#currency of blood and bones fic

[bundrops-n-fluffytops]

Welcome Home Agere Fic - Sing Me to Sleep

Characters: Little!Howdy Pillar, CG!Barnaby B. Beagle

Setting: Howdy’s Bodega (Checkout Desk, Upstairs Breakroom)

Premise: Barnaby notices that his good pal Howdy is overworking himself to the point of losing sleep. Concerned and determined to help his buddy out, he decides to sing him a lullaby to help him sleep. The next morning, he discovers something about Howdy he initially didn’t think he did.

Author’s Note: Another agere fic, this time with Howdy!! I kinda headcanon Barnaby and Howdy as childhood friends, like Barnaby befriended him while he stayed at the farm with his ma, so here it’s mentioned for a bit at the beginning. Hope that’s ok!!

Also the lullaby that Barnaby sings is ai generated, not an original song, so don’t think I write songs too jfkgk

—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—

Ever since the bodega opened in the town of Welcome Home, the lovable yet goofy Barnaby B. Beagle always made a point of visiting. Considering it was run by an old pal of his - that being the ever so hardworking Howdy Pillar - he couldn’t just ignore it! It even had all his favorite things in it; rubber duckies, party horns, endless streams of ribbons, the whole nine! For the price of just a simple trade as well, it was a perfect store!

Of course, it wouldn’t be the same without the man of the hour - or say, caterpillar. Barnaby had always admired the blood and sweat put into every little detail of the bodega, from the paint jobs to the shelving and even to the currency. It was a marvelous sight to see, but he couldn’t expect less from such a diligent and determined shopkeeper. Always toiling and moiling and working himself to the bone to make sure that progress did well and that every customer left with a big smile on their face, he could do no bad.

That… did bring a glaring problem to the surface, however: he did this all the time.

Because his never-ending perseverance and his insistence to make sure that business was booming at the seams, he often tired himself out. And by often, that meant a lot.

The bags under the titular caterpillar’s eyes looked as if they’ve been personally drawn on with permanent marker, with how dark they were. Often times, Barnaby would accidentally catch Howdy almost falling asleep at his checkout desk, but immediately perking up when he noticed that the comedian was watching. He would wake up and catch Howdy still up at the tender hours of night sweeping the floors or wiping the windows or even restocking the shelves.

It was concerning, to say the least. He had occasionally brought up the idea that Howdy could at least lay low for a short while, take a small break. However, the poor shopkeeper would break into a nervous sweat and go, “Oh but who will run the front counter while I’m gone? I’m the only one who works here, I can’t stop now! This shop will go belly-up if I quit here, I just can’t!” It almost broke the dog’s beating heart to see him in such a fit of distress.

He wanted to fix that, and he knew exactly how.

—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—

The sun set behind the trees one hot and sweaty evening, and Howdy was finishing up the last of his chores for the night: restocking the shelves, sweeping up any dust and grime, and wiping the front windows squeaky clean. Barnaby took quick note of this and strolled towards him, humming a jovial tune.

“Well howdy do, Howdy! Lovely afternoon we got here, but golly is it sweltering! I feel like I’m on Hell’s front porch with a pipin’ fever right about now, huh?” Barnaby greeted himself, chuckling as he did. Howdy looked up from wiping the front window, rubbing his sleepy lids with his lower right hand and smiling drowsily.

“You’re not wrong Barnaby, heh! I can feel myself melting like a snow cone in Phoenix!” He replied, wiping his forehead of the pooling sweat and turning back to wiping the windows clean. Barnaby snickered, nodding his head to the statement.

An awkward silence fell on the two. Howdy cleared his throat.

“Ahem, uh… what brings you here, ol’ pal?”, he asked, “ya’ need something from my shop? Any horns or… fake teeth or spinning plates?” The shopkeeper began to put up his bucket of suds and washrag before being stopped by the comedian.

“Oh no, I’m fine as frog hair, buddy! I just came to ask ya’ something, if you have the time, of course.” Howdy perked up at the request, but paused and sighed wearily.

“If you’re asking for me to take a break, Barnaby, then no. I’m not letting this business fall because the one man working here-“

He quickly got interrupted.

“Aww, come on Howdy! You’re exhausted and practically sleepwalking, if you keep working in this state you’ll be dead on your feet!” Barnaby protested, crossing his arms and huffing.

“Barnaby, you really don’t understand,” Howdy rebutted, “this is a matter of needing rather than wanting. Anyone and everyone could come, and if they see me lounging around, doing everything but, I’ll be letting them down! Soon the progress of this whole business could go down, and take me with it. I can’t ‘take a break’ because I am literally against doing it.”

Barnaby sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Howdy sure dug his heels deep in this business, huh? The titular dog wracked his brain for quite a while, thinking of a good way to pry his four arms away from the building… until something popped up.

“Oh well, I guess you’re right… but I do still have something to ask of you.” Howdy sighed, lifting his head towards him with his brow furrowed.

“Will you at least let me sing something to you?”

This tripped the caterpillar upside for a moment. Sing for him? Why exactly would this dog want to sing for him in the dead of night?

“Uhh… may I ask why? That’s a rather odd question to ask, really,” Howdy questioned the dog.

“Oh, well I had been listening to the radio recently and I happened to stumble upon the most loveliest tune! It had me painting the town red, it was lovely!” Howdy tilted his head curiously.

“Hmmm… well what song was it? I think I may have some records inside so you can sing along.” Barnaby grinned widely. His plan was working perfectly.

“I’m pretty sure it was called…Sweet Dreams and Strawberry Milk? It was a guitar song too, very slow and calming.”

“Hmmm… I don’t seem to have that song on a record, from what I can remember.” Barnaby’s heart dropped.

“Buuuuut I do have a guitar! Maybe you can play it on that?” And just like that, the plan was still in motion.

“Oh, superb! You always seem to have something on you to fix a situation, don’tcha? Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go inside before the wolves start howling!”

Barnaby quickly grabbed Howdy’s free arm and dragged him inside the bodega, leaving behind his sud bucket and rag. After a few quick directions, both the dog and caterpillar made their way to the upstairs breakroom.

The breakroom itself was quite large, to his surprise, it almost doubled as a separate house. In one section of the room, a small kitchenette with an oven, fridge, and sink, along with a sofa, record player, and television. In another section, a large bed spread along the room, with a dresser and closet on one side and a bookshelf on the other. In between both sections was a bathroom that he could conveniently walk into any time he wanted. The breakroom as a whole had a sort of forest or plant theme, with leaves and flower decorations galore, it was like shrinking and walking into Poppy’s garden.

Barnaby made their way towards the second section, sitting down on the edge of Howdy’s bed. Howdy strolled towards the closet, opening and rummaging through. He pulled out a large guitar and walked towards the bed where Barnaby sat, handing over the guitar.

“Do make this quick, ok pal?,” Howdy admonishes, slipping off his shoes and taking off his hat. He might as well get comfortable in case things get too long. Barnaby waved his hand dismissively, holding the guitar in his paws.

“Ahh, don’t you worry your pretty lil’ head, Howdy,” he reassured, “I’ll be quicker than green grass though a goose!” Howdy chuckled at that, smiling slightly.

The comedian took a minute to tune and adjust the chords to the guitar, making sure he wasn’t off-tune, before holding the guitar to his chest. He took a deep breath… and began to sing.

Close your eyes my little one

Drift away to sleep

Dream of fields of strawberries

Growing tall and deep

Sweet dreams my love

With strawberry milk in your cup

May your slumber be peaceful

And your dreams be sweet and lush

Imagine a garden of red

With vines and leaves so green

Picking the ripest berries

For the sweetest milk you've seen

Sweet dreams my love

With strawberry milk in your cup

May your slumber be peaceful

And your dreams be sweet and lush

As the peaceful lullaby rang throughout the bedroom, Howdy could feel his head begin to cloud up and his eyelids to feel heavy. He suppressed a yawn but caught himself stretching his arms and back.

He then decided that he rest his head for just a moment, if only for a second. He figured he would be awake by the time the song was finished, so it couldn’t be that bad.

As you lay here in my arms

With your eyes closed tight

Let the taste of strawberry milk

Take you through the night

Sweet dreams my love

With strawberry milk in your cup

May your slumber be peaceful

And your dreams be sweet and lush

Sleep now my little one

May your dreams be bright

With strawberry milk in your thoughts

All through the night.

Barnaby cleared his throat after finishing the song, gently placing the guitar to his left. He turned to face Howdy, who had been silent throughout the entire song, to ask him how he felt, but he instead found Howdy fast asleep beside him. How silly of him to drop off mid song, and in his work clothes too! Barnaby snickered to himself at the sight.

He decided that it would be best to stay the night. He pulled the blankets on the bed over the sleeping shopkeeper, tucking him in comfortably, before quietly leaving the bedroom. He made himself towards the other half of the breakroom and towards the couch, and pulled out the longer section to lie down. Turning off the lights and getting comfortable in the process, soon both of them were in a peaceful slumber.

The plan was a success.

—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—

Barnaby suddenly awoke to a strange noise.

He blinked himself awake to the sudden sound, trying to make sense of his vision. He could make out the kitchenette and the television, and what couch he was on.

Ah, yes, he was at Howdy’s place.

The sun was pooling through the closed curtains and birds were chirping their morning song, signifying a new morning for the sleepy beagle. He slowly stood up from his position and stretched his arms and back wide behind him, popping anything that needed popping.

His attention soon turned to the strange noise that woke him up. It was shrill and loud, yet desperate, if it made sense. It was occasionally interrupted by a slight hiccup or sniffle, before going right back to the shrillness.

Was that… Howdy?

It had the same voice as Howdy, had the same pitch (albeit a tad higher than usual), he could recognize it from a mile away. But what exactly is making him wail this loud?

He had to go investigate.

Barnaby slowly got up from the couch and quietly made his way through the breakroom towards Howdy’s bedroom. He hesitantly knocked one, two, three times, making sure it was quiet but noticeable.

“Howdy? Is that you in there?” Barnaby asked, hands on hips and his face screwed up into that of concern. If his suspicions were correct that this was indeed his pre-pupated pal, then this was quite out of character of him. He wasn’t that open with his inner feelings as he didn’t want them interfering with work, so hearing him so distressed was… odd.

He was quite surprised to see the door swing open not long after he knocked, but what surprised him more was what answered the door: a shaky and teary-eyed Howdy, covered in a colorful blanket and his thumb halfway in his mouth. It took him by surprise for a bit, before quickly being replaced with a brotherly concern.

“Oh jeez… you okay, bud? What happened?” Barnaby said, resting a gentle paw on the shivering shopkeeper’s shoulder and rubbing it slowly. Howdy only sniffled and hiccuped, lowering his head and covering his face with his hands as he continued to cry. The blue beagle took that opportunity to hesitantly wrap his arms around the both of them in a comforting embrace, letting Howdy rest his head on his shoulder.

“Deep breaths, bud… let’s go over here, ok?” Barnaby said quietly and reassuringly, taking one of Howdy’s hands and leading them to the nearby sofa. The titular caterpillar sniffled, wiping his eyes with his hands and popping his free thumb back between his lips. They both trudged towards the comfy cushions, sitting comfortably beside each other with hands clasped gently. Barnaby leaned his friend’s head towards the crook of his neck, letting Howdy rest against him as the bigger dog began to rub his back slowly.

“Hasn’t been your best morning, huh buddy?”, Barnaby said, his voice low and quiet and reassuring. Howdy sniffed, nodding his head silently.

“How’s about I settle here until you’re up and running again, hm?”, the blue beagle suggested, “It don’t seem like you can even walk properly, let alone run a store like this. Not good shape for a guy like you, huh?”

Howdy furiously shook his head no at that notion.

“I know, I know,” the blue dog continued, “you wanna run it. We can always take a day off though, can’t we? It can’t hurt to lay low for at least a day. It’s only about one in a few hundred days, isn’t it?” The small caterpillar sat there for a bit, his head filled with thought. Barnaby scratched his noggin for an idea, then snapped his fingers once it came.

“How about this,” he started, “maybe I can stay and settle with you for the day until you’re feeling better? That way you won’t have to worry about feeling lonely, ok? How does that sound?” Howdy looked down to his feet, wringing his lower hands together in thought. He didn’t want to let the business down, and he felt bad that he was so upset when Barnaby found him.

However, he wasn’t wrong. He had been quite stressed for a few weeks, and he was teetering towards passing out and never getting out of bed. Plus, in his state, how would he run the shop? He could barely talk. It wasn’t an argument at this point, really. He needed this break.

Howdy hesitantly nodded.

“Good to hear, bub,” Barnaby said, squeezing him towards himself a bit tighter. He then stood up and wipe his paws on his vest, and turned back to Howdy.

“You mind if I hold you, bud?”, he asked, lowering himself to the smaller caterpillar’s level. Howdy nodded, holding out his lower arms and flexing the fingers in a grabbing motion. Barnaby gripped his sides and hooked his hands underneath his upper arms. He lifted him up slowly and rested the caterpillar on his hip.

“Now there, how’s about we get you dressed in something nice, m’kay? Those slacks don’t feel so good now, I can find something better for today.”

—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—•—

#This took a WHILE #hope that’s ok lol #but heyyyyy baby howdy for once!! #i considered adding Wally for a sec but figured it would be cute to just practice with Howdy and Barnaby #Barnaby is literally the best cg #welcome home arg #welcome home #welcome home puppet show #welcome home agere #sfw agere #agere positivity #agere fanfic #welcome home howdy #howdy pillar #welcome home barnaby #barnaby b beagle #gummunity fics

[mtreebeardiles]

Fic Author Self Recommendations

Ah! I think I got double tagged by @theoriginalladya​ and @mallaidhsomo​, many thanks!

When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you’ve written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love.

Oh boy do these have to be finished works haha, let’s see...

In no particular order, fave finished pieces:

No Matter What | Rating: M | Pairing: Mshenko (Everett) | An in-between piece transitioning from ME2 to ME3, and some of my favorite prose written from Evvy’s third-person limited POV.

Nightmares and beacons and warnings centuries old, echoing in his skull night after night after night. Final pleas of a race long gone, and only he could serve as their mouthpiece. They would have chosen better, he was sure, if they'd just had the option. Would've chosen someone who could inspire trust, respect, not this caricature of a man who could only try, all his shadows pulled constantly into the light for others to scrutinize.

After the Collectors, after the Bahak System, Shepard finds himself stuck in ways he never would have imagined.

The People You Meet on Omega | Rating: M | Reyes Vidal & Everett Shepard | Pre-Andromeda one-shot delving into some of Reyes’s backstory and how he came to know about the Initiative. Inspired by flashbacks in my larger mreyder fic that I wanted to play around with some more.

He's twenty-five when he winds up on Omega, seemingly for good.

A broken city for a broken man, filling the cracks and the seams with shadows and smoke, and he slips into the not-so-subtle underbelly with an ease that may have worried him, once. There's a currency here, a language he's willing to learn, prices paid in blood and bone, loyalties tested and burned. Cleverness in fingers and tongue, the art of misdirection, information as precious a commodity as the basic necessities he'd once smuggled for those in desperate need.

But Hope's End is gone, her people lost, and Reyes has nothing left but ghosts.

---

Reyes has a decision to make.

Intangible Things | Rating: M | Pairing: Mshep Clone x Major Coats | This was completely spur of the moment when a one-shot featuring Everett’s clone popped into my head and wouldn’t leave until he’d gotten his story, and now he’s got several haha. The fic that started my favorite disaster, Shawn Shepard.

...He looked like Commander Everett Shepard, Hero of Elysium, Alliance Golden Boy, Savior of the Citadel, first human Spectre. And he was none of these things. He'd tried to be, once -- recently, even. It had been only a few months since the admittedly ill-advised, harebrained scheme to steal Commander Shepard's identity, get his access codes, steal the Normandy and… And do… something.

-- After the plan to steal Commander Shepard's life spectacularly backfired, his clone is left struggling to pick up the pieces and figure out what it takes to be his own person.

Some things are easier said than done.

Mystery Requisitions | Rating: T | Pre-mshenko | One of my earliest one-shot character tests for Everett Shepard and Kaidan Alenko, pre-relationship

Kaidan Alenko is determined to solve the puzzle of the mystery baker.

Reassessments | Rating: T | Cora Harper & Reyes Vidal | An early character test for these two, exploring the sort of tone/theme I wanted to carry over into my main mreyder fic. I know most make these two antagonistic, but I ain’t convinced ;)

Stranded in a frozen city, Cora finds herself rescued by an unlikely ally.

And since I was tagged twice, two bonus In-Progress fics that I’m having a blast writing:

Stardew Effect | Rating: M | Pairings: mshenko (Everett); mshep clone x Coats (Shawn; Leigh) | Prompted by discussions in discord and I made good on my threat to combine Mass Effect with Stardew Valley. It’s been super fun and an interesting challenge so far!

A troubled youth, a soul-crushing job, and living life as the resident freak has worn Kaidan Alenko down. So he's quitting his job, abandoning his city life, and running off to the country, to a place his grandfather left him before his passing, to see if a new place, a fresh start, can rekindle his sense of wonder again.

Restoration | Rating: M | Pairings: Mshep Clone x Coats (Shawn; Leigh), with some mshenko in the periphery | THIS came about from a prompt LadyA sent me that I felt could be expanded considerably, and the next thing I knew I had Coats’s family tree sketched out and everything sorta snowballed from there. Chapters alternate between ME3 and Post-ME3.

Then: Warnings unheeded translated to despair and destruction during Reaper Occupation on Earth, the remains of the System Alliance military holding as best they can against the onslaught. Desperate tactics, overwhelming loss in the face of an overwhelming force, and it's all Major Leigh Coats can do to stem the bleeding of his broken city.

Then: a clone grapples with a budding sense of self-awareness at conflict with what is asked of him. Plans gone wrong, and uncertainty in the aftermath, but the Reapers have come to the Citadel and he has other choices to make.

Now: two men grapple with an aftermath they weren't sure they'd ever see, four years down the line, and must reckon with the cracks their pasts have left behind.

Also i am terrible at summaries lordy lordy

Let’s see... tagging @theoriginalladya (you said you had more! let’s see ‘em :D ), @tiny-banana-time, @solstheimart (not sure which of yours is appropriate for this tag), @urdnotflexthejedibard, and @illusivesoul if you like! 

#my writing #fic meme #hard to choose only seven lmao #yes I realize the formatting got messed up but I ain’t fixing it lol

[anouri]

Masterlist of my tags:

General tags:

— a decomposing dump of my thoughts

— anouri answers asks

— art

— ask game

— fashion

— favorite

— mine

— songs that are so personal to me

— srb

— to read

— to reference

— uquiz

— web weaving

— words

Themes:

— a better knife than a person

— and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking

— beauty is terror

— body that can’t love you and will that can’t save you

— burden of consciousness

— burden of knowledge

— burden of physicality

— doomed love

— god must hate me

— gotta love blasphemy

— hands

— how quickly the blade becomes you

— i am because we are and since we are therefore i am

— i resign from humanity

— is to cherish to destroy?

​​— i take off my hands and give them to you but you don’t want them

— i’ll give you my heart to make a place

— i’m making memories. that’s currency too

— i’m weary of being a man

— love as a risk

— love as consumption

— love as hunger

— love as physical touch

— love as religion

— love as sacrifice

— love as tenderness

— love as violence

— love starved

​​— now my wishes are down to two: staying alive. and wanting to.

— on death

— on fear of intimacy

— on humanity

— on longing

— on loss

— on love

— on love and death

— on mental illness

— one of the greatest delusions of the average man is to forget that life is death’s prisoner

— perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid

— platonic love

— she then embraced sweet death as if she were a ghost

— sorry about the blood in your mouth. i wish it was mine

— space

— the mortifying ordeal of being known

— the very act of my wanting it was an assurance that i would not get it

— things left unsaid

— to be truly seen

— to love despite one’s flaws is to carve away a piece of them and decide that that portion is not worthy

— to remember is to press a bruise

— touch starved

— truth is like a blanket

— violent feelings are good so i have heard for your health

— what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?

— who am i

— you blush like an ocean in love wild with blueness

— your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle

My fics:

— fic: l’éphémère

— fic: vermilion dawn (and the touch of an angel)

— fic: working for the knife

Brain rot/misc tags (fandom, favorites, & fixations):

— bones and all

— caravaggio

— cupid and psyche

— if we were villains

— jean paul sartre

— jegulus

— marauders

— monet

— re: a little life annotations

— richard siken’s crush has altered my brain chemistry

— roberto ferri

— taylor russell

— thank u wellbutrin for allowing me to express emotion?

— the secret history

— timothée chalamet

— vincent van gogh

— wolfstar

#why do i have so many #this is for self-reference #will add links one day. today is not that day #to reference

[cyber-phobia]

Poorly explained AU: One (pile) For All (the bones).

Ok I did laugh for this one

#currency of blood and bones fic #poorly explained aus

[gaiuswrites]

King of Cups || Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Tower

Archive: ao3 | masterlist | two

Pairing: Din Djarin x fem!Reader

Summary: You’re apart of the Refugee Relief Movement, an intergalactic organization providing aid throughout the systems, and you find yourself assisting at a resettlement camp in Lothal when disaster strikes, changing your life forever, intertwining your path with that of a certain Mandalorian bounty hunter.

Word count: 3.7k~

Rated: Mature

Warnings: descriptive violence, blood/injury mentioning, danger, mature language

Notes: Hi y'all, welcome. This fic is going to be set during Season 2 of The Mandalorian, and will be what I like to call ‘canon adjacent’. ALSo, this chapter is very much so Reader focused, setting up the scene and the general pacing of the story, but naturally, Din will be more and more featured as things progress. I’m a sucker for backstory and a slow burn, so ye be warned. Please feel free to reach out to me. :) I’d love to hear from you lovely little beans. Be safe out there, friends.

Lothal was a planet all too familiar with occupation.

You remember seeing a quote somewhere that read ‘Look no further than Lothal if you want to see what happens when the Empire takes control of an entire world’; and although the Imperial chokehold had loosened when the Empire fell, the planet, even all these years later, still found itself gasping for breath. 

Off world migration from the Core Worlds had been popularized since the expansion of the Imperial government bureaucracy, which brought booming business opportunities for the fortunate few, but as the rich became richer, the poor grew poorer. The Lothalites were forced out of their homes, off their own lands—refugees on their own planet; forced to resettle and relocate with nothing but the clothes on their back and the possessions they could cram into their pockets. The only heirlooms passed on from generation to generation were that of poverty, tall tales of former splendor, and the greatest of ancestral traumas: disillusionment.

The truly desperate turned to crime, and what couldn’t be solved by back-dealings and blaster fire was managed with fear mongering and the bitter flair of xenophobia. There was always a species to blame, and it was always the one who seemed to be doing better off, no matter how slight the margin. 

Greed. Fear. Despair. These are the currencies in which the galaxy trades. 

And so it was then, and continued to be, cycle after cycle. History, always finding clever ways to repeat itself.

On bad days, pollution still loomed heavy over the atmosphere—remnants of the fires from the Imperial occupation still clinging on to Lothal’s weary bones. She had been stripped during that time; gutted and strung up by her feet to dangle from the Empire’s meat hook, exsanguinated slowly, drop by drop, until she had nothing left to give. Her resources and minerals and ore and water and seed, robbed. Pillaged.

She’s free from it now, but the scars remain— the planet remembers. Her people do not forget. Like muscle memory, they all ungulate to this synthesized rhythm they can’t seem to shake, day in and day out, wandering. Forever unsettled.

The planet had always had a diverse population and had become something of a safe haven for other abandoned people fleeing their home worlds, determined to find somewhere - anywhere - for them to survive. Lothal provided that for them. It wasn’t rich or bountiful by any stretch, but it was simple and safe—safe in the way hidden things in plain sight are. One could blend into the crowd of many, unique faces, of all races and backgrounds; you could be anonymous, if you wanted. You could be free.

That’s how you’ve found yourself here in Jortho. You had been with the Refugee Relief Movement for the better part of what felt like forever, and they had transferred you to this planet not six weeks ago. You were out on rotation; the RRM sends someone new twice a cycle for the span of a month or two to varying locations to supply rations, aid with the influx of refugees, organize resettlement lodgings, and generally be of assistance when and where you could. However, your tenure on this temperate planet was coming to a close, and soon you’d be flying back to the headquarters on Coruscant before being bounced to another post somewhere out among the stars. 

You love your job. You know it’s unpopular to say, but you do. It’s fulfilling and impactful and indescribably special. The individuals you meet, the stories you hear, they’re invaluable— priceless and precious, like handmade trinkets crafted by the fingers of a child; you press them all to your heart, holding them there. You’d be lying if you said it didn’t get to you— the weight of it; the plights of all of these people, all of these lives, burdening your conscience. It isn’t always painless— you aren’t immune to it. Even so, on most nights you manage to sleep easy, tucked away aboard the transport freighter you flew in on with the batch of settlers newly assimilated into town knowing Maker, at least you were doing something— anything— everything you could.

And really, to call Jortho a town would be an insult to all towns everywhere—but ‘town’ has a certain charm to it that ‘refugee camp’ simply did not, and it gave the people hope. Pride, even. That they belonged somewhere.

You suppose that’s all anyone wants. To belong. 

A feather soft gust of wind tickles the golden blades of prairie grass as the sun, bleary and tired, starts dipping from the sky. The crickbeets begin their song early, trilling, sensing Lothal’s moons still coyly tucked away, hiding somewhere along the horizon. A smile adorns your face, private and serene, as you bring a bowl of broth up to your lips, humming when the warm liquid meets your tongue. You sigh, contented, taking in the sights before you; how the dusk blurs the aromatic air, making it opaque, the shuttles docked across the way from you casting long purple shadows onto the flat plains, the snowcapped mountains in the distance bordering the cant of the planet’s surface, nestling Jortho in a shallow valley.

You feel calm, at peace, and take another sip.

An easy moment passes, and it’s the last one you get before silence stalks up from behind you.

You don’t notice it at first, like any patient predator, it goes undetected: the white noise, the nothingness— until finally, you do and then suddenly it’s everywhere. On top of you. Smothering you. Goosebumps stipple your skin and you bristle. The insects have stopped chirping. The breeze has stilled. The air hangs dead. 

And then—

Chaos.

You’re hit with a blast of crushing heat, the sheer power of it picking you up off your feet and onto your side, sending your body careening into a nearby structure. Your shoulder takes most of the blow, but your neck still snaps backwards unnaturally, the back of your head colliding with the stone wall behind you with a dull thwack. You let out a groaned cry at the impact, the wind knocked out of your lungs as you crumple to the ground.

For an instant, your vision goes white, stars popping and fusing out in front of your pupils, and it’s like you can feel everything and nothing all at once, hollow but overwhelmed, and all you want to do is close your eyes and drift asleep— Maker that would feel like a luxury, just right here on the damn dirt. And you almost do, you almost let yourself slip under and sink— until you hear a piercing scream from somewhere close. 

Immediately your eyes shoot open, desperately blinking away the blurriness that threatens to over take them, and you try pushing yourself up by the heels of your scraped hands, failing once - twice - before finding your footing. You’re shaky at first, uncoordinated and dizzy and redownloading bipedalism, before that sweet drug of adrenaline starts to course through your veins and finally, finally, you take in your surroundings. 

The ships that once stood across the field are gone, obliterated, and in their place only metal ribcages remain—empty carcasses like dead birds splayed on their backsides, imploded from the inside out, their bits strewn all around you. 

Your breathing comes hard and heavy, fighting down panic, and cloudy eyes search through the thick black smoke billowing up in stacks, trying to pin point the source of the scream you’d heard just moments ago. You cough a strained wheeze, sputtering against the charred air, and wade your way through the debris— it’s only then that you realize the magnitude of the explosion. It’s not just the landing bay, it’s half the kriffing village. The buildings that neighbored the airfield had been decimated, burning roofs and crumbling fixtures, homes collapsing onto themselves, scorch marks and shrapnel branding the outsides of the shanties left standing.

It looks like a battlefield. You’ve seen holovids of this—what war can look like, how it can ruin a people… But you’ve never had to stand in the middle of it, head on. 

Your heart drums against your chest as you break into a hobbled run, desperately scanning the area for any signs of life, up and down, left and right, straining against the waning daylight. It’s then that you hear your name, urgent and frantic, and you whip your head in it’s direction, knees nearly buckling in relief. You immediately recognize your friend Hareem, brandishing her arms at you, waving you over to her. 

“Thank the Maker, you’re alright!” the Balosar cries out, trembling hands finding purchase on your shoulders, bracing you. You don’t know if its for your benefit or her own, but either way you’re grateful for the grounding pressure; for the first time since the initial blast, you feel solid, like you won’t just float away, atomized and weightless. Worried, you look her over. A sliver of fresh scarlet blooms from her scalp, a small line trickling down past her temple, but she otherwise looks relatively unharmed. You grasp onto her wrist, squeezing firmly.

“What the hell happened?” You ask, voice low and pitched, wide fearful eyes drilling into her.

“T-There was a man-” And she shakes her head, mouth clamping shut, deep wrinkles framing her face.

“Hareem,” you reassure, giving her another squeeze. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.

She tries again with a steadying inhale, “I-I saw him. A-a man. He had a device with him, and he set charges, and Maker I don’t know— I don’t know— it went off a-and he ran towards the center of town!” The Balosar is in hysterics, tears spilling down her dirty cheeks, and it takes your brain a moment to catch up, to wrap your mind around the words she’s stuttering out. 

A man. 

Device. 

Charges.

A bomb. This wasn’t an accident; this was an attack—and he’s still kriffing here. You cup her cheeks, thumbs rubbing against the pale skin, smearing away the blood that’s nearly dripped to her chin. Your friend’s gaze is flighty, everywhere and nowhere, and you try giving her a smile, but you’re not quite sure you manage it.

“Hareem? Hareem. Hey, shh, you’re okay. You’re alright…” You peel your eyes off her to glance around hurriedly. “We need to find cover.”

///

You’re holed up in one of the few remaining homes on this side of the encampment, crowded into the small space with three other survivors. All four of you, packed in and silent and petrified. Unsure of any further threat, you stay completely still. Helpless. Laying here, idle, for whatever awaits you behind that feeble, wooden door. You feel like prey for the wicked, just passing the time.

Minutes inch along like this—or maybe its hours; time moves eerily different when you’re attempting to become invisible—and eventually, you almost begin to relax.

Almost.

But a new sound breaks the din, hard to recognize at first, indistinct from all the commotion outside their hut, but you hear it. You all do. The youngest of you, a teenaged Devaronian, grips onto the hem of your shirt, knuckles creasing with anticipation. You tense, spine going rigid. Footsteps. They’re slow, guarded, but they’re getting closer. You bring an arm up, for all the good it’ll do, creating a human shield in front of the boy at your side. Closer. Someone behind you muffles a whimper. Closer. A Bardottan you hadn’t even met until today let’s out the faint whisper of a prayer, lips barely ghosting over the phrases. Closer- 

and then, nothing.

They’re here. You can sense him, see his shadow sweep across the gaps in the entryway. You all hold your breath, as if the air is being syphoned out of the space… And the door is flung open, nearly breaking off it’s hinges as it slams into the inside of the house, shuttering the rickety walls with a jarring bang. 

You don’t know who looks more astonished: you four, or the Mandalorian before you, dripping head to toe in silver plated armor, pointing a blaster directly at your head.

“Where is he?” He asks, hard edged and modulated, and it’s more of a demand than a question—but he lowers his weapon all the same, holstering it at his side. You gape at him, guppying wordlessly. “Volcur X’elo. The bomber. Where?” He hasn’t moved an inch out of the doorframe but he’s still managing to loom over you, completely filling up the archway, shoulders set and impossibly intimidating.

You gulp, finally finding your voice. “In town, i-in the center of town…” Kriff, you had not idea if that intel was good or not, but it’s all you think to say. Seeming satisfied with your answer he turns on his booted heel, cape whipping behind him, leaving just as soon as he arrived. The dust barely has time to settle as the door teeter’s on its hinge, its rusty squeaks filling the void in the Mandalorian’s wake.

“Fuck,” you hiss, exhaling a breath you didn’t realize you were holding, doubling forward, propping your palms up on your knees.

///

After deliberating it with your group, you all come to the agreement of braving it outside. Better to be out under the open sky than die under a concaving apartment, clambering over each other to get to the exit. After all this, at least your dignity was still partially in tact— normally, you reckon you’d chuckle dryly at that. But you don’t. 

Can’t. 

You lead the pack through the mazelike streets. The sights that once seemed so familiar after weeks of living here become like strangers to you, and you sleepwalk through Jortho, snaking down paths marred by rubble and fallen wreckage— you haven’t seen any bodies, but maybe that isn’t true. Maybe you’re just too scared to notice them. Maybe they’re there, hovering just outside of your peripherals, haunting the corners of your vision… 

You keep your head fixed forward, jaw clenched.

Your feet move on their own like this, only vaguely aware that the red-skinned boy still hadn’t let go of your tunic. You forge on. Have to. You have to. Your only purpose on this kriffing planet was to help these people, to bring them aid, and if that means simply planting one foot in front of the other, then so be it. You take side alleys, double backing here and there, ducking under canopies, looping around yourself, only stopping when you catch a glimpse of beskar, the orange setting sun glinting off the surface of his helmet.

And he’s not alone.

You freeze suddenly, as do the rest, and the Devaronian bumps into you, stumbling under his lanky legs. Some paces in front of you, the bounty hunter has the other man, this Volcur X’elo, by a punishing grip on his shoulders, shoving him forcefully out in front of him; his wrists are bound and he’s fitful without the stabilization of his arms, his feet staccatoed and flailing wildly beneath him as the Mandalorian marches him forward. 

The wind shifts, and on it you can hear the bomber rant madly, only catching snippets of the vile nonsense that spews from him.“- like swine, they are a plague to the system! And they must be purged from this planet, and the next, and the next— every last filthy one!” You spare a glance to Hareem, to find her watching the scene in hypnotized horror, but your eyes snap back at the sound of something maniacal, drawing your attention. It’s laughter. The zealot begins to laugh a twisted, mocking cry that makes you want to vomit. “You might have me in binders Mandalorian, but you’re too late. You’re too late. This isn’t over!” He’s practically giggling, gleeful and demented. Disturbed. “You’ve only found one.”

Your blood runs cold. 

Only one? Oneoneoneone, one what-

The realization hits you with a punch to your gut. He’s only detonated one of his bombs. Somewhere, nearby, there must be another.

Without another word, the Mandalorian whips the smaller man around, pulling him sharply by his collar to collide with his breastplate, completely dwarfing him with his beskar frame. “Where is it, X’elo?” Nothing. Only laughter. High pitched, terrible roars. He tries again, patience ebbing. “The bomb. Now.” X’elo’s head tilts back and he howls another crowing shriek, keeping private his own sick joke, as if clutching a secret to his chest with slimy hands. 

The bounty hunter had heard enough. He clearly wasn’t getting anything more out of him, and with a quick strike, he rears his blaster and pistol whips the terrorist with it. The body drops. Volcur X’elo crumples, unconscious, blood streaming from where he was struck. You hear the Bardottan behind you stifle a cry with her fist. 

And with that, Lothal’s sun disappears completely, stealing away the last of it’s light as it furls into itself, shrinking out of sight. The dark ushers a new wave of dread, creeping over Jortho like a miasma, poisoning the very air.

The Mandalorian wheels around, searching for his heading in the labyrinth of the town. Others have gathered now, poking their heads around corners, stealing glimpses through windows. He turns, his head on a swivel. “Where is your power generator?” he demands, addressing the small crowd, but you’re all too stunned to speak. “Anybody. Generator. Now.” There’s something new in his voice, something muddled, and it takes you a moment to interpret it. It’s desperation, you realize, tinny and deep through his vocoder, and with a surge of adrenaline you move forward, furthering yourself from your group. You swallow. “I-Its this way.” Upon hearing your voice, he spins around, his visor latching on to you, and with a nod you both set out. 

“Watch him,” the Mandalorian growls past his shoulder, stepping over the bounty’s limp body.

///

You’re still not really sure how he knew where it’d be, you wonder to yourself, gravel crunching under foot as you both trudge on, an eery quiet settling over them. You’d say it was a lucky hunch, but judging by the way the Mandalorian carries himself, you doubt luck had much to do with it. 

You had led him to the power generator hub on the other side of the sad excuse for a city, traveling in tense silence, and when you came upon that tall, bulky machine he sprang into action, circling it until he found what he was looking for. The bomb. You stood back, rooted there, and after some grunting and rewiring— or maybe he just hacked at it with a vibroblade, you had no idea; his wide frame engulfed his work and you couldn’t tell what he was up to, all you knew was that his methods proved successful— the man managed to disarm the second device. You had thought you noticed his shoulders release, slumping with relief, after the red flashing lights on the rudimentary interface flickered and then went dark.

And so here you are. The two of you, bathed in the bright light of Lothal’s twin moons, their bellies hanging full in the blue-black night, illuminating the trail of blood staining the dirt beneath your boots as the Mandalorian roughly drags the body by his ankle behind him— through the exploded rubble, through the fragmented lives of the people around you, already displaced and estranged. They’ll all have to move, you think, pack up their lives, or what little is left of them, and relocate. Again. The thought sinks in you like a stone, sobering you. 

Even with the weight of a fully grown man to lug, the bounty hunter is still a few long strides in front of you and your eyes are trained on the unconscious form, taking in the way his mouth lolls open like an animal, his hair matted with thick blood, eyes rolled back into his head. You’re talking out loud before you even realize it.

“How sick do you have to be,” you mumble, transfixed. Your voice, it’s not angry; no, shock has effectively robbed you of that— it’s not anger, but bewilderment. Quivering, broken bewilderment.

“H-How hoodwinked and warped you’d have to be, how disturbed... For you to think like that. To do all... all this...” 

“Hey,” his gruff voice shakes you from your trance, and you blink up at him, tearing your eyes off the body. “Focus,” he urges, and you can only nod dumbly back at him, suddenly feeling a ripple of nausea slither through you.

The ramp to his ship is lowering as they come upon it and you plant yourself at the base, feet seeming to stop on their own accord, and frankly you’re not really sure why you’ve even followed him this far in the first place— always a step behind him as he hauled his bounty all the way through the vestiges of Jortho, across the arid prairie to where he first touched down. Maybe it’s because you feel untethered, unmoored, and all of his steeled surety is like a lighthouse, a beacon, guiding you away from the rocks. 

He heaves X’elo up the ramp and you’re left standing there, staring unseeingly into the durasteel, becoming more and more aware of the ringing in your ears. The longer time passes, the more it’s as if you’re underwater, the background blurring into the foreground, sound gargled and far away. A high pitched buzz pinches your ear drums, and it takes you a moment to realize the Mandalorian is calling out to you, trying to get your attention.

“— Dala.”

Does he sound annoyed? Kriff, you think he might... If you had your wits about you, you might be able to recognize it. But as it stands, you don’t. You’re not here, not all of you. You’re splintered. Suspended.

“Hmm? Sorry, what..?” Your mouth is as dry as Jakku— parched desert tongue darting across your cracked lip, tasting soot and ash and something metallic. Brow furrowed, you touch a shaky finger to the flesh and when you pull it back, crimson red dots your skin. 

Oh, you think, numb. Huh. 

Your eyes skitter back up to the Mandalorian, towering over you, nearly at the apex of the incline, and his stance is broad and his fists are clenched. You’re almost positive he’s glaring down at you through his visor, and you don’t even know the man, can’t even see his damn face, but you can tell he’s peeved— Maker, just how long had you been ignoring him?

A scratched noise comes through his helmet’s vocoder and his next words are clipped, punctuated. “I said, do you have a way off this skug hole?”

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian x you #din djarin #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #din djarin x fem!reader #SHIT #HERE WE GO YALL #i am so sorry #mandalorian fic #din djarin fic #King of Cups #mandalorian fanfic #mandalorian fandom #fanfic #the tower #erikka your progressive liberal slant is showing #erikka u cant just talk about pollution and climate change and deforestation #and then run #like pick a passion #wtf u on about m8

[binniesthighs]

call me babydoll | reader x chan

a/n: chapter threeeee here it is!!! hehe thank you all for being patient for this update and thank you as always for giving this fic your love!! i start out the first part of this chapter in 3rd person which is a lil different, but i wanted to try it out! hehe i love hearing what ya thought of the chapter too! 😊

Pairing: self insert, female reader x bang chan 

Genre: action, mystery and suspense, fluff, smut, angst 

Tags: (of this part) bodyguard au, secret agent au, royal au, moderndayprince!chan, secretagent!reader, secretagent!jeongin, secretagent!jisung, collegestudent!seungmin, skz side characters, 3rd person for the first section, adventure and mystery, action and peril, plot driven, running out of time, slow-ish burn, growing feelings, sexual tension, explicit language, mentions of food, brief talk of gaining weight while travelling, there’s a few spoilers hidden in this one...can ya find them? ;) 

CWs: blood and other wounds, shooting at a convenience store, thoughts about death and dying when in peril 

Word count: 5.6k 

Parts

ONE | TWO | THREE | FOUR

Two years of pocket change and Seungmin had finally saved up enough money to afford to study abroad. It had nearly taken him life and limb, and he might’ve suffered (1) concussion from a bowl of soup being thrown at his head, but, he had done it. 

With grease stains on his sneakers Seungmin traversed the long and stretching corridor of the airport terminal with his backpack strapped onto him tightly. The air smelled different here. It was fresher than he was used to--coming from a large city center--everything here felt more pristine. Outside of the tall glass windows, airplanes lifted off into the sky like massive metal giants. He couldn’t remember properly, but the last time that he must’ve been on a plane, it likely had been when his mother...

Seungmin shook the dusty and cobwebbed ideas out from his head. 

No more sad thoughts. 

I’m gonna like it here. He thought to himself, then clipped the little buckle to his backpack straps over his chest with a determined huff. 

I’m really going to like it here. 

With his phone in hand, he tried his best to decipher what the signs said above him. Mostly, they looked like a jumbled mess of symbols, but luckily he had spent some time trying to learn the language between shifts and sneaking peeks at his little dictionary under the diner counter. The whole terminal buzzed with a lovely kind of energy, and he was thrilled to get to know it better. The first wonderful thing about travelling abroad was that no one knew who he was, and he could be whoever he wanted. In this new land, no one knew him or anything about the dingy little apartment that he had lived in. No one knew about his less than honorable roommates or the debt that he had put himself under to go to college in the first place. 

I could be a prince for all they know. 

Seungmin liked that idea a lot. 

His stomach grumbled as he passed by food stands, however he hadn’t had the chance yet to change his currency, so he knew that he would have to wait just a minute longer. Seungmin had been assigned a host family by his college, and he hoped like crazy that they would be the kind to cook for him. Seungmin had heard somewhere that kids who go on study abroad gain a ton of weight at first...but he didn’t mind. Where else would he get the chance? 

There had been a host father that had sent him an email a couple weeks ago--that he promptly had to run through Google Translate--who told him that he would meet him outside the main luggage claim area after his flight landed. Seungmin had tried to look up and see if his host family were on social media, but he could find no such profile of theirs. He decided it probably was better that it was a surprise. 

Seungmin lugged his two large suitcases out to the summer air of the new and strange land, and it finally hit him. Standing on the solid ground of another land thousands of miles away from his home, it was really all happening. 

The landscape outside was like that of a movie scene: rolling hills and jagged mountains capped with snow, adorable little homes built into the countryside and tiny cars with horizonal license plates. The sun was warm in the cerulean sky that puffed with perfectly white clouds. On the air, the scent of flowers wafted, and he was certain that there was a lake nearby too--he had researched it. There were old men in their caps with a crook in their back, and ladies with long floral skirts and dresses with Mary Janes. Each of them had smile lines on their faces and under their eyes as if they had all lived lives well lived. There were pretty girls too with slender legs and delicate arms swaddled in light scarves. 

Seungmin wouldn’t have minded getting a girlfriend on this trip. While he kept the fact to himself, Seungmin had never really done anything with a girl before outside of some awkwardly handsy kissing in middle school. Maybe this time around, he would finally get his chance: he had read somewhere that girls often like foreigners. 

“Seung Min! Seung Min?” A man’s voice called. 

The young college student whipped his head around in the direction of the sound, finally finding a middle aged man with salt-and-pepper hair with whiskers of the same color. He had red cheeks and a large nose, and looked a bit like a character from a comic. Seungmin waved back, greeting his new father. When they met, the older man threw him into a large hug with a chuckle. He smelled a bit like Tabaco and old leather. He had a couple missing teeth, but that didn’t lessen his bright smile. 

“English?” Seungmin’s host father asked. 

“Yeah! I can speak English.” He returned with a welcoming grin. 

“I thought it would be good for us to speak English since I don’t know your tongue and you don’t know mine...meet in the middle?” 

“Thank you for coming to get me!” He said, handing the man his suitcases which were just a bit too big for the tiny trunk of the car that looked as if it had come from the 80′s. In the end, they decided to put his bags in the backseat. 

The man beamed with smiling eyes. “Of course...son!” 

Seungmin gave him a little bow, “Heh, thank you.”

“Get in the car! You must be hungry right? Long flight?”

“Oh yes, it was really long.” 

“You will eat well here! Mother knows how to feed well. She will put meat on your bones. She did with me!” He guffawed out with hearty laughter, and Seungmin already knew that he would really like this man. 

“We have a room ready for you back at home, and I will show you tomorrow how to use the buses. Okay?” 

Seungmin nodded with a bit of rose to his cheeks. He found his hand wandering down to his arm which he pinched at lightly--cliché as it was. His host father coughed and the engine sputtered, then they took off away from the sounds of jet engines to the countryside which was scattered with churches with protruding steeples and all kinds of homes with red-orange roofs and perfectly symmetrical windows. Seungmin couldn’t help but keep his eyes glued to the window as they drove on to take in the whole scene. Never had he seen a place so beautiful or magical looking. They drove on past a crystal clear lake that stretched on and on to the base of a mountain appearing to claw at the heavens, and adorned in emerald green pines and other deciduous trees. If it was even possible, he had never seen greener grass in all his life. 

“Beautiful, eh?” His host father said while tuning the radio. 

“It’s amazing.” The young student said in his amazement. “Oh, do you know if there is somewhere I can change my money? I don’t have any of your money yet.” 

“Ah!” The older man said with a wink. “I know of a place. I can take you there first.” 

The radio hummed with a static fuzz as Seungmin’s host father messed with it, skipping over the channels, blurring the music and the talk radio all together. 

Seungmin tried out the best he could to make out the words he knew, but even then he didn’t focus too hard, not when he had all this to take in. 

Mad....crime....joke...violence in the South...drugs...unknown...information...hiding...red... 

“Ah!” His host father called out after changing the channel once more, “I love this song!” He held his chest with an affectionate grasp. “The song of my homeland!” 

Seungmin whipped his attention back, trying to listen to the song that sounded anthem-like, and was sung by what sounded like several men harmonizing. Seungmin tried to focus on the melody--it was nothing like he head heard before. It sounded very...honorable. 

The small car whipped up to what looked to be a gas station on the edge of the town with one single pump and a little convenience store attached to it. In the window he read the yellow and black sign saying Currency Exchange. 

“This is what you need?” 

Seungmin nodded in his thanks then stretched his legs out once he exited, slinging his bag over his shoulder. “Are you coming too?” 

The older man shook his head and took out a pack of cigarettes. “I’ll gas the car, you go in.” 

The young man gave his host father one more nod, then set fourth inhaling the immaculate summer air into his lungs. It was as if the very oxygen there held the vitality of life; he almost felt bad wasting it on himself. 

The door swung open with the tiny tinkling of bells and he entered to the smell of cured meats hanging on hooks along side the dry scent of the refrigerators holding their display of soft drinks with labels that he had never seen before. He chuckled a little seeing the giant slab of meat with twine hanging from the ceiling as such. 

“Free sample?” The attendant said while he picked his teeth with a toothpick. “Foreigner?” He added after looking Seungmin up and down. 

“Yes, and no thank you. But, can I exchange my currency here?” 

The unamused man nodded in the direction of the little kiosk in the corner of the shop. He went back to reading his tabloid where he slumped in a stool surrounded by an assortment of candy and cookies. 

Seungmin picked his mother tongue first on the little screen, robotic and green, thankful to see Korean for the first time in this new place. He navigated to the options screen. Behind him, the little bells tinkled to the shop door again, followed by the sound of the attendant scrambling out of his stool, metal legs scraping the floor. 

The student turned his head around in the commotion, taking in four very strange looking customers. Firstly, they were all covered in blood in one way or another, and each of them wore clothes--pajamas from the looks of it--which were shredded, torn, and blackened by something that might’ve been soot. Three men and one woman, and they all had a bit of a crazed look to their eyes. Clearly, none of them cared that they had walked into the store looking as such. 

Seungmin pressed his body to the corner of the shop, as if this could make him invisible. The attendant cowered behind the counter with a series of scared sounding whimpers. 

“Wh-what do you want?” He asked in his native tongue with quaking breaths. 

One of the men in the group wearing a flannel with chocolate brown hair threw open one of the fridges, took out a water bottle, cracked it open, then greedily slugged the liquid down his throat. 

“Pay the man, Fox.” He said to a man with pure white hair and shattered glasses. 

The man with white hair and glasses nodded, digging through his pockets. The man with the flannel then proceeded to revenge the place, opening up snacks and shoving the cheesy dust into his mouth with gluttonous moans and crunching loudly with an open mouth. Had he not been doing something as unsavory as such, Seungmin thought that he was pretty handsome, and somewhat familiar. The other three simply stood and watched as he did so calmly, and surveyed the shelves themselves after a moment. 

The attendant clocked Seungmin with fearful and confused eyes and Seungmin truly didn’t know what to do besides melt into the corner with the currency exchange kiosk. 

A man in running clothes ran a hand through his deep brown hair, then turned to grab several first-aid supplies in his hand. Seungmin noticed that he had a horrible gash over his eye that crusted and bled into the white of his sclera. The woman approached the attendant with arms crossed over her thin camisole that was stained a number of different colors which Seungmin didn’t want to identify. He noticed that she was only wearing white socks that were nearly stained green. 

“You do currency exchange right?” She said with a bold kind of confidence. “EGP?” 

The attendant shook in his boots, then pointed a trembling finger at Seungmin. The young man nearly felt his heart stop. The woman had stern eyes that were bagged with exhaustion, but that didn’t make her any less intimating. While she too looked a wreck, there was something about her so cold and threatening that Seungmin felt like crumpling up into a ball. Over it all, she was startlingly beautiful too. 

“Are you done?” She asked him kindly, and Seungmin struggled to get out a feeble “yes.” Of course, he hadn’t actually drawn any money out yet, but this seemed to be the best answer. 

The man in running clothes dumped a large arrangement of goods on the counter with an emotionless expression: coffee drinks, shooters of alcohol, gauze and tape, Band-Aids, anti-bacterial ointment, gum, a couple lighters and toothpaste with four tooth brushes, combs, several bottles of water, sour candy, and, oddly, condoms. 

The man with white hair came behind him to provide the cash to pay, and the attendant rang the odd group up with nervous glances to the man in the flannel who destroyed the store further. That man laughed maniacally as he popped open the plastic packaging to a pastry, then shoved in as of much of it as he could, smearing white cream over his lips. 

“Bee!! You have to try this!! A day driving through the woods and this is fucking fantastic!” He jumped up and down like an ecstatic toddler--but this was a strange juxtaposition to all the blood staining his arms and the fabric of his flannel. 

“Have some decency, Your Highness.” The woman chided, then held out her hand as the bills dispensed from the little machine. 

“Your Highness?” Seungmin muttered, not really understanding why he was still in there in the first place. 

“Fucking scam.” She muttered. “Is this all that you have??” She growled at the attendant. 

“It’s a little thing!! What do you expect??” He stammered with hands thrown in the air as if she had pointed a gun at his head. 

“F, tell Carroll to wire us when we get to Egypt. This’ll barely get us a place to stay.” 

“When I get internet access, sure, I’ll try my best.” The man with white hair said with an edge to his voice, sarcasm clearly giving it a type of bite. He then took to shoving all of their goods into plastic bags since the attendant had been too fearful to do so. He slid a few spare bills onto the countertop. “This is for everything that he ate.”  

“Do you have a bathroom?” The woman demanded, and the shopkeeper nodded, giving one more fearful glance to the college student. 

“Is there somewhere around here to get clothes?” The man with running clothes asked. 

“I-In town, a couple minutes in--” 

Outside of the little store, the sound of tires screeching on cement screamed, and all four of the strangers whipped their heads in the direction. Seungmin jumped too at the sound, and held his backpack to his chest tightly as if it were some kind of safety vest. 

The four strangers gravely exchanged terrified glances before throwing their bodies to the floor without a word. 

“GET DOWN!” The woman screamed, and in milliseconds, the rapid-fire crack of machine gun bullets came shattering the glass of the convenience store. 

Seungmin too threw all of his weight to land on his stomach on the cold linoleum floors and pressed his cheek against it while his ears rang. Tiny shards of glass pricked at his hands, but this adrenaline didn’t even let him feel the pain. He was certain that he must’ve been hyperventilating, because the room had started to spin among the relentless sounds of metal shells hitting the ground and metal shelves being upended from the force. The room filled with the smell of dozen different kinds of foods as packaging was ripped open and food and drink came spilling to the ground. The shopkeeper whimpered out loud prayers in his native tongue while he hid behind the counter. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as three of the strangers whipped out hand guns from their waistbands and knelt down behind the remaining shelves to shoot back at the black van outside. 

Seungmin pinched his arm with eyes shut. 

He wished he hadn’t. 

oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. He bit the words into his lip. 

“Hey kid!” The man with white hair growled at him. “You okay?” 

While the two of them looked nearly to be the same age, this other man with snow white hair seemed to know what he was doing, so Seungmin decided to take the smallest bit of solace in that over the deafening sound of bullets. 

“I-I think so?!” 

“Keep your head down!” He said with gritted teeth, then angled his gun with a squinted eye. 

“Bee??? Bee?” The fourth man with the flannel cried. 

“Head. Down.” She said while firing more shots. 

The room filled with a thin haze, and Seungmin covered his ears with bloody fingers. 

The strangers fired their guns until there was nothing left, then escaped hiding behind the shelves with heaving chests. The young man had curled up into the fetal position, mouth feeling deathly dry with hot tears streaming down his cheeks. 

Seungmin didn’t know that he had gone on this trip for his life to end. 

How fucking cruel fate was. 

His body shook, and he clung to his bag for dear life, waiting for it all to end, and for his time to come. Seungmin would’ve thought that in the moments before he had died, he wanted to think of all the good things that had happened in his life, but, he was disappointed to find that all he could come up with was fear. 

“Did you get a look at him?” One of the strangers yelled on the other side of Seungmin’s muffled ears. 

“NO!” One of them barked back. 

“He was wearing the crest!! The red!!” The woman called out. 

The world was black behind his eyelids, but anything was better than the scene that was actually unfolding before the terrified college student. Soon, the sounds faded, and Seungmin was then really convinced that it had finally happened. This was it. He was even still scared to open his eyes. 

A grip at his arm pulled him up. 

“You okay? They’re gone. You kinda blacked out there for a second.” It was the woman had pulled him up to his feet. 

His head spun seeing the carnage of the destroyed store, and the student became dizzier by the second. 

“I-I think I’m about to black out again--” His knees felt week and his vision blurred. 

“Hey! Hey!” One of the other strangers, the one with the running clothes scooped him back up and gave a light pat to his face. “You’re alright! See?” 

Miraculously, Seungmin really was unscathed. 

“Who-who are you? Who...who the hell were they? What the FUCK was that?” 

The four of them exchanged glances once more, communicating some kind of silent understanding between all of them. 

“What’s your name kid?” The white-haired one said as he put his gun back into his waistband. 

“S-Seungmin?” 

“Ok Seungmin, there’s a lot going on here that you really shouldn’t be aware of, and there's a lot of answers that I can’t give you, I just need to to trust me, alright?” 

“O-okay?” 

Now that the shop was devoid of windows, the summer breeze came blowing into the store--an odd contrast to the mess that was made all over the glass shards and food. 

“You’re safe now. They’ve gone. No one can hurt you.” 

“A-are you sure about that?” 

“We need to get going. I don’t know why the hell they leaved when they had us cornered, but we can’t be here for long.” The man in running clothes said with a tentative bite to his lip. 

The woman nodded. “You’re right Two.”

“What do we do with him though?” The man supposedly named Two said, motioning to Seungmin. 

“D-do?” His eyes widened to frightful full moons. “D-do????” 

“We take him with?” The man in the flannel suggested and shrugged. 

The woman rolled her eyes. “You don’t call the shots on stuff like this, Your Highness.” 

“H-Highness? What??” Seungmin blabbered. 

The man with white hair snatched the young student’s bag from his hands. “You got a laptop in that bag of yours?” 

“--H-HEY!” 

He man pulled out Seungmin’s dismal Chromebook that he had also saved several months for. 

“Hm. This will do.” 

“I guess we don’t have any other choice...” The woman rolled her eyes. “Introductions later. They could be coming back.” 

“Hey, HEY!” The shopkeeper yelled, then rose from his hiding place to look in despair at his destroyed shop, and his aging cured meat slab stuck with bullet holes on the floor. 

“We’ll take care of it all. We apologize.” The man in the flannel bowed deeply. 

Sunlight stung Seungmin’s strained eyes, and he realized that he had completely forgotten about his host father in his little car from the 80′s. To his surprise, the little car was nowhere to be seen. 

“M-my dad??” He said under his breath, also realizing that all of his belongings had gone with the man too. All he now had left to his name was his passport, a spare set of clothes, his laptop, and a couple school journals. 

“Get in.” The man named Two said while throwing open the door, but then gave him squinted wink. “Been to Egypt before?” 

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

“This mission is fucked.” Jeongin muttered to you, voice echoing slightly in the cobblestone alley. 

“Yeah, it certainly seems like it.” 

You fiddled with you new blouse. It was two times as itchy as you had expected and two times as expensive, but you had been desperate. With all of the spare supplies destroyed in the bombing, you and your partner had found yourselves hopelessly empty handed. 

“Carroll is gonna have our asses. Fuck...” Jeongin slicked a hand through his hair with a bandaged arm. “We can’t take that kid to Egypt with us!! We already have to be on high alert for the prince...and now this??” 

Your partner threw his head back incredulously against the brick wall, then stopped to watch the rest of the group sitting outside of the café and garnering odd glances from passerby's. 

“Well what the hell else to do we do??” 

Jeongin shrugged, then looking to the side shamefully. “You...know what the protocol is. We can’t stay here to watch over him until someone from the agency comes...and, we’re running out of time...White Rabbit is waiting for our correspondence..” 

“Absolutely not.” 

The poor young kid, naïve as he was, you couldn’t but help but feel bad for him. Not only was he all alone out there as he had explained, it appeared as if his host father had made off with all of his things too. It was hard to not pity the kid. 

“Y/n, you know that he’ll only drag us down. If we take him with, his life becomes our problem. If he dies, we’ll have to answer to whoever his family is and we both know that could get messy. We already have a mission: get the intel, then get the prince home. Not take that kid along with us for the joyride.” 

“You’re forgetting that they’ve seen him with us now. He’s associated with us. If we leave him in the dust, there’s gonna be an innocent kid dead in a foreign land, and it’ll be our fault for letting that happen. Do you want that to happen?” 

Your partner sucked at his teeth in thought for a moment, then groaned out. 

“I really fucking hate this babysitting thing.” 

“It’s the three of us and the two of them. The odds are still pretty much in our favor.” 

“It’s still dangerous odds.” Jeongin threw his hands onto his hips, then paced the length of the alley for a small stretch. “As of now, you’re assigned to the prince. Forget about the kid, Two and I will worry about him. The prince is the priority. If shit hits the fan, don’t even think twice, take the prince and get out. Okay? You should never leave his side.” 

You nodded in agreement, feeling a sneaky sense of pride. After all of the chaos and the uncertainty, Jeongin was really coming into his own. 

From the little patio where the others were, it looked as if Chan and Seungmin were getting a long swimmingly. You assumed that it had something to do with shared trauma. Weirdly, Chan had taken to the young man like a bit of a pet. Knowing all that the prince was going through, it made sense...perhaps this also could’ve explained why he had kissed you more than once. Anyone in his position would’ve acted as frantic as such--at least, this was what you had convinced yourself. 

Two sat with the two men wearing thick black sunglasses to hide his gnarly eye wound, sipping espresso. Jeongin started walking back towards the group when you grabbed at his arm. 

“--Wait, I need to talk to you about one more thing?” 

Your partner’s rather gaudy Hawaiian-themed shirt flapped in the breeze. “What’s that?” 

You drew him in closer. “What do you make of Two? He doesn’t strike you as suspicious?” 

“Suspicious? Why?” 

“I-I don’t know...it’s just a feeling that I’m getting. We know next to nothing about him--” 

“--But isn’t that how this goes? We’re not supposed to know things about each other? That’s the point? He’s stuck with us this far...and...” 

A couple passed by the two of you with linked arms, and Jeongin stopped his thought out of distrust of the two of them listening in. 

His voice lowered even further, “If Carroll trusts him, so should we.” The young man nodded, then patted your scratched shoulder. You winced, and he quickly apologized. “It’s...fine that you’re suspicious. Its best for us to be, you know?” 

“Expect the unexpected?” 

Your partner dished out a little eyeroll, “Yeah. Something like that.” 

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

It was as if His Royal Highness Prince Chan had never seen the inside of a public airport before. Everything was just so novel to him, and he gasped out at all the little trinkets and tchotchkes. 

As excited as he was, he still tried his best to keep a solid composure under his disguise: a cap, a hoodie, and thick framed sunglasses. The royal didn’t look the most non-descript, but you figured that it was better than nothing. 

The young kid sulked seeing the inside of the airport once more, as he had claimed that he had just left from there. You still didn’t know what to make of him all the way, but at least you could tell that he had a good heart. While in the car he told you and your companions how he had saved up all this money to travel, studied the language and arranged to go to school here too. While all of his plans had been thwarted, at least the kid was still getting to travel...with a price on his head...but still...he was getting to travel. 

Now that Jeongin had been able to contact HQ thanks to the kid’s computer, everything was arranged. Flight tickets, sleeping arrangements, supplies and Bun even knew that you were on your way. You had little desire to see that man considering how you had heard that he was one to live up to his eccentric reputation, but there was little other choice. Jeongin’s words ran through and through your head, “If Carroll trusts him, so should we.” 

Over it all, it was the prince who had worried you most. He was out in the open, and undoubtedly whoever those bastards were with the red crests would be close on your tail. Your neck strained with a pain that only seemed to grow stronger with every corner that you turned to ensure that no one was there. While the handsome prince liked to joke about how his life was on your hands, it was much more serious than that. 

You had seen the fear in his eyes that night--it was so tangible that you could practically hold in your hands. He was a man terrified of death, and he knew that he had little control over it. You had control over it, but you knew that you could only stretch yourself so far. 

Your group of five neared your gate in the international terminal lined with several dozen different kinds of multi-colored flags. You situated yourself between Two and the Prince on one of the thin teal chairs with flattened cushions. Chan tapped his hands on this knees impatiently as he inspected the place. 

“Kind of exciting isn’t it?” He said with a tiny grin. 

“What?” You moved to look at him with his obscured features. “Exciting?” 

“Yeah, you know, travelling together. It kind of feels like an adventure. I mean, they’ve got a gun to our heads, but at least we’re together right?” 

You scoffed, simply amused at how he had taken the severity out of the situation. It was clear that this prince knew little about the concept of perspective. 

“I’m not following.” 

“I get that...we need to be careful, but who said that we can’t, say, enjoy the journey?” 

“You’re saying that you want us to have fun while we’re running for our lives?” 

The prince smiled. “You know that I like having fun. That and...I’m just trying to be optimistic.” Under his cap, he slicked his brown strands back. “The three of you seem to be so tense all the time. Obviously, that can’t be good for your health--” 

You cracked out with laughter. “You’re being ludicrous, Your Highness. We have to be on high alert at all times--” 

“I said, that you could call me Chan, remember?” He rather languidly spread out his legs in his seat, removing his glasses for moment. “How about, when we go to Egypt, I take you out somewhere nice to eat? We can relax, talk, get to know eachother more--” 

You raised your hand up to silence him. “--If this is just a ploy to get me alone, I politely rescind the offer. Here I was thinking that you were concerned about all three of us...” 

“--I am!” Chan quickly piped, “I-I’ll take you all out for dinner! But...but...you’ll have to allow me to take you out for drink then. Just the two of us. I still hold to my word of wanting to get to know you.” 

The prince’s face was puffed and bloated, and scraped with little pink and red cuts, but nothing stopped him from pulling out his signature charming and persuasive grin. 

“Try to kiss me again, and I won’t hesitate. You might be royalty but I don’t ca--” 

“--Hmmm no promises.” Chan then cut in, his grin turned even more indulgent while you watched him inspect your frame in that god-awful scratchy blouse. 

Next to you, Two let out a particularly amused sounding scoff of a laugh. 

“Forward as ever, Your Highness.” Jeongin deadpanned, then buried his nose in his coffee and newspaper once again. He hadn’t gotten to finish doing so earlier. 

Seungmin, the young student stifled his own laughter which then gradually got louder and louder. “I can’t fucking believe this. Me. Kim Seungmin, the most normal-ass person in the whole world with you four: a fucking prince, secret agents...and now we’re going to Egypt??? Egypt???” 

“Why does that sound like the set up to a shitty joke?” Two popped a bubble he had blown with the gum from the convenience store. Turns out he actually had a bit of a “gum habit” as he called it. 

“Settle down kid.” Jeongin said without his eyes leaving his paper. “You’ll make a scene.” 

The prince yawned, sliding his sunglasses back on. 

“I never really did end up getting as much sleep as I would’ve liked.” If you could’ve seen his eyes, you would’ve then seen him eye your shoulder. “May I?” he politely asked. 

Rather than giving him an answer, you rolled your head around as if to say do I need to? 

Chan let out a happy little hum after resting his head on your shoulder, nuzzling in slightly. 

You met your partner’s side eye, and he repeated for you, I really fucking hate this babysitting thing. 

“Thank you Bee.” Chan softly muttered, almost too quiet for you to hear. “I really do owe you everything.” He was careful at first, but he reached out his hand to rest it atop of yours. While the action made you twitch at first, you remembered how the same action had calmed him in the van when you had escaped the gala. 

You told yourself that you were just being nice. 

The young kid pulled out a journal from his backpack and started scribbling something, Two popped a bubble, snapping it on his unnaturally white teeth, and Jeongin sipped at his coffee. 

This really was the set up to a shitty joke. 

A woman cleared her throat over the intercom and announced, Flight C1180 to Cairo will be boarding in one hour. Thank you for flying with us today. 

~🌹~

Bunch of (Ro)ses! 

@minaamhh @dazzlehoseok @synnocence @jjewibeans @hyunsluvv @unexceptional-h @bobawithchaitea @lechanters @sailorhyunjinz @silencefavarchive @eunaeiekim @lunarskzzz

#skz smut #stray kids smut #kpop smut #bang chan smut #chan smut #skz fanfic #skz imagines #stray kids imagines #stray kids fanfic #stray kids drabbles #stray kids oneshots #stray kids fanfiction #skz fanfiction #bang chan x reader #bang chan x you #bang chan x y/n #bang chan x female reader #bang chan x female reader smut #kpop imagines #kpop drabbles #kpop oneshots #kpop scenarios #stray kids scenarios #kpop fanfiction #skz angst #stray kids angst

[lysmune]

Hoarfrost Heart

Human still

Pairing: KaeLumi CW: Kaeya has an anxious breakdown near the end, and a lot of this fic deals with his trauma of not opening up to people.

  Blood is a loyal follower to Kaeya’s truths, a faint whisper that reminds him of everything that could—has—happened if he slivered an inch of his thoughts. It is the scent of iron he could never wash out, not from the thin line of death across the necks of so many people, not from his hands, nor from the soles of his feet, split open as he walks across the evergreen growth of thorns, fed fat from his deceit.

   These are only skin deep, is how he convinces himself as he tucks the unease behind a veiled smile that pinches his cheeks. Flesh wounds will heal but honesty, baring an unguarded heart out upon his sleeve, is a dangerous game and Kaeya has no desire to tempt mortality again.

   One narrow escape is enough.

   Sweet words, sweeter lies, he offers those instead. They always repay him in trust, a valuable currency he never quite could give away, so he sacrifices what spare human feeling he has for the pristine beauty of a white winter when he responds. Clean, untainted, pure.

   It is easier to deal with the disease that is loneliness than a knife to the back.

   A laid-back, duty-shirking cavalry captain, whose dull seaward lineage is made riveting through ten rounds of Death After Noon. That is who Kaeya is.

   That is how he introduces himself to Mondstadt.

   That is the image he’ll set in the starlit traveller’s mind.

   That is who she, with unabashed vocality, politely refuses to believe.

   Lumine chalks it up to the vagueness of a hunch, and he can’t help but roll his eyes, click his tongue. Sure, he might enjoy throwing the same reason around, but it feels like complete nonsense to have it flung back at him. He pouts, intentionally puppy-like and innocent, and pleads with a tone of feigned hurt.

   Lumine laughs.

   Laughs and looks at him with topaz-cut eyes, eyes like honeyed spring water. Kaeya can’t decide whether he should feel offended at her subtle dig, or honoured that he’s made her smile. He settles on brushing it off with a shrug and a, “Well, you’ve got me there.”

   “I know,” is Lumine’s response, a simple phrase that holds much more depth than it lets on, and he wonders if she’s seen just what it is he’s truly hiding.

   The prospect sends chills down his spine. Does she know me, more than I do?

   Kaeya drowns those fears in the tavern, his local safe haven, a place away from his worries and her all-seeing gaze. It is short-lived some nights, languorous on the others, but at least, here, the chatter is comfortable. Leaning forward, he listens to the slurred words, the odd secrets, to keep his thoughts at bay.

   And yet

   And yet, Kaeya finds himself following the wide expanse of her back, her small frame belying her insurmountable strength as she carries every single burden in silence. “Trust me,” she would assure with her sunlit smile. Kaeya would never admit it, but he does—he wants to.

   But what has trust ever given me?

   Rain and ichor, and festering wounds.

   Everything is unflinchingly loud. How laughable, how maddeningly soft of him, to be so weak in his resolve. Against the hushed humdrum dawn, he watches her leave the gates.

   They say if you stare too long at the sun, you’ll go blind. In her presence, Kaeya feels robbed of his vision. He looks to her footprints instead, at the trail of fireflies she leaves in her wake. They don’t hurt him as much as her wayward glances do, not as much as the sincerity in her voice when she reminds him that he can always seek her company when he needs someone to talk to.

   “I won’t stay long in Mondstadt, anyway,” Lumine laughs, laced with melancholia. “Whatever your secret is, I’ll bring it with me.”

   Kaeya’s chest tightens, constricts. “How fun would I be without my mysteries?” he hums and she scoffs.

   “Well, either way,” she says, shrugging while she goes to her feet, “I’m here to listen.”

   He knows, he knows, that’s why it’s proving difficult to keep all his bottled thoughts neatly safeguarded. Everything is easier around her, as though he can just be honest and loose-lipped, and bare, and Kaeya despises it.

   He despises how vulnerable he feels, how vulnerable she makes him feel.

   Each passing day only serves to coddle that parasite of an idea, the frail, tempting whisper at the shell of his ear, gnawing at him endlessly. The words coagulate in his throat, begging to be spoken and put to death all at once, barred only by gritted teeth and sheer willpower.

   Lumine never quite pries him, not when he excuses himself of her company through the blatant lie of working through his commissions; nor when he hides at the corner of the bar when they celebrate her victorious homecoming; nor when his nightly patrols loop him back to her in some cyclical torment.

   She gives him his space, lets him breathe. Kaeya isn’t sure if he enjoys the consideration, the lack of judgement, the misplaced respect.

   A clean-cut, clinical distance maintained. Lumine never quite meets him again, and he never bothers. It’s easier, it’s easier, he tells himself, chanting it through like a broken record.

   It’s easier, Kaeya convinces, even when he finds her perplexed at her usual spot at Good Hunter, bathed in the scarlet red of a sunset.

   “My,” he greets, pulling up the chair reserved for him, “I don’t think I’ve seen you quite so bothered, Traveller.”

  Lumine’s eyes never quite meets his, even when she’s turned her body to his direction. A chill creeps up the length of his spine.

   “I’m leaving for Liyue,” she says under her breath, so quiet it’s near indistinguishable from the wind. “Tomorrow morning.”

   “Oh,” is all Kaeya manages to muster. She doesn’t speak after that. He doesn’t either, all the sentences tangled and fumbling on his tongue, and It’s easier this way, he reminds himself still, even when she’s long receded into Mondstadt’s crowd.

   There’s a ringing in his ears, a loud, obnoxious pounding against his skull.

   Lumine’s leaving.

   The creature in his chest twists, writhing as he inhales deeply, like it is wounded and angry. Isn’t this what I wanted?

   Iron fills his mouth as his teeth bite into the inside of his cheek. He’s never once looked at her, not in the longest time, and before he knows it, Kaeya’s letting his feet lead him to the home she’s staying in, blood cold and hands trembling.

   The last time Kaeya’s ever held a person so warm dear to him, he burned to ashes.

   Something old and ancient stirs, an acquaintance he thought bygone. Wrapping around his shoulders like a winter veil, it hovers, large and engulfing.

  What has trust given you? Trauma sneers. Kaeya swallows. Rain and ichor, and festering wounds. Scorched skin black to its bone, pain still as new and fresh as spring. All that hate and fear, and loneliness.

  His hand rests quietly on the door, shaking softly.

  Intimately, anxiety slithers around his neck, a spurned lover begging for a second chance. His back is soaked in the frozen thunderstorm, the terrorised flesh on his arm throbbing painfully, this memoir he’s carried with him since eighteen.

  I should leave. I should go. There isn’t much point in this.

  Flashes of white dancing at the peripheral of his eye, embers sparking like coals. Kaeya balls his hand into a fist, breaths shallow and ragged, the smell of carbonised ozone filling the air.

  This was a terri-

  “Kaeya.”

  His demons fall quiet.

  Her fingers are warm around his wrist, comfortingly so, a hearth on a winter’s eve, and Kaeya’s heart steadies. Everything does.

  I’m scared, he realises when he keeps his gaze to the ground, when he struggles to look back at her, when he’s being honest to himself past all those pretences, a lost child navigating uncharted wasteland.

  I’m scared, he realises, of learning how to trust. It feels like centuries since he has. What has trust given you? Rain and ichor, and festering wounds.

  Her grip on his wrist tightens.

  A home. A friend. A brother. Tiny, stumbling memories that fill with laughter.

  Kaeya swallows and turns around, and this time, he meets the gold of her eyes. In the dying light of day, she seems to glow brighter still, undying and unyielding.

  They say if you stare too long at the sun, you’ll go blind. As long as it’s her, he can learn to live with that, to have faith in her promises and follow her lead.

  “Are you alright?” Lumine questions, and he’s touched by the worry in her voice. Kaeya allows himself to smile, just barely, and nods.

  “I’m here for that offer,” he says. There’s an unusual tremor in his words, a nervousness that he’s not quite felt in ages, and ages past. She blinks, once, twice, and Kaeya wonders if he’s misread.

  Maybe-

Lumine laughs, then, like chimes in the wind, and Kaeya can’t help but chuckle along. With practiced ease, she slips her hand around his, linking their fingers together.

Kaeya lets her.

“Make yourself at home,” she guides him through the door and into her space effortlessly, seamlessly. Within the four walls she calls hers, in the incandescent ardour of her presence, he feels safe. Safe and heard, and at peace.

  It isn’t likely that Kaeya will tell her everything he’s been shouldering within the day, nor the coming week, or month, or possibly a year, but he knows he eventually will. If it’s her, he wants to, and when she offers him a gentle sunburst smile, he’s certain of it.

 For the first time since eighteen, Kaeya offers his heart, bare and beating, and him.

#genshin impact #kaelumi #kaeya #lumine #genshin fanfic #munewrites #f: genshin #ch: kaeya #ch: lumine #otp: your absence is loneliness #an: i acc cannot process words rn because kaelumi is just #an: mY HEART #an: THEIR DYNAMIC #an: I AM DYING ON THIS HILL

[ephemerlskies]

constant craving 03 | jjk

⇢ pairing: jungkook x reader

[other members - seokjin]

⇢ genre: drabble series, ANGST, bestfriend!au, unrequited love, the same idiocy just in a different font 

⇢ word count: 4k

⇢ warnings: explicit language, alcohol consumption (drunk jungkook makes his first and final appearance enjoy it while you can), vehicular misdemeanor (drive the speed limit kids), an all out emotional and verbal brawling, a lack of communication on one end and a communicational vomit on the other, seokjin appearance for about .02 seconds, the entirety of this is just.... angst

⇢ summary: your dates with Seokjin had become a somewhat consistent fixture in your schedule, however, jungkook's itinerary seemed to clash with yours when he called you after a night of drinking for reasons you assumed to be him helplessly pleading for a safe return home.

♪ playlist: constant craving - k.d. lang, bad religion - frank ocean, misunderstood - lucky daye, neu roses - daniel caesar ♪

╰ series index: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 (final)

a/n: whew, okay.... this was probably the most argumentative fic i have ever written so prepare yourself. i hope you all enjoy this god awfully angsty installment of the series! also, yes, jungkook is a sentimental drunk and you all know it

part three: i love you

It's true. It's always the biggest pills that are the most difficult to swallow. And if you could compare someone as elusive as Jungkook to anything, it would be the largest pill imaginable. The kind that hurts the first try, then when you drink half your body weight in water, the Jungkook-emblazoned pill forces down your esophagus no easier than the first gulp. You were still holding it in your mouth, pretending that pill wasn't about to dissolve and stain your mouth forever.

And that was the whole process, just to get over Jungkook. Because getting over him wasn't a one-step program. It was waking up everyday, training and retraining your mind not to think of him first thing in the morning. It was resisting the urge to press the send button on multiple texts and funny videos you knew would make him laugh. It was refusing his calls and every memory that would saunter in your mind and compel you to ask him to watch a movie or order takeout.

It was saying yes to Seokjin when he asked you on a date. And, it was doing your best to sever that instinct of yours to ask Jungkook for advice.

But old habits die hard, and this one still clung onto the bit of breath it wielded. That explained why your idiot of a best friend was sitting on your couch, offering half-hearted nods whenever you would walk out draped in a new outfit.

"Okay, this one?" You twirled around, as if doing so would make you any less skeptical of how you looked. And you were never one to scrutinize your appearance so closely, but this was the date. The one that might light the torch to a brighter romantic future and lead you to someone other than the man who could never be yours to begin with.

"Yeah. Cool." At this point, five outfits in, he wasn't paying any attention at all. He couldn't even bring himself to pretend, his eyes lazily fixed onto your dvd player.

"Jungkook, you didn't even look! Let me guess. You wanna play video games. Is that why you're giving fuck-me-eyes to my T.V. set?" You knew a laugh was far along, but you hoped that would get some sort of reaction out of him. Unfortunately, your words were barely registered for a good ten seconds, though, it felt much longer.

"Hm? Oh, sorry. Just tired, I guess." Jungkook said through barely parted lips. You knew when he couldn't even pronounce his words properly, something he took more seriously than others due to the hauntings of a certain speech impediment, there was definitely something wrong.

Things felt off from the moment he walked into your house. Judging from the way he avoided your hug, that alone suggested a sort of imbalance. It was a casual greeting exchanged between the two of you so often that when you lifted your arms to embrace him, it was born of reflexive association. Like Pavlov's dog, trained to hug him the moment you saw him. But the oddity of him almost discretely walking past you before any contact could be made wasn't where the tension bordered.

Following his arrival, he would have littered a few snarky remarks about how messy your kitchen was, while already scavenging through your fridge, just to get a rouse out of you. And Jungkook wouldn't call himself a connoisseur of all things fabric and fashion, but he surely would have a few thoughts consisting more than two-worded responses. But he just sat on your couch, armed with a face any poker player would commend, and gave you insincere cool's or nice's when need be.

"Okay, what's up? Is it Irene?" You sat down since taking a break to figure out what Jungkook was thinking felt better than continuing your self-absorbed fashion show.

"Kinda... We broke up. Well, she broke up with me or... I don't know. It was weird." It bothered you a bit too much that he didn't even look at you. But if he had, then you would have seen a film of red dousing his eyes.

"I'm so sorry, Kook. Is there anything I can do? Anything at all? Want me to egg her house?" This time, he did laugh. You felt relieved he could at least ease slightly back into his expressive self, even if it was just a fraction of what he usually was. A fraction of Jungkook was more than enough for you.

"Nah, no need to go to jail for me. It's not like I didn't see it coming, and apparently she felt the same. Whatever." He let out a sigh that sounded trapped in for a while, then sat up. "We have more important things to worry about."

"I'm sorry, but I don't believe that. Jungkook, literally a week ago you told me she was the love of your life! And now you're just like 'yeah, whatever, I saw it coming.'" You used your notorious 'man voice', which was just yours lowered a few octaves, knowing it would crack another smile along Jungkook's lips. "Come on, I know you love her. This must hurt a lot. I wish... I wish there was something I could do."

You knew exactly what you were doing. Self-sabotage under the guise of consoling your friend. Clearly, it was selfish and regressive to use Jungkook's heartbreak as a means to avoid doing what you could never do before, what you knew deep down you probably would never be able to do: swallow that pill. And what felt even more pathetic than that was the stale, yet persisting hope that he would ask you to stay.

And that's when reality gave you the most gutting and obvious sign. Jungkook was your best friend, the man you had to lug home when he was too drunk to drive, let alone speak coherently or stand. He was the person that buys you ice cream when you're sad, but just as quick to cancel plans with you when Irene needed him. He was just a friend. You'd never be the person he chose, and it nearly made you angry at him for not seeing it all this time.

So, what he said next made everything he was most likely unaware of all too clear to you.

"No, you go have fun. I'll just... chill here?" It was his avoidant way of asking to stay the night, because you knew him to never sleep alone when he had an ache in his heart. "Maybe raid your pantry and use your Netflix account to binge some shows?"

"Fine. Only 'cause I can't say no to you when you're like this." His smile was reimbursement enough for all the food you'd have to restock and the electricity bill that would be higher than usual.

But what he did next, you could almost never forgive him for. It was so subtle, as though it could have passed as an accident or an act he was trying to perform secretly, without any intention of you even noticing. And how could you not notice? The far too temporary and entirely disarming linger of his hand on yours.

Now, you were always one to decipher his most subtle mannerisms, but this one felt beyond the reins of your perceptiveness. It could have been a small gesture of a thank you, but the gentle, and what one could even describe as sentimental, way his skin pressed against yours bore no semblance of a mere expression of gratitude. And it wasn't possible this was a caress of love, because he was already low on currency in that field, spending it completely on Irene.

So, what was it?

How would you describe the way he rested his hand on yours, as if asking you to stay without words, yet punctuating it quick enough to justify it a coincidental form of contact, that your hand just happened to be where his hand was?

"Well, I'm gonna go eat through my problems." Jungkook stood up before you could bat away the wetness in your eyes from your momentary refusal to blink, as if that would somehow help you visualize the meaning of what just happened.

"Oh- Okay. I, um... I should get going." So you did. You walked out your door, and made a decision beyond the demands of your devotion to Jungkook.

Because it probably meant nothing, and he was your best friend, after all.

---

It was easy with Seokjin. And surprisingly enough, that wasn't a bad thing.

You had come to realize everyone craves that passionate kind of love because, in the movies, that's the blueprint for what love should feel like. But that's all it is, something pretty and shiny enough to work into a film. Make believe. And it could never extend beyond the realm of silver screens, where best friends don't magically fall in love and passion awarded more broken hearts than you could count.

Besides, your heart was worn.

See, your heart is a muscle. It works itself to the bone keeping you alive, willing your lungs to breathe, administering blood to each vein and so on. To strain it for someone who was already in love was functionally inefficient. The heart, like any other muscle, grows tired. It can exhaust itself the same way your hand aches after writing for too long.

You needed a break from the gripping emotional aerobics that is and was loving Jeon Jungkook. So, it sufficed that Seokjin was easy. No more overexertion, no more aches and pains and residual soreness occupying your chest, no more of any of that. Because you knew Seokjin liked you, which was safe and easy knowing there was no point mapping out the possible meanings of every inflected word or shrug or smile. They were simply words and shrugs and smiles with him.

And yet, the thing about giving your heart a 'break' is the period succeeding it. When you were finished resting, you knew who would be waiting for you. Who you would always wait for.

"___! Hello?! I can't hear you! It's too loud!" It wasn't really that loud, your idiot of a best friend was just that drunk. You couldn't tell what concerned you more, the fact that his hearing degenerated when he was, from the sound of it, seven shots deep or that this was the third of alcohol-induced call for this week.

"Where are you?" You asked through a sigh, eyes trained on your Twitter feed and ears occupied with the urgent voice blaring through the speaker phone.

And since it was the third time this week, you were not even half-amused by the repetitive stunt he was pulling.

"I don't know... I walked out and now I'm out and I don't know." The hiccup following his messy sentence was comically textbook 'too drunk'. “Hey, we should take a trip! We should, like, go somewhere!”

“The only place you should be going is home.”

“See, I would totally do that, but I have no idea where I am. Why are these street signs so hard to read?” The end and beginning of each word blended together, rendering that sentence one long, slurred word.

By now, the step by step plan synthesized by you had been memorized. And even though you labored your brain to rewire any feelings leaving you at his beck and call, it clearly hadn't been proficient since your keys had already been gathered and his whereabouts programmed in your GPS via his location services.

"You're so annoying." It might have been rude of you to want him to feel guilty, but it was just as rude of him to interrupt your one night off, which was supposed to be spent with Seokjin, with his intoxicated antics. "I'm coming to pick you up."

"Yo- u are? I love you sooo much. You're the best friend ever, ya know that?" Overly emotional professions was your que to drive fifteen miles over the speed limit so he didn't do something stupid enough to land himself in an ICU.

"Okay, I'm almost there. I think I see you. Wave for me?"

The slumped silhouette you were squinting at began to frantically throw its arms side to side, making you both laugh and pull over so he could drag himself into your passenger seat. And, if you were being honest, he looked better as the blackened shadow of himself.

Jungkook, in all his glory, had his shirt almost fully turned backwards, hair ruffled into a mess, and face as red as the time you and him laid on the beach until your skin punished you with a second degree burn. And all those factors didn't amount to how he smelled like he bathed for hours inside a hand sanitizer bottle.

"God, you're a mess, Jungkook." You said that as jokingly as possible, but meant the sternness embedded in each word. Jungkook was a mess, physically and mentally.

"Hey! You're judging me! Stop being th-o mean, ___." Whenever he was this drunk, his lisp made more appearances in his speech than when he wasn't.

You hated how easily it reminded you of when you were in middle school and he was still navigating and rehearsing through his speech patterns. In middle school, when he was the sweet boy with his only fault being his lisp, who gave you his hoodie and a compassionate smile upon meeting you because your current bully plotted the embarrassment of a lifetime with that piece of chocolate on your seat. In middle school, when Jungkook was the only person in your grade who was kind enough to be kind and true to his word when he pledged his loyalty as your best friend. Forever.

With just one word, you were that timid little middle schooler again, helplessly and unconditionally in love with Jungkook.

Hauling Jungkook, who was more muscle than bone and flesh, over to his door was an art form you had trained, practiced, and mastered about thirty or so times before this one. He weighed about twice as much as you could normally carry, and nonetheless, he was out of your car and in his house in no time.

After you locked the door, you turned around to meet Jungkook, rendering the door frame into a crutch and effectively detaining you between his body and the solid wood behind you.

If you weren't so reminiscent in the car seconds before this, then the vodka-scented souvenir on his breath would have gagged you. However, being this close to him, feeling the warmth of his body consuming and overpowering yours, just made you want to sink into him even more and give him everything you had to offer.

His head was hung so when you looked up, you were greeted with Jungkook's lazy smile that gave his lips a boyish asymmetry and draped his eyelids halfway down his irises. And he had you spooled around him so tightly, this look just made him all the more appetizing.

"Kook, we gotta get you to bed, buddy." You tried to ward him off by weaponizing the most strictly platonic nickname you could think of, partnered with a neighborly pat on the back.

It was mostly to remind yourself that this man, who was an inch too close to your face, was your friend, and that in less than ten minutes you were expected to see Seokjin, but from the way he was looking at you, as if he reached into the depths of your heart to devour all your feelings for him and make them his own, you had to remind him of the universally accepted best friend boundaries.

No deep, romantic gazing into each other's eyes. No intimate activity that could be a precursor to anything more affectionate than a hug. No doing exactly what you two were doing as of now.

"Don't call me that." You hoped his aggression against what you said was merely his inebriated irrationally talking, and as always, his emotions were far beyond his control.

And, shamefully, you also hoped it was because he actually did feel the way you felt. What if he wanted the date that Seokjin was going to get tonight and he wanted all the hand holding and none of the back patting, a 'baby' instead of a 'buddy'?

"What? You're drunk-"

"Don't." Before you could drag him by the arm to his bed, a firm palm settled on your torso and closed the gap between you and the door while widening the gap an inch further between Jungkook and his bed, where he would fall asleep without the warmth of the only person he wanted. "___, please."

His voice was strangled with desperation and Jungkook was depleted of all resistance. He just needed to drink you up. To fill himself with the nourishments of your lips, your body, you.

"What-" He could have silenced you easily with a 'shh' or a finger to your lips. Or anything to your lips except his lips.

His lips. They were greedy and giving all at once. Making soft and intimate ministrations against yours as he kissed you before you had the chance to register what was going on. And even when you did, you let his tongue slide into your mouth. This moment was brimming with all the spontaneity you could ever be prepared for, and though it was new, there was no denying that kissing him felt like finally coming home just from the amount of times you had played this moment out in your daydreams. Plus, Jungkook seemed to ease his tongue along yours a bit too confidently for this to be the first time the idea of kissing you has ran through his mind. 

You're being stupid, you told yourself and Jungkook, but that didn't matter when you were finally allowed a taste of what it felt like to be kissed and touched and possibly even loved by Jungkook.

Your shirt was bunched halfway up your torso, his body pressed to your front a reprisal for the chill of the door against your back. Jungkook was, admittedly, a phenomenal kisser even when the lens of sobriety wasn't available to him. The way he ran his hands along the bare of your back like some desperate pilgrimage to discover the undiscovered parts of your body and took your bottom lip between his teeth like it was his to begin with was nearly enough to undress you from all your defenses, from all your clothing, from every single barrier that kept you from Jungkook for the past twelve years and let him have you. And finally have him. It was nearly enough.

Your hands divorced his body from yours before your lips and heart were ready to let go. It was painful, but the heartbroken look wringing his face into a tearful frown was even more so.

"No." You pushed him away further only to walk past him and seek refuge in the open space of his living room. "You don't get to do this."

"What? What does-"

"You don't get to drunkenly kiss me, Jungkook. You don't get to hold me and kiss me like you love me. It's not fair."

"Hey-"

"Because you don't. You don't love me..." If you weren't too busy finally permissing the hot words to boil over from pure anger, then you would have felt the even hotter tears wetting the expanse of your cheek.

"Well, how the hell would you know that?" His voice drowned out the loud pumps of blood beating in your ears like a drum.

"Because it would have happened ten years ago, Jungkook! Jesus, it would have been obvious from the beginning. So if you love me, if you really love me, then it wouldn't be happening now, like this. When you were drunk out of your mind and still vulnerable from Irene."

"You don't know anything." If that were the case, then Jungkook somehow knew even less than you.

"Yeah, clearly. I didn't know you'd stoop this low. I thought I was a lot of things to you. But I never thought I'd be some rebound."

"A rebound? You think that's what this is?" Jungkook seemed upset, but to your knowledge he had absolutely no reason to be angry with you.

He was, as always, displacing the burdens he didn't feel like dealing with on you, moderating you into an emotional punching bag. But what hurt more than those scrapes and bruises, was the aftermath of letting him fuck his worries away which would have consisted of him telling you the next morning that it meant nothing, expecting you to nod demurely, maybe even console him, and act like your chest hadn't been emptied and filled with his baggage in the most murderous way.

"Fuck you."

"Wow. You're really being like this? You really wanna talk about this now?

"You know what? Yeah I wanna talk about it. I wanna talk about the years. The years, Jungkook, that I've spent loving you! I- I wanna talk about the amount of times I've spent thinking about you when you were with her, and I probably didn't even cross your mind. Or how about the fucking thousands of times I've spent crying over you because I knew I was never going to be the one you'd want to wake up next to! And I had to watch! I had to fucking watch you fall in love over and over and probably wonder why I didn't fall in love either. It was you. It was always you, Jungkook."

"___, I-"

"No." His attempt to intervene was quickly denied. You were too angry to let him speak, too tired to carry these grievances any longer. "You don't get to talk. It's all out there. I loved you. I still love you! Fuck, I'm trying to get over you. And it's like you know. It's like you can read my mind or something and strike right when I'm about to recover from the last wound."

Your breathing was as heavy as Jungkook's was shallow. He could only stand, breathlessly, only curse himself for ever being so blind and regret taking advantage of your love even if it were entirely unknowingly, just to let his heart sink deeper until it fell completely out of his chest while his tears fell just as heavily.

"I'm done, Jungkook. I'm tired of trying to outrun you in this race that you're not even competing in. I'm tired of loving you. So, I'm done."

All the words Jungkook wanted to say, the words pleading for sound, carving deep gashes in his throat and leaving him vocally impaired, could never amount to the apology you deserved. Maybe this once, he wouldn't leave you wounded. He would gather the nobility to shut up and let you move on from him. Because you wouldn't know from his lapse of silence that he was empathizing with every bit of pain he caused you, and he hated himself more than you did right now for allowing such a pain to ever fall in your hands. But, where you knew you could someday forgive him for it, he knew he would never forgive himself.

He could scrounge for a few things to respond with, pour the weight of his emotions into the scarcity of his words, but he needed to let you leave and be selfless for once in his life.

"I should go. Drink some water before bed, okay?" You mumbled to choke back your tears, though it wouldn't matter letting a few more tears escape since you were previously sob-ranting and he'd seen you cry like this a hundred times before. He was the shoulder you never thought you'd have to miss leaning on, but walking out of his door punctured a hole in you. An empty space in your heart designed for the one person who had crushed the rest of it.

If this were a movie, with star-crossed lovers and a fiery infatuation blooming into what everyone secretly wants: true love, then Jungkook would have ran out of his door and held you close, professing his undying love for you. He would have won you back, reassembled your broken heart into fullness, kissed you beneath the brilliance of the moon, and lived happily ever after.

But this wasn't a movie, and he did none of those things.

Instead, he stumbled his way into his kitchen. He poured himself that cup of water you advised. He thought about how even when you swore to him you were done, you spared a bit of compassion to remind him to take care of himself. He wondered how deserving he was of everything you are. He touched his lips, searching for the echo of yours. He fell into his queen-sized bed meant for two, alone, and whispered the words that were ever eclipsing to the space beside him where he longed for you to lay so you could hear them for yourself.

"I love you."

a/n: sorry to put you through that, but the idea was born and i am but a humble vessel to bring it to life <3 hehe thank you all so much for reading and like i said, don't worry there will be a happy ending!!! (and possibly a longer-than-drabble final chapter to this series)

#bangtanarmynet #btsgoldnet #ficswithluv #bts fanfic #bts x reader #bts angst #bts writing #jungkook x reader #jungkook fanfic #jungkook angst #jungkook bestfriend!au #bts drabble #jungkook drabble #constant craving #rubycoast

[honeymoonjin]

𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 taehyung x reader ft yoongi || 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕 8.5k || 𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒓𝒆 smut

𝒔𝒖𝒎𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒚 riddled with insomnia, you’d just about do anything to get a good night’s rest. enter sandman. 

𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 masturbation (m), voyeurism, exhibitionism, public sex, mile high club, oral (m receiving), choking, deepthroating, cockwarming but in her throat, throat bulge, way more male oral than i’ve ever written oop, dom!taehyung, sub!reader, dirty talk, unprotected sex, riding, tentacles, yes you did read that correctly user honeymoonjin is expanding her wares, buckets of cum, like really a ridiculous amount of it, is it somnophilia if they’re fucking in her dreams?, cum eating, rough nipple play, hair pulling, belly bulge, creampie

many thanks to @jamaisjoons for the gorgeous banner, she really outsold xx many thanks as well to @honey-boyyoongi​ for beta reading and helping a lot on plot. i wouldn’t have finished this fic without her xx this fic is a part of the monster smash project at ksmutclub : )

--

It’s a shit fair. 

You make sure to tell Yoongi this several times throughout the afternoon, more emphatically as the hours drag on, but he’s too focussed on giving heart-eyes to the young man tending the water pistol stall. The man, who has held an unbelievably cheery grin all night, at some point got caught in the stream of a kid with poor aim, and though it’s warm his shirt still hasn’t dried, leaving a rather promiscuous set of dark spots on his chest behind the translucent cotton. You think Yoongi might be drooling. 

You’ve just about given up wandering around aimlessly waiting for your friend to get the courage to actually approach the guy, when a stall catches your attention. Unsurprising, considering how gaudy and kitschy it is. Heavy embroidered tapestries form a makeshift curtain across the entrance to the booth, and above rests a sign with neon striplighting that reads Enter Sandman. You bite your lip, ignoring Yoongi’s impatient tug on your arm. You don’t remember seeing it on any of your other turns around the small fairground, though you can’t imagine how you could’ve possibly missed it. 

Without breaking your gaze, you address Yoongi. “I’m gonna check out some stalls.”

“Come on, you’re gonna ditch me in my time of need?” Yoongi’s voice is playfully lilting, the kind that lets you know it’s okay to leave while simultaneously promising that he’ll complain about your abandoning him later, probably at four in the morning when neither of you can get to sleep. 

“Yup,” you mumble blankly, and shake off his grip, making your way across the slightly uneven dirt and trampled grass to reach the stall. You feel drawn, strangely, to the narrow dark triangle of shadow between the folds of the curtain. It’s only once you get nearer that you make out the patterns of the delicate stitching: swirls of gold thread weave around figures, horizontal or curled up, all in dull shades of brown and beige. Entranced, you reach out your fingers to follow the swirls of gold. The tapestry, instead of ending in edges over the entrance, is folded so that the pictures trail around the edge. Without thinking to politely announce your presence, you simply slip inside, feeling the late summer humidity lead to a shady coolness.

It’s dark inside, and silent. Nothing illuminates the small room except for a single candle on a table, a black tall taper, drops of wax running cleanly down the sides to stain the golden tablecloth. It’s luckily enough to just make out the reflective glint of the gold thread, and you follow the tapestry slowly as it runs all the way along the walls inside. Part of you feels this is futile, and you shouldn’t be poking around in an empty stall when the owner was out, but still you walk deeper into the booth, the texture of embroidery teasing the tips of your fingers. 

At one point, closer to the back of the room, your shadow begins to block the candlelight, and you squint, barely making out the trail of golden swirls. An odd protrusion in the wall causes you to step back, losing the trail for a moment but picking it up, a bright gold patch, perfectly circular and shining like-

“What are you doing in my tent?”

You gasp and jump back, bumping your lower back on a wooden chair tucked into the table. A hand shoots out, latches tightly onto your wrist. You freeze, following the arm up a sleeve, and to a chest, black silk with a pendant dangling just below his collarbones, a single gold coin. Your eyes jump up, apology on your tongue, but you can’t force your mouth to move when you’re greeted with two gleaming eyes, trained solely on you. 

No, not gleaming. Glowing. 

You swallow hard as he blinks slowly, eyebrows narrowed and partially blocking what looks like swirling irises of molten gold, a depth that draws you in. “I- sorry,” you croak finally, feeling his grip around your wrist loosen, the delicate bones aching. “It did say ‘enter’.”

You can’t be sure in the dim lighting, but a slight flash of white makes you think he’s smirking at you. “My sign says ‘Enter Sandman’. Are you a sandman?”

You blink slowly. “No.” 

“Hm, I didn’t think so. I am the sandman. And you are the trespasser.”

Your mind feels hazy, two beats too slow. “Do you want me to… leave, then?”

His hand lets go of yours completely. It leaves you feeling oddly unmoored. “You could leave,” he offers lightly, “but then you’d never get my help.”

You want to turn around, some illogical urge to make sure the exit is still free, that the fair is still in full swing outside. It feels so quiet in here. But you don’t want to turn your back on him. The hairs on the back of your neck are at full attention and your instincts are going haywire like a faulty compass, unsure what to feel. You swallow past the dryness in your throat. “Your help?”

The gilded glow of his eyes - some modern fashion contacts, no doubt - gently illuminate the dark eyelashes that frame them. They narrow at the corners, like he’s grinning at you. “My help,” he echoes. “You look tired, little girl. Can’t get to sleep?”

The blood in your veins runs cold. In the cool shade of the tent, goosebumps break out along your arms. “How did you know that? Are you meant to be a psychic or something?” 

His tongue clicks in irritation. “I’m a sandman. I believe I told you that. I can promise you restful sleep every night. For a price.”

You scoff, the reality of the situation dawning on you. Cool shtick, you allow. The dude certainly had a good way of setting up atmosphere. “Let me guess, $29.99 plus tax? Or buy a whole week for a hundred? Thanks, but no thanks.”

You turn before he manages to reply. In fact, he remains still in the time it takes you to stumble around the table in the dark, making your way to the bright sliver of light streaming in through the folds of the tapestry. Your hand is on the rough fabric before you hear his honeyed voice again. 

“My price isn’t currency,” he states simply.

Your hand remains frozen in the air. Damn you and your constant curiosity. “What is it, then?” you ask, twisting around. Now that your silhouette isn’t blocking the candlelight, you can make out a vague outline. He’s tall, but you already knew that from the height of his eyes. “Your price, I mean.” 

He steps forward, just one foot dusting the exposed ground, but it’s enough to bring him closer to the light, enough for the dancing flame to shine upon his face. 

With the lighting from below, heavy shadows are cast below his brows and his hairline, but you can see the warm bronze tone to his skin, and the fine bone structure below it. He’s still smirking, just the slightest quirk to his lips, and his chin is jutted forward smugly. He’s gorgeous. 

You can’t help but swallow again as his piercing eyes stay fixed upon you, the slight pink of his tongue poking at the corner of his mouth as his grin widens. “Dream of me.” 

--

You feel like you’re floating. You’re in a bathroom, looking in on a shower. Although the glass should be fully fogged up, with the rest of the room humid with steam, you can see through perfectly, to the naked form inside. 

In real life, you would leave immediately, at the very least turn away, but in the hazy logic of your dream, you simply observe. 

His head is against the wall, forehead pressed to the tile as water pelts down his tanned back. One hand props him up; the other is between his legs, fisting at an angry red erection. It drips precum with every jerk of his wrist, disappearing amongst the slightly soapy water that circles the drain. You can’t see his face with how the sodden bronzed locks of his hair cling to it.

Although the showerhead seems to be spraying full power, his pleasure-filled groans are what fill your ears. The way they trail off shakily every time he twists his wrist just below the tip, the gruff curses under his breath. You listen and watch as he falls apart from his own ministrations, the muscles in his buttocks clenching as he begins to thrust into his hand, panting slightly. 

Like hearing from underwater, you slowly becoming aware of a murmur that the man chants, louder and faster each time, as his hand speeds up. Your mind runs slower than treacle, but you do your best to focus. 

“Y/n! Y/n, fuck, yes! God, right there, I’m not gonna last, fuck!”

You mentally recoil, though your body simply continues to watch, honed in on the way his whole body undulates, chasing the pleasure with every fibre of his being. He moans your name, panting onto the slippery tile. He’s close; you can tell by the way his hips shudder. 

With a shout, he spills himself onto the floor of the shower, spurts of it catching and running down the wall, pooling at the bottom before washing away. He jerks himself languidly until the last drop runs down over his knuckles, and then lets out a satisfied exhale, using his toes to wipe away the last of it, before straightening up again, rinsing his face in the stream. 

“Fuck, Y/n,” he says one last time with a relieved sigh, “mm, thank you.”

Finally, he stretches out an arm blindly to reach for the metal nozzle, cutting the flow of water short. He tips his head back, pressing at his scalp to wring out some of the water, and you catch your first real glimpse of his face. A face you recognise very well. As you stare at the man you had met in the tent, the details of the bathroom blur away, fading into wisps of steam. His eyes, glowing gold, are the last two pinpricks of detail before the dream dissolves into nothingness.

You wake up with a jolt, the sheets underneath you sticky with sweat. It was real. You dismiss the thought with a shake of your head the moment it occurs to you. If anything, it was probably just your mind playing on what had happened as a way of processing it. But then again, you had slept the night through for the first time in almost a year. Speaking of...

Sitting up and stretching languidly, you curse upon viewing your alarm clock. You’d slept through your first class. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” you mutter in resignation, frowning when you become aware of a prickling sensation in your eye. 

You rub at it, only to hiss when a sharp stinging sensation attacks the sensitive nerves. Blinking away the tears that spring up, you kick off your blankets, jogging barefoot to the bathroom to inspect it in the mirror. 

Leaning in close enough that your breath creates little foggy patches on the glass, you make out some substance clogging up the inner corner of your right eye. There’s some on the left too, though not as much, and you use a wet wipe to carefully brush it out. 

In confusion, you pull away the wipe and inspect the grit that’s come away. Like something you might find at a luxurious beach (though you haven’t been to one since you were a kid) a clump of golden sand sits on the moistened fabric, finer and more delicate than caster sugar. The colour reminds you of the hair of the man in your dream, of the man you met the day before. What the fuck? With a deep breath, you force yourself to clear out the rest of the sand from your eyes and clear the worry from your head.

--

“What sand tent?”

You stare at Yoongi in something mildly related to disgust as he shovels an ungodly amount of beef wrapped in a lettuce leaf into his mouth, dark dipping sauce gathering at the corners of his mouth. “A sandman tent. You know, the big neon sign? It was right beside the little homemade fudge stall.” 

He chews noisily, brows furrowed in thought. “The one old Jeanie set up? That was right at the end of the row, Y/n, there wasn’t anything past that.” You go to protest, but Yoongi makes a sound of disagreement. “Seriously, Y/n, there wasn’t. I remember because she was complaining to me about the organisers trying to hide her stall since she’s taking all their business. I went there for some of her earl grey fudge but that certainly wasn’t the tea I ended up getting.”

You roll your eyes at his joke, but your heart isn’t in it. “I went in the tent, though. There was a dude there and everything. He said he’d give me a good night’s sleep if I dreamed of him, and I said sure, and for the first time in fucking ages I actually managed to sleep properly.” 

Yoongi’s chopsticks hover over the beef sizzling on the barbecue. “Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Dream of him,” Yoongi clarifies. 

You think back to the sight of him in the shower, streams of clear water washing away the cream he spilled on the floor, of the way his eyes pierced into you right as you woke up. Your cheeks heat at the lewd imagery. Normally your memory of dreams faded over the day - at least, when you were a kid they did. But every detail seems branded in your mind in full definition. Ducking your head, you reach out for a strip of cooked meat and avoid your friend’s gaze.

“Oh my god, you did! Was he hot?”

“Yoongi!”

“What? If he was, I wanna go track him down and get a dream. Why does all the cool shit happen to you?”

You sigh, though a reluctant smile tugs at your lips. You can never stay mad at him and he knows it. “Shut up and eat your damn lettuce wraps,” you mutter petulantly. 

Over the lunch spent with Yoongi, you find the thought of the mysterious man slip from your mind, instead feeling reenergised from your good rest and cheered up from the good food and company.

--

You dream of him again the next night. Not a bathroom this time; an airplane. At the start, it feels like reality, only slightly more...fluid. The strange quality of a dream where everything is simultaneously crystal clear and blurred. 

He’s beside you, the middle seat as you take the window. Outside, clouds melt into blue sky and in the cabin there are faceless individuals filling the seats.

“You dirty girl,” the sandman whispers, a hand on the inside of your knee. “You’re soaked for me.”

You widen your eyes and look down. The moment you see the dark patch forming in the crotch of your pants, a wave of arousal hits you as if it’s on a delay. “Yeah,” you breathe in awe. “Want you.”

His eyes sparkle behind thick lashes. “Oh, do you really?”

You bite your lip. “Please.” For a moment he looks remarkably casual, commonplace. He tilts his head at you and leans back, drawing your attention to his dress shirt and tie, and perfectly ironed pants, but when you drop his gaze to look over them, you gasp. 

His shirt is unbuttoned all the way, gaping open to reveal his unclothed chest. The tie dangles down his bare skin, guiding your eyes to his crotch, where his pants are lewdly spread open, zipper parted to reveal the waistband of his underwear. A delicate trail of golden hairs dip from below his belly button to underneath the fabric, and without thinking, your hand stretches out towards it, fingering the edge of the waistband. 

Rather than speak, you give him a questioning glance, but what greets you makes you suck in a breath. Just like the first time you met, he’s radiant; godlike. His hair is a silken warm blonde, gentle waves that frame his delicately arched brows. And his eyes. When you meet his gaze, his irises glint and shift, a brilliant gold that swirls around dilated pupils. This is the first time you’ve seen him properly in the light.

He narrows them slightly in amusement, drinking in your reaction. With a barely-there background of the airplane cabin, general shapes and blurs, the man sitting beside you is in startling clarity. Everything seems to revolve around him, a fixation you can’t shake. “Please,” you mumble again unconsciously, hand slipping below the elastic of his underwear. 

He’s hard as a rock, though his face shows no desperation, only mild amusement with the way you lick your lips. As you massage him indulgently, you can’t help but recall the sight of him in the shower. Would his cock be the same in this dream? 

“Watch out,” he warns, before breaking your gaze to face the aisle. Belatedly, you hear a squeaky wheel, a trundle cart being pushed down towards you. As the figure of an air hostess slips into view, you attempt to quickly retract your hand, though it seems your brain and body aren’t on the same track anymore. Even as you mentally strain with the want to take your hand out of his pants, it refuses to cooperate, wrapping your fingers fully around his length, running your thumb over his head. 

He chuckles lowly, head tipped back luxuriously on the head rest, devoid of any shame. The air hostess is talking to the two of you, but your cheeks burn and you can’t bear to look at her. The sandman calmly orders a hot tea, only pausing to groan in relief when your rogue hand slips him out of his pants and into the cool air of the cabin. He’s making conversation with her, discussing landing times and stopovers, and your eyes fill with embarrassed tears as you feel yourself bending down, dipping your head to take him in your mouth. 

Unlike any men you’d been with before, he tastes slightly sweet, a flavour that satisfies your tastebuds. The moment your tongue dips out to swipe up the bead of precum that’s gathered, it’s like your humiliation melts away, and even though you feel yourself regaining control of your hand, you continue to pump the base of his cock, lapping up as much of the moreish taste of him as you can. 

“Now that’s a good girl,” his honeyed voice soothes, a reassuring palm brushing your hair out of your face gently, “just give in to me.”

You moan around the head of his cock and suck him down deeper. As you lower your head more, it seems your perverted dream-logic has taken away your gag reflex, and soon you’re removing your hand, nose pressing against his hip bone. He lets out a low, purring groan, and you grip the flesh of his thigh through his pants in response. You can feel him in your throat as you begin to bob your head, but instead of feeling like you’re being suffocated, you just feel deliciously full. A wave of wet heat rushes between your legs as you picture how it would feel to be that full somewhere else. 

“Yes,” he sighs, “god, it’s been so fucking long, don’t you dare stop.” You pull off him with a pop quickly to look up, expecting the air hostess to have moved on by now, your dream sequence having gone down a different path, but she stands there, perfectly put-together and professional as she stares down at you. Behind her, you notice with a jolt that everyone in their seats have turned to look at you; countless generic faces that blend into nothing the moment you look away. 

“They’re all watching,” you comment with a raw throat, though arousal at the thought of it slides through you like a hot knife, feeling your pants cling to you, impossibly soaked. 

His smile is radiant and the gold in his eyes darkens to burnished bronze. With a hand on the back of your neck, he guides you back down. “Then give them a show.” He moans low in his throat when you take him in your mouth again, tongueing at the veins that run along the underside. His fingers slip around the other side of your neck, pushing down on your voicebox. You can feel the way his constriction traps his cock in your throat. You can’t breathe, but it is no longer necessary, your heart thrumming gently in your chest even without oxygen to pump it. 

He presses down more firmly, an iron grip around your throat that closes your throat around his length. “I wonder…” he muses. With a dark laugh that sounds almost inhuman, the man pulls slowly, lifting you off him until only the tip sits on the back of your palate, barely inside your throat. Though you don’t understand what’s going on, or how your mind has gotten so depraved to picture this, your clit throbs in your panties and you remain obediently in his grasp, waiting for his next move. “Mm, so you are going to be a good girl for me.” You feel pressure around your throat again, though this time he’s pushing you back down. With your throat cinched inside his grip, his cock pushes at the cartilage, completely blocking your airway. Your eyes water, but somehow you remain still, the only part of you moving being your head as he uses your throat as a cocksleeve, pushing you down until your lips touch the skin around the base of his cock. 

He isn’t overly vocal, but his indulgent grunts and moans seem amplified in your ears. He moves faster once you continue to take it, fucking up into you every time he plunges you down. He reaches his end quickly this way, and when he flattens his other palm over your scalp and holds you there, a warm release sliding down your throat, sweet like condensed milk, so much that it bubbles up and pools in your cheeks, spilling down your chin. 

When he finally releases you, you come up, sucking in a shuddering breath. The spectators are still there, though it looks like the scene around you is melting, falling in on itself. The lines between things become blurred, colours on their faces merging into dull greens and browns, like mixed paint. With a horrified gaze, you watch the morphing shapes begin to clap slowly, applauding your performance. 

“I guess they liked it,” he plainly remarks. You turn to face him again, but his forehead is creased, eyes clenched shut in focus. “Fuck, that was so… I can’t hold it, shit-!” 

The moment he swears, all detail begins to fall away faster than before, the vibrant gold of his hair and tanned skin blending away into a black nothingness with the rest of the plane, and you gasp, cracking your eyes open with the sound of applause still ringing in your ears, slowly sounding out into the buzzing phone on your bedside table. You fling your arm out from the warm covers, batting it around until you can turn off the alarm, and let out a groan. 

Your eyes feel dry and crusty, like you’ve been sleeping for days, and when you rub at them the same gritty sensation from the night before stings the inner corners. You pull your fingers away and squint at what’s resting on the pads of your fingertips, unsurprised when you’re greeted with those fine grains of perfectly golden sand. Tearing up at the irritation, you gingerly remove as much as you can, swallowing the dryness in your throat. A small price to pay for decent rest, you promise yourself, though a slight curl of doubt rests stubbornly in the back of your mind.

--

That night, as you drift off blissfully early in the evening, you’re ready. Upon admitting to Yoongi that they were sex dreams - your friend was beyond jealous - he had managed to convince you that you were cursed by the mysterious stranger, that he was a witch or an incubus. His plan, which you are determined to execute tonight, involves confronting the man himself - “Don’t forget to ask him if he’ll give sex dreams upon request!” - and demanding that he releases you from the curse. 

Though you were still a little sceptical that it was anything more than an overactive subconscious, you feel assured going to sleep that at least you know what to do should he return. 

And return he does. 

Not a bathroom this time, nor a plane. In fact, it’s an environment completely foreign to you, all the more hinting at the fact that this maybe isn’t just your mind conjuring strange scenarios. Like the other two times, you feel hazy and sluggish, and it takes you a while to distinguish the scene around you. 

You become slowly aware of lush carpet fibres beneath your feet, the gentle hum of an air conditioning unit, almost totally drowned out by unintelligible murmuring, a television left on. 

He is in the room with you, on a couch. Head tilted to the side, locks of thick gold rumpled and messy. Bare feet up on the coffee table and black sweatpants riding low, exposing a narrow strip of tanned flesh below his t-shirt, he looks unbelievably… domestic. 

You swallow hard, steeling your nerve. “Hey.”

He remains unresponsive, eyes locked on the television. No, not completely unresponsive; the corner of his lip quirks just slightly. You tamp down a rising streak of irritation.

“Hey,” you repeat emphatically. 

With a sigh, the young man reaches out for the remote that rests on the arm of the couch, muting the television. He flattens you with an unimpressed look. “Yes?”

“What are you doing in my dreams?” The question seems unbelievably childish once you say it, so you cross your arms petulantly. This does not help.

He quirks an eyebrow, grin widening to reveal his teeth. “Enjoying myself,” he answers simply.

You huff. “Your stupid tent thing at the fair, was it even real?”

“Did it feel real to you? Did I feel real?” When you simply press your lips closer together in annoyance, he drops the cockiness, leveling an impatient stare at you. “You gave me permission to be here, I hope you remember. Words have power, Y/n.”

You frown at him, unsettled. “I never told you my name.” 

He barks out a condescending laugh. “And I never told you mine, but you know it, don’t you?”

You run your tongue over the edges of your teeth as you ponder this. His name comes to you like a fact once-forgotten. The moment you think it, you know wholeheartedly it’s right. “Taehyung. But- How do I know that?”

His eyebrow twitches down, like he’s tiring of your lack of understanding. “Because I’m in here, Y/n,” he hisses, pointing a finger to his temple. “I’m deep inside you, inside your subconscious. I can access every thought in that pretty little head of yours and you can’t do a single thing about it because you were the one that let me in.” 

You balk at the fiery steel that has entered his expression, the molten gold in his iris darkening as a sneer stretches across his face. You swallow away your nerves, though your chest continues to flutter uncertainly. As if Taehyung is the focal point of this plane, which you suppose he is, colours and textures shift around him, blurring into shapeless swirls at the edges of your vision. Even as he sits in front of you in startling clarity, just as malevolent in sweatpants and a tee as he was standing over you in the dark of the tent, you find your eyes unable to move off of him. You clear your throat, tears pricking. “I didn’t know what I was agreeing to,” you defend weakly. 

He laughs, one short bark that contains no real humor. “Yes, you did. I said ‘dream of me’ and you agreed. You just thought I was some fake scam artist, didn’t you?” With one swift movement, he stands up, and you falter back when you realise just how tall he is. He steps forward once, twice, three steps and his chest almost touches yours. While the swirling sands in his eyes normally jumped and flickered teasingly, now they churn in tight circles, belying his intent. You’re reminded of a shark circling in bloody water. “Well, Y/n,” Taehyung taunts, “do you believe me now?”

Though you tremble, you force yourself to push your chest forward and your chin up. “I believe you,” you allow, voice wavering only a little bit. “So, what are you?”

His lips tighten, eyes lifting to the ceiling in exasperation. You jump when you feel his hand brush your elbow, clasping your upper arm loosely. “Y/n, little Y/n,” he chastises, “stop asking questions that you already know the answer too. How terribly boring.”

You want to shake your arm out of his grip, but his touch is hot, like the heavy warmth of a fire, and you can’t help but want more of it. Judging by the way his fingertips tease at the sensitive skin of your shoulder, he knows it too. “Fine, you’re a sandman. What the fuck does that even mean?”

He sighs shortly, head tipping back down to catch your gaze. His arm drops, and you tremble at the cold air, feeling oddly put-out. “Sit down,” he commands simply. Without waiting for a response, he turns his back to you and flops his body onto the couch, kicking his feet back up onto the coffee table, eyes lazily following the characters on the muted television.

You bite your tongue, doing as he says. It’s strange; you’re barely aware of your own body in the dream, can barely feel the texture of the couch underneath you, yet every nerve in your body is hyper-fixated on the tingling remaining warmth from his hand on your shoulder. You feel yourself wanting to lean in to him in the hopes that he’ll put his hands on you again. You can’t help but wonder if it feels that electric if he touched you somewhere else. 

Fuck. Snap out of it. “I’ve sat down now. Can you actually be serious and answer my questions?”

Like a switch is flipped, his grin drops and his eyebrows flatten. “Fine,” he allows in a chastising tone, “let’s be serious.” You watch in amazement as the scenery around you drops away. Like melting wax, the television, walls, coffee table, everything but the couch the two of you are on morph and fade away. “This is my terrain now,” he states calmly, “I choose what you see, what you experience, what you feel. So if I were you I wouldn’t be so rude to me.” 

Your jaw moves for a few moments before you can voice anything. “Why are you doing this?”

His eyes flicker, though the mischievous glint is gone. “I’m a sandman,” he explains simply. “I only exist in this dream realm. I can only interact with things in the dream realm. Out there, in your world, I have no sensation, no feeling. But if I can get a naive little human like you to give me access into your mind, then your dreams are my playground. And I fully intend to play.” 

With a dry mouth, you clear your throat. “Fine,” you say, “you can do whatever the fuck you want in my dreams but leave me out of it.”

The smirk returns to his face, lips pulling back to reveal teeth. He runs his tongue over them as he sits forward, placing a hand on your knee, fingers wrapping around. You try not to jerk at the sudden touch, the burst of heat. “No can do, sweet thing. You see, if I did something without you around it wouldn’t exactly be your dream, would it? And besides,” he breaks off, grip tightening around your leg as he leans in to press his cheek against yours, teasingly nipping at the skin of your earlobe before he murmurs, “where’s the fun in that?” 

--

Your bed mocks you. This morning, wanting a clean slate, you had washed all the sheets and now it lies before you perfectly neat and pristine, just begging for you to hop in. 

But you refuse. You won’t be falling asleep tonight. If Taehyung thinks he’s in control during your dreams, then fine. You just won’t dream. 

“I thought you’d be making the most of your newfound ability to sleep,” Yoongi comments curiously, feet kicking at the edge of the mattress. You knew you wouldn’t be able to resist the exhaustion that pulled at your eyelids without reinforcements, so you had called in your favorite insomniac to keep you company. 

Swaying aimlessly back and forth on your desk chair, you shrug. “I haven’t hung out with you in ages, I felt like a good, old-fashioned sleepover.”

He narrows his eyes at you, though it’s not particularly intimidating. “I’ve never once slept over at your house, idiot. What’s the real reason?”

You avoid his gaze, studiously focusing on picking a movie on Netflix. “Fine, then. I wanted the goss on that fair boy. You got his number, right? But you never told me how it went.”

Mission successful. Yoongi lights up, suspicion forgotten. “Hoseok! His name is Hoseok, and he’s amazing. We actually… went out for coffee the other day.”

Your eyebrows lift, shutting down your laptop lid to fully give your attention to the boy across from you. “Like a date?” Yoongi grins and nods enthusiastically. “You casanova, you! What’s he like?”

Yoongi’s eyes flicker strangely in the dim evening glow that peeks through your curtains. “He’s great,” he gushes, “friendly, and bubbly, and has the most beautiful smile. But… actually, I guess you could say there’s something I need to tell you.”

You frown. “What? What’s up?”

He pouts, kicking his heels more insistently against the edge of the mattress. “The date was really nice, and Hoseok is really nice, but I couldn’t stop thinking that… that maybe I just liked him because he was like you.”

Your face freezes in an expression of pure confusion. “Huh? What do you mean?”

Yoongi ducks his head. “I’ve been trying to deny it for years. I figured you saw me as a friend and nothing else, and I thought if maybe I focused more on guys instead of girls I could separate myself enough from the image of you, but clearly that isn’t going so well for me.” He laughs, bitterly, and you’re overcome with the urge to rush forward and hug him. Nevertheless, you stay rooted in your spot.

“Yoongi, what are you saying?”

He shrugs, body hunching over like it always does when he’s shy. “Hoseok is nice, but he’s not you. And I think it’s time that stop lying to myself.” He looks up, then, eyes soft. “I think I’m in love with you, Y/n.”

Your lips are parted, jaw slightly slack in shock. “...okay,” you state eventually. Well, this is one way to stay awake. “So, uh, I don’t- What do we do now?”

Scratching behind his ear nervously, Yoongi bites his lip. “Maybe I… Can I kiss you?” When you don’t respond, he shuffles forward a little on the bed so that his feet rest on the ground. “Just once, to see if you feel anything. And if you don’t, we never have to bring it up again.”

You sigh out a rushing breath. “Okay. Yeah, okay.” Fighting the erratic pounding of your heart, you stand up on shaky legs and sit beside him, shoulder to shoulder and nose to nose. 

Now that you’re right in front of him, something foreign rises up in your chest. It feels like he’s the only person in the world, like you can’t look away from the tender look in his eyes. You can practically feel the warmth of his skin through the thin cotton of his shirt. He leans forward, and you reflexively suck in a shallow breath, eyelids fluttering shut. 

His lips are featherlight when they first brush against yours. You feel a palm come up to cup your cheek, and his fingers tentatively fiddle with your hair. Like you’re magnetised, you lean in, and that small sign of reciprocation is enough for him. 

Yoongi deepens the kiss, mouth slanting to get a better angle as he urgently moves his lips against you, tongue dipping out to swipe at the seam of your lips, encouraging you to open up to him. You gasp when his teeth nip gently, tugging the sensitive skin before letting it go with a kitten lick to soothe the bite marks. You’ve never felt this alive before, and it’s a wonder to you that until now you had never looked at Yoongi this way. Now it almost feels like he’s pure, euphoric oxygen and you’ll die if you break away for a second. 

His hand has dipped into your hair, gently pressing the back of your head to hold you against him, and his other arm insistently grips your hip, encouraging you to get even closer. A searing bolt of need rips through you, and you swing a leg up, straddling him. He’s hard beneath you, and the feeling of him makes you groan, gingerly grinding your hips. 

His tongue is in your mouth now, flicking against yours and sucking it back into his mouth like he wants to envelop you in his embrace. His fingers tighten in your hair, gripping a handful. You whimper, hips still working against him. 

“Yoongi,” you make out in a hushed tone, “that hurts.” You sigh in relief when the sharp tugging on your scalp relaxes, his palm soothing the sting. Relaxing against him, you moan into his mouth when you feel him slip his hand under your shirt and palm at your breast, seeking out an already-stiff nipple, no bra to obstruct him. He rubs it, rolling the peak between two fingers, and you feel wet heat gathering between your legs. 

Out of nowhere, he roughly pinches and twists your nipple and your legs jerk in response to the pain, your instincts wanting you to back away from the harsh sensation, but before you can sit up off him he’s yanking on your hair again, twisting your neck back enough that you can feel the muscles twinge and your scalp burn. Your eyes fly open in shock, only for you to freeze. 

Taehyung sits beneath you, dressed in the same shirt and basketball shorts that Yoongi was in, though his much broader chest makes the baggy fabric look fitted. He stares up at you with spit-slicked lips and blown pupils, almost completely enveloping the gold of his irises. With a shit-eating grin, he releases your nipple and pats it, chuckling under his breath when you twitch. 

“Wha- What did you do with Yoongi?” you demand, as forcefully as you can while your legs are still around him. 

He drops his gaze, sliding his hand over to your other breast, the fabric moving over his hand your only warning before he begins to flick your other nipple, every few seconds as you jump and try and twist away. Though he only has one hand in your hair, you feel completely anchored in place, like your arms and legs are too heavy to move even if you tried. “Yoongi is at home, my little human. Haven’t you worked it out yet?”

“You pretended to be him,” you guess, “he probably never came over, then.” He quirks his eyebrows once in affirmation, still teasing roughly at your chest, dragging a fingernail over and over the abused nerves of your nipple, the other one still aching. “But you said you couldn’t feel anything in my world. So what, you’re just doing this to fuck with me?”

A bewildered grin lights up his face. “My god, you’re dense,” he remarks in wonder. “Let me spell it out for you. Yoongi never came over because you never texted him earlier tonight. And you never texted him because you’ve been asleep since you got up onto your bed to put on the washed pillowcases. This is a dream, sweet thing. You’re in my world.” 

“But-” You splutter for a few moments, glancing around at your room. Everything seems in perfect order. “This isn’t like the other ones, I… The dreams you create are always messy at the edges like an unfinished painting, but I can see everything fine now. This exactly what my room is like.” 

“Convenient, then,” Taehyung teases, “that I can make dreams as realistic or rudimentary as I want.” The levity vanishes from his face, leaving behind a dark grin. “You’re out of your depth, Y/n. Stop assuming things just because you don’t know any better.” 

His grip on your hair loosens as you do, realising shaking out of his hold is futile in a plane he completely controls. “Then how am I supposed to tell if something’s a dream or not?”

He leaves your nipple alone, hand dipping to fiddle with a pant hem of your pyjama shorts, calloused fingertips running lightly along the sensitive skin of your inner thigh. His smile is brilliant, wider than you’d ever seen on him before. “That’s the beauty of it, little human. You can’t.” 

You shiver as his hand disappears below the fabric of your shorts, rising up to brush against the front of your panties, thumbing at your clit through the cotton. You feel the tension leave your body, and though a part of you is terrified by this knowledge, a different side takes over. The side that’s indulging in the warm pleasure unfurling in your stomach as his uncharacteristically gentle touch stimulates you. The side that says, you already know you’re dreaming now. Fuck it. 

Taehyung watches in bemusement as you relax above him giving in. Only once you sigh out in pleasure, hand resting on his shoulder for stability, does he remove his thumb from you just enough to grip onto the elastic waistband. He tugs, and you feel the strangest sensation of the fabric dissolving, being pulled off you from the side even though you never hear or feel a tear. By the time his hand emerges from your pant leg, the fabric is whole again, and he bunches it up in his hand, chucking it away from you. With your panties gone, the sewn hem in the crotch of your pyjama shorts drags against your clit, and you heave a shuddering breath, rocking your hips to chase the friction. 

“Do you want a hint?” 

You blink, staring down at Taehyung in confusion. The golden silk of his hair hangs low over his forehead, but you can’t mistake the glitter of his piercing gaze on you. “What?”

His hand leaves your hair, sliding down your back until it rests on your ass, gripping the flesh and pushing you down onto his crotch. “A hint,” he repeats, “for knowing if this is a dream.” 

You stare down at him, eyes lidded. “What?” As you speak, you feel something begin to move beneath you. You frown, looking down, and suck in a horrified breath when you lean back and see his crotch. The tented erection from before is...shifting beneath the fabric of his shorts, creating a rippling effect. You watch it entranced, as one bump slides upwards towards the waistband, prodding at it, before it manages to slip underneath, peeking out to show something that glitters in the dim lighting… 

“The real world doesn’t have this,” he reveals, leaning back slightly as a rounded, blunt end of a golden appendage draws out of his shorts, rising in the air between the two of you. It’s smooth, fleshy yet entirely inhuman. He grips your ass tighter and pulls you forward, the tentacle feeling surprisingly cool as it lays down, curling around your thigh. It clashes with the heat from his hands on you, and you feel yourself sighing out, basking in the contrasting sensations.

“Is that...your real form?” you ask tentatively, curiously reaching down to touch it. It’s firm yet moving, much like muscle, and when you run a finger down the tapering length of it, it flicks in the air, seeking more of your touch.

“I suppose,” Taehyung allows, “though when I can become anything I like, a real form doesn’t matter much.” He stares intensely at the tip of the appendage as it winds around, sliding underneath the fabric of your shorts just as his hand did earlier, though this time with your panties gone there’s nothing between him and your core, and you let out a surprised moan when you feel it begin to massage your clit, pressing its way lower to try and get between you and his crotch, seeking your entrance. Your mouth falls open, too shocked to react to anything except the pleasure, and the sandman hums in response. “You see? These things don’t exist in your world. Your world is dull, basic, human. In here, anything is possible. This doesn’t have to be a fight, Y/n. Give in to me.”

You sigh out, your stomach thick with pleasure, and you nod slowly, lifting your hips to leave some room for the golden tentacle, which doesn’t hesitate before pressing deep inside you, more and more of the tentacle slipping out of his trousers and up into your cunt until you feel a pressure deep inside, the tip poking at your cervix. 

Your legs are jelly and your fingers are iron tight on his shoulders as you moan, the sound broken up by choked gasps. “So...deep,” you pant out, mind unable to string together anything more than that, but Taehyung doesn’t seem to mind, as his brows are knitted together in pleasure too, huffing out groaned breaths in a beautiful baritone. 

“God, it’s been so fucking long, you have no idea,” he curses deep in his throat. He closes his eyes in concentration, and you feel the thick muscle shift inside you, recending from your wet heat like waves in low tide, before slamming back up into you, striking your g-spot with a change in angle. You keen, head falling forward to rest on his shoulder, wishing you were out of the restricting fabric of your shirt and shorts already, wishing you could run your hands over his bare chest and shoulders, hot like a furnace even as his golden member cools you from the inside. 

It’s a feeling you’ve never experienced. The cock inside you moves and writhes like it has a mind of its own, but it’s addictive; almost like the deft flicks of a tongue, the tentacle navigates you from the inside out, stimulating parts of you you didn’t even know could feel pleasure. You find yourself mindlessly grinding into it. Since it gets thicker the closer to the base it gets - though you still haven’t seen where that might be with how long it is - you rock yourself against it, your clit receiving delicious stimulation that has you almost drooling. 

Taehyung’s tanned skin is glistening with perspiration and the glow of his irises is so dark it’s almost amber below his lids. With his hands gripping your ass and hips tightly, he lifts you up onto your knees again so that he can begin to rut his hips up into you, the tentacle splitting you open with every thrust. You tremble and buckle but you’re somehow kept aloft, top half leaning heavily on his chest as the stretch and the deep warmth of pleasure bring you closer to the edge.

On this angle, your clit no longer grinds against the gleaming gold of his slick-covered cock, but Taehyung’s thumb blissfully finds it and you cry out in relief as he quickly rubs it, speeding up your high. “‘m close,” you moan out deliriously, feeling desperation at your impending orgasm shorten your breath. 

“Thank god,” the sandman breathes, his face increasing as he grunts with exertion, “I need to fill this perfect pussy of yours up already.”

Your mouth drops open as the constant stimulation paired with his words pitch you over the edge. Your orgasm takes you by storm, seizing up and shuddering violently on top of him. When you clench around him, Taehyung swears throatily and lowers you down again, both hands firmly planted on your ass as he grinds deeply into your core, reaching his own end.

You’re slowly on the come-down of your powerful orgasm as he begins to spill into you, and you hiss at the sudden warmth filling you up. Streaks and streaks are milked from him, and when you finally get the energy to sit up a little and look down, your eyes widen. 

Your stomach is a little rounder than normal, a bulge just below your belly button that you can see as your shirt’s ridden up. And below that, your pyjama shorts, absolutely soaked with cum. Your hands grip his shoulders as you feel him continuing to move inside you as the fabric turns dark with moisture, until you see it flood past, wetting your thighs with deep bronzed gold, rich and gleaming. When he finally twitches and goes still, the thick substance has begun to slide down your knees and stain the bed, an exorbitant amount of it that spills more and more every time you shift. 

In wonder, you lower a hand and tentatively swipe your fingers through it, marveling at the way it reflects the light and glosses thickly, dripping down to your wrist. Unable to resist the curiosity, you wrap your lips around the tip of your pointer finger and suck, letting the taste of him fill your mouth. Immediately, you hum as the rich taste of dark chocolate fills your mouth, at odds wth the metallic colour. You raise your gaze to Taehyung, who’s propped back on his elbows, staring up at you with his cock still buried deeply inside. His eyes are dark, pupils blown even wider than before as you systematically lick off each finger, being sure to flick your tongue between them before catching the drip that runs halfway down your forearm, indulging in the deep flavor. 

“Fuck, you’re gonna be the death of me,” Taehyung swears, groaning when you lean forward to press your mouth to his, sharing his taste between your lips. 

You let your tongues lazily dance around each other for a few languid moments before he curses and breaks off.

“I can’t hold it,” he admits, and you look around  to see the walls and furniture in your room crystallising and morphing together, losing detail until the colour begins to melt away, the black void slowly creeping inwards. “I don’t want this to end already, fuck.” 

You place one last kiss upon his swollen lips. “Don’t worry,” you remark with a playful grin, “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

#kscproject #bts smut #taehyung smut #ksmutclub #thekimlinenet #smutcentralnet #bangtanarmynet #btswriterscollective #btswritingcafe #btssmutclub #taehyung x reader smut #bts x reader smut #bts oneshot #bts fic #bts x reader #taehyung x reader #kth #taehyung #dom tae #sub reader

[lilhawkeye3]

shifting sands

Boba Fett x afab!Reader

Story Rating: E |||| Hawk’s Masterlist |||| AO3 Link

Chapter Rating: T |||| Word Count: 918 |||| Set after Return of the Jedi and before The Mandalorian S1

Summary: As the twin suns of Tatooine watch overhead, you come upon the still form of one of the universe’s lost souls.

A/N: gender neutral pronouns will be used for the Reader to be as inclusive as possible, but there will be sexually explicit content in this fic in the coming chapters and physically, the Reader will be described as “assigned female at birth” (afab). 

CHAPTER ONE

The sands of Tatooine are a harsh mistress. Life here is all about what one lacks— lack of water, lack of shelter from the sun, lack of purpose... all of these have been known to destroy even the strongest of men.

Tatooine was all you knew. The shifting ocean of sand, the beating sun, the raging storms. Those were all manageable after years of experience. It was the harshness of other beings, the greed of life that truly stood as an obstacle.

News travelled fast on most days, given that information was one of the highest currencies on the planet. Visitors typically only came here for such, so natives gathered as much as they could in the hopes of trading for necessities. It was only fitting that news of the fall of Jabba’s palace should reach your ears within hours.

It didn’t mean anything particularly interesting for your life as a whole. Yes, the threat of Jabba’s unsavory visitors was lessened, but it also meant that there’d be less trade available in that region as a whole. It was a good thing you had other means to keep you on your feet: your herd, scrapping, and moisture farming.

At least, that’s what you originally thought.

But then you saw the still body in the sand on your way back from tending to the herd, and the sands shifted on the balance of fate. 

When you first come upon him, you’re fairly certain he’s dead. Bodies weren’t that still in the open suns on Tatooine unless they were devoid of life. The sand had hidden his left side from view and buried him in his own little dune, the only visible aspects of him the dark underclothes against the reflective desert.

Your scarf is up around your face and you pull it a bit tighter before crouching down next to the body. You make sure to try and get the sand off him, but only doing it bits at a time, not wanting to change his body temperature too quickly. The sand would’ve been able to keep him cool and out of the direct light of the twin suns. It was when you reached out and brushed off their face that you saw it was a man. Even in his half dead state, you were awed by his striking features.

There was blood and sand caked across the left half of his face, and you knew you’d be needing water before you’d be able to see any specifics about him. And yet, you still could make out his strong brow and sharp jawline, the crooked build of his nose that let you know it’d been broken many times before. His eyes may have been shut, but you could tell he’d never been at peace.

You don’t know what spurred you on, but you found yourself reaching out to brush his cheek, grains of sand falling away softly to join the sea around you. He doesn’t flinch at all under your touch, which settles you and spurs you onwards. You run your hands along the stained scraps of fabric covering the rest of his body, trying to feel if there were any severe injuries that would keep you from moving him. He twitches when your hand rests against his lower ribs, and again at his left thigh. Between the locations of those two injuries, you knew it wouldn’t be safe to try and carry him, something that was probably for the best. You doubted you could lift him on your own anyways.

You needed to get him out of the open desert as quickly as you could. The suns are beginning to rise to their maximum height, and the last thing he needs is to be exposed to the elements any longer than he already has been. 

You don’t have much on you, though; if you’d been going out scavenging you’d have been better prepared to cart a whole man home with you. You have to work with what you’ve got. Your outer layers are just going to have to make do as a sling.

A part of you can’t help but wonder if this is all for naught, if the sacrifice of your protective layers will mean another weary soul of the desert will come across both of your bodies, dried out to husks by the suns. You’ll be breaking one of the first and most important rules of survival by trying to save this half-dead man: your life before others.

Of course, you’ll be breaking the second most important rule as well: keep the suns and sand off your skin. 

Perhaps you should have realized this as a foreshadowing of what lengths you’d eventually go to for this individual once you knew him. 

The desert is the past, present, and future. It knows what you’re blind to.

The heat is already sinking into your bones once you’ve wrapped your scarves around his chest and under his arms so his head rests against the fabric as you drag him through the burning sand. You mutter apologies under your breath every time you glance back at his still form, but each of them becomes meaningless as you continue to trudge forward.

He’ll survive this. You’ll make sure he does.

(He needs to be alive... so you can curse him out for all the sand you’ve swallowed by giving up your face scarf as you seek to give him a chance that the universe seems to have wanted to deprive him of.)

#boba fett x reader #boba fett x you #boba fett x gender neutral reader #the mandalorian #the book of boba fett #star wars fanfiction #star wars imagine #temuera morrison #poc imagine #writing while black #shifting sands #tattooine #gender neutral reader

[xiaq]

Fake Fic Titles (Do as many or few as you like): "The More Things Change (The More They Remain The Same)" "Teeth and Other Illegitimate Currency" "Season of the Wolf" "Mirror, Mirror" "12:07 AM" "Carnivore" "Constantinople (Not Istanbul)" "A Cheap Hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico" "Hail Mary, Full of Mace" "Never Travel Without A Potted Plant" "2,992 Meters for 3 hours and 42 Minutes" "When You Are Engulfed In Flames" "The Nature of Virtue" "41266" "Stargazer" and "Things We Do In The Noonday Sun"

Teeth and Other Illegitimate Currency

Yusuf Al-Kaysani and Nicolo di Genova meet during the siege of Jerusalem.

I say “meet.”

They kill each other.

It’s midnight and half the city is already alight with fire and Yusuf is defending the south wall even though he knows it’s a death sentence; Nicolo is an invader.

Their swords meet. Their hearts stop. They breathe again.

It’s only after they’ve repeated this process a few times and lost their respective helmets/head-coverings that they recognize each other: Nicolo has been dreaming about Yusuf’s dark eyes for nearly three years. Yusuf has a journal of precious, expensive, paper full of sketches of Nicolo’s distinct profile. The brow bone. The nose.The lips.

Despite this recognition, fueled by passion and no little amount of fear, they continue to fight until it is clear that the Franks will take the south side of the city, and Yusuf is forced to retreat. But before he disappears into the night, he aims—not to kill, but to injure. He hits Nicolo in the face with the butt of his saber, breaking his nose and shattering his jaw, and scattering teeth in the dirt. Before Nicolo can recover, Yusuf picks up one of the teeth: a canine. He holds it to the light and grins down at Nicolo with his own, perfectly intact, smile. He pockets the tooth. And runs.

For some reason, this infuriates Nicolo, even days later. He hasn’t yet come to terms with his immortality because he is so distracted by the other, ostensibly immortal, man. Not the other man’s immortality, though. The nerve of the man! The audacity! That the infidel have a piece of him. That the infidel stole a piece of him. Unforgivable.

The crusades last a very long time and neither Yusuf nor Nicolo can die. They meet again. After their first meeting, Nicolo has a vendetta. After their second meeting, Nicolo has a fast-healing stab wound and a pocket full of Yusuf’s teeth.

For years, each time they meet, they attempt to steal a piece of each other.

It’s a morbid game, but then, so is war.

Until.

Nicolo finally realizes he’s on the wrong side. He’s supposed to be a god-fearing man; a man on a holy crusade. Except there is nothing holy about the destruction he facilitates with both his sword and his deference. He never kills a child himself. He never rapes a woman or rends ancient religious relics or laughs as cities burn. But he watches his countrymen—supposed holy men—do these things.

It is an unsettling realization to understand that you are on the wrong side of history. But, eventually, he is so exhausted by the senseless brutality that he cannot stand it any longer.

So he seeks out Yusuf.

It takes a few tries (a few deaths) to make Yusuf understand that he does not want to fight anymore. That he does not want to be part of his countrymen’s crusade any longer. He does not want to fight Yusuf any longer. And when Yusuf finally steps away, confused by the still-undrawn sword at Nicolo’s side despite the blood on his face, Nicolo says, with the little Arabic he has managed to learn over the last year as he’s been sorting out his existential crisis: Please. I do not want to fight you. I want to help you. I want to know you.

And so, despite deep initial mistrust by Yusuf, the Frank defects.

A year later, after they have abandoned what is left of Israel and worked their way from Cairo to Benghazi, guarding caravans as sell-swords, they’ve struck up a friendship. It is a relationship based mostly on insults and terrible accents as they learn each other's languages and the knowledge that they are, perhaps, doomed to eternal loneliness if they do not stay together. After two years, Yusuf tells Nicolo he must visit home alone to take care of some business.

He is gone for three months.

Nicolo misses him. Desperately.

When Yusuf finally returns, he tells Nicolo that he plans to book passage to an island called Malta because he wishes to take a break from the world. That he cannot bear any more violence. That he wants quiet and simplicity and that, after returning home to collect a portion of his fortune from his previous life as a merchant, he has enough coin to live well for a handful of years in Malta even if he cannot find work.

Nicolo, of course, asks if he can accompany Yusuf, and Yusuf, who had fiercely hoped for this response, says, all coy:

What have you to add for the expedition? A secret dowery? I won’t abide a freeloading Frank and I know you’ve nearly spent your pay on your lodgings.

After a bit of thought, Nicolo retreats to his room and returns with a soft velvet drawstring bag.

When Yusuf opens the bag he discovers it is full of teeth.

His teeth.

He should not find it nearly as touching as he does.

Yusuf says: This is not a standard currency.

Nicolo says: We are not standard men.

They go to Malta.

#nicky/joe #immortal husbands #joe x nicky #the old guard #fic title game #myfic #gallusrostromegalus

[castillon02]

Mission Report: After Action

Naked, Bond perched on the edge of their mattress like a gazelle deciding which moment was right to leap away from the lynx’s jaws. The soft light of the bedside lamp half-shadowed his face, but she could tell where he was looking.   

Eve poked him in the ribs with her ‘pointy, bony toes,’ as Q called them. “If you try to skip tomorrow, he’ll kill you and I’ll watch,” she told Bond. 

“Oh, is there something special happening tomorrow?” Bond asked wryly. He jerked his gaze away from the closet with his go-bag in it and twisted around to look at her. His eyes flitted up from her toes and followed the curves and planes of her body to her face, admiring, as he always did, how she looked draped across their sheets. “We could do something even more special instead,” Bond purred. 

“Or I can shoot you to jog your memory, if you’d like,” Eve said, arching her eyebrows. 

Bond groaned and flopped onto her. He buried his face in her belly. “This would be much easier if you had shot me again,” he muttered. “Now I have to live with you and Q still working, while I...” 

“While you gracelessly attempt to transition from a job where you track and torment people for information to a job where you track and torment trainees for education,” Eve said, patting his head. “You poor dear,” she cooed. “Living long enough to get benched and having lovers who care enough about you to celebrate it. Why, even now, Q is probably skiving off work to triple-check with the catering that you’ll have the right kind of scrambled eggs at brunch tomorrow. How dreadful.” 

Bond glared balefully up at her. 

“I’m quite looking forward to having a house husband after you give it up,” Eve continued mercilessly. “Perhaps with fewer missions involved, there will be more time for things like nice dinners, foot massages...” 

That got Bond’s mouth twitching, at least, and he scooted back down the bed and pulled her feet into his lap. “More time to spoil my favorite currency and my favorite letter, you mean,” he said, rubbing his thumbs into her usual sore spots.  

Eve smiled. “Now you’ve got it,” she said. 

“You realize,” Bond said in his most casual tone, “that that means you’ll need to be around to be spoiled.”  

Ah, so that was the little fear that had crept into his double-oh heart. Luckily, she and Q had already discussed a few strategies for mitigating their workaholic natures, and they loved Bond, so she was sure they would think of a few more. 

“We won’t leave you behind, James,” Eve said. “We haven’t before, and we wouldn’t break our streak on your last mission.” 

Bond leaned over and kissed her ankle. “I suppose I’ll have to show up tomorrow, then,” he said. “Since that’s where you two will be.” And he wouldn’t leave them behind either. 

Good, Eve thought. He had gone through blood, through broken bones, through bullet wounds to stay with them, and now he would make it through retirement, too. 

***

Note: I was challenged by another double-oh to use the phrase “I can shoot you to jog your memory, if you like.” Now I’m passing that challenge on to @christinefromsherwood! Add this to a fic if you think you can! 

#team00 #007 fest #castillon writes #eve moneypenny #00QMoneypenny

[cyber-phobia]

Oooh super interested in "Currant of blood and bones"!

I don't really know how to describe this one in a different way, so I'm gonna just use the notes.

#yes this is because of the bones discussion #one day i will write something other than ofa and afo #today is not that day #wip #currency of blood and bones fic

[marvelmymarvel]

Green Eyes

Loki x Human!Oblivious!Reader

Synopsis: You were trying to figure out the man that laid in front of you. He was anything but human, but you didn't know what he was yet. He spoke of banishment and a brother who he hated, and quickly, you fell for the green-eyed stranger called Loki in a barn surrounded by thunderstorms and a villain lurking about. 

PS: The reader is oblivious to the Avengers and I’m putting this as sometime after Thor but before Avengers. So that little sliver of time where the Avengers aren't around and the reader can be 100% clueless about ‘aliens’. Also, Loki in the comics has Green eyes, so don't @ me. XOXO. This was lowkey my favorite Loki fic I have written, so go easy ;). Also if you aren't American and more importantly Midwestern, you may be confused by some things. It’s okay, I, as a midwesterner, understand you and am also confused. I will tell you that if you don’t know something go ahead and look it up! The pictures will help :) OKAY, BACK TO IT!

Song: American Money (Away Remix) by BORNS (Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dovRfPNl80w) 

It was a cloudy day in the little Illinois town that you called home. No more than 500 people meant that little things such as fire trucks going out and a cop pulling a person over were talked about like it was the biggest thing that ever happened in the boring town. You didn't like it though. In fact, you quite hated the little town that you had to call home. Most times, you found yourself in the middle of a cornfield, especially when it was about to rain. Your father being a farmer meant you had free range over the 100 acres that your family owned. You took advantage of that fact. There were 100′s of acres to get lost in and disassociate for a couple of hours. Instead of a farmers girl, you were a superhero and even though superheroes didn't exist, it still made you feel special for once. You looked up at the clouds that got darker and darker the more you walked. The feel of the sharp soil under your naked toes brought comfort as you ran your fingers along the tall cornstalks leaves. There was a drought going on where you lived and the soil felt like the sand of a dessert. Dry and sharp. Yet it still brought comfort. Light exploded in the dark cloud and your eyebrows crinkled together in confusion. This wasn't like any lightning you saw.  It came down quickly, light never once fading like a meteorite would after entering the atmosphere. It lit up the acres like a flashlight and the speed of it broke the sound barrier as it barreled towards you. You screeched as it got closer before ducking down into the corn, covering your head and hoping it would miss. The object slammed into the ground 100 feet from you and the dusty soil flew up and fell all around you.  (I was there when you fell from the clouds). You stood up incredulously, eyes wide and mouth agape as you looked at all the cornstalks that fell down due to the sound wave that followed the collision. You could see the figure, and realized quickly it was no meteorite. 

It was a person. 

You walked closer to it, scared that it would harm you. (And landed in the desert). The desert-like surroundings making you feel like you were far from home. Far from the normal thunderstorms and far from normalcy. (There was a thunder inside of my heart). Your heart hammered around like thunder the closer you got. Finally, you got to the figure and used your foot to nudge his shoulder. This caused it to lean forward before falling onto its back. You jumped and squealed in fear, but quickly calmed down seeing that he was not awake. “Are you dead?” you whispered to no one in particular as you knelt and ran a hand down his face. Your eyebrows crinkled as you saw blue appear from under his pale skin the minute your fingers touched it. Your heart hammered harder as you sat down cross-legged into the dirt. Something about that touch made you hungry as if you wanted to touch him more. (There was a wonderful pleasure). You thought about leaving him there and calling the police, but then you had a better idea. Your parents weren't home for a couple of days, so what would be the harm of taking this stranger in. Sure he fell from the sky, but he couldn't be a villain... 

Could he?

You had managed to get onto an old Four-Wheeler that your father had in the barn only a half a mile away from where the man laid. You were hoping and praying he wouldn't have disappeared as you drove through the corn quickly. Your heart relaxed when you saw him still laying there, either soundly sleeping or knocked out cold. You stopped the ATV before swinging off of it and walking over to him. You brushed away the thoughts of your father possibly killing you once he found out you brought a greasy looking man into your little farmhouse, but what he didn't know didn't hurt him. 

Right?

You managed to pull him up onto the back of the Four-Wheeler where you would normally lay hay or other farm equipment that you had to take to your father who was in the middle of a field. You heard thunder overhead and looked up in angst. Feeling a raindrop hit your nose, you climbed back on and took off. All while holding the man's arm to make sure he was still there and not about to fall off. (And like a stallion racing the rain). The rain began to fall harder and you raced faster and faster to get back to the barn. If your dad didn't find out about the man, he would certainly know about all of the corn you were ruining. (You rode on the back of my bike). You looked back to make sure he was alright and were relieved to see him still asleep, but a little more lively as he winced at the bumps. (I knew from the song that you sang). The thunder rumbled in your ears as the rain began to soak you to the bone.  (You were my lover for life). You pulled up and into the barn just in time as the wind picked up and the trees blew violently. Putting the ATV in park and shutting it off, you flew off it and ran to the banging barn door. Grabbing it, you slid it shut so that there was a barrier between you and the wicked thunderstorm that rumbled outside. Instantly, you were enveloped in silence, other than of course, the occasional whistle of the wind outside. You clutched onto the barn door, the soft glow of the lights above giving you warmth and sense of security that you needed. You always hated thunderstorms. They were violent and deadly. Something you always hated. You let out a small exhale before turning towards the ATV, but your breath caught in your throat at the sight of the empty ATV. (Oh, there's no time to sleep). You felt frozen in fear and had to physically force yourself out of the trance to go a step forward. Looking around the barn, the mysterious man was nowhere in sight. You walked over towards the ATV in pure distress. (Oh, living in a dream). Did you dream that? Did you disassociate from the real world into your fantasy dream, and dream him up? You grabbed your head in confusion, you had never done that before. (So take me to the paradise). You exhaled in disbelief before backing away from the Four-Wheeler. “I’m just imagining things. Yes, imagining things. He wasn't real... Ha ha ha so funny.....” you tried so hard to laugh it off and act like it wasn't a big deal, but it was. You dreamed up a man, a man that could bring you some sort of paradise to your boring life. You hit a wall, and your blood ran cold at the impact. There was never a wall here.

“Oh I am very real darling” the voice whispered in your ear, causing you to take a sharp intake of air before whirling around and facing the man awake and towering over you. (It's in your eyes). You knew you should have been afraid of him. But his eyes. They were blueish green, but his green outfit made them greener than they were blue. They took your breath away and seemed to calm you down at the same time. The green in them reminded you of the money you had in your back pocket. (Green like American money). The American currency to you was never beautiful. That was until you met this man. Your eyes went to his lips, pink and plump. (You taste just right). You began to wonder what he tasted like. Did he taste like the Sweet Tea that was mixed with honey from Tennessee that your father got every spring? (Sweet like Tennessee honey). Did he taste like the sweet corn you would have in the summer? Did he taste like the pumpkin pie your mom made on Thanksgiving? Or, did he taste like the mint that was infused in the candy canes you handed out at Christmas time as the white snow fell around you? What did he taste like? More importantly. 

WHY WERE YOU STARING?! 

Your eyes shot up to his eyes once more, cheeks bright red as you saw a knowing smirk on his lips. He knew you were staring... (And we can run away). You wanted to run away right then and there, but you couldn't move. You dripped with cold late summer rain, and it felt like you just got out of a swimming pool. (Swimming in the sunlight every day). Except, you didn’t have the sun to warm you after the cool dip into the water. All you had was his intense gaze that made you feel like a lobster being boiled alive. He was far from the sun... He made things 10x hotter. (Paradise, it's in your eyes). Yet, in the dim lights, his green eyes added a coolness that made you feel safe and secure. You were confused as to why though. He was a stranger, if anything, you should be running from him. His sharp features and height should have sent you running as they screamed arrogant and dangerous. (Green like American money). But his eyes, his eyes spoke of something different. They were soft and careful as if he didn't want to scare you away. His lips must have moved because his eyebrows shot up incredulously. “Sorry what” you whispered out as you shook yourself from your trance. 

He chuckled lightly, the smile reaching his eyes before looking to the side. “I said that you had a staring problem, but you were staring at me too hard to hear it” he teased before looking back at you. Your cheeks reddened more and he rolled his eyes playfully before walking away from you to look at the barn. You stood there, looking at the ground in confusion before turning swiftly to watch him walk. (So we took to the Calico road). He left you in a stupor like no one else ever could do before. You wanted to get answers from him, and since the rain was the way that it was outside. This was a perfect time to take the road less traveled and get the explanations you needed. Simple explanations. Like who he was, where he's from... WHY HE FELL FROM THE FREAKING SKY?!

(Running from the weather). “Are you going to ask questions or do I have to do all the talking love?” He spoke up, once more drawing you from your thoughts. Following his words was a great big flash of lightning and some thunder, causing him to look at the roof in slight fear. “Afraid of lightning?” you blurted out. You mentally cursed yourself for allowing your first question to be whether he was afraid of lightning like you were. The thunder never scared you as much as the lightning, but you always blamed it on the thunder anyway. “Way to go Y/n” you whispered to yourself as you slammed your palm against your head. “I am not...” he started as he looked back at you with confused eyes, “But I’m not too overly fond of what follows...” This caused your head to cock in confusion as you let your hand fall from your face. (There was a highway inside of her eyes). He pinpointed that he was on Midgard, only because most of the beings on this wretched planet acted like you. Trembling and pesky little things, yet, you seemed different. Your e/c eyes were bright under the lights of the barn and it, for some reason, made his heart rate pick up a little every time he looked at you. It was as if you were similar to other humans but different in more ways than you were ever similar. You were nervous on the outside but strong in your heart. He could tell that by just the way you were standing, shaking in fear but still holding your ground. (There was a buried treasure). To him, there was a treasure inside of you, something he would dig for and end up getting if he tried. The thing was though, was that he didn't even know you. Yet at this moment, he felt like he only knew you. Like his brother didn't matter and all that mattered was you. Midgardians, he scoffed to himself, but he didn't realize it was out loud. 

“Midgardians?” you questioned, causing him to freeze in fear of saying too much. You were clearly someone who did not know about the other worlds, and he wanted to spare you that pain of knowing too much. He wishes he could go back when he didn't know too much. Like before he knew he was a frost giant and that his ‘father’ was a liar and a kidnapper. None of that mattered though. (And we got caught in the storm). Lightning flashed once more and a large clap of thunder followed, causing you to scream and cover your ears in fear. His head cocked as he walked over to you, cautiously so as not to spook you further. “Are you alright darling?” he questioned softly as he reached out a hand to your arm, but stopped at the thought of you seeing him as he truly was. (You started flying a kite). “Just afraid of some storms is all” you whimpered out as you adjusted yourself and walked over to the door to look out. The rain started to pour harder than you thought possible and you knew you’d be stuck there for a few hours. (At the end was the key to my heart). He was playing a dangerous game giving out his heart like this. He was Loki, Laufeyson. God of Mischief. He was no man of comfort. His skin was as cold as his heart and he could not fall for a Midgardian woman. Nonetheless, one he met only minutes ago. 

And yet here he was. (You were my lover for life).

He thought he was going crazy as he approached you once more. “I don't know your name,” he whispered out shakily. It felt like he wasn't in control of his tongue or body, otherwise, he would have left you and never said a word. You turned your head a little, contemplating whether to tell him your name or not. Your father's lectures ran through your head on repeat about stranger danger and what not to do in situations like this...

But you broke too many rules already, so why stop now.

“Y/n” you stated firmly before turning and looking at him sternly. Part of you was offended that he was asking the questions around here since you were the one deserving the answers. “That's a beautiful name” he whispered out sweetly nearly causing your knees to buckle and for you to lose your composure. You quickly fixed it and crossed your arms to remain strong. “And yours?” You pressed finally finding your voice. He chuckled lowly before turning to the side and walking towards some farm equipment. “Loki. Previously OdinSon. Now LaufeySon. God of Mischief.” He stated proudly as he turned to look at you cockily hoping to see your disbelief. But you just looked confused. 

“Who?” you asked with crinkled brows and a frown set into your forehead. His cool composure fell and he realized you were clueless. “Loki... Never heard of me?” he pressed causing you to shake your head childishly. He sighed before coming up with an idea, “How about I tell you about myself and where I am from... will that help?” he asked sweetly. You nodded softly and he opened his mouth to begin his long story. (Oh, there's no time to sleep). 

It took a long time to get through his story, but by the time he was done, it felt like you were in a dream. (Oh, living in a dream). He was a fantastic storyteller, but it didn't explain who he truly was and why he fell from the sky. He looked at you with a big smile after he was finished and was pleased to see your dazed look. “That story was amazing, you should write a book about it,” you said innocently, causing his smile to falter and his arms to drop from their ‘ta-da’ position. “I’m a God you Midgardian, how hard is that to understand” he growled frustratedly but calmed himself when he saw you cringe back in fear at his outburst. You fell silent and looked at your hands in embarrassment. “Sorry?” You questioned after looking back up at him. He sighed before rubbing his face and walking towards you quickly. You flinched but he pulled a bucket in front of you and sat down on it. (So take me to the paradise). He grabbed your hand and it made your heart stop as the coldness made the hairs raise on your arms. 

“I’m a God, the God of Mischief to be exact. I can do magic and many people call me a witch, but really, it's just my mother who is a witch, not me.” He stated softly as he turned your hand over so that your palm was up. He moved his finger down the skin of your palm and a glow followed his finger, causing your eyes to widen as you looked up at him. (It's in your eyes). His green eyes were illuminated in the glow that was on your palm. (Green like American money). “This can’t be real” you whispered as you searched his eyes for any sign that this was fake, that you were passed out somewhere in the field and this was all a dream. A very realistic and beautiful dream. (You taste just right). His face was close to yours, and once again, you wondered how he tasted. (Sweet like Tennessee honey). Was he sweet like the words he spoke? Or was he sour like the way he walked? The rain had stopped, causing you both to look up at the ceiling in pure relief. “I’m very real” he whispered as he stood and drug you up with him. Your bodies were close together and you looked down at your shoes in discomfort. He let go of your hand just then and you stepped away afraid you made him feel bad. “Someones here” he whispered out before walking past you and towards the door. “Probably my aunt” you called out before turning around and walking towards him. “Nothing to-” an explosion outside caused you both to fly back, his arms wrapped around your body and protected you both from the explosion and the impact of the fall that followed. Your skull cracked onto the hard ground and you moaned out in pain as his grip around you loosened. 

“Not my aunt” you whispered out shakily as your head began to spin and you sat up to see a man dressed in all black approach you both. “Definitely not my aunt-” but you were cut off once more by Loki lifting you up and putting you onto your feet. “RUN” he screamed in your face as you backed away shakily finally seeing the gigantic blade the thing was holding. (And we can run away). You took 3 steps back before tripping on some rubble, typical of you but luckily you caught yourself and took off. You ran out of what would be the back of the barn and into the corn. (Swimming in the sunlight every day). Sweat poured down you as the sun that was now out beat down onto your poor body. Your mind was spinning still and you stumbled quite a bit. Reaching an opening, you heard laughing all around you, causing you to spin around in anguish. (Paradise, it's in your eyes). You just wanted him and his calm eyes. The one person that you only met hours ago, seemed to be the only one to calm you down now. “WHO ARE YOU?!” you screamed out before a figure emerged. (Green like American money). 

“Loki” you whispered out exasperatedly before running forward and grasping him in a hug. Looking up at him with teary eyes, you thanked him over and over for protecting you, but then you realized something. His eyes...

They weren’t green.

“Who are you” you whispered before pushing out of the strangers grasp. He chuckled, it first sounded like Loki but suddenly morphed into a deeper tone that sounded demonic. (We carved our love in the mountainside). “You were never apart of the plan... But I’m happy you are now, human” it snarled as it got closer and closer to you. You stumbled while backing up and your head slammed into the rock below, only making the spinning worse. (We soaked our hearts in the rain). The mud-stained your clothes and caked your hair and you felt like you were paralyzed. “Who are you” you whimpered out as it leaned down and ran its long finger down your neck. “it's not who I am that matters... Its who I work for that does” He hissed lowly before standing up fully and smiling at you sickeningly. 

You began to go in and out of consciousness, and you weren't sure if you would feel death or not. Would it hurt? Would it be fast? The thing raised its staff down at you and you closed your eyes, praying to pass out before it happened. “I’ll do it” was the last thing you heard before you were out like a light. Not knowing whether or not it was death that consumed you but you knew one thing for sure. That voice. It was Loki’s voice. That was the last thing you heard. (And I, waited my whole life, for you). Somehow, you were okay with his voice being the last thing you would ever hear. You just wished his eyes were the last thing you ever saw. 

Your e/c shot open and you inhaled sharply before sitting up quickly. You winced in pain before grabbing your head as the world spun around you. You balanced yourself before looking up slowly, jumping a little at the sight of Loki sitting at the end of your bed. His back was facing you and while he had a weirdly shaped helmet on his head, you knew it was him from all of the green. (So take me to the paradise). “Loki?” you whispered out softly, hoping it would make him move, but if anything, it made him go more rigid. His bouncing leg stopped and he looked forward into the mirror to look at you in it. Your face, it was so sweet and precious. You were innocent, and now, you were a weapon against him. “I’m so sorry for what I have done” he whispered out, still staring intently at you in the mirror. His green eyes took your breath away once more and his words sent a chill down your spine. (It's in your eyes). “You did nothing wrong Loki? That... That thing was not your fault-” 

“No, but my following actions were” he pressed as he turned and looked you straight on. Your breath caught in your lungs at the piercing color that made you melt and fall in love. (Green like American money). He was someone you just met, but you couldn't help the feeling. The feeling that all of this was meant to happen. “God works in mysterious ways” you whispered out causing him to chuckle darkly and shake his head at you. He leaned forward before pressing a chaste kiss to your lips. (You taste just right). You were right, he did taste perfect. Like honey that you stirred in your hot tea. (Sweet like Tennessee honey). He tasted as sweet as his words. He pulled away and looked at you painfully. He grew to care for you and you would forever be his little human. His Midgardian. Which is why he had to go. (And we can run away). “I have to go little human” he whispered out sadly as you grabbed for his hand anxiously. “We can run from this, I know we barely know each other, but I don't want you to leave me” you whispered shakily as you searched his eyes for something, anything. You felt adventure with him. You felt love when with him. For once in your life, you weren't bored. You only knew each other for less than a day, but less than a day is enough to decide who you wanna spend your life with. He shook his head before lifting your hand and pecking your knuckles softly.  “I’ll keep you safe... I promise...” he whispered once more before using the staff he was holding to form a portal. You looked at him shakily but didn't make a move to stop him. He stepped through, leaving you in your bed. Feeling alone once more. 

(Swimming in the sunlight every day). He stood there, the Other walking around and proclaiming how he would help by leading the Chitauri in taking over the earth. His brain was swimming with worrying thoughts, but he knew that if he followed through, you’d be safe. He closed his eyes, thinking over your face, your beautiful and innocent face. You didn't look at him like he was a God, and for some reason, he liked that. (Paradise, it's in your eyes). He found comfort in the image of your eyes. Eyes that held stories about your life. Stories he wished he could learn, but he wouldn’t be selfish when it came to you. Opening his eyes, he looked at the Other sternly. “You won't harm her, will you?” Loki pressed as the Other walked past him silently, thinking through his answer. 

“Only if you follow through” the Other snarled as he walked behind him and continued on with his speech of how you will be safe as long as Loki does his job. Otherwise, you were as safe as dead. Loki nodded, wishing he never met you. Wishing his green eyes didn’t tempt you. (Green like American money). He was happy he met you for selfish reasons, but meeting you caused so much headache and pain for him.  Now he couldn't protect you, the one thing he truly loved. And that killed him more than saying goodbye. 

Part 2?? IDK let me know :)

#loki imagine #loki imagines #loki x reader #Loki Laufeyson #marvel imagines #marvel imagine #marvel #loki laufeyson imagine #loki laufeyson imagines

[tsuraiwrites]

Fic: Echo (2)

(Prequel) (Part 1)

“You’d let them crush you, Świętomierz.”

Stiles still watches them two years later. They keep waiting for the questions, for the boy’s endless curiosity to eat him from the inside out. But he doesn’t ask, even when they drop little hints to egg him on.

A girl on the playground throws a shower of pebbles at them when Stiles tries to play with her as No follows along. Stiles gets a tiny cut over his cheek and without thinking No takes the pain. The boy’s eyes widen, and it’s only later when they’ve dealt with the girl appropriately that Stiles approaches them. They watch the ambulance roll away and Stiles huffs. “It was an accident, you know.”

“No, it wasn’t. She threw them on purpose.”

“But she didn’t mean to hurt me. And you didn’t have to hurt her so bad.”

“I didn’t.” Everyone saw the tree branch split off, falling in the middle of the yard straight onto the girl, crashing down on one side of her body and breaking several bones. No was far away from the incident, pointedly not looking at the tableau. Their brother folds his arms and looks at them stubbornly until they meet his gaze, their face blank as slate.

Finally, Stiles rolls his eyes. “Next time, I get to decide the punishment. You’re too mean.”

“You’d let them crush you, Świętomierz.”

That nets them a scrunched-up face. “Aw man, don’t call me that. You make me sound like a Polish grandpa. And I won’t, I’ve got you to help me.”

They are silent in response; nothing they say would stand up to the boy’s argument. His Spark leaps in these moments, brightened by the strength of his conviction. It feeds them almost as well as pain and chaos do, these days.

-

Their mother is dying and they hate her. Hate the curious, tender mortal and her too-fragile shell. Hate her flawed brain and the genetics that will take her away from them far too soon. They hate her even as they feed off her family’s pain and rage and fear.

In her lucid moments, Claudia holds them to her, promising that things will be alright, assuring her children of a future that will never come to pass without her in it. (Lies are their currency, and it makes them angry to see them used so poorly.)

It is between some of those moments that she sees clearly, her dementia allowing her to see things as they are, once in a while. She looks at No and can see the lack of soul written in the depths of their eyes, sees how they leech off her true son’s energy and binds it as their own. She screams, rails, tries to separate the twins but never once touches them, afraid No’s corruption will seep into her skin.

Stiles cries and cries but this is one pain they cannot completely erase.

-

Her eventual death should be a relief. After the funeral they curl up beside their brother in bed and hold him until he stops shaking. They eat the nightmares as they come, allow Stiles to slip into restful sleep.

John loses his grip, and they watch as he drinks bottle after bottle of whiskey in an effort to drown his sorrows. He forgets to cook dinner, then breakfast. It’s only when Stiles burns himself cooking eggs that No puts their foot down. 

They lay an illusion on the bottles so John’s attention passes over them unless he concentrates. When the man tries to drink it suddenly feels like glass going down his throat. He gets nightmares – of driving drunk and killing someone whose face he can’t see, of throwing bottles and waking up covered in booze and his sons’ blood.

They watch their twin notice the way their father grimaces and sets the whiskey down moments after he picks it up. It’s easy to see hope growing in the boy’s face when he finds John pouring the bottles down the sink.

The household feels a little less tense, after, even if gloom still creeps at the edges.

No fights for stoicism when their father’s grief finally breaks like a wave as they walk by his bedroom. Stiles is downstairs, watching television and waiting for them to come back from the bathroom. They hesitate outside the door, blank expression slipping into irritated confusion as another muffled sob drifts to their ears.

It is against everything that they are.

But.

They crawl into his arms even as he tries to stifle his tears. Behind John’s neck, their hands go black and they take and take and take.

The wet patch on their shirt will dry. 

They should kill him for it. 

They should-

Oh.

Grief has never been so visceral. Or so hollow. 

Later, Stiles crawls into bed behind them and pulls the blankets up. It is not the last time the three of them pile into the bed, trying to capture the shape of a woman long-since faded from those sheets.

-

The night after Stiles burns the wolf alive, they find themselves with their hands around their brother’s throat, pressing at his neck where Peter dragged his claws.

He almost died tonight. They cared little for the werewolf drama and then No almost lost him.

Stiles, feeling the prick of silver daggers at his carotid, turns trustingly into their hands and finally relaxes. They bite their lip until gashes form and drip onto the sheets. 

“We should kill you,” they rumble in a bass more heard than felt. “We want to rip out your fucking guts and hang you from the Tree. We’ll make you scream until you beg us for death.”

They choke, let go. Press their forehead down against his chest where until they rise and fall with his breath. Still, Stiles is too exhausted to wake, finally crashing from the adderall and far too much caffeine. 

“We’ll kill you someday.” Their words come out as a whine.

Foxes are tricksters and almost always lie. Except when the truth hurts more.

#fic #teen wolf #modern mythos 'verse #voiles #hey welcome to another addition to a fandom I havent cared about in years #and still dont #ha oh well blame mar #bxdcubes