Tumgik
#the necklace alone does the job
crowned-ladybug · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Trying to shake my brain into letting me paint what I'm supposed to be painting resulted in a completely different thing getting finished first
I still don't understand what the hell his face is doing
18 notes · View notes
rene-darling · 4 months
Text
WHEN- you store things inside your boobies
...very obviously fem reader lmao, you store things in the middle of your chest...
...lyney...xiao...itto...wanderer...
Lyney
You're showing lyney a card trick that learned.
But no matter how much he tries to figure out where you hid the card he just can't get it.
He never usually does this but he's just too curious!!
So he's been asking- no, begging for you to tell him how you did it and where you hid the card!
After much pleading and you repeating "a magician never reveals her secrets" you finally spill.
You tell him to watch carefully and he nods.
His eyes widen and his mouth drops open as he burns red.
You reach down your shirt and pull out a card from in between your boobes
"I- you uh..ah.." he's stuttering, not sure what would be an appropriate response to this.
You just laugh "see, this is why I said you can't do this trick, your tits are too small darlin"
"h-hey- making you blush is my job! Not the other way around!"
he's used to making snarky remarks or dirty jokes he can't believe he fell for this!
Xiao
Xiao recently gifted you some adeptus beads
They were meant to ward away evil spirits and demons and keep you safe when he's not around
However, he's noticed that he can't seem to find you wearing them around your neck, so he decided to ask you about it
"y/n where are you keeping the beads I gave you? I didn't give them to you just for you to leave them somewhere to collect dust."
He huffed offended you wouldn't keep the charm on you.
You already insisted on not calling his name when in trouble so you should at least keep the beads on you!
You just looked at him amused telling him you had them on you but he insisted you showed them to him, so you did.
Pulling down the neckline of your shirt you reached your hand in to grab said beaded necklace.
His mouth dropped once you showed it to him and his face bloomed "i- y-you..you have no respect for the adepti!" he vanished after yelling that likely to hide his blushing face, and his boner
Itto
Recently you've hid one of ittos little purple bugs right before his little match with some kid
He's frantically searching for said bug, insisting that he has to take that one or he won't win! Not that he will either way
"y/nnnnn! Are you sure you haven't seen my little bugger! I really need it!" he's whining like a little baby!
Feeling bad for him you finally relent telling him you might have an idea of where his beetle could be
"REALLYYYY!!! You're the best babe-" you tell him to watch carefully as you pull your shirt down and from in-between your valleys crawled out the purple beetle you had hidden
His mouth dropped his eyes looked like they would pop out of their sockets (imagine gojo when he looked at megumi)
"not fair y/n! Why does the beetle get to stay there and not me!" he's thinking about it being unfair,
Then the next second he wants to see if the beetle would fit in between his tits,
Of course, they do. I mean have you seen his tits? He's very proud of that fact
Wanderer
Nahida recently sent the both of you on an expedition together
He acts like he's not happy but deep down he's happy to be traveling alone with his beloved
Recently you both stopped at a shop to buy something but he had forgotten his mora back at camp.
He looked towards you waiting for you to pay, he narrowed his eyes suspiciously at you when you looked at him amused and asked "you sure"
"just pay." well, he insisted, so why would you deny?
As soon as you reached down your shirt his mind short-circuited
You pulled out a mora pouch and handed some mora to the shop keeper like it was nothing and then again stuffed the pouch down your tits.
Grabbing the things you started walking away as wanderer stood there just blushing violently
Looking back you yelled "are you coming or not darling?" he snapped out of it following after you
"did you really have to do that in fucking public?" he huffed in embarrassment, walking back home with a boner is annoying
5K notes · View notes
luvjunie · 7 months
Text
— less is more
pairing: e-42!miles morales x fem!reader
contains: some tears, a little misunderstanding but a fluffy ending
summary: miles makes quite a bit of cash from his jobs, and with his love language being gift giving he often likes to spend a lot of it on you. however, you didn’t grow up with much, and this makes it especially hard for you to accept such expensive things from him without feeling overwhelmed. wc: 1,224
a/n: based off this request! some people might find this reader easier to relate to so i definitely wanted to write it
Tumblr media
Gifts were something that came with the territory of dating Miles Morales. Big bouquets, flashy accessories, shopping sprees at the mall, and probably every single stuffed animal he’d ever caught you eyeing whenever the two of you went out. If you so much as looked at it, it was on your fire escape the next morning. At this point, you had so many on your bed that you were starting to run out of room to sleep.
And you knew he meant well, and you tried your best to enjoy it the way you imagined you should but it was all so foreign to you. Your life was much different before you met him, and it was more along the lines of nervously checking your bank account to see if you had enough cash to buy a five dollar starbucks drink to ‘treat yourself’, or if you’d have to wait till next week’s paycheck for blended coffee with some whipped cream on top.
Most of your clothes were hand-me-downs from your older siblings, or duds you’d secured from the Salvation Army a few blocks down on the colored-tag sale days, and that was the way you liked it. Humble beginnings is where you came from and humble was the way you intended to keep it.
So now as you stared down at the small jewelry box in your hands, Tiffany & Co embellishing the top in silvered letters, trepidation began coursing through you at the size of the box alone. Anything that came in a tiny package such as the one you were holding was bound to cost more than anything you’d ever managed to buy yourself. You realized you must have been lost in thought as you sat gawking at the untouched gift, because your boyfriend’s voice sounded like it was underwater the first few times he called out to you.
“Baby?”
“Hm?” You blinked, looking up at Miles from where you were seated on his bed to see him leaned against the wall, arms crossed.
“Go ‘head and open it, don’t leave me hanging.” Miles joked, brows bunched slightly in confusion.
“Oh— right,” you laughed half-heartedly. Swallowing hard, you gently pried the small box open with hesitant fingers to reveal the prettiest diamond necklace you think you’ve ever seen. Light glinting off the encrusted jewel, Miles waited with bated breath as he watched your hand tremble towards it, a choked inhale catching in your throat as you felt the weight of the pendant alone.
“Well?” he asked quietly.
“How much was this?” Your throat felt tight; uncomfortably so, like the air in the room suddenly wasn’t the kind you were meant to breathe.
Miles glanced to the side for a moment, then stood up straighter. “I mean, I paid for it if that’s what you’re asking...”
“How much was this, Miles?” Voice trembling when you spoke, you asked again but louder, and this time he knew you actually wanted an answer.
Confused because he didn’t take you for the materialistic type, he racked his brain for the memory of the total the clerk had read out to him and scratched his forehead.
“Like… three hundred and some change…maybe? Probably four? I don’t remember. Why does this matter?” He let out a peeved sigh, eyes widening as he watched your shoulders start to shake.
“Ay, mi amor, ¿que pasa? (what’s wrong, my love?)” Miles asked gently as he rushed to sit next to you, taking the jewelry box from your loose hold. He looked down at it disappointedly, lips pursing at the necklace he’d spent so long picking out. He thought you would’ve loved it. “You don’t like it? I can get you somethin’ better—“
“No, Miles. I… It’s perfect.” Warm tears rolled past your waterline and you wiped them away in a rush, aggravated that you were even crying in front of him about something like this. How could you explain yourself without sounding ungrateful or confusing him even more?
Miles licked at his dry lips as he tried to think of what to say. He was usually so good at reading your body language, but this time he was completely lost. You could see it on his expression when you looked at him that he was having a hard time understanding what was going on, and it only made you cry harder.
“No entiendo… (I don’t understand…)” He set the box down next to him and took your hands into his, head lowered to try and meet your averted gaze. “I’m lost.. If it’s perfect, then what’s wrong?”
You inhaled a wavered breath, the feeling of his thumbs rubbing the backs of your hands serving as encouragement for you to go on.
“I just…” taking a breath, your shoulders shrugged weakly. “You spending money on me like this, I— It feels like I’m using you. You should be spending your hard earned money on things for yourself, or… saving it for better things, not spending it on me.”
“Money is nothing to me when it comes to you.” he denied immediately.
“I know, and that’s the problem.” Your lips trembled, but thankfully you were able to prevent more tears from coming.
“Y/n, I—“
“Just, please. Let me finish.” You pleaded quietly, looking up to see him slowly nod at you. “I love you, Miles, and that means I love everything you do for me as well. But I’m not used to things like this.” you looked in the direction of the overturned jewelry box. “It’s a lot.”
Silence filled the space around the two of you. You felt incredibly guilty for even bringing it up, it was never your intention to make him feel this way. There was an energy shift and you could sense him regressing back to the version of him that once didn’t know how to express his love for you.
“I’m sorry.” he murmured simply. He didn’t know what else to say, he didn’t even understand, but he offered it to you anyway.
“No no no, Miles,” You guided his doleful eyes back to you with a hand on his cheek, your tone sincere. “I love the way you love me, really, I do. You don’t have anything to apologize for. It’s not your fault— I’m just not that kind of girl and I don’t know if I ever will be. But the way I grew up and the things I’m used to have nothing to do with you, and everything to do with me, okay?”
He frowned slightly. “So… No more gifts, then?”
You shook your head. “Giving me nice things is how you show your love towards me, I know that, and it would be unfair for me to take that from you. I’d be crazy to not appreciate how you’re always thinking of me wherever you go.”
Chewing on your thoughts, you contemplated the best way to give your answer.
“Okay, so it’s like this,” you sat up a bit. “You could give me a rock, and I’d cherish it like it was the best thing in the entire world, simply because you gave it to me. What I’m trying to say is how expensive the gift is doesn’t matter, all that matters is that my wonderful—“ your head dipped to meet his avoidant eyes. “caring, and thoughtful boyfriend got it for me. I don’t care about the money, I only care that it came from you.”
Miles brightened a little at that, and started to put things together after your explanation. “So, I can still get you nice things, but… less is more?”
A melancholic smile touched your lips before you pecked his cheek. “Less is more.”
He picked the small jewelry box up from the bed. He understood you completely now, but was still a bit bummed. “Does that mean I have to return this?”
You immediately shook your head. “Of course not, baby. I love it, and I think it’s beautiful. Just keep what I said in mind for next time, okay?” He nodded and you turned your back towards him so he could put it on for you.
“Good, cause I kinda lost the receipt.” Miles smiled coyly at the slightly shaky laugh that sounded from you as he unclasped the necklace, draping it over your chest and fastening it.
You peered down at the gorgeous piece around your neck, gently gracing over it with your fingertips. Your heart warmed at the thought of him picking it out for you, how he spotted something this beautiful and needed you to have it. You had to admit, it was absolutely stunning and you didn’t think you’d be taking it off any time soon. Even if the price of it had almost sent you into shock, you were more than grateful to have a boyfriend like him.
“Thank you, Miles. I love it, really.” You faced him once again with your confession, the sincerity laced in your tone accentuating the adoration in your eyes. Your hand caressed the apple of his cheek, it raising when he smiled contently and leaned into your palm. “But I love you, more.”
1K notes · View notes
earthtooz · 16 days
Text
baby, would i still be your lover?
fluff with angst, 1k words, gn!reader celebrates their bday bc it's my bday today, reader likes pearls, childhood friends to lovers (?), ooc!al-haitham, conflict and resolving it, al-haitham's grandmother is featured.
Tumblr media
The best way to describe yours and al-Haitham's friendship is... unusual.
Having known him since childhood, you cannot say that he has changed much over the years. When your parents brought him to his grandmother's house to hopefully give the young boy a chance to socialise with something other than academic journals, befriending him was not easy.
He dodged all conversation you tried to make, ignored all attempts you made to play tag with him, completely evaded your childlike innocence. He always was more mature than everyone else his age, or rather, always acted like it.
Most unusually, he had an uncanny streak of pushing everyone out of his life, and you were not immune to the imaginary lashes he strikes, eventually removing yourself from his life too out of frustration.
At seventeen, when an unforeseen tension had lodged itself between you and al-Haitham, it deteriorated your friendship. One day, he had taken his opinions too far and sharpened his words too much, you left the House of Daena tearful and too wounded to see him for a while. It creates a distance between you two, one that lasts for three years.
At twenty, you visit al-Haitham's grandmother for the last time, and she makes you promise something. She pleads you to take care of her grandson, that for years, he has been hoping for the rekindling of your friendship, and she asks of you to make his wish come to fruition.
You reach out to him a month later on impulse. He invites you to dinner and drinks at Lambad's Tavern, and for the preceding week, it mentally drains you to think about being alone with him again.
He is already there when you arrive, sitting with crossed legs and arms at an empty booth. Showing up later than him gives you time to admire how he has grown. Now freshly turned twenty-one, time has served him well. He has grown into his sharp, taut features, and the way his grey hair falls accommodates his features well, and his build is impressive for a scholar. You've heard from others that he's graduated with the highest honours, and has already been offered a job at the Akademiya.
When the conversation begins, you're relieved to find out that nothing has changed from when you were both seventeen and fumbling teenagers.
As the only person who has stayed in his life since his youth, there is a bond that somehow cannot be severed. You apologise for what happened at seventeen, he does too.
As dinner passes, one thing becomes abundantly clear: al-Haitham does not need someone to 'take care of him' like his grandmother asked. What he did need, however, was his childhood friend that always knew how to push his buttons, and perhaps that was your way of 'caring' for him.
"Y/n." al-Haitham's broad figure looms over your desk, causing you to pause the scribble of words and numbers that you were in the midst of writing. "With your birthday coming in less than a month, I went to review our personal channel for gifts you'd like."
"Have you now?" You rest your chin on your hand, looking up at him through your lashes.
He completely ignores your question. "A sango pearl necklace? From Watatsumi Island? Is that your only desire?"
"I am easy to please," you shrug.
"Perhaps you misunderstand me. Is there no other gift that you'd appreciate?"
"Is a pearl necklace not possible?"
"One from Fontaine would be more achievable. Watatsumi Island, however, given our geographical distance and the fact that Inazuma is only just beginning to open up its transnational-"
"-So it's not possible? Even for the Grand Sage?"
"Acting Grand Sage, and whilst it is not impossible, I came to review with you possible alternatives for gift ideas that would provide the same marginal benefit."
"I suppose I could think of something else," you tap your chin. "One day I'll get my hands on those pearls, do you see the way they shine so clearly? You could use them just to fix your makeup! Cold to the touch and a clearer reflection are what make pearls high quality."
"How fascinating," he responds flatly and you pout. "In other news, it's lunch time now, and you promised you'd pay for my next meal at Lambad's."
You huff, compiling your papers together and clipping them together. "I was hoping you'd forget."
(As always, when the meal is said and done, he doesn't actually allow you to pay.)
A month later, when the clock strikes midnight on the day of your birthday, there is a series of knocks at your door. Unsurprisingly, you're greeted by al-Haitham's handsome face, now softer without the makeup he wears to enhance his features, but still beautiful nonetheless.
In his hands, he holds a gift.
"Happy birthday, Y/n." He declares, straight to the point, and hands you the box. "I hope it is to your liking."
The unassuming packaging only adds to your shocked delight when you see the contents inside.
"Sango pearls, from Watatsumi Island! You got me a necklace and bracelet set!" You squeal in pure excitement, treating the jewellery like fragile little things when you feel them. Cold to the touch, and you can see your reflection in them.
Pride shines in his eyes and a small smile pulls at his lips. He doesn't say anything except watch you freak out, satisfied with the hoops he had to jump through for this present.
"al-Haitham, I am so happy I could kiss you."
"I'd be happy to oblige."
The best way to describe yours and al-Haitham's relationship is unusual. You would do anything to get on his last nerve (without overstepping), and he would do anything for you.
Tumblr media
© EARTHTOOZ 2024, do not steal, translate, repost my fics and do not recommend my fics onto any other site.
484 notes · View notes
byunpum · 4 months
Text
Mama's Boy | Part 5
Tumblr media
Pair: Jake x neytiri x human reader (trio couple) x sully children's
Warning: cozy moments, conflict, family problems
Note: I hope you like this part, the next one is gonna be the final part...Thank you sooo much!! btw I recently opened a KO-Fi…. if you want to leave any tips or support I would appreciate it (it would help me to buy real coffee xD).
AVATAR MASTERLIST | Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6(final)
Tumblr media
The previous day's argument was very intense. Leaving the family in a very delicate state. Even you decided to sleep alone in a kind of bed you made. You were so upset with jake, you couldn't understand why he was like that with lo'ak. Sometimes you thought Jake was ashamed of lo'ak…ashamed that you were his mother. You had been sitting quietly in the marui all day, still feeling a little bad. You were taking care of tuk, the girl was by your side. Making a necklace for you, while she was telling you everything she did in the morning. "Love be careful…you can hurt yourself" you help tuk with the needle she was using. At that, you can see how jake enters the marui, he had a basket full of fish. Looking quickly at you, walking towards where he used to leave the food that had to be prepared. You decide to ignore him, and be playful with tuk.
"baby…can we talk?" asks jake, the man had approached you, sitting down next to you. You on the other hand were acting like he wasn't there. You look up, and sigh loudly. "Tuk honey, why don't you let mommy and daddy talk alone" you help the girl pick up her materials, and wait for her to come out of the marui doing some jumping jacks. You smile a little to see how happy tuk was, oblivious to what was going on. "Tell me?" you speak, looking at jake waiting for him to start talking. "Is it true that you are thinking of leaving? "jake looks at you, you could tell he was worried. It was too dangerous for you to go back to the jungle. The RDA was looking for Jake, and when Jake's name was on the line his whole family was involved. The months you had to be alone, you never left the lab.
"I see neytiri told you everything" you say, trying not to make eye contact with him. "Love…we can fix this" Jake touches your hand, but you push him away. "Jake it's not with me that you have to fix things, it's with your son. Your behavior towards him…it's terrible." You speak, trying to hold back your tears. "Y/n you're misunderstanding things I" jake speaks, but is interrupted when you turn around and are now looking directly at him. "Jake… I have a question for you, what does neteyam like the most?" you ask. "A-ahh he likes hunting, he likes to ride his ikran. He's also a great talker," says jake.
"Okay, now tell me what lo'ak likes?" you speak up, knowing jake wouldn't answer quickly like the other question. Jake gets nervous, looking around for a moment. "He likes…he likes being with his brother. " jake speaks timidly, watching as your eyebrows draw together in anger. "Lo'ak likes to ride around and investigate things. He loves to practice with his bow, he likes to spend time with his sister kiri and all he looks forward to is his father telling him he did a great job" you were already very annoyed.
"I know…" jake speaks softly. Shaking his head, look embarrassed. "Jake your sons are not soldiers…they are children. Children who need love and attention from their father. Neteyam is not the only one here who needs to be trained. Lo'ak too, he needs you to treat him with respect and love. What does it cost you to do that?" you speak, watching as jake pulled his knees up to his chest. Becoming more like a little ball. "I just…want them to be strong and …. I'm afraid they'll be weak and won't be able to survive this chaos we live in" jake tries to explain. And yes, he was a little bit right. But that didn't justify the preference he had over neteyam. "Jake, I know all that" you wave your hands all around you. "This is all chaos, I know this isn't our home. I know what we're going through, but what does lo'ak have to do with it? Why can't you treat him like you treat kiri or neteyam or tuk? What did he do to you?" you speak, getting up from the floor. You had to walk, because the rage was consuming you. You hated it when jake tried to avoid trouble. Telling you smith answers to distract you. "He didn't do anything" jake follows you with his eyes.
"I feel like sometimes you just treat him like that, because he came from me. Because he's not completely na'vi." You had tears in your eyes, you didn't know why you were so sentimental. Even though this situation always broke your heart, you wanted lo'ak to feel loved. "Y/n never say that… this has nothing to do with you being his mother" jake in one swift movement. He takes your arm, to pull you closer to him. "I wouldn't ask for another mother for my son, you are an excellent mother" jake lets his head lay on your chest. He is silent for a moment, you didn't want to keep arguing with him. You loved your family, you loved jake, you hated being upset with him. "Lo'ak is how I was…he is so much like the stupid jake who betrayed and endangered people he cared about. That stupid jake got innocent people killed" jake speaks, you knew he was talking about grace. She had been so important to you.
You take jake's face in your hands, pulling his face up so he could look you in the eye. "But that stupid jake was the one who saved a whole clan, that stupid jake is strong and brave. That stupid jake was the one I fell in love with" you speak softly. Tears streamed down Jake's cheeks. "I want you to be the person that stupid Jake needed, for lo'ak. He needs you…" you speak, feeling jake hug you. You both stand there for a moment. "I don't want him to make mistakes that he'll regret later," jake says. "He'll get in trouble if you don't help…try to be a better parent to him. That's all I ask of you" you start walking away from jake. Picking up some things tuk had left on the ground, you go to look for the girl.
"Do you think you would have been happy if instead of me, tom was the one in this body?" jake asks you. You knew this was tormenting Jake. You had been tom's girlfriend just before he went to earth. And there he was murdered. When jake came to the RDA and took tom's place. For you it was a big shock, Jake was just like your ex-boyfriend, but so different at the same time. You had to admit that Jake was the only thing that kept you sane those months. Not to mention the relationship that formed between the two of you. Jake allowed you to see neytiri again and get closer to the clan. Jake could be a fool, but the fool you liked the most. The rest is history.
You turn around before leaving the marui, tears in your eyes. "Believe it or not, I am very happy…but I wish your insecurities didn't affect this family" you speak, walking out of the marui leaving jake alone with his thoughts. You liked that Jake opened up to you, but you would like to see him try to improve his relationship with his children. Because it wasn't just lo'ak, neteyam was also affected by jake's treatment. You pause for a moment, taking a deep breath and wiping away your tears. You calm down a bit, and start looking for tuk. Luckily for you, the girl wasn't far away. She was sitting with neteyam playing.
You approach the children, see how they look at you and their eyes light up. "Hello" you greet them, sitting down next to tuk. "Look my love, you forgot these things" you hand the things to tuk. The little girl thanks you, she didn't dare to come back for them. "Thank you mommy" tuk says, now sitting on your lap. You can feel neteyam's eyes glued to you, he knew things were not good between his parents. The news that you were likely to leave had destroyed him. Neteyam could be strong, and always be by Jake and Neytiri's side. But you were his refuge, where he could go and be a child again. If he was to be judged for a second. "Mom?" neteyam speaks to you, you look at him quickly. "Mmm?" you are helping tuk, when you feel neteyam sit down next to you. "Is it true that you are going to go and leave us?" neteyam speaks waiting for you to answer. "Mom? You are going to leave us?" yells tuk. You sigh, you had gone through a pretty strong disappointment a few minutes ago and you wanted to control yourself.
"Where did you hear that neteyam?" you look at the boy, you thought you had argued in private, but you guess your screams were too loud. "We heard it by accident, I promise" neteyam gets nervous, but you hold his hand to calm him down. "mom if you go…can I come with you?" neteyam was getting sentimental, you caress his face a little. Laughing a little and tapping your arms to give him support. "I'm not going anywhere…but if I did. Of course you can go with me." You speak, watching as neteyam pouts. You joke a little, in order to change the topic. You didn't like them getting involved in adult issues, you knew they had been through a lot. At such a young age.
It wasn't long before you started to feel a little dizzy. You tried to hold your child tighter in your lap, but you felt like you were about to throw up. Never having felt like this before. You push tuk a little so that the girl slips out of your lap, placing your hands on your stomach, you were in a lot of pain. Neteyam noticed this, and quickly began to help you. "What's wrong mom?" neteyam holds your shoulders. The vomiting was something you couldn't help, and you swore you were emptying yourself alive. neteyam held you so you wouldn't mess yourself up. "Mom!" the boy whines, he has never seen you like this before. It was so strong that as soon as you recover, your sight goes blank.
Tumblr media
You start to get up, you could hear some voices around you. You didn't open your eyes yet, but you could distinguish them. One was from neytiri, and the other was from ronal. You could feel some warm things on your body, and some parts were wet. You start to become conscious, opening your eyes a little at a time. "Ma Y/n!!!" neytiri sounded so happy, she had a nice smile on her face. On the other hand, ronal was moving away from your body. You could tell she looked exhausted. "What happened?" you try to get up, but you barely had any strength. "You fainted again and neteyam warned us" neytiri explains, stroking your hair. Something seemed curious about neytiri, she was supposed to be worried and she looked so happy. "You are sick…you need to rest and take medicine" said Ronal, the woman was already looking in some containers for the herbs to prepare the medicine you had to take. The more you woke up you realized that you were in the marui that Ronal used to take care of the sick na'vi. "And the children?" you look weakly at neytiri. "They are with Jake, don't worry," Neytiri speaks, settling in closer to your side.
You rest a little, but you feel how Ronal starts to remove the towels that were warm before. Drying your exposed skin a bit. He had been using compresses and hot towels to try to get you up. "The medicine is a little strong, but it won't hurt the baby," says Ronal, holding out a jar of carracol. Your eyes widen in surprise, what the hell was this woman talking about, pregnant? This woman is crazy. "Baby? No, I'm not pregnant" you speak, now you had recovered all your strength. You were surprised. You look at neytiri, but she had a look that was worrying you. "ney" you push her a little, you needed her to speak. "Y/N I thought you are…since the symptoms" neytiri can't contain her joy. "Plus we did an abdominal test and we could feel something" ronal looks at you, handing you the drink. You are confused, and now you were about to vomit at the news. How could that be possible, you were sure you weren't pregnant.
Hey, you and Jake had been together. Well…ever since you had joined the clan. You two hadn't kept your hands off each other. Well… the three of you. You were sure neytiri knew you weren't pregnant. The idea of having a baby doesn't enter your head, not now that the atmosphere is so tense. You take the drink, you notice how Ronal is watching you. Making sure you take all the medicine. "Ahh it's disgusting" you complain. Listening to neytiri laugh, you liked seeing her like that. It's been a long time since you've seen her this happy, it was genuine happiness. "Well…I'll let you rest here. I'll come by later and check on you" ronal gets up from the floor, and walks out of the marui. Leaving you and neytiri alone. You were exhausted, but you can feel neytiri touch your stomach. Causing you to look at her with surprise. "We will have another baby ma y/n" neytiri smiles. "But when?" you had many questions, when you found out you were pregnant with lo'ak it was because norm did a test on you. But now it had been a natural test that na'vi women did to find out if they were pregnant. "I think it was the day at the beach" neytir laughs a little, blushing. You start to remember and you want to curl into a ball. You were scared, really scared.
"Hey, don't be scared. I'll be right here with you. And we've been looking for this for so many years," says Neytiri. And she was right, it got to the stage where the pregnancies were more about the two of you. They were very intimate between you and Neytiri. You wanted to be in on the whole process, including the excitement of being pregnant. It would build on the bonds that would be formed with the children. "I know…but this news is very unexpected…and even more so now that I want to kill Jake," you say. ""You haven't talked?"" asks neytiri, she wanted this to be resolved. "Ney…I need him to be a better father to lo'ak and you know I'm right" you speak. Neytiri is thoughtful for a moment, she knew you were right, and she would support you in whatever decision you make. And even more so at this moment. "Well, I'm going to let you rest. Ronal said he would come later. I'll come later." neytiri wanted to break the news to everyone in the family. A baby was big news for her, and she knew everyone would be happy. Giving you a soft kiss, and another on the palms of her hands. You swear you saw Neytiri jump a little in happiness, her tail wagging from side to side and the smile on her face was beautiful. You lay back on the comfortable bed and closed your eyes. You had to rest, otherwise you were going to die of madness.
"Ok, but you have to cut it like this" jake was with lo'ak. The man had decided to go looking for his son after the argument he had with you. Inviting him to go fishing, obviously this was a strange thing for lo'ak to do. But spending the afternoon with his father was making him very happy. Lo'ak was cleaning the fish as jake told him to, looking carefully at the instructions. "And what do I do with this?" lo'ak points with disgust, at the fish's stomach. "Remove it…that's disgusting" jake mimics lo'ak's wince as they both laughed. It was a very nice moment for both of them, jake had to admit that he had missed a lot of moments with lo'ak. While lo'ak and jake were busy, kiri, neteyam and tuk were sitting somewhere in the corner of the marui talking and playing with each other. When they noticed how their mother came in with a happiness. "I have good news," said neytiri.
"How is mom!!!" lo'ak gets up quickly, running to neytiri. "she's fine…but" neytiri pauses, walking over to jake to sit next to him. "What's wrong, she's supposed to just be sick at her stomach" jake says. The last he heard from you, neteyam had taken you to see ronal. And that you had a lot of stomach pain. "It's not a bad thing…come here everybody, come on!" neytiri makes the signal for everyone in the family to come over. Everyone sits around, neytiri looked so excited. "This is so big for this family… Y/N is expecting a baby" neytiri sounds the news, jake gets so excited he hugs neytiri right away. "No way!!!" shouts kiri hugging tuk and the little girl was already very excited. "Another sully to the family" says neteyam, excited. But apparently the news had not gone down well with everyone, "WHAT?" Lo'ak literally screams, capturing her parents' attention. "Lo'ak what's wrong?" neytiri is now confused, this is supposed to be a big surprise.
"Why is mom going to have a baby? She can't have one!!!" Lo'ak was getting a little upset. This was a jealous reaction, and neytiri and jake could tell. "hey lo'ak I need you to calm down" jake tries to calm him down. But the boy stands up in annoyance, getting out of the marui. "Lo'ak needs to stop having tantrums, he's too old to be having these dramas" kiri says. Neytiri taps her knee, kiri complains. Everyone in the family knows how lo'ak was with you, everything that had to do with you affected lo'ak twice as much. Jake was about to get up and go talk to the boy. But he feels neteyam's hand stop him. "Dad…I'll talk to him" says neteyam. Jake looks quickly at neytiri, who signals him to let his brother go get him. Neteyam gets up from the ground and leaves the marui to look for his brother. It doesn't take him long to find him, he was relatively close. Lo'ak was sitting in the sand, he could tell he was crying.
"Little brother…you're jealous" says neteyam. Listening as lo'ak whined. "What do you want you idiot!!!" lo'ak grudgingly replies to neteyam. But neteyam ignores him, laughing and sitting down next to him. "I know you must be feeling jealous," says neteyam. Lo'ak rolls his eyes in white. He didn't want to be messing around with neteyam, sometimes he could be very annoying. "You know…when you were born I felt a little jealous, but when tuk was born I must admit I couldn't help but feel very jealous. Our moms were with her all the time and didn't pay attention to us. " said neteyam. "Yes, but my mom has always paid attention to me" lo'ak says sounding a bit smug. Neteyam laughs, he had to admit that his little brother looked adorable. "And she's always going to love you, I'm the big brother. And having to share everything…but the love mama has for you is special and no one will ever change it," Neteyam speaks. Lo'ak is silent, neteyam stands up and taps his brother on the shoulder. Stepping away to let him think for a moment.
That same afternoon…
You were already up, and it was getting dark. You had to admit that you were pretty bored. Ronal was taking longer than usual. You wanted to be home, you felt a little better. And now that you knew you were sick and the pregnancy symptoms were making it worse, you felt somewhat reassured. Although the news of your pregnancy was not something you were very happy about. Sure, you were happy to have a baby. You had waited for this opportunity for so long, but it had to happen right now. Just now when the situation with lo'ak was very active.
You were so wrapped up in your own thoughts, that you didn't notice when Ronal entered the marui. The woman can see that you were a bit lost. "The news of the baby surprises you, doesn't it? Because it does to me," says Ronal, putting some things she brought to refill. You look at her a little startled, and became a little alert at the tone of Ronal's voice. You weren't friends, and ronal tolerated you and treated you well because tonowari told her to. "Yes…it's a surprise," you say. Trying not to sound awkward. "It seems kind of unreal to me…that one" Ronal scans you up and down. "Human is pregnant, I have doubts even with your supposed child" ronal speaks, she could be quite direct. She didn't mind hurting other people's feelings. "Excuse me?" you get more comfortable in your bed. "Don't take this the wrong way…but it's weird" ronal chuckles a little. You decide to ignore her, you didn't want to argue because you still felt a little bad.
Ronal prepared more medicine for you to take in the next few days. Supposedly some food had made you sick. After several days you are supposed to be left with only the symptoms of pregnancy. She might be a little mean, but she wouldn't hurt you. You get up carefully, leaving Marui. Ronal all this time had been making uncalled for comments about you and your child. But at no time did you want to answer him, you didn't want to cause trouble. "Hey by the way" Ronal starts talking. You stop, and look back.
"I heard you wanted to go back to the jungle…and you know what" Ronal laughs again to herself. You didn't understand what you had done to this woman, but she seemed to hate you. "I think it would be best for your family. Even for that child…lo'ak. When you weren't here, we barely heard the sully. And as far as I can see all you've done is mess everything up around here," Ronal says, turning to continue working. You sigh, you weren't going to give her the pleasure of her seeing you cry, getting out of that marui as fast as you could. Back to the familiar marui, you couldn't help but get Ronal's words out of your head, maybe she was right. Maybe they were better off without you. And now you had one more problem.
P.s The reason I wrote that the reader was pregnant is that the original request asked for two children. Lo'ak and the baby on the way. Second, the reader is still upset with jake, but I wanted to fix things up a bit. Because I want it to focus more on the relationship between lo'ak and his mom.
Tag: @baybaybear1@hoodiepandaninja16@teyyyteyyy@anika-rose-walker@victoria2054@raviolisblog@jessi-dan@neteyams-wh0re@jimfiqs@bitchykittenconnoisseur@chershire23@holynightnacho@danilezilla@thepotatoislost @esposadomd @ratchetprime211 @juneonhoth
863 notes · View notes
chlix · 8 months
Text
to do what i can do
Tumblr media
pairing: seungmin x f!reader
genre: fluff, light angst
word count: 6.1k
warnings: insecurity, light angst, exactly three (3) uses of "y/n"
synopsis: after a conversation with hyunjin's girlfriend, you grow worried that you aren't putting enough work and attention into your relationship. seungmin dissuades you of this idea immediately.
a/n: literally never done this before so sorry if this formatting isn't standard. also ignore any spelling errors pls <3
Seungmin kisses you goodbye every morning. It’s like clockwork: he puts on his shoes, pours his coffee in a mug, kisses you goodbye, and is out the door. Both of you are routine-oriented people. You like schedules and organized silverware drawers. Ever since you first got together, Seungmin has been kissing you goodbye whenever you part ways, and nearly a year later that hasn’t changed. It’s sweet that he always remembers, and the fact that it’s practiced doesn’t make it feel any less sincere.
This morning is more of the same. You get up before him, as always, and put the coffee on. You check your emails while your breakfast cooks. Seungmin emerges just as the food is done (too late to actually eat it, as always) and goes to get his coat and shoes from the door. He loops back around to put his coffee in the cup you washed the previous night and leans down to where you’re sitting at the table to kiss you lightly on the lips. It’s so rote as to be unnotable, but it makes you smile anyway, your day instantly brighter.
“I love you,” you call after him, as you always do, and Seungmin waves as he leaves, throwing a “Be safe!” over his shoulder.  And then the door closes, and you’re alone.
In a few minutes, you’ll go to work at your office job. Later, you’ll come home and make dinner. At some point in the day, Seungmin will text you to let you know if he’ll be coming home or not, so that you’ll know if you need to make one portion or two. You normally make two anyway, and just leave the second wrapped up in the fridge. If worst comes to worst, you don’t mind eating the leftovers. It’s far more horrible in your mind to not have food ready for him when he is home. It’s not that Seungmin expects food from you. He’s expressed multiple times that he can buy food on his way home. But you like cooking for him, and lately you don’t get much chance because he’s so busy. You want things to be perfect when he’s home because the time you get together is precious. You’re not obsessive about it, or anything. You’re not “playing housewife” as your friends sometimes say. It’s not a crime to want to take care of your boyfriend.
Right now is a bit of a hectic period, and you haven’t seen him much for a while. You were surprised he even had the time to come home the previous night, although of course you were grateful. When he does come home, he gives you his undivided attention, like you’re the only person on earth. It makes the wait worth it. And he kisses you goodbye every morning because he loves you, and you can feel it on your lips all day, and it assuages the loneliness you might otherwise feel.
Today you have lunch with Ahrin, Hyunjin’s girlfriend. You have good relationships with the partners of all the boys, but you’re a bit closer to Ahrin, maybe because you two are so similar. Ahrin is quieter than the other women, and is more content to observe rather than participate. She’s witty and sharp-tongued, but still kind, and has a gentleness to her that makes her easy to open up to. She calls you up and complains she hasn’t seen you in a while and asks to have a meal with you that afternoon. You haven’t been feeling work very much, and you do miss her, so you agree to take a late lunch and meet her a cafe near your office.
Ahrin is radiant as always, and you make small talk about your families before devolving into complaining about mundanities: annoyances at work and the price of fruit at the supermarket. As you’re speaking, you notice Ahrin is wearing a dainty gold necklace that you don’t recognize, and cut yourself off to ask about it.
“Oh, this? It’s Cartier. Hyunjin bought it for me,” she says, bringing a hand up to touch the small pendant like she’d forgotten she was wearing it. “He’s on this kick about couple’s jewelry.”
“It’s beautiful,” you say, and you mean it. It suits Ahrin’s softness and sophistication. He may have bought it because it was Cartier, but he clearly put some thought into it besides the designer label.
“Thank you,” she says, genuinely pleased. “I try to wear something he bought me whenever I go visit him.”
“Are you going to see him today?”
“I just come from there, actually. He took my credit card in his wallet, so I had to go get it back.”
“Oldest trick in the book,” you say.
Ahrin rolls her eyes. “I know. But it’ll work every time. I can’t help that I need it to go about my day.”
She doesn’t sound the least bit bothered. Ahrin and Hyunjin have been together for two years, and it’s a trick he’s pulled ever since they started living together, the “accidentally taking one of Ahrin’s things to work.” You’ve asked her before why she doesn’t confront him about it, but she says that she thinks it’s cute how he keeps coming up with excuses to see her, and anyway, she also likes having excuses to see him.
You also think it’s cute, if in a more wistful way. Seungmin is organized to a T, and he’s never needed you to bring him something he’s forgotten or vice versa. In fact, you can’t remember if you’ve ever visited him at work at all. You don’t think it’s that strange, though. It’s not like he’s made a habit of showing up to your workplace. Also, you likely wouldn’t have the time even if he’d offered. It does dampen your mood a bit though, especially as Seungmin texts you in the middle of your conversation that he in fact, would not be coming home today, meaning you would have to eat dinner alone tonight.
Ahrin notices the dip in your mood as you set your phone back on the table.
“Bad news?” she asks.
You swipe the notification away.
“It’s nothing. Seungmin just texting me about how busy they are.”
Ahrin hums in understanding. “Well, what can you do. At least it’s not as crazy as it was a few months ago.”
“Isn’t it?” You’ve been seeing less of Seungmin than you had in ages, and you’d assumed it was because their schedules had been bordering on unbearable lately. But Ahrin looks confused at your question.
“I don’t think so. Busier than last month, yeah. But they’re not filming anything right now, so the schedule isn’t as rigid. Seungmin hasn’t talked to you about this?”
You feel embarrassed, somehow. “He doesn’t talk about work much when he’s with me. He likes to keep it separate.”
“That makes sense. You should ask him to share his schedule with you, though. What if you need him and you don’t know where he is, or when he’ll answer?”
“I know where he’s at, generally. He tells me if he’s traveling. I just don’t know the minutiae.”
“You’re allowed to know. You should, for your own peace of mind.”
It’s not that it hadn’t occurred to you to ask. Seungmin told you his whereabouts if you questioned him, and he even volunteered information every once in a while, so you hadn’t thought much of it. And you didn’t suspect him of cheating on you ever in a million years. You knew he had other hobbies and friends as well- a whole life outside you that you weren’t privy to and didn’t need to be. But was it possible you were being a bit too aloof about your boyfriends daily habits? Why didn’t he share what he was doing, if he wasn’t at work? Why didn’t you know?
“I’ll ask him,” you say. “You’re right.”
Ahrin smiles encouragingly, and the topic is dropped for other matters. The odd feeling in your stomach doesn’t settle, though, and by the time you’ve finished your day and sat down to eat dinner, you realize you’ve unfortunately lost your appetite.
Seungmin calls you the next day to say he’ll be staying at the dorm for several days, and you tell him okay, thanks for telling me, I love you, goodbye. After you hang up the phone, you berate yourself for not asking more questions. You’re his girlfriend. You should be care that he’s leaving you alone for days at a time, you think as you drive to work. Maybe he’d been waiting for you to ask what he’d be doing or pester him for spoilers about the group’s upcoming plans. Maybe he wanted you to pout and whine about missing him and beg him to come home. You’d never done any of those things before, but maybe you should be. Maybe he’d called you hoping you would do those things and had hung up the phone disappointed.
The central problem of dating an idol is always a scarcity of time. They’re always busy, and because they’re always busy, you as a partner need to have a life outside them that is full and fulfilling, and sometimes those two schedules conflict. You can go long stretches without spending meaningful time together, and it’s hard to cope with, especially when they’re within driving distance of you, but still inaccessible. You know, though, that a scarcity of time does not always mean a scarcity of attention. You’ve seen it in Ahrin and Hyunjin, in the Cartier necklace and the missing credit card, that Hyunjin thinks about Ahrin all the time, and Ahrin knows that he does, is thinking of him just as much if not more. She can languish in the thought that even if Hyunjin is not with her, he desperately wishes he was, and when she wears his necklaces and bracelets and $500 hair clips, Hyunjin knows she is also desperately thinking about him.
You and Seungmin don’t have a system like that. Seungmin isn’t in the habit of buying you expensive gifts, for starters. He’s frugal with his money, hyperaware that one day his youth and fame will fade, and he won’t have such extravagant income. You’re similarly pragmatic, and you’ve never resented him for this. And that’s not to say he never spends money on you. He buys you flowers and takes you on expensive dates. He bought you a new laptop and headphones without you saying anything, and your closet is full of fancy dresses that are each tied to a high class outing you’ve been on. For each one, he’d bought himself a shirt and jacket to match. But those aren’t things you wear every day to show off. They’re for special occasions, specific memories. There’s nothing you wear or carry daily that marks you as ‘his.’
And honestly, you’ve never really thought about yourself that way. You and Seungmin are together, and you live together (by whatever measure your living arrangements currently count as), but you’ve never longed to be “branded” in a way befitting a pair of earrings or an oversized sweater. You wear his clothes at home, but never out. You don’t feel the need to show up to his practices and recording sessions. You’ve never even asked if you were allowed. If Seungmin bought you a Cartier necklace, you aren’t totally sure you would wear it.
It hits you like a freight train when you put it all together: You don’t care enough about Seungmin. You’re comfortable with him, you feel like you love him, but you don’t care about him the way you’re supposed to care about him. You’re not involved enough. But then, the same goes for him too, doesn’t it? He knows what you do for work, but he rarely asks you about anything other than a cursory how was your day? He doesn’t pester you for anything, doesn’t ask you to visit him or stay up for him when he comes home late. Aren’t those things that he should expect from you as a girlfriend? Why doesn’t he care that you’re so obviously neglecting him? When he kisses you goodbye in the morning, is that because he misses you, or is that just a habit formed over these past months, a meaningless part of the morning ritual he couldn’t resist if he tried?
You feel caught in a lurch, unsure what to do now. Seungmin deserves better than you, clearly. He deserves a girlfriend who actually gives a fuck about his life. But maybe, if you start making up for it now, he’ll forgive the past few months of you being so terrible. He’ll realize that you are an attentive girlfriend, and that you do care about him and that you love him, and you can prove it, you swear, it took you a while to realize what was wrong but you’ve got it all straightened out now. 
You can change. You can fix this. You know you can.
-/-
The next time Seungmin comes home, you wake up first the next morning, like always. You go to put the coffee on, and you make breakfast, and you check your emails. Seungmin comes out, walks past you to his shoes and coat, and doubles back to get his morning coffee.
“Busy day today?” you ask.
Seungmin freezes in his movements, caught off guard by your question. He recovers quickly enough, and answers. “Not particularly. Vocal practice, some other things.”
“Oh, good. Do you think you’ll be home today then?”
Seungmin turns to face you, his cup abandoned on the counter, unfilled. “Is everything alright?”
“What?”
“Is something wrong? Do we need to talk?”
Oh god, it’s worse than you thought. Asking if he’s going to be home to eat dinner is enough for him to think something is amiss. Have you truly never asked him that before?
“Everything’s fine. It would just be nice to eat dinner with you, is all.”
Seungmin relaxes. He leans down to kiss you, but it lingers longer than normal, as if he’s savoring the touch, your attention. “I’ll do my best,” he promises. “I love you. Have a nice day.”
You absolutely blossom under his affection, the verbosity atypical for so early in the morning.
“I love you too. Be safe.”
“I always am,” he says, and presses another peck to your lips before pulling away. He finishes pouring his coffee, grabs his coat, and waves as he leaves. You sit at the table, vibrating with satisfaction. You’re doing it, you’re giving him what he needs. Maybe all hope isn’t lost for you two just yet.
Your sky-high mood follows you to work, and the day keeps getting better with the discovery of cupcakes in the break room. One of your coworkers’ kids just had a birthday, and they had way too much food left over. You take one back to your desk to nibble on while you work, and even the mundanity of your daily tasks can’t bring you down from how well this day is turning out. Around midmorning, it occurs to you that this is the perfect opportunity to do something else nice for Seungmin by bringing him cupcakes. They’re not filming, which means they’re not on diets, so he can handle a bit of sugar and frosting, especially if it’s a gift from you. You borrow a container from the staff kitchen to carry some cupcakes and decide to defer your own lunch to deliver them across the city.
When you get to the JYPE building, though, you realize you have no idea what to do. You’re fairly sure you’re allowed access; the other girlfriends pop in and out all the time. But it’s possible no one here recognizes you, since this is the first time you’ve shown your face around here.
Being spontaneous is cute and quirky, but standing around lost and embarrassed grows tiring within seconds. You give up and decide to text Seungmin.
Are you busy?, you send, standing awkwardly by the door and hoping security doesn’t throw you out. Thankfully, he responds quickly.
Not super. Do you need to call?
Actually I’m in the lobby of your building. Can you come down?
Typing, and then a pause. Then more typing. Eventually the message comes through.
Ok.
You can’t decode that at all. It strikes you for the first time that you may be bothering him by driving over here. You did ask if he was busy, though. And it stood to reason that if you had time for a 5-minute phone call, he had time to come downstairs and accept the gift you’d brought him. It isn’t intrusive. This is what people do for each other when they care about each other.
It only takes a few minutes for Seungmin to round the corner into the lobby. His face is creased in concern, even worse than he’d looked this morning, and he’s walking at a brisk pace to stand right in front of you.
“Hey,” he says. “What’s going on?”
You don’t know how to respond to his intensity, so you just hold out the container towards him. “I brought you cupcakes.”
Seungmin’s eyebrows furrow in utter confusion. “You…made cupcakes?”
“I didn’t make them. A coworker brought them in. But I remember you saying you liked cupcakes, and I had a free minute, so I thought I’d bring them over before they got finished.”
Seungmin accepts the box gingerly, as though it contains a nest of wild hornets, or lit sticks of dynamite. “You drove all the way over here to give this to me?”
Your doubts go from an inkling to a full-on tumult. “Yes, I did. I was just thinking of you…I thought you might like something sweet.”
You don’t mean to look dismayed, but Seungmin must clue-in to the fact that this isn’t the reaction you were hoping for. He shifts the box to one hand and laces your fingers together with his other.
“Thank you for thinking of me,” he says. “But you don’t need to go out of your way to bring me things.”
“It’s not out of my way. I had time.”
“Let me rephrase. You shouldn’t expend your lunch hour to bring me food. When are you going to eat now?”
“I’ll stay an extra half hour. It’s fine.”
Seungmin clearly isn’t satisfied with this. He tugs lightly on your arm, bidding you to follow, and you do, unsure of what else to do.
He takes you up a floor, and down a hallway to what seems to be a regular employee break room, where he gestures for you to sit down at one of the tables. You do, and he walks over to the fridge to get bottled water and brings back one for you, along with napkins and a knife from the drawer next to the fridge.
“If you aren’t going to eat lunch, you might as well share your spoils with me,” Seungmin says. He opens the container and takes out one of the cupcakes (and they are huge, to be honest, you kind of can’t believe they’re from a kid’s birthday party) and cuts it in half.
“Pick a side,” he says, and you do, and he carefully picks it up and lays it on a paper towel before sliding it towards you. He takes the other half, and you pick your desserts apart with your fingers. Seungmin tells an anecdote about Jeongin from their vocal lesson that morning. It’s…nice. You’re just spending time with your boyfriend, a quick stolen minute in the midst of your busy lives. The frosting is sickeningly sweet, and you find yourself reaching for the bottle of water without even thinking of it, and only later preen at the realization that Seungmin knew you would need to wash the artificial taste out and had brought you water preemptively. He knows you well enough to identify if something would suit your palette with only a glance.
Both of you don’t have much time to spare, so after fifteen minutes you wipe off your hands and clean off the table.
“I’ll bring the rest of these back upstairs,” he says. “They won’t last ten minutes once the others see them.”
“That’s fine. That’s what I was hoping for, actually.”
“And here I thought you brought these only for me,” he says, but his lips are curled up, teasing. He kisses you goodbye, like always, lips sugary-sweet and soft as cotton-candy. “Thank you for stopping by. I’ll see you tonight.”
Your heart grows three sizes. You’re on cloud nine. “Anytime,” you say.
That night you try very hard not to be an absolute freak about dinner. You cook nearly every day, so the cooking itself isn’t that special, but for some reason your usual rotation doesn’t feel good enough. Seungmin is coming home for the second day in a row, and you don’t want to reuse ingredients, or phone it in when you’d specifically asked him to come home. At the same time, a five-course meal is definitely doing way too much. You stop by the store on the way home and scan the shelves, before wrestling yourself into a compromise and getting ingredients for a meal you both enjoy, but you’re normally too lazy to bother after a long day at work. It’s nothing fancy, just time-consuming, but you’re in such high spirits that the labor doesn’t even feel harrowing.
Seungmin gets home a few minutes before you’re properly done, with the pot on the stove ticking down steadily as you wash dishes and spoons. Seungmin greets you as he walks in but vanishes quickly down the hall to shower and change into inside clothes. By the time he reappears, you’re all but done, and you’ve never been more satisfied with yourself as you dish the food into two bowls and set them on the table. Sure, maybe it’s “playing housewife” a little bit, but you don’t even care. If playing housewife is this rewarding, you might have to start doing it more often.
Seungmin raises his eyes as the dinner you prepared.
“Didn’t you complain that this is hard to make?” he asks. You shrug.
“Felt like cooking today,” is all you say. “No biggie.”
Seungmin sits down at the table, pushes his plate to the side, and looks directly at you. “Y/n. What’s going on?”
Anxiety shoots through you. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do. I’m not oblivious. You’ve been acting off all day.”
“Off?”
“Visiting me at the company? Cooking this fancy dinner? It’s not like you at all.”
“That’s not me being ‘off.’ I just missed you, that’s all.”
“Have I not been paying enough attention to you? Is that why?”
“No! I mean, you have. There is no ‘why’. Am I not allowed to miss my boyfriend?”
Seungmin looks distinctly unimpressed. “Nice try. Wanna go again?”
All your good humor from earlier is dissolving into your soup. “You’re mocking me.”
“I’m not mocking you.”
“I was trying to do something nice for you. I just wanted to spend time with you today. Is that so wrong?”
“It’s not wrong. It’s just unusual for you. When you told me you showed up at the company, I thought something horrible had happened, because you never visited me before.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“What doesn’t?”
“That I never visit.”
“Why would that bother me?”
All your anxieties are simmering near the top, threatening to boil over. “Because the other members’ girlfriends visit all the time. I know they do. They have security clearance and everything. But I never do. I don’t even know where you are most days if I wanted to visit you.”
Seungmin frowns. “You’re busy. You have a job you’re at all day, same as me. Some of the other members’ girlfriends work less or have other things going on.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” you mutter. “Maybe I have too much going on.”
Seungmin looks hesitant at this. “If you feel you need to cut back, I’ll support you.”
“Is that what you want? Do you think I should work less?”
“No, I don’t. That’s not my decision anyway.”
“But I just…” You’re cracking, you know you are, you can hear it in your voice- “I just want to be there for you more. I want to be attentive.”
“You are attentive. You’re there for me all the time.”
“I’m not!” It bursts out of you more violently than even you expected. Seungmin is taken aback, eyes widening as you finally break. “I’m so aloof towards you, it’s awful. I never know where you are, or what you’re doing. I never ask you to come home to me. I don’t stay up for you. I don’t visit you. Other girlfriends have bracelets or necklaces they wear for their boyfriends, and I don’t do any of that. No one would even know we were dating, based on how we are now.” You suck in a breath, reminding yourself to stay calm. “I just don’t even know what you get out of being with me. I don’t do anything I’m supposed to do, and you keep letting me get away with it. And I thought if I changed, and I started trying harder, maybe I could fix it before you realize that I don’t deserve you.”
You squeeze your eyes shut, humiliation and sadness making you feel dizzy and hot. Now that you’ve said it all out, it sounds ridiculous. It’s not as if you could fix a behavioral pattern with one good day. If your relationship really is rotten through, all you’ve done is draw attention to the problem and made it even worse. Contrasted with how you acted today, the past eleven months must seem downright hollow.
Seungmin sighs. “Y/n, look at me, please.”
You open your eyes and are horrified to see Seungmin looking absolutely mournful where he sits across the table. He looks so aggrieved, so weighed down, and a horrible rock forms in the pit of your stomach.
“First of all,” he says. “I don’t ever want to hear you say again that you don’t deserve me. It’s not true, and I won’t have you putting yourself down like that. You don’t decide what I deserve, I do. And I’ve decided you’re exactly what I want.”
You blink, confused at the turn of events. It’s a very Seungmin thing to say, yes, but in this situation, you didn’t expect him to double down on it so earnestly.
“Second of all, you’re not aloof towards me. I know you love me, and you care for me in your own ways. I also know you have a life outside of me that keeps you busy. I’m grateful for that. I would feel horrible if you spent a significant amount of your day just waiting around for me when we both know I can’t always be there.”
“That’s different,” you can’t help but interject. “You’re an idol. You can’t help that you’re busy.”
“You can’t help being busy either. Being an idol isn’t any more important than any other job. You have responsibilities too.”
You deflate, sagging in your chair. He takes this as license to continue.
“Third, I didn’t think you were the type to wear jewelry every day. If you want me to get you something, I can do that. I just didn’t want you to feel pressured to wear something just because I bought it and it was expensive. Someday, if we get married, you’ll wear my ring, and that’ll be enough for me.”
He’s right. You don’t usually wear jewelry every day, and you would feel bad about not wearing something he’d specifically bought you as a gift. You’re starting to feel more and more foolish as this conversation continues.
Thankfully, his itemized list ends there, and he leans forward, dark eyes fixed on yours. He doesn’t look angry, or upset, just focused. Leave it to Seungmin to mind-map his way through a relationship crisis.
“Can you tell me what brought this on? It’s unlike you to be insecure. If I’ve done something to make you think you’re not good enough for me, I’d like to know so that I can change my behavior.”
You let out a long breath, giving up the fight in the face of Seungmin’s rationality.
“I had lunch with Ahrin the other day. I was complaining about how you’re so busy these days, I rarely see you. Ahrin said you guys actually haven’t been that busy. It made me realize I don’t actually know your schedule, like what you do all day, much less outside of work. And I also realized part of the reason I haven’t seen you much is because I never ask to see you. You have no reason to spend time with me when it seems like I don’t even want you around.” Your voice trails off as you continue, shame sticking the words in your throat.
Seungmin hums, thinking. He lifts his hand up and stretches it toward you, your sign to extend your own hand so he can lace your fingers together. You oblige, and the contact settles you a bit.
“I have never thought for one second that you didn’t want me around. I don’t take offense to you not knowing my schedule either. I know I don’t talk about work much. It might be a flaw of mine.”
“Hyunjin is always playing these little games with Ahrin to get her to come see him. But I’ve always felt that you’d prefer I stay away when you’re working.”
Seungmin hesitates again. “That might be right. That’s not because I don’t love spending time with you, though. It’s the opposite.”
“I…don’t follow.”
“Whatever you believe, the other members’ partners don’t really come around all that much, but when they do come around, it’s not really a big event. They’re just spectators. Like when Ahrin visits us at practice, it’s easy for Hyunjin to pretend she’s not there and keep working. I couldn’t do that. If you were in the room with me, I don’t think I could be as focused as I normally am. I’d be distracted because all my attention would be on you and how you’re doing. That’s why I’ve never encouraged you to visit.”
A small hysterical part of you wants to twist his words somehow, to start a fight about him calling you a ‘distraction’ and all it implies, but you know what he meant. It’s a fairly big admission he’s given, that he couldn’t keep control of himself if you were in his eyeline. It’s…unexpectedly flattering.
“I fluster you that badly?” you ask, half-teasing, half-curious. But Seungmin answers you dead serious.
“Embarrassingly so. When I went back upstairs with the cupcakes, Minho-hyung didn’t give me a second to breathe before commenting on it.”
You find yourself grinning. “Really?”
“Don’t laugh at me. It’s unkind.”
“I’m not laughing,” you say, even though you definitely are. Seungmin rolls his eyes, but there’s no heat or embarrassment in them.
“You could at least be sorry about it.”
“I’m very sorry that I got you bullied by your bandmates,” you say dutifully. “I promise I will do my best not to place you in such a compromising position again.”
“You can visit me if you want,” Seungmin rebuffs. “I can take a little teasing if you really want to see me. My point is just that you shouldn’t feel like you have to because the other girlfriends do.”
“Okay.” You nod, then venture out into the part of the conversation you’ve been avoiding. “If that’s all true, why do you stay away so often? It’s okay if you just have other things to do, but why do you let me think you’re at work if you aren’t?”
You aren’t sure what he’s going to say to this. You believe in his loyalty, always, and you don’t think he truly intended to lie to you, but you still can’t figure out who’s to blame here, and how this miscommunication has persisted between you for so long.
To your surprise, Seungmin’s ears flare red. His grip tightens on your hand, like he’s fighting himself, but you can tell he answers you honestly when he says,
“I was worried I was imposing on you.”
You blink. “Imposing?”
Seungmin is no longer meeting your eyes, his gaze lowered to the table. “Like I said, I don’t want you to constantly be waiting around for me. I don’t want you to get used to having me around, and then when I go on tour, or get busy with activities, you feel my absence stronger. Then, when I come back, I become an inconvenience as you try to fit me into your life again. It’s hard, and it’s unfair. I thought it would be easier to try to keep the same level of involvement all the time, so that you didn’t miss me too badly when I was gone, and I didn’t annoy you too much when I came back.”
You hardly let him finish his sentence before you say, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You keep your attention from me so that I won’t miss you later? How does that make any sense? I miss you regardless. That’s the point of being in a relationship.”
Seungmin winces, and you decide to dial back your indignance. He’d spoken to you evenly, and you could do the same for him.
“Sorry. I just meant that you shouldn’t keep yourself away from me in an effort to spare my feelings. I know what I signed up for when we started dating. I know some times will be easier than others. I appreciate your efforts to mitigate that, but this isn’t the way. You being gone so often is all the more reason to be overt and intense when we do have time together. It’s fine to not want to spend all your free time with me, but don’t ever think wanting to be around me is imposing, or hurting me in some way, because it’s not.”
Seungmin looks properly chastised. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll be around more.”
“And I’ll ask for you more. We both need to stop holding ourselves and each other back.” You let out a little laugh. “We’re acting like it’s embarrassing to be in love or something.”
“Hyunjin said the same thing to me once.”
“Hyunjin is smart in exactly one area,” you acquiesce. “Ahrin is a lucky girl.”
“Comparison is the thief of joy,” Seungmin mutters. You lean forward over your cold dinner and press a kiss to Seungmin’s cheek.
“I didn’t say she was luckier than me.”
You both grin.
-/-
Next week, Monday. You wake up at your usual time, put on coffee, make breakfast. You clear your entire inbox because fuck the sales department, they can say whatever they need to say in the meeting this afternoon. You set your phone down and enjoy the warmth of the tea you brewed and watch the sun come up outside your living room window.
Seungmin gets up, gets his shoes and coat, and doubles back around.
“Good morning,” you say.
“Good morning.”
“Busy day?”
“Nope. I’m free after lunch.”
“Lucky. I have an awful meeting from two to four.”
“You’ll do fine,” Seungmin says. “Sales isn’t the boss of you.”
“They actually are,” you groan, and Seungmin laughs at your dismay. He kisses you goodbye, tells you to be safe. You tell him you love him. The front door opens and closes.
At around 1pm, your phone buzzes with a text.
Are you busy?
Eh. Why?
I’m in your lobby.
No way.
You grab your security pass and head towards the elevators, watching every floor tick down until it lets you out on the ground floor. Seungmin is sitting in a chair in reception, holding a white cardboard box. When he sees you approach him, he grins and holds it up.
“Got time for cupcakes?”
Your smile is so wide it’s splitting your face in half. “Follow me. The break room is on the fourth floor.”
-/-
“I didn’t even know you knew what building I work in.”
“I looked it up on NAVER.”
“Of course you did.”
“Why reinvent the wheel when someone invented the iPhone, y/n.”
1K notes · View notes
cyberghouleo · 6 months
Text
bodyguard! simon riley x celebrity! reader
To the displeasure of everyone I know, I got cod brain rot.
Inspired by: Celebrity by Slayyyter
Tumblr media
When your manager suggested you hire a new bodyguard after your old one quit, you were not expecting a masked man with an accent to walk through your doors. 
At first, he sees you as a spoiled brat. He’s not used to being a bodyguard for someone famous, he is used to being hired as a hitman in more dangerous situations. He only accepted this job as the pay was good and his last job was nearby, but now he feels as if he's being toted around like a puppy, trailing behind you as you go along your normal day to day life.
Everything was a culture shift to him, he wasn’t used to following his clients while they shop or getting asked if you should purchase something, to which he always responded with “if that’s what you like.” He’s not used to sitting at lunch at a nearby table as your friends drill you with questions about him, questions about the mask and why he looked so differently than your previous guards. He was used to being in stressful situations, spending hours researching his client's attacker while being on alert 24/7, now he was just following you around with no immediate threats happening to you. 
While you're doing interviews or getting your makeup done before a photoshoot, he is sitting across from you in a chair with his arms crossed. He keeps his balaclava on and hardly speaks unless someone tries to deny him access behind the scenes with you. He speaks before you can, “I’m ‘er guard.” he grunts out as he keeps walking past them, following behind you. 
Trying to get to know him felt like pulling teeth, he’s standoffish and when he does answer questions, it's always short answers, even refusing to tell you his real name after you asked. You knew almost nothing about him, but that all changed once you’re alerted that your P.O box is being sent threatening letters, claiming to have a hit out on you. Ghost instructs that you are both to not leave the house until he can gather enough info about your threatener, leaving the two of you alone for several weeks.
These weeks alone cause him to slowly start opening up to you as the two of you have nothing else to do or talk about. You learn about his past clients, how this is his first high status bodyguard job, and his time in the military. He tells you bits at a time, not willing to spill too much at one time, almost testing to see how you respond to each bit of new information you learn about him. During dinner one night, he randomly speaks up. “Simon.” 
“What?”
“My name. Simon.”
It only takes a few weeks for him to track and find the person sending you the threats, and he reassures you that everything will be fine now. He doesn’t show any proof, but you trust him enough to believe him. The weeks you spent together did lead to some tension between the two of you, you are able to see a human side of him that you weren’t expecting, and you could feel yourself getting intrigued by what else you could learn about him. You scolded yourself for thinking this way towards a bodyguard, someone trying to do his job, but you also couldn’t deny the way you were starting to feel when you caught glimpses of his arms flexing underneath the tight black shirts he wore often. 
He slowly starts warming up to you and seeing you in a different light once he spends a few months inside your house. You aren’t as bratty or snobby as he expected. He tries to brush away any lingering thoughts as you ask him to help you zip up your dress, noticing how small your shoulders look under his gaze. Or when you ask him to help you put on a necklace, comparing how small your hands are to his when you hand him the necklace. 
The tension finally breaks when you are in a dressing room alone, waiting around as the photographer goes over the photos one final time before you could leave. You can feel him eyeing you up and down while you aren’t paying attention, his eyes studying the dress you were getting paid to wear and the way it hugged you. One offhand comment from you leads to him lifting you up onto the vanity counter, his mask pulled above his nose as his mouth finds yours, soft moans escaping you. Your panties are pulled to the side as his tongue circles around your clit, one hand pressed against your mouth to quiet you, so the staff doesn’t hear you cumming against his tongue. 
When in large crowds, one of his hands is always pressed against the small of your back as he guides you through the masses, the feeling of his touch lingering on your back even after he pulls away. His other hand resting close to the concealed gun he keeps at his hip, staying alert as his eyes scan through the faces to assess any threats. Crowds will naturally part once they notice how big he is and the way he towers over most of the fans.
The paparazzi gets a photo of you two together, Simon holding a few shopping bags as he trails behind you. The photo is captioned as if he was your secret boyfriend and your fans go crazy, tweeting how cute the two of you are together and how mysterious he was.
“Look, everyone thinks we are dating.” You say as you shove your phone in his face. His eyes take a few seconds to adjust to the photo, reading a comment on how good of a couple the two of you are. He only hums a response and rolls his eyes. He expects you to have a different reaction, shocked that you didn’t find it annoying but almost enduring. The idea of you being okay with the two of you being in a relationship and not just fuckbuddies ignites something deep in his stomach. 
You definitely talk him into taking a few photos of you for Instagram, instructing him on how to frame the photo as he stares blankly at the phone. When you post the photos, comments flood in asking if your mystery bodyguard was the one who took them. You often post stories with him lingering around in the background, only fueling the relationship speculation as fans talk about him living with you.
After the media starts to report more on the two of you, Ghost starts getting more offers from other celebrities to become their bodyguard. He gives them no second thought as he denies them. He will get approached with offers to pay him triple and he still waves them off, he plans on staying loyal as a bodyguard to you and you only, no matter how much they offer him.
Simon decides to make the two of you official by gifting you a necklace with his initial, something you wear and post about often, sending your fans into a bigger spiral. He finds the fans both amusing and slightly disturbing, showing how much love they have for you, yet you only get to call him yours. 
753 notes · View notes
knavves · 1 year
Text
★ SUGAR DADDY ft sae, shidou, yukimiya & ego — different ways sugar daddy blue lock men slut you out !
wc: 1.1k ノ cw + tw: nsfw (18+). fem reader. public sex. fingering. blow jobs. throat fucking. use of petnames. degrading. praise. riding. dirty talk. stomach bulge. dacryphilia. slapping. ego is kinda mean.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
SUGAR DADDY SAE! who can barely contain himself as you finally walk out the dressing room, drinking in the sight of the pricy lingerie clinging to your body, hardly even covering your most intimate parts. his eyes track your every movement as you slightly sway your hips and giggle as you spin for him, allowing him to see the way the fabric fits your body.
“what do you think, sae?” but he doesn’t say anything as he grips your wrist and drags you back into the dressing room. you gasp when he pins you up against the wall, placing needy kisses all over the valley of your neck. you whine about how someone could catch you but he ignored your concerns as he pushes your panties to the side, slipping his cock into your drooling pussy. one hand grips your waist tightly and the other slithers up to cup his hand over your mouth to muffle your pretty cries. the pro athlete knew that if you were to both get caught like this it would make headlines but that didn’t seem to concern him too much.
the necklace that glimmered around your neck, specifically customized for you and engraved with his initials, bounced as he drilled into your cunt from behind. the squelching noises that followed with each thrust and your muffled moans were seemingly louder in your ears, you silently prayed that none of the workers would catch what was going on.
SUGAR DADDY SHIDOU! who has an arm slung around your shoulders, peering at the screen of your phone as you gawk over the new designer bag that just dropped. you look at him with doe eyes and sweetly ask if he can get it for you. he just smirks and tilts his head at you, “you know what you have to do if you want something, baby.”
you immediately slid out of your seat and onto the floor of the limo, sinking to your knees in between his spread legs. your hands shakily reach up to the zipper of his pants, your gold bracelet slightly slipping down your wrist as you do so. your face suddenly grew hot as you remembered you two weren’t alone in the limo as a handful of his friends were with you.
his cock sprung free from the confinements of his boxers, nearly slapping your cheek as it stood tall, already hard and leaking with precum. he grunted at the feeling of your warm mouth enveloping him, his large hand pushed at the back of your head urging you to take more of him. his tip hit the back of your throat causing you to gag around his length, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes. growing impatient, he gripped either side of your head before fucking his hips up into your mouth. you choked and sputtered around him, drool slipping down your chin and some of it coating his balls.
your nails dug into his tanned thighs to stabilize yourself and the tears that had welled up in your lash line had helplessly spilled over, smearing the mascara you’d dolled yourself up with earlier. “fuck, choking on my cock in front of my friends like this? you’re such a slut. my slut though.” he spat between groans. “c’mon shidou be nicer to her, she’s taking you so well.” one of his friends piped up. “so pretty too. i’d love to have her for myself.” another voice said, your thighs clenched at the mix of degradation and praise that rang through your ears. shidou moans shamelessly loud and you’d wish he’d quiet down, how could he not be embarrassed by the lingering eyes on the both of you? but you guess you weren’t any better as you didn’t even hesitate to get on your knees for him.
SUGAR DADDY YUKIMIYA! who fills your ears with praise as he slowly slides his cock into you. every movement he makes is gentle and he holds you like you’re a delicate piece of glass that could shatter with one wrong move. his eyes holding intense contact with your own, clouded with so much adoration and purity as if he wasn’t balls deep inside you right now.
“you’re so beautiful. you always look so pretty drunk on my cock.” he whispered into your ear, not missing the way you shuddered at his warm breath fanning against your skin. his head dropped to rest on your shoulder to silence the groans that left his lips as you squeeze and spasmed around him with each thrust of his hips.
you bat your eyelashes dreamily at him before opening your lips smeared with lipstick to ask if he could get you this new car you really really wanted. his head lifts from your shoulder blade to quirk a brow at you, amused by your antics. “a new car but didn’t i already buy you one?” he quires. you jut your bottom lip out in a pout, “y-yeah but this ones different, it’s pink.”
he just chuckles lightly at you, “beg for it and i’ll think about it.” knowing full well he’s going to get it for you anyway.
SUGAR DADDY EGO! who pays you no mind as you slowly sink down onto his cock. your newly done nails digging into your own thighs as he’d commanded you not to touch him. a drawn out moan slips from your mouth when you finally bottom out, still shaking from the slight burn that came as he stretched you out.
you’d think with his nonchalant attitude that he was disinterested in you but it was completely the opposite. his heavy breaths and the way he throbbed inside of you was a dead giveaway to how much he enjoyed this albeit he’d never admit it. he liked blowing his money on you, too, but he finds sadistic pleasure in making you work and cry for it.
you wince when your legs knock against the arm rests of his office chair as you bounce on his lap. you raise your hips, whimpering at how his dick dragged against your gummy walls when you sunk back down. his eyes would occasionally peel from the monitors that encase him to scan over the bulge in your stomach. he cruelly brought his hand up to press against it, reviling in the way you squeal and push his hand away.
a sharp sting against the flesh of your ass had you retracting your hands, “i told you not to fucking touch me, slut. you want to go on that shopping spree right?” you nodded dumbly, barely even registering what he was telling you. too dumb to even notice you’d been crying, god he loved it when you cried, always looked so pretty when you did. it gave him a sick sense of pride to see you all ruined for him. “use your words. or do you not want to go? is that it?”
Tumblr media
© knavves : eposting, plagiarizing, modifying, and translating is NOT allowed.
1K notes · View notes
beefboyandbabygirl · 9 months
Text
Good Luck, Fermata Tower (18+)
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
pairing: fire-lookout!seungcheol x female!fire-lookout!reader
genre: firewatch au LMAO, smut (MDNI), soo much angst, COMFORT, fluff
description: after the death of your roommate you have to find a greater purpose to life. what better way than to became a fire lookout with a surprisingly charismatic neighbour tower?
warnings: this fic is a lot, please read ALL warnings. SUICIDE, implied suicidal thoughts, major character death 2x, reader goes through grief, so does seungcheol, AGE GAP, RADIO SEX??? LMAOOO, dirty talk, petnames, cockwarming, pentrative sex, strength kink, f. and m. masturbation (mutual?), PINING TO THE HIGHEST DEGREE, MENTIONS OF DOING DRUGS/DOING SHROOMS, talks of drowning, if u know the game i think you'll be able to visualize the beauty of this way more, intensive writing on the scenery and the emotions, LMK IF I FORGOT ANYTHING PLEASe
quotes from babygirl (@joshibambi): "im getting out lana", "im just gonna be making animal sounds", "can we make this into a play so i can perform this?", "OF ALL THE THINGS THAT COULD MAKE ME CRY IT WAS THE DESCRIPTION OF HIS HOT ASS FACE"
wordcount: 13.9k
a/n: HAPPY BIRTHDAY SEUNGCHEOL. i love this fic. the writing is a little novelly for a fic, but i was so passionate ab this whole firewatch thing and i got SO INTO the arcs and their personal losses and i just really love yn and seungcheol. i hope this was worth the wait and i apologize for not finishing sooner. all my love, beefboy
You and Mingyu meet at college at some parkour club that you’d both joined to make friends. You face-plant into the pavement and knock out a tooth and Mingyu takes you to a nearby hospital. You click instantly. 
You and Mingyu spend every moment together - you help him and he helps you. Mingyu is smart, you realize. He knows all the formulas in your mathematics course by heart. You tell him he’s smart and he says that no one else seems to think that.
You and Mingyu are best friends. You have matching necklaces that complete a heart. 
You and Mingyu party together and when you get too drunk, he carries you down the halls, home. Sometimes at night he sleeps in your bed. 
Your friend group thinks you’re dating, but you think you and Mingyu are something much more earnest than lovers. You think Mingyu is your soulmate. 
You piggy-back ride Mingyu at graduation and you give him a peck on the cheek when he shakes hands with the dean. 
You and Mingyu become roommates. You binge-watch terrible movies together and hold drinking games. It’s hard to admit some of your favorite memories are from watching the Alvin and The Chipmunks trilogy. 
The night before it happens you and Mingyu eat dinner together that he cooked. You see his snaggletooth every time he smiles. 
You’d almost lived together for two years that morning. He usually wakes earlier than you, but he is nowhere to be seen. The apartment is oddly still. You feel trapped. 
You enter Mingyu’s room.
You think he’s asleep. You leave him alone. 
Two hours later you grow worried. You enter his room to find him in the same position. You shake him. Mingyu doesn’t wake. 
The doctors say a case like Mingyu’s is extremely rare - he was in great shape. You’re not sure if that’s supposed to make you feel better. 
Mingyu’s funeral is grim. His death is so terrible, says the pastor, because it’s so domestic. You think it’s terrible because he is - was - the brightest, most amazing person to walk the earth. His parents want you to hold a speech, but you can’t find the words. You think you might sob if you go up there. You sob anyway. The flowers form a ring on the floor of the church and your soulmate is dead.
You can’t sleep anymore. You imagine him dying, left arm numb, alone in the dead of night and choking out your name, reaching for the thin wall that separated you. You cry for a whole month. The apartment is cursed so you live with your parents. 
One day, you see an ad for a job in the paper. 
You take it.  _____________________________
“Hello?” 
Static stormed the tower-house when the other end cut off.
“Are you there?” 
Your eyes frantically darted around the cabin. It was no more than a 13 foot rectangle and yet your tired eyes couldn’t find the radio, churning out a gruff voice. 
You’d just arrived, barely turned on the generator to allow light in. It was nighttime. The park’s dips and peaks were veiled in blue; the silhouettes of the trees, forking out in long, thin spikes, were navy and the lake Fermata was the brightest, glittering pearl from the moon above. Stars twinkled knowingly at you. 
There. A flash of yellow in your blurred vision. You picked up the worn, dirty radio in your heavy hand, pressing at its side. 
“Yeah, hi, I’m here,” you breathed out tiredly. You let go of the button and a small bit of static spoke back to you. 
“Y/n?” 
“Mhm.” 
“I’m Seungcheol. I’m in Bay Valley Tower. It’s to the east. Saw your light turn on,” His voice was gruff, laced with sleep. It had a rasp at every vowel, strings of vocal chords straining to spit out the words in between sticky ropes of bile. 
“It’s nice to meet you,” you said. You had nothing else to say. The flimsy, one person bed beckoned to your tired body. You moved, like a doll, one limb at a time, into its harbor, collapsing into the thin mattress. You laid on your side, moonlight shining in from the window by the door. 
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, carelessly. Impatient in tone, you imagined he’d probably been through this a hundred times before. “So,” he sighed out, deeply. “What’s your problem?” 
“Hm?” 
There was a shooting star, dancing across the sky in that moment. You watched it, shuffling onto your back with half-closed eyes. Stardust sprinkled from it on the open, empty sky.
“People here are all running from something. So what’s your deal?” 
You sighed, watching the star’s open path. It could go anywhere, you thought. Then you moved your arm, holding the receiver to your mouth. 
“Listen, Seungcheol. I’ve been hiking for two days, so I’m gonna go to bed now, okay? Hopefully you’ve found some manners by the time I wake up,” you mumbled, then let go of the button (it had a harsh, grainy texture for some reason), and laid your hand, radio in it, limply at your side. 
You heard a raspy chuckle from the other end. You had no energy to be angry. 
“Alright, Fermata Tower,” there was a smile in the anonymous man’s voice. 
There was a pause. The sound of the fierce breeze carried whiffs of autumn, as it lulled you to sleep. You had almost fallen into a black, snow-buried slumber when you heard the radio crinkle again: 
“Fermata, do you see that shooting star?” 
You had no energy to respond, radio spewing static in your open hand. Thankfully, Seungcheol seemed understanding.
“That’s good luck. So...”
A moment. You and Seungcheol watched the sky-dancer, apart. 
“Good luck.”  _____________________________
“You’re awake!” 
It was Seungcheol’s voice. Transformed by the orange hues of daytime, he sounded much more alive than the night prior. 
“I can see you sitting at your desk.” 
Indeed you were sitting on your desk - a flimsy wooden thing, which looked like it had come form a yard sale - studying the map of the massive park. There were simple cartoonish figures to indicate stresses of trees and drops in the terrain, and rock quarries and waterfalls and lakes. You’d delicately pointed out your own position with red marker, scribbling ‘me’ by it with a heavy child’s hand.
It was cold - the thin boards did not do much to ward away the heavy wind, hooting creeping in the cracks. It smelled like pine needles and tea, as you’d just boiled a lavender on the kettle. IT sat, heating your fingers where it rested beside them in a mug left behind by the previous firewatchman (it read: “don’t talk to me before I’ve had my coffee”). 
The radio clattered against the wood when you clumsily picked it up. 
“Didn’t know when I signed up for this that I would be dealing with a stalker,” you joked, smiling small when you heard the man on the other end let out a hearty laugh. 
“Hey, don’t go labeling me just yet, kid.”
“Kid?!” you said incredulously, dropping the marker that you had been so diligently using to scribble excellent comments on your map (latest was: “maybe cute bears”). “How old are you?!” 
“I’m 37,” Seungcheol said.
“Oof.” 
“Hey!” 
“I’m kidding!” you laughed, dropping your pen and leaning back in your seat. The view was beautiful. You could see the lake, surrounded by a rippling sea of trees, each top reaching for the sky, like you. “I’m 27, I’m getting up there with you.”
“Just a small decade.”
“I’m mature for my age.” 
Seungcheol chuckled on the other end of the radio. You spun around in your chair (it creaked horribly - it sounded like a pig at the sight of a cleaver) surveying each square of the forest from your windows. You narrowed your eyes, trying to spot his lookout tower. 
“How come you can see me but I can’t see you?” you mumbled, now standing to try and see, but it was drowned out by the sheer volume of pinewood. Seungcheol grumbled on the other end: “I should be East.” 
“Yeah, fuck, I forgot to tell you, I think I dropped my fucking compass on the way here,” you ran a hand through your hair and frown. 
“Uh, shit, you’re gonna have to pick up a new one, bud,” he said and you slumped. “Well, if you’re facing the lake - Fermata Lake, I mean - I should be to your left.” 
You followed his instructions. You faced the lake, then took two loggy steps to face left, then squinted incessantly at the horizon. Not dissimilar to a crowd in Times Square, the trees stood toe to toe all across at every inch you spied. The pines zagged upwards like Giza, and culminated into the biggest mountain in the park, just under the sun. The mountain loomed overhead where you finally spotted the lookout tower, like a monster crouched over its prey. You tried to shake off the thought and focus on the lone, floating tower in the pit of pointy trees.
“I see you, Bay Valley,” you breathed into the radio. 
The tower looked much more lonely from so far away. It was different when you were in it, but with the miles-long stretch between you two, you found it looked so small and feeble. You could make out the light turned on within it, a rectangle of burning orange. The shooting star must’ve crossed directly between your two towers. 
“Attagirl,” Seungcheol smiles. “Do you see me waving?”
“No, what the fuck.” 
“I got binoculars.” 
“Ew, you are a stalker!” 
“It’s for bird-watching!” Seungcheol informed you, offense in his tone. You cackled into the radio. “I like watching birds, thank you very much.” 
“Jeez, can’t believe what this job does to people.” 
“I liked bird-watching before I got this job,” Seungcheol said.
“You’re so white,” you grinned. 
“I’m not even white!” 
You and Seungcheol both laughed, joyous hiccups interrupted by bursts of static and 3 miles of rocky terrain and pine needles. You squint at the sun, traversing and dipping under the jagged hedges of the tree-line. 
Your head lolled over to spot between the desk and doorway, where you’d dropped your orange backpack (a peculiar color, come to think of it - same color as the lifejacket they deploy on airplanes when everything has already gone wrong). Now it was flopped onto its side, zipper ripped open and knick knacks and crumbs at its mouth, spilling onto the floor. 
“Where do I get a new compass?” you asked, looking at a yellowed book sat beside the backpack.
“Uh, shit, gimme a sec,” Seungcheol mumbled, and before his radio cut off, you heard, briefly, the itchy scrambling of papers, and the sound made him seem a lot more real. “We have these, uh, supply boxes scattered around. ‘M readin’ this, uhhh, fuckin’ info-thing.. Should say which of them supposedly has a compass.” 
“Sounds like you really know your stuff.” 
“Get off my ass, Fermata.” 
You heard papers rustle again and a small bump before the radio cut off, as if he put the radio down on the table. You awaited, arms crossed over your pink and gray striped hoodie, and staring at sundown. Orange flooded the sky, as if it were all engulfed in flames and this was really hell. 
“Uhhh, okay, I got it! There’s one down at Eleison Valley? The code is 1-2-3-4. That’s actually the code to all of them.” 
“Secure.”
“Shut up.” 
“Well, I can get some exploring done, at least,” you frown, spying a not-so-casual hike on the dotted surface of your map, when you tangoed back to the table, fiddling with the edge of the paper. 
“Yeah. You should probably do it tomorrow though. Sun’s coming down.” 
“Yeah. Can’t believe I slept that long.” 
“Don’t feel too bad about it, kid. I was knocked out for, like, two days after the hike out here. It’s a miracle you’re already awake.” 
“Thanks, Bay Valley,” you sighed, leaning back in your seat with some strained shuffling. You watched, eyes half-lidded as the sun fully disappeared behind the curtain of the park. Its light still roamed the sky, where it hid. Half dark blue, half red, the sky twinkled at you and your insignificance brilliantly. You tried not to think about how lonely and floaty your lookout tower must look from afar. Everything feels big when it’s close enough. 
“You’re welcome, Fermata.” _____________________________
“You think I could eat any of these mushrooms, BV?” 
“BV?” 
“Bay Valley.”
“Ah,” Seungcheol sighed on his end of the radio. You were trudging through the undergrowth in your new hiking boots, lifesaver-colored backpack on the plates of your back, weight pushing through the fabric of your jacket. “No, I don’t think that would be wise.” 
“Damn it. Was gonna get hella high,” you joked, eyeing another cluster of snow-white mushrooms under the shade of a tree, sloping along a gnarly root. Your crunching steps in the loose dirt came to a halt - there was a dropoff. The cliff cut off like a broken chocolate bar and a sharp rockwall supported it to the next layer of earth. 
The path was snaking down towards the lake. You’d circle around and climb up towards Tri Forks Tower, where eventually the climbing heights would bowl into Eleison Valley - a flower field, supposedly (in the map a little flower icon alerted you of this). 
“If I die from this rockwall, please, tell my family I love them,” you grumbled, fetching an itchy, frayed rope from the depths of your backpack. Squinting at the high sun, pale drops of sweat forming around your forehead, you slung it over the hook. The park was littered with these - rusted old things that were leaning forward from years of heavy hikers’ tugging. This one was particularly bent. 
“You’re so dramatic,” came Seungcheol from the speaker. 
“Am not, man, these rocks are like fucking knives!” 
“Such a drama queen. A real Primadonna.”
You huffed and puffed as you lowered yourself down the cliffside. Your boots pressed flat against the jagged rock, biceps burning as you held yourself up and walked down the side of it. The whole world was with you, sideways, and you would’ve stopped to appreciate it were you not sure you would pass out doing so. 
“Holy shit,” you said to yourself when you were finally on stable ground and not spider-manning the mineral deposits of the park. You put your hands on your hips and squinted at its imposing open jaw. 
“You down yet, Queen B?”
You panted, grimacing, when you tugged the rope hard and it leapt down like a flying snake: “Yeah, I’m down.” 
You continued padding through the forest. The earth was dry and it was summer, but the wind was harsh and it cooled your stovetop-skin as you walked along a rock quarry, Fermata Lake hiding behind the covers of huge, flat bulwark. You listened to the cacophonous call of the forest: rustling leaves and birds. 
“I had a friend - uh, friend of a friend, actually - who, like, got high as fuck off mushrooms and had a bad trip,” you said, mouth to the mic of the radio, as you studied the cover of the leaves. 
“Yeah? What happened?” Seungcheol hummed. 
“She said that, like -- fuck,” you breathed, scrambling over a particularly rocky rock. “She said there was, like, like her house flooded. Like, water just came gushing in and the whole house was, like, underwater suddenly and she.. She thought she was gonna drown. And her fuckin’ kitchen turned into, like, a coral reef or some shit, I don’t know.” 
“Shit,” Seungcheol seemed much more alert now. You heard him put something down on his table (you imagined it was just as shitty as your own). “I didn’t even know that was possible.” 
“It’s fucking crazy. Don’t do drugs, man.” 
You turned past the quarry and was met with the sight of the huge, gaping hole of Fermata Lake. Strangely oval, the lake was flanked on all sides with thick pineland, except for a slight angle where grassy hills turned upwards towards Tri Forks Tower. 
The water was much more green up close. Algae sloshed up the side of the gravel-earth, willing you into the murky depths. 
You stared at it for a while. You thought maybe you could make out someone standing at the bottom of the bowl-shape.
“I’m at Fermata Lake,” you said then, and then started walking again. 
“Good job! And you haven’t even died at a drop off yet,” Seungcheol joked and you laughed. 
“God, you’re such a jerk. I bet you’re fuckin’.. Watching birds right now like a nerd.” 
“Okay, rude-” 
“Why don’t you go outside and be productive?” 
“I’m looking for fires,” Seungcheol snarked back. “The binoculars are multi-use.” 
You let the conversation die down for a bit, focused on the walk. It was peaceful when you let it be, but at times you came to feel like you were being swallowed alive, or like the looming figure of Aluralura Mountain was pressing its boulder-brawn in between your shoulder blades. The air in the forests was thicker, so you stayed persistent in your path, as you climbed up the clearings and spotted Tri Forks in the distance. 
“Hey, uh, Y/n?” 
The sudden intrusion of Seungcheol on the radio had you jolting, dropping the radio into the earth (thankfully it was fine - here the earth was softer and it dipped under your boot and water pressed out from the mull). You bent over and picked it back up. 
“Jesus, you scared the shit out of me!” you scolded, wiping mud off the yellow plastic of the radio.
“Oh, uh, sorry..” 
It was only then that you noticed a meekness in Seungcheol’s voice. You, of course, had not the furthest idea what he looked like, but he sounded like he was holding a knife behind his back. You furrowed your brows and stared down the radio, as if it would give you answers. There was dirt clamoring the yellow, where your fingers had held on.
“What’s up?” you said and sounded fakely bright. 
“Well, I just-” he cut himself off with a cough, one that reached those stringent, thinning vocal cords and brought back the rasp. “I wanted to apologize. For the other night. I mean, when you came to the tower.” 
You didn’t respond, only furrowed your brow and looked out across the sun-lit moor. There was a deer traversing across the grass. 
“Uhm. Because. I was- I was kinda drunk, uh, when you came, and I know I was kinda pushy about, you know, why you came out here and all that.” 
“OH!” you exclaimed and the noise ended in a laugh. “Please, Seungcheol. Don’t worry about that. It’s fine.” 
“Okay, good,” he mumbled. 
The flower field came into view after climbing a particularly steep hill and it was a flower field - not just cartography myth. 
It was all sunflowers and catmint - a huge, long stretch of purple and yellow splotches, stemming from green, untamed grass - stretching as far as you could see, disappearing into a hill at the far horizon. You were sure the smell of pollen went for miles, flowerdust sprinkling the air in heavy coats. The path you were following split the field in two, a dry, boring gravel streak, but you saw, faded from sunlight, a once deep, now light, ashy brown box at the right side. 
“I found it!” you shrieked into the radio, a newfound strength gearing your legs into a sprint. “Fuck, yes!” 
“Good job, Fermata!” there was a smile in his voice. 
“Thank you!” 
You were also smiling, when you went up to it. It was rectangular and made of planks, held together by a metal loop and a padlock. Like everything else, it was dirty and ravished, and you felt a faint worry at the sight of scratch marks on its side. You clicked in the code: 1-2-3-4. 
The interior of the box was mostly empty. To your horror the first thing you saw was a porn magazine, which you did not dare to touch; then you saw a granola bar, which you did touch and stash away in your backpack, without any regard for how old it may have been; then came the compass, small and cheap metal and pointing out that you were, in fact, facing Northwest.
There was another item in the box. You did not initially see it, as it was taped to the interior of the lid, but when you raised your eyes, you saw it. It was a piece of paper - a note. 
Grimacing, you ripped it off where it was blowing violently in the wind, holding it tight between your fingers and smudging dirt along the untainted white. 
It read: 
‘Hey, Cheol. If you head up the path there’s a family of raccoons! I left this granola bar here so you could feed them! From Jun.’
“Hey, Seungcheol?” you said absently, staring over the blue, scribbled ink, worn out from months of rainwater dripping in through the planks. He hummed on the other end of the line. “There’s a note here for you. From a, uh, Jun?”
“Oh.”
There was a pause that you couldn’t decipher - maybe you could have, had you been there with Seungcheol. Maybe if you could read his face, his body, you could’ve known what it meant. But for now you just stood in the breeze. It was picking up, getting angrier, hurling at your clothes and hair, banishing you from the field. The flowers dangled uselessly. 
“Do you want me to read it to you?” 
Silence. 
“No, not really.” 
“Oh, okay. Uh, who’s- who’s Jun?” 
Silence. 
“The guy who used to work in Fermata Tower. Before you.” 
“Oh.” 
Every second was longer than the last. You wish you knew what it all meant, but you sensed in Seungcheol’s curtness that he was not taking questions currently, and so you looked around the quickly graying sky and the suddenly spiteful wind and folded the note away in your jacket pocket. 
“I’m gonna head back now,” even your voice was rocked by the wind. 
Seungcheol didn’t respond. 
You left Eleison Valley alone.  _____________________________
This was where it was supposed to be - greatness. Not success, but something greater, larger, more alive than you could ever be. You thought you’d find it in the mountains, the valleys, the lakes and the forests and maybe that had been naive of you - to think that nature and earth could give any sort of meaning that death had taken away from you. These shadowed parts only served to make you feel smaller, you realized. The mountains glared at you, the forests swallowed and spat you out. 
You couldn’t sleep. The image of Mingyu’s outstretched hand was back and you could almost see him from your flimsy bed, lying on his back with a tanned hand out for you. You left him alone, just like you always had. 
Burrowed under the veil of your thin blanket, grabbing at it with clumsy hands, you turned your back to Mingyu’s corpse on your floor.
A prickle sauntered up your back. It was that emotion that something was creeping closer, something was out to get you. That you would feel a cool, dead hand on your back and when it would spin you around his face would be there, and he’d look nothing like himself; he’d be pale and purple around the mouth and his eyes would be sunken and dark and all the glitter he possessed - that he used to possess - would be gone and something menacing, like a hungry mountain, would have replaced it. 
You thrashed, suddenly, to look back at the corpse. It was still there. Hadn’t moved an inch. Deja vu. 
Thoughtlessly, desperately, you fumbled for the radio wrapped up the sheets of your bed. Your fingertips found the plastic hardware, and it bounced at your eagerness, before you pulled it along the sheets and up to your mouth. 
“Seungcheol?” you gasped. 
When did you start crying? You decided you must’ve been crying all night and maybe you’d cried so much that your brain had stopped registering the feeling of wet tears. 
There was a pause. A long one. So long, you started to really become aware of the cries of the wind, the patter of the rain and the endless mumbling of the trees (and the gargled, bubbling blood rising from Imaginary Friend Mingyu’s half-open mouth). Then static spoke back to you: 
“Yeah?” his voice was so raspy, you registered that you must’ve awoken him from his sleep, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. Your nails dug into the radio and you pressed it into your chest, holding on tight. 
“I can’t sleep,” you whispered, words full of shaky air. There was another pause and for a second you feared that Seungcheol might’ve gotten angry and gone back to bed. But he spoke again.
“Are you okay?” You heard rustling on his end, and you imagined him standing up from the bed, looking out at your lonely island of a lookout tower. “Do I need to trek over there?” 
“No!- no, I couldn’t ask you to do that,” you protested, then trailed off. 
“... Are you crying?” 
You squeezed your eyes shut: “I just- d’you remember what I said? About my- my friend’s friend who- who had a bad mushroom trip?” 
“Uh, yeah, I remember. Her- Her house flooded, right?” Seungcheol’s voice was tainted with thorough confusion, but not annoyance. Never annoyance. 
“Well, I just-” you sputtered and sighed. You almost wanted to stop talking and give up when Seungcheol stayed quiet on his end and drew the words forward: “It’s so stupid. Sometimes I just- I just feel like that. Like you’re drowning, everywhere you go. You know?” 
Your voice was stringent with nervousness, and you picked at your nail, wrapped around the radio in the shallow dark. 
“It’s not stupid, sweetheart,” he mumbled. It was amazing to you how gruff and tough Seungcheol turned soothing and caring so fast. The nickname felt like a warm hug, and you almost didn’t register the sound of fabric rustling once more. “I’m coming over.”
“N-No!” you gasped sharply. Your eyes flickered down. Mingyu watched from the floor, eyes glazed over from death. He smelled foul.
“Can you.. Can you just- talk to me?” you whispered helplessly, and Seungcheol quieted down, seemingly weighing your proposal. 
“Okay. Okay, sweetheart, I’ll talk to you,” Seungcheol whispered soothingly, and for God’s sake, you didn’t even know what he looked like, but the rasp in his voice, and the comfort and warmth that sung out the speaker of the radio had your heart clenching in your chest. “What do you wanna talk about?” 
“Um, I don’t know,” you sniffled. Seungcheol only softened his voice and sat, awake in the middle of the night, comforting you.
“Can I tell you about birds?” 
He told you about birds for 45 minutes before you fell asleep (something he had predicted would happen); he told you about how pheasants are known for their striking colors and how they have excellent eyesight; he told you how he saw a nightjar just before going to bed that night, and how they’re incredibly hard to spot; he told you about Barrow’s Goldeneyes, and how they’re the funniest little guys, and he loves them, because they glow purple in the sunlight; he told you about g…
Oh. You must’ve started dozing off.  _____________________________
You weren’t sure when it changed, but at some point you looked out the window, and the mountain looked a lot more like yourself. 
You were getting better, happier, you were waking up with more energy, you were bubblier. You weren’t entirely sure you could blame it on the park though. For two months you’d had your job and for about two months, every once in a while, you’d radioed Seungcheol at night, and without any question, he’d tell you about birds. 
It sounded stupid the more you thought about it, but his voice lulled you into a comfortable sleep even on Mingyu’s most insistent nights. 
You’d wake up and patrol your area, then you’d settle back in for a couple of hours, watching out for fire hazards and guests in the park, before you’d patrol one more time. Then you’d go to bed. 
This was not the type of job you took to make friends, but somehow Seungcheol had become the reason you woke up everyday. Everyday you looked forward to walking through the woods with his voice on your radio, and you looked forward to making him laugh and him making you laugh. 
“Seungcheol, I’ve got eyes on what I’m pretty sure is a Red-breasted Merganser, come in.” 
This morning you were up extraordinarily early - for you, that is. You weren’t certain what exactly prompted this early rise (maybe you were finally sleeping right thanks to a certain rough-throated man?), but nonetheless you’d enjoyed the view of dawn along the undergrowth and had eaten half-warm oatmeal in bed with an open book. Now you were bored and craving the attention of your only forest-companion. 
Seungcheol didn’t respond like you were expecting though. When the radio crinkled in response, you heard him panting on the other end and thumps, like he was picking it up off the floor. 
“That’s… That’s great, Fermata. I’ve gotta get my.. My binoculars out,” he heaved for air and fumbled clumsily with the sensitive mic. You cringed at the sound. 
“What are you doing? Why are you so out of breath?” you asked. A twinge of worry slipped out in your tone. Was he okay? 
“I’m, uh, working out,” Seungcheol chuckled, and he seemed to finally regain composure, clearing his throat sheepishly. “You’re not usually awake to hear it.” 
“You work out every day?” 
“Sure do - gotta be prepared to knock out a grizzly,” he grunted. 
You leaned back in your seat, a less than amused expression on your face, because a twirling strand of fire danced up your chest and settled into your cheeks. Why was it suddenly so hot? Fire spread across your nerve endings and twinged you red in the apples of your cheeks. You ran your hands over your face to soothe the sizzling.
This was ridiculous, you thought. Seungcheol was not making you blush. You didn’t even know what he looked like! He might as well have had an eye patch and a mohawk. But even as you halfheartedly scrutinized yourself, your thoughts clouded over the idea of sweet, attentive, raspy Seungcheol with big arms and thighs and a sculpted chest and-
“Are you- are you, like, buff?” 
The question left your lips before you could stop it. Your voice broke halfway through the sentence and you let go of the button with an embarrassed hiss, like a kettle huffing out air. The embarrassment, that was potent and squeezing at your chest, worsened when you heard Seungcheol’s throaty chuckle on the other end, limp and dry. 
“You’re curious today, aren’t you?” he mused then, smirk clear from the tone and pronunciation of the words, and you squeezed your eyes shut because why was his voice and the thought of him and the warmth coming through the radio speaker suddenly bothering you so much?
The truth was you hadn’t masturbated in months. With everything going on, you simply hadn’t felt the urge or the want. But, it occurred to you, now that you were slowly becoming a functioning human once more, the urge was returning hot and fast in your core, and, of course, your only companion with the raspy voice and the attentive words and the apparently muscly body was bringing forth this urge with ease. 
You pressed down the urge, taking a deep breath before you pressed the button once more. You were not going to masturbate to the thought of Seungcheol - not Seungcheol who you only knew by voice, who had been nothing but caring and sweet to you. You could not corrupt the preciousness of your companionship with your lewd, depraved thoughts. 
“I’m just curious what you look like. Unlike you, stalker, I don’t have binoculars!” That sounded a lot more like the you that had not just gotten wet at the thought of Seungcheol’s bulging muscles. 
“Hey! The power of the binoculars is limited. I can only really see your silhouette, nothing fancy,” he defended and then right as you were about to respond, he knocked the wind out of you again: “And yes, I’m pretty buff, if I do say so myself.”
Ugh. 
You went the rounds that day and got through another day without having to complete fire protocol, ending out the evening with a pack of instant noodles your family had so graciously sent you (Seungcheol scolded you: “That has no nutrients!”). However each step through the forest and each slurp of noodles and page of your book was plagued by the latent fire inside you. A burning occupied your abdomen fueled by the echoing morning voice of Bay Valley Tower. 
By nightfall you gave in. You were only a girl. This didn’t have to change anything, you thought, as the park turned plum purple. You settled into bed in your pajamas, sitting upright against the frail wood wall and letting your hair bunch on the rattling plate of glass. Your eyes moved to and fro, bouncing over the now lived-in cabin and taking in the dark void of the farest corner. 
Briefly, you fiddled with your radio in your palm. You could call Seungcheol and- wait, why would you do that? No, no. You packed away that wicked thought - it only served to make you feel more guilty. No, instead you slid down the wall to lay in your pillow, now positive you were alone. 
An owl hooted outside and you slipped your hand into your underwear. 
It was surprisingly easy to surrender your consciousness to the lust (and you had, God bless your soul, stayed wet throughout the entire day). It clouded you over, as you began rubbing up and down your pussy, ghosting over your clit to dip down to your glazed slit. Your eyes squeezed shut and you conjured your best doll-replica of Seungcheol.
In your dream he was a faceless mist, but he had a carved upper body, and from the fog surrounding his head spewed his voice - dripping in warmth and comfort, as you imagined it was his toned arm reaching between your legs and pumping into you.
Your other hand snaked down to your clit, where your hips canted off the bed. In the whirl of thrusting into yourself and rubbing tight circles in your clit, you realized, lip bitten raw under your prying teeth, that there was no reason to hold back your moans. It was only forest and wasteland for miles - and surely Seungcheol would not hear you in his floating snow globe. 
“A-ah, Seungcheol,” you wantonly murmured, burying your head in your pillow and sighing lazily. A flush had crept up your neck, where your chest expanded to allow for air. The pleasure was immense - probably more intense, since it had been quite a while - warmth spreading in your lower stomach and culminating at your throbbing clit. Recklessly, you moaned and thrashed as you fucked yourself on your fingers, hiking towards your orgasm. “Seungcheoool-”
“Y/n?” 
You froze. 
Maybe you’d imagined it. Still, your fingers were stopped in their tracks, simply resting on the warmth of your folds, itching to continue. You sat up in bed and tried to ward away the creeping panic. Your heart began to gallop to the beat of a siren. 
The air had been starched when you finally pulled your hand out of your underwear, hot cheeks and glistening hands all over, when you began searching for the radio.
“Y/n, are you okay?” 
You had your back hunched over the edge of the bed, searching for the little yellow receiver, when his voice came again in a thick forest of static. You snapped your head to under your comforter, where the noise was slightly muffled. 
In a blurred panic, you threw the comforter off of you and spotted the small radio by your calf, and you scrambled to pick it up. When the dirty plastic touched your cheek, you stopped, sighed a shaky, hot breath, and closed your eyes. 
“Yeah, I’m, uh, I’m fine. What’s up?” you let go of the button and cringed at your own disheveledness, the breath and shake in your voice. You pressed your forehead radio-front in a silent prayer. 
There was a hesitance to Seungcheol when he spoke next: “... You were calling for me, you sounded in pain?” 
This was certainly the worst thing he could’ve said. You would’ve rather he told you he spotted a bear at the foot of your tower, trying to eat you! You must’ve accidentally kicked the radio and hit the button, you decide, and you damn yourself for keeping it in the bed - of course, shit like this would happen!
“I was…-” (If only you were a better liar), “- pranking you…” 
Seungcheol huffed out in amusement on the other end and you wanted to jump off the railing to the lookout tower and break your neck. “You were pranking me?” 
You gulped with a decidedly dry mouth. “It was a bear attack prank.” 
Seungcheol was smiling: “Yeah?” 
You were not: “Yeah.” 
There was an entropic silence, where you thoughts came rambled and pleading in your head: Please, just let this go, please, just let this go, let’s pretend it never happened, let’s-
“You wanna know what I think you were doing?” 
Seungcheol’s voice had dropped an octave. The smile in his voice was gone and there was something menacing and commanding about him now. In the moment, overcome with a cocktail of guilt and shame, you could not discern if this was anger or lust - the first seemed fitting. 
“I think you were fucking your little fingers thinkin’ about me,” he hummed and in response you whined and squeezed your eyes shut. The shame encapsulated you. “Shh, shh, calm down, I’m not mad, honey.” 
Blinking through rapidly forming tears, you opened your eyes to stare, dumbfounded, at the radio (as if it were Seungcheol and you were not several miles apart). “Really?” 
“Not mad at all. Jus’ think you should’ve told me if you wanted my help,” he tutted on his end and, God, he was so nurturing and comforting and he knew it, and it was so sexy. Your pussy, which had vaguely throbbed from the negligence throughout, was now screaming for your attention, hole clenching sadly around nothing. 
“I thought you wouldn’t want-” 
“You’re crying again, baby,” he must’ve noted from the hoarseness of your voice and the sniffles that accompanied every syllable. 
“Just want you so bad,” you sobbed, now shamelessly slipping your hand back into your underwear and sighing dazedly in relief when you touched it again. 
“Need Seungcheol to take care of you, huh?” The smile in his voice was back. 
“Yeah.” 
“Bet you don’t want me talking about birds now, hm?” he chuckled (at his own joke), voice low and raspy. “Are you touching that pretty pussy?” 
“Mhmm,” you responded lazily, floating high on the sound of his voice and jolts of electricity they sent as you worked up a pace on your clit once more. The pain of the interruption ebbed away. 
“Good girl, hm?” He knew. “Getting off to the sound of my voice, eh? Don’t even know what I look like.” 
“Hng- k-know you’re b-buff,” you gritted out, voice coming in sharp breaths. Your body moved languidly, back arching off the bed and hair coming out in choppy strands on your pillow. Seungcheol scoffed out a laugh: “Like knowing I could just fold you in half? Fuck you into tomorrow? Hm?” 
You let out a loud, dumb whine of his name. It was a total inability to get over his words; how melodious it was, and yet, how contradictory the smoothness of his words were to the strained nature of his thrumming voice. And the worst of it all was how confident he was - you supposed hearing someone else masturbate to you would be a confidence boost - and how the arrogance swelled out in the most comforting, nurturing way. Each word felt like a hand on your body, like a caress that sent shivers down your spine. 
“Fuck, princess, say my name like that again. Please.” 
“Seungcheol!” you obliged mindlessly, legs shaking on either side of your glistening hand. 
“Shit, I-” he grunted, and you heard a fumbling of fabrics on his end. Your nerves spun in excitement at the thought of him getting hard at your voice. “Can you put two fingers in the pretty pussy - it’ll feel like one of mine, baby.” 
You cried out when your fingers entered yourself, pads of your fingertips rubbing against your walls. Outside of the windows, the park was an empty wasteland of mauve and orchid, and the Fermata lake was brilliantly alive and dipping under the three-quarter-moon. 
“Wish it was your pussy wrapped around my cock right now,” he grunted, and he’d lost breath and composure and if you knew what his face looked like, you would imagine it sweaty and twisted up and a red-lipped ‘o’ letting the jaw slack. 
Resuming your earlier motions (double-handing your own kitty), you felt your orgasm lurking in the pit of your stomach, a tight-wound knot being ripped apart. You were panting into the cool air, creating silver-clouds in your tower-home. “A-ah, want you inside me so bad, Cheol- shit! Gonna- gonna cum-” 
“Yeah? You gonna cum thinking about my cock inside you baby? Thinkin’ about me just bouncing you up and down like my little fuckdoll?” His speech ended in the prettiest moan you’d ever heard, and you imagined every well-defined, flexed muscle under the moonlight and the thought had your whole body jerking and shaking and when you closed your eyes the stars stayed with you, white and glimmering under your eyelid. 
The strangled moans of your orgasm sent Seungcheol over the edge - at least from what you could tell. His dirty talk turned into strings of curses and moans and grunts until the radio went dead, and all you could hear was your own labored breaths and the faraway hooting of a horned owl. 
The silence flatlined the excitement into nervousness. Your lip was almost automatically caught in your teeth and you glanced over the radio beside you through your lashes.
Oh shit. What the fuck had you done?
“Uh, did you-” the smell of sweat shot up as you shuffled in your sheet to grab the radio once more. “Did you, uh, cum?” 
Oh fuck. You just made it way worse.
The silence from the radio was much louder than any response, but when the receiver did finally crinkle with static, the sound of laughter exploded from it.
“Don’t fucking laugh at me, BV,” you scolded, but you were smiling and relief flooded you like water overflows Fermata Lake during heavy downpour. 
“I’m sorry,” he hiccuped on the other end. “It’s just-.. ‘DID YOU CUM?’” 
“Alright, I’m going to bed now. You suck,” you quacked, and even though you were alone you thought to suppress the gentle tugging at your lips into a sharky smile. 
“DID YOU CUM?” 
He sounded pretty when he laughed.  _____________________________
“I can’t believe I have to hike down here to confiscate some fireworks.” 
Your grumble came from the forest beside Fermata Lake. You were walking down a patch of dirt revealed from years’ of trampling feet, dewy sprigs of grass arching into the mud. A group of (presumably) teenagers were firing fireworks down near the edge of your assigned territory. 
“They’re a fire hazard!” Seungcheol squawked obviously, and you huffed in your boots, preparing to climb down a rocky slope. 
“I know that! It’s just everywhere - the website, the signs - don’t use fireworks!” you complained. Seungcheol hummed absently on the other line: “Go teach those suckers a lesson, Fermata!” 
“I will,” you said, agitated. 
“Just don’t fuck with their personal belongings. Last thing we need is a lawsuit. Again.”
“I won’t,” you said, deflated. 
Even in your most angered moments, you could hand yourself over to the gentle forest. No longer were you protruding into a bubble, straining to get through a barrier that was urging you out, but you were absorbed into it, like you were one of its own. 
The forest was lush with pines and brown and green moss painting bark and rocks, and the grass leapt higher than your knees, as you trudged further and further in. 
SWOOOOSH!
A firework propelled into the sky about 100 meters away, and you watched its ignited trails of smoke before it exploded into a fest of sparkling blue and gold. You huffed out in anger at the sight. The sky wasn’t even fully dark - it was merely a muted blue evening. 
“Did you see that?” Seungcheol came from the radio-speaker. 
“Yeah, I’m right with them.” 
As you padded closer the smell of wet pine cones and coltsfoot accompanied the sound of distant voices - indeed, they sounded juvenile. You could make out at least two girls and at least one boy, although their voices were hard to distinguish, the way they echoed in between the grid of trees.
“Hey!” you yelled, as you creeped just close enough. Their voices hushed and you saw their frightened faces lit by handheld, Target-bought flashlights when you peeled back the screen of a bramblebush. They were gathered together amongst a tent, flashlight lighting the plates of the faces ablaze in cool white.
“Cut it out with the fireworks, alright?” you huffed and your anger melted a little when you saw that they were indeed just kids - maybe 19? They seemed to have nothing to say, and so you scanned the beer cans and the scattered backpacks and finally caught sight of a bundle of rockets in the grass. Your brows furrowed, and you picked it up with a sternness. 
“Hey, that’s ours!” one kid chimed, but he made no move to stop you, really, as you trudged angrily back to the bush you had come from. 
“Not as long as you’re in our park, man. It’s a fire hazard.” 
“We’ll take them back home-” 
“Goodnight!” The desperate plea fell on deaf, tired ears. You just wanted to eat dinner, so you disappeared out on a trail of pine needles and valiantly ignored the trail of curses and insults following you. You could care less. 
“I got the fireworks, Seungcheol,” you sighed tiredly and your eyes were dark pits and your face was relaxed, if only to conservative energy. 
“Good job, Fermata.” 
You were not in the talking mood. Maybe Seungcheol could tell by your tone of voice; maybe he could hear it in your sigh; but Seungcheol piped up again: “You know, if you need some energy for the hike back, there’s a supply box - uhh, 52? - if you head upwards instead of towards Fermata Lake.” 
You wanted to be grumpy, you really did, but the thought of a salivating, expired, delicious, out-of-date granola bar had you changing course to the slowly gaining hill of the forest. 
It was weird. This was probably the closest you’d ever been to Seungcheol’s tower. Under the prickly cover of pine some mile in the distance, you could see a glowing square, perched over the treetops by long, wooden pillars, support beams crossing the middle. You couldn’t help but wanna go up to it. There had been an unbearable magnetic pull to his tower ever since that night however long ago. You decided to stay the course for Supply Box 52. 
“I can practically see you from here,” you commented, and the tower was becoming a beacon as the evening mulled darker and darker by the minute. 
“Really? Hang on,” he did not let go of the radio-button, and so you had the pleasure of listening to the ruffling of fabrics and thumps on the floor. “Can you see me flexing in the window?” 
“You’re such a dork,” you laughed, and the sound bounced off the pines and traveled up to the rock of the nearby Aluralura Mountain. “No, I’m not quite that close.” 
“Damn it!” 
“Yeah, it‘s a real shame,” you muttered, smiling, and then you caught sight of the supply box up ahead. The hill flattened out once more (to which you breathed a sigh of relief) and the box was perched on the edge facing the path that began onto the cliffs. This was Seungcheol’s territory - cliff sides and all. “I think I see Supply Box 52.”
“Open that bad boy up.” 
You entered the code, scrolling the mechanisms one by one until the numbers read 1-2-3-4 (you still thought this combination was ridiculous), and when you opened the lid it creaked horribly, worn from the weather. 
The wind was harsh that day, and a note, identical to the one you’d found at Eleison Valley, broke off its tape from the mean pushes of the wind. Instinctively, you grabbed it as it started to fly off, and your hand closed around it and crinkled it under your fingers. You looked at it with knitted brows. 
Wordlessly, you tucked it in between your side and your arm, redirecting your attention to the goodies in the supply box. 52 held a rope and a map and another directory for supply boxes and, to your exhausted delight, a box of grandma-looking caramels. You took the whole thing and stuffed it into your bag. 
As you shuffled, you put the note between your lips, stuffing the plastic container of gold-wrapped, sugary candies in between your rope and your own map and a coat for possible rain. When you zipped it up, the fabric of the bag warped grotesquely to fit the various items you’d brought. 
You pulled the note back out from your lips. A small wet patch of spit lingered on the paper, as you unfolded it. 
It read: 
‘Hey Seungcheol,
If you find this, I gotta go be with my mom now. I’ll miss you forever.
From Jun.’
The wind blew kisses on your back like the presence of a ghost.
“You find anything good?” Seungcheol’s voice peeked through the static of the radio. It had been quiet for a while. You couldn’t take your eyes off the letter. The ink was smudged and slurred. 
“Uh, caramels, actually,” you said, eyes dancing over each slope of ‘forever’. “Like, granny caramels.”
You put the letter away.  _____________________________
A week later and you were looking out of the window at pouring rain. The sky was smothered by a duvet of dark gray clouds, and the rain was coming harder than you’d ever seen. It was like thousands of bullets pelting into the ground and turning it soft and muddy, and the drops hit your roof like the nonstop click of a keyboard. 
"Rainy season, huh?” your mouth was to the radio. 
“Yeah. We’re gonna be staying up all night to watch out for lightning. Fire hazard.” 
“Shit, I should make coffee.” 
“I’m way ahead of you.” 
The lightning came and thunder followed. The sound was enormous and terrifying. It grumbled like a hungry beast and the sound bounced off of every mountain-wall and echoed from all sides. You felt very small, wrapped up in a blanket at your desk, a steaming cup of coffee by your side and your fire extinguisher evacuated from its holder to stand beside you, all red and shiny aluminum and rubber nozzle. 
“Did that look like it hit a tree?” you asked after seeing a zig-zagging bolt of lightning hanging a little too low over the crowns. Your voice was louder than usual - this night was a game of overpowering the screaming rain. It was some 1 AM.
“Uhhhhh, shit. Maybe. We’d see the fire, but it’s possible it’s at the root.” 
“Fuck,” you whispered. “Was that yours or my area?” 
“Uhhhhh-” 
“I’m gonna check it out.” 
Determined, you let the radio fall on the table, as you fumbled for another sweater. The knitted fabric slipped over your other sweater, and then you were wrapping yourself up in your raincoat.
“Maybe I should go - it’s slippery right now, it’s dangerous as fuck. You could fall and hit your head, you know. I think it was closer to me anyway, so--” 
“Seungcheol, I already have my coat on, I’m going!” 
And indeed you were going, despite the grumbled protests of Seungcheol. Your coat blew in the hurricane wind as you stood atop the cliff, looking down at the cascading water, that’d all race down to the sinkhole that was Fermata Lake. Through the clouds, there were no stars to trade glances with, not even ghosts.
You fought headwind the entire way, your hair flowing wildly and your coat threatening to unbutton at the will of the blasts. The ground under your rainboots had become mud and the further you trudged into the forest, the more the mud crept up your yellow shoe, slinging over you like liquid ropes. 
“I’m going down the drop off again!” you were screaming to overpower the wind, radio to your mouth before you dropped it into your pocket and retrieved your bag to regather your rope. 
“Be careful!” Seungcheol commandeered bitterly, muffled from your pocket. “It’s slippery as shit! Radio me immediately when you’re down, so I know you’re okay.” 
Even as your face grew wet and sore from the whipping rain, you scoffed. A gloved hand shoved into your pocket, brought the radio back up to your red lips: “Stop being such a pussy!” 
“Say yes, Y/n!” 
You rolled your eyes. “Aye, aye.”
“... I’ll take that, asshole.” 
Wet as a wipe, you slung your rope over the hook and prepared it in a slew of motions you’d by now memorized. Although, you noted your movements were awkward, somewhat impaired by the layers of fabric that encased you. Stubborn, you stood before the hook, grabbed onto the rope, and began walking backwards. 
Your booted foot curled around the edge of the cliffside, and with the tightened rope you began your careful horizontal walk. Raindrops pelted your face like a clenched fist, but you only blinked away the water and tried to focus on stepping carefully down the side of the rockface. 
KRRRRRRRRKKKKKK!
You screamed girlishly when your rope snapped from the hook, and you watched it come flying out over the ledge, before you realized, horrifically, you were already falling. 
It was barely a second, just one blurry image of the weeping sky, before you were on the ground, groaning in pain. A pulsing ache creeped up your spine, and you twisted your body in the mud to put the weight on your side. You sighed into the mud, dirt on your squished cheek. 
The rain was uncaring of your unfortunate situation, as you laid pathetically in the dirt, body scrunching up like an elastic, while your shadow was cast by sudden bursts of lightning. Panting, you pushed yourself up by your arms and felt blindly for your-
Where was your radio? 
Your pocket was deflated and empty, and you scrambled in the dirt, desperately, pushing yourself up completely to scan the area. You noted how the pain subsided into a small, dwindling soreness, thanking whatever God for your layers of clothing and the softness of the earth. 
There. A flash of yellow in your blurred vision, aided by another strike of lightning atop Aluralura Mountain. You picked up the worn, dirty radio in your heavy hand, pressing at its side. 
“Hello? Seungcheol?” 
There was no static to indicate your message had been relayed, and the usual red digital numbers telling you what channel you were on was gone, a simple, black screen remaining, mirroring your muddied face, twisted in anguish. 
“Fuck this,” you hissed, standing up on two legs. You looked back up to where your lookout tower was still ablaze, a yellow box in the heights. The rope was fucked. You had to go down anyway. Huffing, you started walking. 
You marched through the undergrowth, crossing through unpathed forest to reach the destination. It was near a hollow marked on your map, and so the expedition, although scarier, more empty and dark without Seungcheol's warm voice, was mild. 
Wet petals brushed your face from rows of bushes, and even through your gloves the cold left your fingertips numb. You sniffled in the dark. 
You found the hollow, then you found the tree. There was, indeed, ash going up the side of it, seemingly stemming from a smaller bush in the clearing, but the fire had been long put out by the insistent rain, and partially you felt disappointment that you’d trekked all the way out here, only for there to be no real danger. 
Heavier than ever, you turned your gaze to the glowing hut in the distance. 
You almost wanted to go back to your own hut, to turn your back to Seungcheol’s glowing tower and forget this ever happened. The anticipation of seeing him - of him seeing you - was a tall wall to overcome. But, you realized, not only was his tower closer; you also needed help. 
Your radio was fucked, your rope was fucked and moreover, you needed to be sure you hadn’t done irreparable damage to your back. With water dripping over the ledge of your hood, you began walking towards Seungcheol. 
Rainwater cascaded off the edge of the trees and the consistent dashed dots looked like tiny glass orbs in the light of Bay Valley Tower. It was intensely quiet for a while - it seemed like every bush-tailed critter of the forest had scuttered away to hide from the rain and the echoing growling of the sky. 
“Y/n!” 
You were so tired you almost could’ve missed it. Each layer of fabric weighed you down and the dirt smearing your cheeks and hands and fabrics could’ve melted you right into the earth. But indeed, a voice - so familiar it almost hurt - was calling to you in the dead of night.
“Seungcheol?” your first call was not a call, but a whisper, as you peered into the thick grooves of the forest. Then, your senses returned to you and you screamed as loud as you could: “Seungcheol!” 
“Y/n!”
You and Seungcheol called for each other, syllables echoing off the huge, towering presence Aluralura Mountain. Getting closer and then closer, and then you could see the figure of another raincoated person, shaded by a hood.
“Y/n? Oh, thank God!” He ran to you, swimming in the rubber of his red coat and pink lips peeking over the closed hood. 
It was a little paralyzing. He was so beautiful, you didn’t even know which speck of his shadowed face to look at. Tan, wet skin and big eyes from which the longest, blackest lashes you’d ever seen sprung. Most notable were his fuzzy, blocky eyebrows sitting over his brown eyes, fine wrinkles springing from the corners (you’d like to think you’d helped create some of those). His lips were big and bright and pouty, but it was wiped away when he smiled at the sight of you, and you could die, because a dimple indented itself in his cheek at the motion. 
“Are you okay?” his smile faded when you said nothing, only stared at him, and then stared at where his thick fingers wrapped around your arm. He leaned into you and God, you hadn’t seen him before this very moment, and now he was leaning over you and he was so close and he smelled like pinewood, and you were pretty sure you smelt exactly the same. 
You lowered yourself from your daze, trying to follow the pattering of rain atop both of your hoods. “Uh,” you gulped, finding his eyes, “yeah, I jus’... I thought you were joking when you said you weren’t white.” 
His laugh. His laugh was even prettier in person and it had the same rasp and the same disapproving hint to it that it had had at all your other jokes. “You’re unbelievable, you know that, Fermata?” 
“Bird watching is crazy, man.” 
He smiled and studied your face for a moment, still leaned over you and thoroughly ignoring the rain and the thunder and the dirt on your boots. Then the smile faded, just a little: “What happened to your radio?” 
“Oh- oh my God! Do you- do you remember my first day? The drop off! I fuckin’- fell down, my rope came undone on the hook! My radio was knocked the fuck out, it was crazy, I’m gonna need a new one-”
“Are you okay? You fell?” Seungcheol’s strong eyebrows became furrowed and the sight was so utterly mesmerizing to you. You waved him off: “I’ll be fine, please, I just want to get out of this weather.” 
Seungcheol did not seem to entirely believe you, but nonetheless he grabbed your hand - in his own rough, used one - and started leading you upwards (“If I don’t hold your hand, how can I be sure you don’t fall down another drop off?”).
Time was not as agonizingly slow by his size, and the tower seemed to propel towards you and the hands on your wristwatch seemed to move backwards. Not before long, you were climbing up the stairway with Seungcheol’s iron fist on your wrist, so as to prevent you from falling down something else (you had a feeling that he would not let this go). 
“I’m gonna make us some tea,” grumbled Seungcheol when you arrived.
“Yes, please,” you murmured. Your coat was folded beside you, starry raindrops soaking into a blanket thrown over his bed. 
It was warm in Seungcheol’s tower house - he had half a brain to put an electric heater in the corner of the room, unlike you - and it was only the sudden embrace of warmth that had you looking out into the park and realizing you would have frozen to death if you’d stayed. 
There was a warm glow from a naked bulb in the ceiling (you guessed Seungcheol had put it up himself), an old rug full of sand-corns, and a shelf with various books. Seungcheol also had a small kitchen, a desk and a bed, just like you. The layout was exactly the same, but sitting down on Seungcheol’s bed, you noted he must’ve made some alterations. Your fingers pulled at the white of the mattress - it was his own and it was much softer.  
When the electric kettle (a rusted, iron old thing) was cooking, Seungcheol turned to you sheepishly and unzipped his coat. You waited in secret anticipation for his supposedly smoking-hot bod, but were disappointed to see another sweater underneath it. 
Seungcheol stopped the kettle and took two large mugs from his cupboard. These, he placed on a carved tray (you thought he might have made it himself from pinewood), and then from a small, wooden tea box on his countertop, he produced two bright yellow tea packets, which he gently placed in the mugs. Then he poured in the water, steam traveling up to open his pores and whatnot. 
“Do you want anything in yours?” he asked, not really looking. 
“Uhm. No, no, thank you,” your hands were folded in your lap. 
He only grunted in response and left one tea untouched, then took a clear, plastic container of honey from an array of unrefrigerated condiments, and squirted half the bottle into his tea. He sniffled when he was done, grabbing the tray and turning to you. Tonight, Seungcheol was uncharacteristically nervous.
“Can you-?”
“Hm?”
“That little- little table over there-”
“What?”
“Can you grab it?- For- for the tray?” 
“Oh, yeah, sure.” 
The tea sat on the tray and the tray sat on the foldable table and you and Seungcheol sat before them on the edge of his bed. You took the hefty mug in your hand and took a slurp, looking over at him from the rim. Seungcheol looked at you awkwardly. He did not move for his tea. 
“I should take a look at your back,” he said. 
“What? Why?” you quacked disapprovingly. “You fell on it,” Seungcheol reminded you.
You shook your head silently. “I like your hut. It’s way better than mine.” 
“I’ve been here longer,” Seungcheol shrugged. You looked at him and he seemed displeased - this would not have been a big deal were you speaking to him on the radio, but his aura was much more commanding in person - something about his eyes, you thought. You had to look away, settling on your mug again (there was a cartoon dog on it). 
“I suppose that’s true,” you murmured. Seungcheol stared into the side of your face and his obvious concern for you weighed down at your muscles. 
A gentle pause where rain pattered his roof. 
“Are you okay?” 
You glanced over, nervously: “Tired.” 
He bit his lip: “Maybe I should’ve made coffee... Can we put instant coffee in tea?” 
“Seungcheol, I wanted to ask you something,” you said and put your mug down on the tray again with a small ‘clink’. Seungcheol rubbed his hands over his trouser-clad thighs, nodding, maybe more nervous than you. The warm glow of the bulb made him even prettier and all was warm and dry in the hut, even though rain was falling down in thick curtains just outside by the troughs. “It’s just..” you began, “you’ve been so avoidant about this.. Jun guy..”
Seungcheol’s sigh interrupted you before you could finish: “He was just the guy that worked here before you.” 
“I found another letter.”
Seungcheol’s furrowed expression softened and he looked at you with big, glassy brown eyes, hidden under a waft of choppy bangs. What was that in the shine of his pupil? Fear? Vulnerability? Sadness?
“It was about- it said he was gonna go be with his mother and that- that he would miss you,” you explained and your voice was snotty and throaty, and your eyes averted to a folded napkin beside a half-eaten slice of bread. A fly circulated it hungrily. 
Seungcheol’s lips made a tight line, dimples poking out pathetically. He cleared his throat and you heard the strain in his vocal chords once more (and it was so real because there he was - right beside you). 
“Me and Junhui came here together. We’d just finished college and we didn’t want-.. We didn’t want to be adults yet. Like, an office job, wife and kids,” he began and there was a tremor about Seungcheol tonight. “I don’t think he was made for a job like this though. I think the loneliness got to him.. Think he just lived with it ‘cause he could tell I liked it.” 
You nodded along until he wasn’t speaking anymore. Then a thick silence absorbed the two of you, a patch of moss drowned in the downpour. 
“His mom was dead, so..” he whispered. Tears gathered at his waterline like a string of stars. “So, yeah, he went to.. To be with her.” 
“I’m so sorry, Seungcheol,” you whispered and the echoing whispers of the storm bouncing off the rock faces of Aluralura mountain beckoned your hand onto his woolen sleeve. “I had no idea.” 
“They never found his body, you know? He’s just out there, somewhere,” both you and Seungcheol turned your heads out to the pitch black expanse of the massive park. Your mind wandered to every crook and crevice you’d seen out there, wondering if a dead body had hidden behind a quarry rock. “Fuckin’ terrified I’ll find him one day. Just… Rotten.” 
You didn’t know what to say. What do you say? Even though you’d stood in a similar situation - losing a friend - you couldn’t find anything that could ease his pain, the pain that was now tinting the light blue and dulling the sound of the rain. The whole room was pulsating. Luckily, it seemed Seungcheol had something more to say. You watched his lips pucker as the words tried to leave his tongue, then watched them draw back. 
“He used to.. He used to say this thing. It reminded me so much of what you- you said that night about, uhm, your friend’s friend. He used to say that- that sometimes he’d wake up in the middle of the night and he’d just be.. Totally.. Convinced that he was at the bottom of Fermata Lake and he was drowning,” Seungcheol’s voice broke one too many times and his jaw clenched. “God, I was so worried. Jus’ thought I couldn’t- I couldn’t be the reason that happened again.” 
“I…” A tear slipped down your face and your hand left Seungcheol’s arm to wipe it, furiously.He turned to you pitifully, the broad width of his shoulders hanging low. “I’m sorry- you weren’t meant to feel that way-”
“It’s okay. I wanted to help,” Seungcheol grabbed your hands in his, a deep frown on his lips. 
You stopped the tears, face burning hot and wet when you looked up at him again, calmed. His thumbs stroked over the backs of your hands. The pads were rough and beaten. 
“Y’know it was sort of the same for me,” you said. Seungcheol waited for you to talk patiently and with a small, encouraging smile, as warmth streamed from his hands into yours.
“Yeah, my- uh roommate - best friend - died. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how I found him, like, his hand was just outstretched towards- towards the wall to my room, and he must’ve just lied there while his heart was giving out and I wasn’t there-... And I found him the next morning like that and I thought he was asleep and I left him there. Again. And I just can’t stop seeing him everywhere and for a while I was afraid that he would move, you know, like, start crawling towards me or some shit, but I think now I’m actually more afraid that he’ll never move. I think that’s the joke or whatever, he just won’t move, he’ll just be there the way I left him- and I guess- I guess, I thought I could find some sort of higher purpose out here, but I just can’t.. I feel more as though.. Like, it was these things that took him away from me, these fundamental parts of- existence. Like all the cliffs have evil faces and they want to take me too, and maybe I did want them to take me, but not- not anymore. I don’t know if that makes any sense?” 
You peered up at Seungcheol through your lashes, wet and heavy. He was frowning, hands gripping yours tighter.
“You don’t want them to take you anymore?” he asked quietly. You shook your head. “How so?”
“Honestly, I don’t think it has much to do with me or the park. I think-” you gaze flitted to Seungcheol and he smiled knowingly. You scoffed and smiled too. 
Although you both were fully clothed (Seungcheol annoyingly so), it felt as if all the layers had been stripped away one by one; sweaters and trousers, skin and meat and bones. All there was left were two brightly glowing hearts in front of one another. 
“It’s okay,” he whispered then. “You don’t have to say it.”
You rolled your eyes: “I think it’s because of you.” 
He grinned, wrinkles crinkling the corners of his eyes and cheeks bunching up in shiny, red fat. You poorly suppressed your own grin and the two of you leaned into each other when your eyes hooked, laughing into each other's shoulders.
“You’re so dumb,” you complained, forehead scratching against the stiff, knitted threads in Seungcheol’s shirt. 
“I think- I think we both jus’ get dumber together,” you could feel his smile into your neck and the hot stream of air that bounced against the skin. 
Right as you were about to pull away, Seungcheol’s arms wrapped around your back and pushed you back into him. You giggled at the motion, but with little thought your own arms wrapped around his back too, and your knees clashed where they met. 
“Seungcheol?” your voice was muffled by his neck. His only response was hum, that ruminated from deep in his throat right by your ear. You pulled away until you were staring at his face. 
Each thick stroke of eyebrow hair, each long, black eyelash and each mole dotted on his softly aging skin was crystal clear then. Your hands wrapped around his biceps and felt your heart buzz at their pronounced carvings under the wool. Seungcheol smiled down at you in a sort of adoring way.
“I think-” you began, then felt stupid, then felt idiotic and cowardly. “I don’t know- I think we should kiss now?” 
It came out as more of a question than a statement. 
Seungcheol gravelled a laugh and his eyes became all squinty and he pursed his lips as if it concealed his amusement in any way at how you squirmed beneath him and your face heated up. 
“I think you’re right,” he nodded and you could barely register the feeling of joy that exploded in your chest, before Seungcheol’s pillowy lips crashed into yours at the same instance as a crack of thunder. 
The lightning was a flickering show to the performance of yours and Seungcheol’s passionate kiss. His lips molded to yours and yours to his, warm and chapped and your hands couldn’t help but wrap around the soft planes of his cheeks - to pull him further, to keep him with you. 
Seungcheol grappled for your hips, and you moaned in a sort of discombobulated agreement, as he, with shocking ease, pulled you into his lap. His hands on your body, stroking and pressing into the meat, left a burning ghostly trail behind it. 
“Can I be honest?” you mumbled in between bitten kisses and panted breaths. “You’re hotter than I imagined.” 
Seungcheol smiled into the kiss at that: “You too, baby. Now you get the real thing, hm? After fucking your sweet pussy thinking about me?” 
You whined in response, hips canting down into his and head dropping into the warm crook of his neck. You licked mindlessly at the skin, rolling your hips into his. Seungcheol groaned and steel hands halted your eager core. 
“Desperate so quick?” he quirked, and you cried out because how could even begin to describe how hot it was that he could entirely still your movements so nonchalantly? You swallowed before you tilted your head from the safety of his neck. 
“I have waited so fucking long for your cock, Cheol. I need it inside me now,” you said seriously, and it was his turn to swallow the rising viscous in his throat, before he nodded and pushed you off his lap to remove his trousers. 
You saw the way the metal of the belt reflected the light, as he (almost angrily) began journeying it off his middle, and you took the hint, beginning to discard your clothes. Your first sweater fell to the floor, then the next followed, and then you were stomping the floor to rid your soaked trousers. Another article of clothing that was soaked - your panties! And embarrassingly so, you thought, watching the slick, wet patch as you lowered the material to the floor. 
Only then did your attention return to Seungcheol, now fully naked in his hut with windows on all sides, and you audibly gasped. 
His torso was one huge slab of muscle and meat. The skin was relatively pale, pronounced pecs and his arms were like tree trunks at his sides. His thighs were fucking huge, indentations of muscles peering through his skin, as he impatiently worked his boxers off. 
He halted though at your gasp, smirking cockily before returning to his work.
“Is it as good as you imagined when you came thinkin’ ‘bout me?” he muttered as his boxers slid down his calf. Too busy staring at his girthy, leaking cock sprouting between his legs, you neglected to answer and Seungcheol continued in a deliberately raspy tone: “Jus’ thinking about your pretty moans, my cock’s aching for you, princess. You’re not gonna come warm it up, beautiful?” 
“Yes-” you stumbled over a treacherous boot, “yes, I am!” 
“Good girl,” Seungcheol rumbled, bemused, as your knees floundered into the mattress and back into his lap. Seungcheol seemed to have other plans, however, because as soon as you had found your footing, and his warm hands were sliding up your back and his neck was craned up to you, breath hitting your breasts, he raised you and flipped you over, so you were digging into the mattress and he was above you. The shadows only served to define the chisel of his arms further. 
His hand slid down your soft thighs, settling in between your legs to run two fingers through your folds. 
“Your pussy is so pretty,” he whispered, somewhat mesmerized at the slick coating his fingertips. You squirmed impatiently and he shushed you, ever so gently: “Shh, baby, I’ll take care of you.” 
Immediately following up on his promise, the two fingers snaked down to your sensitive, pulsing hole, prodding gently. You wiggled and whined, one of your hands (which had been gripping his bedsheets) stopped him at the wrist. He stopped, eyes flitting up to your flushed, shiny face questioningly. 
“I wan’ your cock now. No prep,” you scowled, strands of hair sticking out messily. Seungcheol frowned. 
“I need to-” 
“I’m wet enough, please, been thinkin’ ‘bout this since-..” you cut yourself off with a frustrated sigh, eyebrows knitted together in frustration. Seungcheol couldn’t help but smile at how fucked out you were already, so precious, all beautiful and naked and womanly. 
“You sure?” he asked, voice matching the depth of the thunder. You nodded eagerly: “Please, please-” 
“Okay,” he murmured, sticky hand leaving your burning pussy in favor of pressing it against the underside of your thigh. At the command of his strong hands, your body folded in half and the realization of your position had you crying out pathetically. “Anything for my beautiful baby.” 
My. His. The word choice had you clenching around nothing, all spread out for him while he lined his pretty, red cock up with your entrance. 
“Gonna feel real full in a minute, yeah?” he said absently, watching intently at how your pretty pussy was splayed out and ready and aching for him, mind reeling at the sight of you and the smell of you and how you felt under his hands. 
And suddenly it was there - a mountain of pressure building around the head of his cock as it pushed inside, bursting when he pushed in a little further, until he was fully nestled inside. Seungcheol was not unaffected, body curling over yours animalistically with a deep, throaty groan. You, too, had to squirm and moan wantonly, as your body shone under the bulb. 
“You’re so tight, pretty,” Seungcheol managed, face scrunched up, as his pelvis met your pubic bone. His hands gripped your shaking legs once more, fully folding you in half and you cried as the movement invited him further inside, feeling him brush the spongy spot inside you. 
“Feel s’good!” you moaned, even as he hadn’t moved yet, and Seungcheol’s hands squeezed you in response. 
Experimentally (perhaps fearful, as you had rushed into it without preparation), Seungcheol thrust shallowly and was pleased at your broken cry, so he did it again and then again, and then he was building up a rhythm and your sultry moans were slipping through the cracks of the hut and bouncing off the walls of Aluralura mountain and echoing twenty times over. 
There was nothing sweet about the pace of Seungcheol’s hips. He was pistoning in and out with an impressive agility, huffing over your folded body. It was desperation; the way your nails raked over his back and his sloping arms, and sweet, little whimpers and your pussy choking his cock. 
“Sweetest, prettiest-” he squeezed his eyes shut and groaned, stomach caving inwards and clenching. “Fuck, cutest, little princess being stuffed full of my cock.”
“Love your cock,” you babbled, “Love- love your cock, love you.” 
The words slipped out as if they were nothing, but their meaning was solidified by your raking hand sneaking up to his neck and pulling him down into another sloppy kiss. Tongues melding and spit trickling down your chin as he hummed into your mouth in the most wonderful way. 
“Love you, too. Pretty, funny, sweet girl-” 
“A-ah, ‘m gonna cum soon,” you warned, voice nothing but a breath, and your face pleasured, scrunched up in the dead of night. Your stomach was a well of pressure.
“I know, baby, I know. Squeezing me so tight,” he soothed, hands running up and down the plush underside of your thighs, as his hips continued their unrelenting pace. “Come on, cum on my cock.” 
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, Seungcheol-” a string of curses and his name followed as your pussy clenched one last hard time and your cum seeped out around his thick, veiny length.
Holding his own orgasm at bay, he clenched his jaw and gritted out: “Where d’you want my cum?” 
“Inside!” you mewled, overstimulated and sore, and legs still pressed to your chest, clammy and slick. 
Seungcheol would’ve made a snarky remark was he not already cumming at your words, white seed painting your insides and spilling out around his softening length. He thrust a couple more times, relishing in the sounds of your fucked-out moans before he’d emptied himself, and he dropped down beside you. 
Due to the nature of a one-person bed, you and Seungcheol were both pressed close to one another, covered in sweat. Your panting, huffing breaths synchronized and you stared into each other's eyes, all wild and blushed. 
“Holy shit,” you whispered, brought back to reality by a distant calling owl. You were still in the park, you realized - not some other pleasure dimension like one may have thought. Seungcheol smiled giddily.
You looked out into the wasteland, and your eyelids and limbs (draping over Seungcheol’s big, pretty body) were suddenly heavy. You yawned.
“D’you think we have to stay up anymore?”
Seungcheol watched you gauging the pinelands with starry eyes. “You can go to bed,” he offered gently, “I’ll stay up and make sure the storm’s over.” 
“Are you sure?” you mumbled, but you were already settling into the domes of his chest, closing your eyes. Seungcheol looked at you and thought you were adorable. 
“Yeah.” 
“Can you stay here?” 
“Yeah.” 
“Can your dick stay inside me?” 
This prompted a laughter blooming all the way from his chest, where your cheek bunched up against the skin. His arm was wrapped around your back. 
“Sure, baby.” 
You mumbled something like ‘okay’ or ‘good’ or ‘thank you’, and you drifted off into sleep with his arms around you, and when Seungcheol was certain the storm had passed, he nuzzled his head into your hair and dozed off himself. 
At the swimming red sky of dawn, your eyes pried open to see Seungcheol already awake, still wrapped around you. 
Nonchalantly (that is to say: as if your chest was not bursting with glee), you nodded your head over to the window behind him:
“Is that not a black-billed cuckoo?!” 
And Seungcheol thought that maybe you and him could find birds together elsewhere too. 
855 notes · View notes
ponderingmoonlight · 9 months
Text
Touch her and you'll burn
Tumblr media
Pairing: boyfriend!Gojo x fem!reader; Toji x reader (kinda?)
Word Count: 2,8k
Synopsis: When it comes to Satoru Gojo, you are his true weakness - after all, you've been his girlfriend for years. Toji doesn't miss that either and takes you prisoner without further ado in order to get at the white-haired man.
Warnings: violence, death, tortue, mentions of sa, hurt, language
„What a cute little thing you are. Too bad you chose the wrong guy as your fuck buddy. How did you two end up anyway? I bet it’s because he’s tall and his special appearance, you women all tick the same way. Whatever, let’s see how I will kill you today, sweetie. And maybe we can have some fun before, what do you think, huh?”
“Rot in hell, fucking asshole.”
You spit directly into the way too close face of none other than Toji Fushiguro. The man that broke into your apartment, drugged and hauled you into this dark and dirty room that is only lit by one small lightbulb. Your hands are chained to the ceiling, you’ve been kneeling on the floor for what feels like an eternity now. Not the best starting point to be honest.
“I love my women feisty, little bitch. Listen up.”
His rough hand yanks on your chin so harshly that you can’t help but stare straight into his cold eyes which are only inches away from yours. Sweat drips from your forehead against your already bleeding nose, your body slowly but surely begins to tremble from the cold and exhaustion.
“There are exactly two options for you. One: That fucker appears and you both die while trying to save your cute ass. Two: He’ll let you rot in here and I’ll kill you all alone. If I were you, I’d be nicer to the man who’s been taking such good care of me for the last hours and who’s responsible for my death.”
“My parents taught me not to talk to strangers, especially the stinky and homeless ones. Save your breath”, you hiss back.
His palm crushes against your soft cheek without any mercy. Dizziness consumes you instantly, your lifeless head falls to the side while blood squirts out of your nose again. Fuck, that hurt pretty bad. But still a quiet laughter escapes your lips. Does he really think he can crush your will with a few punches? Pathetic. You may not be a jujutsu sorcerer, but you’re damn though. It’s not the first time that you have to deal with assholes like him because of your precious boyfriend Satoru Gojo. He definitely owns you a shopping tour after that.
“What are you laughing about, brat?”
“Just thinking about how Satoru will kick your ass later”, you bark through gritted teeth.
“First he has to find me. I’m a non-jujutsu sorcerer, just like you. So he can’t detect me by my curse power either. Your mobile phone and your pathetic GPS necklace are in your apartment, Gojo didn’t protect you with his powers. Hurts huh? Apparently the other girl's more important to him. Treats you pretty badly, don’t you think?”
You don’t like to admit it, but his words make your heart ache for a brief moment. Deep down, you know that it was his job to protect her, that he cares about you the most even though you haven’t seen him in days now. Would he even risk her life to save yours? He told you over and over that you are his priority, his everything. But…you don’t know.
Will Satoru come at all?
You sink into your chains and stare at the man and his mischievous grin in front of you. It doesn’t matter if Satoru searches for you or finds you. But you won’t let Toji bring you to your knees so easily.
His gaze wanders through the room while he casually strides around. He needs to stay focused. Gojo is probably the strongest jujutsu sorcerer of his lifetime. Kidnapping his girlfriend to weaken him and divert his attention from Riko is a smart move, but risky if Toji isn’t careful. And then there’s the fact that (y/n) is a pain in the ass herself.
“Where ya lookin’? I’m the view, asshole.”
“No wonder a slut like you is the girlfriend of someone like that Gojo guy. I’ll shut up your pretty little mouth soon enough.”
“Did you just say I’m pretty?”
Your maniac grin and disrespect catches Toji off guard. Of course he knew you would be a handful, but he’s a well-known assassin. Damn, he could kill you in a heartbeat if he wanted to, are you too dumb to see that? Is your trust in your stupid boyfriend really this big? Maybe he should in fact kill you instantly.
“I’d love to wring your throat right away, but before that I’ll show you where your place is.”
All color drains from your face in an instant, cheeky grin gone in the wind. Fuck, this asshole is about to unbuckle his belt. Your throat is tight, it’s like you’ve forgotten how to breathe…Will he really? You shake your head in disbelief, limbs fighting desperately against the merciless force of the chains around your bloody wrists. No, you can’t let this happen. You would rather die than allow this man to touch you with his disgusting hands.
“Cat got your tongue, huh? What’s up, (y/n)? Don’t worry, I’ll show you what you’ve missed before you die.”
Toji wraps his arm around your waist and presses his muscular body against yours. The urge to puke into his face becomes unbearable as well as your impatience. Where the fuck is Satoru? You close your eyes in a desperate attempt to calm your thoughts and breathing. Even a man like him wouldn’t dare to assault you, not the girlfriend of Gojo Satoru. But since he’s not here at the moment, you’ll just have to take care of that situation yourself.
When you open your eyes again, there’s not a spark of humor left in them – pure determination and rage draw your face. With all the strength you are able to gather in your poor condition you put your head in your neck and yank it forward as hard as possible against his nose. You ignore the throbbing pain that seems to radiate from your forehead all over your body and the nausea that suddenly overcomes you. This is not over. Bracing your body against the chains, you push yourself off the ground and kick his chest hard with both legs. His huge frame stumbles backwards while his loud groan fills the room.
You breathe heavy, sight almost completely obscure by the waterfall of blood that streams down your head. With a satisfaction – filled grin you notice his bleeding nose. Serves him right, stupid asshole. He just shouldn’t have messed with you. After all, just because you are a non-jujutsu sorcerer doesn’t mean you’re not good at defending yourself. Who does this guy think he even is anyway?
Fuck, Toji rushes towards you with quick steps, the muscles under his tight shirt are dangerously tense. Not good. But even worse is that all you can do is stare at him through your tired lids and let him approach you. Damn, he is fucking furious.
“That blood really suits you, brings out your icy-murderer eyes, y’know. Man, you’d be so fucking hot if you weren’t a stone cold asshole. Could get yourself a nice girl.”
At this point, your words aren’t more than an uncovered fading whisper anymore. You are just so fucking tired of hanging in this room and fighting a hopeless battle. At least you die in style.
“Nice show, slut. But that’s it for you now. I hope you realize that I could have just dodged your pathetic punches. Just like that”, he hisses through gritted teeth.
With a swift motion of his arm, he grips your wrist and twists it. You see stars, bones audible shattering in your body. All color that is left in your face drains instantly, a cry filled with ache reverberates around the room and rings back in your ears. You feel like you’re going to lose consciousness at any moment. No, stay awake, bark back, show him that you don’t care.
But you can’t.
His right hand clenches into a fist. As if in slow motion, you watch it move towards your face. This is gonna hurt like hell, maybe you should close your eyes and pretend none of this is happening. You at the beach with Satoru, his delicious body exposed to the sun and your merciless eyes, dipping his face into the water over and over again until he begs you to stop. Yeah, that would be nice. Satoru…You love him so much that it hurts sometimes, some say you two are obsessed with each other. He wears you on his hands, you’re the only one who can match his sense of humor and has the ability to put up with his lifestyle. He would never allow that any harm touches your delicate skin, that you get involved into his work as a jujutsu sorcerer. But today it seems like he can’t save you. At least you can say you fought back as much as you could.
“Touch her and you’ll burn.”
Your eyes snap open immediately. There he stands, your boyfriend, your knight in shining armor with his sunglasses casually covering his bright blue orbs.
“What are you doing, (y/n)?”, he questions ironically while slowly approaching the both of you.
“I’m just out here being cute, y’know”, you mumble with a small smirk.
Satoru gives you a loving smile. At that moment you just know that everything is going to be okay, that he will kill Toji for tormenting you and that you’ll meet again in the sheets this evening.
“Took you quite a while to get here”, Toji comments dryly and turns away from you.
The moment his big frame moves away a wave of relief washes over you. If Satoru had come just a second later Toji might have filleted you and you are very aware of that. You are no longer interesting for Toji, after all you served your purpose as decoy.
With a swift motion, your boyfriend frees your hands from the chains that have already cut deep into your tender flesh. Your knees meet the hard concrete floor in an instant, your body is too weak to stand up on its own.
“Come on (y/n), get yourself together and walk out of that room. Suguru will meet up with you. This is about to get pretty ugly.”
The air is filled with thick tension as both men stand still and just look at each other. He’s right. You have to get up, get out of this fucking room, find Suguru. If you stay here you are only an obstacle to Satoru.
“Your girlfriend is quite a pain in the ass. Well, at least she’s hot, I see where you’re coming from.”
“Beat his ass a few times more for me”, you breathe out.
You can do this. With all the strength you have left in your body, you lift your aching limbs off the ground and stumble to the door. Satoru positions himself in front of you, alert in chase Toji wants to attack you.
“Hit me up later, sweetheart.”
“Thank you for saving me. Even if it’s technically your fault I was trapped here.”
“How rude!”
With one last glance at you, he closes the door by one rapid motion of his arm.
You can’t help but let out a sign of relief. Fuck, this was a very close call – too close for your liking. Again your body lets you down and sinks onto the dirty ground in an instant. Your limbs are trembling, your mind goes numb. If you stay awake a little longer, you are able to find Suguru and get out of here…
“(y/n)?”
You would recognize his voice everywhere. How much you’d like to call out his name now so that he can find you and get you away from here, but the corners of your saggy mouth don’t move an inch. The ability to speak seems to be failing you completely at this point.
“(y/n)!”
Are you dying? You’re not sure. But your thoughts completely drift away until they’re utterly still. Finally rest, finally no more pain, finally-
“There you are (y/n). Stay awake okay? Let’s meet up with Shoko.”
The fear in Sugurus voice is unmistakable. His arms gently wrap themselves around your knees and back before lifting you up with ease.
“I hope you drove him insane with your talking”, Suguru gently whispers while sprinting down dark hallways.
“You bet I did.” ______________________________________________________________
God, you feel terrible. The second your thoughts begin to race again your whole body seems to be on fire. Your opened eyes get greeted by harsh lights.
“Can someone turn this the fuck off”, you mumble.
“Oh, there you are (y/n). Took you quite a while to get back to us.”
You recognize this voice. It’s Shoko, you’re with Shoko. That can only mean that Suguru brought you here. You must have passed out shortly after he found you. Your mind is clouded by faded memories and pain. What happened last? You were kidnapped and tortured by Toji Fushiguro, Satoru…Satoru was there, he saved you. After that, Suguru got you to safety.
“Where are they?”
Shoko sits next to you, a cigarette hanging from her mouth.
“This thing has gotten pretty ugly, (y/n)…But you’d better rest a little. Your boyfriend should explain this to you himself.”
“Are they fine?”
Your eyes are widened in horror. That look of worry on Shoko’s face is so unfamiliar to you that it makes your guts twist in thick fear. If something happened to Suguru because of you…Could Satoru defeat Toji all by himself? He is the strongest, right? Surely he had no problem with killing a basic non jujutsu sorcerer.
“Look who’s awake.”
Suguru’s figure is so tall that he dims the lights that irritated you before. He looks like he’s wearing a halo – how suiting.
“Suguru, you’re alright. Please tell me you’re okay”, you mumble, mouth still not able to process your battling thoughts. 
“I’m fine again. Don’t worry.” There it is, his usual bright smile. But something’s different. You can tell that the corners of his mouth don’t pull up as far as usual, that he looks overall…defeated.
“What…What happened? Where is Satoru?”
You can hear your own voice trembling in anticipation. Fuck, he would have been by your side the whole time if everything was alright. Your last encounter plays like a movie in your head. Did Toji?...This can’t be. It’s simply not possible.
“Sorry for keeping you waiting!”
The sight next to Suguru makes you nauseous. Satoru’s uniform is completely torn and blood soaked, you can detect a small wound on his forehead, his white hair discolored in crimson. And god his eyes…He looks possessed. No, that can’t be your boyfriend. You hardly recognize him.
“Satoru, is that you?”
“The one and only! I did it (y/n). I killed that man!”
He roughly grabs your upper arms and leans over you. The weight of his huge frame against your throbbing skin takes your breath away. A whimper of agony escapes your lips while you squint and screw up your face.
“Back off, Satoru, you’re hurting her!”, Shoko yelps in an desperate attempt to free you from his grip.
“Look at me, (y/n)! I finally mastered reverse cursed technique and killed Toji for what he did to you. Anami was murdered as well as basically everyone else, but I did this for you! We both survived!”
The maniac look in his eyes sends shivers down your spine. What has gotten into him?
“Satoru, are you on drugs? Let go off me!”, you cry out.
“I think we should get going now. See you, (y/n)”, Suguru interrupts and yanks Satoru away from you.
“B-But…I need answers! Get your ass back here! What’s the matter with you two!?”
“Don’t ask questions I don’t have the answer to (y/n).”
With one last look both men leave you alone with Shoko. What just happened? The girl…she’s dead? So Toji killed her after all. And the bruises on Satoru…Fuck, maybe that man was stronger than you thought. But he’s also dead, right? Your head begins to spin with all the scenarios that cloud your mind. You need answers, you need to talk to Satoru, you need to-
“You need to rest, (y/n). This one will blow you away.”
Her fingers snap against the syringe in her hand. Your eyes widen in shock, heartbeat picking up in an instant. No, you can’t sleep now, you need to talk to Satoru, he needs to explain what happened to him, why he looks so torn, why Suguru’s eyes were so empty.
“Wait Shoko, I-I need to t-talk t-to…”
A sharp stab in your upper arm. Then darkness. Nothing but darkness.
837 notes · View notes
multifandomgirl08 · 6 months
Text
Sugar Daddy!Daniel Ricciardo x Fem!Reader Part 2
The Arrangement Masterlist
Formula 1 Masterlist
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
He said that he would be flying to Italy for a few weeks and wanted to see you
You would have your own room in the Villa that he was staying in, and before you could even bring up paying for a plane ticket he said that he would e-mail all of the flight information to you
You agree to go and he’s quick to tell you that if you need anything you don’t have for the trip he’ll cover the costs
Over the course of the trip, you start to notice things
On your second day in Italy, Daniel takes you shopping at all of the big-name brands that you can't afford while paying for college
He buys you Chanel, and Dior, even insisting on going into Cartier and Van Cleef. He says, "We'll just be looking."
You spend a little too much time standing in front of the display with all of the paved Love bracelets and see a pair of butterfly earrings in Van Cleef
You and Daniel end up getting lunch at a little Café at the end of your day of shopping
He tells you that he made reservations at 8 pm at some restaurant and that he's already picked out something for you to wear
When you get back to the Villa, there is an Oscar De La Renta Box on the bed in your room
You're hesitant to open it, let alone put what's in the box on
In the end, you end up putting on the stunning red jeweled dress and you take the new Dior bag that Daniel bought you
When you walk out of your bedroom you see Daniel standing there in the foyer of the house in a suit
"Wow," He says, his eyes constantly looking at you. As if you're gliding on the marble floor. "You look... beautiful."
He's quick to try to meet your eyes before you notice that his eyes fall to your neck.
"I knew something was missing." He quickly mentions before walking over to the table that's by the front door. There’s a small white bag with green letters reading Van Cleef & Arpels.
Your eyes go a little wide when Daniel pulls out a green box and presents it to you.
He's quick to motion at you to open it. You pull the ribbon and open the box of the lid to reveal the butterfly necklace that you had been looking at earlier in the day.
Daniel takes it out of the box before clasping it around your neck
"Something to remember me by." He off-handedly says before offering you his arm.
While you're at dinner, you notice that Daniel is quiet and not as animated as usual
Something is going on. Maybe he's calling this off, but he doesn't seem like the type of person to fly you all the way to Italy just to end the arrangement that you have
Daniel had chosen a bottle of wine, and you both ordered dinner. He ordered you pasta, the most expensive option on the menu before fidgeting with the sleeves of his dress shirt
"So, I know that we've been doing this for a while... and I was wondering if you would be interested in taking it a little further?" He asked.
You weren't really sure what further meant for the two of you. You were basically at his beck and call, although he never forced you to do anything that you didn't want to
"What does that mean? Do you want to see me more?" You ask back.
"Yeah, or maybe I could start to give you an allowance every month and pay your rent or get you an apartment."
Your hand drops to your neck without thinking about it.
Was this why Daniel bought you the necklace? In case you said no to his offer?
You liked spending time with him when you could, it wasn't often but he wouldn't be driving in F1 next year so you hoped to see him more.
It would work well for you really. To take up his offer while you were in search of a job. He could cover your rent for however long you needed.
"Why don't we start small, like we have been." You offered, you never wanted Daniel to think that you were taking advantage of his generosity.
Both of you agreed.
A few weeks after you got home from your trip, there was a yellow package from Daniel.
In it, a red Cartier box, and a letter with the word Enchanté in cursive.
You opened the letter first, leaving the Cartier box too scared to see what was on the inside. You still wore the Van Cleef necklace that Daniel gifted you every day.
The letter read.
Hey babe,
figured it was time for a bit of an upgrade from what you're used to. I'm going home to Australia for the holidays and I know that we won't get to spend them together so I figured I'd get you all of your gifts early.
If you look through the rest of the envelope from this letter there is a card with your name on it (again), we talked about an allowance in Italy and I intend to keep my promise. It's already activated and everything. Don't worry about the limit on it.
But knowing you, you won't try to spend me out of house and home. Is it bad that I kind of want you too?
I meant to give you what was in that red box before we left Italy but there never seemed like a good time.
Talk soon
- Danny Ric
You end up opening the envelope the letter came in to see a thick metal-like card before pulling it out to see a metal American Express card. It had his name written on it.
As you look at it you're not sure if you even want to use it. But Daniel seems to trust you with the money that he gave you.
You end up putting the letter and the card to the side before reaching for the Cartier box. It's wrapped with a red ribbon. You delicately pull it off the box, and then pull the lid off the reveal the signature Cartier Love bracelet box.
You press the button on the box seeing a fully paved Love bracelet with its matching 14k gold screwdriver.
You leave it before reaching for your phone and take a picture of it to send to Daniel with the message, Thank you, I love it!💕
You only had to wait a little bit before Daniel messaged you back.
Anything for my girl, you read.
275 notes · View notes
angelltheninth · 9 months
Note
What are your flirting headcanons for Daniel, Gun, Xiaolong and James?
I'm still in the process of reading through this so I might not have the best grasp on the characters just yet. I'll give this my best.
Pairing: Daniel Park, Gun Park, Xiaolong, James Lee x Reader
Tags: fluff, teasing, flirting, kissing, gift giving, physical affection, jealousy, protectiveness, insecurity, clothes sharing
A/N: I still like Xiaolong the best, and I once mistakenly called him Xiaoli cause I've been having Genshin on the brain.
Tumblr media
DANIEL PARK
He is a complete and utter mess with you no matter what body he's in. True that he might get a small confidence boost but he doesn't know how to flirt at all, or what it feels like to be flirted with. He tries to copy things that he's seen or read, holding your hand and surprising you with kisses and such but you can see how he's still shaking with nervousness every time. He feels like everyone's watching, waiting for him to slip up so they can swoop in and make a move on you. It's only when you're alone that he lets his nerdy charms take over and truly shine.
GUN PARK
In private he loves to fluster you and kiss you breathless, until you're a moaning mess and more, in public he will always have a hand thrown over your shoulder and whisper in your ear about how jealous everyone else must be that the two of you are walking down the street, in love and they can't even come close. He is slightly insistent on you wearing something of his when you're going out, he won't say you have to but will strongly imply it by putting his suit jacket over you and leaving it there. Throws flirty and very suggestive lines at you almost every time he opens his mouth, which them makes you kiss him to get him to stop teasing you.
XIAOLONG
Only flirts in private because when you're outside his job comes first and foremost. The only kind of flirting he will do then is over text and even then they'll be one or two messages. He flirts with you when he stares at you, obviously looking up and down your body and undressing you with his eyes. God forbid another man look at you like does because they will get their teeth broken really fast. Of course this will be under the guise of protecting you, doing as he's payed to do, but to you its obvious he's jealous that other men can flirt with you openly but he has to hold back.
JAMES LEE
Keeps his flirting to touches and looks and lots and lots of kissing. He is a man on not many words anyway, unless your relationship is a good ways along at that point, in which case he will gladly interject teasing words in between his kisses. Hand kisses are his favorite when you're in public, or the ones where he will spin you around while kissing whispering things only you can hear, things that make your heart beat so hard he can feel it against his chest as well. Loves to trail his fingers over any patch of bare skin that's showing on your body and take note of that place so he can mark it with his lips later. Will also buy you things and give them to you in front of others, for example a necklace which you will let him put around your neck, making it easy for him to pull you into a kiss later.
619 notes · View notes
Only villains are allowed to be complex in Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender
I had a major issue with the treatment of the original gaang in natla and I think it has to do with character flaws. As in, they don't have any.
In the case of Aang, other characters keep telling him that he can't ignore his responsibilities but when do we ever see him actually do this? When does he seek out distractions to avoid his duties, like penguin sledding, or riding elephant koi, or hiding in a cave? Hell, the reason he gets trapped in the iceberg is changed. In natla he was only going out on a short flight with Appa and gets caught in a storm. In the original he ran away, and it's understandable because he felt alone and out of control of his life. But it is still a choice he makes, to run away from his responsibilities, and he has to deal with the consequences.
In natla there is no choice to run away, it's fully an accident and it takes away his agency as a character. So when Bumi starts blaming him for the war it really rings hollow because it was all an accident. It has more weight when a random fisherman blames him in atla because at least in that version he did make a choice to runaway. Obviously he had no way of knowing what would happen and he never intended to abandon the world to genocide and war. But that's the thing about life, you never know the full consequences of your decisions, and you just have to deal with them when they happen. The war is not Aang's fault, but he did make a bad decision, and it had far reaching consequences. It made Aang's character more relatable and gave him a starting place from which he could grow as a character. He had to learn how to accept responsibility for his actions without blaming himself for the actions of other (i.e. Sozin starting the war).
I feel like in the case of Katara, they stripped her passion and anger. They explored Katara's PTSD but they take away how angry it made her. Anger is a totally normal response to trauma. While letting yourself be consumed by anger is obviously bad, anger can also be channeled into passion and energy to enact positive change. This was a big part of Katara's character in atla, learning how to control her righteous indignation and use it to fight for the rights of other. She has none of that anger here, so there is no character growth and no emotional connection to the character through that arc.
This especially falls flat in her 'feminist arc.' She fights with Pakku but there is no anger, no fire in her. In atla at the end of the fight, even though she was pinned down and had clearly lost, she was still going. She was almost feral. Even though she was worn out, her passion of fighting for what is right still fueled her. She would not give up. So I guess it's fitting natla's unpassionate Katara just falls down at the end of the fight. And they cut out the whole importance of the necklace, which serves as Pakku's realization on how his sexism has negatively impacted his own life. It's this realization that motivates him to reevaluate his beliefs and agree to train Katara. Which needs to happen because having a master's tutelage is what allows her to become a master herself. Alta makes it clear that she excels because of her hard work and determination along with guidance from a mentor. There's none of this in natla. They just start calling Katara a master because 'girlpower' I guess? They certainly don't show how she became so talented. But natla Katara doesn't need help from other people to grow. She's already a master. She's already perfect.
Sokka is also stripped of his flaws as well. Obviously we know he is not sexist in natla. I don't think this is inherently a bad change, but you have to understand how the sexism impacted his character in atla and adjust accordingly. In atla, Sokka's sexism is really the origin of his all his insecurities. He believes there are roles for men and roles for women. Protecting the tribe is a man's job. So when the men go off to fight in the war, he believes he must carry the burden of protecting the tribe as the oldest male. He sets himself up for failure because he places impossible standards on himself. He cannot protect and lead the tribe all by himself, especially not when he is a young child. This leads to him feeling inadequate because he cannot measure up to his own impossible standards or his idealized version of his father (who was an adult and had the support of his tribesmen).
I could still see a way to still adapt atla without the sexism. (For example Hakoda tells Sokka to look after his younger sister. He takes that to an extreme of being overprotective of the whole tribe. And we are back at him failing to met his own impossible expectations again). But natla doesn't do this. Instead it just throws in a flashback of Hakoda saying that Sokka isn't fit to be a warrior. This kind of defeats the purpose of Sokka's own internal conflict about not measuring up to his own unrealistic expectations. Now it's his father's expectation's he doesn't measure up to. This is not a bad story beat in and of itself. It works well with Zuko. But it's not Sokka's character conflict. In alta Sokka's insecurities, internal expectations, and sexism also cause him to lash out at others sometimes. He's not allowed to act so negatively in atla. So again there is no place for him to grow as a character, as he does not have these flaws.
Honestly it seems like they tired to removal all negative character traits from the main characters, which makes them feel more stiff and allows them no room for growth. I really wanted to like this adaptation. And I do think there are some changes they do really well. But those changes are related to the villains and they just drop the ball so hard with our main characters.
146 notes · View notes
tabithatwo · 1 year
Text
okay, it has been a HOT fucking second, but it's time for the rest of my jackie taylor is a lesbian and she knows it (or she at LEAST knows she likes women) thoughts for the pilot (this is a continuation, if you feel like this is abrupt click the link <3)
Tumblr media
jackie trying to set shauna up with randy LISTEN she does it in SUCH a lesbian-minded way...like ah yes, a boy that can be an accessory and what if you dated randy and you wouldn't like him (i KNOW you wouldn't like him) and i kept dating jeff (i don't like him and don't you KNOW that i don't like him?) and then we could always insist on double dates and every time i have to go out with jeff, i'd actually be going out with you <3 <3
Tumblr media
jackie is not even looking much at shauna's outfits when shauna turns to her for feedback and y'know why??? the existence of BOOB DRESS!!! the sheer lesbianism of that line continues to amaze me. shauna! just wear the dress i got you that makes your boobs look sooooo good pleasssse?? LIKE HELLO??
Tumblr media
shauna gets frustrated which jackie clearly didn't expect, so what's she gonna do?? immediately make a joke <3 back off <3 try and make her smile <3 (sidebar idk how people read this scene as intensely mean and controlling jackie like i beg you to watch again, they're teenagers being teenagers, jackie unintentionally upsets shauna and shauna gets frustrated and jackie smooths it over and shauna chills out like that's the scene baby)
Tumblr media
jackie being sooo happy that shauna is joking again (this is one of those times we see the smile/laugh that only shauna really gets out of her)
Tumblr media
she's got her arm around jeff but her eyes on shauna for much of this scene and we get a completely different jackie here with jeff than we saw in the opening because she is PERFORMING! like this is the man she makes herself tolerate serving his purpose for real, such a young lesbian experience
Tumblr media Tumblr media
okay that is ENOUGH of that man (truly three seconds with her arm around him, where her eyes were still on shauna not him), jackie hands jeff her drink and immediately reaches for shauna when she wants to dance
Tumblr media Tumblr media
okay more performance yes, like she's clearly putting on a show here but also?? it is SOOOO obvious that little miss broody shauna is watching right now and jackie actually looks directly at her for good fucking measure, like she is very aware of shauna watching her and shauna's attention being on her. she does this AGAIN when she's desperate for shauna's love/attention/affection in doomcoming when she walks away with travis (to FUCK HIM IN SHAUNA'S BED)
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
the compliments scene? so fucking flirty, so fucking gay, so clear that this is their usual dynamic. like the level of baby dyke flirty love in the i dunno...you haven't said anything nice about me yet and all the little smiles and the ritual of it the you're my best friend as a stand in for i love you like we really don't get a ton of them precrash but the pilot establishes SO MUCH of their relationship prior to all the trauma so beautifully ughhh
Tumblr media
jackie wanting to be dropped off first GOD THIS SCENE, it is so often taken as her being selfish for selfishness sake (or out of fear of her parents) but she also does NOT want to be left alone in the car with jeff!! we saw her discomfort with being sexual with him right away in the pilot, it was immediately established, he ignored every sign that she did NOT want him to be touching her. i don't know about you but this was a dance i did allll the time at that age!! the plotting to not be alone with the boyfriend!!
Tumblr media
also her performative happiness with jeff EVAPORATES, like that is for public straightness perception, she does the minimum saying bye to that man and then she hugs shauna like its her goddamn job
Tumblr media Tumblr media
jackie taylor queen of gay-zing tbh
Tumblr media Tumblr media
y'know when your parents are terrifying but your girl got really anxious last time you flew somewhere so you steal your insane mother's valium for her??
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
but that's not enough so you have to GIVE HER THE HEART NECKLACE THAT YOU WEAR EVERY DAY AND SAY THERE NOTHING CAN TOUCH YOU NOW (because you have my heart, you have my love, jackie taylor ALSO queen of discomfort with saying i love you verbatim but saying it in a million other ways, this is a thought for another day but!! a heart!! that she wears!! next to her heart!! for the girl who has her heart!!)
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
of course she's also got to watch shauna put it on (gay-zingly) and did i need to include 10 screenshots of this moment to make my point?? MAYBE NOT but YOU'RE WELCOME cause LOOK AT THEM!!
more to come eventually <3 <3 this one was largely fun sweet precious honestly compared to the last and the ones to come, so yeah i really went wild with the photos <3 <3
706 notes · View notes
meiiuka · 1 year
Text
byakuya togami, peko pekoyama, and ryoma hoshi dating you headcanons:
category: fluff, headcanons
notes: I MISS WRITING ABOUT BYAKUYA i could go on and on 😭
Byakuya Togami:
Tumblr media
• by the time you two start dating he’s already warmed up to you quite a bit, considering he even thought to date you
• especially because this man is so damn picky with who allows to be close to him,, so if you’re actually officially dating him, everyone knows to consider you special
• “i’ll have you know y/n, i’ve always been very… invested with my career and such. so it didn’t occur to me that i’d have enough time to spend on a romantic partner… but you do a good job at proving me wrong, my dearest.”
• he confines most of his affection to when you two are alone together (he’d never admit it but he’s actually a softie if you let him be </3)
• if you two are alone together, he tends to let loose of his formal etiquette. meaning he’ll “reciprocate” your hugs by placing a hand on your arm instead of pushing you away /hj
• when he uses pet names for you he likes to use them in an elegantly ‘posh’ way, like how you’d see wealthy people talk in an old film 💀
• when he uses pet names, he pretty much exclusively uses “my dear”, “darling”, “my lover” and “my beloved”
• contrary to what a lot of people may see him as, he can be a good boyfriend as long as you communicate what you want to him (he’s really emotionally dense otherwise)
• he’s not as touchy as most people but his love language tends to be more acts of service-y along with other things
• he’ll buy you luxury items, like the most gorgeous gemstone necklace you’ve ever seen in your life and he’ll just act like it’s not a big deal
• “what? i was thinking about you today while i was out so i stopped by the jeweler and picked up this necklace. do you not like it? don’t look so shocked now, just take it.”
Peko Pekoyama:
Tumblr media
• she needs to be held by you SO badly and frequently and as her s/o, it’s very obvious
• peko really yearns to have a partnership with you that’s emotionally close and loving (although she isn’t sure of how to manage it herself at first)
• she’s worried that she comes off as too menacing to love and that she may scare you away one day so she can be insecure about losing you
• in context, if you two are sleeping next to each other, like on a couch or bed, she tends to furrow her eyebrows a lot in her sleep while reaching out for you so she can hold you tighter :(
• “… i was doing what? i didn’t mean to invade your space like that while i was resting y/n. i had been dreaming about you and had a nightmare… i’ll prevent it from bothering you next time.”
• it will in fact happen again but it’s okay because as long as you hold her back she visibly calms down and is able to get more restful sleep
• she actually does crave a lot of physical affection but is often too anxious about being off putting to ask you directly
• she also doesn’t ever explicitly ask however she craves your attention and can be rather clingy with you
• thankfully you’ve learned to read her body language over time and you can see the longing look in her eyes when she holds her gaze against yours
• during the moments that she lets her guard down for you, she likes it when you play with her hair and when you kiss her forehead gently
• throughout the course of dating you, she’s learning to become more warm towards you, smiling more and learning how to communicate her need for affection
• “i would like a hug from you… i think i need a moment to just be here, in your arms. to be loved by you. it’s all so simple…”
Ryoma Hoshi:
Tumblr media
• words cannot convey the degree by which this man needs to be loved 💀
• his biggest struggle at first was with feeling worthy, not understanding why someone like you would ever want to date him
• he requires a lot of verbal reassurance and outwards affection before he starts to feel comfortable expressing it towards you
• but since you two are dating, he feels grateful and will show his appreciation for you in very heartfelt ways
• if you two have gotten close, expect him to love you like his life depends on it because you’re automatically his favorite person
• he’ll silently do the household chores for the two of you, like folding your laundry, and he’ll call your phone to tell you he misses you when you’re out
• “hey. i’ve been missing you. i want you to shoot me a call back when you get this, but i’m at home right now waiting for you… why don’t you hurry it up so i can see you again sooner? … love you, bye-bye.”
• it’s evident in the way he talks about you, but you’re always on his mind and he’s very attached to you. you’re one of the few people he can actually trust so in a way, he’s lended his heart to you
• he’s always been composed in his demeanor and that hasn’t changed. but after you entered his life, that ‘calmness’ shifted from being because he felt dead inside to being because he’s feeling peace within himself
• “you don’t know the impact you’ve had on me. i couldn’t be here without you, plain and simple. maybe this is too cheesy, but you really do mean the world to me, y/n.”
781 notes · View notes
sollsmith · 3 months
Text
Fire in the Flesh
Tumblr media
Chapter Four
Daemon Targaryen x Original Female Character
Words: 1.9K
Warnings: mentions of abuse/injury
Summary:
After five years at war in the Stepstones and the death of his first wife, Daemon Targaryen returns to court embroiling himself, and his niece and heir to the throne Rhaenyra, in chaos and scandal. Daemon’s actions cause Viserys to give him the one thing he has always wanted. A Valyrian bride. Just not the one he had in mind.
“No luck?” Marra shouts over the noise of the gushing water when she hears the door to the chamber open. 
“No.” Daella shouts back, kicking her shoes off, before hiking up her skirts to remove her stockings. She had taken to wearing stockings under her dresses for warmth. She and Marra had decided back in Volantis to wait until they had arrived in Westeros to order some new dresses, as they were unsure of the style in the capital. So she had been wearing her dresses of silk and cotton for the last number of days since they arrived, learning the hard way that they were not made for the Westerosi autumn climate. 
“How many is that now? Six? Seven?”
“Only five. The one yesterday was with Rhaenyra.” Daella reminded her as she removed her necklace and rings. “And they only set up the one with her, as they thought maybe he would appear if she was there.” 
“Well at least you and the Princess seem to get along, she invited you for tea tomorrow again. Perhaps a friendship with Rhaenyra will convince him to show up before the 17th day?” Marra said, testing the water in the bath, before reaching for the oils.
Daella doesn’t answer straight away. Her meeting with the Princess had gone surprisingly well. After a couple of minutes of polite smiling and picking in silence at their cakes, the girls began slowly striking conversation with one another, by the end, they had sat for nearly three hours.
“Rhaenyra said I have nothing to worry about, that he’s just sulking, but I doubt he will even show up on the day. He does not want me.” 
“The King will have his head if he does not. He has a dragon, he would have left if he was so opposed to the match. The Princess is right, he will come around. He just needs to meet you.” Marra smiled as Daella finally came into view. She jumped to her feet, rounding the metal tub, helping Daella remove the dress they had chosen for her unsuccessful meeting with the Prince. 
“I suppose so.” Daella shrugged, dipping her fingers into the steaming bath to ensure the water was hot enough, before stepping in and sinking down into the water. It had been a long day and she was finally able to stomach food for the first time since arriving at dinner. She was cold, tired and full, and all she wanted was to be warm in her bed. Closing her eyes, she let out a satisfied sigh before opening her eyes again at the sound of Marra crouching down beside her. 
“What did you get up to while I was gone? Have you eaten?” 
“I have. I finished unpacking for Maelor, and I visited the kitchen. I asked if they had anything other than venison, they offered duck if you think that would suit you better?” 
“Perhaps, there is no harm in trying.” 
“Also your father dropped by said he visit before bed-” 
“What? Did he say why?” Daella shoots up in the bath a little. She had barely seen her father since they had arrived. She knew he was lingering on the balcony of the courtyard where her meetings with the Prince were meant to take place, watching as she sat either alone or with the King for several hours at a time. 
“No, just to prepare for him to be here.” Marra reassured as she began to watch Daella’s body with a soft cloth and soap. “He didn’t seem angry or upset.” 
“Mm, will you ensure some wine is left, I’m not sure I can face him without it” Daella leaned back again, closing her eyes and allowing Marra to continue her job. 
“Of course.” Marra smiled softly. “Oh and I saw the Queen today.” Daella’s eyes shot open again. Neither of them had seen the Queen since they arrived. Viserys had briefly spoken about her when they were lunching waiting ro Daemon to show, but she had never accompanied him and they had not been formally introduced. When she had brought the Queen up to Rhaenrya, she had reacted oddly, so Daella dropped the conversation.
“Pretty, must be your age.” 
“Really? I knew she was younger than him but I didn’t think… Viserys didn’t strike me as the type.” Daella wondered aloud, lifting her leg for Marra. 
“Mm, she was just walking by with the children. Lovely little things.” Marra hummed, moving behind her to start on Daella’s hair. Daella slid forward a little to give her room to work. 
“It’s a little odd don’t you think? That we never see her? Never attended a lunch with Viserys? Also if she was my age, wouldn’t that mean she grew up in court with Rhaenyra? They don’t seem friendly to me, Rhaenyra nearly shrivelled up when I mentioned her at lunch yesterday” 
“A little. Maybe she is just busy, and I’m starting to realise this court is very complicated and confusing. Do you want to hear what I heard about one of the Northern Lords while I was in the kitchen?” 
Tumblr media
“She’s very pretty.” 
Daemon rolls his eyes. They stood in the bowels of the Red Keep, the candles from Balerion's shrine a few feet away the only light. 
“She is. Prettier than any girl at court.” 
“So are many of the whores on the street of silk.” 
It was Rhaenyra's turn to roll her eyes now. Daemon had convinced her to go to tea with his betrothed, and now he will not hear any feedback she had. 
“She was sweet - 
“Sweet!” Daemon snorts. 
“Why did you insist I go if you have no intention of listening to anything I have to say?” 
“I am-” 
“No, you are not.” 
“Fine. What else? Make it quick, I’m on watch tonight.” 
“I do not understand why you do not go yourself if you are so curious. Father has given you several options; teas, lunches, dinners, walks. You have taken none of them. She would like to meet you at least once for the wedding day. She will not admit it but she is scared, Daemon.” 
“I didn’t want this.” 
“Neither did she. Or I. But you cannot and will not take me to wife-” 
“Who says I won’t?”
“If you wanted to you would have already taken me to Dragonstone and done it.” 
Daemon doesn’t have a rebuttal for her. She was right, as much has he wants do, he could not bring himself to do it. 
“I have to go.” He says coldly, wanting to be done with this conversation. It begins to stalk off into the darkness leaving Rhaenyra standing. 
“The final arrangements for your wedding are being discussed at the small council tomorrow. Go. She will be there.” She calls after him. 
Tumblr media
She felt foolish, knocking on the large door of Mellos’ room. She had turned her room upside down looking for the ointment that Marra gave her two years ago the first time she had seen Daella’s red cheek after returning from her father's room, but it was nowhere to be found. Not wanting to wake Marra, she seeked out the Maester herself. Maester Mellos was an old man, but kind. He had opened his door immediately for her, and asked what had happened. 
“Slipped on a wet floor, hit the bedframe on the way down.” She had meekly replied, wincing as he prodded lightly at her swelling cheek. It was not the truth of course. Her father had come, and at first the conversation was pleasant, but quickly turned sour, Daella spoke out of turn and paid the consequence for it. 
“Sit. Arnica ointment for the cheek. It will take out some swelling and colouring. I’ll mix some lint, grease, and honey for the cut as well. It will heal in no time.”
He had left the main chamber room, shuffling through an arch walkway to fetch what he needed, leaving Daella sitting alone on the small wooden stool Mellos had procured for her. It was then she finally allowed herself to cry a little, the ever growing feeling of misery finally coming to the surface.  
“Rhaenyra, what are you doing her..” 
Daella turned her head to look up at the silver haired man that had entered the room and now stopped in his tracks. He was taller than she remembered. Broader too, but that could be the bloodied and dirt clad armour he was wearing. The silky long hair she had remembered from her childhood was now cut short and his face was harder from age. 
Daella stared up at him speechless from her stool, tears still falling from her eyes. The Prince stared back, not giving much away, but Daella noticed his eyes flicking from her swollen cheek to her bloody lip. 
“Maester Mellos?” Daemon spoke first. Daella quickly wiped her eyes, and sniffled a little, straightening up in her stool. 
“Oh, he has gone to fetch me some ointment.” It came out more timid and pathetic than she had intended, her voice still shaky and hoarse from crying. Daemon continues to stare at her, before moving towards her, hand reaching out to lift her chin and turn her head. She flinched a little when he touched her. The smell of dirt, sweat and iron lingered on him, his thumb pulling gently on her bottom lip to assess the damage. 
“Mm, what happened?” 
“Fell and hit the bed frame. Wet floors.” 
“Old Mellos believed that?” He let her chin go, his rough hand softly leaving her face. Taking a few steps back, he distanced himself from her. 
“It’s what happened.” 
“You can lie to the Maesters all you like, but assume you know better than to lie to your husband.” 
“You're not my husband.” 
Daella swears she saw his lips threatening to curl up into a smirk. He continued to stare down at her, leaning back against a wooden table. Daella suddenly became aware she was just in her nightgown, arms folding over her chest. 
“Saying a couple of meaningless vows before God’s we do not believe in front of a crowd of old fat lords does not make us married. You’ve been mine from the day they made this betrothal.” 
“Well, it doesn’t feel like it.” She whispered. Daemon almost snapped back at her, but noticed the tears welling up in her eyes again, he decided to let her off, not wanting to deal with any hysterics. 
“Why are you here?” Daella sniffles. 
“I don’t believe that’s any of your business.” 
“Your health is not the business of your wife, no?” 
“Very good.” Daemon surprises her by chuckling at her remark, head turning as Mellos shuffled back into the room. 
“Oh Prince Daemon, I was locating some items for young Lady Daella, the carron oil is on the table as usual.” Mellos grabbed a small bowl from a shelf before disappearing through the door again. 
“Thank you, maester.” Daemon said almost meekly as Daella stared at him. He turned and lifted the small vial of the table. It was at that point Daella noticed the slightly raw burn marks on his neck. 
“Is it helping?” She asks softly. 
“Hm, but not quick enough.” 
“Next time ask him for a mix of honey, aloe and tannic.” 
“A maester now are we?” Daemon teased dryly. 
“No, I once burnt my fingers on a fire as a child, it’s what the healers back home used on it. Healed in three days.” 
Daemon grunted in some acknowledgement, before beginning to head towards the door, pulling it open to leave. But he stopped and turned to look at Daella. 
“Goodnight then.” 
“Goodnight.”
Tumblr media
Tag List: @ajthefujoshi @hangmanscoming @papichulo120627
For the masterlist to this series and all my other fics click here!
93 notes · View notes