#i could have gone on and on... but deadlines exist

[3amfanfiction]

Our Girlfriend pt 2

The morning after.

You can thank @disasterofastory for this piece about the morning after you had four men in your bed. Considering you'd never spoken to two of them, how is this going to go? 1.5k little ficlet of a scene. A little bit of fluffy sweetness to even out the pure smut of the first chapter.

Part one

The bed was almost empty by the time you woke up, only you and Johnny remaining. You were curled up to his chest, listening to the steady thrum of his heart as your eyes peeled open, sticky with sleep.

You didn't move at first, just laid there content to breathe in the still morning air where nothing needed to be done. There were no deadlines to meet, no chores to complete . . . it was just you, existing.

You watched as the thick chest under your cheek raised up as he drew in the breath to speak. Your quiet morning was about to be disturbed. You held onto the few split seconds you had remaining, locking onto this peace to get you through your day.

"You awake, love?"

Because real life always came knocking.

You hummed an assent, not interested in trying to force your tongue into shapes that would make words. You felt wonderfully wrung out, with only the things occurring right this moment needing thought. There wasn't any stress about yesterday or any worry about tomorrow.

Johnny stroked along your back gently with calloused fingers, a slight tickling scratch to go along with the warm caress. It roused you enough to turn and press a kiss to the warm skin you were laying on, a non-verbal 'good morning' in place of any proper greeting.

Johnny pressed a return kiss to the crown of your head, never ceasing the running of his palm over your back. You really did love him. You knew it was fast, that people say there was no way it would last because of how quickly you two fell together but you ignored them. Johnny was something special and you were thankful he was in your life.

The sun had shifted slightly when he spoke again. "How do you feel this morning?"

As a matter of fact . . .

"Johnny." Firm. You know he'll try and wiggle his way out of an answer if he catches any hint of weakness. "What was that last night?"

He didn't respond at first. After a moment you tilted your head up to look at him. He was staring at the ceiling, a serene look on his face with a hint of a smile on his lips.

"It was nice, wasn't it? I can't believe I decided to take a nap right in the middle of it though. Don't worry, love, I'll be making it up to you." He was coming to life with every word spoken. His face more animated, fingers starting to twitch and legs rubbing together. You knew you only had a few more minutes in bed before he would be up and gone—ready to start another day.

"That wasn't what I meant and you know it. Why did they all talk like we were dating? What have you been telling them?"

"Nothing that wasn't true, I promise." He turned to look beseechingly into your eyes, ensuring you saw the truth in what he was saying. "I told them about you, of course. How amazing you were—always looking out for me, being so understanding, not taking any of my shite." He grinned at the last one, ever amused by your backbone, "and they fell in love with you, just like I did. And then you went and showed me that you loved them back and I couldn't let it go. I had to bring the four of you together."

Immediately you clocked what he meant. "Johnny MacTavish, those muffins weren't—they didn't mean—" How could you even begin to explain away this misunderstanding? Especially after what happened last night? You didn't get any further before the bedroom door opened.

"Good morning, sleeping beauties," Kyle beamed as he walked in holding two coffee cups. "You two finally ready to join the rest of us?"

Oh shit. The rest of them.

How are you going to face them? You'd never even properly met two of them and you let them into your bed. You'd let the man standing in the doorway come in your mouth last night. You've never even spoken to him.

All of a sudden you found yourself tongue-tied, unable to do anything more than mumble a shy thank you as you were handed your cup of coffee. Starting to sit up you realized you were still completely naked under the blanket and looked around self-consciously for a shirt to pull on.

Kyle saw slight panic in your eyes and grabbed a t-shirt off the floor. It was the one Simon had worn last night. You thought about putting up a fuss, asking for one of your own but in the end you graciously accepted, more worried about being covered in the bold light of day than worrying about who's shirt you wore.

Comfortably covered once more you turned to face the two men, looking at you with differing shades of the same smile. You felt around the corners of your mouth and eyes to make sure there weren't any lingering crusties before you took a sip of your coffee. Your eyes widened and darted up to Kyle's face.

"Johnny hasn't stopped talking about you since he you met. Any one of us could make your drink with our eyes closed by now," he teased gently, good-natured mirth shining through his warm eyes. "I hope you don't mind, we took liberties with your kitchen. Cap and Simon are finishing breakfast right now. Well," he allowed with a small shrug, "The captain is, Simon isn't allowed near the stove. Not unless you want a bit of char on your food."

"You didn't have to do all that, here let me . . . " You worked to pull yourself from the bed without spilling your coffee or flashing anyone. "Let me get dressed and I'll be down. They're guests, they shouldn't be cooking." Of all the things. You didn't truly mind the thought of them in your kitchen but it felt like you should protest on principle. When you stood up your hips gave a worrying twinge and you braced yourself against the mattress. Yeah, maybe you should just leave them be after all.

It was embarrassing how quickly Johnny and Kyle were at your side, clearly no worse for wear after the night you all had. You'd like to see them jump up like that after having their hips spread around another's torso. Not so easy then, huh?

Waving them off exasperatedly you gingerly left the room and headed for the kitchen. You walked in just in time to see John swatting at Simon, shooing him away from the stove where he had picked up a spatula and was attempting to stir the eggs. You must have made some sort of noise because both men turned to look at you, freezing as they took you in. Standing in the kitchen with bare legs and Simon's black t-shirt, Kyle and Johnny clustered behind you, you must have made quite the sight. John was the first to come to his senses, pushing the utensil back into Simon's hand distractedly and walking over to you.

"Good morning, sweetheart." He looked you up and down, "we weren't too rough with you last night, I hope?" he questioned with a raised brow, his soft-looking mustache bristling with the movement of his mouth. It twitched while he waited for your answer—worried but fighting not to show it.

"I'm good," you reassured, "Better than, even." You smiled sweetly up at him, enjoying watching the tension leave his face, the little furrow between his brow disappearing. It almost startled you, how fond you were of these men. It was strange.

You didn't know the exact shade of blue John's eyes were but you knew he needed reading glasses if it was late at night and he was still working on paperwork. You'd never seen the way the hair curled at the nape of his neck but you knew he liked deep-tissue massages after tough missions.

So strange. You knew them intimately and as strangers all at once, a unique dichotomy to be in. You wondered if they felt the same way. They knew how you took your coffee and what you would normally make for yourself for breakfast. Was it so hard to believe they were in the same boat as you? That they knew you as deeply as you knew them?

You found it was easy to fall into their orbit. All of them drifting around the others in ever-changing patterns. Present but not suffocating.

They liked to keep a hand on you though, for all that they gave each other room to breathe. They would take turns standing beside you after you took a seat—a hand placed low on your back as they came in for a kiss or moving over to hold your hand while they spoke about anything under the sun.

You laughed when the eggs Simon had been tasked to look over had to be tossed out after smoke started wafting from the pan. The happy peals doing more to settle the men than you knew, because hadn't you realized? They were already falling for you too.

Next

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Oh my gods, so many people seem to try to use AI at your university! Is this just the state of education now? It's been decades since I graduated and I've never been more relieved!

It's everywhere, in every uni unfortunately. Thing is, you can see why - it has always been true that uni is stressful and difficult and when deadlines loom and you don't have anything written, my god is it tempting, right? The answer to your prayers. When I did my first degree and the rampant undiagnosed ADHD meant I wasn't even starting to write until the evening before, I would spent hours sitting at a computer until the early hours of the morning, hating the assignment, hating life, hating myself, trying to squeeze words out of my stupid brain. And honestly, I think if the Magic Solves The Problem machine had existed, I honestly don't know if I wouldn't have gone for it. I was in a bad place, and it's an easy out.

It's just the absolute ultimate in "Congrats, you played yourself." Those all-nighters were work that was less good than it should have been; but I did learn those topics to be able to write about them. At the end of that degree, poor though it was, I knew the damned subject. If someone asked me about it, I could answer. The ChatGPT generation can't; they also cannot analyse anything. They simply can't. The drop in soft skills in the last two years has been stark and terrifying.

That said, though, higher education in the UK is now entering crisis anyway, because the UK government has spent years blocking student visas and stopping overseas students (with their much higher tuition fees) from being able to study. To give an idea, our Masters course last year had thirty (30) applicants from overseas; take a quick guess at how many were granted visas.

Did you guess one (1)?

You're correct.

And on top of that, there's a cost of living crisis that's halting domestic applicants. So everyone is now scrabbling for a diminishing pool of students, courses are closing, staff are being made redundant, and so on.

So. Whole thing's a fucking shitshow.

[vamp0rivm]

☆ 𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚒𝚌𝚊 ☆

sub!ellie x dom!reader

𝚂𝚞𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚢: 𝚈𝚘𝚞, 𝙳𝚒𝚗𝚊, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙴𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚎 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠𝚗 𝚎𝚊𝚌𝚑 𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚜𝚗𝚘𝚝-𝚏𝚊𝚌𝚎𝚍 𝚔𝚒𝚍𝚜 𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔 𝚒𝚗 𝙹𝚊𝚌𝚔𝚜𝚘𝚗. 𝙽𝚘𝚠, 𝚢𝚘𝚞'𝚛𝚎 𝚛𝚘𝚘𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚜 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝙳𝚒𝚗𝚊 𝚒𝚗 𝚌𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚐𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙴𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚎'𝚜 𝚊𝚕𝚠𝚊𝚢𝚜 𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛. 𝙳𝚒𝚗𝚊'𝚜 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚢𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝙹𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚎 𝚜𝚘, 𝚘𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚊𝚐𝚊𝚒𝚗, 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚝𝚠𝚘 𝚘𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚊𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚎.

𝚊/𝚗: 𝚖𝚢 𝚑𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚜 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚠𝚊𝚌𝚔 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚒𝚖 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚑𝚘𝚛𝚗𝚢 𝚜𝚘 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚜𝚖𝚞𝚝-𝚏𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚍 kind of shitty really bad 𝚘𝚗���� 𝚜𝚑𝚘𝚝 that i absolutely despise but spent too long on to keep in the drafts 𝚠𝚑𝚒𝚕𝚎 𝚒 𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚒𝚜𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚗𝚎𝚡𝚝 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝e𝚛 𝚘𝚏 𝚋𝚎𝚢𝚘𝚗𝚍 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎 ♥︎

It's been dark for a few hours now, light pooling into your room from the flicker of a candle and the red lava lamp you stole from Dina's room.

She's gone again and the apartment feels hollow. Still, you're sat at your desk working as the regimented tick of your clock beats on in the background.

A shuffle and the click of a door capture your attention.

Ellie's here. As per usual.

You let out a strained puff of air and swivel your chair around to face the source of the thud that’s now aggressively rubbing her eyes and sitting at the foot of your bed.

“Ellie.”

“Hm?” she croaks out.

“You bored?”

“Hmmm…” She finally looks up from her palms with slightly blood-shot eyes and freckled skin splotched pink to meet your inquisitive gaze.

“Dina said she was gonna watch Back to the Future with me and then she ditched me for Jesse… So, now I’m left with you, the roommate.”

“The roommate, huh? I see how it is. What if I beat your ass? Then what?”

Your attempt to lighten the tired atmosphere lacks much spark, but Ellie’s bored enough to bite. Her green eyes are illuminated by the dim glow of the lava lamp as she waves you off dismissively and, for a split second, they’re flecked with the purest gold you’ve ever seen.

You play it totally cool, with your arm strung over the backrest of your chair nonchalantly, as though you didn’t just witness a scene that will be burnt onto your retinas and play late at night when you’re trying to sleep.

“Pfft, like you could fight anyone.”   

You scoff indignantly, mock offended, and stand up from your seat, leaving it spinning behind you.

“Uhhh, at least I got meat on my bones.”         

“Yeah! And absolutely none of it is muscle.”

“You askin’ me to unleash the beast, E-bone?”

God, you become the biggest dork around her… It's like you both morph into your thirteen year old selves, sitting on Ellie's disheveled bedroom floor after school and bickering about anything and everything until Joel yells up about dinner being done.

Times were simpler. Then, you got older and the buzz you felt each time your hands brushed, which was so easy to downplay, gradually became gaping - virtually impossible to ignore five years down the line. Once the door was open, there was no looking back.

Didn't help that Ellie only got hotter and hotter.

The thought of losing her over something like this makes your stomach writhe inside you though, so you keep the fantasizing to a minimum. Kind of.

The apples of her cheeks puff out rosy in an unrestrained grin, as she announces,

“Bring it, dude. I’d like to see you try,”

“I’m gonna rip your non-existent balls off,”

“Oh, I am just shaking with fear!”

“Fuck off, you little greaseball,”

“Pfft, please, that’s just my aesthetic appeal. You’re gonna have to try harder than that to insult me, bud.”

Your mind flurries with a million responses but the beckoning of your open laptop, begging for your attention before the fast approaching deadline, cuts through the buzz with ease.

Unfortunately, you can’t just ignore it this time. You’ve got less than twenty four hours to complete the soul-draining assignment, and you've spent the last few hours sighing periodically as you looked over the mediocre jargon you’d written so far instead of adding anything.

Great.

But it’s so tempting to forget about the essay completely and let go: focus all your attention onto doing dumb shit with Ellie like you usually do.

“Okay, I do not have time for this, I’ve got a whole ass essay due.”

Ellie sits up with an exaggerated groan, tugging you in by the arm.

“You always have something due!”

“Not always… And, yeah, Ellie! That’s college.”

“Dude. You’re either studying or working all the time and you barely leave this room.”

“Hey, I happen to think it’s pretty cozy in here.”

Ellie rolls her eyes before taking in the contents of the room, scanning the papers and lone items of stationery cluttering, no, invading your cramped desk space.

“Yeahhh… real ‘cozy’ in here. Do you ever clean?”

“Oh, big talk from someone who lives in a literal pig sty! I'm working so this doesn't count. Plus, it’s paper mess, not actual junk.”                 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. At least your bed’s comfortable…"

She turns her head to face you, watching your expression become slightly conflicted.

“Come on, dude, take a break from working for five minutes! Just five!”

You look back at her for a moment, at those eyes you desperately want to please even in the pettiest of situations, and sigh before sitting beside her.

“For the record, it won’t be ‘just five’, and you’re a bad influence on me.”

Ellie chuckles as the bed dips nearby with a soft creak.

“How am I a bad influence? I’m simply encouraging you to relax with me.”

The weird thing about your relationship is that, having been friends for so long, the bickering is intrinsically woven through every conversation you have, and it often leads to the kinds of petty arguments you're having now: the kind that you don't even remember the cause of.

“Uh, yeah?”

“You’re just jealous.”

“Suuuuuure-”

“Shut up, Ellie.”

“No.”

“You know what? Get out of my room.”

“Fine. Asshole.”

The kind of dumbass arguments that Joel would have to come in and alleviate without knowing the cause of either, because it was always something incredibly stupid anyway.

Joel's still back in Jackson though, while the two of you are miles away, and sulking's kinda pointless when there's no one around to see, so Ellie gets back up from her sprawled out position on the living room couch out of boredom and asks if she can come back in.

Same solution you used back when you were 12: you smirk deviously to yourself as you recall the memories before muttering,

“You can come in but you have to sit on the floor.”

Ellie scoffs, recognition evident in the unimpressed raise of her eyebrows. This pissed her off beyond measure back when you were kids, but now it weirdly brings on a sense of nostalgia, so she lets it slide, coming in and suppressing the small smile playing on her lips.

“Fine… Jackass.”

She lowers herself to the scratchy rug beneath your bed and leans against the wooden frame. She’s facing away like she used to too, always trying to avoid the embarrassment of having to look up at you. She still looks up over her shoulder at you with an exaggerated expression anyway though.

“Happy now?”

You look down at her and smirk.

“Very.”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. You're really enjoyin' this, aren't you?”

“Yep! You know, you’re still so easy to work up. Must be pretty uncomfortable down there, huh?”

“Shut up, asshole. I’m waaaaay more cozy down here. This carpet's amazing; you're missing out. I could fall asleep any second.”

Ellie's voice rasps as she rambles on, looking up at you with those big eyes that make you weak in the knees, and you can't resist the urge to just reach out and ruffle the auburn tufts of hair laying chaotically on her head, smirking as you mutter,

“Whatever you say, sweetheart.”

Ellie’s cheeks almost immediately flush. Her gaze begins to flicker away from you, no longer so unaware of the intricacies of holding eye contact.

She opens her mouth in shock, and then her eyebrow furrow quickly to cover up with a scoff,

“You are such a dick.”

“What? I didn't even do anything!”

“Dude, you do this every time and it pisses me off! You can cuss me out one minute and say you hate me and then be all corny the next?!”

“Okay, that was in the heat of the mo-”

“Yeah, right, 'in the heat of the moment.' You say shit like that every time we argue and you don't even apologize. At least be honest.”

Her expression looks earnest and it makes your heart contract a little tighter, the hot bite of guilt nipping at your insides. But something else stirs too.

You hate how attracted you are to her when she’s frustrated.

This room, with the warmth of body heat and candlelight intoxicating you and the red glow that casts over Ellie’s pretty face, makes the gaze she holds up at you so sweetly drowsier through the obscurant of her thick eyelashes, makes the swell of her bottom lip as she releases it from a harsh bite seem so much more enticing, makes you feel like your inhibitions are strapped to a ticking time bomb.

The pull is electrifying - more than magnetic, and you'd give anything to lay your skin onto hers, to feel each touch, so gentle, ignite your skin, and embrace her wholly. Consume doesn't even seem too strong a word.

“I don’t hate you, Ellie. Here, come sit."

You shift aside and pat the space next to you, watching intently as she huffs and rises to her feet before flopping down beside you.

Unbeknownst to her, all her movements are so much more sensuous now - you’re trying desperately to ignore the sliver of skin that showed as her shirt rode up her stomach when she got up, but it’s almost getting painful.

So much so that you have to physically drag your mind away from it.

“Anyway, have you had dinner yet?”

Ellie blinks a few times, caught in the crossover between the two completely separate conversations as she fumbles her way through a response,

“No, not yet. I was planning on ordering something later though. Why?”

“I’m starving.”

She chuckles and you feel the tense disposition of your muscles physically loosen.

“Oh, you’re hungry, huh? You want me to order food for you too, don't ya?”

“And you’ll do it because you’re the absolute coolest, most awesomest person in the whole entire world, right?”

She smiles softly, "Alright, alright, tell me something I don't know."

As your eyes meet, something in you clicks into place.

Your heart is thumping erratically in your chest. She’s so close; her hands are so near. You could lean in ever so slightly and your lips would meet.

For some reason, something in you is saying that it’s now or never, so the petrifying thoughts of any possible consequence arise again.

It’s realistic to be scared. That’s why you pushed down these feelings away for so long. But, in a moment of clarity, you realise your relationship is strong enough to withhold something like this, even if it would be devastating if Ellie didn’t feel the same way. You’ve known each other since you were children, your childhood homes are only a few houses away from each other, all your friends are friends, and even your parents are friends. There’s no escaping this.

Even if it doesn’t go as planned, you have to take the leap or you’ll never get over her.

“Thank you, Ellie... God, this is gonna take a really long time though, isn’t it?"

“Pfft, you’re such a baby. It’s gonna take like 30 minutes max, just chill.”

You smile, the thumping of your heart becoming supermassive. You can feel it filling your being and surrounding you completely. Then, you mutter,

“Maybe we can keep ourselves entertained in the meantime,”

and the seal is broken.

Ellie is perplexed. From where she sits on your bed, you’ve suddenly become a lot more tense, and your gaze bears into her much more sharply than she’s ever noticed before. But it makes her feel weird… in a good way, and her throat runs dry as she raises an eyebrow skeptically.

“And how do you plan on doing that, exactly?”

You shrug,

“Can I try something?”

“I’m kinda terrified but okay,” she chuckles

You hum, falling into a rhythm, the nervousness so intense that it numbs you.

“Lay back for a second.”

Ellie’s eyebrows draw together with a burning curiosity, feeling a heat rise in the pit of her stomach which seems to answer her unspoken questions.

She know what’s going to happen now, but it feels so surreal, it can’t be.

She shuffles back and lays into the embrace of your pillows, surrounded by the sweet scent of your perfume. She’s been dreaming of this moment as soon as she realized she saw girls differently.

How could she not? You've always been right next to her, and you were perfect in every way - you are perfect in every way. You’re smart, funny, sweet, and she thought you were beautiful as soon as she saw you for the first time, gazing at you with her jaw dropped for, most likely, a few too many seconds. Then it happened again one day when she was 16.

You’d both gone out to get ice cream and she became enraptured by the hazed look in your eyes as the liquid dripped down your chin and over the smooth skin of your hand, your soft hair, tussled by the summer breeze. Her breath caught in her throat as she scrambled to look away. She knew there was no turning back.

But most of all, you’re the one she goes to before anyone else, and it’s always been that way. You’re the only person that brings her a different kind of peace, that indica high, calmer than she feels with anybody else. You’re her girl. Always have been; always will be.

All the playful flirtation and lingering glances - she’d never imagined would really result in this.

 “What now?” she whispers, her voice coming out quieter than she intended for it to, giving her away in an instant. She clears her throat but you can't help but play into her discomfort, pleasure woven through the feeling you get when you make her needy. You already feel a buzz from the fact that she’s not pushing you away or playing you off. This was only ever a daydream in the past, but so, so much better than you'd hoped.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that; you just make sure you’re comfortable. Are you comfortable?”

She stutters through an answer, taken aback by the silkiness of your tone. God, she had dreamed about this so many times and never imagined you so like this, never imagined herself so submissive.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m comfortable… You… You aren’t fucking around, are you?”

“Fucking around? Gonna need you to be more specific, Els.”

She forces a gulp down her now dry throat, looking up at you and she mutters,

“Uh, I don’t know… Like… Like that one time you twisted my arm because you wanted to see-”

She hesitates, cutting herself off, her eyes drifting down to the curvature of your body that she’s wanted to feel for too long for just a split second.

“Can I touch you?” she splutters as soon as the thought enters her mind, overwhelmed with a sudden panic, her eyes flit up again to meet yours, flickering between each pupil in desperate search of any confirmation.

A shudder ripples through her body as your hands move closer, taking the lead before you give her the chance to. Her heart is racing.

“Can I touch you?”

She nods, almost too eagerly.

She curses internally.

You let your hand hover over her shoulder for a moment,

“Hmm, and where is it okay to touch you, Ellie?”

Ellie feels dangerously flustered. She tries to regain her composure, but it’s long gone out the window, and she’s like a handful of clay, soft and malleable, pervious under the sensational pressure of your fingertips.

“Anywhere.”

A soft smile graces your lips.

“Thirty minutes.”

You run your hand down her arm, grazing the skin gently with your nails and then down her stomach to her hip under her shirt, taking time to fully feel the gentle grooves and curves of her body for the first time.

“Is this okay, Ellie?”

She lets out a shaky breath at the feeling of your hand trailing over her skin, goosebumps rising in its wake. She swallows once more before replying, her voice unsteady.

“Yeah… Yeah, that’s fine. It feels… nice.”

“Hmm,”

Then, you place your palm on her ankle and begin to move up, ghosting your hand over her inner leg,

“I want you to tell me what feels good. Okay, Ellie?”

“Y-yeah. Sure. I can… I can do that.”

“Good. Good girl.”

You sit up and straddle her lap, and it catches Ellie off guard, suddenly feeling so much more at your mercy as you stare directly down at her, reaching out to tuck her hair behind her pink ear. Her breath hitches but she instinctively brings her hands to rest on your waist. You lean in to whisper,

“You look comfortable. Are you comfortable? I want you to feel good.”

And she tries to make sense of the fuzz in her brain to answer the influx of questions you’re asking. They’re barely keeping her grounded. Her hands move down to hold your thighs.

“Y-yeah, I’m good. You… You’re making me feel… good.”

“That’s good.”

Though you're dragging it out, teasing her because her neediness makes you wetter, eager to make her eager, you are just as needy, if not more. You're desperate to taste her, to be close to her, to feel her lips moving sensually with yours.

You place your hand over one of hers on your thigh and mutter, your words like the wisp of a feather caressing her skin,

“I’m gonna kiss you, Ellie, is that okay?

Ellie thinks she might die. The way her heart buffered in her chest once she processed your words felt too intense to not be her going into cardiac arrest. Either way, she's happy. What a way to go.

Somehow, all her feelings have culminated in this moment, in something she would never have expected, and her grip tightens to remind herself that that is really your body she’s feeling and this is really real.

She nods slowly, drowsy eyes meeting yours.

“Yeah… Yeah, yes, fuck, y-you can kiss me. Please.”

But, fuck, you just can't help teasing when she looks like she's yearning for you so sweetly that it makes your pussy flutter.

So, instead, you lean forward and kiss her forehead, listening to her labored breaths catch and watching her lips twitch in confusion when you pull back with your hands on either side of her head supporting you. You look her in the eyes and move one of them to caress the red stray hairs clinging to her face away.

“You look so beautiful."

“Th-thank you… You’re…”

It's obvious she's flustered, and it only makes you feel more high, so you pull back and kiss her cheek, mocking,

“Hm? You gonna finish that sentence, Els?”

“You’re- fuck… Y-you’re beautiful… too.”

“That’s my girl.”

You kiss the corner of her mouth and Ellie’s heart is beating hard enough for her to feel like her whole body is pounding as she squirms to lean into your touch.

“Y-your girl?”

“Yeah, Ellie.”

You lean in and finally connect lips, words blanketed by the contact.

“My girl.”

Ellie melts beneath you as you finally kiss her properly. Despite her usual nature, she finds herself completely powerless against the feelings coursing through her body. You’re completely overwhelming her senses, and you’ve never seen her like this.

She wraps her arms around your waist, and presses into the small of your back to pull you impossibly closer as she kisses you back deeply, losing herself in the moment.

You sink into her, deepening the kiss with impatience and roaming your hands along the expanse of her freckled skin while gently rutting your hips into her.  

Ellie moans against your mouth at the pressure, and you use the opening to circle her tongue with your own, making her body arch up into you.

She runs her hands along your sides, her fingers groping the fat of your ass as you grind against her. The sensations are overwhelming, arousal pooling in her underwear as her desire for more continues to grow.

“God… Please…”

You pull back, sealing your thirst with a peck on her lips.

“You’re so good for me, Ellie. You want me somewhere else?”

When she looks up at you, her eyes are clouded with desire. She can’t find the words to express herself properly, the intensity of the moment rendering her speechless, but she pushes through the fog,

“Y-yeah… I need you… more, fuck, please.”

It's blatant that your own arousal is overtaking your need to push her, so you lift her shirt up and place kisses along the soft, velvety skin of her chest, circling her pebbled nipples with your tongue. Ellie lets out a soft gasp at the warm and wet feeling, tingles erupting through her chest, and her body caves to feel the gentle pressure deepen before you get up from her lap and lift her thigh.

She watches you go with wide eyes, following you away by pushing herself up off the mattress in a subconscious attempt to remain close to you. You’re already looking back at her for permission before tugging off her sweatpants,

“You know something, Els?”

Her eyes are dark with desire and her response is hoarse.

“What… what is it?”

“I’m still really hungry.”

You push her leg up and place an anything-but- chaste kiss upon the fat of her inner thigh, watching her shudder and her eyes roll back ever so slightly in pleasure,

“Can you help me?”

Her breath hitches in her throat. She nods once, swallowing hard before replying.

“Yeah... Yeah, fuck. Just... Please,” she thrusts her hips up against you.

You run your fingers down her stomach, over the wispy auburn curls trailing down to her pussy and and over the damp fabric of her underwear, drunk off the sight of her flushed beneath you,

“Do you think you can handle that?”

Ellie's body tenses as she gasps out,

“Y-yeah, I can handle it… Fuck... You're making it really hard to think straight.”

You just smile as you drag her underwear down her legs agonizingly slowly before throwing it aside haphazardly. She watches you lower yourself in front of her pussy and it makes her throw her head back.

It's swollen and glistening, squelching quietly as she tenses above you in hungry pulses, and the exhale of a warm breath over it causes her to shiver. You chuckle.

Ellie bites her lip to muffle a moan, knowing how fucking pathetic it is that she finds it hot when you're mean, and that the breathy melody of your laugh only turned her on even more, when she didn't think that was possible.

“Please, baby…”

You run your tongue over your bottom lip and push your face in to kiss her protruding clit gently, feeling her convulse before you. She wants nothing more than for you to give her the release she craves but, before she knows it, you’re pulling away abruptly, and her throbbing pussy is left dripping again.

“Patience, okay?”

She strains out a scoff with the last shred of sanity left in her and mumbles,

“You're really testing my limits here,”

“What was that, sweetheart?”

Ellie meets your gaze with frustration, her body thrumming with need. Your teasing and the way you tower over her laying body are making her feel insane, making it difficult to get any words out. She swallows hard before replying, her voice slightly breathless.

“I said... You're testing my limits... Don’t tease me... Fuck, you’re such a dick,”

“I don’t think…”

You lean closer and run the tip of your tongue from her hole over her swollen pink clit, smearing her slick up crudely. Ellie squirms, her body taut with need.

“I don’t think I like your tone, baby, do you want me to stop? Is that what you want?”

Her eyes widen as she shifts into pleading,     

“No, no, don't stop. Please... I don't want you to stop. I'm just... Fuck... You're driving me crazy.

“I’m the one who gets to call the shots, okay, Els? I’m gonna need you to say sorry and then maybe I’ll consider giving you what you need.”

“Okay, okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please, just... I need you so bad. Please, baby, fuck…”

Ellie feels a surge of impatience, desperate for your touch and frustrated by your insistence on making her wait. She needs you, and she'll do anything to get you to give her what she wants, but what you want is to make her writhe. You kiss her forehead,

“Good girl,”

and then you crawl back to where you desperately need to be: between her legs, and push her thighs up to her chest before burying the lower half of your face into her core without warning, your tongue flexed erotically as you slurp the slick from her pussy like you're starving, flicking your tongue erratically and eagerly.

“Oh, fuck... Just like that... Please, don't stop...”

Ellie’s moans are sweet and debaucherous, with her hands scrambling for purchase, grasping at the wrinkled sheets beneath her when you thrust your tongue into her.

Your eyes never leave her face, watching the way she sinks further into the loss of control, mouth opening wider, eyes rolling back further. You slowly sink a finger, and then another, into her drooling hole with ease, feeling her pussy flutter around you.

The hold you have on her thighs is tightening mercilessly, but you're losing yourself too, untouched and squeezing your legs together to satiate your own ache.

Quickly, intoxicated by the depraved squelching sound filling the room and the suction of her walls taking in your digits, you plunge them deeper, in and out, in and out.

“Oh, oh god... Fuck, baby, please don't stop... Fuck, I'm cumming, I’m-”

Ellie arches her back, lifting off the mattress, her body tensing up as the pleasure builds to a peak within her, faster than you had anticipated. You keep your eyes trained on her, and they meet when she looks down on you, bottom lip red and raw, tugged between her teeth, eyebrows knitted in rapture.

She's completely captivated by you, her body trembling as she teeters on the edge of climax, but the sight of your half-lidded eyes gazing up at her knocks her over the edge with intensity.

She lets out a groan and then a cry of ecstasy, her body trembling beneath you as the intense waves of pleasure wash over her. You don't let up. She gasps for air, her hands rushing to your head to simultaneously push your face into her as she thrusts her hips against you, and pull you away by the hair as the pleasure becomes too much.

Her chest heaves for a moment before reaching a pinnacle in a soft sigh and, gradually, the room floods with silence. Ellie turns her head to gaze at you hazily, eyes honeyed with affection and exhaustion, and she grins toothily,

“That was... amazing... Holy fuck… You're amazing...”

Finally, you lift yourself up and hover over her.

“Yeah?”

Ellie wraps her arms around you, pulling you against her, and the tenderness of it all makes your chest fill with a tingling warmth reserved just for Ellie.

Her body still thrums with the aftershocks of pleasure,

Yeah... Yeah, that was... incredible."     

“You’re pretty cute when you get all flustered, Els.”               

Ellie blushes at your words; you hoped to draw that out of her, and she huffs slightly in feigned annoyance, though it’s completely half-hearted.

“Shut up.”

You chuckle, but it dies out quickly as she looks down at you longingly, elaborating,

“I... don't know if it's kinda late to say this now but... I love you... I mean, obviously, I do, but as... more than just a friend. I've known for a long time, I've just been too scared of ruining things to actually tell you-”

“Pussy-” Ironic.

“Shut up - you know, that is incredibly rich coming from- fuck, forget that, it's been... building for a while now, and, if you feel the same, I wanna take you out... Maybe, next Friday? Or whatever day works for you…”

She pauses before meeting your gaze, her eyes searching yours intently as she mumbles,

“Please say something. Preferably other than ‘pussy.’”

“Ellie.”

“Yes?”

“I love you too, as more than just a friend... I would love to go out with you and thanks for letting me eat you out. That was pretty awesome."

She grins stupidly,

“You're welcome, it was pretty awesome for me too.”

“Nice.”

Ellie smiles, the furious blush unfading on her cheeks as she studies your expression.

“You're enjoying this, aren't you, you little asshole.”                                                        

“Oh, absolutely.”                       

You place a gentle kiss on her freckled cheek and pull back to see the way she grins, but then her face drops.

“Fuck, I forgot to order the food.”

[starsinthesky5]

do joe and song bird ever talk about the future like what their kids will be like, what their wedding will be like, things like that?

a/n: this is so fucking cute im-

wc: 1.4k

you are in love masterlist

───────⋆⋅☆⋅⋆───────

they do :( like constantly—and it’s so soft, so dreamy, it makes your heart ache in the best way. they don’t talk about forever like it’s this plan they’ve mapped out on a whiteboard. no checklists, no five-year timelines. they talk about it the way people hum songs they’ve fallen in love with—absentmindedly, sweetly, without even realizing they’re doing it. it just...spills out of them. because how could it not?

it’s always in the quietest moments, too. they’ll be brushing their teeth side by side, her in one of his old hoodies, him still blinking sleep from his eyes. or folding laundry on a mild sunday afternoon with the windows cracked open and sunlight spilling across the bed. or tangled up under the same throw blanket, feet pressed together, watching a comfort movie they’ve both memorized by now. and suddenly she’s like, “do you think our kid would have your curls or mine?”.

and joe, without missing a beat, smiles into her shoulder and says, “mine for sure, but i know they’d sing like you,”.

and just like that, she’s gone. melted. puddle of goo. absolutely useless.

because it’s the way he says it—like it’s not even a question. like it’s already in the cards, written into their stars. like of course they’re going to have this little human who has his curls and her voice and their love written all over them. and she can see it, feel it in the way he says it. that the little world they’re building—between whispered pillow talks and sleepy good mornings—is just the beginning.

sometimes it happens on the drive home from dinner. windows rolled down, his hand resting on her thigh, music low in the background. they’ll stop at a red light and watch a little girl run past the crosswalk, laughter echoing behind her, curls bouncing in the wind. joe smiles as he watches her—soft, faraway, completely entranced. what’s even sweeter is that he’ll murmur, “i hope our girl’s that happy one day,”. 

then there are days where it’s even quieter.

when he’s watching her dance around the kitchen, humming some song she hasn’t released yet, spinning in her fuzzy bengals socks with a wooden spoon microphone. she’s a mess—messy bun, oversized hoodie falling off one shoulder, flour smudged on her cheek—and joe just stares like he’s never seen anything more beautiful.

“you’re gonna be the sweetest mom,” he whispers. and her heart aches so good.

they talk about names. not seriously, but playfully. she throws out something wild and bold, and he counters with something classic and sweet. they go back and forth like that, writing mental notes they’ll revisit someday. she likes names with meaning, like athena or something inspired by greek mythology. he likes names that feel like home, joe jr. a strong candidate, or even JJ (joe junior but better). somehow, they always land on ones that sound like love.

she knows she wants their daughter to grow up with soft strength. to watch joe love her mom out loud and learn what she deserves because of it. she wants their son to be gentle, open-hearted, unafraid to feel—and for joe to be the one who teaches him that because he was so good at doing that himself.

they imagine family game nights and road trips with too many snack stops. backyard birthday parties and holidays full of music. a home with messy rooms and loud laughter. she swears joe will be the softest girl dad to ever exist, and joe says he just hopes they’re half as cool as she is.

and the best part? they don’t need answers. no deadlines. no pressure. just quiet promises. hopeful hearts. and a million whispered “somedays,”.

because they’re already building forever. one soft dream at a time. hand in hand. heart in heart.

–

and as for the wedding, well…she’s always been a daydreamer—especially when it comes to love. but with joe? it’s different. it's not a wedding she’s dreaming of. it's their wedding. their quiet, golden moment in time. and she’s imagined it a hundred different ways, always with the same constant: joe standing at the end of the aisle, looking at her like she’s the only thing that’s ever made sense.

she doesn’t care about grandness or extravagance. she wants their day to feel like them. soft. warm. meaningful in the most soul-deep kind of way. she pictures it outside, somewhere private—maybe in a garden with precious summer flowers swaying in the breeze or near a quiet stretch of coastline where the sky meets the water in a haze of blush and gold. it has to be at golden hour, when the sun dips low and everything is cast in honeyed light. she wants barefoot moments and soft kisses. delicate violin music or maybe an acoustic guitar playing something that tugs at their hearts. fairy lights strung above them, the kind that twinkle like stars even before the sun fully sets.

she’d wear something simple but ethereal, nothing heavy or overly fancy, just something soft and romantic that moves with the wind. flowers in her hair, maybe a piece of her mom’s jewelry sewn into the fabric somewhere close to her heart. she wants to walk herself down the aisle. not because no one offered, but because she wants joe to know—when he sees her coming toward him—that she chose him. fully. fiercely. freely.

she’s dreamed of them writing their own vows. she knows hers will be a mess, and she’s okay with that. she’ll be crying before she even gets through the first sentence. because how do you look at the love of your life—this boy who became her home in such a short amount of time—and put it into words? she’s spent her whole life trying to turn the ache of true love—the kind that sets your soul quietly on fire—into words for her songs, and she still hasn’t quite mastered that yet. so how do you just talk about how safe he’s made you feel in a speech like that? how seen? how soft? she didn’t know how she would be able to do it, but she just knew her vows would be a love letter and a promise, wrapped in shaky breath and too many tears. she’d tell him all the ways he’s changed her, all the reasons she’ll never stop choosing him.

and joe? he’s quieter about it. more grounded. but his vows would for sure gut her. because he wouldn’t try to be poetic—he’d just be honest. devastatingly so. he’d talk about the first time he saw her and how nothing’s ever felt the same since. he’d talk about the mornings he wakes up to her beside him and thinks, “this is it. this is what the peace i’ve wanted for so long feels like,” he’d probably cry, too—but the kind of quiet, overwhelmed tears that break your heart a little. because that’s the thing about joe—when he feels, he feels everything.

their first look would be private—just them. no cameras, no audience. she’d want to run to him and bury her face in his chest the second he turns around. and he’d hold her like he’s trying to memorize her, like he’s keeping himself in the moment before everything else begins. they’d whisper little things to each other, things that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else but mean the world to them.

their first dance? a slow, aching kind of song. maybe “heavenly” by cigarettes after sex, or “hunger” by ross copperman. something intimate enough to make the rest of the world fall away. they wouldn’t care if people were watching. they’d just hold each other close, forehead to forehead, swaying slowly, whispering soft things only they could hear.

she wants to laugh at the reception. she wants to dance barefoot and eat cake with her fingers and watch joe toast with that sleepy grin he gets when he’s overwhelmed with joy. she wants to take a moment just for them, maybe sneak away and lay in the grass for a few minutes to catch their breath and soak it all in.

and joe? he doesn’t care about flowers or venues or timelines. he just wants her. wants to see her walking toward him, glowing. wants to slide a ring onto her finger and call her his wife like it’s a prayer he’s been whispering for years. he wants to kiss her like it’s their last first kiss. wants to look back on that day and remember one thing: how it felt to be that loved. that seen. that chosen.

and long after the wedding is over, he wants the rest of their days to feel just like that—soft, sacred, and full of love.

but of course, there’s time before all of that happens. they’re in no rush; just soaking in every moment, every sleepy morning and shared hoodie and tangled-up kiss. but that doesn’t mean they can’t dream about it. because when something feels this right, this sure, it’s impossible not to.

and maybe it’s just daydreaming, whispered between kisses, or half-asleep musings at midnight, but still—some part of them knows. sometimes your dreams sneak up on you.

sometimes they come true faster than you think.

[anjeix]

II. After the gate.

Oblivion | Sung Jinwoo x ???!Reader

The gate collapsed behind them with a sound like a sigh.

One moment, Jinwoo was inside a space that didn't follow any known laws. The next, he was standing in the middle of a rain-slicked street just outside the barrier, the sky overcast and buzzing with residual mana.

And she was beside him.

She stood barefoot in a thin, dark veil that clung to her shoulders and hair — now short, black, damp. Her face was pale, human. Her eyes no longer glowed.

Her breath caught.

She looked down at herself, hands trembling slightly as they clutched the edge of the fabric. The cloak she wore didn't belong to her — that much was obvious from the confusion written all over her face.

A Hunter from the Association took a step forward, sword half-raised.

"Who the hell is she?"

"With me" Jinwoo said with no hesitation.

The hunter, caught by surprise, narrowed his eyes. But then they saw his face, and backed off without another word.

The woman turned to Jinwoo.

"What... what happened?" she asked.

She was still blinking too slowly, as if her mind was processing too many things at once. Her voice was hoarse but clear. Familiar.

"You walked out of a dungeon," he said. "Unregistered. Unarmed." He thought.

Her brows drew together.

"No... I..." Her fingers grazed her temple. "I was just going home. I took the bus. Then I—"

She trailed off.

"You remember your name?" Jinwoo asked, watching her carefully.

She nodded slowly.

"(Y/n)."

It was not a false name. Not a lie. A memory...

"I live in Mapo. I work in publishing. I'm..."

She looked down at her bare feet again, then at the puddle she stood in like it might explain something.

"Why am I wearing this?" she said, annoyed. Almost starting to get irritated with the situation.

Jinwoo didn't answer. He was staring at her too intently now — not with suspicion, but with calculation. As if she were a puzzle he didn't know how to solve yet.

"I have to go," she said suddenly, taking a shaky step back. "I have work. Deadlines. My phone—"

Her hands searched her cloak, but of course it wasn't there.

Jinwoo finally moved, reaching into his jacket and pulling out his own phone.

"I'll call you a ride," he said.

"Why would you—?"

"Because you're not ready to take the subway barefoot."

He said it without irony, without softness. But his coat was already off his shoulders and in her hands before she could protest. She stared at it for a second, then wrapped it around herself with a quiet, mechanical gratitude.

The car that arrived minutes later had tinted windows, and an Association license plate. She hesitated at the open door.

"I don't know what happened in there," she said, not looking at him.

"Neither do I," Jinwoo replied. "But I'm going to find out."

She didn't argue while she got in.

And as the car pulled away, he stood there in the rain, watching the reflection of a woman who shouldn't exist fade into Seoul's gray horizon.

The apartment key still worked.

She stood in front of the door for a long moment, uncertain. The taxi was gone. The hallway smelled like floor polish and cheap incense. Third floor, just like she remembered. Her name still on the mailbox: (Y/n) (L/n).

Inside, the lights flickered on as she stepped in.

It was all hers.

The bookshelves. The coat rack. The half-finished coffee mug in the sink. A single heel kicked under the dining table. That stack of papers with her notes in tight, looping script.

She ran her fingers along the edge of the kitchen counter, letting her breath catch. It felt like walking into someone else's dream.

Her phone buzzed on the couch — battery miraculously not dead — and the screen lit up with a string of missed calls. Coworkers, editors, unknown numbers.

Her chest tightened. She wasn't afraid, just... out of sync.

She moved through the apartment with practiced ease: changed clothes, tied her hair, brewed coffee without thinking. Muscle memory carried her.

But underneath that normal rhythm, something pulsed — like a second heartbeat, just out of reach.

By the time the sun went down, she'd replied to two work emails, sent a vague apology about being "offline," and drafted a list of things to do the next day.

She didn't remember writing half of it.

The next day, the subway smelled like metal and rain.

(Y/n) stood quietly, one hand on the rail, the other clutching a canvas tote that didn't feel like hers — though the keys inside it jingled just right. The crowd was dull: office workers in trench coats, students with earbuds, the occasional half-asleep stranger nodding with the rhythm of the train.

No one looked at her.

Good.

She used the ride to study the city outside the window — tall buildings softened by fog, everything glass and motion. It felt like watching someone else's memory. A version of her life she had the script for, but no lines.

Her phone buzzed again.

[From: Min Joo] Saw your email. We'll talk when you get in. Everyone's dying.

Classic. She smiled faintly, almost relieved. Min Joo was her assistant editor — sharp, nosy, and catastrophically over-caffeinated. If Min Joo was texting like that, things hadn't changed.

The office sat on the 17th floor of an old high-rise near Seongsu — not flashy, not corporate. Just enough history in the walls to smell like paper and too many opinions.

As soon as she walked in, the familiar weight of it hit her: the clatter of keyboards, the hum of bad coffee, the quick glance from the intern who definitely wasn't expecting her to show up today.

"(Y/n)?" a voice said.

She turned. Min Joo stood by the glass-walled meeting room, tablet in one hand, soy latte in the other, blinking like she'd seen a ghost.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"I got caught near a gate when it closed," (y/n) said quickly, smoothly. "Wasn't injured. Just... offline for a while."

Min Joo didn't buy it, but she also didn't push. She handed her the coffee.

"Your desk is buried, there's a manuscript crisis brewing, and two authors think we ghosted them."

"Perfect," she said, sipping. "Let's get to it."

Meetings, notes, margin edits, half-finished contracts. The language of publishing wrapped around her like armor — precise, controlled, familiar.

She slipped back into her role without hesitation. After all, running Obsidian Press demanded it.

But something was off.

Not in the office — in her.

A brief flash of something when she touched a manuscript — the paper buzzed faintly against her fingertips, like it remembered things she didn't.

Or when she looked too long at the flickering fluorescent lights above her desk and felt something behind them, watching.

She blinked it away. Refocused.

By mid-afternoon, it was almost easy to pretend nothing had changed.

Almost.

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

LINKS : Masterpost | Part three

Are you guys liking this so far ? By the way, has anyone noticed what I changed in the title [eyes emoji] ?

[samptlay]

https://www.tumblr.com/yandere-3-sagau/707700753307942912/can-i-request-sagau-with-reader-coming-into-teyvat

This

This is perfect

@112-darling~💕

Finished it. Alright, so this is a work of art. I'm so sad it seems abandoned and the creator is not even reblogging anything, so I believe their poof, gone. They will most likely come back eventually but for now, I'll feed your hunger.

Now I completely understand the AU you want me to make. It would be similar to @yandere-3-sagau's, yet different.

This is my rundown of my own AU for this, Simple!Creator!AU :

Now with the way I would have the Reader wake up in Liyue as well, though she doesn't run into a grandpa who takes care of her. She is aware that her blood is golden and she cries crystals, so she could never really be accused as an imposter, there's no worry on that part.

But Reader wants to live a quiet, peaceful life. She no longer has to worry about exams or deadlines. She finds an abandoned family cabin somewhere in the open fields of Liyue, renovating it herself to call it her own. The reader does farm work to get by, and with how much power she holds, all her fruits & vegetables are always sold out the fastest due to how fresh they are.

Word gets around about how amazing your supply is, and of course, eventually, even Zhongli is curious about the commotion.

So when he one day runs into Childe who had just gotten back from your stall and the ginger offers him some of your own fruits, he is, awestruck. Out of his 6000 years of experience, he had never tasted something so sweet & juicy. Not a single taste of bitterness in sight.

This couldn't have possibly been produced by a regular human being.

As an Ex-Overlord (Like An Archon, but we’re thinking of dynamics,) his suspension was too high for his too drop the concern so he hunts The reader down, eventually finds out the truth about who she really is and suddenly becomes as submissive as a loyal dog.

Though it feels nice, it’s not what she wants. So what else then to keep him on a leash, making a pact with him to silence The reader's existence. 

A LOT more happens, the story would be way more detailed but this is just a rundown. Each Genshin Man would discover her secret in different ways, and the reader eventually has them all wrapped around her fingertips.

The men are just happy to have their souls connected with the creators in some way.

I might make the pacts with Archon’s (including Neuvillette) a lot stronger, so they're somewhat more at her mercy, something in that manner.

What do you think? I’d like to hear more ideas and comments about this AU and how it should be constructed.

Taglist For Those Who Want To Maybe Contribute Ideas. Edit: The reader will be Gender Neutral, though it'll be my first time writing like that so please forgive mistakes.

@uhfhfhfhf @xdrin @msun1c0rn @lovingnahida @strrawb3rrysh0rtcak3 @ssecylia @skyl8ver @immahuman @meowmeowraven @01234 @markexplanation @esthelily @dawnofazrael

[hells-wasabii]

Character: Velvette

Type: Drabble (meet cute gone wrong)

A/N: I can't get out of my head a potential first meeting and the resulting aftermath. Especially when it's a meet cute gone wrong. To start the blog off, have some Velvette brain rot that's been floating in my noggin(mostly cuz this is how my oc would meet her 100% but this can be read as a reader insert)

It had been... a day. Sure, Hell was chaotic, the Pride Ring especially, but today needed to get the fuck over with. Valentino had had yet another bloody hissy fit and ruined even more of her models. Thank fuck she wasn't on a deadline or she might have killed the temperamental piss-baby herself, upcoming extermination be damned. But now, she just needed a drink. Sure, the influencer could have stuck around home base, but she couldn't stand the sight of the tower right now.

So some random bar down the road would have to do. The woman had been there before, a little hole in the wall. nothing to

So when some stranger came bursting out the door nearly stumbling over themself, Velvette wasn't too surprised. That is until she managed to peak inside the bar to find unconscious patrons, and broken tables and glass littering the bar.

"Well, shit." The influencer huffed, she'd have to find a different bar. Guess it'd been too much to hope for that a bar wouldn't be wrecked in the middle of the week.

This got your attention. Taking a breath, you straightened your posture and dusted yourself off. You look at her and your eyes meet. Then there's a pause. You look her up and down, taking her in. The influencer places a hand on her hip, raising an eyebrow at you. This was the first time that she even acknowledged your existence.

"Your outfit's kinda tacky, little miss." You managed and-

Oh if looks could kill, you'd be dead a thousand times over. Velvette. Fashionista. The biggest fashion icon in the Pride Ring. TACKY?!

You were lucky, so fucking lucky, that her phone started buzzing away in her pocket.

Drink be damned, the youngest overlord turned on her heels and stormed off, answering Vox's call with an enraged 'what'.

Of course, the other V's heard nothing but angry ranting about some random demon that clearly had no taste in clothing for the next week from their youngest member.

[belladonnadawn]

Bohemian Rhapsody

No matter where they are and what they become, they'll always be their mother's son.

Ft. Elias, Xanthus Claiborne, and Isaac Rhoades

Elias

Mama, life had just begun, but now I've gone and thrown it all away

The room was thick with silence and tension after his father explained his place in Wraiths. Every meeting seemed to be a preparation for what's to come. Elias would try to stray from the topic, but he knew that delaying the inevitable would just make things more unbearable.

“You're not a stupid teenage boy, Elias. It's time for you to think rationally for once,” His father looked at him sternly.

Elias returned his gaze, hoping that he'd feel his contempt, "Yes, Sir. May I go now?" He huffed, not waiting for his orders, he immediately grabbed his jacket and left.

The night was quiet, the stars were bright. A semblance of peace after what happened. He can't help but feel helpless, stuck in a responsibility that was about to be passed down to him. A responsibility that he never wished or wanted.

Elias couldn't help but wonder what his life would be if it was different. If he was just a normal college student whose worries are the pending deadlines, not an heir who has eyes on him every move.

For a while, he let his mind escape the current situation. Elias closed his eyes, wondering about what his life could be. He'd be a studious student, finally learning more about his passion. He'll meet new friends, join organisations, maybe go to college events where he'd forget about the deadlines. Elias would come home to his parents, gazing at their eyes filled with love as they watched their son grow up and achieve his dream. A smile formed on his lips,

That's all he does– wonder. As he opened his eyes, he was welcomed by the harsh reality. He's not a college student pursuing his passion, the Wraiths is not a simple family business, and he's no longer the son who has his mother. The reality is he is Elias, the heir of the Wraiths.

And the life that he longed for was like stars, beautiful but out of reach.

A shaky sigh escaped his lips, he gazed at the sky with a wish in heart. Hoping that in another universe he lived the life that he wanted.

Xanthus Claiborne

Mama, didn't mean to make you cry, if I'm not back again this time tomorrow

"And once you're back, I promise to have the grandest feast for my dearest warrior," She gently caressed his hair, hoping to soothe out any dread that he felt. Lawrence looked at his mother's eyes, reflecting the gnawing anxiety that he felt. For a while, he felt comfort and warmth, making him forget about what's to come.

"Just being home is enough, mother," Lawrence answered with a small smile, he didn't mind the way that his voice broke a little. He knew about battles– the fallen heroes and their honours. But those compared to nothing once he's on the battlefield.

“I know, but the fact that you'll make it out alive is worth the celebration. Your existence is worth the celebration, Lawrence. And we'll be waiting until we can celebrate that,” His mother's voice was firm, filled with conviction; an emotion that he wished he had.

Adrenaline pumped his veins as he held into his weapon. Despite the overwhelming screams and views of his allies and his enemies, he tried to push through. Lawrence gathered his will and strength, pouring all his might to fight– but it was futile. The enemies continued to advance, the dread that he buried rushed towards his veins.

Lawrence wanted to protest, to cry, to plead. But what would that do now that his fate is set in stone? Instead, he smiled, burying his fear somewhere it can't reach his mother.

Everything was sudden, quick as a blink of an eye. Lawrence choked as he felt a sharp pain on his chest. His eyes widened as he saw the spear penetrating through his armour. He was done for.

A soft thud as he fell on the ground. As he lay, he finally allowed himself to cry. The spear lodged in his chest continued to ache, the dread finally engulfed him. Lawrence gazed at the sky, feeling his vision blur and his eyelids get heavy. A sigh escaped his lips as he succumbed into the unknown wishing that once he's awake, he'll be home.

Isaac Rhoades

Mama, I don't wanna die. I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all

Isaac flipped through the surveillance footage as he prepared to go to sleep. His eyes scanned every area meticulously, leaving no pixels behind. He checked the areas twice, thrice, and quadruple times. The amount of times seemed unnecessary but it helped appease his paranoia.

After a breakthrough in his case, he knew that certain people would do anything to get their hands on the information. He can't let them have that.

Isaac kept himself composed, he can't let his guard down especially when he knew how they wait till they strike, drinking on his fear. One slip of the facade and all the walls that he built may seem useless– like sharks smelling blood. Isaac knew how they moved and how they operated. He knew because he witnessed it in the first place– through his parents.

Years of their absence in the manor and Isaac couldn't seem to get used to it. The silence engulfed him as he drowns himself with whiskey, his only companion to lonely dark nights. Grief is never easy, it is a wound that won't stop bleeding no matter how you patch it up. Back then, he saw the love of his parents in his very own eyes, but now he can only see it when he closes his eyes.

He held on to his grandfather, who died of old age– which he found incredibly commendable especially with his line of work. It was a hard pill to swallow for Isaac, but all the anger he felt towards his grandfather was replaced with guilt.

It haunts him how he poured all the blame towards him when all he wanted was to look after his loved ones. His grandfather thought that he made the right decision, unfortunately it cost the life of his son and daughter in law.

Isaac recalled the remorse and in his grandfather's eyes every distance, every jab, and every glares seems to bury it deeper. And every night he regrets that things ended in such a way.

After he took over the family business, Isaac was introduced to a new reality; a new level of danger he never knew he could reach– and it scares him. No matter how desensitised he is due to his profession, the human in him dreads when the time comes.

He knew how quick the bullet hits and how fast death takes over.

A part of him wishes to abandon everything. To start a new life where he doesn't have to look over his shoulder every second. A life with no dangers, no targets, no killings: only peace. But he knew it was impossible.

At the end of the day, Isaac finds himself longing for his mother's care and protection. He wished that he had his mother's strength, his father's toughness, and his father's determination. But he's not a child anymore, he's now a man carrying his family's legacy despite grief and ache surrounding his heart.

Divider: saradika-graphics

[peppymintdreams]

isaac and pickle get into a fight, pickle starts crying and breaking down in the middle of it, isaac comforts them and and they make-up in the end PLEASEPLEASE im literally begging im on my knees

Of course my child

Broken Promises

Isaac Rhoades x pickle

Isaac was buried in paperwork, his eyes glued to his computer screen, fingers tapping furiously against the keys. The room was dimly lit by the blue glow of his desk lamp, casting long shadows on the walls. Across the room, Pickle sat on the couch, watching him with growing frustration.

“You promised,” Pickle’s voice finally broke the silence, cutting through the tension that had been building for days.

Isaac didn’t look up, too absorbed in whatever document he was typing. “What?”

“You promised you’d take a break tonight. You’ve been working non-stop for weeks.” Pickle’s voice wavered, but they tried to stay calm. This conversation had happened too many times before, and Pickle was tired of the same excuses.

Isaac sighed, still not taking his eyes off the screen. “I know, I know, but this is important. I just need to finish this report.”

Pickle’s chest tightened, their hands curling into fists as they fought to keep their cool. “It’s always one more report. One more email. One more late night.”

Isaac paused, fingers hovering over the keyboard, but he didn’t respond.

Pickle stood up, their frustration boiling over. “You said you’d take a break, Isaac! You promised we’d spend time together tonight. But here you are, working again, like always.” Their voice shook now, the pent-up hurt and disappointment spilling out.

Isaac rubbed his temple, finally glancing over at them. “I’m sorry, okay? But I can’t just drop everything because you want me to. This is my job. You know how much pressure I’m under.”

Pickle’s heart sank at his dismissive tone. They weren’t asking for much, just a few hours of his time. “I’m not asking you to drop everything. I’m asking you to keep your promise, to us,” they said softly, their voice trembling with emotion. “We never see each other anymore.”

Isaac sighed again, louder this time, as if Pickle’s words were an inconvenience. “You don’t get it, Pickle. I have deadlines. Responsibilities. I can’t just—”

“Of course, I don’t get it!” Pickle interrupted, tears stinging their eyes. “How could I? You never talk to me anymore. You’re so caught up in your work that it’s like I don’t even exist!”

The room fell into a tense silence. Isaac blinked at them, caught off guard by the raw emotion in their voice. Pickle rarely got this upset, but when they did, it was like a dam breaking.

“I can’t keep doing this,” Pickle whispered, their voice breaking. “I can’t keep feeling like I’m second to your job, like I don’t matter.”

Isaac opened his mouth to respond, but the words didn’t come. He hadn’t realized how deep the hurt had gone. Pickle’s hands were shaking now, and before Isaac could say anything, they sank onto the couch, burying their face in their hands.

“I’m sorry,” Pickle mumbled, their voice muffled by their hands. “I just— I just want you back. I miss you, Isaac.”

Isaac felt a knot tighten in his chest as he watched them break down, the weight of his broken promises settling over him like a heavy cloak. He could see now how much he’d been neglecting them, how his constant work had driven a wedge between them.

Slowly, Isaac stood and crossed the room, sitting beside Pickle. Gently, he placed a hand on their back, feeling the way they trembled beneath his touch. “Hey…,” he murmured, his voice soft now, filled with regret. “I didn’t realize how much this was hurting you.”

Pickle didn’t lift their head, their sobs shaking their small frame. Isaac’s heart clenched as he pulled them into his arms, wrapping them tightly in a comforting embrace. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered into their hair. “I didn’t mean to push you away.”

Pickle’s sobs quieted as they leaned into Isaac, clinging to his shirt as if he might disappear. “I just feel so alone,” they admitted in a shaky breath. “I know your work is important, but I need you too.”

Isaac held them closer, guilt coursing through him. “You’re right. I’ve been working too much. I just get so caught up in everything, and I didn’t see how much I was neglecting you. But I promise I’ll do better. I’m here now.”

Pickle sniffled, wiping their eyes with the back of their hand. “You always say that, but nothing ever changes. I just… I don’t know what to do anymore.”

Isaac felt the weight of their words, and it hit him how many times he had made that same promise. He had let them down, again and again. “I mean it this time,” he said softly. “I’ll make time for us. I don’t want to lose you, Pickle. You’re more important to me than anything else, I swear.”

Pickle looked up at him, their eyes still wet with tears, but there was a flicker of hope there too. “You mean it?”

Isaac nodded, his voice steady. “I do. I’ll take that break, I’ll make time for us starting now.”

Pickle searched his face, as if trying to believe him, before nodding slowly. “Okay… but I need you to actually do it, Isaac. Not just say it.”

Isaac gently brushed a tear from their cheek, his expression soft. “I will. I promise.”

For a long moment, they stayed there in the quiet, holding each other as the tension began to dissolve. Isaac rested his chin on Pickle’s head, feeling their breathing slowly steady as they calmed down in his arms.

“I missed you too,” he whispered. “I’m sorry it took me so long to see it.”

Pickle closed their eyes, leaning into his warmth. “Just… don’t forget about me again, okay?”

Isaac pressed a kiss to their forehead, pulling them closer. “I won’t. I promise.”

And this time, Isaac vowed to keep that promise.

[fantasyheroine]

Once in a Lifetime

Word Count: 1,815

Warnings: Some angst, Fluff, Reminiscing

A/N: This is written for @impala-dreamer's Through His Eyes challenge. I suddenly realize as I go to post this that I am a couple hours behind the deadline as I forgot that it was EST! I'm sorry! I hope you will still read it impala-dreamer!

Dean had been with many girls throughout his life. Most of them he hadn't cared to learn the names of past the night he’d spent in their bed. Then there were the few that stood out. Robin. Cassie. Lisa. But eventually he had moved on from them as well. Not always to his choosing, but an inevitability with his line of work. Then there was her. The brunette he'd grown up with. His dad had taken her as his ward after she'd been the only one in her family to survive a vamp attack. Usually his father would have left surviving kids at the police station but something about this one little girl had him taking her under his wing. In retrospect she had filled a void that'd existed ever since his mother had died. The soothing grace of a female's presence. She had raised Sammy like her own despite only being older than him by four years. A year younger than Dean himself. And surprisingly, time and time again she had proved her value in a fight. How a girl from the suburbs picked up on shooting rock salt out of a shotgun so easily was still a mystery to him.

As a kid he had hated her. Two sides of the same coin they were. Butting heads endlessly. Stubborn facing stubborn. Then there was the fact she'd constantly fight with his dad, challenging his authority like it was a game. Her disrespect of the man had always pissed him off. But that strong-headedness of hers had come in handy as they'd aged. She’d protected his little brother with the same fierceness he did. Would stand brazenly against whatever monster they faced with no fear. A hunter through and through. As teenagers they came to a sort of truce. Working together to give Sam the best childhood they could. His brother deserved it. And he couldn’t deny that the two of them worked well together as surrogate parents. While he would go out and steal to make sure Sam had christmas gifts and food, she was the one who would stay up with his brother, holding him in her arms, humming softly, every time he’d wake up from a nightmare. And that is when he felt it. The first pings of infatuation. 

When they hit high school he began toying with her the same way he did with all the other girls in his life. Casual flirtations that he knew got under her skin. She would always snap at him to cut it out but he wasn't the kind of boy who missed when he'd made a girl blush. He’d pick on her, tease her and she’d fight back with a fire that always made his heart leap. When she kissed a boy for the first time he followed that kid home the next day, beating him into pulp until he was promising to never speak to her again. She never knew why her first crush abandoned her. They toed the line between friendship and something more for years; neither of them ever giving in but not asking the other to stop either. Their back and forth continued until the day Sammy left for college. 

The fight between Sam and his dad had been the worst they’d ever had. It had had her seeing red. The way she immediately jumped to his brother’s defence when he didn’t brought forth a guilt in him that still weighed on him heavily. She had never liked his dad but that was the first time he could ever remember her punching him. Sam left and a week later she was fully gone as well. A hijacked car taking her far away from him. Those first two years he tried to keep in contact with her but she never seemed to be fully there, rushing through their conversations as if she wished he'd stop calling. Eventually he did. He tried to fill the void she’d left with women. Cassie came close, but there were still the nights where he was lying beside his lover that his mind would drift back to her. The night he broke into Sam’s college apartment he almost expected she’d be there. But no. The girl from his childhood was nowhere to be seen.

It was weeks after reconnecting with his brother that she finally appeared. He wasn't sure how the news had gotten to her but one day as he was travelling with Sam in search of their dad, she showed up in the same town working the same case. A teary reconciliation occured as she gave her sympathies to his brother about his loss of Jess. Sam hugged her with a fierce love Dean had never seen from him before. One he wasn’t sure he even received himself. When she looked at him again for the first time after leaving he felt his heart stop. Staring back at him was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She had grown out of all of her adolescent looks, her features more mature and devastatingly attractive. He gave her a hug and welcomed her back. From that day on the three of them were hunting together once more. 

As their travels progressed it seemed she was willing to let bygones be bygones and those pangs he’d felt as a teenager came back with a vengeance that had his head spinning. Logically he knew she primarily stuck around for Sam. To protect him like she had her whole life. It was written on her face every time the topic came up that she didn’t give a damn about whatever had happened to his father. But one day, when her gaze met his in the rearview mirror, he wondered  then if maybe she didn't stick around for him as well. Time moved slowly as they hunted, the search for his dad eventually fading when the trail went cold. She often took his side in those many months. Arguing with Sam when his brother would insist on continuing the search. That fateful day when Sam walked away once again she blew his mind. She hadn’t gone after his brother like he’d been expecting. In fact she hadn’t even gotten out of her seat in the Impala when the fight shifted to the side of the road. She had just sat and waited. And when he had come back and informed her that Sam was going off on his own, she had simply slid her body into the passenger seat beside him instructing him to go. It wasn’t lost on him then that despite everything he thought he knew about her, she had chosen him.

Time went on and they grew closer, Sam joining up with them once more only a few days after he had left. She shared stories while they traveled. Anecdotes from when she had been on her own. He learned how she had sought out her grandparents but because of never having had a relationship with them, life took her back on the road. He felt so sorry for her that day and the guilt inside him grew. Her chance at normalcy had been stolen away from her the same night her family had been. Forced into the life like him and his brother. For the first time he questioned if his dad was truly the all knowing person he thought he was. But she was resilient, and as he studied her he realized that she wasn’t fully unhappy.

The day she almost died on a hunt he thought his heart was going to give out. The witch was torturing her as he was pinned helpless against the wall. He knew he would never forget the image of her body being contorted. The sound of her bones breaking. And yet despite how much pain she was clearly in, all that escaped her were a few solemn tears. That night he realized just how strong she actually was. Even when standing in the face of almost certain death her defiance remained. The look in her eyes a promise to the witch that she would come back and that she would kill. They had survived. They always survived. But that night had broken something within her and finally he could see through the chinks in her well crafted armor. See the depression that had always eaten at her mind. As awful as it sounds, it gave him a sense of belonging. Like he wasn't the only one struggling in this fucked up world. Like he wasn’t alone.

The way he flirted with her turned softer. A goal of seeing her smile solidifying in place. Every time he succeeded made his heart thunder with a beat that sand only for her. He loved her. Maybe he had loved her all along. It became his life’s mission to make her happy. Give her a semblance of what had been taken. He would split his burger and they’d share beers, reveling in each other’s company. He'd make her laugh and he’d find himself smiling. Actually smiling. His love grew until one day she baked him his favorite pie. It was poorly made, the insides sloppy, the middle cold, but he adored it all the same. He knew he had to tell her. Come up with a way to explain everything she meant to him. But the chance never came, life taking him to the hells where those barely held together pieces of him broke further.

He was distant when he came back. Guilt riddled and full of despair. She tried to soothe him. Get him to open up. But he couldn’t, too scared of losing her to the darkness inside him. He pushed her away. Pushed Sam away. He kept pushing until one day she screamed in his face, completely at her wit’s end, that she would always love him if he only would let her in. His walls came down and they were kissing and crying, limbs tangled as they slept. He never pushed her away again. Even when he was at his lowest. Even through the Mark of Cain or after his time spent in Purgatory. He held her to him. Clinging to her love like it was his only lifeline.

His hand squeezes hers and he leans down to kiss her knuckles. Her screams bring a smile to his face and he whispers words of encouragement. Praises on how good she is doing. On how happy she is making him. The doctor instructs her to push and soon her cries are joined by tiny ones. He moves to cut the cord, hands shaky even though this is their fourth time. The little girl is placed on her heaving chest, his tears mingling with hers. And as he gazes down at the wife who has made him a father once again, he knows that a person like her only comes by once in a lifetime.

[eretzyisrael]

by Maya Sulkin

Garber insists that the university has “made it abundantly clear that we do not take lightly our moral duty to fight antisemitism,” and has “taken many steps to address antisemitism on our campus,” as he wrote in his letter to the Harvard community last week. But not everyone sees it that way.

Rabbi David Wolpe is one of them. He received a call on October 8, 2023—a day after Hamas’s attack on Israel—from a “shaken up” Claudine Gay, asking the Harvard Divinity School visiting professor for advice. She ended up forming an Antisemitism Advisory Group and asking Wolpe to join. Summers cautioned Wolpe not to take the position for fear he was “being used,” but Wolpe accepted anyway. Two months later, in December 2023, Wolpe resigned from the advisory group, stating that “both events on campus and [Claudine Gay’s] painfully inadequate testimony reinforced the idea that I cannot make the sort of difference I had hoped.”

When I asked Wolpe about Harvard’s current antisemitism task force, he told me that while Garber “takes antisemitism seriously, people underestimate the amount of institutional resistance at many, many levels that a president of Harvard finds when it comes to dealing with antisemitism.”

Wolpe added that “many people at Harvard are themselves either mildly or seriously antisemitic,” and others “don’t believe that antisemitism is a problem, and Jews are just the paragon of white privilege.” Between those two constituencies, said Wolpe, “I don’t know how much more Garber could or couldn’t do,” and that “it’s an extraordinarily thorny path to navigate to change that ethos.”

Adding to concerns about Harvard’s antisemitism problem are fears over the precipitous fall in the number of Jewish undergraduates at the university. As of 2023, that figure is estimated at lower than 5 percent, compared to almost 25 percent in the 1970s.

When I asked Larry Summers about the decline in Jewish students at Harvard, he told me that he does not think it is evidence of antisemitism. “I certainly am not serene about Harvard and antisemitism, but I have seen no credible basis for believing that the decline in the Jewish fraction of the Harvard student body results from anti-Jewish discrimination,” he said. “Rather, it is an arithmetic consequence of efforts and developments leading to more African American, Hispanic, Asian, and more students from disadvantaged backgrounds—which had been a priority of mine—and more foreign students being admitted to Harvard.”

The only thing Harvard’s task force has produced since it was established more than a year ago is a list of preliminary recommendations. They urged the university to issue “statements condemning forms of discrimination and affirming existing values” and “fund a visiting professorship in Palestinian studies.”

The preliminary recommendations also noted that the task force’s “listening sessions provided abundant reports that since last October, and to some extent long before then, many Jewish students (and especially Israeli students) have been subject to shunning, harassment, and intimidation.”

Last May, the co-chairs of the task force wrote an op-ed in which they detailed the “appalling” things they had heard in listening sessions with Harvard students and faculty members. They recounted instances of “doxxing,” and students who “did not take certain classes because they believed the instructor would treat a Jewish or Israeli student unfairly.” But since then, the task force has gone quiet.

[hbyrde36]

Caught in the Undertow

Hi, 👋 Welcome to another old fic made new again! I promise this is my last re-write, but in similar fashion to Times Like These I found myself fixated recently on giving this fic the more practiced hand it deserves. I hadn't planned on posting much about it until the full re-write was done, but with the Steddie big bang deadline rapidly approaching, it's going to take a little longer than I thought. (And being a slut for encouragement, I figured why not start sharing the first 5 redone chapters now while I work on the rest, in hopes someone will enjoy it.)

Summary:

Against all odds, Steve Harrington saved Eddie Munson from certain death. And Eddie doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forgive him for it.

Chapter One

WC: 1980 | R: Explicit | TW: Suicidal ideation/depression | Ch 1/10 | AO3

On some level, Eddie had always sort-of wanted to die. 

He never planned it out, and he wouldn’t actually do anything about it—probably—but he fantasized about it a lot. 

Which was maybe something he should unpack with a therapist at some point, but that type of thing wasn’t really in the budget for a kid who lived in a trailer park and sold a little weed on the side for extra cash.

Sometimes, on the really bad nights just before falling asleep, he found himself wishing, praying even, not that he really believed in such things, to just not wake up again. And deep down he knew that if he were ever faced with the opportunity to bow out, so to speak, especially in a way that wouldn’t burden anyone—bonus points for a blaze of glory—he’d take it.

The idea came to him as he was helping Dustin to climb up the sheet rope and into the safety of the right-side-up, the thumping sound of the bats throwing themselves into the sides of the trailer, trying so desperately to get in, grating on his already frayed nerves.

It had truly been the week from hell. 

He was cold, dirty, and scared. Overwhelmed with the new reality he’d been forced to accept with exactly zero time to process, and having to come to terms with the fact that there’d been a whole other world existing right under his feet for fucking years, all while on the run from the cops, as well as a community calling for his head on a pike. 

It left him with that all too familiar feeling—weary down to his bones in a way that no nap or good night’s sleep could ever cure.

It wasn’t even a debate in his mind.

Eddie pulled his switchblade out from one of the many pockets on the snazzy green vest Harrington had picked up for him from The Warzone, and slashed the rope, ensuring that Dustin couldn’t follow him—ensuring the kid’s safety before rushing out into the dark to lead the bats away.

Life sure was funny, he thought wryly as he mounted one of the bikes they’d left behind during their last jaunt into the Upside Down, it can take you to places you never even dreamed of, and yet you’ll still wind up exactly where you’re meant to be. 

He peddled as fast as he could, trying to get the bats as far away from the gate as possible.

This was it, the chance he’d always longed for, and at least this way he could leave knowing his life meant something. His sacrifice would keep Dustin safe, keep the demobats out of their world, and buy more time for Harrington and the girls to kill Vecna.

It was a win-win.

And really, what sort of life would he be going back to anyway?

Devil worshiper, cult leader, freak, murderer. It was too many labels, too many things to overcome, just too much, the way he’d always been too much. Too loud, too different, too broken for anyone to want to get too close. 

Worse—when he wasn’t busy being too much, he wasn't enough. Not smart enough, clearly. Who takes this many tries to graduate high school? Not a good enough son, if his parents dumping him on Wayne’s doorstep and never looking back was any indication.

Wayne.

Thinking of the older man caused a brief stab of guilt. Uncle Wayne would be sad when he was gone, no question. The old man wasn’t shy about his love for his only nephew, but honestly this was for the best for him too. One less thing to worry about, and one less mouth to feed. It couldn’t have been easy on his uncle all these years. Raising a kid was never easy, surely, let alone raising someone else’s, but Eddie had no doubt that he’d posed an especially unique challenge.

It wasn’t long before Eddie’s legs failed him, exhaustion making them feel like lead, slowing his pace to the point that the bats were right on his tail, the bulk of the swarm a swirling black cloud above him. One of the little fuckers peeled away from the group, swooping down to knock him from the bike. He flew over the handlebars, hitting the dirt hard, rolling several times before coming to a stop and scrambling back to his feet. 

Eddie screamed his pain at the advancing hoard, banging his shield and raising it against the onslaught of gnashing teeth and beating wings. 

He stood his ground. 

He didn’t give up.

He fought to the very end, until he was overtaken and brought to the ground, laid out like a feast for his unsightly foe.

Later—minutes or hours he had no sense of time anymore, as he lay there dying, soaking the ground beneath him as he bled out, Eddie wondered at his own actions. It must have been a reflex, some long dormant base instinct to survive popping up at the last second, because why else would he fight so hard when it would have made more sense to not? When the writing was on the wall, when this was what he wanted?

Eddie had wanted this.

Hadn’t he?

Steve was soaring. 

He was fucking ecstatic. 

They did it, they’d killed Vecna. 

They fucking won for once, their years-long nightmare finally over for good. 

He, Nancy, and Robin smiled at each other, laughing in hysterical relief as they bounded down the crumbling old steps of the Creel house, the criss-crossing vines that decorated nearly every surface laying dead and dormant. 

The walk back to Forest Hills was spent recounting every detail of their battle. Each one of Nancy’s expert shots, and every molotov cocktail that Steve and Robin had thrown. So sure he was that their little group had had the most dangerous job, save for maybe Max, it didn’t even cross Steve’s mind to worry about the others just yet. He couldn't wait to see Dustin's face, to celebrate this victory with him and the rest of the twerps. 

It wasn’t until they were nearly back to the trailer that he realized something had gone terribly, horribly wrong.

He heard Dustin’s cries long before he saw him, and Steve didn’t hesitate to take off running as fast as his legs would carry him in the direction of the sound, trusting that the girls would follow. 

Steve’s heart dropped when the scene finally came into view—Dustin with his head bowed, sobbing as he knelt over the lifeless body of Eddie Munson.

“What happened?” Steve asked, skidding to a stop at their side, dropping to his knees next to the younger boy.

“H-he said he was gonna buy more time. The bats started getting into the trailer and he made me go through the gate first—he made me—and then he cut the rope and then he—” Dustin's voice shook, his eyes shining and red rimmed as he raised his head to meet Steve’s gaze. “He’s gone.”

Those two words broke something inside Steve. 

He couldn't allow this, wouldn’t accept it. They fucking won goddamn it. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. If any one of them wasn’t going to make it out of this place alive, it should have been him, not Eddie.

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Steve bent over the prone figure, listening closely for any signs of breathing while pressing his fingers to Eddie’s neck to check for a pulse. He found neither at first but didn’t let that deter him. Eddie’s skin was still warm and Steve's hands were shaking, his own heartbeat pounding so loudly in his head that it could feasibly be drowning out signs of life.

He gently nudged a still silently weeping Dustin aside and began CPR. 

“What can I do?” Robin asked from his left. She and Nancy must have finally caught up, he hadn’t even heard their approach. 

Steve kept an even rhythm, concentrating all his effort on his compressions as he replied. “Find something to wrap his side, I think that’s where most of the blood is coming from. Then take Dustin back through the gate and call an ambulance. I want them waiting on the other side before I try to move him.”

Robin quickly jumped into action, slipping her jacket off to remove her button down, and with Dustin’s help began working it around Eddie’s middle.

“Steve," Nancy whispered his name, carefully, gently. She was kneeling down on Eddie’s other side, her ear practically pressed to his mouth. "He’s not breathing and he’s lost a lot of blood. I’m sorry, but did he even have a pulse when you got here?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said immediately.

“Steve–”

“Just go! Please, Nance.”

Steve wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Robin finally came back, and if Dustin had put up a fuss at being made to leave, he hadn’t heard any of it. His entire focus narrowed down to his hands on Eddie’s chest, pumping, his eyes locked on Eddie’s face as he counted to thirty, the taste of blood on his lips as he administered rescue breaths. 

Lather, rinse, repeat… 

“The ambulance is five minutes out, how do you want to do this?”

He could have kissed her in that moment—in the most sisterly way of course. 

She didn’t waste any time questioning if they should be doing this, or if Eddie’s condition had improved. Accepting that Steve had made up his mind and she was going to do everything in her power to help him make it happen. 

The thing was, Steve had felt a faint tap against his fingers the last time he’d checked, and he was 99% sure Eddie did have a pulse now, even if he hadn’t before, and it could have been his imagination but he could have sworn he heard the other boy take a few shallow breaths on his own too.

Together, he and Robin hauled over a piece of discarded corrugated metal, moving Eddie onto it as gently as possible, using it like a stretcher to carry him back to the trailer. 

Getting him through the gate was a bit trickier. Even more-so with the rope being cut, but Robin and Nancy had shoved a bunch of furniture under the hole in the ceiling, and Steve somehow managed to climb up the precarious tower one-handed while balancing their unconscious friend on his back.

When they made it to the other side, Steve carried Eddie in his arms all the way to the ambulance doors, insisting on riding along with them to the hospital. He must have been a sight, sweaty and out of breath, covered head to toe in muck and the other boy’s blood. The EMTs didn't even argue, except to insist Dustin come along too once they noticed his limp. 

Robin and Nancy followed behind in the RV, promising to pick up the others on their way so everyone could regroup at the hospital.

Things changed drastically once they arrived at Hawkins General, and the staff realized just who their patient was. Thankfully the paramedic in the ambulance had managed to stabilize Eddie before he was recognized. Steve shuddered to think about what might have happened otherwise.

Though unconscious and in critical condition, Eddie was treated like the dangerous criminal the whole town thought he was—handcuffed to his hospital bed, and an officer posted up at his door. 

No visitors allowed. 

Once Dustin was released, ankle wrapped and with orders to take it easy for a few weeks, their group was asked in no uncertain terms to leave. Told that no updates would be given on the suspect's condition.

Suspect. 

Steve wanted to throw up, but at least Eddie was alive. 

Chapter 2

Thanks and love to @penny00dreadful and @pearynice for all your help and encouragement with this.

Permanent taglist(open): @penny00dreadful @pearynice @hitlikehammers @bookworm0690 @wonderland-girl143-blog 

@goodolefashionedloverboi @themagicalari @awkwardgravity1 @rocknrollsalad

P.S. Taglist friends, I know this one might not be for everyone, if you'd prefer I not tag you in this fic pls let me know, I totally understand 💜

[soobadnoonecanstopher]

Can I Stay? (A Baekhyun Story) Part 17.

Pairing: You x Baekhyun

Rating: M

Word Count: 10.5k

Warnings: More plot. No space for smut this time.

Tag list @andimoon @his-mochi-cheeks

Links: Part 1, … Part 16, Part 17, Part 18

You were the kind of person who worked very well under pressure. It was written all over your résumé and unlike some others who claimed this trait and then folded like paper under the slightest bit of stress; you actually did work very well under pressure.

The career kind of pressure.

The pressure involving deadlines and all-hands on deck scenarios in which you needed to perform flawlessly and harness every innate professional skill you’d perfected over the years so well that you could rely on trusting your gut with every move and you actually saw results. You could handle anything, professionally; you were not one to back down from any challenge you were presented with and you did not waver or cower in the face of great adversary.

Baekhyun had gone motionless beside you. From the corner of your eye you could see the way he clenched down hard on his jaw and judging from how very still his chest was, it didn't seem like he was breathing.

Your mind half registered the elevator stopping at your floor, only you did not make any moves to exit.

You watched the back of President Byun’s head, frozen by what you could only describe as abject panic coursing through your every vein. It was a new feeling to you. You felt paralyzed as you stared at the graying strands of his hair and you begged and pleaded that perhaps you had simply misheard him.

You did not have a plan for this. This was a new and terrifying kind of pressure you had never experienced before.

President Byun, Baekhyun’s father and your boss — not your direct superior by any stretch of your imagination but the boss, the big boss, the boss to end all bosses of your entire professional existence up until this point, that President Byun — he had just dropped an atom bomb on top of your head in this tiny box that was hurling you away from the earth up toward his golden towers in the sky, he had just called you out for your sins against him, your sins against him and your sins again his precious and dearest child. His son who he’d breathed life into when he brought him into this world and had handed over to you to nurture and to care for and you had what? Seduced your way into his life; made him fall in love with you…

What would the man think of you?

A harlot? A threat to the Byun family name? A gold digger? There was plenty of his hard earned and life long suffering gold to dig for; but would any amount of your begging and pleading arguments even begin to touch at the surface of just how much you weren’t after any of the fortune? You did not care one bit about it. You had made your way in this world just fine so far on your own merit alone and you could continue in this way forever for all you cared.

But Baekhyun… never in your entire existence had you felt this kind of love for another human being.

Would you just have to give him up?

You would not survive such a blow. You’d just as easily give up your career than give this man up. Just the thought of spending a lifetime without him in it made that prospective life worthless to you.

The elevator had halted. It had reached the end of the line and the doors dinged softly seconds before they pulled open and your eyes caught the tasteful red patterned plush carpet that lined the top floor of this building. None of the other floors had this kind of luxury that gave with a bounce underneath your feet as you walked.

It was a different world entirely up here.

“See me in my office, in one hour.” You flinched when his strong booming voice called out into the hollow space of this elevator right before a shift in his balance indicated that he was leaving you both behind in here. You still could not be sure he was speaking to you both or only to Baekhyun, but there was something that felt a bit like a guillotine’s chop that struck against you hard when you caught movement in his face as he angled his focus just slightly in your direction for one more strike, “You might as well come too,” he added before he was gone.

You managed a quiet whisper before the doors moved. A “Yes, Sir” somehow came out of your parted lips.

The doors closed up and neither of you moved.

Your eyes wandered over the space before you. The illuminated lights overhead that told you this contraption was still sitting at the top floor; not yet called on by any other travelers and not told where to head by either of the two occupants still standing inside of it. The shiny doors now in their closed position showed very clear scratch marks from the years of opening and closing again and again. The panel with all of its numbers and at the bottom, the red alarm button that would connect you with someone, with anyone, who might be able to help you in the most dire of situations you found yourself trapped in. Did they help with disasters of your own making?

You extended your hand and you noticed the visible tremble in your fingers as you pointed your index finger and lightly ran it over that red alarm button; genuinely wondering what kinds of emergencies they were equipped to help with.

A movement pulled you out of the quiet trance you’d been stuck inside, and a hand with slim fingers reached forward into your field of vision.

His fingers pressed a familiar number and then his hand traveled down to lay lightly over your hand. His hand moved slowly over the back of yours and he wrapped his fingers around your hand and squeezed down just enough for you to pull your eyes away from the red alarm button and seek him out.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly; his brown eyes looking into your own with a myriad of emotions surging through them. Concern. Guilt. Worry. He blinked once and broke eye contact, looking down at his feet as he bit down on his bottom lip and furrowed his eyebrows.

“I’m going to be fired.”

Baekhyun shook his head back and forth, lightly at first but harder as he got going; with a deep inhale into his lungs, his face lifted and he looked into your eyes once more as he shook his head with more conviction.

“No,” he said, “No, you won’t.”

You watched his face and felt the effect of the stress you were feeling pulling at your stomach, making you ache from the inside. You closed up your eyes and felt the smallest tug at your hand as he shook you lightly to beg for your attention again.

You gave in to him with his next words.

“This is just a negotiation. We have an important meeting in an hour — for a negotiation. We’ve had plenty of those, right?”

It took you a moment to hear him through the haze you felt in your mind but after a few seconds you nodded your head in agreement. Maybe you could get through it with this kind of mindset.

He inhaled to speak again, “Now…we have to prepare for the meeting.”

You found yourself seated on the sofa in your office. Assistant Cha had been sent away on some insane photocopying mission crafted by Baekhyun that was likely to keep her occupied for hours, and although you had wished for it all day long, having some alone time with Baekhyun inside your office now, felt about as joyous as planning a funeral.

During your discussion with him, he seemed to overlook the ‘how’ for now — he was less concerned with how President Byun came to know of this incriminating information; brushing it aside as a mere detail that would be dealt with later, and he was fixated on the ‘what’ as in Baekhyun seemed convinced that his father, master businessman that he was, actually knew far less than the brief encounter in the elevator suggested.

“I’m not convinced he knows it’s you,” he urged.

“Why does he want to see me in his office, then?” You countered and he only shook his head with a small shrug of his face, not at all giving you a response to this fact with anything concrete.

“I don't know that. But you don't know that man. He was angled in my direction; I could just feel it.”

“He was standing straight and facing forward. There was no angle.”

“He was talking to me. His tone — his voice — it was projected in my direction. I know my Dad, he is upset at me. But only at me. His feet, or his hips had a slight…angle, I can’t explain it, but I know it,” he insisted again, “he definitely knows there is a woman, but that’s as much as he’s got.”

“What if we get up there and he knows?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. What do you always say is the first rule of negotiation?”

“Don't ever show your hand,” you repeated the words you religiously mumbled to yourself before any big showdown.

“Don't ever show your hand,” he repeated with a forced smile on his face that did not reach his eyes.

You’d kept an eye on the clock. Time was moving much too fast for this. You hardly had any time at all to prepare; not that there was much either of you could do to prepare for this.

You made a quick stop at your desk before you joined where Baekhyun stood with his hand on the doorknob of your office watching and waiting for you to follow him out. Of course, he was watching you as you grabbed the plain white envelope out of your desk drawer and discretely slipped it inside the inner pocket of your suit coat.

“You won’t need that,” he said matter of factly.

“That’s just a worst case scenario. Like a plan B.” you said with a sad smile on your face, speaking of the short but sweet resignation letter signed with your own hand. “I’d rather resign than have my name dragged through the mud.”

You heard a dissenting hum from the back of his throat as Baekhyun clearly did not agree with your back-up plan. You’d taken your place at his side and instantly you felt his hands reach into your coat and he pulled out the letter. You watched in half annoyance, half amusement as he gripped it lightly in his fingertips and quickly ripped it in half, before stacking the halves and ripping those into more pieces which he proceeded to drop into the waiting trash can near the sofa.

“Plan B is you are 6 weeks pregnant,” he said in a joking tone. You frowned as you looked down into the trash can. You definitely didn't have time to print out another resignation letter now. “Of course, we’d have to get started on that right away, so that the timing works out.”

“And then plan C is we run away and get married, anyway,” he said with a dip of his head to catch your eyes, making you look up into his face. You had still been looking down at the trash can when you felt the softness of his fingertips below your chin, urging you to look at him. “You can be the breadwinner. I alway knew I would make a beautiful trophy wife one day.”

He was playing now. It was intentional; just to lighten your mood a little bit before the real danger came and you found yourself standing in front of the consequences of your actions trying not to pass out. You knew he wasn’t making light of this very real and very scary situation with his jokes and after a few seconds you looked up into his face; you could see so clearly, the poorly concealed worry there.

You leaned into him first. You slipped your hands inside the warmth of his suit jacket; wrapping your arms tightly around his waist and you buried your face well into the crook of his neck. His arms encircled you immediately and you felt the echo of a soft hum from deep within his chest.

“We will be okay,” you heard him say right beside your ear where he had tucked his face into your hair. It sounded like a statement but you definitely heard a hint of uncertainty in his voice. After a few quiet seconds you heard his inhale.

“No matter what happens — y-you wouldn’t leave me, right?” All traces of the ruse were gone. All false humor and forced bravado vanished with his quiet question.

His voice trembled with genuine fear as he asked you such a terrible thing.

You lifted your eyes to look into his face and you lifted a hand to rest it on his cheek.

“I would abandon my career before I would leave you, my love,” you called into his heart, soothing whatever silly fears he had — that you could somehow live without him. With your words, he closed his eyes slowly; taking them deep inside. His lips parted as he tasted the truth in them.

“But you just ripped up my resignation letter so let’s hope it doesn’t come down to that.”

For this, he opened his eyes again, tilting his head slightly to the side.

It was time to go. You knew how long the elevator ride would take up to the top floor and if you weren’t inside of it soon, you’d be late. With as many transgressions as you had under your belt against his father you didn’t need to add any more to the list.

“Wait, I thought the resignation letter was to keep your name off the blacklist, as in to protect your career — but it was for me? To stay with me? You’d give up your job to stay with me?”

“But you love your job. Your job is, like, everything to you.” He was still speaking; strangely fixated on this little detail. You were certain it must be his need to gauge your love and devotion to him; which was ridiculous. You were about to get fired because of how much you loved this man. The least he could do was not gloat about it.

You were straightening your suit jacket, buttoning buttons and smoothing your skirt as he talked.

“Well you ripped it up,” you said with a grin; feeling a little bit like you were going into battle, “so I guess we’ll never know.”

You pulled your office door open and stepped out into the open floor; making your way through the cubicles and out into the hallway that led to the elevators.

The hour reprieve you’d had with him had done something unexpected. Yes you were headed up to what was very likely to be your demise, but strangely with him beside you — with Baekhyun, your love by your side, you might just make it through whatever happened upstairs. Perhaps this love you’d found could soften whatever detrimental blows you received today. Suddenly your work, your career, your job title felt just a little bit less than the highest priority to you.

Inside the elevator he inhaled a breath. You knew his silence through the crowded office space would not last; not with his curiosity left unsatisfied.

“So me or your professional reputation? What was that letter for?”

The elevator moved quickly. The rapid motion made you feel queasy and you had to lay a hand over your belly to calm your nerves. He noticed and reached a hand out in your direction, landing a palm over your own hand as you cradled your belly.

“What is it? Is it the baby?” His words of what sounded like genuine and convincing concern caught you off guard and you couldn’t hold the small surprised chuckle that broke free — that he would dare say such a ridiculous thing out loud. The laugh, the first genuine bit of happiness you’d felt in more than an hour caught you off guard more than his joke and you marveled that you could dare to be feeling something so joyous during such a dreadful situation.

You lightly swatted his hand away and he let out the sweetest teasing giggle.

“Sorry, just practicing my acting.”

The final steps out of the elevator, out onto that luxurious carpeting, and down the hallway that lead up to the heavy wooden doors of the CEOs office, were quiet. Any remnants of misplaced humor from either of you were snuffed out by nerves.

Baekhyun pulled on the handle and you stepped inside first, catching the eyes of the President’s secretary as soon as you both stepped inside the entryway.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Byun, ” the young man in the crisp suit called out an overly formal greeting with a stiff smile directed at your boyfriend. His eyes glanced in your direction and you got a short head-nod, “Miss Managar. The president is expecting you. Please — this way.”

The man rounded his desk and stood in front of a second set of heavy wooden doors with a hand extended toward it and his torso leaned in the direction you were both to go.

“You may go in.” His other hand extended halfway toward his first.

You felt as if this plush carpet had swallowed up your feet. They seemed to refuse your attempts to send a signal from your brain to your legs to make them move.

You heard the heavy door open, despite how well oiled and maintained those hinges were, your ears caught the movement of wood as it slid over thick carpet.

You knew you should move. Baekhyun was already inside.

The young man took one step closer to where you stood and you heard him inhale to speak again.

“You — may go in,” he said with, god bless him, without any change at all in his tone, despite the fact that he had now said this to you twice without you actually moving at all.

“Yes.” You whispered toward him. His eyes caught ahold of yours and he held on to his blank expression so well.

“I am — g-going in.”

Something was wrong with you. Could stress cause paralysis?

“Miss Manager, you may go in.” The man reached a quick hand behind you and you felt the smallest push of his palm over your shoulder and coupled with the nerves; the embarrassment you felt surge through you surely had turned your entire face into a flushed hot red mess. Still, the smallest push he gave you actually got your feet moving and you took three or four big steps right into the office of the President of this company and the father of the man you secretly loved.

President Byun’s focus was on his son. There seemed to be some sort of a stare down going in the first few seconds of this interaction. Your entry into the space pulled both of their eyes away from each other and you closed the distance so that you were standing directly beside Baekhyun.

President Byun opened his mouth to speak.

“Ahh Miss Manager,” he said, looking into your face with lifted eyebrows and a confusing smile on his face. “Lovely that you could make it as well.”

The smile for you felt so genuine. Soft almost. You couldn’t quite connect that soft smile the old man gave you with the anger and outrage he should have had on his face when he looked at you — you, the scheming, gold digging harlot who had used her influence and power over his dear sweet child to trick him into believing he was in love with her.

You felt confused. You felt silly. The longer he looked at you with such a warm expression. The nerves and apprehensions you had been feeling were dissipating like bubbles in the air above your head.

“I actually wanted to meet with you about this young man right here, but I don’t believe you need to be present quite yet.

“I have a personal family matter to discuss with my son first. Something about some woman he intends to marry — without even consulting his dear father, that has given him everything — without even letting me meet her first.”

Oh.

He didn’t know.

Baekhyun was right.

Baekhyun’s posture had sagged some. You could see the relief in his spine and you looked over into his face and found him concealing the smallest smile on his lips that he had to bite down to keep under control. His eyes stayed fixed ahead of him but you could tell he was quite pleased to have been right about his father.

“Umm..pardon me, Mr. President but I haven’t prepared any performance evaluation materials for Assistant Byun for today…”

“Oh don’t worry one bit, Dear. This is all very unofficial.”

The soft pet name was unexpected but not unwelcome. You were not in any trouble at all. You were not about to be fired. There would be no official sanction or lawsuit. Sure you had technically broken some of HR’s rules with the timing of everything but there was no crowd awaiting your public execution. No one was sharpening a head chopping ax. Just a soft old man whose feelings had been hurt that his son left him out of such a monumental life decision.

Baekhyun would have to soothe his fathers ego well, but you were certain he could handle it without letting his own stubbornness get in the way.

“Dad. You will get to meet her, but no matter what you say, I’m not going to change my mind. This meeting is pointless. If you wanted me to come and hang out we could have just had lunch together.”

Oh no. He sounded sassy and defensive. Stubborn and immovable. Just as you’d feared, both men shared an equally strong sense of stubborn entitlement that was probably genetic.

“I don’t even know her. Is she smart and capable? Does she have good business sense? What does she do for a living? You have kept her from me — why? Do I know her?”

“She loves me. I love her. That should be your first question.”

Part of you wanted to intervene; to remind him of how delicate this situation was and how if he handled it with just a little more grace he might get further with convincing his dad.

You were retreating. You’d already been told to step aside and you’d made it just outside the doorway mid-way through their heated discussion about Baekhyun’s future, his birthright, and his responsibilities.

You were alone with the secretary again. He was seated in his chair behind his desk watching you with a passive and disinterested expression on his face as you stood with your back against the wall right beside the still slightly parted doorway.

You could make out their conversation but with the young man watching you, you pretended like couldn't and you kept your judgements about the over the top and ridiculously stubborn things both men were saying to yourself.

“Have you ever been to Egypt?” the secretary suddenly asked. His focus seemed far away but you were the only person in this room so you figured he was talking to you.

It took a few seconds but you shook your head back and forth as a reply.

“Oh you seemed like maybe you have. I want to go to Egypt.”

Clearly this man had some preconceptions about you. You smiled politely as you kept your ears trained on the heated discussion that continued behind the door.

“Just try it. Go ahead. You say I’m dramatic now, just try and force my hand. You want to lose your only son, forever? You have no idea how dramatic I’ll get.”

“Maybe I’ll go in the spring so it’s not so hot. It’s the desert though so it might be hot all the time. I want to see the pyramids. Which has better pyramids, Mexico or Egypt?”

“Please. The nurse at the hospital said she’d never seen such a dramatic baby and you were only one day old. I know exactly what kind of show you can put on. Is she trustworthy. Can she handle coming into this world.”

“I won’t give her up, even if she can’t. I’ll protect her from the family if I have to.”

“I don’t know,” you said to the young man.

“Oh you seem like you would know,” he replied, looking genuinely disappointed in your answer. You felt slightly taken aback. What on earth gave him the impression that you were an expert on the pyramids in Egypt and Mexico? “Why do I seem like I would know?”

“I don’t know.” He said as a final cryptic response and just continued staring at you. You felt weirdly sorry to him; as if you’d actually let him down today. Maybe you should read the Wikipedia pages on the pyramids in case you had to come back up here for a meeting with the President again.

“And don’t even try and come up with something dumb like ‘she’s pregnant.’ I have my own private doctor on speed dial.”

“Well, what if she really is pregnant?”

“Is she?”

“No.”

“Get out of here.”

The door pushed open sooner than you expected and with enough force that you had to quickly move yourself away from it to avoid being smacked. Baekhyun came through the doorway with about as much pent up aggression as you had ever seen on him and the second his eyes met yours you caught the tiny wink and the soft smile that spread over his face for a split second. He gave you a small head nod and you inhaled a breath and actually fought the eye roll at the theatrics you had just witnessed from him. Was this really his negotiation tactic? Act like such a brat that his father simply gave in from sheer exhaustion from having to put up with his spoiled behavior?

You made a mental note to have a word with him about maybe trying out some other techniques that may be just as effective and less traumatizing for everyone involved.

There was no time now though, it was your turn with the old man. You pushed through the doorway and found Baekhyun’s dad standing on this side of his desk. You imagined how worked up the man had been with his son pushing all of his buttons as he had apparently been so good at doing.

“Ahh yes, close the door please, if you don't mind.” The shift was attempted well, but not complete as you could still see some of the previous agitation rolling off of his shoulders.

You did as you were told and circled back toward the doorway that you had left slightly parted for Baekhyun’s benefit and through the crack in the doorway you caught his eyes and seemed to beg you to keep it open just a little bit. He even lifted his fingers up, holding his index and thumb together motioning a tiny space between the two and frowned his lips dramatically when you shrugged and pulled the door closed completely, blocking out the view and the sight of the man entirely.

You could tell from how his disgruntled ‘hrmph’ sound was cut off mid-way that this heavy wooden door was completely soundproof.

“Miss Manager,” the president began when you returned to him. He had leaned against the desk, taking on a much more casual stance than when you first entered this office and he lifted both of his hands to his chin in a thoughtful and pensive pose as he cleared his throat and said your name without your title attached to it. You found it curious, but the next words he said had your curiosity absolutely burning and your mind whirling.

“I’m afraid this is not a business meeting. I am so sorry if this is unwelcome and I realize it is inappropriate of me to even mention it, but alas I am an old man without nearly as much shame as I should have. Life is long and yet life is so short.”

“And yet, I do admit that I am still ashamed to say I have something very personal to ask of you — or more so, to beg you to consider. Merely the consideration is all I ask.”

“Go on,” you said carefully and with absolute caution in your voice. His words had so much pretext you could hardly stand the build up. Whatever it was he was about to ask you must be the most unusual and unheard of request you’d ever received from anyone and as delicately as he danced around his words, protecting his pride with as many asides as a self aware one act play, you imagined he had never had to ask anyone this sort of thing in the entirety of his life up until this point.

Until he was standing here before you with chagrin in his eyes, a shameful smile on his face and his beseeching request sitting on the tip of his tongue.

You had been well prepared. As prepared by him as you were going to get. And still you felt a jolt.

“What do you think of my son?”

You watched his face after he asked this question. Unsure enough for your lips to remain steadily closed and your eyes to flutter about his face, landing into those familiar brown eyes that now seemed to look at you with a different sort of fondness you had not yet noticed from him before.

Was this a trick?

Had you walked into a trap?

“Umm..Assistant Byun has proven himself to be an invaluable asset to my team. He is sharp, insightful, and incredibly capable. Much too valuable to be stuck as my assistant for any longer, which is why I’ve processed his transfer out so much sooner than anticipated. Perhaps you’ve noticed, he will be moving on next week.”

President Byun watched silently with that same smile on his face as you raved about his only child and when you were out of compliments to give, you closed up your mouth and looked into his expectant face with your eyes growing wider the longer he looked at you in silence.

“Mhmm, I see,” He said after a while and his eyebrows lifted as he tilted his head.

“And what do you think of my son…as a man.”

His eyes did not leave your face and you inhaled a breath to hear his follow up question and the implications it concealed. It definitely felt as if you had walked into some sort of a trap here with his knowing smile and his trustworthy and open stance. He was standing close to you and had angled his torso in your direction. He had given you his full and undivided attention and possibly even cleared out a long block of time in his busy schedule just for you and you instantly closed up your lips; taking a tiny step backward and crossing your arms over your chest at just how dangerous this little talk of his felt. This unofficial, off the record talk, in which he had yet to actually ask you the question — the favor or whatever it was that he claimed to be so ashamed to have to ask you to consider.

The shift in your body language loosened his tongue and out from his chest came the smallest chuckle of amusement.

“I have to admit. I’m a bit disappointed. As a loving father to that kid — that brat. Over the past few months of him working closely with you, I admit I noticed some incredible changes in him and silly me, it actually did get my hopes up a bit. I thought — I hoped there might be something there. Now I fear I’ve been wrong. You’re sending him away and he’s marrying some stranger.”

“And so now here I am — just a pathetic old man coming to a strong and capable and wonderful woman such as yourself, who I’m sure has her share of men to choose from and asking her just to consider him.”

“What exactly are you asking of me?” The longer he went on, the less this felt like a trap. It felt like the carefully trodden steps of a father who loved his son and wanted what was best for him, even at the expense of his own pride.

“Nothing really. You can just turn around and leave and this conversation will have never officially happened, in fact if you are so offended that you wish to file suit for this; I would have it coming and settle immediately. I understand that this is inappropriate of me to ask.”

“Mr. Byun,” you said softly, removing the formal title and addressing him in a way that took a little of the pressure off, “I’m not…offended so much as I am just a bit cautious; yet, I do feel the need to answer you honestly, as difficult as it may be to say. Just to answer your question from earlier, as a man, Baekhyun is just lovely. To me, he is. He is funny and caring and handsome and he was raised right. There is so much to like about him. That much is clear. Any woman, myself included, would be absolutely lucky to have him. Honestly, and this is quite embarrassing to admit to you; but, I’d be lying if I said I’ve never seen him in that way.”

Your words had an effect on the man. You saw the widening of his smile, a genuine grin that reached his eyes and he even went so far as to lightly clap his hands together just once out of happiness. You couldn’t help your own smile even if you did have to look away from him to keep yourself from giving away too much.

“That’s good enough for me. Let me just put it out there. If something should transpire and you happen to steal him away from her…let’s just say I wouldn't be mad about it. We all have our favorites and I don't even know who she is. But I know you and I couldn't sleep at night without at least having said it. I hope you’ll forgive this silly old man for the intrusion.”

“Of course, Mr. Byun.” The smile on your face was as genuine as the endearing words from this man that you’d absorbed straight into your heart.

You said your farewells and as you made it closer to the door, Baekhyun’s father called back to you with his hands to get your attention, making a motion like he was zipping his lips closed and locking them tight with an imaginary key as he gestured toward where his son waited on the other side of that door. The message was clear. Baekhyun shouldn’t know about his father’s plan to get you to steal his affections away from whatever mystery woman he had promised to spend his life with.

You smiled and nodded your head in response, placing a hand over the center of your chest in a promise to the man that his secret was safe with you, you would do your best with your new task, and he could trust you with the minor details of it all.

This was really the best case scenario in every way possible. It wasn't that you didn't want to tell him the truth about you and Baekhun’s relationship right now. After having talked with him, you knew you could trust the man to support you both. But you could tell just how much he was enjoying crafting this scheme of his and you would much rather have him believe he was a relationship mastermind later, than know right now about how inappropriate and unprofessional the mentor/mentee relationship with his son had already been up until this point.

When you pushed the big heavy door open you could hear Baekhyun’s voice as he appeared to be deep in a conversation about pyramids with the president’s secretary.

“…actually in Mexico, in Cholula there’s a pyramid twice the size of the biggest one in Giza, but the problem is it’s buried so it just looks like a big hill. The Spaniards built a church on top of it. But if you’re looking for the oldest pyramids, then definitely Egypt is the place to —,” Baekhyun said; his voice trailing off at the end when he noticed you emerging from the office.

“Hey man, thanks for this.” The secretary said to Baekhyun as he motioned to something on his phone. Gone was the disinterested and blank stare; the man was downright jolly as he looked down at whatever it was Baekhyun had provided.

Clearly your boyfriend was the kind of pyramid expert that you simply were not and you vowed to brush up on several wonders of the world the moment you had a few hours to spare.

The second you were both out of earshot Baekhyun turned to you with bright eyes and a hopeful smile on his face.

“What happened in there? What did you two talk about?”

You bit down on your lips and shrugged your shoulders lightly, avoiding his eyes in favor of finding the ever elusive elevator button to press.

“Umm..” you let your response trail off under the guise of needing every bit of your focus for this task in front of you.

You were extra careful to press it slowly and you did not let up until you were satisfied that the button had been pressed and was lit up in just the right kind of way. You listened carefully, craning your neck a little until the far away sounds of the ascending elevator box could be faintly heard as it made its way up to you.

Beside you, Baekhyun was vibrating with anticipation.

He was a remarkably patient man. You could see his movements out of the corner of your eye as you looked ahead and waited for the elevator.

“Noona,” he barked straight from the center of his chest, the nickname said in the gruffest most annoyed sounding tone you’d ever heard him use with you.

The sound of it pulled your eyes away from that illuminated up arrow on the wall and you looked into his once expecting, and now outright demanding face with his raised eyebrows and parted lips, his arms crossed over his chest and his huffing and puffing breaths through his open mouth. Oh, he was worked up.

“What did he say?”

You pursed your lips and you shook your head back and forth in shallow passes.

“Well…Not…much, really. And nothing bad.” Your staggered words had him reeling and when the elevator doors opened, you stepped inside quickly; standing against the back wall. The very picture of innocence.

“Oh my god. He’s up to something. He’s scheming. I just know it. I don’t trust it. And now you — you won’t even tell me what you two talked about —”

He was going now. Really, really giving into the whiny, put-out mood he’d been in since the confrontational chat with his dad about his love life. You knew you had to give him something just to ease his worries a little bit — if not, to save your eardrums. This was not the place to reveal everything that had been discussed in that top floor office.

“It was just kind of an upper management check-in, Baekhyun. Nothing out of the norm after a project wraps or after a high profile employee, such as yourself,” you motioned with a hand over the length of him, “moves onto another department. I gave you glowing reviews, of course. And I meant every word.”

He had been covering his whole face with his hands when you started speaking. Once you were done declaring the whole father-secret girlfriend talk ‘no big deal’ with a flippant hand wave, you renewed your focus ahead of yourself with a newly formed interest in watching the descending numbers on the elevator’s digital display, Baekhyun’s hands had fully fallen to his side and he was watching your profile with what some might consider a suspicious eye squint.

He did not respond to you in any way. He merely watched your face and you were extra careful to keep your focus on the numbers that any moment now, would halt on your floor and give you an excuse to exit this little box of deceit.

You weren’t cut out for this. Not with him. You couldn't stand not being able to tell him every single thing that happened, and frankly the excitement that was bubbling up inside of your chest threatened to spill out all over his crisp white dress shirt.

Not only did you have his father’s encouragement and blessing, but inside of you, you felt the kind of euphoria one might feel after receiving their very own Presidential Pardon. Which in a way, you kind of did. Ever since you started working closely with Baekhyun, you’d shared nearly everything with him. It didn't even take much for you to spill. He could usually sniff you out based on your body language alone or you would spill the truth of any situation with him simply because he was your ally and if you didn’t share it with him; what even was the point of having a trusty assistant.

After the relationship started it was a no-brainer. You told him everything because you wanted to. You loved him and you wanted him to know the things you knew. You were pretty sure it was mutual because oftentimes you’d catch yourself listening to some long rambling story of his. Him detailing something mundane, while you being completely transfixed just feeling pleasure from the sound of his voice and not even minding that, if you were in your right mind, you would have zero interest in the temperature of the soup served in the work cafeteria or the ratio of noodles to shrimp (it was one. One single, lonely shrimp in the entire bowl of noodles) in today’s stir fry.

You could not lie to Baekhyun. You could only run away.

And run away you tried, the elevator dinged and the doors began to open and you were out of there before those doors had even parted enough for a single, normal person to exit. You squeezed through and your feet were carrying you with a remarkable quickness.

Halfway through your journey away from him, you realized that rushing made you look so much guiltier and by the time you reached your office and pushed your door open, frantic eyes behind you told you that he wasn’t even chasing. In fact, he was taking his time walking in between the cubicles without even the slightest bit of urgency.

Perhaps he just … bought it?

Maybe he actually believed that all you and his father talked about up there was his recent performance as an Assistant.

Of course you would tell him the truth. The moment you both had any significant amount of time together you would spill it. The second you had his pretty face in your sights and his hands inside of your hands; the strands of his hair raked through your fingers and the smell of his warm skin floating over your parted lips as you breathed him in.

You knew it had to wait until you had him alone. You could not trust yourself after you told him this news. You could not be held responsible for what you might do.

The moment you entered your office, you were greeted by the smiling face of Assistant Cha, who up until this very moment you had simply forgotten existed. The surprise of finding her sitting inside your closed up office made you jump and you gasped out in shock at first before you tried to recover as quickly as possible; replacing the look of surprise with a friendly smile and following the startled, “Ahh” with hastily covered up, “Ahh -Ohh—hello…there Assistant Cha.”

It took a good ten seconds to recover and a few deep breaths later you had found some words for the girl.

“Have you been waiting long? Assistant Byun should be around any moment—”

“Sunny, did you finish? Already?” Baekhyun’s voice broke through your words, paired with the sound of your office door being thrust open and you whirled around to see his head poking through the opening and his abrupt words directed at Assistant Cha.

You watched his face, expecting to catch some hidden look from him, perhaps a secret eyebrow raise or at least a bit of that smile but you received none.

His focus was only on Sunny, who was standing with her arms filled with stacks and stacks of papers and a whirlwind of an overwhelmed expression in her eyes.

She received a wide and beautiful smile from him. A sweet reward for all of her efforts.

“Of course you did!” He sang out through the breathtaking smile and he was pushing a rolling chair across the open office, through the open door for her to set the stacks of papers on. He was telling her things like how she could go home early today and how he would likely see her around the building next week and they should maybe do lunch after they get settled into their new roles.

It all felt very purposeful. He was getting rid of the girl. He was getting rid of the only link to reality you’d both desperately clung to all day long, the only thing that so far had worked to keep you both away from each other for long enough for any actual work to get done.

As much as you’d wished for her to leave the two of you alone all day, there was a dryness building in your mouth to watch her leave.

You inhaled a breath through parted lips, swallowed away at nothing, and bit down on your bottom lip, chewing lightly on the flesh held between your teeth and you watched him take two careful steps through the threshold of your office and turn around to close the door behind him quietly.

You didn’t know what to do with yourself. Whether it was the after affects of keeping the secret for the past probably six hours, or so it felt like — a quick glance at the clock on your wall confirmed that only ten minutes had passed since you’d run away from your boyfriend with your guilt eating you alive from the inside and, Jesus Christ, the realization that you hadn’t even lasted long enough to enjoy a coffee break before you began to self combust was a shocking reality check — whether it was the filthy lie, or the fact that this beautiful man had just closed you both up alone inside of this office after you’d been denied the touch of his hands and the taste of his lips for an entire eight-hour work shift; you did know know which breathtaking effort you were finding more difficult to withstand.

He moved slowly and you swear to god you could hear an overwhelmingly frantic thumping well inside of your ears. The sounds from outside of this private space were cut off with the click of that door and the silence was so very loud.

Baekhyun took his time. He moved with careful and deliberate steps, even pausing his journey through your office to look down and run his fingertips down the length of his necktie, straightening it out and then running hands down the length of his suit jacket, from his broad chest to his cinched waist, smoothing out wrinkles that did not exist.

Your hands gripped each other tightly in the center of your hips and you were thankful that you were already leaning against your desk because you weren’t certain you wouldn’t drop to your knees the moment he stood in front of you.

To beg forgiveness or…

Baekhyun hadn’t spoken to you since he closed the door and at least he seemed to have reached a destination. He sat down on the end of your sofa, closest to where you stood — or leaned — whatever; and at last he turned his face, his big brown eyes looked up into your face and he stared into your eyes without speaking a single word. You closed up your mouth and pulled your arms tight over your chest and lifted your eyebrows in his direction.

In your mind, you liked to think you looked at least a little strong. Maybe a touch formidable. A challenge he would struggle to overcome. Perhaps.

“I’ll be honest with you,” he spoke very suddenly and very softly. Nearly under his breath, “I am annoyed with you right now.”

He did not blink as he said it. His face did not falter.

You held your breath and felt your eyebrows tremble once over your eyes. Swallowing didn’t seem to help much with dryness in your mouth and you nearly couldn’t stand to maintain eye contact with him. You glanced down at the floor once before working up the nerve to look into his face once more.

“Not annoyed enough to matter,” he conceded the moment he had your eyes again. “I’m more amused by this right now. By how uncomfortable you look, Noona. You really cannot lie to me, not even a little bit, can you?”

His lips pulled into a smile the longer he looked at you and you felt every bit of your resolve crumble with the deep sigh that you pulled into your chest and exhaled through your parted lips.

“Fine,” you said, “I’ll tell you.” You said it with your eyes closed and the defeat evident in your tone.

When you opened your eyes he was leaning forward with his forearms resting over his parted knees and he was looking at you with his eyes wide open and his tongue inside of his mouth messing with his teeth. You could see the movement in his jaw. After a few moments he bit down on his lips.

This hopeful and expectant stance had you feeling a certain way. Perhaps just a little bit indignant that he would read you so very easily about every little thing. Were you not allowed to have any secrets from him? Were you not a human being too?

Sure this was directly related to him and directly involved his father and basically his entire life, but the man was just so difficult to keep in the dark about anything.

“For the record, I was going to tell you,” you lifted a hand. It felt like a defensive stance. “I was always going to tell you. I was getting ready,” you emphasized the word, “to tell you.” You closed your lips up and he leaned back on the sofa, swallowing with a visible bob of his throat and blinking his brown eyes slowly at you, “when we were alone.”

“So the talk with your dad went well,” you lifted your eyebrows and looked around the room without any real focus before you danced right back into his eyes. You filled your lungs, feeling like you couldn’t quite get enough air for this.

“We did speak about you — that was the truth. I did report about how you’ll be transferred out next week and how great and awesome and handsome you are — wait. I didn’t say that at first.”

His eyes widened as you stumbled a bit over your words and he ticked his head slightly.

“Noona,” he mumbled, a slight alarm on his voice. You raised a hand to shush the man while you tried your best to put your words together.

“Okay so first, I did give him the report.” You weren't quite sure why you kept returning to this point, but it felt so much safer than the next part of the talk you were desperately trying to just get out of your mouth, while also hoping you didn't actually need to say outloud.

“Second, he asked me to—” you waved a hand around, palm up, shrugging your lips with a little head shake, “asked me to, maybe consider?”

You pulled your lips wide, baring your teeth, “a-asked me to seduce you? And steal you away from this mystery woman you’re going to marry?” The upward inflection definitely made your words sound like several questions and you winced once your own words hit your ears.

You had to cover your own face with your hands.

His mouth had fallen open and his shoulders had sagged as he watched your face with wide brown eyes.

You uncovered your face and he was still staring at you without speaking a word. You were compelled by some unknown force, probably directly related to the insane butterflies that you felt fluttering around inside of your stomach with having to actually say this out loud.

He wasn’t speaking, but boy, were you.

“I don't know? I don't know.” Your eyes were wide enough to pop out of your head. You dropped the hands from your face and felt twitchy all over. A hand returned to covered over your mouth and you felt those same butterflies threatening to burst free.

You felt a small giggle come out of your chest, “he says I’m his favorite. I think I might have told him I found you lovely,” you said through a hopeless laugh, “and attractive too, I definitely said that. I’m pretty sure he believes I am going to take my assignment very seriously, and take that other woman down. I might have only imagined that part. Is it hot in here?” Your skin felt humid. You uncrossed your arms and pulled the suit coat off over your shoulders and tossed it into a heap onto a chair.

Baekhyun had both of his hands covering his open mouth and you heard the first sounds from him in the form of a quiet gasp before he was speaking.

“Noona —” his mouth opened wide but no additional words came out. When he stood up from the sofa it was to wave his hands around in front of himself with a sort of speechless wonder in his eyes, “fucking, WHAT?” He finally exploded with his noisy question, followed by the breathy, humorless laugh of genuine disbelief that broke free from his chest.

“Oh my god.” His body was in motion even though his feet stayed firmly planted in place. This revelation rolled over him from head to toe and he moved from the waves of it. His skin turned flushed and you could see the half amusement half disbelief on his expression. At last his hands lifted to cover his face with another, drawn out, “oh my god, this is so—” His voice grew muffled and from under his hands, out came, “so, so embarrassing. What the hell, Dad?”

His hands lifted. His eyes were wide and that pinkness was still coloring his cheeks, making the flush of his skin look quite pretty and you responded with a wide smile that you had no control over.

He was looking into your face and the movement in him seemed to settle the longer he looked at you. It took a few moments of it for your wide smile to even out and you looked into his face with tiny remnants of that delight returning with tiny twitches at the corners of your lips.

On his face, you witnessed the opposite happening, his embarrassment faded and with the quiet observations of you that he so openly partook in, you saw the first small hints of a smile beginning on his lips. He breathed through an open mouth and his lips pulled incrementally wider with each puff of air from his lungs until a genuine and breathtaking smile colored his beautiful face.

It was your favorite smile on your favorite face belonging to your favorite human being.

“So what is your plan?” he asked. “How will you manage to seduce me?” His eyes dropped slowly over your face to touch on your lips the moment you bit down and pondered this new task of yours.

“Do you think you can really do it?”

“Hmmm…,” you lifted a finger to your chin. His brown eyes followed the movement and his smile widened before he reined it in with an inhale through his nose.

“Well, probably,” you shrugged. “Doesn’t seem that hard to steal you away.”

A laugh broke free from him and he took a step closer to where you stood.

“You sound very confident. What makes you so sure?”

You straightened your spine, lifted your chin, and you took a step, allowing yourself to lean just a bit closer to him and the movement pulled his brown eyes over your face once more. They lingered again down on your lips.

“See,” you said in a whisper. He swallowed and pulled his eyes slowly up into your smug ones, “you’re already thinking about it.”

“What am I thinking about? You and I are just talking,” he said, “besides, I’m going to marry her.”

This had you smiling. You had to turn your face away from him and you lifted your left hand, placing your fingertips over your bottom lip briefly.

“I hear she doesn’t even wear a ring,” you said as you lifted an eyebrow, “can’t be that serious without a ring.”

You were joking of course. It had only been one day. Just last night you’d spontaneously agreed to marry him, and he had, of course, spontaneously asked you as you were both caught up the moment. Your joke had his attention though and you heard a sharp inhale pulled in through his nose.

You caught motion in his mouth as his tongue ran over his teeth and after witnessing the evidence of a few of his internal struggles he broke all eye contact with you and looked somewhere behind you where your office desk was.

“That’s just because she hasn’t looked inside the right drawer of her desk yet.” His eyes pulled back into yours and your mouth flew open in genuine surprise. You gave a small head shake and looked behind toward your desk.

He couldn’t be serious.

The little bubble that was this little charade popped in an instant and you looked into his face. He had the smallest smile there.

“Are you kidding me right now?” You were back to yourself; taking a step to walk away from him so you could round the side of your desk. You pulled at the desk drawer handle, finding the upper smaller drawer completely empty save for a few flat documents in yellow folders. You gave a little whine from the back of your throat and closed it up.

Baekhyun’s face was blank now; completely devoid of any clues as to what sort of a trick he was playing on you.

Your curiosity had grown to be too much and you reached lower, having to bend at the waist to pull the bigger bottom drawer open and inside sat a small bag; a strikingly familiar bag; the same bag he had been carrying with him when he came back from lunch and had received a delivery from one of your favorite bakeries down the corner.

You grabbed the bag and peered down inside, seeing one very delicious looking chocolate cake slice in a completely clear plastic clamshell container without anything else at all concealed inside the bag.

A motion to your side nagged at your focus and a sensation that gripped ahold of your empty left hand pulled your face out of this bakery bag with nothing more than a slice of cake and you searched for him for any clues at all about what he was playing at.

What you felt was something small pressed with his fingertips into the palm of your left hand; something cold and metal and heart fluttering.

You felt him lean into you then; the warmth of him touched your cheek and his lips pressed lightly against your earlobe as you heard the rasp of his lungs as he inhaled to speak to you.

“Excuse me, I think you dropped this,” he said into your ear and inside your hand he left a ring behind. You felt the trembling in your limbs as you lifted your hand to see it and you had to place the bakery bag down on your desk because it was rattling in your grip.

With your left hand lifted and cradled by your right hand you held the precious little thing up to your face; somehow not quite convinced you weren’t actually dreaming right now. Sure you knew he had asked you and yes you had agreed but there was a different more certain emotion that was bubbling up inside of your chest right now as you looked down at the sparkling diamond and you couldn’t help the tiny question that broke from your lips, “Baekhyun are you serious? This is mine?”

He was moving then. He reached for the ring with his fingertips and his other hand gently gripped your left hand and turned it over and you watched as he slid the diamond into your ring finger. It was beautiful. The center stone was enormous and the trailing diamonds that lined the band threw sparks as you moved your hand. You couldn’t pull your eyes away from the undeniable sparkle and opulence that you saw in this thing. You didn’t even want to imagine how much he had paid for this. It was so much more that you had even anticipated

“When did you even get this? We’ve been together all day and even all night; how did you do this?”

“Don’t ask me how long I’ve had it, or how long I’ve been carrying it with me,” he said as he watched your face. Inside his eyes you were caught in a myriad of emotions that were clear and evident. You were captured by the sincerity with which he spoke these words to you.

It took what was left of your breath away, “Just know that for as long as I’ve known of your existence in this world, you have been the one. I was always going to marry you. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire life, as I am about you.”

[to be continued]

Links: Part 1, … Part 16, Part 17, Part 18

[okdeannawrites]

WIP Tuesday/Wednesday

I was tagged by the lovely @endwersed yesterday, but I missed seeing it due to a busy workday, so I'm doing it today instead!

I had hoped to have this one-shot completed by now, but busy work days and unexpected tragedies made it impossible for me to concentrate. This was not a personal tragedy so much as a neighborhood tragedy/loss, but it easily could have been a personal tragedy for me and my parents and that's been a hard thing to have on my mind. It definitely made it difficult to feel creative when the real world came far too close to changing forever for me.

At any rate, this is a small portion of the one-shot I have been working on since the first week in May. I hope to have it completed in the next couple of days, but I am going to miss my own Sterek Writers Event April prompts deadline. I wish I wasn't but there is no way I can finish this with only an hour to spare when I get off work tonight. It will just have to be for another day. Either way, I hope you enjoy this little taste of something new.

Here's a snippet of my Sterek fic (rated E):

CW: mentions of scars, violence, blood letting, loss of life

A Song Inside My Soul

There was a scar on his right leg, high up on his thigh. A leftover remnant of a fight gone wrong. Where an evil sorceress stabbed him with a dagger, desperate to complete her ritual by bleeding him out.

She almost succeeded.

Almost.

Another few minutes and he’d probably be having these thoughts from the other side. Or maybe he’d just be dead, lying buried and forgotten in the ground like yesterday’s leftovers.

He didn’t remember much about the confrontation with the witch. He’d been so out of it, there was no way he could piece it together at the time. But he knew all kinds of things about its aftermath.

Large, shaky hands that tried to stop his bleeding.

Warm muscular arms that picked him up from the cold, stone floor, rapidly carrying him out to safety.

The soft, frantic voice in his ear. Begging him to hold on. Not go to sleep.

To fight. Just a little bit longer.

He dreamed about that moment sometimes. All those little details. All the things his brain had caught on, catalogued for him in the chaos of escape.

Small things, mostly.

The way the brisk pace jostled him against a hard chest that rose and fell with disjointed, hurried breaths.

The way other voices called out to him. Some hysterical, others more subdued. As if he’d already died, and they were watching a wild, terrified Derek Hale carry his lifeless body out of the warehouse and toward his car.

It was crazy, in hindsight, the things his memory amassed in those brief, half-strewn  moments. Yet, his brain understood it. Probably more than anyone else in the world ever could.

Well, anyone other than Derek.

He still didn’t know how the older man came to be there, or how he felt about any of what happened after the pack killed the witch. If the wolf ever thought about that day, that moment coming out of the warehouse, when all the world slowed to a stop and the only thing in existence was the pain, the cold—and the man who rushed him toward safety, toward help.

The man who literally kept him alive.

Stiles wanted to think Derek did remember. Did think about it.

But he also feared maybe he didn’t. Maybe he couldn’t.

Ninety-one days felt like a lifetime ago. Things were different then.

Before. During. After.

Nothing was the same as it had been. Especially not him.

A single instant, and his whole world changed—his whole life, a-blink-and-you-miss-it disappearance before his eyes.

Maybe Derek’s world had changed, too. Maybe that was why he’d avoided Stiles for so long. Maybe he couldn’t look at him. Not without remembering that day, that moment. The rapid breaths and frantic heartbeats.

Or maybe, as Stiles feared, it didn’t even register for him. Didn’t mean anything at all. Just another instance in a long line of instances of one guy helping another guy out. No more, no less.

It felt like more though, but he thought it was probably less. A lot less. Way more less than his stubborn brain had built it up in his head to be.

Probably. Maybe. Almost certainly.

Shaking his head, Stiles tossed the soft, weighted ball in his hand toward the rim hooked on the back of his bedroom door. He watched the small sphere bounce back toward him and frowned when it disappeared somewhere in the minuscule gap between his bed and his nightstand. He groaned and immediately shifted to lean over, then hesitated, and laid back down on his back again.

He knew it was stupid. Knew his fractured ribs were fully healed—he’d gotten the doctor’s all clear and everything. Still, it smarted a bit. Sometimes. Not like hurt, nothing like that, but his brain reminded him of the trauma with certain movements now, and it made him cautious. Probably too cautious.

“Fuck it,” he murmured, twisting on the bed to reach out for his ball. He stopped short when another hand— a large, tan hand with a scattering of thin, tiny black hairs—reached for it.

His gaze shot upward, unerringly connecting with a kaleidoscope of colors and emotions. A beat passed, then another, before he finally got a hold of himself and huffed out, “I could’ve got it.”

He eased back up onto the bed and scooted around until his back hit the wooden headboard, and he sat upright instead of prone. He didn’t bother to glance at Derek again, but he felt his presence all the same.

“I know you could have gotten it,” Derek replied simply. He tossed the stupid orange ball to him as if it wasn’t a potential stand-in for a secret attack weapon, and it was all Stiles could do not to twist around and throw the thing at his big, stupid head.

Except Derek wasn’t stupid, and his head wasn’t big.

Well, not that big.

Dammit.

Low pressure tags: anyone who wants to play and hasn't been tagged.

[itzsyds]

Rodrigo “Roro” Riquelme x Reader

Stay in My Arms😩

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Listen guys I am so in love with this man it’s like he shouldn’t exist but he does😭😩

He’s so pretty & gorgeously underrated!! Kicking my feet💓 x

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FLUFF/ MINOR WARNING- Roro is in one of his moods— clingy, pouty, and desperate for your undivided attention. A simple morning turns into something far more intimate as he pulls you back into the sheets, determined to remind you exactly who you belong to…

—

It starts the moment you try to get out of bed.

A hand wraps around your waist, firm and unmistakable, pulling you back into the warmth of the sheets and the solid heat of Rodrigo’s bare chest. His nose nudges into the crook of your neck, lazy and possessive, and when you try to sit up again, he groans like you're personally ruining his life.

“Don’t go,” he mumbles, voice rough with sleep and something darker.

“Roro, I have to—”

“No, you don’t.” He kisses your shoulder, soft but stubborn. “Whatever it is can wait.”

You glance at the clock. The world is already awake outside your window, deadlines ticking closer by the second. But Rodrigo is draped across your back, legs tangled with yours, his breath warm against your skin, and suddenly, the urgency of anything else fades to white noise.

He shifts, hand sliding beneath your shirt, fingers brushing the curve of your stomach like he’s memorizing the shape of you.

“You’ve been gone all week,” he whispers. “I haven’t even had time to miss you properly.”

You twist to look at him, and there it is— that pout. That soft, dangerous expression that always precedes your undoing. His eyes are darker in the early light, heavy-lidded and full of something needy, something intimate.

“You missed me?” you tease, fingers carding through his hair.

He leans into your touch like a cat. “So much it hurt.”

A laugh slips from you, low and affectionate, but it’s swallowed quickly when Rodrigo rolls over, shifting so he’s above you now, braced on his elbows, his body fitting perfectly between your thighs.

His lips find yours, slow and deliberate, like he has all the time in the world. Like he’s daring you to keep pretending the outside matters more than this— more than him.

Your hands trace down his back, and he shivers. “You’re impossible when you’re like this,” you murmur against his mouth.

“And yet,” he says, voice husky, “you never say no.”

Because how could you?

With his mouth trailing down your throat, his breath hot and desperate, his fingers stroking reverently along your hips like he’s touching something sacred.

He worships slowly, thoroughly, savoring every inch of you like it’s a meal he’s waited weeks for.

You cling to him, sighing into his kisses, the world outside forgotten. You could be late. You will be late. But when he whispers your name like a prayer, when his hands cup your face and his body presses fully against yours, it becomes clear:

This— him, you, the way you fit— is the only thing worth being on time for.

And maybe, if he has his way, you won’t be leaving at all.

—

This was a short one but wanted to get something out today. I currently have no requests so if anyone wants to keep me busy by sending them in I will be happy to cater to them! I have found a new love for writing guys😭✍️

I never thought I would be this happy & consistent with it, so let’s hope that it lasts x

[bookseffect]

'Aight, buckle up because we are going to have a video game development rant about the Solas romance that I need to get off my chest before DATV comes out. And please know that this is coming from someone who has worked in the industry.

So, by now we all know that the romance was added somewhere in the last year of development, said year being an extension year ( for source check note 29 on the Solas Wiki). With that in mind, I keep seeing people complain that Solas cannot be romanced by other races, by a male Inquisitor, etc. All of that criticism is very much Valid. However. I need all of you to understand from a technical point of view how INSANE it is to add new IMPORTANT content on such short notice.

So, all games have several development phases:

Pre-production & Planning - when the sketch of the game is started and a team with sponsor and budget is assembled

Alpha - when the overall structure of the game is created, like the maps, the big story points, think we made the skeleton of the game

Early beta - which is where we really put the meat on those bones, the maps get all their assets, all their quests, interactions, etc

Late beta- when all efforts are focused on POLISHING THE GAME, making sure that it can pass submissions (because Microsoft and Sony will want the game to pass their internal checks FIRST so they know the game that the company is publishing is not utter garbage and is adapted to their platform). This is the road to Gold Master Candidate

Gold Master Candidate or GMC - is the base game, the version of the game that you will meet, hopefully as perfect as possible (unfortunately, that is not always the case, but alas)

And finally

Post production - which means patches, post release support etc.

Now here is the trick, on most games patches are tested and developed before the release. "Why"you ask? Because of deadlines and corpo greed. Meaning, that the publishers and developers will agree on certain deadlines, for example by 25th of August 2025 the game needs to be sent to the Microsoft and Sony submission. This does not account for any of the setbacks that the team may encounter, usually, a version of the game will be sent to submission and everyone will pray that it passes. If it does pass, anything else that had to be fixed will come in patches, because after the game was GMC certified, no one can modify that version anymore.

Now, back to the Solas romance, for the romance to exist you need to:

Record voicelines

Create new animations that hopefully do not look completely broken

Create new lines of code

Translate the new dialogue in all supported languages

Work on the approval system

Allocate testing hours for this specific new quirk to ensure that IT WORKS

All of this, while the team should have been focusing on a game this massive on polishing. Polishing, obviously, does not mean adding a massive, game-changing path at the last minute. At that phase, I would not be surprised if they were in late beta or maybe on their way to GMC. So while all efforts should have gone to polishing the already existing features, making the game run smooth, verifying all maps, all text etc, Weekes came in and said WELL LET'S JUST ADD....THIS!!!

Of course on such short notice they were able to only make one race and one gender workable, please bear in mind that at one point in development Iron Bull was to be romanced only by other qunaris because they could not make the animations work.

So while, yes, I agree that ideally, Solas should have had more complex romance options, the mere fact that the romance exists and works is nothing short of a huge success.

Rant over