#to find the fragment of a fallen star

[badkarma1998]

Sketchin fanfic scenes now because I have been cursed by my own hubris

Behold, the jokes i tell myself:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/65714167/chapters/169230178

[itsvenera]

summary: You and Sasuke have been caught in a toxic cycle of love and hate for as long as you can remember. Yet when you try to break free, he finds himself unable to let you go. (14k words)

warning(s): 18+ content (minors DO NOT INTERACT!), toxic! fem reader, toxic!Sasuke (a bit ooc as well?), mentions of cheating, love-hate relationship, p in v, oral (f! receiving), oral (m! receiving), fingering, unprotected sex

author's note: that was supposed to be a a short nsfw fic, yet somehow it became... this. Anyway, I am actually really proud of this one, so I really hope you enjoy! Shoutout to the anon who had send me their thoughts on toxic reader x toxic character , your message was main inspo for this one <3

Sasuke Uchiha has made many mistakes in his life. Fact.

The biggest one, however, had to be you.

From the moment he met you during one of his travels after the war, he could feel it deep inside his chest - a growing feeling of irritation, one that he has not felt since his early genin days. He has seen women like you before - ones that rely heavily on their beauty to get what they want. One coy smile or a seductive glance was enough to tilt the odds in your favour in every situation and - God! - did Sasuke hate it. How was it fair that someone like you could always achieve anything they put their mind to with such an ease, while others had to spend years in hard work while patiently waiting for their moment to shine?

But it wasn't just your looks that captivated people. Your wit, sharper and faster than his sword, had to be your biggest weapon - and you wielded it masterfully, he had to admit. You spared no man or a woman, as you let charming lies and sugarcoated compliments tease the egos of those around you, quickly turning them in nothing more than powerless puppets in your hands.

What angered him the most, however, is how aware you were of your power. You used it unapologetically, without even a single ounce of guilt or shame, as if it was your birthright to make everyone else around you bow to your will. So when he found himself in your bed just a few days after your first meeting, the tip of his cock kissing your cervix with each harsh thrust while his fingers squeezed your throat so hard, you could swear you were seeing stars, he convinced himself that you deserve no mercy.

No, far from it!

Women like you deserved to be reminded of their place. And Sasuke was determined to be the one to do it.

He kept reminding you over and over again for the short period he was visiting your village - in your bedroom; in the shower; on the table of the Council of your village; on the training grounds under the moonlight; in the secluded corners of the leader's (who was also your pathetic lover) building where no one dared to wander. He had made it his mission you understood - no matter how cunning your schemes were, you would never have the upper hand over him.

Being a good and changed man now, Sasuke knew he couldn't just let you drift through life relying on lies and using people. So he did what he thought was the best way to deal with a menace like you...

he married you.

It his mind, it was perfectly logical solution. If you were going to wreak havoc across the nations, Sasuke figured he might as well be the one to keep you in check. He had witnessed first-hand how many fools have fallen to your sweet deceptions and he knew that if there was one man who can handle you, it was him.

In addition, you were also the perfect tool to get his many 'fangirls' and Naruto off his back. He knew that as the last surviving member of his clan there was certain pressure for him to settle down, but he didn't expect that everyone would ‘demand’ it from him so soon after the war. He still had to atone to his sins, piece together the shattered fragments of his identity and find his place in this broken world. A relationship - let alone a wife and kids - was the last thing on his mind.

Yet it seemed that everywhere he went, the whispers of the 'last eligible Uchiha bachelor' were faster - by the time he entered a village, he was eagerly welcomed by elders who would parade young women before him, as if they were animals for sale.

It was sickening, really. And no matter how bluntly he expressed he is not interested, the people just didn't take the hint.

So if he could kill two rabbits with only one shot, then…

"We are getting married," he informed you on his last night at your village, while getting dressed. It was not a proposal, or even a question - just a simple, straightforward declaration.

He didn't even spare a glance in your direction as he adjusted his clothes, almost as if he didn't pump you full of his seed multiple times through the night. Unlike any other man you've met (and fucked) before, he was always eager to leave after you two were done. He never held you close or whispered sweet nothings into your ear - no, he hated you too much to put all that effort for a single fuck.

"I don't usually go for men with missing limbs," you snickered with that signature infuriating smirk on your face that drove Sasuke wild, "But I guess the good sex and your last name are worth for me to make an exception."

Sasuke only grunted in response, before leaving you alone in your bedroom. How did you manage to get under his skin so effortlessly, he'd never understand.

He was no fool, he knew that if it was any other man - even that short, fat loser who was your village leader (and lover) - you would've turned him down straight away. But he had something he knew you wanted badly and that was the name Uchiha. You were a smart woman and had calculated all the privileges - the power, the influence, the fame - that a union like that could give you. He knew you were not really interested in him, at least not in the way other women were.

You never fawned over him or actively sought his attention. Instead you were treating him with a level of indifference, gracing him your full attentiveness only when you were intimate. And even then you liked to show your bratty side, refusing to submit and leaving him with no other option than manhandling you till you admit surrender. But you never made it easy, that's for sure.

When he brought you back to Konoha, officially as his wife, everyone thought he had lost the last bit of sanity in his head for good.

"This has to be joke..." Sakura muttered as she watched you walk next to Sasuke into the Uchiha compound, the clan symbol proudly decorating the back of your kimono. She didn't want to sound jealous or envious, but you just looked so... not his type. She had always envisioned him with a strong woman - ninja, for sure - who could balance his cold and distant nature by providing him with all the love and warmth he has been deprived for all these years.

But you? You looked nothing like that. Sure, you were pretty, but you were a civilian who couldn't relate to the shinobi's lifestyle. How Sasuke chose you, a foreigner nonetheless, from all of the available women in Konoha was beyond her comprehension.

"I don't think it is, Sakura-chan," Naruto replied from his spot next to her, his eyes unable to move away from the way you swayed your hips while walking next to his best friend. He knew it was wrong, that he shouldn't look at someone else's woman like that, but how could he control himself? He knew he was too weak to resist you the moment Sasuke introduced you to him and Sakura, and your eyes lingered just a second longer on his, before you turned away, a small smirk grazing your lips.

To say that you had quickly became the favourite woman of every person in the village would be an understatement. All of the men, even geniuses like Neji and Shikamaru, seemed to fall under your spell without much effort. Your confidence, combined with your sharp mind and beauty, seemed to draw in everyone like flies to honey much to Sasuke's dismay. Of course, he expected from you to continue to try playing your little games even after bringing you back to the Leaf, but he thought better of his old teammates.

And it wasn't just the men in the village, either. Even the reluctant women who initially questioned your motivations, like Sakura and Ino, soon found themselves drawn to your company, seduced by the idea of not having to shy away from their femininity around you. All their life they have been taught that they have to train and work hard to be considered as something even close to a man's equal - yet, here you were, without any skills or fighting abilities, managing to wrap every single man around your finger and make them inferior to yourself. You were strong in a way that they hadn't considered before - through your confidence, charm, and most importantly, intelligence.

Sasuke was feeling torn by the whole thing. On one hand, he felt like he had failed in his goal to tame you and keep you in control. A year after he made you his wife, he found himself not only unsuccessful, but completely outsmarted and outplayed by you.

On the other hand, for less than half a decade, you managed to achieve what he thought he may not achieve in his whole lifetime. Not only you had carried his twin boys - a result of him bullying all his frustration and annoyance he held toward you into your tight little pussy every chance he got - but you somehow managed to restore the reputation of the Uchiha clan all by yourself. What was once a name connected only to criminals and bloodshed, was now associated with respect, political influence, and a sense of honor. You had restored the pride that Sasuke thought he never may regain again, let alone be given by someone like you.

When you asked him for a divorce one peaceful night during dinner, he thought he has heard you wrong. His mismatched eyes narrowed, as he studied your calm expression. After six years of using his name to climb to the village's higher circles and giving him sons to continue the legacy of the Uchiha clan, you suddenly wanted to leave?

"I think we had this dance for long enough, don't you, husband?"

Your marriage was far from perfect or even socially acceptable, you both knew that. From the very beginning, it was built on mutual benefits rather than love. Sasuke never grew to be a loving husband, at least in the traditional sense of the word, and neither you learned how to play the role of the typical 'caring wife' at home. Yet, after six years together, you somehow managed to fall into a twisted cycle of love desperation and need for each other.

It wasn't the type of relationship that inspired poetry or flowery fairytales. It was raw, obsessive, and painful. There was darkness in both of you, one which you greedily embraced, feeding off each other's flaws, insecurities and unhappiness. Your fights were loud and destructive, as venomous words were aimed at each other's weakest spots. He never missed a chance to remind you of how unlovable you were - a shiny and pretty empty shell that men saw for its beauty, not for its substance. You never held back in holding his past sins over his head, bringing even his own brother as an argument when you found yourself cornered.

"Kinslayer playing house," you would hiss, the edge of your lips turning slightly upward as you notice his eyes darkening, "I wonder what your dear brother would think if he saw you right now."

Furniture would break, plates would fly, and just like every time, you would find yourselves in your shared bed, tangled in the passion and chaos on which you both thrived.

It was toxic, but it was also consuming. Neither of you knew how to break free from these chains, and neither of you really wanted to. It was addicting, it was broken and it was yours.

Till it suddenly wasn't.

When you brought up the divorce, he knew you have calculated the whole thing - the twins were in the room next door and you never fought when your kids were around. If there was one genuine thing that came out from this marriage, it was your two boys Isao and Jiro. They were born a year after you wed and for better or worse, were a perfect mix of both of your personalities.

Isao was the older son - a confident and focused kid, who despite his young age, has already shown impressive skills with ninjutsu and taijutsu. He always looked up to his father, seeking his approval as he pushed himself harder and harder every day. In a lot of ways, he reminded Sasuke of himself - his black eyes were full of determination, as he refused to settle for anything but being the best in everything he did. Yet, unlike his gloomy younger self, Isao possessed a level of charisma that he surely inherited from you.

Everyone loved Isao - and he knew how to use it to his advantage to get what he wanted, even from you.

Jiro on the other hand, preferred to stay in the background and observe, rather than to be in the centre of the attention. He had Sasuke's calm and reserved nature and unlike his brother, he didn't seek anyone's approval or attention. Quite the opposite - he preferred to hold back his true strength, patiently waiting and strategizing for the right moment to unleash it.

"I'm not letting you take my kids away from me," Sasuke promised you that night, his eyes boring into yours as he sat at the other end of the table.

His voice was cold and firm, so different from his usual venomous hiss he uses during arguments with you. But in his mind this wasn't an argument - it was just one of your many silly tantrums, a move inspired by nothing else than the desire to get under his skin.

"I am their mother and their place is with me," you stated seriously without even a hint of the usual mockery which could always be heard when you were speaking to your husband, "You can still see them during weekends - if you are in Konoha and not chasing shadows of threats across the villages, that's it."

Sasuke's jaw tightened, as he slammed his glass down louder than necessary. You didn't even flinch, as you held his gaze which was slowly becoming darker.

"What are you getting at?"

"You know very well I am getting at," you scoffed, the calm and collected composure finally cracking under the heaviness of all unspoken feelings you carried inside your chest, "When was the last time you spend more than a few days with your kids? You're constantly on the road, doing God knows what, while I am left here-"

"Stop bringing the children into this!" he snapped, interrupting you mid-sentence. His voice was low but with a note of irritation, proving to you that he was holding back for the sake of your children next door. Your lips pressed into a thin line, your teeth gritting together while you pressed your back against the chair. There may have been a fire of defiance burning inside of you, but even you knew when to draw the line, especially when he used that voice.

"This is about you, isn't it?" he clicked his tongue, his head shaking from side to side, "About your greediness and unsatisfiable need to suck the life out of everyone around you, before you move on to your next victim. What, did you already exhaust all the benefits you got from carrying the last name Uchiha?"

The room suddenly grew colder, as you stared at each other, his words still lingering in the tense air between you. He was never one to shy from the opportunity to hit you where he knew it hurt the most and in typical Sasuke's style, it was not his final blow either.

"You talk about my failures as a father all the time, but what kind of mother uses her own sons as pawns in her silly power game?"

Your breath hitched in your throat and before you can even think about it, you grabbed the dinner knife on your right and hurled it in his direction, aiming for his head. He dodged it effortlessly, his eyes narrowing as he saw you reaching for your fork next.

"If you are trying to get my head, dear wife," he said almost mockingly, catching the next flaying utensil with his hand before slamming it down on the table next to him, "Have the decency not to do it while the children are next door."

Gripping the edge of the table to stop yourself from throwing your plate next, all you could see in front of your eyes was red. Blinding, raging red, which was threatening to consume you whole.

God, you hated him! You hated him, you despised him and if it was up to you, he would burn in hell for at least a few eternities!

"You are the last person who gets to lecture me on decency," you chuckled dryly, before reaching for your wine glass and swallowing a large gulp, "Did you also talk to your brother about it when he slaughtered your whole family? Or when you killed him?"

Sasuke's expression immediately hardened and his hand clenched into a fist. He has met many infuriating women in his lifetime, but you... you were a monster! A beautiful nightmare that had her claws deep into his soul, chewing and digging into his very core.

"I've told you not to bring up Itachi-"

"Or what?" you leaned forward, one elegant brow raising as you placed your chin on top of your crossed fingers, "What will you do, Sasuke? Divorce me?"

It was clear you were pushing his limits, Sasuke knew you well enough by now to see through your attempts to rile him up. Despite his realisation, however, it was too late - you had already buried your stinger under his skin, poking at his past wounds that never closed. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath while trying to control his nerves.

"I am not giving you a divorce," he said finally, his tone cold, "So stop throwing your tantrum and find other ways to pass your free time, which you seem to have in excess. Perhaps finding a job will do you good."

Sasuke got up from his seat, pushing his plate to the side before exiting the dinner room without casting even a single glance in your direction. You pressed your lips together as you watched him leave, the door closing with a quiet thud behind him. There was a brief silence, before you heard Isao and Jiro's laughter from their room at the end of the corridor. With a sigh, you got up and you started to clear the table.

. . .

Whatever you wanted, you got. Sasuke had seen you going great lengths to achieve what you wanted. Yet, he didn't think you would actually go this far.

As a Shadow Hokage, he was used to spending months away from home, investigating threats made toward Konoha and if necessary, taking all the measures to get rid of them before they can become actual problems. Most of them were coming from rebel groups in neighbouring countries, who were trying to stir another armed conflict between the nations, but sometimes there were unexpected surprises.

One of these surprises was the letter he received one sunny morning by Koyuki, the leader of the Land of Snow. She had warned Konoha about rumours of unnamed groups, who were actively recruiting members to start a new cult against the Land of Fire. Their motivation seemed unclear, but she had provided enough evidence to give both Naruto and Sasuke a reason to worry.

Leaving the same day, he spend three months travelling across the small country, interviewing civilians, chasing trials and collecting evidence before he found out that his whole thing was orchestrated by no one else other than his own wife.

It wasn't the first time he had found himself tangled in one of your schemes. You had not only the influence, but also the connections long before you became an Uchiha. After you got his last name they only intensified and a single word from you was enough to set a whole series of events and tangle dozen of innocent people in them.

The letter from Koyuki should've been the first sign something was going on. After all, he knew that you two did know each other and that she often described herself as "girl's girl", whatever that nonsense meant. And then all the evidence that kept pointing to no one in particular, before he finally realised this was all one carefully crafted deception.

There was no cult, there were no threats and there was certainly no one in the whole country that even cared about Land of Fire, let alone bother to threaten it.

At first, he couldn't understand what was your motivation. Were you doing it to spite him? To make him look like a fool? Obviously you didn't think about about the potential damage on the alliance between the two countries, and even if you did, you simply didn't care.

"I am sorry it came to this," Koyuki said as she was bidding him farewell at the village's gates, "It’s nothing personal. It’s just a favor to an old friend."

A favor.

The word ringed in his mind the whole way back home and Sasuke didn't completely connect the dots till he came back home, only to find the compound empty, a signed divorce pack laying on the table. He didn't waste even a second in flipping through the pages, his jaw tightening as he realised that not only he was your ex-husband now, but that you planned this whole thing to keep him long enough so you can convince the Hokage to sign your request to end your marriage in his absence.

"She said you both have reached an agreement and that you specifically gave your permission for her to deal with all the legal stuff, since you know... you were away for a while," Naruto said carefully once the Uchiha confronted him, his brows furrowing in confusion, "Is there something wrong?"

Sasuke had never pulled the curtain behind your marriage before, the image of your family always being perfectly polished picture of the ideal union in front of the society - a noble warrior with a beautiful influential wife, and two talented sons, both already known as the most promising young ninjas at the Academy. To the world, you and him were the epitome of love and success.

Only the two of you knew the truth and he was determined to keep it that way.

"Nothing wrong other than the fact that the Hokage allowed himself to sign papers affecting my life in my absence," Sasuke said coldly, before laying the report of his mission on the blonde's desk, "Me and Mrs. Uchiha have agreed to hold off any final decision until I returned. You shouldn't have dissolved our marriage."

Naruto's expression faltered for a moment, before his gaze hardened at the sound of his friend’s accusation. He wasn't seeing how he was the bad guy in the whole situation, when you were the one who sought his approval of your divorce petition.

"Sasuke," the Hokage said slowly, his voice suddenly sounding more serious than usual, "I was told by Mrs. Uchiha herself that it was a mutual decision and that it was already settled."

"Are you blaming my wife for your failure to follow the proper administrative procedures?" Sasuke snapped, his eyes narrowing at the man before him. If there is one thing he had learned from you, it was how to always turn the tables in his favour.

"She was alone for months and was probably worried sick if her husband will come back at all," he continued, conveniently missing the fact that it was all you who created this whole situation in the first place, "She was acting under the influence of her distress and worry. You, on the other hand, should've known better."

Naruto sighed, before rubbing one of his hands up and down his face. What was exactly going on between you and Sasuke, he would never understand.

From the outside, you two appeared to have everything one couple could wish for - stable family (or not so much now that your divorce was finalized), money, influence, respect. People looked at you and used you as an example of what they wanted to achieve in the future.

For a long time, Naruto also believed that perfectly crafted image, and deep inside, even resented his friend for building such a life. Of course, he loved Hinata with all his heart, but he couldn't lie and say that the intensity of his job hasn't affected their relationship. There were days when he couldn't even see the eyes of his kids, let alone talk to them or train with them. His wife has always remained patient and understanding, but his guilt had already become a constant in his mind.

And then there was Sasuke.

He was often missing for months on end, yet still managed to return to a happy family back home. His kids were cheerful and obedient, excelling in their training and seemingly never resenting their father's prolonged absences. Meanwhile, you - the beautiful and intelligent civilian wife - held the household together, while single-handedly cleared the Uchiha name of whatever bloodshed had tarnished it in the past.

It was yours and Sasuke's world and everyone else was just living in it.

Yet, the more he interacted with either of you, the more he could see how different and toxic you were for each other. He had no doubt you held some type of love for each other, but it was far from the gentle and nurturing kind he and Hinata had. Yours was raw, obsessive, sometimes even cruel.

He had seen the subtle cracks in your act before. Sasuke, with his silent obsession to control you, monitoring every single step you made. Who were you talking to, what were you wearing, when did you eat, how often have you left the house - he knew everything, even when he was miles away. He has abused his position before by having shinobi watching over you, reporting every detail of your daily life to him. Naruto knew about it, but at the time he was just excusing it as Sasuke being overprotective.

The longer it continued, however, the more distant you became. Sasuke had slowly cut off your ties with everyone he deemed an unnecessary connection - including many of his old friends - reducing everyone close to you to mere acquittances.

Yet, you remained defiant. There was a challenge in everything you did - from the way you liked to oppose him in public to the way you bribed the shinobi around your house so they would spare your ex-spouse some of the details of your daily life. You liked getting under his skin and, unlike many other women would, seemed to enjoy playing with his possessiveness. Sometimes your gaze would linger just a second longer on other men, while gracing them with a flirty joke or a seductive smile, before you turn toward Sasuke to check his reaction.

"What do you want me to do?" asked Naruto, his voice laced with frustration as he stared at his old friend. He already messed up by taking your word for the divorce agreement and signing the documents in Sasuke's absence, he wasn't sure he wanted to involve himself even more in whatever game you two were playing.

"You already did enough," the Uchiha scoffed, turning away and starting to walk toward the door, "Just keep your nose out of my and my wife's business. I will take care of this mess."

. . .

During the months following the divorce, Sasuke was more of a husband to you than he has been for the whole six years you were married.

It was ironic, really. After years of him devoting himself completely to the village, he had now taken "indefinite break" because he wanted to "spend time with his family". The first time you heard this rumour you scoffed, unable to believe that Sasuke would actually let go of his relentless pursuit of redemption, let alone because of his ex-wife and kids. However, you were proven wrong the moment Isao and Jiro came back from the Academy one day, all happy and smiling because "Dad said we are moving back home".

You have been underestimating him, it seemed. You always knew Sasuke Uchiha was a man who was persistent in chasing his goals, yet you always seen his idea of honour and moral as weaknesses - flaws that held him back, instead of push him forward. Not that you lacked any, of course, but your approach has always been a bit more... flexible. You weren't afraid to bend a few moral principles if it meant gaining the upper hand.

But your ex-husband was a completely different man from the one you had married six years ago. And for the first time since you met, it was him that was always one step ahead of you.

It started with the children first. Isao and Jiro have always looked up to their father, eager to prove themselves as worthy Uchiha in his eyes. Deep down, however, they were momma's boys. Maybe because Sasuke was absent so frequently and for so long, or maybe because it was just a natural bond, the one between a mother and her sons.

With Sasuke stepping back from his shinobi duties, however, the balance had shifted. He started to be the one to take them to school and pick them up in the afternoon; he spend at least a few hours every afternoon training each one; he took them on day trips across the Land of Fire on weekends. Suddenly he was not just an absent figure of admiration in their life - instead, he was an active father, a hero, a mentor.

Then, he used that newly created bond to pull you back to your old home. At first, it was one day per week "for the boys' sake". Then it was every weekend, because "the kids deserved some sense of normality". Soon, your "new normal" was to spend almost every night back in the Uchiha compound, the casual dinners stretching into overnight stays. It wasn't till Isao and Jiro informed you that Sasuke has told them you three are moving back "home" that you realized how quickly and effectively he managed to push himself back into your life.

He had finally cracked the key to make you submit - while you were quick to dismiss and say 'no' to him, you were powerless when it was your children pleading with you.

"Ironic how you were the one accusing me of using my own sons as pawns once, yet here you are, doing exactly that," you muttered one evening, while cutting vegetables for dinner. While Sasuke was decent enough to provide you with your own house in the compound, between the boys constantly asking for family dinners and your ex-husband orchestrating late night activities for them to bond, you spend the majority of your time in the main house.

Sasuke, who was seated at the kitchen table, looked up from the scroll he was reading, his dark eyes boring into the back of your head.

"Isao and Jiro deserve to have a normal family," he said calmly, ignoring the loud snort that left your lips after he said those words. You casted a side glance at him, one of your brows raising in mock disbelief.

When you didn't receive an answer, you decided that maybe, just maybe, you needed to take it a little bit further.

"I am not going to be here for dinner tonight."

No answer.

"I have a date."

Sasuke's hand stilled and he lowered the scroll once again, his eyes closing. He knew your games by now, he knew it was not beyond you to use other males' attention as a tool to test his patience, yet he couldn't help but feel his stomach twist at the idea of you going out with another man.

"With who?" he asked after a minute of silence, making you smirk to yourself. Ah, there it was - the little crack in his stoic armor that you have been searching for! No matter how much he liked to pretend he hates you or doesn't care about you, the good old trick of bringing a another man into the conversation always worked.

"Oh, you don't know him," you replied casually, sliding the chopped vegetables into the pot and make a few stirs with the wooden spoon, "He is not a shinobi. A kind man, attentive and gentle... with two arms. Everything you are not, really."

A loud scoff left his lips and you turned around to face him, the wooden spoon dangling from your left hand. Sasuke looked at you with furrowed brows, his hand slowly starting to roll the scroll back.

"Doesn't seem you type," he observed, his head finally lifting in your direction. He didn't look half as bothered as you expected, yet you noticed the faintest flicker of annoyance bubbling right under the surface.

You needed to push just a liiiittlleeeee bit more.

"Oh, he is exactly my type!" you grinned at your ex-husband, before crossing your arms in front of your chest, "Still wondering how did I get so lucky!"

Surprisingly your words seemed to humor him and he let out a dry chuckle, while standing up from his seat. You watched him come closer, and you could feel your breath hitching as you saw his hand reaching toward your face.

But right when you thought he was about to cup your cheek, he reached to the small bowl on the shelf behind you and grabbed an apple.

"I think the real question is how did he get so unlucky," he smirked at you before taking a bite.

The AUDACITY of this man!

"Glad to know your sense of humour is just as nonexistent as it was before," you rolled your eyes at him, before turning around to stir your soup. Despite your attempt to pretend his closeness did not affect you, he could notice the small blush on the tip of your ears and the sudden stiffness in your shoulders.

"I am not joking," he calmly chewed his apple, his eyes trained on the side of your face, "He must be quite the loser to go after a woman who is still living with her husband and kids."

You grimaced at his words, your head turning to the side as you challenged him with a glare. If looks could kill, he would've been long gone by now.

"Ex-husband", you corrected him, your jaw clenching as you caught the slightest twitch of his lips upward, "I know you were too busy to attend the divorce hearing with the Hokage, but-"

"I was not busy!" he suddenly interrupted you, his expression becoming serious, "I was away because you orchestrated a whole false cult, which put our alliance with the Land of Snow at risk, just so you can keep me away for long enough to lie to Naruto and get him to sign your petition."

There was a brief silence during which you narrowed your eyes at him, before you shrugged your shoulders.

"I told you I want a divorce."

"And I told you, I am not going to give you one."

His words made you pause, the spoon still held tight by your right hand while you were clutching your apron with your left. You gave a few more stirs to your soup, before setting the utensil down and turning fully toward him.

"I always get what I want," you smiled sweetly, before reaching for his face. Just like you did before, he seemed to freeze for a few seconds, completely thrown off by your gesture. Just when he thought your fingers may brush against his skin, you snatched the apple from his hands, a victorious smirk on your face.

"I thought you knew that by now."

. . .

It wasn't everyday that a man had the chance to take out a beautiful woman out for a dinner, and such an occasion deserved special preparation.

When your date came to pick you up, he made sure to wear his nicest clothes, put his most expensive cologne and buy the biggest bouquet at the flower shop. He lifted his hand against the massive wooden door, nervously checking that he was right on time, before knocking a few times. The door creaked open, but the view that met him on the other side was not one he expected.

"Uh... hi!" he stammered, his cheeks becoming a light shade of pink as the dark-haired man before him stared at him blankly. A few minutes of silence passed, during which Sasuke looked him up and down, before he raised a dark brow.

"Are you lost?" your ex-husband asked impatiently. So far the only true characteristic from your description earlier is the fact the man had two arms. But handsome? Pffttt.

The man blinked rapidly before clearing his throat a bit. Of course, he found it strange that you told him to pick you up from the Uchiha compound, as you were not with Sasuke anymore, but he assumed you got the house during the divorce proceeding. He didn’t think you lived together.

"No, no! I am here to pick up-"

"My wife?" Sasuke interrupted, his expression bored. He had to bite back a smirk as he looked at your date chuckling nervously, before scratching the back of his head. It was as clear as day that you did all this to get him jealous, but honestly you could do so much better than this idiot.

"Your ex-wife" the man furrowed his brows, mentally praying to all deities he could think of, that you did not in fact get back together with the Uchiha. Not that he blamed you - if he was a woman, he wouldn't let go of him in the first place. You had not told him much about your marriage or why you separated, but it was clear that whatever dynamic you had going on was way more complicated than he first thought. He had heard rumours in town that Sasuke still referred to you as Mrs. Uchiha and while you pretended you have not noticed, the Uchiha crest was still proudly decorating the back of all of your kimonos.

Sasuke let his lips curve in a small smirk, as he leaned against the doorframe.

"You got the wrong door," he finally said, nodding his head toward the rest of the compound, where a numerous small houses were standing, separated by tight dark alleys, "Mrs. Uchiha lives further down in the compound."

"Oh?", your date exclaimed, his face twisted in something between confusion and reluctance, "Well, I am sorry to bother you then-"

"Follow me," Sasuke suddenly said, completely ignoring what the other man was about to say, before stepping out of the house and walking down the stairs. Your date hesitated for a moment, his eyes flicking between your ex-husband and the now closed door, before reluctantly decided to follow.

"I am sorry if this is awkward-"

"Loose your tie a bit, you look like you are going to choke," Sasuke interrupted once again, his eyes trained on the dark path in front of him as he didn't even glance in the other male's direction, "And uncuff your trousers! It is ridiculous for a man your age to come to pick up a woman like my wife wearing socks with printed ducks on them."

Your date flushed red, as he hurried to loose his tie and fix the bottom of his pants, while Sasuke continued to walk toward the house where you were supposedly staying. For a moment your admirer wondered if this was not just one big ploy by your husband... ex-husband to get him alone and get rid of him. As he saw the shadow of your figure passing by one of the windows in the distance, however, he relaxed.

It was all fine. It was all going to be fine-

"Wait here," Sasuke instructed as they both reached the door, before reaching for the handle. Before the man can even open his mouth to reply, Sasuke slipped inside and shut the door right under his nose.

As you heard the door opening and closing, you came downstairs to the living room, where your ex-husband was standing with his hand on his waist. His eyes widened just the tiniest bit as they landed on your descending figure, his gaze slowly running from your hair, lifted in a straight high ponytail, to your chest where a gold metallic corset was pushing your breasts forward, showing just enough skin to wake up the imagination. The white fabric of your dress fell down in gentle folds, the high slits that run up each leg, offering a glimpse of your smooth skin with each step that you took.

Ethereal. Powerful. His.

If Sasuke had to describe with only a few words, it would be exactly these.

"Can I help you?" your voice brought Sasuke back to reality and he cleared his throat, his face immediately falling into its usual stoic expression. You smirked as you noticed the apple of his cheeks becoming a slight shade of red, the idea of still having that effect on him after years tickling your sensitive ego.

"Your date is here," he said blankly, his jaw clenching as he tried hard not to let his eyes wander down once again. Damn you, damn you, damn you! When did you even got that dress? Sasuke was pretty sure he knew each piece of clothing in your wardrobe and yet he has never seen this one. There was no doubt in his mind that you didn't do all this for the awkward loser outside, you did this for him.

"Alright," you hummed, leaning your head to the side as you fixed one of your earrings, "And why are you here? You could've just send him down, you didn't have to play the role of a tour guide."

And of course your big mouth just had to shatter whatever fantasy was swirling in Sasuke's head as he was still staring at you. He rolled his eyes, a quiet scoff escaping his lips.

"If I didn't show him where you are, he would've been doing circles around the compound all night," he gave you a funny look, as he lifted a brow, "Really? You said he is the "whole package" - kind, smart, handsome, ... so far the only true thing turned out to be that he indeed have all his limbs."

You clicked your tongue as you moved toward the large mirror in the corner of the living room, completely ignoring your ex-husband who watched each one of yours steps like a predator ready to pounce on his prey any second now.

"Oh, don't be so harsh!" you glanced over your shoulder so you can give him a small smirk, "He can be polished here and there, but he still has his charm."

He let out a small chuckle, as he started to make slow, deliberate steps in your direction.

"He came to pick you up wearing socks with ducks..."

You lifted a brow, your mischievous gaze meeting Sasuke's through the reflection of the mirror.

"Oh? I didn't know that they did socks with your face on them, let alone that he is a fan."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed at your childish jab, before his features twisted in amusement. Since you saw that one childhood photo with Team 7 years ago, you just couldn't let his old hairstyle go. While he usually would scoff or roll his eyes at your antics, now he held your gaze firmly as he closed the remaining distance between you, his chest pressing against your upper back.

"You have always been one hell of a woman...," he muttered, his breath tickling the back of your neck. Your breathing increased slightly as you watched him lean over your shoulder, the playful tension that was filling the room till now quickly turning into something else.

"Do you think he can handle you?" Sasuke continued, the side of his face pressing against yours as he continued to stare right into your soul. His hand made its way toward your waist, harshly pulling you back against him till you could feel the print of his hardness right against your bottom. You let out a short gasp, instinctively leaning back against him.

"Do you think he can keep up with your little games? To match your fire, your temper..."

His hand moved lower, the tips of his rough fingers grazing the bit of visible skin there causing another shaky breath to leave your lips. It was embarrassing, how wet and bothered he managed to get you just with a single stare and a few words. The lacy underwear you have been wearing was already soaked, sticking to your puffy lips as you tried to rub your thighs together before Sasuke dug his fingers in your skin, stilling you in place.

"You're so dirty," he laughs quietly, his chapped lips grazing the tip of your ear, before landing a small kiss right behind it, "Was that your plan all along? To bring a naive fool to our home, so I can fuck some brains into you? Remind you that you belong to me?"

The blissful state your mind was in was shattered to pieces as he reminded you about your date. Shit, he was right in front of the door! As if he somehow read your mind, just second later there was an urgent knock on the door.

"Hello? Anybody there?"

Your eyes widened and you tried to push your ex-husband's hand away from you, which made him only grip you tighter. His hips buckled against you and you bit your lip, holding back a groan.

"Tell him you are going to be a minute," Sasuke instructed against your ear, his lips slowly kissing their way down to your shoulder, "Don't send him away... yet."

There was a hint of darkness in his tone and this was your first sign that you should do anything but what he is telling you. As his hand slipped through the slit of your dress and between you thighs, however, you couldn't even form a single thought in your brain, let alone follow it.

"I will be a.. ah!... minute," you called out, your voice shaking as you felt your ex-husband dragging his fingers against your laced pussy, collecting the juices that were now freely flowing through the thin material, "I am just about to be... ready."

Sasuke couldn't help but smile triumphally not only at the fact that you did exactly what he told you, but that no matter how much you said you hated him and how many stunts you pulled against him, you could still crumble in his hand with him barely doing anything.

He grazed your soaked pussy, avoiding the bundle of nerves that you desperately tried to get him to touch by wriggling your hips left and right. It was laughable, really - you always talked back to him, you always liked to oppose... yet in moments like now, there was nothing but pathetic whimpers leaving your lips.

"Sasuke," you groaned in a hushed town, earing nothing but a low chuckle from your ex-husband. The pads of his ring and middle finger circled your entrance, his smirk becoming bigger as he could feel your soaked panties basically clutching to your lips now.

"What is it, my wife?" he dragged the last word down, his mouth latching against the sensitive skin on the side of your neck. Your head fell back against his shoulder, both of your hands now gripping his muscular forearm as he finally pushed your panties to the side. As he reached for your clit, gently rolling the little pearl against his thumb and forefinger, you let out a loud moan, unable to hold back anymore. Your knees buckled and you pressed your ass and back firmly against him, seeking any type of steadiness before you fall to the floor.

"What do you want, hm?" Sasuke muttered, his eyes moving back to the mirror so he could observe your fucked out expression - eyes shut tightly; glossy lips open in the prettiest 'o' shape; red colours spreading from your cheeks all down your neck... Fuck, you were a handful, but for this sight he was ready to take anything you threw his way - from insults to your poor attempts to make him jealous.

"Sasuke, you know what I want," you whined again, your head rolling against his shoulder till you found yourself face to face with him, "Just give it to me."

In any other situation he would've made you wait longer - after all you had been giving him nothing but headaches in the past few months. But as he looked down at you, his pretty wife, who was practically asking him to take her once again, to reclaim her as fully his... How could he say 'no'?

Spreading your glistering puffy lips apart, he collected some of your arousal, before roughly burying two fingers inside. You immediately fall forward, your hands gripping the sides of the mirror, as Sasuke immediately start pumping his digits in a rough pace. It's not hurtful - you are so wet, you are pretty sure you could even take his dick without any preparation - yet he couldn't mask the slight smugness he felt once he felt how tight you were. A clear sign you haven’t been with another man since him.

“Ah-Sas-..Sasuke!” you panted as his fingers brushed that one spongy spot inside of you that was making you see stars. The room was filled with your gasps and the slick sound of his hand rhythmically moving in and out of you, so loud that Sasuke was sure that the poor fool outside was hearing just as clearly.

As he felt the slight shiver of your thighs he roughly pulled his fingers out, before landing a loud slap on your quivering pussy. You gasped, your eyes immediately opening wide so you can glare at your ex-husband.

"Arrogant prick!" you thought as turned to face him but before you could say the words out loud, he wrapped his hand around your forearm before roughly pulling you toward the door.

"What are you doing?" you hissed, your eyes widening as your stumbled after him. You expected the jealousy, but making you open the door in the dishevelled state you were in was just cruel. Sasuke didn't answer, but just as you thought he would open the door and force you to face your poor date, he turned you around and slammed your back against it.

"Hello? Is everything okay in there?" your date's voice sounded and Sasuke couldn't help but roll his eyes. There is no way that idiot did not hear your whimpers of pleasure and especially the sound of your drenched pussy sucking your ex-husband's fingers in an out, why was he still here? He was either deaf or really, really ignorant.

Either way, Sasuke was determined to show him who you belong to. Or even better, he was determined to make you show him.

"Everything is fine... I will be a minute," you called out, your eyes focused on the mismatched ones of your lover - fuck, ex-lover.

Damn you, Sasuke Uchiha!

Deep down whatever consciousness you had left was quietly whispering that you should feel bad. That you actually genuinely liked the man on the other side of the door and, for once, you wanted to experience love. Real one, gentle... like the ones of all the other couples you keep seeing on the streets. Without the fighting, without the hatred, without the constant pain and hurt.

Yet as you stared at Sasuke, you felt yourself being consumed once again by the fire that has always burned between you. It was maddening and reckless to go back into the same cycle, the one that felt more like a battle rather than war.

"You are unbelievable!" you groaned quietly, your teeth gritting against each other, "Why can't you just let go? I don't want you anymore! I want something normal, something that doesn't hurt all the time!"

Sasuke's expression darkened and he narrowed his eyes while studying you. He remained silent for a minute and you thought that he may finally back off, but instead he stepped even closer, trapping you between his muscular chest and the door. His hand moved to cradle your jaw, while his head leaned forward.

"You can keep repeating the same lie over and over," he muttered, his lips barely brushing against yours, "But you know that is not who you are. It's not who we are."

A small sigh left past your lips and Sasuke used it as sign to close the little distance between you. You and him have been intimate thousands of times before, but your shared kisses can be counted on the fingers of your one hand. Maybe because kisses were usually saved for lovers, the one that shared the sweet and kind type of love, rather than the raw and brutal one you had between you. Or maybe they have always been too intimate, a confession that neither of you were ready to make till now.

Unlike other times this kiss was not just a peck or a battle of dominance. It was slow and deep, an act which was supposed to show everything that both of you couldn't put into words. As he licked your bottom lip, you opened your mouth to welcome his tongue in it - an opportunity which he eagerly took, pressing you harder against the door with his body. His hand roamed between your waist and your thighs, before he reached for your chest, grabbing one of your breasts and squeezing roughly.

"Ah, Sasuke!" you gasped your head falling back, as his lips moved down your neck, softly sucking and biting the sensitive skin there. While there was a certain roughness to his moves, he was still way gentler than usual, making you rub your thighs together in a weak attempt to get some friction. He must've saw that because a second later, he roughly pushed his own leg between yours, preventing you from getting any type of relief.

You opened your eyes just enough to send him a glare but closed them once again as you felt his fingers swiftly untying the top of your corset, before pulling your breasts out and pinching your left nipple. Sasuke could barely hold back a smirk, as you watched your back arch forward, seeking even closer contact with him.

As he moved down your body, placing damp kiss down your collarbone, chest and side of your breast, his hand found it's way under your dress once again. He started to draw small circles on your swollen clit, as his lips wrapped around your other nipple and before you could sink your teeth in your lip, you made the loudest, most pornographic moan both Sasuke and your date have ever heard.

A few moves were enough for your legs to start trembling once again, the knot from your previous denied orgasm forming once again at the pit of your stomach. You opened your eyelids as you looked down at Sasuke, who was still kissing, sucking and biting your breasts, leaving his marks all over the soft skin.

"Sasuke...," you mumbled, your hips buckling as he slipped two of his fingers inside, his thumb increasing its pace on your clit. Suddenly everything felt overwhelming - the image of your ex-husband in front of you, the sound of your date who was now eagerly knocking on the door behind you, mumbling something about how all the Uchihas can go to hell, the light above you which was suddenly shining brighter the closer you were getting to the edge.

"Come for me," Sasuke muttered against the plush skin of your boob, the harsh bite that followed enough to make the knot inside of you snap. Your fingers pulled his black locks earing a small hiss from him, finally freeing your chest from his lips.

He held you close to him as you slowly came back to your senses, your body limp in his arms. The knocking on the door behind you had stopped long ago, the memory of your date swearing and throwing the flowers he had brought against the window next to you now echoing at the back of your mind. Before you had the time to think about him, however, your ex-husband fell to his knees, his hand lifting one of your legs on his shoulder as he lifted your dress above your hips.

Sasuke had felt the lacy material under his fingers earlier, but as he was now looking at the type of underwear you had chosen to go out on a date with another man, he felt the earlier jealousy coming back to his chest. White lacy panties, which were now drenched with both your arousal and the juices from your release, with a white bow on the front... really?

"Were you planning to let him fuck you?", he asked annoyed, his forehead creasing as he glanced up at you. A bright red colour covered your cheeks, but you turned to the side, refusing to answer.

Were you? Sure, maybe the thought had crossed your mind and maybe this is exactly why you choose these panties. But deep down, you knew that even if you went on that date and let him bring you back to his house, you would've probably backed out in the last minute.

No one can handle you the way Sasuke can.

"Answer!" Sasuke snapped impatiently, his fingers pinching your swollen and oversensitive clit through your panties. You quickly shook your head, your hands burying themselves in his silky hair once again so you can pull his head away just enough to see his eyes.

"Of course not!" you said and Sasuke rolled his eyes, half-expecting for you to deny the truth anyway. If he wasn't face to face to your drenched cunt, the aroma of your juices fogging his mind with only one thought - that he needed to have you - he would've probably told you off. But even if he was one of the most powerful men on the planet, he was still just a man - and with this ethereal sight in front of hem, he could do no more than remain on his knees and worship you the way you deserved to be worshiped.

With one harsh move, your panties pooled down your ankles while your ex-husband buried his head between your legs. Sasuke always prided himself to be a man of self-control and discipline, yet the moment he got to taste you, he forgot any of that.

Heavy puffs of air mixed with loud moans, as he latched his slightly chapped lips on your clit, sucking harshly before lightly flicking the tip of his tongue against it. Your hands harshly gripped his hair, making an attempt to push him away from your oversensitive folds, which were met with a rough slap against the inside of your thight.

"Hold still, brat," he mumbled as his tongue buried itself inside of you, his nose rubbing against your shiny pearl. You wanted to snap at him, tell him he knows how much you hate when he calls you that, but your body could do nothing else than to buckle against his face, your eyelids shutting down so tightly, bursts of rainbow colours infiltrated your closed vision.

He could feel your walls tightening around his tongue, more of your sweet nectar flowing from your pussy as he hungrily drank everything you gave him. Sasuke was rarely so desperate and open, completely giving up control as he made a mess out of both of you.

"Sasuke, please-," you tried to beg, an usual softness filling your voice as you sought mercy from him. And while his pants were getting uncomfortably tight, he wanted to teach you a lesson, to show you that you are his and his only. You deserved no mercy.

Not after all your little stunts recently.

Sasuke could feel his tip leaking pre-cum just from all the sweet sounds you made, encouraging him to only start lapping at your puffy lips faster and faster, his fingers digging themselves into your soft thigh as you tried to pull away and push yourself closer at the same time.

"One more," he whispered into your pussy, his lips and chin dripping with your arousal, "I know you can give me one more."

You whimpered in response, your head falling back as he pulled a second orgasm out of you, slurping all of your juices without pulling away even for a second to breathe.

His erratic movements soon turned into sloppy licks as he cleaned you up, his tongue catching every single drop of your release. You twitched in his grasp, weakly pushing him away, the feeling of his mouth too much for your oversensitive pussy right now.

Sasuke slowly lowered your leg from his shoulder back on the ground, his arm tightly gripping the side of your hip as he tried to stabilize your quivering form.

"You came only twice and you are already shaking like a leaf," he noted with a smirk, before standing up back to his feet. Blinking a few times, you tried to ground yourself back to reality, before your arms found their way around his neck, leaning your full weight against him.

"Gosh, just shut up!" you mumbled, not wanting to break out from your euphoric state just to deal with the annoying ramblings of your ex-husband. He clicked his tongue, his hand moving to your lower back and pressing you flush against him.

For the first time in all the years you have known each other, you stood in each other's embrace without the weight of anger, hate or pride threatening to crush you. There was no shouting, no flying objects, no painful insults - just you, holding each other and silently admitting that neither of you wanted normal.

You craved chaos. You craved the intensity, the frustration, the pain, the longing.

You craved him.

Pulling back just enough to look at him, your eyes searches his mismatched ones for something - anger, hesitation, adoration, anything. You wanted... you didn't even know what you wanted either. Maybe some clarity, maybe a sign that it doesn't always have to be this messy, this hurtful and this complicated.

All you were met with was the same dark gaze that he always had when he laid his eyes on you. It was never loving or soft, not in the way that he was looking at your children, for example. With you they were always holding a storm of emotions behind them, one which you could never fully decipher.

Desire? Regret? Irritation? Admiration? Pride? Hate?

They were all there, clashing and mixing in such a way that you were never sure if he was looking at you like you were his biggest regret in life or like he couldn't bear the thought of you being anywhere else but by his side.

Hesitantly, you lifted yourself on your toes and pressed your lips against him. It was a gentle peck, unlike your kiss earlier. Sasuke stiffened for a moment, his eyes widening at the unexpected softness from you. Was this another one of your games? But before he could think more about it, you grabbed his hand and started to pull him back into the house and up the stairs to your bedroom.

Sasuke followed you almost instinctively, a certain cautiousness to his steps. He watched you open the door, before you gently pushed him in till the back of his knees hit the bed and he reluctantly sat down. His eyes twitched as you stood before his open legs, expertly undoing the rest of your corset before throwing it to the side. Your hands then slowly pushed the straps of your dress down, allowing it to fall down at your ankles, leaving you completely bare in front of him.

"What are you doing?" he asked sharply as he watched you climb up his lap. Despite his hostility, however, he didn't push you away. Instead his eyes bore into yours, studying you and trying to understand the underlying motive of your actions.

You were never this... soft. Not with him, anyway. Your sex life was a mirror of your relationship - urgent, rough, fast. You never made love - you fucked. It often felt like a battle of dominance, rather than a union between your bodies.

Now, however, you were taking your time. Your forehead gently pressed against his, as your hand started to slowly unbutton his shirt, before sliding it down his muscular shoulders. You have seen his body countless of times before, but this time it felt different. There was no other light other than the bright moonlight coming through the window, as you dragged your fingers across the numerous healed scars across his skin. It was such a stark contrast - the softness of your hands, ones that never even held a weapon, against the roughness of his body, one built for battles and war.

His breath hitched as he felt one of your hands slide down the shoulder of his missing arm and he involuntarily twitched away, almost as if he was trying to hide it away from you. His reaction was not surprising - he always tried to hide the imperfect parts of himself, his Rinnegan and his missing arm, either by using the solace of the darkness or by having you in such positions that your back would be facing his naked form.

In this moment there was nowhere to hide. And Sasuke wasn't sure he liked that.

"Don't," he said, his voice rough, "I swear, if this is one of your games-"

Another unexpected peck on his lips interrupted his train of thoughts as you continued your exploration of his body. It was weird not only for him, but also for you - he never let you in like that, not when he was completely exposed and vulnerable. It felt like you explored him for the first time, and in a way, you actually were. No walls, no layers of hate and tension between you.

"Shh...," you whispered, your breath ghosting across his skin, "I am not going to hurt you."

Sasuke wanted to scoff at your words. There was no reality or place in time where the two of you didn't hurt each other. Neither of you knew how to stop. Pain was part of who you were and as twisted as it was, it was at the core of your love for each other.

His muscles tensed as your hands slid down his abs and started to work on the strings of his pants. His hand instinctively shot out to catch your wrist, stopping your mid-way of unzipping his pants, as his breathing became heavier. He locked his eyes on you, searching for a sign, any sign that you were just playing him - either a small smirk or a mischievous spark in your eyes - yet there were none.

The look in your eyes was one of a lover, not an enemy.

Loosening his grip on your wrist, he watched you as you pulled his zipper down before he lifted his hips so you can slide down his pants. Your lips found their way to his neck, pressing soft kisses against his warm skin as you slowly trained downward. He let out a shaky breath as he felt you kissing his scars, spending extra time on the ones on his chest and abdomen before you slid down on your knees in front of him.

In the past, you have always refused to pleasure him orally. "It's something that only lovers do", you would say with a frown, drawing a clear boundaries of what you were willing to do in the bedroom. Sasuke never pushed for it, either - one thing about him is that no matter how dominant or controlling he was, he respected your wishes. As someone who wasn't particularly needy or with a high libido, he didn't care that much.

But as he watched you grab his rock hard cock in your hand, slowly rubbing your thumb across the tip and smearing the leaking pre-cum, he wondered if he actually didn't care or if he just never knew what he was missing. The sigh before him - his beautiful, defiant wife sitting on her knees and slowly pumping his dick, while placing soft kisses across his thighs - was one that has only appeared once or twice in his dreams before.

Your pace was slow, almost painful as you moved closer and closer to where he was needing you the most, your eyes shifting toward his face every few seconds in order to catch each one of his reactions. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed loudly, a pink colour covering his pale cheeks and neck. His eyes bore into yours, a barely addible moan leaving his lips once you finally wrap your lips around his pink mushroom tip.

Digging one of your hands in his thigh, you take more of him, slowly moving your head back and forth while coating his dick in a mix of your spit and his pre-cum. Sasuke groans once he feels him reaching the back of your throat and his hand instinctively goes to your head, gripping your ponytail as he tried to ground himself and not cum right then and there.

If there was heaven, this had to be it. And maybe he was there, because in what world would his ex-wife suck him off on an evening she was supposed to be out with someone else? You looked up at him through your lashes as you hollowed your cheeks, a new wave of pleasure washing over your body as you saw him closing his eyes.

"Fuck...," he breathed out, a thin layer of sweat starting to form on the top of his forehead, "My wife... just like that.."

His words only seemed to encourage you and you hummed around him, the vibrations making him buck his hips involuntarily. As you started to move faster, his grip on your hair tightened and your hand trailed down back between your legs where your pussy was clenching around nothing.

You pulled away slightly, twirling your tongue over his slit before sliding it down all the way down to his balls. You laid a few small kisses on each one, before taking his left one in your mouth and sucking harshly, earning yourself a sharp gasp from him. It was almost intoxicating, having so much power over a man, who had spend years trying to make you submit to him.

As you took his cock in your mouth again, you put even more effort in trying to bring him closer to the edge. Burying your face against his h pelvis, you flattened your tongue as you felt his head brushing at the back of your throat. Shiny tears started to roll down your cheeks and you gagged around his fat length, the need to pull away to take a breath burning your lungs, yet you didn't stop.

"Ah.. I'm.. close...," he breathed out and you could see his chest starting to move rapidly up and down, as his hold on your head tightened. Once you started to feel him pulsating, however, you pulled out with a loud 'pop', grinning once he gives you a nasty glare.

"What the actual fuck?" he snaps, his brain still foggy with the need to cum, "Are you serious?"

You only roll your eyes in response to your ex-husband's dramatic reaction, before you stood up and made your way back on top of him Resting your hands on his chest, you pushed him down till he was laying flat on his back and you hovered your dripping cunt over his pulsating cock.

Whatever other complaint he was ready to give quickly died in his throat as the moonlight exposed your full beauty in front of him - makeup smeared across your cheeks, fat tears still pooling at the corners of your eyes, pussy glistering in the juices of your own arousal. It was a messy sight - filthy, even - and a perfect representation of your love for each other.

"I need you inside of me," you gasp, your thighs trembling as you brush your swollen clit against his tip, "I need to -ah! I need to feel you!"

You didn't wait for a response as you grabbed his cock and the base and aligned it with your entrance, before slowly sinking in. Your eyes remained locked on his and almost in unison, a loud moan left both of your lips.

"Fuck..," you whimpered, your walls involuntarily tightening around Sasuke's dick as you adjusted to his length. His mouth and fingers could make you see stars, but nothing could even remotely compare to the feeling of having him inside of you. It felt like you were made for each other, his thickness stretching you out just enough for the pain to be pleasurable.

As you started to slowly move up and down, Sasuke gripped the side of your waist helping your keep a steady rhythm. His teeth sank in his bottom lip as his moved down and focused to where the two of you connected.

You let out a loud yelp when he suddenly landed a heavy slap on one of your plush ass cheeks, digging his fingers into its softness. He could feel your juices leaking all over his thighs, the sound of skin slapping against skin becoming louder as your moves become faster.

"Good girl," he muttered, his feet planting firmly on the bed so he can start thrusting up. He did try to entertain the idea of giving you control at least for one night, he really did, but fuck - how could he, when you looked so divine above him?

The new angle allowed for his cock to hit straight into that one sensitive spot inside you and you suddenly lost balance, collapsing on top of his chest as his hand moved toward the back of your head, keeping you down so he can hit that same spot over and over again.

"Sas-ah!" you whined, your nails digging into his hard chest, leaving angry red marks after themselves. Sasuke could only smirk, his heavy breath tickling the side of your face as he picked up the pace.

"What's wrong?" he teased, his hand yanking your head back by your hear so he can inspect your face, "Did you get tired already?"

Opening your eyes, you let out a few tears fall freely down your cheeks as you glared down at him. The mix of pleasure and pain was clouding your mind and you could do nothing but moan helplessly as he roughly fucked you, completely disregarding the sensual and gentle tone you tried to settle earlier.

As you started clenching around him, the first sign that you were approaching yet another orgasm, Sasuke swiftly turned you around, laying you under him as he hovered over you, the tip of his cock brushing against your entrance, yet not entering fully.

"Sasuke," you whined, trying to move yourself down so he can fill the burning emptiness inside of you, "C'mon, don't stop now!"

Sasuke only smirked at your words before grabbing his cock, sliding it up and down your pussy lips, before flicking your aching clit with his head. You let out a small moan, the oversensitivity causing your cunt to clench around nothing.

"Beg for it."

No amount of pleasure could cloud your mind enough for such words to slip by without your eyes immediately widening. Was he serious? As you watched him looking at you with that small annoying smile on his lips, you tried your best to avoid the aching need between your legs as you snorted loudly in response.

"I rather die needy and unsatisfied," you huffed, your brows furrowing as a small crease appeared in the middle of your sweaty forehead, "Than to beg my douchebag ex-husband to fuck me."

Your words seemed to humour him as he pushed the tip in, earning a small gasp from you before withdrawing again, his hand slowly pumping his cock as he watched you wriggling beneath him.

"What happened to "I am not going to hurt you"?" he tilted his head to the side, "I thought that included insults and your usual low blows as well."

You rolled your eyes, frustration mixing with annoyance as he continued to stroke himself in front of you, completely ignoring the fact you were dripping with need to be touched by him.

"Since when you are such a rambler?" you snapped, a loud huff escaping your lips as you started to lift yourself on your elbows, "If I knew you would waste my night like this, I would've just spend it with my date inste-"

Your sentence was cut off short as he suddenly wrapped his hand around your throat, pressing you back into the pillow as he entered you with one move. He was not gentle or careful - his dick slid all the way in, his heavy balls slapping against your ass as he dug his nails into your neck.

"Shut up!" he hissed, as his pace increased even more from before. Your legs dangled weakly around his hips, as you shut your eyes, the all familiar knot starting to form inside of your stomach once again. His pace was brutal, almost animalistic, as the headboard of the bed was hitting against the wall with a rhythmic thump! thump! thump!.

"You always have to open your big mouth, don't you?" he panted, his abs clenching as he adjusted his hips forward, practically folding your body under his weight, "I'm sick of your little games, I'm sick of your attitude... fuck, I'm so sick of you!"

Instead of taking insult, your jaw dopped in a silent scream as your back arched in pleasure. You could feel your orgasm coming closer and closer, as Sasuke was squishing your under his body, his pelvis rubbing against your pulsating clit. You could feel his pace becoming more erratic as he chased his own pleasure, his fingers still tightly wrapped around your throat.

"You are going to marry me again," he panted against your mouth as he pressed his forehead against yours, "And this time I won't let you go... Ever. Again."

Just like the first "proposal", this was more of a declaration rather than a question. And just like the last time you found yourself unable to defy him, as his words combined with the way you could feel each inch of him rubbing against your tight walls, was enough to send you over the edge.

A loud moan escaped your lips as your pussy leaked cum around his cock, forming a white circle at the base. His hips stuttered as he felt you clamp around him, ropes of thick cum filling your tight pussy till it started to overflow with his seed. He thrusted once, twice, making sure he had emptied fully inside of you before he collapsed on top of you, his face burying where your shoulder and neck meet.

You let out a sigh, your hands instinctively wrapping around him as you ran your fingers through his black hair. Slowly, his breath became steadier and his heart rate slower as both of you let the reality of what you just did settle. His last words rang in your head, as your eyes remained focused on the ceiling above you.

"It would never end, would it?" you whispered in a hushed tone, almost as if you were hesitant to break the silence between you two. Sasuke stilled, his head moving to the side so he can give you a questioning glance.

"This cycle that we are in... This constant push and pull, the hurt, the twisted love that we have for each other. "

You could feel his body tense at your last words, as he let them sink. Slowly, his hand let go of your throat, before he gently brushed a few hairs away from your sweaty forehead. His gaze softened as he adjusted his position so he can study your face, his eyes trailing down the messy streaks of makeup down your cheeks.

"No," he finally murmured, his voice quieter than usual, "Maybe it's not meant to end. Maybe that's just who we are."

"What? Broken?", you laughed dryly, turning your head to the side so your eyes meet. Sasuke's expression remained blank, as his hand moved down so he can take yours in his. He didn't answer but the way his jaw clenched and his eyes hardened were enough of confirmation. He didn't want to admit it out loud, but this is exactly who you were - two broken people who never learned to give or receive anything else other than raw and painful love.

"I do love you," he suddenly said, breaking the short silence that has settled between you, "But I only know one way to."

His confession hung between you as an open wound that both of you tried to cover for too long, causing a mix of relief and heartache to swirl inside your chest. His fingers brushed against your ring finger, where your wedding band once was, and you closed your eyes, silently accepting that no matter how hard you tried to escape, you were always pulled back.

Letting go of his hair, you reached toward the bedside cabinet before you pulled first drawer open, and you got a small velvet box out. Inside, your polished wedding band shined brightly, reflecting the moonlight as you pulled it out and slid it back on your finger. Sasuke's eyes carefully followed your movements, before he took your hand in his once again, his head falling against your chest as he inhaled your scent.

You had made many mistakes in your life. Ironically, the biggest one was not him.

Instead, it was the illusion that you could escape from him, or from what you had. You couldn't. And the truth is, deep inside, you didn't want to.

cc artwork: pinterest <3

[call-me-little-sunshine84]

Watcher in the Woods

Pairing: Remmick x female reader

Warnings: 18+ MNDI ~ smut, infidelity, oral sex, unprotected sex, multiple orgasms, vampirism

Summary: you come across a stranger in the woods outside your house, and he makes you a tempting offer

W/C: 2150

A/N: I haven't written in a while, but I am absolutely feral for this man. I don't even know if this is any good, it was just an idea I couldn't get out of my brain

Night closed in, the cotton candy sky fading to black. Even at this hour the heat was still oppressive, the humidity making your thin night shirt cling to your body. That was one thing you still hadn’t gotten used to about living in the south - it was always so damn hot.

You had thought moving with your husband for his job would have been a welcome change of scenery; that it might help fix the cracks that were already beginning to show in your marriage. Instead, you were miserable. While he settled in quickly and easily, you struggled to find another job in a city you knew nothing about. When you finally did, you ended up working opposite shifts, you on days and him on nights. Only seeing him in passing, you were quickly becoming strangers. When you did spend time together, it always resulted in a fight, or worse - you ignored each other completely. The strain was becoming more than you could bear, but you didn’t know how to leave. You could almost feel the fragmented pieces of yourself that broke off a little more each day.

Your house was literally in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by woods. Initially you were scared to be there by yourself at night, but you quickly realized it was really pretty peaceful. The best feature was the wrap-around porch, complete with a swing. It wasn’t long before you were spending every night outside, watching the stars and trying to clear your head.

That night, you headed out the front door, glass of whiskey in your hand, when you realized something felt different. The air felt charged, heavy. Downing your drink, you sat the glass down and took a few steps off the porch. A noise in the distance caught your attention, barely audible over the sound of the insects in the woods. Was that…music? Surely not. You had no neighbors to speak of, and there was no reason for anyone to be in the woods surrounding the house. You had seen enough true crime documentaries to know that you should immediately run in the house, lock the door, and call the police. But it felt like something about the music wouldn’t let you. It was haunting and melodic, and before you knew it, you were walking toward the source.

Carefully making your way through the woods, you approached a small clearing. The music was louder now; it had to be close. Parting the last of the branches in front of you revealed a man sitting on a fallen tree branch. He was playing a banjo and singing, only stopping when he saw you. Panic should have set in, but just looking at him transfixed you.

He was gorgeous. Beautiful really, and not in that pretty-boy way that usually signaled a bad attitude and shittier personality. He looked up at you with puppy dog eyes that stole your ability to think. “Hey there, name’s Remmick,” he drawled in a southern accent so thick it was practically dripping. “What are you doing out here?” you asked as he sat the banjo down. “Just playin’ some music,” he replied with a wink. Irritated at the obvious avoidance you said “Yes, I can see that. I mean why are you here. On my property.”

“Well darlin’, I’ve been waiting for you,” he replied with a smile. Ignoring your brain’s screaming warnings, you moved closer to him. “What are you talking about? I don’t know you and you sure as hell don’t know me.”

What could this man possibly want with you? He cocked an eyebrow and seemed to be considering his response. “Don’t I though? I’ve been out here watching you for a long time, practically since the day you moved here. I’ve seen how your so-called husband treats you. I’ve heard you cry yourself to sleep at night over him. I’ve seen his indifference, how you just want to be loved and respected. What if I told you I can offer you that and so much more?”

Just like that, in a split second, your world shifted. It understandably took a minute to even be able to form a coherent sentence. “Wait, you say you’ve been watching me for months. Why would you do that? There’s nothing special about me,” you replied, spinning out from the thousand thoughts running through your brain. “Well, now, it saddens me to hear you say that. You’re so much more than you think you are. You just need someone to show you. I can give you an eternity of happiness, of pleasure like you’ve never known. No getting sick, no growing old. And you’ll never feel like you’re not enough. Come with me and I can give you everything you ever wanted.” He held out a hand and fixed you with those doe eyes again.

What was he talking about? How was any of this even possible? Did you drink more whiskey than you thought, and this was an alcohol-induced hallucination? Narrowing your eyes, you asked him “How? What are you?” Looking back up at you, his eyes flashed red, and he opened his mouth, revealing a row of razor-sharp fangs.

Vampire??

You should have run, displayed at least some kind of self-preservation instinct, but you didn’t. Instead, every cell in your body seemed to come alive. You felt excited, curious. You had always been intrigued by the darker things in life, and now here it was right in front you.

He seemed to sense the shift in your thoughts. You walked toward him, standing face to face. He was perfectly still, afraid if he moved even an inch it would scare you off. Reaching a hand out tentatively, you ran a finger slowly across the points of his teeth. Fascination danced in your eyes, and he closed his with a look of absolute satisfaction.

“Again, I’m asking you why me.” Pure longing crossed his face. “It’s something in your blood. It calls to me. I’ve been around a long long time and never felt anything like it. It’s like a sickness, a burning need that never goes away. I have to taste you, have to have you,” he practically begged.

Thinking about it, what exactly were you holding onto? You had no family left, no friends, a dead-end job, and a failing marriage. Here was a sexy stranger that wanted to worship you. It had been so long since you felt wanted by anyone and it was intoxicating. “And what if I say no?” you asked. He shrugged. “I guess I’ll have to go back to watching you from afar,” he responded. “Really? Just like that? No repercussions?” you ask, skeptical. How was any of this real? His seeming desperation made it hard to believe he would just let it go if you said no.

He gave a small laugh. “I could have just taken you, claimed you for my own a thousand times before tonight, but I wanted to give you a choice. I wanted you to come to me willingly.”

You asked the only question your brain could come up with. “Would it hurt?” He paused before answering. “Only for a moment. After that you would never have to hurt again.”

Were you really considering this? Then an idea struck, and you couldn’t help but smile. You had never felt so powerful, so emboldened before. “Okay, convince me. If you want me to give up my humanity for you then you need to show me what I’ll be getting in return. If you really want me so badly then I need you to prove it. Make me believe you’re more than just a lot of pretty words.” The fire returned to his eyes. “Oh sugar, that I can certainly do.”

Before you could blink, he was on you, literally flying you back through the trees and onto the porch, slamming against the screen door. “Let me in,” he growled, already trying to rip your clothes off, kissing your neck fervently. “Mmmm, come in. Please,” you answered, pulling him by the straps of his suspenders over the threshold of the doorway. He pushed you against the wall, tongue tracing designs over the delicate skin of your neck. You burned from his touch, nerves on fire with desire. One of his hands snaked its way up the inside of your thigh, stopping when he reached your apex, ripping your panties off with one quick jerk.

“Is all this for me?” he asked, running a finger between your legs while you whimpered. You managed a nod. It was embarrassing how fast you felt yourself falling over the edge for him.

“He really has neglected you, hasn’t he?” Again, you nodded, tears brimming in your eyes. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore; you’re never leaving me.” What would have sounded like a threat coming from anyone else only served to turn you on even more coming from him.

Tossing your clothes aside you stumbled your way into your bedroom, falling onto the bed. You looked at him, his pale body ethereal in the moonlight from the nearby window. Is this really going to be my life? Eternity with this gorgeous man?

Fingertips ghosted slowly over his chest, admiring every inch of him. He pressed you back against the mattress, trailing kisses down your chest. His tongue licked along the slopes of your breasts, teeth gently biting at your nipples. When he looked up again his pupils were blown wide, the expression on his face alone enough to have you clenching the sheet in your fists. He was propped along your side, the length of him heavy against your leg.

Working his way down your body, he pushed your legs apart and settled between them. He latched his mouth onto you, his movements slow and purposeful; gentle licks that felt like nothing you had ever experienced. You could feel his fangs extending, brushing against that most sensitive skin, and your body bucked off the bed. He did his best to stay attached through all your movement, your thighs shaking as an orgasm hit you hard and fast. “Good girl,” he said, a self-satisfied grin on his face.

“Remmick, please,” you begged. “Please what?” he asked, already knowing exactly what you wanted. You whimpered. “Please, please just fuck me. Now.” He shook his head. “Now darlin’, I’m supposed to be convincing you, remember?” he laughed. “I can’t just give in now, can I?” You groaned, your own words biting you in the ass. “I don’t care. I don’t need convincing. I’m yours,” you replied, trying to grind yourself against him to feel some kind of relief. The burning need was lighting you on fire from the inside out. Powerful hands gripped your waist and held you in place. “Are you sure you know what you’re agreeing to?” he asked, fire blazing in his eyes once again. You gave a small nod. You had accepted it in your head; this offer of his.

“Okay,” he said, kissing you fiercely while lining himself up and entering you. A thousand tiny stars exploded behind your eyes as he set his pace, hips rocking in slow, measured movement, giving you time to adjust to him. It seemed like such a cliche, but he felt like he was made for you, his body perfectly molded to yours. He settled on his knees, drawing your legs up against his chest, his hands roaming your body. He was hitting all the right places, and the pure pleasure felt like it would tear you apart. That feeling was building again, driving you toward yet another orgasm. He sensed it; you could tell he was close also. His hips snapped at a brutal pace and you felt the wave break inside you.

As you rode out the final pulses of the most powerful orgasm you had ever experienced, Remmick grabbed your hair and pulled your neck to the side. You felt his fangs sink in, pain and pleasure mixing in perfect harmony. He drank and drank with no end in sight. Your vision blurred and you felt everything fade to black; you heard him say one last word as your heart beat for the final time: mine.

Time passed - it could have been minutes or hours, you didn’t know. When you finally opened your eyes again you were still in bed, but Remmick had cleaned you up and redressed you. He was lying beside you. “Hey there darlin’,” he said, kissing you on the forehead. “How are you feeling?”

Stretching your limbs, everything felt different. “Is it…am I…” you asked. He nodded. “We’ve got to get out of here; the sun will be up soon.” He rose, holding out his hand. This might have been the oddest day of your life, but now you felt like you had a purpose. You finally belonged - to the night, and to him.

[muzansfangs]

Il nome mio nessun saprà (no one will know my name).

Starring: The Salesman x f!reader; mention to Seong Gi-hun x f!reader (platonic relationship); mention to Cho Sang-woo;

Format: multi-chapter story;

Warnings: nsfw, panic attack, anxiety, fear of being stalked, mention to gagging and masturbation, dacryphilia, vaginal fingering, language, vaginal sex, hair pulling, slight degradation kink, manipulative behavior, loss and grieving, dom!salesman, sub!reader, lying to the partner, the salesman has told the reader to call him Gong Yoo;

Plot: Before you knew it, you were the prisoner of a castle made of lies he sugarcoated with his charm, dates and the fleeting feeling you had someone to count on. You were content with your life, grateful you had found yourself someone to grow attached to amidst the chaos. He taught you to play ddakji, only for you to end in his bed. How naive you were, how sad it was you did not know his job actually consisted in bamboozling people by playing the same game in the underground. Too bad those people did not find themselves undressed, if they lost the match.

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[𝟎𝟎𝟐] ����𝐢𝐦, 𝐚 𝐦𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐲.

The dull and insistent sound of an object repeatedly banging on a solid surface was your good morning kiss. Your heavy eyelids shot open and it took you a few seconds to rationalize you were not sleeping anymore. The sound continued, your eyebrows furrowing, as you pushed yourself up on your elbows. Was someone knocking on the door?

The door. Right. Your eyes darted on the entrance and your brain began to function. Why was the door tinted black? White. It should have been white. This was not your bedroom. Your eyes flickered across the room, so minimalistic and luxurious at the same time. Yes, it definitely was not your room.

Well, awesome! Apparently, you had fallen asleep in that man’s house then. When, though? How? You remembered the intimate interaction, then you recalled nothing but small fragments of a senseless conversation you had had. Your face heated up instantly, fingers uncomfortably tugging down the sheets draped over your body and, much to your horror, you ascertained you were wearing your dress but not your underwear. Instead of being secured to your hips, the flimsy item was laying on your side.

Your eyes grew round, bare feet touching the carpeted floor, before you padded towards the source of the irritating noise. With your heart pounding in your chest, hard enough to steal your breath, you rapidly tried to fix your hair and opened the door. There he was, the hot gentleman who had offered you an expensive vintage Chianti and faked a relationship with you not to cause your face to be printed on the newspapers under the dreadful word ‘missing’.

You stood before him, nervously pushing the skirt of your creased dress further down, wide-eyed and full of questions. It made him smile and your heart dropped in your stomach. He was already dressed up, hair neatly combed, head tilted to the side, as he stared down at you seemingly amusedly.

“I was starting to get worried. Are you feeling better?” he asked you, somehow not sounding that much concerned about your well-being. If any, his remark was unnecessarily overly sarcastic. Then again, you were still feeling kind of drowsy. Your perception of the surroundings was absolutely not reliable at the moment.

You rubbed the back of your neck “Uhm, yeah, I think I’m fine. — you replied, leaning against the doorframe to formulate the first of the million of questions bombarding your mind — What exactly happened yesterday night? I mean, how did I end up in the bedroom?”.

He quirked his dark eyebrows up, a small pout exalting his plumped lips as he then invited you to follow him with a wave of his hand. Why did he look so good, even when he was clearly pitying you and your poor state? It was not like you were experiencing an attack of amnesia. What troubled you was you had blurry fragments of conversations, or events playing on repeat in the back of your mind. Obviously, you needed help to put the pieces together.

Reluctantly, you followed him to what you assumed was the kitchen. Upon crossing the threshold, were you really that shocked to land your eyes on a set of splendid forniture? You almost felt bad for climbing on one of the stools but, after shooting an apologetic glance at him, you did. Once you had taken a seat at the immense island, the man reached his hand up to the cupboard to grab a small plate and cup.

“How much do you remember, dear?” he inquired, nimble fingers opening a sugar bowl and settling it on the kitchen island before your droopy and soft eyes.

Not much. You remembered you two had kissed, that he had fingered you until you had reached your climax, then you could recall him calling you by your name before you started sobbing in his chest, blinded by the fear of the stalker knowing details of you no one you actually knew had been informed of. You truly wished you had not insulted him, or maybe even jumped at his throat during your rampage. Something in his eyes made you think the opposite.

You chewed on your lower lip, the sound of the percolator alluring you to dwell in distant memories of the Sunday mornings spent with your grandparents at their house. If you closed your eyes, you were still able to vividly evoke the scene unfolding in a familiar routine you loved. The sour aroma flinging all around the living room, when you sat on the sofa sipping on a cup of coffee with your grandmother, was one of your dearest memories. A core one, indeed. And, unfortunately, one of the things you missed and could not have back. Life did not really fight fair with you.

“If I said, or did something unpleasant to you, I’m deeply ashamed of it. I’m sorry. — you began then, watching the way he checked his wristwatch on his right wrist, eyes zeroing back on you in a split second — For an instant, when you called me by my name, I’ve assumed you were my stalker. I told you how I got the informations about Mr. Cho, right? I think someone is following me around, or messing with me, I don’t know. I think this is affecting me more than I like yo admit” you ranted, propping both of your elbows over the counter and palming your forehead in distress and an ounce of genuine remorse. You really had went bonkers yesterday night, had you not?

He did not answer immediately. Probably, he let a couple of minutes pass. Enough for your coffee to be ready.

“It is only natural to become a tad paranoid in such stressful situations. I have nothing to forgive you for” he crooned, flashing a tight smile at you, deftly turning off the boiling ring and grasping the percolator to pour the hot liquid in the cup.

Your eyes were transfixed on him, on the way he appeared to be so perfect he almost reminded you of a robot. He must have been hiding his flaws masterly. He could not be impeccable that early in the morning. It was frustrating. Yet, he was not kicking you out of his house. He was not offended in the slightest. Actually, he was making sure you ate breakfast and that you had fully recovered.

You missed someone doing that to you now that there was no one else in the world left to oh-so-annoyingly look after you.

“Tell me what I’ve said, please. You can’t act like it’s okay. I’ve been an awful guest and—”.

“You haven’t. What I saw, what you did, my dear, was nothing more than a girl having a meltdown. Now, stop apologizing and … — he pushed the cup towards you, his everlasting smirk greeting you once again — Drink up your coffee. You can serve yourself with the right amount of sugar”.

You stared at him dumbfounded, hesitantly grasping a small silver spoon to collect some sugar and drop it in the boiling coffee to sweeten its strong taste. You felt his piercing gaze on you all the time, almost studying each movement you made. The air was electric as you blew on the cup to cool it down. There was still so much you craved to know, so many questions you yearned to ask. Your eyes betrayed you for he tilted his head to the side and rested the opened palms of his hands on the smooth surface of the counter, leaning slightly forwards.

“Something’s clearly troubling you. Care to explain what?” he inquired smoothly, dark eyes capturing your gaze and breaking the unbearable silence asphyxiating you.

You took a sip of your coffee, holding the cup tightly between your hands “I was wondering if… — you began, but your words somehow failed you and you cleared your throat to encourage yourself to speak up — Why am I not wearing my underwear? Did we cross the line?”.

He shook his head, hand reaching out to draw a cowlick off of your face. The gesture seemed tender, albeit his eyes were sharp and cold as those of a shark “No, we did not. However, maybe I shall let you know the reason you are not wearing them resides in your will to continue what had started in the living room. I dissuaded you, though. I did not think you were in the right state of mind for it” he explained, not batting an eye when you choked on your coffee at the embarrassing revelation.

What the Hell did you do? Did you really freak out that much? Did you make a fool of yourself in front of the man you were attracted to?

You felt your cheeks heat up, head turning to avoid meeting his intense gaze. You somewhat had a feeling he was enjoying seeing you under pressure, but his behavior puzzled you. He was not pesting you. This man was downright direct, a smooth talker, oozing confidence and cockiness like an overflowing sink. Despite that, he did not take advantage of you. He was still treating you with due respect. You appreciated this, but you were now asking yourself how you were supposed to look him in the eye again after listening to what had happened a few hours ago.

The situation you were in had clearly taken a tool on you. It did not matter that you had stopped looking for your father. You were still tangled in a web of uncertainity, pain, loneliness and now fear. The fear of some psychopath playing with your fragilities, helping you out from the shadows, keeping an eye on you. Letting you know you were being watched and, just because he was not harming you, it did not mean he was not going to hurt you.

“Thanks” you murmured, eyes downcast, as you drank up the remaining coffee and hopped down from the stool, hell-bent on making your getaway from him as soon as humanly possible.

His hand latching around your wrist halted you. You shuddered, finally flicking your eyes up to meet his penetrating gaze. He was not smiling this time. He was too damn serious, as he stared you down the way a famished hawk pinned a mouse on the spot before pecking its skull and killing it in a instant. Were you supposed to he afraid? Was he merely trying to reassure you nothing detrimental had happened, when you were out of your mind? What game was he playing? What if he was going to hurt you, to kidnap you?

He held your gaze, circling the kitchen island before stopping in front of you, his grip on your wrist still firm but gentler now.

He was tall. Too tall for you not to crane your neck up to look at him “Hold on. — he said, thumb stroking your wrist soothingly —May I, at least, accompany you home?”.

You parted your lips, a small sigh of relief escaping your mouth as you realized he really did not mean any harm. He was the same gentleman who had protected you at the train station, the same man who had charmed you at the discotheque. Also, you felt safe, going out with him. A lift home would have not hurt you.

You smiled softly “Are you sure I am not ruining your plans for the day?”.

“You are my plan for the day, dear”.

Fuck. Here he was bewitching you again with his silver tongue. You could not help yourself, but chuckle “Really now? Are you hitting on me again?”.

He grinned, fingers finally releasing your wrist “Would you mind, if I were?”.

Your cheeks flushed up, head shaking imperceptibly, jumping into the unknown at the faintest taste of affection, of genuine attention and concern. You had sealed your fate and you had no idea of what awaited for you at the end of the road. Salty tears, the metallic taste of blood staining your teeth, tickling your tongue.

“I wouldn’t”.

You had forgotten the enthralling feeling of dolling up for someone, of dressing up to impress someone. Since he had made it an habit to drop by your dorm to pick you up for romantic dates in places you could have never afforded in your entire life, you had begun to put an unreasonable amount of effort to meet his expectations. Your were finally flourishing. A month of dating and he still had not gone beyond sneaky kisses and sensual make-out sessions in the back of his car. This man was unique, a mystery to uncover. You still knew too little about him to say you had learned enough about his life to trust him blindly. Gradually, though, he had even started to open up about himself.

And you treasured those small informations.

You had learned not to ask too many questions about his job, or private life, when he had told he worked undercover for the Government. At your silent pleading of knowing his name, he had begrudgingly given you one, but had also made it loud and clear it was not his real name. Gong Yoo. At least, you were now going to whisper that name when his lips nipped at your jugular, while he palmed your breasts through the fabric of your clothes.

You were not the type to change for a man. However, you were now far from the scared little girl who had taken a plane all those months ago and moved to South Korea with nothing but an immense sense of loneliness and the incapability to smile. You were not alone anymore and you cheerfully smiled in his company. Everyone you had grown attached to had noticed the transformation you were going through, asking you what had happened, if there was a man in your life, or if you had met your father.

All you did to quench their thirst was saying you were dating a man, nor details, neither hints about his persona left your mouth. This was the plan he had come up with to ‘protect you from potential enemies’. Your mutual agreement to keep your relationship top secret had been a wise choice. Gong Yoo seemed reserved and, on the other hand, you were not enthusiastic at the idea of people gossiping about your sentimental life. Not to mention he was right about the risks of a delinquent going after you for simply be associated with him.

He cared about you. Your safety was his top priority.

It was a Friday night, when he surprised you yet again. You were slow-dancing in his living room, one of his hand delicately resting on the small of your back, the other holding yours up, when he brought his mouth next to the shell of your ear. It was hard thinking straight, when he touched you like that.

“Do you like playing games?”.

His question left you stunned for a few seconds, your lips curving into a smile, but you refused to lift your head up and look at him. Your cheek was stubbornly glued to his chest, eyes closing as Riccardo Cocciante’s voice lulled you in a heartbreaking song your mother used to love. Distant summertime memories of car rides with you two singing along with the singer flashed before your eyes. Somehow, thinking about her, about your past life, when you were in his company, did not hurt as much as it did when you were alone. He was a placebo coursing through your veins.

“What kind of games?” you whispered, his lips slithering up and grazing the top of your head affectionately.

“Games. Did you play games, when you were a kid?”.

You chortled “Well, I did, of course. — you replied, craning your neck to inspect his face — Why are you asking me that?” you queried, a knot forming between your eyebrows as he smiled down at you charmingly, large hands leaving your body to cradle your face.

His thumbs stroked your cheekbones, his jovial smile pulling the strings of your heart with such an expertise you thought you were a puppet in his hands “Because I do. — he chimed, watching your eyes light up in curiosity — And I may or may not have come up with a way to spice things up tonight” he drawled, tilting his head to the side to assess the way you seemed to glow in glee and trepidation. Admittedly, you had been dying to bring your relationship to the next level. To be completely honest, you had been taken aback by his old-fashioned way of courting you. Albeit, you obviously did not mind it.

He did not seem to be in a hurry. He savoured each and every encounter you had had up until now. When you seemed to be particularly ecstatic about the outcome of your dates, he indulged into inappropriate steamy activities, even publicly. But he never crossed the line of burying himself deep into you, of nestling himself in your warmth. He mostly focused on your pleasure, rolling your nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, shoving three digits into you, asking you to dry-hump his thigh until you orgasmed on his slacks.

You did not really mind taking things slow. It was a breath of fresh air, it was therapeutic.

Still, you knew he had a freaky side. You had caught glimpses of it, when he seemed to be on the verge of gripping your hair and force his throbbing cock in your mouth, while he was on the brink of reaching his climax. You had witnessed to the way he struggled to last, whilst touching himself, at the sight of you wearing a gag and pretending to beg for your life to feed his fantasy. You played along in his wicked, perverted scenarios. After all, it was nothing too extreme and you had to admit a certain curiosity tickled your ego.

“Oh, I see. Then show me” you stated, his dark eyes flitting towards the couch as he gestured for you to take a seat and proceeded in disappearing behind the door leading to the bedrooms.

In a matter of seconds, he was back, a shit-eating grin plastered on his face as he stopped in front of you. Raising his hands, he showed two paper squares at you. What was that supposed to mean? Did you have to pick a color?

“Uhm, what… I mean, besides choosing a color, what do I have to do with that?” you voiced your thoughts, instinctively reaching your hand out to snatch the red tile from his hand. He sighed, lowering his gaze thoughtfully, as if reality was dawning on him all of a sudden.

“I beg your pardon, I have forgotten you are not familiar with Korean games. This is called ‘ddakji’, a popular game among kids. — he explained, straightening his back and motioning for you to stand up — The rules are pretty simple: you settle your tile on the floor and the opponent has to flip it with his one. Before we get serious, I will show you how it is done” he offered, crouching down to put his blue tile on the parquet and retriving the red one you had picked from your hand.

You made space for him, watching intently the way he took aim and hastily, precisely, almost like a sniper, he hurled the red tile to the floor. The blue tile was flipped around, the smack of the impact echoed in the living room, catching you off guard for a second. He made it look so easy. If only you had had the chance to practice before, your chances to win would have increased.

You hummed, nodding your head, as you bent down to pick up the red tile “I got it. I think we can start, but that’s a tad unfair. — you pinpointed, shooting a side-eye at him, as he repositioned his blue tile on the floor — I have never played ddakji before. I will keep on failing miserably and you are going to gloat about your victory for days. You play dirty!”.

He smirked, hands tucked into the pockets of his slacks “Playing dirty, huh? You have no idea how dirty this is going to get”.

You faltered, lips parting, as you connected the dots. Oh, this was what he meant by ‘spicing things up’, was it not? Nevertheless, you refused to play until he explained exactly what he had in mind.

You clicked your tongue, cocking your head to the side “Oh really? Interesting. What is on stake? What rules have you come up with?”.

Gong Yoo quirked his eyebrows up, leaning down towards you just enough for his hot breath to waft over your face “You may not know ddakji, but you surely know a thing or two about ‘strip poker’, am I right? — he tested the waters, his gaze trailing down your body shamelessly — What if we apply the same scheme to ddakji? You lose, you take something off. The one who gets naked first will sadly lose” he offered, watching you regret every single decision you had made until now.

You were not against the idea of letting him pounce at you. You ached to finally feel him inside of you, to hear him animalistically grunt as he ruined you for anyone else coming later in your life. To say you were bittered by your lack of choice, though, was an understatement. You were not a sore loser. This one was just not a fair fight. You were destined to lose, to succumb, to yield to him like you were not capable of defending yourself. Impotent, yet cunning, you eventually nodded your head and prepared to play the first round.

Four rounds. If you lost four rounds, you were done for. You should have not worn a simple sundress. How were you supposed to know he was going to scam you into a round of strip ddakji, though?

“I’m in” you agreed, before you took a sharp intake of air and transfixed your gaze on the blue square at your feet. You could do it. You just had to concentrate, put the right amount of force into it and flip that thing around.

Without thinking too much about it, you did it. You smashed your tile against it and, much to your surprise, it flipped the other successfully. If it was not for the music playing in the background, a still silence blanketed the room. You stood there in shock, he stared at the tiles on the floor as if you had just robbed him of his dignity. He looked almost offended, his eyes meeting yourself as he shrugged his jacket off of his shoulders made you feel like you should have apologized for what you had just done. You did not, though. You had earned your victory. Maybe it was just luck, maybe you were going to lose the following four rounds and he was going to win. It really did not matter, did it? You had won and you were not going to belittle your skills to console him.

“Congratulations, ma’am” he told you, clearing his throat and busying himself with repositioning the tiles optimally to play the second round. His voice sounded mechanical, almost as if he was used to praise people who won. How absurd it was.

The smack of your tile being flipped made you flinch and you felt your mouth going dry, as you slipped off your shoes, instead of your dress. A loss is a loss, right? But you had to choice to decide which item was going to be removed first. Why not claiming your rights?

“Wise choice” he observed pointedly, eyes raking over your form. The atmosphere was gradually shifting, the tension thick and the hunger burning in his eyes enveloping you like an incendio. He was eager to defeat you, but so were you to prove him he was not in total control. You were playing a game you had not even heard about before and, apparently, you were not even too bad at it.

You had a feeling it was going to be a wild ride.

You swept your tongue out of your mouth, tasting your cherry chopstick in the process of moistening your bottom lip. After a couple of dates with him, you had given up on the feminine urge to paint your lips properly with your favorite lipstick. You had literally walked around the dormitory with a smudged lipstick making you look like you were cosplaying the Joker.

“You sound disappointed” you teased him, glancing at him briefly, arm raising above your head to calibrate your aim. You had won once, why not doing it twice?

“Actually, I am glad you have decided to start from the shoes. If you had removed your dress right away, I would have been tempted to break the rules and I am not the type to do that” he promptly replied, your grip around the edges of the square in your hand tightening significantly. Did he really have such an high self-esteem and inflexible moral code imposing him not to deflect from rules and principles?

You took a deeper breath, squinting, before slamming your tile against the blue one. You won. Again.

A joyful smile crossed your face “Woah, I think you ought me a ‘thank you’ for having won again, then. I am preservating your morals” you replied, a smirk curving his own lips as he reached his hands up and unknotted the necktie with ease, discading it carelessly at his feet.

As he grasped his blue tile, he shot you an immodest look, sending shivers down your spine you even failed to camouflage “Probably, but I will obviously stick to the rules, dear. Correct me if I’m wrong. It really doesn’t matter, if I’m going to lose this game. — he paused, eyes darting down on your red tile, before he furiously flipped it around, making it clatter ominously on the parquet — It’s irrelevant who ends up stripping naked first. In the end, you are going to let me screw you anyway”.

You fingers twitched at your sides, brain registering his words in slow motion. He had won, you had to remove an item. But he was undeniably speaking facts. This game meant nothing. It was just another way to spend time, before you spread your legs for him. Finally, you dared to think as he stared at you expectantly. Your dress. You should have logically removed your dress first. This was what everyone at your place would have done, what he expected you to do. Imagine how surprised he was, when you instead showed him you still had the upper hand. Your cheeks were on fire, heart thrumming against your ribacage violently, when you shamelessly locked eyes with him.

Your hands slipped underneath the skirt of your dress, fingers hooking around the waistband, pulling at it until the underwear rested around your thighs. Then you began to kick them off, not granting him a glimpse of yourself to him. Not yet. Were you really going to make him work for it? Of course, you were.

“You are so arrogant” you whispered, arching your eyebrows as you stepped out of the poor excuse of underwear you had chosen for the night.

His jaw tensed and, considering the prominent tent in his slacks, you had aroused him enough to cause a strong physical reaction from him. You felt victorious in that very instant. Especially, when he pulled his gaze away from you forcefully, battling with the beast inside of him howling for you.

“Stai giocando con il fuoco ¹” he muttered.

“Who doesn’t like to get burned?”.

And you did get burned. You won again, you watched him unbutton his shirt, you basked into the celestial sight of his sculpted body, of his rock hard abs and board shoulders. But he won too. And, dear God, how much it costed you unhooking your bra from underneath the dress and remove it in that ‘magical way only women knew’. It angered him. You were purposefully starving him.

So much that his intense gaze made you falter and you lost the fourth round. His tile mocked you, his dark eyes devouring your curves now clouding over, as he stepped closer to you, deliberately leaving no room between you two. You held your breath, your hands reaching for the hem of your dress to pull it over your head, but he stopped you.

“Let me unwrap my prize” he chided you, timbre dropping a few octaves and prompting you to press your thighs together. The ache between your legs, you could feel it perfectly, and you were going insane. You needed relief, you need him to touch you.

You raised your arms up, above your head, eyes fluttering closed and focusing only on what you felt. On the way his fingers had already gripped the skirt of your dress, slowly dragging the fabric up your body, exposing your upper thighs, your intimacy, your hipbones. You shuddered, when his knuckles grazed over your ribs, your mounds, the hardened nipples. You refused to meet his gaze, not until you felt the rustle of the dress landing somewhere in the room.

It was only them, when you lowered your arms, that he grasped your chin and commanded you to open your eyes “Look at me”.

It sounded like a plain order, devoid of any emotion, but his words rang in your head like a love confession. You obeyed, eyelids lifting and focalizing him. Your head was spinning, the world a blurry, multicolored landscape around him. He had become the center of your gravity.

His thumb pressed onto your bottom lip, playing with it, toying with you like a cat would with the small animal weeping between its claws. What was the difference between you and the meal of a stray cat? You had willingly chosen your fate. You had a choice to flee, but you did not want to.

“Would you believe me, If I told you I want to fuck you in so many places I don’t know where to start from?” he said, towering over you as he glided his hands down your back, encircling your hipbones to pull your body closer to his. Your breath hitched, eloquence abandoning you when his lips were bruising yours. When had he begun to kiss you? You could not tell. You really could not and it was maddening how you only came back on Earth when he had you straddling his waist on the couch, just like the night it all started.

He cussed under his breath, when the pads of his fingers glided down your slippery folds, earning small whines from you. The stretch of his fingers into your warm channel was ever so pleasant. He was a fiend, a devil who knew the seven deadly sins and had made lust his favorite one. His other hand slided behind your neck, tongue swiping over your lips to taste you.

“Tell me, have you ever been with a man before?”.

“You should know by now I’m not a virgin” you breathed out, hands sliding over his pectorals the moment he curled his fingers into you. You squeled out in bliss, toes curling, pelvis rocking back and forth to seek your orgasm.

He chuckled, a rare sight “I’m talking about the age of your partners. — he clarified, depriving you of your climax and reaching his hands down to unbuckle his belt and unzip his slacks — I think you just mingled with boys your age. But it is fine, I like to think you are still convinced twenty seconds is all it takes for someone to cum” he mockingly commented, squeezing your hips to prompt you to cling onto him, which you did without hesitation.

His unhinged words made you bury your face in the crook of his neck, shielding your face from his lascivious gaze. He was smirking, your lack of silence speaking volumes as he stood up, hooking his hands benath your thighs to hold you up against him. His slacks were hanging loosely around his hips, the sound of his unfastened belt clinking with each step he took sounding both gloomy and promising for the incoming event. Up in the sky, parading to the adamantine gates of Heaveb, or swimming into the scorching, boiling lava of Hell. Which was the path you were going to take?

Your back hit the soft mattress, his hand splayed over your midriff to keep you in place. You saw him tucking his free hand in the pocket of his slacks, drawing out his watter.

“Don’t move” he warned you, before his hand left your stomach, fingers trailing down towards your belly to keep you on your toes.

You were not really suprised he kept some condoms in his wallet. A few years ago, you had been warned most of the men who do this are huge red flags. He was not an exception, you knew it. However, you did what he said. You did not run away, you did not shift your position, you watched him rip the package open with his teeth and remove his pants, all the while feeling your mouth salivate like that of a starving dog.

“Tell me, dear, do you want me to fuck you?” he asked you, sitting on the edge of the bed, at your side.

“Is that even a question?”.

You did not anticipate his hand grabbing a fist full of your hair, forcing you to bend towards his lap. His other hand held the condom between his fingers, pressing it against your mouth. You shot him an inquisitive gaze, evidently demanding an explanation to what he was doing.

“Then use your juicy mouth to roll this down my cock” he instructed you impassibly, a glint of unbridled lust twinkling in his dark hues.

You felt almost degraded. Your mouth opening to protest, but you bit your tongue and took it as a personal challenge. You could do it, right? It was just a game. It was sex, nothing you could not deal with. You had even put a gag in your mouth to let him jerk off at the sight of your saliva dribbling down your chin.

“I’m not doing this just to please you. Take it as my way to… Show my gratitude for that night at the station” you said, softly taking the ring between your lips and pinching the tip of the condom to ensure there was no air in it. He stiffened, an inaudible groan erupting from somewhere deep in his chest, when you tugged the condom down his shaft. His grip on your hair intensified, a wince ripping from your throat, but you refused to pull away until you reached the base. Only then, he abruptly pulled you off of him.

“Oh really? You want to show me how grateful you are to me? Alright, ride me then. — he rasped out, lips lingering over yours, as you sucked in a sharp intake of breath — Fuck yourself on me”.

There it was. His most pervert side gleaming in the dimly illuminated bedroom, flickering in destructive lapilli shot from a volcano. In that moment, you felt like a helpless slave, witnessing to the fatal event cascading over the city of Pompeii. You had no where to go, no one to look for. You accepted your end, fiery eyes glinting in pride, heart pounding against your chest so hard you struggled to concentrate. You straddled him, your hand lining the bulbous tip of his cock to your sappy entrance. He held you close to him, hands firmly planted on your hips, fingernails biting your skin to hurt you.

You choked out a strained moan, when you gained enough courage to lower yourself down on him. The burning sensation made you utter out inchorent words he failed to understand.

“Cazzo²— O my Gosh…” you whimpered out, pausing to let your gummy walls adjust to his girth. It had been a while since you last let someone humour you among the bedsheets. To be frank, you did not recall anyone be that big. You felt it all, stretching you open inch by inch. Sweat began to bead your forehead and you cried out in a strangled moan that was sloppily swallowed by his mouth.

He was far way more controlled than you were, but not totally unaffected. His jaw clenched, before his hands squeezed your ass roughly, hips bucking up to impale you fully on his shaft. You whined, eyes growing round in a soppy sight that made him hum in amusement.

“What is it? What are you trying to babble out? Are those compliments to my size?”.

“Kind of, those were cusses”.

He grinned, squishing your cheeks together and planting a kiss on the tip of your nose “Really? Let’s make a bet. I am going to fuck you so good that, by the time I am done with you, you will forget your mother language. Oh, the Hell with that… You won’t be able to speak anymore” he crooned, making you roll your eyes.

“Let’s see”.

Gradually, you raised yourself, shuddering at the feeling of his length rubbing against your warm walls. It felt overwhelming. He was overwhelming. Was this what it meant to be with an older man? Feeling safe, but on a precipice? Was it not an addictive but destructive feeling? It was too late to retaliate. You needed him and you needed him badly, until your bones broke, until you were a writhing mass of sweat laying on his bed.

You lowered yourself back on him again, a breathy moan echoing around you. Soon enough you set a good tempo, steady and passionate. Your hands cupped his cheeks, your forehead pressed against his.

“Fuck! Just like that! There it is. — he encouraged you, breath uneven, hair disheveled, as he thrusted up to meet your movements — Let it out, darling! Let your anger out, your pain too. I can take it, I can handle it for you”.

No. No. This was bad.

He should have not said that. Flashes of your adventures in the search of your father, of your talk with Mr. Cho, of the day you saw your mother close her eyes for the last time ran through your head. Your nails scraped down his back, scratching, clawing like an animal, your teeth gritting as your pace got faster, but more desperate. He knew what he was doing.

“Don’t do that” you admonished him, whining when he bit down on your jugular.

“Doing what?”.

“Making me believe I can count on you”.

“But you can count on me. I’m here for you”.

You could not tell if he was lying, or not. You clenched around him, inner and velvet walls squeezing him up to the point he grunted out in pleasure. You lost the track of time, the moment he shoved your face down on the pillow and made your spine arch for him. Your eyes closed, lower lip wobbling as he thrusted back into you.

Unlike yours, his pace was brutal, punishing, but you loved it. You enjoyed the way he had his hand enclosed on the back of your neck to pin you down. You reeled at the feeling of his cock hitting your sweet spot hard enough to prevent you from talking anymore. You climaxed a few seconds before he did, your body aching and your mascara ruined. You heard him groan, stilling his movements and he was done. Your body ached and you were too tired to talk. All you heard was him taunting you one last time before he collapsed next to you.

“I told you I would have deprived you of your voice”.

Recruiting people was monotonuosly easy. Tracking them down, finding out informations about their lives that would have messed with their heads was even easier. It had been so long since he had enjoyed recruiting someone. Let alone slapping them.

But this was a whole different story. This fucking man, that bastard, had triggered something into him.

He failed, he smacked him harder than he had ever hit anyone in his entire life. The moment he had decided to be an asshole with the wrong person was the moment he had decided this bastard did not deserve redemption. He did not deserve jail, but death. Presumptuous and a felon. How could he deem himself in the position to mistreat a person in need?

Smack.

The sound of the glasses clattering on the concrete was music to his ears.

“Again” Cho Sang-woo declared, composing himself quickly, ignoring the curious passerby who was horrified by the scene unfolding in a public area. He was more than glad to comply to his request.

Welcome to the games, Cho Sang-woo, player 218.

Author note.

Hello there! Thank you for the attention you have reserved to the first chapter of this story. I wanted to publish the second part sooner but life got in the way! I love to read your comments and impressions, therefore do not refrain from expressing your opinions! You could say things are going up (but the reader doesn’t know they are actually going down, poor little star). Anyway, I hope you don’t mind I have decided to give the Salesman his actor’s name. I came up with the escamotage of ‘he gave you one but warned you it is not his real name’. Deal with me! Also, if you wish to be tagged in the next parts, please I need to read in your bio your age! ✨

P.S.: the song they were listening to was “Era già tutto previsto” by Riccardo Cocciante. For a better experience, here it is:

Thank you again,

Luce.

VOCABULARY.

1. Stai giocando con il fuoco: you are playing with fire;

2. Cazzo: in this specific context, ‘fuck’.

CREDITS FOR THE DIVIDERS: @cafekitsune

TAGS: @axesfordays @apookalypse @trentknd

[itsgivingmami]

“And Burn With Her I Devout Too”

Rhea Ripley x reader

Sappho Fragments- 105a. 16. 49. 1. 34. 48/49(translation dependant) 147. 58.

Before we get into it I just wanted to thank you for the lovely comments, positive reception and generally good vibes you gave on part one. Likes, comments and reblogs are always more than appreciated but just reading is always enough.

—

It’s not immediate.

The night she watched you sleep—whispering poetry into the dark and holding herself back like a saint—she thought maybe she could survive this a little longer. Maybe if she buried it deep enough, she could carry it without spilling.

As the sweet apple blushes on the end of the bough, the very end of the bough which gatherers missed, nay, missed not, but could not reach.

Virtue has never been her strong suit, always destined to enjoy the deep and edged qualities of life. Her tendencies fall toward the macabre—how wonderfully ironic your light feels to her. She’s spent time wondering if maybe you’re supposed to bridge the gap between her and the pearly gates, proof that she hasn’t fallen so far she can’t still reach for heaven.

But each day makes it worse.

It starts small.

At catering, your hand brushes hers reaching for the same plate. You laugh. She doesn’t.

Not because she’s annoyed, but because your fingers linger. Because she can’t help but think of all the things she would do with them. Because your smile hits her like a bruise she asked for, unlike the countless others that come with the job. Because the second you pull away—

She wants you back.

She could be pinning you in piles of poems she’s never written, only spoken softly in the dark. She’s never understood Sisyphus more than she does now. Some might argue she becomes him every time she wins a title just to lose it again—storylines and expectations shifting like wind. But the boulder never seems to fall as fast as her heart does when your attention drifts elsewhere.

She hears someone compliment you backstage—calls you “adorable” in a way that makes her jaw tighten—and you thank them, oblivious, like it means nothing. But Rhea can’t stop thinking about it. Not because of what they said, but because she wants to be the only one allowed to think that. To say it. To prove it.

It’s no use,

Later that week, you show up to rehearsals in a crop top. She chokes on her water, despite needing to cling to the cold it provides.

“Wrong pipe,” she says quickly, as if you haven’t been knocking the air from her lungs daily.

Your laugh is light, unbothered. She plays it off with a smirk, but when you turn around—

She actually growls under her breath.

It’s driving her insane.

You may blame Aphrodite,

You don’t even know what you do to her.

And yet—every moment you exist beside her is another verse etched into the searing script in her chest. You steal her hoodie on a cold walk through the lot. She gives it freely, like anything you could ask for. She’d give all seven of her figures away just to have yours beneath her at night, beside her in the morning.

But she doesn’t mention it.

She can’t.

As soft as she is she has almost killed me,

You curl up on her couch with your legs tucked beneath you, still in that damn crop top, wearing the necklace she bought you three cities ago—something low-key, something no one else would recognize.

You sip, leaving deep red stains on your glass and in her vision, and she can’t stop imagining bruising your mouth with hers. You speak, and she swears no instrument on Earth compares. You tease her, and every time you laugh or glance at her over the rim of your glass, her resolve splinters just a little more.

She’s beginning to crumble—like a statue of Persephone eroding under your sun—finding herself drowning in the fabric of your presence.

She sits beside you in long stretches of silence, just watching the way your lips glisten, the way your bare knee touches her thigh and doesn’t move.

You keep laughing.

You keep sipping.

The stars around the beautiful moon

Hiding their glittering forms

Whenever she shines full on earth

Silver…

You’re not sure when it shifts.

Maybe it’s the way her hand brushes your back as you pass by her in the suite’s kitchenette—soft, deliberate.

Maybe it’s the quiet hum of the speaker in the corner, looping some low, dreamy track like a heartbeat.

Maybe it’s the way she’s watching you now—like she’s stopped pretending not to. Like looking away would wound her.

You’re on her couch again, knees tucked beneath you, sipping from the glass she poured. Your shorts ride higher than you meant them to, and her eyes flick—just once—but it sends heat crawling up your spine.

“Come here,” Rhea says softly.

You look up. Her voice is velvet—unmistakably velvet—but there’s no room for misinterpretation.

You set your glass down slowly, suddenly aware of the silence. The moment feels electric—taut, pulled between two truths aching to finally touch.

“You came and I was longing for you,”

When you move toward her, she meets you halfway. Her palm slides behind your neck, thumb brushing just below your jaw. She tilts your face up with such gentle command that your knees threaten to buckle.

“Do you have any idea,” she breathes, her lips inches from yours, “how long I’ve wanted to do this?”

You don’t answer.

You can’t.

Not with the way she kisses you.

It’s not rushed.

It’s not desperate.

It’s devout.

“You cooled a heart that burned with desire,”

Rhea kisses you like she’s been writing this moment in her mind every night and only now dares to say it aloud. Her mouth moves over yours with aching reverence. Her hand cradles the back of your head like she’s afraid you might disappear if she lets go.

There’s a pessimistic voice in her head urging her to enjoy it before it ends—but the greed takes over before she can silence it. Her other hand slides around your waist, pulling you flush against her.

She guides you onto her lap, and you go willingly, breath caught. The second your hips settle, she exhales against your skin, pressing her forehead to your cheekbone.

You both move like tectonic plates—inevitable, earth-shaking, unstoppable. You wouldn’t even notice the destruction around you if it came.

“Fuck,” she murmurs, voice cracked and raw. “You feel like sin.”

Her grip tightens. One hand low on your back, the other trailing heat along your thigh. Her lips find your jaw, the hinge of it, the column of your neck—like an architect building a cathedral out of reverence.

She doesn’t just kiss you.

She reads you—like scripture, like a favorite passage she’s never dared underline before.

“You’re going to ruin me,” she whispers. “And I’ll thank you for it.”

Your fingers tangle in her hair, pulling just enough to make her groan—a sound that clenches something low and primal inside you.

She notices.

Of course she does.

“Me?” you scoff, breath catching. “I’m going to ruin you?”

Rhea slides a hand under your shorts, up the back of your thigh. Her calloused palm drags across soft skin. Goosebumps rise like prayer.

She pauses at the hem of your underwear, exhaling against your throat.

“Say the word,” she murmurs, “and I’ll worship you.”

You don’t say a word.

You kiss her harder instead.

Someone, I tell you, will remember us, even in another time.

Her mouth is everywhere.

Reverent. Relentless.

The way Rhea touches you—it’s not about possession, though it stirs something feral in her soul. It’s about devotion. It’s about memory. She moves like every inch of you holds verses only she’s allowed to read.

You feel drunk on her.

On this.

On the holiness of it.

She mouths at your collarbone, teeth grazing, lips apologizing. Her breath is unsteady. Her hands are not. She maps you like a sacred text, fingers brushing your thighs, rings cool against flushed skin.

“I’ve imagined this,” she confesses, low against your shoulder. “So many fucking times. The way you’d feel. The way you’d sound.”

You try to respond, but each time you open your mouth she steals another sound from it.

She leans back to look at you. Pupils blown. Jaw tight. You touch her cheek softly, willing her to relax.

“You’re more beautiful than I let myself believe.” Her voice breaks just barely. She presses your hand to her cheek, then to her lips—kissing every part of you she can reach.

No part of you is out of her grasp now.

Clothes fall like petals—yours first, then hers. Every inch of bare skin is kissed, praised, held. She mutters soft things you don’t catch, just feel: pet names, affirmations, worship.

She makes you feel small in the safest way. Powerful in her eyes. Eternal beneath her touch.

“Let me take care of you,” she breathes, holding herself above you. “Let me show you what I haven’t had the courage to say.”

You nod.

That’s all she needs.

What follows is slow. Heated. Intentional. She asks with her eyes, listens with her hands. When you fall apart beneath her—soft, trembling, divine—she kisses your temple and whispers your name like a prayer.

Like she’s home.

Like the scales have finally balanced.

Beauty endures only for as long as it can be seen; goodness, beautiful today, will remain so tomorrow.

Time doesn’t exist afterward. Not really.

You’re curled into her chest, cheek to the warmth above her heart. Her fingers trace secret patterns on your spine—circles, hearts, soft lines.

The city hums outside. In here, it’s golden.

You shift. She kisses your forehead. Then your cheek.

“Y’alright?” she asks, voice rough with affection.

You nod. “Heavenly.”

She smiles—crooked, sleepy, dangerously close to love.

She pulls the blanket over your bare shoulders, arms tightening around you. Her nose tucks into your hair. She breathes you in.

And then—

“I think I’m falling in love with you.”

A breath. Barely spoken.

You pull back just enough to see her eyes. They’re open. Honest. Vulnerable.

“I already have,” you whisper.

She kisses you again. Slower.

Like the beginning of forever.

You set me on fire, she thinks again.

But this time… she’s not afraid to burn.

Some say an army of horsemen, some say foot soldiers, still others say a fleet of ships is the loveliest thing on the dark earth, but I say it is the one you love.

⸻

[raining-rays]

Doze (Sans) and Star (Papyrus)

HELLO FRAGMENT AND FRACTURE! IT IS I, THE TERRIFYING STAR! HERE TO BLESS YOU WEAKLINGS WITH MY AWESOME FRIENDSHIP! AND DOZE'S DESPITE HIS PROTESTS. REASONS TO BE MY FRIEND: I AM FEARLESSLY AMAZING! ENOUGH SAID! AS FOR WHY TO BEFRIEND MY BEANBAG OF A BROTHER, HE MAKES GREAT APPOLIGY CINNAMON ROLLS. SHOULD YOU ACCEPT THIS FORCEFUL DEMAND OF FRIENDSHIP, I WILL ENSURE HE STAYS AWAKE LONG ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU SOME NON-APOLIGY APOLIGY CINNAMON ROLLS. AS FOR CONDITIONS REGARDING OUR FRIEN- HEY!

dis is doze. i'm only going through with dis cause star seems reallll intent on it. not like we can really visit ya unless it's in ya dreams away. heh heh. i'd say i'd only be yer friend in yer dreams, but it'd be to literal fer my taste. anyway...my bro's a good kid, hasn't had da harshness of reality crush him yet. it best stay dat way. cause if i ever find out ya hurt my little bro in any way...buddy, yer in for one frinken bad time.

also don't curse in front of my bro, or i'll plague ya with nightmares of having soap bein' shoved down ya throat. don't even ask wah kinda crap you'll be seein' if ya hurt him, best jus' not go dere.

SANS! THAT IS NO WAY TO MAKE FRIENDS! YOU NOW OWE ME AND THEM CINNAMON ROLLS!

aw come on paps i was jus-

NO! I WILL NOT HEAR IT, BROTHER! I DEMAND CINNAMON ROLLS!

flippin' heck...fine

THANK YOU!

ya ya. anydang fer ya bro.

(you dream of freshly baked cinnamon rolls to enjoy in the comfort of home. They have a sweet and tangy cherry glaze and are oddly in the shape of stars)

Doze Art Star Art The minuscule amount of lore I have for this world.

Here's a little blurb

Slumberfell AU story. Slumberfell is a fell AU (kinda loosy at this point) inspired by Slumbertale (A fucking amazing comic right here on Tumblr by rainingskeletons). The story would revolve around Sans and his younger brother Papyrus (he's a child here) and their struggles surviving in the realm of Dreams that entraps monster kind. With the lack of Hope and rise in violence in the Realm of Dreams, more and more of the Dreams that make up the monster's prisons are turning into nightmares. But what's worse than the nightmares that surround the monsters is the Night Terrors, the warped minds and bodies of the fallen monsters. For you see falling down does not mean an endless slumber for the monsters, but and endless restlessness. With Sans meager 1hp, he is one such monster at risk of changing into one of these Night Terrors. However, a desperate escape for the two's life may have brought them to their salvation, as they quite literally fall into the only dream that has been seen in ages, Frisk's dream. (Frisk is a child and there will be no Frans ship) Can Frisk's HoPe help Sans? Can Sans help them stay Determined despite the bleak reality Frisk has to wake to? Can Papyrus keep the peace between the two? Can the Three of them finally help monster kind as a whole? And why is Papyrus a child?

The world may never know.

Anyway go check out @fragmentedtale-official-blog or @quackysmackk cause they're making a super cool comic and ask blog! Love Fragment and Fracture! Those two are precious!

Hehe hope you enjoyed this silly comic of these two lads. I love them so much. Doze is just a grumpy, anxious bean who wants to keep his bro safe. And Star just wants to make friends and actually leave the house for once.

Slumberfell by Me!!

[simpforoneandonlycarlossainz]

Thank you for the Happiest Years of my Life

Summary: After an emotionally charged fallout, Carlos and Y/N find themselves at the end of a love they once believed was unbreakable.

A/n, Buckle up for an angst filled chapter, not really fight or arguement, just resignation cause I am in the mood for tears:3. Do let me know if I should make a part 2 for a happy ending? Its inspired by the song Happiest Year by Jaymes Young. Let me know you thoughts in the notes and if you want you can send me requests for any Carlos x reader oneshot and I will try my best to deliver it to you<3

The lights of Monte Carlo shimmered in the distance, scattering like crushed diamonds across the dark velvet sea. The waves below caught each fragment of light and fractured them—delicate, broken reflections that danced restlessly, aimlessly.

Just like the memories in his mind.

Carlos stood alone on the narrow balcony of the penthouse suite, his knuckles white as he gripped the iron railing. The wind carried a chill that didn’t quite reach his skin—it went deeper, settling somewhere in the hollow part of his chest.

The same suite. The same balcony. The same view.

And yet… nothing felt the same.

Everything looked like it was holding its breath, as if waiting for her to walk back in and breathe life into it again.

The silence inside clawed at him.

He could almost hear her—could almost convince himself that if he turned around, she’d be there, barefoot and half-asleep, wrapped in one of his hoodies, her voice thick with sleep as she mumbled something about the stars being brighter in Monaco.

But all he heard was the soft hum of traffic far below and the wind rushing through a world that had moved on without her.

The suite was still hers in so many ways. Her perfume—warm vanilla laced with a whisper of jasmine—still clung stubbornly to the cushions, to his shirts, to the edges of his thoughts. That scent used to be his anchor. Now, it was a knife.

And then there was the plant.

That stupid little plant she had insisted on buying from a street vendor during one of their walks.

"Even hotel rooms deserve a little life, and this is our home so of course," she had said playfully, placing it by the window with a proud smile.

He hadn’t watered it since she left. Couldn’t bear to touch it. Its leaves now curled inward, starved and browning at the edges—just like him.

Y/N had poured love into everything she touched. Into that room. Into him.

And now?

Now it all felt like an echo of a life that belonged to someone else. A version of himself he barely recognized anymore. One who smiled more. Who slept better. Who believed in forever.

But he let her go.

Or maybe—he pushed her.

And standing there, watching the broken city lights scatter like fallen promises, Carlos couldn’t help but feel the undeniable truth settle in his bones:

He was the one wilting now.

And there was no one left to save him.

The door creaked open behind him—soft, uncertain. Like a memory daring to come back.

Carlos froze. His heartbeat thundered in his chest, loud enough he thought it might echo off the walls.

And then—her voice.

Quiet. Barely above a whisper. Fragile, yet laced with something unshakably familiar. “You still keeping the place.”

He turned slowly.

And there she was.

Y/N stood in the doorway like a ghost wrapped in warmth. His oversized navy sweater hung off her frame—too big, too worn, and yet it looked like it belonged only to her. Her hair was pulled up in a loose, messy knot, strands falling around her face like they used to after long, sleepy mornings tangled in each other. Her eyes… they held storms and softness. Tired. Guarded. But still somehow—him.

Carlos swallowed hard, something raw catching in his throat. “I never stopped.”

His voice cracked at the edges.

She stepped inside with careful, deliberate steps—as though the floor might collapse beneath her if she wasn’t careful. As though the silence might shatter at any moment and take her heart with it.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her. The silence between them stretched, thick with things unsaid, thick with time they couldn’t get back.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he said, quieter this time. Like it hurt to admit.

She offered the ghost of a smile—so faint, it looked like it had been exiled from her lips. “I almost didn’t.”

And just like that, he was 23 again. Breathless in love with the girl who painted light into every room just by standing in it.

Carlos exhaled shakily, running a hand through his hair, trying to hold the pieces of himself together. But she was here. And every crack ached anew.

Y/N crossed her arms—not in defiance, but in defense. Like she was wrapping herself in the only armor she had left. “Why did you ask me here, Carlos?”

He didn’t answer right away. He turned from her, walking into the living room where the dim lamplight cast long, empty shadows. The air smelled faintly of her perfume—vanilla and something floral—and it hit him like a punch to the gut.

In the corner, he opened a drawer. Quietly. Reverently.

From it, he pulled a photo—slightly curled at the edges, faded from being handled too much.

He held it out.

She stepped forward slowly and took it from him, their fingers brushing briefly. It was electric. Painful. A reminder of a thousand soft moments now bruised.

It was them.

Tuscany. A vineyard. She was laughing, her head thrown back, sunlight caught like wildfire in her hair. He was mid-laugh, eyes closed, joy unfiltered, real. Untouched by the weight they hadn’t known was coming.

“I found this yesterday,” he said, voice low and hoarse. “And I…”

He faltered.

“I realized I never said thank you.”

She looked up, eyes narrowing slightly in confusion.

He kept going.

“Thank you,” he repeated, firmer now. “For loving me. For seeing me. For staying when I didn’t give you a single reason to.”

She stared at him, lips parting as if to speak. But nothing came. Her eyes gleamed, lashes trembling. She blinked—once, twice, fast—like she could physically will the tears away.

Carlos’s gaze dropped. His next words came out quieter, broken. “I ruined it.”

He stepped back, shame curling through every syllable.

Carlos let the silence hang for a long beat, his hands trembling slightly as they hung useless by his sides. The air between them felt heavy, too thick to breathe.

“I let the world eat me alive,” he said finally, his voice hoarse and low, like it was being dragged from somewhere buried deep inside his chest. “The pressure. The noise. The weight of being everything for everyone except myself.” He looked at her, eyes red and glassy. “Except you.”

His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard, forcing himself to keep going.

“I didn’t know how to ask for help… I didn’t know how to admit I was drowning. So instead of handing you a life vest, I dragged you under with me. I watched you gasp for air while I pretended I was fine. I put it all on you. Every fear, every failure, every bad day that I couldn’t carry anymore—I dumped it at your feet.”

His voice cracked—visibly, audibly.

“I made you carry me… when I should’ve just reached out and held your hand.”

He exhaled, ragged and broken.

“And then,” he continued, quieter now, almost like he hated himself for the words that came next, “I turned it all into poison. Into sharp edges and cold shoulders. Into silence when you needed comfort, into anger when you only offered love.”

Y/N didn’t move.

But he saw it.

The tiniest twitch of her lips. The way her chin wobbled for just a second before she stilled it. Her shoulders sank—not dramatically, not enough to collapse, but enough to say she had heard every word, and that each one cut just a little deeper than the last.

“And you,” Carlos whispered, his voice like glass, “you drank every drop of that poison. Thinking it was love. Believing that maybe if you just held on long enough, I’d come back to you.”

A tear rolled down her cheek, unbidden.

But she didn’t speak. Didn’t wipe it away.

She just let it fall.

And Carlos felt something in his chest rip wide open.

He bit the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted blood. Still, he kept going, because she deserved the truth—even if it came late, even if it came from a place of ruin.

“It broke you too, didn’t it?” he whispered, barely able to look at her now. “Loving me... it broke you.”

Her silence was an answer. A loud one.

Not because she didn’t want to speak.

But because there was nothing left to say that could undo the damage.

He saw it in her eyes—the ache of someone who had fought for too long and had nothing left to fight with. The kind of pain that came from loving someone who kept handing you reasons to leave, and still… you stayed.

Until it tore you apart.

Carlos’s chest heaved, the guilt pressing into his ribs like a scream trapped beneath his skin.

And for the first time in a long time, he didn’t just regret what he did.

He regretted what he turned her into while doing it.

And now all that remained was the echo.

“You pushed me away,” she whispered. “And then you acted surprised when I finally left.”

Carlos nodded. “I know.”

There was a long silence.

Y/N stepped closer, the photo still trembling faintly between her fingers. Her voice was soft, but every word struck him with the weight of months lost and memories bleeding at the edges.

“You know… when I left,” she began, her eyes not quite meeting his, “I thought I’d feel lighter.”

Carlos froze, his breath catching in his throat.

“Like I’d finally put something down,” she continued, voice trembling like a tightrope about to snap. “Like walking away from something too heavy to carry any longer. But it didn’t feel like relief, Carlos.”

She finally looked up—and the pain in her eyes knocked the air out of his lungs.

“It felt like mourning someone who was still alive.”

His gaze dropped instantly, guilt curling in his stomach like rusted wire.

Y/N's breath hitched, and she blinked rapidly, her lashes wet. “Do you know how cruel that is?” she whispered, voice breaking on the edges. “To grieve someone who walks and breathes and smiles for the rest of the world—but not for you anymore?”

Carlos couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Every part of him was splintering under the weight of her honesty.

“I loved you in ways I didn’t even understand yet,” she whispered, her voice cracking wide open. “You were home. You were my constant. I was building forever with you in mind. Every plan, every promise—I placed it all around you like stars in a sky I thought we shared.”

She exhaled slowly, like the words were knives she had to bleed out just to breathe.

“But you… you were building walls.”

He flinched.

“And now you hate me,” he said quietly, almost like he was asking for it. A punishment he believed he deserved.

“No.” Her response was instant, fierce, and full of something tragically beautiful. “I could never hate you. That’s the problem.”

Her voice broke at the end—just a tremor—but it shattered him completely. A single tear slipped down her cheek, and she turned slightly away, as if ashamed of the emotion that cracked through her composed exterior.

And for the first time in months, Carlos let go.

His own tears slipped past his defenses—silent, unrestrained. His chest ached as if something vital inside him had been torn out.

“I still dream about you,” he whispered, barely able to speak. “About waking up next to you. About hearing you laugh in the mornings. Seeing you at the races. About driving you to the airport and holding your hand across the console like always. Like nothing ever went wrong.”

Y/N looked down, and a shaky smile ghosted across her lips—heartbreaking in its fragility.

“I still reach for your side of the bed sometimes,” she said. “Instinct, I guess. My body hasn’t caught up with reality yet.”

Silence fell between them again—but it wasn’t empty. It pulsed with everything unsaid, with memories too sacred to destroy and wounds too fresh to ignore.

It wrapped around them like smoke—soft, suffocating, and impossible to escape. Neither of them moved. Neither of them dared to.

Because this—this was the kind of heartbreak that didn’t scream.

It lingered. It haunted. It remembered.

And it loved… still.

“You were my happiest years,” she whispered, her voice breaking like delicate glass under the weight of memory.

Carlos felt the breath leave his body.

Those words—so gentle, so full of everything they had been—landed like a knife to the chest. His hand moved on instinct, reaching out, fingertips trembling as he brushed the tear sliding down her cheek. He wanted to touch her one last time. To anchor himself in the softness he once called home.

But she flinched—not out of anger, but self-preservation—and stepped back. Knowing if she didn't step back, she will never be able to leave.

“Don’t,” she said, not unkindly. Her voice was like silk being torn. “Please… don’t make this harder than it already is.”

Carlos froze. His hand dropped to his side like it no longer belonged to him. His jaw clenched so tight it ached, but he nodded—once, sharp, painful—like the acknowledgment itself might keep him from falling apart.

Y/N reached into her bag, her movements slow and deliberate, as though every second she stalled would delay the inevitable. Then she held it out to him—a photograph. Just a small one. Faded around the edges, worn from years of being folded and carried too close to the heart.

The two of them in golden hour sunlight—she was laughing, her head tilted back, eyes crinkled with joy, while Carlos stared at her like she was the only thing in the world that ever made sense.

“You should keep it,” she murmured, placing it gently into his hand. “So you remember what it felt like. To be loved like that.”

Carlos’s fingers curled around it like it was fragile, sacred. Like it was the last piece of her he’d ever get to hold. And maybe it was.

He didn’t even look at it.

He couldn’t.

Instead, he held it to his chest, pressing it against the space where his heart was now screaming. As if maybe the memory—the ghost of that moment—could stop the rest of him from shattering.

y/n turned.

Her heels clicked once against the hotel floor, then stopped.

She paused at the door, her back to him, shoulders drawn tight with everything she wasn’t saying.

Then, with a breath that sounded like it took every last ounce of strength she had left, she gave him a final smile before quietly saying, “I’ll always be rooting for you, Carlos. Even from far away.”

And then she opened the door.

And she was gone.

Gone like sunlight slipping beneath the sea.

Gone like the last note of a song that once made you feel infinite.

Gone like a heartbeat slowing down into silence.

Carlos didn’t move.

The door clicked shut behind her with the softest finality, and it echoed louder than any scream could’ve.

He stood there, alone in the quiet, the photograph still pressed to his chest. The room around him felt hollow—too still, too clean. As if all the color had drained out the second she left. Her scent lingered in the air like a secret, her laughter haunted the corners like a memory refusing to be erased.

And his knees buckled.

He collapsed into the nearest chair, chest heaving, the photo shaking in his hands.

Tears fell freely now—messy, unguarded, without shame.

And in the ruins of what once was, all Carlos could whisper, through the wreckage of everything he hadn’t said, everything he hadn’t done to deserve her, was—

“Thank you… for the happiest years of my life.”

Even if it ended like this. Even if it tore him apart. Even if it was goodbye.

It had been hers. And that was enough to break him.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

Should there be a part 2?

[gone-fish-mode]

hello beasties! apologies for the mass tag- but I thought it would be the best way to get the attention of everyone who showed interest in a nonhuman news letter!

Currently, I am opening up applications to help me out with the newsletter and email updates + subscriptions! You can do both, you can only do one, it doesn't matter.

The newsletter is not ready to open submissions and the website isn't done yet, but the ball is approaching the edge of the hill and, god willing, is about to start rolling.

there are no real requirements to be apart of the staff, I just ask that you are a) nonhuman, b) 16 or older, and c) able to use discord.

If you really wanna help, but don't want to use discord, just send me a dm or comment and we can find a way for you to be apart of this without the discord.

All the information you need should be in the google forms. I'll go in tonight and start adding folks to everything.

If you have questions, comment!!! dm me!! I know the forms say email, but honestly we're not to the point where email is preferable.

There is no age restriction on the updates or subscription list!

updates + subscription

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[h5eavenly]

Fallen Star┃Jake Sim

fourteen - Why didn't you take me? warning: detailed description of anxiety, mentions of death, angst, and smut.

Masterlist ✶ prev ✶ next

(a/n: special thanks to @stargirl-gigi for giving me strength when i lacked it. i know you're not the biggest fan of enhypen but i still hope you'll like this cus if it weren't for you my brain wouldn't have been able to form this many words <3)

Jake learns that the world is unjust early on in his life. Even supposing for the preponderance of his few first moons he’s adjudged lucky not to be on the receiving end. Nevertheless, he finds himself appertained to an all-familiar watching crowd. With impertinent eyes and forged pity, they’ll watch as lives fall apart in front of them. They’ll never help but prate about how bad they feel.

Jake wasn’t on the receiving end for a long time, but he recalls being a perpetrator.

He is seven years old. It was a warm summer afternoon; he was running around with fellow students in the classroom. Despite being apprised a little more over four times to not do that. Jake was born obdurate; it wasn’t something that came with time. Conceivably it might have grown, became something that is unwillingly part of his skin. Nonetheless it was always there, and it is still the reason his hip ends up colliding with the teacher’s table, knocking over her vase of flowers and he watches with wide eyes as it tumbles to the ground and shatters into diminutive bits.

When his favorite teacher with disenchantment imprinted on her features asked who did it. His heart trembled with the trepidation of getting reprimand and so he ends up blaming someone else. throwing the guilt of his wrongdoings upon someone else’s shoulders to carry. He watches as his superiority sides with his luck. Being the most liked kid in his class aids his lie and every student lies with him, for him.

Jake ruminates on the situation a lot more than he would like. It comes to him on random days of his life, and it comes to him when his supply of luck runs out. The day he ends up on the receiving margin of life. He’s on his knees. Agony sneaks its way onto every atom of his being and before he could even breathe – it draped itself over him.

More often than not Jake feels like he had lived four lives, yet he bides not even past his mid-twenties. His first ends with him starry eyed, floating in a pipe dream. That despite his insidious mind he could still make it work in Paranoia. It only lasts for fleeting moments before it all crumbles. Anxiety is a searing ache, it’s in perpetuity coursing through his veins. No matter how hard Jake locks the door, with indomitable force it breaks it down, it travels through the window until he’s tied together by threads of unpreventable dread.

His second life passes by in a colorful daze, an emptiness in his chest that’s scarcely filled with pills on his tongue and poison in his blood. It’s all blurry fragments of him on stage, staying in the studio until every bone in his body ached and him trying to find meaning in pages of his lyrics.

With his third life he’s watching his mother’s dead body being lowered into her grave. His heart is now nothing, but a gaping scar and it pulsates with agonizing affliction every time he breathes. The flashes of cameras feel like knives being stabbed repeatedly into his body. In a fugitive breath he recalls that day when he was seven years old, and he ponders on if this was his punishment.

Why didn’t you take me?

In another world, one where life is impartial, his mother lives and Jake dies, with no blood on his hands.

By his fourth try he no longer feels human. Rather a floating revenant watching down upon the creature who’s etched with misery and a colossal amount of anxiety. He’s constantly overtaken by calamitous emotions. There’s no time for his wounds to mend when he’s so busy trying to control his thoughts, to keep them at bay. Placate them with rehearsed fortitude just so he could have room to exhale. However, his questions remain. They plague his mind; it beleaguers him and then at night it all interposes into questions he can’t seem to find a remedy to.

Why didn’t you take me?

What’s the point of anything?

“Jake?” He hears you calling him, disquiet lacing your voice. He blinks, his eyes that have been zeroed in on a random spot in the mirror finally move, landing on yours instead.

“Yes?”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Sorry, do you mind repeating that once again?” he sighs, rubbing his temples warily. Missing the way, yours linger on his face with worry etched on them.

“Okay.”  He’s met with a few moments of silence as you scroll up through your ipad “The Vogue team reached out again and they’re hoping to redo the interview you never got to finish a while ago,” your eyes flick to his for mere seconds, ephemeral although more than enough to skim across his features, perusing his scrunched brows “do you want that?”

“If they’re actually gonna show up on time then sure.”

“Okay.”

“Make sure to tell them that.”

“You want me to tell Vogue they better show up on time?”

“Yes bunny,” despite his raised brow and the look in his eyes that straight up calls you stupid. You grow somewhat relieved that bits of his usual self are back on the surface.

A pout draws on your lips as you type away on the screen of your ipad and his eyes fleet to them a tad too long to be deemed appropriate. He is apt to be swayed by deviant desires, yours seem to feed his ardour.

“Can I get you anything?” You speak suddenly and it takes him back to his reality, gaze shifting away and you, too busy to notice.

“An energy drink would be nice.”

“What kind?”

“Whatever is available.” With a nod sent in his direction you leave with a brush of your hand on his shoulder blade. It’s delicately discreet. In the same way your lashes flutter whenever he looks at you and the warmth of your palm doesn’t stay long but it has him trifling.

Not inordinately scalding but rather a soothing touch that eases the thorns picking at his heart.

With a sigh he leans back in his seat and checks his phone. The tightness pulling at his ribs comes back, intensifies by his messages to Soojin being left unanswered. And it all makes itself discernible once he starts bouncing his leg on the floor. His demons swarm by his feet and inchmeal, they creep upwards, almost as if they’re melting onto his flesh.

“Is Soojin still coming?” he asks Jay – who is sitting on the couch not too far away - with concealed fret. The latter looks up from his stack of papers, glasses halfway down the bridge of his nose.

“As far as I know yes. Why?”

“She’s not answering my texts, so I was wondering.” regardless of his inefficacious attempts to remain composed Jay has spent what feels like a lifetime by his side, every moment was more than enough for him to commit every mannerism of Jake into his memory. Seeing through his façade is a practice he mastered.

“I’m sure she’s okay man. She probably has it on do not disturb or something.”

“Yeah,” Jake replies absentminded. A fraught silence settles and despite Jay’s words that portray themselves as a touch of gentleness on his being. His striving to calm down the storms that are threatening to take over him.

It starts off palliate with slight tugging at his chest, puncture just to be annoying. The logical wheels in his mind turn, giving meaning to Jay’s words to him and finding solace in between the letters. He busies himself with turning all of Sunoo’s makeup products with the label upfront. It earns him a slap on his hand and a glare.

“Can you fuck off Jake? I have other clients to work on.” Sunoo spits and he only huffs in response, sinking in his seat and checking his phone once again.

No Notifications. He never hated anything more than those two words. The tugging grows relentless and before he gets to think he’s already picking at the skin around his nails.

Jake’s anxiety is too fickle of a creature to ever just leave him in seclusion for far too long.

It already seeped into him and clung itself on his bones. It is more than just a part of him but rather who he is. Like A winding coil that finally snaps. his head is bombarded with frightful images and every bad thing that could have happened to Soojin flashes in a moment. His heart skips three beats at once and panic travels through his veins.

The logical wheels come to a halt so abruptly.

What if something really bad happened to her? What if she’s hurt? What if she got into an accident on her way here to see him? It’s his fault, isn’t it?

“Are you okay Jake?” His head swivels towards Jay who somehow has made it to his side without making much noise or getting his attention.

“Yeah um- “he clears his throat “do you think you could call Soojin? See where she is?” The worry that starts filling Jay’s eyes is what he was hoping to avoid seeing. He knows it’s nowhere close to pity, knows no matter how much blood his heart spills, Jay will never look at him with ruth.

And yet Jake has grown an immense hatred for every possible way that people look at him, somewhere between sleepless nights, how vacant his chest remains and his constant reminder to breathe- he yearns for normality and if it’s something he isn’t meant for, his unyielding covet to be invisible overtakes his will to live.

“Of course.” Jay like always doesn’t question him, a tender smile settles on his face “I’m sure she’s okay, alright?” he assures, and Jake could only nod mutely in response, his throat is tightening and an all too familiar knot is forming.

With Jay walking away from to make a call, you’re back. His promised drink between your hands.

“Here.” You place it in front of him and when Jake doesn’t even look at it, his peculiar silence is enough for you to take notice of the shift in the air. Your words hanging heavy, and Jake’s agitation is avidly pellucid, as crystal as running water.

Your eyes shift when Jay walks back to you two, with downcast eyes.

“She’s not picking up. Should I call her manager?”

“I guess?” Although Jake’s voice is unmodulated edged with an imperturbable expression, your eyes remain on the way he keeps picking at his skin. With a mute nod Jay leaves you two alone once again

He glances at you when your fingers wrap around his wrist to halt his movement, with imbedded delicacy. Even your touch plea rather than order and if Jake’s mind wasn’t already clouded with webs of consternation. He would notice it.

“Is this about Soojin?” You purse your lips right after the question slips from your mouth, as if you didn’t mean to ask and really if Jake wasn’t so busy worrying about the wellbeing of his friend right now, he’d be snorting at you.

Alternatively, his state remains stoic.

“Yeah.”

“You seem to care about her a lot.”

“Because she’s my friend?” He side-eyes you, sharp enough to again call out the lack of your intelligence with a glance and it renders you mute. Walking away from him just in time for him to roll his eyes, checking his phone for the third time.

Your absence doesn’t last long, in fact it doesn’t last long enough for him to click his phone shut before you’re shoving a stack of papers in his face with a minacious lustre in the flickers of color in your eyes.

“Can you help me count these folded pages?” you smile at him, imbued with inimitable docile that only seem to find home in you, and in between his sheets.

He prances between you and the papers in almost suspicion yet stays quiet and despite the way he fights the urge to roll his eyes at you he still takes them from you, only because it is welcome enough of a hindrance to combat against his fatalistic mind.

“Sure.”

As a tranquil silence descends upon the two of you. It takes mere moments for comprehension to swim its way to his head, amidst the crashing waves of overbearing disquietude, he finds your kindness. Like a shore he finally gets to rest on after swimming for so long, he’s choking on the water clogging his throat pipe, yet you manage to exist as a stroke of color amongst his grays.

He remembers it so well. Seeing you this morning counting these same papers.

Were you trying to distract him?

He pauses, and you catch his eyes promptly. You don’t make him wait and his brain fizzles out for a second, a silence he doesn’t get to linger in enough to appreciate, as his eyes rake over your features, your eyes manage to exist in screaming color while the rest withers away, uncompromising. And then ever so slightly, the corners of your lips turn upwards in a smile that isn’t inundated with sympathy for him. Instead, you’re everything that you ever are, sugary sweet and nothing like his forget me nots. You’re akin to cherry blossoms that sprout throughout spring.

So scintillating, too exorbitant he’s obligated to tear his gaze away from you.

Jake had long discarded his deficient organ - so called heart. It is nothing more than meritless and it died the day his mother left this world. It only ever subsists to awaken him once it slips his mind that he is alive, he is present if not that, it’s here to remind him he is made of his anxiety.

Right now, an interval of many years that feels closer to decades than anything, his heart skips a beat, not out of trepidation.

However, it being so unwonted does not give it any more sprinkle of an eminence, it persists in being counterfeit. It disintegrates the moment your own heart picks up speed, the moment a blush starts to bloom high on your cheeks because the softness glazing his features is never directed at you.

It is completely foolish, how hope remains an adherent wavering spirit, and it crumbles in the blink of an eyes, right when his eyes shift to somewhere behind you.

“Soojin..” he mutters and your expression falls.

Jake never gets to see it cause he’s out of your sight as soon as her name leaves his mouth. Getting up from his seat and abandoning the papers he had between his hands and you with them, as you look down at them, it’s ironic how your blush subsides, instead you feel as inconsequential as a piece of paper. Trifle.

“Soojin! Fuck are you okay?” He asks once he’s in front of her, hands on her shoulders and his eyes etched with concern as they dart over her figure in a rapid search for any visible wounds, any evidence to pack up his growing anxious feelings but he finds nothing but puffy eyes and a breathy yawn.

“Gosh I was so tired I ended up falling asleep in the car. Sorry for being so late.” She chuckles sheepishly and despite the smile clinging to her ravishing face it isn’t enough to estrange his ghosts, they stay like foreboding shackles tightened around his ankles, dragging him down.

He almost stumbles, shoulders slumping as his overwhelming feelings transform themselves into pure enervation, it is enough for Soojin to take notice of his all-knowing telltale signs of his anxiety and this time she’s the one who holds him, as if she’s ever able to keep pieces of him together.

“Hey, hey I’m okay Jake.” Despite the nod he gives her, his unfocused eyes are an indication of how he’s not actually listening. His worry only starts to melt when she brings his palm right atop her pulse, pressing his fingers right where life beats “I’m okay,” she whispers softly.

“you’re okay.” He repeats, more to himself yet she nods incessantly.

“I’m here. I’m okay.” Her fingers intertwine with his, laced with a pledge to bring ease into his jumbled-up mind and when she squeezes, he lets out a breath he didn’t realize he needed to release.

He is constantly overshadowed by exhaustion. And you sit in a corner, gaze locked on their hands, it only irks your uncertainties -akin to his monsters- to raise to the surface. A feeling you’re so inured to stirs in the middle of your chest, it’s not pleasant and it feels like callous hands have made their way inside, clutching it until you feel like you can’t breathe. Not when she’s here.

You pack your papers and leave the room with an unyielding grip, a heavy emotion sits in the Indeterminate territory between you two, your body is colliding against these walls and it’s all too familiar jealousy.

why why why

Jake only notices when he’s calmed down enough, with furrowed eyebrows his eyes scanned the room looking for glimpses of you.

“Good job everyone! That’s all for today!” one of the staff members yells, a cluster of ‘Good job’s is being thrown around, staff walking around to pack a mess the photoshoot had left behind.

Jake slumps in his chair with a sigh, an ache is starting to spread throughout his body, specifically his shoulders. Despite not having a long day of work unlike his usual days he just feels so exhausted. Soojin stands close by munching on a mini croissant, his mini croissant to be specific.

“You could have asked,” he remarks and Soojin only snorts in response.

“I could have,” she shrugs with a smirk tugging at her lips and Jake’s eyes are already rolling “but I didn’t feel like it.”

He finds nothing to say back, instead his eyes are lolling to you, who’s a few steps away from him, writing something down with enormous potency it’s almost comical. You’ve been a little off ever since his little episode earlier today. Avoiding his eyes and only talking when you’re talked to. Truthfully, it’s how Jake wished you to be, but he knows your proclivity for chatter, for loud laughter to know that you’re not okay.

“Bunny.” He doesn’t get a respond.

“yn.” this time you look up, glancing at him with an empty expression.

Ah so you are upset.

With a raised brow and his index finger beckons you to come over, you sigh, making a show of dragging your feet to him.

“Yes?” you ask when you’re in front of him, looking down at him with faux emptiness clinging to the tips of your lashes.

“Could you get me my phone? I left it in my dressing room right on the vanity.” You nod mutely and just as you’re about to leave Soojin speaks up “Oh! I left my phone there too could you grab it please? It’s the one with the red phone case!” she claps her hands together in a plea, a sweet smile spreading across her face and yet an almost eerie silence fills the air as you turn your head to face her.

“You’re talking to me?” there’s an edge to your tone that makes Soojin’s expression fall, her mouth opening and closing a couple of time.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” She trails off, bewildered.

Your lips separates, ready to spit a response and Jake knows the look in your eyes cannot be anything good and so he stands up, walking past you with a demanding “Follow me.” voice laced with enough venom for your words to dissolve on your tongue and you saunter behind him.

Once you’re in his dressing room, the door is locked, and he faces you with crossed arms. The room is leaden with stillness that has your heart picking up speed, your eye contact falls into a familiar dance, lead by tension, vexation and then something that tastes akin to abhor.

“Are you okay?” he asks and despite the shaking of your soul you stay as frigid as stone. The way your eyes flit behind him in avoidance starts to annoy him right away but he pulls on his composure.

“I’m perfect,” sarcasm drips from your voice and his own teeth sink into his bottom lip, thinking of the right words to say.

“You seem pretty upset.”

“It’s your imagination.” The sneer on your face is cruel enough to expose your lousy acting and he only sighs, his hand falling to rest at his hip.

“If you’re tired you can take the rest of the day off, bunny.”

“I’m perfectly fine Jake.”

“Are you sure? I’m just asking because I assume you’re still worried about your brother so you can leave, or you can take the next few days off.” He attempts to lean down, closer to your height in grappling tries to catch your eyes, his words dripping with odd tenderness, it feels foreign in his mouth.

“Oh!” an extravagant widened gaze takes over your face, your feigned coldness is washed away by the heat of your emotions , profoundly.

“I’m sorry if I’m disturbing your little reunion,” this time you’re not running away, this time your hardened stare melts his softness right off him “you’re trying to get rid of me now?”

“What’s with this attitude? Huh? I'm only trying to help." His benevolent demeanor is already fleeing, replaced with stoicism.

“I don’t have an attitude.”

“Yeah, you do. You’re acting like a fucking brat yn.” you breathe out through your nose, you feel your bones shake from within with licks of anger, it matches the fire setting his eyes ablaze.

“How am I acting like a brat?”

“Do I have to spill everything out for you every single time?” he spits, indignation seeping into every word.

“So, when I treat you the same way you treat me, I’m being a brat?”

“So, you do know what you’re doing.” He raises his eyebrow at you in mocking provocation while your eyes start to escape his anew.

“If you’re gonna ignore me then don’t be mad when I do the same.” You mutter in a much smaller voice, and maybe because you sound frangible, curling into yourself as if that will help you appear smaller, shrinking under his gaze that his annoyance subsides for a moment.

He sighs, demolishing his aggravation for a moment.

“I’m sorry bunny I didn’t mean to ignore you. I was just relieved to see Soojin.”

You don’t foresee an apology tumbling out his lips and when it happens it leaves you foundering, not sure how to deal with this mess between you two now. You fall into a discomfiting silence, with callow stubbornness you rake your brain to find something to throw at him, something to blame him for, something that will help quiet down the voice inside of you. yet you come back empty handed.

“Are we good now?” he asks, and you swallow, eyes darting between him and the wall behind him, a yes nor a no wants to find place on your tongue. At the lack of response from you he turns to leave.

You feel foolish as a misplaced proprietorial desire drapes over you when you mutter your next words; “of course you’re going back to her.” A part of you wishes he didn’t hear you, it’s too hideous of a truth for you to admit yet when Jake turns to face you with a twisted expression. Fulfilment engulfs you, knowing you aren’t the only person who cares enough to be drowning in anger.

“Are you jealous?” he jeers.

“I’m not jealous.” Your glare is a flimsy barrier against your veracity.

“You better not be. You and I both know exactly what this is.” He says, pointing at the space between you and him and when your eyebrows scrunch together, he is only grows confused at your anger, doesn’t quite understand what triggered it.

“With the way you keep treating me it’s hard to fucking forget.”

Jake was never really an angry person; he did get annoyed about a lot of things, and many might have considered him sensitive towards a lot of things as well. The list of adjectives to describe him is long and angry isn’t even in his top ten. Yet you, with a flame-like personality and piercing eyes as deep as oceans he only ever sees in his dream, manage to make rage his utmost emotion. You have it rushing through his veins and it’s moments like these when he’s standing in front of you, he feels like nothing but a hurricane of rage and every dark emotion in between.

In an inhale of harsh anger, he has you against the wall, caging your body with a palm flat next to your head, he tilts his head to regard you with a narrowed gaze, doused with wrath that has your knees buckling.

“I’m so sick of having this fucking conversation with you.”

“We don’t have to talk.” You sneer.

“I’m not doing this with you.” he scoffs in disbelief at your words and your eyes only grow harsher with disdain.

“what’s wrong? You can’t fuck me when your dear Soojin is outside?” you mutter atop his lips, your eyes fliting between his mouth and eyes, and the scowl that crawls over his face looks delicious “no. I’m not fucking you because you’re feeling insecure and you don’t know how to deal with your emotions.”

One thing about you, is you’re always as translucent as glass, despite your futile attempts at standing your ground, the way you try to keep your stare as bitter, it all crumbles in front of him and he sees past it all. It’s in the way your eyebrows drop ever so slightly, the way your lips separate with a slight breath as if you felt his words grazing the surface of your heart.

“Keep lying to yourself Jake.”

How do you manage to still get on his nerves? He’s not sure anymore. Even when he cups your face with one hand, denting your cheeks with his fingers.

“Shut the fuck up. You’re pissing me the fuck off.” He spits through gritted teeth, eyes flashing in warning, yet you don’t relent.

“Make me.” you whisper, a smirk curling your lips upwards.

He doesn’t kiss you like he knows you want him to, it’s so evident in the way your eyes fall lidded with hunger, your lips falling open with breaths as you involuntary lean forward with a want for a taste of him. The glint in your eyes, resembles the moon is enough for him to snap, igniting the flame of desire within him and he groans, flipping your body and pressing your chest to the wall, with your wrist between his grip and pressing them into your lower back, a gasp shooting from your lips as you attempt to look back at him.

“Jake what the fu-“

“Shut up.” He growls in your ear, laced by displeasure and overtaken by lust.

Your short skirt gives facile access to his thigh when he nudges it between your legs and against your clothed cunt, an inadvertent shiver courses through your body, every comeback you had conjured up flees your mind and instead a barely audible whimper escapes your lips.

“I’m going to fuck you,” he presses his chest against your back “like the fucking brat you are, so you better take it.” He tells you darkly, his words looming over you and your silence lingers, hanging your head pathetically and he wants to scoff.

For someone who talks so much you fall apart easily every single time.

With a glare set on the back of your head, as if his eyes are bullets that can break through your skull, you shiver when you feel his cold hands remove your underwear. His fingers brush against your folds and wetness meet his hands, a breath of belittlement escapes him, burning the entirety of your face bright red.

“Does pissing me off really turn you on that much?”

You force a swallow, your head lolling into a haze of arousal and your vigour for a quarrel dissolve becoming one with the floor.

“that’s not  it-.” You attempt to reply, your words are cut off by a gasp forcing its way out of you when he presses you further against the wall, your cheek centimeters away from it “didn’t I fucking tell you to shut up?” your sanity collapses along with your common sense, intoxicated by his voice “why the fuck are you talking huh?” he taunts and this time you don’t answer, your chest heaving with the proximity.

His fingers loosen from around your wrists, but you keep them where they are, daunted by retribution. They throb, matching the beating of your heart against your ribcage. He leaves behind reddening marks, residue of a rage that only you are able to inflict on him. He moves quickly to remove himself from the confines of his pants.

You turn your head to the side slightly, stealing a glance at him with an idiotic hope that it’s unobtrusive yet they stumble upon his frighteningly nimble.

“Face the wall I don’t want to fucking look at you.” with a scowl plastered across his face, his voice doused enmity has you whimpering, melting the metal of malignant insults right off your brain as you turn to face the wall again.

your body tenses at the feeling of him lining his cock up with your entrance, his hands rough against the skin of your body and when he sinks into you, he doesn’t give you much time to linger for breathing, setting a pace that is nothing less than brutal, one of his hands inches upwards and wraps around your throat driving you to the brink of insanity, you’re constantly fighting against a losing battle and your moans spill endlessly.

“J-jake slow down.” You cry out, your hand reaching for his hips to somehow impede them.

“Quiet.” He hisses, his tone shaking with a groan and you’re even more turned on by his gravel voice “if you make another sound, I’m gonna stop and leave you like this, do you understand?” you could only whimper in response, a piteous sound that feels revolting as it falls upon your ears, you wish to block it yet a prodigious wish takes over, you hope he takes it as enough of affirmative.

He picks up speed, grows harsher with every thrust, not caring if this whole thing is turning vengeful more than anything else, your teeth sink in your bottom lip, banishing your sounds of pleasure and your eyes roll back, you hang your head, exhilaration taking your mind through a whirlwind, your pain and ecstasy tangling together into a song of nothing but sin and loathing.

At a particular harsh thrust you’re launched forward, your cheek pressing against the cold surface and you’re falling apart, eyes falling open lined with tears, and you lock gazes with him unintended. He is not sure if it’s the whine you let out, or your rapture soaked expression, it’s probably your tears shining like specks of glitter on still water. Whatever it is, it has him by his throat, within reach and his anger is lost in between your arousal as he leans forward and takes your lips for his.

Imprisoning you in a curse of passion with his kiss and you let out a wanton moan against his mouth, as if you were dying to feel his lips upon yours.

He fucks you through your orgasm and his.

As soon as the smoke of lust clears up, a contrasting tension fills the heavy breaths between you two. He moves away from you in silence, his limbs filling with aversion towards you and himself for giving in to you. More than anything he’s congested with disenchantment that he hopes his eyes covey when he looks at you.

“you’re acting the same way you acted the first time this happened.” You ridicule, hurt creases your glance and he lets out a humorless laugh that has you frowning.

“I’m still fucking pissed at you.” he’s flooded with disbelief “did you think I was gonna fuck you and then everything was going to be fine?”

You fall silent, lips pressing together and really there you go again, igniting the flame of prickling rage within him. It has him wanting to pull at his hair, he doesn’t understand you, constantly confused by the way your mind works, the emotions swimming in your eyes aren’t close to aiding anything and it only waters his disappointment. Plunges it further into dirt the more he recalls the events of the day.

You blend with everyone else, everyone who sees him as a shiny toy to play with, to ease their inquisitiveness. After that he is nothing.

“Jake-” You start and your words are once again snatched away from you, a knock on the door purloins his attention away from you.

“Jake? Are you still coming to the store opening with me?” Soojin’s voice reverberates from behind the door, like a blade flung at your chest, your fist clenched.

“I’m coming.” He replies, moving to tidy himself and you splutter, hands going through your hair nervously “y-you’re leaving? Just give me a few minutes to sort out myself-“

“You’re not coming with me.”

“What? But I always go everywhere with you.”

“Not this time.”

You mouth opens and closes a couple of times, suddenly your resentment flees your body like a breath of air, nerves taking their place just as quickly, building all the way to your throat.

“I understand you’re mad at me but at least let me do my job.”

“Your job is to listen to me,” his icy eyes flit to your convoluted ones “I’m telling you I don’t need you so you’re not coming.”

He doesn’t give room for your answer to exist, he leaves the room with despondency clinging to his ankles, a headache is already starting to form and his heart is loaded heavy with conflicting emotions that only ever exist because of you. Disappointment slithers its path throughout his being and he’s growing frustrated for letting himself kneel into hope in the first place. How stupid. The feeling lingers even when he’s in the car with Soojin next to him, her concerned eyes glued to him.

"Are you okay?" She asks, her palm envelopes his with warmth and he doesn't have courage to tell her about the emotions that are breaking him down.

He can't tell her.

You’re just like everyone else.

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[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 1: Ares, God Of War]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 5.7k

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💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let’s begin with a definition.

Disaster is a noun derived from Ancient Greek: dus, a prefix meaning “bad,” and aster, or “star.” In the time when humans worshipped Zeus and Hera, Hephaestus and Aphrodite, it was believed that tragedies resulted from the inauspicious positioning of celestial bodies: a volcano erupts because of Jupiter, a returning comet brings with it a flood. There is a certain helplessness inherent in this mythology. There is predestined suffering that lies in wait until all the jewels of the sky have malignantly aligned.

Have you ever met someone who made you ache to change the stars?

~~~~~~~~~~

Gunshots explode through the lobby of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida; you feel the wind of the bullets as they clip by, fragmented metallic rage. Aemond is on the marble floor, blood pouring down his face, blood all over the white shirt beneath his navy blue suit jacket when you rip it open, tearing a button loose. He’s reaching for you through the jostling and the screams, leaving crimson handprints on your mint green dress. And you think: He just won the Florida primary. He’s not supposed to die. He’s supposed to be the president.

“What happened?” Aemond murmurs, his right eye dazed and only half-open; the left has vanished beneath a cloudburst of gore. Perhaps ten yards away, people have caught the assailant and pinned him against one of the vast Venetian windows until the police arrive. They’re roaring at him in red-faced fury, their closed fists strike his ribs and his cheekbones, their knuckles paint him scarlet and indigo.

“You’re alright, you’re alright.” You brace both palms over the maroon stain spreading rapidly across Aemond’s chest and press down as hard as you can. Your fingers are drenched in seconds, warm fading life. He’s bleeding to death. You shriek through the turmoil: “Criston?!”

“Is he okay?” Aemond asks faintly. He means the baby; you’re six months pregnant with his first child, his greatest treasure, his Atlantis, his Holy Grail. Aemond has already decided that it’s a boy. Sometimes you fear what will happen if he’s wrong.

“Yes, honey, the baby’s fine, don’t worry. Criston!”

Aegon is here instead, sweating out rum and ruin like he always is, hair too long, veins full of pills, colliding with you and pawing at his dying brother with untrustworthy hands. “Aemond?!”

You shove Aegon away, splattering him with blood. “Get back, he needs air!”

“Where’s he shot?! Let me see—”

“I told you to get back!”

“Goddammit, you don’t own him! He’s mine too!”

Criston has battled his way to you and is yanking Aegon back by the collar of his frayed olive green army jacket, stolen from Daeron when he visited home after basic training, a uniform of embittered revolution worn by a man who’s never fought for anything. “Aegon, make sure someone’s called for an ambulance, then meet the paramedics at the door and help them find us.”

“But—”

“Go!” Criston yells, and Aegon scrambles to his feet and is lost within the crowd. You can hear Otto bellowing at journalists and hotel employees to make space for the fallen senator; there are flashes of cameras and prayers shouted aloud. Above your head are crystal chandeliers and a vaulted ceiling hand-painted by 75 Italian artists in the 1920s; swimming in your skull are visions of Jackie Kennedy in the pink suit filthy with her husband’s brains. It’s just before midnight on Tuesday, May 28th. Upstairs in their oceanfront Imperial Suites, nannies will be shaking awake the absent adults of the Targaryen dynasty, who retired with the children before Aemond made his victory speech in the hotel ballroom: Alicent, Helaena, Fosco, Mimi.

Criston’s hands—larger, stronger—replace yours over the gushing wound in Aemond’s chest. What did the bullet hit? His lung, his heart? He’s not speaking anymore, his right eye is closed. His bloodied hands rest open and empty on the floor. “Criston, he’s dying,” you sob.

“No he’s not. We’re not going to let him.”

“What’s the closest hospital?”

“Good Samaritan is just across the bridge on the mainland.” It’s Criston’s job to know these things, though he had been thinking of you when he plotted his meticulous notes in his day planner: in case you eat a bad cheeseburger, or trip on the stairs, or catch the flu and start burning up with fever. Aemond worries about the baby. Aegon has five children, Helaena has three, and Aemond will feel that he has been robbed of something if he does not swiftly procure a family of his own. He needs you on the campaign trail, but still, he worries.

Across the lobby, the police have arrived to arrest the aspiring assassin. He puts up a fight when they try to handcuff him and earns a nightstick to the gut, an elbow to the nose. He is choking on his own blood. Perhaps he is drowning in it. Good, you think.

“Don’t kill him!” Otto booms at the officers. “I want him alive for trial! I want him to ride the lighting up in Raiford, you keep that son of a bitch alive!”

“Aemond?” You thread your fingers through his blood-soaked hair. What happened to his left eye? Is it somewhere underneath all that carnage, or is it gone? “Please wake up. Please stay with me. We need you. The baby and I need you.”

“He’s going to live,” Criston promises, both hands still clamped over the bullet wound to slow the hemorrhaging.

“Aemond, please…” How can he be the president with only one eye?

An old woman in a yellow striped skirt suit is lumbering close with a homemade prayer rope clenched in her fist. “A komboskini for the senator!” For his last rites. For his soul.

“He doesn’t need it!” Criston says. “He’s not dying! No one is dying tonight!”

Still, you take the komboskini from the lady, each of the 100 knots a prayer unspoken. She is a devotee of Aemond, and you must show her gratitude. “Efcharistó, aderfí. O Theós na se evlogeí.” They are some of the few Greek words you’ve mastered; you’ve used them often since Aemond announced that he was running for president. Thank you, sister. God bless you.

The paramedics arrive, splitting the crowd like a laceration, white uniforms and a stretcher to ferry Aemond away. People are wailing, cursing, swearing vengeance. Aegon has returned and is peering down at Aemond with those large, glassy, muddled eyes, afraid to ask. “Is he…is he still…?”

“He has a pulse,” Criston replies. He helps the paramedics drag Aemond onto the stretcher and strap him to it. Your husband’s shirt is now drenched in red like garnet, like cinnabar, like the poppies that commemorate the boys butchered in World War I, like the wasted blood being spilled in Vietnam, men reduced to memory. “Good Samaritan?” Criston confirms with the paramedics.

“Yes sir,” the most senior one agrees. And then to you, with great deference, with compassion that transcends what somebody can harbor for strangers: “Ma’am, there’s a place for you if you want it.”

“I do,” you say, tear-streaked face, hands bathed in blood. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

The ambulance is idling outside the main entranceway of the hotel. Criston grasps your hand to steady you as you step up into the back, and you take a seat on the red leather bench beside the stretcher. The paramedics are placing IVs, holding an oxygen mask to Aemond’s face, muttering urgently into their radio, abbreviations and code words you can’t understand, a secret language of organic calamities. High above the stars are crystalline and radiant in a clear sky. In your own chest—unshredded by metal, unpierced by rage—your intact heart is pounding.

The lead paramedic turns to you again and says: “We can fit one more person.”

It’s your decision. You are the senator’s wife; you were supposed to be the next first lady of the United States. You look through the ambulance’s open doors. Aegon stares back expectantly, his hair falling in his face, his arms thrown wide, petulant, combative, useless, drunk. “Criston.”

“Bitch!” Aegon hisses at you as Criston climbs into the vehicle. The doors slam shut, the engine rumbles, the siren squeals as the ambulance races westbound on Breakers Row towards County Road, which connects with Flagler Memorial Bridge and the mainland.

Through the rear window you watch Aegon as he stands in the white-gold hotel luminescence, becoming smaller and smaller until he vanishes, and all you can see are streetlights, and all you can smell is blood.

~~~~~~~~~~

Every story needs its cast of characters. Here are the major players in the summer of 1968.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson is in the White House watching the clocks tick towards November 5th, when his successor will be ordained. He has chosen not to seek reelection. Since his ascension upon Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson’s domestic focus has been unprecedented civil rights legislation and his War On Poverty, yet what has infected the media like blood poisoning is the war in Vietnam. On the television are napalm bombs incinerating Vietnamese peasants, caskets draped with American flags, riots being beaten down by police, college students torching draft cards and chanting “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Now the president is sick in body, in spirit, in heart, and this is not a metaphor: he suffered a near-fatal cardiac arrest in 1955 and another shortly after John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas. He will die almost exactly four years after leaving office. Had he sought another term, he would have been unlikely to survive it. The public eye is something like a snake bite; it sinks its fangs in and you hope the venom burns clean before it can curse you with clots or hemorrhages or paralysis, before it can drown you in the dark waters of infamy.

In the void left by President Johnson’s surrender, four factions have emerged within the Democratic Party. The old guard—the same labor unions, congressmen, and local political machines who have steered the platform since the days of Franklin D. Roosvelt’s New Deal—has flocked to current Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey is competent yet uninspiring, a mid-fifties Midwesterner who flinches at the unpolished fury of antiwar protests and sedately lectures Black Power activists on the dangers of “reverse racism.” He is not a threat. He is a sheep in sheep’s clothing, and this is the time for wolves.

Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota is unapologetically opposed to the Vietnam War, a moral crusader, a reluctant warrior, a man who wears his lack of taste for the presidency like a badge of honor. He feels compelled to run, but he does not crave it. He thinks this makes him a saint; but Joan of Arc was burned at the stake and Saint Lawrence was roasted alive. Like Halloween candy plunked into a child’s neon orange plastic pumpkin, McCarthy has collected his own coalition, college students and posh urbanites who believe themselves to be the future of the Democratic Party. In 2016, people will conjure McCarthy’s ghost when drawing comparisons to a controversial left-wing senator from Vermont named Bernie Sanders.

If McCarthy is the future and Humphrey is the past, then former governor of Alabama George Wallace is downright archaic. He is the candidate of choice for Southern white supremacists, averse to Republicans since Lincoln and still reverent of Depression-era New Deal programs that kept them from starving to death. Wallace is best known for his promise of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and pledges to end the chaos that has besieged America through strict law and order. Provided he loses the Democratic primary, Wallace plans to run in the general election as an Independent, hoping to peel away enough support from the major party candidates to force the House of Representatives to declare the winner and then leverage his votes to negotiate an end to federal desegregation efforts in the South. His devoted wife Lurleen just died of uterine cancer, a diagnosis which Wallace kept hidden from her for years; doctors are in the habit of informing husbands of their wives’ ailments and giving them carte blanche control over the treatment plan, which unfortunately in Lurleen’s case was nothing. She was 41 years old.

In his short-lived castle of red corridors like the marrow rivers of bones, President Johnson hides from the hippies who jeer and spit; Humphrey frowns at them, McCarthy tries to appease them, Wallace says the only four-letter words they don’t know are “w-o-r-k” and “s-o-a-p.” But Aemond climbs down from podiums to meet them like old friends. He is young, only 36. He has a brother serving in the swamps of Vietnam. He is focused, determined, insatiable; he devours every scrap of news that is printed about him and writes his speeches by hand. As the self-admitted runt of the Targaryen family, Aemond knows what it is like to be underestimated. He wants a better America, and he wants to be the president, and he wants these things in equal, relentless measure, each fueling the other until these ambitions become inseparable. He has grown up hearing slurs against Greeks and consequently has no tolerance for discrimination, which he contends is antithetical to the American Dream. He attends civil rights marches in labyrinthian cities, antiwar protests on college campuses, union meetings in coal mining towns of West Virginia and Kentucky and Wyoming, music festivals crowded with long unwashed hair and braless women, fundraisers flush with the deep pockets of the Northeastern elite. Aemond’s coalition grows each day, bleeding away strength from his rivals like a Medieval surgeon. Their flesh turns cold and anemic, while Aemond’s heart pumps scalding torrents of blood.

If Aemond wins the Democratic primary at the convention in August, his opponent will almost certainly be the Republican frontrunner Richard Nixon of California. Nixon wants the White House just as badly, and he’s much smarter than he looks. He was Eisenhower’s vice president for eight years in the 1950s and lost to the ill-fated John F. Kennedy in 1960 by a whisker; some say he did not lose at all, but instead was cheated out of 100,000 votes by Kennedy’s mafia connections in Chicago. But with the Democrats divided and their incumbent president floundering, Nixon’s timing has never been better. He was once a poor boy with two dead brothers who earned a scholarship to Duke Law. Now he will become whoever he needs to be to win the presidency of the United States.

1968 is the year of wolves. The fangs are sharp, and the bellies ache with hunger.

~~~~~~~~~~

A local deli has opened early and sent sandwiches to Good Samaritan Medical Center for the family and friends of the senator from New Jersey: ham and Swiss, cucumber and cream cheese, tuna salad, egg salad, pimento cheese, BLTs, Cubans. The lobby is filling up with bouquets of flowers and handwritten notes. You pace and count the knots of the komboskini over and over again as you wait; Aemond has been in surgery for hours. The nurses periodically bring you Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate, scalding watered-down sweetness to distract you from the fact that some surgeon is currently rooting around inside your husband’s ribcage.

Alicent—a convert to the Greek Orthodox faith just as you are, though far more zealous, far more sincere if you dared to admit it—is pleading for God to save her son as she clasps her own prayer rope. Helaena is seated beside her, eerily calm. Helaena’s husband Fosco is wandering around boredly and inflicting small talk upon the nurses, ogling out the third-story windows, playing with his red Duncan yo-yo. Otto is making a series of calls using one of the phones at the nurses’ station. Criston is there too, leaning over the countertop and speaking with Otto in low conspiratorial whispers.

Aegon is sitting alone and glaring at you. He takes a rattling bottle of pills—prescriptions that doctors are too afraid not to write for him when he asks—out of a pocket on the front of his green army jacket, spotted like a leopard with your bloody handprints. He opens the amber-colored, cylindrical container and pours two, no, three tiny white tablets into his palm. He tosses them into his mouth and washes them down with a swallow of his own mediocre hot chocolate, still glaring. You ignore him.

“How could this have happened?” Mimi says again from where she’s slumped in her chair. Aegon’s wife has a Snow White sort of beauty, but with a perpetual ruddiness in her nose and cheeks from the gin she sips constantly. You suppose it would make anyone a drunk, being married to a man like that. Her maiden name was Marina Marceline Leroux, but everyone has always called her Mimi, even the press on the rare occasions when she makes an appearance. Her children—Orion, Spiro, Violeta, Thaddeus, and little Cosmo, only five years old—are all back at the Breakers Hotel with the nannies, the same as Helaena’s. Mimi blubbers to nobody in particular: “How…? Who…? Who would want to hurt Aemond…?”

Someone needs to sober her up. You fetch a BLT off the platter of sandwiches and offer it to her. “Here. Eat.”

“I’m not hungry. Who on earth could be hungry at a time like this? I’m absolutely nauseated, I’ll never want food again—”

“Mimi, eat the sandwich.”

“Fine, fine,” she slurs morosely, then takes an unenthusiastic bite. She listens to you, all the women do. They listen to you, and you listen to Aemond, and the circle is closed and complete.

Criston is walking over now. You turn to him, needing good news, bad news, any news. “It was a Wallace supporter,” Criston says. From his seat, Aegon is watching Criston with his slow drugged gaze, listening intently. “Some bell pepper farmer from up by Jacksonville.”

“He’s been taken to the local jail for holding?” you ask, and then add: “Alive?”

“Yeah, and he already has a record. Assault and battery. His brother-in-law is apparently a Grand Dragon in the Klan.”

“What the hell is a Grand Dragon?”

“Well, it’s higher than a Goblin, but not as illustrious as an Imperial Wizard, does that answer your question?”

“Perfectly.” You smile at Criston, a pained, wry smile. He returns it and places a palm over your belly. You are still wearing the mint green dress Aemond picked out for you this morning, before he won the Florida primary, before he was shot twice by the disciple of a political adversary and laid at death’s doorstep. You are still covered in your husband’s blood.

“You’re feeling alright?” Then Criston smirks, knowing how ridiculous he must sound. “You know. All things considered.”

“We’re both fine. The baby’s moving around, I can feel it.”

“You can feel him, you mean,” Criston teases, knowing Aemond’s preoccupation with his unborn son; but you can’t bring yourself to appreciate the joke.

Aegon says to you suddenly: “How the fuck did you let this happen?”

“What?” you answer, stunned.

Aegon stands and approaches, lurching, raging. “You always have to be right beside him, in the photographs, in the headlines, in the soundbites, but you let some psychopath run up and shoot him? Twice?!”

“I thought he just wanted to shake Aemond’s hand, or maybe get a quote for an article—”

“You didn’t notice the gun?!”

“Aegon, sit down,” Criston orders.

“It happened in seconds,” you say. “You think you would have done better? You and your Valium, and your Librium, and your Percodan? You think your reaction time would have been so superior to mine?”

“Please,” Alicent moans, mopping tears from her pink cheeks with a handkerchief. “Please, don’t fight, not now…”

“We are all friends here,” Fosco adds in his thick Italian accent, yo-yoing by a window.

“You want to be the first lady so bad but you can’t handle it!” Aegon shouts, his voice echoing through the lobby. “You’re not some prodigy, you don’t have all the answers, you’re just a girl who stitched yourself to Aemond and then you let him get shot, he’s being operated on right now, maybe he’s even dying, and you still act like you’re so fucking perfect—”

“You’re mad because you know that everybody here is thinking the same thing,” you tell Aegon, cold and cruel. “That if someone had to get killed tonight it should have been you.”

Aegon’s mouth drops open; he stares at you with that slippery, opaque, stoned woundedness, pathetic, infuriating, illogically childish. Everyone else pretends they haven’t heard you. Alicent sniffles into her handkerchief. Fosco begins humming I Want To Hold Your Hand. Mimi chews sluggishly on her BLT. From the nurses’ station, Otto says, holding the phone to his chest: “It’s George Wallace. He’s calling for Aemond’s wife.” Then he waits to see if you’ll agree to take it.

Of course you will. You have to. You are acting in your husband’s stead. You go to the nurses’ station and grab the handset when Otto passes it to you. “This is Mrs. Targaryen.”

“Ma’am, I just wanted to offer you my sincerest condolences.” He has a pronounced drawl, born and raised in what he has praised as the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland. You animal, you think. You braindead bigot. “I do hope the senator makes a hasty recovery. I sure would like to beat him at the ballot box, but I have no stomach for anarchy. An act like this is repugnant to me, as it should be to any red-blooded American.”

“It was one of yours, do you know that?” you say, dripping venom. “One of your hateful ghouls.”

“I have no such knowledge. But if the shooter does turn out to be a supporter of my campaign, I disavow him utterly. He deserves a nice long sit in Old Sparky and then to meet his maker.”

“You inspire men to commit violence, and then you renounce them when they spill blood. I’m still wearing my husband’s. It’s on my hands, it’s on my dress, and I will not absolve you of blame. You are a gardener of discord. You grow it like roses or wheat. You tend to it until it blooms.” Otto is studying you, bushy eyebrows raised. “If you’d truly like to repent, perhaps dropping out of the Democratic primary would be a good start. And then you could find something useful to do, like drowning yourself.”

From whatever office he’s currently lounging comfortably in, his shoes kicked up on the desk, Wallace chuckles. “Aemond is very fortunate to have as ardent a defender as you, my dear.”

“Yes, a devoted wife is such a treasure. It’s a shame you killed yours.”

“Ma’am, once again, I just wanted to express how terribly sorry I am for your family’s hardship. I would never wish for an incident like this—”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be emboldening white supremacists then!” You slam the phone as you hang up.

Otto looks at you. He says: “Did it go well?”

The heavy double doors leading to the operating theater swing open, and a surgeon steps through them, still drying his hands with a dark blue towel. He has changed his scrubs and washed his skin, but you notice a spot he missed: a fleck of half-dried blood up by his temple. That’s Aemond, you think. That’s a piece of him.

Everyone rushes to gather around the doctor, even Mimi; she lists like a ship taking on water as she walks, gnawing at all that remains of her BLT, just a sliver of white toast crust.

“The senator is alive,” the doctor says, and Alicent cries out in relief. Criston rests a palm on her shoulder. “But we could not save the eye.”

“He’s half-blind?” you ask. There’s never been a half-blind president. There’s never been a Greek one either. And the only reason this is stuck in your mind is because you know it will consume Aemond’s.

The doctor nods. “We had to remove it. The bullet that struck Senator Targaryen in the head, fortunately, was more of a graze. It ricocheted off his skull and didn’t cause any trauma to the brain, but his eye was…” He hesitates, trying to find a more polite word than shredded, macerated, pulverized. “Destroyed.”

“You stopped the bleeding?” Aegon says, astonished. “He’s okay? He’s really okay?”

“The second bullet pierced the thoracic cavity and was lodged less than an inch from his heart. He was very lucky. We repaired the damage to the best of our ability, and I am optimistic that the senator will make a full recovery. He’s resting comfortably now, but he should be awake soon.”

“Oh, thank God,” Alicent says, glistening dark eyes raised to heaven. The salient points gathered, Fosco wanders off again, his yo-yo dangling from its string.

Otto asks: “When can he resume campaigning?”

The doctor is caught off-guard; it takes him a moment to answer. “That will depend on the senator’s stamina as he regains his strength. If he chooses to stay in the race at all.”

Otto scoffs. “Of course he’ll stay in. This is what he lives for. You really can’t give me a ballpark figure?”

The doctor is determinately impassive. “I would estimate a month or two before he can withstand the rigors of the campaign trail again.”

“California is June 4th,” Otto recalls, counting off dates on his fingers. “Illinois is the 11th, New York is the 18th…”

“Look, there are people outside!” Fosco announces excitedly as he peers through one of the windows. “Hello! Hello everybody!”

“Fosco, you idiot, stop waving,” Otto snaps. “Go sit down.”

“But they are cheering.”

“Not for you.”

Fosco, somewhat deflated, grabs an egg salad sandwich off the platter and plops into a chair to eat it. He’s dressed in a green plaid sport coat and tight white trousers, very chic, very European. You’ve never been able to imagine Fosco and Helaena being passionately romantic with each other. They’re both a bit too doll-like for that, closer to Barbie and Ken than flesh and blood, blank stares and vague ambitions.

“Someone should talk to them,” Alicent says softly. She means the crowd that is forming in front of the hospital: journalists, cops, local politicians, mutilated veterans, college kids, farmers, fishermen, women and children, the future and the past. Everyone turns to look at you.

“I’ll do it,” you volunteer. You will, you must. Aemond could have chosen a hundred similarly suited women to be his wife, but he chose you, and when he did your vows became a blood oath.

Criston accompanies you downstairs to where the crowd has gathered just outside the front entrance of Good Samaritan Medical Center. The night air is warm and humid, the stars bright. You had thought of so many things to tell these people as you’d stood in the elevator as it descended, but now your mind is empty, fearful. There are photographers with blinding camera flashes and apostles waiting with famished eyes. From the depths of injustice and poverty and war, they have come to pay their respects to the man they believe is destined to save not just themselves but their world. What should I say? What would Aemond want me to say?

“I am very pleased to share with you all that Senator Targaryen is out of surgery and regaining his strength.”

There are cheers and applause and prayers; you are still clutching the komboskini that the old woman gave you in the lobby of the Breakers Hotel. You see more prayer ropes in this flock, and rosaries too, Bibles and dog tags, copies of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Joanne Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

“We would like to thank you for your heartfelt support. Aemond and I are so very grateful, and he is looking forward to being back on the campaign trail soon.”

More clapping and whistling, and then the crowd waits. You aren’t sure what they want to hear as you stand in the glow of the hospital luminance; your hands are trembling wildly, so you clasp them together as you hold the komboskini. Criston glances over at you, concerned. You settle on the truth.

“The man who tried to kill my husband tonight is a supporter of former Alabama governor George Wallace and an avowed white supremacist. Any ideology that advocates for violence and prejudice is a threat to our bodies, our nation, and our souls. We will not surrender to it, not even when our lives are in jeopardy. We will not concede that hope for a better world is lost. We will press ever onward with the knowledge that God is on our side, and that the future of this country is worth fighting for.”

You are bathed in flashbulb lightning; your ears ring with the thunder of the applause. You are shaking hands now, nodding, beaming, Criston following you like a shadow as you move through the congregation. You stop to listen to a middle-aged woman in a floral dress who wants to give you marriage advice: never get bossy, don’t become selfish, remember that you are his safe harbor in the storms of life. It is your job to gift her your momentary veneration. You have beauty, but she has wisdom; or at least, that is the bargain that has been struck, that is the presumption everyone agrees upon. She must have some advantage over you, otherwise the decades she has spent in service of her parents and husband and children have been wasted, she has carved away pieces of herself to feed hungry mouths until she vanished like the doomed nymph Echo. In return, she tries not to envy you too much, not to dismiss you as foolish or frivolous or lustful. Sometimes you think that women are filled with such vicious, relentless self-loathing that it feels good to direct it at someone else for a while, to pick apart another body, to tally up the deficits of her spirit.

“Aemond is so lucky to have you,” the woman says. You can barely hear her over the roar of the crowd.

And you smile as you dutifully reply: “I think it’s the other way around.”

~~~~~~~~~~

There is a television mounted on the wall in Aemond’s room. The news coverage, the volume turned way down low, oscillates between his own near-assassination and the stalled peace talks in Paris. Representatives of the United States and North Vietnam cannot agree, and so each day more body bags are flown home to return the bones of the nation’s sons and fathers to Missouri, Alabama, Idaho, Maine, Wisconsin, Maryland, Arizona, California, New Jersey, everywhere else. Someone has to end it. Aemond will end it.

“I dreamed I won Florida,” your husband mumbles, and that’s how you know he’s awake, here in a hospital bed and wearing IVs like strings of Christmas lights around a pine tree.

“You did,” you tell him, gently smoothing back his hair from his forehead. His left eye—where his left eye used to be—is bandaged; his words are soft and labored. “Humphrey was second. Wallace got third. But you won. And you’re going to be okay.”

“McCarthy?”

“It seems you’re devouring his coalition.”

Aemond’s lips slowly curl into a grin, triumphant. “It is God’s will.” And this is what he always says. It is God’s will that he survives, it is God’s will that he wins the presidency, it is God’s will that you give him sons.

“Yes,” you agree, lifting his right hand to kiss his knuckles. Then you press the komboskini you’re still carrying into his weak grasp. It means more to Aemond than it does to you. “Yes it is.”

Aemond sinks into unconsciousness again, morphine and dreams that blur with reality. There will be pain soon, and plenty of it, but he is free from that impending truth for now. You rise from your chair to tell the rest of the family that Aemond is beginning to wake up. Alicent and Criston will want to speak with him.

When you open the door, Aegon is standing there: an eavesdropper, a trespasser. He glares at you with his large wet ocean-blue eyes, hazy with pills, glinting with resentment. Reluctantly, you step aside to let him in. Aegon wobbles as he passes you and has to grab onto the doorframe to steady himself, scrabbling like a trapped animal.

“You’re a disaster,” you say, caustic like acid, biting, repulsed.

Aegon whirls and jabs his index finger against your chest, bloodstained mint green wool bouclé by Chanel. “You’re a vessel. You’re a cow. And one day he’ll be done with you.”

You feel something hitting you like a bullet, cracking ribs, piercing lungs, tearing muscles and ligaments. Your lips have parted, but you can’t fathom words. Aegon has said many things to you—bitter things, belittling things, things in mixed company, things when you’re alone—but never this. For the first time since you met him two years ago, he has won one of your sparring matches. He has the upper hand. He has wounded you.

Aegon can see this, certainly. But he doesn’t seem pleased with himself. He looks a little shellshocked, like he can’t quite believe he said the words, like maybe if given the chance again he wouldn’t take it. But the moment is over now, and you can’t get time back, it is a thread that unspools until every inch is gone, spent, tangled in a thousand webs.

Aegon staggers into the hospital room. You flee from it. Out in the lobby the phone at the nurses’ station is ringing again. They’ll all be calling now to give their requisite sympathies. Humphrey counsels prudence, McCarthy prays for peace, LBJ offers the empathy of someone who has felt the cold gaze of Death in his own doorway, Nixon praises Aemond’s resilience and quotes the ancient philosopher Seneca: “There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.”

[washisart]

Yup. There is a Legendary Blader of Uranus/Caelus and it's J aka Dynamis's cousin. A funny little bug I added into my Zero-G AU thingy. (Gonna be a bit trivia yapping down here so buckle up folks and ALSO potentially Dynamis's lore?) - J is from a branch of Dynamis's family that has been detached in the past. He reunited with them, meeting his cousin D-Dynamis at a young age and got into beyblade. - He really likes his cousin and was shocked to find out about Dynamis's inherited duty, passing down for generations. - Overall, J treats beyblade a hobby, juggling between everything: from battling, collecting to tinkering with the bey. That's why he'd changed beyblade at least twice before Mental Fury. - J, mysterious as he is, found his way into the Dynamis's guarded temple on his own. - When the star fragment came for his bey, J quickly smashed it away with his shovel but later tripped, and the star fragment entered his fallen bey. - After being marked as a Legendary Blader by the prophesy, J started messing around with said prophesy. - His bey beast/bey spirit is a butterfly-like creature.

[shroudcryptid]

“Damn.” A somehow familiar voice says, out of the endless pale desert. Elidibus thinks he’d been to a desert, once. He must have. “You swived yourself up good, didn’t you.” 

It’s a dream. He knows this. Knows it more than he knows... What was it, that he’d known? 

...It’s not important, then. 

It’s with surprising eagerness that he turns towards the voice, with a heart light within his chest. To his confusion, however, it’s not the mask of either of his surviving brethren that greets him. Instead, the figure reclining upon the sands looks like one of the new, sundered, barely alive creatures. Just yesterday, Elidibus had seen a similarly looking one bash another unfortunate creature over the head, with a rock, of all things. Over naught more than food...

This one, though. Perhaps it is wishful thinking, a product of his dreaming soul, because this one can see him. Can look at him with fond, wistful eyes, as if they know him. What did that say about him, Elidibus wonders. Merely that he longs to be surrounded by actual people? 

“What manner of hope are you?” He muses out loud. “Are you mine? Or another amalgam of those roiling dreams within Lord Zodiark....” 

Unsaid is that he suddenly wants it to be the first.

The figure’s eyebrows raise, and their amused smile says that they’re humoring him. That they have secrets for him to dig free from their stubborn flesh. 

“You called me your guiding star, once.” They say, and the way they look at him is much like Lahabrea and Emet-Selch do. Looking into him, searching for something familiar, as if he’s become a stranger to them, even though he’s right there, right in front of them. Unlike his brethren, however, they seem to recognize what they find. Something that brings an odd, sorrowful look to their face. “But I don’t think I can be that for you right now. Not on your current course.”

“Mm.” Elidibus says. “Of course. So many stars fell.” 

Their eyes widen at that, and then, well, they’re clearly thinking about something. “I guess they did.” They say, thoughtfully. Their hand moves to a pocket in the side of their un-Amaurotine garb, and they toy with something. 

Elidibus stares at the features of their face, bemused by the almost-there thoughts in the back of his mind. They’re so familiar. Perhaps, if he just stares at them a little longer, he’ll manage to grab a memory to keep. A fragment of Amaurot’s warmth. Of a life that was his own. Something for only him.

…..What a selfish thought.

He sighs, quietly, and nonetheless walks towards them. Lowers himself to sit at their side, as they’re watching him with a dependable, if sad, smile. 

In front of them, the dreamscape has turned to a beach. Waters softly lap at its pale shore, sand swirling lightly in the wake of small waves. 

Elidibus’s fallen star pats his adorned shoulder lightly as they sit there. A notice. He turns his head back to them, and then his eyes go wide in surprise behind his mask, as they wrap the arm fully around him and pull him in, to rest upon their shoulder. 

They’re soft, and warm, even though the layers and new adornments upon his robes. He sighs, softly, even though this is a dream. Although, if it’s a dream, then maybe....

With a careful hand, he reaches up and takes off his mask. Stares at the back of it as it comes off. Turns it around in his hand, and feels oddly unnerved by staring at what is, for all intents and purposes, his face. 

“Ah, there’s my Themis.” His star says above him, fondly, and- And something clicks within his mind. 

“Themis.” He says, feeling the word in his mouth. “My personal name is... Themis.” 

Pale, fluffy hair falls free from his cowl, spills around his shoulders. Hair that was not there mere moments ago. Elidibus, now also Themis, stares out at the warm, starry sky. A sky filled with stars, without the dimness following the final days of Amaurot. 

And then, he turns, looks up at the face of the person he rests against. A face that, while lacking Amaurotine features, is beloved nonetheless. “You.... I met you. You helped me find a path forward, and protected me while I worked....” 

“Hah! Is that what you remember!” They laugh out loud, and he feels it in their chest, against his own. How odd. How nice. “Yeah. We were friends. I think.” They add on at the end, voice suddenly quieting. 

Thoughts still whirling, Elidibus turns sharply, arms reaching around them to be the one pulling them closer, a reversal of earlier. He buries his face in their chest, maskless forehead pressed forcefully against their collarbone. Feeling their breath, their startled gasp. As if he held them tight enough, then he could keep them this time. “The memories of that time we spent together are precious beyond words. Do not... Please do not assume I would look upon you, would know you, and think of you as anything but a dear friend. Please. Even if I cannot reassure you, cannot... Remember...” His voice trails off, a bitter taste in his mouth. 

For some reason, that wrings an unhappy laugh from them. Fisted in the cloth at their back, his hands tighten. 

“...What if I don’t remember, either? What if I don’t recognize you?”

As with many times before, it sounds as if they know something he doesn’t. He’s not sure what, or how, it could be here and now, but he goes with it, follows them down the trail of thought. “The thought feels absurd, but... I cannot imagine that I would not be drawn to you, were we to meet anew.”

They suck in a breath, but against the cloth of their top, his lips curve into a smile. “And you are quite good at digging out the heart of matters. I cannot imagine that, nor your character, would change...”

They’re shaking against him, and Elidibus knows not whether it is laughter or tears. He hugs them tight nonetheless.

“I... Will remember this, for you, then.” They say, sounding incredibly tired. “Will remember your trust in me.” 

“Good.” Elidibus says, muffled against their chest 

Their arms wrap around him, and he lets himself relax into them. Relax into their warmth, that odd bubble of love and determination that they carry with them.  Somehow, even the omnipresent distant whispers are quieted, as if the distant dreamers upon the moon can feel it, too. Can feel it through him. 

He doesn’t know how long he stays there, with them, in their arms, holding fast to them. Dreams are strange like that. 

What he does know is that when he blinks awake, he no longer feels like fractured crystal, ready to shatter once more at the lightest touch. And that, for some reason, there are tears in his eyes. 

[dukeofdelirium]

Tagged by @waxalas to share the first lines of your latest 10 fics!

I tag @fraisederouge @sailing-the-seas-of-qube @kwop-kilawtley 🤭🤭🤭🤭

Some of the stuff I’ll share are WIPs and some are posted on my ao3. The posted ones I will share links to 💕

1. sempiternally

“The first time the man appears, Light is eight and surpassing his peers, soaring above their heads like a shooting star that illuminates the night. They are left marveling at the sight, and know they will never obtain it themselves. He is alarmingly bright, too much for his teachers to handle, and learning perhaps for the first time to mold himself into something tame to the benefit of another, to dim that brilliant blaze into weak flame.”

A lawlight time travel one shot told out of order

2. A Certain Slant of Light

“He felt caught in flame, as if being broiled alive in hellfire before he eventually woke. The night was ancient, and when he sat upright in his small bed, craning his head toward the room's single window, he saw its death sitting there, just on the horizon.

It was unbearably hot, Mello thought, swiping his forehead with the back of a hand, and it came away damp with sweat and salt.”

A lawlight Wammy House AU where L “wins” and keeps Light at the orphanage as an unofficial prisoner. This is the beginning of chapter 5 ✨

3. The Book of Grimes

“My father is buried beside Andrea’s grave, and the funeral is not lavish in any sense, not fit for a name as large as his is, but it is enough. People come and go, paying respects, and I stay sitting by the headstone, long after the light has died. They do not linger in the dirt the way I do.

It is some time before another visitor comes.”

A one shot for The Walking Dead comic book told from Carl’s pov that bridges the gap from issue #192 to #193

4. These Threads That Bind Us

“Never had she known a lonesomeness quite like this. Her humble home was still as ever against the sunlight, the tap leaked droplets into the sink, and she held onto the counter to steady her pulse. Embry had come home last night, hiding in his room and vanishing again before the break of dawn could find him.”

These are the first lines of the last chapter I wrote for this fanfic which focuses on the wolf shifter characters for Twilight, specifically Embry and Quil and is like a slowburn romance 🤭 I smash Twilight canon with a hammer 🔨

5. say a solemn prayer

“She is struck, as she walks onto the balcony, of a vision a year before.

At the Southern Air Temple, when he had stood upon the ledge there, voice carried off on a current of wind from the mountain his home had been built into as he stopped explaining how things should have been. Katara had watched him then as she watches him now, studying the curvature of his spine as it bears the impossible weight of reality.

I really am the last airbender, his voice is but a ripple in a pool of time that expands over the surface of her memory.

The sky had been ash against his vibrant robes, making him burn against its void backdrop as if a fragment of the sun had fallen to earth so that it might walk amongst them.”

This is a Katara x Aang one shot for Avatar: The Last Airbender that takes place directly after the end of the cartoon. TW there is a lot of depiction of genocide, mass graves etc so if this upsets you read with caution or not at all

6. Memoir

“Remembrance is a type of torment few come to know intimately well. How perplexing is it then, that when such a unique pain is spoken of, it is often described with a bursting, violent vocabulary? It will never come to curl in one’s lap as some raw and bleeding animal, but as its ghost, lingering there in the hollow bits.

In the silence between one breath and the next.

There is a truth that everyone must come to reconcile eventually in their lives: it is regrettably possible to love someone to the point of passing right through them. Like the dead, trapped thing between two people once enraptured with love. It drifts through bodies like a spirit would a house, still struggling and full of knowledge, refusing to accept the fact that it died long ago.

That it is time to move on.

Nothing likes to be told it is a dead thing, after all. Especially not someone still in love.”

This is an amnesia fic I started for the Embry x Quil rare pair ship 🤭 this is specifically the start of chapter 3

7. The Rightside Up

“November 1st, 1987

Will is always appearing in his dreams.

Most of the time they are maddening fevers, strange collages that Mike tries and fails to make sense of, piecing them together with thought alone as he’d once taped together the drawings Will had made of Hawkins’ tunnels, spreading right beneath their feet. They draw together, sometimes, in these dreams, in an undisturbed Byers’ home, though Mike’s sketches look more like misshapen blobs of random color, no reason behind it. Unlike Will, who is so precise and conscious, even in that state of unreality. He will hold his sketch up proudly to show his friend, missing a tooth from the seventh grade, and Mike will file it away in a binder where he’s secretly kept every discarded drawing that Will otherwise believed was lost to time. A binder he has no idea exists outside of their dream realm.

Sometimes, they hold hands, fingers clasped together under the table as they color paper into whatever shade they want. Once, they’d hidden under the wood themselves in a vision turned terror, de-aging rapidly. Will had been ten, and then seven, and finally five all in the blink of an eye, shaking within Mike’s palms under the sound of his father’s heavy footfall. Dream Lonnie was as mean as the real thing when he inevitably caught them.”

This is a Byler one shot for Stranger Things that is a WIP in my google docs currently at 14,000 words. And it will probably wind up around 25-30k before it is complete lol. This is the very beginning of it. It’s basically my thoughts and ideas for the final season

8. TWD FIC WIP

“Before a body is a body, it is a blubbering baby, screaming and kicking from the womb for the agony of life. Such a thing is a paradox, a feigned primitive prey animal that bares teeth and will not bite. After a body is done being a body, it is a rabid stillborn, a rotting piece of meat that has forgotten the privilege of its own death, trudging on despite.

Somewhere I find myself cradling both, one in each red-stained elbow.

Each step is clumsy in its attempt, like a toddler that has tried to evolve from a practiced crawl, and when I slip over the dampness of the grass, the newborn in me wails. It is desperate, despite the blood pouring from my arms, to get away from the dead things that have fallen, too, and yet will not stay down.”

I started rewriting my Walking Dead fanfic that I wrote when I was like 14 lol. I recently logged into my ancient fanfiction.net account and saw that this fanfic pulled 170,000 views and was shocked. I won’t link the original because it uh… isn’t good lol. But I started writing this for my own entertainment bc I always liked my character and I can do it way better now that I’m older 😂 I don’t have a decided title yet

I don’t think I have 10 to share 😭🚶🏻I have other fics on my ao3 but y’all can check them out if you like the pairings or media bc I jump around from different media I like lol! Thanks for the tag 🥰

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: The Pettiness of Man

( Please come see me on my new patreon and support me for early access to stories and personal story requests :D https://www.patreon.com/NiqhtLord Every bit helps)

Human pocket kingdoms were the result of the fragmented nature of humanity’s space exploration and settlement programs. Central authority still resided with the Terran Protectorate the closer one got to the Terran homeworld, but the further one went the less and less power the Protectorate had leaving opportunistic parties to establish their own domains.

The Federalist Union and Kingdom of the Fallen Sun were two such domains. Each situated in their own star system neighboring the other, the two realms had at one point been part of what was known as the Caspen Initiative. Funded by the Caspen Corporation, both systems were colonized and put under direct corporate rule rather than the laws of the Protectorate.

The Truna System held the most infrastructure and had turned its settlements into thriving cities. The comforts of the core worlds could be found here in abundance leading to a higher quality of life. It was here Caspen situated their corporate headquarters for the initiative which further led to the system becoming a major trade hub.

In contrast, the Kefer System was still largely untamed and wild yet rich with natural resources. Caspen did not wish to risk losing more experienced personnel on these planets nor take the time to invest in an expensive robotic work force. The wildlife across all the planets within the Kefer System was extremely hostile and dangerous; resulting in the failures of two colonization attempts already. In the end Caspen instead was able to obtain several transports of convicted criminals and turn them into penal laborers.  Fortified factories were established with a heavily armed guard force watching over the laborers and delivering them expected quotas. In exchange for their labor they were provided with basic necessities for living and comfort; though the prisoners soon realized that the corporate ideal of “comfort” was often the least expensive option they could find.

Initially the management of both systems under the Caspen Corporation went well the company saw ever increasing share values. Unsurprisingly though, corporations are not equipped to act as a governing body and rifts soon began brewing in both systems. In Truna, the citizens began moving for more reasonable work hours and a louder voice in who is selected for high level positions. Around the same time the penal laborers in Kefer began planning mass revolts to overthrow an increasingly oppressive guard force that repeatedly put them in danger for the sake of profit margins. Caspen naturally tried to clamp down on the unrest, but their often heavy handed retaliations only further inflamed dissident movements to the point open revolt occurred almost simultaneously.

The resulting struggle would eventually see the complete removal of the Caspen Corporation from both systems, but also lay the groundwork for future conflicts between the newly established Federalist Union of the Truna system and the Kingdom of the Fallen Sun in the Kefer System.

The Unionists of Truna saw the penal laborers as nothing more than convicts and refused to recognize their newly founded kingdom as legitimate. Likewise the newly freed prisoners of Kefer, under their chosen king Sigvold the Mad, saw the citizens of Truna as part of the corporate machine that had made their lives a living hell and wanted nothing to do with them.

Each side regards the other as being the natural aggressor, but to finding the truth of who fired the first shot will never be known. What is certain is that not long after their corporate overlords were driven away did both systems set their sights on each other.

For nearly two centuries both systems have been at war with each other with the Federalist Union developing into a thriving independent system and the Kingdom of the Fallen Sun becoming a haven for every backwater, illegal, and nefarious scoundrel the galaxy has to offer. The Federalist council has attempted to isolate the Kefer system via naval blockades, while the new king Haren Hammer launches periodic raids against the Union to steal technology and supplies.

It looked like the stalemate would continue until the end of time until a third party intervened.

The alien species Gresh’n had been eyeing the prosperous worlds in the Truna System and had waited for the right moment to strike and claim them for their own. This moment came when the Federalist Union deployed the majority of their fleet to make yet another attempt to destroy the Kingdom of the Fallen Sun and remove the corruption so close to their doorstep.

Once the Gresh’n confirmed both human fleets were locked in deadly battle did they commit their own forces to invading the Federalist Union.

Caught completely unaware, the forces left to protect the borders of the Federalist Union were easily swept aside in a series of lightning strikes. Even the capital world came under siege with Gresh’n forces poised to conquer the world in little more than a month.

Just when the system was at its darkest something beyond comprehension happened.

At the outskirts of the Truna System the Gresh’n detected a massive fleet. The picket lines established to screen the main invasion force were decimated and when the mystery fleet finally held orbit and squared off with the primary fleet of the Gresh’n military they were surprised to see that it was comprised of both Unionist and Kingdom forces. Before the final battle commenced a system wide broadcast went out originating from the Kingdom’s flagship and personal ship of king Harren Hammer.

“YOU FUCKING INGRATES!!!” the pocket king shouted into the camera, “YOU’VE RUINED EVERYTHING!!!!”

“FOR YEARS I PLANNED THE PERFECT WAR TO END THESE UNION BASTARDS ONCE AND FOR ALL AND YOU COME ALONG AND FUCK IT UP! I WILL NOT HAVE MY VICTORY STOLEN FROM ME!”

With that the massed armada descended on both the Gresh’n fleet and their forces on the capital world. The civilized citizens of the Union watched as they were rescued by pirates, thieves, criminals, and every variety of psychopaths the galaxy had a name for while overhead Kingdom junkers and corsair ships boarded Gresh’n ships and took them as trophies.

After thirteen hours of intense fighting the Gresh’n finally flung up the proverbial white flag and surrendered. King Harren replied that he would give them a three hour head start and that after that every Gresh’n in system would be hunted down and killed. In its weakened state the Federalist Union could not oppose this decision and so remained quiet.

Three hours passed and true to his word King Harren began a massive hunt the likes of which are still spoken of. Fleeing Gresh’n ships were magnetically harpooned as they fled and dragged back to be boarded by cutthroats while Gresh’n ground forces pleaded to deaf eared Union citizens for shelter as the Kingdom vagabonds scoured the planet for new trophies.

When the hunt was finally finished there was no exchange of thanks, nor celebration held in honor of their saviors. The forces of the kingdom withdrew one by one, hulls full of new bounty, until only King Harren’s flagship remained.

“You get five years to rebuild.” He said over another system wide broadcast. “After that I’m coming back and taking this all proper.”

With that final ominous warning the pocket king left.

The effects of the Gresh’n failed invasion would have limited impact on the wider galaxy save for the fact it would teach future alien leaders that when considering invasions of human territory, one could not always count on the enemy of your enemy being your friend.

[lostinhistory]

Heritage News of the Week

Discoveries!

Archaeologists have pieced together thousands of fragments of 2,000-year-old wall plaster to reveal remarkable frescoes that decorated a luxurious Roman villa.

Archaeologists uncover dozens of 2,000-year-old tombs in China

Between April and December 2024, research teams from the Anhui Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, in cooperation with the Qianshan City Cultural Relics Protection Center and Qianshan City Museum, excavated a total of 75 tombs and 4 kiln sites within the project site.

Viking burial site with royal connections unearthed in Denmark

A Viking burial site from the 10th century has been excavated in central Denmark. Consisting of 30 graves, the area was uncovered by chance in the village of Lisbjerg five miles north of Aarhus, the country’s second-largest city.

Malta’s mysterious prehistoric temples may have taught sailors to navigate by the stars, new research suggests

Experts have long wondered whether the layout of the temples, which were constructed between 3800BC and 2400BC, held specific meaning

Viking Age woman was buried with her dog in an elaborate 'boat grave,' excavations reveal

Researchers think the Viking Age boat burial of a woman and her pooch in Norway dates to between A.D. 900 and 950.

Mysterious carving found in northern Ontario wilderness

Found carved into the bedrock, not far from the town of Wawa, were 255 symbols arranged in a square about 1.2 metres by 1.5 metres, and next to it, there is carved a picture of a boat with 16 people on it, as well as 14 Xs.

Archaeologists confirm that limestone 'Venus of Kołobrzeg' found by a farmer in Poland is 6,000 years old

A figure found by a Polish farmer near the Baltic coastal city of Kołobrzeg has been confirmed as a 6,000-year-old figurine depicting a woman.

Archaeologists identify France’s deepest shipwreck

French archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 16th-century merchant vessel 1.6 miles below the surface of the Mediterranean Sea, the deepest such find ever made in French waters.

Ancient ‘Dragon Man’ DNA reveals mysterious human relative

New research has found that a skull from a mysterious human relative nicknamed “Dragon Man” belongs to an extinct archaic species known as the Denisovans.

Medieval gold ring found in castle in Slovakia has rare purple sapphire imported from Sri Lanka

A stunning gold ring lost at a medieval castle in Slovakia over 700 years ago has been rediscovered. The jewelry was likely worn by a bishop and includes an unusual Sri Lankan reddish-purple sapphire set in a band flanked by lions.

Archaeologists unearth foundation of 1760s schoolhouse for Black children

Archaeologists in Virginia have unearthed the foundation of a building from the 1700s that once supported the nation’s oldest surviving schoolhouse for Black children.

Unprecedented large burial urns in the Amazon may reveal a previously unknown Indigenous tradition

An archaeological discovery in the heart of the Amazon—seven giant funerary urns buried beneath a fallen tree—is offering fresh insights into the ancestral lifeways of Indigenous peoples who inhabited the region’s floodplains for centuries, perhaps even millennia.

New research reveals cultural and historical evolution at Homer's school

New important data on the historical and cultural evolution of Ithaca has emerged from the University of Ioannina research at the archaeological site known as Homer's School since the start of the 19th century.

Women likely ruled in Stone Age China, DNA analysis of 4,500-year-old skeletons reveals

While analyzing the ancient DNA of skeletons buried in Stone Age cemeteries in China, archaeologists discovered that the society was organized in an extremely rare way: Everyone belonged to one of two clans headed by women, and people were buried in their maternal clans for at least 10 generations.

Wreck of legendary Spanish galleon with $17 billion cargo confirmed by coin evidence

The holy grail of shipwrecks is believed to have been sunk by the British navy in 1708.

4,000 years of human history uncovered in Croatian cave

An archaeological team from the Dubrovnik Museums recently uncovered 4,000 years of human occupation in the Crno Jezero (“Black Lake”) Cave.

Hannibal’s Italian ally: 170 meters of fortifications and 450 Roman lead projectiles discovered

Archaeologists in Ugento have uncovered a stretch of ancient Messapian fortifications and a trove of Roman weaponry. The excavation revealed over 170 meters of defensive walls and 450 lead sling bullets—silent witnesses to a brutal Roman siege dating back over 2,200 years.

Museums

Thousands of visitors to the Louvre Museum in Paris were stuck in hours-long lines outside the institution today, June 16, when the museum shuttered for part of the day due to an unplanned staff strike. The spontaneous work stoppage, which involved gallery attendants and reception and security workers, focused on claims of poor working conditions exacerbated by overcrowding and a staff shortage.

Grand Egyptian Museum delays grand opening again due to ‘current regional developments’

The official opening of Grand Egyptian Museum that was slated for July 3 has yet again been delayed. Egyptian prime minister Mostafa Madbouly said in a press conference on Saturday that the museum won’t fully open until the final quarter of this year, citing “current regional developments.”

Museum of the American Latino could vanish under Trump

The National Museum of the American Latino and the Anacostia Community Museum in Washington, DC, are on the chopping block as the Trump administration targets the Smithsonian Institution.

Italy’s leading archaeological museum uses young creatives’ press shots without payment

A row has broken out over fair pay after Italy’s leading archaeological museum launched a controversial photography competition offering the winners exposure but no fee.

Repatriation

Spain’s Supreme Court has ordered the heirs of former dictator Francisco Franco to return two religious statues to the city of Santiago, concluding a years-long legal dispute over their ownership.

Search for century-old artifact from Canadian shipwreck solved with a call from the U.S.

David Saint-Pierre says he had little information to go on in his effort to hunt down the keeper of a 111-year-old artifact from the shipwrecked Empress of Ireland.

Heritage at risk

UNESCO has expressed “grave concern over the increasing threats” to the 11th-century Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv—which is on the organisation's World Heritage List—after its facade was damaged by a Russian drone strike on Tuesday.

Museums in Tehran and Tel Aviv move to safeguard their collections

Israel and Iran have taken measures to safeguard their cultural property amid escalating hostilities between the neighboring countries, which has included air strikes on cosmopolitan centers.

Murray Watt ‘personally lobbied’ UNESCO over barring of WA rock art from world heritage list

Australia’s environment minister, Murray Watt, has lobbied national UNESCO ambassadors in a bid to overturn a recommendation that ancient rock art in Western Australia’s north-west should not receive world heritage listing unless nearby industrial facilities shut down.

Funding cuts to U.S. archaeology could imperil field’s future

Compared with biomedicine and physics with their billion-dollar budgets, archaeology has always survived on a trickle of federal funding. But it has not escaped cuts by the administration of President Donald Trump, which has halted or slowed research on past cultures and human origins and choked off spending on training and scholarship, jeopardizing the future of the field in the United States, researchers say.

128-year-old mystery shipwreck scorched by fire on Vancouver Island

For at least 128 years, a mysterious shipwreck has sat on the southwest shore of Vancouver Island in Ucluelet, B.C., about 170 kilometres northwest of Victoria. And now officials are investigating another mystery: who or what is responsible for a recent fire that scorched the long-standing attraction?

Israeli attacks on Palestinian heritage sites constitute war crimes: UN report

Israeli attacks on cultural and religious sites in occupied Palestinian territory amount to war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination, an independent investigation conducted by a United Nations commission has concluded in a new report.

Climate change is destroying Maine’s historic lighthouses

These unique monuments to a coastal way of life, some of them dating to the US’s colonial period, appear on the 2025 World Monuments Watch list alongside historic sites in countries experiencing war and drought

Odds and ends

The New Providence Pirates Expedition – which is dedicated to science, education, entertainment and tourism in the Bahamas – is drawing on historical and archaeological evidence to conduct the first underwater survey, which begins in September.

The protesters and residents pushing back on tourism in Barcelona

Tourism is hugely important to Spain and Barcelona is a top destination for visitors. But the crowds are growing so fast that many locals complain they're being squeezed out of their own cities.

A 2,000-year-old Pompeii garden springs back to life

The Pompeii Archaeological Park has recreated an ancient perfume garden—right down to its antique roses.

Harvard hired a researcher to uncover its ties to slavery. He says the results cost him his job: ‘We found too many slaves’

When the extent of the university’s involvement with slavery was unearthed, a scholar tracking descendants of enslaved workers was suddenly fired

How a “centuries-old” carpet duped art dealers and curators for decades

Dorothy Armstrong Explores the History of Real and Fake Antique Textiles, from Central Asia to Europe

[w0efulboopsoul]

𐌂𐌀ɽ𐌀'𐌔 Ꮤ𐌄𐌀𐌐ꝋ𐌍𐌔

Thrym’s Lower Jawbone and Teeth

Teeth: Both halves of Thrym’s lower jawbone remain intact, their teeth gleaming with an unnatural sharpness. Despite the age of the fossilized jawbone, these fangs are pristine, as if time and decay have no claim on them. They’re still capable of tearing through flesh and bone with ease.

Significance: These aren’t just trophies; they embody Thrym’s enduring strength and Cara’s deep connection to him. They are a primal reminder of the bear who once stood by her side, their readiness for battle a silent promise of his lingering presence.

The Jawbone Halves: A jagged monument to loss and divinity, the Jawbone Halves are more than mere bone—they are a covenant carved in ice, a fractured hymn to a god’s suffering. Each half of Thrym’s lower jaw, sundered cleanly by forces unknown, resembles a glacial shard torn from the heart of a dying star. Timeworn and gnarled by eons, the fossilized bone gleams like polished ivory veined with cobalt, its surface etched with spiraling runes that pulse faintly, as though breathing with the rhythm of Thrym’s spectral soul.

Physicality & History: The left half bears the scars of Thrym’s mortal torment: deep gouges from chains, hairline fractures from the chieftain’s cudgel, and a permanent stain of rust-brown where his lifeblood seeped into the bone. The right half, smoother but no less ancient, glimmers with an ethereal frost, its edges lined with tiny, crystalline teeth that shimmer like trapped starlight—a haunting reminder of the cub who once nibbled his mother’s nose beneath the auroras. When joined, the halves lock seamlessly, revealing the full arc of Thrym’s primal roar frozen in time, a silent scream that still chills the air around it.

Magical Essence: To touch the Jawbone is to feel the weight of a glacier and the whisper of a ghost. It thrums with a low, resonant hum, a dirge that vibrates through the marrow—a soundless lament for Thrym’s stolen innocence. When Cara clasps her half, it warms gently, as if cupping a handful of freshly fallen snow kissed by sunlight. Yet its chill never fades; frost feathers across surfaces beneath it, and in moments of sorrow or rage, its glow intensifies, casting shadows that twist into spectral visions of ice-bound forests and a caged bear’s despair.

Symbolism & Power: This is no passive relic. The Jawbone is Thrym’s tether to the mortal realm—and Cara’s lifeline to the divine. Its fractures mirror the cracks in his spirit, yet its unyielding structure embodies his unbroken will. Those who dare wield it without reverence find their hands numbed to the bone, their breath crystallizing in their lungs. For Cara, it is both compass and confessional: when pressed to her brow, it floods her mind with fragments of Thrym’s memories—the coppery tang of his mother’s blood, the suffocating stench of the arena, the honey-sweet oblivion of his first taste of freedom.

A Divine Paradox: Here lies the contradiction: a relic of death that brims with stubborn, seething life. The Jawbone’s magic is primal, raw, and unrefined—a storm contained. It rejects decay, its edges sharpening in winter’s heart and softening under summer’s gaze, as though Thrym himself still seasons the world through it. To hold both halves is to stand at the threshold of godhood, to feel the raw scrape of a glacier’s march and the fragile warmth of a spirit refusing to be forgotten. In the end, the Jawbone Halves are not just bone. They are a requiem. A promise. And, perhaps, a thaw waiting to begin.

Kira’s Dagger

Blade: Forged from Starfall Iron—a rare fusion of meteorite and iron ore—this blade is a deep, inky black. When caught in the right light, it sparkles like a star-strewn night sky, a hauntingly beautiful effect that mirrors the cosmos.

Hilt: Carved from the bone of a Sawtail—a creature renowned for its toughness—the hilt bears intricate carvings of Frostbloom Flowers. These delicate etchings were done by Cara herself, each petal and stem a labor of love in memory of her sister, Kira.

Emotional Weight: More than a weapon, this dagger is a piece of Kira’s essence, a keepsake that blends sorrow and strength. It cuts with both steel and sentiment, a constant companion that keeps Kira’s warmth alive.

This is more of a trinket than a weapon to Cara as she never uses this blade until she is taken to the Howa'ahian Palace.

Hidden Retractable Blade

Material: Crafted from the femur bone of a Wolf Drake—a cunning and ferocious predator—this blade is lightweight yet devastatingly sharp.

Design: Tucked within Cara’s hide gauntlets, it deploys with a flick of her wrist, its razor edge perfect for slashing or stabbing in an instant. It’s a silent killer, designed for speed and surprise.

Purpose: This is Cara’s last resort, a hidden trump card that ensures she’s never truly defenseless. It’s a symbol of her refusal to be caught off guard again.

Frost and Lightning Rune-Enchanted Necklace

Pendant: Shaped from Thrym’s shed ice, this crude pendant was carved by Cara into an awkward hammer-like form. It’s blunt on one end for crushing and pointed on the other for piercing or stabbing.

Enchantments: Embedded with frost and lightning runes, it pulses with energy—capable of unleashing freezing cold or electric shocks with a touch.

Strap: Made from the scarred hide of a BloodFang Wyvern, the leather is as tough and battle-worn as Cara herself, a trophy from a near-fatal encounter.

Significance: This necklace doubles as a weapon and a protective charm, channeling Thrym’s spirit to guard her as fiercely as he once did in life.

Small Claw Pocket Knife

Blade: Carved from one of Thrym’s shed claws, this narrow, slightly curved knife has a rough, hand-forged edge that reflects its origins in the wilds.

Handle: An extension of the blade itself, it features a decorative spiral loop at the top—ideal for hanging or quick access.

Utility: Small but versatile, it’s perfect for carving, skinning, or delivering a swift, lethal strike. It’s a constant reminder of Thrym, always within reach like a trusted friend.

Viper Cat Bone Shiv

Origin: This jagged, blood-stained shiv was Cara’s first weapon, carved from the bone of a Viper Cat in the slavers’ pits. It’s crude and brutal, a product of desperation that fueled her escape to the wilds of Howa’ah.

Sentiment: It’s a raw symbol of the terrified girl she once was—and the unbreakable will that carried her through. She keeps it as a memento of her survival, a testament to her refusal to surrender.

Thin Spears of Ice

Magic: Formed from Cara’s frost magic, these spears are translucent and razor-sharp, their icy chill capable of impaling on impact.

Tactics: She summons them in an instant, hurling them with pinpoint accuracy or using them to impale foes. They’re as fragile as they are deadly, a frozen extension of her rage and precision.

Bow with Blunt Forced End and Enchanted Arrows

Bow: Made from sturdy wood with metal-capped ends, this bow is built for versatility. The blunt tips double as clubs when arrows run out or enemies close in.

Arrows: Each arrow is tipped with enchanted runes—some crackle with lightning, others glow with frost, and a few carry a mysterious, darker magic.

Versatility: This weapon is both a hunter’s tool and a warrior’s lifeline, excelling at range and holding its own up close. It reflects Cara’s adaptability, her ability to fight on any terms.

Razor-Like Shards in Cara’s Hair

Description: These are razor-sharp shards made from either Thrym’s enchanted ice or the polished bones of beasts Cara has hunted. They are small, lethal, and seamlessly woven into her blonde hair.

Purpose: Designed to prevent enemies from grabbing her hair during combat, the shards act as a hidden trap. When an opponent makes contact, the jagged edges slice into their flesh, drawing blood and forcing them to let go. The ice shards, infused with frost magic, also chill the attacker’s skin, adding an extra layer of deterrence.