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dolphin-diaries · 2 months ago

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Death Of The Woman

Originally posted on the Dolphin Diaries substack.

The following essay is not my usual fare. It’s my personal story as a detrans woman, and as such, it will lack in abstracted theory or argumentation. After this I will be publishing a special interview, and then I’ll return to my usual programming.

For now though, be advised this isn’t quite light reading material. There is some cursory description of sexual violence. If you do not feel like you can engage with that, skip from the paragraph beginning “At one point, …” to the next titled section.

Girl/Flesh

Before there is an adult, there is first a child—a not-so-blank slate, a state of being with an expiration date. Boys must be made men; girls must be made women. To the end of that becoming, childhood is a prelude and adolescence a ritual.

Contemplate for a moment, without any input from me: how is a girl made a woman?

My upbringing was rather feminist, compared to the average for my country. My mother did not take my father’s name; she earned more; they had a whole and loving marriage. A husband-and-kids were expected of me eventually, but ever nebulously and not quite yet; my own family’s example seemed perfectly encouraging. For the time being, the biggest expectation placed on me was intellectual accomplishment. You might think a boy child would be preferable to such an endeavour, but it was quite the opposite. Boys will be boys, after all: rowdy, willful, lascivious, ever in need of someone else’s care. Handed gently from the mother’s hand to a wife’s, they’re basically eternal children. But girls? Girls are born older. Mature faster—biologically, essentially, fundamentally. Girls listen. Girls obey.

By all accounts I was a fantastic foundation for such a purpose. Tallest, strongest, bursting with curly dark hair. You couldn’t possibly mistake me for a fragile doll, no, not like some other, more childish girls; I was obviously ready for responsibility. And not just in superficial appearance. Speech came to me quickly and easily; writing flowed from my fingertips with perfect calligraphy; I made art worthy of fridges and walls; I took to learning with all the energy of an insomniac puppy.

Did other kids like a fat, moustachioed girl that beat them at everything, and after class also won at arm-wrestling? Fuck no! But that was alright. I was born into intelligentsia, and envy was our natural curse, one to be proud of. At any rate, someday puberty would come. A body-shedding into something physically desirable; combined with all this accrued talent, it would ensure I’d have the pick of good men. Though I didn’t yet know men, only the irksome boys from whom they hatched. I lived for the attention of adults and for making other girls laugh—if clever ogres are good for nothing else, it’s humour. There was something transcendent in seeing someone fae-pretty and so unreachable be made happy by my effort. Even if they bullied me after. Of course, that meant I was too rowdy—oh, and too stubborn. Girls are supposed to understand the rules of the world exist for a reason; I didn’t. I needed things explained before I obeyed.

The rule I didn’t understand most of all was touch. I was brutish, and my brutishness marked me for disgust—and yet, I was constantly touched, even as I was told I’d never be touchable. My body burgeoned with entirely too much flesh, and every hand was drawn to grab it, to pinch and assess it in some unannounced Try-Before-You-Buy. Teachers, children, family members. It would not stop and it made my skin crawl, but it was also normal. The adults I liked did it. My peers did it. No one remarked on it.

When womanhood was yet a distant prospect, I dreamt of something ethereal. Power-suited. Someone that looked like mother, or like Barbie. Someone untouchable. Because surely this was all a growing pain. I was a girl, and that meant all the things that made me revolting, naive, and unruly would be purged by shed blood.

That’s not how that goes, though. How is a girl made a woman?

When adolescence finally arrived, it was rather early, eleven or so. I always was an overachiever. And I discovered I was not yet becoming something better. I was just myself, but more. More flesh. More hair, in all the wrong places. Same moustache, same swollen face, same ungainly buffoon demeanour, only now with hips bursting through trousers and a boyish deep voice.

The leering and touching did not cease—they got worse. The older I grew, the older my mother dressed me, dolling me up in heels and arse-hugging skirts with the vicarious glee of someone who got another chance at making a woman, and who was emboldened by the powerlessness of my ‘no.’ The dress-up had a goal in mind, of course. Same as my obligation to intellectual accomplishment; the only difference was, I was now failing, while the prospect of adulthood loomed ever closer. So I had it spelled out to me: it was all to ensure I could return to my family the debt I incurred with the costs of my existence. To birth them a child and uphold their reputation. If I was unfeminine, untouchable, unfuckable, they would not get a return on their investment. If I preferred girls—which, big surprise, I did—that would invite untold humiliation on the family name. That I was given to choose my would-be boyfriends, nudged to enjoy the makeup and skirts, was a just bit of carrot to the whip. If I sneered too much at the carrot, I’d get the whip.

So on I wobbled, a fleshy, moustachioed doll. Every new softness and curve invited a groping hand or a disgusting comment. Every fault of my body was bared as proof I should be happy to get this much at all. In old deformity and in newfangled woman-ness, I was just a girl.

I sought other ways of being. An escape from the barbed chain link of The Family. I had limited recourse in my small town, but the internet is a wide-reaching thing. No lesbian community existed for miles, but I could still read about the ring and the hanky code and whatever else. I could look at pictures.

(Although those were at times alarming, because all these lesbian women I glimpsed looked rather like me—whereas I had hoped that, by the time I grew up, I’d be something better.)

Regardless, I tried the codes and the cargo trousers, as much as I could—which wasn’t much. I stoked fascination in my classmates with giddy and secretive coming-outs. Only some showed me compassion and dignity, but I was even happy enough to be seen as a weirdo monster. At least they saw me. Worse was their dissecting vigilance. Their attention to the way I moved or spoke. The moment I’d do something girly, they’d cry, they knew it! I was just a girl. I did have a boy crush, and I should admit it; I was surely—as they put it—a faggot. Yes, really, literally ‘faggot,’ that word precisely. Even when I flicked my wrist like so while all dolled-up from head to toe, no one seemed to quite stomach believing me a real woman.

Giddiness over coming out doesn’t last. Disobedience brooks punishment. Through the listicles of lesbian identities and vocabulary, you dig through to testimonies. To rape. To abjected and dysphoric butches. To abuse at school, university, work, home. To the loss of all those things. To death. Elsewhere lesbians sometimes got their happily-ever-afters, loving families and the luxury of walking free, but here, we have not earned it. Visa-barred from leaving, doomed to die fighting for a future we would never live—even as far away, someone already got it just for having been born.

When I Saw The TV Glow

2011. A documentary, in all the glory of 480p. I’d heard of trans women before in concept—dear, some men just become women, it happens, okay?—but I’d never heard of trans men before. Never conceived of it.

I watched the screen like it was a revelation. A man in a white tee tucked into light jeans, cut like a Ken doll, strutting down a springtime street in low resolution.

Before then, I’d accepted that the burgeoning breasts and hips was simply something I had to contend with. That the way the boys around me were growing stronger while I was ever-groped was simply nature asserting itself. My body was proof of my place in the world.

I looked at the screen and thought, So that was a big fat lie.

The moment I knew it was possible, I wanted it like nothing else. The broad shoulders, the muscles, the dapper swagger. I wished for my body to take the shape of my being, instead of my being contorting to the body’s mould. Perhaps I could be loved for all the things that made me a deformed monster. Perhaps I didn’t need to watch every step to prove I wasn’t just a girl. Here was a place already in the shape of me, rather than a stifling lot I had to constantly fight against.

How could one go about changing sex? According to the documentary, it started with a psychiatric assessment—and so, my little twelve-year-old self took to studying the DSM. As I scoured it, I learned I could not be described by its standards as a true transsexual. I’d never before thought of myself as a boy nor had wanted to be one. Yet in the same breath, the DSM claimed no girl could ever desire physical masculinity beyond what came naturally to her. It was either transsexualism or some fetish or self-harming disorder. I had neither of the latter. My desire to inhabit masculinity was undeniable and crystal-clear, and the only kind of person that could’ve felt this way was a transsexual man—so that meant I must’ve simply remembered my life wrong. Or interpreted it wrong. If I twisted my memories this way or that, discarded one as an anomaly and repainted another in baby-boy blue, it would all make sense. It had to. Trans people online talked about a sense of mis-belonging, and I did feel like an outsider among the girls—what did it mean to feel like a gender, at any rate? I only knew what I felt like. And I felt like something sorry and misshapen.

Somewhat later, circa 2013, I did hear of weirder gender concepts in the distant West, mostly as just definitions of words. Genderqueer, nonbinary, et cetera. I comprehended them rationally but I did not understand or relate to them. Wherever I read about it, genderqueerness was described in a manner parallel to transsexuality—the sex-changing—or else as an exotic alternative to hormones and scalpels. But I desired body change so desperately, and regardless, I could not envision living as a nonbinary gender in my own country. Maybe in the West that was possible, but here nothing but derision would entail. It just wasn’t for me.

Naturally, trans men’s testimonies of hardship met and rivalled those of cis lesbian women. But the vast majority of them were concentrated on the times before and during transition. After that—sure, all of medicine reviles you and you’re at risk of a heinous hate crime. But the same has been true before; now though, when you walk down the street or meet a new friend, when you live, you’re just some guy. Your life is tinted by your queerness as much as any other sex/gender-deviant, but that constant, unabating struggle against a blistering torrent of humiliation, of being forced into the place of a woman? That seemed to end. Eventually. And then—who knows? Move to a new town, a new country even. No one need ever know who you had once been.

At that time though, I was still very young, and the thing about discovering a solution to a problem you thought inescapable is that it makes the problem itself feel that much more acute. So I did the stupidest thing imaginable: come out.

Dear reader, it wasn’t a good idea.

It is, after all, rather trivial to exact whatever punishment one desires upon one’s queer children, for children are parents’ property. It is true everywhere, but if ‘in some fucking America’ there is something called ‘child-protective services,’ here nothing short of murder, starvation, or exceptionally unsubtle and repeated rape could possibly broker an outside intervention. The debt you incurred to your parents for being born still holds, and you’ve just betrayed its very foundation. A woman still needs to be made of you. And anyway, who are you gonna call? The police? For what, total social isolation? For derision and humiliation? For the hours spent unmaking all your agency, all your desire as nothing more than delusion brought on by that damned internet? For total control over you, over every movement, every manner, every gesture, every word? For what you claim was assault? For what you claim was an attempted murder? I mean, it’s all rather sad, but it’s not a crime; not provably. Not against faggots.

I Win, Bitch

I am first and foremost a problem-solver. Even in total solitude, without access to the internet or to kindred spirits, there are plans to be made. I did not want to die, and I was still in the questionable position of being my family’s pride. Had to be. My parents couldn’t have any more children; they had to get it right with me.

So of course, if I got free admission to a prestigious university many kilometres away, and if I proved I’d learned my lesson enough to be trusted with leaving—who was to gainsay me?

Getting out was a decision I made almost the moment my abuse took on a corrective and violent turn. I knew what I had to do, even if it cost me immeasurably. Overnight I had to call quits on any remnant of childhood and learn to steal money to ensure future independence. Had to play my woman’s part convincingly. Had to look as if I’m enjoying it, convincingly. If I’d found the role stifling before, now it was as razors under my skin. Everything that ‘woman’ encompassed had been weaponised for my constant abuse, and I could not stomach a second of it—but I had to. Until I broke free.

Besides the severance of any familial support, financial or otherwise, my psyche was thoroughly shattered. All the times I’d been told, at length and for hours, that I was suffering a dangerous delusion, that I had to be forced to conform to my true nature—every single time, I knew that it was wrong. Even when I was as young as twelve, I knew I deserved none of it. I knew it was abuse and injustice. All the same it broke me. There was no pride and no resilience strong enough in me to withstand years and years of it. For a while I could barely look at women that whatsoever resembled me; the very concept, the very idea was a trigger. When it came to my own mind, I struggled to tell what was real, what I did and did not feel. Everything laid under panes and panes of ice, and that disassociation was the only way I could maintain a grip—or else everything erupted in screams.

The worst of my C-PTSD would be dealt with in the ensuing years thanks to NGO-sponsored therapy for queer patients. Unpacking pane after pane, unwinding coil after coil of the rage I had to swallow, piecing together shards of abandoned and dissociated memories. But I’d be paying mental dividends on my damage for longer still, and in ways I couldn’t even imagine.

For now though: I won.

Social transition was easy for me. It took little more than cutting my hair and swapping out wardrobes to pass as a man pretty reliably—well, a teenage boy, but I was only seventeen, so it didn’t raise eyebrows. I felt freed. Like I could walk and speak and make friends without chains attached to me. Only the softness of my shape gnawed at me, how it had shifted from despicable womanly maturity to boyish youth. I hated not having my coming adulthood recognised. Hated that other young men got to grow stronger and larger while I was stuck in perpetual pseudo-adolescence. I was free, I was no child, no property of adults; I wanted to be seen.

But it was also the first time I discovered queer spaces in person. Mixed and trans ones—especially trans ones. For the first time, I walked among people who understood. Really understood, the dysphoria and the otherness and the abuse and the whole lot. I’d found my home amongst the gender criminals; we talked feminism and activism; we braved protests despite threats of alt-right retaliation; we stumbled through relationships. Like most trans people, I harbour no nostalgia for my childhood or early youth—but for that time, I do. Not because it didn’t have its share of struggle, but because of my then-partner A. and my friends. Because it was the first time I felt the mutability of sex/gender, and breathed the freedom that entailed.

Things don’t last though, especially not in youth. Relationships fall apart; social circles reshuffle. I was leaving university to pursue a career—after all, I could not afford to be on HRT without income.

Moreover I felt… insecure, you could call it. Most of my social connections were to trans people and/or women. But I was a man. Shouldn’t I—commit? Make an effort? If cisgender men did not accept me as one of theirs, didn’t that make me a kind of impostor? I chafed in the body of an eternal adolescent, and the rift I felt between myself and cis men salted the wound.

Brain/Worms

The first problem was easily addressed with exogenous testosterone. Starting it was a euphoric experience—the rapid swelling of muscle, the spike in energy and hunger and libido. I loved the changes to my body, and I wished all traces of insidious womanhood would wilt from me.

The second issue was more difficult. I’d always felt at an arm’s length from cis heterosexual men, and never got much closer. No matter what, I simply felt other. That made sense, though. Once I re-conceptualised my gender as male, I did not identify as straight. I didn’t feel so sure anymore I was solely attracted to women, and that feeling only solidified the more I transitioned. If gender and sex were uncertain, how could I be so sure? I had no genital preference. What did it mean to be attracted to a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ anyway? Some men could be as pretty as women. Wouldn’t giving a definitive answer be a little bioessentialist? Aren’t we all, as they say, a little bisexual?

Yes, I thought, it made perfect sense that I, a bisexual man, would find no belonging among cishet men. And the more I thought about the sort of relationships I desired, the more I realised I could not possibly be fulfilled in a straight relationship. I attempted facsimiles of a straight man’s role, and they all left me feeling hollowed. The attraction and relationship calculus of straight women was an arcane language to me. The sorts of women I liked were distinctly dyke-y; sure, some of those happen to be bisexual, but if they were to date me, they’d still be dating a man. I’d hate that as much as I’d hate not having my manhood acknowledged or recognised. And that’s to say nothing of how sleazy and dishonest it felt to intrude on queer women’s dating scene as a man. Now that I lived as a man, what made me so different from cis men? Innate birth-assigned woman-ness? Misogyny-flavoured childhood trauma? The vagina? All excuses felt like pathetic, opportunistic self-humiliation. Debasing myself by appealing to someone else’s cissexism so I could appear like something I wasn’t.

So naturally, I pursued community and companionship with gay men. As any gay trans man will tell you, it is usually a thankless and annoying task; transphobia is insidious and oft-unchallenged in gay male circles. The way they treat trans men ranges from hostile to patronising to weird. But overall I had a better time of it than most, and cultivated a few long-lasting friendships. The gay men around me had more class consciousness than average. They were not shy about liking me, even after apologising for speaking ill of vaginas. It was ego-boosting. But I was still afraid that when we took our shirts off, they’d stop seeing me and find a woman in me. Fuck me like one. Erase me.

A new ghost began to haunt me. It’d coalesced from pieces that already existed within me, but never before had this shape. What were fragments of my desires and thoughts coalesced into a singular fixation that constricted all of my libido, all of my sexual being. Fantasies of being fucked into womanhood invaded my mind and would not let go of it. In them, men were personless and barely corporeal, but the women existed in graphic detail. I myself was either completely disembodied and not present, not even as a voyeur—or else oddly, vaguely within the woman, both me and not-me at once.

I was horrified. Not even by the fantasy itself; its contents were murky and not particularly original. By my singular lust for it. I felt as though I’d discovered a monster within. A violent misogynist puppeteering the woman’s image to quench a fetish for sexist humiliation. A depraved and lowly creature fed on my own abuse.

But it made a kind of sense, I thought, the horror aside. I’d experienced plenty of misogynistic violence, the sexual kind included, and I guessed I’d sublimated it. Except—

There was a problem with that interpretation. That coercive return to womanhood, what I feared men might do to me—it was not the same as what aroused me. In the fantasy, I was not returning or reverting; I was not giving in to transphobic violence, which these scenarios notably lacked; I just was.

Despite all my efforts, this creature within responded to no self-insight, no cross-examination, no rationalisation. Everything I learned from the handbooks of either trauma therapy or kink-positive thinking failed utterly. I could not unlearn shame. I could not arrive at an epiphany. Like a hungry tapeworm, the unnameable thing inside me gnawed and gnawed, and any attempts to understand my desire, to make it less dissociative, only caused it to mutate to something more esoteric. The images morphed from banal patriarchal brutality to anonymous men forcibly feminised via sex by domineering, ultra-feminine women. Once my mind arrived at image, it sank its teeth into it so completely that it began to hollow my waking life, which now paled by comparison to the fantasy. And yet the thing still resisted knowledge even as it drained blood from me. I could not comprehend what pleasure I derived from this, what desire this fulfilled. When looked upon in the light of day, beyond the haze of arousal, the monster within me became only fear, a terrifying and nameless anxiety that liquefied all efforts to understand it.

In any case, the only ‘gay man’ I ended up dating long-term was a severely closeted trans woman. I failed thoroughly at sourcing validity from gay male partners as I realised I never wanted them in the first place; it’d all been a self-delusional charade whose only purpose was to forestall loneliness and to quench the thing within. So I settled on helping a girl find her gender. My perversion remained my little secret. No one in the world could’ve possibly shared it, and if they did, it was probably for the best that I did not know them.

A strange and nameless discontent festered. Past the initial joy in well-sculpted shoulders, the more virilised my body became, the more difficult it was to differentiate myself from the Average Cishetero Man, or even the Average Gay Man (which do not, in the end, look that different)—and it felt existentially important to be differentiated somehow. Looking like that made me feel dead. Whatever ‘that’ was. I found myself confusedly wishing for jewellery and makeup and feminine fashion—things that were once violently forced upon me. So the desire itself made me squirm. At the same time though, it’d been a while since my abuse. Years. Therapy, time, et cetera. I knew it was normal enough for someone later in transition to mellow out on strict gender expression, now that doing it ‘incorrectly’ no longer threatened misgendering. I’d met plenty of people with that exact experience. So, I thought, maybe that was my damage. Desire for gender-nonconformity, which I’d repressed in a bizarre manner.

Of course, experimenting with being a feminine man in public would get my head kicked in; discovering a craving for femininity was very inconvenient for me. I wasn’t pleased to regress back to stifling my gender presentation for social security. But no one could stop me from crossdressing in private—so, bit by bit, I tried.

When I finally built up the courage to order proper womenswear and put it on, I looked in the mirror and saw a man in a dress. I did exactly as I wanted and achieved exactly what I thought I would. Except, instead of relief or joy, a wave of such profound disappointment hit me that I could neither understand nor describe its nature. I could only comprehend it as a compulsion to tear my skin off. As dysphoria.

Well, duh. I was a trans man. Of course dolling up would make me dysphoric. Especially after all that’d happened to me. What did I expect? This had all been a waste of fucking time. There was nothing to discover behind my desires. I abandoned my pursuit, resigned to the daily kaleidoscope of sexual depravity that I couldn’t stop my mind from spinning; I’d given up on understanding the source or goal of any of it; I would simply entertain it in the privacy of my head and carry it to my grave.

Or at least, I’d try.

At one point, a cis woman took an interest in me. That interest was not reciprocated; something about her person was off-putting to me. She acted towards my friends with extreme jealousy, and even though I rejected her advances in no uncertain terms multiple times, she would not stop offering. At the same time though, now that I realised I did not belong among gay men, I felt extremely alone. And revolting. How many women were out there that’d even want to touch me? I really shouldn’t look a gifted horse in the mouth.

We were drunk, and I a complete mess. I’d bristled before when she pointedly asked if I knew she was bisexual—the implication being, she wasn’t afraid of vagina—because there was nothing un-straight about a woman wanting a trans man. But with so much wine in my veins—you know, maybe I wasn’t such a trans man after all? Maybe I was—I dunno. Like a girl—like, only for sex, though. I had stockings and lingerie in my bedside drawers and shit. If you squint and turn off the light.

I remember a shift in her gaze, once it finally sank in. From giggling and alcohol-addled to something sharper. Not quite homicidally disgusted, but still vicious; like I’d been made a thing. I didn’t know what I did wrong; I didn’t tell her about any of the truly despicable things—I was still me! Wasn’t she bisexual? Wasn’t she queer? We don’t have to do it, I said, forget it.

The next thing I remember is a body forcing me down. Vicious, gleeful lust. “Oh, you’ll be a girl, alright.”

My whole body stiffened. I snapped at her to stop, tried to push her away, but she only pressed down harder, fingers sinking into flesh.

When I threw her off me to the floor, blood split her lip. She cried and shrieked. So much for a feminist man! How dared I hit her! She just did as I asked!

I yelled at her to get out, but once the door slammed shut, I thought of the unending parade of rapacious fetish in my head. Of how well I knew this woman didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, and how I caved to her anyway. And, well, I couldn’t help feeling like—

Didn’t I ask for it?

Unmoored

A few years later, I found myself abroad. Far from family, and from most friends—except one. Shortly before I moved, I had met my once-partner A. from my university days and felt drawn to her all over again. Our relationship rekindled, and hand in hand, we flew westward. It was a dark time for unrelated reasons, but in a twisted way, it granted me as much of a ‘clean start’ as I could’ve ever hoped for. I was untethered from traces of growing pains I left all over the city I once called home, from the messy parts of transition—it’d been, at that point, well over five years since I started.

No one here needed to know who I’d been.

I’d never doubted it. In fact, I was then in the process of fighting bureaucracy to re-ensure my access to hormones. They were the only way I could ever hope to rid myself of that bodily displacement I’d been feeling. That was how it went with trans men; it helped them, so it should help me.

Only I’d already been on T for a while then. Whatever ‘feminine curves’ I had left, had melted away; a beard had sprouted from my face, which now increasingly resembled my father’s. Even if I stripped naked, I looked more like an intersex man than anything else. That was basically what I’d expected. I’d always been rather cold-blooded about my transition expectations and proud of that fact; I’d sourced my information from many sources and first-hand accounts, and I neither underestimated the changes nor hoped for the impossible. All in all, I got what I sought. The thing I kept waiting for had already happened.

And I felt nothing. The disappearance of features I used to despise evoked naught more than a quiet oh well. My photos seemed oddly unfamiliar. A numbness had subsumed me, as if I’d been encased in wax.

But I had more pressing problems. Relocation, unemployment, the lot. Dealing with a subtle and unnameable depression seemed like a waste of time. Perhaps there was just something broken about me—that much had been clear for a while now. If I just kept a lid on it, I could live a happy enough life. On and on years went.

Lesbians In My Phone

What to do, when you’re hopelessly unemployed and feeling like there’s a black hole inside you threatening to swallow it all? Try to find a Discord to distract yourself, of course.

E.: mostly girlies in here so I hope you won't feel too out of place! we do strive to be an inclusive place

Me: haha i hope i got here thanks to a diversity and inclusion programme

My excuse for entering a transfem-majority space was an invitation thanks to my writing and editing. I’d put out a short story myself, and I was eager to help fellow authors. Of course, I was still a community outsider on the gender side of it, so I didn’t expect to get much out of that space personally. It just felt good to be involved in something, anything.

But, it turned out, many of the women on that server were good and easy company regardless. Unfamiliar subcultures are easily learned when its members are not hostile to you; they seemed to like me.

Most of the server members were transfem lesbians writing and reading sexually explicit fiction—some of which resembled my personal nonsense kaleidoscope, if… unpacked, let’s say. It was rather surreal to see the sorts of things my mind inflicted upon me being discussed in jest or dissected for the purposes of creating more elevated, self-conscious art. When I thought about it from the perspective of a trans woman, escapism via fancies of forced feminisation only made sense. Trans women internalise what society deems to be the place of women as much as anyone else, but also, trans womanhood is violently flagellated for existing in any way whatsoever. The fantasy would then revolve around removing the element of choice from it—so you could not be punished for wanting it.

Intellectually fascinating, but why it appealed to me made no more sense than it ever had. I wasn’t a trans woman—quite the opposite. They just wanted to be women; what the fuck was my problem? Although it calmed me somewhat to see normal people have experiences so similar to mine, I still felt like an intruder, stealing away pieces of someone else’s intimate life for my own shallow pleasure. I spoke nothing of it. No one would take kindly to me skin-walking their innermost desires this way.

As I spent my time in the company of trans lesbians, silent or not, I was still exposed to a stream of art and stories and images. Their depictions of women differed drastically from what I’d seen before. Two metres tall, or tiny as a gnome, or more muscular than a Greek god, or more voluptuous than a fertility idol, or werewolf-hairy, or covered in scales, or made completely of metal. A thousand melodies in fractal variations of flesh, all desired and lauded. I was no stranger to ideas of body positivity or ‘celebrating queerness’, but that all came wrapped in stipulations and activism. Always a statement, a process of battling or quieting shame. Never before have I experienced such utterly shameless, sincere, and carnal fanfare for everyone and anyone who claimed the space of ‘woman,’ in such a way that ‘woman’ meant nothing more and nothing less than simply ‘human.’ Not for statements. Just because it made them happy.

It was as alien as it was beautiful.

It’s not that I felt like I was missing out. Or that I wasn’t sufficiently fanfared. There were other spaces that did the same for men, run chiefly by gay transmasculine people, and they seemed to be having a great time of it. I just didn’t personally care for them one bit. I wanted this.

Naturally, it was all only fantasy. Art and books. That’s great, but that’s not real. In reality I was a twink with a receding hairline. It seemed prudent to know my limits rather than get too hung up on the fact I couldn’t be a two-metre-tall lesbian cyborg.

Except that some of it is real. Not the cyborgs and werewolves, but the diversity of body; the desire for its freedom and customisation. Women discontent with taking simply what they’re given. Through acquaintance and anecdote, I met lesbians with the same ‘unnatural’ desire I’d had. Lesbians on testosterone, desiring embodiments which, according to all I’d ever known, were never meant to be. Lesbians who wished for phalloplasty or for top surgery or both; lesbians that went on T temporarily to drop their voices and grow more muscle and body hair. Lesbians that weren’t women at all. Only there was no DSM attached. No packaged deal of ‘total’ transition, no script, no chain of demands that followed one to another.

No requirement of man.

It felt like anathema—and like a revelation. Whereas before genderqueerness seemed hypothetical and divorced from my reality, now I suddenly understood it. Now that I saw it, I knew it.

And I felt only directionless, ennui-steeped anger. As if someone stole the last ticket to a train that would never again leave my station. I didn’t know—how could I have known? No shit the things that helped trans men didn’t help me. I looked at all the past incongruences I’d revised and sanded over to fit the fucking DSM transsexualism diagnosis, and found only someone groping in the dark for a path they couldn’t even imagine existed. Except this realisation was arriving some fifteen years too late. Had I been younger or born elsewhere, then sure, I could’ve been one of those lesbians middle-fingering gender and microdosing T. But I wasn’t. I was a man. And when I dared think of relinquishing my grip on manhood, memory clawed at me. The assault. The humiliation. The un-personing. What would I be asking for? And what would that even yield? Look in the mirror, idiot. You are a man.

It wasn’t a rational calculus of consequences. It was a buzzing storm inside my head, pitch-black, impenetrable. I’d long stopped seeing women in their totality as my conversion-therapy prison, but even still—to see myself attached to ‘woman’ even slightly, even tangentially, even if I wanted it—this all evoked visceral, horrible fear.

But: knowing that a problem has a solution only makes it that much more impossible to ignore. My off-handed remarks and jokes about my miseries had my transfem friends looking funny at me. As if they recognised something.

T.: do you mind if I ask what you conceptualize your specific gendered deal as, or is that invasive?

Me: great question, i’ll get back to you in 5 to 10 business years.

Although I still loved the early changes I received from my HRT, everything I’d accrued since then was undeniably eating me alive. It was becoming difficult to dismiss dysphoria as mere vanity or body image issues; through all my attempts to make peace with my flesh, nothing helped even slightly. When I stopped binding, that felt better. When I lowered my T dose, that accomplished nothing in particular, but it felt comforting in a placebo sort of way. I tried to schedule laser hair removal—and that was too much. I panicked. Too obvious. What if someone noticed? What if someone asked why? I couldn’t deal with it. What if my partner noticed? She didn’t sign up for this shit. She was dating a man. What if—

No, it couldn’t go that badly. My partner wasn’t like that. Still, I felt paralysed. If I just did nothing, it couldn’t get worse. No one needed to know.

T.: hey, what’s up with the depression beard? do we need to get you laser?

Fuck it. I understood what my friends were seeing in me now. At first I thought myself definitionally far-removed from any transfeminine experience, but now that I’d met trans lesbians in truth, I couldn’t stop noticing patterns. And I wouldn’t have treated a transfem friend with the same denial or nihilistic abjection that I reserved for myself. She would’ve deserved help. A way out.

Didn’t I, too?

Detransition, Lady

The date I mark as the start of my detransition is April 16th, 2024, although I wouldn’t be calling it that for a few months yet. It was the first time I told anyone I was not a man, and that I was a lesbian, even though I didn’t exactly feel like a woman. On the surface it seemed a small thing. I had not yet decided on any particular body modifications (except laser—god, someone flay that thing off my face), and I felt deeply uncomfortable changing my gender presentation too much. So it seemed almost a question of semantics alone. Inside me though, it was a titanic shift: I allowed myself to name that which I’d been avoiding at all cost. To voice a desire I thought would brook only disgust, humiliation, and exile.

It did not.

The reaction of my partner and friends was, across the board, positive—none of my worst fears came to pass. Apparently I’d been far too obviously depressed, despite my best efforts to hide it—and now, I was far too obviously happy and, as some put it, ‘unclenched.’ Nothing in my loved ones’ behaviour should’ve led me to believe they would ridicule and hate me; still, it felt monumentally difficult to stop seeing myself as uniquely undeserving and pathetic.

I pursued my detransition incrementally. I pinpointed sources of dysphoria and addressed them. Laser, first. When my droning bass baritone started getting on my nerves, ensuring as it was that I’d always be gendered male—voice training. Soon I discovered that, despite the kinship I felt with transmasculine lesbians, I did not quite belong with them; whereas they relished the virilisation they’d carved out for themselves, my situation was different. I’d lived as a man for far too long to experience the world the same way they did. Most of them did not share my degree of distaste and distress at getting dude’d and he/him’d; they did not quite match my flavour of alienation from ‘woman.’ They usually strove to distinguish themselves from the category that would have them stifled and consumed—whereas that category now repelled me almost definitionally, whether I liked it or not. When I braved the outside world, there was no amount of social signalling that would make strange cis women see me as akin to them, or at least as not akin to men. Often not even lesbian cis women. Markers of an androgenic puberty singled me out as something categorically Other, and I’d not yet been in detransition long enough to change that.

Only among the transfeminine was I witnessed. Trans women I didn’t know loudly and protectively she/her’d me. The pronouns I actually used at the time were they/them, and my internal gender was nil with a side of ‘dyke,’ yet I found myself unwilling to correct anyone who decided I was a woman. Trans women that did know me playfully teased me for being ‘transfem-coded.’ Beyond initial recognition of repeating patterns, I’d started to realise that of all the people I knew, I belonged with them the most.

It was… confounding. In a way, it made no sense at all. And there were clear lines that delineated us: they would not relate to my visceral hatred of my first puberty, and I would not relate to theirs; I did not share their childhood of a girl trapped among boys. My ever-unchanged legal sex now granted me a degree of protection they could never take for granted. My birth sex gave me leverage to sacrifice trans women for a shred of acceptance—to shriek that I, unlike them, was a real woman. Even when no one but them saw me as one.

But in my daily existence and in much of my psychology, I was indistinguishable from my transfem peers. I’d transitioned a decade ago, right out of school; socially, I’d once been a girl a long time ago, but never a woman. Now I danced a dance I’d only before witnessed as an outsider; longed for and imagined, never performed. I had not the same continuity of belonging that cis women did, and nor did cis women know what it was like to walk among men, a secret alien, slowly realising every step you take is wrong.

I supposed, it made an intuitive kind of sense. Transition works. Not my now-distant history, not my birth, and certainly not my chromosomes or genitals had made me somehow more innately or inexorably woman. As all transsexuals learn sooner or later, lived experiences and hormones trump the rest of sex/gender with ease. So, although I wasn’t a trans woman, when I applied the same logics to myself, it simply worked. Despite the imperfect match, all my current problems had answers from the same solution sheet, from the way I treated myself to the way others treated me.

Well, almost all my problems.

Now that I compared myself to women and not to men, body insecurity cut much deeper and bloodier. I despaired no one would ever believe I was anything woman-shaped; they barely did before I took testosterone. Which I was still taking. I looked at the small dose of T gel I’d been applying, then at the finasteride pills I’d been chasing that with. And I thought, What does this even do? What is this even for anymore?

Stasis. It was for stasis, and a little placebo. I feared that if I stopped T, I’d tumble all the way back into the spiral of dysphoria I felt as a teen and young adult. That my body—for all its flaws still mine, still fought-for, still tailor-made—would dissolve again into an adolescent blob hatefully sculpted by others into the image of a future child-bearer. Only now I hated most of my virilisation and would claw at walls if I received any more of it—and my fear was not exactly rational, was it?

I breathed out. The testosterone wasn’t going to spoil the moment I put it away. I could try, and if it didn’t work out—a short period of a second-and-a-half puberty could not be that extreme. Whatever new changes I’d cause would likely revert fast.

For a while, nothing much happened. Nothing dissolved or melted. But little by little, my skin smoothed; my face softened; my wiry limbs lost their mesh of veins. My hips and breasts, once so maligned, swelled and enveloped muscle. I didn’t look the way I used to—of course not. I was stronger and a decade older; all the things I’d done to build my own self did not vanish, but merely, well—feminised.

I’d never met myself in an adult woman’s body before. In a self-made body. Although this flesh too did not feel mine, but for a different reason; I felt as if the moment I looked away, it’d all be gone. It wasn’t mine because it couldn’t possibly be. I wasn’t allowed this, I was never allowed this—the only shape of woman allowed to me was future-husband’s broodmare, mummy’s doll. I wasn’t allowed this.

But I did want it. And now I knew I could have it. Now, that gnawing monster inside my head had dissolved like it was never there at all. No disassociation, no torment, no total death of all other desire, no compulsion to retreat from the real world into a singular fantasy. Just… me.

At almost midnight I walked into mine and A.’s bedroom rambling. What does it fucking mean to feel like something, like a category; I only ever feel like me; what does it mean when you’re a forever-outsider; what does it mean when it’s been used to fucking hurt you, how can you then feel like anything at all; but what if I want it, what if I want it anyway. What if I want to be a woman anyway, the way my friends are women. The way lesbians are women. What if I want to belong among them? How do I know if I feel it? How do I know I’m real? How do I know I deserve—

In a space where freedom is possible, how is anyone made a woman?

Blearily, A. looked up from her Crusader Kings and said, “Look, uh—it doesn’t have to be that deep. If you want to be a woman, you can just do that.”

Could I?

I knew my transfem friends could. They built new shapes of ‘woman’ to their liking, in spite of all outside insistence they cannot. I had no reason nor unkindness to believe that their efforts amounted to less or more than mine. If they could, so could I. If I saw them, they would see me. They already did.

Perhaps sometimes, what makes a woman is who she calls a sister.

Recommended Reading

On embracing the constructed nature of one’s sex/gender: Susan Stryker, My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage.

On the asymmetric forces behind patriarchal gender enforcement: Talia Bhatt, Degendering and Regendering.

#transfeminism #material feminism #detrans #detransition #feminism #lesbian feminism #sex is a social construct #gender is a social construct

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arcadia-of-pluto · 2 months ago

Text

LADS! Idol Group AU — The Boys

(art by @/AngyFdez on X and the idea was partially inspired by this post)

Hey guys! So this idea suddenly came to me because I realized I've been using "OT4/5" for the male leads in my works, and I noticed that no one else does that. I, then, realized why because they're not a k-pop group (I'm not sure if OT– is a k-pop only thing, but I've always seen it when I read bts fics). So, I thought "why don't I make them an idol group and continue using OT5 on all of my fics!" It's honestly so much easier than writing out ____ X _____ X reader.

First and foremost, a bit of backstory before I get into their character sheets!

Their company is called UNICORNS INC and Miss Grey is their manager. Sylus joined first, then Zayne, Rafayel came next followed by Xavier, and lastly Caleb was added! Zayne was 22, Sylus was 23, Caleb was 20, Rafayel was 19, and Xavier was 18. The next drabbles, besides the prelude, will be based five years after they've been a group and grew in popularity.

Each of their Y/n's will have a different name along with the Poly Y/n (who is their manager).

Zayne's Y/n — Petal

Sylus's Y/n — Kitten

Caleb's Y/n — Pipsqueak

Rafayel's Y/n — Cutie

Xavier's Y/n — Starlight

Manager Y/n — Grey

(In their respective drabbles, I will use Y/n, however these placeholder names will be used outside of that or the non-love interests will use she/her.)

Now, onto the boys;

⛄️❄️🐻‍❄❄️🐻‍❄❄️🐻‍❄❄️🐻‍❄❄️🐻‍❄❄️🐻‍❄❄️⛄️

Zayne Li

Stage name — Zayne // He has no need for special names or anything. He'll just stick with his own.

Fan-given nicknames — Z, Zaynie, Snowy,

Age — 27

Hair / Eye colour —He has hazel eyes and black hair. He will sometimes wear clear contacts during performances, so his prescription glasses don't get broken or lost.

Evol — Ice

Position in the Group — He is the Leader, Sub-Rapper, Sub-Vocalist, and he produces and writes a majority of their songs. He can't dance and doesn't bother trying. (He will attempt the simplest of dances on stage for the fans, but he does best with a partner.)

Sub-units — Snow Crow ⛄️🐦‍⬛(aka the Two-left-feet unit); This duo, while the eldest of the group, is somehow the most clumsy. Separately, it's not that bad. But when they're together, it's absolute chaos. They have to be choreographed far from each other or else they'll trip over each other's feet.

Emojis — 🐻‍❄⛄️❄️

Before Joining — Zayne graduated highschool at 16 and was the valedictorian. Before joining LADS, he was 22 and had been in medical school for 5 years, so he had a year left until he graduated. He thought being a doctor would be something he would enjoy, but all these years of school while watching his retired parents travel the world…It really tore him down. He realized he didn't want to be stuck inside a hospital for the rest of his life, working day in and day out. Yes, the thought of saving someone with his own hands did appeal to him, but it just didn't feel right anymore. The moment he was scouted, he jumped at the chance and dropped out without a second thought. He already had debt accumulated, so what harm would it do to add more to it?

Fun facts — He has a pet flying squirrel named Clopidogrel. If he overuses his Evol, it hurts himself, but he tries to hide this from fans and his bandmates.

Personality — He is usually calm, cool, and collected. He always cares about others more than himself, and puts others first. He keeps a close eye on his bandmates and makes sure no one is over exhausting themselves. He only ever loses his cool whenever Caleb or Rafayel willingly throw a challenge (on a show they're on) when they're on his team – just so Zayne is forced to take a punishment as well.

🖤❤️🐦‍⬛❤️🖤🐦‍⬛🖤❤️🐦‍⬛❤️🖤🐦‍⬛🖤❤️🐦‍⬛

Sylus Qin

Stage name — Sy // He would prefer Sylus, but it's honestly the fans’ choice

Fan-given nicknames — Sylie, Sy,

Age — 28

Hair / Eye colour — His hair is dyed white and he occasionally has his natural black roots showing whenever he forgets to touch them up. He has cognac brown eyes (brown eyes that are warm in colour with varying shades of orange and red mixed in – or simply amber eyes), he'll sometimes wear red contacts on stage.

Evol — Energy manipulation

Position in the Group —He is the Lead Rapper, Sub Vocalist, and The Center, He can't dance but will try regardless of if he gets laughed at or not.

Sub-units — Snow Crow ⛄️🐦‍⬛(aka the Two-left-feet unit)

Emojis — 🐦‍⬛❤️🖤

Before Joining — When Sylus was younger, he was rather sickly. He was born with a heart condition and so, to have a successor to his company if something were to happen to Sylus, his father adopted Luke and Kieran. Shortly after the twins were adopted, Sylus had open heart surgery and miraculously recovered. However, he didn't want to succeed his father, he'd rather the twins do so. In fact, Sylus has always wanted to be on stage – to see the world. After recovering from his injuries, he discovered an underground club, called The N109 Zone, and eventually became the leader of a rap group, Onychinus. With this experience under his belt, Sylus went to an agency and at 23, he pitched the idea of a band that used their Evols while performing. He originally wanted this group to be solely a rap group, but…plans changed.

Fun facts — He has a pet crow named Mephisto. He has to wear prescription contacts on stage, but otherwise, he rarely has any lenses on. He can still see fairly well, but he does wear his glasses whenever he reads. He has a scar on his chest.

Personality — He's another calm member. He tends to sleep more during the day and stay up late, so he's always a bit more quiet and sluggish on the days they have to record early. However, he also has a somewhat sassy and teasing side that always comes out whenever the younger members of the group try to pick on him. He's always down to do anything for the bit (for the joke), even if he ends up getting laughed at. He's an animal lover at heart and if he had his way, the LADS dorm would be filled with stray animals, so instead he makes constant donations to shelters.

🍎🐶🍏🐶🍎🐶🍏🐶🍎🐶🍏🐶🍎🐶

Caleb Xia

Stage name — Tango // He wants to choose a name that's more sentimental to him, something he was called in the past.

Fan-given nicknames — Cal, puppy

Age — 25

Hair / Eye colour — He has dark brown hair and has central heterochromia. His iris is lined with a darker blue ring, mostly a lighter shade of blue, with a thin yellow-green ring around his pupil.

Evol — Gravity manipulation

Position in the Group — He is the Lead Vocalist, Main Dancer, and Sub-Rapper.

Sub-units — Apple Fish 🍎🐠(also known as the Party Unit); Rafayel and Caleb are the hyperactive duo of the group. They're always seen playing around, pranking the other members, but when they're together on stage…They both captivate and amuse their fans.

Emojis — 🐶🍎🍏

Before Joining — He was a pilot at 20. He loved to take to the skies and feel so free in his plane. Since he reminded most of his co-workers of a dog, they would usually call him Tango – jokingly calling him to and fro like a dog, to which he'd happily go along with it. There was unfortunately an issue nine months prior to him being scouted. He had been flying for two years now, had more than enough experience, but he had his first critical malfunction. Doing some routine maintenance on one of the ships, something must've gone wrong and triggered an explosion. By the time Caleb woke up, he was already in the hospital and his right arm was gone. He got a hefty sum of worker's comp and more money on top of that to get himself a nice new arm. And while he was in his final stage of recovery, that’s when he was scouted. His childhood friend pulled a few strings, called in a few favours, and just asked the agency to try and scout Caleb out. That it would definitely be worth it in the end. And that’s how Caleb joined as the final member of LADS.

Fun facts — He lost his right arm in an accidental explosion that happened at his previous job. He wears contacts on stage that are purple. Only his right eye's contact is prescription since the blast that blew off his arm, slightly affected his eyesight. He had a malinois named Twix when he was younger (and he hopes to get another dog soon).

Personality — He's always been an easy-going, lovable person. He gives off “boy-next-door” vibes. He's hyperactive and teasing, and he's almost always seen smiling. Though, he does have his bad days…reminiscing on when he still had his right arm, annoyed by the phantom pains he feels. But, for the most part, he's a mischievous duo with Rafayel and especially so on stage. Never missing a chance to play with the confetti cannons or throw water into the crowd.

🌊🐱🐠🌊🐠🐱🌊🐱🐠🌊🐠🐱🌊🐱

Rafayel Qi

Stage name — Fay // Since he's one for dramatics, he wanted multiple stage names, but the company said no. So unfortunately, he can only have one. He really wanted to use Mango, thinking it would be comical to rhyme with Caleb's, but Mangos don't fit him…Then he thought of Durango, but again…it just didn't feel like him. Eventually he decides to just use his name, but only a part of his name. He settles on Fay, another variation of the word fae. As a Lemurian, any way to slot his culture (or anything similar to his culture, seeing as mermaids and fae are in the same realm) into his work is a win in his eyes.

Fan-given nicknames — Raf, Raffie, Fishie

Age — 24

Hair / Eye colour — Rafayel has dyed purple hair (that oftentimes has his light brown roots peeking out) and he has sectoral heterochromia. His eyes are half blue, half green.

Evol — Fire

Position in the Group —He is the Main Vocalist, and The Visual, The face of the group, He can't dance because of a previous leg injury, but still tries his best.

Sub-units — Apple Fish 🍎🐠 (also known as the Party Unit)

Before Joining — Rafayel was an avid painter, a well-known artist within the community. He went by the name, Tidus, and would often show up to his own exhibits in disguise to hear what people really thought of him. He was scouted by his agent Thomas and his main reason for joining was Zayne. He was curious as to why a budding doctor would leave five years of college behind to join an idol group and honestly – he also loved the attention. Sylus might've felt a little bit of panic whenever he saw pretty boy Rafayel waltz through the doors. Especially since he was a good singer. (Sylus was spiraling, at this point. “We're turning into an idol group, Zayne — why do they keep recruiting singers?”)

Emojis — 🐱🐠🌊

Fun facts — He has a pet super red half-moon betta fish named Reddie. He wears contacts on stage that are pinkish blue, they aren't prescription – he just loves the attention he gets while wearing them. His aunt, Thalia, is an extremely popular soloist. He originally wanted his official emoji to be a fish, however once the fans learnt of his aversion to cats...His emoji was already decided by the majority. 🐱

Personality — He's always been eccentric. He's energetic but laid back, domineering yet pouty. His emotions are constantly all over the place, but that's just something you'll have to get used to since this is just how Rafayel is. He'll stop mid-practice to paint, if he is hit with a burst of inspiration. He'll run around, demanding piggyback rides from everyone. He won't hesitate to take a photo or sign an autograph while out and about. He's always buying or wearing luxury brands and doing modeling deals.

🐥☁️🌟🌔🌓🌒🌑🌘🌗🌖🌕🌟☁️🐥

Xavier Shen

Stage name — XV (fifteen) // He honestly doesn't care for stage names. He wouldn't have chosen one if the agency didn't pester him until he finally did. XV means nothing to him, it just sounded better than any of the cheesy names the company tried to come up with. (Which was “starboy”)

Fan-given nicknames — Xav, Xavi, Starlight

Age — 23

Hair / Eye colour — Xavier has blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes.

Evol — Light

Position in the Group —He is the Sub Vocalist, Main Rapper, Lead Dancer, and The Maknae/Youngest.

Sub-units — Star Fish Apple 🌟🐠🍎 (aka the troublesome trio); While Xavier is usually laid back and sleepy, whenever he gets around Caleb and Rafayel - and is in the mood for mischief - these three are an unstoppable trio who will stop at nothing to annoy their, usually calm and collected, eldest band mates.

Emojis — 🐥🌟👾 (I know 🐰 is the obvious emoji for Xavier, but hear me out —)

Before Joining — He was the valedictorian of his class so many had high expectations of him. This would be a good thing since he passed all of his classes with flying colours and was on the track of being the val in college as well – but, his biggest problem was that classes were so boring. They were too easy for him, so he'd usually finish his work and nap until class was over. Or even nap during testing. It got so bad that he was eventually expelled and decided to just do part time jobs for money so he could rest more at home. He was scouted in a surprising way. The talent agents were off duty, just hanging out together, and they suddenly stopped at a café in confusion. The employee behind the counter had a long line, but it showed no signs of moving. They could hear the complaints from all the way outside, so whenever they entered the café, they had to do a double take. The negligent employee that was napping on the job looked ethereal. With the sun shining on his face, the talent agents bypassed the crowd, woke Xavier up, and gave him a business card so that he could call them later. Weeks passed with no answer, the agents go back to the café, learn Xavier was fired, and eventually find him selling flowers on the sidewalk for a nearby florist who was taking advantage of Xavier's good looks. That's when he finally gets scouted. Sylus is, again, distraught. Thinking “oh no…we were supposed to be a rap group”, but as fate would have it, Xavier was an excellent rapper.

Fun facts — He originally wanted a pet cat but, since Rafayel is afraid of cats, he settled on a turtle named Fluffball. He doesn't need contacts, his eyes are perfect and he loves to rub this fact in. The fact that every other member needs contacts besides him — until Rafayel smacks him on the back of the head, reminding Xavier that his contacts are also non-prescription.

Personality — While you'd expect the youngest member to be expression and bouncy, Xavier is quite the opposite. Though he has his spikes of high energy, he's usually very calm and sleepy. He naps while getting his hair and makeup done, during concert breaks, and he'll even sometimes fall asleep mid-interview. However, he doesn't have any medical condition, he's just sleepy all the time and there's nothing he can do about it. But when he's hyper, there's no stopping him. Whether he's hopping around like a bunny, peeking over his bandmates shoulders during interviews, putting his hand in anyone's pockets – he's just LADS’ clingy, sleepy, youngest member. But also, whenever he's happy, he literally glows (and the fans adore this).

That's all I've got so far!

I'm still coming up with more as I go along so let me know if y'all have any more nicknames ideas and the like! Oh, and the name of their fans! I was contemplating on using "Lovers", but I'm still not 100% certain on what to name their fanbase.

I have Caleb and Rafayel's Y/ns pretty much conceptualized since they were the easiest to come up with, however I'm still struggling a bit for the other three, along with the Poly Y/n. (This is going to be a drabble type of series, so nothing too intense or detailed.)

Also! Nobody come at me for changing three of their eye colours. This is an au and I think it makes sense for them to wear their specifically in-game eye colours as contacts since a lot of idols wear contacts on stage! Since irl Sylus wouldn't have red eyes unless he had albinism while Caleb and Rafayel would have to have some form of heterochromia to have their original eye colours.

I'm going to add this here as well, but this is an AU. Evols are present, but there is no threat of Wanderers. Only criminals who misuse their Evols, similar to the world of My Hero Academia and the like.

<3 I'll be back whenever to post the prelude! And also, if you're here for ToF, Divisa, or Inertia — I'll try to post on ToF and Inertia soon!

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oikarma · 3 months ago

Text

terrible things

pairing: max verstappen x reader

summary: people like to say love is a static thing-it sparks at first sight and never fizzes out. but maybe it just takes on a different feeling, quite like the ever-changing colors of a flame.

a/n: new month new ending! this is the last part to the number one girl series. hope you enjoy <3

part one / part two / part three

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

liked by 703,924 others

f1gossipofficial: Max Verstappen was spotted walking Y/N L/N to dinner from electric lady studios! Two things are on our mind: new music and an old flame.

tagged: yourinstagram, maxverstappen

view all 53,681 comments

user1: i feel like this is going to get messy real quick..

user2: MY YNMAX HEART 🥺 ARE THEY FINALLY TOGETHER

user3: hello? what about lewis FREAKING hamilton?

user4: not y/n in her homewrecker era

user5: woah woah she was there WAY before kelly user6: kelly and max announced their split months ago user7: ikr how are people defending her

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

@/charmschoolgirl She is definitely releasing new music. So happy! I hope the Grammy's don't snub her this year.

@/its2ayem freak bro 😭 she just said that her and lewis have never agreed to anything beyond friends & he is one of her closest friends

@/genericuser5 who is this diva 💜

@/bananas I lowk felt bad when the interviewer asked about Max. You could like...see it on her face. How she didn't want to talk about it.

@/charlesdannate but!! she said they were on talking terms again!! and they'd reconciled and also that photo of them leaving els!!!!!!! YN LOVE SONG ABOUT MAX?

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

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yourinstagram: TOO MUCH TO LOSE / FEB 2

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francolapinto: mother 🛐

user1: oh next year is going to be HELL for him user2: @/lewishamilton @/maxverstappen idek which one of you she's dating but DO SOMETHING yourinstagram: oh franco...don't you think i'm a bit too old for you? user3: @/yourinstagram y/n bae he dated a mother of like 3 kids or something age is nothing LMAOAOAO user4: franco's mommy kink allegations r never going away

user5: red is SO your color!!

user6: i love how even her looks r maturing? like on burnout it was all schoolgirl, teen, naive and this album is SERVING.

luxurylaw: pleasure to style you !!

yourinstagram: nono it was MY honor

user7: time to wager. is this a baddie (i eat men) album or a breakup (???) album

user8: well she's all cozy w max now so maybe something happened with lewis? user9: @/user8 WHYYY I LOVED THEM TOGETHER

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

r/popheads · 1 wk. ago jammies_on_all_night

Y/N L/N - TOO MUCH TO LOSE [MEGATHREAD]

This megathread is to be used for discussion regarding Y/N L/N's second album, as well as articles and reviews of the album. The album, Too Much to Lose, comes out at midnight in PST.

Please keep all reviews to the megathread - I will attempt to keep the post updated with reviews, please feel free to DM me if I've missed any.

Links to any leaks, as well as asking for any, will not be allowed in this megathread.

Album Links:

Spotify

Apple Music

TIDAL

Amazon Music

Tracklist:

we can't be friends (wait for your love)

prelude in e minor

cornerstone

tis the damn season

i love you, i'm sorry

heavenly

terrible things

don't look back in anger

This thread will be updated with important links for release day events, reviews of the album, etc.

ynsgirlfriend: I was expecting another pop-y album but this was so much more heartfelt. WCBF eats so hard. SO HARD.

↳ dannyric03: Love her growth. Also, the way the album goes from distancing herself (we can't be friends, duh) until the time is right and finding so much beauty in what time you have (terrible things). I don't even want to speculate who the album is about. It's...beautiful. ↳ User5: calling it rn. wcbf (wfyl) is going to be a smash hit on the radio

CharliesPrelude2: literally came up w my user after charlie's prelude (based off of chopin's prelude in e minor) SO Y/N ACKNOWLEDGED ME

↳ SalsaBird: LOL. Loved her on that track. Didn't expect them but they were haunting. Honestly, I'm surprised at how insane her vocals are.

Sharks1039: Trying to decode this. bear with me. [1/2] 1. we can't be friends (wait for your love) - i feel like this is pretty obviously about max. not exactly, bcs i think we've garnered it was y/n who left him first after THAT night (thanks burnout!!) but the fact that she's learning to live without him. even though she still wishes they could be friends. just my interpretation. 2. prelude in e minor - i don't know. it's beautiful. it's chopin. it's y/n. it's just there and a good transition into the rest of the album? it really cleared up my mind and helped me appreciate the other songs. 3. cornerstone - seeing that person in every place. "thought i saw you at the X, but it was only a lookalike." idk who's perspective this is supposed to be from. the message is imo such longing you look for it everywhere. 4. tis the damn season - i feel like the lyrics point toward max (hometown, etc.) but i also feel like we've never really seen anything in the last 4 years indicating a reunion like that. after we stopped seeing her and lewis (we saw them SM last year) i thought something might've gone wrong? i'm p sure they're still on friendly terms, they comment on each other's posts, etc. but less close. maybe some regret from her side?

↳ ApplestoApples: I KNEW I wasn't the only one who thought "tis the damn season" gave Lewis. They hinted at a sort of romance. Especially when Lewis visited Y/N in her hometown (they took a few pictures with fans who'd spotted them). "It always leads to you, in my hometown" is probably about her thinking a lot about that. Sad they didn't work out. Loved how well he treated her and how happy they seemed. ↳ Sharks1039: @/ApplestoApples how did i not know that. omfg it's so about lewis. ↳ Shakes1039: anyway part two of my yap. [2/2] 5. i love you i'm sorry - "you were the best but you were the worst, as sick as it sounds i loved you first" ??? i don't even know what this means but damn girl i hope you're ok now. 6. heavenly - this is such a love song. lowkey found it a TINY bit jarring when we went from ilyis to heavenly but it's more like. i love you (im sorry) to i love you (i'm not)? that's the only explanation i can think of. banger, though. 7. terrible things - MY FAVORITE SONG. ALSO SHOULD BE YOURS. "i can tell by your eyes that you're in love with me" hello. i bawled hearing this. i'm so glad she's found love because it seemed like the max thing shook her up so bad. "don't fall in love, there's just too much to lose ... i beg you to choose to walk away" oh my god. she still sounds pretty worried about how strong love is and how losing a loved one will hurt... 8. don't look back in anger - oasis cover. live. i feel like given the previous song (terrible things) it's like when you walk away to protect yourself from love, don't look back in anger. and at the end of the day, i think this is an album about max. some people talk about how she has growth through the album but honestly idrk about that. it's just her coming to terms with her actions. it's an album about being in love and all the bad things that happen when you're in love. it's an album about deciding to walk away to not hurt yourself. but at the end of the day, people are overcoming that desire to protect themselves. they want to love, even if it hurts.

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

liked by lewishamilton and 1,203,864 others

yourinstagram: hello everyone! happy valentine's ♡ i just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you for the support you have shown my music. everyone says this, but the songs i put out are pieces of my heart. they are lessons i have learned and stories i want to tell. some of you have already figured this out, but a little piece of advice:

don't be afraid to love. there are much more terrible things to experience.

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yourinstagram: i mean don't be afraid to love in reasonable circumstances!! 😭 don't be afraid to love if people discourage it, if your heart truly wants it. pls be afraid to love if you're being forced against your will. love you all so much, take care and make good decisions!

user1: she's so real for freaking out over misinterpretation user2: sorry ma'am reading fics of your man as a mafia boss has stopped me from mafia reasonable decisions

lewishamilton: happy valentine's, y/n

yourinstagram: hope the grapes did something for you user3: roman empire unlocked. user4: omfg 😭 not the grapes

user5: hold up. why is no one talking about that photo. it's not in any of her music videos?? she's in that dress in the dlbia live performance but WHEN WAS IT TAKEN

user6: i bet it's max. user7: it's totally max. user8: RELATIONSHIP UPDATE PLS @/yourinstagram

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

liked by yourinstagram and 5,019,432 others

maxverstappen: Home is where the heart is.

tagged: yourinstagram

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user1: HARD LAUNCH HARD LAUNCH

user2: it's real omg!!

user3: haven't seen y/n in ages THANK U FOR THE CRUMBS MAX

user4: the way he looks at her...

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

liked by 732,891 others

f1gossipofficial: Max Verstappen spotted crying after last Dutch GP. All our hearts are equally as heavy.

view all 13,405 comments

user1: poor man. last year of zandvoort. i'll miss it too

user2: i'm sure y/n will cheer him up! missed seeing her at the last few races

user3: omg what if she's pregnant... user4: girl 😭 i like to think max would've learned from kelly and put a ring on her BEFORE the baby user5: @/user3 yea the last photo we saw of her was like months ago and she was wearing a fur around her waist so we couldn't see much

user5: rip dutch gp.

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

maxverstappen: Life can do terrible things. But you are the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.

tagged: yourinstagram

Comments on this post have been limited.

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

BREAKING: Max Verstappen has retired from racing. He has reportedly moved back to the Netherlands with remaining family.

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

INTERVIEW WITH HUGH L/N-VERSTAPPEN

...

INTERVIEWER: Moving on, congratulations on the Best Actor award!

HUGH gives the interviewer a shy smile. He takes a sip of the coffee in his hands: Thanks. I was so surprised. I didn't think people enjoyed my performance that much.

INTERVIEWER: Well I guess you were proven wrong. How do you feel about following in your mother's footsteps, instead of racing like your father?

HUGH pauses before speaking: I suppose...I sometimes wonder if I would be suited for it. If I could've done more. At the end of the day, acting feels like keeping my mother's legacy. Many people remember her as my dad's wife, or just a songwriter. She went into acting because she loved it. I just wish she was more recognized for it.

[ There is a moment of silence as Hugh plays with the cup in his hands. ]

INTERVIEWER: I know your acceptance speech brought quite a few people to tears. It was very moving.

HUGH nods: I didn't mean to. I just wanted to thank my mom one more time. And my dad, too.

INTERVIEWER: It was a good kind of tears, I'm sure.

HUGH laughs.

INTERVIEWER: Which of your mother's songs is your favorite?

HUGH: Well, my dad used to try singing "terrible things" to me. He's not a great singer, so emphasis on the try.

INTERVIEWER: If I'm not wrong, the song does say "now son, I'm only telling you this because life does terrible things." Is it like a message to you?

HUGH: Yeah. I know the song is about how hard love is and how painful it is. But she did it anyway. What's my excuse? Life is short and there's so much to experience.

INTERVIEWER is handed a note. THEIR eyebrows furrow, looking at HUGH: Sorry, would you be comfortable answering a question about your dad? I know you only agreed to talking about Y/N. We can cut this part out if you mind.

HUGH shakes his head: No, it's quite alright. What was the question?

INTERVIEWER: Well, your father hasn't made any public appearances save for your Academy Award win. It's been many years...would he like to pass on a message?

HUGH: Oh, my dad loves to talk. Let me think. He's old, you know that. I think he enjoys the quiet life. He wouldn't survive in an F1 car nowadays, but he still enjoys driving.

[ HUGH thinks. The INTERVIEWER doesn't prompt him. ]

HUGH smiles to himself: I don't think he'll be showing up at any of my future premieres. Don't expect that. It's been a while, yeah. But he's happy with his years. He said he's close to seeing her again.

INTERVIEWER only nods. There are tears in both their eyes.

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

a/n: it's over! lowk felt bad for the ending. but i think i like it this way. sorry ynlewis stans. i just think. at the end of the day they would find their way back to each other.

#formula one #max verstappen x reader #formula one x reader #f1 #f1 x you #max verstappen #f1 smau #smau #x reader #oikarma ᯓᡣ𐭩

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ssa-dado · 3 months ago

Text

The Ship of Theseus (prelude)

Aaron Hotchner x fem!bau!reader Genre: fluff, hurt/comfort (?), pining - I really do suck at tagging Summary: Never fuck your boss. Never fuck your best friend. And definitely never fuck Aaron Hotchner. But you did anyways. And now you’re left with the post-coital edition of Mr. Practical and all the messy aftermath that came with it. And a makeout too. Apparently the big scary man fell asleep right into your arms. Warnings: It's mentioned that they fucked. Whoops. IDK. In doubt - +18 MINORS DO NOT INTERACT. No actual smut, but it's STEAMYYYYY... way too suggestive. Also, some cuss words here and there. Hotch being a softie. Word Count: 4.1k Dado's Corner: It’s a Chekhov’s gun of Ethics but without the actual gun… unless, of course, we’re talking about Aaron’s GUNSHOTS - oh, wait, there it is! The gun! Aaron’s thick, throbbing GUNSHOTS - oh shit, that’s so cool

masterlist

If there was ever an Olympic event for post-coital efficiency, your dearest friend – and funnily enough – your boss Aaron Hotchner would be taking home the gold.

Truly, what a sight to behold.

One moment, he was wrecking you within an inch of your sanity, and the next - barely a minute later - him and his ridiculously long legs were back in your bedroom, carrying a towel in one hand, a damp washcloth in the other, like the world’s most disciplined housekeeper.

So proper, so effortlessly composed, even now.

Because of course Aaron Hotchner - former prosecutor, Unit Chief, insufferable neat freak - would handle post-coital cleanup like it was just another task on meticulously organized, color-coded to-do list.

Sex: Completed (highly successful, performance rating: exemplary)

Orgasm(s): Confirmed (3, official review pending, though “best orgasm of my life” was strongly implied)

Post-coital hydration: Pending (but water bottle is within retrieval distance)

Aftercare protocol: Initiated (warm washcloth acquired, towel deployment imminent)

Debriefing & emotional processing: Ongoing (mission parameters unclear, subject remains evasive yet sarcastic)

Sheets: Ruined (replacement required, but can be postponed in favor of further activity)

Boss/subordinate ethical violation acknowledgment: Not yet addressed, deliberately ignored

Cuddling: Proposal under review (high-risk scenario)

Exit strategy: TBD (complications may include the inability to leave this bed for the foreseeable future)

And, obviously, you could not let him get away with that.

"Look at you, being all domesticated," you teased, propping yourself up slightly as he walked over.

"Someone has to take care of you," he shot back smoothly, dropping the towel onto the bed and kneeling beside you like this was normal.

Like you weren’t both still bare, still caught in the strange, floating space that existed after.

That was the problem, wasn’t it?

The teasing - the constant, insufferable push and pull - was easy. That was your rhythm. That was safe. But this was something else entirely.

Something that left you both a little flustered, a little unsteady.

Even you - you, who could talk your way out of anything, who thrived on throwing him off - found yourself at a loss, your mouth opening, reaching for something to say, for anything that would keep this from feeling like more than what it was.

But then he touched you.

Pressed the warm cloth to your skin with so much care, with so much intent, and whatever sarcastic remark had been forming on your tongue just evaporated.

It wasn’t fair how tender he could be, how his hands - capable of so much control, so much discipline - could be this gentle, this careful. On you.

"You don’t have to do that," you murmured, breathless and barely audible.

"I know," he said simply, his gaze flicking up just long enough to see you before returning to his task. "But I want to."

So you let him. Let him take care of you.

Let yourself watch him, tracing the way his thick brows furrowed with concentration because he wanted to get it just right, the way his jaw tensed and relaxed as he worked, annoyingly meticulous, like this was just as important as everything that had come before it.

Gentle. Steady. Intimate. Intentional.

In a way that made your chest ache.

In a way that made you terrified of what it meant - now that the lust had passed, now that you were both just... here, bare, with nothing but each other.

And especially when he started pressing slow, lazy kisses along your knee, your already-marked thigh, your hip - like he needed to, like he couldn’t help himself, like he wanted to remind you that he had been there, that you were safe with him, even now.

Every second was more devastating than the last.

When he finished, he set the towel aside and leaned in, pressing a kiss to your forehead, lingering there for a beat, then another, then another, until he could hear how fast your heart was pounding.

"There," he murmured, lips still brushing against your skin. "All set."

You shook your head, forcing a smile, forcing yourself back to safer ground. "So thorough, Hotchner. Truly, I’m impressed."

His mouth quirked, but apparently, he wasn’t done being insufferably tender, kissing your cheek up next. Wasn’t he just adorable?!

"I aim to please," it was so utterly him it made your stomach flip, but not even more Aaron Hotchner than when, suddenly, he was back to bossing you around in your own home.

"Now, we change the bedsheets, take a shower, and then I’ll see you back here so we-"

And then he stopped. Oh no. Cat got your tongue, bossman?

"We what?" you prompted, raising an eyebrow, watching with unholy satisfaction as the tips of his ears turned red.

He cleared his throat, hesitated in a way that was so unlike him it almost hurt to witness."We… could cuddle. If you want. Or talk. Or whatever you want to do, really. No pressure. I can leave, all you have to do is tell me."

The longer he spoke, the redder he got, his words tripping over themselves, and honestly, it was taking everything in you not to burst out laughing right in front of him.

"You’re adorable, you know that?" you said instead, leaning in to press a kiss to his flushed cheek, hopefully to calm him down – or at least that was your excuse. "Big, scary Aaron Hotchner, suggesting cuddling in the same breath as ‘no pressure.’"

You mocked him, because humbling him was your second nature, and judging by the glare he was giving you, you were winning yet another round. Still, you didn’t want him to just leave. That much was obvious.

He exhaled slowly, gaze steady. "So… what do you want?"

You pretended to think about it, dragging it out just to see that little furrow in his brow deepen.

"Well, I suppose I could settle for cuddling… " you mused, letting your fingers ghost along his shoulders, "but only if you’re the little spoon."

He scoffed, shaking his head. "Little spoon?"

Oh, wasn’t it just glorious. 2-0

"My house, my rules," you said smugly. "If you don’t like it, next time we’ll do it at your place, and you can do whatever you want."

And the second the words left your mouth, you definitely wanted to die.

Next time.

As if this was a thing. As if you had even talked about what it was, what this meant. As if you had acknowledged that what you’d just done was completely, wildly, against every rule in the protocol - and common sense as well.

Especially because he was your boss.

"I’m joking, of course," you backtracked quickly, though you felt the heat creeping up your neck.

"Of course," he echoed, but there was something in his expression, something behind his eyes that said he wasn’t entirely convinced, probably because he caught you with your hands in the cookie jar. "This was…"

Great. The talk.

"An accident," you supplied.

"Against protocol," he continued.

No shit, Sherlock.

"Because you’re my boss-"

"We work together," he chimed in, but his voice was softer now, trailing.

"Could cost us our careers," you pointed out, waiting for him to acknowledge it, to confirm the obvious.

"When there’s a pattern of offending behavior," he murmured, almost to himself, slipping into technicalities - because of course he would.

But then - he smirked. Just the slightest tilt of his lips, still – he smirked.

Oh.

And that could only mean one thing.

"A pattern," you echoed, watching him carefully.

And just like that, because he was only a man - logical, brilliant, but still just a man - he reached the same inevitable conclusion you had, just a breath later.

His fingers found yours, intertwining, and it was stupid how calming that simple gesture was.

Or maybe it wasn’t the touch itself but the truth laced between your hands.

Or maybe both.

Or maybe it was just this - how the whole conversation had shifted without either of you stopping it.

It didn’t mean you wouldn’t push and pull anymore. Didn’t mean you wouldn’t still play cat and mouse. You would. Just differently now. With your lips on the other’s skin instead of just grazing the air.

"We’re very good at patterns," he murmured, lips brushing your jaw, pressing a kiss there.

"At recognizing patterns," you corrected, your breath hitching as you tilted your head, catching the corner of his mouth with yours.

"What is a pattern, after all?" His lips moved along your cheek, his hands sliding up your spine, settling against your back.

"A repetition," you answered, barely above a whisper, pressing a kiss just beneath his ear.

"A repetition," he echoed, voice rasping, pressing one to the curve of your jaw.

"Exactly that." You murmured as your fingers traced patterns over his bare shoulders.

"Depending on a series of factors," he continued, shifting slightly, pressing another kiss to your collarbone.

"Such as…?" You exhaled against the bruise you left on his throat.

"Subjects involved," he murmured.

"Location," you supplied.

"A very important factor," he agreed, flashing his intoxicating dimples, nudging his nose against yours.

"Fundamental in analysis," you teased, smiling against his lips.

"If the location changes," he murmured, pausing just long enough to press a kiss to the tip of your nose, "the recognition of the pattern could be…"

You barely heard him, too focused on the way his breath ghosted over your skin, but still - hearing him talk like that, with his voice all low and thoughtful and dangerous, made you shiver.

"Devious," you countered, barely referring to legal theory anymore.

No, he was devious - the way his mouth was just barely touching yours, his hands skimming your sides like he wanted to devour you but was forcing himself to behave.

You've had enough. You tilted your head, catching his lips in a kiss, cutting off whatever legal analysis he thought he was about to give.

"Faulted," he corrected, the words slipping straight into your mouth, delivered onto your tongue by his, deepening the kiss without hesitation.

"You can never be sure…" your voice faltered, swallowed by the way he pulled you flush against his bare body, his fingers digging into the skin of your lower back.

"…if it’s the same pattern," he finished for you, just before his teeth caught your bottom lip, just hard enough to make you gasp.

"Or a copycat," you murmured, pulling back just enough to meet his gaze, feeling completely dizzy, straight-up autopilot - you barely even knew what you’d just said.

Judging by the way he chuckled, though, it was probably nonsense.

No, definitely ridiculous, because now he was repeating it back to you, still grinning, "…A copycat? You’re crazy."

Still, he never looked away.

Right… you definitely weren’t exactly talking about unsubs now.

"So one single act can still be admissible?" you asked, fingers idly tracing over his cheek.

"It was just a little lapse in judgment," he chuckled, but you could already feel the gears turning in that brilliant lawyer’s mind, already bending the rules in real time, looking for the inevitable loophole in the very system you both swore by.

"...At your place," he added, like that alone made all the difference. "And that’s just one location."

You smirked. "Not your apartment."

"To be precise," he murmured, his mouth brushing over yours, "it was just your bed… which means that technically-"

"Technically", you could still fuck each other everywhere else.

"Oh, I love the way your brain works…" you hummed, punctuating your words with another kiss, this time against the sharp line of his jaw. "So… not the shower."

And just like that, it became a game.

A list. A reckless, bucket list.

"The desk," he murmured, and fuck, you had to squeeze your thighs together at that one, trying so hard not to let your brain go there - not to picture which specific desk you wanted him to bend you over, not to imagine the feel of his hands gripping your hips, his voice low in your ear, telling you to keep quiet.

Definitely not the one in his office. No. That would be unethical.

"The kitchen counter," you whispered, voice already a little breathless.

"The floor," he added, lips dragging just beneath your ear, voice husky, teasing, unfair.

"Of all the rooms in this apartment…" you trailed off, tilting his chin just slightly so you could press a slow kiss right between his brows, smoothing away the tiny crease there.

"The couch," he murmured. Low blow.

You bit your lip, because that wasn’t fair, because now all you could think about was straddling his lap, sinking down onto him, rolling your hips while his hands dug into the flesh of your thighs, holding you in place, watching you come undone.

You had never wanted to ride a man so badly in your life.

"Against the front door," you suggested next

“The armchair” he added, and okay - so he really wanted you to ride him. Noted.

"The stairs," you countered, throwing something ridiculous just to regain some control.

"We don’t have stairs," he said, lips curving against your skin.

"Fine," you huffed. "The car."

"Backseat or front?" he asked, way too inclined to indulge in your proposal.

"Front if I’m driving," you mused.

He groaned at that, and you took the opportunity to press your advantage, brushing your lips over his throat, smirking against his skin as you felt something become quite… hard.

"My bed," he rasped suddenly, and damn, you knew you were done for the second those words left his mouth.

Because that - that was dangerous. The thought of being wrapped in sheets that smelled like him, tangled up in his warmth, surrounded by the scent of sex and sweat and that insufferable, frustratingly attractive man…

You would not survive it.

"The elevator," you rasped before you could stop yourself.

And that was when he froze - for half a second, you thought maybe he hadn’t heard you. And then-

"Jesus Christ."

"I don’t think that one’s possible, Hotchner.."

Still, his mouth parted, his pupils blown so wide there was barely any brown left, and for a second, you genuinely thought he was about to die right then and there. Would’ve been tragic, really - death by horny legal loopholes debate.

Explain that to Erin Strauss...

But then he groaned, deep and wrecked, dropping his face into your neck like he needed a moment to recover. Maybe he wasn’t going to die just yet.

"The elevator?" he muttered against your skin, muffled, bewildered, like he couldn’t quite believe he was having this conversation.

"The elevator," you confirmed, absolutely shameless.

"Jesus."

"I’d prefer it be just the two of us, if that’s not a problem for you," you deadpanned.

He let out a deep, suffering sigh against your neck, like he was physically restraining himself from debating elevator logistics.

"I don’t even know what to do with you," he muttered.

"I have some ideas."

He exhaled, then lifted his head just enough to look you dead in the eye. "We are never having sex in an elevator."

"That sounds like a challenge."

"That sounds like a lawsuit," he corrected, still so visibly distressed that you could not stop laughing.

"Thought you used to be a good lawyer, Hotchner," you teased, your fingers dragging lazily along his spine. "Wouldn't you know your way around a legal loophole?"

"Oh, I do," he sighed. "I also know how to avoid federal charges."

"You’re truly a prude."

"You're truly reckless," he shot back, eyes closed, mentally revisiting every questionable decision he’d made in the last hour… or maybe the last two…

Honestly, who was even keeping track at this point?

You smirked, shifting until you were draped half over his chest, resting your chin on your folded arms as you gazed at him. "Oh, c'mon, Hotchner, live a little."

His eyes opened just enough to give you a look.

You huffed. "Okay, okay, fine. No elevators. If you really wanna be lame about it."

"Thank you," he said flatly.

A pause. Then, you couldn’t help it. "The jet."

His entire body went rigid. You swore you felt his soul attempt to leave his body.

"The jet?" he repeated, voice hoarse.

You nodded sagely. "The jet."

"Oh my God."

You grinned, slow and so wicked. "Can you imagine it?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"Small, enclosed space-" you started.

"Oh my God."

"-turbulence, you pinning me against the-"

"No." He cut you off.

You cackled, absolutely delighted by his suffering.

"The team is on that jet," he tried to argue.

"Not always," you countered, “sometimes Strauss is there too.”

His entire face drained of color. For a solid three seconds, he just stared at you, mouth slightly parted, horror creeping into his very being.

"Get out."

You wheezed, collapsing against his chest, “Of my bedroom?! You can’t really dismiss me here unfortunately for you.”

"I don’t ever want to hear the words sex and Strauss in the same sentence again," he grumbled.

"I believe you just said them yourself, Hotchner"

A slow blink. A deep sigh. He was so close to reconsidering every single choice that had led him to this moment.

And yet-

Instead of answering, he just exhaled, letting his weight sink into you, his forehead dropping onto your shoulder like admitting defeat.

Because you both knew exactly what this was.

A game.

A flimsy, shameless, beautiful excuse to keep doing this - to keep falling into each other, to keep breaking rules and bending logic, to keep pretending it wasn’t something more.

But neither of you said that.

Neither of you needed to.

Instead, you simply thrived in the ineffable, in the space where words didn’t need to be spoken. In the way his body melted on top of yours, drawn to you despite himself, despite the attitude, despite everything.

Because with you, he could just be.

Simply, truly, exist in his truth.

Not Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner. Not the unshakable leader, not the man who carried the weight of everyone else’s burdens on his back, never allowing himself to falter.

Just Aaron.

The six-foot-two little spoon who swore he wouldn’t be, yet here he was, folded into you like he’d never belonged anywhere else, all because you’d jokingly set it as a condition for him to breathe this close to you.

At least, that’s what you told him.

But in reality a part of you wanted this.

A part of you wanted the man who always stayed close – from the victims, to the UnSubs, and everyone he cared about, always making sure he was the one who bore the weight so no one else had to - to have someone stay close for him.

To let him know what it felt like to be held.

Because the thought had been lingering at the edges of your mind for far too long now - unwelcome, unavoidable -

If he was there to protect everyone, who was there to protect him?

Not that you were volunteering. Not like that.

Actually if you said it out loud, he’d probably just laugh at you, and use that damned dry humor of his and tell you “How can you protect me if you can barely shoot?”

And you’d laugh, you’d tease him right back - and nothing would change.

But you knew the truth - you’d been his anchor for the past decade.

And so your fingers traced idle patterns along his back, thoughtlessly, feeling the tension unwind from his muscles, bit by bit, until there was nothing left but the slow, steady rhythm of his breathing, the rise and fall of his chest against yours.

"You’re warm," he murmured after a while, rasping at the edges, making your heart ache in a way you didn’t want to think too hard about.

"You’re a bit heavy," you murmured, lips quirking slightly.

"Mhm." But he didn’t move, didn’t even try.

You smiled to yourself, dragging your fingers gently through his short hair, feeling the strands slip between them, coarse and slightly mussed.

"You don’t have to do that," he said softly against your skin.

"I know," you whispered, your hand still smoothing over his back, still holding him close, like you weren’t fooling either of you. "But I want to."

A pause. A deep breath.

Then-

"Thank you," he sighed, pressing a barely-there kiss to your shoulder, too tired to move, too tired to do anything but exist against you.

Just holding each other.

Just existing in the same space, in the same breath, with no expectations, no pressure, no future to consider beyond the feel of his heartbeat against yours.

"You know, there’s a philosophical dilemma called the Ship of Theseus-" you started, your voice a gentle hum in the quiet, earning a small huff from him in response.

"It questions whether an object remains fundamentally the same if all of its components are replaced over time. If every original part is gone, is it still the same thing? Because technically, it’s not… if identity is tied to its physical components and not something more abstract, like function or form."

You felt the slow, subtle curve of his lips against your shoulder.

"Which brings us to," you added, lips curving now too, " is this even the same bed if we just change the sheets? On some criteria, following this logic… it isn’t."

A beat.

No reply.

Just the steady, even sound of his breathing.

And - oh.

Oh.

He’d fallen asleep on you. Mid-philosophy. Unbelievable.

Great. So apparently, you were the boring one now. Perfect.

But before you could dwell too much on your bruised ego, he stirred, mumbling something barely coherent against your skin.

"Mmmh… we change the sheets… shower… come back here and-"

“’And’ what?” You sighed, your fingers still lazily running through his hair. “Aaron, you sound like a low-battery version of yourself.” You huffed a laugh, shaking your head.

"M'practical," he slurred, as if that was a valid argument.

"You’re half-asleep."

"Still practical," he muttered.

"If you move, I’ll take care of the sheets. You go shower," you offered, voice quiet, fond.

He barely responded, just a low, unintelligible grumble against your collarbone before-

"Mm-mm… we don’t… shower together?”

You sighed. Of course that was where his sleepy brain went.

"Will we just shower?" you asked, knowing full well he wouldn’t have the energy for anything else.

A beat of silence.

Then, his voice barely above a whisper-

"What if we don’t?" he muttered, already half-asleep. "S’not against the rules…"

You laughed softly, shaking your head. "Aaron-"

"The ship… applies to your shower too…" his words trailed off lazily, completely nonsense, but you could hear the hint of a smile in them. "If you replace the soap… ‘s a different shower…"

Well, at least even in his on-the-brink-of-unconsciousness state, he was committed to following through with your logic...

"I’m saying this for your own good, Hotchner, because you really don’t have the energy for another round."

"I do," he grumbled, shifting, his arms tightening around you like you had to believe him.

"Sure," you murmured, kissing his forehead. "I’ll believe that when you make it to the bathroom without falling asleep in the doorway."

He made a low, unintelligible noise, like he wanted to argue, but his body had already betrayed him, too heavy, too settled against you.

"Go," you whispered, nudging him gently.

A deep sigh. Then-

"Fine."

He peeled himself off you with the effort of a man being dragged out of bed by force, his body moving like it was actively resisting him.

You bit back another laugh as he stumbled toward the bathroom, catching himself on the doorframe for just a second before disappearing inside.

And, of course-

When you finished your own shower and stepped quietly back into the bedroom, he was already collapsed against the bed, completely dead to the world.

Or so you thought.

Because the moment you eased yourself into bed, trying your best to be quiet, he shifted -

One sleepy, instinctive movement.

And suddenly, his arms were wrapping around you without thinking, his body curling into yours, his head tucking against the crook of your neck, snuggling.

Clingy.

"Annoying little spoon," you muttered.

You felt a muffled hum against your skin. "Next time… we switch."

You sighed, pressing a kiss to the top of his head, letting your fingers drift through his hair one more time. "Go to sleep, Aaron."

He sighed against your skin, warm and content, the weight of him only settling deeper into you.

"Mmm. ‘M already sleepin’…" he murmured, words barely holding together.

A beat.

Then, even softer-

"You should too… two hours ‘til work."

Oh, he just could not help himself - spent a full minute reminding you, over and over, that you just fucked your boss.

Damn it, Aaron. At least he could try to pretend...

"Actually, it’s one and a half." you bit back.

A pause.

Then-

"Shit."

Shit indeed.

Phi's Corner: BOTTOM HOTCH RIGHTS!!!!!!!! Also don't worry filthy goyals, you will be fed with some actual smut tomorrow. And probably some context too... maybe?!?! hope you enjoyed this anyways...

taglist: @beata1108 ; @c-losur3 ; @fangirlunknown ; @hayleym1234 ; @justyourusualash ; @khxna ; @kyrathekiller ; @lostinwonderland314 ; @mxblobby ; @oxforce ; @person-005 ; @prettybaby-reid ; @reidfile ; @royalestrellas ; @ssa-callahan ; @softestqueeen ; @theseerbetweenus ; @todorokishoe24

#aaron hotchner #hotch #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotch x reader #symposiumff #aaron hotchner smut

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gracieheartspedro · 1 year ago

Text

Your Needs, My Needs

I : Strawberry Wine

a masterlist of how you can help gaza

the prelude to this series

pairing: cowboy!joel x f!reader (no outbreak)

description: joel fixes your toilet but you can't help but yearn for more time with him. so you invite him to dinner and try to win his stomach? aka love?

word count: 3.2k words

warnings: there is no smut in this part. still MINORS DNI! no use of y/n! vague talk of reader's old life before texas, no real description of the reader, reader does have anxiety/mental illness that is not fully recognized/diagnosed, mentions of eating food, reader lives alone, reader got MONEYYYY, mentions of joel's ex wife (gasp), alcohol consumption, smoking cigarettes, kissing, flirting. all the fluffy stuff <3

author's note: hey...hey.... how y'all doing?? i'm so so so sorry this has taken so long. my life has been crazy for the last like 4 months and I'm finally getting settled into my life again. I miss y'all and I miss writing, so HERE I AM! I'm hoping everyone who wanted me to tag them months ago is still cool with me tagging them 4 months later lol. okay, lemme know what you think xoxo

Joel comes and goes for days. The first day he returns, he inspects your toilet again and tells you he has the wrong tools. You discuss a game plan and by his initial projections, your toilet should be fixed the next day. But when he fails to come by in the morning, you decide to call the phone number on the post-it note he left for you the day before.

The phone rings and you get an answering machine of a younger girl telling you to leave her and Dad a message after the beep. When the line lets out a long ding, you breathe out the random croak in your throat.

“Uh, hey, Joel, it’s me. Just seeing if you’re stopping by today. If not, that’s fine, I’ll be home all day today and tomorrow. Okay, uh, bye.”

Hours go by and you find yourself pacing, regretting your decision to leave him a message. What if he gets it and thinks that you’re crazy?

Ever since you had made his acquaintance, you felt completely reliant on interacting with him. It may be due to the fact that you haven’t socialized with anyone else in months. You were very good at isolating yourself, but lately, it’s been eating you alive being so alone. Now that you had this big house, the silence felt almost too quiet. Joel’s southern drawl and straightforward responses gave a bit of light back to your life.

Around dinner time, your landline rings. You practically fall over your couch racing to pick it up, hoping it was him.

“Howdy neighbor,” He grunts through the phone, “Sorry I didn’t come by today, hope ya didn’t miss me too much.”

You let out a dry laugh, trying not to sound too giddy about him following up with you. You were borderline pathetic.

“No, I just wanted to make sure you were still alive,” You manage to get out, “You are still alive right?”

“Still kickin’, just busy as all get out. ‘M fixin’ to head to your place now if you’re not busy.”

You look down at your pajamas and start to nod. It’s not like he can see you through the phone, but you are reacting to his words like he’s right in front of you.

“Sure thing, I’ll leave the door unlocked.”

“So… It’s really just you here? All by your lonesome?”

He’s messing with his toolbox, searching for the one tool he needs to fix the toilet. You stir your fresh brewed tea, ensuring none of the sugar clumps up at the bottom of the mug. You had offered him some, but he politely declined, telling you that he had a big dinner.

You take a sip, testing the sweetness. “Just me. How about you? Just you and your daughter, right?”

He laughs heartedly, turning towards you from where he’s squatted. You look at him with curious eyes, unsure if you asked the wrong question. He stands up, a wrench in his hand, a smile still spread across his face.

“Her mama left town with her new boyfriend about 5 years ago. Wanted the city life, not the life I gave her. It’s been just me and her ever since.”

So he’s single. You think to yourself.

You realize the laugh was probably because of how absurd and new it must be for someone to ask him about his life. He grew up here and you are positive everyone here already knew all about his business. You are a breath of fresh air for him.

Before the silence becomes awkward, you speak up. “City life ain’t worth a shit.”

“Yeah, she’s different. Won’t speak ill of her ‘cause that’s my bosses’ mama. She sees her now and again. They are just very different.”

The conversation comes easy with Joel. While the first couple of interactions you two shared were a bit strained, after days of small talk, you realize he’s the truest Southern gentleman you’ve ever interacted with. Polite with a little bite. He never speaks ill of others, except his brother. He loves to pick on Tommy. He seems like an attentive father. He loves to pick at you, always pointing out your Northern tendencies. Your horrible driving. Your accent and your speech patterns. But he’s also very complimentary. A couple of days ago, he remarked how nice your perfume was when you were standing close to him. It made your heart skip a beat.

And on top of all of those things, he’s very easy on the eyes.

“That’s mighty fine of you not speaking ill of your ex,” You try to drag out the silly Southern saying, which causes him to chuckle again. You smack your lips before continuing, “Wish I could do the same.”

You are not sure what he’s doing to the tank of your toilet, but you watch him strain to get a piece out of the corner with the wrench he has. He clenches his teeth, turning the piece to the left to loosen it.

“Exes are exes for a reason,” He grunts, fiddling with some more things in the tank, “I ain’t too hung up on datin’ right now. I got my girl and my horses.”

“And now you got me, your annoying neighbor who almost crashes into your horses and asks you to fix toilets.”

He breathes out loudly, “Yeah, ‘nother pain in my ass. Just what a man needs.”

The toilet is fixed too quickly. You had busied yourself with other small cleaning tasks that when Joel finds you in the kitchen doing dishes, he startles you. It took him about 15 minutes to finish the job and you had thought you could at least finish up the dishes you made from dinner.

“‘M all finished up. Gotta get back home to do some rounds at the stables,” He says as he waltzes over to your paper towel holder. He grabs a sheet and begins to wipe his damp hands, “Anythin’ else for me today?”

You turn off the running water, going down a list of fixes you could ask him to do. You decide it’s probably best to just ask him to swing by another day to help you with other things.

“No, thank you though, Joel. I am sure I’ll be by to ask for more help,” You chuckle, shaking your hands dry, “I owe you dinner or something.”

As you say it, it feels like all the air leaves your lungs. He’s staring at you and there’s a glint in his eyes. You are not that good at reading people, mostly because you are deathly afraid of being wrong. His eyebrows raise as he leans against the counter near you. He’s so close and in your space, but you try to push the thought of him coming onto you out of your mind.

“What’do you got on the menu tomorrow?”

His voice is kind of husky which makes your brain draw a blank. You wipe your hands on your pants before crossing the kitchen to check your fridge. You glance through your ingredients, settling for the only dinner item you can conjure up that his southern palette may like.

“Baked chicken and vegetables?”

He nods, tossing his paper towel into the bin beside you. “Yeah, I've been needing a home-cooked meal. Think I could come over at like 5? Tomorrow?”

You recollect a time when a guy showed interest in wanting to hang out with you outside of work. It had been years and he was not nearly as attractive as the man in front of you.

You nod slowly, trying not to look too robotic due to your nerves. “Sure thing, cowboy.”

You did not know what to wear. You contemplated going into town to see what the local boutiques had but you ran the risk of Joel seeing you out. You didn’t even know if this was a date.

You settle on a sundress you have owned since high school. It’s the perfect length and while your mind goes to wanting to impress Joel, you also need to be comfortable.

You cleaned your house, adding some new decorations to your living room walls. You even clean your sheets and make sure your bedroom is vacuumed.

When the time comes for Joel to arrive, you pace the kitchen anticipating the doorbell. You already had all the food prepped and ready to put in the oven. The vegetables have been cut and seasoned. Everything was just the way you needed it to be.

Joel gets there 5 after your scheduled time. When you welcome him at the door, his hair is styled and you can tell he put on his “fancy jeans”.

What you didn’t expect was the bouquet of flowers he had in his hands.

“Afternoon, neighbor,” He begins before extending the floral arrangement towards you, “My girl said I had to bring you something nice. Somethin’ bout being a gentleman.”

You smile widely, giving flowers all your attention. Even with the fragrant bouquet, you get a whiff of his sandalwood cologne.

“Nice to see you cleaned up for me, cowboy. Come on in, dinner is about to get put in the oven.”

You catch him scanning you up and down when you place the spread of chicken and vegetables on the table. He was in the midst of talking about his daughter and her band fundraiser, but he completely halted when you took notice of his staring.

You settle into the dining room chair across from him, waiting for him to continue, but he doesn’t.

“She needs more sponsors?” You break the silence, wanting to move away from the sudden awkwardness.

He swallows, reaching for the serving fork, “Oh, yeah. She needs to reach a certain goal to go on her senior band trip.”

You try to avoid his wandering gaze again, focusing on organizing your plate of vegetables. “Where are they going?”

“Disney. She ain’t never been out of Texas, so she really wants to go.”

You remember all the trips your family said they’d go on to Disney, but they never did. Your father could not stand being around his own children, let alone other people’s children. You think about how he used to complain about your constant questions, all the times he completely ignored you for your brother. You start to spiral, the anxiety creeping up in the back of your throat. You push your chair out from under the table, excusing yourself for a moment. You go to the bar you have set up in the living room and grab the only sweet wine you have. Strawberry. You grab two glasses from the top of the setup and walk back to Joel.

“Forgot wine,” you mumble, setting a glass in front of him, “You want some?”

He is already picking at his chicken, “Yeah, I’ll take some.”

You are quiet as you uncork it expertly, pouring it into each of the glasses. Joel watches you like a hawk. You can tell he’s trying to read your expression, so you try your best to remain neutral even though your hands are shaking.

You place the bottle in the middle of the table, making sure it’s easily reachable.

You finally sit back down, sipping the red liquid. The strawberry flavor isn’t very strong, it’s more like a hint of the berry. You had gotten the bottle from a roadside stand in Kentucky. An older lady who must have owned a vineyard nearby was selling them for $5 each. You told yourself you would only use it for a special occasion. This event seemed fitting.

Wine always makes you flushed, but you are always a bit flushed around Joel. Even more so when he’s watching you so intently.

After a couple of sips, you finally rest your shoulders and begin to eat your dinner.

“I could sponsor her,” you finally say, returning to the previous conversation. For some reason, you felt obligated. Joel quickly retaliates, shaking his head as he chewed on your roasted veggies.

“You ain’t gotta do that, doll.”

The nickname rings in your ears. You take another sip of wine. You can tell Joel notices your reaction because he smirks with his mouth full.

“But I want to, Joel. I’m sure she has worked hard her high school career, she deserves to have fun.”

He hums, but still shakes his head negatively, “I can’t let you just pay for-”

“You can and you will,” You enjoy another bite, smirking at your defiance towards him. He looks perplexed. “So when is this fundraiser? Is there like a dinner or something?”

He finally caves, “This Friday at the school. It’s a dinner and auction. I guess if the kids don’t find their sponsors, some local businesses are willing to sponsor them.”

“Are you going?”

“Yeah,” He cuts up his chicken, “I guess you’re gonna come along, too, if you’re givin’ my girl all that money.”

“Does a check work?”

He sits back in his chair, already finishing off his wine, “You seriously don’t have to-”

“What are neighbors for, Joel?”

He nods, “You mean friends.”

You furrow your brows, trying to let your hazy mind find a time when you called him your friend. This was a new development.

“Friends, huh?”

He pours more in his glass, “Well, I’d like to think so.”

The wine is hitting your system and you realize your arms feel lighter. You grab the stem of your glass and tip it up to down the rest of the alcohol. Joel’s eyes are trained on you, waiting for a snarky response.

“Do friends stare at other friends like that?” You pour more wine for yourself. You realize he’s done eating so before he can respond to your flirtation, you speak up again, “You done with that?”

He looks down at his empty plate, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Yes friends look at other friends like that, or you’re done eating.”

He grins, “‘m done eating, doll.”

You two find your way out to the rocking chairs. They were left there by the previous owners and you could tell they were probably as old as you.

You had another full glass of wine, sipping it as Joel lit up a cigarette. He admitted it was only a bad habit when he was drinking, which was rare. “Sarah gets onto me when I have even one beer. So this has gotta be between us two.”

You swirl the crystal, watching him carefully take a drag of the stick. “Your secret is safe with me, cowboy.”

He giggles as he lets out a huff of smoke. “I haven’t had secrets in a long time. Guess I’m lucky it’s with the town stranger.”

The statement hits you in the very pit of your settling tummy. You furrow your eyebrows, leaning forward towards him. Your chairs are not that far away from one another, so this is probably the closest you have ever been to him except for that one moment in the kitchen.

“Luckiest man in Texas that’s for sure,” You muster, averting your eyes. You could not stare into his beautiful brown eyes for too long. “Having the privilege of getting me out of my head. No man has done that in years.”

“What? You not good at letting loose?”

You shake your head, knowing that he did not understand what you meant. You take a moment to inhale, finally glancing up at him again. “I think I may just be cursed.”

“Now, why do you say that?”

You contemplate spilling the beans. Letting your heart fall onto your sleeve after years of shielding it from anyone who looks your way. Your lips part, but no words come out. It’s just the sounds of the cicadas.

“As soon as something is good, it gets bad somehow. I don’t even get a moment to savor it.”

You feel the statement down to your bones. The last time you felt settled in your own life, the rug got pulled out from under you. You cannot remember a time when you truly felt present in a special moment. You always felt like you were floating outside of your body, watching things happen and never really truly feeling anything.

You don’t expect him to lean closer to you, “Whatever happened before you got here, you ain’t gotta worry about it anymore. You obviously put distance between you and what happened for a reason. Let this little side of the world be your home now.”

You push your spiraling thoughts away, letting him be right.

“I’m workin’ on getting settled. It’s easy when you have a handsome cowboy to help along the way.”

It comes out like word vomit. Between the wine and the nerves coursing through your entire being, you can’t help but admit your little crush on the man. You slap your free hand over your forehead, admitting defeat before he can even respond. You knew he would take the comment and run with it.

“You always flirt with your friends, sweetheart?” He was toying with you, which was a good sign. If he wasn’t interested, he wouldn’t call you such a thing.

You smile, releasing your face from your hand. His eyes are tracing every curve of your face, a subtle pass that you did not capture quickly enough.

“Only ones that fix my toilets.”

And then, he kisses you. It happens so quickly, that you don’t fully grasp that it’s happening until you're molding your lips into his. Once your buzzed brain picks up the fact that the man you have been crushing on is kissing you, he pulls away. Your eyes are still closed, your hands still gripping onto your wine glass.

He huffs loudly and stands up quickly. Once you place your eyes on him, he’s pacing around the back deck stairs, not too far from where you’re sitting. You instantly bite back the urge to ask him what’s wrong, because there’s always something wrong.

“‘M sorry, sweetheart. I should’na done that.”

He instantly regretted it. The thought made your throat tighten. He continues to walk back and forth, causing a draft.

“It’s fine, Joel. I’m n-not mad.”

He shakes his head, halting his robot-like movements. He finally looks at your pitiful expression and lets out a long sigh. “I don’t think I’m much of a gentleman, kissing you on the first date.”

You watch as he places his hands on his hips, contemplating his whole life right before your eyes. You realize he is too traditional to see that nowadays, people are sleeping together on the first date. First base is nothing. You rest your glass on a decrepit table next to you and stand up.

You slowly approach him, trying to catch a glance from him, but he continues to avert his eyes. You grow bold enough to tilt his chin towards you, letting your guard down for a moment.

“You’re such a gentleman, it hurts,” you whisper, slowly letting a smirk grow across your face. The comment makes his shoulders lower, finally relaxing from such a heated moment.

“Just don’t wanna mess this up with ya,” He murmurs, only letting you and the nearby fireflies hear you, “I enjoy spending time with you.”

You slowly lower your hand to your side, trying to act casually about the confession. But the truth is you want to run and wake up every cow and horse within a 10-mile radius with a squeal of delight.

“I like spending time with you, too, Joel.”

He takes your hand as you say it, bringing your knuckles up to his lips. His breath is hot on the back of your hand before he says, “Well now, I quite like the sound of that."

taglist (some of y'all can't be tagged, I tried lol)

@midnightdragonzero @casssiopeia @anoverwhelmingdin @notsosecretspy @raindrcpsangel @art-estrange @misstokyo7love @lizzie-cakes @d1lf-loverrr @ashleyfilm

@blckbrrybasket @cande-beggins @gloryekaterina @lilyevanstan1325 @frogtape @jamesdeerest @mellymbee @arrowsandanchor @polishedtaylor @harrieandharassed @ranahx @youwouldntdownloadapizza @jmillersgirl @wintersquirrel @stefanibear003 @joliettes @startsm00n @abbsfrommars @76bookworm76 @youotterbekiddingme @jodiswiftle

#joel miller #pedro pascal #joel miller x reader #joel miller fic #joel miller smut #joel miller tlou #joel miller fanfic #joel miller au #joel miller the last of us #tlou au #pedro pascal characters #gracieheartspedro

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bruhstation · 5 months ago

Text

hello tumbled er

greetings and salutation. it is I, senja heterocaine, speaking to you through your favorite home screens. now you might be wondering: where on earth has senja heterocaine disappeared to these past 5 months? well the answer is as simple as it gets

I focused on my studies.

well yes that is the main reason. but that's like the nerd "obvious" answer. there’s other reasons too. some of which includes me getting into new interests, revisiting my old, hibernating interests, getting involved in university organizations and events, getting more involved in big family stuff since I'm the oldest and the only of-age grandchild of grandma from mom's side.... lots of stuff

so I just finished the third semester of premed school right. honestly speaking, with how I was losing motivation on drawing, the art block post-art fight, and lack of time, I decided to well, take a break. and it’s pretty convenient too since it was early on in the third semester. during the entirety of it I was feeling pretty proud of myself like "oh I've been studying a lot. I've taken a break from drawing and blog stuff. surely things will get better" and it did! not immensely but it's significant enough that for once I don't feel an indescribable sense of terror after the semester ends. the focus of this semester was about reproduction systems and growth and development which is pretty fun? we get to use models and medical phantoms hands-on and poke them with needles and other rube goldberg contraptions. I did miss breeding bacterias in petri dishes and seeing my friends burn the microbiology lab’s ceiling like last semester though. my grades are also improving… slowly but surely

(aftermath not pictured: me lounging on the couch scrolling through quora to see if there are people currently in college wanting to drop out)

maybe I was aiming too high. at least my grades are better than the previous two semesters and my social life is much better than it was back in high school. speaking of exams -- I went through my first osce exam around a week ago (practical exam to see if you can actually perform the skills labs lessons from the entire semester like you're a real physician). it was the most terrifying day of the month. my dentist said I have a big tongue and that’s why I can’t speak properly if I’m being too fast. ntm I WAS NERVOUS!!! MY FIRST OSCE!!! with how I memorized everything I needed, I was pretty confident that I'd pass, though. I didn't and retook the exam the next day. the prelude was the worst crash out ever

ah ptooey. I'll just take it like a champ. my tutor who's 3 years older than me and currently in the anesthetic rotation of co-ass told me that things will get easier but that's very subjective. he's a medical olympiad student after all. my parents are pretty happy though with how my academic life is becoming better so that's that

LETS MOVE ON TO SOMETHING LIGHTER. section B: what I've been getting into ever since bruhstation was put on cryostasis

you know Transformers One (2024)? the transformers movie directed by josh cooley? based on the Transformers(tm) franchise by Takara Tomy and Hasbro? most tragic break up movie of the decade? I watched it twice, squealed once, and left me broken and inconsolable for weeks on end. it made me revisit my dormant transformers interest after 5 years. I've reread the idw comics (mtmte, LL, taao, main transformers comic), and is currently checking out more (reading the wreckers saga right now). god it made me miss rodimus and friends' zany space opera adventures. I've always envisioned casa tidmouth to have the same tone as mtmte... the oftentimes dark humor, fridge horror stuff, weird magic/science, the roller coaster of emotions, confronting the past... its crazy good.

stories where misfits and knuckleheads band together in a confined space while having crazy doctor who-like adventures am I right. like I want casa tidmouth to be like that. remind me to thank 14 year old me for this trip down memory lane. and as usual, I tend to make self-indulgent crossovers of any interest I'm thinking about at the moment with casa tidmouth

a terrifying sneak peak on what's to come.

I've been working on my oc projects too. you may have seen some of them on artfight (graciela, saudade, altair, etc) but I've been focusing the most on graciela and saudade's universe, children's heterotopia. it has the largest amount of characters in any story I've created (not counting casa tidmouth), the most effort put into planning the stories and weaving in its themes about capitalism, patriarchy, period-typical bigotry, etc. there's human experimentation and they're given powers that range from punching super hard to time and space displacement. I also inserted whatever I wanted into the story. sure, yes, there's a lesbians-only organization of which its members are named off the knights of the round table, theres a mafia that focuses more on the family drama and attempted parricide from all angles, and tragic assassin maids of which their names are wuthering heights references. also if you've been following my main tumblr hajimedics for a while, you might've seen my three fairly oddparents ocs. well I've given them the tezuka star system treatment and inserted them into children's heterotopia as well.

I've also gotten into UTAU production! I've made a number of UTAU covers but haven't uploaded them to youtube. only shared them around with my friends on priv twitter. a good friend of mine assisted in the creation of my own UTAU voicebank! their name is TORKA (like "torque"), their voice bank has a slight accent when singing in japanese (because I'm their voice lol) and CV-only, their in-universe lore is that they're an intergalactic train conductor picking up wayfarers and outcasts trying to find a place in the vast universe, and I love them dearly

moving on! this is a thomas the engine and company blog THIS IS A LIFE UPDATE POST

I'd rather not discuss about how I'm doing mentally in deep detail BUT what I'll say is that I can't confidently say "I'm doing better" or "I'm doing worse" because it always depends on the days. things are okay-ish nowadays. some days are scary. some days are boring. I still experience delusions, (ironically) worried about my anhedonia, and believe that certain bouts of confidence will trigger a jinx, but I think I've been controlling myself well? at least? I keep internalizing the belief that I'm an adult. 20 years old. I have to act accordingly and my life in real life is ten times more important than the internet. things are going to change more and more once I graduate premed and began the co-ass program. I have to think 10 steps into the future. building successful connections before you turn 30. sigma grindset and all that. sorry that was my father using my body as a spirit medium

AND ALSO. ALSO. BACK TO THE BLOG DO YOU GUYS REMEMBER THAT ONE TIME I PROMISED TO MAKE A COMIC BASED ON THE RESULTS OF THE 1000 FOLLOWERS POLL AND NEVER DID UNTIL NOW. I'm terribly sorry. I promise I will get into it I SWEAR procrastination is kicking my ass. I have to plan the dialogue and script and stuff AND DRAW BUT

BUT HERE’S THE FUNNY THING

THE BLOG REACHED 2000+ FOLLOWERS A FEW MONTHS AGO

NOW WHAT DO I DO TO CELEBRATE?

I don’t know honestly. I haven’t done the 1000+ followers celebratory comic, and NOW I HAVE 2000+ FOLLOWERS. THERES 2000+ OF YOU NOW!!!!! THAT’S CRAZY (IN A GOOD WAY)!!!! I thank you all for sticking with bruhstation through thick and thin for around 2 and a half years. I’m glad for all your support, fanarts, asks, and such truly. like wow. 2k. in such a short time too! thanks guys. admittedly, I feel kind of guilty to leave everyone hanging for months with nothing to give, especially with such a high follower number. and realistically? I don’t think I’ll be able to draw as much as I used to. like I’ve said earlier, I’ve been busy with my personal life and oc projects. it’s not like I’m abandoning this blog any time soon? I’m just speaking from a logical perspective, given my status as a student and (possibly, hopefully) future doctor too. I don't want to burn myself out posting like thrice a week, answering asks daily, I want to take things slow. at my own pace. maybe I'll focus on designing side characters as well and thinking about their roles in the story! but that's for another day. I’m just glad everyone’s still sticking around and enjoying my silly stuff

I do want to draw more for this blog! I want to put thomas and co. in more situations. make them dance for all our entertainments. but when you’re an adult, you realize that you have your own priorities. you can’t always do the things you wanna do. you can’t just drop something you don’t like out of the blue. sometimes you have to sigh, scratch the back of your neck, and brave it while saying “I sure am getting old”

oh and also I'm a butch lesbian now. still he/they (heavy preference on he/him), still preferring masculine terms like "mr", "sir", "guy", still as crazy as ever. still aroace too and not interested in dating, something that's been a constant in my identity ever since I'm in early high school. little have changed I can assure you this. I am still senja. senja heterocaine from the net.

and thus concludes senja’s life update post! what will the next post after this be about? something gordon-centric again? serious colored art? old men yaoi? silent hill UK localization? place your bets. everyone loves a good laugh

#life update post: now with illustrations #zin.txt #thomas the tank engine #ttte gordon #ttte james #judea (oc)#casa tidmouth #tugs zip #tugs ten cents #fortezza bigg city #very long post #senjart

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clegfly · 1 month ago

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OUGH FINALLY FINISHED MY FIRST PROPER FANART FOR THE @omorithedreamermod PRELUDE… AT LAST!!!! Had this done for a while but kept putting off doing the background. Not the biggest fan of how it turned out in the end but we BALL!!!!!

Anyways. Below is a sappy little ramble about how much this mod means to me so. 👇👇

I’m not sure how to begin this without sounding REALLY corny, but this mod means the absolute world to me. It is my genuine opinion that it is equal in quality, effort, passion, talent and impact to the base game so far.

I’ve been in the modding community for omori for a while (since late 2021 I believe?) and I’ve never been actually active in it, but as I watched more mods being developed I always wanted to see something like the dreamer- a faithful continuation that both felt like omori, but had its own identity too. When I first played the demo back in December, I felt genuinely overjoyed at what I was playing, because the dreamer achieves what it sets out to do so so perfectly- it is extremely faithful to the game.

Every little detail, dialogue and secret brought me back to experiencing omori for the first time all the way back in 2021. Feeling for these characters in the same raw way I did back when I experienced their story for the first time years ago, in a way I never thought I could again. Seeing the game I loved, the characters I loved, the world I had fixated on being given the promise of rejuvenation in that demo brought me indescribable excitement- and then the prelude came out.

And the prelude was even BETTER. I’ve mentioned it a few times, but for the prelude, I actually decided to record my play through, something I’d never done before! It was mainly for note-taking purposes for analysis (expect a big one on stranger at some point…), but I’ve found that for the past couple weeks when I’ve been listening back to those recordings, listening to my commentary, I can’t help but notice the pure emotion and joy in each thing I said. This mod made me SO happy I can’t even put it into words.

Otomerson, and everyone else that worked on this masterpiece, I actually cannot express how amazing and brilliant each and every one of you are. You brought this game which I didn’t know I could love and appreciate any more than I already did new life for me, and you let me, and so many others, play it for the first time again, experience the story and observe these wonderful characters for the first time again, cry for the first time again. It was so moving, so fun, so beautiful- like GOD I sound SO CORNY but it’s the truth. You are so AWESOME. Be SO proud of what you’ve made!!!!!

I’m not sure how to end this- I don’t want it to be too long and too weird and sappy hehe but I haven’t felt like this since I first completed omori. The dreamer is a masterpiece and if you haven’t played it yet I HIGHLY recommend you do- you won’t regret it! I’m UNFATHOMABLY excited for December- I can’t wait to see what otomerson and the team make, and to finish this familiar yet new experience. Remember to pace yourself, everyone!!!! You’re all amazing!!!! :D

Anyways… this is DEFINITELY not gonna be the last the dreamer art I make so hopefully the next few will be better SHSJSJSJ I just didn’t want this simmering for too long… also here’s the lads without the background and lighting!!! Since I actually really like how they turned out…

Look at them!!! The sillies!!!!!!!

Anyways. Long post. Sorry HEJDJSJ. I’ll make more stupid doodles of these guys in the near future but for now here they are!!! Woo hoo!!!! Go play the dreamer!!!!!

#omori #omori au #omori mod #omori the dreamer #omori sunny #omori stranger #omori basil #god this mod…. oughhh #I tried to make sunny and basil look kind of. I don’t know hazy on purpose but it looks a little strange… ough #that’s okay thiugh!!! I’m still proud of this :))) even if the background is rushed…#my art

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interlunium-opus · 4 months ago

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►DANCING WITH THE DEVIL #004: Prelude [Sunghoon.]

Abstract: Eight years have passed since you betrayed Park Sunghoon, leaving his fate shrouded in uncertainty. You thought you'd left that world behind, but the serial killings in the capital city —which bore a haunting resemblance to that in your past—pulled you right back into the shadows you once escaped. What began as a quest to prove your worth soon unraveled into something far more sinister: a labyrinthine network of power, deceit, and danger hidden beneath a veneer of opulence.Now, amidst the grandeur of a castle steeped in blood-soaked tradition, you find yourself, once again, entangled with Sunghoon—a ghost from your past whose motives remain as inscrutable as ever. The stakes are now higher, the games deadlier, and survival feels like chasing a mirage. As you navigate a web of twisted rituals and deadly alliances, the tension between you and Sunghoon ignites once again.But this time, the game is different. With whispers of betrayal and lingering wounds threatening to consume you both, you must decide if trust is a risk worth taking—because in doing so, you are not just exposing the truths they've hidden, but also the feelings you’ve fought so hard to suppress and bury.

Parts ‣ #001 | ‣ #002 | ‣ #003 | ‣ #004: Prelude | ‣#004: Finale

Genre: vampire!sunghoon | horror | thriller | fantasy | romance (or is it? 😋)||| wc: ~31.7k

Featuring: Anton from Riize. [ PSA! ] There's also a Jaeyun here -- this is actually Enhypen Jake lol. Soz, no one fits the role that Jaeyun has in here better than Dark Blood Jake so I plead you guys to just go along and imagine that the Jake in Part 1-3 and Jaeyun in this Part are two different people ((who happen to look alike)) HAHAH

Warnings: blood; violence; injuries (some are self-inflicted); suggestiveness (some are forced); mentions of crimes (missing persons, murder, serial killings); manipulation; toxicity; trauma.

A/N: A re-upload since my initial one got comm-labeled 💀

— i

You have never for once thought you were safe from his clutches—not after he vanished; not after you’ve moved to the Big City and left it all behind; and not even after 8 full years had passed without any hint of him and his kind terrorising your life.

But 8 years was indeed a long time—long enough to make you almost want to believe that it was all just a fever dream especially when your traumatic memories have now been reduced to dubious patchwork of images in your mind.

Until, that is, the odd happenings cropping up around the city in recent months began to bear an eerie resemblance to those from 8 years ago.

“You sure about this?” Anton’s voice cut through your thoughts as the van pulled to a stop near an abandoned alley. Your colleague’s expression was tight, his concern unmistakable. You didn’t look up, eyes fixed on the heatmap glowing on your laptop screen—a web of red nodes clustering around several locations with grey nodes showing your predicted ones.

You’d spent months perfecting this quantitative model and simulation, and this little incursion into the field was a risk you were willing to take to prove it worked, “this district is the next likeliest place. Just a glimmer of evidence from here can really set the whole ‘drug epidemic’ story down the drain.”

“I didn’t mean the location,” Anton sighed, “I meant about you being the bait. You don’t have to take things this far. What if, like they say the serial killings are just the product of yet another drug epidemic? It checks out—youth, homeless, poor, dubious backgro—"

“Then I’ll come out of this little project unscathed,” you cut him, “and you can say ‘I told you so.”

“And if you’re right?”

The question hung in the air, heavy with unspoken implications. If you were right and it wasn’t just a drug epidemic, then it is indeed something far worse. Something beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. Something you’d hoped never to face again for it was the very reason that had once brought you so close to death.

"then I get to say I told you so," you replied, forcing a grin that didn't quite reach your eyes. You, of all people, knew if what you suspected was indeed true and something goes wrong tonight then you might not actually make it out alive.

Steeling yourself, you stepped out of the van, pulling your coat tighter against the night’s chill. With a final glance at Anton and the rest of the unofficial team, you gave a curt nod—a silent signal that the plan was in motion.

Truthfully, you’d never planned to get involved in this case—or any case for that matter. You were just a data analyst, seconded to the Ministry of Justice to modernize their outdated systems. It was supposed to be a safe, back-office job. But fate had other plans.

When the first odd killings started cropping up, you’d recognized the signs immediately. The patterns were unmistakable—just like the ones from eight years ago. Still, you stayed quiet, trusting the experts to handle it. This was the capital city, after all—surely, the investigators here wouldn’t fall victim to the same manipulation and incompetence as your small town had before.

But you were wrong.

Just like how authorities back then easily latched onto a convenient red herring, the Criminal Investigations Department here, dismissed the deaths as nothing more than a string of drug-related incident. And that was when you decided to take matters into your own hands. The sloppy slashing on the victims’ necks to hide bite marks, the feral attacks perfectly timed with rising homelessness and drug abuse—it was all too deliberate. Someone was definitely orchestrating this. Someone who knew how to exploit public sentiment and navigate around the intricacies of public policies to mask their crimes.

The Criminal Investigations Department didn’t believe you of course. You could have all the data in the world and use the most expensive software to churn your model and still all they see is just another desk jockey—naive, out of touch, and blind to the so-called realities of the field.

And so, here you were, about to test your model in this so-called field that they held in such high regard.

You stepped deeper into the alley. All sounds from faraway city had disappeared by then—filling the empty maze with eerie silence. Shadows stretched and folded over you, growing heavier with every step. Then, behind you, the faint echo of footsteps began.

You tightened your grip on the dagger hidden in your sleeve.

Making yourself the bait tonight was a calculated risk, just like every other part of your plan. If the pattern in your simulation was correct—and that the culprit were really bloodsuckers—the scent of fresh blood would draw them straight to you.

So with swift resolute movements you quickly pricked your finger against the blade, just enough for a bead of crimson to well up. The shift was immediate. The air grew heavy, the faint echo of footsteps reached your ears, and the lights above flickered, one by one.

Anxiety clawed at the edges of your resolve, threatening to boil over. But you pushed it down—there was no room for error or stalling. You had to keep moving, to reach the junction as planned. The junction wasn't just any random spot; it had been chosen carefully. Its CCTV placements made it ideal for monitoring, and your team was supposed to be stationed at key points, ready to act if anything went wrong. Timing was everything because if you didn’t make it before someone—or something—caught you, the entire operation could fall apart.

Except when you reached the junction and rounded the corner, you didn't see any signals from your team. You looked at the other end, also none. Fuck, you thought, the dread coiling tight in your chest. If your backup wasn’t here, then you might really be alone—in the middle of a potential serial killer’s or bloodsucker hunting ground.

But there was no time or room for fear. So with sharp fluid movements, you pulled the gun from your holster, cocking it in one swift motion as you turned sharply, ready to fire at whatever might be following you. Except, there was nothing. Only an alley stretching out, empty and undisturbed.

A shaky exhale escaped your lips. Maybe it had been your own footsteps echoing after all. You cast a quick glance over your shoulder, scanning every shadow one last time before reaching for your phone. Your fingers hovered over the screen, ready to fire off a message to the team demanding their whereabouts.

Then suddenly, there was a blur of movements but just as you looked up, a gloved hand clamped your mouth, yanking you backward, causing you to drop your gun. You kicked, twisting violently in his grasp, but it was like trying to break free from iron. Another hand gripped your waist, lifting you off the ground before slamming you into a cold brick wall.

The next thing you knew the attacker pressed his forearm hard against your throat, cutting off your air and blurring your visions. Panic clawed at your chest as you thrashed harder, but even through the haze, you saw his eyes—glowing faintly in the darkness, flickering like embers of a dying fire.

For a split second, something passed through them. Recognition? Realization?

Whatever it was, you didn't spend any longer to ponder about it. Instead, you seized the moment of his momentary lapse, jabbing the dagger you concealed up until now, into his hand. He hissed, the sound unnatural and guttural, releasing you just enough for you to stumble free.

But then you saw it as you looked up: the way the wound on his hand was already healing, the flesh stitching itself together before your very eyes.

Not human.

You were correct, after all.

Then a sudden bloodcurdling scream tore through the alley, sharp and bone-chilling. Your head whipped toward the sound, the shock of it stealing your focus for a single, crucial moment. When you turned back, the assailant was already sprinting into the shadows, his pace unnaturally swift.

Cursing under your breath, you bolted after him, refusing to lose sight. But no matter how hard you pushed, he was faster—inhumanly fast in fact. He darted around a corner, but when you reached it, it was a dead-end and he was gone, leaving nothing but silence in his wake.

"What?" you muttered, bewildered, your breathing ragged as your eyes darted around, scanning the area for any hidden doors or passages. There were none.

Your phone suddenly buzzed; it was Anton. When you answered, his voice spilled out, panicked and strained—a contrast to his usual soft-spoken calm, “y/n! Please tell me you’re okay. Please tell me you’re—”

“Anton, I’m fine,” you cut him off, your voice tight.

“Fuck.” Anton cursed—a rare slip. “One of the agents found a body. Said it was bloodless. I thought- I-”

“Where?” you demanded sharply. "Okay, I'll see you there."

You spun on your heels, already halfway to bolting, when an odd crunch under your shoe froze you in place. The sound echoed unnaturally in the suffocating silence of the alley, sharp and out of place. It was something metallic that glinted faintly in the dim light.

Slowly, cautiously, you bent down and picked it up.

It was a brooch, heavy and ornate, its craftsmanship disturbingly perfect.

Your fingers traced the coat of arms etched into the metal: a spiked crown loomed at the top, flanked by a raven and a wolf poised like sentinels. Between them rested a shield, and at its very center, encased in intricate filigree, was a ruby—a dark, smoldering gem that glowed faintly as though alive. It pulsed, dim and irregular, like the heartbeat of something ancient and unspeakable. Beneath the crest, the words were etched in a precise, unnerving script:

"In shadows, we endure. In blood, we rise."

Your breath caught, your chest tightening with a visceral, unnameable dread. The ruby seemed to grow warmer against your skin, the faint light flickering as if responding to the fear blooming inside you.

That was when it hit you.

You’d seen this crest before. The realization struck like a blow, dredging up something long buried—a truth you had fought to forget.

No. It couldn’t be. Your mind grasped for another explanation, anything but the one clawing its way to the surface. But the brooch felt heavier in your palm, its ruby pulsing faintly, as if mocking your denial.

A rush of memories broke through the floodgates, sharp and disjointed flashes that cut through your resolve: bloodied lips, the metallic taste of iron, a pained gaze—and the weight of betrayal pressing into your chest.

“Sunghoon,” you whispered, the name falling from your lips like a curse.

— ii

“Told you it would work,” you nudged Anton as you headed towards the meeting room where you were supposed to meet the Detective Chief Inspector.

“It made a ‘work’ out of you too,” Anton replied begrudgingly, clicking his tongue as his eyes trace the bruise on your neck and the cuts on your hand.

“I’d say it’s worth it,” you shrugged, looking awfully calm and happy for someone who had a brush with death just last night.

True, you got berated by your boss for acting recklessly on your own and putting your life in line but it was all worth it, you thought. Afterall not only did you manage to put a question mark on the current narrative but in doing so, you have also forced the Criminal Investigations Department to take you and your work seriously. After months of being treated lightly and as a joke, you couldn’t help but feel triumphant to see the Detective Chief Superintendent personally walking to your office this morning — requesting assistance on how his department can utilise the model you had built.

“Well let’s hope the Detective they send for me this time isn’t another boomer or misogynist as the rest of the lot has been,” Anton handed you the photocopies he had made, wishing you luck as he held the door of the meeting room open for you. You quickly set up the meeting room, turning on your laptop while setting the copies and relevant files neatly in the middle of the table.

You hadn’t slept all night but this was the most energised you have felt in months. In fact, so absorbed you were, you didn’t notice the figure at first. Your focus was on the documents, your pen tapping lightly against the table as you scanned line after line of text.

It wasn’t until the faintest flicker of movement passed beyond the glass walls of the meeting room that you looked up. At first, it was just a shadow—a fleeting outline that barely registered. Then, step by step, it came into focus.

Broad shoulders and a rigid stance that carried an effortless authority. Thick raven-black hair that caught the light like polished obsidian. Pale skin that seemed almost luminous under the sterile lights.

Your pen stilled in your hands, fingers unconsciously tightening around it as the door clicked open.

The scent hit you first—woodsy and citrusy. That cologne. The one you knew too well. It swept over you with a cruel familiarity, twisting your stomach as memories clawed at the edges of your mind, sharp and unwelcome.

You didn’t need to see his face to know.

And yet, when he stepped inside, bowing slightly—polite in a way that felt almost mocking—it still made your breath catch. By the time he straightened, your heart had already plummeted.

“Park Sunghoon,” you croaked, almost reflexively, your voice barely above a whisper. The name tasted bitter on your tongue, dredged up from a place you had tried to bury.

His gaze sharpened, dark eyes sweeping over you with clinical precision before his lips curved into a slow, deliberate smirk. His hand moved smoothly, locking the door behind him with a soft click that echoed far too loudly in the confined space.

“I don’t think we need introductions, then?” he drawled, his voice low and silken, every word laced with amusement.

Your hand moved instinctively to your back pocket, fingers fumbling for the dagger you always carried.

“Looking for this?" he asked nonchalantly as he pulled something out from his coat. It was a dagger – your dagger from last night. Before you could react, he flicked his wrist, sending it spinning through the air. It landed with a sharp thud, piercing through the stack of files in front of you. The deliberate impact echoed through the room, loud and accusatory.

“Don’t bother,” he said, his tone dismissive but firm. “You know you can’t kill me.”

You swallowed thickly, but forced your lips to curl into a dry, humorless smile. “Killing me here, in a glass-walled meeting room?” you asked, leaning casually back against the table as if you weren’t seconds from bolting. “That’d be messy, don’t you think? Hundreds of employees just outside. You’d need a whole army of PR vampires—or whatever you guys have—to cover it up.”

His smirk was slow, deliberate, like he enjoyed your attempt at bravado. “Even if my fury for you ran that deep,” he said, his voice a low purr, “I wouldn’t be that stupid.”

“Then why are you here?” you asked, your voice sharpening as you straightened, your fingers subtly curling into fists at your sides.

“Because someone has been causing havoc,” he said, his voice dropping to something colder. “And it turns out that someone is you. No surprise there—you’ve always been a thorn.”

You scoffed, “for a thorn you sure are taking your time eliminating me. Lingering feelings?”

His lips curved into another smirk, this one sharper, more dangerous. “You tell me,” he said, gesturing lazily toward your pocket. “You could’ve handed my crest over to the investigators. Why didn’t you?”

Your breath caught, realization dawning. He was right. The crest you’d kept instead of handing over to the Criminal Investigations Department—why hadn’t you? You’d lied to them, and for what?

“That’s not—”

“I’m not interested to hear your excuses actually,” Sunghoon interrupted smoothly, “let me just say if I want to kill you, I would have—be it yesterday or before. I’m letting you live because I need something from you. Your expertise.”

He fished out a file from his briefcase and slid it across the table towards you, “I’ve heard of the model you built. I think it’s brilliant.” His tone was casual, almost complimentary, but his eyes gleamed with something colder. “I have some additional data. It will definitely enhance your model. There is however a catch—whatever you find goes back to me. Not to your boss, not to the department. Just me.”

Your eyes flitted suspiciously from the file to him, “why would I do that? For all I know you’re just trying to mess the investigations up.”

“I mean you guys are already fumbling the investigations as it is," he scoffed. "Look. You, of all people, know that the authorities are powerless against my kind. If they meddle further, they’ll just get caught in the crossfire and make a bigger mess. Deadlier mess.”

“How do I know that you’re not behind it all?” you shot back, the accusation sharp. “It all clicks. You being here. You meddling in the investigations.”

His patience visibly thinned, his expression hardening. “If you hadn’t been messing around last night, that poor woman wouldn’t have been preyed upon,” he said, his tone like a blade. “Do you see it now? the implications of your tampering—of any human tampering?”

Your breath hitched as the weight of his words sank in: it was your fault. Your little game at baiting the undead last nigth had apparently led to the death of an innocent, “I wasn’t—”

“Save your guilt,” he snapped, his voice slicing through your stammered excuse. “I don’t have time for it. What I need is for your department to stop trampling through this mess so I can finish the job.”

You glared at him, still reeling. “Why do you need my model then? Don’t vampires have… superpowers or something? Shouldn’t you be able to track them down faster?”

His expression darkened, and for the first time, you saw something close to frustration in his eyes. “If it were that simple, you wouldn't even need to construct a quantitative model out of it.” he muttered. “Look, our worlds are not that different. We are scattered and fragmented but the more powerful you are, the more you blend in. The ones you have here is not like the usual. This is a network, vast and insidious, weaving itself into your world so deeply that even I can’t see where it begins or ends. They’re embedded in your systems. In your policies. This is why I can’t just go to someone or outsource it to a company to ask them to aid me in this—you never know who’s with who anymore, mortal or not.”

“And yet you trust me?”

“Trust? that’s rich coming from you,” he scoffed, his eyes narrowing with thinly veiled derision, as though he’d accidentally stepped on something unpleasant. “No I don’t trust you and I don’t need to. I need you to be useful, to be good. That’s your only insurance right now.”

“Actually you know what? you don’t have a choice,” he said, his voice unnervingly calm, as though he had already decided the conversation was over. “You can either help me clean up the mess you’ve started, or watch it spiral into something far beyond your control.”

He didn’t wait for an answer. The door clicked softly behind him as he left, leaving the faint echo of his words and the sharp scent of him—woodsy and citrusy, painfully familiar—lingering in the room.

It struck you then—how much he had changed. He was the same physically, but something about him felt far more oppressive now, his presence pressing down like a shadow too large to escape. His broad shoulders carried a weight that seemed heavier than before, not burdened, but deliberate—like the world bent itself to him, not the other way around. There was also a quiet gravity to his presence now, like a storm that hadn’t yet decided when to break.

In fact, even the smallest movements felt so charged and calculated. The tilt of his head, slight but purposeful, carried an air of disdain that cut deeper than any raised voice. His gaze was no less piercing than you remembered, but where it once burned with an intensity that sought to subdue, now it chilled—deliberate and calculating.

Now that you think about, he might not even be a storm looking for release—he was a tempest waiting to destroy.

You staggered backward, the sharp edges of the table behind you digging painfully into your spine, grounding you as the realization settled like a stone in your chest. Time hadn’t softened him; it had stripped him bare, refined him into something terrifying. He wasn’t just dangerous—he was inevitable.

— iii

You couldn’t decide who was more foolish at this point—yourself, for agreeing to work with Sunghoon despite the nightmare he’d put you through eight years ago, or Sunghoon, for still not carrying out whatever vengeance he had surely plotted for you during all that time. While you should be grateful for the latter, you can never put the thought aside–not with Sunghoon at least.

“If you’re done, email it to me immediately,” Sunghoon muttered without looking up, his eyes glued to the screen of his iPad.

As unbelievable as it sound, this had become your normal 5-9 now, churning additional data from Sunghoon and refine your code—all the while he lounge at your office, waiting for you to finish like a headmaster. Or a vulture.

You tore your gaze from him, frowning at the heatmap on your laptop. You’d expected his “additional data” to sharpen your model, maybe even tie up some loose ends. Instead, the trends you’d been working on became a tangled mess—sporadic points, clusters dissolving into chaos. “It’s messier now, thanks to your data,” you grumbled, sneaking a suspicious glance his way. “You’re not just feeding me duds to throw me off, are you?”

Without a word, Sunghoon rose from the couch and strolled over. It took everything in you not to flinch as your fight-or-flight instincts are still hardwired to react whenever he was near.

Oblivious to your unease, he leaned down to take the mouse from your hand, his cold presence making you shift uncomfortably in your chair. The cursor hovered over a dense cluster of points as he swiped through something on his iPad. “Actually, it’s perfect. Send this over.”

“This is perfect?” you scoffed in disbelief before you found your eyes involuntarily shifting to his iPad screen nearby where rows of profiles stared back at you—some with ominous red slashes across their faces.

“They’re people I’ve exterminated,” he said flatly as if reading your mind before you could form the question.

“I wasn—" your mouth went dry. “Exterminated?”

“Don’t worry,” he said nonchalantly as he snatched the iPad back. “They’re not human.”

You hit send just as he moved toward the door, speaking into his phone. “I think there are some new leads. Yes, I’ll take the car.”

“Hey—” you called out, hoping to pry more, but he was already out of your office. You lingered for a moment, the uneasy silence filling the space he left behind. Though you hated dwelling on him, you couldn’t help but feel that there was something different about Sunghoon—something colder, more detached, even by his standards. He felt hollow—as if this was just a shell of the man who had haunted you eight years ago.

But then again, did it really matter, you shrugged the thought off, at least he hadn’t killed you yet.

You grabbed your coat and followed him, catching up just as he reached a sleek black Benz idling at the curb. “If this is related to the case, I should go too,” you said firmly. “We’re working together, after all.”

He stopped mid-step, turning to face you. For a moment, the barest flicker of amusement crossed his face, gone so quickly you almost doubted it had been there.

“Working together?” he repeated, his tone laced with derision. “Look, this isn’t a partnership,” he said, his voice cool and detached. “You’re not my equal. You’re a tool—a useful one, for now—but a tool all the same. Don’t get confused.”

You bristled, heat rising to your cheeks. “You—”

But before you could finish, he slipped into the car and shut the door in your face.

“—prick,” you muttered under your breath.

That should have been your cue to drop it. To turn back and call it a day. But that would be very unlike of you.

Undeterred, or challenged rather, you quickly flagged a cab nearby, sliding into the backseat. “Follow that car,” you instructed, your voice steady despite the adrenaline surging through you. “But keep some distance. He has eyes at the back of his head...” your voice trailed, grimacing at the memory of Sunghoon and his arrogance. Probably the only thing unchanged, you thought as you sink back into the seat.

The drive began uneventfully, Sunghoon’s car weaving through familiar streets of the central business district—all skyscrapers and corporate logos. You watched intently, expecting him to stop near one of the clusters your heatmap had predicted. But then he took an unexpected turn—away from downtown and into unfamiliar territory.

“Where’s he going?” you mumbled, staring out the window. Instead of decaying alleyways or abandoned districts—the usual spots you were tracking—the car rolled through rows of pristine streets where luxury cars were neatly parked outside glittering buildings. This wasn’t the kind of place you would associate with the victims of the recent serial killings—or with him, in fact. With the 1%, celebrities and socialites perhaps, but not him.

“Your guy just got out,” the driver called, jolting you from your thoughts.

Sure enough, Sunghoon had exited the car. But it wasn’t the Sunghoon you’d followed all evening. He was wearing a tailored tuxedo now, his raven hair swept back in a way that made him look effortlessly polished, like he belonged on the cover of a magazine. While others flashed passes to the doorman to gain entry into the towering, shard-like skyscraper, Sunghoon merely nodded—and the door opened for him, as if the place were his.

You stared, dumbfounded. A party? A date? You thought for a split second, even considering turning the car back around. Perhaps, he really wasn’t pursuing any leads tonight and you’re just being a nosy stalker.

“Miss, I’m not your personal chauffeur so if you can get off now—”

“You know what, I’ll pay you extra,” you said, handing the driver a wad of cash. “Wait for me here—I just need to confirm some things.”

“I’m not—” he started, but his protest died the moment you waved another wad of cash. He sighed, exasperated. “Fine. Ten minutes.”

“Deal,” you muttered, slipping out of the car and immediately regretting it. Clad in your office attire, you stuck out like a sore thumb as elegantly dressed guests brushed past you, the scent of expensive perfume lingering in the air.

The towering skyscraper ahead loomed like a beacon of opulence and exclusivity, its glass facade reflecting the city lights in dazzling patterns. The entrance buzzed with high society chatter—sweeping gowns, tailored suits, and muted conversations that felt worlds apart from your reality. Whoever was hosting this wasn’t just powerful—they were untouchable.

You tried to blend in, keeping your head low as you slipped into the flow of guests. But before you reached the doors, a burly security guard stepped into your path.

“Pass?”

“I—uh,” you stammered, scrambling for an excuse. “I’m with Park Sunghoon,” you lied, willing your voice to sound composed. “I’m his personal assistant,” you added, forcing yourself not to gag, “and he left his phone so I’m here to deliver it back to him.”

The guard’s suspicion was immediate. He squinted at you, then glanced at his colleague. “Wait here,” he said curtly, retreating to his desk and picking up the phone. As he made the call, his shifting expressions told you everything you needed to know—your story wasn’t holding up.

Before you could quietly slip away however, you felt the sudden grip of two guards seizing your arms from behind.

“Lord Park says he doesn’t know you,” the first guard returned, his smug expression practically oozing satisfaction. “Nor does he have a personal assistant. He has also requested that we report you to the nearest station for attempted trespassing. If you’ll follow—”

His voice faded into the background as panic set in. Your mind raced, adrenaline surging as you desperately tried to think of a way out. Perhaps show my work ID, you thought, but that won’t be ethical. Perhaps give them a kick, you pondered, come on, what’s a kick going to do against 2 buff guards.

“y/n?”

The voice cut through the noise like a lifeline, warm and familiar, yet so painfully out of place in a setting like this.

You turned sharply, and your breath caught.

There, standing in front of you, was someone you barely recognized.

“Sunoo?” you blurted, blinking as if your brain needed time to process what you were seeing.

Gone were the oversized hoodies and worn-out sneakers. The Sunoo before you now was practically dripping in luxury—a designer suit tailored to perfection, sleek leather loafers, and a watch you were pretty sure cost more than your apartment. His hair was immaculately styled, his face radiating the kind of confidence and wealth that turned heads.

“It is you!” he exclaimed, a broad grin splitting his face, softening his features to the Sunoo you remembered from eight years ago. Your best friend, Kim Sunoo.

You wanted to revel in the reunion, to cling to the warmth of familiarity, but the weight of the moment sank into you like a stone. Slowly, it dawned on you how ominous it all was—how Sunghoon and Sunoo could now be tied so closely. You remembered the tension between them eight years ago all too well, the lengths you went to keep them apart. The bargain you had struck with Sunghoon just so he’d leave him alone.

And yet, here they were, looking as though they were cut from the same cloth.

“Let her go. She’s with me,” Sunoo snapped at the guards, his grin vanishing in an instant, replaced by an expression of sharp disdain. The shift was jarring, his tone unrecognizable—cutting, cold, and entirely unlike him.

— iv

“Wine?”

Sunoo gestured at the uniformed staff pushing a gleaming silver cart toward you. The plates were stacked high with decadent hors d'oeuvres, and some accompanying bottles of wines that looked like it cost three times more than your monthly rent.

You shook your head, watching as Sunoo casually reached for his third glass. “You used to hated drinking,” you muttered.

“Well, the world I live in now is different—" he smirked, “—so are my tastes."

Before you could respond, Sunoo grabbed you by the side of your arms, swivelling you toward the floor-to-ceiling window which overlooked the grand hall below. "Take a good look, y/n. This is the upper echeleons of society."

Your gaze fell on the scene below: a vast, glittering ballroom with a massive crystal chandelier casting golden light over an impeccably dressed crowd. Designer gowns swept the marble floor, and tuxedos gleamed under the light. Waiters glided like shadows, balancing trays of champagne flutes and hors d’oeuvres.

“What is this place?” you asked, dragging your eyes back to him.

“It’s the Charity Gala of the year,” Sunoo said, his voice filled with a casual air you didn’t quite believe. “Officially, it’s a fundraiser for disaster relief in Southeast Asia. Unofficially—” he took a deliberate sip from his glass, his fourth, though he still seemed unbelievably sober, “—it’s a playground for the 1%. A chance to flaunt their wealth, rub shoulders with the powerful, and make backroom deals over overpriced wine.” He raised his glass in mock celebration. “Welcome to their world, y/n. The air up here is great.”

Your stomach twisted as you tried to reconcile this version of Sunoo with the one you’d once known. But before you could dwell on it, your wandering gaze caught something that made your blood run cold.

Park Sunghoon.

He was in the center of the ballroom, effortlessly commanding attention without seeking it. His raven-black hair was swept back, his tailored suit flawless, and a glass of wine rested lightly in his hand. But it wasn’t his appearance that made you freeze—it was the way he seemed to own the room, as though every person there unconsciously revolved around him. He moved through the crowd with an ease that was almost unsettling, exchanging words with men in expensive suits and women draped in jewels.

This wasn’t the Sunghoon you remembered. Back then, he was distant, deliberately anti-social, and disdainful of any social niceties when in a crowd. Now, he was polished, poised, and completely in his element—like a diplomat or a politician.

And yet, what truly froze you wasn’t his transformation. It was his gaze—for when he looked up, his eyes found yours in chilling precision. As if he knew you were there; as if he knew you had been staring.

Shit, you drew back instinctively, trying to stay away from his line of sight.

“y/n?” Sunoo’s voice jolted you out of your spiralling thoughts. “You said you were here because of someone is it?”

You forced a laugh, trying to sound casual. “Yeah, someone I know left some stuff with me, so I was going to return it. But, apparently, I needed a pass.”

“Who is it? I’ll help you find them,” Sunoo offered, clearly oblivious to the tension rolling off you.

“No, no, it’s fine,” you said quickly, waving him off. “I just got a text—they said they don’t need it anymore. I’ll just head out—”

“Go back? Are you kidding me?” Sunoo interrupted, his hand gripping yours as he started to drag you across the room. “Come on, y/n. There’s no way I’m letting you miss this opportunity. You’re practically at the nexus of power and privilege. Everyone who is anyone is in here. I’ll introduce you to some top brass. Permanent secretaries, directors—you name it. I’m pretty sure they’d love to meet someone as sharp as you. You deserve to climb the ladder faster.”

“Sunoo, I—just give me a minute,” you stammered, trying to stall.

But Sunoo was already weaving you through the glittering crowd, his excitement palpable as he introduced you to people whose names blurred together in your head. Your nerves prickled with every passing moment, the hum of conversations swelling louder, pressing in on you. Then, one of them—an ex-politician—broke through your haze.

“Oh! You said you’re from the Ministry of Justice? Then you must know—” His words trailed off as his gaze shifted, scanning the room.

When he turned back, the crowd parted just enough to reveal Sunghoon, standing tall and composed, clinking his glass with a man who radiated power and authority.

Your heart plummeted and instinctively you shrank back, hoping the dim lighting would shield you. But then Sunoo's grip tightened around your hand, a sudden and unwelcome anchor.

“Sunoo, just let go—” you wrenched your hand away, perhaps a little too roughly, for he looked at you all confused as if you had struck him. "Sorry," you stammered, your voice low and frantic, “—bathroom.” Before he could even say anything, you had already turned on your heel, letting yourself get swallowed by the crowd. Except instead of reprieve, the air grew heavier with every step, the clinking of glasses and muted laughter morphing into a sinister undercurrent. The wine in their hands seemed darker, richer, almost like blood under the golden lights.

Finally, you found a door and without even sparing another second, you slipped out, closing the door behind you. You pressed your back against the cool surface of the door, exhaling shakily as you fought to steady yourself. The chill of the corridor was a stark contrast to the stifling opulence you’d just escaped, yet the unease clung to you like a second skin. Even here, away from the crowd, you couldn’t shake the feeling that unseen eyes were still watching, waiting.

“Thought I smelled something that didn’t belong—"

You froze, turning to find yourself surrounded by a group of men—three to be exact. At first glance, they looked as though they had stepped off the cover of a glossy magazine, all chiseled features and effortless grace. But there was something off about them. Their beauty was uncanny, a little too perfect, too symmetrical—like sculptures that had come to life but had missed the soul that should have animated them.

Yet, it wasn’t their appearance that sent shivers racing down your spine—it was the way they moved. They encircled you with slow, deliberate steps, each movement fluid, almost predatory, like Hyenas.

Your pulse quickened as the weight of their gazes bore down on you.

“Yeah, this one probably weaseled her way in,” the other one murmured, giving you a once-over that made your skin crawl, “journalist? fangirl?”

“Maybe it’s one of those waitresses again,” the other one scoffed, “remember how someone stole a dress and paraded around as a socialite during last year’s gala?”

“Ah- right,” the first one drew closer, “well, guess what? We are feeling very generous tonight and would like to give you a personal private tour. How's that?”

You evaded his hand just as he was about to wrap it over your shoulder, only to bump into the other who had closed in from the other side, his hand seizing yours like talons, “she’s warm.”

You yanked your arm free, retreating instinctively, only to collide with the cold, unyielding wall behind you.

“Actually, the wines weren’t cutting it,” the third one said, turning to his companions, who exchanged knowing grins, as though sharing a thought without needing words, “—but you,” he continued, his gaze snapping back to you with an intensity that made your skin crawl, “might just do.”

“You guys are messing with the wrong person,” you spat, feigning confidence despite the tremor in your voice. “I’m with Park—Lord Park, and he won’t take too kindly to a bunch of lower beings harassing his guest.”

“Oh, Lord Park,” the first one sneered, leaning in closer, his breath cold against your ear. “Pretty sure he wouldn’t notice if one of his toys went missing.”

Laughter rippled between them, dark and taunting, and your stomach churned.

“You guys better piss off before—before I—” you broke off, your fumbling hands grazed something cool and solid behind you—a decorative vase perched precariously on a ledge. Without hesitation, you grabbed it and hurled it to the floor. The porcelain shattered with a deafening crash, the sound ricocheting through the corridor like a gunshot.

The distraction worked and the men recoiled for a split second—just enough for you to twist free and bolt.

You didn’t think. You didn’t look back. You just ran, your heels clicking frantically against the marble floor, heart pounding in rhythm with your steps. Their shouts grew fainter as you darted through the twisting hallways, rounding the corner when—slam.

You barrelled straight into something—or rather, someone.

The impact sent you stumbling back, but a strong hand shot out, steadying you with an iron grip. Dread pooled in your stomach as your gaze lifted, meeting a pair of dark piercing eyes.

It wasn’t one of them.

It was Sunghoon.

And frankly, you didn't know which one was worse.

He glanced past you to the commotion down the hall, then back to your flushed, panicked face. His eyes meeting yours in such inscrutable and cold way that it was entirely possible to you that he had sent those three men down your way.

“Lord Park,” one of the men murmured, their voices dropping into something that sounded both reverent and fearful. The shift in their demeanor was immediate. The playfulness vanished, replaced by something closer to submission. They exchanged glances, their earlier bravado crumbling under the weight of his command.

“Didn’t she say she is with me?” Sunghoon’s voice was quiet but lethal, each word laced with venom. His tone was flat, almost disinterested, but the menace beneath it was unmistakable, “and you guys still had the audacity to mess with what’s mine?”

The words hit you like a cold wind, cutting through your defenses. You didn’t flinch outwardly, but inside, you recoiled—the weight of his casual claim felt heavier than it had any right to be. While the possessiveness in his tone unsettled you, what struck harder was the irony: how the very lie you’d spun to escape trouble was now your lifeline. Worse still, it was being wielded by the one who was being taken advantage of.

“Of course not,” one of them stammered, his words spilling out in a frantic rush.

“We’d never dare,” another muttered, bowing his head slightly as if the act alone might spare him from further scrutiny.

The three men backed away, their movements stiff and deliberate, muttering apologies that barely reached the air before they vanished into the shadows.

The hallway emptied as quickly as it had filled, leaving only you and Sunghoon behind. But as the men disappeared into the shadows, the oppressive weight of their presence was replaced by something just as stifling—Sunghoon’s gaze, dark and commanding, boring into you like a spotlight, leaving no room for escape.

You instinctively tried to yank your arm free from his grasp, but his grip was vice-like—firm and unrelenting. “Let go,” you demanded, your voice steady.

“You’re the one who said you’re with me, aren’t you?” he countered, his brow lifting in mocking amusement. “Let’s go then.”

“Sunghoon—” you began to protest, but his hold tightened as he dragged you down the corridor. His pace was deliberate, each step unhurried, but there was no mistaking the force in his pull. Before you could fully processed it, the elevator doors slid shut behind you, sealing the two of you in a tense, suffocating silence.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he said flatly, his tone devoid of emotion, the words hitting like a slap. “You don’t belong here.”

Your chest tightened, the sting of his words sharp and deliberate. “Thank you for stating the obvious,” you shot back sharply. “You, on the other hand, look like you belong. Almost didn’t recognize you with all the mushy act. Maturing at last? Bit late for your age, don’t you think?”

His brow arched, the faintest flicker of amusement crossing his face. “Careful,” he said, his voice deceptively calm, “with that much interest, I might start thinking you missed me.”

The elevator dinged, and you expected him to release you. Instead, his grip only tightened as he pulled you across the lobby.

“Sunghoon—where are we—” you protested, your voice rising, drawing the attention of a few onlookers. “Sunghoon, let me go—let me—”

“You brought this on yourself, y/n,” he interrupted, his voice cutting clean through your panic. The dread hit you fully as you saw his Benz from earlier pull up to the curb. “You need to be taught a hard lesson—” he said, his tone dark, ominous, his grip tightening with every resistance from you, “—then maybe next time, you’ll think twice before running your mouth so carelessly.”

With unsettling ease, he opened the car door, shoving you unceremoniously into the backseat. You barely had time to twist toward the exit before he stepped into the doorway, his frame filling the space, blocking any chance of escape. Before you could shove him away, his hand moved as if he’d anticipated it—catching yours mid-motion with startling precision. The swiftness of it stole your breath, his grip unrelenting as it pinned your arm in place. The harder you tried to pull free, the more his hold seemed to tighten—like a quicksand—rendering you completely immobile with an ease that sent a cold shiver racing down your spine.

“Take her home,” Sunghoon ordered towards his driver curtly, his voice sharp and devoid of patience, his eyes never leaving yours.

“I can go home on my own,” you snapped.

“I’m sure you can,” he replied, his tone calm but razor-sharp. “But you won’t. Not after the havoc you wreaked earlier, with people you shouldn’t have.”

“But they—”

“—won’t let you go that easily. That's for certain.” he finished for you, his voice dropping low, slicing through your protest. His grip on your arm tightened one last time before he threw it back, the motion sending you off balance, your palms hitting the seat behind you to steady yourself.

Leaning into the open doorway, his eyes pinned you in place, his voice quiet but venomous. “He’ll take you home,” he muttered darkly, “or you’ll just never see home ever again.”

And with that, he slammed the door shut before walking back to the tower, the sound reverberating like the final nail in a coffin. No chance to argue. No chance to escape.

— v

Things settled back into a strained rhythm after that evening at the Charity Gala, though Sunghoon had stopped lingering. He would appear occasionally, dropping off new data without a word, then vanish as swiftly as he came. You told yourself it was better this way. His presence was, afterall, suffocating—a storm cloud hovering just out of reach. But no matter how hard you tried to bury the thoughts, the elephant in the room loomed larger with every passing moment of silence: Why had he let you live this long?

You knew Sunghoon hadn’t forgiven your betrayal. And yet, here you were—alive, breathing, and watching the shadows too closely because of him. Perhaps this was his punishment for you—making the guilt gnaw you from inside and driving you to the brink of insanity.

Then, one day, an invitation came out of nowhere.

The oxblood-coloured envelope was thick and weighty, its golden wax seal embossed with an unfamiliar crest that glinted under the light like a silent threat. You stared at it for a long moment before picking it up, turning it over in your hands.

“Wait—” Anton’s voice broke through your thoughts as he leaned over your desk, wide-eyed. “Is that—?”

“What?” you asked warily, still staring at the envelope as if it might bite.

“Noctis Imperium,” Anton breathed, his tone reverent.

You frowned. “Noctis what now?”

Anton looked at you like you’d just admitted you didn’t know how to breathe. “Noctis Imperium. It’s an exclusive retreat for the 1% — total luxury and opulence somewhere in the Montes Obscuri—you know the mountain range you can’t even find on google map? Point is, It’s completely exclusive. Totally off the grid. No cameras, no leaks, no nothing. Just power brokers, decision-makers, and untouchables all in one place.”

“Sounds pretentious,” you scoffed, breaking the seal.

He leaned closer, lowering his voice as if the walls might be listening. “People call it a modern-day Bohemian Grove but... darker. Rumor has it that the deals made there don’t just change industries—they change entire nations.”

You shook your head dismissively as you pulled out the invitation. The embossed gold lettering shimmered faintly in the light:

To Our Chosen Few, The Noctis Imperium convenes soon, A place where maps end and silence consumes. Beneath the shadow of the Blood Moon, shapers and wielders come forge their runes. This is not a request, nor a courtesy—it is an acknowledgment of your place among those who command the currents of power. Your passage has been arranged. You will be expected.

“I’m a data analyst, not a billionaire,” you muttered, “perhaps they mailed it to the wrong room- ah—" your fingers brushed a small note tucked inside which read ‘From: Sunoo.’ “Well, perks of having connections, right?”

“Who cares?” Anton said, waving it off. “If I were you, I’d go. Network the hell out of it. Who knows? You might end up running this whole city someday.”

“To be honest, I’d probably die before I even get promoted,” you deadpanned, “My Reaper is just around the corner anyway—" you muttered nonchalantly. It was a casual claim, thrown carelessly into the air in reference to Sunghoon, but one that would echo with far more weight than you could possibly realize at that point in time.

The day passed in a blur, yet the envelope lingered in the recesses of your mind, a nagging presence you couldn’t quite shake. It resurfaced sharply at the end of the day, your steps faltering when the security guard stopped you just as you were about to leave the office.

“Madam, sorry to bother you, but did you receive your invitation?”

“Excuse me?”

“The red envelope, ma’am. There were only two sent to this building—one for you and one for the gentleman. I was told that it is very important that you receive and read it.”

“Yes. I got—" you halted, “—wait, the gentleman? Which one?”

The guard nodded. “The one who’s been visiting you. Mr. Park, I believe.”

Your stomach twisted. Sunghoon.

You mumbled a distracted thanks.

Of course, he is also invited.

The thought continued to gnaw at you afterwards, echoing in your mind as you climbed into the waiting cab. Your invitation had came from Sunoo but now that you knew Sunghoon, too, had been invited reframed everything. It meant that the Noctis Imperium wasn’t just any retreat of shallow opulence. In fact, the words in the letter, which you have dismissed as being far too pretentious and unnecessarily cryptic, now carried a weight that felt unnervingly and ominously real.

Had he always been part of this? Your mind flashed to him at the party, the ease with which he’d navigated the room, the smiles, the warmth—a performance so seamless it made your skin crawl. He very much look like he belonged.

You sank into the back of the cab, pulling out your laptop and flipping it open. You couldn’t shake the unease now that you look at the simulation your model had churned. The data—the tangled mess of trends and points you’d been staring at for weeks—felt like it was hiding something, just out of reach.

Sunghoon’s words from weeks ago echoed faintly in your mind: “They’re embedded in your systems. In your policies.”

“What if it’s a team effort?” you murmured to yourself as you pull up your coding window, inserting several data and refining the code to allow for some different sets of filtering. This time, one layer of noise dropped. Another filter, another layer gone.

Slowly, patterns emerged where there had been none. The suspects—every single one—had histories that aligned: mental institutionalization, retrenchment, depression diagnoses. All of which conveniently could serve as motives behind drug abuse and the sudden violence as a byproduct of such addiction. The victims on the other hand were from the bottom rung of society – the homeless, the poor, the invisible – people whose deaths wouldn’t have made dent and wouldn’t have been fought for.

If it is a team effort and that they’re embedded in every sector, you pondered toggling with the filters, then the demand and supply can be carefully managed.

Eight years ago, a similar pattern emerged in your little town—but it was confined to a pureblood and a couple of strays. But this? This was larger. It was a system beneath the system. An empire operating in shadows. Or perhaps, you thought, it's a collusion of system that straddle both worlds.

You sunk back into your seat, your head spinning as you realised the gravity of the situation if indeed true. Outside, the city blurred past, its twinkling lights reflected across glass and metal surfaces like fleeting stars. The golden seal of the invitation caught your eye where it lay in your bag, gleaming faintly. As if it was beckoning you.

You hesitated, the weight of the decision pressing down on you. In another life—one with stability, comfort, and certainty—you might have left that envelope unopened, dismissed it as someone else’s game. But that wasn’t your life, was it? Not anymore.

Not since Sunghoon's returned at least. For since his reappearance, your days had become a delicate balancing act, every step more precarious than the last, every shadow in corner felt more ominous by the passing day. With your data pointing toward something vast and insidious, the invitation felt less like a trap and more like an opportunity. Reckless? Yes. But what choice did you have? This was a chance to get closer to the truth, to the root of the tangled chaos that had consumed your life.

The seal gleamed as the cab pulled at a traffic stop—a quiet and unyielding challenge.

Your resolve solidified in that moment.

By the time the cab pulled up to your apartment, you had already submitted your leave request: two weeks, no questions asked. Moving on autopilot, you packed a small bag—your laptop, backups of the data, and whatever else you thought you might need.

You didn’t know if you were walking into a trap or uncovering the truth. But either way, you were determined to find out. You were, afterall, already walking a tightrope as it is.

— vi

True enough, the farther the drive went, the more foreboding the journey became. An hour and a half in, the landscape had transformed into an endless expanse of towering ancient trees. The sun, so bright when you’d left the city, was nowhere to be found—as though you’d been transported into a realm of perpetual darkness.

You glanced at your phone, hoping in vain that you'd a get a signal. Nothing. Nada. But then it wasn't like the signal would have helped, Google Maps showed you that your destination is buried in middle of an unbroken expanse of green—no landmarks, no markings, not even a hint of civilization.

Anton wasn’t exaggerating, you thought, unease coiling tighter in your chest. It's one thing for the retreat to be shrouded in so much secrecy; but another for it to actually be able to evade global mapping systems entirely.

“We’re here, Madam,” the driver announced as the car turned into a gated lawn. Through the dense canopy of ancient trees, you caught glimpses of something massive looming in the distance. Its spires pierced the sky, clawing out from the forested expanse like talons.

“A manor?”

“A castle, Madam,” the driver corrected, the car’s tires crunching over the gravel path. “One of the few left. Very highly protected.”

The path wound sharply uphill, twisting like a serpent as it climbed higher into the forested slope. Ancient wrought-iron torches lined the way, their uneven intervals casting flickering pools of golden light that danced across the shadows of the towering trees. With each turn, more of the castle came into view, unraveling piece by piece. Its gothic silhouette loomed larger with every moment, the sheer size of it making the air seem heavier, as though the structure itself demanded reverence. "I can see why," you sighed, in complete awe.

By the time the car reached the final bend, the forest opened up completely, revealing the castle in all its glory. Perched atop the hill like a sentinel, its massive stone walls seemed to rise endlessly into the sky, adorned with spires and arches that looked almost alive in their intricacy. The grandeur of it was otherworldly, a masterpiece of both architecture and menace.

By the time the car slowed to a stop before the entrance, the sun had fully set—its descent perfectly timed, as if orchestrated to embody the very essence of the Noctis Imperium which aptly translated as 'The Empire of Shadows'. You checked back the agenda and true enough, every events were set to start once the sun sets.

“Madam y/n,” a pair of what looked like a maid and a butler, judging from the uniform, greeted you. “Please come with us, we have been assigned to you. We shall show you around and show you to your suite.”

As you followed the maid, you swallowed thickly, your steps faltering at the sight before you. The castle loomed larger up close, its presence more imposing and ominous than you had imagined. Crimson light seeped through the towering windows, bathing the weathered stone in an eerie glow, as though the building itself pulsed with a forbidden life force. At the grand entrance, blood-red flowers coiled up the walls, their tendrils creeping toward the arched doorway like veins, giving the unsettling impression that the castle was bleeding from within. The effect was grotesque yet mesmerizing, made even more chilling by the gargoyles crouched on the jagged edges of the roof, their wretched expressions seemingly serve as a warning.

As you ventured deeper into the castle, the emptiness and stillness seemed to press heavier around you, yet the unsettling sensation of being watched clung to you like a second skin. Faces in oil paintings—pale, sharp-featured men and women—appeared to shift in the corner of your vision, their painted eyes tracking your every move with unnerving precision. Shadows lingered in the corners, seeming to stir with faint, unnatural movement, and more than once, you swore you heard footsteps trailing behind you. But each time you turned, you found nothing but darkness pooling at your heels.

“Madam y/n,” the maid interrupted your thoughts as they stopped at the farthest corner of the fifth floor, “this will be your suite.”

She pushed open the massive double doors, revealing a room so grand it could have swallowed your entire apartment twice over. The space was opulent yet cold—ancient but well-kept. Rich, crimson drapes framed the tall windows, shielding the suite from whatever darkness lurked outside. The bed was enormous, its carved wooden posts supporting a canopy of deep velvet that seemed to absorb all light. The furniture—ornate dressers, armchairs, and a writing desk—looked like it had been plucked straight from a century long past.

Despite the beauty and grandiosity, the room was no less comforting than the dark corridors outside as it felt both untouched and meticulously staged—like a theater set waiting for its players to arrive.

“Madam,” the maid’s voice drew your attention. She moved to a dresser near the far wall and opened its doors, revealing a collection that left your mouth slightly agape. “These are from Mr. Kim Sunoo,” she explained, gesturing gracefully at the contents. “He has prepared a selection of designers for you to choose from. One for each evening.”

Designer gowns of every color and cut hung delicately, their fabrics shimmering faintly in the dim light. Silks, chiffons, and velvets, all rich and lush, stitched with gold and silver threads. Each one looked painstakingly curated, designed to command attention. A far cry from the practical wardrobe you were used to.

Far from being delighted and spoiled for choice however – the uneasiness you feel only grew. This did not felt like hospitality.

It felt like preparation.

— vii

You stood hestiantly in front of the Hall of Ascendancy—the weight of the decision pressing down on you. You had considered skipping tonight’s welcome dinner altogether—after all, unlike everyone, you weren’t exactly here to mingle and shake hands with elites. But, given the circumstances, skipping would only attract unwanted attention and you weren’t about to make waves before you had a clearer understanding of what you were truly stepping into.

You stared at your reflection in a nearby polished surface, taking in the sleek black suede long-sleeved gown you had chosen for tonight. Its asymmetrical cut was understated but elegant—one shoulder covered, the other left bare, the smooth fabric dipping to reveal your collarbone. The golden phoenix embellishments—one over the shoulder and the other delicately positioned just above the curve of your chest following the neckline—shimmered faintly under the low light, resting on the rich fabric as if they were alive. It was a dress that does not scream for attention, but one that still whispered sophistication.

Just as you stood there, caught between hesitation and obligation, a butler appeared at your side, pushing a cart laden with Venetian masks. He glanced at you briefly, his expression polite but unreadable. “It’s tradition Madam,” he said, his voice smooth and practiced, beckoning you to pick any one of the masks. “Everyone is supposed to be equals once inside. The masks ensure that no one stands above the others, no titles, no status. Simply anonymity.”

Guests ahead of you eagerly snatched the most ornate masks—studded with jewels, embroidered in gold filigree, some even fashioned with feathers that curved skyward. You, by contrast, reached for the most unassuming one: a black Colombina Venetian mask with faded bronze detailing. It blended into the shadows, almost disappearing entirely. Just as you preferred.

As you step into the Hall of Ascendancy, the irony of its name strikes you almost as sharply as the chilling ambiance. The term, which typically conjures visions of rising to heights of glory and light, is subverted here into something far more sinister. Instead of ascending into brilliance, the hall seems to draw all who enter into a descent into shadow.

Above, towering Gothic arches stretch upward, but rather than reaching a grand zenith, they dissolve into darkness, the ceiling lost to an enveloping blackness. This architectural feat creates the disquieting illusion of an upside-down ascendancy, as if the very structure aims to pull the heavens down into the abyss.

The hall is dimly lit by countless candles clustered along its length, their glow insufficient to penetrate the upper shadows but adequate to cast a ghostly light on the faces of the masked guests. Each mask, elaborately crafted and grotesquely beautiful, appears almost spectral under the flickering candlelight. The play of light and shadows however twisted their features, turning what might be considered majestic into something distinctly macabre.

In this realm of reversed ascendancy, the guests move like phantoms against a backdrop of dark stone and darker shadows, their whispers echoing off the walls as if sharing secrets with the ancient stones. Their movement—gliding soundlessly in pairs, every step perfectly in rhythm with the eerie strains of the orchestra—makes your skin crawl.

They were too graceful. Too perfect.

You tried not to stare, reminding yourself that some among them might be bloodsuckers. But that was precisely the most unsettling part—you wouldn't know who. Everyone was perfectly hidden behind elaborate gowns and crisp suits, their expressions meticulously concealed behind eerie Venetian masks.

“y/n!”

The voice was familiar, bright—an anchor in this dizzying sea of masked spectre.

Sunoo.

You spotted him, his pale skin glimmering under the faint light, the grin behind his own half mask unmistakeable. He waved enthusiastically, threading through the crowd as though they weren’t even there. You lifted your hand, returning his wave, moving instinctively toward him.

But then—

The music swelled, deep and rhythmic, and soon the crowd, too, shifted. Pairs began to form, bodies turning in fluid precision. The crowd twisted and folded in on itself, the movements impossibly synchronized, cutting through the hall like tides.

Sunoo’s figure vanished, swallowed by the waves dancing guests.

“Sunoo?” you called, your voice dissolving into the music. You pushed forward but the crowd grew tighter. Dark gowns spun like shadows, masks turned toward you in quick, darting glances—just enough to unnerve you, just enough to make you feel watched. You tried to move away but like tidal wave, the dancing guests surged and swirled around you as if all conspiring to keep you tethered where you were.

Then—

A hand seized yours.

Before you could react, you were pulled sharply into the crowd, your body spun until you collided with someone—chest to chest. An arm snaked around your waist, strong and unyielding, holding you in place as the waltz swept you into its current.

“I’m sorry, I’m not—”

The words died in your throat. You recognized this grip—talon-like and suffocating, an iron cage clasping your ribs. The broad shoulders pressing against you and the sharp jawline cutting like stone beneath the Golden of the Colombina Venetian mask, were unmistakably familiar. And those eyes—the penetrating, intense gaze that seemed to probe the depths of your mind—left no room for doubt.

Park Sunghoon.

Of course, it was him. It was always him, you thought bitterly.

“Of course, it’s you,” you muttered, vivid memories starting to surge to the forefront of your mind—that of eight years ago during the Winter Ball when his grip had been just as unforgiving, his presence just as inescapable, and the proximity just as suffocating. It felt as though no time had passed at all.

His head tilted menacingly, the golden venetian mask he wore catching the flicker of candlelight. “—likewise, it is always you,” he murmured, his voice was quiet but edged with something darker.

The room, the people, the music—all of it faded to nothing. It was just you and him again, caught in a silent war that neither of you dared name. The waltz pulled you into its current, and Sunghoon led you with an ease that only reminded you how effortlessly he always took control.

“I told you to stay away,” he said softly, though there was no kindness in the words—just quiet steel.

“And I told you I don’t take orders,” you shot back, forcing steadiness into your voice despite the way his presence pressed against you, suffocating and all-encompassing. His proximity, the unyielding strength in his hold, stirred memories you had buried too deep to ignore. “Besides, I didn’t come here uninvited.”

“You let yourself be invited into a lion’s den,” he scoffed, the sound barely audible above the swell of violins.

“I trumped the rat maze you set for me eight years ago, didn’t I?" you retorted, "clearly, survival is my forte.”

His fingers curled tighter around your waist, vice-like against your ribs. Not enough to hurt, but enough to remind you who led this dance. “Take your penchant for mind games elsewhere, y/n. This isn’t a playpen—it’s a gladiator ring.”

“You should be the one taking your mind games elsewhere, Sunghoon. I know your game, so if you’re thinking of orchestrating everything around me just to play the savior—don’t bother,” you hissed. “Just come as you are. If you’re here for vengeance, then do it. Stop being cold one second and trying to save me the next.”

The music swelled again, a crescendo that made the floor seem to tremble beneath your feet. His fingers dug into your side—almost punishing—as though your words struck deeper than you expect it would.

As the piece surged toward its thunderous finale, Sunghoon’s hand shifted, guiding you into a sharp turn. But as you spun, the momentum of the movement carried you further than intended—too far for his grasp to reclaim you. The music fractured into a new, chaotic melody, the dancers around you shifting like tides in time with the change.

Before you could regain your balance, another hand caught yours, pulling you into the rhythm of the new dance. The hold was gentler this time, firm but reassuring, a stark contrast to the suffocating grip you’d just escaped. The voice that followed cut through the stifling tension, light and teasing.

“Sorry about that. You looked like you needed rescuing.”

You turned sharply, blinking up at the man who’d swept you to the edge of the room. He was slightly shorter than Sunghoon, his build lean and lithe. Where Sunghoon exuded impenetrable strength, this man moved with a kind of devil-may-care ease as though he thrived on chaos without ever letting it touch him. His blonde hair fell in deliberate disarray, a tousled mess that only added to the impression that nothing in this world—rules, expectations, or danger—could weigh him down.

His half-jester mask concealed the upper half of his face, but the smirk pulling at his lips was impossible to miss. It was wide, sharp, and full of boyish charm, a grin that danced the line between amusement and provocation. The silver lip ring he wore at the centre of his lower lip only enhanced the air of mischief he seemed to carry effortlessly.

“Jaeyun,” he introduced, his voice smooth but carrying the kind of playfulness that made you wonder if he ever took anything seriously. Spinning you out of the crowd with a dancer’s grace, he watched you closely, the weight of his gaze hidden beneath the mask, yet still palpable. His grip was steady but not imposing, the veins on his hands prominent, betraying a strength that seemed out of place with his disarming demeanor.

“I haven’t seen you around before,” he continued smoothly, his tone casual but edged with intrigue. There was something both playful and calculated about him, as though every word he spoke carried a double meaning.

“That is probably because I’m not part of the 1%. Just someone invited out of favour,” you shrugged and eased up, thinking how anywhere was better than being near Sunghoon and right now in this man’s arms, you felt oddly at ease.

His golden brow arched beneath the mask, a playful smirk curling his lips. “No one here gets invited without a reason, my lady. You’re meant to be here.”

“Trust me,” you said drily, “I’m no one important, so you’ve picked the wrong girl to waltz with. I can’t help you worm your way to any position.”

He chuckled, “well, that makes two of us. I’m no one important either. Just a nepo baby bouncing between industries like a particularly well-dressed pinball.”

The laugh that escaped you was unguarded, the first real one that night.

“I don’t think I can last much longer tonight,” you admitted quietly, glancing back at the sea of masked faces and swirling gowns. “Do you think there’s a way to sneak out of here?”

He chuckled, as though he’d been waiting for you to ask. “Skipping the speech? Bold choice. I approve.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping conspiratorially. “Don’t let a maid or butler catch you—they’ll just escort you back in. But I know a way. I’ll help you escape to your chamber.”

You hesitated, glancing back at the dark swirl of dancers in the center of the room. Somewhere in that tide of velvet and masks, you knew Sunghoon was watching.

“Lead the way,” you muttered, straightening your mask and steeling yourself against the lingering shiver of Sunghoon’s presence.

Jaeyun offered his arm with a wink. “Smart choice. Follow me.”

He led you deftly through the swirling mass of dancers, weaving in and out of the crowd as though he’d done this a hundred times before. You kept your hand in his, letting him pull you along, grateful for the escape—even if part of you couldn’t shake the feeling that this castle had eyes everywhere.

The towering figures in elaborate cloaks and Venetian masks seemed to loom larger as you passed, their heads turning ever so slightly in your direction, as though they knew your intentions. You forced yourself to look ahead, Jaeyun’s golden hair your only anchor amidst the sea of elaborate gowns and flickering shadows.

At last, he pushed open a discreet side door, ushering you into a narrow, dimly lit corridor. The muffled strains of the orchestra faded slightly, replaced by the faint hum of silence. The walls here were stone, the flickering sconces spaced farther apart, casting deep pools of darkness.

“There,” he said, finally letting go of your hand and gesturing down the hall. “This leads back toward the guest wings. No one’ll bother you this way—no guards, no butlers.”

You glanced at him warily, still catching your breath. “And how do you know all of this?”

Jaeyun flashed that mischievous smile, but there was something in his eyes—a flicker of something too knowing. “I have my ways,” he teased, tapping the edge of his mask. “I’m a bit of an expert at slipping out unnoticed.”

You folded your arms, trying to read him. He didn’t feel like the others—those unsettling, predatory guests whose masked faces all seemed to tilt as you passed. Compared to Sunghoon’s towering, fortress-like presence, Jaeyun was the opposite—light, sharp, and unpredictable. If Sunghoon was a storm, heavy with inevitability, Jaeyun was the wind, playful and untethered, ready to shift direction at any moment.

“You’re not leading me into another lion’s den, are you?” you asked flatly. Trust is afterall not something you hand out very freely.

He chuckled. “No lions here. Maybe a few rats, but you’ll be fine.” He tilted his head toward the hallway. “Go on, I’ll keep watch to make sure no one follows.”

You hesitated, searching his expression one last time, but his grin was steady, his posture relaxed—like someone who lived for mischief but wasn’t cruel enough to throw you into a pit for fun.

“Fine,” you muttered. “Thanks, I guess.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said, stepping back into the shadows near the door. “And don’t get lost—these halls have a habit of playing tricks. It's not called the Corridors of Treachery for nothing.”

You shot him one last glance before hurrying down the corridor, the faint sound of your heels against the stone floor echoing back at you. The hallway stretched longer than you’d expected, the shadows creeping in at the edges of your vision, distorting the path. Doors lined the hallway on either side, their carved handles gleaming faintly in the dim light, inviting and forbidding all at once.

You reached for the nearest door, desperate to find a way back to your chambers. It creaked open slowly, revealing a narrow staircase spiraling downward into darkness. Nope, you thought as you closed the door and opened the one next to it.

This time, the door opened to a vast, empty dining hall, its long table draped in crimson cloth, the chairs eerily vacant as though waiting for unseen occupants. The chandeliers above swayed slightly, though no wind stirred the air. You slammed the door shut, your breath catching, the eerie stillness pressing against your chest.

Your heart raced as you tried another handle, and another, each opening up to various types of rooms but not to the North Wing. You reached the end of the corridor, desperation creeping into your movements. But when the door opened, your stomach twisted. The staircase from the first door now stood before you again.

No, that's not possible. You turned sharply, your gaze darting down the corridor. You were certain the staircase had been at the other end of the hall, far from here. Yet here it was, unmoved, defying logic.

Shaking your head, you pushed the thought aside and moved to the next door, your steps hurried. The knob twisted reluctantly under your grip, creaking open to reveal something entirely different. The air shifted, heavier now, the dim light casting elongated shadows across the floor. The scent of dust and aged paper filled your senses.

“A library?” you murmured, the word barely audible as your curiosity overrode caution. Towering bookshelves rose around you, their rows packed with cracked leather bindings. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the faint creak of wood beneath your steps. You ventured further in, but a sudden sound stopped you cold—footsteps. Voices.

“I swear I saw someone—” a maid’s voice, soft but tense, carried through the corridor outside.

“No one would be stupid enough to use this corridor,” an older, irritated butler replied. “Still, we’ll get in trouble if someone’s unaccounted for in the Hall. You check the doors on that side. I’ll take this one—”

Panic shot through you as Jaeyun’s warning echoed in your mind: Don’t let them catch you. They’ll just drag you back. Before you could think, you had already shut the door behind you, bolting it as quietly as possible. The prospect of locking yourself in an unfamiliar room was unsettling, but the thought of being dragged back into the Hall was enough to root you in place.

Stepping back into the dim room, your fingers brushed against a nearby oil lamp. You hesitated only for a moment before taking it, the soft glow pushing back the shadows around you. A new thought flickered in your mind: perhaps this was exactly where you needed to be because if there were any place to find answers, it would be in a library.

And so you turned to the towering shelves, your eyes already skimming the spines of the books. Most of the books were likely ancient with their cracked spines etched with unfamiliar symbols and faded runes.

And then, something caught your attention.

There, in the middle of the farthest shelf, tucked between larger tomes, was a book entitled The Annals of Kings. Its spine was cracked with age, the title barely visible in faded gold lettering. Perhaps this can tell me more about the owner of the castle, you thought, carefully taking it out and flipping open the cover. At first, the book seemed to be a meticulously detailed chronicle of royal bloodlines—family trees stretching back to eras long forgotten, with unfamiliar crests and names etched in bold, precise script. "Weird," you find yourself whispering as one particular page had burnt marks precisely over some members of the House. As you flipped further, your breath hitch when your eyes read the word 'Purebloods' in the 3rd chapter. You remembered Sunghoon had once talked about a 'Pureblood' to refer to one of them.

You read on, setting the book down on a nearby table:

In the earliest epochs of human civilization, the Purebloods did not linger in the shadows—they ruled openly, their supernatural gifts woven seamlessly into the fabric of leadership. To mortals, their superhuman abilities appeared as divine providence, unparalleled intelligence, or sheer physical prowess. Kingdoms flourished under their command, their strength ensuring stability and their cunning guiding progress. Mortals, though inferior, were the lifeblood of the empire in every sense—figuratively and literally. They served not only as a source of sustenance but as indispensable tools in the expansion and maintenance of vampiric rule. By draining mortals to the brink of death, Purebloods could create Strays: undead beings stripped of humanity and intelligence, reduced to feral creatures driven solely by hunger and instinct. These mindless abominations, incapable of fear or betrayal, became perfect instruments of war. By contrast, Spoilbloods were created with precision and strategic intent. Only mortals of exceptional strength, intellect, or loyalty were chosen—sifted from the mortals and meticulously groomed. The transformation involved an agonizing process: near-fatal blood loss followed by the infusion of Pureblood blood. The result was a new kin—impure yet indispensable. Retaining their human intellect and experience, Spoilbloods became tethered to their Pureblood creators through an unbreakable bond. They served as advisors, enforcers, and agents, wielding their knowledge of mortal affairs to further their master’s dominion. Their dual nature made them invaluable, bridging the gap between humanity and the Purebloods’ reign, and solidifying the Purebloods’ control over mortal realms. But as the empire grew, so too did ambition and recklessness. The turning of mortals, once deliberate and controlled, became indiscriminate. Strays, bred in overwhelming numbers, escaped their creators’ control, wreaking havoc even within vampiric strongholds. Spoilbloods, no longer chosen for their value, were created in excess, leading to insubordination and infighting. The tools that had forged an empire became the seeds of its collapse. Strays, unleashed without thought, ravaged lands indiscriminately. Spoilbloods, embittered by their tainted status, turned on their masters, allying with mortals or seeking power for themselves. And mortals, emboldened by the chaos, rose in rebellion, wielding fire and steel against their oppressors. What followed was the Great Sundering—a cataclysmic collapse of the Shadow Reign. Purebloods who had once ruled openly were forced to retreat into obscurity, their ambitions tempered by the need for secrecy. Now, the Purebloods operate from the shadows, manipulating mortals and maintaining their dominion through whispers and unseen influence. Yet the lessons of the past remain unlearned, for ambition stirs once more. The tools that once brought empires to ruin may yet be repurposed in the pursuit of a legacy reborn—

The sound of a doorknob turning shattered your concentration, your heart nearly leaping out of your ribcage. “See? It’s locked—” the butler’s voice, the one from earlier, filtered through, sharp with irritation. “No one is here. Let’s go now before we’re the ones getting searched for.”

You exhaled shakily, bracing yourself against the table as your pulse thundered in your ears. I need to go. Quickly, you shut the book, its weight feeling heavier now, as though it carried more than history—something darker, something alive. You wanted to read more, to uncover the truths buried in its pages, but lingering wasn’t an option. And carrying a book about vampire history through this castle felt like begging for trouble.

Your gaze fell to your gown, and in a moment of desperation, you slipped the book into the narrow space between your corset and dress. The edges dug into your ribs uncomfortably, but it would have to do.

Unbolting the door with painstaking caution, you cracked it open just enough to peek into the hallway. Clear. You slipped into the corridor, moving as quickly as you dared. One door, then another—each led to rooms you’d already seen, as though the corridor itself conspired against you, bending and twisting your sense of direction.

"I swear if—" you groaned in frustation as you twisted the doorknob next to the lopsided sconce, half expecting it to open into a room you had seen but this time, as if the corridor has had enough of torturing you, it opened to the North Wing, the one you had passed through to get to your room.

Relief surged through you, propelling your legs forward. You darted down the hall, your steps unsteady, nearly stumbling as your door came into view. Throwing yourself inside, you slammed it shut, bolting it with trembling hands. Leaning heavily against the door, your chest heaved, each gasp scraping against the pressure of the book pressed tightly to your ribs, making every breath feel like a chore.

With a frustrated sigh, you reached for the zipper of your gown, tugging it down just enough to free the stolen volume. The moment felt almost triumphant—until—

“Fuck—what the heck, Park Sunghoon?!”

Your own voice rang out, sharp and panicked, as you froze.

There he was. Sitting on your bed like he owned it, leaning back lazily with his arms sprawled behind him. His hands pressed into the mattress to prop himself up, his posture infuriatingly casual, like he’d been waiting for hours. One leg stretched out, the other bent loosely at the knee.

His golden Venetian mask sat perched atop his head, as though he’d lazily shoved it out of the way. The ornate design, with its sharp angles and eerie elegance, looked less menacing up there—but you’d almost prefer it over his uncovered face. At least the mask didn’t smirk. That infuriating curve of his lips, brimming with amusement, made you want to throw something at him. But more annoying than that was his gaze: how it lingered—too long—on your corseted torso where the gown had slipped slightly from your shoulders. Your cheeks flamed, flustered, as you hastily tugged your dress back together, zipping it up in one swift, jerky motion. You clutched the fabric tightly over your chest, as though it could shield you from the weight of his gaze.

“Calm down,” he drawled, his voice low and almost teasing. “You had a corset on. It’s not like you were only in your br—”

“Shut it," you snapped.

Sunghoon’s smirk deepened, but the amusement in his expression gave way to something sharper as his eyes dropped to the book still clutched in your hands.

“Instead of worrying about your dignity,” he said, his tone suddenly edged with steel, “you might want to worry about the implication of stealing that.”

“It’s just a book,” you muttered, though you knew better.

He tilted his head, the casual air around him darkening. “Just a book? That’s a very important book, and people would kill to lay their hands on it—humans especially. And if the nonhumans find out that a human had stolen it…” He let the words hang, the unspoken consequence thickening the silence.

You swallowed hard, suspicion flaring despite his warning. “perhaps you’re just saying that to stop me from learning what’s inside.”

He rose fluidly from the bed, moving closer with that same languid grace that unnerved you, “Actually, you know what..." his voice was calm, almost mocking, as he advanced toward you. He didn’t stop, his deliberate steps forcing you to retreat until your back hit the door, "Go ahead. Read it from cover to cover. Then maybe you’ll finally understand how foolish you had been to throw yourself here—and perhaps…”

His tone sharpened as his hand slid up the curve of your waist, his fingers curling against your ribs with a vicelike grip. The pressure pinned you harder against the door, leaving no room to escape. You had almost forgotten how paralyzing his beauty could be up close—how each sharp line of his face seemed crafted with unnerving precision. But it wasn’t just his features; it was his gaze.

There, in the scant inches between you, his eyes burned with an intensity that made you hold your breath. It wasn’t the probing look you’d grown used to, the one that seemed to sift through your thoughts for answers. No, this was something else. This gaze demanded. It didn’t seek to uncover the depth of your mind; it sought to make you reveal it willingly.

And then, fleeting but unmistakable, you caught the way his eyes flitted downward—down to your lips—before returning to your eyes. It was brief, the kind of glance you could almost convince yourself didn’t happen, but the air between you felt thicker for it, alive with unspoken tension.

“—learn a thing or two about not trusting anyone here,” he finished, his voice like the brush of a blade against your throat.

The door clicked open softly behind you, and his hand released you just as suddenly as it had held you. Before you could process the shift, something cold pressed into your palm. It was your dagger—the one he impaled on your stacks of files with just weeks ago.

“I’d keep that knife on me at all times if I were you,” he murmured, breath ghosting your ear. “And maybe sleep with one eye open. You’ve made quite the impression tonight—and I’m not just talking about me.”

It was only then did you notice the small charm dangling from the hilt of your dagger—a ruby crest, unmistakably his. It swayed gently, a silent signature that felt more mocking than reassuring. The crimson gem glinted wickedly in the dim light, its gleam as taunting and inescapable as the smirk that now lingered, unbidden, in your thoughts.

— viii

The second night reconvened in an entirely different space. Unlike the grandeur of the Hall of Ascendancy, tonight’s venue stretched seamlessly into a vast conservatory. But this wasn’t just any conservatory—it was a towering mansion of glass and steel, an architectural marvel that seemed almost alive under the full moon, which hung high above.

The guests were already assembled by the time you arrived, their attire more elaborate than ever. Velvet gowns flowed like liquid shadows, and cloaks billowed with every calculated step. Masks adorned with jewels, feathers, and gilded filigree glinted in the broken light, their ornate designs blurring the line between beauty and monstrosity.

But tonight, something felt different.

Their movements, slower and more deliberate, carried an unsettling weight. The laughter that echoed through the towering space was sharper, colder, its brittle edges slicing through the charged silence.

They no longer looked like nobles. Their presence felt predatory, their glances sharp and calculating, their steps echoing with a primal rhythm. After what you’d learned yesterday, you no longer saw them as elegant courtiers.

Your burgundy gown did little to comfort you, its sheer cape trailing behind as you moved through the crowd. The beads shimmered under the moonlight like droplets of blood, an omen you couldn’t ignore. The dagger in your garter weighed heavier than ever, its promise sharp against your thigh.

At the far end of the room, the soft murmur of voices fell silent when the host stepped onto a raised platform, his usual playful energy somewhat tempered by the atmosphere. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” the host spread his arms wide in a gesture of welcome. “Or perhaps I should say hunters and prey.”

A ripple of laughter moved through the crowd, low and knowing.

“As per tradition, tonight we hunt. We test not just our skill but our resolve,” he continued, his tone light but his words laden with a weight that made your stomach churn. “Our prey tonight will be scattered across the grounds. Cunning and elusive, just as they always have been. You know the rules. The one with the highest count by sunrise… wins.”

The crowd stirred, their masked faces tilting in eerie anticipation.

“Hunting?” you whispered, dread curling through you – dread that no one seems to share. “Of course,” you thought to yourself, “it’s normal rich people bloodsport. Deplorable.”

“Word of advice?”

You jumped, surprised, spinning to face the owner of the voice. It was Jaeyun. Despite wearing an ominous half Plague Doctor mask this time, you could easily recognise those piercing in the middle of his lips and the playful voice. He leaned closer, whispering, “—don’t think of just sitting around and laying low.”

Your brows furrowed. “Excuse me?”

“This is more than just your usual ‘rich-people bloodsport’. The real prize lay beyond rabbits, bison, herrons-” Jaeyun said smoothly, a casual drawl lacing his words.

You shook your head, disbelieving, “forget it. I’m not interested in getting first place in killing innocent animals.”

“Trust me, it’s not just about coming up at the top,” he muttered ominously before his lips widened into the usual playful grin. “That aside…” he beckoned subtly, nudging you to glance toward the far end of the room, “I can never tell if you two are lovers or enemies, but there’s something there. He’s been staring for ages.”

You turned, following his line of sight, and felt your pulse stutter.

Sunghoon.

He stood at the far side of the glasshouse, his tall figure cutting through the crowd like a shadow. But even the mask couldn’t conceal the intensity of his stare—sharp, piercing, locked directly onto you.

You tore your gaze away, the weight of it lingering far too heavily on your shoulders.

“Careful,” Jaeyun murmured, his grin turning faintly wolfish, “you might end up being the one he hunts tonight instead of a bison.”

Before you could respond, a bell rang and darkness consumed the glasshouse. “You have until sun down,” you hear the host announce, amusement evident, “eternal glory awaits those who makes it. Happy hunting.”

There was something ominous about the way he emphasizes the words but before you could process them further, you feel a hand on yours, soft but insistent. “Madam, it’s me,” you recognised the voice, it was one of those maids who served you breakfast this morning, “please follow me. I am to take you to your respective position.”

Before you could resist, she slipped a blindfold over your eyes and led you outside. The cold night air bit at your skin, your pulse quickening with every step. When the blindfold came off, you were near a shed, and a shotgun was thrusted into your hands.

The bell tolled again, its echo swallowed by the night, and almost immediately, gunshots rang out, shattering the stillness. Manic laughter followed—sharp, jagged, and unhinged, like a predator’s glee.

You’d always been competitive, but killing innocent animals had never been your sport. As the Maid stepped away, a thought struck you. Without hesitation, you grabbed her arm, realizing you could easily disguise yourself—especially since the mask you wore among the guests would conceal your identity.

“Trade clothes with me," you said urgently, "please. It's a bit too heavy for hunting, don't you think?" you lied.

The maid looked hesitant at first but eventually agreed after you promised her some reward as long as she finds you afterward. You two ducked inside the shed and traded clothes.

The maid's uniform was simple and nondescript, just a black velvet dress that hugged the figure modestly with its high neckline framed by delicate white lace and long sleeves that gathered slightly at the shoulders with a matching lace at the cuffs. It was the perfect attire for hiding in plain sight. Or running, should you need to.

You muttered a thanks as she took her leave but just as you were buttoning yours, you heard noises—footsteps, closer now, and the sharp bark of a laugh that set your teeth on edge. You froze, your breath caught in your throat, as you crept toward the narrow window.

Outside, in the clearing beyond, stood the tall man whose obnoxious laugh had always filled the hall whenever you guys gather. His mask hung crooked on his face, barely concealing the manic grin beneath it. He cocked his rifle toward the shadows, his movements deliberate, his laughter trailing like the howl of a wolf on the hunt. Then he fired indiscriminately.

A rabbit fell first, its small body tumbling lifelessly into the frost-tipped grass. Then an eagle, a deer—anything that dared move. He chuckled to himself, carelessly slinging the dead rabbit over his shoulder as another figure emerged from the shadows.

“You’re hoarding everything,” the newcomer whined. He wore a double-faced mask—one side smiling, the other weeping—and his movements were unnervingly fluid, almost inhuman. “You’ve really got to leave some for us poor uncivilized folk. It’s not like we can afford to go hunting every week.”

The tall man turned with an arrogant shrug, his grin widening. “Well, some people are just meant to stay at the top.”

Before he could say more, the masked figure vanished—gone, like smoke dissipating into the night.

And then he was behind him.

You barely suppressed a gasp as the double-faced figure reappeared, silent and sudden, sinking his fangs deep into the tall man’s neck. There wasn’t even time for a scream—just a gurgled choke as the man’s body went limp, his rifle falling uselessly to the ground. The tall man’s once boisterous laughter was silenced forever.

You staggered back, horror twisting in your gut, bile rising in your throat. The realization hit you like ice—this wasn’t just a hunt. It was a literal bloodsport and you were part of the pecking order, a prey for a specific kind of predator.

You had to flee now.

Your pulse thundered in your ears as you darted out of the shed, the shadows of the garden swallowing you whole. Thorny rose bushes clawed at your skirt as you weaved through the rows, their petals dark as ink beneath the full moon. Then you heard it—a low, muffled protest. A man’s voice, weak and disbelieving. You froze, crouching behind the tangled branches, peering through a narrow clearing.

“You bastard—” the man on the ground croaked as he laid in a pool of his own blood. The bile rose in your throat as his voice cracked with desperate rage, “—they were right, you shouldn’t have lived.”

Another man suddenly stepped into the frame with unhurried ease, exuding an air of cold authority. Then with utter ruthlessness, brought his shoe down onto the bleeding man's face, tilting it toward your direction. The lifeless eyes locked onto yours, wide and unblinking, fangs bared in a final expression of fury—frozen in death.

“Why do you have to bleed that much?” the man above him muttered, his tone detached and annoyed. “It’s getting all over my trousers.”

Your breath caught. You knew that voice. That smooth, unbothered and utterly unforgiving voice.

Park Sunghoon.

He stood over the lifeless body, unnervingly casual, shaking his shoes to remove the last traces of blood, as though he’d swatted a fly instead of taken a life.

Your chest tightened. You should have known—he was a vampire after all which means he must have also been taking part in this brutal, predatory game. But seeing it like this, the casual ruthlessness in his every move, made the realization cut deeper than you’d ever prepared for.

Then, his head snapped up.

Fuck, you thought as you drew back instinctively, he knew.

You stifled a gasp, turning on your heel to bolt the other way—only to collide with something solid. Someone.

Sunghoon.

Before you could react, his fingers wrapped around your wrist, effortlessly stilling the blade you had instinctively raised between you. But it wasn’t the pain in your wrist that made your blood ran cold. It was the expression in his eyes. Cold. Calculating. It occured to you that if he could kill his own kind so easily and so remorselessly – killing you would be child’s play especially given the bad blood between you too.

“I should have known—" you said scornfully. Each word spitted out like venom, “you’re just like them.”

“I never said I was any different,” he replied smoothly, his brows arching with disinterested amusement, as though your accusation was a mild inconvenience. “Your words imply you thought otherwise though. I’m touched. But game’s over y/n, let’s stop beating around the—”

Before he could continue, the sharp twang of a bowstring shattered the silence. An arrow sliced through the air, embedding itself in the stone fountain between you with a thud.

“Not the most gentlemanly, is it?”

Both of you turned sharply.

Jaeyun stood at the edge of the clearing, a bow in hand, a smirk painted across his face. His plague doctor mask gleam rather luminously in the moonlight. “Attacking a lone woman? That’s very low of you, Lord Park. But then again, the bar has been in hell when it comes to you—"

Another arrow zipped through the air but Sunghoon caught it mid-flight, snapping the shaft with an almost irritated flick of his wrist. Before he could react further, however, Jaeyun fired again. This time, the arrow struck true, embedding itself into Sunghoon’s upper arm. While pulling his bowstring taut for another hit, Jaeyun tilted his head sharply in your direction, the motion clear and deliberate: run.

You didn’t need to be told twice. You bolted toward the castle, your dagger still clutched tightly in your hand. Behind you, the sound of movement—fast, deliberate, and unnervingly close—cut through the night, followed by the sharp crack of something violent. But you didn’t look back.

You tore through the rose garden, through the labyrinth of shadowed corridors, until the heavy castle doors loomed before you. They slammed shut behind you with a deafening boom, the echo resounding like a gunshot in the empty hall. Only then did you pause, chest heaving, your pulse a frantic rhythm beneath your skin.

As you force yourself to make your way through the series of hallways, dread rose with every step when you realised you had stepped into the Corridors of Treachery—its narrow, winding passages and endless series of identical doors looming ominously before you.

“Fuck,” you muttered defeatedly as you tried door after door, only to find yourself circling back to the same rooms you had already seen. It was as though the castle itself conspired to trap you within its labyrinth.

At this rate, he’d find you.

Then finally, one door opened to a different room. Relief surged through you—until you saw where you’d ended up. The library.

You groaned in frustration, about to turn back but then realised that perhaps this was exactly where you should be. You quickly shut the door behind you as you recalled the host mentioning how tonight's event was tradition. If it was tradition, then there had to be something written about it.

Grabbing the nearest lamp, you scanned the shelves for books that details about traditions or perhaps rituals, reading the titles aloud in a voice that is barely above a whisper: "The Blood Wars. The Vitae Manifesto. Of Reigns and Conquests. The Obsidian Testament. The Silent Prophecy—"

You froze. Backtracking, your fingers traced over one title. The Obsidian Testament.

“This—” you murmured, cutting yourself off as you freed the book from its resting place. You remembered a reference to this particular book yesterday, though the page had been burnt—intentionally, it seemed, as though someone had tried to erase all traces of its existence.

The words from The Annals of Kings surfaced in your mind like a whisper from the grave: “The Obsidian Testament is no book—it is a hunger that feeds. Blood begets blood, and its truths are carved in the ruin of those who sought them.”

The Obsidian Testament felt heavier than you expected, its weight solid and unyielding, as if the book itself resisted being opened. The leather cover, cracked and brittle with age, was uneven beneath your fingertips. At first, you thought it was some widespread leather cracks, but no—there was something more deliberate about it. The surface felt etched, uneven ridges forming patterns you couldn’t quite discern under the flickering lamplight. But there was no time to linger.

Hurriedly, you flipped through the first few pages, your breath quickening as you searched for any explanation for the night’s macabre events but the first few pages only offered you macabre drawings of human, sigils and strange incantations.

There must be something, you thought desperately as you turned the brittle pages. The parchment crackled under your touch, the oppressive silence pressing in around you. Then, finally, something legible:

The Pureblood lineage, though unparalleled in strength, is not immune to the decay that plagues all empires. Bloodlines can weaken. Houses can fall. To maintain the purity and continuation of our kind, vigilance is required. The survival of the Pureblood lineage is not merely a matter of existence but the continuation of perfection itself. The weak may breed indiscriminately, but the strong—the Purebloods—must refine and preserve their population with precision.

“Sounds like something straight out of a supremacist manifesto,” you murmured, but your words faltered as your eyes fell to the next few lines:

—what remains hidden knowledge, however, is that the act of turning a mortal into a Spoilblood, while widely practiced, harbors a purpose far greater than is openly acknowledged. The Reaping—is a truth reserved for the most exalted among us, a secret rite that transcends the mundane utility of turning. It is the keystone of power, a ritual that restores the Pureblood’s supremacy, binding mortality to perfection beneath the crimson glow of a blood moon. If, during a blood moon, a pureblood binds their hundredth Spoilblood, renewal grants power anew—

Just then you thought you saw movements outside the window. You peered through an opening, seeing three figures striding toward the castle, weapons glinting in the moonlight—a bat, a sickle, a scythe. The air grew heavy with the unmistakable promise of bloodshed.

You shoved the book back onto the shelf, your pulse hammering against your chest. Keeping to the shadows, you slipped back into the hall, trying every door possible. At last, one opened to a new hallway, but as you moved to leave, muffled cries stopped you.

“I’ll give you my wealth—my land—please!” The man’s voice was frantic, his words tumbling over each other in desperation. Looming over him were the 3 masked men from earlier, their choice of masks as macabre as the weapon in their hands

“Well, look who it is—the Actor,” the one in the Bauta Venetian mask said ,as he pushed the pleading man’s mask aside to reveal his face.

“Too bad,” sneered the one with the Baphomet mask, squatting beside him. “We’ve got too many pretty faces already. Shall we feast instead?”

“Sounds good to me. All that caviar and wine probably makes his blood taste divine.” The one in the clown mask pressed the edge of his scythe against the man’s neck. “Besides, he’s not good enough for the Reaping—not enough wealth and influence.”

The man’s protests fell on deaf ears, dissolving into guttural choking as the three figures descended upon him in a brutal, efficient frenzy. You turned away, bile rising in your throat, the wet, tearing sounds behind you digging into your mind like jagged glass.

Desperate to focus elsewhere, your gaze landed on the nearest window. The silver glow of the full moon spilled through it, freezing you in place as fragments of memory jolted through your mind, unbidden and sharp. Words from The Obsidian Testament rang like a broken radio—disjointed, warped. "When the full moon wanes, the blood moon will rise, and with it, chaos shall reign." The line clung to your thoughts, twisting with Anton’s offhand remark just a week ago: "There’s a Blood Moon this month," he’d said casually, as if it were a trivial astrological event.

The realisation struck you like a lightning bolt. Tonight's bloodsport wasn't simply for entertainment nor indulgence. It was preparation—an offering—for something far more insidious.

This wasn't just a game.

This was the prelude to a Reaping.

You needed to move—fast. The sickening sounds of their feeding still echoed down the corridor, making your skin crawl. Keeping low, you slipped past the door left ajar earlier and darted into the dimly lit hall, your footsteps light and deliberate. Ahead, a smaller door leading to the servants’ passage came into view.

You shoved it open, slipping through and climbing the spiral staircase two steps at a time, your breath quick and shallow. Then you heard it—the clatter of heavy footsteps below, sharp and deliberate. Looking down, your eyes locked with one of the men from earlier—the one in the Bauta mask. He stood at the base of the stairs, his head tilted, his expression unreadable beneath the eerie mask.

“Thought I sensed a weasel snooping around,” he called mockingly, his tone dripping with sinister amusement. “You’re mine, then.”

Panic surged. Fuck. You slammed the door shut behind you, twisting the lock just as he reached it, sprinting into what looked like a gallery of a statues. But everywhere you looked there were no exit in sight, just statues looming in eerie stillness, their solemn faces twisted as though mourning what was to come.

Behind you, the door crashed open, and his relentless footsteps followed, their sound reverberating through the empty space.

Desperation clawed at you as you slid behind one of the statues, your chest heaving, eyes darting around for an exit. Still none in sight. Your grip tightened around the dagger in your hand, its cool weight grounding you. The heart, you thought as your mind raced back to everything you’d read about vampires yesterday. That was their weak point.

But as your gaze flicked between the trembling dagger in your hand and the figure still prowling the gallery, searching for you, doubt seeped in like an unwelcome shadow. His towering build, his inhuman speed, his strength—there was no way you could overpower him.

Your eyes darted back to the blade, the calculated risk forming in your mind the only option left. Steeling yourself, you drew the blade across your thigh, wincing as the sharp pain flared and blood welled up in angry streaks which summoned him almost immediately. “Gotcha—" he sneered, as he closed the distance in one smooth unsettling motion, his grin stretching unnaturally wide, fangs bared in predatory triumph.

You let him topple you, his weight crashing down with bruising force. As you’d anticipated, his head dipped straight to your thigh, drawn to the fresh cut rather than your neck. His grip tightened, his breath sharp and ragged against your skin.

It was the opening you needed.

With a surge of determination, you drove the blade into his chest from his back, straight into his heart. A guttural hiss tore from his throat as his body convulsed, staggering back violently. Blood soaked his shirt as he clawed at the weapon embedded in his chest. He ripped it free with a snarl, flinging it aside like it was nothing more than an inconvenience. “You filthy wench,” he spat venomously, trying in vain to stem the flow of blood.

You didn’t wait. Scrambling to your feet, you grabbed the dagger he had thrown near you and darted back out to where you came from, sprinting into the corridor at the other end instead which led to a hallway lined with mirrors, their warped reflections casting eerie, shifting shadows. You sprinted aimlessly, your only thought to escape. But just as the end of the hallway came into view, something heavy wrenched you backward with inhuman strength. A hand clamped over your mouth, muffling your terrified cry. It can’t end like this, your mind screamed, desperation clawing at the edges of your sanity but no matter how hard you thrashed, it was futile and the next thing you knew, you were hurled into a small, confined space with the sound of the door clicking shut behind you sealing your fate.

Your back slammed against what felt like a cupboard, the hard surface digging painfully into your spine. The body pinning you in place was unyielding—a solid wall of muscle that absorbed your frantic shoves and kicks without faltering.

“Calm down, calm—” a familiar voice whispered, but with adrenaline fuelling your struggle, terror overrode recognition.

“y/n, calm the fuck down—it’s me, Sunghoon.”

Your movements stilled instantly, your chest heaving with ragged breaths. He flipped a hidden switch near the door, his face was set in frustration, though there was no malice in his eyes, “if you don’t stop struggling, they will find you—“

You looked at him, confused but suspicious. This was, afterall, still Sunghoon—a Pureblood who had killed another of his own tonight, and possibly Jaeyun as well. You were naturally next.

“Look,” he hissed, his tone edged with exasperation. “If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it already. I’ve had plenty of opportunities, remember?” His voice shifted then, quieter, almost coaxing. “I’m going to uncover your mouth, but only if you promise to stop fighting me—at least while we’re in here.”

Your heart pounded, your instincts screaming to resist, but grudgingly, you nodded. If he wanted you dead, he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of dragging you here.

His hand dropped from your mouth, but before you could fully process what was happening, his arm moved behind you, sliding firmly along the curve of your back. With unsettling ease, he lifted you and settled you on top of the cupboard—the motion fluid and controlled, as though you weighed nothing.

Suddenly, he bit into his wrist, the blood welling instantly. “Sunghoon—what the hell—”

He didn’t answer. Instead, in one fluid movement, he stepped closer, his presence overwhelming as he positioned himself intimately between your legs, his hand sliding up your thigh with deliberate intent, the fabric of your dress gathering beneath his fingers.

“Hey—” you stammered, heat flushing your cheeks as you instinctively tried to stop him. But the protest died in your throat when you saw what he was doing—his bloodied wrist pressed against your wound, his movements steady, precise. The smear of crimson over your skin was deliberate, purposeful, and the air between you seemed to thrum with unspoken tension.

“This will mask the scent,” he murmured, his voice low and almost detached, though his eyes flickered briefly to meet yours. You were just about to ease up when without warning, his other hand had slid up your waist, his fingers splaying possessively over your lower back. Before you could reach, he pulled you flush against him with unsettling ease.

“Sunghoon, st—"

“We’re running out of time,” he cut you off, his tone sharp but tinged with something unfamiliar—urgency, almost pleading—something you’d never imagined him capable of. “You just have to trust me on this.”

But before you could even respond, Sunghoon had slammed his lips against yours. They were soft—unexpectedly so—but his movements were anything but. Fierce and unrelenting, the kiss carried a desperation that felt almost feral, as though the very act was a lifeline he was determined to seize.

You struggled against the onslaught, your hands pushing at his chest, but his grip over your waist tightened, anchoring you to him like a shield. Then the door burst open and his intent—his strategy—became clear to you. His body shifted instantly, fully shielding yours from view as his hand hooked firmly under your thigh, steadying you and sealing the ruse with unnerving precision.

Reluctantly, you played along, your hands faltering as his weight pressed against you, quashing any remaining space between your bodies. Your dress shifted dangerously high as his body leaned into yours, the act deliberate and unyielding. While every instinct screamed at you to shove him away, you forced yourself to stay still, to let the illusion hold—for now.

But then you felt his lips adeptly part yours—deepening the kiss in a way you were never prepared—stealing every breath and muffling every protests. The hard planes of his chest pressed against yours, the beat of his heart—or the echo of yours, you couldn't tell—pulsating in tandem with your own. The dresser creaked in protest, the faint sound barely registering above the storm of your senses.

Time itself seemed to bend, stretching each second unbearably long. Every sensation overwhelmed you—the heat radiating from his closeness, the weight of his touch, the faint creak of the dresser beneath you. It all blurred together, threatening to drown you in its intensity. But then his wandering hands jolted you out of the haze, yanking you sharply back into the present. In a swift, instinctive motion, you wrenched yourself from his embrace. "St-stop..." your breath coming in short, uneven gasps, "—they're... already gone."

Your heart pounded in your chest, and you struggled to steady your racing pulse. The stinging sensation on your lips serving as a persistent reminder of the scorching passion that had nearly consumed you. His kiss, like a brand, had left its mark.

Sunghoon stilled, his chest rising and falling, though you knew better—vampires didn’t tire. His jaw tensed, the sharp line of his profile shadowed as he turned slightly away.

“Right. Of course,” he muttered, his voice quieter than usual, as if trying to gather himself. His usual calm façade was intact, but you noticed the faintest flicker—a barely-there crack in his composure, “—it worked. That’s all that matters.”

You exhaled shakily, unable to look at him, your own pulse thrumming wildly against your ribs. “So, what now?” you asked, your voice sharper than you intended as you tried to compose yourself, “we can’t just make out everytime there’s footsteps.”

He nodded absently, but midway, his brows arched as if you’d said something illuminating. “Actually, that’s a great idea. Come with me—”

“No—” You dug your heels in as he gripped your wrist—not roughly, but with enough firmness to tell you resistance was pointless. You give in, reluctantly letting let him pull you along, his pace deliberate but measured, as if he were navigating a trap you couldn’t yet see. Through a discreet side passage—a door you hadn’t noticed earlier—he led you to an ornate chamber, hidden away from the guest suites. The heavy door creaked open, revealing a room so grand it felt frozen in time: dark velvet drapery pooling on the floor, an unlit fireplace, and a sprawling canopy bed swathed in deep red fabric.

“This is your idea of a safe haven? Your room?” you scoffed as Sunghoon bolted the door shut behind him. With swift movements, he shrugged off his cloak and undid his buttons, feeling hot – though whether it was from all the running or memories from the earlier kiss, only he knew.

You backed away instinctively, unsettled by his casual ease, his shirt hanging open just enough to reveal glimpses of his sculpted chest, the memory of his touch still fresh, an unwelcome echo that made your skin prickle.

“Sunghoon, what are you doing? You’re not suggesting-“

“—unless you want to—” he smirked, tousling his well-kept hair with a deliberate flick. “Relax. I’m joking. Ease up.”

He leaned casually against the edge of the bed, his smirk deepening. “This really is the safest place. Firstly, it’s my room. Secondly, after seeing the way we ‘made out’ in that closet, naturally, they’d assume we’d escalate things here. You know… where we’d be up all night, tangled in—”

“Right! I get it-“ you interjected, cheeks blazing, “still though – this is your room. I’m supposed to let myself be locked with you for the whole night? This evening is as much of a bloodsport to you as it is to them.”

He sighed, “look, if trust is too much to ask, I’ll ask for your clear-headed logic then y/n. If I wanted you dead, you’d already be. But tonight, I’ve been saving you instead.”

“That’s the suspicious part, why did you save me then?”

The air was heavy. The silence felt like it dragged on for too long.

“I know what Noctis Imperium really is Sunghoon so if you want my trust then you must answer me honestly,” you tone was firm.

Sunghoon tilted his head lazily, his lips curving ever so faintly, “Oh? Do you now?”

You ignored the sardonic edge in his tone and pressed on. “It’s a Reaping, isn’t it?” the word dropped like a blade between you, heavy and damning. “The bloodsport? That’s just the opening act. It weeds out the unworthy—leaves only the best standing. The strongest. The smartest. The richest. And they’re the ones who get turned. It’s systematic.”

His gaze sharpened, but he didn’t interrupt.

“This event coincides with a blood moon which is due sometime this month—that’s very specific. If you guys wanted bloodsport, it didn’t even have to align,” you continued, stepping closer, “and clearly it isn’t just about sick entertainment is it? It’s about expansion—physically and financially.”

Your hands balled into fists at your sides as you turned to meet his gaze, your voice daring and unyielding. “If you want me to trust you tonight, then tell me—why are you here? For a Reaping as well?”

For the first time, something flickered in his expression. A fleeting shadow of recognition—or understanding—but it vanished as quickly as it came. His smirk didn’t return, and when he finally spoke, his voice was low, measured, “sounds like you have done your homework-“

“That’s not an answer,” you cut off.

“Fine. If it will get you to shut up tonight, I’ll entertain you,” he plopped himself on the bed, hands braced behind him, “I had my suspicions about this... place,” he admitted, his tone calm but laced with something heavier, darker. “But a Reaping? That’s far-fetched. The Reaping is after all shunned and is not widespread knowledge,” he continued, his voice dropping lower, “it’s forbidden—archaic. Lost and buried for a reason.”

“Apparently not,” you shot back, “because I read a book on it in the library so you being here can either mean you’re part of this ring or someone is.”

“You’re smart enough to find this place and unearth a rather dark history and practice by my kind—” he spoke with a quiet, almost resigned tone, “but can't see just how absurd it'd be for me to play detective with you and ask you to run your simulation for me if all I wanted was to attend a ritual I am supposedly to have been part of?”

For a moment, your gaze faltered—not out of fear, but something closer to embarrassment. “Then why are you here?” you demanded, suspicion still sharp in your voice. His explanation didn’t erase your doubts—not yet.

“I’m kind of like you,” his voice is calm, “except I’m not just playing detective. I’m here to root out the deviants among us. I don’t just cover foul plays up – I follow the trail and remove the troublemakers.”

You stared into his gaze a little longer, letting the silence simmer, trying to search if there is any faltering – if he was lying. But it is hard to tell with him.

“Not the answer you’re looking for?” he raised his brows – challenging and proud, “that’s entirely your fault for jumping into conclusions when it comes to me.”

“Well it’s not like you were the most forthcoming anyway,” you grumbled back, “you keep people in the dark and then say cryptic shit. You brought it unto yourself.”

He shrugged, “if you say so. The point is, if what you say is true then the odds are stacked against us.”

“us?” you echoed, incredulous, “Just a few days ago, you said I was nothing more than a tool. What’s changed? Can’t survive on your fangs alone?”

He scoffed, his smirk sharpening. “If it helps you sleep at night, then let’s just say it makes the two of us.” He leaned back slightly, his gaze steady and unreadable. “Now, can you set your blade down and ease up?”

You hesitated, the weight of his words settling heavily. Finally, you let out a sharp breath. “Fine. For now. But don’t mistake this for trust.”

His smirk deepened faintly, though his gaze remained steady. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

— ix

They said the third night was set to be a respite. But by now, you knew better. You knew their sick way of twisting words.

As you stood outside the Hall of Reckoning, your fists clenched tightly at your sides, the full weight of the night before bore down on you. The bloodsport, the laughter, the violence—it wasn’t chaos. It wasn’t chance. It was a gladiator ring.

The realization sat heavy in your chest, making it hard to breathe. You had no illusions about the outcome: the deck was stacked, and you were playing with cards designed to fail. But it was too late to run. Far too late.

“What about the masks?” you asked as you approached the butler usually manning the mask cart.

“No longer needed, Madam,” he replied smoothly, pushing the door open.

The Hall of Reckoning. At first glance, the name seemed almost merciful—a place where justice might be sought, where those who endured could demand retribution for their suffering.

But the irony revealed itself immediately. For the mortals, there could be no reckoning. Survival in the bloodsport had made them complicit in its savagery, their hands stained with the violence they had been forced to commit. This hall, for all its grandeur, wasn’t a sanctuary. It was a monument to their sins.

Every detail in the room seemed to echo that truth. Murals stretched across the vaulted ceiling, vivid and grotesque in their depiction of Dante’s seven circles of hell. Around the room, statues stood like solemn judges—angels with shattered wings, warriors frozen mid-fall, veiled damsels cloaked in grief. Their hollow eyes seemed to follow every movement, bearing silent witness to the carnage both endured and inflicted.

This wasn’t a Hall of Reckoning meant to absolve. It was designed to haunt.

The proof lay in the faces of the remaining guests. Unlike before, only a quarter of them had made it here, their masks removed for the first time. It was painfully clear now who among them were human for trepidation clung to their pale, drawn faces, their hollow gazes—stark contrast to the air of haughtiness and confidence that most displayed during the first day.

And then, there were the vampires. At least by the looks of it for their beauty was unparalleled, ethereal almost, as if they’d been carved from marble to perfection. But that perfection was unnerving, cold, their smiles charming yet faintly menacing in certain light. They moved with an unnatural grace, each step calculated and precise. Their eyes, ageless and predatory, gleamed like polished glass, betraying nothing but an unwavering hunger that lingered beneath their elegant façades.

Together, the humans and vampires painted a stark contrast: the fragility of mortality set against the eerie permanence of the immortal.

You were still absorbing the scene when a hand grasped yours, the touch firm yet deliberate, calculated.

Startled, you turned sharply, only to find yourself face-to-face with a man bowing slightly as he pressed a light kiss to your knuckles. “My Lady,” he murmured, his voice smooth and infuriatingly charming. He straightened, and the wide playful grin that stretched across his face was unmistakable. The glint of a lip ring under the soft glow of the chandeliers sealed his identity.

“Jaeyun,” you muttered, his name slipping out like a reflex.

Unmasked, his face was even more disarming than you’d imagined. His features were sharp—his cheekbones high and his jawline so clean it seemed almost sculpted. Yet there was a boyishness to him, a devil-may-care charm that softened the harsh lines, making him look approachable in a way that felt both alluring and dangerous.

That grin of his was impossible to ignore. His lips, fuller and more expressive than you remembered, curled just slightly as if he were privy to a joke no one else was in on. The lip ring only added to his allure, a small but significant detail that gave him an edge, an irreverent flair.

He tilted his head, his golden hair catching the faint light, and for a moment, he seemed to drink in your surprise. His gaze was playful, mischievous, daring you to react. Where Sunghoon exuded stormy gravitas, with every movement deliberate and weighted, Jaeyun felt like a gust of wind—unpredictable, fleeting, and impossible to pin down.

Before you could react, you felt another presence—familiar, cold, and steady. A hand slid to the small of your back then over your waist, firm and commanding as it pulled you away from Jaeyun.

“You’ve had enough of his company,” Sunghoon said, his voice cutting through the din with icy precision. His tone was low but laced with a chill that sent a ripple through the air, “he’s just a vermin.”

Jaeyun’s grin widened, deliberately slow, as he released you, his movements deliberate and mocking. “Ah, or so I hear about last night,” he replied smoothly. His lip curled in amusement as his eyes flicked between you and Sunghoon. “Apologies. Just a formality, of course. I’d never dare touch what you’ve claimed, Lord Park.”

Your breath caught, mortified. You knew exactly what Jaeyun was implying.

“No, we’re not— we didn’t—" you tried to clarify, but Sunghoon’s grip tightened, cutting off your words as he turned you sharply, his hand firm on your waist as he steered you away.

“Excuse you,” you exclaimed, stumbling slightly as he wheeled you toward the table. His jaw was set, a shadow of something unreadable flashing in his eyes. Without a word, he pulled out a chair and practically pushed you into it, his actions possessive and territorial.

He snatched the plaque bearing Jaeyun’s name from the table and thrust it at a passing butler. “Find this bastard another seat,” he ordered coldly.

Before the butler could even take a step, Sunghoon dropped into the chair beside you—Jaeyun’s chair. His hand rested lightly on the table, fingers drumming in a rhythm that felt calculated, as though he was staking his claim with every deliberate tap.

“Just because you two have some bad blood doesn’t mean I should be the collateral damage,” you huffed, crossing your arms in defiance. “At least you didn’t kill him.”

“I should have,” Sunghoon’s gaze remained fixed on Jaeyun, his expression darkening. “You should stop letting him talk to you,” he said, his tone sharp. “He’s poison wrapped in silk. It doesn’t matter how harmless he seems—he’ll ruin you just the same.”

“And you’re not?” you shot back, your voice low but challenging. “Sunghoon, you’re just as suspicious as everyone else.”

His head snapped toward you, the storm in his gaze faltering. For a brief moment, something softer flickered across his features—something almost tender. His shoulders eased as he seemed to struggle for words.

“It’s not—” he began, his voice quieter, but his unfinished sentence hung in the air, swallowed by the sudden shift in the room.

“Welcome,” the host’s voice rang out, smooth and practiced, drawing all attention to the front of the room. He stepped forward, his grin too wide to be sincere. “After all the fun yesterday,” he drawled, his words dripping with theatrical flair, “tonight will just be purely a celebration. Unending feast and fireworks.”

The room shifted uneasily, the faint clink of glassware underscoring the uncomfortable silence.

“As I’ve reassured you all—what happened last night is not your fault,” the host continued, his grin widening to something almost maniacal. His gaze swept over the room like a predator scanning for weakness.

The words hung in the air, their implication sinking in like lead. The humans, especially, seemed to shrink into their seats, their faces pale and drawn, haunted by memories of the previous night.

“Greed,” the host continued, his voice both rich and biting, “is a poisonous thing. And with stakes so high, we understand when one must act… out of self-preservation.”

Your breath caught at his choice of words. Slowly, your gaze swept the hall, catching subtle tremors in the crowd—the twitch of a hand, the widening of eyes before they schooled back into forced calm. A woman in crimson sat frozen, her glass of wine untouched. Nearby, a man swallowed hard, his fingers gripping his fork like a lifeline. It struck you then: these people must have seen—or done—unspeakable things last night. Survival had come at a cost, and their faces betrayed that cost in every taut line and shadowed expression.

“Rest assured,” the host added, his tone lightening into something almost whimsical, yet no less sinister. “Our discretion is ironclad. Whatever happens here… stays here.”

The words slithered through the air like smoke, a chill rippling in their wake. It was meant to be reassurance but you knew better—it was a warning, one that is thinly veiled in polished charm.

For a moment, the room remained frozen, the silence taut with unspoken apprehension. Then, the faint clink of glassware broke the stillness—a subtle signal that sent ripples through the crowd. The guests shifted in their seats, some reaching hesitantly for their utensils, others masking their unease behind stiff smiles and murmured conversation.

You glanced down at the table before you as the quiet ceremony of dining began. The elaborate spread was a grotesque spectacle, the kind of decadence that bordered on parody. Platters overflowed with fleshy cuts of meat, dripping in dark wine sauces that shimmered like blood under the chandeliers. Fruits glistened like polished jewels, their vibrant colors almost too vivid to be real. Desserts spun from delicate sugar glimmered with an unnatural brilliance.

The clinking of forks and knives against fine china grated against your nerves. It wasn’t the sound of sustenance—it was a performance, a ritual of excess that felt grotesque in its mockery. You shifted uneasily in your seat, unable to quell the nausea roiling in your stomach. This wasn’t a feast for survivors. It was a celebration for predators.

“y/n,” Sunghoon’s voice cut through the oppressive din, low and quiet, his breath ghosting against your ear, “meet me in the library once the firework starts.”

You turned, but he was already gone, leaving behind only the faint scent of his cologne—a mix of wood and bergamot that lingered in the air, equal parts hypnotizing and suffocating.

Time dragged after that, the air in the hall thick with unspoken tension. Each moment stretched unbearably as the chatter around you ebbed and flowed, the underlying unease never quite dissipating. When the first explosion of light burst across the night sky, you slipped away unnoticed, your footsteps soft amidst the murmurs of awe and raised glasses.

The Corridors of Treachery felt colder, quieter as you made your way to the library. Once, these endless stretches of identical doors and twisting hallways had felt alive—ever-shifting, as though the castle itself sought to mislead and ensnare. But now, their tricks no longer held sway over you. After several visits, you had unraveled their secrets, piecing together the intricate design that made chaos into order.

The corridor was more than a labyrinth; they were a calculated test. A clever combination of architectural illusion, psychological distortion, and mathematical precision, that tests not just one’s preserverance—but also the mind. The patterns embedded in the walls required focus to decipher: sconces positioned slightly off-center, cracks in the stone tiles forming faint lines that pointed toward the correct path, even the rhythmic shifts in echo that whispered of direction. It wasn’t enough to simply try door after door—one needed intellect and restraint to navigate the maze. If approached in a state of heightened fear, the corridors became a prison. Anxiety clouded judgment, turned every door into a dead end, and every turn into an endless loop. But you’d learned to steady yourself, to let logic and observation guide your steps rather than emotion.

Now, your movements were purposeful, almost effortless. Three lefts, a right, pause at the second door. The sequence was etched into your mind, the once-treacherous maze reduced to a solvable equation. Without hesitation, you pushed open the heavy library door.

The room stretched before you, towering shelves disappearing into the shadows. The faint scent of aged parchment and leather hung in the air as you lit your oil lamp, its flickering glow barely cutting through the darkness.

Sunghoon, however, wasn’t there.

Figures, you sighed, trailing your fingers along the shelves, half out of habit, half out of frustration. Why did he even—

A sudden gust of wind swept through the room, sharp and biting. The lamp hissed and went dark, plunging you into thick silence. You stilled, your heart leaping into your throat as darkness swallowed you whole.

Moonlight spilled through the tall, arched windows, faint and ethereal. The shadows danced in its glow, painting the room in shifting silver and gray. You fumbled for the small flint striker embedder near the base of the oil lamp, about to twist it when a glimmer among the books caught your eye—faint but unmistakable.

You stilled, the lamp momentarily forgotten as you stepped closer towards the book in the shelf. It wasn’t just the sheen of the leather—it was something deliberate, something hidden. Your fingers brushed the spine, its texture rough and cold. It was The Obsidian Testament—the one you picked out yesterday—but beneath the gilded letters were faint Latin scrawls, curling like veins across the surface like an incantation. You didn’t remember them being there yesterday.

You pulled the book free, its weight heavier than it should have been, like it carried more than just words within its pages.

As you turned it over in your hands, you can feel the roughness in the surface— something you noticed yesterday but didn’t press on. It didn't feel like wear and tear. It was faintly raised but textured in a way that felt deliberate, though the design was invisible to the naked eye. You held it closer to the window, letting the silver light of the moon spill across its surface.

And then you saw it.

Slowly, like ink blooming through parchment, a faint, silvery glow materialised. Ominously scrawled in faint, curling script were words you could barely decipher:"The blood of the pure seals the bond. The moon bears witness."

Beneath it, a coat of arms emerged—hidden from sight, lying dormant until called forth by the moonlight. A spiked crown sat atop the shield, flanked by a raven and a wolf poised as sentinels. Intricate designs framed the emblem, with the motto etched beneath it: "In shadows, we endure. In blood, we rise."

Your blood turned cold. You knew that coat of arms.

“Sunghoon,” you whispered, the realization hitting you like a thunderclap. It was his crest—the same one he often wore on his lapel.

“Took you long enough,” a low voice drawled, making you jump. You whirled, your heart pounding as a figure emerged from the shadows near the door. For a moment, you thought it was Sunghoon but as he stepped into the faint glow of moonlight, the features were unmistakably Jaeyun’s.

“What do you mean?” you demanded, taking a step back toward the table. Unease curled in your chest.

He scoffed, looking mildly offended as he stepped closer. The way the moonlight caught his face accentuated the sharpness of his grin—mischievous, yes, but laced with something colder. “Why do you look so scared of me now? Sunghoon should be the one you’re wary of. Ah, of course, he did save you, didn’t he?”

Before you could react, he vanished—only to reappear beside you, one hand braced against the table as he leaned down, head tilted coyly. Another vampire, you thought.

“Ever considered that saving you serves him more than it serves you? Perhaps he might even be saving you for himself.”

You stiffened, refusing to let his words take root. “And what about you? You’ve been dropping crumbs here and there for me—” you countered sharply. “Nothing is ever free—not from the likes of you.”

Jaeyun’s lips quirked, amused. “You sound just like one of us, y/n. You would make a great addition,” he drawled. “I’m helping because well, you’re not my enemy and I hate inflicting collateral damage.”

“And your enemy is?”

“Sunghoon. Or rather, royal purebloods like him. Someone who has a legacy to reclaim,” he said with a singsong edge. “They represent the dark ages—the rigid hierarchy of power that exalted purity above all else, splintering us with its toxic elitism.”

“Are you not a pureblood?”

“No. I’m a halfblood—borne out of a Pureblood and a Spoilblood.” His tone turned casual, but there was a slight edge to it. “Practically blasphemy to those supremacists. Think of it like a noble bedding their servant.”

The admission hung in the air, bitter and heavy. But you knew better than to simply lap up his words, “and yet you’re here? Toasting and laughing as if you belong.”

His grin faltered just slightly, a flicker of something darker flashing across his face before he masked it with his usual nonchalance. “I’m here because time has changed. We, here, are no longer bound by such hierarchical concept of power—”

He unfurled his hand, and another book materialised. You recognised it immediately—The Annals of Kings, the book you’d pocketed the other day, “—but nothing stays buried forever. Blood, as they say, runs thicker than water.”

Your frown deepened as you stepped closer, your eyes scanning the page he’d flipped open. It was the family tree—the same one you’d seen before, with several members’ pictures burnt out, their identities erased.

“The Annals of Kings usually purges the disgraced from history,” Jaeyun said, his tone casual but laced with intrigue.

Your gaze drifted lower, catching on a footnote you hadn’t noticed before. It detailed how, after the kingdom fell, forbidden books like the Obsidian Testament were uncovered and destroyed. But one line stopped you cold: “Rumor has it the royal bloodline survived through a single son, then eight years old, whose charred remains were never found.”

Your eyes shifted to the Obsidian Testament on the table, the coat of arms seem to glow brighter, its presence now feeling impossibly heavy.

“Who do you think that son grew up to be?” Jaeyun asked softly, his voice a dark thread weaving through your spiralling thoughts.

Your throat tightened. His words gnawed at you, each syllable fitting too neatly into the doubts you were already trying to suppress about Sunghoon. But Jaeyun wasn’t someone you could trust—not completely. His grin felt like a trap disguised as an invitation. Trying to seem unfazed, you retorted, “And your point is?”

“That you should know your enemies,” he said, stepping closer, his presence suffocating. “The Reaping holds immense significance for someone like him—symbolically and physically.” His lips curled into a bitter smile. “The current shadow reign is fracturing, and if someone like him—a figure with such legacy—steps forward to challenge it, everything could come crashing down."

“He is, after all—” Jaeyun suddenly appeared behind you, his long fingers curling around both of your arms like claws. He turned you sharply toward the window, forcing you to look outside.

Below, the rose garden was alive with movements, figures clashing in a violent blur. Your breath hitched as a body crumpled near the fountain, blood pooling beneath it. Then, through the shifting shadows, Sunghoon stepped into view, his chest heaving, a bloodied sword in hand. His expression was cold, detached, as he surveyed the carnage.

“—notorious for being bloodthirsty,” Jaeyun finished, his tone dripping with venom.

“You're not su—” you called out but when you turned, he was already gone, leaving only the echo of his words in your ears.

Before you could process his disappearance, the sharp sound of steel meeting steel cut through the air, pulling your attention sharply back to the garden.

You turned toward the window again, just in time to see Sunghoon locked in battle once more. Two shadows darted around him, their movements impossibly fast—blurs of black against the silver glow of the moonlight. The figures clashed violently, steel colliding in bursts of sparks, the muted sounds barely audible beneath the distant roar of fireworks.

Your breath caught as Sunghoon dodged a strike aimed at his head, his blade moving in a deadly rhythm to fend off one blow after another. The attackers worked in tandem, circling him like wolves hunting their prey.

Almost without realizing it, you followed their movements from one window to the next, each fleeting glimpse quickening your pulse. When you reached the outer hallway near the armory, the scene came into sharp focus.

Sunghoon stood at the center of the rose garden, near the weeping angel statue. The moonlight bathed the scene in stark clarity, illuminating his form as he fended off the taller of the two attackers. The man’s strikes were heavy and relentless, forcing Sunghoon back with every blow.

Then, with a sharp pivot, Sunghoon turned the tide. His blade cleanly plunging into his chest with brutal precision. Blood sprayed across the weeping angel grotesquely as the figure crumpled to the ground, lifeless.

But the danger wasn’t over.

The second attacker appeared from the shadows behind him, silent and deadly, a spear poised to strike.

Given everything you’d pieced together about him—his secrets, his lies, his family—you probably should have let nature run its course. Let him get attacked. Let him fall. Let him bleed.

But you didn’t and apparently, your body had a life of its own as your hands moved before your could catch up, grabbing a bow that had been left discarded near the windowsill. The wood felt foreign and unwieldy in your grip, but you didn’t care. Your fingers fumbled, pulling the string taut, the arrow trembling as you tried to steady your aim.

You weren’t a good shot. You knew that. The arrow might not even strike the man. But it didn’t need to. All it had to do was distract him.

You exhaled sharply, releasing the arrow. It cut through the air, a streak of silver in the darkness. The attacker flinched as the arrow grazed his arm, his blade faltering mid-swing. It was enough.

Sunghoon spun with brutal precision, his sword arcing upward in a deadly sweep. The man barely had time to react before the blade found its mark, cutting him down. His body hit the ground with a sickening thud, blood pooling around him as the garden fell silent once more.

For a moment, Sunghoon stood motionless, the tip of his blade resting in the dirt, as if even he needed a reprieve. Then you saw it—a dark patch blooming on his coat, stark against the pale moonlight. Blood.

Your breath hitched. You couldn’t tell why your chest tightened at the sight, but it did.

He staggered, using his sword for support, his breaths coming in shallow, ragged gasps. But before you could call out to him, he vanished—a blur dissolving into the shadowy expanse of the garden below.

“Sunghoon!” you called after him, but the only response was the distant crackle of fading fireworks. Darting from one window to the next, you searched desperately, peering into the garden for any sign of him.

But all you found was stillness.

The gardens were littered with lifeless bodies, their forms grotesque and twisted. Some had fangs bared, their features frozen in feral rage. Others had begun to disintegrate—their flesh sloughing off in patches, bones crumbling into soil as though the earth itself were reclaiming them. That was apparently how vampires die, you realized with a shudder: reverting to their original forms, their unnatural beauty undone, and their once-mighty presence reduced to the frailty of dust and decay.

But more than the remains, it was Sunghoon’s vanishing that disturbed you the most. As you lingered by the window, the night only grew quieter. The shadows betrayed nothing, and the garden below remained hauntingly still.

He won’t die easily, you reassured yourself as you hesitantly step away from the window, eyes still flicking toward the darkened garden as you made your way back to your room, each step heavier than the last. You pushed your door absentmindedly, mind lost in thoughts, why do you care so much, you thought bitterly, trying to distract yourself, he’s not your ally. He is a lying, manipulative-

Except there he was—the very man who haunted your mind—sitting at the foot of your bed.

Battered, bruised, and bloodied, Sunghoon looked nothing like the composed predator you’d grown accustomed to. His back rested against the mattress, his head tilted back in exhaustion, eyes half-lidded as if he barely registered your presence. Blood stained his shirt, his once-pristine collar torn and soaked through. The dark fabric clung to his skin, emphasizing the sharp lines of his frame and the sheer vulnerability of his state.

“Sunghoon…” you whispered, unsure whether it was relief or fear tightening your throat.

He didn’t respond immediately, his breathing shallow and uneven. For a fleeting moment, the vulnerability of the scene struck you—this wasn’t the stoic, untouchable figure you’d grown used to. He looked... mortal.

His head shifted slightly, but his gaze didn’t meet yours. “I’m fine,” he muttered hoarsely, frustration lacing his voice. “Just… give me a moment.”

You stepped closer, your body moving before your mind could catch up. Despite everything—the lies, the doubts, the warning signs—you knelt in front of him, hands trembling. “You’re bleeding out, you’re not fine,” you said sharply.

Your eyes dropped to the dark patch spreading across his lower abdomen, fresh blood seeping through the fabric. Panic licked at the edges of your mind as you remembered how his wounds used to heal instantly. “Why isn’t it healing?” you asked, horrified.

“Too much damage for an old body, I guess,” he quipped weakly, a sardonic smile tugging at his lips before he winced.

“But you’re a pureblood,” you blurted – reminded suddenly of what Jaeyun had said earlier, how the Reaping was significant for someone like Sunghoon, not just symbolically but physically. “Never mind,” you said quickly, hoisting his arm over your shoulders. “We need to stop the bleeding. Can you get up?”

“You know,” he rasped, leaning heavily against you, “if you leave me here, I could just… die. Problem solved.”

“Not funny,” you gritted out, half-dragging him to the bed. “Besides, too late for that. I’m already in this gladiator ring. You’d just be replaced by someone worse.”

“You’re adapting well,” he drawled, though his voice was strained.

“And you’re not,” you shot back, grimacing as his head thudded lightly against the wooden frame. His sharp intake of breath made your guilt flare. “Sorry,” you muttered, adjusting him with more care, “I’m not used to you being this… human. Stay here, I’ll be back.”

You returned moments later with a first-aid kit. His face was slick with sweat, but his eyes—sharp and calculating—followed your every movement. He leaned back against the headboard, his posture deceptively casual despite the bruises and blood staining his shirt. One leg stretched out along the mattress, while the other was bent at the knee, his foot tucked close to his thigh.

You settled beside his bent leg, placing the kit near his outstretched one for easy access. Shrugging off your sheer cape to free your arms, the fabric pooled beside you, leaving you in the midnight-black velvet dress beneath. The low sweetheart neckline felt far too revealing for your comfort, but practicality took precedence. Ignoring the unease prickling at the back of your mind, you focused on sorting through the kit’s contents with swift precision.

“Baring your shoulders in front of a wounded vampire,” Sunghoon murmured, his lips curving into a faint smirk despite the exhaustion that lined his features. His gaze flicked briefly to your now-bared shoulders. “Reckless.”

“If you had no self-control, like eight years ago, you’d have flung yourself at me cape and all,” you grumbled disinterestedly while tearing open a sterile pad. You didn’t miss the slight twitch of his brow at your words.

“This is going to sound crude,” you continued, gesturing at the blood-soaked fabric covering his lower abdomen, “but you need to take that off.”

He smirked, the expression so maddeningly coy that you were this close to hurling the entire first-aid kit at his face. Only the sight of his injuries stopped you.

“Gladly,” he drawled, his tone light and infuriating, “but I’m far too weak right now. You’ll have to do the honors.”

You scowled. “I know you’re not that weak.”

He leaned back, the movement drawing his bent leg closer to you, his gaze never leaving yours, “your choice.”

Cursing under your breath, you leaned closer and began unbuttoning his shirt. The fabric peeled away, revealing the deep, angry wound slashing across his abdomen. Blood seeped sluggishly, staining his pale skin—but it wasn’t just the injury that caught your attention. Beneath the torn fabric, the sharp lines of his torso stood out, his muscles tense under the faint light.

It was jarring how even battered and shirtless, his broad shoulders and tall frame made him seem larger than life. His physique, though marred by the fresh wounds, seemed to amplify his imposing aura, each flex of muscle a stark reminder of the strength he carried even in his weakest moments. You swallowed hard, forcing yourself to focus on the gash instead of the sheer dominance his form exuded.

“Hold still,” you muttered, pressing an alcohol-soaked pad against the gash.

He hissed, his knuckles going white as he gripped the sheets. “You could be gentler.”

“Enjoy it,” you said with mock cheer, pressing harder. “Your super-healing isn’t working, so welcome to our reality.”

His exhale was sharp, almost a laugh, though it sounded more like a groan. “Why did they attack you?” you asked, focused on cleaning the wound.

“There’s always a bounty on the head of a pureblood,” he replied dismissively, his tone brushing off the question.

“Especially a pureblood with a reigning ancestry?” you pressed though his expression didn’t shift.

“Does knowing that I have links to old royalty suddenly make me attractive?” he asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“You tell me,” you retorted, dabbing the edges of the wound clean before reaching for the gauze. “Apparently the Reaping originated from your family. You knew all about it.”

“I love how distrustful you are of me,” he muttered, his voice laced with dry amusement, “and yet here you are—patching me up, looking rather vulnerable yourself.” His gaze dripped briefly down to your body, as if trying to unsettle you. “I wear my crest openly, y/n. If I wanted to hide my ancestry, I wouldn’t flaunt it, would I? And besides—” a sardonic smirk tugged at his lips, “—if I’d completed my first Reaping ages ago, I wouldn’t be in this pathetic state, relying on a mere mortal to save me.”

“You’re a walking contradiction do you know that?” you muttered, eyes focused on cleaning the remaining dark blood on his gash. “Let’s say you do hate your background that much then why wear the crest around like a badge of honor?”

Sunghoon didn’t hesitate, his voice calm but carrying an edge of practicality. “Because in places like these,” he gestured subtly, “ancestry and purity of blood can mean everything. That crest opens doors that would otherwise be slammed shut. It’s a key, y/n and one I’ve learned to wield to my advantage.”

“You always talk as if you’re not one of them.”

He scoffed weakly, “I’ve killed some of them and they tried to kill me as well—does that look like we are of the same camp?”

Your hands stilled, your gaze lifting to meet his. It was infuriating how his answers were always so maddeningly straightforward—delivered with an air of certainty that made your doubts feel baseless. It wasn’t just irritating—it made you feel stupid, even guilty. Like your suspicions were nothing more than the product of paranoia, blinding you to truths that should be obvious.

“You said you haven’t completed even your first cycle of Reaping—why?”

He leaned back, a sardonic smirk tugging at his lips. “While we’re at it, why don’t you ask how many people I’ve bedded over the centuries I’ve lived?” His voice was laced with mockery, his gaze unrelenting. “You don’t get to ask all the questions, y/n. It takes two to tango.”

Your brows furrowed as you pressed an adhesive bandage over the wound on his abdomen. “Fine. Then you can ask me questions, though I doubt there’s anything interesting you don’t already know.”

His smirk faded, replaced by a sharper edge as his eyes narrowed. “Why did you save me back there?”

You stilled, realizing too late that maybe you shouldn’t have egged him on. His gaze pinned you, waiting for an answer you weren’t sure how to give.

Avoiding his piercing eyes, you grabbed an antiseptic wipe and turned your attention to the shallow cut on his bicep. “Hold still,” you muttered, focusing on dabbing at the wound.

His muscles tensed slightly under your touch. “If you want honesty from me,” he murmured, his tone low and firm, “you’ll need to give me just as much honesty.”

You pressed the pad harder than necessary, drawing a sharp inhale from him. “To make us even,” you answered steadily. “You saved me twice. Now it’s repaid.”

He scoffed, “Of course.”

You shifted closer, careful not to lean too far into his space, though the proximity was unavoidable. Your hands moved to tend to the faint bruises along his jaw, the sharp lines of his face brushing against your fingertips. His skin was cool beneath your touch, but the air between you felt heavy, charged.

Your knees brushed his as you adjusted your position, the small contact enough to make you hyper-aware of how close the two of you were. His shirtless torso, marred by bruises and blood, felt more imposing than vulnerable this close.

You feigned nonchalance, focusing intently on the bruises instead of the weight of his gaze burning into you. The room didn’t help—the soft crackle of the fireplace was casting flickering light across his face, deepening the shadows under his sharp cheekbones and making the moment feel stiflingly intimate.

“You’re awfully quiet suddenly,” he mocked, his tone low and taunting. “Also, why are you avoiding my gaze? You’re not suddenly shy are you? After taking off my—ugh—” He winced as you pressed the antiseptic harder than necessary onto the cut along his cheekbone.

“Isn't it my turn now?” you shot back, your voice sharp and unwavering. “You haven’t answered my question earlier—why haven’t you completed the Reaping?”

He sighed. "Because it’s barbaric,” he said evenly, though a flicker of something darker seeped into his tone. “If you believe a vampire can ever have a moral standing, this would be the closest thing I have to it.”

He paused, his voice dipping lower, laced with bitterness that seemed to surface despite his best efforts, “tying someone to your power for eternity? That’s not dominance—that’s desperation. It’s a legacy I’ve spent centuries trying to outrun—the dark history of which I constantly had to carry over my shoulders, sins of which are thrusted upon me as though I am to pay their penance.”

His tone softened, almost imperceptibly, as he continued. “That’s probably why I’ve allied myself with the Council of Elders for a long time. It started as an act to prove to the world that I am not like what my blood dictates—” his voice dipped, quieter now, as if he was speaking more to himself than to you, “—but now it just feels like a duty. A duty to clean the world after the seeds of chaos that my ancestors have planted—“

Your gaze flicked to his, caught off guard by the quiet rawness in his tone. His eyes were elsewhere, focused on the flickering shadows dancing along the walls—perhaps trying to distract himself, perhaps lost in a memory. The sincerity in his words was equal parts fascinating and infuriating. Infuriating because they felt genuine. Too genuine for someone like him. It’s as if being reduced to this state—a state just a fraction closer to that of a mere mortal—extinguish the cryptic layers he had always put up.

But of course, such a rare moment didn’t last long. His gaze returned to yours, and so did the familiar smirk—lazy, detached and maddening. “Besides, I’ve never seen the need for renewal,” he added lightly, brushing the weight of his previous words aside, “longevity is getting boring anyway. Unless, of course, you’re offering yourself up to be mine. That might make eternity interesting again.”

He leaned forward slightly, the ghost of a smirk tugging at his lips. “We could spend centuries being at each other’s throats. Literally.”

“I’d poison my blood first then we both can go down together,” you rolled your eyes, moving on to the huge cut on his eyebrows.

“Just like how you poisoned me 8 years ago?” he said suddenly.

That was it. The elephant in the room. Finally out in the open.

Your hand stilled, a physical testament to the guilt you’d carried for years. You couldn’t bring yourself to look at him, but his stare was inescapable—heavy, suffocating, like it had the weight to crush you on the spot. “I guess the grudge is still there, alright,” you said, your tone brittle with feigned nonchalance, desperate to temper the tension building between you. The isolation, the proximity—it was all suddenly too much. “Then why haven’t you carried out your vengeance?”

“I asked first,” he retorted sharply. Beneath the edge of his voice, though, there was something fragile, almost pleading. “Why did you poison me?”

You hesitated, the truth clawing at the back of your throat. “Because we’re not meant to be,” you finally said, after some hesitation, surprised at yourself for the honesty and depth that you yourself never dared to confront. “We’re too dangerous for each other. Too toxic. It was the only way to break it.”

Sunghoon scoffed, his hand shooting out to capture yours. His grip was firm, startlingly so, yet it lacked malice—gentle in a way that forced your gaze to his. His eyes were unguarded, piercing, the storm within them quieting into something raw and vulnerable.

“Did you ever love me?” he murmured, his voice cracking faintly under the weight of the words.

You froze. The question hit you like a tidal wave, its weight settling deep in your chest. His gaze softened, achingly so, as if the silence cut.

“Did you?” he croaked, his voice barely above a whisper, yet it held a sharp edge, as though the answer could either mend or shatter him.

The guilt clawed at you, deeper than ever, threatening to crack the mask you wore. “Hardly matters anymore, does it?” you shot back, your voice wavering despite your best effort. “I ended it in the worst way possible.”

His grip over yours tightened ever so slightly, his jaw clenching as frustration flickered across his face. Slowly, deliberately, he shifted. Rising halfway, he leaned forward, his shadow devouring the faint light as his frame loomed impossibly large over you. The bed dipped under his weight, tilting you toward him as if even the mattress was conspiring to close the gap.

And suddenly, he was too close—towering over you like a shadow you couldn’t escape. You instinctively leaned back, but his free hand braced against the bed beside you, a silent, immovable barrier that kept you locked in place.

You swallowed thickly, realising how utterly compromising the moment was. His sheer size, the commanding breadth of his shoulders, the dominance in the way he loomed over you, left no room for doubt: he could crush you if he wanted to. The sharp lines of his torso, from the broad planes of his chest to the rigid definition of his abdomen, were marked by bruises and wounds that should have humanized him, softened the edge of his dominance—but they didn’t. Even in his weakened state, he radiated sheer power, every ripple of muscle a quiet, unspoken warning that he could break you, overwhelm you, overpower you, without much effort. His grip on you wrist wasn’t painful, but it thrummed with latent power, the kind that made you all too aware of the control he wasn’t even exerting yet.

You hated how easily he made you feel so small. Yet, despite the tightness in your chest and the way his gaze bore into yours with a storm of unspoken emotions, you refused to flinch. Refused to show that he has an effect on you. You knew him—getting you flustered and yield had always been something he thrived on and now, in a set-up that is meant to amplify it, you refused to give him that satisfaction.

“My turn,” you murmured, the words cutting through the silence like a thread pulled too tight. “Did you?” the question wasn’t a slip—it was purposeful, a strike meant to turn the tables.

Except, the joke was probably on you because instead of a response, something in him snapped. His grip on your wrist tightened almost too punishingly and his other hand shot to your jaw, holding you still as his lips crashed against yours.

Your body tensed at the unexpected contact, but his arm had slithered around your back—locking you in place like a steel band—fingers digging into your ribs as if tethering you in place—closer, ever closer—leaving no room to move, no air to breathe, only the suffocating weight of his presence pressing down on you. The curve of his palm seemed to mold perfectly to your body, a gesture that felt both infuriatingly possessive and unnervingly intimate. His hand, a possessive vice around your nape, tilted your head, allowing him to plunder your mouth with a punishing intensity, his lips slotting against yours with a brutal, consuming force.

You hands clawed at his shoulders, frantically trying to push him off, to break free, but every resistance seemed to ignite a darker hunger within him. With a grunt, he crushed you against him, making you feel every plane and contour of his chest and muscles, the searing heat of his skin branding yours, the unyielding planes of his chest pressing into you, heavy and demanding. Before you could catch your breath, he pressed forward with a brutal force, throwing off your balance and sending you crashing down onto the sheets—his lips never leaving yours as if it was his very lifeline. The world around you spun and you struggled to regain your bearings, but he was relentless, his lips moving with ever greater fervour, forcing your lips apart, his tongue invading your mouth with a forceful, dominant stroke.

The weight of his body pinned you down, heavy and unyielding, his bare skin hot against yours—suffocating and intoxicating all at once. Your breath was coming up in ragged gasps as you struggled against the tide of sensations that threatened to drown you. Like sandcastles against the tide, your resistance crumbled under the unrelenting force of his lips and touch. Your hands, grasping for purchase, clung to his shoulders, nails digging into his skin as you struggled to anchor yourself, as his tongue plundered your mouth with renewed vigor, claiming every inch, demanding your surrender, refusing to accept anything less.

As you softened under him, his hands glided along your sides, caressing every curve and dip with purposeful precision, setting every nerve alight, while making you feel every plane and contour of his chest and muscles. His taut muscles rippled beneath your touch, a testament to his restrained power. Lost in the tempest of sensations, you barely noticed his his hand creeping higher up your thigh, bunching your dress dangerously high. It was only then did you realised just how far things had escalated. Jerking back to reality, you wedged a hand against his chest, breaking the kiss, and grabbed for his wandering hand, your breath coming in ragged gasps.

But like a raging inferno, Sunghoon was unstoppable, his lips now trailing a scorching path down your neck, leaving a wake of fiery, open-mouthed kisses that seared your skin. "Sunghoon, stop," you gasped, panic lacing your voice as his hand pried yours away and pinned it painfully against the bed. You were utterly powerless then, your movements and strength futile against his onslaught. For a terrifying moment, you thought he might sink his fangs into your neck, draining you of your lifesource, but instead, he continued to ravage you with his lips and hands—leaving marks and that burned and bruised. It was quickly dawning on you just how far gone Sunghoon was and the prospect of where it was heading terrified you more than getting bitten was. “Sunghoon, please—" you begged, your voice breaking, and that seemed to have to snap him back to reality for his movements stilled, face hovering inches from yours. The look in his eyes was wild and uncertain, as if he was struggling to reign himself in from crossing a dangerous line.

"I- I’m sorry," he muttered, voice low and hoarse, tinged with something that almost sounded like guilt. He moved off you in one fluid motion, retreating like a shadow, his usual composure slowly slipping back into place. "I shouldn’t have—" He ran a hand through his hair, sighing heavily. "— just stay here for the night, okay? It’s safer. I’ll stay watch outside."

You remained frozen, your breathing uneven, your heart pounding in the deafening silence he left behind. The door clicked shut, but the echoes of his presence lingered, searing into you like a brand. Your bruised lips throbbed, the faint crescent-shaped imprints of his nails burned on your skin, and your neck felt alive with the memory of where his lips had lingered. Every mark he left wasn’t just a reminder of him—it was a reminder of what lay beneath the surface: a beast, barely leashed.

And yet, it wasn’t his loss of control that haunted you most. It was the way, in the charged stillness of the moment, you hadn’t fought him. You hadn’t turned away. Some part of you had yielded—not out of weakness, but out of something more dangerous.

The truth gripped you now, unrelenting: it wasn’t just Sunghoon you didn’t trust.

It was yourself.

— x

As foretold, the sun set the following day beneath a blood moon, casting an eerie reddish glow over the fourth evening, which was to be held in the Hall of Glory. As if mirroring your impending doom, the castle had been unnaturally still all day. The familiar footsteps of maids in the hall and the muted clink of silverware being set had disappeared, replaced by an oppressive, almost reverent silence. No maids brought breakfast to your door. No butlers appeared with fresh linens.

The absence wasn’t coincidence—it was tradition. You’d overheard whispers in the days before, half-muttered exchanges between the staff about “the sacred day” when they were to leave the castle as it would be reserved only for the “worthy.” You hadn’t understood the gravity of those words then, but now, under the ominous glow of the blood moon and the oppressive stillness of the castle’s grandeur, it felt like a prelude to slaughter. As if you’d stepped willingly into a gilded abattoir.

Unlike the vast, awe-inspiring spaces of the previous halls, the Hall of Glory was smaller, darker, and far more intimate, as though it were designed to suffocate rather than inspire. Towering columns stood sentinel around the circular chamber, their presence oppressive and unyielding. Between them loomed statues of tragedy: alabaster angels with torn wings, warriors collapsing under unseen burdens, veiled women weeping into gilded boxes clutched reverently in their hands. Each figure radiated its own unique agony, frozen mid-suffering, their despair immortalized in marble—a chilling homage to the 'glory' promised by the hall’s name.

At the center rose a massive stained-glass window, its grotesque designs seeming to shift under scrutiny. The blood moon’s crimson light spilled through, bleeding into the chamber and fracturing into jagged patterns across the polished floor, pooling like spilled wine—or something darker.

Then, as though drawn by the room’s gravity, the host appeared at the grand doorway, his jubilance a stark contrast to the oppressive room. “Welcome, my survivors!” he proclaimed, arms flung wide. “The best part of our tradition has finally arrived! As you can see, the hall is surrounded by statues. If they seem to call to you, perhaps they are. In fact,” he paused for emphasis, “at their base, you’ll find your names, and in their hands lie a gilded box where your prize awaits.”

You followed the rest as they hesitantly approached the statues. Yours, a marble depiction of a woman being hauled away by a man, felt like a cruel joke. A mocking reflection of your predicament, carved in cold, unfeeling stone. Your jaw tightened as you pried open the gilded box at its base, the air in the hall suddenly feeling heavier. Inside lay two pieces of burgundy parchment.

Suppressing the uneasy churn in your stomach, you picked up the closer parchment, revealing a name etched in elegant script: “Jaeyun.”

Nearby, a man’s voice rose, sharp with indignation. “A name?! What the hell are we supposed to do with a name?!”

The host’s laugh cut through the hall like a razor, too bright, too sharp, ricocheting off the oppressive walls. “Of course they’re names,” he drawled, his grin widening to something feral. “They’re the ones who will grant you eternal glory.”

The words settled over you like a vice, their meaning sinking deeper with each passing second. If this was the Reaping, then... The thought trailed off, unfinished but heavy, tugging your gaze upward instinctively where your eyes lock with Jaeyun who was perched casually at the triforium near the stained glass, as if he’d been waiting for you to look. Jaeyun leaned against the edge, his grin splitting his face like a sinister mask, hand lifting in a greeting in an almost maddeningly casual way like a predator toying with its prey. Mocking you without a word.

“—The Reaper," you finished your thought aloud, the title slipping from your lips as if it had been lurking there all along, waiting to be named.

Your throat tightened, but your hands remained steady as you reached for the second parchment. When you flipped it, the name seemed to glare back at you, heavier, crueler. You whispered it aloud, the word sharp on your tongue: “Sunghoon.”

Your gaze darted across the room, where Sunghoon stood at the opposite triforium from Jaeyun. His eyes found yours instantly, dark and inscrutable. No surprise. No panic. Not even a flicker of emotion. Just that infuriatingly calm, unbothered facade that made your skin crawl. Jaeyun’s taunting words from the library echoed in your mind: What if he’s saving you for himself?

“I can see some victors are rather popular this evening,” the host chimed, his clapping hands slicing through the suffocating tension. His smile stretched wider, dripping with theatrical delight. “But fret not! As tradition dictates, the popular ones will be granted five minutes with each of their suitors in this hall—for one final waltz. Serenade them, threaten them, confess your undying love—whatever suits your fancy. But remember—at the end, only one name must be chosen.”

A man nearby let out a hysterical laugh, his voice cracking as it spiralled into something desperate. “You’re insane—this is insane! I’m not doing this!” His words barely finished before he bolted for the door.

Not that he made it far.

In a blur of motion, one of the vampires materialized before him. The creature’s clawed hand plunged into his chest with a sickening crunch, emerging a moment later clutching his pulsating heart. The man crumpled, lifeless, as a fresh scream tore through the air from the woman beside you.

“And that,” the host exclaimed, his voice still so bright and cheerful, “is what becomes of the ungrateful.” He gestured theatrically to the room, as if he’d just delivered a perfectly rehearsed line in a play. “Come now, victors. Look alive. You’ve earned this. Eternal glory is yours to claim.”

Without waiting for a response, the orchestra struck a jarring chord, the music swelling into something both grand and ominous. Above, the vampires descended from their balconies like a wave of predators, their movements too fast to track. They poured into the hall with eerie precision, seizing their chosen humans without ceremony. The room erupted into chaos—screams, cries, and the sound of shattering glass blending into a cacophony that seemed to mock the elegant setting.

“And now the Waltz commences,” the host declared, his voice ringing with perverse joy.

You barely had time to react before strong hands wrapped around your waist, spinning you with a force that nearly knocked you off balance. “Jaeyun,” you said bitterly, as he grabbed your hand, the other already planted possessively on your waist.

“I told you so,” he drawled, his voice smooth but tinged with mockery. “Your savior is your undoing.”

“And you’re not?” you shot back, trying to pull away, but his grip only tightened as he began to move, forcing you into the dance. His movements were elegant yet aggressive, dragging you along like a puppet on strings.

“Can’t you see? I’m the one saving you from him,” he scoffed, exasperated, “don’t tell me his sob story about the his family's sins and the Council of Elders is all it took to sway you—" he clicked his tongue as he spun you around before pulling you back against him, “Can’t you see the double entrende here? he’s not working under the Council of Elders to promote good. It’s completely self-serving – it grants him what is essentially a license to kill vampires. Less powerful purebloods mean fewer threats. It’s all about power, darling.”

You faltered for a moment, his words digging under your skin. “Even if that’s true,” you said, trying to keep your voice steady, “I’m still being passed from one wolf to another. You’re not exactly an ideal choice either…”

He spun you away from the center, the shadows engulfing you both, “tell you what, after this charade, they’ll give you a chance to escape through the Maze outside the castle. People would run aimlessly through the maze, thinking that it will eventually get them somewhere but it wont. The secret lies in the statues. Their hands are always pointing at the right way.”

You stared at him, trying to see past those unfathomable eyes. “Why are you telling me this? Why help me?”

He murmured, his lips ghosting dangerously close to your ear, “because we have the same goal, albeit in different forms, which is survival. And Sunghoon is the only one staying in our way. He’s playing the long game y/n. Look at him. Look at how he watches you—like a chess piece he hasn’t figured out how to move yet. You think he saved you? Sunghoon doesn’t save people. He removes and collects them, like a relic. That’s how it is with the royal Purebloods—it's always all about control and servitude. He’ll never let anyone be his equal.”

“Still, even if I choose you. It won’t guarantee my safety,” you said adamantly, “you could still end up reaping me.”

“And what for?” he said matter-of-factly, “My mother was reaped and I became a ‘tainted’ child in a world that worships purity. Can you see now? why I hate collateral damage?"

He paused, his gaze piercing. “And frankly, with what I hear about you and him… the Reaping might just be his way to stake his claim on you you—to make you his in every sense. Among other things.” His lips twisted into a bitter smirk. “Trust me, you’ll wish he’d killed you instead.”

You wanted to open your mouth, say something defiant, but nothing came. He pressed on, “I know you’re smart and rational so think of me as the lesser evil. I, at least, have no motive to want to reap you specifically and if you choose me at the end—I’ll really let you go because then I know that we are of the same understanding.”

Suddenly you feel his hand creep higher over your back, like a vine reclaiming its hold. His face was inches from yours, and for a fleeting moment, the interplay of shadow and light caught you off guard. Jaeyun’s usual devil-may-care grin—mischievous, boyish—seemed to warp under the flickering half-light. The shadows deepened the sharp angles of his cheekbones, the tilt of his lips more predator than prankster, as though the ease in his expression was a veneer stretched over something far more calculated. The light, faint and fleeting, only accentuated the unsettling duality—a face that could charm or terrify, depending on how you looked at it.

“If you choose Sunghoon however” his voice dipped lower, his head tilting so his breath brushed against your ear, “I’ll take it that you’re no different from him. And trust me—I won’t even let you get past any statues in the maze.”

You barely had the time to process the onslaught of words—teetering confusingly between helpful and threatening—when his hand cupped your face. Gentle yet deliberate, he tipped your chin ever so slightly toward him before pressing his lips languidly on your cheek—the kiss too slow, too deliberate to be mistaken for tenderness. No, it was a warning—a searing brand meant to remind you of the stakes.

He was like a thorny vine—subtle, insidious. The more you moved, the more you were pricked, and if you stayed still, it would creep over you, wrapping tighter until it claimed you entirely.

The heat lingered long after he pulled away, your skin prickling as though it carried the weight of his words. He loosened his grip just enough to spin you away, the force dismissive yet laced with an unsettling possessiveness.

The force sent you stumbling, disoriented, until strong arms caught you mid-motion, halting your fall. You looked up, your breath hitching as Sunghoon’s dark gaze locked onto yours. His presence was grounding, anchoring you in the chaos—but it was suffocating too, a storm restrained just beneath the surface, its weight pressing down on you.

“You look like you had an enjoyable time with the loach,” Sunghoon muttered, bitterness lacing every syllable. His grip tightened slightly on your waist, dragging you closer as the music swelled around you.

“And you look like you’re exactly where you should be,” you shot back, trying to twist out of his grip, “—the Reaping’s poster child. Is that why you saved me so far?” you pressed on, unable to conceal your own bitterness, “because you’re actually saving me for this.”

His grip tightened—not enough to hurt, but enough to keep you tethered to him. “Would you rather there only be a single name?” he asked coldly, his tone as biting as the frigid air between you. “His?”

“At least he’s honest, Sunghoon,” you snapped, your voice cracking under the weight of your frustration. “At least I know where I stand with him. You—” your hand pressed against his chest, a futile attempt to create space as he guided you into a sharp turn. “You twist everything until I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

“You don’t know what’s real?” His laugh was bitter, humorless, as he spun you again, this time keeping you so close you could feel the rise and fall of his chest against yours. “You poisoned me, y/n. You ran from me. You were the one who destroyed what was real.”

The pang of guilt that surged through you was like a knife, but you refused to let it show. “Oh, I see,” you said, mockery dripping from every word. “Killing two birds with one stone, are we? Reclaim your glory and punish me in one fell swoop. Immortality, bound to you for eternity—that’s the perfect revenge for me, isn’t it? You’ve outdone yourself, Park Sunghoon.”

His jaw tightened, his calm facade cracking just slightly. “You think this is about power?” he asked quietly, his voice simmering with frustration. “I’ve lived for centuries and gone through several wars. If I cared about reclaiming anything, I would have done it long ago.”

“So this is about us, is it?” you pressed, your voice trembling with both anger and something rawer. “Punishing me for what I did eight years ago? You knew the Reaping would break me irreparably more than killing me ever could. That’s why you kept me alive—so you could tether me to you, curse me with eternity, all under your control.”

“You think I want you bound to me just to feed some twisted sense of power?” he scoffed, the bitterness in his tone cutting sharper than any blade. “God, y/n, this isn’t about control.”

“Then what is it about?” you demanded. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks a hell of a lot like revenge. A power play.”

His jaw clenched, the restraint in his expression cracking further as he took another step toward you. “You think I want revenge? That I want to punish you?” he snapped, his voice rising. “Can’t you see that it’s you that I want?” his voice cracking, “I can’t afford to lose you. Not to him, not to anyone. I’d tear this place apart before I let him have you.”

“I am not yours,” you said bitterly, the words like venom on your tongue. “And you don’t get to play saviour by making me your captive.”

“Captive?” he echoed, the hint of hurt in his voice was subtle but evident. “Sure. Paint me as the villain then—that’s easier, isn’t it? Easier than admitting you’re the one who’s afraid.”

“Afraid?” you scoffed, though the tremor in your voice betrayed you. “Of you?”

“No,” he said sharply, his gaze piercing through you. “Afraid of what you feel. Of what you felt back then, and what you still feel now.”

You flinched as if his words had physically struck you, the momentary crack in your resolve giving him an opening. He stepped closer, his movements calculated as he swept you into a slow, deliberate turn, each step forcing you to follow, leaving you breathless and off balance. “Because if you were really sure,” he murmured, his voice dropping dangerously low, “you wouldn’t need to convince yourself I’m the villain. You wouldn’t be standing here, accusing me of using you, when the truth is you’re just looking for a reason to run.”

Your laugh was hollow, brittle. “You think I’d run from you?”

“I think you’ve been running since the moment we met,” he said simply, his voice cutting through your bravado like a blade. “And I think you’ll keep running until you admit why you poisoned me in the first place.”

He spun you again, his movements sharp and unrelenting, before pulling you back into him, his voice soft but no less cutting. “You knew what we were, what we could’ve been—and you destroyed it. You burned it all to the ground before it could burn you.”

Your fingers curled against his shoulder, nails lightly digging into the fabric, your voice cracking as you hissed, “What you felt for me is not love, Sunghoon. It’s control wrapped in obsession; possession, dressed up as affection.”

He swallowed thickly, and for a moment, you couldn’t tell why—was it because he had called you out, or because your words had cut too deep? The silence between you seemed to stretch, taut and unyielding. His jaw tightened, his gaze darkening, and when he finally spoke, his voice was quieter, sharper, cutting through the air like frost.

“Maybe it is,” he murmured, each word deliberate, his brows furrowing as a glint flashed in his eyes—something cold, something you’d never seen before. “Maybe that’s all I am now.” The faint curve of his lips followed, but it wasn’t a smile—it was bitterness made flesh, a weapon unsheathed.

“Fine, y/n.” His voice dropped lower, darker, as though he were sealing a pact. “I’ll be the villain you so desperately need me to be.”

Before you could respond, he stepped closer, manoeuvring you sharply across the hall. The motion was unrelenting, his grip tightening with a force that felt like it could crush you if he chose. His movements were forceful, almost punishing, the elegance of the waltz tainted by the sheer rawness of his frustration.

“I’ll selfishly take back what you tore from me—what you tore from us—eight years ago,” he continued, his voice low and cutting, each word laced with an accusation that burned. His fingers moved with a slithery precision, curling with just enough force to press you against him, like a marionette in his grasp. His arm, firm and unrelenting, coiled around you like a serpent, each step tethering you closer, suffocating you with its possessiveness.

The curve of his palm seemed to mold perfectly to your body, a gesture that felt both possessive and unnervingly intimate. When he spun you, his hand didn’t falter—it followed the contours of your frame, reclaiming its position with a fluidity that felt inevitable, like gravity itself had shifted in his favour. His grip tightened subtly, fingers splaying just enough to press into the delicate fabric of your gown, branding you in a way that felt both commanding and terrifyingly intimate.

“You tore us apart,” he murmured, his voice dropping into something darker, heavier, as though he was drawing from a well of buried pain. His face hovered inches from yours, his breath searing against your skin. “This time, I’ll make sure you can’t end anything. Because if I can’t have you, no one can.”

The finality in his words hit you like a physical blow, leaving you frozen as he guided you through another step, his movements precise yet devoid of tenderness. The music surged around you, its crescendo mimicking the storm of emotions churning in the air.

And then, as the final note reverberated through the hall, Sunghoon stepped back. His retreat was slow, deliberate, each step like a crumbling facade. His dark eyes burned with an intensity you’d never seen before, emotions swirling just beneath the surface—anger, pain, longing, and something far darker. You couldn’t bring yourself to move, trapped in the gravity of what had just passed between you.

“Now, now,” the host’s voice shattered the silence like breaking glass, his cheerful tone jarring against the tension that lingered in the air. “You know the rules,” he announced, his grin sharp. “Burn the name of the rejected and put the chosen name in the gilded chest.”

Your gaze dropped to the two burgundy parchments in your hand. Slowly, deliberately, you picked up the one with Jaeyun’s name, placing it inside the chest that was meant for the chosen one. The soft click of the lid sealed your choice, a decision made for all to see.

Your gaze instinctively sought Sunghoon in the crowd. His eyes locked with yours for a fleeting second, and in that moment, something flickered across his face—fury, yes, but beneath it, a flash of raw hurt that cut deeper than any words. Then he turned sharply, vanishing into the sea of bodies.

What he didn’t see, what no one would ever see, was how you never burnt the name you rejected—Sunghoon's. You couldn’t.

Instead you folded the parchment with painstaking care, tucking it into the lining of your dress, just over your heart. As though it carried every unspoken word between you.

As if it meant more than you dared to admit.

A/N: No this isn't the end HAHAHAHA told you it was a 40k work so it's actually supposed to be longer but bloody hell apparently tumblr has a 1000 blocks per post limit and it exceeded. So I gotta chop it here. See you in the next one ((i might post it immediately after, or space it out hohoh so let me know what you think about this one)) !

#enhypen vampire #enhypen imagines #enhypen sunghoon #enhypen sunghoon imagines #park sunghoon #enhypen scenarios #enhypen #sunghoon imagines #sunghoon vampire #kpop imagines #sunghoon scenarios #enhypen sunghoon scenarios #kpop scenarios #enhypen x reader #enhypen x female reader #enhypen vampire au

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ghostpoetics · 18 days ago

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Queer Indie Horror and Dark Fantasy Romances

I currently have seven books out! Signed copies are available on Etsy. They are a mix of Gothic lit, horror romance, and dark fantasy romance.

Some of these books are very dark. Be sure to check out my author site for content warnings on every book page.

A FLAME IN THE NIGHT: Or—Marriage: Two people and their silver-haired vampire. An MMF vampire romance that takes place in 1924 Paris. Burlesque clubs, Twenties stag films, decadent parties, a blond waifish man who is totally straight, and bloody eroticism.

WITCH SOUL: M/F witch x vampire continuation of A FLAME IN THE NIGHT, prelude to MFMF. Millie, a strong-willed and disabled witch, meets Leon in less than favorable circumstances and works to gain control of her witch soul, the fallen angel stuck inside her.

PROVIDENCE GIRLS: A sapphic cosmic horror romance that takes place in Great Depression New England. After Vin escapes from being sacrificed in her hilly, isolated town of Dunwich, she’s saved and taken in by Azzie, a reclusive and aloof clerk at East Providence’s city hall. The two women bond and share their strange and harrowing past experiences, but Azzie has a secret: She’s from a hamlet called Innsmouth, and she’s changing into a Deep One.

KING OF HELL: M/M vampire x demon romance and revenge road trip. Laurențiu, one of the favourites of the hedonistic King Paimon, asks him to help him get revenge on the man who betrayed him a long time ago. What ensues is a road trip through post-apocalyptic Atlanta and abandoned Dollywood.

UNHOLY WITH EYES LIKE WOLVES: Carmilla x FMC x Erzsébet Báthory. Noémie, a dishonored and widowed noblewoman in early 17th century Hungary, finds herself in an unenviable position: After grievous trauma and loss, her last chance to regain her honor comes when she must serve as Lady Erzsébet Báthory’s handmaiden. Báthory is stoic and imperious, and as Noémie struggles to acclimate and accept her present and future, she begins to have dreams about a mysterious woman. Worse, there are stories of disappearances and deaths in the castle, and Noémie might be next.

THE SAINT OF HEARTBREAK: Two of the Bible's greatest villains... After his betrayal with a kiss, Judas Iscariot dies in despair and goes to Hell. When Christ saves other souls during the Harrowing of Hell, he leaves Judas behind—but not alone in the ninth circle, where the most detestable traitors go. Callous, resigned, and abandoned by God long ago, the Devil sees Judas as a pathetic wretch, but he soon finds a kindred spirit. As the centuries pass, they struggle to find even a sliver of happiness in Hell. Doomed by the narrative, will they find happiness, or will their story continue to be a tragedy?

SACRAMENT: SACRAMENT is a dark Gothic romance that follows Maël, a man who makes a deal to be the human familiar to a peevish vampire lord named Sebestyen. Besides dealing with Sebestyen’s demands, he also contends with his burgeoning feelings for Alain, his closest friend, all while faced with the looming threat of Sebestyen’s twin vampiric masters.

#books #lgbt books #queer indie books #vampire books #horror romance #gothic books

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thebenjiblackwoodexpress · 4 months ago

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The Blackwood Knight: Troublesome Suitors

Description: In which the Blackwood Knight must fend off some troublesome suitors vying for his fair lady's hand.

Writer's Note: Hi all! Been a long time since I posted any 'Blackwood Knight' related content but this is an outtake/extra part of that story, if you will. It may be the prelude to another story/sequel (*wink, wink*). Not sure if this is still of interest to anyone, but had an idea so thought I'd run with it. There was a request from a very kind reader (@rebeccawinters) to write more in this series, so consider this a taste of more to come.

Warning: Brief mention of non con kiss. Female reader.

Dividers by @zaldritzosrose

A gentle breeze fluttered the golden leaves of the Brackentree, overhead, under which a lady and a Knight were ensconced. The lady looked down nervously at the tome open on her lap, still nervous that the Knight next to her would grow bored of hearing her speak of her favourite stories, though he had not yet, after a week of meeting at this tree. She little knew how fascinated Benji was to hear this lovely girl talk to him on whatever subject she chose, especially her stories, since they revealed so much of her character and interests. He admired the beauty of her mind as much as her person, and that of the ideal world she had built in her mind; a world in which loyalty and honour stood for something more than swearing fealty to the next usurper to make a claim for the throne. Perhaps they could build that world together, thought he, smiling softly down at her as she continued to talk about her book. He found her intermittent stutters and nervous avoidance of his eyes endearing and sweet, though he wished that she would feel comfortable in his presence. Benji frowned as he saw Y/N shudder slightly for the second time in a few minutes, realising that she must be cold.

Swiftly unclasping his cloak from around his neck, he gently wrapped it around her shoulders, holding her shoulders affectionately for a moment longer than he needed to. His heart stuttered as she turned her pretty face to look inquisitively up at him, and he found himself stuttering a reply. "Forgive me for my presumption, I thought you might be cold." He held his breath as she tilted her head curiously at him, fearing he had offended her, but she only rewarded him with a sweet, shy smile before returning her gaze to her book. He smiled to himself smugly as he noticed a light dusting of pink on her cheeks. Leaning back against the tree complacently, he shuffled slightly closer so that his shoulder could brush hers. Looking at her out of the corner of his eye to gage her reaction, he was further gratified when she did not stiffen in the slightest and only continued to tell him about her book.

After a few moments she grew silent and her brows furrowed together in a look of worry. Leaning down to meet her gaze, he questioned frantically, “what's wrong? Have I done something to upset you?” Y/N quickly refuted this, shaking her head and waving her hand as if dismissing the issue. “Oh no, not at all, I was only thinking about something displeasing. No matter”' and with that, she smiled up at him. Her quick dismissal of an issue, which was clearly bothering her, concerned Benjicot, demonstrative of a lack of concern for herself and a lack of belief that anyone would care about something worrying her. He would have to remedy this. Anything that concerned her concerned him, and he would fix it if he could. Speaking softly, or as softly as he could, he sought to ascertain the cause of her worry. “I would be grateful if you would tell me what concerns you, my Lady.”

She titled her head inquisitively at him, once again, as if surprised he would care, but answered him hesitantly. 'It is only that my Lord Uncle has been quite insistent in urging me to consider potential suitors of late and I would rather he was not so. I find it difficult enough being forced to talk to people I do not care for, let alone suitors who have no real interest in my person, just what a marriage between our Houses could do for their own personal gain.” She said all of this without taking a breath, her frustration barely concealed, but she immediately looked bashfully after she had finished, as if half expecting Benji to reprimand her for such openness. The dark expression on his face only seemed to confirm this fear and she stuttered out an apology. “Pay me no heed, it is a foolish thing to complain of. I know I will have to marry eventually, but I cannot imagine marrying a man I did not at least like or respect.”

As she looked away from the Knight beside her in embarrassment, she internally rebuked herself for her complaining. Her internal tirade was cut short by Benji interjecting in a soft, almost coaxing tone. She thought she imagined him moving his hand closer to hers on the ground so that their fingers could touch, a comforting gesture. But perhaps he had not realised how close they were, she reminded herself. “When you do marry, it should not be to a man you merely like or respect.” “No?” She questioned tentatively, surprised to see a warmth in Benji's eyes, as he gazed down at her, his face closer to hers than she had previously thought. “It should be to a man who adores you and loves respects your whole person; not only the beauty of your outward person, but also your mind”. Y/N's mouth parted in silent shock at Benji's outburst before she turned away, growing bashful at his description of her as 'beautiful'. Benji gently turned her chin back to face him, determined that she should fully internalise his words. “For you are beautiful, in your physical person and your mind, which is like a diamond, clear and dazzling.”

He bent lower to her face, noses nearly brushing as he half-whispered. “The man who you marry will not only see this, but do everything in his power to protect such beauty. I know I would.” Y/N emitted a nervous laugh before releasing herself from Benji's grasp on her chin, and turning away from him once again, though she nestled herself closer to him all the same. Benji satisfied himself that he had made his point and that if his lady did not entirely take his full meaning, the confession of love behind his words, she would at least understand her worth. A moment of silence passed before Y/N quietly said words which had Benji's heart soaring. “None of them are as polite and kind as you. They do not understand me as you do or even care to.”

Benji took a deep breath, feeling his heart swell at her sweet words. Perhaps Rob was wrong. Perhaps she could grow to love him and would one day accept his hand in marriage. His joy was cut short, however, by his lady's next words, muttered quietly under her breath, as if she was unsure whether or not she wanted him to hear. “I know that they mock me for my shyness and see me as no more than a bargaining chip.” Benji's next words came out stiff, through gritted teeth. “These suitors,” he spat out, as if the word was distasteful, “bother you? Are insolent enough to be rude to you?” His anger was rising in his chest, his fist clenching into a tight ball at his side as he immediately began planning how to despatch any man who insulted his lady. The next moment he found himself relaxing and assuming a dazed expression as the lovely lady next to him surprised him by turning her pretty features upon him in a look marked with the utmost concern.

Raising her hand to his head, she pressed the back of it against his forehead and he had to force himself not to close his eyes at the feel of her hand upon him. Instead he looked down at her speechless, as she urgently enquired into his wellbeing. "Are you well Benji? You look flushed, is something the matter?" She looked briefly confused at his lack of response, which she began to grow concerned was only further evidence of an incipient illness.

In truth, the normally formidable Benjicott Blackwood was left utterly in awe of the beauty and gentleness he saw before him, hardly believing it was directed towards him. He very nearly forgot himself and swept the angelic creature before him into his arms then and there but, reminding himself that she was shy and probably did not reciprocate his love for her, he restrained himself, even if he did lean into her touch. Lowering his face towards her, pulled almost by a magnetic force he spoke in a soft tone. "No, my Lady, I am perfectly well, thank you. I am only unhappy to hear of your own troubles and would remedy them if I could. Would you...” He hesitated, seeking to indirectly gain her permission to despatch, remove, he corrected himself, these troublesome suitors for her. “Yes?” She asked in that straightforward way she always did. It was one of the things he loved most about her. She had an innocence, almost like a baby deer encountering the world for the first time, in how she perceived the world and communicated her thoughts. He could not understand how she had been mocked for such transparency in a world of vipers and lickspittles. He knew only too well what he would do to the people who had ever made her feel inadequate about the very traits he found so enchanting about her. He'd planned each of their murders in great detail. Not that he would ever tell her that. The aim was not to frighten her, but to win her love.

He'd have to be indirect about his approach to these suitors, lest the sweet creature next to him looking at him with her crystal blue eyes should grow suspicious of their sudden absence. He'd have to pick them off one by one. “Would you be opposed to these suitors disappearing, entirely coincidentally of course,” he added, hurriedly. He could almost hear Rob's patronising voice in his mind: “real smooth, Benjicott”. “That would be too convenient,” She sighed. Benji smirked slightly, that was all the permission he needed to remove these irritating obstacles from his lady's sight...and his path to win her hand to him.. He was snapped out of his malevolent thoughts, once again, by the soft voice of the lady next to him. “What are you thinking of Benji? You have that odd expression on your face you usually have when I talk about Edmund. Are you...angry with me? We don't have to talk about this anymore if it bothers you.” She spoke hurriedly, turning her reddening face away from him in embarrassment, clearly believing herself to be the cause of Benjicot’s ire.

Benjicot’s eyes widened with alarm and he grabbed her delicate hand in his own and held her shoulder gently with his other, before he could think better of it. Y/N's her head snapped up to meet his at his sudden touch, surprised by the almost tender way he had encased her hand and shoulder in his hands, gently turning her toward him. “Sweet...” Y/N's eyes widened at what she thought sounded like...but it couldn't be, she chastised herself. Why would Benji, a Knight who could probably had a vast entourage of ladies interested in him, possibly be about to call her 'sweet heart.'

After a moment of hesitation, Benji continued, only a slight tension in his jaw revealing his frustration at having allowed his love for the lady before him to nearly result in a misstep that may have had her fleeing from his presence before he could stop her. He could not risk losing her by frightening her with the ardency of his feelings when he was certain she did not feel the same. He sought to correct his mistake as quickly as possible, lest she realise what he had nearly said and flee. “You are very sweet, my Lady, but I wish you to know that you could never anger or annoy me. Everything and anything you have to say to me is of the highest importance to me and if I do appear angry, it is only on your behalf. These ignorant pups have no business intruding themselves upon your presence. I would chase them off if I could.” Benji was equally surprised and delighted to hear his quiet lady, usually so reserved and shy, even with him, break into playful laughter at his last comment - which he had meant in all seriousness. He could not contain the smile that spread across his features as she continued to laugh, her hand pressed to her lips as if to suppress her mirth. He playfully nudged her shoulder, before leaning down conspiratorially to her level. “And what, may I ask, is the cause of your laughter my Lady?”

Still struggling to contain her laughter, Y/N met Benji's gaze with a dazzling smile, like the light dappling a woodland, as she responded. “It is only the thought of you chasing those intolerable suitors off. I suppose one look from you would have them running”, she jested. Benji smirked at this, lowering his head teasingly, seeing her face redden as he drew closer, though she did not move away from him, much to his pleasure. Tilting his head, he whispered by her ear, “am I really so formidable, my Lady? I hope you do not find me frightening”. Sensing she was flustered by his close proximity by the way she was tensed, he reluctantly drew back, though he watched her expression carefully. She could little guess how important her answer to his question was to him. He thought he could hardly bare it if she answered in the affirmative...that she was afraid of him too, just like everyone else seemed to be, Bracken or otherwise.

To the rest of the Riverlands, even his own kin and bannermen, he was known as ‘Bloody Benjicot’, and not for nothing. He protected Blackwood lands from Bracken incursions with a ferocity that lent weight to the appellation. Nevertheless, he never wished for the gentle lady before him to view him as such. From their very first meeting and, even before that, when he had only watched her from afar, he had felt a deep desire to protect her. Much to his surprise and delight, she had appeared to view him as such since he had first defended her from her incorrigible peacock of a cousin who, he reminded himself, still needed a plucking for his crimes against her. Beyond her habitual timidity, she had never seemed to fear him. After he had watched her walk back to her home that first day of their meeting, he had feared that he would never see her again, but she had returned each day to the Brackentree, bordering his lands.

Never seeming surprised to see him waiting for her, she appeared contented at the sight, quickly nestling down next to him to discuss her books or her day or anything. It was all as interesting to Benji, since it concerned her - the lady he loved and adored more than anything in this life, even his own lands. She was the only person who had seen him not only for who he was, but who he could be: a Knight whose trenchant sense of loyalty could be directed towards a higher aim than merely countering border scuffles. He had always thought that no single cause or person could ever command the loyalty of him that his own House and lands did, not even the ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, though he was proud to pledge his sword to Rhaenyra, the true Queen's cause. He soon came to realise that the lady before him was this higher aim, the guiding star in his life and the object of all his future hopes. She might not ever be a Queen in name, but he would readily admit to anyone who asked that she was the queen of his heart and where his true loyalty lay.

Usually so confident, Benjicot found himself tensing his shoulders and fixing his gaze upon the ground, rather than her lovely eyes as he awaited her response to his question. He looked up suddenly in shock, first to the small hand placed upon his forearm and then to the crystalline eyes that had haunted his dreams so much of late. "I am not afraid of you, Benji. You have always been so kind to me. You are...my best friend" she added, with a nervous smile, before quickly looking away from him. Warm affection surged in his chest at hearing her confirm that she was not only not afraid of him, as he had feared, but also even considered him more gentlemanly than her suitors on the Bracken side. Lowering his head to chase her eyes, despite her adorable attempts to evade them. He couldn't help finding her perennial shyness endearing. When she finally met his gaze, he gently lifted her hand to his lips and placed a reverent kiss upon her knuckles, which only made her blush harder. "You are my best friend too, my Lady, and if your, no doubt, endless train of suitors are causing you distress, I am sure your loyal friend can think of a way of 'removing them'.

Benji grinned, pleased with himself, as a laugh bubbled forth from her and she lightly pushed his shoulder in remonstrance. "Don't be silly, Benji. I appreciate your concern, but there's nothing you can do without crossing the border into Brackenlands. That would be far too dangerous". Benji murmured under his breath, "for them." "What was that, I didn't quite catch it," Y/N looked up inquisitively at him. "Nothing, nothing, my Lady, you just have a twig in your hair. Do I have your permission to remove it?" Embarrassed at having had a twig in her hair for gods only know how long, she quickly assented, "Oh, yes of course." With her agreement, Benji wasted no time in brushing his knuckle softly against her temple and through her hair, before tucking a stray lock behind her ear. "All gone now," he assured her, though there had never really been a twig in her hair to begin with. He smiled mischievously at her, for what reason she could not tell, but she did so like to see him smile, especially at her, because of something she had said.

Smiling brightly back at him, she quickly waved away her concern that he might incur danger to himself in order to rid her of her irritating suitors. Why would he go to so much trouble on her account, even if they were friends? Returning her gaze to her book, the pair happily passed the time in comfortable silence, Benjicott content merely to be in the presence of the one he loved, and she absorbed in her book. When enough time had elapsed, Benji thought, for his next question to be posed without incurring too much suspicion from his lady as to the motivations behind it, Benji tentatively spoke his next query. "My Lady, would you be able to....perhaps, describe these suitors or...tell me their names?" Avoiding her eyes, sure she would be able to see the dark thoughts lingering behind them, Benji directed his gaze off into the far distance as he awaited her reply. A quiet, yet direct response of 'why?' had him struggling to repress a smile at the air of ingenuousness behind it. As expected, she did not as of yet hold any suspicions as to his reasoning; she was genuinely incredulous as to the reason. His brows furrowed the next moment, however, as he realised that her lack of suspicion also spoke to her disbelief that anyone would care enough to intercede on her behalf over something that had upset or concerned her.

A wave of sadness passed over him then, but he quickly rallied himself, a look of steely determination in his eyes. He would convince her, no matter how many years it took, that she was worth more than anyone had ever lead her to belief. That she was worthy of being cared for. That she meant more than anything to him. Gods, he worshipped the ground she tread on and he'd be damned before he let any suitors bother his love for even a second more. Still assuming an air of nonchalance and directing his shifty expression elsewhere, Benjicott responded to his lady's query. "No reason in particular, just to build a better mental picture for myself of these bastar....weasels," he quickly corrected himself. "Oh, of course." She responded, in her sweet, direct way of hers, as if she should have expected us much. She then proceeded to describe the four offenders with a degree of detail he was grateful for, only interjecting a few times to ask for more particulars.

By the time she had finished describing them, Benjicott had a clear enough idea of the "weasels" in question who he needed to despatch...have a stern talking to, he corrected himself mentally, once again. Only one of his lady's suitors had caused enough offense to merit more than that, the others were mere weak-spirited vassals of House Bracken that needed to be removed from his Love's presence. That shouldn't be too difficult. He'd seen all of them before and knew when he could expect to come across them near the borders to the Blackwood lands. The other one, however, would need more than a stern talking to. The craven bastard had dared to touch his lady, grabbing her wrist to prevent her from leaving the room to avoid hearing his pathetic attempts to win her heart. Benji's eyes had darkened at his lady's admission of this, his fists once again curling into tight balls at his side. His voice came out harsher than he'd intended, as he realised he'd been gritting his teeth in his anger at the suitor who had dared to frighten his lady by imposing his unwanted attentions on her. "He should never have touched you or enforced his unwanted solicitations upon your presence.

He would not have gotten so far if I had been in the room, my Lady." Y/N met his gaze with another quizzical look, searching his eyes for something, he could not tell what. He found himself wishing, hoping even, that she might find the love he held for her therein and not be offended by it. That she might even return it. But no, she only looked away from him again and spoke in a quiet tone. "You have always been such a gentleman, Benji. Not all men are so. I wish you could be there with me when I have to deal with these suitors. I never know what to say to them. I always end up offending them merely by being myself." Her eyebrows furrowed at this into a look of concentration, seemingly trying to uncover the reason why she had caused offense. Benjicott found her look of confusion adorable, much as he did everything else about her, especially her directness, which so seemed to offend the spineless scoundrels who vied for her hand. The hand he would so cherish if she were to grant him her love.

"It is their fault if they are offended, not yours. You should always speak your mind, my Lady. It is not for you to pander to weak men such as they are. Have you spoken to anyone of the rude manner in which these suitors have addressed you?" Y/N smiled sadly up at Benjicott before replying. My Lord Uncle cares little for anything involving myself and I would not want to be a burden. "You never could be" Benjicott interjected abruptly before he could stop himself. Another quizzical look from her, before she lightly patted his shoulder. "Thank you Benji, you are very kind." "No I am not, my Lady. Or at least, I say what I say not out of mere kindness, but because I genuinely, ardently mean what I say. You are and never could be a burden...not to me." He said the last part so quietly he was not sure if she would hear him. The light blush on her cheeks was the only intimation that she had heard him and might have been touched by what he had meant as a subtle confession of his true feelings for her, but she quickly looked away before he could completely embarrass himself by falling to his knees in front of her and begging her to grant him her hand in marriage.

"My uncle does not share your view. My cousin, Aeron, is very kind to be and cares for me. I'm sure he would intervene if I were to tell him of Ser Percival's unwanted attentions but I hesitate to do so after the last time I mentioned a suitor was bothering me." Benjicot's interest was immediately piqued at this unexpected revelation. "Oh? What happened the last time you did so, my Lady?"

"Aeron wouldn't tell me exactly, he's very assiduous about not involving me in anything unpleasant, but Ser Benjen did not renew his suit afterwards and I later caught a glimpse of something that looked suspiciously like a purple bruise under his eye. Aeron wouldn't admit that he was the culprit, but he grew very edgy when I mentioned it to him and started stuttering out possible scenarios which were so outlandish that I know it was him. Ser Benjen is an oaf, but not so much so that he could, as Aeron suggested, have 'tripped over a bucket and fallen down the stairs or been hit in the face by a raven.' Aeron's never been a very good liar, gods bless him. Not to mention that he'd already asked me if Ser Benjen had bothered me again, no doubt in full knowledge the poor man had been too afraid to, with Aeron glaring at him every time he was even in the same room as me'. Y/N shook her head and smiled indulgently at the thought of her kind cousin's well-meaning antics.

Benjicot found himself smiling in spite of himself. He had to hand it to Aeron Bracken, he was as loyal to his House and family as he was to his own. That factor alone had earned him enough respect from Benjicot to ensure their frequent border scuffles always involved an element of almost brotherly playfulness that never resulted in full out warfare. But it was his kindness and care for his cousin, the lady Benjicot loved, which had him thinking he could have befriended Aeron under different circumstances. Not to mention he'd done Benjicot the immense favour of already removing one suitor from the equation. One down, three to go, Benjicot mentally made a tally for himself.

"Right, one down, three more Bracken scoundrels to go. No problem, you've come to the right man. I can arrange for them to mysteriously and, quite coincidentally, of course, disappear". Rob echoed the tally Benji had mentally made for himself but a few hours ago, waggling his eyebrows suggestively and making a motion with his hand as if he were physically wiping the suitors away. Benjicot sighed in frustration with his loyal and well-meaning friend. "How many times do I have to tell you, Rob. I won't allow you to murder Brackens and cause a war, just because you hate them." Rob's mischievous expression quickly turned sullen. "Fine," he sulkily replied, "have it your way. How do you plan on 'removing' these drivelling knaves from your lady's presence?”

Benji turned fully to his friend, having advanced a few paces ahead of him on their way back to Raventree. "I intend to have a polite discussion with the first two and a not so polite discussion with the third one who dared to lay a hand on her." Benjicot glowered at Rob as he broke into laughter, holding his torso in response to what he had meant to be taken in utter seriousness. "Enjoying yourself, Rob?" Still struggling to quiet his laughter, brushing away stray tears that had streamed from his eyes, Rob sought to make amends. "I apologise my friend, but I think I know enough of your character to know exactly what you mean by a 'polite discussion' and it involves at least three broken noses and several black eyes." "Not necessarily!" Benjicott peevishly replied, though he could not entirely refute Rob's accusation. It all depended on how amenable these pipsqueaks were to his 'polite' request that they kindly full off and leave his girl alone...or else.

His dark thoughts were interrupted, once again, by Rob breaking into another round of laughter. "There it is, I can see you scheming their deaths right now. I'll marry a Bracken tomorrow if you manage to have a 'polite discussion' with these suitors that doesn't involve them encountering some violence from your end of some kind or another." Benjicot did not honour Rob's sallies with any response, merely glowering at him and turning petulantly to stalk off in the direction of Raventree. He'd show Rob that he could a conversation with these suitors, telling them to never impose themselves upon his lady again or face the consequences, without actually putting those consequences into action...he hoped.

"Right, one down, three more Bracken scoundrels to go. No problem, you've come to the right man. I can arrange for them to mysteriously and, quite coincidentally, of course, disappear". Rob echoed the tally Benji had mentally made for himself but a few hours ago, waggling his eyebrows suggestively and making a motion with his hand as if he were physically wiping the suitors away. Benjicott sighed in frustration with his loyal and well-meaning friend. "How many times do I have to tell you, Rob. I won't allow you to murder Brackens and cause a war, just because you hate them." Rob's mischievous expression quickly turned sullen. "Fine," he sulkily replied, "have it your way. How do you plan on 'removing' these drivelling knaves from your lady's presence?”

Benji turned fully to his friend, having advanced a few paces ahead of him on their way back to Raventree. "I intend to have a polite discussion with the first two and a not so polite discussion with the third one who dared to lay a hand on her." Benjicott glowered at Rob as he broke into laughter, holding his torso in response to what he had meant to be taken in utter seriousness. "Enjoying yourself, Rob?" Still struggling to quiet his laughter, brushing away stray tears that had streamed from his eyes, Rob sought to make amends. "I apologise my friend, but I think I know enough of your character to know exactly what you mean by a 'polite discussion' and it involves at least three broken noses and several black eyes." "Not necessarily!" Benjicott peevishly replied, though he could not entirely refute Rob's accusation. It all depended on how amenable these pipsqueaks were to his 'polite' request that they kindly full off and leave his girl alone...or else.

"Well well, the conciliator returns, no doubt from his successful diplomatic negotiations with the unlucky fellows who dared to bother his sweet lady. Oh but look, lads," Rob called jubilantly from his jaunty position on a fence to Kermit and Oscar beside him, all with smirks on their faces, "is that blood on your collar, good envoy?" "Oh fuck off, Rob, this one deserved it and I barely touched him. He ran off with his tail between his legs." Rob looked at his nails, returning smugly. "So you said the last two times. Did they all deserve it too?" "Yes!" Benjicott spat out quickly, without hesitation. "This was especially." His eyes darkened at the memory of his encounter with the craven bastard who had presumed to touch his lady and frighten her with his unwanted solicitations. He'd found the swine patrolling the border on his own, in his arrogance. Well, this would go a lot quicker than if Benjicott had to deal with a host if Brackens.

"Oi, dastard, I have some business with you," Benjicott shouted across to the Knight, swaggering casually up to the border. "You dare address me in such a manner, Blackwood swine!" The Knight spat out. "Who are you to accuse me of cowardice?" Benjicot advanced so that he was chest to chest with the Bracken Knight, his steely response coming out through gritted teeth. "Oh I dare. Any man that presumes to touch a lady without her permission and insult her with his unwanted presence deserves the name of coward." The Knight looked shifty and considerably chastened by Benjicot’s close proximity and the sheer aggression radiating off him. Seeing the Blackwood sigil on the broach fastening Benjicot’s cloak round his shoulders, the Knight gulped at the realisation that it was the formidable future Lord of Raventree bearing down upon him.

"I don't...don't understand your meaning, Ser." He stuttered out, attempting to take a step back, before Benji grabbed him by his cloak, preventing his retreat. "Did you, or did you not lay a hand on Lady Y/N Bracken when she tried to kindly reject your pathetic suit for her hand?" The scoundrel had the audacity to laugh then, making Benjicot's blood boil. "Is that what this is about? Why should you care, Ser? Is she some great friend of yours." He quickly stopped laughing when Benjicot's grip on his collar tightened painfully so as to nearly lift him off the ground. The knight shivered in fear as he saw Benjicot's eyes darken and heard his next words, spoken in a low, dangerous tone. "She means more to me than a spineless lickspittle like yourself could ever comprehend and if I ever head of you approaching or even looking at her again, I will have no hesitation in paying you another visit. I assure you that I will not be so reasonable, in that case."

"I didn't even kiss her, she wouldn’t let me, the minx. She didn't need to go crying about it. I said as much to her at the time. She's just too sensitive, I assure you Ser." Benjicot saw red at the knight's revelation. Of course his lady wouldn't tell him the whole truth. She never wanted to burden anyone with anything that troubled her, not even when someone offered her physical insult. If he had known that this scoundrel had not only attempted to kiss his darling lady without her consent, but also made her cry in the attempt, there would have been not attempt at a 'discussion' with him, 'polite' or otherwise. What followed was not pretty and Benjicott was sure Rob would laugh at him relentlessly for giving into his anger. He was also sure that his friend would agree that this one really did 'deserve it'. Besides, he hadn't hurt him too badly, just enough to be sure that he'd never approach either his, or any other lady with his unwanted attentions again. Drawing his mind back to the present, Benjicott was irritated to see that Rob, the smug git, was still smirking knowingly at him whilst Kermit and Oscar continued to laugh at his lovesick behaviour. No matter, he didn't care what they thought. He only cared what she thought. He couldn't seem to care for much else at this point, his whole thoughts consumed by his lovely lady. Even now a dreamy look transformed his features, which had shown his irritation only a moment before.

"What exactly is your plan here, Benjicot? I hate to break it to you, my good man, but as soon as you despatch one suitor another shall surely raise his ugly head. You can't prevent every suitor from seeking out your fair lady's hand. She will marry some lucky fellow one day." Rob held his hands up placatingly, seeing the danger in his friend's darkening eyes, but he could not help himself from expressing what to him was an unavoidable obstacle to Benjicot's suit for the fair Bracken lady's hand. "I only mean to point out, dear fellow, that removing these suitors now will not help you in the long run. You can't really believe that she would marry a Blackwood, let alone the heir of Raventree." "I'm counting on it." Benjicot spoke through gritted teeth, a look of fierce determination on his face. "She's my girl, in my heart, even if she won't have me in that way. She will be my wife if I have my way and even if she won't, I'll get rid of any problem that bothers her and that I have the power of removing. Whatever it is, I will attend to it. And if anyone hurts her," his voice became cold and low, "I'll kill them. Whenever she needs someone to rely upon, I will be there. Is that clear, Rob?"

Rob smiled softly at his friend then, before shooting a warning look at his two partners in crime, who were barely holding back their sniggers, unused to seeing the usually fearsome Bloody Benjicott act in such a manner. He understood now, where he had doubted before, that his friend was not merely infatuated, but deeply in love with this lady. He couldn't fault him for that, though he questioned the wiseness of his choice. The enmity between the Blackwood and Bracken Houses was no easy thing to surmount, and his friend had a hard road ahead of him if he were to win the love and hand of the lady he had chosen. "Crystal clear, my good man." If his friend was really serious about gaining the love of the mysterious Bracken lady, he would help him if he could.

A day later, Benjicot found himself waiting for his lady underneath their Brackentree, more anxious than usual to see her and convince himself she was well. He could not erase the image of her distress at that brute's behaviour from his mind. A deep sense of sadness and anger on her behalf left him with a painful feeling in the pit of his stomach that she considered herself so little she would not even tell anyone that she had been insulted in such a manner. That she wouldn't tell him. He wanted so desperately for her to see him as someone she could confide in and trust to fight on her behalf for her interests. Just as he was pondering how he could possibly gain her trust in this capacity, the very lady he was thinking of emerged from the tree line into view, a book in hand, as usual.

His face immediately broke into a smile reserved just for her, her presence alone acting like a wave of calm quieting his anxious thoughts. He was delighted to see her return his smile with a gentle smile of her own, even if she shyly cast her gaze elsewhere as he continued to gaze at her. He continued to find this perennial shyness an endearing trait of hers, hoping that it might have more to do with his effect on her than any reservations around him. He was surprised when she tripped lightly up to the tree he resided under and slid down to sit beside him, a smile still on her face. Normally she would seem hesitant to take a seat by his side until he had first stood up to greet her and invite her to. He always hoped that she would grow more familiar and comfortable around him and was elated to see her already seeming to be so.

"Good morrow, my Lady. What has you looking so pleased this day?" To his further surprise, she turned to meet his gaze fully, where she usually avoided direct eye contact, gushing out, "Oh Benji, you will never guess what has happened. It's the most wonderful thing. All of the horrid suitors I was telling you off have stopped their pursuit without me having to do anything. I have never had so much time to read!" "Oh?" Benjicot responded in a wry tone, a single eyebrow raised. "I cannot account for it. Of course my uncle is less than pleased, but he cares too little about me to take too much of an interest. Perhaps my awkward manner frightened them off or someone prettier has taken their interest. Whatever it is, I am most glad of it." She sighed in relief. Benjicot frowned at her last statement. Though he was pleased that she was relieved to be rid of these troublesome suitors, he was anxious to impress upon her that their sudden absence was due to no fault of her own. "I assure you, my Lady, that neither of your suggestions for your suitors' sudden departure are in the least likely, for your manner is positively charming and," he tentatively placed his hand on hers, as he gazed into her eyes, "you are the fairest lady that ever lived."

Unsurprisingly, though much to his dismay, she frowned at his compliment, as she always did and looked almost disappointed in him, before shrinking into herself and retracting her hand. "I wish you wouldn't say jest with me like that Benji, it's not very kind." He immediately snatched her hand back as she retracted it and chased her eyes with his own. "Don't do that, Y/N. Don't hide from me and lock yourself inside your mind. I can see you doing it." She met his gaze at this, looking startled, as if she didn't think he would notice her protective mechanism. He noticed everything about her. He just wished that he would be where she would look to for reassurance and comfort, rather than withdrawing from him. "I need you to understand that I would never jest about what I believe to be absolutely true. To me you are the loveliest, most charming girl, not least because you are so outwardly fair. But it is the beauty of your mind and person that makes me sure you are the fairest lady in the Riverlands." He did not add, Westeros, fearing she may think he was being too grandiose in making such a claim, though he was confident that he was not.

To his relief, she had not run away, as he had half expected her too, already kneeling next to her in case he needed to head tail it after her and make her belief him. He couldn't risk losing her forever if he allowed her to run off this once. Not when it was so important that she finally understood how highly he thought of her, to say nothing of loving her. He didn't think it was safe to risk revealing that when she was already put out with him at a compliment. Better to be safe than sorry and lose his girl because he was too impatient to gush out his love for her and wrap her in his arms. Instead he gently held her chin in his hand, holding her gaze as he invested his voice with a firmness he never usually directed at her. "Please believe me when I say that I have never and will never deceive you. I always mean exactly what I say when I tell you how lovely you are. How much I value your voice. How any measure of time spent with you could never be enough for me." Her head titled quizzically in that adorable way it always did when she was testing the truth of what he said before she offered him a small smile, much to his relief. "Thank you Benji, you are very kind. I'm glad you should think me such a friend and that you enjoy my company...I think the same of you." She added before he finally allowed her to withdraw her head from his hand and look away. He could help the smug smile that made its way onto his features at this, though he wished she would see him as more than a friend.

"No one has ever much cared for what I have had to say. It certainly makes a nice change." She smiled up at him once again. Benjicot gazed down lovingly at her, his eyes aglow with adoration for her, which she, alas, could not see, though it was there plainly for any other observer to see. "You have the most beautiful voice I have ever heard. It is to others' detriment if they have failed to hear it. Though it is quiet, little mouse," he lightly stroked her cheek, smiling indulgently at her, "I would hear it above a throng of voices." She seemed genuinely taken aback by this, a light blush gracing her features, and he could only hope that the truth of his words had resonated for her.

Not wishing to flustered her too much, he directed his gaze elsewhere. A hard task for him, since he could very happily gaze at her pretty features until the end of his days. He would make this sacrifice to her shyness, however. "In the matter of your disappearing suitors, I suspect a bigger game is at play. Perhaps a more worthy suitor has sought fit to see them off from bothering his fair lady with their suits." He smiled slyly at her from the corner of his eye, trying to silently convey that he was said suitor. "Don't be silly, Benji. What a ridiculous suggestion." She narrowed her eyes at him as he broke out into laughter at her directness. She grabbed his elbow then. "What's so funny Benji!" "Nothing, my Lady. Only I think in this, I may be proven correct, and you may be mistaken. It is an unlikely turn of events, of course, since you are clearly the intellectual in this pair." "You are clearly wrong. I think I would realise if such were the case." She did not hear as Benjicot muttered under his breath, "if only you would."

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