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kiri-ah · 3 years

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Something To Sink My Teeth Into || she/her pronouns version

Themes: Supernatural AU, Vampire AU, strangers to lovers, angst and fluff (so much fluff), something similar to those symbiotes from Venom and Hanahaki disease combined, interplanar travel, Jaemin and the reader are oblivious and Chenle gets mad about it, long conversations about vampires, vampires can't cry

Pairing: Vampire!Jaemin x Female Human!reader

Warnings: mentions of blood (minor), mentions of eating (human food and vampire food), character death, Chenle is kind of a butthole, in depth conversations about humans and vampires which include biting and blood drinking, Yuta's house gets set on fire

Word Count: 26.4k

Taglist: @bluejaem, @heyyyun, @generantionct (untaggable), @stayctday, @kunrengui, @allegxdly, @leetaeyonglover, @koishua, @choppedupcactus, @hyuckworld, @alexameliamg, @notbeforelong, @jaemotel

Summary: A trip to Poland goes terribly wrong - or maybe terribly right - when you're bitten and kidnapped by a vampire. Between passing out, almost dying multiple times, and falling in love, you have a lot on your plate. Oh, and the magic. Right. Teaser here.

A/N: This is so much longer than it was meant to be... *sigh*

This has only been edited by myself and a friend of mine, please excuse any errors. I worked hard to make the best experience possible. For that reason, please note that this is the !she/her pronouns version! He/him pronouns may be found here, they/them pronouns here. Please enjoy!

You were on holiday in Krakow, Poland. For your twenty first birthday, your parents had gifted you a weeklong trip over Spring Break, and you had been having the time of your life. You had found Krakow rich in historical influence - it had been the capital of Poland until 1596 and still had remnants of the past, like a Renaissance-era trading post and sections of the medieval walls that surrounded the city. Plus, the section of the city that you were staying in was very close to the city center, where you discovered aforementioned trading post, called the Cloth Hall, and an old cathedral named St. Mary’s Basilica.

The first night of your stay, Sunday night, you had struggled to sleep, because of the time difference and the excitement of arriving. You stayed in Monday morning, trying to at least rest a bit, and then ventured out to the nearest coffee shop when that didn’t alleviate your sleepiness. The barista had whipped up your favorite pick-me-up morning drink, and you went to sit outside in the fresh air, surveying the plaza over the rim of your cup. It was just the right time of year, you thought, because it was nice and warm without being too hot, just how you liked it. The sun had started to rise about the buildings around you, illuminating certain structures and giving them an unearthly glow.

When you finished your drink, you put the cup into the collection bin and walked back out onto the main square, just enjoying the sun on your face (over the sunglasses you had bought in the airport after forgetting to pack yours) and letting the warmth sink through your limbs after the tired night. One of the unfortunate things about the time of year you had travelled was the tourists. There were families and older couples and people your age taking trips with their friends, and most everyone stayed right where you were staying as well: right in the heart of the city. To avoid as many crowds as possible, you had booked a tour of St. Mary’s Basilica for Thursday morning, and reserved entry to the underground museum for this afternoon.

Tomorrow you planned to go and see Grodzka Street, where you were going to try and find a souvenir. In the same neighborhood was an ancient church called St. Andrew’s Church, which dated back to around 1079. On Wednesday, you were going to brave the crowds of people in the Cloth Hall for the same purpose, and also because it was a historical landmark that you just needed to explore. Wednesday afternoon was blocked out to be a rest period, as was Thursday morning. Then on Friday you were planning to go and see the Wawel Castle and Cathedral. From there you would explore the various attractions on the property, and then return to the plaza later to eat. That afternoon, you planned to go to the Jewish cemetery. Saturday was blocked out for a trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was a Nazi concentration camp and a Holocaust memorial out of the main town. When you returned to the hotel late that afternoon you would pack and get ready for your flight Sunday morning. It was going to be a very full and very fun week. Or at least you hoped it would be fun.

You explored the main square a little bit that first day and unpacked your things, making sure you had everything you needed for your trip and you didn’t need to walk to one of the convenience stores nearby.

The days passed quickly, and you finished each one completely satisfied. Everything and everyone here was so wonderful and you started to wonder how you had never heard of this place before this trip. It was absolutely one of the best places your parents could have picked.

On Friday morning you got up bright and early (well, actually, it was dark and early) to go to the Wawel Castle. You had heard from a travelling site that tickets sold out fast and it was important to get there early in the day, and you tried to heed that warning. At 7am when you arrived it was already busy, but thankfully not so much that the lines were too long. You wandered through the small exhibits and around the grounds. It was a bit more chilly today and you wrapped a scarf around your neck as you shivered, trying to find a less windy spot to hide out for a second. You found a little spot where you could take a moment and recharge your inner heater and were doing just that, burrowing into your small scarf mountain, when you realized that a person stood next to you. You looked up through your lashes at them and caught your breath - holy cow he had good genes. He had a sharp, sloping jawline that stopped at a chin less pointy than you had expected. His lips were plush and round, although he needed some chapstick. His hair was pushed around by the wind but despite that he looked, well, amazing. Sections were bleached, giving his hair an almost halo-esque look. His nostrils contracted as he inhaled and then his eyes cut down to yours, dark and deep and was that eyeliner?

He smiled then, a smirk that seemed far too self-assured for the situation, and leaned over towards your exposed ear. “I can feel you staring, sweetheart,” he murmured. The top of your ear, which had been feeling rather numb, flamed hot at his words. It almost hurt, the sudden jump into heat. You turned towards him fully, only eyes exposed by the scarf mountain. Your hair whipped around as the wind shifted again, but he didn’t seem cold, although he was in only a pair of black skinny jeans, a white t-shirt, and a black jacket. The jacket caught your attention for a second - it was studded with thousands of little rhinestones, like a varsity jacket gone shiny. Then he shifted closer into your space and you were forced to look back at his eyes, glittering in a way that seemed almost predatory. You sucked in a breath through your mouth and started to back away.

“S-sorry,” your breath came out in a whisper. Nobody seemed to notice your interaction. “I didn’t see you there, I’ll just leave.” You turned to go before his hand, surprisingly strong, clamped around your arm and pulled you back into his chest.

His voice came out in a growl as he blocked your scream with his other hand. “I am far, far too hungry for you to leave right now, precious.” The strength in your legs seemed to dissipate at his tone, you knew you needed to defend yourself, but ‘hungry’? What was that about? And precious? The hand wrapped around your arm let go and started unwrapping your scarf, exposing your face to both him and the frigid wind. He started to lean down, and you pressed your lips together tightly. At the very least, he wasn’t getting in your mouth. You may have lost the strength in your legs, but not in your will. Then he bypassed your mouth and leaned into your neck, inhaling and causing cold air to course along the column of your throat. He chuckled when you shivered, then bit into your neck.

The pain was overwhelming, you could feel each individual blood cell crying out, every organ protesting, your head started to pound with it. It hurt far more than even a dog bite should. It hurt like a shot at the doctor going on and on, echoing through your body and you were powerless to stop it. The pain flared in your neck and your brain seemed to slow down as the blood flowed away from it and into his mouth. You crumbled into him, and without detaching from your throat, he scooped you up into his arms, holding you there to be his personal bloodbag. You had long since stopped trying to scream, it was too difficult, too much effort.

Vampires, your thoughts whispered, before the pain covered you and you passed out, collapsing completely.

☽༓☾

You woke up in a... cozy cottage? There wasn’t any sign of your attacker and, in fact, no sign of anything vampire esque either. You looked around the single room at the soft fabric couch (covered in boho style throw pillows), the kitchenette (complete with pre packed food), and the window, through which you could see a combination flower and vegetable garden. There were two doors off of the room you were in, one that led towards the lush green outside, and one that must have concealed the bathroom.

The moment you realized this, you also realized that you really needed to use said bathroom, and struggled to plant your bare feet on the floor. Your legs didn't want to hold your weight, and you crumbled to the rug with a whine. Two seconds later, the door to the outside opened with a swish of fresh air and there, outlined by the sun, stood the most gorgeous person you had ever had the pleasure to lay eyes on. When he saw you on the floor, he groaned and ran a hand through his pink hair. "Shit, I'm so sorry, let me help you!" He ran over and you allowed him to half carry you into the bathroom. It wasn’t like you had any strength to protest, and he seemed nice. He smelled like sunshine on fresh earth.

Once you had finished using the toilet you tried to stand up again, now that you at least had some semblance of strength in your legs. After a few tries you were able to support yourself against the bathroom counter, with more than half of your weight against the frigid tiles. Your legs shook as you started standing more straight up, and you made a high pitched keening sound that you didn’t even know you could make; the man’s worried voice came through the door. His voice was higher and slightly panicked.

“Are you okay? Do you need help? Are you hurting too much?”

Your voice, which you hadn’t managed to make work properly, came out lower than usual and scratchy. A portion of your throat ached as you tried to make the sounds audibly. “Yeah,” you rasped out. “I can’t stand up properly.”

“Do you need me to come and help?” There was something about his voice that just made you want to trust him. It was soft but strong and even though he had toned down the panic, it still had soft tremors of worry running through it.

You thought about it for a second and considered yourself in the mirror. You looked, quite frankly, horrible. Your hair was a mess (more than usual), your eye bags were sagging unnaturally, and your eyes themselves were dull. You did look like you needed help. You sighed. “Sure.”

A moment later he opened the door slowly and stepped into the space with you, putting one arm around your waist to help support you. You relaxed some of your weight onto him and closed your eyes briefly. It would have been a wholly relaxing moment if not for your stomach. It grumbled up at you and you thought for a moment that it sounded like an angry octopus trapped inside of you. Then you blinked to clear the thought away as the man laughed. It was deeper than you expected from a man with pink cotton-candy colored hair, a low chuckle that rumbled through his body and, in turn, yours. You shook against him slightly with the movement and his other arm came to help you lean more against his body. He was stronger than you expected and you could feel the muscles in his arms shift as he reoriented himself.

“Let’s get you some food,” he said, smiling. “Unfortunately I’m not sure I’ll have much you’ll like.” You just nodded. Your throat was still throbbing uncomfortably where you were bitten and you weren’t sure you had the energy to even debate his statement. You were sure you would eat whatever he gave you. He led you into the main room again and helped you settle onto the couch. He walked over to the kitchenette and picked up a can of soup, then walked back to you to verify it was a kind that you liked. Once you had approved it, he went back and put it in a pot on the electric stove, starting to heat it up. As he stood over it, you had some time to think as you sat on the couch. The first thing you realized was that you still didn’t know what his name was, which was an issue. You couldn’t thank him properly without knowing his name. The second thing you realized was that you didn’t know where you were, exactly. The third was that you had probably missed your flight back home and your parents were going to murder you for it when you eventually got back. You shifted so you were more comfortable before trying to speak again. You started with the easiest vocal warmup you remembered and the man looked over at you with eyebrows raised.

“You good?” he asked. You nodded in response, hoping that your throat would relax and stop throbbing.

“Yeah, I think so,” you told him. “The side of my neck really aches where that man bit me.” His eyebrows furrowed at this and you thought maybe you just imagined it, that nobody actually bit you, but the pain was real enough in that moment and it was certainly real enough when he bit you. “Also,” you continued, “I still don’t know what your name is.” He seemed to think about this for a moment.

“I’m Jaemin Na,” he said eventually. “This is my house. And I think maybe we need to take a closer look at your bite, I didn’t realize it still hurt. Usually the throbbing goes away after a day or two.” You found yourself nodding along before his words sank in.

“Okay, uh, nice to actually know who you are now. I’m Y/N,” you said. There were suddenly many more questions floating around your brain. Usually he had said, which meant he had dealt with vampire bitten people before. How? Was he one? Why weren’t you a vampire? And how long had you been asleep for? They circled around your head like a dog chasing its tail until you realized that Jaemin was in front of you. It seemed like he was waiting for you to say something.

“Sorry,” you murmured. “What was that?”

“I said we have all the time in the world for you to ask me the questions I know you must have. Don’t psych yourself out. You’re safe.” Despite the fact that you knew next to nothing about him you found yourself once again trusting him without reason. He just seemed like a genuinely nice person, someone you could believe to tell you nothing but the truth.

“Okay,” you agreed, and it came out like a sigh. Your throat gave a particularly unpleasant throb and you unconsciously brought a hand up to rub at it. Jaemin’s hand fastened around your wrist and pulled it away, looking closely at your skin. He sighed.

“You’ve probably figured out by now that the man who bit you was a vampire. If you haven’t, have your moment of denial now.” You just looked back at him, surprised.

“Denial?”

“Yeah. Usually when humans find out about vampires for the first time they aren’t very accepting of it. I’ve had to replace my windows a few times from thrown objects.” You almost laughed before realizing that he was serious.

“Okay, well, I already got that, so go ahead,” you prompted.

“Great!” His eyes got just a little bit less heavy with your statement and he continued, “contrary to popular belief, vampires don’t actually turn humans all that often. If we had that little self control the whole population would be dead or turned already.” You noted his use of the word we and shuddered a little. He could attack you too? He seemed so gentle.

For the first time you noticed your soup in a bowl on the coffee table. Jaemin reclaimed your attention by speaking again. “We’re also pretty good at choosing who to bite, and when. We’re not heartless. We try to choose people with good metabolisms so that we can return them to Earth quickly.” At this you inhaled so sharply that he paused, looking over at you.

“We aren’t on Earth anymore?” you asked shakily. He shook his head with a quirk of his lips. That distracted you enough to calm down for a moment. He really was a gorgeous person. Was the word person still applicable to vampires? You didn’t know. He sucked you out of your thoughts again with a hand waved in front of you.

“No, we’re not on Earth. Where we are… it’s like a parallel plane of existence. Vampires can live here, do live here, in bigger bunches than we can on Earth. We call it ‘Vahmpyr.’ I always thought that was a really unoriginal name, but I was turned after it was discovered so I didn’t have much of a say. It would be like you trying to rename Earth.” He picked up your bowl of soup and stirred it around, handing it to you, before continuing.

“This is my vacation house of sorts, where I nurse humans who have been bitten back to their healthy selves. Generally we vampires try to keep one certified nurse or doctor in each coven just in case, more if the coven is large. It’s a handy skill to have. Especially if you happen to have parts of your coven who are as chaotic as ours.” He looked over at you and smiled wryly before adding, “I didn’t poison the soup, you know.” You looked down at your lap where the warm bowl sat and laughed under your breath before picking up the spoon and taking a bite. It was delicious. You flashed him a thumbs up with your mouth full and he smiled brightly again.

Once you had swallowed you asked, “how can you bite humans and not turn them? I didn’t know it was possible to not turn us.” He nodded like he was expecting this question.

“It’s kind of a strange feeling,” he told you. “Biting, I mean. It’s not like the human feeling of biting into a piece of meat. It’s just… it’s amazing. It’s like cold fruit on a summer’s day, hot chocolate while snow falls. It’s at once a feeling of absolute power and absolute devotion because tasting a human’s blood puts them above everything else, at least for a few moments. At the same time you’re aware that their body is falling apart and right into you. It’s intoxicating. Every once in a while you’ll bite someone that just tastes extraordinarily good, or meet someone with a unique and, pardon my language, delicious, smell. Then your body sort of automatically realizes you want them to stick around and releases the venom.”

“So,” you said, interested by his version of vampires, “if you bit me right now, I’d be fine?”

His eyes sparked with something new. Anger, you thought, or something close to it. “I just spent four days nursing you back to health and you want me to bite you just to see what happens?” he asked incredulously.

“No! I was just confirming. I’m sorry,” you murmured, and shoved another bite of the soup into your mouth for good measure. He sighed.

“I’m sorry too, it feels so easy to talk to you. I forget that you’re new to this.” You choked on your soup while he and he hurriedly patted your back as you regained your breath. “Are you alright?”

“Did you say you spent four days nursing me back to health?” you asked, head spinning. Four days. Four days. Four days. “I’ve been missing from Earth for four days?”

He deliberated for a moment. “Yes, and no. You’ve been off of Earth for four days, yes, but you aren’t missing.” You raised an eyebrow in response and he hurried to explain more. “I mean, obviously you’re here, and yes, you’ve been here for four days, asleep, recovering from Jisung’s bite. On the other hand, there’s still a you on Earth right now. That’s the interesting thing about Vahmpyr. We can bring humans back, with some effort, and while they’re here, a version of them is still on Earth. It’s still you. And if you go back, from what I understand, you get your other half’s memories back, like you never left. It’s quite the phenomenon.” He seemed completely serious and you were inclined to believe him, but this was insanity. Another you, a perfect copy, walking around on Earth while you hung out with the vampires in their parallel plane? You pinched yourself. It hurt, and you winced. Jaemin looked at you with this horrible understanding glimmer in his eyes like he was saying I know how this is. It’s weird and unimaginable but it’s here. Please don’t break any of my things.

Eventually you just kept sitting and looked back at him. “This really is good soup,” you said. He looked at you in surprise before bursting out laughing, face lighting up like the horizon at sunrise.

“You’re not going to attack me?” he asked between chuckles. “That’s the normal response. And thank you, that’s my favorite kind of soup too.” You shook your head, smiling back at him.

“I decided that there’s no changing it even if this is just a fever dream induced by an infected human,” you explained to him. “And wait, can you actually eat still? Like stuff besides blood?” In response he ran over to the small kitchen and grabbed a spoon of his own, dipping it into the bowl and moving it to his mouth. When he was done he smiled at you.

“I can still eat human foods. Nothing is as good as blood, of course, but I can still enjoy it. It’s just dulled by the transformation. And I’m glad that’s the stance you take on being transported to a different plane, I’ve known humans to react rather badly.” He took a moment to think. “For example, there was a woman who was convinced we had sexually assaulted her, which is a fair thought, but she wouldn’t let me explain anything to her. She ran outside as soon as her legs were strong enough and ran right into Lucas. He’s a really big guy, wide and tall and strong and such. She was so terrified she ran into my bathroom and I had to give her the spiel from through the door. Not the finest of interactions.” In spite of yourself you laughed. You could imagine the woman’s fear, especially if this Lucas was as infuriatingly gorgeous as Jaemin and the man who had bit you. You probably should’ve felt the same way, but something about Jaemin was just relaxing, and you felt safe with him.

“I get it,” you told Jaemin. “All of you guys; the guy who bit me - what did you say his name was? Jisung? Yeah, him. Jisung and you and probably Lucas, you all look like models which I guess goes with the vampire narrative, but it’s a little shocking since I’ve never seen someone so good looking. It’s nearly scary.” You looked back up to see Jaemin looking surprised.

“You think we’re good looking? Even after you got bitten by one, abducted by another, and have only heard of the third in a story about someone running away screaming?”

You shrugged. “All of that doesn’t change the facts. You’re still some pretty perfect looking human beings.” A moment later you realized what you had said and wrinkled your nose. “Sorry, uh, creatures. Is that offensive?” Jaemin laughed again and wow you could get addicted to that laugh. It was so carefree. You supposed that came with immortality.

“Technically ‘creatures’ is more accurate but isn’t very nice-sounding, even if we are unnatural monsters.” He said this as though he had come to terms with it. Even if we are unnatural monsters.

“I don’t think you’re unnatural,” you told him. “I mean, if there is a higher power out there then He or It or They created a whole plane for you and if not then nature did. I don’t think Vahmpyr would exist if you were unnatural.” He looked at you without speaking as you took another spoonful of soup.

“That’s… that’s a new way of looking at it.” He looked conflicted, like he was trying to reconcile your view of him with his view of himself. “I don’t think our plane was meant to exist though, by higher power or nature. Humans are beautiful because they age and there is room for change within your society. It’s hard to change an entire plane full of the unchanging.”

“Maybe so,” you argued, “but you’re obviously gorgeous on the outside, and on the inside it seems like you have a good system too. If I was a vampire I don’t think I’d take care of the humans I had bitten. It wouldn’t have occurred to me. They would all die. I would be dead, come to think of it.”

“That’s true,” he conceded. “You really do have a unique view of things.”

“Thank you?” It came out sounding more like a question than you intended. You finished your bowl of soup, licking the excess off of your upper lip. Setting the bowl back down seemed to break whatever spell had kept you in eager conversation with him. You supposed all of your questions had been answered, for now. Jaemin helped you get set up with Netflix on his TV and went back outside to his garden. He explained that you could call for him through the open window if you needed him, he would be right nearby. You nodded, already distracted by the opening scene of your show.

After a while you realized that there were low voices coming from outside. It sounded like Jaemin was talking to someone. You turned the volume down on the TV a little bit to listen. Maybe you could meet the infamous Lucas or someone else in Jaemin’s vampire family.

“... have to bring her to me?” Jaemin was saying. “You tasted her, you know her scent. This is painful. Her scent is all over my things, my bed.” He let out a small groan and the other man with him chuckled breathily.

“Hyung, I didn’t mean for her to smell so good I swear, it was a spur of the moment decision. I was hunting in her area and her scent was so enticing. Plus, I was hungry!” You shuddered at the mention of hunting. This one, who must be Jisung, was far less civilized than Jaemin, it seemed.

Jaemin made an angry noise and his words hissed out when he spoke. “You think it was enticing out in the open air of Poland? On a windy day? I’ve been smelling her acutely on my things, in my house, for four days and it hurts. My venom has been going non-stop for the entire period and it’s not like I can just change her, she’s got a life ahead of her!” Part of your heart went out to Jaemin - he was trying so hard to take care of you and even caused himself pain for it. That explained why he had reacted so negatively when you asked what would happen if he bit you. You wouldn’t have been fine. You would’ve become like him. The thought didn’t cause the anger or disgust you thought it should have. It sounded nice, almost, to be like him. To stay in his safety for eternity.

“Jaemin,” said a new voice. It was strong and rough like tree bark lined his throat. “You can return her back to the real world in just a few more days and you’ll be free of her. It’s not like she would want to stay here anyway, her friends and family are back on Earth. We can keep Jisung home and have him feed on Chenle until he learns his lesson.”

Someone, presumably Jisung, made a wounded noise. “I can control myself, I promise. Don’t make me feed on Chenle, Hyung, he doesn’t taste anywhere near as good.” Definitely Jisung.

“Jisung,” said Jaemin’s voice. “Don’t argue, you brought this on yourself. And me,” he adds as an afterthought.

Jisung’s sullen voice responded, “fine, Hyung, but Chenle isn’t going to be happy either, you know.” You thought maybe Jaemin must have nodded or something because nobody said anything for a while. You turned off the TV, suddenly bored with the program and head full of new questions. The top one on the list was why. Why did you affect them this way? Why did Jaemin treat you so nicely when you were hurting him? Why did Jisung sound like a puppy who had been reprimanded? Why did Jaemin and the other man have the power to ground him, essentially? Then there were the who questions. Who was the man with the voice like tree bark? Who was Chenle, and why wouldn’t he be happy? Lastly were the when questions. When would you be going home? When would you see them again? Would you see them ever again? When would Jisung be allowed to hunt again?

You were so deep in your head that you didn’t notice the door opening and Jaemin coming in, two men behind him, until he stopped and waved a hand in front of you.

“Y/N, you okay? I brought you some people to meet.” He stepped back and you forced your eyes to refocus on what was in front of you. When you looked up at him, he presented the two other guys like he was a car salesman and these were his favorite models. “This is Jisung, you’ve met him already although I don’t know if you remember him.” You nodded, looking over him. He had on a grey crewneck sweatshirt over a pair of black sweatpants today and looked far less terrifyingly beautiful flanked by his hyungs.

“I remember him,” you told them. “You’re the one who bit me.” You didn’t think it was possible for him to look more sheepish than he already did but he managed to, and shrank back so that he was standing half-behind the other man. The other guy had bleached hair falling messily over his forehead, and even though he was shorter than Jisung, he seemed to command your attention more. He had on a green sleeveless shirt that showed off arms rippling with muscles. You gulped, looking up at him, but then he smiled at you. His whole demeanor changed. He felt less like he was about to kill you and more like he might accidentally strangle you to death in a hug. His eyes scrunched up into little crescents and you found yourself smiling back.

“I’m Jeno,” he said, walking forward to shake your hand. “Sorry I didn’t come to visit earlier.” His voice still sounded like bark lined his throat, but less so now that he wasn’t bothering to limit his volume.

“That’s fine,” you replied. “I just woke up earlier today.” You glanced towards Jaemin; he looked like a proud mom watching you interact with his friend. “Jaemin fed me, and since then I’ve just been sitting here watching TV. I can’t find my phone, and even if I did I’m not sure I could walk over to it. My legs are out of practice.”

Jeno smiled again. “That’s pretty common for Jisung’s victims. We found out he has these little back teeth that make it more painful for the people he bites so they usually need more bed rest to recover from the strain on their bodies and the blood loss.”

You nodded, as though that made sense. They still let Jisung hunt with his unpredictability and extra teeth? That seemed a little irresponsible of them, but you supposed that Jeno and Jaemin weren’t that much older than him in the first place. You tried to bring up your next subject subtly.

“Speaking of recovery, when do you think I’ll be going back to Earth?” The change in the room was immediate. Jeno’s smile faltered enough for you to see his eyes, Jaemin’s shoulders slumped, and Jisung’s foot started tapping against the rug. “It’s not that I don’t like it here,” you interjected, “I'm just worried that my, uh, double self will get up to trouble and stuff. What if someone notices it’s not me?”

Jisung looked at Jaemin. “You either did a really bad job of explaining this or she wasn't listening, Hyung.” Jaemin glared at him in response and chose not to dignify the statement with an answer. Jisung huffed at him and turned to you. “It’s you, y’know, back on Earth. Like… when a starfish gets cut in half, both halves grow into full starfish again. Something similar happened to you. Same organism, same you, just two different places. Is that a weird comparison?”

“What he means,” interjected Jeno before you could reply, “is that the you down there has all of your experiences and memories and the same brain. It’s the exact same person as you, just two versions of you. When you go back you won't even have a bite scar.” At this you lifted your hand to rub at the mark on your throat. You saw Jisung’s eyes follow the action and he licked his lips. You put your arm back down into your lap and swallowed, the sound echoing in your head.

Finally Jaemin spoke. “And to answer your question, as soon as we get you strong enough to walk on your own you can go back. I mean technically there’s a body waiting for you down there, but we don’t know what would happen if we sent you back faulty, so we like to be careful.” You laughed at his use of the word faulty and nodded.

“Okay. Do you guys have a portal or something that’ll take me back?” At this all three men burst into laughter and a high pitched squeal joined the mix, coming from the doorway. Yet another man was standing there, thin orange-dyed hair flopping as he doubled over laughing.

“A- a portal,” he wheezed out between laughs. “No, we don’t have a portal.” You threw him a disgruntled look.

“I was just asking…”

Jaemin looked equally off-put and said, “Y/N, this is Chenle, Jisung’s best friend and our second child. Sorry about his lack of a filter.” His lips pursed unhappily and you rushed to reassure him.

“No, that’s okay, I don’t know if that was stupid question. No feelings hurt, he’s fine.” Jaemin looked unconvinced, so you sat up more towards Chenle and reached out a hand. “I’m Y/N.”

“Oh is that your name?” he replied breezily, shaking your hand quickly. “They were right, you do smell good.” Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Jaemin shift protectively.

“Chenle.” His voice came out a growl, raising hairs on the back of your neck. “Don’t you dare.” It was interesting, you thought, how this dynamic worked. From what you had heard with Jisung, Jaemin had always contained himself, like he was reprimanding his favorite child. With Chenle he seemed almost dangerous, like it was possible for him to hurt a fly, and things much bigger than a fly. You wondered if he was this way with all of his patients, or if Chenle just bothered him more with you than usual.

“I’m not going to, mom, chill out a moment.” Chenle, you decided, must be the bad egg of their group. Every family had at least one, and here was theirs. He seemed the most likely to hurt something for the fun of it, and it almost seemed like he should have been the one to attack you, not Jisung. You wondered, in the distant back of your head, whether he had extra teeth for biting like Jisung did. Maybe it was better not to find out.

“Please don’t call me mom,” Jaemin sighed in response, all of the fight leaving him a rush. His muscles were still tense, though, and he ran a hand through his cotton candy colored hair.

“Chenle,” said Jeno, “I think you and Jisung should go talk. He has news for you.” Jisung shuddered slightly, his nod small and tense. You remembered his reaction earlier, when he had been informed that he needed to feed from Chenle for the time being. Chenle looked between Jisung and Jeno and an expression appeared on his face that didn’t seem natural on him - uncomfortable confusion. What you had seen in this past tension filled minute was that he was self assured and rambunctious. Now you wondered if he respected Jeno, regardless of that. You supposed you didn’t really have time to find out, you would be going home as soon as you could walk on your own. Speaking of which-

“I need to use the bathroom again,” you said as Jisung walked out of the house with Chenle right behind him.

“You should try getting up on your own,” Jeno suggested. “The more you sit around the harder it’ll be for your legs to get strong again.” You nodded and used the arm of the couch to haul yourself to your feet. Your knees started shaking again and Jaemin hurried to support you a little, until you felt a little more steady on your feet. Once you did, you tentatively took a tiny step towards the bathroom. Your arms flew out to your sides to help with balance and Jaemin took the mother bird stance, worriedly standing within arm’s length to catch you if you started to collapse. Jeno watched from a few paces away and smiled at you.

“Let’s see if you can get to me, okay? Then we can help if you need support.” You nodded and gritted your teeth, shuffling forward on your weak legs slowly. The good news: you made it to him without falling or using Jaemin’s ever-there assistance. The not so good news: you practically fell into Jeno when you got to him, using his body for support. He helped you find your center of gravity again before acting as a crutch to get you to the bathroom.

“If you need anything,” Jaemin told you, “I’ll be right out here. Don’t over-exert yourself.”

“I’ll be fine, it’s just like one step to the toilet, and there’s a nice strong counter” you assured him, and closed the door behind you as you stepped away from Jeno’s warm strength. Immediately you felt weak again but you reached out to hold on to the edge of the counter while you walked and got safely to the toilet. Your legs screeched at you as you lowered yourself onto the seat and you relaxed a little bit once you were seated. Recovery was going to be hard.

☽༓☾

Two days passed in a blur of pain and people. You met quite a few new people, like the infamous Lucas (who was a giant baby and who adored you), a woman named Joy who had actual red eyes like the legends said, and a man that everyone called Ten. Actually, you weren’t sure if Ten counted as a man. He dropped by Jaemin’s house the third day, right after Jisung and Chenle had just left after getting some flowers from Jaemin’s garden. He walked in on tentacles, long and thick ones that wrapped around the door frame and curled and uncurled as he talked. He muttered something about wishing they would just admit they were gay and asked Jaemin if he happened to have clams. Jaemin, looking amused, supplied him with an entire bucket of the little creatures. Ten gave him a jar in response and flounced out the door without even looking at you.

“Jaemin,” you asked, “what, or who, was that?” Jaemin laughed happily and the sound was so perfect that you wished he would just keep laughing forever.

“Ten is kind of unique,” Jaemin said. “Obviously, he’s got tentacles, which is unusual, and then he’s also not a vampire so none of us can quite figure out how he can get here, to Vahmpyr. But he can see the future, sort of, which is pretty helpful sometimes. Warns us when we’re getting too active and need to be careful of humans. He’s also convinced that Chenle and Jisung are gay and that they just need some guidance.”

You couldn’t decide on a question to ask about these revelations, so you settled for a very intelligent sounding “huh,” and continued your walking around the house. You were doing a lot better now with your exercises and had been able to make it around the room without holding onto anything for support four times now. Jaemin laughed again and you felt yourself actually flinch from the force of his happiness. It was addicting, almost. He went back to his Gaelic scrolls, which he was translating for a man called Kun, who you had yet to meet.

You had a sudden thought and you found yourself needing to talk, to explain about the other day. “Jaemin,” you said, dropping into the seat across from him at the table with a low groan. “The other day when Jisung and Jeno came, you guys were talking outside, you know?” He looked up from the scrolls, giving you a raised eyebrow like ‘so?’

“So I may or may not have listened to your conversation,” you told him, watching as he gave you his full attention, clicking his pen closed and rolling up the scrolls gently. He didn’t look angry, exactly, more apprehensive than anything. Like he was back to worrying about you throwing things and breaking his windows.

“And?” he prompted, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opened them you saw something strange there, like fear. But certainly the immortal and beautiful Jaemin couldn’t be scared of you. You must’ve been interpreting it wrong.

“Well you guys were talking about my smell,” you started slowly. “And, uh, you said that you- that I was causing you pain. And I was just wondering, why keep me around? Why not take me to a human hospital, or just kill me? Or turn me? Why did you make yourself suffer?”

He inhaled deeply and then shivered a little bit. When he spoke, his voice was soft and a little scratchy. “For one, we’ve never had a case like this before. I mean obviously there have been people who have smelled good to me before, but usually I’m able to ignore it. With you… it’s like my vampire body can’t get enough of your scent. It wants to turn you, to keep you, in its selfishness. That part of me is weak, in its greed. And of course I couldn’t kill you, I could barely control myself when Chenle- when he-” Jaemin took a deep breath to steady himself. “He wanted to bite you. You smell good to our whole coven, to everyone who’s met you, at least, which is a first. Thankfully you don’t appeal to Jisung the same way you do to me though, because by now you’d be a full fledged member of the family. Jeno is really good at hiding it, but I could tell he wanted to drink from you too, when you used him to help you walk the other day. I think the only ones not affected by it are Lucas and Ten, although that could be because they’re both gay, I’m not sure.” As an afterthought, he added, “actually Lucas is demisexual but I’ve only ever seen him date guys.”

Skipping over the bit about Lucas’ sexuality, you spoke, horrified. “I’ve been hurting all of you? Seriously, why not just make me go to a regular hospital on Earth?”

“Well it would be a little hard to just give you to a hospital on Earth and be like, ‘here, take this body which may or may not have a vampire bite in its neck,’” Jaemin told you. “And also because I haven’t given up on a patient yet, and I didn’t want the first to be because I can’t control myself. And as to why I didn’t turn you… I didn’t want to take your life away. I still don’t. I think your life is going to be a good one and I don’t want to steal that. That’s why you’re going back tomorrow.”

An empty feeling settled in your chest. “You’re sending me back tomorrow? I still haven’t met so many of your friends though!”

He leveled you with a stare. “The rest of my patients never got to meet any other members of the coven. This was a one and done. You don’t need to know the rest of them. Especially not Yuta or Hyuck, good gracious.”

Who are Yuta and Hyuck? you wanted to ask, but his tone implied the end of the conversation, so you refrained from forming the question. “Okay, uh, I’m going to go sit in the garden.”

Jaemin flashed you a barely-there smile, opening his scrolls again and clicking his pen open. “Mhm. Be careful.”

You went out to sit under a tree in his front yard. Actually there were a lot of trees in his front yard - his house was in a forest. He had neglected to mention that when he first told you about his home and you had found it fascinating how it worked. When you walked out, there wasn’t any path out of the small clearing that housed his cottage. When you imagined a person, though, a tree tunnel would open and you could go any which way you wanted. You had tried imagining your parents the first time Jaemin told you about it and it hadn’t worked. He had explained that it only worked for people on this plane of existence, which made sense. When you had imagined Joy, it had shown you a way to a small town. Jaemin had forbidden you to go anywhere without him in case someone got territorial or hungry and killed you by accident. You respected that, you didn’t want to be murdered, but you wanted to see Lucas, and talk to him. He had fun stories to tell of his best friends. Jaemin seemed a bit huffy. It would be fine to go and see him, right? You’d just go and be back quickly before Jaemin even realized you were gone.

You decided that you just needed to talk to a friend right now and focused your mind on Lucas, finding an apartment building on the outskirts of the largest vampire city you had seen so far. With a little more effort you could find his apartment, although you couldn’t see him. The trees opened and you glanced back at Jaemin’s cottage before setting off.

As you walked down the path you reveled in your ability to walk. After two days of walking in short bursts and trying to regain strength in your legs you were finally able to walk like a normal human being, no flailing arms or stops every few meters to take a break and rest your muscles. It was nice, after so little freedom within Jaemin’s one room cabin. You liked being out here better. You avoided tree limbs and roots as you went, always focused on getting to Lucas. At one point your focus switched from his apartment to a convenience store and you panicked, realizing that you couldn’t go there. There, you might actually get murdered like Jaemin had predicted. He hadn’t nursed you back to health and struggled through your scent just for you to go and get yourself killed. You waited, walking more slowly, until the view at the end of the tunnel switched back to Lucas’ apartment’s front door. You breathed out a sigh of relief and continued on your way.

It was fascinating to you how there was no life in the forest besides the plants. You didn’t hear or see any insects or birds and you wondered if that was because they were afraid of the vampires or if they just didn’t exist on this plane. You decided to ask Lucas when you got to his house. After a while you realized that the image at the end of the tree tunnel was no longer a moving image of where you wanted to go, but rather the actual thing, growing bigger as you progressed down the path. You found yourself increasing your pace in your hurry to see Lucas.

When you left the comfort and relative safety of the forest, you nearly ran across the street separating the apartment complex from the trees. You stumbled at one point and almost fell to the pavement but recovered and kept going. You entered the main door and started up the stairs, still hurrying a little faster than your body thought was necessary. You speed walked until you reached the third floor and started looking through the numbers, looking for a door marked with ‘311,’ the one you had seen in the forest while looking for Lucas. After a good few minutes searching, you located the hallway his apartment was in and walked down it, looking at the odd numbers on the right. They counted down from 39, so you had a ways to go. Part of you wondered if the vampires just didn’t care about your presence, because apparently your scent was pretty strong and you were sure that you were stinking up the whole hallway with your human-ness, but nobody had come to murder you yet.

When you finally got to the door labeled with a faded ‘311,’ you stopped to take a breath before knocking on the door. An uncomfortable pause (where you wondered if Lucas was out after all) later, the door opened and you breathed out a sigh of relief, only for the air to stick in your throat at the sight of a man shorter than Lucas, but much scarier.

He had dark brown hair, obviously lightened but only a bit. It fell over his forehead and stopped just short of his eyes. His lips set in a grim line as he looked over you before they pulled back into what should have been a heart stopping smile, but was instead a snarl, a grimace of distrust and anger. The feature that stuck out most to you were his eyes. You imagined that when he was happy, his eyes would glow with an inner light. Now they were dark and they promised violence.

No sooner had you come to this conclusion before he had you pinned against the opposite wall. “Give me one good reason,” he hissed, “why I shouldn’t just kill you.” His arm pressed into your throat, keeping you pinned against the wall, on your tiptoes to accommodate the height of his arm.

Lucas, I came to see Lucas, you tried to say, but it got stuck on the way out of your throat and instead what came out was a weak, “Lu…” followed by a wispy groan. The man furrowed his brow and moved to hold you against the wall by your arms so you could speak. “Lucas,” you gasped, air rushing back into your body and allowing you to speak once more. “Friend.” The man put you completely down now, on the floor, and you moved to massage your throat before his eyes, dark and threatening, halted your movement. Lucas certainly has a knack for choosing friends, you thought.

“Don’t move,” he growled, “Or I’ll throw you out our living room window. It may not kill you, but it will hurt.” Then he turned around slightly and called, “Xuxi! There’s someone here to see you!”

You heard shuffling inside before the figure of Lucas appeared, tall and thick and seeming like safety incarnate in the presence of someone as terrifying as the man who still had one hand next to your head.

“Yang?” he asked. “Is everything alright?”

The man, Yang, shifted so that Lucas could see your face. “This one just came knocking on our door and said he wanted to see you. Do you know her?”

Lucas gasped slightly and sped up, blurring a little, so that he reached you in less than a second. “Oh my gosh, Y/N, are you okay? Yangyang, this is the human that’s been staying with Jaemin for the past week, she’s my friend!”

“Hey Lucas,” you said weakly, finally reaching up to massage your throat now that you had someone to protect you from being thrown out the living room window. “I’m okay, I think. Just a little lightheaded.” Part of you wanted to add, Is his name Yang or Yangyang? but you figured now wasn’t the time to ask.

A strange look crossed Lucas’ face. “Well, I’m glad you’re alright, come inside and sit down, I’ll get you some water.” You followed him into the apartment, Yang (Yangyang?) behind you. He still slightly scared you and you stayed as close to Lucas as possible. Lucas spoke again as he grabbed a water bottle for you. You noted idly that it was Dasani. “But, uh, didn’t Jaemin tell you to, like, not come out here? So you didn’t get murdered? Cause that could’ve ended a lot worse.”

“Not you too!” you cried, exaggerating the syllables. “I know I could’ve died, but I wanted to see my friend! How hard is that to understand? Did it bother you so much that I wanted to see you?”

Lucas figited uncomfortably. “Well I appreciate that you came to see me, that’s really nice of you. It’s just that Jaemin was right. This really isn’t a safe place for you to be. I mean Yangyang could’ve killed you if he didn’t have such a heart of gold.” You threw a disbelieving glance towards the man in question and he shrugged, mouth tugging up in a mischievous grin.

“Okay, I mean, I can go back if you don’t want me here, I have to be back before Jaemin realizes I’m gone anyway,” you said, drinking more of your water. Yangyang and Lucas both froze.

“You didn’t get his permission?” Lucas asked in a tone that confused you. Was he scared of Jaemin? “Or tell him you were going for a walk? Or anything?”

“No, of course not. He would’ve said no!” you protested unhappily. This was not how you imagined this trip going.

“Okay,” Lucas said. “I’m taking you back right now. Jaemin will- well, he won’t kill me, but he’ll be scarily close if he finds out you came here.”

With a heavy sigh, you stood up. You knew that if he needed to, he could just throw you over his shoulder and carry you all the way back to Jaemin’s cottage. Darned vampire strength. “Fine.”

You got down the hallway and into the stairwell before Lucas tensed up again. “Shoot,” he muttered, looking down the stairs below. You couldn’t hear or see anything, and you were about to tell him so when he sighed and you heard a pitter patter like rain, growing louder by the second.

Moments later Jamin appeared in front of you, pink hair mussed and eyes wild with a mix of fear and anger. For a moment he didn’t even speak, just glared at you. The fear faded from his eyes. When he did speak, the words seemed like poison being spit off the tongue of a snake.

“I can’t believe you,” he seethed. “I kept you in my house, fed you, nursed you back to health. I let you use all of my things and was even going to send you home once you were perfectly healthy again. I gave you one rule. One! Just to keep you safe! And you go and break it. You could have died, Y/N, do you understand that? I did everything in my power to keep you in an environment where you weren’t in danger! I didn’t allow Hyuck to come over, I made sure that you were prepared to meet Lucas and Jeno and even Jisung! But all of my efforts faded to nothing when you opened that doorway to the city. I’m taking you home right now, I can’t bear to keep you here any longer, not when you obviously have no sense of self preservation!”

He picked you up before you could even blink and you felt a sharp wind on your face as he ran home. His steps sounded like raindrops falling on pavement, sharp but small, a pinprick of sound in an otherwise silent stairwell. Lucas had disappeared from view in less than a second and you shut your eyes against the vertigo of being carried at such a speed. Everything blurred, everything was indistinct and most things weren’t even worthy of notice. Jaemin smelled like ink, and you had space in the very back of your mind to wonder if he had spilled his, in his haste to find you. It didn’t seem like a very vampire-like thing to do.

A few moments later you entered the canopy of the forest and every once in a while you heard a stick break under his foot or a rock get catapulted out of the way. Then you felt the sun on your back again and you gasped as Jaemin dumped you onto the warm grass, standing tall before you. He said something in a language you didn’t know - it sounded vaguely like Latin - and the grass fell out from under you as the ground opened up and you fell into space.

☽༓☾

When you woke up the next morning to your alarm, you wondered briefly if your entire experience with Jaemin and the other vampires was a dream. The puncture wounds that had been on your neck were utterly nonexistent, and there was no evidence on you that you had even left the comfort of your bed. On the other hand, you had clear memories of your time in Vahmpyr, short as it was. You remembered how it smelled and how the trees had felt as you walked outside. You remembered the feeling of the cool granite of the bathroom countertop. Mostly you remembered being with Lucas, Jeno, Jisung, and Chenle. You remembered almost dying at the hands of Lucas’ roommate and you remembered the terrifying flight in Jaemin’s arms.

Jaemin.

You grimaced at yourself in the mirror and spit out your toothpaste. There was no way your mind could have made up someone as excruciatingly kind and beautiful as Jaemin was. At the same time you felt anger bubble up inside of you. He hadn’t even given you a chance to say goodbye - he had just put you through to your Earthly self without any words between the two of you. You hadn’t said goodbye to Lucas or Jeno either, nor had you seen the rest of your new acquaintances. The anger flared, hot against your insides, and you could swear you actually felt your chest twinge. You spat out the last of your toothpaste and replaced your toothbrush in its holder, going to get ready for your day.

The next few days were spent alternately missing the simplicity of life on Vahmpyr and being angry at Jaemin. Assignments piled onto your shoulders and in addition to that, you discovered some sort of disconnect between you and the part of you that had stayed on Earth while you were out. That part of you seemed to dismiss your time in Vahmpyr as something it had dreamed up all on its own. It didn’t acknowledge you and liked to take control of your body whenever you weren’t paying full attention to it. Every time it did that you felt the twinge in your chest again, except it got more and more painful. You started having headaches that the other part of you didn’t seem to feel but which pressed against your skull like tiny war hammers thudding into the bone by your temples and occasionally your eyes.

Your vision would go blurry and you started having lapses of consciousness, only to wake up and find yourself doing just fine with your other part in charge. During these lapses you would dream of being in Vahmpyr again, and you saw Lucas smiling with Yangyang, Chenle rolling his eyes at Jisung before hugging him tightly. Other men you didn’t know and other women you hadn’t met also flew across the screen of your eyes but they disappeared quickly. Ten even passed by once, haughtily scrolling past everyone until he sidled up to a tall man with long blond hair who smiled down at him and pressed a gentle kiss to one of Ten’s tentacles. A man with red hair and an eyebrow slit served coffee to a man who chewed like a rabbit. A group of three guys held up a sign that said “Go Taemin!” as a group played football. A woman in a suit jacket over jean shorts sat with a box of papers, crying. Joy played a game with other girls where they tried to push lockers over on each other. Everything (with the exception of the lockers) looked like fun. It was better than Earth, at any rate. Every night you went to bed wondering if you might just die by morning and leave the other half of yourself behind to control the body. You were just along for the ride at this point.

The evening of your fourth day back on Earth you went to sit outside the dorm building on a bench, just for some fresh air. For once you had control of the body and you let your head tip back, closing your eyes and just feeling. The bench pressed up against your back in a way that hurt slightly, but your body had been wracked with pain for two days straight and it didn’t ache so much as behind your eyes or inside your skull. The evening breeze blew across your eyelids and brought with it the scent of sun-warmed dirt.

It smelled like Jaemin, that first morning you woke up in his house. When he had helped you across the cottage towards the bathroom and been outlined by the sun, when he had made you soup and sat with you on the couch while he explained where you were and what he was.

Your body shook with a particularly painful pound on the inside of your ribs. You let yourself relax against the bench again and the sensations enveloped you once more. You felt yourself let go of your body on Earth and float away, less falling and more weightlessness, floating away on a wind that smelled of sun on dirt and felt like arms wrapping around you while rain fell on summer-warmed pavement. You floated away on this wind and it lifted you endlessly until you nodded off, finally free of the pains that had kept you company for the past few days. You wondered if perhaps you had died of it, if being back on Earth had perhaps been more detrimental to you than beneficial.

Then your back hit something hard and the breath was knocked from your lungs, waking you up again and telling you that something had gone very very wrong or very very well. You gasped air back into your body and rolled over weakly, now in a body you recognized as the one you inhabited on Vahmpyr. Grass poked your inner arms and you pushed yourself up to sitting with your legs crossed. You massaged your chest as you inhaled and found yourself miraculously free of pain, aside from the slight burn of breath inhaled too quickly after loss of oxygen. The war hammers in your head had vacated the premises and the aches of your ribs had subsided, making it easier to breath and just sit without drawing in pained gasps.

You registered a return of cold as a shadow fell over you and looked up to see none other than Chenle, with Jisung behind him. Did they never go anywhere without each other? Well, besides hunting.

“Y/N?” He gaped down at you, and you looked back up at him.

“The one and only,” you said, before you realized that didn’t apply to you anymore. “Well, one of only two in existence.”

He laughed that weird dolphin laugh he had again and reached out a hand to help you up. You took it, standing unsteadily on two feet that didn’t ache the moment you put weight on them. “What’re you doing back here? Jaemin-hyung said he sent you back to Earth.”

You feel the corners of your mouth tug down almost instinctively at the mention of Jaemin. “He did. I don’t think Earth agreed with me,” you told him. Jisung walked forward and looked you up and down.

“Maybe we should take you back to Jaeminnie hyung, he’ll know what to do.”

You groaned. “I really don’t want to deal with him at the moment.”

“We can take him to Kun-ge,” Chenle interjected smoothly. “He’ll know better than Jaemin-hyung anyway, he’s been a doctor and a vampire longer.” A side of Chenle appeared that you hadn’t seen yet, a side that took charge in a way that wasn’t just insulting anyone near him. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. He took your hand with one of his and grabbed Jisung’s arm with the other.

“Come on, let’s go see Kun-ge!”

☽༓☾

Kun, as it happened, lived in the same building as Lucas. Actually he lived one apartment over, behind the door labeled ‘313.’ When he opened the door he seemed strangely unsurprised to see you there, just breathed out a sigh and let you in. He had nice light brown hair that worked well with his skin tone and eyes that smiled even when he wasn’t. He had this aura of parenting around him, like he took care of everyone he knew. It was comfortable to be around him from the start. Once Chenle had explained where he found you, Kun sat you down and asked exactly what had happened.

“Listen,” he said seriously. “I’ve never seen a human react the way you did. Nobody has ever come back, from what I know. We have to figure out exactly what happened, why you came back, and how to get you back to Earth.”

You inhaled deeply, relishing in the painless breath. “Okay, uh, I’m not really sure where to start,” you told him.

“Tell me about how you got sent home.”

“Okay. So, I left Jaemin’s cottage to come and see Lucas and I guess Jaemin is a lot scarier when he gets mad, because he was not happy when he found out I had left. He did this, like, superfast running thing, very Twilight, and carried me to this random clearing, I guess, I didn’t look around much.” You paused to let Kun write that down on his very professional looking clipboard, but he waved you on. Right, he was a vampire. He could write stuff fast.

“So he sort of dumped me on the ground and said something in a language I didn’t know, it sounded like Latin but I’m not sure. Then the ground sort of opened up and I fell and fell and fell until I rejoined my, uh, Earthly body.” You paused to take a breath and think about how to convey what happened when you got back to Earth.

“When I got back there was this weird disconnect with my body. Like, uh, there was me, in my body, and there was also this other part of me, the part of me that stayed behind when I came here the first time. That other part sort of took the main control of the body we lived in, and it felt like I was along for the ride. It liked to pretend that I wasn’t there, that my time here in Vahmpyr wasn’t real. It was weird. Then a little into my stay, I started getting these super bad pains all over my body.”

Kun interrupted you by holding up a finger. “How long were you home before the pains started?”

You thought back, struggling to pinpoint when they had started. “I think maybe a little longer than twenty four hours? When I got back I woke up in that body, and about one sleep later I started getting the pains, which would be like twenty five hours. Twenty four and a half, maybe. At first it was just these weird twinges in my chest, like my ribs were popping every time I took a breath, then it progressed. I got these horrible headaches, and my chest hurt all the time, and walking felt like attacking my feet, and my neck was always super achy. The thing is, my other half didn’t feel any of that. It was just my half of our consciousness. Then about on my fourth day back I went outside and sat on the bench outside my dorm. I laid back and, uh, it felt like I died or something. I just felt my consciousness leave the body and I guess the other half is still there living down there and now I’m here.”

Kun, Chenle, and Jisung all sat on the couch together, Kun looking over his notes while the other two guys just sat in silence. After a minute Kun spoke. “I don’t really know what happened to you, but I’m almost certain that your connection to your human self is gone. Or at least, your Earthly self. I don’t think we can send you back anymore, I’m sorry.” He looked at you, eyes full of remorse. You expected to mirror that feeling, but you discovered that it didn’t bother you so much. The other half of yourself would keep all of your friends and family from having to mourn you, and you could stay here, painless.

“I’m actually kind of glad about that,” you told them, and Chenle’s head snapped from picking at his jeans to look at you.

“Glad?” he demanded, incredulous. “To stay here?”

“Well yeah, I mean I was in pain most of the time I was back on Earth so it’s not like I’m eager to go back there. Plus, since I didn’t actually die nobody has to mourn me. And part of the time I was like… seeing Vahmpyr. Like is Ten dating this super tall guy with blonde hair? And Joy was pushing lockers over on her friends? And you two!” You turned an accusatory finger at Jisung and Chenle. “You two are adorable together!”

Jisung sighed. “Not you too…”

Kun shushed him. “You could see what was going on here in Vahmpyr?”

“Well, sort of,” you told him. “I saw that Lucas and Yangyang were having, like, a picnic?”

Kun’s eyebrows furrowed and he muttered, “I knew they had one without me.”

“I also saw this guy with red hair giving coffee to a man who sort of chewed like a bunny. And there was this group of three guys holding up a sign that said “Go Taemin!” I think, and I guess Taemin must have been playing football with the others I could see, although I couldn’t recognize any of the people playing. Oh, and there was this lady with really pretty hair who had a box of papers and she was just, like, sitting there and crying. She had the part of her hair near her neck bleached and the outer layers were still black, and she was wearing a suit jacket with jean shorts, which is kind of a weird combination.”

Kun looked over his notes. “That’s really interesting. All of those things have happened since you left, definitely. Joy and her friends like to play games where they try to kill each other, because they’re all immortal. The red haired man was probably Taeyong, and the bunny man would be Doyoung. Ten is dating Johnny, and yes, he is pretty tall and has blonde hair. I haven’t seen Taemin-hyung in a while so I don’t know if he’s playing football again or not. I don’t know about the woman with the cool hair either.”

“Definitely Taeyeon-noona,” Jisung interjected. “She broke up with her boyfriend a few days ago, and she does have hair dyed like that right now.”

Kun raised his eyebrows in curiosity. “Huh, I hope she’s doing okay. Actually I think maybe we should worry more about whoever she broke up with, she’s not exactly good with breakups.”

As though it’s a secret, Jisung’s next words came out in a whisper, and he leaned closer to Chenle and Kun. You had to strain a little to hear. “I heard it was a human. He, like, got super insecure about the fact that she wasn’t aging with him and broke up with her. It’s killing her. She really liked that guy.”

“Why did she get with him in the first place?” Chenle sounded absolutely confused. “She knew it would end like this. That’s how the last two ended.”

“I don’t know, but now I’m really worried for the guy,” said Kun. “We might have to cover up for her.” The implications of his words sank in and you made a small sound. All three men snapped their heads up and it looked as though they forgot you were there.

“Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry Y/N! Do you have anywhere to stay where you’ll be safe for at least a few days? Jaemin’s cottage should be pretty easy to stay hidden in.”

“She doesn’t want to go and see him after what happened,” Chenle supplied helpfully. “I’m taking her back to my place once we’re done here.” Kun appeared to consider that, and then nodded his approval.

“That sounds alright. Tomorrow we can go out and get her some things to make her stay more comfortable. Maybe we can find one of the Outer Plots to put her on.”

“Outer Plots?” you asked, because the way he said it demanded capitalization in your head.

“They’re sort of exactly what they sound like,” Kun explained. “There are these pieces of land around the edges of the towns that nobody really lives on but they’re solid places to live, if we can get a good one. It’s a little bit like Jaemin’s land out there, lot’s of forest, so we can set up tree tunnels for you to get here fast, if you need to.”

You nodded. “That does sound pretty good. I don’t know what I’m going to do though, it’s not like I have all that many hobbies. I was midway through getting my bachelor’s when I left.”

“That’s fine,” Chenle said. “I have plenty of things to keep you entertained, and we can get some of the other guys to keep you company if we’re busy. There are a lot of us with a lot of open time. I also have a ton of extra textbooks from learning languages, so if you want you can spend your life becoming fluent in Japanese, Latin, French, German, Scottish Gaelic, Hawaiian, or one of the others I have. Or multiple, if you learn fast.”

“Thanks Chenle.” He wasn’t actually so bad, you thought. He had brought you to Kun and he was offering to let you use his house and his things. “I might just take you up on that.”

“You guys should probably leave now, actually,” Kun said. “At human speeds you’ll get home right on time.”

Chenle checked his watch and nodded. “He’s right. We should get going.”

You thanked Kun again and Chenle led you out the door, Jisung following behind you. You separated ways with him once you left the apartment building, his figure disappearing swiftly into the trees. Once you blinked there was no finding him again.

You walked behind Chenle quietly, choosing to observe your surroundings. You didn’t see much in the way of low quality or old houses here. It seemed as though a lower class had been eradicated entirely and the vampires could choose where they wanted to live. When you asked him how that was possible, Chenle laughed that peculiar screech of his and said, “when you’re reborn into a family of beings that has been around for millenia, you accumulate some shared wealth. Especially when some of the coven members have doctorate degrees and work on Earth full time, and some of us had familial connections as well, like money left in wills and such.”

You nodded. “So you guys are basically like the elite class of the universe.”

“Pretty much. My house is probably the biggest you’ll ever be in, because I like to splurge a little bit. Unfortunately you might get lost, though, and if you do, just call for me. I’ll make sure to be listening all night in case you need me.”

“It’s that big?” you asked in disbelief. “Do you live in Buckingham Palace?”

He grinned, showing off his incisors. “Bigger.”

“And you live alone?”

“Well, I haven’t always. Jisung and I will probably have sleepovers for all of eternity, and whenever a new coven starts they stay with me for a few days while they get their own living quarters set up, but for the most part , yes. I don’t actually spend a ton of time in the house, it’s more just for the sensation of owning a building that large.”

You shook your head. “As a broke college student, I find that completely unfair. I was working two jobs just to keep my head above water and you’re on this alternate plane just chilling in your house that’s bigger than Buckingham Palace.”

He smiled again. “Nobody said life was fair, Y/N. Nobody.”

☽༓☾

Three days and a shocking amount of Gaelic verbs later (you only got lost in Chenle’s palace four times), a house was ready for you to move in. Johnny and Ten had furnished it for you, and Chenle had explained that the two of them were the stylists of the coven, for the most part. The mysterious Yuta had also taken part in finding high quality fabrics to fit their vision. You had thanked the whole group of vampires who helped with the house profusely for not only building said house, but also for getting you a bunch of comfortable furniture. They had smiled and said it was their pleasure and all of the typical things, but what really stood out was Ten’s reaction. He had barely paid attention to you - he barely paid attention to anyone besides Johnny and Yangyang, who he called their baby - this whole time. When you had thanked him, however, he wrapped all but four of his tentacles around you in a surprisingly dry hug.

“It’s refreshing to have you around,” he had told you. “I’m glad we could help you get settled.”

Later as you reflected on it, you figured that it probably got pretty boring to know what was going to happen all of the time, and maybe you had disrupted the usual happenings of his visions and the vampires in Vahmpyr. Maybe you made other people happy too, to have a new person around.

One person who didn’t seem thrilled to have you back was Jaemin. Every time you made eye contact with him (twice, over the three days), he grimaced and turned away like the sight of you hurt him. Maybe he was mad that you were back within scenting range. He wouldn’t get near you, so it wasn’t like you could ask.

While settling into your new normal, you discovered that Chenle was actually a good friend. His love language was insults and pointed jabs, but he actually did care for his friends quite a lot. He had watched Jaemin from across your front yard as they were laying down grass seed and sighed.

“I wish he would just talk to you,” he told you sadly. “I’ve never, in all our years together, seen him like this. I’m not sure anyone has, even Taeil-hyung.” He didn’t elaborate on who Taeil was, and you didn’t press him. Was Jaemin really so mad that he couldn’t even look at you?

“Well,” you had said, “I don’t want to talk to him. He dumped me through an interplanar tunnel without warning me and yelled at me like the world was ending when I took a walk. I don’t think there’s much to be talked about. He must hate me.” Over Chenle’s shoulder, you had seen Jaemin flinch slightly. How strange. Part of you hoped that he felt the same pain that you did, a sort of ache that told you that you were unwanted. Another part of you murmured quietly in the back of your mind that you were being petty. You had chosen to ignore it for the time being. You were being petty, but so was he. He had thousands of years on you, so he should be the mature one, right?

“I don’t think he hates you. I think you both need to grow up and talk like adults,” Chenle had said flatly, orange hair seeming to flash in the sun. Jaemin sort of curled in on himself.

“Tell that to Mister Millenia before you lecture me on growing up,” you had replied. Then you reopened your Gaelic textbook and pretended to bury yourself in it, blatantly ignoring Chenle’s judgemental gaze.

“Fine,” he had muttered angrily. “You can both suffer for all I care.” Then he had stalked off and started pounding fence posts into the dirt so hard that Jeno had to tell him to take a break before he broke them.

You found yourself thinking about that moment as you walked through the trees, ironically on your way to see Jaemin. Since you had close to nothing to do , you had offered yourself up as an errand person to anyone that would hire and found yourself working for Kun running scrolls across Vahmpyr while he translated and examined them. It kept you busy and in shape, and Kun seemed happy with your service. This morning he had sent you to get the Scottish scroll back from Jaemin, along with a few other documents to pick up and drop off. You had saved this one for last, procrastinating on having to see him again. As his cottage came into full view, you sighed, preparing yourself for a cold shoulder and a very quick visit.

“Jaemin?” you called, knocking on the front door. It was closed for once, usually he kept it open for better air circulation. A moment later the door opened and there he stood, in all his cotton candy colored glory.

“Y/N? What’re you doing here?”

“Kun sent me, he wants that Scottish scroll back. He said he hopes you’re done translating it since you’re had it for a few weeks now,” you replied, willing your voice to stay professional. You were here for the scroll. When Jaemin didn’t reply, you looked up at him. “So? Where is it?”

“I don’t know why he sent you out like this, but I sent that scroll back three days ago, on our agreed upon date. I know he got it, because he sent me back a thank you with those little stickers he likes to use.”

“Oh. Um, I’ll just go then,” you muttered, turning around as you spoke. “Sorry I bothered you.”

Suddenly a hand was wrapped around your own, keeping you in place. Your breath caught in your throat, remembering the last time that had happened with a vampire. All that came out of Jaemin’s mouth, however, was, “Can I talk to you? Please?”

“Jaemin, please let me go,” you said, trying to keep your tone even. His hand released you immediately and you stepped a pace away from him and turned around so that you could see his face. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Well, uh, do you want some tea? I have some inside…” It was clear he hadn’t expected you to actually agree and he needed to collect his thoughts, so you nodded and he led you inside, sitting you on the familiar couch while he busied himself in the kitchen.

“I actually wanted to apologize,” Jaemin said after a minute. “I worried so much about protecting you that I forgot to let you enjoy your time here. It scared me how good you were at adjusting to this world, how much you liked being with Lucas and my other friends… I’m not used to humans reacting positively.” The kettle whistled and he took a moment to pour water into the mugs, steam rising gently from them in silvery whisps.

Once he poured the water, he continued speaking. “I wanted to make sure you knew that it wasn’t all fun and games here. I didn't want you to go looking for a place in our community because I was worried that you’d get killed. Vampires are pretty possessive of their property on Vahmpyr, for the most part, and you went right into one of the biggest apartment complexes within a day’s travelling distance - and that’s vampire distance, not human distance. Lucas told me about what happened with Yangyang, and I almost tore Yang’s arm off, I was so mad. He could have actually murdered you, and I couldn’t stomach the thought. What if Lucas hadn’t been home? What if Yangyang hadn’t given you that one moment to explain yourself? What if you had met another one of us on the stairs, without any protection? It terrified me to consider.” He walked over, a mug carried in each hand, and sat on the couch, leaving a large space in between you. It was strangely reminiscent of that first day, when he had explained Vahmpyr to you over soup.

“Of course,” Jaemin started, and you refocused. “That was only after I had sent you home, that he told me about that. When I dumped you in that tunnel, it was just fear of you being unsafe that made me so mad. The fact that you would willingly put yourself in danger, when I valued you so highly? Inconceivable. And yet, it happened. So I made another big mistake: I sent you home. I thought you would be better off there, regardless of what was happening. I knew you were healthy enough to walk to the city, so I thought you were fine. Apparently not. I heard from Chenle and Kun what happened to you back on Earth and it broke another part of me apart. I hurt you, in sending you back, not just in temporary emotional pain, but in physical pain that persisted through your entire stay. We still don’t know why you reacted the way you did, but it scared me to hear of it. I had made yet another mistake that could have killed you.” He paused to take a sip of his tea, and you did too. It was pleasant, not too hot and not too cold, just warming up your insides.

“Then the last straw came when you said I must hate you…” Jaemin’s voice broke slightly. “If anything, it’s the exact opposite, I realized I missed you more than I should, given you should be just a patient. I wanted to hug you the second I saw you, but you looked so mad to see me that I couldn’t do it. I was literally building a house for you and still couldn’t look you in the eyes for more than a moment. So I went home in shame, knowing that you were right, with thousands of years under my belt, I should be the more mature one. I decided that the next time I saw you, I would talk to you, no matter the circumstances. I couldn’t have you keep living thinking that I hated you. I didn’t actually expect you to come in when I asked. I thought I’d have to follow you through the woods, honestly.”

He fell silent, took another sip of his tea, and for the first time, you spoke. “I really didn’t want to talk to you. I wanted you to realize how much I hurt from your actions, but I think maybe I took that a little too far. I knew you were protecting me, but I really wanted to see somebody, and I knew you wouldn’t let me out, so I ran away. I didn’t really know what I was getting into. I probably should have asked you to accompany me, at least. Not my finest moment.”

Jaemin laughed weakly, taking another sip of tea. “Not mine either. I should have trusted you more.”

“And I shouldn’t have run off without even asking for your help..”

He smiled at you, that gorgeous little smile that made your heart smile back.

“Friends?” you asked.

He hesitated for only a moment, a strange sort of disappointment flashing across his face, before he was extending his hand to meet yours. “Friends.”

You grinned at him, finishing your tea. “Great. Now I need to go yell at Kun for sending me out to see you when I didn’t need to.”

“Isn’t it good that he did?” Jaemin asked with a confused frown on his face.

“Well yes, but it was a very Cupid-like thing to do, wasn’t it? I don’t tolerate my friends trying to play Cupid with myself and my other friends.” You stood up and walked your empty tea cup to the kitchen. “Do you want to come?”

He laughed. “No, you can just tell me all about it tomorrow, okay?”

You nodded. “Alright.”

You walked out into the cool twilight and started going towards Kun’s house. He had a big storm coming.

☽༓☾

A few days later, you were sitting in Jaemin’s cottage again, Gaelic textbook open on your lap. Since he was close to fluent in the language, he was helping you learn it. It wasn’t an extraordinarily difficult language, but some of the words were hard to pronounce and he had been eager to help you.

“Look here,” he said, pointing at some words on the page. “Say this for me.”

“Tha gaol agam ort,” you replied. He grinned.

“That’s how it’s written, but not how it’s said. Okay, now listen to me pronounce it. ‘Ha geul akeum orsht’. Repeat that for me.”

“‘Ha geul akeum orsht’? That’s how you say that?” you demanded. “This is like French! They don’t spell things anywhere close to how they’re said!”

“Unfortunately, most languages don’t. The same goes for Korean verb conjugations and English words and, yes, French everything, but it’s just learning new rules. After a while you understand it. I promise that you’ll get it eventually. You have the rest of your life.”

You looked over at him suddenly, questions rising to the forefront over Gaelic words. “Am I really going to stay here forever? Am I never going to see Earth again, just sit here as a useless human surrounded by powerful and immortal vampires, until I die?”

He seemed surprised by the questions. “I’m not sure any of us had really thought about it,” he said carefully.

“You all had just accepted the fact that I was stuck on your plane of existence with nothing worth doing to do? When am I going to use Scottish Gaelic, Jaemin? When will this actually come in handy, except to distract me? I’m here to do nothing, and the moment I go back to Earth, I start suffering. What am I meant to do here, Jaem?”

Jaemin gently lifted the textbook from your lap and put in on his coffee table, then pulled you into his side for a hug. You snuggled into him, inhaling the scent of sunshine and warm earth. Comfort.

“I don’t know exactly how to make you feel better,” Jaemin murmured from somewhere above your head. “But we all like having you around, you know that. It’s nice to have someone young around. We haven’t turned a human in about thirty years, so the novelty has worn off, and here we have this beautiful creature who is new in so many ways. You’re refreshing, and you’re human, so you’ll continue to be refreshing.”

“Well, thank you,” you said, muffled in his side. “But still, I don’t feel like I have anything worth doing here. You can all do anything I can do, just ten times faster. I have no unique skills or brains or anything. So what am I meant to do? I can’t even go spy on the other humans or anything because I can’t go back to Earth!”

Jaemin shifted you a little bit in his arms and started rubbing your shoulder softly. “Is there anything you particularly enjoy doing? Maybe you could do art, or gardening? Or I have this book of old forms of witchcraft?”

You turned to face him. “You have a book of witchcraft sitting around?”

He released you and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “I found a papyrus scroll in this ruined Egyptian city, and I kept it just ‘cause it was cool. Then I learned hieroglyphics so that I could translate it and made a copy. Unfortunately, witchcraft is… not my strong suit, and I’m somewhat afraid of giving it away in case I never see it again. I spent a lot of time and energy on that translation.”

“And you want me to use it?” you asked, confused. Why on earth would he give it to you if he didn’t trust the perfectly composed vampires around him? “I mean it sounds super cool, but aren’t you worried about it being in my hands? I am a human, after all.”

“Well-”

Jaemin was cut off at that moment by a sharp knock on the door. At least, you assumed it was a knock, it sounded a little bit more like a wet thwap than a knock. Jaemin blurred slightly as he ran over to the door and opened it, revealing cloudy skies dropping rain onto a harried-looking Ten.

“Ten-hyung?” he asked, sounding as confused as you felt. “I’d say this is a nice surprise, but why are you here? I thought today was your Earth day? Is everything alright?”

“Yes,” Ten said, gasping slightly as he spoke. “I ran straight here from the Pacific.” You took a second to think about the fact that Ten was swimming in the Pacific Ocean before refocusing on him. “-future just completely shifted, a few minutes ago. Y/N-” He turned to face you completely. “Whatever you two just did, it caused you to become a vampire in the future.”

“But we were just talking?” you told him, confused. “It wasn’t like Jaem was about to bite me.” You turned to Jaemin. “Right?”

He looked at you solemnly. “If you were going to have been bitten by me, it would have already happened. Ten-hyung, are you sure that she’s a vampire in your future? Can you see more details?”

Ten closed his eyes briefly like he was trying to focus, and in the meantime a tentacle wrung the salt and rain water out of his hair. Jaemin wrinkled his nose at the growing puddle. Ten spoke, eyes fluttering open slowly. “In the parts I can see, she’s covered in this, like, tree? It’s a little bit fuzzy. It’s green, and looks like it has brown splotches like branches. Maybe a tree falls on her or something. Anyway, you take one look at him and bite her. She goes limp... After that? Fuzzy scenes of her waking up and you taking her running. Like, really running. Vampire running.”

Jaemin took a shaky breath. “Okay, I don’t know why our conversation would have caused a tree to fall on her in the future. We were talking about, like, Earth and art and stuff. Oh, and my witchcraft book.”

Ten’s eyes refocused on him, narrowing slightly. “You’re going to give her your witchcraft book after not letting me touch it? That’s a little underhanded.” His eyes narrow briefly before looking at you. “But maybe that’s it. You’ll just have to make sure that she doesn’t practice any witchcraft under the cover of trees. Otherwise I think you’ll be fine. I’ll keep you updated.”

“Thanks Ten,” you murmured. “For warning us and stuff.”

“Of course. Now I need to go back to the Pacific. Ta ta!” Ten waved to you and walked out the door.

“Well,” Jaemin said, “that’s some news, huh?”

“Yeah. Do you think that it’s okay for me to practice witchcraft with this in my future?”

“I do. I think you’ll be fine. We’ll keep you as safe as we possibly can, and if you become a vampire… at least it won’t be because I gave in. I’ll still be strong.”

“Jaem, I don’t think that was ever in question.”

“It was for me.” His voice went dark momentarily, then he brightened up again. “At any rate, I think we can safely teach you some things that’ll keep life interesting.”

You grinned. “Then let’s get started.”

☽༓☾

You were surprised at how easily witchcraft came to you, in the beginning. Jaemin insisted that you had some sort of gift with it, and as much as you told him that was silly, it seemed possible. You could easily understand instructions on Jaemin’s careful translations that even he couldn’t decipher. You gave up on Gaelic after a while, focused more on learning the original Egyptian Hieroglyphs of the spells and potions. You trusted Jaemin’s precise translation, but there was something unique about seeing an instruction in a new language and being able to understand it.

Days turned to weeks as you experimented with the materials growing in and around Vahmpyr. Taeil, who you eventually met, turned out to be a valuable resource. He was an avid collector of ancient written works, including but not limited to an original Greek copy of The Odyssey, Chinese bamboo books saved from the book burnings of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, and an exact replica of the Rosetta Stone. Taeil must have been ancient himself to have all of these valuables, but he still had the energy of the far younger members of their coven, which amazed you. He showed you different specialties of different cultures within witchcraft, ideas born from scrolls and tablets, bamboo strips and wax blocks. It was far more information than you could ever decipher or use during your short human life, but every day you got better, starting out small with poultices that you had to injure yourself to try and ward spells that exhausted you but could make your home more secure than any in Vahmpyr (or on Earth).

At one point Chenle gifted you a book covered in old stains and strangely familiar drawings that you started to use before abruptly realizing that it was an old chemistry textbook. You invited him over that afternoon and whacked him over the head with the thick pages. He told you with a disgruntled look that he put a lot of effort into that, thank you very much. And besides, chemistry was a magic in itself. (His words, not yours.) After that you made sure to thoroughly inspect any gifts you received from the more mischievous family members.

Lucas came over and helped you set up more complicated equipment that you couldn’t lift, like a big cauldron, which you actually did use on the regular after you learned how to use it, and after some consideration you set up a chemistry station for the odd experiment. At this point your house was more magical items than actual living space, something that Kun was quick to point out when he came over.

“You know, you should really be more careful about having all of these powders and dusts and-” He cut himself off with a distasteful wrinkle of his nose. “Things.” He pursed his lips, looking at you. “We don’t really know what these things will do to you in the long run. You have to be careful.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you responded distractedly, making his coffee and a drink for yourself. “Maybe I’ll clean it all up sometime, but you know I’m awfully busy these days.” You used a spoon to stir in the milk and sugar, tapping the metal against the china in a soft clink.

He sighed tiredly. “Your health is less important than staying busy?”

You gave him a look that you hoped conveyed your need to stay busy, to continuously learn and improve. “Keeping my schedule full keeps me healthy, Kun. At least mentally.”

Kun didn’t look impressed by your reasoning. “I think your mental health will go down pretty quickly if you get sick and can’t do anything because you’re stuck in bed twenty-four-seven.”

You gave a sigh of your own at that. “And as always,�� you announced to the room at large, “Doctor Kun gives amazing advice that I shouldn’t ignore but probably will.”

Y/n,” he said in a warning tone. “Seriously. You need to be careful! No human has ever lived here for so long, and I worry about you catching some mysterious illness that nobody has ever heard of!”

“Kun, I will do my best to keep myself healthy. I’ve put every kind of ward that I can around my house to protect me, I have magically circulated and cleaned air, I have literal superhumans to protect me from anything else, and I’m happy here! I finally have something to contribute. Maybe someday I’ll find some concoction or enchantment that will let me visit Earth, even. I just don’t know. But I’m going to keep trying.”

He took his coffee out of your grasp and walked back into the living room, which housed your indoor plants, magical and earthly. “That’s all I can ask,” he said, voice betraying his disappointment in that fact. “I’ll still give you monthly checkups for a while though, just to make sure.

“Can’t Jaemin take care of me?” you asked, thinking of Jaemin with his warm smile and caring words and the smell of sun on dirt and- well. Jaemin felt like safety in a person. Kun was wonderful, but Jaemin was just that little bit better, that little bit more comfortable to be around.

“He could,” Kun replied after taking a sip of coffee. “But I know he’s been busy lately though, he’s been on Earth for a few days checking on all of his businesses and stocks and his human personas. On the other hand, I hardly go back to Earth for more than a twelve hour shift here and there.”

“I understand.”

“Plus, I’m about two thousand years older than Jaemin, I have a lot of experience.”

“How old are you?” Two thousand years older than Jaemin would make Kun… pretty darn old.

Kun grinned. “I was around before and after Jesus came to Earth. I was around before the Terracotta Army was built. I was born in China circa when the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are said to have been built. Taeil-hyung turned me into a vampire when I was twenty five, and I’ve been twenty five ever since. None of us know when he was born. When you’re as old as he is, even with a vampire’s memory, history starts to blend together. He says he remembers the Pyramids at Giza going up, though, and that was after he had been a vampire for what he thinks was a few hundred years. He’s literally prehistoric.”

“Wow,” was all you could think to say. No wonder Taeil had so many artifacts. He was one. Kun was too, for that matter. And Jaemin… Jaemin would have been born AD, but how far into it? You asked Kun this question and he chuckled.

“Jaemin was born in fourteen forty two. He was twenty when Jeno turned him, and he’s still twenty, five hundred years later.”

“Who turned Taeil, then? I can hardly imagine a vampire older than him, even.”

“We’re not sure. Whoever it was is so unimaginably old now that even I can’t comprehend it. But whoever the original vampire was must have turned a whole lot of people. There are dozens more vampires just within our small community, and an entire plane full of them. From what I can tell, Taeil isn’t even the oldest. There’s this man who lives in the mountains by himself, and from what I hear, he hasn’t been seen by another vampire in nearly three thousand years. He’s almost a myth around here anymore. Taeil knew him back when Vahmpyr was sparsely populated, and he told us that the man - his name is Jinyoung Park - is older than him by so many years that he is to Taeil as Taeil is to me. He probably lived before Mesopotamia existed, even, or was right at the beginning of it. Before him, we have no idea who the first vampire was. If that vampire is still alive, he she or they hasn't been seen since, well, before living memory. If they still exist that would mean that vampires have been around since before modern humanity. I really wish we knew.”

“I wish you knew too,” you breathed. You had never really considered that immortality meant that the same vampires who existed before the Pyramids at Giza still lived among humanity today. It was mind boggling. The history in just their brains alone could fill thousands of textbooks and solve history’s greatest mysteries. But they couldn’t show themselves to the humans without risk. Even the people that they bit and sent back to Earth wouldn’t dare talk about their experiences, for fear of sounding crazy. Their gift to the world would never be wrapped up in gold tissue paper and presented with the proper awe, but here you were, in this modern metropolis of history. It truly hurt your brain to consider everything that came with that sort of age.

Just then a yell came from outside. “Kun-ge! Are you with Y/N?!” It sounded suspiciously like a panicked Yangyang. He never got panicked.

Kun stood up and hurried over to the front door, blurring in his hurry. “What happened?” he demanded.

“Well, uh, we may or may not have set Yuta’s house on fire…” Yangyang’s voice trailed off as Kun’s face reacted. First his eyebrows raised, then his mouth dropped open, and finally his eyes squeezed shut before reopening after a moment.

“You did what?”

Yangyang’s voice was small. “We set Yuta’s house on fire?” His voice was so high and squeaky that it sounded more like a question than a statement.

“Who is ‘we’?”

“Me, and Hyuck, and Taemin-hyung.”

“Oh my,” Kun said, running a hand over his face and through his hair. “I am going to murder Taemin-hyung.” He turned to Yangyang. “I might murder you and Donghyuck too.”

“We didn’t mean to,” Yangyang said. “It just happened.”

“You didn’t mean to set Yuta’s house on fire? How do you accidentally set someone’s house on fire?”

“You put on an impromptu fire show right next to the house, mess up a trick, and accidentally throw a flaming baton on their house. It was surprisingly easy. Anyway, I know that you would know what to do. You and Y/N both.”

Kun ran his hand through his hair again. You watched as a few light brown strands flew to the carpet with the force of it. “Y/N, do you have anything for flaming houses?”

You looked around your living room as though that would help you remember whether you did or not. “I think so, let me check my storage room,” you muttered, already dashing away. You did, in fact, have something that you loosely translated from the Egyptian spell scroll as “Fire Away Goop,” or something similar. It was a green, nearly transparent goop that sloshed in its bottle but it was too thick to really flow. It oozed more than anything. When it hit heat, it tended to solidify into a more solid green that would be easily removable from Yuta’s house, if said house was still there by the time you got to wherever it was. You grabbed the bottle and rushed back to the living room, panting. Kun turned to you.

“Is it okay if I carry you, to make sure we get there in time?”

“Won’t I be too heavy?”

He gave you an unimpressed look. “We’re literally the strongest things known to man. I’ll be fine.”

“Then sure. Let’s go save Yuta’s house!”

Kun carried you piggyback as fast as he could, your face tucked into his shoulder to avert most of the vertigo induced by such high speeds. Trees flashed by in browns and greens, and then you were going through the city, past the city, through more trees, in a rush that you couldn’t quite comprehend but which caused a sinking feeling to settle in your gut. Yuta’s house was far away. By the time you got there, the house was fully consumed by the flames, the fire burning merrily without knowledge that it was ruining a man’s home.

A man, presumably Yuta, stood out front, another man on his knees next to him. Once you were next to them, you realized that the standing man had the kneeling man’s ear in a tight grip. You figured that the man on his knees must have been the infamous Donghyuck.

“Yuta-hyung, Hyuck,” Kun greeted them as he set you on the ground.

“Yangyang,” said Yuta, turning around, “You’re a bit late.” He nodded at you and Kun in acknowledgement, as Donghyuck yelped at the tug on his ear. Yuta had black hair streaked through with neon green, and it framed a narrow face and startlingly pink lips. You wondered, in the back of your head, if he used lip tint. You also briefly entertained the idea that he contoured his face, because there was no way that he looked that good without makeup. He’s a vampire, your consciousness provided. All of them look that good.

“Sorry hyung,” Yangyang murmured. “We came as fast as we could!”

Kun stepped forward. “We brought Y/N, as you can see, and she has something to put the fire out.” Something like hope sparked in Yuta’s eyes as he looked over you again, taking in details of your appearance.

“Do you really? Well, go ahead.” He gestured to the house and the flames danced in your face, leaving you to hope that this gloop worked for fires this big. You took a deep breath and poured the goop onto the grass, where it oozed between the blades of grass like a big blob of snot on the lawn.

“Atlaq alnaar,” you murmured to it, and it rose into the air, following your mental directions toward the fire. The moment they made contact, the goop started to solidify and expand, covering the fire rapidly. Green overtook bright reds and oranges as you focused on the fire and made the goop cover it.

“Y/N!” Someone was calling to you, their voice out of focus as though you heard them from underwater. “You’ll get covered!” You were vaguely aware of a hand trying to lead you away, but the spell kept you rooted in place, your feet seemingly super glued to the lawn. You kept focus on the fire as the last flames were overtaken and put out. Yuta’s house was now a giant green blob. From what you could see through the jello-like goop, it had sustained a minimal amount of damage considering the amount of flames you had seen. You were so engrossed in the green substance that you missed the warning signs before it swallowed you up too, ever expanding.

It took your outstretched hands first, pulling you forward into it. Through your panic you had just enough brain power left to be amazed at how thick it was before your feet and legs were covered too, nearly encased in the goop. You leaned your head back as far as you could, trying to keep yourself in the open air, but the goop kept expanding. You felt more than saw the vampires try to dig you out, but while the spell still fueled it, the goop was surprisingly strong. A hand grasped your elbow as the goop grasped your neck and chin, keeping you completely still as it covered more of you. The hand let go. It couldn’t do anything now.

You took a deep breath just before the goop covered your mouth, nose, and eyes. You thought you felt something on the back of your neck but didn’t think much of it until it started burning. Any strength you had left crumbled as your eyes started stinging and your oxygen ran out. You couldn't see, but it felt as though the world was spinning around you, as though you had been disconnected from everything but the pain. Even through your lightheadedness the pain persisted. It had spread now, from your neck over your shoulders like the creeping vines on the back wall of Jaemin’s cottage.

Jaemin.

You realized through your hazy thoughts that you would never see him again. Your eyes and nose burned now, from tears you couldn’t cry and the pain slowly enveloping you.

You couldn’t hold on any longer.

Black.

☽༓☾

Across a forest and a small town, Jaemin was working on his Hindi pronunciation when Ten burst into his home for the second time in what seemed like a very short period. He wasn’t dripping this time, just looked thoroughly terrified of something.

“Jaemin! She needs help!”

“What? Who?” Jaemin stood up and walked over to his friend. Ten’s tentacles curled and uncurled repeatedly as he spoke.

“Y/N! The vision got sharper, which usually means it’s happening. The green blob wasn’t a tree, it was some sort of spell! She’s going to die if we don’t get there fast.”

“Where are we going?” Jaemin demanded as they ran through the trees around his cabin.

“Yuta’s house. Or, at least, where it used to be.”

“What happened to Yuta’s house?”

“Yangyang and Hyuck burned it down.”

“Ah.”

Ten was panting as he continued speaking. “I think that must be what the spell was for. Some sort of fire putter-outer.”

Jaemin tried to think back to all of the books he had given you, recalling a spell that sounded suspiciously like what Ten described. “If the one I think you’re talking about is the spell she used,” he told Ten, “we might not be able to save her by the time we get there.” A pang echoed through his chest. An empty feeling, as though your small human life had affected his own so strongly as to make him miss you without knowing that you were gone. Jaemin ran on, leaving Ten behind when he paused to rest, sprinting at his highest speed towards where you were.

When he arrived on Yuta’s plot, most of his vision turned green, not because things were actually green, but from the sheer size of the lime coloured stuff all over Yuta’s house. He had been correct when he guessed at which spell you had used. His gaze fell on Kun, Yangyang, Yuta, and Donghyuck, who stood at the still-expanding base of the blob, seemingly trying to get something out. He gasped. You were in the thing. He ran up and tried to help the others dig you out, to no avail. They couldn't do anything against the spell so long as you were alive, and he wasn’t about to kill the person he had worked so hard to protect. He tried to hold onto your elbow as it was swallowed, but was afraid of hurting you. They all watched as you took a deep breath and the gloop covered your face.

Jaemin slumped, out of ideas. There was no way to save you that he knew of. Then he thought back to Ten’s vision. He had to change you. It was the only way. You wouldn’t need to breathe, wouldn’t need to do anything. You could still be here with him. It was with that in mind that he lunged forward at the last moment and latched onto your neck, stretching his jar as wide as it would go. His fangs, already dripping uncomfortably with venom in your presence, sank into your veins, and he felt it as you stiffened slightly. You couldn’t move much in your current situation, but your muscles seized all the same. He stayed next to you as long as he could, until he was in danger of being swallowed into the goop as well. He licked the wounds closed as efficiently as possible and stepped back with the others to see what happened.

It was obvious that you had gone unconscious. The goop stopped moving so rapidly and seemed to pause in its conquest of the front yard. It started oozing slowly around again, creating something of a reverse muffin top as the top shell hardened and the bottom bits leaked out. They backed up to the edge of the yard and Jaemin used his (admittedly small) knowledge of spellcraft to create wards that would protect the house down the street and hopefully contain the goo. They watched in silence as the green kept expanding. Then Yangyang spoke.

“Will Y/N die?”

“I don’t think so,” said Jaemin slowly. “She shouldn’t, at any rate. I bit her.”

A collective tremor went around the group, as though none of them wanted to appear surprised but they all were.

“It was the only thing I could think of that gave Y/N a chance, so I had to try it,” Jaemin continued. “But Kun-hyung knows more than me on that subject.”

Kun looked pensive as he considered what Jaemin had said. “It should work, in theory. But between the wards always up around Y/N’s house, this spell, and the venom in his system, her body might now be able to take it. It’s just a game of chance, unless we can find some way to take some stress off of her body.”

They all looked to Jaemin again.

“Is there some way to break the wards that she has up?” Yuta asked.

“I don’t think so,” Jaemin said, frowning. “Not without taxing her further. We definitely can’t affect this spell without killing her, and as far as the transformation goes, we’d need to be able to get to her body in there. That’s obviously not happening either.”

“So what can we do?” Donghyuck’s voice was small and he sounded almost repentant, as though he thought this whole thing was his fault. It sort of was, but it was odd to hear that tone from him.

“We ask Ten what he can see of the future and go from there,” Jaemin said. “There’s not much else that we can do, unless anyone knows someone better with spells than Y/N.”

The whole group shook their heads. Spells could be cast by any human variant creature that they knew of, but spellcraft was a human specialty. You in particular were gifted beyond what they had seen in a very long while.

While they thought about it, Ten burst forth from the trees down the street and ran towards their group. He slowed down as he took in the blob, now pressing against the wards that contained it. Jaemin could feel a subtle sort of pressure in his head as his spells kept the goop within Yuta’s plot.

“So?” Ten asked Jaemin as he walked up. “Did it work?”

“We’re not sure. She’s not dead, or the Fire Away spell would have gone small and liquidy again. On the other hand, none of us know any way to get her out, and Kun-hyung’s worried about the toll that all of this” - he waved his hands at the blob - “will kill her while he turns. We wanted to ask what you were seeing as of now.”

Ten closed his eyes, most of his tentacles going still as he focused. There was one that whacked anxiously against the dirt beneath him, beating a steady rhythm against the earth. After a few minutes, his eyes opened and he refocused his eyes on the group around him.

“Well?” Yangyang prompted when he didn’t speak. Ten sighed.

“Good news is that she’s probably not going to die.”

“And the bad news?”

“She might die.”

“What do you mean, Ten-hyung?”

“I can’t… I can’t tell which future is the one that will come true. It’s like there are two possible ways for the future to go, and neither of them is solid. Either she makes it through, or she dies. The worst part is that I can’t tell what causes her death. It could happen two seconds from now, or two hours, or two days. I just don’t know.”

“I don’t remember your visions ever having two outcomes,” Kun said, brows furrowed.

“I haven’t ever had one like this.”

“Well,” Jaemin said, “I’ll just stay here until she wakes up.”

“And where should I go?” asked Yuta. “Maybe nobody told you, but this is my house that just got burned down.” He threw a glare at Hyuck and Yangyang.

“Go stay with Mark-hyung or something. You sleep over with him all the time anyway,” Donghyuck suggested, and Yuta grinned, a complete change from two seconds before.

“He’ll hate that. See you guys later!” He skipped a few steps before running full tilt, phone in his hands and fingers tapping. The glow of the screen disappeared quickly from Jaemin’s view, and he turned back to their now-smaller group.

“Are you sure that you want to stay here until Y/N wakes up?” Kun asked Jaemin. “I know that you don’t need sleep or anything, but that seems like a waste of time.”

“I have eternity,” Jaemin told him. “I just need to be here to watch it deflate, whether it’s because she’s turned or because…” His voice went weak. He couldn't see you die. He just couldn’t. Kun patted him on the shoulder.

“Okay. We’ll come check on you tomorrow.” As he walked away with Yangyang and Donghyuck, Jaemin heard Kun’s ‘mom voice’ come out as he lectured on the dangers of playing with fire. It made Jaemin smile a little.

His head was starting to feel uncomfortable with the pressure of his wards, so he carefully widened them, centimeter by centimeter, until there was less gloop on them. He couldn’t keep this up until you completed the transformation, he knew, but it would work for now. Maybe he could call Kibum-hyung tomorrow for help.

Until then all he had to do was sit and wait, and look at your form encased in neo pearl champagne colored jello.

☽༓☾

It was exactly twenty five hours, forty minutes, and nine seconds since Jaemin had first settled in when the goop started deflating. The hard casing that had developed collapsed in on itself when the slightly softer insides began to shrink, reminding Jaemin slightly of Honey Lemon and her chemical reactions in Big Hero 6. He sprang to his feet, rushing forward to where he could see the outline of your body inside the collapsing bubble, grabbing the empty decanter that the goop had once been held in. He scooped up the small oozing goop that remained from the spell and plugged the decanter, turning around slowly to look at your body once more.

As your still-limp body collapsed to the ground, Jaemin felt his unbeating heart sink. You didn’t move, there was no rise and fall to your chest. There was no sound of your breath in the air. Your eyes didn’t roll around under your eyelids. You seemed… corpselike. Dead. But it couldn’t be. Ten had said that you would probably survive! Jaemin opened his phone and pressed Ten’s contact to call it. He answered on the third ring.

“Jaemin? What’s up?”

“Ten-hyung,” Jaemin said, and his voice cracked. He cleared his throat before continuing. “Y/N… I think, is dead?”

Ten sucked in a breath, audible even through the phone. “Jaemin I’m so sorry-”

Jaemin cut him off. “Hyung, you said she would make it!”

“There was always that chance that she wouldn’t-”

“But you said-” Jaemin’s voice cracked again and he fell into silence. He couldn’t cry, and he had never wished he could until now. Tears might convey the hole in his chest, the emptiness of his existence without your life to partner him.

“Jaemin,” came Ten’s voice, and it was soft, delicate. “I’m so so sorry. I thought that she would make it, but there was always that second path. I can’t-” He took a deep breath. “I can’t see her anymore. I think… I think she might be gone.”

“No!” Jaemin exclaimed hotly. “She can’t be!”

“Jaemin-”

He hung up. Whatever Ten-hyung had to say wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t bring you back. He was along now, with your body and this stupid Flame Away Goop that had managed to take your life despite Ten’s prophecies and Jaemin’s best efforts. The person that you were was gone. Now you were just a still corpse, a painful reminder of what could have been and what should have been and what couldn’t be.

“I’ll give you a proper funeral,” Jaemin told your body as he lifted it into his arms gently. “I promise.”

For the next three days, Jaemin worked non-stop. He prepared a funeral for you, ignored everyone except to invite them to the event. He could still picture your smile, the way he had to support you those first few steps. He remembered how you had called him gorgeous, how you had said I love you in Gaelic to him without knowing what it meant. He recalled the trust you had for him despite his own occasional self-loathing, the way you had reminded him of his worth every time you were around him.

He missed you. He missed you a lot.

People had called him, came knocking once an hour. He eventually just shut off his phone so he didn’t have to hear their pleas for him to let them in. All of his hyungs and all of his noonas came to make sure he was okay, but would he ever be? There was a Y/N shaped hole in him that he didn’t think could ever be filled up again. Jeno came around three times a day with hug offerings, but Jaemin shut him out. He knew it hurt his friends, knew they only wanted to help, but you were gone and nobody understood. Nobody had loved you the way he had. Nobody had your blood quite literally on their hands, flowing through their veins.

It hurt to think about that. He “lived” while you were dead; he had gained life through your death and that was the most ironic thing. In his attempt to save you, he may have killed you.

He hurt.

On the fourth day since your death, Jaemin gently dressed your body in the best clothes he could find, brushed your hair, and put you in a casket, standing you in an open clearing, the one where he had tried to send you back to Earth. It was the largest clearing nearby, and all of the vampires that had met you plus Ten came to pay their respects. They spoke about the short time they had known you, and the strong impact you had made despite that. They told of how you had gone back to Earth and suffered until you had returned. They told of your feats practicing witchcraft and most of all they spoke of your kindness, the lack of repulsion towards them. They spoke of your kind smile and the way you had fit in so nicely with their community.

Jaemin started not-crying, as vampires did, and he thought he would be alone, but Jeno joined him. Lucas joined him. Jisung and Chenle joined him. Ten and Johnny joined him. He was not the only one who had loved you. Donghyuck joined him. Yangyang and Yuta and Kun joined him. He was not the only one who felt that your death was his fault.

Jaemin was not the only person who choked out their words in an imitation of crying. Jaemin was not the only person who missed you. Jaemin was not the only one who wanted you back. Jaemin was not the only one.

He hadn’t realized how much he missed his friends until they surrounded him in a huge hug. It wasn’t a warm hug, necessarily, but it was a hug nonetheless and made him feel better. He was not the only one.

He was still dealing with the hole in his chest, but he had others to patch himself up with now. Like each person who had known you could bring a part of you back through their memories of you. It was nice, almost.

☽༓☾

The first thing you realized was that you could hear again. Your ears were uncovered, and you vaguely registered words being choked out somewhere near you. It sounded like a large number of people were very sad about something. You wondered what it could be. The second thing you realized was that you were laying down on some sort of padded… thing. It felt like too much work to open your eyes, so you felt around and realized that you were in a padded box. A padded box? That was new.

You tried to sniff the air and were met with the smell of cologne, not too strong but apparently on enough people that it permeated the air. You got hints of perfume too, but it was far less strong. Something in the box shifted and you felt breaths on your face. Were people looking at you in your sleep? Come to think of it, why were these many people around you while you slept at all? That seemed sort of rude. You tried to remember getting here but came up blank. Your last memories were of the pain before you passed out. You shivered at the memory.

“She’s awake!” someone shouted. The noise hurt your ears after the deafening silence of your previous state, and you itched to get away from them. A murmur of sound rolled through the room and then a familiar scent invaded your senses, that of sun-warmed earth.

“Y- Y/N?” Jaemin asked hesitantly. “Can you hear me? Are you in there?”

He sounded absolutely wrecked, like his voice had been stripped of his usual honey and sunshine. You tried to open your eyes, but it was too bright and you just couldn’t, so you nodded slightly.

“Oh my- Y/N,” he continued. “Can’t you open your eyes for me, please?”

You shook your head no.

“Okay, that’s fine, sweetheart. Let me get you out of there.” There was the sound of something wooden being bonked against a wall, but that faded in comparison to the name. Sweetheart. Sweetheart.

You were lifted gently from your padded box and carried somewhere shady and cold. It felt nice against your skin. He felt nice against your skin. He carried you gently, like you were made of glass, but you felt surprisingly strong, just out of sorts. As though while your mind struggled to catch up, your body had strengthened. It was a very different sensation to that of your first time waking up in Jaemin’s house. He walked you through what you thought must be the forest for a bit before he sat down and nestled you into his side. You felt as though some muscles should be unhappy about the position, but you felt completely comfortable.

“Y/N.” Jaemin’s voice came to you, soft and warm and familiar. It was shaking slightly. “Can you open your eyes for me now?”

You focused on your eyelids, raising them slowly until you could see Jaemin. He had on a suit; black jacket over a white shirt, accented by a thin black ribbon tied loosely around his neck. His pink hair fell neatly in waves over his forehead and you reached up to brush away a piece that had fallen over his eyes, smiling.

“Hey Jaem. What happened?” Your voice wasn’t weak, like you supposed it should have been. It came out like a melody into the air, and you marvelled internally at the sound of it, how smooth it was. It felt nice.

“You-” Jaemin broke off for a second, rearranging your limbs next to him. “You were trying to save Yuta’s house. We had to rebuild part, but it’s fine. He stayed with Mark for a few days. For the most part, your spell worked. But then, it- it swallowed you. I got there in time to watch as you were absorbed by this green goop and I thought I was too late. I bit you, back here.” He brushed his fingers gently over the sides of your neck and you shivered. “But you didn’t wake up… I thought I was too late. You weren’t breathing, and you weren’t awake… I have no idea how you managed to cancel the spell without waking up or dying. So I-” He made a choked up sound and tightened his arm around your shoulders. “We’re at your funeral. Ten couldn’t see your future anymore, so we thought you were dead…” He trailed off.

“Wow,” you said. “I died? Then how am I here now? I feel alive?”

“It worked. It must have. You don’t have a heartbeat, but you’re awake. I don’t know what happened exactly, but you must be a vampire now.”

“Huh. I thought I’d feel more… hungry.”

He laughed. It glittered over your ears and you smiled, an involuntary reaction to him. “It’ll kick in, don’t worry.”

“What about the others? I mean, Lucas and Kun and everyone? Are they just at my funeral right now? Without me?”

“Oh.” Jaemin looked as though he had forgotten about them. “I guess they are. Let’s go see them?”

“Let’s.”

☽༓☾

After that day, it didn’t take you long to realize that the other vampires were purposefully putting you with Jaemin for just about everything. On days where you went to hang out with Lucas, he would ask you how Jaemin was doing. If you didn’t know, he would suggest that you go and visit him. Kun asked you to make sure that Jaemin was feeling okay. Yuta, who you were finally allowed to meet and hang out with, constantly suggested that you should spend more time with him. It was strange. Nobody had seemed to mind that you had your own hobbies before your transformation, but now that you were a vampire, it was as though you were meant to be with Jaemin all of the time. You asked Lucas about it once you got sick of the mysterious treatment and he looked at you heavily.

“When you got trapped in that goopy stuff, Jaemin went all weird. He didn’t move for, like, more than 24 hours, and once he thought you were dead… he didn’t talk to any of us until the funeral. We worry about him, and you seem to make him really happy, so we’re trying to keep you two around each other.”

You didn’t really know what to say to that, so you chose the very eloquent “oh,” as your response. Lucas chuckled.

“I know. It was really weird, I’ve never seen him like that. I think we’ve seen a lot of new sides of Jaemin since you came along.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“It’s… well, I don’t think it’s bad or good. It just is. You affect him differently than anyone else we know.”

“Why is that, do you think?”

“Y/N, you idiot, he’s in love with you.”

“He’s what?”

Lucas sighed. “He’s in love with you.”

“Why do you think that? This is Jaemin we’re talking about here. Jaemin. He’s, like, beauty incarnate and he’s smart and kind and wonderful in every aspect of everything. He just can’t be in love with me.”

“He’s in love with you.”

“He’s not.”

“He is.”

“He can't be.”

“Why not?”

“I just told you why.”

Lucas sighed again, more deeply. “But you’re in love with him.”

“I-” You consider that. “I guess?”

“That wasn’t a question.” He rolled his eyes.

“Do you think it’s possible that he actually does like me back?”

“Yes.”

Somehow, after that, Lucas managed to steer the conversation onto other subjects and you refocused on those things, but it echoed in your head. He’s in love with you.

☽༓☾

Even with this new information bouncing around the forefront of your brain, you still had to go and spend time with Jaemin. Maybe it was a little strange for your thoughts to short circuit when you saw him, the little whisper of what if in your head. Maybe it was a little peculiar for a vampire such as yourself to stutter through sentences because you were busy thinking about what life would be like if he really did like you back. Maybe you spent less time talking on your walks together because you wanted to lay next to him in a clearing and watch the clouds instead. Just maybe.

If Jaemin noticed any of your strange behaviour, he didn’t call you out on it. He either really wasn’t paying all that much attention, or he knew enough about you to know that you wouldn’t want him to pry. It was strange, really, how well you knew each other in such a short time. You supposed that since you spent so much time together it wasn’t improbable, but he knew you nearly as well as your old human friends back home.

Thinking about your old memories was a strange experience. You could remember everything as clearly as your human self could, but you noticed more the lack of detail within the images, the way your human eyes couldn’t move as fast as your vampire ones, and your reflexes weren’t as fast, and the way you fixated on one part of the picture without taking in the details of the rest of your vision. You had entirely blocked out memories of driving, they were too harrowing. You recalled more easily now all of the times you had nearly hit something or someone, and while you couldn't die now, at least not that easily, you could have easily fallen prey to the fatal blind spot more times than you’d care to admit.

When you told Jaemin about that, he laughed that laugh you loved so much. “I was born in fourteen forty-two, Y/N. We didn’t have cars back then. The only thing on the street that would run me over was a horse-drawn carriage.”

“Well,” you retorted, “you should consider yourself lucky then. Carriages and horses don’t sound half so bad as giant hunks of metal flying at each other at eighty miles per hour.”

“Maybe you’re right,” he mused, stroking an imaginary beard. “Maybe I was lucky to be born in Korea during the 1400s. You may have heard of the emperor Sejong the Great? I was born during his rule. He was one of the best emperors Korea ever had, he introduced hangul and united the country under Confucian principles so that there was more love for the country and the people living in it. Peaceful few years we had there, from what little I remember. After that, though? Lots of killing, children on the throne, et cetera et cetera. Not so fun. And I was actually able to die through all of that, so that wasn’t pleasant. But then King Sejo, the one who did the killing, actually did a pretty okay job of ruling the country and we had a few more years of prosperity. He died six years after my transformation. I missed that event because I was here in Vahmpyr getting to know Jeno, who turned me.”

“How much of the group was around, at that point?”

“Well…” Jaemin closed his eyes briefly in thought. “Here, let me draw you a family tree.” He grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote ‘Moon Taeil’ at the top. “Okay so as you know, Taeil is here as the first of us. He turned Yuta-hyung, Kun-hyung, Johnny-hyung, and Taeyong-hyung.” He wrote in their names under Taeil’s, spacing them out across the paper.

“Yuta-hyung turned Sicheng-hyung and Shotaro; Kun-hyung turned Dejun-hyung and Lucas-hyung; Johnny-hyung turned Jungwoo-hyung and Mark, and Taeyongie-hyung turned Hyuck, Doyoung-hyung, and Jaehyun hyung.” He labeled all of these names, then drew more stems leading from Jaehyun, Lucas, and Dejun.

“Jaehyun-hyung turned Sungchan, Lucas-hyung turned Hendery-hyung and Yangyang, and Dejun-hyung turned Renjun.” He drew all of these connections and stemmed Renjun’s name down even farther.

“Renjun turned Jeno and Chenle, then Jeno turned me, and I turned Jisung and now you.” He finished the tree with a flourish, black ink stark against the creamy paper. They were all connected, in some way, to Taeil’s venom. And there was you, at the very bottom, your name small next to Jisung’s.

“You guys are all so… connected.”

“Yep! We’re all one big family.”

“Do you guys have, like, family reunions? And who changed Joy and her friends? Or what’s-his-face? Taemin?”

“We don’t really all get together a lot, just because most of us have jobs on Earth or spend our days doing stuff on our own. Some of them like having flings all the time. Obviously none of us can get STDs or get pregnant, so they can do that, no strings attached. We sort of hang out in our individual groups for the most part, and then hang out every once in a while. As far as the others, we think that they must have come from the same person as Taeil-hyung, a very very old vampire. There are other stories like ours across Vahmpyr, where one vampire created one member of each coven and let us grow from there. The difference is that some of them actually have good relationships with those older vampires, whereas I’ve never met ours. I’ve heard that there’s a man called Park Jae-sang who actually comes around to spend time with the vampires he’s changed. The closest we have to an old vampire is Leeteuk-hyung, and he isn’t really around much, plus he’s not that much older than Taeil-hyung.

“Anyway, to answer your question, when I was turned, nearly everyone was around already. Only Yangyang, Sungchan, Shotaro, Chenle, and Jisung are younger than me. And now you.”

“Wow, so you had to meet everyone right after your transformation? I bet that was chaotic.”

“It was, but it was also fun. I got to be the baby for a while. Then the others came around and I somehow became a mother figure.”

You laughed. Jaemin was a mother figure, for sure. He liked to take care of the people around him, including humans that his brothers had brought home for him to patch up. “That doesn’t surprise me one bit.”

He giggled along with you, that laugh you adored so much, and grinned. “I guess it sort of fits me, doesn’t it? Mother Jaem.” He rolled the name over his tongue and you collapsed into laughter again. “I think that works well, yep.”

The next few days, you called him Mother Jaem, and everyone gave you weird looks, but it made Jaemin laugh hard enough that it was worth it.

☽༓☾

One day after this, Chenle pulled Jaemin aside to ask him what on Earth was going on with this whole “Mother Jaem” thing. Jaemin explained happily how it had come about. Chenle rolled his eyes dramatically.

“When are you two getting married?”

Jaemin just gave him a blank stare. “What?”

“It’s so disgusting how much you guys love each other! When can we shove you two together in a house and call it a day?”

“Um, okay, first of all, that is not how you get rid of somebody. Second, she doesn't love me? And third, there is definitely not enough space in her house for me, even if she did.”

Chenle pinched the bridge of his nose. “Lucas was right, you guys are blind fools. Of course she loves you! She goes to see you all the time! And enjoys it! You’re both in love with each other and both of you are cowards.” He ran his hand through his hair, knocking a piece into his eye. He squinted unhappily but didn’t try to move it.

Jaemin sighed as he got the chunk of hair away from Chenle’s eye. “This is Y/N we’re talking about though! She might hate me for everything I put her through and only stick around because I turned her or something. Plus, she spends as much time with Lucas as with me.”

“My God, your logic is terrible. You love her, she loves you, you need to get together. Watch some dramas and kiss her in the rain or something. Lucas even told me that she loves you!”

“That’s astonishingly specific for someone who doesn’t have a romance under their belt.”

“That’s besides the point!” Chenle grabbed the sides of Jaemin’s face and held him still while he spoke. “You need to confess sometime or another before the rest of us go crazy watching you run in circles around each other.”

With that he stalked away, leaving Jaemin rubbing his face where Chenle’s fingertips had pressed into the skin. It didn’t hurt, but the echoes of his voice and his fingers held Jaemin still for a long time afterwards.

☽༓☾

The next week, Kun and Taeil invited the whole coven to a reunion at Kun’s country estate. Having never been, you looked forward to seeing the giant house as much as meeting the rest of the family. It didn’t disappoint, it was absolutely massive, at least four or five floors and extensive gardens in front. Kun gave you free run of the place, asking you to please not enter rooms marked with a “Do Not Enter” sign. Simple rule to follow. You entered the main hall first, feeling like royalty in such an elegant room. Twin staircases led from the upstairs, leading your eyes to an extravagant chandelier covered in hundreds of crystals, and a mint green ceiling. From either side of the large room extended hallways with lush pale blue rugs and endless vases on platforms. It felt as though you had entered the past, or maybe a very expensive movie set. You moved through hallways and rooms, gazing at velvet chairs and old paintings that screamed money. You wondered if someone in Vahmpyr painted them, or if they were from Earth. You found only two rooms marked “Do Not Enter,” one of which was in a long hallway of bedrooms, so you assumed it was Kun’s.

The other was in the back of a positively colossal library. The library caught your eye because of the sheer size of it. Rows upon rows of books lined the walls and seemingly endless freestanding shelves. It was as large as the main public library back home, taking up at least four average rooms worth of space per floor. Not to mention the height. You estimated that it was at least three floors high, perhaps four. An entire long wall was devoted to Kun’s studies in medicine, dating back to leeches and poultices on open wounds through Magnetic Resonance Imaging and the most advanced of current surgeries. He had records of patients stacked by century, and a desk that popped out of the wall to reveal his own notes on developing vaccines and other medicines. Had you still been human, you were certain that a room like this would have given you a headache, from the size and the amount of books to look at.

From the medicine section you moved to other sciences like forensics, geology (although that section was considerably smaller), and astronomy. You also discovered an entire section on aviation. In the astronomy section, you found cork boards with maps pinned to them, stars drawn in detail, space stations built for both humans and vampires, and more drawings you didn't know how to interpret. You pulled out a few books at random and flipped through them, smiling at the notes in the margins. Past those sections were books on every type of science you had ever heard of, and some you hadn’t.

Beyond those were histories, and Kun’s travel section. He had bins filled with brochures, maps, and travel magazines and accounts of, from what you could tell, every war known to have occurred past Kun’s turning. That blended into social studies, and you found books on language next to copies of the Bible in seemingly every version, translations of the Quran, and more religious texts. Stock market trends were recorded and stored next to books on how to hire smart and anthropology. Cultural studies were stored with ethics and political records. Newspapers appeared as well, although those were fewer than the books by far. They appeared to be from a singular area, a place called Taining County, in China. Kun must have some sort of tie to it. You made a mental note to ask him when you rejoined the others.

You climbed a staircase to the second floor, where you found a fireplace and sitting area within the books. It appeared that the entire second floor was books organized by language, starting each section with children’s books and working their way up to novels. You found all of the Romance Languages, German, Hindi, Greek, Tagalog, Russian, Dutch, Japanese, Cantonese, Thai, Korean, Arabic, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Urdu, Latin and more that you didn’t know. In the back was a small compilation of different countries’ sign languages, as well.

You climbed the next flight of stairs to the third floor, finding the fiction section. These were organized by genre, with horror on one shelf, science fiction hogging four shelves on the opposite walls, romance taking up a large section next to that, et cetera. You spotted a section marked “Transcribed” and walked over to it, finding books handwritten by Kun, presumably taken from other forms and written over to fit in his library. You imagined the wax tablets and stone slabs of old books and shuddered. Even as a vampire, transporting those wouldn’t be easy. This floor was open in the middle, looking down at the second. Above you, the next floor was open as well and housed more shelves.

You walked up the last staircase and came upon a musical archive. There were phonographs on tables next to more recent record turntables, followed by cassette players and CD players. Each one was in impeccable condition, and behind them were shelves of every format that would work with those machines. These were shorter shelves, since the music was thinner than books, but there were still many many of them. You saw cassette boxes labeled with the albums contained within, records in yellowed sleeves, and CDs in thick storage cases. They were organized by decade, with the earliest dating back to the late nineteenth century. You guessed that was when recorded music had been invented. Perhaps Kun could still remember older pieces though; something else you would have to ask him about. You were looking through the most recent music to see what he liked and if you had heard of it when you heard someone calling your name.

“Y/N? Where are you?”

“In the library, fourth floor!” you yelled back.

“Will you come back to the kitchen and help me with this?”

“Sure!”

You weren’t sure who was calling you, but it sounded like Lucas, so you ran towards the kitchen. You weren’t sure entirely why there was a kitchen, since you all drank blood anyway, but you figured there was a good reason. You added that to your growing list of things to ask Kun. You understood why you had a kitchen in your house since you had lived in it while you were still human, but Kun hadn’t been to Vahmpyr before he was turned as far as you knew. Besides, he usually lived in his apartment next to the other guys. Maybe it was just necessary to have a kitchen in a house, you didn’t know. It would have felt weird, you guessed, to live in a house without one.

When you arrived, Lucas was outside as you had guessed.

“Will you run in and grab these things for me?” he asked, handing you a sticky note. “I’ve been tasked with rounding up everyone else.”

“Yeah, no problem,” you replied, walking through the doors into the room. It was industrial, like Kun cooked for dozens of people at a time, and there was a surprising amount of cooking utensils that wouldn’t work on raw bodies, like spatulas. You looked down at the sticky note for the first time. If you don’t confess, it read, I will smack you when you come back out. And you know how big my hands are, I will make it hurt.

“What?” you murmured to yourself as Jaemin walked into the room.

“Oh hey Y/N, did Chenle send you?”

“No, Lucas did. But did Chenle perhaps give you a sticky note with things to get for him on it?”

Jaemin glanced down at a hot pink slip of paper in his hand. “Yeah.” He looked back up at you before his brow furrowed and he looked more thoroughly at the writing on it. He groaned. “I am going to kill Chenle.” He ran a hand through his cotton candy pink hair. “I guess I should just get it over with then.”

He walked closer to you, setting the sticky note on the counter as he came. “I’m kind of in love with you? And I have been for a while? I mean I get if you hate me after everything I put you through, but according to Chenle you like me back? And… yeah?”

You were left speechless. Hate Jaemin? Never. And he… loved… you?

“Y/N? Are you okay?” Jaemin waved a hand in front of your face. “I’m sorry, I’ll go, Chenle must have set up a prank.” He started walking away and you grabbed his wrist.

“Jaem, hold on. I’m just in shock. I thought there was no way you could like me back…” Your voice got steadily smaller until it trailed off at the end of your sentence as a whisper.

His entire face lit up like a Christmas tree plugged in for the first time, glowing and cheerful. “It’s not a prank?”

You rubbed a hand over your face. “No, it’s not a prank. I thought Lucas was kidding when he said you liked me back. Or at least that he was wrong. You- you’re actually telling me that you’re in love with me?”

“I am.”

“Holy shit.”

He laughed, a ringing sound in the quiet of the kitchen. It echoed back at you as though the happiness of the laugh had been multiplied. “They’re going to be so smug,” he muttered.

“Oh yes they are. We’re going to have to get back at them someday.”

“Well, we have forever,” he reminded you. You grinned and held out your hand. He took it.

“Let’s go get the teasing over with then.”

You walked out of the kitchen and down the hall. “What did Chenle threaten you with if you didn’t confess?” you asked.

“Oh, he was going to tell the group about the fling I had with Jeno when we were younger.”

You looked at him in shock. “You had a fling with Jeno? Why would you choose me over him?”

“It was just sexual attraction. While that works for some people, both of us were happier just being friends, so we ended it. I actually am in love with you, which makes all the difference. Anyway, Chenle got that story out of me on a dare once and has held it over my head ever since.”

“I wonder if he’s told Jeno he knows?”

“Probably.”

You had reached the front room, and you took a deep breath as you walked forward, though it did nothing for your undead body. “Let’s throw ourselves to the wolves.”

As you walked out into the sunlight, a cheer rose up that would have sent birds flapping away, had there been any. You heard Chenle’s unique laugh paired with Lucas’ happy shouts of “yes!” and the voices of the other men you had gotten to know, paired with ones you didn’t. They stood in a group in the garden, whooping and throwing up hats if they had any. Lucas was the first to reach you.

“I can’t believe you actually did it! I thought I’d have to smack you!” He sounded far too happy at the prospect for your liking.

The rest of the boys ran over. There was a repeating round of “finally” until someone mentioned the food getting warm and there was a great rush to get back to the patio in the garden. You sat next to Jaemin in patio chairs as the sun slowly sank past the tree line and talked with friends old and new.

There was something new, something warm inside of you. A feeling of belonging more than ever when Jaemin fed you a little and the rest of the guys booed jokingly. Under the rising stars you kissed him for the first time, a quick peck at the behest of Yangyang. There were more cheers and hugs and someone had a polaroid camera out, the flash lighting up the scene as everyone laughed.

This was where you were meant to be.

End.

!!reblogs and feedback are much appreciated!!

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autumnleaves1991-blog · 3 years

Text

The Next One’s on You 4/5

This one is going to hurt. I’m sorry. Here is chapter four: Champagne. Thank you so much for your support. I love every reblog, comment, and like. Pairing: Maxwell Lord x F! Reader

Warning: 18 + for language, mentions of pregnancy, toxic relatives Taglist: @josepedropascal @mrschiltoncat @mrsparknuts @ghostwiththemostbitch @zannemes @oldstuffnewstuff @yespolkadotkitty @heythere-mel @justanotherblonde23 @artsymaddie @anetteaneta @maxlordsgf

My Masterlist

Chapter Four: Champagne

From the outside the coffee shop looks closed for the evening, the neon's are off, the chairs are up, and all is quiet. Except for the light bleeding from under the door that leads to the back room. There you sit, on the cold freshly mopped tile in the most expensive dress you could ever imagine. Heels kicked off, knees pulled up to your chest, and head down. You slowly raise your head and see your face reflected off the walk in across the room. A diamond headband in your hair, curls falling out of the once elegant up-do, and mascara running down your cheeks. This was supposed to be the happiest day of your life, but it’s quickly become the worst.

Becoming a figure in the public eye was never part of your ideal life plan. But, falling in love with Maxwell Lord IV and becoming his future wife, did not leave you with much of a choice. When he made the announcement at the next public event the press went crazy. Tearing apart every inch of your life with tweezers, paying old friends, roommates, people you had gone to school with for even a smidge of gossip. They were ruthless and hounded you all hours of the day from the moment you stepped outside your home and then all the way to work. At the coffee shop business was booming and every day you felt like the new animal at the zoo. Everyone coming to stick their ugly faces against the glass and ooh and ahh at the barista who had managed to ensnare Maxwell Lord.

They weren’t interested in who you were as a person or even how you had fallen in love. Because stuff like that, it doesn’t sell papers. Luckily, your fiancé had been navigating the press for years and knew how to keep them off your tail in your private life. Shielding you from them in the comfort of your own home and helping him plan the ‘wedding of the century.’ Maxwell hired a wedding planner that he thought would get along with you and thankfully Juliet was perfect. She was organized, professional, and knew exactly what you wanted.

Yes, it wasn’t the small intimate wedding you had always hoped for but at least it wasn’t gaudy. Invitations had been sent out, food ordered, floral arrangements chosen, cake sampled, everything was going according to plan. Even going dress shopping with your mother, and grandmother had been perfect. Finding an eggshell colored dress with no train and small puffs on the sleeves. The salesgirl had placed a diamond headband in your hair holding the veil in place and giggled telling you it was sent over by Mr. Lord as a wedding present. The headband was white gold and had leaves encrusted with diamonds that shimmered in the light.

The big day was fast approaching, and thankfully Mrs. Lord the former was nowhere in sight. Although it didn’t leave you with a good feeling in your stomach, she had been too quiet.

On your wedding day you woke up bright and early, Juliet bringing you breakfast in bed and going over the schedule for the day. You sipped a cup of coffee and smiled just letting her talk. When she was finished a team of stylists came in and got you ready. Manicure, pedicure, massage, makeup, and an elegant up-do, you glowed from the attention. When the dress was lifted over your head and cinched into place your breath caught in the mirror at your reflection. Fingers tracing over the fabric soft under your fingers and fitting just perfectly. They slid the diamond headband in place, and you wiped quickly at the tears streaming down your cheeks.

“Oh honey,” you turn and laugh as your father cries watching you, “you’re so beautiful.” You hold out your arms and hug him and he squeezes you tight. Juliet ushers the two of you down and to the limo to take you to the cathedral. The only church big enough for all the guests you had been forced to invite. When you step from the limo you feel like Princess Diana on the television and give a small wave to the growing crowds. Fingers digging into your fathers’ arm as he confidently leads you forward. Inside are your roommates and friends Michael and Robin acting as your bridesmaid/man. They are ushered down the aisle to the wedding march and your dad takes a deep breath leading you.

Your steps are slow and sure as you pass the elegant floral arrangements of white roses. The petals lining the aisle as you smile at some of the familiar faces. When you look up your breath is sucked out and you beam at your husband to be. Wearing a tuxedo and a hint of a familiar pocket square sticking out. He’s perfect, and smiling so brightly he rivals the sun, as he watches you glide toward him.

You reach out to grab his hand and feel it tighten around your own. His eyes glassy with unshed tears as he smiles at you. Not the fake one from the television but the one he reserves just for you, warm and so full of love. You beam right back at him and mouth I love you before turning to the officiant. You choose not to write your own vows instead following along with the usual lines. Saving your vows for when you’re alone later. When he comes to ask for objections your smile dims as the sound of heels clacking on the floor directs your attention to the aisle.

Mrs. Lord in a white chanel suit is stalking towards you with a sneer. Maxwell moves to stand in front of you when the doors at the back of the church open and in walks….Tom? Your sleazy date from the first night with Maxwell is strutting confidently up the aisle wearing a tuxedo and smiling broadly, coming to stand beside Maxwell’s mother.

“Hi baby,” he coos at you and you shudder.

“What is the meaning of this?” Maxwell hisses clearly angry.

“I have come to bring an end to this sorry excuse for a wedding. My son,” she turns to the crowd like the detective in the novels you read does before unraveling the great mystery, “has been tricked by this little harlot! She has been part of a plot to steal my son’s money and company from the beginning!” She turns to gesture at Tom. “Thomas here told me of her scheme. One year ago, she hired him to pretend to be her date and take advantage of her. She knew my son would be at the restaurant and wanted him to come to her aid.”

“That’s absolute bullsh-“ you're cut off as Michael steps forward.

“It’s true! She asked if I knew anyone she could use as a date to trap some rich guy, I never knew she meant Maxwell Lord,” he points at you and your heart beats loudly in your ears watching one of your oldest friends lie to your face.

“I was there that night, the night she needed to be ‘rescued’ she was all over my son and straddling him on the couch, sure didn’t look like someone who just needed comfort to me!” she shrieks, and several people scoff in outrage although at who it isn’t clear.

She continues on and on making more outlandish claims and each time you go to defend yourself another of your friends, coworkers, or even acquaintances would step forward and collaborate with her. Until you are in tears and Maxwell is withdrawing further and further away from you. The room goes silent as she makes the biggest claim of all, “AND I know she is pregnant! The little bitch is trying to claim my son is the father of her bastard child!”

Maxwell frozen turns to stare at you and your mouth drops open a hand coming to quickly cover it as the tears stream down your cheeks. From the back of the room another voice speaks out, “I can confirm it! She had the appointment two weeks ago, and I performed the ultrasound myself.” The technician from your doctor’s office steps forward holding out a black and white photograph.

Maxwell stares at it and then turns back to you, “Is it true?” he whispers voice cracking.

“Maxwell-“ you reach for him and he takes a step back.

“Is it mine?” he shouts, and you tremble, lip wobbling as you bite down hard enough to taste the tang of blood in your mouth.

“How can you even ask me that? Of course, it’s yours,” your voice quivers and he scoffs.

“Because it seems like everyone you know, is accusing you of sleeping around with fucking Tom!” he shouts, and you take a step back hand protectively covering your stomach.

He glares at you and you take a step back, “Were you going to tell me?” he begs, “That the baby isn’t mine?!”

Your voice cracks, “It is yours! I haven’t been with anyone else Maxwell, you know this!” you shout sobs swelling in your chest. All the guests watching the drama unfold.

“Another lie!” his mother shouts, stalking over to Maxwell and whispering in his ear like the snake that tempted Eve. “She only wants to take your money, everything that you have worked so hard to build. All of your success will be hers. She doesn’t love you.”

Your heart splinters as he nods and drops his head, she turns to you grinning. “I think it’s time for you to leave, you are not welcome here anymore.”

“Maxwell,” you cry reaching for him but he is far away from you now. You hold your head up high and glare at the people who stepped forward. “How fucking dare you,” you say low and threatengly, “some of them taking a step back at the venom in your voice. You walk down the steps slowly and hold up a hand as your family tries to rush you, walking towards a smirking Tom you rear your fist back. It makes a satisfying crunch as you break his nose.

Shaking your hand as it stings and he curses at you from the ground, “Fucking bitch!”

“Go to hell you lying son of a bitch! If you ever get near me or my child, I will have you arrested,” you storm out of the church blood boiling stomach sour. As you slam open the doors to the waiting area, a waiter for the cocktail hour passes and you crash into him. Coating you in champagne as he quickly apologizes begging for forgiveness. You're too upset to even notice and when you open the doors of the church the press go nuts. Cameras flashing, you race toward the limo. Jeeves the driver, holding the door open as you dive inside, slamming it closed behind you. He quickly climbs into the driver's seat, and the tires squeal as he drives away.

“Mrs. Lord, what happened?” You sob into your hands and try to catch your breath.

“I didn’t become Mrs. Lord,” you mumble and he stays silent just driving until you’ve calmed down enough to give him directions. The night is dark and you make your way across town. You have nowhere to go. You live with Maxwell and your former friends and roommate betrayed you. “Jeeves?” he looks into the rearview in sympathy, “take me to work please,” your voice is soft and he nods turning the limo toward the coffee shop. He pulls up out front and you quickly wave him off as you get out of the car and stumble towards the door. Giselle is locking up for the evening and freezes upon seeing you. Quickly rushing to the door and letting you inside. You collapse in her arms and she lets you spill everything, running her hand up and down your back.

The wedding, Maxwell’s mother, Tom, Michael, the baby...all of it comes pouring out. When you're spent and your eyes have no more tears you haul yourself off the floor and push into the backroom. Giselle follows and you ask for the keys, “I’ll lock the door when I leave just...please let me stay.” She nods and hugs you tightly again before grabbing her purse and sliding out the side door. You lock in behind you and lean against the door sliding to the floor.

From the outside the coffee shop looks closed for the evening, the neons are off, the chairs are up, and all is quiet. Except for the light bleeding from under the door that leads to the back room. There you sit, on the cold freshly mopped tile in the most expensive dress you could ever imagine. Heels kicked off, knees pulled up to your chest, and head down. You slowly raise your head and see your face reflected off the walk in across the room. A diamond headband in your hair, curls falling out of the once elegant up-do, and mascara running down your cheeks. This was supposed to be the happiest day of your life, but it quickly became the worst.

You place your hands protectively over your stomach, rubbing gently. Oh fuck...what have we gotten ourselves into now…

The rasp of knuckles sounds at the back door.

#maxwell lord #Maxwell Lord x reader #ww84 #Wonder Woman 1984 #Pedro Pascal #autumn writes

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fortheloveoffanfic · 4 years

Text

Family Matters More

Keanu Reeves x reader. Requested. (A/n- So, because I’m terrible at staying organized, I have all of my requests, but not who they were requested by, so, when I write and post and you aren’t tagged even if you didn’t request on anon, I am very, very sorry, it’s no one’s fault but my own.)

Masterlist

Warnings- Pregnancy, Angst (it’s fine at the end though.)

Dropping the phone to the dark veined, marble kitchen counter, Y/n sighed heavily, raking her nails through her hair. Tears prickled at her eyes, making them glassy and ready to overflow. It had been coming, her entire family knew it, but Y/n still couldn’t believe the news she’d just heard from her mother; her uncle, who she’d grown up extremely close to, had died, from lung cancer. He’d been suffering for almost two years, aggressive chemo had only worked the first time, but when another cluster of tumors had shown up in a follow up PET scan, nothing had worked and her family’s only option had been to make his last days comfortable. Unfortunately, his ‘last days’ had turned out to be thirteen grueling months.

Uncle Kenny had wilted away like flowers at the beginning of winter, growing duller as the days dragged on. The last time Y/n had seen him was months ago, she’d wanted to visit him at the hospice, but collectively, her parents and husband had urged her to keep their interactions restricted to over the phone, not wanting to stress her out too much. It had frustrated her at first, Uncle Kenny was her favorite uncle, always able to put a smile on her face when she was a kid and had taught her so much about the great outdoors while her parents were too busy climbing the corporate ladder to do it themselves. But though it was hard, eventually, Y/n had relented, but only after her uncle had personally requested that she stay away. That had come after she’d told him that she and Keanu were expecting. He loved her, and his unborn grand niece, which was why he couldn't risk something happening to Y/n or the baby because of added stress.

Hanging her head in her hands, Y/n tried to quell the stinging in her eyes, but her efforts were fruitless and before long, hot tears were falling freely, punctuated by soft sobs racking her body. It wasn’t supposed to hurt that much, Y/n knew that it was inevitable, and it should have comforted her that he’d gone in his sleep, but really, it didn’t. If only he hadn’t been such an avid smoker, then maybe he’d still be there, hopefully to teach her daughter the things he’d taught Y/n when she was a kid.

“So, babe I-” Keanu cut himself off as he entered the kitchen. Worry immediately swelling in his chest at the sight of his wife in tears, “Hey,” he cooed, immediately going over to where she sat at the counter, pulling her flush against his chest and smoothing his hands over her hair, “Shh,” he kissed the top of her head, “What’s wrong baby?”

It took a while, Y/n was blubbering so intense that she couldn’t speak, but after about fifteen minutes spent in Keanu’s comforting embrace, she settled enough to form words, “He’s gone Ke,” she sobbed, burrowing into his chest, “Uncle Kenny’s gone.”

Right there, Keanu’s heart broke for her. Of course, everyone knew that the moment was coming, but still his wife had lost someone dear to her, and in such a painful way. All he wanted was to take the hurt away, she was supposed to be enjoying the path to motherhood, not breaking down because she’d lost a loved one. “I’m sorry baby,” Keanu kissed the top of Y/n’s head again. “Come on,” he eventually urged her off of the barstool, hugging her close as he led them to the living room, cuddling her as they sank onto the sofa. “Can I get you anything? Water or tea?” Even if he couldn’t fix her heartbreak, Keanu could still take care of her, and their baby.

“No,” she shook her head, staring forward blankly, her fingers absently tracing circles on her growing bump, too upset to notice the fluttering kicks against her stomach. Why couldn’t he have just stuck around for three more months? If not to see her grow up, just to meet her, at least once.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Keanu probed, wishing that he could offer more than just a listening ear and a hug.

Y/n shook her head again, “Not really,” her words were soft and broken, “Can we just sit here for a bit?”

“Of course sweetheart.”

Funerals were always emotionally draining, but it was especially so when you were six months pregnant and your emotions were working in overtime. Huffing as she entered their bedroom, Y/n winced as she stationed a weary hand at her aching back. The lengthy service had been held at a church in the city, Uncle Kenny just had to be a devout Catholic in his final days, and the old, worn, wooden pews hadn’t been very kind. Worse yet, the kitten heels she’d opted to wear didn’t provide much support when she’d had to spend nearly two hours on her feet, standing at the entrance with her parents as they thanked everyone as they trickled out of the cathedral.

With a pained groan, half from her back, half from the headache she’d acquired at some point throughout the day, Y/n slowly sank into the armchair, intent on starting to remove her shoes. Just as Y/n had lifted one swollen ankle onto her other knee, Keanu came into the bedroom, tugging at the neck of his black tie, his longish dark strands brushing his shoulders, the salt in his beard signalling that he hadn’t gone for a trim in a while. “Let me do that,” he offered, coming to kneel in front of her.

“No,” Y/n flinched away, “I’ll do it.” She was upset with him, though, she hadn’t let him know yet. Y/n had spent the last week or so in deep, deep thought; her uncle had been a smoker, which had led to lung cancer and, ultimately, death. Keanu was a smoker too, and Y/n couldn’t help but worry that she’d lose him like that or to some other type of ill health.

Furrowing his brows, Keanu tilted his head to the side. Y/n had been cold with him all day, holding his hand, but only reluctantly so, and barely saying a word to him on the drive back to their house. He understood that she was hurting, but he didn’t want her to shut him out because of it. “What’s wrong?”

“We just came back from a funeral, what do you think’s wrong?” Y/n grumbled, struggling to take her shoes off, eventually submitting to his help. “Excuse me,” she pushed off the arm chair, shrugging off the black blazer that she’d worn over her smock dress, letting her hair down afterwards.

“Y/n,” Keanu sighed her name quietly, “Please, just talk to me. I know this is hard for you but-”

“I want you to stop smoking,” the admission just tumbled out of her mouth, with barely any warning. She’d had it; watching her uncle wither away was hard enough, Y/n was sure that she couldn’t survive watching Keanu being broken down like that. And worse yet, raise their child on her own, what was she supposed to tell their daughter? That her father puffed his life away even though he knew she’d need him?

“What?” Keanu slipped his hands into the pockets of his black slacks, taken aback by her harsh request.

“I want you to stop smoking,” Y/n repeated firmly, “I don’t want to lose you like that. And even if its not cancer, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff that it could cause. I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you, you know that.”

Keanu chuckled humorlessly, hoping to lighten the moment. Y/n had never had a problem with his nasty vice before, they’d been together for years, and now, out of the blue she wanted him to stop? “Honey,” he chuckled again, “Don’t be ridiculous.” In retrospect, accusing his pregnant wife of being ridiculous may not have been his best move.

“Ridiculous?” Y/n repeated incredulously, “You think I’m being ridiculous for wanting you to be healthy? Well maybe I’m being ridiculous for having a baby with a man who’s not taking care of himself, who probably doesn’t even care if he lives long enough to walk his daughter down the aisle one day.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” He scoffed, already exasperated, “I’m fine Y/n, healthy and right here.” He loved his wife, but like almost every other husband in the world Keanu didn’t want to be wrong. Besides, he was stuck in his ways; old habits die hard. And above all, he was scared, Keanu didn’t want to think about missing one of the most important days of his daughter’s life, no father did. Unfortunately though, instead of his inner turmoil encouraging him to be sympathetic to Y/n's cause, it just fanned Keanu’s flame, rousing the worst reaction, “And you know what? If having a baby with me is so fucking ridiculous, maybe we shouldn’t have kept it! Hell, I’m older than you anyway, maybe I’ll just die, have you thought of that?”

Y/n’s lips quivered, frightened at his tone and at a complete loss for words. How could he say those things? “I…..” Nothing would come, and suddenly, Y/n wanted to be far away from Keanu. That wasn’t the gentle, sweet man she married. Her husband was loving and sensitive, he was overjoyed when they’d found out that they were having a baby and ordinarily would have never said something so cruel. Y/n didn’t know what had prompted the seemingly overnight change, but she did know that if Keanu was going to be like that, she didn’t want to be in the same house with him.

Seeing the tears in her eyes and the slight shake in her form, Keanu swore under his breath, “Fuck.” He couldn’t believe that he’d let fear and anger get the better of him like that. He stood; wooden and glued to the floor as Y/n suddenly started moving around in as much of a haste as her condition would afford her, grabbing a large bag from their closet and packing some of her stuff into it, “I’m- shit,” he mumbled when she wouldn’t stop to hear him, “Y/n,” he pleaded, reached out to grab her arm, huffing in defeat when she pulled away, “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Yeah, well you did.” Zipping the top up, Y/n swung her bag over her shoulders, too enraged to take the time to put her shoes back on, so instead shoving her tired feet into the nearest pair of flip flops, a fluffy set that she usually wore after getting into her pajamas. Without another word, she was leaving the bedroom, headed towards the stairs.

“Where are you going?” Keanu followed Y/n down the steps, and able to move a little faster than her, he easily blocked her way at the bottom.

Her cheeks were tear stained and Y/n’s eyes were already red, one hand gripped the strap of the bag tightly while the other was placed protectively over her bump. Keanu hated seeing her cry, yet, that night, he’d been the one bringing tears to her eyes. “Home,” was all she offered, trying to squeeze through the space between his larger body and the railing.

“You are home,” he countered, folding his arms.

“I meant home, to my parents,” she clarified, not even sure why she’d bothered to tell him. At the side door to the garage, Y/n grabbed her car keys off the little brass hook, singling out the remote for her car alarm and then hitting the button at the top to unlock it.

“At least let me drive you,” he didn’t want Y/n to leave like that, distraught and past dark. Even in the security of her car, anything could happen, and above all, her safety came first, triumphing any amount of anger over their spat.

“No,” Y/n was getting into her car, clumsily sliding into the driver’s seat, “I just…...I don’t want to be around you right now, okay?”

The harshness in her tone coupled with her actual words stung like a snake bite to the chest, though Keanu was well aware that he’d said much worse not too long ago. He should have been reasonable instead of acting like an insensitive jerk. He should have heard her out and talked things through with Y/n instead of spewing battery acid.

The garage door reeled open and Y/n started backing her car out, not paying Keanu any mind as he called after her. Desperately, he followed on his feet for as far as he could, though, as usual, he was reminded that his knees weren't what they used to be and before long, Y/n's car was far beyond his reach, his wife and child, who he was absolutely terrified to lose, gone, and he'd had no clue when, or if, they'd ever be back.

Sleep had been hard to come by that night, so hard that it never really came. Keanu's mind was constantly bombarded with anxious thoughts of Y/n. She hadn't answered her phone when he called, probably two dozen times, and when he'd tried her parents place, they'd both rattled off cheap, continuous excuses; she wasn't there yet, she was sleeping or even the age old "she's busy."

All night, he'd worried about her, even between his fruitless phone calls. Was she sleeping okay? Was she well? How was the baby? For a brief moment, at around two am, Keanu had all but actually made it to his car, still dressed from the funeral, ready to head to his in-laws and mend things with his love, but in the end, fear and reason had stopped him. Y/n needed time to cool off, especially after what he'd said, a mere few hours definitely weren't going to cut it.

And then, slumping into one of the sitting room's sofas, Keanu finally took a minute to think about exactly what had gone down. Her plea had been reasonable; if it had been the other way around, he'd have wanted her to stop a lifetime ago, expect her to do anything that would prolong their time together. But there he'd stood, trying to make Y/n the fool for asking the same of him.

Maybe I'll just die. Those were his words.

Keanu had never been one to let himself be preoccupied with thoughts of his own death, it was frivolous after all, it wasn't like he could change it. One day, it was going to happen, one day, he was going to leave people behind. And it never bothered him, that was, until he met her. So innocently, not looking to fall in love, but just a month later, doing it anyway. Almost four years ago, Y/n had brought a new vibrancy to his life, and now, they were creating one together. And with every cell in his being, Keanu didn't want to miss a moment of it.

Quitting was hard, he'd tried before. But arguably, before, there wasn't so much at stake. Just like that, with reinvigorated energy, Keanu pushed off the couch, fishing a half empty pack of smokes from his pocket, tossing it to the kitchen counter, only to head to the little draw in the kitchen where he usually kept some more on hand. Even if it wasn't going to be easy, even if the stories he'd heard about withdrawal and the side effects of going cold turkey were terrifying, Keanu knew that he had to. For his wife, for his child. For himself.

For the rest of the night, knowing full and well that sleeping with her spot vacant would be a daunting task, Keanu disregarded the need for rest, instead opting to sweep the house for any trace of a cigarette; getting rid of everything from stray smokes and glass ashtrays to expensive cigars. If he was going to do it, he was going to do it right.

By dawn, everything indicating that a smoker resided at their cushy house in the hills had been tossed; dumped in the appropriate bin at the curb, and then, unable to hold out any longer, Keanu finally got in his car, started it up and backed out into the street, headed to bring his family home.

Her eyes burned, half from crying all night and half from just not sleeping at all. Though she'd tried, pillows tucked around her, Y/n still hadn't managed to catch a wink all night, and as the light of dawn split the darkness, she'd found herself queasy with homesickness. It wasn't like she hadn't ever spent a night away from her place with Keanu, but the feeling of being at odds with him like that, knowing she'd actively left so abruptly and so distraught, had made her literally sick.

Needless to say, things had gone far awry from what Y/n had expected. Of course, he was allowed to be upset, she was asking him to give up something he'd been doing for more than twenty years, smoking, as terrible as it was, was ingrained in his routine. Habitual. And trying to take it away so sudden would be like ripping away someone's security blanket. So really, she had no intention of hurting him.

Yet still, he'd hurt her

That morning, and the painful memory continued to rack her frame with soft sobs, eventually interrupted by her mother, features pinched with worry, knocking on her ajar door as she poked her head in, "Y/n," she probed tentatively, "Sweetheart, Keanu wants to know if you'd be okay with talking to him now. Please, he's worried about you."

"I don't wanna talk to him," Y/n shifted beneath the mass of covers, swiping away some tears from her reddened cheeks, "Just tell him to leave me alone." She knew, full and well, that she sounded like a melodramatic teenager going through a lover's spat with her high school boyfriend, but Y/n didn't care.

"Dear," her mother sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of her nose, "I know you two had a fight last night, but he's your husband. Besides, he's already downstairs."

Struggling to turn towards the door and sit up, Y/n couldn't decide if she was infuriated or touched, "What?" Sniffing loudly, she reached for a tissue from the box at her bedside, "Why?"

"Because, he's worried and he loves you," when Y/n didn't look particularly moved, her mother, as adamant on having them resolve their issues as she was, continued, "And he know he's said some stupid things, but he doesn't want to keep things this way. Everyone makes mistakes Y/n. Please just talk to him, he's here and he's as much of a mess as you are. And we both know that all this stress isn't good for the baby, I'm sure she misses her daddy."

Hesitating for a moment, Y/n eventually nodded, absently caressing her bump as she finally permitted, "Okay, fine. Tell him I'll be right down."

Smiling faintly, Y/n's mother thought on it for a minute, before suggesting; "Even better; why don't I ask him up here? That way you two can shut the door and have some privacy."

"Yeah, okay," wiping her reddened nose with the crumpled tissue, trying not to cry again, "He can come up." Mouthing an okay, Y/n’s mother pushed the door back in, walking off without another word, and just as she did, Y/n shoved off the covers, scooting to the edge of the bed and slowly standing. Taking a minute to go over to the full length mirror, passing a brush from the top of the dresser through her bed head and then attempting to straighten her mismatched pajamas, she was just about to go over to the window, to see if Keanu's car was really parked out front, when her door creaked open, the sudden sound making her jump and gasp.

"Hey," Keanu didn't hold her gaze for longer than a minute handful of seconds before letting his whiskey orbs fall to the hardwood floor, strands from his untamed mane curtaining his tired features. Cautiously, as if he were afraid of upsetting her, Keanu inched into Y/n's childhood bedroom. They both knew the room well, and she remembered the first time she'd brought him to it, the night he'd met her parents for the first time. They'd been skeptical at first, he was older, and Hollywood had given most of their men a bad rep, but by the end of dinner, her mother was smitten and her father…...well, he could tolerate him. They'd brought their desert up there and had it by the window, just before Y/n had showed him around. Their current situation felt far different; void of the warmth of new love replaced by the stifling fear that their marriage was hanging in the balance.

"Hi," meekly, Y/n replied, swallowing thickly and not knowing how they should have continued. She didn't like how it felt; to be so flustered in his company. They were each other's safe places, refuge after a long, hard day, their first phone calls when something good happened and everything in between. Around Keanu, silence was comfortable and usually, breaking long stretches without words exchanged was easy. But that morning, she didn't have the slightest clue on what to say, on how to begin to bridge the gap that had grown overnight.

Putting a fist to his lips, Keanu raised his head again, tentatively looking around first to the unmade bed and then to Y/n standing near the closed window as he cleared his throat, primarily to break the tense silence. "I'm sorry," just as she had the night before, Y/n flinched when Keanu reached for her, that time though, it was more out of hurt than anger. She could see that her actions had stung him by the pained look that crossed his face, but he'd done his own share of damage the night before, and even if she could be talked into forgiving, Y/n wasn't just yet ready to forget. "What I said-"

"Was pretty damn fucked up," the break in her voice brought with it a new wave of quiet tears and Y/n could swear she felt her heart start breaking at his words replaying in her mind. Maybe we shouldn’t have kept it. Maybe I’ll just die. “You talked about aborting our child Keanu! What, were you just lying every time you said you wanted a family with me?”

“No, no, of course not,” scouring his brain for the right words, Keanu’s chest felt tight. He really had messed things up, with the best person in his life, and he wasn’t sure he could fix it. But he had to give it his best. He didn’t think he could stand to leave without his wife. “I just,” hitting his thigh with his fist and shaking his head, Y/n could see him fighting tears, “I got defensive, I don't want to think about not being there for the both of you, it’s scary.”

“Then talk to me about it, try to understand where I’m coming from when I ask you to try to quit,” Y/n’s arms fell to her sides in defeat, “Don’t…..” When she couldn’t finish, Keanu approached her again, and that time, she let him wrap her in his strong arms. It had just been one night, but she’d missed their comfort dearly, there was absolutely nothing that could compare to his embrace.

“I’m so, so sorry sweetheart,” his husky, pained voice was barely a whisper and he followed up his words with a chaste kiss on the crown of her head, breathing in the scent of her shampoo. It felt so good to have her tucked against his chest again, their heartbeats in sync. “I never, ever want to hurt you like this again,” Keanu rubbed her back soothingly, one hand toying with the ends of her freed tresses, “And I want to be with you, both of you, for as long as I can be. So I’m quitting, I’m done with that.”

With tear stained cheeks and glassy eyes, Y/n reared back slightly to meet his equally blurry gaze, “I’m sorry I picked a fight about that,” Y/n sighed quietly, and as much as she’d wanted him to quit smoking, she didn’t want to push him too hard, “And you know, if its too hard then-”

“No,” Keanu swallowed thickly, “It’s not. I don’t care about that, our family matters more to me, and you two are gonna be stuck with me for a very, very long time.”

Through her tears, a glimmer of a smile broke through, brightening her sorrow, and without warning Y/n’s arms around Keanu’s middle tightened and she laid her head on his chest, “Good,” she grinned softly, standing on her tiptoes to kiss him sweetly, “Cause we wouldn’t have it any other way.”

*****

Tagging- @harrisongslimited @magnificentclodpiebanana @keandrews @greenmanalishi @rdjloverxxx @danceoftwowolves

#keanu reeves #keanu reeves x you #keanu reeves x reader #john wick #john wick x reader #john wick x you #keanu reeves fanfic #john wick fanfic #ff #fanfic #fanfiction #oneshot #requested #angst #fluff #keanu reeves oneshot #john wick oneshot #family matter more

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mindswriters · 4 years

Text

Yucatán [BLURB] - jj maybank × reader

not my gif again, credits to the owner ;)

Summary: in the midst of a difficult situation, y/n and jj decide to dream about an optimistic future.

Pairing: jj maybank × reader

Warnings: nothing much I think, just some bad words, kissing??

Word count: 739 (i told you it was a blurp)

A/N: in this story the Pogues created a plan to forge the death of John B and Sarah to lose the police, and you and jj have been together for a few months. This is a really really short and shitty writed blurp, but I just felt like writing something like this so whatever. I'm sorry for taking so long to post the third part of Just Good Friends, but it's coming, I swear! ;)

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This week was horrible for all of you Pogues, having to pretend you lost one of your best friends is not the easiest thing in the world, not to mention that you are not sure if the plan worked out and John B and Sarah are really well. The Chateau was brokered by the police and your parents are even more rigid, so you no longer see each other for days. On Saturday your mom and dad had to stay in the store until later, to make cash accounting, and it seemed the perfect opportunity for you and JJ meet. A week was like months for you, so you have arranged by text messages to meet in the abandoned cathedral. You were the first to arrive, and the anxiety took care of your body until you heard the little trapdoor open. Your eyes were worn as soon as you saw JJ's blond locks illuminate the room.

"JJ!" you ran to a hug and felt your body warm up when wrapped by the boy's arms "Oh my god, how were you? I missed you so much!" you vent without walking from the bear hug.

"Air, Y/n." he giggled while you almost suffocated him in the embrace.

"Oh, I'm sorry..." you left a little laugh moving away from him and looking at his face "Shit J, your face... what happened?"

You noticed that he swallowed dry as soon as you saw and ran your hands through some bruises that covered his face.

"Oh this- this is my dad, you know, nothing much." he smirked ashamed.

"J, baby..." you stroked his cheeks trying to keep tears from falling from your eyes.

"I'm fine, don't worry about it." he said, pulling away a lock of hair that fell on your face "Let's just enjoy this time together."

You shared smiles before sticking your lips together. God knows how much you missed that, the kisses, the touches, being safe in each other's arms. After everything that happened in the last few months, happy moments like this should be appreciated, and even with little time, that's what you did. Enjoyed each other's company.

"Do you think John B and Sarah are doing well?" you asked while lying next to the window and resting your head in JJ's chest.

"Sure!" he said quickly "I mean, we're talking about John B, we both know that asshole can survive anything" he laughed running a hand through your hair "and Sarah, she'll help him to don't do anything stupid."

"I hope so." you smirked tracing his other hand with you fingers "J, can you remember me about the happy ending? The one where we find the gold..."

"Reunite with the Pogues, share the money, move to Yucatán..."

"You will never give up of this Yucatán thing, will you?" you giggled looking up to face him.

"Of course not! In my plans, we'll take the money, move to Yucatán, open a hostel for tourists, maybe a diving school, have kids..." the boy's dreams were interrupted by your furrowed brow and a louder laugh.

"Wait, what?" you turned around facing him "First, I don't know if I would like to have a hostel full of hot tourists flirting with you. Second, how are you going to have a diving school if you don't even know how to dive? And third, kids? JJ, you think mold is good for your health because it is a natural organism! You are definitely not ready to fatherhood!"

"Oh, that hurt." he pretended to be offended by your comment.

"Sorry but is kinda true, JJ, we're just 16" you shrugged.

"Yeah, right. So, first, I'm pretty sure that you will be the hottest 'chica' of Yucatán. Second, we'll be Kooks, I'll learn how to dive. And third, you're right, kids can wait," he turned his body over yours and placed one hand between your neck and jaw, caressing your ear with his thumb "but, until there, we can keep practicing..." he glued his lips with yours after a malicious smile.

"You're a bitch, Maybank."

And let's say that you owed your parents a lot of answers about "where" and "with who" in the next morning.

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breaniebree · 4 years

Photo

Talking about my love for my OC with @xxqueenofdragonsxx. This is my Zahira as best as I can make her, though someone awesome may be drawing me some amazing fan art of her so fingers crossed.

ZAHIRA ZELENA ZACARIAS (ZEE):

Magizoologist, works for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures for the Ministry of Magic.

Born 9th April, 1964 to parents Michael Ivanovich (Misha) Zacarias and Magnolia Jackson Zacarias. Misha, a Muggleborn Russian Auror who is following the trail of a dark wizard and finds himself in Paris where he meets the American witch Magnolia Jackson. They fall in love and get married and Magnolia moves to Moscow to be with him and then when Zee is six, her mother is killed.

I think that it was a gruesome death, a curse that tortured her for days before she finally succumbed to her death. They were living in Russia at the time and Zee was with her Baba and Deda, as she was only six, and her mother had gone into town to do some shopping. The dark wizard was stalking her and cursed her. She was left alone in an alley to die and wasn’t found for almost six hours, by then, the curse had taken over too much of her and any attempt at saving her life was impossible. She’d lost her mind and Zee was never able to say goodbye. Magnolia didn’t even recognize Misha when he found her which was part of why it hurt Misha so much to lose her in the end.

Misha meets Sorcha Brown when Zee is eight, a freelance journalist from Scotland. Zee grew up travelling between Scotland and Moscow and she always loved animals. She spent her summers visiting her American grandparents on their ranch in Toccoa, Georgia where her grandmother owns a 50s diner called Flo’s and her grandfather is chief of police. Her stepmother is the mother she grew up with. Mama, seeing Zee’s love for animals always allowed her to bring home strays. Her father continued to work in Russia, travelling back and forth via international portkey every day when they spent time in Scotland. And when it came time for her to go to school, they decided to send her to the wizarding school in Russia — the Koldovstoretz School of Magic because it had such an amazing Care of Magical Creatures program. She speaks fluent French, Russian, and Mermish because of her upbringing and her career and a little bit of Greek.

She has 4 tattoos:

Gold and green tribal elephant on right side of ribs

Red and gold dragon across spine

Black niffler on back of her neck

Zee tattoo over scar - deep green vines with bright blue orchids scattered from the top of her left hip down the side of her thigh, wrapping around her knee, Lady Godiva hidden in the vines covering her scar lying on a bed of blue orchids ending at her ankle. I AM WOMAN written on one side, HEAR ME ROAR, written on the other.

Zee found him napping on the sofa and she smiled at the sight of him, bending to kiss his forehead. Her curls tickled his face, a small smile on his lips. Not wanting to disturb him, she hurried upstairs to pack the rest of her bag. She changed into a short halter dress over her new bikini and was admiring her calf in the mirror when he came in.

His eyes met hers in the mirror and the look in them sent desire raking through her.

“When did you get home?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes ago? You looked so peaceful having your nap.”

“I was resting my eyes,” he said, making her grin.

“Right.”

Sirius moved towards her, his eyes trailing down her body. “You look fucking gorgeous.” His gaze stopped on her leg, a brow rising. “You got a new tat?”

Zee held onto his arm as he picked up her leg to examine the new tattoo. She had gotten Lady Godiva. She’d done her panther’s sleek form in a dark black outline but other than her golden eyes, she’d coloured the panther in with flowered camouflage. Purple perennials and pink tulips, red roses and blue lilacs that brightened her leg and covered every inch of the ugly burn scar to the back of her knee. Deep green vines and leaves surrounded the outline of the panther, framing the words written down either side of the panther in cursive: I Am Woman and on the other side it continued with: Hear Me Roar.

“Fuck, that’s sexy,” Sirius murmured, his fingertips tracing the words.

“Yeah?” Zee said. “I didn’t want to look at my burn anymore so I wanted to cover it with something beautiful.”

“And the Reddy lyrics?”

She grinned. “Points to you.”

Sirius let go of her leg and bent his head to kiss her. “I love it. But you were sexy with the scar too.”

Zee slipped her arms around his neck. “And that, Mr Black, is one of the many reasons why I love you.”

Sirius slid his hands up her back into her hair. “Let’s go shag on the beach.”

She laughed as he let her go and picked up their bags. “Sounds perfect.”

As he walked out the door, she couldn’t help but think that she had never loved anyone more than the man before her. She didn’t know what the future held for her, but she did know that her future was nothing without Sirius Black and Harry Potter. (Excerpt from A Second Chance, chapter 213)

Zee’s wand was made by Gregorvich and it is chestnut as the wood meshes with her love of animals, I think it’s short like her, only 15 cm in length and her core is from a coral reef. Her wand core gives the owner patience, someone with a coral reef core knows how to bring things to fruition, provide protection for all, as well as generate longevity. They have a knack for deflecting disaster, whatever form it takes. They are also loving, nurturing, and healing; are a source of enduring friendship and support and often the glue that holds the ship together. I thought it sounded very much like Zee.

She stands no taller than 156 cm (roughly 5′1 and 3/4) and often wears 4 inch heels as if she was born in them, preferably her heeled cowboy boots. She has long dark brown hair with golden caramel highlights mixed through it. Her grandmother on her mum’s side was African-American so her skin is like a caramel toffee. She loves bright red lipstick and big earrings. She wears a white gold and turquoise turtle belly button ring and usually has smaller hoops or studs in her ears above the big hoops. As shown above and mentioned before, she is very curvy, hourglass and I picture her body type like Jaydah Doll, but her face is the gorgeous model at the top (I saw her and thought Zee).

Her pet is a panther named Lady Godiva. She rescued her from Muggles who were hunting her and her pack in Kenya. Her parents were killed and she was the only cub that she could find so she nurtured her and kept her safe. Why Godiva?

“I always admired her bravery; standing up for what she wanted and doing the only thing that she could do at the time to make her stand. No one would listen to her and she had no power and no ability to use weapons. She wasn’t a witch with powers to sway them so she set out on a horse, completely nude, and she got the attention she wanted. She made her mark. I found Lady Godiva in Kenya, hiding from the Muggles who had shot and killed her family, when I rescued her and confronted the Muggles, she jumped from my arms and stood in front of me, growling at them, almost daring them to fight her to get to me. I thought that she was making her stand, a cub with no power of her own, but she was trying. So I named her Godiva.” (Excerpt from A Second Chance, chapter 65)

Her grandfather on her dad’s side was a Muggle and veteran of the Second World War. He drove a 1937 BSA M20 and it’s hers now. She loves motorcycles and getting her hands dirty. She’s an incredible cook. She likes to read mystery, horror, and romance novels. She travels for her job and has been all over the world, but has recently been enjoying her time working in the menagerie within the Ministry of Magic and helping to organize it.

As to the Koldovstoretz School of Magic, I like to think it’s hidden somewhere deep in Russia and that it looks like the ruins Balga Castle to prevent anyone from finding it, but when you get through the warding it opens up and looks the Vologda Kremlin and Saint Sophia Cathedral, just gorgeous Russian architecture -- but not as large as Hogwarts’ castle. It says that they played a version of Quidditch there where they flew on uprooted trees instead of broomsticks -- which is another reason why I think Zee was never big into playing the sport herself. Also I imagine her as short and curvy, which means she may not have great balance on a broom, and she loves riding the motorbike and likes the Muggle machine more than a broomstick if she has to choose.

As to her family tree:

The Jacksons:

Colten (Muggle) and Florence Jackson

Daughter Magnolia Jackson Zacarias (deceased) married to Michael (Misha) Zacarias with one daughterZahira Zelena Zacarias

The Zacarias’:

Ivan and Anya Zacarias (Muggles – Ivan was the soldier in WWII with the motorbike that he gave to Zee)

1. Michael (Misha) Ivanovich Zacarias m. Magnolia Jackson Zacarias (d) m. Sorcha Brown Zacarias

(a) Zahira Zelena Zacarias eng. Sirius Orion Black

(i) Harry James Potter

(ii) Twin 1 and Twin 2 Black (due January 1997)

2. Olga Ivanova Zacarias Petrov m. Dimtri Petrov

(a) Mikhail Petrov m. Ana Ivanov

(i) Yuri Petrov (11)

(b) Mila Petrov Sokolov m. Nicholas Sokolov

(i) Nastasia Sokolov (9)

(ii) Dinara Sokolov (6)

3. Sasha Zacarias Blok m. Yerik Blok

(a) Tanya Blok Fedorov m. Alek Fedorov

(i) Eva and Irina (twin girls identical) (2)

(b) Tatiana Blok eng. Iosif Kuznetsov

The Browns:

Callum and Fiona Brown

Brian Brown m. Jocasta Fitzgibbons

(a) Dougal Brown m. Ellen Smith

(i) Jenny Brown (24)

(ii) Ian Brown (22)

Sorcha Brown m. Misha Zacarias

(a) Zahira Zacarias

Names for Family Members:

Ivan & Anya = Baba and Deda

Tetya = auntie

Dyadya = uncle

Misha & Sorcha = Papa and Grandmama

Colt & Flo = Grandpa and Grandma

Callum & Fiona = Gran and Grandda

Basically, I love her and I’m so glad that other people have come to love her as much as me.

Zeerius is my canon.

@velvethopewrites thank you for loving her enough to put her in your Muggle AU.

#a second chance #harry potter fanfiction #breanie #original character #zee zacarias oc #sirius and zee #zeerius

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prider-parker-imaginations · 4 years

Text

ℍ𝕠𝕝𝕕 𝕋𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥, 𝕊𝕨𝕖𝕖𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕥

Title: Hold Tight, Sweetheart

Characters: Peter Parker x Male!Stark!Reader (can be read as platonic or romantic)

Warnings: grief, language, implied PTSD, Endgame spoilers, Far From Home spoilers, honestly just angst

Prompt: Rainbow by Kesha

Word Count: 2.6k

A/N: My submission for @locke-writes Intro to 2020 Challenge! / Sequel can be found here!

“Sorry you had to ditch your friends.” You crouched beside Peter in the cathedral tower overlooking the carnival below. The two of you would have blended in with the gargoyles, just two shadows against the night sky if anyone had deigned to look up. “Also sorry Fury chewed you out earlier. That was a dick move.”

Peter let out a breath through his nose, his head lowering a fraction. The lights below reflected like stars in his eyepieces. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

You shrugged one shoulder and tried to suppress a pang of guilt. You hadn’t seen Peter since the funeral. “Been keeping busy.” This was something you were good at. Throwing yourself back into your work was a way to keep moving forward. It was a way to move on without really moving on. You could just pretend like nothing had changed. When your life gets turned upside down, finding a new centre of gravity was better than dealing with the vertigo. Leaving Peter behind had simply been an unfortunate side effect.

“It’s been awhile.”

You rubbed the back of your neck. “Yeah. That’s my bad.”

“No, it’s okay, I get it.”

An uncomfortable silence stretched on for several beats.

“You don’t... think all this is weird?” he asked after a minute.

Laughter drifted up from the crowd far below and you frowned. “Which part?”

It was Peter’s turn to shrug in the dark.

You shifted so you were sitting cross-legged on the ledge, elbows on your thighs. “Weird is kind of an understatement nowadays. I just punch what Fury tells me to punch.”

“How, uh... how’s Morgan?”

Your gut twisted and you stared harder into the festivities below. “I haven’t been home in awhile,” you admitted, the words feeling strange on your tongue. The cabin had never been your home. You had only visited a handful of times since the funeral. It was a place filled with a life you had never been a part of. A life that had moved on without you. The only connection you would have had to it was gone. You weren’t sure you knew how to be part of a family anymore. You wanted to like Morgan, you really did. She was a great kid. But every time you looked at her, your stomach squeezed. And as nice as Pepper was, you couldn’t help but feel like an intruder. You had been part of Tony’s life, not hers. No, working was better for you. It was better for everyone. You sniffed and blamed it on the cool night air. “She misses him though.”

Peter gave a small nod, “Yeah, me too.”

You swallowed, casting the teen a sidelong glance. “What about you? How’ve you been holding up?”

Up here in the darkness, even with his face shrouded, you couldn’t help but notice how young Peter looked. You were both young, you reminded yourself, though you hadn’t felt young in a long time. “I didn’t expect to be saving the world this summer. I know it sounds stupid but I just wanted to try being normal for a little while.”

You pulled one knee up to your chest, resting your chin in the crook of your arm. “I know what you mean. I never really got to have a normal life. I was angry about that for a really long time. It was just easier to be pissed off.” “What made you change your mind?”

“Bucky helped. And dad too, eventually. He wasn’t the best dad, but he was trying. We had a lot of lost time to make up for. I didn’t have to live in the dark anymore. I could try to be a person again instead of just some tool to hurt people. My head’s still fucked up but it’s my head again.” You tilted your chin to look up at the sky, your eyes tracing over the constellations as if they held some sign telling you how to move on from a life that was never really yours to begin with. They twinkled back silently. A sigh fell from your lips, “I’ll never have a normal life. I think I accepted that a long time ago.”

Even as you spoke the words, ou knew they weren’t entirely true. Yes, you had given up for a long time. Hydra had ruined your chances at anything normal when they turned your life upside down the first time all those years ago and made you into a weapon to use as they pleased. But there had been a brief window where you had hoped. Once you had been freed of Hydra and found your father, things had been almost good. They hadn’t been easy. There was a lot you needed to learn how to do again. You’d forgotten how to daydream, so consumed with all the wrong things Hydra had implanted in your head. But you hadn’t been alone. Now, though? Now there was even more of a reason for you to throw yourself into your work.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting a normal life, though. You might not get it, but it’s okay to want it. I think most of us wish we weren’t who we were sometimes. It’d make things a hell of a lot easier.”

Another stretch of silence fell punctuated only by the noise of the festival below.

“Are you sure you’re okay to do this?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” You glanced over and felt your throat tighten at the sight of the glasses case in his hands. Your eyes burned as you looked up at the sky again. “Oh. That.”

“I don’t know why he left them to me,” Peter admitted quietly, and you could hear the guilt in his voice.

A rough, joyless laugh fell from your lips. “He trusted you.”

“But you were his son.”

“You were never brainwashed by a terrorist organization bent on world domination.” You forced a tight-lipped smile and wiped at your eyes before he could see the hurt threatening to leak out, “Besides, I never had my dad’s brains. I’d make a shit Iron Man.”

“It’s not for the next Iron Man. It’s for the next Tony Stark,” Peter pointed out softly.

You swallowed hard, struggling to reign in your emotions, “Not helping, Pete.”

“I’m sorry.”

You ran a hand over your face, biting back a groan. You hadn't been trying to make him feel bad. “Don’t be. I just... I have to believe he had his reasons, you know? Picking you over me. You’ve always been better than me. I was just a reminder of all the mistakes he made. All the times he’d fucked up. But you were something new. Something good. I’m just damaged goods. Hydra messed with my head and it's still all fucked up. I’m here to fix all the things I’ve screwed up. But you? You’re here to make something better."

Peter fiddled with his sleeve beneath his webshooter. "I think maybe we're all a little fucked up. Mr. Stark made a lot of mistakes, but you weren’t one of them.”

You bit back a snort. "He didn't even know I existed until after Berlin. Hell, he knew you longer than he knew me. He didn't have to help teach you to be a person again either. You've always been a complete package." You rubbed a hand against your chest, your chin tucked against your neck. “He wasn’t a bad dad. I was just a shitty excuse for a son. Makes sense he wouldn’t want me touching his legacy. Who wants to give a kid who once had Hydra screwing around with his brain and DNA access to a global defence system?”

You swiped the wetness from your eyes and let out a shaky laugh. “Shit, this wasn’t supposed to become a pity party.” You stood sharply, pacing along the ledge. One hand raked through your hair. “Look at us. We’re supposed to be saving the world and here we are. Dad couldn’t just make things easy for us, could he? He brings us back after five fucking years and he’s just-” you stopped short, voice cracking. You drew in a shuddering breath, ducking your head. You pinched the bridge of your nose, chest tight and painful as all the emotions you had been trying to shove down for eight months came bubbling up and out. “He’s just gone.” Your hands moved to your hips as you stared up at the sky as if gravity would help keep the tears in. “I keep working because I don’t know what else to do. I had just found him, Pete. And then that purple bastard came along and-”

You were saved from having to finish the thought when Peter hugged you. You felt something inside you break, the hot anger turning to wet and water. Your nose pressed against his shoulder, hands fisted against the back of his suit. It had been so long since you’d cried. You were a weapon. Weapons didn’t cry. But you were a boy beneath all the shit and that boy was hurting.

“I know,” Peter whispered, thickness in his voice as he held onto you, “I know. I miss him too.”

You pulled away, using your sleeve to swipe your cheeks dry as best you could. God, you felt pathetic. You were supposed to be a hero, or at least something like one. You were supposed to be watching out for a creature that threatened the entire planet, and instead you were a crying mess. “I’m sorry. Shit, this wasn’t how this was supposed to go.”

“How was it supposed to go?”

You forced out a half-hearted laugh at the question, “I don’t know. Kick some Elemental ass and then go get drunk maybe. You could tell me about your school year and we could pretend we’re normal and I’m not the most fucked up human on the planet. Something like that.”

“Here.”

You blinked as Peter held out the glasses case, vision still blurry with tears. You shook your head, “He left it for you.”

“He left it for the next Tony Stark. That’s as much you as me. Just try them.”

Reluctantly, you reached out and opened the case. The glasses lay there over a note with your father’s handwriting. Your throat tightened. When you picked up the glasses, you did so as though they might shatter at your touch. It felt wrong. It felt like you were tainting his legacy, just like being with Pepper and Morgan had felt like you were invading somewhere you shouldn’t. You swallowed a lump in your throat and slipped them on. The lens lit up and you blinked in surprise as a feminine voice sounded by your ear.

“Stand by for retinal and biometric scan. Retinal and biometric scan accepted. Hello, Mr. Stark.”

Using that name to address you felt wrong. It felt like you had taken something that didn’t belong to you. Like you weren’t worthy. You swallowed hard, a shaky feeling settling in your chest. “Hey.”

“Mr. Stark has recorded a message for you. Would you like me to play it?”

` It felt as though the wind had been knocked out of you, “What?”

“Mr. Stark has recorded a message for you. Would you like me to play it?” EDITH repeated patiently.

Your eyes flickered to Peter, searching for courage in the pale eyes of his suit, your heart pounding in your chest, “Yes.”

“Hey, kiddo.”

The sound of your father’s voice washed over you and it was like someone had reached into your chest and wrapped their first around your heart. You covered your mouth with your hand, choking down a sob. Peter reached out and took hold of your other hand, offering a gentle squeeze.

“I’m going to skip over the whole ‘if you’re listening to this, I must be gone’ spiel. We both already know that and I’ve got more important things to say. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. And I’m sorry I’m not there now. You deserved a better dad than me. I’ve done a lot of things wrong in my life. Not being there for you when you were little was one of them. I couldn’t give you the family you deserved. If I could go back and do everything again, that’s what I’d change. All this talk about time travel and all I can think about is if I could somehow save you from the hurt you’ve endured. But that’s not how it works, so I’ll settle for just having you back. If I can’t change the past, maybe I can change the future. I’m just sorry I can’t be there to see it with you. I hope you can forgive me.

“You’ve been through so much and you know better than anyone that life can be terrifying. But you’re still here, or at least, you will be. I know you can make it. Our scars make us who we are, and you’re strong, and you’re good. What’s left of your heart is made of gold. You’re my son, and I love you more than you’ll ever know. Hold tight. You gotta learn to let go. Put the past behind you. Trust me, I know the ghosts will try to find you. But you have so much ahead of you, so much more than anything you could ever leave behind. You have the chance to create your own legacy. Not my legacy, not Hydra’s legacy. Yours. You and Peter, you’ve both got so much potential. That’s not from me. That’s from you. So make the world a better place, but do it the way you know how. And do me a favour and look out for your little sister, okay? The world is a scary place and she’s gonna need her big brother to help her find her way through it. I’m proud of you. And I love you.”

EDITH’s voice sounded again, quieter this time, “Message ended.”

Hot tears continued to track down your cheeks and you could taste salt on your lips as you slipped the glasses off of your face and handed them back to Peter.

“Are you okay?” the boy asked softly, his fingers still brushing yours. You could hear the wetness in his voice and picture the dampness of his cheeks even behind the mask.

You shook your head. A shuddering breath fell from your lips. “Not yet. But I’ll get there.”

--- --- --- --- ---

A slow smirk curled Quentin’s lips as he listened over the hacked comms and added to his mental list of weaknesses to exploit. You were almost making it too easy as you spilled your guts to Peter, all your doubts and regrets. All that pain, right there for him to twist and mold as he saw fit. Two mourning, lonely boys desperate for a father figure, desperate for guidance and comfort and reassurance. He could do that. He could wrap the two damaged boys around his finger easily, digging his claws deep into those broken places.

He pressed a button on his own private comm, “Riva, open a file on the Stark kid. Compile all the information you can find on his time with Hydra. Look into the Bucky guy too. Might be something there we can use in case things go south. Get Guterman to come up with something that’ll help me relate to him too. Maybe some sort of Hydra equivalent brainwashing a friend or having to undergo experiments to get my powers, something like that. It’ll look good to have Stark’s kid supporting me until he tragically reverts to his former training and I’m forced to kill him.”

“On it, boss.”

“And start prepping the simulation. I’ve heard all I need and I’m getting sick of listening to them cry over Stark. It’s time for some real action.”

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fmdjoosungarchive · 3 years

Text

location: mainly daisung’s apartment

date: ~april-sept 2020

word count: 1967

tldr; verification for sung’s song badbye. full everything. the beginning reads so pretentious and dramatic i’m so sorry. sung has a dream about his first best friend (peep the call back to the first loves series) and it sets him on a spiral of self-negativity, thinking he’s bad for everyone he loves and they’re all gonna want to leave him some day. copious mentions of daisuke, who is featuring on the song, mention of yujin, and unnamed references to sung’s friends

“but you could! you could just leave me!” the sound must have been deafening, but all sound muffled. sung barely heard himself. “you can just- just decide you don’t want me anymore! and i- i can’t-” his knees felt weak, sudden as it was, and he collapsed forward, breathing in the heat of daisuke’s body against his own. that warmth was infuriating, but right below that, taking up the majority of space within sung, in every last crevasse, was a deeper pit, hollow and eternally empty. the voice that came out of sung’s mouth was broken apart, near unrecognizable as his own, “please... please don’t leave me.”

static, with his finger pressed down on the rubber tipped button of the remote. the television was older, blocky, thick rimmed. the one from his home in gwangju. he registered, then, that he was in the sitting room of said apartment. but, unlike the home from back then, filled with ambient noise of his mother milling about, starting their dinner hours far ahead of time as she preferred to every day, his father flipping through papers or rattling off to his itty bitty brother about sports, said brother nodding enthusiastically despite only understanding every fifth word, this room was silent, save for the static.

zzt.

blue glow combined from the greyed out screen, must have been covering his face. he could feel blue, as a tangible object, a taste in his mouth, an ink on his eyes, a scent perforating his brain.

sung changed the channel, and there he was. in the same white shirt and grey pants he was in the last time he ever saw him. his first best friend.

he didn’t look happy. he was mouthing something, but sung couldn’t hear it over the static. volume button pressed, again, again, five, ten, thirteen times. the static became deafening, tempting sung to cover his ears again, but -he heard it. quiet as ever, sung needed to lean forward to make sure he was hearing correctly. a shout, in english. you know why, over and over.

his fingers fumbled for the buttons again as his heart sped up, to change the channel yet again, but there the boy was, never having left. the sound only got louder, and louder still the more times sung attempted to change the channel. what whispered shout he’d heard before was shouted in his ears now, like the words circled him, pushed closer inward with the force of static, trapping him in.

tears fell from his eyes in buckets, as if within a few minutes he might have been stranded in his own tears like alice. his hands did cover his ears then, trying to dull the sound, but it had no effect. he screamed back, “i’m sorry! i loved you! i’m sorry! please!” a litany of sorry’s continued, until his voice grew hoarse, and all that came out was static.

sung woke with a start. every bit of lining in his mouth was dry, along with a chalk filled throat and tongue. his cheeks opposed that feeling, accessorizing with streaks of salted water dripping all the way down to his chin, starting from his tear ducts.

instinct took over as sung’s hand flopped down next to him with power, only to smack upon empty bedsheets beside him. suddenly, his heart matched that of his dream self.

he couldn’t taste the blue, though the computer’s light lit up his face anyway. one leg was pulled up onto the chair, arm wrapped around it. no matter how hard he’d been trying, everything he ended up coming up with that day sounded doom and gloom. if he was thinking more clearly, more rationally, sung might have told himself to open up to that feeling, to let himself feel it enough it can dissipate with time. right then, his eyes half focused on the funnel shape of light coming off of his phone that had been left open for so long it was running on low battery.

a bad habit, that red bar was. sung wasn’t bad about charging his phone usually, but the red bar represented something else. it was the indicator of the tens of text threads that had been pushed up to the top of his messages.

you like me, right?

i’m sorry if i’ve ever hurt you.

you’ll be my friend forever? please?

i know you don’t want to talk to me...

don’t lie to me, please

it’s okay if you don’t like me

don’t leave me

one after the next, insecurities on blast. a nasty habit. sung kept to himself, when he was feeling at his lowest, for reasons like that. no one needed to shoulder his irrational mind that was bordering on manipulation. it manipulated himself, and when he let it, others.

that funnel of light had invaded every part of the studio, even into the screws lodged in the desk. there was no getting away from this, no distraction. his feelings demanded they be felt, right then, in anything he did. if someone had passed by quickly, they could feel the heady emotions pulsing out of the door. even if they didn’t pass by, they could hear it, in the wafting, wailing sounds of something akin to an empty cathedral’s organ.

a sludge-ing smack of the apartment door closing, and sung’s heart skipped a beat, momentarily paralyzed. daisuke. more than any other, his boyfriend had dealt with the brunt of his unwell text messages. between each new conversation pushed up to the top of his messages, was another message to daisuke. even then, the coned phone light crowned the king.

his writing programs laid open, nearing on sleep, unsaved, second tier to sung standing up. the chair he’d been sitting on bounced with the force of his lift, and if it were possible, the floor might have bounced with each step as he made his way to the entrance.

what might have usually been a warm, gentled welcome to the love of his life, was replaced with a trembling jaw and tightened muscles. “who have you been with all day?”

sung wasn’t the type of person to yell when he was upset. frankly, he didn’t even yell much when he was excited. but the cries coming from his mouth sounded eerily like a tinny white noise, a million cicadas seeking mates, a buzzing static of a tv.

only after his tears had drenched daisuke’s shirt, and his hands had created what seemed like permanent wrinkles, and large, warm hands, much different than his own, had sent cozy heat onto every inch of his body, could sung calm down.

another day on, his worries felt distant. at first, he required the unyielding grip of daisuke’s arms around him as he woke up, keeping him tethered to the promises he’d been given the day before. however, as the days passed, it became easier to trust in that once again, and settle his insecurities into their own box.

long after his welcomes had become once again filled with kisses and the touch of skin, was when sung finally felt ready to try to tackle those emotions, and the song he’d accidentally started.

healing was never easy, though. listening back to what he had written, and did end up remembering to save the next morning, brought back all of the terrible feelings he’d been having while writing it. no matter how far he had come to distance himself in daily life from the feelings, they still existed within him, ready to be brought to the surface at any given point.

now wasn’t that time. sung had decided as much. he’d made sure to get a decent night of sleep, and to have spent as much time with those he cared for as possible in the days leading up to this attempt. sung could handle this.

he took it from a more professional standpoint, rather than purely emotional as he had before. while what he’d written was beautiful, it was disjointed together, mixed improperly, and not in a way that was purposeful. although, he realized that it could be purposeful to have the sound a little disjointed, especially if he wrote some kind of lyric basis to the song. after having written dystopia for our songs, sung felt a little more comfortable with the idea, if not excited for such a thing.

if this song worked as an interlude of sorts, it didn’t need to be anything fancy. so, sung worked. he took all of his experiences from that terrible day, and fit them together in a song that was just a little off.

within that same day, sung finished what he’d started before, wrote lyrics, a melody for said lyrics, and mixed it together in a first draft sort of style. it was a feeling of burnout over having sat working on the same thing for so long, over burnout of the song itself, that had him packing up his day there. and with fresh eyes later on, fresh ears that could listen to the song more objectively, to think, this really could work on the album.

he’d been writing for his album long enough that he’d mixed dozens of songs with the same soundscape, a uniformity across the majority of everything he’d written for the album, so the cohesiveness necessary wasn’t a difficult task. probably, the hardest part, was the idea he’d had towards the end of producing.

static.

this song was meant to be an unabridged look into his mind that day, right? and, if there was one thing that had encapsulated every part of that day, it was that terrible sound. as an interlude, it was even more compelling. however, that meant he’d be required to capture the sound. sung considered, for a moment, asking a friend to do it for him, but... he knew this was his own battle to win.

in the end, it wasn’t as terrible as he thought it would be, even if his sweat glands and heart valves may have disagreed.

the final piece, ended up being a singer. sung didn’t think the demo recording he’d done was bad per say, considering there wasn’t a whole lot of technical skill needed for what he’d written, but it certainly wasn’t what he’d wanted.

naturally, sung turned to those close to him. while that was common for him in pretty much any scenario, his demo songs filled to the brim with demos sung by yujin, this was more of a need. he wasn’t sure who he could trust to share this with, especially before it had ever been presented to the company. for all intents and purposes, this piece was sung baring the parts of his soul that not even the people closest to him got to see often. the best -and safest- choice, was the man who had seen him that exact day, had experienced how he felt, and continued to love him anyway.

he’d gone over and over again in his head how he might approach the situation, trying to think of his words more carefully so he wouldn’t trip over them when it came to actually talking to daisuke. and he did so anyway. but, thankfully, call it the power of being in love or something, daisuke readily agreed.

even in the recording booth, sung knew that his fears had still led him to the right decision. daisuke’s voice on the track was as hauntingly beautiful as he could never attempt to pull off. by the end of that day, sung, creativity and love overflowing, had mixed the song, finishing up the last touches, to officially add to his folder for the next album review.

#fmdverification #i rly record scratched this one huh #aha yep that's me bet ur wondering how i got into this mess well lets take it back to the beginnign #refuse to fix that typo xx #self para #era: happiness #still have 7 of these bihs to go n ive been trying to write this one for like a week #will i actually finish in time Who Knows

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nicolewrites · 4 years

Text

i apologize for my divinity (it’s never enough) - i

maybe I shouldn’t have started another massive passion project right in the beginning of a new semester, but i finished the blue lion route and didn’t know how else to cope besides angst. here’s part i, there will likely be more and i hope you’re ready for angst.

Rating: T Genre: Angst, Friendship, Family Characters: Byleth/My Unit, Dimitri B., the Blue Lions Words: 5,481

AO3 | FFN

i - white clouds

- ~ -

/ great tree moon /

The first time, Byleth is curious about the underlying darkness she sees in Dimitri, Crown Prince of the Kingdom.

When Rhea asks her, she chooses the Blue Lions with very little hesitation. Edelgard is visibly disappointed in the news and Byleth can see it in her sharp eyes. Claude, on the other hand, is much harder to read as he shrugs, smirks, and promises to make her regret the decision. Dimitri smiles in that polite, reserved way of his and a lifetime of being with Jeralt and the mercenaries allows her to observe that the smile doesn't reach his eyes.

The Blue Lions are a wonderfully chaotic group, but they believe in honour. Sylvain's respect is the easiest to win, she thinks, but the red-headed noble has a sly smirk and a playful twinkle in his eyes that makes her doubt, if only for a moment. Ingrid's is won over a rich, meaty stew for lunch that Byleth compliments, but still slips her student the larger portion.

She's not sure Felix has ever respected anyone, but she disarms him when they spar and there's a begrudging look in his eye when he accepts defeat. Annette and Mercedes are happy and light and Byleth goes to choir with them once and Annette is all smiles and Mercedes is all gentle praise. Ashe is tougher, but she slips him a sweet treat after a trip to market along with some bowstring wax and he beams for several hours afterward.

Dedue is the hardest of the Blue Lions because he cares so little for his own safety and so much for Dimitri's. She manages to spend just enough time in the garden with him to draw out a rare smile and a small discussion of Duscur and how much he misses home. He cautions her about Dimitri and the fact that His Highness is possible the most important figure at the academy in the current time.

Byleth knows he's correct. The whirling political landscape of Fódlan does not leave space for Dimitri or Edelgard or Claude to fumble. The three of them will have to be perfect and incredible to keep peace on the continent. Still, Dimitri is kind and when she finds herself alone with him in the Blue Lions classroom, she feels at peace. Their strategic plans are often very similar even if Dimitri prefers to rely on Sylvain, Ingrid, Felix and their penchant for brute force and Byleth likes to call on Annette and Mercedes and Ashe to rain fire and arrows from further away.

- ~ -

/ harpstring moon /

Felix calls him the Boar Prince, referring to savagery in the wake of the tragedy of Duscur. If Byleth wasn't Byleth–and Sothis wasn't bringing it up constantly in her head–she might not have seen the prince's lingering darkness, but she does. Most people don't seem to see it and Byleth knows that if Ingrid, Sylvain, or Dedue see it, they don't mention it. But, Dimitri's facade isn't perfect.

When they spar and her sword cuts into his lance, Dimitri growls in frustration and strikes out at her with more strength than she's expecting. Sothis screams for her to move and Byleth barely rolls out of the way of the blow before counterattacking. She disarms him neatly in three moves after that. Jeralt has taught her that anger is weakness and frustration is diluted anger and it is Dimitri's weakness.

His lance hits the ground and Dimitri sighs. The frustration seeps out of him and Byleth's grip of her sword loosens. Just because she can glimpse the darkness Felix goads, doesn't mean it's always there.

- ~ -

/ garland moon /

They take out Lonato's rebellion with little trouble. Dedue spends a little extra time under Mercedes's watchful eye, but for the most part, they all come out alright. At least, this is what Byleth assumes on the march back to the monastery.

Byleth trains late one night and doesn't leave the Training Hall till early morning. The monastery is dark and quiet, but as she makes her way back to her quarters, she catches sight of a bobbing light nearby. She considers leaving it, but with the rumours of a plot against Rhea still swirling, she adjusts her grip on her steel sword and follows it.

She sees the Officer's Academy uniform when she follows the student onto the bridge between the main monastery and the Cathedral. Her tension sifts away, but now she's curious so she keeps following. She follows the candle all the way into the main building of the cathedral where finally she catches up to Ashe.

He sits on the floor in front of the goddess's statue, the candle on the floor in front of him, and stares up at the statue. Ashe's childlike face is pained and sad. Byleth feels a tug in her chest as she steps towards him that she's not familiar with.

"Sympathy," Sothis whispers inside her mind. "Sympathy and grief."

Ashe had just lost his father. Adopted father, but still his father. Byleth recalls Ashe's timid confession to his past life as a thief and how Lonato saved him and his siblings. Byleth's walk towards him falters. She didn't know how to relate to him. Her father was alive, well, and a strong member of the Knights of Seiros.

Her foot must skid on the marble floor just enough to draw Ashe's attention and he turns toward her, looking skittish. Byleth exhales slowly and walks forward until she's standing next to Ashe. She lowers herself to the ground and bows her head, giving her student the privacy to mourn he'd needed while also supplying the company that he desperately needed.

Ashe says nothing, but the next day there is a beautifully crafted cupcake on her desk when she arrives in class.

- ~ -

/ blue sea moon /

The Sword of the Creator hums in her hand and some part of Byleth screams for her to drop it. She adjusts her grip on it and cracks it across the Western Church members and the blade sings as it cuts down her foes.

Later, back in the Blue Lion classroom, her students are abuzz with energy as they describe how she was glowing with the light of the sword and the light of her crest as she fought, like some force of nature. Sylvain looks uncomfortable through the discussion of the crest and Ashe is still uncomfortable with the Western Church.

Byleth herself still wants to drop the Sword of the Creator and run as far as she can away.

Jeralt shows up at her door that night, a scowl etched into his features. He glances at the sword–lying flat across her desk–and looks at her. Byleth knows she's hard to read, even for Jeralt, but he's her father so she gets the sense he knows at least a little of what she's feeling.

Byleth knows her father to be a mostly stoic man who's not big on affection, but his arms curl around her for a long moment as he just holds her. He expects no conversation, just her presence, and her arms slowly come up to hold him as well.

- ~ -

/ verdant rain moon /

Byleth is organizing her notes for the next week's lectures when Felix and Ingrid find her. The Kingdom nobles both look deeply troubled and Byleth instantly closes her book to focus her full attention on her students.

"Professor," Ingrid begins carefully. She glances at Felix, but he doesn't say anything. Ingrid sighs and straightens her shoulders. "We wanted to tell you that Sylvain probably won't be in class tomorrow."

"Or the rest of the week," Felix finally adds.

Byleth doesn't need a reason from her students. She had seen the pain on Sylvain's face when his brother had transformed. The hurt that had roiled in him as Miklan had spat and cursed his brother and all that he stood for. The Lance of Ruin had destroyed Miklan's humanity and turned him into a cursed beast and Sylvain had watched him lose his mind before taking the Lance to wield for his own.

Byleth can still visualize the agony in Sylvain's expression as he had struck down Miklan, landing the final blow to protect Ingrid who had been about to be torn apart. Byleth had been seconds away from tugging at Sothis's power, the Divine Pulse, to save Ingrid when Sylvain had leapt from his horse to strike down his brother.

The Gautier heir had dropped his lance as if it had burned him as he watched the darkness seep away from Miklan, leaving the dead body of his elder brother behind. Byleth didn't blame him. She still felt like she wanted to drop the Sword of the Creator every time it burned warmly in her grip.

"I understand," she says quietly to Ingrid and Felix.

She sees loss in them too. Not Miklan's loss, but she knows it is there. Glenn's death lingers like a shadow over the pair and over Dimitri as well. Dimitri shoulders the burden of the Tragedy of Duscur and lets it haunt him, but Byleth acknowledges that the others of the Kingdom bear its scars as well.

- ~ -

/ horsebow moon /

Seteth was inconsolable when Flayn was missing. Rhea was the picture of indifference in the matter, her face set into practiced neutrality that had Sothis mouthing off inside of Byleth's head. Byleth can barely process Sothis's rants and Rhea's debrief because her ears are still ringing from the encounter with the Death Knight.

The wound he left on her side still aches, but she had shaken off Mercedes and Marianne's offers to have a look at it because she needed to speak with Rhea and Seteth. The fact that it is still pulsing with pain is confusing, but she chalks it up to the adrenaline. Finally, gloriously, Rhea dismisses her to get some rest, holding Seteth back so that the two may speak.

Byleth walks out of the audience hall without stumbling, but the pain in her side flares sharply as she starts to descend back to the first floor. She trips on the stairs and barely catches herself. Her vision swirls and her feet feel like lead. It feels like someone is pouring acid along her side and she bites her tongue to keep from crying out.

Somehow, she makes it down to the first floor without falling again, but the pain is staggering now. Byleth gasps for air and feels her chest contract uselessly as she tries to draw in air. Her hand skids along the stonework of the wall as she tries to keep herself upright.

"You need help," Sothis hisses inside her head. "You cannot die here."

Byleth hears voices nearby, probably just inside the entrance hall, and she blindly stumbles in that direction. Blood pounds in her ears and her legs finally give out. She clatters to the floor noisily and her palms barely catch herself so she doesn't crack her head on the ground. There's a loud clang as the Sword of the Creator at her hip collides with the stone.

She breathes slowly and deeply, trying to stay in the moment as Jeralt has taught her. It is easiest to help an injured man if he is awake enough to tell you how he was injured. There's a horrible moment of nothing where Byleth thinks no one will see her, but then there's a shout from a monk and a stampede of footsteps.

Someone rolls her onto her back slowly and Byleth is staring up into Dimitri's horrified expression. His blue eyes are wide, his hair hangs tauntingly in front of his face, and his brows furrow as he tries to see what is wrong with her. There's a panic in his expression that causes something deep inside Byleth to ache. It's a familiarity with losing people and she wants to take it away from him and tell him she'll be fine.

There's another pulse of pain from the wound in her side and she gasps, feeling her sore muscles protest as her back arches.

"Professor, what's," Dimitri trails off, lost as his hands hover awkwardly around her.

"Dimitri, move." Another voice cuts in firmly and without room for argument. Byleth's head lolls slightly to the side and she sees Claude kneeling next to Dimitri.

The Alliance heir reaches for her, going straight to the wound on her side. He holds a hand out above him for a second. Byleth follows the line of his arm with her eyes weakly and sees Edelgard standing just behind both boys. She fumbles for a moment before placing a dagger in Claude's hand. Dimitri tenses upon seeing it, but Claude ignores him and cuts away Byleth's coat and shirt to expose the wound.

Dimitri and Edelgard both recoil at the sight of the wound, but Claude steels himself. His fingers graze along the visible blackened veins in Byleth's side. Veins that shouldn't be black but are crackling with poison and venom. Claude's fingers tremble as he reaches for a pouch at his waist. He pulls out a small vial of clear liquid and uncorks it. He presses the glass to Byleth's lips and she forces herself to crack them open.

"This is a general neutralizer," Claude murmured. "You need to drink this, Teach, because I don't know what's killing you. Your Royal Highnesses, I would highly recommend one of you go find me Mercedes, Lindhardt, Marianne, or Manuela as quickly as possible. This stops the poison from spreading, but I need their White Magic to heal it."

Dimitri doesn't move at first, his eyes locked on Byleth's, but when Edelgard doesn't shift, Dimitri squeezes Byleth's hand tightly before rising and stumbling off. Claude's eyes stay fixed on the poisoned wound on her side, but Byleth is surprised that when she tilts her head back slightly to get a glimpse of Edelgard, there is a cold fear and uncertainty in the Imperial Princess's expression. Edelgard, who is normally the picture of calm and indifference, looks paralyzed with fear.

Byleth inhales and exhales. Her breathing doesn't hurt anymore. That is probably a good sign. The tension in Claude's shoulders has loosened and Byleth knows that whatever Claude had given her had effectively saved her life.

Jeralt finds her before Dimitri returns and he kneels quickly and pulls Byleth up so that she's resting against her father. His body is warm behind her as he questions Claude and Edelgard what happened. Byleth's eyes close slowly in her weariness and the conversation fades to a mumble.

There are more footsteps in the background and a tingle of warmth against her side and Byleth exhales slowly. Marianne seems to have been the one Dimitri located because Byleth can barely pick out her gentle stutter before she lets her tiredness swallow her.

- ~ -

/ wyvern moon /

Manuela and Hanneman didn't participate in the battle and it had taken every persuasive bone in her body to get anyone to allow her to fight. Dimitri had been against it, citing the mostly-healed poisoned wound from the Death Knight. Edelgard had protested it, but Byleth suspected that was more related to the fact that neither the Deer or the Eagles would have their professors accompanying them into battle.

Claude, on the other hand, had advocated for it. He had promised that any remaining poison was effectively neutralized and he pointed out that the battle was under a strict "no-killing" policy anyways. Finally, Seteth and the others had consented and Byleth was allowed back into her classroom to plan for the fight. Despite the listening ears of Claude and Edelgard, Byleth and Dimitri had managed to come up with enough of a plan to secure a victory.

White Magic monks from the monastery were healing any remaining wounds from the battle that the Blue Lions had handily won. Byleth feels a tingle of pride in her chest as she examines Gronder Field from the wooden platform in the middle. The ballista up top had caused her Lions some issues at the start since Bernadetta was more than proficient with a bow and Ingrid, her usual scout, couldn't get near the contraption due to her weakness to bows as a Pegasus Knight.

Felix and Annette had been the ones who had driven Bernadetta back, leaving a path for Ashe to claim the centre to wreak the same havoc. Sylvain and Dedue had pounded through Edelgard's defences, going straight at her magic users, while Ingrid flew above and ahead of them, clearing a path. Byleth, with Mercedes and Dimitri, had focused on taking down the Deer. As good of a strategist as Claude was, once the Lions took the hill it was over for the deer. The ballista had a better range than their archers and a practiced Thunder attack from Byleth had brought Claude to the ground where he was hopelessly outmatched by Dimitri.

Her side aches mildly, but she's too high on victory to let it bother her too much. Still, she must be favouring it a bit because as soon as he's done receiving some medical care for the arrow wound from Claude, Dimitri makes his way to her side.

"We fought well, Professor, wouldn't you agree?" he asks as he ascends to stand next to her.

Byleth nods. The hostilities from the battle have faded with the wounds and her Lions chat alongside Eagles and Deer with no hesitation. All of her students fought brilliantly, but she was beyond proud of her lions. Annette is chattering excitedly with Dorothea and Felix is hovering nearby. So close, in fact, that when she flings her hands out to describe something, she smacks him in the face. Dimitri chuckles as he follows her gaze.

Sylvain isn't far from the base of the hill, brushing his horse's coat. Leonie and Marianne are close enough that he could be flirting with them, but instead, he's focused on his horse and the conversation he's sharing with Ingrid as the Pegasus Knight grooms her own mount nearby.

Mercedes is healing the last of Dedue's burns, sustained from a defensive Hubert. Linhardt stands with them, conversing quietly and politely. Ashe and Bernadetta seem to be comparing notes on the ballista and Ignatz joins them after a moment. The trio of archers chat easily and Byleth knows there is no ill-will between any of them.

"Your cubs are growing," Sothis's voice croons quietly. Byleth smiles to herself.

Dimitri tips his head to look at her and Byleth takes a moment to study the Prince of Faerghus. He is taller than her and strong, but he looks weary. The ghost of pain that underlies him is agonizingly present. Not for the first time, Byleth wants to pull him close and banish his pain and his past to somewhere it will not bother him.

She can't, of course, and Dimitri never needs to know what happens in her mind in these times.

"Professor?" he asks. "Is everything alright?"

She nods. She wants to tell him that he led them to battle admirably. "We fought well," she says instead.

Dimitri smiles and the weight in her chest eases.

- ~ -

/ red wolf moon /

As the village of Remire burns around her, Byleth frowns and turns about, assessing.

"Who would have imagined that Tomas wasn't really Tomas?" Sothis's voice says. The tiny spirit inside of Byleth sounds perplexed and frustrated just like she did when she couldn't remember why she desired to go to the Red Canyon.

Byleth certainly hadn't guessed and it bothers her. The fact that Tomas–Solon, she corrects–had been at the monastery the whole time. It doesn't sit well, especially since it is likely that Jeritza was the Death Knight as well. She wonders what other horrors the monastery holds and how long it would be until they reared their heads.

"Professor?"

Byleth turns and sees Annette and Dedue standing behind her. Annette is the one who called out to her. Dedue's polished armour is scorched in places and Annette has a cut along her cheekbone from a swordsman who got too close for her magic to counter. They both look tired and deeply uncomfortable in the ruins of Remire.

"We're getting ready to march back to the monastery," Annette explains and glances at Dedue, nervous.

The prince's vassal straightens and Byleth recognizes the discomfort in his expression. "Could you speak to His Highness, Professor? He," Dedue pauses and turns, looking across the ruined village to a silhouette standing still at the southeast entrance to the village. The statement lingers, unfinished.

Byleth nods and dismisses her students back to the rest of the group. She picks her way through rubble toward Dimitri. When she makes it to his side, he tenses a little and keeps his gaze fixed on the line of the trees nearby.

"We met here," he says lowly. "Why did it have to be these people?" he questions. "Innocent people who did not deserve to die." He shakes his head heavily.

"We'll find him," Byleth promises in lieu of an explanation.

She knows Dimitri well enough by now to know that he is fluent in the language of revenge and retribution. The Tragedy of Duscur hangs over him so precariously and entirely that she is shocked he is not consumed by it. Felix's biting comments about Dimitri's savagery cut her and she can only hope to guide him to a better place.

She touches his arm and turns away to head back to the others. It takes a moment, but she hears his heavy footsteps following her.

- ~ -

/ ethereal moon /

"Save him!” Sothis cries out in her mind.

Byleth lets Sothis's power well up and she forces time to reverse. Jeralt rises from the ground, Monica backs up, and her Blue Lions get three steps further away. For the first time, Byleth can remember a clenching pain in her chest–her heart–and a coldness that grips her entire body.

Her body hums as she reaches for the Sword of the Creator and cracks it toward Monica. SAVEJERALTSAVEJERALTSAVEJERALT–her heart screams. Her blade whistles forward and– it crashes against a magic shield.

The mysterious figure takes Monica and disappears and Byleth is left in the field with the falling body of her father. Her body is screaming and the sword burns in her hand. She discards it and rushes to her father's side, rolling him onto his back in his lap. It feels like when he held her after she had been poisoned.

Her chest is dead tight as he speaks to her, tells her that he loves her and that this is the first time he has ever seen her cry. Her eyes are burning and her cheeks are wet and it's raining. The pull in her chest intensifies to a piercing, consistent stab and Byleth curls over her father's cooling body and screams.

The Lions come running, their faces slack with horror and disbelief as Byleth screams at the sky. She curses everything for taking her father from her and for letting her feel now of all times. She rocks Jeralt's body slowly, shaking and trembling as she tries to hold him as close as she can.

Sothis, please let me save him, she begs in her mind.

"Byleth," Sothis's voice is pained and tight. "We tried. We turned back time and he still fell. Perhaps this is fate."

I cannot accept that, she thinks desperately. I'll bring him back without you then.

Byleth summons every shred of divine power she carries and tries to force time to go backwards, but all she manages is a stall in time where her students appear to be running towards her in slow motion. Pain explodes in her temples and her students return to normal speed.

"I'm sorry," Sothis's gentle voice says. "I know what he meant to you, you know."

The pain in her temples increases as she cries out, fisting her fingers in the thick leather of her father's armour. Her vision whites out for a moment and it takes a long second before it comes back to her.

When she opens her eyes again, there are warm arms around her and a deeply-breathing chest pressed against hers. She gets an eye-full of bloodied and torn blue cloak as Dimitri curls himself around her and she clings to him. This embrace is so different than the innocent hug they had shared just a day ago in the goddess tower, but it cuts her to the core.

She lets her nails claw at Dimitri's cloak as she holds him. She can feel that Jeralt is still half-draped over her lap. Dimitri has thrown himself into the mud beside her to hold her. After a moment, a slender set of arms winds half around Dimitri and half around Byleth as Mercedes adds herself to the hug.

Annette follows quickly, pulling Ashe by the hand as the two smallest members of the Blue Lions add themselves to what is turning into a mass of bodies. Sylvain kneels behind Byleth and rests his forehead against her shoulder. Ingrid presses her cheek against Dimitri's arm where it brushes Byleth. Felix kneels in the mud on Byleth's other side and just presses a warm hand to her thigh. Byleth doesn't feel Dedue touch her, but she sees him take Dimitri's other side and rest a large palm against the Prince's upper back, just under where Byleth's fingers have dug into the blue cloak.

For a long, terrible minute the Blue Lions sit in a field, covered in mud and blood and getting soaked by the rain. No words are said because there are none to be uttered as Jeralt's blood seeps out into the mud below them.

"I'm sorry," Sothis says again. "I'm sorry that we were not enough."

- ~ -

/ guardian moon /

Sothis's scolding rolls over Byleth mindlessly as Byleth spins and observes the echoing, absolute, crushing darkness around the pair. The Sword of the Creator is still in her hand, but it will do her no good here.

After all, only a god can escape this place.

The demi-plane is what is finally takes for both Sothis and Byleth to conclude that whatever Rhea did, allowed Sothis, the goddess, to be reborn inside of Byleth. This created an un-feeling, un-crying child.

Byleth remembers her father's men calling her the Ashen Demon–unfeeling, unyielding, and merciless. They often asked what kind of mortal could feel no emotion. Byleth thinks on this as Sothis affirms that she is more than mortal. Some part of her has known this, Byleth realizes. When she pitied Ashe and empathized with Sylvain and defended Ingrid and desired to protect Dimitri so strongly.

And when she cried for Jeralt's loss.

Sothis's apology hands unanswered in the darkness, but that is expected. When the young goddess touches her, it burns. The burn is familiar to that of the Sword of the Creator, but it feels purer and cleansing. The tingling sensation that accompanies her Divine Pulses overtakes her and Byleth screams out.

Gold consumes the darkness around her and when she opens her eyes, the Sword of the Creator is singing in her grip and glowing and blazing. She swings down and reality bends to her new strength.

She emerges back onto the battlefield to the complete shock of the Blue Lions, glowing with power and energy. Later, Ashe will tell her that she looked like an avenging angel emerging from darkness to smite the evil in the world.

Byleth is unstoppable in that battle. The merging with Sothis has let the blood in her veins sing out with power as she cuts down enemy after enemy. Her Lions fight valiantly at her side, but Solon is hers to defeat.

The Sublime Creator Sword–the sword in its truest form–hums in her palm as she whips it out, lashing over and over against the mage who killed Kronya, the one responsible for her father's death. The scream she lets out as she strikes sends fear into the heart of the remaining soldiers enough that all battle freezes to watch her strike Solon down.

After, she stands, trembling with power and emotion as Dimitri rushes to her side. He asks what happens and she tells him, plainly, and though he seems unsure, her conviction sells him on the point. He points out that she has changed and she uses the mostly unused silver sword at her hip to check her reflection and sees the truth in his words. She looks almost like Rhea now except for the divine light that seems to be glowing in her veins.

The light fades as she talks to Dimitri and it seems to take her strength with it. Finally, her mortal exhaustion pulls her into darkness and she buckles to the ground, Dimitri's startled cry the last thing she hears.

- ~ -

/ pegasus moon /

Dimitri breaks Edelgard's mask underfoot and charges at her with a reckless abandon she has not seen in him before. Felix's taunts and warnings stab at her memories sharply as she watches him cut down Edelgard's soldiers without mercy.

Edelgard's expression, cool and stern, hurts too. This is not the girl that Byleth met nearly a year ago at Remire village. This is a woman growing into her hatred of an institution and anyone who stands in the way of her ambition. This is not the student who's axe grip Byleth spent hours correcting so that Edelgard could throw and hit the target dead centre without hardly a glance in its direction.

Hubert is at Edelgard's side and then the two are gone in twin bursts of red light. Dimitri is breathing heavily and Byleth's chest is aching. The Holy Tomb doesn't feel big enough for the monsters they have just unleashed and with a horribly practiced ease, Dimitri schools his features back to the polished, personable prince they know.

The other Blue Lions cast him wary glances, but they follow the summons of Rhea with little argument. Felix gives Byleth a significant look and she breaks eye contact quickly. Dimitri is not lost yet and she refuses to relinquish the hope that she can protect him.

Dimitri is quiet in most of the following proceedings, contributing here and there, but the conviction in his words when he addresses the Lions later scared Byleth. He says it with such surgical precision that it cuts across the hope that had been rallying in the Blue Lions, shocking the Empire citizens into silence.

Byleth doesn't want to listen to their speculation after Dimitri takes his leave, so she hurries out soon after. Ingrid's defensive words clash with Felix's biting ones and Byleth wishes she had heard none of it.

She gets most of the way back to her quarters when the Golden Deer find her. Claude and Hilda are leading the charge and the group of nobles and commoners–her students–stare at her, expecting answers. Apparently, Hanneman, Manuela, Seteth, and Rhea had provided them with such little information all they knew was that the Church was preparing to go to war with the Empire.

Claude's green eyes are sharp as he tracks them across her face, trying to read her. After Ignatz finishes describing what the Deer know, Claude speaks up.

"Did he break?" he asks quietly.

He says it with such a certainty that Byleth knows he doesn't need the conformation in words. He reads her expression well enough and he casts his eyes to the sky, scowling suddenly.

"Goddess damn you, Edelgard," Claude basically spits.

The Deer recoil at the sharp tone of their leader's voice and Byleth quickly steals away, leaving them further in the dark.

- ~ -

/ lone moon /

Rhea is a dragon. Claude and Dimitri are fighting back-to-back. Her Blue Lions, the Golden Deer, and the broken remains of the Black Eagles sweep through Edelgard's forces with a practiced strategy Byleth remembers outlining in a rainy Wednesday lecture.

The Empire keeps coming.

Rhea goes down under a swarm of demonic beasts. Byleth charges forward, Sothis's divine power surging through her veins. The Sublime Creator Sword whips out with a deafening crack and shatters the mask of a beast. Rhea throws it off, roars, and tears the other two in half easily.

Hope springs in Byleth's heart as she hears the dragon roar and her armies roar in response.

But, then,

Thales.

The magic sends her flying back to the gorge and she skids to a stop, pained and angry, right at the edge of a cliff. There's an ominous, terrible creaking beneath her. Rhea's dragon form screams out and then she hears the cries of her Lions as they turn from their own battles just in time to watch the cliff give out beneath her feet.

The fall tears the air out of Byleth's lungs and there is PAIN and then–

darkness.

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chalabrun · 6 years

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saint lost, chapter 3

Title: Saint Lost Word Count: 1591 Pairing: Ravus/Noctis & one-sided Ardyn/Ravus Rating: M Warnings: None Summary: A Corpse Bride AU. In an effort to save his sister from the snares of an arranged marriage, Ravus Nox Fleuret takes it upon himself to volunteer in her stead to be wed to Chancellor Ardyn Izunia. What seems to be a steady arrangement instead devolves into a political ploy for power and for Ravus’ life to be forfeit among the dead. Yet, it is here where an unexpected ally might be his only chance for absolution. Everything changes. Things end, and the beginning of a lifeless life is set to begin.

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(Warning(s): M, gore, death)

Even when his nights are cloudless and cold, without a burbling stream or the sweetened shade of a weeping willow, they are still warm upon awaking. Ravus had since been spending his nights away from his own bedroom in exchange for sharing Ardyn’s bed. After their rough and tumble nights, he slept soundly, fully; better than he had in years and with a warm arm around his midsection and breath between his shoulder blades that reminds him he is not to be alone anymore.

Letters are sent to Luna, via Umbra, and due to the imperial censor that often circumnavigated and read all material passing through, his letters are at once honest and guarded. He tells Luna of what had transpired, of the closeness that had blossomed between him and the chancellor. Of the arrangement of governor, but nothing of his original misgivings that could incriminate him. She would know. Luna would know, but regardless, his happiness would soothe them both.

The dreams in which he met with Noctis no longer occurred, it would seem, and Ravus knew there would be time to mourn them another day. Yet, he remembered he still had Luna, the only other person aside from Noctis who knew almost everything about him. She could be his rock as much he sought to be hers.

Perhaps it was time he cease pouring himself in those dreams and instead decided to live among the living.

That morning, he and Ardyn departed with all tender sentiments as they left to prepare themselves. Ravus returned to his room, doing as the chancellor said would be requisite and changing into his military raiment. That wholly of Tenebrae, something he bore pride in knowing even the empire couldn’t take the love of his homeland away from him. They’d tried, and failed miserably. He’d earned this, and nothing could take it from him.

Buckling the complicated armor pieces over his prosthesis always took extra time, but at least it gave him another moment to mull over his future in peace.

It was when he sought his sword that the man became confused. The Alba Leonis was a unique blade forged with him in mind upon receiving it three years before for ascending to the rank of deputy High Commander before his formal appointment as High Commander but a few months before.

Fishing his pocket for a cell phone, he dialed Ardyn’s number, perplexed by this conundrum. Blasted maids or other must’ve misplaced it, the fools.

“Ardyn, yes. Have any of the staff reported seeing my sword? I seem to be without it,” came Ravus’ terse inquiry, without the tenderness coloring them from before.

“The Alba Leonis? Why, I can’t say I have, dear Ravus. If we cannot find it before the ceremony, we shall simply do without. Would a dummy sword be an acceptable substitute in the meantime?”

Ravus sighed in exasperation. “Yes, it should. I see I shall simply have to do without.” He paused for a beat, feeling a light flush and nervousness color his cheeks and curdle his blood. When he heard Ardyn motion to hang up, he protested, “Ardyn, wait—“ before inhaling a shaky breath. “...I love you. I look forward to seeing you at the ceremony shortly.”

He could almost hear the sly upturn of Ardyn’s lips on the other end. “And I, you. I eagerly await seeing you, my dear,” Ardyn said in a dusky baritone, eliciting a pleasurable shiver from the man.

The matter of the sword was almost entirely forgotten at that, Ravus lingering for several moments even after the call had ended to simply replay Ardyn’s farewell in his head, reciprocating those fledgling feelings. He knew it was far too early to yet call it love, perhaps better to say it was infatuation, but he knew the words would feel more real with time.

Regardless, he had his own wedding to attend, eager to see his sister and finally begin a better chapter of his life.

At the Cathedral of the Hexatheon, more ceremonial than seeing actual worship anymore, Ravus was in a small partitioned room wherein he was allowed to prepare himself, more mentally than anything. It was agreed in a previous letter that Luna would be the one walking him down the aisle, something he couldn’t be gladder for. If anyone deserved to, it was her.

It was silent, save for the distant din of the organ player and choir that would provide musical accompaniment, their music selection being several somber hymns in Niflheim’s tongue with one or two allowed in Tenebraen. It was touching, even if the lack of Tenebraen hymns was agitating.

Darker in the corridor outside his own, he couldn’t help but start when he saw a coattail of white flutter past the vanity mirror that afforded a wide view of the room at his back. Perhaps what was most damning was seeing the ornate scabbard of the Alba Leonis just as this phantom walked past.

Ravus bolted from from his seat, ready to shout for the thief to halt, but found the corridor only empty as he stared with a blistering contempt and bewilderment. However, sensitive hearing caught wind of the same footfalls emanating from a hall adjacent, Ravus giving chase. He stopped short again, seeing no perpetrator in this hall any more than the other. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he wondered if this weren’t some mad conjuration of an anxious mind before the wedding. Paranoia was still a symptom of the long years of abuse in the military.

“Ravus.”

He started at the sound of his name, sounding as if it’d been whispered in his ear. Forcing himself to calm, to quiet the thudding of his heart, he inhaled a steadying breath. That voice—it couldn’t have been his imagination.

Seeing yet another flutter of white, he followed the billow into what appeared appeared to be a small yet gracious chapel, appalled by what he saw.

Standing over the prone form of Iedolas was an exact doppelganger of himself, staring dispassionately at the pool of blood pooling on the marble floor. His sword was skewered through the emperor’s side, the man’s face still frozen in a paroxysm of horror and pain. The apparition turned slowly, smiling ghoulishly at Ravus with blackened coronas and ink-bleeding eyes, an inky Glasgow smile only terrorizing that expression further.

Though he held no love for the emperor, Ravus lunged at the phantom and snarled as he made to charge it and pin it down, only to find himself careening into empty air as it vanished the second he made contact. Catching himself before he could trip over the felled emperor’s feet, he breathed raggedly until he heard the damning sound of MT’s approaching.

Wheeling around sharply, he found the threshold to the chapel flooded with an eerily familiar silhouette than seemed menacing before it stepped into the light, Ravus finding himself facing a horror-struck Ardyn.

“What… What have you done?”

“It’s— It’s not what it looks like!” Ravus pleaded breathlessly, stumbling a step towards his fiance before the man’s face suddenly twisted into a rage.

Ardyn charged into Ravus and he felt a sharp sting in his gut, gasping painfully as he felt sharp steel suddenly gored into his abdomen, breath stuttering from his throat. Glancing down, he saw the hilt of a dagger protrude from his gut, body frozen from shock.

Eyes wide, his gaze turned incrementally on Ardyn as he suddenly saw the man smile ghoulishly and cruelly, eyes framed in shadow. “W-Why?” he gasped out so lowly only Ardyn could hear, hurt and betrayal clouding his features.

“Why? Tsk, tsk, Ravus. Were you truly so easily fooled? Iedolas had to die, you see, and I needed a way of ridding you from gaining access to your dear sister. It’s funny how the world works, but I must say, you fit into the role quite splendidly,” Ardyn boasted mockingly, ramming the dagger in harder as Ravus cried out in pain, twisted and carved higher into his flesh, blood spurting out on to the floor to join the emperor’s.

“I-I thought we were...” Ravus trailed, coughing up blood as Ardyn shushed him and removed the blade, stepping back to let Ravus stagger, blood free to flow. Tears welled within his eyes, equally from a broken heart and from the excruciating pain as he clutched his bleeding abdomen. He stumbled forwards a step, Ardyn taking another back in response, quirking an unimpressed brow.

“As did I, but I cannot forgive what you’ve done,” Ardyn said in an audible, heartfelt tone, expression suddenly changed to one of sorrow as he gazed sadly on the commander despite how much Ravus wanted to scream and protest at the injustice of his action, to claw the falsity from his face.

Knees buckling, his free arm caught him despite how he felt his own intestines squelching and pressing grotesquely against his fingers, blood pooling as it reflected the pain and shock and tears that dripped and joined the growing pool. Strength giving way, he collapsed on his side, growing still as he felt his heart slow, eyes shining and blankly staring into oblivion as his vision grew darker and darker.

But the last thing he sees is a different pair of combat boots stand near him, kneeling, feeling himself being embraced by a strong pair of arms, catching a glimpse of familiar eyes and a face achingly merciful.

This was all he saw before all faded to black.

#ravus nox fleuret #ardyn izunia #ardyn x ravus #ravus x noctis #ffxv fanfic

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kiri-ah · 3 years

Text

Something To Sink My Teeth Into || he/him pronouns version

Pairing: Vampire!Jaemin x Male Human!reader

Word Count: 26.4k

A/N: Okay so uh... this wasn't meant to be this long. I hate my brain sometimes. *sigh*

This has only been edited by myself and a friend of mine, please excuse any errors. I worked hard to make the best experience possible. For that reason, please note that this is the !he/him pronouns version! They/them pronouns may be found here, she/her pronouns here. Please enjoy!

He smiled then, a smirk that seemed far too self-assured for the situation, and leaned over towards your exposed ear. “I can feel you staring, baby,” he murmured. The top of your ear, which had been feeling rather numb, flamed hot at his words. It almost hurt, the sudden jump into heat. You turned towards him fully, only eyes exposed by the scarf mountain. Your hair whipped around as the wind shifted again, but he didn’t seem cold, although he was in only a pair of black skinny jeans, a white t-shirt, and a black jacket. The jacket caught your attention for a second - it was studded with thousands of little rhinestones, like a varsity jacket gone shiny. Then he shifted closer into your space and you were forced to look back at his eyes, glittering in a way that seemed almost predatory. You sucked in a breath through your mouth and started to back away.

Vampires, your thoughts whispered, before the pain covered you and you passed out, collapsing completely.

☽༓☾

“Are you okay? Do you need help? Are you hurting too much?”

“You good?” he asked. You nodded in response, hoping that your throat would relax and stop throbbing.

“Sorry,” you murmured. “What was that?”

“Okay,” you agreed, and it came out like a sigh. Your throat gave a particularly unpleasant throb and you unconsciously brought a hand up to rub at it. Jaemin��s hand fastened around your wrist and pulled it away, looking closely at your skin. He sighed.