#now I’m here on tumblr scrolling the tag

[murkycran]

2023 is apparently the year of me revisiting fandoms and pairings which I know have very, very little content outside of the source work. That’s right y’all, I’m ready to be hurt again.

[deepseawave]

obsessed w the tags on ur last reblog

Omgg, thank you haha, it was a quality post so I just had to appreciate it in full force 😂❤️

Can‘t believe someone would actually enjoy my yapping :,D

[thebadchoicemachine]

You know there’s something incredibly comforting about how everyone’s lives are happening at the exact same time.

[steampunk-raven]

can I stop rapid switching. please. that would be lovely

[bennyden]

User hamatoanne's fic plagiarism

Hello, I’m the author of The Android, an AO3 Robot OC x Reader fic that was plagiarized by hamatoanne on Tumblr in her Aemond x Reader story, System Error. You can read my AO3 post for more info about the issue. As you can tell by the timestamps on AO3 and the screenshots of her now-deleted story, mine was posted months before hers. I didn’t want to make this public, but it appears Anne has not learned her lesson and is grasping at straws to keep her readers in the dark. She’s been deleting her stories to hide evidence of her plagiarism. I think you deserve to know who your beloved writer gets her words from.

I don’t know this fandom, but I’ve heard you guys can get pretty crazy. Control yourselves. The only one who needs to take responsibility is Anne. Don’t send hate to her mutuals. Don’t send hate to her followers. Don’t stalk or harass or dox anyone. Read through this post and form your opinion.

First bunch of screenshots: A side-by-side comparison of her story (now deleted) and mine (still up and linked above). I took screenshots in advance in case something like this happened so I’d have proof if I needed it. I decided to compare the first chapter of my fic with the first part of hers. I could do the whole thing, but I’m a busy college student and I think just a quick skim of the pictures below is enough for people to see the extent of her plagiarism. 

I have screenshots of her entire post, but I don’t want to make this too long to scroll through and Tumblr posts cap at 30 pictures. I’m assuming some of you have already read her story multiple times, so you’re familiar with the words. If you haven’t, then I should warn you that the fic that she plagiarized is very not SFW. I’ll let you know where the not SFW content starts so you can skip it. 

On the left is my story. On the right is what Anne posted (and took down).

Not SFW content starts here. 

Not SFW content over.

Finally, I DM’ed her. This was just before I posted to The Android on AO3 about the situation. To summarize, I wrote about how I would go about the situation and how hurt I was about a bigger creator stealing from me. I admit, I was too kind and too much of a pushover. I just wanted things to go quietly. She later replied with this and deleted her fic immediately. 

“I was completely stupid for not giving your credit” Why do they always play dumb? You copy that much and can’t even think to put my name there? You credit the artist but not the person who basically wrote your whole story? The story that gave you over 3k notes, so much more clout than any of your other stories has earned you? Total BS.

“I had every intention of giving credit where it was due…But I forgot” Right. Sure. Of course. If she felt guilty about plagiarizing, she would not be so shameless to accept praise like she did. I have examples of where she happily thanked people for complimenting "her work”, but didn’t want to bring other blogs into this, especially since they were none the wiser to her plagiarism. Ironically enough, someone even gifted her a badge for being a good writer the day she replied to my DM. She tagged that post “#a breath of fresh air on a horrible day”. I wonder why her day was horrible. Whoever gifted her that badge deserves their money back.

My thoughts when approaching her DMs were:

If she wants to keep up the story? Fine, just edit the post to say that it was heavily influenced by my story and leave a link to the original. I don’t mind. The readers will see that, click my story, compare the two, and think, “Hey, that’s not just inspiration! She plagiarized!” and her downfall would start from there without me having to do anything.

If she ignored me and didn’t fulfill that request, i would take matters into my own hands and expose her on her own post. Even more damaging.

In the end, she chose to delete the post entirely, getting rid of the evidence and her clout. I actually didn’t expect this outcome since I thought she’d like the clout too much, but I guess she decided this route would be the least damaging to her reputation. Everything was swept under the rug for now. 

And like a fool, I said thanks and went on with my life. But I decided to keep track of her. Because while I was too cowardly to do anything, I knew there would always be someone in the crowd who would take action. And it seems like people did. 

After reading the supportive comments from readers of my fic, I started to regret how lightly I handled it. I wanted to be mature even though I wanted her entire blog to fall and her reputation taken away. But I didn’t want to be a “bad person”. I wondered if I should keep pursuing the issue. I realized that my overly-people-pleasing behavior might lead her to continue her ways. I decided to speak out because others might’ve had their works taken by her and that my silence wasn’t helping. 

Next is her post, now deleted (I wonder why), about how she’s been so sad and how she’s going to be deleting her old stories and starting over. I’m likely not the only one she’s plagiarized from if she’s deleting other stories. At the time, I only saw supportive replies and reblogs on it, but maybe she deleted it after people started calling her out? Idk.

She’s playing the victim game pretty hard. Acting as a kind underdog even though she’s the big creator who stole from a nobody like me. I know I said on my AO3 update that people shouldn’t send hate to her (and even censored her name after she deleted her story) but I guess I’m a little happy that people sought to call her out on her shit. I wish I was as brave. 

Later, a nice person (we’ll call her Bob because she asked to remain anonymous) DM’ed me directly with a kind message. After seeing this, I decided I should take action and expose all of this since Anne obviously hasn’t learned and wants to keep it all hidden. Bob confirmed that I’m not the only victim of Anne’s plagiarism either.

Bob asked that I not use screenshots of our DM’s so here is a transcription of the important parts:

“Hey! I just found out that one of your fics had been plagiarized by someone in the HOTD community. First of all, I am tremendously sorry that happened…”

(For Bob’s privacy, I won’t explain her relation to Anne. Just know that Anne has refused to message her back).

“I definitely think you should make a blog post. with side by side comparison. I am still completely gobsmacked that she pilfered your entire story word for word and changed a few things. We found evidence that she had plagiarized multiple stories. Not just yours. We found out her mermaid!aemond fic was entirely stolen as well as a few others. She has quietly deleted them and hasn't spoken on them since.”

“We surmised that she takes ‘underrated’ fics from different fandoms and changes the name and that's it. It's almost like she believed that stealing from other fandoms was going to draw less attention than stealing directly from the HOTD fandom.”

So if you noticed that one of your favorite Aemond fics is gone, now you know why.

‘But benny, she still wrote her own sentences and just changed it around to fit aemond!’

Fanfiction is transformative. You know what the source material is and who created it. You know you’re not reading a copied and pasted text with maybe some words and sentences switched around. This wasn’t fanfic. According to Google, plagiarism is defined as, “the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.” (See what I did there? I credited Google. Is it so hard to give credit where credit is due?) She copied people's work, didn't give credit to the source material, and claimed it as her own. That's plagiarism.

I wouldn’t have had a problem if she properly credited me and linked the original story. I wouldn’t have had a problem if she didn’t blatantly copy and paste the entire text and premise. I wouldn’t even require getting permission to write a story based on my fic if she had satisfied those conditions.

She’s a 27-year-old grown-ass woman with enough free time to simp over some blond guy with an eyepatch. I’m a 21-year-old college student who only posts fics during the summer and winter because that’s when school’s on break. I’m too busy writing lab reports and essays to be an active writer online. The fact that she can disrespect smaller writers so tremendously should not be acceptable. The fact that she also deceived her devoted readers and friends about her "works" is also unacceptable.

What can you do about this? To be honest, I don’t know what to do. I’ve never had to deal with this before. I want to be a good person and say, “Don’t send any hate to Anne, don’t harass her. Just unfollow her and stop supporting her.” But that obviously hasn’t taught her anything. She’ll just make a half-assed apology, maybe go on hiatus, maybe disappear, and then pop up again under another name to steal from another creator. If you have any ideas on how to deal with this, please tell us. 

She can try to block me or delete her posts, but the evidence is out and the damage is done. Anything she does to hide this mess will only make it worse for her. I’d appreciate people bringing more awareness to this issue, especially if it can reach the eyes of others she’s taken from. 

Thanks for reading.

[sergeantbarnessdoll]

Dirty Little Stories » Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier

Pairings: Boyfriend!Bucky Barnes x Girlfriend!Reader

Summary: Bucky finds out what a dirty girl Y/N is when he finds her Tumblr blog.

Warnings: Smut (18+), language, dirty talk, kissing, hickeys, fingering, (f receiving), unprotected sex, rough sex, praise kink, metal arm kink, Bucky’s dog tags, name calling (slut), pet names (doll, babydoll, doll face)

Written on my phone so sorry if there’s any mistakes or typos.

Header made by @buckys-wintersoldier

GIF IS NOT MINE! Credit goes to the creators.

Getting used to modern day technology was difficult for Bucky, but with help from you, it was easier than he thought. Now he’s able to talk, text, and do whatever he wants now. As of right now, Bucky was catching up on stuff he missed throughout the years. As he was scrolling through Google, he came across a link that’s connected to Tumblr so he tapped on it to see what it was. That’s when he came across something interesting. He found a blog that has particularly dirty things, meaning the person who runs the blog writes a lot of smut. Bucky tapped on one of the links that took him to one of the stories. His mind was nearly blown when he finished it. He went back to read another one and another one. That’s when something caught his eye. He recognized the name of the person’s blog. The name “Y/N” was displayed in the bio of the blog. It didn’t take long for Bucky to figure out that the blog is ran by his girlfriend, who isn’t as innocent as he thought she was.

“Oh you’re in so much trouble when you get home, doll.” Bucky says to himself.

Bucky continued to read the stories you have posted on your blog. He didn’t like the fact that you were writing and fantasizing about other men, but he will admit that your writing is very well written.

“Bucky, I’m home!” Your voice echoed through the apartment.

You kicked the door shut with your foot and went to the kitchen to put the groceries away. Bucky shut his phone off and put it in his pocket, making his way to the kitchen.

“Hey, doll.” Bucky kisses your lips. “How was the store?” He asks.

“It was alright. It wasn’t as crowded as last week.” You tell him. “Anything interesting happened here?” You asked.

“Not really.” He starts. “I did come across something interesting.” He says, leaning against the kitchen counter and crosses his arms over his chest.

“What was it?” You asked, putting something in the refrigerator.

“Have you heard of something called Tumblr?” He asks.

You stopped in your tracks, nearly dropping the gallon of milk in your hands.

“I- uhh may have came across it a couple times. Why?” You say nervously.

“Well, I seen this blog on there and this person writes stories that are sexual.” He says.

“Oh, th-that’s cool.” You say with a stutter.

“The person also has the same first name as you.” He says.

Your eyes widened. Bucky noticed how you went quiet. He pushed himself off the counter and approached you. Your breathing got heavy when you felt his presence behind you. Bucky’s body was against your back. He placed his hands on the counter on either side of you, trapping you in between his body and the counter. You shivered when you felt his breath against your neck.

“Is there something you want to tell me, doll?” Bucky asks, whispering in your ear.

“N-No.” You say.

“Really? Cause it sounds like you do.” He says.

“I-I don’t know what you mean.” You say, playing dumb.

“Don’t lie to me, babydoll. You exactly know what I’m talking about.” He says.

You gasped when you felt his bulge against your ass. It took everything in you to not give in and tell him that you’re the one writing those stories.

“I think…” Bucky’s right hand slides down the front of your body, stopping on your clothed pussy. “You’re the one who’s writing those dirty stories.” He says, applying pressure to your clit.

“It’s me! I’m the one who’s writing them!” You blurted out, not being able to take it anymore.

“I would’ve never thought that my doll has such a dirty mind.” He says with a chuckle.

Bucky spun you around and threw you over his shoulder, carrying you to the bedroom. He dropped you on the bed causing you to bounce a couple times. He grabbed your ankles and pulled you to the edge of the bed so your legs were dangling from it. His metal fingers tilted your head up so you were looking into his eyes that were once a beautiful blue which now were darker.

“I should punish you for being such a dirty girl, but instead, I’m going to have my fun with you.” He says.

You nodded. Bucky pulled your shirt over your head, revealing your lacy bra to him. He pushed you back so you were laying on the bed. He leaned over you, his dog tags dangling in your face. He placed kisses along your neck and shoulder. You gasped when you felt his teeth graze your skin. He bit down hard enough to create a hickey. His hand blindly found its way to your back and expertly unclasping your bra, discarding it somewhere in the room. His thumbs rubbed over your nipples. You let out a moan when you felt his metal fingers pinch your nipple, sending a new sensation through your body. He moved his lips further down your body, stopping at the waistband of your leggings. Bucky hooked his fingers in the waistband and pulled them down your legs, along with your soaked panties. He got on his knee next to the bed and spread your legs open, displaying your wetness to him. You moaned when you felt his fingers rub in between your wet folds.

“So wet for me.” Bucky says.

He moved his face closer to your pussy. His tongue slid in between your folds, moaning at your taste against his tongue. His tongue circled around your clit a few times before he latched his lips on it and began to suck on it. Your hands flew down to his head, tugging at his hair.

“Oh my god, yes!” You moaned, threw your head back in pleasure.

If you knew one thing about Bucky, it’s that he knows how to eat pussy. He took your pleasure seriously.

You were caught off guard when one of his metal fingers slid past your entrance. Your jaw dropped, breathy moans fell from your lips. The cool metal of his fingers against your walls felt better than any sex you have ever used. Bucky took his lips off your clit, but keeping his metal fingers inside of you, moving them at a painfully slow pace.

“When were you going to tell me about those dirty little stories of yours? Huh, doll?” Bucky asks.

“I-I don’t know.” You say.

Bucky stopped his movements with his fingers causing you to let out a frustrated whine. He chuckled at your frustrated state as he stood up. You watched as he took off his shirt causing you to lick your lips. You leaned up, touching his perfectly sculpted body. Bucky stopped you by grabbing your wrist.

“No touching, doll face.” He let go of your wrist. “Turn around and bend over the bed.” He orders.

You did as you were told and bent over the bed. You the sound of his belt hitting the floor causing you to look over your shoulder. You watched as he took off his jeans and boxers. You licked your lips at the sight of his hard cock.

“Face forward.” Bucky turns your head forward. “Spread ‘em.” He says, tapping your inner thigh.

You spread your legs apart, giving Bucky more access. Bucky rubs his hands over your ass cheeks, giving them a squeeze causing you to gasp.

“All this time, I thought my doll was a good girl.” Bucky says, rubbing his hand up and down your spine.

“I am a good girl.” You mumbled loud enough for him to hear you.

“You are, but as of right now, you’re a dirty little slut.” He says.

Bucky leaned over your body, his dog tags lightly brushed against your back. His metal hand went to the front of your body and down to your clit. His metal fingers lightly rubbed your clit in circles causing your pussy to clench around nothing.

“I know how much you love my metal arm so let’s see how long it takes you to cum just from me rub your little clit.” Bucky says in almost a whisper.

Bucky’s metal fingers applied more pressure to your clit and began rubbing it in circles. You gripped the blankets on the bed from the amount of pleasure Bucky was giving you just from his metal fingers.

“Bucky, please I want you to—” A moan left your lips causing you to cut your sentence short.

“You want me to what, doll?” He asks.

“Fuck me please!” You begged.

“Not until you cum on my metal fingers.” He says.

You opened your mouth to say something, but a moan left your mouth instead when two of his metal fingers slid past your entrance while his metal thumb continued to rub your clit. Your walls immediately clenched around his fingers.

“I know you want to cum. Just do it and I’ll give you my cock.” He whispers in your ear.

It didn’t take long for you to cum. Your eyes nearly rolled to the back of your head as you came hard on his metal fingers.

“There you go. Good girl.” Bucky praises.

You whimpered when he took his metal fingers out of your pussy. Bucky brought his metal fingers up to his mouth and tasted your juices, moaning at the taste. He then rubbed his cock in between your wet folds, his tip bumping your almost sensitive clit causing you to whimper. He lined his cock up at your entrance, slowly sliding it in, inch by inch until he was fully inside of you. He gave you a moment to adjust to his size. You nodded your head, giving him permission to start thrusting. Bucky gripped your hips and slowly pulled his cock out until his tip was left inside of you. With a hard thrust, his whole cock was back inside of you. His thrusts were rough, but loving.

“Such a dirty little slut, aren’t ya, babydoll? Say you’re a dirty little slut.” He says.

“I’m dirty little slut!” You moaned.

“You’re my dirty little slut.” Bucky practically growls.

Bucky leaned down, kissing along the back of your neck, working his way around to your lips. His right hand left your hip, his fingers gripped your jaw firmly and turned your head to capture your lips in a much needed kiss. One of your hands reached up to the back of his head to intensify the kiss. Your fingers ran through his hair, tugging at it causing Bucky to moan against your lips. Bucky’s metal hand left your hip and moved back down to your clit, rubbing it in fast circles.

“Bucky! Oh fuck!” You moaned.

“I love the way you moan my name. Keep saying it.” He says, kissing just below your ear.

“Bucky!” You moaned again.

The tip of his cock hit that one spot inside of you causing your pussy to clench around his cock making him moan at the feeling.

“I won’t last long if you keep doing that.” Bucky moans.

Bucky’s metal fingers applied more pressure to your clit, roughly rubbing it. Your hands clutched the blankets on the bed and your toes curled at the feeling. You felt your orgasm building up again.

“Bucky, I— oh fuck! Please let me cum!” You whined desperately.

“I don’t know if I should let you. You never told me what a dirty girl you are.” Bucky says teasingly.

“I’ll show you everything if you want! Just please let me cum!” You whined again.

“Alright then. Cum for me, doll.” He says.

Bucky’s fingers moved faster against your clit, helping you chase your high. Your orgasm came crashing down on you. Your eyes rolled to the back of your head as you came harder than you did the first time. Bucky was now chasing his high.

“Such a good girl for me.” Bucky praises. “Gonna fill this little pussy up till it’s dripping with my cum.” He says in your ear.

“Yes please!” You moaned.

“Of course you fucking want it.” He chuckles. “Dirty girl.” He growls.

Your name left his lips as he came inside of you. Bucky thrusted a few more times before stopping and leaning against your back, his arms caging you in. You two stood there panting and catching your breath.

“You still with me, doll face?” Bucky moved your hair from your face. “I didn’t break you, did I?” He asks.

���Mmm, I’m good.” You hummed. “Just a little sensitive.” You say.

“Let’s get cleaned up and we can cuddle for the rest of the day.” He says and kissed your cheek.

Bucky slowly pulled his cock out of you causing you to whine. You tried standing up, but your legs were so wobbly causing you to lose your balance. Bucky was quick to catch you. He picked you up bridal style, carrying you to the bathroom for a nice warm bath. After you guys got cleaned up, Bucky gave you one of his t-shirts and got underneath the blankets with you, pulling you close to him. You snuggled yourself against his side and laid your head on his chest. You played with his dog tags.

“Just out of curiosity, how much of my smut did you read?” You asked, tilting your head to look up at him.

“A few.” Bucky answers. “I have to say, you’re quite the writer.” He says.

“Oh god.” You say, hiding your face against his chest.

“I mean it, doll.” He says, lifting your head up to look at him.

You leaned up and kissed his lips sweetly.

“Let me know if you need any inspiration for your dirty little stories.” Bucky says against your lips.

“Bucky!” You whined, lightly smacking his chest causing him to chuckle.

🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵

-Bucky’s Doll

[ugh-yoongi]

the very last thing i decide | pjm

(or, the one in which a love exists that's easy and instinctual as much as it is painful and self-destructive.)

✘ PAIRING jimin x f. reader ✘ SUMMARY you learn what it means to love with blood on your hands. ✘ GENRE hitman/assassin au; angst, smut ✘ RATING explicit. minors dni. ✘ WARNINGS they are both hitmen (hitpeople?) so there's all the content that goes along with that: violence, death, mentions of blood (a lot) and weapons, murder, but no explicit gore. everyone is morally grey at best and downright psychotic at worst (especially yoongi). reader gets stabbed. no one knows how to be a functional human being. swearing, smoking, light smut (penetrative & oral sex), miscommunication and unrequited love but not really, i drop a classic tumblr meme in a line of dialogue. ambiguous/hopeful ending!! some of the themes here are kinda heavy and i am not entirely sure how to tag them so if you have any questions pls don’t hesitate to ask! ✘ WORDCOUNT 12k ✘ LISTEN TO manchester orchestra - telepath ✘ THANK YOU i cannot remember everyone i’ve showed this to over the years. @the-boy-meets-evil for looking this over and brainstorming with me today. @hot-soop for always being a help. @effortandmore because you told me an embarrassingly long time ago this was worth finishing. and i’m pretty sure i also sent this to @jihopesjoint at some point too. i did a quick edit of this on my own, but after nearly three years i just wanted it posted and out of my wips so i'm sure i missed things. pls ignore them. ✘ AUTHOR'S NOTE fic drops two days in a row?? who am i?? i started this in may 2021 and it was supposed to be a simple pegging fic. i abandoned it bc i was convinced no one would want to read it. between today and yesterday i have written thousands of words and made it across the finish line. i hope you like it. the violence is a metaphor for love or whatever.

[37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA]

Jimin’s hair had been red the first time he met you.

How fitting, he thinks, considering he’s currently bleeding out on a table.

Well, there’s still a bit of fight left in him. He hasn’t lost consciousness yet, which he assumes is a good sign; he can still hear Hoseok barking out orders quite clearly. The edges of his vision are fuzzy and the pain in his abdomen is sharp and unrelenting, but he still has enough brain power left to wish he’d died instead.

Because you’d saved his life. And now he’s further indebted to you.

(Jimin never leaves a debt unpaid, but he’s not sure how to make even on something like this.)

Jungkook and Taehyung are fetching supplies faster than Hoseok can ask for them. Two pairs of frazzled, spaced-out eyes. Four sets of trembling limbs. Namjoon’s wearing burn marks into the floor, his cuticles bloody and nearly worried to the bone since he can’t keep them out of his mouth.

And then there’s you.

Sitting cross-legged in a chair as you scroll through your phone. Jimin’s blood is still drying on your hands, leaving smears as you drag your thumb back and forth across the screen, and this doesn’t seem to faze you one bit.

Behind you, Yoongi takes a seat at the piano and starts playing Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and Jimin simply cannot die like this. He can’t die on a wooden table in a room with a piano on which Min Yoongi is playing Baroque organ pieces.

“What is this, a fucking funeral?” Hoseok snaps, though there’s a desperation creeping into his tone that Jimin does not like, does not want to hear. “Cut it out, Yoongi.”

Said man staunchly ignores the doctor, transitioning flawlessly into the fugue. Jimin barely hears the tinkle of your laughter but he hears it all the same, and he wants to pretend it doesn’t calm him, bring him back down to earth when he starts drifting too far away. But you do, and it does, and all he can think about is: will you miss him if he dies? Will it take you long to wash his blood from your hands?

Hoseok’s absolutely incensed, pushed to the limits of his stress at the thought of not being able to save Jimin’s life, and Jimin appreciates this, really, but not when Hoseok pushes two gloved fingers deep into the wound in his stomach so hard all he can do is cry. “Yoongi—”

You snort. You don’t even look up from your phone.

Namjoon, for all his leadership and stoicism and poise under pressure, is just as frantic and panicked as the rest. It’s not everyday one of his people is inches from death ten feet away from him. Most people usually die in the shadows. Kim Namjoon has faced down death more times than most, yet watching the life slowly fade from Jimin’s eyes is too much even for him. “Yoongi, please—”

But the fugue keeps going, tempo change after tempo change, the two pillars of this organization spiraling completely by the time the coda starts, unfocused and sweating and praying. To gods they don’t believe in, to hope, to chance—whatever and whoever might be listening. Jimin usually loves hearing Yoongi play. It’s the only thing that humanizes him, and Jimin had spent so many restless nights shoulder to shoulder with him on that exact bench in the blue hours of the early morning, hypnotized by the way the older man’s knobby fingers moved across the keys.

This is it, he thinks.

Jimin’s going to die with Toccata and Fugue in D minor playing in the background.

He’s imagined his death so many times. Stupid not to in this line of work. Violent, quick and painless, in his sleep, drawn out and gory, a message. And in all of those scenarios, it’s either jarringly silent or there’s someone screaming. Usually him, sounding much like he is now, two fingers stuck in his gut. In all of those scenarios, Min Yoongi is never playing Bach as everything fades to black.

You sigh. “Shut the fuck up, Yoongi,” you say, your tone as blasé and inconvenienced as ever.

Shocked at your audacity, one of Yoongi’s fingers slips and hits the wrong key, something dissonant and metallic as it rings out. But the music stops all the same, the silence nearly giving Jimin whiplash. Now he can hear the clinkof Hoseok’s tools, the squelching of his wound, Jungkook’s desperate pleading for him to just be alright, please God, just hang on. He wants the music back. He doesn’t want Jungkook’s crying to be the last thing he hears. Doesn’t want the sound of his own organs imprinted into his memory.

“What’d you say?” Yoongi asks, because no one talks to him that way. They wouldn’t dare. Most people try not to talk to him at all.

But you do.

And, inexplicably, Yoongi listens.

You roll your eyes. “You go deaf in your old age? I said shut the fuck up. Hoseok’s two knuckles deep in Jimin’s fucking stomach and you’re over there having your little Amadeus moment.”

He bristles. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” Yoongi repeats, and Jimin can’t see him, but he knows his eyes are narrowed, lips pulled back in a snarl, fists clenched at his side.

“Oh, princess,” you coo, and Yoongi’s fury is palpable, permeates every inch of this place, overrides all the fear and anguish. “I’m talking to you, baby. I know Jiminie’s busy trying not to die and that’s stressful for all of us, but please do try to keep up.”

Jimin hears the flick of Yoongi’s switchblade. Then he hears him say, “Please let me fucking kill her,” in that lazy Daegu drawl of his, like forming full words are beneath him. Not worth the effort when they’re directed at you.

Still seated, you uncross your legs and, through blurred vision, Jimin watches you grab Yoongi by his belt loops to tug him closer, grab the wrist that holds his knife and press it to your own throat. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, Yoongi. Be a good boy and make it hurt.”

Jungkook’s near hysterics at Jimin’s side. “What the fuck is wrong with you two? He’s dying!”

Jimin tries to say I’m not, Kookie, I’m okay but the pressure on his abdomen is too intense. He can barely breathe, and Hoseok’s still digging around, still looking for that stupid fucking bullet, had to do something and do it quick so there’d been very little anesthetic and finesse, and he’s silently screaming for someone to just comfort Jungkook, tell him everything’s going to be okay, but instead—

“Serves him right for being a fucking idiot,” you say, words muffled by the knife still pressed to your throat. “What a painful, permanentlesson in not forgetting your fucking vest.”

“Stop it!” Jungkook sobs, fingers ghosting along Jimin’s matted fringe.

Yoongi’s still scowling. “Just say the word, Joon-ah. I’ll make it quick.”

You actually laugh at that. The kind of full-belly laugh Jimin would kill to be able to produce. “You wanna fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid.”

Someone snarls. Probably Yoongi. “You’d look so good gutted on the floor like a fish,” he replies, and if Jimin knows him at all, he knows he’s got that dreamy, faraway look in his eyes. The one he always gets when he’s about to kill—the one that makes him so unhinged and dangerous. “Left there to bleed out and die all alone like the trash you are.”

No one’s survived that look before, but you just grin, as if being on the receiving end of it is nothing more than another simple inconvenience. “Do it, then,” you prompt. “You’re so big and bad, yet here you are, waiting for Namjoon’s permission like some kind of pathetic fucking dog.”

“I’m no one’s dog.”

Your eyes slowly flick over to Namjoon. “No?” you ask, smile widening as Jimin watches you drag your heeled foot up the inside of Yoongi’s calf, his thigh, stiletto coming to rest in the center of his sternum. “That’s a shame, princess. That pretty neck of yours was just made for a collar.”

There’s no doubt in Jimin’s mind now that he actually died back in that penthouse and is now residing in whatever level of hell is watching you give his associate a semi despite him being a millisecond away from murdering you.

Yoongi would do it, too. No hesitation. You’ve been on his shit list for as long as Jimin can remember, and you’ve been daring him to put his money where his mouth is and just kill you already for just as long.

Taehyung groans. “Can you two just fuck already so the rest of us can be spared of this?”

You click your tongue, tone melting like butter. You’re fond of Taehyung, soft on him. “No can do, angel. Yoongi here knows I only have eyes for our Jiminie, and god does that hurt his little feelings.”

Your wicked smile gives away nothing—whether you’re telling a bold truth or just unnecessarily needling Yoongi further—but Jimin’s caught off guard and chokes on your words nonetheless.

Hoseok’s forceps still digging around in his stomach, there’s a quiet hurrah of triumph as he finally locates the bullet. Jimin feels nothing as he retrieves it and plucks it out, a reverberated clank! as he drops it into a kidney dish, your words the anesthetic he’s needed as they play on a loop in his head.

When he finally blacks out, either from the pain or the adrenaline or both, it’s your face that greets him. He never gets the chance to tell you why he forgot his vest.

[64.1466° N, 21.9426° W | Reykjavík, ICELAND]

Jimin’s hair is blue when it happens the first time.

It’s November. Namjoon has sent the two of you to Reykjavik and it’s dark all the time, the midnight hue of his hair blending into the impenetrable nighttime that surrounds you. Jimin works best like this—out of sight, part of the shadows. He’s light on his feet, lithe in ways no one else is, not even you, and he’s impossible to anticipate under the cover of darkness.

That’s why Jimin always takes care of the appetizers.

It’s your job to clean up the main course.

The two of you are two halves of the same lethal coin, working together flawlessly after years of carefully honed practice. Jimin slams an unsuspecting man’s head into a wall and you’re right behind him to put a bullet in it.

It’s just how it goes.

And he trusts you. He has to, otherwise he would’ve gotten taken out years ago. You’re not always in his line of sight, but he always feels you, senses your movements before you’re even on your feet. The times it’s gone wrong—and it’s gone wrong so many fucking times, despite how cautious and skilled the two of you are—you’re always right there to catch him before he even hits the ground. Just like a ghost, as if your only purpose in life is keeping Jimin safe and alive.

(It isn’t, but it sure feels that way.)

Tonight it’s another hit carried out in an overpriced penthouse overlooking the northern shore. You’re in and out, don’t waste a second more than you need to. Jimin doesn’t spare a glance at the carnage left behind. Nothing he hasn’t seen a hundred times before. All blood bleeds the same, but he still wonders, foolishly, if his looks different to you. If it feels wrong when it stains your hands and seeps into your clothes.

Jimin has never been covered in your blood before, but he likes to think it would.

The two of you don’t speak until you’re in the quiet safety of yet another hotel room, chain lock thrown across the door, deadbolt secured. A small arsenal of weapons is retrieved from ankles and waistbands and cleaned and packed away meticulously. Jimin’s the one who makes the call to Namjoon, tells him in code that the job’s done. You’ve barely broken a sweat, but under the fluorescent light of the bathroom, Jimin can see a small smattering of blood just along your temple when he closes the distance between you.

Someone else’s, of course.

Anyone who made you bleed your own blood wouldn’t be a quick, clean kill. Jimin would make sure of that.

There’s less to be done about the half-inch scar in the hollow of your throat—a pearlescent reminder of the twin scar he has just below his navel; a callback to the day your devilish mouth said the words Jimin can’t stop thinking about.

“No can do, angel. Yoongi here knows I only have eyes for our Jiminie.”

Maybe it’s stupidity. Maybe it’s the feral, years-long build up that’s been simmering between the two of you—low enough to keep warm, contained enough to never evolve into a rapid boil. Maybe Jimin’s just finally desperate enough to go seeking out answers to questions he’s far too scared to put a voice to.

(Really, Jimin knows it’s adrenaline. Nothing more than chemicals. The two of you high on it, heads floating above the clouds. Powerless; or, at the very least, indifferent to stop the very clear path that’s unfolding on the ground below.)

But, god, he needs to know.

Needs answers.

Needs to know if there’s even a chance you feel it, too: the magnetic ebb and flow the two of you have been dancing around for years. If you see how fondly he looks at you. If you have any idea how easy it is for him to get lost in you. If you know he’d let someone put a bullet between his eyes before he placed his life in the hands of anyone else.

Jimin knows he loves you. He’s known it for a long time, just like he knows all those other things that are second nature to him. Loving you is easy and instinctual as much as it is painful and self-destructive.

At least that’s what he’d thought. Until your devilish mouth said those devilish words and sent him into a tailspin he’s yet to recover from.

You have to feel it. God, can’t you? The way the air crackles between you. The way his skin ignites with a simple look from you. The trembling of his fingers at his sides, desperate to just reach out and touch you—fingers that have been bathed in blood, that have taken life. Fingers that now just want to graze softly across your cheekbones, catch on your bottom lip. Fingers that want to hand you the world on a silver platter. Jimin would do anything for you, give you whatever you wanted. You wouldn’t even have to ask.

Can’t you feel that?

He needs to know.

Jimin is composed, elegant. He kills with grace and still maintains as much of his softness as he can. Isn’t ruled by emotion the way Yoongi and Jungkook are. But now, as he teeters on the edge of the unknown, all he wants to do is jump. Wants to buck all his training, all his resolve and forethought, and jump.

“Did you mean it?” he asks, voice thick. Fingers curl into the expensive silk of his shirt just so they have something to do—something to keep them from reaching out and touching you. “Back in Seoul.”

You’re the smartest person Jimin knows. When you ask, “Did I mean what, Chim?” he knows you’re fucking with him. Dragging this out. You know exactly what he’s asking and he knows you’ll never give anything away so easily.

“What you said to Taehyung,” he answers.

You tsk, eyebrows raising in intrigue. As much as Jimin trusts you, as well as you know him, know all those dirty, dirty secrets he’d never tell anyone else, he’s never been so bold with you. “That those long fingers of his would look good wrapped around my throat? Yeah, I meant that.”

Jimin’s jaw clenches at your taunt. “Don’t play games with me.”

A smirk graces your lips. “Trust me, sweetheart,” you say, voice sickly-sweet as the affection starts popping at the last seams holding him together, “if I wanted to play with you, there’s nothing you could do to stop it.”

With Jimin pressed into the wall behind you, you turn to meet his eye in the mirror. Another smile, teeth bared as you run your tongue across your lips, and this one is his undoing. Makes his cock twitch in his dress pants. Makes him bold. “Do you want to, then?” He takes a step forward—close enough to smell the gunpowder stuck to your clothes, your hair. Close enough for the sulfur and metal to sting his nostrils each time he breathes you in. “Do you want to play with me?”

You love Jimin. Maybe it’s a trauma bond or the implicit, unwavering trust the two of you have in one another, but you know you love him limitlessly. But you also know you can’t love him the way he loves you, the way he deserves to be loved by someone, which is why your mask slips as you say, “I can’t give you what you want, Jimin.”

You try to make him understand that. Really, you do—because Jimin is the smartest person you know, and you know he’s thought about every possible consequence down to the most minute detail and has decided this is worth it anyway. You want to believe in something the way Jimin believes in you, even though he’s wrong. You want something worth throwing all of this away for.

Maybe it’s Jimin, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just been so fucking long since someone has looked at you with any gentleness in their eyes at all that when Jimin meets your gaze and says, “I don’t want anything more than you’re willing to give,” you take his hand and jump, too.

And there’s nothing gentle about the first time.

It’s all raw, urgent need, Jimin trying desperately to convince himself it’s more than it is while you convince yourself it’s less.

It’s the two of you finally giving up and giving in, letting yourselves be pulled taut by that invisible string tying you together.

It’s Jimin’s sharp intake of breath when you fully step out of your clothes, the sight rendering him immobile. Whatever plans he’d had before seeing the curves of your body, all the scars from years of working by his side, the mottled yellow-greens and purples from the bruises lining your skin—he has no plans now. Can barely think. Wouldn’t be able to tear his eyes away from you with a gun to his head.

It’s the final bricks of the wall he’d built around himself—around his heart, around all those words and feelings he’d never put a voice to—crumbling into ash at his feet. Now he knows he can’t go back. Can’t return to a reality where this isn’t his truth. Where there’s no you and him, him and you. Where it’s just a physical exchange, a give-and-take, tit for tat.

And god, he knows he shouldn’t think like this; knows he’s keeping the truth buried somewhere deep behind lock and key.

…But now that he knows how it feels to move inside you, what else is he supposed to do?

You’re everywhere. Clenched around him. Your taste on his tongue. The feel of you on the pads of his fingers. The smell of you making a mockery of all logical thought. No—no, he can’t do a goddamn thing to stop the avalanche now it’s started.

“Fuck,” he whines, fingers digging into your hips. The soft skin he finds purchase in such a contrast from your hardened exterior, but Jimin knows. He knows you, knows the person behind the mask, sees straight through you each time it slips.

What stared back at him had always been just out of reach.

Taunting him.

Screaming come and get me, come make me yours, come and fucking take what you want.

Until now.

Now it’s tangible. Now it’s breathy, fractured moans that echo off tile walls. Now it’s the sound of his name thatleaves your lips like a prayer. Now it’s the sheen of sweat that covers both of you. Now it’s nails scraping down his back, tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck.

(And Jimin won’t tell you this, but those red welts are proof that this is real, this happened, and later on when he’s alone, when his mind is working overtime, he’ll look at them and he’ll smile. Because they’re real. Because this happened.)

Now, it’s the way blue becomes his favorite color. Because he can see his reflection in the mirror as he unravels and comes to his own demise as he spills inside of you; can see the fluorescent lights reflecting off the hue of his hair.

Jimin’s hair is blue when he realizes he’s in love with you.

[34.6037° S, 58.3816° W | Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA]

Jimin is blond when Namjoon sends you to South America.

The details had been scarce: a diplomatic advisor with a rap sheet of human rights violations that have been continuously swept under the rug and his equally-corrupt lawyer. A candid photograph paperclipped to another manila folder, Namjoon a fan of all those old cliches. Likes being a little cheeky that way when he can get away with it, because god knows he can’t get away with much, doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.

It’s a simple job. You and Jimin will have it dealt with in a matter of hours. Less if you’re lucky and the universe is agreeable. But the humidity sticks to your skin, has sweat seeping into your clothes and rolling down your temples, and if there’s one thing you can’t stand it’s the heat. Makes it hard to think. And Namjoon—Namjoon, who makes sure all of his agents want for nothing—is a cheap bastard. Rarely approves nice lodging, says it’s too risky despite your arguments to the contrary, that people don’t care what you do when you have money, so you’re stuck in some shithole motel room with an aircon unit that keeps blowing out stale, warm air.

And maybe you shouldn’t, maybe you should be more cognizant of Jimin and all his feelings, but it’s fucking hot, so you peel your shirt over your head and undo the button of your pants. Sit on the edge of the bed and try to think about anything other than the temperature, how it’s starting to prick uncomfortably at your skin.

Jimin clears his throat, keeps his eyes glued to the disgusting carpet. “Got a text from Seokjin-ssi,” he says, words strained. “Looks like they’ll be solo jobs.”

You groan. Leave it to Seokjin to change the plan at the last minute. “Tell Kim Seokjin he’s a useless piece of shit.”

“Done. Anything else?”

“Tell Kim Namjoon if he ever sends us to South America in the summer again I’ll kill him myself.”

Jimin has a laugh like an anodyne. A laugh that takes all those broken, bleeding parts of you and soothes over them like a balm. “Seokjin-ssi says he’s not passing along that particular message.”

“Tell him he’s a bitch, then.”

“He’ll kill me if I say that.”

“He hasn’t done field work in years and he’s probably too vitamin D deficient to leave the basement. He couldn’t even kill a fucking rat.”

There’s another laugh. More forced, less tinkling. You recognize it right away, the sound of anxiety. Solo jobs aren’t common for the two of you. For Yoongi and Taehyung, sure, but not you and Jimin. You’re a team for a reason, and though you’re more than capable of getting this done and out of the way, it doesn’t feel right. Settles in your gut like something rotten, knowing you’ll be without Jimin.

And you know he’s thinking it, too. How he turns the burner over and over in his hands, as if there’s some combination of words he can send back to Seoul to get Seokjin and Namjoon to reconsider. Plans don’t change often; not like this, anyway. These have been declared solos for a reason, and that’s a thought you can’t linger on too long.

“Are they leaving it up to us?” Jimin nods, still not meeting your eye. “Do you have a preference?”

He shrugs, tossing the phone on the small table in the corner. Nothing else to be done. “Not really. What do you think?”

“Nah, don’t care, either. Just toss me one.”

Santiago Aguirre… 47 years old… Resides in a high-rise luxury apartment in Retiro…

Your eyes skim the file, study the black and white photograph of the lawyer. Read over the list of all his high-profile, degenerate clients and all their high-profile crimes. You read about the previous attempts on his life, the seemingly never-ending list of people who want him dead. Your eyes go back to his photograph, frowning at the smug look on his face. What stares back at you is a man who thinks he’s invincible, who thinks a penthouse apartment on the top floor and a security team in the lobby means he’s impervious to harm. A man who has made money off people just like him: dirty, corrupt, hands stained red.

“Okay?” Jimin asks, looking up from his own file.

He’s so striking. So safe. And you know what he’s done, giving you the hit he thinks is easier, willing to risk himself on a solo mission to ensure you make it out. There’s no guarantees in this line of work, in life in general, but Jimin’s brand of selfless love is certainly one.

So you just nod, knowing someone slimy like this can quickly go sideways, and decide you can do the same.

“I’m gonna get ready,” you say. “The plan is the same as all the other solo jobs. Get in, get it done, get out as quickly as possible. Lay low. Don’t come straight back here.”

Jimin rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Anything else?”

You exhale. Try to quiet the nerves roiling in your stomach. Barely resist the urge to press a lingering kiss to Jimin’s forehead before you swallow hard and say, “Yeah. Stay alive.”

It comes out more like a plea.

—

You’re good at your job.

Rarely feel much guilt over it, either, which—well, you’re not sure what that means. That something is permanently broken in your psyche, probably. Being able to take life so easily and without remorse. It’s not natural.

Kim Namjoon is a man who plays God, is the one who decides who gets to live and who has to die. His word is the only law you adhere to. And that’s… that’s something. Makes it less burdensome, takes some weight off, because Kim Namjoon wouldn’t accept a morally-ambiguous job. He wouldn’t ask you to put your life on the line for some petty bullshit.

This is how you’ve lived for the last four years. Four years of blindly following Namjoon’s word, of being a good little soldier and doing whatever is asked of you. Four years of being responsible for not only your own life, but Jimin’s as well, just as he is for yours. Four years that have served you well, all things considered.

Until now.

Something about this job hits you hard. Doesn’t settle quite as quickly as the ones that have come before. For the first time, you’d looked down at the lifeless body at your feet and couldn’t stop the trembling, could barely quell the nausea. Thought what the fuck am I doing, what kind of life is this for the first time. Thought back to that day four years ago when Kim Namjoon saved your life and offered you a job and wondered, for the first time, what would’ve happened if you’d said no.

Now, as you suck on a cigarette, legs dangling off the roof of a building looking not far from collapse, a new thought:

Would Namjoon let you go if you asked?

He’s taken care of you. For four years you’ve wanted for nothing. Have socked away more money than you’ll ever be able to spend, even if you live to a thousand. You could go anywhere, become anyone, and no one would suspect a thing. There’d just be you and a million lifetimes’ worth of transgressions, alone under the weight of all that burden; alone, except for all the ghosts that come to greet you every time you close your eyes.

Doesn’t matter. Namjoon might be willing to let you go, give you the chance to salvage something from this life in the name of normalcy, but Yoongi would gladly put a bullet in your head before he let you disappear with all his secrets.

Doesn’t matter.

You stub out the cigarette and put the butt in your pocket. Make your way down to the street. Stay under the shadows—just visible enough to redirect any suspicion shot your way. You pretend to take a call, flawless Argentinian Spanish falling from your lips as you tell the imaginary person on the other end all about your fucked up day at work. How your manager never gets off your ass, doesn’t trust you, thinks you’re too fucking stupid to run a simple executable.

No one spares you a second glance.

Not here, on this nondescript street in a nondescript Argentinian neighborhood, and not when you stumble into the tiny lobby of your shithole motel. The poor kid behind the desk doesn’t even glance up, just mutters a good evening, miss under his breath that you return in a voice far too high-pitched to be your own.

Better to be seen and be unremarkable than draw attention to yourself trying to stay invisible, you figure.

The cameras in the stairwell are broken so you take the steps two at a time. Pull the room key from its place inside your boot, happy to no longer have it digging into your skin. Pause just long enough to make sure you don’t hear anything on the other side of the door before you’re unlocking it with your free hand wrapped around the trigger of your gun.

It’s empty.

Of course it is.

Jimin stashed the burner in a place no one but you would think to look. You text one simple word to Seokjin—Hey!—and you get two in return: Who’s this?

You know who it is, you fucking dickhead.

It takes a few seconds, but the reply is a simple—

Sorry.

Then you toss aside the phone and float in the darkness of the room. There’s nothing to do but wait, because you don’t dare to do anything alone. There’s sweat and blood and fuck knows what else stuck to your skin, your hair, but you can’t risk taking a shower. Can’t risk the water dampening your senses. Can’t risk being cornered in a moldy bathroom, only one way out. Can’t risk doing anything alone. Can’t take a fucking shower.

It’s this thought, more than anything else, that has your body flushing with rage.

What kind of life is this?

Namjoon had never mentioned repaying your debt. He’d never insinuated you owed him anything at all for saving your life, but you know something like that never comes for free. Namjoon doesn’t do anything just because. Has no goodness in his heart to do anything in the name of it. Watching Jimin nearly die in front of him had been the exception to his usual nature; a rare slip-up by an otherwise detached, uncaring man.

Still, whatever you owe him has surely been repaid by now. Tenfold, if the bloodstains along your collar are anything to go by.

It’s time for Namjoon to let you go.

—

Something is wrong.

Two hours have ticked by and there’s no word from Jimin. No word from Namjoon or Seokjin, either, which is the only reason you’re still in this nauseating motel room and not out on the streets searching for him. Solo jobs don’t go like this. The two of you are always in and out, tragically efficient. Back to where you started and then back on a plane, nothing left behind except a singular bullet hole and another fragmented piece of your conscience.

You’ve had a lot of jobs go wrong, but never two hours.

You’re about three minutes from coming out of your skin. Sick to your stomach with worry, anxiety weighing you down like an anchor. You wouldn’t be able to go out searching for Jimin like this even if you could, and there’s no point in dwelling on that, examining it further. All you can do is wait.

It’s another hour before you hear the click of the lock. You’re nearly on your knees in relief, but you stay rooted to the flimsy mattress. Try not to think about how you’ll have to sleep on it, even though you’ll be up half the night with residual worry. All those lingering ghosts.

Jimin doesn’t say anything, so neither do you.

[55.6761° N, 12.5683° E | Copenhagen, DENMARK]

Jimin’s hair is orange when you go to Copenhagen.

Not for a job, just to breathe. You wanted to see the city at Christmastime; Jimin’s never been.

You crack a joke. Point out buildings of similar color, have him stand in front of one as you take a picture. Everyone smiles when they pass the two of you on the street, Jimin’s eyes fond even though he rolls them as you pose him how you want. Still stands against an apricot-colored wall and flashes a smile and a peace sign, cheeks pink from the cold. Does a good job of pretending the two of you aren’t here just for fun, that this is something more.

It’s not.

The two of you fucked in a hotel room in Reykjavik and haven’t spoken a word of it since.

You nearly lost your mind over him in Buenos Aires and haven’t spoken a word of that, either.

Instead, his hand finds yours as the two of you walk around Tivoli Gardens. You marvel at the lights and Jimin marvels at you. You share mulled wine and spiced doughnuts. Jimin tries to drag you on the swings but you plant your feet and refuse, laughing through your refusals. As dangerous as your lives are, motion sickness might be the most. He gets his revenge and poses you in front of a giant nutcracker, then again in front of one of the endless Christmas trees.

Jimin pays for the two of you to decorate honey cakes. You’re surrounded by families with shrieking children and palpable adoration, and it’s all you can do not to wonder if anyone you’ve taken out had ever had something like this. Something that makes your soul warm; something that still lingers in your bones years later.

The two of you take a selfie when it starts to snow. It stings when you have no one to send it to, so it just lives in your phone. Maybe it’s enough.

On another day, Jimin holds your hand through Torvehallerne. This time you marvel at him while he marvels at all the food, eyes wide each time he turns to ask if he should buy something. You always say yes and he always shares, and it’s all you can do not to think about why you don’t have to budget yourselves. Why you’re able to walk through the market and buy whatever you want; how you could buy every item for sale and it wouldn’t make a dent.

(You pick up small trinkets for Taehyung and Jungkook. Not because you want to, but because it feels nicer than remembering that you have no one to buy gifts for. Not really. Not anymore.)

Jimin wants to ice skate, so you do. He holds your hand then, too. More out of necessity than anything else, and he has none of his usual grace. Someone hands you a free cup of hot chocolate, just because. Jimin pouts and then it’s his hot chocolate. It’s all you can do not to kiss away the whipped cream on the corner of his mouth.

Back in your lavish hotel, after countless days have blurred together and Jimin’s fresh from a shower, skin flushed, you finally ask yourself if it’s worth putting up such a fight. If it’s really all that bad to care for Jimin and be cared for in return. If it’s all that bad to be someone else, just for a little while: someone with a normal life who makes a normal living and has a normal capability to love. Someone who isn’t damaged beyond repair.

That will never be you. Not fully, and certainly not in this lifetime, but maybe it could be, a little.

“Jimin,” you say, because you need to try. Jimin loves you in ways you’ll never understand, and you want to be better for him. “We should talk.”

Your voice is small and hesitant, and Jimin hates it. Sees trouble where there’s only vulnerability, so he misreads. Shakes his head. Takes a risk and stands between your legs at the edge of the bed—yours, because there’s two—as he tilts your head back, thumbs pressing into the contours of your cheeks. The scar still sits in the hollow of your throat, and that version of you feels so far away. That life feels so far away.

There’s no violence here. There’s no blood, no fugues. There’s just you and Jimin, whose voice is small like yours when he shakes his head and says, “You should kiss me instead.”

The second time is nothing like the first.

Jimin moves delicately. Feels like silk lace, tastes like spun sugar. Moves both his mouth and his body fluidly, no hesitation, yet he still takes his time. Still pauses to look at you with endless devotion; with awed reverence. Makes a map of your body and marks all his favorite places with his lips.

“Tell me what you want,” he says. Speaks the words against the skin just beneath your ear. “Anything. I’ll give you whatever you want, just have to ask.”

What you want isn’t tangible, isn’t possible, so you stay quiet. Thread your fingers through Jimin’s hair, gasp when he mouths along the column of your throat. Jimin reserves all his softness for you. Bathes you in it. Would kill anyone to keep it that way.

So you say, “Want your mouth,” and let slip a quiet moan when he gives you what you’ve asked for. When he situates himself between your thighs and sucks and licks until you’re writhing, making a mess, grasping fruitlessly at the sheets, his hair, his shoulders, only calming when his hands find yours and your fingers interlock.

Jimin mouths at you until you’re trembling. Until you’re needy and desperate, hips moving on their own, fucking yourself against his face. Until nothing exists except the heat in your belly, the stars behind your eyelids, the heady, fucked-out sound of Jimin’s voice as he talks you through it, murmurs praise against your cunt.

Jimin mouths at you until you forget.

This isn’t your life. This is not something you can have.

But, in the grand scheme of things, what does it matter? You’ve made peace with death, and there’s only one of two ways it’s going to come for you in the end: by Namjoon’s hand or someone else’s. So what does it matter?

This time, Jimin fucks you slow. Kisses you with your taste still in his mouth. Thumbs over a hardened nipple just to see what earns him a reaction, and what you truly want is more time—something else that’s impossible.

Jimin’s hair is orange when you think you might be in love with him.

[ 48.8566° N, 2.3522° E | Paris, FRANCE ]

Jimin’s hair is pink when—

“Sit,” he says, gesturing to the toilet.

Soaks a washcloth in warm water. Wrings it out. Stands in front of you, and there’s water dripping onto the floor and Jimin doesn’t care, doesn’t seem to see anything in this moment except for you, your hands covered in someone else’s blood, and he reaches out, gently grabs your wrist. Palm up. Someone else’s blood. Everything smells like copper and iron. Looks too surreal beneath the fluorescent lights of this hotel bathroom for your mind to make sense of it.

There is care in the way Jimin cleans your hands. There is tenderness in the way he both refuses to see what you really are and the way he’s the only one to ever see you so entirely, when you look down at the blood he’s washing away and all you can see is stigmata. When all you see is sin.

“I know you don’t love me,” he says, and there is a conviction in his words that stuns you into silence. “Not the way I love you, anyway.”

That tenderness is still there as he says this. As he presses the wet fabric into the meat of your palm, wipes the stains away, and the warmth is as calming as it is undeserved. It feels like something forbidden. It feels like salvation and condemnation all at once, like whatever sick depravity permeates you is contagious, will take over Jimin, too, just from touching you.

Jimin is close enough to reach out and touch. Close enough to see the violence that he exists in alongside you: the rips in his clothes, the scars that decorate his skin. Close enough to know he smells sickly-sweet, just like death. Your hand shakes as it reaches for him and never follows through. Doesn’t want to contaminate him.

“I do,” you finally say. Whatever is in your voice is not conviction. “I can’t.” You suck in a breath, try to steady your breathing. This is where it all comes crashing down, you think, because in all the years you’ve done Namjoon’s bidding, you’ve never cried. You can take life so freely and without thought, but you cannot love Jimin. “Someone like me isn’t capable of it.”

Jimin pauses, the washcloth stuck in the space between your ring and middle fingers. “And who is someone like you?”

Water is still dripping to the floor. Serosanguineous: blood tainting something untouched. Not something one thing or another but both, watery-pink. Looks like Jimin’s hair. “I’ve killed a lot of people,” you answer. “More than I can count. More than I can name. More than the ones that come to haunt me at night.” Your free hand moves to your chest, covers your heart. “There’s nothing here, Jimin. I’m not sure there ever was.”

The washcloth drops to the floor, and all that blood belonging to a man whose name you never bothered to learn before you put a bullet between his eyes finds a new place to rest. “I think,” he begins, clasping your unclean hand in his own, voice dropping to a whisper, “you forget, sometimes.” You gasp as he places your palm to his cheek, drags it across his face, smears a stranger’s blood across his skin. “That we’re the same.”

Jimin is always overwhelming, but the love he has for you is even more so. It consumes you entirely, embeds itself beneath your skin, makes a home, would tear you apart, body and soul, to return to him.

[ 47.4979° N, 19.0402° E | Budapest, HUNGARY ]

Jimin’s hair is lavender when it all goes to shit.

“You’re being followed.”

Seokjin’s voice is garbled through the earpiece, tinny and metallic, and you roll your eyes. Some things don’t need to be said, because you’ve known someone was following you for the last three blocks. Average height, black peacoat, close-cropped haircut. Not the kind of person that’d stand out here, and that’s exactly why you’d sent Jimin in the other direction.

“No shit,” you respond in Hungarian, because you already know the man following you doesn’t speak or understand it. “Give me somewhere to go.”

It takes Seokjin a few moments to run the translation. “There’s a side street up on your right,” he answers. “It’s tight, but there’s an alleyway at the end. You can buy some time if you’re quick.”

“Where’s Jimin?”

You pass a vendor selling lángos and duck into the street behind the stall. Just as Seokjin had said, there’s a small alleyway up on the left, and your footfall is near-silent as you break into a sprint to reach it. “Safe,” is all Seokjin says.

You take a second to steady your breathing, knowing you’re good on time—the man following you was close enough to know where you’d turned, but, if you’re lucky, not much after that. That plays on a loop: if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky. What is luck, what does it look like, in a life left entirely to chance? In a life with no guarantees?

You tuck yourself away, focus on Seokjin’s metallic breaths. Think about his basement in Seoul, why he’s in it. Ask, “What happened in Addis Ababa?” because it feels important to know.

There’s not much you know about Seokjin’s life. Whatever happened in Ethiopia had been before your time, reduced to hushed whispers and gossip fodder after your arrival. No one spoke of it, Seokjin especially, but every now and then something would slip in the same way weeds grow in sidewalk cracks.

A job gone wrong. A bombing at the consulate with Seokjin inside.

His reply is simple, words spoken carefully: “I loved someone once, too.”

He can’t see it, but you nod nonetheless; an answer that doesn’t require a response, because you know. It’s enough to fill in the rest. What Seokjin’s trauma looks like. Why he doesn’t do field work anymore. Why he prefers the solitude of the basement, rarely a sound beyond the electric thrum of the server racks.

Who had gone in to retrieve him, and why Yoongi has the scar over his eye.

“You loved someone,” you conclude, “and he would’ve been willing to die for you.”

“Yes,” Seokjin says, and it’s like the word’s been punched out of him. Sounds like something repressed, something left to rot in the darkest corner of the world.

Love, to Seokjin, looks and sounds the same as death.

“I think most people spend their entire lives searching for a love like that,” he continues, and if you could see him you think he might look dazed, off-kilter. You think he might be an avatar. Seokjin is prying his ribcage apart, unwrapping the barbed wire from his heart, saying I once was in love and this is all I know of it. “But, to me, in this life, it’s a prison. Once someone is willing to die for you, how do you keep them alive? How do you—I kissed that skin. I worshiped it. I pressed my lips to it with whatever softness was left in me. How do you look at that same skin and know you’re the reason it’s mangled?” He exhales, all tremor. “You can’t. You can’t.”

You know this all too well. You know what it feels like to look at Jimin and know, intrinsically and subconsciously, that you wouldn’t even hesitate. You’d take and give life to keep him alive and safe. You know that when you exit this world at someone else’s hand his face is the last thing you want to see.

You know it’s a liability.

You know it’s a target painted on your back. Between your eyes.

You know there’s nothing left to say, that this particular conversation has run its course. The two of you sit in an amicable silence, and you hope Seokjin can hear the life that surrounds you, however mundane. Hope he can hear the lángos vendor trying to hawk his goods; hope he can hear a city 8,000 kilometers away; hope he can hear these regular, everyday people going about their lives and remember there’s hope beyond his four walls.

I think you’d like it here, you think, but you don’t dare to say it aloud.

Time passes in a meaningless blur. Could be minutes, could be hours. No one’s come to kill you, so you reckon you’ve long since been in the clear. And maybe it speaks to Seokjin’s idea that love is a prison, because you know something’s happened to Jimin long before Seokjin speaks it into existence.

You’re up and out of the alleyway before you’re told to move. Have no idea where you’re going, but you’re racing through the streets of Budapest with a panic you haven’t ever felt in your life. Feels like quicksand; feels like molasses; feels like you have to wade through all the blood you’ve spilled, now congealed, to get to him.

“Where am I going?” you demand. Your lungs are on fire. In the split-second of silence it becomes a desperate scream. “Seokjin, tell me where the fuck I’m going!”

“The—fuck, the wa-warehouse up on your right.” You can’t think about why he’s crying. “I don’t—I don’t know wha-what’s there, you need to be careful. Please, you have to—”

Twenty seconds and you’ll be there, you’ll be with Jimin, you just need to keep running. You need to keep your head on straight. Remember your training. Remember you’ve built a life in a viper pit.

A man in a uniform is unloading a shipment around the back of the building. Faces away from you, bent at the waist. Takes very little effort to smash his head into the stone exterior and knock him unconscious, pocket his badge. You can’t get stupid now. Tell Seokjin to make sure all the cameras are cut, ask what floor when you shut yourself inside the freight elevator, unwilling to take the stairs and run into anyone who might be waiting. All the way to the top, he says, so all the way to the top you go.

—

Over the course of your life, you’ve made peace with death. Have stared it in the eye more times than you can count. Have dealt it out, evaded it, shook its hand.

You are wholly unprepared for the sight that greets you.

Red. Everything is red—the walls, the floor, what used to be a beautiful parquet pattern in the wood. In the center of the room: two bodies, maybe three. Not much that’d be able to identify them beyond a pile of teeth, no saying whose is whose. Slaughterhouse scraps.

And this is not—Jimin doesn’t work this way. Isn’t his MO. Jimin’s kills are elegant and neat, topped with a bow. What you see before you is ultraviolence. It is unhinged, it is fury, it is a complete loss of control. It’s what love looks like to Jimin, because he sits at the very edge of a rotted chair, legs crossed. Face streaked with blood, clothes covered in it.

“Jimin,” you say, because what else is there?

He tilts his head to the side, smirks a little, looks at you beneath his lashes. Eyes that used to find you across a room and calm you. Eyes that have locked onto you in the throes of pleasure. Eyes you’ve seen yourself reflected in, bathed in love and adoration.

Eyes that now contain nothing.

“Jimin, what the fuck happened?”

He removes his gloves with his teeth and doesn’t flinch away from the taste of iron. “They said they hurt you,” he states simply, “so I did what needed to be done.”

“What—” Nausea claws at your throat; for the first time, it’s all too much. This isn’t Jimin. This isn’t your Jimin, who smiled as you posed him against apricot walls in Copenhagen, who took a bullet to the stomach to protect you and never, ever told you. This is not the Jimin who wasted the last of his goodwill on loving you. “What did you do?” you whisper.

He rises to full height and it makes you flinch. You are scared of Jimin for the first time in your life: scared of who he is in this moment, what he’s capable of. And he sees it, lets that brand of anguish overtake him. Reaches for you before he decides against it and lets his hand drop to his side. Says, “I would never hurt you,” as if the words could brand themselves into your skin so you’d never forget.

“No, you’d just—” You squeeze your eyes shut. Don’t think about how one of the men nearly embedded into the floor was the one trailing you earlier.

Instead, you think about Seokjin: Once someone is willing to die for you, how do you keep them alive? You think about: How do you look at that same skin and know you’re the reason it’s mangled? You think about: In this life, it’s a prison.

You drop to your knees. Let the blood seep through your clothes and into your skin, undeserving of shying away from it.

Namjoon should’ve let you go.

You think about the men in front of you. Who they were, who they loved. The grief all of this is going to leave behind, and it becomes impossible to breathe. You grasp at your throat, think about all the times you’ve been strangled and who’d been there to cut the rope. There is no limit to Jimin’s devotion, and you understand now, how it drove Yoongi to madness. How he loved someone so much he would’ve retrieved their corpse from a building and how that same person can no longer bear to look at the damage they’d caused.

“This isn’t love, Jimin,” you choke out.

He stands in front of you. Stigmata. You’re worshiping at the altar of some kind of devil. At least his hands are clean when he places his fingers beneath your chin, forces you to look up at him. “What is it, then?”

“Destruction.”

A quiet huff of cruel laughter. “See, this is the difference between me and you, darling.” He takes back his hand, runs it through his blood-streaked hair, and your chin sags to your chest without his support. “Because I already knew that. Because I have destroyed myself every single day loving you.” He squats down, eye-level, and he says, “I need you to listen to me when I say this, sweetheart: you do not love me the way I love you, because I would do worse. When it comes to you, there is nothing on this earth I would not destroy to keep you safe.”

He clears his throat. Collects whatever’s in his mouth and spits onto one of the bodies. “If this is enough to have you tucking your fucking tail between your legs, then go, because this doesn’t even scratch the fucking surface.”

You can’t bring yourself to say anything, and sometimes that says it all.

Jimin presses a kiss to the top of your head. Makes a call. Cleaners will be here soon, he says, better get going.

You watch him go.

[ 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA ]

Jimin’s hair is black when Namjoon calls the meeting.

He takes the seat across from Namjoon’s desk because they don’t meet like this often. Assignments are usually manila folders slipped under doors, hushed whispers in hallways confirmed with a nod or a text on a burner phone. Assignments are not last-minute assemblies in conference rooms and offices.

But the way Namjoon is looking at him, with his clenched jaw and a gaze that’s meant to look barbed to anyone who doesn’t actually know him—Jimin doesn’t need to ask what this is about.

Had he bothered to look, he would’ve known by the way you stood in the far corner of the room, face obscured by the mid-afternoon shadows. Yoongi’s close to you, for some reason: dressed head to toe in black, perched on a lateral file cabinet, using a metal corner to sharpen his switchblade. Just like a harbinger of death. Some sort of fucked up omen, a warning that’s come too late.

Didn’t I tell you this would end badly, he hears Yoongi taunt in his head. This is what happens when you lay with trash.

Easy for Yoongi to say when he doesn’t know what it means to be cared for by you. Doesn’t know how it feels to give in to the freefall and plummet at your feet, stripped back and laid bare. Doesn’t know how it feels to kiss secrets into your skin like constellations, to map his tongue along every unspoken confession.

Easy for Yoongi to say, because he doesn’t have to survive the aftermath. Doesn’t have to feel the heartbreak, the agony of having you and watching as you slip through his fingers. Yoongi doesn’t have to struggle just to breathe, doesn’t have to endure the nights staring at the ceiling, watching as the daylight creeps into the corners of his vision. Doesn’t have to watch you looking so unaffected.

“Jimin.” Namjoon’s tone is flat, needlelike.

Behind him, Yoongi chuckles lowly. “What?” Jimin asks, his gaze trained on the painting behind Namjoon’s head. Looks like one he’d seen in Berlin, the time the two of you had gone just because and spent an afternoon ducking in and out of museums to escape the rain.

When he closes his eyes, he still sees the raindrops stuck to your eyelashes. The beads of water rolling off the sleeves of your leather jacket. How blinding your smile had been. The laughter in your voice as you ordered beer after beer after beer for the two of you in flawless Berlinisch. A brief, fleeting glimpse at normalcy. At the kind of life the two of you could have if you were just… different. Lived different lives. Were different people.

“You’ve gotten sloppy.”

Namjoon’s words are a cold bucket of water. Snap him back to reality, yank him back to the present where he’s forced to leave those river-lined streets behind. You’re silent and Yoongi’s still snorting laughter. “Okay,” is all Jimin can bring himself to say.

Jin had gotten sloppy once, too, and Namjoon stuck him down in the basement to work logistics. Might not be so bad, Jimin reckons. He’d be away from you, spared of this fucking misery. “So you know that’s unacceptable.”

Jimin just shrugs, resigned to his fate, whatever it may be. “I’m reassigning the both of you,” Namjoon continues. “You’ll both have new partners for your next assignments, since you clearly can no longer be trusted together.”

“Who?” Jimin manages to choke out.

Namjoon raises an eyebrow, clearly having expected an argument. “You’re being sent to Shanghai with Jungkook. You,” he says, turning his attention to you, “are going to Moscow with Taehyung.”

She’s fond of Taehyung, Jimin wants to say. But you’d been fond of him too, once upon a time, and that’d only ended in heartbreak, so who fucking cares.

They’re cruel, the tricks Jimin’s mind plays on him. How he convinces himself you look pained. How his fingers wring together at the thought of entrusting his life in the hands of someone else, someone new. At your life being just as at stake; at Taehyung being tasked with keeping you alive. Would you die for him, too, the way you’d always told Jimin you would for him? Would Taehyung take a bullet to the stomach to keep you safe the way Jimin had?

Even more cruel is the way you scoff, pushing yourself off of the wall as you fold your arms across your chest and say, “That’s bullshit, Kim Namjoon.”

No one talks to Namjoon that way except you.

Yoongi’s knife stops twirling. Just like a bird sensing a storm, senses on high-alert as he flicks his gaze over to you. “I’m sorry?” Namjoon says. “What part of Jimin losing his mind and nearly outing all of us seems like bullshit to you?”

“Hm, let me think,” you retort, a manicured finger tapping against the hollow of your cheek. “The part where you’re reassigning me for someone else’s mistake?”

Which part was the mistake? Jimin wants to ask. Needs to know how much you regret. Was sleeping with you the mistake? Falling in love with you? Getting too caught up in all these daydreams and letting reality get away from him?

“This organization is more important than Park Jimin getting his goddamn dick wet,” Namjoon snaps. “Keeping all of you safe—keeping you alive—is more—”

You scoff. Take an entire container of gasoline and pour it right on top of Namjoon’s flammable ire. “Then perhaps you’d be so kind as to explain to me why Min fucking Yoongi can fuck damn near everyone in this establishment, yet I have to sit here and listen to your goddamn mouth—”

Jimin doesn’t think Yoongi even knows his arm is moving.

There’d just been the trading of barbed words. His own name being spoken into the ether. Yoongi’s arm moving away from his body, switchblade clasped tightly between his fingers as he plunges it into your flesh.

Jimin watches it puncture your arm in slow motion. Feels the bile in his throat, the heat in his belly. Looks first at Namjoon whose jaw has gone slack, skin pale, as he stammers over words that won’t come. Then he looks at Yoongi—expects to find shock or guilt but finds only a muted disinterest and flared nostrils.

Finally, he looks at you. Watches the white cotton sleeve of your shirt slowly turn red and sticky-wet. Watches as your lips move around syllables and vowels and consonants Jimin can’t decipher.

“—fucking piece of shit, this is my favorite shirt! I’ll never get all this goddamn blood out of it—”

Jimin thinks he hears Yoongi say you deserve it. But Jimin isn’t really thinking much as he clambers out of his chair and moves in Yoongi’s direction. Doesn’t think at all as he lets instinct take over, lets adrenaline steer him headfirst into yet another bad idea.

He’s always known there’d come a day he’d be face-to-face with the sight of your blood. Had always known it’d come from someone else’s hand. Had always promised himself that hurting you would be the last thing anyone ever did.

Jimin has his fingers wrapped around Yoongi’s throat and he finally understands it—the joy Yoongi finds in taking life.

“What’s the matter, Jimin-ah?” Yoongi taunts. Jimin tightens his grip. Suddenly hates that fucking scar across Yoongi’s eye. “You’re never on clean-up duty. Always make your girlfriend do the dirty work. Finally grew some fucking balls, huh?”

“Fuck you,” Jimin says stupidly. Can’t think of anything more to say. Not that he needs to. Wrapping your hands around someone’s throat sends enough of a message, he thinks.

Namjoon’s still tongue-tied as you yank Yoongi’s blade from your arm, immediately pressing your other hand over the wound to stem the bleeding. The sight of your blood is making Jimin dizzy; the smell of the iron hanging in the air. All he wants to do is choke the life out of the man in front of him, but more than that, he just wants to hold your hand. Wants to comfort you, even though he knows you don’t need it. Not from him, not from anyone, but he still wants to. Wants to press his lips to the sweat at your brow.

And Yoongi can see it, too, because he starts laughing. It’s an odd, fractured noise. Jimin isn’t sure if he’s ever heard him laugh before, decides he also hates the way it sounds. Feels all wrong watching it leave his crooked smirk. Makes Jimin’s stomach plummet to the ground.

“Oh, you’re fucked, aren’t you?” Yoongi teases around Jimin’s slackened grip. “You weren’t just fucking her, you’re in love with her.”

Weird how Jimin is the one with his hands around someone’s neck and feels like he’s the one suffocating.

[ 31.2304° N, 121.4737° E | Shanghai, CHINA ]

Jimin watches the life drain from an innocent woman’s face and feels nothing.

Jimin watches Jungkook cut a man down and feels even less.

When it’s over, he cleans up wordlessly and doesn’t eat for three days.

[ 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA ]

Jimin’s hair has faded to brown by the time he returns from Shanghai.

The more complicated job had gone to you and Taehyung. Jimin had tried not to take it personally. The Russian hits are always unnecessarily violent and Jungkook still isn’t fully trained. There’s still a phantom pain in Jimin’s stomach that warns him of the consequences of taking on more than he can chew. So, sure, Shanghai had gone fine, but his mind had been nearly 7,000 kilometers away the entire time.

Good thing he’d returned to Seoul unscathed, too, because he’s sure Namjoon would’ve eliminated him without a moment’s hesitation if he’d fucked up again.

But Shanghai had only served to prove the leader right. Jimin can’t work with you anymore. Can’t focus, can’t stomach the violence, can’t keep his goddamn head on straight.

He sighs as he glances at Jungkook to his right. Jimin had watched him murder two men in cold blood not even thirty-six hours ago and now he’s doe-eyed and sucking down his third banana milk of the morning. It really makes his head spin, being paired with this grown-up infant of a man now instead of you, but for all of Jungkook’s apparent shortcomings, he’d kept Jimin alive. He isn’t dead.

And then you walk in with Taehyung and he wishes he was.

Because you’re laughing and Taehyung’s got his arm slung around your shoulder and you look happy. It’s the kind of happiness that should be contagious, bloom warmth in his chest, but it doesn’t. It just takes the last frayed strand of hope he has and sets flame to it.

You don’t look like you miss Jimin at all. Don’t look like you’ve lost sleep or skipped meals.

“Didn’t take you long, did it?” Jimin says, because he’s wounded and lashing out. Not because he means it.

You must know he doesn’t, too, because you don’t react. “Watch your mouth, Park Jimin,” Taehyung warns, because he doesn’t know, and this only sets Jimin off more. You don’t need defending. Or had you, and Jimin had simply thought it wasn’t his place to provide it? That you wouldn’t want it?

“Or what, Kim Taehyung?”

Taehyung is cherubic. It’s part of his charm, one of many reasons why he’s so effective. If you’re looking to die, you look for the guy who looks like Yoongi, not the one who smiles wide and warm like Taehyung. So when he sets his jaw and pokes his tongue into his cheek and says, “Or I’ll cut your fucking head off, you stupid fuck,” your attention is finally piqued.

“I’m so sick of this,” Jungkook wails, banana milk tossed carelessly in the trash. “All of you need to get your fucking shit together!”

Taehyung rolls his eyes at the same time you pretend to inspect your nails. “Is that why you’re so temperamental, Chim?” Taehyung prods, looking every bit the pretentious, murderous angel he is. “Because you got sent to China on a babysitting mission while the grownups did real work?”

“Fuck you,” Jungkook snaps, rising to full height. “I’m not a fucking child.”

“Oh? Could’ve fooled me.” Taehyung’s words are razor-sharp and smell like kerosene. “Tell me, then: were you on babysitting duty? Had to look after our precious little Jiminie while he nursed his broken heart?”

You sigh, full of faux-exasperation, and place a gentle hand on Taehyung’s forearm. Dig your nails in just enough to be a warning, and if Jimin hadn’t been looking he’d miss it: the way Taehyung deflates instantly, anger dissipating like smoke, back in control. Just because you’d touched him. Just because you were there. Jimin knows that touch, how it feels to be under your control, and it makes his chest ache. Makes everything feel like it’s sitting wrong in his stomach, and he’s either going to be sick all over Namjoon’s overpriced fucking rug or wrap his hands around Taehyung’s throat the way he’d done to Yoongi.

He’s out of his goddamned mind; he feels untethered. Helpless. Like it was always going to end like this, and maybe Jimin knew that and had just ignored it. Maybe now he’s paying the price—maybe he’s finally found something he can’t afford.

Jungkook’s still going off, nasty gaze set on Taehyung because he’s the only one playing along. They’re exchanging words Jimin can’t make heads nor tails of. Words he doesn’t care about. Words that ring empty and hollow because they sound nothing like the way you say his name. Shapeless, unlike the way your lips move around those syllables.

“Jimin,” you say, the sound finally registering and bringing him back down to earth. All he can do is stare. “Can we talk?” Taehyung and Jungkook are still trading barbs.

Wonders how he got here. Looks around the room and wonders if each and every one of them is destined for this same fate, this madness. Wants to tell you why he forgot his vest, why he was three hours late in Argentina. Wants to grovel and beg and leave this place and never look back.

More than anything, he wants to know what it feels like to actually be human.

So he shakes his head. Tries not to be haunted by the way your face falls at the rejection.

There is a scar on his abdomen and a scar on your arm that both tell the same story. There is a man in the basement who is in love with a man above ground and is too weighed down by guilt to do anything about it. There is a man here who plays god, has soldiers to do his bidding, and there is very little here that Jimin has only for himself.

The two of you will have that conversation, but he needs to be human, first.

[ 34.6901° N, 135.1956° E | Kobe, JAPAN ]

This is a waste of your fucking time.

Whatever Namjoon had thought would be here doesn’t seem to exist. Yoongi can barely tolerate you on a good day, threatens to stick a dagger in your neck at least twice an hour, but the more time the two of you waste chasing ghosts, the closer he comes to unraveling entirely.

“Stop fucking staring at me,” he snaps, blowing the smoke of his cigarette right in your face.

You tut. “But you’re so beautiful, Yoongi, I just can’t help it.”

He digs his switchblade from his boot. Makes a show of flipping it open. “I can cut your fuckin’ eyes out of your skull,” he intones. “Maybe that’ll help.”

In your ear, Jimin’s laughter rings like crystal.

Ricochets off of all the corners of Seokjin’s basement, makes the echo sound warped through the earpiece. “Please tell Yoongi-ssi to keep an eye on the man with the shaved head. In front of him, roughly sixty degrees to his right.”

You relay the message. Watch as Yoongi transforms—sharpened gaze, rigid posture, disappears into the shadows. More apex predator than man. “And me?” you ask.

“Backup,” comes Seokjin’s voice. “We haven’t found your mark yet.”

You hum. Pick up the cigarette Yoongi left behind and stick it between your lips. Smoke it nearly to the filter. “You got it, boss,” you tease, just because it flusters him.

“I’m—that’s not—knock it off.”

Exhale. Stub out the cigarette. Butt in your pocket. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Jimin says, and his voice is soft, sounds like spun sugar. “Stay alive, all right?”

Jimin’s hair isn’t dyed at all.

if you've read this far: thank you so, so much! i am more appreciative than i can put into words. this is very different from what i typically write, but i hope you enjoyed it nonetheless.

i would love to hear your thoughts if you have any. <3

[smileysuh]

ghostie - TEASER

🌙 staring. Johnny x afab!Reader

🔮 preview. As one am rolls around, you start to realize that maybe tonight you won’t get a call. He is a frat boy, and this is Halloween weekend.  You’re disappointed as you get into bed, frowning as you scroll on your phone, hoping that if you wait another five minutes, maybe he’ll catch you. Five minutes turns into ten, turns into fifteen, and you find your eyes beginning to shut. You’re starting to understand how much you truly have come to depend on Ghostie as part of your nightly ritual. It hurts not to get a call from your favourite voice-modulated anonymous frat boy.

tw/cw. yandere/stalker subthemes, unknown caller, weed use, multiple reader orgasms, big dick!Johnny, oral, pussy eating, blowjob, deep throating, spit as lube, fingering, hand riding, dacryphilia, praise, dirty talk, cum/fullness kink, unprotected sex, heavy grinding, dick bulge, creampie, rough groping, slight restraint, size kink, submissive reader, subspace, dumbification, hair pulling, finger sucking, etc… I pet names: (hers) Tiny, good girl, pretty girl. (his) Ghostie.

👹 rating. 18+ explicit I wc. 15k

🍭 aus. uni/frat au, yandere subthemes, Halloween, etc…

☀️ mlist + an. this might just be the best John fic I've ever written, or maybe I just need therapy

“Mark told me you’re probably a stalker, said I should maybe block your number.”

“I don’t have a number, if I did, that would be too easy for you. I’m an unknown caller… can you even block unknown callers?” 

“I guess we’ll find out when I block you.”

“Won’t happen though. What did you do after your class with Mark?”

“Are you really that interested in my day?” 

“I wouldn’t be asking if I wasn’t interested.”

He’s a cocky softy, who would have imagined. 

You wonder what you ever did to make this guy so sweet on you- you’ve dated men who don’t even care to ask you how your day went, and this guy is out here doing it practically for free.

“Classes were okay, my sorority had a little fundraiser at lunch, we baked cupcakes.”

“They were good cupcakes.” 

“Wait…” your stomach churns a little. “You stopped by?”

“I’m a sucker for cupcakes, and how cute your butt looks in blue jeans.”

You search your memory, counting how many NCT boys came through around lunch. You realize that there were far too many for it to do any good in deciphering which one is the man you’re currently talking to.

“Did we talk?”

“You talked to everyone who bought something. I’m not special.”

Except… he kind of is special, in a way you can’t truly explain… not yet anyways.

“Maybe you are a stalker,” you decide.

“I can promise you I’m not, but I bet you’d be kind of into it if I was.”

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[urfavoritegirlkisser]

"Midnight Rain" II - Rockstar!Ellie Williams x Popstar!Reader

an - wow i did not expect you guys to like this idea so much, if you haven't read part one i would go ahead and read it first before reading this part!! Enjoy!

I don't consent to anyone sharing my work anywhere else, I only post my writing on this tumblr account, do not steal my work

Tags: Fem!popstar!reader, rockstar!Ellie, we're burning slow here my loves, fake dating trope, no outbreak au, angst, slight anxious!reader, Ellie is a little bit of a player and kind of an asshole sorry pookies, lightly proof read, listen to "lucky" by britney spears it literally inspired this entire idea

So apparently you lied to yourself and no one forgot it happened

Two months. It had been two months since you had seen that article and left Ellie’s hotel room, and people couldn’t seem to let it go.

Edits of the two of you filled your for you page, fans brought signs to your shows asking about you and Ellie, and honestly, you were sick of it.

It didn’t help that your management thought it was a great idea because it gained traction for both you and Ellie’s fan bases.

So now you sit in a meeting with Ellie and your managers as they discuss another appearance from the two of you together.

This was your least favorite part of being a pop star, the fame, and your fans were amazing, but most of your choices weren’t your own; they were for the “brand” your management wanted to maintain.

“Sounds good to me” Ellie speaks up, breaking you from your thoughts as you look at her like she has two heads and scoff

“I’m sorry but weren’t you the one telling me that you had your precious reputation to uphold and couldn’t be tied down with anyone?”, you could feel your anger at the situation growing but knew you should keep yourself from completely losing it

“We both benefit from the attention, that’s more important to me than some silly reputation sweetheart,” she says with that infuriating smirk that lets you think for a moment that her words are truthful

“Fine,” you say, “But this is only going to be a thing for a few months, after my tour is over we are over, got it?” 

Your managers go over the agreements and discuss appearances before the both of you sign, basically binding yourselves to each other for the next six months.

The first appearance was simply Ellie coming to one of your shows

She hangs out with her bandmates Dina and Jesse in the VIP box where they are visible to the fans attending but are secure enough so they don’t get mobbed and can enjoy the show comfortably.

You make sure to direct most lyrics in the more romantic songs on your set list toward Ellie and can tell that your fans are eating it up.

After the show, your manager escorts you backstage where Ellie is waiting, noticing that it’s visible by some fans lingering in the upper levels.

Your manager pushes you toward Ellie and you plaster on a fake smile, running up to her and hugging her tightly.

Ellie kisses your cheek lovingly and it sends a jolt of sadness through you as you look into her eyes, wishing the look of care on her face was real.

“Smile, people are watching” she whispers into your ear while letting her hand slip to your waist and letting the other cup your jaw to tilt your face to hers.

You shake off the creeping feeling of anxiety at so many cameras on the two of you and smile softly, letting Ellie lead you into a quick kiss before parting and being led back to your dressing room by your manager.

You get back to your hotel that night and scroll mindlessly through your feed of constant videos from tonight, some of you performing, some of Ellie in the VIP box, and plenty of when the two of you met after the show.

You scroll through the comments of fans raving about how happy the two of you look with tears in your eyes

If only they knew

an - I listened to my sad girl hours playlist for this, I hope you enjoyed it!! Now go drink water you girl kissers xoxo

[kahluah]

*puts hand up* sorry I’m very new here what’s the context with what’s happening with the tag war??

Alright, I will give my run down, but I will not be naming any blog names on either side even if I have the info and the action was net positive. I just like to use my blog to scroll and reblog for the most part and refuse to embroil myself in the drama more than just giving my view on it as a bystander. One that definitely has an opinion on the events, but also as someone who would rather curate my own experience than fight.

So all this fighting that is going on, it used to just happen in the normal "Jiang Cheng" tag because back then there was no "canon Jiang Cheng" tag; it had not been created yet. (By that I mean it was not a tag used as a tag, Tumblr's shitty search algorithm might still show posts if one typed it in to the search bar because those posts had the words 'canon', 'Jiang', and 'Cheng' in the tags separately, but there would not be posts with "#canon Jiang Cheng" because nobody normally creates a post with a tag like that when "#Jiang Cheng" was suffice. Sometimes I see irrelevant posts in the canon Jiang Cheng tag, but the actual tag isn't on the post, the tags just happen to have all three words in them. Those I ignore because that is Tumblr's fault, not the poster.)

The fighting was between people that like the character and prefer to see the good in him and the interpretation of his character, and those that may or may not like the character (just because you like a character does not mean you need to defend their every action after all) but do not share that opinion of his character and have a more neutral or negative portrayal by contrast. The former also tended to favor or have only read the novel as it is the source material for all other adaptations.

Now things really came to a head when hate and threats were being thrown about on posts that were just quotes from the book showing the negative actions of Jiang Cheng. The people posting the quotes were basically told "if you hate the character why don't you just tag the post as anti-JC?!" but is it really right to call those anti posts when they were posting how the character acts in the source material? That is the character. That is how he acted. Look it is in the book! The character really did that! It is not somebody's negative headcanon that the character may act like that, it is something the character actually did. Personally I can not consider that as an anti character post, and neither did the people who made posts like that.

But things did get heated enough that some people finally took a step back and said "Fine. You want us to make our own space to make these posts so that you do not have to see us talk about JC this way? We will. It will be #canon Jiang Cheng and you can block it if you don't want to see the posts." Was the name picked in the spirit of schadenfreude? Very probable, but it is also not an incorrect name as the people who wanted to use it base their opinion on the novel. But the point was that the tag was created so that people now had their own space to make the posts they wanted and those that did not want to see it could block the tag. Curate your own experience; we can block tags on this site for a reason and advertising tags to block is a courtesy. (Because as said previously, the search here sucks, because the posts contain the character's name they are still likely to show up in the main tag, but block the newly created tag and you will not see those posts either way). Could the other people come into the tag in good faith and make arguments with textual support? Yeah, that was welcomed, but in the spirit of debate they should expect rebuttal. Was that what happened? No.

No instead what happened was basically this meme

They did not like the name chosen for the tag. They read the novel too and still believe that JC is good, so they should be able to use the tag too! Never mind the fact that the tag was made so they could block the posts they didn't want to see. So that they can go on with their days no longer having to deal with the people they constantly fought with. No. Instead of curating the experience of this website, they would get so hung up on the fact that there was now a tag called #canon Jiang Cheng in use that they had to use it too to defend JC from the people that post 'negative' things about him; even if it is novel text!

So while the fighting didn't stop, it did get slightly better because not everyone felt the need to jump into the new tag to defend their fave. Some people actually did curate their experience. Plus there is a block button and people do use it, so things got to a point where I would say it was relatively stable even if there was still fights here and there. (But once again I lurk, I do not participate. Things may not have been the same for more outspoken people).

But then a certain muskrat bought Twitter and a chunk of the fandom there fled here. That's when the main push to "reclaim the tag" and the new influx of people hopping into the tag to argue and defend their fave appeared. These people did not know why the tag was made, they just saw blogs that they liked telling people about the "JC-antis" that made it and how with the new people pouring into the Tumblr fandom from twitter, they had a chance to flood it and reclaim it. And since then the fighting has not really stopped.

As for what has happened in the past few days, you have JC defenders flooding the tag with fan art (not canon), screen caps from CLQ (not canon), and screenshots of a sentence or two from the novel (canon, but usually out of context or lacking additional lines that go on to rebut what was previously said) in the tag and the people who made the tag for a specific purpose getting mad about the spam. (I block so I have no clue how big the influx was or whatever but there was definitely like at least 3 new people I had to block). So when they made posts venting the anger, you got JC defenders coming back to them and going "But I never sent any hate or harassment! I just used the tag to talk about the canon character!" And perhaps they didn't, but these people in their defense always ignore and never respond to the question of why they are in the tag instead of blocking it because that is what the tag was made for. Instead they come back with "Well if you want to talk about JC that way, why don't you post in the anti tag or make your own tag!"... Remember that meme picture I used above. Yup.

The tag war began because people did not like negative posts about JC in the main character tag for JC. When told to use the anti tag or make a new tag, a new tag was made, but instead of curating the experience the stans of JC got so tilted at the name of the tag that they decided that they would come into the tag and continue the fight instead of just blocking it. Twitter fallout made the fighting worse. And now we have come full circle to the JC stans once again telling people to just use the anti tag or make their own tag.

[chloessleepystories]

Rabbit Hole

Based on a true story

Zoe was slumped down in the back row of the classroom, scrolling through Tumblr on her phone instead of paying attention to the teacher. Like usual.

Oh, here’s a sexy picture to share. Here’s a gif to attach a few lines of dialogue to… She liked teasing the boys (and girls) online, and they liked teasing her. Especially when she was in class and couldn’t do anything about her rising horniness.

Oooh, a hypno story, her favorite. She checked that the teacher was droning on, and not looking her direction, and started reading. Just a couple paragraphs in, she knew it was a good one. She reblogged it to finish reading later, and to share it with her followers (her many, many followers… how had that happened?) and kept scrolling. Ooh! A spiral! Don’t get distracted… But uunnnfff, so easy to get distracted… to get drawn in…

She shook herself, sharing the spiral with a drooling smiley face, and moved on.

“I’m a little concerned, looking at your last batch of papers, that so many of you got to college without apparently learning how to punctuate a simple compound sentence, much less to fill it with original thoughts…” Miss Thompson was saying.

Zoe squeezed her thighs together, feeling the arousal spread through her body. She looked around. Nobody looking. Good. She knew she should be listening, should be taking notes, but all she could think about was her needy pussy.

The constant alerts from her phone kept drawing her back to the glowing rectangle in her hand. BUZZ. Another favorite blog had just shared something, Tumblr wanted her to know. BUZZ. Someone was tagging her in a pic of one of her favorite porn stars. BUZZ… 

She was powerless. She had to look, every time the phone buzzed. Every time Tumblr fed her more. She didn’t used to be like this, did she? She used to have, like, an attention span and stuff? Could leave her phone alone for a few hours? Now she was addicted… like she had conditioned herself to salivate at the buzzer. 

Or been conditioned, came a whisper. 

Been brainwashed. 

Cuntwashed.

Drippy cunt. Salivating pussy…

BUZZ. 

Ooh! a hot little gif that someone wanted her to see – “wanna ride me like this?” he asked, adding Zoe’s handle. Where was the teacher? Zoe knew she should scan for Miss Thompson again, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away.

BUZZ BUZZ. Three more guys wanting to talk to her privately. She was already keeping four conversations going…

This one, for instance, was telling her, in detail, what he would be doing to her if they were in a hotel room together right now. She was giving as well as she was getting, egging him on, hoping he was stroking to her words the way she wished she could be rubbing to his. This one was begging her to punish him, and reveling in her attempts to be domineering. And this one… oh, this one kept sending spirals, and inductive texts, drawing her ever downward (or trying to), making her sleepy, making her horny… making her a mindnumbed cockslave…

She tapped the little pencil symbol to make a public post.

“You guys are making me so horny!!!” she typed.

I’m supposed to be paying attention to the teacher right now but my tumblr feed is full of porn and 3 of you fuckers are having hot conversations with me trying to make me horny and IT’S FUCKING WORKING I’m sure my neighbors can smell me I’m so turned on I can feel how drippy I am goddammit I need to stroke I’m not gonna make it

That was a mistake, of course. As she knew it would be. The sharks smelled blood in the water, and circled.

“Just keep watching little slave. Soon you’ll be my little cock hungry whore”

“It’s just so nice to be able to turn off your brain for a while, ya know? Join me?”

“And when I say “horny bunny” you’ll have a powerful urge…”

“Mmm damn what a view! Your nice tight pussy wrapped around my cock feels so damn good. I’m going to enjoy fucking you hard, bottoming out hitting your womb”

“…And then one day you wake up and you’re an empty headed pink bimbo, with no thoughts in your dumb bimbo head but getting bigger tits and pleasing your Mistress’s pussy…”

Another public post:

Ogod now ur all piling on cumming our of the woodwork why csnt i turn off this app why do i keep lookin im not gonna make it im such a dumb hotny cow 

Sent.

And back to messaging, the words pummeling her brain –

Blank. Obedient. Responsive. Counting from 10. Letting your mind slide away. Relaxed. Empty. No thoughts. 8. Letting go….

Then, even before she could register the shadow over her desk, a hand snatched the phone from her fingers.

“You know the rules about phones in my class, Zoe,” said Miss Thompson. Zoe made a choked whimper, her fingers mindlessly twitching after the phone.

“You can get it back later. If you’re good.”

If you’re good. If you’re a good girl. Good girls obey.

Zoe whimpered again, as Miss Thompson walked away. She was going to have to sprint to the ladies’ room when class was over. The phone would have to wait. Her clit was throbbing… and she needed to obey.

*****

Later, after everyone had filed out, Miss Thompson carefully and (BUZZ) meticulously wiped clean the blackboard. She liked the board to be as neat (BUZZ) and tidy as her desk.

(BUZZ)

What on earth was – Oh. Right. That girl’s phone was still on the desk. Vibrating away, for some unknown reason.

She sat down and picked it up, turning it on. Silly child didn’t seem to have a lock on the –

A rainbow of porn leapt out of the screen and slapped Miss Thompson about the face.

Cocks going into young women’s mouths. A girl’s tongue on a pussy. “Zoe, are you still there?” Breasts, so many breasts. “Zoe, girl, look how hard you made me…” A maelstrom of dark and light flesh that she couldn’t make sense of for a moment, until she saw the caption “gangbanged fuckslut made airtight with BBC”… which, to be frank, didn’t ENTIRELY explain the picture to Miss Thompson, but it let her figure out what some of the shapes were…

Horrified, repulsed, Miss Thompson started scrolling. And couldn’t stop scrolling. Stories of incest and bondage. Lewd photos and gifs, scenes of decadence and degradation. She shook her head, her mouth open, but she couldn’t stop…

And the hypnosis. Over and over in the girl’s feed, the hypnosis! Glassy eyed girls with drooping mouths, baring their breasts… Women with spirals in their eyes, and cocks in their mouths… Flashing gifs with pictures and words, too fast to follow, telling her how she should be, how she must be, how she knew she already was, if she would just admit it to herself… Inductions, and fantasies, and more spirals, and submissive, drooling women, eager to serve cock, to serve pussy, to become slaves to their own needy cunts…

Miss Thompson hadn’t noticed how hard her nipples had gotten. She hadn’t noticed how wet her own cunt was, until she found herself dipping in a finger… She bucked against her hand, but didn’t stop stroking… just kept scrolling… 

Someone calling himself Master of Mystery – except with some of the letters replaced by numbers – BUZZed into a private message. “Getting pretty horny, Zoe? Pretty needy and desperate?”

“No,” she found herself typing. “I mean, no, I’m – I’m not… No.”

“Oh, you certainly sounded pretty desperate to me. You sounded like a little slut who needed permission to cum… A naughty fucktoy who can’t stop touching her princess parts even though she’s not supposed to…”

Miss Thompson bit her lip and with an effort pulled her hand away from her pussy. “I’m not Zoe. I am Miss Thompson, her teacher,” she typed.

She tried to pull herself together.

“And you should keep a civil tongue in your head, young man.”

“Ohhh! Naughty, naughty, teacher… Are you looking through a confiscated phone? And getting TURNED ON by someone else’s Tumblr porn? You are, aren’t you… Go ahead, you can admit it…”

“i” she typed and sent by mistake.

She cursed.

“I will do no such thing. I am… I am putting the phone down now.”

“No you’re not.”

She hesitated. He seemed so sure. She waited, panting.

“You won’t, because you would have already without saying anything. You would have before you got so horny scrolling through her feed.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Because you are horny, aren’t you? All pent-up, tied up in knots…”

“Yes, yes, I am, OK, but there’s nothing wrong with that”

“No, not at all. Tell you what. You seem tense. Let me help you relax. Can we do that?”

“Um”

“Just focus on your shoulders for a second. Feel how tight they are? Tighten them up even more, just for a second. Take a deep breath in. And then let it out, and as you do, feel all the tension go out of your shoulders…”

“what”

“Sshh shh you don’t have to say anything just listen. I’m going to count, and with each number you’re going to release a little tension, and it’s going to turn into warmth… warmth spreading through your body… 

“And then maybe we’ll look at a spiral together for a while… You’ll like that…”

*****

Zoe was feeling SO much better – though her legs were still a little wobbly – as she walked toward the classroom door. She couldn’t believe she’d left her phone behind! She hoped she could get it back quietly, without much fuss. There didn’t seem to be a class in there now. Maybe she could just slip in and grab it?

She eased the door open gently… and then almost dropped her backpack in surprise.

Miss Thompson was sprawled, nearly nude, in her wooden rolling chair! Her skirt was bunched around her middle, panties on the floor, white blouse and bra tangled on her desk. Most surprising of all, one hand was operating Zoe’s phone, and the other hand was operating Miss Thompson’s bushy cunt!

She stepped closer, sliding the backpack gently to the floor. The teacher’s breathing was ragged, her cheeks flushed, her eyes glassy… and sure enough, Zoe could see a spiral on the glowing screen. She tiptoed close enough to read over her shoulder.

You want to watch

To let the spiral suck you in

To let my spiral suck away all resistance

You want to become mindless for me, because it feels so good to stop thinking

Each word you read will bring you pleasure, and each second you spend watching will make you sink deeper and deeper, until you can’t help but obey…

She reached around her teacher’s body, and cupped both breasts at once.

Miss Thompson gasped, and then relaxed with a moan as Zoe began kneading her nipples.

“How are you doing, miss?” she whispered.

“Can’t… Can’t cum. Need to… but don’t… don’t have permission…”

“Mmmm.” Zoe tweaked her nipples, massaging her surprisingly full and warm tits. “I know it’s a lot to handle if you’re not used to it. I’ve been sliding into this rabbit hole a bit at a time for months, so I’ve built up a liiiittle bit of an immunity.” Partially true, anyway. “But my feed and my followers must have hit you like a ton of bricks.” 

Zoe giggled to herself, as her teacher panted.

“Who are you talking to,” Zoe murmured.

“M-Master of Mystery,” Miss Thompson gasped, her back arching.

Ah yes, thought Zoe. Also known as Kevin.

“Tell him I’m here. And ask him what I should do to you.”

“Master…” Miss Thompson typed, and after a moment, responded.

“He says to get on your knees and lick my s-slutty, juicy c… cunt.”

Zoe smiled. “That’s what I was hoping he was going to say,” she murmured as she knelt.

After all, she thought. Good girls obey.

[heatherm00ch-dh00]

TW: Adam Rosner … if you don’t feel comfortable about the topic, scroll past. But I think something does need to be said…

I found out that Adam Rosner has created a new Tumblr account. Using his full name, I’m not tagging him here. Why? I can only make assumptions. Maybe because he’s trying to rebrand his Search Engine Optimization. Maybe he’s trying to clean up his social media presence (he’s posting about diets and gardening, etc). He knows he’s already been written out of the Slenderverse history books, for good reason too.

Yes, he’s an optometrist. Adam Rosner is a doctor in optometry. I haven’t the slightest idea who the fuck would hire him. Especially in the New York City area. If you live in New York City, I would highly suggest to NOT go to his practice. Especially if you have children.

The reason I’m posting this is because I want to recommend to everyone NOT to interact with Adam Rosner. If you don’t already know, Adam is probably the most disgusting piece of shit I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. He is dangerous, malicious, evil, predatory, fucked up, and a narcissist. I would not put it past him to take advantage of you. I’m begging of you, don’t think you’re immune to him.

If you don’t know, I’m sure there’s a master list of the sexual abuse accusations against Adam Rosner on Reddit or Tumblr somewhere. He has “allegedly” abused, manipulated, r@ped, and groomed multiple fans and ‘friends’ alike, adults and minors. I’m using the word “allegations” because that spoiled crybaby bitch’s rich daddy probably has legal retainer for their fuckup of a son. I’m not intentionally trying to be vague, it’s just very exhausting discussing one of the worst things that has happened to me.

I still think it’s important that the community knows about why he is cast out, because I don’t want any new fans that may have found the Slenderverse post-COVID to fall into his trap. I think it’s pretty well known, but there are a lot of minors in this fandom. And we’ve learned that hasn’t stopped him in the past. If he lied to me about it, he’s lying to everyone else in his life (professionally, especially).

Soooo…the point is…..This is not me advocating for you all to go and comment & reblog his posts letting people know about what he’s done. That would be irresponsible…we wouldn’t want to have people who don’t know him well enough to read the replies & reblogs and find out what he has done…that would be so terrible! Right? We wouldn’t want an “alleged” predator to feel uncomfortable in a safe space he doesn’t belong in. Right? We wouldn’t want to lock down the Slenderverse, that would be ridiculous, right?

Fuck Adam Rosner. I know you’re reading this right now you fucking scumbag. I know you’ll never apologize because you don’t have a shred of dignity or humanity in that empty cavern others call their soul. You’ll never know what it’s like to be loved and respected. You’re pathetic and I hate you more than anyone in this world. Others should too.

[relaxxattack]

ok yeah lots of memes about how the shitty new UI is literally a direct carbon copy of twitter and we hate it because of that, yea yea

here’s some actual/extra reasons why the UI itself is shitty beyond the fact that it’s stolen from twitter (in just my personal opinion)

it’s claustrophobic as hell. the old UI felt breathable, felt like you could scroll and actually look at your posts, and now there’s enough shit going on on one page that it actually gives me a headache. (i’ve heard other people say this as well, so maybe it’s not just me that’s overstimulated by all the fucking noise on the dash?)

the ‘dash sorting’ (for you / your tags / what you missed) is way too high up the page now and appears crowded against the top where things like the bookmarks bar are on most browsers. not that anything in this new UI isn’t crowded.

i’ve seen it mentioned plenty already, but there’s quite a lot of unnecessary duplication-- as in, the same buttons that exist in the new left navigation panel show up on the right in blog view, which is just completely annoying and unneeded clutter.

the fact that post interaction options are all on the right side of the posts, but dashboard navigation is now all pushed to the far left of display, is extremely annoying. i’m right-handed, so it’s extra annoying for me to have to constantly go all the way over there. maybe that’s easier for left-handed people, but if the case was supporting diversity, why not just put an option in dashboard preferences to switch the side of ALL the controls? because the post interactions are still on the right.

while we’re on the subject-- tumblr’s original design was actually MUCH more intuitive and easy to navigate. the reason for this is that everything you needed to click was in one small area. you scroll up and down the dash, move slightly up to navigate (home/asks/notifications) and slightly down to the side to interact with a post (reblog/reply). extremely simple, easy to use, even ‘lazy + addicting’, which is what all social media studio exes are supposed to want right now. changing the ui to actually be more work and more frustrating to navigate seems completely opposed to what their obvious business strategy should be.

tumblr’s original design was also much more breathable, with the small icons in the corner looking organized and not taking up much space, and lots of room for the posts themselves to be the main attraction.

there’s the fact that copying someone else’s brand entirely actually just puts you in a bigger, wider pool with much more competition, and makes you much more likely to immediately fall short of that and go bankrupt.

tumblr's original purpose was to be geared toward blogs, and these updates, along with the writing on the wall about blog themes being completely phased out soon, is completely against the original purpose. although sometimes website purposes change for the better, so take that as you will.

and finally the obvious point that you can tell from all the memes: this change is almost universally hated by the core tumblr userbase-- aka the site’s loyal consumers for years and years. driving out their main demographic seems like a very obvious, very quick way to lose a lot of fucking money. they also did this “carbon copy of twitter” update literally just a week after sitewide protest about the idea of this site being anything like twitter, so it feels like a massive Fuck You to literally all of the users. tumblr is rapidly approaching their trust thermocline, and show no sign of slowing down.

these are just my opinions about the ui, and i’m only one person. so feel free to add on other design flaws you think people should be aware of or able to mention! i will probably also be submitting this post as feedback to staff, and will be taking their surveys when i can as well.

[thefallennightmare]

Just Pretend-three

*gif created by me. feel free to use, simply give credit*

Parings: Noah Sebastian x Reader

Warnings/Tropes: language, angst, fluff, smut, star-crossed lovers, right person/wrong time, cheating, talks of mental abuse.

Summary: “I can wait for years, heaven knows I’m not getting over you.” A story about two star-crossed lovers, that always find their way back because their souls are entwined. The universe desperately attempts to bring them together, no matter what the cost.

Authors Note: i hate how this took me all day to write. I just want to keep writing this story!

Collaborating With: @thescarlettvvitch(better give her all the love as well)

Tags: @thescarlettvvitch @ozwriterchick @waake-meee-up @notingridslurkaccount @niicoleleigh @sammyjoeee @xxrainstorm @dominuslunae @notmaddihealy @malice-ov-mercy @crimson-calligraphyx @iknownothingpeople @writethrough @thebadchic @blackveilomens Claudia on Tumblr @tobe-written @blacksoul-27 @loeytuan98

I sat in the front lounge area of our bus on the couch with my legs crossed, laptop in my lap, as I scrolled through the Spotify playlist I finished creating. It was quiet up here, the rest of the guys of Hollow Souls were scattered throughout; Malcolm was out for a run around the block, Chase was hanging on Bad Omens bus, and Trey was still asleep in his bunk.

It was only 9:30 in the morning but I knew he would sleep most of the day away especially since it was our day off. We were already at the next city, parked in the venues lot, and since we didn't have to worry about sound check or setting up yet, we all did our own things.

Me? I had been debating all morning if I should create this playlist but in the end figured it was the best thing to do. I was touring with Bad Omens after all, shouldn't I be familiar with their songs?

For the next while I let Noah's voice blast through my headphones as I danced in my seat as Limits played, banged my head as Hedonist screamed in my ear, and felt my heart fall out of my ass when his soft voice of If I'm There buried deep in my soul. The lyric struck me right away and the pure raw emotion that oozed out of Noah made my heart skip a beat, almost as if I was about to pass out.

Fuck what Trey thinks, I need to watch these guys perform tomorrow night.

Malcolm came bounding up the steps, sweat dripping from his auburn hair that was falling around his bare shoulders in waves, and gave me a smile.

"Okay two things," I scrunched up my nose as he sat next to me. "How the fuck do you run so early in the morning, with your hair down no less? And you fucking stink."

"Oh, listening to our tour buddies I see," he ignored my observations by nodding to my laptop screen.

I shrugged. "I was the only one of us that wasn't familiar with them and now I'm pissed it took me so long to discover them. They're amazing."

Malcolm agreed with a nod. "Noah's voice has grown so much from their first album, it's actually impressive. It would be sick if we got him on a song for our next album."

"Trey would immediately shut that down. He hates collab's between artists," I closed my laptop and set it on the small kitchen table next to me.

Malcolm sighed while running a hand through his long locks. "We really should talk about-."

"No," I sliced my eyes into him. "I'm not having this conversation with you when he's a few feet away from us. We can talk about it later when he's not around."

"Alright," he nodded. "I'm going to hop in the shower. Chase still with the Bad Omens guys?"

"I think so," I answered, watching as he stood and made his way to the bathroom.

"Cool. You should get ready, we're going to hang with them for the day. Wear something cute!" Malcolm called over his shoulder before the bathroom door shut.

I blinked slowly at the space in front of me for a few moments before staring down at my outfit; black leggings and an oversized shirt. Which would have been fine for a day of lounging on the bus but going out in public called for an outfit change.

And that Noah will be there has nothing to do with it.

Ignoring the voices in my brain, I trekked over towards my bunk where I had a suitcase already open, clothes folded neatly into small piles and rummaged through before deciding on a pair of biker shorts and one of our merch shirts I rolled up the bottom of to show off part of my stomach. It was a warm day in Wisconsin so I wanted to be comfortable.

As I slipped on my docs and finished french braiding my hair, Malcolm emerged from the bathroom also dressed and ready to go.

He nodded in approval. "Much better."

I snorted and patted his chest while walking past him. "Glad you think so."

"I think you should change your shirt though."

"What's wrong with my shirt?" I asked suddenly self conscious about the way I looked. "If it's showing too much, I can change-."

"Fuck," Malcolm sighed. "Trey's warped your mind so bad. No, Y/N. You look great, I'm just saying it would be better if you wore this."

He tossed me a different shirt, one I caught with ease, and when I held it in front of me I gave him a raised brow.

"Really?"

"Meet you at the OMENS bus. I'll text Trey to let him know where we're at," Malcolm pounding his knuckles with mine before leaving the bus.

With my bottom lip caught between my teeth, I decided not to dwell too much on the decision of wearing the shirt. That's all it was, a shirt. If he got upset about it, he can fuck right off. Once changed in the new shirt, I realized it was a bit long since it clearly was Malcoms who was atleast a foot taller than me. The shirt rested about mid thigh and covered most of my biker shorts. I let out a few deep breaths to center and calm myself, because the idea of hanging out with the guys without Trey made me nervous.

Yes that was it, not because Noah was going to be there. Ever since we hung out the other day, all I could think about was his tattoos or the way he instilled so much confidence in me as he spoke deeply about my lyrics. No one has ever had an in-depth conversation about my lyrics before since they all thought Trey was the one that wrote our songs. The only thing Trey was good for was his screams, which I had to admit were faltering. Our energy and connection on stage wasn't the same anymore but thankfully, none of the fans cared to notice. As long as Trey dared them a glance, they were happy.

So with the confidence from my conversation with Noah the other day, I walked out into the warm morning sun, bare legs and arms on display for everyone to see. While my right leg had no tattoos, every inch of skin was covered in ink. The bright rays burned my eyes, so I slipped on my sunglasses while throwing my purse over my shoulder and made my way towards Bad Omen's bus, hearing a round of laughter emanating from the back of it.

As soon as I walked up, the conversations continued for all but one. Noah, who was talking to someone I hadn't recognised, turned his attention to me and even through his own sunglasses, I felt the burning gaze from him as he took in every inch of my body. I shrank into myself as others started staring at me but Noah's was the most intense, and I ran my sweaty palms along my thighs.

"What?" I asked.

"Nice shirt," Folio smirked. "We haven't seen that design in a while. Almost forgot it was a Bad Omens design."

I fiddled with the bottom of it and shrugged. "If we can move on from my outfit choice, that'd be great."

The voices in my mind were screaming at me to run back to my bus to change and my feet turned when Noah's voice stopped me.

"You look good."

Three words.

Those three words ignited the blaze across my skin and all I could do was nod because I was so nervous to say something, afraid I would make a fool of myself. Noah also looked good. No scratch that, he looked fucking beautiful with his hair flowing freely across his shoulders and the white shirt he wore hugged his chest and arms in all the right places. The bottom half of his tattoos were on display and I couldn't help myself as I stared at them, something I didn't realize Noah was doing the same to me.

"Hey, I'm Matt," the man who was talking with Noah smiled.

"Y/N," I gave him a small wave.

"So," Chase spoke. "There's this really awesome zoo just around the block. Figured it be cool to check out?"

We all nodded in agreement and began walking in our large group; three of Hollow Souls, four Bad Omens, and two of their crew members. Matt, their manager, and Bryan, their photographer who had a camera slung around his neck. I walked in steps with Chase on one side of me and Nick on the other. Once again, Nick was looking down at the tattoo on my leg.

"You love to analyze the designs, huh?" I joked.

He shrugged. "I can't help it. Does the design on your leg have a meaning?"

It was a large tattoo of several Greek Gods sitting on top of Mount Olympus; Athena, Artemis, Ares, and Posiedon. My favorites.

"Uh, I'm a huge Greek Mythology nerd and these are some of my favorite Gods," I gave a sheepish smile.

Malcolm turned to face us as he began walking backwards. "Don't get her started on Zeus."

I pointed a finger at him. "Everyone thinks he's the most all mighty God when in fact, he was a douche! One of the worst Gods. Makes me so angry everyone puts him on a high pedestal."

Chase chuckled. "Way to go, Malcolm."

Noah walked ahead of me a few feet and as I continued to talk with Nick, I could see out of the corner of my eye when he would turn to face me; almost making sure I was still here. Soon the entrance to the zoo stood in front of us and as I pulled out my wallet to pay, I realized it was missing.

"What the fuck?" I murmured while riffling through my purse.

"Something wrong?"

Gazing up through my sunglasses, I saw Noah looking at me with concern. He pocketed his glasses so I could see the browns of his eyes sparkle in the sunlight.

"No. Well yea," I sighed letting my purse fall to my side. "I must have left my wallet on the bus. You guys ahead. I'll see you back at the venue."

It all happened so fast; Noah pulling out his own wallet, asking for two tickets, and handing the person behind the counter the correct amount of change.

"Noah," I scolded. "You didn't have to do that!"

"Come on. They're waiting for us," Noah said with an extended arm in front of me.

The rest of the group hung back just inside the entrance as they watched us with their own wondering eyes.

I didn't move however, only kept a stern gaze on Noah through my glasses. "I had no problem going back to the bus."

He scoffed while dropping his arm. "Right, to sit with Trey while the rest of us have fun? How is that fair?"

I pursed my lips, unsure how to respond, so instead with a long sigh, I walked past him towards Chase who had a large smirk on his face.

"What?" I asked, slightly irritated.

He motioned to Noah behind me. "He was checking out your ass."

I never whirled around so damn fast before in my life and one of my braids slapped me in the face as I looked at Noah, who in fact was starting intently at me. When our gazes locked, he quickly averted his over to Bryan.

For the next while, I walked with Chase as we stopped every few minutes to check out the animals at the zoo. Halfway through our visit, I stopped to grab a pretzel with cheese thanks to Chase who paid. When we then stopped in front of a large sign showcasing the map, I gasped excitedly while pointing to it.

"They have wolves!" I turned on my heels towards everyone.

"So dogs?" Folio teased with a smirk.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "How dare you! They're not just dogs. Well, I guess they are since they descend from wolves. But-." My ramblings fell off my lips when I saw Noah staring at me.

"What? Do I have something on my face?" I wiped at my face, afraid there was dried cheese on it.

"No," Noah's voice was low. "I just like how you look when you're so passionate about something. It's cute."

Turning my face away from him so he couldn't see the way I blushed, I nibbled on my bottom lip. "We don't have to go see them."

"To the dogs-I mean wolves!" Folio exclaimed with a hand up in the air.

I all but ran to the encloser that was only a few feet away from where we were and as we approached the high chain-link fence, I bent low so I could peer through hoping to see them. With what I knew about wolves I wouldn't catch a glimpse because of the heat today. It was almost like this every time I tried to see wolves at any zoo.

Everyone stood back, a quiet hum of their conversations background noise, until with a frown I rose to my feet not realizing Noah was standing behind me. I felt his warm body heat envelope around me and I peered over my shoulder to him.

"I could stay here for hours just waiting," I admitted with a smile.

"We can stay," Noah suggested.

"No," I shook my head while turning to face him. "We can go. I don't want to make the others hang around for nothing."

His long lashes brushed across his cheek as he blinked slowly, eyes never once leaving my face. My heart was beating so fast at how close we were and I wanted to take a step back, I really did, but there was this invisible force that kept us tied together. It pulled my hand away from my purse strap to brush some hair out of his face but before the action took place, Malcolm's loud voice hollered over to us, breaking the trance we were in.

"If you two are done staring at each other, Jolly wants to go see the tigers!"

Retreating away from Noah, I scurried over towards the group of the guys as we made our way over to the next large encloser, Noah trailing slowly behind. While Jolly interacted with the tigers, I hung off to the side lost in my own thoughts. Often I would check my phone to see if Trey texted me but nothing. I was gone for hours already, wouldn't he have noticed we were gone?

Maybe he was still asleep?

I tried to think of scenarios of why he wouldn't text or call instead of thinking of how close Noah and I got back at the wolves. It was wrong of me to think of another man like that. It was also wrong for me to keep stealing glances his way all day or wondering what his skin on mine would feel like.

Almost in a trance of my own thoughts, I followed the group when we reached the petting zoo area of the zoo where you could feed deers.

"Oh, sick!" Nick exclaimed.

I, on the other hand, did not think so.

"Do you want too?" Noah asked me.

"I'll watch. You can't trust these guys, they'll try to eat your shirt." I said.

I watched him bend to his knees as a smaller deer came up to him, licking up the food from his open hand. Noah smiled brightly as the deer nibbled the cracker from between his fingers and I couldn't stop my smile as it pulled at my lips. It was one of those smiles where the skin next to your eyes crinkle and cheeks hurt from how hard your smiling.

His smile could make you forget all the bad in your life. It brought so much light to the darkness that filled my soul of the last few months. My stomach burned with something unknown and it scared me that one person could cause this intense feeling; who I wasn't even dating. Trey never once made me feel this way or even tried too. All Noah had to do was smile at me and I was on my knees in a puddle mess of desire.

"Are you going to keep staring at me or help?" He smirked up at me.

Embarrassed at getting caught, I reluctantly bent down next to him and took a cracker he extended towards me. "I swear if this little shit bites my finger, I'm going to kick your ass."

Noah bumped his shoulder with mine. "It's a deal."

"Okay, I'll admit this is kind of cool," I mused while scratching a deer on its nose.

When he didn't say anything, I turned my head slightly towards Noah but sucked in a breath when I realized how close we were. His warm breath fanned over my lips as his eyes tracked every movement of my tongue made as I licked my suddenly dry lips. We were so close I was afraid that if I leaned forward slightly, our lips would brush across each other. I could smell the lemonade he drank earlier as the scent tickled my nostrils.

Noah swallowed thickly, and a noise came out of the back of his throat as he went to say something but was cut off by someone's screams. For the second time that afternoon, we were broken out of our trance like state to see Nick and Malcolm running away from a group of deers that were chasing them.

"Uh," my voice stammered. "I should probably go help him."

Quickly rising to my feet, I left Noah behind to go save my idiot friend from a couple of deers that just wanted something to eat.

NOAH

A yawn fell past my lips as I stretched out my long limbs before leaning up against the cool metal of our tour bus, the cool night air wrapping around the small group of us. We all returned from the zoo a little while ago and while Bryan and Matt went to the crew bus and Malcom and Chase went back to theirs, I was standing with Folio and Y/N, as she pulled out some cash that she grabbed from her bus.

"Please take the money, Noah. I feel terrible that you spent your money on me," she extended the two twenty-dollar bills towards me while she clutched the small wolf stuffed animal underneath her arm.

Something I surprised her with on the way out of the zoo.

Her eyes sparkled as she eyed the gift cart when we walked past it. "Would it be stupid for a grown woman to want a stuffed animal?"

She asked to Malcolm, who merely shrugged in response. So while she wasn't looking, I bought a wolf one for her.

I didn't miss the way her lips parted in surprise when I gave it to her. Or the way she let out a long shaky breath before muttering to herself.

"He doesn't even buy me anything."

She didn't have to say his name; I knew who she was talking about.

"I'm not taking your money," I shook my head.

Y/N groaned and tried to give the money to Folio who raised his hands as if the money was cursed. "I'm not taking it either, Y/N. When Noah wants something, there's no changing his mind. He wanted to pay for you today, accept it."

"Fine," she stuffed the money into her pocket. "But I owe you back with something, Noah."

Folio was fast to speak before I could even argue. "Why don't you come hang out on the bus with us for a bit?"

Y/N's body went rigid, eyes glancing over to her bus so fast I almost missed it.

"It'll be fun. Even for a bit," Folio smiled before walking up the stairs of the bus, leaving her and I alone.

Alone.

Just the two of us.

For the first time all day.

I rubbed the back of my neck, suddenly very nervous. With the others around, I could act cool around her but now under her bright eyes, my knee buckled.

"It might be fun if you hang out with me-us," I quickly corrected myself hoping she didn't notice. "We could play Mario cart?"

I stared down sheepishly at my feet, trying to find the courage to ask a girl to hang out with me. Not that fucking hard so why did my voice waver every time I tried to talk to her.

"We could play monopoly but that wouldn’t end well. Jolly thinks he’s the bomb at games and we spend most of the time kicking his ass.”

Another quick glance to her bus as she shifted on her feet something I realized she was doing because she was nervous Trey would come out any moment. According to Chase, Trey didn't call or text her all day to see where she was or at least check in on her.

"Hey," my fingers brushed along the inside of her wrist, getting her to finally look at me instead of fear to her bus. The spark that shocked through us nearly had me rear my hand back from the intensity. "You don't have to go back, you know."

Her brows furrowed. "What do you mean?"

My heart pounded as I forced the words out of my mouth before I second guessed myself. "Stay till morning? Knowing Trey, he's probably going to be nursing a hangover in the morning so he won't even notice you're not there."

"Where would I sleep?" Her voice was hushed, barley above a whisper.

With me.

"We have extra bunks," I said.

She blinked for a long moment, letting my words process in her brain. She was highly debating my offer but in the end; she shook her head.

"It's been a long day and I should head back. I'm sure Trey is wondering where I am."

The disappointment was evident on my face and I had to bit my tongue not to lash out with a comment about how much Trey did in fact not care.

"Sure," I nodded. "Let me walk you back to your bus then?"

Clutching the wolf stuffed animal closer to her chest, she nodded with a smile playing at her lips. It wasn't a long walk so my mind was running rampant with something to say to keep the last little of this perfect day alive.

"I don't think I mentioned how much I like you in my shirt."

Shit, I didn't mean that.

"Our shirt. The band's shirt," I quickly recovered when I noticed the playful gleam in her eyes.

We came to a stop in front of the door of her bus, the lights off inside which meant that either no one was in there or they were asleep.

Her gaze darted to the windows back to me. "I had a really fun day today, Noah. Thank you."

My fingers itched with the need to brush a strand of hair that came loose from her braid but I resisted.

"Anytime, angel."

Fuck.

She raised a brow at me, a reddish tint creeping from her cheeks to the tops of her ears. "Oh, angel, huh?"

"Sorry, it kind of slipped out," I rubbed my chin nervously. "If you don't like it, I can-."

"No, I like it!" She rushed out. "A lot, actually."

That was an ego boost that I desperately needed. So, with a wink, I began walking backwards to my bus calling out in the dark night air. "Good because it stays, angel!"

[armysantiny]

The Pale Idol – PSH

P: Seonghwa x gender neutral reader | G: fluff, fantasy, drabble | Inc: Baldur's Gate 3 au, vampire elf!Seonghwa, Seonghwa is basically Astarion, tiefling!reader, mentioned Jongho, mentioned Wooyoung, tiefling!Wooyoung, makeup artist!reader, mentioned San, drow!San, implied Hongjoong mention, high half elf!Hongjoong| Wc: 1.1k | W: mentioned blood, old bite marks | R: G

Min's notes: This idea struck and would not leave me until I wrote it out. This fic's quality is questionable lmao, but I like it and that's enough for me. If I like this enough I'll do headcanons abt what the other members are lol. Also fuck tumblr's 5 link/tags per line thing-

Seonghwa lifts his head from his phone when his name is called, abandoning the green room’s sofa in favour of the stool his makeup artist is calling him to. He’s not the last one to have his hair and makeup done, but he has been able to relax while the others get ready. Precious minutes of simply sinking into the sofa and scrolling through the device in his hand.

Once he settles in his chair, his head turns to y/n, politeness melting away into a smile. They’ve got the brightest expression on their face, an eagerness he can feel in abundance. It’s rather charming, and a wonderful start to his day.

Even if he’s feeling a tad bit peckish.

“Morning to you too, y/n,” he chuckles, letting the Tiefling go about putting on his makeup for the group’s upcoming stage. “You seem excited today, something lifting your spirits?”

“Hm? Oh, yes! I have this new palette, you have to see the shades, Seonghwa, it’s going to highlight your eyes perfectly for this stage!” Y/n answers, bringing over the eyeshadow palette in question for Seonghwa to inspect. Much to their luck—and intuition—the makeup gets the idol’s seal of approval, and y/n gets to work right away. And Seonghwa is just the perfect client; holding himself just how y/n needs him to, closing his eyes exactly when needed.

The perfect symbol of grace, Park Seonghwa is.

Just as their close attention comes to an end and y/n goes to put their equipment away, the Tiefling’s gaze catches on something. It’s so small, so inconspicuous, clearly a small miracle they ever notice it at all. Hidden just below Seonghwa’s collar, in the crook of his neck, are two little scars.

And old vampire bite. Pale skin, the red eyes, the bite…

“Am I free to sit back on the sofa..?” Seonghwa’s watching them. Right. He’s caught them staring, surely the elf is uncomfortable.

“Yes! Yes, sorry, of course… you’re free to go.”

“Great. Thank you as always, y/n. Can we talk later?”

Later. The promise of conversation after the day’s recordings is daunting. Why he even suggested it in the first place, Seonghwa can’t recall. Y/n had seen it, his bite marks, and now he owes them an explanation, at the very least. Or a well-meaning half-truth if he has the heart to lie to them. His brow furrows, or well he supposes they do because Seonghwa feels a stare burning into the side of his head, San watching him with all-too-knowing eyes.

Damn the Drow for being so observant and empathetic. But San is a ray of sunshine, warm and loving, so all is forgiven. As it always is.

“Hyung,” San begins, “everything alright? Do you need..?”

“No, no, I’m okay,” and he is, “just a few things on my mind. It’s nothing to worry about, San-ah, promise.” Seonghwa isn’t lying. There isn’t anything—or at very least there shouldn’t be—to worry about. The performance will go well, he’ll smooth things over will y/n and maybe he’ll bother their high half-elf leader for a bite or two once night falls.

The performance ends almost as soon as it begins, adrenaline coursing through Seonghwa’s undead veins as the music comes to an end. Even as the idol works his charms for the close-up camera shot and the audience screams their praises, the prospect of confronting y/n hangs back in the crevices of his mind. Just like that horrifying mindflayer tadpole he once harboured, but that’s neither here nor there. So, after a few minutes of waving to fans onstage, Seonghwa tags along with his members and heads backstage, the green room and a darling Tiefling awaiting him.

What fun.

Y/n can barely look Seonghwa in the eye when he and the others walk back in, hands clamming up while they spend another minute or two or three distracting themselves with mundane tasks. How are they supposed to confess to the vampire that they’ve figured out that Seonghwa isn’t just an elf? It’s a small miracle in of itself that Jongho pulls them aside, needing y/n’s assistance, a clasp stuck on the idol’s mic pack.

“…mind if I interrupt?” y/n nearly jumps out of their own skin as Jongho’s clasp comes unstuck. Hells, was Seonghwa always this good at moving around silently?

“Nothing to interrupt,” they say, composure recovered, “is this going to be a private conversation?”

He nods. Very well, they can give him that much.

Following Seonghwa to a rather unused section of the green room, y/n stays decidedly quiet. Sure, the Tiefling knows, but this is Seonghwa’s secret to sure. It’s not hard to see the nerves play out on his face either, the way the elf’s expression holds itself a little too stiff.

And then y/n blinks when Seonghwa just comes out with it.

“I should have told you sooner, y/n, really,” the elf continues, “but surely, my friend, you understand just how risky it is to admit my nature as a vampire. Especially in this line of work.” They understand. Of course they understand.

“I do, Seonghwa, really. And thank you for telling me, though…” y/n trails off, reaching for Seonghwa’s hands when said elf stares at them with panicked eyes. “It’s nothing bad, I promise! I didn’t want to intrude on your revelation, just now, but I did figure it out. Earlier.”

Never has the Tiefling seen Seonghwa so flustered before. They watch the way he clears his throat, avoids looking at them for all of ten seconds before plastering on a nervous grin.

“How— how did you..?”

Y/n launches into their explanation, suddenly very aware that they probably should have brought up their suspicions ages ago. Like how they hadn’t wanted to point out how rare it is for high elves to have crimson-red eyes, or how the idol is paler than most and spends a little longer just observing his own reflection. Not that y/n always knew, but the old bite mark did play a decently large part in them finally putting two and two together.

“I was that obvious, was I?”

“…a bit?” Seonghwa groans. His hair falling across his face as he hangs his head in defeat. All that effort, all that time spent crafting his illusion and y/n figured it all out. Just like that. Now they’re laughing! All bashful and giggly and—

Hells below he wants to hide.

“My dear, can we please put this conversation to bed? Preferably before I go and ask Wooyoung to smite me?”

Y/n nods, not without stifling the rest of their laughter.

Thank the hells.

© copyright work of armysantiny 2024-2025

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[olderthannetfic]

The moment it really clicked with me how downhill online etiquette had gone was when I realized we were all collectively expected to put our personal info or content warnings in our bios. Why? If you don’t want to see certain content from certain people filter out tags. If that blog doesn’t use tags and you require filtering then just don’t follow that blog or block them. No but that is not good enough. I have to tell everyone LOUDLY that I reblog nsfw content because ‘think of the 16 year old children’ or whatever. Okay. Those teenager children can also just filter out tags I am not required to list my personal information or to put a neon NSFW sign in my description for that to happen.

Just use the tags. We’ve always had that why do people now require my blog description give them warning? Why can’t you be responsible for yourselves?

My advice to anyone reading this is the same advice I would give someone online 10 years ago. Do not advertise your personal information online. That’s just my opinion and I’m not changing my habits because some would be bully thinks it’s “sus” not to.

--

Honestly, I think we expect to take things in at a glance far too much too.

If I suddenly started posting tons of explicit images, sure, that could be annoying since it would be a change. But I've had tons of people send me weird asks demanding that I explain my blog to them or being confused about why such-and-such is on here when such-and-such is routinely on here.

When I'm curious about someone, I usually scroll through a couple of months of their tumblr to see what sorts of things they normally post. Even then, it might take some time of interacting with them before I have a sense of who they are.

That's how learning a person or a space works.

But a lot of people expect to see cliff notes in the sidebar and for these to have been updated recently with great accuracy.