#easy the counselor said

[disdaidal]

I don't want to brag or sound too optimistic about it, but after three weeks of training at a private college, I think my lessons with this one particular immigrant student (who has serious motivational problems lemme tell ya) are finally starting to get through and there's been improvement.

Only slight improvement so far but I have spotted some, so maybe not all hope is lost yet.

Remains to be seen I guess.

#personal #so in case anyone's still wondering i'm studying to become a tutor/instructor/guidance counselor etc. etc. whatever it's called in english #and currently i mostly work with immigrants with language. sometimes i help high school students as well. but mostly immigrants #and there's this one immigrant student who's been there since last spring. and he still barely even knows the basics because he's 'given up #according to him that is. he told me this at least three times yesterday and i told him that's a problem #so i've been trying to hammer it through his head that he can't be sitting in classes and using his phone when he's supposed to be learning #or expect me or teachers giving him all the answers when he also needs to show a little effort and help us back as well #and that he needs to participate in pair and group activities in classes because we're a team and we need to work together #so basically he's been asking me to either teach him or then find someone who can teach him #i told one of our teachers this and she answered that he could also participate in evening activities at the college but he's not doing tha #and according to him he doesn't 'mingle'. so i told him maybe he should once in a while. get out of his comfort zone. at least try #to my surprise he actually showed up to one of the evening activities that i hosted. didn't do much anything there but sit but still #that was effort. he did exactly what i said despite it making him a little uncomfortable so that's improvement #so then yesterday he asked me about teaching him the language again. i told him i host a homework club at tuesdays & thursdays @ 3:30-4:30p #he showed up there yesterday and was the only student. so i had time to teach him basic greetings. weekdays. months. things he shoulda know #and i thought it's all probably in vain but i tried. so today. he was in their class and actually doing pair work and reading stuff aloud #and even translating some stuff when i asked. calling it easy. and that he's trying to use his phone less and memorize this stuff instead #to which the rest clapped at and cheered him on for. and i told this to the teacher afterwards when she asked me about him. and she gave #me a thumbs up and looked a little surprised but also delighted. because he's been a popular subject amongst ourselves for a reason #so i don't want to get too optimistic about it. because he still has an attitude problem. but he's tried a little at least. so there's hope

[kamaluhkhan]

THE GRUDGE (or: the 7 things luke castellan hated about you)

read part two GET HIM BACK! (or: the 7 reasons you want revenge on luke castellan)

pairing: luke castellan x child of nemesis!reader (gender not specified)

word count: 8.5k

summary: luke hated your guts. he really did. he just hoped that no one could tell how, even after all this, you're still everything to him.

warnings/disclaimer: luke's POV. spoilers for the lightning thief and season 1 of pjo. some heated make-out sessions but no actual smut - MDNI / 18+. mentions of blood + death + alcohol. luke is 19 during tlt but i wrote this with him + reader being 21 by the end of this (this is important for the next part lol). anyways, luke + reader share clothes and lots of intense emotions they maybe possibly don't process in the best way. lots of ANGST - it's a greek tragedy fr!

author's note: welcome to my new hyperfixation! this fic is LONG but i hope she's worth it ♡

♪: the grudge by olivia rodrigo

(i. you have a sharp tongue)

fourteen year old luke was overwhelmed when he first stepped into the hermes cabin. it was loud and overcrowded and no one really seemed to care that they had a new cabinmate. the head counselor showed luke to an empty bed at the back, told him to get settled in, and left without another word. luke dropped his backpack before collapsing on the mattress. it was so thin that he could feel the springs dig into his back.

"you'll get used to it."

luke sat up to see you climbing through the window. 

you had a band-aid stuck on your chin, chipped nail polish the color of blackberries, and leather combat boots that looked way too heavy to be wearing in the heat of summer. 

“the shitty mattress?”

“i meant the whole chaos of cabin 11, and the way things work around here in general. if you can get used to the shitty mattress, all power to you.” 

your tone was friendly enough, playful even. you smiled at him so comfortably it made luke nauseous. 

“good to know.” he tried to smile back at you, but his heart wasn’t in it. “i’m luke, by the way.”

“yeah, i know. i’m —”

“y/n!”

you seemed entirely unfazed as the blond who called your name stormed over to you. you rolled your eyes, something only luke could notice, before turning to her.

“someone stole my candy.”

“i’m very sorry to hear that, maddy. gotta be careful around here.” your voice dripped like poisoned honey, deceptively innocent and sweet.

maddy was not having it. she huffed at you. “it was you, wasn’t it?”

“that depends. did you cheat at poker last night? again?” 

some of the chatter throughout the cabin paused, heads turning to listen in. 

“what? n-no!” 

“then you have your answer, maddy.” you exaggerated a sigh, as though you had already won the fight and were annoyed that she came back for more. “now, if you’ll excuse me, i have a new camper to show around.”

chiron had already given them a tour, but luke didn’t protest when you grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the window with you. your hand was warm in his as you dragged him along to the corner of the cabin where a poorly made ladder waited for you. 

“come on.” you started climbing, and only stopped to look down when you realized luke wasn’t following you. “best view of camp. trust me.”

a shiver passed through luke. trust didn’t come easy to him. he also didn’t particularly want to return to a stuffy cabin where all he would do was count reasons he did not want to be there.

 so, luke followed you. he sat down next to you on the roof and looked out at the sun shining on his new home, but he couldn't help but be slightly bitter. the gods had gotten all of you into this life of endless danger and battles and monsters, and this was all they had to offer in return: a summer camp. 

it just didn't seem fair. 

there was something else he noticed then. what was it that chiron had said? camp half-blood was supposed to be a safe haven for all demigods. 

“i don’t get it. there are only twelve cabins, but aren’t there, like, a million other gods?”

you straightened your posture then, and turned to luke with a newfound interest. 

“camp half-blood only has cabins representing the twelve olympians. apparently, they’re the only ones important enough to have children worth recognizing, and they can’t even do that half the time,” you explained, impertinence laced throughout your words. it seemed like something you could never quite get off your chest. 

every  demigod knew that the gods didn’t appreciate sarcasm. they  didn’t particularly like being called out on their bullshit, either.

you didn’t seem to care; you even rolled your eyes up at the sky, as if challenging zeus himself. 

“anyways, that’s why the hermes cabin is so crowded. it takes in campers who are unclaimed or whose parent doesn’t have a cabin at camp. like me.”

“so, who’s your godly parent?”

you fiddled with the leather cord on your neck. it held a few clay beads like the other campers, but there was one silver charm he noticed only you wore — scales, by the looks of it. you clutched onto it.

luke realized that, despite your own advice, maybe you resented having to get used to the way things worked around here, and having to hide your resentment. maybe that was worse than having to sleep on an uncomfortable bed for the rest of your life.

"nemesis. goddess of revenge."

"that's....hardcore."

you scoffed and moved on to twisting the silver ring on your index finger. "a lot of people take it that way, and i think it scares them a bit.”

“so that’s why you’re extra nice to new campers, huh?” 

“no, i was just in a good mood today.” you smirked.

“guess i was just lucky, then.”

luke couldn’t help but smile at your laugh — sharp, biting. you nudged your boot against his sneaker, which shifted you closer to him, shoulders practically touching. 

“what people don’t understand is that it's more about balance, you know? you do good things, and good things happen to you. at least, they should. you do bad things and….” you pulled out an outrageously big bag of candy, dropped it between you and luke, and winked at him. “you face the consequences.” 

“that makes sense.” luke leaned over to grab a handful of gummy bears. “like karma.”

“yeah. exactly.” 

you bit the head off a red bear, both of you chewing in silence before you added:

“by the way, i’m sorry about your friend.” you swallowed and caught luke’s gaze. 

chiron warned him that word would travel fast around camp about what happened to thalia, and luke had prepared himself for anything — anything but your reaction. there was no pity in your eyes; instead, there was a hint of rage, as though thalia had been your friend, too. 

“she deserved more.” 

luke’s eyes caught the glint of a knife strapped to your belt. he took another handful of the candy you stole, and he thought about the fire and fearlessness behind your words, and, despite everything, it felt right to be with you then and there. 

“yeah,” he finally whispered back. “she did.”

we all do. 

neither of you said those words, but the suggestion was there, and it felt like a promise. 

(ii. you hold on to every stupid, little detail)

“slow down, tiger.” 

your voice echoed throughout the arena, and if luke had been fighting a real opponent, it might have gotten him killed. instead, he just stopped mid-swing, sparing another straw dummy from losing its arm. 

“left hand,” you noted as you walked past him towards a bench. “you, my friend, are in need of a break.”

luke loosened the grip on his sword. the only time luke fought with his non-dominant hand was when he had overworked the other. he must have switched an hour ago, but judging by how heavy his arm felt, it could have very well been two.  

his curls were stuck to his forehead with sweat, his shirt soaked through. he could feel a dull pain behind his eyes, and luke was worried that if he stopped to catch his breath, he would pass out. or, even worse, have to face the reality of the shitty news he’d gotten early that day. 

“come sit with me,” you urged. “you’re exhausted, tiger.” 

luke bristled at your nickname for him. 

sure, luke loved that there was something only you called him, a secret kept between you in plain sight, but it was also a reminder that it was harder to hide behind the hero act when you were around.

everyone else at camp figured the nickname was a playful attempt at calling him strong and charismatic. the truth was that luke once told you that his favorite cereal as a kid was frosted flakes and that he would dream of playing sports as well as tony the tiger. for better or for worse, like most things, you wouldn’t let it go. 

case in point: if it was anybody other than you trying to get him to take a break, luke could have just brushed them off with a charming smile and continued swordfighting until his arms fell off, but in the two years since meeting you, luke had never met anyone as stubborn and convincing. like him, it seemed you were willing to fight and shed blood to get your way. luke was never really in the mood to make you bleed, even when feeling like he could burn the entire world down, so he usually gave in to your demands.  

as soon as he sat down next to you, you handed him an orange flavored energy drink — his favorite. anything other than water was hard to come by at camp without the enchanted goblets in the dining pavilion, or the right connection in the hermes cabin. he ran out of his stash the other day, but you must have noticed and gotten one of the stoll brothers to smuggle more in. 

“thanks,” luke said, ignoring the jolt of electricity that passed through him when your fingers brushed together briefly. 

 the two of you looked out at the sword arena, and all the straw dummies that luke had destroyed. you wait for him to take three big gulps of his drink before speaking again. 

“i guess chiron and your dad decided you weren’t ready for a quest.”

luke exhaled sharply. “how did you —”

“the only time you’d skip out on capture the flag is if something really shitty happened.” you looked down at luke’s clenched fists, and that seemed to be all the confirmation you needed. “you promised annabeth you'd be there, and it's not like you to let her down."

fuck. he had completely forgotten that tonight was annabeth's first time as team captain. this entire week, she had been prepping a winning strategy. it wasn’t like annabeth needed him to win, but luke was her big brother, and he should have been there. you were right — he had let her down. 

the realization made luke’s day go from bad to worse. 

"i told her you were helping a new camper with an emergency. she didn't believe it, but she adjusted her strategy and we still won.”

“well, thank the gods everything worked in the end,” luke grumbled. 

“don’t thank the gods,” you quipped. “thank annabeth chase for her brilliant mind, and me for covering for your sorry ass.”

when luke didn’t indulge in your usual playful banter, you moved closer to him and brushed some curls away from his eyes. your skin warmed his forehead, and the small gesture made him feel better than he had all day.

“look, i’m not going to give you some bullshit inspirational speech about how the gods don’t get to define what a hero is, or how you don’t need a quest to prove that you’re worthy of being one. we’ve each been through that before, and i have a feeling this won’t be our last time, either.”

“then why are you here?” the question came out harsher than luke had intended it to.

“because she’s trying her best to hide it, but annabeth is really hurt that you didn’t show up for the game. i figured the least you could do is suck it up, come to the campfire, and make her those signature luke castellan s’mores. you could probably use one, too, since you haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.” 

you were right, again. luke was exhausted, he was furious, but most of all, he was starving.  

later that night, luke sat next to annabeth and vowed to make her as many s’mores as she wanted. you’d gone to sit with the hephaestus kids, trying to convince beckendorf and nyssa to join your cabin’s post-campfire party at the beach, even though they had to work in the forges early the next morning. 

when chiron made his weekly speech, congratulating the winners of capture the flag and thanking the gods for keeping everyone safe, you and luke caught each other’s gaze from across the fire. you rolled your eyes and luke bit back a smile as you turned back to beckendorf. he noticed your knees were practically touching. did you sit that close to everyone? 

luke was looking at you for so long that the marshmallow he was roasting fell into the fire, despite annabeth’s warnings. she handed him another one. 

"you should tell her how you feel," annabeth said. "stop being a coward." 

whether it was the smell of burnt sugar, the heat of the fire, or annabeth’s comment, luke started to feel dizzy. he did his best to shake it off, asking annabeth for a play-by-play of her strategy earlier that night, but he couldn’t quite get rid of the thought of you. 

(iii. you don't care if your clothes are stained with blood)

“i just….i can’t fucking believe you, luke.”

“i don’t get why you’re so upset — you’ve never cared about quests before.”

luke was hoping to break the news to you after capture the flag. unfortunately for him, word travels fast around camp. 

annabeth had the two of you scouting the east side for the flag, while she and some other athena kids took the west. you hadn’t found anything so far, which meant that you’d spent the better part of an hour bickering over luke’s choice of companions for his quest. a choice that included charles beckendorf and chris rodriguez, and purposefully did not include you, much to your fury.  

before you could continue arguing, luke heard the sound of footsteps approaching. he looked over to you, and you already had your shield and sword at the ready. 

a few red defenders emerged from the trees. one charged at luke, but you stepped in so he could deal with the other two. one of his opponents went down fairly easily, but the other put up much more of a fight. metal clashed behind him as you kept fighting as well. you might not have been as skilled a swordfighter as luke, but he knew that you could hold your own, at least until he was finished with the person in front of him. 

luke parried his opponent’s strike, causing them to take a step closer. he was preparing to disarm them, just as he heard you yelp and stumble to the ground. it only took a millisecond of his attention, but it gave his opponent the opportunity to elbow him in the face. luke felt a crack upon impact, and pain radiated from his nose; he powered through. 

he had to finish this fight, and he had to do it fast. you needed him. 

his ears were ringing as he finally knocked over his opponent, kicking away their sword and keeping his foot on their chest. luke turned around to see you having turned the tides, the blade of your sword dangerously close to your opponent’s neck.

you locked eyes with luke, and you both understood — it was time to go. the two of you ran through the forest, as far away as you could before having to stop and catch your breath.

luke removed his helmet to get some air, and dropped his weapons. you did the same. you looked at him, brows furrowed.

“your nose.”

luke licked his lips, tasting blood. the triumph of winning that last fight overshadowed the ache of his potentially broken nose. in fact, he liked the image of a ruthless warrior emerging from the glory and gore of battle, that even though he did not bleed ichor like a god, he still had power. 

you, on the other hand, didn’t look impressed. instead, you stepped forward and offered the sleeve of your shirt to wipe away the blood. 

“you don’t have to —”

“i know you think you’re a badass walking around all broken and bloody, but you shouldn’t deny your admirers your pretty face,” you teased. 

it was no secret that luke had numerous admirers around camp, a fact you loved to tease him about. he was sure that you relished in how flustered that made him. all you had to call him was pretty boy, and luke could be reduced to a blushing mess. 

it was pathetic how much power you had over him.

“besides, i wouldn’t have gotten out of that last fight if you hadn’t taught me that disarming technique earlier. i owe you. it’s what we do. we take care of each other, right?”

he couldn’t argue with that.

a few moments of silence passed as you cleaned his face. something shifted as you worked, the flirtatious grin fading away. when you pulled away, your sleeve was stained a dark crimson. 

“just tell me honestly,” you finally murmured. “why don't you want me to join your quest?” 

luke was genuinely taken aback by the softness of your voice, now devoid of its usual fire. you wouldn’t meet luke’s eyes, but being that close to you, he noticed they were slightly glazed over.

he had expected you to be angry at his decision. he expected you to yell and argue and try to change his mind. luke hadn’t expected you to be so hurt. so broken. 

he hadn’t planned on it, but luke decided to tell you the truth then.

“look, karma, if you come with me, my heart wouldn’t fully be in the quest. i’d be so caught up in….well, you.”

a pause.

“is that a bad thing?”

“not usually, no.” 

you smirked a little at that, and luke’s heart skipped a beat. it also made his decision even clearer. 

“but i need to be focused for this. i need….” he let out a deep sigh. “i need to prove myself. this is my first real chance, and i can’t fuck it up.”

you met his gaze and smiled brightly at him, your signature spark of confidence returning.  

“you won’t.”

you reached a hand up to play with his necklace. luke hadn’t noticed how close you’d gotten until your fingers started tracing over those four clay beads. it made his entire body burst into flames.

“i’ve been wanting to do something for a while. and, aphrodite save me, it might be really stupid, but —”

luke took a lucky guess as to where you were going, and crashed his lips against yours. aphrodite knows that he'd been wanting to do that for a while, too. 

he often got drunk on the adrenaline of battle, the glory of winning, but nothing was quite like the rush of kissing you for the first time. 

it was messy and urgent, both of you aware that, at any moment, you could be interrupted. your noses were bumping together, teeth clacking against each other. the metallic tang of blood lingered on luke’s tongue, but neither of you seemed to care. you even bit his lip slightly, as if you wanted more. armor sat heavy and cold between your chests, preventing you from getting closer. luke had never loathed the protective gear more. 

he made up for it by lodging one hand underneath your jaw, and snaking the other beneath the celestial bronze, beneath the cotton of your shirt, admiring how your pulse quickened under his thumb when he grazed the soft skin of your stomach. you tangled your hands into his hair, nails scraping against his scalp. he groaned and felt you smirk against his lips. 

luke had kissed a few people before, sure, but never like this: like a knife to the gut, and if you pulled away, luke would surely bleed out and die. 

it wouldn’t be a hero’s death, in the traditional sense, but at least he’d die happy. 

how many heroes could claim that?

when luke ran out of air, feeling like his lungs were burning, he had to pull away. 

you glanced down at luke’s kiss-bitten lips, then back to his eyes. luke flushed under the intensity of your gaze. 

“just promise me something, tiger,” you whispered, voice hoarse. 

“anything.”

“come back alive.”

luke leaned forward and placed another kiss on your lips, this one much gentler than before.

“i promise.”

(iv. you love like a scar that won't fade)

the nightmares were getting worse. 

luke woke up in a cold sweat, taking gulps of air in an attempt to steady his breathing.

“luke.” 

your whisper did little to quell the pit of dread growing in his stomach, but it did enough to bring him back down to reality. 

he was at camp half-blood (fuck the gods of olympus), in the hermes cabin (fuck you, dad), in a bed next to yours (fuck, if he could tell you what — who — was going through his head, he would).

“i’m…i’m fine,” he murmured back, voice catching slightly on the lie. 

like clockwork, you shifted from your bed to his, slipping under the covers. it didn’t matter that it was a hot summer night, and the minute your legs touched his, he could feel himself starting to overheat. 

your thumb brushed over the thick edge of his scar, up his cheekbone to the corner of his eye. it had been a year, living with this reminder. a reminder that he had failed, just as much as his father and the olympians had failed him. 

luke tried to pretend that he didn’t come back from his quest as a shell of who he once was. after all, it was meant to be his shining moment as a demigod, meant to gain him all the glory and father’s praise he once wished for. 

what a fucking joke.

every morning, luke would crawl into a different skin. he welcomed new campers and taught sword-fighting. he laughed with chris and his other siblings and strategized with annabeth for capture the flag. he would be the easy-going, charming, skillful senior counselor who respected the gods and honored them in everything he did. 

again: a fucking joke.

nights were different, though, with you so close to him, you who could always see right through him.

every night, luke was a fourteen-year old boy again, with so much rage and resentment he didn't know what to do with it. 

of course, you were always you - a bleeding heart underneath layers of armor. you didn't care about fate, or the gods, or the titans. you cared about justice, you cared about what was right and fair. 

most of all, you cared about luke.

“you were screaming,” you told him, voice barely cutting through the soft snores and sleeptalkings of your other cabinmates. 

“sorry,” he managed. looking at you in the dull moonlight, luke noticed the deep shadows under your eyes. 

“it’s fine. you just….you scared me, tiger.” 

your hand still rested on his cheek, and for a second, luke hoped you would kiss him, but you didn’t. instead, you told him to try and get some sleep, and sank further into his bed before closing your eyes. 

for the hundredth night in a row, luke hoped you couldn’t hear his heart hammering in his chest as you fell asleep next to him.

since coming back from his quest, luke didn’t have it in him to suggest being anything other than friends, and you didn’t push it. there had been a few....moments between you, sure, but nothing more.

luke thought you might have changed your mind, because who would want to be with a bitter, worthless, wannabe hero? then again, that voice haunting his dreams…. luke could change that. 

but, at what cost?

(v. you protect people as ruthlessly as a starving dog)

luke could hear you talking to percy jackson outside. though he couldn’t quite determine what was being said, as much as he tried.

you entered the bathroom and instantly caught luke’s eyes in the mirror. you were wearing your faded pyjama shorts with cartoon crows, and a flannel shirt that luke had a sneaking suspicion might have been his. you smiled at him before setting up at the counter, one sink between you. 

“what was that about?” luke asked after spitting out a mouthful of minty toothpaste.

“oh, nothing.” you were searching through your toiletry bag for something, and seemed to come up short. “hey, do you have any extra dental floss?”

luke threw some over to you. as you effortlessly caught it, he noticed your knuckles, bruised and bloodied.

“what happened?” 

you finished flossing and briefly examined your hands before pulling out your toothbrush. 

“it’s not a big deal,” you assured. “some ares kids were picking on percy, and then they started pushing him around, like, really pushing him around, so….” 

“....you decided to send them to the infirmary.”

you squeezed some toothpaste on your brush before continuing. “i don’t need you to lecture me about how i shouldn’t be fighting with other campers because i’ve been here longer and i should be a good role model. you know what a good role model does? not let kids beat up other kids and think the worst punishment they’ll get is no dessert for a week.”

luke watched carefully as you jammed the toothbrush in your mouth and brushed with such force, he was worried your teeth might dislodge. he knew that you would shed blood for someone you loved, and that you didn’t particularly care if you had to break rules in doing so, because you believed that what was written was not necessarily what was right. 

in fact, luke loved that about you.

no, it wasn’t the fighting that luke cared about — it was who you were fighting for. 

percy was a good kid, he really was. luke just didn’t want you getting attached. 

“i wasn’t going to lecture you. i’m guessing chiron already did?” 

you nodded and spat out what looked like a combination of toothpaste and blood. you rinsed your mouth until the water lost its pinkish hue. once you were done, luke continued his train of thought.

“i just didn’t realize you cared so much about him.”

“about percy?” 

luke could tell that he didn’t have your full attention. you were packing your stuff back up, accidentally tossing luke’s dental floss into your bag, but he had more pressing matters to deal with.

“yeah. the kid’s only been at camp for three days, and you’re already acting like his guard dog.”

you finally turned to luke and glared at him. 

“maybe. but percy’s sweet and he doesn’t seem like the type to put up with bullshit. he’s been through a lot, and annabeth seems to like him, too. as far as i’m concerned, percy’s one of us, and i’m not going to let anyone push him around.”

luke raised an eyebrow at you. “he’s sweet?”

“yeah. like, just now, he gave me some blue raspberry jelly beans as a thank you. said his mom used to work at a candy store. he also wanted me to apologize to you for him. he feels bad about beating you in sword-fighting earlier.” 

you scoffed, like you resented luke for having to apologize to him on percy’s behalf. you definitely did not appreciate that guard dog comment. luke clenched his jaw, seething over what you had just said. 

satisfied with his reaction, you gave luke that nauseating smile of yours, tilted your head towards the exit. a truce, because you never liked to fight with luke for too long, and a order, because you knew luke would always follow. 

the two of you began walking back to your cabin in the warm mid-june air. 

“i wouldn’t say he beat me,” luke huffed. “it was beginner’s luck.”

“sure, tiger. it was beginner’s luck that disarmed the best swordsman we’ve had in the last 300 years.”

you nudged luke’s shoulder with yours, but he recoiled from your touch. 

“are you trying to make me feel worse?” luke tried his best to avoid snapping at you, keeping his tone measured.

“i’m just saying that maybe the kid has natural talent and that doesn’t make you any less talented. there’s no need to get jealous.”

luke resisted the urge to growl at your suggestion. 

to be clear, he was not jealous. it’s just that luke had spent years of blood, sweat, and tears getting to where he was then, and percy jackson had just gotten to camp. 

and, to be even more clear, luke was not jealous of how you were already defending percy with your whole body and your whole heart, the way you did for him. 

by then, you reached the front of the hermes cabin. luke could already hear the commotion of what he would need to deal with as soon as he walked in. the burden of being head counselor, one he approached with an elastic smile that could snap at any moment. 

you tugged on luke’s sleeve before he could open the door. 

“hey. are we okay?”

luke looked down at your fingers grasping the fabric of a sweatshirt he was just realizing was yours. your nails were painted a dark red, now chipped after a week of wear. you had begged luke to paint his nails then, and once again, he gave in. he even started to like the purple you had chosen just for him, so deep it was almost black. the same color you were wearing the first time you and luke met.

he smiled at the memory — a real smile, no plastic — and then smiled back up at you.

“we’re fine, karma.” and he moved to enter the cabin. luke could hear the threat of an argument bubbling up, what sounded like a petty one over a prank gone wrong.

“wait.” you tugged at his (your) sweatshirt once more. “there’s something i wanted to talk to you about, about tomorrow night—”

“annabeth called a meeting during free time.”

“yeah, i know, it’s just —”

“she’ll run through strategy for capture the flag then.”

“one of the aphrodite senior campers asked me to the campfire,” you blurted it out, and luke decided to ignore the sound of a fight breaking out from behind the wooden door.

what in the name of hades were you talking about?

“they asked you out? like…like a….” luke didn’t even want to speak the word, scared it would make it real.

“a date,” you said casually, as if that one word didn’t rip luke’s heart in a million pieces. “i said yes.” an admission that took all those pieces and set them on fire. 

sure, in the seven years since you and luke met, you’d each talked about boys, about girls, about dating and kissing them and going further. but there was something about this one that felt different. something about the way you told him.

“but, listen, i wanted to let you know it’s not —”

“good for you,” was all luke said through gritted teeth before someone started calling his name again, louder and more urgently, and he had to duck inside.  

(vi. you taste like burning cherries and righteous anger)

your team had won capture the flag, of course. the biggest news of the evening, though: percy jackson was the son of the sea god. 

he was a forbidden child, the hero of the great prophecy. 

everything was falling into place. 

all luke should be thinking about is kronos’ plan, and his role in it, and how a world without the gods of olympus was that much more in reach.  

unfortunately, for the time being, he was so consumed by you. 

you, from across the campfire, sporting cutoff denim shorts and fresh wounds from the game earlier. you, who had wrapped your knuckles in gauze, concealing their bruising, fixed the chips in your nail polish and stacked rings on your fingers. (for the record: luke had gifted you the one on your left thumb.) you, with dark lips that whispered too closely and laughed too loudly with a child of aphrodite— jordan li.

you hadn’t so much as looked at luke since congratulating each other on another win. when chiron announced his weekly gratitude to the gods at the start of that night’s campfire, you didn’t punctuate your resentment with your usual eye-roll or biting remark. you were too busy giggling at something jordan said.

luke wanted to be the one to whisper jokes in your ear. he wanted to be the one you left lipstick stains on later, along his jaw and down his neck. he wanted to be the one who kissed the blade mark on your shoulder and the bruises on your knuckles. 

and yet, hours passed and it seemed that the thought of luke had never so much as crossed your mind. he found himself at an after hours party with a few senior campers on the beach. a lethal recipe: a poorly crafted bonfire, some contraband drinks and you in jordan li’s lap, playing with their hair and pretending luke castellan did not exist. 

meanwhile, luke had katie gardner’s full attention. she was talking to him about the strawberry season, potentially leaning a bit too close into luke’s personal space, definitely flirting with him. 

luke could have done a lot worse than the head counselor of the demeter cabin, who always smelled like fresh lavender, whose eyes were the bright green of spring grass and whose lips tasted like golden honey. 

the problem was that luke only wanted you, and his eyes kept sliding over to where you were kissing jordan’s cheek, and he accidentally called the girl he was kissing by your name, which did not make her happy. 

katie threw her drink in his face, told him to wake the fuck up, and walked away.

a chorus of gasps and chuckles erupted as luke stood there, diet coke and vodka seeping into his shirt. the commotion seemed to capture your attention, because you suddenly appeared next to luke, an empty bottle of cherry soda in your hand.

“rough night, tiger?” your voice, that nickname, made luke sick, his face twisting into a frown. you don’t seem to notice or care. instead, you switched your bottle with luke’s and took a sip.

“looks like you were having a pretty good time,” luke practically sneered. “where’s your date?” 

 “they went to bed.” you swallowed a mouthful of beer, grimacing at its bitterness. “gods, this is terrible. you and i should go on the drink run next time — we have better taste.”

“so, are you and jordan like a thing now?”

you gave luke a smile he didn’t quite understand, but made his stomach churn in ways only you could. “would that be a problem?”

“of course not.” he answered way too quickly for that to be true. 

“let’s get out of here,” you suggested. “i think katie is about this close to strangling you with a tree branch.”

luke glanced over your shoulder to where green eyes glared back at him. 

nowhere could luke find it in him to care. he wasn’t even sorry. he just shrugged, took the bottle back from you, took his first sip all night. luke almost gagged (because of course you were right, and the stoll brothers had better fake ids than they had taste) but he suppressed it. 

“no. i’m good.”

biggest lie he ever said. like there wasn’t anger caught in his throat and jealousy swelling between his ribs.

“go find jordan,” he taunted. “kiss them, show them a good time! isn’t that the reason why you got all pretty?”

you narrowed your eyes at him carefully. your nostrils were slightly flared, and luke took a bit of pride in being able to rile you up.

“look, we haven’t really talked lately, and i think we should.”

“go find jordan,” he mocked once more. “almost all the aphrodite kids are here, and i’m sure you can be quiet enough to sneak into their cabin and if you want a quick fu—”

“luke.” you clipped his name, obviously getting to the limit of your patience with him. “if you want to stay here all night and be an asshole, you’re welcome to. you should know, though, that your happy-go-lucky hero mask is starting to crack and i don’t know if you could deal with the fallout from it shattering completely.”

you leaned in close and whispered that last part, very aware of the chattering that stopped and the eyes that watched the pair of you anxiously. luke was usually good at hiding that part of himself who wanted to burn the world down. 

in ways you didn’t realize, you were right: he couldn’t risk revealing it, not now.

not yet. 

“do whatever you want, castellan,” you spat out his last name, the combination of letters foreign in your mouth.“i’m leaving.”

luke should be proud of himself. he waited a whole two seconds before following you like a stray dog. 

luke didn’t know if he’d ever felt you that enraged by him, and it horrified him. it also made him hungry for more. 

“i’m not sure that jordan would want the two of us alone together at night,” he shouted after you, words echoing into the starless sky.

“gods, enough about jordan!” luke practically ran into you with how fast you turned around to confront him. “i was helping them with that stupid aphrodite tradition!”

“you….” luke faltered, all the snark leaving his body. “what?”

luke remembered silena beauregard once explaining the rite of passage to him: to prove themselves, a child of aphrodite had to make someone fall in love with them, and then break their heart.

“why…why would you agree to do that?”

you had reached the dining area by then, and you sat on one of the steps leading to the pavilion. luke stayed a few feet away, looking at you cautiously. 

“jordan and i are already friends, and they figured a fake relationship would be the way to avoid anyone from actually getting hurt in the process.”

“you seemed so…so into it, though,” luke stammered, the memory of you in jordan’s lap, laughter bubbling from your lips, still fresh.

“it’s called acting, dumbass.” the camp didn’t rely on electricity, but there were enough torches around that luke could see you roll your eyes. “anyways, i was trying to give you a heads-up last night, but you wouldn’t listen.” you took a deep breath. “and, honestly, i didn’t push it because….i figured i should test a hypothesis.”

a hypothesis? you’d known annabeth for too long.

“what hypothesis?”

you hesitated. 

“it doesn’t matter. fuck, this was stupid,” you muttered, and without another word, stormed through the dining pavilion, a short cut to the hermes cabin. your footsteps fell heavy against the marble, and luke’s not far behind. 

“what hypothesis?” he asked again.

nothing but rushed footsteps.

“what hypothesis?” luke finally yelled.

third time was the charm, because you stopped in your tracks and faced luke once again. a fire burned in the bronze brazier, where campers were forced to offer up portions of your food to the gods at every meal. its roaring seemed to captivate you, and the flames danced across your face, illuminating all your curves and edges.

“i’m angry at the gods,” you stated. 

this caught luke off guard. from the day the two of you met, luke knew you shared that feeling. you’d gotten quieter with your rage as you’d gotten older. luke supposed he got better at hiding it himself, as well. 

“i’m angry at the gods for letting bad shit happen even if they can stop it, and for building this world in the fucked up way they did. i’m angry at your dad for the way he’s treated you, but — you, luke castellan.” you finally met luke’s eyes with a gaze so sharp, luke almost felt himself bleed. “i’m also angry at you, and not just for your bullshit tonight.” 

your admission felt like a punch to the stomach, and luke was left with no air to breathe.

did you know?

“you haven’t been the same since your quest,” you continued, words slow and deliberate, the way you spoke when you were worried your voice would shake. “and i’ve come to terms with that in the past few years, but you….you’ve never tried to ice me out before. you’ve been acting distant since december, and it’s been driving me insane. do you realize how much i miss my best …..” you swallowed the word friend. “how much i miss you?”

luke hesitated, because what could he say? i know i’ve been distant, but i’ve been busy trying to start a war between the gods. sorry babe! 

would you hate him, if you knew? 

you had to have known that, despite the distance, luke missed you. for tartarus sake, in the last two days, he’d driven himself mad at you calling a fourteen year old boy sweet, and he was about to combust at the image of you dating someone else, with little care as to the collateral damage. 

"you can't just avoid me, makeout with katie fucking gardner, and then….” you trailed off, hiding your face in your hands. whether it was to hide embarrassment or tears, luke wasn’t sure.

a smirk spread across luke’s face at the revelation that he hadn’t been the only one jealous at the bonfire that night. it lit luke up with the confidence he needed to not completely fall to his knees in front of you, beg for your forgiveness for everything he’s done.

“why do you care if i make out with katie fucking gardner?” 

as he waited for a response, luke walked towards you until your back hit one of the marble columns. 

“why do you care if i’m with jordan fucking li?” you clenched your jaw and looked right through luke. a clear indication that you wanted him to break down first; it wouldn’t be you who yielded this fight.

“because i want to be the one you’re with.” at that point, luke was so close to you that he swore he could hear your heartbeat. he reached out and played with the hem of your shorts. “why do you care if i make out with katie gardner?”

“because.” you drew in a sharp breath when luke’s fingers brushed underneath the denim, across the warm skin of your thigh. you closed your eyes. “don’t make me say it, tiger.” 

the desperation in your voice made luke want to do unholy things with you, to you. luke knew you didn’t think of him as a saint, and you never expected him to be one. the reality was that you weren’t much better, either. what was essentially an altar to the gods burned bright next to you, but it seemed neither of you had ever cared less about it than in that moment. 

luke would watch olympus fall. he would dethrone the gods and watch their glass castle shatter and find glory in a new world. in the grand scheme of things, he was willing to lose this battle.

in fact, he would have rather betrayed the titan lord himself than waste another second not kissing your lips. 

so, he kissed you, and you kissed him back with such force, such hunger, it was ungodly.

no, you certainly weren’t a saint — but you were divine, in the most brutal, intoxicating way. in the way you shuddered when luke lodged a leg between your thighs; in the way you threaded your fingers through the belt loops of his jeans to bring him closer; in the way the metal of your rings burned through the skin of his hip, right to the bone, which made him shudder, and you smile triumphantly against his jaw.

the more he tasted your smirk flavored by cherry soda and the ashes of nearby flames, the more he felt your feral teeth against his neck and your wicked nails digging into his shoulders, the more you tugged on his curls, the more luke thought: maybe. 

maybe you would give into your seething resentment, live up to those eye-rolls and snarky comments that got you in trouble with chiron, on the edge of hot water with the gods. maybe you would join the titan army. maybe, just maybe, this time, you would follow luke.

and yet — maybe wasn’t enough if it meant he could lose this. luke wouldn’t risk it, not until he kissed every battle scar and bruise on your body, and you did the same to his. 

“wait.”

it was the last thing luke wanted to do, but he complied. he took the opportunity to appreciate the chaos he created: your shirt in disarray, your lipstick a mess, your chest heaving and desperate to catch a breath. 

“i promised jordan that we’d keep up our charade for a week, two at the most. do you think we could keep this…” you tightened your fist around the fabric of his shirt. “a secret until then?”

luke responded by pressing his lips to yours once more, because there were definitely worse secrets to keep.

(vii. you wouldn’t hesitate to make him bleed)

luke had just left percy jackson to die.

he should be leaving camp, now, but he needed to see you one last time. 

the universe works in mysterious ways, because you were out on a run through the forest, and you crossed paths before he even had time to wonder where you were.

“hey, tiger.” you smiled as if this was a regular afternoon. the two of you would teach your afternoon activities, sneak away during dinner so luke could kiss you in that spot that made you gasp. “wanna join me? i was just wrapping up, but i could be convinced to go longer.”

for a second, he was tempted to. very tempted. 

“i don’t have much time.”

you seemed to notice luke’s sullen mood and you dropped your playful demeanor. 

luke explained: the messages from kronos in his dreams, him stealing the lightning bolt and helm of darkness to start a war between the gods and framing percy. the plan to destroy olympus that luke had pledged his life to.

percy was surprised at what luke had done, and luke could imagine that the rest of camp would be, too. luke was the golden boy of camp half-blood, everyone’s big brother. 

you, on the other hand, didn’t express any sense of shock. 

“luke.” you said his name like you weren’t quite sure it was poison. “i’m going to give you five seconds to tell me that you’re joking.”

five seconds of silence passed. you took a few steps back from luke.

“i….i should have told you sooner.”

“yeah,” you scoffed. “you should have. but, you didn’t. did it feel good, having the titan king whispering sweet nothings in your ear? all the lies about how this war is the only way to get the glory you so desperately want? it’s fucking delusional.” 

“it’s not delusional—”

“yes, it is!” you glared at him. “you’re on the wrong side of a war you made the mistake of starting.”

luke straightened his posture, thinking about how hypocritical you were being. 

“isn’t this what you’re all about? revenge, karma. your mom will probably join us, too. don’t you want to see the gods finally get what they deserve?”

“not like this. i can’t believe how desperate you are, to believe that kronos is going to make everything right. it’s pathetic,” you spat. “i’m not saying the gods don’t deserve to be taken down a notch. their fucking obsession with power and glory….it’s sick and twisted, but i don’t think your titan king is any better. i don’t think you are any better.” 

“it’s time that the gods fall. this is the only way, even if it isn’t perfect,” luke countered. his voice was firmer now as he absorbed your anger. your mother was the goddess of revenge, but you clearly didn't understand the sacrifices, pain, and blood that was required to make the world a better place.  

luke just needed to convince you.

“we’ve talked about this for years,” he continued. “nothing is balanced! there’s no justice here, for anyone.  we can build a better world where we don’t have to burn our scraps and throw ourselves at monsters to get attention. we can fight together like we always have. y/n, i love—”

“don’t,” you snapped. “don’t you fucking dare. you should have died on your quest.” your voice laced with venom. one hand gripping the knife you always kept on your belt. “that dragon should have fucking sliced through you and saved us all the trouble.”

something pricked in the back of his throat, down to his stomach.

“you don’t mean that.”

“i do,” you promised. “at least you would have died with all of us thinking you’re a hero instead of the traitor you really are.”

you grabbed your knife, took a fighting stance. 

“i’m not going to fight you,” was all luke could say. he noticed your hand tremble, and you tightened the grip on your knife to prevent emotion from slipping through your invisible armor. 

in that moment, you have could slice through luke, and it would hurt less than everything you just said, less than the murderous look you were giving him, like he was just another monster you wouldn’t think twice about sending to tartarus.

luke didn’t even have a chance to unsheathe his sword before you charged at him, but he quickly had you pinned to the ground, the tip of your own knife pointed at you. he hesitated. the blade pressed harder against your cheek than he intended, enough to break the skin and let a few droplets of dark crimson escape. 

“please come with me,” he pleaded. you didn’t answer, but you did seem surprised by the softness of his voice. 

a few moments passed, the celestial bronze still between you. luke waited for you to see his way, to yield to his proposal.

you didn’t. instead, you took advantage of the situation. you wrapped your leg around his and flipped your position. in the process, you regained possession of your knife. without the hesitation that held luke back, you sliced through his cheek, deep. luke bit his lip to suppress a groan, tasting blood. your gaze set his whole body on fire as he waited for your next move. that was when you glanced down at his camp necklace, and the new clay bead added to commemorate this summer.

a turquoise trident.

“percy told me he was on his way to see you,” you realized. “what did you do?”

luke didn’t answer. he knew then that a choice ran through your head. 

and it stung, just a little, watching you sprint away through the trees in a last ditch effort to save percy’s life. 

there was a small, pathetic part of luke that wanted you to choose him, even if it meant you would have plunged the knife into his chest.

#this is my baby fr #really feeling the tragic hero vibe down to my core #will prob do a part 2 from reader's POV! #ofc inspired by get him back! bc nemesis!reader.... #percy jackson #pjo fanfic #pjo series #luke castellan #luke castellan x you #luke castellan x reader #pjo x reader #luke castellan angst #luke castellan imagine #percy jackson and the olympians #luke castellan smut #saf writes #Spotify

[futureman]

eyes on the monitor

pairing: mike schmidt x f!reader

summary: mike catches something on the security cameras that really shouldn't be happening at a family-friendly pizzeria—even an abandoned one

warnings: 18+ MDNI, stranger!reader, submissive!mike, trespassing, smut, m&f masturbation, public masturbation, voyeurism, exhibitionism, squirting, finger sucking, cum eating, looming danger

word count: 3k

Mike has seen a lot of things on the security monitors in his three short nights working at Freddy's. 

Old animatronics that still roam about like they're possessed, cryptic messages written on dusty windows and mirrors. But he can honestly say he never saw this coming.

As the cameras shift from right to left, one of the screens glitches and crackles, and then there's you, tucked into a booth like you belong there. Except you don't. He's not even sure how you evaded his notice, let alone how you got into the building.

Don't you have any idea what's lurking in these halls? The dangers that patiently wait behind the curtained stage not even ten feet from where you're sitting? From where you're...

Fuck.

There's no way you possibly can because you're still lounging there without a care in the world, your legs spread wide and your jeans dangling off one ankle while you fuck yourself on your fingers. Two of them, your ring and middle, pump a steady rhythm in and out, dribbling slick all over the vinyl beneath you. You're so wet, even the camera's picking up the refracted light from the prize counter glinting off your pussy.

He should be panicked. He should be halfway to the auditorium by now to stop you, to drag you out of the pizzeria before the unthinkable happens, but—

But he can't bring himself to move or stop watching. He can't stop himself from palming his stiffening cock through his pants, either. Your head lolls back onto the booth and your body readjusts, giving him the perfect view of your languid movements. Now, it's almost like you're on display just for him.

And suddenly, he doesn't care about Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, or Foxy. He definitely doesn't care about his job or whatever else that career counselor said on the phone. The only thing Mike cares about is getting his dick out as fast as humanly possible so he can match the calculated press of your fingers and your frustratingly unhurried pace. 

You're thoroughly enjoying your pleasure—that much is clear—and it would be so easy to just...join in. He'd planned on sleeping through his fourth night, but now that you're here, there's nothing else he'd rather be doing than spending his shift fucking his fist and pretending it's you.

It'd be wrong. So, so wrong, but as you continue on, completely oblivious to his inner turmoil, he can feel himself getting harder and harder. There's a growing wet patch on the front of his sweatpants that's getting difficult to ignore, and he nearly moans as he grinds the heel of his hand into his lap for relief.

His gaze trails down your figure, surprisingly clear on the aging monitors, and he watches, dry-mouthed, as your unoccupied hand snakes up your body to tweak a nipple through your shirt. 

Fuck it, he can't take this anymore.

He yanks his pants down so fast, he's shocked he doesn't knock himself onto the floor, and hisses out a breath the moment his fingers wrap around himself. It aches with how good it feels, but he only allows his eyes to roll back for a split second before they're locked back on you. 

And you're sexy as hell. Your shirt's been tugged up and tucked under your chin to reveal that you decided to forgo a bra, in addition to the rest of your inhibitions, and he's thanking every deity he doesn't believe in that he doesn't have to imagine the plush curve of your tits and how they'd look sucked into his mouth.

Crap. He can't keep thinking shit like that if he wants to last longer than a few minutes. Ignoring the angry pulsing against his palm, he starts to stroke himself in time with your thrusts, diligently following your lead. But you're moving so slowly like you've got all the time in the world in this abandoned wonderland you've claimed for yourself, and Mike's time is limited. 

The longer this night goes on, the more restless they become, and it won't be long before those curtains open and you're interrupted. For good. There must be something seriously wrong with him, because he doesn't give a shit about that, either. They can wait. He's got another job to finish, and he needs this.

It's been so long since he last allowed himself to let go, and even longer since his body actually wanted to. He's harder than he's ever been in his life, and it's confusing and a little painful, and yet he hopes he lasts until his alarm goes off at 6 a.m., teetering on the edge of nirvana right alongside you. He wants you to make him cum so badly, and he knows you will, even if you don't know it yourself.

Tiny, hushed pleas escape him as your fingers speed up, begging you to coax him, to encourage him to be good for you and follow your every move. His office is too far from the auditorium for his words to carry, but he continues to moan them anyway, desperately. Obediently.

His eyes flutter closed as he succumbs to the fantasy of your lips grazing the shell of his ear, giving him firm instructions and praising him when he proves how well he can listen.

Such a good boy for me, Mike. A little faster, not too much. Nice and tight, just like that.

"Fuck. Like this? Is...is this okay?" he whimpers aloud, thumbing over the tip on his next upstroke. 

His hips buck into his hand at the sensation, and he grits his teeth, anticipating an admonishment that never comes. He's more than a little disappointed. 

That is, until he hears it, crystal clear as it filters through the cracked door and reverberates through his entire body. A needy, perfect moan, rising in pitch and volume with each passing moment. Yours.

You must've heard him, somehow. It's the only explanation. He has no idea how long he's been babbling, drunk on the tight, slick slide of skin against skin, but you're responding to it encouragingly like he's only ever imagined in his wettest dreams.

Mike's eyes shoot open, darting back to the monitor, and he has to grip the base of his cock tight to keep from cumming then and there. You're staring directly at the camera now, your chest heaving as you fuck yourself with three fingers, and he winces at how quickly his balls start to tighten.

He's going to cum. Shit. Shit.

But you didn't tell him he could. You're not even aware of the power you hold over him, and yet—

"You sound close, baby. You gonna cum for me?"

He sees your lips move and then your voice rings out a moment later, breathy and labored, and...how the fuck did you end up in this place? Who are you? He fucks into his fist frantically, leaking precum all over his fingers, and he can feel sweat matting his dark curls to his forehead, pooling where his aching wrist meets his hip bone. 

Maybe it doesn't even matter how or why you're in this pizzeria, not anymore. He can't stop anyway, not when you're urging him on and calling him baby. He feels delirious, blind to the rest of the security monitors and newly flickering lights. To the purple curtain slowly opening behind you.

Right now, it's just you and him. The familiar, searing heat in the pit of his groin, and the wet squelch of your fingers stroking your convulsing walls and rubbing tight circles into your clit—you're both so close, he knows it. He just needs you to say it. He needs your permission.

"Only if—," he gasps, belatedly realizing that his other hand is cupping his balls, squeezing reflexively without his permission. "—only if you say I can."

He watches your jaw drop, and your thighs begin to quake in response. Quicker than he can process, there's a sudden shift, and your gaze darkens mischievously to match the subtle quirk of your lips. You're in control now and you know it. You like it. He does, too.

Your pace doesn't slow at all and, instead, your hips begin to swivel into your touch, grinding into the sticky vinyl bench for more friction. 

So, that turns you on, huh? If he strains his ears, he swears he can just make out the squeaking of a diner booth being pushed to its limit. He's never been more jealous of furniture in his life.

That could've been him, if only he'd manned up and done his damn job. He could've had you bent over that table or bouncing on his cock; felt you gushing around him, clamping down on him. You would've wrung him dry.

Turns out you still do, just from a little further away. 

"Still hanging in there?" you coo from the other room, but the teasing in your voice is undercut by something headier. You sound wrecked.

His eyebrows pinch together, his expression almost pained, and he can feel that telltale pressure building, building.

"Y-yeah, but I...fuck, I can't hold it anymore," he whimpers, unable to keep his hips from snapping up into his hand. His thrusts are getting sloppier and tears are beginning to gather at the corners of his eyes. He wishes you could see him right now. "C-can I? Please."

Your fingers stutter and, for a second, he thinks he might've pushed you over the edge, but you recover just long enough to give him one final push. To tell him the one thing he's been longing to hear since he tugged down his pants and started playing your little game.

"Such a good boy," you repeat from earlier, a murmur that just barely reaches his ears, except this time it's really you and not just a fantasy. "Cum, baby. Let me hear you."

Then, his mind goes blissfully blank.

Mike doesn't just cum, he bursts. Soft whimpers taper into something guttural and animalistic as thick spurts coat his security vest and dribble down his length, soaking into the thick fabric of his sweatpants. He moans his way through it, nearly giving himself a friction burn with the intensity of his grip and speed. And he's loud, just like you told him to be. Much louder than he should be.

For a brief moment, his vision whites out, and he almost misses what he's been looking forward to all night. He blinks away the lingering spots obscuring his sight, and that's when it happens. Bathed in flashing green and yellow fluorescents, your entire body curls in on itself, shaking as your orgasm overcomes you and soaks the floor. 

His cock jerks pathetically in his hand as you work yourself through it, your eyes heavy-lidded and still locked on the camera. After a few more pumps, you slump into your seat and remove your fingers from your cunt, sucking them wetly into your mouth. 

He should get up. He should walk right into that auditorium with his dick still out so you can clean him up too, but he feels frozen in place. The skin at the back of his neck prickles and erupts into goosebumps and it feels like a warning, yet he still can't bring himself to look away from you. 

So, he doesn't notice the purple curtain opening just a fraction more in the background, and the curved, silver hook that peeks out from behind it. The blood rushing in your ears and steady heaving of your chest masks the metallic rattling, leaving you dangerously in the dark, too.

But Mike's eyes on the monitor are just enough to keep the pirate in his cove, and you're captivating enough to ensure they stay there. 

Sticky fingers twitch in his lap and, as if you can tell, you smirk around your own before pulling them free with a lewd pop. His mouth waters at the thought of what you must taste like and, unbeknownst to him, you're thinking the exact same about him. Since you're not there to help him yourself, you ask him to be good for you one last time.

"It's your turn," you laugh teasingly, swirling your tongue around your fingertips. "You should probably clean yourself up before you head home. It's almost six."

Heat curls low in his stomach and compels him to obey again. A cursory glance down at his watch tells him you're right—his alarm will go off soon, way sooner than he expected, and he's still covered in sweat and his own release. He could pop out of the office to the bathroom and be back before any real damage is done, probably. But that's not really what you're asking for.

"Tell me what you want me to do," he calls out, not bothering to hide the neediness in his voice. He's never experienced anything like this—like you—before and he's not sure he'll get the opportunity ever again.

"Lick it off. All of it," you instruct, dropping your fingers between your legs to swirl around your clit before popping them back into your mouth. Slowly, you show him exactly what you want, and he's a little horrified to realize he's getting hard again. "Can you do that for me?"

He nods quickly, forgetting you can't see his approval, but it doesn't matter, anyway. He's sucking the drying cum off his palm and fingers faster than he can reply, and his muffled responding moan tells you everything you need to know. After everything that's happened during this unexplainable night shift and everything you've made him feel, he'd likely do anything you asked.

"Such a good listener," you continue, ceasing your ministrations to lazily slip your underwear and jeans back into place. 

He's hit with a sudden wave of panic. This can't be over yet. There's still so much mystery shrouding you and whatever connection you have to this place, and if you leave now, he'll be left wondering forever. He wants answers, but disappointingly, you only leave him with more questions.

"How did I get so lucky with you, huh? The other security guards weren't nearly this fun," you smirk, dropping another bomb he never saw coming.

Oh. Oh. He freezes as he finishes laving the remaining wetness between his thumb and index fingers, the reality of the situation finally making itself known. This isn't the first time you've done this. It's probably not even the second or third. This is a habit, and he's not the only unwitting participant to fall prey to your seduction.

Fuck, he knew you were too good to be true. He hates that his body's still fighting his rationality while you sit there genuinely believing you've done nothing wrong. So innocent and, yet, still such an enigma. No one's ever made him cum that hard but, thankfully, his head is finally clear enough to put a stop to all of this. It's time to do his job.

The opportunity presents itself almost immediately. The flickering lights that have progressively gotten worse since his shift started reach a fever pitch, and the familiar figure in the corner of the screen reveals itself, wrenching his attention away from you. 

Mike barely has enough time to warn you before the screens start to glitch—every single one of them—and display nothing more than lines and lines of meaningless code. 

"You have to go. Now," he yells, struggling to be heard over the tinny screeching and jarring sounds of children's laughter crackling violently over the intercom. "Just—get out of here. Run, you have to run!"

He doesn't wait for a response, operating on autopilot as he wrestles his pants up and shoots out of his seat to the breaker box across the room. Terror and adrenaline pump through his veins, puppeteering him through the instructions left for him by Mr. Raglan.

Pull the lever down then back up, reset the power, and wait for the monitors to reboot. All he can do now is hope the machines don't deem you a threat and let you go. The room is plunged into darkness and the speakers go eerily silent.

Then, the systems come back online just like they're supposed to. But you're gone. He frantically searches the monitors for even a trace of you, evidence that you ever existed at all, but there's nothing. The only relief he's granted is that there's no blood or pieces of you scattered across the building. There's nothing at all.

Bracing himself on the desk in front of him, he breathes in desperate lungfuls of air, crashing from his adrenaline-fueled high and giving in to exhaustion. Just one more night. One more night at Freddy's, and he'll take that paycheck and never look back.

After a while of waiting for his panic to subside, his watch starts to beep, signaling the end of this night from hell. Fighting to ignore his conflicting feelings and lingering confusion, and even more so the phantom heat still licking at the base of his spine when he lets his thoughts stray back to you, he grabs his backpack and all but speed walks to the breaker to cut the power again.

As his fingers close around the lever, the intercom suddenly crackles to life. Something akin to hope blooms in his chest, and he whips around to see your image picked up by the camera at the entrance, radiant and unharmed under the morning sun of a new day. 

You're smiling, and he can't find it in himself to care that he's smiling back. You turn to leave, then think better of it.

"Same time tomorrow?" 

He scoffs, shaking his head at how ridiculous his life has become since he started this gig. If not even haunted animatronic mascots and the looming threat of death can't keep you away, then who is he to try? 

Yeah. He'll see you tomorrow.

thanks for reading!

#mike schmidt x reader #mike schmidt x you #mike schmidt imagine #mike schmidt #fnaf movie #five nights at freddy's #fnaf #fnaf smut #fnaf imagine #mike schmidt smut

[livlaughloveluke]

𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐤 - 𝐥.𝐜 🪸

daughter of demeter! reader x luke castellan 🫧

summary- the “best friends” of camp half-blood maybe wanna become a little more..

warnings- fem!reader, not proofread

1.7k

Camp Half-blood was illuminated by gold streaks casted from the early morning sun. Light seeped into Cabin 4 through the window, painting the room with warm hues of yellow and orange. The bright rays were a natural alarm, gently waking you from your warm sleep. 

As the covers slipped off your skin with ease, you carefully tiptoed out of the twin bed to close the blinds. Young campers softly snored, and you couldn’t help but smile at their blissful state. Grabbing the rough fabric, you quietly pulled the two pieces together, blocking any more sunlight from startling your siblings.

Sleep still threatened to drag you under, so you slipped on sandals and trudged towards the kitchen, eager to get a warm cup of coffee, or really anything to help you wake up. 

Outside was fairly silent, contrary to the rowdy and noisy afternoons that typically filled the camp. The only ones awake were boisterous birds, who sung an enchanting song, and a few other counselors who were busy setting up  for the day. 

Your steady steps carried you to the small camp kitchen, where snacks littered the room as a reward for the effort of the counselors. A small jet black coffee maker stood on the counter, with Luke Castellan lingering next to it, facing away from you. Your presence went unnoticed by him, and you watched as he swiftly picked up two steaming mugs.

He slightly jumped at the sight of you, surprised by your hushed entrance. 

“H-Hey. Made you your coffee.” He said, reaching out to awkwardly hand you one of the energizing brown liquids. You delicately giggled at him for his initial fright, and accepted the sweet gesture.

“Thank you. Excited for today’s activities?” You asked, taking a sip of your toasty drink. Today, Hermes and Demeter Cabin were partnering up for a lazy day doing arts and crafts and indoor activities. The kids spent the past week relentlessly training, working hard from dusk till dawn, so an easy day was needed.

“Any time I get to spend with you is exciting.” Luke replied, smirking, before realizing how that sounded and backtracking. “I- Uh, I didn’t mean it-“ 

You laughed again, quickly cutting him off.

“I know what you meant. See you at eight.” You turned away, teasingly bumping his shoulder. 

“See ya.” He whispered out, pursing his lips and doing a slight nod as he witnessed you sauntering away. 

You and Luke had been close friends since the beginning. He arrived with Annabeth and Grover, confused and broken by the world. Luke never wanted to be a demigod, to lose Thalia. It was all too much for him.

But then you passed by in the infirmary, practically radiating a positive energy. You smiled at him, a genuine smile, with your nose scrunching up and your eyes nearly closing, before going to chat with some Apollo kid.

You were selected to give him and Annabeth a tour later that afternoon, presumably for your friendly and charming personality that seemed to lure people in. Luke got to observe your perfection firsthand as you helped the his sister adapt to the new surroundings, sweetly showing her everything to love about camp.

Luke followed you around like a lost puppy, mesmerized by your every move. With every step you took, luscious flowers blossomed, creating a beautiful scenery. Not to mention, the kids looked up to you so dearly, with the way you patched their nearly invisible cuts and grew them tulips on their worst days. 

The sad reality was you were more of a mother to them than their biological parents, even if you were only fourteen at the time. You did your best to make them feel “normal,” to let them live a glorious childhood that you were never granted. 

In those five years after his arrival, you became close as ever. Whether it was spending time basking in the strawberry fields or splashing around in the lake, you spent every minute together, your bond stronger than any weapon forged in Olympus. You laid by him on those restless nights before he got claimed, and after, too. And when you had a small cold, he went full Apollo-mode and spent hours glued to your side until you felt better. 

However, there was one teensy issue. Luke was hopelessly and utterly in love with you. Every one saw the way he gazed at you a little too long and with a little too much love in his eyes for just a friend.

Well, all noticed except you. The poor boy thought you weren’t interested, but the reality was your concept of love was so twisted and blurry that you had no clue what “love” even looked like. 

So, both you and him stayed silent, hoping one would realize eventually, and end this torture of a situationship.

Which brings us back to now, a cool and humid lazy morning with the campers, lounging on the few picnic tables decorated outside Hermes Cabin. Luke watched as you sat with your (and his) siblings, carefully threading pearly pink beads on a flimsy string. You laughed as you talked to the young children, making sure they were all included. The sun brightened your features, making you appeal heavenly. And your eyes twinkled with curiosity as a little unclaimed kid ranted on about some silly story.

“Dude, you’re staring again.” Chris chimed in, raising his eyebrows as he continued to paint navy shades of blue onto a rock.

“Shut up. Aren’t you whipped for Clarisse?” Luke sarcastically asked.

“If anyones whipped here, it’s you. How long have you liked her now? Can’t you just tell her already?” He was quick to return the sassy attitude, remaining unbothered by his friend’s remark.

“It’s not that simple, you know that. What if she doesn’t like me back and-“ He tried to ramble on, negative thoughts swallowing him whole. Luckily, Chris was there to pull him out of his own mind with yet another dumb comment.

“Damn. I knew you weren’t Athena’s son, but I didn’t know you were that clueless.”

“What?” Luke questioned, slightly offended.

“How many guys has she dated since she met you?”

“None. But I don’t see how this really relates-“

“And how many have asked her out?”

Luke paused for a second. There was Ethan from Ares, who tried asking her on a date a week ago, but she declined. Or Jack from Aphrodite, who, let’s be real, was the most attractive boy in camp, but she rejected him, too.

Chris took his silence as a victory. “Exactly.” He retorted.

“Whatever.” Luke shrugged, hopping up to sit by you. You scooted to your left, making room for him instantly. Cheers erupted from the campers as they saw their (second favorite) counselor.

“Luke! Y/N told us that you still snore when you sleep!” One of them pipped out, sending the rest of the minions into a giggle fit. Luke took a dramatic gasp in, placing a hand on his heart to pretend he was hurt.

“I do not!” He yelped, making the younger laugh even harder. He couldn’t help but smile as he watched the kids joke around.

“I can’t believe you would betray me like that!” He said to you, trying to fake upset, but the huge grin on his face said otherwise.

“I mean, am I wrong? You are the loudest sleeper I’ve ever met!” You reply, grinning.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He looks the other way, and before you can say anything, a voice cut you off.

“Hey! Luke, Y/N!” A blond Apollo child shouted from afar, gently jogging while approaching them. They shifted their attention, prepared to fulfill whatever task presented.

“Chiron needs you in the office. New kid arrived. They said his name was Percy or something?” He finished, jogging away, most likely to get back to the infirmary.

The leaders looked back at their older friend, wondering if he could cover while they helped this newcomer out. 

Chris gave a thumbs up, signaling he could watch them for a few minutes. 

You and Luke playfully danced around one another on the short stroll, talking about anything and everything while you walk through the woods.

Soon, you reached the open building, the stain glass windows casting a colorful glow. You peer inside to see a blond teen, looking around twelve years old, arguing with Dionysius.

“Peter Johnson is here!” The drunk croaked out, and the two counselors made sure to swoop in. 

“Percy, Right?” You said, slightly a little too enthusiastic for 8am on a Tuesday morning.

“Yeah. At least someone around here can get my name right.” He rolled his eyes. 

“Sorry about that. He can be a little.. chaotic. I’m Y/N, counselor of Demeter Cabin, and this is Luke, counselor of Hermes Cabin. We can give you a tour, if you want.” You explained, gesturing towards Luke who gave a friendly smile.

“Yeah, sure.” The blond boy replied.

-

“And this is Hermes Cabin, where you’ll be staying.” Luke exclaimed, pointing to the rough looking room.

“Uh, no offense, but why am I staying here?” Percy asked, disgust lingering in his words as he stared down the messy bunks.

“Uh, Offense taken. First of all, we’re definitely the best cabin of all time. And all unclaimed campers stay here, along with children of minor Gods.” The brunette said.

“Hate to break it to you Luke, but Demeter absolutely solos your Cabin.” You cut in, mouth letting out a ‘tsk’ sound. 

“Slow your roll there. Your cabin may be neat, but the amount of plants in there is slightly concerning.” Luke joked, you and him now unknowingly engaged in your own little conversation.

“It’s better than your pig pen!” You shouted, your sweet laugh echoing throughout the area.

“Whatever you say, Princess.” He replied, and Percy took a step back, running into an older teen, staring at the “friends” who were flirting right before everyone.

“Do they always act like this?” He asked, referring to their nonstop conversations, and their slight physical touch. Your fleshy fingers were somehow always grazing his calloused skin. 

“Always. It’s sickening.” Chris replied.

“Agreed.” Percy sighed out, as Luke looked back at the two. They both gave an encouraging look, telling him to shoot his shot. 

“Hey, I was wondering if you, uh, wanted to go out to the lake tonight? Just us?” He asked you, throat going dry and knees threatening to buckle as he fidgeted with his thumbs.

“I’d love too, Luke.” You replied, blushing as you swayed nervously.

“Great! It’s a date! Unless you don’t want it to be-“ He was quick to start, but you briefly interrupted.

“I’d like that.” 

#luke castellan #luke castellan fluff #luke castellan x reader #luke castellan x you #luke castellan x demeter reader #liv’s writing !

[queer-little-demigod]

i like me better when i’m with you - luke castellan

summary when a new kid comes to camp, luke gets a bit more stressed than usual, and he goes to his safe space—you.

fic type fluff

pairing luke castellan x fem!Apollo!reader

word count 1.2k

warnings stressed!luke, very much fluff

masterlist

dividers from this post of @cafekitsune ! credits to them and do go check out their posts <3

When people thought of the best swordsman in camp, their first thought was Luke Castellan. The calm Hermes cabin counselor, the one who took every unclaimed camper under his wing. It also meant he was thought of as the only one to beat Clarisse in a fight, the one who had better technique than the others by light years.

But for you, Luke was the sweet boy who brought you flowers every other day, the boy who called you ‘sunshine’ to play around, the boy who held you so gently and kissed you so sweet. To you, Luke was just a soft sweetheart who loved you to the ends of the earth.

But ‘only for you’ as a statement held fast and true with him.

He never acted the same way around other campers the way he acted with you. Not only did they never receive even the slightest easy praise as you did, but they never got that blind trust, that unwavering faith he had in you. Maybe the trust bit was a bit exclusive to Annabeth, but even then that was because they were close. Family.

So it did come to you as a shock when Percy came to camp and that side came out in Luke.

After poor Percy’s unfortunately encounter with Clarisse, you had spotted Luke with him and decided to come over. As the counselor of the Apollo cabin, you additionally decided to help your boyfriend and his new little stray.

“Hey Luke,” you smiled, approaching them both as they talked under the shade of the trees. You leaned your arm against his shoulder, smiling at Percy in a friendly way.

Luke took a second to just look at you. He took in the way the dampened sun kissed your hair, making it shine ever so slightly, the way the shadows fell cleanly on your face to highlight the contours of your face, the way you were so at ease around him and the new camper.

He was so used to seeing you that he only had to take a second to appreciate your features and presence.

“Oh, Percy, meet Y/n, Apollo cabin counselor,” Luke said with a slight smile as he looked at the boy.

You put a hand out to Percy. He did really look like a sweet boy with his soft-looking face, blue-green eyes, and curly gold hair.

“Hey Percy, welcome to camp half-blood,” you smiled. “I’m Y/n, Luke’s girlfriend,”

You could practically hear Luke roll his eyes beside you, his hand resting sneakily against the small of your back as it always did.

“Nice to meet you, Y/n,” said Percy with a small smile.

“Aw, he’s so sweet for a kid on his first day,” you said, looking at Luke, who laughed a bit and looked down, running a hand through his dark curly hair. “What’re you two up to?”

“Nothing much, sunshine, just trying to find out who’s this guy’s godly parent,” Luke shrugged, looking back at you.

“Nice,” you laughed, leaning up to kiss his cheek. “I won’t hold you guys up for too long, though. Don’t worry,”

However, once you left, as usual Luke felt your absence instantly. It wasn’t the literal absence, obviously, which everyone felt, but he always felt like a part of him was missing when he wasn’t around you. As if part of his happiness wasn’t there because in truth, it wasn’t.

It also meant his safe space was not around instantly. It meant that his confidant was too many steps away to be immediate, to be accessible.

So he waited, as always.

He waited for the sun to go down, for the time for responsibilities to go down with it. He waited for the moon to rise, for the sky to turn from cornflower to depthless midnight blue.

The camp was quiet, deathly so, with the distant call of owls from the woods and the rustle of leaves when the scarce wind blew. The night was a mask which cloaked his sounds, his footsteps, his presence, as he walked down the mossy stone pathway into the trees, towards the mirroring lake.

There you sat, the daughter of the sun, looking ever-radiant in the moon’s soft glow. Your body was a silhouette against the silver of the ethereal light, your calculating eyes cast towards the lake, where there seemed another world to mirror this.

Lost in your own thoughts, thoughts which were kept at bay during the sun’s time, you didn’t hear the quiet footsteps, the shift of the pebbles on the lakeside, come up behind you and rest his hands on your shoulders.

“Luke, you scared the hell out of me!” You exclaimed, laughing softly, looking up at him with shining eyes.

He shrugged and sat beside you, leaning back on his palms as his long legs stretched out before him, feet a good way away from the water.

“It wasn’t intentional,” he smiled, looking at you.

Your brows quirked up, amused. “Oh, is that right?”

“Yup,”

“Don’t pop the ‘p’ like that you sound ridiculous,”

“I can never sound ridiculous, I’m too good looking for that,”

“Can’t say I agree,”

He looked at you with mock offence and grabbed you around your shoulders, pulling you closer to him as he ruffled your hair, ignoring your hushed protests and struggles.

You finally squirmed out of his grip, laughing softly.

“You’re such an ass!” You laughed, shoving him by the shoulder.

He winked at you, smiling in that same mischievous way that reminded you that despite his responsibilities, he wasn’t quite the adult he portrayed himself as. He was just 19, not even at legal drinking age, for gods’ sake.

But he had to admit that your laugh was the sweetest, most beautiful thing he’d ever heard in his life. It felt like the spring’s first sun—warm, gentle, and comforting. Perhaps even familiar, he would say.

“Now tell me what’s wrong, love,” you said, your e/c falling to rest on his own, holding what looked like concern.

Was he being concerning? At least he must be, for you to look at him as if his puppy just got run over…

‘Safe space, Luke,’ he reminded himself. ‘She knows you too well, she gets you,’

He sighed and nodded, “Well, for starters, Percy’s still unclaimed and will not let the whole ‘where is my dad’ thing go,”

“Baby, he’s 12, of course he’s in shock, he can’t just let things go,” you said.

Of course, Y/n L/n, the voice of straightforward reason.

“I know but…” he sharply let out a breath, trying to find the words which were on the tip of his tongue but were stuck in his throat. “He’s just…he’s not accepting things the way they are. He’s so damn persistent, constantly questioning the way things work.”

You moved closer to him, moving such that you could sit behind him and pull him close to you, letting his back rest against you while your legs stayed on either side. He felt your hands start to play with his curls, fingertips running over his scalp gently.

His whole body tingled, his skin warmed from your touch. Not only was it because you kept your own skin a little warm on cold nights like this but because of how soft you were with him, because of how gentle your touch was. Because he felt a blush creep along his cheeks at the familiarity of the gesture, at how affectionate you were.

“But look, it means that I’m answering questions that no other camper’s asked me before, and I don’t know how I feel about that…unpredictability,” he explained, staring out at the lake. “Plus with day after’s capture the flag and with my training schedule being booked up back to back, I cannot handle those questions because they need time to be thought over and I don’t have that kind of time,”

Your hands in his hair paused as an amused tone came with your words, “…is Luke Castellan admitting to me, Y/n L/n, that he’s stressed? You stressed, baby, is that it?”

He laughed at the way you talked, like he was a child, with that sweet tone, higher pitch, and general air of playfulness.

“No, I’m not,” he protested, looking up at you, a small smile dancing on his lips as he laughed softly.

Gods, his laugh was everything. You enjoyed the rise and fall of it, his deep voice vibrating through your body with how close he was. It wasn’t explosive, nor was it polite. It was just him being a kid, him being himself, unrestrained by the image of a calm and reserved counselor that he had on most of the time.

“That’s a lie,” you smirked, giggling softly, tilting his head back so he could look at you properly.

He smiled a bit, as your finger traced up the line of his scar, and he stuck his tongue out at you jokingly.

“Fine, tell me more. Get it all of your chest,” you winked, leaning down to kiss his forehead softly.

So he talked all his worries away, till the moon rose high and the water stopped rippling. He talked till his throat ran dry and his eyes started to droop as sleep’s staying caress enveloped you both.

“We should get back,” you yawned, feeling him sit up and out of your arms.

He nodded, rubbing at his eyes with his knuckles. “Yeah, we should…”

He, as a gentleman, stood up first and helped you up, smiling at you as you dusted yourself off and followed him back through the quiet woods and to the cabins. You looped your hand through the crook of his elbow, resting your head against his shoulder affectionately every now and then, smiling up at him.

The trees weren’t as quiet as the night, nor was the grass, as the crickets chirped softly amidst the foliage, and the leaves rustled with the slightest bit of wind that danced through them.

“Can I bother you for a little kiss before we go back to our cabins?” You asked, standing in front of him at the split in the road which led to the Apollo cabin and Hermes cabin.

Luke thought about it for a moment just to tease you, earning a whack on the arm from your end and a laugh.

“Obviously,” he chuckled, pulling you closer by your wrist, his other arm coming up to encircle your waist, as your head tilted up for your lips to meet his in a soft kiss.

His hand left your wrist to cup your cheek while your arms rested around his neck, holding him such that he stayed down a bit to your level. Your lips moved in sync, the action already a habit with the number of times you both had kissed in the past two years of you both dating.

Despite that, butterflies erupted in your stomach at the way his lips felt against yours, the way he held you so tenderly.

Once air became a problem you both had to pull away, and a light blush dusted your cheeks.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning then,” you smiled, winking at him.

“No doubt, sunshine,” he smiled back, ruffling your hair gently, earning a sound of protest from your end as well.

“You know I hate that nickname,”

“Too bad, sunshine,”

All you could do was roll your eyes and press a soft kiss to his cheek before turning back and heading back to the Apollo cabin on soft cat feet, making little noise as you fell into your covers, giggling softly at the ghost feeling of his lips back on yours.

Stuff was better when he was with you.

Hi! I t’s me, Lea! I hope you liked this imagine, feel free to request <3 the ending is a bit eh but otherwise I hope you liked it <3

#Luke Castellan #luke castellan x reader #apollo reader #x fem!reader #fluff #luke x fem!reader #queer little demigod

[wlntrsldler]

thinking of you're on your own, kid and luke x reader.

warnings: fluff, friends to lovers, luke being a simp, hurt, betrayal.

i. summer went away, still, the yearning stays.

your first summer at camp half-blood was a whirlwind, as you assumed it was for anyone who finds out that they are a child of a god. you were one of the older ones, you've come to learn soon after arriving. at seventeen, you were years behind many of the children who inhabited the camp. still, you were treated like anyone new who entered.

you were greeted by the head counselor of the hermes cabin-- luke, he said his name was. it was an easy enough name to remember, but you knew him as the boy whose eyes looked honey-brown in the sunlight, whose lopsided smile made you feel a pit in your stomach, and whose voice made your head spin.

you'd gone to summer camp before. you knew what it was like to have a summer crush. in the third grade, you met a boy named evan kim in asheville. he always had his nose buried in a book. his glasses would slip down the bridge of his nose and he pushed them up with his index finger without skipping a beat. you found comfort that you could sit beside him under the shade of the tree beside the dining hall, not saying a word, just reading.

but the haze of summer subsided as the leaves on the trees changed colors, and by september, you could hardly remember what he looked like. and when he didn't return to camp the following year, you forgot all about him.

but camp half-blood was different, of course it was. and luke was different, of course he is. he stayed with you longer than he had to, but you didn't know that at the time. after all, you were new. you didn't know that all luke had to do was show you around on your first day.

he found you sweet. and really pretty. he loved how the tips of your ears turned a shade of pink when he said your name (he said it too often after he learned it, it just felt right rolling off his tongue). he loved how you smiled at him, looking up at him (he was thankful that he had a growth spurt the summer before he met you), and the crinkles beside your eyes were on full display. he loved how you giggled his name when he did the stupidest things (he did it to make you laugh; chris rolled his eyes, fondly, every time.)

the entire summer, he spent glued next to you. the campers knew that if he wasn't at training or doing his duties, he would be wherever you were. that often meant sitting at your feet while you read under the tree by the lake. too often, you'd rarely get any reading done because luke would ask you questions about yourself. he asked about your life outside of camp (what's your parent like? what kind of school do you go to? do you have a boyfriend? when you answered no to the last one, luke internally cheered.) sometimes he'd read over your shoulder, or ask you to read an excerpt to him, but he never brought his own book to read. he much preferred to watch you.

when you were claimed by your godly parent, luke feared that you'd stop hanging out with him as often (or really, stop letting him follow you around like a love-sick puppy.) because you'd prefer your own siblings' company. but he let out a breath of relief when he found you sitting under the tree the following day, reading your book.

you heard his footsteps, ones you've grown to love, and the sounds of the grass crunching under the soles of his shoes.

you grinned at him (with the smile you reserved for him), "took you long enough, castellan. thought you weren't gonna show."

he took his usual spot sitting diagonally at your feet and smiled, "there's no place else i'd rather be."

so yeah, you'd been to summer camp before. you'd had summer infatuations before, but not like this. not like luke.

when it was time for you to head back home after summer ended, you promised to return the next summer. you promised him that you'd write letters and he made a joke about how it was just like those romance books you read. he didn't miss the way your eyes widened in shock at the comparison. unable to speak, you kissed his cheek goodbye.

at that, luke made a promise to himself that next summer, he'd tell you how he felt.

ii. i waited ages to see you there.

luke waited for your return that summer. he'd grown bigger over the months since you last saw him. he was more muscular, more confident. the girls at camp were taking notice of it. sure, luke had always been a good-looking guy, but there was something about him now that made his charm undeniable. (he would never admit it, but the entire time you two were apart, luke was dedicated to making himself better for you. he wanted to impress you.)

annabeth rolled her eyes at the new-found attention her brother was getting and made it her mission to humble him every chance she got. luke made it clear to her that the attention would never get to his head. there was something unspoken there, but annabeth knew. the only attention luke wanted was from you.

she found it cute, a little gross, but cute nonetheless, so she waited with luke at the entrance of camp-half blood for you. when the sun set and there was still no trace of you, annabeth didn't comment on how luke's shoulders were slumped as they walked into camp together.

luke had faced a lot of disappointment in his life. from not being the perfect child his father expected him to be, to returning to camp as a failure after his quest, he'd gone through a lot of disappointment; far too much for a nineteen-year-old to bear, but this one was the worst of it all.

he skipped dinner to retire to the hermes cabin early. he pulled out a shoebox from under his bunk, the place where he stored all the letters you sent him over the months you'd been apart. he read through them, trying to figure out if you gave any indication of not returning to camp. but there was none.

at the end of every letter, you had written a countdown until you were back at camp. luke's excitement grew as the numbers on the bottom of the page dwindled to a week, the last time you sent him a letter. the last letter was about your eighteenth birthday. you had dinner with your friends from home and received new books to read for when you were at camp. (luke had a top three; he was really hoping you'd read them to him.) in the letter, you also managed to sneak him a polaroid of you before you blew out the candles on your cake. on the bottom of the photo, in your lovely handwriting, you wrote: "for luke."

he kept the picture in his wallet since he first got it.

as he was reading through the letters again (the paper was falling apart between his fingers. he had re-read your letters too much over the months because he missed you so much), annabeth came running into the hermes cabin. she was out of breath and luke could barely understand her. but when your name, "another kid," "grover," and "hurt" left her lips, luke ran out of the cabin to find you.

when he saw you lying on the bed, bloodied and bruised, luke's heart stopped. he ran to you, distressed, and held your hand, only hoping that you'd feel his presence. when you gave his hand a weak squeeze, luke smiled under the tears that spilled from his eyes.

as others tended to your wounds, luke sat there patiently, not once letting go of your hand. when you were finally cleaned up, luke let his sleepiness take over. he fell asleep on the uncomfortable, wooden chair beside your bed, making sure that he was touching you at all times. when his hand cramped from holding yours, he stretched out his fingers, letting his thumb rest on the pulse point of your wrist. he wanted to make sure you were really there.

waking up to a slouching luke castellan, face buried in the crook of his elbow as he snored softly, was arguably the best way to wake up on your first day of camp. softly, you moved your hand from under him and ran your fingers through his messy curls. he stirred under your touch and woke.

"thought you weren't showing up," his voice was deep. he cleared his throat to get rid of the drowsiness. "waited for you at the door."

"as you can see, i was a little caught up," you tried to joke, but failed when you winced. "ow."

"are you okay?" luke was fully awake now. his brows threaded in concern, his hand finding yours again. "do you need anything?"

"'m okay," you whispered, "or i will be, after i heal."

"you'll tell me if you're not okay, right?"

"of course, luke." you said, smiling. "don't you have better things to do than watching me heal?"

"no, nothing important," he replied. you knew he was lying. "being here with you is where i need to be."

iii. something different bloomed.

"can you read to me?"

it was one of those hot, sticky days at camp, but luke refused to get up from where he was laying on your stomach. sweat dripped down from his forehead, but he made no effort to wipe it away. he was too comfortable.

"sure, luke," you couldn't say no to him. you read a passage from the book you were reading (the book was from his top three) as luke listened to you. he hummed when you read a particularly well-written line. he made no mention of when you paused to highlight something. he waited patiently when you struggled with a few lines. you read to him until your voice was hoarse.

"you're a great reader," he said after you were done. "i always had trouble reading. the words get jumbled in my head."

"i wasn't always good at it," you confessed, closing the book and placing it next to you. you looked down at luke only to find him already looking at you. in the sun, his freckles were more prominent. they littered across his face. "when i was younger, i really struggled with it and it frustrated me a lot. but because i can't live with not being good at something, i tried really hard to get better. 'm still not the best at it. there are still moments when the words don't make sense in my head, but i learned to take my time when that happens. if i mess up, then i try again."

luke had a feeling that that last part didn't just apply to reading. he admired that about you. in the short time that he'd known you, he saw how determined you were. last summer, when he taught you how to sword fight, you stumbled a few times but never fell down. he must've spent hours on end with you because you wanted to learn. when he saw you in the infirmary on the first night after the attack on percy, he was thankful that he did that (even if his joints ached for days after.)

"have you heard from percy?" your voice snapped him out of his thoughts. "are they okay?"

luke swallowed, "yeah, i talked to him and annabeth."

"are they okay?"

"they're okay," luke felt his voice betraying him so he let out an awkward laugh, "they're like an old married couple now. they're always bickering."

he was thankful that you laughed along with him. it was good that you didn't suspect a thing. he wasn't ready to tell you, not yet. he got up from where he was lying and sat up to face you. you smiled at him, reaching over to wipe the sweat off his brow.

"i gotta tell you something," you mumbled, eyes now looking everywhere but him. "promise you won't get mad."

"could never be mad at you," he said. his voice was sincere then. he meant it. "what's on your mind, darling?"

"i think i love you."

luke's face dropped, which you took as a rejection. with tears in your eyes, you began to fumble your words. you quickly got up, picking up the book next to you, and said some ridiculous excuse about why you had to go. you were about five feet away from him when luke realized what just happened.

he sprung up from his spot and chased after you, calling out your name with each step. he stopped in front of you and grabbed you by the shoulders, "where are you going?"

"luke, i don't really think it's fair that you're asking me that when you just rejected me."

"when did i reject you?" he asked. he racked his brain trying to figure out if his voice had betrayed him.

"i saw your face, luke," you sighed. "it's fine. i should've known. you're still just being nice to me because you have to be. i just got into my head thinking that you might like me, too, but it's okay if you don't. really, it is! i just need some time to wallow and-"

"oh no," he shook his head, "i was only upset because i was supposed to do it first."

"huh?"

"i was gonna tell you how i felt this summer, but since the attack, i didn't know when the right time was." luke wanted to kiss the cute look of confusion off of your face. he laughed, "i think i love you, too. was just upset i didn't get to say it first."

"oh."

luke really wanted to kiss you then.

"you love me?"

"mhm," he grinned, stepping closer to you. he moved his grasp from your shoulders to your waist. he pulled you in, letting his lips ghost over yours. "i think i do."

you placed your lips on his.

iv. you're on your own, kid.

"luke, what are you saying?"

"he has a plan," he explained, eyes wide and begging. it was only a matter of time before annabeth alerted everyone about percy. about him. "he has a plan for us."

"luke, you're scaring me," you said, backing up from him until you felt your back hit a wall. your hand found the cool metal of the blade he got you. your fingers wrapped around it, making you flinch.

this wasn't right.

you let go of your blade, letting your hands fall to your sides.

"no, no, darling, don't be scared," he said, "please, just listen to me. there's no time."

luke saw tears in your eyes and he cursed himself for making you feel this way. he tried to comfort you with his smile, but for the first time, it didn't work. you just stared at him; the same look of terror etched across your features.

he frowned, pleading, "please, just come with me."

there was a flicker of uncertainty in your eyes. luke thought, for a moment, that you would take his outstretched hand, that you would follow him and disappear into the night with him, that you would fight with him.

"no, i'm sorry, luke," you shook your head, "i can't. i won't."

his ears were ringing. he dropped his hand at the same time all of the commotion outside began. he looked at you, then at the door, panicked. his time was up.

he was on his own.

#luke castellan #luke castellan one shot #luke castellan x reader #luke castellan imagine #pjo #pjo spoilers #pjo tv show #pjo series #pjo fanfic #luke castellan x yn #luke castellan x you #luke castellan x y/n #frances song fics #frances writes

[sinnersweets]

DogDay x Reader part 3

&lt;----part 2, part 4--->

A/N: It’s been a week since your first day 

Everytime I came in for my shift I always needed to change into my uniform which was starting to get tiring. I wasn’t allowed to take the shirt, nametag, or headband home. I promised the team member that I would bring everything back, but they said they needed to wash it every time with the vanilla scent that DogDay has. I huffed in disappointment and took the clothes and went to go change.  

--------------- 

I was told that at the start of the week all the helpers need to give their assigned Smiling Critter a bath that way their scent can be strong again. Also, we needed to arrive two hours before Playcare opened to everyone. Guessing it took a while to wash everyone. Then a thought came into my head. DogDay is a dog, and dogs typically hated getting wet. Oh boy, today would not be easy for me.  

--------------- 

The Playcare looked scary when the lights were off. The only lights present was from the Bron lamps. I walked over to the counselors building and somehow while looking at the ground, I tripped over a wire. “Ah-!” I hit the ground and laid on the floor for ten seconds before rising to my elbows and looking at the wire. While I looked back at the wire, I noticed that it started to move. As I got a closer look, I saw that this wire was fluffy, and purple. “Huh?” Then suddenly whatever I tripped on wrapped around my ankle and quickly pulled me into the air. I didn’t dare make a sound while I was being hoisted up knowing that the kids were all asleep. My morning was going great. 

I was brought up to the statues and finally saw what the heck grabbed me. CatNap. This was the first time I’ve seen him up close and he was by far the scariest one out of the group. Since I was hanging upside down, I had to hold my shirt down with my hands. “Hey there CatNap...could you um, put me down please?” Where the hell was Sarah?! She’s supposed to be keeping an eye on him as his helper. CatNap just stared at me. DogDay did tell me that CatNap doesn’t really talk, but him not talking was making this much creepier. 

“Psst, CatNap, Angel, what are you doing?!” I looked at the floor and spotted DogDay just below me. “CatNap she’s my helper not a doctor. She’s a friend!” DogDay whispered but also yelled out. “Friend....” That’s all CatNap said before releasing his tail from me. I fell and landed into DogDays arms. “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven Angel?” He laughed at the joke that he made. I look towards him with a concerned look on my face. “He pulled me into the air and then dropped me...and you...”  

It then registered what DogDay had just said to me, and I smiled and laughed, all the anger that I felt left. “I can’t believe you just said that. That was cheesy.” I wiped a tear away from laughing. “I wanted to see a smile on your face Angel, especially since what was happening with you and CatNap.” “Yeah, what was that all about anyway?” His face then looked nervous for a moment before he answered. “He’s not a fan of adults. He rarely tolerates his helper. He didn’t mean any harm, really.” I looked back up to the statues, but CatNap was no longer there. “Hm. Well next time I see him I want an apology.” DogDay chuckled and nodded his head. “Oh, I like your earrings, Angel.” I totally forgot that I went out yesterday and bought me a pair of sun earrings. I liked getting earrings to match my outfit. It was earlier than I liked to be awake at, so it slipped my mind that I wore them. “Thank you, there new.” 

--------------- 

DogDay led me to a hidden door that blended in perfectly against the walls. This was where they got washed up. Each Smiling Critter had their own room with everything they needed to be cleaned properly. The whole time we were walking towards DogDays room he was cheerful but as soon as we entered the room, and I closed the door he started shaking. “Hey, hey it’s okay. Taking baths are fun!” I grabbed onto his paw to try to calm him down. DogDay then stopped shaking and looked at me and smiled. “Normally I would give myself a bath but now that I have you Angel, this should be less scary.” I nodded my head and went to put on an apron to not get myself wet. “Alright, let's get started! First, I will need to take off your pendant, don’t want that getting dirty now.” DogDay lowered himself so that I could reach behind his neck and undo the knot from his pendant.  

Since it was just us, I decided to ask him a question that I had for him. “So, I’ve been meaning to ask you this, but you said you went through a lot of applicants before landing on me. What made me stand out?” I could feel DogDay stiffen when I asked this. I was still untying his pendant when he spoke. “Everyone else's application seemed so boring, plus the pictures that they sent in I could tell that they would not be good to work down here at Playcare. But yours Angels, your picture was just full of-” I accidentally cut him off as his pendant was quite heavy and made me yelp in surprise. “Jeez this is heavy!”  

DogDay saw me struggling to pick it up and took it from me and set it down on the table. “Woops, should’ve worn you, sorry Angel.” “That’s really heavy, guess the kids weren’t lying when they said you were strong.” I nudge DogDay playfully. His ears perked up and he wagged his tail. Cute. “Okay now the not so fun part.” I pointed over to where DogDay needed to be at to get washed. He swallowed hard but then walked on all fours over to the area. I saw that there was a step stool for me, so I grabbed it and placed it near him. “I’ll try to be really quick, okay?” He nodded and closed his eyes. I turned on the hose and started to wet DogDay. 

--------------- 

It took around three minutes to fully wet DogDay, yeesh. Now I had to put the vanilla scented soap on him. To pull his mind away from his bath I decided to playfully tease him about calling me pretty. “By the way, I never got to thank you for calling me pretty.” “Huh?!” His ears perked up again. “Oh- right, I forgot that Damian shouted that out...Well you are pretty Angel.” I scrubbed his ears and smiled. “Thank you.” It took me thirty minutes to cover DogDay with soap. This was tiring, but I’ll improve over time. “Okay almost done, just gotta rinse you off and then dry you and then comb your fur and that’s it!” As I said it aloud, I realized that those tasks would also take a while.  

I rinsed off DogDay and turned off the hose. I walked over to a cubby and took off my apron while also grabbing a blow dryer. As I was plugging in the blow dryer I looked over and noticed that he had a look in his eyes. “Angel, I gotta shake this water off.” Oh no. “Nonono don’t shake, please don’t shake.” “It’s dripping down my body...” “Don’t shake!” “I gotta shake!” “No no shaking-” Too late. DogDay shook all the water off of him. DogDay sighed as he no longer felt as wet as he did before. “Whew I feel so much better.” DogDay turned to look at me and he then saw the aftermath of what he did.  

There I stood, all drenched in water. “So sorry Angel...” Even though I was drenched in chilly water I wasn’t angry at all. I started to laugh aloud. “Haha! I should’ve known that was gonna happen.” DogDay smiled and wagged his tail. “I really tried to not shake Angel.” “It’s okay, ahem, now let’s dry ourselves off.”  

I got dried as best as I could but knew I was going to need to change out of these wet clothes before getting sick. I brushed out DogDays fur and added in some more vanilla scent to him. DogDay then grabbed his pendant and I decided to buff it out so that it’ll shine. I looked at the pendant and saw my reflection. “There, all beautiful now.” “Yes, you are Angel...I-I mean yes, it’s beautiful now haha...” I booped him on the nose with my finger and smiled at him. “Thank you, you are looking pretty handsome now after that bath.” His ears perked up and his tail was wagging back and forth fast. Seeing DogDay like this made me happy, and warm inside...maybe I was already getting sick.  

A/N: Thank you for reading!

#sinnersweets #poppy playtime #x reader #dogday #dogday x reader #poppy playtime chapter 3 #catnap

[amourdivine]

𝐖𝐇𝐎'𝐒 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐃𝐎𝐖 𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐅? ઉ   PICK A CARD

Hello lovelies, I hope you're having a wonderful week! This is perhaps the first heavily shadow work focused PAC I bring to you. I'm quite nervous to post this, since I know delivering these messages can be difficult and I don't like taking a harsh, judgmental approach. I hope this reading resonates. As always, feedback is highly appreciated! If you liked this reading, please consider tipping me at @ [email protected]! xo ♡

paid readings are closed as of february 2024

none of the images are mine unless stated otherwise!

pick a card masterlist & information

how to choose your pile.  take a few deep breaths for and look at each and of the piles separately. see which one brings you to a feeling, a place or a memory. take your time and feel free to come back to it later!

amourdivine. 2021 - 2024 © do not copy, redistribute or edit my content.

୨୧ PILE ONE

who is your shadow self? eight of swords • knight of cups • nine of wands • queen of wands

Your shadow self is the fearful side of you attached to anxiety. The side of you that does not believe you can save yourself from bad situations and feels endlessly hopeless, helpless and trapped. It causes a self-fulfilling prophecy, one where you think you'll inevitably fail, so you self-sabotage (either consciously or not) and end up "proving" yourself right.

However, as helpless as your shadow feels, it never asks for help. It's trapped in a spiral of shame and self-doubt, even self-hatred. All of this happens mentally for most of you, to the point where your body is neglected or stuck in flight / freeze mode. I feel stuck in the gutter, unable to move in the sticky mud. Despite your best efforts to succeed, you may suffer from impostor's syndrome as well, an inability to see your worth, your beauty and your own light. It's almost as if you're scared of your own power, pile one. Very painful, very self-inflicted and something which you may have learn from childhood, maybe you got bullied a lot or were heavily criticized by the people around you. If that happened, I'm so sorry pile one. You deserved so much better. You still do.

how can you work with your shadow self? nine of cups • the sun • queen of swords • queen of wands

You know, when I was entering college, I had a counselor whose words were life changing to me. One day, he picked up a cup full of coffee and asked me: how do you get rid of the coffee, without throwing it out entirely? And I was puzzled. It wasn't possible. Him, in his neverending patience, took me to the water station and started pouring water onto it, until the coffee was cleared away and all that remained was clean, crystal liquid.

Maybe the bad things that happened still haunt you, but they can be drawn out by the good ones. Seek for the light, pile one. Seek the nurturing experiences, the days when you allow yourself to just be, seek the help, the love and stay open to the love. Stay open to the idea that yes, you are worthy, even if you do not feel like it, even if so many people have made you feel otherwise.

These wounds may not fade entirely with time, but you are more than them, always. Always. I know it's never easy to challenge what we've been taught about ourselves, but in order to unlearn all of that, you will have to learn the new things, the true things about you. If they said you were lazy - was that really true? Or were you just tired? You're not "naive", you're pure. You're not "too sensitive", you're in tune with your emotions.

The stories we tell ourselves hold power. What stories are you telling about yourself? Maybe it's time to switch to a new point of view, one where you can rewrite yourself as the person you were never allowed to be.

୨୧ PILE TWO

who is your shadow self? judgement • five of swords • ten of cups • king of wands

Your shadow self is the side of you that thrives in chaos - listen, that's not entirely a bad thing, after all, our shadow reflects something which we need to acknowledge, nurture and work with. However, when you perceive danger or feel threatened, you may turn to harsh words or hurtful actions to avenge yourself.

It can manifest in the form of extreme competitive behavior, the inability to rest, overworking, even maybe envy, jealousy and arrogance sometimes. Now, I'm not here to judge or shame you, you're safe here. I think you have and still feel the need to prove yourself to others, to prove them all wrong. Maybe other people told you that you couldn't do it - and you took it all personally, so personally that it crumbles your self-esteem when someone diminishes your efforts or accomplishments.

Your shadow side craves attention, praise and approval. You want to succeed, to be someone you're proud of, to just never feel insecure, diminished or ignored again. You can also turn possessive with loved ones, wondering if they really love you or if they are lying. There's a lot of skepticism here, too.

how can you work with your shadow self? judgement • ace of pentacles • three of pentacles • eight of swords

Acknowledge your feelings and these insecurities. "Fake it 'till you make it" doesn't always work. Being vulnerable is, ironically, also being strong. Understanding your limitations and allowing for other people to collaborate with you (and vice-versa) will take you even further in life.

Your sense of justice is commendable. Make sure you're using it for justice indeed, and not just vengeance. Your ambition can walk hand in hand with your desire to do good, to make space for everyone else to shine, to open up to others, let them see all of you. No one can love perfection - even if they could, what's there to love about something or someone so perfect that they barely feel human?

It's okay to be scared, to feel insecure, to not shove difficult emotions under the rug. We cannot be at our 100% all the time. And we cannot please everyone, all the time. What you can do is praise yourself, let others praise you when they do and accept it gracefully, making sure you're spreading your warmth and wisdom to others as well. See, I think you have overcome a lot and a lot of people could use your help, either in the form of advice, resources or a shoulder to lean on.

You have leadership potential, pile two. Don't limit yourself by being alone. We were never meant to make it on our own.

୨୧ PILE THREE

who is your shadow self? ace of wands • page of swords • three of cups • king of pentacles

Your shadow self is someone who may indulge in harmful habits out of a need for instant gratification, maybe reckless spending, speed driving, partying everyday or simply not saving up resources and caring about the future. Your shadow self is someone who hates boredom, who craves excitement and cannot fully deal with long-term commitment in its many forms. It wants novelty, adventure and it comes at the cost of your responsibilities, your routine and your friendships even.

This shadow self hates suffering (fair enough, who doesn't?!) and will to go great lengths to avoid it... but ironically, it causes you more pain in the long run by avoiding the unavoidable. By never crying, never addressing your issues or your difficult moments, you end up running right back into yourself and these same issues return.

This side of you doesn't want to grow up - you don't want to fall into the trap of routine and a boring, 9-5 job. But excessive habits are difficult to maintain, no matter how good it feels in the short term. There's a difficult, troubled perception of adulthood and life itself. A need for constant adventure and chaos, a feeling of entrapment whenever you are with anyone who loves you, because you fear being controlled, tamed and used.

how can you work with your shadow self? the tower • nine of wands • nine of cups • three of pentacles

To put it simply, let yourself hurt. Let the foundations of your heart crumble, stop to feel just for a second. You don't have to be on the run all the time. What are you running from, pile three? Disaster, pain and hurt are often inevitable, but they do not have to be the be-all, end-all of our lives. The Tower is a reminder that all that crumbles was meant to crumble eventually, and there is beauty in letting things end naturally, allowing the flow of life to do its thing.

That means aging, growing, learning from the seasons. I think you have a very, very deep heart and mind you're scared to tap into. You're scared to be trapped in the endless hustle, to never feel alive or good once you "settle". But who says the big joys are the only ones that matter? As someone said once, big joys and small joys are often the same. Sometimes, waking up in itself can be an adventure. Don't overlook or underestimate the ways life tries to find you, to cling to you - remember to embark on the hard journeys, knowing you'll have gotten something valuable in the end.

You're brave and rebellious. You can be a catalyst for change in so many ways. Who said adulthood has to be boring? Who said you have to work a 9-5? Do you have to get married? Maybe being a stay-at-home parent isn't for you. That's okay.

Challenging the status quo may not be easy, but you have a natural inclination for it. Your shadow self can dive deeper. It's one of your greatest tools. Your need for joy and fun is not shameful - you can use it for healing, instead of self-destruction.

୨୧ PILE FOUR

who is your shadow self? judgment rx • justice • the high priestess rx • knight of swords

Your shadow self is the side of you that refuses to acknowledge your needs, your wants and desires. It makes you live inside of a bubble, scared of the truth, even if it will set you free. I had the hardest time shuffling for this pile, I kept trying and trying but nothing made sense. I think this is how your shadow side manifests as well, in the lack of clarity, the fogginess that permeates the choices you've regretted.

It's both reckless and frozen, completely lost in a maze, confused, looking for a path, for directions, for anything. It's almost as if you lost your compass, nothing eventually guides you and you remain looking for the directions only you have.

It's too scared to admit what it wants, who you are. Both out of fear of what other people will say, but also out of fear that it'll all go wrong. It's the side of you that remains disconnected from yourself, hidden because it keeps highlighting the aspects you keep trying to ignore, to not know. It can manifest in a lot of ways, either through people-pleasing or being completely reckless. Through lying, denial or even isolation from the world, from life itself.

Something funny is that a song by Bad Suns that just started playing really relates to this pile. "Cinderella slips into a dream like a curse / you could mistake it for heaven at first." This shadow self may live in projection, daydreaming or simply keep you out of touch with everything.

how can you work with your shadow self? six of pentacles • page of wands • two of wands • king of cups

Engagement and socializing are big ways you can work with your shadow self. Being actively curious about the world, about people. Approaching relationships, truths and life itself with genuine interest, no judgement or shaming thoughts involved.

Telling yourself you're an eternal student of this world, because we are and remembering you don't have to know everything. Start scared. Most things, you'll have to do it scared. Unprepared. In the thick of it all, you'll find the answers you need, but only if you are willing to dive deep for them. No taking shortcuts, making assumptions or allowing self-doubt to paralyze your living, because you need to witness life as it is.

Therapy is one big thing, music as well. Anything that connects you to your deepest self, relationships that genuinely make room for who you are, good friends that feel safe and non-judgemental. Your heart has been calling you for so long, pile four. It's about time you listen to it. It knows everything you need to know.

disclaimer. tarot not a substitute for medical and professional advice, nor is it meant to be taken as such. i do not take responsibility for any choice(s) made by you or others regarding my readings. please remember you are responsible for life and in power of it, no one else! ♡

amourdivine. 2021 - 2024 © do not copy, redistribute or edit my content.

#pick a card #tarotblr #tarot reading #pick a card reading #tarot #pac reading #astrology #witchblr #tarot witch #pagan #mine.

[kaciebello]

 Bring a scythe to a sword fight

Masterlist

Luke Castellan x Hades! reader (implied, fem)

Percy Jackson x Hades! reader (platonic)

Summary: The reader is gradually suspicious, not believing Clarisse is the lightning thief 

Warning: Angst?, no use of y/n

authors note: Idk, I kinda blacked out writing this, sorry if it does not make sense. English is not my first language so I am sorry for any mistakes beforehand. Proofread by me and me only :(

Word count: 1.6k

Ever since Poseidon claimed Percy and he was moved to cabin 3, the camp became lonely. He eats at his own table, gets to choose his camp activities, and calls ‘ lights out ‘ whenever he feels like it. The other campers think he's a monster magnet now. Most people avoid him, and even Clarisse stays clear of him. Only 4 people in this camp don't seem to be afraid of him. Grover, they often pick strawberries together. Annabeth, who took it upon herself to teach him ancient Greek. Luke, still gives him sword lessons, although they are now more of one-on-one sessions. And the girl Luke seems to have heart eyes for. She mostly hangs out around them when they are training. Such as now.

Luke, was not going easy on him, as always. But Percy was still on his feet, meaning he was improving. Or that is what he believed in before Luke managed to tap the back of his knee and make him fall. A frustrated groan leaves him when Luke's sword touches underneath his chin.

“Giving up?” Luke asks and moves the sword away, extending his hand to Percy. He takes it and gets up. Percy can't help but curse a little.

“Don't worry bubble boy, Castellan is just a show-off, you're doing great.” Says the girl, who was sitting on a rock this whole time, nose in some sort of book he did not recognize. Scoff leaves Luke as he puffs out his chest. Percy picks up his sword and turns his whole body to the girl.

“I'm not really sure of that.” He says, hesitant.

“Trust me, once you take one of the other campers you'll be alright, Lukes is just hardcore when it comes to it.” She says, putting her book down and getting up, stretching her body.

“ How about we give Percy a break. Why don't you fight me? a little spar?” Luke says and walks to the girl, offering a sword to her. Her face twists in disgust and pushes it away. Laugh just leaves his friend before he turns to Percy in the fastest way possible.

“ She claims I'm hardcore, but the truth is, I've never seen her with a sword in her hand,” Luke says, smirking when he hears the girl scoff. Percy's eyes widen.

“You don't fight?” He peeps out, higher than he wanted to. She just shook her head.

“I'm a healer, I don't fight. And I certainly don't play with swords” She says and flicks her hand. Luke rolls his eyes when she sticks her tongue at him.

“How do you survive capture the flag?” Percy asks, he's still not sure he understands the game. He also notices his friend now sitting down and decides to sit down on the floor as well. She, again, shakes her head.

“ I don't play, I stay in the med tent.” She says sitting down next to Luke. Although to Percy it looked like Luke dragged her to him more. He wondered if he could also do that. Just not play. Although Luke probably wouldn't let him. Percy spaces out, not noticing the older campers sitting now a little bit close to anyone's liking, giggling. He also does not notice Annabeth heading their way. But in his defense, she could have been wearing her Yankee cap, he would not know. Her voice snaps him out.

Turns out she was not there to laugh at Percy's poor fighting skills, nor was she there to spy on his progress. Luke was needed, ‘counselor duties’ she said. Completely ignored the fact the other two campers there were technically counselors of their cabins too. Luke told them both he would see them at the bonfire and followed Annabeth back to the camp. Leaving the two forbidden kids alone.

“Ya know,” she says. “I could beat him.”

“What?” Percy turns to her.

“I could beat him up in a sword fight, I just chose not to.” She says getting up, and picking up her book. Percy just gives her a confused look and she sighs.

“ You could too, with time I mean.” She extends her hand to him and helps him up. “We are children of the big three, Percy. There is a reason why they promised to stop having us. You and I, by default, can be the strongest people here. Even someone like me can beat the best swordsman in the last 300 years in his own game. You just need time.” 

Till now Percy thought he was the only one. I did not accrue to him that she may understand. Now that he thinks about it, Percy can count on one hand that he has seen her interact with other campers, not counting Luke of course.  Percy now realized he wasn't alone in this lonely life of Poseidon's son. She is, kinda, his family now too.

—

“ We know who’s the lighting thief.” Says Percy on the other side of the Iris message. She and Luke were just in Chiron's office discussing what to the with the other campers, as they started to take sides.

“How do you know?” “Who?” They say simutainlusly. She looks at him weirdly for a second, thinking that that's not an appropriate question. Percy and Annabeth ramble about meeting Ares, he says something about Ares knowing who the lighting thief is and protecting him.

“ His favorite daughter. Clarisse is the lighting thief.” Luke finishes Percy's thought.

“Nonsense, Clarisse would not do that.” The girl defends her. She may not like the girl very much, but her being the lightning thief is ridiculous. Luke just gives her a pointed look and promises to tell Chiron. Percy turns to say more, but the iris message ends. Luke looks at her softer than he expected.

“ I don't think we should tell Chiron anything.” He says and takes her into a hug. She wrapped her arms around him and they swayed from side to side. Nodding in agreement.

“ If we go by their deductions, it could be anyone. I mean think about it. You would not be in the clear either. Who else than Hermes's son, the god of thieves, to steal the lighting bold.” She was just saying her thoughts out loud. However, Luke's hug tightens. He narrows his eyes and she can see the anger that shows up whenever someone mentions his father. 

“ I did not mean it li th-”

 “ Or you, who better than a daughter of Hades, someone who hates both Poseidon and Zeus.” Luke cuts her off. His eyebrow rose, wanting to see her reaction. She sighs and wraps her hands around his neck. Her comment was not meant to hurt him, but she knows she went overboard and decided to stay silent. Her fingers tangled in his hair, tugging a bit. His eyes close for a minute. She went to play with the camp necklace hanging on his neck. When he opened his eyes again, the hatred was gone.

“Come on, I'm sure someone needs medical assistance.” He says and makes his way out of the office.

“The Apollo kids can do that.” She says but follows him nonetheless. A laugh escapes him. They stop at the outside porch. He turns to her with soft eyes, some would say lovesick one.

“Ya know, there is one thing I did steal,” he says. She just gives him a confused look. “ Your heart.” 

A smile spreads on his his as she groans. He turns around and walks down the little porch. She stops him when he gets to the bottom.

“Luke.” He turns to her with a hum.

“Whose side are you on?” She asks him, looking down at him from the top of the stairs. He was hesitant to answer, so she continued.

“ Percy or Zeus?” He just smiles, takes her hand, and helps her down.

“ I don't side with gods.” He says.

—

Before Luke could strike Percy something blocked his sword. When he looks up he sees her. Before he can react, however, a dagger is thrown his way and he dodges it. Looking that way he sees Annabeth take off her cap. This is not how it was supposed to go. 

“Annabeth…” He breathes out. They were not supposed to be here. He was supposed to recruit Percy. He was gonna recruit them later.

The girl helped Percy up but kept him behind her scythe. Standing in the way of any danger that could come his way. When Luke turns to her, she points her scythe at him.

“Come on, sweetheart…” he tries, but by the look on her face, he can tell it is not gonna do anything.

“ You need to leave,” She says, her face hard as stone. Luke could not read a single emotion from her.  He tries to take a step to her but she swings her scythe at him. He blocks it with ease. He knows she does not want to fight. He knows that the swing was a warning, to keep him away. He knew she would never fight him.

So when he swings it does not come to his surprise she only defends herself. Never playing offense. To others, it may look like they were just dancing, old partners getting together for a spar. It was when Luke felt the wind from the portal he realized she moved him away from his original position. He knew that Annabeth and Percy would tell Chiron right away. She was allowing him to escape.

She stood in front of him. Scythe in a thigh grip. Her eyes reminded him of a momma bear defending her cubs. With tears in his eyes, he turns around and leaps into the portal. In his mind, he promises to go back for all of them.

#luke castellan x y/n #luke castellan x you #luke castellan imagine #luke castellan x fem!reader #luke castellan x reader #percy jackson x fem!reader #percy jackson and the olympians x reader #percy jackson imagine #percy jackson fic #percy jackson x reader #percy jackon and the olympians #luke castellan #percy jackson #percy pjo #percy series #luke castellan angst #luke castellan au

[diorchids]

I don't know if you accept applications but Luke Castellan jealous that ends in smut , I fantasize thanks to you.

LUKE CASTELLAN, LIKE THIS.

cw: jealous!luke, exes, obsessed, SWEARING, masturbation (f receiving)

a/n: of course i do! this is sorta kinda outta character but u see the vision?? also i cut this short because my brain started blanking.. if u want a part 2, js ask

nsfw ahead !

“she doesn’t even like him,” luke scoffed at your attempts to romance a counselor, doing all the things you’d tried on him. 

in reality, he was jealous. he’d been your ex for years before this, always standing on the sidelines each time you found a new guy. he rolled his eyes while nico said nothing. 

this was the least jealous part of him. you’d talked your friends' ears off about this new counselor, describing him in a way that made luke roll his eyes. he eavesdropped often. he’d followed you consistently, playing it off each time your eyes narrowed on him. “do you even like him? he’s not your type.” he stood behind you, feet planted. 

he tried to reason with you, making it clear he wasn’t fond of your sudden relationship. you walk away from him each time, telling him off with a few expletives. 

he fisted his cock furiously every night, sneaking out or sitting in the bathroom while you were with your new guy. he bucked his hips into his tight fist, visualizing your lips wrapped around his cockhead. 

he’d got you to his cabin finally, making sure nobody was around. especially “him.” he hugged you tight and relished in your scent. “missed you. stay here.” he begged you to stay with him often, enjoying your company. “can’t. gotta stay with my sister, luke.” you moved his hands away from your body, you weren't that easy. especially not for luke.

“you’re lying. you’ll go sneak off to the lake with the fuckin’ counselor, you know it.” he caught your wrist in his grip. “c’mon, stay with me,” eyes looking desperate as he looked down at you, grip tightening, you jerked your arm back in an attempt to free yourself before he says, “don’t be like that, i know you wanna stay.” his free hand trailed up your back slowly. crawling and creeping. 

“..maybe i could. she’ll – she’ll be fine.” you gave into him. his words perforating every voice in your head telling yourself you shouldn’t. “good, good,” he whispered softly into your ear, stooping to your ear. “movie?” 

you sat on his bed watching the movie he’d picked, a horror movie with terrible. his voice came from the bathroom, “you don’t even like him,” picking his feet up to walk to the bed, “what’s he got that i don’t?” standing firm between your legs, hunching to your face, hands resting on each of your thighs. 

your faces were inches apart, your breath hitched onto his face. you wanted to speak, but no words could explain how you felt, your tongue nervously running over your top lip.

he rose and brought his rough hand to your chin. he cradled it with such carefulness while his thumb ran over your lip. 

when he speaks now, his voice has an edge of menace, “mine, you know it. you’re my girl.” he was jealous. this did it, this finally let you know that he missed you. that he was obsessed.

his fingers curved around his bulge while you looked up at him with the same eyes that got him roped in. you stood to your feet, still being towered over him, speechless but managed to blurt out two words, “show me.” 

luke doesn’t hesitate. he leans in and grabs the back of your head, planting his lips on yours and pressing his body against yours. the kiss is aggressive and forceful, and his grip on the back of your head is tight. he’s clearly taking all his anger out on you in this kiss.

you try to keep up with his lips and hands roaming all over your body, practically stumbling while he pushes you into the wall. 

big hands fall straight to your hips, rubbing and pawing at them like a desperate animal. he pulls away for a split second, “fuck some sense into you, ‘kay?” 

you attempt to pull back, but he doesn’t let you pull away. he pulls you back to him relentlessly and keeps kissing you, this time even more aggressively. what was making him like this? so needy, so mean.

you lie on his chest while he begins to sloppily run his fingers over your cunt. he moves faster with each whine from your lips, taken over by anger and lust. “be quiet, gonna get us caught.” he whispered into your ear when you mewled too loud. 

his fingers move quickly on your clit, making you buck your hips into his hand helplessly. his forearm resting on your stomach pushes your body back down, the other hand freely digging its nail into your hips. “stop.” he grunted blatantly. 

you thrashed and moaned each time he played with your cunt, fingers moving back and forth as he dug his fingers deeply into your sides. his cock bucked up against your ass, twitching when you cried his name out or begged him to go faster, “can’t make you feel l-like this, huh?”

“that’s it, let go.” his breathing becomes ragged as he feels you starting to lose control. “feels good, real good. fu–uck.” he leans down slightly, his chest pressing against your back and hips grinding against yours.

you love his touch, begging for it again and again, “keep going, please.” tears fall from your eyes when you feel yourself about to cum. he continues his relentless assault on your senses, his fingers finding new ways to stimulate your sensitive spots through your underwear. “can’t make you cum, yeah?”

“cumming, gonna cum.” you taper off. you’re so dazed by his voice and touch that you barely even know what you’re saying. “give in to it, you’re doing so well,” his voice now laced with pure lust as he feels your body trembling and bucking in response to his touch. 

“i’ve got you, cum for me,” his soft side slowly seeping out, “let it wash over you.” he maintains a soothing tone, guiding you through your climax.

“cummin’..” you thrash and groan out, “give in,” he whispers encouragement as you climax, his body tensing as well in sync with yours, his erection throbbing and leaking pre-cum.

your legs shook before luke wrapped his arms around you, not in a comforting way. in a way that made you realize you're his again, pulling you closer to his chest.

“he can’t make you cum like that.”

it took everything in him not to fuck you right then and there.

#pjo #luke castellan #luke castellan smut #luke castellan x reader #luke castellan x you #luke castellan imagine #luke castellan pjo #charlie bushnell #luke pjo

[leviathans-watching]

I have an request for you- is it alright if you do an fanfic where the brothers, dateables, and even the new characters get turned into toddlers? And now (mc) had to care of them? But Luke turns into a baby. A really fluffy, motherly thing? Idrk it's my first time requesting from you- it's alright if you don't want to do it though! :D -chickechee 🐥

when they turn into toddlers

includes: barbatos & gn!reader, & everyone else (no pronouns mentioned)

rated g | wc: .5k | m.list

a/n: oml this was so cute i hope you enjoy!! i have more baby!luke here as well. my inbox is open to chat, req, or leave feedback so come say hi <33

reblogs are greatly appreciated

“oh my god!” you look around the room in horror. “what the hell happened?”

barbatos looks like he hasn't slept in a week. it’s only been a few hours since the initial incident. “what always does,” he answers tiredly, shifting toddler–yes, toddler!–diavolo to his other hip. “someone touched some cursed relic they weren’t supposed to and the effect was disastrous.”

“that’s one word for it,” you murmur. everyone, except for you and barbatos, had regressed into children. infants, even. barbatos had made quick use of the castle’s nursery, left over from one of the previous rulers, and turned it into something daycare-esque, thankfully providing a safe space for them all to be that would keep them out of harm's way, as well as trouble.

as you watch, mammon rises onto shaky legs, making his way over to levi, who’s playing with blocks. “oh please tell me he’s not going to do what i think he’s going to do,” you moan.

“he’s going to do exactly what you think he’s going to do,” barbatos replies, and sure enough, in one deliberate movement, mammon knocks over all of levi’s hard work. immediately, levi begins to scream, startling mammon, who falls back onto the padded ground and begins to cry himself.

“oh, shush.” moving more on instinct, you scoop levi up, patting his back gently. “you’ll be alright, honey.”

he quiets, staring at your face. you wonder if he recognizes you. mammon is still crying, so you set levi back down and move on to comforting him.

“that wasn’t very nice, now, was it?” you ask gently. “let’s not knock over other’s towers, okay?”

he sniffles, rubbing at his eyes with tiny fat baby hands, and it’s just the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen. when you go to set him down, he holds tight, and you realize that apparently, he was just as clingy as a toddler as he is now. wonderful.

shifting him to one side, you take stock of everyone else, making sure there are no immediate concerns. simeon, rapheal, and lucifer are sitting together, coloring (and jesus christ you’re going to need to pull out your camera right now), diavolo is still in barbatos’ capable grasp, beel and belphie are napping quietly in a pile of blankets, solomon is telling something to asmo and satan in incomprehensible toddler speech, and mephisto and thirteen are busy playing on their own. you spy a crib in the corner, which must hold luke, who barbatos had said had regressed into an infant rather than a toddler.

“you’re good with children,” barbatos observes, and you sigh.

“i always did like them. i spent my teenage years as a babysitter and camp counselor so i have some experience under my belt,” you explain. “so are you, by the way.” you’ve long stopped being surprised by the fact that barbatos is skilled at literally everything.

“yes, well, it helps that they’re a bit better behaved like this than when they are normally,” he says, and you can’t help but laugh. against your shoulder, mammon echoes your laugh, then sticks his fingers in his mouth. eh, he’s got a demon’s immune system, he’ll be fine.

“how much longer are they going to stay like this?” you ask, and barbatos shrugs.

“probably two or three more hours,” he says.

“just enough time to have to give them lunch while they’re like this,” you say with a slow-dawning horror. “which should be super easy and not difficult or tiring at all.”

leviathans-watching's work - please do not copy, repost, or claim as your own

#obey me #obey me game #obey me shall we date #swdom #omswd #obey me x reader #obey me x you #lucifer obey me #mammon obey me #levi obey me #satan obey me #asmo obey me #beel obey me #belphie obey me #diavolo obey me #barbatos obey me #simeon obey me #solomon obey me #luke obey me #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me levi #obey me satan #barbatos x reader #barbatos x you #barbatos x mc #obey me fluff #obey me imagine #chickechee #answered asks

[moneypowerglorymiddleofmiami]

WICKED.

MDNI, 18+ CONTENT

pairing: luke castellan x former camper!reader (godly parent not specified)

summary: even after leaving camp half blood to pursue your dreams of attending university, your loyalty to them has never wavered. that is until you stumbled into luke castellan again, of course.

warnings: mature themes, oral sex (m receiving)

note: a purely self-indulgent fic because i wanted to try my hand at writing smut

Luke Castellan was a wicked man.

An inexplicable thrill ran up her spine as he edged closer. Her mind immediately tried to navigate through the haze of excitement and anticipation before ultimately succumbing. She could not— could never fight against him. Perhaps that was her fatal flaw, her irrefutable and unwavering blindness to who he was.

He caged her against the wall, one of his hands framing her face while the other held his cigarette between nimble fingers. He looked away as he took a long drag. The embers of the lit head glowed a dazzling red— dangerous, mesmerizing, and enticing.

The Luke Castellan that stood in front of her was not the same child who was the golden boy of Camp Half-Blood, not the reliable senior counselor who could do no wrong; ultimately, he was vastly different from the person he was all those years ago. He was a man now— pristine yet still gruff around the edges, jaded, resentful, proud, and haughty.

You closed your eyes to breathe in the smoke as he exhaled. He made it so easy to prevent you from ever reconciling the truth of his identity, to accept that he was still the same boy who betrayed everyone around him in cold blood because he was too clouded by anger at the gods to do otherwise.

“How do you want it?” He whispered against your ear. You averted his gaze to him, and watched from your peripheral as he nuzzled your hair. The tip of his nose dragged along the warmth of the skin of your neck.

“Rough.” You responded without a moment of hesitation. Your hands grasped the open edges of his jacket, the leather material was smooth and malleable against your nearly frozen fingers.

He raised an eyebrow as he looked up at you. You saw the surprise in his stare, the want and desire hidden beneath the unreadable sheen of his eyes. His hand traveled up your skirt to your thigh. He rubbed gentle circles against your skin then stopped short at the curve of your ass. He squeezed at the fat then smirked when you flinched.

“Is that what you got up to when you left camp, hm?” He asked softly. He was taunting you. His fingers pulled at the edge of your panties. “Learned to be a slut. Is that it?”

You said nothing. You clutched him tighter when he traced the slit of your cunt through the fabric of your underwear. He followed up and down motions, the movements too miniscule yet the pressure enough to elicit a reaction out of you.

“Already so wet.” He whistled, impressed and amused by how quickly you responded to his advances. You bristled when the tip of his finger pressed into your hole. It was subtle, not enough to latch onto. “Tell me, is this all for me?”

You felt your muscles clench around nothing. You were all the more desperate to feel Luke against you, inside you, to let him have his way with you. You whimpered when he smacked you across the ass.

“Answer me when I ask you a question.” He tutted as he massaged the skin to ease the ruddiness. “Are you wet for me?”

“Yes.” You nodded your head with a small pathetic whimper. “Only for you.”

“Good girl.” He said. He moved his palm to rest against her inner thigh. His thumb continued to press against you. His other hand moved to your hip. “Take your shirt off.”

You quickly unhooked the buttons of your top. Luke’s eyes followed your movements, enraptured by your compliance. He chuckled when he saw the brassiere you were wearing— the little ribbon in between your breasts made it seem as if you were presenting yourself as a gift for him.

You felt another sharp slap across your bottom. “You’re just begging to be fucked, aren’t you?”

You gasped at the pain. You felt simultaneously pissed yet aroused by his comments, although you were completely aware that the former should’ve consumed you whole. You glared at him. “And you’re just proving you can’t, aren’t you?”

You saw his jaw tick in irritation. Luke stood at his full height, the difference between your statures suddenly all the more obvious. He looked down at you, his eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted. You felt something loom at the pit of your stomach— it wasn’t fear.

“You like it rough? Fine, you’ll take it rough.” His voice was deeper and more aggressive, commanding in a sense. “Get on your fucking knees.”

You didn’t need to be asked twice. You touched the ground to steady yourself then leaned against your haunches to wait for his instructions. You kneeled before him as if you were about to pray to the gods. Sadly, you weren't about to worship any of them for the timebeing.

“Open your mouth.” He said as he undid the buckle of his belt. The metal clung against the wall. You watched with pupils dilated in lust as he pulled his cock out— the tip swollen and glistening. He pushed it into your mouth, and you whimpered at the sudden intrusion. “Suck.”

You circled your tongue over the flesh of his cock. You teased and licked at the precum, relished in the salty and deep taste of him. You opened your mouth wider to accommodate for his size then immediately began to hollow your cheeks.

“That’s it. Take it.” Luke groaned above you. His hand wrapped around your head. He controlled your movements by each pull of your hair. He pushed you against him without restraint. “Fuck. So obedient.”

“Wonder what Chiron would say if he saw his precious golden girl being a complete slut for me.” He taunted further. His palm dug against the corner of your neck.

The complete silence of the quiet night was marred by the sinful sounds the both of you were making, hidden in an abandoned alleyway between a Brooklyn nightclub and an electronics shop.

You gagged as he pushed himself deeper into the back of your throat. Your fingers found their purchase on his thighs, your hands grabbed at him like a lifeline. You gaze at him through lidded eyes. You trilled in delight at the sight of him: head thrown back, his Adam's apple bobbed up and down, and his tongue licked at the corner of his lips.

Luke gasped breathlessly as you began to move up and down. He pried his eyes open to peek down at you. He smirked. His words were chopped as he spoke. “So perfect when you’re like this.”

Fueled by lust, bravery and foolishness, you willingly took more of him into your mouth. Your nose hit the base of his cock. You inhaled the heady scent of him, invigorated by it. You choked as you adjusted to the new angle, but he canted his hips instantly. His breaths were ragged and his movements were desperate.

“Ah, shit.” He mumbled. His hand still grasped the back of your head; he pulled you in closer. “I’m close. Gonna come in your mouth and you’re gonna fucking take it.”

He continued to curse and babble as he rutted into your mouth. You closed your eyes as you took in the sensation, as you felt every vein and the ridges of his flesh flush on the flat of your tongue. You felt your own slick trickle down your thighs; empty, uncomfortable and wretched.

He tensed and stilled underneath you. A slew of warm liquid flowed into your throat. You maintained eye contact with him as you swallowed every last bit.

Luke slid himself out of you, his mouth hung open as he tried to catch his breath. He huffed as you made a show of licking off the remnants of his spend from the corners of your lips.

His thumb caressed your cheek. The gesture almost seemed affectionate were it not for the words that quickly followed it. “I’m gonna take you home then I’m going to fuck you all night long.”

Luke Castellan was a wicked man.

#luke castellan imagine #luke castellan x you #luke castellan #luke castellan x reader #luke castellan smut #pjo #percy jackon and the olympians #pjo series

[ugh-yoongi]

by the time i've figured out what it's worth | myg

(or, sometimes you go through hell, and sometimes you make it to the other side.)

✤ PAIRING musician!yoongi x f. reader ✤ SUMMARY you used to find comfort in it—listening to those old songs. the shy sounds of falling in love, the tinkling of a ring in a dish, the inevitable crash and burn. all those songs aren’t so comforting anymore, when you’d do anything to keep him and yoongi’s got one foot out the door. ✤ GENRE est. relationship, marriage au | angst, smut, fluff ✤ RATING explicit. minors dni. ✤ WARNINGS this fic deals with a lot of unhappy topics: mental health, self-worth, divorce, the general demise of a relationship & marriage, counseling & therapy—therefore, there are moments of heavy-ish angst. there are moments where this couple is not all that nice to each other. there are arguments and resolutions. so, it's heavy but they get through it (aka there is a happy ending). american setting, yoongi is a solo artist, everyone pls pray for marriage counselor kim namjoon, seokjin is once again the fic's mvp, swearing, alcohol, recreational drug use (weed/edibles), one quick reference to c*vid, emotional hurt/comfort, miscommunication, two knuckleheads engaging in knucklehead behavior, lots of repetition and space metaphors. this is basically "what would happen if yoongi wrote tiny vessels about his wife: the fic," so do with that what you will. ✤ SMUT WARNINGS oral sex (both receiving), fingering, very slight dom yoongi, dirty talk, unprotected vaginal sex, multiple orgasms, angst and crying during sex, hands on throat but no choking, fingers in mouth bc it's me. i think that's it. the smut is mostly tame. ✤ WORDCOUNT 20k ✤ LISTEN TO all of transatlanticism by death cab for cutie, especially "tiny vessels." all the lyrics used throughout the fic are from this album, so it'd help contextualize a lot! also "monday morning," "stay young go dancing," and "you are a tourist." ✤ WRITTEN FOR the composition of the century collab. thank you to isi (@raplinesmoon), ryen (@kithtaehyung), and mars (@joheunsaram) for letting me participate. ♡ ✤ THANK YOU to jess (@the-boy-meets-evil) and bee (@hot-soop) for being my betas. this was a labor of love and a big ask, so i appreciate the both of you very much. ✤ AUTHOR'S NOTE hi! thank you for checking out my fic. before you read, i just want to overemphasize that this is a pretty angsty piece at times. a lot of it is very personal, and therefore i understand if it's not your cup of tea! if you do read it, i hope you enjoy it and find something human here. relationships are messy because humans are messy, and sometimes both the easiest and most difficult thing you can ever do is love another person.

so this is the new year, and i have no resolutions / or self-assigned penance for problems with easy solutions.

There’s a woman on the television trying to sell you a recliner.

Yoongi isn’t paying attention. He’d downed two glasses of whiskey and said he had something to work on, and he’s here, just like you’d asked, but the distance between the two of you feels insurmountable. Your ninth New Year’s Eve together, and all you’ve got to show for it is a crumbling foundation, a pair of headphones shoved over his ears, a woman on the television trying to sell you a recliner. Some home shopping channel, because you couldn’t bear to see anyone else having a good time. Selfish. Fucking selfish, and you wonder if Yoongi would be on your end of the couch if you weren’t.

What does it matter. You’d be here either way, because you’ve made peace with knowing there are things that are built to last and things like what you and Yoongi have: things that make you hesitant, things that make you yearn, things that sit in your stomach all wrong, taste caustic on your tongue.

It’s logical, then, that you just need something to do. A distraction. You push yourself up from the couch with a sigh, joints cracking, and you feel old. Exhausted, more like; something bone-deep and not easily cured. You pass through the dining room on the way to the kitchen, and all those wedding photos taunt you. Happier times, the two of you smiling into a kiss, Yoongi’s hands on your waist, fingers tangled in chiffon.

You wonder which one of you will stay here after it all goes to shit.

Him, if you were a betting man.

You scrub at the dishes in the sink until your hands are nearly cracked from the scalding water. Yellow gloves sit unused on the counter—sometimes you want the burn because pain is familiar, and a physical pain is easier to solve than your failing marriage. So you scrub away the remnants of a dinner that found you and Yoongi eating in silence. Nothing to say to one another after another year gone by. Not much to look back on fondly. And then you scrub some more, like you could get rid of all the scabs inside of you just as easily.

Some things circle the drain and wash away. Others stain.

You already know which one Yoongi is.

From the living room, the muted sounds of a countdown. Palpable excitement you should be able to feel, but find only numbness instead. Yoongi must have changed the channel. There’s a supercut playing in your head, all the past celebrations. All the parties the two of you have gone to, the years spent alone but together. All the people you’ve kissed in front of. All the quiet, private ways Yoongi used to tell you he loved you. When was the last time? What does it matter. There’s seven seconds until the new year and Yoongi hasn’t come looking for you, so what does it fucking matter.

Fireworks explode outside. A sob wracks your body as you crumble to the floor. There’s a small puddle of dishwater that seeps into the hemline of your shirt. Yoongi hasn’t come looking for you and he can’t hear you, so there’s no one to witness your breakdown but the fucking dishes in the sink. Yoongi had chosen the countertops.

You’re going to miss this place when it’s no longer your home.

instincts are misleading / you shouldn't think what you're feeling / they don't tell you what you know you should want.

Kim Namjoon wouldn’t have been your first choice, if you’d had the luxury of choice.

You like him enough, though. Wicked smart, patient to a fault, pragmatic when it’s required. There’s not much more you could ask for in a marriage counselor besides not needing one at all, but that hadn’t been in the cards. The first time you and Yoongi had met him, you’d cracked a joke that hadn’t landed. The embarrassment of it still stings, made worse by the discomfort of the couch in his office.

“How are things?” he asks. He always dresses impeccably. Today he’s in a sage green sweater and tan trousers that must’ve cost a fortune to get tailored. Even his notebook is genuine leather; sometimes it squeaks when he jots down notes too fast, friction against the fabric of his clothing.

Yoongi is quiet. If you’re embarrassed over a joke, he’s embarrassed over everything else. At least you’re willing to work on things. Getting Yoongi to do anything these days is akin to pulling teeth, and you’ve got a mouth full of blood. “Fine,” Yoongi answers, eyes locked downward. Namjoon’s office has hardwood floors. Tigerwood, he’d said once. Yoongi had complimented them. That had stung, too.

Wicked smart. Namjoon turns to you, glasses slipping a little down his nose. “Would you agree with that?”

You wouldn’t, but the urge to make this easy on Yoongi is hard to fight off. Everything is hard. It’d taken him twenty minutes past midnight to come find you in the kitchen all those weeks ago, chest still heaving, eyes swollen. He’d been distraught, tried to kiss your tears away, apologized over and over like they were the only words he knew. Things aren’t fine, but at least you’ve been willing to fight, and the cost of that persistence feels like the weight of the world.

“No,” you admit, and Namjoon just nods. Writes something down. You don’t have the courage to look at Yoongi. Sometimes it’s easier to let go of a dying thing.

“Okay. How were the holidays?”

It’s hard to breathe around the lump in your throat. All you want to do is hold Yoongi’s hand, scream at him, shake him and ask why he’s doing this to you. Why he’s giving up. Why you aren’t worth more effort—not worth it anymore, when you used to be. If he doesn’t love you anymore you’ve already said you’ll go, and he begs you not to, says he’ll do better, he’s sorry, please don’t.

“They were hard,” you answer, and Yoongi nods his agreement in your peripheral. “We didn’t exchange gifts this year. First time ever.”

“And why is that?”

Yoongi stays quiet. Like pulling teeth, you think, and there’s a flashbang of anger, resentment. Sometimes you want to hurt him. Sometimes you want to make him feel as awful as you do, want him to suffer, want him to atone. It isn’t fair, the things you think, and all you want to do is love your husband without guilt, without wondering if there’s someone out there who’d appreciate it more. Still, you’ve got a nasty streak, and you can’t help but press on the bruise. “Because I knew I’d be the only one.”

“Can you expand on that?”

You shrug. Pick at invisible dirt beneath your nails. “Yoongi said he’d be busy this year. I know what that means.”

“That’s not—” Yoongi sighs, cuts himself off. Runs his hands over his face, sick of this same argument. “Baby, that isn’t fair. I asked you if you wanted to do gifts this year and you said no.”

The laugh that bubbles out of you is derisive, cruel. You’re sick of the same arguments, too. Sick of feeling stuck, some helpless animal in a glue trap. Sick of this office, with Namjoon’s priceless art that doesn’t mean a fucking thing to you; the tigerwood floors that got nicer words out of Yoongi than you have in months; the low thrum of the baseboard heat. Sick of asking Yoongi what you can do, what you can change to make this work, and getting nothing besides a self-deprecating sigh.

Yoongi loves you. Doesn’t want to hurt you. Doesn’t want you to put those kinds of burdens on your shoulders, but taking on all that water himself does nothing but make the both of you sink.

He’ll write about it, though. That’s the thing. Yoongi will write about it, and it used to bring you comfort—listening to those old songs, an aural timeline of your and Yoongi’s relationship. The shy sounds of falling in love, the tinkling of a ring in a dish, the inevitable crash and burn. All those songs aren’t so comforting anymore, when you’d do anything to keep him and Yoongi’s got one foot out the door.

“Because I listened to the song,” you say, and it should feel relieving, should alleviate some of that weight you’ve been carrying around. Instead, you just feel guilty, confessing to some cardinal sin. Yoongi goes stock-still, doesn’t dare to breathe, spine straighter than it’s been in years, and all you feel is guilt.

Namjoon quirks an eyebrow. “The song?”

this is the moment that you know that you told her that you loved her, but you don't / you touch her skin and then you think that she is beautiful but she don't mean a thing to me.

“It wasn’t meant to be about you,” Yoongi says, and his words are pleading, like if he uses the right inflections he can get you to understand. “It was just—shit, I don’t know, I just. I was just writing. I needed to do something with the way I was feeling.” His words take on more panic the longer you’re quiet, and by the end there’s a dazed look in his eyes. They’re taking on water, too. “Baby, please. Did you really think—”

This isn’t the kind of argument meant for an audience, and you’d said as much in therapy. Told Namjoon you’d like to discuss it with Yoongi in private and maybe you could all hash it out during your next session, because you knew this would happen. Knew you’d break down, knew you’d be embarrassed. How do you say your husband wrote a song about not loving you anymore and make it out still feeling whole? How do you swallow all that anger and remember all that bullshit Namjoon had taught you about how to communicate? Your stupid fucking “I” statements.

“Silver Lake?” you retort, resentment burning in your veins. “That wasn’t supposed to be about me? What, are you fucking someone else out there?”

Your husband looks like you’ve slapped him, and sometimes you want to. Sometimes you want to opt out of this life—where they’re just words to Yoongi, but a little too biographical to you. Because you’re not the only one who listens. Yoongi writes these songs and people listen to them and they think, isn’t he married. They think, did he really write a song like this about his wife. They think, that’s a little fucked up. Because they’re just words to Yoongi, and the rest of the world doesn’t know. They’re not in on the joke, and neither are you.

There are few words you can use to explain your hurt. How you’ve sat with that song these past few weeks, scouring each line for something to tell you it hurts now, but it’s going to be okay. Always coming up empty. Those lines you’ve fixated on, refused to let go of—

So when you ask, "Is something wrong?" I think, "You're damn right there is, but we can't talk about it now.”

—because that’s how it is, how it goes.

“This is my fucking life, Yoongi.” There’s only heat where there used to be patience. “You write these songs and you don’t spare a single thought for how they might affect me. You write these songs instead of talking to me, and I’m supposed to know how to fix everything, right? Aren’t I? You can’t even tell me how to fix this fucking marriage, but you’ll write a song about how I don’t mean a goddamn thing to you.”

There are tears rolling down your face. You hadn’t realized you started crying, but everything feels wet, feels wrong. Feels like you’re occupying a body that isn’t yours. You’re having this argument in someone else’s bedroom. You’re watching someone else’s marriage fall apart. Someone else’s life. “Either help me fix this and put in the work or let me go.” Everything boils over eventually. There’s only so much you can stave off before the inevitable, and now it’s come for you. “Please.” You choke on a sob. “Yoongi, please, I’m so tired.”

And Yoongi—Yoongi’s got a lot of nervous habits. Little things he does when the anxiety gets to be too much, and there’s one you share, one of those couple things where you pick up one another’s mannerisms, ways of speaking, specific inflections. Yoongi fidgets with his wedding band, pushes it up to that knobby fourth knuckle with his thumb, twirls it around.

Usually, when he pushes it far enough, there’s a strip of even paler skin. A place the sun hasn’t touched; a place that bears proof that Yoongi is yours. Yoongi pushes his wedding band with his thumb and that strip of skin matches the rest, and it strikes someplace deep that’s irrational and unfair. Because it makes sense that there isn’t a discrepancy, that everything is uniform. It makes sense, but everything is so fragile that the thought comes unbidden. Maybe there’s no discrepancy because Yoongi isn’t wearing it. Maybe there’s no discrepancy because Yoongi has let go without letting go, and there’s nothing to salvage, no point in begging, in putting the gun in his hand and forcing him to make the decision. It all tastes sour, tastes like your tongue has crumbled to ash, but—

“I’m not letting you go,” Yoongi responds, words just as waterlogged as yours. “I can’t. I won’t.”

“But you want to,” you say, and it sounds like a conclusion but you mean it like a question. A plea. Perhaps that’s the crux of it: you just can’t say what you mean. Sometimes Yoongi’s honesty feels like a brand, a permanent reminder of everything he’s ever felt that you’re forced to carry, but at least there’s honor in that. At least Yoongi doesn’t talk in fucking riddles.

He shakes his head. “No.” At least there’s conviction in his words. “No, I don’t. This is just—it’s hard right now, okay. It’s hard and it fucking sucks, and I don’t know why, but I’m not—” He sucks in a breath. Sometimes Yoongi can’t say what he means, either.

“Just say it, Yoongi.” So, you prod. Sometimes you find the most mottled bruise on his body and you press on it, because when you love someone the way you love Yoongi, you also know all the ways to hurt them. Sometimes you hurt Yoongi when you mean to hurt yourself because it feels the same.

“What do you want me to say,” he answers, defeated and raw. “Tell me what you want me to say, because if I didn’t know better, it’d sound like you wanted me to leave. It sounds like you want that but you want me to be the bad guy. You want me to pull the trigger.”

You don’t. You know that for certain, just by the way it feels excruciating to merely think about. What would your life even look like without Yoongi? What would it be? But you’re still that caged animal. Still resentful of Yoongi’s composure, because you can fall apart at a moment’s notice and Yoongi is always calm, prepared; always the last building standing in a hurricane.

“I don’t want that,” you say, borrowing a bit of your husband’s honesty, his fortitude, “but I need you to know that’s where we’re at. I need you to be able to say it, instead of treating it like it’s some impossible thing—“

“It is,” Yoongi argues, brows pinched, lips pouted. “Baby, what are you saying? It is. Why wouldn’t it be? That’s what you want?”

“You don’t write songs like you did about someone you’re not planning on leaving, Yoongi. I don’t know how you don’t understand that. I don’t—how can you think it’s impossible? You think I’ve just been doing all of this for fun? The therapy, the crying? You think I haven’t already—” Mourned the end of my marriage, you want to say, but you can’t. You need to be realistic. You need to say what you mean, and even if it’s true—even if you’ve mentally divided up everything in this house, thehouse itself—it doesn’t do you any good to create new wounds when both of you are already beaten and battered.

“You’re my fucking wife,” comes Yoongi’s response, and the way he says it feels dirty. Yoongi calls you his wife the way lesser men would use a slur, and sometimes Yoongi is composed but sometimes he’s angry. Sometimes he’s so angry the world becomes too small to contain him. “I’m not gonna—you’ve already what? Given up? Checked out? It’s not fair, this thing you do. Decide how things are gonna play out before they even happen. It’s fucking bullshit. You’re my fucking wife, and the least you could do is give me a little credit—”

“Oh, that’s rich.”

Yoongi’s pupils blow wide. Sometimes you think they’re the darkest thing in the universe. Vantablack. “Yeah, it is. It is fucking rich.”

“At least I’m trying! At least I’m doing something, not just writing little fucking songs about how much I don’t care about you.”

Yoongi slams the door behind him.

For the first time, you wonder if he’s coming back.

i am waiting for that sense of relief / i am waiting for you to flee the scene / as if you held in your hand the smoking gun / and on the floor lay the one you said you loved.

You feel him before you hear him, and he doesn’t wake you up.

It’s dark. Probably sometime between one and two, judging by the pillar of moonlight creeping in through the curtains. Yoongi is quiet as he moves around the bedroom, still so considerate even now, and you just watch. Jeans removed one leg at a time, hung neatly in the closet; socks removed one by one, into the hamper; flannel unbuttoned with calloused fingers, dropped on the floor. He’ll pick it up tomorrow, just like he always does. Down to just a t-shirt, neckline loose and stretched from overwear, and black briefs.

Moonlight suits him, you think. (You’ve always thought.) Casts silver shadows on his skin, fills in the contours, lends credence to the thought that Yoongi is something ethereal, someone wasting his time on earth.

He’s down to a t-shirt and briefs, and he hesitates. Takes a step toward the bed and thinks better of it. Doesn’t know what to do in this liminal space, in this liminal period of time. There’s only two ways to go, and Yoongi will either leave or he’ll stay, and right now he doesn’t know which one it’s going to be.

“Yoongi,” you say, and you try to make the decision for him. “You’re home?”

You see him swallow, watch his shoulders slump. “Yeah,” he says, and it’s quiet like the nighttime. You’re in the middle of the city and this moment is so quiet. “I’m—did I wake you? I’m sorry, I just—”

“No,” you answer. You don’t want to fight. “You’re fine. Do you—are you coming to bed?”

He nods. Seems to fold in on himself just a little more. “Yeah. Yeah, just have to brush my teeth.”

There’s the padding of feet on hardwood. Something that sounds like a stubbed toe. A loud curse. The flick of the bathroom light, the faucet, spit. The padding of feet on hardwood, then the bedroom rug. The depression of the mattress, his phone plugged in and discarded carelessly on his nightstand. An exhale, like he’s finally home after a long day.

Does Yoongi still consider you his home?

“I’m sorry,” you say. Still quiet, just like the nighttime. “I don’t want to fight with you.”

You hear Yoongi swallow again. Smell just the faintest hint of alcohol. “No one’s fighting, baby,” he answers. Woven into his words is a softness you don’t deserve. “We can talk about it in the morning.”

“Can we talk about it now?”

Yoongi suits the moonlight, but so do you. It makes you brave. Sometimes things are easier to say in these in-between spaces: love and heartbreak, midnight and morning. Sometimes the sun is too reflective, and sometimes it burns.

“Do you want to?” You nod, even though instinct tells you to shirk away and take it back. A small piece of honesty to work yourself up to something bigger, more consequential. “Okay.”

Sometimes you get what you want and aren’t sure what to do with it, so you roll onto your side, the one facing your husband, and suck in a breath. Hold it. Count to five. Let it go. Yoongi reserves all his patience for you, always. “I’m really scared, Yoongi.”

His sigh is fractured, watery. “Me too,” he admits. “There’s a lot I want to say and I just—I don’t know how. Which makes it worse, I know, and then I don’t know how to fix it.”

Is that why… “The song?”

Yoongi nods. “I needed to get it out. Like, some call of the void shit, you know? Put those big fears into words in a way that—it doesn’t make sense, looking back, because I thought it was just an outlet. Just, write this hypothetical song about the collapse of our relationship because it fucking terrified me and then let it go. Like how sometimes Namjoon tells us to write letters to each other and burn them.” He fists the duvet. Moonlight gleams off his wedding band. “I’m sorry. I need you to know it wasn’t real… like that.”

“Okay.”

“I—you were right. About the other thing. About me not being able to say it.”

“Can you now?”

Yoongi shakes his head. “I don’t think I can. Makes it real.”

“You also can’t stand in a burning house and pretend it’s not on fire.”

That gets a laugh out of him. Sardonic, a little self-deprecating, but it’s there. “Is that where you’re at? With me.” He makes a sound that’s a lot like a whimper. “Divorce.”

“I don’t want to be,” you answer. Another small truth leading up to a bigger one. “I’m trying not to be.”

“But you are.”

Shakily, you nod. “Yeah, I am. Things just aren’t… they’re not working, even though I’m trying, and I just.” Yoongi’s hand finds yours. It’s sweat-slick and cold. “Sometimes I think it’d be the kind thing to do. Put us both out of our misery.”

“Relationship euthanasia.”

“Yeah, kind of. It’s funny, you know. My vet always used to say you’d know it’s time when there’s more bad days than good, so I guess that really is the best way to put it.”

“What would that even look like?”

You want to say you don’t know. That you haven’t thought about it. Is this the call of the void again or is this for real? But the twilight makes you honest, so you tell the truth. “I would leave,” you say. “I wouldn’t be able to stay here, and I couldn’t ask you to go. It’s always been more your space than mine.”

Yoongi hums an agreement. Not cruel, it just makes sense. “I’m not tied to this place,” you continue. “This city. This state. I’m not sure I’d be able to stay, knowing you’re still here in a house that used to be ours without me in it. But sometimes I’m scared I wouldn’t be able to leave, either.”

“You could,” Yoongi answers. When you look up, he’s crying. Cheeks streaked with tears, eyes swollen. “You can do anything, you know? You’re so much stronger than me. You could do the hard thing and be okay. It’s part of the reason I’ve been so scared to have this conversation. You might leave, and you’d be okay, and I wouldn’t.”

“Yoongi...”

“I know you’re tired,” he says, voice laying his own exhaustion bare, “but I want you to be happy. So I will—I’ll let you go, if it’s what you want.” He’s crying harder now, staccato sobs wracking his body, making him smaller. “I don’t want to,” he whispers. “I don’t think I can, but I will. For you. If it’s what you need. If it’ll make you happy.”

You can’t stand it. “Yoongi, no.” You’re on your haunches, wiping furiously at his cheeks, thumbing beneath his eyes. “Being apart from you would never make me happy.”

You’re in his lap. He’s still too anxious to reach out and touch, maybe still a little scorned, and his hands lay at his sides. Twist into the duvet again. You want them on you. You always want Yoongi on you. “Tell me how to fix this,” he begs. “Tell me and I’ll do it, I promise, baby, please just tell me. I can’t—I don’t want to—”

“Yoongi.” He looks up, meets your eye. Moonlight suits him. “Something has to change, and you know that as well as I do. We can’t keep going like this, but just—just meet me in the middle, okay? Help me. Let’s start there.”

“Okay,” comes his automatic response. He’d agree to anything right now. Take any lifeline. And then the words sink in, and the sobs taper off but he’s still got the shakes, so you hold him. Wrap him in your arms and just let him breathe. “Okay,” he repeats. Measured. Considered.

Still standing, even after a hurricane.

i need you so much closer, so come on.

Morning comes, and with it—tenderness.

Also the mug of coffee on your nightstand, Yoongi’s hand splayed on the swell of your hip, the warmth that seeps into your skin. He’s typing away on his phone with the other, and he abandons it to pull you closer when you stir.

“Morning,” you murmur. Yoongi’s reply rumbles against your back.

“S’the afternoon, baby.”

Your laugh is abrupt, soft. Dissipates into the air as quickly as it’d arrived. “Okay. Good afternoon, then.”

Yoongi shuffles closer, adjusts so he’s pressed fully against your back. The hand that was on your hip moves beneath the hemline of your shirt. Explores the soft skin of your stomach, thumbs at the valleys between each rib. Yoongi’s touch is always laced with soft confidence; now, he still knows the way, still has the map memorized, but he’s reluctant.

You place your hand over his, move it higher. His thumb grazes the bottom swell of your breast and he sighs, presses impossibly closer still. “I love you,” he says quietly, like a secret. “Want you to know that.”

“I do,” you answer. He sighs again at your affirmation—more of an exhale, all relief—and drops his head to the crook of your neck. Presses a kiss there. The heat of him is almost disorienting, especially after being deprived of it for so long. “Haven’t been this close to you in months.”

He nips at your ear with his teeth. “I’ll make it up to you,” he says, and something stirs low in your belly. “Take a shower with me. I still smell like the bar.”

You snort. “Very sexy. Top tier dirty talk.”

He presses another kiss beneath your ear. “Please?”

“Let me drink some coffee first. I’m barely awake.” When you roll onto your side, Yoongi looks small, on the verge of dejection. Soft. You can’t help but smile. Can’t help but reach out to smooth the furrow between his brows, kiss away his pout. “I’ll be there, I promise. Give me five minutes.”

He wants to push it, you can tell, but he just says okay, baby. Presses one final kiss to your forehead before he’s gone, before the sound of bare feet on hardwood returns, before you hear the shower turn on, Yoongi’s low hum as he patters around and talks to himself.

You sit up and take stock. Your eyes are sore, head feels like it’s been split in two, but your heart feels… lighter. Scabbed over. Another battle fought and won, and even though the war isn’t over, you feel cautiously optimistic. Better than you have in a while, and you’re smiling when you press the coffee mug to your lips. Still warm, so Yoongi hasn’t been awake much longer than you. You wonder how many cups he’s already had, if he drank them black.

Half your cup is gone before Yoongi starts yelling from the en suite, complaining loudly that he’s cold and lonely, to hurry up. That he’s going to use all the hot water out of spite, but what if it gets too hot, what if he perishes in here and you have to live the rest of your life overcome with guilt. If it’s too hot, wouldn’t I perish too? you call back. Yoongi’s responding silence is so loud, but you fill it with a wild cackle.

“I’m gonna use all the nice shampoo!” he yells, but you’re already in the bathroom.

“And you’re gonna pay to replace it,” you retort, and he’s so caught off-guard that you’re there that he screams, drops a bottle on his foot, screams again. Up and off goes your t-shirt—Yoongi’s; smells like him and not a bar—and then you’re peeling off your underwear, tossing everything in the hamper. Into the shower. You reach out and touch Yoongi just so he knows you’re there even though he already does, but you press a kiss between his shoulder blades all the same. “You okay?”

“Fine,” he grumbles, all embarrassment.

Yoongi had insisted on a large shower. Something big enough for the both of you to fit in, and he’d blushed furiously when talking about it, but it was never anything sexual. You’d tried shower sex once, back in that shitty Silver Lake apartment, and never bothered again. But Yoongi craved the intimacy of showering together, the vulnerability, and over time you found it almost lonesome to shower by yourself.

So when he says, “Come here,” there’s enough space to maneuver beneath the spray, warm and not perishable-hot, and stand beside him. Enough space for Yoongi to rake his hands through your hair, get the strands wet; enough space to reach back for the nice shampoo he didn’t use all of; enough space for him to lather it in his hands and massage it into your scalp. A practiced song and dance. Something Yoongi could never forget the steps of.

Rinsed out, down the drain. Yoongi works in the conditioner next, brushes it through with his fingers, presses a kiss to your shoulder. “I was talking to Jin,” he says, and your mind is blank for a second. Then—when you woke up and he was on his phone. “About the cabin.”

“The one in Oakhurst?”

Yoongi nods. Turns you around so your back is to the spray, facing him. Lets the water rinse the conditioner away, too, before he’s placing a hand beneath your chin, tilting your face up. “Would you wanna go? Just us?”

“How long?”

A thumb settles in the contour of your cheek. Third finger traces the bridge of your nose. “However long you want. I—I don’t have anything, for a while. Could you work from there?”

You nod, a little delirious on how gentle Yoongi’s being with you. “Ye-yeah. Should be fine.”

You suck in a breath, shuddering as Yoongi brushes your rib cage when he reaches for the loofah. “D’you—” A pause. Time for you to swallow that familiar lump in your throat, keep from crying. “D’you think it’ll help?”

He pauses. Nods, so minutely you almost miss it. “I don’t know,” he admits, “but I want to try.”

“Me too.”

“Okay.” Presses his lips to yours. “However long you want, then.”

After he’s scrubbed the scars from your skin, the sadness, he wraps you in a warm towel. Stands behind you and wraps his arms around you as you both brush your teeth. Presses a kiss to your temple. Watches, so fond it makes you ache, as you dry your hair. Cracks little jokes about each product you use, says surely you don’t need all that, and you swat at him because you do. Because he uses just as many as you do, and sometimes uses yours. Tenderly takes the lotion from your hands and rubs it into your skin. His hands are firm when they run over your calves, your thighs, and your moan is quiet but it’s there, and you watch, mouth open, as Yoongi’s eyes flutter shut. As he takes a second to collect himself, breathe through it.

He just hasn’t heard that sound in a while, is all.

“Can I make it up to you now?” The words are spoken into your skin, pressed into the ditch of your knee, all warm breath skirting along your skin. “Show you how much I missed you? How much I love you?”

Goosebumps erupt all over. Dazed, you nod, and instead of words, you can feel the way Yoongi smirks. “Gonna take my time with you,” he promises. “Gonna take you apart. Would you like that, baby? Want me to take you apart?”

You meet your own eyes in the mirror, quick to forget where you are when Yoongi’s like this. You already look picked apart. Glassy eyes, mouth parted. The towel slips in your slackened grip and you dare another glance in the mirror, already knowing you’ll find Yoongi’s hungry gaze staring back, at full height.

“Look at you,” he chides, tone husky, and it’s not a shock that your husband wants you, that you’re both desirable and desired, but Yoongi is usually so unshakeable. Stable. Seeing him so affected from so little has you lightheaded, has your thighs clamping together unconsciously. “No.” Words firm. “Don’t hide from me.”

You reach back, still staring into the mirror, eyes still locked with Yoongi’s. Your hands tangle in his hair. Dark, longer than it’s been in so long, soft when you pull on it a little. Yoongi groans, buries his face in your neck, nips at the skin there. Through half-lidded eyes you watch as his hands roam your body. Feel the way he grows hard against the small of your back. Briefly, you think you might want it like this. Might want Yoongi to hike up the towel, bend you over the counter.

(Impersonal, because that’s what you’ve grown used to.)

But your hand finds his, slow their travel, lace your fingers together. “Not here.” He bites at your skin again and your whole body flushes when he begins to suck a bruise into your neck. “Yoo—Yoongi. No-not here.”

The bites slowly melt into something taunting, almost cruel. “You sound a little needy, baby.”

“I am.” You’re not embarrassed to admit it. It’s been so long you’re nearly aching with want, and you know Yoongi, know the kind of lover he is. The want is so strong you’re trembling with it. “Yoongi, please.”

Your words are hushed, meant only for the sanctity of this moment. Yoongi looks up long enough to catch your eye—long enough for the corners of his lips to pull into a smirk, to squeeze your hand tighter. “You don’t want it like this?” he asks, even though he knows your answer. But he still makes a show of it. Uses his free hand to grip the edge of your towel, drag it up and over your ass. Pauses to knead the flesh there before planting his hand in the center of your back and bending you over the counter. “Bet I could take you just like this, couldn’t I? Bet I’d just slide right in.”

The whine that escapes you is honestly pathetic, but you’re already so wound up, coiled tight, that you’re long past the point of caring. And you wonder, briefly, why you should care at all; why you care about the sounds you make, the way your body looks, when it’s Yoongi. When it’s your husband and not some random hookup. It’s that thought—this is my husband, my husband, my husband—that has your toes curling against the cold tile. It’s seeing the glint of his wedding band in the mirror.

“Do it here.” Your voice betrays your desperation. “Just—fuck, Yoongi, do it here, I don’t care.”

It’s maddening, the fact that he hasn’t even touched you yet. Not properly. But that’s the thing about space: sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s a dying star, a supernova explosion, and you know what comes after. A black hole. Endless, inescapable, dark dark dark. That’s where the two of you are. That’s what all of this is, just a perpetual pull towards Yoongi, fated. Perhaps nothing more than gravity, but you let it reel you in nonetheless.

If the two of you are fated to go out the same way, the same dying star, you’ll go willingly.

“I’ll give it to you how you wan’ it,” Yoongi slurs. Leaves wet, open-mouthed kisses across your neck. “Get on the bed, baby, I’ll give you whatever you want.”

He’s on you before you even have a chance to drop the towel. Drapes his body over yours and presses you into the mattress, wraps one hand around your throat just to keep you there. Like you might leave. Like you might decide you don’t want this, don’t want him. As if you could. “Tell me what else you want,” he says, words unstable and wavering. He’s so fucking hard.

“Your mouth.”

He cock twitches at your words, your direction, and he smiles down at you in a way that makes you feel like you’re burning. “Yeah? That’s what you want?” A switch flips when you nod, chest heaving. Yoongi gets so serious, laser-focused, and it’s overwhelming when it’s pointed at you. You reach out, trace two fingers over his cheekbones just to make sure he’s real, and Yoongi captures them, presses a kiss to the center of your palm.

He’s not so gentle after that.

Yoongi moves slowly, intentionally, and you feel like prey, all part of the show. He trails his tongue down the column of your throat, the space between your breasts, your stomach. Spreads your legs and settles between them, places them over his shoulders. Stares. You can only imagine what you must look like: how wet, how open. His breath is so warm against you when he speaks. “You have to come on my tongue before you can have my cock.” He presses his thumb against your clit and circles slowly, and you can’t remember the last time he touched you like this. “Do you understand, baby?” A few months at least, maybe longer.

You nod. You’d agree to anything to feel Yoongi’s mouth on you, and he knows this, laughs before he leans in to lick a fat stripe against your slit. It’s instinct, the way your hands fly to his hair, trying to pull him closer. Having him here isn’t enough; you need to be consumed by him, need him to ruin you from the inside out, even though he already has. It’s also instinct, the way you know you belong to him, the way everyone who might come after him will pale in comparison.

As diligently as ever, Yoongi works you over. Eats you out so sloppily you can feel it pooling between your legs, seeping into the sheets below you, and the way he’s moaning around you makes you writhe. Has you gripping at the duvet, his hair, his hand. Has you rolling your hips against his face, groaning when Yoongi just takes it. When he says like that, yeah, so fucking hot, baby, love when you use me. When he reaches up to shove two fingers in your mouth and gives you no warning before he presses them inside.

“Fuck, fuck—”

Embarrassing, the way you can hear yourself, the way you can hear every wet pass of Yoongi’s tongue. Embarrassing that he’s only had his mouth on you for a few minutes and you’re already teetering on the edge. Embarrassing how hard Yoongi has to grip your hips to keep you where he wants you. Embarrassing that you welcome the bruises, want to be marked by him. “Are you close?” You think you nod. It’s hard to do much of anything when Yoongi crooks his fingers, presses firmly against your g-spot. “Is my beautiful girl gonna come from my fucking fingers? My mouth?”

(You are beautiful, but you don’t mean a thing to me.)

You try not to go there. You squeeze your eyes shut and try not to think about the words in that song, try to remember that’s all they are. If Yoongi had meant to hurt you, though, he’d hit his mark. Just words, you remind yourself, but they take you out of your body completely.

And it’s a funny thing, this almost-grief, because you’re hurting so badly it feels like you’re drowning, but with the pain comes guilt. What do you do when the person who cut you is the only one who can bandage it? What do you do with this pain when you want to talk it to death, make sense of it, but you don’t want to make Yoongi feel worse?

You hide—hide the pain, hide yourself.

You’ve gotten good at it over the last few months, too much practice, so you let Yoongi suction his lips around your clit and get you off just the way he said he would. You let him kiss you after, taste yourself on his tongue, and you think, This is what you deserve, I hope you taste like me forever, I hope it never washes away. You tug your lip between your teeth when you push him away and reach for his cock. Spit into your hand and say something dirty as you jerk him off, and Yoongi falls for it. Moans brokenly and thrusts into your hand, gets greedy just the way you had before reality humbled you.

“Ba-baby,” he whines, rutting a little harder, a little faster. Everyone gets selfish eventually. “Gotta fuck you.”

It should feel satisfying, seeing him desperate like this, seeing firsthand how badly he wants you, the fucked-out look on his face, but it all rings hollow. So you finish the show—push two fingers into yourself and coat Yoongi’s cock once more with your own slick—and roll over onto your stomach, arch your back the way you know he likes, and beg him to fuck you.

Yoongi falls for it. Yoongi pushes inside and groans, and you moan because you should and not because it’ll cover the sound of your sobs. Yoongi rolls his hips and lets whatever he thinks come out of his mouth, all filth, and it should do something for you but instead you’re wondering what he’d say to someone else. Would he fuck someone else like this? Would he be as desperate for it?

Eventually you forget to keep moaning but you don’t stop crying. You wonder if it should feel cathartic or if it’ll just feel like this forever. You think about New Year’s Eve and crying alone in the kitchen, how Yoongi hadn’t known. You think, I’m scared I could eventually hate him. I’m scared that line gets blurrier everyday.

“Baby?” Yoongi realizes this time.

You think, Another dying star.

“Did I hurt you?”

You think, Maybe I’ve already burned up. Maybe this is all that’s left.

“Baby, talk to me, please—”

You think, How many holes can you patch before it all sinks anyway?

“I’m sorry—”

You think, I’m scared of how much I want to hurt you. I’m scared I’m going to be angry forever.

Yoongi turns you gently onto your back. Takes a long, hard look at the tears rolling down your cheeks. Seems to commit them to memory. Starts crying, too, and it’s nothing more than vindication that doesn’t feel satisfying. Everything just tastes like ash: remnants of the supernova, the crash and burn, a thousand cuts.

Yoongi loves you. “Keep going,” you say, because you both need it. Not every problem can be fucked through, but you think this one can. “Please, keep going.”

Yoongi hesitates. Must find whatever he’s looking for as he stares down at you before he nods minutely and pushes back in. This is not the way you thought you’d heal, but there is only one way this is going to end, so you might as well. The first time was always going to be the hardest.

“I love you,” Yoongi says, and it’s raw. It’s real, the way he drops his head to the crook of your neck and cries. The way he finds your hand and laces your fingers together. His wedding band is cool against your skin. “I fucking love you. I’ll love you for the rest of my fucking life, you know that?”

He’s got something to prove. Wants to fuck devotion into you, wants to promise you impossible things. You wrap your legs around his waist and whimper, ask him to fuck you harder, but he doesn’t. Fucks you steady. “We’re gonna go to that cabin,” he rasps. “We’re gonna figure this out, and we’re gonna do all those things we talked about years ago. I’m gonna fuck you in every room in that place, just like this. I’m gonna make sure you know—even if you leave, you’re gonna know how much I love you.”

He’s going to be the end of you. “Yoongi.” He already is.

He moves your hand to your clit, tells you to make yourself come. Tells you he wants to see it. Fucks into you just a little faster, a little deeper, and you can feel the coil tightening again. Another supernova, you think as your body surrenders and shudders, and buries himself to the hilt and comes with you.

Sometimes space is a dying star, and sometimes it’s salvation.

and when i see you, i really see you upside down / but my brain knows better. it picks you up and turns you around.

There had been a time, years ago, when you and Yoongi would sit at your cramped kitchen table and pluck scraps of paper out of a bowl.

A lot had been left to chance back then. Probably too much, in hindsight, but that’s just the way life was. Carefree, a summer breeze, blissfully naive. The two of you were young and love-drunk and warm from the sun. Yoongi had worked endlessly—gigs for shit pay in shittier bars, overnights in his studio, fingers calloused from guitar strings and networking—to put a ring on your finger, nothing certain except how he felt about you, and that had been enough.

It’d gone like—

(“What’d you write on that one?” you ask, trying to peek over the bowl between you to see. Yoongi laughs, swats your hand away, says oh my god, go away, you’ll see if you pick it. “You’re no fun.”

Yoongi rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I’m no fun because I don’t want to spoil a surprise.”

“But you know what’s on all of mine!” you argue, and you feel more in love with Yoongi than ever, picking a place out of a bowl, leaving things to fate.

It’s your pout that does it. You jut out your bottom lip and turn on the puppy dog eyes, and Yoongi folds like a bad hand. Yah, yah, don’t do that! he says, laughing harder than before, covering his eyes with those calloused hands. There are so many stories in those hands.

So Yoongi laughs and unfolds his scrap of paper and pushes it in your direction. Refuses to meet your eye as you read it over, and you can’t figure out why he’s embarrassed of it. “Jin’s cabin? It’s up in Oakhurst, right? That’s only a five hour drive.”

“For a honeymoon, though?” Yoongi’s question is quiet, small. Still embarrassed. “Isn’t it kind of lame?”

“No, it’s not lame. You’ve wanted to go to Yosemite forever.”

“Yeah, I’ve wanted to go. And it’s mostly just for Horsetail Fall—”

You pinch the bridge of your nose, sighing dramatically. “Yoongi. Put it in the bowl.”

“But—”

“Put it in the bowl.”

A flush creeps up his neck but he listens nonetheless, re-crumpling the paper and tossing it into the bowl. You’ll be picking soon, and you know the odds are slim, but you put a silent hope into the universe for Jin’s little cabin in Oakhurst to be the one, to be able to do this one thing for Yoongi when he’s been working himself to the bone to do so much for you.)

—and it hadn’t worked out, that cabin trip. The two of you had gone to Italy, Yoongi having been the one to pull it, and you rented scooters and ate gelato and soaked in the coastline. You’d dragged Yoongi on a tour of the catacombs and he spent hours at the Roman Forum, reading all the plaques and taking it all in.

You hadn’t felt like you’d missed out. Time hadn’t been wasted, and you still look back fondly at those pictures—the one of Yoongi with powdered sugar on his nose from too much sfogliatella, the two of you at Lake Como, you with all the stray cats at the Gatti di Roma, one in your lap, all gray, that you said had looked like Yoongi.

But, going to that little cabin in Oakhurst now, it feels a little like redemption. It feels like the universe is handing you the keys on a silver platter, saying, it’s okay to do it again; even if you got it right the first time, who says you can only do it once. So you take a day off for the drive and your boss gives you the week; you pack as many clothes as you can fit in your suitcase; you set an alarm for seven o’clock and try to stay grounded.

First, though, you have to survive Namjoon.

“How are things?” he asks, folding one endlessly long leg over the other.

Beside you, Yoongi radiates nervous energy. Jittery but not anxious. The kind of pent-up energy a runner might have: in position, awaiting the gunfire before a race. Composed to a fault, it’s not often you see him like this. Maybe right before an album drop or a big show, but never in marriage counseling.

So it doesn’t feel like a lie or lip service when you say, “Better,” and Namjoon and Yoongi both swallow down the same kind of smile.

“And why is that?”

“We’re going on a trip,” Yoongi says, and this surprises you, too. Protective, fiercely private Yoongi. “To, um. A friend’s place. Up in Oakhurst.”

Namjoon looks excited. “Near Yosemite,” he says. Not a question. “Is this a getaway or just a change of scenery?”

You look at Yoongi; Yoongi looks at you. “I’ll have to work some of the time, so I guess it’s a little bit of both,” you answer, “but it feels… good, exciting. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Yeah?”

You’re fidgeting, digging imaginary dirt from beneath your nails again as your cheeks warm. “Yeah. I know Yoongi has wanted to go for a long time, so I’m excited for that. I think… I think it’s important for him to do something like that, right now. Something big, you know? Or, something that feels big, I guess. I think it’ll be good for him, and—”

“It’ll be good for us.” Yoongi’s correction is gentle, dandelion-soft. He can’t look you in the eye as he says it, but he doesn’t need to. His neck is flushed and Namjoon’s expressive enough for all three of you. “Anything that’s good for me is good for us.”

If you’re stunned, Namjoon is shell shocked. It lasts all of five seconds before he’s coughing to cover his grin, jotting down notes like a mad professor, and it’s a little tooreminiscent of the way your parents had pushed you out the front door on your prom night—that same brand of giddy excitement, like they knew something you didn’t. But, Namjoon is a professional before anything else, so he simply asks, “How long are you going?”

“TBD,” Yoongi answers again.

“You’re able to take the time off?”

Right back to earth. Another sore point, because sometimes, like now, it’s easy to forget who you’re married to; easy to forget when you’re the pinnacle of American suburbia—standard nine-to-five, family health insurance plan, a maxed-out Roth IRA—and Yoongi is anything but. It’s easy to forget when your lives are so different. When Yoongi’s got songs and albums to write, for himself and everyone else, and shows and tours to plan, for himself and when someone else needs him as a fill-in, and you’re gearing up for another half-year spent alone at home.

Sure, it sucks sometimes, but getting to watch Yoongi live out his dreams tampers down all that negativity. When it’s two a.m. in Los Angeles but midday where he is and he sends you pictures of whatever he’s doing, what he’s eating, candids of his tourmates, all the sights and sounds. Yoongi’s doing exactly what he’s always wanted, what he’s meant to, and it’s okay.

What’s good for him is good for you, after all.

“I, uh—” He pauses, rubs at the back of his neck. The flush is still there. “I put a pause on the stand-in work for the rest of the year. Told everyone I wanted to focus on writing and producing and… stuff. Everything else. Getting my shit together.” You can hear it when he swallows, can see the slight tremor of his hands. Yoongi has never done well when he’s not working himself to the bone—when he has too much free time to spend in his own head. “And I can do that from anywhere, so.”

Namjoon catches your eye over the rim of his glasses. Seems to ask a question you’re not sure the answer to so you just stare back, and then his attention turns back to Yoongi. “When you say ‘stuff,’ what do you mean?”

“Well, I wound up here, didn’t I?”

From anyone else, it would sound snappy and bitter, but from Yoongi it’s just… self-deprecating, wounded, like it’s nothing more than a personal failure. Like Yoongi is the only reason the two of you are in marriage counseling and not a million little things the two of you have done. “We,” you correct, dandelion-soft just like Yoongi had been, and his head turns toward you so sharply you worry his neck is going to snap. “Don’t do that, Yoongi.”

He’s stock-still, back uncharacteristically ramrod straight, jaw dropped slightly. “Don’t take on the full burden of this. We wound up here. It’s okay to say that.”

Namjoon tries so hard to hide another smile that his dimples look more like craters.

i roll the window down and then begin to breathe in / the darkest country road and the strong scent of evergreen.

“Hi.”

Yoongi is slouched in the doorway of your office, beanie pulled down low. Strands of curls stick out of the bottom and you shoot him a smile, distracted from your task of packing up your work equipment. “Hi. What’s up?”

“Are you all packed?”

You shrug. “Just about. I don’t really have that much stuff. Just my laptop and some files.” You eye him skeptically, already sensing where this is going. “Are you?”

Your husband pouts, and it’s such a pathetic expression that you swear you can feel your heart grow three sizes. “In my defense—”

“Oh my god.” You try to look stern, but a laugh bubbles out of you anyway. “Why do you always do this?”

“I don’t like packing,” he whines. “And I need help.”

“With what?”

“Some of my production stuff.” He pouts deeper, sends you an impressive pair of puppy dog eyes. “Please help me. You’re my only hope.”

“How much are you bringing?”

“Not that much,” he answers in a way that sounds like a promise. “I wanted to bring the Yamaha because the cabin has that screened in porch and I think the acoustics could be really interesting in there, but it’s really heavy—”

You sigh. Look down at your laptop and stack of paperwork and wireless mouse and sigh again, then nod your agreement, because it’s not the first time you’ve helped Yoongi lug his gear in and out of your place and it won’t be the last. You’ve all but perfected it by now.

The car looks more like you’re moving than going on a trip. Your neighbor’s such a shithead you’re surprised he hasn’t poked his head out by now and asked when the house is getting listed so he can buy it and flip it for three times the price. Another brainless capitalist shill, Yoongi always says, and you laugh to yourself as you force another duffel bag of god-knows-what into the trunk. And we’re his neighbors, so what does that say about us? you always reply.

It takes the better part of twenty minutes, but then it’s done and you’re left with sore arms and a sweaty brow. Yoongi looks like the weight of the world’s been lifted from his shoulders rather than his hefty digital piano, and the thankful smile he shoots at you is worth any price.

“Do you need help with anything?” he asks, and you shake your head.

“No,” you respond, picking up the stack of files only to drop them back down on your desk. “It’s really just my laptop and this stuff. I’m fine; go do whatever it is you’ve got left to do. I’ll take care of it.”

There’s a look Yoongi gets when he’s laser-focused. Intense, unmistakeable, intimidating, especially when it’s trained on you. That’s how he’s looking at you now: looking at the sheen of sweat on your skin, the way your tongue runs along your bottom lip, your mussed-up hair. Both of you know exactly what he wants, and it drives you a little crazy when he’s shameless like this. When he’s not shy about looking, about wanting.

So Yoongi bends you over your desk and fucks you right there, right in your office in front of the street-side window. It’s hazy and primal but he takes his time, does and says exactly what he wants, has you a trembling, incoherent mess in record time, and it works. You come so hard you don’t think about the song, you don’t cry, and those threads of optimism start weaving something you can hold in your hands.

—

“Shut it off,” Yoongi slurs, voice deep and raspy from sleep.

You snort, turning off your alarm, seven a.m. sharp, and roll over to press a kiss to his forehead. “Wake up, sleepyhead, I got breakfast.”

He opens one eye, looks at you questioningly with it, blinks in confusion. “How long have you been up?”

“A while. Now, come on, I ordered your favorite.”

That piques his attention. “The breakfast sandwich?” You nod. “And the little strudels?” You nod again. “Coffee, too?”

You grab the plastic cup and shake it, rattling the ice. “One large iced Americano, at the ready. I even got you one of those bottled horchata cold brews for the road, even though you swear you don’t like them.”

“They’re too sweet,” Yoongi answers. It might be early, but apparently not early enough to not lie right through his teeth.

You glare. “You steal mine every time I order one.”

“That’s not true,” he grumbles, accusations forgotten as he spots the greasy takeout bag. “I should brush my teeth first,” he whines, looking agonized. “I should, right?”

“Says who?”

“I don’t know. The universe or whatever.”

You laugh. Watch, fond, as he drags himself out of bed and into the bathroom. Watch, even more fond, as he returns with a little toothpaste on the corner of his mouth that you thumb away. Watch, hopelessly and forever endeared, as he buries himself back under the duvet, pulls it up and over his nose. You can see the way he’s pouting from his eyes alone, and he starts whining about the cold, how early it is, how the only thing that’ll cure him is a kiss.

Which you give. Freely, without thought.

(And the two of you barely make it to Santa Clarita before Yoongi cracks open the cold brew he didn’t want. Doesn’t say a word about it being too sweet, just sits quietly in the passenger seat, half asleep, as he scrolls through his playlists. Queues up something soft, easy to listen to, and talks your ear off about Jeff Beck when one of his songs comes on.

Beck’s Bolero, which is not as soft and easy as the songs that played before it, but it makes Yoongi’s eyes light up. Has him seemingly speaking in tongues as he spits guitar terms to you, half of Jeff Beck’s life story interwoven with endless praise and awe, all the while he drinks his horchata cold brew and doesn’t say a word about it being too sweet.

You want to listen to him for the rest of your life.)

—

Oakhurst is small.

Only two traffic lights before you reach the road Seokjin’s cabin is on—a sharp right turn off the main highway, an acute angle, a steep decline. You’re glad you’re doing this in early March and not the dead of winter. Doubly glad you’d ignored the judgmental stare Yoongi had given you at the car dealership when you’d insisted on an SUV, all-wheel-drive.

You’d know the cabin was Jin’s even without an address. Baby blue exterior, pink front door. Blends in but still manages to stick out, much like the man himself. More like a bungalow, maybe. Looks, from the outside, like the kind of place that might be good for starting over. Someplace small and unassuming—someplace with a screened-in porch with two rocking chairs. A place where you can drink coffee. Decompress from the city. A place where the only thing you know is Yoongi, so he’s your focus.

A place that makes you smile.

You kill the engine. Just sit in the silence for a moment, hesitant to wake up Yoongi. Unsure, honestly, how he’d slept through the last leg of the trip, all the hairpin turns and uneven roads, but you close the car door gently and punch in the lock code for the house and lug in everything except Yoongi’s gear and let him sleep. Then, when he stirs awake, looking confused and a little lost, you press a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth and gesture theatrically at the baby blue bungalow with the pink door and say, “Surprise! We’re here!” even though it’s not a surprise.

Yoongi laughs anyway.

There isn’t much to unpack, nor is there much space to put it. Only a closet in each of the bedrooms, so you dump everything out of your suitcase and thread your clothes through velvet hangers. Laugh at the thought of Yoongi doing no such thing—of Yoongi living out of his luggage for the next couple weeks, everything wrinkled and looking lived-in.

He comes and finds you, places a hand on your hip as he asks for the car keys, says he’s going to the store. Seokjin had stocked the pantry, but he wants to get fresh stuff, and you know that means he’s going to come back with more coffee than groceries. So you just nod, say okay, ask if he’d like you to unpack and put away his clothes. His nose scrunches; you hide your smile and leave it alone.

When he’s gone, you crack a window in the living room to air out the lingering emptiness. Suck in a mouthful of fresh air that seems to sting your lungs, all evergreen. There’s still so much to do, and you should probably stretch your legs after so long in the car, but the temptation to sink into the couch is strong. Seokjin’s got a soft blanket thrown over the back that you arrange over your legs, and then you’re asleep, some stupid paranormal show playing on the television to greet Yoongi whenever he gets back.

You dream of forgiveness, endless sprawling mountains, and the smell of coffee.

the rhythm of my footsteps crossing flatlands to your door / have been silenced forevermore. and the distance is quite simply much too far for me to row. it seems farther than ever before.

There’s a dive bar up the highway that does karaoke on Friday nights. You crack a joke about going.

“Fat chance,” Yoongi answers. He’s driving this time, and his hands are gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles have gone purple-white.

It shouldn’t mean anything. It doesn’t. Yoongi isn’t a dive bar karaoke kind of guy anymore. Left those days back in college, where you were suffering through your economics courses at USC and barely had two nickels to rub together. Yoongi would play open mics during the week just to cover the bus fare for the two of you to go into Koreatown on Fridays—enough to cover a noraebang for an hour, just to sing some girl group song horribly off-pitch just to make you laugh.

So it shouldn’t sting when Yoongi scoffs and says fat chance about singing karaoke at the dive bar when you drive past it, because Yoongi isn’t a dive bar karaoke kind of guy anymore. Now he’s the kind of guy who gets up on a stage and sings songs to thousands of people. They don’t laugh; they take pictures and videos and sing along to words he wrote, so it shouldn’t sting, and you try not to let it.

Instead, you focus on the blur of scenery: all the greens and browns; whites and deep grays from all the trees that have burned; the blue of the endless sky; the color of the asphalt, the edge of the world, like you could tip right over and disappear, nothing beyond the margins. Yoongi drives the thirty minutes to the park and it doesn’t sting, and you wonder if it’s just because it doesn’t or if it’s because you’re numb.

—

Yosemite is hard to put into words.

You feel small, wrapped in the expanse of the mountains, in this ancient nature that has existed long before you and will persist long after you’re gone. Maybe insignificant is a better word for it, because there’s so much to see—so much that’s known and unknown—and it feels like counting grains of sand. Feels like you could never possibly catch up.

So you sit on the ledge of an overlook and just exist. You don’t watch Yoongi take pictures on an old point and shoot, the one he’d ordered from Japan, because this is just for you. Whatever happens between you and Yoongi, these memories will only belong to you, and you don’t want to override something that’s happy with something that could eventually be sad.

The two of you get back in the car. The drive to Yosemite Village is slow, made even slower when you pass a bunch of cars pulled over. There, about thirty feet from the road, is a baby bear and a crowd. There’s a woman standing too close in order to take a picture and ten more people screaming at her for it. Yoongi looks awestruck when you catch his eye.

“I’ve never seen a bear before,” he says, and you nod. Neither have you.

Maybe you were a little stung before, about the karaoke, even though it’s stupid. But the fact that you and Yoongi have been together for so long and still manage to see new things together eases it a little. Plants a tiny, hopeful little seed.

All you have to do is water it.

—

The weather in the village is bitter cold.

Both of you are wrapped up tight, only your noses peeking out from between the layers of your scarves, tinged pink. Yoongi had wanted to go to Mirror Lake; didn’t seem at all deterred when he found out the shuttles were only doing basic routes so the two of you would have to follow the trail from the shuttle stop. Just under two miles. Hadn’t seemed so bad at the time, but now your lungs ache.

Snow and ice cover most of the lake. It isn’t as reflective as it’s known for, but you’re glad to experience it nonetheless. The sand crunches beneath your boots as you look for a log to sit on, the chill seeping through your clothing as you rummage through your backpack for a protein bar. Yoongi’s off taking pictures again, and it’s another moment you’re content to sit in the quiet.

Gives you time to take stock, figure out how you’re feeling. Instinct wants to say better, but you know it’s wishful thinking. Immature. The tendrils of hurt are still wrapped around your heart, and it’s only been a few days. Not enough time to hack them away. But you’re… at ease. For the first time in a while, it feels like you can breathe, and doing so doesn’t make you feel heavy, doesn’t weigh you down with guilt. Things might not be okay right now, not all the way, but you think your compass is finally pointed in the right direction.

Your husband joins you once he’s done. Doesn’t say anything, just sits beside you on the log and accepts when you offer him half of your protein bar. He’s got a nervous energy about him, like there’s something he wants to say but can’t figure out how to, and that feels familiar. That feels like the status quo. Two people who love each other but can’t figure out how to talk to one another.

So you say, “It’s gorgeous here,” and hope it’s enough. You’re not going to push him if he doesn’t want to talk, but it feels necessary to extend an olive branch. It feels necessary to try.

“It is,” Yoongi agrees. Rubs his hands together. Watches his breath dissipate in front of him. “It feels different.”

“What do you mean?”

A bird lands on a branch in front of you. Orange chest, vibrant blue on top; striking against the dreary backdrop of winter. You watch as it ruffles its feathers, shakes off the snow, and Yoongi cocks his head to the side. A guy who knows a little about a lot, full of knowledge, so you aren’t surprised when he says, “That’s a western bluebird.”

You hum an acknowledgment, because you know what it means to see a bluebird. You know the symbolism, but it feels a little too heavy to bear right now. “Pretty.”

“Yeah.” Then he’s sucking in a breath. Says, “There’s a ramen spot in Mariposa, if you’d wanna go there for dinner.”

It’s not what you were expecting him to say, but you nod anyway. “Sure. Whatever you want.”

Yoongi finally turns to you, then. Raises an eyebrow in question. “But is it what you want?”

“It’s just dinner,” you shrug. “Something warm will be nice after this.”

That nervous energy amplifies. Turns all those words clearly biting at the back of his teeth into a tangible thing. “Something warm—yeah, okay. Sounds good. They have matcha cheesecake.” He smiles, like he doesn’t want to but can’t help himself. “Seemed like something you’d like.”

Two things strike you, then: that your husband is always centering you in his world, even when the two of you are like this, and how badly it hurts that you can’t seem to talk to one another. Because you aren’t taking pictures with him because they might turn out sad, and Yoongi is choosing restaurants because they have matcha cheesecake.

And to hell with that, you think. Yoongi is your husband, and if you can’t talk to him then who can you talk to? So you sigh, say, “Look at me, Yoongi,” and you know there’s a fragment of surprise evident on your face when he listens. You know there’s a fragment of sadness on yours when you take in how exhausted he looks. Almost defeated. “Why can’t we seem to talk to one another?”

It must be what he was working up the courage to say, because his shoulders sag immediately. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I’m trying, but it’s just… I don’t know. Sometimes I’m scared I’m gonna say the wrong thing and that’s gonna be it.”

Your brows pinch. “Okay,” you say, because sometimes you aren’t easy to talk to. Sometimes you take things too personally, sort of revel in the hurt. You understand hesitation. “I… want to fix that. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t talk to me.”

Yoongi nods. “Yeah,” he eventually answers. “I do, too. We’re not really gonna fix anything unless we can talk to each other.”

“Yeah, true.” The bluebird chirps from its spot in the tree. Stares down at the two of you with these jerky little tilts of its head. “Do you think that’s our problem? How it got… like this.”

“I don’t know, baby,” he says again, and you immediately want to push back on it. I don’t know doesn’t tell you anything. Doesn’t tell you how to fix it, how not to let it get this bad again. But then he says, “It could’ve been anything, you know? A million things. I think—I know that doesn’t help you, but for me, it’s less important how and why we got here because that’s… gone. I can’t change it, and the more I dwell on it the more I spiral, so I’m trying not to do that.”

A stuttered exhale. “I haven’t felt present in a long time and I guess it just compounded. Like, once I realized something was wrong, it felt like I’d left it too long to try and do something about it. I knew you were hurt, and instead of trying to fix it, I’d just think, of course you hurt her, because you’re good at that.”

“That’s what you think?”

“Sometimes.” You reach over and take his hand, barely able to slot your fingers together with the thickness of your gloves. “I know I explained it to you before, but the song… it wasn’t honesty, it was self-destruction. Because I thought if all I do is hurt you, then you should be with someone who doesn’t do that. Someone who knows what they have and is able to hang onto it.” He hangs his head, guilt-stricken. “I don’t know why I wrote it. Call of the void shit, I guess, like I told you. I knew the whole time it was a bad idea. I just thought… maybe you’d hear it and do what I couldn’t.”

“Leave?”

He laughs, all derision. “Yeah. Stupid, isn’t it? I’m scared to death that you’ll leave me, so I tried to speed up the process.”

You sit with his words for a minute. “I don’t think it’s stupid, Yoongi. Can I tell you what I think? I think you feel like you deserve to be a little sad, like some kind of artist’s curse. I think you think you need to feel tortured in order to create, and I think you’ve appointed yourself the arbiter of my happiness, so you see me being human as a failure on your part. And I think I made a very smart choice when I was twenty-one years old, because I think you’ve taken my heart and kept it safe all these years.

“It… does matter to me, how we got here,” you continue, “because if I don’t know why, I’m scared it’ll happen again. But you told me I need to give you more credit, and that goes both ways. I know I can be a bastard, so I’m going to be selfish and ask for patience, and I’m going to give you the same. Just… please believe me when I say I’m not going anywhere. Not as long as we’re both gonna try to fix this.”

Yoongi stays quiet. Sticks out his pinky, and you hook yours around it.

(You know what it means to see a bluebird. Remember reading about it once, back when you were desperate to find meaning in everything. Right after a time of tremendous difficulty, the bluebird comes to bring good fortune in all things such as love, healing, and happiness.)

and together there in a shroud of frost, the mountain air / began to pass through every pane of weathered glass / and i held you closer than anyone would ever get.

Yoongi’s birthday is soon.

Four days, to be exact. The two of you will be celebrating in Jin’s cabin in Oakhurst, surrounded by nature and a town still foreign to you, Yoongi’s music gear scattered all around like a treasure hunt. Follow the cables until you find him, hunched in front of a glowing computer screen, massive headphones shoved over his ears as he gets absorbed into his own world, strumming his guitar all the while.

You think thirty will look good on him.

The weather’s still mild, still colder than you’re used to, but the breeze feels nice when you open the small windows in the kitchen and let it blow through. It feels nice when you run to the grocery store and stand in the foreign aisles, staring at all the ingredients you’ll need to bake a cake. You haven’t done it in ages; since Yoongi’s twenty-sixth, you think. Almond with chantilly cream. It had taken you ages because the cream kept splitting, and you insisted on meticulously arranging little strawberry slices between the layers, but Yoongi had loved it so much it hadn’t felt like work at all.

So you grab what you need and some things you don’t and you feel as light as the breeze on the drive back to the cabin. You make a last-second decision to stop at the donut shop because it closes in the afternoon and you never catch it when it’s open. Two blueberry old fashioneds, a large Americano for Yoongi, and a mocha iced coffee for yourself. Six dollars, and the woman behind the counter is kind.

“What’s that?” Yoongi asks when you place the coffee and donut on his makeshift desk. The headphones are looped around his neck.

You click your tongue, all sugar. “What does it look like?”

“This looks like a donut and an Americano. What’s in the bag, though?”

“I went to the grocery store.”

“For what?” he pouts. “I was just there!”

That pout fades when you press a kiss to the top of his head. “Don’t pout. I picked up stuff for your birthday cake.”

“My birth—” he begins, seemingly offended by the mere thought of his birthday and that it might be soon, and then he looks at the date on his computer and mumbles an, oh shit. “You’re baking me a cake?”

“Yeah, I thought it’d be nice.”

He tries to peer into the bag. “What kind?” You swat him away.

“It’s a surprise,” you deadpan.

“But I saw strawberries in there.”

“No you didn’t. Now, eat your donut and get back to work.”

Yoongi pouts again. Really exaggerates it. “I’m really stuck on this bit. I might need a kiss for good luck.”

As you press a kiss to his lips, you think you might give him whatever he wants.

—

Yoongi spends the morning of his birthday tucked in bed.

You spend the morning of Yoongi’s birthday beneath the duvet, hands roaming every inch of your husband’s body. Thumbs digging into the muscles of his calves, sore from the overuse they’ve suffered the last few days. Nails grazing the sensitive skin of his biceps, his stomach, the insides of his thighs. Lips pressing open-mouthed kisses to his forehead, his temple, his neck, down his chest, the jut of both hip bones. And then, once he’s whining and writhing and just on the verge of begging, you spend the morning of Yoongi’s birthday making him come with your mouth.

He spends the early afternoon in his makeshift studio with a cup of coffee. Answers a couple emails. Calls his parents. Messes around on Cubase. Fixes the two of you a quick lunch and says he might want to wander around town for a little bit. Check out the antique store down the street, maybe spend a few hours in the park with his guitar, get some fresh air. Thirty feels weird, he says, and you’re anchored to your laptop at the small dining room table, so you just say okay, I’ll see you later for dinner. There’s a crooked smile on Yoongi’s face as he hikes the gig bag over his shoulder, and then he’s gone.

You: He just left. Coast is clear.

Seokjin: Thank fuck, I’ve been sitting at this Starbucks for 500 hours

You: No you haven’t

Seokjin: 499 hours*

When he arrives, Seokjin blows right by you and locks himself in the bathroom. You know I refuse to use public restrooms, he says after, slinging his arm around your shoulders. He’s not a hugger, so it’s the closest you’re going to get to one.

“My car reeks of kimchi and soup,” he says, dropping a bag of groceries in front of the refrigerator. “Won’t be able to get that smell out for weeks, probably.”

“Thank you for your sacrifice,” you intone. “You’re a god amongst men, Kim Seokjin.”

It’d been your idea. Wanted Yoongi to ring in his thirtieth birthday surrounded by as much love as possible, and a cabin-bungalow nearly five hours away from home wasn’t especially opulent. Not to mention Yoongi had been on tour the last two years—spent twenty-eight and nine in grimy venues in Texas and Birmingham, respectively—and the less said about 2020 the better.

So Seokjin had fucked off from his cushy job for the day and made the drive from San Francisco. Made the miyeokguk and myeongnan-jeot himself, and had whined when you told him you already bought the ingredients for a cake because I was gonna pick up mujigae-tteok, to which you replied, pick it up anyway.

Now he’s standing in the small kitchen of his own small bungalow, and you’ve got a one-thirty meeting so you can’t help, but he’s determined to make gyeran mari anyway, even if it inconveniences you. “Maybe I should make it closer to when he’ll be back?”

“Up to you,” you shrug. “You could also stand on the side of the road and resell all those eggs for ten times the price.”

He just sends you A Look.

—

You watch through the small window above the kitchen sink as Yoongi returns just after six, cheeks pink from the wind, arms full of goodies.

“Hey,” he says, kicking his boots off on the porch, “is that—”

“SURPRISE!”

Seokjin’s scream is so shrill you think you black out for a second. Nearly topple over from your spot in front of the island, frosting knife poised to strike. Yoongi’s still out on the porch, and there’s a terrible crash that can only be him startling and knocking into one of the rocking chairs. He’ll appear any second now, brows pinched, and go is that Seokjin? and once he confirms it is, in fact, Seokjin, he’ll start yell—

“Jesus Christ,” he grumbles, appearing in the doorway. Brows pinched. “I was gonna ask if that’s Seokjin’s car outside, but now I don’t fucking need to.”

Seokjin tuts, ladles another bowl full of miyeokguk. “Is that any way to speak to your elders? Now, get in here and sit down. It’s not breakfast, but it’ll have to do.”

Yoongi grumbles the entire time, but you see the way the flush deepens on his cheeks. The way he’s pleased to be fussed over, to have you and Seokjin in the same room as him. Pleased to be celebrating thirty surrounded by people who love him, people he loves in turn.

“Did you call your mother?” Seokjin asks, setting the bowl in front of him. He jokingly tucks a napkin into the front of Yoongi’s shirt.

“Of course I called my mother.” Yoongi rolls his eyes. “Are you stupid? It’s not my first day being Korean.”

“That’s correct! It’s your 10,950th day being Korean.”

“How did you—”

“I knew you would say that so I looked up how many days are in thirty years. Now, is your lovely wife done with the cake?”

You are, just about. Just a few more slices of strawberry to place on top, and you take a step back once you do so. Admire your hard work. Send up a quick thanks that the cream hadn’t split this time. Seokjin and Yoongi are still bickering—

(“Did you make the miyeokguk last night?”

“I’m offended, Yoongi. Of course I made it last night, the broth needs time to develop! It’s not my first day being Korean, either!”

“No, it’s your ten billionth, you decrepit bitch.”)

—and your heart feels full. Content. You see Yoongi laughing, all gums, and feel untethered. Like any second now your ribs are going to crack apart and give way, let your heart tumble right out of your body. Because it belongs next to Yoongi, always. Because it wants to be next to Yoongi.

So you finish the cake and set it aside. Sit down at the place Seokjin set for you, right next to your husband, whose hand immediately goes to your knee; who immediately turns and smiles at you, even though Seokjin is still squawking in the background. Yah, Yoongi, compliment the soup! Tell me how good it is! Yoongi doesn’t, because he’s still smiling, can’t look away from you, and you swear you can hear a fissure forming, except this one doesn’t hurt.

This one doesn’t hurt at all.

—

Yoongi is sufficiently drunk by nine.

That traitorous combination of alcohol and sugar. A shot of soju, a bite of cake, some mujigae-tteok. Seokjin’s endless chatter as background noise. Yoongi’s hand still on your knee, warm warm warm. Liquor loosens him up a little, has him bashful, chin tucked to his chest, when he offhandedly mentions Namjoon and Seokjin says who’s this Namjoon, and Yoongi says he’s our marriage counselor. Seokjin looks to you, then. Connects some dots.

Says, “Ah, Yoongi, did you eat your tteokguk on Seollal? No? See, this is why things are hard right now, because you didn’t eat your tteokguk. It’s good luck, that’s why you eat it,” because it’s easiest to get through to Yoongi, to let him know he’s okay, when you’re scolding him a little. When you treat it kind of like a joke. No big deal.

And Seokjin follows that up with, “How are you settling in here?” when what he really wants to know is are things better, are the two of you doing okay. Yoongi grumbles again, barely coherent at his current level of inebriation, and Seokjin says, “Ah, I bet not well, huh? There’s just the one Starbucks, can’t find your bougie pour-over, LA coffee here, can you? Do they even have oat milk? Are you—”

“It’s still California,” Yoongi argues, “there’s fucking oat milk everywhere. Hey, hyung, did you—did you know there’s, like, the tree nut milk orchard near here? Not far. Close by. I could drive to see the al-almonds.”

“Tree nut milk,” Seokjin deadpans. “You know, Yoongi, I did not know that. Why don’t you tell me all about it.”

—

By eleven, Seokjin is passed out on the couch.

By eleven-ten, Yoongi has convinced you to lay in the grass with him. A minute later he’s staring up at the sky, making wishes on superstitions. His breath vaporizes in the cold, and he’s not wearing a jacket, but he’s still flushed from the alcohol, feels invincible.

“Think the edible’s hitting me.” He laughs, short and raspy, and he doesn’t seem to care that the grass is wet with dew. Doesn’t care that it’s in his hair, seeping through his clothes. “What’s your favorite one of those?”

He’s pointing at the stars, wants to know your favorite constellation. All of them, you want to say, following his line of sight. Because they’re all different. All meaningful in different ways. All have their own story. Instead, you roll your head to the side, take in Yoongi’s profile. Say, “You’re my favorite,” and laugh at how flustered he gets, laugh at his gravelly protests.

“Yah, you can-can’t say that,” he whines. “That’s so greasy, you can’t say that, it doesn’t count. Give me a real ans—”

“Then why are you smiling?” You laugh as he grows even more thunderstruck, completely caught-out, and it’s nearing midnight but it does nothing to hide the blush creeping down his neck, tingeing the tips of his ears. “You’re so red. That’s exactly what you wanted me to say, you absolute—”

“Real answer, please.”

You decide to take pity on him. Poor thing, can barely look you in the eye because of one terrible pick-up line. “Fine. Pisces.”

His responding groan is so loud you have to slap your hand over his mouth. The grass is so cold but Yoongi’s laughter, the way his shoulders shake with it, makes you warm. “You’re just saying that,” he says once you remove your hand.

“Am not. Ask me why.”

“Okay. Why?”

“Because you’re a Pisces, first of all—”

“Oh my god, here we fuckin’ go—”

“—but I just like the myth. Aphrodite and Eros transformed themselves into fish to escape Typhon, and tied themselves together with rope so they wouldn’t lose one another.” You sigh, watch your breath dissipate into the dark. “I don’t know. I like to think… I don’t believe in soulmates, but I like to think some people are meant to tie themselves together. Some people aren’t meant to be apart.”

There’s a quiet little oh, and then there’s silence. Just the distant sounds of the highway, a dog howling, and, if you listen closely enough, Seokjin’s snoring from inside. Yoongi finds your hand, brings it to his mouth to press a kiss to the back of it, and he’s oddly quiet. Contemplative, maybe. Usually gets a couple drinks in him and starts talking your ear off, but this is nice, too. It’s nice to just exist in the silence alongside someone else.

“Do you know the myth about Eurydice and Orpheus?” he finally asks, and you nod, suddenly understanding why Yoongi doesn’t care that his hair is wet. So inconsequential to this moment where you can exist in the silence alongside someone else. “I was thinking about it today.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I think… I think I’d fuck it up. I think I’d look back. And I think you wouldn’t.” He sighs, and the weight of the world expels alongside it. “What you said about Aphrodite and Eros, that some people are meant to be tied together—if I couldn’t hear you, or touch you… That’s what you are for me, you know? An anchor. The first time I read it, it made me so fuckin’ angry, like why can’t this guy just listen, if he loves her that much wouldn’t he listen, but… I dunno. I think I get it.

“I’m so scared all the time that one day I’m gonna look back and you won’t be there anymore. What would I even do? Baby, what would I do? Sometimes I’m fuckin’ terrified that I don’t think I could have that kind of faith in anything, and I’m finally gonna make it to the end of this cave and they’re gonna lay all my betrayals at my feet.”

Midnight finds you still staring up at the sky, hair wet, breath tangible, wondering how you can be both an anchor and an albatross.

—

(In the morning, Seokjin makes tteokguk and ladles extra into Yoongi’s bowl.)

i'm reaching for the phone to call at 7:03, and on your machine / i slur a plea for you to come home, but i know it's too late / and i should have given you a reason to stay.

The thing about grief is that it’s indiscriminate.

Because it has no context. Grief doesn’t know that things are better, doesn’t know that the two of you have stuck to your appointments with Namjoon and are able to talk honestly; doesn’t know that laughing feels lighter, easier; doesn’t know that guilt isn’t weighing you down as heavy. So it feels a lot like treading water, and sometimes you’re able to float and sometimes you slip beneath the waves, struggle to breathe.

And it’s stupid, you think, that you can disappear too far into your mind to the place where everything feels bad. Where progress is meaningless. Where there’s still you and Yoongi and a crumbling marriage. Where the only words ringing in your ears aren’t I love you, but you are beautiful but you don't mean a thing to me. Just like last time. Regression.

There are only so many distractions. Work helps, because you can’t focus on how shitty you feel—how scared you are—when your boss is on your ass about deadlines. The antique store in town helps, too, though you must’ve worn a pattern into the floors by now, but you can’t help it. It’s nice to hear the stones crunching under the tires when you pull into the parking lot; nice to laugh at the giant Sasquatch outside and greet them like a friend; nostalgic to breathe in the scent of old stuff—belongings that were once well-loved, now free to be loved by someone else.

Grief doesn’t care that you’re sad and Yoongi has that spark in his eyes.

But Yoongi is smart. Wickedly perceptive. Knows there’s something bothering you long before you gather the courage to say it, because it feels wrong to dim that spark, take it away, so he lets you sit with it. Lets you take your time, and that endless patience just makes you feel worse. Makes you think, he deserves better. Makes you think, what’s the point of any of this. Makes you angry, because things aren’t fixed but they’re better, and why can’t everything hurt all at once instead of incrementally.

And, just like always, you can only tread water for so long, stave off the inevitable.

Because Yoongi’s giving you time but when you feel like this, everything reads like an attack. Feels like disregard and indifference. What you want is unfair, and you know it, because you want Yoongi to be able to reach into your mind and see everything that’s turned necrotic. You want him to know how to fix it without having to talk about it, because talking about it makes you feel guilty. How many times can you press your fingers into the same wound and be shocked when they come out bloody?

So it isn’t fair and it’s also hard. Words bite at the back of your teeth, because this is your husband—if you can’t talk to him, what are you even doing? Namjoon would laugh. The one that’s equal parts patient and exasperated, like he can’t believe someone like you exists even though he’s seen some shit. Worse shit than you and Yoongi have, that’s for sure, so it should be reassuring.

(Everything reads like an attack.)

“Hey,” Yoongi says, hip resting against the counter, towel thrown over his shoulder. (These things always happen in a kitchen.) “You okay?”

How doubly unfair is it that your first instinct is to lie? To say yeah, I’m fine—not to be deceptive, but because you’re sure with enough time you can make it true, foolishly certain you can either bury it or delude yourself. But Yoongi is looking at you like a caged animal; like he, too, is foolishly certain of foolish things. Yoongi is looking at you like he knows this is it. Like this is where you say I’m sorry, this just isn’t working, we were stupid to think it would even though we’re trying. Like this is where you take off your wedding band and place it calmly in his hand. No dramatics, just resignation.

So you don’t lie. You can’t. Instead, you say, “Yeah, I think… I think it’s just been a little hard lately.”

Yoongi tries to lie, too. Tries to hide how relieved his exhale is, but the smile peeks through, the flush on his cheeks. Can’t hide that he’s pleased because all those nightmares he’d conjured in his head aren’t coming true.

“I should’ve said something earlier,” you say, because it’s something that’s true, “I’m sorry. I just—I don’t want you to feel bad, you know? I don’t want to keep rehashing things.”

He closes the distance. Wraps you in his arms, all warmth. Presses a kiss to the top of your head. “It’s okay. I know it’s hard to talk about these things sometimes. I just wanted to make sure we’re okay.”

“Yeah. Yeah, Yoongi, I think we will be.”

(Something that’s true.)

it felt just like falling in love again. and it felt just like falling in love again.

On Friday, the two of you go to the bar for karaoke night.

As he’s buttoning his shirt, Yoongi says do you think they’ll have Epik High? and you can’t help the ugly laugh that tumbles out of you even though it’s not really funny. Because no, this two stoplight town won’t have Epik High, but it’s the kind of thing you laugh at when you’re feeling terribly fond, horribly endeared—it’s the kind of thing you laugh at when you’re riding the high of going through hell and making it to the other side.

It’s the kind of thing you laugh at instead of detailing every reason you’re in love with him.

So you do your hair and makeup nice. Barely make it out the door, because Yoongi stumbles into the bathroom to fix his hair and put on cologne and stops dead in his tracks when he sees you. Mutters a goddamn under his breath before he’s all over you. Kisses pressed to the nape of your neck, hips pressing you against the counter. The right side of painful.

You manage to pry him off of you long enough to shove him out the door, thighs just a little bruised, Yoongi’s lips a little too red. He’s still all over you at the bar. Still rests a possessive hand at the small of your back, still presses a kiss to your cheek every time he gets up to order another round of drinks, still whines and pretends to drag his feet when the house music plays and you pull him onto the dancefloor.

Someone sings “Fly Me to the Moon” by Frank Sinatra. It’s off-key and a little grating and Yoongi’s got wing sauce smeared on his cheek, but he still mouths the words to you. You are all I long for. All I worship and adore. You know you look lovestruck, and you think it’s a shame there’s barely anyone in this bar to witness it. What you and Yoongi have—it should be seen. It should be screamed from rooftops.

When the two of you go back to the bungalow, you split a bottle of red wine and sit on the living room floor. Yoongi has his guitar in his lap, barely able to play the chords properly, but he serenades you anyway. Does a better rendition of Fly Me to the Moon than the guy at the bar just because it’s his, and he’s singing it for you. He sweeps the blankets from the back of the couch onto the floor and fucks you slow. Holds your hand and kisses you until you’re breathless. (You already were.)

The rest of the weekend is spent similarly. Yoongi can’t keep his hands to himself, fucks you in nearly every room of Seokjin’s little house in Oakhurst, and presses praise into your skin like a brand. Sits on the living room floor again as you cook dinner, back ramrod straight against the couch; has a spliff stuck between his lips as he jots down words into a notebook. Looks up and over at you every now and then, cheeks reddening each time you catch him staring. You, too, refuse to smile until you’ve turned back around.

On Sunday night, Yoongi ducks out to go to the drug store and returns with an armful of bath bombs. Looks like he looted a bank, but he asks do you want to use the lavender one in that soft, shy voice, and you wouldn’t be able to say no to him even if you wanted to, so you don’t. You sink into the warm water, let the lilac swirl around you, make you soft, and you feel safe here with your back pressed to Yoongi’s chest. With his legs caging you in. With his words in your ear and his lips pressed to the top of your head, fingers dancing along your ribs, clearing the cobwebs from in between.

Monday comes before you’re ready. Insistent, inevitable—the sunlight streams in, wakes you slowly. Yoongi’s arm is thrown over your middle, both of you still lavender-soft, and he groans when you stir, buries his face in your neck. Everything is warm. A blissful little cocoon, made even more so when Yoongi pulls himself out of bed, makes a pot of coffee, returns with your mug steaming hot. He sets it on your nightstand, doesn’t want to risk burning you by handing it off, and tilts your chin up to press a quick kiss to your lips.

You’ve got a nine-thirty meeting, so you tangle your legs together and drink it as fast you can. Shameless, Yoongi watches as you undress—watches as the sun paints you in golden light, watches as you pull his t-shirt up and over your head, watches as your shoulder blades move beneath your skin. It’s the t-shirt that fucks him up the most, has him a little hard in his briefs. One of his tour shirts, the last one he’d gone on before the two of you got married. Says, a little awed, “I’d follow you anywhere,” and he doesn’t elaborate but somehow you know exactly what he means.

And he stays in the bedroom when you log on for your meeting. Listens to you talk to your team, your laugh soft and bright, and feels entirely dumbstruck. Feels overwhelmed, wonders how his body can possibly contain so much affection. Wonders, briefly, where it goes when everything hurts. If it’s just in a reserve, because Yoongi has loved you as long as he’s known you, and he’s not sure it’s ever felt like this; ever hit him this hard.

So, he locks himself in the second bedroom until the late afternoon. Pours over his notebooks, strums every chord he knows until he finds the right one. Jots down words he scribbles over and jots down more. Writes until the calluses on his fingers turn to blisters, writes until the words all blend together, until there’s something singular instead of tendrils. Yoongi writes until there’s something he can feel proud of; something that might feel a lot like redemption.

[interlude: monday morning]

(You listen to it far later. Back in your home that isn’t the apartment in Silver Lake but contains just as much love—perhaps more now than before you left; certainly more patience, more hope, more resilience. And as you take in Yoongi’s words, wrapped in their metaphors and their honesty, you cry again, but this time it’s quiet rather than heaving.

This time Yoongi is singing love, keep your arms around me.)

looking upwards, i strain my eyes and try / to tell the difference between shooting stars and satellites from the passenger seat as you are driving me home.

“Should we go home soon?”

It’s a Saturday morning, and you and Yoongi are on the porch. The air is crisp and cool, makes your coffee a tolerable temperature, and it’s early enough that the world is largely still asleep. There’s no polluted noise, just the rustling of the grass that’s now a little overgrown and the one neighbor from down the road who always wakes up early to run. He must hear your muted voices, because he waves as he passes by.

Home. Back to Los Angeles. Back to your two-storey home with the awful neighbor who doesn’t wake up early to run and never waves to you. Back to the chaos you know. Back to a home that hasn’t felt much like one lately, but one that can be repaired, just like everything else. A home that’s got enough love stored between its walls that you aren’t worried.

But it’s still daunting, somehow. Things feel solid here, like a houseplant sprouting new life—resilient, but a little fragile, too. So you’re scared to burst the bubble and doubly scared of what that hesitation means. “I don’t know,” you say. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know, either,” Yoongi answers. Takes another sip of his coffee, rocks a little in the chair. He’s got his knees pulled up to his chest. Looks impossibly small, especially in his oversized pajamas and the even larger hoodie he’d thrown over them. “It’s nice here.”

It is, in more ways than one. “Yeah, I’m gonna miss it.”

Yoongi hums. “Maybe I’ll just buy it from Seokjin.” Words muffled by the rim of his mug, like he’s trying to hide them from you.

Doesn’t work. Instead, you turn to him, eyebrow quirked. “Oh, really?”

He shrugs, like it’s no big deal. “Gotta do something with all this money, hm?” Then he sighs, picks at imaginary lint on his pants. “You like it here, though, right? Not saying I am, but—”

“Oh no,” you interject, voice at least fifty decibels higher. “I know you, Yoongi! You wouldn’t be asking me any of this unless you already had some half-baked plan in the works—”

“Yah! It’s at least seventy-five percent baked!”

You laugh, the sound the loudest thing for miles. “Yeah, okay. How much did you offer him for it? You spend all my money?”

“Your—that’s not funny.” He pouts. “I didn’t spend all of it.”

“Just seventy-five percent?”

“I’ll have you know I am a very successful musician. I could buy you ten of these cabins if I wanted to.”

You drop your mouth open in mock-affront. “And yet I have zero cabins, so what does that say about the state of your priorities?”

“Not this shit again—”

“I think it’s more of a bungalow, anyway.”

“Yeah, Seokjin said the same thing. Was really offended that I offered to buy his cabin.” A pause. A small lift at the corners of his mouth. “Still offered to sell it to me, though.”

You can’t help the smile that splits your face. “And I’m sure you said yes, of course.”

“I’ve grown very attached to those blueberry donuts.”

“Uh-huh.”

“...And it’s been good for us. We’re happy here. Happier.”

“Yeah, we are. You just needed some fresh air.”

Yoongi’s cheeks tinge pink. “Yah, knock it off! You’re making me sound like a tuberculosis patient. Like I just needed a trip to the seaside to heal.”

“I’m just stating facts, Yoongi. You’re a little studio hermit, barely witnessing the light of day. I bet you got one lungful of this mountain air and almost keeled over.”

“You’re a pain in my ass,” he accuses, “I’m revoking my offer.”

“That you extended with my money.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

—

Saying goodbye is hard.

As you load the last of your belongings into the car, it feels like you’re leaving behind a friend. You know you’ll be back (because Yoongi actually did offer to buy the cabin-bungalow and Seokjin seems keen, but whether that’s because he actually wants to offload it into the two of you or because he wants to salvage your marriage any way he can, you can’t be sure), but tears prick at the corners of your eyes anyway. Because you were desperate when you arrived, and now you aren’t. You were scared and lacking direction, and now you have another place to rest when you get tired.

Yoongi joins you at the car, his guitar bag slung over his shoulder. Just stares at the little blue bungalow with the pink door and doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. Whatever he’s thinking, you know he’s saying it in his head in that fond tone of his. The one that’s bordering on thankful, and you are, too.

On the way home, Yoongi drives and treats you to (read: makes you suffer through) John Denver karaoke. Sings “Take Me Home, Country Roads” the way he used to sing girl group songs at the noraebang. Holds your hand the entire way, and the two of you stop at some hole in the wall for lunch, still a few hours from the city. He orders a beer—some disgusting IPA you know he only drinks to seem distinguished, even though this is the same guy you watched do keg stands in college for free Natty Light—to get out of driving the rest of the way and it’s your turn to call him a pain in the ass.

But he’s quiet in the passenger seat, and it’s not from the alcohol. He’s typing intermittently on his phone, pink tongue darting out from between his lips when he gets especially focused. “I think I got something,” he says eventually. “If I read it to you, will you tell me if it sounds alright?”

“I majored in economics,” you say, because you always do. It’s been your go-to since the first time he asked, all the way back in your junior year.

He laughs anyway. “Perfect, then you can tell me if this shit is gonna make me any money,” he answers with a wry smile, because he always does. “I’ve had this stuck in my head for days.”

You nod. You listen.

“And if you feel just like a tourist in the city you were born, then it’s time to go. And you find your destination with so many different places to call home.”

You wonder how Yoongi is always able to put to paper all the feelings you’ve got locked up tight. You wonder how Yoongi always makes Los Angeles seem less daunting.

there'd be no distance that could hold us back. so this is the new year.

It’s the thirtieth of December.

Your shithead, capitalist shill of a neighbor doesn’t wave when you and Yoongi pack up the car this time, either, just watches from his front porch. You can feel his brooding; worse ever since Yoongi had offhandedly mentioned buying a place up near Yosemite. Got a really good deal from a friend, he’d said, just when we need to get away, you know how it is, and that had your neighbor’s jaw clenching, nodding in faux politeness. Even illuminated by the golden ambiance of icicle lights, he still manages to look like a dickhead.

Good riddance.

“Ready?” Yoongi asks, catching the keys with one hand when you toss them to him.

You nod. Then you fold yourself into the passenger seat and reach for his hand.

—

Oakhurst is still small, but it’s made room for you, now.

There’s still only two traffic lights before you reach the road your cabin is on—a sharp right turn off the main highway, an acute angle, a steep decline. It doesn’t matter what time of year you make the trip, because the uneven, precipitous little road always makes your stomach drop, but it’s home now. Another physical one, because you and Yoongi have worked hard over the last year to make as many as possible.

(And, even still, the strongest home you’ve made is Us. What the two of you have is something still standing long after the storm. Something that has persevered and stood tall, even when the foundation was shaking. Even when you wanted to tear it down. Even when it seemed beyond repair.)

“Home sweet home,” Yoongi jokes as he kills the engine, and you laugh because his tone is flat and dry. Belies his excitement, his insistence on digging out an old box of Christmas lights from the attic and bringing it with you. That he has this whole plan to spend New Year’s Eve decorating, bringing life to this little blue bungalow with the pink door.

“It is pretty sweet,” you agree, and just like before, you neatly unpack your stuff and thread your clothes through velvet hangers and Yoongi abandons his suitcase in a corner of his studio.

—

There’s a woman on the television with rosy cheeks and a drink in hand. She isn’t trying to sell you anything.

She’s lovely and very drunk and even more beautiful when she laughs, teeth perfectly straight and blindingly white. She’s prattling off questions to some celebrity, rapid fire, and they’re trying their best to keep up but it’s hopeless. Eventually they, too, just smile into the camera.

Yoongi’s in the kitchen fixing drinks. Expensive champagne flutes filled with inexpensive champagne, a pair of raspberries tossed into each one as a garnish. Your husband doesn’t even like raspberries, but he’d wanted to feel fancy, so you don’t bother questioning it. You know what it means—wants a do-over of last year. Wants this year to be what the last should’ve been, because this year the two of you will be sitting on the same side of the couch, drinking cheap champagne from Vons out of expensive glassware.

A gift from Seokjin, because he’s a bastard. A housewarming gift for a house you’d bought from him.

There’s still an hour before the countdown. There’s still an empty pot on the stove that used to be full of tteokguk. It’s a different New Year, not Seollal, but Yoongi had wanted to make it anyway. Cracked a joke about not wanting to risk it, so he’s going to eat as much tteokguk as possible, that he might need the luck, you never know. I didn’t eat any last year and still bought a second house, he’d said. Imagine how powerful I’ll be if I eat ten bowls of this.

Your husband is always powerful, but you hadn’t pointed that out. Hadn’t pointed out that the only reason the two of you could afford a second house was because Seokjin gave you a steep pity discount, either. Sometimes it’s just nice to believe in luck, on top of all the other things you already have to believe in.

(Like each other.)

There’s still an hour, and Yoongi hands over a flute of champagne and sinks into the couch beside you. You forget about the woman on TV, but you don’t forget about—“You know, I distinctly remember you making me a promise before we came up here last year.”

Yoongi quirks an eyebrow. “Yeah? Did I make good on it?”

“For the most part,” you answer. “Like, eighty percent.”

Yoongi snorts. “Refresh my memory.”

You set your glass on the coffee table. Angle yourself so you can swing a thigh over Yoongi’s lap to straddle him, earning you another quirked eyebrow. “I distinctly remember you promising to fuck me in every room of this house.”

His own glass abandoned, Yoongi settles one hand on your hip, the other on your thigh. “Surely I already did,” he answers, words spoken into the crook of your neck, goosebumps rising along your skin. “No way I would’ve been able to keep my hands off you.”

Warm lips press against your neck. Kiss their way to your jawline to the corner of your mouth. “Do you remember me fucking you on this couch? On the floor? You remember how hard you came that time?”

Your hips start to grind, seeking friction. This time, the cool metal of Yoongi’s wedding band against your flushed skin doesn’t shock you. Just feels like another home. His hands slipping beneath the fabric of your shirt feel like home. His tongue licking into your mouth tastes like home. When he pulls away to say, “I know you remember the time in the kitchen, the way I fucked your mouth,” you lose all concept of home entirely.

Home is just Yoongi. Everything is Yoongi.

“I fucked you in that bed so many times. Against the bathroom sink. Always so good for me.” He’s thumbing over a nipple, embarrassingly hardened from the husk of his voice, the way his cock is filling out in his joggers. “Where’d we miss, baby?”

You swallow. Know it’s audible even over the sound of the television. People are cheering, but you aren’t turning around to look, because what could they possibly have to cheer for when they don’t have Yoongi? When Yoongi only looks at you like this—like he’s already a little crazed, a little fucked up?

“The st-studio,” you choke out. Dizzy, dizzy, dizzy. Not a drop of champagne made it past your lips and still the world spins.

You can feel Yoongi’s smirk against the column of your throat. Hate what it does to you, because Yoongi could talk you off a ledge when he’s like this. “Ah, you’re right.” Fingers trail along the hem of your pants, toying with you. “Is that what you want? You wanna ride me in my chair? You want it fucking dirty like that, my sweats barely pulled down, like you’re fucking desperate for it?”

You are, and you do.

So that’s how Yoongi fucks you. Gives you exactly what you want: sits in his oversized chair, pulls you into his lap. Sweats pushed down only as far as he needs to fish his cock out, slick it up, and then he’s pushing inside of you. Groans loud, tells you how tight you are, how wet and warm. And it’s stupid, because your husband is fucking your brains out, but there’s a little window in his studio, just above his desk.

Through it, you can see the Christmas lights the two of you spent the afternoon putting up.

You can hear Yoongi’s grumbling in your head, all his shouting when he thought he was going to fall off the ladder even though you were holding it steady. Cursed about not having enough zip ties. Cursed about one lightbulb being burnt out. Cursed when the extension cord wasn’t long enough. Only stopped cursing when you shut him up with a kiss.

You come hard. Yoongi makes good on his promise.

Another home.

—

(From the living room, the muted sounds of a countdown. Palpable excitement you’re finally able to feel, last year’s numbness long gone and replaced with endless warmth. Yoongi only leaves to grab a warm washcloth from the bathroom, and then he’s cleaning you up and pressing his lips back to your kiss-reddened mouth. There’s a supercut playing in your head, all the past celebrations. All the parties the two of you have gone to, the years spent alone but together. All the people you’ve kissed in front of. All the quiet, private ways Yoongi used to tell you he loved you. When was the last time? Just minutes ago. There’s seven seconds until the new year and Yoongi is right beside you.

Fireworks explode outside. You cry this year, too, but they’re happy tears. They’re tears that serve as proof you survived, that you went through hell and made it to the other side. Yoongi sheds a few of his own. Laughs, almost disbelieving, as he tells you he loves you. Smiles, certainly disbelieving, when you repeat it.

You’re going to miss this place when you leave, but there’s a ring on your finger and a man beside you that tells you home can be anywhere, be anything. Tells you that sometimes you’ll have to fight for it, but it’ll always be there so long as you choose to.)

if you've made it this far, i'd like to say thank you again for reading this. as i said, this fic is deeply personal to me, and i hope you find something relatable in it as well.

i know people don't always love to read the members in westernized settings, and i completely understand. i chose oakhurst/yosemite because it's where i went for my own honeymoon, and, well, personal.

i'd love to hear your thoughts! feedback and reblogs are always appreciated. ♡

#btshoneyhive #btswritersclub #kvanity #bangtantheatrenet #bts smut #yoongi smut #yoongi x reader #yoongi x you #yoongi angst #yoongi fluff #bts fanfic #bts x reader #bts x you #bts fanfiction #bts angst #yoongi imagine #bts imagines #bangtan #yoongi

[star-anise]

It's been a hot minute since I looked at Canada's National Occupation Classification system. I learned about it when studying career counselling in grad school, and it's pretty useful in terms of job-hunting and getting information on what different types of jobs require and pay.

A friend asked me for advice about becoming a therapist so I went and looked. They redid it since I last visited, and oh man there are some chef's kiss decisions.

There are 9 top-level categories, with 1 being legislative and senior management, 5 being arts, culture, and sport, and 9 being manufacture and utilities. So I was looking for my old job's classification, which used to be 4153 - Family, marriage and other related counsellors. Knowing that made searching the government job bank really easy back in the day, because instead of searching "counsellor" "counselor" "psychotherapist" "mental health therapist" "clinical counsellor" etc etc etc to find them all, I just typed "4153" and hit enter.

Anyway, they redid the system and now that job is parked at 41301 - Therapists in counselling and related specialized therapies. Here's the tree to get there:

Cool cool cool. It's tidier, even if the occupations are still a bit messy. (When I dropped out of the field, the different counselling subdivisions were tapping their toes impatiently waiting for the provincial government to let them form their own professional regulatory college. Which still has not happened. Last week my shrink said he'd got an email from the College of Psychologists announcing that it would be gathering all the smaller counselling fields into its own downy breast instead. I have no idea what's happening anymore.)

Anyway. I scrolled down to another job I once worked and HAHA WHAT

Yes. There are only three sub-units of category 44:

Nannies:

In-home caregivers:

And,

Combat specialists

I find this grouping of professions hilarious, appropriate, and deeply validating. No notes. 🧑‍🍳👌💋

#staranise original #advice on therapisting #that was the job I still have a scar on my arm from #i badgered my supervisor to death to get that fucking gentle self-defense course because of now unsafe it felt sometimes #man that job broke me #only good thing about that year was my cat and nacho movie night with my roommates #here's to never having to live that year again #sláinte and amen

[steddieas-shegoes]

Nother idea: Wayne & Eddie coming home from a long ass day, tired & stressed, both of them arriving at their trailer at the same time. Both of them taking a deep breath knowing that they'll have to clean up & prepare dinner but both are exhausted. But when they come in their trailer is sparkling clean. The floors swept & mopped, dirty clothes put into the wash, clean clothes folded neatly on the couch in piles for both Eddie and Wayne. Their trailer smells clean & fresh, they turn towards the kitchen & see Steve humming quietly to himself along with the radio on low as he pulls fresh made supper from the oven, on the counters are baked goods cooling. Wayne & Eddie realizing that Steve not only cleaned up their home but he prepared them easy to reheat meals, cleaned up their space bc he knew they'd be exhausted & both of them like the trailer to be clean, but neither had time. So he did it because they are his family & he loves them & wants them to feel safe and cared for in their new home.

MY LOVE! So I kinda ran with a somewhat different background plot, just because it kind of felt like I needed to show that Steve ain't slackin'. I also moved this one ahead of another request because I needed to write Wayne in a sappy way after chapter 2 of demon Steve. Steve was born to be a housewife with guidance counselor tendencies and I don't make the rules. ENJOY! - Mickala ❤️

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

Eddie felt the exhaustion fully hit him as soon as he put his van in park.

He’d been working more overtime over the last month to save up for the down payment on the house he and Steve fell in love with.

The government money helped, but it mostly went to medical bills and a new van when his old one had become government property.

Wayne told him to keep as much of it saved as he could. “You never know what life will throw at ya,” he’d said.

Steve had been working a lot too, but was focusing on his classes at the community college, trying to set up a better future for both of them.

It meant that Eddie was pulling a lot of the financial weight right now, that Wayne was doing as much as he could for them so they could actually save up, but it would all be worth it.

Wayne knocked on his window and he blinked his eyes open again.

When had he even closed them?

Eddie opened the door and stepped out, groaning at the ache in his knee. It still wasn’t 100%, probably never would be as long as he was doing physical labor, and today had been particularly rough at the shop.

“Alright, bud?” Wayne asked him, hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah. Just tired,” Eddie replied.

“You and me both. Let’s go relax a bit.”

But relaxing wouldn’t be on the table until they fixed dinner and cleaned up a bit and Eddie knew the faucet had been leaking when he left this morning and they didn’t need a leak like that running up the water bill, so he should probably try to fix it before bed.

He let Wayne go in first, as always, knowing he’d take longer going up the porch steps.

He could handle walking just fine most of the time, but stairs were a bitch.

He nearly walked right into Wayne when he walked through the front door, the older man standing stock still right in the entrance.

“Wayne? You good?” Eddie asked, his mind suddenly filtering through any number of terrible reasons for his sudden frozen demeanor.

And then he could smell it.

Cookies.

Someone was baking cookies.

And then he saw it.

The living room was completely cleaned and organized, magazines stacked neatly on the table, no crumbs on the couch or carpet, the weird mud stain from Eddie’s boots no longer on the rug by the front door.

He heard the record player going, though the volume was low enough that he could also hear Steve singing in the kitchen.

“Looks like your boy’s been busy,” Wayne smirked over his shoulder at him.

“I don’t-“ Eddie started to say.

“Eds? Wayne? You guys home?” Steve called from the kitchen.

Before they answered, he walked around the corner with an apron on, his glasses perched on his nose, and a beaming smile on his face.

“I just put the lasagna back in the oven to heat up a bit for you. Had to wait for the cookies to come out,” Steve said as he walked towards them.

He wrapped his arms around Eddie’s neck and kissed him on the lips quickly, then pulled away to give Wayne a quick side hug.

“I made some lemonade that should be nice and cold by now. You want some?”

Eddie and Wayne blinked at him, surprise at what was happening rendering them speechless.

“Is everything okay?” Steve’s tone shifted to concern, the smile dropping from his face as he took in their stillness.

“You cleaned?” Wayne asked.

“And cooked?” Eddie asked.

“And baked?” Wayne added.

“My afternoon class was canceled and Keith said he wouldn’t approve overtime for me, so. I came home?” Steve still looked concerned, like he was waiting for one or both of them to start yelling at him.

“Where’s your car?” Wayne asked.

That was a great question. Eddie just realized it wasn’t in the yard, which was half the reason he’d been shocked to see Steve here at all.

“Oh! Max needed to go to therapy. I was already in the middle of baking so I told her she could just use it as long as she was back by eight.”

“So you’ve been cleaning and baking and cooking all afternoon? For us?” Eddie asked, biting back as much emotion as he could.

He was tired and overwhelmed with love and he knew he would start crying if he didn’t contain some of it.

“I just wanted to take care of you guys and take care of our house. You worked all day and I had some free time to do it,” Steve shrugged.

Wayne collected himself first, moving toward Steve and squeezing his shoulder.

“Thanks, son. You don’t know how much I appreciate ya doin’ all this,” he said, voice slightly choked up.

“It’s no problem, Wayne,” Steve replied, face red.

“Mind if I go grab a shower first?” he asked Eddie.

“Fine with me,” Eddie responded.

Wayne nodded once, smiling at them both, and walked to his room to grab clothes for after his shower.

Steve looked up at Eddie shyly.

“Lasagna will be about 20 more minutes if you wanna grab a drink,” he said quietly.

Eddie smirked.

“Some of that lemonade sounds nice,” he played along, knowing exactly where this was going.

No matter how tired or sore he was, he wouldn’t turn down the chance to get his hands on Steve or have Steve’s hands on him.

Steve led him into the kitchen by his hand, tugging him along as he excitedly explained that he’d found the lemons at a farm stand on his way home from work yesterday and considered using them for a cheesecake, but decided this would be better.

Eddie smiled at him fondly, just happy that Steve is happy.

“I’ll get you a glass, just wait right there,” Steve said, pushing him against the counter gently.

But Eddie didn’t let him pull away yet, fisted his shirt and pulled him against his front.

“Eds!” Steve yelped as they made contact.

“I’m sure the lemonade is perfect, but I want a taste of you first, sugar,” Eddie mumbled, leaning down to press his lips against Steve’s.

Steve melted against him, letting Eddie’s tongue past his lips and letting out a low moan when Eddie’s hands squeezed his ass.

“What’re you doing?” he whispered against Eddie’s lips.

“Touching you,” Eddie answered before kissing the corner of his mouth, his cheek, his jaw.

“Wayne though.”

“He’s already in the shower. We got a few minutes.”

“We can’t do much in a few minutes,” Steve said, trying to stifle another moan as Eddie’s fingers untied his apron and slid to the front of his jeans to undo his button.

“You underestimate how hot it is to see you like a little housewife, sweetheart,” Eddie chuckled.

Steve slapped his arm.

“Not a housewife.”

“No? You sure seemed happy about cleaning up and cooking for me,” Eddie said as he slid his hands into the waistband of Steve’s boxers.

“Eds,” he gasped, but didn’t stop him as he wrapped his hand around his half-hard cock.

“Get me out, Stevie. Don’t have much time,” Eddie groaned.

Steve did as he was asked, but still seemed hesitant.

Eddie paused.

“You wanna call it?” he asked.

If Steve truly didn’t want to, he knew what to say to stop, and he knew Eddie would stop, no questions asked.

But he shook his head, biting his lip to contain a whimper as Eddie looked down at their cocks and spit.

“Gotta stay quiet, still. Don’t wanna be caught,” Eddie whispered as he leaned in to kiss him again, keep his mouth preoccupied so he didn’t give them away.

He knew Wayne would be at least another 10 minutes, but they both liked the idea of having to stay quiet and be quick.

And quick it was.

They both came in barely two minutes, Eddie riled up from Steve just being Steve, Steve being riled up at the fact they were doing this in the kitchen.

“I just cleaned this floor, you better not have gotten anything on it,” Steve smirked at Eddie as they buttoned themselves back up.

“Promise I’ll clean it up myself if I did.”

“You better. Gonna go shower next?” Steve tied the apron back up, walking over to the fridge to finally get the lemonade.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sore today. Hot water will help.”

Steve turned to him with a furrowed brow.

“You should’ve said, baby. You need some Motrin or something?”

“Nah, maybe after I eat. Got a dose of you to help,” he winked obnoxiously.

“Alright, keep it in your pants,” Steve said as he poured a glass for Eddie and a glass for Wayne.

“You’re the one who had it out a minute ago!”

Steve just gave him a dead-eyed stare before handing him his lemonade.

“Get out of my kitchen.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Eddie saluted.

He took a few sips of the lemonade as he walked towards his bedroom to grab clothes.

It was delicious, as he expected.

Just like coming home to Steve every day.

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #ficlet #request #wayne munson #steve's housewife tendencies

[gh0stsp1d3r]

thinking of daughter of demeter reader x luke 🥴

tell me they wouldn’t be so cute!! reader patching him up after his training, and him visiting her in the strawberry fields ! 💝

they would be the cutest.

𝒮𝓀𝓎

“Luke!” You exclaimed when he walked into your cabin, you put your book down. Your eyes fell to his arm, bleeding.

“Nice to see you too, angel.” He mumbled when you grabbed his arm, leading him to the bathroom, he sat down on the closed toilet seat and held his arm out.

“What happened this time?” You spoke as you rummaged through the cabinets, pulling out some large bandages. You grabbed a cup nearby and put some water in it, pouring it over his wound, washing the blood away.

“I was training with this Ares kid and he nicked me.” He shrugged as if blood wasn’t just gushing from his arms.

“Nicked you? He might as well have stabbed you! How’d he even manage to do that?”

“Tis but a scratch.” He joked, a small smile on his face as you put the bandage on his arm. “I looked away for a moment, let my guard down. It was my fault,”

You shook your head to yourself and bandaged his arm.

“Thank you.” He said, giving you a kiss on the cheek.

You smiled, “Why did you come to me and not the Apollo cabin?” You asked him as you put everything back where it was.

“Because, I wanted to see you."

"You saw me 20 minutes ago." You spoke, walking out the bathroom now. He followed.

"60." he corrected, a small smile on his face.

“I would love to stay, but I still have classes.” He said with a groan as he looked at the time.

You nodded in understanding.

“Just take it easy and don’t get stabbed next time, okay?”

“You got it, doc. I will see you later.” He said, a small smile as he walked backwards and pointed little finger guns at you.

You rolled your eyes, he was just like a teenage boy.

You walked through the field, basket in your hand and your hands grazing the grass. The strawberries would be perfect for picking now, you thought.

You wanted to lay in them and never leave. You wanted to live amongst the field and the crops.

You had a small smile as you picked some off, putting them into the basket. As a child of Demeter and the counselor of the cabin, you overlooked the crops and the fruits for the rest of the camp, not that you minded. You liked doing it, like how a Hephaestus kid likes forging.

Silently, Luke came up behind you. You were wearing that dress that he loved on you, you seemed at peace, you seemed happy.

You heard his footsteps when he neared, you turned around and your eyes met his.

“Luke.” You said, shocked to find him here. Your basket was almost halfway full.

“Hey.” He spoke, a small smile on his face as you wrapped your arms around him.

“Missed you.” You mumbled.

“I know, ‘m sorry I’ve been so busy.”

“It’s okay. I understand. You’re here now, though.” You said, he leaned down to give you a kiss. Your lipgloss getting onto his lips, making you smile and laugh as he wiped it off.

"Why are you here?" you asked him, turning around and continuing to pick the strawberries.

"Just wanted to see my girl." He said, putting his arm over your shoulders, giving you wet sloppy kisses on your neck. You gently pushed him away with a smile.

"Well, while you're here, you can help me." you said.

"Just when I thought I would be done with work." he sighed, you rolled your eyes.

"Yeah, but strawberry picking wont get an Ares kid to stab you." You bent over to pick one off.

"He didnt stab me. He barely scratched me." He argued, bending down and picking off a strawberry as well.

“Mhm. How is it, by the way?”

“Better, thanks to you.” He said, and when he picked up the next strawberry, there was a little ladybug on it.

“Look.” He mumbled, handing the strawberry to you. You sat down, smiling at the strawberry. He sat down next to you.

“It’s adorable.” You said quietly, it began to climb up your hand then your arm. He smiled as you looked at it crawling up, then at Luke.

You then put your arm to the leaf of another plant, luke furrowed his brows.

“Wouldn’t the ladybug eat it..?”

You smiled and shook your head. “Ladybugs keep the leaves healthy without pesticides. They’re wonderful.” You mumbled the last part, he smiled and nodded. He was happy to see you so passionate about something.

You looked down at your basket, and while you were sitting, picked some other strawberries nearby.

You both sat down for a little, talking and laughing, and somehow, you both ended up laying down on the grass as the sun went down and the stars began sprinkling across the sky.

#luke castellan x you #luke castellan fluff #luke castellan x reader #luke castellan #charlie bushnell x reader #pjo #pjo disney+ #pjo tv show