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ugh-yoongi · 11 months

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the retreat | jhs

(or, the one where namjoon just wants hoseok to take care of himself, but then there's a fake relationship, only one bed, a guy who doesn't talk, and maybe a weird cult.)

✤ pairing: hoseok x f. reader ✤ genre: childhood bf2l, fake dating-ish au; crack, fluff, smut ✤ rating: explicit. minors do not interact. ✤ warnings: there is a lot of talk about food and eating in here, so i would not suggest reading this if you are sensitive to those kinds of triggers. tropes galore! side taegi. 5th muster jimin from that one vcr. hobi is pansexual and i do not wanna hear from the weirdos during pride month, or ever. he is a millionaire tho so he's not off the hook. a slight astrological dragging. a strained mother-daughter relationship. the smut is not super explicit or detailed but warnings are as follows: kissing, oral sex (f. receiving), biting, hair pulling, hobi may or may not rip a pair of underwear, fingering, protected vaginal sex. a brief but canonical breaking-the-fourth-wall appearance by park bogum. beta'd by me, so any mistakes are my own. ✤ wordcount: 19.6k ✤ thank you: @the-boy-meets-evil, as always, for the encouragement and reading every draft of this. @hot-soop for both the astrological advice and advice in general. @effortandmore for reading this over recently and telling me it was worth finishing. i would get absolutely nothing done without the three of you. ✤ author's note: i was supposed to have this posted for jess's birthday two years ago. we're not gonna talk about that, because this just means i'm a month early for this year. happy early birthday, jess! anyway~ this is basically a 20k love letter to jung hoseok bc i miss him. i hope you enjoy it.

Jung Hoseok is overworked.

(He’s also filthy rich, the proud owner of not one but two Lamborghinis [that he doesn’t even drive], and smiling on the cover of Forbes. He has a top floor penthouse in the most expensive high-rise in the city and a vacation home along the Italian coast. When he needs to go on a business trip, his driver takes him straight to the tarmac where he boards a private plane. His tailor just sends him clothes now, the cost of dressing Jung Hoseok far outweighed by the dozens of other filthy rich men who flock to his store to buy whatever he’s wearing.)

Jung Hoseok is also going to have a stroke and die before the age of 30, because what’s a little money at the expense of his mental well-being and cardiac health?

“All things considered, it wouldn’t be the worst way to go out,” he argues, clammy palms flat on his expensive desk. Rosewood, because not only is he a millionaire, he’s a millionaire with taste. None of that monochromatic minimalist bullshit for him, thank you.

In front of him, Kim Namjoon also looks to be on the verge of a stroke. Not of the same variety. Namjoon is paid well because he works for Hoseok and Hoseok insists on it. None of that heartless, dickhead-to-everyone, impossible-to-work-for CEO reputation for him, either, thank you.

Namjoon is also a militant vegan and has twenty-six plants and one bonsai on his desk named Bonnie. He insists on spending his lunch breaks in Hoseok’s office, lecturing him on the benefits of plant-based diets and exercise and meditation. Despite his perpetual smile and sunny demeanor, no one else speaks to Hoseok this way, but Namjoon does. Absolutely doesn’t give a shit.

“It absolutely would be the worst way to go out. Have you even been listening to me?”

Hoseok sighs and closes the symptoms of a stroke tab in his browser. “I always listen to you, Namjoon, I just don’t always listen.” A smart choice, too, judging by the swamp-colored sludge Namjoon has in a glass container, because he doesn’t use plastics.

Following his boss’s line of sight, Namjoon frowns. “It’s a pitaya bowl. Don’t look at it like that.”

“It looks radioactive,” Hoseok says, face contorted in a wince. “Like it’s going to become sentient and sprout six arms.”

Namjoon scoffs. “If it does, I hope it uses all six of them to slap the shit out of you.”

“I could pay it to spare me,” Hoseok insists, chin jutting out indignantly.

One of the reasons Hoseok had all but demanded HR hire Namjoon—despite there being a plethora of other candidates who were just as qualified and nowhere near as hell-bent on him taking care of himself—was his grit and determination. He’d showed up two hours early to his interview and steamed his suit jacket in the employee bathroom. It was completely insane and even more neurotic, but Hoseok had been taken with him immediately.

Now, it seems that determination and hard-headed nature is coming back to bite Hoseok in the ass.

“Oh, yeah? You’re gonna pay your blood to not get cut off from your brain and your heart, too? Well, good for you, Hobi. I heard blood has even started taking American Express. You’re in luck—”

Unable to take anymore, Hoseok groans and waves his arms to cut him off. “Okay, I get it! God, why did I hire you? Your desk alone has to be violating at least fourteen different health codes. Your office is humid. Do you know how impossible that is to achieve outside of a greenhouse?”

“You hired me because I’m good at my job and I’m not afraid of you, so I have no issue slapping your fourth double bacon cheeseburger of the day out of your greasy, on-the-brink-of-dying hands. Christ, you act like it’d actually kill you to eat a vegetable for once.”

Hoseok squawks. “Hey! That definitely didn’t come up in the interview, and I have never eaten four cheeseburgers in a day. Stop being hyperbolic.”

“Speaking of things that start with hyper- and have a Bin them, hyperbaric therapy is great for people with infections from oxygen-starved tissue—”

“Is this what you do all day? You just sit on the internet and search for diseases I could potentially die from and then you come in here and harass me about them?”

Namjoon’s face, which had previously been scrunched up in righteous indignation, smooths over into something far more serious. (He doesn’t even have wrinkles. Namjoon’s skincare routine must be immaculate.)“Someone has a stroke every forty seconds in this country, Hoseok. I wouldn’t joke about this.”

Well, okay. Every forty seconds is far more often than Hoseok had been expecting. Not that he thinks about stroke statistics often, and definitely not outside of Namjoon’s overbearing presence—but, in his defense, it’s not like he’s had much of a reason. He gets a physical and routine blood work done every year and his doctor has never rung any alarm bells, so why would he?

But the resolution with which Namjoon is hammering away at this is definitely giving him pause.

It doesn’t go unnoticed by him, either. “See, you are concerned! Look, you’re far more likely to stick with something if you don’t overwhelm yourself, so let’s start small, okay? One salad per day. And a real salad, Hoseok—not one of those ones loaded with cheese and bacon and drenched in ranch dressing.”

Hoseok’s jaw snaps closed. “Then what’s the point of eating a salad?”

“To prevent you from dying before your thirtieth birthday. We’ve already established this.”

“Okay,” Hoseok drawls, “but it’s not the salad’s fault if that happens. You shouldn’t take it out on him.”

Namjoon gags. “Leave it to me to work for a man who thinks salads are male.” He casts his gaze skyward. “Please, Lord, if you’re listening, please put me out—”

“Please put me out of my misery first,” Hoseok interjects, also staring at the ceiling. Then, with a leveled glare, he says to Namjoon, “Fine. State your terms.”

“Really?” Namjoon asks, having the audacity to look shocked.

“Yeah, if it’ll get you off my back. I can’t spend one more lunch break in here with you.”

Namjoon smiles. Nothing friendly, either—it’s purely sinister and mocking. Then he says, “Great success!” in a horrible impersonation of Borat and the moment’s gone, lost to the stagnant air conditioning of Hoseok’s office.

Unsurprisingly, Namjoon’s terms include a lot of vegetables.

Hoseok has a private chef, of course, so it’s not like he has to really do much other than smile through the pain. But, really, would it actually kill him to be allowed a steak or some lamb skewers? What had started off as salads for lunch has turned into a full-blown war between the two of them. Hoseok had shown up with cheese and bacon on his salad one time and Namjoon nearly went off the rails, performing a very enthusiastic speech about how Hoseok cannot be trusted when left to his own devices, so here they are.

Namjoon’s trying his hardest to crack Hoseok, and Hoseok wouldn’t have become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company by the age of twenty-eight if he were so easily cracked.

So, yeah, here they are. Locked in a stalemate like two idiot deer with their antlers tangled together, except instead of feuding over territory or a mate, they’re ready to spear one another over vegetables.

Darwin would have a lot to say about this.

On Friday, at exactly one-o’clock on the dot, Namjoon barges into Hoseok’s office and slaps a stapled-together pile of papers onto his desk. “New terms.”

“Oh, no thank you,” Hoseok replies airily. “I’m not much of a Dua Lipa fan.”

“Wha—that’s ‘New Rules.’”

“Is it?” Hoseok’s smiling, eyebrows raised in that way that makes him look super charming and innocent.

Namjoon isn’t fooled, though. “Cut it out. I saw you eating ribs under your desk the other day. You owe me this.”

Not much shocks Hoseok, but being outed like this so brazenly sure does. “How did you know about that?”

“Uh, did you forget your office walls are made out of glass?” Namjoon twirls a finger in a circle, as if to say look at your four glass walls, you fucking idiot. Isn’t it great to be rich and have no privacy? “Not to mention you had a glob of barbeque sauce on your shirt that I could smell from a mile away.”

“I could’ve put it on my salad,” Hoseok reasons.

“Oh, please.” Namjoon rolls his eyes. “Six ribs and a side of potato salad does not a salad make.”

“What do you mean? It’s literally called potato salad, isn’t it? God, you’re uptight.”

Namjoon sucks in a deep breath, most likely reciting meditation mantras in his head while he thinks about his plants. “I didn’t come in here for this,” he eventually says, and Hoseok is honestly impressed at how collected he sounds. “The point is you can’t be trusted, so there’s new terms.”

Grabbing the stack of papers, Hoseok flips through them casually. “And if I don’t agree? Don’t forget I’m your boss.”

“If you don’t agree, I’m posting the security footage of you eating those ribs on Twitter.” Hoseok’s looking positively scandalized now. He wouldn’t. Namjoon wouldn’t do that to him. “Honestly, Hoseok. You should be ashamed of yourself. You looked like that video of that oversized baby covered in peanut butter.”

“Are you blackmailing me?” Hoseok asks, eyes narrowed. “Seriously, who are you? Because the man standing across from me is not my sweet baby Namjoon. Sweet, sweet Namjoon, who always checks the toilet bowl before he uses it because he saw one of those videos from Australia of a snake being in there and he’d feel too guilty to even piss on a snake—”

Namjoon plants his palms on Hoseok’s desk and puffs out his chest a little. It’s a great chest, Hoseok must admit. Namjoon had mentioned in passing he’d started going to the gym, so he’s not—“I’m not afraid of you,” Namjoon reminds him. “Try me.”

“I have thirty-two lawyers.”

All Namjoon does is quirk an eyebrow. “I have thirty-thousand Twitter followers.”

“I can fire you.”

“Please do. Capitalism is a scourge on this earth and I no longer wish to participate in it.”

“I can fire you and make sure you never find employment in this city ever again.”

Namjoon shrugs. “Fine by me. I’ve been thinking about moving out of the city, anyway. Too much air pollution and I have no space to garden.”

Two things become clear very quickly: 1. Namjoon is far more cut-throat than Hoseok ever anticipated him being; and 2. Hoseok is woefully underprepared for this particular battle. No matter. He’s business-savvy. There’s no shame in conceding an unwinnable battle if he can still win the war, and that’s exactly what he’s going to do.

“Fine,” he relents after an awkward staring contest that lasts two minutes too long. “What are your new terms, then?”

“You have to go to a wellness retreat.”

Hoseok can’t stop the giggle that bubbles out of his mouth. “Sorry, did you say a retreat? How is that a punishment?”

“It isn’t,” Namjoon says. “It’s meant to reset your body and mind. No phones allowed. Just you and your partner in the refreshing, reinvigorating air of the rainfor—”

“What was that?” Hoseok interjects.

“What, the rainforest part? Don’t worry, it’s safe. You’re not, like, sleeping outside with tarantulas and shi—”

“No, not that. Me and my who?”

“Oh!” Namjoon grins. “Your partner. See, I did a lot of research and found the absolute best and most effective wellness retreat for people of your… uh, standard. And the man who runs this retreat is incredible. Like, world-renowned. But the catch is it’s a couple’s retreat, so you’ll have to find someone to play pretend with you for a month.”

Hoseok is a great businessman. He’s good at negotiations and managing relationships and making smart, anticipatory decisions. He has the bank account and name plate with accompanying title on his desk to prove it. But, as he takes in Namjoon’s words, the only thing his brain can come up with is the Windows shutdown sound and a glaring blue screen alerting him to danger.

Nevertheless, one of Hoseok’s rules for business is to never let the opposition see him frazzled. “Why don’t you just come with me?” he offers casually, his tone completely at odds with the pained, panicked expression on his face.

“Two reasons,” Namjoon says quickly and without hesitation, as if he expected this and had all the time in the world to prepare a rebuttal. “First, you couldn’t pay me enough to act like we’re a couple. No offense, but you’re kind of insufferable and I would never date a carnivore—”

Hoseok clicks his tongue. “Wow. Some offense taken.”

“—Second, someone has to stay behind and hold down the fort if you’re going to be gone for a month.”

“Why can’t Brad do it?” Hoseok asks. This time his strained tone completely gives him away.

“You don’t trust Brad.”

Hoseok’s brows furrow. “I never said that.”

“You absolutely did say that,” Namjoon responds immediately, pulling out his phone. “On April nineteenth at approximately ten-twenty in the morning, you said, and I quote, ‘Namjoon, why do you think I hired you? If I had to suffer through having one more Ivy League white guy who played lacrosse and got grandfathered into a fraternity as my assistant, I was going to throw myself down this elevator shaft.’ To which I replied, ‘Oh, you don’t like Brad?’ And you said, ‘Brad’s fine, I guess. I just don’t trust him.’ So, I asked you why, and you said, ‘I wouldn’t trust Brad to order a box of staples, let alone to know the difference between tteokbokki and hotteok—’”

“That doesn’t sound like something I’d say at all,” Hoseok lies. It absolutely sounds like something he’d say at ten-twenty in the morning on the nineteenth of April. “Also, did you really make a note of that? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Of course I didn’t,” Namjoon fires back. “I obviously took a voice recording of it first and transcribed it later. Sometimes I listen to it on repeat when I really want to strangle you and it calms me, because it serves as a reminder that if I go to prison for attempted murder, Brad will take my job. And we can’t have that, because you might simply distrust Brad, but I fucking hate him.”

Hoseok gapes a little. “We sure can’t,” he agrees. Tense air settles between the two of them as they both wait for the other to make the first move. Namjoon’s patient, having already played his hand knowing Hoseok has nothing to trump him, but Hoseok’s stubborn. He’ll drag this out as long as humanly possible. He’ll be ninety years old, on his fourth heart transplant, and still waiting to go on this trip. He’ll—

He’ll have to step down as CEO, because he has, once again, severely underestimated Kim Namjoon.

“Stop thinking so hard. It’s already booked and paid for.”

“With whose money?”

“Company card.”

“Which has my name on it. I’ll just cancel it.”

“It’s non-refundable, but go ahead. You’re still out all that money, though, so you might as well go.”

“I can’t just take a month off,” Hoseok says. He’s grasping at straws now. No one would dare tell him no, even if he wanted to take the next six years off. Human Resources would simply say of course, sir, have a great vacation, sir, see you in six years, sir, and off he’d go.

“Sure you can.” Namjoon stands, wipes his hands on the dress pants stretched to their limit across his thighs, and looks entirely too smug. “Better start looking for a date. Maybe you’ll have some luck on Tinder.”

Bile rises in Hoseok’s throat. “Tinder? Are you joking? I’m too rich to go on there. What if I find a nice date, take them home, and wake up in a bathtub full of ice because they found out who I was and decided to sell my organs?”

“No one would want them,” Namjoon deadpans. “I see the absolute filth you funnel into that body of yours and I can say, with one-hundred percent certainty, that your organs are worthless. Mine, on the other hand. Pristine—”

“Get the hell out of my office. I can’t even look at you right now.”

Good thing, too, because Namjoon’s still wearing that stupid little smirk. The really smug one that infuriates Hoseok to no end because it brings out his dimples, makes him look innocent and cute even though he’s not. The one that gloats Namjoon’s victory, like he’d known all along it was going to end this way. He’d hid those cards so far up his sleeve, Hoseok’s surprised they hadn’t started sprouting from his ears. God, he’s really insufferable. Makes Hoseok’s blood pressure spike something fierce.

“Did you ever stop to consider you’re the problem?” Hoseok calls to Namjoon’s retreating frame. When had he gotten so broad? “That maybe, if my heart does give out, it’ll be because I have to deal with you, the most stressful person on earth?”

“Nah, it’ll definitely be because two of your desk drawers are full of those disgusting oatmeal creme pies.” Somehow, Namjoon looks even more smug as Hoseok tries to discreetly glance at the aforementioned drawers. How does he find out all these things? “Anyway, you leave in two weeks! Good luck in your search. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon, sir.”

Just as he’d assumed would be the case, Hoseok has no luck on Tinder.

See, he’d fucked up from the beginning, deciding to be honest and truthful and explain his plight to any sympathetic pair of eyes that may have gazed upon it. He’d also decided to use his real name, and anyone familiar with those List of Billionaires We Should Eat listicles had snuffed him out immediately. Long gone were the days of genuine conversation and playful flirting. Now, Hoseok’s inbox is full of more genitalia than he’s ever seen in his life. He’s literally drowning in it and can’t even take time to appreciate the situation in which he’s accidentally found himself.

He’s absolutely going to kill Kim Namjoon once this is all over.

After getting over the embarrassment of the next day’s MULTIMILLIONAIRE CEO JUNG HOSEOK SPOTTED ON TINDERheadline, because he hadn’t even had the good sense to use Raya, Hoseok resigns himself to scrolling through the contacts list in his phone. He’s not desperate or stupid enough to invite his ex, or any of the myriad of names he can’t put to faces because, despite what Namjoon says, he’s still concerned about his organs, so he also resigns himself to calling you.

His best friend.

Who’s going to spend the rest of her life roasting him over this.

“What a pleasant surprise,” you greet him. “Haven’t heard from you in weeks. Let me guess, you need me to make another burner account and explain to Rose Emoji and Hammer and Sickle Twitter why they shouldn’t eat you?”

“No—”

You tsk. “That’s a shame. I think I missed my calling in life.”

“Being a Twitter troll?”

“Yeah, obviously,” you agree. “Do you remember that time I set up the fake Gofundme to pay for my conservative cousin’s cephalanalectomy surgery because the liberal snowflake surgeon refused to perform it and he was going to die if they literally did not remove his head from his ass? That was fucking gold, Hobi. I’m a natural.”

“You’re definitely something,” he acquiesces. Then he has an idea. “Hey, do you wanna help me troll Namjoon?”

Your silence is deafening. “Uh, that depends.” Oh, Hoseok does not like your hesitation at all. “He has, like, a lot of Twitter followers, so I’m not trying to beef with him publicly, even if it is on a burner account.”

“Don’t tell me you’re afr—what the fuck kind of Twitter following does this guy have?”

“It’s probably better if you don’t know,” you say, voice laced with faux-concern. “I like Namjoon and I’d like him to remain employed by you simply so he can annoy the absolute fuck out of you until the day you either retire or die. So, yeah, let’s keep that between him and I.”

Hoseok feels dizzy. Probably because he’s been eating all these goddamn salads and now he’s nutritionally deficient. “Whatever. I do actually need your help with something, though.”

“You know my rates.”

“Why do I have to pay to hang out with you?” Hoseok whines. “Isn’t my life-long friendship enough?”

You snort. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Why is everyone bullying me lately? Can’t you spare a crumb of empathy for your best friend?”

“Empathy machine broke,” you deadpan. “Come on, ask me what my terms are. I already know what I want this time.”

Hoseok sighs. He wouldn’t relent this quickly for anyone else. He has a reputation to uphold, after all. “Fine. What are your—”

“I want a Birkin bag and dinner from that new Brazilian place by your office.”

“That’s a definite no on the bag,” Hoseok says. “I’m not spending that much money on anyone who isn’t my future spouse. We can have dinner, though.”

“I think you misheard me, sunshine. I said I want to go to dinner there. I’m going to gorge myself on expensive all-you-can-eat meats and I do not want to taint my experience watching you shovel a miserable, wilted salad into that pretty little heart-shaped mouth of yours. I’ll get agita.”

“Agi—I can’t believe this,” Hoseok whines, feeling the apples of his cheeks tinge red. “Have you and Namjoon been getting together to conspire against me? Is that why the two of you are bullying me?”

Hoseok expects you to say no. He expects you to say that you and Namjoon don’t even speak, you’d only met him once at that Christmas party a year ago, during which Namjoon spent the entire time waxing poetic about conifers and that time he dropped acid at Yosemite and cried for a week straight. But no. No, you don’t say anything at all, and if Hoseok was feeling bullied and just a little scandalized before, he’s absolutely feeling tortured now.

Namjoon, on his own, is bad.

You, on your own, are worse.

The two of you, together? No. Hoseok simply can’t—and won’t—allow it.

You suck in a breath. “In my defense—”

“You absolute traitor,” Hoseok seethes. “You, of all people, have betrayed me?”

There’s a tiny gasp on the other end of the line. “Oh, come off it, Hobi!” you snap. “Have you ever seen yourself eat? It’s foul. Like something straight out of Animal Planet.”

“It is not!”

“It is, and you know it,” you fire back. “I once watched you eat an entire personal-sized pizza in forty-two seconds. I don’t even think you chewed it. You just detached your jaw like some kind of creepy snake and inhaled. Something needed to be done.”

It’s Hoseok’s turn to gasp. “And that something was going full Judas Iscariot and selling me out to the Romans for thirty pieces of silver?”

There’s a pause on your end. “Is Namjoon the Romans in this scenario? Because, if so, I’ve got to say—”

“Who cares!” Hoseok snaps. “Who fucking cares who the Romans are—”

“The Romans, probably,” you chime in unhelpfully.

“—because the two of you have officially given me agita. How’s that? Huh? First I have to sit through all of Namjoon’s lunch lectures—”

“He should trademark that. Has a nice ring to it. Namjoon’s Lunch Lectures.”

“—then, I had to start eating salads. Salads. Then he signs me up for some stupid wellness retreat in the goddamn rainforest and tells me I have to find a fucking date, so off I go to Tinder, but everyone on there only wanted me for my harvestable organs, so I was like, ‘You know what, Hoseok? You know who you can always count on? Your best friend of twenty years. She’s never let you down. She’ll go with you, and the two of you will have a good time, because she’s your best friend and you enjoy her company.’ But no, come to find out—”

There’s a very loud shriek of laughter. “Oh my god. Holy shit, Hobi, is that really why you called? Namjoon actually signed you up for that couple’s retreat?”

Now, there’s a very loud shriek of disbelief. “You fucking knew about that?” You try to contain your snort. Really, you do, but it’s no match for Hoseok’s palpable ire. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me?”

“Oh, come on! It’ll be good for you, sunshine. You’re clearly overworked. You had visible stress lines in the last selfie you posted on Instagram.”

“I did not, I use hyaluronic acid!” he insists, but if Hoseok swipes out of your call to pull up his Instagram account, no one has to know.

You groan. “Why do you keep arguing with me? I’m never wrong.”

“Yes you are.” There’s a very pointed pause during which Hoseok can very clearly, in his head, hear you say see?

“Listen,” you say, voice strong with all the conviction of a person who hadn’t spent the last five minutes being a menace to society—and Hoseok. “I’ll go with you. I have some time off from my program and there’s nothing I’d rather do than spend a whole month in the rainforest with you.”

“I feel like that was sarcastic.”

You tut. “Honestly, Hobi, it’s like you don’t even know me at all. You know number three on my bucket list is going to Costa Rica to hang out with sloths.”

His phone pings a second later with a text from you. An article about a sloth sanctuary greets him, and he swallows the immediate ew that’s on the tip of his tongue. Sloths are cute, sure, but they also have bugs. “Great,” he chokes out. “Are you gonna meet a sloth and turn into Kristen Bell? Because I’m not signing up for that. You look like Kim Kardashian when you cry.”

“Fuck you.” Hoseok is a millionaire, he doesn’t deserve this treatment. “Now, what are your plans for tomorrow night? Let’s do dinner. We need to take a bunch of selfies during sunsets so we look like a plausible couple.”

When he was eight and you were seven, Hoseok witnessed his first act of violence.

A kid on the school bus had been giving him a hard time. Nothing totally awful, just being a bit of a dick the way kids are wont to do, and Hoseok was a pushover back then. Just wanted everyone to like him so he never really stuck up for himself. Just smiled and laughed off the teasing and cried about it later.

Apparently this was unacceptable to you.

You tossed your bookbag in Hoseok’s lap, pushed up your sleeves, made your way to the back of the bus, and told that kid you’d slam his head into the window if he didn’t stop picking on Hoseok.

He’d gotten his head slammed into the window approximately fourteen seconds later.

(Never messed with Hoseok again, though.)

Since then, the two of you have been nearly inseparable. Sure, there had been petty arguments here and there, and Hoseok had gone to an Ivy League across the country, but it was rare for the two of you to go more than a few days without talking. Even now, when Hoseok works eighty hour weeks and is busy being a Very Important Person, he still makes time for you. Sometimes that time is just exchanging stupid memes over text, but he always makes the effort.

Which is why, even though you don’t see the point in crafting some elaborate backstory and had only said the thing about the sunset selfies to con him into coming over, he stays quiet and shows up to your apartment for dinner and worldbuilding anyway, because it’s been too long since he’s last been here and he misses you.

“Are you taking notes?” Hoseok asks, pointing at you with his fork. “This is important.”

You groan into your wine glass. “Fake dating is so hard,” you whine. “Why can’t we just tell the truth?”

He levels you with a stare. “Because! Don’t you think it’s a bit…”

“What, you think it’s totally unbelievable that I could be in love with you?”

Oh. Hoseok doesn’t like this at all, either. Doesn’t like the way the words sound in your mouth. Doesn’t like the way his stomach drops as he digests them. Doesn’t like how nice they sound, like you’d just waded through all the extracurricular bullshit to get straight to the point and arrive at the inevitable conclusion, which is the two of you riding off together into that sunset you’d mentioned before.

He doesn’t like feeling like he might want that.

It’s not like he’s never thought about it. You’re his best friend and he has 20/20 vision, so of course he has. It's always just been one of those things: didn’t want to ruin your friendship, moved across the country, got too busy, didn’t think you’d want him like that in return.

“I—no,” he says unconvincingly. “I just… it’d totally be weird, right? Us pretending to be a couple?” He throws in a chuckle for good measure, as if the thought of dating you is so preposterous it simply has to be a joke.

You just shrug. Where Hoseok is all nervous jitters, you’re solid and unshaken, always. “Not really. We’ve been friends forever. We’re obviously comfortable with each other. You showing up to my place in those disgusting crochet shoes is proof enough of that.”

Hoseok looks down at his feet and frowns. “They’re Valentino.”

“More like Valenti-no.”

He rolls his eyes. “See, that right there is why we can’t wing this. I can’t pretend to like your awful jokes. I’ll out myself immediately.”

You roll yours right back. “Nah, I think it works. You’re obviously the high-strung CEO who doesn’t appreciate good humor when he sees it and I’m the sad housewife who just wants you to laugh at my jokes.” You jut out your bottom lip and pretend to cry. “Why won’t you just laugh at my jokes, Hobi?”

He flicks a green bean at you. “How’d we go from fake dating to fake marriage? Stop trying to swindle me.”

Once again, you pout dramatically. “God, first you refuse to laugh at my jokes, now you refuse to marry me? You’re breaking my heart here.”

“I’m not buying you a ring,” Hoseok scoffs. “I know for a fact you’ll just turn around and sell it for triple the price to some poor, unsuspecting bastard.”

“Not my fault there’s a lot of poor, unsuspecting bastards in the world. All of this just proves, for the billionth time, that I’m the better businessperson between the two of us.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Hoseok sighs. “Just because your lemonade stand outsold mine once doesn’t mean—”

“I also outsold you during that candle fundraiser in the fifth grade. And the candybars during Little League. And that bullshit one in high school with the pineapple pizzas—”

“Fine!” Hoseok throws his hands up. Then, with as little of a grimace as he can muster, he says, “Let’s go to Costa Rica, Mrs. Jung.”

It doesn’t land.

Your jaw drops immediately, an exaggerated gag spilling from your lips. “I changed my mind,” you deadpan. “No marriage for us unless you take my last name.”

“What’s wrong with mine?”

“Feels bad in my mouth. What’s wrong with mine?”

Hoseok rolls his lips together. “Nothing, really. Just—”

“Is this some kind of male pride thing? You refuse to take your wife’s last name for fear of public ridicule and castration jokes?”

“No.” Hoseok glares at you. “It’s just—the reservation’s in my name. Besides, if someone made shitty jokes about you, I’d slam their head into a window, too.”

“Oh.” As soon as your jaw snaps shut, a brilliant smile splits your face. “That was unexpectedly wholesome, Seok. You’re getting soft in your old age.”

Only for you, he wants to say. Instead, he shoves another forkful of rice in his mouth and a copy of the itinerary in your direction.

(For all your bravado and willingness to slam the heads of elementary school bullies into windows, you hate flying. So, if you squeeze Hoseok’s hand too tight and he snaps a photo of it under the guise of how comically purple-red it’s turning, and not at all because it’s the first time you’re holding his hand and some weird, sentimental part of him wants to commemorate it, that’s his business.

If his heart is so full it nearly bursts out of his chest at the sight of you crying over a sloth, and if he memorizes the stars in your eyes as you hold one—not caring about the bugs or the giant claws or the fact that sloth fur kind of looks like a bird nest, algae included—that’s his business.

If he posts the photo of you crying to his Instagram, knowing damn well you’re going to yell at him for it later, and he cackles wildly over Namjoon’s comment:

[namjooning commented: why does she cry like that kim kardashian meme? junghoseok replied: Right? That’s what I said]

—that’s his business. It’s only because he’d said you look like Kim Kardashian when you cry and, if nothing else, Hoseok loves to be proven right. It has nothing to do with wanting to remember you that happy forever. Not at all.

If he feels like he’s going into cardiac arrest when you hug him tightly, murmuring a quiet thank you in his ear on the last night of your stay at the sanctuary, it’s simply because you’re not very tactile. Hugs—and outward affection—from you are rare. That’s all. His skin absolutely does not break out in goosebumps. Doesn’t feel tingly all over. His breathing continues as normal.

If he finally comes to the startling realization that he’s in way too deep when you fall asleep on his shoulder during the drive to the resort, well…

Hoseok may be deadly smart, but he’s always been a complete fool when it comes to you.

If he sends a panicked text to Namjoon asking how he’s supposed to survive the next month, and if Namjoon misinterprets it as an ambitious, live-to-work type-A personality freaking out over not knowing how to unwind and tells him to just take it easy, and Hoseok misinterprets that as go for it, well…

The next four weeks sure are going to be interesting, aren’t they?)

See, the thing about Hoseok is he has all the money and prestige a man of his status could want.

He’s filthy rich, he’s well-respected, he’s kind. People love him. He loves people in return. He’s been called the living embodiment of actual sunshine more times than you or he could possibly count. There’s truly nothing he wants for in this world.

Hoseok is also the type of person who gets anxious at the thought of calling the Malaysian restaurant you two frequent to place a delivery order. Namjoon has to force him to make his own personal appointments under threat of death. He changed doctors because his new one lets him schedule appointments online. He won’t go to a fast food drive-thru unless they have mobile ordering.

It’s just the way Hoseok is. He’s been that way as long as you’ve known him—at least since that time in the fifth grade when his mother once gave him twenty bucks and told him to call the pizza place and order dinner for the two of you and he totally balked, resigning the two of you to toaster oven Ellio’s that tasted way too similar to skating rink pizza to be a coincidence.

Which is why he balks again as soon as the two of you reach the front desk of the resort, shoving you in front of him to talk to the man behind it.

Maybe it’s the raging pansexual inside Hobi rather than his uncharacteristic fear of talking to literally anyone, but you totally get it. You don’t really want to talk to this man, either. He’s ash blond and bathed in golden light, highlighting his already golden skin to look completely ethereal, and he’s got a smug look on his face that tells you he knows exactly how intimidatingly good-looking he is.

Still, you’re not easily shaken. Jung Hoseok is your best friend—and fake boyfriend, lest you’ve forgotten—for fuck’s sake. You’ve committed violence for him. Golden Desk Boy is going to have to try a whole lot harder than this. “Hiii,” you say, lips painted in a saccharine smile. God, you’re so fake. “We’re checking in under Jung.”

The man—whose name badge says Jimin—returns your fake smile. “Great! Thank you so much for joining us for your stay.”

You take a moment to look around while Jimin pulls up your reservation, purposefully skipping over Hoseok’s form. He’s not doing anything, just sitting in a plush armchair as he pretends to read the newspaper, but you feel the flames of annoyance licking at your heels nonetheless, because you wouldn’t be here to begin with if it weren’t for Hoseok and his subordinate micromanager, and what kind of weird place has he brought you to?

Everything is white. Not in the sterile kind of way, because the monotony is broken up with lush greenery and the occasional piece of teak furniture, but there’s enough white for you to wonder if it’s some sort of statement. The floors and walls are white. All the non-wooden furniture is white. Jimin’s silk uniform and teeth are both blindingly white. Not that you’d seen many people since you stepped into the lobby, but the ones you had seen had been wearing white, too.

Jimin looks up from the computer screen and you’re almost surprised to find his irises aren’t white, too. Maybe it’s rude, but he seriously gives you the creeps. “Everything is ready for your stay, Mr. and Mrs. Jung. I’ve requested someone come to retrieve your luggage.”

You gawk. “Oh, we’re not—we’re not married.”

“Oh?” Jimin asks, one perfect eyebrow arched as his eyes twinkle with intrigue.

“Yeah,” you insist. “Not that I need to explain my morals and ethics to a stranger, but I don’t believe in the patriarchy.”

“Really? That’s great,” Jimin lies. This man is overflowing with shithead energy. “Neither do I.”

You scoff. “Oh, sure. That’s why you just assumed my bes—my partner and I were married.”

“That’s what the reservation says.” He looks very amused now. Kim Namjoon is going to receive a very lengthy text message in approximately ten minutes. “I do apologize for this mistake. I’ll make sure to correct it right away.” Amusement slowly morphs into a challenge. “Is there a new last name I can put on the reservation for you instead?”

Call it a hunch, but you think it best to not give this person any of your identifying information. “No.”

“Shall I leave it as Jung, then?”

It physically pains you to say this, but you manage to choke out a very strained, “Yes.”

“Fantastic,” Jimin sing-songs. “I’m very glad we were able to sort out this issue for you, Mr. and Mrs. Jung.”

Choke on a dick and die is what you want to say (for no reason, really; it isn’t like Jimin’s been outright cruel to you), but as much as Hoseok avoids people—and avoids confrontation even more—he appears at your side, looking every bit the sunshine after a storm he always is. “Everything okay?” he asks, placing a gentle hand at the small of your back. “…Dear,” he tacks on as Jimin’s eyes study the two of you.

“Everything’s great!” you chirp, determined to cast away Jimin’s obvious suspicions. “Jimin here says someone’s coming to get our bags.” Another fake, saccharine smile. Like sweet’n low. “He’s been very helpful.”

Everything’s great, in you-speak, translates to I once, foolishly, thought Kim Namjoon was on my side. I now see the errors of my ways and I demand justice and revenge. Fool you once (getting roped into being Hoseok’s fake partner to come to a weird wellness retreat), shame on Namjoon. Fool you twice (allowing him to book the reservation and label you a married couple), shame on you. There won’t be a third time, because Kim Namjoon’s days are numbered once you’re both in the same country again.

“Will you be needing a tour?” Jimin asks, voice tinkling like expensive crystal.

You grasp Hoseok’s hand far too tight to be believable and wave off the receptionist. “No, thank you! Just a map will do. That’s how we met, you know—at a… map… class.”

“A map class?” Jimin parrots. “Riveting.” He smiles. Sweet’n low.

“It sure was!” You turn to Hobi. “Wasn’t it? …Babe,” you choke out. The word tastes so gross on your tongue.

When you look up at him, Hoseok’s wearing that trademark expression of his: the one where his eyes are too wide, tight-lipped smile stretched too thin. Hoseok’s convinced it’s convincing. It isn’t. It’s terrifying and makes your skin feel itchy from the inside. “Mmm, yep,” he agrees easily. “Love a good map. Some good… cartography.” He pinches three fingers together because he’d seen it on The Sopranos and it’s just a thing he does now.

Sometimes you forget Hoseok is rich-rich.

Of course Namjoon had mentioned booking the trip on the company card and of course you know what someone like him having access to a company card implies. It’d implied you were going on an all-expenses-paid trip on some massive company’s dime. But, perhaps naively, you’d just envisioned a fancy hotel room at some resort near a beach. Shoreline bonfires, tiny portions of food on massive plates when you order room service, colorful drinks with tiny umbrellas and a skewer of fruit stuck inside, three-digit price tag.

Instead, the two of you follow the map to a secluded, private house. There’s a balcony. The shower is made entirely of glass and surrounded by the lush greenery outside. The exterior wall in the bedroom is also made of glass and affords you panoramic views of the beach and forest and everything in between. The thread count of the Egyptian cotton sheets is disgustingly low.

(Which, speaking of Hoseok and all his money—he’d been the one to teach you about thread counts to begin with. You’d wrongfully assumed the higher the number the better, but Hoseok had gently grabbed the scratchy 1500 count sheets out of your hands with a pained grimace and handed you a set of Supima cotton sheets with a startlingly low thread count instead.

Rich people have everything backwards.)

Truth be told, it’s exactly the kind of place you’d see on some influencer’s Instagram account. The kind of place they’d delude you into thinking you could afford, too, because having your influencer boyfriend take a picture of you sinking into the lush white duvet and plastering a $10 filter on it is more important than affording your student loan payments.

But you digress.

Either way, you’ll have to send a thank you card to the board of directors.

Hoseok, on the other hand, balks for the second time. Takes one look at the singular bed and completely shuts down, Windows sound effects practically blaring over an invisible loudspeaker above his head once again. “Where’s the other bed?” he asks stupidly.

You snort. Stash your suitcase in the corner. You’ll unpack it later… or next week. Whenever you get around to it, really. “What other bed?”

“You know, like. The other one.”

“There’s only one, Seok. Why would there be two? This is a couple’s retreat.”

He pouts. “Not every couple sleeps together, you know. My grandparents have separate bedrooms.”

“No offense, bud, but your grandfather also wears diapers.”

“So?”

“So there might be a correlation, is what I’m saying.”

“Are you saying you wouldn’t sleep in the same bed as your husband of seventy years just because he might pee the bed sometimes?”

You level him with a look. Unpacking doesn’t sound like such a bad idea anymore. “I’m well past the age where I could conceivably be married to someone for seventy years, so it doesn’t matter.”

“You’re not even thirty yet.”

You click your tongue. “Hoseok, you of all people know I never expected to live past the age of thirteen. There’s no way I’m making it to ninety-seven.”

“You only thought you were gonna die when you were thirteen because you had your appendix removed.” You give him another look. “And you got your tonsils removed that same year.” Another one. “What?” he huffs. “What’d I forget?”

“That time we were playing volleyball in gym class and you spiked the ball right in my face and broke my nose.”

“Not a life-threatening injury.”

“Thirteen was a really hard year for me,” you retort, overdramatic as always. “It’s a miracle I survived.”

“Oh my god—”

“A miracle, Hobi.”

With a disapproving shake of his head, he’s off to unpack his luggage, because Hoseok is filthy rich and has expensive clothes that, according to him, cannot, under any circumstances, go hours without being hung up properly. You’ve never seen a silk shirt with a wrinkle in it, let alone a wrinkle on any article of Hoseok’s clothing, but you learned a long time ago it’s much less stressful to just let him be neurotic about his wardrobe.

You, on the other hand, are going to do no such thing. You’ll live out of your suitcase for as long as you can get away with it, so you flop face-first onto the bed, careful to leave your shoes dangling off the edge. Hoseok’s already going to give you shit about—

“Yah!” he wails, his fifteenth white button-down shirt draped haphazardly off a hanger. “No street clothes in the bed!”

You roll your eyes. “Street clothes? Who says shit like that? Most people just have clothes.”

“You’ve been wearing them all day,” Hoseok argues, because there’s very little he loves more than an argument. “They’re dirty, and now they’ve made the bed dirty, too.”

However, to the detriment of Hoseok’s well-being, you love arguing, too. You look down at both your clothes and the pristine duvet and vaguely gesture at both. “Ah, yes. So filthy. The bed—which you’d nearly had an aneurysm over sharing with me not even ten minutes ago, might I add—is so dirty. How will we ever be able to sleep in it?”

Watching Hoseok mentally tabulate through the Seven Stages of Grief is the most entertainment you’ve had in hours. Jaw clenched, he simply stares at you for a few seconds before leveling his voice and repeating, “No street clothes in the bed.” Then he tacks on a please that’s clearly an afterthought. “Didn’t you bring loungewear? Can’t you just wear that instead?”

You did, in fact, bring loungewear. It would’ve been irresponsible not to, considering the length of your stay and proximity to paradise, but stubbornness seems to be the flavor of the day so you just shrug and toe your shoes off. “I’m not going to change. We don’t have long before we have that welcome dinner, anyway. I’m not going to put on loungewear only to change into dinner-wear and then come back, shower, and change again into pajamas.”

Hoseok’s nose scrunches in distaste. “What welcome dinner?”

“Do you not read?” you tease. “There was a whole itinerary attached to the map. We have a welcome dinner tonight with that guy Namjoon’s in love with.”

“Which one?”

You click your tongue. “The guy who runs this place.” Then you furrow your brow. “What do you mean ‘which one’?”

“Nothing. Just—you know how Namjoon is. He falls in love at least eight separate times whenever he goes to the gardening store.”

“Guess he doesn’t herb his enthusiasm.” Hoseok groans loudly as you point finger guns at him.

He lobs a mated pair of socks at your head that bounce off your ass instead. “Please just get ready for dinner. I can’t do this.”

To put it mildly, Kim Seokjin is fucking weird.

Hoseok hadn’t noticed. He’d taken one look at him and his mischievous eyes and welcoming smile and dove right in, engaging him in endless conversation about god-knows-what. That’s just how Hoseok is. Aside from his justifiable distrust of Tinder dates, he makes and keeps friends effortlessly. It’s the sunshine in him, your mother always used to say, because Hoseok was always the sun and everyone else were sunflowers, desperate to bask in him and reflect his light.

(Namjoon has always said it’s because he’s an Aquarius. You don’t know what that means, but you assume it’ll click once you buy a few crystals and start exclusively listening to Fleetwood Mac.)

And that has always been okay—good, even. He’s never lost that innate goodness, even when he’d been placed at the head of a billion-dollar corporation where ruthlessness is encouraged. Hoseok’s edges remain rounded and soft; he emphasizes a need for kindness, shows it has a place amongst the cold, calculated world of business. Really, it’s great. You can’t be more proud to call him your best friend.

However.

It doesn’t mean Hoseok isn’t a fucking idiot sometimes.

Because he’s good, his first assumption is always that others are good, too. No matter how many times you’ve grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him away from a fire, his first instinct is still to reach out and touch it.

His first serious girlfriend, back in high school? Yeah, you’d warned him about her. Told him she was messing around with a kid on the soccer team on the side, but Hoseok had insisted she’d never do that. “She’s into embroidery,” he’d said, as if that excused someone from being a two-timing cheat.

That guy he’d been partnered with for a serious project in business school? You’d listened to Hoseok talk about him over Skype once and suggested he find a new one. Kept silent as he unloaded on you a few weeks later after the guy had fucked him over.

You’d even advised him against hiring Namjoon. Couldn’t fathom why Hoseok would even be considering hiring someone who showed up to an interview hours early. Obviously he hadn’t listened, and look where it’s gotten the two of you.

It isn’t that you’ve got a sixth sense for assholes or anything. It’s just that Hoseok’s such a terrible judge of character that it makes you look like Sherlock Holmes in comparison.

So it comes as no surprise to you when Seokjin excuses himself for a moment and Hoseok turns to you with hearts in his eyes only to be greeted by your Hoseok you’re doing that thing again where you put people on a pedestal who are not to be trusted look.

“No,” he dismisses immediately. “Him? No way.”

Your nostrils flare. “Hoseok. Don’t be an idiot about this. He’s weird.”

“He’s just eccentric. Aren’t all these New Age hippie types like that? The guy runs a wellness retreat for fuck’s sake—of course he’s weird.”

“His vibes are off,” you retort, which admittedly sounds like a New Age hippie thing to say, but the longer Hoseok insists you’re wrong, the more you begin to wonder if you are. The two of you had been sent here by Namjoon, and he’s easily one of the weirdest people you’ve ever met. Maybe Hoseok’s right.

You allow yourself two minutes of self-doubt. Then you’re shaking your head and poking your tongue into the fat of your cheek because you know bad vibes when you feel them and Kim Seokjin has them in spades.

The man in question returns a few moments later, two new men in tow: a taller one with a boxy smile and a tan and a shorter one with a scowl that looks permanent but not on purpose, like it’d just shown up on his face one day and forgot to leave. The grumpy-looking one sits across from Hoseok, looking every bit as unsure as you, while the other one takes the empty seat to his left, right in front of you.

“I’m Taehyung,” he says, ass barely in the chair before he’s leaning over the table to shake your hand. His feels like a hand that’s shaken many others—firm, warm, soft. Feels a lot like shaking Hoseok’s hand might feel, an importance simmering beneath the surface, but you’ve never had a reason to do so. “This is Yoongi.” Taehyung gestures to the man beside him. “He doesn’t talk much but you get used to him, I think.”

“You think?” Hoseok laughs, an eyebrow quirked, fully in his element. Words soft, edges softer. Hoseok was born for these types of moments. Meeting strangers, knowing what to say.

Yoongi stays quiet. Barely looks around the room, which is a feat in itself. Seokjin had invited all of you to dinner in a grand dining hall, walls tall and floors gleaming, both stark white like the rest of the resort. Immediately sat at the head of the table like some sort of king, and you would’ve thought something of it, maybe looked at Hoseok and mouthed what’s this guy’s deal? But then he placed his napkin neatly across his lap, looked at the two of you, smiled dazzlingly, and said, “Is cereal soup?”

It had all gone downhill from there, really.

Now Taehyung and Yoongi are seated across from you and Hoseok and Yoongi still hasn’t said a word and you’re hoping maybe, just maybe, he’s also picking up on how weird all of this is. Taehyung has that exuberant optimism that reminds you a lot of Hoseok so you disregard him as a comrade immediately. Just the kind of guy to love any and everyone, oblivious to bad vibes. No, Yoongi’s the one you need on your side and it’s glaringly obvious.

One small hiccup, though: he really doesn’t talk.

Like, at all.

Taehyung talks enough for the both of them, endearing everyone with a smile and an endless supply of stories told in that deep baritone voice of his. Every now and then he’ll turn to Yoongi and say isn’t that right, dumpling? and Yoongi just hums an acknowledgment. Doesn’t seem put off by the pet name at all, despite looking like someone that’d be put off by pet names.

They’re cute. You mouth as much to Hoseok and he just smiles at you in return, a soft little thing. Yoongi and Taehyung are the kind of couple who give off we’ve been together for decades energy even though they don’t look much older than you. Just two people completely at ease with one another, and it does something to your stomach. All small, hidden touches and words communicated through looks alone. Best friends and lovers. Partners both in crime and in life.

It’s a sweet moment.

It’s a moment completely negated by Seokjin’s booming voice at the head of the table. “Well, this was fun, wasn’t it? Let’s move to the lounge.”

Yoongi doesn’t look to Taehyung. Yoongi looks to you, and it’s only because you’d looked at him instead of Hoseok that you notice the subtle downturn of the corners of his mouth, the slight pinch between his brows. He doesn’t outright ask it, but there’s a question in his body language: What’s this guy’s deal?

It’s one you’d also like an answer to.

Yoongi keeps his eyes on you the entire time the five of you talk in the lounge. Well, Taehyung’s once again speaking for both of them, hands and arms gesturing wildly all around him, and Yoongi seems more than content to sit in silence. Seokjin and Hoseok chime in where they should, asking questions and emphasizing words and generally being agreeable. You, on the other hand, sit next to Hoseok and try to exude the same energy Taehyung and Yoongi do. The we’re so in love and comfortable with each other we don’t even need to touch type. The we only post selfies together three times a year because we don’t need to flaunt our relationship variety.

But, as all inevitable things inevitably do, the conversation moves to relationships. Seokjin sneaks it in under the guise of getting to know everyone, and Taehyung takes the bait immediately, seemingly always looking for a reason to show off Yoongi and talk him up. You hate that it’s endearing. You hate that you want something like it—someone enamored with you without preamble. A just because kind of love. Something solid and bone-deep.

“It was totally by accident,” Taehyung’s saying as your attention drifts back to him. Not soon enough, because he’s clearly halfway through a story and you have no idea what the plot is. “We’d both been backpacking through Europe, and I was trying to check in at this tiny hostel in Thessaloniki but my Greek is terrible, understandably, so I was really struggling. Trying to tell the poor woman behind the desk my name and that I’d booked a private room, and she just kept shrugging and looking at me like I was crazy. It was, like, midnight, so I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep, and then out of nowhere this guy”—He jerks his thumb at Yoongi, who remains silent and still—“just comes up behind me and starts speaking fluent Greek.”

Hoseok’s eyes widen. “Fluent Greek? Wow,” he says, eyebrows disappearing beneath his fringe, “that’s really impressive.”

“You have no idea,” Taehyung continues to gush. “He speaks, like, fifteen languages fluently, I swear to god. Anyway, turns out the hostel never received my reservation, which makes sense because I’d tried booking it from the top of a mountain. Yoongi took pity on me and let me share his room since they were fully booked.”

Seokjin smiles and touches a hand to his heart. It’s completely performative but it works—Taehyung looks like he’s just passed some silent test and won the lottery. “Adorable. And so noble, Yoongi. Not many people would do that for a stranger.”

Yoongi shrugs.

Undeterred, Seokjin turns his attention to you and Hoseok. “How about the two of you? Set up by friends? Blind date?” His beady eyes are studying you both diligently, eyes raking over your face for the tiniest tell. “Childhood friends turned lovers?”

Hoseok coughs.

“We met at a cartography class,” you explain, voice even despite Seokjin’s prolonged eye contact making you want to lock yourself in the nearest bathroom. Hoseok had nearly given the two of you away, and it was all you could do to recall whatever bullshit you had tried selling Jimin to cover your asses.

Yoongi’s fighting off a smile. Taehyung looks enthralled. “Cartography? Whoa, now that’s something you definitely don’t hear everyday.”

“A lost art, if you ask me,” Seokjin says. “Are either of you geographists, then?”

Hoseok tenses, fidgeting ceasing immediately. The two of you hadn’t talked about this—about how honest you wanted to be, how much would be fabricated—so while this is typically the kind of environment he’d thrive in, you pluck the reins from his hands and take over. “Double majored back in undergrad. Geography and psych.”

“Interesting combo.”

You nod. Not the first time you’d heard that. “Well, there are things you want to do and things you should do, so I did both.”

“And what was it you wanted to do?”

You wave your hand, gesturing vaguely. “Ah, you know. You go into university with all these aspirations, have all these starry-eyed ideas. You’re gonna be someone, you’re gonna help people, you’re gonna make an impact and travel all over and be super important. People are gonna pay to hear you speak and all that bullshit.” Hoseok’s looking at you—you can feel it, but you can also see the blurred outline of his profile. “What did I want to do? Something in human geography, maybe cultural or political geography.”

“The psych degree?” Seokjin continues prodding, and you find you don’t mind it. Hoseok certainly never had. Was always far too busy doing important business things on the opposite side of the country.

“Picked it up about halfway through. Figured I should have a back-up plan in case I wound up being the only geopolitician working at Starbucks.” Your fingers start picking at your pants even though there’s nothing to grab onto. You’d only packed your best, keenly aware of the standards required to be in Jung Hoseok’s inner circle. “A lot of the research and analysis courses overlapped, so I just… did it.”

“That’s very ambitious.” Seokjin’s compliment feels like some weird kind of approval, like another unspoken test Taehyung would grin over passing. “And now? You’d mentioned undergrad.”

“Started a post-bacc in GIS since I liked doing research. Hence the cartography class.”

Hence the cartography class, as if that’s the end of it and there’s nothing else to say. Like you hadn’t dropped out of that to pursue a Master’s in psychology and maybe med school or a PhD to follow, because your mother would be proud of someone with a doctorate, right? You could finally stop hearing—

Did you hear Hoseokie got an internship at Google? They pay $8,000 a month!

Did you hear Hoseokie graduated at the top of his class? His mother said he didn’t even have to apply to any MBA programs, they recruited him! He’s torn between Stanford and the University of Penn. Isn’t that a nice problem to have?

Did you hear that Hoseokie finished his program early? He’s so smart. His parents must be so proud of him.

Did you hear Hoseokie’s moving back? Just an associate vice president position for now, but his mother says there’s already talks of him being promoted to CEO within the next few years.

That’s not to say you weren’t proud of him or that you were resentful. You’ve always been Hoseok’s biggest fan, but Hoseok had moved across the country and still casted a shadow so large it was impossible to not be swallowed up by it, and it’s hard to have all the things you want to hear be said about someone else.

So, yeah, hence the cartography class.

“What about you, Hoseok? You’ve been quiet.”

Hoseok’s never quiet. When you turn to look at him, he’s already staring back. There’s no perpetual million-dollar smile, no wrinkles at the corner of his eyes from laughing too much, smiling too much, enjoying life too much. There’s just a concerned look that you don’t really know what to do with, because you’ve spent so much of your life worrying over Hoseok—over his concerning judge of character, his inability to cook, those kids on the schoolbus, his diet and now his organs—that things feel out of sorts now that the script is flipped.

It takes him a while to come back down to earth, realize someone has asked him a question. “Business,” is all he says.

He’s still staring.

Things are tense.

Weird-tense, because things are never tense between you and Hoseok. Not even back in high school when you’d threatened his then-girlfriend, the one who was cheating on him, and she ratted you out. Hoseok had shown up all red in the face, talked a lot about what would happen if you ruined things for him, but you’d just said alright, Hobi, whatever you say and things had gone back to normal.

But back in your overpriced rental house, things are definitely weird-tense.

“You never told me any of that.”

Ah. You shrug, toweling off your hair after your shower, and rifle through your suitcase for suitable pajamas. “You never asked.”

“I thought the map story was bullshit. You never—you double majored?”

Isn’t this so typical, you think. You could write a biography on Hoseok, all his accomplishments and dreams and all those silly little subplots that connect at the end, and he didn’t even know your college major. Majors. “That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

In the bathroom, you go through your skincare routine on autopilot and floss and brush your teeth. Try to rid yourself of the taste of disappointment. Smear cold cream under your eyes and try to pretend the sting is from the scent and not welling tears, because this is not something to cry over. This is stupid and unimportant, and you now have two and a half degrees in psychology that tell you how to deal with it.

But Hoseok’s reluctant to let it go. Wants to talk it to death when you’re more than happy to never discuss it again. You’re twenty-seven, meaning you’ve had at least five years to accept the fact that your mother had given all her pride to Hoseok instead. You’re not really keen on spending another five years feeling inadequate. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He appears in the doorway of the bathroom looking positively distressed. “Mom had only told me about the psych degree and that you were trying to get into UCLA for your Master’s. She never said anything about the geography degree.”

You just shrug. “Things you want to do and things you should, right?”

Hoseok doesn’t buy it. “Was telling me what was going on in your life not something you wanted to do, then?” He looks stung.

You’re tired, still a little fucked up from the jet lag and sitting through a bizarre dinner and serving yourself up on a silver platter to an even more bizarre man that now knew something about you that not even Hoseok had known. “I’m going to sleep,” you say, because you’re even more loose-lipped than usual when tired and prone to irritability, and provoking an argument on the first night of a month-long vacation is not something you’re going to do.

And Hoseok—

Hoseok must get it, you think, because he seems to deflate. Just sighs, shoulders hunched, before he steps aside to let you out of the bathroom. No argument, no thinly-veiled threats, no guilt-trips. Resignation: the same kind Namjoon had spoken about when he’d relayed the story of how the wellness retreat came to be.

A resigned Hoseok is probably a dangerous Hoseok, but you’re too exhausted to give a shit. You’ll strategize in the morning, come up with a new plan.

Except the morning comes and Hoseok doesn’t mention it at all.

He doesn’t say anything about it for the next three days, actually, which are all the same and go like this:

On the morning of day two, Hoseok reluctantly wakes you up just after six. There’s a small offering of fruit and coffee waiting for you on a tray that you promptly ignore in lieu of going back to sleep, which lasts until approximately 6:06am when Hoseok wakes you again. The two of you are scheduled for a morning yoga session at seven-o’clock, which is supposedly mandatory and can’t be canceled.

Taehyung takes the mat next to you, leaning over to ask, “Have you ever done this before?” with a slightly panicked expression on this face.

“Every Saturday morning back home,” you answer. Taehyung chuckles nervously, and your experience becomes painfully clear when you’re nailing your Sugarcane pose and everyone else topples over sideways. Yoongi doesn’t make a sound as he hits the floor, and he’s so quiet that your instructor misses him completely when they fret around the room helping everyone else.

You’re so distracted by helping Yoongi yourself that you miss the deep furrow of Hoseok’s brow. And the crestfallen look on his face. Just another thing he hadn’t known.

After you survive yoga, the two of you sit through an awkward breakfast with Taehyung, Certified Chatterbox, and Yoongi, Not One. Taehyung doesn’t comment on Hoseok’s newfound quietude, which is a little surprising, but Yoongi quirks an eyebrow at you that makes your coffee suddenly taste stale.

Between the hours of nine and one, Hoseok disappears to go to the spa or the gym or the gift shop, because he is literally incapable of not spending money. You’re waiting for him to realize how weird it is for a wellness retreat to sell souvenirs but he never brings it up, just strolls back into the room each time and dumps a concerning amount of magnets into his suitcase.

(You wonder if any of them are for your mother. You wonder what she’ll think about this—you and Hoseok going to a couple’s retreat together, playing pretend. You wonder if bagging someone like Hoseok would finally make her proud of you and how shallow that is.)

After lunch, which is barely less awkward than breakfast, the four of you are ushered into a so-called Meditation Clinic, hosted by a very muscular guy with a baby face and a lot of tattoos. His name is Jungkook, and he nearly sends Hoseok into Sexuality Crisis Episode No. 2. Hoseok doesn’t do a damn second of meditating for three days, just stares at the wall looking like a baby who’d just been tricked into sucking on a lemon. Taehyung chatters away at you the entire time, completely oblivious to Jungkook’s annoyed stare. You share an exasperated look with Yoongi on your way out.

Hoseok returns to your rental home on the evening of day three looking scandalized. Apparently, this is the result of him running into Jimin, who’d offered to read and analyze his birth chart for him. Apparently, this is Jimin’s second job when there’s no new check-ins to harass. Apparently, Hoseok has been “read for filth” by “the stars” and “doesn’t wish to discuss it further.”

(Interestingly, Jimin corners you not long after. There’s a dangerous twinkle in his eye as he says, “Curious?” and gestures to a small room just off the lounge.

“The curtain’s kind of corny, isn’t it?” you say, scoffing as one strand of beads smacks you in the side of the head. “Like, this all feels very mysterious carnival tent and not billion-dollar resort, y’know?”

Jimin takes a seat behind a large desk, completely void of decoration. You’re not sure what you expected—some tarot cards, maybe a crystal ball to sell the illusion—but it’s empty. “You must have Leo placements,” he mutters.

“Moon and Mars, actually. Lucky guess.”

He gestures for you to take the seat in front of him. “Mm, not really luck, they’re just really good at lying.”

“And what am I lying about?”

Jimin ignores your question. Instead, he cocks his head to the side and says, “When’s your birthday?”

“Aren’t you the astrologer? Take a guess.” Jimin just stares, looking endlessly amused. Eventually you huff and answer. “March 15th.”

Overdramatic as always, Jimin fake-gags. “A Pisces sun with a Leo moon? Horrendous, truly. How do you function?”

“Stunted, clearly.”

He actually laughs at this, rewarding you with a brilliant smile and an endearingly crooked front tooth. “No matter.” He shakes his head, blond locks falling elegantly around his face as if arranged by the gods themselves. “You may have a truly tragic sun-moon pairing, but it bodes well for you and that neurotic mess of a best friend you’re fake-dating.”

You choke so hard Jimin actually offers you a glass of water.)

Dinners are spent as a five-piece. Seokjin asks more idiotic questions, such as are eyebrows considered facial hair, which prompts a very deep exhale from Yoongi, and did Adam and Eve have bellybuttons, which sends Taehyung into an existential crisis he’s yet to recover from.

Sometimes there are bonfires on the beach at night during which Jungkook plays an acoustic guitar and sings like an angel. Hoseok is conspicuously absent during these.

He’s also absent during your nightly routine. You shower, smear your skincare all over your face, and brush your teeth alone. You change into your pajamas and crawl into your side of the bed alone. By night three, you’re so annoyed you build a pillow wall between the two of you that you instruct Hoseok, under threat of bodily harm, not to demolish.

On the morning of day five, you’re awake before the sun. You sit in the darkness for a while, listening to Hoseok’s soft breaths on the other side of the pillow wall. He hasn’t gone five days without talking to you in twenty years. Even when he’d threatened you over his high school girlfriend, you were back in his good graces within 48 hours, and all of this for what? Because your mother is kind of an asshole and you’re kind of jealous and Hoseok is kind of self-centered sometimes?

“Hobi,” you say, leaning over the wall to nudge his shoulder. “Hobi, wake up.”

He doesn’t budge, mouth hanging open as he continues snoring quietly, these little hiccups of breath every now and then. All you can do is sigh. “Hoseok.” Nothing. “Jung Hoseok,” you try again, voice hardened into a baseless threat. He keeps snoring.

You groan, run your hands over your face in exasperation. Stupidly, you’d assumed that Hoseok would be easier to wake up now that he’s a Very Important Person worth millions of dollars. Clearly he’s not. So you throw the duvet off your legs and stumble to the bathroom in the dark. Brush your teeth and wash your face and throw on a loose long-sleeved shirt and a pair of yoga pants. It’s the weekend, so you’re free to do as you please, no mandated schedule, and you know exactly who you’re going to see.

Unsurprisingly, Taehyung is on the beach, cross-legged in the center of a large blanket close to the water but far enough away that the tide isn’t a concern. His curls are blowing gently in the breeze and every now and then he lets out a huff as he tries to flick them out of his eyes. No wonder Yoongi took pity on him back in that hostel in Thessaloniki. You’ve barely known him a week and are already hopelessly endeared by him.

“Good morning,” he says, eyes closed. Even the sun is barely awake this early, but it spills across Taehyung’s cheeks in dusky, golden rays nonetheless. “The beach is beautiful at this hour, isn’t it?”

Ah, so Taehyung’s one of those. Chatty at all hours, just like Hoseok. You groan. “Yeah, sure.”

“I have a thermos of coffee if you want some.”

“You just carry around thermoses of coffee?”

Taehyung laughs. “No. I don’t drink it, but I always make some in the morning and put it in a thermos in case today’s the day Yoongi decides to wake up before noon and join me.”

You eye the empty space next to him. “I’m guessing today’s not the day.”

He quirks an eyebrow. “After forcing him to wake up at 6am to do yoga the last few days? I might never see him again.”

“It’d be deserved, in his defense.”

Taehyung seems to think on this. Has a laugh just as airy as the gentle ocean wind, one that makes you feel like you’re the funniest person in the world. So much like Hoseok. You wonder if you’re like Yoongi. If you’re just as closed off but more talkative. You wonder if there’s a reason Yoongi holds his cards so close to his chest or if he simply sees no reason for anyone to know him. He’s got Taehyung and fifteen languages and a lifetime’s worth of stories, what more could he need? “You’re probably right. Where’s your other half?”

“Also asleep.”

“Wow,” Taehyung deadpans, “there are parallels everywhere.”

You don’t know him well enough to know how he means it. If it’s sardonic and taking the piss out of that sort of thing the way Yoongi would mean it, or if he’s genuine how Hoseok would be. So you just hum a maybe-agreement and stare out at the ocean.

Truth be told, you’re not sure why Taehyung was the one you wanted to find. He just seems like the type to know a lot about relationships, people. Seems like someone who’d meet and befriend more people in a day than you would in five years, so someone like that’s gotta have some sort of answers.

“How long have you and Yoongi been together?”

“Oh. A long time. I was nineteen when I went to Greece and Yoongi was twenty-one, but it was such bad timing, you know? Like, I was only two months into a year-long trip, and Yoongi has to be dragged into everything kicking and screaming, so we didn’t reconnect for over a year after we met.”

“That must’ve been hard.”

Taehyung smiles: small, tender, fond. “A little, yeah, but I think that sort of stuff is inconsequential in the long run. What’s a year’s worth of distance when you’ve got the rest of your lives?” He shifts on the blanket, a frown dragging down the corners of his mouth. “Although I went to Australia a month later and got bit by this huge fucking spider, so I guess the rest of my life was questionable for a while. In that case, yeah, it would’ve been really hard.”

You hum again, and in a need to fill the silence, Taehyung asks, “What about you and Hoseok?”

“What about us?”

“How long have you been together?”

We’re not, really, sits on the tip of your tongue. Jimin has already seen straight through the bullshit, so why not Taehyung, too? What’s the worst that can happen—they kick you out because you’re not a proper couple? What does that even mean? You’ve known Hoseok for twenty years. You watched him grow into a successful, kind, intelligent adult from a stupid-as-fuck eight-year-old. You’ve watched him fall in love and get his heart broken and piece it back together again. You know his takeout orders and his favorite color and the movies he still cries over but lies and says he doesn’t. You know the smell of his mother’s perfume when she squeals and hugs you like you’re her own. You’re one of two-hundred followers on Hoseok’s private Instagram account—the one you and Namjoon and Hoseok’s sister always join forces to bully him on when he tries posting a thirst trap.

You know what Hoseok looks like when he cries. You know what he’s like when he’s vulnerable and insecure and you know how to be a pillar for him when he’s like that, and he knows the same about you.

Some couples don’t have half of that, so what does it mean or even matter if your coupling is proper? Isn’t what you have enough?

You sigh. “We grew up together. I’ve known him for twenty years.”

“Oh.” Taehyung sucks in a breath. “I thought you’d said—”

“Yeah,” you interject. “We’re not, like, romantically involved.” Another sigh. “It’s a long story.”

Taehyung just smiles, looks at you with those butter-soft eyes, and you’re diving into twenty years of history and backstory. You tell him about punching the kid on the bus. You tell him about Hoseok’s first serious girlfriend in high school and how it made your stomach hurt—

(“Because you had a crush on him?”

“What? No.”

“Hm. Okay.”)

—and you tell him about your mother and all her misplaced pride. He laughs at every story you tell him about Namjoon and how you and Hoseok wound up at this weird wellness retreat. He stops laughing when you tell him that you and Hoseok haven’t spoken properly in days, and his eyebrows get very serious when you admit it’s the reason you came to find him.

“You just look like someone who might know how to help me fix it,” you finish.

Taehyung tries—and fails—to not look pleased as punch at this. “I’m generally very unhelpful. Well, Yoongi says I’m not-not helpful, but sometimes I try to help too much and wind up making things worse.” You shoot him a dubious look. “I won’t do that this time, though, I promise! Please consider me your official relationship fixer.”

“I’m not sure this is a good idea anymore.”

“It probably isn’t, if I’m being totally honest, but if I can manage to make Min Yoongi fall in love with me, I’m extremely overconfident I can do just about anything.”

“Yeah, that’s fair.”

He claps his hands together. “Great! We can start with you apologizing and telling him you’ve been acting out due to temporary insanity on the basis of being in love with him for years and never saying anything.”

“Excuse me—”

“It’s best to be extremely honest about these sorts of things as to leave no room for misinterpretation or misunderstandings,” Taehyung says, tone condescending like you’re a child though it’s working overtime to not sound that way. At your slack jaw, Taehyung’s eyes grow wide. “Have you seriously never thought about it?”

“Me and Hoseok?”

Of course you’ve thought about it, it was just dismissed immediately each time. You love Hoseok; he’s the most important person in your life, and that’s exactly why you shooed those intrusive thoughts away every time they crept up. You’re not generally one to overthink on consequences, but Hoseok is always an idea you’ve treated with kiddie gloves. Something delicate. Something placed in an enclosure with 21mm glass walls and eighteen security alarms. So, sure, you’ve thought about it in the same way you’ve thought about winning the lottery or telling your PhD advisor to fuck off and moving to some remote island paradise where there’s always someone to wait on you hand and foot.

Of course you’ve thought about you and Hoseok, in the same way you think about all inevitable things (like the heat death of the universe) and also impossibilities, both wistful and staunch.

“Yeah,” you eventually answer. “Of course I have.”

Taehyung blinks owlishly. “I thought for sure you were gonna deny it.” Then the smile is back and it makes his eyes glitter like tiny stars. “But that’s great! The first step is admitting you have a problem, or whatever. Anyway! Do you still have feelings? Yoongi thinks I’m bad at reading people”—Yoongi is right, you think—“but I’ve seen the way he looks at me a million times, and sometimes that’s the same way Hoseok looks at you. So I think you should tell him.”

Snorting, you turn your gaze to the ocean. Even the water seems to still be sleepy at this hour, the waves small and gentle as they lap against the shore. “Maybe later on. Getting rejected a few days into a month-long trip doesn’t really sound like my idea of fun.”

Face scrunched up in disgust, Taehyung whines, “You wouldn’t! You’re gonna waste all this time because you think you’d get rejected when in actuality all you’re doing is wasting some really great glass walls to fuck against.”

You blanch. You can say, with one hundred percent conviction, that you’ve never thought about sleeping with Hoseok. Okay, so that’s not entirely true. There was the one time you had to defend him from Rose Emoji and Hammer and Sickle Twitter when they threatened to eat him and one person suggested sparing him because, excessive wealth aside, he had big dick energy. That’d given you pause. Did Hoseok have a big dick?

“No way,” you retort, “Hoseok is like a Ken doll. Completely smooth from the waist down. Dickless.”

Taehyung heaves a long-suffering sigh. “Another L for the gay community.”

Hoseok sleeps until noon.

You’ve already washed the sea salt from your hair and returned to the rental house with your own small haul of gift shop magnets by the time he stirs awake, groggy and looking worse for wear. “Wha’ time s’it?” he slurs, voice far too deep for you to remain unaffected.

“Just after twelve,” you answer. “I can make you some coffee if you want.”

All you get in response is a muffled groan, Hoseok’s dandelion bed-head disappearing under the fluffy duvet once again. You’ve known him long enough to know that means yes, to know he takes his coffee with far too much cream and sugar, the liquid something close to bone white by the time he’s done adding and mixing.

You set the mug on his nightstand and sit on the edge of the bed, leaning over to peel down the duvet and scratch at his scalp. “Coffee’s ready, sunshine.” Eyes still sealed shut, you move your fingers lower to tickle at his neck. “C’mon, Hobi, you’re pissing away another beautiful day in paradise.” You don’t bother telling him it’s overcast and drizzling; not like it matters, because Hoseok groans again and swats your hand away before shoving his head under his pillow.

He says something you can’t catch, words unintelligible beneath layers of down. “What’d you say?” you ask. When his head pops up, expression frustrated and cheeks flushed red, you poke the dimple in his left cheek. He has to fight off a smile.

“I asked why you’re being so nice to me.”

You frown. “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I be nice to you?”

Hoseok sighs. Adjusts until he’s sitting up, long, skinny legs tangled in the comforter. Something about his hands is so interesting he’s unable to focus on anything else. “Because I’ve been a dick to you.” When you move to protest, he tacks on, “And not just on this trip, either. For a while.” For a second, you think he might cry. Hoseok used to cry a lot as a kid—had too much empathy for such a small body to know what to do with so all the excess tended to leak out. “God, there was so much I didn’t know? Like your majors? And the yoga? I just…” He trails off, looks lost. Picks up the coffee mug just to do something with his hands. “It feels bad. It just feels really bad.”

You return his sigh, wishing Hoseok was a little less honest. Always the first to put himself out there, be vulnerable, and sometimes it’s nice and sometimes it makes you feel guilty. “It’s okay.”

“It isn’t,” he argues.

You hold up a hand. “I know where you’re coming from, and I get it. I would probably feel bad, too, if I were in your position.” He whimpers, earning a soft laugh from you. “But I’m telling you it’s okay. I don’t blame you, all right? I never have. I don’t lay in bed at night agonizing over it. This isn’t like that for me.”

“Then what’s it like?”

You hum, knowing this is a moment to handle with care. You can’t be reckless here. So you think it over, and you say, “It’s… I don’t think this happened because you don’t care, because I know you do. I know I’m your best friend in every way someone can be your best friend, and you’re my best friend in all the ways someone can be mine. It’s just that those two things look different, is what I’m saying. And I think that’s okay.”

“It’s unbalanced.”

You nod. “Yeah, maybe it is, but sometimes that happens. It hasn’t always been unbalanced.”

This seems to calm him, and his smile is slow, reluctant, but it’s there nonetheless. “Okay.” He exhales the weight of the world. “Okay. I’d still like to be better, though.”

“We have all the time in the world, Seok.”

You normally eat most of your meals with Taehyung and Yoongi anyway, but since your conversation on the beach, Taehyung attaches to you like a limpet.

The first time had been unnerving. He’d cornered you outside the dining hall, stomach rumbling even as he demanded to know everything, please spare nothing, no detail is too small. There hadn’t been much to report, just that the two of you had talked and things were better.

“Did you tell him you’re in lo—” had earned him an elbow to the ribs.

He hasn’t asked again.

But he’s still hard to shake during mealtime, especially breakfast, because he wakes up ready to talk, conversation locked and loaded on his tongue. Yoongi, of course, doesn’t talk at all, so he offloads onto you and Hoseok, who’s too good-natured to ask for some peace and quiet.

“Seokjin asked me last night if water was wet,” he says, spearing a long piece of pineapple on his fork. “Like, obviously it’s wet? It’s water.”

“It isn’t, though,” you argue. “Water is just water. Wet is a state—”

Taehyung, cheeks bulging around the fruit like a hamster, frowns. “Huh? No. California is a state.”

Yoongi faceplants onto the table.

“No, Tae.” You shake your head. “Like, a state of being. Water makes other things wet, but it’s not wet itself.”

His frown deepens. Looks to Yoongi for help, clarification, but he’s still face-down, so he looks to Hoseok instead. He, very steadfastly, says, “She’s weirdly smart, man. I dunno. I’m not arguing with her.”

“Why? Because you’re also—” Another elbow to the ribs. He coughs, makes a very valiant attempt to look cool, calm, and collected. “You’re also very smart, Hoseok,” he amends. “I am very interested in hearing what you have to say.”

“In business, though. I’m not really smart in science stuff.”

“Interesting,” Taehyung muses. “Would you say you’re smart in love?”

Hoseok is good-natured enough to look genuinely confused. “Huh?”

Yoongi finally picks his head up. Sends Taehyung some kind of look that must mean something to only the two of them, because Taehyung just sighs, put-upon, and shoves a piece of cantaloupe in his mouth. He doesn’t talk to Hoseok for the rest of the day.

Two weeks pass in a blur.

The schedule remains the same. Yoga, shared meals, weird quasi-therapy sessions which you have come to realize are just minor cult recruiting, bonfires on the beach. You and Hoseok stay up late talking and barely make it on time to whatever activity you have first thing in the morning. Jimin corners you at least once a week to talk about your “fucked up and frankly demonic” birth chart because he refuses to believe it’s real. Jungkook offers to teach the four of you how to surf but abandons that five minutes into the first session after Yoongi refuses to touch sand and Hoseok nearly passes out from seeing Jungkook shirtless.

…Which Taehyung catches, of course, because he just sidles up alongside you. Says, “Ooh, interesting,” again, in a really smug way, before intercepting Jungkook and leading him far, far away from the beach. You think he winks at you over his shoulder.

Bastard.

But it works, much to your surprise. Of course the two of you have talked it to death, but part of Hoseok’s bid to be better also seems to include being more tactile. Which… is nice, you’ll admit. Hoseok’s fingers are long and slender and perfectly manicured, his hands soft, so it feels nice when they play with your hair or scratch gently at your back or hold your hand, but it also fills you with an anxious kind of dread.

Uncertainty, maybe.

You know how these things work. Forced proximity, only one bed. You’re two-thirds of a psychologist, after all, so you wouldn’t be surprised if Hoseok is just caught up in the moment, at the relief of overcoming an obstacle and making it to the other side. (God knows the bender he’d gone on after graduating business school attests to that.)

Curiously, none of that stops you from leaning into it.

It doesn’t feel weird. It doesn’t feel awkward or strange or anything besides natural. Hoseok’s bare face is the last thing you see before you fall asleep and the first thing you know you’ll see when you wake up, and just having that certainty, that security, makes the early mornings bearable. It makes them something worth looking forward to. It makes all the tension in your body unwind. Makes you pliable, has you laughing freely and leaning into Hoseok’s side during all those meals Taehyung spends talking. Except he’s not talking so much anymore—now, he’s studying. Smiling. Sending little glances only you and Yoongi catch.

Everything comes to a head at another of Seokjin’s weird dinners.

“A question for your discussion,” he begins, and you swear you hear Yoongi groan under his breath. When you look over at him, he’s nonchalantly chewing his food, no indication at all that he made a sound for the first time in two and a half weeks, so you convince yourself you’re hallucinating. “If no one ever sneezed again, how long do you think it’d take you to notice?”

Yoongi must feel you looking this time, because he offers up a dead stare in return. While Taehyung and Hoseok debate their answers—

(“Well, I work in an office, so probably not long.”

“Ah. I work from home, but I think it’d be pretty obvious? Especially during allergy season.”

“Yeah, for sure. It’s one of those things you’d definitely notice. It’s like—you know when you’re cooking and finally turn off the vent hood and the quiet is a little disorienting? It’d be like that, I think. Like, you definitely—”

“You notice something’s absence more than you notice its presence.”

“Yeah! Yes, exactly.”)

—that dead stare of Yoongi’s morphs into something more mischievous, slow like molasses. He catches your eye, winks, and fakes a yawn.

Taehyung startles, like he forgot Yoongi had been sitting next to him the entire time. “Oh, you’ll have to excuse him,” he says, cheeks dusting pink. “Someone told him once he’d been a rock in a past life and it catches up with him every now and then.”

Seokjin lets out a high-pitched giggle, looking absolutely delighted at this. “A rock, huh? Fascinating. Please tell me all about it.”

“Well, I think a lot of people would assume igneous, but that’s always seemed a little shallow to me, you know? I think he’s more metamorphic—”

As Taehyung rambles on, Seokjin turns his attention to you and Hoseok. “What about you two? What do you think you were like in a past life?”

“He had to have been a monk or something,” you declare, poking the crater of one of Hoseok’s dimples. “He’s been hoarding good karma for centuries and cashed it all in for this lifetime.”

“Aish,” Hoseok replies, cheeks matching Taehyung’s as he scratches at the back of his neck. “I don’t know about all that. It’s just luck, isn’t it?”

You look at Hoseok. Really look at him—at the way his lips curl around his teeth as he tries not to laugh at the way Taehyung’s still going on about rocks; at the way he pouts and gags a little whenever he takes a sip of champagne; at the way the stars in his eyes turn to glitter when Seokjin gives him an opening to talk about his dog. You look at Hoseok and you think yeah, it could be luck, but it feels more monumental.

It feels predestined.

And you’re not sure what that means. Of course friendships can feel predestined; you’re not one to discount the importance of platonic relationships. You’re not sure what it means in the context of yours and Hoseok’s friendship. You’re not sure if your stomach hurt back when Hoseok got a girlfriend back in high school because it was predestined to be platonic.

You frown as you swirl the wine around your glass.

Truth be told, you’re not sure about much of anything right now.

“Hey,” Hoseok says, patting your thigh to get your attention. You’re in a dress. A nice one: silk, a slit up the side, drapes perfectly over the lines of your body and clings where it should. Does absolutely nothing to spare you from the heat of Hoseok’s skin through the fabric. “You okay?”

You’re fucked, is what you are.

“Yeah,” you reply, offering what you can only hope is a convincing smile. “Think I drank this a little too fast.”

“Do you want to go back to the house? We don’t have to stay. Taehyung’s still talking about the difference between limestone and sandstone, so I don’t think we’ll miss anything.”

You nod, dropping your voice to a hushed whisper. “Yeah, that might be a good idea. They look like they’re about ten seconds away from mixing up geography and geology and being really offended when I don’t know anything about rocks.”

The two of you stand, and Hoseok’s hand immediately moves to the small of your back. Warm, warm, warm, and you can’t convince yourself it’s the wine that’s making you lightheaded.

“Oh-ho-ho,” Taehyung chimes, looking pleased as punch at the sight of Hoseok’s hand at your back. Throws an elbow into Yoongi’s ribs. He doesn’t even flinch. “And where are the two of you going?”

“Uh, home?” Hoseok answers at the same time you say, “Fuck off, Taehyung,” because your face feels like it’s on fire and you’ve had enough of his ribbing.

Except, as it turns out, some amalgamation of home and fuck off sounds a whole lot like home, to fuck, and Taehyung might’ve been serious about the matchmaking thing, but even this kind of misunderstood forwardness has him choking on his sip of wine. Yoongi slaps at his back in the most patronizing way you’ve ever seen someone try to save another person from choking.

“Is he okay?” Hoseok asks, completely oblivious.

You shrug. “No. In so many ways.”

Through his choking, Taehyung manages a glare. “Takes one to know one,” he childishly responds, and you roll your eyes at the exact moment Seokjin grins and does a little wiggle, starts up a very enthusiastic fight, fight, fight! chant.

The thing is—Taehyung is drunk. You know he’s drunk, so him overriding Seokjin’s chant with one of his own—kiss, kiss, kiss!—certainly excuses and explains his behavior, it does absolutely nothingto extinguish the wildfire that’s sparked in your belly.

It’s a bad idea.

You and Hoseok have kissed before, when you were twelve and he was thirteen and he landed on you during a game of Spin the Bottle. Everyone around you had erupted into excited jeering, but the two of you shared a mortified look before he shuffled over on his hands and knees looking less like he was about to have his first kiss and more like he was being dragged to his death.

Looking back, that had been offensive, but he’d still puckered his lips and kissed the pout off your face all the same.

So it’s a bad idea, and you should tell Taehyung that the two of you have already kissed and to knock it off, because the second time you kiss shouldn’t only be to shut him up, but you’re both a little drunk in general and a lot drunk on the thought of redemption. If you pursed your lips the way he had fifteen years ago, leaned in close enough for him to smell your perfume, would he wear another mortified look? Or would he—

Fuck it, you think.

Because, once he realizes you’re serious, that you’re actually considering kissing him, the look he wears is not mortified. He looks a little awestruck—slightly dumb, if you’re being honest; definitely dazed—and it takes all that wildfire raging in your gut and unleashes it. Inspires just enough confidence to step closer, lean in; close enough to feel the warmth emanating from Hoseok’s skin, but still far enough for him to pull away if he wanted to.

Hoseok doesn’t want to.

And his hands are already at the small of your back, so it’s so easy to pull you closer. So easy to move them to your hips, grip a little tighter just in case you start to drift away. So easy to press his lips to yours and kiss the absolute life out of you.

You've kissed a lot of people over the span of fifteen years. None of them had lips as soft as Hoseok’s.

He must’ve done a lot of kissing, too, because the way he moves his mouth is sinful. Precise and confident, just a tease of his tongue. You can feel his smile against your lips and it nearly makes your knees buckle. Reminds you, more than the taste and smell of him, that it’s Hoseok you’re kissing, and the thought alone has you gripping at his dress shirt.

Any other time he’d complain about the wrinkles.

Not this one, though.

“Are you nervous?”

The question finds you halfway out of your dress. “Not really,” you answer. “I think my strap is stuck.”

A nervous laugh is punched out of him, but he moves to help you nonetheless. Gently touches your arm and spins you around, fingers ghosting along your skin as he untangles the strap and pushes it off your shoulder. The fabric pools on the floor, emerald and glittering, as you step out of it, and you laugh. It’s been three days since you and Hoseok kissed. The two of you have done a lot of kissing since then, and he’s still so hesitant; eyes still widen every time you lean in close, like he can’t believe it.

Hoseok is still so shy.

“Why would I be nervous?” you ask, because keeping him talking is the best way to keep him out of his head. “It’s you.”

He whimpers, like that’s the worst possible reasoning you could’ve given him. “Yeah, that’s exactly why I’m nervous.”

“It’s okay if you are,” you say, turning around to fully face him, and Hoseok looks struck. Torn between the way his nerves are eating him alive and the sight of you in just a pair of lacy panties. “We can do whatever you want, Seok.”

“I—no.” He swallows hard. “No, no, I think—we should definitely… you know.” You quirk an eyebrow. “My dick is fighting for its life right now.”

You dare a glimpse downward. Hoseok’s dick doesn’t look like it’s fighting for its life, outlined and half-hard in his expensive trousers, but what do you know? “Taehyung asked me about your dick once.”

“What.”

“Well, not exactly. He’d asked me if I ever thought about having sex with you—”

Hoseok whimpers again. “Please do not tell me what your answer was.”

“—and I told him you were like a Ken doll.” At his questioning look, you clarify, “You know. Dickless. Smooth from the waist down.”

“Wow. Why would you tell me that? Not gonna lie, it’s a little emasc—”

“I might need to see it. For science.”

Hoseok startles. “M-my dick?”

“Yeah. For science,” you repeat. “Taehyung is gonna be thrilled. He called your dicklessness, and I quote, an L for the gay community.”

Your best friend seems to ponder this. His hands hover uselessly in the air, and it’s ten seconds, twenty—you think he might call the whole thing off, but then he shrugs and undoes his belt, the metal clanky in his haste. “For the gays,” he explains as he pushes his pants down his thighs.

“Of course,” you agree, nodding seriously. “They deserve it.”

“What else did Taehyung say?”

“Nothing much. Just that we need to get our shit together because we’re wasting some really good windows to fuck against.”

Hoseok doesn’t fuck you against the windows the first time.

The first time is slow and unhurried. Because it’s Hoseok, he lights a candle and the two of you take your time touching, learning, shaking off the dregs of apprehension. He flushes crimson and nearly does a runner anytime something goes less than perfectly, and it’s so endearing you have to stop yourself from sinking through the mattress under the weight of all your affection.

The second time is all raw, desperate need. After a day of sly smiles reserved only for you, Hoseok meets you in the bathroom at the end of another night. There’s a spot of toothpaste on your sleep shirt that he disregards at the sight of your bare legs. His eyes meet yours in the mirror and then there’s only enough time for anticipation to start simmering beneath your skin before he’s moving.

(Technically, the third time is only a few hours later. Just like it has everyday since you arrived, your alarm goes off at six sharp, time for yoga, but instead of ushering you out of bed, Hoseok hits the snooze button and pulls you closer. Fits himself to your back and slides your panties to the side, speaks an is this okay? in his impossibly deep morning voice, and then you’re nodding your head and he’s pushing inside.)

Now, though—

Nerves have been shaken off. Another weird dinner has been sat through to which you’d worn a two-piece outfit, the top cropped just enough to show off a strip of skin—modest enough for the motley crew you share your evenings with, but apparently scandalous enough to drive Hoseok insane. He’s all barely-contained energy beside you, hand gripping your thigh, not paying a lick of attention to the conversation.

You lean over, speak the question just below his ear. “You okay?” Goosebumps erupt all over his skin.

“We need to leave right now.”

“Really? Why? You aren’t having a good time?”

Hoseok makes you pay for your smart mouth. Has you pressed against the expanse of windows in your bedroom, stripped down to just your underwear and the top he insisted you keep on, only your shoulders pressed against the glass. Presses wet, open-mouth kisses along your calves, the sensitive skin of your inner thighs, and then he’s canting your hips forward to nip at you over your underwear. More silk and lace—thin enough to feel the warmth of his breath, then nothing but warmth when he licks a stripe up your folds, spit seeping through the fabric.

“Fuck.”

He does it once, twice more before he leans back, refuses to meet your gaze. Your brows furrow because your hands are tangled in his hair, tugging as you try to get him to look up at you, wanting to see the evidence of your arousal on his face, but then he’s smirking out of the side of his mouth, hands reaching for your underwear.

You register the cold air of the room on your skin before the sound of fabric ripping.

Then you’re saying, “What the fuck, Hobi, did you just—” and he’s laughing as he nods, not a care in the world except getting his mouth back on you. He licks and sucks until you’re nearly trembling with the need to come, begging him to let you, and you think if you were anyone else he’d drag it out longer. Make you beg a little more. But regardless of whatever he’s told himself over the years in order to cope, Hoseok can’t deny you anything, so he presses two fingers inside, right on the spot that whites out your vision.

He touches himself to the sight of your orgasm.

Rolls the condom on. Runs his cock through your folds, tells you to slick him up. As he presses inside again, crowding close, breath fogging the glass behind you, he tells you to thank Taehyung for the idea.

You’re gonna have to thank him for a whole lot more than that.

In hindsight, you should’ve known Namjoon was nothing more than a dirty little schemer.

There’s three days left of your stay, and the question had been nagging at you ever since you cut through the reception area to get to the meditation class you were running late for. Jimin, of course, gave you shit for it: wordlessly, because he was busy checking in a man with far too much luggage. A man who was checking in alone, and that was not a thing, so far as you were aware, so your curiosity was to be expected.

“Can I just ask,” you say, once again in Jimin’s strange little room behind the beaded curtain. “Why a couple’s retreat?”

“Huh?”

“Isn’t it less effective for Seokjin’s weird cult? Like, statistically speaking, you’ve got to be more likely to recruit single people, right?”

“Huh?”

You blink. “What part is confusing you? And don’t say the cult, because I had that pegged on, like, day three.”

“No,” Jimin agrees quickly, “Seokjin is definitely officiating a cult. I just—why do you think this is a couple’s retreat?”

“Uh, because Namjoon said it was? That’s why me and Hoseok are faking being a couple—”

“Were. Were faking.”

“—and it just sort of made sense, considering the people who showed up after us were literally a couple.”

Jimin sighs, schools his expression to the one he always uses when he has to be condescending and speak to you as if you’re a woefully stupid child. “I don’t know who Namjoon is, but I’m assuming he lied in order to get you two to do… exactly what you’ve done.”

“What.”

“This isn’t a couple’s retreat, buttercup, just a regular ol’ wellness one.”

“That Seokjin also uses as his cult recruitment headquarters.”

“Yep.”

“I feel betrayed.”

“Pisces usually do.”

“Excuse me—”

“You’re excused,” he dismisses, shooing you out of his closet.

Despite his innocent nature, Hoseok isn’t nearly as shocked as you to learn Namjoon deceived him.

That’s life, I guess, was all he’d said, the picture of comfort and nonchalance as he lounged in bed, wrapped in a fluffy robe, arm behind his head like a king. You had been shocked—no longer at the betrayal, but at Hoseok’s quick acceptance of it. Hoseok from a month ago would’ve been flustered and on the brink of a meltdown. Hoseok today just shrugs it off.

“I’m just saying.” He dangles a stem of grapes over his mouth like an asshole. “Jimin called it a wellness retreat, right? I didn’t get roped into Seokjin’s cult and we’re… well, whatever we are, so a win is a win. Seems like wellness to me.”

“Whatever we are,” you mimic, pitching Hoseok’s voice up a dozen octaves. “Wow, how romantic.”

Hoseok rolls his eyes, pats the spot next to him on the bed. “If you’d like to come over here, we can have the highly-anticipated ‘what are we’ discussion that no one in the history of human relationships has ever once dreaded having.”

You wave him off. “No need. It’s you, and I trust you, so I don’t think we’re going to go back home and you’re going to write this off as a weird forced proximity thing and ghost me.” You finish the application of your facemask, laughing to yourself at Hoseok’s offended scoff. “Besides, constantly having to defend you from Rose Emoji and Hammer and Sickle Twitter is the pinnacle of devotion and love. That’s the kinda shit that forms a trauma bond.”

“For my peace of mind, then.”

“Fine. Hoseok, I love you dearly as my best friend and I’m probably halfway in love with you as a romantic partner, and even though this vacation has been incredible and rewarding and you are very good at sex, I am also very much looking forward to having my own space again because you are almost impossible to live with.” You roll your lips at the sour expression marring his face. “That said: you still owe me dinner at the Brazilian spot near your office, so I would like it very much if you took me there as a date. You can tell Namjoon I’m your girlfriend if you wish.”

“And are you?”

“Ugh. Of course I am, Hobi. What do you take me for? You think I’m the kind of woman who agrees to spend a month in the rainforest and almost get roped into some sketchy cult with anyone who asks?”

“Well, I don’t know! Maybe!”

“You’re impossible. Do you want to be my boyfriend or not?”

At this, Hoseok’s face lights up so bright it puts the sun to shame. Smiles so big you can hardly believe it. “I would love nothing more.”

During your last group meal, Seokjin invites the new guy to join you.

Taehyung is enthralled immediately, gesturing for him to take the empty seat to his left. “Hello, nice to meet you! I’m Kim Taehyung and this is Min Yoongi. Are you here for the wellness retreat part or the cult part?”

Seokjin chokes on a slice of mango.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Kim Taehyung. I’m Park Bogum,” the man responds. “I’m here for the cult part.”

Seokjin promptly stops choking.

Saying goodbye to this place, these people, is bittersweet.

The last four weeks have undoubtedly been the weirdest of your life, but they’ve more than made up for it with what you’ve been given in return: a blossoming relationship with Hoseok, Taehyung and Yoongi’s friendship. Even Jimin and Jungkook come to see you off, and Jimin surprises you by wrapping you in a tight hug, assuring you that you’ll still be his second-favorite Pisces long after you’re gone.

“Wow, rude. Who’s the first?”

“Yoongi.”

“Yoongi? How is he your favorite? He doesn’t talk!”

Jimin smirks, smug and patronizing. “Exactly. Have a safe trip, buttercup.”

Jungkook, on the other hand, doesn’t say much at all. You suspect he showed up only to look hot and catapult Hoseok into his final sexuality crisis, and that suspicion is confirmed when he leans against the wall and pushes his hair away from his forehead. The sound that comes out of Hoseok is part whimper, part pain and suffering, and truly catastrophic for his ego.

“Get it together,” you plead, but it falls on deaf ears. Hoseok is in a Jungkook-induced haze until you’re halfway to the airport, Taehyung chattering the entire way.

And then—

And then.

“Well, that was fucking weird, huh?” Yoongi asks.

Hoseok is running late.

He’s gotten better at equalizing his work-life balance since returning from your trip, but he still gets held up sometimes. A lot to catch up on, he’d said, and you can understand that. He’d spent his first week back doing nothing but haranguing Namjoon, so that surely ate up a lot of time.

Still, he’s never been quite this late.

The waitstaff are looking at you with concern. They used to look at you only to see if your water needed topping up, so this is an unfortunate development, especially for someone who looks as you currently do. Any person in this overpriced Brazilian steakhouse would be honored to even sit at the same table as you, let alone be able to call you their date, so Hoseok really has a lot of nerve.

You’re halfway to telling him as much over a very angry text message when he appears in front of you, face flushed, chest heaving, hairline dotted with sweat. “Sorry I’m late,” he apologizes, leaning down to press a kiss to your cheek. “Got a little caught up.”

“No shit,” you whisper-yell, “that waiter over there looked like he was about ready to call the cops on me. I probably can’t even afford the water in this place.”

Hoseok grimaces. “In my defense, I have a very good reason.”

“Oh yeah?” you retort, crossing your arms over your chest. “And what is that?”

Wordlessly, Hoseok hands over a garishly orange shopping bag emblazoned with a very familiar logo and brand name. Suddenly, it feels impossible to breathe. “You didn’t. Hobi, tell me you didn’t—”

“You know how much bullshit you have to go through for one of those things? God, I had to put in a request. Not to mention it was like fourteenseparate credit checks…”

You tune him out. Instead, you peek inside the bag with what you can only describe as pure dread. Not at the implication, because that has you thrumming with joy and affection, but at the cost of—

“You got me a Birkin.”

Hoseok looks at you like you’ve sprouted a second head. “Um. That’s what you said you wanted, right?”

“You said you weren’t spending that much money on anyone who isn’t your future spouse.”

The look doesn’t budge. “Yeah? I’m clearly not following.”

“When did you put in the request?” If your voice is audibly waterlogged, Hoseok doesn’t mention it, but you can feel the tears pooling at your lash line nonetheless.

The confusion finally clears and gives way to another brilliant smile. A little bashful, too, because he hides behind the menu and refuses to look at you. Says something you don’t catch, can’t hear over the dim chatter of this restaurant, and he groans in pleased faux-annoyance when you tell him to repeat himself.

“I said… I put it in the night you kissed me.”

It feels like you’ve been punched in the chest. “You’ve known that long?”

And Hoseok—Hoseok ducks behind the menu again, but this time you can hear him loud and clear: “I’ve known a lot longer than that.”

author's note pt. 2: if you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading! i really hope you enjoyed this. as always, any reblogs are greatly appreciated and my inbox is always open for feedback. ♡

#hoseok x reader #hoseok x you #hoseok x y/n #jhope x reader #hobi x reader #hoseok fluff #hoseok smut #hoseok imagine #hoseok fanfic #jhope smut #jhope fanfic #bts x reader #bts smut #bts imagines #bts scenarios #bts fanfiction #bts fanfic

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n3ptoonz · 5 months

Note

Could you do some mk Headcanons (anyone you feel motivated to write about) where their meet the dark version of reader from Dark!Shang Tsung’s timeline, maybe their conflicted because their version of the reader died

randomly selected mk1 character hcs: how kitana, kenshi, mileena, scorpion, li mei, and shang tsung react to the version of their s/o's dark clone post death

this is creative asf ty anon 🫢

warnings: canon typical violence and angst that's about it (gonna hit y'all with the punk tactics)

the dialogue portions are meant to be read in the context of before you and character fight

enjoy!

Kitana

When you appeared in her line of vision, she was immediately heartbroken. She couldn't believe her late partner came back like this after so many years

You died sacrificing yourself for her to live in this timeline. you worked for the royal family for all these years, just to have to take an arrow to the chest due to an assassination attempt

Your skin now had cracks all over it and your eyes glowed red, standing by dark shang tsung's side with a mocking smirk behind your mask. Kitana could barely recognize you and you were only intrigued that she wasn't dead in this timeline

Kitana looked at you with tears in her eyes. The same person who took an arrow so she could live on. She had already taken out clones that looked like her, hell even ones that looked like her own sister and mother. Second pain to that was seeing you approach her with mischievous and evil intent.

"You...gave your life for me...and now you live on as an evil pawn for a man like Shang Tsung?"

"I did? What an idiot. In my timeline, I'm the one who assassinated you, and I still have no remorse."

Kenshi Takahashi

Post losing his eyesight, he could only ever think about how he lost you. How he wasn't quick enough in getting you out of being involved with the Yakuza. How he was one step behind

You died a brutal death simply because you were his partner, and they couldn't risk leaving you alive to tell the story of them torturing you for information, so they took care of it themselves to send a message. And boy, did it send a message

So now, in dark Shang Tsung's timeline, you are resentful of him and want your revenge. However, it was very conflicting for Kenshi: Did he take this version of you out now because he knows you don't actually feel like this? Or...die by your clone's hands to be reunited with the love of his life?

Kenshi stood before you with Sento in hand, but frozen in place. The sound of your voice, the complete change in your demeanor, and even down to how you used to walk (he always knew when you were coming because of the way your footsteps sounded), he was utterly devastated. He only had himself to blame for this moment in time.

"I'm...I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. It's all my fault."

"No need to apologize, past love, I took you out in my timeline, now I've come to finish the job in yours."

Mileena

You died in Mileena's arms. How? Well, you were a little too late in grabbing the serum that calms her down and she went crazy on the closest person to her, literally

Upon barely clinging onto dear life you were able to inject her, but you had lost too much blood. So by the time she came to you were gone. She hadn't cried and wailed this much since her father

Now, as she pointed her Sai at your neck, she didn't know what to do. Even if she turned right now, she couldn't handle killing you in the same exact way two times in a row. Even if evil you was trying to kill her

Mileena breathed heavily as she could feel herself turning, desperately trying to stop herself from mauling you to death. But the way you taunted her made half of her want to turn even quicker, knowing full well this is the dark version of you spewing nonsense to piss her off.

"Come on, Empress, turn. Rip my face off like you did before."

"I don't want to...but if my hand is forced, so be it!"

Scorpion

You guessed it. The classic partner and son loss. You fought tirelessly to defend your home and the Shirai Ryu, but it just wasn't enough. Kuai was also just one step too late

Once he got to you, there lied your lifeless body clutching your son in your arms with a sword through your back. If he just hadn't gone on that mission that day when you said you were worried of being attacked...

Now, the dark version of you relished in the pain and sorrow in his eyes. In your timeline, he was the one that died and you trained your son to be a killing machine

Scorpion's head hung low upon hearing what you've done in your timeline. All this time he promised if he could just see you again, he would apologize profusely and even give his own life for you to come back. But looking at you now, seeing you again with an evil smile and empty eyes you've never worn before made him want to take it all back.

"Want to know something funny? You were the one that died in front of me, and I got our son to do it."

"Training Satoshi to be a killing machine is a sin that not even hellfire can take care of."

Li Mei

You died while on a mission in Li Mei's place to find and gather information that would be of use to the royal house and their next moves on taking down a clan that was after it

Li Mei hasn't properly recovered since. Even to the point where she'll go on solo missions just to avoid anybody else getting hurt. She took extra shifts and extended her personal training time just to keep her mind, but at the end of the day she still crumbled

Now the evil version of you isn't even in the Sun Do. In fact, you actively try to take them down every chance you get just to get to the Li Mei in your timeline--which worked

Li Mei took a fighting stance as soon as you showed up. A piece of her heart broke at the thought of intentionally having to hurt you, but she knew you were long gone now with no shot of saving grace. You dangled your weapon in front of her and showed not one sign of fear.

"You were an esteemed member of the Sun Do, and now you are proudly a disgrace."

"I'll do it again one thousand times over and you can't stop me."

Shang Tsung

Surprisingly, he didn't betray you or kill you himself. You captured the sorcerer's heart, and that was the problem. His followers didn't like how much attention you got, so they formed an organization and took you out when they followed you on a mission

Since then he was on a rampage. He wreaked as much havoc as he could, convinced it was some outside source that held something against him. He only got stronger with anger and deep rooted sadness he couldn't process

Now you blamed him for letting you die when he could've prevented it. Hell, sometimes you felt like it was his idea and his way of getting rid of you as if you were a hindrance to his plans

Shang Tsung couldn't believe his eyes. You, who started walking towards him after you linked arms with his own dark clone. Every emotion he had ever felt bubbled to the surface the second he saw your face. Hurt, anger, sorrow, but mostly confusion. However, knowing the kind of man Shang Tsung was, he wouldn't think twice to rid of your evil clone for good.

"Whoever took you from me will pay, but I will kill you myself before I die by your tainted hands."

"Aw, how the evil sorcerer calls the dark soul 'tainted'"

thank you for reading! man this was SOMETHING but it was fun i don't typically write angst

#n3ptoonz #mk1 #mortal kombat #mortal kombat 1 #mortal kombat dialogues #angst #kitana #mk kitana #kenshi takahashi #mileena #scorpion mk #li mei #shang tsung #headcanon #mortal kombat headcanons #kuai liang #mk x reader #mortal kombat imagine #mk imagine

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morganbritton132 · 1 year

Note

Ik you said some of Eddie’s “fans” don’t like Steve but do you think any of Eddie’s fan would go out of their way to harass Steve purposely? Either out in public, through his Facebook, or even like physical mail? Like how would Eddie even react to that especially after the doctor’s office video debacle?

I absolutely think that some people would go out of their way to harass Steve.

Eddie uses his socials to showcase his life so you get a very real and authentic view of who he is, and sometimes you get even more than he intended to show because he never remembers to end his live streams. I think it’s inevitable that some fans are going to feel like they know him personally, but it becomes a problem when they think they know what’s best for Eddie.

People loved Steve when Eddie was posting funny videos about his clumsy husband. They loved him more when Eddie got serious and spoke about Steve’s health issues. It was only once Steve stopped being perfect that they started speaking up.

And though, it is few. They speak loudly.

Steve’s not on any social media other than Facebook, but his Facebook page is private. He doesn’t accept friend requests from people he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t use Facebook Messenger because he refuses to download the app.

What Steve does get on Facebook is a lot of people tagging him in posts about how much they hate him or how awful he is. He gets a lot of ads on his timeline with TMZ articles about how Eddie should end his marriage, and he gets people commenting under them knowing that Steve sees them.

And it’s upsetting, but the letters are worse.

The first one is mailed to his school. It wouldn’t be that hard to figure out where Steve taught. Some of his students are in Eddie’s comments and some post videos of themselves wearing their school colors.

Steve shreds the first letter.

He doesn’t know what to do with it and he doesn’t know what to say when Eddie asks him later that day how school was. He swallows hard and says, “It was fine. Nothing interesting happened.”

And Eddie smiles, and lie doesn’t feel so bad.

The second letter is mailed to their house.

It’s sitting on top of a stack of bills with his name printed neatly on top when he gets home from work. Eddie mentions that he got something from a former student, and Steve smiles even as he reads the first of many hateful paragraphs, and he says, “Thank you.”

This letter stays neatly folded in his nightstand with the third letter, and the fourth that details how they want Steve to have a seizure and die. He never says anything. He doesn’t even know how to begin to have that conversation, and he doesn’t want to.

He doesn’t want Eddie to be upset, so – so why is Steve so upset when he comes back inside after taking their trash to the curb and sees Eddie holding them. Why is he angry? Why is his ears ringing when Eddie asks how long this has been going on, and Steve just snaps, “Why are you going through my things? Who – who gave you the right?”

“I was checking to see if you needed a refill on your migraine medication before I go out of town,” Eddie snapped back, yanking the letters away when Steve reached for them, “What the fuck, Steve? How long has this been going on for?”

“Eddie, stop-“

“Were you planning on telling me that someone is sending you death threats?”

“No.”

Eddie stops long enough for Steve to snatch the letters back and rip them to shreds like he should have done in the first place. Steve’s angry with himself for getting caught and for the sad kicked puppy look on Eddie’s face, and if he wasn’t so – Why is he crying? He’s not even upset so why is he crying? Why can’t – “What did I do wrong? I don’t understand why people don’t like me."

“Stevie,” Eddie says, voice weak the way it is when he’s trying not to cry and this is Steve’s fault too. He didn’t want to upset Eddie and now he’s going to cry. “Baby, you didn’t do anything wrong. You’re perfect, Stevie. You’re perfect for me and if some – some fucking asshole with stamps can’t see that then that’s on them. Not you.”

“You don’t – no one deserves this shit, okay?” Eddie tells him, practically begs him to understand that. “This is serious, Steve. They have our address and they’re making threats. You can’t hide something like this. You have to understand that.”

“I didn’t want to upset you.”

“I’m upset, babe. I’m upset that my so-called fans are treating you like this and that you’ve looked so miserably lately, and you felt like you couldn’t tell me why. You are more important to me than any of this, and if I have to stop doing shows or posting online than-“

“No,” Steve snaps at him, rubbing at his eyes. “I don’t want you to stop, Eddie. I don’t want this to be another thing you can’t do because of me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, Ed. I don’t know, but you stopped touring because of me. You can’t kiss your husband at the top of a rollercoaster like you want to because my head’s too fucked up. You can’t even sleep half the time because you can’t trust me to not leave. You can’t have flashing lights at your shows, or watch fun movies, or –“

“Steve, I don’t give a fuck about those things. Do you think I’m unhappy?”

“The whole world thinks you’re unhappy, Eddie!”

“I don’t care about the world, Steve. I care about you.”

There comes a point where the conversation fizzles out and the anger leaves, but the sadness remains. Steve goes to bed because there’s nothing else to do, and Eddie goes to his studio.

He sets up his phone and he records a short Tiktok saying, “The meet-and-greet in Indianapolis this Friday is canceled and I won’t be attending the Corroded Coffin concert this weekend or any following weekend indefinitely. You can thank the fucker sending death threats to my family.”

#I left out someone confronting Steve in public because that’s terrifying and also I didn’t read the prompt very well #eddie munson tiktok saga #steve harrington #eddie munson

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flowercitti · 8 months

Note

Hi!! I loved your Tav/Astarion fic where they draw his face, it was so good and tender ; ; could i request something sweet where Astarion does something selfless for Tav? presumably after the graveyard scene in Act 3 where he's finally free to be himself! thank you!

Thank you sm im glad you enjoyed my other fic! 🌸🤍 And thank you sm for sending a request! Took me a little while to figure out what i wanted to do, but I hope this fits the theme!

Fluff/Angst/Gender-Neutral Tav

Astarion taking care of a sick Tav post-canon.

🌸

It has been a very long time since Astarion has cared for another living soul outside of his own.

What would he have done with compassion during those two centuries of torture? What good would it do him, to find himself caring, to find a morsel of kindness in his rotting soul? It would not have allowed him to escape Cazador, it would not have stopped the ache in his bones, the gnawing pain that ate away at his un-beating heart. Any softness inside of him quickly died with his screams of agony—or perhaps it had died the moment his heart stopped and his throat was ripped out, a corpse left to bleed out into the unforgiving dirt.

Astarion had woken up in his own grave, choking on congealed blood and forced to climb out through the dirt until his nails had fallen off. When he found Cazador there waiting for him, he knew that his life had ended a second time.

All he had was himself—trapped in his own body as he was, barely scraps of a person, skin and flesh that was named but left vacant.

He did not care for his supposed siblings. There was no point in feeling a thing for the poor, pitiful creatures that were just as trapped as he was. Unwilling perpetrators in his torture, but perpetrators nonetheless—sorry sacks of flesh that were just as fucked as he was. He thought—knew, for a long time, that none of them were going to make it out of this.

They were going to die here, enslaved and starving and empty, or tortured for the rest of eternity.

It was death that Astarion yearned for most after so long, when freedom seemed like the dreams of someone far younger and more naive than he was. It was barely a decade before he gave up, before he knew there was no point anymore. His body had been twisted, changed, and something wicked and burning pulsed through his veins—like the thick sludge of tar, like the foul stench of sewer water and waste.

Whoever Astarion was before—they were long gone now.

There was nothing left, no family, no friends, no lovers that lasted longer than a night. Perhaps he had a mother, perhaps not. He couldn’t remember after long enough, drowning in a cloud of pain, his mind swimming, thoughts and memories sliding out of his hands like water. Flashes of soft hands, of a motherly voice and the hum of a gentle melody to greet him at the deepest recesses of his mind. Maybe he had just come up with such a thing for comfort, he doesn’t know.

Days would pass in episodes of complete dissociation, his mind so utterly disconnected from his own body, eyes only catching flickers of lights and colors before he retreated again. His body would move and he would not know why, he would hear voices and he could never make them out, his mouth would move with noise that he could not hear.

Cazador hated it most—when Astarion was too gone to feel it.

“My sweet Astarion. Where have you gone, boy?”

Astarion was not sweet—his flesh felt putrid, like the peeling of rotten fruit, like he were flayed open and bare for picking. His mouth tasted like the blood of rodents and maggots, or the spit and release of another body he could not remember the face of. He felt like a retched thing, his blood poisonous and his mind infested, a disgusting thing that Cazador owned—a kept thing that did not remember what it felt like to be alive.

Other times, Astarion felt everything in bright, startling clarity. Every starburst of pain, every touch, every drop of his own blood spilling onto the floor. Cazador loved it when he screamed, when he was brought to pathetic tears, too broken to scramble for a semblance of dignity—but never so pitiful as to bother with begging. It would have done nothing, would have granted him no mercy, and would have only served to please Cazador’s sadistic whims. It was a lesson he had learned early, that he held no power, no control. What was done to his body was done, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Inescapable—pressing over his skin like a sticky film, keeping him trapped, keeping him present when all he wanted to do was slip away. It was a cycle, unending, and it went on for over two bloody centuries.

Any remnants left of Astarion’s heart had been carved out and eagerly feasted upon before his own eyes. He believed that he was never going to get it back, that he wouldn’t even want it, should it be offered. He had no use for it now, had no use for more weakness, more pain.

And then he finally tasted freedom again—and then there was Tav.

After two centuries of pure shit, of torture and existing as the barest sliver of a person, Astarion began to remember what it felt like to care.

It was fucking terrifying. It was exhilarating, gratifying, like waking anew. Astarion hasn’t even felt alive in the past two-hundred years, and now he feels like he’s been washed clean and left a different person. Hopefully for the better, this time around, and so much of it is due to Tav and their persistence. They helped him wipe Cazador’s sorry face off the planet, and stayed at his side every step away, patient and kind when Astarion didn’t deserve a bit of it.

He cares about them, even when he had thought he’d forgotten how to, and he can’t help but be grateful for even having the chance to try.

And right now—Tav is sick.

They’ve barely left their bed in two days now, curled under thick furs and shivering, little more than a head that peaks out from under their cocoon. They only leave to piss or puke their guts out, before crawling back under the comforters and passing out.

It isn’t fatal, and it will pass within the coming week, even with the discomfort and pain. Tav is resilient and tough, has been through far too much to be taken by simple illness. Astarion knows that they’ll make it out of this just fine, that they’ll be back on their feet soon. They don’t need a bedside nurse, and surely not in the form of Astarion of all people—but.

He’s cradling a bowl of soup in his hands. Its heat is stark against the natural frigidness of his skin, and the chicken broth makes his stomach turn, food that would expel itself immediately should Astarion venture for a taste. But the soup is for Tav, prepared to the best of Astarion’s ability, and surely edible. He hopes.

He places it on Tav’s bedside table, perching himself delicately on the edge of the bed.

“You haven’t eaten anything today, darling.” He says quietly, his hand brushing gently over Tav’s shivering shoulder. It’s nearly noon now, but the room is bathed in pitch black to protect Astarion from the sun’s rays. He misses the warmth of it, now that he is unable to traverse under its watchful eye—but he dispels the thoughts quickly lest it sour his mood.

Tav makes a small noise, turning over to face Astarion, blinking up at him blearily. Their eyes are glassy, their face tacky with sweat, lashes fluttering as they try focus.

“Huh?” They mumble dumbly, tongue thick in their mouth, a hitch catching in their throat that’s immediately followed by wracking coughs.

Astarion winces, placing a hand on their forehead and almost flinching away at the temperature, “You’re nearly scorching, dear.”

Tav blinks, their brows furrowing, “Thank you.”

Astarion resists the urge to allow his head to sink down into his hands.

He only huffs instead, “Come now, I need you sitting up for this. If you spill all this soup on yourself after I spent so much time preparing it, I’ll be very—upset with you.” The words are stilted, far softer than the terse tone he was going for. True, genuine threats used to slip off his tongue so easily, even in regards to Tav—if he was pissed off enough. Now, he just sounds like a doting hen—a loving husband, maybe.

But Tav looks nearly worried, though moving easily with Astarion’s urging hands, propped up against the headboard, cushioned with pillows.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Tav asks suddenly, their hand wrapping around one of Astarion’s wrists. They hold him there, a feverish looks in their eyes. “You—you haven’t fed in a while.” They pout, tugging at their shirt collar, as if they were preparing to bare their neck right then and there.

There’s something that twists behind Astarion’s ribs—tight and heart-shaped.

He pushes Tav’s shirt back up, lingering briefly over the warmth of their skin, “You’re sick, darling. I’m not feeding off of you when you’re like this. I shan’t starve without you, I promise.” He says lightly, taking the cooling bowl of soup in his hands, ignoring the violent churn of his gut. Tav looks nearly teary-eyed when he turns back to them, their lips twisted in discomfort, their gaze burning with fever. Astarion sighs quietly, taking the side of their face in one palm, silently delighted when they sink in to the gentle touch.

“Come now, don’t look so sad. How about this—I—I’ll feed you this time, hm?” His thumb traces over their cheekbone, “You needn’t be the one looking after me.”

Tav sniffles, “I like taking care of you.”

Astarion takes a measured breath, trying not to stare blankly at such a bold-faced admission. He thinks Tav may come closer to killing him than Cazador ever did.

“Yes, yes, I know dear. Now eat, and once you’re all better, you can be your perfect, doting self again.” He pulls his hand away reluctantly, but the warmth of Tav’s skin stays pressed into his palm.

But Tav seems to hum happily at the thought, gratefully accepting the spoonful of soup that Astarion brings to their lips. They make no obvious face of disgust, so Astarion decides that it truly is edible. That, or they’re too delirious from fever to even notice—but they eat the whole bowl regardless. They can barely keep their eyes open by the time its empty, their chest rising and dropping with slow, deep breaths.

“Lets lay you back down before you pass out. You’ll whine about the crick in your neck if you fall asleep like this.” Astarion tells them, bullying them back under the covers as they groan sadly, looking far too small and breakable against the large mattress.

“I feel awful.”

Astarion swallows, gently brushing his knuckles over their forehead. “You’ll get better soon, love. You needn’t worry.” The words sound as if they were meant more for him, a strange tightness in his throat.

He knows that they will be fine, he knows that. They’ve both been through worse. And yet—

He leans down, lips brushing over their forehead, far too hot and sweaty. He lingers for a moment longer anyways, listening to the soft murmur of contentment that leaves Tav’s mouth.

“I love you.” They mutter drowsily, their eyes flickering open for just a moment before they slip closed again.

Astarion breathes out, weak and shuddering.

“I love you too, darling. Now sleep, I’ll be back soon enough.”

🌸

Thank you sm for reading! If you wish to send me Astarion-flavored requests for fic or headcanons, they’re still open! ☺️🤍

#my fanfiction #astarion #baldurs gate tav #baldurs gate 3 #bg3 tav #bg3 astarion #baldur’s gate 3 #astarion x tav #ask me

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jaimeslanisters · 1 month

Text

the pawn in every lover’s game (part fourteen)

Aemond Targaryen x Lannister!Reader

When you’re ten, your father sends you to King’s Landing to befriend a princess and woo a prince. A lioness growing up amongst dragons is a dangerous thing indeed.

crossposted on ao3 masterlist word count: 16.1k notes: posting. so i can finally beat those death allegations... 🙏🏼 please take this extra long chapter as my apology if any of you are still around

The wedding of Aegon and Helaena Targaryen ends with as much fanfare as it had began with. Buried underneath the cheers and claps, you can still distinctly hear a choir singing a hymn, its lyrics completely muffled by the sound of revelry still reverberating within the Dragonpit. You’ve long since stopped clapping, having decided to at least save your palms some of the misery, but the rest of the room seemingly does not seem to mind the sting, the sounds of their claps shaking the room like thunder. From your vantage point, you can see how Helaena’s smile tightens and how Aegon’s eyes seem to grow increasingly more and more distressed. Their hands are squeezing each other so tight that even from your vantage point, you can see how their pale knuckles whiten even further from their tight grip on one another. They look beautiful, striking and unnatural, but all you can see when you look up at them are the ghosts of the children they used to be, dressed up and lovely but painfully unprepared.

Part of you wants to usher them off the altar, to save them just a little of the embarrassment, to shield them from the all too piercing gazes of the capitol.

A larger part of you, however, knows that this is only a taste of what they will have to face in the future. Sooner rather than later, the entirety of the realms would be looking to them for direction, for wisdom, and for strength, and they would all trace it all back to this singular moment in time. The historians, the maesters, the singers, and the storytellers would all look back to this one day, to this mere stretch of an hour, and say that this is where the tone of their reign was decided. It’s monumental. It’s historic.

It’s no wonder the Queen looks as stressed as she does. It’s a miracle you haven’t ripped your own hair out.

Just as the cheers begin to die down, you sense movement out of the corner of your eye and you turn your head in time to see Ser Criston nod to the Lord Hand, murmuring something quietly in response. In the next breath, Ser Criston moves up towards the altar, bowing his head to Aegon and Helaena as he does. Behind him, other kingsguards move up to follow behind, their white cloaks starched to perfection so they practically shine with a pale glow from the sunlight filtering in through the windows in the domed roof. They form a wall around the two Targaryens, leaving space for them to remain visible to the rest of the Dragonpit but close enough that no attackers would stand any chance of getting close enough to do damage. It’s a shockingly familiar picture, one that you’ve seen countless times before though not in recent memory.

It’s King Viserys and Queen Alicent, hand in not quite loving hand, their twin crowns perched delicately onto their heads as they stand proud before their people.

Almost.

Not quite but maybe just enough.

“The Lord Hand has an eye for the dramatics,” you murmur to Aemond, not taking your eyes away from the altar, from the show of extravagance.

Aemond hums, dropping his arm down to scoop your’s up. You hide a smile at his show of affection, however small it may be. “He was the one to insist on the coronet. Mother was the one to push for the wedding to be in the Dragonpit rather than the throne room. The throne room would be limited to only nobility and even then, only the highest echelon. Here - thousands can fit.”

You nod, glancing over your shoulder. In the very back, some people have started to move towards the wide open doors, sensing that the ceremony has ended and seeking a quick escape, but the vast majority of people stay, still clambering to catch a glimpse of the royals. The mass of the smallfolk are held at bay by a wall of City’s Watch, their cloaks forming a golden wall between the nobility and the rest of King’s Landing.

Like the curtains of a playhouse stage.

This was a performance. A beautiful lie where the actors would play their roles to perfection or fall to shambles in front of the world. Endless and endless roles and parts to play, endless scenes to perform. It would never end. It couldn’t.

Smallfolk didn’t care about who sat the Iron Throne. They didn’t care about which Lord ruled over them, didn’t care whose birthright was being taken, whose ruling right was being usurped. They cared about being fed. They cared about surviving the winter. They cared about their sons growing into old and grey men instead of dying young in a nameless field and their daughters marrying good, kind men.

They cared about their stories - their pretty little stories they could pass onto their children and their children’s children. They cared about Jonquil and her fool of a knight. They cared about Symeon Star-Eye, about Lann the Clever, about Brandon the Builder.

They would care about this - about the beautiful Targaryen maiden with emeralds in her hair and amethysts in her eyes marrying her equally beautiful brother, the yet uncrowned king. They would care about the dragon and his treasure.

They would care about the performance.

The performance was all that mattered.

“All the world’s a stage,” you murmur quietly and Aemond lets out a small noise, prompting you to tear your eyes away from the goldcloaks to peer up at him. Even as the guards begin to prompt all of the nobles to start to be ushered out of Dragonpit, to be guided through the tunnels, he looks down at you, focusing his attention solely on your words. It warms something up in you and you resist the urge to curl into him, tuck yourself into his side.

“It’s a quote,” you say, smiling slightly thinking about your little sister with her ink stained fingers. “Jeyne… She loves plays, you see. Always reading them, writing them. She used to make me and Tyshara act in them even. There’s a playwright she enjoys. It’s a quote from one of his works, I believe. She convinced me to go see it with her in Lannisport a few months ago.”

“You used to act in her plays?” He questions, gently pulling you along as the guards begin to grow a little more insistent. He walks slowly, keeping pace with you, and the two of you trail behind the rest of the wedding party, behind them but leading the rest of the nobility.

You mockingly frown at him. “What are you trying to imply, my prince? I was a once-in-a-generation talent. Joy still talks about my turn as a knight, a queen, and as a lady in a lake. In the same play.”

“Really?” Aemond says flatly, raising his eyebrow. “I remember a lady always finding my hiding spot in the library and somehow always being surprised to find me. You stopped being convincing after the first few times.”

You tilt your head up to hold your chin high even as your cheeks flare with embarrassed heat. “It worked, didn’t it? Seems like I was something of a leading star.”

“Your audience was a lonely ten-year-old boy and you were the prettiest girl I had ever seen, let alone the prettiest girl to ever talk to me. You could have convinced me that you were Balerion the Black Dread reborn if you had set your mind to it.”

A laugh bursts its way out of you, loud enough that Otto and Alicent turn around to peer curiously at the two of you, one smiling and the other frowning. Part of you wants to seize up at the scrutiny but a bigger part of you wants to stay in this moment and curl up in the warm glow in your chest.

Anything to distract you from the night ahead.

From all the nights ahead.

“Seems a shame I didn’t realize my skills,” you muse, pulling yourself away from the anxious thoughts that creep at the edges of your subconscious. “Then again, if ten-year-old me had known her own power, I’m afraid she might have grown drunk off of it. Who knows what she would have ended up doing?”

Aemond smiles, shaking his head slightly. “Perhaps she would have grown bold enough to woo a prince?”

You laugh again, gleefully, and this time Daeron stops in front of his mother to look back at you. You wave him off, smiling at him, but not before he grins at the two of you, so clearly pleased by the closeness you’re sharing with his brother.

The two of you settle into the silence and, once you step into tunnels leading deeper and deeper into the Dragonpit, you pull his arm closer to you as you follow the blend of goldcloaks and kingsguard. The tunnels are brighter than they were the last time you had entered these halls, when you had followed Helaena deep into the bowels of the pit itself. New lit sconces have been placed into the walls, carefully carved into the stone so they cast the light of the flames over the uneven ground. Even still, you’re careful to watch your step and keep your grip tight on Aemond’s arm, using him to balance yourself in case you misstep and stumble into a dip in the ground.

Somehow, it’s louder the deeper you go into the tunnels, the stone walls amplifying the footsteps of thousands above of you until it’s almost like there are waves crashing on the shore over your head, torrential and powerful. It reverbrates and shakes to the point that dust falls off the rocky ceiling, covering your dress with a thin layer, dulling the starched white into a yellowed shade. You’re not the only one suffering if the cries of the noblemen behind you are anything to go by and you can even feel it on your skin, feel little rocks falling into your hair.

The tunnels have never been so crowded, so full, before.

But there’s a strange emptiness in the air.

“Where did the dragons go?” You ask Aemond. As impossible as it would be, a part of you feels like you’ve snuck into the tunnels, even surrounded as you are by everyone in King’s Landing. It almost feels like you could turn a corner and run into the massive beasts that call this hill home, as if you’ll stumble onto them and have a dragon breathe flame onto you for the injury of trespassing.

Aemond tilts his head. “Dreamfyre and Sunfyre are waiting at another exit to take Helaena and Aegon to the Red Keep for a final procession in the sky. I believe Daeron has Tessarion housed somewhere near the Kingswood though she might have left if she grew bored of the cattle that they got her.”

“And Vhagar is at her roost, I assume?” You ask and Aemond spares you a small smirk.

“Why so inquisitive? Are you interested in meeting her, my lady?”

You miss your next step and only your hand curled around Aemond’s bicep keeps you upright. You right yourself fast enough but not so quick that you don’t hear his stifled laugh, a quick and quiet little thing.

Cheeks embarrassingly hot, you swallow thickly, holding back your immediate and empathetic ‘No’. It is a poorly kept secret that you aren’t fond of the Targaryens’ sigil and Aemond would love the chance to push and prod at this side of you. You weren’t hateful or even open about your aversion. You have just never once jumped at the chance to get close to any dragon, no matter the countless opportunities you’ve been given over the years, and you would shy away from offers to see them.

Helaena never failed to offer to bring you along with her to the Dragonpit and you would occasionally accompany her even if you would always beg off on actually going in with her. Aemond had only ever made one explicit offer, back when he was only weeks into having had claimed Vhagar, and you had been humiliatingly forceful in your denial. It was an embarrassing memory to look back on, one that you always cringed away from even thinking about. Even now, you can remember how you had stammered out a no, citing a recent newfound fear of heights and a mystery injury that had rendered you incapable of climbing up the tangled web of ropes that constituted Vhagar’s harness. You had been petrified to hurt his feelings, so soon after Driftmark, but Aemond had taken your rejection remarkably well even if he had looked insufferably amused by your poor excuses.

Yet another mark against you as an actress.

Aemond had never asked you again though he was remarkably transparent in his desire for you to meet Vhagar. He’d always announce when he was going to go see her, making sure that you were in earshot, and, once, when you were both years younger, he had made a grand show of having commissioned a large saddle of Vhagar - large enough to fit two.

His brothers, surprisingly, were less single-minded in their attempts to convince you to warm up to their sigil. Daeron, in the early years when Tessarion had been comparatively small and he would come to visit, would cheerfully invite you to come feed her with him, seemingly oblivious to the way you would grimace at the thought of seeing a dragon feast on a goat again as you had as a little girl. Aegon was, shockingly enough, the Targaryen least invested in your interest in dragons. While he was always prone to bragging about Sunfyre’s beauty, he hoarded moments with him to himself, zealously protecting his time with his dragon with such fervor that one would almost think that he was paranoid someone would steal Sunfyre out from under him.

No, your lack of fondness for the dragons the Targaryens rode was hardly a secret.

But it feels wrong to say that now.

Now, when all of your intentions had been laid bare at Aemond’s feet. Now, when you’re holding onto Aemond without nervous fear creeping up your throat, without the anxieties of wondering if he wanted you half as much as you wanted him.

No, you couldn’t say that.

“Perhaps,” you start slowly, the words dragging themselves out of you slowly, sluggishly as if your own body was rebelling against what you were about to say. “I would want to meet her. I… I imagine it’s time I see her.”

You feel a jerk on your arm and you stop short, turning to gape at Aemond. He’s completely stopped in the middle of the hallway, staring so intently at you that for a moment, you fear that your very skin will light on fire where his eyes trail on you. You’ve pulled away from him slightly, the most space between your bodies since you had stood in your place next to him during the ceremony, but your hand is still loosely gripping his arm, a tether between the two of you.

“Do you mean that, my lady?” He asks softly, as if he’s scared you’ll take it back, as if he’s nervous you’ll snatch your own words out of the air and push him away.

Around you, your guards slide to a stop behind the pair of you, a crimson wall between the two of you and the rest of the nobility approaching. There are only moments until they’ll be pressing down on your sacred space.

But you don’t look over at them. You look at him.

You feel like a ten-year-old again, sitting at your table in the library, eyes wide as you stare up at Aemond. If you try, you can almost erase the grown man in front of you and slot in a ten-year-old boy, his head wrapped in bandages, his mouth set in a determined line. He had been holding books in his arms, tight to his chest like a shield to protect himself with.

Had he been nervous? You can’t quite remember. Maybe he had been shaking. Maybe his teasing smile after had been hiding the hurt in his eyes. You can’t remember, can’t remember anything but the way it had felt as if your own stomach had dropped to the very ground at the mere idea of approaching the Queen of All Dragons.

You lick your lips, mouth dry. Despite the nerves creeping up your spine, the primal fear that threatens to settle in your bones, there’s only one answer you can give.

“Yes,” you say, voice soft and gentle, almost like a whispered promise down in these winding tunnels where dragons make their home. “Yes, I will meet her.”

Aemond Targaryen is all sharp edges and white knuckles, a dragon’s rage contained within one man. Just two days ago, he had plunged a sword through a man’s throat and stood victorious over him, had been hungry for more and for you. He was proud and lethal, fire and blood embodied.

There’s little trace of that man now.

Now, he stares at you as if this is the first time he’s ever seen you before. His gaze is almost unbearably soft, unbearably gentle. Even as children, he’s never been this open, this completely vulnerable.

Your heart clenches painfully in your chest.

A near decade since Driftmark. A near decade you’ve denied Aemond this.

You tug on his arm, beckoning Aemond to keep up, and this time, he’s dependent on you guiding him through the winding tunnels. His eyes stay on you, scanning you for any sign that you’re reluctant.

You’re not, however. More than your fear, more than your anxieties, you feel remorse creeping up your throat.

It’s an ugly, sickly feeling. You’re not used to guilt, not used to feeling sorry. You like moving people like chess pieces, the subtle art of manipulation, exercising your control and power.

But not with Aemond.

Never with Aemond.

And now, he’s caught you twice in a mere few days.

Your stomach still churns at the memory of when he had revealed that your intentions had always been plain. He had seemingly been okay with it, had seemingly appreciated that you had pursued him, but a part of you still wants to apologize for it.

Just not here.

You can feel the eyes of the nobility behind, peering through the wall of crimson cloaks that can’t quite shield you from their prying eyes. What you want to say deserves to just be his, your’s and his alone with no danger of someone stepping in and interrupting.

You already had to share him with the rest of the world. You didn’t want to have to share this too.

For just a moment’s breath, you allow yourself to lean into Aemond, pressing your side into his, resting your head on his arm. It’s only for a moment but you soak it in, trying your best to commit to memory the feel of his toned arm under your cheek, the way his body shifts to accommodate you, always aware of you as if you’re burned into his periphery, another part of him as he is to you.

You pull away, curling your hand around his arm. He doesn’t say anything but his other hand floats up, moving to cover your own, squeezing it tight.

You walk deeper into the tunnels, the crashing footsteps of King’s Landing all around you.

——————————–

The sunlight is almost unbearable after the tunnels. The sconces had done little to acclimate your eyes and when the narrow passageways open up to the bright blue cloudless sky, you reel back on instinct, turning your face away from the relentless sun. Blessedly, the ground is smoother out here, the rock having been worn down from decades of wagons and the heavy feet of dragons, and you move forward blindly before your eyes adjust.

You’re at the base of Rhaenys’ Hill, away from the grand entrance with its soaring arches and bronze doors. Here, the trees have receded, giving way to a few brick houses that line the bottom of the hill, houses that you know are large and luxurious but somehow seem so quaint in the shadow of the Dragonpit. In the distance, you can see the walls of King’s Landing, looming high over the city. From your vantage, you make out the Dragon Gate with its oversized dragon statues serving as sentinels, the golden bronze serving as a beacon to denote its location. If you turn your head west, you can just see the Old Gate though your sight of it is obscured by the massive mansions that surround it, populated by the richest merchants in the city.

Out here, in the barely fresh air, it almost feels like a world removed from the crowded Dragonpit or even the lined streets of the capital. There are no smallfolk jostling to catch a glimpse at the gilded few. There is no cheering, no screaming. There are just rows and rows of wheelhouses, servants standing at the ready next to them, such a familiar sight that it borders on the mundane. It feels, for the first time all day, normal.

It’s almost sickening.

It feels like you should have walked out to a world on fire. The buildings should have shifted, rearranged themselves to fit this new reality, but all of it is the same. It’s the King’s Landing you’ve grown up with. The King’s Landing you’ll die with.

You dig your thumbnail deep into your own palm, using the small jolt of pain to anchor yourself back into the moment, to quell your own mounting disappointment at this new bitter reality.

Aemond leads you down to the closest ring of wheelhouses, towards the gathered crowd of his family. You spare a glance over your shoulder. It’s a mass of people, all of them more finely dressed than the last, but Lannisters have always stood a head and shoulder above all the rest and that stays true even now. Jason and Tyland are tall and Tygett is even taller and, through seeing them, you can spot the smaller figures of your cousins and distant uncles surrounding them, even as deep as they are in the crowd of nobles.

“I imagine my father will come to fetch me soon enough,” you muse quietly to Aemond, eying the massive crowd that separates you from them.

Aemond spares you a look, his delicate mouth downturned. “You’re free to ride with us in our wheelhouse. There’s room to spare since I believe Princess Rhaenys will ride with her house and Grandfather has some matters to discuss with Lord Hightower in his wheelhouse.”

You hide a smile before shaking your head. “I’m a Lannister, my prince. I may live with dragons but I’m a lion and I go with the rest of the pride for now.”

“For now,” Aemond repeats and you don’t bother hiding your crooked smile now.

“For now,” you echo.

You rejoin his family by his wheelhouse and, the instant you arrive, Alicent descends upon the two of you, her hands fluttering up to brush off nonexistent dust off of Aemond’s tunic.

“You both did lovely,” Alicent praises, offering you both nervous smiles, and you instantly recognize the look in her eye, the energy that seems to pour out of her fingertips and fill the air with a cautious, staticky charge. She’s coming down from an impossible high - for all intents and purposes, she could still be riding that high, still drunk off the adrenaline.

You smile back at her, feeling a similar pulse of nervous energy coursing through your veins even as you bow your head in gratitude. “Thank you, Your Grace. I’d like to congratulate you on the beautiful ceremony - all of it, every single last detail, was an absolute marvel.”

Alicent’s smile softens, losing some of that manic quality and turning into something warmer. There’s a flicker of pride on her face, that age-old feeling of success and satisfaction. It makes her look that much younger, more overeager girl desperate for a pat on the head from her septa than a Queen carrying the burden of seven kingdoms on her back.

She is young if you think about it. If your math is correct, she’s over a decade younger than your own mother and Cerelle is not even a year older than Aegon. Your stomach twists at the thought, at the age she must have been during her first pregnancies. It had been a miracle that no harm had come to Alicent or to any of her babes.

Your mind flashes to Helaena, to the fact that now that she was wedded and soon to be bedded, her first child would come soon enough. That familiar, tell-tale nausea of anxiety begins to creep up your throat and you swallow it down thickly, trying desperately to bury it deep within you, alongside all the other anxieties that haunt your every move. Helaena is older than her mother had been. Helaena is stong - healthy.

You forcibly drag your focus back onto Alicent, just in time to see her bow her head in gratitude, pulling away from Aemond to give the two of you some space. As soon as she moves, however, Daeron takes her place, beaming brightly. His hair is slightly messier than it had been earlier, some of the delicate braids knocked askew as if he had run his hand through the tresses, but all of it only serves to give him a boyish charm. He’s still otherworldly, still more beautiful than anyone has any right to be, but he’s unmistakably human, unmistakably a boy.

It warms you right up and you smile more easily at him, part of you wishing you could reach out and muss up his curls even further. Boy that he is, and as close to adulthood as he is, something in his rosy cheeks and his bright eyes reminds you of Joy, of your little sister with her own rosy cheeks and bright eyes.

“I think you were right, Aemond,” Daeron says, grinning. “All of it went smoothly. Maybe the sun is a blessing for Valyrian weddings? Keep them warm and all of that.”

“As smoothly as it could,” Aemond drawls, seemingly unaffected by the warmth that his brother seems to exhibit like a little sun of his own. You suppose he’s rather used to it, having had him for years before little Daeron had been shipped off to Oldtown. You imagine he was even freer in his affection and kindness as a little boy but somehow, it’s impossible to imagine Daeron being any more sweet. “Helaena and Aegon will need every blessing the Gods see fit to give them.”

You snort, completely unladylike to the point you can feel the ghost pain of your childhood septa rapping you on the knuckles with her ruler. Neither prince seems to mind so you barrel forward. “If an entire day of prayers solely devoted to their union can’t conjure up some goodwill and luck, I pray the sun will do the trick.”

Daeron laughs. “I bet everyone else in the city is also praying for them too. They all want their future princes and princesses to be healthy - especially the heir. I’m sure they’re praying for them as they prayed for Mother and Father.”

You hide a smile but Aemond makes no such effort, looking supremely amused by his younger brother’s guileless treason. Daeron says it as if it’s a settled fact, a law of nature - not the most dangerous dispute to threaten House Targaryen since perhaps Maegor the Cruel. In a way, you suppose it is.

Aegon Targaryen is the true heir to the Iron Throne. He may not be a named heir but calling something by a different name did not change the facts, could not shift the foundations that all of Westeros was built upon.

It is not treason to see the truth.

No one has ever said it so plainly and with such clear language though. You wonder if Daeron even has it in him to be duplicitous, to weave lies in with the truth until it was interchangeable in the same way his grandfather could.

No, you think as you look him over. He’s far too gentle for it, far too chivalrous. He’s the son of Alicent Hightower or, at least, the son of the gentle girl she must have been before the throne turned her into the woman she had to be.

“If the Gods see to bless them, then they will be blessed,” you say in as sincere a voice you can muster. You sound so devout that even the High Septon could not find fault with you but, judging from the tremble of Aemond’s arm tucked into your’s from his suppressing his laughter, you’ve failed with at least one person.

Daeron smiles at you, smaller than his previous grins but all the more sincere. “You’re right, my lady.”

“She rarely isn’t,” Aemond says, sounding entirely too smug to be praising you. “With the exception of her evaluation of her own acting skills.”

You scowl, immediately losing whatever minimal glow you had earned through your holy act. “I was ten and it clearly worked.”

“You used to act?” Daeron asks, looking like a child who’s just been handed a new toy.

You flush. “I didn’t. He’s poking fun.”

At the same time, Aemond says, “She used to. She was terrible but she has improved.”

Daeron laughs gleefully, his amethyst eyes flashing with unbridled joy. “My lady, I had no idea you were a thespian.”

“My sister,” you say, rather than explaining your storied past with acting with regards to Aemond in particular. “She fancies herself a would-be playwright. She’s always scribbling away on any scrap piece of parchment she can find.”

The youngest Targaryen prince tilts his head in response. “Is she good? Have you read her plays?”

You smile slightly. “I tried my best to read them when I was home, my prince, but she guards them more zealously than some dragons guard their treasure.” Aemond snorts quietly next to you, clearly amused by your little barb, and Daeron’s gaze turns all that fonder at his older brother’s obvious satisfaction. “I’m afraid the only writing of Jeyne’s I’ve read in recent memory is her letters,” you finish, sighing slightly.

It certainly hadn’t been due to lack of effort. You had cajoled, attempted bribery, even tried to (unconvincingly) threaten her. Short of locking her in her room, you had no way of getting the opportunity to read Jeyne’s plays. When the two of you were younger, you could hardly go a day without her shoving sheets of parchment in your face, staining your dress sleeves with the ink on her fingers with the way she would tug on them to beg you to read them over. When you had returned home, you had been the one chasing her down, begging for even a morsel of her thoughts.

Just another way that your world has shifted in a way you’re never going to get back.

“I’m sure she’s a great talent,” Daeron says, cheerful and amiable. He’s so sincere that you imagine even the High Septon could find no fault with him though you are certain he would try.

“Like the rest of her sisters, my Jeyne is a rare talent,” your father’s voice cuts through the din and you start slightly, turning to the source. Behind your father, you can see your uncle speaking with Lord Otto and the Queen, Tygett and Tygett’s own father and uncles at his side.

You bow your head at your father in greeting and, next to you, Aemond and Daeron do the same, Aemond deeper than his brother. This doesn’t pass Jason’s keen eyes and his gaze turns sharper, more mischievous boy than a High Lord, and you fight the urge to bury your head in your hands.

Your father will always have his fun.

“Prince Aemond,” Jason says, his voice high and lofty, and Aemond straightens next to you, his normal rigid posture even stiffer. Your father’s eyes sharpen at the shift, looking distinctly leonine, and even Daeron looks absolutely delighted by the turn of events. “I didn’t get the chance to congratulate you directly but House Lannister would like to extend our thanks for honoring my daughter as you have.”

Aemond bows his head again. “She brings herself honor, my lord. I was only given the opportunity to bring the rest of the capital’s attention to it.”

Jason laughs, so clearly amused, and you bite your lip to stop yourself from saying something. Knowing your father, it would only make this game he’s playing all that more fun. “The rest of the capital? After the tourney, I’m afraid the rest of the kingdoms are all too aware of my daughter’s honor now. On my way to the Dragonpit, I could hear some songs being sung through the walls of my wheelhouse. My uncle’s granddaughters were enraptured - they’re already asking their fathers to bring some bards back to Lannisport so they can share the songs with the other members of House Lannister.”

A thrill crawls its way up your spine. You certainly haven’t heard any songs - not that you would have had the chance to hear them - and you had known that the bards would do as they always do and write their songs. The pretty little story that the tourney had provided them with had been too good, too perfect, for them to resist.

But it actually happening is something else entirely.

You don’t dare look up at Aemond now, not when you’re certain it’d be impossible to hide from his amethyst eye, and the sight of your father’s increasingly amused face makes you want to crawl into your own skin to hide so you stay quiet, praying that the conversation will end.

Daeron, however, has no such qualms.

“Really?” He exclaims, so audibly delighted that you look over at him without even thinking. He’s brightened up entirely, grinning so wide that one would think that the bards were writing their songs about him. “Are they any good?”

Jason laughs, similarly pleased to have found someone to play along with his charade. “I’m no great expert on songs, my prince. You’ll have to ask my cousins for an educated opinion.”

Daeron laughs. “Perhaps a bard or two will sing a song at the wedding feast.”

“Perhaps not,” you intervene, sniffing delicately, unable to hold back your tongue. Next to you, Aemond snorts quietly. “This is Helaena’s wedding. Not mine. The singers should stick to the classics rather than trying out any new material on everyone.”

“Give it time, sweetling,” Jason teases and his voice has taken a softer tone, his smile just that much warmer. “Soon you and your dragon prince’s songs will be the classics. You’ll be begging for them to play new songs then.”

You sigh, rolling your eyes, and, against your own better judgment, you glance up at Aemond in hopes of finding an ally in this battle with your father and his unexpected ally Daeron. Predictably, he looks horribly amused as if this was all a big game to him, a show being put on for him. But he’s not just amused. There’s a shine to his eye, a gleam of something that isn’t just barely concealed laughter.

It’s warming. It’s gentle. It’s intoxicating.

You quickly look away, suddenly all too aware of the consequences of looking at him here, in front of your own father.

The thought of providing Jason Lannister with that much ammunition is almost too much to bear.

“We’ll have time to continue this at the feast,” Jason finally says, shedding the skin of a teasing young boy and donning his high lord costume. “In fact… Your Queen Mother and I have planned a tea for tomorrow. Just a simple meeting. Nothing to be concerned about.”

Nothing to be concerned about? You could almost laugh out loud. There would be nothing simple about a tea with the Queen - not one following a declaration of intents. Your father and Alicent would sit down and discuss joining their two houses, probing politely at the bones of a bethoral contract without overplaying their hand. If they were even feeling particularly productive, they could likely even hammer out the larger details of one - questions about your dowry, bridal payments, properties to inherit and divide. Knowing your father, he would be sure to push trade contracts that would heavily favor House Lannister, maybe try to slide in a chance for another marriage contract for Jeyne or Joy.

Tomorrow would be a starting point. It would be the first move to lay down the foundation on which your and Aemond’s futures would be built on top of.

Your mouth dries in anticipation.

“Yes,” you echo, letting a small smile slip on your face. “We have a tea tomorrow. There will be much to discuss.”

Your father smiles, pleased by your easy obedience, and Daeron grins, delighted by another chance to tease and poke at his brother.

But Aemond…

When you tilt your head up to look at Aemond, that gentle warmth has fled from his sole eye. There’s a curve to his lips still but it isn’t amusement or laughter.

No.

This is him moving with you, him responding on sheer instinct alone to the gnawing ambition that lays claim to your peripheries, pushing and pushing inwards until you can see nothing else.

This is him seeing your hunger.

And this is his answering your call.

——————————–

Sometime after the wheelhouse’s easy travel on smooth dirt roads gives way to the familiar bumping and jostling of the cobblestone roads of King’s Landing, you hear the roar of a dragon.

It’s like a shot in the dark, so loud and invasive that it slices through your father and uncle’s easy conversation without remorse, and you freeze for a moment, primal urge overtaking any rational thought.

Don’t move. You can’t be seen if you don’t move.

The impulse leaves you quick enough and you’re left with just a fading sense of embarrassment as you turn to one of the many windows that line House Lannister’s grandest wheelhouse. Sliding one open, you peer up to the sky in time to see a golden shine break apart the endless blue.

Sunfyre. Beautiful and peerless.

You frown slightly as you look up at his shape gliding delicately through the air, more graceful than any beast of that size had any right to be. You couldn’t hear the telltale sound of Dreamfyre’s wings beating loud and clear or see her blue scales glinting in the sun. There was no sign of Helaena’s companion which meant that there was only place that the girl herself could be.

Helaena and Aegon were riding together.

The thought makes you slide the window shut and you slump back in your seat, worrying your bottom lip with your teeth. Aegon was notoriously possessive of his dragon - all of his rings were styled after Sunfyre, obnoxiously ostentatious things, and most of his clothes were embroidered with metallic thread in an attempt to capture even a sliver of his beauty. Since reaching adulthood, he had forced the Dragonpit keepers to swear off approaching Sunfyre even to feed the dragon, preferring to do the gruesome task himself. If you’re being honest, you doubt there’s even another relationship in his life that would come close to his uncomplicated and free passion towards his own personal sigil.

And now Helaena had invaded that sacred space.

Even just a week ago, you would have gambled everything on Aegon preferring to be bathed in fire rather than allowing any of his siblings to ride alongside him on his one treasure. He coveted Sunfyre something fierce, more possessive of him than he was of anything else.

Yet Helaena was with him.

You’re not sure what it means.

Aegon loves his sister - you know that as surely as you know that you love his sister - but he didn’t love his sister and that maybe mattered more now. Aegon and Helaena would be no Jaehaerys the Conciliator and Good Queen Alysanne whose love for each other only dimmed in comparison to their love for the realm.

But maybe they could be something better. Something more than their parents with their glacial relationship. Something more stable than their grandparents and their infamous Quarrels.

You sigh, pushing the thought out of your mind. There would be plenty of time in the future to worry and fuss about Helaena and Aegon’s relationship and how the realm would view it. There would be plenty of time to plan how you would twist Westeros into cherishing it. You had enough to worry about for today.

Namely the feast.

“I wonder how Queen Alicent will outdo herself tonight,” you muse out loud, drawing your father and uncle’s attention to yourself. “She’s guarded her plans rather zealously.”

Tyland snorts quietly. “It’s certainly been a grand expense. Lord Beesbury has not stopped fussing about the cost of this and that to anyone who will listen even though the Hightowers are paying for most of it from their own coffers. You’d think the expenses are coming straight from his own purse with the way he goes on about it.”

You hum, letting a mischievous smile slip on your face. “Lord Beesbury, may the Gods forgive me for saying so, much prefers the sound of his voice rather than putting forth any meaningful solutions. He’s never been fond of the Queen and he’s even less fond of her children. It’s a miracle that the Lord Hand managed to loosen his grip on the purse of the Targaryens to fund even the tourney.”

Your uncle nods in agreement, tapping his fingers against his thigh. “He’s Lord of Honeyholt. They’re always getting the castoffs of House Hightower and old Lyman is no exception to the animosity his House has nursed for centuries now. I sometimes wonder if he’s really so fond of Princess Rhaenyra as he likes to say he is or if he just hates the alternative. He himself has a daughter older than his heir and you don’t see him pushing her first in his line of succession.”

Jason shakes his head, looking genuinely annoyed. “They should have retired Lord Beesbury years ago. He’s senile in his old age. It’s a miracle he doesn’t crumble into dust whenever he bumps against something.”

You blink, somewhat caught off guard by your father’s frustration. “Is he really that old?” You prompt, eager to coax more of his true thoughts out of him.

“He was old when they placed him on the small council, sweetling,” Jason scoffs. “He’s even older now.”

Tyland grins at his brother, looking absolutely tickled by his twin’s simmering anger. “You’ve never gotten over the fact that King Viserys snubbed Uncle Stafford for him.”

“More that he snubbed you,” Jason shoots back. “Master of Coin should be yours. You’re a Lannister - who knows gold better than us?”

You nod slowly. “If King Viserys was smart, he’d offer you, Uncle Tyland, Master of Coin and offer Master of Ships to Corlys Velaryon if not his brother. Bring the Velaryons back to the fold. Everyone knows that they’ve split from Princess Rhaenyra.”

“If,” Tyland murmurs, raising an eyebrow, and you stifle a laugh. “Besides… The Queen and her father hold the throne now, truly, and they might be hard-pressed to convince the Velaryons to come to their side. I don’t doubt that the Sea Snake still harbors a grudge for King Viserys passing over Lady Laena for Alicent Hightower.”

“The Sea Snake,” you say without thinking. “Not Princess Rhaenys. She’s a Velaryon and, like Queen Alicent, she holds her House’s power while her husband fights an endless war in the Stepstones.”

Jason leans forward slightly, quirking up a brow. “Since when have you been so close to Princess Rhaenys?”

“I’m not,” you reply. “But I’m not a Hightower or a Targaryen and that seems to count for something in her eyes. She clearly wants to foster a connection where her husband did not if she accepted the role of the Crone. Moreover to the point, I believe she’s… Fond of me.”

“Fond?” Tyland now questions you.

You shrug, flashing a smile. “Fond. Like a lady and her pet. I imagine she’d be surprised to find anything in my head that wasn’t revolving around Aemond or Helaena.”

Jason hums, leaning back in his seat. He starts drumming his fingers against his thigh, eerily echoing his brother perfectly. “Princess Rhaenys always liked to think that she was cleverer than everyone around her by far. She never did quite live up to her own expectations.”

She is clever, you muse, keeping your thoughts to yourself. But she’s too stubborn to approach allies - not when she can wait for them to approach her. She harbors the same grudge that her husband does towards the Hightowers. She can’t move past what Rhaenyra and Daemon did to her children. She’s isolated herself in a war where she’ll need allies to survive.

She would need to pick a side eventually if only to keep herself and her granddaughters afloat.

The only question was which side would snap her up first.

“The key to the throne is through the Velaryons, through Princess Rhaenys,” you say quietly. Jason tilts his head at you but Tyland nods at you, immediately understanding. “Securing her means securing her husband’s fleet and bringing two dragons with her.”

“Two?” Jason asks.

You nod, thinking of bared teeth and sharp purple eyes narrowed in your direction. “Lady Baela,” you say slowly, mulling over your words before you say them. “I do not believe she’s… as dedicated to Princess Rhaenyra’s claim as people think. She resents her for the shame she brought upon her mother by marrying Prince Daemon so fast.”

“Prince Daemon is her father,” Tyland says, more out of prompting you to continue with your logic rather than truly reminding you.

You tilt your head, playing with your sleeves slightly as you ponder what to say. “She’s loyal to her sister before anything else. I think… she may be more loyal to House Velaryon than to House Targaryen. Surely, that would mean something to her father.”

Jason snorts. “Prince Daemon deflowered the Realm’s Delight. He took a second wife and shamed Rhea Royce before a fall saved her from that humiliation. There are even more stories about him that would make your ears bleed, sweetling. He covets the throne. Always has. I doubt even his daughter could sway him from a lifelong dream being so close to his grasp.”

“Perhaps he does not need to be swayed,” Tyland murmurs. “A mad dog is only dangerous if it’s off its leash.”

“He is not a dog,” you reply. “He’s a dragon and those are rather hard to leash. If his own brother could not do it, I doubt we’d have much luck even with his daughter.”

“Then what do you suggest?” Your uncle asks and the look in his eye gives you pause for the first time in this conversation. He’s searching you, looking into you. He knows what your answer would be but he wants to draw it out of you, wants you to admit it to him, to your father. He wants your resolve to be firm. “How would you manage Daemon Targaryen?”

Silence hangs in the wheelhouse. Outside, you can hear the constant hum of people, the sound of hooves hitting the cobblestones, the shouted orders of City’s Watch.

Inside, you stare down at your uncle.

“I wouldn’t manage him,” you finally say, your voice steady. “I would kill him.”

Tyland’s eyes glint with something and you don’t dare look away, not even with your father looking at you with the same inquisitive stare. “And Rhaenyra Targaryen?”

Your breath catches in your throat and Helaena flashes in your mind. Helaena who had nothing in common with her sister but everything in common with who she had once been to Alicent Hightower.

“If I must,” you finally respond. “If I need to.”

“You’ll be kin by the time this would be necessary,” Jason finally says and your eyes swing to look at him. “She’d be your sister by law. He’d be your uncle by law.”

“No one is as accursed as the kinslayer,” you say on instinct, the phrase coming to you as easily as breathing. This time, you see Aemond. You see Aemond and dusty books and can hear you whisper about Brandon the Breaker and the night’s king. “There are kinslayers in every line,” you finally say, echoing your childish self. “What’s one more?”

“There are septons who would demand your tongue for that, little one,” Tyland muses, smiling all the while.

You shrug. “They’re not in here, are they?”

“Even if there was,” Jason starts, still peering at you as if he’s never seen you before. “I can’t imagine they’d have much sway on you.”

“Septons can be useful,” you reply, thinking of the High Septon with his clear gray eyes, with his rainbow crown. “I believe in them, I do, but I value my family, mine, over any of their words.”

“Your family is a mite larger than just lions,” Jason says, no question in his voice.

You meet his green eyes head-on, straightening up. “You sent me here,” you remind him, feeling that years-long grudge, that childish anger you could never quite free yourself from, rear its ugly head. “You told me to find a space for myself in the royal family. I did. I have. You cannot fault me for its consequences. Lannisters protect their own - at all costs and damn the consequences. I just have more to protect now than I did at ten.”

Jason looks at you, his eyes looking all over you as if he’ll find the answer written somewhere on your body. Maybe he’s searching, you muse almost fancifully, for the little girl he had sent away, the little girl he had damned to the capitol with its endless hate and its even more endless schemes. Maybe he’s wondering who this stranger that took her place is, this stranger that sends her sister off to freeze in the North, who wears a crown of bloody flowers like a prize, who walks amongst dragons.

You can’t miss her now, you almost want to say out of sheer spite. Not now when you didn’t want her then. You bite the inside of your cheek, knowing that’s more than unfair. It would just be cruel. Vicious.

It doesn’t make the desire to say it go away, doesn’t stop the anger from bubbling underneath your skin.

Finally, Jason smiles. That same old friendly smile that always disarmed your resentment, took away its teeth to make it into something docile. It’s the same smile that had coaxed you into the Sunset Sea after him, the same one he would give you the few times he had allowed you to crawl onto his lap during the summer storms.

You wish it didn’t work just as well now as it had back then.

“Hear me roar,” he says, grinning at you like you’re sharing a funny joke.

You simply nod, not wanting to speak anymore.

——————————–

None of the chaos of the earlier week of feasting seems to compare to the maelstrom that has gripped the halls of the Red Keep now. It feels impossible to move without having to elbow at least five of your cousins out of the way and not even your father and uncle forming a small retinue around you seems to clear your path any.

Perhaps I should have taken Aemond up on his offer you grumble in your head, eying the crowded hall outside the throne room with disdain. At least with the royal family, you doubt you would have had to wade through what seems like every single noble family in Westeros.

Up ahead, towards the entrance of the throne room, you can see the poor servant in charge of informing Ser Harrold of the next family to enter so that the Lord Commander can announce it. He looks harried and stressed, seconds from pulling his own hair out with his bare hands and you feel a flash of pity for him. Aside from the major houses, sure to be announced first, the minor lords must be haranguing him to be bumped up the list, to inflate their own self-importance by calling their name closer to the high lords.

It’d be a pointless exercise - you doubt people listen to the names if they’re not a major house and even then, you doubt most would care if it’s not their high lord being called.

You watch the servant for a few beats longer, fighting the urge to laugh when he gets shoved back by a lord only for the lord to realize that that was the man in charge of the procession. You’re so engrossed in observing that you miss the first whisper of your name. It takes a few more times but you finally register it and you turn slightly to see Jocata standing next to you, her big green eyes peering up at you anxiously.

You furrow your brows slightly as you look at her, more baffled than annoyed. Aside from the final day of the tourney, when she had complimented your crown blood and all, she has practically hidden herself from your sight, trembling like a leaf when your gaze did fall on her. You had silently resigned yourself to having soured that relationship for good but now she’s here, standing in front of you looking as if she would rather be anywhere than there.

“My lady,” she starts, her voice trembling as she takes a deep inhale to steel herself.

“You’re my cousin,” you interject before she can say her next bit, frowning slightly. “There’s no need to stand on etiquette between the two of us.”

Her lip shakes and you distantly wonder if she’d have a better go of it if you looked away or closed your eyes. She says your name weakly, shyly, as if she’s trying it out for the first time in her life and not having had used it for the eternity of your relationship with her. “I just wanted to… I ran away last time and it wasn’t right and I… I wanted to congratulate you on your crown… and apologize again for my role in Ser Victor’s favor.”

It’s a credit to her that she doesn’t burst into tears but she does look dangerously close to it, her pale cheeks a brighter red than either of your two dresses. You smile at her, trying your very best to put her at ease. “Just see to it that men don’t take further advantage of your innocence, Jocasta,” you warn. “It’ll only get more and more difficult the older that you get.”

Jocasta sniffles, nodding her head, looking distinctly like a scolded puppy. “I understand. I won’t… I won’t fall for it again. But I wanted to offer you a true apology. Not… Not what I had tried to do.”

She’s too soft to be a Lannister you think without any malice or anger as you look at her. She’s kind, gentle, sweet - all the markings of a lady and none of the characteristics of the house she called her own. With any luck, her husband would be a knight, a true knight who could uphold his vows and honor and cherish his lady wife. You somehow doubt her father would prioritize that, likely more concerned with increasing his own wealth as the third son of a second son, far removed from the main line and its heir, but you hope for it regardless.

“Of course Jocasta,” you finally say, reaching out to squeeze her hand, and she blinks at you before a small hesitant smile lights up her face.

“I prayed for Prince Aemond in the melee,” she whispers as if it's a secret she’s confessing. “I went to the sept and I lit a candle for him at the Warrior statue. I lit one for you too in front of the Maiden. Not because I knew you were going to the Maiden in the wedding party b-but just because I thought she should bless you regardless.”

Your breath hitches, caught off guard, and, wildly, you remember your fervent prayers that day, remember perfectly how much you had wished you had been able to light a candle for Aemond at the Warrior’s feet. Sweet Jocasta had. She had lit one for him and you.

You squeeze her hand again. “Thank you,” you murmur, wishing you could say more without tripping over your own words.

Jocasta just gives you another smile before she pulls away, walking beyond you to seek refuge among her sisters and brothers and cousins. You stare at the spot she had been occupying, turning the feeling of gratitude over and over in your mind, trying your best to force it to solidify into something you can do. Something you could reward her with for her good nature, for her gentle soul.

A good marriage is the only thing you can think of. Perhaps even an offer to serve in the royal court as a lady in waiting for you and Helaena. She could better her odds here, away from Lannisport where only lions roamed, but it would be dangerous here. She was too soft for the cesspit that formed King’s Landing and the Red Keep. The snakes in the court would eat her alive, and would strive to take advantage of her at every turn. Her Lannister name would protect her - some - but she’d still be subject to the court politics that haunted everything around her.

You bite your lip, moving forward on instinct when your father and uncle step closer and closer to the entrance to the throne room. There wouldn’t be much time to debate this or any time at all. Your cousins were scheduled to leave in the next couple of days. They’d possibly be delayed a few days if your father formalized a betrothal contract with the Targaryens but he could hold that card close to his chest. Cerelle’s marriage with Cregan Stark was sure to break soon and the announcement of a royal engagement could prove loud enough to drown out the whispers around that.

You wouldn’t be surprised if Cerelle’s new role as Lady Stark would be talked about tonight. If she was riding out to gather her new husband’s bannermen for him, more than a few of those lords would let any allies in the South know about the shock of a Stark lord taking a Southern wife for the first time in their long history and that wife being a Lannister of all things. Her letter couldn’t have possibly beaten all that gossip and could have very possibly been delayed if everything had happened as fast as she had said it had.

A part of you that isn’t preoccupied with whirling plans and ideas childishly longs for the next raven to be carrying a letter for you; that with it Cerelle will either castigate you or soothe your guilt. Either way, you want to hear her voice, read her words. You miss your oldest sister with a fierceness you haven’t felt in years. It had been different all the times before - you had always been secure in knowing that she was safe in Casterly Rock with your other sisters and your mother. Now, she’s in the frozen North, married to a man no one in your family has ever met before, far from your grasp and she would be for the foreseeable future.

Suddenly it feels like there’s no time at all. No time with Jocasta. No time with Cerelle. No time for anything. Everything is speeding up more than it had ever before, threatening to leave you in the lurch.

That familiar tight ball of pain begins to bear down on your chest, crushing your lungs and your heart under its weight, and it’s only the gentle call of that poor, harried servant that knocks you out of it.

When you come back to it, you’re standing right by the door of the throne room, positioned to the right of your father while your uncle occupies his left. Ser Harrold looks over at you and, as is customary with him, he spares you that little smile that you know has always been meant more for your mother than it has ever been meant for you.

You smile back though, completely instinctual, reminding yourself that this is the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. Who cares if he only likes you because you were the walking mirror image of Johanna Westerling, born looking more like your mother than any trueborn Lannister had any right to be? What mattered was that he liked you.

He looks over at your father and the warmth that he had held in his eyes for you slips away when he looks at Lord Lannister, replacing it with the stern face of one of the greatest knights in the realm.

He nods at Jason and your father nods and you take a deep, settling breath.

“House Lannister, with their lord, Jason Lannister. Lord Paramount of the West and Master of Casterly Rock.” Ser Harrold booms, loud and thunderous, and the endless chatter of the throne room, of all the lords and ladies of the regions that had gone before the Westerlands, ends and a silence settles across the room.

Your house moves as one.

The throne room is an impossible marvel, burning sconces of different colored flames illuminating the tables, mini suns lighting the room and making the banners and the tapestries glow with an otherworldly gleam.

Making House Lannister glow.

Underneath the flickering fires, the veins of gold within your dress glitter endlessly, the delicate rubies and emeralds woven within gleaming with a vengeance. Your bust and corset are covered with this, armorlike if not for the fact that it's molded perfectly to your body, tailored so perfectly that it clings like a second skin. The jewels stop at your waist, giving way to the crimson velvet that forms the skirt and train of your gown but the tendrils of gold continue, swirling and spinning in careful spirals down your body and skirt.

It is by far the most expensive thing you’ve ever worn, more expensive, you’d wager, than all the gowns and jewels some houses could bear to afford. It was the most extravagant show of wealth at this wedding - it would be obnoxious if it wasn’t so Lannister. Showing off your riches came as easy to you as breathing. Lann the Clever had won the Rock from the Casterlys and that made this your right.

Your father leads the procession to the royal table, somehow even more confidence in his step than ever before. He’s secured a grand prize, after all; a prince for his daughter. He walks like it too, smugness radiating from his every pore, as proud as he’s ever been. One would think that he was the one all but set to marry into the royal family.

When your family arrives at the foot of the Iron Throne, you all bow deep. When you rise, you look over in instinct at Aemond’s seat. Dimly, you recognize Daeron sitting in Helaena’s old seat, accommodating the shift to have Helaena and Aegon sitting together in the center, but he’s almost blurred in your periphery as you stare at Aemond.

He’s changed from his warrior outfit into a tunic more fit for a feast - fit for a prince. The black velvet is fitted to his chest perfectly, emphasizing his slender build to the point your mouth dries. Embossed on his chest, three dragons twist and curl around each other, each so distinct that you immediately recognize them as the dragons that conquered Westeros, and your lips tug up into a smile when you recognize the familiar shape of Vhagar front and center. Some of his long hair is braided up away from his face, the braids like a pattern against his scalp, but the majority falls like a sheet around his face. He’s so far removed from what he had been wearing earlier - a nobleman now rather than the living manifestation of a god. Even like this though, even without wearing the robes of the Warrior, he’s still undeniable, still holy and sanctified.

Your body lights up again, deep in your core and spreading out into your chest, and you feel the sudden desire to pray at his own altar, to prostrate yourself in front of him, to kneel and worship.

Your mouth runs even drier and you snap yourself back into focus, suddenly feeling too warm inside the throne room. You feel a hot desire for the cool air of the gardens or even the chill of the library and you bite your lip to pull yourself away from it, to settle in the now. It’s only then that you notice Aemond’s hot stare, the way he looks at you as if the entirety of his world has shrunk down to just you. That increasingly familiar heat is back in his eyes and he looks at you as he had when he had been covered in the blood of Victor Florent, when he had licked the sugar off a candied lemon.

He looks at you as if he wants nothing more than to devour you whole.

That gnawing hunger in your core, that burning flame, glows that much brighter, that much hotter, and you snap your eyes away from him, taking in a shaky deep breath.

You settle your gaze on Aegon and Helaena, sitting together directly in the shadow of the throne. They’ve changed as well, matching in velvet green and shining golden. You wouldn’t be surprised if the seamstresses had used the same bolts of fabric to make their clothes. It’s meant to present an image of unity, of harmony, but they look nauseatingly similar. Dressed like this, the scant year gap between the two of them vanishes entirely, leaving them as mirror images of each other, as alike as Jason and Tyland.

Your stomach twists but you force a smile anyways, meeting Helaena’s eyes. She’s plainly ignoring your father’s introduction of the gift House Lannister is presenting (three golden dragon statues with rubies for eyes), putting less of an effort than even blearily eyed Aegon, but she’s plastered a bland smile on her face to at least attempt the veneer of an interested party. The moment she registers that it’s you looking at her, however, her entire face brightens up and she sits up straighter in her seat, her fake smile melting away into something softer, more genuine.

You smile at her almost girlish expression. She almost looks like her old self, the sweet girl who had let you read to her in the shade of old trees. She looks like that little girl wearing a costume, too big in certain places, too tight in others, but it’s undeniably her. Maybe your fears were unfounded. Maybe your anxieties didn’t need to ruin every waking moment. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

Your father finishes the presentation with a final vow to always be faithful to the crown and Alicent smiles gracefully, nodding and plainly deferring to Aegon to accept his oath. Aegon, for his part, doesn’t seem wholly aware of what’s happening, only jerking to attention when his mother leans closer to him, her smile placid as if she wasn’t driving the point of her elbow into his ribs. He jolts straight up, clearing his throat instinctually, eyes looking skyward as if he’s trying to remember a script he’s forgotten.

“As the first son of King Viserys, first of his name,” Aegon says slowly, trying the words out carefully like he’s learning them as he goes. “I am grateful… and appreciative of your loyalty to House Targaryen and… vow to return your faith. I- We look forward to only deepening and strengthening our bond and alliance.” He meanders his way through the sentence, clearly lost and struggling to remember, but when he finishes, there’s a quick flash of boyish pride on his face when he realizes he hasn’t messed up and he looks so much like the boy he must have been before even you had arrived to the capital and you feel an unfamiliar warm glow towards him.

You’re not used to feeling cozy towards Aegon - amused, yes. Annoyed, most definitely. But this is something new and your own confusion at your feelings must show on your face since Aemond looks supremely amused. You quickly move your sleeve up to cover your mouth, trying to play off your aborted laugh like a sneeze or a cough, but, judging from the way your uncle shoots you a reproachful look, you haven’t really succeeded.

Your father gives one final nod to Prince Aegon and, when he turns to face the rest of your house to be led to your seats, he meets your eyes. For a moment, in all the colors of light, he almost doesn’t look real with all the shades cutting across his sharp features. He doesn’t look like your father, doesn’t look like Jason Lannister. He looks like something else - almost like a painting with the colors smeared across it.

He looks proud, fierce. He’s won a windfall for House Lannister. You’ve won a windfall for House Lannister. He must already taste the iron in his mouth, must already dream of a daughter of your’s marrying into the house of the dragon, his blood sitting the throne itself.

And it’s all owed to you.

Your blood thrums with success, strong and vicious, and a part of you wants to hiss that truth to your father. Tell the Lord Paramount of the West that it was his daughter, his third daughter, the daughter he sent away, that brought this bounty to their house. Not him. You.

Jason nods at you, a smile flickering on his face, and you bow your head in response, only looking up once he’s passed you. You meet Aemond’s eye once more and he tilts his head at you, asking a question without words.

I’m fine.

He shifts in his seat, straightening up slightly, and you bite the inside of your cheek to hold back a grin when you realize if you made even the slight move to suggest it, he’d leave the royal table to follow you like a shadow to ensure your comfort and safety. You give him a small smile as assurance before taking your leave, following the rest of your house to be directed to your seats.

Unlike the feasts before, the seating isn’t strictly by houses. While your uncle is directed a few seats down from you, next to Lord Ormund, and your father settles into a seat next to Lord Celtigar, clapping the younger lord firmly on his shoulder, a maid directs you towards a seat nestled between Baela and Lady Floris Baratheon. You idly wonder how long it took the Queen to arrange this seating - who she must have consulted and what patterns she must have seen. You wonder if Aemond told her about your attempts to form some relationship with Baela Targaryen or if she had seen it for herself at the melee.

The moment you sit, eying the spread of food already laid out for you to enjoy, Lady Floris turns to you, a pretty smile on her face. “Lady Lannister,” she greets, leaning closer than she should, close enough that you can see the dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose and the kaleidoscope of colors in her eyes. “I just wanted to personally congratulate you on your crowns - oh, what an honor! I heard the songs the bards were playing near the Dragonpit - they were so, so lovely! I hope you’ll forgive me for saying this but I hadn’t known Prince Aemond was so handsome and he looked so beautiful crowning you.”

You smile awkwardly, slightly caught off guard by her overly effusive praise. She’s not all that much younger than you, closer in age to you than you were to Jocasta, but she’s so free in her manners that you wouldn’t be surprised if she was nearer in age to Jeyne. It seems half a miracle that such a sweet girl would come from the stormy house of Lord Borros, that such a frivolous girl could be the daughter of a high lord.

“I thank you, Lady Floris. I’m afraid I haven’t gotten to listen to the songs myself but it seems I will have to soon enough,” you reply, bowing your head in thanks, and she beams prettily. Everything she does is pretty - from the way she smiles to the way she reaches for her goblet of wine. Everyone around you seems to notice and you hold back a laugh at the way Floris seems to glow under everyone’s attention. You doubt there’s much of it to go around in Storm’s End - you can’t imagine a lovely girl like her thriving in the dark and dread of the tempests that haunt her home even if the Baratheons are nearly as prolifically virile as the Lannisters. It’s almost impossible to imagine it - even more impossible to imagine that she is one of the Four Storms, that her fights with her sister can and do grow to the point of infamy.

She giggles, her pale cheeks a bright red, and you drop your gaze slightly to the nearly empty goblet in her hand before looking back at her flushed face. You look slightly behind her, further down the table, to see her father laughing loudly as he snatches a carafe away from a servant to keep for himself.

As pretty as she is, it seems Lord Borros left his mark on his daughter after all.

She gives you one final big smile, slightly lopsided now that you look at her more carefully, before turning to talk to the enraptured son of House Reyne sitting at her side.

“She’s had two of them so far,” Baela murmurs, leaning slightly closer to you. Her white curls hang loose today and it tickles on the back of your hand when she moves closer and her hair sways over to you. “I’m afraid she might be a bit of a lightweight.”

You stifle your snort of laughter. “I’m sure she hasn’t had much to eat either - I only had some lemon cakes to make sure I didn’t keel over during the ceremony. I doubt she did much better.”

Baela snorts, reaching for her own goblet of wine in response. “I imagine it’s her first time being out in the court. Easy to get caught up in the splendor of it all.”

You tilt your head, reaching for a candied strawberry to pop in your mouth. “Royal weddings are usually the first time most ladies are brought to the court.”

“There hasn’t been one for years,” she responds immediately before pausing. Something darkens in her eyes, a flicker of old anger or regret, before she shakes her head, trying to clear it from her mind. “At least, none like this one.”

You bite down on the strawberry, enjoying the crunch of the crystalized sugar followed by the sweetness of the fruit. As you chew, you look over Baela carefully. She’s occupied herself with a tart, listlessly picking at it as she glares down at her plate.

The last royal wedding had been her father and Princess Rhaenyra. A rushed affair by all accounts - both in the time after her mother’s death and in the actual ceremony itself. There had been no traditional wedding - at least, no traditional wedding in the light of the Seven. No feasts. No tourney. If what you had heard when it had happened was true, they had had a Valyrian wedding on Dragonstone and that had been it.

You had little knowledge of what went into a Valyrian wedding - Aemond had briefly told you the details of it when the news had first broke but he had been uncharacteristically reticent to share information with you. He had explained there was meant to be a mixing of blood, to symbolize the different bloodlines coming together to become one, in the presence of fire to represent the strength that it would bring. He hadn’t given you much detail after that and you, admittedly, had not pressed him for it.

To be fair, he might have been sore over you debating out loud whether or not mixing the blood was necessary when the bloodlines were one and the same.

There hadn’t been tell of who had attended the wedding. Only that it had been attended by a maester who had confirmed its legitimacy to both the crown and the Citadel and a handful of guests.

You had never stopped to consider whether or not Baela had been there, if she had been there with her sister and with the Strong boys. You try to imagine what it must have been like to watch your father remarry, the tears not even dried from your mother’s funeral, and something in you trembles with rage and, alarmingly enough, sympathy.

Sympathy you didn’t care to feel, not when you can still remember the way Aemond had flinched when the maester had stitched his face back together, stitch by agonizing stitch.

Baela still harbors a grudge over it, bad enough that the memory of it would still send her into a dark mood years later. Another chink in the armor of House Targaryen, in the armor of Rhaenyra and Daemon Targaryen.

Another place you can dig your fingers in and pull and pull and pull until it is an impossible gap to close.

“I doubt there will be more weddings like this for quite some time,” you muse, Baela looking up from her plate to meet your eyes. “No other prince is even betrothed.”

Baela snorts inelegantly. “Not as much time as you’re trying to pretend there will be. The Queen might be better off leaving these decorations up to save some time for the servants for the next one.”

You smile despite yourself. “I wouldn’t dare presume to tell the Queen what to do.”

“You might not but I would,” she responds with the typical brash confidence you’ve come to expect from her. Only her eyes twinkling tell you that she’s teasing. “Might as well tell the guests not to go home. Save us all some trouble.”

“My older sisters are yet to be married,” you remind her, thinking of Tyshara with her letters of love and Cerelle with her new wolf husband.

Baela’s eyes flash and she tilts her head, looking as if she’s caught you out on a lie, and you realize it half a second before she opens her mouth. “I’ve heard a rumor that’s come down from the North. Something about the first southern Lady of Winterfell.”

Something in you seizes for a moment and you can’t think about the fact that Baela is watching you for any reaction or that the intense focus on your house will only increase from here.

You can only think about the fact that Cerelle Lannister doesn’t exist anymore. She’s Cerelle Stark now - both in the eyes of the gods and the court.

You smile on instinct, forcing it easily. “I was wondering when that would spread.”

Baela cocks an eyebrow. “So it is true then?”

Your heart beats hard in your chest, so loud in your ears it’s a miracle she cannot hear, but you nod. You let your smile grow wider and force yourself to relax in your seat. “Lord Cregan Stark heard about my sister and grew curious about the girl who was set to be the Lady of Casterly Rock if there was no boy born to us. He sent her a letter, hoping to bond over their duties, and it grew from there. When Lord Bennard caught wind, he invited her North in hopes of swaying House Lannister to his claim but my father sent her with his blessing. I’m sure you can understand why they couldn’t have a large wedding with us there, not with Bennard Stark refusing to give Lord Cregan what is rightfully his. After the matter of succession is settled in the North, we plan to travel to Winterfell to pay our respects to the new and the rightful Lord and Lady.”

A lie. A very practiced lie. It’s one you’ve mulled over for weeks now, testing the weight of it. It had been Cerelle’s idea, back when the two of you had approached your father and uncle with your plan. A love story, Cerelle had said, would make the idea of a rushed wedding go down easily. Gossip loves a story and, above all, they loved a love story. Your uncle had helped hammer out the details and all of you had agreed on the finished version. Even back in Casterly Rock, your mother and Tyshara had been coached on what to say when questions undoubtedly drifted their way.

For weeks, you’ve stressed about whether or not this flimsy story would be believed, if people would honestly think that Cregan Stark had fallen for your sister through letters. You’ve stayed up wondering if you should have pushed for this certain detail to be added or rallied for that aspect to be changed.

You never once considered if some people simply wouldn’t care.

Baela shrugs after you finish your short speech, looking as if you’ve just commented on the strawberry you just ate or how Floris Baratheon seems to be leaning in closer and closer to you once she realizes you’re gossiping. “Interesting that House Lannister would be so invested in the matters of succession of other houses.”

Your smile grows sharp. “House Lannister just likes to ensure that the correct people receive what is theirs by law.”

She gets that now familiar glint in her eye, that vicious gleam that you’ve seen in Aemond’s. For all that she’s aligned herself with her mother’s Velaryon side, she’s still a Targaryen, still a dragon. You half expect her to lash out but instead, she visibly takes a deep breath, looking down at her plate again and taking another stubborn bite.

You eye her for a moment, taking in her stiff back and her tight grip on her fork, before you sigh slightly, turning back to focus on your own food.

You think you’ll be doomed to sit in silence through the rest of the introductions, through however many courses Alicent has arranged, up until you’re free to leave your seat and find Aemond and Helaena, but then Floris drags you into a conversation about Storm’s End, her goblet thankfully refilled with water from a watchful servant. She tells you about her sisters, the three she has, and she’s absolutely delighted when you tell her you have four.

“You have me beat, my lady,” she giggles, swaying into you. You shift slightly in your seat, accommodating her so she’s pressing more into your chest rather than your shoulder, and she slides closer, nearly leaning on you entirely. You glance over her head towards the royal table, just in time to see Daeron laughing uproariously at you while Aemond hides his smirk behind his own drink. You’re so busy making a face at them that you almost miss her next words entirely. “Maybe the gods will bless my family with another daughter soon. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough or another sister.”

You glance down at her, your eyes roaming over her reddened cheeks and her half-lidded eyes. She’s still smiling, just barely as if she’s not wholly aware that she is. “Not a boy, my lady?” You ask, unable to stop yourself from bringing your arm up to wrap around her shoulders. It’s a small show of comfort, a little affection, and it embarrasses you slightly to do so in public - especially to a girl you’ve only just met. A quick look around, however, reveals that Floris Baratheon is hardly the only drunk at the feast and that most likely she’s not even the drunkest. Her own father has only gotten louder and louder, singing bawdy songs over the hum of the crowd, and you can spot your father laughing at Lord Celtigar as the poor man spills wine all over himself. Tyland and Ormund are speaking to each other in low tones, their heads bowed together as if they’re sharing a secret for only the two of them. Everywhere you look, people are deep deep in their cups and this is still only the beginning of the night.

You shudder to think what it means for the rest of the night.

Floris doesn’t respond after a moment and you glance down at her, praying that she hasn’t fallen asleep on you, but instead, you just see her playing with her goblet, swirling it gently in her hand.

“My lady?” You prompt again and Floris heaves a sigh before dragging herself up in her seat, pulling away from you.

She frowns, the first time you’ve seen a smile drop from her face. “Maybe I’ll be lucky enough for another sister,” she repeats again, not meeting your eyes. You stare at her a little longer, trying to puzzle out her meaning.

House Baratheon didn’t have an heir - at least, no boy had been born to them as of yet. Only four daughters, nearly as precarious a place as House Lannister had been, but your house had had a key advantage. You had the blood of the Andals coursing through your veins. The lordship would have gone to Cerelle before it ever would have gone to your uncle. That rule had been what had allowed for Queen Leila to rule, protect her inheritance, and choose a husband of her picking. Joffrey Lydden had only earned the title of King of the Rock through her and, even then, he had had to change his name to hers. There was a precedent of strength through the maternal line in House Lannister.

Not so in House Baratheon though, to be fair, there wasn’t much of a precedent in anything for that house. It was scarcely over a century old, formed the same year that Aegon began his conquest. They had Andal blood, yes, but also Valyrian and First Men. It’d be much harder for them to force Cassandra Baratheon, their current heir as it all stands, through to the lordship without being able to use Andal law as a major precedent. This crisis would be the first true one yet. A boy was a necessity or else their house could very well crumble.

But Floris wants a sister.

You eye her for a moment longer, wishing you could probe her for more, but as soon as you open your mouth to ask her, Lord Otto Hightower calls the hall to attention.

You straighten up and even Floris next to you pulls herself up to her full height, the sound of the Lord Hand’s voice nearly enough to sober herself. On your other side, you can feel Baela shifting, settling her attention towards the throne.

Just like during the opening feast, Otto Hightower stands in the shadow of the Iron Throne but now, Aegon and Helaena stand on either side of them, mirrors of each other. You’ve never seen much of a resemblance between the Lord Hand and his grandchildren but now, with the three of them standing side by side, you can catch echoes of him in the pair of them. Aegon is purely Alicent, a perfect copy if not for his Targaryen coloring, but it’s Helaena who bears the greatest resemblance. She’s always been pretty, always been soft around the edges, but here, next to her maternal grandfather, she’s almost handsome in a certain way. In the same way that Otto Hightower demands respect, Helaena demands worship.

“The crown would like once more to thank all the great and noble lords of Westeros for coming to celebrate this union of King Viserys and Queen Alicent’s children,” he booms, his voice loud and strong. The room claps, a few of the drunker occupants cheering loudly, and Otto raises his hands, calling for quiet. “The crown’s strength comes from its people, from you, my lords, and from the power of House Targaryen itself, from its dragons, from its allies. As we look to the future, Prince Aegon and Princess Helaena will serve as leaders, as examples, as pillars to guide the crown to even greater heights. They will help to usher in a power not seen since the days of the Conqueror himself.”

The throne room cheers again, loud and raucous, and, even as you clap, you look around. Otto Hightower’s words are chosen carefully, vague enough that to take umbrage over them would be an extreme overreaction, but directed and pointed enough that his message is clear to those who care to listen. Most are applauding, completely buying into the words of the Lord Hand, but there are a few who look more thoughtful, more suspicious. Lyman Beesbury looks as if he’s sucked a lemon, his weathered face pinched and scornful, while Lord Grover Tully nods firmly in agreement.

Rhaenys Targaryen sits, surrounded by Baratheons and Tyrells and some of your Lannister cousins, looking to all the world as if she’s working out a puzzle, trying to make a piece fit where it ought not go. You can almost see her weighing her options, mentally calculating between the two claimants and what power they bring, calculating what Rhaenyra or Aegon would bring to the realm and, more importantly, what they would bring to her and her own.

Remember your children you want to whisper in her ear. Remember how Laena screamed in pain by herself, half a world away from you. Remember how Laenor must have fought in his final moments before they burned him in his childhood home.

You can hear Baela’s clapping slow next to you and, when you tear your stare away from Rhaenys, you meet her own blazing amethyst gaze. She doesn’t bother to hide the question in her eyes, doesn’t bother to disguise her naked curiosity. You know that there’s no answer you can give her - not one that would satisfy her by any means - so instead, you give her a smile.

Her gaze hardens like flint and you wonder if this will be where she snaps, where the Rogue Prince’s impulsive nature will take over, but her own common sense takes control and she simply looks away, back to the Iron Throne.

You eye her for a moment longer, brushing your gaze over her tense frame, before returning your own gaze back to the three figures standing at the royal table.

When the clapping slows and there’s a lull in the noise, Helaena claps her hands, the sound soft but still striking enough to call attention back to her before it can turn elsewhere. You straighten up even taller in your seat, focusing completely on her. She’s been worrying over this since she told you a few days ago and you bite your lip.

Helaena takes a deep breath, looking visibly anxious to your familiar eyes, before clasping her hands together to hold against her chest. “In thanks for all the warmth the people have provided, Aegon and I would like to gift the leftovers from this feast to the poorest in this city.”

Aegon nods beside her, waiting for the applause to die down again. “We’d also like to provide more funds to the poorhouses in Flea Bottom so they can share in some of the plenty.”

He stands there awkwardly for a second, clearly unaware of what to do once he finishes his part, but, when the crowd begins to clap and cheer for him too, he straightens up, a small smile creeping on his face. You release a breath in relief when their small speech is over and it’s clear that the room is pleased by their show of charity. It had been the Queen’s idea - both the gift itself and the actual presentation of it - but you had helped Helaena practice. She had rehearsed it over and over again until you’re sure you could say her part in your sleep.

But it had all gone according to plan. You can feel one of the countless knots of anxiety inside you loosen and vanish but it gives you no relief, not when there are countless other knots to unravel within you.

There’s a beat where Aegon and Helaena look at each other, both of them caught in the moment staring each other down. It would look romantic if you didn’t recognize it for what it was - reluctance.

Then Aegon, drawing on strength from who knows where, holds up his hand for his sister, bowing his head as he does. Helaena only waits a breath before taking it and, together, the two of them walk around the royal table, beginning the slow march down to the empty space that had been cleared for dance. When they pass Aemond, your stare lingers on him.

He’s watching his siblings go, stone-faced and looking to all the world as if he was sitting a normal dinner and not the wedding feasts for his siblings. His eye tracks Aegon and Helaena as they walk and when they reach the center of the room and turn to each other, a flicker of something flashes on his face. It vanishes quickly, as if it had never been there, but it had been there.

Regret? Pity?

For all his talk of doing what he must for his family, you imagine even he would chafe at this duty. Even he would resist. Talk is easy. A lifetime tied to his sister with more than just blood is not.

You watch him, greedily taking in every single minute twitch of his face. For once, he doesn’t seem to sense your gaze. He’s completely lost in watching his siblings, his eye solely focused on them, and you know without looking when the dance begins. More than the soft gasp from Floris, more than the songs of the bards growing louder and more pitched, you can tell from the way he shifts in his seat, pitching forward as if it’ll give him a better view. His hair falls over his shoulders, falling around his face as if a curtain to protect him, but it doesn’t hide his complete concentration.

He would pull them away if he could. He would try to save them from this pain.

If he could.

Your breath hitches and you look away, following his gaze to see Helaena and Aegon.

They’re closer than they had been at the opening feast, their chests pressed up against each other in a show of intimacy. They’re clinging to each other, their heads bowed together as if they’re whispering to one another. It looks romantic. It should work.

But it doesn’t. It almost can’t. It’s the closest Helaena has ever been to anyone else - closer than even you have been to her in years but it fits her all wrong. It’s like trying to fit into a dress made for someone years younger, trying to shove your foot into one meant for a child. She holds Aegon as if she’s never held him before - never held him so close to her, so intimately. You wonder if she’s ever held anyone like that and somehow you doubt it.

She’s never been allowed it, never been given the opportunity to desire it out of anyone but her brother.

Not even with you - never been allowed to, had maybe never even considered.

A hot flame of resentment and jealousy begins to burn through your chest, burning and painful and agonizing. Why Aegon? Why her?

None of it has ever been about fair, about what was just, but now more than ever, you want to break something. Somehow this dance, this close of a dance, feels more a finality than even the wedding had been. This is everything put into motion. This is the first show of the performance that the two of them will have to give every day for the rest of their lives. You had told yourself you could manage it. You had told yourself that you could swallow back the bile and work with the pieces they’ve given you.

And you can. You will. You’ll bear it and relish the weight of the burden because of the power it gives you.

But as you watch the two of them, spinning round and round on the dance floor, it’s hard to remember that horrible truth about yourself - not with the pain swirling inside your chest.

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond x reader #aemond x you #i MEANT it when i said that grrm himself couldn't stop me from finishing this fic #ok bedding next chapter fr i got carried away bc im the biggest yapper i know #love you guys

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butterscotch-brigade · 3 months

Text

🐴 eat-the-alicorns Follow

sick of ponies saying shit like "luna > celestia" or "celestia is a tyrant, luna is best princess" like you know equestria is still a monarchy right. it doesn't matter who you "stan" they're still both members of the royal family. i should not have to explain to you why "stanning" a literal monarch is wrong

🌚 moonrises Follow

Somepony's a Celestia stan

🐴 eat-the-alicorns

read my post again

🌫 books-and-friendship-deactivated10102010

Excuse me, but can you please explain to me why the monarchy is so bad? I'm from the Dragon Lands, and we choose our leaders by sending them on a dangerous quest to retrieve a scepter from an active volcano. Thousands of dragons die every millenium to this gauntlet alone. How is that any better than living under the alicorns' comparatively peaceful and diplomatic rule?

🐴 eat-the-alicorns

girl you're literally a twilight sparkle stan blog i'm not arguing with you. go read books egghead

🥀 unlucky-rosepetals Follow

op thats not just a twilight themed blog that is the actual princess twilight herself

🐴 eat-the-alicorns

WHAT????????

🐴 eat-the-alicorns

IM BUCKING CRYINGGGG SHE DELETED THE POST AKSJDJDDJSJSJ

⛅️ chasingcloudstildawn Follow

SHE MUST HAVE FORGOTTEN TO SWITCH TO HER SIDEBLOG LMAOOOOO

🥕 beyond-my-garden Follow

NO BUCKING WAY SHE DEACTIVATED. RIP BOZO

🌅 sunny-daze-haze Follow

Welcome to Tumblr, the only website where you can cyberbully the princess of friendship into deactivating. Well done guys

🐴 eat-the-alicorns

"cyberbullying" she's taken on Actual Demons From Tartarus i think she'll be fine

📰 gxbby-gxms Follow

one of those "demons" was a literal child btw. yknow the one currently encased in stone in the canterlot sculpture garden

🎭 chaotic-strings Follow

Being a minor doesn't make you exempt from the consequences of your actions????

🐴 eat-the-alicorns

SHE'S A /CHILD/??? LIKE AN ACTUAL CHILD. and she's FULLY aware of everything going on around her??? tell me why you think eternal petrification is a fitting punishment for a child

⏳️ timeywimey Follow

@/chaotic-strings is Discord btw. In case you're wondering why he's advocating for turning a child to stone. I love sucking hooves

⏳️ timeywimey

???? I DID NOT TYPE "I LOVE SUCKING HOOVES" WTF???? DID SOMEPONY EDIT MY POST OR SMTH I THOUGHT YOU COULDN'T DO THAT ANYMORE????

🎭 chaotic-strings

lol

🍎 i-say-eeyup Follow

eeyup

#vanilla talks #mlp #i came up w the idea for this post while i was doing dishes LMAOOOOOO #uhh #unreality #i guess?? just to be safe

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dfortrafalgar · 6 hours

Note

would you be interested in a more Platonic type fic? Like being good friends with Robin?

alternatively if it has to be romantic: Law being forced on a disaster of a date only to meet a super helpful (comic) bookshop employee and she starts seeming cute when he finds out she has similar interests? (Boy probably went into cardiac arrest at first when someone caught him not being broody)

hope this isn’t too much!

and you’re doing awesome!

thank you so much for your request, anon!!!! im actually going to use both of your ideas, but i started with the Law one because that hit seriously close to home. ive been on some absolute TRAVESTIES of dates in the past, and i needed to write law suffering through a similar fate or i'd die!!!!! I hope you enjoy, and pretty soon I'll post your platonic Robin request as well! I love writing platonic stories just as much as romantic ones <3

An Out.

Law x Fem Reader

Law made the mistake of letting his friends talk him into a first date… and now he desperately needs an out. Fast.

Warnings: an absolute disaster of a first date for our wonderful nerdy man. modern au, implied college setting, some mild slight suggestive language but nothing more than that

Trafalgar Law tried in vain to recount the series of events that led up to this very moment.

There was the dusty apartment floor discussion about how the med-student hadn’t gotten laid yet, which was followed by a raunchy comment about a girl in someone’s class, it was revealed that this girl was single (‘and ready to mingle’), and her number was forcibly input into Law’s phone.

For the week that followed, he was inundated with flirty texts from this girl he had never met in person. He was forced to send her a picture of himself, mostly to get her to stop blowing up his texts every hour, and that was the next mistake in the line-up of unfortunate events.

Turned out she had a thing for facial hair.

Then, instead of getting pestered with general flirty messages, it was general flirty messages that were ramped up to a nine. ‘I’d rip your clothes off if you give me the opportunity,’ kind of nine.

Law knew he was a virgin, but at least he wasn’t this desperate, nor did he have any inclination to be. If anything, the texts he received from this stranger were making him want sex even less.

And yet… he was still pushed into this.

A date around downtown with this girl. She clung to his arm, tried to loop her fingers into his, and yet had absolutely no interest in anything he had to say. At all.

First red flag: she mentioned her ex. Three times. In four minutes. Everything was about what he did wrong to upset her, no self-awareness to be found. Second red flag: the clinginess. Law hated public affection, but any attempts to urge her to give him space resulted in a childish pout and her arms caged around his, almost pulling him to the ground. Third red flag: she couldn’t give two shits about Law, in any sense of the word. She wouldn’t stop talking about herself. Her looks, her clothes, her favorite music, her favorite shows to binge watch, her distaste for the area of the city they were in, her distaste for the lunch Law had [regretfully] paid for, her distaste for the speckled jeans he decided to wear…

He could feel the premature wrinkles forming in between his eyebrows the longer the date went on. He was starting to wonder if he’d have to throw out the shirt he was wearing later. It already reeked of the too-strong, powdery-scented perfume she bathed herself in.

“Where do you wanna go?” she suddenly asked, still tugging on his arm.

“I kinda want to stop by the bookstore before we leave,” he suggested, his feet already carrying him, and by extension, her, along the sidewalk to a small bookshop that had just recently opened.

“The bookstore? What kinda guy brings a girl to a bookstore on a first date?!” she demanded, showing off yet another childish pout. It wasn’t a good look on her.

‘A guy who knows this girl’s not getting a second date,’ he wished he could say. Instead, all the snarky remarks stayed locked inside his weary brain, bouncing around like a caged lion desperate to escape.

The girl didn’t make any motions to ditch him to his nerdy reprieve, and instead followed on his heels as he pulled open the bookshop’s door, the familiar, calming scent of new books, fresh paper, and ink filling his nose.

“It smells gross in here,” the girl huffed.

Aaaand there went Law’s fleeting moment of peace. Out the window. Down fifteen stories and splattered on the pavement. He needed to violently restrain the eyeroll that begged to appear. His ocular nerves ached to be a dick in the pettiest way possible. He inwardly hoped that by dragging this girl to the most unassuming bookshop would encourage her to leave, call a friend or get a cab to take her back to her home, but alas, she stayed glued to Law’s side like a lost dog.

She followed behind him as he blindly perused shelves of new and pre-owned books, Law’s feet subconsciously guiding him to the back of the store where he knew the comic books would be located.

If anything would turn this girl off for good, it had to be his love for all things superhero. His comic book collection would dry her up like a dessert in a drought. Or at least, it fucking better.

His eyes lit up as he approached the expansive comic shelf, immediately spotting the latest print of Sora: Warrior of the Sea- Volume 10. It had finally been officially localized, and he had been saving some of his spending money for this very moment. He eagerly grabbed the book from the shelf, thumbing through the pages.

“How old even are you?” jeered the girl by his side. “Comic books are, like, little kid shit.”

“I’m five years old,” barked Law, refusing to look toward her as he continued to analyze the pages of his favorite series.

To the average onlooker, they both probably looked like complete jackasses towards one another. And while Law was at least brave enough to admit that his behavior was certainly petty, he felt like he was warranted a Get Out Of Jerk Free card for all the painful hours of suffering through this atomic catastrophe of a date had put him through.

“Whatever, I’m going to find a bathroom,” the girl finally groaned, releasing his arm and trudging through the aisles of books toward the checkout counter to ask an employee where the bathrooms were located.

Law watched her go out of his peripheral vision, refusing to exhale a sigh of profound relief until she was completely out of his line of sight. With shoulders that finally relaxed, free from the overbearing tension, he turned his focus back to the comic in his hands, continuing to thumb through the colorful pages of artwork. He flipped the book around to examine the price, smiling at how reasonable it was. He filled his arms with a few other comics from a series he had been meaning to pick up, and retreated toward the cash registers to buy his books. The sooner he got his treat for this ordeal, the sooner he could get out of here, call this girl a taxi home, and spend the rest of his life as a willingly single comic book mega-nerd.

But reality wouldn’t let him off the hook so easily.

Not when the girl sitting behind the register thumbing through another copy of Sora Volume 10 was an absolute bombshell.

When she looked up at Law, her eyes quickly went wide. She placed the book under the register counter and eagerly leaned forward, her hands supporting her over the counter. “Are you alright?” she asked, her voice laced with worry.

Law cocked an eyebrow, confused. “Yeah, why?”

“That girl you’re with is making you miserable. You walked through the door looking like you wanted someone to grant you a mercy killing,” she huffed. Her eyes were clearly concerned. “Are you dating her?”

Law felt his guard dropping without even realizing it the longer he was in the presence of this cashier. “My friends set me up on a date with her, but I’m having the absolute worst time of my life.”

The new girl’s own eyebrows angled downward in concern. “Do you want an out?”

“A what?”

“An out,” she repeated. “An excuse to get her to leave you alone.” Time was running out. At any moment, she could leave the bathroom.

Law frantically looked back and forth between the cashier and the small, short hallway that led to the single restroom. With pleading, golden eyes, he silently mumbled, “Yes, please.”

The cashier kept her eyes on the bathroom door as she began unloading Law’s hands, spreading his books out on the counter to make it look like she was busy ringing out his purchase. Law watched with an analytical gaze as she fumbled with his items, clearly buying time until the bathroom door opened.

He didn’t have time to ask what she was plotting.

The second the door cracked open, the man’s shirt collar was violently clenched in the cashier’s hands as she pulled him over the counter, smushing her lips into his. Law’s fingers flexed in thin air as he froze, brain completely fried as he was frozen in this sudden kiss.

His first kiss.

“What the fuck?!” the girl screeched, exiting the bathroom in a frenzy as she booked it toward the heated exchange happening over the cash register.

The new girl pulled herself away from Law’s face, but only enough where she could display her best rendition of a weary, tired war-torn wife waiting on a cliffside for her husband to return. “Baby, please just take me back! My life isn’t complete without you!” Her voice was cracking as she fake-wailed, her grip on Law’s shirt never faltering, not even once. The few customers who also occupied the store turned to stare at the commotion, frazzled and befuddled. “Nothing in life is as good as it was with you! I’m in shambles! You were the best sex I’ve ever had!”

It took a few moments for Law to catch on to the ruse. As soon as he put the puzzle pieces together in his mind, however, he was grabbing the wrists of the cashier and bringing his lips back to hers, closing his eyes and trailing his arms up to grasp her face. Completely disregarding the fact that they were still separated by the heavy check-out counter between their torsos.

“You were dating someone?!” snapped the original girl. “Why didn’t you tell me?!”

Law pulled away from the cashier’s lips, his own skin immediately feeling fifteen degrees colder from the loss of her contact. “I wasn’t. Until now.”

The new girl put her arm around Law’s shoulders from across the check-out counter, her deft fingers caressing his skin through his shirt. “I’m sorry, but I’m taking him back, I can’t stand to be without him any longer! The sight of him with another woman…” she made a show of clenching her chest, “makes me sick!” She was damn good at this, in a way that almost made Law concerned. The fact that she was pulling all of this out of nowhere, and the fact that her first course of action was this drastic, made Law’s heart flutter in his chest.

“Ugh, whatever. This place sucks ass anyway. I’m going home.” She finally shouldered her bag and marched out of the shop, her feet stomping across the hardwood floor until the sound of the front door slamming closed finally made the cashier release her arm from Law’s shoulders.

And once again, the man was feeling oddly cold without the contact. He glanced at her as she started ringing up his items for real. “You’re… a good actor,” he blurted.

The girl hid her face in her arm with shame, an awkward laugh bubbling from her throat. “I’m so sorry, I was trying to think of what to do to help you but when the door opened I panicked.” Her eyes were focused on her work. “I’ve been on some absolutely awful dates myself, so I understand. Sometimes I’ve wished I could have Prince Charming swoop me out of the movie theater where a guy made fun of me for my interests the entire run-time.”

His jaw went slack. “Are you serious?”

“Deadass,” she replied, quick as a whip. “Insisted on holding my hand the entire time. I think he was convinced that I had taken him to see a horror movie because I wanted to act scared in front of him, but his hand was so clammy and sticky the whole time. And not in the endearing ‘Aww he’s shy!’ kind of way.”

Law wished at that moment that he had more charisma. He was sure one of his friends would be able to pull a witty, flirty quip from their asses like it was nothing, but Law’s personal dictionary of flattery was nonexistent as it was. He balked while he listened to the cashier who just took his breath away lamenting about her own poor experiences with dating, and he was sure that her example in this moment was only one of many. Instead of continuing the conversation, his mind blanked. He stated, more like whispered, “That was my first kiss.”

The girl’s hands stopped scanning his books halfway through. Her wide eyes darted up to Law’s, her jaw slack. “It… It was?”

“Yeah.”

Her hands flew to cover her mouth, eyes wide with shock. “Oh my god… oh my god, I’m so sorry!” She dropped her head onto the counter, covering her despair with both of her arms now. “First kisses are supposed to be special and I just took your’s away from you…”

Law shocked himself by smiling at the weary display in front of him. “If it makes you feel any better, that was far better than the date I was on. But I’m sure you already knew that.”

She picked her head up, a trembling hand grabbing one of his last books to scan. Her eyes nervously darted back and forth as she silently worked, once in a while sucking her bottom lip in with her teeth before releasing the flesh. She was clearly lost in an intense inner turmoil.

“It’s really alright,” Law muttered, now growing shy himself. He was just now realizing the gravity of what had happened… and how truly adorable this girl was.

She tapped a few buttons on her cash register before finally making eye contact with him again. “You are a pretty good kisser… you’re really sure you’ve never done that before?”

He affirmatively shook his head. “Never. I’ve never been… popular with the dating scene,” he muttered. “Hence this awful set-up date.”

The cashier’s eyes went wide again momentarily. “That’s kind of surprising to me… I would think someone like you would get any girl you wanted.”

Law backpedaled. “What does that mean?”

She pulled his total up on the small screen that faced him. She was turning away from him as if to hide her face, her entire expression teeming with a child-like embarrassment. “Well, you’re crazy hot, for starters. And you like Sora, clearly.”

Law felt a smirk emerge on his lips. “Is Sora one of your only qualifiers for a decent partner?” He began to rekindle some of the confidence he had lost throughout the day. The longer he spent in this girl’s presence, the more he felt the tension in his body leaving.

She grinned, the stress in her shoulders from her own actions finally releasing. “Only guys with fluffy black hair and golden eyes that read Sora, if you want my honest answer.”

Now this was flirting. Law had to admit, he was pretty pleased with this sudden turn of events. The atmosphere this girl radiated was immensely calming, allowing him to chip through his reinforced walls just enough to feel like a somewhat normal person. He started to wonder if she could break through his barriers even more.

“What’s your name?” he finally asked, taking out his credit card and swiping it through the machine to finally cash out his order.

The girl excitedly revealed her name. “And your’s?”

“Trafalgar Law,” he replied. “I go to North Blue University for med school in the next town over.”

“No shit, so do I! I’m getting a worker's license there,” she added, her expression shifting from one of moderate happiness to one of excitement. “I doubt we’ve had any of the same classes, but we should hang out sometime! Get coffee, maybe talk about Sora…” Her voice trailed off, her eyes growing soft. “Unless you’ve been completely turned off to dating after what you’ve clearly just been through.”

Law took a few moments to ponder over her words, watching as the receipts for his purchase slowly emerged from the thermal printer. “I think I can make an exception this time.”

The smile that broke out on the girl’s face may as well have blinded him. She was truly dazzling, even in her ratty-looking employee apron and an oversized T-shirt accounting for her work attire.

Law placed his new assortment of books into his own bag, the girl snatching his receipts from the printer and stashing one of the copies in the drawer below the counter. When he looked back up, she was holding out his second receipt, folded in half. She gave him a fond smile when he took it.

“I hope you’re able to relax later today, and enjoy your books!” she called, waving to Law as he exited the store.

Once outside again, the air felt clearer now that he was alone. The day was still young, hardly a cloud in the sky and a pleasant breeze coasting through the city. He looped his bag over his shoulder and opened the receipt, peering at what was written on the backside.

Call me for Sora… and for just me ;) <3 1125-354-9854

#x reader #reader insert #fem reader #one piece x reader #law x reader #op x reader #trafalgar law x reader #trafalgar d water law x reader #trafalgar d water law #trafalgar law #law oneshot #request fics

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galedekarios · 4 months

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that interview is driving me insane i've been thinking about it for the past hour and i still can't wrap my head around it. i think what really gets under my skin is it just... contradicts with the text of the game. the most positive possible reading of the ending where gale blows himself up is that it was an unavoidable tragedy dictated by fate but even that's a stretch. to say it's a good ending?? or a satisfying conclusion to his arc?? i call bull. it's more infuriating because there is such a clear good ending for gale's character arc and it's the professor ending! his arc was about learning to accept himself as he was, to value who he is as he is flaws and all, and he's done that in the professor ending! and the god of ambition ending is a bad end for him but still ties into his overall arc in a satisfying if sad way (imo). the ending where he dies just... doesn't. which is fine as a tragedy but to imply it isn't exactly that, a tragedy, is wild to me. and it being so blatantly contradictory to the actual events of the game makes me think that whole thing was just catering to people who hate gale which like... why? people who don't like him don't care about his story so why pander to them like this?

uhg. i am sorry for blowing up your inbox like this i just feel like i'm gonna rip my hair out and need to express that to a fellow gale appreciator. i love gale's epilogue SO MUCH it made me feel for a bit like maybe the writers had actually changed how they felt about him but. nope! silly of me to hope for that. wish i could memory wipe that whole interview from my brain dark urge style.

don't be sorry at all! 🖤 i feel the same way in a lot of ways. altho i feel the need to mention that gale's writer, jan van dosselaer, was not involved in this interview.

i started to make a meta post about this yesterday, but reading things like this from gale:

act ii [after elminster] Player: An old man with a craving for cheese. Hardly the great wizard of legend. Gale: A wizard doesn't reach Elminster's age without enjoying their home comforts. Those who seek danger over cheese don't tend to live as long. Gale: For Mystra to have sent him... The severity of her bidding could not be clearer. Or weigh more heavily on me. devnote: reflecting on mystra sending elminster, of all people - a powerful individual, becoming reflective. Gale: Time seems so infinite when you are young... a month is an age, a year is a lifetime... it is a strange feeling, to realise how little of it one might have left. Player: You're seriously considering doing what Elminster said? Gale: Of course - he offered the clearest solution to our problem. All I have to do is find the right place and time, close my eyes, and let go... devnote: Trying to sound upbeat, not fully engaging with what he's saying (that he's going to kill himself). Gale: Then the slate will be clean, wrongs will be righted, the Absolute will be gone... devnote: Trying to sound upbeat, not fully engaging with what he's saying (that he's going to kill himself). Gale: ...and I along with it. devnote: Still trying to sound upbeat, though this time the reality that this means he will die weighs a bit heavier

and:

act ii [act ii romance scene] Gale: I am terrified - I will not claim otherwise. My face could scarcely conceal it even if my words sought to deny it. nodecontext: Hushed, vulnerable Gale: There is no point in running from the inevitable. Better to meet it, on my own terms. nodecontext: Resigned

as well as this:

act ii [act ii friendship version] Gale: Yes... but there is so much to live for, and so few moments in which to house it all. Gale: Damn you. Damn you for giving me so much to care about. Our friends, our adventures... this would have been so much easier if it was just me. But it isn't. Gale: If there is a way - any way - to save all that's grown dear to me, I want to seize it. I just cannot fathom what that might be, other than to fail Mystra and condemn the world. Gale: Stay with me, will you? I don't want to think of it any more, but I don't want to be alone either.

act iii [before the netherbrain] Player: Gale... I think we should consider using the orb as Mystra intended. To blow up the Netherbrain. Gale: I'm getting rather tired of how often those I care about seem to reach the same conclusion.

when you have this:

and i just... couldn't finish the meta.

it's absolutely beyond comprehension for me how anyone could try to frame this as an ending that is the right one in "many ways", as the "guy who starts off annoying everyone", eating your "most priced possessions", having to "give back to the world".

for the founder of the company to say he wasn't "ready" the "first time", but he's finally "ready" now.

gale's death isn't only unnecessary, an instruction given to him by his former mentor on the behalf of a goddess, who would've sacrificed not only him but thousands of others to achieve her own goals, he doesn't want to die. he's terrified. he wants to live. he is offering this because he believes that his time has run out. because he wants his death to have purpose if it must happen. because he feels he made a mistake far bigger than he can ever make up for. because he doesn't want others to waste their chance at life like he feels he has. the will he leaves behind in the epilogue if he sacrifices himself isn't finished because he thought there would be more time. i could go on and on.

and again, the question is too... for what exactly does he need to "give back to the world"?

being perceived as annoying after coming out of what is presented as isolation and depression? asking for help with a now chronic impairment that feeds on his very soul and wreaks havoc on his body? for making a mistake? by that logic every companion deserves the same fate.

which brings me to the contrast to how most of the other companions are framed in this interview: k*rlach, "the labrador of the party". l*e'zel, "she's so young". ast*rion, "much of what he does it out of fear". sh*dowheart, "the jason bourne" and "victim of religous trauma". w*ll, "the true baldur's gate hero".

the difference is staggering. there's empathy here. there's at least a surface level understanding and/or appreciation of the characters there.

...and then you have gale.

it's alienating and disappointing to see devs have so little respect and care for their own character, as well as for the parts of their fandom who have grown attached to the character exactly for the strengths and flaws he has, for the struggles he faces and for the healing journey he can have if he is helped and lives.

#my opinion on larian has already changed to the negative for the way they've lied prior release re: what is actually in the game #as well as the amount of bugs and issues that other companies would be dragged through the mud for #as well as the extreme bias showing itself in the scene disparity of their characters #but this was really the final nail in the coffin for me #i also think that it would have been so easy to find a more diplomatic answer instead of choosing reddit talking points but that's just me #ch: gale dekarios #vg: baldur's gate 3 #series: baldur's gate #text: personal #text: asks #bg3 critical #larian critical #suicidal ideation cw #depression cw

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adelaidedrubman · 1 month

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