#ironically i had a field day with it like her saying that was the worst thing she could have done
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in love like we were (red velvet seulgi)
(ft. the rest of red velvet) (smut, female reader, actress seulgi, actress you, cheating, choking, homewrecking, mommy kink, spanking, praise and degradation, semi-public sex, fluff, i support women's rights but more importantly i support women's wrongs, jk this is fiction do NOT cheat on your partners..., 24k words)
So, here’s the bottom line: you never meant for any of this to happen. Hand to God. Er - alright, whatever, maybe you shouldn’t be dragging God into any of this, considering-
“Christ, you’re so fucking wet.”
-okay, you’re pretty much in the least holy position possible.
The lighting in the bathroom’s dangerously dim, but if anyone were to walk in, there’d be no mistaking it: the scent of sex, the needy, desperate whines, the way Kang Seulgi’s got you on the counter with two fingers driving into your cunt, laughing as you drip down her wrist, embarrassingly soaked. The media would have a fucking field day. Your careers would be permanently ruined. And yet-
“Shut up,” you’re choking out. “Shut up, shut up, just fuck me-”
“Baby.” Seulgi tuts. Her fingers stall. “Ask nicely.”
You know what she wants. And - unfortunately, humiliatingly - it happens to be the exact same thing you want.
Your eyes squeeze shut. “Mommy-”
Beside you, her phone starts to ring.
Seulgi stops cold with her fingers still buried in you at the sight of the name flashing across the screen. The picture, too: Seulgi, grinning widely, with her arms thrown around an unbelievably gorgeous dark-haired woman. Smile demure. Not a hair out of place. Looking like she’s straight off the movie sets she frequents, made-up and meticulously styled.
“Oh, wow,” you say, strangled, breathless. Derisive, at the contact: capitalized, first and last. As detached and businesslike as she could possibly get. “Your contact name for her is just Bae Irene?”
“That’s her name, isn’t it?”
It quite literally isn’t, but you’ll let that one slide. “Unsentimental much?”
“You think so?” A harsh thrust to your cunt. You buckle at the movement, gasping, clutching the lip of the bathroom counter. Seulgi’s smirk is murderously sharp, eyebrows twitching upwards. It’s a good thing one of you is finding this funny.
“Seulgi-”
“Enlighten me then, sweetheart.” She leans in close. Timbre of her voice like gunfire, like she knows she’s about to deliver a fatal blow. “What was your contact name for her when you dated her?”
And that’s something that should be digging up graves, unearthing corpses: there’s the coffin, there’s your past relationship haunting you, there’s the residual remorse like Catholic guilt. There’s the fact that she’s got a girl at home and you’re casting yourself as the other woman just by letting her touch you. There’s Seulgi’s other hand wrapping around your throat, just as her fingers curl deep inside your cunt - and every ghost in the room packs up and goes home. They know a foregone conclusion when they see one.
You can’t talk. You’re back to whining pathetically, pussy clenching around her fingers. “That’s what I thought,” husks Seulgi, maniacally victorious, and lets Irene’s call go to voicemail.
“Mommy, mommy, mommy-”
Fine, God can get the fuck out of here. Yeah, Seulgi’s your ex-girlfriend’s current girlfriend, and now she’s making you cum harder than you ever have. The holy spirit’s just gonna have to make his peace with that. We all make mistakes. It’s so human. Seriously, come on: it’s not like you’ll make this one ever again.
Well, probably.
-
For context, a month and a half ago, you just had the worst breakup of your life.
-
There’s no real need to recap the gory details, play back a previously-on to catch an audience up. Really, all you have to know is this:
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
It’s late September. Sky clear and cloudless through your windows. The day ironically gorgeous around you, like it’s taunting you. And Irene stands in your doorway with her hands balled into bloodless fists by her side, the expression on her face never wavering.
“It’s just not working,” she repeats, like that means anything. Like it’s rehearsed, inflection practiced and pristine. “And-” A breath, regulating. “I feel like it hasn’t been working for a while.”
Here’s where you’re at: reeling through a shock to the system. It’s you, adrift in the center of the sea, fatally unmoored; you and no map and no way home, facing down the last two years of your life in the resolute line of Irene’s mouth. All your words shipwrecked; any fight you have left chained to stones and sinking. You, alone.
“For a while?” you get out, sounding very small.
Irene’s lashes flutter fast, a miniscule crack in her composure. Then, like it takes a Herculean effort for her voice not to shake: “I’m sorry.”
And just like that - cut to black, let the credits roll, force the audience out of their seats; pack up the rest of Irene’s clothes and let her take them, leave like she was never there. No warning, no explanation. Just like that, it’s over.
-
The news’ll hit the press by the end of October. It’ll make the rounds throughout social media, pictures of you and her together, award-winning actresses, looking so happy and in love that you’ll feel like throwing up. There’ll be conspiracy theories, headlines claiming to know exactly where it went wrong; fans mourning melodramatically, hashtags and trending topics. Someone will talk about it and it’ll rip all the same wounds right open. It’ll break your heart on loop. It’ll be horrible.
And in any other life, if you’d just left it alone after that, you would’ve gotten out of it all completely unscathed.
See, it’s all about the narrative. You as the designated victim in your story; she broke up with you, and you’d be able to thrive off the sympathy from that forever. Themes of love and loss, healing and recovery, forgiveness and starting fresh. And one day - in some sort of neat little epilogue, wrapping up loose ends - you’d be able to meet up with Irene again and laugh about the old times, and you’d be so benevolent, accepting apologies; she’d take the blame, and smile, and wish you the best. Leave you as the heroine, with your perfect happy ending. Time healing all wounds, as they say - what a tale, what a message; critics would’ve praised the life lessons taught, call it coming-of-age, honest and raw and real. But instead-
Well, instead, you’ve got no other story to tell but this. You figure it’s as good a place to start as any.
-
It’s a month and a half after Irene breaks up with you, but she somehow manages to send you into complete and utter insanity all over again. It’s a talent, but she’s always had a lot of those. Here’s how it really begins:
“I actually have a new lease on life,” you say, over the phone on a Friday, lazing on your couch. “I’m actually feeling so optimistic right now.”
The feeling’s warranted, you’re thinking. It’s a perfect, peaceful day. You’re in between projects; you don’t start filming again until January. It’s a much-needed break, and you’re taking full advantage of it.
“That’s amazing,” says your best friend, sounding like she means it. “That’s so, so great. So - uh - if that’s the case, I do have some… news for you.”
To her credit, she takes it upon herself to soften the blow, at first. Gives a comprehensive recap of the celebrity rumors going around lately, dances around it with the best of them. First there’s all that baseless (and biased, you’re pretty sure) gossip about Park Sooyoung’s fiancé being a cheater, there’s the usual scandal around Ahn Yujin, there’s that conspiracy theory about Im Nayeon and her secret boyfriend-
“That’s her shirt. ”
And there’s one very specific rumor about your ex-girlfriend and Kang fucking Seulgi.
“Look, it’s…” Your best friend is peering down at your phone screen with the single worst poker face you’ve ever seen. Then again, she’s not the actress between the two of you. “It’s probably not even that serious. It’s, um. Yeah, it’s probably nothing.” A cautious peek out of the corner of her eye. “It might not even be Irene’s, right?”
“Wendy.”
Wendy draws back at your tone, then immediately pats your shoulder gingerly like you’re a particularly prickly feral animal. “Dude, I’m trying to be consoling here.”
She’s doing a shit job at it, but even if she wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter. You’d be losing your mind either way.
Because when Wendy first got you on the phone while she was on the way to your place, filling you in on the goings-on of your rich and famous peers - right, she told you, like an afterthought, people are saying there’s something between she-who-must-not-be-named and Kang Seulgi, but that’s ridiculous, that’s obviously not happening, isn’t that so funny - and you’d laughed along, too, disbelieving. It’s been a month and a half, you thought. Kang Seulgi’s not even Irene’s type. Earlier this year you’d seen one of Seulgi’s smash hit blockbuster flicks with Irene and the only thing Irene said about Seulgi’s performance was a semi-scathing critique about the way her face looked when she was crying. It’s nothing. It’s-
“It’s her shirt,” you say, again, floored.
Wendy gusts out a tiny sigh, giving up the performance. “Yeah,” she says. “I know it is.”
Now you’re both sitting on your couch, staring blankly at Kang Seulgi’s most recent Instagram post. Disheveled black hair. Delicate lines of her nose, her jaw, her mouth. Smoldering dark eyes, lips pulled up in a careless little grin. Tall black boots and heinously expensive jewelry, all caught in high definition. And to top it all off-
“I used to wear that shirt,” you say, viciously, glaring hard at the picture.
“And it looked so much better on you,” says Wendy, lying badly.
“Seungwan.”
“I said I’m trying. ”
“Okay, and I appreciate it, but-” You accidentally swipe to the right; oh, wow, it’s a photo series, that’s fantastic. “Oh my God."
It’s a bloodbath, really. Every image is that same infuriatingly effortless brand of sex appeal that Seulgi’s clearly become accustomed to marketing; she could stick a serial number on it at this point, sell it in stores like she sells out theaters. Face strangely regal and refined, almost austere; smirk pushing it just off the edge, measuring up to sexy rather than stoic. Filthy bedroom eyes, curl of her mouth suggestive by default. It’s obviously a practiced expression. Probably an equally practiced pose, something crafted to deliberately accentuate the toned muscles in her thighs, lean pull of her calves-
“Are you-” starts Wendy, eyeing you suspiciously.
“I’m really, really pissed off,” you clarify, like that explains why you’re staring so hard at Seulgi’s legs. “I seriously can’t believe this is happening.”
“Right,” says Wendy, slowly. “Because for a second I thought you were eye-fucking photos of your ex-girlfriend’s new girlfriend.”
“I would obviously never do that. That’s crazy.” A pause, and then it actually hits: “New what?”
Your voice hitching frantically high is enough to send Wendy on the immediate defense; no, she says, nothing’s actually confirmed, so you can chill out. One shirt - even if it is so obviously Irene’s, down to the tastefully frayed tear in the collar; bought distressed, of course, because Irene’s too classy to rip up her own clothes - doesn’t actually prove anything. They’re probably just fucking, crass as it sounds.
“Yeah,” you say sarcastically, “because that makes it better.”
Wendy simply arches an eyebrow, her almost elfin features - warm, long-lashed eyes, prettily pert nose; today she’s got drawn-on freckles that complete the illusion - arranged in mild confusion. “Well,” she says. “Doesn’t it?”
“Does it?” you echo, a little grouchily, eyes still stuck resentfully on Seulgi’s face.
Look, it’s not just that you’re losing, here - it’s that you’re losing because of her.
“I mean, yeah,” says Wendy, like it’s indisputable. “Because would you rather Irene just be hooking up with Kang Seulgi for fun, or would you rather know that Irene fell for Kang Seulgi in a month and a half in some cheesy whirlwind romance where they discovered that they’re soulmates and now she’s totally over you?”
There’s a pause.
“Okay,” you say, disgruntled. “When you put it like that. ”
“I’m not putting it like anything,” Wendy replies, whimsically. “That’s the way things are, man.”
“Ugh,” you respond, and bury your face in her shoulder.
Because if it’s true, and that’s the way things are-
You’re backpedaling to a month and a half ago, abandoned in the doorway of your apartment; a tsunami with no warning signs, no signals or sirens. Irene’s winning, in a different way. She’s got Kang Seulgi as her girlfriend with her victorious smirk, her reputation, her awards and her fans and her fame. If they’re dating, Seulgi’s cast as the perfect counterpart, the brooding bad-girl love interest, and they’ll sail off into the sunset together, and you’ll die the anticlimactic off-screen death of the side character no one gives a fuck about. Probably from tuberculosis or something equally depressing. Alone.
“This is so ass,” you say miserably, voice muffled by Wendy’s sweater.
“Look at it this way,” replies Wendy, softer, smoothing a hand over your hair. “It’s been a month and a half. You dated Irene for two years. This-” she taps Kang Seulgi’s unreasonably pretty face with a manicured nail- “is definitely just a rebound. Meaningless.”
You emerge, watch her face, watch her click your phone off, screen going blissfully dark. It’s easier to cope when the problem’s not staring at you from a screen, smiling like she’s at the top of the world looking down, forever above it all. “Really?”
“They haven’t gone public with it, right?” Wendy reasons, defaulting to logic. “So it’s clearly not serious. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
It’s hard to argue with her when she takes that tone. No, Wendy’s not an actress, but she spends her life up on a stage, performing in front of a crowd - she knows how to be convincing when the occasion calls for it. Yes, of course I adore my fans, of course I love all my songs, of course the idol life is perfect; of course your ex-girlfriend wouldn’t move on so fast, she loved you, she’s struggling too.
“Okay,” you say, sucking in a deep breath, watching Wendy’s reassuring smile. You’ll buy into logic for one in your life. You’ll be like everyone else, and believe her, for now. “No, you’re right. You’re right.”
And she must be. Because if she’s not, then-
-
“The shirt’s ugly as shit anyway,” says Wendy, loyally, leaning into last-ditch efforts. “Like, you were doing charity by even letting it touch your body.”
“Thanks,” you say. “You know what? You’re absolutely correct.”
“It’s basic, too. Vintage, my ass. I could buy one that looks just like it off of Depop for ten bucks.”
“I’m really digging all the hate in your heart for this t-shirt right now.” You shift your head towards her collarbone. “Except I did used to wear it, so I don’t know what you’re trying to say about my taste.”
“A lapse in judgment,” Wendy proclaims. “You have great taste, historically.”
It’s sweet of her to say. Of course, in, like, three days from now, you’re going to make her eat her words, but neither of you know that just yet. You’ll let it be true until then.
-
Wendy leaves a little later; she’s got an early flight tomorrow, some music show overseas. Call me if you need anything, she tells you, and you hug her goodbye, but you tell her you’ll be fine. Sure, you end up idly scrolling through some of Kang Seulgi’s recent posts, but that’s normal, that’s justifiable. Checking out your replacement, even if it is just a short-lived fling. Photo after photo of her draped in leather jackets and stretching in sports bras and glittering gowns on red carpets - fine, she’s so fucking hot, she’s perfect for a rebound. Womanizing reputation and all. It’s understandable. You wouldn’t be able to blame Irene for wanting her. Dating her, though-
But they’re not. You dispel that thought as quickly as it comes. Logic, you remind yourself. Like Wendy said: they haven’t gone public with it. Meaningless. Ridiculous. So, really, you have nothing to worry about.
-
A day later, they go public with it.
-
“Okay, so I’m not a mind reader,” Wendy is saying frantically into the phone, like she thinks she’s talking you off a ledge. “I didn’t know. Dude, I didn’t know-”
You’re staring at SEULRENE trending on Twitter, under news article after news article touting that the two actresses announce they’re dating, that they finally made it official, that they’re so infatuated with each other, so happy -
“I’m gonna kill her,” you say, seriously.
“That’s such a horrible idea.” A pause. “Which one?”
In the two years that you and Irene were dating, together you managed to curate a particularly rabid fanbase between the two of you, people who lamented that love was fake and didn’t exist after the report of your break-up was made public information. Posting selfies of them crying. Dramatic edits of you and Irene to sappy sad love songs. And now, in the wake of Irene dating someone new:
ooooh no bc this is actually very nasty and evil, someone Tweets. ok so based on the timeline my moot put together (thread linked below of insta stories & tweets for proof) it’s been literally a month & 14 days since they broke up… either irene moves on fast or imo she was prob fucking around with seulgi the whole time…
Somehow your fans are keeping better track of the details than you are, but maybe that’s not so surprising. They’re like the FBI, or something. It’s honestly impressive.
NO… someone else replies underneath. YOU THINK IRENE WAS CHEATING?
idk but the timing sure seems suspicious doesn’t it 🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨
“Was Irene cheating on me?” you choke out into the phone.
Another, longer pause. “Are you stalking your own stans on Twitter?”
A guilty flick across your screen, swiping out of the app. “Of course not.”
Wendy makes a noise like hissing air through her teeth, as if in physical pain. “You need to delete all social media off of your phone right now. For your own good, man, I’m serious. For your mental.”
“I’m gonna hit Kang Seulgi with my car,” you say, fuming. “I’m gonna commit vehicular manslaughter.”
“It’s not manslaughter if it’s premeditated. And you don’t even know how to drive.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
And it’s not like Irene’s done anything wrong, per se - it’s not even that. Sure, it’s a quick turnaround, but the two of you are broken up, and she’s allowed to do whatever she wants. No, it’s something else, something much more bitter and bruising-
Okay: it’s not lost on you that Kang Seulgi’s basically your exact opposite.
She’s the country’s favorite bad girl, reputation larger than life and with this air of mystery, of carelessness, of unassailable cool. Starring in all these gritty action flicks or psychological thrillers or hard-hitting dramas, perpetually covered in blood and soaked in sweat, defined lines of muscle in her arms, along her stomach. Straight-faced and curt and sarcastic in interviews, when she chooses to give them. A revolving door of girls that’ve never been granted any official title - nothing exclusive, nothing serious - or, at least, not until Irene. You’re the antithesis, the sweet-faced girl next door, dressed up in schoolgirl skirts and playing high schoolers even at twenty-one. Innocence personified. Even dating a girl a decade older than you wasn’t enough to tarnish your image.
So it’s so easy to imagine Seulgi with Irene, smiling that same heedless smile that’s plastered all over her Instagram - saying I know what you had before; I know it wasn’t enough. Let me show you everything you’re missing out on. Oh, she bored you to tears , didn’t she; come on, watch me bring you back to life. Serpent in Eden, fangs like the devil. Smiling because she knows she won.
“When did this become a competition?” asks Wendy, after a beat. “I mean, I’m all for coming up with crazy delusional narratives in my free time, but - what, you think she did this on purpose?”
“It doesn’t matter,” you insist, scrolling through her Instagram again. “It’s just - God. It’s like, out of everyone, why did it have to be Kang Seulgi?”
A sigh. “No, I get it. You feel like they ended up having this instant connection, or whatever. Because it’s so fast. So it’s kind of like - you’re wondering what she has that you don’t, right?”
Well, sort of. You know what she has that you don’t, on a surface level: she’s (marginally) more famous than you, hotter and more established, she’s got more awards, more money - she’s got visible abs and those toned thighs, hands threatening in every photograph; seduction down pat, like she’d been trained for it; this way of making everything she does seem so easy-
An extended stretch of silence. “So is it that they’re in a serious public relationship or is it really just the Kang Seulgi of it all?”
You’re swiping through a photo series of Seulgi on set for her most recent action film, her with a fake cut done up in SFX makeup stretching bloody across her collarbone, her nose glinting with a sheen of sweat. Gaze trained off into the distance, bruises underneath enticingly dark. Flex of her bicep in the sixth one as she closes her fist around a pistol. Half a smirk at the camera in the eighth, eyes saying it all: you want me and you can’t have me; you want me, but doesn’t everyone?
“Can’t it be both?” you say, staring hard.
“Well, it kind of seems like you think she’s really hot and you’re mad about that first and foremost.”
“Um,” you say, and abruptly it’s like you’ve never acted in your life. “No. It’s, like, way deeper than that.”
Wendy sounds like she’s holding back a laugh. “Okay,” she says, and lets it go. It’s the kind thing to do.
-
“I think I understand it now,” she says, later. “She’s currently your mortal enemy because you think she’s better than you.”
“I can handle her being better than me,” you say. “She’s my mortal enemy because she’s better than me and my ex-girlfriend’s in love with her.”
“Who said anything about love?”
But along with the story, there’s a handful of paparazzi pictures posted in each article, plastered all over Twitter - Irene and Seulgi laughing as they pile into a car together, hands linked, smiles blindingly bright. Stunning even through blurry photographs, in every medium; the two of them spotting the cameras and not caring at all, treating them with great angles, perfect shots. So sure of themselves. Pictures and a thousand words, et cetera. It says everything it needs to.
“Seriously, though, do I really need a reason?” you add, after an hour of ranting. “She’s my ex’s new girlfriend. It’s been a month and a half. I’m allowed to want her dead.”
“Totally,” says Wendy, supportively. “I’m sure there’s no other explanation for why you feel so strongly about her.”
“There really isn’t,” you say, and leave it at that. It’s practically the truth, anyway.
-
Later that night, as you’re still stalking Seulgi on Instagram, you accidentally like a photo from February. It’s bad, but it could be worse. At least it’s not from last year. At least she’s clothed in it.
(Mostly. It’s her sprawled over a motel bed in a ripped band tee and lacy panties and nothing else. But it’s also very clearly a photo from set - you recognize it from a movie of hers that you went to see with Wendy a few months back. R-rated, fully scandalous, entirely brilliant, sure to sweep the end-of-year awards ceremonies you have coming up. Seulgi played the drug-addicted fuck-crazy frontwoman to some rock band, had half a dozen topless scenes, thrown back on the sheets like a timeless sex symbol: makeup smudged, chest heaving, moans practically pornographic. Eyes heavy, hooded, meant to seduce.
But this picture’s got none of that. Seulgi’s very clearly mid-laugh in it, for one, breaking character; someone had happened to snap a candid, catch her in a moment of gorgeous, wild imperfection. It’s one of the only photos on her Instagram that isn’t her face fixed in a practiced smolder, that doesn’t relegate her pretty mouth to a smirk. A rarity, where she’s not living up to her reputation.
And you can’t stop staring at it. Wondering what it was that got her to crack. Strangely spellbound by that one expression, unable to pull your eyes away.)
So your finger slips, and you like it - whatever. But it’s probably fine: you doubt Seulgi even has her notifications turned on, and even if she does, she gets hundreds of thousands of those per day. She’ll never see it.
Nobody needs to know, really. And even if they do, it’s not like it means anything.
-
do you think this is heartless of irene though, you text Wendy. like i know i said i wasn’t mad at her but
irene? heartless? replies Wendy. generally yes. but in this context….. ummm…
???
i mean. sorry. but its KANG SEULGI
and? you say. And then, because it’s easier to lie to Wendy through your teeth when she can’t see the expression on your face: kang seulgi is like deeply mediocre as an actress. and otherwise. i don’t know what you’re talking about.
It’s a mistruth of biblical proportions. Miraculously, Wendy doesn’t even call you on it.
whoa…. she says, instead. cant wait for these texts to get leaked so u get crucified on twitter for talking shit about THE kang seulgi
wendy why would these texts ever get leaked.
idk….. for the right price…..
you leak these texts and i’m leaking your nudes.
go ahead i look fucking great in all my nudes!!!!! tf!!!!
And that’s how you know it’s really over: Wendy can’t even blame Irene for going after Seulgi. Wendy, who’s always had a vague vendetta against Irene (her vibes are permanently fucked and can never be resuscitated, Wendy informed you once, while drunk, and has since never offered another explanation), backing down from an opportunity to insult her. It’s bad. It’s really bad.
KYSSSSS, you say. Then, immediately: okay i’m sorry i didn’t mean that i’m just emotional right now.
we’re going to a party when i get back, texts Wendy. u need to get out of the house before u become so delusional that u have to be institutionalized.
fine, you say, unable to fight back. It’s starting to seem like she kind of has a point.
-
(Looking back on it now, the actual first problem is this:
Wendy’s right. You think Kang Seulgi is so, so hot. But the even worse thing is that you’ve thought this for ages: binge-watched every movie she’s ever been in, gone through dozens of interviews, drooled over red carpet photos. Since you started dating Irene. Since long before that. But it’s always been fine - distant and manageable, irrelevant and light-hearted - because you’ve never once acted on it, because you’ve never once met her. Nothing that’ll ever come to fruition at all, and for good reason. And it doesn’t matter now, because she’s dating your ex-girlfriend and so you want her dead. It’ll never be anything more than that.
Or, at least, that’s what you think.)
-
Two days later, and - well, there’s always a party. You’re all too rich and famous and repressed. It’s just how it’s always been.
The typical scene’s already in full swing, when you get there: looming mansion, rooms gaping wide, the most well-known names in the country spilling out over the spotless tile flooring, laughing and drinking and enjoying some semblance of freedom. You’re all so used to smiling into a lens like surveillance is second nature - you’ll get reckless at times like these, when you know you can afford it. When you know there’s only a miniscule chance of getting caught.
“Seriously,” you say, phone tucked close to your ear, talking loud over the music: “if I don’t find you in the next ten minutes, I’m leaving.”
“But then how will you get laid without me?” Wendy says, on the other line.
You roll your eyes, then shoot a wave at one of Wendy’s idol friends across the room, someone she probably knows from a music show or a collab stage or because they’re part of the same company. The idol industry’s a little different than yours; they’re constantly at the same events, frequenting the same venues. It’s easier to forge connections. “You mean because you’ll be my wingman or because you’ll take one for the team and fuck me yourself?”
“It’s a toss-up,” says Wendy, who’s talking equally loudly, probably trapped in some opposite corner of this manor of a house. “I still haven’t seen if you look hot enough tonight. I have standards, bitch.”
“Right,” you say, as you notice Park Sooyoung and her fiancé, isolated off to the right in what seems like a particularly intense conversation for a party. “You really know how to turn a girl on, Wendy. I’m, like, creaming my jeans.”
A horrified pause through the pounding music. “You’re wearing jeans?”
“Obviously not. Weren’t you the one who said-”
“Yeah, yeah. The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.”
Cliché, but you won’t knock it ‘til you try it. They’re tropes for a reason. So you’re looking for a very specific kind of attention tonight: short skirt and shoes with a heel and hair straightened to a shine. This Kang Seulgi thing is the last goddamn straw, giving you a mission, an objective: you need to get fucked, and soon. You don’t need to find the love of your life, or whatever. You just need to prove you’ve moved on.
“Shouldn’t be that hard,” says Wendy. “I’m sure there are plenty of social climbers at this party who want what you have and think they can fuck their way into a job or whatever.”
“So you’re saying that they’d want me for my fame and not anything else?” She’s got a point, but you’re not about to tell her that; it’s enough to get a fuck, and that’s all you’re asking for. “Thanks. Really, that’s so helpful.”
“Your fame and your ass,” replies Wendy, cheerfully. “What else do you need? Like, it clearly wouldn’t be for your personality-”
“Fuck off. I’m going out to the balcony,” you say, beelining towards the glass double doors; they’re recognizable enough, and you need the backup. “Come find me, okay?”
“Okay, no, that’s too vague. There are like fifteen balconies in this place. How will I know-”
-
And everything that happens next occurs with horror-movie proportions: the fatal anticipation, the red flags flying. Any audience member’s screaming at the screen right now, warning you: don’t go through that doorway, don’t make that decision, turn on your heel and run. It’s a slasher and you’re heading right into the killer’s arms. It’ll ruin you for life. It’s so obvious-
(There’s a storm coming. There’s the crack of lightning, electricity at your ribs. The sky’s a second from splitting open. What are the odds, what’s the mathematic probability; you and the girl you’ve been obsessing over for the past three days - or earlier than that, if you’re counting just how many of her movies you’ve seen, put on repeat, lost your mind a million times over - in the same place, the same time. You’re distracted; you’ve forgotten to put your guard up. Again with all the fucking clichés.)
-but there’s hindsight, and all its clarity. You’re just not there yet. You’re too close to see it coming.
-
There’s a woman smoking on the balcony.
There’d be a sitcom laugh track here, if anyone were watching - how clueless can someone be, how comically stupid - because you don’t even realize it at first, much less recognize who it is. You’re pushing open the heavy double doors, still talking loudly to Wendy, trying to elaborate on statues that could serve as makeshift landmarks - and in the rush of the cool autumn wind, you finally spot her standing there. Cue raucous laughter. Take a breath for delighted applause.
“Ah, sorry,” you say, automatically, coming to a stop.
“Yeah, you should be,” says Wendy, still on the phone.
The doors shut with an ominous sound behind you; bad omens, butterfly effects. Smoke curling around the woman’s hair, turning her silhouette spectral, ghostlike. Clad in a dress so short there’s no way her teeth aren’t chattering around her cigarette. You say, into the phone, “Not to you, idiot. I’m talking to-”
And then the woman turns, and you’re so shocked you accidentally hang up the call. Because it’s-
Well, everyone probably already knows by now.
What they don’t know - what nobody could know, except you, in this one moment - is the overwhelmingly, tragically physical effect seeing her in person has on you. Lungs suddenly like they’re struggling for air. Pulse like the thrum of music still blaring inside, bass as a bloodline, melodies as chemical compositions. Somehow, entirely by accident, you’d built her up in your head to be this deity, this goddess, this fictitious impossibility: she’s otherworldly in her films, in photographs, spur-of-the-moment snaps taken by fans. Beautiful like something out of a Renaissance painting, striking and regal and ruminative. You’d never even imagined anything else.
And it’s there, in bits and pieces, a glimpse of the myth in motion. Threat in the high hemline of her skirt. Lips startlingly red, blood and sin and more suggestive things. Collarbones like cliffs to throw yourself off of; glint in her eye like she’s armed and dangerous. Like she’s everything her movies paint her out to be.
But then there’s everything else.
“Oh,” you say out loud, throat dry, and you’re paralyzed.
Because she’s nothing like she is when you’ve seen her in print, awards shows and billboards - and in that moment, it all starts crumbling to the ground.
She’s positively tiny in real life, that’s the first thing. Sporting platform boots and still a few inches shorter than you are; sleeves hitting below her elbows, veins visible in her arms, patterned under her skin. Lipstick bleeding just past the line of her mouth, smudged unevenly at her cupid’s bow. Hair a little wild in the wind, slipping undone and coarse over her shoulders. Eyeliner worn-in, mascara leaving faint, sooty shadows under both eyes. Tiny moles you’d seen photoshopped out in magazines; one just underneath her eyebrow, stark against fair skin; one of her knees is badly bruised, blooming a faint, sickly yellow-green. Posture slightly slumped as she turns to look at you, shoulders rounded, set of her lips a bit crooked, pulled up at a corner.
“Hey,” Kang Seulgi says, voice gravelly, and that’s really when everything falls apart.
Because she’s nothing like she is on billboards. Because she’s better.
-
Here’s how it happens, if you had to explain yourself: you meet and it’s already so far gone. You can’t help but blink dumbly, heart thrown into an avalanche, splitting your ribs; smoke everywhere, fires set ablaze. Off the key of reason, each bit of her just past perfect and heading straight to immeasurably, unquantifiably beautiful. Rough edges and nails unpolished, hands like an invitation. Lips puckering around her cigarette, hair somewhat blending into the night sky - and Seulgi looks right on back at you, staring openly, drinking you in.
“Hi,” you say, breathlessly, because you forget that you’re supposed to hate her guts.
“Hey,” says Seulgi again, and she’s still staring, eyes wide. It’s becoming incredibly apparent that there’s no need for introduction. She knows who you are.
(That’s the next problem. You know each other, even though you’ve never met. There’s no escaping it now.)
The seconds tick by in spellbindingly slow motion. Like you’re waiting for the clock to strike midnight; waiting on an inevitability, a prewritten series of events, an entirely scripted array of scenes. Moon a deliberate director. Stars the screenwriters, setting marks, assigning meaning: put a pause here, pull back on the dialogue - the critics will get all the subtext.
You’re frozen. You just can’t stop looking at her.
“Sorry,” Seulgi says, suddenly.
“Um,” you say back, because for one crazy moment, you think she’s talking about Irene. And for an even crazier moment you think of saying no, it’s fine, I forgive you - no, obviously I haven’t been obsessing about it since I heard the news; God, you’re so much more than gorgeous, I get it; fuck, I’d never blame anyone for going after you. Look at you. Look at you.
But then Seulgi gestures with her cigarette between two fingers, and you realize she’s talking about the smoking. And she abruptly doesn’t sound sorry at all when she says, “You can go back inside, if you want. Not trying to offend anyone’s delicate sensibilities here.”
Your mouth falls open.
“Seriously,” Seulgi tacks on, at your silence. “I wouldn’t want to, you know.” Slow pan of your body, your hair to your heels. Something about the way she looks at you, then; severe quirk of her eyebrow, the amused sniff of air through her nose. “Get in your way.”
And, well-
“It’s a bad habit,” continues Seulgi, mouth at an exponentially sharper tilt, and takes another lazy drag.
-it occurs to you that she’s kind of being a bitch.
And that in itself is fucking mind-boggling. Because she’s the one dating your ex-girlfriend after a month and a half. Because if anyone should be getting nasty here, it should be you - you’d have the right to, you should be furious (and you are, you remind yourself, you’ve been furious at her this whole time, she’s your mortal enemy, seeing her in person doesn’t change that), you should follow through on your threat of running her over with a car, it’s so stupid that she’s the one trying to get a rise out of you right now-
“Disgusting habit, actually,” you say, barely giving her a chance to breathe. “But if you want to die from lung cancer, that’s totally your prerogative. I don’t care either way.”
So, obviously, you make the split-second decision to be a bitch right back. It’s just the thing to do.
A tiny, maddening smirk curls around Seulgi’s mouth. “That’s a little strong, kid,” she says. “You wouldn’t care if I died?”
“Does it really matter to you what I care about?” You’ve got your arms folded over your chest; you can’t believe she just called you kid. Yeah, she’s got like ten years on you, but - Jesus Christ. “You don’t know me.”
“You don’t like me,” says Seulgi, like she’s mildly delighted by it.
“I just said I don’t know you, Seulgi.”
The moment her name leaves your mouth you know it’s a mistake - but you can’t quite figure out why. Just that you’re both aware of something of a seismic shift, the whole house tipping sideways; moon slipping slightly out of orbit, constellations doubling back to take another glance. Both of you unsteady in your heels; Seulgi’s lips part, and she’s staring again. Expression oddly slack, as if struck. Smoke softening the line of her jaw.
“Seulgi,” you say, again, trying to recover.
You can’t come up with anything else. It’s as if you’ve never done improv, like you’ve never charmed your way through talk show interviews. There are tiny, glimmering studs lining Seulgi’s ears, a perfect match to the small pendant she’s got around her neck, glinting in the moonlight. Nestled right where her neckline dips scandalously low.
“My eyes are up here,” says Seulgi, apparently taking the opportunity to bring back the hostility full-force.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” you say, just as fast. “There’s barely anything worth looking at there.”
There’s a pause.
Okay - fine, it’s possible that was maybe going a little far. To be fair, you’ve never had a first conversation this tense, with anyone; you don’t know the regulations. It’s ridiculous that you’re acting like this. But it’s her - it’s something about her stupid smile and her smoking, her reckless beauty and her big reputation, that look in her eyes that says she gets whatever she wants, even if she has to take it.
You glance upwards just to see that Seulgi actually almost looks like she’s about to burst out laughing. Lips twitching, irises strangely bright under silvery moonlight. Smile revealing her teeth.
But she doesn’t, though it looks like it takes some effort. “Wow,” she says, instead, and returns to condescending amusement as quickly as she’d left it. “That’s really mature.”
“You’re the one who stole my girlfriend and you wanna talk about maturity?” you spit. “That’s hilarious.”
It’s not your best move. As if anyone could steal a grown woman, much less one like Irene - but Seulgi’s looking at you like that, and you have to land a blow, even if it’s irrational. Plus sometimes you’re susceptible to social media bullshit.
Seulgi’s still smiling. “I’ll have you know there was no overlap,” she says. “Very above board. But it’s cute that you buy into Twitter conspiracy theories. Spend a lot of time stalking your own stans?”
“Okay,” you shoot back, “but how would you know that my stans are coming up with Twitter conspiracy theories in the first place?”
There’s another long silence.
“So you’re stalking my stans,” you conclude. “That’s way worse.”
“Um,” says Seulgi, suddenly looking considerably less intimidating than she did two seconds ago. Then, “Well, you’re the one who liked one of my half-naked Instagram photos from February.”
“Okay,” you say, again, arms crossed over your chest. “But why do you know that?”
“My stans are well-informed,” Seulgi explains, tapping her cigarette against her bottom lip. “They like to keep track of who likes my shit.”
“All I’m getting from this is that you regularly monitor both my stans and your stans when they talk about me.”
Seulgi stares at you, mouth opening a little; like she’s guilty, like she’s caught. “So,” she says.
“Loser,” you say, probably proving her point about immaturity.
But it doesn’t even faze her; you blink once and she’s smiling again, for some godforsaken reason. She says, “You know what, I think we got off on the wrong foot.” Corner of her mouth curling further, putting her cigarette out on the railing. “I’m actually a big fan of you, to be honest.”
“Ugh,” you say, cheeks flushing hot with frustration. It seems so obvious that she’s making fun of you; because she’s older and sexier and more famous, because there’s no way you were even on her radar before she started dating your ex. “You’re so - whatever. I’m leaving. Bye.”
You turn to go, fully intending to never speak to her again. Asshole, you’re thinking, she’s such a-
“No, no,” Seulgi’s saying, laughing, “hold on, we should-”
And it’s the littlest thing that does it, in the end:
Seulgi’s fingers close around your wrist, and all she does is tug lightly. Barely any pressure at all. But she’s stepped forward to get her hand on you, and so she’s so close when she pulls you back to her; you stumble a bit in your heels, not expecting it, almost tumbling right into her. And - as if it’s an instinct - her other hand falls carefully to the small of your back, steadying you with her palm at your spine. Face so near to yours you can smell her perfume under all the smoke. Gazes locking; clink of chains, discarding keys, handcuffs latching tight. It’s instantaneous.
There are fifty things you should probably say right now - don’t touch me, we’re strangers, we don’t know each other; are you this presumptuous with everyone you meet, do you try to provoke them, or is it something about me; please don’t say it’s me. But the truth is that the moment she gets her hands on you, it’s already pretty much doomed.
“Oh,” Seulgi breathes out, like a revelation.
She’s no longer laughing, so thrown even she can’t act it off. Eyes so dark, pupils scarily dilated. Wind flicking inky strands of hair across her face. Her tongue darts out to wet her lips; you shiver underneath her hand on your back, your wrist, pulse hammering underneath her thumb. Seulgi’s been messing with you since the second you met her, but even she doesn’t have the power to charge the atmosphere like this; electric current, preparing for the roll of thunder, bones thrumming restless and wired under your skin. Seismic shift, give it a sequel: any second the house’ll catch fire and disintegrate.
“You should probably let go of me,” you warn, faintly, shivering, staring at her mouth and thinking fuck, fuck, fuck.
Seulgi’s lashes flutter fast, blinking herself out of a trance.
“Yeah,” she says, but there’s an undertone to it; she steps back, lets you go, visibly bites the inside of her cheek. Like she needs to snap herself out of it before it’s too late. “Right. Sorry, kid. I didn’t - I really am a fan, you know.”
“Are you,” you say, too enthralled to try and catch her in a lie. The air’s still so thick: it could splinter every surrounding window from the outside in, tear through glass like paper. You can’t comprehend the change - can’t understand why you can still feel her hands on you, white-hot and consuming. It’s too fast a tilt, throwing your head into vertigo; you’re still so full of misplaced expectation. Will she, won’t she.
“I have been for a while,” says Seulgi, suddenly bashful. She won’t, you’re certain. She can’t; she’s out of your league and so gorgeous and she’s taken, she’s so unavailable, you just met, she’d never. “I think you’re…”
“You think I’m…” you mimic.
Seulgi’s eyebrows raise, and her gaze drops. Surveying you again, your face, your hair, your body - measuring you up to your films, the fiction and the fantasy. And there’s this look in her eye; you can’t tell what she sees when she looks at you. Her hair’s filtering moonlight; she’s all surrealism, the temptation of imperfect things, the immeasurable beauty. Soft line of her neck. Sharp glint of her stare. And out of nowhere you already know it’s over, before she even opens her mouth.
“Fucking incredible,” she murmurs, at a sensuous rasp, throaty insinuation curling around every syllable.
(She will, then - it’s done and decided. She will.)
And it’s so idiotic, because you’re actresses, for God’s sake. You make a living off of faking feelings, playing parts. But there’s something about you and her and how high you are off the ground, on top of the world, larger than life and the city far beneath your heels; all it takes is a little bit of proximity. You’re both too used to having everything you’ve ever wanted right at your fingertips. All it takes is a touch.
“You should go,” you say, quietly, hands aching to have her.
Out of nowhere you’re too close together again. You’re not sure who stepped forward first, not sure who started it; not sure who’s fault this is going to be, when you play it all back. You can’t rationalize it in the least. Sometimes it’s just a feeling.
“I don’t think I want to,” Seulgi murmurs back, just as inexplicably captivated as you are, too near to rein it in. “Do you really want me to?”
“You have a girlfriend.” It’s not an answer. You’re drawn into her eyes as if by gravity; deep-space, brilliant astronomy. You can’t make yourself sound as guilty as you should. “Seulgi.”
There’s that problem with her name in your mouth again: like a death sentence, like a missile deployed, like a cocking gun. It’s a direct hit. You’ll never be able to take this one back.
“Fuck,” Seulgi says, out loud, and then she kisses you.
-
(Oh, there’s no way to explain it. It’s exactly the kind of thing that’d cause walk-outs in theaters, reviewers throwing up their hands in disbelief, baffled; the chemistry is there, sure, but where’s the logic, where’s the narrative sense, where’s the justification. That can’t be all it takes, that would make you and Seulgi both morons: five minutes of snarky conversation and sexual tension and you both cave, how does that work, who approved this fucking script-
Well, they’re just gonna have to get used to it. It’s a film where neither of the main characters have any common decency, so what did you really expect - and, truthfully, it only gets worse from here on out.)
-
Right away it’s too intense, too sensual and filled with filthy intention. Countdown clocks, hourglasses dripping sand: you’re existing on completely stolen time and it shows. Her thigh finds her way between both of yours; your back hits the wall right next to the double doors. You’ve never had a first kiss so fucking sloppy - licking along your lip gloss, the seam of your mouth; teeth colliding, fingers digging into your hips; deliciously invasive, like she’s trying to devour you: motive shifting, nails working their way against your scalp, scraping until you whimper. You’re seconds from humping her thigh like an animal, making a mess to clean. And you’re suddenly so, so wet.
“Are we really doing this?” Seulgi’s all smoke, old horrible habits; vices, addictions. “We - God-”
“Depends,” you say, too turned on to be anything but a bitch. “If you wanna be a morally corrupt cheater who cheats on your girlfriend with someone you just met-”
“Are you gonna say that’s my prerogative again?”
“Well.” You can’t believe she’s onto you so soon. “It is.”
“You’re such a brat,” she says, with feeling, and then sees the look on your face. “Oh, wow. Of course you’re into that.”
Apparently she’s onto a lot of things about you. “Who says I’m into that?”
It’s a bad point to call her bluff. In no time at all Seulgi’s got her thigh between your legs again, dislodges her hand from your hair and holds a fist to your shoulder; pressing you down, forcing friction. You can’t stop yourself - you’re rocking your hips, you’re soaking through your thong, trying not to whine - you can’t comprehend how you got here so fast, so wanton and desperate, how natural it feels for her to pin you against a wall and work whimpers out of your mouth - how much you want it-
(Fine, maybe the real truth is that the minute you saw her and her eyes and her hands and her short dress you wanted her so bad you forgot how to function, she got a little mean with you and it turned you on, she got too close to your face and you instantly thought of her fucking you senseless - fine. It’s been doomed from the very first second. Maybe you’re just as morally corrupt as she is. Maybe even more.)
“Huh, I don’t know.” There’s no justifying it. Seulgi’s mouth held in a wicked smirk, gleam of teeth like the definition of the upper hand. Taking it without question; you’re into that, so she’ll be what you want. “Your cunt dripping all over my thigh right now?”
“This is so fucked up,” you manage, needing to kiss her again, needing to be bent over and fucked on her fingers, needing more. Her own question thrown back in her face: “Are we really doing this?”
You’re finally gonna get your answer. It’s her, and it’s hopeless. Serpent in Eden. Fangs like the devil. Heedless smile, photographs and their infinite words: let me show you everything you’ve been missing out on; come on, baby, let me take you home; let me bring you back to life.
“Yeah,” sighs Seulgi, and presses her lips to yours, one more time. “I think we are.”
-
She pulls you inside by the hand, shoving past some of the most well-known names in the country. She’s careless about it, too. Like you’re incomprehensibly the only thing in the room she can see, fingers intertwined tight with yours, your nails and her bare knuckles, a near-perfect fit. She trips over someone’s foot and has to catch herself on a doorframe, and you laugh until she tells you to shut the fuck up, but she’s laughing too, and kind of looking like she wants to kiss you, right there in public. She doesn’t, because she can’t, and you know it. You let the moment go.
-
Seulgi doesn’t take you home. She’s got Irene there, probably; that’s the first reason. The second is that, truthfully, the two of you aren’t only stupid, you’re also impatient - if you have to wait any longer you’re gonna lose your minds.
“You know, I have this theory about you.”
So that’s how you end up in some upstairs bathroom, your back flush against the sink, her hands up in your hair and her teeth over your throat, your nails leaving marks on her wrists, her thighs. Those fucking claws, Seulgi says, and grins at the scarlet-red scratches; like she likes you when you’re riled and needy, like there’s a sort of test you’ve passed. Tugs the neckline of your top down with rough fingers; kisses sloppy and open-mouthed down your neck, your collarbone, licks a line down your chest. And right as she’s hovering over a nipple, breath so hot you’re already whining, that’s when she says-
“What?” you say back. Too thrown off, too turned on; you’re blinking down at her swollen mouth, panting. It barely registers. “You have a what?”
“Here’s how I see it.” It’s almost conversational. Seulgi flicks her tongue over your nipple, draws back just as quick. You whine without meaning to, spine curving, begging for more. “Girls like you,” she says. “You always have a type.”
There’s something dangerous about her tone, something sending you on high alert, alarms wailing, windows blown out or breaking in. Something about how she says girls like you, like she’s already got you all figured out - physical evidence to a heinous crime, already crafting her case. Motive and opportunity. Gleam in her eyes before she puts you away for life.
“What?” you say, again, voice wavering.
Her hand trails down your stomach, searching for more skin. Tugs the hem of your skirt up. “I think you have a thing for it,” Seulgi says, and dips her chin, indicating herself. “Older women. All that entails. See, I don’t think someone like you accidentally starts dating someone like Irene.” Her hand stops at your inner thigh, won’t go near your cunt, won’t touch you where you need it. “You get off on that kind of age gap, right?” She doesn’t need you to answer for her to know it’s true. “You like feeling helpless. Like you need to be taken care of.”
She leans forward; her lips hover over yours, unwilling to kiss you again. She’ll make you work for it. She says, “You like pretending that you’re just this naïve good girl, corrupted by some older woman who couldn’t keep her hands off you. Like you’re just such an angel, baby. They couldn’t resist.” Raises her hands to your hips and presses down. “I think it makes you so fucking wet. ”
You hold your breath. You can’t give yourself away this early, you’re thinking. You can’t be so predictable - it’s humiliating, it’s unbearable. “Seulgi-”
Unwilling to kiss you, or at least she’s trying to be - but you say her name, and that’s all it takes for her to break.
There’s something about the way she kisses you, then, hoisting you up until you’re perched on the bathroom sink, tongue slipping across your bottom lip: like you should’ve known. Like the first second you saw her, it should’ve sent your nervous system haywire, veins knotting themselves and bloodstream freezing like ice. Like no matter what - talk about butterfly effects, talk about roads and pathways and predestination - the second you saw her, she was always going to see right through you. Like she was always going to tilt her head like this, pull back with her lashes a flicker against her cheekbone. Pull back and demand-
“Say it.”
You’re barely breathing. “Say what?”
Seulgi lifts an eyebrow, amused by you playing dumb. And there’s a purpose to it - a monologue, an anticipation, a breaking point. Testing you against the pull of her blunt nails scraping your thighs, won’t touch you further until you give in. Excruciating, temptation incarnate.
“Say it,” she purrs, again. “I know you want to.” One hand on either thigh and parting them, slowly. “I’m not gonna fuck you until you say it.”
And then she runs her knuckles against the drenched spot on your panties, right where your cunt’s soaked through - and the pressure’s not nearly enough. Pulls your thong to the side, your cunt glistening wet; every part of you throbbing with aching need. She’s watching your face with an intent, arrogant sort of certainty. She knows you’re about to give in.
“Sweetheart,” Seulgi says, sends your skin simmering hot with just a word. You can’t handle how shiny her hair is, still tangled from the autumn wind - can’t stand the way her irises glint in a dark room, like she’s so great she’s defying logic, like fame’s really made her something supernatural. Can’t stand that she’s unfathomably beautiful. Can’t stand that she’s not yours.
So you give in.
-
“Mommy, mommy, mommy-”
Somewhere in there - that’s when Irene calls. But it’s not a question, what’s more important right now: Seulgi lets you run your mouth and stays hooked on every word, taunting you, laughing as your cunt soaks her hand. Keeps fucking your pussy like there’s nothing in the world she’d rather be doing, and lets the call go to voicemail.
-
Seulgi fucks you like she’s everything her reputation makes her out to be, and that’s the only way to put it: rough and brutal and intense, off the edge of violent. You’re thinking of the box office killer you saw her in a few weeks back - she played the love-interest-turned-villain, led the reveal with knuckles chapped and split, smile lined in blood - and it’s the risk, the ruthlessness: it’s like no one’s ever gotten what you need until her. Throat under her hand, saying filthy things about how wet you are, how fucked up, how pathetic and naughty, fingers around your neck and squeezing hard. You’re long past the threshold of embarrassment, recognizing humiliation - the only thing you’re thinking about is cumming around her fingers, her murmuring against your skin. You’ll let her say anything.
Which is probably a bad call, in retrospect, because the obscenity that comes out of her mouth-
“No,” she snaps, when you try to cover your mouth with your palm, stifling moans. Slips her hand from the base of your throat to your wrist and tugs. “Let me hear you moan for mommy, baby.”
You’re helpless to obey, and she laughs when you do - fully laughs, fingers curling in your cunt, the sloppy wet sounds loud enough to fill the bathroom, echo off the walls. “Mommy,” you’re whimpering, losing it, stare hooked on her red, irresistible mouth, “fuck, you-”
There’s a dark flush in her cheeks, up to her neck; you try and kiss her and Seulgi holds her mouth out of reach. Leans in and says, breath hitting your teeth, “Are you always this fucking desperate?”
No, you can’t say, no, never. I swear it’s something about you. You. It’s you.
Because it’s so mortifying, but it’s true: Seulgi’s eyes and her hands and the way she’s got you firmly in place, one hand between your legs, the other returning delicious pressure against the nape of your neck. Tone of her voice, musical with mirth. The way it’s like she’s got everything that’ll turn you on indexed and itemized - demeaning you, making you work for it, beg for it, in this bathroom where the party’s still carrying on outside, blissfully unaware - like, somehow, she already knows.
Then, like you’d spoken it out loud: Seulgi grips the back of your neck hard. “Or is it just that you like fucking other people’s girlfriends?”
See, you’re an actress, in your profession, in your habits. You’re so used to being in control. Pulling at your muscles like they’re on marionette strings, perfectly maneuvering your face, your body. You can lie your way out of anything, if you put your mind to it. You’re even better with the truth.
But you can’t even shake your head, can’t get a protest out past your whines. Seulgi’s got a hold on you and your thighs clamping down around your wrist. “I think it turns you on,” she says, and as if to punctuate it, her hand leaves your neck and connects with your cheek, quick and hard. “Smug little slut. Acting all bratty, humping my leg - you wanted this, didn’t you? I bet right when you saw me you got so wet. Already thinking about calling me mommy. ” Lips ghosting over your jaw. “You’re so obvious.”
“That’s not-”
Another slap, the crack of her hand mesmerizing, head-spinning. “Don’t lie to me,” Seulgi says, but it’s almost amused, one eyebrow raised, sharp pull of a smirk. “You think I can’t feel your pussy clenching around my fingers?”
And she just keeps going and going - it’s a revenge fantasy for you, huh, she says, seducing your ex’s girlfriend, whining like a bitch in heat until I finally give you what you need; irises like staring down the barrel of a gun, dark and explicitly dangerous. The world’s suddenly impossible to hold in your head, parameters blurring, inhibitions seeping out at the edges - you abruptly can’t comprehend anything but the tactile, the physical - fuck status, fuck scandal, fuck anything but her in front of you - saying you’re so soaked, baby, creaming all over mommy’s fingers like that. Saying cum for me. Saying now.
You do, and then she doesn’t stop. It’s not like you expected anything less.
-
“You’re lucky I think you’re so fucking cute,” she tells you, pain in all the right places. “Depraved as fuck, but cute.”
-
Afterwards:
“God,” you mutter into the crook of Seulgi’s neck. She’s holding you upright on the counter, laughing a little, breath against your temple. Lips brushing your hairline, impossibly gentle. You’re so thoroughly fucked; you forget what the protocol for no-strings sex is, illicit affairs. You were in a relationship with the same girl for two years: you’ve never learned how to have meaningless sex. Well, it’s coming back to bite you now. “Seulgi.”
She stops laughing, sucks in a sharp breath. “You’re fucked up,” she tells you. “Saying my name like that.”
“I’m not-” You’re grinning. “I’m just saying it. Like a normal person.”
“Nothing about you is normal,” says Seulgi, with mild fondness, and lets one hand drop between your thighs.
It’s meant only to tease, obviously; she drags two fingers through your drooling cunt, makes you whimper from overstimulation when she bumps your clit. You’re trying to blink yourself back to clarity - all you can see is her face, her smudged lipstick, mask slipping further. Mascara fading under her eyes. Sheen breaking through her foundation on her forehead.
“You,” you say, captivated. “You’re so…”
You just met her for the first time tonight. She just introduced her current infidelity into the fucking dirty talk, like a taboo straight out of some really questionable porn - and, yeah, she just made you cum like you never have before. She’s possibly insane. She’s sick in the head. She’s so, so stunning.
“You have serious issues,” you say, instead. “And you probably need to seek professional help for them. Let me make you cum.”
Seulgi fully laughs then, something clearly out of sheer surprise, and it’s lovely: nothing like the sexy, raspy, careless thing you’ve seen her do in movies, on talk shows. No, it’s this adorable, unselfconscious bout of giggles, like she’s close to letting out a snort. You’re struck, staring. Watching her eyes squeeze shut and her head tip back, cheeks flushed. Watching her, gorgeous.
“Okay,” you say, too weirdly endeared to be frustrated by it. “You don’t want me to make you cum, then.”
Seulgi’s lips part, laughter dropping off. “It’s not that. It’s just - baby, you can’t even stand up right now. And you don’t have to.” Runs her tongue across her top teeth, like she’s been starved for years and she’s finally satiated. Lets her eyes fall half-lidded, and adds, lower, “Fucking your needy little pussy was enough for me right now.”
Your mouth dries up.
But the idea’s already spreading feverishly hot; settles at the tips of your fingers, gives your hands a motive. There’s that low throb behind your navel, desire untameable, physical. You need to hear it, hear her moaning for you, feel her cunt clamp down around your fingers. You’ll fight dirty to get it, too. Alright, it’s more than returning the favor, it’s so selfish-
You slip down from the counter, heels meeting the tile with a click. Your body trapped between Seulgi’s and the sink. You, leaning in, noses bumping, and say, breathless: “Mommy, I wanna make you cum for me.” Further, mouth capturing hers, the barest amount and nothing more. “Please.”
-but this started out selfish, so there’s no other way it could really end.
“Jesus,” exhales Seulgi, ruined. Then she pauses. “Wait, you’re gonna finger me with those?”
You stare, uncomprehending.
Seulgi nods downwards. “What are you trying to do, slash my vulva?”
Right. Your nails - almond-shaped, painted a glossy black; they’re not acrylics, but they’re uniformly long, regardless. “Um,” you say. “Fuck.” Then, “Well, I can probably improvise.”
-
You both rummage around in the bathroom cabinets until you - remarkably - find both a nail clipper and a nail file. It’s one of those really nice ones, too, metal and practically indestructible. “God’s on our side,” says Seulgi, as she watches you clip your middle fingernail down, then your ring.
“I seriously doubt it,” you say. “You’re gay and unfaithful. God definitely hates your guts.”
Seulgi swirls the nail file in the air, wisely, like she’s communing with a higher power. “No,” she disagrees, and takes your hand gently, getting to work. “God totally gets me. She understands.”
You lean back and let her, entertained against your will. “Understands what?”
“That I’m dumb.” Seulgi’s concentrating hard on sanding the uneven edges of your newly short nails; better safe than sorry. “And impulsive. And I make really self-destructive decisions. And you’re so adorable and so fuckable. And I really, really can’t help myself.”
“All valid reasons to cheat,” you say, dryly, even though this definitely isn’t something you should be joking about.
“That’s what I’m saying,” says Seulgi, equally as straight-faced, and presses her lips to the back of your hand. “All good, baby. You can make mommy cum now, or whatever it was you were begging to do.”
“Asshole,” you mutter, jerking your hand back. It’s futile, meaningless; all you do is take a step closer to her, anyway, looping your arms around her neck. “Why would I make you cum if you’re just gonna be a bitch to me?”
“Sweetheart.” She’s smiling now. “I think we’ve established that me being a bitch to you just makes you want to fuck me more.”
Well, shit. You can’t really argue with that one.
-
She’s the one on the counter this time, and you get two fingers inside her before she can run her mouth more - and Seulgi’s so responsive when she’s getting fucked, like she’s forgotten the role she’s playing, the arrogance and the degradation. Eyelids shuttering, head craning back, exposing the line of her throat. Kissing you like she can’t hold back from it, tongue trailing your teeth. Her voice drawls sweet and sultry, calling you good girl, oh, you’re so good for me, sweetheart, fucking mommy so good. I know, you wanna eat me out so bad, but you can’t ruin your makeup, I get it. Priorities, whatever. I respect your vanity.
“What?” you say, caught on a strange, sudden laugh, still pumping at her cunt, drawing sordidly wet sounds; cracking jokes at your expense while she’s on the verge of cumming all over your hand, that’s a new one. “Uh - fuck you?”
“Right,” Seulgi pants, gripping your wrist, bearing down on your fingers. “Exactly.”
And that’s probably the first red flag - the second, third, fourth; fine, you’re collecting them like the bruises you’ll have tomorrow, on your throat and wrists and thighs - because there’s a camaraderie there that shouldn’t be. You don’t even know her, and you’re trusting her enough to make you cum, make you laugh. It’s a warning sign. You’ve blown past those. Perfect, she’s repeating, anyway, pleasure stringing syllables together. You’re so perfect. So-
You hold her gaze when it’s over, suck your cum-soaked fingers into your mouth, enjoying the way Seulgi’s expression cracks open candidly, staring without shame. Not all your nails were cut short; your left hand’s scrawled scarlet marks into her thigh. Maybe they’ll fade fast - maybe they won’t. To be fair, that’s not exactly your problem.
Seulgi breathes out harshly, looking somewhat tortured. “Baby.”
Talk about red flags, you’re thinking, and release your fingers from your lips with a wet little pop. Maybe you’ll leave a few of your own, too.
-
For all intents and purposes, this aftermath should be devastating. Apocalyptic, the end of the world. There should be some huge, tearful declaration of regret, of remorse, repenting to some higher power. Maybe you’d slap her. Maybe you’d blame her. Maybe she’d turn into a crying mess, lamenting betrayal, crying how will she ever come back from this, it’s the biggest mistake of her life-
“So,” says Seulgi, suddenly. “You wanna get out of here or something?”
You turn and look at her in the mirror, sentiment like whiplash. “Excuse me?”
She’s already watching you, mouth quirked at a corner, caught - and then she doesn’t stop staring. Observing you openly, like she’s got a complete and total claim to you, canvassing every part of your body. Penetrative and unrelenting.
“Like, go home with you?” you ask, stepping forward.��
You skid a little bit in your heels; Seulgi steadies you at an elbow. “Yeah,” she says.
“No,” you say, staring at her mouth, her pretty white teeth. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You have a girlfriend. You have Irene. Why would I…”
But you’re standing here in this bathroom, freshly fucked and nothing close to classy; there are probably dark smears of lipstick covering your mouth, your collarbone. Hair beyond saving. Why would you, you’re thinking - but then again, you already have.
“What the fuck is wrong with me,” you say, out loud.
“So much,” Seulgi says, “but I’m definitely into it.”
And now she’s more than smiling - positively beaming, with teeth and all, lighting up her whole face - like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard. And she’s gorgeous. Something vaguely poetic about her face, features purposely and masterfully articulated; she’s so striking you can’t ever picture her being a normal girl, going to college classes and working part-time jobs. Maybe she fell into fame by accident; maybe it dragged her in, parasitic and poisonous. Either way, she’s here.
You step closer; you can’t help it, like magnetism, like gravity, like all everlasting clichés, applying even in the worst contexts. “Shut up,” you’re saying, and it’s only then that you realize you’re accidentally mid-laugh. “I’m not going home with you, Seulgi. And you’re definitely going to hell.”
Seulgi’s hand finds your waist too easily, slipping into place. Eyes glittering in the half-light; you’d call it seeing stars, but that’s all of her. Space sweeping wide with the fall of her hair, curve of her mouth like a sliver of the moon. Guiding you right into a storm just to make you beg for more.
“Alright,” she says, perfectly content. “But I’m pretty sure you’re gonna end up in hell, too, kid. We’re in the same boat here.”
Kid, she says, making you smaller. You should hate it and you can’t bring yourself to.
“Promise?” you say, and hold out your pinky.
It doesn’t mean anything. Her word’s been rendered null and void since she moment she touched you; there’s no commitment she makes that you should trust. But you’re fuck-addled and delirious and enchanted by the look on her face, the way her irises are so dark almost match her pupils: midnight, shadow, sin. You’ve known her for an hour, tops. She’s so beautiful you want her to do everything to you, but you won’t let her. There’s still a line, hypothetically.
“Promise,” Seulgi says, without a hint of irony, and wraps your pinky around yours. It’s so funny, it’s hilarious. You laugh until you fall right back into her arms.
-
It’s over. Well, in theory.
Mostly, it’s the worst mistake you’ve ever made, and you’re not going to repeat it. So you don’t get Seulgi’s number. You don’t say something coy about doing this again sometime, about seeing her soon, about how she should maybe dump her girlfriend and get with you instead - there’d be no point. Because it’ll never, ever happen again.
“Totally,” agrees Seulgi, and presses you up against the bathroom door just to kiss the life out of you. Forehead bumping yours clumsily, breathing against your teeth. “Never again. I’m right there with you.”
“Seulgi.”
“Jesus,” she says, laughing right into your mouth. “You’re cute.”
There’s nothing choreographed about it, nothing sorted through by intimacy coordinators, directors critiquing your chemistry. She’s got your jaw gently between her fingers, all smoke and sweet perfume. Kisses you once, lightly.
“I’ll see you later,” she says, like another promise.
You try and scowl, can’t quite pull it off. “The fuck you will.”
“Fine,” Seulgi says, eyes curved in her smile, thumb to your bottom lip, skimming lightly. “Fine. We’ll never see each other again.”
-
Never again, you’re repeating as you leave, reminding yourself, clutching the stairwell. Going home alone, swearing you regret it. Never, ever again.
-
omg ok i’m so sorry please don’t be mad, you text Wendy, right after calling your driver. i know we didn’t meet up but i don’t feel well and i think i have to head home :(
ok no worries take care of ur mental!!!!! says Wendy. also i ran into park sooyoung and she and her fuckass bf just had a fight or something so now we’re going to ditch the party and go get food.. wish me luck <3
her fuckass fiancé, you correct. they’re getting married next month.
Then: the bite of the wind, the hit of hypocrisy. Pots and kettles. Purpling edges of bruises spilling out from the neckline of your shirt, you can probably still smell Seulgi’s smoke in your hair - fuck, alright, okay.
You follow up, quickly: so if you’re going to homewreck their relationship you better do it before the wedding!!!! it’s just easier legally.
She doesn’t answer for a beat. You squint, re-reading it; okay, it’s sort of extreme. ummm i’m joking LOL, you text again, chewing on your lip. homewrecking is very bad!
right right right right, says Wendy, who has never taken any severe moral stance on homewrecking and isn’t about to start now. okay i love u pls call ur therapist and get better soon!!!!!
The thing about calling your therapist: that’s probably something you should do, yeah. Get better soon - not fucking likely.
-
And here’s the worst thing:
None of it breaks. You go home, you wait, you bide your time waiting for the other shoe to drop; there’s gotta be people who saw, who are trying to turn a profit off of selling secrets, who are good and honest and won’t tolerate something awful like cheating - but there’s nothing. No articles insinuating guilt, no trending Twitter hashtags, no headlines or anonymous sources or incriminating photographs. You’re not stupid enough to think you’re gonna get away with this, but it kind of feels like you’re gonna get away with this.
“Fuck,” you say, out loud, as you’re scrolling through Netflix and landing on one of Seulgi’s new action films, an automatic preview starting to play. She’s gorgeous, she’s villainous; the rasp of her voice alone sends your spine aching. “Fuck.”
So you’ve decided that you’re never going to make this horrible mistake again; one and done, one strike and it’s out of your system - that’s the smart choice to land on, in the moment. But then none of it gets out. And it plants the dangerous little thought in your head: if nobody knows about it, you begin to wonder, if it’s this easy to keep this terribly illicit affair a secret - well, it kind of makes you think that-
-
You watch the movie. It can’t hurt, at this point. You’ve already committed graver sins than that.
-
“Okay, seriously, what is the matter with you?”
So, it’s all you can fucking think about. Not that it’s even a surprise.
In the shower, while you’re on the phone talking to your agent, thumbing through a script for a new project. Images in your mind on repeat, abject filth: Seulgi with her mouth on yours, Seulgi pinching your nipple between two fingers, Seulgi with your thighs clamping around her wrist and making you whimper mommy, mommy, mommy; stain of her lipstick on your neck, sweat shimmering over her delicate collarbones, how she’d looked at you after a little bit in awe, and laughed. Not meanly, not condescending. Just like the situation amazed her, to be there with you.
You’re hopeless, floating through the next few days in a fog. Brain skipping through the same details, uncannily appreciative of cinematography: black hair mussed by the wind, blue-green veins pale in her wrists. Rasp of her voice, breath hot against your ear, against the sensitive skin of your neck. Your cunt dripping down her hand as she curls her fingers; her dark eyes like the night in the dimmer light, like they’re sewn up with stars-
“Are you dissociating right now?” says Wendy, eyeing you like she’s seconds from getting your psychiatrist on the phone. “Alright, wait - name five things you can see, four things you can touch-”
-and Wendy, obviously, is not going to leave you alone about it.
“That’s for anxiety,” you say, staring at your nails. You’d clipped them all short after the party; it’s less incriminating that way. “And I’m fine.”
Wendy snorts. “Now I know you’re full of shit. When are you ever fine?”
It’s two days later. You, horrifically enough, have an awards show to attend in the evening; in about fifteen minutes you’re about to have an entire team swarming your apartment, makeup artists armed to the teeth, hairstylists wielding heat protectant and flat-irons. Before that, though - okay, you’ve never been good at hiding things from Wendy.
“So,” you say, as the two of you are lounging across your bed. It’s hard to know how to put something like this gracefully without lines to memorize, cues to follow. “Remember that party the other day-”
“Obviously.”
You’re stalling. “I know I said I went home because I felt sick. But, um…”
Wendy throws you an aghast look. “But you lied?” She hits you in the thigh with her phone. “Figures. Fucking actresses. You’re all just pathological liars who learned how to profit off of it.” She rolls her eyes up to the ceiling. “Ugh.”
She’s got you pegged early, but she always seems to. “What about Park Sooyoung?”
“Park Sooyoung’s an angel,” says Wendy, immediately. “She’s an exception.”
You’d probably be able to chat around the topic for hours, if you’d felt the need - but you’re dying to talk about it, a little bit. Nothing’s like I thought it was, you want to say. I swear the sun’s put itself out, I swear I saw the devil in the flesh; she was so much more than I thought she would be. “At the party,” you say, instead, bracing for impact, “I kind of - okay, when I was on the phone with you, and I hung up - it was because I ran into Kang Seulgi.”
Wendy gasps. Rolls over on her side, auburn hair splayed over your sheets, eyes comically wide. “And you didn’t end up in prison for murder?”
Oh, no; you just did something a lot worse. “We did have an… altercation.”
The implication alone jolts Wendy upright. “You fought her? Like, physically?” Mouth open, jaw hanging off its hinges. “Without me?”
“Uh.” You guiltily divert your gaze out the window. “Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?” Wendy tugs at the sleeve of your shirt, forcing you to face her. “What does that mean? There was just mild bitch-slapping or something?”
You pause. It’s not the time, but it’s there anyway, the way you make a wet dream a memory: Seulgi with her palm pressed tight to your throat, Seulgi with her hand smacking across your face. Seulgi with her gaze dark and attentive, the path of her fingers slick across your thighs, always pushing for more, more-
“Um,” you say. “I mean, there was slapping involved.”
And all hell breaks loose.
-
It’s actually almost impressive, the way Wendy hears slapping and instantly connects the dots. Even more impressive, the way she loses her shit on the spot, goes one to ten - punching your shoulder repeatedly, voice reaching a fever pitch, shrieking oh my God, you evil homewrecking whore, what the hell, I knew you wanted to fuck her but I never thought you’d actually pull it off-
“What are you talking about?” you say, thrown entirely.
“Come on.” Wendy’s got one of your pillows in her fist and is now attempting to clobber you with it; she’s tinier than you and more uncoordinated than her ultra-successful idol career would insinuate - it’s an easy dodge. “Every time you see a picture of Kang Seulgi you start salivating, and you have no morals when you’re horny. You think I don’t remember how many times you saw that movie where she was topless for fifty percent of it-”
“I watched that for the plot. It was my favorite movie of this year for the plot.”
“Jesus,” Wendy says, appalled at how transparent you are. “You call yourself an actress?”
But here’s probably the more fucked up thing - Wendy doesn’t really care. It’s not the kind of thing she’ll unfriend you over, or leak to the press, or tell Irene; her morals are just as compromised as yours are, here. And in the end, all she does is laugh so hard it brings tears to her eyes, says you’re setting an example for queer homewreckers everywhere. Says you have to teach me all your tricks - I wanna be where you are. It’s nasty of her, probably, but Wendy’s always on your side. She’s also in love with a girl who’s getting married in a month. She’s got her own motives.
“I wasn’t even trying to do anything,” you say, defeated. “We just met and right away it was so-”
You don’t even have the words for it. How do you sum up a mortal sin in a sentence, verbalize an impossible chemistry - there’s no rationale that makes it okay. You say, lamely, “I just wanted her.”
“And you always get what you want,” Wendy interprets, because it’s true. Even if it’s awful and wrong, goes unsaid. Even if you’re willingly ruining someone else’s relationship; even if it’s selfish and horrible and you’re going to hell for it.
“Yeah,” you agree, sighing. “I mean, most of the time.”
And it’s ludicrous. You’re reworking your own code of ethics because you saw Seulgi through the blur of a smokescreen, because you’re addicted to the look in her eye, because you’re realizing she’s way less cool and collected and mysterious than she pretends to be. Fucks you like she wants you dead then lets you make her cum with a gentle hand stroking through your hair, all praise and open pleasure. There’s no excuse for it.
“This is going to be a total trainwreck,” says Wendy, with very malicious glee; it’s a film that’s bombed in the box office, all the critics hate the conclusion - the characters should’ve got what was coming to them and they didn’t, they say, what the fuck kind of message is that. “But I can’t wait to see how this ends.”
-
“Besides,” you say, “It doesn’t matter. It’s completely a one-time thing. It’s never happening again.”
Self-fulfilling prophecies and all that, you’re telling yourself. Maybe if you repeat it enough, it’ll come true.
-
So, if you wanna know about the second time it happens:
-
It’s later that same night, because irony loves to make a fool of you, laughing at you from behind a camera, thumbing over a script, lines she already knows are coming. Awards shows, it’s how they go; all the major players are there. Well, except for Irene, who’s overseas as an ambassador for some high-end fashion brand; you see people talking about it on Twitter, disappointed that she and Seulgi won’t make their power couple debut on the red carpet. Either way, she’s not coming. It’s already completely fucked off of that fact alone.
im putting 100 bucks on kang seulgi taking u home tonight, texts Wendy, beforehand, as you’re getting your makeup done. all the pieces are in place…
please get a grip on reality seungwan i am NEVER talking to her again, you say, and leave it at that.
Look, you know Seulgi’s gonna be there. Embarrassingly, just the thought of it sends your stomach into knots, your brain into overdrive. You’re used to keeping your composure even under the most stressful of situations - nature of fame, it’s just how it works - but the anticipation of seeing Seulgi again is so -
lmfao ok, says Wendy. as if u can keep ur hormones in check….. whore!!!!! 💀💀💀
i will get my bodyguard to beat you to a pulp, you say.
alright thats it. im reporting u for making threats to my life.
you can’t report me on twitter for something i said over text lol…
bitch i meant report u to the AUTHORITIES.
You swear you have a spine, a backbone. You swear you’re gonna show up and stun on the carpet, maybe take home an award or two; realistically, you’re not even gonna run into Seulgi at all. You’ve made it this far - you stepped onto the scene at eighteen and so it’s been three years of frequenting the same ceremonies as Kang Seulgi, and you’d never met at any one of those, never so much as interacted. Maybe you’ll get out of this alive. But there’s still that fucking feeling, the whole way to the venue - like there’s fingerprints as evidence on your body, like everyone might be able to see through your dress to all the places she left a mark on you-
(You get there and she’s gorgeous. She’s there and she looks like a goddess, dressed in blue, submerged in it, sweeping you along. Same boat, you remember her saying; if we go down we go down together. Sink to the bottom of the sea and let the ocean swallow us whole. You force her voice out of your mind; it’d be better to pretend she doesn’t exist. It’s also impossible.)
You’re not nominated for any of the same awards. You sit in entirely different sections. But you’re so aware of the fact that she’s in the room that it’s driving you a little crazy; you have to make this concerted effort to keep your eyes off of her, keep from staring, blushing, making any missteps or wrong moves. You’re back under spotlights, scrutiny. You don’t let your eyes trace her body in her dress, and she doesn’t look at you at all.
At first, it actually seems like you’re going to make it.
-
(Same boat; same room and opposite sides. Same old fucking mistakes.)
-
It all goes to shit when you steal away to the bathroom halfway through the show, and - because behind the curtain, someone’s controlling the setting, the scenes, getting you exactly right where you’re supposed to be - Seulgi’s already in there when you step in. It’s a trope. It’s formulaic. It’s real life reduced to rom-com clichés, except there’s nothing funny about a moment like this.
It’s done. You stop dead in your tracks, door shutting soft behind you. “Hi.”
And you’ve been so good all night, you have - keeping your smile contained and your eyes from straying - but it’s different when she’s in front of you, like seeing a deity in the flesh, like someone that you should drop to your knees and worship. Dress a glittering navy, floor-length and cap-sleeved, tapering in at her waist. Hair in tastefully tamed waves, begging you to run your fingers through it. There’s something about the stark black of her hair, the starlike sapphire beadwork gleaming on her dress, her fair skin, her pink lips - she looks almost ethereally ghostlike, a spirit out of a story, so gorgeous she leaves everyone she touches haunted. Skin silk-soft. Makeup immaculate. Nothing like how she looked when you saw her last, already half-undone, autumn wind throwing her into gorgeous disarray. She’s living up to her reputation, curated perfection. And she’s flawless.
Seulgi’s staring at you with that same wide-eyed look she had the first time you two met. She says, sounding somewhat strangled, mesmerized: “Oh.”
It’s then that you realize she’s playing some dumb mobile game on her phone.
“Uh,” you say.
Seulgi immediately abandons her phone on the counter. “Sorry,” she says, and it’s like you’re getting deja vu.
“Are you ditching an awards show to play games on your phone?” you say, stepping closer. You can’t help yourself. Seulgi straightens as you do, like an automatic reaction to your presence, spine curving to face you. You try not to read into it.
“I got bored,” she says, blinking. Her eyes are stunningly made-up, sending them otherworldly striking; liner sliding into sharp points at the corner of each eye, false lashes individually glued and arranged purposely. That’s the thing about awards shows: you’re all selling a product, acting even more than you do on set.
“You really are a loser,” you say, somehow delighted by it.
“I know,” she says, leaning against the counter, and now she’s smiling. “Hey, kid.”
And it’s as if you’ve both forgotten how to act at all.
Because it’s the same as it was before; like a reprise, like a relapse. You get too close together and you feel it, that impossible tug, the way the moon controls the tides, the way celebrities control their own images; Seulgi rests her elbow on the counter and you watch the flex of her bicep, the splay of her fingers, nails manicured but enticingly short. Remembering how it felt to have those fingers fucking your cunt, wrapped around your throat. Realizing that not an inch of her belongs to you, and that you don’t have a backbone, and that you want her anyway. She’s parting her lips, inhaling deep. She knows.
Nothing helps. You’re halfway to dry drowning; shutting off airways, breathing rendered impossible. Water won’t reach your lungs, but it’ll still be the thing to kill you.
“I don’t think we should be alone together,” you say, softly, the first to call it as it is.
“Alright.” Seulgi folds her arms over her chest. You’re struck by the way the straps of her dress pull over her collarbone, her slender shoulders; tailored to perfection, and she’s too beautiful to be real. “Then go pee. I’ll leave.”
“I didn’t have to pee,” you say. “I just - nerves, you know. I needed some air.” You wave vaguely around the bathroom. “Or alone time, I guess.”
“You did,” says Seulgi, getting implications. She tilts her head. “But you’ve been to so many of these, no?” You’re moving even closer without realizing it, pulled out to sea. “And just this show is making you nervous?”
You’re supposed to be cutting off conversation at the source, quitting your vices cold turkey. “Yeah,” you say instead, throwing her a dirty look. “I wonder why that is.”
“It’s a mystery,” Seulgi agrees.
“Jesus.” Her attitude’s so cavalier, her eyes so fucking intense; you couldn’t wrench yourself away even if you wanted to. It’s intoxicating. It’s irresistible. “You and I had sex a day after you went public with your relationship with Irene. Can you at least pretend to feel remorseful about it?”
Seulgi cocks an eyebrow. Her arms unfold; her mouth flicks at a corner. I do too much pretending in my day-to-day, the expression says; I don’t let my life imitate my art. I’m with you. Why fake like I want to be anywhere else?
“You’re an actress,” you add, like anyone needs a reminder.
“So are you,” she returns. “I don’t see you feeling very remorseful about any of this either.”
“I do,” you say, itching to step forward, to fall into her arms, to make her laugh, to beg her to fuck your brains out. “I regret it. It was a mistake. I really fucking regret it.”
“No, you don’t.” Seulgi’s fingers graze your wrist, wrap around your hand. Pulling you closer like it’s something she’s allowed to do. Calling your bluff, again, like she’s seen too much of you to be fooled by all your usual tricks - and there’s tension brimming where there shouldn’t be. Like you’re back on the balcony, inhaling smoke; like it’s all about to go up in flames.
“Well,” you say, unsteadily. “I will.”
But, first-
-
You shouldn’t fuck her. There are a million reasons why you shouldn’t fuck her. Every regular watcher is threatening to cancel their streaming subscription - the self-sabotaging, the mess; God, the screenwriters must hate you, constantly making you make the shittiest decisions, ruining your character; where’s the resolution, where’s the redemption arc. But-
“You’ll be a good girl for mommy, right? Be quiet while I fuck your little cunt?"
But you’re fucking her. There’s no way around it.
You’re pressed against the bathroom counter and she’s pushing your dress up your thighs; you’re clutching handfuls of your full skirt, hitching it up to give her access. She trails a hand upwards, takes your panties and pulls them to the side. “Sweetheart,” Seulgi says, intention cut into her mouth, carnal and wicked, “I asked you a question.”
You’re nodding wildly, lip tucked tightly between your teeth. You’ll be quiet, you’re trying to communicate with your eyes alone, you will, you’ll behave-
She thumbs your clit, dips to feel how soaked you are, pulls back with the pads of her fingers wet and glistening. Eyes snapping to yours. Pitch leaving no room for discussion. “Words, please.”
“Yes, mommy,” you whimper, and Seulgi grins.
“You’re so much less bratty this time around,” she muses, sinks one finger in your dripping pussy, leaves you gasping for air. “All you needed was to get your pussy fucked right, huh? That’s all you needed to learn your lesson?”
She really starts fucking you, then, like she’s addicted to the moans you’re letting out of your mouth; works in two fingers, then three - it’s not as brutal as the first time, but just as all-consuming, life-wrecking, devastating, the sounds as she finger-fucks you just as slick and nasty. Cunt clenching around her fingers, wet down your thighs, hips rocking; she goes for your jugular, pressure against both sides of your neck; claustrophobic, erotic, breath shuddering low and trapped in your throat. Grinding when she rubs her palm over your clit, aching for more. Begging to cum in a low rasp. You’re not learning any lessons in this room: that’s a fucking given.
Seulgi’s more in control than you are, but barely; her eyes are tied to your lips, to the wet raw heat of your pussy, dripping down her hand. I’d love to fuck that face, she says like a threat, ride that pretty mouth, cum on your tongue - but I really can’t ruin your makeup tonight. (Privately, you think she’s already ruined a lot more than that.)
“Next time,” she promises, eyes sly and undertone murderous, and you cum right around her fingers.
(There are a million reasons why you shouldn’t, but you do anyway.)
-
You’re right, in the end. You’re absolutely gonna regret this.
-
Afterwards, take two:
Any second it’ll hit, you’re telling yourself. Reality, all-consuming guilt, the weight of what you’ve just done - again. Your conscience is gonna make you start sobbing, push you to a confession, push Seulgi away and scream at her. Any minute now, you’ll-
“You’re definitely gonna win it,” Seulgi’s saying, about your nomination for your most recent drama, the award you’re up for. “You were unreal. I swear every time I see you cry on-screen, I really feel it. It’s so…” She shakes her head, overcome. “Powerful, I guess. Sorry. That sounds lame.”
“No, it doesn’t,” you say back, smiling. “Thanks. And - you’re gonna win yours too.” She’s nominated for your favorite film of hers, the one where she played the rock star, wore too much eyeliner, created a character that broke your heart. “That movie’s my favorite one of this past year, just for the record. I’ve seen it like a million times. I love it to death.”
“You would,” says Seulgi, arching an eyebrow, but there’s something soft around the edges of her grin. “I’m topless for so much of it.”
“Not because of that.” You pause, allow: “But it was a perk.”
“I’m sure.”
“No, seriously.” You turn fully; Seulgi’s leaning a little into your side, already, and doesn’t flinch when you bump her shoulder, fingers at the crook of her elbow. She chances a glance at you, smooths a hand over your hair. “It was your voice.”
Seulgi lets out a little laugh. Brushes under your eye with a careful thumb, flicking away a flake of mascara. “What?”
See, she’s a rock star in this movie you love, like you said; it’s all made up of concert performances and sold-out stadium tours that look so real, fake talk show performances, studio audiences. Strumming at a guitar in the quiet moments. Singing aloud to herself, her band, her love interest. Rich and honeyed, gliding over every note, thick and raspy at all the right times. “Your voice,” you say. “I mean - it’s amazing. You would’ve made a killing as an idol, you have to know that. The soundtrack to that movie - it was all I listened to for months. You’re absolutely gonna fuck my Spotify Wrapped.”
Seulgi’s mouth opens a little. Her fingers pause at your temple, the bobby pins holding your hair back.
“So I guess you could say I’m a fan, too,” you say, suddenly shy. “I have been for a while.”
You were right, before: no one should’ve allowed you two to be alone together. It opens the door for this, for opportunity, for mortal fuck-ups; Seulgi’s manicured fingers drop to your neckline, the walls threaten to tear themselves down, the sinks ache to switch on and flood the room. Current rushing in, taking you both away - where are the lifeboats now, the escape routes - you’re swept off your feet in the waves. Seulgi tangles a hand in your necklace like she wants to snap it off and she’s tempering her instincts. Anyone could walk in and catch you. They don’t.
“You,” she says, sighing. Not like she’s giving up, but like she’s giving in. “I can’t get enough of you.”
“You’re gonna have to,” you say, hot and helpless under her touch. “You have a girlfriend. And this is all really fucked up.”
You keep saying this like it means anything, like it’ll trigger a fight or flight response, send Seulgi running. “I know,” she says instead, stays exactly where she is, blunt nails grazing your collarbone. Fastened to you as if with thread, incapable of tearing herself free. “You think I don’t know that?”
“I don’t know what you think,” you point out, searching her expression. “I don’t know anything about you. Except that you’re a fan of me and you love being called mommy and every time you get your hands on me you try to fuck me until I can’t walk.”
“See?” says Seulgi. “You know all the important things.”
There’s nothing funny about this - her cheating on her girlfriend, her girlfriend being your ex - but there’s this expression on her face, corner of her mouth turned up, studying you freely. Dark eyes reading nothing but beguiled amusement. Tapping two fingers against her bottom lip like she might still be able to taste your cunt off of them.
“We’re strangers,” you say, so enthralled by her. “Complete strangers.”
(That’s the problem with fame, you think of saying. It doesn’t feel like it. I’ve seen hours of your interviews, all of your movies. I was lying: I know so much, I know more than I should. You feel like you knew me before we met; I see the way you look at me, the way you touch me. Like you’ve imagined it happening a million times before.)
“I know,” Seulgi says, smiling.
There’s a kind of odd acceptance to it, in that one single sentence. You can’t look away from her, and it’s mutual - Seulgi pulls your chin down with her thumb, and kisses you.
It’s almost tender, sweetly gentle, like she has every right to do so. You’re smiling, for some reason, grinning against her lips. She must know it, because the next thing she does is sink her teeth into the corner of your mouth, enough to sting but not enough to break skin - and a whine traps itself in your throat. You kiss her and you can feel it, really feel it: this uncontainable scope of fame, between the two of you. Supernovas in this sort of world, side by side like meteors on a crash course, like heat death, like that same self-fulfilling prophecy.
Give it one more minute and you’ll call it off, you’re thinking, winding your arms around her neck. Any minute now.
-
You’re actually about to leave at the same time, but there’s the telltale sound of some music performance going on, some idol group; it’s better to sneak back into the show on a break, an intermission to situate. That’s what you tell yourself. In reality, it’s probably something about the allure of stolen moments - Seulgi leans against the counter, opens her phone, starts playing the same dumb mobile game she was engrossed in when you first walked in; you crook your head over your shoulder, watch her do it - and nothing about it makes sense. It’s all beyond logic. For some reason, she’s talking freely, randomly, now asking your opinion on festive outfits for pets; for some reason, you’re indulging her. It’s almost normal. It’s fucking asinine.
“This is crazy, you know,” you say, unprovoked, as she loses the same game for the fifth time.
“This is crazy,” Seulgi agrees, somehow correctly attributing it to your situation and not her lack of gaming skill. “There’s something about you,” she says, chin in her hand, gazing at your reflection. It’s exhilarating, the way she stares without trying to hide it; the way she doesn’t even attempt to play it cool. “Like I want to crack your head open and pick your brain.”
“You are so psychotic,” you say, loving it. “You can’t just say you have a crush on me?”
“I’m twenty-eight,” she says, a little petulantly, pout offsetting the sentiment.
“Not too old to have a crush,” you say. “Not too old to have an ongoing affair.”
There you go again: acknowledging the weight of what you’re doing like it’ll snap you out of it, force your moral compass back into alignment. Seulgi huffs a little through her nose, absentmindedly drops her lips to the side of your head. Leaves with the line of her lipstick still intact, somehow. Starts talking again, about what she usually does on Christmas, seeing if she can order some miniature Santa hats for her cats, new colorful lights to put around her house; you’re watching her phone and humming a little in agreement, drawn in. Rasp of her voice something like the North star, guiding you to unfamiliar territory. She keeps making you laugh. You both know exactly what you’re doing and you’re doing it anyway.
“Congratulations,” Seulgi says, as you’re about to leave, holding the door open for you. “On your award.”
“I didn’t win anything yet,” you tell her, bemused.
“But you’re going to,” she says, laughing, leaving no room for debate. Squeezes your hand as you pass, like she’s saying, I mean it. I’m lying through my teeth to everyone else but you. It’d be no use. It’s you.
You roll your eyes, and let her have it. You’ve let her have so much already.
-
She’s right. You win the award. You step up to the podium, thank your manager and your company and your fans. From the tables of actors, Seulgi wolf-whistles - honest-to-God, loud and disruptive; probably just to make you laugh, and it works. You can’t stop grinning. You’ll see the pictures later, plastered across social media: smile more genuine than any movie you’ve ever been in, any performance you’ve ever put on. Wow, some of your fans will say, already crafting theories; I haven’t seen her look this happy in a while; I wonder what it is, I wonder if she’ll tell us. It’s dramatic of them, you think. You don’t read into that, either.
You could DM Seulgi, private message her on Twitter, get her number from an acquaintance, contact her in fifteen different ways. You don’t. It’s for the best, really.
-
ok you’re right i need to go to jail, you text Wendy, after. i need to be arrested and put in jail…. i am a danger to myself and others.
YOU WENT HOME WITH HER???? is the immediate response. I CALLED IT PAY UP BITCH
no we fucked in the bathroom 😭😭😭😭
in PUBLIC???? oh my god. And then: u are so lucky u got famous right after u graduated high school because u would never have made it into college. DUMB FUCK
ok that’s going a little far.
U ARE UR EX’S GF’S MISTRESS UR THE ONE WHO TOOK IT TOO FAR FIRST, says Wendy, and then sends a string of incomprehensible emojis. u could have fucked ANYONE else. ANYONE. U ARE THE ONE WHO MADE THIS HAPPEN!!!!!
Alright, it’s certainly aggressive. But she’s not really wrong, either.
-
You post a series of photos on your Instagram of your dress, of the night, thanking the designer and your fans, saying you’re so grateful for the award, the opportunity. You look just like you always have; clean-cut and pristine, good-girl shine completely intact, like you’ve never made a single mistake in your life. Seulgi doesn’t like it, doesn’t comment. You let it be.
-
lolll at her and seulgi both being at that event at the same time, one of your fans says on Twitter, about you. come on there have to be SOME pap pics of them getting into a knock down drag out NASTY fight in the street like
no catfight sry, someone else responds, and links a video: this is the only interaction we got between them? but it’s kind of…. idk
The video’s a fifteen second clip of the event itself; you and Seulgi aren’t seated at the same table, but it’s close enough for you to both be in the same shot. And it’s barely anything at all; the announcer says something and Seulgi looks over her shoulder at you, twitches an eyebrow upwards. You meet her eyes immediately, nose scrunching, the subtle dig of your front teeth into your lip. She smiles, just barely; your lashes flutter fast, and you look away.
It’s the tiniest thing. Could read as anything from hostile to cordial to a complete accident to what it truly was, at the time: like you’re both high schoolers commiserating over a lame teacher, an annoying classmate, sharing a private joke between the two of you. Much too comfortable to be strangers. It’s your second time meeting; you’ve both seen too much of each other - on-screen, uncovered skin - to be anything but overly familiar.
is anyone else seeing the enemies to lovers vision, someone says. like the chemistry…. OH
??????, someone replies. IT'S A 15 SECOND CLIP AND SEULGI’S STILL DATING IRENE.
okay but look at the material like they’d be hot together i’m sorry
As if that’s all it takes to make it okay, you’re thinking, scrolling through it, entertained when you shouldn’t be. The two of you being hot together, erasing all your sins. Ah, well. Maybe in a perfect world.
-
You watch the movie you’d been talking with Seulgi about that night - your favorite one, the rock star role and the topless scenes and her stunning voice. It bowls you over like it always does, brings tears to your eyes at the ending; it’s just that kind of film, angsty and gorgeous and devastating, Seulgi’s performance somewhat earth-shattering every time. All the right nuance, leaning into the subtleties. She’s brilliant; every line brutal and beautiful in equal measures, every turn of her head a revelatory, religious experience. The very first time you watched it was alone, a few months back, clicking through various streaming services - you like everything Seulgi’s been in, so it was a no-brainer - and two hours later you were sobbing into your hands, rethinking your whole life and every personal career choice you’ve ever made. Putting it as five stars into your secret Letterboxd account and adding a review that says i'm pregnant and the baby daddy is kang seulgi’s performance in this movie and leaving it there, self-explanatory. It said enough, you thought.
Honestly, it’s possible you should’ve seen this whole affair coming.
-
“So, what’s the deal?” asks Wendy, when you see her in person the next day. “Are you still pretending like this is just a - what, a two-time thing, now? That you came to your senses and it’ll really never happen again this time?”
“Um,” you say.
(The fact of the matter is this: there’s a new ache in you, something only she can ease. You try fucking yourself - with your fingers, with toys - and it’s nowhere near as satisfying. Even with you picturing her voice murmuring low in your ear: so pretty, baby, taking mommy’s fingers like that. Cum for me. Cum. So you touch yourself and it’s effective in the barest sense, and nothing more. Like Seulgi broke you the second she got her hands on you and now she’s the only one that can get you back. You’re needy all the time, distracted and wet; longing for her voice, her mouth, the hungry glint in her eyes when she looks at you. Longing for something you know you shouldn’t want, and it only makes you want it more.)
“It’s gonna happen again,” you admit, and Wendy bursts out laughing. At least you’re being honest with someone.
-
Later that night - because you hate to make sound decisions, because common sense has thoroughly escaped you, because you can’t make mistakes without making them habits, too; because there’s the sharp edge of a horror sting, Hitchcockian, and every murderous whodunit needs a plot device and a dumbass final girl - Wendy says that the two of you should go to a party. Another one of her idol friends’ places, she says. Plus, the last party you went to worked out really well for the both of you, so.
“Is Seulgi gonna be there?” you ask, sussing out motives. “Is that why you’re doing this?”
“How should I know?” says Wendy, innocently, but you figure everyone probably already does.
-
(Because - yep, you’re gonna be the person who fucks your ex-girlfriend’s new girlfriend three times in one week. God’s just gonna have to deal with that in his own way.)
-
So you return to the scene of the very first crime, in spirit: another party, another packed mansion. Another short skirt and sheer tights and an opportunity to fuck your whole life up. Well, at least Wendy’s by your side for this one - it makes a difference, having her for support.
“Wait,” you realize belatedly, when you get inside. “This is Park Sooyoung’s house.”
“Oh, is it?” says Wendy, arm linked in yours and searching the crowd. “That’s so funny.”
“Good God.” It’s not hard to pick Sooyoung out; she’s at her own kitchen counter, black hair spilling over her shoulders, her fiancé with an arm around her waist and a drink in his hand. She also spots Wendy the second she enters the vicinity, breaks into a smile that echoes something like relief, all teeth and tired eyes - wedding planning must be taking its toll. “So we’re at this party for you, then.”
Wendy smiles back at Sooyoung, the same way she does in every broadcasted performance; grin glittering, irresistibly earnest charm. The line of Sooyoung’s mouth softens, goes tender. “I figured if you’re gonna homewreck a perfectly good relationship just so you can fuck the girl of your dreams, I should get to do the same.”
It’s one way to land a blow. “The girl of my-” you choke out, stop, have to take it back. “Okay, Seulgi is not-”
“Uh,” says Wendy, raising an eyebrow at something over your shoulder. “Turn around.”
You stop cold. You’ve seen a movie just like this before - you know a spoken cue when you hear one. “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“We just got here. She can’t already be here. It’s too soon.”
Wendy bites her bottom lip into her mouth, agitated and amused in equal measures; you’re too wired to place the source of it, waves already crashing against the hull, the threat of salt and sea and drowning. You’re putting off the inevitable. If you turned around right now, it’d all play in slow motion, your gazes meeting in a crowded room, right out of one of your dramas - she’d stare at you like she always does, those fucking eyes, craving and unreal and unrelenting, and-
“Anything else,” you say, frantically. It’s too early in the night; you’re too fucking sober. “We can even go talk to Park Sooyoung. Come on, girl of your dreams-”
Wendy’s focus flicks behind you again. “Alright,” she agrees, too easily. “Let’s go.”
It’s then that you should probably figure out what’s going on here, but you don’t.
It’s always been easy to talk to Sooyoung, for you - the two of you first met on the first big project you’d ever filmed, where she’d played your older sister - and tonight she’s just as lovely, effervescent and flawlessly gorgeous, always indulgent in conversation. It helps that Wendy’s there; they go back even farther, though it’s a story you’ve heard a million times. Sooyoung has a specific smile she saves just for Wendy, a way she laughs when Wendy cracks a joke - that’s a whole narrative on its own, prologue to finale.
“The wedding’s so soon, though,” you’re saying emphatically, propping your hip against Sooyoung’s counter, preoccupying yourself with staring at her engagement ring so you don’t let your eyes wander anywhere else. “Are you stressed?”
Sooyoung hums, adjusts her long hair over her shoulder. She, for some unknown reason, has her fingers hooked in the sleeve of Wendy’s top, fingers absentmindedly brushing her wrist. Her soon-to-be husband’s suddenly nowhere to be seen. “Not really,” she says, though the minute crease in her forehead says otherwise. “I mean, I have a wedding planner that I’m paying a small fortune to, so. Basically the only thing I have to do on the day is show up and look pretty.”
“Oh, no,” says Wendy, grinning, sensing an opening. “How are you ever gonna make that happen?”
Sooyoung shoots Wendy a sideways look. “I know,” she says, mouth at a playful tilt. “Getting me to look good? Ugh.”
“Hey, if you believe in miracles…”
You fight back an eye-roll. For as long as you’ve known them, they’ve always been like this; the banter, the back-and-forth, irrationally entertained by each other from the jump. It’s beyond you how Park Sooyoung’s ever convinced herself that she likes anyone more than she likes Wendy - why spend the rest of your life with anyone else but your favorite person - but she’s made her own decisions. It’s not like you’d have any room to judge, at this point. Speaking of which-
“-is everything okay there?” Sooyoung’s saying, when you start listening again. “I bet it’s at least a little awkward, right?”
“It’s very fucking awkward,” says Wendy. It becomes immediately apparent that they’re talking about you, either sensing that you’ve tuned out or so wrapped up in each other that they’ve forgotten you’re standing there entirely. “But - you know. She’s working through it in her own way. Certainly making some drastic choices.”
“But not good ones,” Sooyoung interprets, tone indicating she thinks it’s a joke.
“Absolutely not,” confirms Wendy, deadly serious.
A sigh from Sooyoung. “Is it fine that all three of them are here, then? I guess - I never know how to go about these things, I don’t know, like, what’s fair game, whose side to take-”
“Wait,” you say, cutting in. “All three of us?”
Wendy grimaces, tossing another glance right over your shoulder, scoping out how bad the situation is. There’s a bomb she’s been managing to delay in increments, a hastily built dam holding back a rush of water - and, now, that break in the floodgates. It’s over. It’s been over for ages.
“Well, yeah,” says Sooyoung. “You, and Seulgi, and-”
-
Needless to say, you’re about to prove Wendy completely right, yet again - the only choices you ever make are fucking awful, but you’ve gone way too far to go back now.
-
Look, at least it’s nothing like the movies.
It’s the farthest thing from slow motion: you turn around and it’s like everything hits in that same split second, no soundtrack to soften the blow - a sucker punch, a car crash - no perfect pacing, leisurely pan of a camera lens. It’s you and your ex-girlfriend and the girl you’ve been fucking; the roof seems to sink low, walls pulling in tight, doors locking you all in. Debris and smoking wreckage. There’s no way to romanticize that.
“Um,” says Sooyoung, already turning to go. “You know what, I’m gonna…”
It’s a relatively graceful exit for a moment like this. Wendy, whether out of some loyalty or some sick desire to see how this trainwreck plays out - alright, it’s probably both - stays right by your side. Like you said: backup. There are some things you don’t have the sanity to face alone. Such as-
“Hello,” says Irene, with a hesitant little smile.
It’s very nearly devastating - that's the thing. It comes so close.
There’s her categorically perfect face, beautiful like she’s getting put in front of a panel and scored on it, tens across the board - poise of a pageant queen, composure like the movie star she is - exactly like you’d always remember her, since two years ago when you first started dating, since nearly three when you’d met for the first time. And despite her haughty, aloof image, there’s still that visible soft spot she has for you: in the gentle tug of her lips, chin tilted barely upwards, color of her eyes warm and familiar. It’s enough to pull you back in. It’s enough to dredge up memories like floodlands, something that’ll consume you entirely.
“Hi,” you say, speechless for all the wrong reasons.
(And here’s the thing: you should be thinking of all that. You spent two years loving her, kissing the curve of her smile, wrapped up in her arms; her date to every movie premiere, your face all over her social media. You’d been a brand together, a phenomenon, a love story to admire and aspire to - a perfect slow-burn, strangers to friends to lovers, soft and simple and romantic; you hadn’t fallen in love, like the poets say: you’d slipped into it quietly, like being tucked into bed at night. And that was better. That was the way it should’ve been.)
You should be a mess, right now. You should be racked with guilt - she loved you, how could you do this to her, what about your morals, your dignity - honestly, and it comes so close to being devastating, you swear, the first time you’ve seen Irene since the breakup, in front of you and smiling like that, it’s almost enough to bring you to ruin-
“Hi,” says Seulgi, next to her, voice short and somewhat shot. “Nice to meet you.”
-but it’s nothing compared to the way you want to get absolutely fucked to death by Kang Seulgi right now.
“Oh, that’s right,” says Irene, cordially, and your history hightails it out of the room. It’s a party; she’ll keep it friendly, light. You clearly aren’t making this a whole thing, so she won’t either. “You haven’t met Seulgi before, have you?”
“No, I don’t think so,” you say, playing along. It’s the role of a lifetime: acting like you’re someone who didn’t cum all over Seulgi’s fingers just yesterday. “Nice to meet you, Seulgi.”
It’s a bad move, saying her name - but then again, it always is.
You just can’t help it. You’re too overcome by the sight of her. It’s like she’s never looked so close to you, so dangerous; top with too many buttons undone, deep cut down her chest, divide of her collarbone, skin unmarred and inviting, hair loose and wild. Suddenly it’s like you feel everywhere she’s ever touched you, marked by notes and chalk outlines, body a crime scene; here’s the evidence, here’s the guilty verdict, open-and-shut. And Seulgi’s looking right back at you, too, lips parted, flushing through her foundation, eyes heavy with liner and blatant desire. Bites on the inside of her lower lip, visible and rough; scans your entire body, top to toe, throat constricting as she swallows. She’s wearing the tiniest plaid miniskirt, like she’s making a mockery of a school uniform, fulfilling someone’s very specific fantasy. And she’s so, so fucking hot.
“Yeah, cool,” says Seulgi, staring like she wants to bend you over the nearest flat surface and rail you in front of everyone, and not making much of an effort to act at all. Then, abruptly: “I need a cigarette.”
She turns on her heel and bolts for the back door.
“Wow,” says Wendy, next to you, watching Seulgi as she makes her escape. “She seems… nice.”
Irene’s silent, watching your expression, face impassive.
“No, I get it,” you say, working your tone into something sympathetic; keep the layers, the feigned bitterness, the judgment. “I’m her girlfriend’s ex. Of course she’d feel a little awkward around me.” You smile reassuringly at Irene. “It’s okay. I’m sure she’s great.”
The corner of Irene’s mouth turns up, grateful. Close press of her lips, and doesn’t speak.
“It’s good to see you,” you say, getting the gist anyway.
Because Irene’s as she always is, at the end of the day; assuming she doesn’t need words to communicate, counting on the people around her to read her mind, do the heavy lifting for her. There are worse character flaws for a person to have, you reason. It’s at least a damn good thing she never learned to do the same for you.
(Oh, the things she’d see, if she could get into your head. Brimming with the uncontrollable urge to either burst out laughing on the spot at Seulgi’s unsubtle exit or run after her and kiss Seulgi senseless, watch her smoke and let her make you smile, lean into her body and say you’re so cute, do whatever you want with me; I’ll be yours for tonight, if that’s what you need. We’ve made so many mistakes, you and me. Let’s make some more.)
“It’s good to see you, too,” Irene says, finally. She won’t pull you in for a reconciliatory hug, won’t lay a finger on you; she knows all her boundaries. She’s probably the only one in this room who does. “I’m glad to see that you’re doing well.”
“Thanks,” you say, because if only she knew.
-
Speaking of worse character flaws.
-
“Get your shit together,” you say, out of the corner of your mouth, when you run into Seulgi on the back patio. “I thought you were an actress.”
“It’s a crime that I’m not fucking you right now,” Seulgi says around her cigarette, lighter flicking fast. A beat, and it catches. “I’m gonna lose my mind.”
There’s that same pretty pink blush high in her cheeks. It could be the cold but it isn’t. “Your girlfriend’s here,” you say, like she’s unaware, like that’ll make her take it back, like you don’t wish you were on your knees and eating her out just as much as she does. “We are horrible fucking people, Seulgi.”
There’s really no use - it’s a formality, completely performative. Seulgi’s got her gaze stuck on your tight top, your legs wrapped in sheer black tights, your boots, your blunt nails. Stare hooded, expression suggesting unspeakable things.
“Alright, kid,” she agrees. Alright, she’s saying; I’ll be anything, as long as I can have you. “I think I can be okay with that.”
-
It’s a long, torturous night.
Not that you thought it’d be any different. Irene’s as much of a presence as she always is, despite how physically small she is - it’d be hard to find a room she couldn’t command with a snap of her fingers, a click of her stilettos - but it’s unbearable when she’s with Seulgi, the two of them attracting stares and attention simply by virtue of being together, stunning separately and surreal on each others’ arms. It’s manageable, at first; your jealousy’s so misplaced and so you start drinking a little yourself, laughing loud with Wendy, ignoring it. It’s fine.
But it starts unraveling completely probably about two hours in.
“I can’t take this anymore,” you say, watching Seulgi prop her elbows atop Sooyoung’s kitchen island, hair winding its way past her shoulders, looking like how light runs from night skies, seeps its way from shadowy corners. Can’t stand the way she leans in and whispers something to Irene, and Irene’s reactions are as muted as they always are, when she’s not on camera; a quick quirk of her mouth, and nothing more. Seulgi’s eyes slide to you every other minute. She looks bored. She looks vicious. “I need to be admitted to the psych ward.”
“So I’ve been saying,” says Wendy. “For years.”
Seulgi’s laughing, now, but in that closed-off, false way she does in talk show interviews. Playing with Irene’s fingers, their heads bent together. She darts another look towards you again. Put your money where your mouth is, you want to tell her; you want me so bad, then have me. Give it all up for me.
“I wanna test a theory,” you say, to Wendy, because it’s all about the scientific method, and you know Seulgi won’t give anything up for you at all, unless pushed to the brink. It’s just the way things are.
Wendy tilts her head. “Is it Kang Seulgi-related?”
“Uh.” You’re too obvious.
She rolls her eyes, rephrases. “Is it gonna get you laid?”
“Yeah,” you say, because it’s too late for shame, but it’d be tactless to say well, that’s gonna happen regardless. Even if it’s true.
“Fine.” Wendy sighs, sends a baleful look over to where Park Sooyoung’s smiling softly by the back door, wrapped up in her fiancé’s arms. “At least one of us should be getting fucked tonight.”
-
You’ve acted in enough dramas to know how to manufacture chemistry with anyone, but it’s a little extra effective with Wendy; the two of you aren’t scared to touch each other, giggle together like you’re in on a dirty, private joke, ignore that there’s anyone else in the room. You’re codependent, and she’s gorgeous, crop top revealing her toned stomach, plenty of places to trace with your fingertips. It’s easy to put on a show. And it’s not at all a subtle one; Wendy’s got an arm around your waist in turn, murmuring something in your ear, lips brushing your jaw when she pulls back. Transforming every touch into something intimate, suggestive.
“I really don’t think you need to be doing all this,” says Wendy, as you wind a lock of her hair around your finger, flutter your eyelashes like she’s flirting. “Seulgi’s already cheated on Irene with you twice. Doesn’t that already prove enough?”
“No,” you say, stare purposely focused on her mouth. It’s pettier than that, anyway. See me with someone else, you’re thinking; see how you like it. It’s a thought that’d be understandable if you were trying to stick it to Irene right now, instead of a girl you’ve met (and fucked) twice, but- “Is she looking?”
“Oh, yeah.” Wendy’s grinning, unable to work her lips into a sultry kind of pout; it’s something she’d be able to do on stage, but it’s different when she’s back here on earth with the rest of you. “And I think she’s gonna wring my fucking neck.”
You throw a glance over your shoulder. Seulgi’s still over in the kitchen, jaw flat and eyes trained on you without a cover, no façade in sight. She’s getting that look on her face - the one that says she’s gonna fucking strangle you for this - and the way her fingers flex outwards instead of curling to fists - saying if I do, you’re gonna beg for more. It’s working. Of course it’s working. Seulgi’s fingers are trembling a little bit, restless; desperate for a vice, you or her nicotine. What’s worse, really.
“How far are you willing to go for this?” you ask, hand falling to cup Wendy’s cheek.
“As far as you want.” Wendy’s always game, and she’s spent a few too many nights alone. She’s got her own points to prove.
“Great,” you say, smiling. “Kiss me.”
“So romantic,” says Wendy, but she does it anyway.
-
It’s not like you haven’t done it before, but it’s different under the influence - under alcohol, under Seulgi’s stare burning a hole in your back, under the cover of darkness like you’ve never shone under spotlights - and it works.
“Oh, man,” says Wendy, pulling back, sliding a hand through your hair; your lip gloss glimmers on her bottom lip. “We’re fucked up. And I think I need to stop before Seulgi actually puts out a hit on me.”
“She shouldn’t care,” you say, innocuous, tracing Wendy’s sides with your fingertips. “She has a girlfriend. Why should she give a fuck who I’m making out with?”
“We’re not making out,” says Wendy. She’s got glittering eyeshadow on the inner corners of both eyes, sparkling in low light. You think of city streets and skylines, her face on billboards, her voice on the radio, how her fans would froth at the mouths if they could see her like this. “I kissed you once.”
“We’re not making out yet,” you correct her.
“Well, in that case,” says Wendy, and pulls you back in.
(By the back door, Park Sooyoung’s watching the both of you, lips pressed together in a thin line, blinking fast as if unable to reconcile what she’s seeing. Unsure of what she really wants, never knowing how to get it. Feelings are funny like that.)
-
It’s only a matter of time, but it always is.
come outside, the text from a number you don’t recognize reads. i’m taking you home.
seems like a bad idea to hitch a ride home with a stranger, you respond right away, knowing even with the anonymity, fingertips trembling like your entire body aches to scream her name. Wendy’s got an arm around your waist, the two of you tucked in a corner and talking to one of her friends; she reads the texts over your shoulder and laughs out loud. You add, i’m famous or whatever. there are a lot of people who want to hurt me.
yeah, is the only response, like a threat in itself. you’re right. they do.
-
You don’t know what Seulgi tells Irene to get away with this, but it doesn’t really matter.
“Oh, wow,” you say, as you make it down the driveway just to see her already standing by the front gate. She’s got her phone in her hand and a sleek black car idling on the curb. “What a coincidence. You know, I just got this text from this person who’s clearly stalking me, wanted to take me home with them - so crazy, seriously, fans these days-”
“Get in the fucking car,” Seulgi snaps, voice deadly low; closes her fingers around your wrist and tugs.
She doesn’t leave you any room to argue, but it’s not like you would, regardless - you wouldn’t leave even if she’d let you.
So you’re piling into the backseat of the car, and the second the door shuts, windows tinted, she curls her fingers in your hair and kisses you. Desperately, like she’s been wanting to the moment she saw you, right when you walked in a room; possessive and sloppy, the taste of her mouth, the bite of alcohol - oh, she’s drunk, she can’t curb a single impulse like this. Knuckles bone-white and every breath like a gasp; you’re losing your mind already, inhibitions like a foreign language, something you could never really get a grasp on. She sighs right on your tongue, sharing air like a necessity. The car starts moving. Nothing registers but her.
“You’re such a fucking brat,” says Seulgi roughly, fingers tangled in the flimsy strap of your top. “I don’t give you attention for one night and you start throwing yourself at anyone desperate enough to fucking touch you-”
“Are you jealous?” you taunt, asking for it. “Even though you were there with your girlfriend?”
Her gaze locks on yours. Pupils drowning her irises. Staring at the flick of her tongue against her teeth. Other hand on your thigh, underneath your skirt.
And then she wraps one hand in the fabric of your tights and tears.
All the air vacates your lungs, a head-rush if there ever was one - and now she’s got complete access to everything she wants, your thong, the way she can probably see how you’re soaking through it. You get out shakily, like it’s what matters: “Those were expensive.”
“Darling,” says Seulgi, smugly arrogant, “I’m pretty sure I can afford to buy you new ones.”
Her ego shouldn’t be as hot as it is, but it is. You’re squirming in place, begging to be touched; you’d let her fuck you right here in the back of this car with her driver stone-faced at the wheel, let heat fog up the windows, let it be a sex scene straight out of some filthy erotic art film, you squealing and cumming all over the leather seats - but you’ve been bad, Seulgi murmurs against your ear, and so you can wait. She’s thumbing your cunt through your panties, agonizingly slow, forcing you to grind down against her fingers. Anything for friction, for pressure, for her hands right where you want them-
“You make me kind of insane,” she mumbles against your mouth, a break in the character, revelation of the truth. Pulls back with her lips swollen and red. “God. I just wanna do super fucked up things to you, all the time.”
“Then do them,” you breathe out, and Seulgi smiles widely, teeth glinting like they’re coated in venom.
You don’t fuck in the car, but it’s close. Her driver doesn’t say a thing. That’s something you’ve all come to know, early on in this world: money can buy anything, especially silence. It’s the only way you’ll ever make it out of this alive.
-
Finally, she takes you home.
-
Your first thought is that it’s fucking unbelievable.
You’re so used to McMansions and penthouse apartments, sterile and unwelcoming - but Seulgi’s place is artsy and cluttered like she’s an ancient, eccentric billionaire instead of a twentysomething movie star. Strange intricate sculptures and colorful throw pillows. Paintings covering the walls that seem vaguely obscene. Sprawling plush rugs, overgrown plants situated at almost every corner in glazed terracotta pots, vines weaving their way towards the floor, over windowsills. A few very elaborate-looking cat trees, dangling with lilac fabric flowers and strung up with tiny plush bees. The view’s stunning. It’s not the only thing.
“Whoa,” you say, forgetting you’re supposed to be begging for forgiveness, or something. “The feng shui of this house is, like, nuts.”
“Thanks,” says Seulgi, mildly endeared and holding your hand, like she’s accidentally forgotten the same thing.
But it doesn’t last long - she drops to her knees right there in the entryway and works your boots off of you, one leg at a time - her heels are undoubtedly thousands of dollars, but she discards them like they’re nothing, lets them clatter across the floor. You don’t even make it to the bedroom before she’s got your skirt rucked up around your waist and she’s pulling at your ruined tights; off, she’s saying, standing, mouthing at your neck, I need them off - and you’re too needy and pliant underneath her, too ready and desperate to be ruined. “Mommy,” you’re saying, making your eyes big, tapping into every trick of the trade, “mommy, I’m so wet-”
And there’s the sharp sound of her hand colliding hard with your cheek.
“I don’t wanna hear it,” drawls Seulgi, tone slipping low and deadly, and drags you up the stairs.
You don’t have time to catalog the rest of the feng shui - you would if you could - because the second you hit her bedroom Seulgi’s tugging at the rest of your clothes, lifting your shirt overhead, unclasping your bra; you’re pawing at her in a similarly insatiable way, hands unbuttoning her blouse, yanking at that goddamned schoolgirl skirt, entranced by the look on her face: lips bitten, cheeks flushed, painstakingly pretty. Like you might be ruining you as much as you’re ruining her. I’m so sorry, you’re blubbering, as her nails scrape at you, mommy, I know I was bad-
“And you know what happens to bad girls, right?”
Yes, you’re thinking, staring up at her with watery eyes - oh, yeah, you know how this ends.
Stomach-first on Seulgi’s lap, for one. Soaked and trembling on top of her, drenched through your thong. Gasping because you can’t quite catch your breath. That’s how it goes with sex, with her, like you can never get your fucking bearings, like you never know when she’s gonna strike-
“Here’s the thing about you,” you hear Seulgi say, one hand stroking gently through your hair, voice suddenly soothing. “You’re never gonna learn how to behave unless I teach you, huh?”
-and that’s right when the flat of her palm comes down on your ass.
Tears spring to your eyes immediately. “Fuck-”
“Oh, baby girl.” Her hand’s back in your hair. Click of her tongue against teeth. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”
Another one, the loud crack of her hand. You flinch violently, wriggling in her lap - she gives a tiny laugh, loving it, yanking a little on your hair. She says, in a rasp: “And you’re so wet, aren’t you?”
It’s barely a question. You’re leaking through your thong, dripping onto her thighs. She’ll probably make you lick it up later, make you face it, take it. You can’t hide forever, she’ll say. I see what all of this does to you.
Seulgi leans down, rubbing her hand up your spine, fist clutching at your hair. “You can’t be acting like a whore in public like that, sweetheart,” she murmurs. “It’s unflattering.”
You can’t speak, squirming and humiliated, embarrassing whines tearing their way out of your mouth, out of your control. You’re shuddering, you’re pathetic, seconds from coming apart at the seams; her fingertips skate back down, circle your ass, threatening to hit. She’ll hurt you and you’ll like it, she knows. You already do.
“In private - I mean, do whatever you want.” Another hit, then another - you’re crying now, dizzy and light-headed - you’ve never been more wet in your fucking life. “That’s how you got so far in this industry, isn’t it? You just let everybody take a turn with this slutty fucking cunt. That’s how you get all your jobs, right?” Seulgi’s palm rubs the length of your cunt, harsh and rough; the apartment’s crumbling, foundation tearing itself up - she hits you again - leave as many bruises as you want, you think of saying, give me something that’ll haunt me when you leave, please - “I mean, I already know you like fucking people with experience.”
And it’s a vile thing to say, it’s so sick, and so not true. You’re a superstar, you should have your own level of ego, should fight allegations like those - but the truth is the only star left in the room is above you, laughing as your pussy leaks all over her thighs. She adjusts your body in her lap like you’re made for her to manhandle, turns you until she can see your face, the tear tracks on your cheeks.
Your eyes on her, never snapping away. Do whatever you want to me, you’re saying, I’ll take it.
“Like a good girl,” Seulgi interprets.
“Yeah,” you say, hoarse and already gone. “Like a good girl.”
(If you’re gonna make all the wrong choices, you might as well make it worth your while.)
-
Seulgi makes you cum first - and then second, and then third - with her hand forcing you down by your hipbone, lips at your navel and trailing downwards, lips wrapping around your clit and sucking. It’s somehow filthier fucking her in her own bed, no public bathrooms or images to keep clean: she makes you cum and cum until she emerges with her chin glistening and a feral smirk on her face, pleased with her handiwork, the half-moon crescents of her nails against your thighs, the way you can’t stop whining.
“Oh, baby,” she sighs after, at the look on your face, spaced out and wrecked. “Did mommy work you too hard?” Rubs a wet hand along your ribs, uncaring of the way she smears your own cum along your skin. “I thought you said you could take it.”
“I can,” you say, vehement, trembling all over. Prop yourself up on your elbows, breathless, and say: “I can give it pretty good, too, mommy.” Lean forward, capture her mouth against yours, tasting your own cunt. “If you’ll let me.”
Clutches the headboard and sits on your face, hips rocking against your mouth, your tongue lapping greedily at her cunt, dripping cum all over your jaw - she cums once and you push her to the bed, work your fingers in the tight wet heat of her pussy, say mommy, I just wanna make you feel good. Thumb circling her hard little clit, fingers curling inside her, punching out full-hearted moans from her slick mouth. You’re supposed to be a pillow princess, probably, that’s absolutely your archetype - begging for a girl’s fingers or mouth, getting fucked into oblivion and calling it there - but you’ve always been greedier than you should be, needing to take and own and touch and fuck. And Seulgi’s so fucking sensitive.
“That’s my girl,” Seulgi’s saying, one hand wound in your hair, syrupy-sweet; she won’t raise her voice anymore when it’s like this, when you’ve been good, when you’re seconds from making her cum again. She knows when you deserve the praise. “God, fuck-”
You push her to orgasm over and over until she hits her own limit, shoves you to the bed and says, Jesus, I can’t, I can’t. Ends it by taking your wrist and dragging your fingers into her mouth, tongue laving over her own cum, stringing sticky over your hand. Looks right at you the whole time, perched on your thigh, breathtaking. She’s smaller than you, but you never feel it. Like without trying, she could bring the whole world to her feet and make them beg for salvation - like without effort, she owns you.
“I’d ask you who taught you to eat pussy like that,” Seulgi tells you, voice gravelly from moaning, “but I think I probably already know the answer.”
It leaves you giggling, nose against her neck, consumed by her. It’s a fucked up thing to joke about, but it’s just one more thing to add to the list.
-
(It’s hysterical, because she’s the one who should be begging for salvation - no one needs to repent more than she does. Oh, well. She’s about to spend all night on her knees, worshipping; if she’s right and God gets her, then it’s possible God can let this one slide, just this once.)
-
Afterwards - ah, you know what they say. Third time’s the fucking charm.
-
You don’t really mean to stay the night, but it happens anyway. Maybe you’re learning to pick your battles. You’ve made it this far giving into every stupid impulse - you know what you want, so why fight it, really.
Seulgi’s something of a miracle to witness, first thing in the morning: gorgeous and completely dead to the world, streaks of eyeliner smeared across her closed eyes, foundation shiny and worn, whatever was left of her lipstick staining her pillowcase. Everyone’s favorite movie star, so utterly human. She’ll probably break out from falling asleep in her makeup. You probably will, too.
“Seulgi.”
You stretch, disentangle yourself from her; you’re sore in all the most satisfying ways, ass a stinging mess. Seulgi shifts in lieu of a response, hums, clearly a light sleeper. A smile flickers at her mouth.
“Seulgi,” you say again, brattier, and bury your face in her hair.
It does the trick: her name, your tone. “Kid,” Seulgi says, curving to make space for you, voice hoarse from sleep, like she’s retaliating. Then, with a laugh, eyes blinking open: “I can’t believe you stayed.”
You pull back just to cock your head at her, assessing intention. She reaches out a hand under the sheets and grazes your bare thigh. Like she’s trying to see if she’s sleepwalking, lucid dreaming - her subconscious knows what she wants; it’ll cater to her. Sometimes she touches you like she’s not convinced you’re real. Sometimes you think you do the same for her.
“Did you want me to leave?” you ask, grinning, somehow already knowing the answer.
“No,” Seulgi says, anyway. Smile sleepy and stunning, a glimpse of the sun in the room with you. “Stay as long as you want.”
It’s a blatant lie, but a heart-stoppingly sweet one. Actresses, you think, disparagingly, and lean in to kiss her mouth. “Bullshit,” you say, calling her on it.
But she’s giggling in that way she only does when it’s real, and so you slip back between the sheets, letting her arm fall comfortably over your waist. Let the other actors carry on without you; let the plot shift around you as it goes, improvisational; let it leave you be. Oh, you don’t deserve this kind of reprieve, not by a long shot. Somehow, it’s still what you’ve got.
(Because the truth is that the moment she takes you home, it’s already over. It’s one thing to keep an affair like this confined to public bathrooms and dark corners - it’s another to hold its hand, wrap it up in her bed, let it sneak into the sheets and spend the night. Look, you’ve seen all the movies: there’s no feel-good film that lets people like you and her win. But the tape’s still rolling: there are still people listening in, sound technicians with boom mics, directors monitoring your work. We’ve set you free, let you play it by ear, they’re saying - impress me, come on, show me something good. Give me an answer that’ll satisfy an audience. You’ve made it this far, haven’t you?)
Stay, Seulgi says, like she’s even got a right to ask. Stay, she says, so you do.
-
Fine. The truth can wait for another day, after all. You’ll just have to let it haunt you until then.
-
obligatory author does not condone cheating and homewrecking disclaimer here. also this is another case of me intending this to be a one-shot and then it got too long..... okay the part 2 will come eventually i SWEAR!!!! if you made it here thanks for reading 24k words of fuckery and brainrot ily <3
#kpop smut#kpop fanfiction#kpop fanfic#idol x reader#idol x female reader#reader insert#female reader#seulgi smut#red velvet smut
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the famous for being famous part is very true. when the eras tour started it looked like taylor the musician was gaining more prominence, and it was like that from folklore's release all the way up to speak now tv's release. she was very very commerically popular but her music was always at the forefront of the conversation.
and now she's a glamourous doll for an nfl player, even with all her accomplishments, which is very ironic for a woman with a song named bejeweled. swifties can deny it all they want but the nfl's culture places their men first and foremost in the conversation, and as one of america's most powerful and richest organisations, they have completely shifted the public's perception of taylor. even when there are articles about taylor's reactions to the nfl games, what is the main subject of the article? is it taylor swift? no! its taylor swift at travis kelce's game! its taylor swift cheering for travis kelce! its taylor swift making buddies with travis' circle! its taylor swift planning on getting engaged and popping out babies with travis kelce!!
its a very calculated and manipulative narrative and its sickening. the public and swifties are of the impression that taylor is the new all powerful girlboss dominatrix of the biggest male dominated organisation of america, but its actually the other way around. the nfl is using taylor's relationship with one of their own to prop themselves and their games up. even when she's the main character in a game she's still a side character to a man on the field.
(not saying that that's what taylor and travis's relationship actually is. who knows. im indifferent to the guy)
but this is the nfl's publicity tactic. pretending to shine a spotlight on taylor and using her star power to keep themselves in the bigger picture of her fame and stardom. and the worst part is, taylor doesn't seem to care that she's being used to prop up an organisation as toxic as the NFL. its not that she's unaware. she's so indifferent and its sad and it puts feminism back 50 years.
YES! And to add on to your excellent points, it’s Taylor’s own fans who also make every conversation about the man in her life, they always have. A new song comes out? Let’s find out who it’s about. Every time a re-recording comes out the main ex the album is speculated to be about trends on Twitter more than the actual album. Red tv was made entirely about Jake, speak now tv’s catchphrase was ‘John count your days’. Taylor had to get on stage and waste time to tell her own fans to chill tf out. They laughed it off and continue to make everything she does about who she’s with. Reputation isn’t even out yet and the egregious amount of ‘this albums gonna feel so different’ ‘this is gonna be so hard for her now with Joe 💔’ is insane. Who cares. Men don’t control the music why are you making it seem like they rule over her art.
And everything you said about the nfl is so true and that’s one thing I wish swifties would grasp. The nfl is a terrible organization that stands for everything any decent human being would be against. That’s why I was so upset when she showed up to that first game, she’s publicly allowed herself to be the face of the game now. ‘But she’s dating a player what’s she supposed to do?’ Not be in a public box where she can be filmed? Watch the game on the million places she won’t be filmed? Not be decked out head to toe in racist merch supporting the nfl and directly advertising them and the team? It’s all a mess.
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She recognises that faraway look in his eyes. The beloved General Mahamatra is brooding once more and that simply won't do. At least, not whilst he is here to rest. It is now time for drastic measures. Candace settles quietly by Cyno's side slowly and, without preamble, rests against his side, setting her cheek on his shoulder to gaze up at him. Should he stir and look upon her in surprise, he will be greeted with a soft smile and a gentle kiss to his jawline. [uwu surprise soff]
They said there could be no thing or soul in Aaru Village that could exist while escaping the ever-watching eye of its Guardian. Was it really any surprise then that with each visit and stay in this place, Cyno's heart became easier to read for her?
It was ironic. For being his worst fear, he'd made it a self-fulfilling prophecy with each day he stepped through the gates and came to sit at this little place of hers. A place he considered a bit as his own by now.
And with growing awareness of how more visible his motives had become, his worry also grew, that the dreaded day would come, when she'd come to find him and put him in his place, drawing the line between them as an unbreakable Law he would have no choice but to respect.
He'd sensed her come to sit next to him and his heart had sunk. Cyno's mind had been still too busy scrambling for something, figure out what he'd say in the face of any accusation or question that may come for him; of how to stay true while protecting his own heart from imploding and shattering into a thousand grains of crystal when...
... When he felt the light but unmistakable weight of Candace's body against him. It wasn't dead weight, but not a brush either. She was leaning against him. And when the curve of her headpiece touched the back of his shoulder, the skin beneath his cloak felt way too hot for comfort all of a sudden.
"Is... is something wrong?" He asked, hating the hesitant note in his own voice and regretting it the moment he'd spoken his question. But it was already out, and turning his face, he almost worried the woman was perhaps having a fainting spell right there and then.
He'd barely the moment to blink his own surprise into the blue eye that made it into his field of vision, before lips connected with his face and everything became a blur of colorful dots anywhere his pupils pointed.
Which had to be somewhere down at his feet, because after a few seconds of frozen shock, he was quickly looking away and pulling up the hood of his cloak over the head to conceal the dark shade of red that he felt to be rushing to his face.
Was... was that truly... Had she just...?
This was nothing like how he'd dreamed imagined it could happen! How could he be so unprepared? It was shameful.
"...I'm sorry. I should've warned you I was going to turn..." He muttered quickly, fully believing he'd mistakenly intercepted her mouth with his face when Candace was probably... surely... trying to do... he wasn't sure what, actually, but definitely something else.
#00j || that's what they said. [asked & answered]#grislyintentions#GI01 || There is no escape for the guilty. [IC: Cyno]#v18 || Genshin Impact#to: || candace (genshin impact)#//A just killing me slowly#one sweet cancyno moment after the other~\\
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Because I’m on an angst train, if you’re still doing prompts: ❛ i can’t do this without you. ❜ Loving your fills!
This is insanely, hilariously, offensively late, I'm so sorry @silverbrume!
A good six weeks after you sent it, here's your fill.
Read it under the cut or on AO3. Enjoy (as much as you can with the angst)! 💛
to forgive divine.
Q wakes up feeling like he’s been stepped on by a giant. The ceiling is unfamiliar; yellowing and pockmarked, its imperfections are thrown into sharp relief by the heavy golden light in the room. Q’s first thought is that it’s hot. God knows where he is, but he surmises it’s not England. This heat is oppressive and desert-dry, not at all like a sticky, claustrophobic London summer.
He tries to sit up. It doesn’t go well. The whole middle section of his body feels like it’s been squeezed very hard by something with a hundred knives attached.
“Oh, ow.”
Q hears a sigh next to him. Turning his head, he sees Bond sitting and nursing a drink. He looks awful. All covered in dust, bloodied and bruised, like after all his worst missions. But it’s his tired, forlorn expression that catches Q off guard. Perhaps he realises what he looks like because before Q can ask any questions, Bond’s usual mask is back in place. He schools his features into genial impassivity and nods in the general direction of Q’s body.
“Don’t try to move. Your ribs are broken. Tanner’s sending a medical evacuation team.”
“How—” Q coughs, then stifles a shout at the pain it causes him. His throat is scratchier than the jumpers his mother used to make him wear as a child. He pleads for a drink to relieve it.
Bond lifts his head forward a little and holds a glass up to his lips. Q drinks. The water is tepid and metallic tasting, and he spends a few seconds grimacing as it dislodges all the filth in his mouth. Still, it makes him feel a little more alive than before. So too does Bond’s steady hand on his neck. He’s tracing comforting little circular patterns with his thumb, and it’s catching in Q’s curls, which are tacky with something. Blood, perhaps. Q isn’t sure he wants to know.
But the empty stretch of nothing in his brain is worrying. He isn’t used to lapses in memory or gaps in thought. All day every day, his mind is full to the brim with reports and equations and numbers from his budget meetings. It is disconcerting in the extreme to prod at it and not encounter anything at all.
Q leans into Bond’s hand and tries to remember. The last clear memory he has is of being in Paris on holiday, drinking a mediocre cup of tea and eating a perfect, buttery croissant. That had been before Bond crashed through his hotel room door with a rather brusque request for help. I can’t do this without you, he’d growled. I need someone who can hack their systems. There was a woman, too. God, there was always a woman, wasn’t there? Even after he and Q had—well. The field always seemed to involve so many women.
Q had helped, in the end, because the job was the job, but Q was also Q, and for his sins, he’d do anything for James bloody Bond.
He puts that thought to the side. It’ll surely drive him insane if he thinks about it now.
“What happened to—” He can’t remember the woman’s name. Angelica? Angelina? Annabel?
“Dead,” says Bond, with finality. “She sold you out.”
“Me?”
“Quite the payout for capturing MI6’s greatest technical mind.”
Q remembers now. Her name had been Angel, ironically enough. Tall, dark and deadly. Shrewd enough to take advantage of her only chance when Bond had left their hotel room briefly to talk to the concierge. She’d had green eyes, awfully sharp ones that turned sharper as she’d held a gun to his head. Without Bond there, Q hadn’t been able to put up much of a fight. His memories after that are hazy, but Q recalls a concrete floor and quite a lot of blood. Not all of it his own, admittedly. Still, there’d been enough leaking out of his body to make him dizzy and lightheaded.
“How long was I…erm.” Interrogated. Tortured, he supposes. Imprisoned, definitely. He doesn’t really want to consider any of it too deeply.
“Two days.”
Bond’s voice is barely suppressing a rollicking storm of anger. Q has learned to read him quite well over the years and knows he’s trying to keep calm either for the sake of Q or some continuing part of the mission. The tell is in his shoulders. They’re hunched and tight with tension, stretching the blue polo shirt he has on to its limits.
“Could’ve been worse,” croaks Q because it definitely could have been. Last week they’d only just recovered an agent who’d been in an unmapped Russian prison for six months.
Bond doesn’t reply.
“How far away did you say the evac team was?”
“I didn’t. And they’re too bloody slow.”
“Bond—”
Bond glances briefly at the clock on the wall. “Three minutes.”
“It’ll be fine,” breathes Q before letting out a cough that makes him feel like he’s being run through with a burning sword. Bond is glaring into his whisky, so Q reaches out a hand to his arm. He’s just far enough away that the stretch makes Q’s ribs burn. “I’m not bleeding. James, I’m all right.”
Not strictly true, of course. There could be internal bleeding. And when his memory returns - which it likely will - he expects he’s going to feel far more pain than the kind caused by a few broken ribs and bruises.
Bond traces along the bony contours of Q’s knuckles with surprising softness.
“You almost weren’t.”
“Well, I am,” insists Q, with a confidence he doesn’t quite feel. He laces his fingers with Bond’s and relishes the way the tension seems to bleed out of Bond in a rush. “You saved my life.”
“I was the one who put it in danger.”
There’s such anguish on his face. It’s so raw that Q can’t help the pained noise that leaves his throat. He knows Bond’s body count is high and that some of those bodies have come at an astronomical personal cost. Perhaps it isn’t only Q Bond is looking at now. Perhaps he’s seeing all the blood of those who came before.
Q has a fleeting, foolish thought that they might run away together.
He’s snapped out of it by an alarming bang as the door opens, a medical team of three pushing through with a stretcher and kits upon kits of equipment.
“007,” snaps Doctor Nolan, brusque, blonde and very familiar with Bond’s brand of bullshit. “Please. Get out of the way.”
Bond levels her with an unimpressed look, grumbling something about the medical staff these days not being what they once were. Q doesn’t catch it because he’s too busy rueing the way their fingers are untangling.
“You’ll be all right now,” Bond tells him.
Nolan rolls her eyes. “Bond.”
Q sees Bond return to his whisky, knocking it back this time for fortitude rather than nursing it in malaise. And then the good doctor stabs Q with a lot of needles, and it all becomes a blur. A heady cocktail of drugs makes him feel like he’s floating. Later, he will find out that he was in a helicopter, a place he’d never be caught dead in sober. In the moment, however, there is only the loud droning sound of engines and sharp, bright lights being shone on his face. Q dozes through most of it. Just before he falls asleep properly, he experiences a clear moment of lucidity looking into Bond’s eyes. He’s come back to take Q’s hand, just like before.
“Christ, you look awful,” whispers Bond.
Q’s tongue feels like lead, but he finds enough energy to reassure Bond with the one thing Q knows has always reassured him in the past.
“So do you,” he slurs. “But the job’s done. S’all that matters.”
As Q falls into a dreamless sleep, he notices Bond doesn’t smile. His hand only tightens over Q’s own, and when Q wakes in the morning, it’s to an empty hospital room and a dull throb in that same hand. There are some lovely gifts at his bedside. Most notable of all are the yellow tulips, sparkling get-well-soon cards, and a teddy bear wearing glasses and holding a cup of tea.
It’s not until hours after waking that he notices the thumbnail-sized radio and Omega watch lying amongst the rest of the saccharine rubble. He reaches for them, only to find a slip of paper underneath.
There’s a message carved ruthlessly in blue ink. Q can feel the words denting the other side of the paper.
I’m sorry, Q. Forgive me.
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May or may not tidy this up later (probably will eventually), but a little scene where Hyrule is sick, and everyone is miserable until they find cause to tease Legend mercilessly.
Largely inspired by me doodling Hyrule’s mother for a different thing, and only later realising I’d given her the same shade of pink hair as Legend post-bunny, plus a red apron. I’ve thrown a bad photo of a sketch of Hyrule’s mother and Legend on opposite pages for reference. It’s a slightly different outfit, but after realising I decided to play it up a little and say her work-apron is higher and she uses a blue bandana to keep her hair out of her potions because why not.
(Ironically, while the Hyrule in the verse this version of his mother exists in is Legend’s biological descendant, its via Hyrule’s father not his mother. The hair is just a magic side effect with unfortunate consequences for Legend.)
~1.6K, comedy-fluff, mild illness, being Legend is suffering (affectionate)
It had been a long few weeks for the heroes of courage. For once it was not the fault of monster nor man, but merely the fragility of the human condition; fifteen days ago, Sky had sneezed. This was not that unusual, but by the next morning the Chosen Hero had been aching, miserable, and firmly in the grasp of a mild but spiteful cold. Warriors had groaned, and Legend had accepted that - close quarters that they lived in - all of them would be condemned soon enough. He did not /like/ this fact, but he had taken it on the chin, and accepted it for the truth it was. He had even suffered his own illness quietly, continuing their slow march across whichever Hyrule they were currently in with no more snark than a glare levelled at the next man’s back.
Two weeks later and the Chain was through the worst of it. The Links were exhausted, strung out, and miserable, the ache of illness lingering in their bones for a while yet, but they were fine. Some had taken worse to sickness than others - Four looked especially miserable, allowing Time to carry him, while Warriors had barely seemed to notice that he was unwell - but they had mostly recovered by now.
Only mostly, because Hyrule - the last to go down, but the one who had crashed the hardest - was still sick. That morning he had insisted that he had been fine to continue. Whether the traveller had known it or not, this had been a lie.
About ten feet after passing through a portal, the traveller had collapsed, falling to a disordered heap as his body refused to hold him longer. It was by far the most dramatic of any of their symptoms, his body pushed too far in a way that made Legend's gut uncomfortably squirm.
Legend had caught him - of course he had - and held him whilst the rest of the Chain had fallen into a panicked flurry. Somehow this had morphed into Legend holding him as they set up camp; Hyrule was mostly fine - just exhausted, feverish, utterly miserable, and near-insufferably clingy - but nobody really wanted to drag a semi-conscious hero across the fields if it was not necessary.
Semi-conscious, Legend thought, as Hyrule’s weight grew ever heavier. Eyes fluttered shut, and if he were not asleep on Legend’s lap, then he was doing an excellent job of pretending otherwise.
Soon enough, their camp was set up. Sky had pooled up a mountain of blankets on Hyrule’s bedroll, claiming that the soft fabric would help him feel more comfortable. Given Hyrule’s love of sleeping under the bed, Legend was not entirely convinced, but he would let the Chosen Hero fret in his own ways.
The Links backed off, knowing that being watched while sick only made them more miserable and snappish, and left Legend to deal with Hyrule. Great. At least he was wearing his power bracelet, and so could actually pick the boy up.
Which he did; scooping the traveller into his arms he took him over to the blanket pile, opened a small hole with his elbow, and gently positioned him inside.
Duty done, Legend meant to back off, tuck the blankets closer, and allow Hyrule to sleep off the worst of the cold in peace. It was the same privacy that the Links had all granted each other these past few weeks, and he meant to give the same now.
Someone, however, had other plans; Legend drew back, but was stopped. He looked back down, searching with narrowed, unhappy eyes.
Hyrule's fingers were loosely wrapped into Legend's tunic. He could have easily ripped them away; Legend considered it a moment, before just resting a hand atop them.
Brown eyes, hazy with fever, blinked slowly until they managed to reach half open. Hyrule let go and reached up, seemingly towards Legend though his coordination was messy. The fingers opened and closed in a way reminiscent of watching pre-language children gesture for something they wanted.
Legend frowned. He took Hyrule's hands in his own, and moved them into the pile of blankets.
"You'll get cold like that," he hissed.
Not that he expected Hyrule to understand him, but it was worth a try; only one hand wandered out of the blankets this time, making grabby motions at Legend again.
Stupid kid.
Legend took the hand, pressing it between his own.
Hazy eyes looked at their hands together, then trailed up Legend's arms. They settled somewhere near his face, but not quite on it. There was a cautious wonder hidden behind the confusion and the fever.
Legend sighed. The kid needed to rest if he was going to get better, "go back to sleep, Link."
"Hurts," Hyrule whimpered back.
Crinkling his nose, Legend pretended his heart did not twist. Instead he squeezed the hand. Being sick was miserable.
"I know," he replied. "You'll feel better in the morning."
Hopefully. If not, they were diverting to a village to find a doctor. The cold had been through most of the Chain at this point, but Hyrule was taking it harder than the rest. Legend suspected it might have something to do with the way he had stared confused at an orange when they had first met; Ravio also seemed to get sick more easily and more severely.
"Don't go?" Hyrule whispered back.
"Furthest I'm going is the campfire," Legend rolled his eyes, but gestured to it. "Like I'd wander off when some idiot got himself sick."
Hyrule clearly understood little to nothing of the words, only content to get a response.
Legend thought that that would be the end of it, and was about ready to tuck Hyrule's other hand away and let him rest, when the boy whispered something again.
Despite being just as loud as before - loud enough to be heard by at least most of the now eavesdropping camp - it took a few moments to process.
'Mummy'. Hyrule had looked at him, and mumbled a request for his mother.
Legend stared down at Hyrule, trying to comprehend ir, but received no explanation. Tired eyes simply blinked trustingly up at him a while longer, before fluttering shut.
The scene looked peaceful, but only because they could not hear Legend's screaming.
Really there was only one thing that Legend could do with - turn with helpless eyes to the rest of the chain and whisper "the fuck?!"
A familial word Legend could understand, with how quickly their shared soul had forced bonds between them all. Brother was the obvious choice, the two of them being of similar age. Uncle Legend could accept, the word filled with painful but happy memories of the man who had taught him all. Father... He would have been less happy with that, the implications a little too strong, but he would have taken it on the chin. Grandfather, and he might have slapped Hyrule, but with the distance between each Link would not have been unreasonable. Sister, maybe, if Hyrule was as delirious as he appeared, or a little more fairy than he claimed. Auntie, if he was too tired to determine what was going on but some part of his mind still remembered their separation in time.
But Hyrule's mother?
Legend could see Sky being mistaken for a mother, cucco that he was, but not himself. He was bitter and brash and blunt, experienced but curt in the way that came from knowing too much. Sarcastic mothers were cruel, and Legend did not know how to be a gentle one. How he had been mistaken he had no idea.
Warriors' cackling laughter was helping him none, but did give him an outlet; Legend turned, careful not to wake Hyrule as he did, and glowered, "what are you laughing at, asshole?"
His target was too busy laughing to even rise to the occasion. "You good, /mummy/?" Warriors cackled. "Looking a little red there."
"Shut up," was the only reply Legend could manage to hiss between clenched teeth. "You'll wake him up again."
From the corners of his eye, Legend could see Sky raise his eyebrows, and Time's eyes alighting with laughter. He was getting no help from there.
"Oh really?" Warriors teased some more, face shifting from a grin to a smirk with ease. "You're too prissy to be anyone's mother - it has to be your dress."
"It's not a dress," Legend snapped back, forgetting his own warnings to be quiet.
"A skirt and apron, then? Can't be a tunic, you need to wear trousers with those."
Legend was fed up with the conversation; with his free hand he grabbed a small pebble, and lobbed it in Warriors' direction. The captain dodged, still laughing. "Defensive much?"
"Now boys," Time's voice finally stepped in. "Some people are sleeping."
The two of them rolled their eyes and grumbled a little, but it was true - not only was Hyrule sleeping beside Legend's knees, Wild was blearily blinking at the 'argument' from his place trapped at Twilight's eyes. The two of them had - bar Hyrule - been the last to catch the cold, and we're still fighting off the last few of its effects.
There was another candidate for mother, Legend thought, guarding and protective if a little bit stern. A den mother, not a nesting one.
"And anyway, you should let Legend enjoy motherhood," and there was the conclusion to the impish grin on Time's face.
Legend glowered at him. His scowl only grew fiercer as Sky's raised eyebrows morphed into giggling.
"He's probably just delirious," Four rolled his eyes at the whole group of them. "Just go to sleep and tease him about it in the morning."
It sounded like a fantastic idea, the long day and evening’s panic draining on Legend's skull. And after the teasing that Hyrule had inflicted upon Legend, consciously or otherwise, he deserved a little of his own. Still, Legend was not one to lose - he flipped a finger at Warriors, before moving to return to his bedroll.
Worn fingers on his tunic stopped his retreat a moment; with a scoff he unpicked them this time, and stalked back over to his own bedroll.
If he picked the nicest of his blankets up and tossed at (carefully placed it over) Hyrule, then that was nobody's business but his own.
#lu legend#lu hyrule#linked universe#fanfic#lu fanfic#fluff#teasing#this is not my terrible wonderful idea referenced yesterday this is something I've had a week or so#/that/ is being worked on between things#its... silly
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Garbage Farm (#42)
2023-03-17, Garbage Farm session #42 (I think), spanning from Summer 4 Year 4 to Summer 15 Year 4
Cast:
me (@mothmute )
E.B. (@salamand3rin)
Kimi (@2kimi2furious)
Highlights include, but are not limited to:
Alex is gonna start reading books and be a nerd now, to everybody’s horror
we’re out of wood!
Pierre called, says he has “the finest” seeds and produce
what produce is that, pierre??
Robin finished Pam and Penny’s new house!!
she spends some time rambling about the woodworking
we choose not to take credit, causing Pam to refer to their anonymous donors as “pure angels”
Robin evidently tells everybody anyway, ‘cause everybody seems to know.
“snitches get stitches, robin!”
Frucko isn’t visible in E.B.’s version of the cutscene, so she just sees me running around and doing a little hop
Should I buy shortcuts for $300,000? yolo
Harvey is nowhere to be found, it’s E.B.’s turn for garbage marital strife :(
We forgot to remind Kimi to make the fancy purple shorts
Haley sleeps through rock time when Kimi goes to use Emily’s sewing machine
Lewis is now afraid of and mad at Kimi
The ducks keep taunting us by going up to the edge of the pond ... and stopping.
Shane wants garbage money too, now, goddammit Robin
Speaking of Robin, she’s now hitting a cliffside with her hammer in the middle of the night
BIG WINE MONEY
Kimi likes jumpscaring Lewis
Marnie just giggles about it
I get caught with iron crumbs all over my face.........
(There was a train but I missed it)
Robin mailed me some wood, I guess she realized we direly needed more (we always need more wood)
New cows, Jumbus and Zartino
Kimi says Stardew’s random animal names are “so cursed”
I begin breaking down the keg-shed, but hitting each keg is taking forever
hey, what if I just set off a bomb to break them? I’m so smart :)
OH NO IT DELETED THEM I AM NOT SMART THIS IS A DISASTER
lmao RIP me, laughing about it is the only way to keep from crying
Emily mailed me a sea urchin!!
We were talking before the session about somebody marrying Emily just to get her very special hat, only to give it to a sea urchin — this is approval!!
Worst part of making new kegs is gonna be getting enough oak resin, so I plant a buttload of oak up by the train station
ugh I’m gonna have to make extra tappers...
(it’s my fuckup, I can take responsibility for it)
A rare crow is spotted on garbage farm, eating the fiber field.
I start buying my way out of my mistakes (specifically: iron, copper, some wood, some stone, some extra coal)
Kimi borrows Frucko
Alex and Harvey both want to know what their spouses are gonna put in the soup. I guess they haven’t been initiated into that level of the Garbage Mysteries
Starting another pond, I get a special line about how Robin’ll start the day after tomorrow, since she always takes festivals off. I don’t think I’ve seen that before, it’s a nice touch!
okay, I made a bunch of extra tappers
Luau day!!
The melons are ready, but we can leave those for the day after
Everybody is at the luau except for Pizza :(
Every year, the Governor says this is the best soup he’s ever had—
is our soup getting better every year? is the governor a liar??
“maybe he’s forgetful” shhhh my theories are more fun
“maybe he goes around complimenting towns’ soups”
“maybe it’s a new governor every year, they replace the old one with a clone”
The Bloobening!
(ask not for whom the berry bloobs; it bloobs for thee)
Witchcraft?? In Garbage Farm???
(it’s just a void egg, we’ve got void eggs at home)
more cows, Bollello and Matchu
This is not good weather for sports!
Kimi visits the desert for fashion!
(dweeb fashion, she gets suspenders)
“we got oak resin?”
... actually, no!
Kimi stays up crafting in the shed and dies.
Marlon says he found her face-down in the mud ... in our shed.
???
E.B. tries to pick up some batteries near the desert obelisk and gets sent to the desert, good thing there’s a bus
“who’s watering the fiber? you don’t need to”
I think it’s Elliott, actually!
starting to tap the new oak
I suggest a garbage derby someday
KEG TUNNEL is starting to come online......!
TO-DO:
fix my mistake ;_;
more kegs, also more preserves jars
Finish Kimi’s Hoe
if it isn’t finished already
Even more ponds??
We’re gonna need so many sea urchins
still need a big melon......
I mean I guess worst case scenario we leave the cauliflower up and try again next summer, right?
still need to venture deeper into skulls............
still need a prismatic shard for the museum???
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Dark Mistress 22: Confession
Belle tells Rumple everything
Lots of trigger warnings on this one, see the note on AO3
Read on AO3
In a cloud of wine-red smoke, Belle transported Rumpelstiltskin just outside the ruin that had once been a castle. After a hundred years of disuse, the road leading to the front gates should have been overgrown with weeds and taken back by the forest. But nothing grew in this place. The soil was poisoned. The trees were charred black. The forest undergrowth was nothing but cinders. It was like this everywhere. The circle of the Dark One’s destruction stretched as far as the eye could see.
Rumpelstiltskin looked around with wide eyes. When they had left the clearing, it had been the dawn of a lovely spring day. In his world, birds sang and flowers bloomed and lambs frolicked across grassy fields. Here, a cold fog hung over the land. It was as silent as a thousand graves.
“This is the Gray Forest,” he whispered. Then he looked to her. “Isn’t it?”
She’d heard the name before. Whenever humans spoke of forbidden lands, where evil lived, where monsters came from, the source of all their misfortune, they always said it was the Gray Forest.
“I call it the palace of ashes.” She turned from the forest to the two mounds of stone that had once been the front gates. When the fire had hit, the iron bars had melted like wax. Some of the stones had exploded in the heat. Belle walked under the memory of an archway. “When I was a girl, they called it Avonlea.”
It had been a long time since she had physically walked the grounds of her wasteland. Too long, perhaps, since she had evidently forgotten the destruction that flowed through her veins.
In front of the gate, there was a large expanse of lawn. It had been the head gardener’s pride and joy to have a smooth, even field of grass. It was the first thing visitors saw when they came to the castle, her father had insisted on that. It was a mark of status. Everyone who saw the lawn knew that his family was wealthy enough to maintain land that had no practical purpose whatsoever.
She walked past the dead lawn with Rumple trailing behind her. He moved even more slowly than usual, stopping every few steps to look around. Belle led the way, but stopped when he stopped. The sound of his breathing was the loudest noise she’d heard in this place in decades.
“This used to be a rose garden,” she told him when they reached a patch of burned-out thorns. “They told me my mother loved roses.”
She swallowed. She had known this would be difficult, but she didn’t have a choice. He had to know everything. She had to tell him everything.
“She was my first murder, you know.”
Rumpelstiltskin looked at her, his mouth half-open, but he said nothing.
“When I was born,” she explained. “The story goes that as soon as I drew my first breath, my mother took her last.”
“Oh,” Rumple said. “Well that’s--”
“You want to say it’s not my fault?” She almost smiled at how well she knew her spinner. “You may be right. Still, it is a terrible shadow for a child to grow up under.”
The tomb was near the rose garden. It was a grand sculpture of polished marble, the coffin placed upon a wide plinth and the effigy resting on top. Belle had only ever known her mother as this statue--a beautiful woman, lying on her back in a stone dress and jewels. Blank eyes stared up at the sky, as they had for more than a hundred years. She had a book in one hand and a rose on her chest. The tomb had been spared the worst of the blast. The stone was singed and weathered, but carved letters still spelled out: COLETTE.
“My father couldn’t stomach the thought of burying my mother in the ground,” she told Rumple as they passed. “So he had this built, had it set up outside, in the place she loved.”
Some of Belle’s earliest memories were in this garden. Papa would take her out here to run and play until it was time to give her back to her nurse. He would hold her up to the stone box and tell her that her mother was inside, and that she would be so happy to see her little girl so lively. He had meant well, but the image of a dead woman watching her from inside a statue had given her nightmares for months. And all of that was before she had found out the details of how her mother had died.
She turned away.
“The stables were over there.” She pointed to a spot closer to the castle. Thinking of the stables made her remember how they had burned. The horrible screaming sound the horses had made. The stableboys who had rushed in to save the animals before thinking to save themselves. Not that any of them could run from the inferno that was coming. Not that any of them had a chance.
She shuddered. So many deaths, all on her hands. So much blood, all on her hands.
“Mistress?”
Rumpelstiltskin’s soft voice snatched Belle away from her waking nightmare. She blinked, felt the heat on her eyes. Tears. She wiped them away with her palms.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
He shook his head, a little sadly. “I’m not afraid of you, Mistress.”
He held out his hand, but she couldn’t bear to take it. She wasn’t good enough to touch him, or the child he carried.
“If you’re not afraid of me yet, then we need to keep going.”
****
They crossed the yard, which brought them close to the stables again. To calm her mind, she tried to speak of something happy.
“I was afraid of horses, when I was a little girl. I refused to learn to ride, and my father indulged my stubbornness.” She gave a weak smile, which Rumpelstiltskin returned. “It wasn’t until I met the man who would be my husband, that I first sat atop a horse.”
“You were married?”
She nodded. “Briefly. But I knew Gaston for years before the wedding. He told me how much fun I would get out of riding, how much freedom. When I told him I wasn’t brave enough, he told me that if I did the brave thing, bravery would follow.”
Rumple made a rueful sound. “That’s a pleasant thought.”
“Yes,” she said. Thinking of Gaston put a heaviness in her heart. “He was a good man, my husband. He didn’t deserve to die the way he did.”
Her spinner came up beside her. “How did he die?”
He spoke like he already knew the answer. Of course he did, he wasn’t a fool. Yet he had asked anyway. He wanted to hear it from her lips. Perhaps he understood how much she wanted to tell him.
“I will show you,” she promised, “when we get there.”
They went to the temple next. Most castles had temples on their grounds, so the nobles would have the gods close at hand. This was where Belle had been named as an infant, where she had declared the mysteries of the faith as a child. After she had first taken on the powers of the Dark One, Belle had hoped that the mere act of entering the holy place would break her curse, or destroy her instantly. It hadn’t, of course. The gods hadn’t seemed to notice the most evil creature in the world desecrating their home with her presence--or with her fire.
“I was married here,” she told Rumple as they gazed over the rubble. “Gaston didn’t have to marry me, I tried to release him from his obligation. The poor man had courted a lady, there was no need for him to shackle himself to a… to the Dark One.”
“Wait.” He rested on a crumbling half-wall and caught his breath. “You were not always the Dark One?”
She shook her head. “No one is born with this curse, they must kill for it. The previous Dark One was the second murder of my life.”
“The Dark One can die?”
She nodded. “Most of us go mad first, if we have no purpose to keep us sane. If you live long enough, do enough dark magic, have enough voices in your head… It can be very tempting to let some secrets slip. Tell a human about the only weapon that can kill you, let them see that you just so happen to have it with you when you’re making a deal.” She sighed. “I thought it was an accident, when the Dark One did it to me.”
Rumpelstiltskin looked at her. His eyes did not waver. “Do you want to tell me?”
She had never told anyone. Much of that night she tried to forget herself. But it was right, to tell this part of her story to Rumple. He needed to know everything.
Two walls met in a corner that had only partially been destroyed. There was part of a window frame, with a few shards of colored glass still embedded in the stone. They were the only color in this place, these shattered fragments of holiness. She sank down onto a stone under the window, with her elbows resting on her knees. Hunched forward, she protected her body while she bared her soul.
“What do you know about the Ogre War?”
Rumpelstiltskin answered quickly, like he was being given an examination. “The first one? It was more than a hundred years ago, Milah’s grandfather fought in it. They say the field of battle stretched all the way from the sea coast to--to the Gray Forest.” He blinked at her. “Here. Your home. You saw the First Ogre War?”
“I ended the First Ogre War,” she corrected him. “And, yes, I saw it too. This castle used to be the safest place in the kingdom. We used it as a marshaling grounds for the soldiers. Then as a refugee camp. Then a hospital. It would have been a morgue, a mass grave.” She looked up, at the gray dust all around her. “Which is what it became anyway. But before that, I saw it all. I came of age during the years of the war. I did everything I could to help, we all did. In vain, of course. There was no beating them.”
“I know.” Rumpelstiltskin sounded as weary as she felt. Somehow, that helped.
“You do know, don’t you, Spinner? You know exactly how desperate a person has to be to risk summoning the Dark One.”
He gave her a slight nod. “What deal did you make?”
She looked at her hands. “My Dark One was a man. Later, I found out his name was Zoso. I snuck out into the forest on my own, called on the power of darkness--I had read about doing that in a book--and when he appeared, I begged him to help us. I said I would do anything.”
“What did he want?”
She spent a long moment looking at Rumpelstiltskin before she spoke. Of all the people in the world, he had the most reason to sympathize with her, the least reason to judge her.
The Dark One had no need for human wealth or mortal influence. For all her blue-blooded nobility, Belle had as much to offer the Dark One as a penniless spinner. When she’d called Zoso, there was only one thing she’d had that Rumpelstiltskin had lacked when he called her.
“My virginity,” she said at last. “It was the most important thing about me in those days. I grew up hearing about my duty to save my virginity for my husband, so there would be no doubt about my family’s honor, no question about whose children I gave birth to. It was proof that I was a young woman of virtue and proper upbringing. It was all the goodness in my heart manifested as a physical attribute--and the Dark One wanted me to sacrifice it, in the mud on a forest floor.”
Rumple was already by her side. He knelt in front of where she sat and offered his hands to her. This time, she took them, squeezing his fingers in her palms.
“I said yes, of course. What else could I do? People were dying, what did my honor matter? And so he--” Her voice caught. Rumpelstiltskin squeezed her hand, but she didn’t stop. “He was wearing a cloak. A cloak of pure darkness. He wrapped it over me, and lay down on top of me on the ground. He--It hurt. He could have used magic to keep me from feeling the pain, but he didn’t. He could have done anything to make such a thing easier on a crying child, but he didn’t. Hell, he could have just not raped me!” She practically screamed those last words, crying out at the injustice done to her. “But he didn’t.”
He was kissing her fingers now, rubbing his face against the backs of her hands. If only she could allow it, Rumple would hold her in an embrace that would never end.
She pulled him close, bent down, and kissed the top of his head. When he looked up at her, his eyes were wet with unshed tears.
For her. He was sorry for her.
“Will it help,” he asked, “if I tell you that you have never been so cruel to me? Not once.”
She kissed him again. ���My Rumple,” she murmured. “You are better than I deserve.”
“No,” he said quickly. He sat up just enough to kneel in front of her. “No, sweetheart, you deserve much better than me.” He rested his forehead on her knee. “You deserve more than the man no one wants.”
She raised his chin. “I want you,” she told him. “I hate thinking of my life without you in it.”
He opened his mouth, but then closed it, accepting the truth with grace.
Belle continued her tale. “When the Dark One was finished, he rolled off of me and fell asleep--or at least that’s what I thought. I saw a dagger on his belt. A name was written on it. I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t even know if it could hurt him. But I took it anyway, and hid it in the folds of my skirt.
“When the Dark One woke, he told me that because of some technicality in our deal, I would be at his disposal whenever he wanted me. He said terrible things about what his appetites were, what he would make me do, who he would make watch. I kept getting more and more angry. I had the dagger in my hand and I--I killed him. Stabbed him through the heart. And suddenly, my name was on the dagger. And I was the Dark One. And he was laughing.”
She covered her face with her hands, not stopping the tears this time. She let them flow. She let her sorrow and her rage fill up the whole of her being--then let them trickle down her cheeks. Rumple stayed beside her, huddled at her feet, clinging to her legs, holding her with all his might. Silently, he offered every comfort she would accept.
Belle allowed herself his touch. She let herself be comforted. For as long as Rumple wanted to love her, she would accept his love.
When there came a break in the tears, she touched his head. He looked up at her, tried to read her face. He was silent but watchful, hopeful. She ran her fingers through his hair.
“Your hair is like silk,” she murmured. “Have I ever told you that?”
He shook his head, “No, Mistress.”
The title made her wince. “Belle,” she told him.
“What?”
“Belle. It’s my name. You may use it if you want to.”
“Belle,” Rumpelstiltskin repeated. He tested the name, trying it out. The way he said it made his lips form a smile. “It’s beautiful.”
She felt different, now that she had told him some of her secrets. The weight of them was still there, but it had shifted, somehow, become less burdensome. There was something better about having these things be brought into the light. She stood up and helped him get to his feet.
****
They walked away from the temple and into the main building of the castle. Holding on to Rumple’s hand, she led him up missing staircases to a second story that should be nothing but rubble on the ground. As long as they touched each other, the magic would work for him as well as for her.
She remade the library. The ashes remembered what they had been. She made the cinders form back into floors and shelves and books--all gray and white and black. Her favorite room, a ghost of itself.
“I never got a chance to read all the books in my mother’s library, though I did put forth a sporting effort.”
Rumple looked up at the newly-created ceiling arching high above his head. “I’ve never seen so many books in all my life.”
She heard the reverence in his voice, and took some joy in knowing that he valued the place she loved most in the world. “There used to be a ladder on wheels, to help a person get to the top shelves. I used to slide back and forth on it, when I was a child.”
“What did you like to read?”
“Adventure stories. You know, far-off places, daring sword fights, magic spells, a prince in disguise.” She shook her head. “My own life was so impossibly dull. Before the war.”
Still holding his hand, she led him to her favorite corner of the library. The windows here always caught the most of the evening sun, so she could stay up late on summer evenings without bothering to light any candles. The once-blue ashes of a large and well-worn book had formed on top of an exceptionally comfortable chair.
“I read this book over and over,” she told him. “Gideon and Alma were better friends to me than anyone I knew in the real world.” The warmth of remembering her favorite book grew cold as she remembered everything else. “I always was a funny girl. They said that about me behind my back--servants, courtiers, even relatives when they came to visit. ‘A beauty, but a funny girl.’ And that was before all the magic, that was just me that didn’t fit in.”
Rumple squeezed her hand. “I know what that’s like too,” he said. “Even before the war and my ankle and being a coward, I was never really the right fit in any company I kept. I never wanted to be alone, but--”
“It’s easier,” she finished. “Sometimes being around people is impossible.”
He nodded, then looked at her. “It’s easy to be around you.”
Belle felt her cheeks grow hot. It took her a moment to realize she was blushing. She turned away from Rumple to compose herself.
“We need to keep going.”
****
In the library, she had shown him the best of herself. In the temple, she had told him of the evil done to her. Now, as they climbed the phantom stairs up to her bedchamber, she would show him the evil she had done.
“At first, in the early days after I took this curse, it was easy to pretend that I was still human. Everyone wanted that, I wanted that. I told my father that the Dark One killed all the ogres, and left out the part where the Dark One was me. I can look human, if I make an effort.”
She stopped on the landing, and showed him. She started with the hand that held onto his wrist. Her black claws lightened and shortened into delicate fingernails. Her skin became flesh instead of scales, pink and soft. He touched her, gently, rubbing his fingers across her palm.
The transformation crept up her arm to her face. In Rumple’s expression, Belle saw how her features changed. Rosy lips, human teeth, round cheeks that grew rounder when she smiled. He took all of them in with wonder. A honey-brown ringlet fell into her vision, instead of a black wave. Her hair was back to being a wild mess of curls, the bane of every maid who tried to comb it.
Rumple’s eyes were so dark she could use them as a mirror. She could see her human eyes look back at her--blue and white as a summer sky. They used to sparkle with merriment. She used to make faces at her reflection. She used to be so pretty, so pleasing. Even if she was a funny girl, at least she was a beauty.
Sometimes people told her she looked like her mother.
In this form, she was shorter than Rumpelstiltskin. If she chose to, she could walk into his embrace. She could nestle herself under his chin and let him hold her. It would feel so right, so natural. He could kiss her on the forehead, wipe away her clear tears. He could tell her that everything was going to be alright.
But it wouldn’t be. No matter what he said.
“This is the mask I wore, to hide the monster I was inside. I tried to be normal. I tried to sleep, I tried to eat. When I married my husband, I kept my body like this when we were in bed together. I--I think that’s why I was able to become pregnant.”
Rumple’s eyes widened. “You did have a child.”
“No.” She took away the enchantment, went back to her monstrous form. “I didn’t.”
She led him into the recreation of her bedchamber. Like the library, it was made of re-formed ashes and charred remains. Still holding Rumpelstiltskin by the hand, she took him to the ghost of her bed. It was as disheveled as it had been when she’d woken up that fateful morning. The heavy coverlet was thrown back on itself. The linen sheets had been pulled off the mattress and sat in a crumpled heap.
“As I said, I was still trying to sleep at night. This was, perhaps, half a year after I was cursed. It was getting harder and harder to keep up the pretense. I had so much power, and such a burning need to use it. But Gaston and my father kept treating me like I was just a girl, like I had to be protected from the world. They didn’t know I had a thousand years of evil in my head, memories of committing the most horrific deeds. I lived with those thoughts every day and they treated me like my greatest concern was picking out ribbons for my hair!”
She was clutching Rumple’s hand now, pressing her claws into him so deeply that they pierced his skin. A trickle of blood ran down from his palm. His teeth were on edge from the pain, but he had made no sound of protest.
“Blood,” Belle whispered.
She passed her other hand over his flesh and took his injury unto herself. Pain sliced across her perception, but it was nothing. All that mattered was that Rumple stayed safe.
“I woke up to blood.” She could not look at the bed. She could not look at his face. “Under my legs. Staining the sheets. Red blood. It wasn’t mine, I knew that as soon as I saw it. I knew everything that had happened. I knew that just by existing, I had killed my child.” She closed her eyes, waited until her voice was steady before she spoke. “My third murder.”
“No.” Rumple said immediately. “No, Belle, sweetheart. Don’t think like that. Don’t do that to yourself.”
She kept her eyes closed, and continued her grisly tale. “The servants heard me crying, screaming. Instead of facing me themselves they ran and got my husband.”
The form of Gaston rose up from the spot where he had died. His ashes still had fragments of bones and teeth. She recreated him as best she could--tall and broad, with a square jaw and a cleft in his chin. That early in the morning, he had been out riding. He was still wearing his boots and coat when he’d stormed into the room.
“He saw everything. Saw the blood. Saw me as I truly was. He’d wanted a child so badly, had been so glad when I told him. He thought that being a mother would cure me of my strangeness. Then he saw me sobbing black tears into blood-stained sheets. The first thing he said was, ‘What have you done to my son?’”
Belle’s voice began to break. “As if I had chosen this! As if I wanted it! As if--as if I had miscarried just to spite him! As if I had no pain of my own. But I had pain. I would show him my pain.”
Now, as then, the Dark One’s free hand held a plume of black fire. She closed her fingers around it like a fist, then unleashed it at the figure of Gaston. The ashes crumbled and fell, silent as snow. His real death had been nothing so peaceful.
“His hair and clothes burned first. He tried to bat out the flames but there was no stopping this. His skin burned and blistered and peeled away. He had the most beautiful blue eyes and they melted in his skull. He screamed, as he died. He was a strong man, a brave soldier, no older than twenty-five. His short life ended with him terrified, crying like a child.”
She was shaking. Rumple held on not only to her hand, but her whole arm. He pressed against her, as close as he could get.
“The maids came in next. They’d heard the noise. There were two of them. Deline was young, in training. She gave me gossip and liked to flirt with the pageboys. Arnta had been my maid since I was a child. She comforted me every time I woke from nightmares.
“I killed them both. Without a thought. All I knew was that they were in my way. They were there, and then they were burning.”
Her teeth chattered, but she pressed on. “The whole room had begun to burn. The carpet caught, then that spread to the bed and the tapestries and the timbers in the ceiling. More people came, when they smelled the smoke. I remember them coughing and falling back from the heat. I walked through the fire like it was nothing. They saw me, and they called me a witch, a monster. They were right, but I killed them just the same.
“Understand, these were people I loved. People I had grown up with, some of them my own kin. I had taken on this power to save them from ogres, but I couldn’t save them from me.”
She sobbed so hard it bent her over double. Rumple was still there. He said nothing, but he held on to her, with both hands and a white-knuckle grip.
“I went through the whole castle like that,” she said when she had enough air to speak again. “I killed everyone. I burned them all. My father, when he saw me coming, he pulled out his sword to stop me.” She shook her head. “I turned the sword into a flame and made it stab him, over and over until he burned from the inside out. There was no thought, no intention. Just pure evil.”
“Belle,” Rumple murmured.
“The fire burned through the castle, onto the grounds and then the forest. There used to be villages near here, full of families. Smiling mothers, happy babies, doting grandparents--the fire moved too fast for them to run. It burned so hot it killed people without touching them. It burned and burned, and I was in the center of it. All of this destruction is on my hands.”
Gently, she removed the illusion of the castle that had been. Now she knelt with Rumple on the ground, in the gray dust of what used to be her people.
She pulled away from him. He didn’t need her magic, now that they were on solid ground again. There was no need for him to touch her. She walked back to the rose garden, back to her mother’s final resting place. She stood and stared at the statue. If only she could be stone. If only she could have switched places with her mother. If Belle had been born dead, none of this would have ever happened.
After a moment, she heard the thump of Rumple’s staff as he came near her. She turned to him, and tried to gather herself. She tried to put on a face that resembled sanity. He stood by her side. Together, they looked out at the barren wasteland.
“So,” she breathed. “Now you see what happens to the people I love.”
He shook his head. “I’m glad you told me, sweetheart. Especially about your child.”
Belle winced. “You understand now, don’t you? Why I was so afraid about you being pregnant?”
“Of course I do,” he said. He put his hand on his belly. “It’s hardly a fear without merit.”
“If my magic was good, I could keep you safe,” she told him. “But as I am, the best I could ever do would be to take the danger away from you and give it to someone else. A price must be paid. There must be a balance.”
“I know,” he said. “You say that every time you take my pain away.”
“You mean every time I give it back to you.”
She faced him, her hands helplessly half-reaching. He met her halfway, and took her hands into his own.
“I am darkness,” she told him. “I am pain. I cannot be anything else. Do you understand that?”
“I do,” he said. He closed the gap between their bodies.
“That’s why I had to show you this. You had to know what my magic is capable of--what I am capable of. I didn’t want to lose you, without you knowing everything.”
He put his hands up to her face, holding her cheeks. His brown eyes poured his soul into her. “You will never lose me, Belle. No matter what you do. I love you.”
Belle threw her arms around her spinner. She kissed him, as long and deep and loving as she could. Please, she prayed to every power in the universe. Please let this work.
She waited for a sign. To see some glow, to feel some new light in her heart, to notice some change in her body. She kissed Rumpelstiltskin again and again, with fever, and passion, and desperation.
But aside from the warmth of his touch and the pleasure of kissing him, Belle felt nothing. Certainly nothing magical. When she looked at her hands, they were still as white and as hard as a corpse.
Breaking away from Rumple, she rested her forehead against his. His breath was heavy. His hands moved freely around her body. He rubbed her back and traced her curves. If she said it was allowed, he would lay her down in the ashes and worship every inch of her, his love unhindered by the death she caused.
She put her hands on his arms and he stopped immediately. Now it was her turn, to hold his face and look him in the eye. Her sweet spinner. Her beautiful Rumple.
“I love you too,” she told him. “But it’s not enough.”
“What?” He shook his head. “No. What do you mean it’s not enough? Sweetheart.” He took her hands and held them in his own in the space between their hearts. He smiled. “If we love each other, how can that not be enough?”
“Because you are not just yourself!” She tried to pull her hands away, but he held on to her and she had no strength to fight him. “Because love is sacrifice and there are things you cannot sacrifice for me.”
“Belle.” He tried to touch her, but she pulled away. She staggered backwards to put distance between them.
“Rumple,” she choked. “Can you look me in the eye and tell me that you would choose me over your sons?”
“Sons?” His eyes went wide at the word. Slowly, his hands lowered. No longer reaching out for her, he cradled his round belly. “Is it a boy?”
That was all the answer she needed. All the True Love that existed in Rumpelstiltskin belonged wholly to his children. As it should be. He was a good father. Of course he would put them first.
“It is a boy,” she told him. “Healthy and human, as far as I can tell.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “And he has a father who loves him more than anything in the world.”
He tried to wrap his arm around her waist. “And a mother who--”
“No.” She evaded his grasp, floating up into the air to stay out of his reach. “No, Rumpelstiltskin, I can’t.” She spread her arms wide. “This whole place is a monument to what happens when I try to love. I cannot do that to a child, not again. Never again.”
He looked up at her. “Please. Please, Belle!”
“It’s too late!” she cried. “It’s too late for me. It is a miracle that this is the worst that has happened to you. It will be another miracle if your child remains healthy and human. Having me in your life will only make things worse.”
“No!” he shouted up at her. “That isn’t true. You can’t--”
“You know my name,” she declared. “You may call me when you’re ready for me to take your child from your body. Aside from that, I will never see you again.”
“No,” Rumple wept. He dropped to his knees. “Please, Mistress. Please don’t leave me alone!”
She was already casting the spell that would take him back to his home. “You won’t be alone,” she offered her final words as a comfort. “You will always have your family.”
A family that would never include her.
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The way I went >:) at your second round of questions bc it means I have every right to bother you with more in return (if you want to answer them ofc)
35 for Casimir, 84 for Lavael, and 11 for whoever you want ^-^
Round two!!
35. What is the easiest way to annoy them?
It usually takes a significant amount of effort to get on Casimir’s nerves for obvious (to those of us who know them) reasons, the All-Seer’s persistence is so great an annoyance that almost everything else seems inconsequential. Even so, he’s not unshakeable. The fastest way to annoy him and to very quickly lose any goodwill he had towards you is by staring at him as, thanks to his patron’s influence, he has developed pretty severe scopophobia over time. They do their best to express their discomfort with it before most interactions to avoid any issues but actively ignoring their wishes is a one-way ticket to a very agitated warlock who, despite their typical apathy, is not unwilling to use their power to inflict an equal amount of distress and discomfort upon the offending party.
84. Which deadly sin do they represent best?
Pride, easily. I pretty much created Lavael with Pride at the forefront of his personality. He’s a man who came from absolutely nothing and managed to successfully claw his way to everything he thought he wanted. He gained access to a title, land, wealth, and the adoration of his newfound peers in a relatively short amount of time, that kind of smashing success combined with the lurking anxiety of losing it all if he slipped up brought out nothing but the worst in him. Fooling the entirety of high society into thinking he belonged among them is no small feat and the longer he kept up this deception successfully the more arrogant he became. He had gained the admiration and envy of his peers in equal measure and relished in every bit of it. After starting with so little and gaining so much, it’s not so much of a surprise that he turned out the way he did, it was just very unfortunate for everyone who ever had to interact with him for the entire time period before he started his character development.
(Over two years of character development have done wonders for his personality, he’s only a slight prick these days as opposed to how he was before.)
11. If they could make a mark on history, what would they like it to be?
Surprise! The new character brainrot completely hijacked this one, time to meet my wizard in a more official capacity I guess??
Camellia Siltweiss carries a name that comes with the burden of great expectations. Many of her ancestors have already made their mark on the continent’s history. Her earliest ancestor founded a city that shares the name, another contributed valuable arcane discoveries to a university that now bears the name, her parents have ensured that the name will be listed amongst the most influential western leaders of the current era, and her siblings have already started to earn great renown in their respective fields. Needless to say, there may be some mild pressure to live up to the Siltweiss name. Luckily, she already has some plans in mind to make her mark.
To any outsider, it would seem that Siltweiss is a thriving and prosperous city but those who live there are fully aware of the darkness that lurks beneath its surface. Unlike her family (and ironically), Camellia hasn’t turned a blind eye to the deep-rooted corruption plaguing her city. She has spent a significant amount of time drafting up drastic reforms with the intent to enact them as soon as she takes over the chancellery from her parents. She’s made plenty of preparations to deal with the fallout of her actions as well, you can’t really expect to completely overhaul a long-standing system without some outcry after all (especially from those who benefit most from it.) It’ll still be some time yet before she gets the chance to enact her plans but she’s more than willing to lie in wait. History is rarely made in a day after all, and she’s nothing if not patient.
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Saturday 8 July 1837
7 20
12 ½
fine morning tho’ gloomy F58 ½° now at 8 ½ am and out till breakfast at 9 – tête-à-tête with A- ¼ hour – just before breakfast the gardener brought home the old bay horse hardly able to crawl – Zebedee had thrown the water cart over in the garden – 1st time of carting water in a large barrel for the bricklayers in the garden and the masons who began the hay barn this morning – sent for Wheatley – I feared the horse had put his shoulder out – Wheatley here about (after) noon – the shoulder not out, but very badly bruised – might be fit for wok again in a short time – had David Mallinson who came very soon after 9 and waited till I had breakfasted at 9 ¾ - told him how much I was dissatisfied with his work at Northgate he owned it was bad, but said it was no more than he expected – ‘Mr. Husband was partly to blame’ – he would make him lay the floors in winter when the boards were wet – M- told him how it would be but he would have it so – M- owned too the board lathing and crooked plastered corners etc. in fact, he behaved as civilly and well as he could under such awkward circumstances – gave him a check for £300 in a/c – then had Stephen Mallinson joiner and James Wood and another masons with him and paid the latter in cash in full for the Stump X Inn, and paid the former an extra bill by check for £30+ then A- had Bairstow and paid him £63.3.10 for work done at his mill – I had proved and let her have sixty pounds towards the bill B- objected to sign his lease because it gave no power to let off, and he wanted to let off a room for worsted frames – times so bad, or should not have thought of it – I said A- would willingly take back lease and mill, too, if he liked – but no! that was not the thing desired – they had laid out (Bairstow Tetley and Cunliffe) a great deal of money – However A- if the thing properly explained said she might give consent in writing to underlet, and then all would be right – Long talk afterwards; for I had a bill of £16+ to pay for iron work (west tower roof and £3.3.0 for Northgate) – I think B- was persuaded not to split his vote but to give a plumper for Wood – (not vote for Protheroe the radical candidate at all) – and perhaps he could persuade Tetley to do the same – Cunliffe was a radical but is rather changing – then had Wheatley the veterinary surgeon – A- had had Mr. SW- and had told him of her canvassing Mallinson etc and said she would quit him and every other tenant who voted for Protheroe – then sat with A- till 2 10 – had had note about 11 am from Mr. James Norris respecting canvassing my tenants for the country for Mr. (John Stuart) Wortley – then out about till 3 – saw Zebedee – the poor fellow so sorry did not say much to him – spoke to Mawson about the rough walling at the Lodge – determined to have the place walled up against nuisances – he was to do the walling at 2/6 per (vid. my rough book of some time ago) and have 4d. extra for each yard of height above 2 yards high I think it was – all Mark and Mawson and co. very busy in the hay – cocked the wheat field before night and rickled sour Ing and part of upper brook Ing – 3 or 4 mowers at work call the day – with A- again above ½ hour from 3 – she rode off to Cliff Hill at 3 40 – then washed and out again out again at 3 55 – with Robert Mann who was just going home – and with Mr. Gray at the meer, and back thro’ the wood by the hay barn and Lodge home at 6 25 then had the 2 Manns and Blythe (the latter for sawyers and Henry Ryles the joiner and brother to Michael) till dinner at 7 40 – asleep on the sofa in A-‘s sitting room (north parlour) – coffee – we both came upstairs at 10 ½ - very good friends now Mr. Jubbs’ blue pill and effervescing draught during this week have done A- good – fine day F50° at 10 40 – sat up looking at maps
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My late dad was a pianist at the Lutheran Church, so I spent most of my childhood in church. Arriving at church an hour early on Sundays was a routine for me so that my dad could prepare for his work.
I got my primary education in a Catholic school for seven years and went to a Lutheran Seminary boarding school for my secondary education.
Living my early life mainly in a church environment and teachings, I believe I earned the title of theologist. People who personally know me are aware of my struggle to correct the false doctrines rampant in churches these days.
Like any other field of life, the prevailing racist practices in modern-day churches have undermined the church concept these days.
I have faced racism in churches as well; that was the last thing I would expect.
Upon inquiring further, I concluded that white Christians are the worst perpetrators of racism in society these days, as they back their claims with the Bible.
[caption id="attachment_7288" align="aligncenter" width="1170"] Bible verse numbered 15:15[/caption]
How did I face betrayal at church by “white moderates?”
On one fine Sunday, following my routine, I went to a Lutheran Church in Rogers, Minnesota, arriving half an hour earlier than the service starting time with my ten-year-old son.
As we were the first ones in the church, pews were empty, so we sat on a middle bench with my son, waiting for the start of service.
After some time, the congregation started entering the church, occupying different benches. Ironically, everyone was avoiding our bench, presumably as we had Black color.
When an innocent kid, free from racial malice, tried to sit with us, his parents pulled him away to a different bench. Not surprisingly, Rogers, Minnesota, has 99% of its population white people, so the church's concentration was also heavily composed of white Christians.
Seeing the unfolding event of racism specifically demonstrated against people of color in church, I was shocked, and my son was even more alarmed.
I did not want my son to experience this racism again in the church, so I started to shop for a new church. After doing my research, I found a church named “Speak the Word Church International”, where the pastors were black and white, husband and wife, and the congregation was of mixed races.
I thought this one would be an anti-racist church, so we started attending it as our local church.
Meanwhile, the pastors divorced, and the husband stayed with the church while the wife started her own church.
This divorce affected the racial unity of the church as well, and white people started changing their church.
As the white preacher was gone, white people started attending another church named “Living World Christian Center”, so I decided to visit that church myself.
When I visited that, I saw many familiar white faces who were with us at the previous church.
During the service, the white pastor promoted Trump in the church, which was shocking for me, considering the bigotry he often portrays against Black people.
In this church, such a man was promoted who hates foreigners and separates children from their families.
Wearing my theologist hat, for Christians, if you have a bible app, you can type the word “foreigner” and see how many times it appears in the whole book, and what it says. I will mention one such verse here, which says,
“The community is to have the same rules for you and the foreigner residing among you; this is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. You and the foreigner shall be the same before the Lord.”
(Numbers 15:15)
During his imprisonment in the Birmingham jail, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter to the church clergymen, calling them “white moderates.” According to him, they are worse than the KKK, because at least KKK is open in their approach, and they don’t have any clandestine ambitions.
However, during this time of church hypocrisy, “white m
oderates,” from clergymen to the congregation, are just the puppet of racism trying to use the church as their cover.
As these experiences were not enough to portray the notion of church hypocrisy, I felt the other colors of “white moderates” as well.
I usually attend an annual Gospel Music Festival in Minnesota called “Joyful Noise,” due to my preference for hard rock music, as my favorite band is Switchfoot.
In a concert, there are usually two types of VIP tickets. VIP guests typically have their own line and usually enter one hour earlier than the standard ticketholder.
We usually come with our beach chairs, so while setting up my chair to sit in a VIP line, a white lady came to me and said, “Your line is not here; you are supposed to be on the other side, where there is a standard line.” I inquired of her the reason for the comment, for which she told me she didn’t want me to waste my time.
Because of my color, she automatically assumed that I could not buy VIP tickets because they are expensive, and people of color are supposed to be poor.
We even had the same color of wristbands, which indicated I am VIP as well, so she didn’t see that color. She just noticed my skin color and launched her racist attack.
[caption id="attachment_7287" align="aligncenter" width="1536"] Eli Mshomi attending "JoyFul Noise" Concert in Blaine Minnesota. On this day, he was told that he should not be in the VIP area and was asked to move to the Standard area due to his color despite having a VIP wrist band on his hand.[/caption]
The Pervasive Racism of White Christians: Not a new phenomenon
Over the years, white Christians have shaped their behavior in the worst possible racist way. The problem worsens when they deny this racism is being perpetrated by themselves.
Many times, they even end up defending it. The interesting thing is that no specific sect can be singled out in this regard. Be it the white Evangelicals, or Protestants, or Catholics, all of them show the same pattern, which is evident from the data.
For instance, according to the survey conducted by PRRI, white Christians are more likely to think in favor of police brutality against African Americans compared to non-religious whites.
Not only this but more white Christians than non-religious people think that monuments to confederate soldiers were given as pride rather than to celebrate racism.
Then comes the white Christian’s attitude toward racial apathy in jobs, as they do not believe that Black people face any discrimination to move up the ladder of social mobility.
This is not a phenomenon that has just happened overnight. Instead, this pervasive discrimination is embedded within the very roots of white Christianity, as nearly all the sects unilaterally agree and support it.
Ironically, many white Christians even deny that the churches' persisting racism these days exists. When asked, most of them say that the data is being collected from people who are “Christians in name only.”
Perhaps, it is time for retrospection so that racism could be tackled in a better way.
Final Thoughts
The prevalence of racial prejudice in white Christians these days is endangering all other communities, especially the Black ones.
The hypocrisy is so intense that they often try to defend it with the Bible, which leaves most people silent.
Since I am a theologian, I know how these “white moderates” are destroying the church’s sanctity, defending their cruelty with the Bible.
If they continue defending it with the Bible, it is probably time for the 14th Amendment in the Bible as well.
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Unpopular opinion but i feel like dasha hasn't said or done anything someone like idk, john mulaney or jimmy carr wouldn't say? Every tomgreg person I like hates her so bad, but I find her interesting... I like hearing people who I can't tell if they're mean or not. I'm in the position of shipping tomgreg, liking dasha, being 10 days sober and sleeping on a mattress on the floor
have you actually looked into criticisms against her at all? because i don't know how you could've gotten the idea that "she hasn't said or done anything someone like john mulaney wouldn't say". also it sounds like you're conflating people's opinion on dasha as a public figure with succession fans' feelings towards comfrey as a fictional character, when they have nothing to do with each other. or—people might dislike comfrey because she's played by dasha but nobody who knows what they're talking about only hates dasha because they think she got in the way of a ship
dasha redscare has been a piece of shit well before she joined succession, and people criticizing her for it didn't just start a of a sudden. her entire brand is stirring up controversy for the sake of self promotion, and this has ranged from being at best in poor taste to at worst giving the appearance of her genuinely endorsing alt right ideologies. her point of pride for red scare is that it embraces the grey area within conflicts, but by toeing the line of the far right under the guise of hearing out both sides, all they have managed to do is give bigots access to their platform of fans (the most notable of which being Alex Jones because they actually had him on the podcast, but its common for her and the people she associates with to be seen interacting with nazi sympathisers and crypto fascists because they think its funny to say they're doing so ironically)
I'd reccomended you read this summary of the politics of who she associates with
warning for an instance of nazi symbols in that article, in which dasha is seen with an ss flag. the most abhorrent example of her history of embracing the offensive because the controversy generates free publicity is that she sent in those photos herself. after the site updated the article to include the images, she revealed that she intentionally sent them in, knowingly associating her public image with nazi iconography, and laughed about it.
the same author posted a follow up to the entire ordeal that summarizes better than i can exactly how hypocritical and absurd it is that so many self identified lefists feel comfortable embracing the far right as long as its done 'ironically', as if its something worth laughing over.
finally: here's a few more articles
Red Scare’s Real Offense Is Nihilism
What is Red Scare and Am I Exempt From Caring About It? A Brief Guide to the Podcast World’s Laziest Provocateurs
These ‘Dirtbag Left’ Stars Are Flirting With the Far Right
about why this isnt an isolated incident of an annoying internet micro celebrity but rather indicitive of the way alt right ideologies are able to infiltrate leftist spaces and are a danger to progressive movements by pushing the idea that you can call yourself a leftist without giving a shit about any of the actual framework of leftist politics, and doing so makes you immune to any criticism and means you no longer have to be held accountable for misconduct.
so yeah, regardless of what you think of comfrey as a character in the vacuum of the succession universe, the actress dasha nekrasova is an pathetic voice in the field of political commentary and what she stands for is shallow and built on a lack of compassion and the fact that she got a trophy for being a part of the succession ensemble as if she has any claim over the series' success is fucking asinine, and it's infuriating that she's been put in front of such a huge audience of viewers that she can promote her shitty podcast to.
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Okay but I would LOVE to here your heretical opinions on Padame if you ever want to share them or any of your other views on star wars prequel characters. Your character analysises are INCREDIBLE and really fun to read <3
Oh boy, are you sure about that?
Well, the ask has been made so here, we, gooooooooooooooo!
Padme’s one of those strange characters who appears as one thing but in actuality is quite different. Because she appears as the first thing, and it’s something people really like, most people accept that at face value and if she’s not always consistent--well, she came from a series of screenplays written by George Lucas.
Padme comes across as a very noble, kind, and courageous character who is also quite politically savvy. At fourteen, against all odds, she saves her planet from invasion when the Senate did nothing, secured herself an ally in the chancellor (nevermind him being secretly Palpatine), and even after relinquishing her title as queen remains a major player in the senate for years and is seen as enough of a threat to warrant several assassination attempts (one so bad she has to be guarded by Jedi and sent home to Naboo for several weeks).
And I’m not saying she’s not any of these things. Padme is very courageous, is one of those odd politicians who... believes she stands for what she believes in (more on this later), and has a remarkable political career.
However, she’s also romantic to the point of being completely and utterly delusional, self-centered, and frankly a little nuts.
(Yeah, you knew you were waiting for me to say something terrible, WEREN’T YOU?!)
Right, so what’s wrong with Padme?
Well, if you look closely at a few of her choices, the ones that never seemed to make much sense, then you can look at her other choices and... Well, it all sort of comes together.
That’s right, I’m talking about “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith”.
Attack of the Clones we have the very lackluster and strange romance of Anakin and Padme.
On Anakin’s end, his infatuation with Padme makes a lot of sense. She was part of the party that rescued him from slavery, she was very kind to him, and was the prettiest girl he’s ever seen in his life. Ten years later, always having harbored a crush on her memory and keeping it alive through whatever news he hears of her, she’s grown into a very beautiful woman and Anakin is by chance introduced back into her life. I get why Anakin falls head over heels for Padme, I’ll get more into this later and how their relationship has some major issues (aside from the obvious), but I understand why he marries this girl out of nowhere even when it could get him thrown out of the Jedi. (As an aside, since this is more of a Padme post, I think Anakin was spurred on in part also by the death of his mother and his massacre of the Tusken Raiders. Anakin’s life was flipped upside down in a very short amount of time, one of his great emotional ties is suddenly gone, and I think he has this internal crisis that culminates in him deciding to marry Padme. Without this, he and Padme may have become lovers, but I don’t think he’d marry her).
On Padme’s end... it’s a little less clear. Anakin has grown into an attractive young man, yes. Take out all of George Lucas’ dialogue, and maybe Padme finds Anakin very charming. However, Padme secretly marries a Jedi she’s known for three weeks. Now, I’d be a bit more forgiving of this, love is love and we can’t always think rationally, but there’s some other things.
Unlike Anakin, Padme hasn’t been spending the past ten years romanticizing her memory of Anakin Skywalker. When they met in Phantom Menace, Anakin was not only five years younger than her, he was nine-years-old. To fourteen-year-old Padme, Anakin was not then dating material and was instead this poor boy in slavery. Which means while Anakin has build up justifying this rapid romance, Padme really doesn’t. What this means is that her romance with Anakin reads a lot more like a romantic fantasy. Cute dashing bodyguard shows up, saves her life, through contrived circumstances they’re sent back to beautiful Naboo where they spend time together, only cute bodyguard is a Jedi and can’t marry, which makes their love excitingly taboo!
Everything Padme does, before and after this point, lends itself to this overdeveloped sense of romance. Padme wants to be whisked away, wants to have this secret unsustainable marriage with a man who cannot be married, she’s in love with the idea of being in love. Given how little time she spends with Anakin, how little they really know of each other, I’d say she’s more in love with the idea of Anakin than Anakin Skywalker himself. And this isn’t a bad thing necessarily, or at least not a grievous flaw, however, that’s not all.
Padme chooses to marry Anakin knowing he murdered an entire village of men, women, and children. She marries him almost immediately after the massacre of the Tusken Raiders. Note, she does not learn about this later and have to come to terms with it, she is right there. She is on Tatooine with him and sees him go to do it and then return.
Padme doesn’t take it... particularly well, that said, she also seems to shove it under the carpet immediately. She, first, marries Anakin within days after this event. She second, never really has a “holy fuck, Anakin” conversation with him. And worst yet, she never confesses to anyone else. Padme is a hypocrite and willing to sacrifice everything she believes in, albeit I believe unwittingly, for her romantic fantasy.
She tells no one about what happened. An entire village was brutally massacred, those who are already poor and oppressed and have no voice, by a man who is supposed to be a protector of all people in the galaxy. I’m sorry, Anakin, but if Padme was who you think she is then she would have to tell the Jedi Order at the very least if not the Republic. Instead, there are no consequences, only Anakin’s descent into guilt and madness as three years pass with it festering in the back of his mind.
Padme does not stand for the poor, for the people, or for justice. She only does so when it does not conflict with her own interests, i.e. her actions regarding the invasion of Naboo. More, I do not believe Padme has the introspection to realize this about herself, she never realizes that not narking on Anakin was very very very bad.
Three years pass and she lives the whirlwind romantic fantasy that she and Anakin both want. They’re secret lovers/spouses, meeting up at the oddest hours of the day and... This is three years of this ridiculous affair. Three years to come to terms with the fact that something must change. And then the kicker, Padme gets pregnant, and this is where the extra delusional comes in.
The child should have been a signal of the end. There can be no more secret now. Padme is having a child, presumably out of wedlock, and even if space is very very very different from our society I imagine this would be quite the scandal that could even get her thrown out of the senate. I believe Padme mentions as much to Anakin. More, Anakin is no longer a lover, he is now a father. What’s supposed to happen now? They raise this secret child, instructing them that Anakin is only a father in private, never in public?
Anakin and Padme briefly flirt with the idea of Anakin leaving the order. Anakin even wants to do so, but it... never happens. Now is the time it absolutely should happen. Yes, Anakin’s a big part of the war effort, but he could at least start talking to the Order and they could decide if it’d be a slow or fast exit.
My theory, Padme’s too in love with the fantasy. Anakin leaving means he’s no longer a Jedi, it means he’ll come to Naboo, be unemployed and be around. Anakin visiting will no longer be this romantic, fraught with the danger of being found out, passionate, short lived event for Padme. It’ll become real life. He’ll be a real, ordinary man, she’ll be a real, ordinary, woman, and that spark of romance will be gone.
I don’t think Padme wants that.
Which is why, even with the child on the way, we see Anakin and Padme continue to play out this ridiculous secret lovers fantasy. And then, of course, Anakin goes insane off screen.
Padme is told that, once again, Anakin has murdered dozens of children. Of course, this is a terrible thing to be told and she can’t process it. She needs to find Anakin and confront him, but people always criticize Lucas here and feel it’s out of character for Padme to have run to Anakin in sobbing hysterics with no plan of enacting vengence.
Frankly, I think it’s very in character. She did nothing about the Tuskens, remember? I think at the end of the day, the murder of the Jedi children means very little to her. What hurts Padme the most is that the fantasy of Anakin she married is not real. The Anakin she married would never murder the Jedi children, betray the Republic, or do any of what he’s done. And I think Padme only has that strong, iron, will when she knows the world she’s in. With the Trade Federation, her stance was obvious. Her people were being oppressed, butchered, and invaded. In this case, the world she knew no longer exists.
The Republic is gone, perhaps hasn’t existed in thirteen years, as it turns out the senator who had always been her biggest supporter was a Sith Lord. The Jedi are gone, children murdered by Anakin while those in the field are picked off by their own clone soldiers. Padme’s world has fallen apart, and I think that makes it much harder for her to be the girl we saw in Phantom Menace. In time, perhaps, she would have joined the rebellion but... I do think Padme might have also given into despair.
So, yeah, that’s Padme for you.
#ask#anon#padme amidala#star wars#star wars prequel trilogy#anakin skywalker#anti anidala#anti padme amidala#are you sure you wanted this rant?
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Surrounded by You
Summary: Peter's always been a Tony Stark fan, and then later an Iron Man one. When he started collecting all of the memorabilia, he never imagined he'd be engaged and moving in with said man. What do you do when you have enough stuff to make a shrine to your husband-to-be and still haven’t told them?
Read here on AO3.
Many thanks to @the-mad-starker for betaing. Also enjoy the gift!
“Why is there no social convention on what to do when you have a small shrine’s worth of memorabilia for your fiance,” Peter groaned as he and Ned packed up yet another box of Iron Man collectibles. Peter had started collecting stuff about Tony Stark after he had read articles on the man’s latest works. Then, after Iron Man, Peter had collected that too. There were 12 years worth of collectibles, carefully packed in boxes and bins for his move to the tower.
May was finally taking time for herself now that Peter had finished college and was officially engaged with Tony. Which meant they were finally saying goodbye to their Queens apartment. May would be moving into a different apartment in the tower and Peter would join Tony in the penthouse.
“I don’t know, dude, but you probably should tell him before he’s opening the boxes to help you unpack,” Ned said. “Either that or rehome it to someone that would love it like you do.”
“I can’t just get rehome it, Ned,” Peter said with a sigh. “This is 12 years of memories, like the souvenirs from the Stark Expo and our field trip to SI and just– everything.”
“Then you’re just going to have to suck it up and tell him,” Ned said, patting Peter on the back. “Don’t worry, he’ll probably think it’s cute or something. He’s your fiance, after all.”
“You don’t understand, Ned,” Peter groaned. “He’s never going to let me live this down.”
“So? It’s not like you don’t have access to footage of him in the lab hitting the wall while testing Iron Man suits and stuff,” Ned pointed out. “Isn’t that just normal couple things? To have the dirt on each other?”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re right,” Peter said with a wry grin. “He’s still going to tease me about it though.”
“Probably but so does MJ, so you’ll be fine,” Ned reassured him. Peter nodded and then got back to work packing. The movers would be by the next day, but Tony said it was always better to pack the important stuff yourself.
***********************************
With the rush of moving and seeing May off on her trip, Peter had forgotten about his collection and the conversation he needed to have with Tony. At least, until the man found the boxes, just as Ned had predicted.
“Hey babe? I’m not sure where you want to put these,” Tony called from the stack he was working on. They had decided the fastest way would just be to unpack a few boxes together each day.
“Put what?” Peter asked, his eyes widening as he recognized the box Tony was standing in front of.
"Oh just a very respectable sized Iron Man collection," Tony said with a smirk.
"Technically, it's a Tony Stark collection," Peter couldn't help but retort, even as his face burned.
"Oh, it is now?" Tony asked, stepping close and brushing a bit of Peter's hair back. "And how does one make a Tony Stark collection?"
"I-I have the old articles from when you did the interviews about Dum E and some of your other inventions," Peter said, his blush darkening. "And I kept any articles or reports that talked about SI. Because I've always thought Tony Stark had a brilliant mind, even if Aunt May said I shouldn't copy his behavior."
"She's right, definitely don't do what I did," Tony said. Peter looked up, half expecting to see Tony's mischievous look on his face but instead the older man had a soft, fond look, and Peter smiled at him.
"Yeah but it got better after Iron Man," Peter said, grabbing Tony's hand and laying his cheek against Tony's palm. "And you've always been a good man. Just a bit misguided and lonely."
"You always think the best of me," Tony said, his voice quiet.
"And you always think the worst, which is dumb," Peter said firmly. "Tony Stark is a brilliant man and I don't regret spending 12 years collecting his stuff."
"12 years huh?" Tony said with a snort. "That's dedication."
"Right? Pretty impressive if I do say so myself," Peter said, trying to cover his mortification. He hadn't meant to admit just how long he'd been collecting for.
Tony fell silent for a moment, lost in thought while looking at one of the Iron Man figurines.
"Do you trust me?" Tony asked after a moment.
"What? Yes, of course I trust you," Peter said, a little off balance with the sudden change of topic.
"Let me put something together for you with your collection. I promise it won't be tacky or anything, but this way you can keep your memories safe."
Peter's heart melted, and he internally wondered how he could ever have thought Tony would tease him for this.
"Alright, I'll leave it to you."
"Good. It'll take a little for me to set up but it will be totally worth it."
*********************************
Peter forgot all about Tony’s plans as school started again and he focused on getting settled in. The boxes had been whisked away and Tony hadn’t said anything other than things were going when Peter asked. So Peter was off guard when Tony said he had something to show him after dinner one night.
“Why after dinner?” Peter asked. They were already in the lab and pretty much all of Tony’s surprises happened here.
“You’ll see,” Tony said. “You’re going to love it.”
Peter groaned but let his fiance have his fun. The man was entirely too prone to mischief when bored but at least anything with Peter would be safe. The same couldn’t be said when Tony would pick other people to amuse himself with.
Dinner flew by as they debated the latest set of products they were developing for SI, and soon, the dishes were cleared and leftovers put away.
"Alright, come on, this way," Tony said, tugging at Peter's arm like a little kid in a candy store.
Peter followed, chuckling a bit but otherwise not saying anything.
"Close your eyes," Tony said as they got close to one of the spare rooms. Peter rolled his eyes but did as he was asked. Tony led him into the room, pushing Peter towards the center before stepping back and saying, "Ok, open them."
When Peter did, he gasped with delight. Tony had transformed one of their spare bedrooms into a proper collectors room. The articles Peter had so painstakingly kept were framed and hung on the walls in a timeline that displayed all of the major SI inventions that Tony had a hand in. It even included new articles and the feature piece with him and Tony on the cover for their environmental work. The Iron Man figures were stored in glass cases, each with a little plaque stating their year and what model/event they were from. Peter realized there were a few new additions here too. Models that had been too expensive or too hard for him to find had been added as well, along with a selection of Spider Man figurines.
Peter walked the whole room twice, marveling at the love and care Tony had put into the room. The older man had even left space on the shelves for new pieces to be added. Peter stopped on his second circuit of the room in front of his Iron Man mask from the expo.
"Did you know, I was wearing this the first time I met you," Peter said softly as Tony came up behind him. "It was the expo where the drones went nuts and I was there wearing my mask and homemade repulsor gloves, and I just faced it down and raised my hand just like you would. Right before it could fire, you swooped in and shot it."
"I said 'Nice work, kid' and then flew off," Tony said with a groan. "That was you? Of course it was you, look who we’re talking about. You were ridiculously brave and stupid even then."
"Hey, I think of that day fondly. How many people have had Iron Man save them and give them a compliment," Peter teased. "You kept me safe, even then."
"I'll always keep you safe," Tony promised, hugging Peter tight.
"I know," Peter replied. "And I promise not to point non working weaponry at evil drones. I'll make sure to use the right tools next time."
Tony just snorted, then pulled Peter in for a gentle kiss.
"I love you, and it is so humbling to know that I hold your regard," Tony whispered to him. "You make me a better man."
#tony stark/peter parker#starker#dorks in love#khalixa writes#mads made me do it#fanboy peter#engaged#Peter's tony stark collection#Fluff#nothing but fluff
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Chapter 13: An Understatement
Warnings: blaster fire and descriptions of battle, mentions of injuries, Mando gets pretty hurt and the reader is a wreck (as usual)
Author’s Note: Enjoy Chapter 13!
Mando’s POV
All Mando could think about was you.
Did you protect the child? There’s no way you leaked their info to the Empire and betrayed them, right? Were you dead?
Somehow, the third option scared him the most.
As if this could not get any worse, Moff Gideon opened his mouth yet again.
“I have just received word that you seem to have a very valuable asset on your side,” he said, and Mando knew exactly what he was getting at.
He was referring to you.
Mando’s mind raced a million miles a minute. The Empire were after you, and they had to know you had the child with them. You could hold your own, he knew that, but against an entire regime of soldiers?
Mando knew you would rather die than get the child caught, he would do the same thing, but he wanted you alive. That’s all he wanted.
“It’s ironic, really,” Moff continued. “You put your trust in the Empire to get away from the Empire.”
Moff Gideon could insult Mando all he wanted. He could insult his religion, his creed, his past, but something about him referring to you as “the Empire” when you had worked so hard to get away from it rubbed him in all the wrong ways.
You had helped Mando start to put his violent ways aside, but you weren’t here now, and Mando wanted to kill the Moff where he stood.
“It’s time you face the fact that she will return to where she belongs. My side. I hope her betrayal does not hurt your feelings too bad,” Moff said, and Cara scoffed.
Mando’s last button had been pushed.
“She didn’t betray us, Cara,” he said sternly, and Cara rolled her eyes.
“Oh, so you’re on her side? The Empire’s side?,” she responded, and Mando tried to keep his cool.
It wasn’t really working.
“We are on the same side,” Mando snapped back. “It’s time you realized that.”
You would not betray him. If you were any other person in the galaxy, Mando would start to give up now. But you showed him, in the very brief time you were together, that even people with the worst pasts can still have good hearts.
You made him feel like an idiot. Like a joke. He hadn’t genuinely cared for a person since his parents, but then the kid came along, and then you came along. It’s like the galaxy was showing him perfect prizes, but the game was impossible to win.
But the very worst part of it all, was that Mando was willing to try.
What had you done to him?
Your POV
To say this day did not go as planned was an understatement.
One second you are running for your life, the next you are being scooped up by a metal hand. It happened so fast you barely even had time to register you were lifted off the ground and placed onto a speeder bike.
Once you finally did register what had happened, you immediately thought it was the Empire’s doing, so you turned around and aimed your longspear at the driver.
“Please don’t,” the droid responded. “Me being dead would make this much worse for you.”
The nurse droid, you thought to yourself. From Kuiil’s house!
You were in such a haze of mourning and sadness those couple of days, you barely remembered meeting the droid. You even forgot it rode on the ship to this planet!
You relaxed a bit and lowered your longspear, smiling internally at the thought that a piece of Kuiil was still alive, but you didn’t put your guard down.
You hadn’t put your guard down in days, so it’s not like your overall body language changed that much.
You made sure the child was ok, and once your head finally cleared, you realized Mando was trying to reach you again.
“Kuiil, Y/N, somebody come in.”
The droid picked up the comm device before you could get it, and responded in a very monotoned voice.
“Kuiil has been terminated.”
That ought to make Mando feel better, won’t it, you thought to yourself.
You were going to take the comm device out of the droid’s hand, but you froze when you heard Mando’s tone of voice speaking through the comms again.
“What did you do?” he asked, and you swore you could hear the venom dripping from his mouth.
It always surprised you how scary Mando could really be when he tried.
“I am fulfilling my basic function,” the droid responded.
“Which is?” Mando asked.
“To nourish and protect.”
With that statement, the droid sped up the bike, and you held the child in your lap. He looked up at you with confused eyes, and you could tell he was asking why you weren’t going home.
“We are going to save him little guy,” you said with a stroke to his ear. “We will be home before you know it.”
You smiled lightly to yourself, and before you knew it, the speeder bike was roaring through the town and taking out every trooper in sight.
Blaster fire surrounded you and you tried to focus on what was ahead.
Mando was trapped…. But where?
Finally, you squinted your eyes and saw a regiment of soldiers ahead, and you knew Mando and the rest of the team were trapped inside the building.
“There!” you yelled, pointing to Mando’s cage, and the droid turned you and the child around for protection while he continued to fire.
It was slightly disorienting at first, because you honestly didn’t expect that to happen, but you felt better about the child’s safety.
This droid is no dummy, you thought to yourself. Kuiil did a good job.
Your heart pulled slightly at the thought of Kuiil, still laying out in the desert, but he would get his proper burial.
You just had to make sure Mando didn’t get one of those first.
The droid finally slowed down, and you took the opportunity to jump off the speeder bike and dive behind a pillar.
You got the child situated in your arms well enough so he could be protected, and started making your way out of your hiding spot.
You knew you couldn’t fight with the child in your arms, that’s just stupid, but you did reflect blaster shots from the troopers and took as many out as you could.
You had to start making your way to Mando somehow, but out of the corner of your eye, it seemed Mando was coming to you.
Mando charged out into the open with Karga on his tail, and he fired at will. He kicked and punched the troopers who were close enough to him, and you couldn’t help the smile that graced over your face at the sight of him.
You couldn’t see it, but Mando was smiling too.
You stuck close to the buildings surrounding you, slowly making your way around to where Karga was, but the chaos was insane. You could barely see where the shots were coming from, let alone where you were sending them.
You looked around to find some other way, but what you did see was way better.
Mando was running to a huge cannon, and you watched him rip it off the tripod and start firing it at the stormtroopers.
Your hopes were on the rise.
You saw a dark black death trooper place a detonator on the wall of Mando’s former cage, and you panicked when you realized Cara was still in there.
You started to make your way over there when the explosion hit, but you were far enough away so that you didn’t feel any wave from it.
You continued to make your way over to her.
Your senses were going so crazy, that you didn’t even feel Moff Gideon enter the scene.
What you did feel, however, was the pain Mando felt when the Moff fired a shot directly into his helmet.
It hurt like hell, and you heard Mando cry out in pain.
You turned back to where Mando was, and you saw him take aim at Moff with his canon.
This is it, you thought. Moff Gideon is dead.
You wish you hadn’t been trained in the force so well, because the very next thing you felt was the pride in Moff’s chest when he realized how to take Mando out.
Your eyes widened and panic struck you like lighting.
Moff is gonna kill him.
“Mando,” you screamed, but it was too late.
Moff Gideon had already fired at the generator next to Mando, and you had no choice but to dive for cover. You shielded the child with your body, and you were lucky enough to not feel the effects of the explosion.
But Mando felt it all.
When the dust cleared, you saw Cara dragging, his body back inside while Karga and IG-11 followed her in.
You didn’t care about anything in that moment. And if you would have known merely weeks ago that you would run across a battle field with no armour and a child in your arms, you would have smacked yourself silly.
But you did it anyways.
You made it to the door right before it closed, and you stopped in your tracks when you almost ran right into Cara’s gun.
It was pointed right at you.
“Get out,” she said, and you raised the hand not holding the child in surrender.
“Cara please,” you plead. You could see Mando laying on the floor behind her, and your heart was breaking.
He was badly injured. You could feel it.
“You can kick me out as soon as you’d like. I promise. Just let me see him,” you ask.
The tears were starting to cloud your vision and you tried not to let your voice crack. You didn’t want Cara to think you were trying to manipulate her.
But your Mandalorian was dying behind her.
“I promise,” you say, and she finally lowers your blaster.
“Thank you,” you respond, letting a breath out of your mouth as you do it, and you run to kneel beside Mando.
Of all the pain you’ve experienced in your life, you had learned a lot about it. You had learned that you personally deal better with pain when you have something to squeeze in your hand, like a pillow or the arm of a chair. You’ve learned that there are people in the world who enjoy making others feel pain, and no matter how many times you try, you just can’t understand why. You’ve learned that bacta shots work wonders for physical pain, but mental pain is almost impossible to numb.
But worse of all, you’ve learned that watching people you care for in pain is the worst pain in the world.
And this one hurt.
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@leahkenobi @pinkninja200 @farfromjustordinary @440mxs-wife @bookloverfilmoholic
#din djarin#din djarin fluff#din djarin imagine#din djarin x reader#din djarin x you#mando#the mandalorian#the mandalorian fanfiction#the mandalorian x reader#the mandalorian x you
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this song is stuck in my head, thanks to tiktok. this ficlet correlates (ish?) with my two previous pieces of stephen brainrot.
.
"That's not your place to decide," arms crossed, she stared Stephen down with all the forces of nature behind her, like an iceberg, all sharp edges, and incoming avalanche.
Stephen stood equally frozen, blue eyes as piercing as the most hard-working icebreaker. "No," his voice thundered, echoing between the rest of the team who watched the spectacle with little more than amusement. "And that is my final word."
It struck a chord within her, it was obvious. From the way she straightened in her spot to the way her fingertips dug into the softness of her arms, her body pulled as taut as a bowstring. "You are not my boss, you are not my father," the last word spoken with a smirk; she was openly mocking Stephen. "Some nerve you have, giving me orders."
The golden embers sprung to life in his eyes fully, fingertips shooting tiny little sparks flying over the table. Magic that the rest of the team pretended not to see - because, well, it wasn't like they could do anything about it and Loki was obviously enjoying the circus.
"I will lock you up, if I have to," the calmness in Stephen's voice was deceptive. "It's for your own good. You are not trained to be in the field."
That makes her laugh almost hysterically. "I am not trained?.." She trails off, shaking her head to clear the venomous, malicious joy. "Baby, I am a woman. All we have been taught is to appeal to men, from the day we wear our first clothes to the day that we die, all covered in flowers and make-up as we're quite literally decaying," there's a hidden rage in her words; she leans in, catching Stephen's wide eyes.
Natasha whistles, quietly, and Wanda shuffles in her place, looking awkward and uncomfortable. It isn't lost on them how most men blank at her statement. Stephen's no different. He remains quiet.
"So I will get this sonuvabitch without even really having to try. Because men think that they can make decisions for me, and I'm pretty," her words seep bitterness, like the strongest gin, they can all taste it in their mouths.
Loki's grin slides off his face like a Christmas ornament that has been hanging out for far too long.
She's drop-dead gorgeous in her dress. The fabric glistens in the candlelight, and she cocks the gun of it right at their unsuspecting target; he falls for it, of course, and they are forced to watch the exchange of pleasantries thorough several cameras; listen to the man's blatant flattery through several mics.
The worst part of it isn't concern for their un-official teammate; there was always a mutual understanding that she wasn't, didn't want to be quite one of them. She wasn't even a baby agent, just a civilian that knew a little too much.
Having to see her genuine personality, the, at times, obscenely joyful words melting off her tongue directed at someone else, at an enemy - it feels like walking on broken glass, like dragging bare feet through burning coal. They're all jealous. Natasha hasn't stopped grumbling about how she's laying it on too thick but deep down, everyone knows that the spy is just impressed by the sheer amount of charisma their girl seems to be in possession of.
"I'm not a fan of classical music, it's boring," she says, convincingly, playing the part of a slightly-above-average college student.
"What do the youngsters listen to these days?" The target asks in a patronising tone.
Somewhere in the background, Tony makes a quiet, sharp inhale into his mic. He'd said the same thing to her not too long ago. But it was different.
Instead of shooting the target a sarcastic grin and showing her teeth, she softly sings, coos. "Baby, I'm a gangsta too, and it takes two to tango," the song is vaguely familiar and a few of the team snort. "You don't wanna mess with me, mess with me," their target had leaned in, eyes darting between her plush lips and her cleavage.
"That's cute," the man breathes, but it's all wrong.
Stephen glows. A golden glow surrounds his bailed fists, a cloud the size of Manhattan hanging over his head like a lead curtain. Not one person can blame him, though.
She briefly upturns her nose, scoffing, and if they knew her even slightly a little but less, they would have been forced to give a standing ovation to her fake-flirting skils. Except the scrunch of her nose is quite obviously disgusted and her body language has that subtle undertone of wariness, as if she is trying to figure out how to inconspicuously shake off a piece of shit stuck to her shoe.
The mission is a success. They apprehend the man in his hotel room, Natasha waiting for him leisurely reclining on the bed and Loki holding onto a seething Stephen for his (and the criminal's) life.
She grins at them, all canines and blood-red lips. Stephen shudders, looking away, going through the motions of opening a portal just for the sake of doing something. Her shoes lay abandoned by the bed, bare feet padding on the carpet and into the portal, greeting the emptiness of the common room with a stretch.
Quick fingers make the work of removing the jewelry; its empty shine forlorn and discarded. Diamonds or just stray rays of the sun caught in the prismatic glass surface, they bear no meaning. The tight peplum dress gets hiked up to mid-thigh, the intricate hairstyle crumbles into endless waves of unruly hair, cascades over her shoulders.
Stephen watches with the portal shrinking behind his stiff form. The light of the hotel room on the other side makes a for a halo around his lithe form.
She admires it, the flow of his ironed dark robes, the graceful posture. Not without the eyebrow arch, however. She waits.
His eyes rake over the expensive dress, now crumpled and misshapen, the lipstick, now smeared from the bottle of some fancy soda; the way her hair stands up in all directions. Stephen can so nothing but shake his head at the provocation.
"Baby, I'm a gangsta too, and it takes two to tango, you don't wanna mess with me, mess with me..." She drawls mockingly, a challenge they both know he won't be able, doesn't want to resist.
#stephen strange x reader#lana del rey lyrics#i felt the tension writing this#i just want to be a cute brat
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Rayaari headcanon - in canon for rivals to friends (...to something more?)
(inspired by this lovely anon)
Namaari doesn't really have any friends. She has acquaintances for sure, and soldiers who will follow her into battle without question. She has political advisors who can speak to her for hours regarding trade policies, and the average Fang citizen, who will bow deeply whenever she passes. She has the little Fang children, who chant 'Princess Namaari!' when she visits, and palace staff, whom she knows all by name. But a friend..?
She never had a truly close friend as a child, which makes it all the more difficult when she meets Raya and thinks 'what if?', despite knowing what she is about to do. After her betrayal, after breaking Raya's heart, Namaari knows that dream of friendship will never happen, but in the moment, it is truly sincere.
For at least the first five years following the return of the Druun, Namaari catches sight of Raya regularly during her scouting missions. They often share barbed and vicious words, although there is a familiarity to their exchanges that makes Raya ironically feel more like an old friend than any of the acquaintances surrounding her back home.
When she doesn't see Raya for more than a year, she fears the worst - that Raya has been turned to stone. It's strange how attached she's gotten to their run-ins, but there are bigger problems facing Fang, so Namaari attempts to accept this fact. It festers in the back of her mind, however.
She can't help but feel relieved when she discovers the Dragon Scroll has been stolen from her room...Somehow, she instantly knows this is the work of Raya.
After the Druun, after the return of the dragons, after...everything, Namaari looks across at Raya, and sees a person who has been in her life for so long, and yet she knows so little about. Her feelings for Raya are complicated - guilt and remorse for what she has done, a fondness and familiarity for this girl who has been her supposed rival for so long, and a tiny corner of her heart that always asks 'what if?'
She watches Raya reunite with her father, and can't help but accept the fact that she did this, she separated Raya from her family and from her land. She's surprised that Raya still seems to want to speak to her, let alone welcome her to this reunion. But representatives from all the lands are there, and this first day of freedom from the fear and despair of the last six years brings with it a sense of renewed hope.
'The bright celebration of the day has calmed as dusk fell, and now people are conversing in different groups. Raya is sat on a low wall overlooking the courtyard, and Namaari can see her legs swinging aimlessly. She sits beside her for a while, gathering up the courage, and then says 'I'm sorry.'
Raya turns to look at her, but says nothing, her eyes shadowed from the lights shining out from behind them. 'I'm sorry for the pain I've caused you in life, for all of it,' Namaari continues. 'I'm sorry you trusted me and I let you down. I'm just...sorry.' She offers no excuses, but wishes her words would be more eloquent instead.
She allows the silence to settle over them, allows Raya to think. And then, as she stares into the darkening skies above, she feels fingers brush against her arm. 'I can't say for certain if I can forgive it all,' Raya admits. 'But I accept. And maybe...maybe we can start afresh?'
The subtle offer of friendship is handed to Namaari, but some days she struggles to take it up, unsure if it is really her place to do so. She's the reason behind many of the terrible things that have happened in Raya's life, and it's easy to think that Raya deserves to be free of it all - free of the memories, of having to see Namaari, of having to speak to her.
But she sees Raya more and more often as the lands begin to work together and help each other rebuild, and Raya sends a private smile her way whenever they run into each other.
And so, she tries...she listens attentively when Raya shares a story, or complains about something that happened to her that day. She picks up small ways to help Raya be in a better mood when she is feeling melancholy (talking a lot, to distract) or overwhelmed (sitting with her, in silence), or even angry (taking her to the sparring grounds). She brings small treats with her to Heart after she's been on missions to the other lands, which invariably make Raya light up in excitement to taste them.
There is still a certain level of awkwardness or hesitancy between the two of them for the few months. Namaari is slow to share anything herself, picking through her words carefully in case she says the wrong thing and offends. Raya often babbles away for a while, before having moments where she stops and looks mortified - clearly forgetting there is another person there to listen to her stream of consciousness.
Raya's popularity has also changed. She shifts from being a lonely figure in the word (and the guilt inside Namaari burns whenever she remembers her role in why that is), to someone who is the savior of Kumandra, the bringer of dragons. People whisper about her exploits, and are eager to get to know the Princess of Heart. Namaari sees how special Sisu, Tong, Boun, Noi and their families have become to Raya, like an extended family that can join her and Chief Benja.
In her darker thoughts, Namaari reflects on how she will never be able to join that aspect of Raya's life, feeling as if she's caused too much damage and hurt to deserve such a role.
Nine months after the return of Kumandra, they are walking side-by-side through fields near the palace in Heart, when a group of small children run up and start demanding attention from Raya. 'Is this her?' one demands loudly, and they all turn their small faces to stare at Namaari. 'Is this the Princess?'
'This is Princess Namaari of Fang,' Raya confirms. 'The warrior who helped save Kumandra, and also my best friend.' She entertains the children for a while longer, and then they both watch as the group runs off for the next adventure. 'Best friend?' Namaari finally manages to ask, trying to make her voice sound teasing, but it comes out slightly croaky instead. Raya bumps her shoulder against Namaari's arm. 'Sure you are.'
Three months later, the lands have gathered together for the first annual celebration of Kumandra's rebirth. Heart is hosting again, this time in order to show off the progress made since that first day, when the aftermath of what had happened six years prior needed to be cleared away.
Namaari finds herself sitting back on the same wall, next to Raya as they watch fireworks explode in the sky above. The rest of the crowd is entranced by the pretty lights, but Namaari is tuned into the woman sat beside her as she leans closer. 'I was wrong,' Raya half-whispers in her ear as more fireworks explode overheard. Namaari turns to stare at her, quirking an eyebrow in response. 'I could forgive you,' Raya explains. 'I forgave you a long time ago.'
And then Raya's hand are on her face, and they are kissing sweetly
#raya and the last dragon#rayaari#ratld#raya#namaari#raya and namaari#raya x namaari#raymaari#Some issues to work through always with these two#but they also understand each other#friiiends to rivals to friends to lovers#always the complicated path#but we love that#alllll the headcanons
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