#and since i was at it; something small/thin for myself since my

[aikotos]

"Maybe I should buy the little plushes since they don't seem to want to reprint then in the next months, weren't they like 3k yen second h-"

[icewindandboringhorror]

Some recent pressed leaves and stuff to add to the collection :0

[markster666]

Hey! I noticed you write smut for everyones favorite deer man. Episode 5 was getting to me with those tentacles! i was wondering if you could write something to do with that when you get the chance? 👀

Yes I do! Your wish is my command. <33

ALASTOR X READER (SMUT/18+) - TENTACLES

Pairing: Alastor x Fem!Reader

Tags: Smut, 18+, Double Penetration, Tentacles, Porn without much plot, Daddy Kink, Master Kink, Pet Kink, Sensory Deprivation, CNC, and other stuff lol

Fandom: Hazbin Hotel

Word Count: 863

A/N: Thank you so much to @thatdeadstoat for taking the time and effort to put in this prompt request. I'm so happy with all the Alastor lore and screen time lol. Unedited, so apologies for spelling mistakes. Requests are open.

You heard Alastor's microphone cane tapping the ground as he walked down the hallway to your room. You couldn't even see his face but you could FEEL the seething energy rising from him. He didn't even knock as he busted open your door, slamming it roughly behind him and leaning against it.

"I don't know WHY Charlie thought it was a brilliant idea to bring that low life to this hotel. I despise him with a furious passion."

You shrugged very slightly and sat up in your bed, pausing the tv show you were watching.

"It's her father, Alastor. They're blood. At least he's trying."

Alastors ears furrow back as he squints at you.

"I can't believe you're justifying him, my Dear! I taught you so much better than that."

You bit your lip.

"I was just trying to state my opinion-"

You cut yourself off as he purposely made a threatening walk towards you, his eyes filled with a cannibalistic nature.

"Your opinion doesn't matter in this bedroom, my Dear, I'm CERTAIN i've made that clear, no? Do you need a reminder?"

Before you could open your mouth to speak, his tentacles appeared out of thin air, one of them wrapping around your mouth like a gag and the others pinning you to the bed on your stomach, wrapped around your body like a bunch of rope to keep your arms locked to your side. Alastor got on top of you, straddling the small of your back and wrapping a hand around your throat, squeezing gently on the sides. He pulled your hair aggressively up and got close to your ear,

"Not like you had much of a choice anyways, little one. If you're a good pet, I might let you feel some of your own pleasure, but for now, let your Master let off some steam, hm?"

The tentacle around your mouth tightened as you desperately nodded, trying to murmur something to him but instead it comes out as groans.

"What was that, my Dear? I can't hear you."

He was obviously mocking you. His grin grew wider.

"Since you can't keep your opinionated mouth shut, that restraint is not going anywhere. If I hear you try to speak, I will not give you relief. Do I make myself clear?"

You nodded, feeling your core heat up and the wetness starting to spill down your legs.

"Good."

He gives you a quick kiss on the cheek before slamming your face into the pillow, ripping down your pants and feeling your pussy through your panties.

"Oh my! I haven't even DONE anything yet, Princess! Maybe you really DO need this!"

He moved your panties to the side and inserted a two fingers into your cunt, not giving you much time to adjust before pumping them out as fast as he could. You instinctively arched your back before moaning out in overstimulation as he pushed your face harder into the pillow, his hand entangled in your hair.

He kept going for a good bit before stopping, slapping your ass once before letting go of your hair. You were panting and whimpering and felt your juices dripping down your thighs onto the bed.

You felt humilated and he felt like a god.

Before you could catch your breath, you instantly felt Alastor press into your pussy all the way to the hilt, filling you up in just the perfect way. His ears furrowed back as he gripped your hips tighter.

"Goooood girl, you take me so well. Now, just be still and let Daddy breed you."

You were a moaning whimpering mess as he started fucking you into the mattress, his tentacles still wrapped around your body and your mouth. He had an animalistic rage inside of him making him grasp at every part of you, trying to fuck you as deep as he could.

And you loved every second of it.

He kept going for awhile before you felt something push against your asshole. You winced and then moaned in pure pleasure as one of his tentacles inserted itself into it, both holes now being used and filled up.

You bit against the tentacle keeping your mouth in place while you were being brutalized by the deer demon. You were moaning so loud you could probably guess everybody was hearing this.

It wasn't long until Alastor was close, his thrusts become more sloppy and his grip on your hips becoming tighter. You felt yourself getting close to.

"Cum for me."

You instantly came at the sound of his voice and he came too, pushing as deep as he could go. You two stayed in that position for awhile, catching your breathes before he took his tentacles out of you and from around you and himself out as well. You tried to stand up to use the restroom to empty his seed out but he stopped you,

"Ah ah, at least give it 10 minutes, Pet."

He gave you a small kiss on the forehead and dressed himself, sitting on the edge of your bed.

"Thanks Alastor... I guess I really did need that."

His grin grew as wide as it could.

"Good girl."

⋆｡‧˚ʚ♡ɞ˚‧｡⋆⋆｡‧˚ʚ♡ɞ˚‧｡⋆⋆｡‧˚ʚ♡ɞ˚‧｡⋆⋆｡‧˚ʚ♡ɞ˚‧｡⋆⋆｡‧˚ʚ♡ɞ˚‧｡⋆

A/N: Thank you so much for everybody who has read! Your support means the world to me. If you didn't know, I will be participating in Kinktober (except in February lol) with some pretty smutty prompts starting February 1st and going on all month, so if you like my writing and want some more Alastor x reader smuts, please consider following. Lots of love.

[bianquitasunderworld]

could you write something where dave is obsessed with readers boobs please?

18+

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

Warnings: 18+ English is not my first language! Smut, Fingering, Teasing, Switch Dave, Switch Reader/Dom Reader, Dave begs, Mommy kink, Female Penetration. (I think that’s it)

Parings: Dave Lizewski x Reader

A/N: This man is such a LOSER and I love that. I got carried away with this one. I don’t proofread.

Dave’s obsession with boobs, especially your own is truly…questionable. We all know he’s got a thing for boobs I mean we all saw that one scene!

Dave struggles to voice his feelings, often too embarrassed to even speak about such things. He’s frequently averting his gaze, but his eyes involuntarily gravitate towards your chest. The ogling always intensifies when you choose to wear tank tops or choose to forgo a bra, leaving him subtly captivated.

On a particularly hot summer day, Dave had invited you to his home due to your apartment’s lack of electricity and air conditioning. You gladly accepted his offer immediately and chose to wear the most revealing outfit in your wardrobe to keep the heat from affecting you. The outfit was perfect; poor Dave couldn’t look away. He was hypnotized by the way your boobs looked, and his gaze seemed glued to them. Despite his efforts, he found himself entranced, unable to divert his attention.

You weren’t completely oblivious to your boyfriend’s wandering eyes. Of course you didn’t mind but you couldn’t help but wonder what thoughts were playing inside his head. Filthy thoughts consumed your mind, the way Dave’s tongue was poking out of the corner of his mouth and the way he licked his lips only made you more curious as to what scenarios he could possibly be playing out in his mind.

You wondered if he was thinking about sucking your tits as you ride him, or if he was thinking of you kneeling in front of him with his dick between your tits as he coats them with his come. You couldn’t help but squeeze your thighs together in your seat as you bit your bottom lip, desperately trying to find some relief or pleasure. The thought alone is simply enough for you to get off on.

Your thoughts are interrupted when you feel Dave’s hand and hear his soft voice. “W-what are ya thinking about?” He stutters, his voice laced with nervousness.

He watches and notices how you become fidgety when his hands caress your thigh. A sense of warmth comes over you at his soft touch. His featherlike touch further ignites the small flame that has been burning within you since you noticed his gaze.

your voice is soft as you trip over your words. “N-nothing. T-this is just a good movie, don’t you agree?” Your head nods towards Dave’s tv. Truthfully you couldn’t care less about whatever movie was on at the moment, and neither did Dave, all he could focus on was how thin your blouse was and how he could just barely see the outline of your boobs.

Dave nods even though he isn’t paying any attention to whatever the fuck was playing either, how could he when the most beautiful girl in the world was right in front of him with her boobs on full display! His heart was racing as he tries to calm down his arousal.

He can’t take it anymore, he decides to make a bold decision and just acts before thinking. If all failed he could just die of embarrassment and curl up into fetal position, right?

Dave slowly moves his soft hands up your torso tracing small random patterns against your skin. You shiver as you feel his cold hands make their way up and under your blouse.

"I-I'm sorry, I can't help myself..." He leans in closer, his breath tickling your neck as his fingers brush against your bare skin. His heart is pounding in his chest as he struggles with his desire for you.

“Davie-“ your voice is soft. Dave takes it as a good sign when you don’t immediately stop him and curse him out for being a pervert. You of course know what Dave wants and exactly what he’s up to, he plays this game far too often. Pretends to be shy, innocent, and soft then next thing you know you’re both naked as he’s deep inside you while his mouth is wrapped around your boob or his hand is down your shorts while he suck on your boob, regardless of what happens mark my words, some part of him will be touching your chest.

"I'm-I’m sorry, I can't help myself," Dave confesses, his lips moving against your neck, his hands gently squeezing your soft breasts through your thin blouse. "You're so irresistible." His voice is soft and whiny.

His hand trails across your cheek, leaving a trail of goosebumps along your skin. “Y-you’re going to love it. I promise, alright?”

His hands slide down to unbutton your blouse, revealing your bare skin underneath. He leans in to lay a soft kiss on the exposed skin of your collarbone as his fingers skim across your chest.

You nod hesitantly as his hands focus on unbuttoning your blouse, once it’s finally off and your breasts are revealed to him, he can’t help but let out a small whimper. Dave can’t help it, when he sees your bare chest he swears he’s in heaven.

Dave's hands tremble as they slide up to cup your breasts, his thumbs brushing over your hardened nipples. He leans in closer, his warm breath fanning across your skin. "They're perfect," he murmurs, his voice barely audible even to himself.

You hesitate to speak, stuttering at every word that leaves your lips. “T-Thank yo-u Davie.” The heat between your thighs is becoming so unbearable.

“I w-wanna taste you mommy” Dave murmurs, his voice rough with need. His hands slip inside your panties, his fingers finding the dampness between your legs. Dave’s mouth wraps around your nipple, flicking at it and sucking at it as his hands explore your panties, feeling how wet you’ve become just for him, because of him.

The only sounds that can be heard throughout Dave’s household is the sound of your moans and whimpers as his hand plays with your wet pussy. You buck your hips agaisnt his hand as his fingers rub your clit. "Dave... I'm close," you gasp out, your body arching into his touch. "Don't stop oh my god baby!" The feel of his fingers inside you, combined with his mouth on your breast, sends waves of pleasure coursing through your entire being.

You pant his name, your body trembling with need. The sensations are overwhelming, but in the best way imaginable as his fingers continue to tease you.

F-fuck, yeah, baby," Dave gasps out, his breath hot against your skin. "I want to feel you come around my fingers, come on pretty girl. Let me feel you come around my hand." His fingers move faster, curling deeper inside you as he searches for that one perfect spot to send you over the edge.

Your eyes shut tight and your nails dig into his shoulder as you feel your climax approaching, you cry out his name and beg for him to let you come.

“Fuck, yes," Dave moans, his hips bucking against your leg as he whispers in your ear."Let go, baby. Let me see you come apart for me."

"Come for me, baby. Let go," Dave urges in a husky whimper. "I want to feel you baby.." His fingers curl and stretch, finding just the right spot, the perfect rhythm.

Dave’s eyes watch your every move and reaction as he feels your pussy tighten around his fingers, his eyes light up as he hears you moan and watches you buck your hips uncontrollably agaisnt his hand. Broken cry’s of pleasure leave your mouth as you come apart around his fingers.

Dave watches you fall apart under his touch. He groans, his hips bucking up against your side , seeking more contact as he feels you shatter around his fingers. “Such a good girl, so fucking tight.” he breathes, his voice thick with lust and pride.

A small gasp leaves your lips as you feel empty when he pulls his fingers from your pussy and brings them to his mouth. You watch and bite your lip as with a slow, deliberate motion, he tastes you, savoring your sweetness.

“You taste amazing," Dave murmurs, his eyes locked on yours."Mmm," Dave hums, his eyes closing in pleasure as he tastes you. "You're so fucking addictive," he whispers, leaning down to capture your lips in a deep, passionate kiss.

Feeling your body pressing against his, Dave groans into the kiss, his cock twitching against the rough fabric of his jeans. His cock is begging for a release. He breaks the kiss, panting heavily as he looks into your eyes. "You're killing me," he mutters, his voice rough with lust.

Your eyes slowly wander down to the bulge in his jeans, you lick your lips at the sight admiring the imprint of his cock against his jeans. “Is this all for me Davie? You’re this worked up over watching me come and playing my tits?” Your words are filthy and condescending, something Dave catches on to quickly.

“Y-you turned me on so much just by letting me play with your pretty pussy.” He whimpers "I need you right now." He tugs on your hand gently, guiding it to his erection. “I want to feel you wrapped around me so bad." Dave’s voice comes out as a whimper as he begs for you. He’s become desperate and grinds against your palm.

“Please, baby." He whines, his hips undulating against your hand. "I need you so fucking bad." His eyes bore into yours, full of desire and need.

Your eyes admire him as he begs desperately for you, your body is begging for him but the desire to make him beg for your body overpowered your need to please him, to have him inside of you.

Whimpering, Dave presses his hips into your hand. "Please, mommy, please. I need to be inside you.." His voice is raw with need and desire. He leans in, pressing his lips against your neck.

Your resolve slowly fades and you feel yourself giving into him. His desire and desperation turns you on more than anything. Watching him fall apart simply because he needs to be inside you is the most amazing thing you’ve ever experienced.

You give him a small nod and watch as he quickly moves to unzip and take off his pants and quickly drops his boxers to floor, kicking both items of clothing off and moving back to sit near you looking at you intently. You slowly bring your palm to his cock and wrap your hand around it. Admiring his manhood. His cock twitches in anticipation, leaking pre-cum onto your hand.

Your eyes sparkle in admiration as you watch Dave’s face contor into one of pleasure. A deep moan escapes from his throat as he jerks his hips forward, pushing his cock deeper into your hand.

“What do you need baby?” You tease him, watching closely as his glasses fall askew. “I need you to take me inside that tight little pussy of yours, mommy." Dave's voice is ragged.

You tsk at him in disapproval. “Oh such nasty words coming from such a pretty boy, what a shame.”

His cock jerks in your hand, a testament to his arousal. Your hand slows around him, teasing him. “I'm sorry, mommy," Dave pants, his hips jerking involuntarily. "I can't help it. I need you." His cock throbs in your hand

“Oh that’s much better, good boy.” You praise.

“T-Thank you mommy.” As if responding to your approval, Dave's cock twitches again, this time more forcefully. He arches his back, offering you better access to his sensitive tip. "Please, mommy," he whispers. "I need you to ride me.."

You coo at him and slowly remove your hand that’s wrapped around his shaft. “I know baby, you’re just so pretty when you beg. Mommy’s gonna give you what you want baby”

Dave's breath hitches when you remove your hand from his cock. His head rolls back in anticipation, his eyes closed tightly. "Oh, god..mommy," he moans, his voice shaky with desire.

His eyes flutter open, he watches you through the lenses of his glasses. “Thank you, mommy," Dave breathes out, his body trembling with anticipation. As you pull back, he reaches out, tracing the curve of your breast with his fingers. "You're so beautiful."

His words send a shiver throughout your body, his compliment bring out a small smile from you.

“Thank you Davie” You kiss his lips softly then pull away as you straddle his hips. Your entrance hovering right over his thick length, his hands slowly make their way to hold your hips.

Dave watches as you position yourself above him, his heart racing in anticipation. "Mommy," he moans, his hips pushing up against you. His cockhead brushes against your entrance.

His cock twitches against your sensitive folds, begging for entrance. "Please, mommy." You slowly lover yourself down on him, your mouth falls open as you gasp and your eyes shut as you feel his large cock slowly stretch you open around him. “Oh Davie-“ You steady yourself against him.

A soft moan escapes Dave as you lower yourself onto him, feeling you stretch around him. He grips your hips tightly, guiding you slowly down his length. "Oh fuck, mommy," he whispers.

“You’re so big Davie” You cry out as you lower yourself down on him, feeling him inside you. Dave pants, his voice thick with lust and need. He thrusts upwards gently, meeting your downward motion, their hips slapping together in a rhythmic dance of desire.

his cock throbs inside you. His hands slide up to cup your breasts, his thumbs teasing your nipples, his hands hold your breasts tenderly. His hips buck slightly, pushing further into the tight embrace of your warmth. You whimper when he’s fully inside you, his throbbing cock fills your body and your brain feels empty, your only thought is him and how good he’s making you feel. You slowly grind your hips down agaisnt his own.

“Fuck, yes," Dave groans, feeling you move against him. His own hips buck up, meeting your grind with enthusiasm. He bites his lower lip, feeling overwhelmed by the sensation of being inside you. "So fucking tight," he pants.

You groan as you feel him thrust up into your pussy, the sounds of skin slapping filling the room. “You feel so good baby-Oh fuck!” Every sound and noise that is being made is borderline filthy, every moan and whimper sounds almost pornographic.

Dave cries out, his hips bucking wildly as he takes you with force. His cock pistons in and out of you, driving you both towards the brink of ecstasy. Your tits bounce at his hard thrust, your moans and cries come out broken, due to the overwhelming sense of pleasure that’s he’s giving to you.

Daves hands roamover your body again, finding your nipples. He pinches and rolls them between his fingers, using them to his advantage as he continues to fuck you senseless. Dave’s hands wander back down towards your hips, his hands wander lower and grope your ass. he leans forward, taking one of your nipples into his mouth. Dave’s glasses are foggy and crooked, barely on the tip of his nose.

You whimper and reach your hand towards his face gently taking them off and tossing them to the side of the couch. His tongue circles around your nipple, tugging gently at the sensitive flesh, his face somehow burrowing further against your tit. Feeling the warmth of your ass against his hands, the taste of your nipple in his mouth, and the tightness surrounding his cock, Dave can't hold back any longer. His hips buck up fiercely.

You moan and your eyes roll back as you feel your climax approaching “I’m gonna fucking come!” You groan. “Come for me baby, fuck-Oh Dave-“

Dave’s groans are muffled as he sucks on your tit, his feels his own orgasm taking over. He thrusts up into you, his cock pulsing as he releases his seed deep inside you. His hips buck wildly, his hands gripping your hips tightly. His hip shudder as he thrust up into you, emptying himself inside you. He pulls his mouth off and away from your tit and just rests his head against your chest.

As the wave of pleasure subsides, leaving both of you panting heavily, Dave remains connected to you, his cock still buried deep inside. He kisses your chest tenderly, his ear still pressed against your racing heartbeat.

[evie-sturns]

missed you - Chris Sturniolo

summary: where you see your boyfriend for the first time in 3 weeks, all you want is his dick.

contains: cockwarming, fluff, swearing, nsfw

——————————————————————————

chris and i have been together for over a year, now that his career is getting busy he takes regular work trips with his brothers, leaving me alone for a couple of weeks.

today is the day where chris finally comes home after 3 weeks, and god have i needed him.

i lay back on chris and i’s shared bed, scrolling aimlessly through instagram as my eyes repeatedly flick up towards the time.

my mind starts to wonder, since chris and i haven’t had sex in 3 weeks i can barely imagine the thinks we are going to get up to.

it turns me on just thinking about it, i don’t even realise the fact i’m squeezing my thighs together desperately. i feel a familiar heat grow between my legs as i let out a sexually frustrated sigh.

click

the door to our house unlocks with a faint click, i shoot up in bed and sprint for the door handle

i swing it open and run down the corridor where chris is standing,

“chris!” i squeal before jumping into his large arms, he lets out a small laugh before wrapping his arms around me,

“i missed you so much baby!” chris smiles before placing me back down on my feet.

“how was it!!” i smile widely, grabbing chris’s hand, desperate for some sort of touch of his.

“mmm, not great” chris hums, dragging his bag towards our room,

“i’m sorry to hear that chris, i have a lot to tell you though..” i say with a small jump.

“do you now?” chris teases, i nod my head with a ‘mhm’

i open the door to our room, “it’s so clean in here.” chris states while rubbing his eyes.

“just for you” i say rubbing my shoulder on him,

“you’re so corny.” he scoffs, chucking his bag in the wardrobe and tossing his shirt along with it, leaving him in just his sweatpants and a red cap.

i jump into bed, the thin fabric of my pyjamas press against my cold skin as i tug the covers up over me.

chris sets himself down on his desk chair, he pulls off his hat with a small sigh before powering his computer up.

i observe as he clicks through the various files on his computer before settling on the one which has all the footage that he filmed this month,

“chris..” i whine quietly,

“yeah?” he turns back to look at me,

“how long is that ‘gonna take you.” i pout,

“about… an hour? maybe.” he replies with a small nod.

i run my hands over my face with a big sig,

“what’s wrong gorgeous girl.” chris smiles,

“i don’t know- ‘m just need you.” i say shyly, chris nods understandably

“need me like how?” he asks, he knows what i mean but his constant need to tease me is taking over.

“need you to touch me.. or something.” i whisper, avoiding all eye contact with chris.

chris stays silent, wanting a better response out of me.

i exhale loudly with a small smile, “i want you.. your dick.”

chris stands up and walks over to me, his large frame leans over the bed as he looks down at me,

“is that so?” he says softly, i nod.

he sits down in bed beside me, his back presses against the headboard as he sits next to me.

“c’mon up.” chris grins, i let the covers fall off of my body as i sit up in bed,

i swing my legs over chris and straddle him, my clothed cunt pressing against his bulge.

“you gotta tell me what you want princess.” he says, looking into my eyes.

“i want to feel you.. inside of me.” i say, “there she is.” chris chuckles.

he tugs down his sweatpants to his mid thighs, his erection springs out as i look at it very obviously

i hover off of chris’s lap for a second to pull my small shorts off, discarding them in the corner.

“you’re so pretty.” chris whispers, i get flustered easily, “stop it chris.” i giggle.

chris wraps a hand around his length, pumping a few times slowly, almost as though he was waiting for me to do something myself.

i take his length into my hands as chris shuffles his back further up the headboard of our bed, sitting him up properly.

i hover up above chris’s tip as i attempt to line his pink tip up with my slit.

“you need some help there?” he asks, i nod, sinking my top teeth into my bottom lip.

he lays his large hands on my waist before pressing me down onto his length.

in the 3 weeks we’ve been apart i haven’t touched myself, it’s not the same without chris. meaning that i’m no longer used to chris’s size at all.

i let out a pathetic whimper as i look into chris’s eyes.

“you’re okay, just gonna give you a little bit at a time yeah?” chris says, all i can do is nod in response.

he lets me sink down further onto him, i feel him slowly getting deeper.

“oh chris- fuck.” i wince from the stretch. chris presses a quick kiss to my lips, “you’re okay, i promise baby.”

“you’re so tight aren’t you.” he whispers into my hair before bottoming out.

i sit fully down on his dick, feeling his tip rest on my cervix.

“w-why does it hurt.” i breathe out with a small laugh,

“you’re just not used to it, ya think?” he smiles, pressing another kiss to my swollen lips.

“yeah, i think so.”

“you wanna just sit here, try something new?” he asks, keeping his blue eyes fixed on mine.

i nod eagerly, letting my head fall towards onto his boney shoulder.

i adjust to his size slowly, chris wraps his arms around my back as he holds me close to him.

“feeling okay?” he whispers, i nod

the sensation of chris so deep inside of me, filling me completely to the brim is driving me crazy. i never want to move from this position.

“this feels.. so good chris.” i sigh, chris lets out a small laugh before pressing a kiss to my cheek.

i sit back up on his lap, earning a groan from chris’s pink lips.

“you like sitting on my cock don’t you?” he teases, reaching one of his large hands up and cupping my jaw, he presses a thumb into my mouth and rests its against his tongue.

i swirl my tongue around his thumb with a smile, “mhm!” i reply eagerly.

i lean back slightly and rest my hands against chris’s thighs from behind me,

“oh fuck-“ chris almost gasps, he reaches out his hand and rubs my lower stomach.

i look down and see a clear stomach bulge, i clench around chris just from the sight.

my eyes widen as i shift around on his lap, my clit rubs against the skin above his dick

the stomach bulge moves around with each of my movements. chris throws his head back against the headboard messily, “fuck you squeeze me so well.”

i let out a loud moan of his name as i repeatedly rut my hips, brushing my clit against his pelvis.

“i’m right here, you got it.” he praises, i clench around his dick and feel the knot in my stomach snap.

all pleasure washes over me, i feel myself release on his length as my cheeks flush.

“oh gosh-“ i pant, letting my head fall onto his boney collarbone.

i feel chris quickly thrust up into me desperately, i let out a small gasp from overstimulation.

“i’m sorry-“ he breathes before thrusting once more, he released inside of me as his hands find my way to my hips,

i feel him coat my insides with a loud whimper,

the only sound in the hot room are our pants, recovering from.. that.

i sit back up and go to pull off of him, “n-no.” chris stutters, grabbing my waist and pushing me back down onto his dick

“chris.. i need to go to get water.” i protest with a cheeky smile,

“no.. i want you to stay here on me.” chris laughs slightly.

“hmm…” i hum,

“please..?” chris whines, looking at me with with pouting lips.

“okay.” i give in, chris lays down onto the bed.

i lay down onto his body, him still buried inside of me, filling me perfectly.

he wraps his arms around me and presses a kiss to my forehead.

"you are so needy" i sigh with a small laugh,

"i mean you do keep giving me what i need.." he teases back

—————

@gabrielle-brun1 @ilovemymannnnnnnn @sturnioloxlver @buckys-goodgirl @sturniol0s @mattybsgf @stupid4sturniolo @lydi2718 @chrisstopherfilmed2 @flosslikeabosss @zturndq @skysturniolo @jetaimevous @sturniolo04 @luxy-nyx @aliceloveschris @livvy4realll @chrissturnsss @ilovemymannnnnnnn @chr1sgirl4life @luanetaluenta @sturnsssbow @mattfangirl @luvr4miya @luvtay111 @lolasturniolo @freshloveforthefit @ruedowney @lovingchrissposts @333michelle @h3arts4harry @sonicmacks @jamiesturniolo @chrisstopherfilmed @itzdarling @sturniolo-simp4life @daddyslilchickenfingers2 @ev3rgreenxtrees @lovergirl4387 @certifiednatelover @solarsturniolo @mattsenthusiast @yomamaslays4lyfe @peachmels @alinaa131 @pepsiluvr0209 @creamoncreamoncream2 @szobofc @mattscoquette @blahbell668 @sturniolo04 @ecilphttlunar @bitchydragonparadise @thematthewlover @sturni0l0 @ratatioulle @sturnsfav @chrisgetsmewetterxo @mattsonly @justalittle47 @mattsturnioloisbae@sunsetsturniolos @sturniolo04 @similartokayyz @pkfferoo @sturnsintrouble @ilovemattsturn @raysmayhem-72 @75sturn @sturniol0s @secret-sturniolo @hfkeclnendmwodne @sturniolosass @gxldenlush @stonermattsgf @101sara @beccaluvschris @oliviasturniolo21 @imwetforyourmom @tylerstacobell @sunsetsturniolos @aliceloveschris @jayz4dayz4 @sassysturniolo2008 @nyktoxs-lover @nathandoesgf @starsturns234 @chrissturnsss s @joemamaaa42069 @sturnthepot @zayyluvz @realuvrrr @livialifesblog @sturnioloblogs @riowritesitall

[neil-gaiman]

Hello, Neil Gaiman. I am writing this letter of gratitude because I am in despair, but I am obliged to you. I am Russian, I live in a small town in the south of Russia, in the Caucasus. a month ago I turned 16, so now I am fully responsible for all my actions. I'm bisexual, which is now illegal. you understand what I mean, but I’m simply scared to write about such things. absolutely no one knows about this, and I have to hide every day. this is an unbearable burden, but I must say thank you. because your projects are what gives me life. you have no idea how much pleasure it was for me, at eight years old, to fearfully admire Mr. Bobinsky. when, at 14, I finally saved up money for the Russian edition of Good Omens, which I had to order via the Internet not directly, but through my friends, I was quietly delighted. it is worth paying tribute to: this edition is really good and very warms the soul, its design may not be filled with elegance with a golden border, but it is very homely, cozy and imbued with love for the work, this can be felt, even if the translation is not the best. and on the very first pages I felt something that I had never experienced, having problems with the nervous system and anxiety: I felt protected and happy. I felt complete. each line was a sip of life-giving water for me. let me be so bold but this book is perfect for me and it's hard to believe it wasn't written for me personally haha. like two pieces of a puzzle. I hold the book of Good Omens, and I cry almost every time because it feels good just to hold it in my hands. you shouldn’t put this next to fanaticism, it’s just personal happiness. sometimes I felt so safe with this book that I hugged it as I fell asleep. then I saved up to the translation of script book for the first season, and I must say that I am confused, because there are no deleted scenes in it with Crowley shopping or the opening of Aziraphale's bookstore and others, and this was not clear to me. and a month ago, on October 30, my cousin, who is like my own sister, gave me the original Good Omens for my birthday. can you imagine? in all of Russia she was able to find only one person who carried out such foreign orders (please forgive me, I have little understanding of this). so, in some ineffable way, a copy was delivered to me via America from Corgi Books, I think, 2014. soft cover and thin pages, of course, but I'm so happy. and I’m also grateful to myself, because I’ve been learning English since I was seven, and therefore I’m glad that I can read the original. oh, you should have seen with what rapture I waited for the release of the second season at three in the morning! and with what delight I watched it in English without subtitles, understanding what was happening. this is happiness. what I want to say is that you bring…indescribable happiness to my life. you give me strength, and I don’t give up. I cry every time I allow myself to dream that I am escaping from here. that I can meet you and say thank you in person with my stupid accent, not so much because of my native language, but because of the braces, hahaha. but I never stop dreaming about it, although even this is hard. thank you for everything. I wish only peace and love. with devotion, love and gratitude, A.

I'm sending thoughts of love and concern. Stay safe.

[aajjks]

Destroyer (m)

Synopsis: you better start to love him before he destroys you and himself.

warnings: yándèrè, kïdnáppèd rèádèr, dárk contènt, câptívè rèádèr, obsèssíón, ünhëälthy bêhávïöür, dárk côntènt, ünstáble jk.

note: just a small little something, shouto’s ver. SHARE FEEDBACK AND TALK TO HIM. ENJOYYYY!!!!

“Jungkook… I hate you so much, I can’t even begin to describe how much I fucking despise your guts!” You scream at the top of your lungs, but your voice only comes back to you with the sound of echoing in the basement, Jungkook watched you with his calculated gaze. His lips were pressed in a thin straight line, you stared back at him with hatred filled eyes. A flash of longing and disappointment shined in his brown coloured eyes, but only for a second.

“Fuck you! Fuck you! I hate you!” You spat again, anger was coursing through your veins. He didn’t care, did he? Your skin was itching with irritation, it didn’t bug him. He was really insufferable. But you wanted to hurt him, in the worst ways possible.

But, To your disappointment, He only looked down.

“I know.” After what felt like an hour, he finally replied. Your eyebrows farrowed, what did he mean? “What?!?” You were now, genuinely confused. His tone was void of any emotion. It was cold, just like him. “I know, y/n.” He looked up from the concrete floor to you. His feet were starting to walk ahead in your direction, where you were held captive by the steel chains. “You never fail to express it. I-I know..” His eyes were glossy, his lips upturned, almost in a pout. If you didn’t know the real him, his tone would’ve made your heart shake.

But you knew damn well than to pity a monster like him.

“Oh that’s good! Kook, then… tell me..” you gave him a faux smile in return, taking in a deep breath. “Why don’t you fucking let me go?”

Your eyes never left his face. He was now close than ever, your faces were only inches apart, he could grab your face easily in his hands. You hated the way he looked at you, like you were his world. “Because I can’t. I can’t let you go, y/n.” His eyes were swimming in obsession, “I love you- AND I FUCKING HATE YOU!?!” It was infuriating.

This was starting to get frustrating, more than before. It had been months. Months without any human contact expect him, who claimed to be your lover. You only saw his face.

“I don’t care. I never cared. I love you and I only care about that. I don’t care if you hate or want to fucking kill me. I can even die for you.” Jungkook only dismissed your confession. His eyes had been covered with a dark shadow, his jaw was clenched, his tone was deadly. “Don’t you get it, sweetheart? I love you.” He chuckled at your disgusted expression.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to love me. My love for you is enough for both of us. I love you so fucking much, ever since I saw you, I have loved you ever since.” He whispered in a low husky tone.

He seemed to have completely change in a span of fifty seconds. It was scary. “I love you so much, like a fucking madman. I’m starting to go insane.” He gritted his teeth. His intense gaze sent shivers down your spine, his eyes were filled with craze, passion. “You’ll learn to love me, baby. Yes, you have to. You have to love me.” His fingers grabbed your face, gently but tightly. You only stared back in horror. His tone was dripping with craziness.

“You have to love me, sweetheart because now, my patience in running thin. I was never really a patient person y’know? But I have waited so fuckin’ long for you to finally become mine. Only mine,

So love me now, before I fuckin lose it and destroy both you and myself.”

[hughes86-43]

An Hour and Half | L.Hughes

summary - what happens when your flight seat mate happens to be a super cute guy and you only have an hour and half to talk to him

warnings/note- none; i have no clue how long a plane ride is from new jersey to detroit is sooo im guessing

Masterlist

“Hi, excuse me, my seat is by the window, if you don’t care to let me through?” You ask the young guy sitting in the middle seat in your row. He was wearing a ‘drew’ hoodie with black sweatpants.

Looking up at you from his phone, he immediately gets out of his seat. “Oh gosh, sorry! Of course, go ahead.” You give him a small smile and squeeze through to get to your seat. You loved taking the window seat, however you hated the awkwardness of getting through the row.

“Thank you,” You wince. “Oh, wait! Before you sit down, I hate to ask, but can you grab my water bottle out of the black and white carry on up above? I’m so sorry, I completely forgot about it!” The guy nods and opens the compartment and finds the water bottle.

“It’s no problem, really. Is there anything else you need?” He asks as he hands the bottle over to you.

You shake your head. “No, I think I’m all set.” The guy nods once again and sits back down in his seat.

You go back to getting comfortable in your seat and reply back to your mom telling her that you made it on to the plane. While the flight attendants go over the safety precautions, you can’t help but to side eye the cute guy sitting next to you. He had roughly curled hair and some small stubble on his face. He looked a bit tired.

He must’ve noticed you side eyeing him because he removes his earbud and asks, “Did you need out? Sorry, I can’t hear anything with these,” he points to his earbud.

Immediately blushing, because there’s no way that he totally didn’t see you checking him out, you reply, “Oh, no! I’m all good! Also, doesn’t seem like anybody else is in the row so that’s good!”

The guy smiles at your nervousness. “Yeah, it makes the plane ride ten times better when nobody is at the end of the row. Although for you, you would have to ask me to move but still, one person is better than two to get through,” the guy laughs out.

“Honestly though. Last plane ride I was on, none of the people sitting in my row would move, so I had to awkwardly try to go over them. Gosh, it was so embarrassing but why not just move out of the way!” The guy laughs at that, putting his earbuds back into his case.

“Well, if you need me to move, just ask and I will. Since we’re here for a bit, guess I’ll introduce myself, my name is Luke.” He sticks his hand out for you to shake and introduce yourself. You’re not one to talk much to the person sitting next to you on the plane, but something about him honestly has you intrigued.

Shaking his hand, you say, “My name is Y/N, nice to meet you.”

“Y/N, lovely name. So are you heading to Michigan as a trip or do you have family there?” He asks as he returns his hand back to his lap.

You lean against the window. “I actually have some family there, and it’s my grandmother’s 90th birthday so I’m heading back to that. I’ll stay for a bit. What about you? What has you going to Michigan?” You raise your eyebrow waiting on his answer.

“Wow, 90 years old, go her,” he smiles, “Well, long story is my team just finished for the season and I’m heading home to be with the family and spend time with friends that I need to catch up with.”

You nod. “If that’s the long story, what would the short story be?”

He laughs and tries to think, “Um, the short story would probably be going home, but the long story was better.” You laugh as you fiddle with the water bottle in your hand.

You go back to asking about his team he mentioned. “So your team? What sport do you play?”

He looks at you weirdly for a second before giving a toothy grin. “Do you live in New Jersey?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Have you heard of the New Jersey Devils?” Luke asks.

You think back to a sign you saw. “Honestly, I saw a billboard about them, and I think my co-worker is obsessed with them, but mostly no.”

He lets out another laugh, and you raise your eyebrow. “You live in New Jersey, and you barely know about the New Jersey Devils? Do you know or watch anything about hockey?”

“I mean, I seen that one movie. Gosh, what is it? Is it like called ‘sensation’ or something?” You try to think. “Oh gosh, no! It wasn’t called ‘sensation’ it was called—”

He cuts you off, “Miracle.”

You scream out, “Yes!” Then wince as you realize that was a bit loud. Lowering your voice, you continue, “Yes, the hockey movie called Miracle. My dad made me watch all the time, but that’s all I know about hockey really.” You shrug.

If Luke didn’t know better, he already knows that he wants to get to know you better. “Miracle’s a good movie. Anyway, back to my team, I actually play for the New Jersey Devils.”

You shake your head, not believing him. “No way, prove it!”

Luke grabs his phone out of his pocket and shows you a recent game day photo of him in his jersey. “See, jersey, skates, and everything. I play on the defense side.”

You take a minute, probably too long, to look at the photo. Gosh, he did look in his jersey, and his hair was a bit longer in that photo. “Okay, I believe you. So, do you like it? Sorry, if that’s a bit too much to ask, I’m just a curious person.”

“No, it’s okay. Honestly, I love it. Some days and games are a bit tougher than others, but I still love it no matter what. I actually play with one of my older brothers on the team,” Luke says, a bit proud of playing with his brother.

“That’s awesome, I couldn’t imagine playing with my brother on a team, so that’s really awesome,” you say.

“Yeah, it really is,” he beams, “Anyway, the season just ended for us last week due to getting eliminated from the playoffs.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. That must suck!”

“Yeah, but we have a chance to look over the season and come back better next season. Like yeah it sucks, but I also get to go home early. It’s a win lose situation,” he shrugs.

“Still, I see how it would suck, but if you didn’t get eliminated, you wouldn’t be on this plane talking to me right now,” you smile.

“Ha, I guess you’re right,” he guides a hand through his curls. “Enough about my job, what do you do back in New Jersey?”

You wince at the mention of talking about what you do for work. Your job recently wasn’t doing it for you. You had been working at an advertising agency for a while now, but after awhile, you decided it was not for you. You wanted a new job, but you also haven’t been looking. “Eh, I work at an advertising agency. Overall, it pays the bills, but it’s not my favorite.”

Luke replies, “Did you go to school for advertising or something related?”

You shake your head, “No, I actually went for public relations, but somehow I got this job in advertising. One of my friends put in a good word for me, but I have slowly started to dread going to work.”

Luke nods, “I’m sorry that you don’t like your job.”

You shrug, looking passed him to the couple across the aisle. “Honestly, I should really get a new job if I hate it so much, but the idea of going through the process of applying and interviewing is so nerve wracking for me.”

Luke listens to see if you’re going to add anymore before talking. Truthfully, you’ve never seen a guy take the time to listen so well about your problems, let alone a stranger you just met. He speaks up again, “Although that would be nerve wracking, it would mean that you get a chance to get a new job. I say go for it, especially since you’re not loving the job you already have. You should have a job that you love to do, not a job that just pays the bills.” Honestly, Luke has no idea where all these encouraging words are coming from, but he was just letting them spill out in the chance it would help you.

“You’re right, I totally should. You’ve changed my perspective, I guess when I head back to New Jersey I’ll look at job openings related to what I want to do,” you say, smiling up at him.

You and Luke continue to talk for the next hour on the plane. Talking about various adventures you’ll both get into when you’re back in Michigan, he talks about his brothers and how they both play in the NHL, and you talk about your grandparents and how they are you’re world. Time has a sense of flying by when you’re enjoying time with someone, and surprisingly you’re enjoying and loving the time talking to Luke. Even though you both just met, you two could talk forever. You really didn’t want to get off the plane as that would mean you wouldn’t be able to talk to him much more.

An hour or so later, the moment you had been dreading since talking to him has come, time to depart the plane. You’re walking down the hallway leading out of the plane when Luke speaks up next to you. “I know it’s crazy that we just met, but honestly you’re the easiest person to talk to that I have ever met. Hopefully that made sense?”

You nod, looking into his eyes, trying to savor the last look at him. “It made sense. I think the same goes for me. You listened to what I had to say, which is surprising because most people stop listening to me after awhile,” you blush at his intense stare, actually noticing how tall he was when you stood next to him.

You both make it through the exit. Luke turns to you again and tries to say, “Since we’re both gonna be here in Michigan for a bit, we should—” but he gets cut off by someone yelling. “LUKE!”

You both turn to where the sudden yelling was from. He mumbles, a hint of red touching his cheeks, “my brother, Quinn.” You nod, moving to the side so he can hug his brother.

Quinn must notice you, because he says to Luke, “Oh, sorry for interrupting, go ahead.” He pushed Luke to go back talking to you, but when he does, he notices that you have walked off to meet with, what he assumes is, your grandparents.

He smiles as he watches you hug and kiss them both. He watches as you hold a finger, signaling them to hold on for a second, and you walk back over to him. “I’m sorry, I gotta head on out, it was so lovely to meet you and talk to you, Luke.”

He smiles, “It was great to meet you, too, Y/N. As I was trying to say before, since we’re both in Michigan for a bit, how about we try and hang out?”

You try to stay cool, but you still let out a massive grin. “Yes, absolutely! I would love to!”

“Great! Reach out to me!” He moves closer to you, before he chickens out, he pulls you into a hug. You instantly hug him back, thinking it was crazy how you just met him and now don’t want him to go. “Bye, see you soon,” he says, pulling away and walking towards his brother.

You stand there a bit in shock before yelling across to him, “Wait, but I don’t have your number!”

Luke turns around, he gives you a grin, “Check your bag! I might’ve put it in there while I was getting it down!” You blush, giving him a thumbs up before heading over to your grandparents with the biggest grin on your face.

-

Later on, you finally get to unpacking your bag. Upon unzipping it, a piece of paper falls out. He must’ve written it when you went to the bathroom. Written on it, it says…

“It was great meeting you, and you’re the best person ever to talk to. If you ever need someone to listen, call me… xxxxxxxx”

Needless to say, you did call him, and he listened to you all night long. Both of you were in over your heads with each other.

[cutielando]

happy ~ lando norris

Summary: After 5 years together, having made it through thick and thin, it was finally time for the long awaited wedding between Y/N and Lando.

Words: 1.2k+

Other works: my masterlist

♡♡♡♡♡

"Why am I so nervous?" you asked Cisca and your mother, both of them helping you get the last things ready on your dress while simultaneously trying to calm you down.

"Darling, you're going to give yourself a panic attack if you don't stop stressing" Cisca said, your mother agreeing with her.

You sighed, staring at your reflection in the mirror while the 2 mothers worked around you.

Your wedding day has been something you have waited for your entire life. The day Lando proposed, you felt one step closer to living your dream. Seeing yourself in your wedding dress all glammed up made tears well up in your eyes, but you kept them at bay.

It was supposed to be a perfect day, after all. You were marrying the love of your life in front of all of your families.

A knock on your door made you look anxiously towards the closed doors, your nerves worse than ever. 

Adam, Lando's father, poked his head inside, his eyes landing on all three of you.

"Are you ready?" he asked, eyeing you up and smiling.

"I'm nervous" you admitted, making him chuckle and enter the room, closing the door behind him.

Due to the fact that your father had passed away when you were young, Adam decided to step up and be the one walking you down the aisle.

Something that brought tears to your mother's eyes when he had first suggested it.

"Trust me, you can't be more nervous than the groom himself. He's been stressing about ever since he woke up" Adam reassured you, hoping it would make you feel slightly better.

It did, in all honesty. It made you chuckle as well, already imagining Lando stressing over every single small thing that you could possibly think of. His shoes weren't right, his tie was crooked, his curls weren't on point, you name it.

He was a perfectionist at heart, especially on this day since he wanted everything to be perfect. You deserved a perfect wedding day.

"Honey" your mother took your hands and smiled. "You remind me of myself on my wedding day to your father. I was a nervous wreck the entire we were planning the wedding, but when I saw your father waiting for me at the alter, nothing else mattered in that moment. You and Lando love each other dearly and you're going to have an amazing life together. Go out there and get your boy, leave the nerves at the door"

You nodded and hugged her tightly, burying your face in her neck.

"I'm ready" you told Adam once you pulled away, taking his arm.

"Let's get you married"

♡♡♡♡♡

As the music started playing and the big oak doors opened, your eyes immediately landed on your soon-to-be husband waiting for you, Max and his brother by his side.

Adam and you slowly walked towards him, smiling at the guests all around you. 

Once you reached Lando, Adam took your hand and clasped it in his, smiling at you with tears in his eyes.

"Take care of him for us" he said, making everyone in the room swallow down a giggle.

"I will" you whispered back, squeezing his hands before turning towards Lando.

Your eyes were locked on each other, a silent conversation taking place. He looked dashingly handsome, his tux amazing on his fit physique.  You really hit the jackpot with him.

"Hello, everyone" the reverend began speaking. "We are gathered here today to celebrate the marriage between these two exceptional young people, Y/N and Lando. I can see how excited the bride and the groom are, so I won't make this any longer than it should be. Y/N, Lando, have you prepared your vows?" you both nodded, and then the reverend motioned for you to go first.

You let out a deep breath, taking Lando's hands in yours.

"Way to make me break the ice, reverend" you joked, making everyone laugh including Lando. "Lando, you're my best friend, my partner in crime, my gaming buddy, the absolute love of my life, the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. When we met all those years ago, I could only dream of reaching this day, the day that would make you officially mine forever. I'm grateful for everything that you do for me, for being who you are and for loving me despite my flaws. You always know what to say, you always know how to make me feel loved and appreciated. I'm proud of everything that you do, of how successful your career is and how much potential you're always showing. I love you, and I cannot wait to spend the rest of my days loving you and enjoying life by your side"

Everyone in the room was crying, your mothers holding onto each other as they silently cried in their tissues.

"Y/N, light of my life, I'm so proud of us for being here today. Ever since I laid my eyes on you when we first met, I knew you would be the woman that I would marry. You bring a light and stability in my life that I've been lacking for as long as I can remember. I can be myself when I'm around you, I can escape the fame and pressure when it's just the two of us, just how I want it to be. You have been nothing short of supportive in my career, coming to my races and cheering me on, believing in me when I didn't believe in myself. I cannot thank you enough. I promise to always love you and care for you, keep you safe and show you just how grateful I am to have you in my life. I love you so damn much and I cannot wait for you to finally become a Norris"

You smiled, tears threatening to fall from your eyes and ruin your perfect makeup, but you didn't care in that moment. The only thing you cared about was Lando.

"Do you have the rings?" the reverend asked, and Max quickly got the velvet box out of his pocked and gave it to Lando.

He took out the rings, giving you his while he took yours.

"Y/N Y/L/N, do you take Lando Norris to be your lawfully wedded husband, to live together in holy matrimony, to love him, to honor him, to comfort him, and to keep him in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, for as long as you both shall live?"

"I do" you almost yelled out, making everyone chuckle due to how eager you were.

"Lando, do you take Y/N Y/L/N to be your lawfully wedded wife, to live together in holy matrimony, to love her, to honor her, to comfort her, and to keep her in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, for as long as you both shall live?"

"I do" Lando smiled.

You both put your rings on each other's fingers, smiling like two idiots in love while waiting for the part of the ceremony that you had been looking forward to.

"By the power invested in me, I pronounce you husband and wife. Lando, you may kiss your bride" the reverend hadn't even finished what he was saying before Lando wrapped his arms around your waist and kissed you.

Everyone cheered for you, clapping and whistling for the two newlyweds.

As you pulled away, you didn't acknowledge anything around you except for Lando, your husband.

Finally, your husband.

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[butchtheworld]

crip tips

i'm an experienced disabled person (EDS, CFS, POTS, chronic pain). here are some of the things that help me get by as a college student (note: i use a wheelchair and a cane most days. i also am fortunate enough to have decent medical care, meds, and my aforementioned mobility aids)

shower chair. i can't stand for long enough to shower, and especially not if it's a hot shower. i got a cheap one off of amazon that has three legs and a plastic seat. that plastic seat makes it super easy to keep clean. i know there's a weird sort of embarrassment about sitting in the shower, but PLEASE, it is so much better than sitting on the floor in the shower or falling. in my dorms, there are two (2) showers with fold-down seats. i put a small towel down on the seat so i'm not bare-ass on this dorm bathroom surface, then i wash it down after.

normal wheelchair gloves are fingerless, which suck for winter. BUT, winter cycling gloves have the same cushioning on the palms and grip material and fingers. they're not super warm, but throw on a pair of thin gloves underneath (or, if you're like me, propelling keeps your hands super hot anyways).

an ice pack on the back of your neck can help with migraines and dizziness. i keep a small one in my freezer at all times. i tuck it into a hairband so it can be hands-free.

PLEASE adjust your cane/crutch/crutches to the right height. it helps so much with shoulder/elbow pain and balance. if it doesn't feel right, it probably isn't. the handle of my cane hits around the height of my wrist if my arm is just hanging down.

if you have hyper mobility, try high-rise shoes. i wear only high-rise converse and doc martens, which i can lace tightly around my ankles to keep them from rolling or sliding out of place.

(MENTIONS FOOD AND CALORIES) keep an easy, high-in-calorie food around. for me, eating on high pain days is essentially impossible. so, i need something that i can get myself to eat (like ice cream or canned soup or chips) that won't take any effort. ice cream is a great one for me, since it's sweet and cold and dense. even if it's not healthy, nothing is more unhealthy than not eating.

please, please, please find a community of disabled people. most of my close friends are able-bodied and, as much as i love them, they just can't understand it like other disabled people do. i found two great communities on my college campus, but i've also heard that support groups are a great way to meet people within the community

if you have any other tips, reblog with them. i remember the beginning days of my illness and how daunting all of this was. this is how we support our community.

[headspace-hotel]

I have an essay brewing in my head constantly about lawns. Which, well, unsurprising, since I post about how I hate lawns all the time, but I think the "lawn" and "landscaping" centered way of thinking about Places Outside is a Bigger Thing that Connects to Other Things

(What isn't? Having ideas about concepts is always like this.)

I will introduce my ideas by a situation where they apply: Sometimes life-forms mimic other life forms. One form of mimicry is called Vavilovian mimicry, where weed species in crops grown by humans evolve over time to be more similar to the crops.

Vavilovian mimicry basically helps weeds survive because the weeds are adapted to the care-taking regimen of the crops, and because the human caretakers of the crop can have a hard time telling them apart, which means they might say "Ehh...I'll wait until it grows up so I can be sure I'm not pulling up my crop."

I think there's something similar at work among flower gardens and landscaping...but it's different.

Regular people don't know the name of every plant that might possibly grow in their flower beds, and they often pull up plants they don't know just because they don't know them. They sometimes say they pull up a plant that "looks weedy" or "looks like a weed."

I think to myself...what does "weedy" look like?

This question collided unexpectedly in my brain with an insight I had about invasive species that I could not explain.

I have to get rid of a lot of Callery pear, wintercreeper, honeysuckle, burningbush, privet, English ivy, and other plants that are invasive where I live. And strangely- many invasive plants look similar in ways they don't share with very many native species. They tend to have small, round or squat, glossy leaves, and they tend to have a very dense growth habit.

I can think of several possible explanations: Maybe these species thrive in North America today because of the loss of controlled burning, but their characteristics look so distinct next to native species because they relate to things that would make a species fire-intolerant? This doesn't seem quite right, since it doesn't predict level of fire-adaptedness in native species.

Another explanation is better: they were selected for these traits by humans for their usefulness in landscaping. Dense growth habit would be useful for creating hedges or ground covers. This is why many invasives were originally planted, right? And small leaves might feel or be perceived as less "messy" when they fall.

But I think this is a clue to something else going on. What does "weedy" look like?

Some plants go on one side of "weeds vs. flowers" and some on the other, and it's almost totally arbitrary...so how do gardeners make the call so decisively?

I think about the commonest "landscaping" plants- Knock Out roses, hostas, petunias, begonias, boxwoods and so on- they share a lot of the characteristics mentioned above. Shiny or at least smooth, typically small and squat leaves, dense and compact growth habit.

Then I think about some of the commonest and most important "weedy" native wildflowers, such as goldenrods, asters, milkweeds, Joe-Pye weed, ironweed, sunflower. They all differ from the above in at least one striking way. Mostly, they have hairy leaves and stems, long and thin leaves, and a tendency to grow up tall before blooming. Milkweed has smooth leaves, but its leaves are long and very big. Hmm...

And I think I can guess where this is coming from.

Landscaping and garden designs often look like this

See how the plants are drawn and arranged to cover a space in two dimensions, mostly not overlapping with each other? This is very easy to plan and design. And those common landscaping plants I mentioned—hostas, Knock Out roses, boxwoods, and so on—are very good at acting just like a two-dimensional representation of them does. Just look, you can see them:

Now look at those important native wildflowers I mentioned:

Goldenrod

Ironweed

Milkweed

These guys don't fill much space in a horizontal plane, they go straight up. They don't exclude other plants from very much space either. Plants could grow under them and among them. So they're not very good for "filling up" space, and their opener, lankier, less dense shape doesn't do a good job at blocking other plants from growing.

In a garden of North American prairie- or meadow-adapted plants, the plants wouldn't exclude each other and stay within their designated spots because they're evolved to intermix with a great variety of plants.

"Separateness" is a big part of the typical "landscape" aesthetic. These plants are very neatly separate from each other. This is what looks "neat" and well-kept to us...the opposite of "weedy."

This could mean our garden and flower beds are affected by a selective pressure a lot like the Vavilovian mimicry situation. But instead of weeds being selected to look like intentionally grown plants, the intentionally grown plants are being selected to look different from weeds.

The subtle difference makes perfect sense. In a field, the rule is "leave the plant there if you're unsure" because that's your food. In a flower bed, the rule is "get rid of the plant if you're unsure" because having weeds is more aesthetically unacceptable than having blank space.

The point is: Ecology needs to be a big part of gardening and landscaping, because you are DOING ecology. Even if you don't know the evolutionary principles, you're acting them out.

Just like the ineffable preferences of female birds give the males weird elaborate display structures, ineffable aesthetic "senses" that govern our "built" world slowly turn it into something weird.

[dycefic]

The Hearthstone God

[The sequel to the God of Prophecy, and the Serpent God of Protection]

---

Fire is out of fashion, in this new age.

Some of my kind have found new homes, new names, in factories or forges, in the hearts of wildfires or crystals or volcanoes.

Most of us are simply forgotten.

I was a fire god, once. A god of gathering, a god of communion, a god of song and story. But there are no hearthstones now. No fires around which families gather to eat and talk and tell stories.

I am lucky. I am tied to a great flat stone near a lake. A lake that has survived all the wild exuberance of men, when they learned to change the world around them. Once, this was a place where travellers stopped to rest. At first they travelled on their feet, or on half-wild horses. Then there were carts, and a road. Much later, cars drove down the road. The road was paved.

But some things do not change. People need clean water to drink, and the spring here is good. They need to rest, when they are weary. And even now, when they come to camp in nylon tents, to fish in the lake, or to hunt the ducks, or drive camper-vans to the flat place, their ancient instincts wake, and they turn to fire once more. They light new fires atop my stone, so flat and safe, from which no log will roll to set the woods afire.

Not so many come now. Camping is less popular these days. But some still come. Some still light their fires, and settle around my stone, and talk, or listen to music, or tell stories. So I survive, just barely, on the edges of belief.

I feel it, when things begin to change. Something is happening. Something is drawing old gods back. Not the great ones, risen beyond mortal understanding, but the oldest gods, the small gods, those who rose when humankind were still learning what they were.

Far to the west of me, a god even more ancient than I wakes, and begins to hunt again. I remember the stories that were once told of that old serpent, and tell them over to myself in the long fireless nights.

A god of prophecy, not of this land, settles south and west, and I remember tales of ancient ravens, their wisdom and their guile and their sharp, sharp eyes. There was a raven clan once, who passed this way in the days of skin garments and stone tools, but I have forgotten their name. I only remember the symbol they wore, the black bird with its spread wings, marked in charcoal or charring on wooden talismans or leather garments.

I wait, to see who will awaken next.

To my great surprise, it is me.

The people who come this time aren’t like the campers. They come at night, a ragged family group with few blood ties between them, with a single tent and few possessions carried on devices I haven’t seen before. Bicycles, they’re called, slung over with bags the way ponies used to be. They come at night, and hide when cars pass on the road.

They light a fire on my stone, with wood scavenged from the forest, and huddle around its warmth. They don’t speak much, not at first, but they say enough. They have no home, I learn. They are travellers of a kind I have not known before, who are allowed to stop nowhere, but have no goal but a place to rest. They are thin, and worn, and so tired. So very tired.

They need a hearth.

I am only a weak shadow of a god, now, who once recorded the songs and stories of a thousand generations in my ancient stone, but I am still a god of fire. Their fire burns slow, their little fuel lasting well. The food they heat over it sustains them better. The water of that spring, my spring, puts a little life back in them. This stone has lain in this place since great monsters walked this world, since before humans spoke words to one another, and I came into being with the first fire that burned on it. I am old, old, and though weak, I am not powerless.

They stay.

I cannot speak to them. I am old, and weak, and they do not believe. But slowly, with the power of the fires they build every night, with the tiny offerings of scraps of food spilled into the flames, with their growing confidence in the safety of this place, I am able to do more. I give them dreams and they find the cave not far away, where they can hide. They dream of fish, and begin to try to catch some. A woman remembers that some of the local plants are safe to eat, when I slowly wake a long-forgotten memory of a camping trip from her childhood.

And then a child, a strange, quiet child who rarely speaks, a child without mother or father, in the care of an older brother who is exhausted to the very edge of death but cannot give up while she needs him… that child begins to hear.

She sits on my stone, sometimes for hours, not moving or speaking. It worries the others, but at least she is quiet, at least she is no trouble, and they are beginning to associate their hearth with safety. So they let her sit.

She is *listening*. She is listening to the sound of the water, to the sounds of the forest, to the wind blowing. And because she is listening, where no-one else has listened for so long, I sing to her. I sing to her the songs of thousands of years. From the wordless music of the earliest people, who sang what was in their hearts without words, to the songs I have learned from the fishermen with their radios and bluetooth speakers.

I do not know if she hears me, for some time. But then, one night, while they sit around their fire and eat food the oldest have almost certainly stolen, she sings one of my songs. “In a cavern… on a canyon… excavating for a mine…” she sings in a small voice. The others are startled, confused, for she has not spoken aloud since some bad thing they do not name happened, but one of the older ones knows the song and sings with her.

I have always liked ‘Clementine’. It’s been popular with campers for a long time.

The next day, while she sits on my stone, she sings along to one of the wordless songs the Raven People whose name I no longer remember once sang. It is a lullaby, a soft croon to soothe an infant, passed from mother to mother, and she seems to take pleasure in it.

She can hear me. She can even answer me, as the voice driven away by pain and fear begins to return. And so I grow stronger still. Strong enough to make the raven sign on the stone, one day, in the ashes of the fire of the night before.

She takes a half burned stick, and draws the sign on the stone. Pleased, I show her another sign, a leaping fish. She draws that too.

Soon, I need not shift the ashes. I can show her the pictures in her mind, and she draws them. She draws the wheel of a cart, and into her heart I whisper the stories the travellers in covered wagons once told over my stone. She draws a fish, and I make her laugh silently with the jests of fishermen who boast of fish who escaped them. She draws a horse, and I tell her about the wild horses who once drank at this lake, about the men and women who captured and tamed them and rode them through the forest when it was far greater than it is now. She draws a long-toothed cat, and I show her the great cat that once slept on my stone, and denned in the cave where her new found family sleep.

One night, when all the others are asleep and my fire has burned down to coals, she creeps back to the stone and looks into the coals. “Who are you?” she asks. “Are you real?”

She is afraid that the voice in her mind is the voice of madness, a lie created by a mind that does not work like other minds, that has endured great hardship. I do not want this child to be afraid. To instill fear runs counter to my very nature, save in whoever might threaten those my hearth protects.

I am a god of the hearth. I am a god of food, and communication, and peace, and safety. I am all the things that fire used to mean, before humans learned again to fear the thing they had tamed. I do not often take a form, for fire is my form, but for her I must try.

There was a wise woman once, who knew me, whose clan visited this lake several times every year. I watched her grow up, and grow old. I watched her learn of the god of the fire stone, and I watched her teach others. She slept beside me as a child, and as a woman. She sang her children to sleep beside me, and her grandchildren, and dozed beside me as an old, old woman. To her, I was represented by a sign of a flame in an oval, a fire and a stone.

I build a likeness of her out of the light of the coals and the shadows of smoke, a child with straight dark hair and a simple tunic, and in lines of light I draw the sign of the fire and the stone on the outlined chest. “I am the fire,” I tell her, “and the stone. I am all the fires that have ever burned here, all the stories told, all the songs sung, all the meals eaten. I am the traveler’s hearth, and the rest for the weary, and this is my place.”

“Piedra de fuego,” she says, tracing the symbol with her finger in the air. “The fire stone.”

“Yes. I am the god of this place.”

She frowns at this. “My brother says that God is in the sky.”

“Many gods are in the sky.” I cannot continue to hold the form of the girl, but the coals shift to make my sign. “I am not. I am here. I have always been here, since the first people built a fire on my stone, and warmed themselves.”

She nods slowly. “You are… a small god,” she says thoughtfully. “A place god. Like in movies.”

“Yes.” I’ve heard of movies, which are a new way of telling old, old stories. “Old places, important places, often have gods. And gods who are forgotten return to their old places and wait, until someone believes again.”

“Will you protect us?” she asks. “When the police come, to tell us to move on?”

“I am not strong,” I tell her sadly. “I cannot make men go away from here, if they are dangerous, or even call game here for you as I once did. But what I can do, I will do.”

She sits watching the coals for a long time, thinking. “Can we make you stronger?”

I think too, and she waits patiently. “You have already made me stronger. You listened. You believed. If you can convince the others to believe, that will make me stronger still.”

She sighed. “They don’t believe in anything, anymore. Not good things.”

It is a sad thing, that she knows that. They’ve been trying to hide it from her. “Then,” I tell her, “that means there is a place in their hearts that is ready for me. I am not hope. I am not a happy ending. I am not a god in the sky. I am a stone, and a fire, and a song. I am *real*. They can believe in what is real.”

The next night, she asks for a story, and one of the adults tells her an old fairy-tale from a country far away.

The next night, again, she asks for a story, and another adult tells a funny story about his childhood.

On the third night, she asks her brother to tell her a story. He tries, but he is so tired - not physically, but emotionally - that he runs out of words. So she lays her hand on his arm and offers to tell him a story, instead.

And she tells them all a story about a stone near a lake, flat and strong, that people wearing uncured skins and carrying flint weapons built a fire on. She tells of centuries passing, of people coming to the lake on their feet, on horses, in carts and wagons, in cars and motor-homes. Of thousands of years of fires, of people gathered around them, of the great continuity of humanity, and the Piedra De Fuego that has lain in this place since time began, listening to the stories and the songs and the voices of people long gone. Somewhere in the stone, she says, laying her hand on it, all those stories are remembered. All those songs are still sung. And it will remember us too.

I don’t know if it will work. But I was right. People need to believe in something. They need something to hold onto, when times are hard, when the ties of community and family are broken and they feel alone. And a stone thousands of years old, and a fire endlessly renewed on that stone, always new… that is real. They touch me, and think of those who came before, of thousands of years of history meeting them in this place, and they feel less alone.

It’s not much, not yet. But it is something. My nature, my existence, as explained to them by my small, strange priestess, is a slender lifeline flung to those who are adrift, a tiny certainty in a world they do not trust. And the more they believe in that lifeline, that certainty, then the more they believe in me. I *am* growing stronger.

When the police come, I will not be able to make them leave… but I think I am strong enough now to hide my people from unkind eyes. And if I can do that, then their faith will grow.

Tonight, three more people come. A mother and two children, weary and beaten down with hardship. My people welcome them, give them fish and greens grown by the lake, speak kindly to them. And when they have eaten, my little priestess sits between the two children and tells them a story of a stone, and a fire, and thousands of years of stories and songs, and she sings a wordless lullaby six thousand years forgotten, but living again in a child who draws the sign of the Raven in the dirt while she sings, and the sign of the fire on the stone.

And I grow a little stronger.

[nmakii]

SWAY WITH ME…

— a date with alastor didn’t go as he had planned… but, it wasn’t that bad after all…

hi!!! i saw this idea from @callmechito and, i didnt make the idea exactly the way specified. but, i really wanted to try :)!! it is late at night though, so i did not make it as long as i wanted it to be (sorry if it’s rushed!!)

acid rain. perhaps it would’ve been wiser to check the 666 news weather report before scheduling your date…

you stood by the window of your hotel room, wearing what you’d call your sunday’s bests. thousands of sinners’ skins burning on impact from the acidic rain pouring outside.

knock!

“s/o, are you decent? may i come in?” a static voice came from the other side of the door. “uuh, yeah! come in” you called back to him as he gently opened the door.

and on the other side of the door, you saw a different side of alastor that had never been seen before; a smitten yet small smile drawn on his face, wearing a red coat, as per usual (though this time, his coat is not tattered), and his big doe eyes shyly looking at the outfit you’d chosen for your proposed date.

alastor let out a quiet sigh, an overwhelming feeling filling his chest, making it hard to breath. “my dear! well, aren’t you stunning? i might just drop dead right now, haha!” alastor laughed, a laugh track joining along. “haha… it’s a shame that we have to cancel our date…” you smiled bittersweetly, quite honestly looking forward to the date. it must have been a millennia since your last date, not to mention how it is with alastor, hell’s most eligible bachelors if i do say so myself…

“well, who said we had to cancel our date?” he tilted his head. “i’d think the rain outside would speak for itself…” you muttered out. “we could just have our date here at the hotel! we could simply move the date to my hotel room, would you like that?” his fingers tapped against his staff.

“su-“”brilliant! let’s make haste now!” he smiled gleefully, taking his hand in yours and shadow teleporting you to his hotel room— the warm red tones of the hotel harshly contrasting with the cool blue and green tones of the forest on the other side.

alastor took your fingers in his hand and gently guided you to a table with two seats. he pulled one out and helped you into the chair. “just sit tight now, darling. i’ll have niffty whip something up for us.” he smiled before leaving the room.

minutes later, alastor came back— two delectable dishes in hand. he placed one in front of you before sitting down himself and digging in.

the two of you had spent your dinner getting to know each other better (more like just him getting to know you better…), talking about whatever came to mind.

not for one second had you ever doubted alastor tonight. everything coming from his beautifully thin lips had sounded as genuine as ever.

after dinner had ended, you wiped your mouth with the napkin on your lap. “alastor, i had a really good time…” you grinned awkwardly, blood rushing to your face. “i think i must go now, i have a busy day tomorrow…” you frowned slightly before standing up to leave.

“nonsense! come, dance with me for a while, would you?” he teasingly pleaded, placing a hand on your shoulder. you hesitated for a while, considering the consequences of staying up an extra few minutes. “ahh… i guess it couldn’t hurt..” you smiled as alastor walked to his vinyl record played, placing the needle onto the grooves of the CD.

as alastor placed a hand on your shoulder and hip, sway by michael bublé began playing. you copied his actions, placing your own hands on his hip and shoulder as the two of you began dancing to the soft music, alastor’s soft voice singing along to the tune.

you soaked in the soft sight of the scary radio demon, as docile as a doe. you rested the side of your head against alastor’s chest, feeling every vibration as he sang. alastor sighed softly, all of this simply being too much for him to act calmly.

all of these emotions were too much, alastor needed a way to release them… he took his hand off of your shoulder before gently gripping your chin. he leaned down a bit before kissing you.

his lips smiled into the kiss, the hand on your hip snaking up to cup your cheek.

the kiss lasted quite long before he finally pulled away, a proud yet mischievous grin decorating his handsome face.

alastor leaned down, his mouth hovering over your ear. “would you like to know something, gorgeous?” he whispered, the hand on your chin resting once more on your shoulder. “i’d say i’m the luckiest man in hell right now, on a date with a treasure like you. i might just die, again!” he laughed. though, despite his joke— when he had said that, the radio filter on his voice was gone, letting you hear his true voice.

you looked up to meet his careful gaze as you grinned lovingly “i had a marvelous time with you… you make me happy that… im in hell.” you laughed.

as the song stopped, alastor paused, thinking to himself quietly. he dropped your hand before cupping your back. “you said you must leave, didn’t you? i wouldn’t want to be the reason you’re groggy in the morning!” he smiled, walking you over to your hotel room, just a few ways down.

“i did have an amazing night with you, my dear. i hope we could do this again, perhaps again during an acid rain shower?” he teased while laughing. a calm composure remaining on his face.

and despite that poker face, he was in the best terms; burning on the inside out. his longing for you filling all of his senses. he must stay gentlemanly though… so, for now, he’ll cherish the beautiful date he had with you tonight.

[wonryllis]

YES BABY? ﹙ in a lovesick smile.﹚

────𝖺𝗅𝗍𝖾𝗋𝗇𝖺𝗍𝗂𝗏𝖾𝗅𝗒, 𝗐𝗁𝖾𝗋𝖾 𝗁𝖾 𝗌𝗁𝗈𝗐𝗌 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝗐𝗁𝖺𝗍 𝗂𝗍'𝗌 𝗅𝗂𝗄𝖾 𝗍𝗈 𝖻𝖾 𝗅𝗈𝗏𝖾𝖽 𝗋𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍 .

( NOTES. ) lee heeseung as your comfort love. fluff. comfort hurt. fem!centered. lowercase intended. 810wc. frm my old acct. 𓈃 ๋ 𝐍𝐄𝐖 峠

reqs are open!

you watch as heeseung laughs with jay, giggling and snorting over something you assume jay told him. for minutes you have been contemplating whether you should tell him or not, more like ask him. afterall it’s something he bought, you can’t just have it like that, even if its as minuscule as it is.

for as long as you can remember you had been scolded and talked bad about when you took anything without asking, even something like a thin cucumber slice as a child. eventually you stopped, not bothering to have or ask for things that you liked or needed; being told you waste money when you only wanted to enjoy suppressed your will to voice out or act on your cravings.

walking up to the corner of the couch where both the boys are seated, you stand in front of heeseung. looking at the tiny mole near his jaw in a fiddling nervousness while he's focused on jay. but all that focus shifts on you before you even tap on his shoulder to get his attention, your index finger mid-way in the air, hovering over his arm as he subtly gestures to jay and then turns to look at you. removing his cap so that he can see your face better, he asks,“yes baby?” a fond and lovestruck smile spread on his lips, his eyes twinkling with hearts and stars.

for as long as you can remember you had always been looked past, disregarded or brushed aside during conversations. people, even your own family members wouldn’t consider whatever you were saying as important enough to acknowledge. simply your words, your opinions weren’t ever important, at least that’s you were made to feel.

“the ice cream..i..-”, you mumble out in a small voice afraid of him getting upset and mad at you or so but instead he pouts in an apologetic ‘oh no’ look, almost making you believe it’s wrong. “i only got myself rainbow sherbet since you had a cold last week and they didn’t have you favorite,"

“should i go get you some now? you want it, right?” he asks softly, reaching out to hold your hand in his, gently squeezing your fingers and rubbing his thumb across them while lightly swinging your arm with his as he looks up at you.

“can i go with you?” his smile widens at that and he nods.

but it falls immediately when he sees your eyes starting to water, the white turning into subtle red, as the tears begin to shine against the light of the room.

and for as long as you can remember your presence was ignored whenever you cried, it didn’t matter even when it was something as serious as the worst mental breakdown you had ever had in your life. like you were invisible, people walked past you, talked and laughed while you were there crying just beside them. people who were supposed to comfort you. you could say you never had someone comfort you during hard times or something even as small as hitting your head against the car door, when you would mumble out a small ouch and no one around would bother to look at you. no one would even ask if you’re okay when you would fall over and scrape your knee or walk over a piece of glass.

but heeseung, he is the kind of person you should have had or perhaps needed your entire childhood and up until you actually met him. being with him made you realize that you could be treated like a princess, you could be given importance, you could be given respect and a kind of love which doesn’t put you down. you could be cared for like a baby yet still not be spoiled, you could make mistakes and not be made fun of for that, you could be taken seriously and most of all, you could be you and still be loved with all of a heart, mind and soul.

he made you realize, right people make you feel right and wrong people come disguised as people closest to you. they may not intend to hurt you but they did and you’re not obliged to forgive them.

in an instant your boyfriend stands up, bending to your height and cupping your face. bambi eyes big and concerned as he wipes the tears now rolling down and constantly muttering 'why’, this is what you had missed, never experienced.

when you step back a little and tumble on a cord on the floor, almost falling over he grabs you in swift motion before crouching down to let him give you a piggy back ride to the store just across the building because he doesn’t want even a scratch on you.

love might not heal but sometimes it shows what should have been.

TAGLIST ( open. ) @kangseulgithegreat @s00buwu @luvyev @pockyyasii

[photmath]

Secret Santa | Trent Alexander-Arnold

Pairing: Trent Alexander-Arnold x Female Reader

Summary: A Secret Santa exchange leads to a rekindling relationship.

Word Count: 5.3k

Warnings: BLOWJOB (18+), secret santa/christmas themes, situationship somewhat, cursing, idiots in love, soft trent

Note: I had massive brain fog and covid while writing a good chunk of this so sorry, also wanted to have it posted before christmas but when have I ever posted something on time. Happy Holidays and readings!

As the night winded down, the group of friends were already thinking about their next hangout, you just happened to be there as they begged you to join in on their Secret Santa exchange.

“Oh come on, it’d be an even number with you!” Sara chimes, you swigging the chilled drink in your hand.

“You don’t need an even number for Secret Santa,” you correct and the boys let out a tut.

“Just this once, there’s a budget,” Jude begs, his beady eyes widening. “It’s thirty bucks.”

You roll your eyes bashfully, “Okay, count me in then.”

Your eyes don’t mean to land on Trent but they do anyway. He’s tucked into the sofa next to Jude, his mouth covered with the red cup he has resting on his bottom lip. His locs stop just above his eyebrow, and the black hoodie he has on looks comforting. You two maintain eye contact until he looks down.

Ben gathers everyone’s emails before you and Sara head out for the night. You had rode with Sara, living in the same apartment complex, but she lags behind telling the others bye. You do the same, mumbling goodbyes and giving out sidehugs.

It had been a while since you hung out with them all at once again. After a year's worth of studies and the summer, you had kinda mingled away from the tight group of friends you were once a part of. It didn’t help that you and Trent had a huge fight that catalyzed you from stepping away from the group, and no one seemed to notice just how close you and Trent were for them to suspect it was because of him. He played a part in making you keep your distance, but you were also so much more busy than before. You had a demanding job while still having to manage your uni classes, so those late nights hanging out with them became scarce.

It was beginning to get chilly while you waited for Sara outside on the front patio. And just when you thought it was her stepping out of the front door, Trent came out and your shoulders sunk.

“So, you’re back,” he states, slipping the hood over his head and then shoving his fists into the jumper’s pocket.

You nod, “Yeah, looks like I got dragged into doing Secret Santa, sounds fun.”

“When are you leaving?” His voice is small, almost like he doesn’t want to know the answer but asks anyway.

Pulling your thin jacket tighter, you raise your hands, “Um, I’m waiting for Sara.”

“You aren’t gonna stay?”

“What do you mean?”

“The boys,” he points back into the apartment and scratches his head bleakly, “we’re having a sleepover. The other girls are staying, I mean if you want to.”

“Oh,” you say. You had heard about it but you definitely didn’t intend on staying over, not in their scary, germy apartment. Trent, Jude, Ben, and Aaron were great, but they desperately needed a deep clean. “Um, Sara isn’t staying though.”

He shakes his head, “Doesn’t mean you have to leave too.”

You narrow your eyes at him, he nonchalantly shrugs. “Would you be okay if I were to stay?”

He raises his hands up in surrender, “I’m just glad to see ya. It’s been a couple of months.”

“We saw each other last month.”

“We didn’t talk though,” Trent chirps, licking his bottom lip. “Come on, stay. Walk with me to my car, I have to get some blankets.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea, Trent?” you ask. It slips out of your mouth much more ominously than you intend.

He gives you a dubious look, “What? Think I can’t keep my hands to myself?”

“Trent!” you gasp. He grabs your arm and leads you down the stairs in front of his apartment. Your hand slips into the groove of his elbow, him locking your hand in place.

You two ended during the summer break, you deciding to put an end to the back and forth flings you both had going on. Sneaking around each other wasn’t hard to do, but denying you having feelings for him was. He didn’t feel the same, and wanted to keep what the two of you shared strictly between sex, but him singing songs in your ear while he’d be on the cusp of sleep, caressing your skin so tenderly afterward, and trying his best to cook breakfast for you in the morning or even late at night, it was hard not to fall in love with him. Especially when you would catch him across the room and he’d beam so brightly. He would be mid conversation with someone, but the moment he saw you, he was grinning ear to ear.

“I’m sure these blankets are really in your car,” you say sarcastically. There was always something in his car. It would be his way of sneaking you off for a quickie, but god were you in the mood to do that now? You couldn’t deny it, the idea of you sneaking off like old times did tug a heartstring but you couldn’t. Now was not the time to think with something other than your head.

Trent opens up the back seat of his car, revealing four neatly-rolled, holiday blankets, “Get your head out of the gutter, sweetheart.”

You roll your eyes, helping him grab two of them although he could carry all four. You hated just how nostalgic it felt to visit his car, his black Range Rover, its windows always fogged after the two of you stepped out of it. A part of you was glad that he didn’t try to do something while you were out here, but another part of you was…disappointed? Had he really moved on three months later? While you were left in sputtering sobs—

“Hey,” Trent calls out, his breath billowing out in front of him. He’s standing a couple of steps in front, looking back at you. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” you muster and catch up to him, not realizing that you had stopped following him. The sound of his car locking rings through your ears as he wears a sincere smile while he waits. He lets you pass him to walk in front of him.

Sara is making her way down the stairs by the time you two arrive back, “Hey! Are you ready?”

“I changed my mind,” you smile meekly, “I think I’m going to stay.”

“Oh, okay!” Sara says, bringing you in for a hug. For a moment, you were glad of her agreeable personality because she wasn’t going to ask why you changed your mind and you weren’t sure what you’d say if she put you on the spot. You were staying because of friends, right? “I’ll see you in a week!”

Sara hugs Trent briefly and then the two of you make your way back upstairs quietly. Trent’s phone pings and you feel the buzz of your own phone in your pocket. The both of you pause to read the notification, an email from Ben with your Secret Santa assignments.

You raise an eyebrow at Trent as the both of you glance at each other. Unlocking your phone, you quickly find the email and open it, reading that you’re assigned Delilah. That should be easy, you knew her like the back of your hand.

“Who do you have?” he asks.

“It’s a secret.” Slipping your phone into your pocket, you peer up at him. He looks down at you with a smirk, his lips glistening from having just licked them. “Get chapstick or something.”

He chuckles, opening the door. Delilah and Ava are cuddled up on their sofa in their pajamas, their faces shocked but then quickly filled with excitement when they see you.

“You’re staying!” Ava cheers. The next movie they have lined up is How the Grinch Stole Christmas, a Christmas classic. And of course the only open two seats on the sofa is next to an unsuspecting Jude.

Trent hands out the blankets but keeps one to himself, plopping down in the spot next to you, unfolding it over the two of you. A part of you would’ve pushed away the blanket but even in your pajama pants you were cold.

“Thanks,” you mutter, ignoring the arm that lands over your shoulders. Trent was suddenly being a lot more vocal than he was earlier, maybe it was the confidence from the alcohol he had drank, but just two hours ago he had trouble looking at you.

It wasn’t awkward, but it was definitely a sudden switch. All it took was you almost leaving for him to chat with you like nothing happened.

Throughout the movie, you all laughed during the funny scenes, Jude nearly clutching onto you because of just how hilarious the Grinch was. Trent didn’t shy away from letting his arm fall and grasp your shoulder occasionally, but seriously, what was up with him? Earlier at his car it piqued you with interest to be talking to him, referencing the past, but now he seemed to be adamantly ignoring it.

Something sour bursts in your mouth as you shrug Trent’s arm off your shoulder, excusing yourself off the couch and to the guest restroom down the hall.

Trent’s bedroom was the only bedroom downstairs, planted right next to the guest restroom, so it shouldn’t have shocked you to see him in his bedroom with the door wide open, but still, it did. He was pulling his black hoodie over his head, left shirtless. Look away!

Trent catches your stare through the hallway and heat rushes to your cheeks in an instant. He smirks, kicking his door open wider and then slipping on a white tee. His red plaid pajama pants hang dangerously low.

You had to talk to him anyway, so you walked inside and closed the door.

“Hey,” he says, eyebrows raised, but his eyelids hood the closer you walk to him. A part of him knew you would come into his room.

“Can we talk?”

“Sure.” He sits down on the edge of the bed patting the spot next to him but you stay standing.

“We’re good…right?”

His eyebrows furrow, “What do you mean?”

“Okay,” you blow out a raspberry. “Last time we spoke, I told you I had feelings for you and then we argued, and then you pranced off. You basically said you didn’t feel the same and that we should stop, but during the movie you put your arm around me making me feel confused.”

“I can’t just rest my arm?”

Your jaw drops, you knew it was dumb. Knew it was haste. Knew that you didn’t really have something to talk about him. Maybe a part of you was still hurt from his rejection, hoping that he felt the same. That the months apart left him a dull ache, but here he was staring at you with those same serious—but blank—brown eyes that broke your heart months ago.

“Unbelievable,” you mumble and turn towards his door. His hand is on your wrist before you can even reach the exit.

“Wait.” Facing him, you pull your hand out of his grip. The seriousness from his eyes moments ago is gone, they seem on edge. “I’m sorry. I was joking, sorry. I—I’ve missed you.”

“Trent—”

“No, I’ve really missed you. I would’ve told you sooner but I thought you moved on.” The confusion is etched on your face that he continues, scrambling for words. “I saw Jack’s arm around you at our first football match and I thought you had moved on, or were trying to, so I didn’t want to come back and tell you that I felt the same way.”

“What?” you exasperate.

He licks his lips, briefly looking down, “I like you too. I know you probably don’t feel the same way anymore because it was months ago and that’s okay, but since we’re talking now, yeah…I like you.”

Trent’s nervousness practically seeped out of his pores. His voice seemed so fragile, his hands anxiously playing with his pajama strings. And his eyes were anywhere but on you. He was pouring out his heart in the most shy way he could, his way.

Another reason that drove the two of you away was him always keeping in his feelings. Even when it was just about sex, he didn’t communicate well. So for him to talk right now, you wanted nothing more than to throw your arms around him, heart swelling at him confessing his feelings.

But it had been months. Did you still feel the same for Trent? Your heart skipped a beat when you saw him, but you also hadn’t seen him that much so the distance mended your heart to some extent.

“Oh,” you say. “I really wish you said that earlier, wow, um—”

The more you search for words, the more you notice the sudden panic in Trent’s eyes grow.

“I don’t know if I feel the same,” you confess, pretending to ignore the droop of his shoulders. “We’ve been separated for so long that I don’t know if I still feel that…I’ve missed you too, a lot, so maybe I do. This sounds dumb but can you give me time?”

And who were you kidding? Because the moment he nods, you knew that you still had feelings for him. He was too patient for his own good.

“Of course,” he forces out a smile. You aren’t sure what to do at that moment so you hesitantly reach out for him and give him a hug. He tucks his head into the crook of your shoulder, pulling your body closer to his and then giving you a squeeze.

“Trent,” you squeal.

“Sorry,” he chuckles. “I’ve missed our hugs.”

“I missed them too.”

There's a brief moment the two of you share after you pull away from him. His hands are placed gently around your elbows, his head hanging down towards yours. Your nose bumps into his and he pulls away just barely and whispers, “Are you sure?”

You nod, “Yeah.” Trent places a chaste kiss on your lips, sighing through his nose like he’s granted some kind of relief.

His hands slip onto your waist, tugging you closer and you wrap your arms around his neck. He kisses your jaw and neck slowly, basking in the feel of your body pressed against him once again.

You aren’t shy to give his neck a kiss or two back, a rumbling laugh escaping his chest as you find his unusual tickle spot. His thumbs feel the sliver of skin where your shirt rode up, aimlessly rubbing circles, “We should head back.”

“We should,” you glance at him once more, planting a kiss on his cheek and then fumbling out of his bedroom. You can hear his laugh as you exit.

You sit back down next to Jude who still seems so engrossed into the movie, so he doesn’t bat an eye when Trent follows suit afterward. He fluffs the blanket over the two of you and keeps his hand lingering on your thigh. If you were stronger, you would’ve pushed it off, but you liked having his soothing touch on you again.

-

In the middle of the night, you stirred awake, shivering. The blanket you were wrapped in on the boy’s sofa wasn’t sufficient enough to keep you warm and you couldn’t bear another minute with your teeth chattering. Grumbling, you wrap the blanket around your body and tiptoe to Trent’s bedroom. He wouldn’t have minded, had basically whispered in your ear countless times to come sleep with him before you all went to bed.

As you open his bedroom door, you hear him shuffle around in his blankets, barely able to make out him rubbing his eyes while looking at you.

“I’m freezing,” you mutter, shutting his door. Trent understands immediately, doesn’t have to be told twice as he opens the blanket for you. It doesn’t take much for you to realize he’s shirtless, but you don’t care when you wrap your body around him and hold onto him like a koala.

“Your feet are cold,” he chuckles, his voice hoarse and throaty. “I missed you.”

“I know you did, now please finish tucking the blankets in and hold me.”

“Yes ma'am,” he mumbles. He makes sure you’re securely wrapped in the blanket and that there isn’t a pocket of space open somewhere. His arms slither around your back, and he presses a sleepy kiss to your forehead before shutting his eyes. “Night, sweetheart.”

“Goodnight, Trent.”

-

It takes you a couple of seconds to realize where you’re at in the morning, Trent’s white walls are a stark difference from your decorated covered walls. And his semi-hard dick pressed against your butt is certainly an unfamiliar feeling. Well, unfamiliar for only the past few months.

His hand is tucked tightly underneath your shirt, resting between the valley of your breasts. It was a position he resorted to all the time mid-sleep, and maybe you should’ve remembered that before crawling into his bed last night, but the shallow, labored breathing fanning across your neck lulled you back to sleep that your wind went fuzzy. All rational thoughts vanished.

Trent’s hips buckle up as he lets out a deep sigh, his dick only pressing further into you that you had to wake him up or separate. Gently, you slide his arm down, biting down your bottom lip as his hand brushes your nipple.

His eyes flutter open and he groans at the roll of your hips, “Stop moving.”

“You hurt,” you whisper.

“Yeah, you're hurting me,” he mumbles, pulling his hips back. He takes notice of his hand, sliding his hand out from underneath your shirt. “Fuck, sorry—”

“No, you’re hurting me, asshole,” you say at the same time. Trent’s cheeks are burning because he knows what position he was in, having always found himself in that same position every morning after being with you.

“I’m sorry,” he sits up, grumbling at the pain in his pants and embarrassment spreading to his face. He didn’t want to ruin the progress he had made, the two of you just sharing a kiss last night.

You sit up immediately with him, noticing the tension in his bare shoulders as he looks around his bedroom, debating his next move. You grasp his shoulder softly and he lets out a small gasp. “Hey, it’s okay. I was joking around. I’m not actually upset.”

Trent’s panicked eyes simmer down, “Okay.”

“Do you want to lay back down? It’s barely seven in the morning, I doubt the others are awake,” you continue, suddenly feeling nervous. You only started getting nervous in front of Trent after you caught feelings, before, you never had a problem poking jokes at him. You still had them, but they were much more tamed and timid.

He nods, letting out a shaky sigh as he gets back underneath the blankets. He crosses his arm, not daring to peer at you because he knows it wouldn’t help his ever growing erection. That burning hand you placed on his shoulders, sent him haywire for the thirty seconds it was on him.

And you hated the way you knew his body like the back of your hand. You knew how his long eyelashes would bat, his blown pupils, and why he bit onto his bottom lip almost drawing blood. The line of sweat that brimmed his forehead, his ragged breaths—god, you weren’t strong enough. It all went straight down to your core, making you squeeze your thighs a little tighter, and the second the bed dipped, Trent’s breath hitched.

“Do you,” you swallowed, “need help?”

Trent’s bare stomach caved in as he sighed, the bunched blanket barely stopping above the hemline of his pants. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he threw his crossed arms over his eyes, “Sweetheart, please don’t tease right now.”

What was once semi-hard was now raging and throbbing, way too rigid that even his breathing made him hurt. He felt your watchful eyes on him earlier, making him only grow harder as he tried to ignore it. Even if he were to scramble to his bathroom, it would hurt way too much that he would rather just sit and wait it out. But you were not making it easy, not when he could smell your shampoo still.

“I’m not teasing,” you say, voice a little louder laced with confidence.

Trent sucks his breath, “You’re cruel.”

You roll your eyes, “Do you want me to suck your dick or not?”

An eye peaks over his crossed arms, “Well when you put it like that—”

“And here I was trying to be nice and a little romantic.”

Trent chuckles as his arms flop down beside him, immediately grimacing as the force travels down, “Please just kiss me.”

He’s still facing the ceiling as he relinquished, eyes dancing around his bedroom and you. You stir beside him and he pouts. You snicker as you roll by his side, “So needy.” You press your lips on his pout and he’s immediately devouring you, slipping his tongue into your mouth as he grips your neck. Your hand barely had time to slide down the back of his neck. Meanwhile his other hand is gripping a fistful of your shirt.

You force your head back, out of breath, “Okay—”

Trent lets out another guttural groan, his eyes squeezing in frustration, “I’m really fucking hard right now, so if you’re playing around just tell me so I can blow this load myself.”

“I’m not playing around, you said to kiss you! I didn’t think fucking tongue!” you yell, almost wanting to laugh at your two’s situation. You were being a little slow on purpose but come on now, it was a little funny at just how much the tables were turned. On so many occasions, Trent decided to be a dickwad and tease the hell out of you, and you relished the few times you were able to tease him back.

His bottom lip jutted out again, almost by reflex, and the vein popping out of his forehead didn’t make your building laughter any more suppressed. His fisted grip on your shirt loosened as he stirred.

“Okay, okay, no foreplay,” you conclude, pecking his pouty lip and pulling down his blanket. His eyes bulge and he attempts to pick up his head but immediately slams it back down with an agonized groan.

Jesus.

You pull down his tented pajama pants to his ankles, not bothering to take them off completely, and then eye him through his black briefs. He was rock solid, a small, darker spot of precum encircling near his tip. And once you pull down his boxers, it springs out, hitting his stomach. The tip glistened with precum.

He lamented after he was finally out of those constricting boxers.

“Everyone is still sleeping out there,” you warn. He nods frantically, grabbing onto a piece of the blanket and biting onto it. His bedroom walls were thick but with the silence of the morning, noise was bound to travel.

You seriously wanted to tease him on just how desperate he was behaving right now, but you didn’t want to add more frustration than what he was already feeling.

With one stroke of Trent’s leaking arousal with your hand, it doesn’t take long for you to put him out of his misery with your mouth. His own precum lubricated much of himself that he didn’t need your spit, so you gingerly lick his tip as he lets out another groan as he grips the sheets.

Your tongue lapped around his tip as your hand stroked what couldn’t fit in your mouth. You could feel him practically swelling with each pump that it wasn’t going to take much longer to come.

His stomach caved in rapidly as you slowly sunk your head down on him. It had been a while and your teeth may have grazed him by accident as you adjusted to his size but he didn’t care. He was too much in a haze with the feel of your lips and tongue.

Once you found your rhythm, you bobbed your head faster, licking and sucking him off until tears welled in your eyes. His hands were immediately prying at your head and neck as his hips bucked, his tip nearly hitting the back of your throat.

“Fuck, I’m about—” Usually you’d back off and dump his seed onto his stomach but you decided not to this time, lapping up his shaft one more time before circling his tip with your tongue and then prodding the slit. He winced as his hand grew tighter around your shoulder, his other hand stifling the moan that threatened to come out.

Trent’s hips buckled once more and finally you felt the steamy ropes of his seed fall into and around your mouth, you were not fast enough to catch him entirely. Feeling his entire stomach grumble as he came, you caressed his thighs as you swallowed what you could. He handed you the small towel he had near his bed and you really would’ve cringed if the circumstances were different, but his room wasn’t necessarily tidy. There were a couple of shirts strewn on the floor and he did seem to have just recently washed towels since there was a pile of them on the floor next to his bed.

His breathing was heavy as he tried to calm himself down as you cleaned your chin and the remnants that dribbled down onto his stomach. And the second you pushed his briefs back on him, he sat up straight immediately, attacking your face with a hungry kiss. You giggled as you fell back, him landing on top with a chuckle as his hand gently slipped down your neck.

He pulled back, a wide grin on his face as his locs unstuck from his sweaty forehead, “I think I had blue balls.”

“You think? You came in like two seconds,” you laugh.

He shushes you, “Don’t say that so loud—”

“You were all whiny and couldn’t even get up!”

He rolls his eyes, his hair flopping with his exaggerated roll, “I knew you’d laugh.”

“I helped you, didn’t I?”

He rolls his eyes again, “Yeah, you did. Thank you, let me return the favor, yeah?”

“Hmmm,” you ponder. “Okay, go for it.”

He laughs, kissing you cheerfully. It doesn’t take long for you to be undressed and gripping onto his shoulders tightly with your thighs while his hand covers your mouth to stifle your moans.

-

Delilah taunts the group with her makeshift mistletoe, it hangs from the end of her long stick as she walks around. She had yet to stop on anyone—or pair rather—but you knew the moment you got up to get a drink from Trent she’d follow. And that’s exactly how you wound up in the position with everyone chanting, “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

Your face radiates with heat as Trent smirks. You hid your nervous smile with your cup as Jude’s chant got louder. They crowd the kitchen, not daring to let up as the two of you get circled.

Trent nudges your hip with his, removing the cup from your face as his hand goes to your cheek and jaw. His eyes read yours briefly before dipping his head into a searing kiss. It wasn’t necessarily brief but it wasn’t long either as they erupt into a chorus of hoots and shocked gasps. Once he pulls away, he lets you bury your head into his chest, hugging you. His chest vibrates with his chuckle.

Your hands went through his unzipped brown fluffy sweater, head resting alongside the white sweater he wore. He looked so soft and comfy in the outfit, you had been dying to just give him a giant hug the moment you saw him.

He kisses your forehead tenderly, “You okay?”

“Mmhmm,” you mumble, releasing him. His gentle and attentive eyes almost make your knees buckle, so you don’t notice everyone staring at the two of you because it felt like it was just you and him. You chuckle, “Surprise?”

Trent’s grip falls from your shoulder to your waist, a simpering smile as he pulls you closer to his side.

“I knew it!” Aaron yells and Trent shakes his head. “You’re such a liar.”

“What?” Trent feigns.

“I always said it looked like her car was out there and you always said that I was wrong,” Aaron says, taking a swig of his drink. Trent chuckles from behind you, throwing his arm across your shoulders as he forces you to fall back into his grasp.

Jude narrows his eyes, “Fairs.”

The girls direct their questions at you all at once but you don’t understand a thing. Trent kisses your forehead once more before letting go to let you have your space with the girls.

Ben whistles to get everyone’s attention for the Secret Santa exchange so the only question you get to answer is Sara’s: “How could you not tell us?” You sit next to the girls while Trent plops down on the couch next to Jude and Aaron.

One by one you all go in a circle exchanging gifts, you starting first with Delilah. You had gotten her the paint-by-numbers kit that she wanted the longest and pink slippers. Delilah gifts Aaron headphones; Aaron gifts Sara a new jewelry box that Ava helped pick out; Sara gifts Jude sunglasses; and Jude gifts Ben a new pair of Adidas boots and a box full of rubbers. Everyone laughs and momentarily gapes at this box full of condoms that Jude filled all the way to the top.

Ben then gets up and grabs his gift for Ava. Ava unwraps her highly anticipated book that she spammed the group chat with to get her, marveling at it. She then hurls Trent his gift and he chuckles at the new sweater he now has. It’s a long white knitted sweater that he’d probably look adorable in and you can’t help but to beam at him from across the room. The Christmas tree’s lights produce a glimmer in his eyes that makes you swoon when he locks eyes with you.

You didn’t even notice that you were the last one to yet receive your gift from…Trent. It doesn’t take long for you to realize he’s all who’s left, but the thought of who had you escaped your mind because you were too busy fawning over everyone else’s gifts.

Trent saunters towards you, a neatly wrapped white box with a red ribbon tied in the center. He sits down onto the side of the couch and hovers over you. His warmth radiates onto you that the urge to take him back into his room to cuddle him is so strong, but the others were staring as they waited for you to open the box.

You tear off the wrapping paper and open the box, inside is a neatly folded pink hoodie. Just from the sheer size of it you can tell it’s thick and cozy.

“I know how you always get cold,” he whispers.

You smile brightly, cheeks feeling warm as you pull it out. Underneath it is fuzzy red socks and you gasp, “This is so cute, thank you!”

For whatever reason, as you look up at him your eyes are nearly filled with tears that you have to blink them away rapidly. He chuckles, bending down to kiss your smile. Needless to say, you had made up your mind. This man held your heart in the palm of his hands.

Meanwhile, Ben stuffs a handful of rubbers into Trent’s palm and he laughs as he drops them into your box.

“Way to be romantic,” you scold, peering up at him.

Trent bends down to be level with your ear, “Saying that when you had my dick in your mouth hours ago.”

You slap his jean-clad thigh, “Trent!”

He may have looked like a sweet cuddly bear in his outfit but he was anything but, especially when the night was still young.

----

Note: OKAY I promise I will steer away from friend groups in my next fic LOL.

[setsugekka]

↳ Forever was simple: meet a man you love, and live happily ever after.

A hope built on lies, and when it all comes crashing down, you find a new faith inside of the atrium at the countryside.

painter!lee minho x fem!reader/prince!hwang hyunjin x fem!reader (side pairing) — arranged marriage au, historical au. royalty, slow burn, angst, idiots in love, sexual content. [26k wc] cws: themes of vaguely period-typical sexism, themes of loneliness, (heavy) pining + the poor decisions that sometimes result from that, themes of social anxiety + using alcohol to cope, heavy sexual content.

𝕀.

Everything around you glitters in the ambient light of the evening masquerade ball.

Tables lined with beautiful cloths sit along the edges of the ornate hall, piled high with decorative and delicious foods. Amber, bubbling drinks flow and occasionally spill out of long, crystal glasses held by perfectly manicured hands holding them just a little too excitedly.

The kind of night life that you have grown so accustomed to.

Your dress is stunning and perfectly to your tastes, hair styled to match and draped in decadent jewels to showcase yourself with. The suitors are dressed much in the same, though in far more drab colors as men tend to do. This is of no consequence to you, because your eye is set on only one in particular.

Crown Prince Hwang Hyunjin.

You watch him from across the marbled floor, through groups of guests who might as well not even be present with how rapt your attention is on him. He is tall and broad, far from lanky but toned enough to give the impression of a certain kind of sturdiness that has always edged a particular curiosity in you. Hyunjin's hair is black, tied back from framing his face with its length, and you watch him laugh through conversations with other women who likely desire the same thing as you.

Engaging in private rendezvous with potential suitors is strictly against the royal code, all the more reason that no one must ever find out about the edge above the rest that you have taken for yourself in regards to him.

The memories date back to the summer—winter now—a late night out with other women that you've mostly grown up with and set as your entourage. The first time, running into the royal Hwang entourage without prying eyes to watch you felt like something of a hint, and the second, more of a blessing as the night ended with soft hands against your skin, and plush lips pressed against your own.

These secret encounters carried on through the months, as well as implicit promises in relation to the royal choices soon to be made. Between the sheets and with warm breaths of air exhaled against the shell of your ear, Hyunjin has promised time and time again: "You will be my choice, you have nothing to fear, my love. It's all for show and display, isn't it?"

You believe him.

"Are you going to spend the whole evening in the corner by yourself?" A woman steps up beside you with a knowing grin, and you offer your elbow to her side lightly in response.

"I've no particular interest in showing myself off like some prized cut of meat for men to fawn over, you know this, Sana."

This woman, a friend since your earliest days, looks out across the crowd not unlike yourself just moments before, and then offers yet another smile of understanding before speaking.

"Not for men, perhaps, but for a man," she says. "Are you really so sure that you only carry interest in Crown Prince Hwang? There are so many other perfectly acceptable suitors to choose from."

You sigh, taking a small sip from your glass. "I do not doubt that there are, but when have you ever known me to be the type to spread myself so thin between any such possibilities in life? I have always been something of a single-eyed woman."

"That much I do know, yes," Sana says with a small laugh, "but I don't want you to be left with nothing in the event of things not turning out the way that you wish them to. The Prince has many hopefuls, and while he is the only prince, would it be so bad to consider a life outside of the royal court? You've never much cared for the excessive nature of their goings on, anyway."

Turning to look at her, you cast Sana a questioning glance, "I have grown up in the lap of luxury, it is all that I know, are you to imply a step down is what suits me rather than a step up?"

"I would never, but there are many levels between poverty, and royalty."

"Anything other than a step up, is a step down," you say firmly, pressing the rim of your glass to your painted lip again. Your eyes wander out towards Hyunjin once more, and a slight curve upwards takes them, perhaps some enjoyment in the fact that you know something that even your closest confidants do not. Perhaps some enjoyment in the fact that you have already won a game that the others still insist on competing in. "Besides, do you think not of me as future Queen?"

"I wouldn't dream of such a thing, just remember me and all of our times shared once you begin lobbing off the heads of people who dare to oppose you."

Feigning horror, you reel exaggeratedly, "Now who is assuming things?"

Sana's hand finds the small of your tightly bound back, and lightly pushes you forward.

"Go dance with your future husband, would you?"

𝕀𝕀.

While far from unusual for your nights to end up like this, perhaps after everything that this one has presented, the aura casts something different, something intangible and strange that you can't quite grasp despite its familiarity still.

The masquerade ball winds down three levels from where you reside now. People still dance and laugh and shout amongst themselves, though the largest collective of guests have long since begun their journeys back to their own homes. Your entourage awaits you somewhere outside for much of the same, though they have long since learned not to bother coming and finding you in the event that you have disappeared.

For that, you are thankful, because nothing good can come of being discovered like this.

The room is small—a sitting area with little more than a table, chair, window, and tall bookshelves filled to the brim with just that. Moonlight shines in as the only illumination, faint and appearing cool to the touch if one were able to. Only enough to find one's way, and plenty to remain hidden in the darkness while people engage in their disagreeable deeds.

Lips hurriedly find your own, teeth nipping at them with a needy hunger. Palms graze up the outside of your legs, dress hiked up and leg eventually along with it. The door is pinned shut by your back firmly pressed against it, your head tips back with a small thud, Hyunjin chuckles under his breath at the sound, and then drives his hips forward to give the both of you what it is that you've been waiting all evening for.

"I saw you speaking with Lady Sana this evening," Hyunjin whispers, mouth feathering against your neck. "Am I wrong in suspecting that you were speaking about me?"

He presses himself forward, pulls your body down and against the effort simultaneously, ensuring no space is left between your figures. You gasp at the feeling, and he smiles at the sound, fingernails digging into the flesh of your thighs and hips in places that you don't dare let any of your house staff see.

"You would not be wrong," you reply, forcefully maintaining some semblance of composure. "Only good things, of course."

Chest pinned against your own, Hyunjin pulls back, then presses into you again. The glide is smoother this time, and you can't help the moan that escapes you suddenly.

"Have you told her?" he asks, drives quicker and less shallow than before. "I must announce my decision tomorrow afternoon, not long to wait now."

The ability to converse is leaving you with each steady roll of Hyunjin's hips. Your fingernails grip tightly into his suit jacket, though it grants you little purchase with the smoothness of it. Harder, faster; the tell-tale signs of nefarious activities beginning to be heard in rhythmic fashion against the wood of the door, as well as the explicit, unmistakable sound of skin meeting skin.

"No," you manage to say, though barely, "I would never, would never jeopardize what we have waited so long for."

Hyunjin's lips trail up your neck, along the edge of your jaw and settle lightly against your own. He kisses you gently, then merely sits there to drink down the gasps and whimpers of you accepting him. There is little time for this—something that the both of you know—rolls and snaps of his hips become quick, erratic in order to meet his end, and so he does with the kind of rapidity that leaves you terribly wanting and wishing for more.

There is a parting kiss left to you, and Hyunjin readjusts himself so that he can reemerge into the public. Smoothing your dress and slipping out from the doorway, he cracks it open to leave but looks back at you with a smile that you can only assume to be full of sly adoration for you, and for this. The joys of engaging in such things unbeknownst to others, the excitement of deception.

"A shame that tomorrow we will put an end to this, isn't it?" he says.

A shame indeed, you think to yourself. And then he is gone.

𝕀𝕀𝕀.

Just as you had anticipated it would, the city streets come alive for the naming of the Crown Prince’s companion.

Bodies crowd around you by every inch, music performed with accompanying dancers displaying their crafts as well as shop setups lining the way selling beautiful merchandise; hand crafted with care that shines blindingly under the sunlight above.

As you move along your way, the numerous scents of charred meats and grilled vegetables infiltrate your senses, all encompassing and inviting in a way that makes you almost wish to give up on what it is that you are meant to do today. In order to keep your mind set, you remind yourself that soon you will be at the receiving end of royal chefs and all that it is they have to offer you. There is charm to the street cooks and their home grown and cut ingredients, but nothing matches the knowledge and adeptness of the throne.

You have dressed simply today, not wanting to draw attention to yourself nor wanting to appear expectant. Reaching closer to the stage, the bodies are packed in far more tightly, as do the frequency of other potentials come more into vision. So many women; hair stacked high and curled in such a lovely way, all standing in wait in their best dresses with moderate jewelry. It is cold today, and the lavish, heavy coats that hang around their shoulders allude to as much, but you are warm with a deep understanding of what you are to gain this afternoon.

 A few rows back from the front of the stage, you find Sana as well as another friend shared between the two of you, Tzuyu. A beautiful woman wrapped in dark vermillion red with black hair that hangs so opposingly to Sana's blonde. They both smile and greet you, as do you, to them.

"Are you anticipating the naming as much as the rest of us are?" Tzuyu asks, a bright, cheerfulness to her tone that gives her something of a charmingly juvenile expressiveness. "So many women are here in wait, I do wonder what His Highness has in store for us."

"A difficult choice awaits him, no doubt," Sana adds, glancing up towards the place where he will soon call his decision towards the people. "I question how these sorts of decisions could ever be made through matters of the heart, but I suppose when it comes to royalty, the heart is of the least concern."

Pulling your coat tightly against yourself, you force back the smile that wishes to take your lips. "I trust that he will make the right call, do you not?"

"I'd sooner disappear into the forest, never to be seen again than dare speak ill of the royal house and their choosings," Sana says through a laugh. "Besides, I would be banished to such a place for doing so, anyway."

"You speak in theatrics," Tzuyu scoffs, a roll of her eyes punctuating it. "The rulers of our country are not so sinister."

"One can only hope, but knowledge of the Crown Prince and his ways are not well known to the people, only time will tell if he is as benevolent of a ruler as His and Her Majesty are," Sana says.

You look at her questioningly, "You suspect otherwise?" you ask, but she is quick to shake her head.

"No, but I am realistic in all of the possibilities that lie before us. Quite the contract, in fact, I have heard rather good things."

Sana's tone is peculiar to you in a way that you find difficult to pinpoint as she speaks on the intricacies of Hyunjin's personality. Her face is simplistic enough to not give anything away, but the sound of her voice carries a sort of inflection when referring to him that settles a strangely ire spark within your chest.

You are given no time to question it further, however, because the royal guards set themselves perfectly in place along the stage, and the arrival of the throne is loudly announced from beyond.

His and Her Majesty step forward first, luxuriously sparkling with expensive jewels and fur coats that you would otherwise never hope to afford, not even from your own place of incredibly comfortable class. The two of them settle in the background, and without wasting any further time, the man that you have grown to love and adore enters the stage in long, tall strides that exude confidence and elegance both.

Thankful for your place in the crowd, you gaze up at him and await his eyes to meet your own. A scroll is handed to him by one of the royal staff from just outside of the main stage, and he slowly unfurls it for all waiting eyes to see.

Hyunjin, all white in attire and garnished with a stunning sash that weighs heavily with brooches and sigils, inhales deeply and then looks out towards the crowd. You stare expectantly, because this is your time. So many nights shared hushed and secret between the two of you, discussed between sheets and pillows of just this very moment that will be granted unto you. His eyes do not find yours, but it is of no particular concern to you, as there will be so many more times for adoring moments to be had between the both of you from this day forward.

No more secrets, no more hiding your love for one another.

"Thank you for gathering here today, it is an honor for me to be able to share this with the people of my country. I do not wish to take much of your time, as there are far more convivial activities for you to be partaking in, aren't there?"

Gentle laughter resounds through the crowd, and Hyunjin smiles ever so slightly at the sound of it before glancing down at the paper in hand once again.

"With my greatest pleasure, I will announce to you the future Queen of the Hwang throne…"

Excitement flows through your veins, head light and nearly dizzying as you await the call. You clutch tightly to your robe, knuckles white and forcing your breath steady as the seconds pass by you like decades until the name is called.

A name is called.

"Minatozaki Sana."

A name that does not belong to you.

From just beside you, a shriek falls from Sana's lips but is forced back halfway through, presumably as to not embarrass herself. Tzuyu clutches at the friend’s shoulders and the two of them celebrate with covered mouths, wide eyes, and hushed shock. The world dulls into a kind of unfelt, nonexistent quietness around you as you stare forward and towards this man; this man that you have shared your body and a bed with, so much of your time and trust with.

He has betrayed you.

You can no longer hear the other women around you, shrouded in disbelief as you gawk at him. Something within you wishes to disappear—humiliation beginning to thrum up and across your skin—there is a small token of solace in the fact that no one else knows of your engagements with him prior as it is widely and heavily frowned upon for the both of you, but this knowledge does nothing to ease the pain that swiftly starts to replace all of the other initial feelings that have befallen you in these seconds passing.

The dizziness begins to set in faster and heavier, you realize that you must take your leave now. You take a step backwards, bumping into another saddened hopeful, but don't even have your wits about you enough to apologize for having done so. Sana and Tzuyu grab at you, say something, but you cannot hear it through the thick blanket of betrayal that casts so heavily between you, and them. Perhaps you congratulate her, words leave your lips but you haven't the slightest clue of what they are. Sana is smiling, crying, so perhaps they have been adequate enough.

Another step back, and you look up towards Hyunjin again. This time, his eyes find yours, and all he offers you is the faintest of wicked grins.

You take your leave quietly, without another word. Heart hanging heavily and not allowing him to take the tears from you that he has so evilly and rightfully earned.

𝕀𝕍.

You are not given time to grieve your loss, as if to intentionally add insult to injury.

Unfortunately, your parents can only be as understanding as information granted allows them to be. The first month, you are given space to wade through your reasonable disappointment, but past that point in time, questions of your next potential suitor once again begin to find themselves at the forefront of discussion amongst the dinner table. You did not know this man, I understand your disappointment in not being chosen, but it's high time to look forward and set your sights towards other potentials, your mother says. Royalty is not everything, there are plenty of other perfectly well-to-do men to take your pick from, your father says.

You tell them that you will look, with no intention of truly doing so. Once the second month passes by with little more progress, you begin to find the signs around the house of your parents taking matters into their own hands.

Letters line the desk of your father’s library room, and one in particular causes the hair at the back of your neck to stand on end.

Only partially sticking out from beneath the stack, you just so slightly pull the corner to unearth more of the words that bring a sickness to your stomach. 

"Would be honored to be chosen as your daughter's suitor. The estate is grand and well-kept, though rather empty of life—" the sentence is cut off, you skip to the next area that you can read. "Staff around the clock. Any endeavors she wishes to engage in will be made available—"

The spin inside of your stomach has you reaching forward and clutching at the sides of your father’s desk. It has only been two months, and already there are discussions of having you shipped out and elsewhere, to a strange man that you have never met, and will be expected to placate in all of the ways that one might. While these sorts of scenarios are nothing new to you—the knowledge well known—this was never supposed to be you. No, you were to marry into the royal house, to be made Queen, and having done so through a shared love. 

Not pawned off to a stranger who intends to keep you as a moderately cared for pet. You have heard the stories of other such arrangements before; the best that you can ever hope for is a perfectly tepid and boring man who has no interest in your being there, and has only accepted it for the offerings that such an agreement carries between the families in a monetary and societal sense.

How could your parents do this to you? The truth of the matter, however, is that they do not know the intricacies of what it is that they are doing to you. The details of your prior goings on. They must never know, and god forbid potential suitors were to ever find out about your involvement with the Prince beforehand…shunned and displaced, you will forever remain.

Turning towards the doorway, you begin to take your leave. The wheels are in motion and there is nothing left for you to do. Moving forward, you will await the day that your father comes to you with the news of having come to an agreement with a man for the arrangement of your marriage, and you will grin and bear it as daughters of high class households are told to do. In the meantime, you will hope and pray that the man chosen by your father is a kind one, a simple one. Dull and uninteresting and with only enough attention to give to his own things.

𝕍.

Writing takes you by the soul, and always has for as long as you found yourself able to hold a pen.

Your timing in finding out about your father’s misdoings an impeccable sort, because it is only two days later that he finds you in the large study of your manor and informs you of the news. A decision has been made about your future—one that you have had no part in making—and you will be sent off in two weeks time to the northern countryside to live with a man who he describes as "kind, albeit a little eccentric from what I can gather." The documentation has already been signed, and as far as you are concerned in a legal sense, are now married to someone whose name you do not even know.

"Lee Minho," your father says quietly, and you can't help but wonder if the airiness to his voice is of true sadness in having done this to you, or a feigned one, only given because he believes it to be what you desire of him. "He's a painter, quite gifted. A very well-off man, you shouldn't worry about wanting for anything in the absence of our affluence."

Hand gripping the pen tightly, still pressed hard against the paper, you find yourself indifferent to whether or not he can see the displeasure washing over you.

"Understood, I'll have my belongings packed by the handmaidens in proper time."

Your tone is simple, offering nothing more than the most basic of expressions. He does not reply to you with any sort of swiftness, and instead sighs as he turns to make his exit.

"I'm sorry it had to come down to this," he says suddenly, and with no warning. "As you know, you are coming up on your age and—"

"I know, father," you reply, just as flatly as before and continuing with your work along the page. "It is understood."

He leaves, and your scribbling comes to you with a slightly more erratic speed.

𝕍𝕀.

The goodbyes shared with your family carry little weight, and while there is a large part of you never wishing for this day to have come, there is another area that finds solace in no longer having to live under the roof of people who have done so wrongly by you, and with such great ease.

All you needed was time, and you were not given that. Is it so difficult to carry empathy for people who are hurting? To cast aside asinine traditions of age and worth for the sanctity of caring for those that share blood? 

Sitting in the back of the carriage as it plods along, you stare out of the small window and contemplate just that. What is family, if not the people meant to care for you above all else? Hyunjin betrayed you with a kind of extravagant ease, but your family, he was not. What excuse do your parents have to cast you aside so eagerly? All but sell you off to a man and for no other reason than to maintain social appearances. Yes, my daughter married that famous painter, Lee Minho. How exceptional and prized such a partnership is. 

The journey is a long one, and you hope to have settled in your anger by the time that you arrive. You have no interest in maintaining any sort of exceptional appearances with this man, but perhaps at the very least, he does not need to be on the receiving end of your indignation.

Instead, you fantasize about the perfect life you may be able to cultivate upon your arrival. Perhaps there are perks to him being involved in such a solitary way of life; you imagine two sides of the same mansion, one for you, and one for him. The painter and the writer, and never shall they meet.

𝕍𝕀𝕀.

Nighttime falls upon the land before you make your arrival, and late into the evening do you come. 

The estate is seen long before you come upon it, with a handful of lights standing out against the otherwise stark darkness of the countryside surroundings. You recall a mention of the home being relatively lifeless, and so few lights on inside certainly give truth to that. Barren trees line the street and as far as the eye can see given how deeply into winter it still is. There is little snow piled up into little hills along the ground, but it is impossible to see the vastness of the land without proper daylight to guide you.

When you arrive, a handful of house staff are there to greet you. Three women smile and bow, help you out of the carriage and then move along to retrieve your things. One remains with you, and you pull your jacket tighter so as to not allow the frigid air to touch you.

"It is much colder in the countryside than what you are used to," she says gently. "You'll get used to it in due time, but it can be frightening at first."

You glance at her, though not for long. It feels strange to be attended to by staff other than those that you are used to being handled by. This strange woman—older but softer in demeanor—smooths a hand down your arm with little more than a feather-light touch, and then offers you a slight yet understanding smile.

"My name is Mai, I am the head of the housing staff, you'll be seeing me around quite often, so I hope that we can grow comfortable with one another quickly. I understand that this is difficult for you, and strange, so please take your time. There's no rush to become acquainted with myself or the estate grounds."

It's only then that you come to realize the stark lacking of someone else's attendance to your arrival. You glance around slightly, perhaps you have missed him? But there are no men, and so, you ask the question, "What about Mr. Lee?"

Mai's features drop ever so slightly, like she feels some level of sympathy for you. Her hand smooths over your arm again, then gently tugs you towards the large doorway.

"The Master of the house will seldom make himself known, I wouldn't worry too much about that, dear."

"He didn't even come to welcome me, a strange sort of fellow to not bother greeting his wife upon her arrival," you say pointedly. It garners another, particular sort of look from the woman bringing you inside.

"Yes, the Master has been referred to as strange before, this would not be the first time. Please don't take it personally, or as some sort of slight towards you individually. I'm sure that given enough time, the two of you should meet and become acquainted with one another."

You chuckle under your breath, "Husband and wife, acquainted with one another. What have my parents done."

Though your wish upon arriving has ultimately come true, you sift through the confusion in your feelings regarding Minho's disinterest in finding you. The woman that he has taken into his home, agreed to marry, surely expected to have children with—yet with no apparent interest in your being there whatsoever. Stepping inside of the home, it shines and exudes beauty, almost like a museum. Pieces of painted art and statues sit at every inch, as far as the eye can see, but all you can think about is the absence of the man who has beckoned you here.

"I apologize for the darkness of the estate, as you know, it's quite late. I hope that you will take it upon yourself to wander tomorrow during the day. Everything is yours, please make yourself at home." Mai extends a hand forward and towards the large staircase, then points upwards at the centered emptiness created by the winding steps. "At the highest level is the atrium, the only place that is strictly off limits. The Master does most of his work up there, though it's difficult to simply stumble upon, no cause for concern as far as that goes."

Continuing to gaze up at what feels like forever, you slowly bring your attention back down and then fully towards Mai.

"Why has he brought me here?" you ask.

A single corner of her mouth perks, as if contemplating offering a smile that may or may not be apt. Besides that, however, the only expression of feeling you can find amongst her features is that of compassion, and perhaps, maybe even pity.

"As you know, these sorts of things tend to be about maintaining appearances…" Mai trails off, likely on account of having nothing more to add to the fact. It is plenty enough, and indeed, you are very well aware.

"I'd like to be taken to my room now."

There's a hazy numbness that finds your limbs as the staff take your things and begin moving towards the stairs. This is your new life, your new normal for the rest of your life. A loveless existence, a loveless marriage with a man that you will scarcely meet. You wonder, albeit briefly, what you have done to doom your existence to that of such fleeting tenderness. 

Hyunjin did not love you, but he was willing to pretend, and while your body was beneath his, you could so easily believe it.

Minho does not love you, and will not even grant you as much. No willingness to try, no interest in feigning the possibility of as much. You are not so foolish to expect to fall in love with this man, but is it so wrong to wish for moments that offer themselves to the fleeting fantasy of it? Infrequent dinners, shared glances from down the hall, and if all goes well, even a kind of friendship developed amongst incapable lovers.

Your bedroom is stunning and immaculately decorated. Mai informs you that anything that you wish to have added or removed is yours to have, and that she will see to it being done swiftly. The walls are lined in a dark, royal blue and accented at the corners with incredible, gold fillings that make the estate feel more like a castle than a simple home for only one man and his house staff. 

The thought is appreciated, but you truly cannot fathom wanting for more, not in the physical sense of owning and acquiring physical things. The emptiness inside of you is so much heavier and deeper than the shade of the walls, or the perfectly waxed oak of the floors.

"Thank you," you say. The words are small, and sound far more defeated than you would like them to. Mai is heavenly, everything that you could ever want from someone that you're likely to be spending the majority of your time here with. "What time shall I come down for breakfast in the morning?"

Mai smiles in the doorway, her light gray dress swaying with every slight movement that she makes.

"Eight is standard for the house, but whenever you prefer. If you are an early riser, we can see to it that it is ready and waiting for you by the time you find your footing."

You glance at your handbag, manuscript of your writing sticking out by the corner from it and make your decision going forward.

"I am something of an early morning type. I like to write, I find that I do my best work before the rest of the world begins to stir," you say, forcing a small smile into your lips. "I don't require much, especially just for one person. Just some small breads with butter and coffee will suit me just fine."

Mai nods happily, so obviously delighted by your willingness to allow her to do what she does here. "Of course, anything you wish. If you need anything else in the morning, please don't hesitate to inform any of the staff, we want to make your transition here as smooth and seamless as possible."

"Thank you," you say again, and Mai takes her leave.

Sleep does not find you well that night, despite the weariness of your body from the travel. Instead, your mind races with possibility and wonder about the ghost that you now share a home with, and when you finally do find rest, all that is there to greet you now is the dark, faceless silhouette of a man that you may never come to meet.

𝕍𝕀𝕀𝕀.

Time at the estate feels as though it crawls, and yet slips away and through your fingers in ways that make it feel as though it doesn't really exist at all.

Another month passes you by, a new routine set into motion not unlike yours from back home. Different settings, different foods offered; scents that arrive to you like they are foreign and fabrics against your skin that feel entirely different from that which you have become accustomed to. Life here is easy, and for that, you are thankful, but the dull ache of listlessness begins to take hold of you faster than you might have anticipated it to, and your curiosities about the manor creep up and make themselves known to you without much of an ability left in you to fight them off.

You have yet to meet Minho, even in all of your time here. A month is not long to spend in one place, but feels like a lifetime to not have met the person that you live with, the man that you are married to and meant to spend the rest of your days alongside.

Writing, at the very least, comes to you with incredible ease while cased inside of these walls. Your manuscript—a sort of anonymous autobiography of your life—grows and grows like it is showered with all of the sunlight and nutrients of a lovingly kept garden. There is nothing else for you to do here, after all.

These routines come to you naturally, not one to stray from those things that come naturally and comfortably to you. In the mornings, you wake early to head downstairs to eat warm, buttered bread and take your cup of coffee; leaving towards the large study that sits looking off into the flowerbeds with a large, never dirtied window to grant you such a view.

Books surround here, as do their smells. You could never hope to read them all, though you might like to. When particularly down about your circumstances, you consider the fact that you have ample time to begin such an endeavor, as nothing else inside of this building will ever bother to ask for time from you.

One day after the mark of a month from your arrival, you stay up a little later than usual and slowly sip an aged, red wine from the shined lip of a glass. Your nighttime gown already drapes from your body, but you have no such intention of finding sleep any time soon.

For one reason or another, the atrium calls to you silently in the ambient darkness of the house.

The house staff is long asleep, nobody lurking the corridors to ensure that the inhabitants are not allowing the whimsy of curiosity to get the best of them. You step out and into the hallway, small candles lining the way and towards the stairs that lead further up, guiding lights beckoning you, asking you to follow them, telling you to take liberties not truly afforded to you.

So you do. Up so many flights, a climb that feels endless at points, until of course, you reach the top. 

Perhaps you had expected too much, built up the possibilities so much in your mind that whatever it is that you might find here never standing a chance in living up to your imagination. There is little that greets you once you climb the last step; no warning signs, no guards or traps set for intruders stumbling upon this place. Instead, you find an incomprehensible mess along the large and wide expanse of floor. Canvases sprawled as far as the eye can see—some still basking in their unmarred perfection, others splashed with color or linework—paint pots and filthy brushes, palettes that appear as though they've never seen the loving touch of water to clean them.

Furthest away from where you stand, you find a table and a single chair, though it would not seem to be used for its intended purpose with the way items have been set against and atop them. There are papers sitting on the wood, however, and your budding curiosity gets the best of you even more as you carefully step forward and over all of the belongings that coat the floor.

The floor beneath you is sturdy, and for that, you are thankful. There are no creaks of footsteps to alert anyone of your presence here, and when you arrive at the table, you find piles upon piles of letters pinned down beneath dirty, likely forgotten jars of water.

The penmanship of one draws your attention, familiar and loud as it stares back at you. It is from your father.

This date is recent, one of the few things that you can make out from where it sits. You care little for maintaining your invisibility here now, and pull the sheet out from within the others so that you can read it in full.

You realize quickly upon scanning it that you did not know what to expect, but what it is that you have found now somehow sits even more strangely in your chest. Your eyebrows furrow as you take in the words from your father—they are nonsensical in every sense of the word—incomprehensible when paired with the realism of your life at this place.

One part reads: I am happy to hear that the two of you are getting along so splendidly. Of course, it is impossible to say when putting together such matters, but I had something of a feeling that it would be right, and I am so blessed to find that this meeting has been a successful one.

He has been lying to your father ever since your arrival here.

"Is there something I can help you with?"

Your attention shoots up from the letter, which drops from your hand on account of the shock in being found. What jars you from your thoughts much more than having been caught, however, is not that fact in and of itself. Rather, it is the fact that it is the voice of a man that has questioned you.

And looking up from here, back towards the stairs, the moonlight shines in from the glass ceiling panels of the atrium, down onto the face of a man with somewhat long and relatively unkempt black hair that curtains in front of his eyes delicately. His jaw is strong, sharp; outlining narrow eyes and lips that settle into a somewhat upturned position when not forced into another shape.

Could it be…?

You do not respond right away, and neither does he press you further for a reply. Instead, the man carries himself forward and kneels down in front of a particular pile of painting supplies. Perhaps you hadn't taken careful enough notice of them, the way that the paint is still fresh and wet, now that you look at it.

His shirt is white, sleeves rolled up along his forearms and cuffed carelessly at the bend of his elbow. He appears strong, not at all the dainty, frail image of an artist type that one might typically assume someone like this to be. Somewhere within you swims the possibility that this is not the man that you are married to, merely some other person who also is granted the ability to use the atrium for its assigned purpose, but the thought seems asinine with the evidence presented in front of you.

He grabs a brush, takes a palette into hand and dips the bristles into something dark. One stroke, then another onto a canvas that has already been seen by his hand previously. He ignores you for many long moments, and as a result, you merely stand there in silence and watch as he continues on.

The brush dips into a jar of water, swirled around and faintly clinking against the glass. Then, the man looks up at you again.

"Is there?"

Forgetting that there has ever been a question posed, your mind races to catch up to what it is that he's asking. Nervousness catches your limbs, not knowing what to do with your hands, your feet, the expression on your face when suddenly and finally addressed. 

But you have no interest in answering his inquiry, and instead, pose one of your own.

"Why have you been lying to my father?"

"Ah," he says, the sound quiet and coming out with a knowing exhale. His attention drops back to the canvas and colors in front of him. "Do you make it a habit of reading other people's mail, then?"

"We've not even met once since I moved here, yet you're telling my father that we're getting along swimmingly, why?"

"Are we not?" Minho says, his engagement in the discussion confirmation enough of the fact that this is him. "No arguments, no raised tones or names called. As far as I'm concerned, we're getting along as well as one might hope, all things considered."

"We have never even met!" you nearly yell, dropping your volume at the tail end with the way that you know voice carries through the halls of the estate. This is a discussion meant for the two of you alone. "The least you could do after all of this time is introduce yourself to me, especially if you're going to be lying to my parents about the goings on out here!"

Minho looks up at you then, but his face is empty of feeling. "This is why I thought it best that we not meet, now I have to tell him that things have taken a turn," he says.

His face does not allude to it, but his tone very much does in the way that the faintest hint of amusement can be discerned throughout his words. Hearing such coyness does nothing to calm your growing resentment towards him, if anything, only adding fuel to the budding fire.

"Do you think this is funny?" you ask, anger laden in your voice. "Is that why you brought me out here? For your amusement, so that you could laugh to yourself in the late hours of the night about the woman that you're keeping holed up while I rot away inside of these walls and lament what my life might have been if my father had only allowed me a little more time?"

Stare unwavering, your eyes remain locked onto Minho's once you finish speaking, and he is not quick to reply in any fashion. Silence slips in between the two of you, only the faintest ticking of an old, antique clock stationed off to the side heard between the nothingness growing inside of the atrium.

Then, he sighs.

"I brought you out here because of the nature of our society and the expectation of certain norms therein. You know this as well as I do, what is expected of us by certain ages. Unfortunately for you, both of our time is nearly up and as a result, this is how fate would have it."

He explains it so matter of factly that the entire concept of these arrangements feels strange and foreign to you, despite its familiarity. Minho is right, and what he says to you is true, but it does little to make you feel calm in the matter. He offers you no comfort, no easiness or soft words to sort any pain that you may be feeling as a result of it. Perfunctory in delivery, Minho only gives to you precisely what it is that the two of you already know; nothing more, and nothing less.

You know this, but the dull ache of pain inside of your chest does not wane. It grows instead, so much so that you find yourself losing the ability to maintain disdain for him, or the fact that he brought you here, at all.

"Did you reach out to my father, or did he call out to you?" you ask, voice timid and broken. The details of the arrangement are of little consequence now, but you find yourself questioning it all the same. Perhaps they have only both ended up here by chance, and if so, is that the best possible outcome of all?

Lips thinning straight, it's a sort of forced smile that barely ever comes through, and Minho breaks eye contact once you present the question to him like he is aware that nothing he has to offer you will ever be enough.

The brush handle rattles against the glass once again, the sound sharp and jarring, bothersome to your ears now.

"He reached out to me," Minho says plainly, "and for that, you have my condolences."

𝕀𝕏.

Two weeks go by without so much as a sighting of the man that lives among you. In that time, however, a letter finds you from your mother. Late in the morning on a particularly dreary day, Mai comes to you in your study and hands off the envelope with a gleeful smile, seemingly thrilled to be offering you something instead of your husband.

"I was hoping that they would write to you soon," she says. "The early stages still require much conversing between the Master and your parents, but it's good that they have found the time to reach out to you now, as well."

"Yes, very good," you reply, forcing the sound of pleasantness through the words. You wonder if she knows about your meeting with Minho not so long ago, if she has been informed of your snooping and the knowledge you gained therein. "Thank you, I'll read it quickly."

Mai takes her leave and you are once again left to your things. Your finger slides beneath the flap of the envelope and pulls the seal apart, nimbly releasing the letter inside from its confines. Heart beating rapidly and not knowing what you will find, you attempt to steady your anxiety and land your eyes onto the page.

The words penned across it are happy ones, and that shifts your nerves at a sudden pace. She expresses her joy at all of the things your father has informed her in regards to his constant speaking with Minho; how well things have been going between the two of you, how worried she had been at the possibility of otherwise, and how proud she is of you. The words feel empty and as if they are not meant for you—how could they be? There is no truth held inside of any of it.

Once finished, you slip the letter back inside and tuck it away beneath your manuscript, opting instead to turn your attention towards the garden that awaits you just through the dampened window. Rain lightly pelts it, a calming sound that is very much needed in the aftermath of this reminder. 

Recalling your conversation with Minho in the atrium, you hone in on the specifics of it now. In particular, his stoic interpretation of this combination between the two of you. It was not he who intended to seek you out, and rather, the both of you share the difficulties of age and societal expectations that have been casted upon you at birth. A loveless marriage it is, convenience, even; but circumstances that the both of you are flattened beneath the pressure of.

You had once wished for him to be a man with no interest in you, and that is precisely what you have been graced with. Minho does not care for your presence, does not wish to spend time with you or converse with you in any way that people who share a home tend to do. This is what you had wanted for, so then why now does it feel so rotten to be on the receiving end of it?

A flash of lightning in the far off distance comes to pass, and it is at that moment that you come to your decision: you will make your way to the atrium once more.

𝕏.

Shadows flicker and dance across the darkness of the walls and bookcases lining the crescent shaped sides of the atrium, seen long before you reach the topmost step. There is no sound besides faint rustling, and the occasional, familiar clinking of wooden stick against glass rim.

Minho is there.

You reach the top and find him; on his knees and hunched over not unlike your last meeting in this place. His shoulders and back flex against the tightness of the white blouse that holds him, deceptively firm muscles that you are only now able to see from this angle. He stills briefly, silent acknowledgment of his knowing that you are there, but carries on with his task for a while before bothering to utter a word.

"You shouldn't be up here."

An expected warning, but it does little to deter you. Instead of turning back, you continue forward, towards him, and stop only a few more strides away. Distance given out of the goodness of your heart, and because you accept wrongdoing in ever having come here in the first place.

"Why?" you ask.

With busy hands, Minho remains fast at work, splashing blues, pinks and purples across the white canvas. His features do not twist or contort in any sort of way that one might expect from tortured artists who suffer at the hands of their crafts. Quite the contrary; he appears at ease, calm and collected in this place that is meant only for him and the creations that pour from his skilled fingers.

"For no other reason than it being my working space, and working spaces must be maintained as such." He pauses finally, drops the bush into the water sitting just beside and then looks up at you through messy, loose strands of black hair. "It is no place for conversing, especially if you wish to fight with me like before."

The reluctance in his voice, almost pained in the way that he says it, has your eyebrows pressing together with rather intense confusion. While it is true that you had been far from pleased with the discoveries made the first time you made your way up here, to call it something of a fight feels rather excessive to you, in hindsight.

"I wouldn't say that we fought, can you blame me for feeling the way that I had felt then?"

"Not at all," he admits with ease, "but you shouldn't go through my things, and you shouldn't raise your voice at me in regards to matters that are just as much out of my control as they are your own."

That rubs you wrongly, and your eyes narrow as a result of it. "They are not equally out of our control. You desired a woman to live idly in your home and that is what you received. I desired only the smallest allowance of time in order to get my surroundings back on track, and in the end, what I received was nothing more than being the aforementioned idle woman."

Minho sighs heavily, then turns back to the canvas in front of him. "How many times must I apologize for that? It's not as if I had known when the inquiry was sent to me that you would be so displeased. Is it not enough that I do not force you to engage with me?"

"That's not—"

"I ask nothing of you," Minho continues, a newfound pointedness to his voice. "I do not request your company in any capacity, no expectation of you to entertain me in any way. I do not bother you, I do my best to stay out of your way. Anything you desire, it's yours. Money, gifts, luxury cloths or even the most expensive art pieces from all across the globe…any of it can be yours, should it suit you."

His voice wavers as he reaches the tail end of his words, and the weight of it hangs heavy on your heart. Minho sounds sad, defeated in a battle that he hadn't even bothered to take on. 

Then, he looks up towards you again. 

"If a lover is what you wish to have, you may take one. I understand the difficulty in meeting people so far out in the countryside, but I'll see to it that the staff will accommodate your needs in any way."

Once he finishes, you stand silently just off and to the side of him. Your stares towards one another rest in the balance, you anticipate him saying more, but the words never come.

You frown at him, just slightly.

"What do you know about me?" you ask.

The question seems to take him aback, eyes widening slightly at the suddenness of it being presented towards him. His eyes fall from yours then, cast around the floor between you as if the answers sprawled out somewhere there. Eventually, he accepts his fate, and looks back up towards you.

"I…I don't know. Nothing, I suppose. Not beyond what your father has told me throughout our correspondence."

"My father knows nothing about me, not beyond the perfected image of daughterhood that I am expected to present. You know all about expectations, don't you, Mr. Lee?"

His watching you continues, but no words dare to be uttered by the man.

"Perhaps instead of holing yourself up here your whole life, you come down and do what is expected of you." Turning back towards the stairs that brought you here, you begin your descent down—one, two—and then pause to turn back for your final parting words.

"A man is expected to be seen by his wife, is he not? To talk to her, to know things about her, to learn. More than that, a husband is expected to do all of that, and even more. I refuse to allow you to use my invisible presence here as nothing more than a story that you can tell people while you're away presenting your art pieces. You wanted me here, and so I am. You will have to do better, because I have nothing left to lose, and the humiliation of returning home from a failed marriage is a far cry from the things I have already endured."

Minho does not reply.

𝕏𝕀.

The next morning, just as any other, you maintain your routines.

Exiting your bedroom, your feet pad along the floor one after another—simple slippers that adorn them, keeping your toes warm—the sound of it is one that you have now grown accustomed to, the echo as it carries through the emptiness of the estate.

Thankfully, as you draw nearer to the lowest level and towards the kitchen, the gentle music of other inhabitants fondly make themselves known to you. Scents mix in as well, cinnamon and coffee and vanilla all whirled together in the air that you can't help but find peace amongst it all. When you enter, you are greeted brightly by Mai, as well as the other housekeepers lending their hands to ensure a seamlessly run ship.

You offer your thanks, and head along your way towards the study. The door hangs ajar, just as you always leave it. No concern for whether or not Minho will make his way down and curiosity will get the best of him upon catching sight of your belongings; a man who has made it more than clear that he holds no such fascination in you.

The large seat situated in front of the window awaits you. Today is sunny, the short rain that tells a tale of spring soon to come, having since passed during the nighttime and bringing after its having gone bright skies and pristine white clouds. A good day, a nice day. You sit, opening the drawer inside of the desk and pulling from it the notebook that holds your manuscript. So many years of work, so personal and encompassing everything that makes you. 

With your back towards the door, you only vaguely hear the sounds of Mai's hushed utterance from just within the kitchen. Some exclamation of surprise, though it disappears with the same swiftness that it seems to have caught her. Perhaps a bug, or a misplaced knife settled within the wrong drawer—anything could be the case—and for that very reason, you brush it off and focus instead on the pen and paper before you.

Then, there's a knock at the wood of your door.

"Yes?" you call back out at it, unsure of what the housekeepers could be wanting from you. Your typical routine with them has been more or less concluded, no obvious reason for anyone to be looking for you now. "I've not finished with my first coffee yet, I'll come when I have, you need not wait on me and worry yourselves sick."

"Does the Lady of the house have a moment of her time to spare?"

Before you can so much as fathom it, your body whips around and you nearly wholly twist in your chair to look back at the place that the masculine voice has come.

As if what awaits you there could be anything else, anyone else; Minho stands in the small crack of the doorway, barely enough for him to fit half of his body through. He does not dare attempt it, waiting outside for your word of affirmation. His face is downcast, looking up through eyelashes at you like he is doing something entirely wrong of the both of you. Anticipating being turned away, expecting to be berated for having the gall to make such a brave attempt.

"Y-yes, of course, come in!" you reply, biting back the eagerness in your tone at the end of the sentence. Suddenly, you become painfully aware of the space around you and how unkempt you have allowed it to be. "I apologize, it's something of a mess. I only come in here to do some small tasks to keep myself busy and then I leave so I don't think much of keeping it tidy."

Minho steps inside, though the effort is barely there. Two steps into the room, and then he stops; looks around it like he has never been here before. Eventually, you come to understand that he is not so much looking at the things he keeps and rather, that he is avoiding eyes that belong to you.

"It is yours, you may keep it as you wish," he says. His hands dance between being cradled in front of himself, to similarly behind his back. Forward again, thumbs craned into his pockets, then out and to his sides—strangely, uncomfortably. He does not know what to do with them. "I apologize for intruding on your time like this, I—" he pauses, stops looking around once he realizes he has seen all that there is to see, and then has no other option than to look at you. This action is short lived, however, eyes quickly falling to the wood beneath his feet. "I believe that you were correct last night, in your assessment of me and our arrangement. For that reason, I want to make an effort. I want to…do what is expected of me."

Silence blankets the room, his eyes cast upwards again; "If that's all right, of course."

"Yes, yes of course it's…what I would prefer, I think." Once again, excitement that betrays your unwillingness to give too much, too fast. Even if he weren't looking at you, the glee would be heard in your voice. "At the very least, an effort made to get to know one another on a more personal basis. We may never fall in love, may never become lovers…it's impossible to say if we will ever even become friends, but I think it best for the both of us if there is some level of acquaintanceship here."

Minho nods once, swallowing so hard and through a throat so dry that you swear you can hear it. "Understood. Though I must say, I do…" he trails off in thought, returns to it only moments later, "I still intend to spend the majority of my time in the atrium, for work. I must insist that even with our new arrangement, you do not come up there. I will instead…make myself more common down here, or if you request my presence—not that I suspect you will—please inform Mai, and she will retrieve me."

"I accept these terms, but in the inception of such, it is only fair that I forge those of my own."

Eyes widening in shock, Minho seems surprised by your candor. Though you do not know him well, one thing you are thankful for is his seeming unwillingness to abide by much of the traditional social construct that exists around the expectations of the way that men and women are meant to engage with one another. You speak loudly and brashly with Minho, a man that you barely know, and he accepts as much with grace. When he wishes for you to not engage with him in such ways, he calmly asks it of you, rather than demands it through authoritarian fear.

When you wish to push back, he takes a step backwards of his own in order to grant you the space to do so.

"That indeed is fair," Minho agrees, a barely-there smile curving into the corners of his lips. "What does the Lady seek?"

"We have a meal together, most days. Breakfast or dinner, it is of no particular consequence to me. I do not know if you prefer the morning or evening hours, but based on your artistic habits and the dark circling beneath your eyes currently, one can only assume that breakfast is out of the question."

Your own smile perks up, and along with it, Minho's widens. He turns his head, looks over in an attempt to find the nearest reflective surface. Only a silver vase, his face coming out all wobbly and distorted as he looks at himself against it. The truth of your words is still found, however.

"I accept," he says. "Dinner. Let's have dinner together tonight."

You grant him a nod, and he cumbersomely turns towards the door to take his leave.

"One more thing," he adds, paused perfectly within the doorframe but choosing not to look back at you. "Perhaps we should…prepare for the conversations that will be had. It would be awfully unfortunate to waste our time together among the dead of an otherwise quiet night."

Charmed in all of the most fascinating and incomprehensible ways, you see straight through the veil that Minho has attempted to hold up. A million questions run through your mind already; regarding him, this estate, his work, where he has been, and you cannot fathom the possibility of him not experiencing the same. Rather, the second likelihood swims within your thoughts, humorously intriguing, and serving as the catalyst for your ability to begin putting the pieces of him together into something far more recognizable.

Lee Minho is reserved. Locked away in the countryside and borderline cripplingly timid in the face of anything new and not easily understood—made sense by the dabbing of colored paints onto a canvas, dragged and splotched into something that his eye can really and truly see.

Later that evening, Mai and her staff spend far more time and effort preparing a meal than is truly necessary. You worry to yourself slightly watching the lot of them hustle about—there are only two of you, after all—but Mai insists each and every time that she finds the concern spread across your features that she is actually quite thrilled to be doing something such as this for once.

"The Master does not have company often, and for that reason, does not frequently take a proper meal in the evenings," she says, delight dripping from her voice.

Comically to you, however, is the fact that Minho is here and seated at the table across from you already; spoken about as if he is not even in the room. You look him over when Mai admits as much and his features pan, somewhat pained by the truth of it all, you suppose.

"I'm busy in the evenings, more often than not, you are well aware of this, Mai."

"That's no reason not to allow us to have some fun in this kitchen." Her fists ball up at the tops of her hips, and then a handful of other staff begin making their way over to set dishes atop the table.

"You shouldn't say it like I don't permit you to do so," Minho says. He glances up at you briefly, as if to gauge how you're taking all of this. Worried you might think him to be an evil ruler of the manor. "You can, it's just—"

"Wasteful!" Mai finishes with a knowing nod, and then disappears from your side of the table altogether. Her next words are spoken from quite a ways away, down the hall and out of the dining area. "Enjoy your meal! Call for us if you need anything!" she says.

And then the room is silent.

The smells of roasted chicken and glazed vegetables quickly beckon your attention. Buttered dinner rolls in wicker baskets and already poured glasses of wine await each of you. The serving of food has already been completed, your plate piled high with items that drown in delicious looking gravy and topped with garnishes. 

You reach towards your wine glass, and make short eye contact with Minho along the way.

He clears his throat, shuffles uncomfortably in his seat after it, and then picks up his eating utensils.

"Some men," he starts, then waits, like he isn't sure that it's so much of a good idea, "some men can be strange about the types of food, or the amount, that their wives eat."

You continue staring at him, because what is the point of this?

Minho reaches for his glass, takes a large sip from it. "Uhh, I'm not like those men, so please, have your fill."

"Are you informing me that I am permitted to not go hungry for appearances?" you ask flatly.

"I—" he begins, short and cut off, not sure where to go from here. "Yes, I suppose that I am. I just wanted to be clear, in case there was cause for concern."

"With all due respect," you say through a light chuckle, "we're in the middle of nowhere, and I've not left the estate since I came. Who am I really intending to impress?"

Minho does not respond to that. He seems to be willing to relent to the conversation at just about any turn, which amuses and also confuses you. Watching him, he cuts into a piece of potato and carefully puts the chunk between slightly crooked, off kilter front teeth. Sort of charming, one of those quirks about a person's appearance that grows on you over time.

He looks up at you suddenly, then takes another sip of the wine.

"What do you do here? How do you spend your days?"

That is unexpected, though you can't quite pinpoint why. Perhaps it is the brashness of finally asking something so quizzical, so personal; a true attempt at learning something about you in a way not before seen or expressed by him. You do not answer right away, nor does he press further. Only the scraping of silverware against fine porcelain is heard throughout the space for entirely too long.

Might he think you strange for your habits? Is he someone safe to tell?

It's worth the chance, and you will yourself to be unbothered by any negative reaction that he may have.

"I…um, I'm writing a book," you say, steadying the tremble that punctures the words, "I do a lot of writing. In the mornings I wake up early, have my breakfast, and then I write in the study by the garden."

You remain nervous about Minho's reaction, but for no discernible reason you come to find. His eyebrows perk up, attention rapt by what it is that you've said. "A book? That's quite impressive, how long have you been working on it?"

"Oh, many years." Stumbling through the strangeness of his sudden exhilaration, you attempt to maintain your composure. "It is something of a memoir, so I have been collecting moments of my life for as long as I can remember."

Minho shakes his head, evidently stunned by such a possibility. "Writing is such a magnificent craft, everyday I wish that the gift of language and written word is the one that had come to find my hands."

"Painting is an incredible art, so few people are creatively capable of mastering the concepts of color or line like you have. Anyone literate can write a sentence."

Minho looks up and the two of you meet glances. It is a moment shared between people who have a newfound understanding amongst one another, and as a result, it feels special; magical. He smiles slightly, and you can't help but match it, too.

"Well, anyone can scribble color onto a canvas, but I think we both know well enough that there is much more that goes into the arts than that," Minho says, a newfound casualness that you feel as though you have only just unlocked to his tone. "Are you looking to publish someday?"

"I think I might like to, if the opportunity were to arise." You stop, reconsider the content therein, and correct for that. "Anonymously, or under a penname. Not my own."

He nods in acceptance of that, then takes another bite of food with his vision cast down towards the plate. In times like this, Minho reminds you of a small child, poorly socialized and unsure of how to move about the world with other people in it. He tries his best, has only the best of intentions, but it never quite feels as though it's enough.

Little by little, you're peeling through those layers. All things considered, so far, the journey isn't half bad.

"I'm pleased that we've decided to do this," Minho says, focused solely on pushing the broccoli around on his plate idly. "Spend time together, I mean. Getting to know one another."

Thus far, perhaps there is a part of you that cannot help but agree.

𝕏𝕀𝕀.

New routines unearth themselves throughout the estate.

Spring washes over the land in waves; flowers in their fullest blossom, live with color and birds that joyously scour the land for new perches to rest their tired wings atop. The trees fill in once more with lush greens and fruits that begin to fill in along the firm branches.

Minho makes himself more often seen throughout the manor corridors, though often brief and insistent on his having some other place to be. You learn not to take it to heart—his insistence in giving himself an out of the conversation—as it would seem that conversation with others is not a skill that comes naturally to him.

Still, you appreciate the effort. Some mornings, Minho slinks down the stairway and into the kitchen, long before his usual rising hours, and asks you about the agenda for your day. You often do not have much to offer him, but Minho watches on as you fill him in with his chin cradled in his hands and eyes that sparkle under the barely breaking dawn that washes in from the windows. He always smiles; somewhat crooked, with one side pulling ever so slightly higher than the other. It isn't a lot, but for now, it will do.

The month is April, and out of the study window you find Minho tending to the garden.

The outside grounds are not well traveled by you, partially on account of arriving to the countryside in the dead of winter. Now that the breezes have warmed and the snow has melted, it's as fine a time as any, and you carry yourself off towards the side door in the kitchen to take your first few steps into the garden that you have adoringly watched all of these months.

"Decided not to keep yourself cooped up in there, did you?" Minho asks playfully, only briefly glancing up towards you from his bent and knelt position in the turned soil. His hands are dirty—no gloves to be seen—but his forearms flex and pulse with strength as he rips at weeds and digs his holes. "People are going to start to think I don't permit you to leave."

"People? What people?" you reply. "Even my own parents have grown bored of writing to me. I don't think you live in any fear of what the people might think. Perhaps they assume that we are wildly happy together, no interest in sharing that with the rest of the unworthy world."

"Aren't we?" Minho says, chuckling lightly. 

You make an effort to ignore the question, as well as the way his muscles all appear taut and well attended to beneath his moistened white shirt. Minho is a good looking man, in ways that are a little surprising to you and even in spite of his lack of social character, but even as your husband, he is a stranger. A man that you now live with because it is nothing more than convenient for the both of you, not someone to be lusted after.

Hyunjin comes to mind suddenly. Every time you find yourself missing the touch of a man, it's him that torments you still.

"Of course." You make an effort to ignore the thoughts, and change the subject. "I didn't know you had an interest in gardening. Perhaps I wrongfully assumed it to be something kept up with by the staff."

"Wrong indeed," he says, wiping at his forehead with the rolled up sleeve of his shirt. His skin glistens under the spring sunlight, hair collecting the moisture of his face within its strands. 

You are only lusting after him in this way because you wish to be touched by a man again, you barely even know him, you reason. Some reason.

"It's something I picked up a good many years back, when I was shoved deeply into the success of my career. I spent even more time locked away with my work and my paintings, if you could even believe it," Minho says, smiling at himself at the memory of it all. "So, I had to find a reason to get out of the house. Not too far, or for too long, but something. Additionally, I enjoy the act of creation…" he pauses, picks up a small vegetable bulb and holds it up for you to look at. "What's more creative than life?"

You smile, wide and with teeth in a way that you don't remember having done in such a long, long time. Minho laughs at your reaction, and then carries on burying the plant into the ground as originally intended.

"You like to play God in the garden, then?" 

"I wouldn't say that."

"What would you say?"

Minho looks up, a surprisingly thoughtful expression etched into his features, as if really, genuinely giving the question an ample amount of thought. "I would say that I like to create!"

A beat of silence passes between the two of you, and Minho continues on with his task. You cock your head to the side, watching him quietly as he moves as if an incredibly bizarre exchange hasn't just taken place. The truth of the matter, you know without so much as even having to ask, is that the discussion is more than likely not strange to him, at all. A perfectly fine chat, nothing out of the ordinary.

Naturally, in the midst of moments like these is when Minho seems most at ease.

"You're a bit odd, Mr. Lee," you say. Calmness is heavy in your tone, marking down the potential distaste that might otherwise accompany such words. "Do you often hear that?"

"Yes, but my oddities and eccentricities are what make the mind tick, the art work and come to life. If I were anything other than myself, who knows what may come of it. I'd rather not find out. Oh, that reminds me—"

Setting his tools down and wiping his hands uselessly on his brown trousers, Minho pauses all of his toiling about to give you his full attention for the words that he is intending for you. His face appears somewhat disappointed, but there's something else mixing within the emotions that you might easily name that you can't quite pinpoint.

"At the beginning of the summer, around June or so, I will leave you to carry on with a showing. I will be gone until autumn time, perhaps November…it will be cold again when I return."

Your stomach drops, and that feeling shocks you.

"Of course, the estate is yours to do as you see fit, and you may leave it as frequently as you wish, too. All of the staff will be yours. It is all yours."

Your lips thin into a frown, and as it would seem, the reaction surprises Minho. He looks up at you in confusion, and perhaps quickly works through the thoughts by himself, because his eyes dip down and away from you, unable to share his gaze with your own with how displeased you appear.

"I'm going to be alone here…for months…"

"Well, you won't be alone…" he says quietly, offering nothing.

"We've finally begun the process of getting to know one another in a meaningful way, and now you're leaving until autumn…it'll be as though we're strangers all over again when you return."

"Surely it won't be that bad…" Minho forces himself to give you answers, but none of them quell the feeling that presses against your chest. "I'll return before you even notice I'm away. For a long time upon your arrival, it was as if I wasn't here at all."

"And I hated it!" you reply quickly, brashly. The words come out loud and honest in a way that you have not intended. Your eyes sit wide on your face, and finally, Minho slowly looks up at you again with eyes not unlike your own.

Neither of you speak for a long while, until Minho sighs and has no other option but to do so himself.

"I apologize, I…did not anticipate that you would feel this way about it, but nevertheless, there is nothing that I can do. This is a part of my work, I often must leave to do such things. The year after this one will be no different, and if it is, then the futility of fame and the fickleness of the human intrigue has finally caught up to me." He quiets again, continues trying to wipe the dirt caked onto the skin of his hands off and onto his pants uselessly. A pointless endeavor. It feels not unlike wanting to be loved. 

"I can…try to come home sooner, at the tail end of things. Sometimes it wraps up earlier than anticipated," he says, looking away from your disappointed eyes. "I've not bothered to rush home before, with nothing waiting for me. Not to imply that you are…waiting for my return…"

"I would like that," you say, simply put. "Suppose then we should make an effort to make these last two months together count, yes?"

Minho doesn't look up at you, too socially strangled to do so. It's not necessary, however, because the small perk at the corner of his mouth as a result of what you have proposed says plenty.

𝕏𝕀𝕀𝕀.

"Another lovely dinner, thank you, Mai."

She nods to Minho kindly, accepting the compliment, and then finishes up her small cleaning tasks to head out and away from the dining area. You look out and across the living room at the large window that leads into the garden—not unlike your study—and bask in the way that the moonlight shines down onto the glistening, wet leaves and petals that have since come to bloom.

"Have you been out yet? In the evening, I mean." Minho turns to you when he says it, notices where it is that you've been looking, but you shake your head.

"No, too busy with my writing, I suppose."

"You'll find an excuse forever if you allow yourself to, come on, let's go."

Minho doesn't touch you, but he waves his hand towards you and then back into the direction of the side door that leads into the garden. You follow along without much argument, wanting just as much to see what the grounds have to offer you, and perhaps now is as good of a time as any.

The nighttime breeze is cold, and you are not at all dressed to be traversing it with only a thin shawl draped over your shoulders. Immediately upon stepping down and onto the cobblestone pathway your arms fly up to cradle yourself, attempting to hug back the warmth that escapes. Minho seems far less bothered by the pricking of cold against his skin. He is never dressed in anything special or extravagant for as long as you have known him; a plain, white button down shirt with brown, fitted pants suited for not much more than becoming dirty without a care. 

Regardless, you push through. It is not often that the two of you partake in anything other than a dinner, or a coffee together. Two people so wrapped up in their own things that they nearly forget about the existence of the other. You make an effort—Minho is getting better over the weeks—but only so many hours in a day.

The two of you slip around the gray, brick corner of the home; grand in its stature. As far as the eye can see sit beds of flowers, ornate bushes, and the shining droplets of rain from earlier in the day that still collect on each. It's a beautiful sight, the way that they twinkle, and when Minho turns to look back at you, a rare and wide smile pulls at his face.

And then it falls.

"Are you cold?" he asks, concerned and rushing towards you instead. "You should have said something, only now do I realize that you're not dressed for the evening breeze."

"I'm fine, really," you insist, something of a lie with the way that you tremble. He must not be thinking clearly, too wrapped up in the sight before him to thoroughly consider all of his options. Minho reaches for you, presses smooth, warm palms to your arms and runs down them carefully before grasping gently at your wrists and pulling your body against his. He wraps his arms around you—he is firm, both in body and embrace—and he smells like the strangest combination of paint and cinnamon.

Indeed, you are warmer now.

You are not unfamiliar with the touch of a man, and it is not that in particular that dredges up the nervousness in your stomach. Rather, you have never shared a touch with this man, and this man is the one that you live with, are married to. You wonder if it is only natural to have considered the possibility of wanting him; handsome, smart, kind, who wouldn't at the very least enjoy the fantasy of such a thing.

But never to touch.

Minho's hands, surprisingly strong and confident, inch down your back to pool at the small of it as distance is created between the both of your bodies. You crave the kind of intimacy that being like this gives you, but still it feels wrong when it comes from him. Accepting this arrangement as nothing more than a marriage of convenience cements certain ideas for the remainder of your time with this man, and one of those, unwaveringly, is that love and love making will be strictly absent from it.

Yet you enjoy the way that he touches you now.

In the dark of night, and just outside of the manor, Minho pulls back from you slowly and it's like this that you are finally able to see him up close, the tiny, charming intricacies of his face otherwise missed due to proximity. A small freckle on his nose, the ever so slight crookedness to his front teeth that—while you have noticed—are so much more handsome and real like this.

His eyes sparkle looking at you, and there's a pause before anything more happens. In your mind, you beg. Loudly asking for that which you seek, no matter the outcome. You can deal with that when it comes, and perhaps you don't even know precisely what it is that you desire from him now. Still, you beg; please, please, please…

Minho's eyes fixate on yours, and then drop down, down, to where your lips sit. His own part, as if with intention to speak, or a desire to taste, one you prefer far more than the other. He does neither, however, finds eye contact once more, but his fingers grasping harder into the loose fabric sitting at the small of your back sends chills down your spine in a way that the meeting of your lips might not even manage.

Do you want, Lee Minho? Do you crave, as well?

"We should go inside," he says, a whisper that shakes. His gaze finds itself fixated down towards your lips again, and all concern aside, you want in that moment for him to have you. "You're not dressed to be out here, you'll catch a cold."

If Minho has ever desired you, even for a moment prior to this, never has he shown so much as an inkling of it. Now, he stands unraveled, pulled apart and bare for you to see. You wonder if he aches, you cannot help but wonder whether or not the need will be sated.

"Yes, let us do that," you answer, but only because you should. No part of you wishes to find warmth within the walls of the estate. 

The following weeks bring a sort of comfortable bliss to the previously cold, ominous interior of the home. One morning, however, that all changes.

Early mornings are warmer now than they once were, each passing day cutting through the chilly breeze. The grounds come to live in lush greens and colorful petals; you've even begun taking trips out of the countryside and into the nearest, small town. It has little to offer besides functional necessity, but leaving the estate is a breath of fresh air that rejuvenates your senses.

You hope to make that journey today, but first, there is work that must be done.

The manuscript is coming along, words filling each page like they've always meant to be there. With your coffee in hand, you make your way towards the study that keeps your things like an untended vault. Secrets hide inside, but no one dares to seek them out—or so you thought.

You push the door open, and what you find is nearly enough to drop the cup from your hands and to the floor completely. Your heart stops similarly instead, and for a brief moment, you cannot believe your eyes.

Minho looks up at you from inside, standing by the desk from which you often work. In his hands sit all of your deepest, innermost secrets. Things you wish not to share with him now, perhaps ever, but the look on his face is one of someone who now understands everything.

He is difficult to read from here, his feelings incomprehensible from just what his features have presented as the two of your eyes meet.

You rush inside, though the damage is done, you know. "What are you doing?" you ask, making little effort to mask your feelings on this matter. Once you reach him, you snatch the pages from his hands and shove them back inside of the drawer from which he got them. "That's not yours to read!"

He does not respond right away, and instead, the room fills with a heavy silence. Minho's hands drop slowly to his sides as he watches you, lips pulled thinly across his face. He appears neither angry, nor sad. He has the appearance of nothing, at all.

"I only wanted to understand you better, get to know you more than what we already have, I thought…" he trails off, eyes falling away from yours, "I thought this to be the best way, suppose I was not mistaken."

You don't dare make an attempt to find his gaze, not looking at one another. It's better like this. Anger bubbles up inside of you, as well as the humiliation of everything that has led you to this point, to this place with him. "So, now you know. Now you know everything."

"I don't…" Minho starts again in response, once again there are words that he cannot seem to find with the same sort of urgency that he needs them. "If it is some concern about my feelings on the matter, I'm unbothered by what you've done, by your history."

"And why should you care?" you ask, the words coming out biting and spit like a kind of venom. "We are not involved in this partnership in any typical sense of the word. This is a marriage of convenience, and convenient it shall remain." It feels bad when spoken, as if betraying your own self-interest. What you feel it to be instead is the most logical course of action given the circumstances; neither serving you nor your heart as far as any potential, budding relationship between the two of you is concerned.

Minho's eyes dart up at that and find your own, but you continue on. "A wife for show, am I not? And for show I will continue to be. No one else knows, you will never experience the same sort of humiliation as I have, if that is your concern."

"It's not." His face twists at the words you've said to him. "That couldn't be the furthest thing from my concern. Do I come off as someone who loses sleep over the opinions of people?"

There's more fight in his voice now, something you're not used to hearing from him. It rattles you, but only slightly, because you are not frightened of him or what he may do. Rather, it serves as a sort of reminder of just how little you appear to understand about him. Most men, most husbands, in these situations would be livid, and demanding of the dissolution of a partnership from which has been built upon deception. This, however, would seem to be far from Minho's interest.

"I would be dishonest if I said that I didn't wish you had told me, of course I do, but I am reasonable enough to understand why you have not," Minho says. "You have lived a whole life before ever having met me, your path leading you elsewhere. That is neither my business, nor my concern. My concern is…"

He does not complete the thought and instead turns away from you once more. Minho makes his way towards the door of the study, but gives pause just before making his exit.

"I am to leave in a week's time, perhaps the space will do us well, after all."

The reminder of all of the time that you will spend by yourself hangs grossly dense inside of your heart. Everything about this feels so wrong, not as it was meant to ever be. Birthed from some incomprehensible place is the desire to beg him to stay, to not leave you here alone despite knowing that he cannot. So much progress has been made between the two of you, only to be spoiled by this; left to fester for the summer months, and you cannot fathom a scenario in which he returns having missed you now.

𝕏𝕀𝕍.

When Minho leaves for his trip, you do not bid him farewell.

Instead, you watch from the window of your bedroom as bags and canvases are piled into the carriage. Minho, Mai and the rest of the staff all smile and say their goodbyes—you can't help but wonder if he wishes you were there alongside them.

It is unimportant. What must be done carries on regardless, and Minho sits himself inside, the carriage pulls away, and down the pathway he eventually disappears; not to return until the leaves on the trees begin to color and fall away with the soon to be onset of winter air once more.

You wonder if you will miss him, only time will tell.

The passing months bore you, and offer you little to placate your wandering mind.

Summer is in full swing, it comes and works its way to closing before you have much of a moment to enjoy it. You make many trips into town to partake in the fresh bakeries and even engage with the folk who enjoy their lives there. They seem happy, you can't help but wonder what that must be like.

Though the manor had been lonely upon your first arrival, there is a stark difference between then, and now. The knowledge that Minho was there—somewhere—within the halls somehow serving as just enough of a comfort to take the edge off of the blanketing nothingness, now gone; and worse than that, you do not know what awaits you when he will return.

Mai offers you kindness, and that is appreciated, but her dedication to her job makes it so that the line towards friendship never truly becomes crossed. You have not seen your parents, and they do not write to you as often as you might like them to. Tzuyu has sent a letter or two, but they are as infrequent as the others, as she is busy with the courtship process herself after the announcement from the prince.

Seven days into September, there is a knock at the door.

Sitting in the vast living room area, surrounded by old paintings, books and other such decorations, the sun begins to set on the home and the summer heat finally starts to wane. The book in hand—one Minho had recommended before his departure—is one that tells the tale of an old painter who traveled all around the world, and gifted a canvas of his art to every person that he met along the way. You wonder if this is the life that Minho wishes for, you wonder if eventually, you will be left behind for good as nothing more than another collectible that he has accumulated inside of the estate.

"Miss…" 

Mai comes up from behind, wringing her hands strangely, unlike anything you've ever seen from her before. Nervous. "You have a visitor."

"I do?" you question, reeling. You are not expecting anyone. "Who is it?"

"I think it might be best if you come quickly."

She has never appeared so concerned to you, and thus, you make haste to follow her and trust her word. The strides past the kitchen and through the small hallway are quick and long, there's a kind of worry bubbling up inside of you. All of the worst potential things begin to muddle your mind; what if your parents have passed away and someone has come to deliver the news in person? 

But turning into the foyer puts a different kind of nail into a different kind of coffin.

Three men stand in the doorway, one on each side of the person intended to be the centerpiece of their arrival. A simple, loose black shirt draping over broad shoulders and a thin, lithe torso, cinched at the waist and carelessly tucked into the matching black trousers there.

He nearly gives the appearance of someone normal, everyday. Just a spot above Minho's own, usual look. Fascinating, the way your mind instantly moves to compare the two.

"Hello, darling," Hyunjin says. Then, he turns to his guards. "You may go."

You feel Mai's eyes on you, and quickly turn to acknowledge them. "Please, leave us."

She nods, and you can only imagine the questions running through her head. You have not a clue how you intend on ever addressing them in the future, but there are many things that you do not understand yet in front of you.

"Your Highness," you say, and then begin to take your bow. Hyunjin steps forward with a gentle scoff, and quickly waves the display away, instead setting his hand atop your shoulder as he moves past you and into the direction from which you came. 

"That's not necessary, let us leave the theatrics of royalty for the streets, where the people might see them, shall we? I think we are a long way away from requiring that between us."

And so you do. The two of you make your way back into the common area of the downstairs and each take an end of the lengthiest couch. Hyunjin sits leaned forward, hands clasped together and resting against his knees. His hair is still long and dark, you thought he might cut it to relinquish such a boyish, juvenile look, but you find that has not been the case.

"I must admit," he begins through a sigh, "I was a bit taken aback when I heard who it was that you ended up being married off to."

"Yes, well, suppose I experienced much of the same when it came to you," you reply curtly.

To that, Hyunjin smiles slightly and stares down at the floor between his feet.

"Fair play. Unfortunately, there are certain expectations…"

"Was everything a lie? Did you never have any intention of marrying me? Did you never love me? If there are expectations then surely you knew when we began our private affairs what could come of it all, so why…"

"It's not so simple," Hyunjin says slowly, turning to look at you now. "My parents have the majority of say in who gets chosen. How lovely it would be if falling in love were enough."

You look at him, but frown. The possibility that the choice be wholly out of his hands is not one that had ever crossed your mind, too busy cursing him for a choice that may have never been his to begin with. Your eyes rake over him, his face; and perhaps there is something of a sadness behind his eyes if you dare to give him the grace of seeing it.

"Where is Sana?"

To this question, Hyunjin sits back with a heavy, loud exhale. "At home, perhaps shopping with her friends as she tends to do. Where is Mr. Lee?"

"Away for work, until the end of autumn."

"It must be lonely, being cooped up here in the countryside alone for so long."

"I…" you hesitate, unsure of how much of yourself you wish to indulge in a man who has already hurt you so gravely in the past. "I make do."

Looking towards you again, Hyunjin's gaze is heavy and narrow, full of a silent contemplation that he has not yet shared with you. Talking to someone that you know so well feels comforting, welcomed. You feel at home. He is disarming.

"Does he suit you?" Hyunjin asks.

You hadn't thought about it in such simplistic terms before. Does Minho suit you? you question yourself in your mind again.

And then you give one, single nod. "He suits me enough, I suppose. Our partnership is a bit…unorthodox perhaps, but we find joy in each other's company."

His eyebrow perks up at that, catching the hint of something unspoken hidden between the words.

"Is that so? A loveless marriage then?"

You scoff, shifting uncomfortably in your seat at the mere mention of it, regardless of how much truth there may be in the statement. "I think loveless makes it seem so much more harsh than it is. I believe we have begun to care for one another in some fashion, over the months. We talk, we have meals together—"

"But he doesn't make love to you."

Stilling your awkward movements, you slowly turn to look up and meet Hyunjin's curious gaze once more.

"No. We've not…reached that point in our relationship, if we ever do." Your eyes fall away. "Surely you are familiar with marriages of convenience, and that very much is ours. We are both at peace with it. Minho is kind, he is accepting of my interests and allows me to do as I please in order to maintain a sense of self, I couldn't ask for more."

As if taking your words as an invitation, Hyunjin slowly begins making his way down the length of the empty couch and towards you. A wry smile tugs at his lips, and though the better part of you knows better than to entertain the possibility of whatever it is that this man may have to offer you, there does still remain the wicked loneliness of a woman who misses—craves—the adoring, wanting touch of a man who desires her.

You tell yourself to create more space between your bodies as Hyunjin comes near, to stand to your feet, to ask him to leave. You are not frightened of him, not an ounce of concern laden in you that he may wish to take something that you are unwilling to give him; no, the horror lies within the fact that you very much do wish to give to him.

Hyunjin's hand finds your leg. The touch is light, tentative and testing. You do not pull away.

"That is no way to live the rest of your days, my love."

It should be harder, you imagine, to give in to his whims. The consideration should weigh heavier on your chest, not handed over so easily once his lips find the skin of your neck, and shortly thereafter, your own. Hyunjin's hands smooth up your legs and beneath your dress, laid back against the sofa. He hovers over you with long, black hair that curtains the both of you inside of this moment. Unsure whether or not it is right, or wrong. For him, the answer is a simple one, but suppose these sorts of things are commonplace among men of a royal standing; after all, who exists to cast down judgment upon them?

His touch is electric against your skin, even more so with the first, slow press of himself into you. You gasp at the feeling. Indeed, you have missed this more than even you had known.

Still, you think of Minho.

When Hyunjin takes his leave once more and bids you farewell, new thoughts and feelings run rampant through your mind as you smile and wave down the cobblestone walkway. Perhaps there had been a kind of truth in his words—that this is no way to live forever—but you cannot fathom any other way, either.

Falling into Hyunjin's touch is easy because it is one that is so familiar. The same motions repeated time and time again and to a kind of perfection, however; something is missing, something that you cannot quite put your finger on.

𝕏𝕍.

The weeks continue to draw on, as does the day of Minho's return in November.

Leaves begin to change their colors, falling away from the branches that they once called their home. The flowers litter the ground, browning and dying to spring anew in the following year. It reminds you of your first arrival upon this place, though snow covered the land then. Not yet has it fallen for the first time this season, but soon it shall.

You keep busy, trying to put out of your mind the happenings in his absence. It is of little consequence to you what has happened in Hyunjin's brief visit, and perhaps the worst part of your soul considers it a kind of unearned payback towards a friend who had taken everything you had hoped for from you. It is unfair, not the kind of person you wish to be, and you put the thought to bed just as quickly as it comes to you. You do not expect to see him again, and in kind, you decide to never delve in such foolish and unbecoming behaviors regarding him even in the event that you do.

Written off as closure, there is some semblance of peace therein. 

On the day of Minho's return, the house is alive. The keepers of the manor all rushing around to ensure that everything is precisely as it should be for the moment that he steps inside; it fascinates you to watch them, knowing full well that Minho is not the sort of man to be bothered by the occasional, misplaced item or a spec of dust left upon the mantle. Of course, this is their job, and they take it upon themselves to make sure that it is done to the best of their ability. You wait just inside the foyer as good wives do when his carriage pulls up, and the quick, anxious beating of your heart comes to be a far more unexpected guest than the man of the hour is.

The doors open and he enters. Two other men are with him and aiding with his belongings, a sight that reminds you of Hyunjin's visit, and you are none pleased by that fact. Minho is dressed differently than you are used to seeing him; far more put together, and with a heavy coat sitting atop his shoulders. Hair less unkempt, it makes you wonder if someone had their hand at his appearance before he left to begin his journey.

He greets the staff first, those that arrived with him handing off his things, and then, he turns his sights towards you.

"Welcome home," you say, fighting back the shake of your voice. "Was it a good trip?"

"It was, but long. Too long for my liking," he admits with a smile. "I'm happy to be home, and not looking forward to having to do much of the same next year, but we'll take it as it comes."

The two of you step towards one another, and to your surprise, Minho takes your hand into his.

"How have things been while I've been away? Hopefully not too dull."

His eyes are gentle as he looks at you, and there is a part of you that wonders if he even recalls the events that took place only just before his embarking. If he does, he shows no signs of it; only a captivating adoration for you.

"Things have been fine…good," you say with a nod, eyes forcing themselves away from his own. Your nervousness and secrets catching up to you, making themselves known within the room. "The days passed as they do, I took many trips into the small town down the way, worked on my book…you've not missed much along the way."

You can feel Mai's eyes on you as you tell the half-truth, and for that reason, you continue on. Perhaps a wild assumption that you would be able to keep this large a secret strictly under lock and key.

Squeezing his hand lightly, you smile ever so slightly at him and say, "We should talk, there are some things. It would be best that way, once you're settled in."

"Of course, I only need a short while. A rinse off and a change of clothes from being cooped up in travel for so long, and then I'm all yours."

Pulling his hand away to attend to his things, you wish deeply to hold on tight—afraid that this may be the last time Minho ever offers you such a genuine, cherished moment.

Later into the afternoon, the changing colors of the sky can be seen through the windows. Hues of blues, purples and oranges that decorate it so beautifully, informing all of those who can see it that the sun is soon to take its rest along the horizon.

You stand in the kitchen, a bowl of fruits sitting before you. Apples, cranberries and persimmons give off their assortment of shades to choose from when Minho quietly makes his way inside.

Eyes meet, and smiles follow after.

Minho's hair is damp from water, strewn about his head and face, entirely uncared for in appearance. He is back in his usual attire; pants with paint stains that not even Mai has managed to defeat, but that function perfectly well as far as he is concerned, you reckon.

Leaning against the counter beside you, he pops a cranberry into his mouth and then cocks his head to the side inquisitively. "You wanted to speak to me?"

Moments like this make it so much harder. You'd not wanted to disclose this to him in any case, but have since decided it better to do so. The guilt weighs so heavily on your chest—has ever since the day—and you wonder if it is selfish to put that onto a man who does not need to carry the burden. Minho is your husband, yes, but in title and legality alone. He has given you permission to carry on as you please, explicit permission to take a lover if that is what you so wish to do; so why is it that having done so feels so regrettable?

This is not a situation that you have ever found yourself to be in before, and thus, you do not know how best to navigate it. You are not one to mince words, however, and so you make the choice to simply come out with it.

"While you were away, Hyunjin was here."

Minho's chewing slows, all softness in his face melting away once the words finally come together as something that he understands the meanings of. "Here? He came here?"

"Yes, to see me."

"He came here…to see you…" Minho says slowly, thoughtfully. "If he knew to come here, then surely he must know that you've been married." He pauses briefly, thinks it through just a bit more before continuing. "As has he."

You nod affirmatively and then say, "Yes, all of this is true. He wanted to see me…I think…there was something of unfinished business between the two of us, as you know with the way that things turned out. It was a brief encounter, he was not here long. I do not think we will meet again in the future."

Minho looks at you tentatively, and you can nearly see all of the questions that beg to be asked swimming around behind his eyes. Surely, he fights back the urge to do so with all of his might for your sake alone, and instead chooses to stomach the brunt of this knowledge by himself, no matter how much discomfort it may bring.

But you do not escape them all.

"You say the encounter was…brief," he starts, though his eyes are unable to meet your own as he presses forward with what he must know. "I have little interest in prying into your personal affairs, I understand what this is—between us—just as well as you do, but I must know; did you—"

"Yes."

Rather than making him say it, you put an end to the entire thing abruptly. Minho blinks through the acceptance of it, a little awe struck, you can tell. He gives two, small nods and then swallows down hard.

"Thank you for telling me," he says. His voice is level, but you can tell as well as anyone else might that it is a facade. Minho turns towards the hallway and says, "If you don't mind, I have work to attend to. Have a good evening."

He does not appear outwardly angry or upset in the ways that you are used to men expressing such emotions, and thus, you are unsure of what to make from all of this. You watch him take two, three steps towards his exit before you rush around the corner of the marble counter and towards him. A hand reaches out towards his arm, but you do not dare make contact—unsure of what may happen if you do. Minho does not scare you, nor has he ever shown aggression, or violence towards you, but you must at all costs aim to protect yourself in such precarious circumstances.

The movement must catch his attention and he stills in place, seemingly waiting for you to reach him. Minho turns to look at you from over his shoulder, unwilling to fully give himself to your insistence of such.

Your chest feels impossibly tight, the struggling burn of discomfort creeping up and into your throat. Are these tears that threaten you? Why, you wonder. You care for him, yes, but there is little between you, and in most recent times not much more than some sort of contention. What is there to care for? And more than that, when has this man ever bothered to express as much towards you?

Still, you press forward. "Are you upset with me? It was thoughtless, but you have said before that I am able to do such things. Don't punish me for the allowances that you have offered!"

"Punish you?" Minho says, tone questioning. "I have no interest in punishing you for anything that you have done in my absence. Your personal matters are your own. If you wish to sleep with the prince then who am I to tell you not to."

"I do not wish to sleep with the prince! I wish to sleep with—"

It comes out faster than you have the chance to pull it back. Dripping with pure emotion and absolutely unbridled truth, you manage to cut it off at the tail end, though you fear that the damage has been done. The heat of humiliation curls up your spine, you take a step back and away from the man in front of you.

Too much silence creeps up between the two of your bodies, and Minho offers nothing to you in the immediate aftermath of the words. Wordlessly, you beg him to say something—anything—to cut through it, even if it is condemnation that sits at the tip of his tongue.

Much to your surprise, however, Minho turns back to face away from you fully with something of an awkward shift to his stature. He does not look at you, but the more that he chooses not to, the less you believe it to be a sign of displeasure and more so one born from a kind of strange unsureness of how to move forward, where to go with this from here.

He clears his throat loudly, one by one cracking the knuckles in his fingers as if to fill in the empty space between your bodies. Finally, he says, "Perhaps we simply move on from this, as if nothing ever happened. In any case, I'll be in the atrium, should you need to find me."

A curious thing to say from the man, one that has you reeling in shock upon hearing it. 

"Is that…an invitation?"

And to that, Minho sighs aloud.

"Must you make me speak everything into existence? Surely you've noticed I lack the capabilities for these sorts of things."

It's not perfect, but you'd not expected to leave this particular discussion with a smile pulling at your lips.

𝕏𝕍𝕀.

The atrium smells of cinnamon, paint thinner, and alcohol.

Rum, in particular. You're not able to make out its particular scent until you're much closer to the man that it emanates off of, pungent and impossible to ignore. You try to recall any other time that you've been aware of Minho's drinking, but you cannot.

Tonight must be a special night for him to be partaking.

There's a soft spot in the wooden paneling of the floor, and it creaks beneath your weight. This is enough to finally alert Minho of your arrival to this place, having not noticed you before. He glances at you from over his shoulder—not unlike the hours before—and then carries on with the mixture of colors that have already been dabbed onto the bristles of his brush.

"You came," he says.

"You drink."

Minho sighs at your response. "You know this, we have shared wine at the dinner table before."

"Yes, but not like this."

Hunched over and knelt onto the floor, Minho ignores this and instead continues painting. You opt out of pressing any further on the matter and instead, bring yourself to his side in order to see what it is that he is working on.

The canvas is wide rather than tall, with hues of blue, white and green masterfully splashed across the majority of it. The beauty of the ocean and the waves that live within it perfectly captured in time by his hand—a small ship depicted amidst it all.

"I spent some time by the harbor on this trip, and spent a good deal of my time there thinking about how my life might be if I ceased to exist here, the way that I have been, the way that I do."

You look down at him, but he does not look up. He continues with his work.

"The truth of the matter, is that there isn't much keeping me here, is there? Not much would change. I could be anywhere in the world doing this. No reason it must be here."

"Is that why you painted this? Your wish to escape it all?" you ask.

Minho stops his strokes, then drops his paintbrush into the muddied mixture of water just beside him. He stands to his feet—albeit wobbly—and stares down at the piece of artwork as if it's something not crafted from himself. A strange existence that has somehow found its way into his home, into his thoughts, but not of his own doing.

"I'm not sure that I even wish for it," he says. "I'm unsure of a lot of things. I make decisions largely because they are expected of me, because I see what everyone else does, and so I emulate it. It's easy to assimilate like this, I don't have to think about it all that much."

"Like taking a wife."

Minho looks away from the painting then and over towards you. You meet his eyes, but feel a sense of nervousness under the intensity that sits behind them tonight. 

"It has always been difficult for me to set my anxieties aside without the aid of warmth that the bottle brings. I don't partake often, I know it's unhealthy, so I keep to myself and suffer alone." Minho's hand reaches towards yours, and while you're happy to allow him to take it, that is not all that he does. Quickly you feel the gentle tug of his strength, inching you closer to him. His warm, soft palm tracing up the outside of your arm until it disappears behind your back to rest there. Now the scent of alcohol is strong on his breath, but you cannot find it within yourself to care when proximity is so tightly held between you.

Minho's finger traces down the middle of your back, an action that sends chills up the very same place. You fight back the shudder that threatens to shake you while in his grasp, and your own hands find their placement at the front of his broad, firm chest.

The alcohol indeed must be making him brave, lowering his inhibitions and the torrent of thoughts that otherwise might bar him from ever attempting this. For that, you are thankful. You glance at his lips, then up at eyes that are already watching you. Minho's thoughts and feelings are nearly indiscernible on his face; still thinking, thinking, thinking, no doubt.

He leans in towards you, so short and small that you nearly miss it entirely if not for how rapt with attention to him you are. A tentative gesture to test the waters, to see if you will pull away.

But you will not.

And so, he presses forward again, slowly still, as if to give you ample time to escape him. You couldn't imagine yourself a world where you might; heart beating hard and fast within your chest in anticipation of this, fingers gripping tightly into the fabric of his shirt with each passing second between the two of you. Truthfully, you have been wanting this, for so, so long. Longer than you could ever fathom to allow him to know, the kind of dull, anticipatory, hopeful desire that rests dormant often, but never completely able to be ignored.

It's hard to pinpoint the moment in which Minho became more than just a concept of a husband in your mind, muddied even more once his lips finally find your own. Careful and warm, he kisses you like he's afraid to break you, but the hand gripping at the small of your back tells a different story; one of forced back desire, of bitten back need. It presses your body more firmly against his, it informs far more than his words will allow for now. 

When you do not create space, the kiss becomes heavier too. Testing, unsure lips that at first only ghost against your own then expose their want for you in the careful turn of his head and ever so slight nips of teeth at the bottom of your lip. Harder, faster with every moment that passes in the atrium; you forget to breathe and gasp into his mouth, Minho finally relents in tasting you so ravenously.

Physical desire is nothing new to you, but never have you experienced it quite like this.

Minho's free hand comes up to cup your face, thumb grazing lightly against the skin of your cheek as he looks at you. Both just slightly out of breath, you can't fathom how wrecked you appear just from a kiss.

His lips part as if to speak, and then close shortly thereafter. Once again; thinking, thinking, thinking. The alcohol is incapable of disposing of it all. Then, they part again, and Minho pushes forward with the words that fail him so frequently.

"Do you still love the prince?"

The least that you can do is answer his question honestly.

"I don't know."

And though it may not be the ideal reply, Minho still appears pleased by it. Everything that you have learned about him since your arrival here points to the very same conclusion, because he smiles ever so slightly, and gives a small nod in acceptance.

𝕏𝕍𝕀𝕀.

Though not spoken of, the kiss lives on in every interaction shared between the two of you going forward.

You wish deeply for the conversation to come to a head, but by now you know Minho and the way that he functions well enough to know that that will more than likely not be the case. Still, you manage to find solace in this fact; his nervous mannerisms and the barely there catch in his voice when speaking to you on occasion, as if the memory of such has just caught up with him in real time. You smile through these instances, pleased by them in some capacity. Pleased knowing that it is not a thing that has simply come and gone.

The only person that Minho answers to in his life is his agent, and his agent insists on having a holiday party at the estate.

On the day of, it is a week into December. Snow has begun to fall, though not heavily yet. It sprinkles like sugar from the sky, only lightly dusting the windows and grounds. It is a beautiful sight, but you're thankful for not having to be the one traveling within it, and when the guests start arriving, you realize just how grossly unprepared for this volume of guests the home truly is. Not enough coat racks, not enough space for wiping off their shoes. Hats are placed wherever it is that they can go; Mai scuttling about the hallways with her staff in an attempt to make it all work.

To your surprise, Minho makes himself seen. No doubt a push by said agent, but his displeasure at doing so resides heavily within his stature.

First laying eyes on him is a sight to behold. His hair is more put together, set into place purposefully. He wears all black, but the front panel of his coat is garnished with the sparkle and shine of dark jewels that bring it to life. It's a little unlike him, you have to admit, but Minho wears it well.

Quickly, you finish up a conversation with people that your husband barely knows, that you have barely been partaking in, and go to him. He, too, is amidst something of the same, though handling it far less gracefully than you have.

You put on your widest smile, and curl your arm firmly around his own from the side.

"My sincerest apologies," you start, tone dripping with a sweet edge, "I'm afraid I must take my husband from you, if only for a brief moment."

The man smiles and nods happily, understanding of whatever situation it is that you've made up in your head in order to rescue Minho. It's late into the evening and you've not been keeping a watchful eye, but the smell on his breath of alcohol is one that you're quite familiar with, and disappearing into the halls towards less-traveled passages, you can't help but wonder what this instance has in store.

Minho drags along, but doesn't say a word. He stumbles slightly once, you try not to ascribe it to his drunkenness unfairly. You have just the place in mind, and once you reach the old, empty study at the far, opposite end of the hall, you push Minho inside lightly, and then close the door behind.

"Are you rescuing the damsel?" Minho asks, cheeky and with a smile. "Was it that obvious?"

"Only to someone with the eyes to see it," you reply. "I know that you don't enjoy these sorts of busy situations."

"One might say I hate it, in fact." Minho steps towards you, and you take a step back. Only there is nowhere left for you to go, and your back is up against the door from which you came. "Indeed, I much prefer quieter moments of peace, just between myself and another…"

His hand finds the outside of your thigh, only the thick layers of your dress between skin. He closes the space further, as much as he can, until his body is pressed tightly against your own. You've been holding your breath—for how long? you wonder. A sharp inhale takes you, though it's ragged and shudders at the feeling of being with him like this. Everything that Minho offers you feels white hot, regardless of the clothes that keep you separated, and when his mouth finds the line of your jaw, you cannot help but melt into the touch.

You ache for him. A dull throb that makes itself known, impossible to ignore. His other hand snakes around your waist to pull you closer—as if closer is physically possible. You could beg for him to touch you elsewhere, drunk with want not unlike his own intoxication.

"I don't care if you love another man," he says suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere. The abrupt mention of Hyunjin sends something of a cold chill to your otherwise hot skin. "I'm happy that you're here, I love having you here…" His lips are still lightly mouthing against the flesh of your jaw, voice low, nearly a whisper. "I love…you. Even in the event that you love another, that is of no consequence to me. Not really."

Desire has waned, flushed away quickly as if it had never even been there. You gently push Minho away so that you can look him in the eyes, but all that you find is the slightly drunken, but incredibly sincere glean looking back at you.

"You're drunk," you say, rejecting his advances for this to go any further. Now is not the time. "You always say and do such things when you're intoxicated."

"Do you assume me to be more intoxicated than I am so that you don't have to acknowledge the words?"

You don't respond to this immediately. Minho does not deserve to be told a lie, and thus, you say nothing.

He continues on. "In the atrium that night, you assumed that I was making poor choices, outside of the realm of my own logic? Things that I would never do just because of the drink? And then now, you think the same? Do you truly believe that, or is it easier than the words? Because no one understands that feeling better than I do."

"Is that why you drink, then? To say and do all of the things that you can't do when you're sober?" You scoff lightly. "You can't drink through every step of your life."

"I don't, I won't," Minho says firmly. "Think of it more…as a coincidence."

Stepping towards you once more, Minho closes in on you all over again. His lips mere inches away from your own as he gazes down at you.

Then, the door opens from behind you, and he pulls it open to fashion himself an exit.

"If you don't believe me, then you're more than welcome to nurse my hangover in the morning hours, since you'll be awake!" he says loudly, far too cheerfully for everything that's gone on. 

You smile at him, and hate that you do. This annoying, eccentric, strange man that has buried himself so deeply beneath your skin. An unshakable, ineffable and unquantifiable shine to his mere existence.

Minho disappears back down the hall and towards the guests that await him, nearly skipping as he does so. You watch from the doorframe, make an effort to steady the quick beating of your heart, and replay the words over and over again in your mind; unremittingly.

"Good morning, darling."

Bent over the kitchen counter, chin perched up against your palm, you cock your head and smile at Minho as he slowly, carefully enters the shared space. Eyes narrow, like any light pains his entire being.

"Shall we take you for your bath, then?" you add, walking towards him and circling your arm around his.

A light steam rises from the water as Minho's sore body sinks into it. You reenter just moments later with a set of clothing in hand, and sit yourself just beside the porcelain tub to aid him in his recovery.

"You shouldn't drink so much," you say, obviously.

"I know," he admits through a groan. "Every time I do this, I say it'll be the last. Then another social event comes up."

"There was no such social event in the atrium that evening."

"Sure there was, you were there."

Silence falls between the two of you in the following moments, and you watch as Minho closes his eyes, sinks his body deeper into the water to the point that only his head sticks out from the top. You take it upon yourself to lightly remove strands of hair stuck to the dampness of his forehead, and then, Minho inhales with intent to speak.

"I apologize for last night, as well as for the evening in the atrium. I apologize for…parts of them, but not everything." He pauses, eyes still closed, but forces himself to continue on. "The truth is: I do not care about your history with the prince, no matter how recent it has been. I understand there is a complexity there that I may never be able to grasp, nor do I think it necessary for me to do so. What is necessary of me—as your husband—is to be kind, understanding, and perhaps if there could be space for it; loving."

You still completely, allowing the words to wash over you and sink deeply into every crevice of your being.

He speaks again. "Suppose what I had hoped for; some starry-eyed, hopeless romantic sort of expectation in all of this that was left unspoken, is that regardless of your feelings for him, your history with him, that you might still find space in your heart to someday love me too."

An immediate reply escapes you, and you lose sight of just how tortuous such a wait can be until Minho cracks one, single eye open and peers at you cautiously through it.

"Please, say something. Put me out of my misery, if you must," he says.

Your senses come back to you quickly, shaking your head in the negative. "No! No, Minho…have you truly not noticed? Let us not forget who it was that insisted upon the two of us becoming more than strangers who share a home together…"

"Living with strangers is, well, strange. You could have meant anything by that."

You try not to roll your eyes, but fail. Instead of pressing further on this particular endeavor, you decide to revisit the original one, as brought forward by him. The entire thing remains fascinating to you—the density of his capability to understand things that come to you with such ease.

"I probably can," you say, acknowledging his hope for the openness of your heart. "I probably do."

Minho closes his eyes again, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. The tension that collected at his shoulders amidst all of this falling away like weights strapped to him. You are calmed watching him unravel before you.

"Let us share an evening meal tonight, something special. Think about all of the things that you wish to say to me in earnest, and I will do the same," you offer quietly.

"I would like that."

𝕏𝕍𝕀𝕀𝕀.

Minho enters just as the large, antique clock begins to sing its tune of nine in the evening.

Candle light flickers against the walls of the dining room and illuminates the table where all of the dishes that Mai has hand crafted herself sit. A beautiful display, though hardly what you're taking an interest in tonight.

He takes his seat across from you, clears his throat gently, and averts his eyes as much as he can until it seemingly dawns on him that he cannot do so for much longer. Reluctantly, Minho looks at you, and though his appearance is not unlike his usual self, something new makes itself apparent within him.

Mai comes over and pours your glass of wine, then makes her way around the table towards his. However, Minho does not accept the gesture. Watching you the entire time.

"You're not having wine with your meal?" you ask.

"No, I've decided to come off it, at least for a time."

"For a time?"

"This time."

Surprisingly confident and almost sinister sounding, Minho no longer makes an effort to avert his eyes from you and as a result, the weight of them rests heavily on your form. There is a sort of humor to this, you find, desiring nothing more than for him to see you for so long and now feeling as though you should shrink away from beneath his gaze. Why is he looking at you in such a way? Why is it that you feel like prey?

You steady your nerves and smile. "Well, there will be other times."

"Do you wish to remain married to me?"

Your attention pulls towards him quickly and with a confused earnestness. "What? Why are you asking me such a thing?"

Minho leans forward against the table. "We agreed to have this meal together and discuss such things. I think…I have not done much to aid in the ease of your comfort here. I think we have grown a lot together, maybe even enjoy our time shared. Perhaps it is time that we decide on just how much of a married life we wish to have with one another. Thus, do you wish to remain married to me?"

"Is there really an alternative?" you question, somewhat humorously. "Of course, marriages have ended before but we hardly meet the sorts of societal requirements for such a thing."

"You have not answered my question," he insists.

You press your palms abruptly to the table, fed up by his ridiculous pushing on the matter.

"Yes! I wish to remain married to you! My goodness; we've shared meals together, our thoughts and dreams and hopes for the future together, intimacy together! As if I've not made it clear where I stand on the matter while I drag you along through all of this kicking and screaming the whole way…you don't exactly make it easy on a woman!"

"So you are happy."

"Yes!" you quickly bite back.

"Content."

"Yes, Minho!"

"But you want more," he continues on, the rapid fire back and forth between you now mounting the anticipation of where this is meant to go.

"Of course I do!"

"You desire more of me."

"Yes!" you reply, exasperated by the questioning but barely even having a moment to register what's been laid out before you. The affirmation slips out from your lips unwillingly, but it's too late to bring it back. Instead, you watch Minho's eyes narrow mischievously as a result of the grin that tugs at his lips. He must be pleased with himself.

"We should eat." Hardly convincing when you say it. Still, you pick up your utensil. "The food will get cold."

"We can eat any time," Minho says, still playfully persistent. "Is there anything that you wish to ask of me?"

"Yes! What has gotten into you?"

"You, us; the concept of it, the possibility of it." Minho pushes his chair back then and stands, makes his way around the table and towards you. He takes your hand gently, timidly, and pulls you up towards him. Protest dies in your throat before you have the chance to make it heard, because his hand slips around your back and as a result, your body rests flush against his. "Admittedly, I am slow on the uptake of such things. My thoughts get the best of me, second guessing every interaction, every word…" He trails off, the hand at your back slipping to settle at your waist, and then it tightens. "Every touch."

Minho's face dips over to the side of yours, lips edging at the shell of your ear and then he whispers against it, "But you say you want more of me, more that I've not yet given. More that I can give."

Your head swims, warm breath tickling your skin in such an enticing way. Minho's grip against you does not relent, nor do you want it to. You've quietly yearned for what appears to be now presented before you; his touch, and in ways, so much more than that.

"I've still not seen where you sleep," you say quietly, pointedly. "Only ever the atrium."

"Some husband I am, making my darling wife wait so long for such a thing." Minho's hand then slowly falls from your waist down to your hip, then further more to your thigh. His palm settles atop the front for a short moment before he then continues the journey between them, bunching the fabric of your skirt where his fingers rest. "I've not been doing my due diligence, have I?"

Knees nearly buckling at the touch, you clutch onto him by the shoulders, breath hitching as you attempt to answer him. "No, you certainly have not."

This is your best attempt at maintaining composure, but truthfully, you stand in his grasp, disoriented with want for him. Minho's lips graze your jaw, teeth bared within a smile. He says, "Allow me to make it up to you, then."

The large, ornate door to his bedroom closes, and with no more time to waste, Minho's hands begin to artfully search for the flesh of your body.

His lips hurriedly find yours, as if the only thing he ever wishes to taste is within them. Fingers adeptly unfastening the buttons and clasps of your dress while you, in turn, do much of the same at those that hold the fabric of his shirt in place. The race is won by you, and your mouths part only long enough to remove the hindrance from his body—but he follows just after—and your garment falls away, exposed to the ambient chill of the room, though not for long.

Minho leads you with a gentle urgency back towards his bed. There's a haste behind his motions that alludes to a dormant kind of desire that has been held inside of him for far longer than you have been aware of, not at all unlike yourself. As your back finds the mattress, Minho follows you over it; mouth only leaving your skin for the briefest of seconds before finding it once again.

Your legs fall apart to fit his body between them, and his hand slips beneath your last remaining undergarment soon after. Deft fingers that glide between your folds, ample pressure that has you gasping into his mouth for him to drink down and arching your back up to meet the firmness of his chest. Minho smiles against your lips as you do so, slowly and methodically unraveling you for his own viewing pleasure.

He pulls back, slinks down the length of your body and trailing his lips along the way. Warm, wetness circles at your chest before he continues further down.

Hands grip firmly into the plush flesh of your thighs, prying them apart for him just that much more. You glance down, but cannot stand to look at the sight of him; his face mere inches away from just the place that you wish for him to touch again. Minho does not leave you wanting, perhaps he cannot bear to do so, and his tongue finds you, mouth pressed flush against your own lips. The gasp that escapes from you is horrid, far too telling of how much you've been wanting to have him like this. 

Minho pulls off of you, but his dominant hand finds the place he has only just left instead. The wetness pooling is nearly humiliating if not for the comfort that you feel in his presence, and his fingers delicately trickle downward further, carefully driving into you. He watches your face as he takes you apart just that much more, but you do not have the sensibilities to muster up much for words.

"Do you like this?" he asks, the first words spoken since entering the room. The press of his fingers against you is slow, rhythmic, testing. Before you find it within yourself to respond, his mouth reattaches to the place just above where his hand works you open.

Yes falls away from you, though you're not sure how you've managed it. It appears to please him, however, and he continues on with a newly found enthusiasm. He pushes deeper, and a moan escapes you with every drive. A sheen of sweat collects atop your skin, strands of hair matted against you, fingers curling tightly into the sheets beneath your grasp.

Your skin prickles, warmth spreading across your body and muscles stiffening as he continues on. Breaths to take in become shorter and faster, the grind of your hips against the way that he works your body less and less within your conscious control. You slip a hand down between your legs, gently carding fingers through soft, black hair. His fingers curl inside of you, and as a result of it, so do yours atop his head. A whimper slips out from between your lips, and following immediately after, come the desperate pleads for him not to stop.

And he has no intention of doing so. Minho does not stop until your pleasure peaks and ravages your body within his hold. You shake and cry out; wounded gasps and moans that avalanche from you thoughtlessly, the only thing that you can manage through this feeling. Once satisfied, he slows to bring you back down gently, and once delicately seated, he removes himself from you and the bed entirely to finish the act of disrobing.

Chest heaving with exhausted breaths, you nearly miss his doing so, only alerted to the fact once the bed dips again, signifying his return to you. Minho crawls between your legs and up the length of your body just as he did the first time; kisses your chest, your neck, your jaw, only to then settle atop your lips. Teeth faintly find the bottom of your lip, already well and truly bitten raw from your own abuse. Still, you reach up to feel the warmth of his skin under your hands and revel in the way that his body feels against your own. Though release has found you once this evening, you are not truly satiated by him yet.

Minho's hand slips down between both of your bodies to hold himself in place. You feel him against you; wet and solid, enticing and teasing. You move almost involuntarily against him, hopeful to receive what it is that you desire from him now, but he is unwilling to relent to your neediness just yet.

You gasp lightly against his mouth, and Minho happily accepts it into his own, delighted by the way you come apart beneath him.

"Have you thought about it before?" he asks, a coy whisper shared only between lovers. A question that does not require further expansion, for you know precisely what it is that is being referred to.

"So many times," you reply.

At that, Minho begins the slow, precise drive of himself inside of you once more. "Apologies for keeping you waiting then."

He sinks into you, body accepting him with ease. Minho's mouth hangs slightly ajar as he does so, taken by the feeling, and settles momentarily once his hips meet flush against your own before his hips pull back and he repeats the process once more. The thick drag, hard and strong is dizzying and nearly disorienting to your senses—your fingernails dig into his skin, and for the first time, Minho groans with a sort of primal lust that has the hairs across your skin standing on end, and the fire inside of your abdomen burning just that much hotter than before.

With the ease in which your body accepts him, Minho is able to find a quick and strong rhythm. Harder and faster his hips find your own, the urgency needing this moment for so long finally coming to a head between the both of you. Your whimpers and moans echo off the walls, losing sight of the once prominent thought in your mind that the staff may hear you; instead, you beg and plead for more of him, anything that he is physically capable of giving you—he does.

Body tightening beneath him, you feel once again the familiar promise of release. Your hands glide over hot, damp skin; muscles that flex and move with every drive of himself inside of you. Minho kisses you—a sloppy attempt—but you meet it happily, and his face falls away to the crook of your neck to nip into the skin there. One, strong hand slips down to grip at your thigh, pulls you apart further and wider for him to work your body open with his own. Hard, methodical strokes; one after another, whimpers and whines punched out of you with each. You beg for more, continuously beg as if never satisfied, and Minho continues to give relentlessly to you until his own ability finally falters and gives way; rhythm shifting, failing, wavering. He hisses against your skin, choking out a pained groan, and you find your end just alongside him in bitten back cries and a final, deep sinking of himself within you.

Chests heaving and basking in the afterglow for many, long moments, he does not hurry to separate your bodies, and instead, his lips begin to work at the sensitive skin of your neck once again. You close your eyes to simply enjoy the feeling of this, of him, and hold tightly in your arms the man that has somehow come to be precisely what it is that you have always hoped for someone to become.

"Stay here tonight," he says quietly. "Don't go."

You smile, barely there. Mustering up all of the energy within your bones that you have left to expend and say, "I wouldn't dream of it."

𝕏𝕀𝕏.

The new year brings new cheer, as well as new prospects to the household.

It has been a year since you've been back to the city center, and though covered in snow and the dreadful darkness that winter brings, you feel some semblance of ease having returned.

You remember the days that you spent dreaming of being inside of these very same castle walls, though now that you're here, you can't help but feel as though they glitter less brightly than what it is that you had imagined.

Beside you, Minho stands with a forced and feigned confidence. He glances at you, perhaps having felt your eyes upon him, and offers a nervous smile that does nothing to placate your concern for him. Indeed, not all things change with ease—and some may never—but having the comfort of those who love you shouldering much of the burden instead. 

In arm, he holds a wrapped painting. One that you know well; a small ship atop a vast, brightly colored sea.

You hear the echo of doors opening from behind you, and when you turn, you are familiar with what you see.

Methodical clicks of shoes being the only thing that cuts through the silence, you watch as the prince makes his way towards the two of you—a smile on his face—and most certainly a genuine one. You've never known Hyunjin to be particularly petty, or mean-spirited; and despite all of his shortcomings, he likely does feel softness in his heart for you and the happiness that you have found.

"Your Highness," Minho says with an accompanying bow, but Hyunjin is quick to put a hand up and wave away the gesture.

"I do believe the three of us are well past the need for such things." Looking at you, Hyunjin smiles. "I see things worked out in the end, then?"

With half a mind to question how it is that he knows, you instead chalk it up to a sort of intangible, understood aura that simply exists between lovers; people who are madly, deeply in love with one another. You couldn't fight back the smile if you tried, and so, you don't. Instead, your hand finds Minho's free one, and you nod.

"Yes, indeed they have."

"Splendid news! Perhaps someday I will find myself to be so lucky," Hyunjin says, though there is a particular bite of discontentment in the words that you feel you understand far too well. "Nevertheless, you've brought the painting! I wish I could express in words how eagerly I've been anticipating receiving this piece…ever since it was put up into the auction, I simply knew I had to have it."

"I appreciate your kindness," Minho replies, squeezing your hand lightly. Just another, small offering shared between lovers.

"You will be paid handsomely for this. I am aware of what the asking was but I feel as though it is worth far more, and I'll see to it that you receive precisely that which you are deserving of."

Eyes widening in surprise, Minho glances first at you—but you merely shrug, unmoved by Hyunjin's antics—and instead, he defers to the prince, himself. "Your Highness, that's not—"

"Aht! It is. You creatives truly must value yourself higher, the world moves and exists and revolves around these crafts. Without art, we have nothing. We are nothing."

Hyunjin calls for his housestaff to take the canvas from Minho's grasp, and as they disappear down the hall, the man smiles widely at the two of you as if pleased with himself, with everything that has taken place today.

"Perhaps next in line is getting that book of yours published."

You shake your head, a sort of nervousness striking you that isn't commonplace. "I'm not so sure that's a good idea, you know, there is much of you written inside of those pages."

He waves his hand in the air again, unbothered by the fact. "So be it, I'd rather like being not just a part of history, but a part of art, as well."

"Strange fellow," Minho says, walking beside you through the city streets and long after having bid the prince farewell. "Not sure what it is that you ever saw in him."

The comment is pointedly comedic, and you judge him playfully with your elbow before responding in words. "He's handsome, and royalty. Suppose for a long time I didn't consider there to be much else outside of those things. What else could a man have to offer me?"

"As it would seem, only having one of those things is plenty to suit you," he jokes, slinging an arm up and around your shoulders as the two of you carry on. "You have been taken by my confusing whimsy and cumbersome charms."

"So it would seem," you reply, watching the sprinkle of shimmering snow collect atop a difficult, complicated head of black hair that you have incomprehensibly grown to love.

a/n: thanks for reading and i hope you enjoyed it! no pt. 2, and kind words are always much appreciated ♡