to focus on Heeseung, but your vision is swimming. You wonder if he would be warm. “I’m right here. Just… fuck.”
Gently, he eases you both to the ground. The floor is hard beneath you, but it feels like a reprieve. You’re tired of holding the weight of your body upright. Your blinking is becoming slow, lethargic. Your head is suddenly far too heavy for your neck. 
Slowly, Heeseung removes his hands from your waist, relocates them to either side of your jaw. With the care of someone well versed in patience, he delicately maneuvers your head to the side, exposing the length of your neck. 
Whatever he finds there must be displeasing. You can’t imagine why. You can’t think much of anything. The world has taken on a sort of dreamlike quality in which everything feels loose, fluid and unburdened by the laws of any physics. 
“Fuck,” he whispers for the fourth time. The curse scatters over your cheekbone like a kiss. 
Pulling back slightly, he meets your half-closed eyes. “I’m sorry.” It sounds like a prayer. “This might…” he swallows, something in his resolve wavering. “This might hurt.”
Pain. You can barely conceptualize the sensation. It feels like a distant memory. 
And then he’s tilting your head to the side again. His face draws closer, overcomes the last of your remaining senses, demands the full attention of what’s left of your consciousness. 
You think he might kiss you. Whatever desire remains in you almost wishes he would. 
Your eyes flutter shut, lips parting slightly as your eyelashes fan against the tops of your cheeks. 
But his mouth never finds yours. Instead, you feel the soft caress of his lips against the side of your neck, a fleeting touch against the sensitive skin just beneath your jaw. Inhibitions whittled to nothing, you shudder against the sensation, release the airy ghost of a sigh.
He was wrong, you think. With his mouth on your neck, pain is the last thing you feel. 
You feel his lips part against your skin, chasing away some of the cold that has only seeped deeper into bones, into the very essence of your being. 
And then you feel it. Whatever capacity for sensation that remains all focuses on the sudden flash of agony as his teeth pierce the skin of your throat. 
The tiny moan that escapes your lips is pitiful. Your ability to think, to rationalize, feels like something that’s dangling in front of you, just out of reach. Your body is too heavy, too weak to respond to the flash of searing pain as your skin is pierced deeper. 
He can’t speak, but you feel the shallow vibration of a hum against your neck. Soothing, calming. His hand that doesn’t bear the weight of your head moves to push a stray strand of hair from your forehead. It’s gentle, reverent. In complete opposition to the war he wages against your neck. 
Mouth still full of you, a groan escapes him. It’s heady, throaty, and you feel it travel the length of your spine, settle in the pit of your stomach. Sensation is the only thing tethering you to this world, and you can’t quite tell if this is pleasure or pain. 
He pulls back, the absence of his steady heat leaving your jaw vulnerable to the chill in the air. 
“Hold on,” you hear. You can’t pinpoint where the noise comes from. Sound surrounds you, washes over you in a strange uniformity. You feel the ground fall away, something warm and solid behind your shoulders and under your knees.“We’ll be there soon.”
Floating, you think. You must be floating. It’s hard to tell. Moments are bleeding into one another too quickly for you to keep up. 
Eyes closed, body molten, you relax into the steady grip that carries you. 
And the last thing you hear before reality loses its hold is the fervent, whispered sound of your name. 
⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖
CONTINUED IN PART 2 (which can be found on my masterlist!)
⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖
note: THANK YOUUUUU for reading!!! this is pretty different from what I usually write plot wise, so I hope it made for a good read. vampire heeseung and this oc are near and dear to me, and I'm excited to continue their story. the rest of this fic is fully plotted and partially written. I'm actively continuing to work on it, and hearing your thoughts/theories/screaming/feedback/etc. is great motivation! as always, I love know what you're thinking. ♡
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11queensupreme11 · 2 months ago
Note
AB Percy in The Little Mermaid :
Percy as Ariel (girl just wants to go up to the surface world and be with her beau 😭)
Poseidon as King Triton (definitely won’t let girlie go to the surface world “it’s too dangerous Ariel”)(precedes to lock her in the palace)
Prince Eric as Anthonius (this is the human she has fallen in love with and wants to date)
Ursula as Beelzebub (will do everything in his power to prevent Ariel (Percy) and Eric (Anthonius) from getting together and becoming end game
Sebastian as Proteus (just wants to serve his king and protect his charge—the lovable but kinda slow Ariel—from the “evil” humans)
Flounder as Grover (he’s just a gullible, sweetheart looking for his chaotic bestfriend whose trapped in another universe🥺)
Scuttle as Adamas (a loud moron but has nothing but good intentions towards his niece and just wants her to be happy)
P.S. Apollo, Loki, Hades, Anubis, Cu, and Poseidon are also close contestants for the Ursula spot since they also which to break up Perthonius (Ariel and Eric) but—plot twist—it’s so that they can all become Ariel’s psychotic Eric (…once the OG Eric is DEAD asf!!)
RIP Eric u will be missed 🥺😢
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BEELZEBUB AS URSULA IS PERFECT BECAUSE URSULA IS ACTUALLY WHO I BASED OFF HIS MER FORM AS!!!!!
if you go back to chapter 21 "the devil is my part-time babysitter" i wrote:
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PLUS THE WHOLE THING WITH DEALS TOO!!!! HE'S PERFECT LMAO
and also when they do the whole "kiss the girl" scene where ursula sends her two eels to make sure they don't kiss, i can imagine all the yans actually working together for once to try and make sure she and anthonius never kiss, not because the kiss means she wins the deal, but solely because they're just too jealous and possessive 😭
also, you know that scene where ursula turns into vanessa to enchant eric and steal him from ariel???? there's no damn way beelzebub would EVER turn into a woman to seduce anthonius, but i can see loki taking one for the team only for THIS scene to happen between him and percy (and percy doesn't know that she's actually loki, just knows that there's a rando woman trying mind-control anthonius and we all know how protective she gets when it comes to her loved ones):
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and even tho that plan failed, the yans would just take a step back and let it happen because "whoops loki's getting beat up, oh well, back to the drawing board men!" 😭😭
it's just basically all of them doing their damnest to prevent perthonius from happening while also trying not to get caught by percy (i know some yans wouldn't bother being discreet, but let's just pretend for the sake of the AU) 💀💀
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604to647 · 5 months ago
Text
Safest with You - Ch. 17 (The Preparations)
4.7K / Modern AU Retired Mob Enforcer!Din Djarin x fem!reader
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Summary: Wedding planning for the upcoming Fett-Pyke nuptials ramps up and you lend a helping hand.
Warnings: 18+ Content (MDNI please). Established relationship, fingering, unprotected PiV, roughish sex, semi public sex, mirror sex (again!), light roleplay, nicknames per usual (pretty bird, baby, sweetheart, etc.), reader has to try a bunch of dresses on but there is no implied body shape or size.
A/N: This chapter precedes The Wedding, a drabble I wrote all the way back in October. You don't have to read it (there is no real plot progression), but Ch. 18 will pick up when the wedding has already taken place 😊 Thank you so much to everyone who reads this series - ilysm! 🥹 Series Masterlist
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You would think that with the amount of stress and anxiety you’ve been feeling lately, you were the one getting married.
Din has been out late on security detail every night since the fight with Rotta.  That creeping feeling you had at the BBQ, that something like escalation was just around the corner seems to have materialized as if you manifested it, crashing into your lives without nuance after fight night.  Whatever or whomever is responsible for the incendiary string of misdemeanors seems to have been emboldened by the Hutts’ recent defeat, their humiliation lighting the fuse to a powder keg that you’re sure is just waiting to explode.
You worry for Din - not because you don’t think he can handle himself, but truthfully, you don’t even know what’s out there to worry over.  Din insists on keeping the darker sides of the Family’s business and what he does away from you – which you understood and agreed to, but your imagination can’t help but run wild.  You spend too much of your time away from him worried for his well being and trying to quiet that overthinking part of your brain that loves to indulge in paranoid, imagined scenarios.
In truth, most nights Din comes home perfectly fine – a little stressed maybe, but fine; he’ll unwind a little as you walk Al together, sometimes venting to you about what’s been going on, but other times just reveling in your soft touch and gentle calm.
You don’t tell Din that the calmness you exude for him only surfaces when you’ve laid eyes on him again; that otherwise, you’re a bundle of tightly wound nerves while the two of you are apart.
One day, you don’t know why, but a looming sense of dread hangs over you all day – there wasn’t any particular reason other than possibly your worry and anxiety having been building up for weeks and you had subconsciously reached a breaking point.  Certainly, Din hadn’t said anything or indicated that today was different than any other.  But still, you feel your skin prickling all day and you check your phone more than usual – for what?  You don’t even know.
For the first time that night, you add pacing to your efforts to work out your nervous energy; Al watching, confused, as you do laps of Din’s apartment while waiting for him to come home.
Your head snaps up when you hear uneven footsteps on the stairs and watch as Din stumbles in through the door, holding his hand to his face, blood dripping down to his wrist.  Blinking back tears, you lead Din to the couch and wordlessly climb into his lap with the first aid kit to start cleaning the blood and inspecting his wound.
Din is pissed at himself.  He was careless. 
Tired from the endless nights of patrol and seemingly never-ending malfeasance that requires the Mandos’ constant intervention, he had let his guard down for a minute while Jimmy had gone ahead to check on some Fett Family protected businesses.  It had been long enough for some young punk who must have been hiding in the shadows to get the jump on him.  Ultimately, it didn’t take more then a few minutes for Din to subdue the wannabe thug, pinning him to the ground with his arm across the back of his neck to choke out that this kid worked for the Crymorah Syndicate, but not before Din only half ducked the swing of the baseball bat - hence the blood now pouring out of his head.
The scared and pained expression on your face as you focus on disinfecting and bandaging his bloody cut is making Din feel even worse than the massive headache that continues to pound between his temples.
It’s the first night he takes you up on the offer you brought up at the BBQ: to use you to fuck out his frustrations. 
He takes you right there on the couch.  Facing you away from him, Din holds you wide over his lap, fingering you roughly and playing with your clit until you come.  Once he has you lolling your head back onto his shoulder, he slams you down on his cock and fucks up into you at a demanding pace, taking out his grievances on your lithe, supple body, chasing only his own high.  You’re completely fucked out of your mind, all thoughts leaving your brain except for how good it feels to give yourself over to Din entirely, letting him handle your body and use it for his selfish needs.  Pliant and limp like his own personal fuck doll, Din thrusts into you with a force that causes your breasts to bounce so violently you start to sweat, moaning and whimpering into Din’s neck as you’re jostled without reprieve over his lap; Din grunts low and dangerous in your ear, “So good at taking my cock, baby.  Take it, take it.  Take what daddy gives you.”
He uses you until you’ve come shaking on his length twice more, legs spread so wide they’ve started to ache, body shiny with sweat and voice hoarse from screaming so much.  Only then does Din finish, spilling rope after rope of cum into you, stretching your legs taut with his paw like hands so he can shoot his spend into you as deep as possible and all you can do is let him and take, take, take.
After, he gently closes your legs and pulls out, laying you down tenderly on the couch before fetching a warm cloth to clean you up.  You remain in a completely brain numbed, cock drunk state – every anxious thought and worry having been fucked out of your head.  Your overthinking brain shut off the minute Din entered you and the noise of your stressful thoughts dominated into submission by his punishing cock; you feel nothing but pleasure, relief, peace.  Later while cuddling in bed, Din checks in with you that he hadn’t taken things too far with your offer to let him use you.
Sleepily, you nod and let him know that you’re more than okay.  And it’s true.  The original intent was to give Din an outlet for his frustrations, but now you think that him using you could be just as much for you as it is for him. 
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In comparison to the burden of your mental load, the actual wedding planning for Cass’s wedding has been a breeze.
Admittedly, you don’t have to do very much.  Periodically, Lisa will invite you to come taste something or ask you to pick up some samples for her.  Mainly you do research into different vendors that still need to be secured and ask Rory if there’s anyone on the blacklist before sharing your suggestions with Lisa.  If a Rory approved vendor from your list is selected, you usually attend those meetings, feeling somewhat responsible for their performance – what Lisa and Cass don’t know is that the vendors approved for your lists are usually ones that having working relationships with Rory’s boutique – you being to suspect that their relationship with Rory is enough to secure lower than standard prices and higher than usual levels of service.  You buy Rory brunch for three weeks in a row to thank her.
The biggest request to date from Cass is that you attend the bridal dress consultation and bridesmaid dress shopping with them at Rory’s boutique. 
The appointment itself had been a favour you weren’t willing to ask of your friend; knowing the calibre of Rory’s work and the level to which her services were in demand, you didn’t think it right for you to ask her to make any exceptions for you.  But being the elite friend that Rory is, she cleared it with her boss to open up the boutique privately after hours on an upcoming Saturday and extended the invitation after she had already made all the arrangements.
You couldn’t believe it.  It was so incredibly kind.  You cry a little.  Afterall, Rory doesn’t even know Lisa or Cass - she did all this on the strength of her love for you alone.  Rory awkwardly pats your head and just says she can tell that you’ve been under a lot of stress lately and this is such a small thing she could do to help you out.  You cry more.  You hadn’t realized that you had let your anxiety and concern for Din and whatever was happening with the Mandos affect your mood that much; you obviously don’t share with your friends Fett Family business, but that they knew something was up but never pushed you to tell them makes you love them all the more.  Sometimes you’re not sure you deserve your friends.
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Today, you decide you definitely don’t deserve Rory.  Helping Cass find her dream dress has been relatively easy - Cass looks gorgeous in everything she tries on, and with Rory’s expertise, she easily pulls five perfect options and gives the proper advice and compliments to help the bride narrow it down to the one.  One of Cass’s aunties proclaims that she’s never been to such an efficient and smooth wedding dress consultation and she has five married daughters – you smile proud: that’s the power of Rory.
But the selection of the bridesmaid dresses is an entirely different matter.  For one thing, only two of the bridesmaids are actually in attendance (one of them is Lisa).  For another, there are seven bridesmaids in total, some of whom even Cass doesn’t know very well and half of them from the Pyke’s side.  Everyone has an opinion, several have sent notes, and no one is available to FaceTime.
You think Rory must pull over fifty dresses.  You stop counting after twenty-five – somehow becoming the doll that all the dresses are modelled on, standing up on the pedestal in front a couch full of women so they can judge the chiffon trimmed monstrosity you have on.  It’s not as easy as just throwing your hands up and letting dress after dress fall over your shoulders and hang smoothly off your body while you sway the fabric prettily.  Some of the sample dresses are too big and requiring copious pinning.  Others, too small, pinch your skin and your sides where the zipper bites into your squishy bits.  Others are too long, causing you to almost fall trying to step up onto the pedestal, and some have so many buttons that your limbs go numb while waiting to be buttoned in or out.  Many of them are very, very ugly.  It’s seemingly impossible to please seven bridesmaid and one bride who all have very different tastes and very different bodies, especially if offending any one of them might incite a gang war.
The women are getting increasingly frustrated and snippy with each other, all while you stand in front of them in a little satin strapless number that is definitely too short (for a wedding) and too small (for you, the back barely zipped and your boobs pushed together comically, close to scandalously spilling out the top).  You’re hot and tired, and the arguing that is only getting louder is starting to creep its way into your shoulders where you’ve been holding all your stress lately.  You’re about to ask for a break and voluntell Lisa to be the next dress model when Rory comes striding back into the room and does it for you.  She’s grinning triumphantly and behind her walks your knight in shining armour: Din carrying a box of baked goods intended to help refuel the women and invigorate the appointment that’s slowly going off the rails.
You don’t wait around to find out if it works.  Ramming yourself into Din’s chest, you let him wrap his arms around you and melt into the comforting warmth of his presence while you breath a sigh of relief - as big of a breath as your too tight dress will allow, anyways.  Unbeknownst to you, Rory makes eye contact with Din over your head and tilts hers discreetly towards a door in the hallway that has a little velvet rope drawn across.  Looking down at your tired face, Din understands her meaning immediately and mouths ‘thank you’ before he starts to walk you in the direction indicated.
“Din?” you look up at him sleepily as you come a stop outside the door which he’s opening gingerly. 
“Don’t worry, pretty bird, no one will bother us here,” he smiles indulgently and directs you up the staircase hidden behind the door, keeping his big firm hand splayed on your back to hold you steady as you ascend.
The stairs lead to the third floor of the boutique which is home to a private consultation room.  It’s similar to the set-up of the room you were in downstairs, but a bit smaller, a little more intimate.  The racks of dresses lining the walls are fewer and the furniture up here is luxurious and fine. 
You heave a sigh of exhaustion and start to move towards the chaise lounge near the window when you hear Din chuckle behind you, “Baby.  What are you wearing?”
“Hey!” you spin around, stress and exhaustion catching up with you, annoyed, “You try on a million dresses and none of them fit, and Elena wants strapless, but Lisa doesn’t want to have to buy a new bra.  Xi’an hates all fabrics but silk and Cass wants it to match the wedding colours, but Morgan’s grandma says green is bad luck.  Sasha thinks that it’s not fashionable to match and that everyone should wear a different style, and Elsbeth wants everyone in a mermaid style but Winnie thinks a train will upstage the bride!!  And I’m not even in the wedding - I’m just trying to help!! It’s so much to take in, it’s not possible to look good too!!”
Din chuckles again - you look so feisty and irritated, breathing heavily in your too short, too tight dress, but he’s finding it terribly endearing.  He doesn’t tell you this because he thinks he might find himself with a shoe thrown at his head, so instead he silently steers you over to the mirror; wrapping one arm around your waist, he hooks his chin over your shoulder and walks two fingers across the tops of your overspilling cleavage, “I didn’t say it didn’t look good, sweetheart,” and starts kissing your neck.
Sighing now from the tingle of Din’s lips on your hot skin, you whisper, resigned, “This thing is like, a bajillion sizes too small.  I can’t believe I even had to try it on.  It’s too short.  Too tight.  Too low cut.”
“Too slutty,” Din murmurs behind your ear as he starts to push the hem of the dress up your thighs, the skirt so short he only raises the fabric a few inches before your white lace panties come into view in the mirror.  You moan a little when you see the hungry look in his eyes reflected back at you.
“Seems to me if it’s too tight, we should just,” Din’s starts to drag the back zipper down very slowly, “… loosen it a little.” You exhale as the fabric around your chest falls away from your body a little, giving your lungs room to expand.  As you take in a few deep breaths, your tits fall out over the top of the dress, exposing your naked curves to Din’s darkened stare, “Well, well, well… what do we have here?”  He reaches up to palm your breasts, groping them gently before rolling your nipples between his thumbs and middle fingers, toying and pinching them just the way you like.  You arch against Din and when you feel his hardening cock press against your ass, you whine, “Oh Daddy…”
“That’s right, pretty bird,” coos Din, he reaches up to wrap one hand around the base of your neck while the other drops from your tits to slip down the front of your panties and gently starts to massage your clit, “Daddy’s going to take care of you.” 
You relax into Din’s hold, letting him guide your head back to rest against his shoulder, softly moaning as he strokes through your folds, “You’re stressed baby, you take on too much.”
“No, it’s okay…” you murmur, eyes still closed.
Din drags his fingers over and around your slit, pressing gently against but never breeching the entrance, pulling a needy whine from your lips which he shushes, “Yeah, you do, pretty bird.  You’re helping so much with this wedding.  You’re stressed worrying about me all the time.  And you have your own work and Al to take care of.  You deserve to be taken care of too, baby.”
And as if he knows you’re about to protest that he does take care of you, Din chooses this exact moment to plunge two fingers into your needy cunt; you would double over from the electric shock of pleasure to your system if Din wasn’t holding you upright.  “Gonna take real good care of you, sweet girl,” he whispers as he starts driving his fingers into you, drinking in your breathy chants of daddy, daddy, daddy, perfectly timed to his thrusts.
“Open your eyes, bunny.  Look how good you look when you’re being taken care of,” commands Din, softly.  You open your eyes and take in your reflection in the mirror: you have a lazy grin spread across your face, Din’s arm crosses over your chest to hold you by the neck but you can still see your exposed breasts, your nipples perky and sensitive.  Your eyes linger over your white lace panties stuffed full with Din’s hand, and your mouth relaxes into a soft ‘O’ shape whenever the movement under the fabric results in a wet squelch from your dripping pussy.  You look depraved and serene all at once.
“Feel so good, daddy,” you purr, as your arms reach up and around the back of Din’s neck, arching your body further into his touch.  Din adds a third finger slowly, hungrily consuming your sharp intake of air and the way your legs quake at the added stretch; when he starts to write your name in cursive over your clit, your knees actually buckle.
“I got you, bun.  Don’t worry, your big bad wolf is here.  Gonna take care of everything for you, little bunny.  All you have to is come,” Din hums, shifting you in the firm embrace of his arm so you rest comfortably against his body, propped up against his thigh while he continues his efforts on your cunt.
Your eyes glassy, you smile dreamily as you continue to watch the way Din works your body over with his nimble fingers; when you start to climb towards your peak, your body instinctively tries to run but Din grips you tight, “You’re close, pretty girl.  Can feel you on my fingers.  Let go and come for me.  I got you, baby.”  His reassuring tone and confident swipes over your swollen nub push you right over the edge and you come with a melodic wail that’s more of a cry of relief than anything.
Fucking you gently through your high, Din murmurs praise in your ear as he pulls you back to Earth, “Did so good for me.  So perfect, sweetheart.  Always come so pretty for me.  Feel good, pretty bird?”
You nod lazily under Din’s jaw, arms still hanging on to his neck as if for dear life.  He chuckles, and through the fog of your post orgasm stupor, you feel Din position your body closer to the mirror, placing your hands against the glass for stability before helping you out of your shoes and underwear.  You feel his warm breath on your neck before he nips playfully at your earlobe and you smile affectionately, mainly to yourself in the glass.  But when you hear him rumble low in your ear, “Gonna fuck you now, bunny,” you brain wakes up and your eyes snap open, “Din!  We can’t!  This isn’t my dress!  And this is Rory’s place of work!”
Din places his hands over yours and gently kisses down your neck, tutting reassuringly, “Uh uh uh, you’re still worrying too much.  Didn’t I say Daddy was going to take care of everything? I’m going buy this dress, and Rory is the one who sent us up here.  You have to let go and let me take care of you, sweetheart.”
He’s right, you do worry a lot; as Din eases his cock between your snug walls you think you should let him take care of all your concerns, no matter how silly. Din sets a slow, languid pace and you grin teasingly at him, already cock drunk, “And what am I going to do with a dress that doesn’t fit, daddy?”
Din grins back at you, “We could use it for role play?”
“Like slutty bridesmaid?”
He starts to thrust a little faster, a little harder, “Or maybe you’re a slutty cocktail waitress looking for a big tip.”  He smirks at the you in the reflection, slutty little you with your tits out, bouncing hard while being railed by your big bad wolf.
“Ohhhhhh yessss, fuck that feels good.  You got a big tip for me, daddy?” you slur, eyes still twinkling despite having gone unfocused.
Din rakes his big hands up your arms and down your sides, grabbing on to your breasts and toying with your nipples before grasping you hard and slamming his cock into you without warning.
Your yelp of surprise quickly turns into bawdy moans as Din continues to rut into you with a force that shakes the glass you’re still bracing your hands on, “Fuck, Din.”
“Maybe one of the dancers didn’t come in tonight and this poor slutty cocktail waitress has to fill in and give me a lap dance,” smirks Din, he’s leveraging one of your favourite roleplay fantasies and he knows it.
You grind back into his crotch, circling your hips as he fucks into you, cooing, “I’m sorry I’m not your regular girl, daddy.  Please don’t be upset.”
Still smirking, Din lays a loud smack to your ass, “Can’t be too upset when I’ve this perfect ass bouncing on me.”  You squeal from the sting and the ease with which you and Din have slipped into this dirty dialogue.
Continuing to pound into you, Din crowds you towards the mirror, open mouth kissing at your neck and focusing on that spot behind your ear that drives you crazy, “Gonna let me take you to the VIP room, baby?  Gonna let me do VIP things to you?”
You whine, “That’s against the rules, daddy!”
Din pushes you into the mirror so your tits are pressed against the glass and growls as he continues to fuck up into your core, “What did I tell you?  No more worrying in that pretty head of yours.  You gonna let me break some rules and wreck this pussy, little slut?”
You know you’re just playing a silly fantasy game, but this is the second time Din’s told you to stop worrying and to let him take care of things – you know there’s some truth behind his words so you give in; you know he’ll take good care of you, “All yours, daddy.  Do whatever you want to me.”
“Good girl,” Din rewards you by snaking his hand down to your clit and giving your throbbing bud the attention it’s been aching for.  He bites down on your shoulder and drinks in your little cry, “Gonna fuck you until you don’t have a thought in that slutty little brain of yours, ‘kay?  I’m gonna take care of it all for you, just trust your daddy.”
He nuzzles his strong, perfect nose into your cheek to press your face against the mirror and you can see the glass start to fog up from how hard you’re panting; the cool surface doesn’t quite feel so cool anymore as you nod the best you can.
Over and over, Din punches the air out of your lungs, and you just take, the patch of condensation on the mirror growing bigger and bigger; you focus on Din’s face, the way his eyes are blown wide with lust and the curl of his lips as he snarls, “Pretty little whore, want me to take you away from this club?  Away from all your worries? Be the only one to fuck you?  Take care of you?”
“Yes!” you cry, you kiss your reflection as your lips smash against the glass with every hard thrust from Din’s cock; your pussy trapping his hand against the smooth surface of the mirror as he continues to draw perfect circles on your clit.
“Then come for me. Give it to me, baby.  Give me ever worry, every anxious thought.  Give it all to me, bunny,” Din coaxes.  Demands.  And you do, you come hard - your walls clamping down on Din’s length, fluttering with the aftershocks of your orgasm while continuing to pulse down on Din as he comes nearly right after, absorbing your fall and taking it all from you.  He shoots his spend deep and you take from him too, letting him give you everything he’s got.
After pulling you away from the mirror, you watch absent-mindedly as the Din in the mirror holds you upright against his chest until he’s sure you can stand; he helps you put on your underwear and adjusts the tiny dress to cover you up the best he can before leading you to one of the plush lounges.  Laying you down gently, Din covers you with a blanket he finds before you see him go off and disappear into an alcove in the corner of the room.  He must have found a bathroom or a changing room because he comes back with some tissues and helps you clean some of the joint spill that’s now dripping from you, before you watch with some amusement as he cleans the mirror that the two of you defiled.  Thoughtful, thoughtful man. 
When he’s finished, Din comes back to you as he always does, kneels by your head and strokes your hair, kissing you tenderly, “Pretty bird, I mean it.  You’re taking on a lot.  Too much.”
This time when he says it, you’re too placated and pliant to argue, so you just nod, sleepy.
“This dress fitting was too much to ask of you.  And even though it’s in your nature to help, I know you’re really doing this for me.  I ask too much of you sometimes – I know it hasn’t been easy with me coming home late, scaring you with what I might be facing while I’m out.  I’m sorry,” Din looks at you with such a soulful, downcast look, your heart breaks – you bring your hand to his cheek and warm when you feel him leaning into your touch.
“Don’t be sorry.  I love you, Din,” you whisper, trying to let him know with your eyes that you can handle it.  You can handle anything with him.
Din knows. “Let me take care of you too sometimes, okay, pretty bird?  You don’t have to handle it all on your own.”
“Okay,” you smile.  This one word breaks any remaining tension that Din had been holding on to and he leans in, kissing you with devotion, sealing in your promise.
“I think you’re done for the day, sweetheart.  No more of these dresses for you.  I’ll go downstairs and get your stuff from Rory.  I’ll pay for this one you’re wearing now… and then we’ll leave?”
“Sounds good, daddy,” you yawn, closing your eyes.
As Din approaches the staircase, he looks back at you and asks, curious, “Did you try on any wedding dresses today, pretty girl?”
Half asleep, you shake your head, “Nope, just a million bridesmaid dresses.”
“Hmmm,” Din muses, thoughtful, “Bet you would look really good in a wedding dress, baby.”
“Din, don’t even start…” your voice trails off as sleep carries you away, barely registering the conversation that’s taking place.
Din continues down the stairs, humming and grinning stupidly to himself.
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The Wedding takes place after this chapter and before Ch. 18, but it's not necessary for the plot to read - just know that when Ch. 18 starts, Cass and Rikard are already married 🥰
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bonefall · 2 years ago
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So way back in the day on the original Warriors website, there was an area where you could submit questions about the series that the Erin's would answer and then post the question and answers on a FAQ page. Someone asked about prefixes that the Clans don't use because they're considered sacred, and the answer had been iterations of Moon-, Star-, or the Clan names themselves, so Sky-, Shadow-, etc.
Obviously this isn't true for canon anymore, if it ever actually was (citing here: lack of continuity between the Erins) but I'm curious to know if your AU has any prefixes that the Clan's absolutely refuse to use for one reason or another? Whether they be sacred or maybe they're considered "cursed", like perhaps a particularly evil cat has tarnished the prefix forever. (Such as the lack of Maple- prefixes in canon books post-Mapleshade! Maybe not intentional, but a cool world-building detail nonetheless!)
Stemming from that, do you think any prefixes would/could be turned into insults/curses later on down the line? Basically, what's the culture like for names? My favorite part of Warriors has always been the names, and the Erin's had such a nice thing going until it was tossed out the window. The system you use with Clanmew and all is super neat and I'd love to know more about Clan naming traditions! Also how each leader names cats - idk if it was you or someone else that I follow, but I saw a post talking about how each leader has a distinct way to name their warriors.
(Also small fun fact while on the subject of names, a friend of mine submitted a question asking about who Bluestar's parents were, and the answer was Duskflower and Stormtail. This was a few years before Bluestar's Prophecy was published, so she was very upset over them changing "Duskflower" to "Moonflower" when it did finally come out!)
The Duskflower thing is actually a misconception: What happened was that in a field guide, the Erins wrote that the name was "Moonflower," and then felt that "moon" should be sacred. That's when they started using "Duskflower," until Bluestar's Prophecy came out and they agreed with the editors that the older information should take precedence
(Rare anti-retcon win)
But anyway I have no banned or sacred names! I don't like that concept! Possibly because I am from an old fandom era of 'traditional namers' that just used it as an excuse to bully people and have bad taste. Hawkfrost's name ROCKS MY SOCKS and they all died mad while I'm still here.
My rules with namings is that EVERYTHING must make sense in-universe. So I don't like lyrical naming very much... names like "Friendlyface" or "Empyreanmist" are funny, but I don't see how a kitten would end up with those names unless every cat in their Clan stopped taking their lives seriously
(Or are in WarriorClan. BB!WarriorClan renamings are going to look WILD)
That also means ecologically invalid names get cut or end up being translation quirks. Names like Cypress, Olive, Myrtle, etc.
I don't ban "insult" names either, but I do rule that they are typically ShadowClan. They have a very dark sense of humor.
And yes I am the one with leader naming styles! So far these are the styles:
Bramblestar: terrible. Doesn't consider names beforehand, often comes up with titles that are awkward or unimpressive
Harestar: Reverant and thoughtful, tries to name based on friendships, interests, and quirks.
Mistystar: Names litters according to 'themes,' often sharing suffixes or picking similar ones.
Brokenstar: Only ever gives "cool" names with deadly and strong connotations.
Firestar: Names awkwardly, but genuinely. Surprises his Clan constantly with banger names (Lionblaze) or shockingly uncomfortable ones (Brambleclaw).
Onestar: Names practically, trying to limit suffix repeats and tonguetwisters.
So on.
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baronessblixen · 11 months ago
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You know, I was wondering:
If canon stopped at Je Souhaite and CC wrote the Revival later (but excluded William-Jackson and the mytharc), I wonder how much more... I don't know, plausible? it would be?
The problem with the Revival-- or why I never got into it-- was that so many out-of-character moments had to happen (S9 mostly) in order to set it up; and it never seemed worth my effort to watch. But I have IWTB locked and loaded for later this month; and I began to wonder if the Revival would have made more sense if Mulder had become lost in his obsession/depression after Colonization didn't happen, period, sometime after Je Souhaite; and the two being torn apart because of his tendency to withdraw into himself. I always thought that, even though they'd lost their son canonically, it was a factor that bound he and Scully tighter together; and their will-they-won't-they post S9 never rang true to me. I do factor in the need for space especially if Mulder won't/can't listen (precedent being set in Syzygy and Never Again and One Son etc.); but the reasons given (or not) for each "breakup" weren't... dealt with very well.
And maybe it's just me but some conversations in the Revival would have made more sense? if Mulder and Scully had never had kids and were happy but their happiness was shattered here and there because of Mulder's obsessions and regrets and not because Scully gave it all up but still walked away from him twice. (Plus One I think? was the "what if you get married and have kids" convo, and wouldn't that have been an interesting twist if Jackson wasn't a part of their history?)
ANYWAY. Ramble aside, I'll probably have more thoughts after IWTB... which should be interesting because I'm skipping right over S9 (so that my brain keeps it firmly in the AU category.) And IF that goes well, I miiiiiiiiiiiiight? dip into the Revival episodes that have nothing to do with the mytharc or William? Maybe? (Maybe not. XDD)
Is there a will-they-won't-they situation with them? To me there isn't. It might seem that way because CC didn't come right out and showed them as a couple in IWTB cause he wanted the audience to be surprised or something. But their love and what they feel for each other and that they both wanted to be together (and were) was never in question for me. And there is a lot of what you say in IWTB. Mulder and his obsessions and how that might drive a wedge between him and Scully.
As for the breakup in the revival, it just wasn't done well if you ask me. Like it's mentioned and then next episode, their dynamic is as it always was and you completely forget about it for the most part. There are a few mentions and in fact, there are a few great things in the revival.
The Plus One conversation - to me - was so misplaced in that episode. They were so beyond that point. It's a conversation they should have had in IWTB maybe. They were in their 50s (!) and talk about what "what if you meet someone and have a family". Sorry but that doesn't work for me.
The whole thing was clunky and just a way for CC to let Mulder and Scully have sex. Even without William/Jackson, that conversation happened too late for me. Cause it's never about what COULD have happened but what can still happen. And they're just too old for me for that at that point.
I think you can easily watch IWTB without having seen season 9. The only episodes you really need knowledge of to watch it are The Truth and maybe William.
I say give the revival a chance. You can always put it into AU category if you hate it :D
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land-under-wave · 3 months ago
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A behind the scenes look at no map to follow
As always, feel free to ask any questions
I started this fic back in November 2021. I actually finished most of it way earlier, but the penultimate scene, where Red has his mini-panic, took a lot of time and revisions. There’s probably half a dozen versions in my drafts. I only got the tone shift to a place where I was happy with it a day or two before I published it (thank god! Was really worried I wasn’t going to make it for a bit). If it’s still feeling a bit rough, that would be why!
This was actually just supposed to be a short fic about Green swanning in and being a jerk and (unfortunately?) developed something resembling feelings in the middle.
The title has three meanings. 1: the very literal idea that Red didn’t provide his specific location, so Green has no map to get there. 2: Red feels like he doesn’t know what to do with himself, so he has no map for adulthood/his future, 3: no map to follow as in “to come afterwards,” as in even after he’s made the decision to come down from the mountain sometimes, that doesn’t make it any easier or tell him what to do with his life. I liked how that shows a future focus.
A couple of the titles I contemplated had to do with The Bear Went Over the Mountain and She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain (mountain and children associations felt fitting). I ended up looking at some mountaineering vocab and free-associating.
The whole fic spun off my attempt to salvage some of the funny bits of dialogue I wrote for this AU. I thought I’d try to convert it into a series of banter ficlets, wrote part of the last section, and things snowballed from there. Still can’t believe it ended up 6k.
If Delia had heard from Red, Green was just going to spend a chill day in Pallet.
I don’t actually know that much about how charging works and I don’t think I ever saw any delicate-thing charging by Electric Pokemon canonically? But just slot the timing of this in the appropriate place in Pokemon history if so.
Erika gave Green the charging project because she wanted the others to learn some of Green’s better traits, like his brains and his work ethic, and also because she realized Green is hungry for acknowledgement and wanted to give him an accomplishment
The sad interpretation of Green’s particular viciousness in certain places is that he’s afraid to admit he misses anyone because he spent so much time missing his extremely busy and often absent grandfather when he was younger, and it just made him feel powerless and weak. The happier interpretation is that he’s just particularly pissed at Red and so really in top form. Lots of pent up aggression and also wandering for hours on a snowy mountain.
Didn’t want to mention this in the fic because it’s pretty lighthearted, but well. A year with absolutely no communication on a mountain that’s not known to be forgiving, and your mind gets to wondering. Green was generally confident in Red’s survival skills, but there was a faint, niggling fear in the back of his head that he might be looking for Red’s corpse. And another reason he focused on the anger was that if it’s Red’s fault for dropping out of contact, that means Red is alive and deliberately didn’t do it.
The big reason Green’s behavior in the penultimate section is so far off normal is less that he’s changed a lot and more that there hasn’t been any precedent for it in their relationship! Green has really complex feelings about Red in that moment, and they’ve never had any conflicts that lasted long enough for things to get so weird before. It’s a mixture of a long simmering but faded resentment with annoyance that Red’s been super inconsiderate, both of which died down when he got genuinely concerned that Red might’ve died up there, and there’s also a new dose of maturity that Red just isn’t familiar with because he’s used to Green being super bratty and willing to air out grievances immediately. He has basically no precedence for Green actively trying to not to be a dick and trying to get over his pettiness.
Basically, he’s never seen Green try to beat down his worse impulses instead of just being super honest about them, and that plus the unusually complex mixture of emotions on Green’s side ends up putting Green in quiet unreadable mode for once and makes Red go ???
(I feel like someone might say he did end up airing out those grievances — not quite! While he did do it in a not-very-adult way, Green was trying to only air out Red’s “objective” wrongdoings and not his personal concerns. Red’s just used to seeing through him)
What cracks me up is that Green’s perspective of that scene is him losing his temper and ranting like crazy while Red looks at him like an inscrutable hermit and then just cuts him to the root with a single simple sentence. Red seems so infuriatingly cool from the Green version of things while Red was having an internal panic of WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?
Notice how Green’s visit ends up throwing Red for a loop? That’s a little bit of a tie-in to pyrography, something Red says at the beginning. The thing that Green has always brought to their relationship (even when he was a massive brat), is startling Red out of his complacency and making him realize what he’s been missing on.
I’ve joked that this is low key the antithesis fic of In Absentia. Instead of just passively sitting around and absolutely nothing happening, Green goes up and chews him out and starts a change in their relationship dynamic
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horsechestnut · 1 year ago
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I would love details on the Reverse Robin AU idea, I always adore those. (Though I often feel they miss an opportunity by not having Duke be first. Then again I sort of have a "Either its the first four Robins being reversed, or its all of them and thus Duke is first" system. A lot depends on what swerves the story best.) Sorry for the off topic ramble and no pressure to share, but yeah it'd be cool.
One thing I am notably curious about is how you'd handle the pre death relationship between Bruce & Stephanie. Cos so much of their canon one is filtered through his grief over Jason and projection onto her which led to his awful treatment of her, which led to her desperation to please him. Without that death things would probably be a lot more chill.
Still, I could see a similar death happening if Bruce got to up his own ass with trying to play master mind and it all blowing up in his face (Which I insist would have happened with his crime control plan regardless of Stephanie.)
No apology necessary! I love off topic rambles and am prone to doing them myself (see how long this explanation ended up for reference lol).
Here's a link to a sort of fan-fic/sort of explanation I wrote earlier (Though I think you already found it). I would love to flesh it out into a full fic, but I'm not sure that will ever actually happen.
As for Steph and Bruce specifically though, I think there's still tension between them, but it comes from a different place. Spoiler is a rouge agent, a teenager with no training, no oversight, and a personal score to settle, and Bruce isn't really prepared to handle that. Damian came to him pre-trained and if Tim comes second (which I think he should since he's both before and after Steph in canon) he was doing it because he believed it was the right thing to do. Without Jason Bruce has never had to deal with anyone who's completely untrained before, and without Dick he's never had to deal with a personal grudge as motivation (except his own, and he's really not prepared to get into that), so the combination of them in Steph seems far to dangerous to have in the field. Besides, it sets a bad precedent, he can't just let any teenager start running around fighting crime or he'll have a We Are Robin situation on his hands, and he already has a Robin. I don't think it's really personal for him, it just makes logical sense for everyone if she would stop, but for some reason she won't, even after Cluemaster is dead. (She also reminds him a little to much of himself at that age, but he's not going to think about that).
On Steph's end I think things are a little more complicated. I think the indifference would both drive her insane and give her this sort of false hope. No matter what she does it never seems to be enough, but the parts of her Bruce seems to dislike are all related to Spoiler, not Stephanie, which means she can change them! But there are parts of Steph that are baked into Spoiler, which carry over to Robin in turn that she can't get rid of no matter how hard she tries. Plus there are just enough similarities between the way Batman talks to her and the way Arthur did that sometimes it activates her fight instinct when logically she knows she should just listen to him. And unfortunately Bruce doesn't respond well to being snapped at, but he also never seems to hold it against her for more than a day. So Steph just keeps running in this circle and never knows where she stands with Bruce, and in some ways it's better and in some ways it's worse, because at least with her dad she knew where she stood and could stop trying.
I don't like that answer, trust me I wish I could say things between them would be better, but personally I don't think so. Bruce might be nicer about the way he says it, but I think he'd still want Steph to stop and Steph would still think if she tries hard enough he'll realize he was wrong.
Sorry, that got away from me, but anyway, I think the concept of including Duke is interesting! I just don't really know enough about him to know how it would play out or have thoughts on how We Are Robin could happen without Robin.
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bluelockednyx · 1 year ago
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i just finish rereading "Isagi's Gemstone Mishap", and not sure if i should use ask on tumblr or comment on ao3 to rant about it but here i am (sorry for any grammayical errors):
isagi is pining hard, (and a bit possessive too, lol)
the whole journey of "retrieving a stone that can wreak havoc where i have to disguise, trick someone, break into a warehouse then break a spell, nearly break my neck from a fall and involve a friend using his young-master status to cover up my ass" is hilariously silly, my face hurts from smiling too much
i have questions, like, did rin drop the luggage out of the window bc he saw reo outside? or someone else? im kind amazed that isagi didnt argue and just went along with rin's plan
their dynamics were so well portrayed. it's consistent with what i think is in canon, most of fandom works quite frightened me a bit because they are very ... off-putting, i guess, but with yours, i feel somewhat safe (?)
i am interested in this au that i want to ask about your inspirations (?) for this fic, like how did you come up with this plot, and if there are other works that i should read in order to understand this world more
thank you so much
You can do whatever you feel more comfortable with, anon! Ao3's easier for archiving purposes, but if you prefer asking on tumblr then go ahead. I don't mind either way.
Yes, I wrote the whole thing with the idea of coming up with 'something fun that could happen while Isagi is crushing hard on Rin'. I'm happy you like it and find it silly!
When I was writing that scene, Rin and Isagi were preoccupied with getting out of the warehouse as quickly as they could without being spotted. The luggage was both bulky and heavy, so Rin took his chances with tossing it out of the window so Isagi could get up on the ledge, then they'd both run. Isagi had no idea that Rin was going to do that, so he was actually panicking when the noise got attention. Rin hadn't noticed Reo at all in the entire fic.
asjkl thanks, i'm glad you like the dynamic I put down here. I don't really read much fanfic these days, so I'm not too sure what you mean by my fic being safe? If you mean the content, do be aware that I explore heavy 18+ content on occasion, though I do tag it appropriately.
I based most of the world building of this AU off of generic fantasy novels and manga/manhwa. There's no 'one' work that I referenced explicitly, although I do indulge in Magic A is Magic A trope extensively, with some ideas about the limits of what the characters are able to do here.
I have only posted one other work for this series, which focuses on Karasu and Chigiri looking for a cure for a badly hurt Otoya, and it's also on ao3. That fic precedes this, and is both longer and a bit more serious, with some hints about other fics I've been writing for this AU. The 'part 3' of the series is a mistake from my side due to drafts and posting issues, so there's only two fics for this series currently.
Thanks again for reading!
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adventureofthedancinggirl · 9 months ago
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Behind the fic: An Experiment by Any Other Name
(a.k.a. my AO3 origin story)
Recently, I scrolled all the way to the bottom of my “drafts” and found this gem from when I was still active in the BBC Sherlock fandom:
AU in which Sherlock and John were together before Reichenbach. Sherlock insists on giving him roses as part of an “experiment.” Behind closed bedroom doors John calls Sherlock “my rosebud boy” as he showers him with kisses. Then the Fall happens. Molly leaves yellow roses at Sherlock’s grave because they are the color of hope and she knows hope is still out there. A nurse at the surgery finds a puppy and asks John if he wants it. He almost says no, but something about the dog reminds him of Sherlock. He adopts the dog and names it Rosie.
Judging by the date on the draft (28th January, 2017), this was when I first got inspired to write the fic that would become “An Experiment By Any Other Name”, which was the first thing I posted on AO3.
The initial idea expanded to the point that the fic I wrote ended up being just the “getting together” portion of the above idea. The post-Reichenbach part was supposed to be a sequel, navigating Sherlock’s return, wherein Mary would only make a brief appearance and Rosie was a dog who helped to keep John grounded in the years Sherlock was gone.
Well, things happened, other ideas took precedence, and eventually I ended up taking a long break from being active in online fandoms because of real life responsibilities.
I still enjoy browsing the Johnlock tag from time to time, finding new fics or re-reading old favorites, but as you’ll see if you scroll through my blog, I’m mostly active in other fandoms these days. 
I probably won’t end up writing the sequel, but since it’s 29th January (Johnlock day), I figured I would share this in case any of my old Sherlock mutuals are still around and might find it interesting.
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nervouswaltz · 2 years ago
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Hello! I read your latest fic yesterday-I love werewolves and I loved your fic too. So I was wondering if you have any personal headcanons of your own version of werewolves (like does a full moon precede a shift, do they all travel in packs, etc.) Would you ever write another werewolf AU? I feel like it would be interesting to read one that explores a bitten werewolf and one who was born a "natural" werewolf in a relationship. :)
holy fuck i have been thinking about this All Fawking Day thank u so much for asking my thoughts on werewolves because i have MANY. it is under the cut because i started talking and then i Could Not Fucking Stop :)
okay so basically i have gotten really FUCKING obsessed with the concept of like. monster horror and queerness and in general like body horror and its relation to sexuality and gender as a whole? read Real Women Have Bodies by carmen maria machado btw that's where i started thinking about this. and i got really into this idea of like. being a werewolf/being monstrous is a very queer thing like especially looking at my own journey of transition and coming out i see myself sorta reflected in the inevitability of shifting into a monstrous state. like you cant hide it. you cant run from it. you can only surrender yourself to it. and so i wrote an entire short story for a class that was about werewolves and internalized homophobia and healing and self acceptance and I've really vibed with my own personal interpretation of werewolves from there so. that is the Starting Point of My Thoughts sorry that is ZERO headcanons and more metaphorical implications of a person being neither monster nor human but a secret third thing (which is the best phrase in the english language btw).
ANYWAYS headcanon/personal truths time. 1. werewolves cannot shift at will. did fucking twilight make this popular i HATE this it takes away from the agony of being forced to confront the thing that is simultaneously monstrous and also a core part of who you are. i like my body horror gory and bloody and in my mind a werewolf's shift is PAINFUL like losing teeth and breaking bones and bleeding and bleeding and bleeding. didnt write that into the fic of course but i think that lack of control (even the lack of control of When A Wolf Goes Into Rut) is something thats really critical to the concept of werewolves and their relation to queerness in general. i DO think werewolves form packs, much like when you are queer your friendgroup generally. becomes a bunch of queer people. like calls to like but im not a fan of strict pack dynamics/leaders/borderline omegaverse dynamics, especially since strict pack dynamics actually arent really a thing in real life wolf packs. it also gives every member a sense of autonomy and shifts the definition of "pack" from "social structure" into something closer to a Found Family dynamic.
okay fun nsfw time about ruts. i dont like the concept of omegaverse heats/ruts to be honest i have a lot of problems with a lot of omegaverse (starting with its history and conception) that run the risk of often taking mlm relationships and sorta. heterosexualizing them? idk how to phrase it well but the uber-masculine-male and pathetic-breedable-twink thing is fun sometimes but sometimes feels gensrs borderline misogynistic in omegaverse when its the Only Possible Dynamic and moderate masc/moderate masc couples get SHUNTED into those stereotypes but thats just my thoughts. ANYWAYS when a boy werewolf and a boy werewolf love each other very much or dont its just a thing i think they have ruts where its not Fuck Or Die but it sure feels like it! i think they shift a little bit claws sharp teeth ears hehe puppy ears (do i think werewolf dick is like that all the time? unclear i have to examine my own personal biases) but they are still mainly in control except for being very horny which is like. epic. anyways i kinda leaned into omegaverse ideas of Scents and Mating but for me i thought of it more like getting married instead of "this is my babymaker and i have CLAIMED THEM" dynamics (thats why i made them switches also i just think dnf r switch representation men can be pillow princes one day and be topping you the next lets have some diversity okay?) and also i just think dream deserves to smell like apple cider and george deserves to smell like moss but hey its fic i do what i want i could write different monster sex and Someone would read it.
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh unclear if ill write more werewolves ill certainly FUCKING think about them a lot of the goddamn time and probably will write stuff like this again exploring other pairings/plots? no promises for anything tho u can only ever trust me to not deliver on a fic i say i want to write. also very interesting comment about the born vs bitten werewolves. i dont like how jkr (may she ROT!!) made werewolves a metaphor for aids but i deffo think that the concept could explore the ideas of coming out/knowing your orientation earlier in life versus later. thats a Fantastic thing to explore and i am 100000% going to do that with my werewolf ocs because that is an essential part of their plot i hadnt really thought about until literally right now
thank u so much for Inviting The Beast To Speak i just REALLY FUCKING LOVE WEREWOLVES IN A METAPHORICAL AND HOMOSEXUAL SENSE. GOD BLESS GOODNIGHT IM GOING TO GET TACOS WITH MY DAD.
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cdelphiki · 5 years ago
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Bruce woke to the sound of a page turning. The harsh scrape of paper against cloth as whoever the culprit was didn’t lift the book high enough to avoid his own shirt grating against the headache currently occupying most of Bruce’s attention. 
His pillow was the next thing he noticed. Never had he felt a pillow so hard. Was it made of concrete? He was fairly certain it was. The bed under his body was softer than the pillow. It was not helping the headache at all.
Why’d his head even hurt? He’d never had a headache like this before. It felt like someone had hit him with a baseball bat. 
And… oh. 
Last night.
 That was what had happened.
Scraping from his left started again, so he dared to crack and eye open and see what was creating the noise. Was Dick home? Alfred would never be so noisy while reading. 
The light was excruciating. Even though he could tell the lamps were dimmed to the lowest setting. And his vision took a good several seconds to clear enough for him to see, but eventually he made out the figure of Jason. His precious Jason. Engrossed in a book, sitting right next to him in bed. 
That was good. 
Odd, for some reason. But good. He loved Jason. It was nice he was hanging out in Bruce’s room.
Was that what was so odd? Jason had been with him for months now. Six? No, eight. Eight months. And he’d never been in Bruce’s room. Bruce had no idea how to fully gain his trust. Or if he’d ever be able to. Jason was such a skittish kid. That was okay. Bruce would go at Jason’s pace. Jason deserved caretakers who loved and respected him and his boundaries. 
He just wished Jason could trust that Bruce would never hurt him. He’d loved him pretty much from the moment he first saw him. He could never hurt his own son.
“Hey old man,” Jason said, his voice a gentle murmur. It still caused a spike of pain, almost as bad as the lights had, but the pain was worth the warmth in his chest. “I heard you pulled a muscle trying to stand up.”
Why would….? Oh. Because he was ‘old.’ He was only 30, for God’s sake. Why did his kids think he was old?
“Something like that,” he mumbled, a slight smile tugging at his lips. Jason was so cute. A cracked skull was just like pulling a muscle. Exactly the same. Just came along with Superman panicky arriving on scene and Bruce blacking out before Clark could say “I’ve got you.” 
Thank God for Clark. Not that he’d ever tell the man that. It’s a little insulting he’s been listening in more since Dick left. Bruce really doesn’t need a babysitter. Or a partner. He’s fine out there on his own.
Except when he’s not. But it wasn’t his fault some goon snuck up behind him and hit him with a bat. Really, he was occupied with the four in front of him. 
But Bruce couldn’t deny it was good Clark was there. Because had he not been, the bat that cracked his skull likely would have killed him. He couldn’t get killed. Jason needed him. 
“Do you know what year it is?” Jason asked, and Bruce smiled fully.
“We already know I have a concussion. No need to do a check.” 
“Pfft,” Jason said, and Bruce could hear how he’d blown a puff of air into his bangs. That was such a cute habit of his. Bruce kind of hoped he never cut his hair shorter so he’d never stop. “Fine. Just wanted to make sure you knew where you were n’stuff.”
Bruce opened his eyes again and looked over at Jason. He’d set his book down, and was now hugging onto his knees, his head resting in his arms as he stared at Bruce. “Hi, Jason,” he said, hoping to reassure his son that he did, in fact, know where he was and what was happening. 
“Hey,” Jason exhaled, and Bruce could see the tension bleed right out of his shoulders and he slumped down a little more. 
“You’re in here by yourself?” he asked, remembering why this was all weird. Jason never had a problem being alone with Bruce, but never this close. Never this intimately. And never in his bedroom. 
“Yeah, what of it? Want me to leave?” 
Bruce had shut his eyes again, so he could only hear the way Jason closed back up again. Like he thought Bruce didn’t want him around. 
How could Bruce not want Jason around? Jason was great. Didn’t he know that?
“No,” he nearly hummed, shifting his head and immediately regretting it. The concrete beneath his head did not give way, and the entirety of his skull felt like it was on fire for a brief second. One the pain subsided, he added, “You just never come in here. I thought you didn’t trust me.”
Jason was quiet for a bit after that. So long, in fact, Bruce would have assumed he left. But he could hear Jason’s breathing, still, and knew he was still sitting right next to him. Hugging his knees and everything. He almost turned to look at Jason again, but he finally spoke up.
“Well I do.”
And there was the warmth again. So much of it. He wanted to cry, from the intensity of it, actually. But that would likely make his head worse. Crying always make his head hurt, just naturally. He didn’t want to fell what it was like to have a migraine and crying headache at the same time. 
“I love you, Jay,” he mumbled, instead, “You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” Jason whispered, the slight rasp to his voice grating on Bruce’s ears. If he thought he could move much, he would have dragged Jason to his side for that rasp. But the thought of moving even his arm made his head hurt more. 
“Good,” he said, relaxing a little. Because at least Jason knew. “So much.” 
“You must be feeling pretty bad,” Jason said, shifting around enough that the bed springs squeaked. 
Once Bruce’s world stopped spinning, he grunted. Because he felt like shit, and there was no use in lying to Jay. He’d see right through him.
“You really need backup out there, B,” Jason said, and this was definitely not a conversation he was up for having. He and Jason had argued so many times now over whether Jason could go out. Bruce didn’t have the energy for that. He almost never had the energy for it.
“Can we talk about that later? My head hurts a little.” 
Jason laughed, mostly under his breath, before he said, “No shit. Does me talking make it worse?”
“No,” he lied. It made it a lot worse. But Jason not talking made his heart hurt. 
“You’re lying.”
“Mm,” Bruce hummed, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. But he did add, “I like hearing your voice.” 
“You’re still lying,” Jason said, but now Bruce could hear the smile. If he opened his eyes, he’d probably see bright red cheeks, too. 
“I do. It reminds me that you’re here. I’m so happy you’re here,” he said, feeling himself get choked up again. He took a deep breath, to center himself, then finished, “Sometimes I wonder where you’d be if you weren’t here and I can’t bear it. I love you so much. I can’t imagine life without you.” 
“Man, you really are messed up in the head,” Jason said, but again, Bruce could hear the smile. 
He wished he had the energy to sit up and hug Jason. That was something Jason could always use more of. Bruce was pretty sure his dad had never hugged him. Not much, at least. Kids needed hugs. 
And, yeah. He could see the ‘messed up in the head.’ Concussions had always made him a little on the emotional side. Usually it’s Dick or Alfred dealing with them. This would be Jason’s first. “It’s still true.” 
Jason was quiet after that. For so long, in fact, Bruce started to nod off. Not that it would take much to do so. He estimated he only had a few more minutes of consciousness, anyway. 
But he startled, a little, when Jason started moving again, and stilled when his left arm was lifted into the air. Jason slipped under the arm and rested back against Bruce’s side, effectively using his side as a pillow, then settled Bruce’s arm back down around him. 
Bruce tightened his arm around Jason’s chest a little, hopefully conveying everything his words could not. 
“Does this hurt?” Jason asked, tugging a blanket over himself it felt like. It covered Bruce’s arm, too, which was nice. His hand had been getting cold. 
“No.” It was the opposite of hurt. The moving jarred his head a little, but he’d live. Having Jason in his arm was going to help him sleep so deeply, he just knew it. 
He’d always gotten the best sleep on the nights Dick came to him for comfort after nightmares. Something about having a child—his child—in his arms just made everything else in the world melt away. No fear or anxieties or worries to keep him up. Just him and his precious son. 
Now he had two sons. Maybe sometime soon he’d have both of them at the same time. That… that would make him very happy. 
“Go to sleep, old man,” Jason murmured, as he opened his book again. He rested his arms over Bruce’s, and Bruce could hear the pages scrape against the blanket draped over them. “Doctor Alfred says you need to rest for a few days. Can’t have you getting stupider from this.” 
“Did he say that?” Bruce asked, but his voice was far too amused. Totally missed the faux hurt he had been going for. 
��He did. In those exact words.” 
“Hmm. You’re a brat, you know?”
“I know,” Jason said, and all Bruce wanted to do was give him a kiss on the forehead. But sitting up would ruin this position they held. He’d much rather get to hold Jason for a while. Even if the boy would probably leave long before Bruce woke again, at least he’d have these few minutes. 
He settled for squeezing him a little tighter again, then relaxed to the cadence of Jason’s page turning. The blanket didn’t scrape nearly as bad as Jason’s shirt had, after all. Plus, the warm weight of his son pressing against his side was very grounding. A good something to focus on, to help tune out the blaring that was his head. 
And just as he was drifting off to sleep, the soundless void that was unconsciousness lulling him toward it, he just heard Jason say, “I love you, too.” 
Bruce was a little happy he’d got hit in the head. 
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nostalgicatsea · 2 years ago
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If you’ve been following me long enough, you know I’ve been trying to write a soccer/football/fútbol/whatever-you-call-it-in-your-area-of-the-world AU. I finally wrote words for it for @lightsonparkave round 34! I didn’t have a prompt in mind while writing it, but this one has a similar theme.
This is a story where Tony, a young talented player who’s become so jaded that he doesn’t know if he loves soccer anymore or if he ever really did, goes to the U.S. to be on the same team as Steve, who lives and breathes soccer. They dislike each other instantly, but they learn to be teammates and fall in love. 
“It’ll be a fresh start,” Pepper had told him, tapping the signature line with her “special occasions only” Montblanc—as if downgrading to the U.S. from Spain was a momentous event that deserved to be celebrated—and the best and worst part of it was that she had sincerely believed it.
Between the pen and the optimism brimming in her eyes, Tony had found himself believing it too. Or at least believing that he wasn’t throwing his life away entirely. The contract wouldn’t have even been on the table if Pepper hadn’t thought it was worth his time. She wasn’t the type to latch herself to a sinking ship; she was a loyal friend, of course, but she was also his agent and much more crucially, not an idiot. Tony had come across his fair share of clueless agents who had no idea what they were doing and Pepper was their opposite. One day, she was going to be a superagent (except not evil) and take over the world (in a non-evil way). 
But Pepper was known to be wrong on the rare occasion and Tony knew there were few places he could go where Howard’s shadow didn’t reach and his own reputation didn’t precede him. Having such a large social following and being a tabloid darling made that hard. 
Not to mention, he thought bitterly, his new club was led by Steve Rogers, the apple of Howard Stark’s eye, the guy who captured enough hearts to be dubbed Captain America even before he became captain of anything. Not exactly the most logical place to go when you’re aiming for a low profile, though maybe the rivalry was mostly in his head since they played on two different continents and weren’t even on the same national team. If he was going to give his career another shot, it could do him some good to start over away from the spotlight that would follow him no matter where he was in Europe.
Here in New York, he at least had a chance at anonymity. The MLS wasn’t the league where superstars went to retire anymore, but despite its growth, it was still a ways from being the most-watched sports league in the States. 
Here, he wouldn’t have to fight as much to reinvent himself. He could lay low, put in the work, stay away from the party life, and maybe, just maybe, not have to deal with every move he made being scrutinized and sensationalized. Or even wholly made up. Admittedly, he had fed the flames, doing things like going out to clubs the night before a match and staying until the early hours more than once, but it wasn’t like he had let that affect his on-pitch performance or even more absurdly, insisted on having a clause in his contract that Real Madrid would allow him to go clubbing at least once a week.
No one could be stupid enough to believe that—Tony could argue about why it was stupid for days, and the maxim that no player was bigger than the club was a maxim for a reason—but considering how the “news” was received, apparently most people were convinced that there was at least a kernel of truth to the rumor even if it wasn’t entirely true.
And so was his new captain, apparently. Steve Rogers could pretend all he wanted that he was as upstanding and accepting as everyone who fawned over him claimed him to be, but Tony was better at reading people than most gave him credit for. He could tell by the way Rogers painstakingly tried to fix a neutral expression on his face like any sudden move would make it slip off that he knew exactly who Tony was and he didn’t like what he saw.
A spoiled brat who got away with murder because he was so gifted and his dad and godfather were important people.
Not for the first time, Tony wondered if there was even a point in trying to change if everyone only saw him the way they wanted to see him.
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bbugyu · 3 years ago
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of all the views you had seen, there was little that could compare to him.
6.2k | cavalry captain!jeonghan x gn pyro!reader, genshin impact au, fluff, adventure, drinking, so much flirting, mentions of trauma, honestly this is the sweetest i'm ever gonna write jeonghan
happy inazuma release day!!! it's your local kaeya trash, because i predictably fall for gay bastards that lie straight to my face (example: jeonghan), and i'm here to give you a fic i wrote AGES ago and just polished up a bit to celebrate the release of what is likely going to be my FAVORITE region in genshin impact. i'm japanese so 😅 i have a soft spot. if there's any other gaymer carats out there, enjoy this one. if not, sorry! you can actually probably still read this and understand it for the most part, though you might miss a bit of context of the landscape and the lore.
ps. go tell @babiemingoo that wonwoo xinqiu 🤭
~
your work with the adventurer's guild was always efficient. you received your commissions, you carried them out, then returned for your reward, usually before the sun had even peaked. the rest of your day was generally spent either basking in the eternal sun of mondstadt, feeding cats in inazuma, or enjoying a hard earned meal in liyue, depending on where you decided to stay that week, finding board and paying for it with the commission you had earned that day. your tendency to wander came less from choice and more from nature - you could call yourself a nomad, but generally, you just got bored, and preferred seeing everything teyvat had to offer rather than settling in one place. adventuring was simply what you were meant to do, your mother had told you at a young age.
she, too, had wandered for most of her youth, and didn't stop just because you had come into her life. you remembered getting scooped up because you had wandered off a bit too close to the railing at wangshu inn as a toddler, playing with dogs at the docks of liyue harbor. you remembered the ludi harpastum and the first time you had ever had a sweet honey roast, and the way it made your eyes grow ten times in size before you dug in for more.
when your vision was bestowed upon you, you already knew how to use a sword. it was important, your mother told you, that you knew how to protect yourself. she had a vision as well, younger even than you had, and you had come to recognize the static in the air as a sign that she was angry - whether it was because of an altercation with someone on your journey or because you had secretly eaten the last hashbrown without consulting her first.
she used her vision and a sturdy blade she had owned since before you were born to protect the two of you on the road, but when she felt you were old enough, she taught you how to weild. a two handed weapon that was far too big for you when you were only fourteen, but when your reckless abandon got paired with a spark, you suddenly became far more dangerous than even your own mother. she scolded you for nearly starting a forest fire when you tried to pair the two skills for the first time after receiving your vision, and you both agreed that training was a beach activity from then on.
your mother settled eventually, after you were old and skilled enough to take on the road alone, pulling the many favors she had gathered in her travels to build a home in a small neighborhood south of liyue harbor, nestled in the foothills of mount tianheng, where you visited as often as your wandering allowed.
you had become much better with your vision. more careful but just as hot. quick to scan situations and strategize in the moment, hardly taking a second before jumping into action, slaying hilichurls like you were getting paid. well, you were, you supposed, but you had been doing this long before you had discovered the benefit of joining the guild. you were good at it. you were built for adventure, but revelled in leisure. there was good reason you were able to take afternoons off, and you milked every last second of it.
"you're back in town?"
you grinned, leaning your sword against the wall and dropping your bag off your shoulders before settling at the bar. "for now."
rubin often served you alcohol - when you were in mondstadt, at least, however often that may be - but never questioned you deeply. he would ask how your travels were, and listen to your stories from regions beyond his knowledge, of the cultures that he had only heard of from people like you. he enjoyed them just about as much as any, if not a little more, purely because your tenacious personality brought something more to the table. he wondered, though, how long you intended to keep living day by day, sleeping in different beds every week.
"what's wrong with sleeping in different beds?" you teased, laughing into your wine glass. "if i didn't know any better, i'd think you were shaming me, rube."
rubin simply laughed, knowing your tone by now. "i just wonder if you ever intend on digging in your roots, or if you'll continue travelling forever."
"if i dig roots, you may never see me again. is that what you want?"
"what," he said. "you don't like mondstadt?"
"i love monstadt," you assured him. "but i also love inazuma. and my mother is in liyue, though she might be upset with me if i try to settle too close to her. perhaps natlan would suit me more?" you shrugged finally, the door behind you opening as you finished with "i suppose i'll settle when i've found a reason to love one place more than the rest."
rubin shook his head, a chuckle falling from his lips. "a wanderer through and through." his attention was quickly drawn to the man entering the bar. "ah, captain! the usual?"
"please," the decorated man said, quickly taking a seat beside you despite the rest of the bar being available. "would you like another, wanderer?"
you eyed him cautiously, studying what you could see if his face around the black eyepatch, gaze skimming down his elaborate clothing before looking down at your emptied drink. "sure."
"another for your wandering friend, rubin, on my tab, please." your brain swirled, considering the brief information you had been given and wondered how you had never managed to meet this regular during your past visits. "are you just drinking dandelion wine, or something more fun?"
"more fun?" you asked. "what are you drinking, then?"
"well, a death after noon, of course," he stated. "don't tell me you haven't had one."
you blinked at him. "i haven't."
you turned towards rubin when he laughed at the back and forth. "shall i make two, then?"
"definitely," your new drinking buddy said, then gestured to you. "you trust my taste, right?"
you said nothing, but he accepted your silent smile as an agreeance. "captain," you said finally, thinking of how rubin had addressed him. "of?"
the man turned towards you, his elbow planted on the bar and his cheek on a fist. despite his get up, he had a playful smirk across his lips. "you mean, my reputation doesn't precede me? you really are a wanderer. everyone in mondstadt knows my name."
"everyone but me," you corrected. "as i'm currently in mondstadt."
his teeth shone behind his smirking lips before he sat up straight. "well, allow me to introduce myself." he saluted, his arm extending from his side at an angle - a salute you recognized from the guards around the city. "i am jeonghan, the cavalry captain of the knights of favonius."
"ah, the knights," you smiled briefly, before letting your eyes wander as you thought, crossing your arms over the bar. "i don't see much of a cavalry in the city, though."
he let out an amused exhale. "so i have a bit more free time these days."
"i'm sure the acting grand master is jealous of all your free time," you teased. "poor guy, looks like he's staving off a panic attack every time i see him. you should probably help him more."
"so," he sighed, leaning against the bar again. "you know of the acting grand master but not me?"
"jihoon?" you asked. "of course i know of him. he's all anyone ever talks about around here."
jeonghan nodded once, thanking rubin when he placed two drinks before you. "people talk about me, also, you know."
your lips stuck out in a pout. "jeonghan, you said? doesn't ring a bell."
he rolled his eyes and picked up his drink, holding it out for you to cheers against. you giggled, clinking your glass against his before taking a sip. the golden liquid was sweet, but not like the dandelion wine you had grown to love in this region. it had more depth, a subtle bitterness to it, and a refreshing bubble. you stared after the glass when it left your lips, then looked over to find jeonghan grinning at you.
"i see why it's your usual," you said, taking another sip before placing the glass on the bar. "i could drink too many."
"will you?" he asked.
"not tonight," you replied coolly. "i haven't asked sana to put me up at the guild yet, and if i get there too late, i'll get a cot instead of a bed. unless rubin finally wants to come clean about something?"
the bartender laughed. "how many times do i have to tell you? we don't even have rooms to board."
you squinted at him. "i know there's something upstairs. i'll learn your secrets one day, rube."
"i wouldn't be a very good bartender if i didn't know how to keep them."
"so you're in the guild?" jeonghan asked as rubin attended to another patron. "an adventuring wanderer."
you smiled vaguely at him. "i am. i have to pay for my travels somehow."
he shrugged. "there's other ways to make money. probably more profitable, too."
you eyed his teasing smirk. "i'm not sure i know what you're implying."
"as a captain of the knights of favonius, i assure you, i'm implying nothing at all," he said, exhaling sharply and adjusting on his stool. he leaned over towards you before speaking in a quieter tone. "but as jeonghan, i think you know exactly what i'm implying."
you only laughed, recognizing the thinly veiled attempt to worm a secret out of you. "i outgrew those means a long time ago. besides, when mora gets tight, i can always board up with my mother. i like liyue enough."
jeonghan studied you as you drank again. "liyue's home, is it?'
"for her, yes," you said, looking over to him, but you found yourself looking away again when his steely blue gaze met yours. you thought carefully about how much of yourself you were willing to reveal to this stranger, especially considering how important he was in the rule of the city. "she was a wanderer, too, and ended up falling in love with liyue harbor."
jeonghan made note of the way your face softened as you spoke about your mother. "and what about you?"
you met his intent look again, thinking about how his covered eye somehow made him even more intimidating. perhaps that was its purpose. "what about me?"
"what have you fallen in love with?"
a smile crept onto your lips as you processed his question. "oh, archons, what have i not fallen in love with? the smell of the open ocean in inazuma, the breathtaking temples in sumeru - have you ever been to waterfall city?"
jeonghan merely shook his head at you, the corners of his mouth turning upwards as he put his cheek on a fist again, leaning against the bar. "beautiful?"
you exhaled, eyes wide as you thought of the towering falls and the light mist that covered the city, trying to come up with an apt description. "humbling. there's nothing like it."
he watched your expression, head tilting further. "what a wonderful way to describe a place. tell me more."
your gaze went to him, then away briefly, feeling suddenly shy as you noticed his look. "about waterfall city?"
he shrugged a fur covered shoulder, shaking his head lightly. "about anywhere. describe your world, wanderer. i'd like to hear whatever you have to say."
you wondered if the heat that ran through you was because of the alcohol or the man, but you just took another drink and cleared your throat lightly, thinking of more places you had discovered in your travels. you thought of qingce village, one of your favorite places to visit, because the people are kind and welcoming and the fields are so beautiful. you told him about a tea shop owned by an old man - he insisted you call him pops so fiercely that you weren't even sure you had caught his given name - and it was probably the most relaxing cup of tea you ever had.
"it's been a while since i've gone," you sighed. "i think i'm overdue for a chat with pops and his tea."
jeonghan was smiling when you looked at him again. "the tea in liyue is unmatched," he said, reaching for his drink. before taking another sip, he gestured for you to continue.
so you did. you told him about sakura pond, about celestia city, about the volcanic black beaches. you told him liyue had your favorite people, but inazuma had your favorite food. he clicked his tongue at you.
"what about mondstadt? do we have one of your favorites?"
you smiled, genuinely. "sunsets. the night sky is different here than it is anywhere else. i think mondstadt is the closest we can get to the stars without joining the archons."
jeonghan studied you briefly, his blue eye flicking over your face as you finished your drink. "i think that's an apt observation. it seems your eyes are always wide."
"i travel for the views," you exhaled. "i don't plan on missing any."
he thought a second. "have you been to starsnatch cliff?"
your eyes lit up. "not in years," you said, in complete shock that you could have forgotten such a place. you pushed from the bar slightly, turning towards him, and he noticed the flash of a red gem strapped to your right thigh for the first time. "my mother took me there when i was a kid, but i haven't gone since."
"it never gets old," he said, sipping at the end of his drink. "i've yet to see that view and not be in awe."
"i'll go before i leave mondstadt again," you decided.
he looked to you. "when will that be?"
you sighed. "not sure, yet."
he just chuckled. "would you like another drink?"
"oh, no," you said, standing and stretching your spine. "i should make my leave. i don't like sleeping on cots. i just came by to let my ol' pal rube know i was in town again."
jeonghan watched you pull your pack onto your back, grabbing the handle of your sheathed claymore from where it was leaning against the wall next to the bar. "perhaps i'll see you again tomorrow?"
you looked at him, a vague smile on your lips as you strapped your sword back on. "perhaps you will, captain."
"jeonghan," he corrected. "but i don't believe you ever shared your name?"
"that was by design, captain," you said, and he swore he caught a glint in your eye as you bid rubin a farewell and stepped out of the angel's share.
jeonghan spun back around on his stool, immediately looking to rubin. "do you know their name?"
"no, sir," he said, looking at the closed door. "they've never said."
jeonghan's gaze went to the empty glass you had left behind, thinking about your stories, your sword, and the signifier of your vision on your thigh. "fascinating."
you got lucky - sana had a private room for you, and said you were welcome to rent it for your stay. she said not many people were travelling to mondstadt these days, and that more often than not, the adventurer's barracks in headquarters went unused. ever since the fatui had holed up in the grand goth hotel, it had been harder for you to make extended stays in mondstadt, but it seemed that something was telling you to stick around longer than usual. you laid on the hard mattress - a feeling that was more comforting than most, thanks to your continuous travels - and thought of the charming captain that had made a night of questioning you. you wondered if he really had any interest in anything you had to say, or if he had been hoping for details about something pertinent to an investigation.
you packed a lighter bag in the morning, only bringing along the essentials as you set out for your commissions for the day. that afternoon, you wandered around mondstadt and asked questions. questions about the simultaneously well-discussed and mysterious cavalry captain that had listened to your tales of travel, and answers came easier than expected, though they didn't contain all the details you were looking for. that night, you waited up at the angel's share to brag about your newfound knowledge to the captain that never showed, and you did your best to not let that hurt your ego.
the next day, you made a detour on your way back to the city after completing your commissions, stopping by springvale to enjoy a well deserved lunch and catch up with some locals. you sat in the grass with a skewer of grilled meat, watching the windmills of mondstadt steadily spin in the distance as time passed, thinking about how rubin had asked you if you didn't like it here.
you did, you decided. mondstadt felt different than anywhere else you had been. untouched, almost. wilder. freer. despite being born in inazuma, your first memories being in celestia, or your mother being in liyue, mondstadt felt comfortable. felt like a home. you wondered to yourself what that might mean.
sana greeted you happily when you returned much later than you normally did. she told you to go ahead to the guild and come back, filing away your reports and retrieving your rewards. you dropped off your things in your rented room, quickly, practically galloping back down the steps towards the entrance of the city to continue your conversation with the adventurer guilds' mighty receptionist without your sword weighing you down. you crossed your arms on the counter, comfortably lounging as you chatted with her, having always enjoyed her conversations more than most. like rubin, she was a reason mondstadt always felt comfortable.
"fancy meeting you here," an all too familiar voice said, and you pulled your eyes from sana to find jeonghan leaning his side against the counter next to you.
"good evening, cavalry captain!" sana chirped, placing your reward - your room free already removed - on the counter and bowing politely. "can i help you with anything today?"
his icy gaze flickered from your lightly curved lips towards sana. "oh, no, my dear. i'm just coming back from an investigation near springvale"
"interesting," you said, eyeing him. "i was just there and didn't see you."
"i wouldn't be very good at my job if you did, wanderer," he grinned. "knight business, you wouldn't understand. got the assignment yesterday."
"ah," you shifted to your side to face him, making him eye the vision on your thigh. "is that why you never showed? rubin was worried."
he looked you up and down. "rubin was, huh?"
you rolled your eyes and adjusted your posture to face away from his smirk. sana looked between the two of you twice before clearing her throat as quietly as possible, making jeonghan let out a chuckle before he directed his attention to the guild's receptionist.
"how goes holding the post, sana?"
she looked almost frightened when the attention was directed back to her. "good, captain! in fact, one of our most capable adventurers-" she gestured to you, "-just returned from taking care of some of our more difficult commissions - no one else would take them."
jeonghan looked at you. "why did sana have to tell your secret?"
your eyebrows quirked upwards. "what secret?"
"that you're good at this. shouldn't you be bragging?"
a chuckle spilled from your lips, and jeonghan watched you as you looked away. "i'm not the bragging type."
he studied you a moment. "what type are you, then?"
you considered the question, wondering exactly how to answer. what type were you? if not a teller, than surely you must be a shower, but that didn't seem right either. you exhaled. "the quiet type. see you later, sana."
he laughed, pushing off the counter as you tucked your mora into your waist bag, wishing sana a good evening and following you towards the fountain. "you sure talk a lot for being the quiet type."
a smirk landed itself on your lips as he fell into step beside you. "maybe private is a better description."
"that one i can see," jeonghan said, looking over to you. he thought of how you had spent nearly an hour telling him about the best views in teyvat, yet he still didn't know the most basic information about you. "do you share your name with anyone?"
you thought. "my mother."
he scoffed. "anyone else?"
you looked to the sky. "rubin."
"wrong," he retorted. "he doesn't know your name, either."
you laughed, looking over to him as you came up to the fountain, spinning and sitting back on the ledge. "you asked?"
"of course i asked," he said, planting one foot on the ledge beside you and placing his arms on his knee. "i asked other people, too. almost everyone knows you, but they don't know anything about you. bits and pieces, but never the full picture."
you just smiled up at him from your relaxed posture on the concrete. "what's wrong with a little intrigue?"
he just smiled back at you. "nothing. i tend to keep a bit myself. did you know there's a large number of people in this city that were shocked when i said you wield a claymore?"
you hummed, dipping the tips of your fingers into the fountain. "did you know there's a large number of people in this city that consider you the most eligible bachelor in not only mondstadt, but in all of teyvat?"
his lips parted slightly as you spoke. "so you snooped, too."
"i was bored yesterday. it wasn't hard," you exhaled. you flicked a drop of water towards his foot. "jeonghan yoon, the cavalry captain of the knights of favonius since he was only nineteen. who loves wine and whose adopted brother runs the biggest winery in teyvat, yet they're hardly ever seen speaking. who comes from a far off land on a different continent, but has come to love mondstadt like it was his home. who wears an eyepatch but has never told anyone why."
he chuckled at the assessment and pulled his foot off the ledge to sit beside you. "so when do i get to learn about you?"
"i told you about me yesterday," you said.
"you told me about teyvat," he corrected. "and while i was able to infer some things about your character, i still know close to nothing about you."
you thought for a moment, realizing no one had ever noticed how little you truly shared despite always being willing to tell stories. "sometimes it feels like i am teyvat. it's hard to think of things that are just about me."
"you could start with that vision," he said, nodding at the strap across your thigh. you looked down at it, exhaling.
"what's there to tell? you know what it means, and that's more teyvat than me, too."
he leaned back on a hand, looking you up and down in curiosity. "how old were you."
you chewed your cheek. "fourteen. you?"
his lip quirked upwards. "sixteen."
you bumped his shoulder with yours playfully. "beat you."
he laughed. "how'd it happen?"
you paused. "you go first."
he just chuckled and looked away, watching a dog wander past the general store. "another day, then."
"no fun," you sighed, brushing your hands together as you leaned forward. "what about the eyepatch?"
he met your eyes, mouth slanted in a smirk. "another day."
you clicked your tongue. "if you wanna learn about me, you have to be willing to give up some details, too. i value a fair trade."
"then stop asking questions that you know i won't share the answer to." jeonghan noticed the color of the sky, then suddenly pulled a pocket watch out, checking it quickly to confirm that there was enough time and stood. "come with me?"
you stared up at him. "where?"
he grinned, extending a hand to help you to your feet. "you said mondstadt's sunsets were your favorite, correct?"
you generally weren't prone to following mysterious men into back corridors, but jeonghan easily convinced you with no words at all that sneaking around the sight line of the acting grand master was completely normal behavior, sushing you with a grin as you giggled, taking refuge around a corner after the two of you made it up to the second floor of the favonius headquarters. he tugged your hand with his, pulling you into a steep maintenance staircase behind a door.
"this feels like it's against some rules," you said, climbing the stairs behind him.
"nonsense," he said, looking back at you and grinning. "are you suggesting that a knight of favonius would break rules just to impress a mysterious traveler?"
you laughed quietly, wondering if he really meant that he wanted to impress you. "not most, but maybe this one."
he only thought for a split second. "if anyone asks, we're on official knight business."
he opened the door and you found the sky again, beginning to glow orange as the edge of the sun began to hide behind the cliffs. you stared in awe at the way the few fluffy clouds reflected pink and gold, then readjusted your focus when jeonghan spoke again.
"i hope you aren't afraid of heights," he said, walking over to the parapets that surrounded you. "the best view requires a bit of a climb."
you looked up at the tower, and while it wasn't much higher than where you stood, you also recognized that you were well above most of mondstadt already. "you climb up there?"
he paused, studying you. "we don't have to, we can just sit on a merlon-"
"no, we can climb," you said, walking over to where he was and eyeing the small gap between the parapet and the adjacent roof. "hop over?"
he laughed, stepping over the gap and holding a hand out for you. "watch your step."
and though you didn't need it, you accepted the hand anyways, and it stayed on yours as you walked over the roof to the tower, as if making sure you didn't misstep several stories in the air.
"would you like to go first?" he asked. "i'll catch you if you fall."
you rolled your eyes at him, dropping your hand from his grip. "you go first. i want to see where the handholds are."
he just grinned at you. "very well," he said, tugging on the wrists of his fingerless gloves to make sure they were taught against his skin before taking hold of a brick. you watched him as he took foothold after foothold, and he resisted the urge to show off by speedily scaling the wall in favor of making sure you had the chance to see where he gripped. when he reached the opening in the tower, he pulled himself up and spun around, exhaling with a grin as he seated himself at the ledge with his legs dangling above you.
"your turn."
you adjusted your waist bag as you sighed in amused annoyance, spinning it to be behind you and out of your hips' way to climb the wall. it wasn't much - a couple meters, maybe - and you had definitely climbed further, but jeonghan's presence made you slightly nervous. that nervousness, however, just fueled you to prove yourself.
you scaled the wall easily, making jeonghan whistle and jokingly call you some kind of adventurer, and your only hesitation came when his hand was in your face. despite your initial inclination to ignore it, you put your left hand in his, allowing him to help you pull yourself up on the ledge and sit beside him.
"impressive," he commented.
you laughed, brushing off your hands. "you, too."
"c'mon," he said, gesturing his head over his shoulder before making moves to stand. "the view's on the other side."
you sighed, looking over the view of mondstadt shrouded in golden light as he stood and walked to the other ledge. "never a moment of rest with you."
"if you want to miss the sunset, be my guest."
you leaned back on your hands and laughed, pulling your gaze away from the city to look at where jeonghan had seated himself on the other end of the tower, and subsequently the view of the rolling hills beyond him that were glowing golden in the evening sun. you blinked for a second, realizing you hadn't seen the sunset the night before, and quickly got to your feet to join him before you missed this one, too.
he gave you a soft smile when you sat beside him, and you briefly wondered how many he had in his repertoire. the wind was stronger higher, whipping gently through his hair and alleviating any uncomfortable warmth you may have had from exerting yourself on the way up. you watched the dregs of sunlight skip across the grassy hills and the sky turn deep orange and bright pink, feet swinging lightly over the edge of the tower.
"i was fighting with my brother," he said suddenly, causing you to look at him with a start before you realized he was telling you about his vision. there was a slight smile on his face as he looked out on the fields. "hyungwon. it was bad. he already had his - he's a pyro, like you - and we were both young and stupid and just lost our dad. we were sword fighting and it came to me when i needed it. it probably saved my life, honestly."
you blinked at him. "you think he would have killed you?'
he exhaled, leaning back on his hands. "i think if the roles had been reversed, i would have tried to kill him, too. i'm grateful it didn't go that way, though." he coughed abruptly, clearing his throat. "we're on speaking terms, and i do love him as a brother, but i generally avoid him."
you let that thought ruminate as you watched the sun sink, halfway beyond the horizon. "my father was in a gang in inazuma, but my mom ran away when she found out she was pregnant. didn't want to raise a kid in that world, i guess? we ran into him when i got older and he wasn't very understanding." you paused, remembering the detail too well. "they were going to take her vision. that's what they did to traitors. probably take me, too. they weren't expecting me to start setting fires."
jeonghan's gaze was on you as yours was on the horizon. "just a couple of survivors."
you looked over at him, a smirk on your lips. "a couple?"
he laughed waving at your implication, thinking he would have said the same thing in an attempt to fluster you just as you were to him. "like, more than one and less than four."
you only laughed back. "fortune favors the weak, i suppose. the archons saw we needed help and extended a fig branch."
"is that what it was?" he asked, a laugh on his lips. "we were both fighting people. that's hardly an offer of peace."
"look for the deeper meaning, jeonghan. we were fighting for our lives," you pointed out, and he realized it was the first time you had addressed him by his name rather than his title. "i was fighting for family. for freedom. is that not the greatest pursuit of peace?"
he watched you as you pulled your knees to your chest, putting your feet on the edge of the stonework surface you sat on. he studied the way the golden rays lit your skin and made your eyes sparkle. "i suppose so."
you paused in that moment for a long while, and jeonghan allowed the comfortable silence as the two of you watched the sun disappear beyond the cliffs of mondstadt. the sky was turning a deep shade of purple when you told him your name, and jeonghan thought that it was quite possibly the best news he had ever received, but he kept that joy to himself as he confirmed your name, and you rolled your eyes.
"are you gonna answer my other question now?"
he scoffed. "about the eyepatch? is it really that interesting?"
"not any more interesting than my name," you retorted.
"completely untrue," jeonghan insisted. "i've never been so excited to be told a secret, and i get told a lot of secrets."
you eyed his smile warily. "my name may be unknown, but it's no secret."
he sighed and shook his head lightly. "you really wanna know the reason i wear it? it's probably not as dramatic as you're hoping."
"yet you hide it?"
he laughed. "what's wrong with a little intrigue?"
you looked away, recognizing the parrot of your own words. "whatever you say, captain."
"no!" he whined and grabbed your arm, making you start and look at him with big eyes. "you just started calling me jeonghan, don't go back to captain."
you stared at him, only breaking to laugh, dropping your legs over the edge again. "you won't show me what's under the eyepatch, so i thought we weren't on first name basis."
his hand on your bicep was warm and gentle, but his gaze was piercing as he thought it over for a bit longer. you did your best to hold it, but you felt yourself shrinking when he quietly muttered, "go on, then."
it took you a second to register what he meant, and you reached out slowly, fingers hesitating before they brushed upon his cheekbone. jeonghan closed his eyes, resigning to your touch as you gently lifted the eyepatch. his eyes opened again, slowly, and you thought your heart might have skipped a beat.
"like chocolate," you commented, and a smile spread across his lips.
"that's the kindest reaction i've gotten."
your fingers fell upon his temple, brushing down gently as you inspected his singular brown eye. "since birth?"
he nodded, his eyes flicking down to your lips briefly before he spoke. "heterochromia. it's a characteristic of my family."
you studied his face. "not the one here?"
he sighed. "not the one here."
the icy blue of jeonghan's eye had always struck something in you. it made him mysterious. commanding. it felt like he saw more than you despite having one eye covered. but now, you felt warm. you felt his gentleness. there was comfort hidden away behind that black patch, and you told him that you understood why the cavalry captain had chosen to hide the eye he did.
but to you, he was willing to show anything that would keep you around longer, he said.
"why me?" you asked, studying his expression when he looked away. the sun had retreated behind the hills, leaving the sky a deep blue.
jeonghan didn't respond right away, and you wondered if he himself even knew the answer. "we're birds of a feather, you and i."
you looked out to the view again, watching the subtle movements of the wild hills. "did you travel much before you came here?"
"it was all i knew," he told you. "i was thirteen when my father left me here."
your neck snapped, your eyes on his profile when he leaned back on his hands. "left you?"
he almost laughed, a smile on his lips when his eyes met yours. "i was slowing him down, i suppose. hyungwon's father found me and took me in."
"so you stayed?"
"i didn't always want to," he assured you. "i had the itch to leave for years. as soon as i was able, i always told myself." he paused, eyes dropping. "then father died. then hyungwon turned down his position with the knights. and i was their second choice."
you pursed your lips. "you stayed for a job."
he laughed. "it's not that simple."
you smiled at him, enjoying the warmth of his eyes on yours as the sky cooled. "are you sure we're birds of a feather?"
"listen," he said, getting off his hands and brushing them off on his thighs. "i accepted the job so that i could set the story straight. i didn't want to run from the people that believed that hyungwon tried to kill me to avenge our father."
you studied him. "i'm sorry."
"don't be," he said, nudging your shoulder. "i was still planning on leaving, but then i fell in love."
you looked away, trying to sort out the way your stomach flipped. "are they still around?"
"not with a person," he laughed, then nodded towards the now dark hills. "with the views. besides, i get free reign whenever i leave for missions. i have fun adventuring, and come home to the best sunsets in teyvat. there are worse places to call home."
your eyes scanned the horizon, remembering the brilliant rays of sun you had just seen skip across it. "that is tempting."
"how tempting?" he asked.
you thought on that for a moment. "almost as much as a death after noon right now."
jeonghan laughed, slightly proud that he had hooked you on his favorite drink. "shall we go see rubin, then?"
you hummed, smiling at the captain. "as long as i don't have to sit alone again."
"that's a promise," he told you as he stood, holding out a hand that you took without hesitation, though he withheld his intention to make sure you were never alone again.
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terapsina · 2 years ago
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hi! for the writing ask game, I'd love if you answered what you want outta: 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 12, 15, 19, 23, 24, 29, and 48! :)
*deep breath* alright then 😉
1. When did you start writing?
When I was a kid I used to write a bit but not anything serious (I did plot out an idea for a "book" that shall never see the light of day). And then twelve years ago when I was 18 I started writing fanfiction, it was also when I started writing in English (which isn't my first language, but is weirdly now the only language I know how to write stories in).
2. Favourite character?
Of all time? No idea. Seriously. But let's narrow it down a bit. Favorite character that I enjoy writing for from the fandoms I've written in a few times? Elena from TVD because it's easy to get into her headspace, and also I feel very protective of her. Sameen Shaw from Person of Interest because doing her character right is kind of a challenge for me, also I adore her. Regina Mills, though it's hard to write from her POV so I mostly have stuff from Emma just being totally in love with her. Parker from Leverage, because she's really cool. Izzy from Shadowhunters, because ditto. Lizzie from Legacies, IDK she's just one of the most complex and interesting characters in the show. River Song from DW, she's really cool and I love trying to reunite her with Thirteen. Aaaaaand I think that's enough of that.
3. Favourite AU?
From one's I've written... I think I'm really proud of this one.
Royal Marriage Agreements and Cursed Princesses and Dragons Oh My!
It's my Clary/Izzy feminist Sleeping Beauty fic where Princess Izzy's supposed to get married for political reasons but doesn't wanna and figures out that if she wakes 'the sleeping princess' then that would take precedent. There's also a bit of cute background Malec with Dragon!Magnus.
6. Do you write on your phone/laptop/paper/something else?
Usually my laptop. But if an idea for a sentence or a paragraph strikes, or if I'm editing and adding some short changes, but I don't have the laptop on me I also use my phone.
7. Favourite writing advice?
Probably the advice to not worry about making it good immediately. To write something that's terrible because once it's been written you can edit it to your heart's content. But first you need to WRITE it.
12. Your favourite work?
Currently the story I'm working on right now because I've never done something as challenging as this. Something where I keep switching points of view through the chapters, and where I'm dealing with really complicated and intricate issues of overcoming trauma, and healing, and opening up to love, and finding comfort in friendships.
She's Come Undone and Set Free
Which is the story where Elena deals with the trauma of the sire bond, as well as finds out what Damon did to Caroline in s1. Which brings stuff to the surface for Caroline, but now she has her friends there to support her. Elena and Caroline get to be ANGRY. Also there's Elejah. And a bit of Klaroline. But also a LOT of bonding for Elena, Bonnie, Caroline and Rebekah. Also the Salvatores face some actual consequences.
15. Do you ever delete works?
I have in the past. Like two or three fics I think, some of the very first ones I ever wrote. They were AWFUL. And really short. No one's missing much, I promise.
But I don't think I'm ever going to again. Even though there's a lot that makes me cringe upon rereading, it would feel wrong to delete them.
19. Where do you write?
In bed. It's weird, I know, but I have some back issues and it's better for me than staying in a chair for hours on end.
23. Least favourite part about writing fanfiction?
Starting out. Once I've started I get in the zone and the story kind of... happens, like even if I don't know where I'm going with it there's little unexpected moments that surprise me. But starting out is hell, I've somehow always have just forgotten how to write.
24. How many unfinished works are in your drafts?
I plead the fifth 😂. Seriously though... a BUNCH. I've got a half written Hizzie fic that's torturing me. A Bellarke fic that will probably never see the light of day. Some beginnings to a Marisa/Asriel fic that I lost inspiration to.
Yeah, a bunch.
29. Where do you get your inspiration from?
Hell if I know. Usually though it's when something is pisses me off about canon and my brain goes 'wouldn't it be cool if...' and then I try to write that scenario and sometimes a fic happens.
48. How do you deal with coming up with titles?
*groans* it is the WORST.
Sometimes I take the episode title and twist it. 5+1 fics make it easy and I just describe the scenario. Sometimes I take one word that is used in the fic and use that. Sometimes I pick a random song lyric.
There's not a lot of brain involved, is what I'm saying.
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bedlamsbard · 3 years ago
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#if I was interested in writing a somewhat different story the next big divergence would have been when steve nat and loki were in the past#and then things would get COMPLICATED in the most BEDLAM OF WAYS#and I could very easily have written that AU but I wanted to do THIS AU#(that one probably would have been 350K lol)#(you can ask about it since it doesn't give away anything in how yonder is actually going to go)
out of curiosity and a love of your complicated AUs: how would this have gone?
okay, so there are a couple of different things I could have done that would have been different aspects of The Full Bedlam! I should note that I originally started this thinking that it might be maybe three chapters and not, like, a FIX-IT fix-it, just a cool thought project. right now it's looking like it will be five chapters.
I could have done -- and strongly considered doing before deciding against -- those characteristic Bedlamsbard flashbacks that have shown up in every major fic since Gambit. (I think they're not yet in Crown but were planned for future chapters and a few were written.) These would have been from Natasha's POV and would have included Loki arriving in Wakanda with Rocket and Groot, Loki taking Steve and Natasha to Nidavellir after the Snap, and possibly Tony's return to Earth and his wtf is Loki doing here??? reaction.
I could have had multiple POVs. I think this is the first multi-chapter story I've written in the better part of a decade that only has one POV character. In this case we would have gotten other POVs of the Time Heist -- i.e., the Knowhere heist (probably a Scott POV), Nebula and Rhodey on Morag (probably both POVs so I could include the Thanos bit), and then Bruce and Clint on Vormir (probably a Clint POV for the wtf aspect). Likely also a Valkyrie POV; I don't think I ever seriously considered ever using a Loki POV (for various reasons). I at one point also considered having Natasha go with Loki to Vanaheim and some of the other Realms when he's coordinating the return, but decided against.
Those two are structural but probably wouldn't have changed the actual plot, per se -- just added different aspects to the story that I ultimately decided not to go with. (I could have also made the Steve/Natasha explicit -- like, I wrote this story with the background knowledge that they have a thing going on, but it's really not on the page aside from one or two sideways mentions.)
Now, the major divergences, which would have come with the Time Heist. TWO OPTIONS, both of which come with the (again, characteristic Bedlam-style) assumption that instead of landing in their own past, Team SteveNatLoki would have landed in the past of an alternate universe.
(Next bit talks about Chapter 3, which just got posted.)
ONE
Normal single point divergence AU -- one difference spinning out into consequences, the way I normally do. (And which this story is already, tbh.) This would have been, essentially, the Morning altverse (Odin's timeline), which has the divergence point as Odin deciding not to throw Mjolnir after Thor in Thor, Thor falling off the Bifrost as a result, and ending up with Thanos to lead the Chitauri invasion, with Loki as the crown prince who turns up to stop that. (The divergence point flashback is the last scene in Morning 4, if anyone hasn't read that and wants to know what I'm talking about (you don't have to know the rest of the story, though the flashback at the end of the preceding chapter is from the same universe); randomly, I don't think I have a whole lot of reader crossover between Morning and Yonder?)
So the meeting with the Ancient One would have gone the same as in Yonder 3, but upon arriving at the secret hideout, instead of just walking straight in they get captured and then Loki, Steve, and Nat get the shock of their lives. Loki does not handle this particularly well. Eventually altverse Loki shows up (early, like Thor does in Yonder), kind of just stares at the situation in bafflement, and eventually does break SteveNatLoki out, at which point he promptly calls the Bifrost down on them because this is Asgard's problem now. (Well, as far as he was concerned, this was Asgard's problem anyway, but now it's even more Asgard's problem.) Loki does not handle that particularly well either.
anyway what probably ends up happening is most of the plot of The Avengers, complete with altverse Natasha and Yonder Natasha being very, very weird about each other, and eventually Team SteveNatLoki gets to go home. (Presumably...with the scepter and Tesseract? To return later?)
TWO
Rather than being a single point divergence AU, it's several different roleswaps: Thor invading Earth and Loki turning up to stop that, Natasha got mind-controlled instead of Clint, and to really top it off, it's Bucky Captain America (and Steve Winter Soldier somewhere out there).
so like Team SteveNatLoki handles that as well as you'd think. (there's probably a lot of hugging and crying on Bucky's and Steve's parts until Steve and Nat abruptly realize that if Bucky is here then there's a high chance that this universe's Winter Soldier is Steve himself and then there's a lot of silent screaming.) (Loki is already silently screaming because this is awful.)
things would probably snowball from there but I didn't run out the chain of events that would result from this AU. (and I don't like doing multiple divergence point AUs and couldn't run this one back far enough to make the multiple divergences stem from a single point, since I could do "Steve falls from the train instead of Bucky" but that wouldn't affect Thor and Loki.)
eta: thinking about this one more I’d probably do not as a double roleswap, but keep 2012 Loki as in canon (so, you know, invading Earth), but have them get the timing wrong or something and end up having to deal with 2012 Bucky Cap and 2012 Thor.
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dontcallmecarrie · 3 years ago
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Replying to the commenter of this snippet, who said:
oh i love it when a normaly controlled character just has a moment to let loose and everyone around them, that only know them in some variation of "placid" know shit will go down now ^^ also is there a hint of friendship with victor or are they just professional aquainted? thanks for the snippet
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Friend, you hit the nail on the head of why I wrote it. 
This AU’s Justin is normally very self-controlled, sometimes almost to a fault— because for so long he’s been used to “being the bigger man” and “setting an example” [sure, most of the times he chose it because the actual adults were busy being overgrown toddlers], but that also means that when he loses it...
Well. As you saw, it’s not pretty. 
Also because while he normally leans hard on the ‘affable’ part of ‘affable villain’ in most of the installments of this AU, so a rare instance of him losing his temper is hopefully a good reminder of exactly what alignment he is. 
aka writing villain protagonists isn’t easy for me, if I don’t check myself they turn into anti-villains instead...which was not the goal of this thought exercise
As for his dynamic with Victor von Doom: in an earlier part, I mentioned they were childhood friends, kinda. They went to the same boarding school and were study buddies and had the weirdest friendship just about anyone could’ve thought of— barring Justin’s frenemies-slash-rivals-slash-idek-anymore dynamic with Tony— and didn’t even know each other’s names until after Victor got pulled out of boarding school because of reasons related to his country’s destabilization [his family had a lot of pull in Latveria and kept him abroad as much as possible for safety reasons, but when things really started to hit the fan they couldn’t afford to split their assets anymore].
Next time Justin saw his closest-thing-to-an-actual childhood friend’s name, it was on a request from a group who wanted to buy Hammer weapons for reasons relating to the bloody civil war going on.
Had Justin not recognized the name, the proposal would’ve been rejected; Victor’s group was technically classified as insurgents because they didn’t have official government backing [...because good luck getting anything of the sort in the middle of a civil war with multiple factions going on] and the political situation was, as analysts called it, a Tire Fire™ at best. 
So. 
Getting involved was risky at best and long story short, yeah, Justin may or may not have broken quite a few national and international laws to get Victor the weapons he needed.
After all, Victor was a relative unknown; a budding warlord whose motivations and goals were uncertain, and in retrospect, a handful of childhood memories was an incredibly risky gamble.
But it paid off.
And that’s the kicker, isn’t it?
If not for those first few shipments, Victor’s group would have just been one of the many that got wiped out. Because towards the end, they were reusing as much ammo as they could, some of their guns were Frankensteined abominations that were as liable to blow up in their faces as they were to shoot but it’s not like they had any better options, not as the fighting escalated and more and more factions tried to take advantage of any and every perceived weaknesses.
Instead, however, Victor von Doom became a national hero as Latveria went from ‘somewhere between Somalia and Yemen’ in terms of stability, straight to a Wakanda-esque powerhouse. 
probably not a great comparison, but a) both are super isolationist, b) industrialized powerhouses, and c) have a single leader
And now, Victor von Doom is the leader of a country that did a 180 on par with... quite a few historical precedents that make a lot of people very uncomfortable with the parallels. 
Latveria’s taken seriously at the international level, it has to be. Victor is hailed as a genius and dictator and everything in between, scion of one of its oldest families and with diplomatic immunity with just about any country he can name.
The man who has it all— and remembers how he got there.
If not for those first few shipments...
Victor von Doom owes Justin Hammer more than he can name. 
So, so much more, because part of Victor had never really expected to see the end of the fighting, let alone live to oversee his home country’s rebuilding.
His strange childhood friend became a kingmaker sometime when the world wasn’t looking, and it’s a secret the two of them will take to their graves.
So if Justin has an idea? Well, he’ll listen. 
It’s the least he can do.
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...aka hopefully that gives you a better idea of their dynamic? 
That was the first time Justin really got his hands dirty: a risky gamble based off the world’s [second-]weirdest childhood friendship, but it paid off so well the CIA actually came calling asking for why he was on first-name terms with Latveria’s dictator and he had to explain they used to know each other in boarding school and were just now catching up.
For the record, Tony is incredibly jealous when he first gets wind of their friendship because excuse you, he was the one who knew Justin since they were kids! So what if they’re rivals, he was there first!!! 
To the point where someone probably ends up side-eyeing him and asking if he and Justin were exes, because Tony keeps going ‘what does he have that I don’t?’ because Justin’s been spending all his time with Victor now that he’s in town for the UN summit and dammit, they’d had plans.
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