#a kind of longing to claw out that sameness he senses in him

[mssalo]

safety - Part: I

Summary: After years of isolation, Joel Miller's life revolves around control and keeping danger at bay, his past as a soldier leaving him constantly on edge. But when a sweet, soft-spoken young woman starts working at the supply store, her innocence stirs something inside him. Despite his efforts to remain detached, Joel becomes obsessed with keeping her safe from the dangers he’s certain are lurking everywhere.

As his protective instincts morph into darker desires, the lines between safeguarding her and possessing her begin to blur.

Warnings will vary by chapter depending on the content.

Warnings: Dark!Joel, 18+ MDNI, Obsession themes, Stalking, Joel has major Trauma/PTSD, Mentions of military past, Manipulation, Power dynamics, Joel needs a hug and therapy. As per usual.

4k

Enjoy!

Part II here:

· · ───────────𖥸──────────· ··

Joel Miller wasn’t the type of man who sought peace or ease.

He’d spent too many years living a different kind of life-one built around routines of survival, discipline, and a level of alertness that never quite faded.

Now, back in Texas, he carried that constant vigilance like a second skin.

He’d settled in a small, secluded home just outside of Austin.

The area was quiet, isolated, the kind of place where nobody asked too many questions.

The locals respected boundaries, and Joel had made his clear. He kept to himself, lived a simple life, and preferred things that way.

People complicated things—something he wasn’t interested in anymore.

Most of his days followed a routine that he clung to with the same intensity he had in the service.

Early mornings were spent with coffee and silence, the smell of pine trees drifting through the windows of his old, weathered cabin.

Afterward, he'd take to the woods, either hunting or just walking trails he knew as well as the lines in his hands.

Out there, he could let his mind focus on something tangible—the tracks of a deer, the feel of the rifle in his hand.

There, his senses sharpened again, always on alert.

Joel’s awareness never dulled, not even after all these years.

Every noise, every shift in the wind or crunch of leaves beneath his boots, kept him on edge.

He was always scanning his surroundings, ready to react.

He knew it wasn’t just about the hunt.

It was the way his brain had been wired, after all the years of needing to be ready—whether it was for survival or something worse.

It wasn’t paranoia, just the reality of a mind that had been trained for danger. He told himself.

He didn't see many people. He didn’t want to.

But the thing about always being on edge was that it left little room for rest.

At night, the memories clawed their way in—images he’d rather forget but couldn’t.

Sleep was shallow and rare.

Even when he managed to drift off, he was often jolted awake by some phantom noise or sensation.

And once he was up, it was hard to shake the feeling that something or someone was out there.

He’d get up, check the locks, sometimes even patrol the perimeter of his land just to make sure.

In the quiet of his cabin, with only the crackling of a fire or the hum of the wind for company,

Joel would pour himself a drink.

Whiskey, usually. Something to dull the noise in his head, to take the edge off the constant tension that never quite left him.

But he never drank too much. He couldn’t afford to. He needed to stay sharp, always ready—just in case.

His life wasn’t complicated, and he liked it that way. He didn’t need company or connection, not anymore.

He kept things simple: survival, routine, and the solitude of the Texas wilderness.

It asked nothing of him, and in return, he didn’t have to share the parts of himself he’d buried long ago.

· · ─────

Waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat had become part of his routine, and after tossing and turning for hours, Joel would get up, make coffee, and try to focus on the small tasks that anchored him.

The sun was just beginning to rise as Joel Miller pushed the key into the ignition of his truck, the familiar rumble beneath him a small comfort in an otherwise uneasy world.

He had always been an early riser, but lately, the habit had turned into more of a necessity.

Driving out into the quiet Texas morning was one of those tasks.

The roads were mostly empty, and Joel preferred it that way—less to watch for, less noise, fewer things to trust.

He liked things simple.

Routine. Predictable.

After everything, it was easier to stick to what he knew, to keep the world at arm's length.

It was safer.

His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles turning white as his eyes flicked from side to side, scanning the road ahead and the landscape around him.

There was no telling who or what could be out there, even in a sleepy Texas town.

He wasn’t stupid enough to let his guard down, not after everything he'd seen.

Trust was a currency he couldn’t afford to spend, not anymore.

He kept the radio off, preferring the silence. It gave him space to think, to process.

Most of the time, though, it just made him more aware of the quietness around him.

Every little creak or snap of a twig was magnified, every shadow cast by the rising sun something to take note of.

He didn't trust the peaceful exterior of the world anymore.

Too much could change in an instant.

It was exhausting, always being on edge like that, but Joel had learned to live with it.

He couldn’t imagine doing things any other way.

As he drove further down the road toward the camping&outdoor supply store, he caught a glimpse of something moving in the distance—a flicker of motion between the trees.

His heart quickened, and his foot instinctively lifted off the gas pedal.

He slowed down just enough to check the rearview mirror, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the tree line.

Nothing. It could’ve been an animal, but Joel’s mind didn’t let him settle on that.

Even when he convinced himself it was probably just wildlife, he remained alert, tension rippling through his muscles.

"Could be anything," he muttered under his breath, gripping the wheel tighter. "Ain't takin' chances."

The camping store was a bit of a drive, but Joel didn’t mind.

The solitude of the open road helped him clear his head, as much as his thoughts would let him, anyway.

Hunting was something he could still rely on.

He didn't need anyone else for it, and it gave him an excuse to get away from people.

He wasn’t much for conversation these days, always keeping interactions short and transactional.

He liked the supply store too; the guy who ran it knew not to ask too many questions, just handled the sale and let Joel be.

It suited him fine.

As the store came into view, Joel exhaled, his mind already running through what he needed to pick up.

The truck tires crunched against the gravel as he pulled into the lot, parking in a spot that allowed him a clear view of the entrance and the surrounding area.

Old habits.

Joel turned off the ignition and leaned back in the seat, taking a moment to observe the store.

His hand absentmindedly reached toward the glove compartment, where his gun was stashed, just in case. He didn’t need it often, but knowing it was there kept him grounded.

After a few seconds of scanning the area and feeling satisfied that nothing was amiss, he stepped out of the truck.

The supply store wasn’t busy, just a couple of people browsing inside.

As Joel stepped into the store, the familiar scent of leather and canvas greeted him. Country music hummed low in the background, and the quiet atmosphere brought him a sense of calm.

The simplicity of the place was something he appreciated—straightforward, nothing complicated.

Just the way he liked it.

His boots thudded softly on the wooden floor as he made his way toward the back, scanning the shelves for the hunting gear he needed. It was his routine, one he kept to himself.

The sudden crash jolted him like a gunshot.

Joel’s instincts took over, his body reacting before his mind caught up.

His hand flew to his side, fingers brushing the handle of the knife he always kept on him. His eyes darted around the store, scanning for threats, muscles coiled tight and ready.

He felt that old familiar rush of adrenaline—the kind that came from years of having to be on guard every second.

His heart pounded, the edges of his vision sharpening as he prepared for the worst.

But then, he saw her.

Just a girl. Bending over, trying to gather the gear she’d knocked to the floor. No threat. No danger. Just her.

Joel exhaled slowly, the tension easing out of his shoulders as the world settled back into place.

He let go of the knife, though his pulse still hammered in his ears. He hadn’t been expecting someone like her to trigger that reaction. Not here. Not now.

But for some reason, he couldn’t look away.

She was clumsy, but calm—no panic, no rush to fix what she’d done.

It was as if she was used to things slipping from her hands, not bothered in the slightest. That softness, that ease, it drew him in like nothing else had in a long time.

And even though the tension from the noise had faded, he found himself still rooted to the spot, watching her.

His eyes trailed over her, catching the way her long, soft looking, hair tumbled down her back, how her tender fingers fumbled with the items before her.

She was a mess of soft edges, and he hadn’t seen anything that soft in years.

He’s not used to that.

His world had become hard, sharp, filled with things that made sense, with people who didn’t get too close.

People like him, always on edge, always prepared.

She stood up, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, and for the first time, Joel saw her face.

Young. Too young. Early twenties, maybe.

Her cheeks were flushed a soft pink, her lips parted in what looked like mild embarrassment as she glanced around at the mess she had made.

But it was her eyes that hit him the hardest.

Doe eyed, wide, bright, completely unguarded.

So easy to read.

She looked right at him, her gaze catching his, and Joel’s breath hitched in his chest.

What was this girl doing? Looking at him like that?

She wasn’t supposed to look at him that way—not with that kind of openness, that kind of… trust.

Her blush deepened as her gaze flickered to the ground, but not before Joel saw it creep up her neck, warming her face.

She was blushing because of him.

When was the last time that happened?

“Oh! Sorry,” she said, her voice light, soft, but not the irritating kind of soft.

It was smooth in a way that made something settle in Joel’s chest. Normally, he hated small talk.

People’s voices grated on him. But hers didn’t.

Her voice wrapped around him, warm and gentle, and for reasons he couldn’t explain, Joel didn’t hate it.

“I didn’t see you there,” she continued, letting out a nervous laugh, her hands brushing against the fallen gear.

“I swear, I’m always knocking things over.” She smiled shyly, that blush still clinging to her cheeks, and Joel’s chest tightened again.

She was yapping—just rambling on in a way that would’ve made him turn his back on anyone else. But he couldn’t move.

He was locked in place, listening to her soft, musical voice as if it was something he hadn’t heard in years.

Maybe because it was. Maybe because no one ever talked to him like this anymore.

Most people avoided him.

They saw the hard set of his jaw, the cold glint in his eyes, and they stayed far, far away.

And that was just how he liked it. Less mess, less trouble.

But not her. She was still standing there, babbling about how clumsy she was, her voice a soft hum in his ears.

Joel felt something shift inside him, something he wasn’t sure he liked. He didn’t know her.

Shouldn’t care about her babbling, or the way her scent—something fresh and sweet—drifted toward him, making his head swim.

But here he was, standing there, drinking in her voice, her scent, like he hadn’t been around anyone like her in years.

Which, to be fair, he hadn’t.

Joel cleared his throat, forcing himself to speak, though his voice came out rougher than he’d intended. “Don’t worry ‘bout it,” he muttered, his words gruff, but his feet still rooted to the spot.

Her smile widened, and her eyes lit up.

The warmth in them caught him off guard. He wasn’t prepared for that.

“Thanks for not laughing at me,” she said with a small, bashful laugh, her fingers fiddling with the edge of her jacket. “Most people would’ve.”

Joel’s brow furrowed. “Why would I laugh?”

She shrugged, glancing at the gear still scattered on the floor. “I’m kind of a mess.”

Her words didn’t sit right with him. How could someone like her—someone so soft, so full of light—call herself a mess? He is a mess.

But before he could respond, she smiled again, her lips curving up in that sweet way that made his chest tighten all over again.

And that scent… God, he couldn’t place it, but it clung to her, swirling around him like a warm blanket.

His mind raced, cataloging every little detail about her.

Her soft pretty eyes. The way her smile made the corners of her eyes crinkle just a little. The way she smelled, like fresh air and something sweet. Vanilla?

He was reading her, studying her like he used to study his surroundings, picking up on every detail.

But none of it made sense. She didn’t make sense.

Normally, he’d be long gone by now. His thoughts already moving on.

But she was still talking, still smiling up at him, and instead of walking away, he just… stared.

She cleared her throat again, glancing down at her hands before looking back up at him.

“Do you work around here?” she asked, her voice a little softer now, a little shyer.

Joel blinked, realizing he hadn’t said a damn thing in what felt like minutes.

He shook his head. “Nah, just pickin’ up some things.” His voice sounded foreign to him—rough, cold, not at all the kind of tone that matched the warmth she was giving him.

But she didn’t seem bothered by it. Instead, she tilted her head slightly, her lips curving up in that smile again.

“Oh, cool. What are you picking up?”

Joel stared at her, unsure of why she was still talking to him, still smiling at him.

But he found himself answering her anyway. “Just some gear. Hunting stuff.”

Her eyes brightened, her smile widening even more. “Oh, hunting! That’s cool. I’ve never been, but I always thought it seemed kind of… peaceful, you know? Just you and nature.”

Peaceful? Joel had never thought of hunting as peaceful. Necessary, sure. But peaceful? Not in the way she was describing.

He grunted, not sure how to respond, but she just kept smiling, her voice still light, still soft.

“Oh, gosh,” she said, standing up with a bundle of fallen gear in her hands, a sheepish smile on her face. “I could never hurt an animal, though. I don’t know how people do it. Like, I get hunting and all, but... me? No way. I’d be useless out there.”

Joel’s brow furrowed, still caught between the sharp edge of his earlier reaction and the softness of her voice.

“Right,” he muttered, nodding slightly, feeling more awkward than he had in years.

“Well,” Joel grunted, his voice a little rougher than intended, “it ain’t about enjoyin’ it. It’s necessary. You do what you gotta do.”

And for the life of him, Joel couldn’t understand why he didn’t just walk away.

He should’ve. He should’ve grabbed what he needed and left.

But something about her—her scent, her smile, her softness—kept him rooted in place.

He wasn’t good at this. Talking. Interacting. Especially not with someone like her—someone who looked at him like he wasn’t something to be avoided.

But she was smiling at him, her eyes wide and innocent, like she wasn’t aware of how the world really worked.

Before he could say anything else, he saw her blush deepen, her fingers fidgeting with the hem of her jacket.

She was nervous, but not in the way people usually got around him.

She wasn’t scared. She wasn’t backing away.

She was blushing because of him.

Hm?

As the awkward silence stretched between them, Joel cleared his throat, the sound rough and abrupt.

He hadn’t realized how long he’d been standing there, just staring at her while she kept talking, her soft voice filling the space between them.

He needed to go.

This whole interaction had lasted far too long, longer than he was comfortable with.

His chest tightened with a mix of confusion and frustration, and he could feel the tension creeping into his limbs, urging him to move, to walk away.

She was still smiling at him, her eyes bright, completely unaware of the storm brewing inside him.

“Right,” Joel muttered, his voice gruffer than he intended.

“I should… get goin’.” He nodded awkwardly toward the hunting gear in his hand, using it as an excuse to leave.

Her smile faltered for just a second, her eyes flickering with a hint of confusion.

“Oh, sure! No problem,” she said quickly, her voice still sweet, but there was something softer in it now, like she wasn’t quite sure what she’d done wrong.

Joel could feel her eyes on him as he turned away, the tension in his shoulders growing with every step he took.

He forced himself to keep walking, not allowing himself to glance back, not letting himself think about the way her scent still lingered in the air around him.

As he pushed open the door of the shop, the cool air hit his face, a stark contrast to the warmth that had been building inside him.

He needed to get out of there. Now.

“Have a good day!” she called after him, her voice still light, still warm.

Joel didn’t respond.

He just kept walking, his boots heavy against the gravel as he made his way to his truck, his mind already trying to shove the whole interaction into the back of his mind.

It shouldn’t have affected him like that.

Joel climbed into his truck, the door creaking as it shut with a heavy thud.

The sun was setting, casting a golden light over the horizon, but his mind was somewhere else entirely.

His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles turning white as he sat there, staring straight ahead.

He let out a slow breath, trying to shake off the strange feeling that had settled deep in his chest.

That girl—he couldn’t get her out of his head. It didn’t make sense.

Her smile. The way her cheeks flushed when she looked at him.

The softness in her voice, the way she smelled—fresh, sweet, and somehow... so pure.

His brow furrowed as the memory tugged at him, gnawing at the edges of his mind like an itch he couldn’t scratch.

He hadn’t felt like this in years—hadn’t felt much of anything, to be honest.

And yet, there it was. Something stirring inside him, something he couldn’t ignore.

With a grunt, he turned the key in the ignition, the engine roaring to life.

He needed to get his mind straight, back to reality, back to the things that actually mattered.

Surviving.

Not some girl in a supply shop.

It couldn’t be because of her.

But as he shifted the truck into gear, his grip on the wheel tightened even more.

He couldn’t deny the physical reaction in his body—the tension building low in his gut, the heat rising through his chest.

Joel shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his breath catching for a moment.

He hadn’t even noticed it before, hadn’t allowed himself to.

But now, as he adjusted himself, the realization hit him with a force that nearly knocked the breath out of his lungs.

He was hard.

His heart pounded in his chest, the weight of it settling low in his gut.

How long had it been?

He couldn’t even remember the last time he felt like this, the last time his body reacted this way.

But it couldn’t be because of the girl in the shop, right?

“Jesus.” He clenched his jaw, the muscles in his neck tightening as he fought the urge to dwell on it. “There was no way.”

She was just a kid. I mean, a woman sure. But so young, soft, innocent.

Completely the opposite of everything he was—everything he’d become.

Joel’s grip on the steering wheel tightened even further, his mind racing.

This was wrong. He shouldn’t be thinking about her like this, shouldn’t be feeling this way.

But the more he tried to push it down, the more it rose to the surface.

Her voice, the way she’d blushed when she looked at him, the scent of her clinging to the air around her like a warmth he hadn’t known he needed.

Joel shifted again, trying to shake the thoughts from his head. He’d drive home, clear his mind, and forget about it.

Forget about her.

But as he drove down the empty road, the tension in his body only seemed to build. It had been years. Years since anyone, or anything, had made him feel like this.

And the truth gnawed at him, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

It was because of her.

· · ───────────𖥸──────────· ··

moodboard:

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New series incoming!! Thank you for the nice comments, they make me the most motivated to keep writing. :)

[hawkinasock]

haiii pls spill abt ur chimera yq ideas... i have my own (https://www.tumblr.com/waterfrontcomplex/758520749229277184/dunmeshi-chapter-37ep-17-spoilers-look?source=share)

i also drew my own idea of him (swallow + abundant deer)

Yes ofc!! I'm so happy that someone else has had this idea too, it has so much potential. I want to see all the chimera Yanqings.

Mine looks like this. I actually didn't have a design drawn out for him initially, so I had to whip something up quickly. That's why it took me so long to answer </3

Originally, he had a more swallow-based design.

I still really like it, but I changed the lore a lot, so I made the new one, the current au, which goes something like this:

(CW for blatant body horror, descriptions of digestion, as well as brief details regarding real world animal death)

Here's my idea. Like most aeons, Lan The Hunt has emanators that carry out their will. One of these emanator's is currently unnamed and without a solid design yet. It has an animalistic appearance in my head. Imagine Feixiao's inner beast, or the Mourning Aix from WuWa. That'll give you the best reference.

It travels the cosmos, tracking down and eliminating the Abundance. it does this with the use of extremely powerful olfactory cells. Even with galaxies separating them, the emanator can detect abominations through smell alone, and when it finds one, it will consume it to ensure it cannot possibly regenerate.

Suffice to say, it's very good at its job, and Yanqing, unfortunately, is not an exception to their heightened senses. Surprisingly to no one, Abundance Yanqing coexists with this au, and he is immediately recognized as an abomination when the emanator is in proximity of the Luofu. Yanqing is unaware of his status as an spawn of Yaoshi, so when the devourer of monsters (working title) visits the Luofu, he never would have expected it to turn its eyes onto him.

To say the Luofu is thrown into chaos when one of Lan's emanator's eats a Liuetenant of The Hunt is an understatement. The emanator insists no mistake has been made and it is justified through Lan's divine will. It actually shifts the blame onto Jing Yuan for assigning an abomination as his Lieutenant in the first place, citing incompetence on his part. Kind of a shitty thing to do after eating the man's son but okay...

Not long after, the emanator starts to... change. It begins experiencing sudden and visible signs of mara: bouts of aggression, delirium, and eventually flora and fungus sprouting from its flesh. It's incorrectly concluded that Yanqing's death was a result of early unset mara in the emanator, and Jing Yuan decides the emanator has to be killed via decapitation, such is their duty as followers of The Hunt.

You can probably guess where this is going.

So, you know how bones are capable of fusing together or into other objects during the healing process? Like that deer that was shot by an arrow and the ribcage actually fused itself with the arrow? That's essentially how chimera Yanqing is born.

As an abomination, Yanqing is capable of postmortem regeneration, and as an abomination that is particularly favored by Yaoshi (in my delusional mind) his regeneration capabilities far exceed that of the average denizen, and one this emanator's digestive system was not capable of overriding.

Much like how that deer bone fused with the arrow, Yanqing's body begins the process of fusing back together after partial consumption, and during that process, he inadvertently fuses with the emanator's body, which triggered those mara symptoms. Additionally, because there had also been remains of other denizens in the emanator's stomach, they were unintentionally included in the revitalization process. This, in the end, gave the chimera's body the claws of a Borisin, the wings of a Wingweaver, and the head of a human (his body structure is also the same as the Houyhnhnm, but that's obviously a coincidence on my part lol).

The flowers and mushrooms don't really serve any other purpose besides looking pretty and emphasizing his connection to the abundance - his power is so palpable that life is literally sprouting through his skin. I just think it's kinda neat.

Anyways, in terms of psychological aftereffects, Yanqing himself is still there. However, his sense of self is muddied and most of his memories suppressed. Because he's at the head, he's in control of his own movements and actions. Usually, he's completely docile, but in the face of people currently trying to kill him, he becomes confused and scared, and fights back in self-defense. He's also experiencing prolonged dysmorphia from his new form, which causes him greater confusion and even pain.

For Jing Yuan? I think everyone would agree he wouldn't want to kill Yanqing. He believes there's still a way to reverse Yanqing's affliction, even if the Ten Lords insist otherwise.

Currently I don't have an detailed outline of what happens next. My current ideas are similar to yours actually, where the disciples take an interest in Yanqing for whatever reason, be it desperation to stop the Luofu from killing him and seeing him as blessed by Yaoshi, what have you. It could honestly go a similar route as Dvalin's manipulation by the hands of the Abyss. If I were to give this au a happy ending, I could incorporate the Viscorpus' ability to shapeshift and have Yanqing hone that ability, allowing him to regain his human form.

That's all I have for what was meant to be a short, detailed summary </3 All these asks always end with me yapping, forgive me. I've had this au cooking in my head for so long now, and I'm glad I have an excuse to spurge about it now.

(p.s. pls make more of your chimera au, I would eat it up)

[hyukascampfire]

To: Someone From a Warm Climate

wc: 23.2k

genre: smut, angst, fantasy violence

pairings: faerie!taehyun x human!reader, faerie!yeonjun x human!reader

synopsis: a life lived as a human among the fae is one hard-earned. the folk are built of indescribable beauty, and of debauchery and mischief. for some, a life lived subservient to the folk is just fine; but to those who dream of something more, they would spend their lives clawing and biting to make it happen.

you, looking for a way to escape a life as a faerie’s human servant, put a new foot forward thinking that any life could be better than that. but, when your first assignment as a king’s spy is alongside a brooding, icy faerie man, you begin to wonder what your place in this foreign world really could be.

a/n: this part, i put my heart and soul into! i rewrote so many parts and agonized over following the path that i most wanted the story to go down—i hope it shows! xoxoxoxo, love ya! again, this is a long one, so pls let me know about spelling mistakes :,)

! warnings: angst, unprotected sex, voyeurism, orgasm denial, jealousy, angst again, dubious intentions of multiple main characters... poor mc has no idea who to believe

playlists: taehyun | yeonjun | series

prev | next

You had hoped that learning of Yeonjun’s relationship with the same crowd who have made attempts on your life would be enough to rattle your brittle heart into sense. You really had. As you watch Taehyun, bent over the war strategy table, though, you wish you had more time to sort it out in your head. You hate the thought of settling on half-baked answers and information all for the fact that time is not on your side. When had time ever really been kind to you, though? It had not made exceptions when you were small and innocent in your cradle, had not slowed down to allow you to at least cherish your final moments a normal child with her human parents. You can only fantasize who you would be if you had been given just enough time to know that gentle love. Even now, time makes your choices for you.  

Taehyun looks over those metal figurines as if searching for something in them. There are more of them stood and strewn out on the map. It reminds you how you are now faced with a plethora of newer, more powerful players.  

You miss when this had been a simple spying mission—when your path forward had been unobscured and clear. You envy that version of yourself: able to believe that bad things presented themselves as such. The world had been clean-cut. Evil had jagged teeth and foul breath, and good had soft edges and sweet smiles. You’re not sure where that distinction lies anymore.  

“How’s your shoulder?” you say, making your presence known. You’re sure he had been keen to your presence from the moment you’d entered the estate, though; not only thanks to his better hearing, but also because Taehyun is constantly assessing his surroundings. The smallest insect could hardly sneak up on him. You push off the doorframe and enter the room. 

He nods his head once in greeting, but he doesn’t tear his gaze away from the table’s ensemble. “It’s doing fine.” 

Sighing, you decide not to push it. The sight of that puncture had been ghastly, and it wreaks havoc in your belly every time you replay it, but the tick in his jaw when you mention it tells you enough of how he feels about disclosing whether or not anything might hurt him. How many times in the past few weeks had you forced him to do just that? It’s no wonder that the two of you butt heads so terribly. Allowing you to stitch him up must’ve been the extent of how far he’d let you see him in need of help. 

You gesture toward the table. “Have you decided when we leave?” 

Taehyun answers you with a strained sigh out through his nose: a testament to how he’d been mulling it over. He levies those figures a few more moments of his gaze as if they might speak an answer for him. They don’t. He concedes to their lack of direction and turns to you. “Every moment we spend here, we risk our identities further,” he starts, crossing his arms over his chest.  

You wince. He still believes that you’d at least contained some of your identity by taking out those three faeries. You know better. Even the bard in that tavern had known what had happened; it’s why Yeonjun ended up finding out in the first place. Even if not all of them had been a part of that rebellion, it’s reckless to assume that there were no more than that. 

Continuing, he says, “And judging by what we’ve picked up, we need to get it all back before the solstice.” He doesn’t pace as he thinks. Only the faraway look in his eyes betray the noise in his head. 

You hate the way it sounds like he’s going to demand that you leave immediately, and you hate how it sieges your tongue and makes it dance into a pitiful ploy to stay. To give yourself some credit, it’s better that Taehyun knows every bit of information you have. This moment is desperate for informed decisions. 

“I saw Yeonjun this morning,” you blurt. The words bubbled and bubbled behind your lips until they’d found the tipping point and spilled out. You’d agonized over what to make of it all for hours: that Yeonjun had been as deceitful with you as you’d been with him, that you are a sorry human girl that had wedged her way into the cross-firings of a war much beyond yourself, that you still have the gall to consider your own feelings despite its grandness... None of that worrying had led you to a conclusion that both your heart and mind would agree on.  

Taehyun’s gaze snaps to you, contained and remote aside from the twitching at the corners of his lips. The intensity of it makes you waver, but you have no time for wavering.  

“He’s... been made aware of our purpose here. He knows that we’re spies,” you say. As you watch him try to piece that together, you add, “He’s part of their rebellion.” 

Now he laughs, barbed and full of mock and disbelief. “The prince is rebelling against his father? He thinks he’ll find the throne like that? What’s his plan for when this falls through? For when his father hears of his mutiny? The prince will lose his head.” 

The thought makes you nauseous, despite how Yeonjun’s image has grown to be something murky. You don’t know what Yeonjun’s intentions are in aligning with the rebellion here. You hardly know anything about his relationship with his father and the High Court aside from the fact that he feels suffocated by his life back there. You’d assume that there’s a lot more to his reasoning, but you’ve learned your lesson about assuming that you know who people are. The inability to lie comes with the need for secrets. The thought that perhaps Yeonjun is only making a shady attempt for power crosses your mind, but either your own reasoning or your own stubbornness shoves it down. Nobody in faerie would hand their fealty to a prince who’d taken the throne of a long-standing king by those sorts of means. He’d be a king with no denizens to preside over. 

You interject Taehyun’s parade of scoffs. “He told me that war is coming, that it’s been coming.” 

His face drops, and he straightens up. “Of course it is. It’ll begin the moment we return with what we’ve found.” 

Your lips go a bit numb, and then your fingers follow. You know that this is your duty—it’d been this all along. It should come as no shock to you that he intends to relay this all to The King. But that was before you allowed your heart to make its home here. How simply he demands that you return to those lands with information that would kill Yeonjun... it has acid crawling a path up your throat. 

You make your best effort to ensure that your voice doesn’t falter as you speak. “He offered us protection as long as we stay here,” you say. “We don’t have to leave now.” You try to catch his gaze as you add, “We don’t have to leave at all.”  

You know that Yeonjun plays a part in the rebellion, but you don’t know how deep his devotion goes, and you also don’t know to what ends you can trust his intentions. How far do his loyalties to the rebellion go? And, where do his loyalties to you stand? The thought that he may have never loved you at all... it’s been a plague to your heart and mind from the very moment he’d revealed the truth to you this morning. Your guilt has chipped away at you without mercy—you’ve spent so many awful nights wishing you could unload your deceptions in front of him. How had it ended up so trivial in the grand scheme of things? How are you the one left feeling betrayed? 

You really, really cannot imagine having Yeonjun’s blood on your hands. He is one of them—a creature deception, and yet you still cannot shake those stolen nights from your bones. He had been your first. He’d made this place a home for you, where you had never had a home. It’s pitiful to search so deeply in someone else for your own strengths; even you can see that. Nevertheless, you do it. You suppose that a pair of warm arms and sweet words will do that to someone, no matter if you know that they could rot you like sweets do the tooth. It’s not unlike drunkards who find their day’s comfort in their drinks, even as it rots their body and mind away. Anything for a stretch of belonging and bliss. You're desperate for it. 

Taehyun’s sinewy words rattle your wandering mind back to reality. “He tells you that he is a member of the same group of people that have tried multiple times to kill you, and you believe him when he says he’s going to protect you? Still?” he spits, shaking his head. “What makes you so sure that he’s not just keeping us from running? That he isn’t handing us on a platter to his rebel friends? You’re going to get us fucking killed.” 

Blood roars like frothy-white rapids in your ears, warring with the echoes of his honey-glazed exclamations of love. To some capacity, he had to have meant those words. Faeries can’t lie, and he had said it so plainly. He loves you. 

“We can’t leave yet,” you say, stepping toward him on legs that you fear might collapse beneath you. “You said it yourself; we can’t return without the whole story. If we return now, we could be missing something.” You study the frosty set to his face and suck in a stabilizing breath. “Please, Taehyun. Please trust me on this.”  

You sound desperate and pleading, but you don’t reel it in at all. You are desperate and pleading. You have no intent of returning as some successful spy and continuing a life of deception and violence. It’s not who you are; it’ll never be who you are. Maybe this world tries to ask it of you, but you refuse to concede to it. 

“Part of our job is staying alive,” he says, his body rigid. He doesn’t like where you’re going with this, you can tell that much. 

“Is that what you want? To be a pawn of war? Isn’t that what we are if we bring this information back?” you challenge. “Don’t you think that if the prince of all people has turned against him, then serving at his hand is the wrong choice? I don’t know The King—I’ve never even seen him! Why should I be excited to serve him?” 

“The prince has more reason than anybody to want his father off his throne.” 

“That’s not what I’m saying,” you say, stepping further toward him. Though, it does make you revisit those thoughts. If vying for the crown is really Yeonjun’s intention, you suppose he’d have no problems pleading with you to stay in order to tie off loose ends. You wish you could see it all from somebody else’s untainted eyes. “What I’m saying is, do you want to be a spy? What has The King ever done for you to earn your loyalty?” 

Taehyun looks at you with disbelief, the corners of his mouth tilting down. “I don’t care about the damn king,” he snaps, and then gestures down at the table with all those figures. “The Queen operates on necessary evils. Where she can find a string to pull, she will pull it. My father was her general for a reason. Do you think she would keep him unless she approved of his violence? There is no good side to this war—just sides. If you’re suggesting that we stay here and try to forget that we came as spies, then you can forget it.” 

You glance over at the war table and wonder how you’ve become a moving piece in ancient faerie politics when all you’d set out for was a purpose. You’d been so warped by your bitterness with your upbringing that you’d failed to see how anything could be worse than that. You’d been so excited that you jumped willingly into dark water without knowing how deep it was, and now your feet can’t touch the ground. Is this the purpose you want? 

“Leave, then,” you say, stepping back. “You can leave. Just let me stay here. Please.” 

Something in Taehyun’s expression flips, so subtle that you can’t name it. It unsettles you, your hair standing on edge. There is something in his eyes that you do not like.  

“So, that’s it?” he says, his voice odd too. “That’s all it took for you to hand your future over on a leash to him?” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” you stammer. The only ones with a collar around your neck are the spies. They’re the ones who insisted on that geas—the ones who needed to compel you with their faerie magic.  

“It means that you got all the way here, uncovered a whole rebellion, and made a life for yourself, not handed to you by a prince, and you’re going to trade it in. It means that you’ve let him convince you that you are weak and need to be coddled.” 

Your fists curl tight and dig your nails into your palms. “I never wanted to be a spy,” you grit out. Yeonjun is not the reason you want to stay here. He may be part of it, but you’ve come to be utterly unwilling to return to that spy den like it’s your home, or something. It’s not. You’d slept there for one night. Beyond just your word and that geas, what reason do you have to return? 

“You didn’t? And yet, it’s what we are, isn’t it?” he says. “Do you think that I dreamed of being a spy? That I do it because I love it?” 

“Then, what do you do it for, Taehyun?” you say. “When will you begin living your life for you?” 

Taehyun seems to consider your words for a few long heartbeats, and then he seems to settle into something in his head. You allow yourself to let go of some of the tension in your shoulders as you watch his expression morph into something much less poisonous. 

You hadn’t expected him to react like that. 

“Do you have any weapons on you?” he says. 

Faltering, you sputter out, “What?” You look over the room. The last time you’d been in here, you’d sparred. Does he intend to properly fight you in here now? Had you pushed him too far? Shaking your head and feeling at all the places you usually tuck your blades away, you say, “No... I don’t.” 

“Get some. Where we’re about to go...” he trails off, as if reconsidering, but then he continues, “I’ll get you a hag stone.” 

You furrow your brows, not taking off to do so. “A hag stone?” you echo, thankful that he isn’t trying to duel you, but wary at the need for such a faerie ward. Hag stones are of the more serious class of wards used to protect humans from faerie enchantment or glamour. Most often, humans would string theirs up with a bit of thread through the hole of it and wear it around their necks as a pendant. Unlike turning one’s clothes inside out or taking red berries on your person, hag stones protect against the more devastating faerie magic. You shudder simply wondering what you might need a hag stone to protect yourself from. 

He nods a bit solemnly. “Kelpie do not let a meal or trick pass them by when they wait so long to have them.” 

You look at him with wild eyes, hoping to see him laugh or play his words off as a joke. He does not, but of course he doesn’t. Taehyun doesn’t waste his words on jokes. 

“Why... Why would we be going to a kelpie?” you ask him, laughing around the ball of fright in your chest. 

He lends you a wretched look. “I have old debts to call on.” 

❉

The forest in which Taehyun leads you is untamed. At some point, the sound of nature’s buzzing tapers off, and you know that you’ve entered a deeper forest than you ought to be sticking your nose in. When the forest goes silent, it’s only for one reason.  

You’d grown up here. Maybe you’d been born elsewhere, but that does not negate the fact that you had grown up scared every day of the powerful creatures that inhabit this world. Your fear has ruled you for your whole life, and you let it. You’d be a fool not to. It’s how you survive in this world. Your limbs tremble; they plead with you to listen to everything you’ve ever known—do not mess with what is bigger than you.  

You step around frost-capped puddles and dance between briars, careful not to snag yourself on their claws. It unsettles you further that this part of the forest is so untrodden and overgrown. With no folk coming through, you fear how the kelpie might behave when you make an audience before it. Will it climb straight from its frosty swamp and drag you back down with it? Is the hag stone you clutch at your chest enough to keep you safe? 

“I don’t understand why we’re doing this, Taehyun,” you say, delicately avoiding any tumbles as you speed up to gauge his feelings by his face. You’re not fond of the remote blankness in his eyes, nor the staunch determined set to his jaw. “That thing might kill us, and your shoulder is hurt. You shouldn’t be out here; you should be letting it heal.” 

“I know my limits,” he says. 

Grimacing, you return his curt tone. “Taehyun.” You grab at the material of his sleeve with urgency. When he stops to look at you, you continue. “I want you to actually listen to me. You’re being unreasonable. Yeonjun said he’d use his pull to protect us. Both of us. We have no reason to be out here, you’re just putting us in danger.” 

He lets your words stew in the air for a moment before saying, “I’m the one putting us in danger? Me?” He scoffs. “We are about as safe dealing with a kelpie as we are living off his promises. I’m doing what’s best for us. Trust me.” 

You’re winded by his choice of words. You’ve become wary of dealing out your trust so frivolously. Those two words ring alarm bells. 

“But where is this coming from? You didn’t want to stay.” Your breath furls out in a plume of white smoke in front of your face as you speak.  

He looks as if he doesn’t want to answer that. It only makes you more apprehensive. Your limbs fill with lead, planting you where you stand. “Taehyun, I’m scared,” you say. “Isn’t finding help from a solitary faerie a bit too far? How is trusting Yeonjun any more dangerous than that?” 

Taehyun steps toward you. “He is going to kill us. It’s not if, it’s when. That bastard is going to hurt you. This... This is for us. We are self-sufficient; we don’t need his protection shit.” A bitter tang colors his words. “I know that you’re scared. I won’t let it hurt you; I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise that you’ll be okay. You want to stay, don’t you?” 

You nod. You would even make deals with a kelpie for it.  

“Okay, then, let’s go,” he says, taking off with those words, effectively punctuating the conversation.  

You follow him. 

You grow more anxious the deeper you trudge into the forest without any consolation as the daylight begins creeping away. Following behind Taehyun, the wind whips at the perfect angle so that his form takes most of its terror, allowing you a respite from at least some of the brutal cold. You don’t feel any remorse using him as a shield against the elements—frost runs through his veins. He doesn’t shiver or wince at it. 

Taehyun stops a few feet before a wintry mire framed by crystallized cattails and reeds. Your heart stutters as he looks around to ensure that this is the right spot. The water is dark and deep. You stay a healthy distance away from it. You do not want to find out just how deep it is. 

“Where is it?” you say, keeping your voice low as if the beast might lunge from the water and snatch you up if you don’t. 

Taehyun surveys the forest surrounding you and then the body of water as he always does, and when he looks to you, you already know he’s calculated and planned. He doesn’t face a situation without thought—that notion soothes you, even if it’s to the slightest degree.  

“It won’t come until I call it,” he says, gesturing at those murky and horrible watery depths. Swallowing hard, you consider how close you stand to it. You take a shuffled step back. “When you see it, you need to stay calm. Don’t let it see your fear. It’ll find it amusing and latch onto you. Do you understand?” 

A rush of heavy dread spreads from your core and seizes your lungs at his words. You’ve made it this far. You want to stay. You want to stay, bad. If this thing outsmarts you, you will not go down without swinging this time. You have your daggers, and you know how to wield them. Bravery is most of the battle, isn’t it? 

You muster a nod, trying to give yourself a brave heart, but Taehyun shakes his head. Your eyes must betray how stricken you are. “Do you understand?” he repeats, his voice sharp and grave. 

“I do.” 

He accepts your words, pressing on. “It will try to trip you over your words and spin you into a trap with tricky words. Do not entertain it, even as it tries, okay?” 

You’ve been terrorized by faerie tricks your whole life. You can handle their schemes just fine. “Okay.” 

Taehyun frees a blade from its hiding place and brings it to his palm. He slides it there, slicing it open. Crimson creeps from the slit, running in between his fingers and trickling onto the snow. He’d cut pretty deep. 

“Why are you—Taehyun?” you say, stepping toward him as he curls his wounded hand into a fist over the water, shaking it so as to let the droplets down into the black water. You regret those steps you’d made toward him as something comes crashing through the surface. 

No, rather than emerging from under the surface, the beast is born from the water, manifesting from it as something gangly and wretched. From its pointed ears to its hooves, it pushes up from nothingness until it is standing there, real and terrible before you. Its skin glistens with a thickness like oil and its hair and tail hang in heavy, seaweed-like tendrils, plastered against its body. The scum floating on top of the water clung to its hair and pelt as it rose, twigs and the like poking from its withered body. A bridle cages its head, leather reins dangling down. Of all its awful things, you believe that its eyes are the worst—bone-white and piercing, they send a terror down your spine that solidifies in your bones. You know you will not soon forget the ancient soullessness that lives there. The folk do sometimes resemble the places in which they hail from; you suppose that the kelpie bares striking resemblance to the swirling water that sits at its feet. 

You try not to choke or gasp or react in any way at all, but it isn’t easy. You focus your adrenaline on keeping your breathing as even as you can manage. 

“It has been a long time since I’ve found a human at my doorstep,” the creature says, steam blowing from its nostrils as it snorts. How long might a long time mean to a faerie, especially one you know is so ancient? You hope that your presence does not intrigue the beast at all. 

Taehyun swoops in before you can speak, and you are boundlessly thankful for it. “I’ve come to call on the debt you owe me,” he says. He doesn’t leave any room for any familiarity or playfulness. 

“Is it that time?” the kelpie says, placing one hoof down onto the snow. It had looked so incorporeal and liquid that you half expect it to burst and turn to water as it does, but it climbs out just fine. Very real.  

Taehyun eyes the kelpie as it makes land, dribbling with water and its kelp hair swinging. You swallow hard as it disregards his presence to observe you. You’re used to the folk disregarding you, not this. How many years had you yearned for their attention? Right now, you scare under it.  

“For what do you need my help, boy?” it says, voice gurgled, “And why do you bring this human along? Is it for her? Or, rather, have you brought her as your peace offering?” 

Your legs tremble beneath you.  

“I don’t owe you any peace offering, kelpie,” Taehyun says, his head held righteously high. “You’ll offer me what I ask, or you’ll suffer for it.” 

Shifting under the tense atmosphere, you still don’t speak. In Faerie, debt is law. The folk live by a law that is, like many other things about them, foreign to you. Whatever natural laws by which they govern themselves are vastly lost on you—but of keeping promises and respecting debts, you are very aware. They hate to be indebted—you’re sure it’s why this kelpie is so peevish. You hope that the folk’s need to balance their debts is enough to keep it hospitable.  

The kelpie makes a rumbling and throaty sound that mimics that of a laugh. It rumbles the ground below your feet. “Just as rigid as the last time we met like this,” it says. “I wonder if it's because you’ve inherited your father’s stone heart, or because you fear me?” 

The kelpie remains playful with its intonation, but tension lies thick and dangerous beneath both of their words. You know well enough that the beast is not being light-hearted.  

Taehyun holds his face firm. He refuses to give an inch. “Do not try that with me. You have your word to upkeep for my help.” 

Shimmering under the moon’s light now, the beast treats us with a long moment of hostile silence. You can feel its malintent despite how hollow those eyes remain.  

“What do you ask of me?” it finally says, whipping its drooping tail behind it. 

“There is a rebellion here,” starts Taehyun, shoulders relaxing to the slightest degree as the kelpie defers, “The north is uneasy. I’m optimistic that you’ll lend us your protection and hand, whenever I call on it. Regardless of it being in my interest, I’m sure that you aim to keep your lands peaceful, no?” 

“Rebellion? For what would anything of the courts be in my interest? Of their rebellion or even just their ridiculousness, I do not care. I’ve left your gentry to you, leave me to mine.” 

Taehyun’s nostrils flare. “I’m not asking you to care about the courts, I’m asking you to lend me your help when I ask of it,” he grits out, “Or, rather, I’m not asking. I am informing you that I am expecting you to uphold your debt to me, and you’d better be ready to do so. This is just courtesy.” 

You feel the kelpie’s offense in the hollow quiet that follows Taehyun’s demands. Among many things, the fae are prideful creatures. Your stomach is in terrible knots. Taehyun is just trying to regain the power in the situation. You know that. It doesn’t make you any less scared for your life. With an ancient creature like a kelpie, it is paramount to earn its respect, or else it will push you around. 

Worse than that. It will drag you down into its waters and make your soul into a meal. 

“It’s a pity you think that hag stone will save you from me, human.” The kelpie turns its attention back on you. You bade your knees not to crumple. “It takes much more than that to protect you in places like these. Perhaps you’ll be safe from petty enchantment, though.”  

Taehyun shoves his words in before you can give the kelpie any sort of reaction. Not even a tremble. “Understood?” 

“You’ve made deals with our kind before. The magic reeks on you. It’s lousy enchantment, I could dissolve that geas for you. All you’d have to do is climb up on my back, and I’d grant you your freedom.”  

You can’t help but perk up. The prospect of ridding yourself of the geas placed over you is a painfully delicious one. 

Bristling, Taehyun steps between you and the kelpie. Whether he does it to fight off the beast should it lunge at you or to prevent you from approaching it, you’re unsure. “Do not,” he says. 

“Wasn’t going to.” You say it, and of course it’s true. The kelpie is poking around to see what will most entice you. Regardless, you can’t deny how awfully you wish that geas were gone. It’s the one thing that you fear will tether you to The King’s bidding. No matter how you armor yourselves from the rebellion here in the north, what’s to stop the spies from tugging on the enchanted leash? One command from Cricket, and your body would betray you and walk the whole way there itself. 

Though you don’t verbalize your interest, the kelpie no doubt sees the interest alight in your eyes. It pounces accordingly. “Unless you’d prefer that I give you a whole other enchantment. Protection against any of our kind’s glamours? Permanant true sight? A touch to my pelt would be all it would take for you to make yourself free.” 

Taehyun clicks just the hilt of his sword free from the sheathe. “Stop with the tricks. You can find your fun elsewhere.” 

Like the swampish water behind it, the kelpie stands there totally still, studying Taehyun. You really wish this altercation could wrap up at any pace faster than it currently is. You’re itching to escape those white eyes. They’re much more intimidating as night settles in. What sort of thing had Taehyun even done to indebt a creature like this to him? Once again, you’re left confronting how little you know of him and his past. By the time you’ve come to terms with the last thing, the next arrives to remind you that the folk lead much longer lives than you do. 

It finally speaks again. “Why have you brought this human with you, Lord?” Its furls out the term like a weapon. This bitter intonation that you’ve seen be used multiple times to speak of Taehyun’s title sticks with you. The title is a taunt. In this case, the you know it comes from the kelpie’s place of utter indifference and lack of obeisances toward whatever sovereignty the Courts may claim. The kelpie only answers to the land.  

“Because I needed you to know that your protection will extend to her. Know her face, learn it so that when I call on you, you’ll play your part correctly.” 

“I fail to see why you dote over her safety. Who is the human to you?” The kelpie takes a step forward, its powerful muscles rippling with the moon’s white light on its ink pelt. You mirror it with a step back. Taehyun stays put. “I owe her no help. That’s not how this works. I concede that I am bound to your help, but I do not repay double. You overestimate my generosity.” 

You watch as Taehyun takes on a posture that you’ve come to recognize as his offensive posture, potent adrenaline twisting up your stomach and sending your heart into a fit so fierce that you feel it in all your pulse points. You’re sure that swords are a laughable matter to the kelpie. Iron, though, you’re sure would still burn. Turning your hands to fists, you make a conscious effort not to find your iron weapons. If the kelpie were to see that, it may escalate things. You do not want to escalate.  

It’s only smart for you to consider your disadvantages: Taehyun is wounded. He had literally been struck by an arrow last night. You’re so far into the woods that running would consist of stumbling over roots and avoiding thorny bushes. Taehyun might know them, but you’re fully unfamiliar with a kelpie’s weaknesses, or if they even have any at all. You’re better off appeasing the beast.  

“Taehyun,” you warn. 

He pays it no mind. “I said,” he snarls, “stop with the tricks. You owe your very ability to draw breath to me, and beyond that. It was my neck on the line to grant you that. What I did for you was worth many debts. If you want to settle it all to even, you’ll do it. Don’t play this like a fool.” He doesn’t address the kelpie’s first question. 

Taehyun creeps toward the kelpie. You’re not sure where he sources all that fearlessness from inside himself. He’s way too close for your comfort. “What are you doing?” you hiss, quiet and meant for just him. There is no way he intends to fight this thing right now. You’d prefer taking the risk of trusting Yeonjun’s word over this any day. 

“Even the general”—the kelpie spits that word with a similar distaste as he had Taehyun’s title—“knew when he was in over his head. Ask a more respectable payment of me.” 

You suck in a breath. “Let’s just go,” you tell Taehyun. “We don’t need to do this; we didn’t need to in the first place.”  

As Taehyun takes one last step toward the kelpie, he reaches a sword’s distance from it.  

Really? Is this happening right now? 

“I’m giving you grace right now, kelpie,” he says, his voice pure warning, “My father is the one who landed you like that. It’s humorous that you’d even speak of him while we’re sorting out the debts that you incurred because of him. I suggest that you give up the sly act.” 

Once again, a charged and meaningful pause rings throughout the forest. The silence speaks volumes of how the kelpie takes his words.  

It’s a flash of movement, the two dark figures like blurs as Taehyun’s hand flies out to grab a hold of the reins that hang from its head and the kelpie rears back with a bone-piercing, harrowing whinny. He braces himself on its side and uses its flank to push off of. The creature bucks fast, but Taehyun is faster.  

The rage that it bellows with guts you. The forest ground trembles with its frantic clambering, hooves battering the snow.  

The kelpie’s frenzy ends as Taehyun takes the reins in both hands. It doesn’t make any more attempts to send him off, nor does it stumble about wildly. It settles. The kelpie bows its head. Your hands cover your mouth. They’re ready to muffle your scream. You wait for Taehyun to become one with the beast’s figure and for it to drag him down to the depths of its water that don’t see the sun’s light. Nothing happens. Instead, he slips off the back of the kelpie without any trouble, landing with a thud back on the ground.  

“Fix your appearance,” Taehyun commands.  

You allow a sound of surprise to slip as the beast melts down, shedding water to the ground and crumpling over. You watch it shrink all the way down until, where once the gangly beast had stood, the form of a faerie man stands. He unfurls from the forest floor to his full height, taller than Taehyun and reedy in his limbs. His hair cascades down from his head in shaggy, damp brown locks with twigs and leaves tangled in. Sharp faerie ears protrude from it. It confirms to you that this is just another form of the kelpie, not someone else entirely. 

“You’re a fool,” the man says, turning on Taehyun with wild eyes.  

You join his confrontation on Taehyun. “What the hell is going on?” you say. You’re still jittery with the urge to run. 

Taehyun entertains only you, saying, “I hoped that he’d just make things easy in the first place.” 

The man, dripping with water from his tattered, sopping rags for clothes, sneers. “I would not serve you if you fucking killed me. Of course you had to take my bridle.” 

You give Taehyun an expectant look. You’re in dire need of being filled in. 

“His bridle,” he says, grabbing the reins that still hang from the man’s face even in his human form and tugging him into a walk into the forest, “I grabbed it. He serves me, now. He can hate it all he wants, but he’ll do what I ask.” 

The thought makes you deeply uncomfortable, but you can’t pin exactly why. It lives somewhere around the place inside you that loathed the way the folk made your kind into their glamoured servants.  

“We’re just going to bring him back with us?” You trail them tentatively back through the woods that you had arrived from. “Like a prisoner, or something?” 

“Exactly like a prisoner,” the man says, excited to get a hit in on Taehyun. Of course, he’s unhappy.  

He stumbles as Taehyun tugs him forward by his bridle. “Shut your mouth,” Taehyun says. It’s more commanding than angry. “What’s your name?” he asks him.  

The man looks as though he wants to deny him that knowledge. Names are a powerful thing to a faerie. They spend their lives hiding them away—to give away their real name would make them totally vulnerable to the whims of whoever knows and uses it. However, you assume that whatever hold Taehyun has over him now works in a similar way, and his lips move despite his revolt.  

“Beomgyu,” he answers, eyes full of bite. 

You climb between a pair of close-resting, gnarled trees. “Does he have to keep that thing on, Taehyun?” you say, struggling with the sight of him being dragged along. It’s unsettling. “Like, does it work without that?” 

Stopping, Taehyun reaches up to pull the bridle off and around from Beomgyu’s head. He lets it fall to the snow. “You can use his name if you need to command him and I’m not around. He’ll have to do what you say.” Pushing Beomgyu into a walk, he says, “You’re going to protect us if in any case we need it. That includes her. You’re going to stay within my estate, unless one of us brings you somewhere. You won’t try your hand at any escape, and you won’t make any attempts to harm us either directly or by omitting something you are aware will do so.” 

You rub your hands together to generate heat as he lists his commands. Why would he even need those precautions, if Beomgyu is supposed to be his compulsory servant now? Would that not mean that he’d be unable to harm him? Either Taehyun is being extra precautious, or the command he has over him is weaker than you had thought at first. Beomgyu scowls the whole way through. Perhaps if Taehyun had not spoken those exact words, he would have lunged at him. 

As the kelpie stalls, Taehyun urges him forward once again with a shove. “Walk,” he snaps. “You did this to yourself. If you’d been a respectable man, I’d have only asked for your help when we needed. Now, you’re following us everywhere.” He allows him to stew on that for a little before saying, “You do your job well and I’ll let you return to your waters. I’ll forget I even made you my servant, and you’ll live knowing you’re no longer in my debt. You’ll not have to worry that someone might tame you again, because I already had, and I won’t even utilize it. We’ll never even make each other’s acquaintance again. You’ll be free to toil in your forest, and I will stay far away. All I need is for you to keep us alive and unharmed.” 

At least he doesn’t intend to keep him forever as an eternal servant. Most faeries that fall into debts work their long lives as living servants. Your years as Nut-hatch's worker taught you how that life whittles your soul down. Hundreds of years of just that is unfathomable. Maybe that is the cost of betraying honor here, though.

“So be it,” Beomgyu says, teeth gritted.  

You continue to trudge through the forest behind them. 

❉

Once you’re within the walls of the estate and Beomgyu is given a place to stay, you turn to Taehyun. “What part of that was safer than trusting Yeonjun?” you say.  

His eyes drop closed and he sighs. “It was worlds safer,” he grits out. “I knew what I was doing. You had that hag stone, and I’d have cut him down if he tried anything.” 

He stretches out his shoulders, shifting them uncomfortably under the fabric of his tunic. You know that his sewn-up wound bothers him. Could it be getting infected? You hope not—an infection this early on would most definitely mean it would be a nasty one. If only he weren’t insistent on pretending that it’s nothing. “I don’t think you could”—you gesture at your own shoulder—“you’re going to infect your shoulder. I don’t know how to treat an infected wound that big.” 

“I wouldn’t have even gone there if I thought I couldn’t handle it. I had a plan. I can protect us just fine.” 

Us. You’ve been wondering what your purpose here might become once you abandon returning to your duties. Would you be staying with Yeonjun? If he betrays you, and Taehyun were to push you out now that you’re no longer partners in duty, where would you go? Crawl to the doorstep of some random faerie to place yourself in their services, just to find yourself a warm place to stay? Taehyun now makes it clear that he still sees the two of you as a pair, but why? You still can’t understand why he’d suddenly switched up the moment you said you’d stay here even if he left. Realistically, he should’ve killed you for being a traitor to the king that he serves. You know that his intentions are more complex than that, but you fail to grasp where they lie. His actions and his words clash.  

“And when Yeonjun doesn’t betray us? What will all of this be for?” 

“This doesn’t stop at the prince,” he says, “there are more players than just him and The Queen. Any one of them could determine that we’re liabilities. Don’t you think that we should prepare for that? We came here as spies infiltrating their court from the very king that they rebel against; of course they’ll have plans for us. 

“It’s still best that you stay your distance from the prince from this point on, regardless, unless you bring the kelpie.” 

Your mouth drops open, brows pinching. You don’t like the thought of being chaperoned at all. If Yeonjun is to betray you, then it’ll be your own fault. You can take the consequences of your actions just fine. “I think I can make that decision for myself,” you say, voice low. “And I can protect myself, too. Are you saying my skills aren’t up to your standards? Well, I didn’t spend that time working on them for nothing, and I don’t plan on stopping. I know I’m not perfect, but I think I can at least use a dagger adequately, no?” 

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Taehyun says, eyes flat with frustration. “You can protect yourself well. I know that. What I mean is that you shouldn’t rest your life on his integrity. I have no doubts that you’d be able to protect yourself from him alone. He’s delicate. The King doesn’t pamper his children, but I have no doubt that the prince hasn’t wielded a sword anywhere other than in sparring. But you don’t know if you’ll ever truly be alone, and you don’t know whether or not he’s setting you up. I think you can at least agree that it’s best that you can acknowledge that and behave accordingly, no?” 

“I rested my life on your integrity today. Am I supposed to trust you blindly, too? What if you’re just stringing me along until you kill me for my treason to The King? You were his spy, no? How many years did you serve him? Why have you given it up so easily? Why are you staying here? None of it makes sense to me, but I still trusted you. Was I wrong for that? Are you a liar, Taehyun? Does your tongue tell lies?” 

His eyes crystallize, a few degrees colder than you’d seen them all day. “I can lie,” he says. “But would I have done what I did today if I intended to kill you? It’s time that you see that actions tell you so much more than words ever will.” 

Again, he treads around your questions about his intentions. “Why are you staying here?” you repeat, studying him with your suspicion.  

He’s quiet. 

“Answer me,” you demand. 

“Is this not my home?” he says. 

Unsatisfied, you press more. “I thought you hated this place. Why would you want to stay here? Don’t you have an awful reputation here?” 

His eyebrows shoot up, but his face stays hauntingly blank. You’re used to his blank mask, but this feels different. “If you think that I left here because of my reputation, then you’ve fooled yourself.” He begins making for his quarters. “I have obligations to fulfilling my father’s role as Lord of this estate,” he says before turning and ending the conversation on his terms. 

That leaves you just as confused. If he cared about his responsibilities here, he would’ve never left them in the first place to become a spy under The King. It makes no sense. Whether or not it’s true, you’re positive that you aren’t getting the whole story. You sigh and drag your feet bed-bound. You hope to never have another day as unending as today again. 

❉

You dodge Beomgyu for the entirety of the day, not sure what to make of a new presence around the estate, even if it’s an indebted servant beast of a presence. You’d half expected Taehyun to rope him up in the horse stalls outside, making that his permanent residence, but he’d given Beomgyu a place somewhere in the servant’s quarters. You’re glad of it—you may be wary of him, but you don’t wish anything like that for him. Now that he has a more human form, you find yourself able to empathize with him more than you were when he was a hulking, killer water horse. He doesn’t necessarily run around much—without a doubt because he’s not the happiest about being forced into Taehyun’s servitude. You don’t blame him. 

Despite your efforts, he enters the kitchens while you’re alternating between chomping on a slice of bread and a platter of dates. He eyes you. Though in this form his eyes are not as piercing, they’re still heavy.  

You offer him a slice of the bread and push the platter toward him. “Hungry?” 

He shakes his head. “I don’t eat the way you do.” 

Then why’d he come to the kitchens? Either he’s exploring, or he came looking for you. “Not even like this?” you ask, gesturing down to his form. 

“I eat when someone is foolish enough to come to my waters,” he says. “I thought I’d be eating yesterday, but the Lord subverted those plans, didn’t he?” 

You laugh a bit, though it’s absurd to laugh about being eaten with the same creature that had intended to do so.  

“I sometimes go for more years than the entire span of your human life without eating,” he says, tilting his head to one side. Shaggy locks of hair follow his head with it. It’s unkempt and in dire need of a washing to rid it of dirt. 

You gesture at his dirt-smudged cheek. “Do you want to clean up? I’m sure Taehyun has some clothes to spare for you. There are some pretty nice bathing quarters, here, too. The kind that makes you reluctant to get out.” 

A wry smile cracks across his face, a bit feral like the rest of him. “I’m not afraid of some dirt. These are my clothes. I’d go naked before dressing myself in his.” 

“Okay, then,” you snort, shrugging. “No baths.” You rip a bite out of the wrinkled fruit in your hand. “How did you even end up... in debt to Taehyun?” you ask, eager to fill yourself in. If Taehyun insists on not telling you anything, you’ll find it in other places. You’d picked up that it had something to do with his father, but you need to know more. The more you’re able to piece together, the better you’ll be able to make sense of Taehyun’s behaviors. You hope so, at least. He holds is truths very close to himself, and almost everybody else seems to harbor a poignant distaste for him. 

Beomgyu’s face sours up again. “I had a dispute with his father. The General was going to raze my forest and kill each one of us. I’d called on him and asked for his help. I’m not sure what he did, but The General never came. If I knew it’d land me like this, though...” He grimaces. “I’d have just let him make me history.” 

Reigning in the laugh that bubbles in your chest at his resentment, because you’re positive that you finding humor in his misfortunes would ruffle him, you nod and pocket that information. “Then, why didn’t you just agree to help when he tried to collect your debt in the first place?” 

“I was going to,” he snaps. “He’s just a prideful creature. No patience. If he’d waited a few moments, I’d have agreed.” 

Humming, you don’t tell him that he’s definitely the one who wound himself up like this. Taehyun had made it clear multiple times that Beomgyu needed to stop playing around.  

Taehyun’s voice comes from the doorway, cutting into the conversation with its matter-of-factness. “Speaking bad on my name while I’m away, kelpie? Should I amend your list of commands to include watch your mouth?” His tone is bare and humorless. 

Beomgyu bristles beside you, about to rebut him before you spy the weapon at Taehyun’s hip and interrupt before they can come to verbal blows. “Where are you going?” 

Taehyun rips his icy gaze from Beomgyu to you. “To Court,” he answers, plain and as if it were obvious. 

Furrowing your brows, you say, “Court? Why didn’t you tell me we’re going? I don’t want to get ready in a rush.” Your mind turns. You weren’t even sure what you’d be doing now that you’re no longer here as spies. There’s no need to infiltrate Court, now. Would you just be attending as revelers? Not to mention that Yeonjun no doubt has no clue that you’re even staying. You hadn’t seen him since you’d ran to him yesterday morning and had your world thrown for a loop as he revealed his truth. How had so much happened in one day?  

His mouth hardens. “You’re not attending with me,” he says, knuckles turning white over the pommel of his sword. “You’ll stay here with him today.” 

Your heart thrums in your chest; not with fear like it had been doing so much over the span of the last few days, but with anger. “What?” you say, voice strained with shock. “No. I’m getting ready; wait for me, or don’t. I don’t care.” You spin on your heels to do just that, gritting your teeth. He thinks he can tell you what to do? Is that it? You don’t care what he’s done for you, or what power he thinks he has over you because of it. You’d left your life of taking commands behind for a reason. This was supposed to be new beginnings, not just your past life under a new skin. 

He catches your upper arm frantically. Whipping your head to him, you rip yourself away from him and back off. “I said, no!” you say, lips twitching into a heavily emotional scowl. It’s not just that he’s telling you to stay back today. You know that what he’s doing is much bigger than that. It sends memories of a life in a seamstress’ cottage flooding back. You struggle to keep your head afloat, to keep yourself from drowning in it, but they’re old and deep wounds. 

“Oh, look at that,” Beomgyu croons. “You are just like him. Except, your father was a general, so at least he had some reason to believe that folk would obey him. You? Not so much.” 

Taehyun’s head snaps to him. He barks a command. “Leave.” 

His eyes flash and he reels against it, but Beomgyu’s body moves against his own will. There’s a spark of ravenous hate smeared across his lips and in the glare he gives Taehyun as he leaves. 

“So, you’re just going to hand out commands and expect them to be followed now, huh? Because you’re suddenly just... taking up this role as Lord? Well, you’re not my Lord. You’re not his, either.” 

He crosses his arms over his chest. “Stop that.” 

Laughing a bitter laugh, you spit, “Stop what? Oh, I’m sorry. I should just obey you like a good human does, huh? ‘Cause that’s what we’re for, right? My bad, I’ll get a head start on working around the estate—what would you like for dinner, my lord? Or, do you need me to press your clothes?” Your words are angry, but you choke toward the end around the lump of emotion in the back of your throat. 

He takes both your arms into his hands, his brow furrowed hard. “Stop it,” he snarls. “Stop it, damn it. Don’t do that. You’re not a servant here. Don’t you try to cry to me, I expect better than this from you. That’s not it at all.” 

You shove back on his chest, putting some distance between you. “I’m not crying,” you say. “And, so what if I was? There’s nothing wrong with it. I think it’d do you a little good to cry some time.” 

“It’s weak,” he says. “Pitying yourself just ends up making you a fool. If you just sit around and wallow, you’ll just stay where you are. The only thing you can do is act.”  

That sounds about right coming from his lips. “Is that what your father taught you?” you ask. “Well, he was wrong. You can cry and try and take care of things at the same time.” 

“I’m just asking you to stay back today,” he says. 

“Why?” you say, throwing your hands up in exasperation. “Tell me why? It’s not like we’re spying around or have some sort of mission to keep secret. Why can’t I just go enjoy it like that for once?” 

“Can you just do this for me?” Taehyun says, jaw tight. “I just need you to stay.” 

You’ve become sick of him not telling you things. Being in the dark never feels good, but it especially feels like shaky ground now. If he thinks you’ll be attacked, so what? You’re the one who wanted to stay here. Let you come. You’re better off being attacked as a group of three than he would be by himself, no? 

You decide to lean into his own concerns to appeal. “What if they’re waiting for you? Wouldn’t it be better that Beomgyu and I are there? Isn’t that why you did that whole thing yesterday?” 

He shakes his head. “If they are, then it’ll be easier for me to slip out if it’s just me.” 

Crossing your arms over your chest, you determine by the solemn lines to his face that he’s not going to give. “Fine,” you say. “I’ll stay here today. If it’s so necessary, I’ll stay here. Do you want me to stay inside the estate, too? Could I go see Yeonjun?” 

“I’d prefer that you stay here,” he says, slow and measured and veiling tension. 

You shake your head, pairing it with a tired laugh. “Yeah, right, I forgot. He’s a threat too. Well, you have fun then.” Turning and departing from the kitchens, you leave behind your bread and dates. So much for lunch. 

❉

Reaffirming Taehyun’s ability to lie, it was not just that one day. The next day, Taehyun slipped out for Court, sword on hip and pleading with you to stay in the estate on the terms that he believes they still might have an attack planned for you. It turned into a week that you were cooped up in the estate, and then two. The same walls you’d once looked at in wonder for their beauty became the ones you stared at mindlessly during the most boring of hours. 

You spend most of your time listening to Beomgyu drone on and on about the ways he’d tricked faeries and humans. He’s quite odd, but it’s not like you can blame him for it—most of the folk are odd to you, and he’s an ancient beast among them. You feel like that warrants a spunky personality like his. He’s nice company, anyway. Such a long life lends you an impressive wealth of stories. 

You can’t help but think about Yeonjun. He’s got to have seen Taehyun at Court by now. If there haven’t been any incidents at this point, doesn’t that mean that he doesn’t intend to betray you? The images of him thinking that you’re avoiding him makes you want to slip out to see him. You not sure why you don’t. Maybe the lies that sat between you affect you more than you thought they did. You’re quite the hypocrite, though. You’d kept secrets just as much as he had. 

You miss those stolen nights you two had shared. A knot, queasy and pessimistic, sits in your belly each time you lay in your bed and remember them and tells you that you’ll never see anything like that again. You’d allowed a girlish part of you to blossom beside him—a part of you that could throw caution to the wind and melt into the fun things in life.  

As you rot your days away in that estate that has become more like a dungeon than an estate, you allow yourself to miss him only a little. Once it begins transforming into a certain impending doom about how you’d thought that staying here would be everything you’d ever wanted, you find something else to do. If you aren’t toiling around by yourself or listening to Beomgyu drone, you’re practicing your combat skills. The times that Taehyun stops in to help you, it ends with you insisting that you’re fine to make appearances in Court by now, or at least see Yeonjun with Beomgyu in attendance. He never agrees. Each time, it’s the same awful excuse: Tensions are worse. He doesn’t know if they’re planning something. When you ask why he demands that he can attend, but you and Beomgyu can’t join: He’s a lord. It’s his duty to attend Court. 

The solstice is nearing, too. You’d looked forward to it, honestly. Hopefully Taehyun will let you attend by then. 

You sit crisscrossed on the hardwood flooring, running your fingers through your hair. Beomgyu is stood a couple feet away, and makes big gestures as he explains the one time he’d been called to attend Court as a solitary faerie. Moments like this have kept you grounded over the weeks. 

“And the stupid crone tried to say that I was wrong for catching him,” he exclaims, crossing his arms over his chest and shaking his head as if the ancient memory were still as fresh as day one.  

You laugh. “What did you even do to end up there, anyway?” you ask. You can hardly picture Beomgyu in the setting of Court, even more so meeting with The Queen and her council. Moreover, you’re intrigued to know what he’d said to talk himself out of trouble. You’re amazed that he managed to make a sufficient enough case to save his life. 

“They said that I’d been taking too many of their folk—hah! I must eat too, you know? Oh, the pretention! Do they expect me to starve? If a fool lands themselves on my pelt and then in my waters, it’s only natural that they’re eaten. I’m simply freeing them from one more mud-brained fool. The Courts are full of those, too. It’d take me a millennium to eat them all. What are they so worried for, I wonder? They do the very same to their own people.” 

“Aren’t they ridiculous?” you say. Like you, he’d been an outsider in Court. Though you’re sure that it’s just as, if not more, intricate to those well-versed in it, to the ones like you two... It’s odd to see. You had grown used to it in the time you spent there, but you still know what the first day had felt like. Anyway, you hadn’t spent as many days there as you feel you had. All that had happened had bloated that time in your memories. “To be quite honest with you, your kind are all so odd to me. I grew up among you, but still... my instincts are always kinda at odds with my surroundings, you know?” 

Beomgyu considers that for a moment, as if trying to view the fae from a human’s eyes. “Even when we look so similar?” he asks you, grabbing at a lock of his hair and making a round gesture over himself. 

You nod. “Even in this form, you just... I don’t feel like I’m looking into the face of another human. Maybe that’s because I watched you turn to this from a horse, though.” 

“A kelpie,” he corrects. “What gives it away?” 

“Sorry, a kelpie,” you snicker. You look over his face. It’s so close to right, but somewhere in your mind you can decipher that something is not right. Like all of the fae, though, there’s an unspeakable beauty there, beyond explanation. It demands your human attention. Even the most terrifying are beautiful. “Well, for starters, your ears. They’re pointy. All of you have that, and none of us do. And then... I guess”—you narrow your eyes—“your eyes? They’re just different. And your limbs are pretty lanky, too.” 

He frowns as if he’s unable to see it. “You don’t sound so sure,” he says, joining you on the floor. “I’ve had quite some time to look at myself in my life. I don’t think I ever saw any of that when I was in this form...” 

“I’m sure you did,” you say, lips turning up in a playful mock. A water creature no doubt has an eternity to stare into the water at themselves in its rippled reflection. “Did you do a lot of that?” 

Scowling, he huffs. “No. But I’m sure you would, if you looked like this, huh?” 

You roll your eyes. “You’re ridiculous.” His face morphs from dismay to careful concentration. Frowning, you look around and ask, “What?” 

“I hear somebody,” he answers, pushing off the floor. 

Your spine tingles, but you search for the logical explanation. “Like... Taehyun?” 

“No... the walk is definitely different.” He strains to listen. “He’s usually pretty quiet. This one... they don’t conceal their footsteps.” 

Neither of you can get to a window to scope anything out before there’s three heavy knocks from the door, the metal knocker ringing. You shoot him a wary look and tilt your head toward the door. You mouth the word, answer? 

He considers for a moment and then nods. Well, he’s the one able to hear their approach. You trust they’re at least not imminent danger. You pull the door open. A breeze of frost comes rushing in as you do, blowing your hair and as jarring as a hit to the face might be. You’ve been cooped up in here for so long you’ve forgotten how bitter the cold here is.  

Behind the door your eyes lock with a pair of inky ones, settled into a pinched and snooty face. “Letters from the palace I have for you, my lady,” she says, her voice mousy. She holds out a stack full of letters to you, all held together by some twine. 

An errand runner. You furrow your brows down at her and accept them. The little hob wrings out her long fingers. “From who?” you ask her.  

She bows her head to you hurriedly. “Oh, from the prince, my lady! He sends these for you!” 

You look down at the stack in your hands, and your heart begins to run amok in your chest. He’d sent to you? You thank her. She scurries off in the snow and you close the door, sharing a look with Beomgyu. 

“The prince?” he says, brows shot up. “Meaning, The King’s son? He’s sent letters for you?” 

Nodding, you hold the stack close to you. Your feet ache to find your quarters and to begin tearing into each one; you’re ravenous for any sort of word from him. Does he hate you? Does he miss you? At least he still thinks of you. You’d worried that he might’ve found another lady of the court to dote on in your absence... 

“Yeah,” you say over your shoulder, more interested in tearing the letters open than explaining to him why the prince would be sending you letters. Curiosity sits in his furrowed brow. You hadn’t exactly prattled on about Yeonjun to him. Had you even mentioned him at all? 

He tags along as you head to your room and plop onto your bed. You don’t tell him to leave you; opening these letters alone... You appreciate his presence in some odd way.  

Unstringing the pile, you pull the first one out and run a thumb over the wax seal that identifies it as definitely from the High Prince—a fine silver dusted over white wax and branded with the image of Yeonjun’s insignia, the fox. It’s uneven and dribbled, clearly sealed by Yeonjun himself with the insignia ring he often wears on his finger. You pry it open and then unfurl the parchment inside. 

Do you intend to return to Court? Perhaps we keep missing each other. Though, the Lord is always there. I wonder where you are. If my letter reaches you, please write me back. Or better, come see me. My doors are open to you.  

They always have been. 

Yeonjun 

Beomgyu’s gaze burns holes through you as you read this first one. You sigh, pressing your lips into a thin line as you reach for the next one. This one twists a hot knife of guilt into your belly and up into your heart. 

Have I done something wrong?  

The General’s son continues to attend Court, and though I seek your lovely face beside his, you’re never there. I’m under the impression that he wants you not seeing me. Although, perhaps that’s only because I loathe what your absence might mean otherwise. 

Is it because I learned of your identity? Is it that you think I hate you? 

Allow me to make it utmost clear: I do not. I doubt I could if I tried. You’re quite the heart stealer.  

I know I sound a bit ridiculous telling you I love you when we only knew each other for so long. I understand that. It’s that sort of love that ought to burn bright and short, right? But I won’t let it. Not us. 

Some might say that a love found so easily is fickle. That it doesn’t exist. I say it does, because I have felt it. 

Do you remember how it felt the first time our eyes met, too? How odd is it to feel something so deep inside you, but also so far beyond your reach that you cannot alter its course?  

Please write me, pretty. If I can’t see your face, at least allow me the pleasure of knowing that you’re okay. 

Yeonjun 

“What do they say?” Beomgyu asks, timbred voice whipping you apart from the words on paper that manage to send your heart hurting.  

You’re not entirely sure how to tell him that they’re desperate letters of the High Prince’s love for you, a worthless human girl that had avoided him on purpose. He probably wouldn't believe you, anyway. Leaving behind your old life, you had pleaded with the sky to make your life something worth note. It seems that it had answered. Life works in odd ways.  

“A lot,” you say, brushing him off. Your voice cracks with the word, though,  

Hearing the veiled emotion, he frowns, inching forward to take a peek. “Why are you upset?” he pries, and then gasps as a thought formulates in his head. “Have they called you to be tried by the council?” He considers his own suggestion for a long moment and then shakes his head. “You hardly have gone anywhere enough to cause that degree of trouble, though.”  

You let your face drop into your hands. Is the tremor in your chest from laughter, or from crying? You can’t tell. Maybe it’s both. 

The kelpie makes an unsure sound, clearing his throat. “I... uh, I jest...” 

Collecting yourself, you say, “No. I’m not being called in for trial.” You reach for the next letter.  

The next envelope has dried up rose petals that come falling out when you pull out the letter. The flower of love. 

Have you left the north? Could you not have at least lent me one last look at your face before doing so? I don’t mean to be so pathetic, but my heart is lonesome. I thought we’d have more time. Hadn’t you wanted to stay with me?  

If you still reside in his estate, I send these letters to you. I’m not sure if they’ll reach you, but I hope that they’ll move you. Don’t you know that I’d give you anything? 

Please come see me. I beg. Let’s talk. I just want to know what’s wrong. 

Yeonjun 

Why hadn’t you at least gone and told him that you’ve stayed? How had you allowed yourself to feel fear when you think of him? You don’t deserve his love.  

You don’t even know if you deserve love at all. All it would’ve taken was one night of slipping out. He deserved to know that you’re okay. You don’t remember being this selfish. When had this happened? Maybe this is just what happens when someone spends a lifetime not allowed to think of themselves before serving others. You don’t want to be selfish, though.  

The next one you open is more raw. Hurt. The paper, scrawled in writing that becomes less elegant and more frenzied as you read down it, crumples in your hand. 

If you think that I’m the sort of man that will easily forget what we’ve shared, I am not. I love you. I love you. I love you. Please return to my arms. They ache for you. They remember your weight, and they won’t soon forget it.  

Do I need to say it anymore?  

I love you, darling. It’s making me sick.  

Yeonjun 

You stuff the letters back in their envelopes and shove them into a box in your wardrobe. If you don’t, you’ll read them over until you’re ill. Once over was enough for you. 

❉

“The Lord would have my pelt if I let you leave,” Beomgyu, crossing his arms firmly over his chest, says. “Let alone by yourself.” Realizing that his words insinuate that Taehyun holds any true power over him, he backtracks. “If it weren’t for the harness, I’d be unconcerned with his anger, but... Of course, you know, I’m obligated by my imposition to his word, so...” 

Tugging your boots on, you say, “So, tell him I commanded you to stay. You’ll be fine.”  

You had waited for Taehyun to leave for Court, anyway. You have hours of the night to sly-foot your way around him. 

You’d moped around for a few more days, your gut heavy with stones each time you remember Yeonjun’s letters. Stuffing them into a box, no matter how deep into the corner of your wardrobe, still could not wipe those words from your mind. You’d turned them over and over until you couldn’t handle imagining him writing those letters with a hopeful heart any longer.  

The solstice is only a few days away now, too. You’d been bound to the estate for weeks. Although you’re unsure what Taehyun’s real intentions are in boarding you in, you can no longer even care if leaving will end up getting you attacked. You’ve become a bird with clipped wings.  

Even if your wings are out of order, you’ll walk your way to your freedom. Hell, you’d crawl there. It just so happens that Yeonjun’s doorway feels like freedom in this moment.  

Like he’d always said, the doors remain unbarred. You don’t even have to use the metal knocker; you just push through the doors of swirling white engravements. Just as if nothing had changed. He’d been waiting for you. 

Instead of Yeonjun in his quarters, you find a brownie diligently working on doing up Yeonjun’s bedding. When she turns to you, her hands continue their efforts. 

“The prince is not here right now, dear,” she says, snout twitching. Round eyes recognize you before you can introduce yourself. “He’s only just made for Court, though. You should catch him quite quickly, if you mean to.” 

It seems he hasn’t given up searching for you in Court, either. You offer her your gratitude and slip out from his room. Picking up the hems of your dress, you race to catch Yeonjun before he’s arrived at Court. Once he does, things get more sticky—if Taehyun spots you... Pushing down the anxiety that bubbles up at the thought, you cross your fingers. Let luck be on your side.  

Your Court dress, though heavy, feels nice on your skin. Although you often look down on court goers for their pompousness, you can’t deny how good it feels to fit in. That’s perhaps the reason you cling to Court the way you do; you’re beyond desperate for belonging. 

On the plush, snow-dusted bits of the forest’s floor, you spot a set of footsteps. They’re quickly being filled with the flurries. You clasp your hands in an overwhelming bout of gratitude—luck had listened, this time. Those tracks are as fresh as can be. You double your pace. 

Around a bend, you’re overjoyed to see his figure walking there. Finally hearing you coming over the roar of snowfall, he spins. His face pinches and then drops as he recognizes you. 

“You... You came?” he says. Disbelief flips his lips into a frown. “You got my letters?” 

“I did,” you answer, catching your breath. “I’m so sorry.” 

A few feet float between you, the space not yet closed but so magnetic. His cheeks are tinged pink with the cold. Yours must be too.  

“I’d thought you left. I thought I’d never see you again.” 

Your chest caves in a little at the hurt in his voice and the way it clashes with the longing in his eyes. He wants to be angry; he wants to yell at you. He can’t do either when he’s just thankful to see your face. You had missed his just as much. 

“I’m sorry,” you repeat. “It shouldn’t have happened.” 

Yeonjun approaches you and takes your face into his hands. His fingers are ice on your skin. He swallows in your face, soft black eyes darting from your eyes to your lips and around the rest of it; just like he’d begged you to let him do in his letters. 

“Why?” Yeonjun asks you, brushing your hair back with his fingers like he’s just testing the feel of it. 

You don’t know how to answer him. You could tell him a lot of things: Taehyun told me to stay away. He had told me that you’d hurt me. I’d started to believe him. I became scared of you. We had lied to each other. None of them feel adequate in this moment, so you shake your head. 

His eyes harden to a degree as you don’t answer. “Why wouldn’t you come talk to me, pretty?” he urges. “If something was wrong, why couldn’t you come to me? We can’t leave things broken. I sent you weeks of letters. Weeks.” 

Weeks? You’d only seen four.  

“Finally, I got smart enough to send them when he’s at Court. And then you show up here. Tell me, how am I to think that you’re okay? When he won’t even let you speak with me?” 

You blink once. Twice. Taehyun had been intercepting letters. A pit of anger flares in your belly. Whatever this protecting thing he’s doing really is, you’re sick of it. Since when had he become your keeper? He’d demanded that Yeonjun was trying to do just that, but here he is, and you have no clue why he’s doing it. 

“I didn’t know you’d sent letters until yesterday,” you tell him. “I should’ve come and seen you.” 

Running his thumb over your cheek, he murmurs, “You’re not going back there. Please, tell me you’ll stay with me. If you’re to stay here in the north forever, let it be with me. We can’t slip around like this forever.” 

Shaking your head in his hands, you pull back. You can’t decipher the dread that washes over you at his suggestion once again. Your heart is wary with the need to do just that—to not return to the estate where you’d become some sort of prisoner. Something washes over you and tells you that it won’t go the way you’d wanted, just as most things in your life hadn’t. 

Seeing the way you retract, Yeonjun becomes more desperate. “Please,” he says, hands finding your shoulders to hold you as if you’ll leave him there.  

“We’ll figure it out,” you say. “Just give me a few days to think about it, okay?” 

His face stays drawn as if he wants to argue it, but he relents. Taking your frozen hands into his own and wrapping them up in attempts to warm them, he says, “Okay. Okay, let’s get away from this blizzard, then. I’ll wait for you, love.” 

Your chest sizzles. The cold isn’t so bad, today. In a way, you’d missed it. You nod.  

Yeonjun brings you to his chambers and urges you to settle into a plush seat. You run your hands over the embroidered whorls of thread on the cushions as you watch him rummage through a chest. “What are you looking for?” you ask him, drinking in his figure. He’d switched his Court shirts for some more comfortable wear, but even in those he looks princely. He’s so pretty. Your heart flutters as he fishes out what he’d been searching for and turns to you with a smile. He settles beside you carrying a leatherbound book and a miniature wood sculpture of a girl. 

“These,” he says, setting them down on the cushion between you.  

You pick up the wood thing, looking over its painted pink cheeks and feeling the carvings that make its face. It’s fitted with a dress; one unlike any you’d ever seen. Your brow furrows. “What’s this thing?” you ask. 

“It’s called a doll,” he says explains. You feel his eyes on you, watching your reaction, not on the thing in your hands. “Human girls carry them around to play with. They change the dresses and stuff. They even make things for them to hold, but... I couldn’t get ahold of any of those.”  

Heart stuttering, you look at the wood-carved thing. “Human girls?” you ask, imagining a life where you too could have worried only about what dress your toy would wear. You revere the resilience your younger self had to have. At least you didn’t know any better; you didn’t know how you could’ve had it. That ignorance saved you. The painted eyes of the doll stare back at you. 

“Kinda cute, huh?” he says, smiling and scooting closer to fiddle with the thing’s hair. “They even do their hair up all pretty.” Looking back up to you, he says, “It’s a shame that no human who has ever grown up here knows of things like these. Simple joys.” 

You nod, a little choked up. “Yeah. I wish I had. It would have been nice to have something like this as a girl.”  

He tucks some hair behind your ear to get a better look at your face from the side. “How did you ever end up being a spy?” 

Tearing your gaze from the doll to meet his, you find a sadness there despite you not even having told him yet. It’s as if he knows it’ll hurt him already. You fiddle with the little doll’s dress as you recount. “I was a servant to a seamstress,” you start. “A royal seamstress, too. She was favored well by the gentry. She brought in hordes of clients and made dresses and Court clothes for them—but, really, her work mostly ended at being there to hear what they’d want and inlaying the dresses with her magic when they’d ask for it. The rest was my work. Taking their measurements, making their dresses... I worked her shop as soon as I became able to.” Memories of cruel and wicked faces that snickered at your expense or those who found it entertainment to scare you come back, as fresh as ever. Those memories never leave you; the ones so early on that they’d calcified into permanent parts of your personality. That terrified little girl will always be somewhere in your mind. She surfaces quite a lot, these days.  

“There was this one time...” you say, trailing off to trudge up a more awful memory. “A Lady had come in to have a dress made. She brought a guard along with her. He was this massive troll with grey skin like a toad.” You’d recall his details without any trouble for the rest of your life, you think. “I’d ran off to grab some fabric for the Lady, and he followed,” you say, voice wavering just how your little heart had wavered as you had turned around from the bolts of fabric to see the goblin stood there. “He yanked me around by my hair until I sobbed, and then he had me get on the floor and beg him to let me live.” You know now that of course he wasn’t going to kill you—he wouldn’t want problems with Nut-hatch—but you hadn’t known it then. You thought you were dead. “When he had enough of his fun, he let me go. When the other two saw how hysterical I was, all I got was being asked why I’d left them waiting so long.”  

Yeonjun asks, voice soft and tender, “The seamstress allowed that?” His eyes are heavy with a mixture of emotions. You see sadness and anger there, but also something a bit more. 

“Nut-hatch?” you say. “Of course.” They’d known what he was doing in there, of course. Even a human could have heard it. As long as you served your purpose, the folk could not care less. 

He looks taken aback at that, recognition turning his brows up. “Nut-hatch? You worked for Nut-hatch?” he asks. 

Nodding, you hum. You had no doubt he’d know her name. Her work was well-renowned in his father’s court and beyond. “I did.” 

His eyes rake over you for a long few beats before he turns your face up. “Their names?” he asks. 

“Huh?” 

“The goblin and the Lady. What are their names?” 

You try to tug at the threads of that old memory. “I don’t remember,” you say. Much of it is fresh, but you hadn’t committed their names to memory. Inconsequential in the grand scheme of it. “It’s okay. It’s passed now.” 

He doesn’t look very convinced, mind wheeling behind his eyes. You don’t want to stay on this memory for too long. Pushing it back into the dusty corner where it stays, you continue explaining. “I accepted that as my life for a long time, but... At some point, I just wanted more. I imagined all the ways I could find a new life as a human here. There are so many other things I’d preferred, but the only one I could manage was that. Even that, I was wrong about. I’m not really made for that, you know?” You lighten your tone in hopes that it’ll make your chest feel lighter as well.  

He listens intently and then leans forward to press a kiss to your forehead. Pulling you into his chest and keeping you notched under his chin, he says, his voice smooth to your ears, “I’m so happy you’re here now, pretty.” 

Letting out the weight in your lungs in a long, meaningful sigh, you melt into his touch. It’s difficult not to when his body is so warm against yours. You revel in it for some time, just letting him smooth over your hair and rub your back. You try your best not to let any old, sad emotions pour out through your eyes; this is a happy moment. You’ve made it. Perhaps things had been harder than you imagined they’d be, but you knew it’d be a long journey when you escaped that sewing cottage anyway. 

Peppering a few last kisses to the top of your head, he releases you to pick up the book he had also grabbed from that chest. On the front it reads: Pride & Prejudice.  

“A book?” you say, looking over the brown leather and gold printing. It’s an unfamiliar name to you, but you never read much anyway.  

He nods and pries it open. The spine crackles with age. “It’s also from the human world.” Thumbing through the pages, he adds, “It’s a story. I read it often, it’s quite a nice one. I want to give it to you so that you can read it too; it’s a beautiful love story.” 

You lean in to take a look at the words, too perfect to be handwritten. “Where do you get all this stuff?” you say. It reminds you of he’d brought you to that market for human goods. He seems to be interested in things that are human. Perhaps that includes you. Either that or he continues to show you these kinds of things for your sake. 

“I lived in their world for some years,” he says, flipping through the pages. “It’s quite different. Though... I found myself not wanting to leave. When the time came, I brought these back with me to remind me of that time.” 

Lived? Not just visited, but Yeonjun had lived in the human realm? Your heart flurries with a lifetime of wondering what your true home was like. How ironic is it that he knew more of humans than you? That you’re the one asking him questions about your kind? “How long?” you ask first. “And why were you living there?” 

“Just for something my father wanted me to do,” he answers, “Somewhere around a decade, I believe.” 

He’d spent ten years there. Multiple things click into place—no wonder he’s so able to understand your human emotions. No wonder it feels as though you’ve been seen to a different degree by him than you’d ever known before. He’d spent years with your kind. “What is it like?” you say, not sure where to begin with your questions. 

He smiles fondly. “You wouldn’t even be able to believe me, pretty. You’ll just have to see it.” 

See it. “You’d take me there?” you say.  

“Of course,” Yeonjun says, frowning. He takes one of your hands into his, pressing a kiss to it. “You deserve to see it.” He presses another kiss to your skin, now at your wrist. The hair on your skin raises at the contact. His eyes find yours as he begins a slow ascent of kisses up your arm. Each is warm and sends your spine blazing. Once he reaches your shoulder, he slows down, leaving a long moment between kisses. He continues this pace—one that both makes you wish he’d slow down and that he’d hurry and quell your want—right up the juncture of your neck and up the column, too. His controlled breaths puff out like fire on your skin where his mouth lingers. You let your head back to help his path up. He places one final kiss at your jawline before his lips land on yours, drunken and in no rush at all.  

You can’t help the visceral urge to run your hands over his soft skin, to check if the warmth there was real or if you’d manifested it in your longing. Yeonjun breaks this lethargic kiss just to laugh, but he’s quick to recapture your lips. He meets your hand and brings it under his silken shirt, guiding you up the soft planes of his abdomen. 

Pushing you back, he whispers into your mouth, “I missed you so much, pretty.” 

You rememorize the gentle muscles of his stomach beneath your palm. “It was only so many days,” you tease, “you’re just horny.” 

He lets go of your hand to begin slipping down your dress from the shoulders. “Yeah?” he hums, gobbling up each inch of skin that he reveals. “I suppose I am. It’s a gift to be able to love you in this way.” Once the fabric is clear of your hips and he’s tugging it down your legs, his face turns sly. He studies your wettened core. “I think you missed me too, though, love.” 

You drag your bottom lip into your teeth. You had. Your chest thumps rhythmically in your chest, syncing like symphony with the throb between your thighs. 

Blood sings in your veins when he places his palm right on the boundary between your lower belly and your cunt. Your stomach soars, too, so excited by his touch so near where your body craves it. He runs it up, feeling the curves of your body, up to your breast. You expect him to stop and pay attention to your chest, but he presses his hand down right over your heart and feels its beating against his palm. His eyes flutter to a shut, and he leaves his hand there for a few moments, relishing in it.  

“What other purer form of love can I show you?” he says, tapping on your hip. “On your hands and knees, baby.” 

You flip, your limbs a bit clumsy in anticipation. Once you’ve found your way there, he dances his fingertips on the small of your spine. 

“Did you think of my touches while we were apart?” 

“Mhm,” you hum. Especially on the nights when the estate seemed the emptiest. Some nights, your fingers were just not enough to save you, and you’d contemplate making a big escape to find him.  

“Well, I shouldn’t make you wait too much longer then, huh?” he coos, running that hand down to ghost touches over your slit. Though minimal, you jolt. You’d been so ravenous for this. He’d worked his shirt off so that when he leans forward to meld his chest to your back, it’s his skin that touches yours, not fabric. His hand stays ghosting touches that leave you softly gasping. 

He teasingly pinches your clit, laughing in your hair at the sharp hiss it draws from you. “So reactive,” Yeonjun muses. His fingers find their way to your hole. He dips the middle two in. “Just like the first time we made love like this. Your lovely face is burned into my mind, pretty. You have such hungry eyes.” As he pushes his fingers in, he uses his free hand to tilt your face against the cushion so that he can better see your eyes. 

You sigh, shuddering and breathy, as he begins to curl his fingers. It only takes him a few curls to rediscover that spot that has sparks flying behind your eyes. 

“There?” he asks, chin on your shoulder. “That feel good, darling?” 

Your muscles tremble at their own accord, rendering your huffs trembled as well. “Yes,” you answer. Each meaningful curl hits its mark, knees unsteady pillars that dig into the cushions. “So—so good. Please don’t stop.”  

He maintains a sickening pace—your muscles twitch around his giving fingers, just enough so that your entire body buzzes and your stomach twists, but not enough to send you shaking yet. You collapse down from your elbows, chest in the cushions. He brushes back the hair that obscures your face with the movement, adamant to see your face.  

He eggs you on by curling deeper; faster. Your answering groan is shaky and tense—you can’t get enough of the knot he curates in your belly, but at the same time, it’s daunting. He sits back, but his fingers don’t falter. His free hand explores, feeling your body up for all the time he couldn’t.  

Stomach taut and brimming on your peak, you suck in a breath. Your orgasm sits so close, running a line of electricity from between your legs up to your spine, raising goosebumps on your skin.  

Your eyes fly open, mouth ready to scold, as Yeonjun pulls his fingers from you. Your chest bubbles up with frustration, your orgasm drifting off to somewhere else. “Why?” you ask, cheeks burning. It slips and slips away from you, hole twitching around nothing as if seeking out just enough stimulus to bring it crashing back. “I was so close.” 

His hand soothes the loss ever so slightly by circling your cunt, but he does not make the mistake of offering you any touch where you most need it. It only prolongs the float down, keeping you suspended. You abhor it.  

“Please,” you whine. 

He doesn’t entertain your whines. He only continues to deliver just enough to torment you until he’s sure that you’re not so wound up that you’ll cum the moment he touches you, and then he slides his fingers back in and begins building up a more tense knot with pointed curls. Your insides delight in the return of attention, falling almost instantly back into a brutal climb. Yeonjun doesn’t bother with languid, teasing strokes now. He aims for your ruining. 

You writhe against the cushions. Your heart is a fluttering bird in your chest, trilling at the prospect of your release. It’s so close—so close that you might be able to just touch it. It tastes like honey on your tongue, painting your words sweet. “Love you,” you tell him. “Love you so much.” 

Yeonjun rewards your sweetness with his free hand on your throbbing clit, sending your hands gripping at the cushions. You wiggle your hips helplessly in search of just the right amount of friction that it’ll finally give you want you’ve been wanting. “Yes,” you mewl. “Yes, so close—” 

“Wait, baby,” he commands from behind you. “It’ll feel so much better. I promise. Hold it back.” 

He reins in his touches once again, not stopping like last time. It’s not enough to put a stop to the orgasm rippling right under your skin, right at the edge of ripping through you. You can’t hold it back; it’s right there. 

“No,” he says, once again ripping his touch from you. It doesn’t stop anything—you go rigid just before it crashes over you, and then you’re shaking without his hands even on you. You cum with a vengeance—body reclaiming twofold what he had denied you.  

“Holy shit.” Yeonjun groans watching you come unraveled without his help. “So riled up that you’re cumming by yourself, pretty,” he says, running a hand around to feel your belly muscles twitching and the way they roll along with the twitches of your hips. He eggs on your orgasm with gentle touches at your clit, sending you jolting, until you’re a panting mess and he can tell that you’ve had enough. 

You attempt to push yourself off your chest, but he gently guides you back down with a palm against your back. “Stay there, pretty. You can handle a little more, right? You did so well, I know you can. Let me make love to you, darling.” 

The cushions are awfully warm against your skin and you’re still dealing with the waves of pleasure that drift up from your cunt, but you nod your head for him. “’Kay,” you say. 

The rustling behind you tells of how he’s slipping out of the rest of his attire. You lay boneless as he does, focusing on the waves running down your thighs. It’s ecstasy in its purest form. It floats through your veins, addling any consciousness and breaking you down into what you are at your core. 

The familiar prod at your entrance jolts you back to life. As he presses in, he presses a hand to your flushed cheek. It’s a welcome temperature difference—you feel set ablaze in some sort of languid flame, one that takes its time to consume you. He laughs softly. “You’re burning up,” he says as he bottoms out, as if the feeling of him filling you up isn’t rendering you jittery in anticipation. “Ready for me, pretty?” he teases, taking your hips into his hands. “I need you to make those pretty sounds for me. I want to know that they’re just as sweet as I remember them.” He punctuates his sentence with deep rolls of his hips, aiming where he knows will have you singing. 

You’re helpless to the chorus of ‘Oh's and ‘Yes’s that he draws from you, the smacking of his hips and your sweet moans much too loud for you. You dread the thought of his servants hearing you and push your face into the cushions, muffling the array of sounds that bubble over. It’s all you can do—you could hardly contain your sounds. 

Your scalp strains as he tugs your head back, tugging your face from the cushion. “None of that, love. I waited too long for that. Don’t hide your pretty voice.”  

You shake your head. “Too loud,” you pant. “They’re gonna hear.” 

“I don’t care who hears you. Let me hear how good I’m making you feel, or I’m going to stop. Do you want me to stop?” His fingers cling to your soft hips, betraying how much this is affecting him. You know that he hardly wants to stop. 

You’re turned to mush, though. In this moment, being heard feels nowhere near as awful as Yeonjun ceasing those dizzying thrusts. You shake your head, scalp aching against the movement. “No,” you say, breathless.  

“That’s what I thought,” Yeonjun taunts, letting your cheek drop back into the fabric. “Let them hear our love. Let them hear how real it is, darling. Louder.”  

You tentatively let your sounds out into the thick air, but he decides that it’s not enough for him. Taking his hand off your hip to brace himself on the seat’s plush armrest, he doubles down his thrusts, feverish and desperate to guide you both to a beautifully explosive end. Your mouth drops open, unfiltered words and sounds spilling out from your chest as you grab at the cushions for help. With the hand that he doesn’t use to deliver those wild thrusts, he encases your hand in his own, threading his fingers between yours.  

For a few more incandescent moments, Yeonjun’s room only consists of your unabashed cries, his alternating grunts and whines, the rhythmic and hollow smacks of his hips to your skin, and the musk of your passion. Frantic bodies dance against each other, skin against skin in the purest way. Your thighs tremble pathetically, his cock brushing against your sweet spot until you squeeze your eyes shut and ride out the quivering of your cunt around him. You squeeze his hand as you shake. 

“Yes,” his pretty voice whines, “Just like that.”  

Picking up his pace, he chases to join you in your orgasm. He pants behind you, desperately fucking into you until his hips stutter and he stills, falling into your shoulder to deliver needy rolls and shooting warm spurts of his release into you.  

You two stay like this for some unhurried moments. You focus on his heartbeat; feeling it thudding against your back reminds you that he is real, and he is love. You hold his hand in yours a little tighter. 

❉

“I doubt that this will go exactly as you believe it will,” Beomgyu says, watching you do your hair up. Your eyes meet his in the vanity’s mirror.  

Arms burning as your hold them over your head, your words come out clipped with the ache. “It worked yesterday, didn’t it?” you say. You push a filigree comb into your hair to secure it up. “I got back hours before he did.” 

“I’m not saying that Taehyun is right,” he says, “but I think that it would do us both a favor if you practice a bit more precaution.” 

“What, are you afraid of Taehyun?” you ask, raising your brows at him in the reflection.  

Your taunt hits its mark, Beomgyu shifting in your bed and scowling. “Of Taehyun, never,” he parries, “of the fact that he could ask me to do anything and I’d do it, yes.” He shakes out his lightly matted tresses, a habit you’ve noticed over the passing weeks. “I played a little too closely to the fire with him once, and it landed me like this: no longer the owner of my being. I’d sooner chew off my own fingers than become his obedient dog, but I believe you also know that it’s best to soar low with this, no? Are we not together in this?” 

You press your lips into a thin line. In a way, you’d come to an alliance of sorts with Beomgyu. Despite his being a kelpie, the two of you are not so different now. Both confined to these walls, listening to Taehyun when he commands it. You don’t want any of your actions to snap back on Beomgyu, though. With you attending Court today, it’s almost definite that Taehyun will see you. You turn to face him. “Why don’t you join us, then?” you offer. “I’ll tell him myself that I commanded you to come with me. I’m sure he’ll be less upset if I have you there with me.” 

He gives it a thought, his eyes looking as tired and sunken as they always do. “I’m not one for Court,” he says. 

“But I’ll be there,” you plead, unable to help the twitching of smirk on your lips. “If we do it together, it can’t be so bad.” 

He frowns, but you can see that you’ve won. “I grieve for how the forest left me to my own,” Beomgyu grumbles. 

You surge up from your seat, eyes bright. “You’ll go?” you say, giddy to return to the thrill of faerie revelry and also to see the strange kelpie in the center of it. 

Grimacing, he answers, “I will join you.” 

You take his hands into yours and press a cheeky kiss to his forehead. “You’re not so scary as you try to paint yourself,” you tell him, watching as he catches bait. You laugh as he glowers. 

“Don’t push it.” He climbs off your bed. “I’m scarier than you should imagine, girl. I do this for my own reasons.” 

You pull a patronizing frown and nod. “Of course, I know.” 

You don’t have to wait for him to get ready to any capacity; he tells you that he has no intentions of making any impressions, and you’ve seen faeries in far more drastic states of disarray. Many show up for their reveling in just their skin. 

Beomgyu drones on about how he detests the audaciousness of the gentry folk while you make for the hall. The forest around you is as quiet as you remember it being when you’d first met him. It reminds you that, no matter how used you become to him, he is a creature to be feared. The little folk are right to hide away. For you, though, his might is a relief: should Taehyun be right, you’ll be safe. He moves at your beck and call. Though, the thought of forcing the kelpie to carry out your will is an uneasy one that you do not strive to fulfill. 

Once the buzzing of Court comes into earshot, wonderful faerie music along with it, you breathe it in. “First time in... how long since you’ve shown your face here?” 

“Perhaps four-hundred-something years,” he answers, looking over the scene with as much distaste in his face as his voice. “We solitary folk don’t make ourselves known here unless to bow to a crown. I do not bow to any crown.” 

Itching to find your prince, you gesture toward it. He should be fine—Court is supposed to be an insouciant place. “Don’t they host anybody who decides to come? Faerie hospitality, and all that? You’ll be fine.” 

“It’s all hospitality until you step foot from those trees,” he says. “And even hospitality is sometimes betrayed. You know how capricious we can be, I’m sure.”  

You approach the warm lights, but his words remain with you. It beckons you to remember that their minds are fickle and fundamentally different from yours. However you think they may act, they might act in the complete opposite way. You should at least let that guide how you conduct your actions a little bit. 

As you breach the pillars of trees and are finally surrounded once again by their pinched faces and gangly limbs, you search for both Taehyun and Yeonjun. You see neither, and so you make your way to the tables to seek snacks. You scour them for something sweet to chew over as you wait for him to appear. He’d said he’d be coming around this time, right? You surely hadn’t mistaken the time he’d told you? 

Beomgyu speaks from beside you, observing a hag that loiters nearby. “Is he not here?” he asks. 

Shrugging, you say, “He’ll be here soon.”  

You watch the hag inching closer, bent over with age; though, you assume that’s she’s been old for the entirety of her life. Her pointed ears droop from her thin tresses of silver, cuffed with gold.  

Turning from her, you gesture over the cavorting crowds, more frantically chasing their merriments than ever before. The solstice arrives tomorrow; they welcome its presence with their excitement. “This is all for the solstice?” 

He offers you an affirmative nod. “Just some excuse to entertain themselves like this,” he explains, “the solstice will arrive whether they encourage its coming or not. I believe that they just enjoy this debauchery too much.” His hollow eyes rake over the throngs. “Anyway, many of them are just here because it’s the only time that they’ll see Court. Otherwise, only the gentry gather here.” 

“What makes you any different than them?” you ask. “What makes you so averse to offering your allegiance to the High Courts? Would it not be nice to have their protection, and to keep them off your back?” You seek Yeonjun once more in the crowds, but still, he doesn’t appear. “You know, so they don’t call you in for things like eating too much?” 

“I do not surrender my sovereignty to any. Come they to my doorstep and demand that I do, I could not care. I’m content with the way I make my life.”  

His refusal to do just that must be why Taehyun’s father had come to claim his life. You’re sure that it’s also why the coming of the General’s son to steal his autonomy must’ve made him so angry. You don’t blame him.  

Why would The Queen demand fealty from the solitary folk? You’d thought that, like the High King, she’d leave them to their forests. If they’re all as adamant as Beomgyu, it seems like a lost cause. 

“Well,” you say, “I’m glad that—” 

A gnarled hand, fingers knobbed against your skin and skin about as soft as tree bark, tugs your arm. You spin to find who owns it.  

The hag’s eyes remind you of Beomgyu’s, piercing and dull with the weight of a long life. Though, hers are much more unsightly than his mud-brown ones, saggy eyelids drooping over a pair of eyes with ink-black where the whites of her eyes should be. She pulls you toward her by your skirts.  

You tug yourself back, pinching your brows. “Who are you?” 

She points her clawed, grey hand out at you, bangles of gold and chunky beads jingling as she does. “You, girl,” the hag says, urgent. Her voice is harsh and it crackles as she speaks. She reaches inside of her furry robes and produces a wood trinket from it. In her palm that she shoves at you lays a bit of wood carved into the shape of a wolf, painted in black. Its shaggy black fur reminds you of the kind Taehyun would sometimes wear over his shoulder.  

“I don’t need that,” you say, rejecting her hand. Nothing in faerie comes for free—the hag just sees a human girl that she can offer free things to in hopes that you’ll know no better and take. Then, you’d be in her debt, and she’d demand something from you. You do know better, though. 

“Oh,” she says, shaking her head as she draws out the word. “You do, girl. Take it, take it. You need it, I know it. Take it, I won’t hold it to you, girl, just have it.” Razor teeth appear behind her curled lips. “It is dormant with me. But, in your hands... Take it.” She shakes her jousted hand out at you each time she demands that you take it. “It offers you protection. It would do no good in my possession. It beckons me to give it to you, its pleas are so loud—loud, loud, loud! Take it off my hand, won’t you?” 

Her urging unsettles you, but so do her words. You assume that it’s inlaid with some sort of protective enchantment. Why would you need protection? Although, she could also just be fooling you. She could be holding a perfectly plain hunk of carved wood in her palm for all you know. You shoot a look at Beomgyu. If she were any trouble, he’d tell you. 

He looks about as lost as you do, shrugging. 

“Oh, sakes!” the hag grumbles, clutching her robes to her body. She takes Beomgyu’s hands and places the thing there. “There. I have no reasons to be here fooling humans. Useless debts, what could you give me? Nothing I need.” She points a sturdy, twiggy finger at you. “Keep it on you, girl, else it won’t do its work.” 

With those final ill-boding words, the hag hobbles off, her curved back disappearing between the gaps in the crowd. 

“Here,” Beomgyu says, regarding the trinket with his observation. “That hag really wanted this to be yours, so I think it ought to be in your hands.” He tries pushing it off to you. 

Laughing, you don’t reach out to take it, darting his hand with your whole body. You hang your hands in the air. “I’m not taking that thing,” you say. “She handed it to you, so I really think it ought to be in your hands.” 

He deadpans. “I’ve just been collecting myself a heap of debts, haven’t I?” He closes it into his fist for his lack of pockets. “What’s this one to add?” 

“Does it... feel like it has anything bad on it?” you ask, remembering how he’d identified your geas. “Like a curse, or a bad enchantment, or something?” 

Shaking his head, he says, “No. I feel it does have a protective purpose, but the magic there is... odd. Hard for me to decipher. Probably that hag’s.”  

You purse your lips, nodding. Regardless, whatever protection that thing might have offered you, you’ll be fine without it. 

Shaking off the odd interaction, you resume perusing the snack platters in your wait. You skip over glazed pinecones. Those would be terrible on your human stomach and teeth. You can only imagine how they’d jab at your gums. You opt for a helping of braised fiddlehead ferns. Chewing on the furled thing, you entertain yourself with the revelers. Littler folk dart in and out of legs. Long-limbed gentryfolk with flowers in their hair spin with interlocked hands at the center of the clamor. Sharp-eyed faeries with even sharper mouths speak in clusters, no doubt scheming. In all its oddness, you’d missed it.  

 A silk-smooth voice steals your attention. “A kelpie?” Yeonjun says, regarding Beomgyu beside you. “Now, how did you manage to befriend a kelpie? Even better, how did you drag it here?” 

Your chest lights up. “Long story,” you say, brushing his curiosity off. “What took you so long?”  

He’s dressed in his Courtly best—cuffs made of ruffle and an array of rings decorating his fingers. They catch light as he brings his hand up to run a hand along the expanse of your collarbone. He hesitates to answer for a split second. “I ran into Kai on my way,” he explains. “He’s performing here today and for tomorrow's solstice.” 

Accepting his answer, you go to tell Beomgyu that you’re going off, but he’s not even there as you turn. He must’ve wandered off as Yeonjun had arrived. 

“Want to join them?” he asks, tilting his head toward the dancing bodies. Soft black strands drift over his eyes.  

Shaking your head, you offer him some of the sweets you’d been eyeing, knowing that he’s got a knack for sweets. “Not today. I think I want to remember all of tonight, and, well...” Memories of the way you’d danced uncontrollably until it’d fade to black lick at your mind. You want to revel in your return to normalcy fully, not with a buzzing mind. You can’t deny the allure of that tingling in your bones as you hear the faerie music, though. It curls a wild finger at you, beckoning. 

An uncomfortable look passes through his eyes, gone as fast as it had come. “All right, darling,” he hums, accepting the sweets. “Does the Lord know you’re here?” 

Lips tugging into a faint frown, you say, “Not yet, I think.” The quick expression doesn’t go unnoticed by you. Unlike the ice the Taehyun offers you, Yeonjun wears his feelings all over himself. It’s just one way that they are fundamentally different. “Is something wrong?” 

Yeonjun looks taken aback at your asking. “I’m doing just fine,” he says. “Why do you ask?” 

He does not say nothing wrong. You know it is because he cannot lie. You look him over. What had happened? And, why is he averse to telling you the truth? “Just thought you looked a bit upset.” You shrug. “Did you want to dance?” 

His nose crinkles with a laugh. “No, pretty. I’d be in your presence doing nothing and still be content.” He takes your hands into his, the metal on his fingers biting cold against your skin. “How about we go listen to Kai play?” 

He leads you to where the musicians work at concocting their works, claiming a chalice of some drink from a table on the way. Kai, of course, stands away from the rest, back to a tree while his fingers dance on the strings. You look around for Taehyun from here, but still, you don’t see his face. 

Yeonjun holds the chalice’s neck between his middle two fingers, sipping from it. “It’s nice to know that even as this season ends, I won’t be forced to go back there.” 

His pretty lips wrap over the edge of the chalice as he drinks from it. “Won’t your father know something is up when you return?” 

Nodding slowly, he grimaces. “I suppose that time has finally come.” 

You squeeze his hand in yours. “We both sacrificed things to be here, huh?” you say. You don’t know a lot of what Yeonjun’s life back in his home court was like, but you know that it would be hard to revolt against your own family for anybody. Even for the prince of Faerie. 

He captures your eyes, his soft brown ones making crescents with his gentle smile. “We did,” he muses. 

“Remember our first night in Court?” you say. You’d been so uneasy, searching for a place to fit in. Then, from the crowds of overwhelming faces, he’d appeared, all charm and welcoming smiles. How couldn’t you have let your heart fall? 

Another flash of disconcertment flashes, his smile faltering. He hides it behind another sip of his drink. Swallowing, he nods, laughing off-kilter. “I do. I think watching you dance that time was the best thing I’ve ever seen.” 

Odd, but you don’t push the issue. If he says that he’s fine, it must just be something to little effect. “What made you come up to me that night?” you say, remembering how confused you’d been when such a pretty gentry boy had taken interest in you. You’d agonized over why he’d done so for long, and sometimes you still, but you’ve made some peace with it by now.  

His lips are tight. “I... It’s hard to explain.” 

You accept that answer at face-value and let your head fall into his shoulder while you watch Kai dutifully work at his songmaking. Among those making the music for Court, his contributions stand out as the most enthralling. Faerie music is too elusive for you to decipher why, but perhaps it’s just his lazed passion. “I understand,” you say. His shoulder is tight and less cushy than you expect it to be. Looking up to him, you frown to see how he’s looking down at you, eyes stormy. He looks like he’s sick to his stomach. You go to ask if he’s going to be okay, but he speaks before you can. 

“Pretty, I... I have to tell you something.” He pulls you off of him to look into your eyes. He’s always been so steadfast and sure, but now his gaze wavers. “I’m so sorry.” 

Your stomach drops. You don’t like the way he’s looking at you. “What?” you say, a tingle in your spine telling you that something isn’t right; that you’re not going to like what he’s going to say. “Yeonjun, you’re making me nervous. Is something wrong?” 

You know it’s awful and you’re not sure why you do it, but for a split second, you inspect the hall for possible attackers. A terrible bout of potent adrenaline makes you want to run or cry. Beomgyu is here, right? 

He swallows hard, face a ghostly pallor. “I can’t keep doing this,” he says, voice trembling. “I need to tell you the truth, it’s... it’s been eating me alive. I can’t look into your sweet face and know...” 

Acid climbs up your throat. Your heart joins it, thick in your throat and choking you. “What? Know what Yeonjun?” you ask, lips trembling. Your skin prickles, hair raising. You may throw up. He looks stricken in place, not answering you. “What?” you demand. 

“I didn’t come up to you for no reason that day.” 

Your heart, still caught in your throat, bursts. It’s a horrifying, bloody affair. “No,” you say, shaking your head. You feel so removed from your body that you can almost envision how your blood-drained face might match his. 

“I knew that you were the spies the moment I saw you. It was....” He sucks in a breath. Your world spins around you as you wait. “I was supposed to determine who the spies were. I was supposed to have them killed, but pretty, I knew I couldn’t do that the moment I saw you. I thought it was just going to be some... some random faerie that I’d...” 

If your world was spinning before, it’s now flipped upside down and inverted. “No,” you repeat, a guttural plea that you know won’t change anything. It’s the only word that your mouth will make for right now, though. 

You’re hurt. You’re scared. You’re angry. You’re frozen. 

Yeonjun grabs for your hands, but you rip yourself away from him, your glaring eyes so at odds with your wobbling lips. “It doesn’t change anything,” he says. “It doesn’t change how I love you now. You know I love you. You know I love you, right? I’m so sorry. I would never hurt you. I did my best to protect you. Please, I never wanted to hurt you,” he rambles, frantically grabbing for your arms as he falls down to his knees before you. 

A few faeries around you gasp, and a blur of their commotion forms around you. The crowned prince of Faerie just went to his knees. Your eyes dart wildly around their guffawing faces, and between a space you spot a familiar face: cold eyes and a cracked mask of indifference. He looks right at you. 

What on earth is going on? How is this life right now? You snap back to Yeonjun in front of you. 

“Please, don’t look at me like that, pretty,” he pleads. “Please.” His voice cracks, eyes frantic. “Slap me. Tell me you hate me for it. But please, don’t look at me like you’re scared of me.” 

Tears scald your cheeks. 

“I know that it’s selfish of me to ask you that; I know, I know it—but please, I can’t handle it, love. I was never going to let anything happen to you, I knew it the moment I saw you. I felt it right here”—he gestures to his beating heart, the one your hand had felt and cherished so only last night—“I knew that no matter how big my ambitions were, they would never be bigger than that.” 

You can’t listen to any more. His words pour out onto your skin, but they all slip off like rain upon a beast’s winter pelt. None can penetrate the ringing in your ears. 

Yeonjun sees how retracted you’ve become. “Pretty, please,” he says, slower and more dire now. “Say something." 

You don’t know what to do. Your feet are rooted fast to the ground, but you know that you have to leave, or else you’ll start creating excuses for him. You know yourself too well to let that happen. 

Picking up your skirts, you manage only a few words to part him with. “Though your kind can’t lie,” you say, “you have been the biggest liar I have ever known. You said you loved me.” 

“I do,” he says, shaking his head, eyes twinkling. “I do.” 

Maybe love is a different thing to a faerie. 

You take off. He calls for you, but it’s muffled by the restlessness of the folk around you and the still-playing music. You dart between openings and bounce off bodies, lights and angry faces a blur in your frenzy. Most folk don’t spare you even a glance; nothing could pull them from their merriment. But others gawk at you like you put on a performance, greedy eyes drinking in any amount of fanfare. Their eyes itch under your skin. Crossing the expanse of the hall has never felt so arduous.  

You’ve become their spectacle. 

Breaking into the cold night air, you don’t run home or collapse to your knees in a sob. You hold your dress hard in your hands, the one he’d gifted you among so many others, its fabric bunching in your fists, and stand there as if frozen staring into the tree line ahead. You don’t move and you don’t think; both would remind you that this is real and that you are a fool. You just allow the bitter air to swaddle your skin. 

You don’t even know if you doubt that he loves you. You don’t even know if he actually never intended to hurt you. Had there been times where all you’d done was look at him with starry eyes, and he’d look at you deciding whether or not to have you killed? 

Why are you even here? There is nothing left for you. Whatever simple joys you thought you’d found, they’re gone. You’re so far away from home, and you’ve nobody to call home. You’d left behind your beginnings of a purpose, and now the only purpose you serve is to rot away in Taehyun’s estate because you demanded that you stay here. 

All that time you’d spent worrying, and still, you walked yourself into this. You’re a joke. 

White breaths unfurl into the night air before you, floating off to join the snowflakes and heavy fog. You just watch those fluffy flakes fall for a while. 

Snow creaks under a few footsteps behind you, someone letting you know that they’re there. “You’ve gotten awfully good at sneaking around,” Taehyun says. 

You let your head fall back, sighing slowly out through your nose. Turning to him, you spit, “I understand. You were right. I got it, okay? I don’t need you to come here and rub it in.” 

Beomgyu approaches from behind Taehyun. 

Taehyun doesn’t say anything for a bit, ice-hard eyes darting all over your face. “Take her back to the estate,” he tells Beomgyu. 

Glad to escape him, you begin your way on your own. You know that he’s only looking at your break down as pathetic. Perhaps it is, but recognizing that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Wind lapping at your wet cheeks have them stinging as you walk. 

Beomgyu awkwardly trails behind you as you follow the path that had become trodden in the time that you and Taehyun have been here, foliage and shrubbery broken down to make somewhat of a path. 

He doesn’t speak; you don’t expect him to. Instead, you break the quiet yourself, unable to stand only the sound of wind twirling between trees. “I should’ve taken that ridiculous charm thing,” you say, laughing through your tears. That hag had absolutely been able to feel what was coming with you with whatever intuition that the magic in her bones lends her. 

“But then,” Beomgyu says, “you wouldn’t know the truth.” 

That’s true. Not knowing the truth doesn’t make it untrue, but at least it spares your fragile heart. “I don’t know if I’d mind that,” you tell him. “I think I’d prefer it.” 

Ignorance is bliss, as the saying goes. 

❉

You don’t remember falling asleep. You remember climbing into your bed, dreading that you’ll be in your head all night, but to some mercy, you’d found sleep not long after that. 

You’d pulled yourself from bed, no matter how it had grown a gravitational pull and insisted that it’d hold you warm while you weep. If you hadn’t, you might not have gotten up at all. As a girl, you’d force yourself into the day’s routine when you had your worst days. It’s the only way that you live through it. You’d also made an effort to walk past your wardrobe. It carries so much of him: the lovely things he’d gifted you, his letters, and that book he’d lent you. It’s not that you don’t want any of these things; to wither away in your bed, to go through his things and wonder how someone who’d showered you so had meant to be your killer, to drag your feet... It’s that you can’t. 

You poke your needle through the fabric. On the cut of white fabric stretched inside the embroidery hoop, you’ve embroidered a dozen woven wheel stitch flowers of different colors and types. Your bottom aches against the hardwood flooring and your lower spine strains, but you don’t pay any mind to their complaining. You just continue to embroider the little flowers. Some are poppy, some rose, and some you’d made up just to have more to stitch. 

A knock resounds through the war room from the doorway. You look to see Taehyun there. He’s dressed in his Court attire. 

“You should get dressed,” he says. “It’s almost midnight. If you want to make it in time, you’ve got to get ready now.” 

Since when had he decided that you’re okay to go? It’s as if this elusive threat that’d he’d been so careful has up and disappeared. “You can go. It’ll take me too long to get ready.” 

Truth be told, you’d go sick seeing Yeonjun’s face, and you know without a doubt that you would. 

“It’s the solstice,” Taehyun says, stepping into the room. He looks like he wants to say more, but he doesn’t. 

Despite how much you had wanted to see it, your heart is too apathetic for it to be worth anything now. Returning to the same faces that had seen your demonstration and no doubt now talk of it... You’d rather finish your fifth rose. “I know.” 

He hesitates, studying you while gears turn in his head. “Hadn’t you thought that something would happen on the solstice?” he says. “Come on. It’s worth seeing how this unfolds.” 

“Why? We aren’t spies anymore. I don’t care what happens in their conflict. It’s well beyond my control as a human here.” 

He grimaces, but you don’t recognize the look there to be anger, more a rigidness. He rests his hand on his sword as he always does. “Then we’ll stay here.” 

You furrow your brows. “Huh?” 

“We can celebrate the solstice here,” he elaborates. “We don’t need to do it there. Plenty of folk celebrate on their own.” 

It dawns upon you that this is his stilted attempt at comforting you. It’s the only way he knows how. You push off the ground. You couldn’t ignore this sliver, however little, of tenderness. You’re not sure if you’d ever see it again if you did. You’ll take anything to distract your mind, as well. You can’t escape the image of Yeonjun’s eyes as he’d pleaded with you from the ground. “I’m not sure Beomgyu will join us, though. He doesn’t believe in the need to celebrate the solstices.” 

“He will if I command it,” he says.  

“What, you’re going to command the poor kelpie to sit and watch a bonfire with us?” you say, imagining how he’d brood. 

The north is wickedly cold at all times, but it’s especially so after night falls. You shuffle closer to the bonfire that Taehyun had built. It’s multitudes smaller than the bonfire you’d sat around with Yeonjun, but it’s warm enough for just the two of you. You quickly shove down those tainted memories before they sting. A lump of emotion forms in your throat before you can, though. You clear it. “Is there anything special that you’re supposed to do?” 

Feeding one last log into the flame, he watches it catch. “We started this really early,” he says. “The fire is supposed to keep you warm and represent the sun’s warmth until sunrise...” He trails off, sliding the cuffs of his shirt that he’d slid up to his elbows to tend to the fire down and sucking in an awkward breath. He looks between the fire and you as though he’d not fully thought out his offer when he’d made it. 

You face your palms to the orange flame, letting the roiling waves of heat warm them. “It’s nice like this.” 

The flame sizzles and pops, spewing sparks and eating up the wood, for a few long moments. You’re not in a talky mood, and Taehyun doesn’t seem to know where to begin on conversation with you that isn't functional. No snow falls around you, and any wind is cut by the estate. This—a place to lose yourself to your mind—is both the thing you need and what you most should not have. 

Taehyun stands watching the fire twirling, his arms over his chest.  

“Is your shoulder healing fine?” you ask, once the air starts feeling a bit heavy with the weight of the prolonged quiet. “Are my stitches holding up fine? No infection, or anything?” 

His gaze flicks up to you. “You stitched it up pretty well,” he answers. “I saw the flowers you were making. You’ve got a good hand.” 

Frowning, you say, “You didn’t say it’s not infected...” 

“It’s not infected,” he says. 

That could be a lie or the truth, you know. But... this sort of deception, you’re more comfortable with. Your human mind can pick up on these subtleties, can catch the careful intonation of somebody trying to hide something behind a lie. “Could I see it?” you ask him. 

He hesitates, expression flat as his eyes convey the extent of his consideration. “You can.” He grabs at his tunic, the fabric the only thing his frost blood even needs to wear out in the cold, and pulls it over his head. 

You swallow hard and fight the flush to your cheeks at the sight of his scar-flecked flesh, his muscled abdomen disappearing as he turns around to show you his back. When you’d last seen his bare skin, you’d been so high on your fear and adrenaline that you’d barely flinched.  

Blinking, you focus on the arrow puncture at his shoulder blade. It’s done some healing, but tinged by an angry red and visibly swollen around the stitches. You curse. 

Of course, he’d rather let his shoulder rot away than admit that he needs any more of your help than he’d been forced to allow. That would require admitting that he’s not just an impenetrable wall of ice. “That is definitely infected,” you say. “Were you just going to let that kill you? Infections like that are beyond help once they get in your bloodstream.” 

“I’ve had infected wounds before,” he says, preparing to put his shirt back on. “This one is nothing. It’ll take a bit longer, but... It’ll heal up fine.” 

You grab his arm. “Just let me clean it a bit,” you insist. “It’s not that big of a deal. You’re not scared that it’s gonna hurt, are you?” 

Sighing, Taehyun says, “I thought you wanted to enjoy the solstice.” 

The hopeful girl you’d been had wanted that, but now it’s just a reminder of everything you don’t want to remember. You wave your hair in the air dismissively. “We did. Come on.” 

You find a bucket to fill with water and cloth along with some stash of ancient spirits in the kitchens, their containers lined with a layer of dust so thick that you know they’re left over from Taehyun’s father. He watches you gather it all. 

You beckon him to turn and show you his shoulder again. He does, bracing his arms on a counter and letting his head hang. You spill out some of that strong liquor into the wound. You’re not really sure if it’ll work as a disinfectant, but as a girl you’d seen an older woman pour it over her wound once, and it’s all you know. 

Gently dabbing at his shoulder now with the water-soaked rag, swollen except for where the stitches sinch it, you say, “You should’ve been going gentle on this thing.” 

Taehyun doesn’t make any fuss as you prod at the wound. “I had more important things to concern myself with,” he says plainly. You press the wet rag to the wound and hold it there, and he begins to try and redirect the conversation to anything other than about himself. “What did the prince say to you at Court?” 

Your stomach drops. “It was nothing.” 

“I know that’s not the truth,” he says, picking up his head to try and look over his shoulder at you. “Tell me the truth.” 

You take the long, torn strips of cloth and begin wrapping it around the expanse of his broad shoulders in a sloppy and amateurish wrap. As long as it shields the wound, it’ll work. “That’s rich coming from you,” you say. “There’s plenty that you lie to me about. You even lied about this.” You tap his shoulder. 

Turning now that you’re done, Taehyun eyes you. You don’t know if he’d been able to hear anything over the sounds of Court or if he’d heard it all with his better hearing ears. You can��t tell which it is.  

“I’ll hear it from some Court gossiper anyway. I think you’d prefer to tell me it yourself.” 

The thought of that scene being a topic of Court gossip makes you ill, but you know that it’s true. The folk love the show, especially one that includes a prince of Faerie on his knees in front of a human. Red-hot embarrassment takes a leisurely stroll up your spine. Your biggest fear has taken flesh in the cruelest way possible.  

Well, if he’s going to end up knowing anyway... You’d prefer it’s from your mouth. You don’t know what sort of conflated half-truths the folk might come up with, since they have no more idea what happened than what they saw. “He was supposed to kill us,” you say, chest too tight to explain it in any depth. “Or, at least, find out who we are, so that we could be killed.” 

Taehyun doesn’t look shocked. He nods. “So, they anticipated our arrival, then. The odds had been stacked against us from the beginning.” 

You nod. Would you have been able to escape? If things had never become entangled between you and Yeonjun, would you and Taehyun lived beyond the first day? Taehyun is strong and you know that he’s no doubt survived plenty in his life, but you’d have been caught completely unaware. “Yeah.” 

“I told you that he’d show you his colors eventually.” 

You want to fight him on that, but you can’t. You have nothing to say. He’d been right. 

What’s left for you now that he has?  

END PART 4

a/n: RAHHH! like i said, this part gave me a bit of grief because part 3 was left so open ended—i had so many options and paths i could follow, but ultimately, i chose this one! how do we feel?

taglist: @lvrs-street2mmorrow , @soohashits , @f4iryfever , @arcturus444 , @linqed , @serenityism00 , @immelissaaa , @luv4cheol , @lickingan0rchid , @20-cms , @hhoneylix , @beestvng , @sanshiningstarhwa , @hyucktapes ,

[funkyplantguy]

grian gets saved by hotguy and then pines over him <3

so this "au" (if you can even call it that when it exists exclusively in my brain and now in this ask) is mostly crack and comes from me joking around a couple days ago with some friends so...don't take it too seriously. that being said... - you have (3) new comments! view now? click. areeongreenday: hey! so this is insane. click. h0tguysnumber0n3fan: i guess i kind of understand where you're coming from with this - scar goodman and hotguy do share a similar sense of humor, and i sort of see what you're saying at 47:03 when you compared their voices (more specifically, the inflection they use on specific words) but...i guess i'm having a hard time imagining scar as a superhero. don't get me wrong - he's plenty cool, but...didn't he say that he's a full-time content creator now? i don't know that he'd really have the time to record, edit, and post videos on top of saving the city on a near-daily basis. interesting theory, though! admire the dedication. click.

scargoodman: ;) and there it was, taunting him - that damn winky face, yet again, commented nearly instantaneously each time grian uploaded a new video about the man itself. scar goodman - known to many as the man who had risen to sudden fame in the video essayist community with his charming good looks and boisterous personality. scar goodman, whom grian suspected was secretly none other than the city's beloved superhero. after all, they'd both made their debuts within a week of each other and shared not only a similar path of success but a similar sense of humor, a similar speaking style, a similar body type, a similar laugh...sure, there were things that didn't quite line up, but...for the most part, they appeared to be the exact same person.

okay - maybe grian was a little obsessed. but what was he supposed to do, not point out the obvious?

what made matters worse was that nobody seemed to believe him. no matter how many videos he posted, no matter how much proof he gave...nobody was willing to hear him out.

nobody except scar goodman himself, who seemed intent to drive him absolutely insane.

grian grumbled something to himself, pocketing his phone and continuing down the long, narrow sidewalk to his apartment complex. he'd lost track of time at work yet again, and as a result, the sun had long set. this wasn't unusual for him - he often opted to remain late in the office to "finish up a few things" (ie take advantage of the functional wifi his workplace offered instead of trying to upload videos on his crummy home network), so he was...fairly comfortable tracing the path back to his apartment in the dark of night. the street lights in this part of town didn't work exceptionally well, but with the familiarity of it all and the dull light of the moon, grian typically fared well enough.

tonight, however...well, call him paranoid, but...something felt...off. something about the way all the buildings around him were dark, indicating that their inhabitants were either asleep or out (and entirely unreachable if grian were to call for help). something about the absence of the various stray cats that he often crossed paths with. something about how the complete and utter silence made his ears ring. "aw, what's this? a cute guy? well, pretty boy, you've just entered the wrong part of town at the wrong time. unfortunately, loose lips sink ships, or...uh...however the saying goes, so...sorry, i can't let you leave this visit alive." before grian could even register the words being spoken (where were they even coming from?? above him? below him? behind him? everywhere, all at once?), he felt hands gripping the back of his shirt. in another moment, he was on the ground, his breath clawing its way out of his chest. above him stood a figure, shrouded in darkness and the billowing, starry cape draped across their shoulders. in their hands was something glinting, something sharp, something deadly -- something that grian's frazzled, spinning mind was unable to put a name to. or maybe it refused to - refused to name the tool that would be his doom. maybe it was better that way, he mused idly, as the figure raised it high above their head. maybe it was best to not know.

"hey! there you are - what did i say about running off?" and just as quickly as he'd accepted his death, the threat of it was gone, vanquished by the appearance of the tall, costumed man on the rooftop adjacent. grian felt his breath return to his chest in one fell swoop, filling his lungs and sending a wave of sensitivity to his throat. he coughed, hard, tears welling helplessly in his eyes, and the newcomer's attention snapped to him in an instant. "oh - and you've made a friend! how nice. unfortunately, there are no plus ones in prison." "hotguy," grian's would-be murderer snarled. "i thought i'd lost you." "nah. i may have gotten lost, sure. but you didn't lose me. there's a difference."

"you'll wish that i'd lost you when i'm through with you." "oh, that was lame!" the man cried, hopping over the low rooftop wall and landing neatly on the ground below (how he did it, even grian wasn't sure. by all intents and purposes, his legs shouldn't have that level of shock absorption, even if he had been fed some chemical cocktail by a mad scientist at a young age as he boasted). "listen - we've got to get you a better catchphrase." hotguy strode forward, his eyes glinting behind his tinted visor. he glanced to grian out of the corner of his eye, then back to the villain - then back to grian again, his mouth going slack in surprise. grian met his gaze - took in his appearance - and let out a bark of laughter, one not missed by either scar goodman or the cloaked figure in front of him. scar returned his laughter, throwing his head back and planting his hands firmly on his hips. "well, what a coincidence," he giggled, after a moment. "my new catchphrase just so happens to be "subscribe to my youtube channel." "what?" their third demanded, glancing between the two. "what are you talking about?" "oh my god. there's no way. there's no way. how - how am i the only one who knows? how am i the only one who suspects?? it's obvious - it's so obvious." "what's obvious?" "i know, right? i make it as obvious as possible, and still...still, nobody puts two and two together. well...nobody except for you, apparently. i guess that you're just...special." "why don't you just come out and say it?" grian mused, propping himself up on his elbows and ignoring the sputtering from their newly acquired third wheel. "i feel like if you said it - either as scar goodman or hotguy - people would have to believe it, no?"

a strange look came over hotguy's face, but it vanished as quickly as it had arrived. "ah...i don't think that would change anything. plus, i have this thing with this cute guy where he tries to tell everyone my identity and i egg him on to get him to make more silly videos. i would hate to give that up." he winked, and grian felt warmth climb his cheeks. gone was the fear, gone was the panic, gone was the darkness and the creeping, crawling sense of unease - instead, there was only curiosity, burning brightly in his chest. he wanted to talk to scar - hotguy - for hours, wanted to pull the object of his obsession apart to see what made him tick, then put him back together again, just to see what would happen. he wanted to get to know who hotguy was underneath the suit - and who scar goodman was with the suit. he'd wanted (he'd wanted for so long) and it felt like maybe...just maybe...he'd get to have.

"hey! what the hell is going on?" "oh, right," hotguy chuckled, turning his attention to the third member of their party. "sorry - didn't mean to ignore you. here - sit tight, for real this time. the police will be here soon." "dude, i'm just going to leave again. do you really not have handcuffs or something?" "who needs handcuffs when you have a cub to design fancy gadgets for you?" "a...a what?" the figure asked, then yelped, startled, as something exploded out of the cuff on hotguy's wrist. a net, affixing itself neatly to their body, wrapping them up in a cocoon of their own folly. grian stared at it, humming in approval. "nice." "thank you! it's new." "i know." "i bet you do," scar responded, and grian flushed further at the teasing edge his tone took on. "i bet you know almost everything about me, at this point. obsessed, much?" "i could say the same," grian huffed back, pulling himself to his feet and brushing off his jeans (there was a rip in one leg, now, he noticed with a frown). "you recognized me, like, immediately. it's pretty dark out, too - sounds like you're the one obsessed." "what can i say - you're pretty and smart. i happen to like my men pretty and smart." grian sputtered incoherently in response, all confidence gone out the window. oh god - he was even more charismatic in person, even in costume. and god, was the costume more attractive in person, as well - baggy cargo pants and a tight, fitted top that exposed his tanned midriff. not the most tactical, sure - but damn was it hot.

"you can't say that," he moaned, covering his reddened cheeks with his hands. "oh my god. i hate you. i've known you for five minutes and i already hate you." "sure you do," scar responded, grinning. "i - oh, hold on." he raised his hand and tapped the earpiece affixed to the side of his head, concentrating. after a moment, he sighed - and for just a second, grian thought that his shoulders drooped in exhaustion. as quickly as they sagged, however, scar was straightening, turning back to grian with an easy smile. "sorry, handsome, duty calls. are you alright to get back home on your own? i doubt this guy will be giving you any more trouble. those nets are pretty sturdy." "wait!" grian sputtered, his heart hammering painfully in his chest (no, no, he couldn't let scar slip through his fingers, not now, not when he was finally so close). "don't go - i...can i see you again?" scar's smile wobbled around the edges, and any panic grian felt was replaced with guilty - heavy and suffocating (though he wasn't sure why) "ah...isn't it more fun, this way? don't you like the chase? isn't that exhilaration enough for your pretty little head?" "i mean...it's a fun hobby, yeah, but -," "then we'll stick to the status quo. after all, i'd hate to rob you of your favorite hobby. goodnight, grian. can't wait for your next video." and with a wink, he was gone, disappearing back into the shadows so quickly grian could have sworn he was made of them. and grian...well. he had an apartment to get home to, a cat to feed...and a chase to continue. and maybe, someday, if he was fast enough...he'd catch up.

[gentlemanjuniper]

very normal about Job era Crowley tempting Aziraphale to be closer to earth, closer to HIM, with wine and food and free will, watching him eat with barely restrained lust in his eyes, recontextualizing every future “Crowley watching Aziraphale eat” scene as him reliving that original thrill

[heck-theo]

Okokokokok- ignore how rough and messy some of these redraws/sketches are - but it's apparently also dinosaur month?? (WHY did no one ever tell me it's Jurassic June? I love dinosaurs) And like. What if Rise but dinosaurs?!

I don't often post such loose sketches but I wanted to show these off cause I really like some of this.

Design choices and dino species + the reasons I picked them bellow (looking for potential Donnie dino suggestions):

Clothes: Without the shell they really need clothes. They'd all have pretty much the same pants to keep some unity, except maybe Mikey (I decided they should all have the same pants after I finished the Mikey sketches, not sure if I'll keep the shorts or change to pants). Accessories are a mix of pre and post finale.

Raph - I think would keep it simple and practical but would also wear nice jackets and stuff when in casual situations. I need to work on giving him an alternative outfit and tweak his accessories a bit.

Donnie - An oversized pull-over hoodie cause we already know he loves that shit. We see him wearing it all the time. Easy enough. He wears a comfortable singlet underneath so the straps of his battle sail don't rub. Nice soft fabric, tight fit so it doesn't move around, tucks it into his pants, etc. When he wears the battle sail he won't overheat so he can wear hoodies basically all year round.

Leo - He's in one of those shirts with obnoxiously large arm holes and make it cropped cause 1. I think he would 2. I want it to be different from Raph and Donnie's singlets. He usually wears the shoulder strap off his shoulder but pulls it up when he needs to. He has some of the black bandages over his mid drift atm but I might just make his pants super high waisted in the final version. He'd probably wear a bomber jacket (also cropped?) over the top for cool weather, but doesn't like to hide his feathers.

Mikey - I think he'd mostly wear hand me downs when he's younger. He definitely goes through a stage of rebelling and wanting to pick his own and would find a middle ground of appreciating sharing some of his brother's clothes and modifying them, as long as he has the choice of his own available. Not sure if that would be before or after this design. At the moment he's got Raph's old shorts (from a loooong time ago), Leo's old shirt, and Donnie's old zip up hoodie. He does have his own accessories though, including pins instead of stickers.

Dinosaurs: I kept them all as non-avian dinosaurs, AKA not including animals that are colloquially considered dinos but aren't (like pterosaurs). I wanted to keep an even split of herbivore vs carnivore just so one wasn't the odd one out. I wanted to keep most of their body structure, colours and distinguishing features the same as canon. Obviously I added tails cause, yeah, of course haha. I did want them to be recognisable as different species of dino using distinct characteristics that their species is known for. I did ignore a lot of differences though, like size and bipedal vs quadruped (although the quadrupeds might be more likely to go to all fours, especially when fighting or afraid). Leo and Donnie are carnivores so have sharper teeth and claws.

Raph - Some kind of Ceratopsian (likely Triceratops or something very similar) and he was the first idea I had for this and I'm really happy with it. I think it just suits him. Trike Raph just came to me in an unprecedented moment of genius. His spikey frill replicates his spikey shell. His sturdiness, protectiveness and willingness to kick ass when needed, all scream trike to me.

Donnie - Spinosaurus but looking for other species recommendations. More details below: So I wanted to figure out a way for him to have tech with a similar function to his battle shell (in the sense that it's something that helped him in day to day life) and so I went with spino cause one possible theory about a function of spinosaurus' sail is temperature regulation. So his battle sail has heating/cooling systems as well as other tech. A spino's sail was probably not fragile but the battle sail would also help protect it from being targeted during fights or crushed during extreme impacts. It was also thought to be used for display, and what's more of a display than a battle sail? The only problem I have with this is that it's lacking part of what makes Donnie's battle shell so great, which is that it is essentially a prosthetic. Not quite the same as how prosthetics are used in people of course, just in the sense that it is replicating the functionality of a body part that he doesn't have (I can't think of a better word). Well he does have a shell but it doesn't function in the same way that his brothers shells do, which leaves him with less defense than they have, hence a big reason for the battle shell (I hope I explained this well, it was hard to try and word properly). I can't think of a good way to do this with dinos. I was thinking of a carno or something with tiny arms, then Donnie could have tech enhanced arms but I'm pretty much ignoring body structure in the others so it would be weird to have just Donnie be affected by a difference in limb structure/functionality. I was thinking prosthetic tail but every non avian dinosaur had a pretty substantial tail. Except therizinosaurus but even they hade pretty obvious tails. I'm open to suggestions for this one if anyone has ideas. It does have to be an extinct non-avian dinosaur (anything not in Avialae), preferably carnivore but if someone suggests a really good herbivore or omnivore then I can try and swap Mikey for a carnivore. I want there to be an even split. I also wanted to give him something different on his face, like his brothers, and that could only be a little spino crest and it crowds the top of his head but I can't put it anywhere else...

Leo - A type of Dromaeosaur. I was tossing up between this and a dilophosaur where his red stripes were part of the dilo's crest, cause I wasn't sure about giving him feathers. But dilo Leo was so plain compared to the rest and the crests were hard to get looking right so I went back to raptor Leo. I can definitely imagine him literally and metaphorically preening his feathers too. You can't really see it but he does also have that big raptor claw. Raptors were smart, tactical and worked in packs so I think that suits him. I wasn't specifically referencing how some artists draw Leo's stripes coming off his face (I was just trying to replicate his stripes somehow, even though it doesn't make a huge amount of sense) but I realised afterwards that it kinda looks like that and might have been subconsciously inspired by it.

Mikey - Is an Ankylosaur. I'm pretty happy with the species but I need to work out the design of his armour plating so that it looks interesting, cool and protective but isn't too chunky, too pointy or super lumpy looking. I went with an anky cause Mikey is often hiding in his shell and he can't do the same here but he could curl up in a defensive ball. Plus I could imagine him using his tail club in his razzmatazz fighting style. A little like his kusari-fundo or nunchacku/nunchucks (not sure on proper wording).

[b00kdiary]

MORE BAT BOYS X PLUS SIZE READER (smut!!) PLEASE xxx

Cautious | Bat Boys

ACOTAR Bat Boys x Plus Size reader

It's just as Cassian said: the bat boys were young and dumb… and fucked females in the same room as each other. Y/N’s in for one hell of a surprise.

Warning: Mature themes (18+), swearing, fluff, and smut.

MASTERLIST - 1 and 2

PART TWO

"Rhysand" I giggled, the sound drowned out as he slammed the oak front door shut and pushed me up against it.

He pressed his lips to mine, capturing my laugh within that soft, sinful mouth of his.

I gasped, back arching against the cold wood as his tongue swept in, the faint taste of wine invading my senses. My fingers clawed up his armoured chest, scratching and admiring the lean muscle he had gained training here at Windhaven.

He caged me in, taller and broader than I had expected, especially for a male of only twenty years. But his experience with females was more than evident as he kissed me, one hand gripping the flesh at my hip while the other curved around my jaw to keep me just where he liked.

A moan slipped free as his lips plucked back from mine, an insatiable hunger in his violet gaze as he dipped his head down and began suckling wet, needy kisses against my throat. I felt his smirk against my skin at the sounds he wrenched from me.

"Rhy-Rhysand," I couldn't form proper sentences, not as he nipped and sucked against the sweetest spot at the base of my throat. He hummed absentmindedly. "We'll get caught – "

"Rhys," He corrected, voice like melted chocolate. I bit my lip as he kissed up neck and jaw, before pulling back to smirk at me.

Gods he was beautiful.

"Call me Rhys, darling," He brushed the tip of his nose against mine and my eyes fluttered. "And no one's going to catch us. My mother is at the town hall, gossiping with your mother."

I giggled again and his lip quirked at the corner. A flash of sweetness behind the charm.

Again, his lips met mine, a collision of teeth and tongues and enough need that all my protests disappeared. Washed away by the feel and taste of him, by the way, his hands now brushed up my stomach, long, ringed fingers teasing under my aching breasts.

So many noises escaped me as that hand lifted higher, and I felt a charge of power course through me as Rhys cupped my breasts in his palm, a rough sound rumbling from him as he pinched my pebbled nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

"I don't – " Words failed me again, every sentence melting into a moan as he toyed with my breasts, grinning as he did so. "I don't think this is what your mother meant when she said to make me feel welcome."

He snorted and braced a hand over my head, the other moved to tilt my chin to meet his pleased smirk. I could smell the salt and jasmine on his tan skin, could make out the few Illyrian tattoos peeking out from under his leathers.

"I disagree, darling," Again that smooth term of endearment, and the smile he gave me as my thighs clenched shut told me he knew what it did to me. "I'm doing exactly what I was told – creating long-lasting allies, a friendship to withstand centuries."

"Is this how you treat all your friends then?" I quirked a brow, desperately ignoring the way his thumb swooped back and forth at my jaw.

"Don't be jealous," His smile broadened a breathtaking sight. My lungs constricted tighter when he leaned down closer, and I felt the unmistakable imprint of his hard length against my stomach. "I'm sure I'm not the first friend you've ever made, Y/N darling."

A glint of challenge in those midnight eyes.

"Now who's jealous?" I teased and satisfaction filled me when shadows eclipsed his eyes, the hand at my jaw tightening when I rocked my hips forward to rut against him. He growled as I did it again. And again.

"You are trouble," He chuckled, and I was molten in his hands as he pressed one long, indulgent kiss against my mouth. The kind that promised a night I wouldn't easily forget. "I'll take your lack of a denial as a personal challenge, to be the best friend you've ever had – "

I opened my mouth to laugh, but then Rhys clamped a broad, calloused hand over my lips. Silencing me.

His mouth pressed against his knuckles, violet eyes warning me to stay quiet.

And then I heard it - footsteps crunched outside, a gentle patter against the stones leading to the cabin.

"Let me just grab my shawl," A light, feminine voice called out. Rhys and I weren't breathing. "The weather's turned for the worst."

My heart lurched. That was Rhysand's mother and the look in his eyes told me she would not be pleased to find him here, find me here. This was definitely not the kind of welcome she had meant.

It all happened in a blur.

One second, we stood there, pressed against each other, his hand over my mouth and knowing we were absolutely fucked. And then the next, a cloud of dark mist erupted through the room and then Rhysand had gripped my small hand in his – and winnowed us.

It was a flurry of darkness and shadows, warping and twisting our bodies as we moved through time and space. He gripped my soft body tight, hands keeping me protectively close.

And then we were in a room.

I gasped as my feet once again met solid ground, the world spinning around me, my guts coiling in tandem with it. Rhys yet against pressed a finger against my lips, and I found myself cemented to another cold, oak door.

His bedroom door likely, though I couldn't see over his towering, broad form.

I gripped his wrist, staring into those wide violet eyes and straining my ears. I froze as the front door creaked open, those soft footsteps pattering into the living room, muttering as she moved. My nails carved half-moons into his flesh, a mixture of fear and excitement taunting me as we both silently listened for his mother's steps.

I might have been crazy, might have utterly fucking insane for how my body was reacting. But with him so close, being able to feel every hard inch of him and not being able to touch him for fear of being caught... it made my core soak.

Rhys's eyes flashed down to mine, surprise and mischief in them as he caught the scent of my arousal. I felt my cheeks heat and I swear he seemed to shake with the restraint it took to keep waiting, looked as if he wanted to devour me at this moment.

But we waited. Even if it killed us.

We waited, listening in suffocating silence as Rhys's mother waded through her home, items rustling and clattering as she searched for her shawl. It might have been a few minutes or a lifetime before she sighed, finding it.

I rubbed against Rhysand's cock again as her footsteps padded toward the door, getting quieter.

And the second that door closed shut – the male snarled and then was upon me.

My back slammed into the wood behind me, hard enough that the breath knocked from my lungs. Rhysand gave me no time to get down air before his mouth clashed with mine and his tongue forced my lips and teeth apart.

He moaned into my mouth, and I felt alight as every inch of him cemented against every inch of me. My hands gripped his shoulders, exploring and feral as I touched my way along the hard, lean lines of him, desperate to just feel him.

He seemed to feel the same, his mouth tearing from mine to bite and kiss against my throat again, his face slotting into the crook of my neck and mouth teasing the already bruising flesh there. I whimpered, eyes rolling as his mouth descended lower, my dress yanked down enough for my breasts to spill free.

"Fuck," Rhys swore, his gaze pitch black. My body burned at that look.

His head dipped and his lips found purchase around one taut nipple, drawing it between his teeth and sucking. He hummed and the sound travelled through my whole body, mixing with the desperate sounds wrenching free from my parted lips.

Rhys enjoyed my breasts, smearing spit along them as he toyed from one to the other, biting and kissing and worshipping them.

It was dangerous for us to do this still. Stupid even. Knowing Rhys's mother could come back at any point, knowing my own mother would likely start looking for me soon, that if they came here, saw us, even smelt us –

"How- how did your mother not know?" I managed to choke out, fisting Rhys's midnight hair. He continued twirling his tongue around my sensitive nipple as if he hadn't heard me. "She must have smelt it – "

"Why are we talking about my mother?" Rhys groaned, lips curling into a disgruntled frown. I yanked at his hair, forcing his face back up to mine, and he sighed at the persistence in my doe eyes. "Magic – that cloud of mist? It's a little trick to make sure none can sense me, sense us."

I hummed in understanding, opening my mouth to ask another question. But then his hand curved down my stomach and my breath hitched as he slowly pulled my dress higher, exposing my legs to the cold air. I shivered as his hand traced my bare skin, closer and closer to where I needed him.

"Did that placate your curiosity?" He teased, fingers trailing in and out, until my core was clenched with need.

"Don't be an ass," I scowled, hips shifting, trying to force some contact. But Rhys just smiled, drawing faint circles at the apex of my thigh. "We nearly got caught, I'm being cautious – "

"Cautious? Is that what it was?" He arched a thick brow at me, and my back curved when he ran the pad of his thumb over the front of my panties, feeling the dampness there. "Do you always get this wet when cautious?"

Any smart retort I had died on my lips as Rhys pressed his thumb against my clit and began slowly rubbing circles over the thin cloth. I moaned, and his grin was victorious, his dark gaze half-shielded by the strands of his hair tousled forward.

He seemed no longer in the mood to tease me, and I was glad for it as I dragged his mouth back to mine. A grumble of approval from him as he lazily rubbed at my clit, his mouth moving just as lazily against mine.

"Rhys," I pleaded, hips grinding down against his palm needing more friction. And he obliged me, no, he more than obliged me.

I watched as this half-Illyrian, half-High Fae male, the next High Lord of the Night Court, possibly the most powerful High Lord to ever be, dropped to his knees before me.

He looked up at me through thick, dark lashes, that mischief and desire in his eyes enough to make me climax alone. But then he lifted my soft thigh and hooked it over one broad shoulder and growled as he pushed my dress back and revealed my white underthings, a wet spot painfully obvious in the centre.

The wooden door handle dug into my spine, but I couldn't do anything but lean against it, my chest rising and falling in waves as I stared down at him before me.

His low position exposed the Fae light in the room, and it glistened over his tan skin and feral smile as he brushed his thumb over the thin material again. I bit my lip hard enough to bleed as he slipped a finger under the material and tugged it to the side.

"Cauldron," Rhys groaned, a low, appreciative noise as he eyed my exposed, wet core. "Look at you."

My cheeks heated, a mixture of arousal and embarrassment, suddenly feeling very exposed. Rhys kissed my inner thigh, playfully nipping at the flesh there, forever able to calm any raging emotions within me.

My nails cracked against the wall as his soft lips trailed higher, closer and closer to my centre. I couldn't contain my breathless moan when his mouth met that forbidden spot, and he dragged a slow, deliberate lick up my core.

"Rhys," I could barely hear my voice over the pounding in my heart. Could barely hear it over the soft, sensual growl Rhysand emitted at the first taste of me.

And as if that taste was better than he could imagine, he went back in for another. And then another. And another. Until he was licking and suckling his tongue back and forth against my sore clit, wrenching sounds that were unmistakably lewd.

"Careful, darling," Rhys chuckled, pulling back from between my legs just far enough for me to see his dilated pupils and the wetness coating his smile. "If you moan any louder, we'll definitely get caught."

I didn't have the chance to respond before Rhys plucked my clit between his lips again, all thoughts eddying from my mind as pleasure knitted through my core, painfully tight. My head thudded back against the door, my hips grinding down against Rhys's tongue, chasing that familiar high.

My fingers laced through his hair and Rhys hummed as I tugged at the strands, my body acting of its own accord, now riding his face, riding his tongue. I felt something tauten within me, and my legs began to shake as my climax approached faster and faster.

"Rhys," I gasped, back bowing. "Rhys, I – "

"I know, I know," He purred, the vibration running through me. "Just let go, darling."

He flicked his tongue hard and fast, and my mouth parted in a desperate cry as my release slammed into me, knocking the air from my lungs. My body stilled, thighs closing around his head instinctively, and I was near sobbing his name as I fell apart.

Rhys kept going through it. Held me like he wished to make this moment last an eternity.

The stars exploding across my vision dimmed, fading as I sagged back against the door.

I giggled, half-gasping as I pushed at his head, my body writhing as I forced his mouth off me. Rhys laughed, low and sultry, before eventually relenting, plucking back and licking the moisture from his lips.

I peered down at him, sweating and dizzy. The male was a sight for sore eyes, grinning up at me, as he watched me catch my breath.

“That wasn’t very cautious of you, darling,” Rhys smirked, stars twinkling in his eyes. “It’s a miracle no one heard you.”

I bit my lip, laughing as I stared down at the male, my orgasm fogging every sense and making it impossible to retort anything nearly witty enough back.

“Oh, you were heard,” A rough voice drawled the words. Yet Rhysand’s mouth didn’t move. “It’s a good thing we’re so good at keeping secrets, eh Rhys?”

My heart stopped as I lifted my head, following that smug voice.

And saw two Illyrian males before us.

Watching us. Watching me.

------------------------------------------------

Comment to be added to the tag list!

Taking requests for all SJM men x plus size reader!

PART TWO

@mirandasidefics @rcarbo1 @girl-of-multi-fandoms @tumblgirlie0210 @mis-lil-red @hyemishii @infintyfandoms @sarawritestories @eerievixen @nyotamalfoy @lewsnumerounofan @dreaming-about-fanfictions @sarawritestories @nottyourlover @bbycowboi @morganwdarius @marvelsmylife @justasillylittlegoofyguy @allyjoe755 @just-a-social-casualty-1 @eleventhboi @sfhsgrad-blog @glam-targaryen @firebreathingbishqueen @sindulgent666 @impossibelle @azrielsmate3 @superspideyparker

@assaultsofthought @starswholistenanddreamsanswered @loveareum

[emchant3d]

siren steve and pirate eddie, part 2 pt 1

Steve heals slowly.

He’s irritable and restless, bedridden, and he doesn’t have the strength in his injured tail to support himself if he were to be tossed back into the ocean.

The crew helps him to the deck for a change of scenery and some sunshine - he seems more settled when he can hear the waves and feel the sun on his skin. He’s less snappish, at least, those sharp teeth tucked away behind his pink lips instead of bared in Eddie’s direction.

Eddie had panicked briefly about how much saltwater Steve needs, and he’d rolled his eyes at him. “Keep it near and I’ll be fine,” he tells him. “Half human remember?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, “but the fish part is looking a little dry, sweetheart.” 

Steve slaps him with a tail fin.

He finds himself spending most days with the Mer. Part of it is pure fascination - it’s difficult to not want to spend time around a story come to life. And if he neglects his duties as Captain a little, well - that’s what his crew is for.

Slowly, he pulls more from Steve. He finds out what caused his injuries - “the deep holds a lot of creatures that like the taste of Mer,” he tells him. “I swam right into a nest. By the time I realized, they already had me by the throat and were dragging me to the seabed.”

“Gods,” Eddie murmurs, and Steve hums in agreement. “Evil little things. Razor sharp claws and teeth, and their tails are like whips. They move in schools, so if there’s one, there’s dozens others.”

He speaks of these kinds of creatures so casually, monsters that have worked their way into human lore and others that are unknown to them, but the idea of them still makes Eddie’s skin crawl.

It’s like Steve has a sixth sense for his discomfort. He’s lounging in a long basin Freak and Jeff put together, a shallow amount of salt water in it to keep him comfortable, and he rolls his head to the side, peering up at Eddie.

“They probably wouldn’t turn down a human, either,” he muses, dragging those unnervingly deep eyes up and down him, “but your little lungs wouldn’t survive that deep down, so you’re probably fine.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Eddie snorts, and Steve breaks into a laugh.

As friendly as they’re becoming, Eddie knows Steve still doesn’t fully trust him. He’s excellent at reading people - he knows when someone is keeping secrets, and Steve is locked tight.

He doesn’t blame him. He knows it’s difficult to believe Eddie’s help doesn’t come with strings, and he catches Steve watching him and his crew sometimes, tense and on edge as if he’s waiting for someone to lash out at him.

Eddie hates it. But he doesn’t know how to settle him, not fully, and so maybe the solution is to craft those strings he’s looking so hard to find. Let him find what he’s looking for, but show him that they aren’t as bad as he’s built them up to be in that pretty head of his.

“So what other gifts are you blessed with, Highness?” he asks one cloudy day, the sky gloomy and overcast. A little rain won’t hurt them, but he’s hoping the darker clouds on the horizon will dissipate before they reach them and upend a true storm.

“Divination,” Steve says like he’s bored, and Eddie’s head whips around to stare at him. Steve holds his gaze, his own a little hooded, and he yawns softly.

“What,” Eddie asks flatly. Steve waves a hand dismissively. 

“Just about the ocean,” he says, like that isn’t still one of the most incredible things Eddie’s ever heard. “I can tell when danger’s near. When something isn’t quite right. Whole lot of good it did me,” he snorts, glancing down at his scarred torso.

The bandages have been removed, and pink skin is healing slowly where there used to be gaping wounds. His tail is faring much the same, scales missing from where he’d been bitten and ripped at, but the new flesh is beginning to blend in with the bright shades of his lower half.

“Everything was dangerous down there, I just tried to pick the safest option. I’m still pretty sure I chose right.” Eddie frowns. “You were almost eaten alive,” he says, can’t help it, and Steve cuts him a lazy smile.

“Almost,” he repeats, and Eddie supposes that’s an answer.

He takes a breath, calms his heart, and tries to act like the Captain he is. “So, if you stuck around, you’d be able to tell me what I’m heading towards.” Steve closes his eyes and lets his head hang back, arms resting on the sides of the basin. 

“Yes.” A cloud sweeps over them, blocking the sun from shining on Steve’s face, casting him in shadows. “I could tell you if you were sailing into an ambush, or if the waters were acting up, or any number of other useful little tips that could keep you and your crew alive.”

“You’ve thought about this,” he says, and Steve snorts.

“Of course I have. I have no home. No family. Going alone almost got me killed. I’m pretty but I’m not dumb, Eddie.” He opens his eyes, fixing his gaze onto Eddie’s. “So how about we make a deal?” he offers, and Eddie grins.

It’s an easy negotiation. Steve wants freedom. He wants to see the world. And he wants safety while he does it. Eddie wants an advantage, wants to keep his crew safe, wants them to thrive in this difficult life they’ve chosen.

They shake on it. Steve moves lightning fast as their hands meet, a sharp claw nicking his own palm and then Eddie’s, making him hiss.

“Fuck–” he grunts. A burning sensation shoots through him from hand to chest, fire hot and searing. He gasps, fingers locked around Steve’s, who stares at him impassively. “What…?”

“You’ve made an oath with a Mer,” Steve says simply. “You’ll be held to your word, Captain Munson.”

Eddie pulls his hand away and looks at his palm. 

A black mark surrounds the cut from Steve’s claw, a swirling spiral that snakes from the center of his palm in three little loops. Steve holds his hand out without being asked, showing the matching mark on his own skin.

Eddie’s no stranger to ink and tattoos, but this is decidedly different. It hums with an ancient kind of magic, a connection that he doesn’t - can’t - understand. Something unnameable settles into his bones.

This is a test, he realizes. Or maybe it’s insurance. Either way, it’s something Steve felt necessary to take Eddie at his word, and so he won’t ask questions - not yet, at least.

“Well, I’ve had worse deals, I guess,” he says, and when he meets Steve’s eyes again, some of the caution has seeped out of them. 

Eddie’s sure there’s more to be found out about this creature in front of him, but contrary to popular belief, he can be patient when it counts. 

For now he’ll take what he’s offered - a wary friendship. A slow-growing understanding. And a certain type of care, of gentleness, that curls warm within him and grows with every smile and soft look that Steve throws his way.

part 3 coming soon 💕 no tag lists, sorry!

[littleheartsong]

Laios x fem or gn reader where she also enjoys monsters but she also enjoys animals (in the mentally ill way). Which leads to them always chatting about them, like chilchuck will be walking by and he'll hear that female hyenas have a penis. He just walks away thinking "what in the fucking fuck was that!?" I imagine they would also stay up late talking about monsters. :D

(↑The big little man learning that information)

i too am mentally ill about animals i could talk about biology for literal hours

laios/gn reader content: fluff. autism-to-autism conversation warnings: casual conversation about killing animals+monsters. mentions of animal genitalia. pretty normal!

"So... what's your favourite monster?"

The sudden question prompted Laios to look up from the delicious aroma of simmering kelpie, probably the one thing to take his attention away from food, while both Chilchuck and Marcille grimaced at what you'd just unleashed.

"My favourite monster?" Laios ponders the question as you nod in confirmation, "Well, Basilisks are pretty cool since they have two heads, though it's thought that the snake head is the actual head." 

"Really?"

"Yeah! Since it's cut in half, the snake head lives longer." His smile widens at your interest.

"I wonder what would happen if you cut a two-headed animal in half. Would one head live longer or would they both die at the same time?" You wonder while tilting your head.

Laios thinks about that for a second; it's a pretty good question! He's only seen two-headed calves in his village, and they didn't live long after birth.

"I think it depends on where it's cut since two-headed animals aren't supposed to have two heads and Basilisks are born that way," he concludes with a nod to cement his statement.

"That makes sense! It probably depends on the animal too; it would be harder for a larger animal like a calf to live longer than something smaller; like a snake," you say.

It appears Marcille has since lost her appetite and absconded from the area to avoid any more of this conversation and tucked into her bedroll, praying to whatever spirits can hear her you will stop soon. Chilchuck is more morbidly fascinated by what you two are talking about. He didn't even know animals could have two heads, and he hopes he never encounters one. Two-headed monsters are enough for him.

"No one can seem t' decide where th' 'ead begins n' ends," Senshi chimes in while preparing dinner.

"So are Basilisks your favourite then?" you ask Laios.

"Huh? Oh!" Laios perks up, reminded of the original question, "They're cool, but not my favourite," He taps his finger to his chin, once again in thought, "I'd have to say Wargs are my favourite," 

You smile at that." Wargs are so cute! They remind me of hyenas or bears, with their big, boxy heads and bulky bodies.

Laios is stunned for a moment; never in his whole life has he heard someone describe Wargs as 'cute'. He'd sooner describe them as 'cool' or 'ferocious'; does that mean you think bears and hyenas are cute too? He could understand bears. They look fluffy, though they also have those big claws. What other things do you think are cute?

"Yeah, they kind of are; they remind me a bit of my dogs back at my village," he says. "They also have really soft fur,"

"Wow! I wanna pet a Warg!" You clap your hands together in delight. "It'd probably bite my hand off, but it'd be worth it."

Warm laughter falls out of Laios' mouth before he can catch it. "Maybe we can find one and pet it together sometime."

Your face breaks into a grin as you sit closer to Laios. "Sounds like a plan! Hey, maybe they're really social, like hyenas."

Laios has to clear his throat, so anything he wants to say doesn't get stuck in there, as a flush rushes to his face. "I don't know that much about hyenas... I've only seen pictures."

That moment is when you really light up. "Oh! They're so cool! Especially spotted hyenas; they're the biggest ones, and they're also called bone-crushing hyenas since can break bones with their bites," and off you go.

"The females are larger than the males, and it's a matriarchal society too! So even the lowest-ranking female is still higher-ranked than the male. Even their penises are bigger!" 

Laios watches you share this information with wide, wondrous eyes. "Wait, their penises?"

"Oh, well, it's not a real penis," you correct yourself. "It's just the clitoris enlarged, but it pretty much acts like a real penis. They mate with it, pee through it, and even give birth with it!"

A pause

"... How does that work?" Laios asks.

"Well-

At that point, Chilchuck silently excuses himself to his own bedroll. He doesn't need to know the details. Birth is excruciating enough as is, but with a- no. No. He shakes his head to get rid of the terrible thought.

Senshi seems interested in listening, though.

[pinknipszz]

POUND TOWN!

modern au, 18+, mdni pls

“sukuna,” you click your tongue, arms crossed over your chest as you stare at the tall, pink-haired man standing at your doorstep. he doesn’t look that different since you last saw him, wearing the same loose wife-beater tank top and grey sweatpants. your nose scrunches up when you catch a whiff of him, as if he can’t decide between cheap cologne, weed, or gym sweat. “what are you doing here?”

“got bored,” he deadpans, tilting his head slightly to catch a glimpse of your apartment through the gap, half-expecting a thing or two to look different. you only sigh and shake your head. sukuna has a strange habit of popping up out of nowhere, knocking on your door, stealing some food, and fooling around for a bit before disappearing for months. when you think sukuna is gone for good, he comes back. like a stray cat. 

you probably shouldn’t be taking in a stray so easily, especially one with claws, but how were you supposed to know that a simple conversation starter like “you smell like blue razz ice” would plant the seed of a beautiful friendship with the hottest plug in the city? it's a little unconventional but neither of you care. what irks you, though, is his shitty timing. “you can’t be here right now,” you say. “i’m busy with something.”

but instead of apologizing for disturbing your peace like any normal person, sukuna plants a foot against the door and pushes open with full-force. you yelp and jump back quickly before it slams against your face, but the drywall isn’t so lucky. you think you hear a loud crack. “what the hell is your–!” before you could finish, the bastard shoves past you and waltzes in like he owns the place. what a fucking bitch!

you lock the door, grumbling. seems like he hasn’t changed much in personality either. when you follow his trail and catch him digging through your fridge, you can’t bite back the sarcasm. “are you that much of a lousy deadbeat to go through girls’ apartments for food?” sukuna turns to flip you off before resuming his venture.

“i know you have more than fucking vegetables in here,” he scoffs, “where is the— gotcha.”

he pulls out your familiar container for leftovers. you don’t even remember what you cooked. it could’ve been weeks old, but sukuna clearly doesn’t have half the mind to care as he rips off the lid and eats with his free hand. “eugh. you’re disgusting,” rolling your eyes, you leave the kitchen and make your way towards the couch to continue your show. you doubt you’ll even enjoy yourself with him around, but whatever.

you won’t let that guy get to your head. just pretend he isn’t there. it's not that serious. the knots in your shoulders loosen when you lean back against the couch and reach for the remote to adjust the volume until sukuna’s shuffling is reduced to nothing but background noise. and it works for the most part. you don’t know how much time passes, maybe an hour or two, until you almost forget he's even there.

a heavy weight precariously plops beside you. cheap cologne, weed, gym sweat. they overwhelm your senses entirely. “breaking bad? is this some kind of joke? thought you said you were busy,” sukuna throws an arm over your shoulder and pulls you close. he doesn’t budge when you try to shove him away, so you resort to pinching his side instead, earning a sharp yelp from the young man. “obviously i am. and don’t get so full of yourself. you don’t even cook.”

he mutters a few words under his breath, probably something vile and venomous, but you couldn’t care less and revert your attention back to the tv. you've waited this long for the show's season finale, and you'll be damned if you let this bastard distract you. but sukuna thinks more with his dick than his brain, evident in the way that the hand on your shoulder slides down and finds your waist, rubbing small circles and squeezes tight on the meat of your flesh.

the episode continues, but you don’t even know what’s happening anymore. when you decide that it's futile to watch without any knowledge of what happened prior, you sigh inwardly and glance to your side. sukuna isn't even looking at the tv.scrolling through his phone, he looks bored and uninterested, as if there's a million other things he could be doing right now. but he’s here with you, holding you close, which is entirely unbecoming for a man like him.

your heart twinges. no, you scold yourself, not for him. anyone but him. sukuna is a stray cat that takes and takes and takes. a storm that wreaks havoc, leaves chaos and destruction in his wake before disappearing like mist. there’s always an underlying motive with him, one that forces you to pick apart his words and play detective for a mystery not worth divulging. 

“relax,” he tuts. but you can’t. not when his hand travels lower down your side, poking and prodding, teasing the waistband of your shorts. and when his fingertips finally melt into unmarred flesh, heat pools deep in your stomach. “sukuna,” comes his only warning. the man of the hour merely flashes a shit-eating grin before he grabs your jaw and presses his mouth to yours.

you taste the earth on his tongue. it’s sweet and smokey and slightly bitter. with a hint of fruit and leftovers from your fridge. strong arms wrap around you properly, holding you close, so close that his heart beats against your own. you kiss him back eagerly. sukuna’s hands move with intent, relearning parts of your body that were forgotten throughout your time apart. when he bites your lips raw, you whimper.

“i know baby, i know,” he hushes in between wet kisses. he pushes until your back hits the cushions underneath. sukuna climbs over and grabs your thighs with two strong hands, cock twitching in his pants at how your flesh spills between his fingers. he positions them over his shoulders and leans down for another a searing kiss. you’re smothered like this, rendered useless under the weight of him and your knees against the sides of your head, pushed far beyond a mating press.

you moan in his mouth when he grinds against you. “i know how much you miss me, miss my cock,” sukuna snarls out, jaw clenching with impatience as he tears through your shorts. the cold air slams against your cunt like a sledgehammer. the ceiling spins overhead. “i’m here, i’ll take care of you.” it’s a salacious promise that he seals with a tender kiss against your temple. you’re writhing, slurring his name as you blink blearily through the blood rushing to your head. he makes a show of pulling himself out of his pants.

sukuna runs a thumb over your folds before smearing the lewd concoction of slick and precum with the tip of his cock. the sight of your sopping hole is obscene, no doubt about it, but that hardly matters now. “put it in already,” you whine with tears collecting in your lashes, the position too taxing for your body. and for once, sukuna listens. he leans forward, groaning as he feeds inch after inch of his hard length into your aching hole. there’s a ring of pink stretched taut around him when he pulls back just slightly. you dig your painted nails in his bicep, squealing.

no matter how many times he’s fucked you, with three fingers or more, cock or toys, it always feels like the first time. “s–slow down–” comes a mewl from underneath him when he pushes in too eagerly. sukuna's eyes flit down to take in the sight of you, flushed out and gorgeous, and decides to tease your pitiful sensitivity. a loud moan is ripped from your throat when he pinches your clit. you try to squirm away.

“oh come on. quit pretending you don’t like it when i do that,” sukuna snickers, readjusting his grip on your plush waist before plunging in. hard. you wail at the motion, eyes fluttering close as the lines of your body arch up to meet him. when you’re like this, soft and pliant, sukuna pounds into you easily, molding your walls into the shape of his cock until your wet heat is nothing but a furnace for him to melt into. 

and then you feel his lips against your jaw, dry and chapped and dragging harshly. the rhythm he sets is nothing short of violent. your moans and his, ladened with the sounds of skin-on-skin, blend together in a filthy cacophony that you can hardly register over the thick scent of sex that leaves your head spinning. in between mindless thrusts, a pink tongue darts out to sample the sheen of sweat on your skin. you drool deliriously at the sensation.

then sukuna pulls back to watch you, your legs remaining in their rightful place over his shoulders. a hand travels down to where you are connected and collects your slick between two fingers. he smears it all over, rubbing the rough pad of his thumb against your clit before spreading your folds apart. “look at her,” he coos, grinning wickedly as he watches your greedy cunt swallow each sizable inch with each poignant snap of his hips. “what a delicious looking thing.”

“sukuna,” your lips fall open at the praise so invitingly that it’d be a crime not to take the opportunity. it’s a clash of teeth when he finally kisses you. sloppy and hungry and urgent, like a man who’s been starved for years. he drinks your moans and savors them, brushing against your tongue and gliding over the roof of your mouth, hips never ceasing their violent rhythm. when you realize the strange intimacy in this position, you feel the familiar, guttural sensation just beneath our gut.

and sukuna feels it too, the way your walls tighten around him. growling with newfound fervor, he leaves a string of spit when he pulls away to angle your hips and hammer against your cervix, eager to finish with you. screams echo across your apartment. he pants quietly, eyes ablaze and lips swollen from your incessant teeth. your body shivers and twitches from carnal ecstasy, addicted to the thick intrusion that nudges the deep bundle of nerves within you. a spot that only sukuna can reach.

the thought does something to you, because your body decides then to tense up against him, clamping hard around his perimeter and soaking his cock in squirt. although his hips stutter, sukuna doesn't relent and fucks through your tight walls. you cry out and hold him close, digging deep scores down the broad expanse of his back before sukuna finally empties himself with one last thrust. a full-body shudder racks through your body. the sensation tears a second orgasm from your twitching cunt.

through the ringing in your ears, you heave a sigh of content. your companion chuckles and collapses on top of you without bothering to pull out. “i’m coming back next week. got kicked out of my old place,” he suddenly mumbles in the crook of your neck, barely audible. you register his words through post-coital bliss. when you don't respond, he turns his head, but you're already looking at him. studying the expression on his face.

"fine," you concede. "but you better get a real job."

(masterlist) | (a/n: tell ur man to wash his pp before sex. idk if this gets a p.2)

[thesummerestsolstice]

I like the idea that the Valar can grant boons to men or elves they favor. Sometimes visible– glowing markings, feathers, claws– and sometimes not. Attitudes of these blessings ranged from fear to reverence to jealousy, often reflecting opinions of the Valar more generally.

Galadriel's special treelight hair came from Finarfin. Finarfin got it as a result of Manwe's favor. Given how rare it was for Manwe to bestow such gifts, this caused quite a stir. Later, Morgoth would spread rumors that Manwe was trying to set Finarfin up as the new Noldor crown prince, bypassing Finwe's older children.

Namo gave Fingolfin a blessing, and no one was particularly sure why, Fingolfin included. The truth was that Namo had already foreseen Fingolfin's death, and wanted to give him the strength to let him wound Morgoth before falling to him. Namo has always felt a sense of responsibility for those who choose to come to his halls, even if he's powerless to change their fates.

Celegorm was blessed by Orome, given the kind of teeth and claws that a few of his best disciples had been granted over the years. Orome couldn't take those gifts back, so Celegorm kept them for all his life. You wouldn't know that looking at paintings of him, though, because none of them show him with the marks of Orome's hunt. Whether this was a choice made by him or by later revisionists trying to minimize his connection with the Valar is unknown.

Varda gave blessings to both Earendil and Gil-Galad in the final years of the First Age. Both of them are said to have shone like stars afterwards, and there were some darker rumors that like the hallowed Silmarils, they would burn any unholy flesh that touched them. Some speculated that the blessings were Varda's way of apologizing for leaving the elves to face Morgoth alone for so long.

Ulmo is probably the Vala who's given out the most blessings– Cirdan, Turgon, Finrod, and Tuor all recieved boons from him, among others. But everyone who's gotten blessings from Ulmo is weirdly secretive about it. There's lots of gossip floating around– Ulmo is the reason Cirdan has a beard, Ulmo is the reason Turgon is taller than Maedhros, Ulmo is the reason that everyone likes Finrod so much, actually everyone blessed by Ulmo gets gills and he has secret underwater meetings with them– you get the idea. Well, probably no reason to consider that last one. I can't imagine any of the Valar using their power for something that foolish.

There is fierce scholarly debate on whether Thingol received a blessing from Melian, and whether her descendants could, theoretically, do the same. Elrond would like everyone to please stop asking him about it. Elrond would also like everyone to please stop talking about Gil-Galad's hair turning silver after the two of them took a very normal hunting trip together.

(Multiple Valar have tried to take credit for just how amazingly luscious and wonderful Finwe's hair is. But no, that wasn't a blessing. He's just like that.)

[dovesdreaming]

At his worst

Summary: Reader stays by Logan during his worst and is unable to be pushed away by him

Request

Masterlist

Warnings: negative self talk

-

The night was cold, unusually quiet for the dingy apartment Wolverine had holed himself up in. After all these years, Logan was used to the silence, comfortable with it even. But something was different tonight. His mind, normally sharp, was dulled by memories that felt like jagged knives cutting through his thoughts. Jean. Rogue. Charles. All the people he had failed. All the people he had lost. The city buzzed below, lights flickering against the darkness, but Logan didn’t care. He slumped against the couch, cradling a half-empty bottle of whiskey, his usual attempt to drown out the pain. But even alcohol couldn’t numb the guilt that weighed on him. He was a weapon designed to hurt, to destroy, and now it seemed like everyone close to him suffered the same fate. A quiet knock broke through the silence, so soft it might’ve gone unnoticed by anyone else, but not him. Logan’s senses were always on high alert. He sighed, part of him wanting to ignore it. He didn’t want company tonight, didn’t deserve it.

Another knock, a little louder this time. Persistent. “Logan?" A familiar voice called softly from the other side. Your voice. His chest tightened. You were the only person in his life now who didn’t seem to fear him. The only person who could look past the claws, the rage, the blood. Why? He could never figure it out. He didn’t deserve you. Heaving himself up, Logan tossed the whiskey bottle aside and trudged to the door. He didn’t bother with a shirt, his muscles tense beneath the scars that marked his body, a roadmap of violence. Opening the door, he looked down at you. You stood there, bundled in a jacket, worry etched on your face. “Hey” you said gently, eyes scanning his face like you could read everything going on inside. “Shouldn’t be here” Logan growled, his voice rough, hoarse. “Ain’t a good time”. You didn’t move. Instead, you tilted your head, eyes soft but unwavering. “When is a good time with you, Logan?”. That made him pause, and for a moment, he almost smirked. Almost. But he was too tired for that tonight. Instead, he stepped back, silently allowing you in.

You didn’t hesitate, walking past him and into the small apartment, your eyes trailing over the chaos. Half-eaten meals, broken furniture, and the unmistakable stench of whiskey lingering in the air. You turned to face him, crossing your arms. “You’ve been drinking”. Logan let out a low grunt, leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his broad chest. “What else is new?”. “You know, you don’t have to push me away every time things get bad” you said, your voice soft but firm. “You’re not alone, Logan”. A sharp laugh escaped him. “Ain’t that simple. People around me... they don’t stay for long. They get hurt. Or worse”.

You took a step closer, closing the space between you. “I’m not them. I’m not going anywhere”. Logan’s jaw tightened, the weight of your words pressing on him. He wanted to believe you, but he knew better. He’d seen it too many times, the look in people’s eyes when they realized just how dangerous he was. How broken. “You don’t know what you’re talking about” he said, the edge in his voice returning. “I’ve done things... terrible things. You don’t wanna see me at my worst”. But you didn’t flinch. You never did. Reaching out, you touched his arm, and for a second, Logan almost pulled away, afraid of your kindness, of the warmth in your touch. But he didn’t. “I’ve seen enough, Logan. I’ve seen you fight, seen the pain you carry. And guess what? I’m still here” you said, your voice unwavering. “Because I care. Because I know that, no matter how much you try to push people away, you deserve to be loved. You deserve to be understood”.

He shook his head, fists clenching at his sides. “I ain’t someone you can fix. I’m not someone who’s ever gonna be... whole”. You stepped even closer, eyes locking with his. “I’m not trying to fix you. I’m here to stay. I’ll take the good, the bad, and everything in between. Even when you’re at your worst”. Logan’s throat tightened, emotions bubbling up that he hadn’t let surface in years. He hated how vulnerable he felt right now, how exposed. But at the same time, there was a small part of him that wanted to believe you. That wanted to trust that you wouldn’t leave like the others.

“Why?” The word slipped out, raw and filled with the pain he had been holding back for so long. “Why would you stay?”. You smiled softly, your hand sliding down to take his, your fingers warm against his cold skin. “Because I see you, Logan. The real you. Not the weapon. Not the Wolverine. Just... you”. For the first time in what felt like forever, Logan didn’t know what to say, he had no comeback. His heart pounded in his chest, his walls crumbling down around him as he looked into your eyes, seeing nothing but honesty. No fear. No judgment. Just... acceptance. A shaky breath escaped him, and before he could stop himself, he pulled you into his arms, holding you close. You didn’t resist, wrapping your arms around him, your head resting against his chest as you stood there in the middle of the mess, in the middle of his chaos.

For the first time in a long time, Logan felt something other than anger, other than pain. It was small, fragile even, but it was there. A flicker of hope. Maybe, just maybe, he didn’t have to be alone. Maybe, with you by his side, he didn’t have to be afraid of his worst anymore. And for the first time in a long time, Logan allowed himself to believe that.

-

Thank you for reading!

[hughiecampbelle]

The Boys Preference: Having The Same Abilities As Wolverine

Requested: Heyy! Can I request a the boys preference where reader is a supe who pretty much has wolverine's powers? Ty!! - @ghostlyaccurate

Requested: Hii can I request the boys pref x female wolverine? <33 - anon

A/N: Reminder my loves! Everything is written as gender neutral, I don't write specifically freader or mreader. I hope you like it! I am working 100% from Wolverines Wikipedia page lol since I forget most of his powers. Feedback is always appreciated 💜💜💜

Butcher finds your abilities both disgusting and impressive. Your super sight, smell, etc. are really helpful in certain situations. He jokingly calls you their own personal Tek Knight, which you shut down immediately. What's disgusting is when your claws come out, breaking through the skin of your knuckles. There's a lot of blood. There's a lot of pain even with your healing. And something about them just freaks him out. You jokingly try to poke him with them, touch him with them, and though he'd never admit it, he absolutely hates the feeling. There's just something wrong about them that he can't pinpoint or describe. They're helpful for sure and watching you use them is always gory, he'd just like for them to go away as quickly as possible.

Hughie finds you fascinating. The healing and the claws are always cool, but it's the fact that you're so much older than all of them, so much more experienced, and yet you age so little. Because you're body heals so well, you age at a slower rate than the rest of the world. While that's not totally new for Supes, he's always interested in hearing about your life. You have so much knowledge, so many more experiences, so many lives lived before this mess took over. You find it the least interesting part of your abilities, but Hughie's always had an appreciation for the underappreciated. He loves to listen to you talk about the past, what the world was like, what Vought and The Seven were like. It wasn't always this fucked, at least that's the conclusion he comes to as you talk. It was fucked, it was a mess, but the introduction of Homelander really set in stone this future.

Annie is your confidant. The healing factor has saved your and others lives countless times, but everyone forgets you can still feel pain. Long after your body has put itself back together, the phantom pain lingers. It's excruciating and, secretly, you live in fear of being torn apart. Days and weeks later, you move as if you're still broken. You'll wake up, confused for a moment, expecting to be torn limb from limb, before you come to your senses. Even your claws leave your hands raw, arthritic. You know Annie thinks about that more than anyone else. You told her one night about the pain and since then she's always been aware, quietly asking you if you're alright. Sometimes the pain goes away in a few hours, other times it takes weeks. It all depends on the severity. You try not to complain, knowing you must sound like a broken record, but she doesn't see it that way.

M.M., kind of like Butcher, is weirded out by your claws. He doesn't mind the healing or the heightened senses. For the most part, those things are hidden. It's the claws he gets the heebie jeebies from. You poke fun at him because of this. Out of all the Supe abilities you could have gotten, claws aren't the oddest thing you could have developed. He is reminded of Webweavers abilities and that puts things into perspective for a little while. He didn't trust you in the beginning. It was hard to show him you weren't just another Supe hopped up on V. You're a lot older than everyone, you've experienced more, you're wiser than he gives you credit for. He learns to trust you because of your level head. In situations where other people would be losing their shit, you're calm, cool, and collected. It isn't your abilities that make him befriend you, it's the person underneath them.

Frenchie both loves and hates your abilities. He finds your claws fascinating. Every time you use them he's left in awe. He loves watching you use them, the way you can hide them and bring them out when they're least expecting it. He doesn't find them weird or odd like his friends. They're amazing. He hates, though, that your heightened senses are basically a lie detector test he fails every time. You know when he's been drinking, smoking, getting high. You try not to make a big deal about it, but you do talk to him about it in private. You know when he's lying, though any non-Supe could figure it out when they learn all his tells. He's not as good as he thinks he is at lying. He's always amazed with your stamina, too. It's something a lot of people tend to overlook about your powers, but he doesn't.

Kimiko and you bond effortlessly. Your abilities are so similar and yet so different. Together you're a fantastic duo, unstoppable. She likes touching your claws, though hates the way they have to come out. She knows what it's like, to have to sacrifice yourself, your body, for the greater good. She knows what it's like to wake up confused and, for a moment, feeling as if you're missing parts of yourself. The two of you work together effortlessly and find a lot of humor in your abilities whereas everyone else sees a severed limb of broken bones, you can see just how silly the body is, how fragile and easily it both breaks and repairs itself. She loves your heightened senses and always tells her what you can find out: M.M. got a new chapstick (strawberry), Butcher ate something with peppers, Annie got Hughie a new cologne, etc.

[cambion-companion]

A Marriage Contract

Eyo...I had an idea LOL what a world!

The scenario of Raphael x reader (gn) being forced into some sort of marriage agreement has been bugging me ALL day! Hopefully some of you lovely folks are as depraved as I am and enjoy this!

“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”  

You were sitting opposite Raphael, the firelight flickering orange across his scarlet visage. You watched with bemused interest as, with a black quill, he scratched ink across a sheaf of yellowed parchment.

The cambion took little heed to your agitated words. His posture was relaxed, one long leg stretched out between your own, his tail tapping idly against your thigh where it rested.

“Raphael.”  You leaned forward, catching a glimpse of the words he now wrote in that elegant script of his. “…Hey, I did not agree to doing that every day with you.”

A peeved hiss escaped Raphael’s sharp teeth as he removed quill from paper and sat back, his yellow eyes finally moving to your tense face. “This arrangement is at the behest of one I cannot yet deny.” His long fingers drummed a pattern against the cherrywood table. “Don’t complain too much, pet.  I may begin to think you’re getting cold feet.”

“Not in this sweltering house.”  You quipped back.  Then you pointed again to the sentence he’d scrawled detailing what lurid acts he expected from you. “I will not be doing that.”

“Might I remind you, this is a contract of marriage.”  

“Believe me, I am well aware.”

“You would receive such pleasures in kind.”

This gave you pause, your brow arched in disbelief. “From you?”

Raphael chuckled dryly. “Yes, from me.  Master of the House, your doting husband.”

Your skin prickled. “There’d better be a clause in there for an annulment once all this is over.”

“It’s possible for such a loophole to be penned in.”  Raphael tilted his horned head diplomatically, though his eyes remained hard. “For you to take advantage of should the fires burn too hot.  However, you will always be mine.”

“How romantic.”  You deadpanned.

“I certainly try.”  Raphael rolled his broad shoulders and stretched his neck side to side.  “Now, shall I rescind these latest conditions or are you now more amenable?”

You hesitated, scooting your chair closer so you could better read the script without getting a crick in your neck. “Hmm…yes, alright. You can get rid of the ‘submits to my will in all infernal matters’ bit.”

With a smooth motion Raphael struck a line through the offending words. “Would ‘heeds my counsel in all the doings of my domain’ better suit your tender palate?”

“Rewording the same sentiment isn’t going to get passed me, love.”  You kissed his cheek, teasing.

Sharp claws pierced the flesh of your jaw as, quick as a viper, Raphael grabbed your face with one hand and held you very still.  His face turned and your noses brushed. You felt his warm breath and his hot skin.

The air between the two of you grew tense, riddled with the frustration at your situation and the desire you’d had for one another since meeting. The lust to dominate and own from him and your need to be wanted and no longer alone.

“This marriage contract is forever binding, little mouse. Much more so than those fragile slips of paper from your insipid mortal world. There is not a clause in your wildest imaginings that will free you from me once you sign yourself over.”

You felt a rush of heat flood your cheeks, his strong hand still holding your head firmly. “We have little choice.”

Raphael’s grip tightened and he brought his lips against yours, just enough to leave you craving more. “What a quaint notion, to believe I have no power to deny or evade.”

He did not elaborate, but his message was clear.  Raphael wanted this. The thought didn’t leave you feeling warm and fuzzy.

There was an evident dynamic here that you didn’t have the capacity to fully understand.  It gave you a sense of dread yet sent a thrill through your body.

You gave Raphael a smile bordering on playful. “Your signature mysterious and vaguely threatening answers won’t exactly breed a relationship of trust.”

“You and I have very different concepts of what a marriage should look like.”  Raphael released your jaw and took both your hands, pulling you with one strong movement onto his lap.  His tail wrapped around your waist, securing you against him. “Speaking of ‘breeding’, I have an excellent idea.”

Your retort was silenced as a long tongue and sharp teeth claimed your mouth and drank down your following noises.

[malleusfucker]

general lilia kinks & headcanons

lilia fuckers we rise because chapter 4 came out and i never wanted to clap a man’s cheeks so hard WE ARE SO BACK *edit* currently writing a malleus fic so look out for it!! warnings: smut/nsfw, overstimulation, biting/bleeding, spanking, oral (receiving), asshole lilia (we all cheered), reader is afab but no gender or pronouns are explicitly specified words: 700+

let’s get one thing straight, the main difference between lilia now and general lilia is that general lilia is an asshole who won’t hesitate to whoop your ass back into your place. unlike the kind and eccentric caregiver we know, this version couldn't be more of the opposite.

overstimulation ~ nothing gets lilia off more than when he sees your spent figure sprawled out in front of him, your face contorted as the sound of your pleas and whines echo in his ears all through the night. when he decides to overstimulate you, he's not kind, nor is the same while you're in bed with him. as befits a general of his stature, he will be nothing short of merciless in his treatment of you. using all types of tricks on you, lilia wants to explore how many ways he can make you cum with a single wave of his finger. as the tears cascade down your cheeks, you find yourself desperately begging him to stop even though his touch has yet even to grace your skin. crawling towards your legs, demanding you to wipe your pathetic expression on your faceーhe won’t stop until he’s satisfied enough to finally use his own body to further ruin you. and when he decides to do so, he’ll only want to prove that he can do all the same with the skills of his fingers and tongue.

biting ~ while not of the possessive nature, that doesn’t mean lilia won’t be flamboyant with his display as he sinks his fangs into you. big, bruised marks scattering your body on a constant basis, with one fading only to be replaced by another a moment after. flashy and dramatic can only describe how he bites youーletting his teeth sit in your skin as he watches the blood trickle down your curves. it’s painful, and if he’s feeling particularly lenient, he’ll lap up each drop that seeps out of you before carefully kissing each cut he left behind. don't fool yourself into thinking he'll be generous enough to lay those marks on places hidden from the public eye; rather, it’s the opposite, with your neck always being his favourite spot to snack on. not even having to deny that he was, in fact, the one who did it to you, with his reputation always surpassing you and being used to his advantage.

oral ~ even in the days of being a general, lilia was no stranger to experience. if there’s one thing he’s good at, it’ll be how he ties you to the bed, spreading you open with his fingers as he lays his deft tongue upon your aching folds. seconds pass, and you feel yourself already succumbing to the skills of his tongue, making a mess of his sheets that only spurs him on to have your body shaking even more. cold and cruel, lilia won’t let you touch him as he works his magic on youーyour ankles bound to each corner of the bed; he forces you to feel only his tongue as each orgasm blends into the next.

degrading ~ not only a tease but a cruel one at that. feeling the heat on your face and between your legs spread as he continues to demean you with his words. he takes far too much delight in abusing and calling you names, pushing you to embarrass and shame yourself for his own sick enjoyment. slapping and spanking your thighs, brutally digging his claws into your skinーeach hit is accompanied by a cascade of cutting words, etching themselves into your mind until the morning after. he’s arrogant and knows it, only continuing to display this cold front as he immediately sensed it turned you on just as much.

hate sex ~ on particularly rough days on the battlefield, he won’t take lightly not getting what he wantsーto satisfy himself after a long day of stress. if you happen to feel just as frustrated as him on that day, he won’t hesitate to shut you up and take what he wants from you. with your face buried into the pillows and your hands tied by the straps of his uniform, his ruthlessness only increases tenfold. gagging you so he doesn’t have to endure the abuse you reflect onto him; each thrust and slam of his hips filled with malice.

can't believe this short little fruit got me off of my writer's block i'll hopefully be writing some more shit now

[gladiatorcunt]

summary: priest!leto x afab!reader x priest!paul (title from scorpio by pour vous)

cw: blasphemy if i’m being so real, spit roasting, reader is lowkey losing it but they’ll be okay, dubcon, pwp-ish (there’s set up but it’s not that long imo), mention of paul being into predator/prey, daddy kink coded without the actual daddy kink, horror elements, unreliable narrator vibes, mention of them being willing to non con reader if things didn’t go their way, no incest between leto & paul 💀, reader’s their sad loser turned attic spouse, mention of eventual impreg, implied soft dom!leto & mean dom!paul, religious practice inaccuracies, possibly predictable plot twists, implied painful anal but reader’s too out of it to feel it, implied natural aphrodisiac in their spit, reader bleeds

wc: 2.5k

block & move on if uncomfortable,

do not translate/repost/give my works to ai

please consider commissioning me or leaving me a tip !!

You’ve been feeling… lost. The trees keep secrets from you and the clouds mix together like egg whites. You wish you knew what kind of pill you need to be on, you wish you knew what was wrong with you. You’re paranoid and seeing blank eyes watching you through the brick and mortar of your apartment. Your skin burns hotter than hell and sometimes you think that there are claws grabbing at your ankles when you sleep.

Church hasn’t been something you’ve bothered to attend since you were a kid, but you yearn for it now.

You pull your tattered coat around yourself as you step into the ancient building. The Church of Caladan is the oldest church in the country, if not the world. You hope you don’t look silly when you take caution with how hard your feet hit the stone. ‘You break it, you buy it’ must apply to old churches too.

Your unease rolls off you in waves, and a couple nearby priests seem to sense it in the same way that horses can sense fear. For a second you imagine bursting into flames, but there are hands groping your flesh through the great hellfire.

They’re about even in height, though one is clearly older. The gray hair weaved into his temples suits him more than it shows his age. The younger man has the same dark and wavy hair, but his gaze is a touch more haggard and rife with burden.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn't have burst in here…. I'm just looking around.” You rush to explain so they would go away, internally cringing at yourself.

“No, we want newcomers to feel comfortable enough to ask questions. I’m Leto,” He says and shakes your hand. “And this is my son, Paul. He’s recently started working here at the church with me.”

Paul steps up to shake your head as well, his mouth doesn’t move but you swear that the corners twitch. The stained glass windows cast a multicolored hue on his eyes and you find yourself lost in the swirling pools of light. Then black holes swallow the brightness in the irises, cosmic cannibalism.

You blink in alarm and awkwardly take a step back from the two priests. Father and son share a look between them that has the hairs on the back of your neck standing them.

Leto clears his throat and pointedly grabs your hands in both of his, encapsulating them in his warmth.

“You’ll have to forgive him, Paul’s never dealt with a lamb as darling as you before. He’s never dealt with one at all actually, you two can go through this together.”

Paul smiles but it fits all wrong, with teeth that should be fangs and with a tongue that appears forked. You blink again and all is well, the man before you fits his human skin like a glove. Maybe you should give them the benefit of the doubt, you’re convinced you’re going crazy anyway and Priests would never be capable of hurting someone. Ghosts aren’t real and Demons are just a crazed mother’s bedtime story.

“Um, okay. Thank you for accepting me.” That’s all you want, deep down, and they know that. “I felt moved to be here, I can’t explain it.”

Leto nods and Paul rubs your shoulder in sympathy. They would hiss that they know full well what called you here, but you might bleat and scurry away. You make a sad picture, abandoned and half insane, but that’s what they are for. To soothe and to serve you, to purify you from the inside out.

“Then all the more reason to stay and sit for a moment, don’t you think?” Paul finally speaks, the boyish tone surprising you.

“Paul’s right, let’s get this jacket off you, poor lamb. You must be freezing to death.” Leto coos, shushing your protests and carefully pulling the cheap thing off of you.

They take you on a little tour of sorts, pointing out the architectural details of the building itself as well as passionately delving into its history. Centuries of worship and service to the community, strangely never having sustained any kind of property damage. The priests speak of the church as if they were wandering through the halls all this time, and they chuckle when they tease you about how relieved they were that you didn’t suffer from a nosebleed. They’re quite common apparently.

“I think that should do it, i’d hate to think that we’ve been talking your ear off, dear.” Leto says, rubbing the inside of your wrist and directing you towards the large piano on the stage at the front of the church.

He must notice the sudden spark in your eyes at the sight, because his crow’s feet wrinkles deepen as he pulls the black piano bench out. Leto’s palm spreads out wide and he gives the leather seat a firm pat, signaling for you to sit down. Butterflies swirl in your stomach with anxiety but you feel too shy to refuse the clearly eager offer. You take a seat in front of an onyx grand piano far grander than you’re used to seeing in a church.

Leto soon occupies the space next to you. The bench is small enough that your thigh is pressing against his, warmth bleeds through your clothes and the indication of muscle really makes you wish you were alone in your room with a rose toy. You place your fingers on the pristinely polished keys and clumsily play some hodgepodge of a melody that you remember from your childhood. A mix of tchaikovsky and children's church songs.

You jump and play the wrong note when you feel thick fingers slide up your thigh. Your cheeks burn with heat but you focus on the music. Leto sighs with sugary sweet satisfaction but doesn’t move his fingers any further. He also doesn’t try to play, it’s almost like he only wants to bask in the domesticity of watching you perform. You think you hear him whisper “That’s it, who knew such a talented lamb would be gracing our doorstep?”

You get a flash of riding him on the piano, gasping into his hair chest when it breaks under the weight of your passion. Thin fingers come from behind to caress your ass as it moves, much colder than the cock you’re bouncing on. Then it fades away, and you’re back to making a fool of yourself with your little song.

Paul watches from the pulpit, eyes drinking in the way your curves expand and move as you squirm. His grip tightens on the bright wood but you’re none the wiser. You almost forget that he’s even there, something which he realizes because he strolls to stand behind you and his father. The music stops once you feel his breath on your neck and he bends down to tenderly pull your hair off of your shoulder, getting himself acquainted with the texture as he rubs his fingertips down the strands.

A distant voice calls out for Leto and he stands, smiling apologetically and thanking you for the performance. You feel adrift as you watch him walk away, reminding yourself that a man like him has other things to do than coddle you.

Paul slides a hand down your back and guides you down to the pew right up front, with a view of center stage, sitting right beside you with a wink. Once Leto returns, you spot the silver tray of communion wafers in his hands. The tray is set on the pulpit by his side.

The older man's eyes darken as he puts one in his mouth, and your brain shuts down when he snatches your face in his rough palms and kisses you sense no less. The wafer cracks as his tongue passes it into your mouth, the salty crumbs oddly making you crave something even saltier. There’s a sticky sweet sensation traveling through your body as you exchange saliva with him, your brain feels so foggy.

You break away, curling your hands into the collar of Leto’s uniform.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Your voice is small and not completely filled with disgust, you’re honestly too desperate for some form of human contact to make good decisions.

“We’re helping you, honey.” Leto purrs into the seam of your mouth, shaking his head in apparent fondness.

You’re too cute for your own good, at least they don’t have to worry about covering their tracks. Any incubus or succubus would be glad to get a hold of someone as lonely as you, but they wouldn’t love you like you deserve. You haven’t been watched by anyone as long as you’ve been watched by them. He hopes that Paul doesn’t shove his foot in his mouth and let it slip that he wished you gave them the opportunity to take you by force. His son carries a torch for a bit of predator and prey action, he likes playing with his food too much. You’re different from the scrambling mice that get torn to bits, though, you’re forever.

Plus, if you don’t get it now, he has no problems with explaining everything when you’re too weak to get up and try to run away.

Paul buries his face in your neck, spilling the vial of wine he had in his pocket down your shirt. It soaks the tank top underneath and though you try with all your might to wriggle away, the desire to resist gets brushed away under a heavy fog.

It’s nice to be touched, to be wanted after a lifetime of feeling the exact opposite. Perhaps this is why the lord guided you to his grandest home, so you could take his prophets into your body.

The black vanishes from Paul’s eyes and you sink against his chest, making out with his father as your eyes roll back into your head.

No words are uttered verbally as Paul shuffles to the side and pulls you to lie back on the pew’s cushion. Leto deprives you of his tongue and gives you a chance to breathe, which both men do with you in sync, resting their foreheads against you.

The nectar on your tongue tastes divine, little lamb, a voice whispers in your mind.

Let us give you purpose so you no longer need to roam, another begs.

You’re crying from the relief of having your mouth filled, Paul tilts your head up by your chin as he slowly slides his cock into your mouth. The ridges and bumps of what feels like piercings sends a jolt of arousal through you.

“Fuck-” He hisses and rubs your neck, watching you adjust to the stretch. “So warm-”

Leto tuts and clamps his hands around your hips, you’re already too fucked out to register sharp black claws taking care of your clothes. Leaving you bare. A shiver passes through your body as he drags his huge hand down to your pussy, being mindful not to accidentally scratch you. He intends for there to be no blood, this time, not a lot.

You gag on Paul’s length when Leto slams your hips against his pelvis, grinding not one but two large cocks against your cunt. If you were looking at his face, you’d see pitch black eyes and intimidating fangs, but all you can focus on is the hazy candle light and what must be someone playing an organ.

You catch a view of one of the stained class windows, a pair of angels cradling a lamb. It’s the only damaged part of the church, with cracks running along the angel’s wings. You’d think it’s a sneeze away from shattering entirely. Your view of it is blurred by Paul’s quick thrusts, gagging on it again. Drools drip onto the red carpet.

Leto grabs one of Paul’s curled horns and yanks his head to the side, scolding at him to be nicer to you. You’ve clearly never taken three cocks inside you, the one you’re servicing is proving to be overwhelming enough. Again, Paul’s new to this experience as well, just in a different way than you are. In a sense, it’s like he was born yesterday. The older man relays this to you through your choked moans and tears, assuring you that he’s taught Paul how to clean up his messes and be grateful. Something like this will be no different.

“Hush, beloved. I would have gladly speared your mouth but you would be dead before I could cum inside it.”

You see God in the sky when Leto slaps the tapered tip of one of his dicks against your slick entrance, God sees you when he gets the tight walls of ass to wrap around the other. Unbeknownst to you, it’s funny how so many things are, your blood pools around his balls. You’re in pain sure but you’ve never felt as much pleasure as you have in this instance. Both “Priests” smell your blood and well, only your body can tell the rest of the story. Later you’ll wake up to find that the building around you has ruby walls and it seems to be breathing. The shooting pain in your left hand is the result of two iron rings being chiseled into the bone of your ring finger.

The four leathery wings protruding from your back, with spikes poking out from the joints, are waiting to be discovered. As are the nubs sprouting out of your hair.

For now beads of sweat highlight your bouncing tits, Paul gropes one and Leto runs the edge of his claw along the side of the other. They’re hissing words that string together and disappear in the blink of an eye, voices slurred and sticky. Their babbling stops and starts again as you reflexively swallow around Paul’s cock when he skull fucks you without warning. They laugh too, but you can at least pretend that Leto’s tone is kinder.

“Alright, alright. That’s enough teasing.”

“But father-“

“I said no. And don’t think for a second that you’re getting anything else but their mouth.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“You lack self control, it wouldn’t be suitable for conception to occur like this. As delectable as their quivering cunt is, demons shouldn’t abstain from courting.”

“You’re saying that as you’re balls deep inside of them.”

“Don’t start with me, Paul.”

All while you’re making gurgling sounds in between the younger priest’s thighs. You hear growls that sound like a mountain lion’s emitting from both men, and the heavy thumps of something flapping in the air gets you holes clenching around Leto. Both men feverishly scratch up and down your limp body, but you’re so enraptured by the chorus of angels happening outside. You have no sense of time, it’s minutes or it’s hours before their cum spills inside of you. There’s too much to possibly keep it all inside, a good amount of it leaks from your cunt and your throat. Leto feels like Christ incarnate when you squirt all over him and yourself with the dumbest expression on your face. Multicolored pieces of glass fall down around you with the loud chime of an invisible bell.