#also i put way too much effort into this can u tell

[kaitcake1289]

their 70 year failmarriage has changed my perception of love

[bacchuschucklefuck]

they tried to rebrand as The Criminals but riz is literally the city council's treasurer and also turns out people in their late 20s don't really name their friend groups. so now they're The Intrepid Heroes

[bmpmp3]

I NEEED to go back to making art that makes it ABUNDANTLY clear that theres something wrong with my brain BUT NOT in a cool or stylishly interesting way. i need to do it in a way that makes people say "hm." and walk away

[pomefioredove]

need overblot boys with epel, and floyd with a reader that randomly lore drops as if they're an old dad like "yeah lol my old school had a shooting once....anyways *SNOREE*" and when asked they just agree and walk away and never elaborate whatsoever💀 if you feel uncomfortable feel free to delete or ignore‼️love ya pookie💥

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ a reader with a backstory

I got u 🫡🫡

summary: wacky reader lore type of post: headcanons characters: riddle, leona, azul, floyd, jamil, vil, epel, idia, malleus additional info: romantic, reader is gender neutral, reader is yuu

you find new ways to raise Riddle's blood pressure every day

little guy is worried enough as it is

you've already got your school work, taking care of Ramshackle, taking care of Grim, taking care of all the other freshmen, taking care of-

well... you get it

the last thing he needs is to hear another one of your stories

"oh, yeah, that's like the time I got stabbed"

"????? WHAT??"

what's entertaining to you and ADeuce is mortifying to Riddle

if you're not careful you'll end up sleeping on the floor in his room

where he can keep a close eye on you

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

you're like Leona's little court jester

and he takes you with him everywhere

it's not easy to get a genuine laugh out of him, after all

besides, what's so bad about a little dark humor? it's not like you died or anything

he knows you're a resilient little thing

and you seem to love telling him about "that time you crawled into a drainage pipe", anyway

you make him laugh; he likes you

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Azul indulges you

his white noise machine stopped working last month and you make for excellent background ambience

so, he lets you talk yourself in circles about your school work, your friends, Grim, Grim again

and then you drop the most HEINOUS bombshells in the middle

"blah blah blah Grim, blah blah Crowley, blah blah, that one time I got lost in the woods for a day, blah blah-"

he loses his train of thought every time

now, Floyd is the complete opposite

he will hyperfocus on the most mundane details

and ignore the bombshells

will give you an, "oh, that's cool" to your ghost story but will find you the pair of socks you mentioned liking three months ago

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Jamil is just fascinated by you

you as a person, of course

but also the fact that you're still alive

one night, he's explaining the reason he makes all of Kalim's food and you're like

"oh, yeah, I get it. I got mold poisoning once and hallucinated for a week"

?????

then you go right back to asking him about the recipe

sitting on the counter, as happy as could be

"HOW ARE YOU STILL ALIVE!!!"

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Vil is used to this

he knows that look on your face

he will shush you with a finger to your lips before you even start

"don't tell me, I'm stressed enough as it is"

he's going to break out if you keep at it

he finds you quite... macabre

which is entertaining until he sees you going down a flight of stairs without holding onto the railing and remembers all those stories you'd told him

he's just... concerned for you, that's all

and he does NOT appreciate Epel for encouraging it

"tell us more about the time you fell down that hill into that pile of rocks, Prefect!"

:D

like a kid in a candy store

learning new Lore is like the highlight of his week

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

"talk about having a high luck stat..."

Idia is more entertained than anything

he thought these kinds of things only happened in anime, but...

...there you are

it sounds like you experience more in a single month than he has in his whole life

and you know what?

GOOD

you can keep your freaky real-world experiences!

he'll just live vicariously through you

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

poor Malleus

he's been putting so much effort into learning and blending with human culture, and now here you are with your terrifying stories

you tell him in such earnest, too

you seem so... unbothered by it

perhaps humans are less fragile than he thought?

of course, he shouldn't have underestimated you in the first place :)!

then you come over for dinner one night

"hahah, yeah, last time I was at someone's house their grandma threw a lamp at my head and I got a concussion"

Silver and Sebek both go >_>

Lilia goes <_<

and then Malleus is there like, "ah, another fascinating tale :)"

[ichigo-dream]

Leon - Squish - (SFW & NSFW)

Hi everyone!

We still can't get over the fact that this man is built like that and that he put on 40 lbs of pure muscle between RE 2 and RE 4. Honestly we've spent many hours discussing his squish so have some of our fav headcanons:

Every part of this man is rideable - thighs, biceps, throat, ab, face, doesn’t matter, any port in a storm and what a pretty, squishy port he is. 

u love gently pinching and biting his cheeks bc he still has some of his lil baby face from his rookie days 

his lap is the comfiest place to sit 

your throne 

Leon will grab you by the hips and pull you onto his plush thighs at any point 

soft and pillowy but you can feel the muscle when he flexes 

You love his little freckles that come out in the sunshine and the summertime - there’s one on the inside of his beautiful thigh scarily close to his dick and it makes him feral when you kiss or bite at it. 

To Leon, the only benefit of working for the US Government is travel perks - when flying he always flies first class, and it's the only time he can be comfortable on public transport bc he’s a unit of a man 

Any other time, he has to curl in on himself and crush his legs together to not take up more than his designated space. 

can spread his thick delicious thighs as much as he wants 

in the summertime he likes to workout outside

will do push-ups whilst shirtless 

you try not to pass out at the sight of his muscles flexing + slick with sweat 

sometimes you’ll sit on his back as he does this when he wants some extra weight 

baby boy is so strong it makes u drool 

Loves wearing shorts but gets self-conscious if he wears them in public.

Absolutely will steal your sunglasses to wear whilst he’s outside - (we couldn’t get the image of Leon shirtless in little shorts wearing heart shaped sunglasses out of our heads)

one day he wants to surprise you by wearing his old rpd uniform (cute play on all the times you would playfully call him “officer Kennedy”) but you hear him grunting in frustration from the bedroom so u go to check it out 

shit does not fit this man

not even a little 

trousers caught around his legs bc the material won’t fit over his juicy thighs + ass. You’re trying not to drool at the sight. waistband is fr about to snap 

dick bulge bc the trousers don’t fit over that either 

shirt also  doesn’t fit  - buttons are straining within an inch of their life against his broad chest, waiting to pop  

only thing that does fit is the old bulletproof vest - barely. 

“Never got to wear my summer uniform, and I didn’t want to buy a new one so… I tried to make my own but…”

baby boy is blushing in embarrassment at his failed attempt to be sexy 

but oh he has no idea 

what he’s doing to you rn 

have to pick your jaw off the floor at the sight of him 

he’s sweating a little too from the effort 

you want him to choke you out with his thighs or biceps, you’re not picky 

You tell him to turn around and you’ll try to help him pull them up at the back but this is a ruse -  you just want to see his ass jiggle as he tries to force the trousers up. 

“I’m sorry, I can't get them on..” he whines, annoyed that he can’t surprise you anymore. 

“It’s okay, pretty boy, I need you to take them off anyway”  

devouring this man like he’s a piece of cake on god 

strawberry to be precise 

When you’re fucking him, if you grab at his ass it’ll drive him crazy

You have to resist the urge to motorboat him when his bare chest is freely offered to your greedy eyes.

the juiciest tits u ever seen 

Don’t be fooled tho - tho this man is a beast, he ‘s actually a puppy on the inside. 

He absolutely adores getting to cuddle with you and lie on your chest and snooze - because he’s bigger than you he tends to worry about crushing you but you reassure him that it's okay (glory glory what a hell of a way to die). 

We could go all day (much like Leon) but we’ll stop there for now!

Comment “Bingo!” if you made it to the end, and let us know if you’d like more!

Love, 

Ichigo and Dream xoxo

[soobnny]

dating him | han jisung

❝ you found my heart broken and you helped me make it whole again ❞

chan | lee know | changbin | hyunjin | HAN | felix | seungmin | jeongin

i think you’re a second love type situation for han jisung

the one where he thought he’d never recover from his first heartbreak

but then here u come

i think han’s the type of person to feel everything

if he’s in love, he’s in LOVE

and if he’s hurt, it would just be overwhelming pain

so imagine how he was when he got his first heartbreak

he’d lose a little bit of his spark

maybe keep to himself even more than he used to

u come to his life in the form of a friend first

and han has unknowingly planted a seed that’s grown and grown and grown

with every interaction

with every laugh you’ve brought back

with every moment he was coming out of his shell again

until it’s fully bloomed into a love that’s very very real and very very present

han jisung would also love so beautifully

he knows what it’s like to be hurt, and he doesn’t ever want u to feel that same pain

he rly makes efforts

he is FULL of efforts

and he makes u laugh ☹️☹️☹️☹️

he communicates

and when the boys finally meet u, they’re very grateful but also

????!!!! why do u they know ur favorite color

and ur go-to order at the cafe

and the hoodie u like to steal from jisung the most

well turns out, han loves talking about u to his friends

they just know everything about u before even meeting u

he’d get rly shy about it but never embarrassed

he’d tell the whole world about u if he could

what else can i tell u

han jisung is just someone where nothing sounds crazy to him

so i think all ur dates with him would be so fun and adventurous lowk

amusement parks !!!!!

ice skating and roller blading

both of u would fall on ur ass

but you’d also laugh so much and somehow that makes up for everything

you’d be holding hands and skating with each other and looking at each other with lovesick smiles

I FEEL SICK!!!!!!!!

he’s always trying to impress u too

he tries to imitate figure skaters

kids don’t try this at home

ofc he fails miserably

obvious blushes when you’d tell him he was cute for trying

or when you’d praise him

anyways when i said he’s always trying to impress u i mean ALWAYS

he treats the relationship like he’s still pining after you

being the standard fr

he never lets go of the love

sometimes he’d still get shy to ask u out

somehow he doesn’t believe u actually said yes to him

he thinks he’s the luckiest boy

anyways, aside from adventurous dates, he equally values his inside time and quieter dates

he’s thankful u understand his shifts in his energy

on days u stay inside, you’d probably watch horror movies

look…. he suggests it….

it looked cool in his head to be all protective

you’d hold onto his arm when the jumpscares come

but

womp womp

he ends up being more afraid than u

and now HE’S holding ur arm

yeah it looked way cooler in his head

you’d play silly little board games together

or maybe charades

he’s so easily amused by sexual innuendos

he’s just a man guys

anyways

there are two things he loves to steal from u the most

aside from ur kisses

and it’s (1) ur perfume and (2) ur lip balm

u’d catch him putting on ur perfume just bc he wants to be surrounded by ur scent

it’s very comforting

one time, he was sick and the boys were taking care of him

and when u finally had time to take over and care for ur bf

u just …. smell ur perfume

“did you put on my perfume?”

“i missed you ☹️☹️☹️☹️”

DOWN BADDDDD

he’s so pouty and so cute

let’s suffocate him with the pillow

KIDDINGGGGGG KIDDING

and then ur lip balm

sometimes he steals the actual thing

sometimes he kisses you so he can have it on his lips too

han jisung is also the type to avail every possible couple coupon

and he’s always begging the cashiers to let u prove u’re a couple

it’s so he has an excuse to kiss you

so

months into dating him also means a thousand love letters

he loves writing u love letters

and u know sooner that he also writes songs

on ur anniversary, he reveals a song he’s written for you

and when he proposes, he tells u about every single one he’d ever written about you and for you

wish that were me 😂😂😂😂😂

TAKE CARE OF HIM

note. credits to user @.luvknow for the layout of this post! let me know what you think! please discuss these with me i’m crazy

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

HOW DEEP IS YOUR DEVOTION? ; SATORU GOJO

synopsis; you’re his knight, and he’s your prince. if only it were that simple.

word count; 6.6k

contents; satoru gojo/reader, gn!reader, royalty au (..but no effort put into making it historically accurate in any way oops), knight!reader x prince!toru!!, childhood friends, mutual pining, fluffy overall, some hurt/comfort too, vague allusions to abuse (reader is punished by one of the castle maids as a child but it’s only really hinted at), knight!reader is horrendously devoted but prince!gojo is arguably worse, he would burn the world down if u asked nicely <3

a/n; big big BIG thank you to @/teddybeartoji for having the biggest brain in the galaxy and infecting me with this concept <33 if u pay attention while reading you can tell the exact moment i started slowly spiraling into insanity

you are five years old when you meet the prince.

five years old, a mere child, and too young to be blinded by such brilliance. too young to be where you are; curled up in a dark alley, back against a grimy brick wall, covered in bruises. like a beaten dog — scrawny and afraid. waiting for a strike that never comes.

the boy in front of you is also five years old, but you don’t know that. something in him looks older, somehow, something in the way he carries himself. like he doesn’t have anything to be afraid of. like he’s never even felt fear. he parts his lips and speaks like he has the right to, like he’s comfortable in his own skin, a radiance so blinding you could mistake him for the sun. too much for you to bear.

”does it hurt?”

the words fall on deaf ears. but you flinch, your body reacts, a tremble down your tiny spine. you hear the sound but not the words. too mesmerized, too paralyzed, unable to look away from the blue of his eyes, painted with rich watercolour hues. seeping into the world around you like ink on paper, cobalt and aquamarine and something else, something you’ve never seen before —

a blue so jarring it makes you shiver.

the boy has an innocent face. almost girlish, plump cheeks and long lashes, clean clothes and smooth skin. a little too pretty to be out here, you think, in this part of town — too pure to be anywhere near someone like you. he’s above you, that much you can tell. a pretty, innocent face, untouched by dirt or ache; the face of royalty. an entirely different species.

there’s something keen in his eyes, a contrast to his childlike features. a sharp gaze, something that sees through you, something that won’t look away. something mildly frightening. enough to have you cowering in fear, hugging your knees closer to your chest.

but then he smiles. and it’s sincere. sweet, vibrant, all honey and milk and a world you cannot reach.

a smile so captivating you take his outstretched hand, and let him drag you away to god-knows-where.

(that's how it begins. the dynamic that’ll follow you into your adult lives; satoru takes the lead, and you follow. no matter where he’s going.)

satoru gojo, as you soon come to learn, is the prince of the nation you reside in. the only child of the royal family, born with talent and prestige, fame and fortune, set to become king. a different species, indeed.

but he brings you home with him, to a castle so grand you feel as if your very presence is an insult to the architects who designed it, and convinces his parents to let you stay. it’s surprising, but you don’t protest; following him like a puppy at his trail. and he’s stubborn, insistent, demanding that he get to keep said puppy. 

the king and queen don’t care one way or another. they glance at you with apathy, and tell satoru to do what he wants — but convincing the scary and displeased castle maids takes some work. 

satoru doesn’t waver, though. he holds your hand in his, and demands that you be treated with respect.

and he wins. he always wins.

that’s how you become the prince’s playmate. raised alongside him, allowed to stay close, eat from the same food. he won’t settle for anything less. defending your honour, always, before you even know what honour means. before you care.

time passes slowly. joyously. every day is a new adventure, as you attempt to get used to the miracle that is your new life — sweet and silky, apricot blossoms and fresh peaches, duvet pillows and a bubbly laughter you didn’t know you still had. he coaxes it out of you, with every secret midnight outing, every bout of mischief he drags you both into. 

satoru has nice hands, uncalloused palms, fingers that grasp yours and don’t let go. he takes you outside, to see the stars, to catch fireflies in the dark of night on top of the hill that oversees the castle. to take a dip in the river just below it, gleaming a silver hue under the blue shade of the moon. you worry about getting in trouble, but he reassures you — the prince can do what he wants.

that might be true, but you are no prince. not even close. satoru may safeguard you, but all you’ll ever be in the eyes of the world is a stray he got to keep.

and one time, only one time, you do face the repercussions of your midnight outings. you, and you alone. a bad influence — seething words, buzzing in your ears. an angry castle maid, and a stinging pain in your cheek. blurry tears. 

but that’s an incident no one in the castle dares to speak of.

(you’ll never forget that look in his eyes.)

satoru is an odd boy. he keeps you close, always, clinging to you like he needs you to breathe. you don’t understand why, but you’ve learned not to question him. the castle guards all know you as the prince’s best friend, and some part of you knows that’s all you’ll ever amount to. but you don’t mind.

because you love him. at five years old, six years old, seven and beyond, you love him. satoru gojo, the kindest boy in the stratosphere. 

a boy who keeps finding you, no matter where you are, who tugs you along as naturally as the rise of the sun. who raids kitchen cabinets with you and always makes you laugh, little giggles and chuckles that have him beaming proudly. a boy who cleans your wounds with a serious expression, and tells you that he’ll protect you forever. 

(you tell yourself the same. that you’ll protect him forever and ever, until you run out of air to breathe. a boy so sweet you’d die for him.)

a pledge is made. you make it before you know what a pledge is. pledging to protect him, to become his sword, because even as a child you understand that his life will be difficult. you see it in the dullness that sometimes comes over his eyes, the apathy of his so-called parents, the hours he spends locked up with nothing but a pile of dusty books to keep him company. 

so you decide to become his knight. his, and his alone. 

it’s challenging. but you push through; training with another aspiring knight, miles better than you, black hair tousled by the breeze as he knocks you off your feet for the thirtieth consecutive time. wincing as the girl who sometimes watches your sparring patches you up, soft hands cleaning your wounds so tenderly that you almost choke up.

and eventually, as the apricot blossoms of the castle orchard wilt and bloom over and over in a flurry of pure white, your dream comes true. 

there’s something playful in satoru’s eyes, when he places his blade on the curve of your shoulder. something sweet and fond, and just a little bit ironic — as if you’re still seven years old, and playing house. 

you want to tell him that it isn’t a joke. that you’re serious, about this, that you’d tear your stomach open to keep him safe. but you know he’d just laugh. so you let the words clog up your throat, honey-sweet devotion sticking to the walls of your esophagus. breathing in through your nose, as he speaks. as the words you’ve waited to hear flow from his glossy lips.

when all is said and done, satoru smiles. he calls you his little knight, and you can tell that he’s teasing you. indulging you, as if he’s in on some joke that you aren’t. but you’ll take what you can get.

you call him my prince, expecting him to laugh it off, but his smile begins to fall. and a pang of ache rushes through your soul, instantaneous, guilty, although you don’t understand why.

so you keep calling him satoru. even though it’s more than a little unprofessional, and you become painfully accustomed to receiving a few judgemental looks here and there. a knight and a prince shouldn’t be so very close, they think, and you don’t disagree. but there’s nothing they can do about it, anyhow.

the prince and his knight can do what they want.

not much changes. you’re his knight, but he treats you the same as before. he’s playful, a little goofy, and you indulge him. as always. attached at the hip, bickering and bantering, bouncing off each other effortlessly. and satoru never bothers to hide your history, the soft spot he has for you; it’s in every fleeting glance, soft tilt of his head, teasing call of ah, there’s my favorite knight. 

(you’re no stranger to jealous looks. sometimes a pout on the lips of a pretty girl, a crease between the brows of one of your fellow knights. and sometimes a glare, from his fiancée — a woman he was engaged to before he was old enough to speak.

but you don’t mind. you’ve never cared what anyone but satoru thinks of you.)

satoru never loses his smile, that effortless air of confidence. the charm that makes people want to follow him, a charisma you know well. one you fell victim to at five years of age. he’s still just a prince, far from being a king, but he receives the same respect.

and that keen, sharp glimmer in his eyes never quite goes away; the hardened shell around his heart unbroken. you see it in fleeting glances, during meetings, ones he allows you to attend despite your status. when he speaks to a room of people with more power than you can imagine, his voice unwavering. back straight. elegant, serious, the presence of royalty — enough to receive respect without even trying. 

but he still shoots you a smile, easygoing, when your eyes meet. one only you can see.

as for you, the step into knighthood is a clumsy one. but you take your duties seriously, and adjust properly. a deep devotion runs through your veins, from your beating heart down to the tips of your fingers, where a sword lies clutched. you keep it close, always, ready to serve. to obey. to protect. 

all of it for one person.

all you do is for him. duels in his honour, beasts slain for his peace of mind, and he’s always there to welcome you back. wiping the blood from your cheek, tenderly, smearing his untainted skin with red; all while he looks at you softly, a coo or word of praise waltzing on the tip of his tongue. 

that’s only for when you remain unscathed, though, when the blood on your cheek isn’t your own. when you get hurt, it’s different — something begins to brew inside his eyes, and you can’t tell what it is. but he insists on bandaging you himself, paying no mind to your meek protests.

sometimes, you’re more reckless than usual. your injuries worse. sometimes he looks upset, angry with you, and doesn’t speak. you don’t, either.

a strange look comes over his eyes, every now and then. when you get down on one knee, to kiss his hand, the metal of the ring on his finger — and if you look up, you’ll see it. simmering inside those blue depths, something just as fond as it is sad. troubled, you think.

(something tells you he’d kneel, too, if only you’d let him.)

the bond between you remains intact. even as you begin to shoulder more responsibilities, more duties, even though you don’t have as much freedom as you used to. even though you seem to get less time to spend with each other every single day. but you stay together, even so; just like when you were children, running around and causing trouble, more than you could get away with now. 

despite everything, satoru has grown up into a fine man. and you couldn't be prouder.

“do you think i look good in black? be honest.”

you throw him a glance. curious, somewhat perplexed, eyeing him up and down.

satoru is wearing a white blouse, puffy sleeves and a low neckline, showing off the skin of his bare chest. no black colours to be seen. you think back to that banquet he attended last month, forced into an expensively tailored black coat. a corset around his waist. and then you hum.

“sure you do.”

”suguru said it makes me look like a try-hard,” he scoffs, crossing his arms. tilting his head in your direction. ”do you think he’s jealous?”

”definitely.”

a moment passes. 

satoru narrow his eyes, and gives you a dubious look. clicking his tongue. ”… something tells me you aren’t taking this seriously.”

”i am,” you assure him, a lazy smile at your lips. meeting his gaze, that displeased little pout. still smoothing a brush down the mane of your horse, the smell of hay soothing your muddled senses. ”just tired. you look good in anything. you know that.”

he hums. silent, the sound of a spring breeze filling in the gaps.

it’s late. outside the stables, the world is engulfed by a dark sky, almost too murky to see anything. hazy stars glimmer in the distance, and a sense of fatigue gnaws at your bones. it’s been a long day, and yet you’re here — doing even more work. just a little more.

and satoru’s right there with you. even though he’s just sitting there, on the floor, not lifting a finger to help. not that he has to. insistent on spending some quality time with you, keeping you company. just talking and munching on the food he snuck in, bread and cheese and an expensive bottle of wine, that he leaves completely untouched. he tries to leave some of everything else for you, though. keyword being tries.

a sense of peace simmers in the air. palpable, almost enough to taste, as midnight air streams in from the opened doors, chilly and pleasant on your skin. ruffling the thin fabric of your clothing.

and it’s nice, you think, just to have satoru there — talking about this and that, complaining about all the annoying people he had to meet yesterday, yawning every now and then. nostalgic. like this, it almost feels like you're still kids. back when you spent every single hour of the day by each other’s side.

it’s been a long time since you got the chance to speak like this. satoru’s been busy, and so have you. more so than usual.

”are they running you ragged?” he suddenly asks, and you don’t realize you’ve spent the last minute staring into space. resuming your brushing, with steady hands, but turning your head to meet his gaze.

”need me to…” he makes a slicing motion with his hand, right over his throat. a glint of mischief in his eyes. ”handle it?”

and you scoff. amused, but answering him seriously; unsure if his question is all-together humorous, if it doesn’t carry a hint of something genuine too. ”of course not.”

there’s a weariness in the way you blink. the way you pet the animal in front of you, having finished getting the dirt and blood clots out of her mane. she lays down in her stall, and you smile. turning around to rest your back against the wooden border between you, a respite for your aching bones.

it gets just a little bit tiring, sometimes. fighting, patrolling, helping townsfolk. protecting the castle, making sure everything is in order. killing whatever needs to be killed. cleaning the stained silver of your sword.

but…

”it’s my duty,” you answer, seriously, and it comes out sounding like a vow. because it is. 

you avoid his gaze, but you can feel it, as you pick up the wine bottle by your feet and pop the cork. soft moonlight flits in from the windows, illuminating the green glass. a chartreuse glow that reminds you of fireflies, shimmering in your grasp, and for some reason it soothes your heart.

satoru only hums, far from approving. popping a piece of cheese into his mouth. 

after a brief pause, he continues. ”you don’t have to be so serious all the time, you know.” his voice comes out a little raspy. it’s got a certain tilt to it, one that means he wants you to take him seriously. ”not around me.”

you take a sip of the wine. expensive, blood red. it’s too sweet for your taste, heavy on your tongue.

”… i’m less serious with you than i am with others.”

satoru sits up a little straighter.

”yeah?” he grins, a kind of satisfaction blooming in his eyes. cerulean and sweet. almost smug, you think, like the cat that got the cream. ”that’s good. you really should loosen up, though.”

a glance. fleeting, just to see him — but he isn’t looking at you. he’s looking outside, through the opened window, at the sway of the apricot trees. white petals flitting in, landing by his feet. in his hair.

when his eyes meet yours, they’re smoothed over by that something you can never put your finger on. a blend between longing and fondness. crinkled at the edges.

”you’ve got a pretty smile,” he exhales. ”be a shame not to show it off.”

when you look at him, really look at him, you see it. that fatigue. it slips out when he talks to you, a sincere way of speaking that never quite allows him to hide his emotions. you hear the hint of a yawn, can practically feel the weight on his shoulders. the weight of an entire nation. a weight he was always bound to carry.

(you could never bring yourself to be even remotely alright with it.)

“have you been doing okay?” you ask, and satoru blinks. there’s a soft look in your eyes, as they trail over the contours of his face, his lashes catching the light of the stars. an innocent, pretty face. but he looks tired. frail. like he hasn’t been sleeping properly.

something rotten bubbles up inside your throat.

”they’re running you ragged, too,” you say, hand settling on your hip. where your sword usually is. unconsciously, on instinct — or maybe just to make him laugh. ”need me to step in?”

satoru chuckles. husky, mellow. dripping with soft amusement.

”settle down, little knight.”

a moment passes. silent. his eyes flutter shut, for a second, and a breath slips from his lips. almost a sigh. in the distance, you hear the quiet coo of an owl. 

”of course,” he eventually answers, opening his eyes. and you think he looks a little resigned. but smiling. self-deprecating, you think, although he’d like you to assume otherwise. ”all of it is just preparation, anyhow.” 

a flimsy smile, as he looks into your knowing eyes. ”it’s what i was born for, wasn’t it?”

you purse your lips.

“… i don’t think so.”

another chuckle. a little delighted, this time. 

“yeah,” he cranes his neck, emitting a low groan. “me neither.” something sweet blossoms in his eyes, sweet like the crunch of the apple he bites into, juice dribbling down his chin. ”but it is what it is.”

a beat. you part your lips, trying to find the right words. ”tell me if there's anything i can do,” you settle on. the same words you always choose. ”anything at all.”

satoru smiles. “right.” his voice carries a teasing tilt; almost a purr. ”there’s nothing you wouldn't do for me, hm?” 

“— there isn’t.” you smile. “nothing at all.”

he blinks. a little dazed, for a second, and you watch as his ears redden. slight, enough for you to notice, but gone before you can bring it up. a contemplation smooths over his features. and a pleasant breeze flits in, ruffling his hair, apricot petals kissing up his skin. he looks at the apple in his hands.

then he sighs. placing his palms on his knees, and rising to his feet. his arms twitch, muscular beneath the flimsy blouse, and you gulp. although you aren’t sure why.

“alright, then.” his eyes flicker in the dim light, sharp and decisive. he crosses over to you with long strides. “there is something you can do.”

when he’s close enough, satoru reaches out his hand; opening his palm. a silent beckoning. you look at him, not saying a word. his expression is unreadable. 

then you intertwine your fingers with his. unquestioningly, even in the midst of your confusion.

(it reminds you of that day. when he pulled you up to your feet, held your hand in his and refused to let go. leading you to the promise of something better.)

no matter where he goes, you follow.

and satoru grins. it’s sweet, just like back then, a smile so vibrant you wish you could tuck it into your sleeve and keep it there forever. he curls his fingers around yours, gentle, fondness bubbling up inside his eyes. for a second, you think you see the sun.

“come with me.”

at first, you truly aren’t sure where he’s going to take you. hand in hand, you begin to walk, feeling the midnight breeze nip at your skin. beyond the castle walls, away from the hustle and bustle of the nearby town. satoru holds your hand and smiles, tousled tufts of white hair swaying with the wind, leading you to a place you know well. a place where the air tastes like freedom.

it’s the river you used to play by as children.

gleaming a solemn silver under the evanescent moon, framed by bushes of lilacs, blooming indigo and violet and pure white. butterflies flutter about, almost glittering, blue wings settling down on the leaves. the scent of nectar hangs heavy in the air. on top of the hill just above you, you think you can spot tiny little glowing dots; green and yellow, buzzing around. dancing merrily, now that there aren’t any troublemaker children left to trap them.

satoru lets go of your hand, to roll up his sleeves. the hems of his pants. then he’s taking a step forward, dangerously close to the edge of the river, and you can tell what he’s thinking.

“ah — wait —“ you stumble forward, to grab hold of his arm. a worried crease forms between your brows. “that's dangerous, satoru. you could slip and fall.”

he turns to face you, a teasing mirth in his eyes. smirking lightly. “oh? is that so?” he hums, a slight tilt of his head. then he’s stepping closer, so close you feel his warm breath on your skin, but you will yourself not to step back. “wanna know what i think?”

he leans forward, just a little further, warm air brushing against the shell of your ear. flushing beneath it. his voice comes out low, a sleepy lilt, dangerously raspy. hand ghosting over your waist.

”i think you’re too scared to get in.”

you blink.

”… really?” you deadpan, stepping back a tad. satoru looks pleased with himself.

“really,” he purrs. “you were always like that. could barely dip your toes in without shivering.” he reaches out to pinch your cheek, a coo on the tip of his tongue. ”scaredy-cat.”

you raise an unimpressed brow. satoru steps back, inching closer to the river, until a quiet splash tells you that he’s standing in the water. lapping up his bare legs, not enough to even reach his knees — it felt a lot scarier when you were smaller. he’s still holding your hand, very loosely, fingertips ghosting your own. 

“c’mon,” he coaxes. soft, encouraging, a playful glimmer in his eyes. teeth catching the light of the moon. “or is it too much for my brave knight to handle?”

satoru laughs, when that makes you furrow your brows, attempting to hide the flush of your cheeks. a warmth spreads through your chest at the term of endearment, and you bite your lip. melting a little. 

his knight. his favourite knight.

“... fine,” you tangle your fingers in his own. sighing deeply, taking a tentative step forward. “just be careful, okay? i don't want to deal with your whining if you hit your head.”

“ah, but you’d kiss it better, no? if i asked?” he flashes you a honeyed grin, eyes rich with amusement. you hope the darkness of the night is enough to hide the red of your ears.

a grumble buzzes in your throat, locked behind your pursed lips. something in your jaw goes tight.

the man in front of you softens. parting his glossy lips. he says your name; slowly, thoughtfully, as if savouring every syllable. dragging them out, speaking with a lilt that tells you he’s being sincere.

“— loosen up. it’s just you and me.”

so you do.

and it’s odd. how easy it is to get lost in him, the watercolour of his eyes, the brightness of his grin. how pliantly you let him whisk you away. before you know it, you’re playing in the water — because satoru splashed you, laughing at the shock on your face and the shiver of your spine, and you had no choice but to retaliate. 

the sound of his laughter fills the air, sweet and bubbly. deep and giddy. strands of hair stick to his wet skin, droplets running down his neck, but his grin never falters. bright and toothy, boyish. he looks younger than you ever remember him being. like there’s no weight on his shoulders, none at all, only soaked fabric weighing him down. a flimsy, see-through blouse.

you think it’s ridiculous. two grown adults, splashing each other like children. but his melodic giggles are contagious, and before you know it, you’re laughing too — and satoru looks at you like you hung all the stars in the sky. through dewy eyelashes, with cerulean eyes that melt into the pale blue of the moon and the silver of the river. filled with wonder.

a particularly ruthless splash knocks him off balance, and he has the instinct to reach for your arm; stumbling, slipping, dragging you down with him. you land on his chest, cheek against his neck, his pulse against your skin. erratic, joyous. fluttering happily. his chest is heaving, lifting you up and down, a little, rhythmic and comforting. 

a sudden yelp slips past your lips, as you get snapped back into reality, into the realization that you basically just pushed your own prince into a river and used his unfairly soft chest as a cushion. a mumbled string of apologies escapes you, as you attempt to get up, scrambling to find footing.

but satoru wraps his arms around you. tucking you under his chin, keeping you flush against his chest. nice and still. 

and then he sighs. a blissful little breath, fatigue seeping out of him. into the air. 

“stay like this, for a bit,” he rasps. ”it’s okay.”

his heartbeat resounds in your ear. warm and rapid, like claps of thunder, coaxing you into closing your eyes. satoru has always felt so very safe. the water of the river is cold, seeping through the fabric of your clothing and sticking to your skin, but…

(he’s warm.)

silence. and then, a whisper; frail, slipping past his lips, gently slicing the silence in half. softer than you've ever heard him speak.

“i missed this.”

…

nuzzling into his neck, you breathe him in. he smells like sandalwood and dried roses, buzzing with warmth, heavy arms around your waist. solid. when did he get so big? you used to be taller. 

then again — that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?

“… me too.”

“missed you,” he continues, his jaw on top of your head. it’s a sincere confession; childlike in its innocence. “missed hearing you laugh like that. feels like it’s been so long.” 

you stay silent. unsure of what to say. satoru continues, and you let his husky voice carry you away, the tremor of his chest running through your entire body. soothing like a lullaby. 

”we haven't had much time together, lately. i’ve been worried,” he admits, and something about it strikes you as rather sheepish. a little ashamed. ”it bothers me that i can't be there to watch over you. make sure you're treated with respect, you know.”

a sleepy chuckle. muffled into his shoulder, almost a scoff — slightly exasperated. little droplets cling to his skin, sticking to your lips.

”relax, your majesty,” you tease. ”i promise the other knights aren’t bullying me.” 

satoru pouts. you can hear it, when he speaks. ”i’m serious,” he huffs, squeezing you lightly. ”and it’s not them i’m worried about. suguru’s there.”

another scoff threatens to escape your throat. you want to tell him the only knight that should be suspected of bullying you is suguru himself, but before you can even think to part your lips satoru’s beaten you to it.

”they all treat you so carelessly.” there’s something cold to his voice, an irritation tugging at his teeth. oddly seething. ”like you exist to serve them. like you’re disposable.” 

a moment passes, heavy with a silence so thick you don’t dare break it. when he speaks again, it’s an order. a demand. 

”i want you to tell me if they go too far.”

silence. again. you can do nothing but gnaw at the flesh of your bottom lip. 

(he isn’t wrong. but that’s simply what it means to be a knight — half-human, half-weapon. an unattainable ideal, stuffed inside a suit of armor.

when a weapon breaks under the force of a slash, the only choice is to throw it away. that much you know.)

”it’s fine. i’m not that fragile,” you weakly protest, but it’s not enough. satoru huffs.

”you’re a human being,” he reminds you. strangely stern, for once. chastising. ”you deserve to be treated with respect. knight or not. fragile or not.”

a deep inhale. he breathes in, and the rise of his chest carries you with it. his voice buzzes with something, a slumbering kind of fury. one you haven’t heard in years. 

“if anyone gives you trouble — if anyone hurts you… if anyone makes you feel unsafe,” he almost spits the words, like they’re venomous, sacrilegious. ”tell me. i’ll destroy them.”

silence. and then, a chuckle.

that’s all you can manage; that one meek little breath. resisting the urge to cower, at the love that clings to every word he speaks. angered affection. a promise, dangerously genuine, like a growing wildfire. ”i can take care of myself, satoru,” you remind him. hoping it’ll soothe him. ”you know that.”

but his grip around you only tightens. gentle, even still. as if you’re made of glass, a firefly cupped in his palms. he lets the silence linger, for a moment.

and then; 

“i’d do it, you know.”

“… do what?” you ask, though some part of you already knows. 

satoru’s reply is instantaneous. an arrow hitting its target, cold and concise, decisive. frighteningly honest. almost a growl, flattened, a hint of teeth behind his soft lips. ”destroy them. anyone.”

”i’d tear this nation apart if you asked me to.”

…

(ah. that look in his eyes — one you remember well. strung together with blurred memories, the sting of a palm on your cheek, a castle maid you never saw again.)

you search for the words. biting back a gulp, hesitant. “… i wouldn’t.”

“i know.” satoru yawns, breathing you in, voice shifting back into the softness you’re so used to. your shoulders relax. “but i would. if that’s what you wanted.”

and it’s a little scary, the depths of his devotion. but you’re almost certain you’d do the same for him. maybe you're both a little sick in the head, a little too eager to serve your hearts on a silver platter.

“it bothers me, you know.” satoru breaks you out of your thoughts. gentle, a soft lull of his tongue. ”when you get hurt. when you fight for me.”

“i know,” you murmur. you’ve seen it in his eyes, a worry he’s not as good at hiding as he thinks. ”i want to, though.”

“and i want you to be safe.” a chuckle bubbles up in his throat, just a little bit rueful. “you never listen, do you? so stubborn, i swear. always worrying me.”

you bite down on your lip. he sounds… a little sad.

“… sorry.”

a moment’s pause. then he shakes his head; cradling you close. “it’s fine. i’m here. always,” his palm runs down the small of your back. ”in case anything happens.”

he inhales. ”and when i become king —” a beat. he swallows thickly. ”you’ll never have to worry again. no one will be able to touch you.”

”satoru,” you crack a small smile. amused. raising a single eyebrow. ”i’m not worried. i can protect myself.”

”i know. but i’m saying you don’t have to.”

and then he’s pulling back. just a little bit, just enough to see you. cheek smushed against his chest, comfortable and soft, more unguarded than he’s seen you these past few months. it’s enough to get his heart racing. enough to have him reaching out, fingertips ghosting over your hand, tangling your fingers together. bringing it to his glossy lips. a chaste kiss, brimming with unspoken murmurs of love.

”— i’ll protect you forever,” he vows. ”remember?”

there’s devotion in his eyes. heavy, a vow he’ll never quite be able to voice in full. something that makes the blue of his eyes glow even brighter, cerulean, aquamarine, a blue so jarring it makes your heart beat faster than it should.

you blink. starstruck, caught in a daze, lost within that sea of blue. distracted by his warm breath on your cold skin, the soft whisper voiced against your knuckle. something shy blossoms in your chest, enough to have you averting your gaze. 

“... you really don’t care about the dynamic here, do you?” is all you can reply. a meek scoff, a weak attempt at hiding how flustered you are. “i’m the knight. i’m your protector.”

“oh, i know.” a smile sticks to his lips, playful, the back of his hand caressing your cheek. a coo on his tongue. “my little hero. what would i ever do without you?”

a roll of your eyes. satoru chuckles. in the distance, you hear crickets chirping, a breeze rustling the lilac bushes all around you. he’s still cradling your cheek, smoothing over your wet skin, brushing a drop of water away with his thumb. clinging to your bottom eyelash.

“i don't get it, though.”

you blink. when you meet his eyes, satoru looks a little perplexed. muttering under his breath, absently rubbing circles over your cheekbone. you resist the urge to close your eyes again, biting back a blissful sigh.

”a prince shouldn’t care for his knight…” he repeats, like he’s heard the string of words a million times before. ”the idea of that. i don’t understand it. never have.”

the smile that blossoms on his lips is soft, indescribably so, as if he’s looking at the most precious thing in his life. rich and warm, like wine in your veins, nectar on your tongue, a chest pressed against your own. dripping with fondness.

satoru tilts his head, as if in confusion — but he’s smiling. “what’s so strange about wanting to protect the one dearest to my heart?” 

…

his hand slips from your skin, a warmth leaving your cheek. only to search for your hand, again, cradling it in his larger palm. placing it right over his chest, against the soaked material of his blouse. ”feel that?”

you do. a rhythmic rise and fall, a soft flutter from the depths of his ribcage. as if it’s itching to break out, out of the cage that binds it, the hardened shell around it. a heart too big for his body.

”it’s you,” satoru whispers. ”all for you.”

a moment passes.

silently, you lean forward; tucking yourself into his neck. into that comforting warmth, wet skin beginning to dry, the steady thrum of his heart right by your ear. you listen. not saying a word, afraid of what might leave the confines of your strangled throat. it feels as if your heart has begun to crawl upwards, sweet honey blocking your airways, and all you can do it feel it pulse. 

all while satoru gazes at you, fondly. placing a big palm on the back of your head.

fireflies dance in the distance. butterflies flutter about. strings of lilacs bloom under the glow of the moon. and satoru’s heartbeat never changes, never falls out of tune, a sound you would recognize even if the sky were to shatter, if the world were to end. the sound that saved you, the boy who dragged you out of hell. into his light. 

satoru gojo is everything. he’s the beat of your heart, the silver of your sword, the reason you believe in goodness. he’s your prince, your favorite person, and you’ll protect him until your very last breath. until the world runs out of oxygen.

a boy so sweet you’d die for him.

(a boy so sweet he wouldn’t want you to.)

a shiver runs down his spine — sudden, a shudder of his bones, and a quiet little sniffle. you feel it, hear it, and don’t attempt to bite back the fond smile that slips into the curve of your lips.

”c’mon,” you beckon, almost a coo, placing your palms on his chest to hoist yourself up. ”let’s go home.”

but satoru shakes his head. and then he traps you again, strong arms around your waist, pressing you against him. you could escape — you’re almost certain you’re stronger — but you don’t quite have the heart to. ”it’s fine,” he huffs. almost a whine. ”stay.”

”you’ll get sick.”

”i never get sick.”

a deep exhale. tumbling from your lips, just a little bit humorous. mostly exasperated. ”that can change,” you mumble, fingertips dancing along his exposed skin. absentmindedly.

a smile. one you can’t see, but you hear it clear as day. he sounds content, like he’s got everything he needs right in front of him. ”some things never change,” he informs you. pleased. ”just look at us.”

and he’s right. so you don’t say anything else. 

but your heartbeat quickens, only for a beat or two, and you’re almost certain he feels it. if he does, he opts not to tease you for once, and you’re grateful. and so the silence lingers. as if time has begun to freeze, into an eternal dusk, a string of silent seconds. broken only by low melodic chirping from faraway fields, his soft breaths in your ear. 

until satoru suddenly chuckles.

“hey,” he hums, shifting a little, the river swaying around you. pulling back to meet your gaze, eyes crinkled and voice raspy. “wanna know a secret?”

you raise your head. a dubious look on your face, one that has him breathing out an amused puff of air, like you’re getting ready to hear a bad joke. “... what is it?”

before the words have fully left your throat, he’s resting his forehead against yours — breath fanning over your lips. a pleasant shiver trails down your spine, at the close proximity, goosebumps spreading across your chilled skin. only exacerbated by the whisper that follows, so quiet you almost don’t know if you heard him correctly. childlike in its sincerity. a sunlaced smile woven in between the vowels.

“i think i was born to meet you.”

(a sentiment so sweet you barely even feel the warmth of his lips meeting yours.)

[nananamiin]

𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐉𝐉𝐊 𝐌𝐞𝐧 - 🤍

tw || sukuna is himself 💀 also this is written in my opinion and own headcanon. pls tell me what u think! :3 might make part 2

𝗦𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘂 𝗚𝗼𝗷𝗼 — ˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗ — 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁

I can’t honestly see Gojo maintaining a long term relationship without him having self destructive tendencies. He’s not exactly a bad boyfriend, he’s surprisingly patient (learned trait as a teacher) and realistic, even cynical on a lot of subjects. But he’s has seen a lot, done a lot and been through a lot. His world has been shaken, destroyed and rearranged so he feels genuine unease and insecurity when he thinks his life is beginning to have some type of stability for once. Which can become Gojo becoming oddly unsure of himself.

He doesn’t understand a lot about himself even at 28 years old, which translates to him struggling to understand where he stands with you. He adores you, in the same way he adored Geto. Hell, he might love you in a more romantic manner than he loved Geto but that doesn’t change the fact that often when you two alone he’s in his own world. He doesn’t mean to be distant, but he overthinks a lot. He thinks and thinks and thinks and he gets lost in it. You have to reel him in. He’ll learn to overcome this bad habit if you give him some encouragement and help.

Always somewhere doing something fighting God knows what. It’s nerve wracking to see him come home after what seems like a week of him just in missions. This can really strain your relationship with Gojo and if it’s a casual thing, then I can’t see him putting too much effort into it. If it’s serious, he will try but try and do are two different things.

Not a very sexual man, he doesn’t have time to sit down and think about sex. He’s comfortable being without it for the rest of his natural life, honestly. When he was a teen, of course he was hormonal and moody. But now as an adult, he thinks of it differently. It’s not a necessity nor does he seek it out. Of course he won’t mind if you initiate it. It’d just be rare for him to make sexual advances on you unprompted. He also values consent A LOT. He hates things going unspoken because it wasn’t until relatively recently did Gojo truly did begin to understand people in general, so he wants you to be clear with him on basically everything.

His students, his work as a teacher, it means everything to him. It grounds him when he’s busy thinking about what if he had gone with Geto, what if Toji hadn’t appeared, what if he wasn’t the strongest, so you have to value that too. That’s a given in a relationship with Gojo and he might put his students before you. If it becomes serious and long term, he might want you to meet his students at some point.

THE master of bad puns and jokes. There’ll be a lot of unserious nights watching him reorganize his Digimon cards into his special folder for the 10th time or watch a romcom with him, just the two of you. These are moments Gojo loves and cherishes. He cherishes what you make him feel.

He can’t help but fall in love. He’s desperately wanting to be who people think he is, to be professional, to understand the role given to him, but he’s human. And he can’t deny it to himself that when he lays down and does his daily routine of overthinking, his brain goes to you. And he has a disdain for it. The last time he got this close to someone…well, they’re not that close anymore. Gojo wants to be both the strongest and the man he wishes he could be for you. But there’ll be times he can’t be that man, he has to be the strongest because society needs him. And it’s emotionally taxing to both him and you.

Let’s be real, we aren’t him. We as people aren’t anything like Gojo so we don’t understand what it’s like being the sorcerer everyone turns to when shit hits the fan, nor will we ever carry that burden (I hope not). And that creates tension. Gojo is disconnected with people which can go both ways for misunderstandings. He’s frustrated at himself that he can’t be what he wants to be and he’s frustrated at you for not being like him (maybe he’s even frustrated you’re not like Geto in the way you can’t understand him.) You’re frustrated because you just can’t always grasp the severity or the way of life with being the strongest sorcerer and also frustrated because it’s just creating tension. But it’s not hopeless! He’s learned that people do care for him beyond just his titles. And he’s learned that communication can make or break a relationship.

If you two overcome your differences, your fears, and become a long term thing it’s his LIFELINE. You are priority number one. That selfish, pretentious part of him really comes back, it really shines through when it comes to you. You’re one part of his life that doesn’t depend on his strength, on this idea of his power bordering deity status. You’re everything to him by not treating him so holy. And God he won’t fuck it up. I can’t see him cheating, not even accidentally. He won’t fuck around, because his devotion is so deep. And he expects devotion back. He’s not possessive but you’re his.

𝗞𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗡𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶 — ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ — 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲

Probably the best dating option out of all the JJK men lmfao. He’s responsible, impossibly patient, open minded, kind, humane and very intelligent. Not to mention, he’s hot! He’s a total hunk with brains which is perfect for basically anyone. And he’s pretty sane, so that’s also a plus. He’d probably be the easiest to the date. He won’t compare you to his exes, he won’t ditch you, he’s great at communication and he’s shockingly very blunt about his emotions. And that can make everything much easier as he’s not very secretive. Also he’s very attentive to your emotions, it’s scary. He has to read people and situations quick to survive his missions so he has this eerie habit of reading your features scarily accurate.

He’s quick to judge character or misunderstand someone, though. If someone’s coming off as rude or as arrogant, Nanami takes them at face value. He doesn’t do soul searching psycho analyzing bullshit, if you’re a dick then you’re a dick regardless of whatever happened to make you a dick. Yes, he’s attentive and emotionally intelligent but in his field of work, he’s seen a lot of genuine freaks and weirdos. So he doesn’t think twice before judging someone.

He absolutely does NOT want you to be in any sorcerer problem. No. He can’t handle that. You could be as strong as Sukuna and he’s still battling himself on whether or not he should sit you down and talk to you about it. He doesn’t care if it’s selfish, he doesn’t care if the higher ups argue with him, the idea of you in this field of work haunts him and he hates it. Even if it helps people, he hates it because he knows at any moment you could be harmed or worse. Just this once let him be selfish in having you when all he’s ever done is be selfless and humane.

This may or may not upset some of y’all but Nanami is not a daddy dom. He doesn’t really care for sex much like Gojo. If it happens, it happens. But if it doesn’t happen, he doesn’t care. He’s plain vanilla and he hates kinky shit simply because it just gives him a bad taste. He prefers if sex comes much much later in a relationship since he’s very traditional in the sense he wants a model family. Not to say he’s a slut shamer (my king is NOT.) but he will absolutely not find the basis of a good relationship from a one night stand. Or maybe he will, who knows? He just wants stability that won’t come from someone fleeting is all.

He will stare blankly at a man joking about you in anyway that’s mean spirited. That shit does not go with him because he will actually visibly roll his eyes and make a rude statement. Never ever think someone will disrespect you in his presence because he’d actually rather listen to Gojo’s Digimon rants than ever let anyone disrespect you. Even if you’re casual with him, you’re funny if you think it won’t become serious with him. He has this charm to him that’ll draw you to him. Can you tell I am in love?

99% of the time, it’s serious. Casual isn’t something he has the time for. It’s serious and long term. Which means he expects for you to be committed, honest, loyal and humble. He can’t stand someone who isn’t those things and if you don’t embody that then he won’t give you the time of day. He doesn’t play games, he doesn’t do situationships. It’s all or nothing with Nanami because tomorrow he might not be able to visit you. And you bet your ass he’ll do a background check on you. He’s SERIOUS.

He might falter in the way he can’t express himself at times. He’s so used to just mindlessly staring off into space about the shit that happens to him that he sort of forgets he can also speak to you about his problems. And as mature as Nanami is, he does have his moods. He gets grumpy, he gets bitchy, he gets upset, but he won’t take it out on you. He’ll just silently deal with it himself, because that’s the way he’s learned to handle the problems. It gets to a point that it’s unhealthy and he knows it, so he’s stuck in that situation of being aware of his shortcomings but he feels like he can’t do much about it. It’s an awkward hell he can often trap himself in.

There’ll be some nights, where everything’s dead, everything’s still. It’s just you and him in bed. And he suddenly just tears up and hugs you. And he silently sobs into your chest, clutching you like you’re his safety net. Because you are, he relies on you for normalcy. For love, for peace. And the way he needs it is like an addict needing their next fix. That’s why he’s so adamant about you not coming close to his line of work, because he doesn’t want to start coming to terms with that. He’ll be dependent on you for emotional support because like every other sorcerer, Nanami has seen things that would leave the average man a shell of his former self. And sometimes Nanami cries to you because he’s so afraid that yes, he is a shell of who he was. You have to reassure him he isn’t.

An emotionally driven person despite his professional look. He’s a kind, sweet guy at the end of the day who I can never see doing a mistake too unforgivable or having a flaw too deep that it can’t be overlooked. He’s another man with you, a softer man. A man that lays with you simply watching a stupid movie because he’s got the time. And in that time, he feels normal. He feels average. It’s funny; he left his salary job to be a sorcerer so he shouldn’t have any room to complain about normalcy since it was his choice. But still, we all strive for stability and a peaceful life. And it’s not a crime for him to want it too, you tell him.

𝗧𝗼𝗷𝗶 𝗙𝘂𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗴𝘂𝗿𝗼 — ⚝ ⫘⫘⫘ ⚝ — 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻

I’m going to need every Toji stan to be so ridiculously for real and sit down and listen to me when I say this man is trouble. He’s hot I can’t deny that but my god, he’s like an amalgamation of bad decisions. He’d do casual dating solely to leech off of you if you have money and that’s UBER broke man activities. He’s also the type to have situationships he just either ghosts or ditches because he does not see it as worth it. Or he’d blow money like it’s nothing because he just doesn’t have impulse control when it comes to horse racing. He’s like a walking red flag when it comes to casual dating.

He’s down for casual sex but I can’t see him starting a relationship based on casual sex. So if you want something with him, it’s hard to start it simply because this man will identify that effort and shut it off or not reciprocate it. He thinks you’re nice, he thinks you’re sweet, but that’s about it. Toji can be very iffy when it comes relationships. He wants something out of it, so you’d probably enter it knowing he has ulterior motives out of it. Sex isn’t a big deal to him anymore, he can’t see it as a big deal. It’s just something he does to stroke his ego and to help himself when he’s in a mood. His way of being can be hedonistic. And destructive.

But, he isn’t just sex and gambling and eating. He is a broken man with a twisted way of love and caring because of the unfortunate circumstances he was raised in. And that isn’t up to anyone but him to fix. So don’t expect to fix him, because Toji won’t do it himself. He’s not a helpless case but I can’t see Toji doing much outside of just acknowledging it. He’s also very VERY touchy on his past and on you trying to get closer to him besides anything that’s casual couple things. It’s possible for him to open up and be personal, but again remember he was raised in an abusive situation so he views things and himself differently than others. His understanding of the world is bleak.

Would he cheat? No. Probably not. He might see a good looking chick and stare for too long or might make a comment to himself but Toji wouldn’t cheat. It’s not worth the screaming and breakup texts and comments. He’s not the smartest man alive but he knows better. And to be brutally honest, he thinks it won’t last long with you. That’s just how it is with him most of the time. He doesn’t see the need to cheat because A.) Either you or him will ditch the other or B.) The mess is too much to clean up.

He doesn’t really care what your input on his income and wasteful lifestyle is, it’s how he lives. And nobody tells him what to do. He didn’t leave the Zenin just to be told off by a person he’s seeing casually. And he hates it when someone does that. It’s his life, not yours. But like I said before—Toji isn’t stupid. He is intelligent and resourceful. If he sees you truly, honestly, genuinely wanting someone and trying then maybe as you two are sat at another dinner date he looks over. And maybe as he looks over, he’ll see that same type of sheer joy he saw so long ago in her eyes. And maybe after years living his lifestyle, does Toji think to himself that maybe you won’t flee if he stops being this pompous persona.

If every star aligns for it to happen, he’ll become gentler during sex. He’ll start to think twice before overspending on betting tickets, he’ll start to walk you to your home. He’s not impossible to work with but he’s extremely closed off and shut off from anything romantic after losing his wife. Selfishly, Toji compares every lover after her to her and he sneers at the thought of them ever measuring up to her. And yet here he finds himself awkwardly wanting to say more to you. But he can’t open his trap.

He’s super not sure how to do PDA. Back then, she’d initiate everything. So he’s left scratching at his head on how to show affectionate again in a way that isn’t sex or fake. If he really starts to feel for you, he’s going the extra step to make sure you’re on the inside of the sidewalk and he’s right beside you. I feel like that’s the extent he can really show his affection, by doing really menial tasks people don’t think twice about. His hand lingers on yours when he hands you some groceries, his eyes stay on you as you talk. He hasn’t done this serious relationship crap since forever.

You’re gonna have to correct a lot of behavior from him which is exhausting. You’re gonna have to tell him again and again you’re not his dead wife so he can’t compare apples to oranges. You’re not there for him to rely on to change his way for because you’re not a therapist, you’re his partner. You’re not here for him to constantly depend on you emotionally to fix his deeper rooted problems, that’s on him. He’s a lovely man when he’s not constantly full of the negative things. But at his worst, he’s a dependent wreck who’s always thinking of her.

If Toji really really does love you, he’ll go beyond the world for you. He’ll kill and maim for you, he’d devote his life savings to your future with him. You’d become something he cherishes more than money, more than his hedonistic tendencies, you’re everything. The air he breathes, the warm breeze, you’re his life. And he won’t lose you. He won’t sabotage himself to lose something he built good for himself and for you. He’d honest to God turn his life around. But again, old habits die hard especially pertaining to Toji. So who knows if he’d really be up for it.

𝗥𝘆ō𝗺𝗲𝗻 𝗦𝘂𝗸𝘂𝗻𝗮 — ⋆ 𓆩☠︎︎𓆪 ⋆ — 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗞𝗶𝗻𝗴

No. Just no. Absolutely not. Let me say it this way; Sukuna genuinely has disinterest in anything that isn’t mass murder with a capital M. He’d literally do everything in his power to be the most heart breaking, bigoted boyfriend imaginable. He’s a wretched son of a bitch. He’s the biggest red flag of the entire series. Sukuna is quite disinterested in romance and relationships as a whole.

He’s a fun villain but as a lover? This man would not hesitate to be a terrible person. He has no problems beating his fucking nephew and murdering children, he has no problem being terrible with you. The only reason I can see him dating you is simply because he’s bored and he wants to see what the fuss is kinda like how he eat popcorn and drank soda in Shibuya. But don’t get it twisted, it’s all on HIS terms. HIS rules. He doesn’t give a shit what you care about or worry for. Your role as his partner is to follow what he says and if you don’t? You’re the next pile of human mush.

If you were of use to him like Uraume, he might consider you something worthy. His relationship with Uraume proves that he can choose a more amicable and stable relationship but let’s be for real, he wouldn’t especially if you’re not as strong as him or someone like Gojo. You’d be a plaything at best. And he doesn’t share his plaything. Even with Uraume, it’s a relationship that benefits him personally so you’d have to provide something of that nature for him to consider you as much as he does Uraume. And good luck avoiding all the comparison he will do to Uraume, he’s toxic LOL.

This can either go two ways which are 1.) you are his favored plaything. And that comes with pros and cons. The pros are that you’re somewhat under the protection of THE Sukuna. That’s about it for the pros because he’d be a possessive, controlling, dominating manchild who would expect you to bend to his whims and any backtalk would be met either a backhand or god knows what else from him. I pray for you if you stand too close to his male servants because they’d be ripped in half simply because one glanced at you. You’d be super isolated, your entire world would just revolve around him whether or not you agree with him. He’d probably stroke your hair not out of love, but as if you’re his pet. His possession. And god forbid you do something he doesn’t like. That leads to him making your life an entire inconvenience to the highest degree.

Impatient and would probably roll his eyes and gaslight you at every turn and tell me I’m wrong. He’d probably laugh and clap if you fell and sprained your ankle.

The second option would be the Uraume route which is a subordinate that can provide him something that’ll be in service to him. I imagine he’d be the biggest bitch ever and very particular so you’d have to deal with him but the benefit of that would be the fact that he’d let you stand close to him and have him cross his bottom two arms over his thick, muscled chest whilst one hand rests on the small of your back to keep you close to him as he overlooks his destruction. It sounds insane but I can see him thinking better of you after sometime as his subordinate. And even in this route I feel like the possessive, selfish streak will continue because you’re actually funny if you think Sukuna’s selfishness has any stops. He will be selfish and probably bodyblock anybody from staring at you.

I can see why Gege wants him so bad though he’s so fine

Honestly, with sex I feel like he really would not give a shit. I mean yes, he has his group of women, but it bores him. Sex doesn’t thrill him unlike fighting, unlike the ability to wreak havoc to a small town that has no choice nor power to defend itself. He understands sexual attraction but I can’t see Sukuna acting on it. He might find you attractive enough to keep you locked up in a dungeon or in a chamber but I feel like he wouldn’t exactly seek you out. You’re more of an afterthought to Sukuna. And you better be comfortable with that because with him around that’s not changing.

Best case scenario? You mean something to him like a useful subordinate he WOULDN’T kill alongside his other servants. He’d like someone resourceful, quick on their feet, intelligent, witty and someone who can understand him which is really weird to say about someone who would skin a grandma. He wants someone to just get him off the bat because I really feel like Sukuna judges hard, especially if you’re someone he’s seriously considering giving respect.

[scarletwinterxx]

but on a wednesday in a cafe i watched it begin again - kim mingyu imagine

hiiiii - okay i'm so so so inlove with this one. may i say this is half inspired by real life scenarios haha anyways i hope you like it!

alsooo just a thought, would anyone want to be mutuals on X?

for my other svt fics, check them here

if you want, u can buy me coffee(totally optional but any donation is very much appreciated!) thank you🥺💛

All works are copyrighted ©scarletwinterxx 2024 . Do not repost, re-write without the permission of author.

(gif not mine, credits to rightful owner)

10 years ago

"Kyeom, I'm gonna go. I have assignments to do"

"What noooo, the game's just about to start" he mutters, he even kick feet like a little kid

"Then stay, but I'm going" you didn't even give him a chance to say anything because you're already out the gym doors. Your bestfriend used to your attitude at this point, he lets you be.

You pull your bag on your shoulders as you walk towards the school gates, some students were also on their way out since classes are done. Just as you were about to exit, someone calls your name making you look back.

When you spot who was calling you, confusion took over your face. Wondering why Kim Mingyu is here running after you when he should be inside with the basketball team.

"Hey, glad I caught you" he smiles at you.

Kim Mingyu, the guy who's known across all campus. He's the star student, all the teachers like him, he's never missed a class, he's good at studying, never the troublemaker, has a big circle of friends and an even bigger number of admirers from all across the school.

"What's up, do you need something?" you nonchalantly replied but that didn't deter him one bit

"Yea uh actually I wanted to ask you out" he scratches the back of his neck, looking down at his shoes as he waits for your answer

"Me?"

"Yea, I like you"

"Oh uh thanks. But I'm not really looking for that type of thing right now"

You watch the smile fall from MIngyu's face before it comes back again, it doesn't quite reach his eyes though. You notice.

"Oh"

"Yeah, sorry but uhm goodluck on your game though. I'm gonna go now" you wave goodbye before going your way. Not once turning to look back where Mingyu was left standing.

The rest of your high school life flew by like that. You still mostly kept to yourself, a few close friends, never really wanting to have any eyes on you. Mingyu never contacted you after that. You two acted like strangers once again, his confession something only you and him know.

Present Day

"Did you get the invite?" Dokyeom asks the moments he enters your apartment. After all these years, he's still your bestfriends. Most of your 'friends' from high school you've already lost contact with, you realized you were only friends with them only because you saw them everyday. Not many of them really made the effort to keep in contact, you can't blame them though since you didn't either.

But that's life. People come and go.

"For?"

"Our high school reunion, please tell me you're going"

"I did get it, and no I'm not going"

"What? Why? It'll be fun" he still does this thing where he stomps his feet like a kid when you say no to him, annoying but he's your bestfriend so you learned to put up with it.

"I don't even talk to anyone from high school apart from you"

"I'll be there, you can talk to me" he weakly reasons out, trying to plead with you is like trying to move a cement brick wall. He knows it's a losing battle but he still tries anyways.

"You won't stop bugging me unless I go, won't you?"

"You know me too well"

"Fine, but I'm not staying long"

"3 hours tops"

"2, take it or leave it"

Leave it to Dokyeom to make sure you're actually coming because by 5pm the day of the reunion, he came to your apartment even though you're taking your own car since you don't plan on staying as long as him.

"Oh you actually got ready" he says when you open the door

"I don't want another long message from you, let's go before I change my mind"

The two of you drove separately to the venue, as an introvert you admit when you got there you already want to go home. You see the familiar faces, already dreading the amount of small talks you have to do for the rest of the night. Cursing Dokyeom in your mind.

Your bestfriend didn't even give you a chance to step back inside your car before he's pulling you inside, saying hello to everyone on your way in. He's always been the nicer one between the two of you.

The two of you grab some snacks and drinks before continuing on meddling with your former schoolmates. Your social battery draining drastically by the second when you hear Dokyeom almost scream from beside you,

"Kim Mingyu! Yo dude you made it"

You look over where Dokyeom went, watching him give a bro hug to the guy. There Kim Mingyu stands, still as handsome as ever. A lot of years passed by but he still looks the same, just even better now.

The years have indeed been kind to him.

With everything happening around you, you can't help but feel overwhelmed. A few moments away from sneaking out but Dokyeom catches you once again before you can even give it a try

"Y/N's here too, you remember Mingyu right?"

You wanted to step on your bestfriend's shoes to make him shut up but instead you just shoot him a tight lipped smile before turning to the taller guy,

"Hi"

"Hey, it's been a while. I haven't seen you since... graduation"

"Yea, you too"

End of conversation.

You're still the same, Mingyu thinks. You're still the same girl he liked back then, you're still just as hard to read, still answering with single sentences, still beautiful like the day you broke his heart.

He wonders how you've been since then. Are you dating anyone or are you still out there breaking other guys' heart with your cold demeanor. He's still friends with Dokyeom and last he heard you've been doing okay. No mention of a boyfriend.

You don't give him a chance to ask any question, you say something to Dokyeom before walking towards the door

"Is she alright?" he can't help but ask

"Oh yea, she's being her usual self. It's a miracle I even got her to go tonight so I won't even be surprised if she's about to sneak home now, I'll just call her later"

"You two still close?"

"She's my bestfriend, dude. Of course we are, we're like twins ya know. Anyways how's the cafe going"

Mingyu hangs out with Dokyeom for the rest of the night, they didn't really run out of things to catch up on. He can't help but wonder how two very different people manage to stay close friends. But then again it's Dokyeom, one of the nicest guy he knows. At the end of the day, he's glad you're friends with someone like him.

The next day Dokyeom calls you to bombard you with stories about the reunion that you missed when you came home, he goes on and on about catching up with Mingyu then some other people from your batch you don't even talk to anymore but you listen anyways.

After the phone call, you get ready to go to work. You go on with your routine and before you know it you're done with your 9-5. That goes on for the rest of the week.

Some people hate it but you liked having a routine, it drives you crazy when things don't go your way.

Like tonight, your workmates all but forced you to come with them for afterwork drinks. You wanted to decline but you already done so many times so they made sure you come with them this time.

"Okay okay so what if you're in a room full of all the people you ever liked, who would you go to?"

Everyone take turns to answer until all head turns to you, "Oh me?"

"Yea, come on spill the details girlie we won't tell" one of your workmate jokes, clearly drunk

You take a few more seconds to think before you say your answer

"I guess this guy I rejected in high school"

"What? Oh my gosh whoooo, tell us tell us what happened" they excitedly ask

"Oh no big deal, just a guy. He was nice, like really nice. I liked that about him, but uh I guess high school me wasn't ready for any kind of commitment so I rejected him. I choose him because I want to apologize, that's all"

"Aw did you hear that? that's so cuteee"

"So where is he now?"

"I don't know, I never really kept in touch"

You grab your glass so you can avoid any more questions, after an hour to tell them goodbye since you still have to go to work tomorrow.

And as expected you woke up with a slight headache, even though you wanted to stay in bed for the day you know you can't. You get up and get ready for the day, planning to stop by this cafe your workmates keep on mentioning on your way to work.

Good things it's still early, when you got the cafe there were only a few people inside. You can smell the freshly brewed coffee and pastries on the stand.

"Next, Hi goodmorning what can I get you?"

"Hi, can I get an iced Vanilla Latte and a bagel with cream cheese to go? Thank you" you say your order while the cashier notes it down "Okay, for a moment I'll just get your order ready"

"Sure" you wait on the counter for your order, checking the other pastries and the menu board.

Mingyu was at the back, getting some stocks ready for the day when he spots someone on the counter. He had to do a double take to make sure it was you standing in his cafe, immediately a smile forming on his face as he watch you look at the display case.

You're too lost in your own world to notice him now standing Infront of you so he clears his throat to get your attention, "Can I get you something else, see anything you like?" he asks

He can see you weren't expecting to see him here, out of all places.

What in the twisted fate was this, you think to yourself.

"Oh uh the other barista already took my order" you tell him, Mingyu goes to the other guy telling him something before returning to the register with your order, "One iced vanilla latte and bagel with cream cheese, here you go. Anything else?" he asks again

"I think this is all for now, so how much?"

"On the house" Mingyu says with a smile, makes you wonder if he does this on a regular basis but you shake the thought away.

"What? No, come on I'll feel bad. Tell me how much" you tell Mingyu but he just shakes his head at you

"Free coffee for the pretty lady"

"Do you tell all your lady customers that?" you ask him, the words already out before you can stop yourself. You can feel your cheeks heat up but Mingyu just chuckles, again he shakes his head

"Just you, tell me next time how's our coffee and baked goods are then we'll call it even" he tells you, pointing at the suggestion box

"Are you sure? My workmates recommended this place and they said the coffee is good but I never really went with them" you tell him,

"You work close by?"

"A few blocks from here, I sometimes pass by here but it's always so busy. I guess I got lucky today"

All this time you were this close to where he was and he never knew. Mingyu mentally agrees with you, indeed it is a lucky day because for the first time since he met you you finally said more than one sentence to him.

17 year old Mingyu would be pouting and kicking his feet out of jealousy, he would never believe this day would come but here you are.

"Thank you for the coffee and food, uh see you around"

"You too, Y/N. It's nice to see you again" he smile again, you shoot him a small smile before going your way.

He watches you go out the door, the scene of you walking away hitting him like a Deja vu. A scene from 10 years go playing in head. Just as you were about to exit the door, to turn around to look at him behind the counter then shoot him another smile then you were gone.

This time though Mingyu wasn't left with a heart to mend but something to look forward to. Maybe just maybe this time it'll be his chance.

"You're down bad" Hoshi, his co-owner and other barista, says from beside him

"Huh?"

"Really?? Coffee for the pretty lady? so original" he laughs

"What? I never used that on anyone" Mingyu mumbles, "I know, that's why I said you're down bad. Who is she by the way?"

"Someone very special, call me when she comes back" he pats Hoshi on the shoulder before going to the back to resume his re-stocking duties.

Mingyu didn't want to expect (but he was), he would be lying if he didn't tell Hoshi he'd open tomorrow and man the register just in case you come in early again. He would be lying if he says he looked up every time the bell dings signaling another customer came in only it wasn't you.

It took you a few days before you visited again, and this time luck wasn't on Mingyu's side because he was not on duty.

"Hey, you're Mingyu's friend" Hoshi remembers you from the other day, greeting you with a big smile making his eyes almost disappear. He seems like a warm person, very friendly.

"Yeah, you can say that" you shyly answer him "Oh right sorry, what can I get you?"

"I'll get another iced vanilla latte. The last one you made was really good" you tell him

"Thanks, make sure to drop that inside our box" he jokes "Anything else?"

"Can you recommend any pastry for me to try? They all look so good"

"Honestly, not to be biased, everything's good here but that chocolate cake is extra special. Mingyu makes it himself everyday, want a slice?"

"Sure, sounds great"

Hoshi, you learn his name, goes and make your order like before then returns to the counter "Okay here you go, and the man says it's on the house"

"Huh?" you ask confused "Mingyu said it's on the house if ever you come back"

"Oh I can not not pay, he already said that the last time" you said, already getting your card out

"No really, he insists. And between us, I'd be in bigger trouble if I let you pay. If you want to scold him, feel free to do so and drop it in the box"

You chuckle, finally taking your drink and food "Thanks again, let me write something" you seat on a vacant chair to get a paper from inside your bag, writing a quick note before going back to the counter to drop it in the box. You say goodbye to Hoshi before going.

You feel your phone ring in your pocket, Dokyeom's name flashing on the screen "Barbeque later"

"Are you asking or are you telling me?"

"I'll come by after work" then he hangs up.

A few hours later, your bestfriend shows up with a few grocery bags and a loud mouth. You two catch up on what you missed on the few days you didn't get to talk, he likes staying up to date with your life even though nothing really ever happens. He's like the brother you never expected but you're now stuck with.

"Do you have any sweets here, chocolate or something" you hear him scrummaging through your kitchen

"I have a cake slice in the fridge"

Dokyeom finds it then walks back to the dining table, setting it in the middle to share between the two of you

"Oh gosh this is so good, where did you buy this?"

"At Mingyu's cafe, did you know he had one?" you ask back, Dokyeom's head springs up to look at you

"You went there? Mingyu did mention he had a cafe. So you two talked?"

"Yea he was there the first time I went, it was really nice the coffee is good. The other barista said Mingyu baked this" you tell him, taking another bite

"You know, you never told me why you rejected him"

Dokyeom suddenly mentioning that made you cough out loud, "You said you liked him right? Then all of a sudden you were telling me you rejected him"

"Are we really talking about this? It's been 10 years"

"Yea"

"Like I said, I didn't have the time and I got overwhelmed. Everyone knew who Mingyu was, I didn't want that kind of attention on me too. I guess 17 year old me got scared"

Dokyeom listens to you, watching you stab the piece of cake before taking a bite "For what it's worth, he really liked you back then. He even asked me what your favorites were, I said you liked cakes more than ice cream"

Back at the cafe, Mingyu comes in after Hoshi closes so he can start on baking tomorrow's batch of cake. He's in the kitchen getting the ingredients ready while Hoshi cleans the display case and front of the house.

He was humming to himself when he hears the kitchen door swing open, "Oh by the way Y/N dropped by today"

Mingyu forgets the number he was on, now he has to measure the flour all over again. He turns to look at his friend with an annoyed expression, Hoshi holds his hands in the air

"Hey don't blame me, not my fault she went here on your only day off. But I did say it's on the house courtesy of you, so you're welcome"

"Atleast you did something right" Mingyu says

"And she got the chocolate cake, she also dropped something in the box. Go check it when you're done, I'm going now" he waves goodbye before going to the office to do a few more things before leaving Mingyu alone at the shop.

He tries to focus first on what he's doing, going back to measuring the ingredients and putting it in the oven before going to the counter to get the box.

How will find your note here when there's about 30 others in here, he's not so sure. He reads through a few of them when finally he finds one

Coffee is great, maybe even better with company. On me next time I come back, thanks Gyu :)

He knows it's from you because of the nickname, a lot of people from highschool used to call him that. It may be common but it sounded extra special when you're the one calling him that. He takes the note and put it in his pocket before putting the others back.

Tonight's cake about to be extra good.

When Mingyu comes in the shop the next day he was expecting you to come, he wasn't going to lie about it this time.

It might seem silly but he never really got over his crush on you. There's something about you that he admired so much, even though people said you're the 'ice queen' with your stoic expression and one line answers he thinks you're just always straight to the point.

He never harbored hard feelings even after you rejected him, he understood your reasons. He knew you were focused on your studies but he just wanted to shoot his shot.

That day when he asked you, he already saw you in the gym before the game. He thought you were going to watch only for you to disappear a few minutes before they started, he chased after you with high hopes only to be handed his heart back in a few pieces. But even then he still liked you, he continued on admiring you from afar. Cheering you on your academic victories and cheering for you on your graduation day when you gave out your valedictorian speech.

He liked watching you achieve your goals, you always had that laser focus and determination. The entire class knew you deserved it.

Now a decade later, you're still the same in some ways. The night during the reunion party, he didn't expect to see you there. You didn't age a day, you still look so beautiful. You now carry this confident but reserved aura around you, he admits he was a bit intimidated to approach you so he thanks Dokyeom for being there.

The day passed by and still no sign of you, when he turns the open sign over to close he lets out the biggest sigh. Looking at the last slice of cake on the stand, ironically very similar to him. Waiting for you to come by.

He's busy mopping the floors to notice he didn't lock the front door, you just got out of work and decided to check if the cafe was still open. The sign said closed but you spot Mingyu inside so you try to knock on the glass door but he couldn't hear you so you let yourself in.

You walk closer to where he was before tapping him on the back making the tall man jump up in the air with mop in hand.

Mingyu turns around, holding his hand to his chest as he looks at you blinking back at him "Fuck you scared the shit out of me, sorry" he mumbles the apology after letting a few curses out

"Sorry, I didn't mean too. I knocked but you couldn't hear. Uhm is it a bad time?"

"No, I mean no it's good. I was just cleaning up. Do you want anything?" he asks you, putting the mop in the bucket before walking towards the counter with you following. He stands by the cashier while you stand on the other side

You spot the last piece of cake like it's calling your name, Mingyu following your gaze. Smiling to himself while he waits for your order.

"I'll get the last piece of chocolate cake, please. Hoshi recommended it yesterday and it was really food. Glad I got the last one" you smile

Little did you know he made that recipe with you in mind. He knew you liked chocolate cakes. "Chocolate cake coming up, anything else? Our cookies are good too, let me get some for you"

"As long as you let me pay for it"

"Not a chance, miss" Mingyu smirks, putting the remaining cookies in a box along with the cake before walking back to face you

"Not this again, you already got it for me the last few times I was here. How will you run a business if you keep on giving it out for free"

"I don't always do it" Mingyu shrugs

"Just let me pay please" you say giving him your card but he just pushes it back

"No"

"Mingyu"

He smiles, looking over at you. For a second you were taken back by his stare. The only way you can describe it was sweet, he looked so sweet like the cake he baked. He looked so soft and gentle like he wouldn't break a heart.

"Come back next time, I'll let you pay"

"You said that the last time"

"Then keep coming back, maybe one day I'll let you" he confidently tells you, the underlying message of wanting to see you again lies in the air. He holds his breath waiting for your next words,

"If you don't let me pay the next time, I won't come back" you threaten him cutely, finally taking the bag from him. Mingyu smiles walking to the other side to walk you out.

Before you reach the door you stop, "Actually, there's something I need to tell you" you turn to look up at him

"Go ahead, I'm listening"

You take a few seconds, again surprised with how he's staring right at you. Like he's seeing all of you.

"I would like to apologize for what happened before, you know the whole rejection thing. I know it's a bit overdue, actually it's very overdue but I've always wanted to say sorry. Someone asked me if I was in a room full of all the people I liked, who would I run to I said you. That's because I wanted to say sorry... so yea. I'm sorry" you mumble, now you're looking at his chest. Too shy to look at him

"You like me?" Mingyu mumbles

This make you look at him again, "That's all you heard?"

"I mean I appreciate the thought, apology accepted. Now back to my question.. I heard that right, right?"

"You're not wrong"

You and your one liner answers.

"So how many are there in the room" he asks, now he's teasing you. You can't help but scowl at him, rolling your eyes.

"It's a very short list and you're missing my point"

"No I get it, and no need to apologize. I respect your decision back then and I still do now. No need to say sorry over that, no hard feelings" he smiles at you.

Mingyu wanted to reach out and hold your hand but he stops himself. He didn't want to mess this again with you, if this is finally his second chance then he's not going to do anything to mess it up.

"I really am, it's been 10 years but I just wanted to tell you that. So yea.. that's uh that's all"

"Can I ask something?"

"What?" you ask back "Who else would be in the room with me, do I know the others"

"Oh my gosh! It's a very short list"

He laughs at your answer, reaching up to tuck the loose hair than fell on your face behind your ear.

"I believe you, tell me about it next time you get coffee"

"Seriously making me rethink about coming back here" you pout, this made Mingyu's heart pound like crazy. A hundred shots of espresso got nothing on you. Only you can make him feel this way, so alive.

"I'll bake you a cake" he bargains

"Chocolate?"

"All yours, on the house"

[kombuuuu]

miles deflecting is so GOOD he makes me ILL!!!!!! i love ur writing <3 do u think we cld have like a short continuation 4 it?

Deflecting on you.

42!Miles Morales x Fem!Reader

“Would you hurt me?” “Never again.”

continuation to this C:

im infecting people with the 42!Miles propaganda cough cough 🗣️ ly2 pookie (also this is definitely not short)

A few days had passed now, and Miles had stayed his previous level of civil, bordering caring, with you.

He wasn’t glad with how easy he had let the two other kids get off. But when they were reduced to cowering forms in darkened corners whenever he was around, it brought a pinch of justice, pride to his chest. Although, James had a rather decent punishment, in his opinion.

Word had gone around that he’d gone insane, smashed his head against a desk in an old , deserted classroom until he’d passed out. Mangled his own skull, intended to stab someone, but couldn’t get up from the damage to his own self.

A tip to the cops surveying the scene, and the rumour was spread a little wider.

He had been wary with you, from the moment you both sat staring at the city life below you, in his bed.

In his room, his house with his Ma just outside. The domesticity of the moment making the ache in his lungs suffocate his heart. Squeezing and pumping out as much blood as it could, heart rate trying to keep up with the lack of air.

He’d thought back to it too often in the mere days since occurrence for him to simply brush it off, but he sure tried.

—

He tapped the rubber of his pencil along his desk, staring at the page below him. The words being said had been drowned out by his racing mind, something he fully knows would get him in trouble eventually for “lack of effort”. But it was maths, there wasn’t a single thing being told that he didn’t already know.

What had his current attention, was the faint sketch of you on his gridded paper. He hadn’t meant to draw it, he’d just—, spaces out and it was there when he snapped back.

Now he was at a standstill with himself, use the currently tapping eraser to get rid of the drawing, or live with the faint lines hidden between pages. It was obvious, rub it out. But the thing, the most difficult aspect—,

—Was how utterly gorgeous the drawing was.

How your hair framed the page, the shape of your eyes being shaded in led. The soft look you’d given him that night being practically pulled from his mind and placed on the cheap paper. He’d recreated it perfectly, he could feel the apprehension, the uncertainty.

But despite how bitter those words sounded, uncertainty was still consideration.

You were considering him. Not as an enemy, or a nuisance — as a stranger.

You can get to know a stranger.

You can get to know him.

Miles closed his eyes and groaned under his breath, rolling eyes at the hope rising in the back of his neck.

He flicked to the next page, promising to never open to it again.

If it ended up cut out of his book, folded neatly and stuffed in the hidden latch of his desk drawer, no one but him would know.

—

You hadn’t forgive him, of course you hadn’t — you’re not that naïve.

He hurt you, cause you an entire season of torment, sleepless night and stress filled days.

You tried to stay quiet, like you always had. Passing by crowds unnoticed and surfing under the noise with a cotton stuffed ear.

And he’d started a ruining of that.

Trying not to draw attention to yourself, despite him so clearly trying to put you in spotlight.

This whole ordeal was a domino effect from that damn kaleidoscope, and he was just another finger flicking the next tile.

Until he wasn’t.

And he’d near killed a man for you. Taken care of you, feared for your life.

He’d found you, from nothing but a gut feeling.

The way he would stare now, was less vindictive. His gaze no longer that of anger but of a man conflicted. Like he couldn’t tell what to think of you.

You lay over your ruffled sheets, quilt and bedding under you to not overheat yourself. You window was wide open, airing out your humid room. The soft sway of leaves sprouting from the vines crawling over your building was pleasant. Digging their roots in the crevices of your window sill like Miles had been digging into the crevices of your mind.

You put a hand over your head, stretching your back up and listening the the crack that came from it.

Dropping back down and huffing, you continued to watch your ceiling in mild disinterest, trying desperately to reach the essence of sleep, and let the way Miles’ lips curled into a smirk fall from your mind.

He hadn’t realised it, but his small rebuttal to your teasing that night in his room had made a permanent statement in your head, no longer able to forget about it.

“No, just you —,” Your mind hadn’t cared to supply the rest.

Every single thing about that scarring night had burned its way into your temporal lobe. Like giving it a searing kiss with memory stained lipstick.

A small clicking had caught your attention, like fingernails tapping glass. The clinks were rhythmic, had the coordination of a spiders legs.

Your focus on the plain ceiling was now broken, a curiosity replacing it.

You approached the open window without caution, Moonlight spilling through the glossy panes. Placing your hands on the sill, you leaned forward, and felt the small rush of wind over your shoulders, the breeze cooling your heated face. An urge to close your eyes and take it in almost over-reigned that new curiosity, but your self preservation thought better of it. Checking left and right either side as if someone was going to be waiting right there for you. Because that was a completely rational and not at all ludicrous thought. You scoffed to yourself, glancing at the skyline with glistening eyes before turning and heading back inside, to finally — maybe, fall asleep.

—

Miles released a quiet breath, braids swaying from his suspended position hanging from a rooftop. Your rooftop, of your building—.. Where he was watching you. It was coincidence, really. That somehow, running from guys he stole a cure his Momma needed for a patient from. And when grappling from building to building, using clips and hooks and zip lines to get away from them, he’d stumbled into your street.

He’d lie to himself and say it was just the street his Ma’s favourite Paella was made, but the one time he’d seen you, exhausted from school—, drag yourself into an apartment across the street from that very place..

His opinion hadn’t changed, so to speak. But there was an added motive, that’s it.

And he’s hiding, it’s not his fault if your apartment is high up. Or his need to see you is growing at alarming rates, or his heart was beating so loud in his ears that he hadn’t heard you approach the window.

So when your fingers had softly scraped along the sill of your window, he’d pulled himself above you — and prayed you wouldn’t look up.

You hadn’t, thankfully.

He’d watched the way your skin had shone under the city lights, your features illuminated and accentuated by the chaos the streets. You were so unbothered—, so calm, even amidst everything he (and everyone else) had put you through.

Like a stubborn stone keeping the whole wall from collapsing.

His admiration for you had grown, not only from the past months — which he realises is slightly sadistic — but from your tenderness that had only lasted mere minutes. Even the glimpse of a softer you, not the one covered in a satiated rage, hands squeezing lemons until the bitterness dripped not from the fruit broken skin, but from your own. The sting of acid only making your bloodied finger feel more justified.

Not that.

What he saw was a woman free of woes, no need to split her skin when her heart was already so vulnerable.

And he craved for a mere glimpse of that again.

Like old, your anger had satisfied him. Gave him those doses of you he’d fiend for, and had excited him to no end. Now, he’s found something stronger.

He can’t let you go.

He watches you scoff at yourself, his mask retracting from his face. You look towards the city’s edge one last time before turning and making your way back inside.

He sighs, adjusting his position on the buildings ledge, and grabs the waterspout running the side of the building, crawling back to the shadows.

His claws clink, like nails tapping glass.

—

There wasn’t a day of peace in the last fortnight.

You were still suffering the effects of your previous injuries. People knowing that something had gone down between you and James, seeing as he hadn’t showed up in two weeks. And the near-healed bruises on your face were a well indicator of your involvement.

So when you stumbled upon Keith, someone you’d basically owed your still-intact-body too, scrambling out of an alley. Bloodied and bruised, nose broken and face almost as busted as your was that day. Safe to say you weren’t exactly confused to what was happening.

He looked up, eyes meeting yours almost eerily fast, the blood from his nose coating his teeth a deep crimson. A sick chill ran down your spine and you stumbled back. A wet gasp for breath was heard, diverting your attention towards its gruesome origin.

Turning your body towards the darkened alley, vision blurring at the edges. Your breath escaped you.

Keith had started speaking, and over the ringing in your ears he’d begged for your forgiveness, scraping his knees while he clawed to get away from his friends continuous spluttered coughing.

“What—..”

Mathew was lying on the floor, avidly trying to protect himself using only his bare hands. While a figure you could only see the back of punched in a strict, repeated pattern — like they’d done this before.

“Miles?”

The man whipped his head towards you, blood dripping down a cut on his cheekbone, and a snarl over his face.

Said contortion quickly smoothened out, a rather *confronted look replacing it.

Keith was long gone by now, having dragged his bloodied body away from whatever mess you were now a part of.

“Chiquita, don’t freak out.”

The way your lungs seemed to refuse oxygen kind of refuted that command.

You were frozen still, eyes stuck on the barely conscious body beneath the subject of your recent intrigue.

Mathew was barely recognisable, eyes puffed up in bruises and bloodied flesh. Miles had taken near no damage compared to the other men.

“[Name], c’mon.” He was getting up now, shuffling off his opponent with a tone of apprehension.

Only when his movement shifted your frozen eyes, did you see the key details you’d missed.

Braids, Nikes, Jacket, Collar, Claws.

A spray painted logo you’d only ever seen one man branding.

The Prowler.

"No te precipites, Ma."

“Don’t act rash, Ma.”

Right as the endearment left his mouth, you turned on your heel and ran.

"[Name], Por dios — quedate aquí."

“[Name]! Oh my god — stay there.”

He waved nonchalantly to the definitely not-going-anywhere boy on the floor. Shifting his foot back and jumping at a wall, claws digging in and gripping the ledge to the roof, swinging himself over it and keeping the momentum in a run.

Darting through corner stalls and confused pedestrians, you tripped over yourself to get away.

A strong, persistent mantra of ‘Holy fuck.’ was circling through the forefront of your mind, and yet everything else was hyper aware.

Not a fault in your step as your grace seemed to come out in times of dire panic, like a dancer following their cues, every movement made around you was an instructors yell.

You turned into the alley leading to your apartment, a shortcut, when you heard someone drop down behind you. You spun around, fast enough to dizzy yourself, and gave one look to the neon mask of the vigilante before going to run again. A small noise of panic escaped your shaking form.

“No corras, por favor!”

“Don’t run, please!”

Your heart beat fast, reaching the door to your apartment complex, swiping your key card and launching yourself inside, the scuffle of shoes being heard just outside the slammed shut door.

“Please, [Name], let me in. We can talk this out, Ma.”

Miles begged, knocking on the complexs’ back door.

"They were gonna jump you, [Name].”

“I don’t believe you.”

Your voice came out shaking, confused and *scared. You’d known he’d been capable of violence. It was adamant in the way he wouldn’t flinch at a hit, or the scars that coated his exposed skin.

But this? A man who’s killed people? Who was going to do it again had you not been a witness.

“I—“ You whined, voice giving out and tears finally breaking the surface of your waterline. “I’ve seen you—,” The back of your head hit the metal door and you sobbed silently. “,—On the news.”

Outside the thin steel, Miles sighed, guilt weighing his chest down heavy. He got sloppy, and paid the price. His anger, rage toward these men. And what they’d planned to do to you — he’d say it was justified. You’d say it was monstrous.

“You kill people, Miles.”

His heart broke at the tone of your voice, the quiet sniffles and shortened sobs. The way your voice cracked and broke under the pressure of your open heart.

“Ma, I—“

“I don’t wan’ hear it.”

His hands rest on the cooled metal, forehead pressing against it as he sighed.

“Please let me in.”

“I can’t.”

“[Name]. Chiquita, por favor.”

He’d begged, ready to get on his knees and stand out in the 40° (104°) heat, and wait until you opened the door. Even if it took days.

Although,

“I’ll break in.”

“Wha—,” you cut yourself off in a sobbing laugh, rubbing at your tear tracked face. “Miles, That’s not a very good bargaining chip.”

He smiled, closing his eyes and loving the sweetened tone you held. You weren’t scared of him, you were scared of the Prowler.

“‘Made you laugh.”

His accent thickened over the words, dragging them out in a rasping hush. Something only for you to hear.

Your resolve was breaking, lungs slowing to a calmed lull as the adrenaline left your body. You didn’t break though— couldn’t.

“I can’t—,” You looked to the ceiling of your apartment’s ground floor, standing in an empty back room. “,—You’re not good, Miles.”

“You helped them, before.” Your brows furrowed, not of anger, but of betrayed desperation.

“You.. You just watched—“

“I know, baby, I know.”

He opened his eyes again, staring at the door like it had attacked you.

“Go upstairs, yeah?”

“Why—“

“Just go on, Ma.”

You huffed out a slow breath, fight draining from your being. You wanted to yell, to scream at him how wrong of a man he was. How he couldn’t risk everything he had for you, not now. Not as the estranged people you were.

You wanted to show the anger you never could, reach that brink of anguish until you’d finally given him what he’d wanted since your moment of meeting. But he no longer wanted that.

He’d always wanted you to break, now he just wants you.

“Okay.” You were breathless and tired, coerced.

He lifted his head quickly, hands splayed against cooled metal curling into fists, an excitement running through him like that of a promise.

—

A minute later you were opening the door to your apartment, and locking it behind you. Anxiously making your way to your bedroom, worried to see what was inside, When you stepped inside, you weren't exactly surprised when your eyes landed on Miles' face, what had surprised you though — was that he was hanging off your window sill with a sheepish smile on his face.

"Now will you let me in?" His voice muffled through the glass and you breathed out a quick gasp, "You— Miles, get down!"

"Down?" He smirked, letting one of his hands drop from the wooden sill. "Oh my god!"

You rushed towards your window, discarding your phone on your bed carelessly. You slid your window up, as Miles laughed, swaying from his one hand. "Jesus Miles— are you trying to kill yourself?!"

He crawled through and you grabbed his free hand, dragging him inside. "Get—.. get." Giving up on your scolding half way through, you quickly ushered him towards your bed and turned to close your window.

"When you said 'Go up.' I didn't think yo—"

"I'm sorry.'

Your hands were left floating above your windowsill, shaking in still air. Miles had come up behind you, hands resting over your hips, toying with the hem of your shirt. His face lowered towards your ear voice dipping with it.

"I know you're mad— hate me, all that. 'S okay. I know—,"

He slowly moved his arms further around your waist, watching your breath hitch and the feel of your pulse under the blow of his breath.

",—And I'm sorry."

"I don't hate you."

"You don't hate anyone."

You relaxed into his hold, tears brimming forth again.

"You keep—" "Scaring you." "Yeah." He dragged his left hand down, trailing his fingers over the skin of your arms and watching as the bumps rose along your flesh. You were entrancing.

"Are you scared now, Mami?" He grabbed your wrist in a gentle hold, swiping his bloodied thumb over your smooth skin. Your hand twitched, and his thumb stopped.

"No." You flipped your hand into his, linking your fingers together, careful to not agitate his bruises.

"Would you hurt me?" He reciprocated, closing his fist over your own, the flick of pain felt like nothing— not when the aching in his chest was finally being calmed.

"Never again."

—

DUDE MY PHONE IS FUCKING BROKEN LOLLL

no ending image today im on my laptop (fucking cries)

translator (bbg) @sataraxia

taglist!! @red-riot-rat , @stvrfir3 , @erensbbg , @umawooma , @wisteriaflowersss , @inejsknifes , @meowsannie , @manduse , @rainy-darling , @riya1161 , @key-zee , @toasttew , @em711 , @starsval , @gemma42 , @lovelymiaablogs

[ambros1an]

firefly x gn reader 18+

warnings: SPOILERS FOR 2.1, eating out, face sitting, dom firefly, he/she/they pronouns for firefly, firefly has 🐱and d (in other form), firefly written as nonbinary, penetration, the suit stays ON, nothing hardcore

summary: gentle dom(ish)! firefly. that’s it. that’s the post

a/n: i wrote this for the people the love firefly in her completeness and not just one aspect or the other. i know y’all are out there. also never written nsfw and wanted to do it semi-realistically (lol)

the way firefly has everyone fooled. most that manage to see her despite her entropy disorder think of her as a kind and compliant girl. someone unfortunate. rarely anyone gets to see her true self, as someone who takes.

her plush thighs grip your head, holding it in place. her panties thrown off in the corner, but not fully undressed. her skirt conceals your face, holding u into her.

“a-ahh” they say your name, “please…”

you swirl your tongue around her clit, giving it kisses when she grinds into u.

“a-aha, sorry,” she apologizes.

you hum into her as acknowledgment. don’t stop

she bounces on your face, grinding against your tongue and your nose to hit that spot just right. She’s just so close- she can feel it. Firefly grips onto your hair in an effort to bring you somehow closer.

your hands clasp around her waist in return. their cunt starts to twitch around your tongue and the grinding gets harder.

“hhah-ah, im so close-“

she throws her head back in a moan. coming because of you, because of your tongue. its all just too much. if only you could see it.

has she ever been cared for like this?

with shaky legs she removes herself from your face and places herself down next to you.

“i want to..help you too” she looks down then back up at you.

obviously it was a yes.

she rolls in between your legs. this time he was Sam, not firefly. but with you, maybe they could be both.

the mecha suit encased her body, and with it was an “attachment.” sam’s cock stood upright. it gleamed with their signature green and blue decals.

he oiled a bottle of lube onto his fingers before inserting them. he didn’t want to hurt you. not again. his two fingers pumped in and out, leaving a full feeling that wasn’t unpleasant but welcome.

your light moans and grunts egged him on, inserting a 3rd finger.

“sam..”

they look up at you, “I know. I’m almost done,” he said lightly, you could hear a smile in her tone.

she removed her fingers from you, slick coating them. she held up the bottle of lube preparing to put it on her cock but you were faster.

“let me” you say, sitting up and plucking it from his hands. sam looks at you with a startled expression. he watches you coat your hand in the liquid then-

“oh-“

you’re touching him. you rub up and down his cock. one hand caressing the tip and the other the base.

“sensitive here?” you smirk, leaning down and placing your mouth onto his tip. he answers you with a shaky moan. not that you needed to ask anyway.

you kiss and lick at the tip, then open your mouth to go down further, humming around the shaft. that is until Sam grips your hair and plucks you off.

“sorry- not now. i wanted to do something for you. please, turn around,” the way he says it, makes it clear he’s out of breath.

you roll over onto your back, looking up at the hulking mecha on top of you. he rubs up and down his shaft, before inserting himself inside you. he moans, the heat surrounding him is enough to make him bust already.

as for you, its a tight fit. you hiss between your teeth. but the fullness feels so good. when sam starts thrusting, even more so.

to any other person, sam staring down at you would be a death sentence, but not to you. you can tell from the way he looks at you, that she really wants to kiss you. the warmth spreads across your stomach.

“ah-haha” he moans your name. “I really do love-“ he whimpers, caressing your hair, “care for you.” the warmth you feel from their emotions, combined with the pleasure, makes you come undone.

“f-firefly!”

you twitch around his cock, and it throbs against you too. the robot releases into you, the sensation is warm. and with it the mecha releases firefly from his suit, and she collapses onto you.

“its way too hot in there,” she moans.

you can’t help but giggle. you still cant believe they’re the same person.

[sminiac]

can u write about giving bonedo legal line head pleaseee 😭😭😭 im such a giver like i need to make them feel good thank you!!!!

💌— I’VE BEEN REALLY STRUGGLING W WRITING LATELY BUT OFC :3

⋆ P. Sungho

Funny enough, I see Sungho as more of a giver. Something about him emits that he loves being able to take care of his lover— but don’t get me wrong, he allows himself to enjoy when you’re the one using your mouth, the only problem is he gets too restless knowing how needy it makes you, your impatience makes him impatient. Gets off on the internal image of giving you head just so the process will be finished faster, and it’s a bad habit, he knows, but you deserve to feel just as good. In short he allows you to do it whenever you ask, and it feels good, of course it does, but he’d much rather be settled comfortably between your thighs, his skin drenched thickly in your arousal, sometimes it makes you wonder if he just enjoys constantly having a locked jaw too?

The only time you can really go through the process of having him cum undisturbed is early in the morning when he’s half awake, struggling to sleep past the feeling of his aching cock. In his drowsy, refusal of day state he’ll let you do it without any convincing that you need the attention more than he does, he’s just much too tired to talk, and to put in the actual effort to have you submitting to his insistence, but he’s still awake enough to give you the ‘go ahead’ when your fingers start drawing feather light touches across his lower tummy, it takes a little while, but eventually he’ll be bucking his hips up and whispering a desperate “Please, honey.” You’ll know he’s close when his big hand finds the top of your head and his back is slightly arching from the mattress, breathlessly stuttering out: “Fuh- fuck, baby. God, oh my, fuck.”

Remainder of members under the cut!

⋆ L. Riwoo

Riwoo likes someone with a level head and a persistent drive because then he doesn’t have to think about a single thing other than you and the way you make him shake and quiver once you’re sunken down, laving hotly at his tip, paying attention to all the right places at once. He won’t say it aloud but he also really likes when you’re messy, calculated in every other aspect as expected, but allowing yourself the freedom of salivating all over him, the sight of it, the feeling, it’s almost like a confidence boost seeing you so into pleasuring him, the way the warm mix of liquids seep out of the corners of your mouth and cover his skin, he’s very adamant about eye contact when he’s not being shy.

If you’re enjoying yourself then he enjoys it all the more! Here and there Riwoo doesn’t mind a pinch of exhibitionism, giving him head in the shower of the dorm or when you’re at his house really gets him going. The fear of someone hearing his pathetic whimpers, catching onto whatever the two of you do behind closed doors— he runs so high off of it, his hips unapologetically slipping his cock in and out of your mouth, the anxiety in his stomach conjoint with the kick of his orgasm approaching always has him shifting gears, sweet sweaty boy just absolutely fucking your mouth with reckless abandon.

⋆ M. Jaehyun

He’s so yappy and adorable! Absolutely cannot keep his mouth shut for the life of him when you’re swallowing around his dick, treating him so delicately, like he’s the prettiest, most delicate thing you’ve ever laid your hands on. The doting and the loving on really makes him so horny though, like, so bad that you can’t tell him he’s pretty whilst looking at him a certain way or he’ll get so whiny about it. The flood of affection being only meant for him makes his limbs so restless, there’s too much good feelings and sweet words that he doesn’t know how to receive it, even more when you’re offering to get on your knees for him.

Jaehyun doesn’t take your certainty of wanting to give any kind of way that’ll make you feel like it’s intended to be degrading, there’s no hidden agenda or kept in thoughts, he’s simply liquid in your hands, takes whatever you have to offer so graciously while still being assuring that he wants it just as bad as you do. He’s so visually pleasing too, doesn’t understand the effect that his shuttered cries and restless legs have on you, every time you have him in your mouth he refuses to look or he’s cumming on the spot, so his eyes are closed most of the time, he’s so :( also has a thing for the feeling of your nails dragging against the soft skin of his thighs, cries and cries from the stimulation, could probably cum from that alone but he’s too embarrassed to find out.

⋆ H. Taesan

A recorder. He is a sluuuut !! Literally asking whenever he can if it’s okay for him to record. Such a freak that even when he’s not horny he’ll be watching back the videos of you giving him head, whenever he’s in the back of the van going to prerecording’s his hidden folder is quickly being pulled up, you’re just so pretty and you always do so good for him, he feels almost this sense of pride? Like “Yeah that’s my girl, she’s so beautiful. Head game is crazy btw!” He just has to brag about you in every way, idk 🙄. Likes when you give him head in ridiculous places and situations too, the back of the car, on an airplane, after shows, before shows etc. and he records those too of course, talks to you in a hushed tone with the phone flash all in your eyes, “Fuuuck- s’good princess. Keep doin’, doing that, please.”

Taesan is such a physically reactive person, it’s like everything the normal human feels he feels 5x stronger. Will unintentionally make you gag and tear up by how much his hips unwillingly twitch and push when he’s close to cumming because of this. He does his best every time to try and stop it, but it’s hard to stop something that’s not done with a conscious effort. Admittedly though, every inch of your mouth he’s been allowed to touch feels amazing, but he’s come to find that the back of your mouth is an especially important part.

⋆ K. Leehan

The most likely to head push, idk if it’s because of how pretty he is but something about him is so intimidating? He brings that same exact energy to bed too, plays into it, likes seeing you flustered and stupid. Yk how it’s always the people you least expect to have crazy experience when it comes to sex? Yeah, literally him. Like he’ll be teaching you shit you would’ve never learned if it was someone else’s dick in your mouth, “Lick it like that” “Use your fingers like this baby” or “More pressure pretty, don’t be shy.” Absolutely intends to build your abilities so they pertain only to what he finds pleasurable. Even the way he talks to you, it’s so entertaining but not in a humorous manner, he knows just what to say and how to say it for the success of getting you squirmy and impatient.

Since he knows how shy you get Leehan purposely makes eye contact with you as much as he can, will caress the top of your head and the soft of your cheek that the tip of his cock pokes into as he talks sweetly to you. Asking if you’re having fun, if he tastes good. He’s such a mouth fucker, I can’t. If you’re giving him the go ahead to use you he does exactly that. The most talkative out of everyone, keeps your ears entertained with his grunts, moans and his thoughts, but he keeps your mouth even more busy. It’s impossible for him to become bored, he feels the same excitement every time you go down on him that he felt the first time it happened.

[pupyuj]

omg u write for bini ??? tots on sub maloi pls 🥹

HEHE finally decided to work on some bini asks i got from a while back so here’s the first one! 🤓 decided to make this (and as well as my future bini stuff) mostly english so everybody can tune in 🤩 i have to scroll pretty far down for the other ones so pardon me—

sobrang mapang asar 😭 like maloi’s the kind of sub that would do all the risky things to get her way! doesn’t matter if you’ll get angry or if both of you get caught—she gets what she wants and 98% of the time, she does! 😈 if you just so happened to be watching the girls while they’re practicing, bigla-bigla ka na lang uupuan kase occupied na daw yung ibang chairs even though there’s like a whole bench available… teases you to hell and acts so oblivious about it when you accuse her! bcs that’s such an indecent act, she wouldn’t dare to grind her ass into your crotch while the girls were around! 🫢🫢 and she wouldn’t take your hands and put them on her thighs and so dangerously close to her warmth while aiah and jhoanna are talking to the two of you, why would you accuse her of that?! 😖

tapos malibog pa! 😭 hands always on your ass, cops a feel of your boobs when nobody’s looking, whispers dirty things into your ear just to see your face flare up, and even forces you to do the dirty stuff by suddenly putting your hand on her boob like ?/!;!/&!/ 😭😭 takes advantage of your timidness a lot and ykw lowkey toxic with all the emotional manipulation she’s always trying to pull on you… “please hon i need you… sandali lang. love mo ako, diba? do this for me naman…” and ofc you can’t say no kase you do love her!! and maloi was just too pretty to say no to so you let her do whatever she wants! 😩

maloi’s favorite thing? risky sex ofc! the mere thought of fucking while the threat of being found really makes it all feel so much better 😋 being in a bathroom stall, her face pressed against the door while your three fingers are knuckle deep inside her cunt and your other hand squeezing her tit just how she likes it.. and ofc she’s not making any effort to use her own hands to clamp her mouth shut bcs she wants to get caught with you.. but you also made it impossible for her to try and keep quiet! you were just so good ☹️💕

and even if you wanted to stop just so you can spare both of your asses the trouble, maloi’s praises were too enchanting to your ears 😵‍💫

“just l-like that, baby… good girl—ahh..!”

“a-ang tapang mo ngayon, huh…? always knew you had it in you..”

“faster, hon.. good, good..!!”

also she’s definitely an anal girl SORRYYYY like she’s walking around with a butt plug that she made you put in her ass earlier in the morning before going to practice and now you’re looking at it while you’re fucking her from behind and it all just adds to the pleasure 😵‍💫 and maloi doesn’t let you stop until colet’s blowing up her phone telling her to go back to practice 😭

[sturniolos-blog]

Can u do one similar to “first panic attack” but Matt comes home late and walks in on reader crying herself to sleep because she feels like she’s raising her kids alone and they don’t really argue but she just kinda breaks down and tells him how she feels. And then he comforts her and like flashes to him putting in more effort and being more present for his kids but also as a husband?

(Love ur writing soo much girl!!💋❣️🫵)

I’m sorry - Matt Sturniolo x Y/n oneshot

warnings - swearing, angst, sad sorta, fluff

disclaimer: this will all be third person pov because i think i write better that way but that wont be for all my fics ‼️‼️

—————————

9:36pm

“Goodnight, sweet boy.” Y/n whispered to her 4 year old son, kissing his forehead as he fell asleep in his thomas the choo-choo train bed.

“Night night, mama!” He giggled, pulling the covers up to his chin.

Y/n smiled at her boy before turning on the white noise machine and before leaving the room also turning on the fan, knowing how her song gets hot and sweaty during the night.

She closes the door to her sons room, making her way to her 6 year old daughters room, a bigger smile flashing on her face when she sees her daughter sitting up waiting for her.

Estrella smiled at her mom as Y/n walked into the room.

“Hey, lovey.” Y/n said in a soft tone.

“Hi, mommy.” Ella smiled cheekly, getting under the covers.

“Goodnight, my girl.” Y/n whispered, the same way she had done to her son prior to this, leaning down and kissing her forehead.

Y/n then turned on the fan for her daughter too, her fan was a little older so it rattled with noise, making enough noise to help Ella fall asleep.

“Mommy?” Estrella called out as the room went dark, a little butterfly nightlight that sat on the small girls nightstand being the only thing lighting up the room, but enough to see.

“Yes, honey?” Y/n turned around.

“Can you read me the dinosaur book?” Estrella asked, “Please?” She dragged out the E at the end.

“Okay, sweetheart.” Y/n sighed, giving into her daughter.

Quick Disclaimer pt.2: This book is based on the runaway dinosaur from the flash, i have changed some words and some details from the book from the show, this book is not made my me, only some changes were made‼️enjoy

Y/n walked over to the 6 year olds shelf with a variety of items on it, picking out the hard covered book that had a dinosaur on the cover, ‘The runaway dinosaur.’

(Italics is the dialogue in the book.)

Estrella clapped her hands together in excitement as Y/n came over and sat on the bed with the girl. Ella immediately snuggling into her mothers side as Y/n started to read.

“The runaway dinosaur..” Y/n started.

There was silence as Y/n flipped to the first page of the picture book.

“Once there was a little dinosaur called a Maiasaur, who lived with her mother.” Y/n read, although Ella has had this story read to her many times, she still pays close attention.

“One day, she told her mother, ‘I wish I were special like the other dinosaurs. If I were a T.Rex, I could chomp with my ferocious teeth!’” Y/n continued, Ella’s eyes focused on the pages as Y/n read.

“‘But if you were a T.Rex,’ said her mother, ‘how would you hug me with your tiny little arms?’” Y/n flipped another page.

“‘I wish I were an Apatosaurus,’ said the little dinosaur, ‘so with my long neck I could see above the treetops.’” Ella clung onto her mothers shirt.

“‘But if you were an Apatosaurus,’ said her mother, ‘how would you hear me in the treetops when I told you I love you?’” Y/n read, her eyes glancing to her daughter that was still wide awake.

Y/n took one deep breath, “‘What makes you so special, little Maiasaur?’ said her mother. ‘Is it your ferocious teeth or long neck or pointy beak?” Y/n shook her head.

“‘What makes you special is out of all the different dinosaurs in the big, wide world, you have the mother who is just right for you, and who will always love you…’” Y/n finished, closing the book.

Ella smiled as Y/n set the book down on her nightstand.

Y/n sighed and started to get up, “Alright-”

“Mommy?” Ella unintentionally interrupted.

“Mhm?” Y/n hummed as she started to tuck the blankets in around her daughter.

“I think the dinosaur book is like us, because you will always love me, and..” Ella trailed off.

Y/n stopped tucking in the blankets to look at her daughter, “And what, baby?” Y/n asked softly.

“And there’s no daddy dinosaur, kind of like right now.” Ella said in a quiet tone.

“Estrella, baby, daddy’s not gone.” Y/n let out a laugh in disbelief.

“But he’s not here.” Ella shrugged, turning on her side.

Y/n stopped for a moment, taking in her daughters words, is that really what she thinks? has matt really not been here that ella feels like she doesn’t have a father? why-

Y/n’s thoughts get interrupted when Ella speaks again, “Well except there’s no Mailo in the book, so it’s kind of different.” The 6 year old points out.

Y/n nods, sniffling for a moment before blinking the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes away. “Time for bed, yeah?”

Estrella nodded, getting comfy one last time. “Night, mommy.”

Y/n forced a smile on her face, “Goodnight, Ella.” She whispered, brushing the hair out of Ella’s face before slowly making her way out of the room.

Y/n walked into her and Matt’s shared room, but now that she thinks about it, it really just feels like hers.

Her eyes glance to the big, empty, bed, the bed looking like it will swallow her whole when she climbs in.

Y/n shakes her head, getting rid of her thoughts as she changes her clothes and into pajamas.

She slowly got into bed, dreading the feeling of the cold sheets without her husband next to her.

And then she slowly, softly, let out a sob.

Tears overwhelmed her, she thought it would stop but it didn’t. The tears kept flowing down her cheeks as she cried into her comforter.

Keeping quiet as she’s afraid to wake her children. The tears soaking her pillow as her head rested on it.

Thoughts ran through her head at rapid speeds but she couldn’t focus on one, the tears that blurred her vision also blurred her line of thought.

The racks of her body and the sobs that escaped her lips went on for about 15 minutes.

Her cries were loud enough for her not to hear the front door open, for her not to hear footsteps come up the stairs, for her not even to hear her bedroom door opening and closing.

Matt made his way in, his calm demeanor he had once plastered on his face now changed to a worried expression, running over to his wife and completely covering her body with his, bringing her to cry in his chest.

She struggled in his grip, not wanting to be held by the person that made her feel like this, the person that was supposed to be a husband to her, the person she vowed her life too, made her feel like this.

She sobbed harder, her tears running through his shirt, making dark wet spots on the white cloth.

“Y/n, holy shit, please- s-stop, Y/n, talk to me.” Matt stuttered out, his wife gripping onto him like he’d disappear once again if she had let go.

Y/n shook her head, knowing what she wants to say but not being able to, her cries were in control, her overthinking was in control, everything else but herself was in control, even Matt.

Matt held her close, repeatedly whispering sweet nothings into her ear as he stroked her hair, a gesture he remembered she loved having done to her.

Her sobs soon turned into, heavy breathing and a cry every so often, her heavy breathing then turned into sniffles, and her sniffles soon turned into silence.

The air was stuck. Every breath she took felt like it was swallowing her.

“Y-you good? What happened?” Matt asked, not wanting to make her break again but also wanting to know what caused her to fall apart.

Y/n took a deep breath and sat up, “I just-” She cut herself off, taking a deep breath as she sat against the headboard next to Matt.

Matt shook his head, “Don’t say it was nothing, Y/n. It obviously wasn’t nothing. You can always-”

“It was you!” She yelled loudly, immediately clearing her throat and lowering her voice into a whisper shout. “It was you.”

Matt went to speak but Y/n beat him to it, “You’re not here anymore, Matt! You leave at seven in the morning and don’t come back ‘till twelve or so. Your children barely see you anymore,” Y/n points to herself, “I barely see you anymore.”

Matt sits there for a moment, “I-i don’t know what to say..” His voice was quiet and small.

Y/n sighed, her sadness was gone, all she felt was anger. “Well your daughter did! She told me how it feels like you’re not here anymore when we were reading ‘The runaway dinosaur.’ And you know what? I realized she was right.” Y/n said.

“I g-got her that book.” Matt said, sadness now filling his body like it had done to Y/n.

“Yeah and that’s probably the best thing you’ve done for a father. I mean, she starred in a play last week! Did you know that?” Y/n asked him.

Matts eyes widened slightly before he shook his head.

“Yeah. She told you, but you were on the phone and said you were running late for work.” Y/n scoffed. “And Mailo made a scene in pre-school when someone asked where his dad was because they never see him drop him off.” Y/n explained. “And i thought that was just Mailo getting upset, but no. He was upset because he probably feels like he doesn’t have a father either. Just like Ella.” Y/n ranted.

“I-i’m sorry. Please, forgive me. I’m so sorry. I don’t mean too- i just, my brothers, and fans, i just- i don’t know i just try to handle it but it seems like im making it worse.” Matt pleaded, tears brimming his eyes as his voice cracks.

Y/n sighed and shook her head. “I just need you, Matt. I miss you. I feel like i don’t have a husband, and my kids don’t have a father, you’re here but you’re not. And i need you to be here, i need you.” Y/n finished.

Matt nodded, grabbing her face in his hands, “I will be here, i promise. Let me make it up to you. Okay? Please.” He begged.

Y/n looked her husband in the eyes and nodded, “Okay..” She whispered.

—————————

8:44am (2 weeks later)

Y/n yawned as she woke up her eyes widening as she checked the time, looking to her left and seeing no one there. She sighed as she should of expected it, it has been good for the last two weeks, but now, as y/n thinks, everything’s back to how it was without Matt.

She rushed out of bed, quickly throwing some jeans and a sweatshirt on, throwing her hair into a bun before running out of her room and into Ella’s,

“Ella! baby! come-” She cut herself off as she looked at the empty made bed.

She scratches her head as she closed the door to Ella’s room, making her way to Mailo’s, opening the door to see his bed was also empty and made.

“What the hell?” She muttered to herself before hearing loud laughs from downstairs.

No way, she thought, starting to walk downstairs.

She walked downstairs and into the kitchen, music was playing from Matt’s phone as he had a kitchen towel slung over his shoulder, holding a wooden kitchen spoon as he had pancake batter smudged on his cheek.

Now taking a look, Y/n saw pancake batter scattered over the counters and some on the floor.

“Mommy!” Ella yelled, catching Y/n’s attention as she looked over, Ella and Mailo sat at the table, dressed with their hair done, eating pancakes with orange juice.

Ellas hair was in a slicked back pony tail and Mailo’s was combed nicely.

“Hi guys..” Y/n furrowed her brows. “What is going on?” Y/n walked closer to Matt as she pointed around the kitchen.

“I got them ready and made breakfast.” Matt shrugged, a smile on his face as he walked over to Y/n, kissing her lips slowly, but both pulling away once they hear complaints of disgust come from the children.

Matt laughs and rolls his eyes.

Y/n’s hand goes up to Matt’s cheek, swiping the pancake batter and putting it in his face. “And what’s this?” She laughs.

Matts eyes widened, “Yes, i’m so sorry, we got a little messy when we were making the pancakes. But i will clean everything up later..” Matt trails off as he glances at the clock.

“Speaking of, i should probably head out.” Matt mentions.

Y/n smile fades, “Where are you going?” She asked quietly.

“To drop the kids off, i’ll be back to clean everything up, promise.” He smiles, pulling her in one last time for a loving kiss.

Matt stares at her for a moment and lets out a sigh, “Okay, and get ready for a lunch date we have at 12:30.” He told her.

“A what?” Y/n laughed in disbelief.

“You heard me.” He laughed too, “Alright,” He clapped his hands together. “Let’s go, let’s go! All aboard the choo-choo train, don’t miss it!” Matt said as the kids giggled.

“Thomas!” Mailo yelled.

Matt nodded, “Well, let’s go so we don’t miss him!” Matt says in a duh tone as he walked past y/n one last time, kissing her cheeks and grabbing the kids backpacks.

“Bye mommy!”

“Bye mama!” Both Ella and Mailo yelled.

“Bye guys!” Y/n said before the door shut and the house went quiet.

Matt really changed.

He really was sorry.

—————————

so i hope you guys loved this and if you didn’t let me know and i’ll make sure to never mess up again okay love yalll

tag list: @sturniolosmind @novasturniolo03 @hearts4chriss @vinniehackerslefttoe @christhopersturniolo

[freyito]

Can I request platonic Tomas and Bi-Han headcannons with a gn child/teen reader who has difficulty feeling emotions because they were never taught how to process or deal with emotions and the only thing they were told about emotions were to hide them?

This is kinda self indulgent, so I'm sorry if it's kinda specific or weird to you

its alright anon this also lowkey heals the inner child in me BECAUSE THATS ME THATS ME THATS ME TOO. paired with flat affect (and rbf) i had a really hard time understanding emotions in general as a kid!!!! nothing could process properly so i was (and still am) the definition of :l (KACPER LORE!!!)so im slappin flat affect on here as well, if u dont mind anon

cw: gn reader, platonic, proud bi-han, happy tomas, reader is teen (age isnt mentioned however), proofread

ᴛᴏᴍᴀꜱ & ʙɪ-ʜᴀɴ + ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ ᴡʜᴏ ꜱᴛʀᴜɢɢʟᴇꜱ ᴡ/ ᴇᴍᴏᴛɪᴏɴ

-Tomas Vrbada

Tomas comes from a place of sympathy. Perhaps he doesn't quite understand why it's so hard for you to show your emotions, given he's very expressive himself. The most he's experienced is difficult emotions, so he tries his very best not to step over a line.

He's curious and worried, though. He wants to understand you better, and he wants to know just why it is so hard to smile around him.

So, Tomas tries hard to make you smile, any sort of emotion. He'll give you gifts, things he thinks you'll find interesting from his missions, or just try and surprise you in any sort of way. Which always falls short.

He notices that in tense times, or even in times of tragedy you almost seem unsure about how to feel. And afterwards, you almost seem unaffected, in a bad way.

He swallows his pride and just asks you why it's hard to make you emote, why your voice almost lacks emotion. And when you don't have a proper answer, somehow he forms his own answer.

He's kind to you, as much as he will always seek out a reaction, he doesn't think of you any differently. In fact, he's actually determined to teach you how to properly understand your emotions.

He assures you it's okay to cry, happy cry, sad cry, confused cry, whatever kind of cry. Although, not much had come up to render this reaction out of you. He's almost too expressive around you, almost as if he's showing you what to do.

At the end of the day, however, Tomas is sure to help you. Regardless. It doesn't matter if you can only pout now, it's progress. And he's happy. He's actually made it a point to be there during every big step. He finds it so hard to contain himself when he sees you genuinely smile for the first time.

-Bi-Han

Now, Bi-Han understands hiding your emotions. He himself was taught to keep them hidden. But slowly, that had just turned into resentment. So he sees a lot of himself in you.

He'll brush it off at first, he tells himself he doesn't want to get into it. But he slowly convinces himself to come around. He's empathetic, he almost understands every movement you make.

He puts in as much effort as he can, at least, what he thinks is enough effort. As strong as he knows he is, he knows that it's a bad idea to let this evasion of emotion turn into the anger he feels.

Bi-Han sits you down, and talks to you directly. He doesn't tell you his entire story, but he tells you that it's okay to allow yourself to feel and allow yourself to express that. But, he tells you not to force yourself to feel. There's a fine line between those two differences.

He enjoys watching your progress, and just like Tomas, he wants to be there every step of the way. But he's also a bit too prideful for that. So, he's content from watching the sidelines.

Little do you know, he's celebrating those little moments. Behind your back, obviously. He's proud of you. But still too prideful to show that in public. However, he voices this to you. He tells you how proud of you he is when he knows he can have a private word with you.

© freyito, 2023 | masterlist | queue | kofi DO NOT REPOST AS YOUR OWN OR USE FOR AI/AI CHATBOTS.

[hyukascampfire]

To: Someone From a Warm Climate

wc: 24.5k (ummm..)

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 one is hhheeefttty and packed with a bunch of angst, so buckle up pls. also... if you see any typos or weird sentences, no u didn't... 24k is a lot of words guys... but also lmk so i can fix it LMAOO. enjoy!!

! warnings: graphic violence, death, descriptions of past trauma, oral (m receiving), PIV sex, poisoning, mean taehyun... tell me if I missed anything

playlists: taehyun | yeonjun | series

prev | next

You wipe at your forehead, dragging in breaths as you realign your stance. Each swipe and jab you run through wells up inside you, amassing frustration. They all feel infuriatingly sloppy. You had cracked open a window in the room. Though it lets a nasty winter breeze in, the cold works wonders against your clammy skin.  

You had initially been practicing in the sparring room, but the heavy, blood-stained and battle-worn swords displayed on the walls, hung right next to the taxidermy heads of fallen faeries, began making you uneasy so you opted for another room in the estate. Taehyun’s father must’ve been a vicious general.  

The words of both Yeonjun and the barkeeping hob at The Hovel are snug under your skin like burrs. He sowed a good seed of wicked into his son, the barkeep had said. Staring into the lifeless, beady eyes of the felled creatures had made you wonder exactly how wicked that seed had been. As far as you know, Taehyun harbors no love for his father, though. It doesn’t make any sense that he’d want to resemble him, especially in his behaviors. You can’t help but feel that you’re missing some intrinsic piece that would clear it all up for you. 

There’s also the matter of what that man in the forest had said after you had stabbed him. You’re fucking dead, anyway. The words have echoed and ricocheted in your head endlessly, and you’ve tried ardently to dissect them. You’re only left with a queasy pit in your gut each time you do. You’ve decided that it’s best to pretend that they’re just the angry words of a man stabbed. You’d probably try to instill fear in the person who’d stabbed you if it was the last thing you could do, too. 

Despite that, it still is concerning that he had known where to find you and had claimed that someone had told him where to do so. There’s also the fact that there had been people in The Hovel looking for you two. You’re not exactly sure what would happen if you and Taehyun were discovered; your suspicions range from a slap on the wrist to the breaking out of war between The North and The High Court. You’ve never so much as seen The Queen, but you can’t imagine she’d take too kindly to discover that The King has spies actively infiltrating her court. Your chest becomes tight with the reminder that the mission that you and Taehyun are on is endlessly delicate. 

“You’re leaving too many openings between swings.”  

Taehyun’s voice tugs you from your own mind. You drop your arms, making great effort to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Your limbs wobble with exertion. You had wanted to practice alone; having Taehyun observe and pick at your shortcomings would only irk you and make you so consciously aware of them that you could think nowhere beyond them. You had pointedly avoided seeking out his help for a reason. 

 “And,” he adds, “you’re so focused on what you do with your arms that you forget to move your feet.”

You toss your head back, willing down the tightness in your throat and the warm, frustrated tears pooling at your eyes. He’s right; you can feel it yourself, but no matter your efforts, your own limbs work against you. Your frustration manifests itself in the form of your heart thumping in your ears. It’s all you can hear. You snap at him. “I know.”  

Taehyun doesn’t look taken aback by the bite in your tone, but he does release his sword from its scabbard, approaching you and leveling his arms into an offensive, swinging stance. Your arms are dead weight as you do the same, but with a defensive one. You anticipate his first swing, meeting it with a sturdy block. Metal sings as he sends you another one.  

“Frustration throws your technique and strength out the window,” he says, going for a jab with the hilt. You narrowly miss it, throwing yourself back. 

 That would’ve been a black eye.  

You furrow your brows at him, and then step forward, slashing your blade with hostile shock. He knocks it away. You throw your free hand up in an exasperated gesture. “What the hell? That would’ve knocked my eye out,” you say. It’s an overdramatization, but it definitely would’ve left a mark. 

He slides a swift foot right at your feet, sending you crumpling the floor of wood. Your body quakes, soft and jelly against the ungiving ground. You stay down for a few moments, trying to brave the bout of roaring pain that sears your body in its entirety. Your knees weep red as you lift yourself to your arms, looking up from your spot on the ground right to the point of his blade in your face. You look past it, into his eyes. He’s studying you, picking apart where you lack and internalizing it. 

“You let yourself get too frustrated. You need a level mind to make clever moves,” he says, sheathing the weapon and offering you a hand up. You accept it, not before sending him an accusatory glare first, your weary muscles pleading with you as you stand. You shake off the radiant pain in your wrists; you shouldn’t have broken your fall with your arms. Taehyun circles you, and you listen to his footsteps creaking until he’s standing behind you.  

“Get in position.”  

You collect your sword from the ground and bring it up by your face, staggering your feet. You shift and readjust your arms and legs here and there, trying to find a sweet spot where it all feels right. None of it does.  

Taehyun’s arms find your shoulders, squaring them. You hold your breath as one of his arms then adjusts the height at which you’re holding the sword, reaching his arm around you. His skin is as cold to the touch as you remember it being, and the way it slides against the skin of your arm is tauntingly familiar.  

You scramble to shove those memories far, far back. When his hands finally drop off you, you stifle a sigh of relief. 

When Taehyun reappears in front of you, he’s holding the hilt of the sword at his hip in a white-knuckled grip, and his jaw is clenched tight. You hold your new stance, trying to settle into it, afraid you’re frustrating him. 

“Swing,” he says. You hesitate. He doesn’t even have his sword out, but he’s watching you so expectantly, and so you do it, cutting the air. You don’t even get to finish the swing before the world whirls around you, Taehyun’s arms twisting you and encasing you so that your sword-wielding arm is stuck behind you. He smells of frosty pinewood musk as he holds you there. Your mouth drops open, and you try to register how he even approached you, caught your swinging arm, and pinned you in that minimal time frame.  

He takes the sword from out of your compromised hand and tosses it. The heavy thing clatters to the ground a few feet away. “What would you do if I was an attacker?” he asks. “You’ve got no weapons. Show me what you’d do.” His muscle-corded forearms hold you pinned in a similar fashion to how that faerie man had in the forest, except now your arm is twisted behind you in an unnatural way that pinches your shoulder blade. 

You wonder if he’s getting flashes of that moment in the forest, too. 

Wiggling proves useless, so you try hooking your own leg into one of his to knock him down. He’s planted too well to the ground. You huff out in frustration, letting your head drop. He’s got you in his arms so tight that your lungs can’t even fully expand.  

“Okay, I can’t,” you say. “Let me go.”  

A few heartbeats pass before he does.  

Taehyun crosses his arms over his chest. “You’d die, if that was real. We don’t know if we’re going to run into more things like what happened at The Hovel. There are ways to defend yourself from bigger attackers.” 

You wince. The press of that dagger into your chest haunts you along with the sensations of hot blood coating your hands, and the pained grunts of the man. “We might at least know a little more, if you hadn’t stabbed him through the stomach before I could ask him any questions.” You rest your sword up against a wall, along with yourself.  

“He was just trying to scare you,” Taehyun says, leaning back onto the edge of an old war strategy desk. You can tell he doesn’t even believe the words himself, his eyes narrowing as cogs turn in his head. 

You shake your head. “No, I don’t think he was.” It takes every ounce of resilience you’ve got to not crumple down to the floor. You’ve been practicing for hours. “He said that he had found us, not that he just stumbled across us. And he knew who you are.” You remember the distaste with which he had regarded Taehyun. It may allude to his motivations. 

Taehyun listens to you, his eyes narrowed in thought, and you take it as an invitation to continue. “I think he knew, Taehyun. He’s got to be the one who was asking about us at The Hovel. Unless he’s not even the only one who knows.” You kick yourself off the wall, despite the ache, and pace. “But he knew you. And I don’t think he liked you, either.”  

Taehyun doesn’t say anything for a few moments as he thinks, tossing metal pieces from the strategy table he leans on as he does. His brow creases. “The Queen must have her own people laying low in Court. Summer’s solstice is only a few weeks away,” he says.  

“What about the Summer Solstice?” you say. You know that the constant holding of Court in your time here has all been in service of the Solstice, but you can’t imagine why that would entail needing ears in your court. 

“I’m not sure,” Taehyun says, thumbing over that figure of metal, feeling its grooves and features. “But The Queen would not have people out there looking for our kind unless she had something she wants quiet.”  

You lick your dry lips. The Queen knows you’re here. “What do we do about the fact that they know there’s infiltrators?” At the very least, that faerie who saw your faces is dead. How much more death will you see in these coming weeks? Telling yourself that it’s for your own safety is doing a flimsy job of soothing you already; you’re unsure how well it’ll work when you have more blood on your hands.  

Taehyun breathes out through his nose, standing up from the desk and taking another metal figure from it. He pushes the ones left, most of them fallen and in disarray, off to the side, before standing the two in his hands. They’re stood generally where the estate would stand on the map. He erects a few of the discarded figures, lining them up around where Court might be, and then lays one felled off in the woods that The Hovel boasts as its home. The faerie he had killed. 

Something about seeing Taehyun, shady eyes and clad in the clothes of a warlord, interacting with the same strategy table that his father would’ve used to lay out his plans of carnage reminds you of repeated warnings and wary eyes bowing before Taehyun. Had the downfalls of those lifeless heads in the sparring room been planned on that same table, with those same figures? 

“All we can do is keep doing what we’ve been doing. Can you promise me that you’ll be as discreet as possible from this point onward?” Taehyun finally pries his eyes from the table up to yours. “You need to watch your words no matter who you’re around. That includes the prince.” 

Attitude flares in your chest at his last words, but you wrangle it back. You don’t think you have to worry about Yeonjun, but you know it’s better to err on the side of caution. You nod. “And if something happens?” you ask. The question is grim and grey on your tongue. Now that you’ve gotten a taste of what this life really means, you can’t help but ask.  

“You do what it takes to survive, and then we return home with all the information we’ve got, and that’s that.”  

The smell of hot iron melts over you, red and suffocating. You remember the thickness of it, and how it had crusted over a deep brown color and stayed plastered to your skin until you took water to it and scrubbed.  

“Taehyun, I barely made it out of that forest. I’m...” You steady your breathing as it seems to get ahead of you. “I’m not going to win a fight one on one, Taehyun. I’m trying to get better, but that’s just not realistic, and you know it. That was luck.”  

Some emotion passes over his face, his eyebrows pinching and eyes wincing, but it’s gone before you can even name it. “This is how you learn to survive. You don’t learn in sparring rooms,” he says. His sword clicks from the scabbard and its metal trills as he draws it again. "But for now, you need to make sure your odds are as good as they can be.” 

You squeeze your eyes shut, releasing your breath.  

“I’ve been in here for hours, Taehyun. I’m tired.”  

He shakes his head. “You need to know how to fight tired.” 

You’re not sure you’ll even be able to swing properly. You don’t barely have it in you to talk, nonetheless fight in any way worthwhile. But he’s right. You swipe your sword off the wall, the dingy metal no longer warmed by your hands. It bites your skin as you settle into the best stance you can muster. To use every bit of your energy in a wild offensive attack, or to slip into the defensive and try to last as long as you can? You’re not sure.  

Taehyun seems to be making the decision for you, though, rooted in his spot, his eyes steady on you. He doesn't urge you to attack him; he just watches to see what you’ll do. Willing your poor, poor legs into motion, you gain on him. You know your legs and pace are lethargic as you move, but you just need to be closer so that you can begin to make moves. He doesn’t comment on the height of your arms or your pace this time. 

You dart your eyes about his torso as if planning a hit there, before swinging down at his sword-bearing arm. Taehyun’s eyes flicker with something akin to surprise, but he dodges well before you can connect. You try not to groan as he darts away and sets back into that unmoving, certain stance. He’s trying to gauge the attacks you opt for. You throw a few unexceptional swings, and he meets all of them. You dart and swing. You need to catch him unaware or unprepared.  

Every time you bring down your sword, it’s doing nothing for you except for draining your energy. He’s full of energy; he hadn’t been practicing like you. You drag full breaths in through your nose, each one not feeling like enough to feed your starved lungs. If you keep fighting like this, you’ll run your well dry.  

You narrow your eyes. Everyone has openings, you just need to find Taehyun’s, however hidden and subtle they are. You take in the sure stance of him, the glimmering dark metal of his heavy blade, the slight way he has his face drawn so that it betrays none of his thoughts, and even the broad musculature of his chest. None are particularly helpful in finding you a clever attack, so you swing at his left. Taehyun is left-handed, you’ve observed that much in the time you’ve known him. Swinging closer to his sword will leave him with less airtime to deflect your hit. Hopefully. 

Taehyun manages to parry your slashing, but it’s just with the edge of his blade, and he has to stumble back. He’s quick to reset, regarding you with twinkling interest in his licorice black eyes. That doesn’t matter—you have your angle, now. You suck in as much air as you can. Your limbs plead with you, whispering that your bed is waiting for you. You answer them by feinting a blow to the right, before pulling back and raising your arms and bringing the entirety of your blade to his left. Metal screeches. Taehyun narrowly meets your sword with his own, supporting the flat side of it with his palm, looking down at you with a smile twitching at his lips. 

 Is that a dimple? 

A sturdy arm curls around your waist, spinning you up and tangling you into a knot. Taehyun pins you against him in exactly the fashion the faerie man had, arms pressed to your sides without seam.  

“Damn it!” you hiss. You dig your fingers into the expanse of his forearm, tensed across your chest like a metal bar. Your sword lies discarded somewhere on the floor. Taehyun is quite a bit taller than that other faerie; he has you held so crushingly that only your toes connect with the ground. 

“You need to stop wearing your thoughts on your face,” he says. His words puff out onto the breadth of your neck, so warm on your skin tingling with the winter air. “But good job trying to find an advantage.”  

You tap out at his arm. “Okay, okay,” you say, trying to find good purchase on your tiptoes. 

“No,” he says, voice thick and stern. He holds you fast to him with his one arm. “You can get out of this. I’ve seen you do it, so do it.”  

You’re sent back to caging arms and words snarled into your ears for the nth time today. “I can’t,” you say, voice wobbly and untrustworthy. “I had to stab him, Taehyun.” You feel nauseous and claustrophobic.   

“He was going to kill you. You don’t need mercy for those who have none for you; It doesn’t serve you.” He wraps his free arm around your waist, tight and oppressive in the same way his other arm is. “C’mon.”  

You grit your teeth kick and buck wildly, digging your heels into his shins and prying at the bar of his arm. Your veins are empty of any fire. You let your head fall back, huffing, and it makes contact with the hardness of his shoulder.  

He pulls you in so that your hips are flush to him. His head drops down near the crook of your neck. “Come on,” he repeats, more punctuated and demanding this time. The contours of his body are solid and hard against you. Your brain feels a little fuzzy. Is it from your shallow breathing, or the way you can feel the heaviness of his eyes boring into you? You’re unsure.  

You pry and pry at his arms, wriggling yourself in hopes that, at one point, you’ll bend your body in a way that will let you slip out. You even reach behind you and shove at the hard planes of his stomach. All of it is infuriatingly futile.  

“You can do more than that,” Taehyun says. “Hit me. Do something. A real captor would’ve done whatever they please with you by now. Come on!”  

“I don’t want to hit you!” you say. When you begin twisting again, he opts for holding you to him by one hip, rather than his whole arm. His fingers dig into you. 

Taehyun’s voice is low in your ears. “I told you to hit me, so do it.”  

All that can be heard in the room for a few long, long moments are your panting breaths, until you bring your foot up and stomp down on his foot, driving your heel down. The thick leather and laces of his boots may pillow some of the force, but not all of it. He grunts, cursing thick and meaningful. He falls back from you, stumbling back until he’s propped up on that strategy table.  

“I’m sorry,” you say, rushing over to him. You had brought your foot down on his harder than you had wanted.  

Taehyun raises a dismissive hand, the wood of the table creaking under his weight as he leans on it, but his face has dropped and smoothed over. You wonder how one could ever be so good at veiling their emotions so completely. He nods at you, his eyes rounded and soft, despite how his foot might be groaning. “Good job,” he says. 

You shake your head and cross your arms over your chest. “You’re insane,” you say. 

He smiles at you. “Maybe.” 

There’s that dimple, again. It’s a soft, kind thing, so at odds with the hard lines and angles of his face. Finally, you let your shoulders soften and relax. You may fall asleep standing upright, if you don’t find the plush of a mattress soon. 

❉

You bite down your hisses and sounds. Yeonjun runs his thumb over the deep purple and yellow bruises that litter your legs and arms, and some are too fresh to be touching. His face is pinched and troubled as his eyes linger over your scabbed knees. 

“Where are you getting these?” he asks. His eyes flicker up to yours, sparkling under the dim firelight that he keeps in his room. Your mouth goes dry. The concern you see brimming there has you wanting to explode in a frenzy of apologies and truths. He deserves to know what you are.  

Sighing, you prop yourself up and onto your elbows. “I do a lot of work at the estate,” you say. It’s a weak excuse for the severity of your bruising, but it’s all you have. His eyebrows lift, and he tilts his head to one side as he looks down at you, something unnamed playing in the lines of his eyes. 

“He lets you get all beaten up like this?” he scoffs. “What kind of work does he even have you doing, anyway? What a piece of shit.” 

 You can tell he wants to extend his offer again. His eyes plead silently with you. You feel guilt the most of any emotion, these days. You shake your head, shrugging him off. “It’s not his fault, Yeonjun. Seriously. I’m just not the best at what I do.”  

“It is his fault, if you come back to me looking like this under his care. I’m sick of it.  Look at your arms,” he says, picking up the battered thing pointedly. “It kills me every moment you’re there with him, and I don’t know what’s happening to you. But then, you show up... like this. It’s hard for me to believe what you say, pretty.” 

You sit up fully. You’re trying to find a way to explain it all away for him. You really are. 

Your silence has him recanting. "I believe you. I do. It’s just...” Yeonjun takes his hand and soothes it over a deep bruise, his eyes trained on it and a bit distant. “I don’t trust him.”  

There it is again. It’s beginning to feel more like cryptic omens the more you hear it. You gnaw at your cheek. “Why?” you blurt. “Why not? I don’t understand.”  

“That family is a line of blood-drinking generals, and I can assure you that he is no different. His father pillaged and devastated as he pleased. Taehyun had no qualms with taking on his father’s legacy. He’s no stranger to killing, pretty. I don’t want you staying in that home.” 

You shake your head, stomach feeling sick. You’ve known about Taehyun’s lineage. But you also know that Taehyun hates his father. Why would he maim himself the way he did if he’s just like his father?  

An image of Taehyun, stone-faced and dark-eyed, standing over the body of that faerie man comes alive in your memories. He had sliced through that man like he was some sort of practice dummy, not a living, breathing thing.  

“Please. I just want you to at least consider why I am asking you to stay with me.”  

You nod, letting him bring you into soft, warm arms. His skin is flush and full of life against yours. It only makes you think of the crystalline and cold that Taehyun’s is. Where Yeonjun is a lush, living thing, Taehyun is more like if frost was stricken with the curse of sentience. 

“Some of my friends are out having a bonfire,” he says, his voice soft. “Do you want to go?” 

You nod. A night under the stars may not be enough to free you of your worries, but it’s enough to let you pretend that they don’t exist.  

❉

The company Yeonjun keeps is admittedly less stuffy and pompous than you had in mind, but still, they are unfamiliar to you. You sit leaned into Yeonjun on some chopped up log, its dry bark digging into your palms and dirtying your skirts. The rumble of Yeonjun’s chest as he laughs and talks with the other faeries circling the towering fire is smooth on your ears. All that lights the gathering is the orange of the flame and the stars above. It’s a moonless night.  

Some of his friends dance free and unabashed to the strumming of a lyre. The faerie plucking at its strings had stricken you a bit frozen when your eyes had first laid on him. You’re familiar with that flop of blonde hair, and that delicately built face. It was the same faerie Taehyun had spoken with in The Hovel. Your eyes linger on him the most—you’re not entirely sure why, but it just feels like an odd coincidence to you. The Hovel, or even its patrons and performers, is not the kind of place you imagined Yeonjun would find his friends. 

He sings to some ridiculous and bawdy faerie ode that you pay no mind. His voice is clear, and it harmonizes wonderfully with the crackle of the bonfire. A jaunty pixie girl cracks up between her dancing at an especially outrageous line.  

“Who is that?” you say, looking up at Yeonjun.  

He looks down at you with starlight in his eyes, alive with the fragrant bliss floating through the air. “Who?” he asks, lips sweet with a smile. You want to kiss them. Is it okay to kiss him here? 

“The guy playing the instrument,” you say, pointing him out. Yeonjun looks in the direction you point. 

“Oh,” he says. “That’s Kai. Why, pretty?” he says, looking back down at you. His black tunic is silken and shimmers under firelight. He brushes strands of your hair from your face so that he can look into your eyes better.  

You shrug. “No reason. Is he a bard?”  

He nods, eyes searching yours. “He is. What are you so curious for?” he asks, the corners of his lips upturned and playful. His skin is fire-warmed, smelling of his familiar sandalwood and clove. You breathe him in. 

“I’m just trying to get to know your friends,” you say. You maintain an air of cheekiness, but you can’t help running over the moment you had first seen the instrument-strumming faerie. 

Yeonjun’s heart seems to tug at that. “I know. Thank you,” he says. His smile is radiant and smooth, and his eyes form crescents.  

“They’re a bit less...” you say. You sit up from him, studying your company to find your words. They’re all more familiar to you—wilder fae, like the kind you might’ve interacted with back home. Not the preening gentry that you’ve mingled with in Court. As a prince, you had imagined Yeonjun might find his home in children of the gentry. 

“Less what? Less frumpy than you thought?” he asks, laughing. His cheeks are flushed with some thick, nectary faerie spirit that the lot have been sipping on, and his breath is sweet with it. “I can’t stand that crowd. Reminds me of home.”  

Your brows pinch with curiosity. “What is your court like?” you say. Someone hoots off in the background, but neither you nor Yeonjun are phased by it. You’ve been surrounded by similar sounds from the moment you arrived here. 

His gaze turns skyward. “Court is court, no matter where it is,” he says, breathing out softly through his nose. “But... at home, things are different. At least, for me they are. I can’t...” He shakes his head as if he’s sorting through old memories that you’re asking him to bare. “I can’t live up to what they expect me to be. There was a time in my life where I tried, but It’s not who I am. You grow tired when it’s your own blood smiling in your face before sticking their blades in your back. All this,”—he takes his silken shirt in his hands— “It becomes tired.”  

His eyes become duller as he speaks. You wince.  

“Maybe it’s a cage of gold, but it is still a cage,” he says into the buzzing night air. Or, rather, he says it to the stars. “So, you get real good at pretending. When everybody is wearing a mask around you, you learn to wear one too.”  

Yeonjun’s head finally drops back down, and he scans around, eyes drinking in the sight of cavorting faeries and the living fire. His eyes then land on you, soft and brimming and full. “It’s nice to have some place to take that mask off.” 

You feel your heart surging in a bittersweet way. You don’t deserve to be that for him. All you do is lie to him, and yet, you can’t help the way your heart aches for him. 

His gaze flickers down at your lips, and he’s leaning in tentative and unsure. You bridge the gap between your lips. He cups your face delicately with a hand, running it back into your hair. His lips have become something familiar; some sort of tonic that washes over you and seeps into your wounds. When you inevitably pull from him, he’s looking right into you. He tastes like that nectar liqueur, as well.  

“I’m gonna go talk. You coming?” he says.  

You shake your head. “I’ll stay right by this fire, thank you very much. It’s cold.”  

He snorts, a corner of his lips turning up. “Yeah, it is. Who let you outside with nothing more than that dress, anyway? It’s freezing out here.” 

“You did.”  

He rubs at the back of his neck, sucking his lips in sheepishly before shuffling away. You roll your eyes and settle into your earthy seat, watching him go. You observe the gathering around you some more while you sit alone, enjoying the sound of true laughs and the music that Kai fills the rest of the air with. Some are sappy, and some are tellings of ancient faerie epics, but there’s one that, for a reason that you’re unsure of, catches your ear and beckons you to listen to it. 

Walls have ears. Doors have eyes. Trees have voices.  Beasts tell lies. Beware the rain. Beware the snow.  Beware the man You think you know. 

You listen as he repeats the ode like a mantra, your bones unsettled. It’s just an ode; you know that. It’s no different from any old, dauntingly ominous faerie folk song. But you think of Taehyun as the bard repeats the words, and you think of how many times you’ve been told to do just that. You try to shrug off that zinging feeling in the back of your neck telling you that you don’t really know Taehyun. In Faerie, there are no coincidences. You don’t know how long you can let words of concern and warning bounce off of you before you start to let them soak right in. 

The metal tang of blood on your tongue tells you that it’s time to get up and distract yourself from your thoughts. You’d gnawed your cheek up. You stretch your limbs and find Yeonjun. He stands talking to a small crowd of faeries, and you join, sliding in next to him. A few of them gawk, and you feel it burning your skin, but you keep your eyes on Yeonjun and do your best to shimmy the feeling off. He wraps an arm around your waist and tugs you in closer to him. 

Their conversation is quite honestly hilarious. Their snorts and hollering draw laughs out of you. They loosen your limbs and leave your cheeks pink. You feel as drunk on your laughter as they are on their drinks. Kai soon decides that, since nobody is even listening to his word-spinning anymore, he should join the circle.You don’t notice it, but at some point, the circle cracks off into many different conversations. You stick with Yeonjun, clinging to him for a sense of belonging among the unfamiliar faces. He talks with Kai and a lanky, bark-skinned faerie. The unfamiliar faerie’s eyes are beady and wet, and you feel uneasy under them. You have to strain your ear to clearly hear what they talk about as the other conversations around you mingle and turn into a big blur of jumbled words and sounds. 

“Wouldn’t you?” the tall faerie says, his voice gravelly and heavy with bass. “The Queen knows it. She has until the Solstice to deal away with it.” Yeonjun and Kai share a look that is quick, but it is charged with meaning. You don’t miss how they shift with his words. 

You shove down the urge to snap your head up and frown. The Solstice? What does The Queen know? And what is it? 

The faerie adds, “I heard from a bird that they’ve got something set up at The Hovel for it, anyway. No worries.”  

His word choice sends a chill over you. You can almost feel the blood draining from your face. It’s an echo of what you had heard in the forest after leaving The Hovel. It feels intentional, like some sort of code or meaning that you’re not privy to. Your mind begins patching together thoughts and memories and gathered information in a messy, hodge-podged way, but none of it forms a coherent line of reasoning. You commit the features of this unfamiliar faerie to your memory. You buzz with the consuming need to begin tearing through the woods and find Taehyun, wherever he might be tonight. 

“Are you okay, pretty?” Yeonjun asks, leaning down. His voice is low and delicate. “You’re pale. Are you cold?” 

You failed to contain your jolt of surprise, and a frown etches deep between his brows. “Is something wrong?” he says. 

You can hardly feel your face. “I’m fine,” you say, dismissing him with a shake of your head. “Just tired. Really tired.” You need to be back at the estate. You need to tell Taehyun what you just heard. 

Yeonjun’s face softens, and he pulls back. “Okay. Let’s get you to bed, then,” he says. 

You can’t help but gnaw at your already chewed cheeks and lips as he walks you home through the ice-capped forest. Your feet break through shrubbery and, though some snap back up and claw at your legs, you can barely register their sting through the fogging of your brain. You’re not sure exactly what or when, but something is going to happen at The Hovel.  

❉

You suck in breaths through your nose, holding your pounding chest as you come flying through the front door of the estate. You visit each of the rooms Taehyun frequents—his room, the sparring quarters, the war room—you find him in none of them.  

You groan. Is he still at Court? Yeonjun had only just dropped you off here; seeking out Taehyun at Court would be a risky move. If he decides that he’s not done with the day and you run into him... You don’t even have a time, nor any idea what is actually going to be happening at The Hovel, to offer Taehyun anyway. But there’s this electricity flowing through your veins. It urges you to move; to do something.  

You pace the floor of the estate furiously until you fear you may look down and find the wood weathered and worn down by your boots. Once you’re sure that enough time has passed and Yeonjun would have cleared the flat and the wooded area, you set for Court with your mind racing in the very same way your heart does. 

Your feet carry you with the lightness of determination and will until you find yourself looking onto the warm, dancing lights of Court. You let yourself fear the consequences of what Yeonjun spotting you might bring for only a moment before you stamp it out and slip through the old pillar trees and join the merriments of Court with every morsel of bravery you have in you. 

Your eyes rake over the scene. You filter out the noise of dancing bodies and opt for tunneling in on the faeries standing still and making conversation—that’s where you’ll find Taehyun. There are multiple groups and bundles littering the floor, and yet, you find that tall head of hair and cold face in none of them. You soothe over your dress with anxious hands as you narrow your eyes and look over the hall again. If not conversation, where is he? 

Your eyes brush past a tall, brooding figure posted at the end of a table, his arms crossed and a heavy sword at his hip. Your eyes sweep back for a double take. Taehyun. 

 You restrain the initial urge to pick the hem of your dress off the floor and take off for him. It would only bring curious eyes your way, and you absolutely do not need that. You need to keep a low profile, like how a spy would. You forget yourself more with each moment you spend at Yeonjun’s side. Fearing attention is what you should be doing, not just as a spy, but as a human intermingling with cruel faerie courts, anyway. You make your way through the thick bunches of court-goers and tables. 

Taehyun’s brows furrow when he spots you, full of questioning. You don’t usually seek each other out during court; it’s easier to float below everybody’s attention when separate. 

Your veins buzz, thrilled to spill every word that has been sitting on your tongue with urgency. “Taehyun,” you say, closing the last steps of distance between you. “I have something to tell you, but... I can’t say it here.” He scans your surroundings, and you can see curiosity brimming all over him. He doesn’t ask the questions he has on his mind, though, simply departing from his post at the table and sifting through the crowds. You follow.  

Only once you’ve left the hall that holds court and are into the trees does he ask, “You found something?”  

You nod, but hasten your pace. Not only is the outside air biting into your skin without any tall bonfires to ward it away, but you’ve felt watched for a while now. The woods that you use as a segway between Court and Taehyun’s estate no longer feels like a haven—instead of just ancient holly and pine trees decorating the snowy grounds, you feel eyes on trees and ears in bushes. Taehyun doesn’t push any when you don’t explain, his face only grows increasingly grim. 

When you’re surrounded by the sturdy, familiar walls of the estate you finally stop and lean into the dining table, running your hands over your face. Taehyun’s shoulders have become tensed and rigid. Your silence must be getting under his skin. 

“I was out with Yeonjun, and I heard something. It was like—” 

Taehyun cuts you off, his face souring. “Why weren’t you at Court? Where were you?”  

“A bonfire,” you say, avoiding his other question. “Just with some of his friends. But that’s not the point. The point is that there was somebody there that was talking about The Queen knowing something, and that something is supposed to happen at The Hovel for it. He said something about how she has to deal with it before the solstice.” Your words run over each other and twist with the way you hurry to get their weight off your tongue.  

Taehyun seems to process your jumbles of information for a moment before he says, “What did he look like?”  

“He had bark skin, and was pretty tall,” you say. “I didn’t hear his name, or anything. Do you think you know him?”  

He shakes his head. “I don’t. Did Yeonjun?” he asks, and something in his tone feels accusatory.  

You shake your head. You’re not sure why you do it. “No, but that wasn’t all. There was something he said,”—your stomach flips at the memory— “it just felt off.” 

“What?” 

“He said that he had heard about whatever is happening at The Hovel from a bird,” you say, fiddling with frayed nerves at a heavy jewel hanging in your ear that Yeonjun had gifted you.  

You recognize the look that etches itself into his features as you say it—it mirrors exactly the way your insides twisted when you had heard it. “We have to go see what’s going to happen, Taehyun. I mean, The Queen is involved! Doesn’t it all feel like it’s something bigger? What if that guy who attacked us was in on it?” You toe the wood flooring. “I feel weird about it.” 

His face pulls into a grimace, but he nods. “We can check it out,” he says. “But I’m still wondering why you were out in the middle of the forest with a group of strangers, instead of at court where you should be.”  

You cross your arms over your chest. “I’m doing what you told me to do,” you say, tired of this conversation. “You asked me to make a show out of it, so I am. It was a little hangout with his friends, and Yeonjun was there with me anyway.”   

“There’s no purpose in showing yourself off to his friends,” he says, his voice taking on a biting, sword edge. “Listen to yourself,” he says, throwing his hands up in an exasperated gesture. “I don’t care if Yeonjun was there. You were in the woods, surrounded by only him and his friends, alone. You found out for yourself what kind of company he keeps, didn’t you? What makes you so sure that he would choose you over your friends?” he sneers, and then his jaw sets. “I don’t care how much you’re practicing, or how many weapons you wear, you should be smarter than to put yourself into situations like that.” 

You spin on your heel, venom spinning itself up potent and mean in your mouth. You choose to keep it there despite the way it sours and begs for you to spit it all out.  

Taehyun’s fingers dig into your wrist as he catches it, as firm and unforgiving as his temper. “Don’t walk away from me,” he grits out. You throw your head back in an effort to keep yourself together, but all the effort it had taken you to not explode suddenly slips through your fingers like water.  

You rip your arm from out of his hand, scathing him with your eyes. “It’s not up to you. If you want me to do something, then tell me. Otherwise, leave me alone. I’m tired of you acting like I don’t have my own brain. I can decide for myself what’s safe and what’s not.” 

He shakes his head, tugging at the collar of his tunic as if it’s stifling around his neck. “I know you can,” he says, his words trained. “I expect more than whatever this is from you. This behavior is unbecoming of a spy.”  

Your shoulders slump heavy with his words. “What? What is?” you say. “We’ve found nothing of value in court. The only thing you ever brought us fell flat on its face, and you brought me closer to death than I ever have. So, tell me how what I did is so awful? I found us something to follow. Can’t you just acknowledge that and move on, without reaching to find something to criticize me for?” 

When you study his face, you expect to find only his torturous mask of ice, but you find his eyes at war with his face. While he seems to be trying to pull that mask over his face, he’s unsuccessful in smoothing over the layered, flickering emotion that his eyes are brimming with. You’re unsure of which emotions you see there. They’re knotty and thorny, and so viscous that you can’t see through or discern them. He doesn’t reply, only pressing his mouth into a thin, cruel line. You wish you could read his eyes and see there what he can’t seem to say with his words. When Taehyun feels his mask slipping away from him, he frantically grasps at straws of rage and mean words to distract from it. 

“Yeah, I’m going to bed,” you say. You know it’s not what this conversation needs; you know that what you need to do is stay here and talk, but that would just be a waste of your time. Taehyun will never offer you the amount of bare emotion that something like that would require, and so you just save yourself the frustration. 

 You chew over more angry words as you storm off for your quarters. Taehyun does not make any attempts to stop you. 

❉

Your eyes flutter open, and you blink them a few times to adjust to the morning rays of light. Birds trill outside your window.  

Your bedding is a warming embrace around you, and it has your eyes drooping and mind fuzzy with sleep just as quickly as you had awoken. You fight it for only a few moments before letting sleep settle itself into your bones once more. 

Your eyes pop back open as the sharp sound of something small and hard colliding with glass rings through your room. You sit up, removing yourself regretfully from the nurturing arms of your bedsheets, and listen. You jump when it happens again. It’s coming from your window. You slide regretfully from the bed and rub at your eyes before padding over to your window. 

You frown at Yeonjun’s silhouette staring up to you from the ground, his hands in his pockets. The grin that he plastered over his mouth when he spots you in the window tells you that he is aware of the fact he had just dragged you out of your slumber. You push open the window, grimacing down at him. 

“Why don’t you just go through the front door?” you gripe, running fingers through your tangle of hair. “Like a normal person would.” 

He tilts his head, swiping his tongue over his lips. “I’m not normal,” he snarks. “You should know that by now, pretty. Do you need me to show you how special I am again?” 

You flush at his innuendo. 

“Tell me why you’re throwing rocks at my window at this hour,” you say, skirting around his words. 

He scoffs. “This hour? What time do you think it is? It’s midday, darling.”  

It’s midday? You’d slept like a rock. 

“Anyway,” he says, “can’t a man just visit a pretty lady? You look lovely fresh from bed, might I add.” He waggles his brows in a gaudy, overdone way.  

You grab at the open window. “Tell me why you’re here, or else I swear I’m closing this window and going back to bed.” 

Yeonjun snorts, leaning his shoulder into the tree at his side. “I have somewhere to take you.” 

You can’t help but remember how Taehyun had scorned you last night for something just like this.  

You shoot a suspicious look down at him. “Where?” 

“Somewhere,” he says. “You’ll love it. I promise.” 

You close the window, saving your room from the bite of the morning air. You have such little time here with Yeonjun. It wouldn’t hurt to use your time together to its fullest extent. A knot forms in your throat as you think of the day you leave this place for home. Would Yeonjun follow you? 

You meet him outside. Your breath furls from your mouth in white plumes, and his nose is tinted pinkish. You quirk an eyebrow, hunched and rallying your own warmth with your arms wrapped around yourself. “What’s inspired you to drag me from my sleep today?” you say. 

Yeonjun shakes his head, eyes creasing into a sweet, sweet smile that wraps your cold bones and rids you of chills. “You’ve seemed worried recently. Is it so wrong for me to take you away for only a day? Would your lord object to even that?” 

You hadn’t realized how much your double life has been weighing down on you. Is it that obvious? He must’ve been worrying. 

“I’m sorry,” you say, kicking at a snow-tufted tree root jutting from the ground. "I haven’t meant to be uptight, or anything.” Your skin prickles as straying snowflakes twirl down and pepper your skin. 

Yeonjun takes your chin in a firm hand, turning your face up from the ground to meet his own. He shakes his head at you, his eyes firm. “Don’t apologize,” he says. “You don’t have to apologize for being tired, or worried, or whatever it is. Not to me, at least. Let me take care of you; let me make it better.”  

If your heart was fluttering before, it has grown legs and escaped you by now. You blink once, twice, or even three full times before you suck your lips in and give him a wordless nod. He smiles a content smile, running his thumb just under the plumpness of your bottom lip. “Good,” he says, voice thick. He presses a chaste kiss to your lips that leaves the cold skin of your cheeks warring against the blush that rises there. He slides a warming arm around you and leads you around the estate.  

You pause as you round the corner and catch sight of a powerful, pearly-coated creature standing on the front grounds. It paws the ground, muscles rippling under its shining pelt.  

“I am not getting on that thing,” you say, looking between Yeonjun and the frilly horse with your eyes blown wide. Horses are something only the gentry use as means of transportation—the rest of faerie ride by other means or simply by foot. This one is perhaps the second you’ve seen in the entirety of your life. You gawk at its long, powerful legs. 

Yeonjun digs into a pouch that sits on the white flank of the creature, a taunting twist to his face. “You’re afraid of horses?” 

His words rile you. “No,” you say, voice tilting up in affront. You reach out to run your fingers over the smooth surface of its neck and retract your hand when the muscles there flinch. Yeonjun, or perhaps his attendants, must care for it well. Its tail is laced with flowers of faerie, only unwilted for the fact that they have some form of faerie enchantment placed over them, and its mane is a white, dripping silk that does not even look windblown, though you assume Yeonjun had ridden it here. It seems that all things flourish under Yeonjun’s touch. “I’ve just never been on one before.” 

He finishes rummaging through the pouch and produces something from it. A thick, fur-lined coverup made of white deerskin, inlaid with whorls of silvery thread. He offers it to you, and you gladly drown yourself in it. You sigh as it thaws out your skin. "I won’t let anything happen to you,” he says, reassuring you before kicking himself up over the top of the horse with practiced ease the speaks to his upbringing. He looks exceedingly princely as he extends his hand down to you, his hair falling into his eyes and his lips lined with charm. When you hesitate, eyeing up the climb onto the horse, he adds, “Trust me.” 

And you do. Perhaps it’s foolish in a world built with elaborately hidden non-truths into its seams, but you do. You’re unsure of whether it emphasizes your foolishness or Yeonjun’s innate charm. You take his hand and slide your foot into the stirrup. You teeter on one leg before you feel the firmness of his hand in yours, and you throw the other one up and over, and then you’re seated on the solid back of the impressive creature. You laugh in disbelief, looking around at the world from this height. When you look down at the floor beneath you, you gasp and circle your arms around Yeonjun’s middle. 

He runs and hand over yours, interlocking your fingers over his abdomen. “Hold on well, okay?” he says over his shoulder. He pats your hands before taking the reins into his own. You dig your fingers into the front of his doublet and press your cheek into his back, squeezing your eyes closed. When he feels your hold tighten, he snaps the reins. The way that the horse whinnies and then takes off, moving faster than you’ve ever moved within only a few blinks, has you reeling. The pull of the speed that you bolt with makes it feel as though you’ll tip back or fly off the rear of the being. You scoot yourself closer to Yeonjun; so close that your front melds into the hardness of his back, the muscles there tensed as he works on guiding the horse.  

Wind whips your hair behind you, and you’re thankful for the way trees begin to litter the scenery. You slow to a trot, winding through ancient, towering trees gray of bark and crawling with lichen. The ambience of the silvery light rays that filter through the branch overhang and the singing of little songbirds has you breathing in until you feel as though you are bursting with air and then releasing it all in a deep, deep sigh. Hoofbeats form a deep, resounding song that you find yourself lost in. 

“You’re quiet back there,” Yeonjun says. You can feel the reverberations of his voice through your cheek.  

You hum, letting your eyes droop closed. “Mhm.” 

A laugh rumbles deep in his chest. “Are you going to fall asleep?” he says, and you can hear his smile in his voice. “We’re not too far from where we’re going, pretty. Why are you so sleepy? You didn’t go to bed too late last night.” 

His question drains every bit of exhaustion from you. You manage the tensing of your limbs carefully. To him, you had gone to bed early last night, but you were too busy sneaking around him and tossing in your bed to get a full night’s sleep last night. “I don’t know,” you say. Your lie is wretched in your mouth and mind. You’re sat on the back of his royal steed and he’s taking you somewhere because he’s worried about you, and you have the gall to lie to him straight through your teeth. For the first time, you envy the faerie composition for their inability to lie. Words claw long, raking welts down your throat as you tamper them down and pretend that they are not there. If you ever tell him your truth, it shouldn’t be now. 

The trotting of the horse turns into leisurely walk. You sit up. Your surroundings look no more special than the last thirty minutes had.  

“We’re here?” you say. 

He slides off the back of the horse, his feet meeting the forest floor the only sound bar the typical buzzing of the forest. He offers you his arm. “We are.” 

Despite his help, your descent is marginally less graceful than his. “Here, where?” you do a full spin before leveling him a curious stare. “This forest is nice, I suppose, but...” 

“I’ve spoiled you rotten,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. “This isn’t enough for you? I mean, these trees are just something else.” 

You know the sparkle in his eyes is all taunt. You narrow your eyes at him. “It’s beautiful, yeah... But I could’ve gone tree gazing literally anywhere else.” You inspect the hollows between trees and the forest floor for some sort of faerie trick or veiling.  

He smirks off your complaining, producing a small, silken cloth from the horse’s satchel. He unfolds it to unveil a glistening, plump chunk of Lachrymose. Faerie fruit.  

“What is that for?” you say, giving him an incredulous stare.  

He raises it to you. The dusty blue skin of it is coated in a fuzz. You’re not mistaken at all—that is faerie fruit. “I need you to eat it,” Yeonjun says. 

“But that’s Lachrymose,” you say. “It’s faerie fruit. I can’t eat that. Why do you want me to eat it?” Shame tickles at your skull as you replay Taehyun’s words from last night. Yeonjun has showered you with nothing but his affection, you have no reason to doubt his intentions now.  

“I know,” he says. “I know it is. Do you trust me?” 

Do you? He had led you here to the forest and now is holding the fruit known to drunken your kind. Taehyun’s words double, and they meld with all that you know about the folk. They don’t care about you. What makes this faerie prince any different? Who’s to say that he didn’t bring you out here with ill intent? It’s not like anybody would come searching for you, anyway.  

But, despite it all, you do. You trust Yeonjun with the blazing intensity of a girl who has not known what it is to be treated delicately. You trust Yeonjun even if it is to a fault. You nod.  

He brings the chunk of yellow-pulp fruit to his lips, and his bite is punctuated by the crisp puncturing of the skin. He chews the fruit and swallows it, and then swipes his tongue over the pink of his lips to collect the thick nectar there. He drops the fruit to the ground. 

Any words or questions die in your throat as he crashes his lips into yours. He rolls his tongue around yours and brings his hands up to hold your face in place. You mewl surprise into his mouth, but the cloying flavor of the nectar lingering on his tongue has each inch of your skin buzzing with the twinkle of faerie enchantment. The taste of Yeonjun mingles with the fruit in a way that seizes your senses. He licks at your bottom lip before pulling off of your mouth. The black of his pupil threatens to drink his eye whole, his eyes dilated and heavy with rolling lust.  

You reclaim your stolen breaths as you watch him and his wet lips, but something behind him catches your attention. You peer around him.  

Behind Yeonjun are multiple merchant stalls so full of odd ornaments and draping fabrics that you fear they’ll spill over onto the forest ground, seemingly appearing where nothing had stood before. Behind the stalls stand a myriad of different fairfolk, some haggling with customers and some fussing over their goods. Your feet grow roots into the ground and you gawk at the scene in front of you. 

“How?—” 

Yeonjun pats the flank of the horse, looping a lead around its gear and making a tree the anchor for the other end. “Faerie fruit is intoxicating to humans, yes,” he says, “but at lower doses it gives you true sight.” He looks over the little marketplace. “There’s so much of Faerie that you miss. Hidden places like this... I want to show you all of them. This is your home, too, isn’t it?” 

Your eyes burn and your throat burns as you strain to bottle your tears up. Your home.  

He takes one of your hands and gestures toward the stalls in a pointing gesture. “Come on, let’s see what they’ve put out for sale.”  

You peruse the stalls with only your eyes for a few moments before walking up to one. This one, you find as you approach the stall, has art for sale. Canvases slathered with paint and telling stories of betrayals and greatness are propped up on display easels, so plentiful that the shopkeeper began littering them about the ground as well. Earthenware and pottery glazed in sparkling silvers and bronzes stand tall and beautiful alongside them. You can’t help but notice that the subjects of the art pieces are all human. 

You drift to the next stall, but Yeonjun stays admiring the art pieces. This one boasts an odd collection of all sorts of seemingly stolen things. Piles of worn buttons and door handles and all other sorts of trinkets. You look over all the hanging baubles and dangling metal pieces that chime when a breeze worms through them. Much of it you can’t even recognize what sort of purpose it may serve, or at least what purpose it may have served at some point. 

It’s all human. 

A gnarled voice startles you. “Do you not see something you like, girl?” says the goblin shopkeeper as he peeks up and over the piles of his selection. The cap on his head is pointed and red, and his ears membranous and bat-like. You immediately know upon seeing him that all of this was gathered by the shopkeeper himself, and not bought off of suppliers. Goblins are infamous for their sticky fingers and fondness toward inconsequential human things like these. He zeroes in on a heavy, unfamiliar coin in your hands, his nose snuffling on his pointed snout. “That’ll run you a fair chunk of your hair.” 

“Oh, I’m just looking,” you say, letting the coin drop back into the piles of unsorted knick-knacks. “Is this all human goods?” 

The shopkeeper chortles. “This is a market for human things, girl. You’ll be harder pressed to find something of faerie make here.” 

Your heart skips a couple beats. Yeonjun had brought you here because he thought being among human things might comfort you.  

You move on to the next stall. This one offers delicate works of silver—earrings, necklaces, bangles, and even cold silver weaponry. You pick up a resplendent dagger, embellished with a myriad of swirling carvings running up the handle. You test its weight. It is heavy and the blade of it is in great shape. The ones you have been using from the arsenal at Taehyun’s estate pale in comparison. 

“Anything catching your eye?” Yeonjun says, his voice sneaking up to your left. He must’ve caught up to you while you were busy browsing. 

You nod, holding up the dagger of silver. "This is gorgeous.” 

He gives you an odd look, tilting his head as he looks down at the weapon and then up at you. “What would you need a weapon for?” he says. “Not that it isn’t lovely.” 

You laugh, and you hope it doesn’t sound as nervous as you feel. “I was just saying that it’s nice,” you say, shrugging. It’s hard to part from the beautiful, silver thing as you place it back down. 

“This is all human stuff, isn’t it?” You turn to look at him. 

He smiles, and his nose crinkles with it. “So, you noticed,” he says. “I thought you might like it.” 

“I do,” you say. “I... I didn’t know there was anything like this here.” You gesture at the market around you, seemingly risen from plain snow and tree. It doesn’t make any bit of sense that there would be a market for human things when faerie craft is unfathomably superior. “I’m not sure why, though. It’s all so...” You mull over a way to put your thoughts into word for a moment. You look over the selection of the stalls, their goods dented and rusting and frayed around the edges. “Lackluster.” 

He shakes his head, looking back at the paintings of the first stall that he had hovered at. “What makes you say that?” he says.

You pick up a necklace on a white gold chain, heavy with a weeping pearl at its apex, from a pile of other odds and ends. “A lot of it is pretty,” you acknowledge, bringing the pearl into your palm and feeling the imperfect shape of it. The color of it is a pale, oil spill mauve shade that you’ve never seen on a pearl, and it is not lovely and round like other pearls, either. “But none of it really matters, like handcraft here does. Like, those paintings don’t strike love in the viewer’s heart...” You look around, and your eyes are pulled like gravity to the blade that you had laid down. “And that dagger doesn’t gift its wielder the blessing of guaranteed victory in any fight they bring to it. They’re just... stuff.” 

Yeonjun takes the necklace from your hands. He reaches around you, clasping the ends of it at the back of your neck. He picks up the drooping pearl from where it dangles about your cleavage, observing it and spinning it in his fingers. “Maybe this necklace isn’t inlaid with magic. Maybe it doesn’t gift its wearer boundless beauty, or act as a ward against evil enchantments. But how I look at it, somebody worked hard days of their lives learning the skillset and working their fingers raw to finally be able to make a piece like this. They had no faerie magic to help them do it, and they did not have the long lifespan of a faerie, either. Their lives were short and valuable, and yet, they spent their scarce time mastering their craft until they made this. Don’t you think that is more lovely than any faerie thing?” 

You take the necklace into your own hand. Suddenly, the weight of it on your chest is more right than anything ever before. The junk around you begins to sparkle with the light of someone’s passions.  

“It looks lovely around your neck, darling,” he says. The husky timbre that is spun into the words makes your skin burn. “It’s yours. Whatever you want from here is yours.” 

You shake your head, still holding the pearl between your fingers and feeling its shape and temperature. “This is all I want.”

He smiles at you before pulling out a heavy bagful of coins, handing it to the shopkeeper who finally looks up from his ministrations behind the counter. “The necklace for the lady,” Yeonjun says. The shopkeeper’s eyes almost bug out of his head as he accepts the jingling pouch of coins that is visibly too much for just the necklace, but he does not protest or point it out. 

Your heart tugs. That shopkeeper knows Yeonjun is prince—there is not a sentient being in these lands that does not know his title. Yeonjun could’ve asked for the necklace and the shopkeeper would’ve given it to him. Maybe a bit begrudgingly, but he would. And yet, Yeonjun handed him the payment for the necklace and more. The amount of money that Yeonjun just handed him is no dent to him, but to the shopkeeper... 

“C’mon,” Yeonjun says, looping his arm around you. “We don’t have long before your true sight fades off. Let’s look at everything before then, yeah?” 

You nod, leaning into his touch. You’re not sure you ever want that fruit to fade; not sure you ever want to leave the forest and face what you’re really here for. But, at least for the time you have here, you’ll pretend that this is it. 

❉

You bound down the stairs, greeting Taehyun with a nod of your head when you spot him leaned against the wall by the door. He returns your nod. It’s the first you’ve seen of him in a few days. 

You frown at him. He looks as if he’s been waiting on you. What other reason would he be hovering around the front door? 

“What’s up?” you say. 

He lets out a sigh, laced with frustration. “Whatever they’re doing at The Hovel, they’ve got it under wraps. It doesn’t matter if I sit there for half the day; nothing but usual customers pass through.”  

You appreciate that he doesn’t mention how your information might be null, despite the fact that you know he’s thinking it. You are. Hopefully, it’s not because you whined so much about being taken seriously that he just accommodates you like a moody toddler. That can’t be the truth, though. If he’s taken multiple of his own days from your finite time here in the north to check it out, he has to believe that it holds some water.  

Shrugging, you say, “We could just leave it, if it doesn’t seem like it’s actually anything.” 

He shakes his head. “No. We’re going to follow this through,” he says. “Get some shoes on. I want to bring you with me, this time.” 

He wants you to come this time. He wants your help. Maybe he’s just saying it to mend the tension that seems to be a permanent aspect of your relationship, but that doesn’t feel like Taehyun’s style. It feels dizzyingly validating for each of the nights you’ve spent running through your sword fighting skills until you wore your muscles down, even when you felt you might collapse.  

You bend down to lace up your boots. Your necklace dangles from your chest, swinging and bumping your chin as you do. When you stand to ask him why he believes you being there might help, you pause as you catch his eyes trained intensely at your chest. You furrow your brows, thrown off by the smolder in his narrowed eyes.  

He steps toward you, reaching up and taking Yeonjun’s necklace from where it rests. His fingers brush right where your breasts begin, if only for a brief, heart-stopping moment. “Where did you get this?” he asks, his tone flat and untelling, but his eyes blaze and do not flicker away from the pearl around your neck for even a moment.  

You can’t muster an answer for a few beats, blundering with his sudden and uncalled for intensity. But, when you finally can, your voice wavers. You have no reason to have guilt roiling in your belly for wearing Yeonjun’s necklace, but you do. “Some market that sells human stuff,” you say. 

His face tightens. “How did you get there?” he says. He must know exactly which market. He won’t look at you. “It’s from Yeonjun,” he says, more a statement than a question. He sounds scorned, as if you wearing some necklace has any reason to encourage this sort of reaction.   

You wince, ready for him to berate you for drowning yourself in Yeonjun’s luxuries, but he doesn’t. Instead, he drops the necklace as if it’s cold iron searing into his skin, stepping back from you. “Let’s go,” he says, cold and sharp and short. 

There it goes; a smooth, flawless mask slides over his face and clicks into place without falter. You’ve become so sick of staring into an emotionless face. 

“No,” you say, crossing your arms. 

His eyebrows shoot up. “No?” he echoes. 

“You’re angry about something. What’s your problem?” You narrow your eyes at him.  

“My problem?” he asks, his lip curling. “I have no problem. We need to go.” 

You bark out a barbed laugh, shaking your head in disbelief. “Sure, let’s do this again. You lead the way.” You gesture at the door in an overblown, dramatic wave of your arm, utterly sardonic. 

He gives you a long look before he does. When the heavy wood door swings open, a cold front of air blasts in, smacking you in the face. You snatch a woolen cloak up from near the door, wrapping yourself up in it and following Taehyun out into whipping wind. 

You drag your feet through snow without any complaint or word exchanged with Taehyun—it’s not the first time you’ve braved a snow storm alongside a sickeningly quiet Taehyun, anyway. 

❉

As you hook your boot into a low-hanging branch, tugging yourself up on unsure arms, you look up to see Taehyun already squatted and settled onto a thick branch a few levels up. He reaches a hand down to you, and you take it, amazed by how much easier it makes the rest of your climb up feel. You remember the buff of his forearms and the feel of them wrapped around you like solid metal through flickering memories, and it adds up. Taehyun does not just wield weapons well; his whole body is honed and molded to be used just as well as any weapon from what you’re sure are from years of spy work and being a general’s son.  

You wobble on this higher branch, wrapping an arm around the trunk of the tree when you look down and see how high you are from the ground. Though it is powdered generously with a white layer of snow, you’re sure that fall would hurt. You focus on breathing. You’re not sure you would, if you don’t. 

Taehyun and you had made the trek to this forest in a familiar, tense silence, only broken when he told you that you’d be climbing into a tree and keeping a bird's eye view of the path to The Hovel. Even now, he won’t address you. It irks you down to your soul; you had done nothing to deserve a cold shoulder from him.  

Taehyun readjusts his footing on the branch and it wobbles under your feet, creaking. Your heart jumps up into your throat, and your arms encircle the tree until it aches. Bark bites your skin, but you couldn’t care less.  

“You need to relax,” Taehyun says. “The more tense you are up here, the more likely it is that you’ll actually fall.” 

You breathe out through your nose shakily, gritting your teeth. “It’s not that easy.” 

“I know it isn’t,” he says, placing a steadying hand on your back. “But you have to.” 

 You attempt to let go of the trunk, but the second you let go, you find that your footing is insufficient, and you teeter. Your arms are back around the tree faster than you can even think. 

“I didn’t say let go of the tree.” 

You bite back a snark, opting to focus your energy on not slipping and cracking your neck. You would not be this uptight if the branches weren’t coated here and there in sheets of snow that has hardened into ice, making good foot placement imperative. 

“How long are we going to be sitting up here?” you ask. You’re thankful for the way the branches and pine needles shelter you from the wind, but you’re unsure of how long you can handle the feeling of your lungs frozen in fear. 

“A while.” he says. 

You shudder out a breath at that. Well, if the tense atmosphere between you two wasn’t already enough on your plate, the threat of falling from this height is a lovely addition. 

The two of you sit perched and hidden in the trees without so much as a passerby for awful stretches of hours. The more you throw yourself into listening and watching, despite the absence of anything to listen or watch, the less taut your muscles grow. At some point, you’re able to let go of the tree, holding to the branch underneath you. You grow intensely bored by the monotonous sight of falling snow and the occasional forest creature. Of course, nobody is visiting The Hovel today. Who would be? 

“Okay, I think it’s safe to call it quits, Taehyun,” you say. Your knees ache furiously from the constant crouch you’re sat in, and you’re reaching your measly human threshold for cold temperatures despite your bundling. “Nobody’s coming. I’m sorry, I guess I interpreted things wrong. Let’s just cut our losses and go back.” 

Taehyun looks at you with a strange look in his eyes. “I’ve been doing this for days. For days, I’ve been sat up in these trees and poking around the place. Do you think I’d waste that time on something that sounds like it could’ve been interpreted wrong?” he snaps. “None of that sounded like coincidence. You found something good, and we’re not going to leave it now.” 

He says the words a bit harsher than you had hoped, but in some odd way that only Taehyun could pull off, it feels like an apology for treating you like dead weight before. 

You huff. “If it’s nothing, you can’t say it’s my fault that we’ve wasted time on this.” 

He doesn’t answer, and the forest slips back into just the quiet howl of wind and rustling branches. You rest your cheek into the tree, submitting to another bout of painfully fruitless watching. 

Taehyun rustles on the branch next to you, sitting up and suddenly very alert. You shoot him a confused glance. There’s nothing and nobody in sight. You mouth the word “What?” at him.  

He presses a finger over his mouth in a shushing gesture, holding it there as he seems to listen to something that you can’t hear. He pulls his bow off his back, notching an arrow. Your heart thumps in your neck wildly as you watch him do it. What, exactly, does he hear? 

It’s a few long, long minutes before you start hearing anything. Indistinct chatter bounces off of trees and reaches you as a pair of faeries, one of them a long-limbed pixie and the other more humanoid aside from the pointed ears peeking out from his hair. You watch them trudge through the piling snow, unable to pick up their conversation from even this distance. 

Taehyun pulls the bowstring taut, aiming at the pixie one with deadly precision. Your eyes bulge, and you turn your gaze to him with a wide-eyed stare. You want to ask him what he thinks he’s doing, but you keep your mouth sealed water-tight. You can’t let them know you’re hidden away up here. 

The utterly remote look on Taehyun’s face, even while having his bow pulled tight and ready to shoot a killing arrow at them, makes you nauseous. He doesn’t look to you, he only narrows his eyes in on the pair, studying them. They look inconspicuous to your eyes—he won’t let that arrow fly, you tell yourself. You tell it to yourself again as he readjusts his squat to better angle at them as they travel further down the path. That consolation does not work, though, when he releases the arrow out onto the pixie. It whistles before piercing the faerie right in the neck. 

You cover your mouth so as to not cry out in shock, but the wail of the other faerie does the job for you. He drops to the floor, his eyes wide and his hands clasping around the entry point of the arrow as if to staunch the bleeding—as if it would save a man with an arrow through the neck. He looks up and around, searching for where the stray arrow had flown from, but Taehyun has you two hidden too perfectly among the branches.  

You look up to Taehyun. He’s loosing another arrow, locking it into place and lining it up with the living faerie, his hands steady in a killing calm. The poor faerie is only just able to realize how vulnerable they are to an arrow before one spears through his chest. Taehyun had aimed for his heart, and he had not missed. His eyes go wide, his skin draining of its color, before he crumples over himself and joins his companion on the ground. 

You watch the sight of their blood slowly embellishing the white snow unable to look away but so sick at the sight that you might bend over and hurl up your guts.  

‘Why the fuck did you just kill them?” you say, and it’s all you can manage to get past your paralyzed lips.  

When he turns away from his carnage and looks at you, all you can see is that detached face as he had made the conscious decision to let those arrows fly and rob those faeries of their lives without warning or even speaking to them. “They’re errand runners for The Queen,” he says before he slinks down the branches, landing on the forest ground. You follow him, suddenly lithe and unafraid of falling with the liquid adrenaline simmering in your bloodstream. 

“So, you shoot and kill them on sight?” you say. “They didn’t deserve that. The most they do is run messages for her, they have no part in any of this.” Your lips tremble as you avoid looking at their still bodies, already losing heat in the snow. You can’t look; not this close. Down here, at their height, you can almost imagine the fear of looking up and knowing that someone sits somewhere in the shadows and knowing that you will be the next on the ground. 

“That’s exactly it,” he says. “They run messages. We need those messages, and we wouldn’t have gotten them by just asking them and saying please.” The rustling sound tells you that he’s searching their bodies.  

You squeeze your eyes shut, the noxious tang of blood finally hitting your nose. Your knees feel like they’ll buckle under you as you remember a time where you had been the cause of that smell. Only a few long steps away from here, you had dug your dagger into the flesh of another living being. How many more times will you see death, now that you’ve found yourself as a spy? Will you one day be as desensitized to its presence as Taehyun is? 

No, you won’t. You can’t see yourself ever valuing the life of any living thing so little that you view it as some means to an end. 

“They had lives, Taehyun. You have no right taking the liberty of that into your own hands. What are you going to do if you find nothing on them? What are you going to do?” 

There’s some more rustling before Taehyun answers. “They would laugh to see you die.” 

It’s true. You know it’s true. Yet, you still can’t find justice in their deaths.   

“You don’t know that; you didn’t know them,” you say. 

He laughs, but it’s empty of what a laugh should be. It feels cold and mocking. “They all would. Every last one of them.” 

You spin on him, hearing his unspoken words. Yeonjun, too. “And you wouldn’t?” you hiss. As you finally look at him, you notice the folded-up paper he holds in his hands.  

His eyes flash. “I am not one of them.” 

Your eyes run over the roundness of his ears. No matter how round he may have sheared them, they can never soften the sharp faerie angles of his face. Not when you’ve seen him kill as wildly and beastly as they do. He has human running in his blood, and yet, the most terrible things you’ve seen have been at his hands. “Aren’t you?” you say. “I think it’s time you come to terms with the fact that you are, and learn how to live with it.” 

He looks at you with eyes of such intensity that you have to make sure you’re still breathing. “You know nothing about me,” he snarls.  

“Maybe I don’t,” you say, rubbing your hands together to fight the cold. “But... killing them, that wasn’t human.” 

“I’m not human, either,” he says, shaking his head. 

“Then, what are you, Taehyun?” you ask.  

He looks at you for a long time, his face unmoving as if he tries but cannot conjure up an answer. “I don’t know,” he says, his tongue lashing. The raw emotion consuming his features, cracking his mask of ice, softens you.  

“Why not?” you say, stepping toward him despite the turning of your stomach when the two fallen faeries come into view. The snow is already dusting them over and covering them; the earth reclaiming what is hers. “You don’t have to live your life in the shadow of that man. You don’t have to deny yourself your own identity because he was a monster. You are not him.”  

As quickly as he let it fall, Taehyun plasters his face in ice and stone. “You have no clue who I am, or what I’ve done.”  

With that last menacing line, Taehyun unfurls the piece of paper he pulled off the errand runners. You’re not sure if the chill resting at the base of your spine is you surpassing your threshold for freezing temperatures, or if the thought of Taehyun committing the same unimaginable atrocities as his father scares you that bad. With what you had just seen... Maybe Taehyun is the same monster that you’ve been continuously warned he could be.  

His brows pinch as he takes in what’s scrawled on the paper, slowly becoming translucent is some places as snow flurries down and falls on it.  

“What?” you say. You hope that whatever is on that paper is worth their lives. 

“It’s just a nursery rhyme,” he says, flipping the paper over to check if there’s anything more. There isn’t. 

You frown. “Let me see.” You take the paper from his hands. At the top sits a crude scribbling of a bird, and beneath it is a nursery rhyme you are vaguely familiar with.  

One for sorrow,  Two for mirth, Three for a wedding,  Four for a birth,  Five for silver, Six for gold,  Seven for a secret never to be told,  Eight for a kiss, Nine for a wish, And ten for a bird you must not miss 

It’s a rhyme about magpies and the meaning behind the numbers you might see them in. On the paper, the last line is written over many times, the writing jagged and almost violent. At the bottom, there are the words tomorrow day written, small and less likely to draw the eye than the bold lines of the rhyme. Your mind freezes up. 

“Taehyun,” you say, swallowing hard. “Do you remember what kind of bird we found dead before I got attacked?” 

He nods, as if catching on to what you’re saying. “It was a magpie.” 

“And everybody is talking in these... codes about birds, right. There is some kind of organized thing happening here, Taehyun, and it involves The Queen. And, down there,” you say, pointing at the bottom of the paper. “Do you think it means that tomorrow is when it’s happening?” 

He thinks for a long moment, probably running through any other possibilities. He nods. “Sounds like it,” he says, inspecting the paper for another few beats before folding it back up and stashing it away. “Let’s get back before it gets too dark.” 

You look up at the overcast and dimming sky, nodding. You’re not sure what you’re going to run into tomorrow at that hidden little tavern, but you feel that you’ll need a better night’s sleep to face it than you’ve been getting. “Okay,” you say. 

❉

You didn’t sleep well last night. Not at all. You tossed and turned, torn between trying to figure out what all the stuff you’re finding could mean and spinning your conversation with Taehyun over and over in your head until you’re sick of it, and then you spin it some more. You thought of the dead indifference on his face as he killed them, and you thought of what he had told you. You have no idea who I am, or what I’ve done. You had hoped for some showcase of the monster that everybody paints him out to be, and you had gotten it.  

You know that the life of a spy is not a cake walk—you know it comes with violence and the constant threat of death. Killing those errand runners was clearly vital to discovering whatever The Queen has going on, and that note was a great help, yeah. Sure. But you can’t convince yourself that the loss of their lives was justifiable. You just can’t. Not even when the inhabitants of this world would do the same unto you without any such remorse. 

When you tug yourself out of bed and meet Taehyun out by the blackthorn tree, he looks at you strangely. You must look as sleep deprived as you feel. He doesn’t mention it, though, and only runs his eyes over you to check if you’ve armed yourself adequately. Nodding in approval, he sets out. 

Once you’ve cleared the trek to The Hovel and are looking upon the little hidey-hole entrance, you suck in a shuddering breath. This moment had plagued you last night, too. You run your hands down each place where you store away your hidden daggers—just for reassurance. 

“Same as last time,” Taehyun says, breaking the silence of the woods to preface your entering the tavern. “If we look like anything other than lord and human servant, we’re going to get attention that we don’t want. Especially when we don’t know who could be in here. If they were able to find out who we were last time, we need to be a thousand times more careful this time. Unless I tell you otherwise, you need to stick by me, understood?” 

You have to breathe manually, wiping your palms on your plain dress. You don’t have the luxury of wearing pants this time, no matter how much better it is in the case that you have to fight your way out of here. Female servants do not wear pants. “Understood,” you say, nodding your head and stepping into the mound entrance. 

Your entrance into the tavern is almost as wild and slippery as last time, but at least you know what to expect this time around. You scan the room as soon as you catch ground, smoothing down your dress. Instantly, you catch sight of Kai’s blonde mop of hair, leaned up against a dirt wall, strumming a fast-paced song on an instrument. The crowd is no busier than the first time you had been here, either.  

Maybe you had interpreted the paper wrong. Nothing looks amiss or curious. You let a little bit of your bottled-up stress out in a slow puff of air.  

When Taehyun appears next to you, you whisper to him, “What do we do?” 

He scans the room in a similar fashion that you had, before he cocks his head to the side in a follow me gesture. He pushes into the measly crowds. You follow him, weaving around drunken bodies and cackling, snaggle-tooth hobs until he comes to a stop. 

You suck in a breath. Of course, he had to head straight for Kai. Just your luck. Taehyun may think that Kai is a good source for information, but you really wish he would’ve picked quite literally anybody else to try and pull information from. Kai is Yeonjun’s friend, and you have no idea what might happen tonight. 

Kai looks up from his bored playing, and his brows shoot up as he spots you next to Taehyun. He doesn’t stop playing his music, though. You’re sure he could be asleep and his fingers would still be plucking strings. “Odd seeing you here,” he says, smiling at you before nodding his head in greetings to Taehyun. “Especially odd that you’re not with Yeonjun. What brings you here?” 

Taehyun looks between you and Kai. You know he’s wondering how you two might know each other.  

“Just out for some fun,” Taehyun says, cutting in and answering before you can. “She’s my ward, I’m unsure why she would make an appearance here with the prince.” There’s a distinct sour undertone to his words, but you can hardly determine why.  

Kai is undeterred by Taehyun’s brooding, a lilting smile tugging his lips up. He tilts his head to one side, and the action reveals a pair of short goat’s horns that peek from his hair. The brown of them compliments well his forest green doublet. “I’m sure you’re well aware of the prince’s fondness for her, then, if she’s your ward.”  

You had, when you first met him, thought that Kai fears Taehyun. Now, you’re more under the impression that he is not the type to really fear anyone.  

Taehyun’s lips pull into a muted frown, but you can tell that he’s ruffled by the stiffness of his shoulders. “I’ve been made aware of it, yes,” he says. His jaw feathers, and he turns his gaze on you. “Would you bring us some drinks?” he says. 

Kai gasps dramatically, furrowing his brows and placing a hand over his chest to feint offense. “That’s no way to treat a lady, Lord,” he says. “It’s no wonder she runs around with Yeonjun the way she does.” 

You resist the urge to snort when Taehyun grits his teeth. He’s only acting like that because it’s how most faeries treat their human servants, but Kai knows how to taunt in a way that meets its mark. 

“She is far from a lady,” Taehyun says, crossing his arms. “Grabbing a drink is a reasonable task for a servant, is it not?”  

You decide to just scurry off and grab drink to save yourself the effort of not laughing at him. When you find the tap barrels from which you had gotten drinks from last time, it’s the same barkeeper. He greets you, but his demeanor is totally different now. He doesn’t speak to you again as he flips up the taps and fills you some goblets. It unsettles you, but you had only interacted with him that one time. You don’t know him well enough to justify saying that he’s acting weird. 

You observe the patrons around you more closely while you wait for the drinks. If there is anything at all supposed to happen today like you had heard, they did a fine job of concealing it. You narrow your eyes, passing everybody over once more and then twice more. You had only been given a date, not a time. You may have to be here all day. 

“Your drinks,” the barkeeper says, jousting out the goblets. Some of the drinks spill over the top and seep into the dirt below. You accept them and try not to let any more go to waste as you slither through the crowds.  

Slipping back into Kai and Taehyun’s conversation, you hand Taehyun his drink. He doesn’t look at it or drink it; it’s more a prop than for his enjoyment.  

“Oh yeah?” Kai says, challenging something Taehyun must’ve said while you were away. He looks to you. “How would you like to dance to some of my music, Lady?” he asks.  

Dance? You look to Taehyun. You doubt he’d want you dancing right now.

He doesn’t object or shake his head like you think he might. 

“Right now?” you ask, looking around you to the faeries cavorting and spinning. “I’m not sure I should. Dancing is dangerous, you know?” 

Kai laughs, easing one song into another, more wild and twisting one. “You won’t lose yourself here. My music is different from other faerie music.” 

You step back so that you hover near where most of the dancing folk are, looking to Taehyun. You’re not sure if this is what you should be doing right now. What if something happens, and you’re here dancing carelessly while he needs you? Maybe it’ll work wonders to keep your cover if you look like a simple human girl losing herself to dancing. You look around once more, gnawing at your cheek, before asking Taehyun with your eyes again for any objections.

He smiles, leaning into the dirt wall behind him and crossing his arms. “Dance,” he says, his tone softer and more playful than you've heard from his lips before.

Well, if he wants you to dance, then you’ll dance. You pick up the ends of your dress and begin twirling and letting yourself fall into the intoxicating ups and downs of Kai’s music. Kai is right—the edges of your vision don’t blur, and you don’t feel your mind slipping away from you, but your cheeks do begin to flush as you tap your boots to the floor and let your hands swirl about to Kai’s singing voice. You feel the burning of Taehyun’s eyes on you. It sends an electric feeling up from the root of your feet to the center of your spine. You can’t explain why the weight of his eyes is so exhilarating, but perhaps it has something to do with the fact that, for once, you are being free in front of him and he isn’t pretending that it’s the worst thing ever. Or, maybe, it’s because you remember the way he tastes.  

You look out from your spot of spinning and enjoying yourself to Taehyun. He rips his attention off of you when your eyes find him, sipping at his drink and looking over the tavern as if he had not been watching you at all.

Once your skin grows slick with effort and your thighs begin to burn, you crawl off the dancefloor and sidle up next to Taehyun.

Well, if he’s drinking, then you can drink too, right? You seek out yours, taking it into your hands. You swirl it and inspect it as you stand beside Taehyun. The bubbly liquid tornadoes beneath an unmoving, frothy layer on the top.  

You pause. You suppose you couldn’t have expected a place like this to have the highest quality wine. You sip it anyway—you intend to relish the sour taste of the plum wine. It’s a bit powdery upon the first drink; little grits of something wash down with the sweet fruitiness. Your nose crinkles. It’s nasty. 

Taehyun doesn’t speak with Kai any more. It seems that he did not have any of the information he had hoped he could find from him. Still, he stays nestled in the little corner where Kai prefers to perform in; you’re sure it’s because it keeps his back protected against the wall, not to mention it lets him observe the entirety of the tavern. Kai doesn’t seem to mind; he’s far more interested in his music, anyway.  

You try and look over the place as well, but there isn’t much to note. Faeries stumble around drunkenly when they aren’t tittering and dancing. Kai’s music begins to swirl and blur in your ears. You blink away the same blurring around the edges of your vision. That must be an awfully strong cup of wine. 

You affirm that none of it is indicative of some covert, shady thing that you’re anticipating. Your stomach feels heavy. Taehyun had sat out here for multiple days because he relied on you; he had killed those two errand runners because of your information. And here is the fruit of your efforts to contribute to this mission: you’re wasting your time in a shabby, dug out little tavern alongside drunken faeries, joining in on their debauchery with a drink in your own hand. You frown down at your cup of wine. The image of it bends and wobbles. 

“Did I do a bad job?” you ask. Your words slur, as if your lips can’t keep up.  

Taehyun stops his monitoring to look at you. His face is fuzzy in your eyes, but you can see the confusion written all over it. “What?” he says. 

You stumble a bit. Your feet don’t seem to be falling where you will them to. “I’m sorry,” you slur. “It’s my fault.” 

He rushes over to you. You don’t even notice you’re falling until he’s catching your weight, keeping you held upright. “Shit,” he says, snatching your drink from you. He inspects it for a moment, swirling it how you had earlier. Whatever he sees makes his face drop, his eyes hardening—as if preparing for something. For what? You lift your head with much effort. It feels dragged down to the earth. You blink and look around.  

Taehyun throws your drink to the ground, the goblet thudding against the dirt. You watch a few heads pop up from the crowd. They watch as Taehyun tries to carry you out. Your clumsy limbs make his efforts more difficult. You can feel him growing more desperate beside you until he curses under his breath, and then hoists you over his shoulder. The world spins around you until you’re staring down at the ground, and Taehyun is heading for the exit. Your fingers and toes buzz. 

Taehyun crawls up the entrance, all while you’re laying over his shoulder like dead weight. Fresh air burns your skin as he clears it. You watch the ground turn from trodden dirt and twigs to snow path. He secures an arm around your waist to steady you, and then he’s taking crashing through the forest. 

You can feel your mind slipping more, as something liquid and hot replaces your blood. You watch the ground pass you by, trying to count the bushes and study the shrubs in hopes that it’ll help you stay present. You can’t tell if it’s working. 

Taehyun stumbles to the ground. You, being on his shoulder, follow. The white blanket on the forest floor does not do anything to cushion the fall. Sharp foliage greets you, slicing up your skin. You bite down a warbled yelp as you struggle up onto your arms.  

Taehyun is hunched over into the snow, grunting into the ground. A bird-feather arrow pierces his shoulder, making the cloth around it dark and sticky with his blood. He writhes there for a moment that seems to stretch. You crawl toward him; you’re sure that if you stand, you’ll just fall anyway.  

“Taehyun.” You shake him. Your heart is up in your throat, choking you. “Taehyun, get up,” you beg. The ground thunders beneath you. There are people coming. Too many of them to fight off by yourself, if the roar of their approach is anything to go by. Adrenaline pumps through you, pushing out some of that substance and making room for itself. It sobers you up, just enough to grasp the dire situation you’re in. You can’t fight them in this state, and you’re not sure if Taehyun can now, either. “Please!” 

He trembles as pushes himself off the ground. The growled sounds of pure, undiluted pain he makes twists your stomach sick. “Do I pull it out?” you ask, your voice thin. Your words are still a bit slow and they still blend into one another, but at least you’re making sense now. 

He pants, shaking his head. “Break it off,” he grits out through his teeth. You crawl behind him on your knees to inspect the arrow. A short breath of relief slips past your lips. It’s shallow enough that you’re certain it didn’t puncture his lung. You bring your hands up and take the whittled shaft of the arrow into your hands. His shuddered breath as you do makes you pause. 

You can’t. You really, really can’t get your hands to move. You’re stricken down by fear, frozen by it. Your breaths come shallow and inadequate—as if your fear constricts your lungs and takes up the space where air should be. Approaching voices and the rumbling forest floor devastates every last ounce of rationality you’ve got in you. 

“Now,” he snaps. “Do it now. Break the end off, and get back. Don’t worry about me.” 

You blow out air, gripping the stem of the arrow harder. You betray your mind and wrench the thing down, trying to snap it in half. It doesn’t work, only digging the tip end of it around in his shoulder. You cover your mouth with your quivering hand as he roars, digging his fingers into his pant legs. His whole body is wracked with tremors at your clumsy hand. Acid crawls up your throat. You grab the portion that is nearest to his skin, holding it in place as you try and snap it again. It works this time. Taehyun’s chest rumbles with a deep, tortured groan under your hands, but it worked. 

He rises from the ground, his pupils blown wide and his skin clammy. He turns to face your pursuers, sliding his sword out. He takes on a defensive stance. There’s a grim set to his face. You wonder if he’s making peace with the impossibility of you making it out of this alive. He’s wounded, you’re not of the right state of mind, and you’d be outnumbered in even a perfect state. 

A flock of faeries you recognize from The Hovel surround you. A red cap with a gnarly scar scrawled across his face, a man with spindly black hair and jagged tusks that curl up from his mouth, and a lanky horned imp with beady eyes. All of them had been separate and inconspicuous when you had seen them, hidden between the crowds. Despite your imposition, you drag yourself off the ground. They don’t even spare you a passing glance. 

“I thought we’d just be snuffing out some forgettable flame today,” the red cap says, laughing. “Oh, could you have imagined it’d be the general’s son?” 

The one with the tusks barks a laugh from your left. He’s holding a bow—he’s the one who shot Taehyun down. “To think you gave your loyalties to The King, considering your own father’s loyalties to our queen,” he says, sneering at Taehyun. This is a hunt—they’ve chased you down like a wild animal, and now that the arrow has hit its mark, they intend to laugh and yip at you like prey. “You’re the spy,” he says, and then gestures at you, “and this is the human companion, then?” 

Taehyun doesn’t answer. 

“Fine. We don’t need your conversation to enjoy this, Lord.” He spits out Taehyun’s title in the very same way the man had during your first run-in that had taken place in this forest. They’re connected—it’s all connected in some grand scheme. And, The Queen is involved. Even if you and Taehyun make it out of this forest alive, leaving a single one of these lackeys alive would expose your identities. Not to mention, it would confirm the fact that The King has spies here. Even if you don’t die here, you and Taehyun are done. Where had you gone wrong? You’re not sure where any of this had slipped off. You hope that it’s just been to the effect of some grand plan much, much out of your own control. You hope it isn’t Taehyun’s blood on your hands, next. 

“I’d heard that you returned to Court recently,” the man continues. “I couldn’t have imagined that it would be because you’d return to your own Court as a spy. Is that why you ran off to those lands? To work at the hand of that worthless king? What would your father think?” 

Taehyun tenses up, the grip on his sword white-knuckled. You pray he doesn’t slip right into their taunting. If you’re to die here today, let it not be as their entertainment. The one thing you promised you would no longer be is their entertainment.  

The horned one cuts in, speaking for the first time. He sounds young. “Speak up, you piece of shit. You at least owe us your fear, for all you and your father did to these lands.” 

They’re growing more antsy and aggressive, their jaws snapping like hungry, circling wolves. You’re not sure how much longer they plan on just taunting.  

“And where is your allegiance?” Taehyun says, breaking his tense silence. “What is this?” He gestures at them with his sword. 

The three of them share a laugh, short and sardonic. The black-haired one speaks. “This is what happens when a worthless man sits on the throne for a millennium, expecting fealty for only his name. This is revolt.” 

You frown. As far as you know, the land of Faerie has never known a time where its denizens, specifically the ones that swore fealty to him, would outright denounce The King. A revolt is unheard of—the throne is an ancient, primordial thing. 

“The Queen is committing treason,” Taehyun says, low and menacing. “And so are you. What name do you call your insurgency?” 

The redcap answers. “We call ourselves The Magpies,” he says. There it is—it all makes sense. All the weird, cryptic words and the wobbly scent trail you and Taehyun have been following. That poem you found on those errand runners, that dead magpie you had found before getting attacked. One for sorrow. It was a message. All of this was a set up; they had intended for those errand runners to die, and they had anticipated you would catch wind and wind up here. You’ve walked yourselves into a wolf den, fully believing that you were the ones a step ahead. You walked yourselves to your deaths.  

No. You walked the two of you to your deaths.  

They don’t plan on you surviving. Them laying this all out for you attests to that. You don’t want to die; not now, not when you’ve found something to live for. Not when Yeonjun will have to deal with the loss of you.  

“C’mon. Where’s all your fight now? Where’s the man that tore down villages by his father’s side? Do something.” The redcap says. They all inch a little closer.  

Your heart stutters in your chest. You hope that he lies; that he’s embellishing Taehyun’s past. You look at Taehyun, and that dead, killing face is there. You know it’s true. He’s exactly the monster you’re supposed to be wary of. But you’re here clawing for your life right beside him. He’s here making a stand to protect you; he could run and leave you here in order to save his own life. You’d be stuck here on poisoned legs and be swiftly dealt with before they take off for him. But he doesn’t leave you. He won’t let you die alone. Is that the heart of a beast? 

“I am loyal to no king or queen,” Taehyun spits out. “Not to my father, either.” 

The red cap groans a patronizing groan. “You’re loyal to nothing, not even yourself. It’s why you fled your homeland the moment you could, isn’t it? You thought distance would change what you’d done?” 

You have to do something. They won’t expect you to, and to sit here would be to just lay down and accept it. You refuse to. If Taehyun can stick his neck out for you, you can try. Maybe your limbs are clumsy and drunken, but if you die, it won’t be for not trying. And, if you make it, you can sort all of this stuff out with Taehyun. 

You inspect the three men. They don’t have their eyes on you; you’ve got that to your advantage. Plus, your blade is made of cold iron. A normal stab would hurt, but a stab with iron would poison them. If you can eliminate at least one of them, you’ll even the playing field just enough for a real fighting chance. You narrow your eyes. You’ll have to use the fact that they aren’t paying attention to you the most efficiently you can—you have to get the biggest threat down. The horned imp is reedy and he doesn’t scare you as bad as the other two do. The black-haired one is wide set and imposing, but you know you’ve got to go for the redcap. Their kind are violent and savage by nature; they breathe the tang of blood in the same way you breathe air. Once they satisfy their bottomless thirst for killing, they dip their red cap into the blood of their victim, and wear it as a trophy. This one’s cap is a testament to his danger, so crusted over and made stiff with old, brown blood that it does not move. You’re unsure why he believes he has the right to accuse Taehyun of violence while he wears his own violence upon his head. 

You bring your hand down to your hip and find a dagger under your dress and at your thigh as fast as you can. You know that if you don’t move fast enough, they’ll see you reaching for something and put an arrow or sword through you. You stumble for the redcap, willing your legs to keep you upright as you do. Please. Please, let this work. Let you be good for something. 

You drive your blade into his abdomen, and then reclaim it from his body. The spray of warm, molten blood comes as less of a shock this time, but it makes you no less nauseous. He makes a sound of howling pain, and then he falls to the ground, spitting out blood. His abdomen hisses and steams, as if burning. You’re sure he’ll stay down there. 

Stabbing him had them finally tearing their attention away from Taehyun. The one with black hair grabs you up quick, spinning you into a hold. He grabs you by the throat, cutting off your air supply. You sputter, clawing at his hand.  

“You’re a sneaky little bitch, aren’t you?” he growls, pulling you tighter. You make a strangled noise. You can’t breathe. You can’t breathe. “I was going to deal with you after him, but look what you’ve done now. Should’ve stayed in your place, huh? Have you forgotten what it is? Let me remind you.”  

You’re shoved down to cold earth, and then his foot comes down onto your neck, twisting and digging into it. “In the dirt. You are nothing. You had no right poking yourself into the business of your superiors, so what made you think you could come here as a spy—”  

You can tell he intends to continue, but he’s cut short by the sword that pierces his chest. He stumbles off you, and you suck in air once his foot is off your neck.  

Your body hurts. It hurts as if your muscles and bones are punishing you for depriving them of their oxygen, as if the poison still loitering around in your veins is making a final, excruciating hurrah. You don’t have time to sink into it, though. You push yourself up on your arms just in time to see Taehyun, wide-eyed and looking part beast, cutting down that imp as well. It’s quick and brutal. Once he’s down and unmoving, Taehyun looks to you. You almost flinch at the sight of him, blood-sprayed and lip-curled. He clears the distance between you in a few, long-legged strides and tugs you up. 

On your feet, you look down at the carnage below you. Blood sits on the snow in puddles and sprinkles it like terrible little blooming flowers. The redcap writhes on the floor, slow and meaningless, as the iron works itself through him. It’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen in your life. 

Taehyun tugs at your arm. “We need to go. We need to go now.” 

You find yourself unable to move. 

“Now,” he growls. “I don’t know if there’s more of them. We need to get out of this forest before we die.” 

You try, but your legs are as solid as water as you do. You were clear headed enough for that last-ditch effort, but it was just that: a last-ditch effort. You barely have control of your limbs enough to go running through the forest. 

“Damn it,” he says, sheathing his sword and taking you back over his good shoulder. It’s just as disorienting this time, but you don’t have it in you to complain. And then, he’s cutting through the forest again, the forest floor of ice and snow whirling by and rendering you sick. 

Please, let there be nobody following you. 

❉

At some point, the poison had worn off you enough for you to travel the rest of the way yourself. It’s an awful journey, with both you and Taehyun watching over your shoulders and each sound of rustling forest creatures makes you jump. Taehyun doesn’t make any commotion about the arrowhead still nestled into his shoulder, but you can see in the stiffness of his movements that it’s bothering him.  

The last stretch of white, snow flats until you’re finally back at the estate is long and arduous. You sigh in relief as you stumble through the front door.  

You can’t fully relax yet, though. Taehyun collapses into the table almost immediately, sliding down into a seat. His skin has a sickly pallor to it.  

“You need to take this thing out of my shoulder,” he says, straining to look up to you. His eyes are so, so wary.  

Your stomach does a cruel twist with just the words, but you know it’s true. You nod. “I’ll go get some thread.”  

You clamber up the stairs and throw open drawers in a frantic search for your sewing kit. If working for Nut-hatch had taught you one thing, it was the importance of keeping a sewing kit around. Oh, and how to sew a solid stitch. You’re not so sure how well your stitching skills will cross over into suturing skin closed, but it has to be better than nothing. It has to be. 

You find the little wooden box in a dressing drawer, and then you bolt back down the stairs. He had spent so much time free bleeding that you worry he’s lost too much; you’ve got to get that closed up. 

Taehyun is peeling off his layers as you’re bounding down the last steps. You help him peel the last bit of his doublet off, and then his tunic, until his bare back faces you, a plane of toned muscle and marred skin. Your heart thunders in your chest. 

His back is littered with an outrageous number of scars, some superficial and some so deep that they leave jagged valleys in their paths. None of them are as gruesome or gnarly a sight as the festering wound at his shoulder, shimmering with his blood. The tip of the arrow is lodged well into it. You run a hand up the skin of his back until it’s resting right before the puncture wound begins. The thought of digging your fingers in there and tugging that arrow out from his flesh is a terrible, terrible one.  

You just have to do it. 

You curl your fingers around the ragged, splintered butt of the arrow where you had snapped it off, and you begin trying to wiggle it loose. Taehyun’s head drops, and he suppresses strangled grunts.  

“I’m sorry,” you apologize. You know it doesn’t make it feel any better, but you want him at least to know that doing this to him is making you ill. You tug on it some more, trying to find the path of least resistance. He shakes under your hand. “I’m sorry, Taehyun.”  

The arrow dislodges finally, leaving an awful open wound now dripping with fresh blood. You take a deep breath before reaching for your sewing kit, grabbing a curved needle. It doesn’t steady your trembling hands.  

He doesn’t make so much noise as you stitch the wound closed, just dangling his head, facing it head-strong. Each time you dig the needle through his skin on one side and then again on the other to form a stitch, you grow increasingly ill. You rub circles into his other shoulder. You’re not sure if they even register for him. Maybe they’re more for you than they are for him. 

“What do we do now, Taehyun?” you ask. You know it’s not the best time to be interrogating him, but you’re lost. You’re not sure if you’re going to be fleeing here tonight, or if you’re going to be able to carry on under the radar. “Do we leave?” 

Taehyun speaks through gritted teeth. “We don’t know all who was at The Hovel. We have no idea who saw what happened. We can’t be certain that every loose end is tied up.” 

Your stomach drops, swift and heavy. You can’t leave; you can’t leave Yeonjun here. You know he returns to his court for the rest of the season, but things will be different there from here. Can’t you just stay here, in this time and frame where you are cherished, forever? At some point, you had forgotten that this was your fate from the very start.  

You wince as a particular stitch has Taehyun trying to hold back his shaking. “When do we leave?” you ask. Let there at least be enough time for you to see Yeonjun.  

He steadies himself. “I don’t know—” he sucks in a withering breath as you stitch him mid-sentence, “let me think about it.” 

You sigh out a selfish, self-serving puff of air. At least you aren’t packing up and scrambling tonight.  

You continue sewing his wound closed for a few tense, silent moments more. 

“Taehyun,” you say. You have to ask; have to talk about it. You have so many questions. Do you leave with Taehyun to continue being a spy when you now know that Taehyun has skeletons in his closet? Is that the new life you dreamed of when you ran away from your old one? 

Taehyun lifts his head to let you know he’s listening. You’re sure he can hear the tension in your tone. 

“In the forest,” you begin. “They said you did those awful things with your father. And, they’re not the only ones I’ve heard say stuff like that.” 

His head snaps up. “From the prince?” he says, his eyes dark and dense with pain.  

“What does it matter?” you say, stepping back from your stitching. “What does it matter where I heard it from? Explain it to me, Taehyun.” Your tone is rigid and accusatory, but there’s also an undercurrent of pleading that slips from you before you can catch it.  

His jaw feathers, and he swallows hard. 

“So, it’s true, huh?” You finish up your last stitch with imprecise hands, tying it then and cutting it off so that you make some distance between you and him. You had known that, but you had hoped it’d all be by your misunderstanding. “What was that story in the cave about your father, then? Buttering me up so that I wouldn’t be afraid of you? And I believed it all, too. Are you even half human? What are you, Taehyun?” you say, your words a bitter echo of a question you had already asked him. 

Hurt fizzles over his eyes and lines his face. “It seems you’ve already decided what I am for me, haven’t you?” He stumbles up from his seat, towering over you with a curled lip. “Say it,” he challenges. “Say what I am.” 

“You’re just like all of the rest of them,” you say. You back up some more; he’s standing over you with more venom and unadulterated emotion than you’ve ever seen him allow. It terrifies you. How deep had you driven your pick, that you had shattered that ice mask and revealed his true face? “You’re a monster.”  

“Like the rest of them?” he says, his eyes blazing. “What about the prince, then? Is he a monster, too?” 

Your back touches the wall. He’s standing right over you. It’s a mirror image of the time he had you backed against a tree, but this time he doesn’t reach out and touch you. “Yeonjun is different. Different from you, at least. He isn’t a murderer. He loves me.” 

Taehyun reaches up for your chest. You flinch, bracing, but he only grabs Yeonjun’s necklace there. Disbelief and hurt flashes over his eyes as you do. You’re not sure why he’s surprised; you had just dubbed him a monster. Maybe the distinction lies somewhere on the borderline where you would believe that he would hurt you. 

“You can’t trust a word from his mouth. Not one.” He rips the necklace from your neck, snapping the delicate chain. You reach up, feeling the empty space there. And then, you see red. 

A few moments of thick, charged disbelief fill the air before you’re finally able to pull together your scattered, frayed and vicious thoughts. “And I’m supposed to believe yours?” you snap, blood roaring in your ears. “You are a filthy, filthy liar, and a murderer too.” You’re not sure whether or not Taehyun can lie. You’re not sure whether or not he is any part human. You’re not sure of anything about him at all. 

“The prince is a liar, too,” Taehyun says. "You really think that he is going to wed you? To make you his wife? Maybe he loves you today, but he will forget you tomorrow. You’re nothing more than a thing to dress up to him, until he finds the next thing to do the same to.” He holds up your ruined necklace and dangles it in the air. “He thinks he can buy you with this. Is that your worth? Pretty necklaces?” 

When you don’t answer, he continues, his face pulled taut into a sneer. “It is now, isn’t it? You’d be content with a life as his mistress, hidden away because he is ashamed of you, for the entirety of your life, just as long as you’re draped in his silks and bows. He will never marry you. He is a prince.” 

That one drives deep into your chest, the wound as visceral and aching as the one in Taehyun’s shoulder. You will back scalding, angry tears. “He said he loves me,” you say. You try and not let your voice wobble, and to not let it sound pathetic and self-convincing. You try to make it sound true. 

He laughs in your face. “He’s had a lifetime perfecting how to lie in his own way.” 

You shake your head. You know sincere eyes when you see them, don’t you? His words weasel down into your mind, anyway. Perhaps you had let your disgusting, decayed heart cling to the smallest morsel of what you had thought was love just a little too tightly. You hope it would not destroy you to try and pry it off; that you are not so sickeningly dependent on the thought of being wanted that it would ruin you to lose it. 

You have nothing. No longer a home, no longer a companion, and no longer a lover. Though, maybe you never had Yeonjun in the first place.  

“Maybe he’s just playing me,” you say. “Maybe that’s true, but you are a murderer, Taehyun.” 

“I never had a choice,” Taehyun says.  

It’s your turn to laugh in his face. “It wasn’t your choice to kill?” 

He shakes his head. His face is still pale with blood loss. “My father brought me when he’d tear down those villages. He’d make me sit and watch because he knew it tortured me. I never once killed any of those people. He was embarrassed to have an heir that didn’t carry out his will, and so he let them think I did it by his side.” 

You reel, trying to imagine a young Taehyun made to witness the gory deaths of innocents. Your words from earlier rise like bile in your throat. You want to ask why he never did anything, why he wouldn’t save them, but you know looking over the jagged, nasty scars that litter his arms and torso that he had. He had, and he took his father’s wrath each time he did. 

“Why didn’t you try to tell them that you didn’t?” you ask. “Why did you let them believe that about you?” 

“I don’t care how they see me. I don’t care for any of it.” 

The estate is silent again as you grapple with your own mind. You know why he left the north, but none of this explains why he’d found himself as a spy to The King.  

Taehyun retracts. You can tell that bearing this out is not a comfortable thing for him; his face is grave and almost sullen.  

Your stomach feels full of rocks. His mean words fill your mind to the brink, and then your own top it off until your mind is spilling over. You grit your teeth. You want to stomp off and explode in your room, to scream into a pillow and pace the floor until daylight. But you can do none of that without disinfecting his wound. 

So, you take a rag and alcohol from the kitchens, and you dab it at the stitching in dense, dense silence. And once you’re done, you disappear upstairs to toss and turn in your bed with awful thoughts and fitful sleep. 

❉

You slip out of the estate as soon as the sun settles into the sky. You don’t know if Taehyun intends on leaving today, or any day soon, but you can’t go without seeing Yeonjun. You have so much you want to leech from your mind. You can’t leave with your mind full like this. When you make it to Yeonjun’s place, no servants even send you a second glance. They know your face, now.  

Your body buzzes as you reach his tall, white doors, and you walk in without any hesitating. You had been tortured with the inability to see or speak or touch him not just since last night, but also for the past few days.  

Yeonjun’s head swivels to you once you’re in his room, eyebrows pulling together. He’s buttoning up a silken shirt, no doubt getting dressed and ready for the day.  

“Is something wrong?” he says, looking over you with worried eyes. 

You crash right into him, circling your arms around him and holding him in your arms. 

He rubs one hand over your back, the other cupping the back of your head. You stay that way for a bit, before he pulls you off him and inspects your face. His eyes then dart to the empty space at your neck. “Where is your necklace?” he asks, his voice dipping. 

You hate the concern on his face. You can’t tell if it’s an act, or if he really worries for you.  

“Hey,” he says, taking your face in one hand with a grounding hold. “Say something. Please.” 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, it got broken,” you say, grimacing. “Just hold me, please.” You want to feel his arms around you, to have him envelope you so entirely that you can’t help but believe there is anything but love in his hold. 

He does without question, delicately guiding you back into the wall. “It can be fixed, darling. We can fix it,” he says, soft and lovely into your ear. 

It feels as though he reached his hand right into your core and brushes his fingers over your tainted thoughts. You almost begin fearing that he has been keen to your thoughts this whole time, the way his words patch over your open wounds. It’s as if he knows something beyond just the necklace has been broken here. 

He presses your hip into the wall with a hand. He brings his head back to inspect your face before bringing your lips together in a warm, savory kiss. You flatten your palm against his stomach, and then drag it down until you cup his rapidly hardening length through his pants. He makes a sharp sound into your mouth and then pulls his mouth off of you to shoot you a look.  

“What are you doing, you little vixen?” he says. You palm him harder, reveling in the way he sucks his lip into his teeth to repress a groan. Please, just let you have this one night in his arms before you have to go. You need his warmth to thaw you out, and then maybe you can leave this frozen place and return to the place where there is no frost or snow. Maybe it’ll make it harder in the end, but you can’t find it within yourself to care right now. You need to breathe him in like oxygen. 

You slide down the wall and let your knees rest on the cold wood of the floor, looking up to his hair obscuring his eyes as he watches you get on the floor for him. You work on his pants, unbuttoning them with nimble, eager hands and then freeing him. The way his length stands tall in front of your face exhilarates you—you did this to him. 

“You don’t have to do this, baby,” he says, but the haze over his eyes says differently.  

You take his cock into your hands. It’s warm and heavy, and leaking from the tip. You do. You need to see how much he needs you; how he craves your touch. You want to make him so ravenous for your touch that he’ll declare his love for you, and it’ll be real, and then you can stay here like this forever. You want his arms to be home, where you don’t have any other place to call home. “You don’t want my mouth?” you say, drunken with the potent need in his eyes. 

“I didn’t say that,” he says, groaning as you kitten lick his slit and then down the side. “On your knees is such a filthy place for a pretty lady to be,” he says, eating up the image of you.  

You take him into your mouth, making sure to run your tongue along the bottom of him as you let him in. He shudders and lets his head fall back, and then snaps his head back down as if thriving off the sight. You bob your head, taking him down until he tickles the back of your throat. You have to force down the gags that prick tears at the corners of your eyes. He cradles the back of your head. 

Yeonjun laughs. “How did you learn to use your mouth like this?” he says between his panted breaths. “You haven’t let him have this, have you?” 

Your eyes flutter open as he says it, your brows furrowed.  

He grabs the hair at the back of your head and uses it to pull you off of him. You suck in full breaths while you have the chance. “What?” he says, letting his saliva-slick length rest on your cheek. It feels more lewd and dirty than having him in your mouth. “I know you kissed him. He told me himself.” 

Your mouth drops open, but he’s guiding himself back into your mouth before you can say anything. Taehyun had told Yeonjun you’d kissed? You couldn’t defend yourself if you tried; he’s rutting into your mouth, hand fisted at the back of your head as he looks down at you with something blazing in his eyes. You can feel the restraint in his hands and in his face. His stomach grows taut. 

“I should’ve known he’d get his hands on you the second he could, pretty. That dog doesn’t know how to keep hands off of what’s not his. I’m going to have to keep you on a tighter leash, huh? I don’t like other men knowing what you taste like, baby.” His words are measured and taunting, but he’s twitching in your mouth and his thrusts are growing more frantic, and his hand is twisted into your hair as if you’ll run away and leave him needy if he doesn’t hold you there. 

You’ve never heard Yeonjun speak like this. He’s expressed distaste for Taehyun before, but never like this. Never like he’s sinking his teeth into you and staking his claim. Yeonjun doesn’t need to cling to his possessions—not when everything he’s ever wanted has been at his fingertips. So, why does he sound like a frantic dog showing its teeth so that another won’t reach for its toy? 

His thrusts become more feverish and shallow, whimpers escaping the back of his throat. Saliva pools out from your lips and sullies your chin, but you’re too focused letting him use your throat that you can’t be bothered with it. 

“Fuck,” he grunts, his abdomen going rigid. He slips out of your mouth quick, before he can melt into your mouth and cum. His cock is red and angry, frustrated with denied release. “Your mouth is so good, baby, but when I cum, I want it to be in you,” he says, reaching down to wipe the mess off your chin with his thumb.  

You whine, the sound a bit hoarse with use. He uses his words in a way that leaves you so weak. The two of you stumble over to the bed, where he lays out and you climb up over him. He pushes your dress up and over your thighs, the skimming of his fingers electric and shooting up straight into your cunt. You hover just above him, lining the weeping tip of him up with you, but not yet sinking down onto him. 

“I waited for this,” he says, taking your hips into his hands. “For multiple days, I yearned to touch you like this again. And, where were you these past few days, darling? In his bed?” 

You brace your hands on his chest, the shirt there disheveled and unbuttoned now, despite him having only freshly put it on. You sink down just a little bit, watching his face contort despite his fiery words. 

“No,” you insist, sinking lower. He stretches you just as deliciously as the first time. “No, ‘Jun. I promise, baby. This is just for you.” 

His head falls back, and he’s looking at you down his nose, his fingers digging divots into your hips. You take him down to the hilt, and then pick yourself up and drop back down, falling into a delicious rhythm. The roll of your hips and the perfect angle of his cock has him brushing up against a sweet, soft spot inside of you, sending your thighs trembling each time it does.  

“Make me believe that, pretty,” he says. His lips are bitten red as you pick up speed, leaning forward onto your hands to fuck yourself down on him harder and faster. You relish in the way he reacts for you. “Make me believe you never gave him what is mine.” 

You try. Oh, you try. Your thighs begin aching, burning with exertion, and sweat sheens your neck. Once your thighs are unable to fully lift you off of him, you opt for rolling your hips into him frantically, chasing that knot deep in your belly the same way you chase to watch him grow restless under you, his hands alternating between holding your hips and the bedsheets and your chin. 

His hands come to your hips again, taking them with a more solid, reinforcing grip. His cheeks are tinted pink. “Need help, baby? Getting tired?” he purrs, picking you up and bringing you back down on his cock with renewed vigor that has you falling forward and whimpering into his neck. He opts for fucking up into feverishly you now that you’re bent over him. 

“I love you— I love you, Yeonjun,” you pant, clinging to his chest. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” 

You’re sorry for so much. You’re so sorry that you can’t help but let it slip out into his skin while you’re in his arms. You’re sorry that you’ve lied to him, you’re sorry that you’ve doubted him, and you’re so awfully sorry that you have to leave him.  

“It’s okay, darling. It’s okay,” he manages through his labored breaths. He holds you to his chest like he can meld you into him there. You know he’s not comforting you for what you wish he would be, but it swells emotion up in your chest regardless.  

He’s so, so close. You can feel him twitching inside you, so riled up that he’s going to cum before you.  

You lift off of him, taking in his heavy eyes and rapidly rising and falling chest, before you crawl off of his cock.  

He whines, reaching out for you. “What are you—” he says, cut off by the strangled hum of relief as you wrap your hand around his length, slick and ruined with your essence. A look of recognition passes over his eyes, and something akin to hurt as well. You hadn’t worried about letting him cum in you last time, but last time you had been reckless and forgotten that you’re living on borrowed time. Your mind was not jaded with the knowledge that you don’t have forever like it is now.

You slide your wrist up and down him, devouring the bucking of his hips and the way he chants your name. Your name. Finally, he stills, cursing and cumming white, hot spurts up onto his belly, soiling part of his shirt that had not yet ridden up. The sight of it has you fluttering around nothing.  

He pants, but picks his head up off the bed with effort before frowning. “You didn’t get off. Let me help you, pretty. Let me take care of you.” He pushes up off the bed, taking your face in one hand. 

You shake your head, falling down into the side of his bed that has become yours. “I’m okay,” you say. Though you’re a sticky, awful mess between your thighs, that’s not what you need. You usher him to lay down with you with a hand. “I just want to be here with you.” 

He gives you an odd look, but lays down on his side, facing you, albeit tentatively. The two of you are quiet for a minute, eyes flickering over each other's faces as if you both have something you want to say, but both can’t form the words or speak them. 

You breathe in a shaky breath, trying to steady yourself. You have to tell him; it’s what you came here for. Can’t your last day just be left untainted? You worry you’ll be forever forced to remember these moments by the sick flipping of your stomach, instead of the angles of his face and the rhythm of his heart beating as it floats down from euphoria. 

“I have to leave this place, Yeonjun,” you say, eyes flickering up to his finally. “I’m leaving tomorrow. Something happened, and I have...” You swallow hard. “I have to tell you something.” 

You expect his face to twist up in confusion or worry, but it doesn’t. Instead, it falls. He doesn’t speak for a moment too long, and your heart plays cruel tricks on you.  

“I know,” he says, and all the air is whooshed from your lungs. 

“What?” you say, flying up onto your arms. “What do you mean?” 

“I know why you’re here. I know that the both of you are spies for my father.” 

Your mouth is paralyzed with all the moments you’ve spent petrified of this exact moment so that you can barely speak. “How?” you say. “Since when?” 

He sighs, sitting up as well. “Since today.” 

He doesn’t answer how, but you already know. It all clicks into place in at this very moment. The only way that he might have found out just today was that Kai had told him. You remember the looks on their faces when that bark-skinned faerie had said something about the solstice and some kind of set-up at The Hovel. Not only had that been a set-up, but Yeonjun had known about it. Him and Kai both had. Whether or not they knew it would be you and Taehyun who would show up until you did, you don’t know. Kai knew there would be a poisoned drink for the spies if they fell into that trap that day, and the moment he saw you go down he knew it was you and Taehyun. 

You jump off the bed, backing up and away from him. “You’re one of them?” you say, your voice fragile.  

“What?” he says, looking at you weird. “One of them? You mean part of the rebellion?” 

You scoff. “Yes.” 

“Is there something wrong with that?” 

Is there something wrong with that? They had tried to kill you twice. Would he be complacent with your death, so long as it’s in the name of his loyalty to The Queen? 

“Your people poisoned me, and have made attempts on my life twice,” you say, stepping away from him again. “And I’m leaving because they might make even more.” 

He shakes his head, his eyes wary watching you back away from him. “They won’t,” he says. “Not now that I know it’s you. They will never lay another finger on you again, nobody will. You don’t have to leave here.” 

“Oh, but if it were any other human girl, that’d be fine? You’d live with the knowledge that the people you cozy yourself up with killed her? And, what about Taehyun? Does your courtesy extend to him, prince? You expect me to just accept your protection and let them hunt for his head? I know your distaste for your father and that crown, Yeonjun. But, is this really the way you intend to do this? Inciting war is not going to mend that.” 

He shakes his head, closing in on you and taking your face into his hands. “War is going to happen regardless of my meddling. It has been charging up for years. I don’t want you working as a spy for my father when it happens; I want you here.” His eyes dart between yours. “If Taehyun decides on staying here, if it will allow me to keep you here, then I will extend every bit of my power to protect the both of you. Forget your duties to my father. You have no need to work as a spy when I will support your life endlessly, pretty. Please.” 

Your stomach roils with flame and acid. Yeonjun hadn’t lied to you, but somehow this is worse. You suppose you can’t feel too left in the dark—he had just found out your deceit, and yet... Here he is, pleading with you to stay. You had imagined he’d cast you out and renounce you upon finding out your truth. In some ways, that almost seems better. You don’t know how to work with this, and you had not prepared for this.  

 Would Taehyun even agree to stay here? You honestly don’t know. You don’t know what Taehyun’s intentions are with being a spy, but you can’t imagine him wanting to stay here. Not when you know his past here in the north.  

Do you want to be a spy? If war is genuinely coming, would it just be returning home with a target on your back?  

Taehyun’s spitted words crawl up to the forefront of your mind. You’ll never be sure if Yeonjun will stay true to his promises of protection and love. Would he wed a human, even when estranged from the throne and his father? 

You search Yeonjun’s desperate, pleading eyes. You hope that what you see there is more than just sparkling need to dig his claws into his play toys. 

END PART 3

a/n: yeaaah. i said it was angsty!! i know u taehyun girlies are waiting on a taehyun scene but guys i promise the longer you wait the better it'll be I PROMISEEE. also, lmk in the comments if you think she should leave the north or stay there with Yeonjun.

tags: @lvrs-street2mmorrow , @soohashits , @f4iryfever , @arcturus444