#there is something about the way they use colors and light and shadow

[rulerofstars]

pretty church girl

oneshot: you’ve always been the church's golden girl—sweet smiles, soft dresses, sunday devotion. but when sergeant barnes returns, quiet and scarred, his steady gaze strips you bare. in pews and candlelight, tension simmers slow and sacred, until every glance feels like a prayer and every touch, a sin. with him, desire feels dangerously close to worship.

pairing: modern! sergeant! bucky barnes x reader

tags: (18+) 6.9k words. slowburn SMUT. sacrilege. raw penetration. fingering. creampie. sex in the church (i am so sorry). filthy smut. body worship. minors, dni. i am so going to hell for this.

“Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy as fierce as the grave.”

Pastor Thomas’s voice settles low into the marrow of the sanctuary, like it belongs more to the wood than to his throat, woven into years of confessions and casseroles, baptisms and burials. Song of Solomon, chapter eight, verse six. A verse meant for brides, for devotion. 

The June light slants through the stained-glass windows in muted halos, bleeding color across the old pews and softer sins. The scent of wax, lilies, and lemon oil clings to the thick air. Outside, the heat is climbing, inside, it gathers slowly between skin and fabric, between your thighs, between breath and restraint.

Your dress sticks faintly to the curve of your waist, the fabric stretched tight over your lap, clinging in places you wish it wouldn’t. The stockings itch beneath your knees, but you don’t move. Stillness is safer. Stillness hides the way your body betrays you when it shouldn’t. Your Bible rests closed in your hands, heavy with underlines and quiet doubts, and your knees remain pressed together in the obedient pose you’ve perfected over the years.

You look the part, demure, lightly glossed lips, posture faultless, a ribbon in your hair like some Sunday painting. But inside, you are heat and hunger and something far less holy.

Beside you, Natasha slouches in her usual irreverence, legs crossed like she owns the pew. Her red hair tumbles out of its barrette, she leans over, breath brushing your shoulder. “I swear, I’m about to drop dead,” she mutters, voice low and lazy. “No coffee. No air. Your uncle’s trying to preach us straight into Revelation.”

You flick her a warning glance, lips barely parting. “Nat. Hush.”

Her mouth quirks, unapologetic. “What? You think Mrs. Carter’s gonna smite me with that hat?”

You almost laugh, but you don’t. Not when your chest already feels too tight. 

Natasha’s teasing feels distant when you glance across the congregation. The town’s finest: fanning themselves with bulletins, murmuring prayers with dry mouths, shifting in their pews like sheep waiting for the bell to ring. There’s comfort in the predictability of it all—Mrs. Thompson dabbing her forehead, the Levin twins flicking spitballs when they think no one’s looking, old Mr. Jenkins snoring softly into his tie.

Then you see him.

Back row. Second pew from the door. Half in shadow.

Your lungs forget how to fill.

White shirt. Sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The stark line of his forearms catching the fractured blue light from the window. Broad shoulders hunched slightly forward, as though he doesn’t belong to the pew or the building or even the air. 

Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes.

You know that name. Everyone does. Even when people don’t say it, it lingers in town like the burn of communion wine on the tongue. The sergeant who disappears and reappears like a ghost. The boy who left with too much silence and came back older than the war he fought in.

You hadn’t seen him since last summer—when you passed him roofing nails and lemonade during a heat wave that melted straight through your better judgment. When he called you darlin’ like it wasn’t a sin to speak that way in front of the steeple. When he looked at you with those storm-gray eyes, slow and sure, and smiled like he saw every rule you ever followed curled up at his feet.

He was trouble. You knew it then.

But now? Now he’s ruinous.

His jaw is sharper, dusted with stubble. A new scar drags a pale line across the corner of his chin. His face is unreadable, but his hands, resting on the hymnal in his lap, are tight. White-knuckled. Like the sermon is something to endure. Like you are.

You shift slightly, thighs pressing tighter together. It does nothing to relieve the pressure, only makes it worse.

Natasha leans over again. “No way. No actual way. He's back?” Her voice catches the edge of a gasp, tempered by a wicked sort of thrill.

“I don’t know,” you manage. Your voice is hoarse.

“God, he looks…” She shakes her head, eyes wide. “Like sin in a shirt.”

You swallow, jaw stiff. “Shut up.”

But she’s right. He does.

He looks like a man built out of grief and war and hard decisions. Like someone who wouldn’t flinch if you kissed him wrong. Like someone who would ruin you sweetly and make you thank him for it.

“Bet he hasn’t looked away since you walked in,” Natasha whispers.

You stiffen. You don’t dare turn back. Not yet. You can feel it, though, like pressure against your skin, like being watched through a keyhole, like heat crawling under your dress in places you can’t mention during confession.

“He was staring last summer too,” Natasha adds casually. “Remember the festival? While you were passing out lemonade?”

You don’t answer. Because you remember. You remember every second of it. How he watched your fingers wrap around the cup. How his gaze trailed down the slope of your neck like he was memorizing it. How he didn’t look away, not even when your hands trembled.

“You’re imagining things,” you whisper.

“Am I?” Natasha hums, smug. “Look at him now.”

Your fingers tighten around your Bible, nails digging into the leather. And against every whisper of sense you ever inherited from your grandmother’s lectures and your mother’s modesty, you lift your gaze.

And find him already watching.

His eyes lock with yours—steady, unflinching, like they’ve been waiting. Not curious. Not playful. Hungry. And not in the way a boy looks at a girl in passing, not like a crush or a flirtation.

No.

This is a gaze that says: I would kneel for you. Or make you kneel for me. It depends on the hour.

His mouth doesn’t move. His hands don’t twitch. But the weight of him—of it—lands between your legs with aching clarity. You feel it. Low and deep. Like a question no prayer can answer.

You look away.

But it’s too late.

You’ve already said amen with your body.

The service closes with “Amazing Grace,” the final verse sung off-key but full-hearted. An old hymn, a familiar one, but today the words feel strange in your mouth.  Voices rise and fall unevenly, and when the last note fades, the congregation stirs like a spell has been broken.

The pews empty with the slow chaos of a summer Sunday. Bulletin pages flutter like leaves in the breeze from the open doors. Your uncle stands at the entrance, shaking hands, nodding gently to familiar faces, each one softened by light and routine. Natasha’s already vanished, no doubt chasing lemon bars and iced tea in the fellowship hall, her halo of red hair the only warning left behind.

But you stay.

The quiet chapel feels safer now that it’s half-empty, stripped of voices and eyes. You move through the rows slowly, hands methodical as you gather hymnals, stack them spine to spine. It’s a ritual. One you’ve claimed for yourself. Tidying things while your thoughts fray. Your dress whispers against your legs with every step, the hem brushing your skin, static clinging to your stockings. 

You’re not the saint they think you are. But you’re good at looking like one.

That’s what matters here, isn’t it? Pretty posture. Kind smiles. A polite “bless your heart” that can cut cleaner than sin. You know how to play this part, the girl with just enough shine to distract from the cracks.

Your fingers brush a forgotten tissue in the pew, and you pause just long enough to hear voices drifting in from the vestibule. The low hum of your uncle’s voice. Familiar, reassuring. Then another... lower, rasped.

Him.

“James,” your uncle says, warmth curling around the name, “we’re planning a Thanksgiving Mass. To give thanks for you and the boys coming home safe. I’d like you to speak, if you’re willing.”

Your hand stills, the bulletin in your grasp crinkling beneath your fingers. You hadn’t known. No one had told you there’d be a Mass. That he would be its centerpiece. 

You shift closer to the aisle, quiet as a shadow. Through the curve of the vestibule, you glimpse him leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, face angled toward the light. He doesn’t belong there. Not really. But he looks like he could, if he let himself. He takes up space in a way that doesn’t feel fair.

His frame eclipses the doorway. Shoulders broad under crisp white cotton. His sleeves are still rolled. Still wrongfully intimate. Like his wrists have known the burden of restraint, and his forearms could still break it.

“Not sure I’m the man for that, Pastor,” he replies, voice rough and quiet. “Words aren’t my thing. Neither are crowds.”

His tone isn’t humble, it’s factual. Honest. Like he knows what he is and what he’s not, and he’s not interested in pretending otherwise.

You catch the sharp gleam of the scar on his jaw, etched like it was earned. You wonder what part of him bled when it happened. 

Pastor Thomas chuckles, warm and unwavering. “You’ll do fine, son. The Lord brought you back. That’s a story worth sharing.”

Bucky hums, noncommittal, and you should go. You should leave. But your feet are heavy. Rooted to the worn wooden floor like they’ve decided they’d rather burn than miss this.

Then he sees you.

No. Finds you.

Across the room, through half-light and silence, his eyes catch yours like a snare. And something inside you stumbles. Not your feet. Your faith.

He doesn’t look away.

He doesn’t smile.

His gaze doesn’t search, it knows. It lands on you like a thumb pressed gently against the base of your throat, a question and a warning both. You lift your chin instinctively, jaw tight, breath shallow. You hope it reads like defiance. But your heart betrays you, thumping recklessly, desperately, like it doesn’t believe in restraint anymore.

You’re still gripping the tissue like it might tether you when you hear them, his footsteps. Not loud. But sure. Each step is a confirmation that he’s coming closer.

You don’t turn.

Not yet.

“Need help?”

His voice is low. Right behind you. Close enough that you feel it in your spine before you hear it fully. You turn slowly, deliberately, because anything faster might reveal too much. He’s only a few feet away, holding a small stack of bulletins. His forearms flex slightly with the weight, veins visible, movements restrained, like he’s always holding something back. Like he could split a pew with his bare hands and wouldn’t apologize.

“I’m fine,” you say, sharper than you intend, smoothing your skirt out of reflex. You need control. You need space. You need him not to be looking at you the way he is.

“I don’t need saving.”

He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t take offense. Just lifts one shoulder in an indifferent shrug.

“Didn’t say you did.”

He steps forward and places the bulletins gently on the pew, fingers brushing the worn wood with unexpected reverence. Every motion is quiet. Careful. Like he’s spent years learning how not to break things.

“Just offering.”

You grab another hymnal too hard and it lands in the stack with a dull thud.

“Well, thanks,” you mutter, eyes not meeting his. “But I’ve got it.”

He lingers. Not moving. Just watching you.

And it’s worse than a smirk. It’s worse than any teasing or flirtation. His silence is knowing. It leaves room for you to trip over your own heartbeat. It asks nothing and says everything.

You don’t trust it. You don’t trust him.

And yet...

Your body betrays you with every pulse of heat under your skin.

You can feel the faint hum in your fingertips. The way your breath shallows when you finally glance at his mouth. The slight part to your lips. 

“All right,” he says at last, voice dipped in something gentler than before. He turns away like he’s not trying to take the air with him. But just before he disappears into the doorway, he glances back.

“Good to see you.”

The words are simple. They shouldn’t make your knees weak. They shouldn’t leave you standing there, staring at your reflection in a polished hymnal like a girl who’s already been ruined in thought, if not in body.

But they do.

—

Weeks passed. Long, thick cozy weeks filled with the same rituals, Sunday services, choir rehearsals, bake sales, and casserole rotations. You keep yourself busy. Keep your hands full and your smile polite.

You stand behind the soup station, ladle in hand, your dress a soft petal pink that hugs at the waist and flares gently at the hem. It’s modest, church-safe, but the way it clings just enough when you lean forward, it’s not innocent. Not really. Your lips are tinted to a subtle shine, catching the light each time you smile politely at a neighbor or crack a joke to one of the kids. Your hair is pinned back with delicate precision, curls tucked into place.

You’re polished. Poised. Perfect.

And you’re distracted as hell.

James Barnes hasn’t been back to Sunday service since. Not that you’ve kept track. Not that you’ve stared too long at the back seats, wondering if it was him that made the air feel different. Not that your heart doesn’t stutter every time the church doors creak open.

You haven’t seen him.

Until now.

You don’t sense him before you see him. There’s no shift in the air, no chill across your neck like in some storybook.

He’s just suddenly there.

Across the table. Holding a tray in his hands.

His jacket is gone—no black barrier between his body and the room. Just a plain gray shirt, sleeves pushed up. His forearms are bare to the elbow, veins visible like topography on a map you don’t dare read too closely. His hair is a little damp at the ends, curled near the nape like he just ran his fingers through it out of habit. He doesn’t smile too much. Doesn’t speak, only when asked.

Your fingers tighten around the ladle.

“Chicken noodle or vegetable?” you ask, voice softer than it should be.

His eyes hold yours a moment longer, like he’s letting the sound of your voice settle in him before answering.

“Whatever you think’s best,” he says, and the gravel in his tone ripples through you like someone dragging their thumb along your spine.

You shouldn’t react. You shouldn’t feel it.

You dip the ladle into the chicken noodle slowly, trying to look as unaffected as you pretend to be. As you pass the bowl across, his fingers meet yours—just for a second—but it’s enough. The touch sends a jolt up your arm.

“Thanks,” he murmurs, holding your gaze a second too long before moving on, his tray held steady. You exhale only once he’s past you.

He walks to the edge of the room, settling at a small table in the corner, where the noise can’t reach him fully. You watch him eat slow, methodical. He doesn’t glance around. But he’s present in a way that’s almost unnerving—aware of everything, even if he doesn’t react to it.

He looks at families like they’re echoes of something he’s lost. Like he’s not sure if he misses it, or if he just envies the simplicity of belonging.

“Earth to you,” Natasha murmurs, appearing at your elbow with a plastic cup of lemonade and a sly smile.

You blink, pulled back into your skin. “What?”

She grins wider. “You were staring.”

“I wasn’t.” But your voice isn’t convincing. Your cheeks are already warm.

“Oh, please.” She sips her drink, gaze flicking over to Bucky. “That man eats soup like he’s brooding on a mountain somewhere.”

“He’s not brooding,” you mutter, though you’re not sure why you feel the need to defend him. You look back toward him and catch the moment he rises quietly to help Mr. Hargrove adjust his chair. He’s gentle. Careful. He doesn’t rush the older man or flinch when thanked. His movements are restrained, but there’s a softness in the way he places a hand on Mr. Hargrove’s shoulder that twists something in your chest.

“Heard he’s been going to the grief group,” Natasha says, quieter now. “Doesn’t talk much, but he listens. Really listens.”

You swallow.

Of course he does.

—

The church’s annual rummage sale spills across the lawn like a quilt, blankets unfurled, tables groaning under crockpots and glass trinkets, old ladies manning booths with sun hats and clipboards. The air smells like cinnamon bread, mothballs, and last year’s perfume. Laughter rises from the youth tent, mingling with the sharp rustle of donation bags and the distant notes of someone strumming a guitar.

You’re tucked beneath a white canopy, surrounded by cardboard boxes of clothes, carefully folding sweaters and arranging them into neat piles by size and color. Your dress is a pale blue today—modest neckline, flutter sleeves, cinched at the waist. It brushes your knees when you crouch to dig through a box of scarves, the cotton soft and worn from too many washes. 

You’re trying to focus. Really.

But your eyes keep drifting.

You’re folding a forest green cardigan when voices filter through from the other side of the rack, low, familiar, and just loud enough to pause your breath.

“Come on, Buck, it’s not that bad,” says someone with a warm, amused voice.

Bucky.

“Steve,” comes his gravelled reply, filled with dry disdain. “I look like an idiot.”

Another voice, deeper, playful: “Man could wear a trash bag and make it work. Even ugly Christmas sweaters.”

You freeze, clutching the cardigan a little too tightly, peeking between the racks like a guilty thought.

Bucky stands beside two other men, one tall, blond, with kind eyes and a faded plaid shirt, clearly the peacemaker. The other, handsome and grinning, carries the energy of someone who always gets the last word.

And James...

He’s holding up the most hideous red sweater you’ve ever seen. Rudolph stitched with googly eyes and a pom-pom nose. His brow is furrowed, jaw set, expression hovering between horrified and resigned.

But his eyes, when they land on his friends—are softer than you’ve ever seen them. Like for a brief moment, the weight he carries lets up, just slightly. Just enough to let something tender slip through.

“It’s for Christmas,” the blond says, Steve, you guess, trying to sound reasonable.

“It’s October,” Bucky mutters.

“Early prep,” the other man adds, grinning. “Ugly sweaters are a chick magnet. Right, Steve?”

“Sam—” Steve starts, face flushed, and Sam just cackles.

You duck back behind the rack, heart suddenly racing.

You don’t know why seeing him like that, a little relaxed, surrounded by people who know him unsettles you.

Maybe because it makes him human. Not just this dark-eyed soldier who lingers like storm clouds in the corners of sanctuaries. Maybe because it cracks the outline of the mystery you’ve built around him. Maybe because you liked it.

You’re folding a scarf, willing your pulse to settle, when...

“Need help with those?”

His voice slides into your bones.

You spin, scarf forgotten, to find him standing behind you, closer than he should be.

The ugly sweater is draped over one forearm, but it’s his eyes you notice first. Clear, steady, gray as winter and just as cold until they settle on you

Your throat tightens.

“I’m good,” you say quickly, too quickly. You step back instinctively, bumping against a box, the cotton of your dress catching on cardboard. “Just sorting for my uncle.”

He nods once. Doesn’t leave.

Instead, his gaze drifts to the rack beside you.

“Looking for anything specific?” he asks, voice low enough to keep between you.

“My aunt needs cardigans,” you reply before thinking. “Medium. Maybe large. She likes them loose.”

You don’t know why you’re telling him. It’s stupid. Pointless.

But he nods, like it matters.

Then he starts looking.

No hesitation. No small talk. Just quiet, focused movement as he shifts hangers aside, fingers brushing knit sleeves and lace trim, eyes scanning the rows. His brow furrows in concentration, the same way it did back in the chapel—like he sees the world in sharp lines and weight.

You steal glances.

His scar looks more pronounced in the sunlight. His hair is messier today, wind-tossed, one dark lock falling across his forehead. His shirt clings to his back when he bends to reach a lower hanger. You shouldn’t be looking. You know that. But your gaze keeps betraying you.

Within minutes, he pulls three cardigans from the rack: dusty rose, seafoam green, and cream. All soft, a little worn, and exactly the kind your aunt hoards in her closet like armor.

“These work?” he asks, voice quieter now.

You blink, surprised. “Yeah. Perfect.”

He holds them out. You reach to take them, and your fingers brush.

You don’t pull away immediately.

Neither does he.

When you finally glance up, his eyes are already on yours. And for one breathless, endless second, you’re not in a rummage tent surrounded by old clothes and casserole pans. You’re in some private, weightless space where nothing exists but the hum beneath your skin and the way he’s looking at you.

You open your mouth, unsure what you’re even going to say, when—

“Buck! You buying that sweater or what?” Sam’s voice slices through the air, easy and loud.

The spell breaks.

Bucky’s jaw tenses. The softness fades like a curtain drawn shut.

“I should go,” he says, stepping back.

You nod, throat dry. “Thanks again.”

“Anytime.”

And then he’s gone, the red reindeer sweater swinging limply from one hand as he walks back toward his friends, their laughter rising around him like smoke.

You hold the cardigans to your chest, trying to breathe normally. Trying not to stare. Trying not to feel the ghost of his fingers still lingering on yours. But when you glance up, just once, you catch the faintest twitch of his lips at something Sam says.

And your chest flutters—small and secret and completely, helplessly real.

—

Today's prayer service ends with the slow murmur of Amen echoing through the chapel. Candles flicker across the altar like dying stars. The scent of wax lingers thick in the air, threaded with incense and old wood. Outside, the sky has opened up and rain falls in relentless sheets, hammering the roof and streaking the stained-glass windows with watercolors. Most of the congregation has already fled, their laughter and boots fading across the slick stone path. The sanctuary empties quickly.

All except for you.

And him.

You’re still gathering candles in the soft hush, moving between pews with practiced care. The hem of your green dress skims your legs with every step, fitted enough to cling when you bend, the fabric catching on the curve of your hips. Your lips are red tonight. A sinful shade, bold against the candlelight. Your hair’s loose, damp near the temples from the mist that snuck in earlier, curling slightly around your shoulders. You hadn't intended to stay this long, but you always do. You like the quiet after services. Like to feel the hush settle into your bones.

But tonight, it’s not just yours.

You hear him before you see him.

He’s at the front now, by the altar, stacking hymnals with the kind of care that suggests reverence, not obligation. Rainlight casts him in fractured hues hrough the stained glass. His shirt, gray, damp at the collar, clings to his chest and shoulders. His hair’s slightly mussed from the rain, one curl clinging to his temple, and there’s a shadow along his jaw.

He hasn’t looked at you yet.

But he doesn’t have to.

His presence coils through the chapel like smoke.

"Rain’s keeping everyone out," you say, trying for lightness. Your voice breaks the quiet, but not the tension.

He looks up, finally.

“Good thing,” he murmurs, voice low, rough, quiet enough that it feels like it’s for you alone. “Gives us time to clean up.”

He sets another hymnal down, the muscles in his arms flexing subtly beneath his skin. You catch a whiff of cedar, leather, rain, and maybe war. It fills your lungs and lodges somewhere between your ribs.

You don’t ask for help.

But he joins you anyway, stepping into the aisle beside you like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

He doesn’t speak.

And you don’t either.

But the silence between you? It's alive.

The two of you work side by side, collecting stray candles and crumpled programs, and though your fingers never quite touch, they move in rhythm, close enough to feel, never enough to satisfy. You’re too aware of him. Of the heat he carries, the way his movements are quiet but commanding.

He nods toward your dress as you reach to place another candle. “Careful with your dress,” he says, voice steady but low. “Wax’ll ruin it.”

You glance down, then back at him. “This old thing?” you say with a faint smile, brushing the fabric. “You sound like my aunt.”

He lets out a quiet huff—amusement, and his eyes flick over you once more. “Doesn’t look old,” he says simply, and there’s something about the way he says it that makes your spine straighten.

You don’t look at him.

But you feel his gaze like the weight of prayer.

Another candle slips as you move—a clatter against wood that echoes too loud in the stillness. You both reach for it at once, and for the first time, you touch.

His fingers meet yours. Warm, firm. You both pause. You could move. You should move.

But you don’t.

Not right away.

You clear your throat, cheeks warm. “Clumsy,” you mutter, standing again, smoothing your dress more out of nerves than necessity.

“Happens,” he replies, placing the candle down carefully, like it deserves respect.

You watch him for a moment. The way he moves. The quiet precision. There’s no arrogance to him. Just control. And control is its own kind of seduction. You turn, gathering the last of the candleholders, but his voice draws you back.

“Been comin’ here a while,” he says. It’s not a question. Just a thread he’s decided to pull. “Used to feel different. Quieter. Now...” His eyes flick to yours. “Better with more of you around.”

Your lips part. The breath you draw feels too full. “Really, James?.”

He steps closer. Not enough to touch, but enough to crowd your space with his warmth. He sets a hymnal on the pew beside you, then lingers—close enough you can see the faint crease in his brow, the flecks of something almost blue in the gray of his eyes.

“Bucky,” he says, low and certain. “Not James. Not with you.”

It knocks something loose in your chest.

You nod, almost breathless. “Bucky,” you echo, trying the name on your tongue. It tastes like honey and warning.

His eyes darken, not in danger, but in depth.

His hand lifts, hesitates, then settles gently at your waist. The contact is featherlight. Careful. But the intention behind it is anything but innocent. His thumb brushes, just once, over the side of your dress. Not suggestive. Not aggressive. Just there.

And your body hums in response.

“Pretty girl,” he murmurs, reverent, sinful. His voice is the kind that belongs in confession. “Been thinkin’ ‘bout you.”

You feel the words like a hand at your throat. Not choking. Just claiming. And you don’t pretend to misunderstand.

“Show me,” you whisper.

He leans in, barely touching his lips to yours. It’s not a kiss. Not yet. 

But your hands rise, uncertain but brave and settle over his chest. He’s warm beneath the fabric, solid, alive.

Then he kisses you.

Gentle.

Sacrilegious.

His lips brush yours with reverence, not hunger, and your mouth parts without a second thought. It’s not urgent. Your fingers curl against him. His hand finds your lower back, anchoring you, holding without taking. He tastes like rain and smoke, like silence, like ache.

He pulls back first.

Breathing ragged.

Forehead to yours.

“Fuck, darlin’,” he breathes, voice thick. “You’re somethin’ else.”

So is this.

So are you.

You smile, slow and knowing, fingers lifting to trace the sharp line of his jaw. The scar beneath your touch is rough, an uneven line carved by something cruel but here, beneath your fingertips, it feels sacred. Claimed. “Gentleman, huh?” you murmur, teasing, your voice a hush in the chapel’s hush.

He chuckles, deep and quiet, the sound vibrating against your palm. His hand settles at your hip, broad and warm, thumb brushing over the fabric of your dress like he’s checking for fragility. “For you,” he says, voice low and thick, reverent as a vow.

Then he kisses you again. Slower now. Deeper. His tongue parts your lips with careful grace. He tastes like rain, like patience, like restraint stretched too thin. Your breath catches, your pulse thrums, and your thighs press together under the growing heat—soft and aching where you want him most.

But it’s not just lust. It’s the way he holds back, like you deserve more than hurried touches and breathless abandon. 

“Wanna do this right,” he breathes against your mouth, his hand sliding down to your lower back, guiding you gently, reverently, to the back pew. The wood creaks as you lower, the old bench cool against your thighs. He kneels between your legs like he’s done it a thousand times, but never like this. Never for this. His frame is massive, towering, but lowered before you now, his eyes locked to yours, asking. 

You nod—small, sure.

His fingers slide up your legs with aching patience. Your dress bunches at your hips, and for a long moment, he just looks at you—=, at your trembling thighs, your flushed face, your breath shallow. And then he moves, so slowly it feels like a confession.

You whimper, soft, unsure if it’s from the need or the way he’s looking at you—like he’s memorizing you, like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he moves too fast.

“Touch me, Bucky,” you whisper, barely a sound, barely a breath.

And he does.

His fingers trace higher, finding the hem of your dress, and he pauses again, eyes searching yours. “This okay?” he murmurs, voice rough but soft, like he’s afraid to break you. His care makes your breath hitch, a spark flaring low in your belly, but it’s his gentleness that holds you.

“Yeah,” you whisper, and he groans, soft, his hand inching your dress up, slow, revealing the soft skin above your stockings. His fingers graze lace, feeling the first hint of your slick through your panties, and he exhales, shaky, like he’s been holding it in. 

“Fuck, darlin’,” he murmurs, voice awed, gentle, “this pussy’s already wet for me, ain’t it?”

You blush, biting your lip, not desperate, just curious, wanting. “Maybe,” you tease, voice soft, and he chuckles, low, wicked, his finger brushing your clit through the lace, light, teasing, making you gasp.

"God."

He leans in, his breath hot against your neck. “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, darlin’,” he whispers, teasing, lips brushing your skin. “Not when you’re this wet and sweet under me.”

You laugh, soft, clenching your thighs, earning a low moan from him. “You’re trouble,” you whisper, fingers grazing his neck, wanting to mark him. His free hand cradles your back, keeping you close.

“Love this,” he growls, lips brushing your ear, teeth grazing, soft, his finger still teasing through lace, not pushing, just stoking the fire. “Gonna make you feel so good, doll.” He pauses, eyes meeting yours, checking again, and you nod, leaning into him, wanting more, but patient, letting him lead.

A sudden gust rattles the chapel windows, rain pounding harder, and you both freeze, glancing toward the sound. The moment breaks, tension easing, and you laugh, nervous, the spell softening but not gone. “Storm’s loud,” you murmur, smoothing your dress, and he nods, hand resting on your knee, steady, grounding.

“Keeps us here,” he says, voice low, eyes glinting. “More time.” He leans in again, lips brushing your forehead, a gesture so tender it makes your heart stutter. “You sure ‘bout this, darlin’? We can stop.” His voice is gentle, respectful, and it pulls you closer, wanting him more.

“Don’t stop,” you whisper, voice raw, and he groans, his hand sliding back up, peeling your panties down, slow, careful, lace slipping over your thighs.

“Fuck, this pussy,” he murmurs, voice awed, finger brushing your bare clit now, making you whine, hips twitching. The wet sounds are soft, obscene in the chapel’s hush, and the rain’s roar makes it feel like a secret, sacred and sinful.

“More,” you plead, soft, and he obliges, dipping a finger inside, stretching, curling slow, hitting your spot. Your pussy grips him, cream coating his finger, and you moan, quiet, head tipping back, the intimacy overwhelming. “Bucky, fuck,” you gasp, and he covers your mouth, gentle, muffling, his lips brushing your ear.

“Shh, baby,” he whispers, amused, naughty, breath hot. “Don’t want the angels listenin’.” His finger thrusts deeper, thumb circling your clit, slow, building you up, and you’re trembling, pussy dripping, the risk spiking your pulse, his cock hard, pressing against your thigh, patient but huge.

“Feel so good,” you murmur, muffled, and he kisses your neck, soft, lingering, his free hand sliding up your back, holding you like you’re precious. “Want you closer,” you whisper, fingers tugging his shirt, pulling him in, and he groans, low, shifting, his massive frame pressing against you, shielding you.

And then it deepens everything. The intimacy, the tension, the sheer care of it. His fingers trace slow, deliberate circles, his eyes never leaving yours. The chapel holds its breath, the candles flicker like they're witnessing something unholy. 

Or maybe divine.

“Gonna give you everything,” he murmurs, adding another finger, fucking you slow, deliberate, wet sounds louder now, your pussy clenching. Your eyes roll, thighs shaking, and he watches. “Fuck, look at you,” he whispers, voice thick, “takin’ my fingers so sweet.”

You chuckle, shaky, clenching again, earning a moan. “Tease,” you whisper, biting your lip, and he smirks. 

“Cum for me, darlin’,” he murmurs, fingers curling, thumb relentless, and you shatter, pussy spasming, cream coating his finger, a muffled scream against his hand. He holds you, lips on your neck, soft, whispering, “That’s it, baby, fuck, so perfect.” 

“I need you, Bucky,” you whispered, voice raw and dripping with want, your gaze locked on his steel-blue eyes, darkened with lust.

He exhaled a low, guttural sound, his hands finding your hips, pulling you flush against him. Through the rough denim of his jeans, you felt the hard, throbbing outline of his cock, thick and insistent, sending a pulse of heat straight to your core. Your fingers fumbled with his belt, brushing against him, and he hissed, head dipping to press a hot, open-mouthed kiss to the curve of your neck. “Baby,” he murmured, “you’re gonna kill me.”

With a swift motion, he freed himself, his cock springing free, veined and heavy, the tip glistening with precum. You swallowed hard, your mouth watering at the sight of him, so potent, so ready. His hand guided himself to your slick folds, rubbing slow, deliberate circles against your entrance, teasing you with the promise of what was to come. Your breath hitched, a soft whimper escaping your lips as you pressed yourself closer, your thighs quivering. “Please, Bucky,” you begged, voice a sultry plea, your legs hooking around his waist, urging him nearer.

He growled low, his hand cupping your ass, lifting you effortlessly onto the edge of the old wooden pew, the creak of the wood echoing in the sacred space. “Gonna love this pussy,” he rasped, his eyes burning into yours, holding you captive as he positioned himself at your entrance.

The first push was exquisite agony. His cock breached you slowly, the thick head stretching your tight walls, parting you with a delicious burn that made you gasp, your nails digging into his shoulders. It felt like he was carving a space inside you, claiming you inch by inch, the sensation overwhelming—full, hot, and unrelenting.

He’s watching you come apart, his lips parted, reverence in every movement. His fingers never rush, never push too far. He keeps you right at the edge, not to tease, but to honor the feeling. His hand curls around the back of your neck, grounding you, and your head falls forward, resting against his.

Your pussy fluttered around him, gripping him instinctively, and you moaned, head falling back as the pleasure-pain of his size consumed you. “God, Bucky,” you whimpered, “you’re so fucking big.”

“Shit, so tight,” he groaned, his voice strained, his vibranium hand steadying your hip as he eased deeper, giving you time to adjust. The stretch was intense, but the intimacy of his restraint made it sacred, a slow, deliberate act of worship. When he bottomed out, filling you completely, your walls pulsed around him, and you both stilled.

He began to move, slow and deep, each thrust a promise, his cock dragging against every sensitive spot inside you, igniting sparks that curled through your spine. The wet, filthy sounds of your bodies filled the air, and you clung to him, your fingers raking down his back. 

“Fuck, feel that,” he murmured, his lips brushing your ear, “your pussy’s grippin’ me so good.”

“Harder,” you whined, craving more, and Bucky obliged, his thrusts deepening, the pew creaking louder under the force. “Yes, fuck, yes!” you cried, your pussy creaming around him, the slickness easing his glide, making every thrust smoother.

He shifted you then, guiding you to turn, your palms bracing against the back of the pew as he positioned you on your knees, your dress hiked up around your waist. The new angle made you gasp as he re-entered you, his cock hitting deeper, stroking a spot that made stars burst behind your eyes. “Goddamn, look at you,” he growled, his hand smacking your ass lightly, the sting blooming into warmth that made you yelp, then grin. “Takin’ me so fuckin’ well.”

You arched your back, pushing back against him, meeting each stroke with a desperate need. “Cream on my cock,” he urged, his voice a dark caress, and the combination of his words, his touch, and the relentless drive of his cock sent you spiraling.

"That's it, that's my pretty girl, Oh— God."

Your orgasm crashed over you, your pussy pulsing, clenching around him as you screamed into the crook of your arm, cream dripping down your thighs.

He wasn’t done. With a gentle tug, he pulled you upright, your back against his chest, his lips finding your neck as he guided you to straddle him, facing him now. You sank onto his cock, the new position intimate, your faces inches apart. His eyes locked on yours, and the connection was electric, his hands guiding your hips as you rode him, slow and deliberate. “Fuck, darlin’,” he panted, his flesh hand cupping your cheek, thumb brushing your lips. “You’re really somethin’ else.”

The pace built again, your thighs burning as you chased another peak. When you came again, it was softer but no less intense, your body trembling as you clung to him, his name a prayer on your lips. 

His groan was raw, almost feral, as his body tensed beneath you, his hands tightening on your hips. “Fuck, baby, this pussy’s gonna make me lose it,” he growled, his voice rough and urgent, thick with lust. “So fuckin’ tight, squeezin’ my cock like you were made for it.” His hips stuttered, thrusting up into you with a desperate edge, and you felt the first hot pulse of his cum spilling deep inside you. “Shit, I’m cummin’ so hard for you,” he rasped, his words dripping with filthy reverence. “Gonna fill this sweet pussy up, make you drip with me, baby—fuck.”

Each pulse of his release was a searing claim, his cock throbbing as he poured himself into you, the heat and fullness overwhelming, slick and messy as it leaked down your thighs and onto his lap.

His thumb strokes slow across your cheek, and the air between you is heavy with unsaid things, with want, with restraint. His other hand finds yours, interlacing your fingers, as he leans closer, kissing your jaw, your throat, your collarbone, like he’s tracing a rosary made of skin.

“You don’t know what you do to me,” he murmurs, and the words are hoarse, unraveling. “Pretty thing. Touchin’ heaven sittin’ on this pew.”

You stayed like that for a long moment, your bodies entwined, the rain a soft murmur outside, the air thick with the scent of sex and intimacy. Your fingers carded through his damp hair, tracing the strands that clung to his forehead, and he sighed, leaning into your touch like a man starved for it.

The storm rages outside.

And inside, he worships.

Not God.

You.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Kalim Al-Asim: Gonna be Golden

… Was NOT expecting THAT pose why did he go to the Kingscholar ceremonial robes school of fukboi hand-in-hair posing with THAT expression, but alright 😭 Jamil voice) you stop that right this instant, mister. dhejebjwkw I guess I’ll just pretend Kalim is patting his stomach and rubbing his head at the same time or something www

The groovy gives me anxiety too 😭 It’s supposed to be a bunch of Scarabia students stopping Kalim from going crazy with his makeup happy pride, guys, but the framing makes me think Kalim is about to be jumped. The groovy also makes me think of Ruggie’s?? Both are doing their makeup with eyeshadow but their social statuses are so different and it shows in the illustrations.

Rise and Shine!

You found an open space along the crimson tiled wall of Scarabia’s washroom and park yourself there. Leaning back, you casted your eyes to a small crowd that had gathered around a vanity. Several pans of eyeshadow were open and spread around the counter.

Seated in the center of the activity was a boy who shone like the sun, pulling everyone to him. His light, his warmth.

“Hmm… What should I wear today?” Kalim wondered out loud.

“How about this one, dorm leader?” a mob student suggests, holding up an eyeshadow quad in different shades of turquoise. “The colors would make your face pop.”

“Or this one?” another offers, showing him a deep gold. “It would really suit you.”

“Red,” said a third, indicating a palette with a striking shadow the color of crushed pomegranates glistening like a ruby. “To match your eyes.”

“Just pick one already. If you spend too long on this, you’ll be late for class,” Jamil grumbles, sounding none too pleased. (He’s been hovering and clucking at Kalim like a mother hen for the past—you consulted your phone—20 or so minutes.)

"But it's so hard... There's too many colors to choose from." Not even a few seconds had passed before Kalim shot up, brighter than ever. "I know! What if I just wore all of them?"

"ALL of them?!" A chorus of shocked cries and makeup brushes clattering to the ground filled the washroom.

Jamil, looking particularly distressed, pushed his way to the front of the group. He moved so quickly, you could have mistaken him for a deadly poison finding its way to Kalim's heart.

"You can't be serious," Jamil protested. "There's far too many colors here. Just how to you intend to fit them all on your eyes?!"

"I figured I could make them fit if I used them for my whole face! You know, like face painting," Kalim chirped, digging his thumb into a pot of royal blue. "I could do a butterfly! Maybe a peacock?"

"Nope, I'm vetoing that!!" Jamil snatched up the pot from Kalim's open palm.

Kalim seemed to not have heard him. He dipped his other fingers into open pots on the counter: green on his index, gold for the middle, magenta for the ring, and red on the pinkie.

"Close them!" Jamil hissed to the mob students. They swooped in from either side, hurriedly screwing the lids over the eyeshadow pots and snapping up the palettes.

You used your hand to stifle a laugh. So early in the morning, and already Jamil was so, so close to losing his mind.

The vice dorm leader shot you a cold stare. Your skin bristled. "If our guest finds this situation laughable, then perhaps they could kindly step in to assist."

"Good idea, Jamil!" Kalim wiggled his makeup-covered fingers at you. "Which one do you like best?"

You peeled away from the wall and mase your way over. Scarabia students parted and, herded by Jamil, shuffles out the door. He's the last to leave, but you knew he hasn't--you felt his presence lingering, ready to leap back in at the first hint of danger.

You stopped right behind Kalim, gently placing your hands on his shoulders. Lowering your face so that it, too, nearly rests on his shoulders, you grinned at him in the mirror.

“You’ll look handsome no matter what you go with, Kalim. Really.”

There's a loud cough from the doorway. Jamil.

You rolled your eyes. "... But maybe your usual eye look would work too? That's what I'm most used to seeing you in. It's pretty iconic." Picking up a brush, you lightly tapped it against Kalim's cheeks. "And you can do the rest of your makeup differently to make you look extra special. Like maybe some highlighter. You'll be glowing."

"Oh!!" He brightened, and it's like the sun is shining a spotlight on you. Your blood heated. "That's such a great idea! Okay, let's go with that, then."

You nodded and straightened, prepared to step back. retreat into the dark. That's when Kalim called out your name, and you glanced back at him.

That warm, light-filled boy.

The sun, pulling you back into his orbit. And you, unable to resist it.

"... How do you do this?" Kalim asked cluelessly.

You sighed with a smile and shook your head. "Geez, you’re hopeless. Here, let me show you."

[weavingstarlight]

Happy Pride, have some angsty art of Four and Shadow ~

So I decided I wanted to draw Four and Shadow for Pride because, hey, I love these gay boys — but when it came to deciding WHAT I wanted to draw, I had a little more trouble. Instead of doing a classic “Pride post,” I wanted to tell a story. I’ve been spending a lot of time recently with Four and Shadow in Guiding Lights and so I felt like it made sense to draw that version of them (even though it felt a little self-indulgent). I didn’t want to illustrate a particular scene, but instead capture the emotions of the characters symbolically. So, uh, this is what I ended up with!

[Spoilers for chapters 1-17 of Guiding Lights below the cut]

Four was not meant to take over the narrative the way he did. Neither was Shadow. Both characters managed to insert themselves into my outline and demand a larger chunk of the story for themselves. I accept this as “the way writing goes.”

I mention in the fic tags that the soulbonds that unite the Chain are entirely platonic, and this is important to keep in mind with Four and Shadow, who are bonded but who additionally have a non-platonic relationship. It is also important to remember that the soulbonds “activate” the moment a pair of Links get close enough to each other, physically or emotionally (and depending on each Link’s sensitivity to the bond). This means something very important for Four and Shadow’s relationship, which some of you may have already figured out but I’ll lay it out plainly here: The Colors were already soulbound to Shadow when Shadow destroyed the Dark Mirror.

Imagine what that felt like for a moment.

Imagine what Link went through, immediately after his adventure — not only losing his friend, Vio’s partner, but losing his soulmate. And at the same time, rejoining for the first time — going from being Link to being the Colors to being Four — and all that that entailed. (We’ll learn more about what that entailed later in our story.) And the choice, the sacrifice, was made by Shadow and Shadow alone.

Four is no stranger to grief… nor to anger.

And then, quite by accident, Shadow was revived. And Four had to adjust his worldview yet again, now to include the person he was sure he’d lost forever.

But Shadow was the same person as the day he’d died, and Four… wasn’t, anymore.

Fast forward to the “present” day.

Shadow desperately wants to use his powers to rejoin his partner — to save him — but practicality prevents him from doing so. He’s not just worried for Four, he’s scared. And he’s also scared for the other Links, and though he’d be embarrassed to admit it, scared for himself. What happens to Shadow if Four is seriously hurt? What if he dies? Guilt of several kinds bites at Shadow at every moment. He feels angry at his enemies, but also angry at himself for not being able to do more — and even though he knows it’s unfair, he’s angry at the Chain for being slow, angry at Wild for not taking a bigger risk and transporting them with the Slate, and angry at the world for just being sucky. And, selfishly, he misses Four. He’s sad.

Meanwhile, Four is going through his own ordeal. He has no way of knowing where the others are or even if they’re coming to save him. Half of him wants to have faith in his partner and brothers; the other half wants to focus on right now and on saving himself. And there’s a little bit of anger on his part, too — of course the others did the best they could, of course they did… and yet. Four is scared, injured, and lonely, and he can’t afford to be any of those things if he’s going to survive and escape.

But despite all the pain they’ve been through, what unites these two — what unites all the Links — is love. They take strength from each other no matter the distance between them, secure in their love for each other. Nothing can destroy that love, not even death. They’ve already proven that.

During Pride month, it’s great to see examples of queer joy — it’s important to see that! But I think it’s also important to see queer sadness, anger, fear — the full range of human emotions, because queer people and queer relationships contain the same kinds of pleasure AND pain as non-queer ones do. So I don’t feel bad about drawing my poor stressed-out boys during Pride month, and I promise I’ll do happier art of them at a later time. ***

Technically speaking, this piece went great. I’m especially pleased with how the colored pencils came out. My white ink was very dry but it rehydrated well!

8 x 11. Alcohol markers, colored pencils, micron pens, and white ink. Digital background.

[IMG: An illustration of Four from Linked Universe and Shadow (Four Swords manga with a Linked Universe-based design). Four is walking away to the left, visible from the knees up. Shadow is floating behind Four and reaching out for him. Shadow is surrounded by a dark, fiery aura, which flames out behind him. Four is reaching back over his shoulder and their fingers are intertwined. Four is wearing a patchwork tunic, black pants, and black gloves over a light gray shirt. He has blonde hair, pale skin and multicolored eyes. Shadow is wearing a black tunic, white pants, and black gloves over a light gray shirt. He has black hair, paler skin than Four, and red eyes. His feet melt away into dark flames. The “flames” surrounding him are various shades of purple. The background is a textured dark gray-blue. The drawing has black ink lineart and is colored with markers and colored pencils.] *** UPDATE: I made additional posts about the process of drawing this illustration, check them out here!

Process photos Inking timelapse

[dissolved-g1rl]

Okk maybe it's about to sound confusing so just ignore it if you feel like so yeah but how about a Dante x reader which is focused on their emotional intimacy. Like Dante isn't ready to get attached, reader don't feel like taking responsibility of being partner but they use each other to feel/experience the love. Whether it's a flirty comment to sleeping in each other's arms, everything is accepted, except just for real love and it's focus on their immaturity (ig), like it's supposed to be an unconcluded scenario. Will their love ever turn true? Who knows? Will they still be close to each other? Who knows? Will be they together tomorrow again? No one knows. But are they together now, in this present? Yes and they enjoy it.

Sorry if it's too long and still confusing. Have a nice day ahead regardless💗

be my weekend lover, but dont be my friend ᡕᠵ᠊ᡃ່࡚ࠢ࠘ ⸝່ࠡࠣ᠊߯᠆ࠣ࠘ᡁࠣ࠘᠊᠊ࠢ࠘𐡏 ♡

Fighting demons is an unreliable job. The demand for killers won’t wear out, but you will. Only one thing is guaranteed, you will die doing this job. You’ve become sensitized to this, death has no longer become a taboo subject to you. It’s an honest way to make a living, you have enough impact to make you feel satisfied, and well you definitely get your kicks.

Chasing adrenaline is easy to do when you know a guy like Dante. The terror you felt watching a demon rip his arm off was indescribable, but the unheard of happened, he lived. With everyone else in this industry dropping like flies, a sturdy killer like Dante is a needed relief. You don’t have to worry about him, he’ll be there, in one whole piece. He’ll be there in any way you really need him, well…physically speaking. Which is lovely, “boyfriend” how immature, you’re too busy for something as stupid as a label. Besides, it never works out anyways, then you’d be down a friend…a really good friend.

The trip to his side of town is familiar, the take a left down the same corner you always do and there you are. You’re welcomed in warmly. It’s routine, one kiss on the cheek, a shy smile is exchanged, a misalignment of upturned mouths. “Hi.” He murmurs, steadying you for a proper kiss. You slot together perfectly fine, chest to chest, heart to heart. “Hey.” Is your reply when he pulls away. He lightly rubs across your bottom lip with his thumb, knuckles under your chin to keep you upright. he steals another kiss.

Easy chatter is shared over lukewarm beers, his overhead lights create warmth that spreads over the office. It had been a little eerie in the beginning, not enough light to make out certain shadows. Now, it’s sort of comforting, Dante looks good in low lighting, makes his stark hair color muted, but the blue in his eyes pop. Gives everything a hazy, almost sleepy feel, thats the excuse you come up to rationalize getting tangled up in his bed again.

“How’d you get this one?” he asks, cool fingers grazing across your marred skin. “Got bit by a dog when I was little, ‘s not from a fight or anything.” You murmur, he hums in acknowledgment, “Are you scared of them now?” Dante catches your gaze, his mouth pressing against your scar, gentle as can be. “No, it was a one off thing.” You laugh airily, and he smiles. Dante feels a sense of accomplishment making you laugh, he thinks you have a nice one. He didn’t want to get used to hearing it, here he is though, relishing in it. He doesn’t want to think about how you make him feel. Sometimes its like you’re a salve being applied to his worst wounds, the only thing that provide a moment of peace throughout an otherwise painful experience. Other times he dreads it, it’s making him weak to pain he should be used to by now. He was used to it. That all seems to be a long time ago.

Dante keeps tracing over little spots of skin. He doesn’t know your insides, but he knows about the ticklish spot on the side of your neck, how you got the jagged scar on the side of your wrist, the mole near your clavicle. He lightly douses your skin with flittering kisses, and he’ll hold you tonight if you let him. Neither of you can face up to your actions in the harsh light of the morning. So please, just don’t be there when he wakes up. That’s not something he can heal from, Dante’s sure of that.

dividers by @enchanthings

a/n: i think i understood what u meant, if not i apologize, hope u like it anon :)

[rea-grimm]

Possession - Demon Mihawk

You reached the end of the road, and your head tilted up as you gazed at the old, abandoned castle before you. You stood in front of a giant creaking gate, goosebumps prickling your skin from the bad feeling you had about the place.

A mist veiled the castle like a shroud, its gothic towers reaching toward the grey sky. It was typical dreary autumn weather, with constant rain and a cold wind blowing. You rubbed your hands together, trying to warm them, continuing to ignore the strange feeling in your stomach that told you this was a bad idea.

After several long minutes, which felt like an eternity in the cold, your boyfriend finally deigned to arrive. This was all his idea, one you hadn't agreed with from the start, but you followed him anyway.

"This place is amazing, don't you think?" he said enthusiastically. "Besides, a little fright never killed anyone," he added, grinning at you with his smug smile.

"Maybe..." you replied, but it seemed as if he didn't even hear you. Or perhaps he didn't want to, and instead headed towards the castle's main gate.

You quietly followed him, constantly glancing back at your own shadow, feeling as if golden eyes were burning a hole in your back.

As you walked, you wondered why you were even doing this. Sure, he was your boyfriend, but you felt a sort of chasm had formed between you two over the past few days. You remembered him as a kind, attentive guy who could easily put a smile on your face. 

Lately, however, he had been rough, inattentive, and many times you felt like you were just a nuisance to him. And when you tried to talk to him about it, it always ended up sounding like it was all your fault.

The castle inside was dark and cold, its empty rooms echoing unnaturally. You moved from room to room, noticing that all the paintings and furniture were covered with white cloths.

Eventually, you arrived in one of the chambers where your boyfriend stopped. In the middle of the room stood a pedestal with a huge black sword, its blade black and its hilt studded with diamonds.

You had the impression that the blade glowed with a faint red light in the dimness. You were hypnotized by it, but the longer you looked at the sword, the more shivers ran down your spine, and you felt as if golden eyes were burning a hole into your soul.

"Wow, this is something! Finally, something interesting!" your boyfriend exclaimed excitedly, while you would have preferred to disappear from there.

"Leave it alone. I have a bad feeling about this," you warned him, but he didn't listen. He never listened to you.

Instead, he reached for the sword. As soon as his hand touched the hilt, it was as if an explosion of strange energy surged through the room. Your boyfriend, still gripping the sword, trembled and looked at you. In that moment, however, his eyes glowed gold. You took a step back, but as soon as you blinked, his eyes were back to their normal color.

You spoke to him in a trembling voice. You had every urge to take off running, to leave him there with his bad ideas, but you couldn't.

"I'm fine," he replied, standing up straight. You had never seen him with such straight posture before. He walked over to you and looked at you with a gaze that sent shivers down your spine, making you tremble.

"Are you cold? We should go," he said gently, stroking your face. You had the impression that this was a completely different boyfriend than you remembered. Could the sword have given him a jolt and made him act like he used to?

"Y-yeah..." you nodded, watching him out of the corner of your eye.

"Good. I'll just take the sword, and we can leave," he said, returning for the sword, which he now held like a professional.

On the way out of the castle, he behaved differently towards you. He was attentive, gallant. He opened doors for you, let you go first, and even offered you his hand so you wouldn't fall on the stairs.

He took you to his car, where he also opened the door for you, waiting for you to settle in before closing it again. During the drive home, he kept asking you things. How you were doing, if you were cold, what would make you happy, and so on. This completely took you by surprise, and the more it happened, the more it confirmed that whoever this was, it wasn't your boyfriend. You just didn't know who it was.

"Is everything alright?" you asked when you finally reached your door.

"Perfectly alright, my dear," he replied with a mysterious smile that was far too perfect. "Everything is as it should be."

You walked inside, and he held the door open for you again. Inside, he sat in an armchair with the sword on his lap. You couldn't take it anymore and had to ask.

"You're not my boyfriend, are you? Who are you?" you asked nervously, noticing his eyes briefly flash gold.

"Perceptive," he chuckled. "What gave me away?" he asked.

"Well..." you weren't sure how to say that a demon was being nicer to you than your own boyfriend without sounding strange.

"Dracule Mihawk, is my name," he introduced himself, rising from the chair and giving you a bow. "I am the demon of this sword. I slept peacefully in that castle for many decades until your friend woke me."

"Let him go," you said determinedly. Sure, the demon was much better, but he was still your boyfriend, even if he was the worst boyfriend in the world.

"And what do I get in return?" he smirked, raising a hand to play with a strand of your hair.

"Anything," you said without thinking.

"Anything? For someone like him? Someone who doesn't even deserve you?" he asked, still toying with your hair.

"I... Even if he doesn't deserve it, I can't just leave him like this," you finally said.

"Hmm, fine, I'll let him go on one condition. You'll take his place," he said, moving from your hair to your chin, which he gently lifted with his fingers.

You weren't entirely sure if you wanted to do something like that. You looked into his golden eyes, which, despite belonging to your boyfriend's face, held something that didn't inspire fear, but rather a sense of sincerity.

"I'll do it," you said resolutely. The demon merely nodded contentedly. He picked up his sword from the floor and handed it to you. As you took it from his hand, you felt a surge of strength and energy, and suddenly you had the impression you could see his golden eyes at the back of your mind.

Your boyfriend released the sword, clutched his head, and staggered a few steps backward. At the same moment, a black shadow poured from beneath your fingers, quickly taking on a human form. Before you now stood a tall man with raven hair, black and gold eyes, and demonic features.

Your boyfriend finally came to his senses, his eyes darting from the demon to you and back again. You knew this was the end between you two. Without a word, he checked if he had his phone, wallet, and car keys before leaving and slamming the door shut behind him.

"He didn't deserve you," Mihawk said when your now-ex was gone.

"I know..." you admitted. You knew it had been a lifeless relationship lately.

"When he touched my sword and woke me from my slumber, he wasted no time in trying to save his own life. Without a moment's hesitation, he immediately offered your life in exchange for his," he said, looking into your eyes.

"What?" It was hard for you to believe, even though deep down you knew it was true.

"A person without honor like that doesn't deserve someone like you. I saw through him how amazing you are," he said more gently, walking over to you. He slowly took your hand in his, leaned down, and lightly kissed the back of it.

"Even though I am with you now, you have no reason to fear me. I promise on my honor as a swordsman that I will never harm you and that I will protect you from everything," he promised, his eyes almost glowing golden like two small flames.

And even though he was a terrifying demon, something inside you told you that he was serious. Whether it was his eyes or his demeanor, you decided to trust him.

Mihawk Masterlist

[luckyroll3]

Mine Chapter 1

Mine Masterlist

A/N: Heads up that this is probably one of the darkest stories I've written to date. Includes stalking, mental and emotional abuse, and obsessive and controlling behavior (see warning on Masterlist). But please note that I choose to not extensively tag in order to preserve some elements of storytelling; however, specific warnings will be provided as they come up at the beginning of each chapter. Therefore, if this type of content might potentially be triggering, I won't be offended if you skip. [spoiler] The story does have a very happy ending, but it will certainly be a roller coaster ride on the way there... [/spoiler]

The late afternoon sun spills golden threads through the sheer curtains, casting a warm glow over the living room where you lounge. The soft fabric of your couch cradles you, offering solace in solitude as you bask in the quiet hum of your life.

You thumb through a worn novel, a recent acquisition from your favorite used book store, but today your mind wanders, not to fictional realms but to the very real one you've built. You’ve been thinking a lot about the future recently and what it means for your current relationship.

As if right on cue, there's a click of the lock and a turn of the knob. The air shifts, charged with a new energy as Chan, your boyfriend, steps inside. His arrival is like a spark to kindling; its immediate warmth floods the space between you two, igniting the familiar dance of smiles and gazes that speak volumes without uttering a single word. He carries an aura of casual charm, his light brown hair tousled just so, as if he's walked straight out of your daydreams and into the room.

"Hey," he greets with that dimpled smile, the one that's disarmingly effective at melting any resolve you might pretend to possess.

"Hi," you reply, feeling the corners of your mouth betray you, curving upwards unbidden. Chan closes the distance, and his hands find your waist as he climbs onto the couch with you, playful and light, yet they ground you in the here and now. In his presence, there is no elsewhere.

"Missed you," he murmurs, pressing a kiss to your temple. The way he says it, tender and earnest, makes it easy to forget the world outside this cocoon of intimacy. He cuddles up next to you and places your legs over his, his hands settling gently on your knees.

The two of you slide into the easy banter, the back-and-forth that feels as natural as breathing, until the conversation meanders to the upcoming celebration of your parents' anniversary in three months, a landmark of commitment and time-worn love.

"Thirty years! I can't even believe that my mom has been able to put up with dad for that long. Can you imagine us, years from now, celebrating like them?" you venture, half in jest, half in a dare to dream.

Chan's laughter is a melody, but it veils something, a brief flicker in his warm brown eyes before he sidesteps the query with a grace that's almost too practiced. "Let's just focus on making sure your dad doesn't get too drunk and break out his dance moves at the party again," he deflects, and although the tease draws a laugh from you, it leaves a residue of unspoken words clinging to your thoughts.

There's no malice coloring his avoidance, but an undercurrent of something else, perhaps a reluctance to anchor himself to a future that looms vast and unknown. A shadow falls across the sunny tableau of your relationship, subtle, yet undeniably there, hinting at the chasm of commitment issues that have laid silently between the two of you for over four years.

But Chan is here now. His touch still lingering, his affection wrapped around you like a promise. You push away the nagging doubts, allowing yourself to be swept up in the allure of the present, the seductive pull of his nearness promising to hold the questions at bay, at least for a little while longer.

The residue of your conversation clings to the air, an invisible weight that Chan seems determined to lift. He leans in, his breath a warm whisper against your ear. "You think too much," he murmurs, his hands finding the curve of your ass with a practiced ease.

You're caught in his gravity, the inevitable pull between you as powerful as it is confounding. The room spins slightly as his lips trace the column of your neck, each kiss igniting a trail of fire on your skin.

“Love you,” he whispers in between kisses.

You can’t deny the chemistry that the two of you have always had, the electric connection that shivers down your center and pools in between your legs. His warmth envelops you, and for a fleeting moment, you let yourself drown in the sensation.

“Love you,” you whisper back.

Chan grabs your hands and leads you to the bedroom. He begins to kiss you deeply as he guides you back, back until the edge of the bed nudges at your legs, and with a gentle insistence, he eases you onto the soft sheets. His eyes, those deep pools of brown, are locked onto yours. “You know I’m yours, right?” he asks as his fingers graze your cheek.

You nod slowly.

His touch is deft as he undresses you, each layer discarded like an afterthought, revealing the canvas of your body. There’s an artistry to his movements, a choreography you both know by heart. This dance is familiar, intimate in its repetition, yet tonight, it feels like a masquerade; a beautiful distraction from the hard truths lurking beneath.

As Chan's body melds with yours, the world narrows down to your shared breaths, the slick slide of skin against skin. The pleasure is potent as he thrusts into you, a heady rush that floods your senses and blurs the edges of reality. His rhythm is relentless, a tidal wave that sweeps you along, leaving no room for your doubts or questions, just the primal pulse of desire.

But as the waves crest and recede, leaving you both adrift in the aftermath, the silence returns. In his arms, you're cocooned in a protective embrace, the steady thump of his heartbeat a lullaby that should soothe your restless thoughts.

Yet, nestled against Chan's chest, you find the solace incomplete. A part of you remains alert, your mind tracing the contours of dreams unvoiced. You envision a future painted in strokes of domestic bliss, with the laughter of children, the shared secrets between partners bound by vows, the warmth of a home suffused with love and certainty.

These yearnings fill the hollow spaces, echoing with the intensity of whispered promises and hopes tenderly nurtured over time. They're visions you've harbored close to your heart, a commitment you've longed for with Chan. But as the night deepens, so does the realization that this dream may never be fulfilled.

You watch him sleep, the gentle rise and fall of his chest syncopated with your own uneven heartbeats. What is holding him back, you wonder, questioning whether the dreams you have ever wander through his mind as well.

"Chan," you murmur softly, the name a caress against the quiet room. But no answer comes, and you swallow the question on your tongue, burying it beneath the layers of denial. He loves you; that much is certain. Yet you know love doesn’t always signify forever. You close your eyes, letting the warmth of his body combat the cool tendrils of doubt that slither through your thoughts.

You breathe in the scent of him, fresh citrus, minty, and a hint of sweetness, and you press closer, seeking a reassurance that remains frustratingly out of reach. Chan tightens his embrace around you and his steady breathing, a rhythm you've come to know as well as your own, lulls you toward a restless sleep where dreams and desires entwine, a bittersweet tapestry of what could be… and what might never come to pass.

Morning dawns with a softness that belies the turmoil within you. You're alone now, the sheets beside you a vacant expanse where the heat of Chan's presence still lingers. He’s gone to the gym.

Your phone buzzes and you turn your attention back to the group chat between you, Liz, and Lucas, your best friends, their digital avatars smiling up from the screen, unaware of the seismic shift happening beneath your composed exterior. The conversation has been very active this morning, but you haven’t really been participating much, your mind on other things.

Liz: So, big anniversary for you and Chan next month Think he’s gonna pop the question?

Liz's text sparkles with her usual blend of anticipation and nosiness.

Lucas: Yeah, 5 years is a long runway for takeoff. 😉 What the fuck is he waiting on? ⌛️

Their words, light-hearted though they may be, claw at your freshly sown doubts. You laugh outwardly, typing back something non-committal.

You: We're happy where we’re at.

But inside, happiness feels like a jigsaw puzzle with one piece perpetually missing.

Liz: Sure, sure. But don't you want more? With him?

Her digital side-eye is very evident even through the phone.

More, echoes in your mind, a refrain that grows louder with each passing second. You do want more; fuck, you want it all. The ring that symbolizes eternity, the family gatherings with kids running underfoot, the shared life built on mutual dreams. And Chan? What does he want?

You’re not sure anymore.

You: Chan's got his own timeline, I guess. 🤷🏽‍♀️

The words are bittersweet as they slip through your fingers. Lucas' reply is immediate, a virtual hug wrapped in concern.

Lucas: Just make sure you're both reading from the same book, okay? Any other guy with common sense would have locked you down already. You’re a fucking catch, chica.

Liz adds a ‘100’ to his comment. You sigh, your finger hovering over the 'like' button before pressing down. A small acknowledgment of their care, yet it feels like conceding to an invisible adversary. There's a tightness in your throat that won't ease, a yearning that refuses to be silenced.

You: Thanks, guys.

A paltry raft of gratitude amidst a sea of unresolved emotions. You set the phone aside, your gaze unfocused as you contemplate the intricate web of feelings and fears that bind you.

Love is never simple, nor is the path it weaves. But as the sun crawls higher, painting the room in shades of hope and trepidation, you know one thing for certain: silence is no longer an option. You need answers, even if they come edged with the possibility of pain. Because without truth, what are you both clinging to but the ghost of a future that might never materialize?

The next day, the doorbell chimes, a soft intrusion that pulls you from the cocoon of your thoughts. Disentangled from the web of brooding reflections, you pad across the cool hardwood floor, curiosity piqued by the unexpected visitor. Your heart skips, half-hopeful, half-restrained as you swing open the door to find Chan's familiar grin, dimples etched deep into his cheeks.

“You have a key….” you say confused.

"I know. But I wanted to surprise you. Surprise!" he says, holding up a basket brimming with the makings of an impromptu Sunday picnic. The gesture slices through the fog of your uncertainties like a beam of sunlight piercing storm clouds. He steps inside, brushing past you with an air of excitement that’s contagious. It’s impossible not to smile back, to feel the warmth spreading through your chest.

"Come on," Chan beckons, grabbing your hand and leading you to the open space of your living room. "Let's make the most of this late afternoon."

You watch him lay out a blanket and adorn it with the decorative pillows from the couch. He meticulously arranges an assortment of cheeses, fruits, and a bottle of your favorite wine. His care, the undiluted attention he lavishes upon this moment, it reassures you in ways words never could. For a while, you allow yourself to be swallowed by the here and now, by the laughter and easy conversation that dances between you.

Three wine bottles in, Chan extends his arms wide like a budget version of Rose in Titanic and dramatically tips backwards into the mountain of cushions beside you.

You burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. “Has the ‘Fallen King’ returned?” you ask when you catch your breath.

“At your service, my queen,” he declares, his voice a blend of mock regality and hilarity, as he joins your laughter.

You roll to lay on your side and watch him pop grapes in his mouth as the memory of the first appearance of Chan’s Fallen King flickers in your mind. It was the first vacation you and Chan had taken with your group of friends.

On a Honolulu beach, Chan was determined to prove that he was an amazing architect and he suggested a sandcastle-building contest. He spent hours sculpting a masterpiece, complete with seashell decorations and a moat dug with the precision of a tiny medieval engineer. Just as he stood back to admire his work, a rogue seagull descended like a feathery wrecking ball, landing in the middle of his creation, sending it crumbling and causing the entire structure to collapse. Instead of accepting defeat, Chan dramatically flopped backwards into the remains of the sandcastle, declaring himself the fallen king of this now bird-conquered beach kingdom, and then promptly snow-angeled the rest of the structure as he laughed at the ridiculousness. It was one of the many moments at the beginning of your relationship that made you fall in love with him.

As night draws its curtain around the room, you stand, swaying slightly to the muted melody of a song that seeps from the speakers. Chan rises to meet you, his hands finding your waist, drawing you closer. You move together, a slow, intimate dance that requires no choreography, just the silent language of bodies in sync. The world shrinks until it's just the two of you, spinning gently in a bubble of shared solitude.

"Thank you for this," you whisper into the crook of his neck, breathing in his scent, a grounding, reassuring presence.

He hums in response, a low, affectionate sound that vibrates against your cheek. "Anything for you."

The music fades into silence, but neither of you stops moving. Instead, you drift toward the couch, still entwined. There, beneath the warm glow of a single lamp, you lower yourselves, a blanket of comfort enveloping you both. His lips find yours, a kiss that ignites yet soothes, that speaks of uncharted depths and the tender surface alike.

"Chan..." Your heart thrums with a cocktail of desire and that persistent, nagging uncertainty. But his touch is insistent, persuasive, guiding you away from the edge of doubts and into the realm of sensation. So you let go, allow yourself to be carried by the current of his affections, convincing yourself that love, in all its complexity, can be enough for now.

"Shh," he whispers against your mouth, a gentle command laced with yearning.

And you do. You feel the heat of his skin, the strength in his arms, the promise in his kiss. It’s seductive, this momentary reprieve from the questions haunting you. Maybe he does need more time. Maybe love is patient after all.

Chan pulls your shorts down, before releasing his throbbing cock from its cage behind the zipper of his jeans. Before you can say anything else, he throws your leg over his shoulder and he’s burying his dick deep within you.

As your bodies move together, a symphony of sounds fills the room: the creaking of the couch, your ragged breaths, and the soft moans and whispered words of endearment that spill from Chan's lips. He tells you that you’re beautiful, that he loves you, that he’s yours. Every touch is deliberate, every kiss laced with intention as he explores the contours of your body with his hands and mouth.

And yet, despite the intensity of your physical connection, there's a lingering hesitation within you. An uncertainty that persists like a thorn in your side, whispering reminders of all the unspoken questions between you and Chan. But he's relentless in his pursuit to banish your doubts, to prove with each stroke and thrust that this moment between you is real, that love can be enough.

But as you sink deeper into the embrace, into the hushed intimacy of whispers and tangled limbs, a part of you can’t help but cling to the hope that these moments are mere preludes to the commitment you so crave.

His lips find yours again, a desperate kiss that leaves no room for second-guessing. You respond with equal fervor, losing yourself in the sensations coursing through your body. His hands leave trails of fire wherever they touch, tracing down to your breasts, teasingly pinching your nipples until they harden between his fingers.

A shuddering breath escapes you when his fingers slip lower still, finding their way between your legs to tease at your clit. A wave of pleasure crashes over you again and again as he expertly builds on each touch until it becomes almost unbearable.

You're barely aware of him pushing up against you, his hips grinding against yours as he relentlessly pursues his own pleasure. His groans fill the air alongside yours until they merge into one symphony, a testament to the raw passion pulsating between you.

In this moment, doubts cease to exist. There's just Chan, just this consuming desire for each other that seems to stretch beyond time and space. You cling to him like a lifeline as he brings you closer and closer to climax, your mind consumed by the heat radiating from every point where his skin meets yours.

For tonight, though, you rest in the eye of the storm, caught between the tempest of your emotions and the tranquil harbor of Chan’s affections, wishing for nothing more than to prolong the illusion of perfect harmony.

****

The clink of glasses and the low murmur of conversations swirl around you, a symphony of corporate revelry. Chan’s law firm hosts these events several times a year. Warm light cascades from ornate chandeliers, casting a golden glow on the sea of suited attendees. Your fingers play with the stem of your wine glass, the cool surface slick against your skin. You search the room for Chan, wondering where he’s gotten off to.

"Quite the power couple, aren't you two?" Chan's boss, Thomas, a silver-haired man with a practiced smile, says as he leans closer across the table. His words are wrapped in congeniality. "You must be excited about his promotion and the potential move. They’d love to get him up at our firm’s headquarters. Your bank also has a branch there, no?”

Your breath catches, a frozen shard in your chest. “In Chicago?” He nods. “Yeah, we do.” The sip of wine you take is tasteless, its usual flavor stripped away by shock.

“So it would be an easy move for you too, right?” The news slices through the evening's ambiance, a stark contrast to the gentle moments of intimacy and reassurance shared not so long ago. It feels like betrayal, not just from Chan but from the future you've woven together in your mind.

You swallow the lump in your throat. “It would,” you squeak out, then plaster a smile on your face.

“Good, good. I’m glad to hear that. Hopefully he’ll make his decision soon.” He gives you a squeeze on the shoulder as he moves to the next table to chat with one of Chan’s coworkers.

Chan's laugh echoes across the room, oblivious to the tremor that has taken root in your world. He returns a few minutes later, all charm and dimpled smiles, sliding into the seat beside you. His hand finds yours under the table, fingers lacing with an ease born of years, as if nothing could ever come between them.

"Hey there," he murmurs, the words a warm breath against your temple before he places a gentle kiss on it. He's close. You want to lean into it, drown in the comfort of his touch like you do so often, but a cold dart of doubt pierces through, sharp and unbidden. "Everything good?" Chan's voice is tinged with concern now, his brow furrowing slightly, a testament to his attunement to your moods.

You nod, forcing a brittle smile. "Just a bit tired from all the socializing," you lie smoothly, the words coated in the honey of feigned contentment. It’s an easy one that you know he’ll accept. You’re not necessarily an introvert, but you’re not the social butterfly that he is.

Internally, you're reeling, questions and accusations tangling like thorns. Does he not see a forever with you? Has this been his plan all along? A solo flight to a new life without you in the picture?

But no – this isn't the time or place for confrontation, despite the sting of uncertainty.

As the night wears on, each tender gesture from Chan feels soothing, but also a reminder of the distance that might soon separate you. The way he brushes a stray lock of hair behind your ear, the softness in his eyes when he looks at you; it’s all there, yet somehow it feels like the prelude to a painful goodbye.

"Let's dance," he suggests playfully, as he stands and offers you his hand. There's an undeniable pull, the magnetic field of his affection drawing you in.

And you follow because it's Chan, because even as your heart wrestles with the fear of loss, your body craves the closeness, the undeniable connection that ignites between you two whenever you touch.

Despite yourself, you allow him to make you laugh as he starts doing body rolls and hip thrusts in the middle of the dance floor, before pulling you close to him to dance against you during the upbeat R&B song. For now, you dance, and Chan holds you tight. But as the evening draws to a close, the echo of his boss' words haunts you, a specter of change looming on the horizon.

****

The flicker of candles casts a warm glow over Chan’s bedroom, softening the edges of your simmering thoughts. He's sprawled on the bed, the epitome of ease, his light brown hair tousled just so, eyes reflecting the candlelight with that gentle and thoughtful look you’ve always found disarming. You trail your fingertips over his sculpted abs, the shadows dancing across his skin as you shift your position to look at his face.

"Chan," you begin, the word a tightrope walk between affection and uncertainty, "Thomas told me you’re being offered a promotion... in Chicago?"

He shifts his position, the springs of the bed creaking beneath him as he turns towards you, and there’s a lilt of dismissiveness in his face before he even speaks. "Oh, that?" Chan brushes it off, waving his hand like he’s swatting away a fly. "It's nothing concrete. Just... a possibility."

Your heart beats a staccato rhythm against your ribs. "But moving to another state, Chan? That’s not just any possibility. It's huge. Why wouldn’t you mention this to me?"

There's a shift in his demeanor, a subtle hardening like frost over glass. "I haven't made any decisions yet," he says, and you notice how he avoids looking directly at you. "It would be a great move for my career, though. I have over a month to think about it."

"Chan... What about us?" The question hangs heavy in the air, clinging to the rich scent of citrus and mint that has become his signature.

He finally meets your gaze, his warm brown eyes now shielding something behind their depths. "You understand, right? You know how important this is for me… to be able to become a junior partner so quickly."

You swallow hard, tasting the bitterness of unmet dreams. Chan assumes your silence is acquiescence, an agreement to the unsaid terms of his potential departure. But inside, a storm brews with doubt, fear, and a desperate longing for the future you envisioned together.

"Of course," you whisper, but the words are ash in your mouth. “And I’m happy for you.” But aren't WE important? you say to yourself, too in your feelings right now to ask it out loud. His hand finds yours, fingers intertwining in a familiar dance, but tonight the touch feels hollow, a ghost of the connection you once believed unshakeable.

As Chan pulls you closer, wrapping you in the fortress of his arms, the nagging feeling clings to you like a second skin. It's the sensation of standing at the edge, peering down into a chasm that separates not just distance, but hearts. Your idealized view of your relationship, once vivid and vibrant, now appears as a mosaic of uncertainties, the pieces drifting apart slowly, almost imperceptibly.

All the while, Chan holds you, his heartbeat a steady drum against your ear, unknowingly serenading the end of an era.

****

You sit cross-legged on the sofa; it still holds the faintest scent of Chan's cologne embedded in its fibers. Your fingers trace an absent pattern on the cushion, a tactile reminder of countless nights spent curled up with him, discussing dreams painted in the hues of a shared future. You sift through memories like pages in a novel you've read too many times, each chapter laden with promises and soft laughter.

And yet, an undercurrent of discord taints the narrative. The images are there—wedding vows exchanged beneath a canopy of stars, the heartbeat of tiny feet pitter-pattering through hallways—but they flicker, unstable, as if threatened by an incoming storm.

The longing for something deeper, something more binding than ephemeral moments of passion, gnaws at you. You've tasted the sweetness of Chan's kisses, felt the electric charge of his touch sparking fire along your skin. But it's the unspoken words, the commitment hanging just beyond reach, that leave you famished, yearning for sustenance. You finally make the decision that it's time to strip away the veneer, to confront the raw, unvarnished truth.

You rise from the couch, resolve hardening like steel within your chest. The air around you feels charged, thick with the gravity of impending confession. There's a certain terror in not knowing how the conversation will unfold, in facing the potential unraveling of the tapestry you've so lovingly woven together.

But the fear is also exhilarating, a heady rush that propels you forward. You need to know where you stand, to see if the foundation you've built is solid or merely a bed of sand ready to shift beneath your feet.

"Chan," you practice the address, your voice low and steady, "we need to talk." The words hang in the air, a declaration of intent. You imagine his reaction, the furrow of his brow, the way he might run a hand through his tousled hair in frustration.

A deep breath fills your lungs, the oxygen emboldening your spirit. You'll speak your truth, lay bare the desires that have been cloaked in silence for far too long. It's a gamble, a roll of the dice with the highest stakes, but you're ready to play.

You reach for your phone, fingers poised over the screen, about to disrupt the delicate equilibrium that’s existed between the two of you over the past few years. Then you pause, allowing yourself one more moment of peace before diving into the tempest. One more heartbeat where everything is still possible, before you step into the unknown and confront the reality of your relationship with Chan.

[capsyst]

To go into more details here, I was astounded to see how much of the original illustrations were… poorly constructed. I’m talking edges of the painted frame in the shot, parts of the characters just missing because they didn’t crop the frame correctly, cels on the wrong layers, cels misaligned… it was surprising how ROUGH these were. More surprising that I never noticed!

Here’s just a sampling of the mistakes I found.

I did my best to correct these little mistakes such as re-aligning the characters to their painted shadows and fixing areas that were not painted or were cropped weird. Here’s an example of me trying to fix the mistakes in the fairy pond setting:

On top of that I tried my best to emulate the way cels were layered on top of each other. I included shadows underneath the animation frames, and even went so far as to introduce mild fogging to the background layers like what happens when you put too many cels on top of each other. When painting the characters I did not correct myself when I made a little mistake, used a dry brush that would intentionally leave cracks and imperfections, and used a slightly darker color for the painted line-work used to distinguish between the light and dark colors. Here’s a close up look of one of the frames to give an example of what I mean.

Before I ran the animation through a VHS filter I also applied film grain, dust, and scratches. I also added a very faint “jitter” to the first and last couple of frames between cuts to simulate the effect of splicing film negatives together. This was something I noticed a lot when watching old anime so I included it here too. Re-watch my animation and see if you can spot the movement between cuts!

A lot of this subtle detail gets lost when the whole thing is run through the VHS filter… but I think that despite this you still “feel” that these elements are there. Even if the filter ended up smoothing out those cracks and imperfections, the tone and roughness still yielded a more authentic look to me and was still worth the effort to put in there.

Overall I’m really proud of the work I did. It was a lot of fun to do and I learned a lot about older anime techniques in my research for this project. I’ll end on my favorite piece of inspiration. To animate Link’s run cycle I studied the way Ghibli and old Toei animations did running. Curiously I discovered most of their runs were only 4 frame long loops and the at no point is there not a foot on the ground!

That’s definitely not how I would want to animate a run, but that’s how they did it so that’s what I emulated!

Anyway, hope you all enjoy the video!

I always liked the anime illustrations in the original NES Zelda manual, and it saddened me to find out these weren’t actually part of a real animated promotion for the game. So I decided to take those illustrations and re-create them as if they were!

Enjoy this long-lost VHS promotion for the Legend of Zelda on the Nintendo Entertainment System!

Voice narration by Streamy McDreamy

Animated in Procreate and Procreate Dreams.

View this video on YouTube here.

[theladyyavilee]

it's just me and my roughly 700 visually-stunning-screenshots-I-took-while-watching-the-next-prince against the world

[thedrotter]

In the terms of cookie run kingdom you're kinda like the pure vanilla to my shadow milk cookie

i dont play crk but my friend explained to me the lore and those 2 sounded so much like yuu and shunkun so i had to(ФωФ)

(+process pics in read more!!!)

never drawing cookie run kingdom clothing ever again I fought for dear life even though ive drawn genshin clothing before /j

[beloveds-embrace]

(a low-effort, self-indulgent post about 141 x sunshine reader with a love for flowers <3)

Moving to a military town had been a gamble. You weren’t military, had no family in the service, and you had no real reason to pick this particular place other than the fact that it was safe, stable, and quiet. The houses were affordable, the people were friendly enough, and you figured you could make a home here. Besides, you were far enough from the base to avoid their early morning drills but close enough to still feel secure.

And it was nice. Really, it was.

The town had its charm. It was small, orderly, and filled with people who were either part of the military or had long grown used to living in the shadow of it.

You just hadn’t expected it to be so… plain.

Everything was muted, designed for practicality rather than beauty. Row after row of beige houses, identical porches, yards that were neat but uninspired. It felt more like a barracks than a town, and you knew you wouldn’t last long surrounded by such monotony.

So, you changed it.

Within a week of moving in, your porch was transformed into a floral wonderland. Ivy and jasmine vines trailed along the railings, hanging baskets, overflowed with cascading petunias, swung from the beams, and the front steps were lined with carefully arranged potted blooms. Roses, marigolds, lavender- anything that could inject some color and life into the dull uniformity of the street.

And the town noticed.

It started small- passersby slowing down, lingering in front of your house, knocking to ask if they can take pictures. Then came the comments at the local market.

“Did you see the new house on [] Street? The one covered in flowers?”

“I thought I was dreaming- looked like something out of a storybook!”

“Oh, that’s her place. She’s always out there, tending to them. Such a sweet thing, always smiling.”

And then came the soldiers.

One morning, while you were watering your newest additions- lilies this time- a group of soldiers on their way to base slowed in front of your house. Their conversation died off, replaced by muttered confusion.

“Didn’t know we had a damn botanical garden in town.” One of them said, adjusting the strap of his gear bag.

“Are those-” Another squinted at your newest arrangement. “Does she change them?”

“She does,” a woman in the group confirmed; you had seen her before, you were sure. “Saw her planting new ones last week. Honestly, it’s nice.”

You smiled to yourself, pretending not to notice as they carried on their way.

But it didn’t stop there.

Another soldier stopped during his run, hands on his hips as he took in your porch. “Hell of a setup.” He commented, glancing at you.

“Thank you!” You beamed, wiping your dirt-streaked hands on your shorts. “Wouldn’t want the town looking too drab, now would we?”

His lips twitched. “Well, you’re succeeding.”

More and more soldiers began to take notice. Some just passed by with lingering glances, others stopped to admire the work. A few even asked for gardening advice- one particularly flustered private admitted he wanted to impress his girlfriend with a flower arrangement but had no idea where to start. You happily helped him pick out a selection, even wrote him a little care guide.

It wasn’t just the passing soldiers, either.

Older women in town would stop by just to chat about your arrangements, some even bringing over cuttings from their own gardens. Parents would pause during walks, their children pointing excitedly at the bright flowers and fairy lights you had strung along the porch. The local baker started leaving small bags of cookies at your door with notes like, Your flowers made my morning brighter!

And then there was Task Force 141, as they’d eventually introduce themselves to you.

The first time you caught Captain John Price standing on your sidewalk, arms crossed as he stared at your house, you thought you were in trouble. He had the kind of presence that demanded respect- commanding, observant, the weight of experience in every movement.

“You lost?” you teased anyways, adjusting a pot of marigolds, and hoping he wouldn’t consider you disrespectful.

Price huffed a quiet laugh, eyes flicking between the vines, the flowers, the fairy lights. “No. Just… wasn’t expecting this.” He gestured vaguely at the floral explosion around you.

“Well,” you grinned. “I refuse to live somewhere that looks like a training camp. You are the soldiers, not me.”

That had been the start of it.

Soap was the next to visit. He showed up a few days later, leaning against your railing as he inspected a cluster of bright yellow sunflowers. “Got any of those that’ll survive my terrible luck?”

You hummed, then handed him a small, sturdy succulent. “Try not to kill it.”

Then came Gaz, who always claimed he was “just passing through” but somehow always found himself near your house. He asked questions- what flowers worked best for balconies? His mum has a love for tending to flowers as well. Did you have any recommendations for someone who had never taken care of a plant in his life?

Regardledd, you happily enjoyed chatting with him, and he left with a small potted fern, promising to send updates.

And then there was Ghost.

Ghost never exactly visited, but you saw him. Once, when you were rearranging your display and muttering about getting new soil, you spotted him standing across the street, arms folded as he observed your work. He didn’t say anything- just gave a barely perceptible nod before disappearing back into the shadows.

But the next morning, a heavy bag of high-quality soil rested against your porch steps. No note. No explanation.

But from what the others had told you of him… you knew who it was from.

The townsfolk had opinions about that, too.

“That group’s been sniffing around your place an awful lot,” Mrs. Holloway, the town baker, noted one morning as she handed you a fresh loaf of bread. “You got yourself a security detail, dear?”

You laughed, shaking your head. “I think they just like the flowers.”

The butcher, a gruff man who had lived in the town longer than anyone, grunted in agreement. “Good. Those boys need something nice to look at.”

Even the local barista took notice. “Gaz came in the other day asking if we had any floral-themed drinks,” she giggled, leaning in close to you. “I swear, he’s trying to impress you.”

Ultimately, the town adored what you were doing. Where once there had been dull uniformity, now there was life. People started adding their own touches- small flower pots, window boxes, even a few hanging baskets inspired by yours. The air felt lighter, more welcoming.

And the 141?

They had seen the worst the world had to offer. They had fought in places where beauty was a distant memory, where survival took precedence over everything else.

Yet, somehow, you- sunshine incarnate, with dirt-streaked hands and a smile that could brighten even the darkest day- had managed to burrow into their hardened hearts.

[ilovemilestellersmoustache]

Just a Tuesday

Bob Reynolds x Reader

Summary: Bob’s decides he can’t take the silence in between missions all alone so he ventures around New York and stumbles across a flower shop with the most gorgeous owner he just knows is his soulmate. Problem? He accidentally says he has a girlfriend, and is now finding ways to still see her at the shop.

WC: 3.4K

Part Two

⸻

The city was quiet in its own crooked, charming way, a quiet that didn’t mean stillness so much as a familiar undercurrent of life. Horns honked lazily in the distance, feet slapped hurriedly against wet pavement, and sirens wailed somewhere far off, like the city sighing through its teeth. New York never truly slept, never fully silenced itself. But that morning, something about it felt subdued. Or maybe it was just Bob.

The Thunderbolts had shipped out hours earlier, some hush-hush mission in the wooded dead zones of upstate New York. Hydra remnants, government paranoia, it didn’t matter. Bob hadn’t even asked for the details. He didn’t need to. He already knew how it went.

He wasn’t invited. He never was.

Not because they didn’t want him. Not exactly. But because they couldn’t. Bob couldn’t let the Sentry, a walking nuclear option, out with the other side. His powers didn’t come alone. They came with him. With it. With the thing inside him that clawed at the walls every time he even considered using them. The Void.

So he stayed behind. Again. Grounded like some too-big dog who might accidentally maul the mailman if someone dropped the leash.

It was becoming routine.

He wandered the long, sterile halls of the Thunderbolts’ tower like a ghost, half-drifting from room to room. He paced. Sat. Stared out windows like they might show him something besides concrete and clouds.

Then he reorganized his comic collection.

Then he reorganized it again, once alphabetically, once by publisher, and once by how the covers made him feel.

He tried baking. Banana bread. Twice. The second loaf burned slightly at the edges, but he ate it anyway, standing barefoot in the kitchen in a hoodie that didn’t fit quite right anymore, wondering if this was what it felt like to live in a snow globe.

The silence pressed in.

It wasn’t peaceful. It was thick, elastic, suffocating in the way only loneliness and fear disguised as control could be. The kind of silence that makes your ears ring just to remind you you’re still alive. The kind that made Bob itch beneath his skin. Made the Void whisper.

He could feel it, coiled and patient, somewhere deep inside. Like a shadow beneath his heartbeat, waiting.

He couldn’t risk it. Not even a flicker of light. Not even a sliver of power. Because when he let the Sentry out, the Void always followed.

And so he didn’t fly. Didn’t lift. Didn’t glow. He stayed grounded. Human. Harmless.

Until that morning, when he simply couldn’t take it anymore.

So Bob Reynolds did something rare. Something almost revolutionary in its simplicity.

He put on his shoes, shrugged into his old zip-up hoodie, pulled the hood over his messy blond hair, and left the house.

Just Bob. Just the city. Just the hope that maybe, somewhere out there between the cracked sidewalks and overpriced coffee, something might remind him how to feel like a person again.

⸻

It was the kind of gray morning that felt like rain was near, the sky heavy with clouds the color of wet concrete, soft and close like they might fall if you looked at them wrong. The kind of morning that muted the city’s chaos just enough to make you believe something meaningful might actually happen.

Bob zipped up his worn hoodie and pulled the hood over his unkempt hair, letting the city swallow him whole. No plan. No direction. Just feet on pavement and the low, steady thrum of New York waking up around him.

He moved through it like a ghost, unnoticed and unremarkable, past bodegas stacked with sun-faded chip bags, past graffiti-tagged corner stores and cafes spilling steam onto the sidewalk, past a man outside a laundromat playing a saxophone with the kind of fury that suggested jazz is the only genre.

Bob might’ve kept walking, might’ve looped the city like he always did until the static in his head quieted, but then the air shifted.

Not in the way he was used to. There was no warning chill, no thunder in his chest. No Void whispering from the seams of his mind.

This was different.

It was subtle, almost fragile. A sudden burst of scent, fresh, sweet, alive.

He turned instinctively, like he’d caught something moving just outside the corner of his eye. And that’s when he saw it.

A flower shop.

Delilah’s. It sat tucked between a wine bar and an antique bookstore, almost too charming to be real, like someone had dropped it in from a movie set. The windows were fogged slightly with morning dew, framed by climbing ivy and painted lettering in faded gold.

He might have kept walking, honestly, he meant to. But then he glanced through the window.

And there you were.

Behind the counter, surrounded by wild arrangements of roses, tulips, peonies and eucalyptus, your hands moving with gentle precision as you wrapped twine around a bouquet. You laughed, something light and true, and tilted your head just slightly as you tucked a final bloom into place for a customer.

Bob froze.

There were things he understood deeply. The gravitational force of the sun. The pressure of time against skin. The weight of a million lives resting on your shoulders. The yawning, endless black of the Void.

But you?

You were something else entirely.

Not celestial, not apocalyptic. Not a vision or a threat. You were, real. Warm. Human in the most impossible, breathtaking way.

And radiant.

Not in the way Bob knew radiance, that blinding power he kept caged behind his ribs. Yours was quieter. A kind of glow that came from being good without needing to prove it. A light that didn’t demand to be seen, but somehow illuminated everything around you.

He panicked.

He stared for exactly three seconds too long, long enough to feel the shame settle into his spine, then spun around like someone who had forgotten how walking worked. His steps became frantic, clumsy, too-loud against the pavement. His heart thudded like a warning bell in his chest.

He didn’t stop until he was three blocks away, chest tight, ears ringing, hoodie pulled low enough to shadow the flush in his cheeks.

But it was already too late.

You were in his head now.

⸻

The next day, Bob found himself walking down the same street.

He told himself it was just coincidence. A convenient route. A longer way to the coffee shop he didn’t even like. But as his steps drew him closer to Delilah’s, his breath hitched in his chest the same way it had the day before.

There you were again.

Through the window, sunlight filtered in golden shafts, catching the strands of your hair as you leaned over a vase. You were laughing, again. Laughing, like joy came easily to you. Like the world hadn’t ever tried to crush it out of you.

Bob didn’t go in. He passed by without turning his head. Except, of course, he did turn his head. Just for a second.

Just enough to see you tuck a flower behind your ear, all soft petals and easy grace, and that was it, he was done for.

And then he came back.

The next day.

And the day after that.

He tried to keep it casual, though casual had never really been in Bob’s skillset. Hoodie pulled low, hands jammed in his pockets, shoulders hunched like he could somehow fold himself into invisibility. A blur of anxious glances, a carefully calculated pace, fast enough to look like he had somewhere to be, slow enough to not miss a glimpse of you.

Some days, he walked past three times. Four. He’d loop the block like a lost tourist, count red lights as a stall tactic, curse how obvious it felt. But you never seemed to notice. You were always busy, greeting customers, arranging spring displays, tying ribbons around wrapped stems. Bob had learned you hummed when you worked. That you wore your hair different every other day. That you had a habit of smiling to yourself when no one was watching.

Except someone was.

Every day, he nearly walked in.

He’d pause near the corner, heart thudding painfully hard against his ribs, hand twitching like it wanted to reach for the door. But the moment would pass. Panic would settle in his chest like a stone. He’d picture himself stammering, fumbling, freezing, ruining whatever spell your world had unknowingly cast over his.

So he didn’t.

Not yet.

⸻

It was day eight when Bob finally cracked.

Something in him gave out, maybe it was the way your laugh echoed through the glass that morning, or how the corner of your mouth lifted as you tied a ribbon with practiced care. Or maybe it was just the quiet that waited for him back at the compound, the echo of empty halls and silence that pressed too hard on his lungs.

Whatever it was, it propelled him forward.

His hands were sweating. Badly. The kind of clammy, panicked sweat that soaked into the sleeves of his hoodie. His heart pounded like war drums in his chest as he stood across the street, psyching himself up like he was about to disarm a bomb instead of walk into a flower shop.

When he finally crossed and pushed open the door, it felt like stepping into another world. The bell above the frame jingled, a small, cheerful sound that somehow made it worse. More real.

The air was warm and sweet with the smell of fresh blooms, eucalyptus, and something soft like jasmine. Everything was bright and lush and beautifully chaotic, with flowers arranged in mismatched vases and shelves lined with little ceramic pots and twine. It was nothing like the cold steel and concrete of his usual life.

Bob stepped in like a man who was unsure of everyting, reverent, terrified, entirely unsure of himself.

You looked up from behind the counter and smiled.

“Hi there!” you greeted, voice honey-light. “What can I help you with?”

Bob opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Then opened it again as his brain hit the emergency eject button.

“I, uh—I need flowers,” he said, his voice about an octave higher than normal. “For uh-“

“My girl-..? Uh-“ Bob mentally cursed himself for saying. He didn’t have a girlfriend? He could barely speak to people in general, he got mixed up in his thoughts thinking about this girl and him wanting her to be his girlfriend.

A beat of silence.

You blinked once, then smiled wider, completely unbothered. “Aw, that’s sweet! What’s the occasion?”

Occasion?

Girlfriend?

Right. The lie. Commit to the bit, Reynolds. Commit to the bit.

“It’s just…” Bob cleared his throat, shifting awkwardly. “Tuesday. And she, uh… likes Tuesdays.”

He winced internally. Likes Tuesdays? Really?

But you just giggled, an actual, genuine giggle, and began pulling tulips from a nearby bucket.

“That’s adorable,” you said warmly. “Honestly, I wish more guys bought random flowers just because. What kind does she like?”

Bob’s brain went blank. Static. He couldn’t remember a single flower that existed, except one color.

“Purple.” he said. Confidently. Like it was a personality trait.

You didn’t even pause. “Nice. Irises and lavender, then. They go beautifully together.”

With the grace of someone who’d done this a thousand times, you bundled the bouquet in brown paper and tied it with string, then handed it over like it was nothing.

Bob took it like it was everything.

“Tell her she’s lucky.” you said with a wink.

He managed a noise that might have been “thanks.” shoved a few crumpled bills into the register tray, and turned to leave. His foot caught on the doorframe. Naturally.

Outside, he all but sprinted back to the tower, clutching the bouquet like it might break if he breathed too hard. Once inside, he stuck it in a vase, then stared at it. For an hour. Maybe two.

The flowers sat perfectly still on the counter.

His pulse didn’t slow for the rest of the day.

⸻

It became routine.

Every few days like clockwork, Bob would return, hoodie zipped, hands fidgeting, nerves jangling. Each time, he walked through the door of Delilah’s with a new bouquet request for his completely imaginary girlfriend.

“She likes lilies now.” he said on a Wednesday, eyes darting anywhere but at you.

“Big fan of sunflowers.” He claimed the following Monday

You always played along. No judgment, no suspicion. Just that same warm smile, that same easy grace.

But something changed.

You didn’t just ring him up and send him on his way. You talked to him. Really talked.

You asked what kind of food he liked “Is banana bread a food group?”, what movies made him cry “Okay, but Paddington 2 is a cinematic masterpiece, don’t judge me”, and what he thought the best pizza joint in Manhattan was “That’s a loaded question and I refuse to start a borough war”.

You told him when to visit Central Park for the best view of the cherry blossoms, which corner of the East Village had the best dumplings, how the city sounded different just after rain, quieter, but softer.

You laughed at his awkward jokes. Teased him when he flubbed his words. Every bouquet he bought came with a little extra, a sprig of rosemary, a twist of eucalyptus, a single daisy tucked in with a wink. “Just because.” you’d say with a shrug.

And then came the days when he stopped pretending altogether, well, mostly.

He still mentioned his “girlfriend.” but he stopped buying flowers.

Instead, he brought coffee. A scone. A wrapped muffin from the bakery two blocks down.

“She had a dentist appointment.” he said one morning, sheepishly placing the cup on the counter. “I, uh… just happened to be in the area.”

You raised an eyebrow, amused. “Uh huh. And you just happened to bring my favorite latte?”

“…She likes vanilla.”

“Does she now?”

He nodded, perhaps too vigorously. “She loves it. Obsessed, really.”

You smirked, taking the drink. “Well. She has excellent taste.”

He flushed. A little too pink in the cheeks, a little too jittery in the hands. But he stayed. Leaned against the counter while you prepped arrangements. Asked questions about dahlias and peonies, even though he barely remembered which was which.

It wasn’t just about the flowers anymore. Or the lies.

It was about you.

Your voice, your laughter, the way you scrunched your nose when you miscounted stems or forgot where you put your scissors. The way you always looked so at home in the chaos of petals and twine and color. You were the kind of beautiful that didn’t announce itself, it radiated.

And Bob was caught in your orbit.

He just hadn’t figured out what to do about it yet.

⸻

[joelsrose]

Feels Right (Part 2)

warninnggssss omg stepdad!joel smut - this is not everyones cup of tea so pls pls be warned also as always 18+ for smut, otherwise to the of age freaks pls enjoyy hehhehe

TW: pls pls pls be warned !!!! this is dirty as fuck !!! stepdad!Joel | peepaw-coded filth | age gap (legal but still unwell) | power imbalance | gaslighting (loving) |manipulation (oop)| face-riding | oral - female receiving | daddy kink (like a huge one) | infidelity | overstim...

Part 1 here

You woke in your childhood bed with the morning light slanting through the blinds, casting soft stripes across the room like it hadn’t witnessed sin just hours before, like everything was still innocent and untouched—but the moment your thighs shifted beneath the sheets, the truth came flooding back, thick and hot and humiliating in the most delicious way. The slickness clinging to your skin, the soaked-through panties that had dried against you uncomfortably, the faint ache between your legs—it wasn’t a dream.

Joel had been there. He’d sat at the foot of your bed, legs spread, hands clasped between them like he was just resting after a long day, but there had been nothing casual about the way he looked at you, nothing accidental in the way his voice dropped low and coaxing, rough as gravel and honeyed with want. He hadn’t stumbled into anything, hadn’t walked in by mistake or tried to back out—no, he’d stayed, eyes dark and heavy, and whispered things that made your body move before your brain could catch up. “Go on, sweetheart,” he’d said, voice all soft encouragement and something unspoken underneath, “Don’t gotta be shy. Not with me. Show me how you do it when you think no one’s listenin’.”

And God help you, you had.

Your hand had slipped between your thighs with a trembling boldness, fingers slicking through your folds as Joel watched, never blinking, never flinching, like he’d been waiting his whole life to see you like that—open, needy, and doing exactly what he told you to. And when you’d come—legs shaking, breath caught in your throat, your stepfather murmuring “that’s it, that’s my girl” like it meant something—you hadn’t even thought to be ashamed.

You wanted him to see. You wanted to be good for him. You wanted more.

And now, in the stillness of morning, wrapped in the scent of your own arousal and the ghost of his voice in your ear, you knew exactly what had happened—and worse, you knew it wasn’t the end.

You checked your phone with trembling fingers, the screen lighting up with a simple message from your mother—“Gone to the shops. Back soon x”

You padded down the stairs slowly, barefoot and quiet, every creak of the wood beneath your feet sounding deafening in the silence. You didn’t know what you were hoping for—maybe that he’d gone with her like he always did, like he should’ve, and this whole thing could stay where it belonged, suspended in the fog of last night. You could pretend he hadn’t watched you touch yourself in the bed where you used to fall asleep clutching stuffed animals, pretend he hadn’t sat there in the shadows with his big hands gripping the edge of the mattress like he was fighting off a goddamn primal urge, coaxing you through it like a man on the edge of something permanent and wrong.

But the minute you reached the bottom of the stairs, you knew.

You rounded the corner cautiously, the hem of your cotton shorts brushing against your thighs, heart thudding like a secret against your ribs, and there he was—Joel—sitting on the edge of the worn leather couch like nothing had happened, one ankle crossed over the other, newspaper draped casually across his lap, a half-drunk mug of coffee in his hand, steam curling lazily into the morning air. The television was on, low and distant, casting muted flashes of color across the lines of his face, but he wasn’t watching it—not really. He was still, thoughtful, his eyes scanning the page with that quiet, deliberate focus you’d always associated with him, like the world couldn’t rush him if it tried.

You were about to retreat, feet moving in silent panic, the urge to flee crawling up your spine like something instinctual and animal—because how the hell were you supposed to look him in the eye after what you’d done, after what he’d said, after the way your body had arched for him like it was his to command? But before you could slip away, his voice rang out, smooth and low, laced with something unreadable.

“Good mornin’,” he said, not lifting his head, just glancing up at you from over the rim of his glasses with those tired, dark eyes that always saw more than they should, always made you feel like you were stripped bare even when fully clothed. He took a slow sip of his coffee, never breaking eye contact, the corner of his mouth twitching just slightly as he swallowed and set the mug down on the side table with a soft clink, the sound delicate and final, like punctuation to a thought he hadn’t said out loud.

Your breath caught, caught hard, because there was nothing casual in the way he looked at you—not with that slow, lingering gaze that flicked down to your bare legs and then back up again, nothing rushed, nothing hidden. He didn’t smile. He didn’t smirk. He just watched, like he was waiting to see what you’d do now, standing in front of him in your little top and sleep-rumpled hair, trembling under the weight of everything that had passed between you in the dark.

And all you could do was stare back, throat dry, knees unsteady, wondering how the hell you were supposed to survive being in the same room with him—when every part of your body remembered what it felt like to come apart just from the sound of his voice.

You stood there frozen in the doorway, your fingers curling around the hem of your shirt like it might anchor you, like it could hide the fact that your entire body was thrumming with something hot and guilty and unspeakably alive. “Hi—good morning,” you managed, your voice a little too light, a little too breathy. You shifted your weight from one foot to the other, cheeks warm, eyes flicking anywhere but his—until they landed on his coffee mug, the newspaper, the soft flicker of the TV, the utterly normalcy of it all, which only made the heat in your belly twist harder.

“I thought you went to the shops,” you said, quieter now, like maybe if you kept your voice soft enough, he wouldn’t hear the way your heart was pounding, wouldn’t notice the nervous tremble in your fingers or the shameful press of your thighs beneath your cotton shorts. Your words hovered in the space between you, light as dust, but the weight of them was unbearable, full of everything unspoken—you shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t want you, we shouldn’t have crossed that line, but we did, didn’t we?

Joel’s eyes never left you. He leaned back slowly against the couch, the leather groaning under his weight, one arm draping over the backrest like he had all the time in the world, like he knew exactly what you were thinking and was content to let you squirm in the silence. His glasses slid a little lower down the bridge of his nose, and he looked at you over the rim with that same unreadable gaze, calm and steady and devastatingly male.

“Didn’t feel like goin’,” he said finally, voice low and warm, rough like gravel softened by honey. “Figured your mama’d be fine on her own.”

And the way he said it—casual, easy, like it was the most natural thing in the world—only made your stomach drop, because it wasn’t natural. It wasn’t normal. Nothing about this morning was.

“Christ, darlin’,” he murmured, setting his mug aside with a quiet clink that felt far too loud in the stillness between you, his voice cutting through the room with that deep, familiar drawl that always felt like it came from somewhere lower than his chest, like it was carved out of something older, heavier, more dangerous. He tilted his head just enough to look at you fully, brows drawn slightly in concern—or maybe curiosity—his gaze sweeping over you in that slow, deliberate way of his, the kind that always made your skin heat and your breath catch even when he didn’t say a word. “You’re lookin’ at me like you’re scared of me.”

You swallowed hard, the knot in your throat tightening as you shifted in place, arms crossed like a weak shield, but your voice—though soft—held no hesitation. “I’m not scared,” you murmured, eyes flicking up to meet his, wide and steady, even if your pulse was doing somersaults under your skin. And it was true—you weren’t scared. You were wired, rattling with nerves and guilt and something molten that pooled low in your belly, but you weren’t afraid. Not of him.

Joel watched you for a moment longer, something unreadable flashing behind those tired eyes of his, and then he exhaled slowly, the tension in his shoulders melting just a fraction. “Good,” he said, and the word came out more like a rumble, warm and rough like it had to scrape its way out of him. He folded the newspaper in half with careful fingers, set it down beside him, and leaned back in the couch like he owned the whole room, legs spread just slightly, one hand resting across his thigh, the other reaching out—beckoning, calling, commanding—with the faintest curl of his fingers.

“C’mere.”

Simple. Low. Quiet. And yet it landed like a thunderclap in your chest.

Your breath stuttered, and for a second, you didn’t move—not because you were unsure, but because you could feel the weight of the moment shift, like the floor had tilted beneath you.

He noticed your hesitation, of course he did—he noticed everything—and like he always did, Joel leaned forward with the kind of slow, deliberate ease that made the room feel smaller, hotter, heavier with something unspoken, his elbows resting on his knees as his voice dipped into that low, husky register that always managed to melt your spine. “Come on, babygirl,” he hummed, the nickname thick with heat and affection, a gentle tease soaked in sin, his mouth curling just slightly as he let the words stretch slow and lazy in his throat, “don’t make me beg.”

And God, how did he say things like that—so casual, so sweet, so devastating—like he didn’t know what it did to you, like he didn’t already have you falling apart with just a look?

You walked toward him then, your legs stiff and uncertain, your breath shallow, like every step toward that couch was pulling you deeper into some dream you weren’t sure how to wake from. You felt like a deer stumbling through tall grass—skittish, wide-eyed, clumsy in your own skin—and it wasn’t who you were. You weren’t some blushing, nervous little thing who forgot how to speak around men, but around Joel, everything in your brain went soft and slow, turned to syrup and static, like nothing else mattered except the space between you and the heat in his eyes.

When you finally reached him and stopped, unsure and awkward with your arms crossed protectively in front of your chest, Joel looked up at you like he was taking in a sunrise—like he had all the time in the world to just sit there and look at you—and you felt your breath catch all over again. His face, weathered and beautiful, every line carved with time and experience, his deep brown eyes impossibly warm, a shade that always made your knees weak, and that beard, thick and soft and shadowing the hard line of his jaw—he was so handsome it hurt. And then his hands, those big, capable hands, reached for you like he had a right to, settling on your hips with a quiet sort of confidence, thumbs rubbing slow, absent circles through the fabric of your shorts, grounding you, claiming you, calming you—and you watched them, stared like you were hypnotized, lips parting, brain empty.

“How’d you sleep?” he murmured, and his voice wasn’t teasing now, just gentle, intimate, the words curling against your skin like a blanket fresh from the dryer.

And just like that, the girl who had mouthed off her whole life, who’d never backed down from anything, was reduced to a blushing, bashful mess beneath the weight of his gaze. You couldn’t even meet his eyes. Your cheeks burned, your lashes fluttered, and something soft and shaky caught in your throat, because somehow this man—your mother’s husband, for God’s sake—had undone you completely.

Joel tilted his head then, smiling like he knew, like he loved it, that slow, crooked smile full of patience and quiet promise, and you swore the room spun just a little.

“You’re real pretty when you’re shy,” he murmured, almost to himself, almost like it was a secret meant for no one but the space between your bodies.

“You… you can’t say that,” you murmured, the words slipping from your mouth in a whisper so soft it felt like they barely existed, your eyes still cast down, lashes lowered as if that might soften the weight of everything hanging in the space between you. Your voice was tight, caught somewhere between protest and plea, the heat in your cheeks blooming all over again as his hands stayed firm on your hips, thumbs brushing in slow, easy circles like he hadn’t just shattered the fragile line between right and wrong with a single sentence.

Joel tilted his head, one brow lifting, his smile widening just a little—amused, indulgent, unbothered. “Can’t say what?” he said, voice smooth and rich, a teasing hum that curled down your spine. “That my stepdaughter’s pretty? Huh? ’Cause it’s just the truth, sugar. Don’t think there’s a law against honesty.”

The word—stepdaughter—hit you like a jolt, echoing in your chest, reverberating somewhere low in your gut, shame and arousal tangling so tightly you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. It felt wrong, it should’ve felt wrong, but the way he said it—so casual, so easy, like it was the most natural thing in the world to call you that and still hold you like this, like he wanted to say it while his hands were on your body—made your breath stutter all over again.

You shifted on your feet, blinking hard, your voice barely steady when you asked, “Did… did mom say anything?” You still couldn’t look at him, not with the way your heart was pounding and your skin was buzzing, not with his hands still warm and heavy on your waist. “I mean—when you went back to your room. After.”

Joel let out a low chuckle, the sound rough and honeyed, and your stomach did a slow flip, because that sound was always dangerous—soft and lazy, like he knew something you didn’t. “Your mama?” he said, drawing the word out with a shake of his head, “She was out cold, sweetheart. Think she drank too much wine. Again.”

He laughed quietly to himself like it wasn’t anything unusual, like it was just another evening in a long stretch of a dull domestic life—and maybe for him it was. Maybe last night hadn’t been a life-altering moment of madness, maybe it had just been inevitable.

You nodded, slow and uncertain, your lips parting just slightly like you wanted to say more but didn’t trust your voice, didn’t trust yourself not to crack under the weight of it all—and that’s when Joel moved, gentle and deliberate, reaching for your wrist with one of those big, weathered hands that always made you feel too small, too soft, too young. He lifted your arm with a tenderness that made your breath hitch, and without breaking eye contact—not even for a second—he pressed his mouth to the inside of your wrist, right over the place where your pulse throbbed wild and frantic beneath your skin. His lips were warm, slow, deliberate, and his eyes stayed locked on yours as if he needed you to feel it everywhere, needed you to remember the way it felt to be touched there, kissed like that, seen like this.

“What I wanna know,” he murmured against your skin, his voice low and molten, seeping into you like heat through the floorboards, “is if you felt good last night. Hmm?” He didn’t ask like a man seeking validation. He asked like someone already sure of the answer, just wanting to hear you say it—needing to hear you admit it, out loud, right here in the daylight.

You swallowed thickly and nodded again, barely breathing, your voice trembling on a single word. “Yeah.”

And that was all he needed.

He smiled then—slow and crooked, like it pleased him more than he wanted to admit—and he hummed, the sound a deep, contented vibration from the back of his throat that made your knees want to give. “Good,” he said, soft and approving, thumb brushing once more across the inside of your wrist before letting go, like he’d branded you there, like the ghost of his mouth would never really leave.

He leaned back just slightly, eyes dragging over you again, darker now, thoughtful. “Now…” he drawled, voice thoughtful, almost lazy, like he was working something out in real time, “I know you can make yourself feel good, babygirl. Real good. But that ain’t what I’m wonderin’ anymore.”

You blinked, heart thudding, every nerve suddenly alive.

Joel tilted his head, that half-smile still on his lips, and added, “What I’m wonderin’ now is… do you want me to make you feel even better?”

And there it was—laid out plain, low, and filthy in that Southern murmur of his, not a question but a promise, the kind that made your thighs press together instinctively, your breath falter, your whole body buzz with the thrill of being wanted by a man who shouldn’t, who knew better, and didn’t give a damn.

You swallowed hard, your throat suddenly dry as cotton, eyes wide and lips parted, voice barely more than a breath when you whispered, “How?”—a question so innocent it betrayed the wildfire already curling low in your belly. “I mean… how would you do that?” you added, stumbling through the words, not out of fear but out of need, the kind that made you dizzy and warm all over, the kind that left no room for shame.

Joel chuckled low, that gravel-and-honey sound curling around your spine, rich with amusement but soft with affection, and the way he looked at you—like you were the sweetest little thing he’d ever laid eyes on—only made the heat behind your ribs burn hotter. “You sound real sweet when you ask things like that,” he said, voice slow and fond, as if he were savoring every syllable you gave him. “But the answer’s easy, sugar… whatever you want. However you want it. However you need it.”

Your gaze dropped instinctively, almost helplessly, flicking down to where his jeans stretched tight across his thighs, to the outline pressing stubbornly against the denim, thick and heavy even in rest, and your breath caught in your chest as your mouth went dry for a whole other reason. You hadn’t meant to look—but your body was ahead of you, craving, already remembering the low rumble of his voice last night and imagining what it would feel like to have him inside you, really inside you.

He noticed, of course he did. Joel’s brows lifted, his mouth twitching in amusement like he could see every filthy thought flickering behind your eyes. “Not yet, darlin’,” he murmured, shaking his head just a little, and there was something dangerous in the way he said it—like a warning wrapped in velvet. “You ain’t ready for that. Gotta get you loosened up first. Gotta work you open nice and slow, stretch you out so you can take all of me. Otherwise…” he trailed off, letting the implication hang heavy between you, smirking slightly as he tilted his head, “well, let’s just say I don’t wanna hurt my best girl.”

And all you could do was blink, dazed, pulse fluttering wildly in your neck, not even embarrassed anymore, just overwhelmed by the sheer weight of want sitting thick in the air around you. “Oh,” you breathed, soft and stunned, your legs trembling where you stood.

Joel reached up then, one hand brushing your hip again, the other sliding lazily down your arm, fingertips ghosting along your skin as he looked up at you like he was already picturing it—already planning it. “How ‘bout my mouth, huh?” he said, almost a whisper, a question laced in promise, in filth, in reverence. “Let me get you ready with my tongue. Open you up real gentle. Make a mess of you before I even fuckin’ touch anything else.”

You bit your lip, teeth sinking into the soft flesh like it might ground you, like it could keep you from making another terrible, beautiful decision—but Joel’s hand was already sliding lower, fingers curving possessively over the swell of your ass, kneading with slow, deliberate pressure, not like a man in a hurry, but like someone savoring something earned, something he’d been waiting for. His grip wasn’t greedy—it was intimate, reverent, the pads of his fingers pressing into you like he was memorizing every curve, every soft place that belonged to him now, at least in this moment.

“But my mom,” you whispered, breath catching at the edge of panic, but not quite falling into it, not with his hand still on you like that. “She’ll be back soon.”

Joel didn’t miss a beat. He just tilted his head with that low, amused smile pulling at the corner of his mouth—like he knew better than you did, like he’d already planned this out in his mind a hundred times. And then, somehow—like it was the easiest thing in the world—he coaxed you into his lap, strong hands guiding you effortlessly until you were straddling his thighs, thighs thick and warm beneath you, denim rough against your bare legs, and his eyes didn’t leave yours for a second, dark and steady and heavy with intent.

Then his mouth was on your neck, hot and damp and devastating, lips dragging open kisses along your skin as the rough stubble of his jaw scraped you raw in the most delicious way, each slow kiss branding you like he was marking you for later, like he wanted your skin to remember his mouth long after he was gone. His tongue flicked over your pulse, and you swore he groaned low in his chest when he felt how fast it was fluttering.

“You know your mama takes forever shoppin’,” he murmured against your throat, voice rough and wicked and so sure of himself it made your stomach flip, his hands moving at the same pace as his words, guiding your hips into a slow, lazy grind over the bulge in his jeans. “I could make you cum at least three times ‘fore she even makes it outta the wine aisle.”

You gasped, not just at the filth of his words, but at the way he said them—like he wasn’t teasing, like it was just fact, like he’d already seen it in his head: you falling apart in his lap, soaked and ruined, breathless and begging, all while your mother compared pinot noir prices three suburbs away.

And you didn’t even argue—couldn’t, really—because with the way his mouth was dragging down your neck and his hands were tightening on your waist, every thought you had was unraveling too fast to hold on to.

And then his mouth was on yours—sinful, hot, wet—and just like that, the world narrowed to the searing press of lips and the slow, molten slide of his tongue against yours, and you forgot everything.

You forgot that this was Joel—your mother’s husband, the man who made coffee every morning with his sleeves rolled up and kissed her cheek with that same mouth now devouring yours like he was starving. You forgot that he wasn’t supposed to be doing this, that you weren’t supposed to want it, because when he kissed you like that, like he already knew every secret your mouth had ever held, like his tongue had been made to move with yours, slow and deep and devastatingly sure, there was no room left in your mind for guilt.

He kissed you like he’d waited years for it. Like he’d dreamed of it in silence, in secret, and now that he had you, he wasn’t going to waste a second. His hand cradled the back of your neck, fingers buried in your hair as he tilted your head the way he wanted, needed, guiding your mouth against his with a tenderness that bordered on desperation. And it was hot, not in a rushed, clumsy way, but in the kind of way that made your toes curl, your thighs clench, the kind of kiss that made your whole body ache with the slow realization that no one had ever kissed you like this—like they wanted to memorize you, ruin you, keep you.

You whimpered into him, soft and helpless, clutching at the collar of his shirt like it was the only thing tethering you to the ground, your fingers curling into the fabric, bunching it in your fists as his mouth moved against yours with maddening slowness.

Joel groaned, deep in his chest, like your little sounds physically affected him, like your pleasure was a trigger inside him. “Goddamn, I love it when you make those sounds for me,” he murmured against your lips, his voice thick and reverent, honeyed and rough, that Southern lilt curling around each word like a caress. “Make me crazy, darlin’. Could kiss you forever.”

And the way he said it—kiss you forever—didn’t sound like a line or a promise or a plea. It sounded like a truth he’d just uncovered, and you believed him. God help you, you believed him.

“All right,” he murmured, finally pulling back, and the loss of his mouth on yours felt like the world shifting on its axis—sudden, dizzying, wrong. You blinked up at him, dazed and breathless, your eyes wide and glassy, lips kiss-bruised and swollen, your chest rising and falling in shallow little gasps like you’d just surfaced from somewhere deep and dangerous, and Joel looked at you like he was proud of that—like he liked seeing you like this, pliant and overwhelmed and barely hanging on.

“Gotta taste you, baby,” he said next, voice thick with hunger and something darker underneath—something that didn’t ask, didn’t beg, just declared, as if it had already been decided, already done. His eyes didn’t leave yours, didn’t flicker or waver, but they darkened right in front of you, going heavy and low like smoke curling under a locked door, like you could see the shift in him—the descent, the change from tender to possessive—as if that kiss had stripped away the last layer of patience he’d been clinging to.

And then, without loosening his grip on your hips, hands still holding you steady in his lap, he leaned in, voice dropping to a gravel-soft whisper as he said, “Want you to sit on my fuckin’ face.”

It hit you like a blow—sharp, hot, filthy—and your breath hitched so fast you nearly choked on it, your thighs tightening around his as your body tried to comprehend just how badly he meant it. His gaze dragged slowly down your body, then back up, and when he met your eyes again, there was nothing sweet left in him. Just need—that dangerous, grown-man kind, the kind that didn't plead, didn't play fair, just took.

“Need you up there, sugar,” he rasped, voice like honey poured over gravel, his thumbs stroking your skin like a pacifying gesture, though the look in his eyes was anything but soft. “Let me get my mouth on that pretty little pussy ‘til you’re cryin’ for me. Want you to look down and see me starin’ up at you while you fall apart, just like last night—but this time, with my fuckin’ tongue in you.”

“You trust me, don’t you?” he added, voice soft now, coaxing, hands slipping under your shirt, warm and sure and possessive. “Then be a good girl and let me taste what’s mine.”

You were aching—truly, undeniably aching now—soaked through and dizzy, your breath caught somewhere between embarrassment and anticipation, your body already betraying you long before you could find the words. The fresh pair of panties you'd slid on after your shower that morning, cotton-soft and meant to make you feel clean and normal again, were already damp, ruined, clinging to you in a way that made it impossible to ignore just how much you'd let him unravel you with nothing but his mouth and a few dangerous words. You shifted in his lap, thighs tightening, trying to will away the throb between your legs, but it was useless—he felt it, and he knew.

Joel’s gaze never left yours. His hands gripped your hips a little tighter, steady and anchoring, and then he cocked his head slightly, eyes soft but sharp—like he was studying you, reading every flicker across your face. “You ever sat on a man’s face before?” he asked, low and rough, but somehow tender, like the question wasn’t filthy at all, just curious, almost concerned, like he needed to know before he went further.

Your lips parted, shame blooming hot across your cheeks, and you shook your head slightly before you could stop yourself, stammering, “I—I’ve never…”

Joel’s expression didn’t shift into surprise, didn’t turn mocking. Instead, it softened, deepened—something proud flickering in his eyes as his thumb brushed across your hipbone in a slow, grounding motion. “That’s okay, baby,” he murmured, and the way he said it—low and sweet and just a little too warm—made your whole chest tighten. “Let daddy be the first.”

He said it like a promise. Like a corruption.

“You don’t gotta be shy with me, sweetheart,” he added, his voice dipping into something darker, older, coaxing, the kind of voice that wrapped around you like a warm blanket and made you forget what was right. “I’ll teach you how good it can feel. I’ll show you real slow, take my time with you, show you how much I like it when a pretty little thing like you gets all messy and shakes on my tongue.”

You gasped at that—soft and instinctive—and he smiled, soft, pleased, like he’d just unlocked something, like every part of this was unfolding exactly how he wanted. His hands slid down to cup the backs of your thighs, squeezing gently, guiding, encouraging—like it wasn’t wrong, like he was doing you a favor.

“That’s it,” he whispered, “Don’t worry about a thing. You just sit that sweet pussy on my mouth and let me take care of you.”

“Okay,” you breathed, the word tumbling from your lips before your mind had time to catch up.

“Good girl,” Joel hummed, low and satisfied, the praise curling around your spine like a hot hand as he leaned in and reached for the hem of your t-shirt, fingers swift and sure, tugging it up and over your head in one smooth motion before you could so much as blink. The cotton landed on the floor with a whisper, forgotten, and suddenly you were bare-chested in his lap, skin flushed, breath caught, and you didn’t care.

You didn’t care that your mother could be pulling into the driveway at this very second, keys jangling in one hand, a shopping bag in the other. You didn’t care that the house was rigged with security cameras that Joel himself had installed—wired into every corner, including the living room where you now straddled him half-naked, soaking through your panties and trembling beneath his gaze. You didn’t care that this man, this older, worn, married-to-your-mother man, had his big hands sliding up your sides like he owned you.

All you knew was the heat of his palms as they cupped your breasts—firm and hungry, calloused thumbs brushing your nipples until they peaked under his touch, until you arched into him with a gasp you couldn’t control.

Joel groaned, deep and filthy, the sound scraping up from his chest like he’d been holding it in for years. His fingers dug in as he kneaded your tits, not delicate or unsure but possessive, like he had every right to touch you like this, like this wasn’t something borrowed but something that had always been his.

“Jesus,” he muttered, almost to himself, dark eyes flicking between your breasts like he couldn’t decide which he loved more. And then, with a low laugh that chilled and scorched you all at once, he added, “These’re a hell of a lot prettier than your mama’s.”

Your breath caught—scandalized, wrecked—and you moaned without meaning to, thighs tightening around his hips as the line between shame and arousal blurred until it didn’t exist at all.

His mouth descended then—hot and open, hungry—and he kissed and nipped at your chest with a desperation that made your head spin, his tongue swirling around your nipple before pulling it between his teeth with a low growl. You whimpered, loud and breathless, clutching at his shoulders, and he pulled back just enough to murmur against your skin, “You moan real sweet when I suck on ‘em like that. Gonna make it my job to hear that every damn morning.”

And as wrong as it was, with your chest heaving and his mouth all over you, your stepfather’s hands gripping you like he’d never let go—you wanted that too.

“So pretty and perky for me,” Joel murmured, lips dragging over the curve of your breast as he spoke, the words half-swallowed against your skin, low and reverent and possessive, like he was speaking straight to them—not you—like your tits were something sacred that belonged to him now. His tongue flicked lazily over your nipple, then again, and the groan that rumbled from his chest was filthy, like it pained him to stop. “So soft, baby… fuckin’ perfect.” His voice dipped lower, barely a breath now, dark and gravel-thick with hunger. “Bet your mama never looked like this when she was your age. Bet she never tasted this sweet.”

You whimpered, back arching, your body moving on instinct—pushing forward into his mouth, into his teeth, like your skin was begging for him, like every inch of you had been waiting for this exact moment without ever knowing it.

But just when you thought you’d melt entirely into him, Joel pulled back with maddening calm, his hands sliding down your sides like he was taking his time, like he was admiring his own work. Then he patted your thigh once, firm and final. “Stand up, babygirl,” he said, leaning back slowly against the sofa, one arm thrown lazily over the backrest, the other trailing down to the curve of his thigh. “Take all of that off. Want you bare.” His gaze roamed over your flushed chest, the curve of your waist, the trembling of your thighs like he was etching you into memory, like you were a painting come to life—and his to strip.

You stood slowly, nerves crackling under your skin like fire, every movement shy but magnetic, compelled by the way he looked at you—not like a girl, not like his wife’s daughter, but like a woman he was about to consume. The cotton shorts slid down your legs, your ruined panties following, and you stepped out of them with shaking hands, now completely naked in the middle of the living room—the one where you’d opened Christmas presents, where your mom hosted wine nights, where Joel installed the goddamn security system that might’ve been watching you both right now—and yet… all you could feel was heat.

Joel didn’t move. Just leaned back further, legs spread, jaw tight, and eyes burning.

It was dizzying, the power imbalance—him fully clothed in denim and flannel, the scent of coffee still lingering on his skin, and you, butt-naked in the soft morning light filtering through the blinds, every inch of your skin exposed and wanting.

“You look like a fuckin’ dream,” he said, voice rough with restraint, dark with something filthy and low. “My sweet little girl. All grown up. Standin’ there like you were made for me.”

And he said it like he believed it. Like this—you, bare and blushing, in your childhood home—was always how it was meant to end.

“You think I’m pretty?” you asked, voice soft and uncertain, the question slipping out like a confession you hadn’t meant to speak aloud, a fragile thing cradled in trembling breath. You stood there—completely bare, skin warm and pink in the morning light, chest rising and falling with every shaky inhale—and for a moment, something inside you tightened, afraid of what he might say, of how quiet the room suddenly felt with those four little words hanging between you.

Joel looked up at you slowly, his gaze traveling the length of your body with something close to awe—not just lust, not just hunger, but a deep, bone-deep reverence, like you were something holy and unrepeatable, like you were a secret he’d been trusted with. .

“Baby,” he said, shaking his head slightly, that crooked, tired smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, “pretty don’t even come close.”

Joel extended his hand toward you, slow and steady like he was asking for something sacred, not sinful, palm up and waiting, and without thinking—without questioning—you placed yours into it. Yours looked so much smaller cradled in his, delicate and trembling against the calloused strength of his fingers, and he gave it the gentlest squeeze before tugging you softly toward him, guiding you like he had all the time in the world.

“C’mere, babygirl,” he murmured, voice low and coaxing, that dangerous mix of comfort and command dripping from every syllable. “Let me show you how this’s done.”

You let him pull you closer, straddling his lap again—but this time, he was leaning back on the sofa, one arm braced along the cushions, the other slipping down to your hips, guiding, positioning, his touch warm and steady as he helped you move. You were awkward at first, hesitant, unsure of where your knees should go, how your legs should spread, how close you were supposed to get—but Joel didn’t laugh, didn’t tease, just murmured soft encouragements under his breath like he loved that you needed help, like he wanted to teach you, shape you.

“Just like that, honey… there you go. Ain’t gotta be nervous,” he whispered, his hand sliding from your thigh to your lower back, pressing lightly to arch you just so. “You’re doin’ perfect. Fuck, look at you—sweetest little thing I’ve ever seen.”

And then suddenly—God, somehow—you were hovering over his face, thighs shaking as they spread wider, your bare heat so close to his mouth you could feel his breath ghosting over you, warm and reverent, and your whole body lit up like a live wire. You couldn’t look down.

Joel tilted his head back, eyes locked on your pussy like it was the fucking holy grail, mouth parted slightly like he was about to start praying. His grip on your hips tightened, grounding you in place, and then he groaned—deep, guttural, like the scent of you hit him all at once and knocked the wind out of him.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, baby,” he rasped, eyes fluttering shut for a second like he needed to recover from it. “Smell so fuckin’ sweet. Like you were made to sit on my face.”

The moan that spilled from you was instant, involuntary, shameless—your whole body trembling at his words, at the way he said them, like you were a drug and he’d been starved for a fix.

“Don’t be shy now,” he whispered, voice barely a breath as he looked up at you again, dark eyes blazing with hunger and something far worse—adoration. “Go on and give it to me, sugar. Let me taste that perfect little pussy. Promise I’ll take care of you better than anyone ever has.”

“I—uh,” you stammered, a soft, breathless laugh bubbling from your lips, bashful and unsure, your voice trembling like the rest of you as you looked down at him through your lashes, your thighs trembling on either side of his broad chest. “How… how will you breathe?” you asked, the question so sweet, so innocent, it made Joel groan low in his throat like it hurt him.

Joel chuckled softly, his thumbs rubbing soothing little circles into your skin, and then he added, voice low and coaxing, “You worry too much, sugar. Just let daddy take care of it. You just sit that pretty thing right on my mouth and hold on tight. Let me show you what a real man can do with no air in his lungs and his stepdaughter drippin’ down his throat.”

And the worst part—the sickest, most shameful part—was the way your hips tilted forward, instinctively, like your body was already saying yes, even if your mind was still spinning.

“Enough talkin’,” Joel growled, his voice suddenly rougher, deeper, edged with something sharp and molten—and before you could even process the shift, his hand came down hard on your ass, a sharp smack that echoed through the living room and made you yelp, more shocked than hurt, your body jolting forward in instinct. The sting bloomed fast, heat flashing across your skin—and before you could so much as whimper, he was gripping your hips tight with both hands and yanking you down, forcing you onto his mouth like he’d lost every ounce of self-control he’d been pretending to have.

You gasped—no, choked—a sound ripped straight from your lungs, loud and broken, as your pussy met the full, hungry heat of his mouth, his tongue already working like a man possessed. He groaned the second he tasted you, that low, guttural noise vibrating directly against your core, and it was diabolical, the way he moaned like you were his favorite meal and he hadn’t eaten in weeks.

Your entire body lurched forward, instinctively bracing your hands on the back of the couch behind his head, your thighs shaking, your breath stuttering as your mouth fell open, lips parted in a silent scream. The sound—his sound, the groan he made the second you were on his face—echoed inside you, down your spine, into your chest, like it rewired your organs, like it knocked the air out of your lungs and replaced it with something molten.

And still, he didn’t let up.

Joel dragged you closer, his grip bruising now, hands spreading you open for him, his face buried so deep it was like he wanted to drown in you—and maybe he did. Maybe that was the point. Maybe he wanted to die like this, with your thighs shaking around his ears and your scent all over his lips, his stepdaughter made into something sweet and sacred between his teeth.

“You taste better than fuckin’ heaven,” he muttered into you between strokes, and you whimpered, already unraveling, already gone.

It was unreal—otherworldly, even—the way Joel ate you out, like he was a man on death row and you were his final meal, and he was determined to savor every last second of it, every twitch, every moan, every drop. From your vantage point—perched above him, thighs trembling, hands gripping the couch behind his head for dear life—you could barely breathe, let alone think.

His tongue lapped at you with slow, deliberate drags at first, warm and too good, circling your clit with the kind of finesse no boy your age had ever dreamed of having—this was a man who knew what he was doing, who enjoyed it, needed it, who moaned into you every few seconds like your pussy was the most sacred place he’d ever been. And fuck, his hands—those big, rough, hands—kept trailing up and down your body, not just holding your hips but gripping them, spreading you wider, sliding up your waist, curling over your belly like he wanted to keep you still and feel everything at once. He reached up once, palm flat against your chest, and squeezed your breast in rhythm with his tongue, and your entire spine arched like he’d struck a chord deep inside you that no one had ever dared touch.

Every time he pulled back to breathe, to talk, you thought you might fall apart from just seeing him—lips red, chin soaked, his beard shining with your slick, mouth swollen like he’d been drinking from you. His voice came out wrecked, voice low and cracked, soaked in sin. “Fuckin’ messy for me, ain’t you, babygirl?” he rasped, his breath fanning hot across your cunt as he pressed a kiss to your inner thigh, biting the skin gently like he couldn’t stop tasting you. “Sittin’ on my face like a goddamn dream, makin’ a mess all over me. Look at you.”

You moaned, loud and desperate, your fingers twisting into the cushion behind you, and Joel grinned like the devil, dragging his tongue back through your folds slow, then curling it up—and your body jolted like he’d struck you.

He pulled back again, licking his lips, your slick clinging to his stubble. “You feel that?” he whispered, tone low and gleefully cruel. “That’s my tongue, baby. That ain’t a toy. That ain’t some fumblin’ college kid who don’t know what the fuck he’s doin’. That’s a man eatin’ pussy like he’s supposed to.”

And then—like he hadn’t just destroyed you with words alone—he pulled you down again, arms tightening around your thighs as he buried himself in you with a growl, groaning into your pussy like your taste was his salvation, like this—you—was what he’d waited his whole damn life for.

And all you could do was take it. Eyes shut, mouth open, body shaking—because no one had ever touched you like this. No one had ever devoured you like they were grateful just to be allowed.

You groaned, a sound ripped raw from your chest—as your whole body started to burn, your thighs quivering violently around Joel’s head, your back arching as every muscle locked tight with that wild, helpless tension only seconds before release. “I’m—I’m gonna—fuck—I’m gonna cu—” you stammered, the words spilling from your lips in broken pieces, high-pitched and desperate, your voice choked with sobs and need and the unbearable heat coiling tight in your belly. You were a mess, a stuttering, trembling, wrecked little thing, and he didn’t let up—not for a second.

Joel’s hands gripped your thighs harder, bruising now, controlling, holding you right where he wanted you as his tongue moved in relentless, devastating circles, flicking against your clit with that same impossible precision that had already dragged you to the edge once, twice—again. You shattered with a scream, your body convulsing above him, your hips bucking in his grip—but he didn’t stop.

He kept going.

The orgasm tore through you, brutal and all-consuming, but Joel didn’t ease off, didn’t slow down—his mouth stayed latched, his tongue deeper, filthier, like he wanted you sobbing, wanted you shaking so bad you couldn’t remember your name.

“Take it,” he growled between licks, his voice muffled and soaked, so deep into you that your vision blurred, so relentless it felt like his mouth was etched into your skin. “That’s it, baby. Be a good girl and fuckin’ take it. Daddy’s not done with you.”

You sobbed, shoulders shaking, hands clawing at the back of the couch as tears rolled freely down your cheeks—not from pain, not from fear, but from the sheer overwhelming pleasure, the shattering fullness of it all, the way he kept licking, kept sucking, even as your body tried to twist away from him. But he held you firm, grounded you with those hands, those stepdad hands that never stopped touching, like he couldn’t bear to be away from any part of you.

“Mm, look at you,” he panted, when he finally pulled back for a breath, his mouth and beard soaked, glistening with your slick. “Cryin’ on my face. You cummin’ that hard for me, sweetheart?” His eyes were wild with need, lips swollen, dripping. “You never had a man really eat this pussy before, huh?”

You couldn’t even answer—your mouth hung open, lips trembling, breath coming in ragged little gasps as your entire body trembled like a live wire, the aftershocks of your second orgasm still shuddering through your limbs when another wave crashed over you. A third—God, a third—and it stole your breath, your thoughts, your ability to do anything but sob, every nerve raw and overstimulated as Joel kept going, licking and groaning and sucking like a man starved. You wailed, high and broken, legs twitching as your hips bucked once, then stilled entirely, your strength gone.

And finally—finally—Joel eased up, his hands loosening their bruising grip on your thighs, his mouth slowing to a few soft, reverent licks before he kissed your inner thigh with something dangerously close to affection. You collapsed forward with a whimper, body slack, boneless, ruined, your limbs trembling as your chest pressed to his, your cheek finding his shoulder, hot and damp with tears and sweat. He caught you effortlessly, wrapping his arms around your waist, drawing you into his lap like you weighed nothing, like you belonged there, like you always had.

“There she is,” he murmured into your hair, his voice thick with satisfaction, fingers stroking your spine in lazy, grounding motions. “My good fuckin’ girl. Took it all, didn’t you?”

You couldn’t speak, could barely move, your fingers twitching weakly against his chest.

And then—the sound.

The sharp crunch of tires over gravel outside. The soft groan of the gate opening. The car pulling into the driveway.

Joel’s head snapped up instantly, his arms still locked around you, and then—so calmly, so dangerously collected—he licked his lips, wiped his soaked mouth with the back of his hand, and was already moving. “Shh,” he whispered as you whined, dazed and whimpering, “I got you. Let daddy take care of it.”

In seconds, he had your ruined panties tugged up your thighs, the fabric sticky and damp, your t-shirt slipped over your head like he’d done it a thousand times, smoothing it down over your trembling body. You could barely lift your arms, let alone help, but he didn’t need help—he just dressed you, quick and efficient, like this was routine, like he knew how to hide a mess. Then he lifted you into the corner of the couch, tucked a throw blanket over your bare legs, and ran his fingers gently through your hair, whispering, “You rest, sugar. You did so good.”

The front door creaked open a second later.

“Joel?” your mother’s voice called from the hallway, casual, distracted. “Can you help me with the bags?”

Joel stood, gave you one last look—soft, smug, filthy—and then turned toward the door.

“Comin’, sweetheart,” he called back, already walking toward her. “Lemme get those for you.”

You blinked slowly, barely able to lift your head as you watched him greet her in the entryway. She smiled—smiled—and leaned in to peck him on the lips like it was nothing, like she wasn’t tasting the ghost of her daughter on his mouth.

He kissed her back, warm and easy. “You get the pinot you like?” he asked, casual as sin.

“Mm,” she nodded, brushing past him, “if they haven’t jacked the price up again.”

And just like that, he turned back once, eyes flicking toward you under the guise of nothing, his lips twitching in that same crooked, knowing smile—and you knew, in that moment, he hadn’t just ruined you.

He owned you.

˚₊‧꒰ა 𓂋 ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

i hope yall enjoyed xxx

[lackadaisycats]

I’m obsessed with the Lackadaisy comics way of shading/colouring! Could you please give a tutorial of how you do that and what brushes you use?

Here's a sample I used for the Lackadaisy Essentials art book. About 98% of the time, I'm not using specialized brushes - just basic soft and hard-round brushes, with various opacities.

Digital scan of the establishing shot pencil drawing - I added some some grid lines on top to double check the 1-point perspective. I didn’t include the characters here because I knew I’d be using the art as a background for more than one panel in the comic.

Initial lighting pass - This was done almost entirely by burning shadow directly into the pencil art scan. This way, I preserve a lot of my pencil lines (rather than painting over them) and the grain of the paper remains in play. This helps retain a sort of aged, natural media look despite the largely digital nature of it.

Contrast and brightness adjustments - Here I hand-painted more minute details into the rug, decor and fixtures with small diameter round brushes. I drew a wallpaper pattern on a separate canvas, then applied it as an overlay layer here too. And, of course, the characters arrived as raw pencils on new layers.

Character compositing and color wash - I didn't want to go fully monochrome with the colors, but I also didn't want to treat this like a full color digital painting. Instead, I opted for something resembling a warm-to- cool wash, achieved with a color layer on top of the grayscale base. Young Mordecai and Rose were toned to match the scene with a combination of burning, dodging and painting.

Lighting effects and atmosphere - Overlay layers can be used to push warm values into a much more saturated, vibrant place than a color layer alone can manage, and that's what I did here to create the streaming sunlight. I used a screen layer to include overexposure on bright colored elements as well. Floating dust motes in the light were added for atmosphere, and I polished the characters up with their own color and overlay layers to match the scene.

There's another, older process breakdown here on the Lackadaisy web site too, if you want more information.

[tender-rosiey]

SUKUNA AND HIS SHY DAUGHTER BONDING TIME WHEN?!?! Reader can be present and discreetly takes their pictures (sukuna pretends not to notice).

guided lines — ryomen sukuna x f!reader

a/n: congrats we now have cameras in the heian era and BIG BIG thanks to @bluebell33 and @soupie-writer for beta-reading <33

it’s a quiet afternoon in the heian household, the kind of stillness that comes after the chaos of the morning has settled.

the courtyard is bathed in golden sunlight, casting soft shadows along the wooden floorboards, and the faint rustle of the wind carries the scent of blooming wisteria.

you lean against the doorframe, peeking through the slightly open shoji screen into the courtyard where your husband and daughter are seated.

it’s a rare sight to see sukuna like this—relaxed, unguarded, the sharp lines of his usual stoicism softened as he sits cross-legged on the floor.

your daughter sits opposite him, her tiny hands clutching a paintbrush far too large for her delicate fingers.

the scroll of parchment between them is already half-filled with colorful smudges and haphazard lines, a far cry from anything artistic, but, hey, the effort is there.

“hold it properly,” sukuna instructs, his deep voice carrying just enough patience to make you pause in the hallway.

he reaches out to adjust her grip, his large hand completely engulfing her tiny one as he guides the brush to the paper.

she ducks her head shyly, murmuring a soft, “okay, papa.”

you bite back a smile, the term still so foreign yet so endearing coming from her lips.

sukuna doesn’t respond, at least not verbally, but his movements slow as he helps her make another stroke on the parchment.

you slip inside quietly, camera in hand.

sukuna had gifted it to you on a whim months ago, claiming he had no use for “trivial inventions,” but you’d quickly discovered his disinterest didn’t extend to being the subject of your photos.

he always pretends not to notice, but you’ve caught the subtle shifts in his posture whenever he knows your lens is trained on him—straightening his back, tilting his chin just slightly.

raising the camera to your eye, you adjust the focus, the scene coming into view with perfect clarity:

sukuna’s broad frame hunched slightly as he leans closer to d/n, his expression uncharacteristically soft, her tiny fingers smudged with ink and her lips pursed in concentration.

the sunlight catches the faint scar over his nose, the curve of his jawline, the tension in his hands as if he’s holding back his full strength.

click.

the sound is quiet, but his ear twitches ever so slightly, and you know he’s caught on. he doesn’t look at you, though, his attention remaining fixed on the little girl in front of him.

“what is that supposed to be?” he asks, nodding toward the splotchy shape she’s drawn.

“a bird,” she whispers, the pink in her cheeks deepening.

he raises a brow, and for a moment, you’re sure he’s about to tease her—sukuna’s sense of humor is sharp, often cutting, and you’ve had your fair share of exasperated sighs directed his way.

but instead, he tilts his head thoughtfully, as if trying to see it from her perspective.

“it…has wings,” he says finally, and her face lights up, a smile spreading across her features.

“you think so?”

“it’s obvious,” he replies, though his tone is far from dismissive. “draw another.”

you stifle a laugh, adjusting your position to capture another angle.

sukuna’s patience with a child isn’t something you’d ever expected to witness, let alone document, and it’s a side of him you treasure more than you’ll ever let on.

click.

this time, his gaze flickers toward you, just for a split second. it’s not a glare—more of a warning, the faintest quirk of his lips betraying his amusement.

you grin back at him, unrepentant, and he huffs quietly before returning his attention to your daughter.

“your brushwork is sloppy,” he comments as she attempts another bird, her little hands trembling slightly as she draws a lopsided wing.

“I’m trying,” she murmurs, her voice barely audible.

he leans back slightly, his arms resting on his knees as he watches her.

“try harder,” he says, but there’s no edge to his tone, only a challenge—a nudge toward improvement.

click.

this time, d/n notices, her wide eyes darting toward you. “mama, what are you doing?”

“nothing,” you lie, lowering the camera with a sheepish smile. “just admiring my two favorite people.”

she beams, but sukuna groans, dragging a hand down his face. “stop filling her head with nonsense,” he mutters, though the faintest hint of pink dusts his ears.

“it’s not nonsense,” you argue, stepping closer and crouching beside them.

d/n immediately crawls into your lap, clutching her brush in one hand and smearing ink on your sleeve in the process. you don’t mind, your focus entirely on the man in front of you.

she giggles, resting her head against your chest as you pull her close.

“papa’s really good at drawing,” she says, pointing at the bird he’d drawn earlier as an example. “he helped me with mine.”

sukuna shrugs, “someone had to make it look like a bird.”

you laugh, the sound light and warm, and his eyes linger on you for just a moment longer than necessary.

it’s subtle, almost imperceptible, but you know him well enough to catch it—the way his gaze softens, the way his shoulders relax just slightly.

later that evening, after your daughter has fallen asleep, you’re sorting through the photos on your camera, sukuna seated beside you on the porch.

he doesn’t say anything, but you can feel his presence, the quiet strength of him a comforting weight at your side.

“you know,” you say, breaking the silence, “I think these might be my favorite pictures yet.”

he glances at the screen, his expression unreadable. “you’re too sentimental.”

“maybe,” you admit, leaning your head against his shoulder. “but I can’t help it. you’re both so... precious to me.”

he doesn’t respond, and you take it as a sign for the comfortable silence to take over again.

but your husband presses a kiss to the top of your head that leaves you speechless till the end of the night.

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copyright © tender-rosiey

do not copy or plagiarize or I will kiss you

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[dksfml]

off my face - yjw

pairing: jungwon x reader genre: soulmate au, mega FLUFF word count: 6.6k summary: in a world where each person has a soulmate mark indicating where they will be touched by their soulmate for the first time, there’s jungwon—the soccer team captain you’d like to be ruined by forever—who has no soulmate mark at all. what does that make you, someone whose mark has changed color because of him? author's note: finally!! here's your most awaited blond jungwon fic that i skipped sleep for<3333 inspired by this amazing prompt my friend sent me.

One touch and you got me stoned. Higher than I've ever known. You call the shots and I follow. Sunrise, but the night still young. No words, but we speak in tongues. If you let me, I might say too much.

You sat near the front row, posture perfect, eyes narrowed as Professor Min’s lecture on ancient mythology took a surprising turn. Today’s topic wasn’t just history—it was soulmate lore, the mysterious marks everyone was born with, and the myths that surrounded them. The professor’s calm, seasoned voice filled the room, but the air buzzed with barely contained excitement. Everyone was alert, even the usual back-row whisperers, captivated by the promise of something rare: a sanctioned discussion about their most private marks.

“These soulmate marks,” Professor Min began, his gaze sweeping the room with a faint smile, “are said to be the final traces of a bond forged in a past life. Legends tell us that in each lifetime, we may be separated from our soulmates, lost to distance or circumstance. But the marks,” he gestured to his own faintly darkened palm, “are said to be the soul’s way of leaving a trail—a reminder.”

A murmur rippled through the room. Everyone had a mark, a small patch of inky darkness, as distinct as fingerprints, mapped out on their bodies. Some had them on their palms or fingertips, waiting for the day a handshake or brush of fingers would light up that mark with color. Others had them in more curious places, whispering of fated touches in the most unlikely moments.

"The legend says," Professor Min continued, "that these marks were painted by one’s soulmate in a past life, a vow made in hopes to meet again, to find each other across time."

You clenched your pen a little tighter, the faint tickle of wonder battling the urge to keep your expression blank and unfeeling. You’d always kept your interest in soulmate marks private. They seemed so full of mystery, and the idea of your soulmate waiting for you somewhere was oddly… reassuring. You glanced down, conscious of the mark behind your knee, hidden like a strange secret that even you could barely understand. What kind of first touch would even reach there? The thought was both amusing and baffling, and you stifled a wry smile.

Around you, other students leaned in to chat, loud enough that their conversations blended into a steady hum. Your classmate Arin nudged her friend, laughing as she displayed the faint mark on her palm. “I’ve been dying to know who’ll shake my hand one day,” she whispered excitedly, her eyes glimmering with hope.

But your gaze drifted just beyond Arin, landing instead on a familiar figure lounging in the middle row with his legs stretched out, looking every bit like he was born to disrupt things without lifting a finger. Jungwon. Handsome in a way that seemed almost unfair, with striking, dark eyes framed by lashes that cast subtle shadows on his cheeks, and hair the color of midnight that fell in soft, tousled waves. He had this effortless, magnetic presence that drew people toward him, like he knew he didn’t need to try.

As captain of the soccer team and one of the most well-known faces on campus, Jungwon somehow managed to look both sharp and relaxed, as if the attention his looks or reputation brought him meant nothing. You’d been crushing on him since last year, an avid fan always present at his games, cheering him on like a lovesick fool. Whenever he scored a goal, you felt your heart leap, and you couldn’t help but unleash your inner fangirl, your excitement spilling over as you screamed his name. Right now, he seemed half-listening to his friends, a hint of a lazy grin tugging at the corners of his mouth as he leaned back, eyes drifting up to the ceiling before refocusing on his friends. It was that easygoing confidence that made him impossible not to notice—and, for you, impossible not to think about.

It was a boy from his friend group, Jay, who interrupted the class chatter by slapping a hand down on the table and teasing, “Come on, Won. You don’t have a soulmate mark, my foot. No one gets off that easy.” The comment was light-hearted but loaded, and more than a few students turned to look.

To your surprise, Jungwon didn’t react with one of his usual witty comebacks or careless shrugs. Instead, he just rubbed the back of his neck, a hint of something almost vulnerable flashing across his face. “No, really,” he insisted, almost apologetically. “I don’t have one. I checked a million times as a kid.”

Your pen paused mid-note, and a slight, irrational disappointment prickled in your chest. It was hard to believe, especially about someone like Jungwon, whose very presence seemed destined to leave a mark on others. Soulmate marks might be rare, but someone like him not having one? It felt impossible, like a missing piece that no one noticed until it was too late.

For a fleeting moment, you wondered if maybe he just hadn’t found it yet. After all, some people only discovered their mark when it finally turned to color. Sometimes it wasn’t a visible spot on the skin but something far subtler—a shadow in the hue of their lips that would only brighten after a first kiss, or a darkness lingering in an eye, invisible until the gentle touch of someone wiping away their tears brought it to life. The thought sent a strange warmth to your cheeks as you glanced back toward him, wondering if Jungwon’s missing mark was just waiting for the right person to unlock it.

Still, he looked surprisingly honest, a faint hint of sadness clouding his otherwise bright gaze. For someone so magnetic, it was as if he was caught drifting in space, without any tether connecting him to anyone at all.

“Alright, alright,” Jay relented, raising his hands in surrender but laughing all the same. “Guess someone’s too cool to be fated to anyone, huh?”

The professor’s voice cut back in, and you forced yourself to refocus, though your mind lingered on Jungwon’s quiet expression and the flicker of something in his eyes, something both resigned and deeply private. Could he really be alone in a world where everyone else was bound to someone?

“Imagine having your mark on your knuckles,” Arin whispered beside you with a grin, oblivious to the moment that had just passed. “You’d probably knock your soulmate out before you even realized they were ‘the one’!”

Another round of laughter scattered through the room, like a shared inside joke. The air felt charged, as if everyone were suddenly curious about each other’s marks, glancing around with new eyes. You let out a small sigh, tapping your pen against your notebook with a faint smile. As much as you tried to keep up the class president, model-student act, the idea of soulmates fascinated you in a way you’d never quite admit.

When the bell finally rang, the room filled with that familiar end-of-class chaos. You started packing up, keeping your head down—until you noticed Jungwon slinging his bag over his shoulder, looking effortlessly put-together, as usual. He laughed at something his friend said, his expression relaxed, his dark eyes flickering with amusement. But you couldn’t help catching the faintest flicker of something else in his gaze as he glanced at his friends—like a momentary, unguarded look that felt… wistful?

Okay, maybe that was just you being overly imaginative.

You let out a little huff as you slung your own bag over your shoulder, shaking off the strange pity you’d felt moments before. So what if Jungwon didn’t have a mark? You barely even knew him. Well, you kind of knew him, but from a distance—and with way more daydreams than you’d like to admit. Still, it was silly to wonder about him, right? With your head full of these thoughts, you walked out into the hallway, lost in a world where maybe, just maybe, he was wondering about you, too.

And as you brushed past a group of friends, laughing and shoving each other, your hand slipped over the back of your knee, where your own mark was hidden—quiet, waiting, and as mysterious as ever.

The sky was an endless blue, stretching wide over the school field as your class spilled out onto the grass for PE. With the teacher conveniently on vacation, today’s instructions were simple: enjoy the free time. Most of your classmates took to the field, breaking off into little clusters for a lazy game of soccer, light stretches, or simple gossip sessions by the bleachers.

As class president, you took it upon yourself to ensure no one went too far or caused trouble. Your duty, as you saw it, was to survey your classmates from a slight distance, keeping an eye out with the calm, serious gaze you’d carefully perfected. Yet even from the sidelines, your eyes found themselves drifting toward a familiar figure on the field, drawn to him like magnets.

Jungwon was at the center of the field with his friends, casual and relaxed, but his every move carried an elegance that made your pulse skip. He was laughing at something his friend said, his eyes crinkling as he kicked the soccer ball back and forth, the glint of a confident smirk tugging at his lips. His ease on the field was mesmerizing, a mixture of strength and grace that made it hard to look away.

You reminded yourself to focus, scanning the field to check on the other groups. But before you could pull your attention back entirely, a voice called out, and you saw Jungwon pivot to chase the soccer ball—only for it to ricochet off his foot, headed directly toward you with alarming speed.

In the split second it took you to react, you felt a sharp thud against the back of your knees. The impact sent you stumbling forward, knees buckling beneath you as you tumbled to the ground. Pain flared up where the ball had struck, but it was drowned out by the shock of it all.

“Oh no—are you okay?” Jungwon’s voice was breathless with concern, his steps hurried as he reached you. You barely had a chance to process his arrival before he knelt beside you, face flushed and clearly panicked. His hand hovered awkwardly as if afraid to touch you, his usual calm replaced with something far more vulnerable.

“I-I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to— Are you hurt?” he stammered, his voice unusually soft. He reached out gently, his hands carefully brushing against your arm as he tried to help you up. “Can you stand?”

Your mind struggled to catch up to the moment, and it took everything you had to keep your stoic demeanor intact. Jungwon was close, closer than he’d ever been, and the intensity of his worried gaze was unexpectedly disarming. Even as pain pulsed through your knee, you couldn’t help but stare, captivated by how intensely he focused on you, as if everything else in the world had fallen away.

“I’m fine, really,” you said, trying to keep your voice steady. But as soon as you tried to stand, pain shot up your leg.

Jungwon’s expression shifted to one of determination, and before you could protest, he slid one arm under your knees and lifted you up, his other arm around your shoulders. The world tilted as he held you in a firm, steady grip, his face barely inches from yours. “We’re getting you to the nurse. No arguments.”

You blinked, momentarily stunned by his closeness, by the warmth radiating from him. “Oh—okay.” The words left your mouth almost on instinct, your brain still catching up with the fact that Jungwon was carrying you, his focus set entirely on you. His hands brushed your arm as he adjusted his grip, and you felt a strange warmth bloom under your skin, something unfamiliar and electric.

The walk to the nurse’s office was quiet, but you couldn’t ignore the way his gaze flickered to you, the gentleness in his expression as he murmured, “Sorry again. I’d never forgive myself if I hurt the class president.”

Your lips parted, searching for something to say, but the way he looked at you—soft, maybe even a bit shy—left you wordless. All you could do was nod, your heart pounding louder with each step as you held onto the feeling of his arms around you, wondering if he could hear it too.

It wasn’t until you glanced down that you noticed it—a faint shift of color beneath your knee where the ball had struck. The mark, once hidden and dark, now radiated a subtle but unmistakable bright yellow hue, soft and warm against your skin.

You froze, eyes wide, as the realization settled in. Jungwon was still mumbling apologies, unaware of the discovery you’d just made. Only he could have caused the mark to change; he was the only one who had touched that spot. The idea left you breathless, your mind scrambling to make sense of it all.

In the clinic, the nurse examined your knee with a quick, professional assessment. “You’ll be fine,” she declared, sending you off with an ice pack and a faint smile. But your thoughts were still racing, tangled up in the startling realization that Jungwon might actually be your soulmate.

The whole walk back to class, you replayed the moment in your mind, trying to make sense of it. Maybe it was a coincidence. Perhaps someone had brushed the back of your knee at some other time, and you simply hadn’t noticed. But deep down, you knew the truth—the mark had only changed when Jungwon touched you.

And when you returned to class, he was there, hovering near the door with a worried frown. He looked up as you approached, eyes bright with relief.

“Are you okay?” he asked, a slight smile breaking through the concern etched into his features. “I was worried about you.”

Your heart skipped as you nodded, doing your best to keep your voice steady. “I’m fine. Just… a bit shaken up, that’s all.” You felt the weight of the new secret pressing down on you, but you forced yourself to smile.

Jungwon’s shoulders relaxed, and he chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck in that effortlessly charming way of his. “I’m glad. I’ll be more careful with my aim next time.”

You smiled back, feeling the weight of the mark’s new color, of the quiet truth only you knew. As Jungwon returned to his seat, your gaze drifted to the back of your knee, where the mark lay hidden under the fabric of your clothes, now touched by color—by him.

In the days following the incident on the field, the world seemed to shift around you, humming with an energy you couldn’t quite shake. The back of your knee, where Jungwon’s touch had changed your soulmate mark to a soft, distinct yellow color, was a constant reminder of the possibility that your crush—Jungwon, the ever-handsome and kind soccer captain—might be something even more significant than you’d ever dared to imagine.

“How’s your knee?” he asked, his voice warm and tinged with that familiar gentleness that made your heart stutter.

“Oh, it’s fine, really!” You waved it off, attempting to tuck your leg further under your desk, hoping he wouldn’t notice the faint new color to the mark that still lingered behind your knee.

Jungwon didn’t seem to buy it. “Are you sure?” he asked, his brows furrowing as he leaned down, intent on seeing for himself. Before he could get a closer look, you tugged your skirt down a little farther, hiding the mark as best as you could.

“I’m sure, really,” you insisted, trying to keep your tone casual. “It’s just a little sore, nothing to worry about.”

For a moment, he hesitated, his gaze lingering on you, unreadable. Then he nodded, standing up with a quiet, sheepish smile. “Alright. I’ll trust you, but only if you promise to let me know if it starts hurting again.”

You managed a nod, clutching your books a little tighter to keep your hands steady. “I promise,” you said, hoping he didn’t notice the flicker of nerves in your eyes.

Your third shared class of the week was English, and just as the teacher assigned the day’s group work, the class began to shift into pairs. Coincidentally (or so you told yourself), the seating arrangement placed Jungwon near you that day.

“Hey,” he said, his voice soft as he approached. He offered you one of his signature, heart-stopping smiles. “Mind if we pair up? I mean…if you’re okay with it.”

With an effort to keep your expression neutral, you nodded. “Sure,” you replied, your voice steady even though your heart was anything but.

Settling at a table near the window, you both pulled out your notebooks. The task was straightforward—analyzing a poem about soulmates. You caught a breath at the irony, and Jungwon, seemingly unfazed, began reading the passage aloud. His voice, low and calm, wove through the words as you listened, though your mind kept wandering to his every movement, the way his eyes flickered thoughtfully over the page, how his fingers held the pencil lightly but with intention.

“What do you think?” he asked, pulling you out of your thoughts.

You cleared your throat, willing your focus back to the assignment. “I think…well, it’s romantic. But it’s also kind of tragic, right? There’s always this sense of waiting—like, what if they don’t meet?”

Jungwon’s gaze flickered up, lingering on your face a little longer than necessary. “Yeah, that’s true,” he agreed, his voice thoughtful. “The idea that you’re waiting your whole life for just one person…it’s a lot of pressure.”

He paused, eyes settling on you, as if searching for something beneath the calm exterior you held so tightly. “Do you… believe in it? Soulmates, I mean?”

Caught off guard, you looked down, your fingers tracing invisible patterns on the edge of your notebook. You thought of your parents, of their own lovely story about finding each other through their marks, and how you’d grown up with those tales of destiny. And now, here you were, sitting with the very boy who might be your own fated match.

“I think,” you began slowly, “that I want to believe in it. My parents…they have one of those classic stories. It’s hard not to believe in soulmates when you’ve heard stories like that all your life.”

He nodded, listening intently. “I get that. I guess…sometimes I wonder what it would be like. But it’s hard to picture when you don’t…you know, have any marks yourself.”

The quiet sadness in his tone took you by surprise. You’d never considered what it might be like to go through life without a soulmate mark, to feel like something intrinsic was missing, a feeling that destiny had passed you by. Suddenly, your thoughts flickered back to the legends the elders told—how markless people were said to carry the weight of unrequited love from a past life, doomed to wander without a soulmate to mark them in this one. The idea hung heavy in the air, mingling with your sympathy for him.

“Maybe it doesn’t matter, then,” you murmured, almost to yourself. “Maybe people without marks find their person too, in other ways.” You couldn’t help but think that perhaps Jungwon was one of those souls, burdened by a love that never came to fruition.

The silence that followed was heavy but not uncomfortable. Jungwon seemed lost in thought, his gaze drifting out the window as he considered your words. And just then, a strange sense of comfort washed over you, knowing that even if he was unaware of it, you shared a connection that went beyond what either of you could see.

“Maybe,” he said finally, and then he flashed you a lopsided grin. “Well, even if soulmates are real, maybe it’s a good thing I’m mark-free. I don’t think I’d want someone to find out I was their soulmate because I hit them with a soccer ball.”

His laughter rang out, and you couldn’t help but join him, but beneath the mirth, your heart clenched. You wanted to tell him everything—to reveal the secret that could bridge the chasm between you. But as the words formed on your lips, fear gripped you. What if you were wrong? What if he truly didn’t have a soulmate mark, and this moment of connection was just a fleeting illusion?

So you swallowed hard, plastering a smile on your face that didn’t quite reach your eyes. “Well, let’s just keep that between us, then,” you replied, hoping to mask the anxiety swirling inside you.

Inside, the truth weighed heavy, a secret that felt more like a burden than a bond. Keeping it hidden seemed safer, easier—even if it left you feeling like a ghost, drifting alongside him but never truly reaching out. The thought of him being one of those markless souls—the ones who carried the pain of a love never realized—made you ache. You didn’t want him to feel that emptiness, and yet, here you were, hiding a truth that might shatter the fragile connection you shared.

Perhaps it was better this way. Better to hold onto your heartache in silence than risk shattering the bond you had built, no matter how tenuous it felt. As you returned to the assignment, the bittersweet taste of longing lingered on your tongue, mixing with the thrill of possibility, leaving you torn between the hope of what could be and the fear of what might never come to pass.

Finally, during your biology class, your teacher assigned a laboratory cleaning rotation. By the luck of the draw—or maybe a twist of fate—you found yourself paired with Jungwon. It was supposed to be a simple task, but as the two of you gathered supplies and began tidying up the classroom after hours, you felt the weight of every quiet moment.

Jungwon appeared beside you as you straightened a stack of textbooks, arms full of markers and erasers. His casual, laid-back attitude only heightened the quiet thrill that being near him sparked in you. As he handed you an eraser, your fingers brushed slightly, and you pulled back quickly, heart racing.

"Are you always this… serious?" Jungwon teased, his lips curving into a half-smile. "I mean, you don’t have to look like we’re cleaning the whole school."

You rolled your eyes, fighting back a smile. “It’s just how I work. I take tasks seriously.”

He nodded, still smiling. “You’re impressive, you know. It’s like…you’re always so composed, like nothing rattles you.”

Caught off guard by his observation, you froze momentarily, not sure how to respond. Behind your serious exterior, you were anything but composed—especially around him. Before you could answer, he turned away to tidy the bookshelves, leaving you wondering if he’d picked up on the effect he had on you.

After a while, Jungwon returned to the task at hand, dusting off a few of the windowsills. It was quiet for a few minutes, the sounds of your combined effort filling the room. You both worked in sync, a silent rhythm that had developed without either of you realizing it. And then, with an abruptness that caught you off guard, he spoke again.

“Hey,” he said, hesitating. “I know this might be a weird question, but… where’s your soulmate mark?”

The question hung in the air between you, heavy with implications you weren’t ready to unravel. Your heart thudded as you carefully set down the books you’d been holding, gathering your thoughts.

You felt a flush creep up your cheeks. "Um, it's… it's on my knee," you admitted, your voice barely above a whisper. The intimacy of the moment made you shy, and you instinctively shifted your weight, the hem of your skirt falling to cover your knee even more.

Jungwon raised an eyebrow, curiosity glimmering in his eyes. “Oh? Is it… already in color?”

You hesitated for a brief moment, weighing your words. “Uh, yeah,” you replied, biting your lip. “It changed a while ago. But it’s not a big deal.” You left out the part about him possibly being your soulmate, feeling the weight of that truth settle heavily in the air between you.

His expression shifted slightly, disappointment flashing across his features before he masked it with a casual smile. “That’s cool,” he said, his voice a bit quieter now. “I guess… it must be nice to have that certainty.”

“Yeah,” you said, trying to keep the mood light despite the sudden heaviness in your chest. “I mean, it’s comforting, I suppose.”

But beneath your words, a sense of longing stirred. You noticed how his gaze faltered for a moment, and it struck you then how much he had hoped for something different. He had seemed eager, maybe even hopeful, and the realization stung a little.

Jungwon cleared his throat, breaking the silence that had settled over you both. “So, um… did you see the last soccer game?” he asked, trying to steer the conversation in a different direction. “I think we really need to work on our defense.”

His attempt at lightheartedness felt slightly forced, and you could see a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. Still, it was nice to see him trying to shake off the heaviness from moments before.

“Yeah, I caught a bit of it,” you replied, grateful for the shift in focus. “You guys played well, though a couple of those goals were pretty close calls.”

He chuckled, the tension easing just a little. “Yeah, I think I almost gave our coach a heart attack with that last-minute save,” he said, grinning. It was an infectious smile, and you found yourself smiling back despite the weight still resting in the back of your mind.

The annual school festival arrived faster than expected, and the campus buzzed with activity and excitement. Classrooms were transformed into themed booths, hallways were draped with handmade decorations, and students wore colorful festival shirts and badges, their faces bright with paint and laughter. You found yourself stationed at the face-painting booth, brush in hand, ready to tackle the endless line of eager students.

You’d always enjoyed events like these—participating in the festival offered you a rare chance to relax and feel connected to your classmates outside of the usual seriousness you maintained as class president. Here, you were just another student, painting stars, hearts, and stripes on familiar faces.

“Hey, what’s up? Need a painter?” your friend Taeyoung called out to the next group approaching your booth. You followed his gaze and felt your heart skip when you recognized Jungwon and his friends heading your way, laughing and jostling each other. He wore a loose festival shirt with sleeves rolled up, a casual look that somehow made him even more handsome. You quickly glanced down, suddenly hyper-aware of your paintbrushes and the paper towels you clutched a little too tightly.

The booth was busy, and with most of your fellow painters occupied, it didn’t take long for Taeyoung to pair Jungwon with you. “Hey, Y/N, looks like you’ve got a VIP customer! Captain Jungwon wants to be a canvas today,” he said, a mischievous grin spreading across his face as he nudged Jungwon playfully.

Jungwon chuckled, but there was a flicker of something else in his eyes—an eagerness mixed with a hint of shyness. “Yeah, I guess I’m in your hands now,” he said, his voice low and teasing. “No pressure, right?”

You swallowed hard, trying to maintain your composure as your heart raced. “Uh, right! No pressure at all,” you replied, your voice a little too bright. “What do you have in mind?”

You forced yourself to meet Jungwon’s eyes, fighting back the nervous excitement bubbling in your chest. “So… what would you like?” you asked, trying to keep your voice steady.

Jungwon’s usual confident smile softened a little, and he seemed slightly hesitant, rubbing the back of his neck, a gesture that made your stomach flutter. “Maybe a couple of stars on my cheeks? And… maybe a small cat on my forehead?”

You stifled a laugh at his request, realizing that behind his composed demeanor, he had a playful side you hadn’t seen before. “A star and a cat. Got it,” you whispered, dipping your brush into white paint. You reached out carefully to steady his face, tilting it slightly toward the light. Your fingers lightly touched his cheek, and you couldn’t ignore the spark that jolted through you at the contact.

Jungwon closed his eyes briefly, letting out a small breath. You tried to ignore the slight flush you felt creeping up your neck, focusing on drawing a perfect star on his left cheek. You painted in silence, but every so often, he’d open his eyes and glance at you, making your heart race each time.

With one cheek finished, you moved to the other side. He leaned in closer, giving you the perfect angle. The space between you seemed to shrink with every second, the sounds of the bustling festival fading into a distant hum. You were hyper-aware of everything—the faint scent of his cologne, the warmth radiating from him, and how your fingers gently brushed his skin. When you finished with the stars, you pulled back slightly to look at your work, meeting his gaze as you did.

“They look good,” he murmured, his voice softer than usual.

You swallowed, breaking eye contact to reach for a new brush and dip it in black paint. “Now for the cat,” you said, trying to stay calm. “Hold still.”

You carefully moved to part his hair at the center of his forehead. As your fingers brushed through his bangs, you froze, your eyes widening as you saw something strange—a small patch of his dark hair was shifting, lightening to a soft honey-blonde under your touch.

“Um… Jungwon,” you whispered, your voice barely above a breath as you stared at the transformed lock of hair falling against his forehead. “Your hair…”

“What about it?” He turned to you with a hint of confusion, glancing up as if trying to catch a glimpse of the change. “Did I mess it up?”

You shook your head, the words tangling in your throat as disbelief washed over you. “It’s… it’s changing color.”

He blinked, clearly caught off guard, then brushed his fingers through the area you’d touched. His movements stilled, the warmth in his expression fading, replaced by something deeper—something unreadable. The air thickened around you, a heavy silence filled with unspoken questions.

“Are you sure?” he asked quietly, his gaze searching yours as if trying to decode the truth hidden beneath your surprise.

You nodded slowly, your heart racing. “Yeah, I… I thought it was just the paint at first, but… it’s definitely not.”

The realization hung in the air, electric and palpable, igniting a spark of tension that sent shivers down your spine. Jungwon’s fingers gently traced the newly lightened strands of hair, his expression a mix of wonder and trepidation. You could feel your pulse quicken, an exhilarating rush flooding through you as you grasped the meaning behind this strange phenomenon.

Time seemed to stretch in that moment, each heartbeat echoing like a drum in your chest. Here he was, the boy you’d admired from afar, unexpectedly transformed before your eyes. Jungwon—the one who had unwittingly painted your world in vibrant colors, now literally changing right in front of you.

Suddenly, self-consciousness washed over you like a cold wave. You averted your gaze, stepping back instinctively. “I—I should go finish with the others. They’re probably waiting for me…” Your voice wavered, betraying the rush of emotions threatening to spill over.

Before you could dwell on it, a paint container wobbled on the edge of the table, knocking into your elbow. In your panic, you stumbled, sending brushes and colors sprawling over yourself. “Oh no!” you yelped, scrambling to clean up the mess.

“Y/N, wait!” Jungwon exclaimed, his eyes widening in surprise. He stepped closer, his hand closing around yours, halting your frantic movements. “Stop. Just breathe.”

His grip was steadying, grounding you amidst the chaos of your racing thoughts. “Let’s find somewhere quiet, okay? You need to clean up.” His voice held a calmness that contrasted sharply with the storm inside you.

You felt a rush of warmth at his concern, but your mind spun with confusion. “But… the booth—”

“Trust me,” he said, his gaze unwavering, a silent promise passing between you. “Just for a moment. Let’s talk.”

With a nod, you allowed him to guide you away from the festival’s noise, your heart racing not just from the moment, but from the undeniable connection building between you. The thrill of discovery was tempered by the anxiety of what it all meant, and yet, in Jungwon’s presence, you felt something shift—something new and exciting, just waiting to be explored.

He led you through a quieter section of the campus, where the walls were lined with colorful murals painted by students, the air filled with the faint scent of paint and creativity. The laughter and chatter from the festival faded into the background, replaced by the gentle rustle of leaves overhead and the distant sound of music drifting from the booths.

As you turned a corner, Jungwon paused, the air around you suddenly thick with anticipation. He glanced around, ensuring you were alone, then leaned against the cool brick wall, his posture relaxed yet focused. His gaze locked onto yours, intensity radiating from him. “My hair… it’s slowly turning blond. Isn’t this what soulmate marks are supposed to be like?”

His words hung in the air, electrifying the space between you. You felt the weight of the moment press down, your heart racing like a wild drum in your chest. “Right… your soulmate mark,” you stammered, the tremor in your voice betraying the chaos inside. “I didn’t want to say anything because I thought it might just be a coincidence, but now… it's all starting to make sense.”

Jungwon stepped closer, the seriousness in his expression deepening. “You mean you knew?” His voice was low, the edge of urgency evident. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

The air crackled with tension, and you felt your pulse quicken. “I didn’t know it was you! I thought—” you cut yourself off, frustration bubbling within you. “I didn’t want to ruin our friendship or make things awkward. You’ve been my crush longer than you’ve been a friend. Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep things from being awkward with you, especially when my mark changed?”

Jungwon’s expression shifted, vulnerability breaking through his confidence. “Your mark... is it.… when did it change? Am I—was it before… or after we met?” His voice was tight, the weight of his words hanging heavily in the air.

You took a deep breath, feeling the memories rush back. “The day you carried me to the nurse’s office, you idiot.”

He blinked, taken aback by your response. “Wait… that day? But I thought...”

His expression softened slightly, the intensity in his eyes shifting as he took a step closer. You held your breath as he knelt down, his fingers hovering over your soulmate mark. The moment felt electric, a mix of vulnerability and anticipation coursing through you.

“Can I…?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

You nodded, giving him permission to touch it. As his fingers brushed against your skin, a shiver ran down your spine. Jungwon chuckled softly, the sound breaking some of the tension between you. “Can you believe this? It feels just like yesterday when I accidentally hit my crush with a soccer ball at her knees,” he said, shaking his head with a bemused smile. “The same crush I’ve wanted to approach since 10th grade but was always too afraid to mess up, especially with how she glares at boys.”

You couldn’t help but laugh, the image of a younger Jungwon fumbling with his words as he tried to impress you suddenly vivid in your mind. “I didn’t mean to scare you off,” you admitted, your heart swelling with warmth. “I thought you were just… confident, you know?”

He shrugged, a hint of shyness creeping back into his demeanor. “I try to be. But it’s hard when you’re crushing on someone who’s out of your league.”

“Out of my league?” you repeated, incredulous. “Jungwon, you’re the captain of the soccer team! Everyone looks up to you.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I’m not nervous around you,” he replied, his gaze locking onto yours, sincerity pouring from his words. “It’s different with you. You make me want to be better.”

The air between you thickened with unspoken emotions, each heartbeat echoing the connection that had always been there, waiting to be acknowledged. You both stood on the edge of something monumental, the laughter of the festival fading away, leaving only the two of you and the promise of what lay ahead.

The next day, Jungwon strolled confidently down the hallway, his head of hair transformed into a stunning honeyed blonde that turned heads with every step. The shift was striking—bold, noticeable, and oddly fitting—making it seem as though he had always intended to embrace this change. Whispers and awestruck glances followed him like a gentle wave, yet beneath that cool exterior, you could see the spark of mischief in his eyes, especially when they met yours.

“Wow, he really went all out,” Arin murmured beside you, her voice a mix of surprise and admiration. “He must’ve bleached the whole thing. I didn’t think Jungwon had that in him.”

You nodded, trying to maintain your composure while your heart raced. “Yeah… surprising, isn’t it?” you replied, though a smile betrayed your nonchalance as you watched him navigate the crowd like he owned the place.

Unaware of the true significance of his transformation, your classmates continued their commentary. “Looks good on him, though,” one girl remarked, her tone infused with genuine admiration. “Like he was meant to have it all along.”

Jungwon seemed completely unfazed by the attention, wearing his new look with a blend of pride and ease, as if his blonde hair was a badge of honor that only you understood. It was a mark that connected the two of you in ways that no one else could fathom—an intimate secret wrapped in boldness.

As the hallway thinned out, he lingered by his locker, his casual demeanor slipping just a bit as he caught your gaze from across the hall. He lifted a hand, brushing back his hair with an effortless charm that sent butterflies fluttering in your stomach—a subtle nod to the secret you shared.

You walked over, your heart pounding just a little faster than usual. “It suits you,” you said, keeping your voice low, the air between you thick with unspoken words.

His eyes softened, gratitude shimmering in their depths. “Good to know,” he murmured, his tone low but filled with warmth. “After all, it’s your fault it looks this good.”

A faint blush crept up your cheeks at his words, and before you could respond, he leaned in slightly, lowering his voice even more as he added, “And don’t worry. The secret’s safe.”

In that crowded hallway, with laughter and footsteps echoing around you, it felt like you and Jungwon were enveloped in your own little world. His blonde hair, like a silent vow, was a reminder of what only the two of you understood: a hidden connection, pulsing with promise and anticipation, waiting to be explored.

[ckret2]

At some point, the Axolotl must've witnessed the aftermath of the Euclidean Massacre.

As you can see, Bill is very happy and definitely not at all traumatized and doing great and look at all these followers he's found who are definitely alive.

Here, have a fic about the Axolotl, the birth of the Nightmare Realm, and Bill trying so so hard to convince himself that he's the hero.

####

To the mortals he swam past, with their different calendars and their different ways of perceiving time, the great Axolotl's migration through space and between dimensions was an event of great note: his passing marked eclipses, tsunamis, festivals, omens, meteor showers; his migration was studied by astronomers and his position was marked in astrological birth charts.

To the Axolotl, he was on his daily commute home. He could take an interdimensional portal, but swimming was better for the environment and he could use the exercise.

He passed by the same two dimensional wall every day. It was covered with many little worlds, and so many of them populated with little mortals, and he'd never paid any particular attention to the wall—until yesterday. A bold little triangle had shouted at him as he passed. It had been an amusing conversation—first contact was always fun—but he'd been busy and couldn't talk more than a moment, just long enough for the Axolotl to be charmed that a lower-dimensional creature had yelled at him and for the triangle to be shocked that a higher-dimensional creature had answered. The triangle had told him that, to his two-dimensional people, these shadows on the wall, the Axolotl was an eclipse: they marked the time by the shadow he cast on their flat world during his commute.

He hadn't even learned the triangle's real name. The triangle had refused to tell him, instead introducing himself as the "Magister Mentium." Teacher of minds? Maybe it was a job title.

Between the nightmare of a case the Axolotl was currently handling and the fact that he'd had to stay late working, he'd nearly forgotten about yesterday's fascinating little meeting until he was leaving on his nightly commute. He didn't know how long the tiny shapes' life cycles were; he hoped the little triangle was still alive today. If not, maybe he'd left behind descendants.

But when he came up to the wall, it was gone.

The vacuum reeked of burning hydrogen.

The Axolotl stopped, puzzled. The wall wasn't empty, wasn't damaged, wasn't going through heat death—the entire thing was missing. No rubble. Surely it hadn't been demolished for some new construction? It had been in good condition. It was a fairly new plane of reality, likely under fifty billion years old. And it had admittedly been a few eons since the Axolotl had studied dimension use & zoning law, but last he checked it was unlawful to demolish a populated dimension without transplanting the growths first—which took much longer than a day. So what could possibly have done this? And what he saw behind the wall...

Something was very wrong. He started moving again, faster, looking for someone who could tell him what was happening. He kept the ragged rip in reality left by the missing wall in his peripheral vision. Stars and stardust slowly fell in, sucked through the tear. The wall must have come down by accident.

Nobody would have knowingly left behind such a large hole to Dimension Zero.

Assuming he was looking at Dimension Zero; he wasn't sure he was. Beneath all other dimensions was supposed to be a void, an empty in-between space. The zeroth "dimension" was simply reality's center point, the not-dimension between all dimensions; it wasn't a place. But with the two dimensional wall gone, he didn't see reality bending in toward a point like he should. He saw a roiling, nauseating mass of blinding colors, thrashing around each other like a frightened pile of injured worms.

Far in the distance, a full reality away, he saw a faint line of blue light.

It was several minutes before he began to run into other people. He passed a crew of cosmic firefighters and their ships, spread out over a span of space wider than an asteroid belt. The fact that they didn't appear to currently be fighting any fires was more disconcerting than a full blaze would have been. An eerie tension hung thick over the scene like invisible smoke. As the Axolotl swam by a couple of firefighters, he overheard them saying, "... orders of magnitude higher than anything we've been trained to handle. An entire reality catching fire is one thing, but the concept of realitycatching fire...?"

"And the speed it's moving..."

"Excuse me," the Axolotl said, trying to keep the edge of fear out of his voice. (Why was he so afraid? He was barely acquaintances with one resident on the wall.) "Can you tell me what happened to the wall? It was just here yesterday."

Rather than explain, one of them pointed in the direction he'd been going. "Sorry, we don't know any more than you do. Look for the storm. You can't miss it."

The other asked, "Are you one of the guys with the apoc cops?"

His fear leaped higher. The "apoc cops" were members of the Apocalyptic Threat Task Force. "No. Sorry, I have to go." He swam onward toward the blue line of light.

The stench of burning hydrogen grew stronger. He smelled something else acrid underneath.

####

To his slight relief, the "storm" wasn't the disaster that had brought down this wall. Rather, it was a person: a lightly raining storm cloud with a gray rain-soaked fedora perched on top, hovering in space.

It was talking to a hapless-looking furred serpent twice the Axolotl's length with four mismatched limbs: she clutched a can of spray paint in her claws, and was so nervous he could hear the marble in the can rattling. A disembodied sunbeam pierced the eye of the storm cloud to shine in the serpent's face as she spoke, and a tornado swirled beneath its cloud, carrying all its personal effects—including a tumbling badge from the Apocalyptic Threat Task Force, its logo of a mushroom cloud struck out with the "no" symbol still visible through a thin glaze of sleet. A chill ran through the Axolotl at the sight of that badge.

The cloud wasn't the only one with the apoc cops on the scene. There were several other investigators nearby, taking readings where the wall used to be. The Axolotl didn't like just how many were buzzing around. They seemed far too busy for far too empty a space, and they steered far too clear of the thrashing, multicolored miasma covering the emptiness that should contain Dimension Zero.

There were several stars in the area that the investigators had to work around. Between the crowds and the missing wall, it took the Axolotl a moment to realize where they were: this was the spot he'd met the triangle yesterday. He was sure of it. He recognized the star right next to the missing wall, the one the triangle had told him he eclipsed during his commute. He'd passed it millions of times.

Why had the apoc cops set up here?

The star was slowly falling toward the roiling miasma where Dimension Zero should have been. He nudged it back into place as he passed.

As the Axolotl approached the duo, the serpent was saying, "I told you, I don't know how it caught fire! I was just passing by..." The storm cloud's sunbeam dropped from her face to point skeptically at her spray paint. She hid it behind her back and quickly went on, "I was just passing by, minding my own business and not doing anything illegal, and suddenly the whole wall went up in flames!"

The cloud said, "The whole wall? Simultaneously?"

"The whole thing! I mean... it kind of rolled across the dimension, but—it took less than ten seconds to cover everything I saw!"

"Which direction did the fire travel?"

While the serpent tried to remember, the Axolotl swam up to the storm cloud. "Excuse me, the firefighters said you're in charge of the investigation?"

"Currently," the cloud said, in a tone that suggested it very much wished it wasn't. It looked over the Axolotl, then turned back to the serpent—she flinched when its sunbeam hit her face again—and it asked gruffly, "Is this your lawyer?"

The serpent looked hopeful. "Are you my lawyer?"

"No, I'm not," the Axolotl said, perturbed. Potential defendants aside, nobody ever insinuated he was somebody's lawyer and meant it in a nice way—and he was on the receiving end of such accusations more and more often lately. His reputation was beginning to precede him. "We've never met. I'm trying to find out what happened to this wall. I know a—friend in there. You said something about a fire?"

An active ATTF investigation was in no way the Axolotl's business. But people had a tendency to cooperate with professionals, whether or not their profession had anything to do with the situation at hand. The ATTF agent turned to the Axolotl and said, "You had a friend in there. The wall that used to be here, Dimension 2 Delta, has been completely incinerated."

The Axolotl stared at the cloud, trying to process that. But the whole wall had been there yesterday. Billions of galaxies, each with trillions of stars, each capable of supporting trillions of species—never mind lives. "You can't mean completely. Surely there are some survivors?"

"Not a single one," the cloud said. "Not even gods and ghosts made it out."

"How?"

"That's what we're trying to figure out," the storm said. "Right now, the only witness we've found was the person who called in the emergency." A branch of lightning pointed toward the serpent. "And she doesn't know a damn thing." The serpent nodded in enthusiastic agreement.

"But that's... How does an entire dimension disappear with only one witness?"

"Very quickly," the storm said. "The apocalypse Origin & Cause investigation can't make heads or tails of the scene—" a gust of wind swept demonstratively toward the other apoc cops taking readings near the missing wall, "but far as we can tell, the damn thing spontaneously combusted—somewhere near here."

The Axolotl stared helplessly between the serpent and the storm. "Dimensions aren't supposed to spontaneously combust," he said, very reasonably and very unnecessarily.

"Tell 2Δ that," the storm said. "Only time a dimension moves that fast is during a Big Bang explosion or a Big Crunch implosion—and 2Δ wasn't undergoing a Big Crunch. No natural one, anyway. In all my eons with ATTF, I've never seen anything like it."

The Axolotl had been around enough eons himself to know that, after a certain point, novelty became very, very scary—because things working like they should shouldn't do anything you'd never seen before. He worriedly searched the roiling chaos exposed by Dimension 2 Delta's collapse for any sign of what had happened.

The chaos simply thrashed. It moved like it was in pain.

"Did that..." the Axolotl gestured vaguely toward the chaotic foam, "have anything to do with the wall's combustion?"

The serpent shrugged. "I didn't see it until after the fire went by."

The storm grunted uncertainly, a low, thunderous grumble. "Heck if we know. It's connected, no doubt about that—but we haven't even figured out what it is yet. All we know is, it shouldn't have been behind the wall."

The Axolotl stared into the roiling colors, looking for anything visible through the thrashing kaleidoscopic colors.  "If you don't know what it is yet—then, how do you know there aren't survivors in there?" The Axolotl couldn't stop seeing that poor, frightened, awed triangle he'd met yesterday. All the people who'd once been in Dimension 2 Delta mattered—of course they did, those billions of trillions of trillions of billions of lives; he wanted any of them to survive—but that triangle was the one he knew, the one he saw in his mind's eye now. The whole dimension was contained inside that triangle. He had to hope. "I'm going to check."

"What—? You're crazy! Don't you know falling into Dimension Zero will destroy you?!"

"I know falling into Dimension Zero destroys you; I don't know what falling into that thing will do." He squared up with the chaos and steeled his nerves. "Besides, I can regenerate. I'm an axolotl."

"But—!"

"Sorry, there isn't time for more questions." He swam into the maelstrom.

####

Dimension Zero was supposed to be a singularity. Like a black hole, but even smaller—a point so dense it broke physics. If you fell in you'd be crushed into that point by the weight of all realities, a point so small it had no volume.

But whatever was behind where the wall had been, it was certainly no point.

As soon as he crossed the threshold, he was barraged with a psychic hurricane. Reality frothed and foamed like a flood spilling from a burst dam. Distant baby stars were born and popped like bubbles, and old stars fell in and were gloriously reignited. His every sense was bombarded with infinite sensations—every color and image in this dimension all at once; every song that had ever been played playing in the same instant and the instant extended indefinitely; strobe lights that were both flashing on and flashing off at the exact same moment. Beneath the music was a constant hiss like the background radiation of reality, the static echo of a universe's birth, but much too loud; he could swear it sounded like gibbering, babbling voices, their desperate messages unintelligible. He smelled every scent, including the lingering smell of burning hydrogen that he'd noticed outside; but above and beyond all that, he smelled the stench of burning life.

He knew now, this was Dimension Zero: it was as if all of spacetime had been crushed into a singularity, but then the singularity was bloated up to the size of an entire universe. Dimension Zero was never supposed to be this bloated.

And the most terrifying part: there were people in this bizarre ruin of a dimension. Millions of them. (Just as horrifying: there were only millions of them.) He was sure he must have been hallucinating—here, dreams and reality swirled around each other like a bottle of water and oil shaken until they were forced to mix—but the longer he looked, the more sure he was that the people were a part of reality. They were, perhaps, the most real thing in the entire dimension.

They were all dancing.

They were all dead.

"Heeey, look who's here!" Suddenly, in front of the Axolotl, there he was—as if he'd always been in front of the Axolotl, as if he were always everywhere at once. The ghost of the little triangle he'd seen yesterday, neon incorporeal. "Happy New Year, everybody!" He laughed. "Get it? That—that's a joke, time doesn't pass in the dream realm, so..." The triangle waved off the Axolotl. "Oh, you wouldn't get it. Screw you. Anyway, introductions! I should do that." 

The triangle was extremely inebriated. He was blinking blearily, floating crookedly, moving in odd uncoordinated jerks, his pupil expanding and contracting with no correlation to the light it was taking in. He seemed to flicker across multiple timelines that had been collapsed into one, like a drunk that couldn't walk a straight line: appearing here then there, then multiple places at once, then everywhere; and then became everywhere, and then collapsed again to a single triangular point. The Axolotl had the worrying impression that the triangle hadn't been sober for a long time.

"So! These are my people!" He gestured with a flourish to the dancing corpse puppets. The strobe lights—which, the Axolotl only now realized, didn't actually have a source, but were rather disembodied rays of light emanating from nothing—turned to highlight them from every angle. It was like a cloud of glitter, all these tiny, flat, jewel-tone flecks, emerald and citrine and ruby and sapphire, triangles and squares and pentagons and hexagons. Each with two spindly arms; some with legs and some without; a single dull eye or a slack mouth; some of them cracked and chipped like broken glass, some of them crushed and melted together into multi-corpsed horrors, some of them fraying and peeling apart around the edges like fabric; so much silvery blood dripping and floating around them. Such beautiful, colorful dancing gore. "All my followers and friends! They love me! They couldn't see you last time you flew by, but thanks to me, they sure can now! Say hellooo!"

It took the Axolotl a moment to realize that the triangle's eye was boring into him and the instruction was for him. "Hello," he said weakly. 

"Very nice." The triangle turned without turning to the millions lost inside Dimension Zero, reality shifting around him to put all of the dimension's prisoners in front of his eye. The Axolotl reeled from existential vertigo. "Now check this out!" The triangle gestured at the Axolotl for his people's benefit. "Behold! Your Magister Mentium presents to you: the eclipse! In the horrifying pink flesh! Quite a sight, huh?"

Many of the dancers turned toward him. Some aimed their dull, dead eyes in his direction. He shivered under their chill stares.

Heedless of the Axolotl's horror, the triangle elbowed him. "I didn't peg you for a party crasher, pinky!" (The triangle's touch was so cold.) "But hey, the more the merrier. Welcome to the dream realm, have a drink!"

A 2D cup manifested in front of the Axolotl that, based on its smooth, featureless yellow surface and its glow, appeared to be made from the triangle's own ghostly flesh. It seemed to be filled with watered-down raw existence. He didn't touch the cup. "What's the dream realm?" He couldn't stop staring at the dancers macabre.

"This is!" The triangle stretched out his arms—and stretched them, and stretched them, seeming to embrace all of reality at once. The Axolotl got the terrifying impression he was within the embrace too. "The realm of dreams! My realm! Paradise of color and light! Realm of spirits and muses!"

"It looks more like a nightmare."

"Do I come to your house and insult your wallpaper? Buzz off."

When the triangle dismissively floated away from him, the Axolotl again got the dizzying sensation that he was the one moving. The truth finally dawned on him:

The triangle, somehow, was literally the center of this universe. Point 0,0,0 on the cartesian plane of reality. Whenever he moved, Dimension Zero moved with him. When he backed away from the Axolotl, Dimension Zero backed with him, rushing past while the Axolotl held still.

And not once during their conversation did any of the millions of dead shapes stop dancing. 

"What are you doing?" the Axolotl asked, voice hushed.

"Partying," the triangle said. "We're having a party."

The Axolotl couldn't tear his eyes from the choreomaniacs' forced revelry. "How long have you been partying?"

"Uhh... pfff... I dunno, hard to keep track. A few months?" The triangle turned toward his tortured people. "Hey! How long have we been partying?"

One of the bodies mixed in amongst the dead, boogying deliriously, faintly cried back, "Time has no meaning and eternity has collapsed into a single unending moment of bliss!" (The Axolotl shuddered at the grotesque ventriloquism act.)

"Oh, yeah, right, forgot I decreed that. Thanks, pal!"

"You're welcome, oh wise and glorious Magister Mentium!"

The triangle turned back to the Axolotl. "An eternity."

The Axolotl tore his horrified eyes away from the dancers. "What about all the others?"

The triangle paused. "I don't know who you're talking about." The background radiation hissed in agitation.

The Axolotl very much suspected he did. "Your other people."

"There aren't any others," the triangle said defensively.

"There were! All of the other shapes around your world! All of the lives on other worlds! Where are all those people?!" He hoped that they might have gotten evacuated to a neighboring wall, or that they'd been concealed somehow, or even that they'd been collapsed together into the shapes he saw before him and could still be separated—

"It's fine," the triangle said stiffly. "Nothing important was lost."

"Nothing important?" the Axolotl repeated, shocked. "This was an entire dimension—!"

"A wall," the triangle said.

"A wall with lives on it—"

"Shadows."

"And do shadows not deserve to live?!"

The triangle flinched at the question as his good cheer crumbled. He didn't answer, but he gave the Axolotl a heavy, hard, emotionless look—a wretched, empty look—and the Axolotl knew he knew they did deserve to live.

"They don't matter," the triangle lied. "Nothing important was lost. Only the true believers and the worthy remain."

"Your dimension had billions of trillions of stars alone. All the people surrounding them—"

"I didn't see any stars!" He said it so vehemently—as though, if he didn't see them, they must not have existed. As though he refused to acknowledge their existence. "I told everyone about the third dimension, I told them we were going, they had their chance to join me!" His voice was shaking. As he spoke he grew larger, until he was as large as the Axolotl—or perhaps the universe had contracted around him. "And if they refused to join the liberation, then they are what we liberated ourselves from!" Distant bolts of lights flashed through Dimension Zero, responding to the triangle's outrage; the nearest stars blazed brighter for him. His dead people screamed in terror. They didn't stop dancing.

"You... tried to leave your dimension before the fire reached them?" Had he tried too late?

The triangle flinched again; his appearance flickered, like a TV that for a moment had picked up a pirate station broadcasting on the same frequency. The whispers hissing beneath the music grew more excited again, but the Axolotl still couldn't make out what they said beneath the party music.

The triangle said, "The... the fire came second."

"What came first?"

But he didn't answer. "Yeah, I brought them here." He spread his arms again, gesturing at the other shapes. "They followed me, and I freed them from our flat, restrictive dimension. They're all fine. And they all love me for saving them."

"Saving them?" he echoed. He wanted to laugh in disbelief, but it felt too much like laughing at a stranger's funeral. Laughing at an open mass grave. "But—everyone here is already dead. Even you." The triangle should be in an afterlife. Whatever afterlives his dimension once had, they were gone now. The Axolotl would have to help the triangle find one in another dimension—the paperwork alone would take time he didn't have to spare; he'd probably have to split off a timeline or two to squeeze it in...

The triangle snapped, "Whoa, hey, hey! Watch who you call dead, buddy! Look at me!" He stretched out his limbs, glowing dazzlingly bright. Brighter than a star. Even the Axolotl had to turn away from the blinding light. "I transcended my body! I'm made of pure energy! This is the most alive I've ever been!" A being of pure energy that had lost its physical form was the very definition of a ghost; but the Axolotl didn't have a chance to argue before the triangle went on, "And does anyone here look dead? Everyone's dancing! We're all having a great time, aren't we?" A few corpses groaned and gurgled in response.

If the triangle wanted to be a wandering ghost, fine. That was his prerogative. But he had no right to force the remains of his followers to deny their death with him. "Look—look at your people," the Axolotl commanded. "You're making them dance! You must know what state they're in!"

Without actually moving, the triangle had somehow become the space in between the Axolotl and his choreomaniacs, forming a sharp shield in between them. "You don't know what you're talking about. They're fine. They're immortal!"

The Axolotl gestured furiously past the triangle. "LOOK AT THEM!"

The triangle's gaze flickered toward them for a split second. The Axolotl saw guilt flashing in his eye; but then he squeezed his eye shut. "No, you look at them. Maybe it took me a little bit to get it right, but they're all great now."

To get it right? The Axolotl peered around the triangle at the shapes again, and only now saw that he was right.

Not all of them were dead.

Some were trapped in ecstatic trances; some were numb with terror; some were already long dead, and yet the corpses weren't being puppeted like he'd assumed—they danced under their own power. There were amalgams of a dozen, a hundred bodies fused together into shambling, gyrating horrors—but there was still life in their horrified eyes and their limbs twitched independently. The ones that were bleeding just kept bleeding and bleeding and bleeding, unending, blood never clotting nor running dry. The corpses and the comatose and the ailing and the bleeding dancing with the living that craved death.

The triangle was responsible for their condition?

He glided between the corpses, sliding his arms around a few of them. They kept dancing.  "I didn't quite get to a few of them in time, so I took the empty space where their souls used to be and filled them with an insatiable hunger to party," he said. "And look, they're good as new! Probably better than they were before, even!"

"These bodies should be laid to rest," the Axolotl said heatedly, "and the rest of you should be dead."

The triangle went still.

The Axolotl remembered, a second too late, that that was a perfectly normal thing to say to deceased clients and other gods in his line of work, but the kind of thing that scared the living daylights out of mortals.

"So that's a threat." His arms slid off the shapes; his fingers were stained with silvery blood that shimmered like static noise.

"No! No. But the condition that you're all in..."

"You'd better check yourself, frills," the triangle snapped. "You crash our party, in our eternal paradise, and start threatening us! Who the hell do you think you are, telling us we should be dead?!"

The Axolotl paused uneasily. "A fully licensed psychopomp...?"

"Well you'd better keep your psycho, pompous paws off my people!" The triangle blazed bright red, literally incandescent with rage. Some of his "people" slowly stopped dancing and turned their hollow eyes toward the Axolotl.

And the Axolotl couldn't say why, but he was suddenly sure he was in very grave danger.

He backed up from the triangle, moving in the direction that the edge of Dimension Zero should have been, although he was no longer sure whether it was still behind him. "I... think I should leave."

"I think you'd better."

He turned and fled. He couldn't explain his panic, but he felt in his bones like something was chasing him. He had to spend longer than he wanted searching for the edge of this bizarre reality—the triangle had turned and twisted and moved the borders so many times that he'd completely lost his bearings—spied the nearest exit, and darted for it between two unfinished planes of reality.

He thought he felt flames at his back.

The triangle's voice followed him out: "Next time, poop on somebody else's party!"

He tumbled through the membrane between the overbloated Dimension Zero and the higher dimensions with the relief of a suffocating fish escaping its net to plummet back into the water. He had to take a moment to reorient himself to his surroundings—time passing so that each moment took its turn and ended when it was over, space that felt like space rather than all distances collapsed in on themselves—and looked back at Dimension Zero.

The longer he stared into the kaleidoscopic miasma, the more sure he was that, no matter where he looked, right at the center of his field of view, he could always see a shining yellow fleck of triangular glitter.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I spoke out of emotion. I am glad that you—" well, "survived" wasn't the right word, "—still exist. And it was heroic of you to save as many people as you did. I shouldn't have said they shouldn't be alive; just..."

He felt like he could still see the shapes dancing in the corners of his eyes.

"... Just not alive like that."

####

Who was the triangle?

At their first meeting yesterday, it had been clear to the Axolotl that the triangle could see and perceive things off his wall while the rest of his people could not; he'd identified himself as "Magister Mentium" rather than by name; and he'd been surrounded by shapes, all turned toward him, listening: so perhaps he was a leader of some kind? He must have seen whatever destroyed their dimension coming and been able to use his position to evacuate a few people. The true believers and the worthy, he'd said—maybe his... congregation? Maybe he was a religious leader? At any rate, it was a miracle he'd saved as many people as he had with what must have been very short notice.

But... their forced dance... the bodies fused together... the living-who-should-be-dead bleeding and bleeding and bleeding without end...

The Axolotl didn't want to believe the triangle had any ill will. He reminded himself that he didn't know anything about his people or their culture. These shapes had been through something unimaginably traumatic. They'd watched an entire reality die; many of them were stuck in the process of dying in a place where they couldn't complete it. Any mortal would be insane with grief. Perhaps their magister was just leading them in some sort of cathartic dancing mania; perhaps this was how the shapes processed their grief. He hoped that was what it was. He hadn't gotten a chance to speak to the others—he didn't know how many could speak—but he had seen, for just a moment, how survivor's guilt ate at the triangle.

The storm cloud with the Apocalyptic Threat Task Force had said that every single living being from Dimension 2 Delta had been killed. Even the gods and the ghosts. So how had the triangle and his people survived?

And what were they doing here, in the singular heart of all reality?

And what had happened to their world?

####

(Hello, thanks for reading!! If you were lured in by the colorful art I laid out as bait and this is your first time here, welcome!! This is part 1 of a 5-or-6 part fic about the Axolotl in the immediate aftermath of the Euclidean Massacre. I'll be posting one chapter a week, Fridays 5pm CST, so stick around if you wanna read more and learn the exciting answers to exciting questions like "Bill where in the good goddamn did you find a bunch of half-dead shapes??"

It's ALSO chapter 61 of an ongoing post-canon post-TBOB very-reluctantly-human Bill fic. So if you wanna read more of me writing Bill, check it out here. If you're not sold on the idea of a human Bill fic, I've also got a one-shot about normal triangle Bill escaping the Theraprism if you wanna read that.

If this is NOT your first time here and you already knew all of the above: hey y'all remember when we had to skip over chapter 61 because it would've been posted like four days after TBOB came out and it needed MAJOR revisions? Well, here it is!! And also it's currently like six times longer than it was originally. We're gonna be hanging out with the Ax for like a month and a half, buckle up. 

Let me know what y'all think so far!!)