#tight hearts soulmate au

[khruschevshoe]

'Cause you're the last of a dying breed

Write our names in the wet concrete

I wonder if your therapist knows everything about me

I'm here in search of your glory

There's been a million before me

That ultra-kind of love

You never walk away from

You're just the last of the real ones

-Fall Out Boy, Last of the Real Ones

(Aka I am going to scream abt my favorite fanfic series along with my new favorite book, y'all)

[cordeliawhohung]

Thoroughfare

Simon "Ghost" Riley x fem!Reader

Undone fibers and tissue — you are Simon’s magnum opus. The greatest mess he’s ever created.

cw: fucked up soulmate!au, dub-con, smut, alcohol, forced breeding kink, dacryphilia, implied kidnapping, implied baby trapping, simon is a little insane, bound by dreams and memories trope, reader is hyperfeminine

In his dreams, Simon rips you apart with bare hands and teeth.

Sinew and fibers undone, iron on his lips, flesh filling the chasm of his belly. Fingernails grow short and bloodied as he delicately picks apart every inch of you that the universe reveals to him. Easy as tearing through wrapping paper. You are a gift. The only glimpse of light that can make it through the depths; the suffocating layers of earth and soil he’s buried under. 

At first, he is convinced you are just like any other dream. A figment of his imagination. You appear after he kills Roba, with his skin still slick with the viscera of the men he had slaughtered in the name of revenge. A fine thing to look at. Soft — softer than him — with untainted eyes. A gaze not stained by death and horror. His first dream of you is the first time in a long while that he sleeps through the night without a nightmare. Domestic. You smile and laugh for the entire dream. Gentle. An angel. 

It is not your only appearance. Somehow, Simon is lucky enough to be blessed with weekly dreams of you, if not more. He dreams of warm tea, and hands smaller than his wrapping around a cup. He dreams of bright smiles and flowing dresses. Of liquor sweeter than he’d ever order. A chaste kiss with a stranger. Expert fingers typing at an office keyboard. A scraped knee from missing the landing to your apartment. 

You have become his only solace in a world that wants nothing more than to smother him. Crush him and grind him up until there’s nothing left of him — a red paste to feed the worms. For once, he gets to look at the world and enjoy it in ignorance, just as you do. Soak up the beauty of it without glancing over his shoulder. Smell the roses and not worry about pricking his fingers. He sleeps, so he can dream of you; his strange little visitor. 

It isn’t until a few years after your sneaky arrival into his mind that he entertains the fact that you exist in the conscious plane. Something living and breathing. A tangible being. This revelation invades his mind when he dreams of you in front of your vanity, skin clean and fresh from the shower that still wets your skin. A perfect canvas for the makeup you paint yourself with when you go out with friends. 

If he were conscious, his pupils would swallow his irises at the way the wand of your gloss drags across your lips. His thumb would twitch, wanting to replace it, to feel your breath against his skin. Warm him up until he melts. A dripping mess to pool on the floor and ruin that lovely, pristine blouse. 

Goosebumps ripple over your exposed skin halfway through your routine, and you freeze, fingers still gripping your applicator. The features in your face harden — growing cold as if you’ve seen a ghost — before relaxing as your eyes find yourself in the mirror. Your lips press together, then split open to speak. 

“Do you dream of me too, Simon?” 

He wakes with a start. Thick sweat coating his bare chest, scars angry and searing, heart throbbing against his ribs. It’s impossible to tell if it’s fear or infatuation that has his blood singing the way it is, reverberating through tight veins and arteries like a gushing river. He doesn’t care to attempt to differentiate the two feelings. In his mind, they’re both the same; they both feel like impending death. Instead, he keeps his eyes glued on the cigarette-yellowed ceiling above him as he tries to recall the way your lips moved when you said his name. 

There is not a religious or superstitious bone in Simon’s body. He has seen the brutal truth that if there is some superior power holding the cards, they certainly haven’t cared enough to lend him a hand. But he believes in you. In your existence. He believes there is a heat that dwells underneath your skin that will sear away everything that ails him. A softness to you that counteracts his puffy scars and calloused hands. A sweetness that he wants to siphon out of you and devour whole. 

All he has to do is find you. 

It’s an impossible task when he’s usually on the other side of the planet. Heavy gunpowder, disgusting residue, the recoil of his 1911 in the palm of his hand. Simon is the antithesis of you. Sharp where you are gentle, bitter where you are sweet. He thinks that’s why he’s so drawn to you, polar opposites pulling to one another until they crash and burn; superheated sugar melting and blazing through his skin until all he can think about is the pain and you. 

Your voice speaking his name rings loud and clear on his ears as he drags himself through the threshold of his flat. He wonders if you would say his name in real life just as sweetly as you did in his dream. Dead on his feet, he hasn’t slept in a proper bed in weeks, and the plush mattress almost feels foreign against the ache in his back. Usually he knows better than to try and sleep fresh off of deployment. High anxiety and fried nerves force him to toss and turn for a majority of the night, reliving the feeling of gore soaking the threads of his uniform and gloves. 

Countless weeks of long nights have meant there’s been no time for him to sleep, and if he can’t sleep, then he can’t see you. Whether you know it or not, you’ve become his anchor. His gift. The one thing he can focus on that brings him pleasure instead of pain. So he forces his eyes shut and —

He hates what he sees. 

Fresh, unclaimed skin glistening in the faint lighting of a stranger's room — your skin, that soft and beautiful flesh he dreams of every night — you’re in perfect view of a man he doesn’t recognize. Synthetically sweet moans pour from your lips as this stranger — this son of a bitch, this bastard — lazily pumps his cock into you. Even in his unconscious state, Simon can feel the unbridled rage ignite in his chest, flames licking up the cells of his heart until it’s nothing but embers and charcoal. 

Who the hell is fucking his girl? 

Even from an outsider's perspective, he can tell the sex is terrible. Knees bent awkwardly, heels in the mattress as you lay on your back, hands pawing at your own tits for some sort of stimulation as this man fucks you with the slowest speed Simon has ever seen in his life. There’s no friction. No build up of pressure to get you to keen and whine. Your moans born of pity quickly drown in your flings own euphoria as he whines, cock half buried in your cunt. 

He’s finished already.

An unsatisfied but cleverly covered moan leaves your lips as your fling carefully holds onto the condom as he pulls out of you, being courteous enough to not spill. (It’s the least he can do, saying as how he obviously couldn’t make you come). He quickly ties it off, having already caught his breath (he hadn’t worked that hard anyway. Not nearly as hard as you deserve) before he smiles at you with a sigh.

Then there’s the awkward conversation. A terminal lack of chemistry. Polite laughter and reassurances fall from your lips, rehearsed so well it’s almost painful. Too thoughtful for your own good for someone who couldn’t even consider you in such an intimate exchange. A smile swells in the apples of your cheeks as your partner excuses himself to shower, to rid himself of any evidence of you on his body, like he refuses to bask in what little glory he was able to pull out of you. 

Metal squeaks, and the water heater sputters to life. You lie alone in that bed, half spun, yearning to grow tighter. Simon should have seen it coming — your hands slipping between your legs. It’s only natural for the pads of your fingers to dip and toy with the furious, worked up flesh of your clit. There is nothing leisure about it. No teasing yourself — no, everything you do is expertly done. 

Now, it’s an actual task to keep quiet, to not moan and groan as you fuck yourself open on the three fingers you hastily shove inside of yourself while your other hand works at your clit. You’re a better solo performer than you were with that stranger — that motherfucker, that transgressor — and it doesn’t take long at all before your eyes are fluttering shut. The steady rise and fall of your chest heaves with your breaths as you pulse and writhe around your own fingers. You stay like that for as long as you’re willing to risk until you quickly wipe the lingering wetness on your fingers into your thighs before —

Simon stirs, cock painfully hard, straining against his boxers, throbbing. It’s normal for him to sweat when he wakes up from dreams, but not like this. Sticky, thick, heavy; his want taints him to the point of ruin. Seeps from his pores where it soaks into his bedsheets. He grunts as he props his body up on his pillows, heedy desire too heavy on his body. 

There is not a single speck of shame to be found inside his conscience as he yanks the band of his boxers past the crest of his hips. He wastes no time wrapping his hand around himself, blood pulsing through the veins of his cock, searing his hand with each stroke. Unlike you, with your desperate, quick fingers and unrestrained desire to get yourself off, Simon teases himself. Thumbs over the raging nerves in the head of his cock, lazily bucks into his own hand, squeezes just as hard as he thinks your cunt would. 

You. You. Christ, you’re all he can think about. All he dreams about. Haunting him like the grass stains on his uniform or the echo of a gunshot in a small room. Deafening. All consuming. 

It’s only fair that he consumes you back. 

He imagines what it would be like to undo you. Watch your eyes glaze over until you’re nothing but a content, mindless thing. He wonders if you’d cry trying to take his cock for the first time. There’s a certain girth to him that your lover certainly doesn’t have, and he thinks he’d enjoy the brine of your tears. Salty. The only thing on you that isn’t sickeningly sweet. Something that can match his abrasiveness. 

“I dream of ya. All the fuckin’ time,” Simon hisses. Fatigue coats his vocal chords with thick gravel, rumbling deep in his chest as he groans. Glossy lips around his cock, hands rubbing at the length of him that you can’t reach — he craves it. Imagines it so vividly he can almost taste the sex in the air of his stale, hardly lived-in bedroom. “Dream of you fuckin’ other men. Dream of how I could do it better. You’d like that, yeah?” 

Umber eyes peer through the darkness and land on the vague, fuzzy outline of his body. Wide hips, meaty hands, pulsing cock — he hopes you’ll be able to see it when you sleep. He wants you to wake up with that same burning want that you’ve bequeathed to him. 

“Sweet thing, so soft, arent’cha? I know you. Know what you need. Sweet girls like you always need it rough. Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? I’ll get you askin’ for it. Have you on your goddamn knees beggin’ for me.” 

Simon doesn’t make a show of it when he comes. There’s no need to overperform for you. He just makes sure to take in every detail. The steady dribble of cum that slides down his cock into the unruly hair at the base, the angry protruding veins, his own hitched breath and panting. He stares, and stares, and stares until he starts to go soft. 

“Hope you dream of this tonight, sweetheart,” he purrs. 

That’s the only name he calls you by. Sweetheart. Whispers it to the void in the morning when he pulls himself out of bed just before dawn. Asks if his scars turn you on as he lazily shaves his face in the mirror. Mutters wish me luck, sweetheart with a gun in hand, and the sound of roaring plane engines drowning his voice out. 

You leave him treats. Luring a dog with a still wet bone. Twirling in the mirror in cute outfits he craves to tear through with a knife. Popping your lips in the mirror after applying a fresh layer of gloss. Your fingers in your cunt after another failed hookup.

He kills a mercenary in Mexico and wonders if the shade of his blood would look good on your lips. Wants that same shade to stain the base of his cock in smeared lipstick and spit. He sees the bright, piercing pink of brain matter and he thinks about your tongue — what it would look like lulling out of your mouth as you moan. Simon expertly weaves the destructive nature of his hands with your delicate existence until you are nothing but a corrupted glitch in his mind. His cherished gift he can’t help but ruin because it’s the only thing he knows how to do. 

There are some nights when mere thoughts and dreams of you alone aren’t enough to quell the tempest that makes his hands itch with the urge to shred and devour. It’s an easy affliction to satiate on the field when he’s got a knife in his hand. It’s significantly harder when he’s on his third week on leave and he hasn’t heard the death rattle of an enemy — his favorite song. While you are mouthwatering, you aren’t quite tangible enough to pick apart the way his fingers yearn to do so, so he wanders to someplace a bit more stimulating. 

Terminus. The end of the line. He always finds his way back to this bar one way or another. Never to drink, oddly enough. There’s always going to be the rough parts of him he refuses to uncover; the rigid scars on his skin, and the sharpness of his teeth. A thick balaclava always covers anything that would give him away as the blood thirsty devil he so desperately attempts to suppress. No, he never goes to Terminus to order a pint and sit in some dark, sour corner of the building while all other patrons crowd around the dart boards or billiard tables. Simon goes to Terminus because it’s a close walk from his rental, and they sell Kentucky bourbon by the bottle.

A heavy wave of heat hits him as soon as he enters the building, but he doesn’t even stumble as he makes a beeline for the counter. Friday night brings a thick crowd with bodies that pulse and dance to their own tunes as liquor courses through their body and rids them of all the pain and filth of the week. He’s waiting for longer than usual as the bartender — a man who Simon reckons is about as old as the establishment itself — zips between customers as they stumble along and order more poison to cure their pain. Normally, he doesn’t show up on a weekend; he knows better than that, but he’s drowning in a special kind of storm tonight.

Simon is a patient man. He has to be, with his line of work. Relentless in his endeavor to beat his enemy to the mark. Yet, even a man as stoic and persevering as Simon gets antsy when his back is towards the entrance. Door swinging open and closed, allowing the slightest summer breeze to waft through the tight room. The urge to glance over his shoulder and assess every inch of that room haunts him, but he ignores the itch underneath his skin. 

Instead, he focuses on the sounds. The idle chatter of guests as they slip throughout the room, crawling over the establishment like insects. Thick wood splintering as tiny needles drive tip first into the dart board to his left. Laughter and heavy accents, shitty jokes, clinking glass, hoppy beer, body odor, dense nicotine —

A giggle. 

Simon Riley never freezes, but he does the first time his ears are graced with your voice outside of his dreams. He’s in limbo. A terrible purgatory that makes his ears ring as his dark eyes scan the bar with the skill of a bloodthirsty dog. Deadly. Efficient. Your blood sings to him, and he follows the song until he finds you leaning against the wooden wall next to a billiards table. You’re watching some nameless freaks play a game as you sip on some fruity drink through a straw. 

Dark, mid-rise jeans sit satisfyingly low on your hips, and the flesh on your stomach is poorly covered by a thin tank top that doesn’t want to roll past your ribcage. You’re melting, sugar sweet sweat coating your chest, caramelizing deliciously on your skin. Cute, dainty, dull, teeth flash as you giggle again, laughing as some poor sod misses an easy pocket. 

He wants to run his tongue along your neck, lick up that nectar glinting in the dim lights before ruining you. Fingers twitch in time with his pulse as his heart beats harder now than it ever has in any other moment — if he doesn’t move soon, it’ll rip free from his chest and run off without him. 

He didn’t even have to track you down. Like a true gift, you fell right into his lap. 

“The usual?” 

The ancient bar hand grabs Simon’s attention and pulls him back to earth with a swift yank on his leash. Sharp eyes shoot back at him — seemingly annoyed he was pulled out of his daydream — before they soften and he huffs. The man looks impatient, irritated that he’s taking up his valuable time during such a busy night. 

“Bourbon. Angel’s Envy. Neat,” he responds. 

Bewildered, the bartender shrugs as he slinks off to get Simon’s drink, and the moment the glass is in his hand he tosses a few quid on the counter before stalking off into the crowd. He approaches you from the side, though he’s certain you wouldn’t notice him if he came from a more direct route. He waits for everyone to crowd the table, waits for you to be shoved to the back, content against the wall, drink in hand — ripe for the picking. 

You don’t flinch when his hand wraps around your waist, thick pads of his fingers digging into the tender flesh of your waist. He wants to grin at that fact — like you already know that you belong to him — but he doesn’t. Cold. Collected. You look up at him with glinting eyes that quickly grow wide with recognition. The beginning of his name forms on your glossy lips, but doesn’t quite roll off of your tongue. 

“Been lookin’ for you everywhere, sweetheart,” he says, voice a harsh whisper. 

Your eyes flutter, enticing and sweet, like you’re trying to blink sand from your eyes. “I… I didn’t think you actually existed,” you admit. 

He raises a brow, and it dances underneath his mask in a challenge. “Yeah? Is that why you asked if I dreamed of you, too? Were just takin’ the piss outta me?” 

“No- well, I mean… I had a feeling. That you existed,” you say, laugh hissing between your teeth as your gaze drops. 

Melting already, and he’s hardly got his hands on you. 

Amber liquid swirls in the glass in Simon’s hand as he holds it out for you to take. You look at it with cautious eyes, teeth sinking into your lip before you look back at him. 

“This is… this is insane, isn’t it? I mean, you’re real. And I’m real.” You swallow thickly, skin heating as his thumb slides underneath the hem of your tank top. “So everything I saw… was real? Your work, you- you’re in the military? You’ve seen me at my most… open. I’ve watched you… you know… And, uhm… I don’t know what…”

He smirks, breath pushing out of his lungs, fanning across your face even through the fabric of his balaclava. “I told you, didn’t I? I know you. I know what you need, sweetheart.” 

You have no time to answer before he’s raising the glass of bourbon up to your lips, and there’s no choice but to drink. Simon tips the glass, and you let the liquor wash over your tongue. He chuckles at the face you make — it’s too brash for something as sweet as you — yet you swallow every last drop. A thin bead sits on your bottom lip, threatening to dribble down your chin, and he uses the knuckle of his index finger to wipe it clean. 

“I know what you need, and you know what I want,” he continues, head tilting to the side — a predator sizing up his prey. “Let’s not draw this out any longer, yeah?”

Once the door of Simon’s apartment is shut and locked behind him, he’s got your back against the wall. Exposed flesh of your arms pinned beside your head, moans muffled by his lips on yours. Despite the bourbon, he can still taste the mixed drink you were nursing before; syrupy sweet. So fitting. His fingers release your hands before they’re ghosting down the center of your chest, tracing your sternum with professional precision. If he presses any harder, he’ll tear through skin and bone, sink into your blood, into the muscle of your heart, fresh ichor coating his hand with a delicious treat. 

Instead, he yanks your tank top up to your collar bones before pulling down the hem of your bra. Your tits fall free with a gasp from your heaving lungs, and he sinks his teeth into his prize. Bite after bite. Sweet as a peach, just like he knew you would be, and you bruise just as easily as one too. You whimper as he marks you, sharp canines staking claim with pressure harsh enough to draw blood. If it’s too much for you, you don’t say anything. 

You try to return the favor. Palm of your hands pressed against the firm, thick muscle of his chest, pawing at him, trying to feel him through his clothes. You’re not intimidated by the scars that paint his skin, or the roughness of his character. He’s always been like this for as long as you’ve known him, and you’re very familiar with Simon Riley. 

So you trust him completely as he yanks you down the entryway and toward the kitchen. It’s implicit. In your nature. Soft, pliable. Bending. And it’s in his nature. Rough. Demanding. Forceful — your lower back collides with the counter where Simon usually prepares his meals, and he’s aggressive when he unzips your jeans and pushes them past your hips. 

“You’ve been dreaming of this too. I know you have.” Simon grunts as he turns you around, hip bones pressing against the unforgiving countertop as his clothed cock grinds against your bare ass. You try not to wince at the sting of the corner cutting into your thin skin. “Every night. Been watchin’ me just as long as I’ve been watchin’ you. My gift. My sweet fuckin’ angel.” 

Though he assured you that he would have you on your knees begging for him, Simon doesn’t have the time to waste. He crouches down, face level with your ass as he spreads the meat of your thighs apart as far as they’ll go with your jeans restricting your knees. There’s no hesitation as he dives in, tongue lapping at your hole, saliva mixing with your wetness. Muscles tense, throat constricts, and heat courses as you bend forward, elbows resting on the counter to give him better access. 

Searing heat builds in your cunt as his tongue explores around your clit. It’s messy, hardly put together. Like a dog that can’t keep the food in his mouth as he’s chewing.

He wants to stay there forever, lapping at you like the bad dog he is, but he can’t. There’s an incessant pressure building inside of him, broiling, threatening to melt you in the very palm of his hands if he’s not quick. So he pulls away, still aching for you, and spits a thick glob of saliva on you for good measure before standing tall behind you. 

Metal grinds together as he unzips his jeans, and your own ears perk up at the sound. “Do you have protection?” you pant. “I’ve got a few rubbers in my bag if- hey- Simon!” 

Flesh burns and stretches as Simon bullies himself into you. It steals the air from your lungs as he presses, and presses, and presses, until there’s nothing left of him that you haven’t swallowed whole. It’s easy. Slick. He forces you open, giving you no choice but to give in. A strained whine leaves your lips as he rocks his hips, thick cock splitting you apart, legs too restricted to even give him more room inside of you. 

“Don’t worry ‘bout that,” he grunts, hands pulling you back against his chest by your shoulders. “We already confirmed, I know what you need, and you know what I want, yeah?” 

Your mind blanks the moment his thrusts bear weight. So full, then void, and then spilling. It racks your nerves, renders them fuzzy, bogged down with too much syrup that you can’t move fast enough through the stickiness to connect the dots. Gooey. Soft like taffy. You stretch and pull for him as his relentless pace renders you as a puddle in his hands. 

You know what I want. 

You know what you need. A good fuck. That’s why you’re here to begin with, isn’t it? To make love to the man who’s been haunting your dreams with gore and violence. To fall into the gravity of him that you couldn’t escape even if you tried. You thought you knew what he wanted. Same as you. To fuck the girl who’s been giving him a toothache from the sweetness of her voice. But now? As he’s grunting in your ear, hands pawing at your tits, fingers gripping your throat? 

Now, you’re not so sure. 

Still, the pleasure rips through you with a demanding ache you can’t ignore. So needy and worked up from the neglect of your failed love life and array of shitty partners, he feels you start to unwind. Melt and separate as your moans fall free — pleasant and the only filling thing he’s had in his entire life. Your face contorts from the intensity of it all, diaphragm spasming as you hiccup and cry, fresh and hot tears streaming down your face. 

Simon coos and coddles, fingers reaching for your jaw as he turns your face to the side. Hot breath tickles the fresh streaks on your cheeks as he chuckles, patronizing. 

“Cryin’ sweetheart?” he asks; a question he already knows the answer to. 

His tongue lies flat against your skin as you whimper, and he licks your tears like it’s fresh bourbon from the cask. He prepares himself for the salt, the addicting brine, but it doesn’t hit him. Even as you’re being torn apart, flesh pinched free from bone in his hands, you’re just as sweet as you always are. 

“S-Simon, please,” you babble, face trying to wrench free from his tongue. 

“Is there a damn thing on you that doesn’t taste this good? You’re a fuckin’ mess and still… could live off of you forever,” he promises into the raw skin of your cheek. 

There’s a few more minutes of nonstop, demanding thrusts from Simon before the pressure snaps and floods around you. You come with a sob, eyes screwing shut as his cock continues its assault — that demanding rhythm that saps you for everything you’re worth. Liquid. Mush. Bone with the marrow sucked free. Undone fibers and tissue — you are Simon’s magnum opus. The greatest mess he’s ever created. 

He finishes not too long after you in a fury of thrusts and a growl you can feel rumbling in his chest. It leaves you raw. Muscles tingling and dancing underneath your skin. Body spent. Eyes blurring with tears. He keeps himself plugged inside of you, grip slowly becoming loose as he trails kisses along the side of your neck — like he only acknowledges how fragile you are after he’s done breaking you. 

“Sweet angel,” he whispers, cock twitching inside of you as he speaks. “Let’s clean you up.” 

You wake up in his bed the next morning with the window open and the birds attempting to chirp over the sound of car engines and city white noise. Soiled clothes cling to your skin, cum staining your panties and the insides of your thighs from the two other rounds Simon insisted on going for. You’re spent. Licked clean until your sugary crust dissolved, and now you’re nothing but a bare, gooey center. Sheets stick to your body as you sit up, body yearning to stretch, only for a tattooed arm to yank you back onto the mattress. 

You’re face to face with Simon, and your muscles are too mushy to argue with him. His fingers trace your makeup-stained face. Old mascara sitting in the creases of your eyes from heavy tears, glitter from your lip gloss seeping into your chin and cheeks. He adores it. A beautiful mess — the only chaos he can create that is still worth loving. 

But you’ve been here long enough. 

“Morning,” you greet, voice faint. He does nothing but hum in response. “If uh… I can shower and maybe borrow your clothes, I can head home here soon. Get out of your hair.” 

“Not happening,” he replies, voice so sharp you flinch. 

You clear your throat in a poor attempt to regain your composure. “Well, uh. We should probably head to the pharmacy. The morning after pill would be a good idea considering-”

You’re silenced by his hand gently grazing your cheek. He looks human lying there next to you, half of his face smushed into a pillow. Almost. There’s something wrong with his eyes. A darkness lurking there that you hadn’t noticed before. Or had you just forced yourself to be blind to it? You watch him with wide eyes as his gaze narrows, a seething question burning on his tongue. 

“The fuck do you think this is, sweetheart?” You swallow, and it feels like razors tear you apart the whole way down your throat. “Dreamin’ of each other? I’ve been craving you for fucking years. Think this is all just a coincidence? Think this was all for one good fuck?”

“You… don’t seem like the type of man to be superstitious,” you admit. 

His glare undos you as the muscles in his jaw tense. He leans up, towering over you as you lay under him, face mere inches from yours as his upper lip fights back a snarl. 

“We’re in this for the long run, sweetheart,” he says as if he’s staking a claim. “I’ll get you nice and fat with my kid if you aren’t already, and I’ll take good care of the both of you. Protect you. Make sure I never have to dream about you again because you’ll always be right here.”

“That’s crazy, you’re speaking nonsense,” you say, “I-I hardly know you.” 

“We’ll go down to the registrar's office,” he continues as if you never even spoke in the first place. “Next month you’ll be my wife and we’ll make good on the mess our minds have been making of each other for the last few years.” 

Palpable fear plagues your body, forcing your bottom lip to quiver as you shake your head at his utter nonsense. This… this is insane. He’s insane. But weren’t you aware of that much? How many men have you watched him kill? How often have you watched him wash the blood from his gloves, or claw out of an early grave? Heard him chuckle as a man groveled and sobbed, begging to be let go, just for him to skewer him with his knife anyway? 

What else did you expect from a man you met at Terminus? 

While Simon dreamed the good dreams — the fair dreams of sweet smiles and smooth liquor — you’ve been the antithesis of him. You’ve had the nightmares, the sweats, the anxiety. Every single image you ever saw of his life had been a warning. A siren screaming for you to run. A premonition of the trained hunter that’s been on your savory scent for years. And still, you fell right into his trap as if you weren’t taught the exact way to wiggle out of it. 

“What else have these dreams been for, sweetheart? I’ve been huntin’ you for years. Not lettin’ you go now just ‘cause you’ve got cold feet.”

Teeth embedded in flesh, now all you can do is squirm as Simon’s lips press against yours. He no longer needs to dream of ripping you apart. Flesh from bone, sinew shredding and snapping. Now, he can do that all from the comfort of his bed as he devours you — his lovely wife — soul and all. 

[all-purpose-dish-soap]

30 / 1.1k / soap soulmate au, part 7

...

The minutes tick by. You're alone with your thoughts. It's worse than before. But what are you supposed to tell him? All but the smallest thing you could give him would lead his entire team to Captain Graves, and you... you can't do that. You owe him a debt.

The door slams open and Soap walks back in, looking tired and angry. Before you can speak, he grabs you by the arm, drags you out of your chair, and then he's kissing you, pressing you up against the wall. His hands are in your hair and on your hips, his hard body against yours, his teeth finding the place where your neck meets your shoulder.

Everything about it is possessive, angry, desperate. One hand slides around to your ass. The other weaves tighter into your hair, holding you tight between him and the wall, his hips grinding into yours.

"Thought I was gonna have to wait till you stopped being so damn stubborn. You were never going to tell me, were you?" His soft growl is low, heated, and hurt. "You’re always gonna keep this to yourself. Even if it means letting me go to my grave."

He pulls you away from the wall and pushes you into the metal interrogation table with enough force to put you on your back. He advances on you. Straddles you. His mouth is hot and he's not giving you time to think. He's taking what he needs because he wants it, he's tired of waiting for it, and he's finally got you where he wants you. His teeth on your throat have you arching your back. His grip is tight but you don't want to escape.

His fingers dig into you. "Will you even miss me?"

You open your eyes, jolting in place. A dream, it was a dream. You're still cuffed to this stupid chair. You're hot and wet and there's a horrible knot in your throat.

The door slides open. That's what woke you--activity outside. A few people filter into the weapons closet briefly to grab rifles and sidearms. They hardly spare you looks. They leave; the voices outside begin to fade and you hear an engine firing up. Muted panic rises in your gut. They're about to leave. Are they leaving you here? Is Johnny gone already?

Then the door rattles softly and Johnny's familiar shape slips in. He glances back out the door, watching for anyone who might’ve seen him slip in before he closes it. You release a breath through gritted teeth.

"Mornin’.” Soap is suited up, radioed, armed to the teeth. Looking every inch the soldier he is. Your heart sinks. You're in deep. No matter how this situation turns out, it's not good for you. Whoever wins, you lose.

Instead of taking the chair, he circles behind you. You rattle your cuffs as he leaves your line of sight.

"Change your mind?" he asks you.

"No."

He chuckles. "Thought not."

He bends closer. Your heart races. You half-expect to feel his hands--your dream flashes through your mind--but then, to your surprise, you hear the soft clink of metal on metal. He pulls on the cuffs. One falls away. Then the other.

You get to your feet, curling and uncurling your fingers. "Why are you letting me go?" you ask, voice still sharp. "I told you I'm not helping you."

Soap looks bemused. It's like you don't know how to stop being belligerent even when you're not a hostage anymore. "Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I’m under strict orders not to let you leave this room. But if you just so happen to vanish..." He holds up the key--the one he'd swiped from Ghost earlier. "That’d be fine with me.”

“What are you playing at?”

“There's a chance none of us will come back. Don't like the idea of you sittin' here like a rabbit in a trap for God knows how long." He holds out a neat little square of folded cash. When you don't take it, he reaches around and slips it into your back pocket. "There's a town four miles southwest of here. Set off in a half hour and you’ll get there before sundown. Take somethin' off the wall to protect yourself."

You stare at him, your frustration growing with every word he says. Why does he trust you enough to free you? Why? He knows very well you could pick up the first phone you see, call your Captain, and tell him everything. Hell, you could call Shepherd.

You tried your dead fucking best to show him who you are. Why doesn't he believe you? Does he think you're going to grab his hand and ask him to come with you--fuck the Shadows, fuck Las Almas, you know how to buy fake IDs and burner phones, you'll figure it out a day at a time?

Your throat tightens. You could obviously never say that. And if you did consider it, you'd bite your tongue because there's no way he'd accept. You have so much to gain from running away and he has too much to lose. He cares about his team too much.

He skims his gloved fingertips up your arm and goes to touch your cheek again, but then he hesitates and stops himself. You feel radioactive.

"How 'bout a kiss for the road?" he asks. He seems to decide on taking a strand of your hair and places it tentatively behind your ear. "Just in case."

Your hands tighten into fists. How dare he.

"Aw, c'mon. Don't make me walk away from you disappointed." He gives you a small, infuriating smile.

"If you want a kiss, then come back for it when you're done."

"Ah. Fair enough."

He brings his hands up to the sides of your face and presses his lips to your hairline anyway, leaning into you for a long, silent moment.

Then he's gone.

…

You sit cross-legged on that table for a long stretch of time, spinning in one hand the handcuffs that held you. You stare at that photograph and count the seconds. At thirty minutes, you set off, walking southwest.

...

part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4 / part 5 / part 6 / [part 7] / part 8 / part 9 / part 10

more Soap / masterlist tag

[alyakthedorklord]

Dead on Main Soulmate AU

First words your soulmate says to you are written on your skin. Jason didn’t understand his for a long time- it looks like an insult, but he has absolutely no idea what it means, both before and after his death.

Eventually, it starts to make a slight bit more sense as Trendy Lingo advanced, and he hears Steph and Tim and some other teens using something similar. Still, he doesn’t understand why they’re said, and so Jason is completely unprepared for when he’s approached randomly by some guy while walking down the street after a particularly violent pit rage.

“Sir, your vibes are rancid.”

Jason freezes. The pit writhes in offense, because what the fuck, but at the same time his heart is beating out of his chest, because what the fuck?

“Oh ancients that sounded rude.” The guy says, eyes widening like he can’t believe he said that. “I mean- I just- are you okay? You don’t feel okay. You feel really, really sick, like your soul got marinated in corrupted ecto, and do you want help?”

Jason keeps staring. The guy is cute, dark hair and blue eyes that seem just a bit too bright to be human, freckles disappearing behind an embarrassed flush.

“I don’t want to overstep, because you’re giving off a whole lot of “fuck off don’t talk to me”, but I didn’t wanna just ignore you because I’m pretty sure a lot of the anger and bad vibes are coming from the corrupted stuff and I’m pretty sure I can help with that? If you don’t want help just tell me to fuck off or punch me in the face and I’ll leave but-”

The stranger takes a nervous step away, and Jason lunges forwards before he can think, everything in him rebelling at the thought of his soulmate leaving, from his own thoughts to the pits themselves.

“Please don’t leave.” He gasps, hands squeezed tight to his soulmates arm despite the twinge of pain from his bloodied knuckles. His soulmate’s eyes widen in shock, mouth dropped open, before he breaks into a bright, amazed grin.

“I won’t, I promise.” His soulmate says, reaching up to hold onto Jason’s arms in turn. His touch is cold, even through Jason’s jacket. “I’m staying right here.”

Jason leans into the touch, sagging with relief. He can feel the pits receding, the anger and pain and fear fading as his soulmate gently runs his hand over his back.

He feels, for the first time in a long time, at peace.

“…seriously though, wtf happened to you, you reek of bad death juice.”

[upsidedownwithsteve]

A soulmate AU: Steve Harrington x fem!reader [3.7K]

THE TIMELINE

"There was something 'bout you that now I can't remember, It's the same damn thing that made my heart surrender. And I miss you on a train, I miss you in the morning, I never know what to think about. I think about you."

- About You By The 1975

V. HAWKINS, INDIANA: 1988

Two years had passed since the last gate had closed and despite the aftermath of the “earthquakes,” Vecna had yet to make any sort of reappearance. 

Max’s bones healed, eventually, and she regained most of her sight, relying on thick lensed glasses when she grew tired or the words in her books turned blurry. Nancy went to college, Jonathan tried it for a year, Hopper took El on a month-long camping trip to see something other than the town repairing itself and Lucas went to therapy. 

Soon, each kid followed suit, attending sessions that eventually helped them sleep a little better because even though they couldn’t tell the person on the other side of the coffee table about monsters and the world under their feet, there had been enough death and suffering to fill the hour with regardless. 

Dustin told Steve he should go too and Robin agreed. After Eddie’s funeral, the one where they all stood with Wayne, a guy from the garage Eddie worked at on weekends and the remaining Hellfire members beside a small gravestone, they had another one. 

A second ceremony near the woods behind Eddie’s trailer, close to where he died, to where Dustin had found him bleeding and proud. The kids cried and Joyce held on tight to Will while Jonathan hugged Nancy and Dustin punched a tree trunk. It felt better than the first one, easier somehow, when they didn’t have to lie and hide the guilt they had at knowing each and every one of them felt a little shame in having a hand in someone’s else’s death. 

But it was closure. 

The town healed, roads were repaired, houses rebuilt, new flowers planted in the park in memory of those who had been lost in the accident - the natural disaster that made headlines, the one that no one could have predicted. 

Steve helped Dustin clean Eddie’s grave when the spray paint covered the dead boy’s name. Robin stopped crying when she looked in the mirror each morning. Jonathan left his room. 

The kids got better. They smiled more, went to the new arcade on opening day, shared slushies and rode their bikes around town again. Joyce visited Wayne when she could, took him pies and meatloaf and eventually got him out of his armchair and into a coffee shop for a full hour. Hopper got his job back, had a ceremony that preceded the funeral he had years before and Robin managed to get her and Steve a sweet gig at the record store that replaced Family Video. 

It felt fresh. New. Clean. 

So why was Steve still dreaming about gates?

For the third night in a row, he woke up gasping. A yell stuck in his throat that tasted like metal, like blood, and he was drenched. Shirtless, his sheets stuck to his chest, the weight of them tangled around his legs in a sickly familiar way, vines tugging at his ankles. His room was dark, the house empty, too quiet. Quiet enough that his breath ripped from his lungs in harsh pants, his head pounding from the exertion of running in his dream, back in a place that he hadn’t seen in almost twenty one months. 

At first, he dreamt of death. 

Of Eddie and how they found him lifeless and in Dustin’s arms. How Max was barely conscious in the attic of the Creel House, her body broken in ways that no doctor could understand. He dreamt of how he had pulled Lucas away from her, the boy sobbing and yelling, fighting with more strength than he knew he had as Steve tried to restrain him just enough for the paramedics to get Max into the ambulance. 

Then the dreams turned empty. He dreamt of losing everyone, Robin, Dustin, Hop. El was gone, Will too, Mike nowhere to be found. Nancy’s house was empty, Joyce and Jonathan didn’t exist and Steve sat alone in a town that turned grey, crumbling to dust until the vines came back and the clouds turned red. 

He ran miles every night, searching for his friends, his family. Woke up to shaking breaths and sore legs like he’d really sprinted across a town that was no longer home and each morning when the sun rose, he sat with a coffee and his bare legs dipped in the pool in his backyard. He stared at the water until the ripples blurred and wondered how long it would take for Barb to come haunt him too, if she’d reappear in his dreams despite the years that had gone by, if she’d come crawling back out of his pool like she used to, dripping wet and with no eyes. 

But Barb never came and he stopped dreaming of the kids, stopped hearing Lucas’ screams, stopped seeing Max in a hospital bed with blood coming from her eyes and eventually, one night, he dreamt of a gate that he’d never seen before. 

It didn’t even really look like a gate. 

Not the ones Steve knew. It wasn’t framed by dead vines, it didn’t pulsate, it didn’t have a red glow coming from its innards. This one didn’t look like rotting flesh, like a wound in the earth that couldn’t be healed. This one wasn’t at the bottom of a lake, lined with wet moss and cracked rocks, it wasn’t in the Munson trailer nor in the middle of the woods. 

This one opened on a blank wall in Steve’s bedroom, replacing the shelves where his old basketball trophies sat, where he usually left his pile of clothes before falling into bed. In the dream, it started as a crack, a crumbling of plaster and blue plaid wallpaper and Steve watched it open, a yawning thing that split the room and bathed it in light. It was too bright at first, like blinking into a summer sun. And once the white-hot of it cleared from Steve’s eyes, he saw blue skies and he could smell the ocean. 

There were trees he’d never seen before in real life, something out of a movie, tall and green and narrow as they swayed in a breeze he couldn’t really feel from his spot on his bedroom carpet. The buildings were a pinky-peach colour, like clay, with orange slate tiles and there were foundations and statues carved into the walls, water trickling from the mouths of gods and vases that stone faced women held in their marble arms. 

It was like looking at a painting, a canvas between his bed and his old desk, framed with olive branches and large, red fruits that protruded from the gates mouth. 

Pomegranates. 

Steve could smell them, a sweetness that mixed with the ocean air, a kind of freshness that you couldn’t find between the fields and farms that surrounded Hawkins. In the dream, he wanted to move closer but found that he couldn’t, his eyes wide and his bare feet rooted to the spot as he stared at the scene. It felt like a memory the more he looked, the buildings becoming familiar, a baby blue door that looked like somewhere he’d once owned the keys to and the cobbled streets became a well walked way home. 

Then, as if he weren’t supposed to really see it, he spotted something move in an upstairs window. Two houses from the front of the gate, with rusted shutters and white linen curtains, he saw a girl stand between them. 

A pretty girl, with eyes he knew he’d seen before, in a white dress that he was sure he remembered the feeling of. 

The sight of her made Steve’s heart hammer, the dream making him dizzy, the realisation that he knew that girl making the line between unconsciousness and reality a little blurry. He didn’t know her name, or where he knew her from. He didn’t even know where he was looking or why the gate was there. 

But he stared and stared until the girls eyes met his and before he could lift his hand, or even try to speak, there was a crack that seemingly came from the sky - the one above Hawkins or the one inside the gate, he didn’t know - but something flashed, the gate went dark and the rip in his bedroom wall stitched itself back up. 

He woke up feeling like he’d remembered and forgotten something all at once. Like a book he’d read back in middle school, a photo he’d once misplaced, a song he hadn’t heard in years but still remebered some of the words too. 

He knew her. He knew her. 

Steve thought about the girl so much, so often, that it didn’t take him long to think of her, to refer to her, as you. You were someone he’d once known, from a memory or another dream, he wasn't sure. It was the same feeling as watching a movie and seeing a pretty actress on screen, in a different outfit with different hair but knowing her face and wondering what show he’d seen her in before. 

Except with this, there was an aching want that buried itself in his chest at the sight of you, an awful feeling that grew larger each night. And every time his wall cracked open again, it seemed like his ribs did too. A crushing feeling, a yawning expanse inside his body that made room for the way his heart seemed to grow and grow at the sight of you. 

Yearning, that’s what he thought it was. A slow, burning build of it. 

The second night, he dreamt of you in a garden. A sprawling, green lawn with a pond so green-blue it made his eyes hurt. There was an awning beside it, a pergola of sorts made of white stone and it had ivy growing between the pillars, covering the roof and reaching down to trail its flowers in the water below. You were closer than before, than you were in the window, and Steve could see the way your lashes hit your cheeks as you looked down, stitching something that you held in your lap. 

There was a wicker basket beside you, a loaf of fresh bread wrapped in a cloth and he could still smell pomegranates, sweet and tart. There was a space beside you on the blanket, enough room for two but no one else came. 

You were always alone. 

Steve tried to talk to you, to reach out and see if this gate worked like the others, if he could walk through into this other world, this other dimension, but it didn’t work. 

Not yet, anyway. 

You seemed to notice him more on the fifth night, as he watched you walk along the edge of a lake. Your hair was shorter now and your clothes had changed. They look more modern, more like his, the cabins behind you reminiscent of a summer camp, a holiday lodge or something. He could hear music, a song he swore he heard on the radio not too long ago and that night, you watched him back. 

It seemed like you were waiting for someone. And when Steve saw your face light up with a smile, his heart stumbled. You raised your arm, reaching out a hand to the edge of the gate, off to the side as if someone else was in Steve’s walls. He saw another hand reach for yours, larger, definitely male, with a freckle where the thumb joined the palm. 

The jealousy he felt was unmatched, a burning thing that scorched his chest and his throat, hot needles at the back of his mouth. Before the man came into view, the crack in his wall trembled and the gate stitched itself closed once more, leaving plaster dust and flakes of paint on his carpet. 

Apart from the small mess, no one would have ever guessed another world opened up inside of Steve Harrington’s bedroom each night. 

It took him a week and half to notice his hand had a freckle in the same spot. A small beauty mark he’d never really paid attention to before, painted in the space that joined his thumb to his hand. He tried not to read too much into it, tried not to hold onto the hope that maybe it meant something - because none of this made sense, not really. 

They were just dreams. Strange things, brain scrambling things. But it was a welcome reprieve from death and darkness and vines that held onto him too tight. He no longer woke up in a cold sweat, he no longer wished for morning to come, no matter how tired he felt when he opened his eyes. 

Steve wondered if anyone else was experiencing these kinds of dreams. If the rest of the party were getting glimpses of other worlds, other timelines. He wasn’t sure what they were, too scared to ask, too afraid to make everyone else worry. The thought that these dreams could be a trick crossed his mind more than once, a new tactic from Vecna, an infiltration of his sleep that was meant to lull him into some kind of false sense of security. 

Safety - an unknown feeling. 

But everyone else spent their days talking about school and their new bosses, the fair that was coming to town to celebrate the town hall finally being rebuilt. No one mentioned Vecna or dreams or gates or girls they knew from somewhere they couldn’t place. 

So Steve accepted the fact that whatever these dreams were - whatever they meant - they were just for him. Which meant that you were his too. 

Weeks went by with Steve viewing you from the split in his wall, sometimes hearing music, sometimes hearing your muffled voice. Never real words, never loud enough to hear and it didn’t seem like you could hear him either. But Steve watched, enraptured, following you around different parts of the world, new countries and scenes that he could never really place but, oh my god, each one felt like home with you in it. 

Then one night, he saw himself. 

He felt the surge of panic flood him even in his sleep, his body jolting against his bed as he saw the familiar face, staring back at him, nonplussed. He looked a little different, maybe older. His hair was shorter at the back, cropped closer to the nape of his neck but the biggest difference was how happy he looked. 

This Steve, the one in his dream, inside this gate - this Steve from another time, another life - he looked lighter. He didn’t have purple smudges under his eyes, no deep lines settling across his forehead from frowning so much. His clothes were different too, looser, less fitting, the colours more muted. He wore a pair of jeans that looked much more comfortable than his tight Levi’s, a soft burgundy sweater that had the sleeves rolled up. 

Steve didn’t recognise where this dream took place, but he knew it wasn’t Hawkins. America, yeah, the street signs and licence plates on the cars in the street giving that detail away, but he wasn’t too sure where. The buildings were bigger, shinier, more glass than brick but the skies were still blue and it looked peaceful, warm. 

Safe. 

Dream Steve strolled down the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets, looking back over his shoulder every now and then as if to make sure the real Steve was following him. He walked past storefronts and stopped to pet a dog, a golden retriever who was waiting for his owner outside of a bakery. When he came to a bookstore, Steve could see a large building in the distance, a huge billboard atop it that looked like it was advertising a new movie, or a show maybe. It didn’t have much details on it, no actors nor dates to tell what year this was supposed to be. 

Certainly not 1988. 

It only had lettering across it, big and bold and red against a pristine white background: “ANOTHER LIFE.”

The bell to the bookstore jingled and then Steve saw you. As pretty as you had been in every other gate, every other world, every other lifetime. Like a figurine inside a snow globe, like something from a fairytale. Steve had never seen you this close before. 

He watched your smile, the way it widened at the sight of his counterpart, this other version of him. You were so pretty that his breath got caught in his lungs, his sleeping body kicking out in shock when you lunged at the dream version of him, throwing your arms around his shoulders in greeting. 

Steve watched the two figures embrace on the street, he watched how this luckier man got to bring his hand to your cheek and hold to there to kiss, how his lips - Steve’s own lips - met your own and parted them, mouths melting together in something that was so much more than a quick hello. 

Steve didn’t have it in him to feel jealous then. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to. He watched the hand that held your jaw, the thumb that caressed your cheekbone as you grinned into him, your own hands clutching his waist now. There was a freckle, the same as the one he had on his own hand, in the matching spot on yours. This Steve took that hand and kissed that very mark, smacking kisses across your palm and up your wrist until you were laughing, head thrown back, eyes bright. 

Steve hadn’t seen anything so happy. 

He woke up before the dream finished, before the gate closed. Steve woke up with tears stinging at the corners of his eyes, his vision blurry in the navy gloom of his bedroom. It wasn’t yet morning. There was no gate on his bedroom fall, no new city between the plaid striped wallpaper. 

He thought it could’ve been Chicago, maybe New York. Perhaps Philadelphia. 

He wondered if he left and went looking for that bookstore, that street, that billboard, he’d find you too. If he was supposed to, if you were real, if this life was all he was supposed to get. 

Something told him otherwise, that open crack inside his chest that made him ache for hours after he awoke. He never forgot about you during the day, each life he’d watched you live, how you had grown your hair out and then cut it, how you seemed to change your clothing depending on where you were, from old petticoats to jeans and shirts with logos on them he’d never seen before. 

Steve felt like he’d lived a thousand lives with you. 

He wasn’t sure what he had to do to get you in this one. 

After two weeks of dreaming of this life with you, one that he was so sure would happen, he spoke to Joyce. He waited until the kids dragged Hopper out into the yard to help them with some sort of rocket they wanted to make and he found her in the kitchen. It was the closest kind of feeling he had to home - bar from the sight of you, but he wasn’t really sure if that counted when he was asleep. 

So he tried to sound casual when he leaned over the Byers kitchen counter, elbows avoiding the jelly stains that Mike had left after making a sandwich, and asked, “hey, uh, do you believe in soulmates?”

Joyce blinked at him, flour and butter between her fingers as she tried to turn the page in her recipe book back to the instructions for apple pie. The book flopped shut when she let go, her hands reaching for a rag instead. Her eyes never left Steve’s. 

“Uh, well. I guess so,” she paused, head tilted to the side as she watched the younger man, how his cheeks turned pink and his gaze fell to the floor. “I haven’t thought about it all that much. Why’d you ask?”

Steve didn’t know what to say then. So he floundered, flushed in the face and nose scrunched as he ran his fingers through his hair too harshly, hoping that no one else walked in. What was he supposed to say? That he was dreaming of gates in his bedroom walls? But it was okay? ‘Cause these ones didn’t have monsters or creatures set out to kill him, no, these gates held something that he thought he’d once had, that they held something he was so sure he was supposed ot have again?

Maybe, just not in this life.

Maybe, this time, something was broken. Wires were crossed, cut, unravelled. Maybe the upside down messed up a timeline, maybe it ripped apart whatever plan it had originally laid out for Steve Harrington. 

He didn’t know. But he knew it sounded crazy, even in his head.

So he shrugged and said, “no reason.”

And then that night, after Joyce gave him funny looks over the dinner she served him and the rest of his friends, the kitchen table full, he went home and lay on his bed, hardly bothering to pull the sheets over his bare chest.

He counted his breaths, hoped for sleep and wished for you.

Like always, his room grew darker, his lids heavier and the crack in his bedroom wall crumbled and split until the dust settled and he saw your face. You were alone this time, pretty as ever and in the same looking city he’d last seen himself in. The skies were blue behind you, the buildings still tall and shiny looking, all glass window panes and metal framework. If he concentrated enough, he could smell summer.

Hot tarmac and sunscreen, fresh fruit from one of the stores behind you, tart lemons and freshly ground coffee. 

You were looking right at him and even in his sleep, Steve smiled. Your eyes were pretty, too pretty, the colour bright and your gaze excited as you gazed at him. Like you’d been waiting. You held out a hand, coaxing, kind, soft, patient. And for the first time, when Steve reached out too, his hand slipped through the gate. 

He was right, about the season, about it being summer. The air inside this world was warm on his skin, like the sun was on him despite being sprawled out in the blue gloom of his dark bedroom. It felt like a July morning, right before the heat hit. 

He was almost touching your fingers when he woke up alone again.

[writemekpop]

Imperfect | Lee Jeno

Summary: You and Jeno make a list of everything you don’t like about each other. 

Genre: Established relationship AU, angst

Word count: 1k

“You don’t believe in soulmates?” Jeno says, as you lie with your head on his chest. His fingers freeze in your hair, showing his shock. 

“I mean, you’re not gonna like everything about your partner,” you say.

“You don’t like – things about me?” Jeno says. “Like what?” 

Your breath falls short. 

“Not big things!” you say, struggling to dig yourself out of this hole. “Your aftershave! It’s a little… intense.” You suppress a grin. “Like I’m drowning.”

Jeno flops back onto the pillow. “Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“You’ve gotta have things you don’t like about me too!” you insist.

“I can’t think of any,” Jeno groans. “I’m too busy trying to smell myself!” 

You hug Jeno tightly, savouring the feeling of his tight muscles beneath your hands. 

“Let’s just make a list, okay? Whenever something bothers us, we’ll write it down, then at the end of the week, we’ll share. No fights.” 

Jeno smiles. “Good idea.”

-- One week later --

Jeno tries to snatch the piece of paper from you. “Just show me! It’s been ages...”

You wrestle the paper out of his hands. Your heart is racing. “One sec! Just making some – last minute – edits.”

You are desperately scratching half of your list out with a pencil – because you realised that Jeno’s list was just a tiny post-it note, whereas you had a full sheet. 

Jeno snatches the paper from your fingers. “A-ha!” Jeno says. 

He clears his throat dramatically. “Mis-matching socks. Too afraid to talk to the people at the store.” He sits down on the bed, a frown growing on his face. “Kind of ugly… laugh.” The paper starts to shake in his hands. “Sort of – a – crybaby.”

Jeno tries to fling the paper on the floor, but it just wafts slowly down. His chest is rising and falling fast. He scrubs his eyes furiously. 

“Hey! Don’t be mad!” you say, sitting next to him. “You wrote a list about me too. Oh, Jeno, please don’t be upset.”

Jeno glares at you, his eyes red. “I’m not upset. Because that would make me a huge crybaby, and you hate that.”

He storms out of the room. 

You scramble to the floor and pick up Jeno’s list, on its yellow Post-it. You read what is written on it. 

You sink slowly to the floor. You feel like a horrible person. You wish you had never been born. You finally found a good guy, and you stamped on his heart like it was nothing. 

List of things wrong with Y/n:

Nothing 

You’re perfect 

---

You are crouched outside the bathroom door. Jeno has been in there for an hour. 

“Jeno, honey, please talk to me,” you say. 

“Get out!” Jeno yells. 

“You didn’t read the end of the list!” you say. “It says – none of this matters, because you’re the kindest, most passionate, most caring man I’ve ever met.”

You hear the lock clicking, and jump to your feet. 

Jeno opens the door, just a crack. “You don’t get it, do you?” His stare is ice-cold. “All my life, I was told that I wasn’t tough enough, brave enough, man enough. Until I met you, and you told me I was enough.” He shakes his head. “But you were lying.”  

He closes the door in your face. Through the door, you hear him say, “You know what hurts? The fact that I truly thought you were perfect. I was wrong. You’re mean, Y/n.”  

---

For the next two weeks, you spend every day reminding Jeno all the reasons that you love him - but he still gives you the silent treatment. 

One day, when you and Jeno are eating dinner in silence, Jeno slapped a piece of paper onto the table.

“What is that?” you say. 

“It’s my list.” Jeno says. “For you.” He picks it up and reads aloud. “Wears too much makeup. Judgemental. Mean. Can never take responsibility in arguments…”

Each word feels like a slap in the face. You thought that Jeno was too sweet to notice any of that stuff, but you were wrong. 

You clasp his hand, as tears start to fall. “I’m sorry, Jeno. I’m gonna treat you better, I promise.”

Jeno frowns. “Wait. You’re not… mad?”

You shake your head. 

Jeno’s eyebrows rise. “You’re not gonna deny it? Or fight back?”

You shake your head. “No. These past few weeks, I’ve realised that I – I don’t like looking at who I really am. Because who I am is… ugly. But I’m gonna change.”

Jeno clasps both your hands in his. “Oh, Y/n.” 

He comes round the table and pulls you into a tight, warm hug. You have been craving his touch for so long that that hug restores you to life. 

“I love you, you stupid idiot,” Jeno says. 

“I love you, too,” you squeak.

“Now who’s the crybaby?” Jeno says, chuckling. 

You laugh through your tears. “Shut up.” 

Jeno’s smile is warm, all signs of anger completely gone. But you have a niggling feeling you can't quite shake. 

“Do you really think I wear too much make up?” you ask, too embarrassed to meet his gaze. 

Jeno scratches his head. “Maybe… I dunno, I think I was just lashing out.” 

You stay silent. 

“Y/n, I think you’re gorgeous, inside and out. Smoking hot. Ten out of ten. Definitely would bang.” 

You snort. 

Jeno smiles, eyes crinkling. “I’m sorry, baby. I hate it when we fight.” 

You bury your head in Jeno’s neck, touching your lips against his soft skin. You can feel his soft sighs against your ear. Heaven. 

—

MAIN MASTERLIST

Let us know what you thought in the comments or on anon! 💋

[moonlinos]

Invisible string (pt. II)

♡ Pairing: Lee Minho × fem!reader

♡ Synopsis: Minho is even more determined to make you see the good in love after falling for you, while you’re too preoccupied with thinking you’re not good enough for him.

♡ Genre: A ‘lite version’ of a soulmate AU, fluff, smut, friends to lovers, pining

♡ CW: Explicit sexual content (minors dni!), hand job, fingering, like two seconds of nipple play, slut shaming, swearing

♡ Word count: 13.2k

♡ A/N: I got such a great response on the first part 🥲 thank you to everyone who left feedback. It means a lot more than you realize. I researched what to do on a trip to Japan so extensively just to write this part that I got sad I’ve never traveled there 🫠

← part I ♡ part III →

The night after you and Minho watched the light show, you stayed awake until four in the morning with your roommates as Eunha cried about her ex-boyfriend. You’ve never been the type to hope for someone’s misery, but that guy is deserving of every terrible thing that could happen to him.

After she calmed down, you fell asleep together on the couch. You only managed to check your phone in the morning, finding it thrown on your bed along with your bag. Minho’s string of messages put a smile on your face. You could use the time away from everything, even if it was only for a weekend.

You agreed to his strange invitation without thinking twice. You did, however, insist on paying for your hotel room. Chan was already being far too generous in offering you his place on a trip he had paid for.

Soon enough, two weeks flew by and the Friday of your trip finally arrived.

You’re already waiting outside of your house when Minho’s car arrives. He greets you with a hug, taking your backpack from your hands and placing it on the backseat. He opens the passenger door for you, waits until you’re settled in your seat, and only then closes the door and walks around the car. It’s something he does every time you go out together and it always makes you smile, even though it’s such a minor detail.

“You know, you’re my first friend who can drive,” you comment as he enters the car. “You shot up a lot of spots on my favorite friends’ list just by saving me from taking the bus.”

Minho chuckles. “And here I foolishly thought you liked me for my personality,” he feigns offense, shaking his head. “I actually only know how to drive because of my mom. I was moving to the countryside, and she got really worried I was gonna be stranded there, so she gave me a car when I graduated.”

You raise your brows. “You lived in the countryside?”

“Yep, I moved to Gurye right after graduating high school,” he explains simply, starting the car.

You nod slowly. Truthfully, you wanted to ask more questions but didn’t want to seem intrusive. Minho had never told you a lot about his life before starting university — the only things you know are that he has three cats back home in Gimpo and started college late for some reason. You figure he’s a private person who will hopefully open up to you once he’s ready. You couldn’t blame him either; you also desperately pretended as if your life before university didn’t exist.

As you two sit in the car, moving slowly through the awful Friday night traffic, you feel the familiar thoughts of panic overflow your mind. This trip felt almost romantic; just you and Minho in Japan for an entire weekend. You should be running away from shit like this, should be shutting him out before anything more than friendship blossoms between the two of you.

Your fingers pick on the fabric of your sheer tights, pulling and pinching apprehensively as your mind races. Because, at the end of the day, Minho is still a guy. He’s still capable of breaking your heart in the same ways it was broken before, and maybe even in new ways. He could still cheat on you, fall in love with someone else, treat you like nothing more than an object or a nuisance in his life, wake up one day and simply decide he’s had enough of you.

But he’s also Minho.

Your heart quickly countered every single reason your brain came up with on why you should run away from the situation.

How could Minho, who believes that love doesn’t allow you to hurt the person you love because it feels like you’re hurting yourself, cheat on you?

How could Minho, who told you that love makes it so that you can only see the one you love, fall in love with someone else?

How could Minho, who does stupid romance movie shit like opening car doors and pulling out chairs for you, insisting that he should walk on the street side when you’re together, reading classic novels, learning how to cook so his mom doesn’t have to, all while having three fucking cats, possibly break your heart?

Part of you hates how you have to do mental gymnastics to even consider allowing yourself to feel something more for a guy, but a bigger part knows the hurt that inevitably comes with love isn’t worth it.

You hear a soft chuckle beside you, and you lift your gaze to find Minho smiling at you as you stop at a red light.

“Is that a style thing?” He asks, gesturing toward your thighs with a nod. You furrow your brows. The light turns green, and his attention is back on the road, a grin spread across his lips. “Ripping holes in your tights. Is that a style thing?”

You look down toward your legs and grimace as you realize you had mindlessly torn two holes in your tights while overthinking. You mentally curse yourself.

“I’m cold,” you lie with an awkward giggle. “Was trying to warm myself up.”

Minho hums, stepping on the brakes as you encounter another traffic jam. He unbuckles his seat belt, turns his body toward the back seat, and retrieves his jacket before draping it over your thighs. He shoots you a small smile and turns his attention back toward the road.

The side of your brain that was against Minho and anything romantic with him just a few moments ago is completely swallowed up, dissipating as you ultimately admit to yourself that you don’t hate the prospect of this being a romantic trip as long as it’s with him.

God, you really don’t hate it one bit.

You two finally arrive at the airport just in time to board your flight with no issues. You’re not big on flying, but the flight is just a little over two hours, and Minho is such a calming presence next to you. He quietly read you some harlequin romance he picked up at the airport bookstore, and you two laughed a bit too loudly at the over-the-top plot and theatrical writing. The two of you were taken aback as the book turned out to be erotica, but hearing Minho dramatically read to you in a whisper about the hunky love interest and his manhood made you laugh until tears formed in your eyes.

After that, you two somehow end up talking about your lives back home. Minho shares how he always cooks Christmas dinner for his family, and his favorite part of the night is always the praises his grandmother throws his way. He explains that although he started cooking simply to help his mother, he found that he genuinely enjoyed it. He said he missed doing it every day, having stopped because his roommates had begun treating him as nothing more than a personal cook. You listen to his every word with a smile on your face that you can’t hide. It feels like he’s slowly opening up more to you about his life outside of university, and even something as small as this detail about his home life makes you feel closer to him.

The flight is so pleasant that you only realize you’ve landed once you see Minho unbuckling his seat belt.

You two take an Uber to the hotel, arriving in thirty minutes — you insist on paying since you’re basically here for free. You stare out the car window in awe the entire ride, Minho fondly laughing at your amazement.

As you arrive, you struggle with your backpack, pulling it out of the backseat with such force you would have fallen backward had it not been for Minho’s hands holding your shoulders. He asks if you’re okay with a chuckle, and you groan about how heavy your backpack is. Packing light wasn’t your forte.

As you two walk toward the hotel entrance, the weight on your shoulders disappears suddenly. You furrow your brows and look behind you. Minho had nonchalantly picked your backpack up by the handle and lifted it off your shoulders, carrying all the weight in his arms. You bite back a smile, murmuring a thank you. He just nods, like he hasn’t just done yet another thing you thought only happened in books written by women.

You feel that damn pinwheel return to your chest, making you feel a kind of thrill that you haven’t felt in a while. A good kind.

The hotel is relatively small, clearly on the cheap side, although it’s still quite charming. Minho mutters an apology as he catches you looking around the place.

“It was the only place I could afford being a broke college student,” He explains with a sheepish chuckle, and you shake your head.

“It’s lovely. I’m so happy to be here, I think I wouldn’t mind sleeping on the floor.”

Minho is the one who checks you in, speaking in near-perfect Japanese to the front desk clerk. You focus on the wood chipping on the table and bite the inside of your cheek as you inwardly berate yourself for finding it so damn attractive. It was different from your classes or your small study sessions. You had never truly grasped just how good Minho was until right now. You didn’t understand a word he said. All you know is that he sounded too sexy for his own good while saying it.

Minho hands you the key and tells you the room number, and you finally make your way up the stairs. He walks beside you the whole way, and you wonder if his room is on the same floor as yours or if he’s just doing this so he can hold your backpack off your shoulders.

As you reach your room on the third floor, he stops you before you can insert the key into the door.

“Before you go inside…” He trails off, pursing his lips before letting out a sigh. “I — we could only afford to pay for one room, so this is actually our room.”

Your eyes widen for a second before you nod slowly. “Oh. It’s… okay,” you assure him, although there’s very little confidence in your voice. The prospect of sharing a bed with Minho makes you nervous, but not for the reasons you thought it would.

“There are two beds! Of course,” He assures you, and you mentally slap yourself on the forehead for feeling disappointed at this information.

It’s because you’ve exclusively been having sex with Hyunjin for so long, you reason with yourself. Your hormones must be making you stupid, making you want something more with someone else who isn’t him.

Yeah, that’s it.

Minho’s your friend, after all. It wouldn’t make sense for you to want anything more with him.

It’s just your stupid hormones.

You turn the key and open the door, stepping inside the tiny room with Minho. The two beds were so close together due to the room size that they might as well be just one. The only other piece of furniture is a bedside table, which basically connects the two beds.

It’s only once you slide your backpack straps off your shoulders that Minho lets go of the handle, and you toss it on the plain white sheets of the bed to your right by the bathroom door.

Feeling a chill run through your body, you let out a groan. The heater in your room is clearly not the best.

“Tights and a skirt weren’t the right choice for this weather. This shitty heater also isn’t helping,” you grumble.

Minho chuckles behind you, and you hear the sound of the bed springs as he all but throws himself onto the bed. “Poking holes in your tights probably didn’t help either,” he jokes, and you force out a chuckle.

It seems you chose today to act like a complete idiot.

You excuse yourself to the bathroom to change into your warm sleep clothes. The first thing you notice as you walk out into the room again is Minho’s bright orange sweater with a cat knitted on the front. He’s lying down, his back resting on the wall since the beds don’t have a headboard, and the color of his sweater might be a bit offensive to the eyes, but it’s quickly forgiven once you take in the kitten adorning the fabric.

You giggle, and he looks up from his phone, his eyes meeting yours.

“Your sweater is really cute,” you tell him as you sit down in your bed, crossing your legs in an attempt to warm yourself a bit more.

Minho grins. “I know,” He says smugly, “It reminds me of two of my cats because of the color.”

“You know,” you hummed, “You never showed me any pictures of your cats.”

You watch as his eyes light up at your words. He locks his phone before quickly turning it to face you, showing you his wallpaper. Your lips stretch into a fond smile as you analyze the picture: Minho holding an orange and white cat close to his face with a grin, a butterfly filter cutely adorning his nose.

“This is Soonie, he’s the first cat I got,” He explains, turning his head so he could look at the screen as well, “I was thirteen when I adopted him, and I remember begging my parents for almost three months until they agreed. In the end, they loved him so much they allowed me to adopt another one.”

Minho unlocks his phone and opens his gallery, flipping through his pictures like it’s the most normal thing in the world. You purse your lips. It feels like you’re intruding, even though he’s the one who hasn’t moved the screen an inch. You couldn’t think of one person you’d trust enough to so freely view every single picture you had on your phone like this. Minho really was something else.

Most of his gallery is composed of blurry food pictures mixed with pages and covers of books and computer screens filled with codes. Until he reaches a point — before he started university, you assume — where the only thing you can see is pictures of cats.

He stops scrolling and clicks a picture of the same orange cat, this time wearing glasses and a hat. You snort because, of course he dresses his cats in clothes.

“Soonie is adorable,” you beam. Minho furrows his brows and shakes his head, looking at you like he’s offended.

“This is Doongie,” he states like it’s obvious, “The second cat I adopted.”

Your brows furrow as well. “Minho, that’s the same cat.”

He clicks his tongue, closing the picture and scrolling before opening another one; two orange and white cats lay together on a cat tree. Your lips fall open.

“See? This one is Soonie, he has a white nose. And this one is Doongie, his nose is orange,” He explains, and you nod, knowing full well you’d be dead if your life depended on distinguishing these two cats. “Doongie is the middle child, so he’s more temperamental.”

You stifle a giggle at him talking about his cats like they’re his children, much like you do.

He closes the picture once again and scrolls down further. His fingers hover over a picture for a couple of seconds, like he’s hesitating before he ultimately opens it. The screen fills with the image of a younger Minho smiling while holding a gray cat. His wire-frame glasses were round, unlike his current ones, and his black hair used to be shorter. The picture has clearly been cropped, only half of the cat’s body still visible.

“This is Dori. He’s the last cat I got, and he’s actually the only one I call my son.” He lets out a breathy chuckle. “I adopted him with my ex-girlfriend. She wanted a dog, but I fell in love with Dori as soon as I laid eyes on him on the website, so she had no choice but to accept him.”

You watch as he smiles at the picture and the memory. You absentmindedly fiddle with your fingers on your lap, an all too familiar ugly feeling bubbling inside you. Jealousy. Not because Minho mentioned a girlfriend — you wish it was as simple as that. Jealousy consumed you when you were forced to face the reality that people have healthy relationships, where one partner sacrifices their own desires just to please their loved one. Where you make plans to adopt a kitten together just so you can call it your son. You know damn well you were never even close to having something even remotely similar to that.

You shake the feeling off, forcing out a smile. “He’s really cute,” you tell Minho, “And he’s my favorite, ‘cause at least I can tell him apart from the other two.”

Minho chuckles, scrunching his nose as he locks his phone and rests it on his thigh.

  You two settle into bed after Minho walked you through the day he and Chan had planned for tomorrow. He had organized everything neatly in a travel planning app — from where you would be going down to an estimate of how much you would be spending. You always preferred roughly planning things out mentally whenever you traveled, mostly enjoying going with the flow.

Among all your coincidentally similar little incidents, you finally found something in which you two are complete opposites.

That should, in theory, annoy you, but you can’t help but find his meticulousness endearing. You can just picture him searching tirelessly online, crunching numbers and jotting everything down. The image is too adorable for you to be mad.

“Guess we finally found somewhere we’re different,” you mention with a smile as you tuck yourself into your sheets. Minho remains sitting on his bed, putting his glasses on their case.

He hums. “Rather than different, maybe we just complement each other in this case? You hate organizing, and I fucking love to do it, as you just saw,” he chuckles, “We’d be a great team. I plan everything, and all you have to do is show up.”

You nod with a smile, going over the places he chose in your head. You were excited for all but one: the very first one on the list, Inokashira Park.

“You know,” you start with a sigh, Minho’s eyes finding yours in the dimly lit room. “I never talk about this, but I weirdly feel like I can tell you anything. Nobody from our friend group knows this but…” you trail off, gripping the scratchy fabric of the comforter. “One of my ex-boyfriends cheated on me during a family trip to Japan when I was seventeen. I found out ‘cause the girl he hooked up with tagged him in pictures on Instagram. They were together in Inokashira Park.”

Minho hums, his eyes studying your face. After a beat of silence, he shrugs.

“We can skip that if you want to. I just—” He purses his lips, shifting on the mattress. “I just don’t think you should deprive yourself of the experience just because of a bad memory. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”

You nod, taking in his words. He was right. You were positive none of your exes ever deprived themselves of going back to places where they cheated on you, so why should you? They were the ones in the wrong, the ones who hurt and betrayed you, so why should you be the one to bear the trauma?

Minho rests his back against the wall, playing with the drawstrings of his sweatpants. “Is that why you don’t believe in love anymore? Don’t feel like you have to answer! I just… I wondered…” He faltered, a heavy sigh escaping his lips. “I wondered what could have happened to make you feel that way.”

“Well, that was just one of five times when love proved to kind of hate my guts,” you chuckle. You didn’t understand why, but the words you held back for so long were bubbling at your throat, ready to spill out. And you were willing to let them. Even if only to a certain extent, you were ready to talk about this pathetic side of your life. You would rationalize it all later. Right now, you simply wanted to talk.

“I’ve had five boyfriends in my life, and they were all terrible in some way. I know, it’s a lot of relationships considering my age.” You scrunch up your face, cringing when you voice out the number.

Minho chuckles, and you’re ready for him to agree.

“It’s really not. There’s no right or wrong number of people to date during your teenage years or your twenties.” You open your eyes to find him leaning on his side, looking at you dismissively. “Some people date more, some date less, some people don’t even date at all. Either way, it’s fine.”

Your lips open and close, then open again. You had always expected people’s reactions to be the same as the ones you heard during high school. From your classmates to your ex-boyfriends, even your friends at the time, they all seemed to be in unanimous agreement that you were at fault for having dated so much in such a brief period. You never thought that maybe people with different opinions existed. And that, maybe, those people would be the ones who you care the most about.

Thinking about it now, after hearing Minho’s words, you were certain neither Eunha nor Soojung — or any of your friends, for that matter — would ever think badly about you or shame you simply because you’ve had five boyfriends. It seemed silly even to think that way now.

It was sad how much your teenage traumas undeniably affected your perception of reality.

Minho is the one to break the silence, his soft voice pulling you away from your thoughts.

“I’m sorry that happened to you. I promise you, the memories we make on this trip will be good enough that they override this lousy one,” he vows with a small nod. “And, more than ever before, I truly hope I can change your view of love.”

You smile at his words. “I surprisingly feel my thoughts about many things changing. Love is one of them.”

“I’m glad,” he hums, finally slipping under his covers. “Y’know, love isn’t only romantic. You say you’re closed off to love, that’s really a lie,” he states matter-of-factly, a smug grin spreading across his lips. You bite back a smile and raise your eyebrows at him. He continues, “The love you feel for your family and your friends, platonic love, that’s also love. I’ve been around you long enough to know just how much you love your friends.”

To say you loved your friends almost didn’t seem sufficient. After graduating high school, you left behind all the judgmental and toxic friends you had. You are immensely grateful to have found such good people at university. Eunha and Soojung were the housemates of your dreams, the three of you so different that it truthfully shouldn’t work, but it simply did. Hyunjin becoming your best friend was also a surprise; he was younger than you, and you had never been friends with a guy before — in part thanks to your jealous boyfriends — but he carved out a space for himself in your life and refused to leave. And you were so thankful for that.

And then there was Minho, who had come out of the blue into your life and just as suddenly became such an important person to you. From the way you two first met to your little similarities and how well you got along in such a short time, it was as if fate pulled you toward him.

You smile.

“I do love them,” you tell him, fiddling with your fingers under the white comforter. “And I love you, too, Minho. You’re my friend, after all. In a way, you’re already succeeding in changing my view of love just by being you.”

Minho’s eyes blink rapidly as he looks at you, his parted lips making him look like a confused child before they close. He hums, nodding as a small smile spreads on his lips, which quickly grows bigger and bigger until he’s basically giggling. He hides his face behind his hand, clearing his throat. You feel warmth spread across your chest at the sight. You’re sure if the lights were brighter, you’d be able to see his ears turning red.

You shake your head with a chuckle. The mood has suddenly become a bit too emotional, and you still find yourself running away from these things. However, you were proud of your progress tonight. Talking about love and your past — especially regarding your ex-boyfriends — was already a huge step for you.

You hope Minho knows he’s part of the reason you’re able to take this step in the first place.

“Okay, your turn.” You sit up on the bed, the white comforter pooling on your lap. “I’m curious too, y’know. You’re such a love enthusiast,” you tease him with a grin, earning you a chuckle from Minho, who throws his head back. “Tell me about your romantic experiences.”

He mirrors you and sits up on his bed. “Experience. I’ve only had one girlfriend,” he corrects you, “We met on the first day of high school and began dating the year after that, when we were sixteen. We were together until I was just about to turn twenty-one, so…” he trails off with a deep sigh. “Yeah, it was quite the long first relationship.”

“My five relationships combined didn’t last as long as that.” You click your tongue, and Minho lets out a breathy laugh. “Why did you two break up after being together for so long?” You blurt out before you can process the words inside your head. Annoyed with your own self, you scrunch up your face. You really chose today to be an idiot. “If that’s okay for me to ask! Sorry for being nosy, I’m just— I guess I’m curious.”

Minho smiles at you, a fond smile he always shoots your way whenever you are word-vomiting. Much like your other friends, he had quickly adapted to your habit of spilling out words before thinking about them.

“It’s a bit of a long story. Basically, she wanted a quiet and simple life in the countryside, so I did that for her,” he explains, shrugging dismissively. So that was the reason he had moved to Gurye after finishing school. “I began saving up money at eighteen with my job at the convenience store while she gave piano lessons to the kids in our neighborhood, and we moved on her twentieth birthday. I figured I could just do programming jobs from home, anyway, so I completely gave up on my plans to attend university…” Minho trails off, his voice all but a whisper at the end of the sentence. He shakes his head, a bitter chuckle leaving his lips as he continues, “I kind of wanna kick myself in the face for that now. It fucking sucks to have started university so late, but it was my own decision. I guess you say stupid shit when you’re nervous, and I do stupid shit when I’m in love.”

You had never met someone who would abandon so much of themselves for the person they loved. It made Minho even more admirable to you. However, even though it was his own decision, he clearly came to regret it. People often say love is all about compromises, and you couldn’t help but feel like Minho had been the only one to give up anything in this scenario.

“Were your parents okay with you two making such a drastic move?” You question, your curiosity bubbling inside your chest.

Minho scoffs. “Of course they weren’t. Especially my dad. But we were nearing our twenties, so there wasn’t much they could do to stop us.”

He drums his fingers on his thighs, and you wonder if this subject brought back sour memories — or maybe even good ones he just didn’t like remembering because they had become part of the past. You want to tell him it’s okay if he doesn’t want to talk about it any longer, but he’s continuing his story before you can speak.

“We adopted Dori and left a week later. We were pretty much broke. All we could afford was a small cottage that hadn’t been renovated in over a decade, but we were happy,” Minho’s voice is soft as he speaks, a smile forming on his lips as he stares ahead, almost as if he’s reliving those moments in his head. “We talked about growing old together and raising our kids in that cottage. And we — god, looking back, this was so stupid it’s fucking funny,” He chuckled, shaking his head and raising his gaze to meet yours. “We were actually trying to get pregnant. We barely had money to feed Dori and ourselves, yet it still crushed us every time that test read negative.”

You feel your expression change, a blend of astonishment and admiration washing over you. They must’ve truly been in love. You felt a slight pang of hurt and envy run through your body; it truly was so easy for other people when it came to love.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” you lament, although you’re not sure if you’re talking about the pregnancy or the entire relationship.

Minho shakes his head, scrunching his nose. “Don’t feel bad, it was a blessing in disguise. I can’t imagine how the fuck we would ever manage to raise a baby at that time.”

“It seems like you two had the perfect relationship.” You force out a smile, waging war against your bitter jealousy.

“It was perfect, until it wasn’t,” Minho shrugs dismissively, “We began to fight a lot after a while. Haneul would always get upset at me for not doing things the way she thought I should do them, down to replying in a way that didn’t fit with what she had hoped I would say. And I was the same, always getting frustrated when she disagreed with me, even if it was about something silly like what to have for dinner. We used to be able to talk it out and come to an agreement in the past — it wasn’t for nothing that we were together for so long — but being in that little cottage, just us two all the time, it became suffocating.”

“Is that why you two broke up?”

Minho nods. “We realized we were merely playing house. Neither of us was happy anymore,” he explains, a soft laugh escaping his lips. “It was like we each had a script inside our heads of what the other should say or how they should act. It wasn’t healthy anymore, so we mutually decided to end things before they got worse.”

Your fingers fiddle with a loose thread on the white cover. You had always been envious of this type of relationship, but you never thought to think about the fact that they can also come to an end. It always seemed to you that your relationships never worked because they weren’t perfect, like the relationships you saw in books or movies — like the one Minho had described with his ex-girlfriend.

You never once rationalized that even perfect things can ebb away. That nothing lasts forever, even if it seems utterly ideal.

“I know how terrible breakups are,” you tell him. “I can only imagine how much worse it must’ve been to you two after so many years together.”

Minho shakes his head with a smile. “I never really felt hurt by it. It was such a perfect breakup she even let me keep Dori without going through a custody battle,” he jokes, raising his eyebrows at you.

“How can it not have hurt you?” You let out an incredulous laugh. “You were in love, planning to start a family, and you tell me it didn’t hurt when it ended? That’s bullshit, Minho.”

He looks up at the ceiling, like he’s trying to find the words to explain to you. He hums. “Well, I loved Haneul. I loved her so very much, with every fiber of my being. She was my first love. My mom once said we were probably a couple in another life as well, and I fucking loved that,” He chuckles, “The idea that someone was destined for me and I was destined for them, that we were fated to find each other and be together across lifetimes.”

“Like soulmates?” You ask.

He nods. “Soulmates, yes. That’s what we were. And, after we broke up, I realized maybe people’s understanding of soulmates is wrong. At least to me,” He shrugs.

You let out a chuckle. He really turned a terrible situation into a chance to reevaluate his beliefs. It was the most Minho thing you had ever heard.

“How are people understanding it wrong, then?” You question him, resting your chin on the palm of your hand and looking at him. Minho mirrors your actions, a grin etched onto his lips. 

“Well, for starters, you can have many soulmates in one lifetime.” You furrow your brows, opening your mouth to ask him more questions, but he quickly adds, “For example, Haneul was my soulmate and there’s no doubt about it in my mind. But it ended, because it was time for it to end. I learned everything I had to learn with her, and she did the same. We couldn’t grow together anymore, so there was no point in staying together.”

Biting your lip, you nod. “I never thought of it that way. You ask anyone and they’ll tell you that a soulmate is unique.”

“It may be so to some people, but I find that way of thinking a bit unfair,” he shrugs. “Haneul found someone new. Wouldn’t it be unfair for me to say her new relationship is inferior to ours simply because we were soulmates? We were soulmates, but our time to be together has passed and she’s with the soulmate she’s supposed to be right now.”

You hum, tapping your fingers against your cheek. “I guess it does make sense.”

He shrugs, feigning smugness. “I am quite the smart man.”

“What about you?” You question, smiling at him, “Have you ever found a new soulmate after that relationship?”

Minho clears his throat, his gaze shifting to look at where his sock-clad feet poked out from underneath the comforter. You could swear you see a tiny smile on his lips.

“I think I did,” He answers with a questioning lilt. “There were some signs, and a lot of things that aligned.” His gaze lifts once more to meet your eyes as he continues, “Makes me think maybe I’ve found her.”

As you take in his words, jealousy rears its ugly head, the feeling almost swallowing you whole. You gnaw on your bottom lip. The way Minho made you feel at times was questionable at best, but you chalk it all up to your jealous nature. You’d always gotten jealous when your friends found new friendships or when they started relationships.

However, that feeling was a bit different from the one currently making you want to bite your lip until it bled out of sheer and petty jealousy.

You let out a heavy sigh, pushing all those thoughts into a neat little box inside your head and locking them up.

“You’re really lucky,” you tell him, and Minho cocks an eyebrow. “That’s why you think love can only be good, because your only experience with it was long-lasting and good until the very end. I’d much rather have love fizzle out than have it end in a way that ended me as well. That’s how it’s always been with me, and I guess that’s why I came to hate love a little bit.”

Minho smiles at you, a genuine smile that reaches his brown eyes. “Well, sometimes love lasts forever,” he asserts, “So you shouldn’t think about how it’s going to end.”

You can feel the pinwheel inside your chest spinning, causing your heart to skip a beat and your cheeks to blush pink. Forcing out a chuckle, you lie on your bed and pull the covers up to your nose.

“You’re back to your hopeless romantic ways.”

“I never stopped,” He corrects you. He lies down as well, facing you, his hand reaching out to turn off the lamp that sat on the bedside table. “Even when I thought you had a boyfriend,” Minho continues, “I was still able to be a hopeless romantic.”

You feel your eyes widen at his words, thanking the darkness that covers you both as confusion and shock swim in your eyes. Did Minho subtly admit he liked you? Were you reading too much into things? Why did this not scare you? It should scare you, should make you terrified, as this is the very thing you’ve been running away from.

You were probably over-analyzing his words.

But why did you hope that wasn’t the case?

The two of you wake up early, hitting the streets of Tokyo immediately after getting dressed. Minho’s list definitely made things easier, with you two hopping from place to place before crossing them out one by one on his phone. Your favorite so far had been the cat café you two went to for breakfast, where you spent the entire hour watching Minho petting and playing with the kittens, the smile on your lips so fond that it probably made you look stupid.

But as you walk around Inokashira Park, that quickly drops to second place on your mental list. It was a beautiful place, especially in the late afternoon sun. As soon as you arrived, Minho took your hand in his without a word. It was unexpected, to say the least, but you were even more surprised to find yourself liking the gesture. You squeezed his hand, smiling at him, before lacing your fingers together.

Your heart was racing so fast you were certain that damn pinwheel brought along a friend today.

After walking around for a bit, Minho abruptly stopped, letting go of your hand and moving to stand behind you. You furrowed your brows as his hands came to cover your eyes. With his lips incredibly close to your ears, he whispered, “I have a surprise. It’s a place that wasn’t on the list. A museum I think you’ll like.”

You felt goosebumps rise all over your body at the sound of his low voice coupled with his breath tickling your skin. You silently thanked the cold weather — had you not been wearing long sleeves, Minho would have seen the effect he had on you, and you would’ve had no other choice but to throw yourself in front of a taxi on the way back to the hotel.

The two of you waddled awkwardly, Minho still standing behind you with his hands over your eyes. He giggled the whole way to your destination. You were too immersed in not focusing on how his body brushed up against yours with every step you took to even think about laughing.

His broad chest so warm against your back, his arms wrapped around you, his lips grazing your neck once as he bent down to whisper something about the museum being just around the corner, and his lower body continuously brushing and rubbing against your ass as you two walked. You had to fight the urge to push your body against his every time that happened, wondering if that would be enough to get him hard.

After Minho’s supposed confession last night, your mind had truly thrown every bit of worry and shame you felt about being attracted to him out the window.

It felt almost liberating, being able to say fuck it and simply feel.

So you were attracted to Minho; why should it be a big deal? You shouldn't deprive yourself of these silly experiences just because love scares you.

Maybe being scared was okay sometimes. Maybe it was worth it for the right people.

Just as your mind was running wild with thoughts of Minho’s body pressed up against yours, his voice whispered in your ear again. You had arrived, he announced, removing his hands from your eyes.

As your eyes adjusted to the light, you made out the words on a wooden sign before you. Minho had taken you to the Ghibli Museum. Before you could stop yourself, you were throwing your arms around his neck with a gasp.

You could just kiss him at that moment. That was how happy you were.

After walking around the museum with a smile engraved onto your lips, your cheeks hurt in the best way possible. Minho hurried you as you looked through the overly expensive gift shop, reminding you that the swan paddle boats would be closing soon. You whined but ultimately had no choice but to leave the shop as he grabbed your hand and pulled you toward the exit. Mourning the loss of a Soot Sprite plush perfect for your collection, you grumbled to Minho about how he had no heart as you two ran across the park.

You made it just in time, being the last ones in line on the pier. Minho insisted on paying for your tickets, and you agreed only after he explained it would be your compensation for the loss of your precious plushie.

And now you sit beside him on a swan paddle boat, failing miserably at containing your giggles as Minho adjusts his life jacket.

“You know,” He starts with a dramatic sigh, “You’re not gonna be laughing if we crash and you drown.”

You poke his arm, making him look at you just as a smile spreads across his lips. “I’m only laughing ‘cause you look real cute.”

You begin to paddle, and it is surprisingly easy — especially because Minho is the one guiding the boat with a steering wheel. The scenery is quite dull because of the cold season, with most trees already bare of leaves and the sky a blend of pale blue and white.

“I wish it was spring,” Minho speaks beside you as if he’s read your thoughts. “The cherry blossoms are fucking gorgeous.”

You look over at him, his eyes fixed ahead as he steers the boat around the pond. His glasses reflect the pale sky and obscure his eyes, but you’re sure he’s blinking rapidly like he usually does whenever he’s focused.

“Did you come here with your ex-girlfriend in spring?” You blurt out.

Minho’s lips stretch into a grin as he turns to face you.

“No,” he answers simply. “But I want to come with you.”

It’s only then you realize he had been doing most of the work paddling, as he easily controls the speed at which the boat glides across the water, slowing down until you two are stopped at the edge of the pond.

Your mind races, but not as hard as your heart does.

“With me?”

“With you.”

His eyes are fixed on yours, and his left hand grips the steering wheel tightly. You part your lips, but only silence is stuck in your throat. Drawing yourself out of the impromptu staring contest the two of you had gotten into, your eyes shift down to stare at your purse which lay across your lap.

You softly utter the only two words your mind can conjure up. “Why me?”

“Because I like you,” Minho’s voice is also quiet. You hear him shuffling beside you, turning his body so he fully faces you. “I know you’re scared, and you feel like you’re protecting yourself, but I’m—” He cuts himself off abruptly, and your eyes shoot up to find him biting his lip, his brows furrowed. He lets out a sigh. “I like you so much I think I might implode if I do nothing about it.”

Your breath hitched audibly. There is still a part of you that’s screaming out run away, this is terrifying, you’re on your way to another heart-wrenching breakup — but that part has become so minuscule, so insignificant now, it feels like nothing but muffled background noise inside your head. Because a much bigger part of you is begging for you to just say, “Then do something about it.”

And he does.

Minho’s hand leaves the wheel and gingerly touches your cheek, his thumb brushing against your skin before he closes the distance between you. It isn’t the first time you kiss Minho, but it is certainly the first time your entire being is fully enveloped in only him; from the way his slightly chapped lips still felt so soft against your own to how his strong hand finds your waist and pulls you closer to him.

And his taste. Minho coaxes your mouth open with his tongue and licks into it, your senses being taken over by the taste of the watermelon candy he’d been eating all day until you’re positively drunk on him. Your heart racing and your hands shaking like a teenager having their first kiss.

You go to grab his shirt, desperate to pull him even closer to you, but your hands collide with the damn life jacket he’s wearing. You whine into the kiss, annoyed, and Minho only chuckles against your lips. He bites your lower lip, pulling softly before releasing it and pressing another kiss to your pout.

“I take back what I said, the life jacket isn’t cute,” you mumble against his lips. His smile grows, and his lips crash against yours again, his hands tangling in your hair.

He groans into the kiss, barely pulling away before whispering, “Don’t wanna stop kissing you.”

You hum. “Well, you can kiss me anytime now.”

Minho’s lips spread into a grin, and he closes the small distance between you for one last kiss before he pulls away, your noses brushing. His eyes are dark yet soft, as if longing and affection had melted together.

“I want to be with you,” He says, “But I want you to think about it before you say anything because I know how scared you are of love. And if by the end of our trip I haven’t given you enough reasons to give me a chance, I’ll let you go and move on with my life. If you want to stay friends, I’ll happily do that. And if you never want to see me again, I’ll also respect that.”

Your heart swells with his words because Minho is the complete antithesis of everything your ex-boyfriends taught you that men were.

And, for the first time in so long, you feel the kind of nervousness that’s nothing but good. The kind that leaves you with trembling hands, a racing heart, and a dizzy head. The kind that only love can provide.

Despite his request, you’re eager to answer him right then and there, but just as you’re about to speak, the sky roars and dark clouds gather above. You jump in your seat at the sound, and Minho’s hands instinctively wrap around your shoulders and squeeze. You smile, simply nodding your head and giving his lips a small kiss.

Minho struggles a bit, but he’s eventually able to turn the paddle boat around, and you two begin to paddle back toward the pier. The light rain quickly becomes heavy raindrops drumming on the roof of the boat, and you dread the walk back to the hotel as neither of you thought to bring an umbrella.

“Y'know,” Minho starts. “There’s a myth here in Japan that says if you ride this boat with a girlfriend, then you’ll break up soon. I kinda always believed that.”

You let out a chuckle. “Really?”

He hums, nodding his head. “So I’m choosing to also believe that if you ride it with someone you like, they will become your girlfriend soon.”

Minho turns to look at you with a smile as you stop at the pier, removing his life jacket and exiting the boat without another word. You bite the inside of your cheek in a failed attempt at holding back a smile. Minho helps you out of the boat, his hand taking yours and pulling you toward him gently.

You two run back to the hotel, Minho holding you close to him with his hand around your waist. The streets are mostly empty as people squeeze under bus stops and shop awnings to shelter from the rain, and it almost feels like you and Minho are the only people in Tokyo that night.

You two giggle the whole way to the hotel. Even when you are struck with the realization that the power has shut off on the entire street upon arriving, you simply turn to each other and laugh even more.

You clumsily manage to take a brief shower in the darkness, changing into your sleep clothes as quickly as you can. You realize with a grimace that if your room was cold before, with the shitty hotel heater on, it’s basically turned into an icebox now.

Wrapping yourself up in your comforter, you shiver with a groan just as Minho walks out of the bathroom.

“Bet you miss that shitty heater now, huh?” He jokes, and you faintly make out his silhouette in the dim light of the moon coming from the window.

You let out another groan. “I'm gonna freeze to death tonight. I've made peace with that. Thaw me with a hairdryer in the morning, please.”

Minho chuckles, sitting on his bed as he checks his phone. You make out his features in the moonlight coming from the window, and he’s wearing another sweater, black with more cats printed on it.

Such a cozy, warm-looking sweater. You curse yourself inwardly for only packing t-shirts to sleep.

As he locks his phone, an idea hits you, and your words are faster than your thoughts — as they always seem to be whenever you’re around Minho.

“Can I lay with you for a bit?” You ask, “Just for a bit, until I get warm? My bed is right under this damn window, and I don’t have any sweaters I can sleep in, and I know I joked about making peace with freezing but—”

Minho cuts you off by calling out your name with a chuckle. “It's okay. You don’t need to make up a thousand excuses. I'm cold, too,” He says simply, scooting to the side to make room for you in his bed. “Come here.”

You smile, ripping the covers from your body quickly like a band-aid and all but jumping from your mattress to his. Minho instructs you to lie on the left side of the bed, facing the wall. You furrow your brows.

“Why?”

He shrugs. “It’s like the sidewalk thing. So I can protect you if a serial killer comes into our room.”

“Oh, so a serial killer’s gonna come into our room?” You ask, a teasing lilt in your voice as you scoot on the bed and slip under the comforter. 

“Well, I—” Minho stammers, pausing with a sigh. He removes his glasses and places them on the bedside table before he continues, “I don’t know, okay? I just… wanna take care of you in every way possible. Even in this weird scenario that my mind made up.”

His words slip out of his lips quickly, much like yours do when you’re nervous and can’t make yourself stop talking. You wonder if your habit is rubbing off on him, and you can’t help but smile.

As Minho settles into bed, you feel your body stiffen up. The two of you lay on your backs next to each other in the cramped bed, and you feel like you can’t move. Hyunjin was the first guy you ever slept next to, and even then, it was after you two had already had sex, so there was no room for feeling awkward. With Minho, everything feels so new. If kissing him had made your hands shake, laying next to him makes your whole body tremble.

You lay like that for a while, watching as the thunder lights up the ceiling until Minho turns to lie on his side.

“Wouldn’t we get warmer if we cuddled?” He trails off in a whisper, clearing his throat after his words leave his mouth. 

You open your mouth to answer but know you’ll only end up word-vomiting again with how nervous you feel, so you simply nod, turning so you’re facing Minho as well.

His arms quickly find your waist, pulling you closer to him until your noses are touching, and you feel his breath on your lips as he lets out a sigh. Before you can make sense of what’s happening, Minho presses a slow, open-mouthed kiss to your lips, making your mind go hazy. You two stare at each other for a beat, your lips agape and eyes wandering through each other’s features until he breaks the silence.

“You make me nervous,” he whispers, taking your hand and guiding it towards his chest. You feel his heart beating quickly through the thick fabric of his sweater. “In the best way possible.”

You smile, whispering back, “You make me nervous, too.”

Clutching at the fabric of his sweater, you pull him closer to you, slotting your lips together once more. Minho’s hands hesitate, his left hand barely touching your back before he changes his mind and grazes your shoulder with his touch, only to settle for cupping your cheek. You smile into the kiss, taking his hand and placing it firmly on your waist. He grips the fabric of your shirt just as you did and brings your body flush against his.

The kiss is hurried, as if you two will be forced apart tomorrow and this is your only chance to feel each other. Minho licks the seam of your lips, his tongue slipping into your mouth as you gasp. His firm grip on your waist, his body pressed against yours so tightly that you can feel his heartbeat thumping against your chest, and how with every stroke of his tongue, he devours you almost greedily — it’s downright impossible to keep the whine that forms in your throat from slipping out, Minho’s mouth swallowing the muffled sound.

And then he’s pulling away, and you’re left chasing his lips. He lets out a breathy chuckle at that.

“Let’s go to sleep, hm?” He suggests, his voice breathless. You can’t help but wonder if you practically moaning while simply kissing him had made him uncomfortable, and you inwardly berate yourself, mortification washing over you.

So you only nod, turning to face the wall so you can properly cuddle this time. Minho wraps an arm around your waist, and you wait for him to pull you closer, but he never does. You furrow your brows. Was it that bad? You can’t be faulted for reacting like you did, especially with how he kissed you. So you take it into your own hands to shift closer to his body. Your lips part as you feel his hard member pressing against your lower back.

Oh. 

So that’s what’s going on.

You bite back a grin, feeling Minho tense up behind you.

“And here I thought you were like a romantic lead in a PG-13 anime,” you joke, smiling as he chuckles, clearly more at ease. 

He uses the hand that had been resting against your stomach to pull you even closer to him, pressing his body against yours. “I am romantic,” He whispers, lips close to your ear. You only then realize he’s hovering over you. “But I’m still human.”

You fight back the urge to shudder at how his voice drops an octave, all low and soft, and, god, how his breath grazes your neck.

You search your brain for something to say but come up empty. Being nervous has rendered you speechless for the first time in your life.

“Let’s sleep now, okay?” Minho presses a quick kiss on your cheek. “I’ll lie far—”

“I can help you,” you blurt out, turning to face him. Going to sleep is the last thing you want right now. “If you want.”

His eyes wander across your face as he pulls on his bottom lip. “I don’t want to rush things.”

“There are ways to do this that aren’t… rushing.”

Minho hums, but his eyes are now fixed on your lips. You move to lie on your back, and he slowly climbs on top of you.

“As long as it’s okay with you, I don’t care what we do,” he whispers. You smile, pushing his black hair away from his face with your fingers.

“It’s more than okay with me,” You answer simply, using your hand on his hair to guide him down into yet another kiss. 

You can feel him still hesitating, so you grab a fistful of that silly sweater of his and pull him closer to you until your bodies are flush against each other.

“Can I touch you?” You ask, breaking the kiss. Minho nods hastily.

“Yes, please,” he groans, “I’m gonna die if you don’t.”

With a breathy chuckle, you move your hand between your two bodies, cupping him through his sweatpants; he’s even harder now, and you subconsciously bite your lip. He closes his eyes, his left hand resting on your waist before squeezing lightly as he hides his face in the crook of your neck with a shaky sigh. It might simply be because it’s your first time being intimate together, but Minho’s timidness is genuinely endearing to you.

Your palm grinds against him gingerly, and his body trembles under your touch. His hand travels from your waist toward your lower stomach, and you let out a quiet gasp as his fingers toy with the hem of your shirt. He lifts his head off your neck, his face so close to yours you can feel his unsteady breathing on your lips.

“Can I touch you, too?” He whispers, and you nod a bit too eagerly. 

“If you don’t, I think I’ll die too.”

Minho grins, his head dipping lower until his lips are pressed against yours, but he doesn’t kiss you. You’d be lying if you said finding Minho so hard after only kissing you hadn’t turned you on — kissing him alone also made you more aroused than you were willing to admit. But you were more than ready to go to sleep without doing anything about it after offering to help him, so the fact that he wants to do the same for you makes your head spin. This was not on your bingo card of things that could happen during this trip.

He pulls your shirt up slightly, only enough for him to slip his hand inside your sweatpants. He hesitates twice before cupping you through your underwear. His dark eyes meet yours, whispering against your lips, “You’re fucking soaking through your panties, and you weren’t gonna tell me?”

You gasp at his words, clenching around nothing. Wasn’t he shy just two minutes ago? Your mouth opens to answer him, but your brain is far too cloudy to form any coherent sentence, so you settle on a nod. He hums, pressing a kiss to your agape lips.

Once you feel his thumb tentatively brush against your clit through the thin fabric, you find the courage to slip your hand inside the waistband of his sweatpants, your fingers immediately brushing against his member. Minho shudders at the touch, his eyes still fixed on yours.

Your brows shoot up at the fact that he had foregone wearing boxers, and he chuckles lightly at your reaction.

“I never wear underwear to bed, so don’t think I was trying to seduce you,” he jokes.

“Too late,” you hum, “I was seduced the moment I saw your bright orange cat sweater.”

Minho grins, sucking your lower lip as he pushes your panties to the side painfully slowly, his middle finger gliding from your entrance toward your clit and spreading your arousal. With a sigh, you bring one leg to wrap around his waist, and he adjusts himself so he’s properly hovering over you. You take this opportunity to slide his sweatpants down his hips, his hard cock finally free from its confines. He groans low in his throat, his tongue suddenly licking into your open mouth as his right hand intertwines with your left, your fingers locking together. He presses your clasped hands onto the mattress beside your head.

Your hand now glides through his length, the palm of your hand beginning to rub at the head of his cock and Minho sucks in a breath, breaking the kiss, his eyes remaining closed. Pressing your thumb to the slit, you gather as much precum as you can and spread it through his member. You quickly find that it’s not enough, wanting it wetter and messier and—

Minho whines as you stop touching him, eyes shooting open. Bringing your hand to your lips, you lick a stripe on your palm and let a glob of spit fall on it before finding his cock again, wet both with your saliva and his precum as you begin to stroke him gingerly. With a quiet moan, Minho’s hips buck up at the touch and he kisses your lips again. You giggle into the kiss, inwardly thanking Hyunjin for teaching you that guys love sloppy shit like this and, in turn, making you realize you do too.

You avert your eyes from his intense gaze as his finger moves to find your entrance, pushing in slowly before moving at a steady pace.

He squeezes your hand. “Look at me,” his voice is all but a whisper, low and hurried. You turn to lock your eyes on his once more, immediately biting your lips to stop a moan from slipping out of your lips as his thumb begins to rub your clit in circular motions, and he slips another finger inside of your aching cunt. It was getting increasingly difficult to keep yourself from vocally begging him not to stop.

You focus on your own hand as you stroke his cock, your steady pace gradually quickening. Minho’s pace mirrors yours, and soon the small room fills with the noise of his finger swiftly pumping in and out of you mixed with the sound of your hand stroking him.

“What do you like?” Minho asks suddenly, his breath hitching as you tighten your fist around his cock. Your mind is far too clouded by desire and pleasure to fully comprehend, so you hum, your brows furrowing. He leans in, pressing his forehead against yours with a quiet moan and curling his fingers inside you, causing your eyes to shut tightly and a whimper to escape your closed lips. “Look at me, baby,” he repeats himself, his voice firm and his shy demeanor having completely shifted. You slowly open your eyes. “What do you like? I — fuck,” He curses as your hand twists on the head of his cock. “Wanna make you feel good, tell me.”

You’re definitely not used to being vocal about what you want or like during sex; your ex-boyfriends always too selfish, and Hyunjin too confident for you to even have had the opportunity to do so. Coupled with just how good you felt, you know you won’t possibly be able to speak a word without moaning the way you’re trying so hard to avoid. You settle for guiding his hand, which was tangled in yours, under your shirt. Minho immediately massages your breast, his thumb caressing your nipple as his eyes find yours once more.

You feel as if his gaze is setting you ablaze, his eyes boring into you. It felt as if all his desire was accumulated in his dark eyes, clearly visible in how he watches you like he’s drinking in every last drop of you through his stare. You’ve never had someone look at you like this before; it makes you feel so wanted, so desired, as if the only thing Minho could ever need in this moment is you. That alone makes your body tremble, your left hand holding onto his shoulder for purchase as you feel you might float away at any second.

If you were told a couple of hours ago that something as simple as having Minho’s fingers inside you would have you so euphoric, you most definitely would have laughed.

Minho groans into your open mouth, his breathing heavy and his brows drawn together tightly. You force your lips shut once more as his thumb rubs your bundle of nerves more hastily. Your hand leaves his shoulder to tangle in his black hair, futilely attempting to tug him even closer to you before you kiss his agape lips that spill out groans and sighs like a mantra.

It’s almost all-consuming. His fingers inside of you, the warmth of his hand on your breast, his cock pulsating beneath your touch, his hot breaths that fill your lungs as he sighs into your kiss, and his eyes — his damn eyes that look at you as if he wants to eat you whole.

You finally allow yourself to moan as you feel your orgasm building up, whimpering his name against his lips as your strokes on his cock turn messy and desperate among the copious amounts of precum. Minho growls, pulling your hand from his hair — his grip on your wrist so firm it stings a little — before he pins you down to the mattress, fingers messily intertwining with yours again.

This time, you’re unable to restrain your whimper at his actions; Minho had always been gentle and sweet, something as simple as him pinning you down to the bed has you clenching around his fingers. This duality of his you just discovered is something that stirs up curiosity inside of you.

“I’m gonna come,” He announces with a sigh, his hand squeezing yours. You can only nod as you melt around his fingers, your whole body trembling. Minho soon follows, his cum spilling into your hand and your shirt, a low guttural sound leaving his throat.

His eyes only leave yours as he leans down to connect your lips again, giving you small kisses before a stifled laugh escapes him. You furrow your brows, and Minho grins.

“Sorry for getting your shirt dirty,” He mumbles against your lips, the two of you unwilling to move for the time being.

You shake your head with a chuckle. Although you cringe slightly as you feel the fabric of your shirt stick to your stomach.

“It’s okay.”

Minho shifts on top of you, and you only then realize his fingers remain inside of you. Your body jolts faintly at the stimulation, his name falling from your lips in the form of a whine. He grins at you again, all lopsided and handsome, before bringing his hand to his lips. You watch with agape lips as his tongue flicks out to lap at his fingers before sucking on them with a hum, his eyes locked onto yours once more.

Once again with this newfound duality of his. He’s pure romance and gentlemanly behavior, but seemingly so alluring and shameless in bed. The way he looks at you alone makes you clench around nothing as if you didn’t come mere minutes ago. And it’s such a simple act — you can’t count on one hand the number of times you watched as Hyunjin licked his fingers clean after being inside of you — but the contrast of his calm and endearing everyday personality and him suddenly pinning you to the bed or licking your cum off his fingers while looking into your eyes makes this entirely different.

You would’ve never expected this from Minho, and it makes your brain stir up with thoughts of what he would be like while eating you out or while fucking you. Would he pin you to the bed again or pull your hair, or maybe—

The sound of him clearing his throat interrupts you from your thoughts, and you only now realize you had been staring at the ceiling while fantasizing about Minho fucking you. Great.

Once your eyes meet, he’s quick to avert his gaze. “I will, uh, pay to wash your shirt when we — when we get back,” Minho stumbles over his words, his eyes now fixed on your shoulder. “If you want. But, like, I got it dirty, so…” He trails off, and you purse your lips to muffle the giggle that bubbled up your throat as it seems all the confidence he had only minutes ago had dissipated into dust and left his body.

He was back to his usual self. You can’t help but smile as you realize you adore any version of Minho.

He pushes himself off of you, muttering that he’ll be back before disappearing into the small bathroom. You remove your soiled shirt, wiping your hand on it, only to blanche at the sight of the logo printed on the fabric. It’s one of Hyunjin’s shirts that you had stolen ages ago. You mumble a string of apologies to him as you pull the covers off your body. After discarding it on your bed, you change into the first t-shirt you fish out of your backpack, worried Minho might come into the room and see your naked chest — as ludicrous as that was, seeing as he was knuckles deep inside of you less than twenty minutes ago.

Minho returns to the bedroom just as you’re closing the zipper on your bag. He silently takes your hand in his and wipes it with a towel, his head lowered as his eyes focus on his actions. You let out a breathy chuckle.

“There’s really nothing there anymore,” you inform him. “I wiped most of your cum on my shirt.” You nod toward the crumpled-up fabric thrown across the bed. Minho’s mouth opens, then closes, then opens again. He lets out a small noise, nodding his head slowly before ultimately pressing his lips together. Under the faint moonlight that lights up the room, you almost miss how his cheeks dust a shade of pink. You smile, pressing a kiss to his nose. Minho hums, smiling back at you and dropping the towel on top of your shirt.

Soon, you find yourself back in bed with him, Minho pulling you into his chest, his hands now offering you pleasure by gingerly massaging your scalp. You are almost asleep — listening to his heartbeat through his sweater, smiling at the soft snores that escape his parted lips — when it dawned on you.

You notice just how different being with Minho had been. How kissing him alone made your hands shake, how even without being fully intimate, the way you felt with him tonight was incomparable.

Minho’s words from months ago about how sex with someone you love eclipses the feeling of sex with any other person linger in your memory. You hum, a smile on your lips as your eyes flutter closed again.

Before they shoot open.

Because holy shit.

If it felt that way with Minho, it can only mean you’ve fallen for him.

Awakening to the sound of the heater’s soft hum, you feel Minho’s arm tightly around your waist, keeping your body pressed against his. His gentle breathing brushes against the nape of your neck, and you cautiously turn your head, careful not to wake him, only to be greeted by his tender eyes already gazing at you with a soft smile. Cuddling with Minho is another thing that feels different. You feel safe, adored from how he holds you to the way his eyes look at you.

As he realizes you’re also awake, he suddenly turns to lie on his back, staring at the ceiling as his ears slowly turn a light shade of red. You frown, chuckling a bit at his actions, before settling yourself across his chest.

“The power came back a while after you fell asleep,” he explains.

You giggle as you assume maybe he’s shy because of what happened last night. But your smile fades as your mind begins to overthink, your subconscious screaming that maybe you should feel shy, embarrassed. Weren’t you too easy? Letting him touch you like that after just a few kisses. Does Minho think you came into bed with him for that reason?

You think back to the last boyfriend you had, who berated you for how ‘whorish’ it had been when you asked to have sex with him instead of waiting for him to initiate it. And how your first boyfriend would tell you — every chance he got — that you acted like a slut, touching him as if you knew it would make him have sex with you. How, at the end of your relationship, he told you maybe you acted that way because you knew that sex was all you were good for. How another ex had laughed as he told you that even though you went through so many guys, you still managed to be a terrible fuck, and that was the reason he had to cheat on you.

There were also the murmurs around your school whenever you started a new relationship. Another one? She’s boy hopping so much she’s gonna get through our entire class in less than a year. Some girls just can’t stand to be alone, it’s kind of sad.

At some point, you had detangled yourself from Minho, now lying on your side and looking out the window. You never understood why so many people thought that way. You had five boyfriends from fifteen to eighteen, and in each of these relationships, you were either cheated on or broken up with in a less-than-pleasant way. But you did have the awful habit of jumping into relationships with little thought, often because you felt incomplete without a romantic partner — as romantic as high school relationships can be, anyway. Being single and content for almost four years now, you were proud to have worked on that.

But you still can’t shake off the feeling that maybe you were a bit too… forward. You were single, sure, but you were quick to jump at the opportunity to have Hyunjin as a fuck buddy. Perhaps people were right about that.

“Is everything okay?” Minho’s voice pulls you away from your racing thoughts. You offer him a tight-lipped smile, nodding.

“Yeah, I just zoned out.”

Sitting upright on the bed, you stretch with a sigh. Minho takes your hand before you can realize it, placing it on his chest and gently playing with your fingers, his eyes still glued to the ceiling. You gnaw on your bottom lip, pulling at the skin until it stings.

“I’m sorry if I was too forward last night,” you blurt out. Minho’s gaze shifts to focus on you, confusion swimming in his brown eyes and his hands halting around yours. Oh god, why did you say that?

“Forward?” The question trails off his lips, his eyebrows coming together in a frown.

With a sigh, you grimace at your own words. “Yeah, forward, like I was throwing myself at you. I’m sorry if it came off that way. I swear I’m not…”

“You’re not…?”

“You know what I mean, Minho,” you mumble, but his eyes remain swarmed with confusion. 

“I really don’t.”

You roll your eyes in exasperation, annoyed not at him but at yourself for having brought this up in the first place.

“You know, Minho,” you groan, “Forward, like, slutty. Like I asked to come to your bed just so you would fuck me.”

His expression softens, his eyes widening. He sits up as well, his hand still clutching yours.

“Why the fuck would I think that?” He asks matter-of-factly. “What happened last night was completely natural. We made out, we got horny, we took care of it together. You didn’t even ask me to touch you, I did it because I was dying to do it. You weren’t forward — you weren’t slutty.”

You feel the heavy veil of worry lift off your shoulders at his words. It was definitely going to take a while for you to work on that aspect of your trauma. This had never been an issue with Hyunjin since you were pursuing nothing more than a sexual relationship with him — things were different with Minho.

Minho was the complete opposite.

After countless moments of your heart racing and your hands trembling because of him, you finally confess to yourself that your affection for Minho extends well beyond platonic feelings.

With a small smile, you slowly nod your head. “Sorry for bringing this up, I just… didn’t want you to think badly of me.”

Minho smiles, placing a kiss on the back of your hand. “That wouldn’t have made me think badly of you. I’m not some Victorian man who thinks women should be burned at the stake for showing their ankles,” he chuckles, and you bite back a laugh. “Even if you had been slutty, so what? I’d like that just as much.”

You playfully hit his shin under the comforter as he wiggles his eyebrows at you.

Minho was unquestionably different.

“We gotta get to the airport soon,” he says with a sigh, stretching his arms over his head, carrying your hand along the way. “I had to book the earliest flight I could to save up some money.”

With a frown, you retrieve your phone from under your pillow and check for the time: seven-thirty a.m. You feel a pang of guilt as you recall how you are essentially on this trip for free.

“Why didn’t Chan help with the tickets?”

Minho bites the inside of his cheek before his lips stretch into a barely-there grin. “Chan was never coming to this trip,” he blurts out. You feel your lips fall agape.

“What?”

“I… planned this trip by myself. Only for you and me,” he explains. “I wanted to get far away from everything that distracted us so I could concentrate on showing you the good side of love like I’d been trying to do with all those fruitless attempts at taking you on dates.”

You take in his words and find yourself smiling at the gesture — the white lie Minho told pales in comparison to everything else he has done for you, both during this trip and since you met him. Truthfully, you didn’t even realize he had been taking you on dates. You mentally slap yourself in the head for that, believing he simply wanted to spend time with you as a friend.

“I’ll pay you back for my part of the trip as soon as—”

Minho’s voice interrupts you with a drawn-out ‘no.’ He smiles as you stare at him, puzzled.

“This entire trip must’ve been so expensive, Minho.”

But he’s unrelenting, shaking his head with a squeeze of your hand.

“I told you,” he says simply. “I do stupid shit when I’m in love.”

♡ taglist: @notevenheretbh1 @malunar28replies @jazziwritesthings @finchyyy @bloom-ings @linocz @minhochaos @lastgreatamericandynasty1

[sparrowrye]

Alastor x Fem! Reader {soulmates} Part Pilot

Synopsis: soulmate AU where you have the same mark on your body as your soulmate, and if your soulmate dies you also die. Alastor needs to make sure that his soulmate is safe so he can continue his reign - whatever that takes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The hair on the back of my neck rose half a second before something hard hit my head. I couldn't see anything but I could still feel when I hit the pavement. I rolled onto my back and tried to kick up at whoever was there.

Multiple hands grabbed me and dragged my across the hard ground. I felt my strength slowly coming back with my sight. There wasn't much to see as three dark figures towered above me. My back cracked when they slammed me into the wall.

One of them grabbed my jaw and dug their fingers into my cheek. I tried clenching my teeth but they easily pried my mouth open. I tried flicking my wrist but the rocks under my feet barely moved. They had hit my head so I couldn't use my magic. Now they were trying to drug me. Keep a mage discombobulated or high and they can't use their magic.

One of them had their entire weight on my legs and the other had my arms pinned against my side. They slipped a powder past my lips and clamped my mouth shut. I took a deep breath before they pinched my nose. I had only seconds before I passed out and they could get the rest of the powder down my throat. It was already soaking into my tongue and cheeks. I tried scrapping it against my teeth.

The weight on my feet disappeared. I tried kicking them but there was nothing but air. I pulled my leg up and dug my heel in their groin. They fell back and slammed into the wall behind them at an inhuman speed. I reached for the last attacker's eyes and dig my nails in. He let go and jumped over me as if to run. I immediately spat on the ground and wiped my tongue with the back of my hand.

I looked around at the dark alley. Everything was starting to double, the colors a wild red and blue. Some of it had gotten into my system. I saw two men laying still on the ground, the other running for the bright road. Something flew past my face and strikes him dead center in the back of his head. His body fell limp.

"Are you alright, my lady?"

I turned over my shoulder to see Alastor, the Radio Demon, towering above me. His eyes seemed to glow in the dark alley and his coat was as red as blood. I knew he was tall but he looked even more terrifying in person. His long, red fingers were outstretched in a kind gesture.

"What do you want?" I demanded.

"Is that any way to treat your savior?" He moved his hand closer, edging me to accept his offer.

"Why would you help me?" I rubbed the back of my head and winced. He grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. He stood a full head taller than me but he seemed oddly skinny. He didn't have the muscle I had.

"I know rumors deem me a dark light, but I can assure you I'm still a gentleman at heart. How could I let those fools continue their assault?" He wiped his hand on his coat as if I had some kind of germ or disease on me.

"I didn't ask for the help so I'm in no way obligated to do anything you ask," I said. I looked down to examine my hands because that was better than staring at his terrifying eyes. I lost my balance and fell backwards into the wall.

He grabbed my wrist and roughly pulled it up. I tried pulling it back but he held on painfully tight. I could picture him using his sharp teeth to slice it off in one bite. But he didn't. He dropped my hand and grabbed my chin next. He turned my head as if examining my neck. I tilted my head back and pulled away. I slammed into the wall again but tripped on my own feet, landing right on my tailbone.

He leaned down and grabbed my face again. I tried digging my nails into his wrist but my strength had disappeared. The drug was taking full effect now. "Let go of me, demon," I spat. He used his other hand and dragged a claw down my cheek. I cried and tried pushing him away with my feet. He stepped back, his smile never fading. I covered my bloody cheek and stared him down.

I had managed to stay free for five years. I wasn't about to fall into another mage's trap. I wasn't going to go back. I would rather die trying to escape the Radio Mage than go back. I knew his patience was thin and nothing immoral was off the table for him.

He reached up and touched his cheek, his claws coming back with a dark liquid. He looked down at his fingers before slowly meeting my eyes. That's when it clicked. I felt a rush of cold reality over my body. Matching cuts. A soulmate match.

I put both hands in the ground and pushed myself up. I ran down the alley, jumping over my attacker, and bolted for my home. I tripped several times but nothing was going to stop me. People stared at me as if I had seen a ghost. They didn't know that I had seen worse.

Everything hurt by the time I reached my apartment. I hadn't seen him since the alley so I hoped that meant I had lost him. I fumbled with my keys, struggling for several minutes to get the small key into the lock. I fell into my apartment and slammed the door shut with my feet. I turned the lock and crawled into the corner of the living room. I hugged my legs and stared into the dark apartment. Everything was spinning and unnatural colors jumped out at me. I felt jittery, like everything inside me was buzzing.

I stayed there for several minutes, waiting for the inevitable knock at the door. What was I thinking? I had just led the most powerful mage on this side of the country to my doorstep. I should've hid somewhere else. He of all people could follow someone without being noticed.

The only tell of time was the old clock on the fireplace mantle. I stayed in the corner for nearly forty-minutes, unmoving. Time seemed to be past uncharacteristically fast. I blamed the drugs on that. How long before this wore off, again? It wasn't the first time I had ingested this type of drug. It was the drug they used to keep mages from using their magic.

I finally found the courage to stand. I flipped the light switch and walked along the wall to the bathroom. I fell against the sink, clinging to the edge just to keep myself up. For such a small amount it was having a huge effect on me. Had the drug gotten stronger or had it been that long since it was used on her?

I turned on the faucet and gulped down the cool water. I splashed my face and tired to blink away the bright colors. No amount of drinking or splashing could return me to my normal state. I practically choked on the water and finally turned it off, grabbing the towel off the rack and pressing it to my face. I carefully straightened my feet and tried standing up. I felt more sturdy on my feet now. This meant that I had passed the peak of the drug. I was on the hill down to my normal state.

I let out a sigh and hung up the towel. I looked at my red eyes and saw another pair behind me. I screamed and spun a cast back at him. I slipped and fell into the old tub. I slipped into the corner with my hand outstretched. The faucet dug into my spine. He practically glided into the small room.

"Don't come closer!" I yelled. "My accuracy gets better every time."

"Your Slight magic stands no chance against me," he mused, "but I appreciate the confidence."

"The fuck do you want?" I demanded again.

"Should it surprise you that I want to meet my soulmate?" He tilted his head to the side.

"If you kill me you also die," I reminded him.

He chuckled. "I know how the magic of soulmates work, my dear." He stepped close and held out a hand to me. "If I wanted you dead, I would have done so already." The deepening of his tone didn't make me want to accept his gesture any more than already. "I'd like to have a civil conversation, if you don't mind."

It was another moment before I slowly laid my hand on top of his. He was careful to wrap his claws around my hand and didn't roughly pull me to my feet this time. I stepped out of the tub and let him lead me out of the room. He finally let go of my hand, gliding to the small fireplace and lighting it with a snap of his fingers.

He perched himself on one of the chairs and motioned for me to sit in the other one. I quietly obliged, my eyes never once leaving his smiling face. His trademark cane seemingly appeared in his lap.

"What do you want?" I asked less aggressively this time.

"My my, you're a distrustful soul aren't you?" He leaned his cheek on his hand.

"With my history you would be too," I said.

"What do you do for a living?"

"Anything and everything. Really anything that pays me."

"A tradition-breaker I see," he said. "Most women your age are attending school or doing housework for a master or husband."

"Let's just say I'm not well liked."

"Did you know those men?" he prompted.

"No, but they probably knew me."

"Does that happen to you often?"

"It's not frequent but it's not possible to avoid either," I answered. My clasped hands were sweaty and my cheek pinched from the dried blood on it. He was still sporting the same cut on his own cheek, clearly visible in the firelight.

"What did they want with you?" He was sitting straight again with his legs partly crossed and his hands clasped in his lap. Everything in me was tense and conscious. My hair on the back of my neck was standing up. I needed to get the demon out of my house.

"I used to belong to a fight ring."

"Lovely." His tone suggested anything but that. He looked down at his watch and let out a short sigh. "My my, it's sure getting late. We should be heading back."

"We?" I stood up just as he did.

"I can't leave my soulmate in danger, now can I?" He stepped closed to me.

"I know how to go under again," I said quickly. "I'll be leaving town and changing my appearance. No one will know it's me again."

"Then I wouldn't be able to find you again."  His eyes grew brighter the further we walked away from the fire. I bumped into the kitchen table and tried to put it between me and him.

"I'm sure this will scar and you'll be able to tell it's me." I pointed to my cheek. "Or I could just let you know where I go. That way you know where I am."

"If I bring you with me I'll always know where you are." I found myself staring at a shadow the second his claws touched my shoulder. I turned and he shoved me into the wall by my neck. "Besides, I of all people could keep you safest." His claws squeezed my neck.

"I feel qui-quite safe, I'm okay. I-I assure you." I casted a forced smile up at him. The room seemed to darken around his bright red eyes.

"I'm sorry, dear, it's not a request." He slipped his hand behind my neck and pulled me against him. He slammed his cane down on the ground with a cold THUD. His hand moved behind my back as the floor disappeared from beneath my feet. I instinctively grabbed at him to keep myself from falling. Wind whipped my hair around but I didn't dare let go.

My feet abruptly touched solid ground and the wind died down. I carefully let go with one hand to move my hair out of the way. Around me was a dark forest and the sound of waves crashing was apparent, as was the smell of the sea.

His chuckled vibrated through me and I jumped away. "Where the hell are we?" I turned around to see a dark mansion sitting on the cliff's edge. It's pointed roofs sliced through the light blue of the set sun.

"Welcome home, dear," Alastor said as he walked past. I spun in a circle, seeing nothing but forest and ocean. How far were they from civilization? For his reputation, probably hundreds of miles. Maybe even thousands. I crossed my arms and rubbed them to keep warm.

I turned around to see him waiting for me. His smile was still plastered to his face but his teeth weren't showing this time. He was leaning on his cane, if you called his stance leaning, at the base of the porch steps. I clenched my teeth and forced my feet to take one step after another.

Once I had reached him, he put a hand up to stop me. He tried to touch my forehead but I jerked back, my knees nearly buckling underneath. "Relax darling," he said, "I can ease the drug effect." I forced myself to be still as he swept his palm across my forehead. My vision cleared and the bright colors disappeared. I felt more stable but my magic was still out of service.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"Home, dear." He turned and walked into the old house. I looked around once more before following him. Inside looked as dark as the outside. The door slammed shut and the lights abruptly lit up at the snap of his fingers. The house's true colors came through - a deep purple and velvet with dark wood accents.

To the right was the living room that held the warm fire and large windows. To the left was the dining room with what looked like stacks of old furniture and other timely pieces. Did he collect things?

"You don't..." I hesitated, "you don't think...that you can keep me here for the rest of my life."

"I do." He spun his cane and slammed it into the wood flooring. "Because just as you said, lovely, if you die, I die. You have made a name for yourself just as I have. You should be thanking me really," he said walking past me.

"Thank you?" I scoffed.

"I'm doing you a favor. No more of this running from town to town nonsense. Now you have a place to call home and don't have to worry a hair on your head about living to the next day."

"I'd prefer freedom over a fancy cage. I've survived on my own just fine for twenty-one years of my life. I'm no housemaid."

"Then let me put it simply." He stepped dangerously close until I jammed my heels into the door. He leaned down so his yellow teeth were inches from my nose. "You will remain here for the rest of your life, whether you like it or not." The room began to darken. "I have my ways of keeping people in their place. We may share scars but we don't share pain." His face contorted unnaturally and his eyes looked less humane. I felt sick. "You should remember that when you think of defying me. I'm called the Radio Demon for a reason." He abruptly stood up and the lights came back. "Sound good, darling?"

My shoulders fell with my spirit.

[bluemari23]

soul glow | choi seungcheol

summary: you attended your first concert, waiting a long time to see your ult group perform. unable to recognize a soul bond taking place, you leave early, leaving seungcheol to scramble to find you.

pairing: choi seungcheol x neurodivergent reader

genre: soulmates, soul bonds, idol au, angst

warnings: a cinderella moment indeed, mentions of overstimulation,

word count: 1.4k

masterlist

an: couldn't help myself. I had a dream of this and needed to write it out.

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

The concert was your first, and you wouldn’t question if it was also to be your last. You were overwhelmed to say the least. You could practically feel your skin crawl as the colored lights flashed throughout the stadium. 

You had come with your best friend, wanting to see your ult group, Seventeen, while they were finally visiting a city even remotely close to you. You had both waited a long time for them to come, often writing your own prayers on social media with the hopes someone in management would see. 

And now, you’re not sure how you feel. 

“If you’re not feeling it, we can always leave early.” You friend yelled out to you over the music. You were in the front row of the bottom section, right behind the floor seats. You were to the side of the stage, but still had an amazing view of the boys as they performed. 

You loved your friend, how understanding they were, but you just shook your head. You didn’t pay all this money for you to leave early, and because you were overstimulated. You hated feeling like a burden and you knew how much your friend was also looking forward to the concert. You both had been waiting to experience the right of passage for every carat at a concert, the ten thousand aju nices that would happen at the end. 

To be fair, you might just be overstimulated by the lights surrounding the boys, particularly on your side of the stage. You couldn’t figure it out, given it was a bright golden glow and none of the colored lights going on in the stadium resembled that glow or even just the lights that lit up the stage. 

You tried to make the best of your opportunity and sung along to your favorite song once it played. Shadow held a special place in your heart and you loved the timber of the groups individual voices as they sang, particularly Mingyu and Scoups as they gave their best selves to the performance. 

Once the instrumental for To You began to play, Scoups tried his best to remember the choreo but he couldn’t help but to continue to move towards the left of the stage, something catching his eye as he turned to look at their fans. 

He couldn’t help but to falter in his steps, thankfully no one caught his mistake as he was quick to sing his lines. The bright glow of gold held his attention, more like the woman who the glow centered around. 

He could name numerous different soul bonds, from the Flower Halo to the more common Soul Mark, but never did he think he would be blessed with a Soul Glow as his bond. And never did he think he would find his soulmate during one of their concerts, where he can’t immediately move to greet his soulmate, bringing them into his embrace and holding them tight. 

He had even more vigor as he continued on with the concert, knowing that his soulmate was watching him and his brothers perform. Something that everyone seemed to notice, especially his band members. 

During one of the outfit changes, Joshua has come up to him and asked him if he was okay, and he couldn’t hold back. 

“My soulbond activated. She’s here, Shua.” He admitted, causing Joshua’s eyes to widen in shock, and for the excited shouts of his other members who had not so subtly been eavesdropping on their elder members. 

They all quickly dressed in their next set of clothes, and right before they had to go back on stage, Seungcheol has pointed you out to his fellow members and manager, who had been tasked to get a message across to his soulmate before the end of the concert, wanting to meet his soul glow. 

Despite trying their best, his members kept moving to the left of the stage, trying to get a good look at who would be their new best friend by the end of the night. Yeah, they would give you and their leader your space, but they were determined to be your friends, seeing as you would be stuck with their leader forever. 

This was something the crowd noticed as well, those on the floor moving to the left trying to get the boy’s attention and whatever way they could. It only happened for a couple of songs, but then the boys moved back to giving equal time to all sides of the stage. 

It was weird, and something you and your friend both acknowledged. 

“I wonder what happened?” You friend questioned aloud, causing you to hum your agreement. 

“Maybe something caught their eye?” Was your own reply, thinking that to be the most likely answer. 

Either way, the concert continued but not without difficulties. Mainly for you. 

You had tried your hardest, but despite that, you couldn’t help but to feel as though you had overdone your tolerance, the biting pain of your nails digging into your palm a sad reminder.

Loud noises had always been a problem for you; the pain in your head and the itching under your skin that had your scratching marks into your arm was always a reminder. You don’t know why, but too much stimulation always caused somewhat of a shutdown for you, where you couldn’t speak and your mind didn’t seem to want to focus on anything in particular. 

By the time the third Aju Nice had rolled around, you were past your limit and you friend could tell. 

“Hey, you know what, it’s okay. I can see why so many people get tired after the first round. My feet are aching and my cheeks hurt from smiling so much.” Your dear friend helped you out of the aisle and towards the stairs that would lead out to the lobby of the stadium. 

You tried to protest, but even those were weak as you followed behind your best friend. You were incredibly thankful for them and knew you would need to make up for leaving the concert early, even if they are adamant about leaving.

Vernon was the first to notice you leaving, following behind the woman who had been sitting to your right. He tried his best to signal to Seungcheol, but only managed to at the end of the third Aju Nice encore. 

“She’s leaving, Cheol.” Vernon tried to be discrete, which thankfully he managed. His words caught the attention of the others, who had all huddled together near one corner of the stage, watching a couple of their fans in costume dance. They all watched the two women make their way to the stairs and out of the main stadium area.

Cheol panicked, sitting down at the edge of the stage and gesturing for his manager, making him aware of the dilemma. He could only watch as his manager had grabbed some of their security with him and started backstage, trying to catch up to you. 

His heart was racing as he tried his best to focus and make sure the concert ended like every other one, doing his best for his fans. It was like he could feel you getting further away from him, could feel the distance festering in his soul. 

As he sang the last encore, he had come up with a number of ideas, ways to track you down if you did manage to get away from him tonight. 

Once the last note played and they started to leave the stage, Seungcheol walked until he was out of sight of his fans, the proceeded to run to his dressing room, where hopefully you would be waiting with his manager. 

Disappointment and defeat coated his veins as he opened the door, the emptiness in his soul prominent as the room was empty from what he could only imagine would be your inevitable warmth. 

“I’m sorry, Seungcheol, they were driving out of the parking lot by the time we managed to get into the lot. One of the security team did manage to get their license plate number so we have that written down.” His faithful manager spoke sincerely, not wanting to upset Seungcheol more than he probably already was. 

Everyone was throwing out suggestions, some of the members even going to action as they tried to see if they could access ticket information from the stadium itself. Seungcheol remained quiet though, determination flowing through him as he followed along with Mingyu, calling their company and the stadium head to see what they could do. 

One way or another, he would find his soul glow. 

[wonryllis]

𓍼⠀ YOU, MY FATE COME AND KISS ME.

𝒏o𝓉ℯs. park jongseong x fem!reader 𖥔 ݁ fluff-angst, soulmate au LIB? word count `425 for @okwonyo valentine event!

jay thinks he's stuck in a loop.

a never-ending turn of events that cage him beyond the lights of universe. for everyday it feels like he falls in love with you all over again. a trick of heaven, a path weaved so carefully by fate, a red string tying him to you to the ends of his breath.

in a world of destiny, you are his paradox.

since the age of ten, jay has known his soul is bound to another for life, for love, for everything in between and apart. he has spent all his birthdays waiting for the one where the chosen name will etch itself onto his skin, telling him the time has come. but twenty-two and the wheel of cupid is yet to stop. perhaps it's because of you. three seasons spent together, and the guy is smitten. wishing everyday for you to be his other half.

"does this look good on me?" your voice echoes into the silence in the room, an ever quiet jay hoping for things to stay the same every year. to be away from you would be like death to him.

"you look as gorgeous as always, tell me how i got this lucky," his hands wrap around the curve of you waist and he rests his head on your shoulder, eyes locking through the mirror. the scent of your lotion like an ardent addiction. to think maybe someday he could never smell it again would be like stab of grief.

"honestly i am the lucky one, now we only have to wait for this," the words are just above a whisper, a small smile dancing on the tips of your lips, as you stare at your wrist��� the place where jay's name is supposed to show up.

"whatever happens i know i'll only love you," jay leaves a fleeting kiss on your lips, arms holding you tight as if you'd slip away.

"now let's go my pretty valentine," you laugh at the way he tries to wink provocatively, and jay feels the arrow struck through his heart hurt for the nth time. a churning in his stomach evoking a desperate yearn for you, for the spot on his wrist he thought to have reserved for you sits another name.

no matter what happens, he knows you're his forever and he'll fight against all odds for that. even if it means fighting his own self.

"this is gonna be the best date ever i promise," his world revolves around you and it always will.

taglist. ( open ) @kangseulgithegreat @s00buwu @luvyev @pockyyasii @nctislifue @ashtxrie @miniature-tragedy @jayujus @brachives @thoughtsmeander2tumblingblindly

[palajae]

love me (k)not. | 1k special

PAIRING ▸ niki x reader, slight jungwon x reader

GENRE ▸ soulmate! au, string of fate! au, photographer! au, childhood-friends-to-lovers, romance, fluff, angst, humor, SLOW BURN

WORD COUNT▸ 15.6k

SUMMARY ▸ yes, niki can see the red string of fate that connects two people together. and no, he can’t just tell people who their soulmate is. you’re his only friend but there’s one problem and he can see it quite clearly (and literally)- your string isn’t connected to his. 

AKA a reality check that niki loves you, no matter what the universe says. 

AN/NOTES ▸ mentions of bullying, slight violence, child experimentation, food, drinking/alcohol (but only with an aged up riki and reader!!), kissing, jungwon being a jerk for a little :(

hi guys did anyone miss me :) it’s been a long ride but due to popular request for longer oneshots here is a very long one that i basically died over! i really hope you guys enjoy it as i worked super hard, and thank you guys again for 1k (more like 1.2k now but) ily 🩷

i. one string, two strings, red strings, new strings. 

he doesn’t know when it really started. it simply happened one cloudy afternoon. and it’s not like the subject was completely foreign to riki, oh no, he had definitely heard tales from older people about the topic. 

unfortunately for him, it just had to be when he was a mere seven year old. ‘it’ meaning the delicate and thin red strings— almost identical to the yarn his grandma would use for knitting—appearing all around him, encasing him in a world like a spy in a laser trap trying to escape with their precious treasure. 

tiny riki frowned, glancing around while still having a tight grip on his mother’s hand in order not to get lost in the vast mall they were currently shopping at. his attention was suddenly caught, eyes focusing on the larger hand he was still holding onto. more specifically, the pinky finger of his mother’s right hand. 

a perfect little knot wrapped around her smallest finger. 

his eyes followed the string, but it traveled quite far through the crowd of people and he eventually gave up, the string pulling farther than he thought. later would he really figure out the meaning of this, but at the time, he simply tugged on his mother’s shirt, attracting her attention. she glanced down, answering her child with a hum. 

cautiously, riki took a quick peek around at the passerby’s, confirming what he saw on what seemed to be about everyone else’s hands as well, almost getting lost in the maze of the red before his eyes flicked up to her. 

“what are the red strings for?”

his mother raised an eyebrow, leaning closer to hear better. “what? repeat what you said, riki.”

he stood up straighter, clearing his throat. “i said, what are the red strings on everyone’s hand for?”

riki’s mother paused, a train of thoughts running through her head. once an answer finally appeared, she attempted to calm her suddenly racing heart before squatting down and leaning even closer to her son. she looked him carefully in the eye, and riki can still remember the movement of her lips speaking clearly and slowly, the words that left her lips that day and changed his life forever. 

“just like the ones grandpa told you about?”

he remembers exactly what he responded back with. 

“yes.”

they went to the doctors eventually for assistance. riki now knows it would’ve been inevitable, and perhaps earlier was better than later. 

the doctor returned back with what seemed like an impossible diagnosis: riki can see people’s red strings of fate.

their soulmate connections. 

then came the questions, tests, experiments. it lasted for a long time in little riki’s head, and it was indeed a long time for a child. several years- five to be exact. five years spent in a lab, all in solitude, to be kept under control and monitored over time. 

riki remembers the overwhelming amount of people. people like the scientists with the tidy white coats and glasses who came in and took his blood or ran tests on his eyes and brain. he also remembers the average people who would occasionally come in, usually a man and woman looking quite anxious and timid, and who would sit down in front of him, both hands clearly in sight of riki. 

every time, as if it was natural instinct, his eyes would flick down to their right hand, spotting the tied knot on their pinky. then a scientist would ask questions- 

do you see a red string? yes. 

can you see who it is connected to? yes. 

is it to each other? 

yes—most of the time. occasionally, he would answer no with a shake of his head. there was always the variety of responses from the people. a gasp, crestfallen look, maybe even tears. whispers and murmurs would come from the white coated people as they wrote stuff down. 

riki was confused. did being soulmates really matter when most people (meaning everyone except riki) never had to ability to see who their soulmate was anyways? people fell in and out of love, regardless. 

the lab came up with a final conclusion: most likely, nishimura riki could indeed see people’s soulmates through their red strings. he couldn’t touch the red strings, it was like they were just imaginary, only visible to him. but they had no idea how, but they knew he could see them and if they were connected or not in accordance with his field of vision. 

most would think he was just a kid faking it—with a great deal of imagination—but his accuracy of determining two people’s soul connection was a little too frightening to be a childish prank. 

form what riki overheard, the government planned to keep his special “power” a secret. after all, riki was just a kid. public knowledge only meant trouble and who knew what else. half argued to leave the poor kid alone, while others vouched to keep him under surveillance for the rest of his life. 

either way, riki was forced to keep his mouth shut about his ability—not that he wouldn’t have wanted to say anything anyway. 

of course, rumors and secrets still leaked out, but for the most part, riki seemed to be safe. maybe a little too safe. he didn’t really have friends. no, he didn’t have friends at all. 

personally, the imaginary ones appearing in his years of loneliness didn’t count. riki possessed a power the world had never seen before, but he had no friends. no childhood. no life. 

after five years of living alone in a laboratory surrounded by white lights, white clothes, and more white walls, riki was finally released when the government reached a dead end in their research. how much power could a kid with soulmate seeing abilities wield? the government hoped it was close to none. besides, no one knew when he could get called in again.  

his parents? yes, he supposed they did love him. but enough to keep him from being tested on for years and not having a proper life? other would argue it was for the benefit of his “special ability.” 

research gave answers that in reality, didn’t have any use. (his parents wouldn’t mention the copious compensation fee the government gave for testing on their son, though).

and riki’s red string himself? 

he had to admit, when he was first discovering his newly identified ability, he was also curious about who his soulmate could be. and like many, many others when he took a peek, the string just carried on in the distance, unable to display the carrier of the other end. 

once riki was back in the “real world,” he was kept mostly at home during the heat of the summer. but he would always remember the feeling of being taken out of his room and directed outside into a dark, heavily guarded vehicle for occasional checkups. he remembers glancing outside while driving past tall buildings and sometimes seeing countless red strings pass him by, a sight he hadn’t seen since going to the mall with his mother all those years ago. 

his mother walked into his room one day with a clean, white envelope in her hands and an unreadable expression on her face. he looked up from his hands, eyes catching her red string hanging again before looking at his mother fully. 

“you’re attending a new school, riki.”

ii. eros and psyche. 

the cursed rules echo in his mind. they were pretty simple, yet held the heaviest consequences. 

don’t tell anyone about your abilities.

especially don’t tell anyone about their soulmate. 

it wasn’t his choice to. it’s not like he wanted to, either. even at the mere age of twelve, riki wasn’t one to mess with fate or whatever the universe was doing to him. the red lines invaded his personal space, but at some point it didn’t bother him anymore.

what really bothered him was the daunting task of attending school. learning in person, having homework, interacting with others. 

riki was educated at the labs, but that schooling came in the form of simple workbooks and videos. 

needless to say, the first few days were rough. 

quite hard. 

very hard. 

waking up early probably got riki the most. being surrounded by so many other kids was quite overwhelming. especially when they stared at him whenever he passed by like he was different. 

which, he was.

everyone else had established their respective friend groups already. he learned why pretty early on, though. why the weird looks and gossip passed by him. it was all because of one girl who just really couldn’t whisper for her life. (even without confirming or denying it, he wondered how they found out?) 

he even started to go by niki instead of riki—the one letter difference was the best he could do. 

perhaps rumors were spreading quickly around about riki and his ‘power’ to see others’ red strings connected to their soulmates. 

not even a week of school and riki already developed his own reputation. a feat of its own, no? 

at first, it was hard to adjust to seeing so many other kids, waking up at the crack of dawn, and managing the stupid overload of work—basically what seemed to be about everything. but somehow, riki felt a bit more settled in, if he could even describe it as that. 

he was quiet, extremely, but still very well known around the school. his grades weren’t bad after all, it turns out riki was pretty alright at “school”, although he mostly slept in class or daydreamed away. 

the one thing he could admit he failed at as a human (albeit a ‘special’ human) was socialization. 

yeah, riki had basically no friends and he embraced it. 

he sat in the back of the class, spoke a total of four words per day, and occasionally messed around. if he really felt like it, he would put in his earbuds and listen to his mixtape like an angsty teen before going home for the day. 

all day. all week. on repeat. 

if his mother was ever concerned and asked, his rationale would be that riki simply didn’t trust other people. he forced himself to stop caring about and looking at everyone’s red string and soulmates, or anything related. 

yet he still had to deal with strangers confronting him and asking who their soulmate was. it was all random people to him, mostly. so who knew what would happen if he became friends with someone, just to discover they used him to find out their soulmate? 

even years later, his theory is proven to be accurate. 

why, riki internally sighs, do people think they can get whatever they want, whenever they want?

the two girls in front of him, he finally spares them a glance. he just wanted to call it a day, go home and watch some anime or something, not have two random girls pounce on him after school. he barely manages to keep his mouth shut. 

“so,” one of them says, arms crossed and eyebrow raised, “can you tell us who our soulmates are?”

which obviously translates to: tell us now or you’ll suffer the consequences. 

he takes out an earbud nonchalantly, a blank expression on his face. 

“no thanks.”

she takes a step closer, and his eye twitches. “but you can.” 

her eyes glare into his, and her friend does the same. 

“i can, but will i?” riki asks sarcastically, annoyance beginning to reach its limit. when one of them grabs his shoulder, he starts to panic. 

“get your hand off me.” his voice is cold. 

“or what?” they mock. 

riki grits his teeth, attempting to cool down. he can’t fight back—not just because he doesn’t want to hit them, but because it’ll attract unnecessary attention and that’s the last thing he needs. 

the girls giggle that same annoying high pitched sound, although it’s not a blissful or joyful one, it sounds more like a warning with a malicious edge to it. 

“oh come on, won’t you be nice to us girls? we’ll let you-“ 

one hand reaches out and he dodges so quickly they have to pause for a second. 

“don’t touch me,” riki puffs out, barely keeping it together. 

“i said-“

“how many times does he have to tell you two to leave him alone?”

that was the first time. 

the very first time riki ever laid eyes on you, and the very first time his eyes didn’t immediately fall to your hand and red string.

they scowl, about to retort when you shrug uninterestedly, revealing your phone camera pointing straight at them. “i can just report you guys for bullying, you know, or like harassment.”

their eyes widen, before flashing you that look- the one blatantly showing that they just cursed at you silently- before furiously stalking off. 

silence follows as you put your phone away and riki collects himself. 

you turn to him, voice and expression softer than earlier. 

“you good?”

riki shrugs, about to turn away. 

“w-wait!” you call out hesitantly. he stops, on the verge of leaving regardless of what you have to say. 

“uh, don’t worry. i didn’t actually record anything, just made it look like i did.” 

you inhale, trying your best to ignore the awkward atmosphere. “i think we have some classes together? my name’s y/n.”

his eyes flick to yours for a split second before looking away. riki barely nods, putting his earbud back in. 

you clear your throat. “and yours is?” 

you can barely hear his quiet mutter of an answer before he walks off, leaving you alone in the hallway. you already knew what it was, you just wanted to hear his voice at least once. but his answer leaves you frowning (wondering if you didn’t hear him properly or didn’t clean your own ears properly.) 

riki, you contemplate thoughtfully.

regardless of if he was niki or riki, it sounded nicer coming from himself than it did from others. 

surprisingly enough, he runs into you again the next day. or not really, you sort of just found your way towards him in the back of the classroom and plopped your stuff down right beside riki. 

he didn’t notice you because of his earbuds in until you tap his shoulder, sending a small smile. riki stays emotionless, acknowledging your presence with a quick glance over. 

he can’t count the amount of times you attempted at keeping up conversation before giving up. riki would later regret the short, blunt answers he always gave in return. but it baffled him, how you would never mention the red strings or anything related. 

you talked about normal things like a normal person, and like riki was a normal person. it was weird how he could learn so much about you based on what you said in a day. 

like how you would complain about the astounding amount of homework but always did it all on time and aced every single test. or when you said you were starving but during lunch he would catch you giving your packed lunch to your other friends who were just as hungry as you. 

even how you would never fail to greet and sit next to riki, and randomly mutter under your breath for no reason. 

he didn’t understand you and how pervasive you were. when he’s a hard concrete wall and you’re still pounding at it every single time. but deep down, he never failed to see your lively soul.

riki’s encountered so many different people with differing intentions, and yet you stand out. he just can’t figure you out. 

you pass him the paper for attendance one day and he mutters a small thanks. you practically do a double take, staring at him for a good five seconds before beaming down at your paper. riki doesn’t miss that, either. 

he doesn’t know how it happens. you talk to him, and he feels himself responding before he can realize it. you never once mentioned the words red string or soulmate ever. perhaps that was what led him to feel a bit more safe around you. maybe his guard was never let down completely, but you certainly had some effect on him. 

maybe, you two became friends. although riki didn’t even know what friends even were. even the school picked up on it quite easily. one of the most brilliant kids in the grade hanging with the outcast- the weird kid who never said a word. 

riki doesn’t understand. you have your own friends–he assumes. why even bother with him? 

you start sitting next to him at lunch, for crying out loud. 

not that he minded, it was actually nice to sit next to someone and not an empty chair or desk.

“hey,” you plop down next to riki, stuffing a grape into your mouth. “what’d you get on the test?”

he looks up. “which one?”

you sigh, taking out a binder. 

“history.”

riki takes out an earbud, blinking. “78. you?”

you tsk while popping another grape into your mouth. “i thought our study session was helpful. i got a 97.”

he scoffs, nothing your displeased expression. “you’re smart. you should be happy.” 

you raise your eyebrows, ready to retort. 

“ you’re smart too, nishimura riki.”

“-if you stopped watching anime all day.”

you just barely manage to dodge the flying grape aimed at you. 

you take the seat next to him, taking out one of his earbuds with an intent expression. riki looks up at the loss of sound in his left ear, eyebrows furrowed to object. he stops when he sees you.

“you wanna hang out after class?”

“no.”

you pout. “why not?”

he shrugs. “ask my mom.”

“i personally think she would be ecstatic with you going out instead of staying cooped up inside all day.”  

he has to stay silent at that. 

triumphant, you pack up your stuff, not bothering to wait for his answer. “five pm at the gates.”

he shows up. riki wasn’t that big of a jerk (at least he thinks so). 

he did again when you invited him out after that. and again, and again. 

even when you both start adding more and more layers to your everyday outfits, nothing changes. even when exams started and the pink blossoms began falling from the trees. 

it’s like one second you were having one sided conversations and the next thing you know, you’re laying down next to each other in the grass during your lunch break. 

“so you literally just see the strings?”

oh, yeah. 

that was one of the things about you that made riki dumbfounded. at first, you didn’t say a single word about his ability. but as riki let his guard down and opened up more, he realized it was because you actually had no clue. somehow all the rumors that were spread about him never reached you. but once you found out, you did not stop asking questions. countless questions about his “really, really cool superpower” as you deemed it. 

“yeah. i see it.”

“everyday? all the time?”

he shoots you a look. “no, i can just sneeze and it’ll turn off.” 

“really?”

“no, stupid.” 

you huff, hands behind your head as you turn to glance at him and he averts his gaze quickly from your face. 

“that’s cool. but you probably wish you could turn it off, right?”

all the time, he thinks bitterly. maybe even permanently.

“can you touch them?”

“i told you already that i can’t!” he shifts, “besides, why would i want to—everyone would just be staring at me like i was a psycho if they just saw me creepily petting the air or whatever.”

he watches your reaction, seeing the corners of your mouth tilt up as you imagine it, and it makes his as well. there’s something satisfying about seeing your reaction that makes him unable to resist.

you abruptly stop, murmuring, “we’re friends, right?”

he pauses, swallowing. “uh, sure. what makes you ask that?” quickly, you shake your head. “oh no,  i just never asked you before. wanted confirmation.” 

“your only friend, right?” you add jokingly, and he elbows your side. 

“i’m kidding-“

“...but i like that,” you add quietly. 

a petal flutters down from the tree above you, landing in your hair. you don’t notice as you’re distracted, but riki does. as you start to speak again, he lifts a hand and delicately picks it out. you stop mid sentence as riki watches you gently. 

he swallows, and you quickly clear your throat. 

it was true. suddenly, riki’s quite glad that he didn’t know who your—his only friend—soulmate was. why, he’s not sure. all riki knows is that he doesn’t want to find out who your soulmate is. 

and he’d never admit it, but it was probably (definitely) fear. fear at who your string was connected to. why? 

he had no clue and that scared him even more. 

riki’s pulled along by your surprisingly strong grip, weaving through corridors and into an empty classroom. a couple of students stare as you two pass by, apparently still not over the fact that you and riki could be friends—let alone be in the same room. 

panting, you shut the door and lock it, but stay close to watch out through the window quietly. riki notices your hand still tightly intertwined with his but he decides to keep quiet. 

“what’s going on?” he whispers. your gaze breaks away from the window in order to reply to him. “this guy keeps following me-i’m pretty sure it’s the one who left the confession note in my locker and won’t leave me alone during the periods i don’t have with you.”

“someone likes you?” he asks incredulously, and you slap a hand over his mouth, shushing him fiercely as you continue your patrol from inside the classroom. 

his insides suddenly feel unpleasant. it’s already uncomfortable and stuffy enough in the room, being squished next to you behind the door so no one- well, apparently this annoying guy who’s stalking you- can find your whereabouts. he doesn’t know who this person is, but he doesn’t like it. not one bit. 

suddenly, there’s a voice coming from outside, one asking for the location of you. a couple of female ones answer, and riki figures they must belong to the girls from earlier who saw you guys pass by. 

you gasp, and riki feels your grip tighten. you pull him in closer so you’re practically squished together against the door, breaths held as quietly as possible. 

it takes everything in him not to squirm as riki waits, he fears you can hear the sound of his heart pounding. 

two… three… five minutes pass. only when you hear complete silence do you release him. flustered, riki pulls away, attempting to fix his wrinkled uniform so you don’t notice his reaction. 

it must’ve been a clear success, as you only heave a sigh of relief and flash a mischievous grin towards riki. 

“i think we’re good, let’s get out of here!”

you don’t make any leeway for him, escaping past the door and out the classroom without a sound. 

riki pauses, taking a second to catch his breath. the past few seconds of your close proximity replay in his mind. he shakes it off, brushing the weird sensation in his gut. 

still, he wonders if there was any chance you felt that too. or was it just him?

you throw your arm around riki, sporting a grin with a creepy similarity to that of the cheshire cat’s. he flinches at your action, almost cursing in the middle of the crowd of students. “what do you want?”

by this point, finally after two years, most people had gotten used to the sight of the two of you. all the gossip and whispers behind your back flew over his head—and it had never bothered you in the first place. 

you stifle a laugh. “no need to be so grumpy. come on, follow me.” you weave through the hallway of crowded kids and riki struggles to keep up, puzzled. 

he follows you to the somewhat empty courtyard, sitting down on a nice patch of grass as you wait for him to get settled. “why did you take me out here?”

you roll your eyes, “patient as ever, nishimura riki.” you dig through your messy school bag before your eyes light up. 

“close your eyes,” you order. 

he does as you say, no questions asked. riki feels a delicate sensation on his wrist—at this point he can recognize your warmth pretty easily. 

“all done.” 

he cautiously peeks his eyes open only to see you staring expectantly back at him. soon, his gaze falls down to where he felt your light touch before.

a simple, silver chain wraps around his thin wrist. 

pretty. 

confused, riki furrows his eyebrows, meeting your eyes that glimmer with a strange compassion. 

you hold up your own hand with a cute smile that makes his heart pound, displaying a matching bracelet—identical to his. 

“it’s not much but, happy birthday, riki.” 

to think that he himself didn’t even remember his own birthday. you beam at him, and he feels his ears grow red. 

“do you like it?”

“y-yeah,” he mumbles and you nod in satisfaction. “good, because i spent my own money out of my pocket for it. it wasn’t cheap, you know.” 

his eyes widen and you press your lips together. “in exchange, you have to promise me something.” 

under the peacefully swaying trees, under the warm sunlight and buzzing spring, he realizes he could promise you anything. 

you hold out your left pinky. “you’ll stick by my side no matter what. promise me that.”

he opens his mouth to speak but you’re faster, raising your other pointer finger to cover his lips. “just promise me or else i’ll take away your gift.” 

your childlike orbs envelop him, full of life and sincerity—he knows he’ll never forget that day.

nor when his own pinky reaches up to link with yours. 

riki remembers the day as clear as a fresh glass of water, a still puddle of rain that collected after the summer thunderstorms. 

you met up with him in first period as you usually did, ruffling his hair with an easy grin as he grumbles (albeit with an affectionate look that you failed to notice). 

class continued on normally, somewhat rowdy as always before the teacher came in. you get up to grab something on the floor, hair falling into your eyes. as usual, riki watches over you before spotting your foot catching on one of the chair’s legs. he quickly shouts out a warning, grabbing your wrist in order to balance you as your head whips up. 

he catches you, staring at you in concern and making sure you’re alright. you stare at him in shock, flustered and without a response. he chides you with a roll of his eyes, mumbling something about how clumsy you always were and how he always had to watch out for you.

you can’t seem to form any words, so you just snatch your arm back and sit down. riki wordlessly offers a earbud to you, and you accept it with a smile. it’s something you got used to doing, sharing music and playlists with each other. 

even as others made fun of you for doing supposedly cheesy couple things, you ignored them. but it did make you wonder. did you and riki seem like a couple? were you?

you guys were young, you had all of high school still to get through together. 

what did it mean? 

your thoughts get interrupted by the teacher opening the door. everyone settles down, attention focusing. 

but today, it was different. it wasn’t just your teacher walking in. 

there was an addition. an addition that came in the form of a handsome looking boy, around the same age as you guys. 

the teacher introduces him as a transfer student. yang jungwon, he smiles and riki swears people swoon. everyone’s attention is on him, even yours is as you all study him curiously. 

riki swore he was past all that looking at people’s soulmate strings and connections. it had been so long since he tried to put two and two together. it was a whole invasion of privacy, and he simply didn’t want to bother himself with other people’s affairs and relations. 

but once he saw that new kid step into the room, riki can only focus on his hand, the first thing that came into his view. 

and like it was in slow motion, he follows the tiny red string on his pinky down the row of desks to someone sitting a few inches away from riki himself, obviously not paying attention and oblivious to everything while listening to a shared earbud— you. 

he almost thinks his eyes are fooling him. it was barely connected by that thin, cursed string. and that’s when it really hits him.

that string was connected to yours. 

that string meant your soulmate just walked into the classroom—

and it certainly wasn’t riki. 

“jungwon’s really cool. did you know he did taekwondo since he was….”

riki ignores the chatter in the halls as he walks by, brooding as always. but this week was a bit harsher. probably, no, definitely because of the new student jungwon. 

ever since he joined your class, people had been talking about him nonstop. it seemed like jungwon was one of the popular kids now, without even doing anything. riki didn’t get what was so cool about him, anyway. 

sure he was “cute” and had a kind personality. sure he was incredibly smart and well spoken. that’s all riki had heard the past week from everyone else gossiping in awe. 

he turns up the volume on his phone, scoffing. what are they, his fans? 

riki wasn’t sure what to do with the newfound information about your soulmate. he didn’t really want to think about it, his first instinct was to look for you in his next period for some cheering up. but when he walks into the classroom, he doesn’t expect to see aforementioned person talking to you, an animated look on his face. 

jungwon gestures grandly, probably telling some super cool story from all his achievements. you seem pretty invested, watching with big eyes and occasionally laughing.  

riki feels desperation and anger swirl in the pit of his stomach. even worse, he feels loneliness. something he hasn’t felt for a long time blooms inside—something he hasn’t felt since he met you. 

what is he supposed to do now that you’ve found your soulmate? or rather, riki has? 

you thought everything was fine. everything seemed fine. after the new guy joined your class, riki acted a little weird the first couple of days but he returned to normal soon after. you figured it was because of his normally shy personality. it took you a (long) while for him to warm up to too, after all. 

but what you didn’t expect was for him to almost launch a full on investigation. on the new kid jungwon, strangely enough. 

you frown. “he’s nice? why are you asking me this? it’s not like we’re friends or anything.” 

sure, jungwon talked to you unexpectedly a couple of times, but he was very popular and did that to many people. it wasn’t like he was targeting you or anything like that. or so that’s what you believed. 

but it didn’t stop there. in the few classes you shared with the two boys, whenever jungwon would start up a friendly conversation with you, you could feel riki staring holes into your back. and whenever riki made a dumb joke in the middle of class and you flicked him playfully, you swore you caught jungwon’s eye on more than one occasion. 

you brushed it off, but one day it was suddenly no longer a matter of trivial things. 

usually it was just you and riki at your lunch table, and it had been that way for a while. your friends opted to stay away from him, and you shrugged it off. it was their loss, not yours. 

so when jungwon and his group of popular kids approached you and riki, jungwon taking the seat next to you while riki visibly tensed, you figured something was up. you could hear the onslaught of whispers from surrounding tables. 

jungwon, the ideal student, joining you and the weird outcast riki? 

from then on, the changes were too drastic to ignore. hanging out with just riki, you knew he was obviously bothered but wouldn’t tell you about it. it was visible that he had a clear disdain for jungwon, but would never verbally express it as much as you tried to get it out of him. it was an unreachable part of him, although you thought you had worked hard to get past that secretive, closed off part of him. 

worse was jungwon sitting next to you various times in class and making too much conversation for you to ignore (although you really tried to show you weren’t interested in talking the whole time). all while riki stared forward with an unreadable expression, music practically on full blast. 

you didn’t know what was going on, and you didn’t know the situation—how to get a grasp on it. you especially didn’t know the occasional looks the two boys would give each other, and how things would change so soon. 

all you knew was that it happened one gloomy day, nearing the end of the school year. 

you had just finished an exam in science and went looking for riki to walk home together, as you did every day when school ended. when he wasn’t anywhere to be found, you asked around. 

most answers came in the form of shrugs, however a couple of classmates recalled seeing him with another group of kids. 

you frowned—what reason would riki have to go off with some other people? perhaps you heard the mention of jungwon’s name but you were too preoccupied with finding riki to really pay attention. 

before you could get far, you were welcomed into a strange atmosphere when you reached the courtyard. students whispering and gossiping with a variety of expressions present. your heart began to race as you look around. where is he? 

you figure you must’ve missed something as the crowd eventually disperses and you get no answers. perhaps riki had a schedule after school and forgot to tell you? 

you could’ve sworn you heard someone say jungwon’s name again, but this time along with riki’s name. you brush it off though as you needed to get home before it started to rain—you could feel it in the air. 

so you send riki a quick message before starting on the journey home. 

the next morning, you checked your phone to find no response. weird. 

either way, you had no time to question it as you were already late to class, so you quickly slip in to the seat next to your classmate. your eyes don’t fail to see riki and jungwon’s empty seats. 

you nudge haerin sitting next to you. “do you know where niki is? i haven’t seen him since lunch yesterday and he hasn’t responded to any of my texts.”

her eyes widen as she places a hand on your shoulder. 

“y/n….you haven’t heard?”

your eyebrows furrow, “heard what? what’s going on?”

the next thing you remember, is your heart dropping. 

“niki’s leaving.” 

riki…leaving you? 

“what do you mean?”

her eyes soften, and you begin to despise the pity on her face. “he’s leaving the school. no one knows why but-“

you zone out after that. 

your best friend transferring schools—moving away for some unexplained reason? 

no one at school says anything, and you feel like everyone’s keeping you out of the loop on purpose. you hate the feeling that you’re missing a huge piece of the puzzle. 

with no explanation, with no answer from his number (no matter how many times you tried calling), riki disappears in the blink of an eye. it’s as if he never existed in the first place. 

rumors follow but you know better than to listen to them. all you found out was apparently something happened that day—you suspect, no you know, between riki and jungwon—and the damned result was riki leaving your school. 

he never mentioned anything about moving, as far as you knew. he never acted like anything was wrong either. it had to have been something from that day. or maybe not. 

at this point, you didn’t know what to believe. you had just lost your closest friend, your study-slash-lunch-slash-everything buddy, and your number one support. 

and somehow everything was supposed to go back to normal. everyone continues on normally, including jungwon. 

everyone except you. 

he’s gone and he left you alone. 

as if you ever hoped to see him again. 

iii. welcome to the world.

you exhale, smoothing out your wrinkled outfit for the tenth time. you chide yourself internally, why were you so nervous? 

it was just an internship. your first day, too. only recently did you graduate high school yourself. 

it was just the first day of your newly acquired internship and yet you were nervous for it at a new company in a new city. it was your choice to relocate to a new area for new beginnings and new memories. 

to be quite frank, you had no clue what you were doing. why did you even decide to focus on photography? you most definitely didn’t have much experience, only starting the hobby when you graduated high school. maybe you wanted a chance to take your mind off life and see things in a new light. a second chance. 

maybe photos didn’t make you feel as alone.

shivering, you shake your head to clear free of thoughts. time to get this over with. the oh so dreaded first day. 

before leaving, you don’t forget to leave some food for the stray cat outside your place. you then get up with a satisfied grunt and make your way to the bus stop. 

however, your new boss was kind and understanding of your nervousness. you visited the company a couple times before, but never enough to get familiar with the layout and other photographers due to obtaining the internship so suddenly. you didn’t expect to get it either, not as a young, inexperienced student almost fresh out of college. either luck was on your side or your talent seemed to shine through. 

it was strange to be in such a different environment than from what you grew up in. supportive, encouraging people all highly invested and passionate in their jobs. 

you set up everything in your assigned desk and wait for further instruction. 

your boss had showed you around and gotten you used to the daily activities of those working at a photography company, making your transition much smoother.  

the whole experience was a little too easy, making you feel so much lighter. you could feel it. things were good- perhaps too good to be true. 

“isn’t the first day always the best?” mr. lee, your boss, speaks up. 

you quickly nod. “so far, it’s been really good. i was just wondering what my job was actually going to be for the next few months.”

he claps his hands together, almost startling you. 

“of course—i like your attentiveness! you’ll be working under one of our best, accompanying him on his work and assisting with whatever he needs to get a feel for what we do here. we can meet him now if you’d like?” his question causes you to pause.

“of course.” you wonder who this ‘he’ was, apparently being one of the best. 

a sudden wave of nervousness hits you. all the doubts and fears start to rise, so you swallow and try your best to suppress it. 

why did you have such a bad feeling? 

as your boss leads you down the offices and desks, you nod enthusiastically and laugh at his remarks as you make your way to the stairway. you go up, about to reach the top step when you spot someone coming down, their faculty name tag flashing in the light. you just barely steal a glimpse of the name, of the face of the person moving. 

it’s foreign yet familiar at the same time. 

you pause. his face…

you doubt you heard mr lee’s sudden hearty welcome to said person, turning to introduce you with a bright smile. a smile that doesn’t know anything. 

“ha, what a coincidence. this is miss y/l/n! you still haven’t met one of our most talented photographers, have you?” 

that’s when it hits you. 

you feel like everything’s occurring in slow motion, mr. lee’s lips moving slowly, the person’s unreadable expression morphing as you both come to a realization. 

“this is our very own best nishimura. nishimura riki.” 

your heart drops. no. 

it’s not. it can’t be.

why does it feel like the world just crashed down around you? why is it suddenly so hard to breathe? your eyes can’t leave those familiar ones, the same ones that have haunted you ever since that day. 

those eyes that fill with recognition at the sight of you, you’re sure of it. 

and then, everything is set into motion once more. you blink quickly, several times, exhaling as you try to readjust. 

“nice to meet you,” you quickly bow while avoiding his gaze. this actually can’t be. 

“you’ll be working with him for the-“

you mutter some lame excuse of needing to go to the restroom before dashing up the rest of the stairs to the nearest safe room, ignoring your boss’s surprised voice.

once you find the restroom, you find the sink and turn on the water. you scrub and scrub your hands before staring at yourself in the mirror. 

not after all this time-

not after he left you, he can’t just suddenly appear again. did you just imagine him? 

you still can’t believe it, almost refuse to believe it. nishimura riki, after 10 or so years, appears in the flesh right before you. you had long given up on trying to find him. and here he is, working at the same place as you. 

he exists, perfectly alive and well without you. 

it was just too much. riki was all grown up. he really looked the same, just much, much taller and more grown up in his professional attire. you weren’t used to it. or the fact that, he came back. 

unless he never really left. 

all those years in middle school and high school you tried to forget come rushing back. the rumors that followed your footsteps, the questions never answered. all those years of pain and loneliness, and confusion-

staying up so many nights pondering what you did that made him run away, leave you when he promised he would be there. after all that time wondering and wondering why and how and what you did. and what could’ve been done. 

maybe you were being dramatic but it doesn’t change the fact that he left without a word, and with no contact for you to keep in touch. no attempt at all. 

you were so hurt, so closed off now. you convinced yourself that you never cared to see his face again, but what were you supposed to do when riki shows up again, unannounced in front of you like nothing ever happened? 

was there even anything left between you two? 

you decided early on that your best course of action was to pretend that you never knew him. riki was a complete stranger, and it wasn’t truly a lie. it had been so long since you last saw him. 

but you know that won’t work forever. especially not when he was the one you were working under.  

you didn’t know what to call him, how to call him. mr. nishimura sounded way too formal especially considering your history, and riki was obviously off limits.  

the next day, you stand in front of his desk with your hands clasped together in front of you like a scolded child in front of the principal. you couldn’t bear to look him in the eyes. 

“so…uh, i guess you’ll be working with me for the next couple of months?”

you barely nod, shifting in your position uncomfortably. instead, your eyes fall on the pictures scattered around the walls in riki’s office. 

“i’ve never had an intern before, so-“

you interrupt him impatiently while still avoiding eye contact. 

“just tell me what you need me to do, mr. nishimura.” 

you could visibly see the both of you cringe at that. 

“-please.” you add pitifully as an afterthought. 

noticing your coldness, riki must have enough common sense to give you some papers to file and chart. 

what a wonderful first day. 

you would describe your present relationship with riki as a very formal (and strained) senior-junior one. besides your daily task of avoiding your own mentor as much as possible, you rather enjoyed the work. so far, getting to learn the true process behind taking photos was something you never experienced. 

and seeing riki in his element, with his raw talent and skill was another thing in itself. it was a lot to process, seeing an entirely different, mature riki. 

you were a little too sad that you missed his growing up. 

in the break room one morning, you sip peacefully on your freshly made coffee. it was a nice day, at least you believed so until you heard the door open, signaling the entrance of another person. 

you’re about to greet them politely until you realize who exactly it was. you swallow a little too harshly, tensing as the person approached you. 

“if you’ll excuse me,” you mutter while slipping past him. riki stands there, unmoving as he watches your figure leave. 

it had been like that since the first day when he was reintroduced to you. dry to no responses, indifferent gaze, not a single glimpse into you. into the you that he knew, or once knew. 

it was like he was the one talking to a built up wall, unable to do any damage. it’s almost funny how it’s like your positions from back then were switched. 

he figured your cold and unapproachable demeanor was only to him—understandably. there was a lot you must’ve been feeling, as well as he. it was a long journey with a lot of baggage riki was still carrying. 

still, he sees you with some of the other interns, smiling and laughing as you once did with him. as he stares at you from afar (hopefully not in a stalkerish way), riki realizes that you still have the same laugh, same smile, same attentive expression when someone calls your name. 

and yet, you’re so different. you’re so far away from him. 

as time goes on, you realize you can’t act like a little kid for the rest of your life. well, for the rest of the time you had this internship (and currently you didn’t have any plans to resign, especially since you literally just started).

during the lunch break, you don’t expect the seat next to you to be taken. you stiffen once you realize who it is—his presence was so familiar that you didn’t even have to take a glance to see who it was. 

you start to rise from your seat, but a hand clasps gently around your arm. you freeze. 

“y/n,” he starts quietly. you shiver at the sound of his voice, recognizable yet unrecognizable at the same time. you feel like you can’t breathe. 

“please. not now.” 

with that, you stalk away, meanwhile your eyes fly across the room to ensure no one saw your interaction.  

how much longer could you keep doing this? 

the more you see him, the more you can’t ignore the fact that you really, really did miss him. it’s like nothing changed—except for his appearance—and you couldn’t suppress the amount of relief you had at the realization that riki was still riki, after all. 

he was still the same boy you shared earbuds with back then, at least in your eyes.

you want to know how he’s been. what he’s done, how he came back, how he became the person he is today. 

on the other hand, riki realizes the complete transformation you’ve undergone.

the first conversation he had with you after oh so many years, you merely handed him his coffee with a short nod. his attempt to bring up the weather, school, anything just to talk to you again, obviously fell short. 

riki’s strategy? give you your space and time. of course he respected that, and maybe you noticed because it seemed to weaken the intimidating barrier from before. 

after that, you acknowledged him, greeted him (albeit shortly) every morning—riki even noticed you watching him edit some photos although you thought he couldn’t see you. 

while you would never admit it, riki looked pretty cool teaching you his tips and tricks. you didn’t realize how much his job suited him and how lucky his company was to have acquired such a talented, soulful person as a photographer. 

you can tell, riki wants to get talk to you so badly, but in fear of getting hurt again, you push him away. it’s hard, when all you can do is expect him to vanish without another trace again. 

as you finish touchups on the last photo, you sigh and rub your eyes. things were different now. no point in wondering what could have been. 

you walk out into the hallway, wishing to get some coffee to power through those last edits. but you soon stop in your tracks. 

“y-y/n.” 

your eyes lower to the floor, acknowledging him with a nod. “hey.” 

“are you going to the break room?”

you nod again. 

“then…” he hits you with those hopeful eyes and you curse internally. “can i come with?”

a surprisingly comfortable silence fills the air, along with the soothing smell of coffee. 

riki comments on your more compliant and meek nature—it’s certainly supposed to be a joke but you take it the wrong way.

you frown. “i’ve changed, riki.” 

he falters. maybe he’s done too much, too soon.

“i’ve grown up. just like you have. we both have, so maybe you should accept me now like i have to you.”

you turn to leave but he grabs your wrist. 

“please. i’m sorry, i didn’t mean it like that. i know i’m in no position to say this, but i thought we were doing okay. i really want to be friends with you again—truly.”

you sigh audibly. there really was no value in being awkward with him for your time here. at least if you tried to maintain an amicable relationship, you wouldn’t have to make up dumb excuses every time you saw him. and if you got closer again, perhaps you could figure out after all this time why he left.

even more importantly, why he came back. 

“could we please start over?” his voice is the softest you’ve ever heard it (and much deeper than you were used to). 

you wait two, three seconds before turning around, 

and sticking your hand out. 

“nice to meet you,” you introduce yourself. you watch the smile start to grow on his face. 

“i’m nishimura riki, and it’s very nice to meet you too.”

riki sighs, clicking the red x button in the corner. he finished his last portfolio with you as his assistant. it was only a matter of hours, or minutes, before he was assigned his next project. he turns off the light and closes the door behind his office, only to be greeted by your figure. 

an eyebrow of his raises. “were you waiting for me?” 

you scoff, casually kicking the ground with your shoe while looking off into the distance. “no.” 

“well, i was,” you glance at him abruptly in surprise, “let’s go.” 

“huh?” 

he shrugs, “we finished and everyone else is gone.” 

you didn’t expect riki to be so… enthusiastic about it. it as in hanging out together, as friends again. 

maybe, you always knew in the end you had to give in. there was no way you could keep up this act against riki. it had always been like that. 

if anyone saw you two out now they would probably assume you were two college kids on a date. 

wait- date? 

“-y/n?” 

you glance up, startled. “yeah?”

riki frowns, sipping his boba. “are you okay? you seemed distracted. what were you thinking about?” 

you shake your head with a sheepish laugh, “nothing. sorry.” 

you wondered how you got to this point. 

meeting riki outside of work and hoping you don’t run into any of your co-workers. honestly, it was fun to have a friend to talk with—it was fun to have riki next to you again. 

your teenage self would have been dumbfounded. 

while you had this time with him, you could finally ask some things you were curious about. 

“riki,” you start off and he tries his best to keep calm. it was the first time you had called him by his first name in years. he missed it dearly. 

“how did you get into photography?”

he knows what you meant to ask. how did you get here? 

he falls back into his chair, staring up at the ceiling. you know just know riki too well, simply waiting patiently for him to take his time.

“i don’t know, to be honest. i always felt different from everyone else.” he pauses and looks at you, “you knew that the best.”

“i wanted to study people more. so i started taking pictures of others. now i just specialize in photographing more important people, like models and idols. i still don’t know how i got here though. that’s the truth.” 

“you’re really good,” you say lamely. “you’re very talented and i’m jealous, to be frank.”

you see his ears turn red as he coughs shyly. 

“thank you. i guess it’s what i’m best at.”

that wasn’t the exact answer you were expecting, but you took it. soon, you promised yourself, you would uncover the truth. 

iv. cupid’s attack. 

you like to think that you and riki get into a good groove at work. 

you can’t help but burst out laughing, and riki almost stops in his tracks. 

he realizes that sweet and soulful sound was just as he last remembered it. it almost makes him shiver. yes, not everything changed about you.

he knows. it can’t last forever—this push and pull relationship. plus, your budding relationship has to result in an explanation. you deserve it at the very least.

as much as riki wanted to keep it hidden, secrets can’t always stay secrets forever. he can’t protect you from everything in this world, his selfish wants can’t always be kept.

as the two of you joke around, various other workers stare at you in envy. somehow, you got to work with the mysterious yet talented riki. the one who got hired out of the blue and somehow rose to the top. no one could deny his skill. 

his intimidating and mysterious aura haunted the office for some time. that is, until you came. the way he treated you was shocking to say the least. it seemed like you two were in your own world. there was definitely something, and everyone could see that. 

“sorry to interrupt,” another intern speaks up shyly, but the boss wanted me to tell you guys that the party starts at 8.”

“party?” you turn to riki with a perplexed expression. 

“ah, i forgot to mention. we have an office dinner party to celebrate the new interns and their hard work.” riki nudges you with a glint as your eyes widen. 

“that includes you.”

you weren’t the partying type—if that wasn’t obvious enough. especially not one out of the blue, one not meant for you. 

you shift uncomfortably at the large dinner table. riki ended up sitting next to you somehow. you like to think he did it on purpose, knowing you weren’t the type to enjoy socializing in large groups (and neither was he). but little did you know, he came for you. 

only you. 

everyone was urging you guys to drink, as it was custom to do so at office parties. but you had a limit, so when you get up to leave, making some lame excuse about having more work to finish up at home, riki immediately gets up as well. all eyes fall on you two, and you awkwardly take your leave with a tipsy riki in tow. 

“yeah, it’s definitely time to get you home.” 

with a rather embarrassing grunt and help from fellow co-workers, you manage to get a grip around riki’s shoulders. 

once you make it out of the restaurant however, you realize that you indeed have no clue where riki lives. 

“riki,” you start off cautiously, “what’s your address?” 

“there!” he points sluggishly toward a nearby barbecue place. you huff. 

“seriously, riki. i need to get you home. you’re way too drunk to-“

“let’s go there,” he slurs. “i’m hungry.” 

as much as you stand your ground, his incessant begging eventually gets to your head and you cave. 

“fine. i’ll just order you some side dishes. then we’re actually going home.” 

you can only blink at the amount of dishes on the table that riki ate alone (and the amount that was going to be charged to your card). 

“riki… i think that’s enough.” you softly place a hand on his still holding the chopsticks. you mutter something along the lines of, i didn’t know you ate this much this late at night… 

somehow, he manages to hear you. he sounds more sober and looks more sober as well, to your relief. “yeah, well, how do you think i got this tall?”

it’s true, you were quite shocked at how tall he got. for a second, you simply stare at him while lost in your thoughts. perhaps it was the alcohol still running in your system. 

he raises an eyebrow, “what’s so interesting about me suddenly?”

you clear your throat, felling your face turn hot. “nothing.” 

suddenly, it feels as if the mood has changed again. you know this is your chance, and you can’t miss it. not ever again. 

“don’t you need to go home soon? would, would anyone be waiting?”

riki lets out a short laugh. 

“as if. i’ve been living alone ever since i came back.” 

ever since he came back. 

you look down at your hands. 

“why did you come back?” you whisper. and yet, he hears it again. 

as he’s about to respond, you glance at him with a conflicted look. “why did you leave?”

riki inhales, placing his chopsticks on the table neatly. “i’m just… so sorry y/n, for leaving you-“

“then tell me. that’s the least you can do.” 

you hate how your voice quivers at the end. 

“i… it’s all my fault. i lost control. i got into a fight with yang jungwon.” 

you try your best to keep the surprise off your face and let him continue.  

“and with my reputation at the school, my parents and the principal came to the conclusion that it was best for me to leave.” 

“i didn’t know that it meant going overseas,” he quickly adds, “but i had no choice as a teenager. i could only listen to my parents and when i got the chance, i came back as soon as i could.” 

you almost forgot about his so called ability. but it didn’t even matter at this point. you had countless questions, but it seemed like riki was still holding back. there was something he didn’t want to tell you, something he didn’t want you to know. 

you were somewhat satisfied with his answers, but something was still bothering you. 

you can feel his eyes on you, waiting for some sort of response. 

“i see… but why didn’t you come find me?” you voice cracks. “why didn’t you make any effort at all to see me again? because so far, it seems like you were pretty okay with me not knowing that you still existed.” 

what you really meant to say was, 

you seemed perfectly fine without me. you seemed perfectly fine while i was still hurting after all this time. 

“even more,” you continue on, “after you came back all this time.” 

riki shakes his head, “i was looking for you.” 

you falter at that. 

“i always was, even in another country far away. i had to get a new phone and lost your number and all contact. but when i was finally able to come back to our hometown, you were gone. i was able to get a job at our current company due to my parents connections, and i was going to use that money to pay for travel expenses. just to find you.” 

“i swear y/n,” and you almost tear up at the sincerity in his eyes, “i would never abandon you.” 

“just like i promised all those years ago.” 

his voice grows soft, “i always wondered what happened after i left. what you were up to. i imagined you being super successful while doing something you love.” 

you laugh in order to lighten up the heavy mood, “as you can see now, that’s certainly not the case. i actually have no clue what i’m doing with my life.” 

“you’re- you’re not with anyone or anything?” 

you shoot him a baffled look, “what in the world? i can’t even take care of myself, let alone another person.” 

you’re so shocked at the question that you miss riki’s subtle sigh of relief. you hadn’t gotten with jungwon— at least not yet, he thinks. 

“then, what was high school like? you know, without me?” 

you shake your head, not willing to think about those times. 

“lonely, obviously, without you,” you grumble. 

you had some friends still, but they weren’t riki. they never would be and could never replace him. 

you decide to not mention jungwon and the short period of time after riki’s leaving in which he tried to hang out with you. most definitely not after learning what riki told you. 

it was weird even to you, how such a popular guy like yang jungwon wanted to hang out with you for some time. but he soon gave up, whether it was because of all the other students noticing and gossiping or because of your moody brooding over the loss of riki.

“that’s all?”

you nod shortly. “i graduated, became interested in photography, and applied for this internship. end of story.” 

you shake your head, “i just don’t know how we both got here at the same company, at the same time. man, i was even chosen to work for you of all people.” 

riki’s smile grows–

“it’s like it was fate,” you murmur absentmindedly. 

–and it immediately drops at that.  

“can you still see people’s red strings?” of course, you had to bring that topic up at this time. 

“yeah. but i’m done with all that soulmate connection strings and stuff. i just ignore it now.” 

you obviously see his change in demeanor at the topic. 

“that’s good. it obviously doesn’t affect your photography. i didn’t know how talented you were.” 

although so many people had told him that before, it was different hearing it from you. he blames his face flushing on the alcohol, not your compliment.

“t-thanks. you are too. i can see your potential.” 

you cock your head, “really? aren’t you just saying that because i’m working with you?”

he shakes his head vehemently. 

“of course not. i think you’re one of the most special people in the world. you would be good at anything you want to do, because that’s just you y/n.”

you cough at the sudden change in the air. you don’t think you can handle his endless complimenting. 

“thank you riki, really. but are you done eating? i think we should head out.” 

you leave with not just your stomachs fuller, but your mind and heart as well. 

other nights were spent staying up at the office, finishing edits and cuts. those were the best nights though, in your opinion. 

you got the best advice and the best late night talks with riki—he really felt like a leader now. it made you realize how grown up he became. 

“i still have the bracelet you gave me. i keep it on my desk just so i don’t lose it.” 

your mouth drops open, “ no way? the one i gave you in middle school?” he nods and you internally shudder while thinking about what happened to yours. 

“i hate to break it to you, riki, but i actually lost mine..” 

–which translated to i threw mine away out of anger and sadness. but you figured you could keep that a secret for the time being.

“it’s fine. i’ll just get us new matching ones.” riki swears he never will forget the satisfied smile on your face, eyes twinkling and nose scrunching. 

that was it. riki really tried. 

he tried his best, but he can’t help falling in love with you. 

he can’t even tell if you like him back or if you’re just being kind, because you are originally just a kind and beautiful soul. 

he likes you too much it hurts, but he can’t be hurt again. he doesn’t want to be. 

he doesn’t want to tell you about all the secret pictures he would snap of you instead of the actual model that he was working with. the amount of time and effort put into his hidden collection of you. it was one of his works that he was the most proudest of. one that he would cherish forever. 

he didn’t even know when he realized it— that riki loved you. perhaps it was the countless hours spent up at night thinking about you, all alone. 

but loving you came easily and naturally. red string or not, niki would love you endlessly no matter what. and whatever happened in the end, he would only want happiness for you. 

occasionally he would wonder why he had to go through all that testing when he was young, why he had to go thought that entire, torturous and isolating experience. 

but then he thinks about you and how without being stuck in the lab for however many years, he would have never met you in the conditions that you met in. you would have never gotten the chance to save him from those bullies if he had gone to school at a normal age and been like all the other kids. 

everything that happened to riki, it was to bring him to you. for some reason, he’s sure of it. 

even with all that—the feelings and acceptance and denial— riki tries his best to suppress his feelings and just enjoy being with you again. just to make up for lost time, he reasons. 

he knew you two weren’t soulmates, he saw it once more the supposedly fated day he met you again for the second time. 

still, he doesn’t think he could be with anyone else but you. riki knows in his heart you’re the only one for him. he stares at his own red string leading off into the unknown distance. even if the universe said otherwise. 

even if the universe said otherwise, he didn’t want to lose you again. 

the vip landyards you got for entering the venue backstage weren’t vip after all. 

one good thing about riki’s job was the free access to public events, obviously to capture the best photos. but on this occasion, you two were denied access for no particular reason. 

no matter how much riki demanded, the even taller and intimidating body guards wouldn’t budge. 

“it’s fine,” you place a hand on riki’s shoulder to calm him. “we can just go through the front. i bet someone will be willing to listen to us there.” 

you know riki wants to argue more but you give him a look and he concedes. 

the crowd was wilder than you thought though. mainly due to it being some group called oncolon or whatever performing. navigating through the huge crowd, riki suddenly takes your hand tightly. 

you almost trip over some person’s foot, glancing at him with wide eyes and a slight blush. he doesn’t say a single word. 

you’re sure you’ve gotten knocked and pushed several times in the wild crowd. you try your best to keep up, but at some point, too many bodies separate you and riki. 

a rather hard shove causes you to lose your balance, falling onto the ground (with a painful jolt up your butt). 

all you can hear is the booming music for a moment and the flashing lights, until a hand suddenly reaches through. you almost don’t notice it at first until you hear your name being called. 

suddenly you’re being pulled up forward, into sturdy arms. 

“are you okay? sorry i lost you-“

when you see that it’s riki, dark orbs filled with concerned as he speaks, you nod dumbly while zoning the rest of his words out. 

you couldn’t really concentrate, not when you were trying to process the fluttering of your heart and his body oh so close to yours. 

but oh no, it doesn’t stop there. 

it was rather sudden—you called riki over to your desk to ask for his opinion some time later. 

“should i lower the exposure more? i know you were going for a darker look since it fits the concept-?”

what you don’t expect is him to lean a little too close to comfort over you and your desk to reach the computer. even more, you don’t expect his hand to cover yours over the mouse as he clicks a few things. 

all you do is hold your breath but you can still smell him faintly, a comforting and familiar scent. your eyes almost flutter shut. 

suppressed feelings are coming back. coming back to haunt you for good. 

it does indeed feel a little too good to be true. you feel so giddy around riki, like a high schooler experiencing their first love. but you never got to. 

it felt like you were getting to reexperience your teenage years properly with riki—how it should’ve gone. but it’s a little different. it feels a little too different. you want to blame it on the fact that you guys are older and you overthink things, but the feelings and emotions inside you say otherwise. 

v. the thin line between love and hate. 

you startle at the sudden coffee placed in front of you, by a bashful riki. 

“hm? what’s this for?”

he scratches the back of his head, “you’ve been working so hard lately, too much for an intern. i don’t want to be known as the guy who overworks the newbies.”  

the warming of your heart falls flat.

“ha ha ha,” you laugh dryly. “thank you though.” 

before he leaves you to continue your work, he adds, “don’t forget to eat too. i brought some lunch for you in the fridge.” 

you don’t fight off the dumb smile on your face when you open the community fridge to see a packaged lunch with a sticky note on top reading, 

y/n’s only!! no touching!! (please and thank you) 

in someone’s very familiar handwriting that hadn’t changed at all since middle school. 

still, you don’t know how you haven’t gotten fired yet. you tried your best to maintain a professional relationship at work, yet the amount of jokes and ridiculous faces riki made was going to be the death of you. 

he manages to get a choked sound out of you as you put your head down in an attempt to hold back your laughter. he only looks on proudly when you try your best to chide him. 

“focus, riki!”

“how can i focus when his feet smell from across the roo-“

you place a finger over his soft lips, eyes raising from them to his innocent (yet deadly) looking gaze. 

“stop disturbing the others!” you scold. 

“i think you should tell his feet that.”

you stare at each other blankly for a second or two, your eyes flicking to the man’s shoes across the room, before you both can’t help but bursting into a silent fit of laughter. 

meanwhile everyone else looks on, confused but starting to get used to the two of you at this point. 

as riki admires your face full of glee, he thinks there couldn’t have been anything better. 

maybe he should’ve known the universe wouldn’t let him off that easy. 

you’re on the way home from work when you receive a message from riki. he asks for you to stop by the store to grab him ice cream, and you roll your eyes. 

you already knew what that meant. anime night at riki’s place although his deadline was the next day. 

when he sends the begging emojis, you sigh and change routes to the nearest mart. you couldn’t resist him, even if you wanted to. 

you’re browsing the aisles, adding more and more snacks that you really didn’t need but you knew would make riki (and by default—you) happy. 

as you reach for the bungeobbang snack, you don’t notice the hand that grabs it at the same time. a shock courses through you for a split second, and you pull your hand back. 

“sorry…” 

you glance at the figure. and you cock your head. 

a distinct pair of eyes blink back at you. 

wait a second… 

“no way. yang jungwon?”

his mouth drops open. “y/n? it’s been years!” 

you nod, almost laughing at the complete turn of events. “i can’t believe it either. what are you doing here?”

it turns out jungwon was in town for work, as per a client's request. he had also grown up a lot and changed much more than you expected. 

he was still the same, handsome and charming jungwon. but he had definitely matured and you found yourself enjoying the catching-up talk with him. to the point where you lost track of time. 

only was it until you see riki’s name light up your phone do you remember. you scramble to get your things (and probably melted ice cream). 

“sorry jungwon, i have to get going.” 

he gets up to help you gather your things. you can’t help but notice the warmth of his hand lingering on yours when he passes you the last grocery bag. 

“it was really nice to see you again. do you maybe want to keep in touch?” 

you only nod at his hopeful eyes. “of course! we can exchange numbers and meet up again while you’re still here.” 

feeling strangely light on your way to riki’s place, the guilt hits you when you are greeted by riki’s worried face. 

“what took so long?”

you think about jungwon and cringe internally. you don’t think you have the heart to tell riki. not today. 

-Is what you keep telling yourself. days, and days after that first encounter. you just don’t know how to bring it up to riki, or when. after everything that happened, 

you don’t think you can’t risk it. not when you just got your riki back. 

you’re surprised at how often jungwon texts you. maybe he was still the same jungwon after all, still wanting to hang out with you all the time like back in the old days. 

but this time, you had no reason to object. again, guilt washes over you as you respond to his text before looking over at a focused riki. 

just once wouldn’t hurt, you manage to convince yourself. 

it’s not like riki would care that much anyways. the past was the past and things were different now. why would he care if you hung out with another guy? 

it’s not like he liked you… right? 

you repeat that to yourself everyday. everyday that riki greets you with that adoring face of his. everyday that he teases you, makes you laugh, and helps you through all the hard times. 

even the day that you thought he was going to kiss you. when he reached over you to grab the remote, but he didn’t go back to his spot. he stayed hovering over you, faces inches apart. 

and he stared at you, into you, with those eyes that he always looked at you with. 

yet riki didn’t do anything. he didn’t make a single move, so that means it should be fine if you met jungwon just this once? 

even so, you get off work early, rushing to get home and prepare. you brush off riki’s reminder of him stopping by your house later to return your jacket he borrowed. how it fit him, you still don’t know. 

even more you don’t know is why you feel pressured to dress up nice and prepare, just to see jungwon. it was just a simple catch up with him. it wasn’t like you were going to keep seeing him after that. it wasn’t a date of any sort… 

jungwon pulls out the chair and you awkwardly sit down and thank him. 

ok so maybe you should have dated in high school, just so you wouldn’t have been so clueless now. 

it wasn’t a date. you know it wasn’t. and you keep repeating it to yourself. 

maybe jungwon notices your stiffness, because he compliments your outfit. 

“you look really nice.”

“thanks,” you smile, “so do you.” 

“i didn’t know what places were good in this area, but i liked this cafe so i thought it would be a good place for us to talk!” 

you’ve always admired jungwon’s thoughtfulness. or rather, been jealous. there was only one other person who could compete with him on that: nishimura riki. 

again, time passes you as you spend the night with him. it’s quite dark out when you realize you should get going. 

jungwon being ever the gentleman offers to walk you home. he also lends you his jacket, which you have no choice but to accept both his offers. it would end on an awkward note if you rejected him—which you didn’t want—so you decide to bear with it just this once. 

jungwon was simply a cool and fun person to hang out with anyway, so you had no complaints. you trusted him naturally. 

it was all fine until you reached the outside of your apartment. 

you certainly weren’t expecting to see riki waiting outside your door, looking visibly and obviously upset. your feet come to a halt.

you completely forgot. 

jungwon grabs your arm suddenly. “is that niki?” 

you see the expression on riki’s face visibly change, and you rush to explain yourself. 

“riki, please let me-“ 

ignoring jungwon, the coldness emanating from riki physically makes you shiver. 

“we need to talk.” 

you bite your lip. 

“jungwon, i… think you should go.” 

he complies when you ask once more, but not without a concerned request to contact him later. 

even with jungwon gone, riki still looks like he’s about to get attacked, threatened and rigid. 

you call out his name quietly, “can we at least go inside first?” 

you reach for his hand but he pulls away before heading in. fair, you think. 

“-i’m sorry i didn’t tell you earlier, but it was a sudden decision.”

“i still don’t get why you didn’t tell me,” he snaps. 

you don’t like the way this is heading. and you both know where it was going to go. “it was just one small hangout, we were only catching up,” you frown. 

“but you know how i feel about him! you should have told me-“

you feel your anger rise as well as you get to your feet. 

“do i have an obligation to tell you? why is a fight that happened over ten years ago still such a big deal? what’s your issue with jungwon?”

you cross your arms, facing an agitated riki. 

“nevermind that. why can’t you just tell me what happened back then?!” 

the silence, accompanied by the sound of your mixed heavy breaths, leave you weary. you pinch the space between your eyebrows. 

“riki-“ you reach out for him but he pulls away. he’s doing it once again. 

it hurts more than you thought. “fine. if you’re not going to say anything, then i think you should just leave.” 

and you don’t object when he listens to your suggestion, without a second glance back. 

it felt like deja vu, seeing him leave just as he did before. 

it’s been days since you last talked to riki, let alone spared a glance in his direction. work was awkward enough, just like it had been the first week you came.

how could your relationship turn back to strangers so suddenly? did riki not care? 

if anything, he cared too much—but you would have never known. 

it’s hard to work next to him, be near him without the unspoken feelings rising up. a hand brushing his when he passed you papers almost felt like it was burning you. riki noticed how you would flinch away, every time. 

it didn’t matter. your internship was coming to an end, and you were already preparing yourself to leave. 

maybe this was just a sign from the universe telling you that you and riki were meant to be apart. that you weren’t meant to be together after all. 

you loved the area, company, office environment and just about everything else. it should’ve been perfect. 

but you don’t know if you can stand working here, staying here and living here, 

knowing that riki is right around the corner, carrying your heart without a second thought. 

the power that he holds, the fact that he’s able to break your heart in the matter of seconds or make you smile like the happiest person in the world, it’s just too scary for you to handle. 

you’re already planning to head back home and stay with your parents for a little until you get things figured out again. 

you still had tickets to a small festival at the nearby plaza that you planned to go with riki, but that certainly wasn’t happening anymore. 

you didn’t want the second ticket to go to waste, so in your lostness and desperation (and several rejections by coworkers), you asked jungwon. you were leaving soon and didn’t know when the next time you would see him was. 

you greet him with a halfhearted smile, and he gestures for you guys to get closer to the stage to get a better view. but there’s a big crowd, and you stumble over an arm or leg or something. 

for some reason, you expect him to be there and help you up. like someone else did in a strangely familiar situation. 

but there’s no one. nothing except the crowd of bodies that’s starting to get a little too overwhelming. 

for the first time, you wish to the universe for one thing. you wish you had riki again, with you by your side. 

it’s then you realize you’ve been thinking about him the whole time. he who’s been the one always to pick you back up. he was always there for you. 

you know, you need to do something before you leave. you can’t handle leaving things like this. 

you plan to, however, the next day is the last day of your internship and some of the kind workers surprised the interns with a small going away party. it’s bittersweet, especially when everyone assumes you’re getting hired for an official position due to your exceptional work, and another person. 

you were grateful for everyone who planned and showed up. but there was one person who didn’t that you kept looking for. everyone knows who, but no one knows why. 

at the end of the day, you make your way back to riki’s office in order to pack up your stuff. 

you take one last glance around the room and all of its memories. leaving this place felt like leaving riki behind as well. 

you were grateful that you got the chance to see him once more. you were beginning to accept that this was the end. 

putting all your stuff in boxes, you frown while wondering where your compartment desk key was. maybe riki mistakenly took yours instead of his?

you open various drawers, rummaging around. but when you get to the bottommost drawer, your heart stops. 

it’s only a plain cream folder, but what’s written on it takes your breath away. 

just your name. 

photos and photos of you, beautifully crafted and arranged together. it’s riki’s work, you know that for sure. memories spanning your entire internship—from the first day to the last time you talked to him. 

you don’t know when and how he took these photos. or when tears fell down your cheeks. 

you hastily rub the wetness away, sniffling as you close the folder and continue your search. now wasn’t the time to get sentimental. 

it would be alright, because you planned on finding riki the next day before you left. it was too late today, and you needed to finish packing. you just wanted one last chance to say everything you wanted to before going. 

you have to because you feel it deep within, tugging at your heartstrings. 

it’s about 1am when you finish packing. you don’t even want to think about the time you need to get up, nor the fact that you still had to find a way to see riki. 

you zip up the last luggage when the doorbell rings. who in the world would be at your door this late? you consider grabbing some sort of weapon, but decide against it for the time being. 

you nervously peek through the peephole, before throwing the door open. 

“r-riki?”

you’re more shocked that he was crying than him even showing up at your place. 

riki almost lunges forward, trapping you in his arms. he hiccups and you feel a pang in your chest. 

“y/n- please- just please, will you forgive me?”

“what?” you breathe out. you couldn’t even process the situation. 

“please. never leave me.”

“what? why would i ever?” you comfortingly bring a hand to rub his back. it takes a little bit to soothe him, and he speaks again when you feel his erratic breathing has calmed and his body relaxes. 

“i’m so scared to lose you again,” he whispers shakily. you soften, pulling back to see his red eyes and nose. 

“riki, please tell me what’s going on.” he knows immediately what you mean. 

you reach up to wipe the corners of his eyes and the side of his face gently. he closes his eyes at the feeling, to go back into time. 

honestly, he remembers that day as if it was just yesterday. it was a day that haunted him up until now. 

riki always knew then. maybe you weren’t aware but he definitely was.  

yang jungwon liked you. it was obvious. 

riki could see it—physically too. that cursed red string mocked him everyday he saw you two in class. 

riki knew jungwon could feel it too. you were too close to riki and everyone knew that. jungwon knew, and he didn’t care. 

it was raining, as riki recalled many times over and over again. he was alone while waiting for you to finish class. riki was alone until jungwon and his group of friends approached him. 

jungwon knew about his power. he said his father worked for the government, worked with riki. riki suddenly thought of one of the head scientists and his eyes, strikingly similar to jungwon’s. 

so that was his father, he remembers thinking. 

riki never liked him.

regardless, jungwon asked if riki could see your string. just like the others. riki chooses not to answer as always, but jungwon naturally got on his nerves. 

riki remembers the exact words. 

“if you two aren’t dating, does that mean you aren’t soulmates? you would’ve asked y/n out already if you were, am i right?” 

at that, riki’s blood began to boil. but he couldn’t do anything. mainly because jungwon was right. and it infuriated riki. 

jungwon laughed. “then… i can ask y/n out? since you guys aren’t soulmates?”

riki doesn’t remember the next part. maybe he blacked out or chose to erase it from his memory. but apparently, he punched jungwon. he snapped for the first time. 

riki opens his eyes again slowly, seeing your heartfelt gaze on him and him only. 

he almost doesn’t recognize his own voice when he speaks. it sounded too quiet. too defeated. like he was already accepting his loss. 

”you’re jungwon’s soulmate. not mine.”

he glances down at your pinky. it had been a while since he saw your red string, let alone anyone else’s. 

“no matter how much i wished your red string was connected to mine, it wasn’t.” 

at some point, riki assumed his string had no other person it was attached to, because he had never met anyone who made him feel like how you did. no one else made him as happy, as sad, or as loved as you did. 

riki knew if he had a soulmate, it would have been you and only you. 

“i-i was upset when you saw jungwon again that you would fall in love with him. and leave me.”

it was a lot to process. you know and he knows. it wasn’t what you were expecting, but you were fine with that. 

when you call out his name, your hands reach to the sides of his face to guide them to look at you. you take a deep breath. 

“i’ve always loved you.”

and exhale. 

“jungwon was never on my mind, only you’ve been. even after all this time-” 

abruptly, riki reached forward to kiss you harshly and you instantly reciprocate it. your hands tighten around his neck while his come to wrap around your waist, naturally. 

you just can’t seem to let each other go. 

you ask jungwon to meet up with one last time before he leaves, at the same cafe he suggested last time. 

you comment on the nice weather and he agrees. you fiddle with your fingers. 

“this is a bit random, but do you believe in soulmates?” 

jungwon looks confused but he says, “yeah. from what i’ve heard, i think so?” 

your eyes narrow. “even if two people are soulmates, do you think they can love different people?” 

“y/n, where is this-“

“answer the question and i’ll explain. i promise.” 

he scratches his head, “i… i suppose so?” 

“and if two people aren’t soulmates, do you think that they can love each other?” you continue. 

“sure. but i don’t get why you’re asking-“

ignoring him, you nod thoughtfully. “okay.”

he opens his mouth to respond, but you hold up a hand. 

“i just wanted to say it was nice seeing you again.” 

he looks a bit surprised. 

“me too. i enjoyed the time we spent together. i know that i’m leaving soon and this is a bit sudden, but do you want to see each other again-?”

you sigh, looking out the window again. 

“i’m sorry, but i don’t think that’s possible. i hope the rest of your life goes well as you want it to, yang jungwon.”

he nods solemnly. “it’s because you’re with niki, right?” he smiles at your shocked expression. “i figured since he was outside your place. no harm in shooting my shot. but wow, you guys really found each other again.”

you don’t know what to say so you just nod. 

“tell him that i’m sorry for what i said in the past and that i wish him the best too.” he gets up from his chair, prompting you too as well. 

“we can still be friends, of course,” you rush to add. 

jungwon laughs, “it’s alright. i should get over you first before considering a friendship.” 

“maybe in another life. we get along too well,” you joke. he laughs too and you know it’s not forced. 

“come on, i’ll walk you home.” 

you stare at jungwon’s side profile during the walk, as he speaks about random topics and leads the way back. 

it’s strange, imagining him as your soulmate. it was weird imagining a life with anyone else but riki. although yang jungwon may be your soulmate, he’s not the one that you want. that’s okay. 

when he drops you off, riki opens the door. you’re hesitant, but you see the two give a final nod to each other. jungwon leaves without a glance back, and riki closes the door. 

“how was it?” 

you lean in to peck his lips. “good. better than i expected, to be honest. now can we start the movie? i was waiting for this all day.” 

riki smiles as you take off your shoes and get ready for a night in with him. he glances at your matching gold chain bracelets that he bought recently, a promise for the future. just as riki wanted. 

riki doesn’t know what’s going to happen in the future. all he knows is that he’ll be with you forever, red string or not. 

that night, he realized he couldn’t give up on you. not again. he would fight like he did before and choose his own destiny. 

because the only destiny he had was one with you. 

nishimura riki couldn’t see the end of his string. he probably never would. and he didn’t want to. it didn’t matter, after all. now, he looks back at your hands and imagines a perfect little knot in the middle connecting both your red strings. 

and he smiles. 

hi it’s jae again—thank you for reading! i hope you enjoyed it as i put a lot of work and effort into it (my longest one shot so far skxnksdnj so pls excuse mistakes/typos if i missed some) actually it hurt to write won as the “bad guy” but i couldn’t think of anyone else close enough to fit the role lol. anyways that’s all, just wanted to say that i’m thankful for all the love, comments, rbs, and support i receive as it keeps me going to write more. i truly do appreciate all 1.2k and more followers, see you guys again in the next works coming soon ;)

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[cheesecakethots]

Date Night

Chrollo Lucilfer x Reader

after being left alone by your date in a ballroom you weren’t even invited to, you make conversation with a strange man that has bindings over his forehead.

tw: murder, sexual tension, you make out with him which is a little bit cringe, romance is a little rushed but too bad, yan!chrollo, i wrote this a year ago and never posted it so excuse the shoddy writing

this is a soulmate au except chrollo is only one who can sense that you’re his soulmate so it isn’t really mentioned, maybe i’ll make his pov at some point.

“You appear to be as bored as I am.”

The lit cigarette in your hand almost topples into the darkness when you jump at hearing a voice behind you. You don’t turn, instead leaning back into your relaxed position against the balcony railing, facing out into the night sky.

You shrug, “Bored enough that I was considering throwing myself over.”

The stranger chuckles, and you swear the sound of it sends something straight to your belly.

“If you’re so bored, why not go home?”

Finally, you turn to look at him. You’re certain that if you were in a cartoon you’d have heart eyes at seeing the strangely handsome man with an odd bandage on his head.

“I mean, you can probably tell,” you say, gesturing towards your outfit, one that you put on tonight in preparation for a nightclub and not a ballroom, “that I’m someone’s plus one rather than an actual guest. That someone has gone off with another woman, leaving me here with a dead phone and no idea where I am. I have more pride than to go inside and ask those judgemental assholes to call me a taxi.” You look him up and down from the corner of your eye, taking note of his no doubt expensive suit. “No offence.”

“None taken. Does that mean that someone is looking for you?”

You sigh, frowning a little. “Probably not. My friends had basically left me alone at the club anyway. I don’t really enjoy going out to bars all that much, so when some guy in a nice suit offered me to be his date to some fancy ballroom party, I couldn’t pass it up. Now I wish I had just gotten a taxi home then and there.”

The man nods, seemingly in a bit of thought, before coming closer and planting himself next to you, also leaning against the railing. You can’t help but side eye how tight the suit is around the muscle of his arms.

“Your date and friends don’t sound like the best of company.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“May I ask for your name?”

You give him it, “And yours?”

He pauses for a moment, but not long enough for you to think too much on it.

“Chrollo… and, if you don’t mind, I have a proposal. It might help with your boredom.”

You nod, tilting your head a little in curiosity.

“Well, I came outside here to see if anyone wasn’t present in the ballroom. I have a plan set up so that I can thieve the antiques and artworks present in this building, as well as the jewellery being worn by the guests.” He hums, tilting his head a little at you. “You’re rather interesting. I wouldn’t be opposed to sharing some of the loot with you, provided you give some assistance.”

You stare at him with a blank expression for a little while. Then, your lip twitches and a loud laugh escapes you.

“Alright,” you breathe out, wiping away a stray tear, “deal. Make sure to leave that fancy pearl necklace the lady with the red hair has. I’m sure it’d suit me better.”

The man smiles, and for but a moment you take note of something other than amusement in the look, but it quickly goes.

“It’s a deal, then. When would you like to begin?”

“Hmm,” you hum, bottom lip jutting out and finger pressing to your chin jokingly. “Probably soon, it’ll be starting to get light in a few hours. Rich people melt in direct sunlight, y’know. Don’t want them taking the loot with them.”

Chrollo laughs, and it’s a gentle sound that has your heart beating faster.

“It’s a shame, though,” you murmur. “As a kid I always wanted to go to a big fancy ballroom in a big fancy dress and dance around with someone until my feet hurt. I doubt I’ll ever get the chance to be invited to one of these again.”

You sigh, eyes drifting from him back out to the scenery beyond the balcony. His own never stray from your face, a fact you don’t take notice of.

“I disagree.”

You raise an eyebrow, but say nothing more, and it prompts him to continue.

“You’re more interesting than all those inside put together. If I had been the one who had brought you here, I wouldn’t have left your side, and I would most definitely want to bring you with me again. Besides,” he says, voice shifting to a more teasing tone, “I’m sure once our little job is over, you would have enough money to come to these as you please.”

You giggle, blushing a little at the sweetness in his previous words, “Oh, with all the money I make after this job I’ll have my own ballroom to dance in. I’ll let you come visit it, if you’d like.”

The man grins, and god you almost swoon. “Oh? You’re sure you’d allow a man like me into your home, sweetheart?”

You’re considering letting him into your bed at this point.

“Hm, why would I not? I thought you were my partner in crime in all of this?”

“Well, I suppose you’re right in that,” he stands up straight, and a hand extends towards you. “How does a dance sound then, partner?”

“Sorry, partner. I’m not going back in there, at least not for a while.”

“I didn’t say anything about going back inside the ballroom.”

“Huh? Ou-Out here?”

“Why not?”

“As cliché as it sounds, I don’t really know how to dance all that well,” you admit rather awkwardly, and he laughs once more. You’re beginning to become addicted to the sound.

“You don’t have to worry, it’s only me out here. I can teach you the basics. I promise, it’s not hard, partner.”

You don’t say that you’d rather not embarrass yourself in front of the most attractive man you’ve ever met, instead hesitantly placing your hand in his own.

His skin is colder than you expect it to be, and when his other hand envelopes around you, gently holding onto your waist, you almost jolt. He leans in close to you, and the faint minty scent of his breath has your head feeling light.

“No need to be so rigid,” he murmurs quietly, “Just do as I do. I won’t laugh at you.”

How did you end up in this situation again?

He takes a slow step back, pulling you with him, and your foot accidentally treads on his own.

“Sorry!”

“It’s alright,” the man whispers, continuing to hold you as though you were made of the finest material.

A few moments pass of what you consider his graceful movements and your awkward shuffling.

“You are a natural at this, sweetheart.”

“No need to lie to me. Maybe next time we’ll bump into each other at the club and I’ll teach you how to move on the dance floor. Or, I would if I knew how. Maybe we can learn together… then again,” you eye him up and down, “you don’t seem the ‘club’ type, Chrollo.”

“I could say the same about you.”

“Is it that obvious?”

Were you two always this close to each other? One wrong move and you might end up brushing lips. You’re not opposed to the idea.

“Oh, maybe not to others, but I’m good at reading people.” He pauses for a moment. “I would describe you as a book I just can’t seem to put down.”

“You can lay me down instead, if you’d like.”

He halts rather suddenly, and you register the words that just tumbled from your mouth with a gasp.

“S-Sorry! Shit, shit, sorry, I didn’t mean to say that-“

Chrollo’s hands are tightening around your flesh within a fraction of a second, and suddenly his lips are moulded against your own, your body being pushed back until it’s pressed against the brick wall behind you.

If you were more coherent, you would be wondering what happened to the sweet gentleman you had been conversing with only a few moments prior. Maybe you would wonder if he had been replaced by some wild animal, evident by the desperation in his kisses.

But you don’t care about all that, all you can think about is how hot the air has suddenly turned, how there’s a familiar feeling in the pit of your stomach forming, and how good this feels.

Chrollo pulls back from you for a moment, and through half-lidded eyes you’re able to catch sight of your smudged lipstick around his face. You can’t help but giggle at that, prompting a slight smile from him. It doesn’t last very long, as soon he’s moving lower, face pressing into the crevice of your neck and hands combing over your waist.

“I can’t believe I’d meet you here,” You swear you hear him mumble, but you don’t really have time to think on it, not when his body presses even further against you, and his hands ghost over the backs of your thighs.

“Jump.”

“Hu-Huh?”

He doesn’t give you much time to think about it, as you’re swept of your feet, thighs encircled around his waist and allowing him to move impossibly closer.

Something hard presses to the spot between your legs, and he quickly drinks up the gasp of his name you give in response.

“Oh my!”

It takes you a few moments in your lustful haze to realise that it was not your own voice you heard. Chrollo doesn’t even glance to the side at the no doubt horrified guest who had stumbled upon the two of you, instead sighing tiredly into the skin of your throat.

The poor intruder doesn’t stick around long, retreating back into the ballroom to no doubt call someone to kick the two of you out. Chrollo slowly places your legs back on the floor so that you can stand, and you’re tempted to tear off your own skin you’re so embarrassed.

“… God.” An awkward laugh bubbles out of you, and soon you’re wheezing uncontrollably, doubling over and your head pressing to Chrollo’s chest.

“A shame,” he murmurs. “I was enjoying myself… and by the sounds you were making, so were you.”

You fear this moment will plague you forever and ever.

“Maybe I should throw myself off of the balcony, after all.”

“I wouldn’t allow you to. How am I supposed to get the job done without my partner in crime?”

You laugh, a hand moving to your face so you can cover the blush that’s only growing worse by the second. “… I like you, Chrollo. I know this is a little, um… forward and, well, fast… but I want to keep speaking to you past this night. I-If that’s not what you’re after, that’s alright too…”

You’re not sure you can bring yourself to meet his gaze, especially not after the lengthy pause that follows.

“I would like to speak to you past this night as well... and… I like you, too.”

Maybe this night wasn’t a total disaster, after all. Maybe this is the beginning of something new for you.

“Alright, well… I’m going to go inside, and get a drink before we’re kicked out, if you’d like to join me. Looks like our master plan has yet to come into fruition.”

His hand meets your hip again, “I wouldn’t be so sure on that, partner… Shall we?”

“Wait, let me…” you raise a hand and softly wipe at the lipstick staining his lips and jaw.

“Don’t make me kiss you again.”

“Nope. No more PDA. I’ve learnt my lesson.”

He opens the door for you, and you breathe in a big breath of air. This is going to suck, but at least this weirdly charming man is with you.

As the two of you step inside, your eyes immediately find the food and drinks table, missing the sight of two strange men, one short and one large, on the stage.

“Ah, it seems Feitan and Franklin are ready.”

“Hm?”

You’re not sure what comes first, the ear piercing scream on the other side of the ballroom or the sudden darkness that blankets the area.

Another scream, and you jolt backwards, reminding yourself of Chrollo, who is still holding onto you, his grip only tightening and his front pressing to your back.

“Stay close to me. This’ll be over soon.”

“Wh-What?! Chrollo, I don’t-“

You yelp when something falls down beside you, the thud managing to be heard over the chorus of screams.

“What the fuck is going on?!” Someone cries out near you, “Call the-“

Something wet sprays across your neck and face, and another thud follows.

Is this real? Are you dreaming?

A flurry of gunshots are accompanied by brief flashes of light that illuminate the people fighting to get to the doors in front of you, treading and falling over each other in a scramble to escape.

Red. Red. Red. Every flash has you shaking at the sight of more and more blood, and less and less movement. The silence you soon hear is more deafening than anything else before it.

Someone groans, and a popping sound ensues. It is silent once more.

Maybe this is some prank, some elaborate joke set up by a morally bankrupt TV show, you just happen to be the poor sucker who-

Something cold wraps around your neck, and you taste vomit in the base of your throat.

“You were right. It does suit you better.”

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

TOWER OF BABEL (VII)

NAVIGATION || RAVISHING ALLURE MASTERLIST || NEXT: CHAPTER VIII

PAIRING: Nikto x F!Reader (Soulmate AU)

WORDCOUNT: 7.4k

WARNINGS: Angst, intense stalking & stalking behavior, talks of death/injury, toxic modeling standards/expectations, dark implications, symptoms & descriptions of dissociation, scar descriptions, etc. (Series 18+)

A/N: This is where some of the more serious/dark aspects come into the story involving Seraph's job and the pressures that are put on her. It's only implied in this chapter, but in the next, it'll be talked about more. Just to let you all know.

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

The day after your meeting, your gifted clothes came to the lobby of the penthouse. 

You’d gone down with Nikto and picked up what you could, bags and bags of designer goods including purses, makeup, and jewelry. It was excessive—like Fedorov was trying to buy your silence; buy your affection so you’d cozy up into bed with him. 

This job tried you every day, but that was a line you would never cross. Never.

Still, the items needed to be taken and packed for the trip regardless. Eyes would be on you from the moment this adventure from hell started until it ended in what hopefully was a peaceful fashion. 

But you severely doubted it would be anything close to peaceful. 

You take another gray dress and slip it into the garment cover, legs folded on the floor of your living room as you hum under your breath. Music wafts out from your record player, and you’re desperately trying to focus on the task at hand. Nikto reads from the couch. 

“Have they called you yet?” You ask, not looking up as you slide the cover’s zipper, missing it once as your hand shakes unexpectedly. 

The Russian responds with a slow and even, “Нет. No calls.”

You sigh, licking your lips. 

No one had been telling you what was in that last gift at AMA—not even your mother. Aly had said it was probably nothing when she’d been briefly over to assist with the clothes, on a tight break in her schedule, but you weren’t too sure of that. 

Pale eyes blink slowly, and a page turns. “No use thinking. Pack.”

“You make it sound like it’s that easy,” you huff, body leaning back and spine resting against your various rugs. The penthouse was warmer today, and you wear comfortable loungewear; shorts, and a dark baggy t-shirt. Your head shifts, arms out beside you. “How are you so calm about everything? My heart feels like it’s constantly going to break out of my chest.” 

Your phone goes off on the coffee table, a short buzz that has to be either your mom or Alyona. Rubbing a palm into your right eye, you hear the bear grunt and close whatever he was reading, finding it pointless to try and focus if you continue to speak to him.

He stares for a moment, hidden face a mystery you long to solve. With a tap of his finger on his thigh, he explains.

“Training,” you blink, intrigued. Nikto seems to notice, tilting his head and looking down at you. “You are scared, Woman, yes?”

“Of course.” You had no trouble admitting it. “Anyone would be.”

“In military,” the air of the penthouse moves with the weight of his broken words, the rough bleed of vocals. You really did like his accent—it just added so much to his already intimidating form. Just a stack of bricks being constantly grated against one another. “We were taught how to become used to it—the adrenaline. Fear. In the end, it held little over many; failure was the only fear that never left.” 

Your brows furrow, lips frowning. “You fear failure, Nikto?”

You expected a blunt refusal, quick words. But the man had been softening to you over the time you’d known him—if that was your own doing, or something more, you can’t quite tell anymore. Any talk on soulmates has feld you like a rabbit in a dark wood to shy away from the looming presence of something bigger; parties and scorned maniacs.

You still wonder if ignoring the gifts was the right thing to do. Would that make it worse? You think you’d read about that somewhere. 

A trigger. But the stalker had already pushed one of those, hadn't he? What could he do that was worse than killing three men? Mutilating animals?

Nikto surprises you. 

The man blinks, not looking away from your pleasing eyes—even now, your pupils were small with anxiety; he’d noticed how you adamantly avoided social media and the news, plastered with your pictures and the case. The window had never been opened fully since he’d been here, only a creak of natural light slipping from the crack of the half-risen blinds. 

For a gruff beast of action, his eyes missed nothing.

“Yes,” he grumbles, blinking away for a moment before his attention returns. “But it is…lesser than what you feel. Незначительный. Minor.” 

A small smile flickers your lips, skull to the ground even as it aches slightly. 

“I like it when you speak to me—it helps,” you mumble honestly. It wasn’t flirting, not really. 

The Russian looks slightly confused at your sentence, but that doesn’t stop his shoulders from minutely tightening. You chuckle, shifting your head to the ceiling where your little bits of painted glass hang. 

“Nikto,” you point upwards. “That one—the bird. What color is it?”

This was a game you’d taken a fast liking to. You’d point and ask the color; Nikto would answer. 

“Red,” is his monotone reply after a glance. Eyes from behind his mask shrouded in dark paint. You doubted the face grease could come off anymore, the chemicals already bone deep. 

“I thought it was orange,” you sigh. “I still can’t tell the difference.” 

“Obviously,” is the dryly amused response, with you glaring without venom and putting your hands to the ground to help push you back up. 

“Hey,” you try to hide your teasing smirk. “I’m getting better at it—”

Your voice is strangled off as a sharp inhale, eyes blinking rapidly, and your vision blurs in a moment of ricocheting pain flaring in the base of your skull. Snapping one hand to the back of your head, you strangle down a small scream, reducing it to a whimper of utter agony. 

Neck bending forward, your mouth fills with saliva as your spine pulls in, yet you can’t even focus on that. You feel like if you even have a single thought, your brain will explode out of the back of your head. 

Nikto startles, eyes widening, but he doesn’t waste time on shock. Feet already rush over at the slighted change in the air, a hand grasping the base of your neck tightly, attention snapping into place. Your breath puffs as your frantically moving face tenses and eyelids twitch. Your nerves were on fire. 

The Russian watches, confusion and a certain unease striking him through his pounding heart. What had happened? One second you were speaking and the next your body was so steel-like it shook harder than he’d ever seen it. 

“Seraph,” he barks, face close to your head, looking at the spot you grasp at with your visible knuckles, the sound of your gasping pants leaving his throat echoing with reverberations of unease. 

Nikto pulls at the skin of your wrist, peeling your hand back before you draw blood, trying to assess what to do. He only sees it then.

It’s a rabid-looking thing, the scar. With your hair as such, your fingers stuck in the knots, they’re pulled back just perfectly to see it. Pale blue eyes stare unabashedly, struck dumb for a moment in their concerned sheen.

It spans from the base of your skull upward, a jagged bulge of healed tissue and fissures—the shade of skin is different there, hyperpigmentation just as Nikto had. Halfway up the back, the rough line breaks into two places, creating a ‘Y’ with the one nearest to the right stopping sooner than the other. 

But it was deep. Deadly-like. An indent lives at the middle point.

For someone so in tune with the ways of the body, Nikto was horrified and fascinated at the very implication; how had you…survived this? Your entire skull might have been broken open from the force of whatever had happened, judging by the strength needed to achieve such brutality. Was this the injury that you’d been speaking about? 

An overwhelming emotion takes him by the lungs. 

Your body had scars just like his did.

Form curling even farther forward, your legs pull into you, and Nikto finds that at the moment, none of that even matters. 

“Seraph,” he orders again, equally as urgent but noticed less sharp. His thumb curls your wrist to trap itself at your pounding pulse; running as if being chased by whatever nightmares he hears you whine from in your sleep.

You swallow down your bile with a clicking of your throat and a small cough, eyes stinging. 

“Burns,” your lips whisper, lids closing firmly. “God, my head burns.” 

It’s a brief thought—a small moment of slip-second thinking that had saved his life many times. 

A chilled palm spreads itself over the back of your head, directly over the broken fracture of flesh, without an utterance of a word. The effects aren’t immediate; you don’t just calm down and stop panicking. But it helps. Like a light in the dark, it helps. 

After a minute, the chill seeps into your bones. It goes deeper and deeper, the large grip of Nikto’s fingers stuck into your hair perhaps a little harder than they needed to be, but you weren’t about to complain at the pressure. After two minutes, your panting slows to a small ragged wheeze—feeling like a sick duck as your beady eyes finally open. You see the unblinking pale orbs directly to your right almost immediately after the abyssal dots go back to wherever it was they came from. 

He doesn’t speak; you didn’t expect him to. Nikto was arrogant, prideful, but he never spoke unless he knew he had something he needed to say. A blunt hound who never hesitated to bark, but only when he could see something was up in the tree. 

When you’ve seemed to calm down, the hand on your wrist leaves with a brush of rough gloves to the skin, making you shiver. You notice the hastily tossed material of the matching product, belonging to the other limb, near your knee. 

Cold fingers. Cold hands. A corpse would be jealous, but you’d never felt so thankful. 

Nikto studies your face rapidly, and your raspy voice levels out a meek, “Sorry.”

Barely visible brows furrow tightly, almost disgusted. You perhaps misinterpreted that expression the wrong way, because just as you’re about to rush into a wild explanation as to why, how, and every excuse you can give, you’re once more taken off guard today. 

Bulky arms circle your waist and under your vibrating knees. 

With a sluggish reaction, you blink rapidly as you’re settled against the hard Kevlar of his chest—kept firm in his grip. Your legs hang, hand stabilizing yourself on Nikto’s pec. 

“What did I say?” He asks heavily, looking down at you as your shock bleeds away to focus on how to calm your heart. “Seraph?” Nikto prompts, his fingers digging into your clothes. 

You try to think, stuttering, “You don’t like it when I apologize.”

“So do not,” the Russian grunts, clenching his jaw out of sight. His words are low, and he rolls his shoulders. “That is the end of it.”

He sets you down on the couch, sinking into the multiple plush pillows. You feel weak—limp. Not looking into the man’s eyes, you curl your hands around your waist, leaning back and being careful to not hit your head on the back. 

Nikto watches with hidden concern. 

“Explain,” he utters, not moving an inch from in front of you. It’s a minute or so before you can find the words. All the Russian does in that time is shift his arms over his chest—fix the stance of his feet. You can feel his eyes like a knife, but you can’t feel how his brain is on high alert; vigilant to any pain that may be hidden from him. 

“Happens sometimes,” you whisper, one vibrating hand coming up to lightly run over the back of your skull. You trace the scar softly, feeling the pulse underneath. “It’s just… sensitive.”

Nikto’s eyes narrow. 

After a pause, where it’s obvious you feel some sort of embarrassment judging by your avoiding gaze, the great beast sighs long. A slow blink makes his dark lashes up and down. 

He hated how he despised that look on your face.

Moving, Nikto sits beside you, leaning back with a grunt and extending an arm behind you on the hardwood of the couch’s frame. 

“Tell me. I want to know.” You side-eye him, knees pulled up to your chest. It has a distance to it, your focus. Everything feels like it’s underwater. 

“It’s not a good story,” you force a broken huff, smiling wobbly. Numb eyes don’t waver over the lines of your face. 

“No,” Nikto bluntly says. “I did not expect it to be. Nonetheless…” he trails. “I am asking if you are willing to answer.” 

It wasn’t like you were against saying what had transpired, but there was a lot of history there—so much. The event had happened when you were young, so many years had passed to a point where the mental pain of it had dimmed to all except the consequences. The aftermath. 

This was a give and a take; you consider yourself a fair person. 

“How did you lose part of your finger?” You turn it around, licking your lips and staring at his neck. The man’s body stills at the question. 

Nikto slowly loosens a grumbled scoff. But it isn’t a feral thing. Perhaps he was even impressed that you had the forethought to gain something of his story when you’d already told so much of yours. 

He reminds himself once more, not dumb. 

“Very well,” Nikto’s head tilts like a wolf, his knee hitting the place where your feet hang over the edge of the cushion. He looks you up and down as his finger taps the wood behind your head. “Second year with PMC. Operation in far-off country—we do not care to remember which anymore.” You listen, heart calming with every scrape of vocal cords. Nikto explains slowly, thinking over every word carefully as his vision trails to rest at your nose. “Hostile hiding under floorboards.” The Russian rolls his shoulders. “I was reaching down to grab at the hatch; it confused me because it was partially open.” 

Your body lightly turns his way, the side of your skull meeting the hard build off the inside of his forearm. Closing your eyes, you take a deep breath, getting everything under control again one second at a time. As if a book, you turn the pages of Nikto, painting a picture of his tale, oblivious to the way his eyes are stuck on your face. His arm stays completely still for you.

He longs to look at that scar again, and he can’t understand why.

“...Large knife came up through the wood. Cut it off and damaged the others near it. It is numb most days. Barely can tell I still have finger. Very inopportune, but all was not lost.”

“What wasn’t lost?” You hum, sighing, and open your eyes again. The Russian’s gaze darts away. 

“I killed him,” he says numb-like, a vicious smirk in his voice. “In the end, it was only us who could tell the story, yes?”

“Does it hurt?” You change the subject back to his scars, liking how his forearm acted as your pillow. You could feel his tendons as they pulled.

“Sometimes,” Nikto shrugs at your quiet question, thighs over the couch cushions. “Like all the others. Natural.”

He doesn’t need to ask if yours do.

You dwell on what he insinuates about his body—the scars you already thought he’d have; why he wears that mask. 

“I fell,” you share, not letting a long silence linger. Nikto’s feet shuffle on the floor, but otherwise, like a waiting cat, he was completely beholden to your soft voice. “Far. Cracked my head open on a rock.”

There’s so much more to it—but this is the version you always tell everyone. It’s less…complicated. Gets you less looks of pity, even if you’re not sure Nikto is the type to do that. 

The large man hums, nodding. He wants to know more; he’d have to look into it further on his own. “You are lucky to be alive after an injury like that.”

“Yeah,” you whisper, lips twisting. “Lucky.” 

Your skull pulses. 

“But, anyways,” you wave a hand, locking gazes. “Thank you.”

Nikto’s knees crack as he stands, moving away; his heat leaves. Hands situating themselves at the collar of his vest, the Russian’s throat rolls with a noise of acceptance. 

“It is my job. Do you require anything?” 

“I think I’m okay,” you admit, feet delicately moving to the rug on the floor. It’s back to packing, pushing this to the back of your mind just as you do the remembrance of his fingers tight in your hair; tight at your wrist. Nikto’s hard voice in your ear, saying your angelic title. 

Your throat clears itself, blinking, as you stand. 

The man takes it as lightheadedness, one foot moving closer. Your hand raises, and he stops. A small chuckle moves out of your mouth, side-eyeing him with a crinkle to your lids.

“I’m okay, Nikto. Trust me, please.”

He sighs, fingers twitching. But he doesn’t grumble any blunt vitriol, he just watches. Always watching. 

Your spirits are lightened by his presence. 

Brushing down your t-shirt, you close your eyes and shove away the memories, tiny tingles of pain still present as they go up and down your spine. 

“Now, we have to get to work,” you brush past the episode, used to them. “It would be helpful if you lent a hand, Big Guy.” 

Your joke leads to a huff, fingers taking back their book from the table—all in Russian script, so you didn’t know what it was—and a roll of eyes.

“That is not my problem. Your clothes, your parties.”

“The parties you’re going to have to go with me too,” you smirk, eyes glimmering as you grasp your phone, flipping it over to turn it on and look at the text you’d received. “I hope you like suits.”

Pale eyes widen before a growled Russian sentence wafts over the music from the recorder. You laugh, already knowing the contents of curses and refusals. He was so much like a child sometimes it takes you aback. A brute, utterly refusing what was in front of him and owning a short fuse. 

“Oh, calm down,” you blink, signing into your phone. “I’m good at finding clothes as long as you tell me colors and shades. You’re in the best hands in the business, Nikto.”

“Do not say it like that,” he barks, eyes narrowed and his body moving forward to pass you, most likely to go back to your bookshelf and return the book, seeing as he’d get nowhere with it now. “I do not want your hands, Whelp.” 

“You’re saying that now,” you tease, pointing with your free finger. “Everyone says that before they have a taste of—”

“Quiet.” 

You laugh, spine lightly bending forward, and Nikto’s back turned to you to where you can’t see his face soften at the sound. His body unconsciously loosens, orbs gaining a distance that has nothing to do with his condition. Your existence is a curse to him, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it.

It’s only after you’re able to calm down, the Russian putting his book away with a large hand, when you finally look down at the text you’d gotten. 

UNKNOWN NUMBER:

‘I sent you a gift and you didn’t even open it?’

Your face freezes mid-smile.

 ‘I’m giving you everything you wanted—you didn’t open the letter I gave you in the grocery store, either, did you? I waited for hours for you to show up! Hours for you! I’ve waited YEARS to be near you! I love you more than anything in my life and you’re ignoring me? How can you do that when I’ve risked so much? Please, Seraph, I love you but you’re breaking my heart—I’m trying so hard to be kind to you. Please, don’t make this harder than it needs to be. Это любовь с первого взгляда! Я не могу жить без тебя! 

I’m trying to forgive you, my Сладкая, I promise. I’ll always forgive you, but let me show you how much you mean to me.’ 

Images pop through, scent quickly as your glee stiffly drops like glass to the floor. You’d never felt yourself go so still as when you’re halfway through the block of text and you see yourself at the grocery store, alone, and Nikto’s shadow disappearing around the aisle. More—so much more. You in AMA...in…in the photoshoot wearing nothing but the lingerie, skin on full display.

Your eyes flood with tears, jaw open.

He had been in that fucking room. He’d been there when your manager had brought in the dead birds—he, he had…

He’d been right there.

You can’t speak, you’re only looking down at the continuing barrage of photos. 

Outside of the Consulate building, walking down the street, talking with Aly on a girls outing from months ago. Your phone vibrates with every one, quivering hands already moving but now more so. Like a rabbit being hunted down. It shows an escalation—the more you see the closer this freak was getting in each, slowly slinking with vile intentions until the last. 

An image of the direct back of your head, a hand reaching, and almost touching, exactly where your scar lives.

You’re going to vomit.

The entire device is snatched by gloved fingers.

Nikto glares in confusion, ears twitching at every buzz of your phone. “What is wrong with—”

The man is suddenly more wound up than a dog under a noose.

Rushing past, you only reach the kitchen trash can two seconds before your bile rocketed from your mouth, heaving what little you’d managed to eat of Nikto’s cooking into the bottom with a tight sob. 

Nikto’s hand holds the thing—reading, looking, with dead eyes. Dead eyes that gradually become enraged with a certain type of anger that breeds in silence. The skim, a ruthless finger tapping the screen and dragging the conversation back to the top before he stares. He stares and stares and stares at the pictures. At you. 

The way you live your life, oblivious to the threat right behind you. Stalking closer.

Nikto can’t remember a time he’s felt so angry at an enemy before. Not just an enemy, no, an animal. This wasn’t like the rules of war, this was for pleasure; for a selfish need. He knew how to keep himself separate—had to for his sanity—but this was something no one could not get wrathful at. Even him.

He hears you wretch, vomiting into the trash just below the island where he’d made the both of you lunch, the choke of your sobbing breaths. The sounds make his hands tighten over the phone, to smash it to pieces like a toddler with a block castle. 

And then the device buzzes one more time as Nikto silently finishes reading the first text you’d been sent. 

‘Don’t worry about the bodyguard, Seraph, I can take care of him, too. We can finally be together, just like it’s supposed to be.’

Nikto is hitting the call button before his brain catches up to his finger.

Slotting it to his covered ear, he breathes like an afflicted hound, eye buggy and chest rattling with air. Panting echoed from behind his mask, the hot breath moving back to warm his slashed and burned flesh. 

It picks up on the second ring, but nothing is said. No words from the other end. 

In the corner of his eye, Nikto sees you hyperventilating. The former soldier speaks entirely in Russian, slipping back into his native tongue as easily as he slips into violence—it is nothing more than a slide of sandpaper.

“I am going to watch the life bleed from your eyes,” he grinds out. “And then I’m going to make your corpse wish it had been set on fire instead.” 

Nikto hangs up, tossing the phone to the coffee table and making a mental note to get Yaromir and Galina to trace the number. Stomping over to you, your body was away from the trash now, hand to your mouth. 

“I’m okay,” you say hurriedly, tears tracking your cheeks. “I’m okay.”

“You are not,” Nikto wishes he could go to the shooting range—wishes he could spar and slam someone down to a wrestling mat. He needs flesh under his fingertips. 

The Russian’s chest is wide and rising with the pulse of untamed lungs. The bulge of his pecs stuttered over their course and the old scars he carries itch under the barrier of his gear. 

Growling, the man clenches his eyes shut, shaking his head to the side firmly. 

But there was something about the implication of you being threatened that made Nikto need to feel the weight of his service weapon in his grip. To feel the recoil of a bullet being sent into someone. A nameless figure; a silent phone call. 

Nikto scoffs, rolling his neck and shoulders. 

Thinking like this was making him reckless. 

“I guess I should have told you about the letters, then,” you taste bile on your tongue, images swirling in your head—paranoia was firm. Suddenly, every memory was tainted. You gag on your saliva, coughing. 

Nikto doesn’t respond to the self-deprecating comment. 

Once more today, hands move to touch you, pulling at the space under your arms and lifting. Blinking, you’re moving around when your feet are flat on the ground—hands going to rest on the edge of the counter behind you.

Nikto’s hands stay stuck at the meat of your limbs, great head tilted. Eyes lock on the tear tracks spreading down your skin, and he pauses. 

A thumb slowly pushes at them, spreading the liquid along your flesh as your blurry vision stays at his neck. With a shuddering inhale at the unneeded attention, your head lightly sags forward—connecting with Nikto’s chest. 

He tenses, looking down at you from the corner of his eye.

After a minute, his nose releases an unheard sigh, and his arms lower to his sides.

Nikto lets you rest there as long as you need.

—

You’re in the bath tonight, and Nikto listens to the water sloshing as he pushes the envelopes around from inside the lockbox. 

It was safe to say you hadn’t gone back to packing.

That woman, Alyona, was here—she’d made a big fuss about the texts before she’d taken you with her and led you into the bathroom to clean yourself up. You were both in there now—talking. Nikto wasn’t going to act like he wasn’t eavesdropping; he didn’t care if your friend or you knew it. It was mostly about the parties, the talk, and the Russian could understand that Alyona was trying to occupy your mind. 

His mission was more important. 

You’d passed him the box and watched as Nikto had retrieved the letter from your coat pocket. The former soldier had already called the investigators and promptly told them to arrest Sergi, or they would have him to deal with—there hadn’t been time to respond before he’d hung up and smashed his phone to the nightstand of your rented room. The resounding echo had made both parties in the bathroom go silent for a minute before hesitantly starting back up.

And now, there was the scratchy English script of a stalker in his hands. He felt disgusting even touching them; he was glad he’d put his gloves back on. A permanent sneer was stuck to his hidden face like a curse, eyes narrowed.

Standing, the man trades weight from his thighs as he reads the letter that had been stuck in your jacket. 

‘My Сладкая, 

This is the one-hundredth letter I’ve written to you, though you haven’t been sent all of them yet. I’m still waiting for you to notice me, and I’ve grown disquieted by your response to the way I disposed of your three guards. Was that not what you wanted every time you looked at me?’

Nikto’s hand comes up to rub at the fabric over his neck, digging until he feels the bulge of his scar against his fingertips.

‘I thought you would be thankful, but now you have that man following you everywhere. He took your doves from you—the doves that were supposed to make up for the misunderstanding about the dead men. You looked beautiful with the red fire moving over your face that day, you know? It caught every curve and the softness of your skin perfectly. Here—I even took a picture for you to enjoy as I thoroughly have. I hope it brings you the pleasure it brought me to run my lips over your holy image.”

Fingers crumble the side of the letter, creasing it. Not once do they delve into the envelope to look for that picture. If he had the choice, Nikto would rip this entire thing into little bits.

‘I think it’s time that we meet—alone, Сладкая. I’ll be waiting tonight at the café for you, so we can run away together. And start this life together. I think it’s time. Yes. I will ravage you with all of the beautiful things in life; jewelry, dresses, makeup, my body. It is mine, isn’t it? You? You’ve told me with your eyes, so why are you still ignoring me? You look at me every day. I look back—you love me! I know you do! Why are you still being such a—’

It falls off into nothing but rabid script; illegible even to Nikto’s best abilities. The letter is saturated with something—spots of the paper pulling in on itself with droplets off…

Nikto stills, disgust and insult moving in his gut. There wasn’t any DNA on the box, but they certainly had some here.

Dropping the letter into the lockbox on the nightstand, the man takes the top and rams it shut with a rattle of the nesting dolls on the upper shelf. Nikto removes his gloves and tosses them into the garbage bin. 

Stalking to the bathroom door, he moves on instinct. Ever the animal. 

Knuckles rasp to the wood. Conversations halt once more.

“Seraph,” he eases, accent tight. “You are well?”

A bead of silence, the moving of water. 

“Yes, Nikto,” your voice is still shaky, but it comes out from under the door. 

Nikto stares at his feet, blinking. With a grunt, his feet shift and he forces out, “Good. You will call if you need us.”

It wasn’t a question.

Moving back, he nods to himself firmly, shaking out his right hand—he can’t seem to stop being on edge. Every creak, every shadow of your decorations moving, made his eyes dart to them, honing in as if behind the scope of a rifle.  

Nikto brought his hands to the side of his skull, pushing in. You were messing with his head, he tells himself again. The moments of dissociation were becoming more frequent as of late, and he could feel it in the back of his mind even now. A glaze over his brain that made everything feel like it was worlds away from him—it was sharp and sure of itself. Words jumbled, ‘I’s came out as ‘We’s, things were lapsed from his brain; important things. Moments of confusion—aggression. Leaving you behind in a grocery store at the flip of a coin. Snapping at you in real anger when you were just curious. 

He can’t do that. He can’t lose his grip. 

From inside the bathroom, your eyes stay locked on the door, your head resting on the wall behind you as your skin soaks in the claw-footed tub. 

“I don’t know if this is good for me, Aly,” you confess lowly, eyes shifting back to the wall ahead of you, a little black and white ceramic fish on a shelf. Candles let off the scent of linen and pine. 

Alyona sits on the stool a few feet away, watching your face worriedly. 

“Солнышко,” she starts slowly, “we both know it isn’t. It’s going to pass—I can’t hope for more than that.”

It’s like a repeating record—It’ll be okay, just keep strong, push through.

It wasn’t Aly’s fault; she’s involved in this too. 

“Is Nikifor worried about you?” The woman’s head perks, her lips twitching as the orbs inside of her head soften.

“Seraph, you don’t have to change the subject—”

“Truly,” you move a hand up from the water and rub at your face. “Really, Aly, I need a distraction. Please, just…talk. You know I love to hear about the two of you.” 

She sighs, looking to the wall. After a moment, she chuckles, head tilting down. “Yes, he’s worried. He worries about you as well. You have a home with us, little Солнышко—I want you to know that, yes?” Alyona brings a hand to your cheek, pinching in good nature. 

You shuffle away in mock annoyance, lips twitching. 

“...I know, Aly.”

“Good,” she huffs. “I would not be a good friend if you didn’t. At least that brute is taking care of you, it seems.”

“He’s a good cook,” you ease out. “You should try it sometime.”

Gray eyes blink at you, shocked. “He got you to eat a meal?” 

“You’re saying it like I never do,” you chuckle, eyebrows pulling in as the dimmed overhead light shines down on your avoidance of the problem at hand. 

“No, it’s not that,” Aly’s eyes rove with unseen emotion, her concerned heart gaining a smidge of affection for the man outside of the door, whose shadowed feet can still be seen pacing. “I am…glad, Seraph. Food is always the way to someone’s senses, eh?”

Your lips twitch, but the weight on your chest remains. A tense pause grabs the both of you.

“I wish you were coming with,” you have to admit on a stiff tongue. “Ever since I first got here, you’ve been with me for all of it—the parties especially.” Your open mouth stutters. “Aly, I don’t think I can do it again by myself. All of those people; what some of them expect from me, it…it’s just…” Getting choked up, you move a hand to your mouth, covering it. From behind the flesh, you mutter, “I can’t do it again, it’s just the same as staying here, as a matter of fact, I think staying would be better.”

“You need to think rationally,” Aly shakes her head, getting closer to take your hand in both of hers. She squeezes, her top shiny in the light as it moves. “Nothing is worse than staying in this city. The man outside the door agrees. It is the safest option for you, even if,” Alyona closes her eyes, looking away as she opens them. She never finishes her sentence. 

“I don’t want to,” you fight a whimper. “Aly, we tried so hard to get out of them sending us like meat.” 

But there’s nothing that the woman can do to you when you say it like that, and even her expression gets far away. Alyona’s eyes blink fast, getting glossy before they avoid your eyes for the rest of the night. 

“I’m sorry, My Seraph. I’m so, so, sorry.”

And that’s all that can be said.

When night comes, you don’t think you sleep at all, and by Nikto’s pacing of his room, the occasional pause to peek his head through your doorway, neither does he. 

—

The time to leave came far quicker than you could anticipate as the days blended. Chelyabinsk was nearly a three-hour drive if you went the fastest route, and in the time before it, you and Nikto hadn’t spoken much about the letters. They’d been taken by the investigators the next day, along with your phone, for testing and tracking. While you’d been given a new device, it was a tiny thing that died more times than not; you had three contacts—Alyona, Nikto, and your mom.

You’d been assigned a driver by AMA for the trip, and thus, the all-black vehicle had arrived in the small hours of the morning as you had finished a hurried call to your matriarch. 

“I’ll be back soon, Mom,” you’d explained. “Business. I’ll keep me busy.”

She had said it was a good idea like everyone else. Aly and you were the only ones to know the truth. Dread was a fishhook in your throat, but the fear of staying here was just as prominent. Those pictures haunted your mind.

“Nikto,” you ask, grabbing one of your suitcases on the street with a grunt. “Can you…?” The item is taken and easily lifted into the trunk. “Thank you,” your voice breathes out a sigh into the early morning air.

You hadn’t been to Chelyabinsk in a long time. Your brain knew that it would be most of the same—you needed to be careful of who you spoke to and how you did it. While regular crime was only moderate, corruption and bribery was your main problem when entering the place. You were on Allurement’s payroll, would your CEO’s influence be enough to stop anyone from trying anything with you? 

If you stuck to where you were told to go, you should be fine. 

Along with yourself and Nikto, photographers and media know-hows would be tagging along; makeup artists and stylists. A team of people who mostly refuse to look at you at all, only a few familiar faces among them. 

But, thankfully, only you and your guard would be in this car. 

“You can get in,” Nikto comments, blinking at you in the dark street, the lights of the car and the penthouse behind you all you have to differentiate between shades of black and gray. Your eyes had been constantly narrowed so you could try and see better. “I will load the rest.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” you smile sheepishly, “I’d like to stay out until we leave. I get fidgety when I’m in the car for too long.”

His shoulders shrug, taking another of your bags from the ground. “Very well. You will eat on the way there, then.”

Your eyes blink, attention pulled back from the shadow of a man walking across the street, raising hair on your arms. 

“What was that?” You tilt your head.

Nikto huffs. “Eat. On the way there.” He raises a brow. “You need breakfast.”

“Oh,” you at your neck slightly. “Sure, yeah. But what about you? Do you want me to turn around or something so I won’t see your face?”

“No need. We ate as you dressed. Packed the remaining for you.” You’re brushed past, the purse around your shoulder connecting with Nikto’s thigh as his boots clop over the concrete. 

Your lips twitch, expression still worried but the tease sneaking out instinctually. “I need to start calling you Mother Bear, Nikto.” 

“It will be the last thing you do, Whelp,” he grumbles, eyes looking over his shoulder as he packs the last suitcase away. Amusement is like liquid stone inside of them. 

So the trip ensued. 

You entertained yourself by staring out of the window as the cityscape rolled back, already missing the sanctity of your penthouse as you fiddled with a small stuffed bird in your grip. 

“I spy…” you mumble twenty minutes in, trying to be normal again. “Something tall and gray—”

“Tree,” Nikto grunts, trying to read one of the books he packed. 

“No,” you say, defensively. “It was,” your mouth opens and closes, scouring the passing scene but finding nothing. “Fine, yes, it was a tree.”

“I spy something blue.”

“That’s not even funny.”

“I believe it was funny. Perhaps you do not have a good sense of humor, Woman.”

You glare, throwing your stuffed bird directly at his forehead and watching it bounce off. Nikto doesn’t even look away from the words on his page, flipping to the next with a deep chuckle in his neck. 

Rolling your eyes, you groan and slouch into your seat.

You had to say, though, that as the city disappeared, so did your anxieties. It felt good to be near dense croppings of trees again—only an open and uncrowded highway and Nikto beside you. His pale eyes would watch you every so often, and you would do the same, studying each other as time passed and a gradual silence fell.

“Can I use you as a pillow?” You ask with only an hour left on the trip. 

Nikto’s halfway through his book, and up until now, you’d kept to yourself, lost in thought. 

“I am not comfortable,” he utters, leg shifting. He glances, but his numb eyes don’t do much until they move back to where they were prior. “And my Kevlar is hard. It will aggravate your head.” 

You had to wonder how fast he caught onto that fact about you. A smile grows on your face, and you shift to grab your jacket, folding it and tossing the item onto Nikto’s thigh. His head darts down right as you move to rest there, body sideways and legs folded against the door. 

“I like it when you worry—it’s cute,” you stifle a yawn, ignoring his digging eyes. “Wake me before we get there?” 

Your ears don’t wait for an answer, your fatigue from missing an entire night of sleep catching up where Nikto’s never would. He watched you rest for the remainder of the ride, hand hovering over your shoulder until it slowly slipped down to rest on it with a grumble of exasperated Russian under his breath. But the man had noticed the bags under your eyes—unable to be hidden by makeup. He found it in himself to let you sleep, even if the infection of your warmth made his head go loose; how your slackened face looked peaceful. 

The knowledge of what you’d just experienced was still with him, even as he linked his feelings together as pointless. This was a waiting game, and everyone else seemed to have time except for you. 

He didn’t like it. There was a nagging in the back of his gut—instinctual understanding as a hired gun who’d gone through many deployments. This was bigger; something was going to happen soon. A tipping point.

Nikto had a feeling you felt it too, as your head nuzzled his thigh in your sleep, shoving yourself into your jacket as tiny grunts moved from your lips; eyebrows furrowing. 

Bad dream, the Russian clocked immediately, his book long placed at his side and his one elbow against the window frame. 

Pale blue eyes watched for a moment, looking at your deep red blouse and the long back skirt that lightly cascaded over the side of the seats. His hand at your shoulder—hard and immobile, twitches as it tries to keep you steady, feeling the muscle under your flesh writhe. 

Only when you can’t seem to calm down does he do anything at all. 

Nikto can easily stamp an expression of annoyance on his face, of bored numbness, but instead, a sliver of something that could be considered softness bleeds from behind his eyes; something that even if he were to look into a mirror, he couldn’t name himself. 

A finger brushes up your neck, scarred and broken, most of a finger missing and the nearest ones fuzzy with nerve damage. It hovers, steady, before his hand moves to massage along the base of your scar. It’s an awkward angle, no mistake. After all, he was practically grabbing the side of your neck to reach, but it was all he could offer short of waking you. 

When he couldn’t sleep, he’d do the same to himself; it helped, he thought, feeling skin on skin—a caress that eases aches. Call it pathetic, but the sensations he was feeling doing the same to you were nothing short of trance-inducing. To understand the pulse of your heart—your breath returns to a slow puff; brows settling back down at only his circling thumb. 

A bit of that infectious pride trickles into his eyes; smug. 

Nikto grunts, and leans back into his chair, continuing his work to settle you, and smirks softly under his mask. 

Only roughly half an hour to go, and then it was back to guard duty. But perhaps he could close his eyes and rest as well. 

You made for quite the distraction.

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[luveline]

If you’re taking any requests could I request prince Steve and his soulmate wanting to have their first kiss before the wedding since they’re shy about so many people witnessing it

for you my love ♡ prince!steve au

You glance over the pages of your book to watch the Prince. He's stretching by the balcony, the summer air ruffling his hair, the sun kissing his skin. He's tan from weeks of being outside, and when he moves, it's almost like watching the sun itself. Too much. Your eyes burn after a few moments and you look down again. 

“Steve?” you ask, turning a page. 

He stops stretching his shoulders to smile at you. His button up rolled at the sleeves and tight on the arms, he's a poster boy. He's everything a Prince should be, and very soon he's going to be your husband. He's barely even your boyfriend. 

Your soulmark jitters through colours. It's an odd thing, gaussian and scratchy at once, wrapped around your wrist like poorly wound bandages made of light. His, whenever he's with you, glows a steady pinky-purple. You've no idea what it means. 

When you see him, yours is almost always white burning blue. But he smiles fondly and it melds to a softer pink, almost too pale to detect. “What?” 

“We're getting married in sixteen days.”

He crosses the room to sit beside you on the bed. Your sheets are white as the soulmark, crinkled under his weight. “There's still time to send you away.” You laugh a startled laugh and try to keep that lightness about you when he clasps your knee. “But I'd die alone, after that, and the kingdom would collapse, and I'd be miserable, so…” He smiles at you, a silky smoothness to his voice as he continues, “I'd rather you stayed.” 

“I want to stay. I want–” You bite the soft inside of your bottom lip. “I wanted to ask for a favour.” 

“Anything you want. Unless it's to help you with your tutoring. That's never going to happen. I'd make it worse–” 

“No, it's not that.” Bite the bullet. Ask the question, even if you're sitting in bed together, even if he's the most beautiful boy this side of the ocean. “I was wondering if you'd kiss me.” 

Steve stares at you, slack-jawed for a sliver of a second, but he realises himself and his teeth click as he closes his mouth. 

“I don't want the first time we kiss to be– to be in front of so many people. I don't even know what to do.” 

“You don't?” he asks. 

“No.” You rub your thumb against the pages of your book before sitting up to escape. “It was a stupid thing to ask you for, I'm sorry.” 

He takes your arm into his hand. “It's not stupid. I'll kiss you. I want to kiss you, I really want to. I've been worried about it, too. Kissing isn't one size fits all, you know? It's different for everyone.” 

“Right.” Your heart beats in your ears. “So you will?” 

“I will,” he says, quieter than either of you had been speaking before. He takes the book from your hand carefully and puts it aside, pulling at your arm with similar care as he shuffles close to you on the bed. 

You resist the urge to bury your face in your hands. You hadn't thought he'd kiss you straight away, but what difference does it make? You want him to kiss you now, you want—

“You sure?” he asks. 

You nod, not trusting your tongue to make words, the weight of it like lead in your mouth. Steve's hand climbs carefully from the bracelet at your wrist to your elbow, but eventually it slides between your arm and your side to the place just below your breasts. 

The other. He almost kills you, his other hand, brought so tentatively to your face. He doesn't cup your cheek but his palm turns upward, and his fingertips trail from the skin shy of your nose to just under your chin, and then he closes his eyes and you follow suit, too afraid to see anything after that, your skin alive with his touch. 

He kisses like a prince. 

Soft. Delicate. Steve clasps your shoulder very gently and guides your face to his, your lips pressing together, the thrum of a spark between you like a firecracker, a Catherine wheel, that spinning expense of energy with nowhere to go but your mouth. His lips part the slightest bit against yours as he kisses up into your lips. 

When he pulls away a handful of seconds later, your faces are awash with a lavender light. 

“Was that okay?” he asks. 

The light turns darker, a terrible heat flushing through you. You wish you had the bravery to ask for another kiss. “Yes,” you say, nearly whispering. “That was fine.” 

“We can do better than fine, yeah?”

You almost choke on air. "Yeah. Yes."

He's smiling as he leans back in.

[arlana-likes-to-write]

I Wanna Be In Love

Summary: Soulmates were overrated. They added nothing to the world besides seeing color which wasn't important to Yelena but every time she sees her family with their soul mates she can't help but feel jealous. A little trip to a small town to clear her head, she wasn't expecting to see the world in color.

Warning: soulmate AU, fluff, violence, gun shots, mention of past abuse, mention of killing, cult, injuries, blood, kidnapping?

Word Count: 6.2k

Soulmates were overrated. Yelena was too busy to find her soulmate. They were distractions, and she didn’t need to see color for her job. She didn’t care that she couldn’t see the color of Fanny’s fur or the flowers in Melina’s garden. It didn’t bother her that she had to watch everyone around her interact with their soulmate and see the world in color. She was fine. Those were the thoughts that Yelena kept running through her mind. Every. Single. Day. She crossed paths with many people: Red Room missions, contract work with Valentina, and now her time with the Avengers. Still, her vision remained in black and white. “Are you okay?” Kate asked, sitting down next to her. Yelena was sipping coffee, watching her sister and Maria in the kitchen. Maria was cooking a simple meal for lunch, and it smelt amazing. It would have been done by now, but Natasha kept distracting her. She wrapped her arms around the brunette’s waist or spun her around to kiss her. It was gross. It’s cute but gross.

“I’m fine,” The archer chuckled.

“Yeah, sure, because you look like you’re going to murder your sister,” Yelena sighed, staring into the coffee. “Do you want advice or for me to leave you alone?” The blonde shrugged. Even Kate found her soulmate, a girl she met in college. She was nice. Yelena liked her.

“I want,” Yelena paused, struggling to find the words. Her sister’s laughter caught her attention. This time, Maria had her arms around the redhead, tickling at her sides. A deep ache filled Yelena, a tightness in her chest. “To be in love.” She admitted. Yelena grabbed her coffee and left the archer to get a word out.

*

Yelena needed to go for a drive. So she packed a few things in her truck for her and Fanny and left the compound. She told her sister and Kate that she needed a small break from missions. They knew an underlying reason for her leaving, but they didn’t question it. Yelena drove with the radio softly on, her best friend in the passenger seat, and no destination in mind. She tried to date, ignoring the soulmate and forcing a relationship to work, but they never did. There was no spark, no flip in her stomach, and her heart didn’t skip. So the relationship ended, and Yelena was left with the constant wonder of what it would feel like to be in love. She wanted the daydreams, jealousy, and all the little things that came with yearning. She wanted the warmth to flood her head.

Her Bluetooth ringing cut through the song she was listening to and her racing thoughts. It was Natasha. With a sigh, she answered the call. “The world better be on fire right now.”

“Ha, ha, ha, very funny,” Yelena rolled her eyes, offering Fanny some pets as she got excited from hearing Natasha’s voice. “The world is above to be covered in ice and snow,” Yelena frowned. “There is a winter storm warning. You picked a horrible time to go on a self-reflection journey.” The blonde looked at the sky. It was cloudy, and she did notice the temperature dropping. “Where are you?”

“No idea,” she shrugged.

“Sestra…” Natasha sighed.

“I just passed an existing sign for a small town,” the blonde said. “I’ll stop there and wait out the weather.” Yelena could see the tension leaving her sister’s shoulders.

“Okay, text me when you get somewhere safe.” The two Black Widow sisters said their goodbyes, and Yelena sighed when the call ended. This was not part of her plan.

*

The town of Chester was the spitting image of one of those towns in the cheesy Christmas movies Kate forced her to watch. A mountain that was blanked with snow set the background. The buildings were brick, and a bell tower was at the center of the town. It was cute - peaceful even. A little too friendly as Yelena got out of her truck and was greeted with a smile or wave from those walking on the sidewalk. She put a leash on Fanny’s collar. The American Akita was great off-leash, but the duo was in a new place, and she wasn’t sure how the town felt about a random dog. She put her backpack on and headed to the hotel. It was a quick Google search to determine if the hotel was pet-friendly. The hotel lobby was warm to the point Yelena unzipped her jacket. It was coming from the fireplace with couches and tables around it. It reminded Yelena of the lob cabin that Tony built. The place felt homey. She walked over to the front desk, holding onto Fanny’s leash tightly.

“What a beautiful dog,” her name tag said Linda. “What’s her name?”

“Uh, Fanny,” Yelena said. She was surprised the older woman didn’t bat an eye at her accent. The Akita sat down. “I was wondering if you have any available rooms.” Linda turned to face her computer.

“How long do you plan on staying?” That was a great question.

“Not sure,” she raised a questioning eyebrow at the blonde. “I needed a break from work.” Fanny tugged at the leash as Linda gave her an understanding smile.

“I understand that, dear. I need a card to put on file, and I’ll get you all checked in.” Another tug from Fanny’s leash. Odd. As Yelena went to pull out her wallet, Fanny tugged again, and the lease left Yelena’s hand.

“Fanny,” she called out to her dog. “I’m so sorry. Give me one second.” Yelena chased after the dog, who was circling a guest. You were holding a few books and laughing as you tried to move around Fanny’s leash. “I’m so sorry. Fanny, prikhodit’ (come).” The dog stopped and sat next to her owner. You giggled, finally looking up at the Black Widow. The air was knocked out of Yelena’s lungs. Color. She was the color of the wooden lobby she was standing in, the color of the books you held, and your shirt. “Purple,” she whispered. “Your shirt is purple, right?” Natasha loved to spend hours describing colors in words that Yelena could understand. You seemed just as stunned. Your mouth kept opening and closing.

“Yeah,” you said, licking your lips. “I mean, that’s what people tell me.” Your eyes locked with hers. “Green,” you whispered. “Your eyes are green.” Yelena knew that. Natasha spent a whole day describing the colors of her eyes. “I’m Y/n,” Yelena whispered your name back.

“Yelena. It’s nice to meet you.”

*

The Black Widow was sure she would pace a hole into the floor while Fanny lay on the bed. She spent 20 minutes staring at her reflection. The green of her eyes. Her blonde hair. The colors of the ringers that laced her fingers. She spent the next 10 minutes scrolling through her photos. She saw the red of her sister’s hair, the blue of Kate’s eyes, and the color of the pigs at Melina’s farm. She saw color, and it was beautiful. She opened the text message chain with Natasha. ‘Found a place to stay,’ ‘All checked in,’ ‘Call me when you can.’ She stared at the messages as the minutes clicked by. Finally, her phone rang, but it wasn’t her sister’s voice. “Hello,” Kate said.

“Where’s Natasha?”

“Yelling at Tony and Steve,” the blonde called, hearing the faint yelling in the background. Yelena sat on the bed. Immediately, Fanny rested her head on her lap. She ran her fingers through her white and brown tinted fur.

“Do I need to come back?”

“Nah, she’s got it covered. So what’s up?” Yelena closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“I found her,” she whispered. “I can see color.” The archer was silent on the other end. She wondered if the call dropped, but she did hear rustling on the other end. “Kate Bishop,” Yelena spoke slowly.

“Sorry,” Kate sighed. “Tell us everything.”

*

This was normal. You were outside your newly found soulmates’ room with sweets and a hot chocolate tray. It was normal that you raced home, had a minor panic attack, changed into something cuter, and begged Linda to get Yelena’s room number. Completely normal. Before you lost your nerve, you knocked on the door. You heard movement on the other side, and the door finally opened. Her confused face morphed into a smile. “Hi,”

“Hi,” you said, a little out of breath. Her eyes were memorizing. They were a gorgeous shade of green. You realized you were staring, and your body felt warm from embarrassment. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” you admitted. “But I brought hot chocolate, and maybe we can talk.” Her smile grew.

“Yeah, let me take this for you,” she took the tray from you and held open the door to her room. She set the tray on the table, and you shut the door. Her dog jumped from her spot and ran over to you. You knelt to pet her.

“You are a gorgeous, gorgeous girl,” she rewarded you with a few kisses. You looked at Yelena, who was holding one of the mugs and had a fond smile on her face. “Sorry.”

“Please don’t apologize; it’s cute.” Her statement made you feel even more embarrassed. You stood up, taking the mug she offered. “Do you want to sit here or on the bed, or we can stand,” you giggled. Her cheeks blushed a light pink. “I also have no idea what I’m doing.”

“We can sit here and talk,” you said, sat at the table, and decorated the top of your drink with marshmallows and sprinkles. She sat down next to you, sipping the hot chocolate.

“This is good,” you smiled at her praise. “So tell me about yourself.” You did. You were working at the library while studying to get your degree in environmental science. You’ve lived in Chester for seven years. “Where did you live before this?” You felt your blood turn cold. She was your soulmate, destined to be together or some shit. She would understand, right?

“Uh, Florida,” you sipped on your hot chocolate.

“Florida?” She questioned. “You left the sunshine state for eternal winter.” You giggled.

“Complicated on why I left,” you looked out her window. The snow was coming down harder. “Besides, I love the snow.” Snow meant you weren’t a prisoner. Snow told you escaped. Snow meant freedom.

“Do you need to head out before it gets worse?”

“Kicking me out already?” You teased. Her eyes widened. “I’m kidding. I can leave if you want me to.” She shook her head.

“No, stay, please.”

“Okay,” you smiled. “So why did you choose to study environmental science?” You spent the next few hours learning about one another. It got close to dinner time, so Yelena ordered room service to her room. It was a simple plate of burgers and fries that you tried to help pay for, but she refused your money. It was oddly lovely learning about the Avenger, significantly since you believed you’d never find your soulmate. You spent your entire life trapped on your father’s property, hidden from the world. Until you saved enough money and ran, ran, and ran some more. This small town of Chester welcomed you and didn’t question your mysterious past.

You found yourself laughing at a story Yelena was telling you. “Why did you fill her entire room with rubber ducks?” You asked once your laughter died down. Yelena smiled

“Kate Bishop, Peter Parker, and I are involved in a serious prank war,” she explained. “She died my suits hot pink, so I filled her room with 500 rubber ducks.” You giggled, glancing at the clock. It was almost 10 o’clock.

“I should get going,” you said. “You’ve had a long day of traveling.” Something flashed in her green eyes that you missed, but she smiled.

“Yeah, it’s probably for the best.” You helped her clean up the food and put the extra in her fridge. You gave Fanny extra belly rubs before Yelena walked you to the door. “Here,” she handed you a piece of paper with her number. “I should have given you this when we met,” you giggled, putting it in your pocket, then slipped your jacket on.

“I could have done the same,” you began to play with the ring on your finger. It was a gift from your mother. “There is a diner in town that serves amazing breakfast. Do you want to meet there in the morning?” Her smile grew.

“I’d love to. Text me the name,” you nodded. There was this awkward pass between you and her, unsure of how to end this. “You could stay,” she whispered. “Because of the weather.” She added on quickly. You wanted to. Some of you wanted to know what it felt like to be held in her arms, or would she want you to hold her? You sighed.

“I want to, but I shouldn’t. We should take this slow.” Yelena nodded, slipping her hands in her pockets and looking down at her feet. You gathered up some courage and took a step forward in her space. Gently, you lifted her head and kissed her cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” her cheeks were flushed. “Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow.” You smiled and turned to leave, but her hand grabbed yours, spun you back around, and connected her lips with yours. You tensed up, not expecting her to kiss you. She pulled away. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I’ve been thinking about-” You cut her off with a kiss. The feeling of her lips on yours was a feeling you would get addicted to. You moved your hands to cup her cheeks and pulled her closer. Fanny barked, and it startled you apart. Yelena groaned, her head falling onto your shoulder. You chuckled.

“I’ll text you when I’m back safe, okay?” You kissed her one more time before leaving her room. You rested your back on the closed door, touching your fingers to your lips. They tingled as you still felt her lips against yours. Smiling, you left the hotel and walked back to your apartment.

*

‘I’m back. It was amazing getting to know you. See you in the morning.’ Yelena smiled at her phone. “Ooo, it’s that the new boo,” Natasha teased. Yelena groaned, flopping onto her back while on a video call with her sister. “When do we get to meet her?

“I do not know,” Yelena sighed. “She’s lived here for seven years. I can’t force her to leave.” But Yelena was worried about the life you left behind, the life you weren’t discussing. You gave no details - Yelena wasn’t stupid, though. She was a former Red Room assassin, a hired gun, and now an Avenger. She made it this far because she listened to her instincts. You were scared.

“You have your thinking face on,” the blonde rolled her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, but she knew Natasha did not believe her. She could use her connections to discover the truth, but that was a breach of trust. “I’m going to bed. It’s been a long day. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, sestra.” The two sisters said goodnight, and Yelena set her alarm for the morning. She put her phone on the nightstand and cuddled up with Fanny. The dog rested her head on Yelena’s chest. “How did you know?” She asked, scratching her head. “Or did you just find her cute?” Fanny liked her hand. “You are a great wingdog.” She chuckled and closed her eyes. It was a busy day, and sleep found her quickly.

*

The smell of coffee and cinnamon filled your senses as you opened the door to The Lighthouse. It was warm, a stark contrast to the temperatures outside. You saw Yelena in the corner, back to the kitchen, and she faced the door. Smiling, you walked over to her. “Hi,” you said, removing your scarf and placing it on the hook. “I hope you weren’t waiting long.” She shook her head as she stood up, helped you out of your jacket, and hung it up.

“I wasn’t,” you sat down. “I just ordered some coffee.” You grabbed her hand, running your thumb over her knuckles. She smiled at the gesture. You determined you loved making her smile. “Now tell me what to get.”

You ordered the waffles with strawberries on top, and Yelena got the pancakes with scrambled eggs. Once breakfast was done, you argued with Yelena about who would pay (you won) and went back to the hotel room to get Fanny. You showed them around your tiny home, the best views of the mountains, where the kids went ice skating, and the route for the parade for every major holiday.

You sat on a bench near the park, watching Fanny run around in the snow. Your head was resting on Yelena’s shoulder, fingers intertwined with hers. “How long are you staying here?” You felt her shoulders move up and down as she sighed.

“Not sure,” she kissed the top of your head. “As long as I can, but we’ll figure it out, okay?”

“Yeah,” you smiled. ‘We’ll figure it out.”

*

Yelena should have known better. Her happiness would get stripped away as soon as the world was kind to her. It happened when she was six and blipped, resulting in her losing five years. It was not a surprise when she found her soulmate; Avenger duties would call. You were very understanding, but Yelena could see the disappointment on your face as you said goodbye to her and Fanny. The Black Would promised to call and visit as soon as possible. You kissed her softly, telling her to stay safe. It was one of the hardest goodbyes she had to make. Her teammates knew she was upset when she returned to the compound after being away for four days. But she had an obligation, an annoying obligation, but an obligation nonetheless. So she was on a mission with your lips on hers, the phantom feeling of your fingers playing with her rings, and your smile on her mind. It was those things, and the promise to see you kept her going.

*

Yelena dropped her bag to the ground as soon as she entered her room. Her body ached, and she screamed for a day off. She returned from a two-month deep undercover mission. That type of work was her favorite; convincing the people around her she was someone else was thrilling, but she was glad to be home. The bad guys were caught, and it was time to relax. She lay on her bed and pulled out her phone. There was limited contact, so it was quick text messages between you and Yelena. No phone calls meant Yelena was dying to hear your voice, but she knew you were at work. She sent a quick test, ‘Back home. Call me when you’re done. Miss you.’ She ensured her ringer was up before setting it on her side table. Sleep was quick to follow the Black Widow.

The shrill sound of her phone ringing woke her up. Though her eyes were laced with sleep, she didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?” She answered.

“Hi, this is Miss. Yelena, right?” The blonde sat up.

“Speaking, can I ask whose calling?” She knew that voice, but her sleep-deprived brain had trouble connecting.

“Oh, I’m sorry, it’s Linda, the owner of the Woodland Hotel. I do apologize for intruding, and I got your number from when you checked in,” Linda explained. “Oh, this is a complete breach of privacy.”

“Linda,” Yelena cut off her nervous rambling. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Y/n,” the owner of the hotel said. The blonde was quick to her feet, still wearing the clothes she returned in, and walked over to her room. “She is going to kill me when she finds out I called you.”

“Is she in danger?” She took the stairs two at a time to get to her sister’s room and banged on the door. Maria opened the door, and she pushed past her sister’s girlfriend.

“Yes,” Linda said. “You need to get Chester quickly.”

*

Your hands wouldn’t stop shaking as you walked the typical streets of Chester, where you once felt safe. They were here. You weren’t sure how your father’s me found you, but they did. They were waiting - they sat at the diner you and Yelena ate at or checked in at the Woodland Hotel. But you weren’t sure what they were waiting for, so you were trapped. You took your keys out of your bag and unlocked the door, quickly going in and locking the door. You made a beeline for your bedroom, slamming the door closed and pushing our dresser in front of it. Dumping the contents of your bag on your bed, you find your phone and see the missed message from Yelena. You hesitated on calling the blonde. This was your mess, and she had just returned from a mission. With a sigh, you hit the call button. “Sweetheart,” you sounded panicked.

“Hi baby,” you tried to keep your voice steady, but you knew she heard it. “I’m in a little bit of trouble.” She laughed.

“I know,” she knew? She knew? How the hell-oh you were going to kill Linda. “I’m almost there. Where are you?”

“My apartment,” you walked into your closet and used your thumb to open up a small gun safe. “Front door is locked, and I pushed my dresser against my bedroom door,” you felt oddly calm. Something about hearing Yelena’s voice made you believe you would be okay. You loaded the pistol and put two extra magazines in your back pocket. “There are 5 of them. Probably armored with an assault rifle, pistol, and a knife.” You grabbed the knife that your father gave you for your 5th birthday. The man was a leader of a religious doomsday cult; he taught you how to be around weapons. “They are only here to capture me, but they’ll kill anyone in their way.” Yelena was quiet.

“Impressive,” you chuckled, putting the phone on speaker.

“I’ve been running from them for a long time,” you said, removing your shirt and putting on a bulletproof vest.

“Who are they?” A voice you didn’t know asked. “Natasha.” Damn, she was bringing the cavalry. You toed off your sneakers and wore combat boots and a new long-sleeved shirt.

“They call themselves the Arms,” you sighed. This was not how you wanted to tell her. “They are part of the security for my father.”

“And who is your father?” Another voice asked. “Kate.” She added on. You closed your eyes.

“Vincent Pierce.”

“Vincent Pierce,” a new voice repeated, and you knew the name. “Your soulmate is the daughter of a man on the FBI and Shield’s most wanted list.” You chuckled darkly.

“She didn’t know,” you said. “Not something I like to talk about on the first date.” You got Kate to laugh. “If I get out of this, I’ll help you put the son of a bitch in jail.”

“Not if,” Yelena said. You heard her take you off speaker and walk away. “When you get out of this.” You sighed. She was so unaware of the power your father had.

“Lena, if-”

“No,” she snapped. “We are 15 minutes out.” You heard a bang on your front door. “Do you have a weapon?”

“Pistol and a knife. I have two extra magazines.” Another bang forced you to stand up and undo the safety of the gun. You were so tired of the power that man had over you. You’ve been free from him for years, but you should have known better. His power was like a vice grip on your neck as long as he was alive. You were squeezing until you couldn’t breathe. It was so unfair.

Everyone dreamed of finding their soulmate and having that happily ever after. Your mom talked about finding hers one day. She spent her entire life seeing the world in black and white. “I love you,” Yelena laughed.

“Say that again when your life isn’t threatened,” she said. “Promise?”

“Promise.” You were going to keep that promise.

*

The small town of Chester erupted into chaos as the sounds of gunshots came from your apartment. You told Yelena there were only 2 of them before the line went dead, so they were missing 3. Kate and Yelena ran towards your apartment. She didn’t expect the second time being here to save you from your cult leader father’s minions.

The front door was on the ground, and Yelena already had her gun out. It was too quiet for her, and a man was lying face down in a pool of blood. The archer walked over and checked his pulse. She shook her head. They moved into your room and saw another body, and you were barely holding yourself up. Panic filled Yelena as she rushed over to you. “I’m fine,” you said. She saw no blood, but she pulled up your shirt and stared at the bulletproof vest that saved your life.

“Oh, dorogoy (sweetheart),” you chuckled, and Yelena kissed you so intensely that the world around her was drowned out until Kate cleared her throat.

“I love this for both of you,” the archer smiled. Yelena felt you burrow your face in the crook of her neck. “But I think we should get a move on.” The Black Widow sighed.

“Your right,” Yelena said. “Sorry.” Kate shrugged.

“Give me a second,” Yelena reluctantly let you go, and you walked into your closet, taking off the ripped shirt and the bulletproof vest. You grabbed a sweatshirt before turning around to face them, making sure it covered the pistol that was attached to your hip. The blonde could see a bruise forming on your stomach. “I’m down to one magazine,” you checked your gun.

“I have an extra one you can have,” Yelena told you. “We have her.” She said through the coms. Kate handed you an extra one to put in your ear.

“2 of the men have been dealt with,” Kate added.

“Do we have eyes on the other 3?” You asked. Yelena was impressed. You were handling this well, almost as if you were a shield agent. Once this was over, she could convince you to join the team.

‘Negative,’ Natasha said as Yelena led the group down the stairs and out your apartment door. The town was quiet. It was up to Maria to get all the civilizations back inside their house. ‘Has anyone seen or heard from Maria?’

“No,” Yelena answered her sister. “Do you want us to look for her or meet at the Randevu point?” The redhead sighed, and Yelena knew the internal debate she was having.

‘Get your girl to safety,’ Yelenafelt you grab her hand. Her girl. Her soulmate - who was still in danger and needed to get out of this place.

“Little bunny,” you froze, feet stopping in the snow. Yelena looked towards the direction of the voice. Vincent Pierce was decked out in his signature red suit, and 2 men were on either side. The color drained from your face. “Little bunny, it’s time to come home.”

*

“Little bunny, it’s time to come home,” the nickname made the little food in your stomach flip. It was once a name that provided comfort, a sign of love, but like everything your father touched, it turned to poison. You dropped Yelena’s hand and faced him. Now that you could see color, the suit was hideous - aviator glasses on and his hair slicked back with gel. “My, my, my,” he took off the sunglasses and handed them to the man on his left. “You’ve grown up.”

“It’s been a while, but I don’t have time for a family reunion. I have somewhere important to be.” You grabbed Yelena’s hand and began to walk away, but the sound of assault rifles being pointed at you caused the three of you to stop.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said. “Bring you out.” You spun around quickly to see the third man drag a woman. She was handcuffed, and they pushed her down to her knees in front of your father.

“Maria,” you looked at Kate. There was blood dripping down the side of her head. She was pissed, but at least she was alive. You heard Natasha mutter something in Russia.

“She a friend of yours,” your father taunted.

“Let her go,” you held up your arms to stop Yelena and Kate.

“Stop,” you said to all three of them. This had to be done carefully, or they would all go home in body bags. “What do you want, Vincent? She has nothing to do with this.” You pointed to Maria.

“She does, little bunny because she and the other Avengers are keeping you away from me,” of course. The man was obsessed with control. You were surprised he’d kept you alive this long.

‘Keep him talking,’ Natasha said. ‘I’m almost in position.’ You could do that. He loved to talk.

“Why do you want me to go with you so bad?” You questioned. “Don’t you have enough people under your control?”

“Because you are my daughter,” you scuffed. You were a pawn, another tool used so he could convince others to join him. The same went for your mom. “And I’m the only one who can protect you from the Rapture.” You rolled your eyes.

“I’m not a little girl anymore that will feed into your lies,” you took a deep breath. “I see right through them just like mom did.” You knew bringing her up would strike a nerve. His jaw clenched.

“Your mother was a nonbeliever,” he repeated the same lie. “She was a danger to the cult and you.”

“We need to end this,” Yelena mumbled. “The three min’ony (minions) are getting antsy.” They were. You saw their posture change.

“No,” you said, your hand grazing the pistol on your hip. “You killed her because she wanted to leave. You killed her,” you grabbed your pistol and ignored the way Yelena tried to warn you. “Natasha, get ready,” you mumbled. “Just like how I’m going to kill you.” You drew your pistol at him. Immediately, three assault rifles were pointed at you, and Kate and Yelena drew their weapons. When you fled your father’s prison, you bounced between roadside motels, and every night, without fail, there would be an old Western movie would be on TV. You felt like you were in one now. Maria sat up straighter, fidgeting with the cuffs on her wrist. Your father smiled.

“You won’t kill me,” you undid the safety on the gun. “You don’t have the guts, the strength. That’s the one thing I couldn’t beat into you,” your palm began to feel sweaty. It took weeks for some of the bruises to fade. “You are a weak, spineless little girl, just like your mother.” Oh, you wanted to kill the bastard, but you couldn’t. So you lowered your gun.

“Your right,” you said. You saw Maria nod her head. “I can’t kill you.” You smiled. “But my friend can hurt you. We still need to find the people you’ve held hostage.” It happened rather quickly. A single shot ran through the small town, and a bullet hit your father in the leg. Kate hit the man on the left, and Yelena shot the man on the right. Which left the man that brought Maria out; the brunette kicked her leg out and tripped the man. She jumped up, grabbed him by his winter coat, and punched him until he stopped moving.

The snow crunched below on your feet as you approached your father. There was red staining the snow. “Are you alright?” Yelena asked Maria. The brunette nodded.

“You know, I just had to dislocate my thumbs to break free,” you chuckled, but your eyes remained on the man. He was clenching his leg, which had the bullet wound in it.

“Don’t just stand there, you bitch,” he hissed. “Do something before I bleed out.”

“You don’t get to speak to her like that,” Yelena pulled her pistol on her. “You have no power over her.” There was a small part in you that wanted her to pull the trigger, to kill the monster that haunted your dreams, but it wouldn’t end it. Another one of his men would take his spot. You stepped before her, back to your father, and wrapped your arms around her body.

“Don’t,” you whispered, kissing her neck. “He’s not worth it.” Vincent laughed. The sound caused goosebumps to cover your skin.

“You found her,” you turned to face him as Kate forced the man up and handcuffed him. “You found your soulmate. How adorable.” He lunged forward, but Kate held him back. “Just because I’ll be locked away, this won’t end. The Rapture -” The archer punched him and fell back into the snow.

“That man needs to learn to shut up,” she shook her hand. “He’s got a hard jaw.” You laughed as you heard the sound of hurried footsteps against the snow. A redhead ran over to Maria, wrapping her arms around her; the force lifted her slightly. You smiled at the sight. Yelena tilted your head to look at her.

“Say it,” she whispered.

“I love you, Yelena Belova.” You said without hesitation. Yeah, it was good to keep your promise.

*

“We found it,” Maria placed the file on the table before you. You were at the Avenger’s Compound. It didn’t take much convincing for you to make a move until your father was prosecuted and sent to the RAFT. You’ve helped Maria bring down The True Creed for the past week. It was tasking, all the things you had to relive that you wanted to forget. Fanny stood up from her spot underneath the table and rested her head on your lap. The American Akita was your source of comfort when Yelena wasn’t around. Inside the folder were SHIELD agents raiding your father’s compound. “We are working with local officials to get everyone home safe and the help they need to recover.”

“It’s over?” You questioned, looking at the deputy director. She smiled, placing a comforting on your shoulder.

“It’s over. Your father or his men can’t hurt you or anyone else.” You let out a shaky breath. You never thought you would see this day. Freedom. You could go anywhere without having to look over your shoulder.

“Thank you, Maria,” you put the pictures back in the folder and handed them back to her. “I don’t know how I’ll be able to repay you.”

“Shut up,” she huffed, hitting your head with the file. “We should be thanking you.” You rubbed the back of your head with a pout. “So, what’s the plan now?” She asked. “Got to high tail it out of here and travel the world.” You laughed, scratching Fanny’s head.

“Yeah, maybe,” she hit the file against her hand.

“Well, do it. You deserve it.” You talked with her a bit about helping those under your father’s ‘brain control’ until Natasha pulled her away. She claimed that since the case was over, they could spend some time together. You smiled and looked down at the dog.

“Come on, sweet girl, let’s go find your mama,” it wasn’t hard to find the blonde. She was in the kitchen making a big pot of mac and cheese. You weren’t sure how she could stomach so much of the cheesy noddles. You wrapped your arms around her waist. Immediately, she leaned back into your embrace. “Smells good, baby,” you said, kissing her neck.

“Mmmm, it’s almost done,” she said. You kept kissing her neck. “If someone will stop distracting me.” She pushed you away playfully. Pouting, you gave her some space. It lasted 30 seconds.

“Baby, can I see your eyes?” She huffed, shook her head, and turned down the food. The color of her eyes still took your breath away. The green reminded you of chasing fireflies - their light would warm the night. Her eyes were like emeralds, like four-lead clovers; when you found them, you would have luck. Green was Mother Nature’s favorite color. The color was a healthy sign of love. It was unbelievable you went so long without seeing that color. “You are beautiful, Yelena Belova,” the blonde rolled her eyes.

“And you are a sap,” she teased but couldn’t fight the smile on her face. “What do you want?” You held out your hand, and she took it.

“Maria said it’s over,” her eyes lit up. “We can go anywhere we want to do.” Late nights were spent in each other’s arms, dreaming of seeing the world together. But Yelena wanted to wait until you were safe and could enjoy your time.

“Really?” She questioned. You nodded with a smile. “We are going to visit St. Petersburg first. I want to see the pigs.” You laughed as Yelena pulled you into her arms. Her lips briefly brushed against yours. “I love you, Deka.” You smiled, heart, skipping at the simple three-letter word.

“I love you too.”

[sku11s1asher]

Hi omg first time requesting from someone, but like soulmate aus?!?? Can you pretty please (if you can) make one of like arataki itto and the reader (male obvs) where its the first words of your soulmate and ittos first words are like something completely stupid??? Thabk you if you can but its alright if you dont wanna!!

itto x gn/male reader (soulmate au)

notes: i love itto, sorry this took so long bae; i had a fic already but my friends said it sucked so here’s this. i actually need to get a beta reader..i finish fics but i look into them too much and delete it without an actual reason. beta readers hmu frfr ;3

⊹ you always knew your soulmate was the brightest crayon in the box, you got a reminder of it every time you looked at your wrist, ‘worm’ was there.

⊹ though you won’t lie, you were very curious on who they were..who wouldn’t be?

⊹ you lived in liyue, you looked everywhere trying to find your soulmate, but there wasn’t anyone that dumb. at least not that you knew of..

⊹ you complained to your friend, kazuha, about it a lot. eventually he had enough and decided to take you with him on his next trip to inazuma.

⊹ once you arrived in inazuma, you kinda maybe forgot about your soulmate and explored the city looking for interesting things instead of your soulmate.

⊹ you were walking around town talking to kazuha, “what compels someone to do something so stupid?” you asked, “well if you knew him, you'd know he's the definition of stupid,” he responded. all you could think about was how and why a grown man would battle against children, with beetles. “what’s his name again?” “arataki itto.”

⊹ once you heard the man’s name, it immediately reminded you that you needed to look for your soulmate. “kazuha, you’re distracting me from my mission!” “your mission?” “finding my soulmate..?”

meet

⊹it’s been around 3 days, and still no soulmate. you were walking around the city, sulking to yourself about how you’d be alone for life since your soulmate obviously died. you didn’t see the person in front of you since you were too busy thinking about how you’d be alone for life.

⊹ bump. “what the..” it felt like you walked into a brick wall, but before you could fall you felt arms wrap around your waist. “you good, buddy?” the brick wall had a voice?

⊹ you looked up and felt your heart stop, “oh my god.” you were looking at the finest man you’ve ever seen in your life. once you snapped out your gaze you quickly composed yourself.

⊹ “ah, yeah, my apologies.” you took a step back, getting out of his grip. when you apologized, he let out a big smile, “it’s no big deal, im glad you’re okay.” while he was talking, you couldn’t help but take a look at his chest.

⊹ it was like his pecs were basically asking for you to touch them, but you decided to be a good man and not touch this strangers chest.

⊹ “you make me feel funny, like we have a deep connection even though we just met.” his words caught you off guard, “what?” “you must be my soulmate!” he said after a moment.

⊹ you looked at him like he was stupid, “how did you come to that conclusion? you know what, i don’t even want to know. what’s your name?” you asked him with a sigh.

⊹ “arataki itto!” he exclaimed with a huge smie. you immediately busted out laughing. you didn’t expect this guy who looks like he could pick up a house by himself, to be the guy who fought children with beetles.

⊹ you immediately apologized when you saw him pout, “i’m sorry, i didn’t mean to laugh. i just didn’t expect you to be the guy who does the beetle fights.”

⊹ “let me see your wrist.” he asked but he grabbed your wrist before you could answer. after a few moments of closely looking, he hugged you, “i knew it, you’re my soulmate!!”

⊹ you could barely move your arms to hug him back, he was sucking all the air out of your body with the tight hug.

⊹ “cmon, i need to show my soulmate to the gang!” “gang..?”

extra 1:

⊹ “please, just one touch.” you whined while leaning onto ittos chest, your hands slowly going up his stomach.

⊹ “why are you so obsessed with my chest?” he asked with a laugh, but allowed you to touch them.

extra 2:

⊹ “are you really that proud with yourself for beating children?” you asked unimpressed when he bragged about winning matches.

⊹ “you don’t understand! that kid normally beats me! this is a huge accomplishment, y/n!”