#normal after that one hit bc its like a ‘bit by a demon and lived’ effect like how needy absorbed some demon power from being bit by jennife

[loganscroftersstash]

Isn't That Us On That Poster?

hihi back at you with another logan centric fic bc. brainrot. i am so normal abt him and orange. teehee.

i purposefully left him unnamed for multiple reasons soooo yeah!!! i've had this idea since i saw this post by@volno-pesh. its been on my mind. literally since i first saw it. this is just inspired by that post a little bit (a lot. i did make a whole scene out of one of the pieces of art they made.. and used the lyric from the same song they did.. BUT YEAH) sooo feel free to go enjoy that art!! bc its so <333

Summary: Logan doesn't like his counterpart very much. Pairing: Logan & Orange Side (platonic) Word Count: 2042 Tags: Hurt/No Comfort, Logan-centric, angst :3

enjoy!! (crossposted on ao3!)

A fluke was all it was. Logan never lost control like that. He’s had outbursts before— poor puppet Roman bore the brunt of it, he hardly ever got so violent— but this? He’s never…

The moment lingers in his mind like the taste of iron in his mouth, replaying over and over again. Logan felt more like Anxiety than he did Logic, right now. What was Remus going to do with this? Was he going to do anything? Maybe he’d blackmail Logan, use the information to get him to do his dirty work or evil bidding, or maybe he wouldn’t do anything. There was no reason for what he did, he just did, after all. But the very thought that Remus had witnessed it made Logan’s stomach twist and turn.

As he watches Thomas rush out the door and trip over boxes, and gives one last look over to the mess of the apartment, he sinks out, defeated. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. This was his day. His day to help, to get through to Thomas and help him better achieve the best life he can possibly live. After all the hard work he’s done getting him organized, helping him and the others rationalize his intrusive thoughts— all the work that went into the very creation of the schedule itself! He’d done so much for so little and he was going to be demonized for getting upset with the fact that maybe, just maybe, he wanted a little recognition for once. Was it so much to ask for a thank you? If it was up to Patton it’d be mandated, if the Redux he was pulled from was any indication.

He rose back up in his room, feeling exhaustion slowly crawl up his spine and lay over him like a blanket made of lead. Logan knew he only had a minute or two to gather himself, collect his thoughts, and dry his eyes from the angry tears that threatened to spill over. He tossed his planner aside, for once uncaring of the way the pages landed sporadically on the bed and were sure to crease randomly, and took his glasses off. He set them on his dresser and pinched the bridge of his nose, moving his thumb and pointer finger up to rub at his temples as he let out a long sigh.

He was so tired...

Logan didn’t have time to be tired, though. He had a job and that was more important than his own exhaustion. He had to make sure that this little venture to the park was at least worth abandoning the entire day they’d planned out.

After a few long, arduous hours of watching, they’d finally been able to go home. Although the others were thrilled with not only the event but also the outcome, Logan just found himself feeling more bitter than he would’ve liked. He knew it was immature and a waste of time to hold a grudge… so he told himself not to.

Logan sank out, that same lead blanket weighing him down even more as he rises back up into his room. It holds him down as he trudges to his bathroom, flicking on the light and wincing at the usually welcome fluorescent lighting. He examines himself in the mirror, noting the slightly darker eye bags and the tousled hair, probably from him running his hands through it too much.

He takes off his glasses and sets them down, rubbing his eyes. He twists the cold tap on the sink and calmly watches as water flows from the faucet, hitting the white porcelain just loud enough to temporarily drown out his thoughts. He cups his hands beneath it and watches as they fill with water, before he leans down and splashes his face with it. The water makes him feel a little bit better, even if just for a moment. Logan repeats this twice more before he takes a towel, gently patting his face dry before he sets it down. He grabs his glasses and reframes them on his face, glancing up at his reflection once more before he flicks off the light. He closes the door to the bathroom and turns to face his bed again, only to be met with a figure clad in bright orange.

Logan jumps, his left hand bracing against the doorknob behind him and earning a chuckle from the other side. “Oh, Logan. Not expecting my visit?”

Logan glares at him. He’s still exhausted, even more so now after the date, but he couldn’t go to sleep with this… “What do you want?”

“Oh, nothing.” He grinned, baring his teeth in a way that only read as predatory to Logan. Like he’d tear him apart if he was given the very chance. “Just wanted to see you.”

An unlikely occurrence, Logan thinks. Either Janus didn’t care to show up or he was being truthful. “I’ll pretend that’s true. What is it that you really want?”

“To check in on you after what happened up there, silly!” He grinned, tilting his head as he spoke. “You put on quite a show… what a shame Thomas didn’t get to see the fireworks.”

Logan narrows his gaze. He’s doing his best to pick apart his words and dissect his mannerisms, but this bastard is too hard for him to read. If only he knew more about how or why he worked.. “It is not a shame. If Thomas had seen, that would create an even bigger rift between the two of us. I cannot create anymore metaphorical distance between us as he’s already having a hard time listening to me as it is. Furthermore, Thomas is already reeling from the revealing of Remus and Janus, you do not need to be added to the l—”

He burst out laughing, arms crossed over his chest as he did so. “Oh, Logan.” He murmured, shaking his head. “You’re positively adorable. You know that? You try so, so hard.” He rises from his spot on the other side’s bed, and Logan notes that the planner from earlier is still in ruin behind them, and crosses the room to stand directly in front of him. “And yet, you still fail time and time again?”

Logan hates how it gets to him. He knows that’s what he wants: to upset and get another rise out of him so he can take influence over him once more. Logan can’t let that happen. “I did not fail. Thomas redirected his attention to a task he deemed more important, and the other sides agreed. Our viewpoints did not align, but we still got some work accomplished today.”

“Oh, is that how you’d describe it?” He laughs, shaking his head. “Because personally, to me it looked more like Thomas tossing you to the side yet again, and you letting him.” He grinned, but there was no joy behind it. Amusement, more like. “Doesn’t that hurt, Logan? Make you angry?”

“You are trying to get a rise out of me; I am going to continue to ignore you.” Logan removed himself from between the orange clad side and the door, instead walking towards his dresser. “Sure, I wish the others would appreciate my work more, but that does not mean I get to stop working completely and take it out on them. Outbursts get me nowhere.”

“I disagree. But, to each their own,” The other hummed, leaning against the very door he’d just had Logan trapped by. “But… you wouldn’t have to keep having outbursts like this if you quit dealing with their bullshit.”

Logan sighs. This is typical. “Your crude words mean nothing.”

“Words, crude or not, mean everything, Logan. You of all sides should know that.” He smiled again, baring his teeth in a way that Logan just despises in the deepest pits of his stomach. “Unless they’re yours.”

Logan turns from his place at the dresser, cut off once more, “Don’t you get tired, Logan? They’ve stopped caring about you,” He begins to walk over, slowly. “When you started out in these silly little videos, you were so… expressive. You were much less of a prude, you actually had fun! You and padre played dress up together, you wore your onesie and didn’t have a care about it— you expressed yourself.” He approaches Logan in full, pushing his back against the dresser. “And then, a switch flipped at one point. Suddenly, you were all business! No feelings allowed! You stopped smiling, you stopped letting yourself feel joy or anything you considered to be a waste of time, but worst of all, Logan?” He leans down, directly in his face, “You became what they all wanted you to be: An empty, emotionless robot with no feelings, and no other purpose than to answer questions and calm fears when the moment arrived, and when your moment had passed, you could be disposed of.”

Hot, angry tears sting Logan‘s eyes, threatening to spill over. He glares at the now blur of orange in front of him, tempted to yell, scream, hit, punch, do whatever it took to get him and his painfully honest words out of his room. He thinks he can waltz in here and just insult him like this, in the one place he’s supposed to have safety, and destroy that for him as well? Logan knew deep down it was all to get him to react, to upset him and make him lash out again, but all that weighed right now on Logan’s mind was the painfully heavy fact that the other hadn’t lied.

“Get. Out.” Logan spits, fighting back the tears as best as he can.

“I don’t think I will.” The orange side grins back at him. “Admit it. You want to get angry. You want to make them all shut up and listen, don’t you? You want the order, the control, don’t you, Logan? You want to be listened to.”

“So what if I do?!” Logan shouts, near startling himself with the sudden outburst. Tears spill over and fall onto his cheeks, burning red from crying and the anger welling in his chest. “You’d feel just as bad as I do if everything you did that they didn’t deem necessary was discarded!”

“See? There it is,” The tone he used is patronizing, speaking to Logan as if he is some sort of little harmless animal. “You just have to say that! Talk all about how angry it makes you feel, or, alternatively, you take control back by force. I could help you with that, you know.”

Logan shoves him, steadying himself on the dresser as he straightens his posture. “No. I will most certainly not be doing that. I do not need you.”

Suddenly there’s a hand on his jaw and an arm around his waist, spinning him around and pulling him flush against the citrus colored side. “Oh, Logic, don’t be silly! Just look at us!” He forces his head in the direction of the mirror in front of the dresser, earning a glare from the other. The dark blue and bright orange go disgustingly well together, but that doesn’t make Logan anymore trusting. “Don’t we look wonderful together? Come on, now… you mustn’t think you can do this by yourself.” He releases his grip on the other’s jaw and spins him around, “Let me assist you. I know we’re foils but—”

“No.” Logan insists, reaching a hand up to wipe his damp cheeks. “I never have, nor will I ever, need your help. The only way you can assist me now is by getting the hell out of my room.”

“Alright. Alright. I see how it is.” He puts his hands up defensively, backing away slowly from the logical side. “But trust me, Logan. You’ll come crawling back, one way or another. That is a promise.”

The other sinks out, and Logan is momentarily ecstatic to be rid of the orange in his room entirely. He can finally breathe again, relax, as he chews over the words that were said and lingered in the forefront of his mind.

He turns to face the mirror, eyes once again gleaming with orange.

Logan hated the idea that maybe he was right.

[saddvamain]

I want the titular character frm Jennifer’s body to be a killer in dead by daylight sooo bad she literally has a perfect killer origin story and the rich personality that makes her perf for dbd I want to be a Jennifer main... her power could be a ranged attack where she vomits the black goo frm the movie kinda like plague but it slows survivors down/has similar effects to like the clowns bottled gas shit, maybe some kind of movement ability that includes her “hovering” like frm the movie, and her Mori is her jaws unhinging and disemboweling the survivor (maybe after a sexy strip tease-y animation like in the film, I rly want Jennifer’s sexually predatory nature to come through in the game) and then looking like her human self, she drinks the blood from their abdomen with her hands almost like gently and classily like in the scene in the movie after she kills that goth dude. She could have a special perk exclusive to her and later teachable that allows her to kill male survivors (only) by her own hand after hooking them or collecting tokens somehow like devour hope, like maybe each time she hits a male survivor she collects a token and 5 are needed to activate the Mori allowing her to kill downed male survivors that have already been hooked. It kinda adds some of that cool rng beloved by the devs to Jennifer bc there could only be one male survivor and a perk slot is still taken up. Needy and chip and maybe Adam Brody cld be survivors and the school grounds with the overgrown abandoned pool house litcherally already looks like a dbd map lol. Her name could be the demon or the sacrifice or like the temptress or smt idk if it’s achievable for her attacks to be bites instead of the normal scratch/stab attacks but that would be dope. If not, she should be attacking w the Bowie knife they tried to sacrifice her with. I want an empoweringly sexy girl killer to main pls like can you imagine the skins ???? Her base skin should be the bloody black and white dress frm the dance and then she needs a skin with the white parka and red tights frm when she first came back to needy after she was sacrificed and they would almost definitely give her the school girl outfit frm the promotional material to please the weab gamers lol. I’m thinking abt all the funny achievements they could do too like when she uses another Mori offering or whatever and moris a female survivor you get one like “I go both ways” there are so many great easily used quotes like the funny, campy quality of jb would just translate so well into dbd... I like the idea of a sexy girl killer so much in large part because what makes a character like Jennifer so great in horror is that the sexy girl isn’t perceived as threatening and that aids her in luring her victims in and getting away with killing, not to mention the fact that the sexy girl is notably heavily victimized in horror and that’s a trope I love to see turned on it’s head. She would be kind of like legion in the sense that she can be mistaken for a survivor at first glance, esp since there’s no shortage of sexy female survivors in the game to confuse her with, lining up with the fact that the “sexy girl” is non threatening and deemed a helpless victim in horror, something that Jennifer as a character subverts and exploits to get away with killing.

[noteguk]

bad romance | jjk | m

[ ! ] this is part of the bad influence collection. This part cannot be read as a stand-alone.

— summary; in which the two of you finally make it official. 

— contents and warnings; gross fluff, a bit of angst, smut, badboy!jungkook x goodgirl!reader, enemies to lovers, honestly emotionally constipated idiots to lovers, so much mutual pining, cinematic parallels, cute dates, a spark of jealousy/possiveness (mostly playful), the return of car sex, dirty talk, breast play, dom!jk x sub!reader, fingering, spitting, oral (female receiving), cum eating, semi-clothed sex, unprotected sex (don’t be dumb!!), a fuckton of praise kink bc jk is going through it, another glimpse into the demon that lives inside the oc lol, begging, mentions of marking (hickeys), creampie, cockwarming (you already know), jk is whipped and he’s not even hiding it anymore, it’s official ladies!!! 

— words; 18,4k

— author’s notes; here we are, champs!!! The moments of glory 😭 There are a lot of things being wrapped up in here so we can move onto the more interesting stuff, but there are also some points that will be brought up further down the line, so don’t worry! Everything will be explored in its rightful moment. Have fun at the eye of the hurricane y’all 🤠 

There are some things we experience throughout life that, as simple as they may seem at first glance, stick with us forever, like bubblegum on the bottom of a shoe. As a young kid, you were first introduced to optical illusions after spending the day at your friend’s house — and, even after so many years, you still recalled your amazement and confusion; your expectant yelps and annoyed glances at his computer screen. Considering your age, it was normal to be bewildered at the notion that your senses and perceptions, which once seemed so concrete, could fool you just as easily as anything else. 

Mayhaps you were a few thousand years late in your genius discovery, taking into account that ancient philosophers had already discussed and established all that; perhaps your young brain wasn’t all that smart to construct those notions with such complexity. But the point wasn’t that: it was that the world in front of you was a matter of perspective, of finding the truth behind the curtain of your own interpretation. Sometimes you thought that two lines were the same size when they were not; that dots seemed to be moving when they were still; that two completely different shades of grey were actually the same all along. And you had to adapt to that. 

Life went on and, in a way, you always kept that in the back of your head — not about bright-colored illusions on a computer screen, of course, but about people. No matter how much you think you know someone, you never know their full truth (after all, most people barely know themselves, so perhaps it’s a bit too conceited to believe that you know another individual). It’s nothing new to claim that people can surprise you, either positively or negatively and, in your head, trying to predict that was the smallest resemblance of control you could achieve. So you learned to read them as well as you could and never ever created expectations. To you, trust issues were a tiny price to pay for staying one step ahead from a heartbreak. 

That being said, even the best of strategists still make mistakes — apparently no one ever learned not to invade Russia during the winter — and even the strongest walls can still show cracks in its foundation. Ironically, you had predicted it all, followed your life to the most minimal details, but could not avoid the large, powerful wave that hit your fortress head-first, knocking most of your preconceived notions down the moment you found someone that you couldn’t read. 

In a way, Jungkook was the most confusing optical illusion that you had ever come across. 

The thrilling and unforeseen ups and downs of your situationship with Jungkook were often hard to follow, but you still tried your best to do so. From the start he was inconsistent — hot and cold, harsh and tender; always left you seeking for more at the same time you tried to push him away. Every time you’d attempt to read him, imagine the thoughts that unfolded behind his dark eyes, you’d fall flat on your face. Every time you thought you were starting to understand him, he’d hit you with a curveball that would throw you in a loop. It was strange how you thought that you knew him so well, probably better than most people, and yet not well at all. 

In usual unpredictable fashion, Jungkook had called you earlier that day, right after you had just finished washing the dishes, with a proposal you never saw coming. It was a peaceful, chilly morning and, besides the sharp sound of your phone ringing, only the faint chirping of birds could be heard coming from the half-open window. Yongsun was sitting on the couch, her focus swimming in the ink of her newest thriller novel, and she didn’t notice the way your eyes widened when you picked up the phone and heard what he had to say. 

“Morning, princess,” Jungkook greeted, jumping straight to the point. “Are you free? Wanna go out with you.” 

“Today?” You asked, leaning your lower back against the cool counter. His choice of words was peculiar: go out. He had never used that before or, at least, not with such a casual tone. 

“Yeah,” he agreed promptly. “If you have plans we can try another day. But it’s sunny and I didn’t wanna miss my shot.” 

You cleared your throat, glimpsing out the window as if to check that it was, in fact, sunny. Your brain was out of excuses and the silence coming from the other side of the line was too loud, so you had no choice but to give in to the wills of your heart. “Hm. Yeah, sure,” you told him. “We can go out today.” 

“Great,” Jungkook beamed. “I’ll pick you up at one, baby. See you.”

And that was it. Before you could think about asking more details about his plans, the line was cut and you were left staring at your phone screen like an absolute idiot, trying to digest what just had happened. Go out. What a weird thing to say. It sounded like a date. 

Yongsun perked her head up like a meerkat, turning around on the couch so she could get a better look at you. “So…” she started, a smile already curling up on her lips. Her book was practically forgotten now, laying beside her, the page that she had been reading now flimsily marked by one of her perfectly manicured fingers. “I’m guessing you have plans.” 

“I might have,” you responded nonchalantly, locking your phone and placing it on the counter. When was the last time Jungkook asked you out? Even when he took you out for lunch or something, the request was always laced with second intentions. That sounded so odd. “Why?” 

She shrugged. Yongsun had been particularly interested in your romantic affairs ever since that night at Hoseok’s party, teasing you at every chance she got. She was curious, that much you knew, but you guessed that she was also a bit worried about all those secrets. Regardless, if that was the case, her cheerful tone did not let it show. “Oh, nothing, I just think it’s cute that you’re going out with the mystery man.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Has he asked for your hand in marriage yet?” 

You rolled your eyes. “It’s not like that,” you guaranteed. 

“Keep lying to yourself, girl,” she sang, waving her hand in a sign of dismissal. Yongsun had a strong tendency to romanticize things, and you were the opposite: one of your biggest flaws was that you over-rationalized things, found excuses and justifications where there were none. At that moment, both things were taking place, and her voice was like a demon whispering inside your head, making you consider her perspective. “Is he coming to pick you up?” Her smile only grew as you nodded. “Fantastic.” 

Like she had found what she had been searching for, Yongsun plopped back on the couch and returned to her book. Unbeknownst to her, you knew exactly what she was inferring — your gaze already navigating towards the large window across from you, and the open view it gave to the street below your apartment complex. If she wanted to, she could figure out who it was just by looking down and catching a glimpse of him. 

Strangely enough, the idea didn’t bother you as much as it once had. 

~

Part of you believed that, when Yongsun went to her spiritual retreat/cult, she ended up being cursed with a hundred years of bad luck. Besides being ten times more clumsy than usual, she was having more difficulty in class and almost every single time she tried to shower, the hot water would run out halfway through. That morning, she also was unlucky enough to be knocked out on the couch (courtesy of her post-lunch sleepiness) at the exact moment that Jungkook picked you up, missing one of her two chances of catching a glimpse of him. 

About one hour and a half later, her messages arrived in a furious and merciless wave, so constant that you had to silence your phone, turning the screen around and against your thigh so her flood of complaints and curses wouldn’t distract you from the beautiful scenery that blossomed all around the car. At the annoying rush of dinging sounds, however, Jungkook glimpsed at you, eyebrows furrowed. “What’s that about?” He asked, the previous subject long forgotten. 

You shook your head, gazing out of the window. The tall trees passed in a dazzling blur, expanding as far as your eyes could see. “Nothing much,” you told him, voice mingling with the vague tune playing in his car, and the tender gushing of the fresh wind. “Yongsun is having a bad day, that’s all.” 

“Don’t you wanna see if she’s, like, about to die or something?” 

You breathed out, thinking for a moment. “Hmm… not really. She’ll be fine.” 

Jungkook laughed. “What a terrible friend you are.” 

You leaned your head on your palm, elbow supported on the car door, staring him up and down. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t,” he admitted, “I just thought it could be funny to see her losing her mind.”

“Yongsun rarely loses her mind,” you counter-argumented. That was more of a Jisoo thing, honestly. You were about to say that when a little demon landed on your shoulder, reaching forward and whispering an evil idea to you. Usually it was Jungkook that wanted to stir up some shit when things were too calm between you two, but, that day, you felt like switching the roles in the name of karma. “But if you’re so curious about my messages… you know who texted me earlier today?” 

He glanced at you, curious. “Who?”

It was getting hard not to smile. “Jimin,” you said, noticing how his hands tightened around the wheel for a millisecond. If you weren’t looking for it, you would’ve never noticed it. “He asked me out on a date.” 

Okay, half truth: it wasn’t that same day, it was two days before. But it was much more dramatic to put it that way. 

“And?” Jungkook pressed on. 

You couldn’t hold it anymore, laughing at his serious expression. “And I’m telling you that because I knew you’d be fuming, you dumbass.” You pushed his shoulder playfully. “You know I don’t like him like that.” 

“Ha.” He said, flat. “I’m not fuming.”

“Aw come on.” You smiled. You were staring at him now, following the kaleidoscopic bursts of sunlight on his face as he focused on the road before him. The sun dripped amongst the leaves, mingling with the shadows of his features and dancing in his long black hair as it swirled in the faint breeze. Jungkook had mentioned he was thinking about dyeing it, but you liked the way it looked now. You’d like it anyway. “Don’t clench your jaw, that’s bad for your teeth,” you teased, tapping on his chin. “Told him I’m not interested, though. I had said that before, but I guess he was trying again.” You breathed out. “So I said that I was already seeing someone else. That worked.”

That comment managed to relax him straight away. “You just wanted to see me jealous? What for?” 

“Payback,” you claimed, triumphant. “Though that is kind of toxic behavior so it ends here. I just needed it for karmic balance.” 

“The fuck?” he asked. “Payback for what?”

You pouted. “Oh, you’re so innocent, aren’t you?” you teased him, doing the unspeakable and reaching out to pinch his cheek. Jungkook slapped your hand away before you managed to do that, but you still counted his annoyance as a victory. “I can see the halo over your head and everything… the birds are chirping… the purest soul around.”

Jungkook groaned, pushing his body back against the driver’s seat. “Shut up, my god,” he complained. One of his hands left the wheel and landed on the inside of your thigh; the warmness of his skin shooting fireworks inside your chest. “I asked you a question.” 

With a playful hum hanging on the tip of your tongue, you turned around, one arm leaning on the center console. “Wait, you thought I wouldn’t notice you trying to make me jealous that one day in the library?” You asked, watching as the hamster inside Jungkook’s head started running on its wheel, trying to find the memory he was looking for. “The one that Jisoo asked you two to shut up.”

His eyebrows shot up at the realization. “Ah. Yeah. That was funny.” He laughed, glimpsing at you. That road seemed to be endless, with only Jungkook’s car in it. You didn’t remember when was the last time you saw someone else around, but it was a rather peaceful moment. Just the two of you against the world. “Didn’t know it had worked.”

“I never said that.”

“It wouldn’t be a payback if it hadn’t.” He smirked, cocky, squeezing your inner thigh. Touché. “She was my lab partner. That’s it. I don't even remember her name.” 

You made a tisk sound. “And you were leading her on… how cruel.”

Jungkook raised his hand from your thigh, pointing a finger at you. “It wasn’t like that, I’m naturally flirty.” 

“No, you’re naturally irritating,” you corrected, grabbing his hand and putting it back in place. He squeezed your flesh once again, humming at your words. “Shameless, also. Nasty most of the time—” 

He scoffed. “You flatter me, princess.”

“—But not flirty,” you completed.

“Come on, baby, I’m totally flirty,” he wouldn’t relent so easily, especially when his ego was dangerously close to getting bruised. “I flirted with you.” 

You crossed your arms, looking him up and down. “You called me names and fucked me in a church.” 

“Right? And you don’t call that being flirty? It clearly worked,” Jungkook threw back, not an ounce of self-awareness in his arrogant tone. “Also, don’t mention the church thing as if you didn’t beg me to do it.”

“Not the point.” 

“Exactly the point,” he pressed on, stealing a glance at your irritated expression. It wasn’t for real, of course — most times when you two argued now, it was more of a playful thing than a serious back and forth. Jungkook couldn’t pinpoint when that change had occurred, but it was nice. “You’re equally irritating, shameless, and nasty. Sometimes more than me. You just confuse people about it.” 

“I’m not!” you said, knowing very well that you were lying. 

Jungkook sneered at your words. “Yeah, sure. If that helps you feel better, I can roleplay.” He paused. “Actually, I can do that in different contexts too.” 

You poked his cheek, completely ignoring his last comment. It wasn’t the time to unpack that. “You got jealous though,” you teased. 

He frowned. “Change the subject now.” 

Considering you had already gotten your desired reaction, you decided to give him a (temporary) break. “Fine.” You sighed, sitting back. The breeze coming from outside was a gentle caress on your face, bringing the faint smell of flowers. “So… where are we going, exactly?” 

“It’s, like, the fifth time you’re asking,” Jungkook groaned. 

“And you still haven’t answered,” you said. “I’ll keep asking unless you do, you know that.” 

He breathed out, finally cracking. Jungkook looked at his watch, realizing that the two of you would reach your destination rather soon, anyways, so he could stop with the suspense for now. “I wanna take you on a proper date. I’m tired of sneaking around.” He cleared his throat, eyes glued to the road. He suddenly felt very nervous. “It’s like… four cities away from campus, near the beach. No one you know will see us, probably. Is that alright?”

Out of the possible reactions he has conjured in his head, he didn’t expect you to burst out laughing. “I love that you ask me that when we’re already two hours deep into this road trip,” you teased. “But yeah. Sounds great, actually. I can’t believe you have good ideas every once in a while.” 

Jungkook frowned. “You’re really asking for me to turn this car around, aren’t you?”

“Not at all,” you beamed. “You’re trapped with me for the rest of the day now.” 

Once upon a time, that would sound like a nightmare to you — months back, when the two of you barely talked, and you prayed that he would text you a sleazy excuse and not show up to any future tutoring sessions. Months back, when you were still in denial that there was a person underneath all that trouble, all those sly smirks and witty, bitter remarks. 

Weeks back when you still pretended you weren’t in love with him. 

Ever since you (finally) accepted the fact that you had zero control over your emotions towards Jungkook, things had become both easier and harder to deal with. It was easy being with him — just playing with his hair and listening to him talk; kissing him; driving and talking about nothing. But it was a war inside your head: now every shared laughter hurt a bit more, every touch left you a little on edge. The falling-for-the-bad-boy fiasco was embarrassing in itself, but falling for someone who didn’t feel the same would be absolutely dreadful. Especially now that you couldn’t remember how your life was before he had showed up and turned it upside down. 

As if he was reading your mind, Jungkook responded, “That doesn’t sound so bad at all, princess.” 

~

Jungkook parked his car near a very beautiful square, which was a sharp difference considering the places the two of you used to frequent — or, rather, hide in. In your mind, it was surreal that you were actually on a date with the boy, being shamelessly out-there about a scenario that once terrified you so deeply. Honestly, the chances that you’d run into someone you knew (several cities away from campus, with summer break just around the corner and finals piling up) were slim, but not zero. 

However, you couldn’t care about it when Jungkook opened your door and took your hand in his. “You know what’s fucking insane?” He asked abruptly, pressing you against the side of the vehicle. His palm was warm against yours, just like the world around you. You never really liked summer that much, but you were starting to change your mind. “We’ve done so much, but we never just walked around holding hands.” 

You chuckled — putting it like that, yeah, the two of you were doing everything backwards. “Guess we never had the chance,” you said. “But there’s a first time for everything.” 

He breathed out, leaning in to place a kiss on your lips. You once thought that doing that in public would be horrendous, but now, all you could feel were the butterflies in your stomach. “Hopefully,” he said. “Now, let’s go. I wanna show you around.” 

Just like all-things-Jungkook, he still managed to surprise you after so long. Even with his tough exterior and cold stares, he ended up being a big advocate for public displays of affection. Jungkook could not let go of you even if his life depended on it, it seemed — always touching you in some way, playing with your fingers; or with his arm around your shoulders; a gentle kiss against your temple as you walked down the streets. If you stopped and thought about it, traveling through the land of memories, you could see some stark signs that his love language might be leaning more towards physical touch. You just thought it was something he did during intimate moments, and not all the time. 

Frankly, you weren’t complaining, but you were taking some time to get used to it.  During your previous relationship — a five-months-long catastrophe in your final year of high school — you realized that you weren’t super keen on being all touchy-feely, which was the spark for a few immature arguments back in the day. Years passed and you were more open when it came to Jungkook now, but there was still something that held you back a little, that didn’t let you relax all the way when he pulled you into a random hug, or stopped in the middle of his sentence so he could steal a kiss from your lips. 

Also like all-things-Jungkook, you guessed it was just a matter of time before you got used to it. 

~

About two hours after you two had arrived at that city, you managed to drag Jungkook towards a big, absurdly old-looking bookstore, ignoring his complaints as your eyes darted over the books in its interior. 

“It looks so cool, don’t you think?” You asked, finding his reflection on the glass. It was a funny contrast between the two of you — the pastel tones of your blouse and skirt battling against the dark shades of his pants, his boots, his tattoos. It just wasn’t worse because Jungkook had miraculously chosen a white shirt that day, otherwise you’d think that the two of you were from completely different worlds. “I bet they have some super old stuff.” 

Jungkook sighed. “You wanna go in, don’t you?” He asked, traces of annoyance at the back of his tone. 

“I might,” you said, turning your head to look at him. Lucky you (and unlucky Jungkook), you already had your puppy eyes locked and loaded. “Will you hate me?”

He sighed heavily, his bored stare flickering between your face and the dust accumulating inside the store. You didn’t even know the sacrifices he made for you. “Impossible,” Jungkook responded, “go before I change my mind.” 

You smooched his cheek. “Thank you!” 

Okay, maybe you were getting used to those public displays of affection already. 

The place smelled musty, as expected, and there was a thick layer of dust floating in the air; an allergy ready to strike. Against what it’s great exterior showed, the inside of the store was actually really small and packed with books, with you and Jungkook almost knocking a few piles over every time you turned a corner — nothing but another optical illusion to add to your list. 

Surprisingly enough, Jungkook didn’t complain as much as you had expected — instead limiting himself to a few grunts and scoffs as he looked through the endless lines of old, decaying books. Most of the time he kept it to himself, always maintaining you in his peripheral vision as you jumped from one story to the other. 

At some point, his arms wrapped around you, chest flushed against your back as he placed his head on your shoulder, looking down at the book in your hands. Jungkook smelled of coffee and cigarettes, his warmth was all that you could feel. “That looks old and boring,” he complained, nuzzling his nose against your neck. You hoped he didn’t feel the goosebumps spreading through your skin. “Want me to get it for you?” 

“No, I was just looking,” you told him, leaning back against his chest automatically. “I already have this book back at home, it’s really nice. I just never saw the first edition before. I don’t need another one.” 

Jungkook hummed, one hand reaching to turn it around so he could look at the cover — Clockwork Orange. He had heard that name before somewhere, probably another literature quiz he copied the answers for in high school. “You sure? Because it’s the third time you’re picking it up,” he said. You sighed, probably conjuring an excuse inside your mind, but he knew you better than that. He didn’t let you finish, tugging it away from your hands. “I’m getting it for you. And don’t whine about it.” 

You opened your mouth to argue, but you realized you were going to whine about it. In the end, Jungkook bought you that book, which earned him both another kiss on the cheek and a very annoyed look from you. He couldn’t understand you sometimes. 

“I think you’d like it, actually. It’ll fuel your anarchist spirit,” you told him when the two of you were already back on the sidewalks, your wandering eyes peeking at the bag in your hands. “Give it a shot one of these days.” 

Jungkook scoffed. “I don’t remember when was the last time I read for fun.” He paused. “Or ever.” 

“Doesn’t mean you can’t start doing it now. Summer is long, you’ll get bored eventually,” you counter-argumented, but he didn’t seem like he was going to crack. You pouted, pressing your shoulder against his. “Please? For me?”

Now, that was kind of a low hit. But it worked. “You’re pushing my limits here, princess,” he warned. 

But you weren’t relenting. “Please? It’s not even that long anyways.”

Jungkook didn’t know what it was, but he was especially pliant when it came to your requests that day (lie: he knew exactly why). “Fine,” he groaned. “But I’ll complain the entire time.”

You smiled. “Deal.” 

~ 

After walking around the town some more, the two of you eventually settled in a small diner near the beachside. The place was adorable, in typical 50’s style, and you two were one of the few people there — saved for three loud-speaking old men, and an overly-energetic family of five. Jungkook knew you liked to sit by the window, so he found the perfect spot in no time, which you appreciated endlessly. 

Subjects came and went, your food gradually vanished from your plates and, before you could tell, the day was showing signs of ending. Golden hour had arrived, bleeding past the widows and onto the diner’s floor; the buzzing of the town seemed to diminish considerably before rush hour. 

At some point, though, you noticed that Jungkook got distracted, his stare faltering and his mouth falling shut, lips pressed against one another. He was pushing his tongue against the inside of his cheek as he always did when he was trapped deep inside his mind. You reached out, placing your hands over his. “Jungkook,” you called, squeezing his fingers. He blinked his way back into reality, meeting your eyes straight away. With the bright sun coming from the dusty window, his irises had decayed into a clearer shade of brown. “What are you thinking about? You look constipated.” 

He scoffed. “You look constipated most of the time and I don’t comment about it.”

“You do, thought.” You stared at him. “And don’t avoid my question.” 

With a sigh, he leaned back against his seat, gaze flickering to your hands. Jungkook moved his around until your fingers were intertwined. “It’s like…” he hesitated, “Wish we could do this stuff back on campus. Go out or whatever.” He cleared his throat. “Like, out.”

There were traces of hurt in his tone that made you deflate, your heart skipping inside your chest. You had been thinking about it for some time, in different degrees of seriousness: about making it public, about not caring so much about what others thought. It was easier said than done, however, and the effects of your accumulated cowardice were corroding you like kerosene from the inside. “Yeah, I was thinking about that too,” you admitted, looking down at your hands. You knew the dark patterns on his skin by memory, your fingers so used to trailing it. You were never into tattoos before you met him. “We could tell them, you know,” 

He blinked, taken aback. “Who?”

You shrugged, still unable to meet his stare. “Everyone, anyone. I don’t know.” 

“You’re cool with that?” He asked, hesitant. 

You sighed, looking out of the window. Mental barriers can feel so physical sometimes, how strange. “It’s not that I’m… cool with it,” you told him. That would take a bit more adaptation. “I’m just tired of hiding.” 

Jungkook nodded. It was reassuring to know that you were on the same page on that, even if he had reached it a few months back. “Yeah, I get it,” he said, then found his thoughts coming to a sudden halt, hitting something else. There was a little bug of anxiety crawling in his insides for months now, biting down on his insecurities. He had never had trouble keeping secrets (in his mind, people didn’t need to know jackshit about his personal life), but, in a way, he had the hardest time keeping them from you. Especially when they could hurt you too. 

“What is it?” you asked, because he knew you would. “You’re distracted again.” 

Putting everything into perspective, his so-called secret wasn’t that bad, but, in his head, it was apocalypse-inducing. Jungkook hadn’t had the guts to tell you about his roommate's new discovery, fearing that you would lash out at him for being unable to keep it under the covers or, worse, fearing that you would blame him, accusing him of doing it on purpose to hurt you. He had created that tricky situation himself: if he had told you straight away, maybe it wouldn’t look so suspicious. But now that so long had passed, it was likely that you’d see that as an admission of his guilt. 

Once again: Jungkook was never the type to overthink, to assume the worst possible scenario when it came to such simple, mundane things. But when it came to the idea of losing you, he couldn’t help it. 

Still, he tried, deciding that your earlier comment about making it public was the closer he’d ever get to an opening. “There’s something you should probably know,” he started, fighting against the knot in his throat. “Just… don’t get pissed.” 

You frowned. “What is it?”  

And here goes nothing, he thought. “Taehyung knows.” 

You hesitated. Jungkook could practically see the cogs in your head turning, synapses working to make sense of that new, random piece of information. As previously stated, he expected you to start yelling at him, maybe accusing him of betraying your trust, but, instead, what came out of your mouth was a soft-spoken question. “You... told him? When?”

Jungkook shifted around on his seat, catching a glimpse of the happy family by your side — three overly-energetic kids fighting for the pack of sauce, and their parents trying to figure that battle out and end it with the least possible casualties. “Not exactly,” he admitted, looking back at you. “He kind of figured it out by himself. Back at the party. And I couldn’t lie about it, he knows me too well.” 

You nodded slowly, licking your lips. It was weird: how Jungkook could predict you extremely well at times and, at others, he completely missed the mark — which, thinking about it, was what had made him grow so interested in you. Maybe he wasn’t the only optical illusion around. “And… how did that turn out?” you wanted to know.

A puff of air left his nostrils as he recalled that fateful night. “He was in shock for like a week. It was pretty funny, actually, he wouldn't stop talking about it,” Jungkook told you. He had endured weeks of his roommate's meltdowns, floating between the need to talk to you, and the absolute horror of doing so. Taehyung had never been super at ease with you — he thought you were way too intense about stuff — and, after everything clicked in his head and he recalled the fact that you had tied Jungkook up, he didn’t want anything to do with you. Especially considering that he knew something he shouldn’t. “But he’s chill about it. I already made sure that he’s not gonna tell anyone. I don’t think anyone would believe him either.” 

In a way, Jungkook himself couldn’t believe it sometimes. Looking across the table now, watching as the orange sun caressed your cheeks, he was once again reminded of how different the two of you were. You were full of soft, round edges and pretty smiles; delicate fingers that seemed so unlike his own, calloused ones. He didn’t know why you were still around, didn’t know how he had gotten so lucky for so long. 

At his words, though, you frowned. “Tell me you didn’t threaten him with physical violence.”

“Okay.” Jungkook smirked. He had just pressed Taehyung against the wall, no biggie. He’d recover. “I won’t tell you.” 

You rolled your eyes. “Funny.” 

“I’m hilarious, actually. You just don’t appreciate me enough.” 

“Try giving me something to appreciate, then.” You paused, realizing your mistake the exact time that a glint of mischievousness appeared in his eyes. You raised one finger, slightly desperate. “Actually, no, shut up. Don’t say it. There are families in this diner.” 

Jungkook groaned. “Come on, baby, there is no way you can just say that and not expect a dirty joke.”

“It was my fault for creating expectations, sorry.” You decided to shut yourself up with a large gulp of your drink. The sweet taste had just entered your mouth when you recalled something else. “Hm!” You exclaimed, rushing to swallow your milkshake. “I have some good news, by the way.”

Jungkook raised his eyebrows. “Shoot.”

“I’m entering a new research project,” when you first spoke those words out loud, you were already expecting the expression of confusion and disgust that covered his face. You raised one hand, stopping him. “Spare me your comments, that’s only half of it.”

He leaned his head to the side. “And the part that interests me is...?”

You cleared your throat — suddenly, it felt a bit harder to speak. “Well... remember how you said that it would be hard to stay away for the entirety of summer break?” You recalled. Jungkook almost flinched at the memory — it was something he had confessed by mistake, provoked by the peaceful afterglow of his orgasm, and the gentle caresses of your fingers in his hair. You weren’t supposed to actually take that seriously, how embarrassing. “I’ll have to spend at least three to four extra weeks here, because I have to compile and organize a lot of data. Maybe more if I need to.” 

Actually, it was nice that you took that seriously — he changed his mind. 

“That’s… almost a month,” he mumbled, struggling to make sense of that new, fantastic piece of information. 

You nodded, taking another slip. Most of it had melted already, but it was still good. “Yeah, it’s a good amount of time, don’t you think?” 

It’s a fucking dream come true. “Sounds like it.”

You looked down at your milkshake, already almost at the bottom of the cup. The straw swirled around the cream once, twice, your distracted gaze mingling with the hum that fell from your throat. “After that I’m going home, though,” you told him, unaware that his heart had just decided to give him a free trial of arrhythmia. Talk about emotional rollercoasters. “And I’ll probably come back one week before class starts.”  

One month with you, almost two months apart — felt like both an amazing and a horrible deal, like Jungkook was about to sign a contract and sell his soul to the devil. Fame and riches during life, but eternal damnation in death. “I could visit you,” he offered, hopeful. 

You waved your hand, disregarding his words with a gentle smile on your face. “Don’t be silly, my hometown is like five hours away. And that’s during a good traffic day.” 

Jungkook would make the trip every single day if you asked him to. But he didn’t want to push. “Yeah,” he deflated. “That’s silly.” 

“Besides,” you continued, “I don’t think we’re in the meet the parents stage yet.” 

Yet? Wait, were you in any stage at all? Jungkook found himself a little dumbfounded at your comment, trying his best to fit it into reality. “I’m great with parents,” he blurted out, finding the disbelief in your semblance. He thought it would be better to change the subject before he fucked up big time. “You’re not bullshitting me about that summer thing, are you? I’ll have you all to myself for that long?” 

“Yeah, Yongsun will leave soon after the first week. She’s spending the summer at her rich aunt’s house.” And she actually asked you to go along, but you denied. Half because of the research project, half because of him. But he didn’t need to know that. “So you can come over whenever.” 

He wiggled his eyebrows. “Sleep over?”

Yes, please. “If you want.” You shrugged, nonchalant. The Oscars were missing out on your acting skills. “And you, are you planning on visiting your parents during summer?”

You wondered if it was a good idea to bring that up. Jungkook had mentioned that he didn’t have the best relationship with his family — they didn’t hate each other, but didn’t get along super well either. Like pieces of different puzzles thrown together, trying to fit. Regardless of how much you tried to get to know that part of his life, he usually changed the topic before you could do so, avoidant. You didn’t even think he’d answer that question. 

Jungkook cleared his throat. “Maybe. I’m thinking sometime around the end of summer break. I did that last time and it worked,” he said. “I’ll probably spend that middle part with Taehyung. He’s loaded and his house has a guest bedroom.” 

“Sounds like a plan.” You smiled. “I'm actually amazing with parents too.” 

Jungkook caught onto your provocation instantly — smirk already curling up on his lips — but his answer was an honest one. “Oh, no, I’m sure about it.” He scoffed. “Are you kidding me? I can see you all bonding already. They’ll make me an orphan and adopt you instead.” 

“Don’t be so dramatic,” you said. “And I hope you have fun with Taehyung. It’s nice that you two are so close — and for so long too. Not everyone has a friendship like that.” 

Frowning, he thought about what you said. Jungkook had never stopped to see it like that, Taehyung was always such a constant person in his life that he almost took him for granted. “Yeah, it’s crazy…” he drifted off. “He knows me better than I know myself sometimes. It’s weird.” 

You squeezed his hand before his mind could wander too far away from that diner. “Well, now you know how I feel when I’m with you.” You smiled. “Sometimes you tell me things that are so accurate that it scares me.” 

A puff of air escaped his nose, stare oscillating to your intertwined fingers. “I just pay attention, that’s all,” he mumbled. 

“I know you do,” you told him, tilting your head to the side. Your hand was so warm and soft in his that he never wanted to let it go. “Kook?”

He glanced up. “Yeah, baby?” 

“Just remembered something,” you started. “What was the place you wanted to take me to?”

Took him a couple seconds to shuffle around in his mind for that piece of information. Jungkook was so enthralled by your presence that he had frankly forgotten his previous plans for the day. At the realization, though, he looked out of the dusty diner window, eyes following the silhouettes of the strangers outside. “Ah, yeah, it’s almost time,” he said. “I’m glad you asked. Let’s go.” 

The food had already been paid for, so the two of you were outside in no time. The temperature had dropped a little ever since you walked into the diner, courtesy of the scorching sun going down, but there was still a nice warm atmosphere surrounding your bodies. There was a faint buzzing of cicadas in the distance and the air smelled sweet, a mixture of ten different food places at once. 

“You look cute,” he said abruptly, steps slowing down. “Wanna kiss you.” 

You giggled. “Thank you, and you can just kiss me, you know? No need to warn me.” 

Jungkook clicked his tongue, changing his direction without saying another word. Lucky for him, there was an alleyway right ahead, so all he had to do was to turn the corner to have you pressed against the wall. 

“Is this where you wanted to take me?” You teased, head leaning to the side as he caged your body with his. Your wandering hands slid up the sides of his arms, fingers tracing the black ink on his skin. “Doesn’t seem very romantic.”

He hummed, large hands landing on your hips. “Needed to make a quick stop.” He leaned in, lips brushing like feathers against yours. Your breath hitched in expectation, heartbeat thundering inside your chest. “Give me a minute.” 

Kissing Jungkook was pure muscle memory at that point. You didn’t even have to think when his lips met yours, hands flying to his shoulders as his strong arms wrapped around your waist; his large figure pressing you against the brick wall. It was almost poetic how you two had become so accustomed to each other’s mannerisms, like the fact that you knew he’d lean his head to the right side before he did, or that he would take one hand to cup your cheek, thumb grazing your skin. He sighed against the kiss, a pleased hum erupting from his chest as he placed his tongue inside your mouth. 

You pushed him away with a silly smile on your face, his nose bumping on yours. “Don’t make a scene, we’re in public.”

Jungkook smirked, taking in everything about you. He could’ve never guessed the two of you would get that far, but, at that moment, he couldn’t be more thankful for it. “Shut up, princess, that’s the good part about it,” he said before diving back in. 

~ 

The first step to solving a problem is acknowledging you have one — and you had already come to terms with the fact that your blockage when it came to what other people thought of you wasn’t only ruining the great moments you had (or could have had) with Jungkook, but it was also holding you back in general. 

If you stopped to think about it, you knew why that happened: you were projecting. It was easier to place your own insecurities and setbacks onto others, because then you could blame an external force for your own losses. It had never been about telling others, it was about admitting to yourself that maybe you had lost control over key parts in your life, maybe you were crazy about a person that you once saw as the lowest of the low. And that he was good to you, that he was one of the best things that had ever happened to you. 

The whole Taehyung fiasco was more of a pleasant outcome than a traumatic one — much to yours and Jungkook’s surprise. It was a shift in your foundation, a crack in the base of your preconceived notions that made you take a step back and analyze your situation all over again. Against what your chaotic, reptile brain had predicted, the world didn’t end when someone found out about you and Jungkook — actually, it stayed exactly the same. You didn’t know if it was just because you had not been directly exposed to it, or if it was because it was someone you didn’t have that much contact with, but it was just… fine. You were fine. 

That small spark catalyzed a flame of bravery inside your chest: maybe one day you could tell your friends, family, and to hell about what they thought about it. Because you liked (loved) Jungkook and that was enough. Because when he looked at you like he was looking like then, nothing else mattered. Because things would be fine.  

“Thank you for today,” you spoke, leaning onto the wooden fence that surrounded the pier. The sunset was a big pink and red bruise on the sky, painting the calm waves with deep shades of orange. The smell of the sea was overwhelming, cleaning you from the inside out. Jungkook had planned to take you there at sunset, and his timing had been perfect. “I loved it. Really.” 

Stil, you felt paralyzed, like you couldn’t really act out your desires. You wanted to tell everyone (which, on itself, was already a big jump from where you were a few months back), you wanted to kiss him openly and tell him that you loved him, and you wanted everything to be simple, easy, happy — fine. And maybe it would be. But the abysmal fall that you could take if everything went down the drain prevented you from taking that leap of faith. 

Being with Jungkook was easy, but falling for him clearly was not. 

“Me too,” he responded, eyes lost in the horizon. “It’s always nice being with you, especially when you don’t annoy me every five seconds.”

You scoffed. “Took the words straight out of my mouth.”  

He smiled, looking at you. “Why are you so quiet, by the way?” 

Uneasy, you shrugged. Jungkook had shot you right in the chest and was looking at you with gunpowder on his fingers, asking you what happened — why you were acting that way, so mild-mannered when you could barely keep your mouth shut before all that. Truth was, you didn’t know what to say. You didn’t know how to talk like before without completely ruining it. Without speaking too much, and ending up confessing about those annoying butterflies that were madly hitting the walls of your stomach. 

“Just enjoying the view,” you said. 

He hummed, pulling you closer. “So am I.” 

But he was still looking at you. 

You thought that Jungkook felt the same — perhaps not as strongly, not as deeply, but he did. You didn’t miss the way that he held you, the worried messages he sent you when you vanished for a few days, absorbed by your own world and its ephemeral worries. You thought that accepting your feelings would be the hardest part, but it didn’t even come close to the horror of sharing them, of speaking that truth into the universe and dealing with the consequences of it. So you didn’t. 

And yet you had to say something.

As his arm tightened around you, you melted into his embrace, your head placed snugly against his broad chest. Jungkook’s heartbeat was slow against your ear, calming you down and mingling with the crashing of the waves. “Kook?” You called, voice soft like a whisper. 

He placed a kiss on the top of your head. “Mmh?”

You angled your head up, meeting his gaze. There was a warm sensation on your cheeks that you couldn’t get rid of. “I really like you, you know,” you said. 

Those words left you with much more ease than you had expected — not broken, mumbled or hidden. Just a clear, diaphanous truth dripping from your lips and curling around the air. It hit Jungkook right in the heart, wrapping around his soul and nestling inside his chest. 

He didn’t think he needed to respond, because he thought that it was quite obvious he felt the same, but he did it regardless. “I really like you too, baby.” He placed a kiss on your lips. If he could, he would never stop kissing you, but there was something he needed to ask. “Can I take you somewhere else tonight?”

It wasn’t that. But he’d manage it eventually. 

“As long as you don’t kill me and throw my body in a ditch, sure,” you joked.  

He smiled. “Don’t worry, that’s, like, third date material.” Jungkook kissed you again, unable to hold himself back. You giggled against his lips, the sound so pretty that he almost wanted to curse at the sunset for even trying to be more divine than you. He leaned back. “But for real. Can I?” 

You nodded, nose brushing against his. “Yeah, sure.”

“We should get back, then,” he said. “We have a few hours ahead of us.” 

~ 

There are some things we experience throughout life that, as simple as they may seem at first glance, stick with us forever, like bubblegum on the bottom of a shoe. 

Back in high school, Jungkook had a special difficulty when it came to maths — not because he didn’t get it, but because he didn’t practice. He snoozed through most of his classes, cheated his way to the end of the year, and didn’t bother opening his book. His mathematics knowledge was a polychromatic blurr at the dark corners of his head, a car zooming past too fast for him to actually read the license plate. In the middle of it all, however, there was one specific question that never left him alone. 

It was a simple logic problem — so simple, in fact, that his impulsive brain underestimated it. The question was direct, one of many alternatives that he should classify as true or false: a triangle has two sides, it said. Jungkook rolled his eyes, chuckled to himself, and kept reading the test after he had marked it as false. 

Taehyung, who somehow managed to be great at maths studying just as much as his friend, explained to Jungkook later that he was thinking about it all wrong. It was true, because if a triangle has three sides, it is logically correct to say it has two. If it has three, it also has two. It made sense, but it fucked up his worldview forever. 

He swallowed dry, looking at you by his side. Your fingers were intertwined in his, his thumb caressing the back of your hand as you went on about the weird conversation you had in the last gas station you two stopped in. He wasn’t paying much attention, though. As the cool, blue-ish lights of the tunnel melted over your face, his mind was sent somewhere else, going back and forth like a ping-pong ball.

Following his previous, math-guided trail of thought, his earlier confession wasn’t false: if Jungkook was in love with you, he also liked you. If he had three sides, he also had two. But he still felt like was omitting the truth. 

He took your hand and moved it closer to his face. With his eyes stuck on the road, measuring the curving motion of the car, he placed a kiss against the back of your hand. Not that he could just drop that confession on your lap. You liked him, but it didn’t mean that you’d take such a thing lightly, especially if you did not feel the same — and the last thing Jungkook wanted was to scare you away when he finally got you so close. Just because you had two sides, didn’t mean that you had three. 

You were still talking — Jungkook knew that you were talking; he could hear your saccharine voice reverberating at the corners of his mind, but he couldn’t concentrate on any of the words that left you. He had never been so nervous before. 

He had been considering it for some time now — the idea of making it official — and it had been the whole point of asking you out in such a dramatic, impulsive fashion. But when you were right there, with your hand so warm against his and a ghost of a smile on your lips, he couldn’t find the right way to ask you that. 

Basically, he had done and said everything he wanted to, but his main plan (which was to ask you to be his girlfriend) was completely disregarded, pushed aside by the trepidation that grew inside his heart. If Taehyung were there, Jungkook was sure he’d be mocking him for the absolute ridiculousness of it all: it seemed that, after every insane thing Jungkook had done in his life, what has finally got him stuck, paralyzed by fear, was you. 

Vulnerability was a fire burning deep inside, scorching his pride and collapsing his foundations. It came in small, manageable waves; the gradual raising of temperature so he didn’t realize he was being boiled alive until it was too late. It scared him, really. How emotionally attached he had become to you; how he couldn’t imagine his routine without you somewhere in it. Jungkook wasn’t used to having something (or someone) for so long, never applied himself to anything worthwhile before you. 

But he was trying. He swore he was. 

Back at the pier, your confession had put him at ease, gave him an injection of courage to try one more time. Jungkook decided to take you to one of his favorite spots in the world — on top of a hill, right at the outskirts of the city, where he could see the world shining below. It was a private place, outside of the main road, and he didn’t remember any other car showing up anytime he had gone there in the past. In his mind, it was the perfect amount of peacefulness after such a long day. And maybe it would help him steady himself as well. 

You sighed. “This place is so gorgeous.” 

Jungkook nodded, eyes lost somewhere beyond the windshield. Raindrops were covering his vision, surrounding the town like a ghostly halo. It was a beautiful sight, but also melancholic in its own way. “Looks better when it’s not raining, though,” he told you. “I come here with Taehyung sometimes.” 

You giggled. “So many words to say that you’re hotboxing out here.”

“Shut up, that’s only sometimes,” Jungkook told you, pushing your shoulder playfully. “Coming up here helps me think even if I don’t hotbox.” 

“Yeah I can see why,” you agreed, eyes navigating around the foggy world beyond his windshield. Everything seemed so small from up there, so mundane and manageable. “The rain is nice too.”

He hummed. “I’ll bring you up here again once it’s not raining.” 

You nodded, heart jumping at the thought of a next time. “Thank you for showing me this place, Kook. It must be very special to you.”

He chose not to answer that second part, instead reaching out for your hand once more. Jungkook was never particularly keen on holding hands, but, that day, it seemed that he couldn’t get enough of it. Of you. “I’m happy you like it.” Once again, he kissed the back of your hand. “We can stay for as long as you want, baby.” 

And so you did. 

~ 

If a time traveler had told you months back that Jeon Jungkook — of all fucking people — would be the easiest person in the world to talk to, you would’ve probably done something to change your future, because that just couldn’t be a good sign. Still, the universe works in mysterious ways, and you learned to accept its strange peculiarities when it came to the things or people that it decided to shove into your life. Sometimes you have to let go of the wheel to enjoy the drive — figuratively of course. 

Somewhere during your mindless conversation, the two of you had moved to the backseat, under the excuse that the trip had been long, and you needed to stretch out your legs. Being in that position, with the two of you side by side and squeezed into that limited space, took you on a small trip into the past — a faint recollection in which, months ago, you were slightly drunk and pouring out your insecurities to him, convincing yourself that there was no meaning behind that shameful spectacle. 

You were kind of an idiot when it came to stuff like that, however, and you were just starting to figure that out. No amount of book smarts managed to fight against your denial and the emotional pit of despair you had faced when you thought about having actual intimate moments with Jungkook, and about what they could mean. Months ago, you had convinced yourself that it meant nothing — but, now, with that bird eye’s view, you could tell that it always meant something. 

It had always been nice to be with Jungkook, with his smug smirk and the tender touches of his hand on your face, playing with your hair, sliding down your back. It had always been fun, spontaneous, fiery — always something that broke the monotony of your routine and made you have some much-deserved fun. You had spent so long convincing yourself that Jungkook was a bad influence on you that you never even noticed all the good changes he brought into your life. 

He had just pulled away from a kiss when your phone vibrated somewhere on the front seat — and it didn’t stop. Against Jungkook’s whiny protests, you fought your way around until you grabbed the device, then collapsed back into your previous position — with his arm around your shoulder and your head against his chest; both of you sat against the door of his car, legs intertwined on the seat. 

“It’s just Yongsun asking if I’m alive,” you told him, thumbs jumping over the keys on your phone. Jungkook didn’t know why you were telling him that because he could already see your screen — and the flood of texts that came with it, asking if you’d be home for dinner — but he also wasn’t paying much attention. The whole texting moment reminded him of the earlier conversation you two had, a spark of possessiveness spreading like wildfire inside him. “I’ll drop my location and ask her to come dig up my body later.” 

“Funny,” he said, voice flat. He sounded just as distracted as he was, and your ears perked up at that. You were just about to ask him what was bothering him when he told you himself. “No Jimin?” 

You turned your head to look at him, locking your phone. Yongsun could wait a little bit longer. “No Jimin,” you told him. Jungkook’s face was expressionless, you had no clue what he was thinking about. “I told you that—“ 

“Hmmm, yeah, yeah,” he disregarded, shuffling closer to you and removing the phone from your hands, placing it on the floor beside him. His backseat wasn’t the smallest, but it was hard to accommodate both of you — so, it was clear what he wanted you to do. “Heard all that.” 

With a bit of maneuvering, you leaned closer to him, still on his side, and threw one leg over his. Your hands were on his chest now, and your skirt has moved up enough so you could feel the side of his thigh pressing against your mound. “So… what’s the issue?” You asked. 

He sighed deeply, much more dramatic than he needed to be, and nuzzled his face against your neck. “No issue,” Jungkook mumbled, pressing a light kiss against your skin — only the first one, however, because they started to get progressively harsher, needier, as he moved closer to your face. 

You chuckled at his demeanor, surprised at how firm your voice came out. “Don’t believe you.” Your eyes closed as his mouth continued to kiss its way up your neck, tongue playing with your skin, teeth teasing it just slightly. You gasped when he brushed past a particularly sensitive spot, warning a soft grunt from him. “I was just joking earlier, you know, there’s no need to be jealous.” 

“I’m not jealous, princess,” he denied, finally reaching your cheek. Jungkook pulled on your hair so you could lean your head away from him, exposing more of you, and his mouth continued its path closer to your lips. “Not right now.” 

“Not now?” You echoed, interested. 

He finally found your lips, pecking them only once before pulling away. “Mhm. Not now,” Jungkook agreed, letting go of your hair. Took him a few seconds to speak up again, his mind more focused on the way his other hand slipped between your breasts, squeezing your waist before moving on to your ass. “How can I? When you’re mine.” Jungkook groped your ass, earning a soft whimper from you. “All mine, baby.” 

“Says who?” You teased. 

There were goosebumps on your legs that Jungkook didn’t miss, his fingers nonchalantly tracing the back of your thighs, adventuring beneath your skirt. “You.” He smirked. His focus seemed to shift constantly, wanting to have all of you at once. Now, his gaze found the curvature of your neck, a pleased noise leaving his throat. “Wanna mark you up, baby. You look so pretty with hickeys.” 

You gulped. “Not th—“

“Not there, I know,” he finished, taking his hand to your neck. He didn’t press down, but the sensation of his large fingers wrapping around your throat made your heart skip a beat. If he felt it, he didn’t show any reaction. “I won’t do it. But I wanna.” 

There was something dangerous about the husky quality of his tone, the way Jungkook was looking at you like a predator stalking its prey.  You bought yourself some time by leaning your head against his arm, skin touching the cold glass of the window. The drumming of the rain was never-ending, the shapes of the droplets reflecting on his serious features. “Why do you want to do that?” You asked softly, measuring his actions. 

Something told you that Jungkook was enhancing his reactions a little just to fuck with you (roleplaying, if you will). Yet, something switched inside your brain when he spoke out again. “So people know you’re mine.” His warm palm slithered up your neck, cupping your cheek once again. “So they don’t even try to approach my girl.” 

Maybe it was time to admit that you loved when he said stuff like that, exaggerated or not. You wanted it to be true, wanted to be his girl. “Is that why you did it that time?” You asked, unable to fight back against your smile. “Since when are you that possessive?” 

Jungkook breathed out, eyes stuck to the shape of your lips; to the way his thumb grazed them once, twice, until you parted them just slightly. “Not my fault you never noticed,” he sounded like he was about to get sidetracked, as if his mind was already focusing on something else. You let him change the subject. “Can you get home late, princess?”

“Yeah, I don’t have a curfew.” You chuckled. “Why?”

“No reason.” He followed as you took his hand in yours, repositioning it until it was resting on your waist. His stare remained there for a little longer, observing the curves of your body, the way your skirt had hiked up almost completely. “Just thinking.” 

It was your turn to pull him closer, fingers intertwining in his dark locks. Jungkook leaned into your touch, turning his face around so he could place a kiss against your palm. Maybe your heart melted, but he didn’t have to know that. “You don’t do that very often,” you joked. 

He didn’t follow it. “Only about important things,” Jungkook said, the hand that was on your hips now slithering up to your waist. With his other arm still around your shoulder and pressed against the car door, there wasn’t much that he could do, but you could see it in his eyes that he wanted to touch you more, harder, to pull you closer. There was such intensity under his gaze that your stare faltered, instead following the raindrops on the window. “Look at me, princess.” He called and you did. Jungkook sighed, leaning in. “Be good for me, alright?” 

Expectant, you nodded. Your eyes fluttered shut just as his lips met yours; tongue sliding inside your mouth right away, wasting no time. You knew Jungkook enough to learn how to recognize a few signs — and when he kissed you like that, so sloppy and deep, it meant that he had a one-track mind when it came to making you feel good, and he wouldn’t tiptoe around it too much. 

The confirmation for that small hypothesis of yours didn’t take long to arrive. You shuffled closer to him, breasts pressed against his broad chest and one of your legs hooked over his, and Jungkook took that opening as his cue. The arm that was around your shoulder moved to wrap around your waist, pulling your body closer as his other hand slid beneath your skirt, quickly finding what he was looking for. 

A desperate little whimper fell from your lips as his fingers pushed your panties aside, gently brushing between your soaked folds, towards your clit. Jungkook swallowed your moans as he started pressing down on your sensitive spot, his tongue playing with yours as your hands held onto the fabric of his white shirt. You could feel the drumming of his heart beneath your fingers, the raggedy quality of his breath as he groaned against your mouth. “Cute,” he mumbled as he pulled away. “Wanna eat you out. Lie down for me.” 

There wasn’t one single reality in which you’d deny him. After a small instant of struggling and fumbling around, you got to the position he requested, your upper back leaning against the door and your legs spread out on the seat. Jungkook was seated between them, his palms slithering up your calves, finding support on your knees as he leaned down. 

“Have I ever told you how much I love these skirts?” He asked. 

You chuckled. “Only a million times.”

He flicked the fabric over, exposing your panties to him. They were white, a perfect color to see the wet mark you had left on them. “Make that a million and one.” 

One of your hands pushed his hair away from his face. “I almost can’t wear them anymore, because of these.” You pointed down. 

Yeah, he had seen those already. His cock throbbed inside his pants when he saw all the hickeys he had previously left on the insides of your thighs; most of which had already started to fade. You prohibited him from marking you anywhere people could see, and Jungkook kind of liked that a lot more — it was his private spectacle, his skin-deep reminder that you were his, again and again. “So pretty, angel,” he mumbled. “All mine.” 

You smiled fondly. “You haven’t called me that in a long time.” 

“Hmmm yeah?” Jungkook pushed his body closer to your heat, trying to find a good position on the backseat. “Don’t know why. You’re such an angel.” He kissed your thigh. “My pretty angel.” 

Gently, his tongue came out to lick those marks, teeth biting down on your skin just enough to have you gasping above him. “Don’t tease,” you said — what was supposed to be a warning sounded more like a bargain, considering how airy your voice had become. 

“Aw, then it’s no fun.” He pouted, fingers hooking on either side of your panties. One of  his hands let the elastic go, a smirk blossoming on his features as it smacked back against your hips. “What do you want, baby? Let me take care of you.”

“Your mouth,” you told him with no hesitation, “and your fingers too.”

Jungkook chuckled, leaning in so he could place a kiss against your mound. You were so on edge that even that managed to evoke a shiver from you. “My girl’s greedy tonight,” he teased, voice deep. “But whatever she wants.” He finally removed your panties, throwing it on the front seat. “That stays with me.” 

“Pervert,” you teased. 

“For you, maybe,” Jungkook responded, eyes locked on your glistening folds. He separated them just slightly, watching the way your wetness clung onto his fingers, your legs jumping in expectation. “Stay still now, princess.” 

You did as he said, nails digging to the leather of the seat as Jungkook aligned himself with your pussy, letting the saliva accumulate in his mouth. You watched in awe as he let it fall, spit mixing with your juices, dripping down all over your pussy. “Told you that you’re nasty,” you said. 

Jungkook smirked like a devil, two of his fingers spreading his spit around. “You love it. You’re worse than me.” 

You bit your lip. “I’m not.” 

“No?” He raised one eyebrow. “You don’t like it messy, princess?”

Before you could respond, two of his fingers sunk in your pussy, shoving a bit of his saliva inside as well. You shivered at the feeling, walls fluttering around him as he started moving them in and out. 

Jungkook’s smile only grew, victorious. “That’s what I thought.” He reached closer, breath hitting your pussy as he spoke out. “Stay still.” 

His mouth was on you in no time, ripping a loud moan out of you. It wasn’t a mystery that Jungkook had almost an obsession when it came to eating you out, but it always surprised you how eager he was every time he did it, just moaning and grunting against your pussy as if your taste was the best thing he had ever experienced. “F-Fuck,” you cried out, back arching off the leather seat. “Feels s-so good, Kook.” 

He lived for your stuttering, raggedy praises; lived for your taste flooding his mouth. His fingers held onto your thighs harder, keeping you in place as he continued to lap around your folds; sucking your clit and teasing your entrance with his fingers before sinking back in. Jungkook was overcome with the need to see you, so he pulled back for a second so he could meet your heavy eyes. “Be louder for me, baby,” he husked. “Wanna hear how good I make you feel.” 

You gave him one, feverish nod before he was diving back in; licking you clean like his life depended on it. “J-Jungkook,” you called out, slightly dizzy already. “You’re so good. F-Feels so good.” 

In fact, it felt too good. It wasn’t rare for Jungkook to rip your orgasm out of you earlier than expected (which always inflated his ego for days after that), but, that night, you didn’t want it to end so soon. You could already feel the telltale signs of your high approaching and, as tempting as that was, you had different needs in mind. 

“Wait, wait.” You pulled on his hair, trying to get his mouth away from you. Jungkook, however, only went harder. “K-Kook, stop.” 

At that, you got his attention. He was breathing out heavily when he pulled away, his chin covered with your wetness. “What is it?”

“I…” you hesitated, fighting through the veil of dizziness in your mind. Jungkook thought that it was adorable how you got tongue-tied when you were close to cumming. It was a rare sight — one reserved only for him. “I... wanna cum on your cock.” 

That was like a punch in the gut, knocking the air out of his lungs. Jungkook could feel his cock throbbing at the sight of you — so overwhelmed, so wet — sounding so innocent when you asked for such a lewd thing. “Yeah?” He moved quickly, pushing his body away from yours so he could tug off his shirt. It fell somewhere behind him as he placed his face on your neck, voice muffled against your skin. “It’s so fucking hard for you, baby.” He squeezed your hips. “Never wanted to be inside you so fucking much.”

“Please,” you asked again, sounding so sweet and needy that Jungkook had to hold himself back from not fucking you right away. “Want you so much it hurts.” 

He growled against your flesh. “God, I wanna see you riding my cock so fucking bad,” Jungkook cursed, pressing himself against you. You mewled when you felt his erection on the inside of your thigh; his big cock fueling your lust even more. “Sit on my lap for me, baby.” 

Part of you had already guessed he was in that mood. When Jungkook was horny, he wanted to fuck you until you were crying; drilling in and out of you so hard and deep so that he was the only thing you could think about, his name the only thing you could say. But when Jungkook was really horny (as he was that night), there was nothing else in the world that satifistied him more than to watch you fucking yourself on his cock, using him however you wanted until you were sobbing out his name, cumming all over him. 

And you weren’t going to complain about that idea either. 

With a bit more maneuvering — you had yet to figure out if you enjoyed car sex or not — you finally found yourself sitting on top of his muscular thighs, your palms sliding up his toned arms, towards his chest. It was unfair how Jungkook was hot all around, with his Greek god figure and the black ink dancing in his skin; his messy dark hair and lustful gaze. You were doomed, and he pulled you into a hungry kiss before you could stare any further. 

Jungkook’s hands slid up the sides of your body, exploring the smoothness of your skin and dragging your blouse upwards. He groaned against your lips once his palms found the expanse of your breasts, hands squeezing on the flesh. It was annoying that you still had your bra on, but there was something so amazing about the little whimper you let out, about the way your back arched, body moving closer to his touch. You were always so good for him, always ready to give him whatever it was that he asked for. Always so sensitive to his most minimal of touches. 

Soon enough, you were breathing hard against his lips, pulling away so you could speak. “I’m so wet, Kook,” you said, your voice a timid whisper. “Just fuck me, please.” 

He groaned, squeezing your covered breasts once more. “Fuck, don’t say that,” he cursed out. You were never one to speak like that often so, when you did, he felt as if he needed a moment to compose himself. “You don’t know what that does to me.” 

You blinked those pretty eyes of yours at him, seeming so innocent but being anything but. “Why not? it’s true,” you teased, taking one hand beneath your skirt. Jungkook followed the movement, mesmerized, and thought that he was about to pass out when your fingers returned to his field of vision. “Look.” You pouted. 

A deep hum dripped past his lips, his hooded eyes watching as your fingers shimmered under the pale moonlight, covered by your arousal. He could feel himself salivating at the sight, wondering why the hell he had stopped eating you out in the first place. 

Still, he maintained his cool. Jungkook’s hand wrapped around your wrist, gently guiding your fingers closer to your mouth. “Taste yourself for me, baby,” he requested. His heartbeat was out of control as he witnessed your pouty lips opening up so your fingers could slip inside, the same tongue that he had just been caressing now licking yourself clean. “That’s it. Tastes good, right?” You nodded, fingers still pressed against your tongue. After another second, Jungkook removed your digits from your mouth, but his were already taking their place. “Now mine, baby,” he egged you on. 

Of course, you did as he requested, licking and sucking on his fingers until he was satisfied. 

Jungkook smirked, looking particularly hypnotized that night. “Good girl,” he praised under his breath, a maniac gaze swimming inside his eyes as he looked up at yours. “Good girls deserve rewards.” Lethargically, he started moving his fingers in and out of your mouth, his cock throbbing inside his pants at the small whimper that came from your throat. He wanted to see you sucking him off, worshiping him until he came all over your face, inside your mouth, on your chest. But what he needed was to be deep inside your pussy. “Want my cock?”

Again, you nodded, moaning around his digits. 

“Use your words, angel,” he teased, fingers leaving your mouth once again. Lately, it was rare to witness that cocky, annoying side of his, but, once it showed up, it was just like before. “Let me hear you.” 

“Yes, please,” you asked. 

He clicked his tongue, lowering his hand. You gasped when his saliva-covered fingers found your clit, circling it slowly. “Ask one more time.” Jungkook was impassive, not reacting to the way you squirmed above him, already so sensitive. “You can do better than that, baby.” 

You could never tell if you adored or despised when he got like that. Maybe both. Probably both. “Please, Kook, I want it so bad,” you begged. Through it all, you still had your own cards up your sleeve, some small actions you knew that affected him deeply. So you made good use of them: leaning in and placing a hot kiss against his lips, your hands tugging on his hair. Jungkook groaned against your mouth, his fingers stilling on your clit when you rolled your center against his erection. “Please,” you repeated, voice airy. “Let me ride you.” 

How could he possibly say no to that? 

“Fuck. Wanna see you bounce on it, baby.” Jungkook leaned back, quickly opening his zipper. You moved away just enough so he could pull his pants and underwear down, his cock stiff against his lower abdomen. “And hold your skirt up for me.” 

You pouted. “You don’t want me to take it off?” 

Jungkook shook his head, holding you by the chin and pulling you into another heated kiss. He moaned against it once you sat right over his cock, your warm wetness spreading all over him. He pulled away. “You know I love it when you ride me with a skirt on, princess. Looks like a sexy schoolgirl.”

A thousand pecks later, and you found a chance at speaking. “Pervert,” you repeated, smiling against the kiss. “You always do stuff like this.”

He hummed. “Yeah? Like what?”

“Like… fuck me with my skirt on,” you started, kissing down his neck, “Cum inside me and make me keep it inside all day. Eat it out of me.” Jungkook grew stiff beneath you, a grunt leaving his chest as you rolled your pussy against his cock one more time. “Cum inside me two, three times in a row.” You giggled. “Do you like stuffing me that much, Kook? Why is that?” 

He was obsessed with the idea, actually, just you talking about that was enough to make him dizzy with desire. Maybe it could be all trailed back to his possessive gene, the evil, cocky part of him that wanted to see you full of him, dripping with his cum, his fingerprints all over your body. What started as a simple ego thing — playing with your limits, seeing how far you’d let him go — was now a way for him to get a hold of you, to make you his, even if it was an ephemeral, material thing. And, well, yeah, maybe it was also still an ego thing. Maybe it made him super hard thinking that you were walking around with his cum inside you, dripping down your panties and making a mess all over your pussy. 

Instead of saying all that, however, Jungkook simply threw the question right back at you, “Don’t you like it when I do all that?”

“I do,” you admitted straight away, kissing his lips once, twice, barely giving him what he wanted before pulling away. He knew that glint in your eyes, and he had learned to hate it. “Not as much as you, though.” 

Still, Jungkook wouldn’t fall for your schemes that night. Sometimes he didn’t mind so much, but, then, he wouldn’t let you take the wheel no matter what. “Liar. You love it,” he threw back, wrapping one hand around his cock, the other propping you up over it. You got the cue instantly, lowering yourself so his crown brushed against your entrance. “What, you think I forgot how wet you get when I cum inside you? When you keep it in?” He smirked at the overwhelmed expression that monopolized your face, the hand on your hips pushing you down on his cock. He knew how to put you back in place, when necessary. “Look at this, I just cleaned you up and you’re already soaked again. So messy, baby.” 

You gasped when his tip sunk past your entrance, slowly stretching you out. “K-Kook—“

“Shhh, you got this.” One hand was in your hair, guiding your head closer to him. Weak, you could only follow his pull; feeling as he placed a gentle kiss against your lips. “Slow. Deep inside for me, baby. You got this.” 

With a nod, you did as he requested, gradually sinking lower and lower until his big cock filled you to the brim. You moaned out at the feeling, your arms wrapping around his shoulders for support as you tried to get used to it. 

Jungkook was breathing heavily then, his large palms cupping your ass, every cell of his body focused on the amazing way you squeezed around him. It was impossible to consider a reality in which you were not made for him, the way you two fit together was too good to be true. “That’s it… Just like that, baby,” he said, trying to fight back his moans. “Move for me?” 

The thought of mocking him about his request (considering that Jungkook was a big advocate for cockwarming as a teasing mechanism) crossed your mind, but you brushed it off almost instantly. You couldn’t overlook the need that grew inside you, begging you to fulfill it, to roll your hips against his until you were cumming.

So you did. Took you a few attempts to set a rhythm, body moving up and down as you felt his cock sink inside of you, brushing all your sensitive spots on its way out, then all the way back in. Maybe you should’ve gotten used to it by now, but every time still felt like the first. 

“L-Like this?” You asked. 

“Faster,” Jungkook breathed out. Maybe your thighs would burn like hell after your rush of adrenaline went away, but you didn’t care too much about it then — you did what he requested, picking up the pace. “Yeah, yeah, just like that. Fuck, that’s my girl.” 

You nodded, body overflowing with pleasure as you continued to ride him. That harsh, messy pace was a blessing to him, the way your breasts bounced close to his face pulling his attention instantly. 

“Doing so well for me, princess. So fucking perfect for my cock,” Jungkook praised, eyes running all over your body as you squirmed under his touches. There was no one else in his world but you; you and the overwhelming need he had to have your tits on display. He tugged on the hem of your top. “Can I?” 

You nodded, raising your arms so Jungkook could slide that piece of clothing off easily. His hands were quick to unclasp your bra, placing it on the seat next to him as he dove in to play with your breasts. “Love your tits, baby, so soft,” his voice was a muffled groan against your skin, tongue poking out against your nipple. “Love your ass.” He squeezed your cheeks, making you roll your hips against his cock harder. “Fucking love when you ride me.” 

“K-Kook,” you sobbed, I’m—“

He growled. “Love when you call me that.” 

Of course, he loved way more than that. Jungkook was a weak man — point blank, no excuses about it. He was weak about the way your warm walls clenched around his cock; lost himself in the overwhelmed nature of your expression as you rolled your hips down on his length. The world was always so enhanced when he was with you, every sentiment and sensation amplified every time he looked at you. 

The first times you fucked, it was just that, and he was fine with that — at the time. But, back then, Jungkook never noticed those small things about you with such clarity: the small puffs of air that escaped between your lips, the way your nails dug to his neck or the way you whined out his name. He never noticed how ridiculously pretty you looked, his personal angel, just losing yourself over and over for him. He liked having you on top because he couldn’t run away from those details even if he tried, so he let them consume him. 

The sound of you giggling brought him back straight away, however, his heart fluttering inside his chest. “You’re staring,” you told him. 

Jungkook smirked. “Hmmm… am I?” His hand moved your hair away from your face, cupping your cheek. You leaned into the touch and his thumb started caressing your skin, feeling the heat beneath his palm. If he concentrated hard enough, maybe he could remember that forever. “Can you blame me? Look how pretty my girl is.” 

“Your girl?” You asked, slightly delirious at that point. 

Soon enough, if he had the guts to ask you. “Yeah, all mine,” Jungkook responded, diving into that fantasy for a second — into a parallel universe where all his problems were gone, and you two were everything left in the world. “Come here.” His hand moved to the nape of your neck. “Wanna kiss you.” 

And you did, of course, because you were always just so good for him. Jungkook leaned his head to the side, fingers pulling on your hair as you opened your mouth for him, allowing for his tongue to meet yours. Once again, he felt his stomach being filled with that tingling anticipation, lust and tenderness battling inside it, begging for his attention. He couldn’t handle it: you were too much, always had been. 

Just like that, some forsaken feelings hit him before he could avoid them, before he could push them away any further. It was always like that: when he couldn’t deal with it, not when you were consuming every cell of his body and he could not ignore the effect you had on him. 

Again and again, those words were just ringing inside his head — I love you, I love you, I love you — repeating themselves into a maniac crescendo that drowned out his own thoughts. You were all that he could see, all that he could hear and touch; you were every idea that permeated his mind at that instant, chest overflowing with devotion to a point in which he couldn’t even speak. Especially not that. Not those words.

Not when you were so blissfully ignorant above him, not when the realization made him so fucking terrified that he just wanted to crawl into a ball and hide forever. Jungkook couldn’t grasp his reasoning anymore, he had long lost it. He was made of sheer, unadulterated emotion — a fierce battle between his blossoming love and the horrifying vulnerability unraveling inside his soul, promising to break him apart. 

He could not say that. Not now. Not when there was so much at risk. Not when he couldn’t even bring himself to ask you to be his girlfriend in the first place. 

So he didn’t — instead, he continued making out with you in a faithless attempt at shutting himself up.

You whined softly against his lips, your hands losing their strength on his shoulders. Your breathing was ragged, shallow; thighs starting to shake on either side of his body. Jungkook knew those signs like no one else, was quick to grip your ass tighter, helping you move. 

“Close, baby?” He breathed out, voice raspy, sounding like sin itself. “Gonna cum for me?” 

You nodded, nose brushing against his. “Y-Yeah. Almost there.” 

“Fuck, princess, your pussy’s so tight,” Jungkook cursed, closing his eyes for a second. He was a total goner: nothing could ever compare to the high he got when he was plunged deep inside your heat, breathing the same air as you. When his heart felt so full and so empty at the same time. “You sure you don’t wanna come over? Wanna fuck you all night.”

“C-can’t,” you struggled to get out, “have class in the morning.” 

He scoffed. Some things would never change. “How boring.” 

You rolled your eyes. “Next time maybe don't t-take me out on a Sunday, dumbass.” You tried to sound harsh, but it was impossible to ignore the tight grip you had on his cock as you cried out, movements stilling for just a second before you found the strength inside you to pick the pace back up. “K-Kook,” you stuttered, hooded eyes meeting his own. He loved when you called him that, made his heart burst inside his chest — and if you called him that while you were riding him then… well, then he was a dead man. “I’m gonna—“

“Gonna cum for me?” he completed, raising his hips slightly to meet your movements. His cock felt so good inside you, his ragged breaths were all that you could focus on. “Cum all over my cock, baby, wanna feel it.” 

There was nothing in the world you wanted more than that. You could feel your pleasure building up more and more inside you, ready to snap, and you simply followed it as you tipped over the edge. Jungkook loved the way you looked, the way you clenched around him, the way you cried out his name like a prayer when your body finally gave out and you came around his hard cock. He could replay that moment in his mind forever and never get tired of it.

It was by a miracle and the strong support of his hands on your hips that you didn’t just collapse against his chest, instead managing to keep a semi-constant pace on his cock — much slower, however. “Fuck, that’s it,” he moaned under his breath, his dark eyes running all over your body, trying to absorb everything about you: the bouncing of your breasts, the shaking of your thighs, the pretty frown on your features. “So good for me, baby, you always take my cock so well. My good girl.”

You nodded, still slightly dazed-out after your orgasm. Jungkook lived for moments like that, to see how fucked-out and pretty you looked when he was done with you. It made his cock throb inside you, threatening to spill over. 

“W-Want you to cum,” you stuttered. “Inside.” 

Jungkook was almost there already, barely hanging by a thread. “God, you’re fucking perfect.” He threw his head back against the seat, black hair falling all over his forehead, sweaty and sticking onto his skin. Jungkook was an image of perdition then, so hot that you couldn’t even think about anything else for a second. “Fuck, princess,” he moaned out, “you’re gonna make me cum.” 

Lately, his mind became a dangerous place when he was that close to his high, losing its filter and threatening to make him spill everything that was brewing inside his skull. Jungkook had to hold himself back with all the force he had left, but you could see it in his hooded, fucked-out gaze that there was so much that he wanted to say, so many broken words that got lost amidst his groans and moans. 

For better or for worse, he came before he had the chance to do so. Jungkook shivered beneath you as he cock released inside you, hands holding tightly to your ass as you milked his orgasm, moaning out your name as he filled you up. He could feel his cum dripping out of you, making a mess on him; could feel the way your pussy clenched around him, and it all was a piece of paradise reserved just for him. 

Once Jungkook reached his limit, he pulled you flushed against his chest, kissing your forehead. “You’re amazing,” he said, lost in your gaze. “Stay like this for me.” 

You brushed his sweaty hair away from his face. “You don’t wanna see it?” 

“Later,” he responded. “Wanna stay like this for now.” Jungkook shoved his face on the crook of your neck, smooching your skin as a long, delighted hum vibrated in his chest. “Can I see you tomorrow, baby?” He asked, voice muffled against your skin. “I can kick Taehyung out if you wanna come over.” 

You chuckled, placing your fingers in his hair. He leaned against your touch, silently begging you to play with it. “Yeah, sure,” you agreed. “I have class until three, though. And you don’t have to kick the poor boy out. Especially considering that he already knows.” 

Jungkook sighed at your response, his hands pulling you closer by the waist. Your back arched, his toned chest pressing against yours as his mouth started to assault your neck, running over the kisses and bites he had left before. “And the day after that?” He pressed on. 

Even though you had no idea where he was trying to go with that, you still complied. “Yeah, we can figure it out.” You smiled, eyes fluttering shut at the sensation of his mouth moving towards your jaw, your cheek, and then placing a kiss right on the corner of your lips. “Any day you want.” 

He smiled. “I like the way that sounds.” Leaning back, Jungkook looked at you and, just like that, all the monsters recoiled back under his bed. All his negative thoughts evanesced, and there was no doubt pestering his mind. He looked at you and he just realized that things were simple — and, all along, the two of you were just making it way harder than it should be. But he could change that now. “Baby?” He called, possessed by a newfound wave of bravery. “Can I ask you something?” 

“Yes, of course.” You nuzzled closer to him, placing a small kiss against his lips. Jungkook tried to deepen it, but you pulled away before he could manage to do so. That seemed to be a pattern between the two of you. “What is it? You got so serious all of a sudden.” 

His jaw clenched as he formulated his sentence: he had practiced a few times in his head, trying to find the best moment to let it loose, but it was ten times harder now that you were waiting for it. “Do you want to make it, you know, official?” The question left his mouth rather smoothly, much better than he had predicted. “You know. Us.” 

You blinked, shoulders falling as you digested his words. There was a fluttering in your heart that you did not miss, a sinking feeling in your stomach that left your body on edge. “Are… are you kidding?” You asked. Just to be sure. Just so you wouldn’t embarrass yourself with an overly-excited yes. 

Jungkook frowned. “Why would fucking I joke about that?” He threw back. You didn’t know. It just felt too good to be true. “No, I really fucking like you,” he went on, arms tightening around your lower body. “Want you to be mine. For real.” 

Now, Jungkook had seen basically all the expressions you could give, but he had never seen them change so fast. Your face went from disbelief to worry, to happiness and back to confusion; only to explode in a fit of laughter. “I cannot believe you.” You pressed your forehead against his shoulder, body bouncing up and down as you continued to laugh. “And is this how you ask me to be your girlfriend? Cock inside and all?” You leaned back, wiping a tear away from your cheek. “Jeon Jungkook, I swear to god… You’re so stupid.”

He smirked. “So I’m guessing that’s a yes?”

The urge to smack him across the head was overwhelming, but you held it back like a pro — you had months of practice. Instead, you placed both hands on either side of his face, keeping him in place. “See? You’re stupid,” you repeated, unable to fight the happiness in your tone. “It’s a yes, obviously.”

And you kissed him, because there was nothing else in the world to be done at that moment. 

Jungkook had to admit: he didn’t know shit about maths — and the little he did know, it was long forgotten after he had left high school. He wasn’t sure anymore, but he thought that something needed at least three sides to actually be a shape… or whatever it was that mathematicians referred to as. That’s why the triangle was the first of that weird sequence he had to memorize. And, therefore, maybe he was just too dumb to see the third side of you. 

Maybe you liked him way more than you led on. 

~

Turns out that Yongsun’s good luck had magically returned and you didn’t even know about it. 

The drive back to your place was sadly faster than you had anticipated and, about thirty minutes after you had floated your way up to cloud nine, Jungkook was parking in front of your apartment complex, putting an end to your first official date together. He kissed you goodbye (at least three times) before you got out of his car; promising once again that you’d figure out a way to see him the following day. Jungkook (in typical chaotic fashion) decided to keep your panties as a consolation prize regardless.

The front door had started making an awful creaking sound, and it signaled your arrival when you stepped into your apartment. You hummed at the delicious aroma that filled the warm atmosphere, leaning on the wall so you could remove your shoes. They collapsed against the floor, two small perturbations in that peaceful world. “Yongsun! That smells amazing, what is it?” You called out, but received no answer. Yongsun was probably distracted, as she often was when she was cooking. “I’ll be there in a second if you want some help!” 

After you went to your room and changed your clothes, you made your way to the kitchen, where you found her leaning over one large pot — spices in one hand, wooden spoon in the other — and her hair looking like it had been tied in a hurricane. The mess in the kitchen was absurd — with poorly-chopped vegetables thrown around; a dark puddle of sauce on the floor; and remnants of mustard on the back of her clothes. You had no idea how Yongsun managed to be so clumsy, but you couldn’t complain when she cooked so well. 

You crossed your arms as you arrived by her side, taking a peek inside the pot. “Hey, it smells great. What is it?” You repeated, before looking up at her. Yongsun looked awfully serious, the most you had seen during the years she had been your roommate, and that mere observation sunk like an anchor inside your stomach. “What happened?” 

In a way, you knew what had happened before she even started talking. It took you two seconds to remind yourself of the conversation you two had before you left, and another second to take a glimpse at the living room’s window, as if to check that it was still there. Yongsun liked to take breaks during cooking, walking around the place as the food boiled, and it wouldn’t surprise you if her timing had been precise enough to see something. 

Still, her following words caught you a little off guard. “You know Kim Taehyung? Last semester, I had this project with him. He talked so much we almost handed it in late.” 

You blinked — wait, had Taehyung told her something? Had he asked her something and she had just now connected the dots? “I remember that. You just never told me it was with Taehyung.”  

She hummed. “You know him?” 

You took a deep breath, trying to keep your emotions under control. There was an urge inside you to look through the window, review the possibility of Yongsun staring down the street and seeing who you were with — Jungkook hadn’t even left his car, so maybe she was going to mention something completely different. Still, you concentrated that energy into keeping your voice casual, under control. “Yeah, he’s in my ethics class. Why?” 

She nodded, finally meeting your stare. Yongsun didn’t look sad, mad, or anything in between, which confused you a little. “One time he told me about this roommate of his,” she continued casually, measuring your expressions. Of course she knew who it was. There was no way she didn’t. “Who fixed a Chevy Camaro ‘69 when he was in high school, he did it with his dad. Taehyung didn’t stop talking about how the car was super cool, and that he wanted to have a bonding experience like that with his own dad. He showed me a picture of it and everything.” 

“People talk a lot of personal stuff to you,” you deflected. Part of you wanted to tell her, you had thought about it so many times already, and yet you felt like you could barely move now, just waiting for that excruciating mystery to come to an end. 

“Happens when you study psych.” Yongsun sighed, pointing at something behind you. “Pass me the salt?” You had just grabbed it when she gave her killer shot. “Pretty sure you know who his roommate is. I think there’s only one person around campus with a car like that, and I just saw it dropping you off.” 

You laughed, dry, because that was all that your body could do at that point. It was a laugh of nervousness, of relief, of fear, of happiness. Everything and nothing at once. “Surprise, I guess,” you said, monotone. 

She elevated one eyebrow, grabbing the salt from your hands. Most people would measure it, but Yongsun had a weird sixth sense when it came to cooking, so she just threw a random amount inside the mixture before continuing. “Not a surprise, I think,” she told you. “I had my suspicions.” 

Uneasy, you nodded. You also had your suspicions that she knew who it might be, considering the comments she had dropped throughout the months; the way she had looked and talked to Jungkook back at Hoseok’s party. Nevertheless, you guessed she still hoped it was someone else. “You’re fine with that? You look like…”

Yongsun scoffed. “Fine is a strong word, honestly.” Her stare faltered, and suddenly staring at her nails seemed to be much more interesting than keeping a stable eye contact with you. She breathed out, constructing her words inside her head before looking back up. “I’m not your mom, ___. You do what you want, you go out with whoever you want.”

That wasn’t all. “But…?”

She sighed. “But, as your friend, I’m worried,” Yongsun admitted, the wooden spoon sliding between her fingers, bumping on the bottom of the pot. Her body relaxed all at once, glad that she was putting those words out. “You probably know why, maybe the same reason why you didn’t say anything to any of us. Jungkook isn’t really the best dude around and he’s just so… so much.” She shook her head. “You know the things people say about him, right? Do you really think it’s a good idea to get involved?” 

You licked your lips, taking a moment to think about your following words. You had imagined that conversation a billion times in your head, but it seemed otherwise from the way you were reacting. “I know what people say, but most of it isn’t true,” you told her. “Of course, he’s far from perfect. So am I. And I know it sounds really dumb and cliche when I say this, but he’s a really nice guy. He treats me well.” 

With a quick movement, she turned off the stove, reaching for the pot lid. “I have no doubt about that, girl. I told you that you seemed happy and I meant it,” she said. Her shoulders fell and you couldn’t really figure out what her expression meant. “___, I just… I don’t want you to get carried away by someone that isn’t worth it. You have so much ahead of you, I would hate to see you getting heartbroken or even just distracted because of him.” 

You placed one hand on her arm. “Yongsun, believe me when I say that I get it. A hundred percent,” you stressed. “We’ve both been in this… back and forth for a long time now. Exactly because I was thinking the same thing, and I was terrified I was doing something stupid that would end badly. But Jungkook’s great, really.” You breathed out. “I know it’s hard to believe that, it took me some time too. But I’m serious. There’s nothing to be worried about.” 

Against your best expectations, your small speech actually managed to settle her worries for now. Yongsun breathed out, relieved. “Good, okay,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me anything?” 

You swallowed dry. “I was worried about what you guys would say. It’s dumb, I know,” you admitted. “And I guess I was lying to myself too.”

She nodded, taking a glimpse at the pot of food. You still had no clue what it was, but, at that point, that was the smallest of your concerns. “You know I’m a black belt in karate, right?” She asked randomly. “I can kick his ass if you want.” 

You laughed, finally allowing yourself to relax. “I’ll keep that in mind,” you guaranteed. You felt much lighter now, and you could tell that she was going through the same. You didn’t know how much that secret had been killing you inside until you finally let it loose. “Thank you for understanding, Yongsun. I was afraid you and Jisoo would hate me for it.” 

She shook her head, a puff of air leaving her nose. “Honestly, girl, I don’t understand it. At all. But I trust you,” she stressed. That was probably the best scenario you could get out of that. “I can’t guarantee that Jisoo will have the same reaction, though. She hates the guy.” 

Oddly enough, having Yongsun speaking your worries out loud didn’t affect you as much as you had expected. Jisoo had been the central line that connected the web of anxiety inside your head and, yet, she seemed like a distant issue now. She was your best friend and you loved her to death, that hadn’t changed a bit, and still, your perspective had switched enough for you to notice that she was probably the least qualified person in the world to judge you for your impulsive actions. Not when you had to take care of her in Hoseok’s party because she couldn’t make her own decisions; because she was afraid of the social backlash of placing her own limits. And, ironically, you were doing the same thing when it came to her. 

You had already reached a conclusion about what to do about it. “I’ll tell her after summer break,” you shared your idea, “I think she’ll understand if I talk to her about it. Or at least she won’t be so mad about it.” 

“That might work.” Yongsun nodded, thinking for a second. “Well, it’s better than if she figures it out by herself. She’d be really upset.” 

Upset was an understatement, but whatever. “Yeah, that’d be the worst case scenario, but it won’t happen,” you were firm in your words. “I’m like a pro at sneaking around.”

Her expression was washed by disbelief. Yongsun scoffed, grabbing a towel nearby so she could remove the pot from the stove. “Girl, I disagree,” she said, walking towards the kitchen table. She was a small girl, but her cooking superpowers worked wonders when it came to transporting food around. “I’ve heard too much.”

You paused, unable to fight the smile that grew on your lips. “Oh… yeah, that was on purpose.” 

The pot almost tipped over (which would have undoubtedly been a catastrophe) when Yongsun dropped it on the table, surprised. “What?!” She exclaimed, horrified. 

You waved her worries away. “Long story,” you said. 

She shook her head, possessed by chaos. “No, girl, you’re not going to zoom past that like you didn’t just say it. It's dinner time and you’re not running away from my yakisoba.” Oh so that was what the food was. Yongsun pointed at one of the chairs while she walked towards the other. “Sit your ass down. You have months of gossip to tell me.” 

You raised one eyebrow. “During dinner?” You asked. “Are you sure?” 

She huffed. “I have a strong stomach. Go ahead, try me.” 

You shrugged, sitting down. To be fair, she didn’t know what she was asking for. “Fine. What do you want to know?” 

Spoiler: Yongsun did not have a strong stomach. 

[mxvladdy]

I would like to request! Can I request? Well I wish for you to consider what type of person/what kind of situation would cause the brothers to make a pact with someone. Maybe even what they would request in exchange? This can be before or after they met MC. With that out of the way, I totally binge read all of your works after my sister gushed to me about the True Form series, and just thank you??? It made me really happy reading them and it's always impressively detailed and well thought out.

Awww thank you! I’m glad it’s rave-worthy! I plan to add to it soon bc it was an absolute riot to write and research for lol

And wow this one is a toughie! I’ve actually never thought of what would make them want a pact! Hope ya like it!

Lucifer- Pact of Success

Absolutely the hardest brother to do business with, but that is probably a good thing. He is incredibly selfish with his contracts. Sure, they’ll benefit from his pact mark, but he will get the most out of it. Aside from MC he only takes requests for contracts from the human “elite”. They make wonderful feathers in his cap.

But also he takes some enjoyment in breaking them. They always get so cocky with his contracts thinking that they have him on the ropes and at their beck and call. It gives him a good chuckle, humans are so brazen considering their very short lifespan.

He destroys them slowly over time- all the little minutia he peppers in his legal bindings adds up. Not that his normal clientele ever read the fine print. But he designed it that way to make sure they don’t. All their requests are the same and so simplistic. Big boats, fancy cars, climbing the proverbial ladder faster than their friends or enemies - blah-blah-blah. At least the paperwork is easy to complete.

Very rarely does he find a contract he is excited to make. Those contracts are given to artists and craftsmen he sees potential in. He loves good art, and every artist should take pride in their work.

When it comes to the “price” of his pact it is worryingly simple. All he wants is some of their time. It sounds simple, and it is. Which is why it’s dangerous. The contract doesn’t specifically say how or the rules of it. How he takes your time is completely up to him.

Sometimes he simply comes for a drink and to ask how business is going. Or with the pacts he gives a damn about- he pops in to see progress on their artist visions or listen to their latest musings.    

Other times if he grows tired of his pact holders’ ever-growing demands or ludicrous requests he comes and takes time right out of their lifespan. His visits leave them weak and fatigued though they can’t place why. He is a slow siphon of death and they are too foolhardy to notice. If he is feeling especially cruel, or sentimental he takes memories, things that a demon generally wouldn’t want.

Time with family, the first time they met the love of their life, a child’s birthday. He takes them all and leaves them with only a blurry recollection in his wake

When MC crosses his path though he is very apprehensive. He doesn’t want a pact or anything that could jeopardize Diavolo’s upcoming plans. But they make his skin itch with want. He doesn’t want them to be another trophy on his wall. He wants a mutually beneficial pact, one that almost leans in their favor and it grates him. Should/ when a pact is made he won’t use his powers on you as then he would have to take something in return. Instead, he takes his time and coaches them to be successful by their own right, though if he has to eliminate some obstacles- well they don’t need to know that.

Mammon- Pact of Riches

I love his man with all my heart, but even when he isn’t losing bets or getting tricked into pacts he still isn’t the most selective with who he conducts business with. He is the avatar of greed, after all. I guess it comes with the territory.

He scouts for already wealthy humans or people with a good head for numbers and is money smart. Some are too smart to deal with him, knowing that whatever monetary gain they are granted from him will backfire in the end (or their mama’s taught them not to make deals with strange demons). But a sucker is born every minute, and he has nothing but time on his hands.

His pacts are pretty simple and upfront. Sign on the dotted line and they get some of his wicked gamblers’ luck and more riches than one human life span could do much with. While he gets a glorified accountant and a nice percentage of their profits. It’s a win-win… for him.

See he forgets to mention that there are two sides to every coin, and his flip side is particularly detrimental to one’s health. He just so conveniently glosses over that his luck will wear out over time depending on how frequently the pact holder uses it.

But the hunger for more doesn’t. If anything that particular sensation grows into an all-consuming fire in the pit of their pitiful guts. It forces them back into the seedy basements or griming gambling halls. One more roll, one more stack of bills, just one more time and they will hit pay dirt surly! But the losses just keep coming. If one of his pact holders ends up face down in a ditch after one too many bad hands and uncontrollable greed… well ain’t nobody’s fault but their own.

He has a softer spot for humans that seek him out and treat him like a living being instead of some tool to be tossed around at will. It’s refreshing. He will actually take some care with these pacts and tell them to temper their use of his magic so they can get the most out of it in the long run. They still might run into misfortune and he is genuinely sorry for that but there is only so much he can do in the end.

With MC he doesn’t even tell them about what his pact can do or how to use it. He doesn’t want anything bad happening to his human. If they want something tell him he will do it himself no magic or pact summoning required. He wants to keep them happy and healthy for as long as his lifespan will allow.

If MC should find how to use his pact mark he will get pissed. Not so much at them but the situation in general. He’ll be upfront about the whole thing, judge him how they want but he refuses to let greed consume them too. He focuses a lot of time and energy on learning how to reel in his magic with them so they get some of the perks but none of the major downsides. Unlike with his other pacts where he lets it all just run wild (just means they use up their contact faster and he can move on to even bigger fish).

Leviathan- Pact of Wisdom and Skill

Surprisingly, despite his antisocial tendencies with “normies”, he gets around when it comes to contracts. Perhaps it’s jealousy at his other brothers or perhaps he finds collecting contracts a bit of a game on its own.

He has a small niche of people interested in his pacts. Pacts with him give people a strategic advantage in nearly any situation. Seemingly overnight his humans turn into near tactical geniuses. Because of that, he is very popular with military leaders and humans with dangerous careers.

He also makes mini contracts with foot soldiers and humans with dangerous oceanic jobs. They just want to make it out alive and he gets that. With contracts like these, he is more lenient and doesn’t ask for much. Make an offering of fancy food to Henry 2.0 or wait in line for a rare human figuring he wants. Wam-bam thank you ma’am kinda business.

This is completely different from his larger contracts. With the military contracts, he expects them to continue with their duties until they die in the field. Simple as that, he doesn’t mince words in his contract. It’s what he would do as General so he expects it from them. Should they try to define him he will get rid of them.

He takes delight in defiant contract holders. They think they are as clever as he is now. But they forget that they are using his magic. He could take his magic away right after they defy him sure...but he won’t. He lets them stew for a bit, thinking they have had the last laugh on envy. If they wish to play games with a General then he will make sure it’s good.

With MC he plays on easy mode, granting them insight and little touches of his magic during exam week or when playing a game against his brothers. He wants nothing in return from them but some quality hangout time.

Satan- The Pact of Retribution

As the only pure-blooded demon out of the seven, he does these pacts out of necessity like most other demons. While the others do it more so out of monetary gain and an obligation to the crown. Or if you’re Belphie, sheer enjoyment.

He does it because he hungers, it a hole in his very self that he is trying to fill. He hunts for one reason only- relief from his cardinal sin. He will never feel the calm after a storm of rage naturally. Patience and tranquility are the antitheses of his very creation. So he gets it artificially through his contracts.

He looks for the downtrodden, angry, and the most bitterly despondent humans he can find and gives them the chance to seek vengeance. He is very upfront with what his pact entails. Once the vengeance is complete his rage will consume them and they will become another soul for him to consume.

He isn’t cruel about the process or tries to trick a human into a mark. Very few of the ones he approaches turn him down even after hearing the details. It is possible that humans once shot to get even and he gets to feel bliss, to feel calm. He finds out that the longer or more obscure the plan for retribution is the sweeter the outcome is for Satan.

If he is feeling super ornery he will go after people affected by the outcomes of Lucifer’s pacts. They are easy prey and almost as wrathful as Satan himself. Bonus it aggravates Lucifer to no end when he has to go out of his way to clean up the mess Satan’s contract made of his own.  Anything to piss him off makes Satan feel all the better.

With MC he doesn’t need to use his pact magic. Mostly because they are always around him in the Devildom, and no one is stupid enough to mess with someone Satan favors. If someone or something does irritate his MC he will take it out before it can fester into something his magic will try to latch onto. Keeping you calm and happy makes him feel almost tranquil as well.

Asmodeus- Pact of Gratification

Another very popular pact to try to get, and how could it not? He is fabulous~ But as much as people try to find him, he only goes for a certain type of contract. He has his perfectly manicured fingers on the pulse of the fashion and beauty industry.

His name is a whisper among the up and comers in the business. Many-while not looking for a pact - at least want to see him at least once. Many never will, they get cut from their agency or quit before they could get a foothold. It happens, and he hates to see it. Everyone deserves to feel gorgeous, or at least get a chance to be in the same room as him!

But for the ones the perceiver and climb the ranks get invited to one of his many parties. They can only get invited by someone wearing his mark. He trusts them to know who would be amenable to his contract.

His pact grants its bearer a glamor that can’t be broken by any meer mortal or mage. It makes them absolutely irresistible. How they wield that power is completely up to the user, he won’t judge or intervene.

Once they sign the contract all his holders see him frequently. He absolutely loves dropping in on their shoots or fancy dinners to say hi or get a recap on how they are fairing. Not because he is a nice demon or just super friendly (though they would like to think so). No, he just likes to watch.  

His payment is slow, methodical and no one sees it happen until it is already complete. In exchange for beauty and the graduation of getting whatever their little hearts could as for he gets their ability to love, whether that be familiar or sexual. Asmo loves the feeling of being loved; he wants it in all ways possible.

Some pact holders don’t have an issue with this. They got their looks, a successful career, and people to manipulate to their heart’s content. Not having strong contentions with anyone works in their favor. But others don’t and while they search for him to try and get that little slice of humanity back he is long gone. He got what he wanted anyway.

MC is his darling. He can and will make a special contract just for them (reviewed by Lucifer). A beautiful new contract for a beautiful soul! He wants you as unchanged as possible because this MC is the one he fell for.

Beelzebub- Pact of Prowess

His pact is a very elusive one as he isn’t keen on going and looking for one. Beel isn’t a big fan of these trades, but he needs them every once and a while. Nothing is more filling than a contracted soul.

His trade is basic, make a pact and you get his strength. He, like Satan, is upfront about what his payment is and what side effects will plague them. He sees no reason to lie about it. The more they draw on his power the more the host's body gorges itself. Their bones will collapse in on themselves from the stress of it- the magic feeds on anything in the host bodies. It will deplete the iron in the blood, go after the calcium in the bones, sink its teeth in their muscle system.  

It’s all rather gruesome and Beel does feel bad about it. He tells though who are still adamant about binding with him ways they can negate some of the side effects by taking supplements and augmenting their diets.

But it is like patching a deep cut with a bandaid, it just won’t work. His stomach is near bottomless- humans most certainly aren’t. They simply can’t eat enough to sustain their body like he can.

It surprises him that people still seek him out. To some, the pros outweigh that very huge cons. Some really do believe that they can find a loophole or find the right mix of medication to offset it.

He doesn’t get beaten up about it anymore but it gets on his nerves how obstinate humans can be about his very clear warnings. When his magic finally consumes them he takes both the body and soul back down with him and feasts on both.

With MC he keeps an eye out on them. Consistently checking in, making sure they don’t skip a meal, and join him at the gym often. He wants them to be strong and healthy enough to not ever want to use his pact. Though he does speculate that their angelic bloodline buffers both his and his brother’s magic a good bit.

Belphegor- Pact of the Visionary

Dreamers come in every shape and size and from different walks of life. But they are are all suckers to Belphie. He is known as the Lord of Decet for a reason.

He will promise them everything and anything their heart desires. That invention that will change the world? Done. A patent that is long overdue. Easy enough. A sudden rush of ingenuity to complete that nagging project. He is a devil of his word, it will be done. It- just won’t be done in the way they would want it.  

See manipulating the physical realm is hard work. Like a lot of hard work. More than he would ever do for some stupid little human. It’s a lot easier to control outcomes in his realm.

The moment the contract is signed his hosts fall under his control and he takes it from there building a perfect little dream world for them to frolic in and believe they are getting what they want. He feeds off of them here, taking little sips from their energy and exploring these new fresh dream worlds. His dreamscapes get boring every once and a while, so having a new human under his influence is always refreshing.

While his humans thrive inside their minds their bodies waste away in bed as his magic draws them further and further into an endless sleep.

He doesn’t see anything wrong with his contracts. Who would argue with him that the dream realms aren’t real in their own sense? Did his humans not accomplish their goals in the end? He doesn’t think of the outside effects of his magic and pacts. Belphie really doesn’t care about what families he broke apart or lives he inadvertently affected.  

MC is different to him though. He doesn’t keep them under his spell hardly ever (maybe if they are spending too much time with Dia or Lucifer. But he doesn’t push it with them.).He still walks into their dreams whenever he feels but he comes just to visit, not to change. He simply just enjoys keeping you company and relaxing in the little mini paradise you always seem to create in your dreams.

[silvermahogany]

Talking about a few songs I associate with my favourite aonoex characters bc i enjoy shoving my music taste in people's faces and analysing the shit out of nothing <3

Recent chapter spoiler warning lessgo, also mentions of suicide tw

THE MAIN MANS HIMSELF

Still feel - Half•Alive

"I am not a slave, so pick me from the dark and pull me from the grave"

In my mind, this is his themesong without a doubt. Its reached the point where wherever i hear it it makes me really happy because I associate it with him so strongly :,D might just be because I found it while getting back into the fandom when Ren was kinda transitioning to my favourite so they came up together but either way, absolute banger. The bit at the end when everything drops and the lead singer belts his heart out, I always love to picture Ren doing the same in the illuminati uniform with Yamatanka building around him and I've never wanted to learn how to animate more in my life cause my GOD he's so cool.

My favourite song for my favourite character <3

Preach - Saint Motel

"Oh im down on my knees, mercy"

Its so happy and bouncy?? And the vibes are immaculate?? Matches well with the themes of religion as well, this one definitely shows his flirty loverboy side more, it gives the impression of some lovestruck idiot stumbling over himself every time his crush does anything and honestly, sounds like something he'd do. Good song makes me go :))))

Your Love (Deja Vu) - Glass Animals

"You eat us up, you live like you're on camera"

I feel like this one captures his spy side a little more than the others. The lower notes in the main verses give a secretive feel, like he's halfway through a mission and trying trying stay silent. But it's also flirty in a more smooth way than wholesome crushes like the rest. The lead singer has such a gorgeous voice too i'll praise glass animals until the day i die 🥺🥺 God tier song god tier vibe 1000000/10

Do It All The Time - IDKHOWBUTTHEYFOUNDME

"Now we're so young but we're probably gonna die, it's so fun we're so good at selling lies"

Now THIS is a song for a spy working for a secret deadly organisation, all about world domination and having a great time doing it. Renzou is a free spirit and loves the freedom of his job, and this song really captures that for me. He knows he's in danger, but he's living his best life and he's having a great time doing it baybeeee B)))

Sweet Talk - Saint Motel

"You could yell 'piss off won't you stay away!' And still be sweet talk to my ears"

Ren is a persistent little shit when it comes comes crushes and this song shows it, a song about a guy who's so infatuated he doesn't care if he's hated or laughed at, he just loves hearing their voice. I see this as a bit of a yukishima anthem tbh, I feel like in the early stages of their relationship it would be pretty one sided with Shima trying to win him over and Yukio shutting him down so this matches that pretty well :>

Cant go five minutes without talking about them can i-

Honourable mentions-

Talk too much - COIN - very flirty and cheesy considered it as his themesong for a while

Toxic - Britney Spears - self explanatory :)

Razzmatazz - IDKHBTFM - everything they make shows his spy side imo, good for daydreaming

Van horn - Saint Motel -honestly anything by Saint Motel or Half•Alive reminds me of him, great bands :D

YUKIO MY BELOVED

Yukio was weirdly a lot harder for me to find songs for. For Renzou i have a giant playlist I add to over time, supreme comfort playlist egegegeheh, but Yukio's is a lot shorter for some reason. I guess his vibe is a little difficult to get down but a while scrolling through my main playlist and I think I have a decent few that at least match his character development and plotline.

Stressed Out - Twenty one Pilots

"Out of student loans and treehouse homes we all would take the latter"

Pretty self explanatory really, mans was forced to grow up and mature way faster than he shouldve had to, having a high stress job by the age of 13 studying for two meister all while studying to be a normal doctor as well. Not much of a surprise he has so many mental issues by the beginning of the story. I dont listen to much TOP but the few songs I know seem to fit Yukio pretty nicely :)

Oh Klahoma - Jack Stauber

"Those aren't meant to bend, no those arent meant to bend"

Another song based on depression, but with a much quieter feel, much lower energy. I feel like this one more links to his tendencies of delf destruction, and how alone he feels as he faces his battle. Like he's singing into the void hoping for something to reply, but nothing will. Man :(

The Fall - Half•Alive

"I'd jump off and into your arms but i cant trust the fall"

I feel like this one highlight his story to Rin in a really realistic way. Yukio has a good heart, he's kind and wants to love his brother and open up to him he wants to get better. But he's so deep in his pit of depression and conflicting feelings over his brother that he can't bring himself to, he sees no way out. God I wanna write an analysis on his character so bAD-

Baby Hotline - Jack Stauber

"Numb, I've been burning with haste and I'm realising now it's a terrible waste"

We just keep getting darker huh, didn't pick very pleasant tunes for this boy did I. A bouncy, happy song about a girl calling a suicide hotline, lovely. But i feel like it describes his mental state pretty well, outside he seems ok. Sure Rin picks up that somethings off, but once Yukio assures him he doesnt really persist above asking him a couple times. But below the facade he's really reaching his breaking point, and I love how this song contrasts those two tones in a scarily natural way. Absolute banger

Fireflies - Gorillaz

"And if you say goodbye too many times, the sentinels will find me and switch me off this time"

One of my absolute favourite Gorillaz songs by far. The melody is so gorgeous, melancholic in the best kind of way. For Yukio I feel like it signifies how trapped he feels as Satan's son, he's hit his lowest point and he doesnt know how to start moving back up. But the song also has a hopeful feel to it, as if even though he feels lost, he will get better. In the recent chapters we see a moment of reconciliation between Yukio and the people around him, with Suguro forgiving him and tye two brothers finally getting a chance to to things out. Before everything went to shit lmaoo. But with that i really hope that after all the fighting is done, Yukio will finally get the chance to see how bad things have gotten, and reach out to get better. And this song shows that for me :D

Honourable mentions!!

Creature - Half•Alive - the first song I ever added to his playlist, there for sentimentality tbh

Cane shuga - Glass Animals - the plonky noises make the happy chemical go buckwild, not sure why it reminds me of him it just kinda does really

I Earn My Life - Lemon Demon - mans is overworked give him a break :( ngl i don't associate it with him much but i wanted to edge a lemon demon song in somewhere-

Dead inside - Younger Hunger - whenever I hear this I always imagine a really cool animation of him and it always plays out the same way and MAN I wanna animate so baDD

Absolute wordvomit woohoo, hypervocused on this instead if doing the assignment due this evening I'm a fantastic student. This was kinda fun tho!!! I might do other characters at somepoint, these guys are my favourites but i have a bunch of playlists for other characters like Amaimon and Shura, recommendations are welcome too!!

[phoebehalliwell]

Ok I’m curious, how would you fix season 8? Which is objectively the worst season IMO but had the most potential

i mean like there were a lot of things wrong with season eight but i think by far the worst thing was their villains like. for starters. making billie and christy our big bad was. bad. and then there was dumain? the triad? the source came back for a second? it was sloppy, at best. like. like!! i think s8 would have benefitted best from a clear-cut villain from the get go, something that was evil with an agenda, that offered a couple one-off plots rather than like. a girl who was kidnapped an emotionally manipulated into believing she's right by older powerful men exploiting her and wrapping up her plot by literally(!!) incinerating her. she burnt to death i'll never be over this she was literally human lmao what the Fuck. so instead of doing a billie manipulated by christy manipulated by dumain who's like. the triad's bitch. Don't. the underworld is currently in chaos what with the source dying and then the avatars stint and the zankou bit. they need leadership. have someone vy for the throne. forget the ultimate power. leave that shit in the dust. we could still potentially have billie, but billie was just a really bad character for charmed where we were. like we just watched the girls go thru endless shit for a near decade and now we have some knockoff buffy like i know more than you!! like it doesn't matter that in some cases, billie is right (hello?? scrying with a laptop????), like, we’ve been with the charmed ones so long like it's so hard to read billie as anything other than annoying. and then both henry and coop were done So Fast like. those could stand to marinate a shade longer. every tho paige and henry's wedding is my fav out of all the weddings on the show (bc it was the cutest) um. it's very ooc. like they can just be in a long term committed relationship. moving in together could be their big thing. maybe getting engaged. but like the speedrun in three months? two months? unbelievable. and then i've mentioned this before coop entering phoebe's story of his own volition as a passing cupid who senses a blocked heart and tries to fix it and then ends up in way over his head when phoebe summons him and threatens to vanquish him. like way more believable than the elders just sending coop down as a sorry present girl what. other people have also pitched work rivals to lovers phoebecoop as two rival pop culture cupids. there are options. skip over dex obvi. i will give a shout out to the way they got rid of leo. the um. mechanics of it were stupid, as previously stated. but i'm always a fan of bringing in death, and i thought it was a good loophole for getting rid of brian 2 save money. oh you know what else i didn't like? agent murphy. fuck that guy he was both boring uninteresting bland and also a dickwad. so. :\

okay. so to salvage s8 on a budget. here's what i'd proposed: focus on seats of power. sets you already have: magic school, the manor, the underworld (presumably). first thing under siege so 2 speak is the manor, now that the charmed ones are dead. paige keeps trying to help charges on the dl, phoebe still practices magic and intervenes in like. letters that warrant it from the advice column. piper and leo are living that domestic life and maybe we get a quote from wyatt just like from melinda in s2 don't worry mommy i promise not to use my magic and like all these girls kinda hit the conclusion hey. this is wrong. we are the charmed ones. let's own up to it. they're back!! we give paige two relevant charges: speed, a future whitelighter who just graduated high school in the spring. no he's not going to college, despite henry's insistence, and later paige's. he'll hit that epiphany later. billie. wicked smart, independant, freshman at berkeley with a tragic past. they r gonna be each other's love interests, giving us a plotline off the sisters so the actresses can have a break because evidently that was a requirement as well. speed's first 2 notice, but billie's first to put the pieces together: there's something demonic afoot in san francisco. and up-and-coming demon clan have been like. like giving mortals demonic powers, granting them magic in exchange for fealty. this can lead for kind of a big final battle, with the charmed ones vs like an army that can easily be disarmed once they find the necessary magical pathway. we can also have the sidequest of magic school, which will soon be falling into the hands of the charmed ones. in fact, we can have the demon clan going for a "magical seat of power" which the girls interpret as the manor but realize almost too late that it is magic school. from there, all the mortals who went demonic can like. be knocked unconscious have their memories wiped and place back in the world like nothing ever happened, wrapping that up in a neat bow. the girls finish the fortification of magic school, resealing its protections and confirming its place as a haven for the next generation of magic. speed almost dies and you think he's gonna die fr fr because he's a future whitelighter and you're like oh that's how we're gonna wrap that plot up but psych! billie saves him at the last minute. they get to stay in a healthy normal relationship together <3 piper gets leo back after the great battle, phoebe and coop get married in the manor and take the place of the paigehenry wedding because like. again they should also hold off on that (maybe we just include it in the flash forward montage) but we kinda do need at least one wedding to wrap this motherfucker up. and paige and henry get a domesticity beat and also maybe a roadtrip we give them a literal drive off into the sunset symbolizing how piper gets the domesticity the white picket fence life she's always wanted phoebe gets true love and the ability to feel whole again and paige gets freedom and independence symbolized by her road trip, which also shows us how magic has reached such a point of stability that each of the charmed ones can actually live on their own. paige drives off into the sunset And Then we get the flashforward montage of everyone's individual happy endings. fin <3

[mavzoon]

Yandere Bruno x fem/reader smut

So. I didn’t know exactly how to write Bruno’s stand from the perspective of a non-stand user. So. Let’s just think that the reader can only feel strength leave the places that are being zipped. (I also re-watched the episode where Bruno uses his stand on Giorno and he says something along the lines of “does it feel as if your head is about to fall off?” and so I kinda based the readers reaction to his stand after that.

Trigger warnings: Dubcon (def more noncon headed), yandere stuff, a lot of dirty talk (though its rly soft bc Bruno), mild body horror I guess?? Bc Bruno uses his stand on the reader. Just a lot of Bruno being a ‘sweet’ yandere for the reader.

Word count: 2915

Le sin under the cut

The first thing you felt was a throbbing in your head. You looked around, vision still hazy and found that you were in a lavish bedroom. For a second, you thought that it had to be a dream. Then your head throbbed again, and for the first time, you noticed the fact that another person was holding you. You rolled around to see who it was only to be met with a face that might as well have been a strangers. 

You’d see that man before. Usually, you’d forget the faces of strangers, but there was something about his blue eyes and bob cut that made you remember him. Or maybe it was the politeness he showed you when he bumped into you. You couldn’t remember his name. The only thing you knew for sure was that you had no idea how you ended up there. 

You’d gone drinking last night, and at some point, you must have passed out. You weren’t that surprised by having woken up in a strangers bed after a night of drinking, but the thing that puzzled you was that you didn’t even remember seeing the blue-eyed man in the bar. 

Ever so slowly, you pulled yourself free from his grasp. You were about to stand up and sneak away when a strong pair of hands pulled you back down.

“Hey! I’ve got to go now!” You yelped as the man pulled you back into his arms.

“Oh? And where exactly are you planning to go, love?” Though his voice was soft and sweet, you furrowed your brows at what he had said.

You turned to look at him. “Home. I have work and- Hey!” 

The man pulled you against him, and your face pressed up against his bare chest. 

“Oh, but darling, you are home,” he smiled, his eyes not showing even the slightest hint of malice. 

Without even thinking, you kicked yourself away from him and sprinted at the door. At once, your legs gave away, and you fell on the ground, hitting your head. You tried to stand up, but for some reason, your legs wouldn’t co-operate. You whipped your head back, but seemingly there was nothing wrong with your legs. All of the strength below your thigh had just vanished. You screamed. You kicked about, tried to crawl away and thrashed around like a fish on land. 

“Oh, sweetheart, I wish you’d calm down. You could hurt yourself!” The man walked over to you.

You tried crawling away, but you were stopped by the wall hitting your back. “Don’t hurt me!” You threw your hands up and whimpered.

The man tilted his head, looking almost confused. “I’d never hurt you!” He smiled and knelt next to you, placing a warm hand on your cheek. “I love you.”

You felt as if your heart had stopped. “I don’t even know you, just… Let me go, please,” you begged as tears began to slip down your cheeks.

“Oh, darling, please don’t cry.” He wiped the tears away, only serving to scare you even more. “My name is Bruno Bucciarati. Though it does hurt a bit that you’ve forgotten my name, I won’t hold it against you. It must’ve been stressful, living in that chaotic world all by yourself. But don’t worry! You’re safe now.” He pulled you into a tight hug. 

This has to be a dream, you thought. Soon you’d wake up and go on with your normal routine. You’d go to that job you don’t care about and spend time with the coworkers who barely knew the real you. You’d-

The stranger, Bruno, placed a gentle kiss on your forehead. “You don’t have to worry about anything ever again,” he pulled away and looked at you, eyes full with something close to affection. “I’ll take care of you.”

You tried pushing him away, but he grabbed your hand and smiled. “I understand this all must be so confusing for you.” He smirked as if he’d figured something out. He pulled your hand near his face and kissed your palm so gently it barely felt like a tickle. “I was planning on waiting, but I see now that I must show you just how much I love you,” he whispered as a kissed down your palm to your wrist. 

The implications were not lost on you. “P-please don’t! J-just let me go…”

“Hush, you’ll see soon enough that this is for the best.”

“But-”

He interrupted you with a kiss. You tried yanking yourself away, but he followed, eventually trapping you under him, your back pressed against the floor. You tried pulling away once more, placed a firm hand on your side, keeping you in place. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you love every second of this,” he said as he began trailing kisses down your neck.

You were damn-near trembling with fear. “I- I don’t want to-”

“Yes, you do.” Bruno pulled back and picked you up. You tried wiggling yourself free, but the strength was still gone from your legs, and you felt as if they might fall off any second. As he carried you back to the bed, he trailed a finger over your lips and smiled. “You love me. You just don’t know it yet.”

The utter intensity of his gaze made you feel as if you were burning up. At that moment, you realized that there was no reasoning to be done with the man. He had made up his mind. You wished you could escape, but with the spell he’d put on your legs, you knew you couldn’t do that. All you could do was endure whatever hell he’d put you through. 

And so you closed your eyes and grit your teeth, determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing your reactions.  

He laid you down on the bed so carefully it was as if he thought you’d shatter from the smallest bump. You turned your head away, refusing to look at him as he crawled on top of you. Just having him near you made you feel as if you’d suffocate. 

He swiped a stray hair away from your face. “This is one of the things I most love about you. You’re so headstrong and determined.”

He leaned in to kiss you, but you turned your head away, so his lips found your jaw instead. Bruno didn’t show even the slightest hint of disappointment. He kissed down your neck ever so slowly.

“Amore, you may act as indifferent as you want, but I won’t be deterred.” He pushed one hand under your shirt, his fingers barely touching your skin as he pushed your shirt up. “If it were up to me, I’d kiss you for hours.” In a second, your shirt and bra were split open and pulled off. You opened your eyes and looked about, your brows furrowed. They were next to you, unbroken. 

“Are you a demon?” you asked before you could stop yourself.

Bruno chuckled, his warm breath hitting your skin, giving you goosebumps. “No, darling, I’m the love of your life.” 

He dove down, taking one of your nipples into his mouth and licking it. You couldn’t help but whimper. You’d dreamt of finding someone who’d take things slow with you and love you. Never in your wildest dreams would you imagine it would happen like this. 

You’d been fine if Bruno had just bent you over and treated you as if you were worthless, so the fact he was treating you as if you were a porcelain doll was unbearable. You half wanted to tell him to hurry up so you could leave, or at least try to. Then again, you didn’t want to make him think you actually wanted any of this. 

Lost in thought, you yelped when Bruno slid one hand under your pants and began to pull them down. He switched to playing with your other nipple. 

The fact that he was treating you better than all the other lovers you’d had in the past made you seethe with disgust. 

“Hurry up! If you’re going to take me against my will, then just fucking do it!” You snapped. 

Bruno pulled back and stared at you, his eyes wide. “I’m not going to hurt you like that. Can’t you see that I love you?” He sounded genuinely upset.

You laughed, “You might think you do, but you really don’t. And I most certainly don’t love you!” 

Bruno looked as if he might cry. “You do love me.” He leaned in and kissed the valley between your breasts, his hair tickling your skin. “And I love you more than anything.” You shivered as his breath hit your stomach as he slid lower. He stopped at the hem of your panties, kissing just above them. 

“You are the most precious thing in the world, amore mio,” Bruno whispered as he pulled down your panties so gently as if they were made of silk. He visibly shivered at the sight of your exposed pussy. “beautiful,” he breathed out with a shaky voice. 

At that point, you weren’t even sure you’d been able to run away even if he hadn’t put a spell on your legs. You wanted to beg him to stop, to let you go. 

Bruno kissed your inner thigh. You tried closing your legs, but he held your thighs open with warm, gentle hands. “I’ve been waiting to taste you for so long, I can hardly wait.”

Without warning, he licked along the entrance of your pussy and moaned. You whimpered, not so much from the feeling but rather from embarrassment.

“You’re exquisite!” Though he had seemed to want to take things slow, he wasted no second before diving down once more, licking your pussy with such dedication it was as if he wanted to worship each tiny part of you. 

At times, he would plunge his tongue into you and swirl it around, making your toes curl. Then he’d suck on your clit, swirling his tongue around it, dam near making you cry with his skilled movements. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he just hadn’t known what to do, but he did, and now you were left struggling to hold back your own moans. 

“It’s okay, you can let go for me, amore,” Bruno whispered, his breath tickling your pussy. “Let me hear that sweet voice of yours.” 

You shook your head. “N-no,” you spat though your toes were curling with the effort of stifling the noises a part of you was so keen to let out.

You felt Bruno smirk. “My, my! You’re so tense, my love! It’s okay, though. I know you must be excited as well.” 

You yelped as he pushed two fingers into your dripping pussy and curled them, stroking your g-spot. “That’s it. Let me hear that beautiful voice of yours,” he whispered, sucking on your clit again, his movements so gentle and sweet you wanted to cry. 

“Look at the way you’re trembling! You can’t wait until I bury my cock into your pretty little pussy, can’t you? Don’t worry, I can’t wait either but...” he pulled back, and you raised your hips without thinking, a part of you wanting his mouth on you again. 

Bruno smiled, your juices glistening on his lips. “I think I’ll make you come first on my mouth and only then, I’ll give you my cock.” 

He added in a third finger and sped up his movements. The feeling of his warm, wet tongue swirling against your sensitive clit was steadily guiding you towards your orgasm. 

“Go on, don’t you want to cum for me?” Bruno hummed. You whimpered and grit your teeth. 

“Y-you can’t make m-me-” you bit your lip, trying not to cry out. 

“Hmm? What was that, my love? Did you want me to stop?” he pulled away.

“No, don’t!” You yelped before you could stop yourself.

Bruno smiled, his expression full of awe and desire. “How could I ever deny such an earnest request from someone as enchanting as you?” 

With a few more practised curls of his fingers and flicks of his tongue, you came, your body trembling as Bruno held you in place, his movements never once stopping or slowing. You whimpered through your gritted teeth. Then he groaned against your pussy, lapping up your juices. You moaned as he licked it all up as if he’d never tasted anything as delicious before.

He pulled back and smothered your face with kisses. You could taste yourself on his lips. 

“Cara,” Bruno whispered in your ear. “You did so well.” 

For a brief second, you thought it might be over, and you weren’t quite sure if you felt disappointed or glad. 

Then you heard the clinking of a belt and tensed up. “Shh, no need to worry, cuore mio, this won’t hurt a bit.”

You didn’t bother protesting when the tip of his hot cock brushed against your entrance, smearing precum over your wet pussy. 

“Hurry up,” you whimpered.

Bruno chuckled. “Darling, we’ve got all the time in the world, but… I’ll indulge you since you’ve been such a good girl.”

He aligned his uncovered cock at the entrance of your pussy and pushed in with one smooth thrust, never once looking away from you. You yelped. The stretch of his cock didn’t even sting because he’d fingered you earlier.

“Fu- amore! You’re so soft and, God, you’re so tight!” Bruno whimpered as he kissed your neck. He pulled back only to thrust into your dripping pussy.

You whined at the soft pace he set, hating how good it felt, hating how you were already giving in and tightening around his hard cock. You tried your best to ignore everything that he was doing, the way his cock was brushing against your g-spot with each thrust and the way his soft, sweet voice sent warm shivers down your spine. 

“T-that’s it,” Bruno panted. He took hold of your hands and pushed them above your head before kissing you as if his life depended on it, his chest brushing against your breasts. 

Everything about this situation was overwhelming, from the heat of Bruno’s cock, the sweet little moans he was letting out each time you took in all of his cock and the way he was looking at you as if you were the most precious thing in the world. You threw back your head and moaned, giving up on what’s right and wrong. What did that matter when this man you barely knew, who claimed to be the love of your life, was making you feel like an angel?

“B-Bruno! Go faster,” you moaned into his ear. You smiled weakly as he gasped.

“Anything, ah, for you, my love,” he whimpered as he grabbed your hip and began thrusting into you at a furious pace. A part of you still wanted to hate him for taking you against your will, but you found that you loved the way he was worshipping you even more. 

“Is- fuck, is that all you can do, signore?” you bit his neck.

Bruno let out a sound somewhere between a yelp and a moan. He looked at you, his eyes clouded with lust. He let go of your wrists, and you pulled him into a kiss, tangling your hand on his soft hair. 

“I love you! I love you so much, fuck,” Bruno wrapped a hand around your throat but didn’t squeeze. He held you so close your noses nearly touched, the heat of his body warming you, surrounding you. It made you feel safe in the worst of ways.

“I love you too,” you whimpered, voice barely audible.

Bruno stopped abruptly and stared at you, his eyes wide. He thrust back in, and you yelped. “Say that again,” he growled. For the briefest of seconds, you remembered that you were in all actuality, incredibly far away from safety.

“I love you, Bruno,” you dug your nails into his back.

He snarled and bit your neck. “Again.”

“I love you so much! I, oh God, I love you more than anything, please! Please just f-fuck me harder!” The way his hard cock was hitting your sweet spot, his soft panting and whimpering above you and the slapping of his balls against your ass was all bringing you so close to cumming you felt as if you might break.

“C-cum for me,” Bruno buried his face on your neck and whimpered. 

You came with a high pitched moan. You gasped as you regained the control over your legs. Without even thinking, you wrapped them around Bruno’s waist and pulled him as close as possible. 

“Cum in me, Bruno,” you moaned before kissing his cheek.

Bruno gasped as he came, his cum warm in your sensitive pussy. He stayed there for a few seconds, panting before pulling you into a heated kiss once more. He nibbled at your bottom lip and pulled away to look at you. “I really do love you.”

You blushed. On some level, you realized it wasn’t right, but you couldn’t stop your heart from skipping a beat at his words.

“You’ll stay here with me, right?” Bruno pushed a stray hair away from your face and stroked your cheek. “I promise I’ll take good care of you.”

At first, you’d have protested, but now it was as if all the fight had been fucked out of you in the sweetest way possible. You smiled. “I’ll stay.”

[princeharukoji]

2HA REVIEW/ THOUGHTS

SPOILERS AHEAD

So where shall I start? I really liked this story. Book 1 and 2 was a slow burn. I didn't mind it. Because we need to see Moran's personality changes, the love blossoming between the 2 main lead. It was slow, but did a great work. Because actually in the beginning (not Taxian Jun, but the reborn Moran) I couldn't stand the MC...well okay maybe I couldn't stand TXJ actually 😂 but the thing is real. I really liked how every character i disliked slowly started to like, love, and then wanted to protecc 🥺 Ok Chu Wanning has my heart from the beginning to the end. But I disliked Moran, Xue Meng, Nangong Si, Nangong Xu, the ghost girl from the start, Jiang Xi, Mei Hanxue. And I love them all. I even wanted a heart breaking Xue Meng and Jiang Xin father and son moment aaaaaaa. But what I got in the end was a knife in my heart by seeing Xue Meng get to know about Jiang Xi's adooted son 😭 So actually every character I was uninterested I became interested.

I get to like Moran more and more, and wanted them to be together. When Chu Wanning died, i cried. Twice, bc first the present Shizun then the previous Shizun life were taken away. But when Moran learned the truth about wontons, when he went to catch CWN's soul to the underworld...when his affection started to bloom again. Oh God, i could see sparkling eyes, and red ears Shizun.

After 5 yrs Shizun wake up. Ok so tbh the thirst they got made me crazy. At least it keot going on like 40 chapters and i was like OMFG HORNY TEENAGERS 😂 I couldn't bear their pain and thirst hahaha it was a long way to get togetheger. But they live was blooming, it got deeper and deeper.

Tho we were half at the story and they get together... Tho CWN didn't know Moran's secrets yet. Definetely it can't be a happy end like this... I started to train my soul, from now on it will be hell. And yes, actually hell happened through the 3rd book.

Nangong Si and Ye Wangxi storyline broke my heart. I wanted them to be happy together so much they would deserve it. Xue Meng's parents were so strong, they amazed me especially the Madam with her sacrifice. There was a lot of time when I thought YES go and get them. When Nangong Xi told his story I wished he could get his revenge. When Sisheng peak fall I wished they would let the world end. The 3rd book was amazing. I didn't mind that i couldn't breath. It was full of actions, it was fast, it was running at full speed, and I liked it. I liked that I couldn't read at one moment because I was hungry reading and scan readed a lot of things to get to the important part so i had to stop but i couldn't.

Until the last 2 chapters. Because the last 2 chapters gave me a headache. Chapter 309 made me cry I cried so hard. The reborn Moran's death was through 3 chapters. I felt my heart was taken out. Seeing CWN care for him and when he died he didn't want to let it go... I cried like a child. The whole situation with the judgments, the humiliating... It was hard to read. CWN came to save him I.... I cried. The same reborn technique can't be used twice on a soul, and Shizu already made him reborn in the previous life. When he gave his spirit to the body and made the same thing like TXJ in previous life to keep his body alive, until they're living the other's body won't rot- i kinda sensed that it will be used. But after his spirit core were fused in TXJ, the emperor met Moran, give his reborn memories to the 10 yrs old dead body and his soul, I was afraid his soul will merge in that body. But Taxian Jun has one soul, and he changed too, saved everybody and saved Shizun. When he was dying I asked my phone "HOW WILL THIS BE HAPPY END ITS OVER HIS BODY WILL TURN TO ASHES".

And then he woke up at a demon palace. Plot armor. Not dead, not alive. In one chapter "the last card" ironically REALLY is a last card. We get to know that not just Shi Mei, but Mo Ran is actually ACTUALLY A SPECIAL BUTTERFLY-BONED BEAUTY like WHAAAAT 😂😂 you... You can't just throw something so special so randomly. It doesn't work like that. It's totally a PLOT ARMOR! I can think that Taxian Jun was made to look like a demon but... It is not enough clue in the story to make me feel that it is a well builded line.

And the other thing.. why I have mixed feelings is the split personality. Like Moran and Taxian Jun exist. Both of them in one person. Mo Ran is too good while Taxian Jun is too agressive and possessive. This is why i would love to see his personality fused, like a normal human. It was a bit meh. I don't really like it. I would like to see a bit more agressive and possessive Moran, who is grey. Not just 3 days good Moran and 1 day his Majesty. But I will see how will this threesome work in the extras...

+1 Chu Xun'a story was really good, i thought it will be more into it, when they met in the underworld too, I really love how everything is connected!! And the thing that Chu Wanning is a divide wood spirit..... And áll the tree puns.... I cry 😂

I have to mention the antagonist too. Well from the start I didn't liked him. Shi Mei was fake. So fake I could see it. I had a feeling he will be the protagonist, and I spoiled it to later too. His story... Did not touch my heart so much. I thought I will like him, but I just like the present and alive Shi Mei! He chosen a different path. But previous shimei, Hua Binan....he was cruel. He didn't care about humans, just demons, and after knowing her mother story... It just didn't hit the right spots. He wasn't that much of a grey character i love.

This is it for now, maybe i will edit it, or write a part 2 when I feel it. I really love this story, I dont know what to do after it, tho i still have the extras fortunately. I can't wait the cdrama from it, Im so excited to see my 2 fav Shizun and disciple!!

PS pls feel free to talk to me, I don't really have ppl near me who read it, so im happy to chat about it with anybody 😭

[milfisolde]

under read more bc i put too much effort into my ocs and there is A Lot. tw for violent stuff

this will be updated every time i think of something for him!

deviantart link

Rollick

“The Ravenous” ? idk I suck at titles

no accessories

Size reference

why does he have anime hair if hes a fish? because he’s my oc and i say so

I MADE ICONS FOR THE LOCATIONS AND CLASS AND OTHER CHAMPIONS’ ABILITIES AND TUMBLR WONT’T LET ME ADD THEM WITHOUT FUCKING THE WHOLE POST UP

Short crappy bio

A young shark-like Vastaya. Born in Ionia, west of the island Sudaro. He was captured as a child by  Bilgewater pirates after straying too close to the surface and being found. Was then put to work on the Slaughter Docks, and trained to hunt in the traditional Serpent Isles manner: “launching themselves at their targets to secure tow-hooks with their bare hands, and beginning to butcher the creatures while they yet lived.”.

I need to update myself on League lore, but I would like him 2 be acquaintances with Nami and Fizz. Also, Rollick would have heard stories about Pyke and would find him really cool. Ideally, he would have Johnny Yong Bosch as his voice actor because I love how he voiced Kung Jin in Mortal Kombat X, but I don’t know how he’d do with a pirate accent lmao.

Kit

Would be classed as a Fighter with the sub-class Diver. At least I think he would.  

His kit is basically just a mash-up of multiple champions with extra ingredients. Riot do it themselves, so I'm allowed to, too. Pirate lingo used for most of his abilities and voice lines b/c I'm not creative for naming things.

 Passive "Blow the Man Down." : A mash-up of Rengar and Darius' but more complicated. Auto-attacking 3 times in a row, or using abilities, gives his unused abilities 3 different tiers of empowerment. (Like, if you auto-attack 3 times, use W, then Q, his E will have tier 3 empowerment.). Tiers 2 and 3 gives the target bleed when hit by abilities, applying "Blood in the Water."  Applying the bleed multiple times makes it stack, tier 2 stacks like two stacks of tier 1 bleed, tier 3 stacks like two stacks of tier 2 bleed. How many times can it stack? Idk. 5? 7? 10?? ok probably not 10 that would be stupid.

2nd passive "Clipper." : Rollick moves faster in the river; this move speed scales with his normal move speed.

Q "Feed the Fish." : Tier 1 is a swipe in an AOE cone with his claws. Tier 2 is a small lunge in a targeted direction with two swipes, one with each hand. Tier 3 is a longer distance lunge with a bite. If tier 3 lands on a moving target (examples: scuttlecrab when it dashes, Ezreal using his E), it will follow the target like Warwick Q/Evelynn E. The bite will also heal him for a small amount.

W "Hook, Line, Sinker." : is like Rengar's Bola Strike with a wider but shorter range for tiers 1 and 2, but he leaps in the targeted direction at tier 3 and if he hits something, covers it with his net and stays on top of them for a short amount of time. Tier 2 spins the target around from they way Rollick throws his net and will turn the opposite direction of the way the target was originally standing. If you're facing Rollick and the tier 2 net hits you, your back is now turned to Rollick.

E "Chase." : Warwick Blood Hunt but either less or more annoying. Cooldown is shorter in duration, but so is its active. The passive part of it only shows paths to champions affected with a bleed, burn or poison DOT effect. (Includes: Rollick's "Blood in the Water", Darius'  "Hemorrhage", Brand's  "Blaze", Gangplank's  "Trial by Fire", Lillia's  "Dream Dust", Cassiopeia's  "Noxious Poison" and  "Debilitating Poison", Twitch's "Deadly Venom", Teemo's  "Toxic Shot" and  "Noxious Trap", Singed's  "Poison Trail", the  "Scorch" rune,  "Ignite" summoner spell,  "Challenging Smite" summoner spell, "Azakana Gaze" from  Demonic Embrace, and "Torment" from  Liandry's Anguish.

R "Cleave 'Em to the Brisket!" : Similar to Skarner's "Impale". Rollick takes the hooked blade he has on his belt and lunges at the target, stabbing into the enemy champion's chest with his chest to their back, and drags them away. "Cleave 'Em to the Brisket!" can only be used on a champion that has their back turned towards Rollick. It applies a tier 3 "Blood in the Water." upon use. It can yank champions out of  Displacement Immunity, but doesn't suppress the target champion entirely, they are still able to use dash and blink abilities, use Thresh's  "Dark Passage", recast  "Death Sentence" , and use most movement summoner spells ( Flash, Hexflash, Mark/Dash), but if they do, half of their current HP is taken away from the hooked knife being dragged/yanked out of them. If you are 30% HP and you use one of the movement abilities mentioned, you will leave with 15% HP and two stacks of tier 3 bleed. For 5 seconds after using his ult, Rollick uses his knife to attack, gaining increased auto-attack range and his autos apply a tier 1 bleed stack per hit. The enhanced auto-attacks drag his targets towards him because of the hook part in his knife getting caught on them.

Animation ideas

(I used google to find every gif/picture, save for the “dance” one. they have tumblr links bc when writing this tumblr shit itself when i wanted to save it as a draft and i kept it open in a different tab and copy/pasted everything. im sorry some of the gifs are weird aslkfjdjf)

Walking animation is him using his arms and tail to "crawl". imagine the gif has a tail instead of legs

Running animation is the same concept, just with much more effort put into making himself move faster. Moving in the river looks more like he’s swimming rather than crawling. Slowed animation is him dragging himself slowly with his head facing the ground, putting weight on his elbows instead of using his arms completely. Like an army crawl but in pain.

Idle animation is him crossing his arms and resting on his elbows, then looking around and inspecting his claws.

If left in idle animation for more than 15 seconds, he drops down completely and puts his head in his arms and dozes off. Moving after the sleep idle will have him shake his head awake when starting to move.

Death animation is him trying to crawl, being unable to, then collapsing on his side and flopping onto his back.

Taunt animation is him straightening himself then lashing out with his hands and baring his teeth before "biting" the air in the direction he’s standing, voice lines coming out before the bite part.

Joke animation is him chasing his own tail? Maybe he gets tangled in his net after doing it for a second and just struggles there until the animation is interrupted.

Dance is uh. He straightens up and does knife tricks. He doesn’t have legs, doesn’t have a staff like Nami, and just wouldn’t dance like Cassiopeia.

I made the gif using footage from here.

His laugh animation would be him laughing and flopping onto his back, then turning back onto his stomach. All but one of his laughs would be loud and hearty, the one that isn’t would sound like Kung Jin’s laugh.

Voice line ideas

First encounters:

Bilgewater/Bilgewater themed champion:

"Ahoy!" "Ahoy, bucko!" "Ahoy, scallywag."

Multiple champions simultaneously/champions who have a visible partner/partners with them (examples: Kindred, Sejuani, Lulu with Pix, Elise with her Spiderlings, Azir with his Sand Soldiers):

"Ahoy, me hearties."

Pyke:

"Pyke?! I’ve heard stories of you! Though… You’re smaller than I had imagined..." "Hey there, old salt! " "Ahoy, seadog! "

Nami:

"Good to see a friendly face! Shame it’s on the wrong side." "Oh! Little lass! Have you found your stone yet? "

Fizz:

"Little trickster! Where’s your big friend? "

Illaoi:

“Test? Gonna get myself an A-plus-plus! …That’s the good grade, right?

Taunts:

Any champion:

"Scurvy dog! " "AAARRRRGGGGHHHH! "

Bird/bird themed/winged champion:

"Polly want a cracker? "

Tahm Kench:

“The only creature with an appetite bigger than mine” “You put me to shame with that maw of yours! You could fit me in it!”

Abilities/eliminations:

Tier 3 "Feed the Fish.":

(after used on champion wearing armour/with tough skin)

"Ouch… I think I broke a tooth. Good thing I got more. "

(after used on champion with fur/feathers/long hair)

" (violent spitting-out-fluff noises) Blegh! "

Tier 1 and 2 "Hook, Line, Sinker. ":

"Catch! " "Avast, ye! "

Tier 2 "Hook, Line, Sinker. " after turning someone around:

"Bring a spring upon ‘er! " "Broadside! "

Using "Chase. " with a DOT’d champion in range:

"Chum in the water…" " (deep inhale, then a rumbling growl) "

Using "Chase. " with affected champion visible:

"Lookin’ a bit squiffy there…" " (laughter) Yesss… "

Eliminate champion:

"Take a caulk. "

Eliminate champion while using "Cleave ‘Em to the Brisket!" or the enhanced auto-attacks after:

"Hah, keelhauled! " “Taste me steel n’ may the devil take ye!”

“PENTAKILL!”:

"Dead men tell no tales…"

Respawn:

"What a flogging…" "Alright, I’ve fed the fish… Now it’s their turn. "

Pings:

(Danger!):

"Heave to! " "Avast ye! "

(Assist me!):

"All hand hoy! " "All hands on deck! "

(Assist me!) followed up by (On my way!), or vice versa:

"Weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen! "

(Area is warded.):

"They’ve got a lookout. "

(Target champion):

"Thar she blows! " "Sail, ho! " "Savvy? " "Hang ‘em from the Yardarm! "

Miscellaneous:

Allied champion drinks potion or gets healed by another ally when Rollick has missing HP:

"Splice the mainbrace! Please?"

Alone with low HP, no potions or actives available, or sells all items:

"Looks like I’m marooned…"

Healed by ally:

"Feeling shipshape!" "Much obliged." "I’m in your debt." "Thank you!" "Thanks!"

Receives shutdown gold:

"Ha-ha! Plundered! " “Bounty taken.”

Flashing away from enemy:

"Blimey! " "Gah!” "Sink me! " " (girly shriek) "

[heavymetalchemist]

So I gotta say that I agree 100% on your take on “are demonic cultivators innocent? I don’t think so” and I’m so glad someone else thinks that bc it’s a surprisingly rare take?? (Even tho I think it makes sense) PS: Can u rant to me about it? Bc I kinda wanna read about it :p

Ha ha I SURE CAN!

So first a disclaimer: I myself am not Chinese (or of Chinese descent). I’ve been doing a lot of reading because I love digging into the meta of things, but I am no authority on Chinese culture, historical or modern.

This post here which summarizes this twitter thread explains how culturally Demonic Cultivation is kind of fucked up, and that’s one of the best and most concise explanations for the cultural argument.

However, leaving aside that cultural shorthand, I feel it’s pretty clear in the show (CQL) that Demonic Cultivation is bad.  Some of this is muddied thanks to censorship rules, which, so I’ve heard, require a bit more black-and-white morality in the shows - our bad guys are Very Very bad, and our good guys may be misunderstood but they’re always really heroes. In the Donghua it’s a lot more gruesome thanks to the magic of animation (and this is true of the original book as well).

First, what is demonic cultivation? Basically it’s the idea that WWX had way back in the classroom at Cloud Recesses, when Lan Qiren threw a scroll at his head - the fourth way to handle hauntings, essentially.  The traditional method is first liberate, then suppress, then eliminate.  This means, first try to appease the spirit so it can move on (to, presumably, reincarnate). If that doesn’t work, put it in spiritual time-out (suppress) which I think means more-or-less that you’re hoping a long enough time will allow whatever resentment is keeping it here to dissipate, so it can move on eventually on its own. Finally, if you can’t put it in time-out, you have to eliminate it so that it can’t go around hurting people - which would mean that there is no hope of reincarnation, to my understanding.

The fourth way that WWX suggests boils down to “Ghost Fight!” In the classroom example, an executioner is haunting people and wants revenge by killing a lot of people. WWX suggests digging up a hundred corpses, chopping off their heads, and then using the angry ghosts you just created to fight the executioner ghost, so he gets to have his revenge “killing” a lot of people (that is, all those people you just dug up) and dispersing the resentment that way.

Except, like, hold on, you want to dig up a bunch of graves and make the ghosts fight each other??? Almost every culture has taboos about not desecrating the dead, but even aside from that, he’s proposing deliberately dismembering corpses in order to create resentful energy to fight some other resentful energy. Remember how everyone was shocked and appalled that NMJ was dismembered, and how it really increased his resentful energy and turned him into a terrifying fierce corpse that wanted to kill everyone? Yeah that seems like a bad idea. Plus, imagine that happening to your grandma that you buried, gave normal funeral rites to, and then some asshat comes along and digs up her grave to fight some other ghost? That asshat is not going to be on your friends list.

But WWX is basically like, look I made this seal so I can control it! I have everything under control it’s FINE.

Except that the resentful energy is, itself, a corrupting force. We see WWX’s deterioration in CQL, but notably in CQL we still have other people influencing things about Jin Zixuan’s murder and what happens at Nightless City. In the book/donghua, he straight up loses control. WWX’s death in the book is being torn to shreds by the ghosts he had enslaved.

Because that’s the other thing - he’s enslaved the ghosts. You can make the argument that using the ghosts to fight other ghosts is really effective, and it IS, but it also means that as a ghost, you got conscripted into a Ghost Army by someone who does not seem to be trying to liberate you at all. Is it any wonder that they turn on him at the end?

Then there’s the other aspect of demonic cultivation, which is in contrast to regular cultivation. In regular (orthodox) cultivation, one cultivates one’s own spiritual energy. This is developing the golden core, and it’s also learning to use that spiritual energy for cultivator stuff - when LWJ plays Inquiry, he’s using his own spiritual energy to lend it power. Demonic cultivation doesn’t use one’s own energy, it uses the resentful energy of the restless dead, which means that someone who has low personal cultivation can get real powerful real quick because they don’t have to spend years developing their golden core and a personal repository of spiritual energy to use. You just need a little bit to direct the resentful energy, and suddenly you’re able to wield a lot of power. But that’s power that comes at a cost, because as stated before, it’s a corrupting influence.

So here’s this new cultivation method that can make almost any random chucklefuck super powerful, and if, no, when they fuck it up, it’s going to cause a Ghost Explosion that will rend everyone in the splash zone limb-from-limb as the angry ghosts escape control and lash out at whatever’s close by.

It’s one thing for WWX, who was originally traditionally trained in cultivation and had developed a strong golden core, who is a prodigy and a genius, to play around with this. For a person without that background? They’ll be haunted as fuck much faster, have worse control, and be far more dangerous.  Or they’ll just sacrifice their entire spirit to summon an evil being to murder their whole family (Mo Xuanyu). Or they’ll curse someone and then be hit with the backlash of the curse themselves and suffer that way (Su She).

The person we see who manages to copy the Stygian Tiger Seal is Xue Yang, who uses it to control a bunch of people poisoned by corpse dust to make them into shambling living corpses, and control fierce corpses like Song Lan, and try to forcibly resurrect someone who was desperately trying to escape the situation he was put in. It’s very easy to be sympathetic to Song Lan because we know him, but realistically, EVERY controlled spirit and corpse is in kind of the same situation - being manipulated to do things that they wouldn’t choose to do themselves.

WWX invented demonic cultivation because he is an inventor, a pioneer, an experimenter, and also because he could no longer use traditional cultivation methods. He infused papermen with spirits and used them to bully teenagers. He kept ghosts in a spirit pouch and brought them out to shove into paper dolls and fight for him. He turned Wen Ning into a fierce corpse, and yes he managed to retain his consciousness, but he also turned him into a creature that could be controlled like a puppet and forced to kill people that Wen Ning himself would never kill.

As badass as all the necromancy is, there’s always the part where it requires using ghosts who used to be people to further your own ends. If you’re using them to try and neutralize resentful energy overall so that you can defuse spirits down to the point where you can actually liberate them, which seemed to be the point WWX was trying to make all those years ago in that classroom, then it seems like a good thing to do.  But we don’t see any demonic cultivators actually doing that, instead, we see it being used for vengeance, control, murder, power, and as Lan Wangji points out when he keeps trying to get WWX to come back to Gusu, no matter how good your intentions, it’s only a matter of time before the resentful energy consumes you. And in the end, that is what happened to WWX, after all.

EDIT bc I hit post too soon: And so anyone who practices demonic cultivation, knowing what happened to the Grandmaster and all of the rumors about him, is almost certainly not doing it innocently to just try to resolve a haunting near their home, but because they want power, want to hurt their enemies, want vengeance and don’t care who gets hurt in the splash zone. I would argue that in terms of what justice they should face would depend on what they’ve done, not necessarily just the use of demonic cultivation itself, but signs point to demonic cultivation almost never being used altruistically in practice, especially not by someone who chooses to practice it in place of traditional cultivation (with, again, the notable exception of WWX).

[patchwork-panda]

If A Moment Is All We Are (Ch.1)

This is the Dazai x OC/”reader” with bits of Kunikida x OC/”reader” fic I created.

I’m just gonna post the entire text of first chapter below the cut bc even tho it’s at zero hits, I still feel there’s people out there who might want to read it...

OC is based off “The Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, the basis for the movie “Arrival” w Amy Adams.

Shout-out to @discoten for Beta-ing this first part :)

*************************************************************************

Pale gold. Rose red. Dusky purple.

My eyes traveled from one brightly colored glass panel to the next, finally landing upon the deep azure blue of the Virgin Mary’s veil. I kept my eyes trained on her face, trying to stay focused on the massive stained-glass windows, the beautiful art shining all around me, anything to pretend I was at this gallery under different circumstances. Shafts of colored light as bright as shattered gemstones danced across the floor in the late afternoon sun, flitting over the black-clad bodies of the two men who lay prone nearby, their silent forms looking unnaturally still against the vibrant carpet.

I swallowed uneasily, a familiar sort of nausea creeping up from the pit of my stomach as I watched the dark pool of liquid around them grow wider and wider, the smell of iron heavy in the air...

Squeezing my eyes shut momentarily, I wrenched my attention away from them, trying to go back to staring at the windows but found myself looking once again into a pair of steel-gray eyes. There, at the entrance of the gallery, standing so still he may was well be a statue himself, was the young man who’d slain the two security guards lying on the floor nearby. With his pale face, stark-white cravat, and torn black overcoat, he reminded me of a vampire, or maybe even a god of death—his very image called to mind a painting of the Grim Reaper I’d passed on my way into this room. If only I had heeded the warning...

If I had, then maybe I wouldn’t be staring into a pair of piercing red eyes right now—the eyes of a shadowy monster attached to the back of this man’s cloak. As if sensing my thoughts, the demonic creature bared its dagger-like fangs and growled, its bloody, gaping maw stretching wide.

I kept my hands in the air. My cold, sweaty palms trembled on either side of my face as I returned my attention to the stained-glass windows around me. I’d had my hands in the air for so long that my arms were getting tired but I couldn’t drop them—I didn’t want to think about what would happen next if I did. Then the headlines tomorrow would read: “Attack at the South Pier Art Gallery. Three dead: two curators and one visitor.” In perhaps a day or two, they’d identify my corpse as “Kusunoki Kyou, aged twenty, a college drop-out and local shut-in.” They wouldn’t be able to get a hold of my parents; they were overseas and I hadn’t seen the rest of my family in so long, I wasn’t even sure if they were still in Chiba any more. Maybe the reporters would interview one or two of my former classmates... But would they even be able to find anybody who still wanted to talk about me after I shut myself away so abruptly?

“Hey, how have you been? Akutagawa-kun?” the man behind me called out brightly, the lilting tenor of his voice jarring, given our current situation.

I kind of figured he was crazy from the moment we met, but not this crazy.

What kind of man tries to play catch up with a friend (acquaintance? I honestly had no idea how they knew each other) while holding a gun to somebody’s head—my head? Even though I couldn’t turn around to see his face, I could picture his cheerful smile, the twinkle in his intelligent brown eyes, the layers of bandages wrapped around his neck. I could practically hear the gears in his head turning behind me as he watched Akutagawa and calculated his next move, the tone of his voice giving absolutely nothing away.

There was a tiny click—the sound of the safety being shut off—and I grimaced as I felt the metallic chill of the handgun’s muzzle pressing more firmly against the back of my head. Akutagawa immediately shot a dirty glance over my head at the person holding me hostage. He spat out a single name:

“Dazai-san.”

I went back to staring at the windows.

I really shouldn’t have left my apartment this morning.

***

Ramen.

Instant ramen was the reason I decided to venture out of my glorified broom closet for the first time in probably weeks. Had I known that the craving for convenience store food would lead to my being shot to death in six hours’ time, I would’ve ignored the growling of my stomach and taken my chances with starving at home instead.

Maybe.

I’d stayed up far too late the night before binge-watching the latest season of a new anime I’d picked up and my best guess for when I’d finally fallen asleep at my computer was probably around three in the morning. When I finally woke up (sometime around noon), I had Pocky crumbs in my hair, my pajamas were sticking unpleasantly to my skin and my stomach was grumbling from the lack of real food in who knows how long. Unfortunately, my pantry was empty, so I did what any normal person in my situation would do: put off going outside for another couple hours by picking another anime to watch. I only realized I really needed to get going when I finally reached into my giant bag of snacks and found it empty.

Dread building in the pit of my stomach at the mere thought of going outside, I threw off the pink bunny pajamas that I hadn’t changed out of in a while and tossed them on the growing pile of clothes on the floor. I hadn’t done the laundry in weeks and it was anyone’s guess which pile was “clean” and which was “dirty” (I’d lost track of which was which days ago). However, I didn’t have a real need to distinguish between the two until today... I stepped into the bathroom, walking right past the tiny cracked mirror above the sink without really looking into it and pulled the shower curtain closed. I knew what I would see: a greasy, dead-eyed otaku version of the creepy girl from The Ring, with long black hair and reddish-brown eyes, only instead of a haunted child, I’d see an adult who failed to get her life together after just two years of moving out of her relatives’ house.

Half an hour later, I’d dressed myself in an old pair of jeans and a large sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo of a magical girl anime and was desperately fishing around in my kitchen drawer for the thing I needed most: a pair of gloves. I hadn’t needed to go outside in so long that I’d forgotten to stock up on nitrile gloves and it was with an enormous amount of relief that I finally retrieved an old pair at the bottom of the drawer.

I was too tired and hungry to notice the small hole in one of the gloves when I pulled them on, nor did I notice when I put on my face mask and tied up my hair. Honestly, I was just lucky the torn one didn’t rip completely away from my hand when I was putting on my shoes but maybe it would’ve been better if it did. Maybe then I wouldn’t have ended up at the art gallery...

But I wasn’t thinking about my gloves when I prepared for my short trip; I was thinking about food. After all, it was supposed to be a quick trip, just a short walk through the hallway and down the street to the nearest convenience store, then back. It honestly might not have been so bad if everything that happened after hadn’t gone so horribly wrong.

The first thing that went wrong happened the moment I stepped out of the building. Blinded by the sudden appearance of sunlight, I smacked right into an old lady walking in front of my building and immediately fell on my butt.

“Oh my, Kyou-chan!”

I groaned as I slowly got back to my feet.

“Is that you, Kyou-chan? Nobody’s seen you in weeks; it’s been so quiet on your end of the floor that we thought maybe you moved out!”

“No, I’m still here, Yamazaki-san,” I replied, recognizing the woman’s face before her voice.

Mrs. Yamazaki lived on the same floor as me and was kind of a busybody, but a caring one. The evening I’d first moved into the building, she’d knocked on my door around dinner time and asked if I knew how to play Mah-Jong. One of her friends had canceled on their group last minute and they’d needed a fourth. I’d declined as politely as I could but was still somehow dragged out of my room by the boisterous old woman and forcibly socialized over a cup of hot genmai-cha. I’d meant to return the favor by dropping by with some kind of snack in hand but never got around to it.

I could feel the guilt curling in the pit of my stomach as I took in her tiny form, her smiling face but all I could do was smile weakly as she remarked on how malnourished I looked and how long my hair had grown since she’d last seen me. Then she spotted the tote bag in my hand.

“Kyou-chan! Are you going shopping?”

“Not really, just getting some ramen at the convenience store.”

Mrs. Yamazaki’s eyes widened.

“Is that all you’ve been eating these days?” she asked, sounding concerned.

“N-no. I’ve had...”

I thought back to my box of strawberry Pocky.

“...Other things.”

She frowned.

“That won’t do,” she declared.

Without waiting for me to respond, she grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the nearest crosswalk.

“Yamazaki-san!” I tried to wrench my arm out of her grip but she was surprisingly strong for her age. Or maybe—I cringed—maybe I’d just become extremely weak after months of being a shut-in and not getting any proper exercise. Drawing commissions hardly worked the arms.

“This isn’t the way to the convenience store! Yamazaki-san!!”

Before long, we were inside an actual grocery, Mrs. Yamazaki chatting away merrily as she pulled vegetables off the shelves and tucked them away into her own basket (I’d run into her just as she was about to go anyway). Occasionally, she’d grab something green and leafy and stick it into the basket she’d forced into my hands, and she kept doing it until she’d buried the thick layer of ramen and junk food that lay at the bottom of the bag. When she was satisfied with the composition of my groceries, she nodded approvingly and hurried me towards the cash registers.

“There now,” she laughed once we were outside and I was carrying a very heavy bag of things I hadn’t actually intended to buy. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

She stepped off the sidewalk and two things happened very quickly: one, a truck ran a red light, barreling towards her as she attempted to cross the street, and two, as I dropped my groceries and rushed forward to save her, my right glove caught on something sticking out of my bag and finally ripped.

“Yamazaki-san!”

I reached out—my fingers stretched towards her.

“Look out!!”

Several onlookers screamed as I seized Mrs. Yamazaki by the back of her jacket and yanked her back. We fell to the ground, crashing down onto the sidewalk just as the truck sped through the intersection, honking madly as it flew by. Somebody behind us was yelling for the cops, several people had taken out their cell phones and as one of the grocery store employees rushed over to help us up, I felt an odd stinging sensation in my right hand.

I looked down and saw that my right glove had been completely shredded. Though I still had coverage on most of my fingers, much of the pale blue nitrile was hanging off my right hand in thin, ragged tatters and there were several long scratches on the palm of my hand from where I’d scraped it against the sidewalk when I fell.

The store employee, a stout, middle-aged man with bulky arms, helped a very shaken Mrs. Yamazaki to her feet, and though I could feel her trembling as she clung to me, I tried to shift my posture as she leaned on me. I couldn’t let her touch any part of my bare hand.

“Are you alright, ma’am?” the man from the store asked.

“Y-yes, I’m fine,” Mrs. Yamazaki answered, her voice quavering as she looked up at the man and then at me.

Tears sprang to her eyes and before I could stop her, she got down on her knees and bowed deeply, touching her forehead to the ground in gratitude.

“Y-Yamazaki-san?”

“Thank you!” she whispered, her voice cracking. “You saved my life, Kyou-chan!”

“Yamazaki-san, please,” I dropped to my knees as well and tried to help her up. “You don’t need to do that. Please, get up.”

As the store employee and I raised Mrs. Yamazaki to her feet, she chuckled, her eyes wide with wonder as she looked at me.

“And to think, if I hadn’t met you on your way out this morning, I might be...”

She shook her head slowly and I exchanged a worried glance with the man who’d come to help.

“I don’t know where I would be if you weren’t here, Kyou-chan,” Mrs. Yamazaki breathed. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

Though she seemed to be completely fine, with no broken bones or serious injuries, she continued to cling to me, and I felt her grip on my arm tighten as the employee informed her the police were on their way and we may want to stay to give a statement. Panic slowly rose in my chest as I felt my uncovered wrist coming out of my sleeve but as I carefully began to extricate myself from Mrs. Yamazaki’s grip, she suddenly turned to me and looked me up and down. She gasped.

“Oh, Kyou-chan!”

Her eyes had fallen upon my scratched palm.

“You’re bleeding!”

I yanked my hand away.

“I’m fine, ma’am.”

“Let me see it,” she demanded, grabbing my wrist. “I insist.”

As the store employee ran inside to get some band-aids, Mrs. Yamazaki gently picked up the edges of the ripped nitrile, pulling it away from my bloody, scratched-up palm, oblivious to my attempts to get away. As the glove gradually peeled away from my hand, I felt the warmth of her wrinkled skin brush against my fingers.

And then it happened.

The sound of canned laughter echoes throughout the room. Flickering green and white light casts odd shadows upon the walls. The cat-shaped clock above the television reads half past eleven in the middle of the night but there is another sound that is audible over the muffled noises from the TV. It beats in time with the clock and it sounds like something dripping, something liquid and warm.

Tick.

Tick.

T i ck.

The clock cat’s eyes shine with unnatural green light— light reflected from the television screen. They are blank , open, and staring, just like the eyes of the woman draped oddly over the side of the television set, her eyes wide with fear and shock.

Mrs. Yamazaki clutches at her chest. Blood dribbles thickly from between her fingers, her breath comes in wheezes and gurgled gasps as she slumps further and further down the side of her TV set. She leaves a bloody hand print on the side panel and falls to the ground.

Someone is laughing.

I am laughing.

The sound is deep, unfamiliar. There is a large, bloody kitchen knife held fast in my fingers, which are thick and hairy. I move my arm to check the wound Mrs. Yamazaki had inflicted on me and I see the vivid tattoo of a monstrous green snake, its fangs sinking deeply into a cracked human skull.

The television returns to its regularly scheduled programming. A time stamp appears in the upper right hand corner...

I came to, to the sound of somebody calling my name and immediately let out a sharp hiss of pain. While I was out, I had dropped to my knees, scuffing my jeans, and I could feel the thin skin over my kneecaps bruising horribly against the concrete sidewalk. Thankfully, that was all but my hands were shaking and I had a massive headache. Looking alarmed, Mrs. Yamazaki, not a single knife wound visible on her body, held my hand in both of hers with a troubled expression on her face. She had been the one calling me.

“Oh my goodness! Are you alright, Kyou-chan? You’re as white as a sheet.”

I immediately ripped my hand away and stuffed it into my pocket, just as the store employee returned with bandages. As he stuck out his hand to give me the bandages, I took a step back, shrinking away from the two of them.

“I’m fine.”

I stuffed my hand deeper into my pocket, ignoring the stickiness of the drying blood.

“Are you sure?” Mrs. Yamazaki asked, worry clouding her voice.

“I SAID I’M FINE!!”

That came out way louder than I’d meant it to. The people around me looked startled. I could hear the whispers. My Ability, “The Story of Your Life,” the curse of seeing visions of the future of those I touched, had manifested at the worst possible moment. I picked my bag off the sidewalk and ran.

[lunasantcs]

hi hi! it me, leonie ( mariangels mun ), with my second muse luna! unlike mari who’s a total lawful good, luna is more of a mixture of chaotic good and chaotic neutral who’s very much just starting out in life because her mom’s a cray cray rich lady. more on that below, pals. feel free to leave a LIKE and i’ll come to you for plots! OR! feel free to message me on discord at ( emeravdes#9932 ) since i’m not in the gc bc i get overwhelmed very easily. thanks for coming to my ted talk & feel free to read this ridiculously long essay i’ve come up with. <3 @frostfordstart​

TW: MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL ABUSE

full name: luna raquel santos

nicknames: lu, lulu or raquel (but only her grandparents call her that bc they hate the fact that her parents named her luna lol)

birthday: april 30th

current age: twenty six

sexuality: bisexual, panromantic

personality (+): benevolent, adventurous, free spirited, appreciative, energetic, fun loving

personality (-): sheltered, reckless, outspoken, stubborn, envious, attention seeking

luna was born and raised in frostford to yuliana and marcos santos - both of which are of brazilian roots but their families have been living in the us for decades. her family is rich rich and it stems back for a few decades. don’t ask me how they made their fortune because i actually have no clue as of right now. we working on it.

she was the youngest child and only daughter to yuliana and marcos which meant that she was instantly their pride and joy. their princess. their doll. 

she has two older brothers - jax (32) and santiago (35) - who love their little sister to pieces and have never really been a big fan of the way their mother treats luna,

INCOMING MOMMY ISSUES

yuliana was the kind of girl that wanted to be in pageants growing up but her family never allowed her the chance because they valued education over anything that had to do with glamour despite having the money to blow on the fancy aspects. so! the moment yuliana found out that she was having a daughter, she was ECSTATIC. she could finally get to live the life of pageants that her parents robbed her of and she was thriving.

so comes my baby luna

from the moment she was born, her mother had her in fancy dresses and from the moment that she could walk, yuliana made sure that her daughter could perfect the pageant walk before she could perfect walking like a normal human being. if she did something right, she’d drown luna in affection. if she did something wrong, she’d scowl and tell her to do it again. often times this resulted in her crying - especially when she was still a toddler.

over the course of her childhood, she continued with the pageant life and slowly it became something that she lived and breath. she felt like it was the best way to connect with her mother and a part of her really did have a love for the whole ordeal. for a while. by the time she was eight, her mother essentially had the picture perfect pageant girl and she’d completely forgotten that this girl also needed love and a mother to help her through life.

but her dad? a sweetheart, a gem, the most affectionate dad that she could have ever asked for and she loves him to pieces. calls him every single day. or texts. santos fam group chat is her, marcos, jax, santiago, and her maternal grandparents. ANYWAYS! WE CONTINUE!

despite yuliana’s instance that her kids go to private school, her parents convinced her to just send her kids to public school because it would offer the kids a chance to actually get to know people around town that weren’t in their parents circle of rich idiots. this was luna’s saving grace. in school, she made genuine friendships and she finally found a sense of comfort. 

not that that lasted long because yuliana was instantly up her ass telling her that those kids from school weren’t real friends and that she had to focus on her priorities aka pageants. only pageants. always PAGEANTS. so... that’s exactly what luna did. 

can you tell that her mom is a demon yet? ‘cause we got more!

moving on to high school! things were essentially always the same. luna would go to school, live her life, make some friends but eventually she’d lose said friends because of her mom or because luna put up a wall since she knew that she’d lose them anyways. 

she was in a car accident with her older brother jax when she was sixteen which resulted in her missing a pageant which made yuliana BIG MAD. 

it was in her senior year of high school that yuliana set luna up with one of her friends sons and essentially forced her to be in a relationship with someone she had no connection w/at all. 

she dated this person for a while (again, to make her MOM happy, not herself) up until her mother started talking about getting married which was when luna was like LOL ABORT MISSION and broke up w/the dude. did she like him? sure. but she wasn’t going to get married after high school. no thanks. 

yuliana, naturally, was furious. got mad. was mad for a while. oscar the grouch mad 24/7.

THEN CAME COLLEGE! LUNA WAS FINALLY FREE! well... not really because her mother picked her school for her as well as her major; columbia university with a major in business. why? because she knew people who worked at the school that would be able to keep an eye out on her daughter. 

SOMEHOW? luna still managed to find a sense of freedom the moment she stepped foot onto campus and was away from her mother. she was studying something she hated but she finally could live a life where she didn’t feel like she had to constantly please her mother or worry about falling out of line. it felt amazing.

this was where she discovered hook ups and friends w/benefits and BOI OH BOI was she thriving!

it was in her senior year of college that she had a long talk with her grandparents about what she wanted for herself and where she saw herself going. they wanted what was best for her and that meant getting her out from their own childs clutches who only saw luna as someone to parade around. it took her a while but the words from the talk stayed with luna until she was twenty two and she finally stood up for herself and told her mother NO MAS. 

yuliana was like BITCH WHAT but luna was like YOU HEARD ME even though it was a bit less... blunt that i just made it seem. 

at twenty two, she stopped competing in pageants and went off on an adventure to europe with her grandparents. her grandparents were really only with her for a month as they settled them into a nice place in italy but after that, she was finally happy. 

she lived in italy and traveled around europe until she was twenty five which was when she moved back to frostford because she missed her grandparents, dad and older brothers. when she moved back, her grandparents helped her find a cute little home and she even got herself a red husky named kida - since she’d never been allowed to have a pet before in her life. 

her dad still gives luna anything and everything she could ever want bc we stan a man who watches out for his child but luna also wants to make a life for herself outside of her parents money so she went and got a job. it was harder than she expected but she finally was willing to get one thanks to june diaz so now she’s a waitress at the whole enchilada and has been since she got back a solid year ago. 

did i mention she’s been back one year? i feel like i should have mentioned it somewhere above but oh whale. 

her new found freedom (its new even after four years OKAY) has also left her with a bit of a reckless streak. she is, in fact, a lot to handle at times and there’s other times where she falls back into that docile behavior her mom basically morphed into her. so... yeah!

FUN FACTS!

she wanted to be a cheerleader in high school but her mother was like NOT ON MY WATCH YOUNG LADY

her very first shift working at the whole enchilada resulted in her accidentally dropping a customers food on the floor and getting yelled at which resulted in her hiding in the bathroom to cry

she’s fluent in english, portugese, italian and french

she’s a flirty drunk which means she will probs try to get w/you if she’s drunk. unless you’re taken bc she knows her boundaries and she says NO to taken men. 

anything she does regarding men is mainly to spite her mother bc she doesn’t really think she’s capable of falling in love. thanks to her mom basically making her feel worthless all her life :)

she’s a harry potter nerd and spiritually identifies as hufflepuff with slytherin tendencies even though pottermore told her 12 times that she is, in fact, a gryffindor. but she refuses to accept that. nope. not happening. 

her hair is currently dyed a lavender purple. it’s almost always lavender purple. just assume it’s that color 24/7 lol. 

CONNECTIONS!

i put together a wanted connections page for luna but it’s probs gonna get reworked like... two more times because i’m a perfectionist and am obsessed with providing too much detail. too much for my own good imma be hoe-nest. but feel free to hit me with anything! KTHNXBYELOVEYOULOTS<3

[fancat-not-fangirl]

Flying in the Face of Danger

a/n #1: ok so I’ve decided that I’d start posting more of my writing on tumblr bc idk. I like hurt!Dean a lot, so that’s what most of it will be.

a/n #2: Speaking of hurt!Dean’s, if anyone knows any good ones where he gets hurt and either Sam or Cas is protective, please send me a link. I’m running out. I’ll take literally anything I can find. I’m desperate.

a/n #3: This is one I wrote a while ago. It’s on my ao3 and ff.net. This is more of an emotionally hurt Dean than a physical one. Whatever. The demon here is an OC. The fic is set somewhere between seasons 2-6.

Summary: For a case, Dean has to take a trip by plane. Alone

()()()()()()

This particular demon had been bothering them for a while now. Always getting in their way, making their lives much more difficult than necessary. For example, he seemed to find pleasure in sending demon assassins after them. In short, he made their lives hell.

Exorcising him meant that there was always a small chance that he could return. And they couldn’t take any chances. So Sam and Dean decided to play it safe and burn the bones.

Except the bones were in Hawaii. Of course they were in Hawaii. As if anything in their lives was ever easy.

And of course it was Dean that had to fly there because Sam chose that exact time of year to get horribly sick.

Dean had tried to reason with him. He really did. He had tried to convince Sam that Dean should stay and take care of the nose blowing snot spewing cough obsessed moose. But Sam wasn’t having any of that.

“Killing this bastard is more important than a cold,” Sam had told Dean after almost hacking his lungs out during a particularly bad coughing spell. Then, looking more pointedly at Dean, he’d continued with, “And I’m not a kid anymore Dean. I can take care of myself.”

And after days and days of arguing, Dean had relented and bought a plane ticket, flying all the way to Hawaii and back, without throwing up even once. (Or at least that’s what he’d tell Sam.) 

And now he was waiting for his luggage in the airport, still slightly nauseous from the flight but he’d never admit that.

Truth be told, the flights had scared the crap out of Dean Winchester. Back when he and Sam had exorcised that demon years ago when their dad had still been alive, at least he’d had Sam to comfort him. To make fun of him and his Metallica. To squeeze his arm when they hit an especially rough patch of clouds.

This time, all Dean had had was a lady on his right who spent the entire time talking away with her friend, and a man on his left, who seemed to hold on to the firm belief that Dean was, in fact, a pillow, and not one of the fiercest hunters in the entire Western Hemisphere.

But even the best hunters get scared. And right now Dean was terrified. The smell of the too many bodies in the plane still clogged his nose, and the soft mush that the flight had called food was fighting its way back to the surface. Dean could still feel the vibrations of the plane if he didn’t keep moving, which was why he kept up an agitating pace walking back and forth as he kept waiting and waiting for his bags. All of the people here were just as impatient as he was, eager to go home to their families, to their jobs, to their lives. 

What was Dean going home to? Stingy motel rooms, crappy diner food, hours and hours on the road, almost getting killed every few days. Dean didn’t even know if he could call that a home.

Screw this airport. He needed to get out. Soon. 

Everywhere he looked reminded him of that plane. Of the stingy old seats. Of the tiny cramped bathroom that swayed under your feet and made you nauseous. Of the horrid silence broken every few minutes by a cough or a baby’s cry. Of the endless shaking and turbulence of the plane. 

Of the hours upon hours of chilling fear of that small one in a million chance the plane could go down.

The airport seemed to dislike the fact that if it denied Dean his luggage any longer, Dean would rub two parallel lines into the floor with his pacing, so it finally gave up his bag. He would have taken it with him in carry on, but God knows he had too many guns and knives in the bag for him not to have been stopped at security. 

Grumbling to himself, Dean pushed through the crowd of people and hauled his bag off the line. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the man that had used him as a pillow slumped against the wall, waiting for something or other. Hah. Dean thought. At least this time it would be the wall that had to endure the snoring, not Dean.

Following the flow of noisy people out of the terminal, Dean sighed as he realized that he would have to spend another hour or two in a taxi. He’d have to answer stupid questions like “How was your flight?” and “Where are you headed?” And he couldn’t just tell the taxi driver his location in case he was being tailed, so of course Dean would ask him to drop him off three blocks away from the motel room. That would mean another twenty minutes of walking, Dean calculated. Twenty minutes before he got to see Baby again. Before he got to their room and could take an incredibly long shower to wash the airplane out of him. Twenty minutes before he got to see Sam and breathe in that Patented Little Brother Scent that Sam always seemed to have. Dean had high hopes that the airplane musk would get flushed out with Sam’s smell. Not to mention hearing Sam’s voice. Oh how tired Dean was of the constant bickering and mumbling everywhere around him, not being able to make out what was being said but also never quite having a full moment of peace and quiet. 

Dean walked past a row of windows that opened to the line of airplanes outside. Repressing a shudder, Dean remembered the one time on his flight to Hawaii he had braved a glance outside the airplane window at the ground below, and had almost heaved up his lunch. 

The faster he got out of here the better.

The sea of people, including Dean, finally made it out to the arrival dock. He saw families launch towards their loved ones and envelop them in hugs. He saw one girl burst out crying at the sight of her boyfriend, holding up a sign that said ‘Welcome home! Will you marry me?’ Smiling softly to himself, Dean couldn’t help the sad twinge in his gut. It wasn’t quite jealousy, but definitely something akin to it. These people didn’t know how lucky they were, with their normal jobs, peaceful lives, caring families. With their homes. 

Dean shook his head and moved on. He craned his neck, looking for someone that looked like they drove a taxi. Damn it, it was just his luck that they would all be taken by the time he got out-

Dean’s eyes latched onto a sign being held high above the others. He read the word ‘JERK’ spelled out in big bold letters, and followed the arm holding it down down down to Sam’s smiling face. Sam, whose nose was red and had bags under his eyes and was definitely still sick. That didn’t stop Dean from striding over to his brother and pulling him into a quick hug. Inhaling deeply, Dean relaxed at the familiar and comforting smell of his little brother.

Sam let out a noise of surprise, but returned the embrace, coughing a bit when Dean pulled away. 

“I thought you were strictly against chick flick moments?” 

Dean grinned at the sound of Sam’s voice. He’d never admit it to Sam, but he had missed his little brother like crazy on his trip.

Giving Sam a playful shove, Dean teased, “The plane messed with my head. I thought you were Angelina Jolie.”

Sam stuck his tongue out at Dean and was about to say something else when he sneezed. He dug around in his pockets for a tissue, and gave Dean a panicked look when he couldn’t find one. Chuckling, Dean reached into his own pocket and gave Sam a tissue. One of the many Dean had for times like this; when Sam spent too much time thinking of others and not enough to think about himself. But that was alright, because Dean would always be there to think of Sam for him.

“C’mon, Sasquatch. You’re sick as a dog. Let’s get you home so I can see what crap you’ve been doing to yourself to ‘get better’ while I was away.”

“I can take care of myself, you know. I’m not a helpless five year old anymore.”

“You sure about that?”

“You’re a jerk.”

“Bitch.”

And as they left the airport side by side, it registered to Dean that he had used the word ‘home’. But at the sight of Sam’s laughing face as Dean slid into the driver’s seat of Baby and told his car how much he missed her, Dean realized that this was exactly what he was going back to. Hours and hours of driving with Sam at his side. Joking and laughing with his brother about that man that had used Dean as his personal pillow. Listening to Led Zeppelin full blast on the road, with Dean and Sam singing along. Both brothers staying up late, watching crappy motel TV.

Home.

Dean was home.

[greensconnor]

i’m asking about your dragon age characters

molly i would KILL for u im ur personal hitman now

anyway i said my city now because the entire bioware writing team sucks shit xoxo and i’m so much smarter than all of them but also fully incapable of having a normal amount of ocs for anything (see: the time i made 20 rwby ocs in less than two weeks) so i have. five worldstates here r some assorted thoughts

uhhh so the worldstates r as follows

eira mahariel (two-handed berserk/champ spec), rhett hawke (two-handed berserk spec), alas lavellan (mage knight enchanter spec), romanced alistair/fenris/dorian respectively

shiv tabris (dual wield duelist/assassin spec), radella “rads” hawke (mage spirit healer spec), kat adaar (two-handed reaver spec), romanced morrigan/isabela/cassandra respectively because im a pc gamer and i think i should be able to date whatever video game woman i like because im infinitely better than cishet men

this world state said yeah i respect mens rights. mens rights to shut the fuck up

twins bronson (sword/shield reaver spec) & bryant cousland (archer ranger spec), carmine hawke (archer assassin spec), syracuse trevelyan (dual wield tempest spec), romanced zevran/anora/josephine/bull. if ur wondering how that works my city now and the warden, hawke and the inquisitor should all meet and so they do because i Said So

riva amell (mage arcane warrior/battlemage spec), graham “gray” hawke (mage force spec), hellathen “hela” lavellan (archer assassin spec); romanced cullen/anders and later blackwall because hawke only likes men who will break his heart. hela doesn’t have a romance because she’s literally 20. who let her lead the inquisition (me it was me). also it should be noted the version of cullen i have in my head only vaguely resembles actual cullen because i write better than dragon age writers ever could and i gave him an Actual Cohesive Narrative and he gets bullied relentlessly for being scrawnier than his mage boyfriend

malien “mal” surana (mage spirit healer/keeper spec), jules hawke (sword/shield reaver spec), ash adaar (mage rift spec), romanced leliana/merrill/krem because i should have been able to kiss krem and its a Crime that i am not allowed to

knight enchanter is a Very op specialization and by Very op i mean it makes a mage with their built-in low constitution stats able to solo the biggest baddest dragon in the game on nightmare mode in under five minutes so like. alas lavellan fist fights dragons for fun send tweet

i think lavellans should be able to hit ppl with bricks for all the shit they endure. thus solas gets pranked by mahariel and alas by which i mean they just tip buckets of water onto him from the rookery

kat might be my only competent inquisitor but she did also try to knock out the right hand of the divine and attempt to gap even tho there’s fucky magic burning up her hand so does she have a brain cell? you decide

also its fantasy land and i do what i want so kat has blue/gold sectoral heterochromia

gray “mage rights” hawke is best friends with fenris which surprises literally everyone. their friendship started because they got into a fist fight and then they were like okay i respect u now. hawke is like hey fenris give me ur sword i have a fun trick to show u [uses his sword as a foci to zap carver in the ass with lightning]

i am Always thinking abt like how cullen could have been one man anti-chantry propaganda machine if he hadn’t so blatantly been shoehorned into every game past origins so anyway bioware forgot about a wholeass moon i can write what i like. [holds up cullen by the scruff of his stupid armor] not only are you bisexual you are also a bottom

i also Hate the whole uwu mage haters get fixed by romancing a mage

unlocked secret dialogue option where my inquisitors verbally cuss out dorian’s dad instead of whatever sympathetic narrative the writers were going for cuz its bullshit.

riva is a showoff and a Menace about being as good as he is because he unabashedly loves being a mage and hes like oooh look at me im sexy i dont need to use my hands to cast magic because i’m just that good ;)) and you know what. hes right.

gray, on the other hand, does Not want to be mage. he wants to be a druffalo farmer and retire in the hinterlands and be left the fuck alone. unfortunately he is gay and has one brain cell and terrible, terrible taste in men. ribbed relentlessly for this by riva (altho does he have room to talk hes been hung up on cullen since he was like 13)

shiv is trans n kieran is the result of doing the dark ritual with her wife and he looks a Lot like shiv (dark skin pointed ears, shock-white hair) and morrigan always just Assumed she dyed it or did something magic with it so seeing their kid come out like that was a WEIRD time for her

leliana almost Murdered by cassandra in worldstate 5 because the warden is Actually There The Whole Time, but its been 10 years, mal’s cut off all her hair and gotten full facial tattoos and she’s like “no one will know its me its fine” and she’s right. she gets away with it. only cullen like, Knows, because he knew her before the blight but he doesnt have a death wish n he like. will Not piss her off

shes dalish by birth n she was stolen from her clan by templars and thus is vehemently anti-circle and anti-chantry in general

uhhh the vallaslin (elf face tattoos) of my 4 dalish characters are:

eira = ghilan’nain (chose em cuz shes rlly interested in the navigation aspect of the goddess)

alas = falon’din (god of the dead n he picked them because he’s Also the god of fortune and alas is like tee hee fun but also he can and will kill u if u fuck with him so yk its fitting)

hela = june (god of the craft bc she likes to Make things but june is also the god who taught the elves 2 hunt and hela is. a hunter.)

mal = elgar’nan (allfather/god of vengeance bc. she is Vengeful. she is Angry. but yk fucking with shem politics and fucking their divine is like. mal may have little a retribution. as a treat.) yes she has the full half-face solid colour tattoo she does NOT fuck around.

bronson and bryant r not genetically identical but they Look similar enough 2 anyone who doesn’t know them well enough 2 play spot the distance. anora and bronson think this is a super fun game to play, especially when nobles realize they’ve swapped out the king but they’re too nervous to say anything

eira mahariel has two hands. one is for holding hands with alistair and the other is for throttling elven gods, apparently. she’s killed one before so solas she’s coming for your bitch ass next. watch urself.

speaking of eira and alistair are married thru dalish tradition and humans don’t recognize it n alistair loves 2 re-propose to her with random things. he’ll just pick up like. a bit of cheese and be like “marry me ;)” and she’s like GASP but whatever will the chantry say!!!! all of their friends r sick of them

“vhenan if you love me bring me a sword” “you think i could do better than a sword made out of space rock?” “:)”

eira is my youngest hero at 18 at the start of her game and kat is my oldest at 32 at the start of her game.

none of my hawkes are under six foot. rhett is the tallest (6′8″) and rads is the shortest (6′2″).

syracuse trevelyan would have been the Perfect inquisitor if he were not a pretty boy himbo and a gay bastard who does Most Things just to spite his parents.

[corypheus pointing at syracuse’s visage in his crystal orb thingo] i want that twink obliterated

i love the companions from older games return thing i truly do so i make it a point for Every companion to return in inquisition so the gang rlly is all here because i am a Slutte for found family

i lie in my keep worldstates because i dont want to choose between hawke and alistair during here lies the abyss but i never make him king and every time i play inquisition and cole has the wicked grace line it makes me Scream. alistair baby im so sorry i did this to you but i didnt actually do this to you

yes this is my everyone lives au but like. all the time. i have never left hawke in the fade and i do not intend to.

fuck whatever nonsense about wardens not being able 2 have kids. by sheer divine power (me) anora and bryant have three daughters; eleanor, sabina & cecelia n both bronson and zevran make Excellent uncles because i think anora deserves good things because i’m tired of bioware being like women bad, actually,

so like most of the time i have the warden & hawke turning up after the move to skyhold n then staying on, with the exception of bryant, carmine & mal. mal is as mentioned previously just There the whole time with her girlfriend. bryant steps in as king of ferelden w/ interests in closing the big hole in the sky spewing demons in2 his kingdom yk. carmine shows up because she wants to help & she wants protection for bethany but she outright says she’d rather die than be inquisitor so cassandra is shit out of luck.

“CHANGE HER MIND VARRIC” “she once doubled down on insisting amaranth was a shade of blue because she didn’t want to admit to being wrong. no one’s changing her mind seeker”

alas is the middle child of eight and is thus very good with children and also bossing around people older than him. 2 of his older siblings come to the inquisition when stuff in wycome has been settled

i left ash with the basic canon background with Some variation (he grew up under the qun and left of his own free will when his magic was discovered n he realized he couldn’t take living as a saarebas

kat on the other hand was raised tal-vashoth and has bounced around basically all over thedas and leads her own merc company when the conclave blows up. she also speaks multiple languages. is there a language she doesn’t speak? probably not

just realized how long this got so im gonna like. stop my general rambling now but lmao yeah theres some basics. waves hands.

[kpopisthereasonihavenolife]

Don’t Listen

BTS

Kim Taehyung/Reader [F]

Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff

Words: 4.8k

For the one and only bby @tattooedbabymin bc she deserves the world and all its smiles.

He was angry. Furious.  Livid.  Completely perturbed.  All because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut and caused a scene when one wasn’t called for.  He was currently in the comfort of the dance studio at 6:30 PM.  His bandmates all vacated for the day to let him destress on his one for a little while before they intervene.  They didn’t know how to comfort him anyhow, it was all too fuzzy for them to comprehend anything that could or did happen before.

Taehyung knew that.  It was his own self-destructive tendencies and pride that clashed into the spiteful demon that worked its way out of his mouth and into your face all unknown to his peers, his friends.  It was earlier that morning when everything happened.  He woke up, feeling like today would bring nothing but troubles, a good day to spend in bed, but he couldn’t afford that luxury.

He was the last to wake up, a stiff neck and the annoyance of a runny nose.  He hated the cold.  Crawling out of bed, he wandered around mindlessly for a moment before pointing in the direction he needed to go to physically show his semi-working brain the task at hand.  After a trip to the bathroom, a quick face wash and cleaning of his precious pearly whites, he set down for the kitchen.  

A bowl of cereal sat in front of him half empty by the time someone else wandered into the room, teasing him for his late sleeping habits.  It was only 10, good lord.  He felt so agitated, yet he didn’t know why and he couldn’t shake the feeling off.  Taehyung is a force when angry.  He resembled a frozen over river.  If even one person were to bravely face the tempting fate of walking along the ice and cracking even a bit of it, the threat of the raging water beneath the barrier would always increase.  

The cracks in his icy cover over the river were ungodly thin this morning.  Jimin was always very perceptive of all the member's tempers and mood and was always on the prowl to improve them, but Taehyung intimidated him today.  He’d trot up with a smile, and within a couple feet of proximity, he could feel the negative vibes rolling off him like an avalanche.  Any idea he had to cheer him up all vanished and he was left cold with no answers at all.  

Finally, he turned to you.  Taehyung’s best friend.  You knew him growing up and were his source of comfort all through his training days and the days up to debut.  Even when he was the ‘secret member’ and wasn’t known until after debut, you stood at his side and supported him no matter what.  You’d encourage him that he’d be a hit, a star, a love amongst so many people that soon the past wouldn’t matter because he would climb to the top.  Now, he was and you were still there.  

You soon even moved to Seoul to be closer to him as you supported yourself, missed your family and smiled while you worked yourself to damn near death to keep supporting him, his members and keeping yourself stable but financially and mentally it felt like at times.  

You were in the confines of your basic apartment that costs an arm and a leg to keep and max hours at work when Jimin called you.  You ran to your phone as you left it on your charger as you bolted out of the bathroom, hairbrush in your hair as you held your toothbrush in your mouth.  A mix of toothpaste and saliva in your mouth.  Sliding to a stop in your giraffe printed pjs pants and plain black spaghetti top in front of your bedside table.  

“He-phu?”  You mumbled, rather unattractively into the line.  You could basically hear the way Jimin chuckled and slapped his head.  He squeaked on the line as you rolled your eyes.  Taking your phone and Jimin’s voice to the bathroom.  “Holph un,” you said as you put the phone on the sink counter and promptly spit out the toothpaste.  You rinsed your mouth with lukewarm tap water and dabbed your lips with a towel for any leftover toothpaste on your lips and raked that brush completely through your hair.  

You picked your phone back up now.

“You still there?” You asked much more audible this time.  

“Yes,” he said with a dip in his voice.  

“So, why the early morning call?”  

“Look, I know your busy, but do you work at all today?”

“Uh,” you started as if he asked the stupidest question in the world, “duh.  I always work Jimin.  When do I not?  I do need to survive you know.”  Jimin sighed.  “But, if you need something I don’t go in until 4.”  You actually heard his mood improve.  “Is something wrong?”

“Well, you see- it’s Taehyung.  He’s all moody and no one knows why.”

“Have you asked him?”

“Are you crazy?!  He’s fucking terrifying. I thought Jungkook was going to get on his knee and grovel just because he dropped a spoon too loud in the skin while Tae was getting a glass of water.  He growled at him, Y/n.  Growled!”  

You sighed as you rubbed your temple.  You padded into your living room and looked down at the outside, 8 stories down.  Why did your apartment have to be so high up? You couldn’t see hardly anything other than people the size of peas practically race-walking on the streets.  Turning and going to a small sliver of wall that held both an outside and insider thermometer.  A whopping -9 outside.  You shivered at the mere thought of going out.  

However, you knew how Tae was when in a foul mood.  He’d forego anything he could just to less bothered.  He’d probably lock himself up all day if not bothered into work.  Which was probably the direction he was heading today.  You knew he and the others had some stuff to do, some stuff to record, some errands to run and some dances to practice.  

“Jimin,” he hummed at you, “you boys go ahead and head out.  If Tae is really in a bad mood, I’ll stop by while you all are out so he can talk to me privately.”

“Are you sure?  What if-”

“I can handle it.  I have the passcode to the dorm and you guys are busy.  Just leave the grumpy munch to me, okay?”  Jimin submitted, easily in fact.  He knew you knew what to do for the most part.  But he couldn’t shake this stupid feeling sitting in his gut like a lump of black coal.  

“Okay.” He responded.  

“Good.  I’ll be there in an hour, make sure everyone is out by then, and try to convince Tae to stay home.  Just tell Namjoon to tell him to, he usually listens to him.”  You got one last confirmation from Jimin before the call ended and you trotted to your room to get changed.  Guess you were putting on makeup and getting ready early today, so much for chilling in pjs until work called.  

XXX

Just as you said, promptly an hour later you were punching in the 9 digit code you ran over and over in your head to memorize before pushing yourself into the warmth of the large dorm of the 7 idols.  Shaking off your coat and hanging it from the coat rack and peeling off your boots with the inside coated in fuzz, you stepped inside.  

Your hair had been thrown up in a bun, the easiest style to travel and work in. You had a bag with your work uniform on your back that you left by the door just in case you were here for so long you can’t make a run home to change.  The most in one piece pair of jeans you owned on your legs with a turtle neck sweater to cheat the idea of wearing a scarf.  Simple makeup, just enough to were it wasn’t ‘unprofessional’ for your work environment.  

“Taehyung!”  You called into the apartment but didn’t get a reply back.  His set of keys still sat in the bowl at the door next to the coat rack, so he was still indeed here.  His keys also being the only set in the bowl showed that all the boys were also out.  Good.  “Taehyung!”  You tried again, yet you still got nothing back.  

Waltzing inside, you looked in the kitchen.  Not there.  He wasn’t in the living room or in the little corner in the hall he randomly sits when he was bored for no reason either. Not in the bathroom or taking a shower, and definitely not in the laundry room.  Last bet, his room.  If he was in a bad room, he probably was in his room sulking.  Being all mopey.  

You walked up to his room, taking all the twists and turns of the halls before you stood at his door and knocked.  “Tae, open up. It’s me.” Yet again, no answer.  Could he be sleeping?  You sighed as you turned the doorknob into his room and stepped inside, keeping the door open behind you.  You were more than set on trying to drag him out to talk.  

Taehyung was lazily laying on his bed.  One leg hanging off the mattress while the other was propped up with his knee up.  Is phone was hanging above his face, threating to his it if he happened to drop it.  The room was dark, the curtains were drawn, shutting out the sun as all the lights were off.  The dim light of his phone illuminated his face as his face itself was neutral.  

It was blank, unmoving.  He didn’t even acknowledge you were in his room.  His presence just wasn’t exciting enough you guessed.  Normally, he would bound up and carry you around any and everywhere just so he could squeeze any time you came over for all it’s worth.  He knew your free time was very limited, so this was direct lack of response did tick you off.

You stood, cross-armed at his bedside as you stared down at him.  He clearly was in a bad mood, anyone with eyes could see that. You tapped on the inside of your arm with an impatient finger, not saying a word, just staring down at the man.  Soon, he seemed to get frustrated as he locked his phone and dropped it on his chest, moving his icy gaze up to you.  

The room was too dark to make out your precise facial expression, but he expected that you weren’t exactly smiling.  

“What?”  He bit.  You blinked your eyes.  

“What's with that attitude?” You shot back, making him just groan and roll his eyes.  “Taehyung!” You scolded as he quickly sat up in bed, slamming both feet down on the floor and stood up.  He stood above you, towering above you, glaring down at you. Yet, you didn’t falter.  “You’re not scaring me away,” partially true.  Taehyung really was scary when he was angry, and it’s not often that he directs his bad mood towards you.  Was he not your best friend, you’d be gone from the shrinking power of his harsh eyes.

“What do you want, Y/n?”  He asked with nothing but venom in his voice.  It almost made you shake, shiver, coware- but you held fast to your bravery.  Maybe a part of Taehyung’s brain knew this was wrong, pouring his anger out to you.  He didn’t know why he was mad in the first place?!  Why did he want to scratch his skin until the irritation left him? Why did he want to punch a wall, or scream until his vocal cords were shot?  He didn’t know, and the fact he didn’t know made him that much more irritated.  

“You really need to drop the attitude. What the hell is your problem?” He could feel your own distaste for his mood.  Of course, you would be mad at him, pulling something like this when he knew you worked.  Yet, despite that, he shut his logical thoughts away and persisted with the uncooperative nature the day has clearly set for him. For him, your words translated in a way that was telling him he didn’t have the right be to in a bad mood.  

“My problem?  Why the fuck should I have to explain anything to you anyway?”  You recoiled at that.  Dropping your crossed arms and taking a minuscule set backward.  You floundered before you found your voice again.

“What- I’m here because your whole team is wandering the hell is wrong with you!!  Do you realize how worried Jimin is, how much your frightening everyone?  Sure, it’d make sense if they knew, but you won’t dignify anyone with a reason!” 

“I don’t need a reason!”  He raised his voice over yours.  “I don’t need a damn reason to be annoyed, is that some written law in some magical book about being a person?!  Can’t I just be mad to my own decree?!”

“That’s not the issue at hand Taehyung!”  The two of your stood in his room, chest to chest screaming for no reason.  You didn’t want to raise your voice, but he kept egging you on.  His loud, baritone voice made you have to speak up to even attempt to be heard.  

You could hardly comprehend the words flung around into the space around you both.  The atmosphere was heavy, thick, nearly flammable.  You were getting sick of this.  It feels like so long, and there’s no way you’ve been arguing for as long as you think.  

The argument then moved rooms.  Taehyung checking your shoulder as he moved past you, you more insulted than hurt, chasing him and you both continued your mutual verbal assaults.  He made it into the living room, stopping at the wooden coffee table at his shin as you shouted at him once he stopped shouting at you for a breath.

“Taehyung, stop!” He grits his teeth, head pounding as he brought his foot up and kicked the coffee table.  The table slid across the carpet before it snagged a string and tipped to its side.  The force put into the bottom of his new sore foot must’ve been extremely charged.  “Taehyung?!”  He whirled around to you, eyes burning.

“Leave!” He pushed at your shoulder, making you stumble.  “Get out of my house!”  You grit your teeth, the frustrated tears finally starting to sting beyond your ability to keep them back.  Rolling one by one down your flushed, anger painted cheeks you turned around.  

Without a word, you stomped towards the door and once out of his sight, Taehyung listened to a bit of rustling, the door opening to the dorm and soon a violent slam behind it.  The dorm was silent now, as he seemed to have all his strength zapped from him as he fell back onto the couch and cradled his face.  Pushing his large hand over his eyes as he bit his lip, finally, a different feeling besides anger grew in his chest.  It was disgusting, cold, harsh.  All because he just forced his one heaven out of his home.  Part of him wished you just didn’t listen.

XXX

Now, as 7 PM rolls around, Taehyung collapsed onto the practice room floor.  Exhausted both mentally and physically he huffed and gasped air. Sweat coated his forehead and ran down his neck and chest.  His thin white practice shirt patchy with his salty sweat.  

Taehyung hasn’t reached out to you all day, no surprise there.  You also hadn’t attempted to contact him, not that he even knew if he’d answer you.  He was still frustrated, but more at himself now.  When he finally picked himself up to go to the dance studio where half of his team was, he apologized for his behavior, despite him still being in a rotten mood. Yet, when Jimin asked if you stopped by, Taehyung didn’t dignify him with an answer.

He did his work the best his mood would allow, even when the headcount was 7.  Soon, the boys cleared out one by one, the last to leave was Hoseok after being peeled away from Taehyung to breath by Jimin.  So, Taehyung’s been in this room for hours, just being by himself.  

He picked himself off the floor and moved to the door that leads to the empty halls as he moved to the window to see the outside world.  Snow blew in the grey and still darks the sky.  It was still colder than ever and part of him couldn’t help but wonder if you were still working.  It was an unconscious thought that wouldn’t leave his head.

Your coworkers and boss were fairly understanding that you lived a decent distance from your job.  If the weather was too bad, surely they’d let you off early to get home safe, right?  Surely that was the case, but the unpleasant bubbling in his stomach wouldn’t let him stop thinking about it.  He felt like he wanted to get sick.  Still, though, he didn’t contact you.  He walked back into the room and sat against the wall, taking his tall water bottle and taking a hefty swig of water that eased his parched throat.

More time ticked by with him just sitting, staring and thinking.  Time passed by too quickly, as his phone buzzed with a call.  He nearly toppled over to reach it, despite it being right next to him.  His heart almost felt sad when he didn’t see your name over the screen, but Namjoon’s. He picked the call up nonetheless.

“Hey,” he started off.

“Are you planning to come home any time soon?” The leader asked.  It was quiet in whatever room he was in, maybe he was at Rkive instead.  “Jimin texted me, said you hadn’t come back yet.”  

“I’ll be home soon.”  

“Hurry up, the weather’s only going to get worse.”  Why did his mind keep going back to you?  Taehyung heard Namjoon’s phone beep with a notification.  “Hold on,” he said as he puled the phone from his ear for a moment to read yet another texts from Jimin.  “Hey,” he started, “have you really not talked to Y/n this afternoon?”

“No,” he curtly replied.  He stopped a moment, the feeling in his stomach rising up again.  “Why?”  He timidly added on before the conversation was lost.  

“Jimin said she sent a message to him saying she couldn’t make it home tonight.”  Taehyung’s ears perked.  

“Is she staying at work?”

“No, she’s not there.  She left early.”  Taehyung needed to call Jimin.

“I’m hanging up.”  Namjoon didn’t get a word of protest out before he hung up, scrolled through his contacts and immediately dialed Jimin.  The older man quickly picked up before Taehyung was bombarding him with questions.  “Where is she?”

“She?” Jimin asked.

“Y/n!”  

“She told me her car broke down, so she can’t make it home. I offered to pick her up, but she wouldn’t tell me where she was, so unless she’s nearly a motel or something, she’s probably staying in her car until the weather dies down.”

“That’s crazy!  She can’t do that, it’s fucking freezing outside!”  Taehyung was off the dance practice floor and running around, gathering his things like a crazy man. Stuffing his bottle into his drawstring back, pulling on his coat and hat before running out of the room and shutting the lights off.  “I’m going to find her,” he said before he dropped the call.  

Sick.  He felt like he was going to be sick.  He was going to be sick.  He stopped outside the building to promptly vomit into the fresh pile of unshoveled snow.  His throat burned as did his nose, while the wind pushed against his cheeks. He held his stomach as he finally felt all the irritation from today vanish.  Funny, the person who wanted to help him, who he shunned away this morning, is the same person who made his rotten, no good mood disappear and he didn’t have a clue if you’d answer his phone call or not.  

Naturally, when he tried, you didn’t.  The first two time, it went to voice mail, the third you just declined his call.  He had only himself to blame, it was his fault.  He tucked his phone away and took off down the streets.  

It was cold and icy and wet and slushy but he knew the route you always took to get to work and back.  He started there.  Walking down the snowy roads, he soon found himself in the dark with the lamps above his head his own guiding lights beside the occasional passing car.  He was being reckless, he knew that.  

It was already past 8 when he finally got a glimpse of your car.  Layered in a thin coat of snow that blew and wisped in the air.  He ran to the car side, looking in the windows.  You were in the back seats, knees curled up to your chest, shoes, pants, and coat on with a beanie Tae bought you for your last birthday.  He knocked on the window, startling you as you seemed to gasp.  You were quick to crawl over and unlock the door, making him climb in in record time.  

The winter breeze followed him in the car, making you shiver as he shut the door and relocked it.  It wasn’t much warmer in the car than it was outside.  It was still cold and anything idea of taking off a single layer of clothes was a ridiculous one.

For a while, no one spoke.  You sat on your end of the seat, while Taehyung stuck to his.  His whole goal was to come to see you, find you and make sure you were safe. You were, to an extent, but he didn’t know what do to now. Glancing at you, you had put your phone on the seat between you two and wrapped your arms around your knees, your chin resting there.  You looked so forlorn.

Did he put that look on your face?  A punch of guilt hit him as he held his stomach, the awful taste of his earlier vomit still haunting his tongue.  You noticed him clutch his gut as he bit his tongue, a habit he did when he stomach hurt.  

“Are you sick?”  You muttered to him, startling him.  He wanted to weep if he was being honest.  With how emotionally charged he’s been all day, it wouldn’t really be out of place. Even when you’re hurt, you noticed something about him.

Taehyung twisted his body to lean his back against the door and propped one foot onto the seat of the car. He grabbed your arm and tugged you over to him so that your side was pushed to his chest.  He put his leg in front of your, over your lap and hooked it under the foot behind you.  His arms made your shoulder push into space under his shoulder and he pushed your head under his chin.  He shook, not because he was cold, but he was scared.  He was sad.

After being forced to his chest, you placed your hands on his stomach, thumbing over it slightly as he breathed quick uneven gulps.  Taehyung cried while he held you.  The overwhelming guilt in his gut was eating him alive, he couldn’t stand it anymore.  He just wanted to smile with you again.  He didn’t want to be mad anymore.

“I’m sorry,” he spoke with broken, weeping breaths into your hair.  He pushed his face into your hair as he held you tighter, bringing you as close he possibly could. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he repeated like a mantra.  Like a pleading pray.  Like his last hope.  “Don’t listen. This morning, don’t listen to me.  I’m sorry, please, just don’t- I’m sorry!”  He cried as he trembled horribly.  Even with his words of apology, he couldn’t feel better. Nothing was relieving the pain in his heart, his head, his thoughts.

Nothing seemed good enough to him.

“It’s alright,” you said back to him. Why did those two words being such relieve to him?  “I was in the wrong too.  It takes two people to fight, it’s not just one person's fault.”  He just shook his head.  He felt like it was all his fault, he couldn’t see where you were in the wrong for wanting to help him. “Don’t beat yourself up over it.  It’s clear you really mean your apology, so just let it go.”

“I can’t,” he whimpered.  

“Yes, you can.”  You pushed away from him just enough to looked at him, taking his face in your hands. His eyes kept leaking crystal tears as his lips quivered.  His face was warm as he kept his arms laced behind your back.  “You can let it go,” you softly told him as you smiled.  He got to see you smile again, to him- at him- who hurt you.  

His vision of your smile blurred to the point he had to blink out more tears just to see your face clearly until more tears bubbled up and blocked his vision again and again. You chuckled at his unceasing tears.  Thumbing them away, “why are you still crying, silly?” You return of nicknames only made his tears fall faster.  

The pain was gone and all that was left was a tightness over his chest.  He could only think of one remedy that could quell this new feeling.  He scanned your face, as you kept talking to him- soothing him.  He couldn’t focus on your voice, just the movement of your lips that he watched so diligently.

Taehyung was gentle in the action of moving down to capture your lips between his own.  Pushing against you only slightly, and with more seconds that passed, he started to move more desperately.  Molding your lips against his in movements he hadn’t imagined with you before and tugging your bottom lip between his teeth before releasing it to feel your lips more.  You never once pushed him away, why not he didn’t know- but he couldn’t be bothered.  His hand moved to the back of your head, keeping you held against him as he felt like he couldn’t stop.  

He breathed against you, whimpering when you pulled away only to push himself towards you for more.  The breaths he took of your air were something that made him think that he’d stop living if he stopped kissing you.  He felt you grab onto the collar of his coat before he literally pulled himself away from you.  Moving his lips to settle on your forehead as he felt your harsh breath fan onto his neck.  His body felt like it was ignited.  

He stared blankly behind you and out the window of the opposite door, watching the snow fall.  It was so warm, it was like they weren’t in a cold, broken down car at all.  

“I want to do that again,” he all but whispered against your skin.  He moved to look at your again, forehead against yours as he looked at your kiss bitten lips.  “I want to kiss you more,” he breathed.  “Please, Y/n, can I-”

“You may,” you answered.  The red across your cheeks no longer results of the dropped temperature in the car.  He smiled, for the first time that entire day as he happily pushed his lips back over yours, holding you to his chest where he was content to stay.  He doesn’t know how long he spent with you, just sitting in the privacy of your winter snowed car kissing you, but it didn’t feel like long enough.  

As the night drew on, you fell asleep on his chest as he sat lazily against the door with one hand patting your back as he finally decided to reply to the multitude of texts he received.  It was 10PM now.  Sending his members a message in the group chat that they were all panicking in, he told them they’d both be at the dorms tomorrow.  

The temperament from his head was gone, no longer was he plagued with worry, or anger or annoyance.  The taste of you on his tongue washed it all away as he watched you sleep soundly.  It wasn’t cold with you two together.  He smiled as he was eager to take more than one picture of your sleeping face and a fuller one with you sleeping on his chest as he took an aerial shot.  Setting the photo as he phone background he chuckled before he locked his phone, pocketed it and settled to wrapped both arms around you and get some sleep himself.

He’d talk more tomorrow, and be sure to tell the boys to rightfully keep their touching to a minimum.  Taehyung doesn’t like sharing things that are his.  

[seasaltmemories]

Devil’s Line Review/Analysis

This is gonna be a different beast to tackle for a few reasons A) I actually started this once before and dropped it, B) For a proper analysis I’m gonna have to dive into spoilers, and C) I technically haven’t finished the entire series, as the last volume of the manga isn’t translated (and I will only talk about the manga here) I say this all so you’ll be gentle with me as I pop from subject to subject

To start let’s get that summary:

Tsukasa, a college student, is rescued from an attack by a devil, one of many vampires that can blend in among the human population. Anzai, her savior, is a half-devil who exploits his supernatural gifts as a member of a shadowy police task force that specializes in devil-related crime in Tokyo. As Anzai continues to keep guard over Tsukasa, the two quickly forge a tentative bond—one that Anzai fears will test his iron-clad rule of never drinking human blood …

So I feel like expectations play a lot into how you receive this story and what you want to get out of it.  My first time going in I was told it was a dark fantasy series, and then what I got in the 7 or 8 chapters I read was a lot of faffing about of will they won’t they with the external plot only appearing to be there to drive the main couple together, so I got bored and dropped it

This time I went in not only knowing there would be a lot of romance, but also personally more in the mood for vampire stuff, and kinda meeting it where it was allowed me to see it grow into more interesting ways

The beginning isn’t bad, but I think it is best appreciated when you know up front this is 50% romance and 50% thriller, both genres are equally important to the narrative, but rather than starting out with that ratio, the beginning focuses entirely on Tsukasa’s and Anzai’s blossoming romance, from there a greater plot concerning devils begins to unfold, and then the two really begin to work in sync to prop both sides up

Bc once the ball starts rolling, the plot becomes a high-speed mystery concerning secret conspiracies and questions of who you can trust, what started out simple gets more information added on that complicates matters as you begin to question your own judgement, still what keeps the plot from becoming a jumbled mess is the fact at the heart of the story is always Tsukasa and Anzai, it gives the narrative focus that I’ve see few things series have

I should also mention my first impressions of the romance being shaken bc I am so used to series having couples who are love at first sight yet waste the entire time actually getting together until the end, and while these two basically also have love at first sight and take a while to actually get together, they get together in an overall timely manner, and their relationship is allowed to grow and evolve in very mature ways, not just sexually but also emotionally, a lot of their arc together is learning about how to communicate what they want to the other and as their relationship grows, their strength as individual characters grow as well

Now I’m gonna get into some spoilers, but what turned the series from simply fun into can’t put down is the timeskip

A lot of the elements that I enjoyed were being done before the time skip, but I feel like the skip is what allowed it to reach new heights it just kept hovering up at

Bc slowly as we start from Tsukasa and Anzai, the world expands, first to his colleagues, then to their enemies until it is a large but never burgeoning cast of connections, and the way they keep it all together is that it is grounded by lot of casual little moments to see people just be people, no matter their relation to the protagonists, we are consistently shown the humanity of almost everyone we come in contact with, and as a result it is hard to not fall in love with people who had previously tried to murder your faves (and might still currently be doing so)  and after the timeskip we just get hit with back to back side stories of the cast each going through their own internal problems, while still keeping to focus on Tsukasa and Anzai

Another thing that helps is that the worldbuilding concerning devil’s is extremely well-done, again it starts out simple “they see blood, then transform into monsters, sexual lust is connected to their bloodlust” but not only do we learn devil’s themselves, but a lot about what it means for a world to have a population like this, for example we get a detailed look into the tech created to help devil’s have safe sex with human partners and while it can be easy to poke fun at such specific details, by the end of the series it really does feel like an actual genetic disorder rather than some supernatural stuff with a sciency explanation tacked on

A moment that really made me stop and realize “oh the person behind this must know stuff besides story-telling” was when after and educational lecture about devils, the speaker admitted privately that the model used to describe them was problematic in that it demonized certain sects of devils, like wow, it was a quick moment, but a story showing the struggles of nuanced activism? Then we not only touch upon exploration of devil’s through a social science lens, but the overall philosophy that gets brought up on how to deal with institutional bigotry is interesting (this will be endgame spoilers so if you want to skip this, scroll down until you see bolded words again)

In two separate cases, we see two queer women involved in institutions get asked to do something unethical, both decide that if they refuse then they’ll get fired and someone else will simply take their place, and their goal then becomes to work through the system until they make it to the top and can start openly resisting

The effectiveness of these strategies is intriguing to dig through, the first is a researcher breeding devil/human children to study, (many of the participants being convicts) and from her actions we see her try and inform those involved to the best of her abilities and get their consent, and when possible, try to use couples who are already together, any information that would put individuals at risk of being chosen for illegal experimentation, she destroys, when she becomes the head researcher, she changes the program to rely completely on studying the children of already formed devil/human couples who come to them willingly

The second is asked to head the conspiracy of wiping out all devils, when ironically she is a devil herself, and so what they do is essentially play their part until they’ve amassed enough power to eventually stage a coup, until they can get an insider to be the prime minister to publicly reveal to the world, the conspiracy and have vocal support of devil rights, not only does this plan depend on the actual killing of innocents and riling up actual bigotry, but it also attracts actual cold-blooded killers and violent bigots which complicate matters, and for all their effort, the prime minister gets assassinated right during his big speech 

As I mentioned their is still one volume left untranslated so I don’t know how it will add on to this, (most of the plot lines got wrapped up so I can’t see many major developments happening beyond wrapping up character plot threads) but they’re some juicy thematic questions to chew on as well, which is always a treat

Returning to some general strengths of the series, there really is a genuine sex-positive stance, I say that specifically bc it isn’t just simply exploring themes of sex, but also the way it does so, as mentioned above, there is a lot of baggage around devil’s and their sexual relationships, but a lot of what the characters have to learn is that such desires are normal and not some great abomination, just something they have to be responsible about, no one is shamed for communicating what they want/like, especially women, where multiple female characters are in fact openly encouraged to communicate to their partners that they are interested in sex, and from their we watch multiple couples (including a m/m one) work out what they want, in one neither is interested in romance, but is ok with a friends with benefit thing, two have the male participant be unsure of their feelings and so they work in their comfort zone (one likes physical touch and kissing, another they only hug) the m/m couple not only get screen-time of struggling with the “are you gay, I want to show interest but not get perceived as a creep” deal, but one admits to being repulsed by sex, and they still work out a romantic relationship

And the most surprising amount part of this, is that there is no unnecessary titillation, the eternal question of what is over-sexualization and all can get confusing and tiring, so I won’t define a specific threshold here or say this is the only way to tell such stories about sex, but first you don’t got any unrealistic body proportions on anyone or any creepy shots, everyone is fully clothed and dressed normally for the non-sexy bits, and while we do get a sex scene, it is pretty non-graphic (you got boobs and that is all that it on screen) so there really isn’t any confusing moments like in other stories I’ve experienced where I have to wonder if the framing contradicts its message 

I could go on, but the strength of the story lies within at the end of the day being about normal people just trying to live their lives, it really does seem to capture the essence of what it means to be human effortlessly, and I am just immediately charmed and ready to follow Ryo Handa in whatever other projects she does