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ladyartemesia · 3 years

Text

All I Want For Christmas is You

Pairing: Kim Taehyung x Female Reader

Summary: When Park Jimin is unable to escort his precious sister through the gauntlet of corporate holiday galas, he blackmails his best friend Taehyung into being her chaperone. After all, who better to safeguard his headstrong sibling than a man who would never want her for himself? (She and Tae have spent the better part of a decade mutually disliking each other, and that’s putting it mildly.) Yet, even the best laid plans may go awry at Christmas and Kim Taehyung is about to discover that the girl he never wanted has become a temptation he cannot resist...

Genre: Comedy • Fluff • Smut

Tropes: Brother’s Best Friend (Reader is Jimin’s Sister) • Enemies-to-Lovers

Collab: This work is part of the Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tropes Collab featuring original holiday themed works by @ppersonna • @xjoonchildx • @underthejoon • @yeojaa • @untaemedqueen • and @snackhobi

Word Count: 17K (I know—I am shocked too honestly)

Rating: Explicit (18+)

Warnings: suggestive photographs • mention of accidentally being hit with a baseball • hints of jealousy and possessiveness • light tit slapping • explicit sexual content • m/f oral sex • consensual unprotected sex (shield it before you yield it y’all) • Viola’s mirror kink makes yet another appearance •

Acknowledgements:

To @ppersonna (Lindy) @underthejoon (Fal) and @xjoonchildx (Ana) you guys are my heart. Your support, willingness to read (and re-read) and give honest feedback made this fic special. Your friendship is my daily dose of awesome. Truly, I love you.

To @untaemedqueen (D) all of the above applies to you, but I owe you a little something extra for the LITERAL HOURS you spent in the doc with me. This fic would not be here without you. You kept me moving. You inspired me. You were amazing. Thank you so very much. This story is lovingly dedicated to you.

To @hobi-gif for being the most thorough and incredible beta reader and for having all the important girl chats with me. I think you learned more about my past than you wanted... Either way you made this story better and I am profoundly grateful for the hours of time you spent. I have removed all the Hope-No-No words in your honor.

To @lemonjoonah as always, you knew EXACTLY what I needed to tweak to make this story work. (Gotta pass that Lemon Litmus Test or no dice lol.) My lovely soul twin. You’re a bloomin’ rockstar.

Please Picture This Taehyung:

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Yes. Because you absolutely owe me.”

“Then send me a bill, not your unmanageable harpy of a sister.”

Jimin raised a single unimpressed brow.

“Kim Taehyung. It was exactly five years ago today that I carried your drunken naked ass two miles in the rain after you set your clothes on fire and sprained your ankle at that Beta Phi party.” He paused dramatically. “Do you remember what you said to me that night? After I deleted several pictures off phones and paid off half the party to keep it out of the papers?”

The man in question shifted uncomfortably.

“That incident is a bit hazy in my memory. I’m not sure I recall—”

“Jiminie—you’re the best and I—I owe… you. I owe you the most, Jiminie. I do—I owe you a favor—one BIG favor—anything you ask… Even though... I actually like being naked. I don’t think we need clothes. We should all be naked. Everyone. Then there would be world peace.”

Taehyung’s jaw dropped.

“You RECORDED IT?!”

Jimin grinned, sliding his phone back into his pocket.

“Naturally. And I had it all ready to go—just in case you needed extra convincing.” He crossed his arms and fixed his best friend of nearly fifteen years with a triumphant smirk. “I’m calling in that favor today, Taehyung. Now are you a man of your word or not?”

“He did WHAT?!”

Your mother winced.

“Jimin was... uncomfortable leaving you alone for the holiday season. He normally accompanies you to the galas but this year—”

“This year I was going to go alone and finally build my reputation as an asset to this family!”

Park Soomin sighed as she watched her daughter pace fiercely around the living room of their luxury suite.

“No one doubts that you’re an asset, but… in light of recent events...”

Rage and embarrassment flared up in your chest before you could stop them.

“This is about Milo… isn’t it?”

The silence that greeted your statement was confirmation enough.

“Are you ever going to trust me again?” you whispered.

“Oh sweetheart... it isn’t you we don’t trust...”

Tears burned at the corner of your eyes, but you ruthlessly blinked them back.

You would play along with their humiliating schemes.

For now.

“So which one of Jimin’s Ivy League brat pack did he blackmail into babysitting me?

For the first time in the entirety of the conversation, your mother looked truly nervous.

“Kim Taehyung.”

You tripped over your own feet and face-planted into the sofa.

“Jungkook, I need to look into faking my own death. Nothing too over the top. Just a tasteful disappearance—”

The man in question could barely restrain his grin.

“You don’t pay me nearly enough to deal with your mother in the event of your tragic demise and miraculous resurrection.”

“I could pay you more.”

“Or,” Jungkook replied with a heavy dose of judgment coloring his tone, “you could put on this ridiculous tie and stop trying to weasel out of it.”

“Sometimes I wonder why I pay you at all,” Taehyung growled, yanking the tie from the younger man’s grasp. “Clearly I’m not the one in charge.”

“Your words, sir, not mine. Now shall we go over the details and itinerary?”

If Jeon Jungkook wasn’t the best executive aide in the city (and one of his closest friends) Tae would have drop-kicked him right then and there.

“Could you at least try to look like you’re not enjoying this?”

“I’m sorry, sir. It was insensitive of me to ignore your suffering in this delicate time. The trauma of escorting a beautiful woman to a series of glorified buffets weighs heavily upon you.”

Taehyung tightened the tie so aggressively, he almost strangled himself.

“Beautiful woman?!” he wheezed. “We’re talking about the girl who showed up to our formal graduation party looking like she just escaped from Azkaban.”

Jungkook bit the inside of his cheek thoughtfully.

“Tae… how long has it been since you’ve actually seen Ms. Park?”

“Seen? Maybe three—four years.”

The heir-apparent of Kim Holdings avoided the public end of corporate culture like the plague, preferring to leave the requisite schmoozing to his personable cousin, Kim Seokjin.

However, he had crossed paths with his adolescent nemesis in... other ways.

Taehyung was romancing a lovely young socialite who suddenly ghosted him after someone told her that he wanted at least eight naturally-birthed children.

Soon after, your favorite charity received an anonymous 30,000 dollar donation requesting that you be featured in the dunk tank for an upcoming benefit carnival and then the same anonymous patron paid for at least fifteen little league teams to attend.

In retaliation, someone petitioned the National Aviary Society (chaired by a very influential senator’s wife that no one ever refused if they wanted their permits to go through) to make Taehyung the MC at their annual awards ceremony—knowing full well he was allergic to birds (not dangerously allergic—just enough to be miserable).

Taehyung had sniffled and sneezed through approximately one hundred parrots, parakeets, and other assorted fowl until he was ready to commit murder.

The last several years had been littered with similar incidents of the two of you taking thinly veiled potshots at one another.

“I can’t imagine she’s changed very much,” Taehyung bit off absently. His mind was abruptly consumed by how he could get revenge for those demonic birds.

He didn’t notice the smile creeping over Jungkook’s face.

“No, sir. I’m sure she hasn’t changed at all.”

Taehyung had only ever had the wind knocked out of him once before.

He was Dionysia High School’s star pitcher for three seasons and during one particularly tense game against JY Prep, Lim Jaebeom whacked a line drive right into his solar plexus.

That’s how it felt to look up and see you at the top of the stairs.

In his head, you were still the mischievous imp from his childhood. Every prank he played was directed at the fierce little fiend with braids and braces who’d knocked him and his date into the university fountain while experimenting with her friend’s skateboard.

But she was gone… and in her place was something far more dangerous.

A woman.

Silken fabric wrapped tightly over curves you definitely didn’t have four years ago. That wild hair had been tamed into shining waves and pinned elegantly at the nape of your neck. The wicked slit that traveled all the way up your thigh teased a smooth shapely leg that all but demanded the viewer fantasize about running their hand up the length of it.

Suddenly it was very clear why Park Jimin wouldn’t let his sister venture into the corporate cesspool alone.

Because the sight of you could make a man desperate.

Betrayal—of all things—slowly crept over Taehyung as you descended toward him like some sort of angel floating down from the heavens.

His mind went blank. Just watching the seductive shift of your hips as you swayed ever closer felt like a violation of his friendship with Jimin. He could feel the judgmental stares of an imaginary Bro-Code Council boring into him from on high.

“I see you’ve recovered from your memorable tenure as the Aviary Society’s Master of Ceremonies.”

And just like that the brat was back.

Taehyung breathed a hefty sigh of relief, secretly thrilled to be in familiar territory with you.

“Naturally I was delighted to help Senator Mitchell’s wife. In fact, Mitchell’s office just fast tracked all my pending permit requests for the new year.” He tilted forward, coming into your space a bit. “I should really send you a thank you card.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you scowled, breezing past him like an indignant queen.

Tae could practically see the steam pouring out of your ears.

“Of course not,” he chuckled.

The first gala of the holiday season was an extravagant annual affair hosted by Min Corp., a Seoul based investment firm that commanded billions in assets. This year, the theme of the event was the Joseon Dynasty and the entire ballroom had been gloriously transformed into a stunning celebration of the Min family’s royal heritage.

Attendees were gifted their own traditional fan, each uniquely crafted by artisans from Damyang. Taehyung’s was all black with bold silver calligraphy while yours was a beautiful bamboo and silk piece decorated with pomegranate trees.

You had already whacked three people with it by the time dinner was served.

“It really is a pity these fell out of fashion,” you lamented. “They’re quite useful.”

“You are deranged,” Taehyung mumbled, massaging his temples in exasperation.

“Nonsense. I only fanned those who deserved it.”

“Harkins?”

“He was staring at my rack for a solid minute.”

Taehyung could hardly blame the man, it was a battle he himself was losing after all, but Harkins was twice your age and married—therefore his ogling was in especially poor taste.

“Okay... What about Kang?”

“He was verbally abusing one of the waitstaff.”

“Alright, fair enough, but why on earth would you go after sweet old Mrs. O’Malley?”

“She was about to grab your ass.”

Taehyung’s mouth dropped open.

“She’s eighty-five!”

“And still kickin’ apparently.” You shook your head in disgust. “As if I’d whack an eighty-five year-old woman for anything less than non-consensual touching.”

“I- I- mean—surely you must be mistaken,” he coughed.

“Oh, there’s no mistake. That nasty old crone is a serial offender. She likes to play it off as dementia, but she’s as sharp as a tack. Last year she got a whole handful of Jimin. Honestly, I’d call the police on her, but the commissioner is her grandson so I doubt I’d get very far.”

Taehyung turned to the woman in question just in time to see her totter lecherously toward Jung Hoseok, fingers already twitching in anticipation.

“Is nothing sacred?” he mused hollowly.

You shrugged.

“Many people who accumulate as much as our families have start believing that they are entitled to whatever strikes their fancy.” Your eyes met his with a hint of bemusement. “Surely you should be used to this sort of thing by now?”

“Yes, but I was hardly expecting it from little old ladies!”

The remainder of dinner was a terse affair where you pretended he didn’t exist for the entire meal and he in turn pretended that the spunky young heiress seated to his right was the most darling creature to ever walk the earth. By dessert she was ready to get married and you were ready to vomit.

Afterward, Taehyung found himself quickly converted to your views on fan usefulness as you began strolling through the crowd intent on strengthening your family’s corporate ties.

“Kim Taehyung,” you ground out through clenched teeth, “how am I supposed to do business if you keep stabbing everyone I speak to!”

“I don’t know what you’re implying. I’m simply not used to carrying one of these. I may have accidentally grazed a few overzealous individuals—”

“My last three conversations have been rudely disrupted by the blunt end of that accused fan.”

Taehyung crossed his arms smugly.

“And what of it? Jimin sent me along to keep an eye on you and the gentlemen in question were hardly behaving themselves. No one has to put their hand in my back or lean that close to me when they’re talking business.”

“That’s because no one wants to get that close to you,” you replied sweetly. “You’re gross.”

A devastating grin slid slowly over his features as he leaned forward to whisper in your ear.

“I can think of several women who might disagree.”

He just barely caught the hitch in your breath before-

“Like who? Miss Blushes-and-Giggles from dinner?”

“Jealous?” Taehyung drawled cockily.

“Only in your dreams, Kim.” Then, with a deliberate flick of your fan, you turned your back to him. “I’m headed for the ladies room. Do yourself a favor and don’t follow me in.”

It was twenty minutes before Taehyung realized that you slipped out the back entrance of the restroom.

It took another ten for him to locate you on the balcony flirting outrageously with Min Yoongi.

The young heir of Min Corp. was just leaning closer to whisper sweet nothings in your ear when a black fan slid right in between the two of you.

“Lovely weather we’re having,” Taehyung observed cheerfully. His eyes bounced between you and Yoongi with barely concealed fury and you let out a miserable groan.

“Mr. Kim,” Yoongi cleared his throat significantly. “What an… unexpected surprise.”

Frustration clawed at your chest as your overbearing guardian nodded smugly in response.

It was time to teach him—and Jimin—a lesson.

“Yoongi,” you sighed, sliding your hand pointedly through the crook of his arm, “I’m not feeling at all well. Would you perhaps… escort me home?”

Taehyung suddenly looked as if he’d swallowed a live octopus.

Yoongi grinned, clearly thrilled with the prospect of simultaneously spending more time with you and irritating Taehyung.

“It would be my pleasure.”

“Jimin is gonna kill me,” Taehyung grumbled as he watched Min Yoongi help you into the passenger seat of his Aston Martin.

An ugly green feeling he refused to identify twisted sharply in his gut when you smiled coyly at the other man.

“This is ridiculous,” he snarled to no one in particular before yanking his phone out of his pocket.

Jungkook picked up on the second ring.

“Sir?”

“I need you to drive to Ms. Park’s apartment and tell me if she goes in alone or if Min Yoongi goes in with her.”

“You want me to what?!”

“Just do it!” he snapped, downing an entire glass of champagne before signaling his own driver.

Fifteen minutes later his phone vibrated from the car seat next to him.

1 New Message from: Jungkook

Her building has four separate entrances. Which one do I watch?

Taehyung could practically feel the vein pulsing in his forehead as he scrolled through his contacts.

You picked up on the fourth ring.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?”

“Oh it’s you… Wait—how did you get this number?”

“Jimin. Obviously. Now please answer the question.”

“Oh a ‘please.’ Who knew you had manners?”

“Answer the question, Park. I’m tired.”

The distinct sound of a zipper unzipping carried through the speaker.

“I’m at home, of course. Where else would I be? I just got here like a minute ago.”

He had a sudden vision of Min Yoongi helping you out of your dress. His grip on the phone tightened.

“Are you alone?”

You snorted.

“I don’t see how that is any of your business.”

Taehyung saw red.

“I’m coming over.”

There was a loud crash and several colorful words in at least three different languages.

“Wha- No! I’m trying to go to bed!”

“With who?!”

“With myself, you idiot!”

“Prove it!”

“Fine! I will!”

The line disconnected and Taehyung swore loudly. He was just about to direct the driver to your building when his phone went off again.

1 New Message from: Park Gremlin

He almost choked on his tongue.

You were clearly in the middle of undressing and—in your irritation—probably hadn’t looked too carefully at the picture you sent.

At first glance it was simply a shot of your empty room (presumably “proof” that you were alone) but you neglected to consider the floor-length mirror hanging in the far corner…

A mirror that showed you angrily holding up your phone with your gown pooled deliciously around your waist and the soft round swells of your breasts strapped into lacy red lingerie.

You were exquisite.

A fierce, hot sensation gripped him ruthlessly, and this time there was no mistaking it.

Desire.

Your phone lit up on the bed where you tossed it after snapping a photo for your tightly-wound man nanny.

1 New Message from: Kim Grinch

I didn’t know you liked Van Gogh.

Your head tilted in confusion.

There was a Van Gogh print in your room, but he couldn’t have seen it because it was behind you when-

Oh NO.

You gasped, scrolling back up to confirm what deep down you already knew to be true.

… You just sent Kim Taehyung a topless mirror selfie.

Several miles away, smiling smugly in the backseat of his town car, Taehyung was sure he could almost hear you screaming.

“Good morning, sir. Which would you like first; the bad news or the worse news?”

Taehyung groaned from underneath his covers.

“Don’t you ever knock? I could have a woman up here.”

“You’ve never brought a woman up here.”

“Is that the bad news?” Taehyung yawned.

“No,” Jungkook tossed a small stack of newspapers and printed digital articles into his lap, “this is the bad news.”

Pictures of you, Min Yoongi, and even himself were splashed over the front pages of all of them.

PARK ANGEL TRADES ONE CORPORATE HEIR FOR ANOTHER AT MIN GALA

WHO WILL WIN THE PARK ANGEL’S HEART? KIM TAEHYUNG OR MIN YOONGI? LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENTS

NEW ROMANCE ALERT? PARK ANGEL LEAVES JOSEON BALL WITH MIN SCION

“The Park Angel?”

“That’s what the media calls her... The public is rather fascinated with her actually.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Taehyung mumbled.

“Of course not, sir. It’s a great mystery.”

As usual, Taehyung chose to ignore his aide’s lethal snark and pressed on to the matter at hand.

“This is a flaming disaster.”

“Oh I don’t know. I really appreciated the picture of you staring on forlornly while she and Yoongi climbed into the Aston Martin. Takes a real gift to capture all that drama in a single frame.”

“Which one was that?!”

“It’s right under the MAN DOWN: PARK ANGEL LEAVES KIM TAEHYUNG HEARTBROKEN headline.”

Tae ran his hand down over his face in exasperation.

“I’m surprised my mother hasn’t called.”

“She has. Twice.”

“I don’t suppose that’s the ‘worse news’ is it?”

“No.”

“Of course it isn’t. I’m never that lucky.” He collapsed backwards into his pillows with a beleaguered huff. “Go ahead then. Tell me.”

“Park Jimin is on the line for you right now.”

After a small eternity on the phone with Jimin (assuring him that NO Min Yoongi had not despoiled his precious sister and YES he would definitely do better next time), Taehyung was forced to attend an impromptu brunch with his mother. It took considerable effort, but he was eventually able to convince her that you were neither breaking his heart nor expecting his child.

By the time he arrived to collect you for this evening’s event, Taehyung was already sick of hearing your name (he’d spoken it no less than three hundred times since Jungkook woke him this morning).

You were in much the same boat as Taehyung, having spent most of the afternoon pacifying Jimin and clearing up your own mother’s romantic delusions regarding the Min and Kim heirs respectively.

Tonight’s gala was a Victorian Christmas Ball thrown by the National Literary Fund and the entire venue had been transformed into a Charles Dickens fever dream.

Unlike the Min Gala (whose theme was guarded like a state secret every year) the Literary Fund’s tribute to A Christmas Carol was tradition and you were dressed accordingly in a custom corset gown with gorgeous detailing.

Every second of effort it took to lace yourself into the monstrosity was worth the look on Taehyung’s face the moment you slipped off your cape.

“Something wrong, Mr. Kim?”

Taehyung was desperately trying to look literally anywhere but your chest, where said corset was serving up your breasts like a debauched buffet.

Jimin. Think of Jimin. Think of what Jimin will do to you. Think of how much trouble she’s caused-

He peeked again.

I would pay a million dollars to suck those tits.

“Nothing at all,” his voice cracked.

The itinerary for the evening included performances by a local children’s choir, a traditional waltz, and—of course—dinner.

You both managed to get along without snapping at each other during the choral performance, but as two of the largest donors to the Children’s Literacy Initiative, neither of you could escape being drawn into the waltz.

The energetic socialite who Taehyung flirted with over dinner the previous night eventually lured him onto the floor while you graciously accepted an invitation from a lovely older gentleman who chaired the Fund’s event committee.

For the first few movements, you were thoroughly enjoying yourself. Mr. Lee was charming, respectful, and still an excellent dancer despite his advanced age. It wasn’t until a familiar sound caught your attention that the lightness in your chest suddenly felt heavy...

Taehyung was laughing.

You heard him do so many times over the years, and in each instance, the carefree magic of it never failed to make your heart flutter.

But now he was smiling down at the pretty little heiress and laughing for her… and the flutter in your chest was accompanied by something else.

Something that felt an awful lot like longing.

“Does he know you look at him like that?” Mr. Lee asked quietly.

Your eyes flew guiltily to his, but it was too late. The old man had caught a glimpse of the secret you buried deeply for more than a decade; so deeply, in fact, there were times you almost forgot it yourself...

Almost.

“No,” you whispered, “he has no idea.”

Disaster struck at dinner.

Taehyung quite liked dancing with the lovely Miss Something-or-Other. She was sweet and funny and (unlike with you) he wasn’t constantly torn between agitation and raging inappropriate lust in her presence.

The cold shoulder you offered him when he took his seat seemed even more frigid than usual and he spent half the meal wondering what he’d done to earn your amplified disdain when suddenly—

Your hand smacked down on his wrist, seizing it in a vise-like grip.

Taehyung nearly choked on his steak and was about to give you a searing set-down over your spontaneous grabby-ness when he noticed your expression.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered, leaning forward in concern.

“I-I need—”

It looked as if you were in some sort of physical pain and Taehyung was rapidly becoming worried.

“I need your help,” you finally managed to whimper and the next thing he knew, you were dragging him away from the table and into one of the secluded alcoves near the main entrance hall.

“Is there anyone around? Can anyone see us?” The look on your face bordered on unhinged.

“No. There’s no one. Park, are you okay? What’s going on I—”

“I need you to unlace my dress,” you hissed frantically.

At that moment, a bomb could have gone off and Taehyung wouldn’t have blinked.

You, however, were completely preoccupied with your own distress and therefore oblivious to his.

“My earring broke during dinner and fell down there and now it’s stabbing me—”

Your eyes were beginning to tear. Taehyung remained frozen, still trying to figure out whether or not this was a lucid dream.

“—it’s definitely pierced the skin and there’s a possibility I’m gonna start bleeding through the fabric—”

The mention of blood snapped him out of his daze somewhat.

“A-Alright. Just turn around—brace yourself on that wall.”

You quickly did as you were told and Taehyung began to tug fruitlessly at the ties cross-crossing your back.

“Why won’t this—”

His fingers fumbled over the knots, desperately trying to loosen them, but they simply wouldn’t budge.

“I can’t—I can’t get it. Whoever helped you into this thing made sure you weren’t getting out of it.”

You whined in frustration and the earring shifted a bit in response.

There was only one other way to fix this (and you would almost rather be in pain).

“Taehyung I—” you turned to face him again, forcing your eyes shut before reluctantly doing what had to be done “... I need you to reach down the front of my dress and get it.”

He blinked. Twice.

“I’m sorry—What did you just—”

“Please, Tae,” you whispered desperately, letting your lip tremble in a way he had never been able to resist, “it hurts…”

He gulped.

His eyes dropped to the matter at hand.

This is fine. Everything’s fine. She’s in pain, right? You’re basically a doctor right now. You’re just going slide your hand in between the most mouthwatering pair of breasts you’ve ever seen and then—

Taehyung’s manic inner monologue was interrupted by the sound of his own moan. He immediately faked a coughing fit to cover it and prayed you hadn’t noticed.

(You hadn’t. You were actively being stabbed.)

“I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,” he muttered, curling his fingers over the scalloped edge of the bodice.

You bit your lip, desperately trying to hold back any reaction, but when his knuckle brushed the pebbled tip of your nipple, you gasped.

Oh.

His hand stuttered, lingering a moment too long over the tight little peak as his gaze suddenly shot up to meet yours. Both of you had been studiously avoiding eye contact, yet now it was as if neither of you could look away.

Taehyung wet his lips reflexively.

“It’s too tight,” he whispered, “I need more leverage.”

Then his arm wrapped over the curve of your lower back and he drew you tightly against him, anchoring your hips just enough to fully slip his hand between your body and the corset.

You were so warm.

So soft...

“I can feel it,” he grunted, “but I can’t get a good grip on it.”

His mouth pressed into a tight line as he leaned forward, bringing your back up against the wall. You let out a little squeak and his eyes darted briefly down to your mouth before he spoke again.

“Hold on to me.”

You nodded and wordlessly slid your arms around his waist.

If you concentrated hard enough, you could almost pretend that this wasn’t one of the most erotic moments of your life.

You could almost pretend that it meant nothing.

Your mind was spinning wildly, wondering what he was thinking, wondering if he noticed how strangely you were breathing or how hard your heart was beating...

“I’ve got it,” he murmured. Shivers shot down your spine at the dark timbre of his voice.

He was so close. You could feel every word he spoke brushing softly against your skin.

“On ‘three’ I’m going to pull it out… Are you ready?”

You drew in a final steadying breath.

“Do it.”

He nodded.

“One… Two… Three—”

Taehyung yanked his hand back and several things happened at once.

Your breasts bounced almost entirely out of the corset.

The decorative clasps on the front of your gown tangled with the buttons on his shirt and when he pulled back, three of them went flying off like stray bullets.

And finally, the corset didn’t relinquish Taehyung’s hand quite quickly enough and, as a result, you toppled forward and crashed down on top of him, smashing your newly bare breasts to his newly bare chest.

It could have been ten seconds or ten hours that passed by while the two of you lay there, breathing heavily in a pile of confused arousal when—

“... Is… everything alright here?”

You both looked up to find a thoroughly scandalized member of the waitstaff standing over you.

Taehyung saw his life flash before his eyes—ending (of course) with Jimin murdering him for this.

He gulped again.

“I can explain.”

It was decided—for the sake of appearances—that you would both leave the venue (immediately) in separate vehicles.

Taehyung dropped a cool three hundred in crisp bills on the unfortunate waiter in order to help him ‘forget’ whatever he may or may not have seen.

Neither of you spoke another word to each other in the ten minutes it took to bribe all the appropriate parties, gather your coats, and call for two separate town cars.

Something had happened when he touched you; a subtle shift in the precarious balance of your relationship that you both felt keenly, but could not possibly begin to define.

Taehyung barely even remembered climbing into the back of a vehicle. His body was firing on auto-pilot after the sensory overload of the last half hour. It wasn’t until he was nearly home that he realized he was still holding onto your earring.

His mind began to wander as he examined the troublesome bauble in his palm. It was a striking piece; deceptively complex and unexpectedly beautiful.

Just like you.

He told himself that the heat pooling low in his belly was anger—that the strange anxiousness to be near you was simply a desire for retribution—that it was merely platonic curiosity that left his hands aching to explore the rest of your curves.

Lies.

… and pitifully transparent ones at that.

Still, he clung to them desperately out of self-preservation.

The gentle hum of his phone suddenly disturbed Taehyung’s silent contemplation.

1 New Message from: Park Gremlin

I made it home safely.

Taehyung’s fingers were typing a reply before he could properly consider the consequence of his actions.

To: Park Gremlin

I require proof… like last time.

He nearly threw the phone the moment he sent it, running his hands down over his face in disbelief.

You’re playing with fire, Kim Taehyung.

And he was burning up already. He had no business sending you texts like that. Maybe you wouldn’t catch it. Maybe he could just-

The phone went off again and it was embarrassing how quickly he scrambled to open your response.

His heart stuttered in his chest. His breathing ceased entirely-

And he knew—he knew—there was no coming back from this.

At first glance the photo was nearly identical to the shot you sent him last night. Same room, same angle…

same mirror.

Yet this time, the reflection was quite different.

The temptress in the glass wore nothing but that sinfully delicious corset and a pair of silky lace thigh highs, each accented with a green satin bow.

He wanted to rip them off with his teeth.

“Oh Taehyung,” he whispered, as a dark wave primitive longing tore through him, “you are in so much trouble.”

Across town (buried beneath a pile of blankets) you were still struggling to process the boldness of your own actions when his response lit up your screen.

1 New Message from: Kim Grinch

Green is my favorite color.

“WHERE IS HE—”

Taehyung awoke to a series of crashes and shouts echoing from the floor below him.

Jungkook was already seated in the corner of the room reading a newspaper.

“Good morning, sir,” he said without looking up. “Would you like the bad news or the worse news?”

Suddenly the french doors of his bedroom slammed open and one very irate Park Jimin stormed through.

“I swear I should have seen this coming. The two of you have always been obsessed with each other, but I never imagined—”

Taehyung’s eyes widened guiltily. He quickly schooled his features into a confused glare.

“Jimin, I’ve only been awake for fifteen seconds. What the hell are you talking about?!”

Another stack of newspapers hit his lap and this time the pictures were mostly of him with his shirt ripped halfway down his chest.

KIM HEIR AND PARK ANGEL CAUSE AN OLD-FASHIONED SCANDAL AT VICTORIAN BALL

FORGET MISTLETOE: KIM TAEHYUNG DISCOVERED UNDER THE PARK ANGEL AT CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION

NAUGHTY NOEL? PARK ANGEL’S STEAMY AFFAIR WITH CORPORATE PRINCE

PARK ANGEL TOPS KIM TAEHYUNG’S CHRISTMAS TREE

He winced a bit at that last one.

“You have ten seconds to explain before I start throwing things.”

Taehyung opened his mouth to do just that, but he was interrupted when his mother marched into the room waving the same articles that Jimin had just thrown at him.

“KIM TAEHYUNG I raised you better than this! How could you!? That poor girl!”

“Mother!” he squeaked, yanking his blanket up over his chest like a frightened debutante.

Jungkook began surreptitiously filming the whole debacle from the corner.

“Indeed,” Jimin added darkly, crossing his arms over his chest, “how could you?”

Taehyung sighed heavily.

“Is anyone else going to come charging into my bedroom?”

“Just answer me once and for all, is she pregnant?”

“WHAT?!”

“NO! Mother! Oh my—”

“Why does your mom think my little sister is pregnant?!”

Taehyung waved his arms wildly in exasperation.

“My mom thinks everyone is pregnant! You know this!”

Jungkook could no longer contain his hysterical cackling. He very nearly fell off the chair trying to hold it all in.

“Mr. Jeon,” Taehyung ground out irritably, “if it’s not too much trouble, could you please escort everyone out of my bedroom so I can get dressed!”

“So you see—I was basically like a doctor,” Taehyung finished emphatically.

He spent the past twenty minutes explaining to the entire table (which now included both you and your mother) why it was necessary to shove his hand down the front of your dress.

Park Soomin had shown up at his door looking for answers (and dragging you behind her like a sacrificial lamb) about three minutes after Jimin.

You had taken one look at Jimin’s murderous expression and insisted that the situation be evaluated over breakfast at the cafe down the street (where there were lots of witnesses).

Which was how you, Taehyung, Jimin, and both your mothers ended up discussing your cleavage over coffee in a public restaurant.

Jimin was the first to break. It was a few snorts at first, but he was basically in tears by the end of it, wheezing about how he never doubted Taehyung for a second and holding on to his sides from laughing too hard.

Taehyung’s gaze met yours for a brief, heated exchange. He conveniently forgot to mention your slightly-less-than-explainable ‘check-in’ texts, but their existence was palpable in the air between you.

“I think I’ll take a walk,” you muttered, excusing yourself from the complicated atmosphere at the table.

Taehyung’s eyes lingered on you a tad too long as you wandered away, a fact that wasn’t missed by either of your mothers.

“Just a few more events and you can go back to not seeing her at all,” Jimin chuckled, patting him on the back.

“Yeah,” Taehyung answered with a tight smile. “That’s… great.”

The cafe had a lovely little balcony area decorated with all sorts of comforting Christmas foliage. It was far more inviting than the awkward conversation and confusing stares you and Taehyung had been trading all morning.

For the first time in the nearly fifteen years of your relationship (such as it was) you didn’t know where you stood with him… and it bothered you more than you cared to admit.

Taehyung had always been important to you, whether you wanted him to be or not. He mattered—effortlessly—from the first moment you met him and continued to do so without regard for your sanity.

Whatever was building between you now would almost certainly bring change… though what kind of change was anyone’s guess.

It was hard to imagine the years ahead without the strange excitement he always brought to your life, but some things were simply out of your control…

“I never thought I’d see you here.”

A profoundly unpleasant feeling (something similar to falling through the ice on a frozen pond) overtook you.

“Milo.” Even saying his name felt gross. You sighed. “What is so strange about seeing me here?”

The man in question blushed in a way you once found irresistible.

“I looked for you everywhere. All your usual places—”

“I avoided them.”

I avoided you.

Milo nodded.

“I—I figured.”

He took a step closer and you instinctively moved back. The hurt in his eyes was unmistakable, but you had long since become immune.

“What are you doing?” you hissed angrily. “I thought I made myself clear the last time we spoke.”

“Yes, but—” his hand reached out to curl over your forearm and you recoiled, “you didn’t give me a chance to explain—”

“Excuse me.”

You both turned to see Kim Taehyung with his arms crossed over his chest, glaring at Milo like he was a roach that crawled across his dinner plate.

“Your mother sent me to come find you. She wants to leave.”

You nodded and moved to pull away, but Milo’s grip tightened on your arm.

“No—please if you just give me a minute—”

“That is enough,” Taehyung snarled, seizing the other man’s hand and forcibly removing it from your person. He angled his body between the two of you protectively. “I think it’s time for you to go.”

Milo’s eyes narrowed.

“You’re Kim Taehyung. I read all about you in the papers this morning.” His lips twisted into an ugly sneer as he addressed you. “You really think you’re better off with him if that’s the way he treats you?”

Taehyung tensed menacingly beside you, but you laid a gentle hand on his arm to calm him.

“None of that is any of your concern.” Your gaze rose to meet his defiantly. “Nothing about me is your concern anymore.”

Milo’s eyes fell to where your palm rested on the other man’s sleeve, noticing the way you both unconsciously leaned toward one another.

“This isn’t over,” he muttered, storming off.

After he was gone, you let out a breath you hadn’t known you were holding.

“Thank you,” you whispered (though you couldn’t resist adding), “I could have handled it myself of course…”

Taehyung laughed.

“Oh I know. I was at that party where you knocked out Tyler Jung for grabbing your ass.”

You grinned.

“I’d forgotten about that.”

“Well I’m sure Tyler hasn’t.”

(He neglected to mention that he split Tyler’s lip behind the library the next day, just to make sure it was extra memorable for him.)

“I wish I could forget about Milo.”

“... Are you still in love with him?”

The words tasted like ash in his mouth.

“No.” You smiled softly. “I’m not sure I was ever in love with him actually. It’s more—” you sighed, “—embarrassment… wounded pride.”

Taehyung tilted his head curiously and you found yourself continuing.

“In the beginning, he was very playful and charming—and obviously handsome. He reminded me so much of—”

you.

You cleared your throat.

“Anyway… I was quite taken with him at first. I didn’t suspect any ulterior motives.” You shrugged, trying to hold back the unpleasant emotions that always threatened to overrun you in moments like this. “I just thought he liked me.”

Taehyung’s eyes filled with sympathy and understanding as you spoke. It felt oddly natural to open up to him this way.

“Jimin is very protective of me—with good reason it turns out. He was suspicious of Milo and hired people to do some discreet digging.”

Your hands wrapped around your body for both warmth and comfort.

“Milo’s family owns several companies, just like ours, but they’re all struggling. His father sent him to me hoping that he would eventually get compromising information… a sex tape or photographs—something of that nature. They intended to blackmail Jimin into doing business with them.”

Taehyung felt his jaw clench painfully. Fury, hot and profound, rolled through him.

“I should kill him.”

You shook your head, amused in spite of yourself.

“That’s exactly what Jimin said.”

“He has good instincts.”

“Scum like Milo aren’t worth it,” you chuckled. “He never got what he wanted… but I was still mortified. I felt like such a fool for believing him.”

“No,” Taehyung’s hands slid up to cup your shoulders, “it’s not foolish to believe that someone cared for you.”

It would be so easy to care for you.

“Besides…” his eyes fell briefly to your lips as he searched for the right words, “I saw the way he looked at you and—even though he’s clearly a terrible person—I believe his feelings may have been genuine.”

You nodded.

“That’s what he keeps trying to tell me—that he did have bad intentions, but ended up falling for me anyway.” You shook your head. “As If I could believe a word he says.”

The silence between you stretched comfortably. Taehyung sensed you had more to say, so he waited until you were ready to voice it.

“I think that’s why I’m so sensitive about handling things on my own lately… and just now even. I want to prove to everyone—to myself—that I’m not a liability.”

“Hey,” he whispered, tipping your chin up till your gazes met, “no one thinks you’re a liability. And even if you are capable, no one should have to fight their own battles all the time—especially when they’re emotionally compromised…” His thumb gently brushed away the small tear that escaped down the curve of your cheek. “That’s the benefit of having people who care about you.”

“... Like you?”

The words left you so softly, you could almost imagine they were still in your head where they likely should have stayed.

Taehyung’s eyes widened in surprise. His gaze became even more intent and you ceased breathing altogether. After a moment his lips parted as if he was about to speak-

“What’s going on, guys?”

You both jerked back at the sound of your brother’s voice. He was standing in the entrance to the balcony, gaze darting suspiciously between the two of you.

Taehyung was a bit dazed, but you were always quicker on your feet.

“I ran into Milo… Tae was calming me down.”

Jimin’s eyes hardened immediately.

“Where is he?”

“Long gone,” you mumbled, ambling over to the familiar warmth of his arms. “I just want to go home.”

The Black and White Ball was one of the most coveted invitations of the holiday season.

The dress code was quite strict (all black or all white—no exceptions) and it was one of the few events where people actually arrived in limousines.

Taehyung loathed limousines. He felt absurdly pretentious pulling up to your building in such a gauche ride, but traditions and appearances meant too much in his world to simply disregard them.

His ensemble for the evening was a beautifully tailored black suit with hand-stitched baroque detailing. Oddly, he found himself wondering what you would think of it...

“You look like a vampire.”

Taehyung turned at the sound of your voice and was struck, yet again, by how incredibly beautiful you were.

You had chosen to wear white, donning an exquisite gown with delicate pearl beading and a daring sweetheart neckline that molded perfectly to your frame.

If he looked like a vampire, you were surely an angel.

Still…

Angel or not, he couldn’t let that comment pass.

“I think I’m offended.”

“I can’t imagine why. After all, loads of women are attracted to Nosferatu.”

Taehyung’s eyes narrowed.

“There are so many sexy vampires in popular culture, but you just had to lump me in with the creepy bald one...”

You shrugged playfully.

“I wouldn’t want you to think I was going soft.”

A wicked grin danced over your lips as you strolled past him regally—just as you had many times before...

This time, however, he let his eyes linger a little longer on the view.

Lord have mercy.

“Of course not,” he coughed.

“You’re what?!”

You rolled your eyes.

Tonight had been going rather well.

The two of you formed a mutual unspoken agreement to pretend that your last encounter on the balcony (and on the phone) had never happened and (despite the heated glances you occasionally traded) the bickering and playful banter characteristic of your relationship had all but returned to normal...

Until Taehyung learned of your participation in the evening’s main event.

“I told you, I’m part of the date auction this year.”

“Does your brother know about this?!”

“I didn’t see any reason to bother him with it.” You were suddenly preoccupied with your nails.

“Woman,” Taehyung sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, “are you trying to make my life difficult?”

“No, I’m just naturally gifted in that respect.”

You turned and began making your way to the front, but Taehyung was hot on your heels and clearly not ready to let the matter rest.

“I cannot believe you’re actually going through with this! It’s not 1810, you know. We shouldn’t just auction off women for dates—”

“You’re absolutely right, Tae Tae.” You brushed a condescending pat over his cheek. “Nowadays we auction off the men too.”

Then you sauntered off to join the rest of the participating women—and men—backstage, leaving Taehyung to stew about the entire situation from the crowd.

“As you know, all proceeds from tonight’s auction go to fight childhood hunger right here in our city. For legal purposes, I must advise all bidders that you are only bidding on the company of the individual in question.”

Taehyung shook his head. “Jimin is probably going to kill me for this.”

“If you place the winning bid, then you and your date will receive two VIP tickets to the Governor's Winter Wonderland Gala which comes with a variety of amenities including; a luxury limousine service, one of the private and famously romantic Winter Wonderland dinner experiences—”

His eyes fluttered shut. “Jimin is definitely gonna kill me for this.”

“—unlimited free drinks, ten complimentary tickets for each of the grand prize raffles, photos with the Governor and his family, along with many more surprises!”

Taehyung grabbed a champagne flute from a nearby waiter and downed it in one go.

“And now for our first date of the evening! Mr. Jackson Wang!”

Jackson went for a cool six grand because no one was brave enough to outbid his girlfriend.

After him, the beautiful Manoban heiress and her handsome cousin Kim Namjoon went for twelve grand each.

Jung Hoseok started a frenzied bidding war between two young socialites and Mrs. O’Malley. He ended up going to the lovely Ms. Ana Fallon for a staggering twenty thousand dollars.

Taehyung’s own cousin, Kim Seokjin, paid a jaw-dropping twenty-one thousand dollars for Lin Yuna, the young CEO of Lin Cosmetics. (Taehyung made a mental note to ask him about that later.)

Then it was your turn.

“The next lady on our list needs no introduction. The lovely Park Angel has graciously agreed to a date with one lucky bidder tonight! Who will it be? Do I hear ten thousand?”

“Ten thousand.”

Taehyung swung his head toward the first bidder and breathed a sigh of relief.

Tam Martin, one of your best friends and very gay.

“Eleven thousand.”

“Twelve thousand.”

“Fifteen.”

“Sixteen thousand dollars.”

“Seventeen thousand.”

“Eighteen.”

Taehyung was having trouble keeping up with all the bidders. His ears were starting to ring again and a strange unpleasant nausea was building in his stomach.

“Twenty thousand.”

“Twenty-five thousand.”

“Thirty thousand!”

At the sound of the last bidder’s voice, you noticeably paled. Your eyes flew to Taehyung’s and immediately he knew exactly who it was.

Milo.

Before he could even react to the new information, another voice joined the fray.

“Forty thousand.”

Min Yoongi smiled smugly from the other side of the room and even had the audacity to throw you a wink.

You smiled shyly at the young heir’s boldness and Taehyung felt something downright unholy rise up in his chest.

No.

Milo was still bidding.

“Fifty thousand dollars.”

Not her.

“Sixty,” Yoongi countered.

She’s mine.

Suddenly Taehyung was on his feet.

“One hundred thousand dollars!”

The silence in the backseat of your limousine was deafening.

Tension charged the air like an electric current as the significance of the last hour weighed heavily between you.

The spacious luxury vehicle allowed you to sit facing one another. Taehyung’s eyes were focused on his hands, but you were looking at him—letting your mind run wild with speculation.

And hope.

Part of you was still there, on the stage, watching him stand up and bid a fortune for the pleasure of your company.

His gaze was so fierce when he spoke, like an ancient emperor calling out his decree for the people to obey.

You dreamed about him bidding on you when you signed up for the auction (even before Jimin bullied him into accompanying you). You let yourself imagine him speaking out again and again till the others stepped back—

Yet you never dared hope for it.

However, the last several days marked an unexpected turning point in your relationship.

For years, you and he were like magnets with a too-similar charge, but something had shifted irrevocably between you, and somehow your stubborn similarities became opposites that could not resist their attraction.

Kim Taehyung was one of the wealthiest men in the city…

But he didn’t need to buy your heart.

It had always been his, even if you didn’t want to admit it.

He had claimed you tonight—and every single soul in that ballroom knew it.

The next move was yours and you intended to make it.

“Mmm,” you hissed a bit, bringing your hand to rest just below your breasts.

Taehyung’s gaze flew up in concern.

“Is everything alright?”

“Yes, it’s just that scratch from the earring,” your fingers rubbed gingerly at the spot, drawing his focus to it, “it still stings.”

“Oh… I—” he shook his head, “I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

“Do you want to see?”

Taehyung’s eyes rose slowly to yours.

You watched the subtle rise and fall of his chest as he considered your words. Anticipation vibrated through your blood like notes struck on a piano—

Then he nodded...

And you both were lost.

Trembling fingers slid the zipper down the side of your gown. The dress itself was a marvel of physics designed to support you without the need for a bra.

Taehyung drew in an impossibly deep breath as the fabric drifted to your waist, baring the perfect mounds of your breasts to him entirely.

“Here,” you whispered, pointing to a small red mark just under the curve of your left one.

He bit back a moan.

“I—I see. That looks… painful.” His fingers dug into the seat beside him. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

You nodded.

“Kiss it better.”

Taehyung felt the air knock out of his lungs like a sucker punch.

This must have been how Adam felt when Eve offered him the forbidden fruit all those millennia ago.

He knew he shouldn’t—

but he could never deny you.

“Of course.”

You watched as his tongue darted out to wet his lips. He looked like a man possessed and you reveled in the power of it.

It was for you.

He wanted you.

Your back arched up the slightest bit, beckoning to him—offering him a taste of what he was so desperately craving.

Touch me… please.

Large palms landed on either side of your thighs, bracing him on the seat beneath you. The tip of his nose teased the delicate line of your collar bone and he swore violently under his breath.

Then his lips were on your skin and your mind went blank.

“Taehyung—“ you moaned.

Hot open-mouthed kisses spread over the soft swell of your breast and you gasped— shuddering helplessly as a fierce wave of pleasure tore through you.

Sweet merciful heavens.

Over the years you imagined a moment like this thousands of times in your head—only to discover now that you had pitifully underestimated both his passion and his skill.

You had dreamed of a quiet fire—but he had unleashed an inferno.

The lewd sounds of his mouth nipping and sucking at your tender flesh filled the small space around you as he poured himself into each obscene contact—stopping briefly to flick his tongue over the taunt peak of your nipple. You trembled breathlessly at the sharp snap of sensation, letting your head fall back against the seat as you buried your fingers in his soft curls.

“T-Tae—”

Finally his mouth fastened over the tiny scratch, and the kiss deepened. You knew what he was doing, what the result of his efforts would be—

He was marking you.

And you wanted it.

Oh how you wanted it.

Suddenly the car took a sharp turn, causing Taehyung to lose his grip on the seat. His arms wrapped around your torso for balance, dragging you fully against him.

“Does it feel better, Angel?” he growled.

You nodded frantically and he nipped at the underside of your breast.

“Speak up.”

“Yes, Taehyung,” you whimpered, “it feels so much better.”

“Mmmm,” he hummed, brushing his mouth along the sensitive column of your neck. “Who knew you could be such a good girl?”

Then his hand came up to grip your chin, turning it so your lips were almost against his—

“Madame. We’ve arrived.”

The driver’s voice cut over your senses like a shard of ice.

Taehyung jerked backward and immediately buried his face in his hands.

Your fingers hastily yanked your dress up and you stumbled out of the car in a daze, letting your feet carry you forward until you collapsed on top of your bed.

Did we just...

You hadn’t even begun to collect your thoughts when your phone buzzed from inside your purse.

1 New Message from: Taehyung 🙄🥴🙈

I need to know you made it safely to your room.

You grinned.

Greedy boy.

Back in the limousine, the boy in question was nervously tapping the corner of his phone against his chin as he waited for your reply.

1 New Message from: Angel 🤬🥵😅

Oh? But you saw me walk in… and I’m already in bed.

Taehyung growled in frustration.

She would be a tease.

To: Angel 🤬🥵😅

I tend to worry. Put my mind at ease.

He shook his head.

I have officially gone insane.

The phone buzzed again.

1 New Message from: Angel 🤬🥵😅

Well… We can’t have that can we…

Taehyung literally felt the whine tear out of him as he opened the picture.

Your gorgeous body (the body he’d had his hands and mouth on for one glorious minute) was nestled decadently atop a pile of fluffy blue blankets and wrapped in nothing but a tiny silk robe.

The neck gaped open just enough to show off the pretty red marks he left on the delectable curve of your breast.

He groaned, biting down hard on his bottom lip.

To: Angel 🤬🥵😅

That's all I get after I made the pain go away? Good girls send real proof, Angel

The screen lit up again almost immediately.

1 New Message from: Angel 🤬🥵😅

Guess I’m not such a good girl after all...

Jimin came tearing through the Kim Manor front gate at precisely 7 AM—only to find Jungkook camped out at the entrance with several outdoor space heaters and a giant mug of hot chocolate.

“He told you not to let me in, didn’t he?”

Jungkook took a long satisfying sip of his cocoa.

“I hope you don’t feel singled out, sir. I’m not allowed to let his mother in either.”

“I need to talk to him.”

“Of course, Mr. Park, let me just pull up his schedule—”

“I need to talk to him now.”

“I’m afraid Mr. Kim is booked solid for the morning.”

Jimin stomped his foot like a petulant child.

“I know he’s up there.”

Jungkook grinned.

“You’re welcome to climb the trellis and check. I promise not to stop you if you make it all the way up.”

“COME DOWN HERE AND FACE ME YOU COWARD!” Jimin shouted at the top of his lungs.

Jungkook took another long pull of his drink.

“Might I inquire as to the reason for your visit today, sir?”

“The reason for my visit,” Jimin yanked out his phone and angrily began typing into the search bar, “is that your boss paid ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS for my sister at a date auction last night and I want to know what the hell is going on between them!”

The article Jimin pulled up (DEVILISH KIM TAEHYUNG BUYS HIMSELF A $100,000 ANGEL) featured an image of the two of you entering the Black and White Ball. Your head was thrown back in laughter and Taehyung was grinning down at you as if you’d personally hung all the stars in the sky for him.

A genuine smile crept over Jungkook’s face as he studied the photograph.

“That’s quite a headline.” He handed Jimin’s phone back. “Have you asked your sister about it?”

“No, I swung by earlier, but she wasn’t home so—” His eyes widened. “Oh my—is she—”

Jimin suddenly took off running for the trellis, and Jungkook scrambled out of his chair to chase him.

“KIM TAEHYUNG IF MY SISTER IS IN THAT ROOM—”

He was already three feet off the ground when Jungkook yanked him back.

“I thought you said I could climb the trellis!”

“Yes,” Jungkook wheezed, “but I didn’t think you’d actually do it!” That trellis is a hundred years old! A few more feet and I’d be scraping you off the antique brickwork!”

Jimin scowled and crossed his arms.

“Are you by any chance open to bribes?”

“Normally yes, but Tae promised to double my Christmas bonus if I didn’t accept them today.”

Jimin continued to eye the trellis speculatively, clearly willing to take his chances. Jungkook sighed and rubbed his forehead.

“Mr. Park, I promise you… He came home alone last night. In fact, they both returned earlier than usual because your sister had a 7 AM finance meeting.” He paused significantly to glance at his watch. “Which is probably where she is right now.”

“Oh… Well.”

Jungkook bit his lip to hold back a snort and Jimin’s eyes narrowed.

“He has to come down eventually.”

“One would think.”

The young Park heir glanced toward Taehyung’s window again just in time to see the man in question dart back behind the curtains.

"I KNOW YOU'RE AWAKE, KIM TAEHYUNG, YOU PHILANDERING SLEAZE BAG!"

Jimin made another jump for the trellis and this time Jungkook caught him in mid-air.

“Sir, I’m sure it was just the maid!”

“It’s not the maid! I’d know that raggedy mop of his anywhere!”

Jungkook was out of breath at this point. Park Jimin might be small, but he was fierce.

“Perhaps it’s best if you took a moment to collect yourself,” he grunted. “There’s a lovely new spa down the street and they sent Taehyung two free deluxe packages.”

Jimin stopped struggling.

“Oh?”

Five minutes later, Jungkook sighed deeply and fished his phone out of his back pocket.

“He’s gone, sir.”

“Excellent work, Jungkook. I never doubted you for a second.”

“However…”

“... However?”

“I had to give him your spa passes.”

“YOU DID WHAT?!”

“Are you headed for a gala or the guillotine?”

Taehyung rolled his eyes.

“I don’t pay extra for commentary.”

“It’s complimentary, sir.”

The Kim heir tugged absently at the material of his absurdly expensive evening wear.

Why do these events always have to be so uncomfortable?

“Seriously, Tae… you seem,” the young aide searched for the right words, “unusually tense.”

Taehyung’s mind flashed back to three nights ago when he had his mouth wrapped around your breast.

“Not at all,” he coughed, loosening the collar of his shirt.

Jungkook bit his lip.

“Is this about Ms. Park, sir?”

The cufflinks Taehyung was attempting to fasten suddenly went flying across the room and hit a lamp.

Both men winced.

“I think that was your grandmother’s.”

Taehyung sighed.

“I admit there have been… some developments.”

Jungkook nodded nonchalantly, trying to disguise the fact that he was internally frothing at the mouth for details.

“... Such as?”

Taehyung gulped.

“It started out rather innocently I suppose…” he cleared his throat, “but there may have been some suggestive photographs.”

“There may have been? Are you not sure?”

Taehyung colored guiltily.

“Well—”

“Do you need me to check for you, sir? I have an art history degree.”

“Absolutely not.”

Jungkook grinned.

“That’s what I thought.”

Taehyung yanked his tie out of the younger man’s hand.

“Things have… escalated a bit.”

“Escalated how?”

I licked her tit in the back of a limo.

“Physically.”

It was everything Jungkook could do to maintain a straight face.

“That’s… shocking.”

“Then why don’t you seem shocked?” Taehyung grumbled.

A small smile played across Jungkook’s lips as he pointedly ignored the elder man’s observation.

“So what are you going to do, sir?”

Taehyung was silent for a long moment.

“I honestly have no idea.”

Watching you walk toward him was an experience.

Taehyung wondered absently if this was how it would be from now on; if for the rest of his life just the sight of you would be enough to scatter his mind and his pulse and even the way he breathed.

Your dress tonight was deadly.

It was a decadent red satin halter that clung to every curve. The truly wicked detail, however, was a daring slit that ran the entire length of your leg.

Taehyung was certain he was going to trip over his own tongue at some point if he looked directly at you for too long.

Oh help.

Memories of your previous encounter flooded his senses. Every second you were getting closer and he didn’t know what to do—what to say.

So he didn’t say anything at all.

Not a word when you reached the bottom of the stairs. Nothing but silence as he opened the door of the limo for you. More silence and no eye contact as he settled into the seat across from yours—

And you tolerated that for about three minutes.

“I never thought I’d see the day when Kim Taehyung didn’t have a comment about something. Perhaps I should mark this down on my calendar.”

The words were lightly spoken, but you were shaking on the inside. The last time the two of you were alone together he had your dress around your waist and you were moaning his name. Now he wasn’t talking and you were torn between panic and irritation.

Taehyung, however, latched onto your passive barb like a lifeline.

“Is that a hint of sarcasm I hear from the benevolent Park Angel?” He grinned. “Surely not.”

“Red is not a particularly angelic color. Perhaps I’m feeling feisty today.”

Taehyung leaned back in his seat and indulged himself in a thorough examination of your outfit. The urge to run his hands over the satin-covered lines of your body was nearly unbearable. He curled his fingers into fists to keep them from doing just that.

She is definitely trying to kill me.

“Should I be worried?”

Now it was your turn to grin.

“I guess we’ll find out.”

The Governor’s Winter Wonderland Gala was by far the most extravagant event of the holiday season. Tickets cost a small fortune and sold out almost immediately.

But it was well worth the price of admission.

Thousands of lights sparkled overhead as you made your way through the great hall of Governor Kim’s mansion.

It was like stepping into a fairytale.

Taehyung couldn’t take his eyes off you. The sheer wonder in your expression was breathtaking.

You were breathtaking.

“Governor Kim, it is such an honor to finally meet you.”

The Governor was a handsome man in his early fifties with a smile that was every bit as lethal as it had been twenty-five years ago.

“The honor is all mine, Ms. Park. I trust my nephew is treating you well.”

Your eyes widened.

“N-nephew?”

Taehyung shrugged.

“I don’t really talk about it much.”

The Governor chuckled and you cleared your throat to cover your nervousness.

“Yes, he’s been a very capable escort.”

“Is that so?” Governor Kim smiled charmingly. “Well if it doesn’t work out, my son Seokjin is still single—”

“Thank you, Uncle. It was lovely to see you as always.”

You squeaked as Taehyung placed his hand firmly on the curve of your back and practically dragged you away.

The Governor just shook his head and laughed.

“Oh kid, you’ve got it bad.”

Everywhere you looked there was beauty.

Whoever planned the gala this year had truly gone above and beyond. Surrounded on all sides by glittering trees and snowy vignettes, it was easy to be swept away in the festive magic of the evening.

All in all (despite some initial awkwardness), you were having a fantastic time...

Until she showed up.

“Kim Taehyung! Is that you?”

Every single hair on your body stood on end, but before you could determine the source of the shrill squealing, you found yourself being nudged aside by a blinding golden gown and some very high heels.

“Aubrey,” Taehyung grunted as five-and-half feet of gorgeous wrapped herself around him like a clinging vine. “Long time no see.”

“Not since that vacation in Aspen,” she giggled. “We had quite a time, didn’t we Tae Tae!”

Suddenly you had the most unholy urge to slap the spray tan right off this woman.

Instead, you plastered on a vibrant smile and placed your hand on Taehyung’s sleeve.

“Um. Excuse me, Tae Tae, perhaps you could introduce us?”

Taehyung looked as if he’d just been served raw fire ants for dinner.

“Yes. Of course. This is—”

“Aubrey Alicia St. Valentine,” she interrupted with a smug little smirk. “Taehyung and I go way back.” Her expression grew just the slightest bit tighter. “And you are?”

“His date,” you deadpanned.

“Aubrey,” Taehyung cleared his throat, “I’d like you to meet Ms. Park she’s—”

“Oh my goodness! You’re Jimin’s little sister aren't you!” Aubrey slapped her hand over his chest and he winced. “That is so precious of you to take her around like this!”

Your eyebrows raised right up into your hairline and Taehyung groaned.

“Yes, he was kind enough to sign me out of the nursery for the evening.” You offered them both a painfully vacant nod. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I see one of my play-dates near the buffet.”

Then you turned on your heel and sauntered off without another word.

Taehyung moved to follow you, but Aubrey curled her fingers into the crook of his arm and pulled him back.

“Oh let her go, Tae. You and I have so much catching up to do.”

Taehyung pointedly removed her hand from his elbow.

“Some other time perhaps.”

Aubrey pouted prettily.

“You’re not running off after her are you? She’s a big girl, she can take care of herself.”

Taehyung crossed his arms and fixed her with a knowing look.

“Funny... that’s not what you were implying a moment ago.”

“A moment ago I didn’t have you all to myself. Now I do.” She had the decency to blush. “Perhaps I got a bit jealous.”

“You don’t say.” His eyes continued to search the crowd for any sign of you.

“It seems I had good reason to be,” she murmured quietly.

“Aubrey... Listen I—”

She cut him off with a finger to his lips.

“Don’t bother Tae Tae. I’m petty, but I’ve never been pathetic.”

He grinned.

“Never.”

The lady sighed and gave him a heated once over.

“What a shame.”

Then she strolled off with a rueful smile.

“You know what I don’t understand?”

You turn to find Min Yoongi leaning casually against a nearby column. He looked absurdly handsome as always, but his grin was just the slightest bit mischievous.

“What don’t you understand, Mr. Min?”

The question was clearly a bait, but you were still fuming from your earlier encounter with Ms. St. Valentine and therefore desperately in need of a distraction.

Yoongi pushed off the column and lazily made his way toward you.

“I don’t understand how a man pays a hundred thousand dollars for an evening with the most beautiful woman in the city, and then leaves her all by herself.” He leaned forward with a playful grin. “Perhaps you could enlighten me?”

Oh he’s good.

You made a show of tapping your chin thoughtfully.

“I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for that one.”

Yoongi sighed and shook his head.

“Couldn’t be me.”

You laughed then. He really was a delightful man. In fact, if you still had your heart, you might have considered letting him take a shot at it.

Alas.

You tilted your head speculatively.

Surely there was no need to brush away good company...

After all, no one else is interested in spending time with me.

“Since my escort is otherwise occupied, perhaps you could join me for dinner?”

Yoongi held out his hand.

“I’d be delighted.”

Taehyung wandered around the mansion for nearly forty-five minutes looking for his date.

Panic was just starting to build in his chest when he finally spotted you

—at his private dining table with Min Yoongi.

It was everything he could do not to storm over and yank the other man out of his seat by the lapels.

Alright, Angel. If this is the game you want to play… then let’s play.

Taehyung felt his anger rise with every step, but he ruthlessly suppressed any sign of it and instead adopted a charming smile.

“Min, I didn’t expect to find you here. What a… delightful surprise.”

Yoongi’s expression was just a shade too satisfied. Taehyung could already feel his blood pressure beginning to skyrocket.

“Yes, Ms. Park believed that you were otherwise occupied and invited me to share the meal with her.”

“I see,” Taehyung practically snarled. “However,” his gaze landed heavily on you, “since I paid for this table, I hope you won’t mind if I join you as well?”

You avoided looking at him up to this point, but now you were choking on your wine

“Easy there, Angel,” Taehyung murmured as he pulled up a seat extremely close to yours—so close that your thighs were nearly touching.

Oh boy.

Over the next several minutes Yoongi continued to flirt openly and you continued to smile prettily and pretend Taehyung wasn’t there (which naturally infuriated him).

You should have known he wouldn’t let you get away with such behavior so easily.

This was Kim Taehyung, after all, and if there was anything that could be counted on when it came to your shared history, it was that one (or both) of you was always ready to escalate.

You had just offered the young Min heir yet another flowery compliment when you felt Taehyung make his move.

Two warm fingers slid under the silken slit of your dress, coming to rest possessively over the soft flesh of your inner thigh.

You squeaked and nearly spat up your drink.

Taehyung leaned forward in fake concern, wrapping his arm around you as if to offer aid.

“Are you alright?”

His hand continued to move significantly beneath your gown, but his face was the picture of innocence.

You glared.

“Just fine, thank you.”

A slow grin crept across his features as he began to trace soft intimate patterns over your skin.

On the other side of the table, Yoongi tilted his head in genuine solicitude. “Are you sure?”

You nodded sharply.

Satisfied, he resumed speaking about whatever it was he’d been saying—though you couldn’t understand a word of it at this point because the torturous strokes Taehyung was leisurely drawing over your thighs were moving closer to your center with each passing second.

Yet you made no move to stop him.

You should have.

You should have slapped his touch away—rebuked him for his boldness—

But you didn’t.

So he just kept nodding and smiling while Yoongi spoke, even as his fingers teased you with the maddening persistence of a man who knew very well what he was doing.

You gasped aloud when he finally brushed the pad of his thumb over the thin cotton of your panties.

“T-Taehyung—”

“Hmm?” he turned to you, seemingly surprised by your attention (it was—after all—the first time you’d addressed him since the beginning of the meal).

“Could you pass me the salt,” you sputtered (hoping to cover the fact that you moaned his name involuntarily). Unfortunately, Taehyung seemed wholly aware of your ruse, offering you the salt shaker with a superior smirk.

You seriously considered stabbing him with a fork.

However, before you could carry out any bloodthirsty plans, he pressed his fingers directly over your clit and your eyes rolled back in your head

“Oh my g—” you bit your lip stubbornly, “this lamb is just so good.”

Sweet mother of macaroons, he is too skilled at this.

You shoveled another bite into your mouth to cover your whine as Taehyung began to rub tight little circles over your sweet spot.

Across the table, Yoongi nodded in blissful unawareness.

“Yes, I agree, the lamb is excellent—very tender.”

Taehyung took advantage of the momentary distraction to slip beneath the fabric of your undergarment.

Your fork clattered to your plate and your hand came up to cover your mouth as he began running his fingers up and down your soaked slit.

It was everything you could do to hold back your depraved whimpering.

“I can’t wait to taste it,” Taehyung replied, flicking your clit in a way that guaranteed he wasn’t referring to the lamb.

At this point Yoongi seemed to notice you were in some sort of distress. He wiped his mouth with his napkin and leaned forward.

“Ms. Park, are you well?”

Taehyung chose that moment to sink his finger into the welcoming heat of your pussy.

“Yes,” you almost sobbed, “I’m-I’m very well—thank you.”

“Excellent,” Yoongi smiled as he rose to his feet. “If you’re feeling up to it, perhaps you could favor me with a dance?”

Several attendees were already making their way to the center of the floor and the orchestra was beginning to play.

Your entire body, however, was vibrating like a plucked harp string and Taehyung was still brushing back and forth against your clit, driving you toward a release that promised to be explosive.

There was no way—simply no way—that you would be capable of hiding it.

“Yes! I would love to dance with you,” you squeaked, grabbing hold of Taehyung’s wrist frantically. The feel of him pulling out of your sopping core was nearly enough to have you coming right there.

Thankfully, Yoongi remained utterly oblivious to the debauchery unfolding beneath the table. He took your hand and helped you to your feet with an eager smile (and it was a good thing too because your legs were still shaking).

When the two of you reached the dance floor, you turned back for the briefest instant—

just long enough to meet Taehyung’s heated gaze as his lips closed over the finger he buried in your cunt.

Emotions were a funny thing.

They impacted your judgement, affected your body, altered your behavior…

And occasionally eroded your common sense.

Sitting alone in the corner of the Governor��s ballroom, Kim Taehyung found himself experiencing a full spectrum of emotional side-effects.

His hands clenched as he watched Min Yoongi spin you around the floor.

His heart pounded every time he caught a flash of your shapely leg peeking through the slit in your gown.

His blood boiled when you threw your head back and laughed at something the other man said.

It was difficult to pinpoint which emotion was to blame for each of these reactions. There were certainly a number of them boiling over in his subconscious.

Frustration—

I didn’t even want to talk to Aubrey! How are you acting like anything she said was my fault?!

Rage—

Why is challenging people to duels illegal? I would fight Min Yoongi at dawn. I would fight Min Yoongi now.

Jealousy—

You asked her to dance while my fingers were in her pussy. We are not the same.

But perhaps the most persistent—the most overwhelming— emotion twisting through him was longing.

You and Taehyung spent nearly four years apart, and he was so desperate to be near you—even then—that he resorted to childish pranks in order to remain a part of your life.

He hadn’t recognized his actions or desires for what they were. He hadn’t realized what you meant to him...

But now, after spending the last several days with your hand on his arm and your laughter in his ear, he could no longer imagine spending another moment without you.

Everything seemed to crystallize as he watched you laughing and dancing in the arms of another man.

Uncertainty became clear. Complications became simple.

And when he saw Min Yoongi’s hand slide dangerously close to the perfect swell of your backside—

Emotion became action.

“Mind if I cut in?”

It wasn’t a question really. Taehyung was already shouldering his rival out of the way and pulling you into his arms.

“Taehyung,” you hissed, shooting the bewildered Yoongi an apologetic look over his shoulder, “what are you doing? This is so rude—”

“You’re absolutely right,” he agreed, sweeping you through the couples on the floor with practiced ease. “It is unpardonably rude to steal someone else’s date. He’s lucky all I did was steal you back.”

Your mouth dropped open.

“Oh? So you finally remembered that I was your date?”

Taehyung’s grip on the curve of your waist became a shade rougher as he pulled you through the next turn.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means—” you stepped forward vigorously, nearly smashing your body into his, “—that you spent forty-five minutes with Aubrey Alicia St. Valentine when you were supposed to be having dinner with me!”

Taehyung growled and yanked you flush against him.

“I spent forty-five minutes looking for you while you were giving away my table to Min Yoongi!”

The two of you sailed through the next several movements glaring at one another before you snapped again.

“None of this would have happened if you had just told Aubrey St. Spray Tan that you were with me—”

“I did!”

“Instead, you let her call me a baby!”

“What let? Aubrey is a grown woman!”

“But—”

“And—you stormed off before I could say anything, so how would you know what I let?”

“You didn’t come after me!”

“Yes actually I did—but she grabbed my arm!”

“Really? Well what else did she grab?”

Taehyung abruptly realized how silent everything around you had become.

People were staring—and not even discreetly— just full on staring with their mouths hanging open.

Well that’s great.

Taehyung’s hand closed around yours and you suddenly found yourself being marched across the dance floor at a breakneck pace.

“What are you doing?”

“Continuing this discussion in private.”

“We can’t just go somewhere private in the Governor’s mansion!” you sputtered, struggling to keep up with his larger strides.

“You mean in my uncle’s house? Yes—actually we can—and we will.”

Taehyung proved to be a man of his word, dragging you past two security guards and into the roped off section of the manor with nothing more than a nod.

The residential wing of the Governor’s home was beautifully decorated with traditional Korean artistic touches—all of which you were unable to appreciate while Taehyung was speed walking you through the halls.

After a surprising amount of turns and archways, he yanked open an ornate wooden door with the words Reflection Suite written on a plaque above it in beautiful calligraphy.

You almost giggled when you got a look inside.

On the surface it was a tastefully furnished guest room with a simple cherry wood desk and a cozy double bed set in an elegant matching frame.

However—

The ceiling and one full wall were nothing but massive mirrors.

Reflection suite indeed.

The door slammed shut and Taehyung rounded on you with a stormy expression—though you weren’t waiting on him to fire the first volley.

“This is definitely going to get us in trouble.”

“I told you, I can go wherever I want in this house. It’s fine.”

“Then why did you take us here?”

“Because you were shouting—”

“I was shouting?! You were shouting I just—”

Suddenly your back was against the wall and Taehyung’s mouth was on yours.

He hadn’t brought you here for this. When he grabbed your hand, he was only trying to get away from the crowds. He told himself that he needed privacy so you could talk—so he could clarify things.

But the minute the door closed and you flared up again in all your magnificent rage, he was lost.

He had to kiss you then.

You were so lovely. So fierce. So wildly irresistible and he was too utterly smitten to fight the need to be near you—to be with you in every way that he could—for a single second more.

The shock of Kim Taehyung pressing his lips to yours lasted about two full seconds—and then there was nothing but ravenous insatiable need.

Finally.

Everything was him.

Everything was this—this sweet indescribable ignition of a desire that spanned years. You moaned eagerly against his mouth in wanton delight. After a decade of sparks, you were more than ready to burn.

“Taehyung—”

His name poured out of you like a prayer. You needed him everywhere and miraculously he seemed to understand—

Not that he was prepared to be polite about it.

“Where’s that smart mouth now, Angel?” he growled, tangling his hands in your hair to expose the tender column of your throat. “Nothing to say?”

Your only answer was a desperate whine as he spread hot-open mouthed kisses down the soft skin of your neck all the way to your collarbone.

Now was not the time for patience. He would be tender with you later. You absolutely deserved soft sweet caresses and slow leisurely love making and he was absolutely going to give them to you—every day if you’d let him.

But not today.

The minute his mouth encountered the barrier of your dress, he gripped onto the sides and yanked it down to your waist.

“You knew just what you were doing in the back of that limo, you little brat,” he hissed, taking one swollen nipple into his mouth and tormenting it with his tongue.

“Tae-ahhh!” Your back arched involuntarily in ruthless pleasure.

“I spent hours—days even—wanting to get my hands on these perfect tits.” He licked the other nipple obscenely, squeezing the soft mound till it bulged through his fingers. “And you offered me the barest taste with that coy little grin, knowing it wouldn’t be enough—”

He reared back and landed a firm slap on both breasts and you screamed.

It was so so good.

“Look at them now,” he murmured, “so swollen and needy and mine.”

If any other man had said those words, you would have cut his heart out with a butter knife.

But you had always belonged to this man body and soul, and to hear him acknowledge it so primitively felt like the sweetest vindication.

“Yes!” you sobbed.

The affirmation only inflamed him further. He teased and fondled the tender flesh till you were shaking.

Your fingers curled into the soft waves of his hair as he indulged himself. He looked so ridiculously good sucking your nipple, moaning lewdly with his eyes pressed shut in cathartic bliss.

“This is all your fault, Angel,” he groaned. “You just don’t know how to behave.”

His hands gripped the curve of your backside, lifting you right off the floor and into his arms. Your mouths fused together heatedly as he carried you to the bed, and you giggled against him when his words finally processed.

“You’ve been saying that for years.”

“It’s been true for years,” he muttered, pulling one of your legs up around him so he could grind against your cunt while you kissed.

Your fingers tugged at the buttons of his shirt, tearing them off when they didn’t unhook fast enough. You waited too long to be with him like this to care about anything other than the feel of his skin against your own.

“Impatient, are we?” he chuckled, bringing his lips around to nip at your ear.

“You’re one to talk,” you shot back, yanking the ruined garment right off his shoulder just so you could sink your teeth into it.

Taehyung moaned loudly, snapping his hips against yours with an involuntary jerk.

“You really are such a brat,” he hissed, fisting his hands in the satin length of your skirt. “Let’s see how fierce you are with my tongue in your pussy—”

His words were so filthy and raw, yet they stoked a frenzied need in your belly like nothing you had ever encountered.

“This dress is evil,” he snarled, fumbling with the zipper for a moment before switching to a more destructive tactic. “It has tormented me all night and now it’s in my way.”

The stitching proved no match for his resolve, and—after a few vigorous tugs—he ripped it apart from the slit on up, leaving you covered in nothing but the thin cotton underwear he had breached earlier that evening.

After disposing of your shredded gown, Taehyung paused for a moment just to take in the sight of you.

“What a perfect little angel,” he taunted playfully, snapping the band of your lingerie against your hips with a cocky grin.

Then he brushed his nose right up against the sopping fabric and inhaled deeply. “You smell just like heaven,” he growled before licking you right through the cloth, “and you taste even better.”

The sensations twisting through your body were merciless. You needed more or you were going to shake apart.

“Taehyung please,” you whined, pressing against him shamelessly.

“Oh a please?” he chuckled, throwing your own words from the first night back at you. “Who knew you had manners?”

You would have screamed in frustration, but he cut you off with an open mouthed kiss right over the wettest part of your panties.

“Perhaps I can make a good girl of you yet,” he chuckled, as you opened yourself wider to encourage him.

You nodded frantically, letting out another moan when he yanked the flimsy little scrap of lace down your legs—smearing a line of arousal over your thighs.

“So messy,” he tsked, tapping his finger right above your knee where the naughty little streak ended. “What am I going to do with you?”

Then he pressed his tongue over the shiny trail of slick and licked it right off.

You gasped loudly and his lascivious smirk was almost beautiful enough to make up for all of the shameless teasing.

Almost.

"You want my mouth, pretty Angel?” he whispered, letting the words brush maddeningly against your folds. “You want me to feed on this sweet little cunt?”

Every cell in your body cried out for release. He already edged you under the table at dinner and now he was determined to unravel you entirely. You would say anything—do anything.

"Please—" you whispered.

"Please who?"

Normally you met his arrogance with a cutting riposte, but an entire evening of methodical torment had left you beyond desperate.

"Please Taehyung,” you begged needily.

He grinned.

“That’s right, Angel. Kim Taehyung. Not Min Yoongi or any other pathetic trust fund prick that’s panting for a taste of this pussy.” His eyes fastened on yours significantly. “You belong to me.”

Then his tongue licked a flat stripe over your glistening slit and you sagged onto the bed in relief—only to be thrown back into oblivion when his lips closed over your clit.

Your body arched involuntarily as a ruthless wave of pleasure tore through you. Your eyes and mouth flew open in a silent scream and it was in that moment you remembered exactly where you were.

Underneath a giant mirror.

The passionate woman staring down at you was nearly unrecognizable. Her body was littered with her lover’s marks. Her hands gripped feverishly into the sheets beneath her—-

And Kim Taehyung was kneeling between her thighs, suckling on her weeping cunt with obscene satisfaction.

It was the sexiest thing you had ever seen in your life.

Your hands reached down to tangle in his hair, using it for leverage as you ground against his face.

Then suddenly his grip on your legs tightened and his tongue plunged roughly into your trembling core.

“Tae—ahh oh my—I can’t—”

The sensation was so intense that your hips bucked violently. You could not keep still. You were charging towards an explosion and your body was shaking itself apart.

The noises tearing from you were incoherent. Everything around you focused in on the juncture of your thighs where Taehyung was licking inside of you again and again until—

You shattered.

And the force of it nearly bent your back in half.

Delirious sobs poured from your lips as he worked you through it, letting the obscene flood of your cum soak his face.

The sight of him slowly lapping at the release between your folds, was unspeakably erotic. He ran his hands in soothing circles over your skin while you twitched and fluttered back down from your high.

Then he was kissing you again.

It was softer this time, but you felt truly depraved—and instantly obsessed—with the taste of yourself in his mouth—on his skin.

You could barely understand this ravenous hunger. You’d just found relief, yet you were already reaching for more.

Your hands snaked down and wrapped around his still covered cock and he hissed in ragged pleasure.

“So eager,” he gasped, as you pushed him back against the headboard—but you didn’t have time to bother with his teasing.

You were gonna blow Kim Taehyung into space.

He bit his lip when you yanked down his pants and boxers together, freeing his arousal with stunning efficiency.

It was almost unfair to discover that his cock was every bit as beautiful as he was.

“Of course,” you muttered.

The sultry smirk he shot you in return had your cunt flooding all over again.

“You think Min Yoongi has a cock like mine?”

“I don’t think about Min Yoongi’s cock,” you retorted, wrapping your hand around his length, “you’ve always been the biggest dick I’ve ever met.”

“I knew you thought about my dick,” he groaned as you began to work up and down the swollen shaft.

After a moment, his hand slid over your chin to grip your hair, drawing you forward till your lips were almost touching.

“I wonder what this pretty mouth can do,” he whispered.

You gasped against him and he smiled.

“Do you know how often I pictured your lips around my cock, Angel?”

You mewled shamelessly and he growled, cupping your cheek as your hands continued to service him.

“Do you know how often I imagined this perfect throat stuffed full of my cum?”

His palm slid down to lightly grip the soft flesh of your neck and you shuddered against him with a needy whimper.

“I know you could suck me so good, Angel. I’ve wanted it for so so long...”

Your mouth actually watered with anticipation.

The desire to be good for him—to give him whatever he asked for—consumed you.

Taehyung let his head fall back against the headboard with a groan at the first brush of your lips along his shaft. His hips rutted involuntarily as your tongue wrapped around the tip and you hummed with pleasure at his enthusiastic response.

After a moment you slid him into the welcoming heat of your mouth, taking him in as far as you could in one stroke. His jaw dropped open and his entire body jerked forward.

“Yes, that’s it, Angel—feels so good.”

His praise was addictive.

You loved that you could bring him to this. You loved to see the haughty Kim Taehyung coming apart as you sucked him.

It made you feel beautiful—powerful even—and you reveled in every second of it.

Your eyes were starting to tear. His length began to throb and pulse against your tongue and you knew he was close—so close you could almost taste him—

Yet suddenly he was pulling you back and you whined pitifully at the loss.

Taehyung chuckled, dragging you toward him till your dripping core slid across his cock.

“I’m not coming before I get inside that pretty little pussy,” he swore, working your hips over his sex till it was drenched in arousal.

The crass words filled you with the fiercest, most incredible want and you clenched reflexively against him in response.

“Is that what you want?” Taehyung whispered as he bore you back into the mattress, pinning both your wrists above your head. “You want me to fill your empty little cunt?”

You did.

You wanted it so so bad.

“Please.”

Taehyung gently lowered himself closer to you, resting his forehead intimately against yours as he lined up his cock at your entrance.

“Are you sure, Angel? Because there’s no going back after this... If you give yourself to me, then you’re mine—and I’ll fight tooth and nail to keep you.”

“Taehyung, you idiot,”—a tender smile spread over your face as you wrapped your arms around his neck—“... I’ve always been yours.”

He swore violently—letting the slight tremble in his voice betray just how deeply your words affected him.

Then his fingers tightened on the soft flesh of your hip and he filled you to the hilt with one delicious thrust.

There was a moment—the smallest space in time—where your eyes locked together and everything seemed to suspend; a strange perfect calm before a monumental storm.

Then your world caught fire.

Taehyung drove himself into you with passionate fury, letting years of denial fuel the insatiable rhythm of his strokes.

Every time he told himself no. Every time he held himself back—

Every bit of it burned away as you screamed his name.

The feel of him was indescribable.

You imagined it too many times to count, yet your dreams fell pitifully short of the visceral reality.

He was bloomin’ magnificent.

Your fingers clawed up and down his back, desperate to hold on to something while he pounded into your g-spot like an animal.

“This tiny cunt is the tightest thing I’ve ever had around my cock,” he gasped and you whined needily at his praise. “Like it was made for me—” his hand came up to grip your breast, “like you were made for me.”

“Yes—”

Taehyung’s need seemed to amplify with every whimper and moan that fell from your lips. The feelings you sparked in him were fierce and unapologetically primitive.

He would go to war for you—build a fortress for you—fight a dragon if one dared come close.

You were his.

And he felt like a savage every time you cried out for more.

Suddenly an unexpected movement in his periphery caught his attention.

He’d been so consumed with the extraordinary rush of claiming you that he’d forgotten—

This guest room was thirty-five percent mirrors.

And now… he couldn’t look away.

The sight of your bodies tangling together in headless bliss played out before him like a scene from his most debauched and forbidden fantasies. His reflection grinned back at him in fascinated ecstasy while his beloved nemesis lost herself in the pleasure of his cock.

Something dark and wild began to burn in his chest as he studied the lovers in the glass.

“Look at you, Angel,” he whispered softly, “you really are perfect.”

Then he pulled out of your core and you whined bitterly in protest, chasing his body to rid yourself of the sudden unacceptable emptiness.

“Still so needy,” he taunted, gripping your hips and flipping you on your stomach before you could even think to protest.

“I want you to watch that pretty angel in the mirror come on my cock,” he groaned, plunging back into you from behind.

The new angle was somehow impossibly deeper and your body shook as another wave of pleasure overtook it.

Your fingers clawed into the mattress for purchase as he pistoned into your trembling mound.

Only Kim Taehyung could rail you like a whore while he worshiped you like a queen.

He gave you a moment to adjust before drawing your body back against his chest. His arm wrapped over your stomach as he slowly eased your legs apart, unfolding the lewd tableau of your bodies joined together for the voyeuristic gaze of the glass.

“Look at yourself, Angel,” he growled, mesmerized by the way your breasts bounced with every thrust. “Look at how well you're taking me.”

Then his fingers slid down to rub your clit and you screamed.

“Tae! Ah-ahh!”

The pleasure building within you now was violent. You were coiling too tightly, too fast—

“That’s right Angel. Take it all.”

Your eyes locked with his in the mirror for the briefest instant.

And then you flew apart.

Taehyung threw his head back with a carnal moan as you clamped down around him. His body was hurtling toward its own release with reckless speed.

“I’m close,” he panted, “where can I come?”

“Come inside me please,” you begged, and Taehyung’s eyes widened in frenzied lust.

“That’s what you want? Huh?” his thrusts became rougher as he chased his relief, “You want me to fill this puffy little pussy with my cum?”

“Yes, I want it so bad—“ you sobbed.

“Sweet Angel,” he groaned, gripping at your breasts as he pulled you tighter against him.

Then he met your gaze in the mirror again.

“I want everything with you; a home—a family—your body in my arms every morning when I wake up—” his voice trembled, “I want it all.”

The raw vulnerability in his eyes nearly broke you.

“Tae,” you gasped softly, too overcome with joy to manage anything else.

His mouth pressed hungrily against the curve of your shoulder. You could feel his cock throbbing in your core as he bent you forward, pounding into your sex with exquisite precision.

"Stay with me, Angel,” he whispered. His thrusts became erratic as he neared his high. “I don’t want to live without you anymore.”

The glorious thrill of his words tore over your senses with euphoric brutality. Your walls tightened greedily around his cock and the taunt cord of pleasure finally snapped.

He came with a broken groan, flooding the welcoming heat of your womb with his release.

“KIM TAEHYUNG!”

The sound of his name being shouted by the absolute last person in the world whose voice he wanted to hear woke Taehyung from a dead sleep.

His eyes widened in panic as he began yanking pillows and covers from all over the bed in a frenzied attempt to hide—

The doors to his bedroom flew open with a resounding crash.

“Jimin,” he squeaked, trying to look as casual as possible next to a giant pile of bedding. “What uh—what brings you here at—” his eyes darted to the clock on the wall, “—7:30 in the morning?”

Then he frowned.

“And how the hell did you get past Jungkook?”

Jimin’s murderous expression broke momentarily to allow for a smug grin.

“Kendra.”

Kendra Jackson was Jimin’s executive aide. She was fierce, capable, intelligent—

And insanely gorgeous.

Taehyung groaned.

Poor Jungkookie never stood a chance.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, yet another newspaper landed on Taehyung’s lap.

KIM HEIR BRINGS NAUGHTY ANGEL HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

Underneath the headline was a picture of you and Taehyung (dressed in clothes you stole from Jin’s childhood bedroom) kissing passionately against the side entrance of the Governor’s mansion.

One of your legs was wrapped around his waist and he was clearly grabbing your ass.

“Ah… well you see the camera distorts everything from this angle—and-and the lighting is bad so it’s not really what it looks like—”

“Is that so? Cause it looks like you’ve got your tongue down my baby sister’s throat!”

“Okay—okay,” Taehyung massaged his forehead nervously, “so maybe it’s sort of what it looks like but—”

“I’ll kill you.”

“No wait—” he held up his hands to delay an already advancing Jimin.

“Why should I wait?!”

“Because—”

“—I trusted you with the most important person in the world to me—”

“The situation is just not that simple.”

“—and you grabbed her ass in public!”

“Admittedly not my finest hour.”

“So you tell me right now—”

“But you don’t understand it’s—”

“—Why the hell would I wait?!”

“BECAUSE I’M IN LOVE WITH HER!”

For a moment there was absolute silence.

Then your head popped out from the massive pile of bedding.

“Really?”

Jimin’s mouth fell open.

Taehyung groaned again.

“As usual, your timing is impeccable.”

You rolled your eyes, ignoring his comment.

“Are you really in love with me?”

“Of course I’m in love with you! What part of I want you to have my children did you not understand?!”

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Jimin choked.

“That’s not the same thing!”

“It is for me!”

A radiant smile lit up your face.

“I’m in love with you too.”

Taehyung’s expression softened.

“Angel I—”

Then you were kissing and Jimin swung around with a horrified shout.

“Oh! No no no—Come on!”

He stumbled out of the room, hands firmly clamped over his eyes.

“This is not over, Kim Taehyung!” the scandalized young Park heir howled in exasperation… but there was a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

Back in the bedroom, Taehyung shook his head at Jimin’s ridiculous caterwauling.

“No, it’s not over,” he laughed, pulling you deeper into the comfort of his arms. “It’s only just begun.”

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my story.

This baby took FOR-EVER to write. I started it in November and literally worked on it a little every day.

If you enjoyed it— even just a tiny bit—please consider taking a moment to leave me some feedback. It is so incredibly uplifting and rewarding to hear reader thoughts and reactions to my work.

I promise to treasure every word like gold. It took a lot to bring this story to life. Your kind words would mean the world to me.

6K notes · View notes

hxneyandespressx · 3 years

Text

if i were a man (i’d be the man)

summary: jj holds a press conference while on a high-profile case. she has to deal with the stupid male reporters. after the conference is done, jj goes to the nearest bathroom, away from the crowd, and screams and swears to her heart’s content

word count: 6.2k

content warnings: mentions of emotional and verbal abuse, guns, violence, blood, suicide

a/n: inspiration for this fic is from criminal minds season 4 episode 16 “pleasure is my business”

☆。*。☆。

It was a rough start to a Wednesday morning for a particular FBI agent. She almost twisted her ankle on her early morning jog, got stuck in traffic, and had to wait in a long line for her co-workers’ coffee orders. Soon enough, she started to wish that she took the metro instead. Media communications liaison Jennifer “JJ” Jareau woke up today and chose violence. She huffed in frustration at how her morning went.

Walking toward the bullpen with the coffee orders in her hands, JJ was greeted with “hellos” and “good mornings”. Not wanting to have her co-workers profile her, JJ bottled up her frustration and grumpiness and put a smile on her face. It was a rule amongst the group to never profile each other. With learning an assortment of profiling tactics, JJ knew how to form a realistic smile without genuine happiness. Creases around the eyes, smile lines contoured the mouth, sparkles in her baby blue eyes. The short blonde perfected the fake smile that could fool anyone, even expert profilers.

“Good morning, guys.” JJ said with a bright smile on her face. She held two cardboard trays filled with various coffee orders. She placed one of the trays on Emily’s desk, so she can pass out the orders to her co-workers. She called out the order name as she passed the cup to the person.

“One French vanilla latte for Ms. Garcia. Two black coffees for Emily and Derek. And finally, a coffee with extra cream and sugar for Spence.” Everyone said their thank you’s to the blonde. Then, there was one coffee cup left. A cappuccino.

“Happy Wednesday, my nerds.” Rossi said as he approached the group of tired agents. JJ smiled and handed the cappuccino to the elderly man.

“Grazie.” He thanked the media liaison for her efforts to bring his favorite morning beverage. The group spent some time chatting nonsense before the case briefing. Thirty minutes went by and all of them disbursed into their desks to finish up the paperwork. JJ headed down to her office to work on choosing the next case after the one that was currently ongoing.

After settling in her office chair, JJ took a look around her office. Messy stacks of pending files scattered her desk. Empty coffee cups and water bottles lined the file cabinet. JJ checked the time on her watch. 8:12 AM. About two hours to kill. The blonde put her hair up into a ponytail and took in a deep breath. She dove into the nearest pile of manila files, looking through all the documents and photographs to determine which case for the BAU team to take on after the current case.

As the clock ticked closer to 10 AM, JJ picked up today’s case files and head out of her office. Strutting through the bullpen, JJ entered the briefing room slightly out of breath.

“Sorry I’m late, everyone,” JJ said while passing the manila folders out to her co-workers. After handing out the necessary materials, she grabbed the remote from the center of the wooden table.

“Sam Winchester was found in Fulton Park, in the Stuyvesant Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. Eighteen stab wounds to his chest and neck,” JJ explained as she clicked on the remote to switch between the crime scene photos. “He is one of the victims dumped at various locations of Brooklyn that was found last night.”

“Hold up. One of the victims?” Derek asked.

“Yeah. So far this killer built up a rep sheet of five kills.” JJ stated. Hotch raised one of his eyebrows at the new information.

“Seven? Why haven’t the NYPD notified us immediately after the first three kills?” Hotch asked the media liaison.

“Probably the department thought they could handle the crimes,” JJ explained. “That was the case until they realized that they needed help.”

The young blonde switched to the next slide, showing one of the other victims dumped in North Williamsburg.

“What’s interesting about the locations is that the first victim was drowned in the Hudson River. And as more victims appear, the disposal methods get more dramatic. Maybe it plays some role in the unsub’s pathology.” Spencer said as he looked at the screen, observing for any patterns.

“Like with one of the recent victims, the disposal site is in Cobble Hill. It’s typically occupied by those who are relatively wealthy.” Rossi said to continue Spencer’s thoughts. “This unsub is getting bolder with his disposal sites. I’m concerned with there being an end game to this.” Emily stated. Everyone at the round table shifted through the various crime scene photos and documents. Rossi took hold of one of the crime scene photographs: a reversed ten of cups tarot card. “It is also apparent that the unsub is leaving tarot cards at the scene of the crime.”

“Tarot cards? What’s the significance?” Derek asked.

“Maybe to tell of the inevitable fortune the victims faced?” Emily said.

“Well, each card has a different meaning when it is upright and reversed. And usually, when doing a reading, three to five cards are pulled to tell a fortune.” Penelope explained as she typed away on her work laptop. It had not surprised anyone that the technical analyst had an interest in tarot readings and astrology.

“You know, the first documented tarot packs were recorded between 1440 and 1450 AD in Milan, Ferrara, Florence, and Bologna when additional trump cards with allegorical illustrations were added to the common four-suit pack. These new decks were called carte da trionfi, triumph cards, and the additional cards are known simply as trionfi, which became "trumps" in English. The oldest surviving tarot cards are the 15 Visconti-Sforza tarot decks painted in the mid-15th century for the rulers of the Duchy of Milan. The Duke of Milan described a 60-card deck with 16 cards having images of the Roman gods and suits depicting four kinds of birds.” Spencer talked about the history of tarot cards, with hand gestures to accompany his little ramble. When he finished, everyone at the table stared at him. The young FBI agents sheepishly smiled as Emily poked his left cheek.

“Since when did you learn about tarot cards?” Emily asked.

“I learned about it when I took a college course on the Italian Renaissance.” Spencer sheepishly smiled.

“Well, whatever it is, it seems like there is a story to be told––or rather to be heard.” JJ said as she stared at the crime scene photos, her eyebrows knitted together in bewilderment.

“That’s what we need to find out. Wheels up in 20.” Hotch called out.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The BAU members sat comfortably on the jet, each in their little world. That was until the unit chief called on everyone for a case discussion.

“Let’s go over victimology.” Hotch said to call on the group. Everyone moved closer to the unit chief to better discuss the case. Derek sat in an armchair, with Emily next to him. Across from them were Spencer and JJ. Hotch leaned against one of the seats, practically sitting on the adjustable arm of the plane seat. Rossi sat on the tan velvet couch, adjacent to JJ.

“Reid.” Hotch called on the genius of the group.

“White. Male. Between the ages of 45-55. Jobs ranging from a stockbroker to assets protection manager. All of them have cheated on their wives multiple times and some even had sexual harassment accusations.” The young curly-haired man said to start the discussion.

“Even if these men cheated on their wives and got those accusations, they still didn’t deserve the multiple stab wounds to meet their end.” Emily said.

JJ looked through the case file to see the reports on all five victims.

“The victims’ names are Igor Andreevich, Lucas Duncan, Hunter Mcevoy, Sam Winchester, Jared Kalinski.” JJ called the names out like it was a roll call.

“These are the five victims that this unsub killed so far?” Hotch asked. The blonde nodded her head and said “yes, sir” in response.

“As the victim count increased, the more stab wounds appeared on the body.” Rossi said to point out an observation.

“But the M.E. said that most of these stab wounds were created post mortem. Meaning that the initial stab was to get the job done efficiently and he went back in to fuel his rage and/or sexual needs.” Spencer

“Are we assuming his sexual orientation? Because there aren’t many homosexual serial killers, kid” Rossi said.

“It could be a possibility. We have to consider our options.” Hotch said.

Just then, the laptop turned on and showed the beautiful Penelope Garcia.

“How’s it going, my crime-fighting musketeers?” Penelope asked. Everyone, even Hotch, smiled at her cheery greeting.

“Garcia, start compiling files on each of our victims,” Hotch told the technical analyst. “Everything financial and personal. Bank statements, credit card bills, investments, wills, trust funds. Anything that will tell us more about the victim’s lives.”

“Faster than a Hotch rocket.” After that was said into the air, Penelope felt embarrassed while Hotch looked at her with his usual stone-cold face. Derek sighed and shook his head, taking a sip of his coffee to hide his second-hand embarrassment for his babygirl.

To break the silence, Rossi grunted and coughed into his fist.

“Based on the jobs these men had, we could safely assume that they were killed in the financial district of New York. Then, the unsub transported the bodies to a dumpsite.” Emily said as she read off from the case file in her hands.

“But why from Manhattan to Brooklyn? That is a lot of weight to carry.” Derek asked.

“Maybe Brooklyn holds a lot of significance to him. Something from his childhood and he can’t let go.” JJ said. Everyone nodded their heads in agreement as they all closed their files.

“Once we land, do you want me to get in contact with the media to inform the public?” The media liaison asked the unit chief.

“No. We need to hold back on it. Giving him the media’s attention is exactly what he wants. He wants his story to be heard and we will not give him that.” Hotch explained. JJ nodded in response and wrote down media concerns in her small blue notepad.

“Dave, You and Prentiss go to the crime scene,” Hotch instructed the group. “The rest of us will get up to speed at the precinct.” Everyone nodded in agreement with the unit chief.

After discussing the victimology and the nature of the case, everyone separated and occupied their own space on the jet. Derek on the couch, listening to music. Spencer by the window, reading the Hound of the Baskervilles. Rossi and Hotch in the back, conversing whatever two elderly men talk about.

The blonde media liaison stared out of the window until she felt a presence next to her. She looked away to find Emily standing in the aisle with a cup of coffee and a bag of Cheetos in her hands.

“Want some company?” Emily asked as she took the empty seat.

“I don’t mind at all.” JJ smiled at the brunette. The shorter woman felt special that Emily did this for her. She took the Cheetos and the coffee mug from her co-worker. As she grabbed them, their fingers brushed against each other. A little pink blush formed on JJ’s cheeks. Not wanting Emily to know about the silly crush the blonde had on her, JJ covered half her face with her beloved blue blanket. Emily chuckled at JJ’s actions and placed her hand on the blonde’s right shoulder, closing her eyes for a quick nap.

JJ carefully took some of her dark blue blanket and wrapped it around Emily’s right shoulder. She looked at the brunette who was sleeping on her shoulder and softly smiled.

The blonde took sips of the coffee as she stared out of the window. The sunlight bounced off the water particles in the clouds, creating a mini rainbow over the tops of the white clouds. The media liaison took in the silence as a treat, before landing into the chaos of New York.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

A government-mandated black SUV arrived at the 25th precinct. Everyone––sans Emily and Rossi––got out of the car and was greeted by a lively short woman.

“Detective Miller? We spoke on the phone.” JJ shook hands with the short woman.

“Please, call me Kennedy. Thanks for coming in.”

“No problem. These are agents Hotchner, Morgan, and Doctor Reid.” JJ introduced them while gesturing at the person, in respective order.

“Hey, why don't you go on inside and make yourself comfortable.” Kennedy said. The remaining BAU members nodded their heads and made their way inside the busy precinct. Police officers swarmed everywhere as the federal agents weaved their way to an empty conference room.

Everyone worked at a swift pace to get everything set up. JJ and Derek went with a police officer to get boxes filled with case files and other materials. Hotch talked with Detective Miller to get information on how her officers dealt with the unsub so far. While all this is happening, Spencer worked on the geographical profile, so the agents know where to look for the unsub.

“What do these tarot cards mean?” Hotch asked the group. Everyone shook their head “no”, signifying that they had no clue what each card meant.

“I’ll call Penelope and ask her about the meanings of the cards.” Derek said as he took out his flip phone to dial Penelope’s number.

“Live from Quantico, Virginia, it is the Divine Miss Penelope.” Penelope greeted the group.

“Hey, sugar mama. I need something from you.” Derek said.

“Talk to me.”

“I need you to interpret the meanings of the tarot cards that were left at the different crime scenes.”

“Ah- I’ll be your little witch today. Hit me with have you have.”

“Alright, I’m putting you on speaker.” Derek puts down the phone on the wooden table, so everyone could hear what the technical analyst has to say.

“Ten of Cups, Garcia.” Hotch said.

“When upright, the Ten of Cups embody happiness, joy, contentment, and emotional satisfaction in your family, relationship, or companion. It represents an idyllic state of comfort, harmony, peace, and love which makes you feel like you are in paradise. When reversed, it could mean shattered dreams, disharmony, or a broken family.” Penelope explained.

“Reversed Wheel of Fortune card.” Spencer called out.

“When the wheel is reversed, it means that luck has not been on your side and misfortunes have been following you. When it's associated with this card, you must understand that these are due to external influences that you cannot control.” Penelope said.

“Reversed Justice card.” Derek said next.

“A reversed Justice tarot card could indicate various things. One Justice reversal meaning is to show you are living in denial. You are not willing to accept the consequences of your actions or others. You are running from your guilt. You must, however, be aware that these are actions that are in the past. Other Justice reversal meanings could be injustice, retribution, dishonesty, corruption, dishonesty, unfairness, and avoiding accountability.” The technical analyst interpreted.

“Lastly, the reversed Emperor.” JJ said the final card they had.

“The Emperor reversed is a sign of abused authoritative power. In your social life, it can manifest in the overreach of power from a father figure or a possessive partner.” Penelope described the final tarot card.

With all the information in their heads, the BAU members felt puzzled about how to move forward.

“How are these cards related to the crime scenes?” Derek asked.

“It’s like a performance,” Penelope chimed in. Everyone turned their heads to listen to the cheery woman on the phone. “Like there is a story behind these killings. The cards are telling how the unsub is feeling. She wants us to know her story.” Everyone stood in shock when Penelope made a breakthrough in the case.

“Wait, Garcia. You said ‘she’. Why do you think it is a woman?” Hotch asked.

“Well, sir. The first victim was drowned, with no signs of sexual assault on his body. Doesn’t that usually indicate that the unsub is a woman?”

“Not necessarily but it is a quiet and efficient way of murdering someone.” Hotch explained.

“Female serial killers are a fascinating field. We don’t have much information on them. But what we do know involves throwing the riles completely out of the window,” Spencer started going on one of his rambles. “For example, female serial killers typically don’t leave a signature.”

“But this one leaves tarot cards at the scene.” Derek pointed out.

“Maybe it was what Garcia said: she’s telling us her story.” JJ said. “Alright. Let’s start from the beginning. What could be inferenced from her childhood?” Hotch asked.

“She could have had a domineering father who worked on Wall Street. And with that dynamic, he could have sexually and emotionally abused her, making her feeling like damaged goods.” Spencer explained the backstory of the unsub. “Also because the victims cheated on their wives, we could also conclude that the father also cheated on the mother, who always forgave her husband and tried to rationalize to stay for her daughter. And that made the unsub feel rage and being inferior. That she didn’t do anything to help her mother and herself.”

“But there is no indication of sexual gratification.” Hotch interjected.

“However, there’s a reason why there are so many lacerations on the later victims. It could be the rage from her abusive father that this unsub is using against the victims, who acted like surrogates.” Derek said.

“The stressor?” Hotch asked.

“To follow her father’s footsteps, she may have also worked in the financial field. As a stockbroker, a financial analyst, or even as a secretary for a company,” Spencer said. “And as she continued at her job, she had a bunch of little comments and slights against her”

“As for the trigger, maybe she got passed up for a promotion by a male co-worker who was less qualified than she was.” JJ explained.

“Any sane person would get miffed about it, but she’s built differently,” Derek said.

“So much so, she killed five men so far.” Hotch said.

“And she did it in an efficient manner where no one had any idea until now,” Derek said right after the unit chief. “But how did one woman kill five men in one borough and disposed of them in another?”

“She must know the area like the back of her hand. Brooklyn is what? Around 72 square miles?” JJ said in response to Derek.

“Uh, 69.5.” Spencer corrected JJ. The blonde sighed, not surprised that the boy genius would know the exact measurement.

“And the fact that no one has seen her either abduct or dispose of says she knows the city and its patterns well.” Derek said to continue what JJ had said before she was cut off by the boy genius. Just then, both Rossi and Emily had returned from the latest crime scene. In Emily’s hands were coffee cups on cardboard trays while Rossi had Chinese takeout. Everyone shared the food as they continued to work on the case. Being the little tease he was, Derek flung a wonton piece at Spencer, who was struggling to eat with the wooden chopsticks. The wonton piece gently hit Spencer’s forehead and the boy genius pouted, hiding his frustration at both the chopsticks and Derek.

“The M.E. said that the cuts were clean, no serrated edges. It would have to be a very sharp knife to be able to cut through human skin like nothing.” Emily said, to drive the discussion about the M.O.

“A knife like that could get the job done efficiently. Could be the work of a throwing knife. Take out the victim with a single throw to have them die quickly, then she stabs them to feel something.” Derek said.

“Throwing knives? What is she? A secret agent of the Dai Li?” Rossi joked sarcastically.

“From Avatar the Last Airbender?” Hotch retorted, remembering that his son Jack watches that show on Saturday mornings.

“What’s Avatar the Last Airbender?” Spencer asked. Nobody bothered to answer the young man’s question.

“But this one is different. It’s like the more she kills, the more anger builds up inside and it gets released on the victim when she goes back in.” JJ stated.

It became silent in the conference room, quite the opposite to the noise of the New York precinct in the evening rush hour. Tired from both traveling and working, Hotch could see that the rest of his team was also exhausted from the day. The unit chief called everyone to head to the hotel and rest, as they can always come back to the precinct tomorrow morning.

Slowly one by one, each of the agents packed their things and get out of the New York precinct, and hopped into the cars, praying the soft hotel beds would lull them into a deep slumber.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Day Three at the New York precinct. All the BAU members were getting irritated that they hadn’t proceeded much on the case. Derek tossed a small basketball up and down to pass the time. Spencer twirled a pen as he stared at the geographical profile, the gears turning in his mind. Both Hotch and Rossi were discussing the case quietly while JJ and Emily doodled on each others’ arms. The blonde was innocently drawing hearts and flowers until Emily came up with an idea. Feeling a tad mischievous, Emily took her sharpie marker and started to outline something on the media liaison’s left forearm. JJ raised an eyebrow, questioning what her co-worker was doing. As the image came together, JJ gasped softly, however, not surprised that Emily drew a vagina.

Emily quietly laughed as JJ, annoyed by the brunette’s actions, took her sharpie marker and tried her best to transform the vagina drawing into a flower. Taking her time, and with only a sharpie, JJ showed off her artistic talent by creating a masterpiece: a carnation blooming out of a vagina.

Emily rolled her eyes when JJ stuck out her tongue at the brunette. Taking Emily’s right arm, the media liaison started to outline a grid for a game of tic tac toe. The brunette started the game by marking an “x” in a spot and JJ took her turn. The two women continued their game of tic tac toe and

Everyone was silent in their own world until Hotch’s phone rang. The unit chief picked it up and it was a number he couldn’t recognize. Hotch silently motioned Derek to call Penelope to start triangulating the call’s location.

“Hotchner.”

“Hello, Aaron.” A sultry voice talked. On the other side of the call was the unsub, Taylor Evans.

“Seems you know my name.” Hotch asked.

“I researched you in preparation for this phone call,” Evans said. Through the phone receiver, Hotch could hear the soft whooshes of pages turning.

“You reading a book? What’s the title?”

“Le monde comme il va by Voltaire,” Taylor closed her book. “Have you read his work?”

“No, I haven’t. You seem highly educated.” Hotch stated.

“You seem to know a lot about me.” Taylor retorted.

“But I don’t know you that well since the start of this phone call.” Hotch responded.

“What would you like to know?” Taylor asked.

“May I know your name, for starters?” Hotch asked. A cold laugh could be heard through the landline speaker.

“Evans. Taylor Evans.” the unsub replied.

“Nice name,” Hotch complimented her to bring her guard down.

“Now that we are acquainted, you can ask me questions.” the unsub’s content sigh could be heard on the landline.

“Has life been hard on you?” Taylor asked, wanting to jump the gun.

“I try my best.”

“Try my best,” Taylor said mockingly. “Is that the best you can do for your family?” A sarcastic tone filled Taylor’s voice, not liking what the unit chief said in response to her question.

“With what I’ve got.” Hotch said.

“You got any children?” Taylor said to divert the conversation.

“I have a son.”

“How often do you see him?”

“I try to see him every week.”

“Do you see him every week?” Taylor tried to put Hotch under pressure, to get him to crack.

“No, I don't get there as often as I want.” A pitiful sigh was heard on the phone.

“I believe you, but don’t compare yourself to the men I see and work with. You are nothing like them. You’re just another whore.” Taylor said with such disgust in her tone.

“How am I a whore?” Hotch asked.

“You come when called on short notice. Begging to be put to work. Saving your reputation. However, even though you’re a workaholic, you make the time to see your son. You care for your son. You want the best for him.” Taylor explained.

“You’re right. I do want the best for him” Hotch said. The unsub sighed, wishing that she had a good man, like Hotch, for a father.

“Enough about you. What do you have to say about me?” Taylor asked the unit chief.

“You've been betrayed so many times, You don't know who to trust, And that's why that first murder felt so good. But each one since has been less and less satisfying.” Hotch explained.

“Good deductive reasoning,” Taylor said. “But how do you know if what I find provides me less satisfaction each time?”

“It’s a part of your nature. Until you hit a psychotic break and start devolving.” Hotch said.

“Hm. Want to find out, Agent Hotchner?” She hung up on him after that last sentence. Everyone in the conference room stayed silent in awe. The unsub injecting herself into the investigation surprised all the agents in the room.

“She contacted us,” Spencer said in astonishment, breaking the silence.

“She’s getting impatient. Have Garcia look up everything on Taylor Evans. We need to find if she lines up with the preliminary profile.” Hotch instructed Derek. The olive brown-skinned man did exactly what the unit chief said: call Penelope and extract as much information as possible on the potential unsub.

“Her use of the word whore is interesting,” Spencer quipped. “It suggests she's trying to disassociate herself from her actions.”

“But she's become more personal with the murders,” Emily said. “This doesn’t make sense. She is contradicting herself.”

After gathering the information, and debilitating on the facts, everyone came to the same conclusion: Taylor Evans was their unsub.

“Reid, tell Detective Miller that it’s time to deliver the profile.” Rossi said.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Every law enforcement officer occupied the main space of the precinct. All of the BAU members stood at one side, making it like a stage. JJ stood beside Emily, thinking to herself that she could have been this girl in a way. Both her and the unsub look eerily similar, maybe even mistaken for each other.

“We wanted to give out the profile as soon as possible. We’re looking for a white female, between the ages of 20 and 25,” Hotch said to start the profile. “Her name is Taylor Evans. Dirty blonde hair with grey eyes. She’s organized, methodical, and knows how to blend in with the crowd.”

“When this unsub kills, she does so mercilessly and without an ounce of pity. She also wants her victims to know they are going to die by her hand.” Rossi said.

“That’s why her preferred weapon of choice is throwing knives. They provide a clean cut. No mess required.” Emily said, slowly rocking on her heels.

“With her choice of weapon, she can be quick and efficient with her kills, as murder is her only goal,” Spencer paused to catch a breath. “But all the bottled-up rage gets released when she goes in for a second time, post mortem, and stabs the body multiple times.”

“It is a way for her to get sexual gratification. And revenge, from her years of being emotionally and sexually abused by her father,” Rossi said. “The victims fit the description of her father and they are surrogates for him.”

“She is also a textbook psychopath, exhibiting all of the classic traits: incapability of feeling any empathy towards others, neither guilt nor remorse, and claiming no responsibility for her actions. Like others of her type, she is highly intelligent, manipulative, and narcissistic.” Spencer explained the unsub’s pathology.

“Evans had received higher education. She graduated with a business degree, most likely a subconscious influence from her father. With the business acumen and the social skillset, this unsub can easily blend in with all the other business people and manipulate them.” Hotch explained, walked slowly around the large room.

“Based on her background, she came from a wealthy family. However, the family wasn’t perfect. Her father constantly cheated on his wife. The mother always forgave him. As a young girl, Evans most likely has experienced emotional and sexual abuse from her father. It was a way for him to control his daughter, and she had resented that for years.” Emily said about the unsub’s childhood.

“She mostly has experienced misogyny in her professional life. Had little comments and slights against her. Perhaps a less qualified male co-worker took a promotion that she deemed herself to be of a better fit,” Derek explained about the stressor. “Something in her work life triggered her to start killing the men who represented her father.”

“With this profile, we should search for Taylor Evans’ location and any potential victims. We suggest going public with the information as soon as possible… Thank you very much.” Hotch ended the profile with his parting words. Everyone at the precinct was disbursed from the room to get back to their work. The agents huddled together to prep themselves in case something big were to happen.

“JJ, I would like for you to conduct a press conference,” Hotch said.

“Why is that, sir?” The media liaison asked.

“I would like to draw her out. Have it known that we are after her.” The media liaison nodded her head in agreement and left the main room to work on getting a press conference together.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Before entering the press room, JJ took a deep breath and exhaled to calm herself down. Thoughts were rushing in her mind. Don’t let them get to you, JJ. She neatly fixed her hair to seem presentable. Taking her golden heart necklace, the media liaison kissed it for good luck.

The media liaison walked into the conference room with great confidence and stood behind the mahogany podium. Standing tall, JJ was not willing to lose a fight with the media, especially with a high-profile case.

“Ok, can I have everyone's attention,” JJ said to gather the media’s attention to her. “Please, if you could just take your seats…”

“There have been a series of murders that appeared in random locations around Brooklyn. There is sufficient evidence that the victims were murdered on Wall Street then transported to their disposal sites.”

“We believe she may have experienced a psychotic break recently, causing the unsub to escalate to murder to regain a sense of control. You should increase your patrols in and around Wall Street… “

“Why would you focus your profile on the finance guys when the unsub has also contacted members of the FBI?” A male reporter interrupted the media liaison.

JJ stood at the podium in shock. How could he know about that? We kept that under wraps.

“I- How did you obtain that information?” JJ asked.

“I overheard one of the cops saying it.” The journalist said casually. The blonde’s right eyebrow lightly twitched in anger. What couldn’t those cops just shut their mouths, JJ thought.

“What you heard from these officers isn’t true,” JJ lied to keep confidential information private. “Now, do you have any questions about the case?” A new wave of hands came up. JJ took a few more questions to answer. After a while, it was time to end the press conference.

“If anyone works in or around Wall Street, and sees anything unusual, please do not hesitate to call the number on your screen. Thank you.” JJ said her final statement, ending the press conference. As she walked down the steps down the small stage, a reporter called out her name.

“Agent Jareau! I have something that may be of interest for you!” A different male reporter called out. JJ turned to face him, excepting the same male reporter from earlier. Trying to keep her anger inside, she greeted the news reporter with dignity.

The male reporter handed the media liaison a letter. JJ took a look at it and was surprised at what she saw: the signature of their unsub.

“How did you get this?” JJ asked the man.

“It was sent to me yesterday, directly to the New York Herald.” The man said. JJ called for one of the officers by the wall to collect the letter for evidence.

“We are going to take this in for evidence processing. One of the officers here will take you in for some questioning.” The man nodded as another officer whisked him away for interrogation.

JJ sighed and went to search for the officer that unknowingly leaked information. She saw him with another cop, talking, against the wall outside of the press conference room.

“That information was not for the public!” JJ said, angrily at an NYPD officer.

“Listen, lady. I don’t know how and where he got the information from,” The beat cop explained himself. “He could have been creeping around the crime scenes or the precinct.

“Keep your mouth shut, pal, as this case is private and under federal jurisdiction.” JJ huffed as Derek grabbed her shoulders and slowly tried to drag her away. The blonde complied with her co-worker, not throwing a fight as this was not her battle to fight in.

Once Derek loosened his grips, the media liaison dashed out of the conference room to find her own space to calm down.

JJ speed-walked once she was out of the hallway’s vicinity. She rushed into the nearest bathroom. Breathing heavily, the media liaison slowly walked into one of the stalls and locked the door. Taking a deep breath, JJ prepared herself for the biggest scream she would take in her life.

“Fuck. These little shits. Those bastards. Assholes. Son of a bitch. Fucking shit. Why can’t they keep their mouths fucking shut! Those cocksucking motherfucking god damned jackasses!” JJ yelled at the top of her lungs. Her chest fell hard as the blonde was taking deep breaths. She felt better after taking out her anger by screaming. Feeling a little tired, JJ sat on the closed toilet and placed her head between her knees to calm herself down. A few minutes went by, and someone knocked on the bathroom door.

“JJ… Are you okay?” Emily’s voice could be heard on the other side. JJ sighed while getting up. She opened the stall door and tried to make herself more presentable. Unlocking the silver lock, she opened the door slowly to reveal a relieved Emily Prentiss.

“Ah–,” Emily gently grabbed JJ and brought her in a warm embrace. They stood together in that position for a few minutes before heading back to the conference room, where the others were, preparing themselves to capture the unsub tonight.

Later that evening, the BAU team, along with SWAT, raided a luxury apartment building in Downtown Brooklyn. Upon entering the only penthouse, Derek broke the door with his strength. The group of agents entered the area and in the middle of the living room, was Taylor Evans. Black mascara ran down her cheeks as she held a gun in her left hand and the final tarot card in the other.

“Just in time for the show, agents.” Evans croaked. Her sad grey eyes filled with tears, her cheeks flushed from her mental breakdown.

“Taylor… Listen. You’re young. You don’t have to do this. If you come with us, you can get a lighter sentence and live your life.” Emily said to calm down the broken girl.

More time passed by as Emily and Spencer tried their best to negotiate with the unsub, but the end was already written. Taylor Evans planned to do an end game, one where she put herself out of misery.

“I’m sorry….” the blonde girl whispered. In a swift motion, Taylor pulled the trigger onto herself and shot herself underneath the jaw. Her body dropped quickly but Derek ran up to the body to catch it.

“Damn it,” Derek said. “She was young. Broken. Felt like she had to prove herself that she was something.”

“There was nothing we could have done to help, Morgan. She already had planned her end. She was long gone before anyone else could have noticed.” Hotch responded to Derek’s little monologue.

Right next to her body was the Emperor card. A beautiful deep purple with gold lining depicting an emperor. The gold detailing reflected against the tall mirrors in the room. The card was reversed, like if she purposefully did that to tell the end to her story.

taglist: @homosexualyearning / @ssajelle / @iconicc / @sunlightgalaxy / @jemilyology / @pumpkin-stars / @lgbtbau / @drinkingcroissants / @abbyprentiss / @pen3mily / @morcias / @hotchsbabygirl / @gravelyhumerus / @notsosmexy / @rxcklessly-bratty / @hqtchner / @girlbossjareau / @pagetsimp

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silentauroriamthereal · 3 years

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Author interview tag

I was tagged by @therealsaintscully! Thanks, you! :)

Name: SilentAuror

Fandoms: Just Sherlock, though I also follow some Old Guard blogs. :)

Where you post: AO3. Though I was almost knocked over the other day when I got a comment on an old HP fic over on skyehawke.com! It’s been literal YEARS since I got a review on anything over there! :P

Most popular multi-chapter fic: Against the Rest of the World for sure. :)

Favourite story you’ve written so far: With 87 posted fics and 2 more currently on the go, I can’t possibly answer that. That’s cruel. Lol.

Fic you were nervous to post: This, on the other hand, is easy, haha! Three stories, all for very different reasons:

1. The A.G.R.A Complex. This was my first Freebatch fic and I thought I might well be burnt at the stake for even writing any RPF. The notion for this story caught my muses’ attention, though, and they eventually forced me to write it against my will. I can’t be held responsible. Lol. It still amazes me that people continue to read it to this day. The notion: Martin and Benedict are friends. There’s a car accident and Martin suffers a fairly mild brain injury. While in his coma, dreams the entire first three seasons of Sherlock, which in this universe, haven’t happened. The nature of the brain injury is such that he keeps shifting mentally between the reality of who he and Benedict (and Amanda) are, and seeing himself and everyone else as their characters in the Sherlock universe. When I posted it, I intended it to be left up to the reader whether to see it as kind of an AU to actual reality, or else a prequel to the filming of Sherlock. When I finally decided to write a sequel, it meant that I had to be the one to make that clear, which made it a prequel. It became a three-part series, with the second part set during and just after the filming of series 3 (the dodgiest in the moral sense, since it dances around and into real life events), and then the third story takes place ten years later.

2. The Final Proof. Why? Easy. Major character death, and it’s Sherlock. That’s clear from about the first sentence, I think. I had written At the Heart of it All, which features Sherlock running an experiment using the hearts of people who lived lives where they had loved and been loved, and people who hadn’t in an effort to prove his own ability to love to John. He says something at the end of that story about wishing he could see his own heart at the end of their life to see which of the hearts his own resembled by then. And then my muses, my terrible, terrible muses said, “hey... you could write that: you know: Sherlock at the very end of his life, making John promise to look at his heart after he’s died, and complete his experiment.” I, like, teared up just at the thought, and honestly, I cried for most of the writing of that story. I’m assured that about 99% of the people who have read it have also cried throughout, so... sorry. Yeah.

3. Scars. Why? Easy, again: the entire story is riddled with gaslighting and other types of emotional abuse and mind-fuckery, and an actual rape scene. It was painful to the point of being interally corrosive to write, but I still felt it was a story I needed to tell. I did my homework on this one, consulted multiple therapists who work specifically in the field of men who have been absued (emotionally, physically, sexually) by female partners. I thought no one would read it. I thought I might lose half my followers on tumblr. But I still wrote it. It still amazes me that people read it, even more when they actually like it, and still like me after. Lol.

How you choose your titles: Hmm... each title genesis is different, I would say! Sometimes it’s a general theme of the story, sometimes it’s a specific concept or single word, occasionally (but not often) it’s a song title. Sometimes it’s another language, particularly Latin. In The A.G.R.A Complex, the title of the story is also the name that the neurologists given to the brain injury Martin experiences. Vena Cava is titled for the name of the vein that Mary’s bullet punctured in Sherlock’s heart, based on a medical analysis I had read. Scars takes its theme from both Sherlock’s external scars from what he went through during his time away, and John’s internal scars from Mary’s emotional abuse. I also have a whole series of (unrelated) flower-themed stories: The Green Carnations comes from ACD era coding for homosexuality. The Yellow Poppies is the story I wrote after the deleted scene about Magnussen’s hospital visit came out, which features both he and Mary as dual villains, and yellow poppies placed in Sherlock’s room as a threat from one or the other of them. The White Lotuses has a leitmotif of Hinduism and slow-blooming self-awareness and romance. The Red Roses is a Molly POV where she helps Sherlock and John get together in spite of her own feelings, and The Wisteria Tree is an amnesia story that has Sherlock forget the past six years of his life, including the five years that he’s been married to John, and how they find their way back together in spite of that. Rosa Felicia - bonus, both a flower name AND Latin, lol! - is a coming-of-age story about Rosie at the age of 19. Where My Demons Hide is a mid-series 4 story that I wrote after The Lying Detective aired, but before The Final Problem did, and is the title of an Imagine Dragons song. Pater Noster is Latin for the title of the Lord’s Prayer in Latin, but also quite literally just means “our father”, and is a story that centres around the events surrounding the death (murder) of John and Harry’s father. You get the gist.

Do you outline: I always say that one should know how a story begins, how it ends, and at least a few of the major points between those two events. So yes, but loosely. I think that over-plotting kills creativity. It’s not an essay. But even essays need space to grow.

Complete: 105 stories back in my skyehawke days, the vast majority of which are HP, totalling in about 1.5 million words. 87 stories in the Sherlock fandom (though those include my 4 Freebatch fics), totalling in over 2.3 million words now.

In progress: I have two stories currently pending: a Christmas story called The Secret of Hazel Grange, and a trauma-based, co-sleeping fic called Nocturne.

Coming soon/not yet started: I never comment about fics I haven’t yet started. Might curse the entire process, lol.

Do you accept prompts: No, alas. Neither prompts nor commissions. While I’m constantly desperately poor, it takes something out of the writing process for me once it becomes a job. I just feel like that’s not what fanfic is about for me. No judgement to anyone else who does write for commissions, whatsoever - we all have our own process! For me, I’m happy (make that incredibly grateful!) to have donations or supporters through my Patreon (eep: x), but writing to order just doesn’t quite jive for me. I also don’t take prompts, not because I don’t want them, but because I have such a huge backlog of my own ideas that I’ll never get to as it is. There will never be enough time to write all the fics I want to write! That said, don’t think that you can’t still suggest your ideas. My “official policy” (lol) is that I don’t take prompts (for the aforementioned backlog reason), but that doesn’t mean that if you do send me one, my muses won’t seize upon it and force me to write it. You never know. I certainly don’t, at least. :P

Upcoming story you are most excited to write: I’m super excited by the notion of actually getting my Christmas fic finished by Christmas. Lol. Here’s hoping!!

Tagging: Anyone who reads this and is a writer, or thinking about becoming one. You’ve been tagged!

#writer stuff #memes and things #sherlock #johnlock #silentauror

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big-city-dreamer · 4 years

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Fireworks

A/N: Hey! So I’m back with another fic that’s surprisingly not my usual ShieldShock MO. I recently binged Power Rangers RPM and now I’ve joined the fandom, 11 years too late it seems cause the fandom is pretty much dormant/ nonexistent especially here on Tumblr 🤦🏾‍♀️But for anyone who hasn’t seen it, RPM was meant to be the last season of Power Rangers EVER so Disney took ALL the risks and it turned out to be IMO not only the best installment in the 20+ years of the show but some pretty good TV in general! It’s the most adult season they’ve made and with the A1 script and even better acting (Rose McIver, Adelaide Kane, Eka Darville!) it’s hands down SO enjoyable! Anyway, my birthday was on Saturday (#VirgoSZN 🥳) and this self indulgent fic of my new favourite OTP (Dillon x Summer Lansdown) is my gift to myself. It may be hard to follow if you don’t know the show or characters but I hope it’s still an enjoyable read.💜 Gifs by @vakariaan

Title: Fireworks

Pairing: Dillon x Summer Landsdown

Summary: Dillon and Summer finally stop dancing around each other. (Set between the final Venjix battle and the last scenes of Episode 32)

Rating: G

Warnings: Super fluffy and cheesy lol! Lots of direct references to the show.

“That’s three in a row, boys!” Summer Landsdown grinned as she knocked the last striped ball into the top right pocket of the pool table from what seemed like an impossible angle. She blew on the end of her pool stick like it was a smoking gun.

Her teammates Flynn McAllistair and Ziggy Grover were still staring at the cleared table, unable to pick up their jaws off the floor. The blue and green rangers were struggling to understand how they’d suffered yet another defeat at the hands of the yellow bear ranger.

“But that’s not-”

“How did you even-”

Summer handed the pool stick to Ziggy with a smile and took her empty red solo cup from Flynn. She called cheekily over her shoulder as she headed into the kitchen. “Let me know when you’ve had some practice.”

At the punch bowl on the breakfast bar, Summer refilled her cup and grabbed a seat on one of the high stools around it. She took a sip and surveyed the garage.

A week had passed since the Rangers had defeated Venjix. They’d finally cleaned up the destruction in the lab and rebuilt the city’s Command Center, so a night of celebrations and relaxation was in order before they headed off in different directions for the rest of the year. They’d gone all out for the party in true RPM style: lights, garlands, drinks and snacks with music blasting from Flynn’s blue Hummer.

Scott Truman sat with Dr K on the leather couch near the pool table, as Ziggy and Flynn set up a new game of pool. Summer watched with amusement as the red ranger tried to explain the game's objectives, with flagging patience, in response to the good doctor’s endless questions. From a nearby armchair, Tenaya listened intently to the two, raising questions of her own ever so often. Recently freed from Venjix’s control, she was still a little shy and understandably overwhelmed. She kept her distance a bit but was still willing to be involved in the conversation.

The sound of a whirring drill from the left of the garage broke Summer’s focus. She glanced over to see Gem and Gemma working on some kind of experiment as usual if the tangle of wires, bolts and explosives on the aluminium workstation was anything to go by.

Gemma waved excitedly, screwdriver in hand when she caught Summer’s gaze. She shared a knowing smile with the blonde ranger and pointed in the direction of the garage door with an exaggerated wink. Summer blushed and ducked her head in thanks, leaving her cup on the table as she made her way outside.

She found him leaning on the front of the Fury, looking up at the dome’s artificial night’s sky. He was the ultimate picture of the lone wolf black ranger; brows creased in deep thought, arms folded across his broad chest.

Summer was well aware that he knew she was coming closer - enhanced hybrid hearing and all - but she tapped on the hood of the black muscle car anyway to alert him of her presence. They’d been spending a lot more time together since the Rangers’ victory but he still liked to take some time away on his own. She didn’t want to disturb him if he wanted to be alone.

“I thought your brooding days would be over now that you’ve found your sister,” she teased as she stopped in front of the car.

Dillon chuckled as he looked over at her through his dark, shaggy bangs. “This is actually my happy face.”

He extended his arm in a silent invitation for her and she carefully settled next to him on the bonnet of the black muscle car.

“Sometimes,” Dillon began, still focused on the sky, “I look at the moon and the stars here and wonder what the real things are like outside of the dome. It was hard to see it during my time in the Waste Lands but now with Venjix gone, there aren’t any toxic gases to block the view.”

Summer hummed and waited for him to continue.

“The war is over and everyone’s going back to their old lives, but Tenaya and I don’t remember what life was like for us before.” He sighed and looked over at her, “But we do want to find out what the world out there is like without Venjix. We’ll get to know each other, snuff out any remaining factions and try to help hybrids like us who are looking to start over. I mean I wouldn’t call it soul searching, but if we found ourselves out there that would be great too.”

“Oh..” Summer whispered a little deflated, “that... sounds like a good plan.”

Dillon watched as the emotions flashed across Summer’s face till she gave him a half-smile. She could hardly hide her surprise though when he took her hand in his and laced their fingers together.

“But,” Dillon started with his signature smirk, coming around to stand between her legs at the front of the car, “if you’re not in a hurry to go back to life as a princess, I was hoping you’d consider coming too.”

With his free hand, he tucked a stray curl behind her ear, his dark eyes never leaving her bright hazel ones. “With us...With me…Ouch! Hey!”

“That wasn’t funny!” Summer grumbled, smacking him repeatedly on his chest for her momentary distress.

Dillon laughed as he pulled her closer to him, taking her other hand as well to make sure he didn’t get hit again. He leaned his forehead against hers. “So, what do you say?”

Summer couldn’t help the relieved laugh that bubbled up but she wasn’t gonna make it that easy for him. She suppressed a smile as she brushed her nose lightly against his, watching as his long lashes fluttered. “Exploring the world with a rebellious hybrid and his sweet sister? Why would I want to do that?” She challenged playfully.

Dillon knew she was baiting him, teasing him as usual but he was more than willing to bite. He closed the gap between them, sealing their lips with a tentative kiss. When he was certain she wasn’t going to slap him again, he increased the urgency, revelling in her sighs and the feel of her soft lips against his as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

They’d both been anticipating this moment, having been denied twice recently, so the thought of stopping even for a second seemed ridiculously absurd. Between kisses, the black wolf ranger tried his best to convince Summer.

“Because,” he mumbled against her lips, “even when I have the best intentions... I can’t promise I won’t do anything crazy... And I’m definitely going to get into trouble… But there’s no one else...out there... I’d trust to save me... but you.”

Arms still wrapped around him, Summer hummed as she tried to catch her breath. Dillon took smug satisfaction in the dreamy look on her flushed face when he pulled back.

“I’m in,” Summer smiled and it was Dillon’s turn to breathe a sigh of relief- not that he’d admit it, “but I have one condition,” she added mischievously. “I get to drive the Fury if we ever encounter a tornado — Dillon!”

Summer squealed as he picked her up and spun her around for her cheeky comment. Laughing with her, he set her back down on the car and leaned in for another kiss…

“Get a room!”

“Whipped!”

Scott and Flynn both coughed dramatically as they made their way out of the garage to settle themselves on a lowered wall to their left. Dillon rolled his eyes at their antics while Summer buried her face against his chest in embarrassment.

Tenaya filed out after the rangers, smirking at the couple. “Finally.”

“Really?” Dillon scoffed at his sister, “You too?”

Tenaya shrugged as she crossed in front of them to sit on the ledge with the boys.

“Don’t listen to them,” Ziggy began as he perched himself too close to the couple on the hood of the Fury, oblivious of Dillon’s exasperation. Summer placated his pending outburst with a hand to his chest as Ziggy droned on.

“We’re all happy for you crazy lovebirds. Took you long enough with all those longing looks and flirty lines. Though I’m not really sure how such a grouchy cyborg scored a sunny babe like Summer. N-not that I’ve been looking or anything! You should at least think about coming up for air before you miss the show—Ahh!”

Ziggy let out a shout as Dr K dragged him off the car by his ear and pulled him along to the ledge opposite where the others were sitting. “Ranger Operator Series Green,” she scolded, “Ranger Operators Series Black and Yellow do not require your analysis of their blossoming relationship nor do I believe that they appreciate your close proximity while they engage in a lip lock.”

The gang howled with laughter at her statement, much to the confusion of the young doctor.

“Thanks, doc… I think,” Dillon shook his head, turning in Summer’s arms so that he was facing outward again.

Summer ignored the rising blush on her cheeks and directed her attention at Ziggy. “What show?”

“The light show-”

“-to celebrate our victory!”

Gem and Gemma gushed excitedly as they rushed out to join the others, wearing large headphones and each carrying a detonator.

“A big win-”

“-Requires a big explosion!” The duo cheered, exchanging high-fives.

Dillon wasn’t so convinced as he arched an eyebrow at the Boom Twins. “Right. Because that’s exactly what the traumatized citizens on Corinth need— unexpected explosions.”

“I understand your concern, Ranger Operator Series Black,” Dr K admitted, “and we did take that into consideration when we cleared it with Colonel Truman. By tapping into the new configuration at the Command Centre, we were able to integrate reverberation retention technology into the dome’s shield so when the explosions go off in the biofield, we can redirect the noise elsewhere. It’s similar to the programme used to rid of the stale air in the dome.”

“So we designed it so that everyone can see it,” Gemma began.

“But only we get to hear it go BOOM!” Gem finished, pointing to his headphones.

The silver and gold rangers pushed their buttons without further delay and the team joined with the rest of Corinth as they watched the silent fireworks light up the night’s sky.

Summer rested her chin on Dillon’s shoulder and whispered to him. “I’m going to miss this.”

Dillon looked around at the eccentric bunch. They got on his nerves but they weren’t half bad most of the time. He’d started off as a reluctant teammate - joining only due to Summer’s persuasion - but these people had become trustworthy friends who helped him to fight off the Venjix virus inside of him and find the only family he seemed to have left.

Without them, he wouldn’t have plans to see the new world with the one who made him rethink his Lone Ranger act. He’d tried to keep them all at a distance, but she’d melted his icy heart somehow and cared for him through all of it, even when he seemed to be more machine than man.

Dillon turned to kiss Summer on the cheek. “Me too.”

#power rangers rpm #power rangers #dillon x summer #dillon #rose mciver #scott truman #eka darville #tenaya7 #adelaine kane #flynn mcallistair #ari boyland #ziggy grover #milo cawthorne #dr k #olivia tenet #gem and gemma #yellow ranger #black ranger #summer landsdown

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littlethingwithfeathers · 5 years

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Writing Update: 9-9-19

Work was a little slow this week, and will likely continue to be. I’m still catching up from being at Dragon Con last week, plus I’m in tech for the show I’m working on this week. But “Intercalation” has begun publishing and that will keep my queue going for a couple months while I work on some other projects. Thanks for following and reading!

Publishing now!

Intercalation (HBO’s Chernobyl): A Valery/Boris/Ulana fix-it fic that picks up immediately after the final scene of the show. Ulana and Boris try to re-balance their lives after Valery is viciously ripped away from them, all the while facing reminder after reminder of the people they were before Chernobyl and the people they had become together while they were there.

Excerpt:

July 16, 1987

Standing on the poisoned ground of Chernobyl, Boris and Ulana watch helplessly as the car drives away from the makeshift courthouse. They watch with their hearts in their throats and their stomachs in their shoes as the KGB drive away with their comrade in tow. Not "comrade" in the Party sense of the word. They'd perverted it. If telling a truth that potentially saved lives was punished like this, they'd perverted it. They perverted everything.

But what else was there to call it? They'd never dared name the strange shape that had formed around the three of them. Between them. Through them. A year in the crucible of Chernobyl had changed them inexorably, as the accident would change everything for kilometers around it and for years to come.

And now they were split asunder, just as cruelly as they had been fused together.

"Where are they taking him?" Ulana asks, staring up at Boris with wide, lost eyes. She looks shell-shocked. Horrified. I did this,her face says. I told him to tell the truth at all costs, and now he's going to pay. Just him. It should be me.

***

Other “Friendship is Unnecessary” fics at various stages:

But Most of All : Based off this post. In progress, currently just past the 2k mark. This is a short, upbeat, porny little one-shot of Nat being a shit and teasing Steve. Because honestly… this series needs some levity after what I’ve done in “Stolen Season.” Not sure of an ETA, but soon.

One of Those Things (Prologue): Since I’ve written this beast of a series completely out of order, and thus all my author notes are no doubt VERY confusing, I thought I’d put a short prologue on the front. Just a couple of short scenes to plant some seeds and give an actual starting place to this whole sprawling, intertwining mess, but also to give me a chance to address new readers so my forewords on the rest of the fics don’t seem weird. I’ve got a little more than a thousand words written on it which is probably about a third to half way.

Untitled Pre-War Steve/Bucky and Pre-Avengers Phil/Clint/Natasha: Partially a request from @crazyevildru that I’m toying with. Probably a flashback or a memory. This series really does need more Steve/Bucky, and I feel bad about it. I’m thinking of also adding a prequel/flashback of Clint/Phil/Natasha as well… maybe have the whole thing be a discussion over dinner post-Endgame.

Sweet and Honorable (Title pending): Set post Civil War. Bucky insists on coming with Sam and Natasha to rescue Steve when he gets captured. This is starting to take shape in my head as a sort of work through for some of the issues that get raised in “Echo in my Soul.” Given what we know about the new Black Widow movie, I may hold off on this one for a bit. At least until I can figure out how I’m going to squirm around or ignore the added canon. (can’t wait for that movie BTW)

***

Other works coming soon!

Hymn of Acxiom: Scarlet/Vision. It would be post Endgame, with Wanda helping a newly reconstructed Vision who has no memories and no personality without the Mind Stone to network all the pieces and facets of his personality. This is next on the docket after “Intercalation.” I’ve really only just gotten started. Sketching scenes and playing with theme. Don’t expect anything before November.

Untitled Sarge/Melinda May fic: I know. I KNOW! Don’t give me that look. You’re watching the same show I am and you’re seeing what I’m seeing. This shit writes itself. I’ve been sketching on a few things, and now that the season’s wrapped up I have an idea of what I want to do. I might crowbar in a few days just so that I can have some exploration time… sometime between (SPOILERS) May shooting Sarge and them heading for the Temple.

A Maelstrom Whirls Below: I’m toying with the possibility of a sequel to my Darcy/Eddie/Venom fic “A Room for Rent in the Fourth Estate.” A rough outline is in place, and I’m starting to sketch around on a few scenes. But right now it’s just some ideas and a few zippy one-liners. It’s starting to get some traction though! Likely won’t start work in earnest until after all this Chernobyl and Wanda/Vision stuff is done, but I’m definitely letting it percolate.

Hang By Every Word: The outline for my Stucky fic is still coming along but it will be awhile yet before I start writing on it in earnest. The basic theme (and I’m sure this has been done, but fuck it) is the undoing of Bucky’s conditioning one trigger word at a time. And each trigger word locked down a memory that HYDRA deemed integral to Bucky’s personality. And of course… they all involve Steve. So I have to write things from Steve’s point of view, and all ten memories have to be written from Bucky’s point of view, and they have to tie together into a cohesive narrative. The memories are out of order, but Steve’s timeline isn’t and… It’s a challenge. I’m still largely in the brainstorming phase… writing little snippets here and there. Nothing’s solidly taking form just yet. Again… just letting it percolate.

#writing #writing update

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dlwritings · 5 years

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Hey I gots a question!

I’m in the middle of writing like five different series because I’m a DISASTER and can’t stick to one. Who knows if any of them will even see the light of day, but I’ve got a curiosity question. Which of these (if any) gets you the most excited?

Burn : Peter x reader — set during Far From Home — summer fling turned long distance relationship — bit of angst, lots o’ fluff — already in progress — on hella hiatus due to lack of motivation and inspiration

*title pending* : mob!Tom x reader — reader is cool and doesn’t put up with Tom’s shit aka not the “reader needs to be saved” trope — bit of angst, bit of fluff, bit of smut, bit of violence

Secrets in the Dark : Steve Harrington x reader — set during Stranger Things 2 — each chapter is an episode — bit of angst, bit of fluff, lots of spoilers — hella cute ending

*title pending* : editor!Sebastian x assistant!reader — The Proposal AU — Sebastian is Sandra Bullock and reader is Ryan Reynolds — overall plot similar to film but details and scenes are my ideas — Sebastian is an asshole for a while, bit of fluff, family issues, bit of smut

*title pending* : Harrison x reader — Catfish: The TV Show AU — reader thinks she’s talking to Harrison and emails Nev and Max (we’re pretending Max never left the show oops) to help her figure it out — I’m really really into Catfish and I’ve had his half idea for a long time — lots of fluff, angst if you squint, Nev and Max are cute, maybe some smut

Agent of Hydra : Peter x Hydra!reader — reader has to kill Peter aka her best friend but can’t go through with it — Peter decides to help her turn her life around — this was originally just gonna be a one parter but people liked it ?? so I’m gonna combine it with another fic I had been creating but I’m just trying to figure out how to do it — ANGST, bit of fluff, bit of violence, Agents of SHIELD spoilers

As you can see I am a DISASTER and can’t stick with ANYTHING. Honestly I’m just curious which y’all would actually read if I ever finished any of them. Secrets in the Dark just has one chapter left and I just gotta watch the final episode of season two in order to finish it. Don’t get excited about any of these and you should never rely on me to do or complete anything k BYE

#talk to me #dani chats #i’m a trademarked disaster #I don’t know why i can’t stick with anything ever #i get excited about everything and then give up #I think it’s the depression™️#love my life

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leiascully · 6 years

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Fic: Between A Rock And A Hard Place (Part Four)

Timeline: Season 10 (replaces My Struggle in the All The Choices We’ve Made ‘verse - Visitor + Resident + etc.) Rating: PG Characters: Mulder, Scully, Tad O’Malley, Sveta (established MSR) Content warning: canon-typical body horror (mentions of abduction, forced pregnancy, etc.) A/N: I’m collecting all the related stories that go with Visitor/Resident under the title “All The Choices We’ve Made”, because it felt right at the time. This story is an alternate My Struggle that reflects M&S’ growth/change in the ATCWM ‘verse. I’m weaving canon dialogue into the stories in an attempt to keep the reframing plausibly in line with canon.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

It seems inevitable that Sveta and O'Malley will want to meet with them again, so Mulder short-circuits the whole thing. He's impatient in his old age. He was impatient in his youth. He texts O'Malley and asks for the name of Sveta's hotel. He's waiting in the lobby with a coffee when she comes down. Scully's back at Quantico. He expects O'Malley to find her in the morgue. A tv personality shouldn't have that kind of access and yet. O'Malley clearly knows which strings to pull. Sveta wanders down eventually, startled when he waves at her as she crosses the lobby with halting purpose in her step. She turns to him and wavers, like she's torn between wanting his help and fearing that no one can help. Another symptom for his checklist. He waits and finally she steps toward him.

"Agent Mulder. Hello."

"Hey," he says. "Dr. Scully asked me to check on you." It's as close to truth as he can get.

"That's so kind," Sveta says. "I knew she was kind."

"Can I buy you a coffee?" Mulder asks.

"Thank you," Sveta says. They order and he pays, and they return to the table he claimed, his newspaper still open to the half-done crossword.

"I had a few more questions for you myself," he says, after some small talk.

"I know," she tells him. "You can ask."

"There was a moment when we were talking to you about your abductions - about your pregnancies. We asked you a question and you looked at Mr. O'Malley before you answered. Why?"

She laced her fingers around the heat of her coffee cup. The barista hadn't even tried to get her name right. There was just a Z and a scribble. "Because it's not exactly the right question."

"I'm sorry," Mulder said. "I don't understand."

"Mr. O'Malley told you it was aliens who took my babies," Sveta said. "But I don't believe it's aliens who are taking them."

"If aliens didn't abduct you, who did?" Mulder asks, already certain of the answer.

Sveta's lip trembles and her eyes shine with tears that threaten to brim over. "It's difficult to talk about. The memories are difficult and the answers you want...they're dangerous, Mr. Mulder."

Twenty years ago, they would have sent a girl like her to distract him. Twenty years ago, it would have worked. He was a knight errant then, imagining he could save every damsel in distress. He's learned not to gallop off in all directions now, though he paid more than he should have for the lesson.

"Everything stays between us, Sveta," he promises. "This isn't an interrogation. It's not on the record. It's just a conversation."

"The things I've experienced," she chokes out. "They've affected my entire life. They've made it impossible to have anything like a normal existence."

Mulder leans forward, reminded that therapists guide a conversation in much the same way interrogators do, and he's trained in both. "What are you afraid of, Sveta?"

"That it only gets worse," she says, and the tears spill over at last with perfect cinematic timing. He believes in her pain. He also believes in O'Malley's showmanship.

"Who took your babies?" he asks in his most soothing, most confidential voice.

"Men," she says in a hoarse whisper. "They took me aboard their ships. Their human ships. I was afraid they would kill me if I ever told anyone the truth. When I saw Mr. O'Malley...he seemed like my best chance to find out what happened to me."

"You didn't see a doctor because doctors did this to you," Mulder says.

"Who could I trust?" Sveta asks, tears running down her cheeks again. "They would erase the evidence. Call me a liar. They're the liars."

"You can trust me," Mulder says. "You can trust Dr. Scully. Our job is to protect you while we bring justice to those who harmed you."

"You work for the government," Sveta sniffles.

"Sometimes the best place to find the lies is inside the house," Mulder tells her. "They call me a liar too. They call Dr. Scully a liar."

"How do you keep going?" Sveta asks. Her eyes are wet and she looks so young.

"One step at a time," Mulder says. "Right now, your trauma is an open wound. You'll heal with time. And you'll help us bring these men to justice."

"I want to believe you," Sveta says.

"Me too," Mulder sighs.

He calls Scully from the car. She sounds distracted as she answers.

"Is he there?" Mulder asks. "Why am I even asking, of course he's there."

"Of course, Assistant Director," she says. "Just finishing the preliminary notes. Let me wash up and I'll be right there." He hears her turn her face away from the speaker. "So sorry, but I've got a meeting."

"What a shame," says O'Malley's voice, distantly, muffled. "Let me know if you ever want to grab dinner sometime. I'm sure you're a veritable library of information. I'll bring the Scotch and you bring the weird science."

She laughs politely and he hears the door close behind her and then the sound of water running. "Sorry, Mulder. I pretended to hang up and put my phone in my pocket."

"At least you got offered dinner," Mulder says. "You going to go out with Tad O'Malley? The Tad O'Malley? He'll show you a good time."

"I'm married," she says casually but firmly, and his heart flipflops in his chest. "How was Sveta?"

"Rattled," he says. "You were right. The same story about humans abducting her, and O'Malley just running with the notion of aliens. No one can really explain the craft without ET, but everything since then - all the work after the initial abduction, anyway - that's been us. Humans."

"Does that surprise you?" she says after a pause.

"No," he says. "You?"

"No," she says. "I seem to recall you having a meltdown over the same revelation sometime circa 1998."

"I seem to recall you being next to Cassandra Spender as she vanished off a bridge the same year," he counters.

She sighs. "There are days I don't regret getting that tattoo."

"We've been chasing our tails for decades," he agrees.

"They'll reopen the X-Files if he asks them to," she says. "You know they will. And then what will we do?"

"That was my next question," he says.

"We can't help her without access," Scully says. "But it's highly probable we can't help her at all. Ten year of unraveling the lies and we never got any definitive proof we could take to the public."

"You were right," he says. "We need help."

"He brought me a collection of photographs," she tells him. "He wanted me to tell me if they were alien hybrid children."

"Were they?" Mulder asks.

"I can't make that kind of designation based on a photograph," she says sternly, "but my medical opinion, which I shared with Mr. O'Malley, was that they shared a rare disease called microtia, which causes children to be born without the external apparatus of the ear. Rare, but not unearthly. Alien in appearance, but not in origin."

"Did he ask you about the X-Files?"

"Of course," she says. "He wanted to know if I missed the work."

Mulder taps on the steering wheel. "What did you tell him?"

"I told him it was some of the most intense and challenging work I'd ever done," she says. "I told him I thought I had felt most alive when you and I were working together."

He swallowed against the lump in his throat. "Laying it on thick, Dr. Scully."

"I told him that working with you had led to the most intense and challenging and impossible relationship of my life," she says. "And after all of that, he still tried to ask me out."

"Intense and challenging and impossible aren't necessarily positive," Mulder tells her. "You left an opening."

"He wasn't really listening," Scully says. "But you know I love a challenge, Mulder."

"Yes, you do," he says.

"We need to talk to Skinner," she says.

"I'm on it," he tells her, and hangs up.

Skinner meets them after hours at the elevator. They all ride down together. Scully kissed Skinner in this elevator once, Mulder seems to remember, but he only heard about it later from the security guard watching the video feed. He doesn't remember much from that particular adventure anyway, except kissing whoever Scully was in 1939 and getting a gaudy bruise for it. They don't talk on the way to the basement. The place smells the same. The office still has pencils in the ceiling. Somebody's taken the trouble to gut and repaint the place, and it still has pencils in the ceiling.

"Where are the files?" Scully asks.

"I don't know," Skinner says, but he looks away as he says it. Play the game, Mulder thinks, and they'll find out later.

"You said no one had been down here, that it hadn't been touched," he says, letting a little anger color his voice. Skinner will forgive him. They all have to play their parts. New paint means new bugs.

"Not since you and Agent Scully left the Bureau," Skinner says.

"We're back now," Mulder tells him.

"You certainly are," Skinner says. "As of this morning, you're reassigned to the X-Files, pending approval."

"Whose approval?" Scully asks.

"It's above my pay grade," Skinner says.

"We need access," Mulder says, "and we need backup. We need a staff. If the X-Files are so important, there should be more than two agents."

"I'll see what I can do," Skinner mumbles. "Your mysterious benefactors seem willing to allocate whatever resources are deemed necessary."

"Who do you take orders from, sir?" Scully asks sharply.

"All you need to know is that I'm looking out for you," Skinner says dismissively. "I've always looked out for you."

"We've been led through one dark alley after another, and all of them dead ends," Mulder says. "What makes this time different?"

"The world is different," Skinner says. "Since 9/11, this country has taken a very big turn in a very strange direction. I'm not the only one who wished you were still down here. You've got friends in high places."

"All the better to spy on us," Scully says.

"The danger is real," Skinner tells her, "but the opportunities are too. You can do something about it, agents. Together. You may be the only ones left who can."

"Do we have a choice?" Scully asks. She's gotten better at lying in the intervening years. Mulder isn't certain whether he should be grateful for that.

"Do you ever?" Skinner says.

"We'll need desks," Mulder says. "And a new poster."

"I'll see what I can requisition," Skinner tells him. "Welcome home, agents."

Scully goes back to the hospital after they finish the paperwork, murmuring about test results. Mulder doesn't mind. He has his own contacts, even after fourteen years out of the game. Tad O'Malley isn't the only one with a fan base, not that he likes to think about his informants that way. It's evening by the time he gets to the Mall, but he enjoys the walk. He's missed working down here: the bustle and the restaurants, the museums and the tourists. He walks toward the Washington Monument.

"Is the hour absolutely necessary?" says a voice at his shoulder. "I had dinner reservations."

"It was important that I see you," Mulder tells him.

"We made an agreement about our meeting in unsecured environments," grumbles the doctor. Apparently working in Area 51 makes a person paranoid forever. He can relate to that. He's just lucky that anyone who was in Roswell when the crash handed is willing to speak to him.

"I can't provide a high-security cordon like your former establishment," Mulder jokes. "For one thing, I don't have a couple hundred square miles of desert to drop the facility in the middle of or a guard to patrol the perimeter. But anyone who's out here isn't looking at us. I called you because you said if I ever put the pieces together, you would confirm."

"And have you put them together?" the doctor asks.

"I've met someone," Mulder hedges. "I've seen something."

"You weren't even close before," the doctor scoffs. "Warring aliens lighting each other on fire. Weaponized bees. Every distraction they organized for you, you swallowed hook, line, and sinker."

"I was being cleverly manipulated," Mulder says in a tone even he hears as sulky. "I admit to a certain credulousness in my youth."

"And what brings this new clarity?" the doctor asks.

"I saw an ARV running on free energy," Mulder tells him. "I touched it. I saw it disappear."

"That's what they all seem to do," the doctor grumbles.

"Their scientists said the materials were salvaged from Roswell." Mulder paces back and forth. "The technology exists. And it's been in use, being used on humans, for human testing that has been consistently misreported as alien abductions."

"So you believe you know how," the doctor muses.

"Yes," Mulder says. "And I think I know why."

"That 'why' is more complicated than you may ever know, Mr. Mulder," the doctor tells him.

"I've heard that a lot over the years," Mulder says. "Try me. Sixty years ago, we were warned about the military-industrial complex gathering too much power. Now alien technology is being used against us. Not by aliens or with aliens as I believed in the past, but by a venal conspiracy of men against humanity."

"You're wasting my time," the old man said dismissively, turning away. "There's always a bad man in the shadows or a monster under the bed."

"What are the tests for?" Mulder demands. "The babies? The samples? The implanted DNA?"

The doctor squints as he steps under the streetlight. "You tell me, Mr. Mulder."

"Ten years ago you came to me, saying you couldn't take your secrets to your grave, that you couldn't live with it." Mulder steps into the doctor's personal space.

The doctor sighs. "I"m a man of medicine. I didn't know how my work would be used. The lies are so great, Mr. Mulder. I imagined that I would come forward, but I knew that the truth must be unassailable. I am not sure that kind of truth exists anymore."

"Let me tell the world," Mulder tells him.

"They'll make a mockery of us," the doctor says sadly. "They'll pillory us in the town square."

"So what else is new," Mulder says. "I've been a punching bag before. I can take it."

"These men are capable of knocking you out," the doctor says. "You're nearly there. You're close." He turns away. "You listen to me because I was there in Roswell, but Roswell has become a smokescreen."

"So I've been told," Mulder says to himself. He wonders when all the informants began to sound the same. They promise him the truth but only speak in riddles. They offer him the world, but won't give him the map. He'd have better luck with a sphinx, and she'd probably be more coherent.

He goes home. That, at least, is new, that after submerging himself for hours in the kind of paranoia his younger self lived and breathed, he gets to emerge from it and go home to spend his life with Scully.

She's reheated the chili and she's sitting at the table in the kitchen, stirring sour cream into her bowl. "I wasn't sure when you'd be home," she says.

"Sorry," he says. "I meant to text you, but I had to talk to someone."

"Just like old times," she says.

"Except I get to come home to you," he says, and leans down to kiss her. "How were the test results?"

"Strange," she says.

"But you expected that," he says, ladling chili into a bowl and joining her at the table. "Didn't you?"

"They're in line with the results from around the time of my cancer," she tells him.

"You're disappointed," he says.

"I don't know what I was thinking," she says, dropping her spoon. "I thought maybe the chip had removed the junk DNA, or that something about the pregnancy had rewired my system. Dr. Parenti told me that all of my test results were normal. But I suppose he lied about almost everything."

He aches for her, thinking of her going through all of that alone. “I’m sorry, Scully.”

She lifts one shoulder. It isn’t quite a shrug. “I never quite learned to trust no one.”

He smiles at her. "And Sveta's results?"

"Like mine," she said. "Anomalous. Like purity control, all those years ago, and all those women in Pennsylvania." She looks at him across the table and reaches for his hand. "I wish it weren't always so personal."

"Me too," he says.

"Do you still believe we can save the world?" she asks, her voice just slightly shaky.

"I want to believe," he tells her.

"So do I," she says. "I badly want to believe that there is some point to all of this, if we take up this cause again. We've come so far, Mulder."

"One foot in front of the other," he says. "That's how you walk through the desert, Scully. Or the fire."

"It's always worked for us," she says, smiling at him. "I just hope that Sveta's all right. I don't trust O'Malley's intentions. She's vulnerable. She wants answers as badly as I do. I know what that can do to a person."

Mulder sighs. "He'll contact us again. He's had his chance to influence us separately. Do we play along, pretending to be true believers, or do we reject his tangled web of conspiracy theories so flimsy and fringe even a teenager would be ashamed to believe it?"

"To be fair to teenagers, they're ashamed of most things," Scully murmurs. "It is the part you were born to play."

"We all have our faith, Scully," he jokes. "Our belief in things unseen."

"I know," she says.

#xfiles fic #xf fic #xf alternate season 10 #xf revival fic #mulder x scully #my fic #atcwm verse

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justalittlebluetiefling · 5 years

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WIP Tag Game

Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous.

I was tagged by @dracoterrae9099! Thank you, my dear!

This is going to be a crazy list. I’ve got so many things I’ve been working on.... I’m gonna put this under a cut, because I’m scared it’s going to get too long. Also, this is going to reveal to you all that I’ve been toying with writing fic FOR OTHER FANDOMS and I’m scared you are going to hate me, lol.

I’m also not sure who else to tag, so if you’re reading this, consider yourself tagged! (I’m very tired please don’t judge me.)

The 100

Sometimes I Can’t See Myself - Bellarke/Modern AU/College AU - I almost didn’t include this, but it’s still technically in progress. I have one more chapter to go to finish and I think that I’ve been holding off, because it’s the first fic I ever published. I’m kind of scared of ending it, because it’s so monumental and means so much to me.

Untitled Zaven Fic - oneshot - prequel to Hope When All Seems Hopeless about Zeke’s return the welcome home party that led to the situation they’re in, requested by an anon.

Untitled Battlestar Galactica AU - primarily Bellarke, some Zaven/multichapter - this is super rough. I’m still in the outlining phase with a couple random chapters done. But it’s been something I have been messing around with for a while.

We Are Like Dominos - Bellarke/Modern AU/multichapter - Bellamy and Clarke run into each other for the first time in six years at a bar. This is basically a retelling of season five, but in a modern setting. It is going to be very angsty. I have an outline and one chapter completed.

If You’re Not Going, I’m Not Going - season 4 Bellarke/canonverse/oneshot - Bellamy and Clarke discuss going to the bunker post DNR.

Untitled Bellarke Fic - modern AU/oneshot - Bellamy and Clarke teach at the same elementary school. Cute, fluffy fun where their students think they’re together even though they aren’t. Yet.

Veronica Mars

The Collision of Stars - AU where Lilly doesn’t die. Would Logan and Veronica still end up together, anyway? (Hint: yes.) This is closer to fluff than angst, but there is some angst in there. It’s also probably about 2/3 done.

Minute Hands Were Never Slow Enough - Pre-series; how Logan and Veronica meet. The story of their friendship and the events leading up to the series. Also contains some drabbles about events in between episodes during the series. This one is probably close to halfway done.

Untitled LoVe AU - Logan and Veronica are childhood friends. Slow burn with lots of mutual pining. They don’t even realize that the other might like them until college. Very rough draft with a very rough outline.

Untitled Greek, but not-Greek AU - College AU very roughly inspired by Greek. Enemies to friends to lovers. Also only has a very rough outline. Veronica knows the Kanes from high school. Logan ends up in a frat with Duncan, but doesn’t know any of them prior to this.

That First Night We Walked Home / You Forgot Your Raincoat On Purpose - two-part fic inspired by the song Raincoat by Timeflies. That First Night We Walked Home is about how Veronica and Logan meet at one of Lilly’s parties and instantly click. You Forgot Your Raincoat On Purpose is a sequel-ish thing. Veronica and Logan reconnect at another one of Lilly’s parties a couple years after they have a falling out.

Anne of Green Gables/Anne with an E

For most of these, I focus on book-Shirbert, but there is some inspiration from the show ship in some of these.

Untitled Modern AU - oneshot - Gilbert overhears Roy talking about proposing to Anne. He tries to convince himself that he’s okay and he’s over it and that sending her flowers on the day of their college graduation is a totally normal and not romantic thing to do at all. This is actually done and only needs editing... but I haven’t decided if I want to post it yet.

Untitled Harry Potter AU - slow burn/multichapter - I’d say this is 2/3 of the way done at 30k words.The story is fully outlined.

Untitled Canon Divergence Fic - multichapter - What if Gilbert didn’t propose their sophomore year? Would Anne still start to date Roy? How would she react when Christine shows up their Junior year? I wouldn’t call this outline rough, but I also wouldn’t call it complete.

Reckless Lover Trilogy - modern AU/series, multichapter/super angsty/both one-sided AND mutual pining - this set was inspired by the song Reckless Love by Handsome Ghost. Anne and Gilbert became friends their senior year of high school and both ended up having to stay behind in Avonlea for two years before going off to college on different sides of the US. There are three stories in this series and the series is fully outlined. Individual works listed below:

We Both Know Better (Maybe We Don’t Though). This is about their last summer together before they go off to different colleges. Anne asks Gilbert to kiss her, because he’s her best friend and she trusts him and she’s never really been kissed. It... escalates. This story is actually complete, pending edits.

Short Endings or Cheap Goodbyes. This takes place over the years that Anne and Gilbert are separated. It is about how they handle that separation and how long Gilbert can hold in his real feelings for Anne.

I Couldn’t Let It Go. After Anne and Gilbert manage to repair their relationship, Anne isn’t sure if he still loves her or if she’s reading too much into it. And it hurts, because she’s finally realized her feelings for him.

Untitled Soulmate AU - I wish I could find the post that inspired this. It is something like, your soulmate’s favorite word is printed on your wrist and the word on your wrist is your name. Anne’s wrist has her own name on it, which is very confusing. Both of Gilbert’s arms are covered in words, much to his dismay. This takes place in the AWAE universe and is basically fully outlined.

#wow do i really have 18 wips right now????????#tag you're it #i'm so tired or i'd come up with better tags lol

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ranwing · 6 years

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Kadam Fic: Learning to Fly (3/?)

Title: Learning to Fly Series: A New Direction (was Season Four Remix) Pairing(s), Characters(s): Kadam, Kurt Hummel, Adam Crawford, Burt Hummel, Rachel Berry, Santana Lopez, Carmen Tibideaux, Cassandra July, Artie Abrams, Tina Cohen-Chang, Adam’s Apples, Original Characters Rating: PG13 Genre(s): canon divergence. Parts: 3/?

Summary: As another school year starts at NYADA, Kurt seemed to have it all. The respect of his teachers, a group of wonderful friends and best of all, getting to live with the man that he’d come to love. So of course, the universe would throw a few curve balls in his direction.

Part One, Part Two

On AO3

Chapter Text

Kurt blinked and felt the joy within over him Adam’s good news starting to evaporate. “What about?” he asked, not bothering to hide his concern at his boyfriend’s abnormal behavior.

Adam looked down at their entwined hand and couldn’t resist lifting them to press a kiss to Kurt’s fingers. “I didn’t accept the job right away because I needed to speak with you first. My taking this part affects you as well.”

Kurt inhaled, wanting to steady his nerve and gather his thoughts. “Tell me everything,” he demanded, pulling Adam over to the couch. “You’re making me very nervous.”

Adam sighed and sat down next to him. “I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean to do that,” he said sincerely. “It’s just… this isn’t the way I wanted this to happen.”

Kurt’s unease didn’t ease entirely, but he could see that Adam was genuinely distressed by whatever this offer entailed. “It can’t be that bad,” he insisted gently, taking Adam’s hand in his. “I mean, it’s a job offer. It’s what we’ve been waiting for.”

“I know… it’s just...” Adam sighed deeply, looking down at the floor.

Kurt took Adam’s face in his hand and turned it to his, gazing intently into his lover’s eyes. “Sweetheart, there is nothing that you say that will make me angry. What is it that’s got you so twisted up?”

Adam didn’t answer immediately. “You know that I love you,” he insisted. “I love our lives together.”

“I know that,” Kurt answered with full confidence.

Adam closed his eyes, knowing that he couldn’t be looking at Kurt when he told him just what he’d been offered.

“It’s a new show by an English playwright about soldiers in the trenches during the first World War,” he explained. “It takes place the night before they are to go over the top and I’ll be playing the Lieutenant who’s wrestling over following orders and knowing that he’ll be sending the men that he has come to care about to almost certain death.”

Kurt smiled reassuringly. “That sounds like it could be very interesting.”

“It is,” Adam agreed. “There’s a lot of dark comedy and the writer is absolutely brilliant. But… it’s not going to be staged in New York. At least, not yet.”

Adam looked down at their entwined hands and sighed deeply. “They’re talking about a type of touring production, where we perform in several major cities. If the reception is good, the production will then come to New York. Probably an off-Broadway staging but they’re not ruling out a Broadway opening of the interest is there.”

Kurt nodded, starting to see what had Adam so upset. “And you did agree to take the part, right?” he asked.

Adam shook his head. “Not yet. Not before I spoke with you.”

He looked at Kurt, his blue eyes glimmering with tears that he’d been holding back since he first got the call from his agent. “Kurt, they’re looking for at least a six month commitment from me, and most of that will be out of town. You just moved in here and I’m being asked to leave you behind for a job. That’s not fair to you.”

Kurt’s mouth firmed into a tight line, keeping his own emotions in check for the moment. His concern was for Adam at the moment, because his boyfriend looked absolutely devastated. “Is this why you were acting so strange this morning?” he asked gently.

Adam nodded, feeling the flush coming into his cheeks.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Kurt asked, realizing the turmoil his boyfriend had been in. “Sweetheart, you’ve been holding all this in since yesterday?”

Another nod and the first tears escaped Adam’s eye. “I didn’t want to distract you before your audition,” he explained. “That was too important for you.”

“Oh, honey…” Kurt leaned in to kiss Adam softly on the lips. “I wish you would have told me. At the very least, it would have lent some very interesting emotional resonance to my performance given my choice of material.”

His mild teasing caused Adam to smile just a little bit.

“When did they say that they needed an answer by?” Kurt asked.

Adam’s expression lightened a little bit now that the burden of what he’d been holding in was lifted. “They were very understanding and gave me a bit of time to make my decision. I explained that I needed to look into some arrangements and see how it would all work out. And I wasn’t going to take it without talking to you first.”

Kurt nodded thoughtfully. He’d been with Adam long enough that he wasn’t surprised at Adam’s consideration of his feelings on the matter, but he was pleased. “But do you want it?” he questioned gently. “The part sounds great, but I know that it’s a big lifestyle shift to be in a touring production.”

Adam sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I know that it’s a good part. And it could lead to something more significant.”

Kurt gave him a tender smile. “You silly man… then what are you waiting for? Call your agent right now and tell him that of course, you’ll take the part.”

“Kurt…”

Kurt took Adam’s face in his hands, holding his gaze steady. “This is too good an opportunity for you,” he insisted. “This is the kind of job that will give you a lot of exposure and I’m not going to let you turn it down.” He kissed Adam soundly, making sure that he understood that he was completely on board.

“We’ll work the rest of this out,” he assured the older man. “But I don’t want to see you sacrifice what could be a real chance to move your career forward.”

Adam looked at his boyfriend with an expression of wonderment. “What did I ever do to deserve you?” he whispered.

Kurt didn’t say anything more, reaching for Adam’s jacket to pull out his cell phone and press it into the Englishman’s hand. With Kurt’s supportive hand on his arm, Adam dialed up his agent and with a brief conversation lasting less than five minutes accepted the job that he had been agonizing over. After accepting his agent’s congratulations, he turned to Kurt, his energy spent.

Kurt let Adam sink into his arms, holding him close as the older man fought to regain control of his conflicting emotions. He felt Adam sniffle against his shoulder and ran a hand through the unruly blond curls. He didn’t say anything, wanting to provide the comforting, stabilizing rock that Adam so clearly needed at the moment.

“Sweetheart,” he heard Adam say softly against his chest. “We need to talk about…”

“Later,” Kurt urged gently. He laid his cheek against Adam’s head, just wanting to savor the solid presence of the man in his arms. “We’ve got plenty of time to figure everything out.”

In the meantime, they needed some quiet time to absorb the change that was about to be inflicted on their lives.

* * *

Signing the contract and getting his preliminary production schedule seemed almost anticlimactic after the stress of the day before, Adam considered. Rehearsals were set to start in December for five weeks with the premiere set for mid-January in Boston. They would tour ten cities around the country with the run ending in late May. After that, the producers would make a decision about a New York staging for the late fall.

He walked out with his script and the realization that he and Kurt would only have a few weeks to settle matters, but Kurt seemed to be in no real hurry to start those discussions. When Adam returned home from his shift at the café, Kurt was there to greet him with a smile and a sense of excitement.

He looked at Adam’s script and smiled broadly. “It’s like holding this makes it real,” he said in wonderment. He thumbed through the script, seeing Adam’s part and dialogue highlighted and wasn’t at all surprised that his boyfriend would have a significant role.

He closed the script and held it to his chest, his eyes shining with happiness for his partner. “I’m so thrilled for you. This is everything we ever wanted for you.”

“Well, I would much have preferred a job that kept me in New York,” Adam admitted regretfully. “I’m just worried about you. We have to figure out where you’re going to live while I’m away.”

Kurt kissed him, thankful for his consideration. “I’ve been thinking about it, so don’t worry. We’ve got a little bit of time to for me to figure things out. You just focus on this fantastic role and giving it your best.”

“I still feel terrible about this,” Adam admitted. “We were getting ready to start looking at flats and…”

Kurt placed his finger over Adam’s lips, silencing him. “All we’re doing is putting those plans on hold for a little bit. Honey, it’ll all work out. You’ll see.”

Adam thought that Kurt sounded a touch too optimistic given the pending upheaval that was pending in their lives, a bit of cool brittleness behind his tone that betrayed that the younger man wasn’t quite as assured as he pretended to be. But he knew better than to press the issue now. Kurt would deal with things in his own way and pushing him would only get him overly defensive and anxious. Realty would hit them both in the coming weeks and he could only hope to be as supportive to Kurt as Kurt was being for him.

He finally nodded, letting his concerns go for the moment. Opening his arms, he let Kurt slip into his embrace, offering what love and support he could. He felt Kurt’s strong arms wrap about him, giving him the grounding he needed in order to make such a huge leap.

“I think that we need to go out and celebrate,” Kurt decided, craning his head up to kiss his boyfriend. “Just you and me. I want to have you all to myself before we make the big announcement to our friends.”

Adam smiled, kissing Kurt back. “And you need to update me on what’s been happening at school and tell me all about your audition. I’m sure that you did splendidly.”

Kurt nodded, the color in his cheeks warming a bit at his boyfriend’s instinctive assumption that he had done well. “I think that I did,” he said agreeably. “It’ll be interesting to see if I get a few solo lines.”

“I have no doubt that you will,” Adam assured him. His thumb gently rubbed the skin over Kurt’s cheekbone. “And you’ll steal ever scene you’re in.”

Kurt kissed him. He still got a little thrill over having such a supportive man in his life. “Come on… let’s get going. I want to show off my talented, gorgeous man to all of New York and make everyone insanely jealous of me.”

Adam laughed and let Kurt manhandle him into his jacket and all but drag him out of the flat. Whatever Kurt had in mind for their night out, he was certain that he would enjoy every second of it.

* * *

“What do you think?” Rachel asked as she looked to Kurt, her expression betraying her uncertainty.

Kurt looked over at the skin care products in Rachel’s hand. “Those should work for you, but I think you should get the purifying masks also. You’re still prone to break outs and stage makeup can play havoc with your skin.”

After the strain of another insane week of school, Kurt was enjoying some girlfriend time with his ladies by going shopping with them for skin care products in Koreatown. Some of the lady Apples swore by products from this shop to keep their complexions clear and fresh and Kurt planned to blow his play money for the week on some things to pamper himself and Adam with. It was a no-brainer to invite Rachel, Santana and Tina to join him.

“I don’t mean that,” Rachel corrected, though she did go over to the rack of sheet masks and place several in her shopping basket. “I’m talking about Adam.”

“I’m really proud of him and I think that this will be an amazing opportunity,” Kurt insisted, studying the selection of eye creams. He picked one that was supposed to relieve puffiness and placed it in his basket. Now to find something for Adam… He tossed another tube of exfoliating sugar scrub into his basket.

“I’m sure it will be,” Tina inserted, coming over with her collection of products for Kurt’s approval. “But what about you?”

“What about me?” Kurt asked, shrugging indifferently. “I’ll be busy with school and probably the musical while he’s away. I’ll be okay.”

“And where are you supposed to live while he’s off being a big star?” Santana demanded. Her harsh tone betrayed her concern for their friend. “You just moved in with him and…”

Kurt looked up at her with an appreciative smile. “I know. And believe me, he’s more anxious about that than anyone else. And he feels terrible about the offer being with a touring production. I had to push him into taking the job.”

“That doesn’t answer the question on where you’re going to live while he’s away,” Rachel insisted. “Honey, we know this is a big deal for Adam, but this affects you too.”

“I know, and I really do appreciate it but you’re worrying over nothing,” Kurt insisted. “I’m looking at my options and will have a decision long before Adam leaves.”

“I wish that you would just move back into the loft,” Tina said with a trace of sadness. “I feel horrible that Artie and I took your space.”

Rachel touched Kurt’s arm, her concern for him evident. “We’re just worried about you, Kurt. This wasn’t what you were expecting and I’m afraid of you being left without a place to stay. I know that it’s not Adam’s fault, but…”

“Maybe you can move back into the loft,” Tina suggested. “We can squeeze in another bed.”

Kurt frowned to himself, appreciative of her consideration but knowing that it wasn’t a realistic option. As spacious as the loft was, adding another sleeping area would be problematic. And with only one bathroom, it just wasn’t a workable solution for everyone involved.

“Ladies, look… I appreciate your concern, but really… It’s okay,” Kurt insisted, carrying his basket to the register. “I’m looking at some options and you don’t have to worry. I’m hardly going to end up homeless.”

“Are you going to keep the apartment?” Santana asked, selecting a body cream for herself. “Can you afford that?”

Kurt shrugged. “It’s something I’m looking at. Adam and I are going to talk to the landlord to see if they’re willing to extend the current lease and sign it over to me, but that’s going to depend on how much I’m able to work with school and the musical to consider. I’m also checking with the housing office at school about dorm space. They almost always have rooms available.

“And it’s only for a few months,” he reminded them. “I can survive a semester on my own. Adam will be back in New York by the summer and we’ll pick up where we left off.”

Rachel looked a bit dubious at Kurt’s relaxed attitude. “It’s just unfortunate that he has to leave. I don’t think any of us had any real luck with long distance relationships, but maybe you’ll be the one to break the trend,” she said thoughtfully.

Kurt felt a slight jab in the gut at the mention of how each of them standing there had seen relationships that they thought were secure collapse once they were no longer in close proximity to their partners on a daily basis. He certainly didn’t need the reminder that it had taken only a few weeks for Blaine to stray once Kurt’s attention was focused on setting up his life in New York, and he’d be lying if he tried to claim that the thought of another relationship blowing up in his face on account of distance hadn’t crossed his mind at least once. But Adam wasn’t Blaine and Kurt had been tried his very best not to saddle him with Kurt’s unreasonable fears just because his last boyfriend had proven himself to be a shallow, faithless asshole.

And he certainly wasn’t going to try to hold Adam back just because of his fears. Adam deserved this opportunity and there was no way in hell that Kurt would stand in his way. It might end up being a real test of their relationship, but Kurt knew that they had to face it. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them otherwise.

Kurt was a grown man and he wouldn’t be the one to hold Adam back because of his own insecurities. He would face this head on and just endure what would likely be a lengthy separation. He had more than enough on his plate to keep himself busy while Adam was away and the months would pass in no time.

Maybe if he told himself this often enough, he might start to believe it.

* * *

Kurt hurried after his last class to meet Adam at their pre-designated restaurant to grab an early dinner together before Adam had to head to the bar for his shift. His stage combat class ran a little long and he needed to shower before inflicting himself on the general public. Not to mention letting the hot water soothe away the aches that an hour wielding a prop sword and shield left.

He saw his boyfriend standing outside their favorite Indian restaurant and trotted up to him. “Hey… sorry I’m late,” Kurt apologized, turning his head up to receive a kiss from the older man.

“No worries, love. I just got here a moment ago,” Adam assured him. “I don’t know about you, but I’m positively famished.”

“Me too. I don’t know what I was thinking, having dance and stage combat on the same day,” Kurt complained playfully, letting his boyfriend slip and arm about him and guide him into the restaurant.

“Well, didn’t your advisor warn you?” Adam chuckled, giving Kurt a brief squeeze.

“Hush… you know how stubborn I am.”

Inside the restaurant was the combination of India and England that reminded Adam very much of the curry houses he used to frequent back in London and the food in this place was particularly good. This early in the evening, they were seated immediately and ordered their drinks. Adam ordered a mango lassi since he would be working, but Kurt treated himself to a beer that he more than felt was earned after his long day.

Kurt took a nibble of papadum dipped in spicy chutney and finally felt able to relax for the first time all day. He might only have an hour or so with Adam, but he was going to savor it.

“So when is the cast list going out?” Adam asked, sipping at his drink. “I’m sure that everyone is excited.”

“We’re supposed to be notified tomorrow about what role we’ll have in the chorus,” Kurt answered. “It’s kind of nice not being anxious over whether or not we get a part. I think that everyone is just happy to have the opportunity to be in the production in any capacity. Even Rachel isn’t acting like a total lunatic, which is rather nice for a chance.”

“I do have to say that I’m a trifle envious,” Adam teased. “They never invited drama majors to be in any of the musical productions before.”

“I’m really happy that so many of our Apples auditioned. It’s going to be a lot of fun to have so many friends to work with,” Kurt insisted. “And I can’t wait to see what the stage looks like once the prop and costuming students get hold of things.”

The Englishman smiled fondly at Kurt’s enthusiasm. “I’m sure that everything will be grand. And once you have the dates of the performances, I’ll be able to see if I can swing a quick visit to New York to see it. I’m afraid that it’s all going to depend on what city we’re performing in, but I should be able to manage at least a night off.”

Kurt felt his heart warm at his boyfriend’s insistence on being there for a school production when he had his own job to worry about. “Thanks for the reminder of why I love you, but don’t worry if you can’t,” he maintained. “As much as I would love for you to cheer me on while I’m standing in the background, I’m going to more than understand if you can’t.”

“Well, we’ll see how things go,” Adam promised as their waiter set out bowls of rice and curry in front of them and a basket of fresh naan. “In the meantime, let me be proud of my gorgeous, insanely talented boyfriend. Even standing in the background, you’re worth watching.”

Kurt couldn’t help from laughing. “If you’re looking to get laid when you get home from work tonight, you’re off to a good start.”

“Oh? I wasn’t aware that I had to put in extra effort,” Adam teased, his eyes twinkling with the knowledge that he was egging the younger man on. “Usually all I have to do is breathe and you’re all over me.”

“Sweetie… I love you. But keep this up and you’ll be saying goodbye to any chance for a blow job for the foreseeable future,” Kurt warned half-playfully. “I’d think you’d want to get plenty of below-the-belt time in before you leave, so don’t ruin it.”

Adam couldn’t help from laughing as Kurt primly lifted a forkful of lamb vindaloo to his mouth and blew on it delicately before tasting the fiery stew. Kurt’s increasing love of all things hot and peppery was a never ending source of amusement for the older man, leaving him to wonder if Kurt would ever find his limitations. He’d yet to see Kurt limited in any capacity and doubted that this would be much different, though he’d probably draw the line at eating hot coals.

“Then again, with the way you seem determined to turn yourself into a fire-breathing dragon, perhaps I’d best keep your mouth away from my tender bits,” Adam quipped, enjoying his flavorful but much tamer tikka masala.

Kurt’s eyebrow arched at his boyfriend’s teasing. “Just for that, I’d say that you and your right hand should get reacquainted, because the two of you are going to be exclusive for the foreseeable future.”

“You and me both,” Adam reminded him, his smile fading at the unwanted reminder that they would be separating in the not so distant future. His expression fell as it dawned on him just what he said. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry…. I didn’t mean…”

Kurt’s gaze softened and he reached out to take Adam’s hand in his. “Hush. It’s okay,” he assured the older man. “We’ll deal with this. But in the meantime, I just want to enjoy the time we have together and not worry so much about the future. It’ll come and we’ll handle it.”

He speared a cube of tender lamb with his fork and held it out to Adam. “Want a taste?”

Normally Adam would shy away from such fiery food. He probably would never understand the kind of pleasure that Kurt seemed to find in parboiling his tongue with whatever mutant capsicum the chef decided to toss into the pan, but he refused to back away from a shared experience that they would be able to laugh about in the future.

Eyeing the offered morsal dubiously as of Kurt were trying to feed him napalm, Adam manned up and opened his mouth and allowed Kurt to slip the fork between his lips. Heat from the spicy curry washed over his tongue and Adam fought against his own resistance to accept the food that his lover found so alluring. Warmth from the chilies and curry blended with a sharp bite of vinegar and beneath it all, the sweet flavor of young lamb. A scorching but still delicious balance of contrasts.

Much like the young man watching him with a teasing smile on his lips. Kurt was surprisingly simple and complex all at once. He was upfront about his flaws, which were considerable, but shy about his virtues. He was sweet and generous and loving, while at the same time as prickly as a hedgehog and would hold a grudge to the grave. A bit of fire and ice to ensure that one could never be bored in his presence.

“It’s delicious,” Adam granted, giving his young lover a sly glance. “Maybe later we’ll have to test how fireproof some parts of our bodies really are.”

The teasing tone in Adam’s voice caused the amused look in Kurt’s eyes to become more heated. “I’ll make sure that the ice tray is fully loaded for us,” he promised impishly.

Something about the teasing tone in Kurt’s voice just went right to Adam’s balls, and the prospect of Kurt’s wonderful hot mouth on his body followed by the sting of ice were not the kind of mental images that he needed right before starting his long shift at the bar. His lover, of course, just sat there smirking like a little demon at him as he squirmed in his seat.

“Just remember, love… turnabout is fair play,” Adam warned, a lustful edge coloring his voice. Leaving Kurt to spend the evening alone and on edge as he waited for Adam’s return was more than fair in his opinion.

The younger man’s grin was completely unrepentant. “Bring it on, big guy.”

* * *

Those that knew Rachel Berry best accepted that that among her many qualities, being a morning person was something that she was especially proud of. From the time she was in grade school, she had always been able to wake up early and quickly, ready to spring into action least any moment of daylight that could bring her closer to her dreams be wasted. Whether it was waking for an early morning class or to get her exercises in before the day officially began, her body was primed and ready to go the instant that her eyes opened.

This morning there was something particularly exciting to look forward too. The cast list for Les Miz was to be posted and she was looking forward to seeing what role she would play in the show. Being as familiar as she was, she could imagine herself in any one of a number of ensemble positions, though she did have hopes for something that gave her some room to show her improving acting chops.

She took her laptop off of her night table and powered it up before logging into the school website. Then she got her phone, knowing that Kurt would already be awake since he had an eight o’clock Diction class.

“Good morning,” he greeted brightly, answering the call almost immediately.

“Were you up waiting for me?” she teased.

“Nope. Never got to sleep last night,” he chuckled “Though I think I did wear Adam out. He’s out like a light.”

Rachel couldn’t help from laughing. “I don’t want to know the details, but you are so much fun when you’re sleep deprived.”

“It was worth it,” Kurt insisted. “Let me tell you, there are things that Adam can do that…”

“La la la! Not listening!” Rachel giggled, feeling her cheeks warm as she tried very hard not to think about Kurt and Adam together. While she was no more immune than most girls to the idea of two such gorgeous men, there just was something wrong about picturing Kurt having sex. He was like her brother!

“So are you ready?” Kurt asked, unable to keep the playful tone out of his voice.

“I was just waiting for you,” she shot back, opening the email folder waiting for her. “Now if you’ll just stop bragging about your boyfriend’s sexual prowess…”

“I was wondering how long your zen act was going to hold,” Kurt teased. “Okay… On the count of three…”

As expected, the list was an exceptionally long one, with well what looked like well over fifty students in total cast. “Wow. They really are looking to totally fill the stage,” Rachel remarked. “This is going to make some of the bigger numbers look and sound absolutely amazing.”

“I like some of the casting choices for the leads,” Kurt said. “Professor Carmody made some interesting choices, but I think that it’s going to really work.”

Rachel saw the name of the student cast as Eponine and felt herself nodding. She only knew the senior by reputation, but knew that she would acquit herself admirably in the part. “I really can’t fault any of her choices. But then, she had some amazing students to choose from.”

Her eyes scanned down to the list for the chorus parts and was thankful that everyone was listed in alphabetical order so she found her name quickly.

Berry, Rachel B.: Chorus – Act One: Solo (Lovely Ladies), Act Two: Solo (Turning)

“Kurt! I got two solos!” she exclaimed, bouncing elatedly on her bed. To have one in each act would give her just enough focus to satisfy her.

“I see! You get to be a prostitute! I’m so proud of you!” he laughed.

“Oh shush,” she admonished, giggling in her excitement. “Let me see about you…”

Her eyes scanned down the list for Kurt’s name and she felt herself smiling widely at the entry.

Hummel, Kurt E.: Chorus – Act One: Solo (Work Song) Understudy (Enjolras)

“Oh my God… Kurt, this is fantastic,” Rachel praised sincerely. “I didn’t think they’d be casting anyone from our class as understudies.”

“Neither did I, but it’s nice to be considered,” he admitted, sounding more than a little surprised to her. Even if he never got to take the stage in the role, Rachel knew that it was a huge credit to him to be assigned the responsibility. He would have to learn a significant role as well as his place in the ensemble numbers.

She couldn’t help from being envious, but knew that it would be a huge burden for Kurt to carry, with little promise of real reward outside of his early solos in the show. It made sense for him to be chosen for the spot since he’d already proven that he could learn two roles at the same time from his time with the Shakespeare Festival.

“It looks like all of us got a little something in the show,” Kurt nodded, very pleased to see all of their friends listed.

Rachel checked the names of their friends and couldn’t help from giggling. “Well, Katya gets to be a prostitute with me. Nice to see that I won’t be alone in my infamy.”

She could almost mentally see Kurt nodding to himself as he looked over the list. “And it looks like all of my Apples that auditioned get to be in the chorus. They really are pulling in every warm body they can.”

“It’s going to be nice to have so many friends around us for this,” Rachel insisted. “I know that it’s going to be a lot of work, but it’ll probably be a lot of fun.”

“Definitely. Well, I’m going to hang up and give Adam the news,” Kurt informed her. “And Rach? Congratulations. I’m really glad that you got those solos.”

Rachel felt her smile widen at his sincere compliment. “I’ll see you at school, Mr. Understudy. And take it easy on your old man there.”

Kurt laughed before hanging up, leaving Rachel a moment to savor this small but very tangible triumph. It wasn’t as huge an accomplishment as a Broadway lead or Kurt’s star turn this past summer, but it was an affirmation that she was moving forward. This was the evidence that she so very desperately needed to show that she had maybe begun to repair the damage that she’d done to her reputation.

Checking her clock, she knew that it was awfully early to be calling her fathers, but she couldn’t resist the need to tell them her good news. She hardly thought that they’d be mad would very likely be booking their plane tickets the instant they heard.

* * *

“Kurt! Kurt!” Mei squealed as she rushed up to her friend and flung herself into his arms. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“For what, sweetness?” he asked, giving her a quick hug. He wasn’t surprised to see several other members of the group coming up behind her wearing wide grins on their faces.

She gave him an absolutely brilliant smile. “For convincing us to audition for the musical,” she reminded him.

“Oh… that little thing?” he said offhandedly, his tone fondly teasing. “I saw that everyone’s in chorus.”

“And I even got a solo line,” Mei proclaimed. “It’s not much, but considering I’m not a voice major I’ll take it.”

“And we saw that you’re also an understudy. That’s so amazing,” Mitchel insisted.

Kurt felt a small swell of pride at her praise, having learned to be honest enough with himself to recognize what kind of accomplishment he’d managed. If Professor Carmody thought enough of him to make him understudy to such a significant character, the odds were that he would have actually be cast in a role had he been a junior. While he would have loved to actually play a real part, he knew that this was probably the best he could possibly be offered.

“Well, I’m just glad that I’ll be on the stage,” Tommy said. “Put me in the background for ‘Master of the House’ and I’m more than fine.”

Jules gave Kurt’s shoulder a supportive squeeze. “Well, us tech students are also going to be busy on this, even if we don’t get the limelight. Seriously though… no one would ever have auditioned if you hadn’t pushed them.”

“Well, you guys are really talented and it’s long past time for the Apples to be taken a bit more seriously,” Kurt stated. “And what person wouldn’t want to do a show like this with all of his friends around him?”

Mei kissed him on the cheek, positively beaming. “Well, we are thrilled and this is going to be a lot of fun.”

Kurt gave her a quick squeeze. “I’ll see you all later at practice,” he promised. “It looks like it’s probably going to be one of our last actual Apple rehearsals for awhile, and we’ve got a lot of things to figure out. I don’t want to lose our new members because we’re going to be focused on this production. That’s not fair to them.”

Jules nodded in agreement. “We’ll figure something out,” he said assuredly. “Even if we’re not able to have regular practices, I’m sure that we’ll find some time to get together.”

Mei hugged Kurt again before they dispersed and headed of to their respective classes, babbling happily amongst themselves. Kurt felt himself smiling, happy over their obvious delight at the opportunity presented to them. It’s been a long time since he faced the prospect of being in a production with so many friends around him.

He’d known that his time at NYADA would mean working harder than he’d ever expected to in his life, and being pushed in a manner that no teacher ever cared to before with him. But it was the moments like this that made putting himself through this meat grinder so very much worth it.

* * *

Adam sipped his tea as he reviewed his final schedule from the producers, realizing that this was the best that he could possibly expect. He was grateful that rehearsals would be held in New York, so he’d at least get to spend the holidays with Kurt. The tour was expected to end right around the time that Kurt’s spring semester would be winding down, after which a decision would be made about a New York opening.

He still felt terribly conflicted about having taken the job. On one hand, he had needed very much to find work and he was hardly at the stage of his career where he could afford to be too choosy. And this was a good role in an intriguing production. It was a good opportunity for him and he was glad that Kurt convinced him to take the role. He knew that it was a rare chance to actually originate a part and build professional contacts, as well as giving him the opportunity to explore more of the country that he was building his life in.

It was leaving Kurt that troubled him so deeply. His lover had been nothing but supportive about his taking this job and Adam was deeply torn about leaving him for several months. So far Kurt had been taking this very well. Too well, a small, dark spot in his heart kept insisting.

It wasn’t totally unreasonable for him to be anxious, he told himself. This was an unexpected burden he was placing on his boyfriend when Kurt should be focused on school and he wouldn’t be surprised for Kurt to be upset by the disruption of their plans. Or that Kurt might harbor regrets about investing so much in their relationship in just as Adam was running out the door.

So far, Kurt had handled the disruption with his usual aplomb and showed no real evidence of distress about their plans being upended. Adam couldn’t help from wondering how long that would last, because the closer than they got to the day he had to leave the more the pressure would be placed on Kurt to bear.

He looked up at the sound of a key being inserted into the lock of their door and Kurt walking in, looking absolutely delectable in his oxblood leather jacket and a check print scarf wrapped about his elegant throat. “Hi love,” he greeted, getting up to give Kurt a kiss. “What did they say?”

Kurt wrinkled his nose a bit as he slipped off his jacket and draped it over the back of a chair. “Well, they’re willing let me sign a lease for the apartment since I appear to be so responsible, and they’re being generous by not raising the rent. But want for a full year’s commitment. That would lock us in until next winter.”

“That’s not so bad,” Adam surmised. It was actually better than he expected and they’d managed to survive living in close quarters so far.

Kurt shrugged. “I was really hoping that we’d be in a bigger place by then, and to be honest I’m a little concerned about being able to work enough hours to cover things. With school and rehearsals… I’m just not sure what I can really manage.”

Adam nodded understandingly, a trifle disappointed but he fully understood Kurt’s reservations. It was one thing to have roommates that could pick up the slack when money got tight. Kurt would be totally on his own and not only have to cover the whole rent, but utilities and groceries. The idea that Kurt might be left short on money for groceries at times in order to keep a roof over his head made Adam’s stomach clench uncomfortably. The last thing he ever wanted was for Kurt to be left struggling in order to support his career.

“I’ll be making decent money doing the tour,” he reminded his boyfriend. “I can certain help cover things while I’m away.”

Kurt shook his head firmly. “No… that money you’re going to need after the tour ends until you either find another role or until your show gets a commitment for a New York staging,” he reminded Adam.

The older man sighed, wanting to argue the point even knowing that Kurt was right. It was something that they both learned in their first year at NYADA in the required Managing an Acting Career class. It was easy for inexperienced actors to get dazzled by a sudden rush of money that came with a job, and that they could leave themselves with nothing when the job ended if they weren’t careful. He needed a financial cushion to support himself in between jobs and he was thankful that Kurt was mature enough and responsible enough to recognize that fact.

“What about a roommate?” Adam suggested. “I know that the place is a bit on the small side…”

He didn’t finish the thought. It wouldn’t work, he recognized even as he was saying the words. It was one thing for lovers to share such a tiny space, but for Kurt to manage with someone that he wasn’t sleeping with… no.

“The girls suggested that I consider moving back into the loft, but with Artie and Tina there now, it just won’t work,” Kurt explained. “And none of our friends have room for another roommate and to be honest… I just don’t want to live with someone else. Not like that.”

Kurt sat down and ran a hand through his hair to smooth it back, gathering his thoughts. “I… I stopped by the housing office at school the other day, just to ask some questions. There would be no problem with me taking a room in the dorms for the spring semester. It would cost a lot less than trying to cover rent and expenses and with my grades I’d even qualify for a merit grant to help cover my fees.”

Adam felt his heart sink a little bit, but he quickly recognized that it would make sense for Kurt to move into the dorms while he was away.

“I did some thinking on the way home and the more I thought about it, the more sense it made,” Kurt explained, looking up at his boyfriend with eyes that pleaded for understanding. “Even if I could manage things financially, I just don’t know if I’d want to be living entirely on my own. It just seemed like a lot to deal with on top of school and work and rehearsals. Doing all the shopping and laundry and cooking for myself.”

And just being alone. That went unsaid, but Adam knew his lover well enough to pick up on Kurt’s concern loud and clear. Being alone all the time, spending his nights with no one to talk to if his friends weren’t free. Kurt wasn’t emotionally needy by nature and was so astonishingly self-sufficient, but Adam understood his concerns about becoming too isolated. For someone so used to taking care of himself, it would be easy for Kurt to slip into a solitary shell and not recognize just how lonely he was until he was completely boxed in.

It might not be an ideal solution but it was the best one for them, Adam recognized. “That sounds more than fine,” he granted, giving Kurt a reassuring smile. “We can put all of our furniture into storage for the time being and I’ll have time to find us a new flat when I get back to the city.”

Adam knew that he would have to make some arrangements of his own since he wouldn’t be having an apartment to come right back to, but he doubted that he would have trouble finding a friend with a couch that he could stay with until he found a new flat for himself and Kurt. He’d have a bit of time between the conclusion of his tour and the end of Kurt’s spring semester. All going well, they’d be in their new place by the start of summer.

“You’re not upset?” Kurt asked, looking up at Adam hesitantly. “I know this means giving up your apartment and…”

Adam quickly kissed him, easing Kurt’s concerns. “It’s going to be fine,” he assured Kurt. “Now that I’m thinking about it, I feel a lot better knowing that you were staying someplace secure and not so alone while I’m away. The dorms aren’t at all bad and you’ll have some friends there. And a storage room is a lot less expensive than rent here. I don’t want to leave you stressed about trying to manage everything while I’m working.”

Kurt’s expression relaxed when he realized that Adam wasn’t opposed to the idea. “I was really afraid that you’d be upset,” he admitted. “I didn’t want you to lose your apartment and I feel like it’s a step backwards.”

Adam just smiled kindly, reaching up to smooth Kurt’s hair back from his face. “Not at all, darling,” he insisted. “Finding a new place isn’t that serious an issue and I’m more concerned with you feeling like you’re not taking on too much to manage. It’s a lot different living totally by yourself and managing everything, and I know that you’re going to have a lot on your plate to handle the next few months.”

The look of relief in Kurt’s tore at Adam. He’d never wanted his lover to be put under such stress over his aspirations. Kurt had his own future to focus on as well, and Adam didn’t want him to risk his future while Adam built his career. They would both have to make some major compromises, and Adam would not allow all the sacrifices to be made by his partner.

He opened up his arms to embrace the younger man, wanting only to express his support for what Kurt needed to get him through the weeks that were certain to be difficult for the both of them. There were still so many issues that they needed to resolve and things to discuss, but he didn’t have the heart to disturb the fragile peace that they’d reached at that moment.

Adam desperately wanted this experience to be a new beginning for both of them. But how could there be a beginning if there wasn’t an ending?

* * *

The first full cast meeting for Les Miserables was held on a Friday afternoon in the largest of NYADA’s auditoriums. Besides all of voice and theater students in attendance, Professor Carmody had also called in the prop, costuming and technical students who would be working behind the scenes. It was the first time that all of the students really got a sense of the entire scope of the production. It almost looked like the entire student body was in attendance.

“I know,” Professor Carmody acknowledged a little smile on her face as she faced the assembly. “It is a lot to take in. Our production is going to be on the scale that we would see only in some of the largest professional shows. And for us to pull that off successfully, we need each part of the whole working together.”

She looked out on the students, seeing that they had self-segregated to some degree. Voice students sat with other voice students, while dramatics majors clustered together. The technical students kept to their own group, used to being ignored by the performance-focused students. That was something she was going to address now.

“This show won’t work unless we all pull together as a single team,” she waned. “No one element is more important than the other. Our actors may get most of the audience’s attention, but they won’t impress anyone very much if they’re standing on a bare stage in their street clothes. Just as our technical students aren’t going to make an impression on anyone if there is no one on stage to focus those elements on. It all has to come together as a seamless whole.”

She paused to let that sink in, hoping that they really grasped what she was telling them. She knew from personal experience that it was easy for those on stage to disregard the contributions of the technical students, and for the technical students to feel that their hard work is overlooked in favor of the performers.

“We also are going to be joined by several very talented child actors who will be playing Gavroche and Young Cosette and Eponine,” she advised, filling in the blank that she was sure that many of the students probably had in the backs of their minds. “They are performers with a local theater group and are remarkable singers and actors who might one day be students here themselves. I hope that you’ll be as supportive to them as I know you will be to one another since you are going to be in the very unique position of being able to help teach and guide them at this early stage of their performing careers. The experience they get working with us is going to have a big influence on their futures as actors.

“Now starting next week we’ll have our first official rehearsal. Chorus members will get their sheets with their solos and understudies will work alongside the performers they’ll be shadowing. Costumers will be scheduling everyone to come in for measurements so they can get started on wardrobe and our set builders and lighting techs will start designing the stage. This is going to be a tremendous effort on all our parts, but I have every confidence that this production will exceed the expectations that I have.”

Once they got the message of just what they’d let themselves in for and how high her expectations were for their behavior during the course of the production, she dismissed the group with an urging to start really learning the material so they could hit the ground running. Once the students had filed out of the room, she turned to see Carmen standing in the wings of the stage, having watched her talk with the students.

“Keeping an eye on me?” she teased, a wry smile on her face.

Madam Tibideaux just smiled, stepping out to join her old friend. “Just seeing what was going on since it’s going to influence how I handle some of my students over the next few months,” she advised. “You’ve given them quite a challenge.”

Professor Carmody looked about the empty stage, her mind already racing ahead as she considered the rapidly approaching rehearsals. “I know. But I think that it’s going to be good for them. Our seniors and juniors will get a real taste of what they can expect in the world out there, and our younger students… I know that a t lot of them come in thinking that they’re the most talented things ever and...” She paused, gathering her thoughts on just what she wanted to say.

“Some of them do have a certain sense of entitlement and I want to nip that in the bud,” she explained. “It’s a problem that I’ve been seeing for some time. All of our students are valuable and have skills that are vital to the theater world, but how often have we seen our acting and voice students totally disregard the costumers? Or the set builders or the lighting crew. They sometimes act as if those students have no purpose except to showcase the performers and they don’t see how every single element is vital to putting a production together.”

The Dean nodded, in full agreement with her assessment. “There’s always been a pretty rigid hierarchy here, and I agree… the performing students do often tend to treat the production side of things rather callously.”

Professor Carmody just chuckled. “They can be a bunch of arrogant little snots,” she insisted. “I know it’s not just in our school. We’ve both seen plenty of cases out in the world.

“But my whole point is for everyone to be equally invested and that no one is more important than anyone else. The leads are no more important than anyone in the ensemble or the lighting techs or the students designing the programs.”

“Well, at the very least that should help you avoid too many students putting on airs,” Madam Tibideaux said sagely. “It’s a hard balance that we have sometimes as teachers. Our students are talented and their abilities should be encouraged, but not in a way that puts others down.”

Professor Carmody gathered up her things to follow her out of the auditorium. “Well, I’m glad that you see it my way,” she said thankfully. “Because with the scale of this production, I’m not going to have time for handholding or breaking up fights. And I’d hate to cut anyone because they forget their manners.”

The other teacher just smiled, giving her friend’s hand an encouraging squeeze. “I’ll do what I can to head the worst ones off at the pass,” she promised.

And there were a few that she knew that would probably need a bit of watching on her part.

* * *

Rachel took a quick sip of water, delicately swishing it about her mouth before swallowing and moistening her throat. Madam Tibideaux was not taking it at all easy on her, putting her through a rigorous vocal workout and continuing to press her on the weaknesses in her performance style. It was hard to have her deficiencies brought to her attention so often and she had to mentally remind herself that this was for her benefit. How was she ever going to achieve her goals if she ignored the lessons that her teacher was putting so much effort in imparting to her?

Before NYADA, Rachel would be hard pressed to remember a single teacher that was so critical of everything that she did, and she doubted that she ever had one that nitpicked on her flaws the way Madam Tibideaux did. Or who hadn’t couched their careful critiques with reminders of how talented and unique she was as to avoid offending or and instigating a tantrum.

To Madam Tibideaux, talent was the smallest part of her interest in working with students. The ones at this school were a given, and Rachel was constantly reminded that she was surrounded by immensely talented performers. She knew that she had power and polish, but it was Madam Tibideaux’s opinion that she wasn’t a particularly interesting performer because she was so reluctant to push beyond what she was already comfortable doing.

Madam Tibideaux wasn’t critical simply for the purpose of being critical. She had made it abundantly clear that however schooled or talented her students were, it was only a starting point and she expected them to progress in their development. Those that weren’t able to were a waste of her time and there was nothing that their august teacher despised more than having her time and effort wasted. That was something that Rachel knew from personal experience.

Rachel knew that her teacher’s assessment of her was harsh, but not entirely incorrect. She did tend to select material that showcased the best qualities of her voice and there were certain composers and songs that she tended to gravitate towards. And after a lifetime of training herself to imitate her favorite singers, it was a hard to climb out of that rut. Her efforts outside of her comfort zone were, admittedly, a bit hit and miss.

This lesson was just such a case. Madam Tibideax had wanted to see more of her singing where her power was reined in and not used as a crutch to make up for the lack of real emotional connection. She had made an effort with a rendition of “A Change in Me” that Rachel thought showed a softer, more introspective performance style and would hopefully please her incredibly fastidious teacher.

Madam Tibideaux listened closely, paying close attention to every word and breath that Rachel uttered. Her focus was not just on what notes Rachel sang, but how she sang them. When Rachel was finished, her teacher gave her a brief nod, a look of approval apparent in her dark eyes.

“That is much more of the effort that I wanted to see from you,” the older woman complimented. “You’re a much more engaging singer when you’re not actively trying to impress with the power of your voice.”

Rachel nodded, a small smile on her face at the compliment. “I’ve been told that before, and admittedly it took some time for the lesson to sink in.”

“Power and projection are important, but they can be overused,” her teacher advised her. “And when you overuse your power, we miss that you really do have a lovely vocal tone.

“And I do see you showing more real connection with the material,” Madam Tibideaux said thoughtfully. “I’m definitely getting more of a sense that you’re really understanding what the song is intended to communicate and not just paying attention to how it was performed by others in the past. That’s going to be vital to your future as a singer.”

Rachel carefully absorbed her teacher’s assessment, recognizing it for the compliment that it was. “Thank you, Madam,” she said sincerely. “I’ve been having more opportunity to experiment with material the past few weeks.”

“Good,” Madam Tibideaux said, nodding in approval. “I’m glad to see that from you. It’s very easy for a singer to get complacent and lock themselves in a trap. Even the best singers in the world have to keep pushing themselves, otherwise they’ll just end up doing repeated nostalgia shows.”

Rachel knew full well that she had done just that, resting on her laurels and remained in place while others around her passed her by. And it had taken some time for her to grasp that it wasn’t them in the wrong, denying her what she believed was hers by right. She had done that to herself.

Emerging from that hole had been painful and humbling, but she was digging her way out. And she would be all the better for it.

“I understand that you are in the ensemble for the spring musical,” Madam Tibideaux said, opening the door for Rachel to smile and feel like she had something to be proud of.

“Yes… and I’m very excited about it,” she insisted, her expression bright with the excitement was that she could not hide.

“And you have a solo? Let me see,” Madam Tibideaux requested, holding out her hand for Rachel to hand over her book.

“I’m doing a solo in both act one and two,” Rachel explained, opening her script to the bookmarked pages, her solos highlighted.

“Hmmm… ‘Lovely Ladies’,” Madam Tibideaux considered thoughtfully as she looked at the lines for Rachel’s solo. “Interesting.”

“I know it’s not a lot but I think I can really do something with this,” Rachel insisted.

“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” her teacher agreed. “This is a complex song, because it starts out so brightly. As if the prostitutes are enjoying their lives. It’s only at the end where your solo line comes in that we get the real tragedy of their existences.”

She looked at her student appraisingly. “Your lines require those emotional walls to come down. So don’t be afraid to really embrace that character. It’s going to be pivotal in Fantine’s story progression.”

Rachel nodded in understanding, her expression brightening at her teacher’s guidence.

“When you’re in the ensemble it’s very important that you see the musical as a whole,” Madam Tibideaux advised. “You may not feel as if you are getting very much in the way of individual focus, but each role is a thread in an overall tapestry.

“Some threads are bigger, certainly,” she granted. “But all are important. And all are needed to make the full picture. Do you understand?”

Rachel nodded and couldn’t help from smiling. “In other words, there are no small parts. Only small actors?”

Her teacher seemed taken aback at having the lesson she was trying to impart to bluntly rephrased, but nodded and couldn’t resist smiling in return. “Well, I was trying to put it in a more subtle way,” she said, a trace of amusement in her voice. “But Ms. Berry, let me be frank with you… this is going to be a challenge because I never got the impression that you were ever happy to be a supporting player.”

Rachel had to grant her that. Her behavior the few times when someone else was given the spotlight over her was lacking, to say the very least. She made many of the people who’d worked with her in the past pretty miserable on account of her demands and outbursts.

“I know that you imagine yourself in one of the lead parts,” Madam Tibideaux informed her. “And you’re going to have to watch someone else play those roles and probably do them very differently than you would want to play them. And knowing you as well as I think I’ve come to, it’s going to be hard to step back and not imagine how the show might work with you as a lead.”

Rachel felt herself flush a bit, knowing that her teacher was right. She probably would be doing just that, and seeing someone else playing Eponine… that was going to be hard.

“I’m not going to lie,” Rachel admitted reluctantly, her voice soft and betraying her uncertainty. “I know that this is going to be a challenge for me. I know that my reputation for working well with others is not the best.”

Madam Tibideaux chuckled a bit at her student’s obvious discomfort, drawing a rueful smile from the younger woman.

“Yes, I know that’s an understatement,” Rachel acknowledged honestly. “Last year was a big wake up call for me, and I think that I finally got it through my skull that if I continued acting that way that I was only hurting my own prospects. I need to show that I can keep myself under control and work with the rest of the cast in whatever capacity they need of me.”

She composed herself, keeping her expression placid and her voice calm. “As much as I want a lead part… and make no mistake, if they offered it I would jump at the chance… but as much as I want that, I know that I need to show that I can be in the ensemble and be a productive member. This is going to be hard but I have to challenge myself. Otherwise how am I going to show that I’m not as self-centered as everyone thinks that I am?”

She would never admit it to her teacher, but despite knowing that she had more than earned her selfish reputation, it hurt to have people constantly expecting the worst from her. It had been a hard lesson for Rachel to accept that the reason that others viewed her so negatively was due entirely to her own behavior. For the longest time she shielded herself from criticism by insisting that her critics and rivals were motivated by jealousy of her obvious gifts. Accepting that she alone was responsible had been a painful lesson and one that she still struggled with. Her arrogance had nearly cost her everything, including the best friend that she’d ever have in her life.

And watching Kurt, using him as her example, had gone a long way in moderating her conduct. Kurt was tremendously talented and was increasingly confident in showing it, but people still liked him and wanted to be around him. He didn’t use his gifts as a shield to keep others at bay, but he drew them in and surrounded himself with those who wanted to work with him. Rachel had always envied Kurt’s ability to make friends once he’d dropped his icy walls and let them in.

She still had a lot to learn, and she had no doubt that she’d make some stumbles along the way but her path was now clear. If she could keep her head and focus on her work, she could earn a lot of good will and repair the damage that she’d done to her reputation. Rachel knew that it wouldn’t be easy since she was her own worst enemy, but having her friend at her side to show her the way and perhaps help keep her from letting her ego from running away with her.

But it was all on her shoulders. And she knew that if she failed there might be no way to fix the damage.

“Well, let’s get back to work,” Madam Tibideaux urged, gazing at her student thoughtfully. “Let’s see what you do with one of your old favorites now, and see if you can’t personalize it a bit more this time.”

Rachel nodded and shifted her focus back to her training, quickly making the mental calculations on how she going to tailor “It Had to Be You” and avoid sounding like a Streisand impersonator. Taking a quick inhalation, she began to sing.

* * *

Kurt felt marginally better as he left the housing office. Not only was he able to confirm residency in the dorms for the spring, but he had managed to get a single and wouldn’t have to deal with a roommate. This would give him the best of both worlds. He would still be around his friends when he was in the mood to be social, but he would have a private space to retreat to when he needed his privacy.

Ideally he’d rather be in Adam’s little tiny apartment with the Englishman curled up around him at night, snoring in his ear. But they had to play the hand dealt to them, and he was genuinely thrilled for Adam’s opportunity. It was going to be a trial to deal with Adam being away from several months and figuring out how he was going to avoid dwelling on the older man’s continued absence.

Kurt never considered himself to be an especially clingy individual and he had nothing on his ex who spent months being the proverbial gum that he couldn’t scrape off his shoe after their breakup. But he’d be lying through his teeth if he tried to admit that he was fighting the urge to fling himself into Adam’s arms at every opportunity. Or that the thought of spending weeks apart cause his heart to clench painfully.

Kurt sighed as he placed his housing materials in his messenger bag and began the long walk back to their apartment. This wasn’t what he wanted at this stage of his life. Not with how much he loved Adam and wanted to get started on their lives together. There were so many things that they wanted to do and now… it felt like he was just going to have to put those dreams aside for the time being. When Adam returned home…

What would be of them? The girls had been right. None of them had been able to prevent their relationships from withering as time and distance took their tolls. It didn’t matter how much love they had. Nothing mattered once a few miles was put between them and the reasons to part overwhelmed any desire to stay together.

In a short time, Adam would be gone and immersed in a world that Kurt had barely gotten a taste of. He’s be busy traveling and performing, surrounded by other professional actors and he wouldn’t have time to think very much of his theater student boyfriend back in New York. Kurt didn’t think that Adam would cheat on him; that just wasn’t the Englishman’s way. Of all Kurt’s concerns, that was one that didn’t even cross his mind as a serious consideration. But how long would it take for him to start regretting that he tied himself to a silly schoolboy when the theater world had just started to open its doors to him?

No… He shook his head almost angrily. How could he think so little of what he and Adam shared? He knew that Adam loved him, and he adored the older man. But was that enough? It hadn’t been before and he hated that he was letting what Blaine did put a fear into him that didn’t belong here. Adam had done absolutely nothing to earn Kurt’s mistrust. It was his own weakness and fear getting the better of him here.

How could Adam leave knowing that Kurt as so afraid? Knowing his lover the way he did, Adam would probably give up the job and that was something Kurt could never let happen. He would never forgive himself if Adam sacrificed his career prospects in order to appease Kurt’s immature anxieties. Adam deserved a partner who could handle things and let him focus on his job, not a child who’d distract him from what he needed to do.

Adam had been so loving and supportive of Kurt even before their relationship officially began. He’d urged Kurt to spread his wings and seize every opportunity in his grasp. Kurt knew that the Englishman deserved significant credit for the confident performer that Kurt was growing into.

So now it was Adam’s turn to grow and soar. And Kurt would do whatever was necessary to give him that chance. Living in a dorm room for a few months was the absolute least he could do

He deserved just as much support in return. And Kurt could only hope that when it was over that he and Adam would be able to find their ways back together and build their relationship anew. The alternative, though, was what filled him with dread. And he’d fight with everything he had in him to avoid that from happening.

In the meantime, he was going to savor every moment that he could squeeze out of Adam’s remaining time with him. Hopefully it would be enough to hold him through their long separation.

Kurt returned to their tiny apartment to find Adam in the kitchen singing to himself as he started preparations for their dinner. Kurt paused at the door, savoring the sight of the man stirring a pan of vegetables and playfully adding dashes of seasoning and his hips moved to the music in his head. A pot of water was on the boil for pasta and a loaf of ciabatta sat on the counter, ready for slicing.

“Cheer up, sleepy Jean,” he warbled as he dumped a can of tomatoes into his pan with the vegetables and gave it a stir, making a quick sauce. “Oh, what can it mean to a daydream believer and a homecoming queen…”

Kurt dropped his bag off at the table and laid his jacket over the back of a chair, coming up to embrace Adam from behind. “You once thought of me as a white knight on a steed,” he joined in, drawing a surprised and delighted smile from his boyfriend. “Now you know how happy I can be.”

Adam turned so that he could hold Kurt, looking down at him adoringly. “Oh, and our good time start and end, without dollar one to spend,” he answered, his blue eyes shining. “But how much, baby, do we really need?”

He pulled Kurt along with him, dancing about the kitchen as they sang together. “Cheer up, sleepy Jean. Oh, what can it mean to a daydream believer and a home coming queen…”

Kurt leaned into him, letting Adam lead and laughing delightedly as they sang. He savored the feel of those muscular arms about him and when Adam dipped him back to steal a kiss, Kurt couldn’t resist clinging to him. And for a moment, Kurt was able to push aside his worries and just enjoy the moment shared with the man he loved. And to lose the concern that these moments were coming to an end.

* * *

Song sung by Adam and Kurt: "Daydream Believer" by the Monkees

#kadam fic #kurt hummel #adam crawford #rachel berry #santana lopez #tina cohen chang #Carmen tibideaux #Adam's Apples #nyada teachers and students #lol blaine #learning to fly

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