#< I have started the tag but no promises on more in this universe… guess we’ll see though?
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Post Outbreak! Joel Miller x Pregnant! Female Reader
snapshots masterlist
summary: When you finally start to show, Joel has a tough time with it as the reality sinks in—he’s going to be a father again.
warnings/tags: 18+ ONLY, MINORS DNI. JACKSON ERA. (TW) PREGNANCY. established relationship. no mention of reader’s age, however in other works for this universe, it is implied she is younger than Joel, her specific age will never be stated so do with that what you will. brief descriptions of a pregnant woman’s changing body, brief mention of morning sickness, mention of breastfeeding (it only comes up in a conversation very briefly) these subjects can possibly be triggering, especially mentions of a changing body, so while i try to handle everything with the utmost care, i still ask that you proceed with caution. domesticity, reader enjoys taking care of her family, ellie is a little shit, grumpy joel, he’s sort of a dick at first? but only because he’s working through some feelings so let’s forgive him, okay?
word count: 3.5k
a/n: this is part of the snapshots universe, but it could absolutely be read as a standalone too. minimal editing, this has been sitting in my drafts and i did a quick edit during my lunch hour, so please excuse any mistakes.
“Shit.”
You almost can’t believe your own two eyes. Staring at your reflection in the large, oval shaped mirror hanging over the porcelain bathroom sink, your gaze widens in complete surprise. “Jesus Christ,” you mutter, turning to the side. It takes your brain about a good minute or two to process, really process, the way that your belly strains against the thin, white cotton of your camisole. It had seemingly swollen overnight—because it hadn’t been this prominent the day before, had it?
Over the last few months, there’d been changes.
Some subtle and some not so subtle.
“Ellie! Stop fucking staring at them,” you’d scolded the teenager late one evening during yours and hers weekly game night. For as hard as you tried focusing on what move you should make next, it was hard to concentrate on the chessboard in front of you when you could feel the way her eyes were fixed on your breasts. “I mean it! Quit staring at my boobs, you little shit.”
She held up her hands, her mouth full of popcorn.
“Hey, in my defense, they’re just fucking there, man. If anything, they’re fucking staring at me, okay?”
During your chess rematch the following week, you had accidentally knocked one of your pawn pieces off of the table. When you’d stood up and bent over to pick it up, she had made the observation that your butt seemed to have gotten a little bigger too.
“Bet Joel’s liking these changes,” Ellie had smirked. “It sure as hell explains why the headboard’s been banging against the wall more than usual lately.”
You threw the pawn at her, smiling in satisfaction when it bounced off her forehead and landed into her glass of lemonade.
One part of your body, however, hadn’t changed.
Not until now.
“Hon, trust me, you have nothing to be worried about,” Maria had assured you with confidence when you had brought up your concerns about your stomach. “Every woman, and every pregnancy, is different. I didn’t start showing until I was around six months, remember?”
“I guess you’re right.” You’d been around four months, then. “Doesn’t help that I haven’t felt the baby move.”
“You will,” Maria had promised. “Just be patient”
Biting your lip, you place a hand on your belly.
It’s always been one of the softer parts of you, but now, it’s firmed into a perfect, round bump.
“Maybe soon I’ll feel you move,” you murmur, giving it a gentle pat. You tug the lace hem of your camisole down as far as it can go and then pull at the elastic waistband of your blue, terry cloth shorts.
Shutting off the lights in the bathroom, you slip out into the bedroom where you find that Joel’s still tangled up in the sheets, fast asleep. He had been assigned to the afternoon patrol route today—normally an early riser, if he was still snoozing, it meant that he really needed the rest. Deciding it was best to let him keep sleeping for a little while longer, you quietly tiptoe out of your shared bedroom and head downstairs into the kitchen.
After making yourself a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice, and one for the kid as well, you prepare the coffee maker for Joel. You spoon dark roast grounds into the filter and set the timer for the coffee to start brewing in thirty minutes.
He should be up by then, you think, pulling a basket of eggs out of the refrigerator.
You’re starting to get used to this. Domesticity.
Despite your protests, Maria had made the decision to pull you off patrol that same afternoon you had shared the news of your pregnancy. “I’m putting you on leave,” she’d told you. “Effective immediately. I don’t want to see you outside of these walls. Got it?”
“That’s not fair, Maria. You were out on patrol until—”
One stern glare from her had shut you right up.
“Fine.”
Sure, you missed it and looked forward to the day when you’d be able to get back into the saddle with your rifle in hand, but this way of life had grown on you. Certainly a lot more than you thought it would.
You enjoyed taking care of the house. Packing Ellie her lunch for school and checking her homework. Having a nice a meal on the table for the three of you to enjoy in the comfort of your own home instead of having to go down to the crowded mess hall for supper because you and Joel were both always much, much too tired after a long day out on patrol to bother with cooking.
With the baby due to arrive in the winter, looking after your little family had become your purpose, and you did not mind it one bit.
As strips of bacon sizzle in one pan on the gas powered stove, you crack a couple of eggs into another, knowing the kid is already on her way downstairs. You can hear the sound of her old, tattered low top sneakers that you have been trying to throw away for almost a year now squeaking on the kitchen tiles just as you finish plating her breakfast.
“Morning!” Ellie pipes, the loud plop of her backpack into a chair prompting you to turn around. “What’s for brea—whoa! Holy shit!” Her brown eyes widen in shock when she sees you and her jaw drops. “Dude.”
“Ellie,” you say her name warningly as you walk over to the table. “Don’t.”
“You’re bigger!”
With a playful glare, you set her plate down, along with her glass of orange juice. “Thanks a lot, you little jerk.” You feign offense. “You’re making your own eggs from now on.”
“Fuck, I’m sorry.” Ellie’s cheeks flush a shade of red and she squirms, sputtering apologetically, “I swear, I don’t mean it like that at all. It’s just, your stomach, it didn’t—you didn’t look like this last night, you know?”
She’s fucking lucky that your raging hormones decided to take the morning off duty.
“You look different. I mean, you look great—”
“Ellie?”
“Yeah?”
“Just shut up and eat.”
“Deal.”
She shoots you a sheepish grin and sits down, scarfing down her food in her usual manner.
“You get your fractions homework done?”
“Yeah.” Ellie huffs, rolling her eyes. “Took me forever. I was up until fucking midnight.”
Amused, you offer, “Want me to check your work?”
“Sure.”
As Ellie inhales the rest of her breakfast, you pull out a green, single subject notebook from her backpack and look over her homework for miscalculations.
“So, uh, how are you feeling?” she asks after a minute.
“I’m feeling alright. I think the morning sickness finally stopped, so can’t complain.” Shrugging, you close the notebook and stick it into her backpack. “You did good, kid. Only got two problems wrong.”
“Man, I really wish we knew whether it’s a boy or girl,” Ellie mumbles through a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “What do you want to have, anyway?”
“It doesn’t matter to me, Ellie,” you answer, honestly. Clocking the skepticism on her face, you laugh and say, “It’s true. As long as the baby’s healthy, that’s all I care about.” And you mean it. As an expectant mother in the post outbreak world where medicine is scarce, supplies are limited, and the closest thing you have to a hospital is the town’s old clinic, the only thing you can hope for is the smooth, safe delivery of a healthy child.
Before she can say anything, you both catch the sound of Joel’s heavy boots as he descends the staircase.
She quirks an eyebrow. “Uh, has Joel seen you yet?”
Grimacing, you shake your head. “No.”
“Well, I don’t wanna be here for all that awkward,” Ellie says, chugging the rest of her orange juice. She stands up and snatches up her backpack, along with her lunch bag, which you’d packed for her earlier that morning. Just as she’s about to whirl around on the heel of her sneaker and make a run for the front door, she pauses, watching as you make your way back over to the stove to light another flame. “Unless you want me to be?”
“I’ll be fine, Ellie,” you assure her. “Go on, get to school. Maybe you’ll be on time to class for once.”
“If you say so.” She wishes you luck and then bolts out of the kitchen, throwing a quick goodbye at Joel on the way out. “See ya later, old man!”
Nervously, you turn around and start cracking another two eggs into the pan. There’s no telling how he’s going to react.
Joel’s been fairly supportive since you’d found out you were pregnant, considering how unplanned it was. But you know him like the back of your own hand, and you know, despite the numerous times he’s denied it, that it has been weighing heavily on him. Each time you’d try to sit down to talk to him about it, he would brush you off and insist he was fine. But he wasn’t fine.
And you wish he would spit it out and tell you why.
In your periphery, you notice the stained glass butterfly he had hung in front of the window above the sink, the ornament catching and refracting the sunlight. Flecks of color dance across the walls in captivating patterns, brightening the space. You think of the sweet little girl he’d hung it for, the little girl he rarely talks about, that he keeps tucked away safely in his memory.
You bite back a small sigh.
By now, you’ve learned not to push him. Especially not about what he was feeling. He would tell you when he was ready.
“Who the hell lit a fire under her ass this mornin’?” Joel asks gruffly as he walks into the kitchen. “She ain’t ever this fuckin’ eager to go to school.”
“Not sure,” you reply in the most nonchalant tone you can muster as you use a spatula to scramble the eggs. Transferring them onto a plate, you add three strips of bacon, and then pour his coffee. “I have your breakfast ready, Joel. Have a seat.”
You hear a chair scrape against the tile.
“I keep tellin’ you I can make my own breakfast, darlin’.”
“And I keep telling you I don’t mind making it for you,” you quip, and you hear him grumble something under his breath.
Inhaling a deep, calming breath through your nose, you take the plate of eggs and bacon in one hand, and his cup of coffee in the other. Your fingers grasp the handle of his ceramic, owl mug in a near death grip. You exhale slowly, and then turn around to face him.
He sees your swollen middle and stiffens in his chair.
The tension is instantaneous. Palpable.
Uncomfortable.
Awkwardly, you shift from one foot to the other.
“Your belly,” Joel murmurs, a visible tick in his jaw as his gaze drags over your midsection. “S’bigger.”
“Yeah. It is. Guess I’m going to have to start trading for maternity clothes soon,” you remark, shuffling over to the table. Setting down the plate and mug of coffee in front of him, you take a seat across the table. Your eyes try desperately to meet his, but they refuse. There’s no way for you to decipher what he’s thinking. You let out a small, nervous laugh. “Can you please say something?”
He lightly clears his throat. “I’ll take you to Main Street on Saturday,” he tells you, picking up his mug. “I’ve got the day off from patrol. I’ll, uh, pick through some of my own things and see what I don’t need so we can make a trade for some clothes.” He pauses, then offers quietly, “In the meantime, you can wear my shirts. They might be more comfortable for you.”
You flash him a grateful smile. “Thank you, Joel.”
Sipping his coffee, he continues to avoid your gaze.
“Mhm,” is all he says.
Your smile falters.
It’s the middle of August.
The afternoon heat is sweltering. Unforgiving.
“Jesus, it’s a fuckin’ scorcher,” Tommy sighs, glancing over towards the lake where his mare, Maxine, is taking a drink beside his brother’s stallion, Phoenix. His raven curls are damp with sweat, plastered to his forehead. “Hotter than the devil’s fuckin’ balls out here, ain’t it?”
He’s met with silence.
Looking over his shoulder, he sees Joel leaning against a tree, his rifle in hand as he stares at the Grand Tetons in the distance almost like he’s in a trance. “Joel?”
Blinking furiously, Joel shakes his head. “Sorry, you say somethin’ to me just now?” He asks in a daze, pushing away from the lodgepole pine. “We headin’ out?”
“You’ve been actin’ real strange all afternoon,” Tommy observes, walking towards him with his own gun slung over his shoulder. “Either the heat is startin’ to get to you, or you’ve got somethin’ on your mind, big brother.”
Joel hesitates. His dark eyes flit to the other side of the lake where the other members of their afternoon patrol group are refilling their canteens with water.
“S’alright,” his younger brother says. “Don’t worry ‘bout them. Can’t hear us.”
Joel’s chest heaves with a heavy sigh. “She popped.”
“Huh?”
“Her belly finally popped. She’s showin’ now.”
Amused, Tommy lightly shakes his head. “Y’shouldn’t be so surprised, Joel. Was ‘bout time,” he remarks with a shrug. “What is she—like six months along now?”
“She’ll be six months in a couple weeks.” Joel wipes the perspiration off his brow with the back of his hand and sighs once more. “Look, I ain’t stupid, Tommy. I knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, but it still caught me by surprise. When I saw her, it became real for me. She’s got my kid in there. I’m gonna be a dad again.”
“You’re scared.” It’s not a question, it’s a statement.
“Shitless,” Joel confesses, feeling his chest tighten.
“What are you afraid of?”
Joel almost laughs.
He doesn’t know where to start.
He’s afraid of everything.
“All of it, Tommy. I’m afraid for her, havin’ to give birth with no medicine,” he tells him, his voice breaking. “I’m afraid I won’t remember what to do with a newborn or that I won’t know how to help her durin’ those first few months—”
“This ain’t your first rodeo,” Tommy reminds him. “You did it once, and you did just fine, Joel.”
“That was over three fuckin’ decades ago. And it was a different world. If Sarah—” He stops, taking a second to catch his breath. The image of his daughter’s little face flashing in his mind feels like a violent punch to the gut. Even after all this time, it still knocks all of the wind out of his lungs. “When her mom had trouble breastfeedin’ her, I could head to the grocery store and buy her baby formula. If she got a real bad fever, I could load her up in the truck and drive her to the emergency room.” He glances down at his broken watch. “Besides, I was a lot younger, then. And I wasn’t half fuckin’ deaf like I am now. When Sarah would wake up cryin’ in the middle of the night because she needed a diaper change, I’d hear her. What if I can’t hear my own kid cryin’?”
“Joel—”
“I’m in my fifties. What if I can’t keep up because I’m too fuckin’ old?”
Tommy reaches out, clapping a hand onto his shoulder.
“Brother, I need you to take a fuckin’ breath,” he says, chuckling softly. “You’re puttin’ the weight of the world of your shoulders right now—you need to put some of it down. Look, we might not have everythin’ we used to before the world ended, but we make do with what we do have. Considerin’ just how many growin’ families we have and how many little ones we’ve got runnin’ around our town, I’d say it’s workin’ out pretty fuckin well.” He gives his shoulder an encouraging squeeze. “And as far as your ability to be a good dad, you’ve still got it, Joel. You know what to do, and so does she. I’ve seen her in action with my little boy, and it seems like she’s already got those maternal instincts, y’know?”
“Yeah, she does,” Joels agrees quietly, thinking of how you had stepped up to help him care for Ellie.
“Trust me, between the two of you, it’ll be alright.”
He peers at him. “You really believe I still got it in me?”
“I do.” Tommy smiles. “You never stopped knowin’ how to be a father, Joel. You’re gonna be just fine.”
Their patrol shift extends into the evening, turning into a double, and it’s late when he gets home.
“What the hell are you still doin’ up?” Joel asks when he finds Ellie sitting at the kitchen table, cursing to herself as she flips through the stale, yellowing pages of an old life science text book.
“What does it fucking look like, man?”
“Shouldn’t have waited until the last minute, kiddo—”
Ellie holds up a hand and cuts him off.
“Save the lecture for another time, dude. I’m busy.”
Joel rolls his eyes. “Finish up and get to bed. S’late.”
Without waiting for some smartass response, he turns on the heel of his boot and then heads upstairs to your shared bedroom. He flips on the lights only to find that you’re already in bed, fast asleep, wearing nothing but one of his t-shirts and a pair of panties. He toes off his boots and leaves them by the door, being as quiet as he possibly can as he rummages through his top drawer for some clean boxers to sleep in.
He slips into the bathroom where he takes a quick, hot shower, scrubbing off that day’s sweat, dirt, and grime. After he’s dressed and his sopping wet, salt and pepper curls are haphazardly towel dried, Joel walks back out into the bedroom where he switches off the lights and climbs into bed next to you.
He lays on his side and he’s just about to close his eyes when he feels a light shift beside him. You roll over and curl into him, your belly pressing up against his curve of his spine.
He stiffens, freezing as if someone had just placed the barrel of their pistol against his back, their finger over the trigger.
Christ, get a damn grip, he thinks silently to himself.
Joel thinks about that morning in the kitchen.
He knows his reaction had hurt you. Or rather, his lack of a reaction. His shitty ways of coping aren’t your fault, and his struggle to come to terms with your pregnancy sure as hell isn’t your fault, either. He owed it to you to try harder to be the man you needed.
The man you both needed.
Joel’s train of thought comes to a screeching halt when he feels a soft flutter against his middle of his back, the spot right where your tummy is nestled—did the baby just move?
He lies still, waiting to see if he feels it again, and when he doesn’t, he rolls over to face you, causing you to stir.
“Joel?” you mumble his name, sleepily. “What time—?”
“Shh,” Joel soothes, pulling you into his bare chest. He kisses your temple. “S’okay, baby. Go back to sleep.”
He doesn’t have to tell you twice.
Within seconds, you’re asleep again, snuggled into him and snoring softly.
Lifting a hand, he hesitates, then rests it on your belly.
He waits.
And waits.
And waits.
And waits.
Until the minutes turn into hours.
Until dawn’s light filters in through the lace curtains.
Until he finally feels that little flutter again.
He feels it against the palm of his hand. Faint, nothing more than a brief whisper against his skin, but there is no mistaking it.
He’d just felt the baby’s movement.
There’s a sudden shift.
Tense muscles that had been painfully wound up since the moment you’d mentioned to him your period was a week late back in the spring loosen slightly—the breath he had been holding since he’d picked up that positive pregnancy test from the bathroom counter finally falls from his lips, fanning over yours.
His fears, his worries, his uncertainties about what lies ahead, they’re all still there, of course, but he finds they are now accompanied by a glimmer of hope, a sliver of optimism that maybe, just maybe, Joel doesn’t have to be as afraid as he is.
Joel’s eyes glaze over your face, warmth radiating in his chest when you breathe a little a sigh of content in your sleep as he gently rubs your stomach through his shirt.
With his hand still splayed over your belly, he closes his eyes and begins to drift off, falling into the most decent sleep he’s had in the last few months.
Maybe his brother’s right.
Maybe he will be just fine.
divider credit to @saradika 🤍
#tw pregnancy#joel miller x you#joel miller x reader#joel miller x f!reader#joel miller x female reader#joel miller x pregnant reader#joel miller one shot#joel miller drabble#joel miller fanfiction#joel miller fic#fic: snapshots
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Glad You’re Here
Oscar Piastri x insomniac!reader // Tangerine Pt. 1.5
Masterlist // Tangerine Part 1 // Part 1.5 // Part 2
It’s been raining where I live this week and I couldn’t get this version of Oscar and reader out of my head. So, here you go- a little companion blurb from Oscar’s POV.
Word Count: 1.1k
find my other fics here, including the original one for this blurb!
Warnings: none
Oscar loves sleep. He could sleep anywhere, could fall asleep at the drop of a hat. It’s been an issue, actually- he habitually snoozes through alarms and constantly naps when he should be doing more important things.
It’s been an adjustment, dating you, because of that. It’s not that you don’t like sleep, you just… can’t. Honestly, it breaks his heart, because while tumbling into his bed at the end of the day is a relief for him, for you, it’s the opposite.
He’s watched you get worked up with exhaustion to the point of tears far too many times. He wishes he could take it all away, that he could reach deep into your brain and press the magic button that would let you sleep. You’ve tried lots of things- chamomile tea, melatonin, warm baths, hot milk and honey, but nothing seems to help.
That is, until Brazil.
It’s the end of a triple header, which is exhausting in its own way. You’re dragging, have been for days. He can see it in your eyes when you give him the update before qualis, can see the way it pulls at the corners of your lips. He wants to wrap you up in a hug and hold you there until you get so bored you fall asleep- though that doesn’t work, either. But the two of you are in public, surrounded by coworkers, so he refrains.
Dark clouds roll in over the track and cut the session short, which is less than ideal. Oscar climbs out of his car, frowning when he notices you’re missing from your usual spot in the garage. It’s odd, but not impossible. You could be in the bathroom, could be in a meeting- he’s not sure.
When he’s made it through his debrief and you’re still not back- which is odd since you’re a part of his team- he starts to get worried. Finally, he asks, trying to sound casual about it. It’s not necessarily a secret that the two of you are dating- the important people know, important being your bosses. He leans towards one of your closer coworkers, asks them if they know where you are.
“Oh, she left, I think,” she says, and Oscar feels even more concerned. “She said she didn’t sleep well last night, I think she wasn’t feeling good.”
Oscar blinks, rubs his thumb against his knee under the table. It’s odd that you wouldn’t have texted him before you left. He wonders if you went to your hotel room or his, feels a stab in his chest at the thought of you all alone and not feeling well. Not sleeping well the night before is an understatement- he knows you didn’t sleep at all, actually. You’d stayed in his room and read a book, a little light to read by and his head in your lap.
Once they dismiss him to head to the hotel, he beelines for his driver room to gather his stuff. Lando’s trying to make small talk on the way there, and when Oscar opens the door he’s following behind him. Oscar stops in his tracks, though, and Lando bumps into him, opening his mouth to make a comment when Oscar raises his hand and shushes him.
You’re there, curled up on the massage bed, tightly wound. You’re asleep.
“Oh,” Lando whispers. “I’ll go.”
Oscar nods, closes the door, walks over carefully. Your lips are barely parted, lashes tangled together, arms curled protectively around yourself. He watched the soft rise and fall of your shoulders, absolutely entranced.
The thing is, Oscar doesn’t actually see you sleep very often. When it does happen, you usually fall asleep after him, and then you wake up before him.
All of the tense energy is gone from your body. Your hair has fallen into your face, a strand across your lips that moves with every breath you take. He’s pretty sure you’re wearing one of his hoodies. You look so soft, like you’ve melted into the massage table. He wants to curl himself around you, into you, keep you close and warm and safe.
He sends Lando a text, asks him to knock quietly when the car to the hotel is ready. Then he locks the door and crosses the room. He’s so careful when he climbs onto the makeshift bed with you. He takes it inch by inch until he’s got you under one arm, his chin on top of your head. He doesn’t dare pull you close like he’d really like to, afraid of waking you up-
“Osc?” You say, voice soft.
He curses himself out in his head. He shouldn’t have risked it, should’ve just let you sleep, should’ve known this would happen. You’re going to kill him, probably- the one time you fall asleep easily, and here he is, ruining it.
“Sorry, baby,” he says, sighing. “You looked so cozy, I just thought- I didn’t mean to wake you.”
In response, you wrap one of your arms around him and pull yourself into his chest. Your cold nose brushes his neck, lips against his collarbone. You yawn and turn your face so that your cheek is pressed to his chest.
“S’okay, m’glad you’re here.” you mumble. “The storm made me sleepy.”
The rain is still pelting the side of the garage, sending the sound through the room. Every so often, there’s the distant sound of thunder. He wonders if a sound machine would help you sleep, tucks it away into his brain to try later. Right now, he brushes his lips against the crown of your forehead and rubs your back.
He opens his mouth to say something again, but then he feels it- your grip on him loosens, and your soft, even breaths wash over his neck. He pulls his head back just slightly, finds your eyes closed and your lips parted once again. You’re adorable when you’re sleeping. The relaxed look on your face makes his heart clench in his chest. He keeps rubbing your back lightly, afraid that if he’s stops you’ll wake up again.
He’s not tired, but he stays anyways. He stays and watches you sleep, even if it’s mildly creepy, even if Lando will definitely make fun of him for it if he ever finds out. He doesn’t know how long your sleep will last, so he’ll cherish every second of it.
On the car ride back to the hotel, he buys a sound machine off of Amazon. You try it the next time you can’t sleep. It doesn’t work. He waits until then to tell you the truth.
He absolutely hates thunderstorms.
a/n: thank you for all the love on the original fic!!
taglist: @4-mula1
#oscar piastri oneshot#oscar piastri fanfic#oscar piastri x you#f1 fic#formula one fluff#formula 1 fluff#oscar piastri x reader#oscar piastri blurb#tangerine!verse#< I have started the tag but no promises on more in this universe… guess we’ll see though?#honeywrites
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#so fucking tired I want to gensh*n I really do I enjoy it I want it to be good but why the FUCK have they made the choices they have#when it comes to character design and lore#like. I know. I just. I know they can do better I want to believe dammit#I can’t but I want to#like pcktknife said in the tags of one their posts they REALLY need a diversity reader or whatever#like a person who checks stuff to make sure it’s not racist/antisemitic/ableist/etc. (I forgot the exact word for it sorry >.>)#like I think the thing that frustrates me most is that the people working are character design are ENTIRELY capable of doing better#and idk if it’s them or the design director or the fucking marketing team (whoever checks how profitable shit would be) or whoever#but istfg please talk to me in person I will not start biting you I swear I promise#like fuck idk what I was expecting. I mean I did but fuck idk there was hope#cause they’re CLEARLY capable of designing characters with darker skin and the only conclusions are that they’re either not considering them#or just fucking actively choosing not to design characters like that#and I fhufruydfvabyubhj#eqsfahbhleeafbj#I just want the game to be good man#fuck and there’s more to it cause like why would all the dark-skinned characters be concentrated in sumeru in the first place#like fucking obviously they wouldn’t touch that in the lore but that doesn’t change it being weird (if it even. does happen)#I’m just tired like. we could’ve had the world. the fucking universe even. but no I guess#eughuro f1jhdbvhubddvjg#vhgakdvghkqekbhh#also for Those fucking people in the twitter replies tell me your location so I can tear at your flesh and gnaw on your bones#and by that I mean talk peacefully. of course.
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That one Bologna drive
part 2 to That one Christmas flight
(strongly recommend reading that one first! made me so happy you guys liked this one, so let's continue!)
summary: They were suppose to not look for each other. So of course they didn't.
warnings: crushing hard, swear words I guess, typos probably
PS: y'all gonna hate me
Lando really wanted to keep his promise not to search for her online. He enjoyed the mystery and the option to keep this little encounter as a nice "why if".
Until he didn't.
With the only information he had being her first name and the fact she was a student at Bologna university his private burner account was truly burning up.
He must have seen every account of the current Bologna alumni. It was strange being on the other side of these pseudo stalker fan games. There were moments where he deactivated his account, to stop him from doomscrolling. And then there were nights when he did nothing but that.
He was fed up with the emptiness and shallow lifestyle that followed him. His friends were surprised, when he started to carry classical literature books with him. Since he hated those looks, decision to really keep all of this to himself had been made. It felt like a pose sometimes - he did not have to prove anything to anyone, he was fine as he was. But a strange feeling of wanting something more is hard to navigate when the life around you seems dead set in the current ways.
Weeks passed by with his eyes fixed on one moment in particular. The Imola Grand Prix. It felt like a cruel joke when he realized this circuit was a mere hour away from Bologna.
Lando was not sure if he was supposed to be proud or scared when finally found her account. At this point, it was hard to find a better expert on the social life of that university town.
But it would be a massive lie, if he said he did not sprint up from his chair when he saw her in one of her friends insta story. Tagged.
He nearly DM'd her about 20 times. But, this was not the way it was supposed to feel. No. It seemed like a way better plan to ride up to Bologna and hang out at what seemed to be her favorite cafe / bar in the centre. If it was meant to be, he would run into her and it could all be called a second lucky accident.
He had an average start of the season. Maybe Imola would bring him luck one way or the other.
//
His plan was to ride up there the evening after his first practice - then the team debrief dragged until late hours. He hit the wall on the second day - his team made sure he went through all and every medical check up, no matter how much he protested. Then there was this and than that and suddenly he realized the only possible evening would be the Sunday one. He requested the latest flight him team would allow.
Finishing fourth felt like a joke, even though it was his best finish this season. Missing the podium by a mere second was a cruel of a metaphor.
Once he managed to run through all his duties, exhausted as truly was, he hit the road.
Within a half an hour, he was in what seemed her most favorite cafe, sitting on a bar stool, ordering a glass of white wine.
She was nowhere to be found. His heart jumped when her friends came in and sat outside, lighting their cigarettes. Lando waited. He had to laugh at himself, pathetic as he was right now. By his luck lately, she was probably in her bedroom sleeping, or worse - on a date with some Italian fuck boy. Going up to her friends and asking was absolutely not an option - he wanted to surprise her, not scare her and creep her out.
He left the bar after one hour for a stroll around. He walked around the lively square filled with young people sitting on the ground and having the time of their life, the one he saw hundreds of times on his screen. Who knew, maybe she'd be around somewhere. Jealousy swept over him, envying those who were fortunate enough to keep her company right now at this very moment.
After one hour he was back for a second glass. But this time he heard his name being called loudly immediately as he stepped inside. All of his tired muscles tensed up in disbelief. And to continue with the theme of pure luck - it was an ordinary fan. The surprised guy with a Mercedes t-shirt insisted on a photo and signature. Lando smiled, signed and went back to his car.
He probably needed this closure.
//
Y/N was a person who prided herself on her principles. So when she and the mystery boy from that Christmas flight agreed upon not looking each other up, she kept herself away from doing so.
Exam season and university life got in the way, providing a great distraction.
Only when she went on a date with what seemed to be a lovely French physics student, she allowed herself to think back to her encounter with Lando. That's when her internal facade fell apart. She spent the whole date imagining Lando would appear. He'd sit at a different table, right in her view, and then once her date would go on the toilet, they'd run away like little kids would do. They'd sit in a local park and laugh while sharing a bottle of wine.
She knew he was somehow famous. He heart crushed at the thought that she was probably overshadowed by girls way prettier than her.
And then, on a random afternoon during a first study session the weather allowed her and her friends to spend outside, in one of the university gardens, one simple conversation she accidentaly overheard from the people sitting nearby, caused her to loose the last chance of keeping the meeting with Lando intact.
"Yeah, Lando Norris. Way hotter than Leclerc, I must say."
"I still don't understand why you love formula 1."
"They just know how to sell the story."
Surely, they were not talking about Lando.
"Sure, there must be thousands of well known people called Lando," Y/N replied to her own question.
She took this as a sign, gave up on her principles and went full ballistic on her research. Downforce, penalties, the teams history, qualifying, chequered flag.
Since she was so deep in, keeping her obsession to herself as she had no idea with whom she could possibly share this, she might as well ask her mom for tickets money. The idea that she knew that he was just an hour away and she would miss that was simply not on the table.
Formula 1 race in an event meant for groups of friends to share their passion. So sitting there on the stand alone felt a little bittersweet. She made sure to push down any thoughts about seeing him up close again, let alone talking to him. It was something that half of the people present would try to do.
And risking having him look through her, or worse - not remembering her - was not something she wished to live through.
But she cheered for him, she really did. Anytime he passed around her stand she got up, she watched him on the screen during interviews and when it became clear, he would have his best result of the season so far here at Imola, she celebrated with all those around her. Feeling proud that he was doing good. There was an electrifying energy in the air which could not compare to the times she watched races in her room on her laptop.
If he had been standing near to her, she knew he would say something to beat himself up for missing a podium. And if she was standing next to him, she would tell him that he is an idiot and should also celebrate.
He looked a bit off during the interviews. Probably the crash few days ago. Y/N stayed sitting there just a bit longer than an average fan would.
Probably to avoid traffic...
part 3
______________________________________________________
Tagged all those who like to suffer:
@prudyhoo @anuksunamon @sagestack @esquerkaren @ushygushybaby @superlegend216
#lando norris#lando norris x reader#lando norris x you#lando norris fanfic#ln4 imagine#formula 1#formula one x reader#f1 fanfic#f1 imagine#lando norris angst#meet cute#fluff#lando norris fluff#formula 1 fluff#formula 1 fanfic#ln4 x reader#i'm sorry#there will be more#bologna#romance#That one Bologna drive
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𝖯𝖺𝗂𝗋𝗂𝗇𝗀: Song mingi x fem!reader
𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗲: Smut
𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁: 2.9k
𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀: masturbation,voyeurism, unprotected sex (don't do it), reader is older than Mingi (but only by a couple of years)
You were hoping to have a quiet night of relaxation with yourself, but an unexpected visitor knocks on your door and changes your plans.
N/A: I know I promised Yeosang's story, but I was thinking that maybe it will be some kind of series that connects with the other members, but rest assured I will do it. Just wait for it soon <3
masterlist II tag list
This content NOT is for minors!!!
This is merely entertainment, this does not represent any real person.
It is forbidden to copy or translate my work.
English NO is my first language.
The day had been a disaster. That morning when you finally woke up and noticed something unusual, you checked your phone, only to realize that the alarm didn't wake you up on time. You missed the first two classes at the university where you happened to see important topics for the exam, but everything got worse at work, where your boss came up with the brilliant idea of assigning you a difficult project for the weekend. And when you finally got to the room you were renting so you could eat something, you realized that you hadn't gone to the supermarket and there was nothing.
“This couldn't be worse,” you whispered to yourself as you lay down on the bed.
Maybe there was a way to get all the stress out of your body. Cheering up a little, you opened your closet drawer and took out a toy. You needed to distract yourself and forget your frustrations, you deserved it for surviving a shitty day.
You smiled, settling down on the bed and abandoning your shorts somewhere on the floor. You sighed, clearing your thoughts and spread your legs, turning on the toy. You rested your head on the pillows when you felt the contact of the toy on your core and you began to relax, but when you were starting to forget everything you heard a knock on the door.
You screamed inside, angry you got up looking for your shorts and hid the vibrator under the sheets. The doorbell wouldn't stop ringing and if it didn't stop you would greet whoever was waiting with a knock, but when you opened the door all your thoughts were erased.
“Mingi?” The anger disappeared and now you just felt confused, you didn't expect to see him here, especially so late "What are you doing here?"
“Hello, I didn't want to bother you but…” her words were suspended in the air when she noticed what you were wearing.
“Let me guess, Yunho?” He nodded, scratching his head awkwardly when he noticed your clothing, but you didn't notice his eyes running over your shoulders or focusing on the silhouette of your breasts. You sighed, cursing your brother, “That idiot.”
“I didn't know where to go… it's already late and” You sighed defeated and felt a little sorry for him, your night of pleasure could wait.
“Don't talk anymore, come in” you stepped aside letting him enter.
It wasn't the first time Mingi came to your house when Yunho decided to bring someone into the apartment they shared and even though he had promised not to do it he broke his promise too soon.
"I'm sorry"
“Leave the drama, it's not that big of a deal,” you responded, hitting him on the arm, “do you want to sleep?”
“I don't know” You noticed that he was more nervous than normal, but you didn't understand why and you stood in front of him, challenging him, putting your hands on your hips.
"What's the matter?" Mingi looked at you once and tried to just see your face, but since you opened the door he saw through your light pajamas (if you could call them that) and noticed that you weren't wearing a bra, plus the shorts. …well they were too short.
He didn't want to think about you that way, you were his friend's sister, plus you were older than him and he blamed himself for coming here, you were too kind to let a pervert like him pass that the only thing he thought about It was in your body.
“It's just that Yunho… worries me,” he said, trying to focus his attention on something else.
You sighed giving up and walking to the kitchen to make some tea thinking it would calm him down.
“Me too” Mingi stayed where he was resisting the urge to turn around to see your figure “that girl is just playing with him, I'm sure” you passed him the cup of tea and smiled when he took it, noticing that he calmed down a little "Besides, it's not fair that I leave you out"
Mingi nodded, tasting the hot drink as they passed into the small room. You sat on the couch in front of him without noticing that he became tense and you put your feet up on the table in front of you, settling down to pass the time.
They didn't talk much and Mingi forced himself to talk, but your bare legs distracted him for a while, imagining how soft your skin was and how it would feel if he kissed it, he wondered what face you would make if he ran his hands over your breasts and then kissed your breasts neck, he wondered how he would feel if he put his…
He put those thoughts out of his mind, it wasn't the first time he had them, but he had managed to contain himself well until now, he set limits and stopped thinking about you talking to other girls, but sometimes, certain nights, when the memory of you It tormented him, he couldn't resist massaging himself thinking about you.
He shifted in his seat, but he was already tense enough and having you around wasn't helping him.
“I'm dying of sleep,” he whispered, interrupting your conversation. “I think I better go.”
You looked at the clock and got up to stop him. It was too late, you were worried that he would leave in the middle of the night, plus you didn't want to accept it, but you enjoyed his company more than you should.
"Stay"
Mingi could have refused and stopped the trouble he had started having in his pants, but seeing the way your eyebrows furrowed and your lips curled he didn't find the courage to say no.
After leaving him a pillow and some blankets, Mingi prepared to get comfortable on the couch. The lights went out and he closed his eyes to avoid thinking about the smell you had left in the room.
You went to your room and lay down on the bed trying to fall asleep, but something kept you restless. You shifted on the bed until you felt something under you and you pulled it out, embarrassed for forgetting that you had the dildo hidden.
Suddenly the idea that you had had from the beginning came back, you still felt tense and you knew that you wouldn't be able to sleep well tonight, but a part of you was fighting to contain itself, you were not alone and you liked the idea that Mingi could hear you, but you liked it. You were sure that he wouldn't like someone older like you, plus he was your brother's friend.
You closed your eyes, everything was silent, it seemed as if no one was around. You bit your lip and without thinking much you opened your legs, moving your hand down your abdomen until you reached your clothed pussy. You ran your fingers gently over your clit, rubbing it in circles and sank further into the bed.
You slowly increased your movements as you felt your slickness seeping through the fabric. You bit your lips and closed your eyes imagining that your fingers were someone else's as you took off your shorts and directly touched your soaked pussy, forgetting a little that you were not alone and you moaned.
Mingi was restless and although he tried to sleep he was distracted when he heard a strange noise, at first he was scared thinking it was something but when he heard it repeated constantly, curiosity took over him. He got up and walked silently to your room where something could be heard on the other side. A ragged breath and moans reached his head causing him to freeze with his hand on the door.
He rubbed his eyes thinking that he was still dreaming, but when another moan was heard he couldn't do anything. His entire body tensed and he felt a slight pressure in his crotch that wanted to be addressed, his head was hallucinating and his senses had stopped working. It was wrong to stay and listen to you but he couldn't move. He sighed, running his hand over his pants as he pressed his ear to the door and held onto his cock.
It wasn't enough, he needed to see how you gave yourself pleasure, to see how you moaned and joined your fingers up to the knuckles in your pussy. He bit his lip, doubting whether he should turn the knob, but his instincts seemed to react first and he just peeked through the small crack.
Your back was arched and your legs were shaking as your fingers pumped your pussy over and over again, you moaned desperately, biting the sheets to try to silence yourself. Mingi stayed still recording that image in his head for later but when he saw your shiny pussy and your heavy breathing he couldn't contain himself and let out a loud moan.
You had been aware that you might wake Mingi up, but that was your plan and when you heard footsteps outside you moaned louder for him to open the door, you smiled when you heard the low squeak and arched your back sticking your fingers into your pussy, you were close and Knowing that he was watching you helped you elevate the sensation, letting your pleasure release with one last moan.
“Mingi…”
The boy stopped his movements holding his breath, had you moaned his name? What should he do? Have you seen it? Should he run away? but he couldn't answer any of that when he saw your silhouette moving on the bed.
“I know you're behind the door.” Mingi still didn't move, trying to process everything you said, but he wasn't expecting your words. “Are you going to watch or come help me?”
Mingi's head spun, he must have been dreaming, there were no more explanations. The way everything was being too good couldn't be true, but, if it wasn't true it didn't matter at all, right?
Mingi hesitated for a moment, fighting in his head and shouting that this was wrong, that you were his friend's sister, but he gathered his courage and opened the door completely. You smiled when you saw him, leaning on your elbows to notice how his eyes roamed around your naked body you opened your legs even more, letting him see every part of your pussy and you bit your mouth as you watched him run his tongue over his lips.
“Did you plan all this on purpose?” His voice became deep and his eyes darkened a little as they met yours as you closed your legs and stood up to walk to where he was.
His eyes didn't leave your body the entire time, he was fighting not to grab you and throw you onto the bed, but he remained calm when he felt your hand on his cheek. He squeezed his eyes shut as you ran your fingers over his lips giving him a small taste of your taste.
“You should apologize for invading my privacy darling” you saw him salivate and as he parted his lips to lick the tips of your fingers “you're a bad boy” you continued putting your fingers in his mouth when he started breathing harder and harder.
“I'm sorry,” he whispered, connecting his gaze with yours for a moment and moving away a little.
“Show me,” you said, standing on tiptoe to be at the height of his mouth. “Show how sorry you are.”
Mingi didn't wait any longer and he left all doubtful thoughts of him behind. He grabbed your waist and brought your bodies together while he kissed your mouth.
You moaned in surprise, letting him take you to the bed, letting his hands run over your butt and squeeze it hard.
You leaned your head back and arched your body as his mouth descended on your neck and you felt him mark your skin with soft bites. You ran your hands over his chest trying to get rid of his shirt but before you could do anything he threw you on the bed and placed himself on top of you.
His eyes were lost in yours for a moment before he placed short kisses on your breasts, sucking on the skin and passing his tongue over your nipples, making your skin crawl. You let yourself be carried away by the sensation of his mouth slowly going down your abdomen until it reached your thighs and you felt his hands caress the inside of your legs, playing a little with your pussy.
“Min…”
“I want to know every part of your splendid body” he whispered as he brought his mouth closer to the middle of your legs “I want to taste you and feel the pleasure through you” his words made you sigh, no one had ever spoken to you that way.
There was no time to respond when you let out a moan as you felt his tongue in your pussy, your back arched as he began to play with your clit and his fingers caressed your entrance. You felt like you were pressing against nothing and you were already feeling the rush inside you from the overstimulation. You grabbed his hair, urging him to continue licking your pussy and you felt his tongue go faster when he inserted a finger to add to your pleasure but it was not enough.
You closed your legs, crushing his head in between but Mingi didn't complain, he felt like he was in heaven when he felt your flesh crushing him at the same time he tasted your slick. His tongue was fast and his finger lightly touched your g-spot making it torture, tears gathered on your face as you felt so close to orgasm, but suddenly everything stopped.
Mingi withdrew knowing that he couldn't stand it any longer with his cock in his pants either. You saw him undress and you did not hide your astonishment when you saw his worked body, but what surprised you the most was his cock. The tip of it was red and leaking precum and you couldn't help but lick your lips, which he noticed making his cock even harder.
“Fuck me” Mingi smiled, leaning over you, taking the base of his cock and passing it over your clit. “Please…” he left the tip at your entrance and focused on your face while he grabbed your hips tightly and slowly introduced his thick cock inside you making you moan from feeling so full.
“Fuck… it feels so good” Mingi moaned when he saw their joined bodies. He leaned over you and wiped away a tear you had shed, pressing his lips together in a passionate kiss, feeling his tongue and your taste in your mouth.
His hands caressed the outside of your legs and lowered them to your thighs to raise one leg over his body and let it rest on one of his shoulders.
He grabbed your legs and smiled before starting to move his hips crashing against yours, you moaned into his mouth as you felt his cock throb through you. You placed your hands on his shoulders and dug your nails into his skin as he picked up a faster pace.
Mingi could die right now, he had dreamed about you so many times and now that he was buried deep inside your tight pussy he felt like he was in fucking hell. His body was burning and he could only focus on the image of your face while he watched your marked tits bounce with each thrust. He couldn't stand it for long if you continued to squeeze him like that.
“I'm close,” he whispered, feeling his cock throb.
You looked at his body for a moment, taking in his muscles and the small beads of sweat on his chest.
“Do it, I want all of you Min” your warm voice combined with the nickname made Mingi tremble and leave your legs, you received him in your chest as you felt the client liquid seeping inside you.
You wrapped your legs around his waist and stroked his hair, letting yourself be carried away by the feeling of his semen spilling down your thighs.
Silence took over the room for a moment, you kept your eyes closed feeling Mingi's body on yours and her breath on your neck. You weren't sure how this would change the relationship you had with him and how it would affect his relationship with your Yunho, but you didn't want to think about that now.
“Min…” the boy raised his head, resting his hands on the sides of your head.
“I know…” they both looked at each other sharing the blame for a moment until he caressed your cheek “we should go take a shower” he confessed making you laugh a little to cut the tension of the moment.
“Okay” you held hands as you walked, you stood on your tiptoes and pressed yourself against his lips “only if you promise to fuck me again pretty boy”
“You're corrupting me,” Mingi blurted out so seriously with red cheeks that you almost forgot the way he had just fucked you in bed.
They laughed on their way to the bathroom without hearing any of the forgotten ringing phones while Yunho sighed angrily at the missed calls they left him.
#mingi#song mingi#ateez mingi#mingi ateez#ateez#ateez smut#mingi smut#ateez fanfic#ateez fanfiction#mingi hard hours#ateez hard hours#mingi x you#ateez imagines#ateez x you#mingi x reader#kpop fanfic#kpop fanfiction#kpop smut#smut
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13. I NEED U (WRITTEN)
"yunjin?" you called out to the girl infront of you, the sight of her body tensing up hurting a lot more than it should've.
yunjin turned around to meet your gaze, "hi?"
"can we talk?" you ask, maintaining eye contact with her.
"sure but this better be worth it." yunjin says, to which you nod.
"i promise." you say firmly, making yunjin feel a bit at ease. you didn't need to know but she missed the sound of your voice, it calmed her.
shortly after they both made it outside to the soccer field, y/n taking a seat on the bleachers first ushering yunjin to sit next to her.
‘really?’ was all yunjin could think, y/n brought her to the soccer field?
“sorry, it’s just easier for me to think here it makes me feel at ease.” y/n says nervously.
‘oh.’
“i wanna apologize for what i said the other day, i wasn’t thinking and what i said was stupid. i hope you know i didn’t mean it at all, i just was on edge.” y/n starts, pausing briefly to take a breath.
“why?” yunjin says.
“huh?”
“why was that on your mind while we were talking about us?” yunjin says, her eyes stuck on the girl in front of her.
“i don’t know really, i guess i just don’t expect my relationships to last.” y/n shrugs.
“after heeseung?” yunjin asks.
“it wasn’t specifically him, i just don’t typically attract the right people y’know.” y/n starts, her hand moving closer to yunjins.
“except you.” y/n says looking straight into yunjin’s eyes again, making the blonde blush.
“i thank the universe everyday for giving me you.” y/n says, smiling.
yunjin laughs, “how do you go from fucking up horribly to saying some of the sweetest words ever to me?”
y/n looks away in embarrassment, “i planned it out this time.” she mumbles.
“you what?” yunjin teases her, she definitely heard y/n just wanted to mess with her.
“i wrote it out last night before i went to bed, i wanted to make it perfect for you.” y/n says, yunjin giggling.
“you’re cute, did you write that too?” yunjin asks, smiling harder at y/n’s red face.
“ok enough,” y/n groans, “are we okay?”.
“of course, i missed you so much… i even dyed my hair to get your attention.” yunjin admits, mumbling the last bit.
“really?” y/n says, her eyes brightened in awe.
“i think you look really pretty.” she praises, making yunjin stand up immediately.
“the bells about to ring.” she says changing the topic, obviously flustered at y/n’s comment. she didn’t think she would like her new hair this much.
“we’ll talk more later?” y/n asks, grabbing her bag laying beside her on the bleachers.
“yeah, we do have one more thing to discuss.” yunjin says giving y/n a small smile.
“see you later.” y/n says, her eyes locked on yunjin’s lips. she wanted to kiss her so bad.
fortunately for y/n, as she was zoned out yunjin placed a quick peck on her cheek running off almost immediately after.
“bye!” yunjin said, disappearing in mere seconds.
y/n just sat there for a moment, not feeling like what had just happened was real. her hand resting on her cheek.
y/n felt complete almost, her relationships were nearly all rebuilt.
but she had one more thing to do, ask yunjin to be her girlfriend.
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You In My Arms
Chapter 4: Promises
(gif credit to: huangrenjuns)
full masterlist || haechan masterlist || YIMA chapter index
summary: your time at university is coming to an end, but Haechan isn't going anywhere, and neither is your long-standing crush on him
length: 13,144
tags: voyeurism, exhibitionism, slowburn, friends to lovers, masturbation, general perversion, smut
previous chapter || next chapter (Coming Soon)
As time passes, your graduation date growing closer and closer, you try to spend more time with your friends. Sure, you’re looking for a job and all that stuff too, hoping to jump right into a career after graduation, but also you’re not ready to let go of all of this just yet – your friends and this somewhat carefree life.
You take every moment.
You cherish the lunch breaks with your friends, hanging out between classes or after work, going bowling together with some of them on a Saturday night. You take photos and videos, keepsake memories with all of them.
You want to remember it all. To remember way it feels to be surrounded with friends, to laugh with Jaemin and Shotaro in the sunny courtyard outside the sciences building, to eat a gourmet feast Xiaojun made for his culinary cornerstone class.
You enjoy the excitement when you run with Haechan to the cafe in the break during your three-hour lecture to grab a caffeine-punch in a cup — the way he laughs at you as you try not to spill your drink while you jog back to class, the silly way he smiles when you laugh at him for having smudged the pile of whipped cream on top of his drink onto his face.
You spend plenty of time with all of your friends over those final few weeks after midterms, but surprisingly, you spend quite a bit of time with Renjun too. Despite his awkward departure that night after you messed around during the movie, things were going perfectly smooth.
It probably helped that neither of you mentioned it for quite a while after that.
You’ve always been on good terms with Renjun, but over those final weeks of your final semester, you actually become quite close with him in a purely friendly way. You study together, hang out together, grab coffee and lunch and dinner. You talk about stuff, about the impending ominously dark cloud of your futures that looms ahead of you. You talk about many things, yet you both ignore the events of that movie night, not talking about it at all until weeks later.
On a late Saturday morning, you meet Renjun to grab coffee before you go shopping together. It’s at a little place just a few blocks away from your apartment, and unfortunately, too close to the apartment of a guy you’d attempted to hook up with just a couple weeks ago.
It’s truly unfortunate when the guy walks in while you’re standing there with Renjun.
“Oh, shit!” You hiss, tucking yourself into Renjun’s shadow.
Renjun freezes, barely even moving his mouth when he asks, “What? What’s wrong?”
Quickly you sum up the story for him, whispering it in his ear, and Renjun just smirks and shakes his head. He lets you keep hiding behind him until your drinks are ready, until you’ve snuck out of the shop without being noticed by the guy.
Once you’re outside, Renjun begins laughing. “I guess I should be glad you don’t treat me like that.”
You take a sip of your drink and look sideways at him. “Honestly, I’m the one who was worried you were going to start avoiding me. After that night.”
Renjun clears his throat, and for about half a block, the two of you walk in silence tinged with awkwardness — the subject hovers right there between you, unable to be avoided now that it’s been mentioned.
“Look,” Renjun sighs when you reach a crosswalk. Cars whip by, stirring up a breeze. “About that night….”
“Renjun, it’s fine! You don’t —“
“No, listen.” He takes your hand, and you turn to look at him. Renjun clears his throat. “What we did that night, I shouldn’t have done that. I’m kinda seeing someone, and it’s been a tentative thing for a while now.” He doesn’t meet your gaze as he says, “It’s this older guy at the place where I’m interning, so it’s not like we’ve been able to be upfront about it.”
Well, shit. There’s someone else? Did you pressure him into it that night? And, also, on top of that, you didn’t know Renjun was even interested in men.
As if he can read the look of mild panic on your face, Renjun quickly says, “I’m bisexual, which I’ve never really said out loud before. So it’s not like I didn’t enjoy it. I did. It was a sexy situation, and you were very tempting.”
The light changes, and Renjun starts walking away, his hand still wrapped around yours. He starts talking again as you draw level with him, side by side. “The reason I just walked away that night after everything was finished is because I suddenly remembered him, and like, I’ve got this thing with him, and I really like him. So I thought I’d fucked up, and I panicked a little bit. He and I aren’t exclusive at the moment, but I still didn’t want to mess things up.”
You understand. That night is in the past, though now what little awkwardness about it remained has faded.
You’re happy that Renjun feels comfortable enough with you to be open and honest with you, as he’d said, he’s never told anyone he’s bisexual before. And you’re just happy for him as he begins telling you about the guy he’s kinda seeing.
Since you’re the only one of your friends that knows about this secret not-relationship going on, Renjun starts telling you, over the following days and weeks, all about the guy. He shows you pictures of him, tells you cute stories, and he even introduces you to him once when you have to swing by the guy’s apartment to pick Renjun up on your way to class.
It’s a nice building. Nice enough that it has a doorman who gives you a strange look when you pull up to the curb and sit there waiting. You sit there, idling for a moment, and that’s when Renjun emerges.
The guy walking beside him is wearing a cozy looking sweatshirt, a pair of basketball shorts, sandals, a backwards cap, and sunglasses. He doesn’t look like the supremely wealthy man you would typically imagine living here, nor does he totally match with the professional shots Renjun has shown you from their company’s website or his own social media.
To your total surprise, as Renjun opens the door and slides into the passenger seat of your car, he rolls down the window and waves his not-boyfriend over. The man leans at the window with his arms folded on the edge of the car door, grinning in at Renjun before he looks over at you.
“Hi,” he greets you. “I’m Jaehyun.”
He extends a hand, and you take it. He has a firm businessman grip, a strong handshake, a contrastingly cherubic smile. He’s tall and handsome, built like the type of man you’d see in a magazine.
“Nice to meet you,” he tells you as he withdraws from the car a moment later. And to Renjun, he says, “I’ll see you later at the office.”
Renjun smiles and nods, his eyes softening when he looks at Jaehyun. “See you later, hyung.”
As soon as Renjun has rolled the window up, as soon as you’re pulling away, you exclaim, “I can see why you’ve been keeping him all to yourself. He’s even hotter in person, Renjun.”
To that, he just laughs. “I want to show him off. But we can’t go public since I’m an intern and he’s technically my boss right now. He’s, uh, a little bit like you. Doesn’t mind getting a little handsy in public.”
You blush as you drive.
Renjun doesn’t even know half of it. You haven’t told him everything about the interests you’ve taken. All he knows is the way you’d not shied away from his wandering hands during the movie night, how you’d reciprocated without hesitation.
He doesn’t know that lately you’ve been venturing out to explore your exhibitionist hungers somewhat regularly too. But you feel a little too wary about doing anything by yourself completely in public, fearing the negative consequences of getting caught, so you mostly just keep it in your car. Masturbating in your car in the parking lot on campus or while you’re driving. But there’s a missing thrill when you do that because there’s no one to really see you, which is a little contradictory to why you won’t do it properly out in public.
Luckily, Renjun changes the subject, steering things away from your sex life or his. And for the most part, you don’t talk about it again until a few days later.
The end of the semester is rapidly approaching, days filled with studying for finals, working on final projects, spending every waking moment working towards the finale of your time in school. That’s when the subject of Jaehyun finally comes up again. You’d just asked how things were going, Renjun had answered simply, and after a few moments of silence, he spoke up again.
“I told Jae that I hooked up with you once,” Renjun admits.
You’re sitting together on the floor of his bedroom, studying for different classes, but you decided to do it together. Haechan and Jaemin had been here earlier too, but Jaemin left for the gym with Jeno, and Haechan had finally left because he had to go to work at the restaurant. So now it’s just the two of you.
You look over at him.
“Jae said he thinks we must’ve looked good together, and I told him that no one was watching so I wouldn’t know how good we looked together. That we really just swapped a handjob and me fingering you beneath the blankets, so it wasn’t much to look at.” Renjun taps the end of his pen against his notebook, and he’s studying you, looking along the length of you stretched out on your belly on his floor. “He said he still would’ve loved to have seen.”
Yeah, well, you’d like to see him and Jaehyun together too. Renjun is so pretty and Jaehyun is so handsome. You’ve seen his hard muscles in some of the photos Renjun has shown you, plus the day that you picked Renjun up, Jaehyun was wearing a sleeveless shirt that showed off arms so beautiful they could have been marble sculpted by an old-world artist. Renjun has shared a few details about their sex life, enough that you’re intrigued. You’re sure he and Jaehyun make a pretty picture too.
Renjun looks away from you, staring down at his pen tapping on the page. His cheeks are a little pink when he says, “He’s given me permission to have sex with you again, if you’re down for it. But he wants to see. If it happens, he wants me to film it.”
A bolt of heat shoots down to your core, spreading fast through you as you sit up to properly look Renjun in the eye. “Are you serious?”
Renjun nods, nervously avoiding eye contact. “Yeah. It’s weird, I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything about it, but you were into the like exhibitionism of that night, so I thought maybe you could be into this too? But, I get it’s weird so if it’s too weird or if you just don’t want to do it at all, I understand and we can forget all about this.”
But you do want it. It’s exactly what you’ve kinda been wanting. To have someone watch without the risk of it becoming a problem. And you like Renjun; it’s not like the thought of doing anything more sexual with him hadn’t crossed your mind since that first time.
“Ok. Can I make one request?” You ask, already closing your textbook and pushing your notes away.
Renjun nods.
“Can we do it in my car?”
So the next day, you and Renjun are in your car. You’re parked in the back of a parking lot on campus, far away from anyone else, facing a border of trees. Renjun, while he’d agreed to the car thing, didn’t actually want anyone to be able to see, so you’d drawn up this happy medium.
He props his phone up on your dashboard, and you climb into his lap. The day is warm enough that without the AC on in the car, you’re already sweating, especially when your bare thighs rest against Renjun’s. He’s shimmied his shorts down to his ankles, sitting in the passenger seat of your car in just his underwear.
“We do look good,” Renjun comments as he looks over and readjusts the angle of the phone.
You pull the sundress you’re wearing over your head, dropping it back into the driver’s seat. Now you sit nude on Renjun’s lap, sunlight pouring in through the windows over your skin. You put your fingertips just beneath Renjun’s chin, tipping his face up until his gaze meets yours. “Let’s show ourselves off to your man.”
He touches you, running his hands over your thighs, hips, your belly, your chest. You didn’t discuss it beforehand, but Renjun curls his hand against the back of your neck and brings you in for a kiss. His mouth is soft, his breath sweet. Renjun is gentle with you as you both get to know each other a little better, as he softens you up and as he slips his hand down to open you up with his fingers. You don’t hold yourself back, not in the sounds you make or the way you grind onto his fingers. You don’t care that the windows are cracked to allow in a breeze, that your moans might carry across the parking lot.
After a few minutes, Renjun loses the stiffness brought on by uncertainty. He loses a bit of that softness when he grabs both of your hips and drags you a little higher in his lap. He lifts a hand to your throat, holding on as he brings his lips to your ear and tells you, “Want you to ride my cock like a good slut. Yeah?”
A swift smack to your ass with one hand gets you moving.
You push at Renjun’s shoulders, pinning him back into the seat. “Why don’t you just sit back and enjoy, huh?”
Renjun does just that, relaxing back into the seat. He slides the hand down from your throat, to your shoulder, down your arm. His fingertips trace the rounded curve of your breast, down your side, over your hip and your thigh, down to your knee where it bends beside his hip.
You squeal with surprise when suddenly the seat moves, falling nearly horizontal.
Renjun laughs, lifting his hand from where it had fallen to the lever beside the seat, the one he’d used to make the sudden move. “Now,” Renjun says, “Now, ride me, beautiful.”
So you do exactly that.
You fuck Renjun, riding him on that small seat in your car, both of you baking under the heat until sweat pools in all the small places, until your skin sticks to his disgustingly. Your car rocks as you ride him, and the phone filming all of this slips from its perch on the dashboard a few times until Renjun finally picks it up and holds it himself, focusing it where he disappears inside you, aiming it at your tits when he puts a hand on one, speaking to you, and capturing your moans and wordless replies. He films every part of you but your face, which had been another request of yours.
Renjun pushes you off his cock just seconds before his orgasm mounts, and he releases across his belly, gasping and groaning.
“Don’t move,” he groans as you begin to climb off him into the driver’s seat again. “You didn’t finish. Let me.”
It takes some careful rearrangement, but after a moment you’re the one reclining in the seat. Renjun has pushed the seat as far back from the dashboard as allowed, and he’s carefully squeezed himself down onto the floor, kneeling there with your legs draped over his shoulders as he dips in to lick you out.
It’s great. It’s fun.
You’re leaned far enough back that you can’t see the rest of the parking lot beyond the windows, only the sky above. But you can still hear, and you hear as a few people pass nearby the car, as Renjun does a certain thing that makes you let out a completely inappropriate sound. You hear the conversation of those outside pause, but you don’t even mind, in fact it perhaps excites you even more as Renjun carries you straight over the edge of your orgasm.
That time is not the only time. Apparently Jaehyun likes seeing you and Renjun together.
Jaehyun never wants to physically be present to witness it, just wants to see videos and pictures, and once he does call so he can listen and direct Renjun from a distance.
It’s just sex. Great sex. Fun sex, sometimes in public but sometimes in Renjun’s room at the rental house.
You keep it secret between you two. No one needs to know about the confusing nature of whatever is happening between you. They don’t have to know that while you’re all over hanging out at the rented house that you’re wondering about the likelihood of dragging Renjun into the laundry room for a quickie, or you’re wishing that you could just be riding him on the swing on the back porch with each of you wearing an AirPod with Jaehyun connected through a phone call like you’ve done before. None of them have to know at all, not that they’d notice.
No, instead they’re all typically busy focusing on games or whatever movie or drama someone puts on. Or, such as on this particular night, a karaoke machine.
Jaemin brought one home from the rec center on campus because it was outdated and they were going to trash it. So he’s brought it home for some fun tonight, and pretty much everyone has been having fun with it, and paying no attention to anything else, fully distracted. Even Renjun who keeps missing the way you’re trying to catch his eye.
Your mind has been preoccupied with those thoughts about being bent over the washing machine in the laundry room, but it’s clear as you fail to catch Renjun’s eye for the fifth time tonight that it’s not going to happen.
So you decide to give in to just having regular non-sexual fun tonight. To just enjoy the company of your friends, to pick up the mic and sing karaoke along with the rest. You’ll do anything for the prize of the cheap ass gold trophy one of the guys bought as a joke during your freshman year, the one that gets passed around any time there’s a contest.
Haechan, tragically, is just getting over a cold and his voice is still a bit hoarse, so he’s had to sit out on the karaoke fun. He’d pouted for a while earlier when Jaemin brought the machine out, but once Mark had suggested that Haechan be the karaoke maestro for the evening, his mood improved.
Therefore, Haechan is the one holding the control for the karaoke machine when you jump to your feet, ready for your chance. He grins at you, and you get this silly, starry-eyed feeling, bunnies jumping around in your belly. You pinch the inside of your elbow, trying to chase the thoughts away. You need to get over your crush on him. It’s been long enough.
“What’ll it be? Anything in particular?” Haechan rasps, lifting his eyebrows as he scrolls through the selection. “Or dealer’s choice?”
“Don’t do it,” Chenle warns from where he’s sunken into a beanbag chair, arms folded and his eyebrows set in a deep frown. Just moments ago he failed disastrously after the song Haechan had chosen for him proved to be surprisingly too difficult.
Haechan blinks up at you, fluttering his eyelashes with a sweet smile, the face of innocence.
“Yeah, absolutely not,” you laugh. “I know what I want. ‘You In My Arms’ by Yoo Jae Ha, please, Haechan.”
It’s a slow ballad song, but it’s one you like. You’d heard it once and immediately fallen in love with the old song. It’s certainly the oldest choice of all the songs that have been sung so far tonight.
“That one?” Haechan asks, a tone of surprise weaving through the scratch of his voice.
“Yes.” You straighten up, turning to face the screen fully, trying to put Haechan out of your line of sight.
You put your heart and soul into the performance. A few of the others sing along in the background, and even if you’re not the best singer in the room, you’re not the worst. You sink down into your spot on the floor, pretty pleased with yourself honestly, although Xiaojun ends the night in possession of the trophy, vowing that he’ll take good care of it.
It’s only when someone points out that he might be the one to end up with possession of the trophy permanently with graduation coming up that the mood of the night sours. The end of the semester is quickly approaching, and many of you are graduating, and things will be different. There won’t be nights of congregating in the rented house just off campus, no more pointless competitions for the sake of the trophy.
It’s coming to an end.
Someone has the idea, on that bittersweet note, for all of you to take a group picture together because for the first time in forever, your entire close-knit group is all in attendance. And it would be nice to have a group photo to remember everyone by.
“God damn, we’re not dying,” Haechan says. The words are rough, grating out of his throat and grating along sensitive nerves among the group. One of the girls starts crying, dragging everyone she can reach together into a half-hug, half-pose for the photo.
Renjun sets his phone up, sets a timer, and everyone clusters together. Shoulders, knees, elbows knock as everyone scrambles to fit into the frame. Someone steps on someone else’s hand. There’s an elbow digging into someone’s thigh. A hand brushes your back, slipping over your shoulder as they lean on you a bit.
The unexpected weight throws you off balance, and you almost fall forward until the hand on your shoulder drops to your waist, holding you steady, holding you up.
“Smile everyone!” Someone says.
The camera flashes bright. You hear the snap of the iPhone’s camera.
The group disintegrates, people moving immediately. The hand on your waist falls away.
You turn around to see who it was.
Renjun smiles brightly right there. Mark is there too, laughing and swatting Renjun and Haechan on the shoulders. Haechan smiles too, silently laughing along with Mark. None of the three of them look at you.
Renjun promises he’ll send the picture out to everyone, but then someone breaks out a couple bottles of wine. Glasses are poured, toasts are made, memories remembered. The night passes, tasting bittersweet on everyone’s tongues.
“Let’s take a trip,” someone suggests before the night ends. “Let’s all go away somewhere after graduation. One last trip with all of us!”
Haechan is the one to suggest, “We could go overseas to somewhere warm with a beach and get drunk to celebrate.” He’d looked around at your friends, a light glimmering in his eyes, a touch of his insatiable voyeuristic hunger residing in that look. “How about Thailand?”
No official plans are set in stone that night. There’s been too much drinking already, people get sucked back into the lure of the karaoke machine, and others start to head home. You should go home too. Tomorrow you have an interview for a job that starts after graduation. You need to get some rest.
But Haechan offers you another turn on the karaoke machine, any song, your choice. You can turn that down. As you slide down onto the sofa beside him, your shoulder brushes his, fingers sliding against the back of his hand while you use the controller to select the song you want.
And maybe it’s your imagination, just wishful thinking brought on by your crush, but you think he leans into you, that he sighs a little when you touch his hand.
Regardless of the truth of your experience, you cradle the warm feeling brought on by Haechan’s potential reaction, carrying it with you all the way home later that night.
It is a total relief, a weight lifted off of your shoulders, to be walking out into a beautiful, sunny, temperate day knowing that you have just received a job offer from the company you wanted to work at.
The Moon Corporation is a business created by an alumni of your school, Moon Taeil. He’s hired many people who’ve also attended your school, so you felt like your odds at getting hired were pretty good. Especially since you’ve been there at the top of pretty much every class, top grades and performance.
So today, after your interview, you walk out of the building with a nice job offer that you’re absolutely going to accept.
“Well, how did it go?” A voice from behind you. A burst of cool air as the doors of the building are opened again.
You turn around.
Haechan saunters forward, hands tucked in the pockets of his tailored black pants. His shirt is tucked in and crisp. His hair is styled instead of the fluffy mess it had been just last night during all the karaoke-ing. He’s wearing glasses again and an open smile.
You forgot that he was here too. You’d seen him sitting there waiting when you were called in for your interview, but in all the excitement of how well the interview had gone and then receiving the offer, you’d miraculously forgotten about Haechan. That has rarely ever happened when he’s in your vicinity.
“I got the job!” You lift your hands to your face, cool palms against your warm cheeks. You’re still surprised and elated, your face flushed with happiness. “What about you?”
The Moon Corporation was hiring multiple positions as the company was looking to finally expand a bit more.
Haechan grins, and as he comes up beside you, he throws his arm over your shoulders. “I got it too, of course. You already know I could charm my way into anything.” He says it smugly and teasingly, offering you a wink that makes your heart beat a little faster.
You push him away a little, half heartedly because you don’t actually want him to pull his arm away from your shoulders. Luckily he leaves it there as you start walking towards where you’ve parked your car. You ask, “So I’m stuck with you even after graduation?”
“Oh, dear,” Haechan laughs, “Yeah, I think we might be stuck with each other for a long time. It’s a good thing you enjoy my company.”
His arm slides away from your shoulders and he steps away, but you find yourself drifting closer to his side. “We’ve got to have each other’s backs, got it?” You tell him. “We’re in this together. Friends and coworkers, teammates.”
Haechan nods seriously, holding his hand out to you, pinky finger extended. “I promise.”
You loop your pinky finger with his, holding his gaze as you make this pinky promise. An unbreakable vow. “I promise.”
The day of graduation comes too quickly. Final exams pass in a series of successes, final projects are submitted without a hitch. Your contract with the Moon Corporation is signed and submitted, and your orientation is scheduled to begin in two weeks.
But first, before all of that, before the entirety of the rest of your life stretches out before you, there’s the trip to Thailand planned with your friends. Before life, first there is the promise of fun and relaxation, adventure and alcohol as you all fly to Thailand, and cram a dozen of you into one house for a week.
Everyone comes, which is kind of hectic to plan and organize, especially when some of your friends don’t even jump onto the trip until rather last minute.
You don’t know if it’s the heat or something else, but something about those days spent in Thailand has everyone horny.
In between the adventures — trips to historic and religious sites, a trip to a busy market in the city, a few hikes — and just simply relaxing on the beach, it seems that everyone is sneaking around and having sex.
You hear sounds from the rooms the others are in. Echoing moans from the bathroom. You know the outdoor shower certainly gets more use than just for showering – you catch Jaemin walking in there once and moments later soft moans echoed out. You were pretty certain you spotted YangYang getting handsy on the beach with a European tourist he met at one of the bars in town.
You are no exception. The heat just gets under your skin and drives you wild as you lounge on a float in the pool, watching Haechan swim laps, watching Renjun wrestling YangYang in the shallows. You watch both of them closely for the first day, unable to pull your gaze away from Haechan because he’s the object of your list and affection, but Renjun as well. Because you know that if you approach him, it’ll be so easy.
It only takes a few hours for you to snap, to drag Renjun away from your friends and tell him that you need to get off. That leads to the pair of you sneaking around the house and on the beach, having sex at every opportunity over the next few days. You also use that outdoor shower for non-showering activities.
You try to get it all out of your system, just wanting to not feel horny. All you want is to enjoy a day trip to a beautiful ancient temple, but your mind can only focus on Haechan standing beside you in a loose white tank top that doesn’t hide the way the muscles in his arms flex. And since when does he have toned arms? Has he been working out? You can only watch his hands as he gently brushes his fingers over objects in the market. You can only stare as his swim trunks rise up around his thighs when he sits down across from you under the pergola behind the house you’re all staying at, his hand fisted around a water bottle held between his thighs — your mind immediately turns to filthy thoughts of his hand around his cock, his golden thighs on display and his head thrown back with a moan instead of just laughter at a joke that Jeno is telling.
That night you drag Renjun out to the beach when no one is paying attention, and you beg him to please let you do whatever you want with him to just get these urges out of your system. He lets you, and he doesn’t have to know that when your eyes are closed it’s because you’re thinking of Haechan. Although, to be fair, when you’re kneeling in the sand, sucking his cock with his fingers threaded through your hair, he could just as easily be imagining you as Jaehyun as you’re imagining he’s Haechan.
That night is certainly not the only time that week.
You know that you and Renjun aren’t alone in all of this horniness. Everyone is getting action either from among your friend group or from locals or other tourists in the area.
Everyone except Haechan.
You try not to notice, but obviously you can’t help it. Everyone pairs off, even if they’re swapping pairs like YangYang keeps doing when he trades out the tourist for a local girl and that local girl for Giselle in your friend group, and then Giselle for another tourist.
But Haechan is always alone, though he seems entertained by everything going on around him even if he’s not directly involved in any action.
On your final night in Thailand, several of the guys decide to cook for everyone. Xiaojun has just graduated with a culinary degree, Haechan just enjoys cooking, and after a recent trip abroad Chenle is now possibly considering switching his major to culinary arts. The three of them prepare dinner for everyone, serving it out by the pool with many drinks to be had by everyone. The drinking lasts a lot longer than the food, going until late in the night when drunken toasts are being shouted out left and right to celebrate everything from the big victories and accomplishments to the small and ridiculous things.
“To those of us who’ve already got jobs lined up!” Renjun cheers, lifting his glass.
Several of the others glare, but you lift your glass to tap it against his. Haechan too, both of you with your office jobs lined up with the Moon Corporation. Haechan’s knuckles bump against the back of your hand as he joins you in the toast, and you glance his way.
Haechan isn’t truly paying any attention to you, but rather he’s looking at Renjun.
Haechan’s eyes flash as he says, “I still don’t get how you got a full-time position with full benefits, Renjun. Getting promoted from an unpaid intern to having full benefits and everything at your company. You skipped right over being a part-timer. Sheesh,” Haechan whistles, knocks his drink back like it’s a shot, and then asks, “Whose cock did you have to suck for that?”
It’s just a phrase, but still, it holds a little ring of truth to Renjun’s situation.
Renjun sits his glass down heavily onto the table.
Not that Haechan could possibly know it, but that’s something Renjun has expressed concern to you about. That it’s Jaehyun that got Renjun his position. You know it can’t be true; Renjun deserves the job he’s got, and maybe Jaehyun helped fast-track the promotion, but Renjun certainly would have gotten himself there all on his own.
You know that there’s no way that Haechan could know about that. None of your friends probably do. Most of them don’t even know that Renjun is bisexual.
Renjun doesn’t take another drink from his glass or say another word. He simply leaves the table.
“Damn,” Haechan whistles, “I think I touched a nerve.” And then he looks at you, a smile beginning to form, and then he opens his mouth, ready to say something to you, too.
“Don’t even dare to suggest that I did something like sleeping my way into our company, Lee Donghyuck,” you warn him off before he can say anything like that.
He just smirks. “The full government name? What did I do wrong?” He steals Renjun’s abandoned drink and tosses it back without flinching. “And besides, angel, you know I don’t think you could do anything as naughty as fucking your way into a job. You’re too much of a good girl for that.”
Heat flares beneath your skin due both to anger – why is he so determined to think that you are the perfect picture of innocence? – and arousal in hearing him call you a good girl. The way that his voice curls around the words, softening them, turning them into a praise rather than just a tease. You cross your legs beneath the table.
“I wouldn’t accuse you of something like that. I’m not dumb enough to piss you off when we’re about to be working together. And I know you’ve worked hard. You’re brilliant.” Haechan drapes his arm over the back of your seat, and it takes a lot of your willpower to not lean into his gravity. He smells like summer with a little hint of the spices he’d used to prepare dinner. It’s so tempting to lean in, to breathe the smell of him in, to have your nose tracing the path of moles on his throat, to let your tongue take over and taste his sweat….
Just like Renjun, you leave the table without another word. But yours is less to do with being upset, and everything to do with the way that you’re about to throw yourself at him.
Haechan just laughs, and when you take a last glance over your shoulder at him, he’s already turned to a conversation with Shotaro.
You find Renjun upstairs in the group bedroom, or the overflow room where a variety of people who there weren’t enough bedrooms for had been sleeping all week. He’s sitting at the far end of the room on the pallet of blankets that you and he had claimed the first night. He’s on the phone, talking quietly with someone you can only assume is Jaehyun.
Renjun only glances at you as you walk around to sit down on your blankets. You can make out the low timbre of Jaehyun’s voice on the other end of the line, and you quickly determine that Haechan’s little jab at Renjun had certainly touched a nerve as he’s now seeking reassurance from Jaehyun that he didn’t earn his job just because of the relationship that they have.
You find the answer when Renjun spits out, “What the fuck, Jaehyun?”
He promptly ends the call, tossing his phone over into his suitcase. He cries, frustrated, angry, sad. And you sit up there with him and comfort him for a good long while until his irritation with Jaehyun — who had in fact fast-tracked Renjun’s promotion from intern to full-time employee — shifts back to being his irritation with Haechan.
“Haechan can be such an asshole sometimes!” Renjun complains. “You know the other day when I left my phone down by the pool? I saw him looking through it before he returned it to me, like what a nosy asshole.”
“And what do you think he was looking at in your phone?” You rest your cheek on your hand, tilting your head to look at Renjun.
Renjun shrugs. “My photos app is full of nudes and videos, so he probably saw some of that. That’s probably why he thinks I fucked my way out of being an intern.” He shakes his head.
“I’m pretty sure he was about to make some comment about me too,” you say, “But I stopped him before he could.”
Renjun sits up quickly, staring down at you. “Are you fucking kidding? What the hell is his problem tonight? Accusing both you and I of sleeping our way into our jobs?” He scoffs and looks like he’s about to get up, to go hunt Haechan down.
You take his hand, tugging to get him to stay down there on the floor with you. “He never actually said anything implying that I’m a slut. Actually, on the contrary, he told me again that he thinks I’m too innocent to do anything like that.” You roll your eyes a little bit. “I’m halfway convinced Haechan still thinks I’m a blushing virgin.”
“If he only knew.” Renjun slumps back down beside you. “I’ve never met anyone else who wanted to have sex in public as much as you. No one else who would eagerly agree to fuck on video just so I can send it to my… my boyfriend?” His eyebrows furrow. “I don’t know if that’s what Jaehyun is or not. We haven’t called it anything officially. But if that’s not what we are, why would he give me such a good position at work? Like, he obviously wants me around, right? Fuck, Haechan has me questioning everything now. And I had to put a passcode on my phone because of him.”
You smile at him softly. “You probably should’ve done that a while ago if you have so much sensitive stuff in your phone.”
Renjun makes a face, but you know that he knows that you’re right. He sighs, “I’m just ready to go home. I’m tired of being crammed in this house with so many people, most of all him. He’s just right there beneath my skin, you know?”
You do and you don’t. As much as Haechan irritates you sometimes, you also can absolutely not deny that you still like Haechan. Quite a lot. And Renjun mentioning Haechan potentially looking through the camera roll doesn’t help the problem you were trying to escape from by coming up here. A low heat simmers in your belly as you think about gross voyeur Haechan scrolling through Renjun’s phone.
“I’m getting my own place when we get home. With my salary, I’ll be able to afford a decent place.” Renjun stares up at the ceiling, his gaze distant, his thoughts probably miles away from where yours are. “Our lease on the house is up at the end of the month, and most of the rest of them already have their next place lined up. I was hesitating, hoping Jae would ask me to move in with him. Maybe I’ll see if Xiaojun still wants a roommate. But he lives next door to YangYang and Haechan. Do I really want to deal with them?”
As if YangYang isn’t Renjun’s best friend other than you? You know he would love to have him as a next door neighbor. Haechan too. Even though he’s on Renjun’s nerves right now, they generally do get along quite well.
It’s already late, and when someone stumbles into the room a few minutes later, crashing and stumbling down onto the blankets at the other end of the room, your conversation with Renjun tapers off. It’s late, your flight back home is in the morning, and even if the others want to drink until you all leave for the airport, you’re going to sleep.
Renjun follows your lead, getting undressed to fall asleep in the humidity of the room.
You doze off, sleeping lightly.
You hear every creak and groan of the house, each footstep climbing the stairs. Every flush of the toilet. The quiet conversations as people say goodnight and close themselves into their rooms. You hear a distant moaning and thumping of a headboard against a wall. You hear the room fill around you, snores and breathing and the ever-increasing heat as more of your friends pack into the room.
The ceiling fan overhead doesn’t seem to do much at all, and even when you get up to crack the window in the hope of tempting in a breeze, it only helps slightly. But when you lie back down, you do manage to drop right back into sleep. You fall all the way down to a place where you can dream.
And you do dream.
A sweet summer fantasy of relaxing on the sand of the beach just outside this house, entirely nude beneath the sun. There’s a soft pair of lips and a set of rough hands, a clever tongue flicking against your clit, quick fingers pressing inside you. Even in your dream you know it’s wrong to be doing this out in the open, but you love it so much, knowing that anyone could see how your partner is making you feel.
You lift your head and look down your bare body to the head of the person settled between your legs. All you can see is his hair — dark and fluffy, curling in the humidity. And then he moves, tilting his head in just a way that you can at last see his eyes.
“Haechan,” you sigh.
Your eyes open, heart pounding in the quiet of that room. The humid air clings to your skin even though all you’re wearing is your panties and a tshirt. You’ve already kicked your blanket off in your sleep, so what little air is circulating in the room moves over your bare skin, but it does very little to help anything, especially with the heat of a different sort simmering beneath your surface.
And of course, nothing is helped by what you see as soon as you’ve opened your eyes.
The man in your dreams is right in front of you.
Haechan is stretched out on his back right beside you. And he’s awake, his gaze fixed first on your ass only to slowly trail back up to your face.
And that’s when you realize that you’d spoken his name aloud.
“Sorry,” he apologizes quickly, making some excuse about how YangYang had locked him out.
You don’t care about what he’s saying. All you can think about is how you’d just been having a very nice dream about him, and now here he is. What are the odds?
Haechan moves a little, and you realize that you can smell him — all sunscreen and spice, and much like earlier in the night, you have to fight that urge to smell him. It would be so easy right now to just roll closer to him, to snuggle into that spot between his shoulder and his neck, to excuse it in the morning as not having been fully awake. Maybe you’d been able to smell him in your sleep, and that’s why he’d taken up that role in your fantasy.
Haechan finishes his excuse, and you just close your eyes again, and tell him, “Don't care. Just stop staring at my ass. I’m trying to sleep.” You hide your face in your pillow, hoping that he couldn’t tell that you were flushed in the face, hoping he won’t notice that you don’t fall back asleep because your heart is pounding and your body is craving to be touched.
He doesn’t say another word, but after a moment of silence, he does suddenly fling his blanket off only for it to land over your feet. Even that much is too warm, plus it stirs up the scent of him that just riles you up even more. You feel like an animal, getting so turned on just by a smell, so you back away, scooting back towards Renjun to try to get a little distance from Haechan. You turn onto your side instead of the less comfortable position of lying on your belly, and as you do so, you accidentally bump into Renjun.
He jolts, startled awake by the contact. You can tell he’s awake because he wraps an arm around your waist, he presses up against your back. He drops a kiss to the sensitive spot right behind your ear that’s exposed at this angle.
You shiver against him, and without either of you acknowledging it, Renjun starts moving.
You’ve mentioned this before, this idea of being touched in the room with all of your friends. A scenario similar to the first sexual encounter between you and Renjun. Even earlier this week, you’d mentioned something quite similar to this about messing around with each other in this room while your friends slept around you.
You think that’s what Renjun is playing off of right now as he slides the hand resting on your waist down along the band of your panties.
In front of you, Haechan’s face has relaxed, and you think maybe he’s fallen asleep that quickly. Maybe the heat, instead of suffocating him, has lulled him into a comforting sleep. Part of you wishes it had worked that easily for you.
You slowly slide down to lie on your back as Renjun moves too, lifting himself up on his side to look down at you. His fingers graze your clit, dipping a little lower and finding you already soaking wet with arousal, and an involuntary noise leaves your lips. Renjun grins, lifting his free hand up to his lips, signaling that you need to keep quiet, but with the other hand, he keeps touching you. Slowly he circles his fingers on your clit. You want more, need more, crave to be touched everywhere.
And somewhere at the other end of the room, someone coughs in their sleep.
Renjun freezes.
He’d better not stop. He can’t stop. You’re too worked up at this point to not be allowed to cum, even if that means that you wake every single person in this room.
But the room settles into quiet again, and Renjun’s fingers move on your clit again. A sigh spills from your lips.
You bring your own hands up to your chest, slowly moving your hands up over your shirt which is already ridden up over your ribs, and you try to keep it covering your tits just a little to preserve a tiny bit of your modesty. Your nipples are hard, and you pinch them between your fingers, massaging your tits just the way you like as Renjun keeps touching you. And you know there are involuntary little sounds that keep escaping you, but they’re so quiet there’s no way that they’re loud enough for anyone else other than you and Renjun to really hear.
Until Renjun decides to touch you deeper. His fingers dip down to your entrance, sliding inside you in a way that makes your breath catch, makes your legs fall apart to allow him better access.
This time, Renjun clears his throat, just a small coughing sound, but it’s enough to draw your attention up to his face. He flicks his gaze over toward your other side.
Your knee is touching Haechan’s leg. Renjun looks at it, looks back at you. But you don’t care, you just want Renjun to keep touching you. You shrug a little, and that’s enough for Renjun.
As his fingers stroke your inner walls, your control really starts to slip. Whimpers, sighs, all these little noises that are going to get you caught. Which, really, is that the worst thing that could happen?
For Renjun, the answer might be yes.
He covers your mouth with the hand that’s not busy at work between your thighs. You can’t help making sounds, you feel so good, and you’re really enjoying this situation and the possibilities. It’s your ideal exhibitionist scenario playing out in real time.
Renjun holds your gaze, a silent command in his eyes for you to be a little more quiet.
But then his fingers press right against that certain spot inside you, and this time you whimper his name, the sound muffled against the palm of his hand.
A moment passes in which Renjun stops touching you, and then his hand moves as if he’s going to pull his hand away. Immediately you reach down, closing your hand around his wrist, keeping his fingers inside your panties. His threat is clear in that alone, but still Renjun whispers, “Quiet, beautiful.”
“Renjun, please,” you beg, trying your best to keep your voice quiet too. You move, rolling your hips up, trying to get Renjun to resume touching you. He looks into your eyes and you tell him, “Someone is going to hear.” And by that you mean: someone is going to hear, it’s inevitable, but you don’t care. He knows you get off on stuff like this, so why is he suddenly wanting you to be quiet and sneaky about it?
“Then be quiet. You said you wanted this,” his fingers stroke slowly over your clit. “Do you still? Or should I actually stop?”
His threat is clear. His rules are plain.
Either you keep quiet while he fingers you in this room full of your friends, or he’s going to stop and leave you horny. He won’t finish giving you what you want. He doesn’t mind the threat of being discovered, but he doesn’t actually want to be discovered. The noisier you get, the higher the likelihood of you actually being caught.
He slides a finger back down to your entrance, pressing it deep into your tight heat. It’s a test to see if you’ll keep quiet.
Your thighs close, and you roll towards Renjun, rolling your hips to get him to move, hoping he’ll fuck you on his fingers until you’ve made a mess of your panties. He gives you a little, but he’s still holding back, so you clutch at his shirt, press your forehead to his chest, and you plead, “Keep going.”
Fuck.
You wish you were alone with him right now, and that alone is a rare enough feeling to be fucking around with Renjun and wishing that you were entirely alone and in private. You wish that he could properly fuck you right now and that you didn’t have to be quiet. You’re just desperate for it, and you can’t get what you really want here in this room of all of your friends. But this is something that you want too. It’s hot to be getting touched like this right now.
Renjun just smiles and caresses your jaw, your throat, and he touches his fingers lightly just beneath your chin until your tip your head back just enough that it only takes a slight tilt of his face downward to kiss you. You moan softly from the smooth way he kisses you and the way that he finally really starts moving his fingers, fucking you with them.
You slide your legs apart, wanting him to get deeper, to touch you everywhere. You roll your body forward, riding his fingers as well as you can, and you can’t help the sounds you’re making. You know you’re being louder than you probably should, even though you’re actually being quite quiet as compared to normal. You can hear the rasp of the blankets beneath you as you’re moving your hips to meet each thrust of Renjun’s fingers. You can hear your wetness lubricating the way for Renjun, and it only serves to turn you on even more. Knowing that these noises are happening regardless of your attempts to muffle your moans and whimpers (unsuccessfully).
Renjun has three fingers inside you, his thumb rubbing circles at your clit. Your heart is beating everywhere all at once – in your throat, pounding in your chest, pulsing in your pussy, fluttering in your belly. You can feel it in your toes as they curl in the building heat tickling through your veins. Your hands clutch at Renjun’s shirt, and he smiles when he bends his fingers just-so, his thumb working tight circles against that sensitive bundle of nerves at the apex of your thighs.
You gasp and whimper as you cum. You bite at Renjun’s shoulder, pulling him closer even as you try to push him away to get his hand away from where you’re quickly growing sensitive as you soak your panties. You ride it out, still feeling your heart beating in every part of you as you do pull yourself away from Renjun, flopping onto your back to stare up at that ceiling fan revolving slowly overhead.
You’re sweating.
You feel sticky and gross, and you’ve only got a moment to rejoice in the slight respite of the air stirred up by the fan. Then Renjun is there stretching over top of you.
“Good girl,” he whispers, kissing your cheek.
And Renjun is the one all over you right now, but you’re only thinking of Haechan. Thinking of his “good girl” from earlier tonight, wishing it was his voice that was whispering that in your ear, that it was his fingers inside your panties, his body too hot against yours in this already too stuffy room. Which, you do still have that one burning hot point of contact with Haechan where your knee rests against his.
It’s not enough.
Your body craves more of that.
But instead you have Renjun. He’s a cuddler, that’s one thing you’ve learned since this started, and you usually don’t mind. But tonight is too hot.
“Fuck off,” you whine, squirming in a half-assed effort to dislodge him. It’s too hot, but you’ve also completely run out of the energy to actually get him to move. Renjun just lies there halfway on top of you, his arm stretched out on your other side. You wonder if he’s going to tell Jaehyun all about what you and he have done on this trip. You haven’t filmed any of your encounters on this trip, and after his argument over the phone with Jaehyun earlier, you wonder if it even matters.
Haechan suddenly switches sleeping positions, breaking that singular point of contact, and he rolls over in his sleep so his back is to you. He twitches and shivers a little, which seems like it should be impossible given the heat, but after a moment, he relaxes again. He’s shirtless, and in the faint light coming in through the cracked open window, you can see that he’s sweating too. Beads of sweat glisten along his arm and the length of his spine.
You smile a little to yourself as you look at his sleeping figure.
He’s so blissfully unaware that you and Renjun just did this right beside him. You could almost laugh. Would he have watched you two if he’d known? Would he have sat there like he’d done with Shotaro and his girlfriend, watching and getting off?
You fall asleep thinking about that, and in the morning you find yourself looking over at him as you wake. He’s still asleep, now flat on his back again. He looks so peaceful in sleep, his hand resting low on his belly right above the band of his black boxer-briefs. Perhaps you stare a moment too long, but as soon as you feel Renjun stirring behind you, you look away. You get up and leave the room, deciding you definitely need a cool shower before you finish packing up to head to the airport for home.
Life settles into a boring routine once you return from Thailand. Half of your friends move away, the other half is almost always so busy working now that you hardly see each any of your friends.
Except Haechan.
With both of you working at the Moon Corporation, you see him every single day. Plus, YangYang is the only one of your friends still in the city who isn’t pursuing a proper professional lifestyle, so he made an open invitation for any of your friends to come over pretty much at any time. You take him up on that offer pretty often, honestly, but considering that he’s Haechan’s roommate, you still see a significant amount of Haechan.
Not that you’re complaining.
You still have a dumb fucking crush on him even though you know that it’s probably just time for you to completely let it go and move on. It’s been almost five years that you’ve known Haechan, and the relationship between you has never developed beyond friendship, so maybe it’s just time that you give up.
But that history is part of the reason it’s so difficult to just move on.
It also doesn’t help that you’re quite horny like all the time, so seeing the object of many of your fantasies all the time has put you in a rough spot.
After your return from Thailand, Renjun and Jaehyun made up for their little fight, and they created new rules and boundaries, which meant cutting you out of the relationship altogether. You understand, of course. It was really just sex after all. You didn’t have feelings for Renjun, and you don’t want to ruin his happiness with Jaehyun. Renjun gets his own place, though Jaehyun’s over there so often that it might as well be their place. Renjun is swept up in his official relationship and his professional job, so you see less of him than you would like.
Xiaojun gets an apartment right next door to Haechan and YangYang, meaning that it should have been more convenient to get to see him too, and when you receive the invitation to his housewarming party you consider the possibility of rekindling your friends with benefits relationship with him. But at the party you learn that he’s got a new girl he’s seeing, and that it’s only been a few dates but he really likes her.
So, instead of spending that time with your friends (except Haechan), you start spending time with your seniors at the Moon Corporation. Many of your coworkers there are men, though there are a few women too, but for the most part it’s a male-dominated company, though Mr. Moon Taeil had reassured you that as his company grows and he has a larger applicant pool to pull from, he is hoping to bridge that gender gap. For the moment, you don’t mind too much. With less women in the company, it means when you search for private company among your coworkers, there’s less competition.
You select Jungwoo, a nice guy. Funny and carefree. He’s fun for a little while, a couple hook ups in those first few weeks, but soon you both agree that you’re not truly compatible in the long run. Plus he claims that you seem distracted, like you want something else or someone else. Which is bullshit because you’re using Jungwoo to try to forget about Haechan.
Next, you hook up with Yuta – he’s one of the biggest gossips in the company – after a night out having celebratory drinks. It’s just a one-time thing because you realize that the two of you are better off as coworkers or friends.
No one else really catches your eye. You sometimes hang out with Yuta, WinWin, and Ten on your lunch breaks, which is when you learn all the gossip. Particularly everyone’s favorite rumor (or favorite bet) about if Taeil is in fact secretly hooking up with his secretary.
She’s gorgeous, of course, so you can understand why all the guys who have been rejected by her wonder if she’s sleeping with their boss. It’s surely some way of them coping with the rejection. But she is also really close with Taeil, so you can sort of see why they might assume she’s sleeping with him. You consider yourself a pretty decent judge of character and reader of body language, so you can tell by the way Taeil’s secretary and him interact that there’s not anything going on between them.
Romance is surprisingly a hot topic of gossip among your coworkers. But you try not to pay too much attention to it all.
Not until the company retreat in October, a little over five months after you started at the Moon Corporation.
On the way there, you’d been squeezed into the back of one of the transit vans that Mr. Moon had rented. One of the women was sitting beside you, and on the drive she’d chattered to you about everything that she could think of. That included, at one point, her discussing with you her ranking of your male coworkers, which was all fun and games until she reached Haechan.
“A ten. For sure. He just seems like he’d be a fun time, you know?” She says, twirling her hair around her finger as she stares at the back of Haechan’s head a couple rows up from you. “I can’t even lie that it’s kinda my goal to get him during this weekend. I want the full, fun experience of a retreat.”
The woman on your other side giggles at that, but you just sink into a funk.
You haven’t known anyone Haechan’s hooked up with since probably Halloween, which has been nearly a year ago. You don’t want to know that he’s having sex with anyone honestly. And as the two women continue laughing together about it for the next several miles of the trip, whispering about it while you sit there stuck between them, you just want to melt into your seat.
Instead, you decide to drink yourself numb as soon as you arrive at the retreat. Just in case you somehow play witness to your coworker’s seduction of Haechan, maybe you won’t remember it in the morning. Luckily, your first night of the retreat consists of everyone getting drunk together, so it’s not like your actions totally stand out. It’s actually just meant to be everyone drinking together, not necessarily getting drunk.
You, Taeil, and the secretary are probably the three worst drinkers in attendance.
You only have vague recollections of that night. You remember blurrily Haechan coming over to you, stopping you from drinking any more. You remember seeing the other woman watching you with jealousy in her eyes while Haechan talked to you, as he pushed a bottle of water into your hands.
You remember sitting there, looking into his eyes and wondering if maybe you should just confess everything to him. But even with as much alcohol as you’d consumed, it wasn’t enough to loosen your lips and let everything flow out.
You remember him asking to walk you back to your tent, and how your mind had immediately shot to the only possibility that your forever-attracted-to-him brain could think of in delight, while the rational part of your brain was shouting that you couldn’t have sex with Haechan when you were drunk. Of course, that’s not what he was trying to say. He was just trying to be a gentleman and walk you back to your tent since you were staggeringly drunk.
You vaguely recall him calling you angel, him putting his arms around you to help you walk. You barely remember the walk there, only the cool material of your sleeping bag against your bare legs as you crawl in, as you flop down and twist around to look at Haechan. You remember wanting him to stay, but also wanting him to leave because you don’t want him seeing you like this. And then everything fades away completely.
But then you’re awake and it’s not yet morning.
The tent is dark with only the shadows of branches stretching across the canvas ceiling. Bugs chirp and buzz outside the tent flap. Something woke you, though you’re not sure what exactly. You consider rolling back over and falling asleep, but that’s when you realize that the spot beside you in the tent is empty. The spot where Mr. Moon’s secretary was meant to be sleeping tonight.
There’s no way that you’re sober enough to be getting up and wandering around the retreat site in the dark, but you’re also not sober enough to realize how that might be a bad option. So you get up, you pull on a hoodie and slip on your shoes, and you step out into the dark morning.
The grass is damp with dew. The stars are visible overhead. All of your coworkers are asleep in their tents, but the lights are on back up at the guesthouse where the bathrooms and the kitchenette are, and you realize maybe she’s just gone to pee. You can’t blame her for that; as a matter of fact, you could probably use the toilet too. So you make your way in that direction, but before you can quite reach it you notice something odd.
Through the uncovered window, you can see Miss Secretary straddling Mr. Moon's lap while they make out.
Damn, Yuta was right about them, is all you can think as you watch her running her fingers through Mr. Moon’s hair, rubbing herself in his lap.
Then something else shifts in the darkness.
A shadowy figure shifts in front of the scene, standing outside one of the windows in the bushes.
And in the next instant you realize that the shadowy figure is none other than Haechan. And he’s definitely jerking off. You can see his arm moving.
You’re sure he thinks no one could possibly be watching him. But you are. The watcher is being watched, and you can feel yourself growing a little warm and wet from the sight of Haechan highlighted by the glow from the window.
You can’t properly see him from this angle, can’t see the way that his fingers wrap around his cock, but you can definitely tell what he’s doing. The way he strokes himself to the sight of them in front of him. God, he’s gross, but you love it. Heat pools between your legs, watching him like this.
You don’t even notice that Taeil and the secretary have left the scene until you notice Haechan shuddering, a quiet moan breaking the otherwise silent night. You can just barely see in the light that comes through the window, the way that there is a splatter of cum on the window.
Damn. You feel warm, craving to be touched.
You don’t hang around and wait for Haechan to find you, you flee back to your tent. The other woman you’re sharing your tent with is passed out completely. She hadn’t been drinking tonight, but she had taken a sleeping pill, so she is well and truly out when you slide back into your sleeping bag, when you wiggle around to get your hand inside your panties, when you plunge your fingers inside yourself, thumb swirling against your clit as you imagine a scenario where you were there in those bushes with Haechan, him fucking you while you watched the beautiful secretary ride Taeil at the table.
You cum quietly without the other woman in the tent even stirring. And a few minutes later, as your racing heart settles, the secretary quietly returns to the tent, smelling like a masculine body wash as she tucks herself back into the sleeping bag beside yours.
You level your breath, hold still, and soon you fall back asleep again, and in the morning you’ve pretty much forgotten everything from the night before, including the encounter between the boss and the secretary, as well as you witnessing Haechan succumbing to his perversion.
You essentially forget all about it until a few weeks later when Ten excitedly tells you and Haechan that he swears he almost walked in on Taeil and the secretary in the break room. But it just sounds like they were both standing in there when he walked in, though that little tidbit is enough to jumpstart your memory and that early morning comes back to you.
It’s a few days later when the topic returns while you’re out for dinner and drinks with several of your coworkers.
Ten is once again excitedly talking about Taeil and his secretary, insistently asking everyone else, “Don’t you think something is going on?” and “I know we don’t have proof, but I really think….” He doesn’t have to finish the sentence for everyone at your table to know he means that he’s pretty sure they’re fucking.
You look over at Haechan.
He has proof. So do you. You’ve both witnessed it with your own eyes, although you’ve not mentioned it to him since you remembered it a few days ago. That’s in part because you don’t know how to bring it up to him without admitting that you also saw him jerking off while watching them.
Haechan looks at you. A knowing look as if he could possibly know what you’re thinking about right now.
He doesn’t admit to anything then, not in front of your coworkers, and it makes you wonder why he’s keeping the secret to himself. He didn’t hide the secret of Shotaro and his girlfriend hooking up before outing them at that camping trip your friends had taken about a year ago. You’re curious about why he’s hiding it, and you’re curious about what his knowing look had meant.
There’s no way that he knows that you also know.
Later that night as you all start to head home from the pub, you head in the opposite direction from where everyone else seems to have parked. You’re headed for the bus stop since your roommate has borrowed your car for the night.
You don't make it far from the door before someone calls out behind you.
“Can I walk with you?” He asks, jogging a little to catch up with you. “Don’t look at me like that. I just want to make sure you get there safely.”
You immediately wipe away your expression of surprise at his offer. “Yeah, you can walk with me. Thank you, Haechan.”
He just nods, and for a minute the two of you walk in companionable silence. But then you ask, “Well, what do you think? Think they’re fucking?”
That seems to catch him off-guard. A startled laugh tears out of him. “Yeah, they absolutely are.”
Is he going to elaborate on that?
You bump your shoulder against his, hoping if you just make all of this seem like friendly inquiry based off of that earlier conversation that he’ll be more likely to open up. For some reason you really want to hear him say it. You want to finally hear Haechan admit to you that he’s a perverted voyeur who has watched your friends and now your boss while they have sex. “You sound so certain, Haechan. Why?”
“I have my reasons.” He shrugs a little, his lips tilting up on the one side in a smirk.
God. You want to kiss him.
You want him, and the combination of the cool air and the alcohol warm in your veins leads you to pull yourself closer to him. You wrap your hands around his arm, snuggling up against him, and you catch a whiff of that warm summery scent of him like spice, citrus, and something else distinctly Haechan. He doesn’t flinch or say a single thing as you basically hug his arm. As a matter of fact, his fingers flex a little, stretching out minimally to brush against your hip before he closes his fingers in a fist.
You wish he wouldn’t keep this a secret. Maybe if he would just admit to you how he knows, if he confessed to you the truth of his reasons, maybe you would tell him too that he might be a voyeur but you’re an exhibitionist, and something about those two truths could work out between you.
But he doesn’t say that. He actually falls silent as you come to stand beside the bus stop. There are others waiting there too, but your eyes are only on Haechan.
You pretend not to notice when he finally looks over at you. You pretend not to see the way that he’s studying you. You pretend that you don’t notice when Haechan inhales a little sharply, turning his face away to look across the street. He just keeps silent, keeps still as he seems to stare at nothing, deep in thought.
You decide to speak since he won’t.
“I feel like you see a lot of things that other people don’t, Haechan. I think you keep a lot of secrets.” Again, you feel his hand flex, and this time when his fingers stretch out, they rest against your hip and don’t pull away. You’re not even sure he’s aware of it. You continue, “You can share secrets sometimes. I have secrets too. We could trade.”
You want him to know that even though he’s a pervert, you’re a bit of a pervert too.
You lean your head to rest it on his shoulder, and he looks at you again. Your eyes meet.
“Can’t you just share the secret of how you know with absolute certainty that Taeil and his secretary are fucking?” Your fingernails dig into his jacket sleeve, a whine in your voice as you gaze at Haechan’s face. You notice the way his throat bobs as he stares down at you.
“I don’t think you want to know my secrets,” he says, looking away from you. His voice shakes a little bit, and you wonder if he’s truly that nervous about you learning about his creepy habit. You swear you can hear his heart pounding beneath the ear that you have against his shoulder. “You wouldn’t look at me the same.”
The sound that comes out of you then is not a nice one. A snort of laughter. But you’re amused. He must think you’d think of him as some gross weirdo, but it’s really quite the opposite. Ever since that first night you caught him watching Shotaro and his girlfriend in the hot tub, you’ve actually found it surprisingly hot to think of him being a voyeur.
“I don’t know about that, Haechan. Maybe I have secrets that would make you look at me differently.” You tilt your face so you can better see his. He looks down at you with such a look of doubt, that it almost pulls another laugh from you. He really doesn’t believe that you could ever do anything naughty. “Maybe I could tell you a thing or two that would make you finally see me as less than a perfect angel,” you say, and you put a tiny bit of challenge into your voice.
Haechan straightens up. His fingers withdraw from where he’s been absentmindedly touching that little sliver of skin bared between your shirt and the waistband of your pants. Haechan shrugs until you’re dislodged from his shoulder, but he’s relaxed as he stands there beside you and says, “Alright. Not tonight, though. Let’s keep our secrets just a little while longer.”
The squeal of brakes alerts you to your bus pulling up.
Before you walk away, you want to hear him promise you that he’s not just saying this tonight, that it will actually happen.
“Promise?” You hold your pinky finger up to him, daring him to make the promise.
Haechan hesitates for half a second, but then his pinky loops around yours, squeezing tight. “I promise, angel. We’ll trade secrets and truths someday soon.”
Your heart lights up with Haechan’s promise. A trade of secrets someday soon. That’s good enough for you. Before you can think about it too much, you smack a kiss to the back of Haechan’s hand, and then you walk away quickly.
Unable to resist, you turn to look at him over your shoulder. Haechan is still standing there, looking after you with an amused and bemused expression. You smile and watch the way his smile rises as well.
“Text me when you make it home!” He shouts behind you as you climb aboard the bus. You wave in acknowledgement.
You feel giddy, excited. You’d think it’s a date you’ve just planned given how excited you are, but really it’s just going to be a trade of secrets at an undisclosed date. A trade of secrets, a trade of truths.
As you sit down, you look out the window one more time.
Haechan is still standing there, looking right at you. You don’t know what that look on his face means. But he smiles a little, offering you a small wave that you return, and before your bus can even pull away, he turns on his heel and walks away back up the street.
previous chapter || next chapter (Coming Soon)
a/n: part of this was of course inspired by a scene in workplace (mis)conduct the taeil and y/n workplace romance kinktober drabble
And I know that it seems like there's a whole lot more Renjun action in this fic than Haechan, but I promise !!!! there's a lot more of the good Haechan stuff that this story is meant to have coming soon! Like... next chapter? maybe? You'll have to keep reading to see!
#haechan#nct haechan#haechan smut#nct smut#nct dream smut#nct dream#nct#nct 127#nct 127 smut#lee haechan
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(Before cut is In-Character.)
Hiii! Helloooo!
Hello!!!!!! Hehe, thiz iz actually super weird trying to write an intro-- give me a minute.
So, HIII!!!!!!! I'm Unpleasant! That'z not a joke, that iz literally my name. There'z no "deep reason" behind it, it iz literally just what people refer to me az. But, if that'z too weird, I do also go by Unplez or Plez for short.
Uh, pronounz? I don't really care, actually. I don't have a set gender, I've never really met a gradient who doez. That being said, since I started hanging with Infected I have been called he and she specifically a lot... so if it'z easiest for you, just roll with the crowd.
Right, so... the blog. Thatz thiz blog, haha! Well, the easy answer iz I waz super bored, Infected can suck a huge ####, and I like talking about myself! But... I kind of suck at talking in general, so I guess I'll type and answer questionz about myself.
BUT KNOW MY BOUNDARIEZ BEFORE YOU ASK QUESTIONZ! 👇👇👇
(Below cut is Out-Of-Character.)
To those who know me: Good to see you're still stickin' with me! I promise I will make an effort to make this blog much less of a dumpster fire like the last one.
And to those who are only now coming across this blog: Hello! My name is Hex. You don't have to call me "Mod Hex", or anything, just "Hex" will do. I'm the only guy running this thing here. I'll talk more about myself soon, because oversharing is what I do best.
Blog-Context
So, if it wasn't obvious enough from the intro, this is an ask/rp blog for the Unpleasant Gradient from Regretevator, but specifically in the context of the plez-centric au I have created for him. Or, well, the "AU" in question is actually just some freaky amalgamation of all my fucked up headcanons, which means...
I AM NO LONGER DOING DIRECT BLOG ASSOCIATIONS! Really sorry about that, I love my friends with all my heart but if I wanna keep consistency, I'm gonna have to "write the story" on my own. However, I do want to give full credit to my friends @sk8tr1101 and @party-noob for some major concepts involving Unpleasant, especially Audrey who already has some awesome ideas herself. Go check them both out!
MAIN TAGS:
#unpl3zansw3rz - Asks
#unpl3zrambl3z - Non-ask related posts/reblogs
#unpl3zlor3 - Plot points and similar
#ooc - Out-of-character post
OTHER TAGS (to be updated):
(nothing yet, hehe)
Blog-Owner
So hiiii, I'm Hex. If I can be bothered, out-of-character posts will either have the #ooc tag, be in purple text, or be signed off with my name. I'd prefer if you refer to me using he/it pronouns, thnx!
I'd also like you all to keep in mind I am 17 years old, therefore a minor, and even if I wasn't 17 I do not appreciate NSFW/Explicit jokes towards me, ESPECIALLY if you don't know me. It's one thing when you're my very close friends or my partner, it's another thing when you are a stranger on the internet asking me things I should not have to answer.
My other accounts are:
@hexexists - my main blog, if you receive notifications from this account, please know it is just me!
@hexational - my regretevator blog
@geometricgiovanni - a Jeremy ask/rp blog set in the same universe as this one! Please note, however, that in the context of this blog, Unpleasant is not aware of the blog nor would he like to be.
Ask/RP-Boundaries
Let's start off by reiterating that I AM NOT OKAY WITH NSFW/EXPLICIT ASKS IN ANY CAPACITY! Sick of getting them, they're repetitive and annoying. Asking safe-for-work questions involving Unpleasant's anatomy is one thing, but I am not responding to ANYTHING involving genetalia.
ALSO! I am very unlikely to respond to things that is either hard to make a unique drawing for or don't progress the story (unlocking "lore" and such). I'm watching your ass, Mango, I know what you like to do (/lh). Joke asks are still okay, you don't *have* to progress story, but please keep in mind my "criteria" for answering asks when sending them. A clean inbox gives me a clear mind. I do not like notifications.
Shipping content: Shipping content is okay, I guess. Not exactly the direction I want to take things, though some storylines will involved implied ships. Don't push anything that isn't hinted at, and under no circumstances encourage proshipping or any kind of illegal pairing. If a ship is hinted toward that you personally do not like, then just block me and move on with your day.
Roleplaying: While I'd prefer to not be in direct contact with other rp blogs, I am totally cool with roleplaying side stories and stuff, interactions and such! Please keep in mind though, Unpleasant in this is not a very social person, so you're probably not going to get the reaction you want.
Also! I think OCs are super cool and am happy to respond/interact with them as well! However,
PLEASE DON'T SEND YOUR GRADIENT OCS TO THIS ACCOUNT IF YOU WANT ME TO DRAW THEM! Please instead send them to @hexational! A lot of people were sending me their Gradient ocs to the previous Unpleasant account, and as much as I love seeing Gradient ocs and Gradient sonas, I'd love to be able to draw them, and if you are just asking an opinion on them and not an in-character ask or a genuine question involving other gradients I'd much prefer you send them to the account previously tagged!
That's pretty much all I can think of! Sorry for the long post, I just have a lot to say hehe
Lots of love,
- Hex
#unpl3zansw3rz#unpl3zrambl3z#ic#ooc#ask blog#regretevator unpleasant#regretevator ask blog#regretevator infected#unpleasant gradient
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Run Rabbit Run .07
Yandere!Eustass Kid x F!Reader
Warnings: Angst, mentions of death, reader having vivid nightmares, reader having a crisis, Kid being the insane fuck he is, Tashigi and G-5 being real ones, little happy moments???
A/N: I will defend all of G-5 will my DYING breath. Only Marines that I don't hate
tags: @rebeccawinters @iggy5055 @dairygrrl @childconnoisseur @menifire1092 @tremendoushorsepatrolgoth @nerdgeekandeverysweet-blog @sydneyyyya
pt.1 pt.2 pt.3 pt.4 pt.5 pt.6 pt.7 pt.8 pt.9 pt.10
~~~
You pace back and forth in the infirmary. The sound of your shoes hitting the floor was nothing compared to your speeding heartbeat. Nothing like this happened at all when you were with Kid. So why now that you’ve escaped, has it shown up? Why did this have to happen?
Biting your knuckles, you try to ignore the agonizing feeling in your gut. The universe obviously wasn’t done screwing with you if what you feared was true. Not to mention how it’d affect everything good going on in your life.
“Take a deep breath and sit down, okay? Stressing isn’t gonna help.”
“How can I not stress?! What if it’s exactly what we think it is? What if I really am…”
“Pregnant?” Tashigi’s voice cuts into your skin as soon as the word leaves her throat. It felt like a fresh stab to your heart. Hearing the word out loud only made the fear all the more real and strong.
“I can’t even hear the word without being nauseous.” Taking a seat next to Tashigi on the infirmary bed, you put your head in your hands.
“What am I supposed to do? I still have four months to get to Sabaody. Not to mention, I wouldn’t be able to fulfill my promise to you and Vice Admiral Smoker! A pirate on a Marine ship was pushing it, but a pregnant pirate on a Marine ship? He’ll probably dump me somewhere since I won’t be able to fight alongside you guys like I promised…” Tears start threatening to spill from your eyes as all the worst-case scenarios start playing through your head.
“Vice Admiral Smoker would never! Sure, he’s a little rough around the edge, but he’d never kick you off for something that you can’t control.” Soft tears slip from your cheeks as you listen to her words.
“Do you think the Straw Hats will take me back? I know you're a Marine, so your answer might be biased, but…”
“If they don’t, you can come back to G-5 and join the Marines!” You giggle slightly.
“If push comes to shove and they don’t take me back, you're gonna be stuck with me.” Tashigi smiles at you brightly, which makes you smile in return.
Yet there was still one cripiling fear that resurfaced and continues to resurface no matter how hard you try to forget it.
You remembered what Kid said when you told him that the Straw Hats would save you. The rage in his eyes, when those words slipped from your lips, made you fear for any future you might have that didn’t involve Kid. If he made a statement about the Straw Hats without a second thought, would he do the same to G-5? He’s violent in general, but you can’t imagine how violent everything would get if he got his hands on the people who helped you hide from him.
“What should I do though? What if I really am pregnant?” Tashigi was quiet as she thought about how to answer.
“Would it look like him? Have his facial features or hair? Could it look like me?”
“I don’t know. Only time will tell if or when the baby arrives.” You lay your head on her shoulder as you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding.
“We’re stopping at an island tomorrow to gather supplies. We could go to the hospital there to see what the fully certified doctors have to say.”
“What about the bounty on me from Kid?”
“We can disguise you? I’m sure we can try to hide as many identifiers as possible.”
“I guess. Let’s hope that it works.”
~~~
Sitting still, you let Tashigi mess with your appearance. The two of you have been in her cabin for what felt like forever just to disguise you. She had you put on one of her long-sleeved shirts under your Marine uniform to hide the scars along your arms.
“What if we put a small part of your hair in front of your eye/scar to hide it? It’ll look a little weird, but it’d be less eye-catching than a bandage.”
“Alright, sounds good.” The two of you stand up and begin to make your way to the ship’s deck.
It was a beautiful day outside when you left her cabin. The sun shined down and watched you walk beside Tashigi as you passed the rest of G-5, who were getting ready to grab supplies. Your legs feel weak as you struggle to walk down the ramp. The sound of bustling passerby’s and the talking of the crew from behind you only makes your nervousness worse. The overwhelming feeling of anxiety swallowed you whole as you finally stepped foot off the dock and onto the green grass. Hearing your shoes glide against the grass for the first time since Sabaody made a small upturn of your lip. A tiny ray of happiness in the dark of your anxiety and fear.
“Look mom! It’s the Marines!” Looking to your right, you see a small boy and his mother. He tugged on his mom's arm to try and bring her closer to you and Tashigi. The boy held such a cute smile as he ran up to you.
“I wanna become a Marine! I can fight and kick pirate's butt!” His eyes held such a bright light that it was impossible not to be as smiley as him. Crouching down slightly, you watch as the little boy rolls on his heels.
“Is that so? Are you sure you got what it takes, little man? Are you brave enough to also fight the weather?”
“I’m brave! I’m not afraid of anything! The weather is nothing!” The little boy’s excitement made your heart skip a few beats. For a living being so small, he has so much happiness and life inside him.
“Tell ya what, come back in a few years, and we’ll be happy to have you join.”
“Why not now?” A cute pout played against the boy's face.
“To get stronger, of course! Plus, wouldn’t you miss your mommy if we let you come with us?” the boy turns around to see his mom smiling at him. He ran to her and wrapped himself around her. He said something, but it was muffled by his mother's clothes.
“Thank you for giving him a second of your time. I bet you guys are busy, so we should be off. Do you wanna say goodbye to the Marines, baby?” Lifting his face from his mother's clothes, he waves to you and Tashigi with the cutest smile.
“Byyee...” You both walk in different directions after waving back, the sound of the giddy child ringing in your ears.
“Said like a true Marine.”
“Best pirate Marine the world has ever seen.” You whisper rhyme, and it only makes Tashigi laugh.
“I think you’ll be okay (Y/N).” She whispered back, making you turn to look at her.
“Huh?”
“I think you’ll be okay. You seem good with children. Your caring personality really shows.”
“OH! Well, that's only one child! Plus, I might not actually be pregnant! The universe might have just wanted to scare me…” Laughing awkwardly, you think about what the doctor and their tests would say.
While making your way to the hospital, it seemed like you passed by every child on the island. Kids from 13 all the way to infants. All of them with happy parents giving them the love they deserve. The joyful giggles made a small smile crack along your lips.
Yet, it soon disappeared as you unconsciously put your hand to your stomach. All those children with happy lives with healthy caring parents. If you really were pregnant, the child’s life would be nothing like the ones living on this island. It’d be constantly on the run along side you. That can’t be healthy for a baby right?
“Looks like we’re here.” The big sign saying ‘HOSPITAL’ made you swallow the lump in your throat as you walked through the front doors right beside Tashigi.
It seemed like everyone and their grandma was here today. Almost the entire waiting room was full. You get in line behind a man and wait for your turn as Tashigi goes and sits down. Once it got to your turn though, you feel your hands start to sweat.
“Hi, welcome to Halyard Island Hospital. What can I do for you today, Marine?”
“Oh, um, think I might be pregnant, but I want a doctor to check it out before I jump to any conclusions.” The receptionist started typing before she asked for your birthday and name. You start to internally freak out before remembering that you don’t have any records on yourself. Why not just give her a fake name and date of birth?
“(....) (......) is my name and my birth date is (.........).”
“Alright, you're good to go. Have a seat, and the doctor will be with you as soon as possible.” Giving a small nod, you go sit next to Tashigi, who has started to read a magazine.
“What are you reading?”
“Judging the ugly fashion choices.” You let out a snort, hearing her words.
“Didn’t know I was in the presence of a fashion designer. Mind if I judge with you to learn your skills?”
“I’m feeling generous, so I guess I can take in an apprentice.” The two of you laugh as you look down at the magazine. It was refreshing to have a small burst of silliness instead of fear and panic.
It felt like twenty minutes before your ‘name’ was called. Your heart beats against your ribs as you and Tashigi follow the doctor. The world seemed to spin as you walked along the halls. The familiar nausea you’ve been having coming back.
‘My luck is nonexistent.’ Holding the wall, you try to walk normally. Thankfully, Tashigi notices and helps you walk to the room. Once entering the room, you sit on the paper-covered bed as Tashigi sits on the chair next to it.
“So it says you think you're pregnant but want a doctor to confirm it?”
“Yes.” Sitting down at the computer, the doctor starts to give you a check-up.
“When’s the last time you had intercourse?” You can feel your face burn, and Tashigi lets out a snort.
“Two or three months ago? I believe?”
“Did you have your cycle during that?”
“Mine can be irregular, so I thought nothing of it at first, but it’s been a week since it should have started, and nothing has happened.”
“Okay. Any symptoms? Nausea, fatigue, frequent trips to the bathroom, weird food cravings, body ache, anything like that?” Listing them out, the doctor said them in the most calming way. She’s probably dealt with people like you, coming and going all the time.
“All of the above, except for the food cravings.”
“Yet.”
“Yet.” You snap your head to Tashigi, who’s smiling at you while holding back a giggle as she tries to make you laugh. Even the doctor let out a quiet laugh.
“Well, we have tests that we can use cause while it sounds like you could be pregnant, it’s better to be sure.”
“What kind of tests?”
“Blood and urine. The urine one is usually more correct and takes less time.”
“Alright. That one, then.”
~~~
The doctor had left to bring the sample to the lab, leaving you and Tashigi alone again. You lay against the bed and stare at the ceiling.
“What should I do if it’s positive? The sea is no place for a child to grow. Especially the New World.”
“You have months to think about it if you are. Don’t overwhelm yourself, and think about it all right now.” Tashigi was probably right, but it still scratched away at your mind.
“Do you want to be pregnant?”
“No. If it was another man’s baby, then maybe. But we both know whose child it’d be if I am.” Tashigi stays silent and lets you talk.
“A child deserves a happy home. With loving parents. Not someone like me. I already have so much shit to deal with from what happened, and adding a child to the mix wouldn’t be fair to them. Having a mother who has problems all the way to the ozone layer.” Just as Tashigi goes to speak, a knocking interrupts her.
“The test results came back.” The doctor's voice had you holding your breath as your heart jumped in suspense.
“And?” Sitting on the edge of your seat, you both look at the doctor.
“It’s positive! Congratulations! Your gonna be a mother!” You knew the doctor didn’t know your story, so you're not mad at her happy news delivery. Instead of what felt like a punch to the chest, was an overload of feelings. To many to name, so all you can do is let the tears start pouring harshly.
Your sobs didn’t shock the doctor, so you thought she must have concluded that you were crying tears of joy. Which they definitely weren’t. Each tear felt like battery acid sliding down your skin. This was supposed to be a happy moment. This was supposed to be a moment shared with your fiance. You were supposed to be crying tears of joy next to them, happy that you can finally have a family with the person you love.
But once again, this was just another moment in your life ruined by the man who took everything from you. Even when you were away from him, he always somehow had a way to remind you that you're never free of him. No matter where you go, he’ll always be next to you. In your mind or in person was for the universe to decide. And now, it decided that it wasn’t done with you just yet.
~~~
Walking out of the hospital, you're silent as you walk next to Tashigi. The doctor had given you a bag of things to help you on your ‘journey.’ Little things like booklets on what to expect, recommended medical items safe for mother and child, things to watch out for, and more. Didn’t help she gave you a bag with a pacifier on it.
“You okay? You’ve been quiet since we left.”
“Just wondering what the fuck I’m gonna do. Not to mention when Vice Admiral Smoker finds out-”
“There's no need to worry. Everything will be okay.” Before you can respond, countless footsteps come running toward you. Looking up, you see some of G-5 rushing their way to the both of you. It caused a gust of wind to come rushing through and slightly move the hair covering your facial scar. Leaving it visible to the world.
“Shit.” You quickly try to cover it up and act normal, hoping no one saw you in your split second of weakness.
“Marines! What’s going on?”
“Pirates were seen sailing up to the docks! The others and Vice Admiral Smoker are there as we speak!”
“Alright, let’s go take them down! Contact the others and tell them we’ll be there as fast as we can!”
“Right away-” The Marines stop their words as their eyes train in on the bag in your hand. You can see the gears turning in their heads before it finally clicks. They all gasp and point to the bag like children.
“Stop pointing! We’ll talk about that when we leave the island! Contact Smoker!”
“Uh, right! Yes, Captain!” Everyone, including you, started running towards the docks to back up the Vice Admiral.
~~~
You don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve been staring at yourself in the mirror, but it was enough time for you to grip the edge of the bathroom sink and try to calm your breathing.
It was difficult to look at yourself in the mirror. The person staring back at you wasn’t someone you recognized. The scar that covered your face laughed at you endlessly, as well as the ones on your arm that were currently visible while in your uniform.
You try to imagine yourself before the raid. Before the Straw Hats, before the scars, and before Kid. Would past you even know who you are? Would your fiance still love you if they saw you like this and were still alive? Still love you and all the mental, physical, and emotional damage you’ve received? And even after knowingly carrying another person's child despite it being out of your control?
Would anyone love you?
Who would want a broken doll when they can just buy a new one? Without all the cracks and damage it’s received along its journey? Not to mention, who’d want a doll with an ‘owner’ willing to kill anyone who touches what’s his?
People would be afraid to even get close to you, let alone love you. What sane person would dare love something that could get them killed? Why love something that can’t go one day without crying or trembling when a certain thing is said or done? Why love someone who carries the child of the devil himself?
The sound of tears hitting the sink brought you back to the present. Your breathing was ragged as you tried to calm yourself down so no one would hear your sobs. Biting your lip, you look at your teary face in the mirror. Your hands shake as your knuckles turn white from how hard you were gripping the sink. But even through your blurry vision, your eye caught sight of the bag on the counter that the doctor had given you earlier that day.
“This shouldn’t be how you come into the world. You should be able to grow up carefree with a stable parent. Not me, who can’t even go one night without waking up in a cold sweat from nightmares. A child shouldn’t have to move from place to place just to make sure his crazy father won’t kidnap him and his mom. I’m so sorry that I’m going to be the one you call mother. Please forgive me…” Quiet hiccups and sobs bounce off the walls and can be heard from outside the bathroom door. Even trying your best to be silent, your woeful cries caught the attention of your comrades.
“Man, this is kinda painful to hear. She’s being really hard on herself.”
“Never thought I’d feel bad for a pirate yet here i am.”
“What will those Straw Hats think?” Hushed whispers were exchanged among the Marines before all went silent as soon as a shadow of a man loomed over them.
KNOCK KNOCK
Wiping your tears and shoving down yoru emotions, you grab your bag before opening the door.
“Sorry for being so long I-”
“Is it true, rookie?” Vice Admiral Smoker’s voice made your stomach drop. Did Tashigi tell him? Or at least tried to?
“Vice Admiral Smoker! I didn’t know you’d-”
“Is it true?” You looked up at him, and all you could do was nod as you tried to hold back the rest of the emotions you shoved away moments ago. But it didn’t matter. He could see your trembling lips and glassy eyes.
“So Tashigi was right.”
“I’m so sorry, Vice Admiral! I promise I’ll still do everything you want! Please don’t kick me off the ship! I’ll still fight in battles, anything you want I’ll still do!” Your begging only caused pity to fill Smokers body. Watching you beg for a simply a place of refuge confirmed that you were indeed pregnant. Normally, he’d never let a pregnant woman on his ship. A pregnant pirate nonetheless, but were you even a pirate? That ‘bounty’ ad wasn’t a government issued one, the whole world thinks almost everyone died on your island, including you. They basically have no record of your existence except the ad that Kid had put up for you. And based on what he’s observed, you seemed perfectly contempt when you lived as a civilian before everything went down. You simply feel like you owe your life to the Straw Hats. It’d probably be the same way if it was the Marines that saved you the first time. But they wouldn’t have let you get kidnapped again, but there was nothing that could change the past.
“I’m not gonna kick you off. You're not going out fighting pirates, but everything else will stay the same. Not going easy on you just cause you're pregnant.” He could see the relief fill your eyes at his words.
“Thank you so much! Thank you, thank you!”
“Now quit your crying and go to the dining hall. Foods done.” Sniffling a bit, you smile as you make your way to the dining hall. While it didn’t soothe all your worries, knowing you’d be safe here and Smoker would let you stay helped soothe those knawing thoughts.
~~~
The day was going great so far, no bad weater in sight, clear skies and the breakfast for the day was your favorite! You did have to tell everyone the news about your pregnancy and while it was hard, they all seemed very supportive. No one treated you differently after hearing the news which you greatly appreciated. The last thing you wanted to be reminded of was being pregnant. It’s easier for everyone in the world if it only stayed between you and G-5.
“Uh (Y/N)? Have you seen today's paper?” Another Marine came up to you with the paper in hand.
“No? Is something wrong? Did Kid up the bounty again?”
“Not exactly…” Handing you the paper, you open it with a questioning look. But as soon as your eyes scan the front page, they blow wide open.
“What?!”
~~~~
“Kid! Open the door!” The first mate of the Kid pirates banged on the metal door of his Captain's workshop. When the paper bird had delivered the daily paper, he expected the paper to be as bland as it has been the past few months. Same old, same old. That was until he looked at the front page of the paper. Instead of the bounty ad, there was a picture. A fresh picture of you.
‘Eustass Kid’s Darling, (L/N) (Y/N), Spotted on Halyard Island?’
He didn’t even read the article that accompanied it before making a dash to his friends workshop. This was finally a clue as to where you might be. Finally something to get Kid to shut the fuck up and prevent him from destroying more things in fits of rage.
“Fucking christ Killer! What do you want?!” As soon as the red-headed man opened the door, the newspaper was shoved into his chest.
“Look at the front page.” Scoffing, Kid uncrumples the paper, giving his friend a quick glare. But Killer could see the insane glee in his eyes when he read the front page.
‘The woman the entire New World has been looking for has finally been spotted! She was last seen leaving a hospital on Halyard Island disgused as a Marine! Unknown whether its a real Marine uniform or not. A gust of wind blew her hair away which hid her facial scar, making it visible for the world to see and identify her! Let’s not forget what she seems to have clutched tightly in her hand! Could this mean the cruelest pirate of the worst generation might be a father? Only time can tell.’
“Of course, it’s the fucking Marines who hid her! Always getting in my damn business. Killer! Set course to Halyard Island!”
“Already told Wire on my way here.”
“Good. Board and search any Marine ships we see on the way there. If the Marines are hiding her, then we can’t take chances and let them slip past us.”
“You do know what this means, right?”
“Yeah, I get what’s mine back.” Killer hit the back of Kid’s head.
“Ow! What the fuck?!”
“It means pull your head out of your ass! If it’s true, if (Y/N) is pregnant, that means you're going to be a dad. Any enemies other than the Marines will want to kidnap and hurt (Y/N) and your possible unborn child. We already knew the risks of putting out the ad. It's to let our enemies know that you have a weakness. But now she could be in even more danger when pregnant. We need to get her before she gives birth understand?” Rubbing the back of his head, Kid realized Killer was right. Your safety was in danger even more now that his enemies knew that you might be pregnant. Not to mention, what are the Marines gonna do with you and his child?
The thought of him being a father finally hit him a full force when he invisioned the moment he got his hands on you again. He’d get to see your belly grow with something the both of you created. The child would be the thing that keeps you with him forever.
~~~
“Do these journalists not have any souls?! Who would want to snitch on an escapee?! Truly heartless.” Tashigi rubbed your back as you cried into your hands. How could your luck grow so sour?
“I knew I shouldn’t have taken that dumb bag! Now the whole New World knows about this stupid fucking child!” Tashigi lets out a sigh.
“I’m sorry. It’s no one’s fault this happened except the person who took the picture. Not yours or the unborn baby.” Wrapping your arms around your tummy, you sniffle.
“I’m sorry. I just…This should be an experience I share with someone I love. I should be talking about baby things with joy and eating gross, a combination of random food, not fearing for my and the baby’s safety twenty-four-seven. I should be able to sleep without having nightmares about their father's eyes.” Tashigi stays quiet as she continues to try and soothe your troubled mind.
“What if they look alike? What if the baby’s a spitting image of him?”
“You’ll be able to turn them into something Kid isn’t. Make them kind and loving. Have them be the person Kid can never be. It’ll be like starting a new. They aren’t just Kid’s child. They’ll also be yours.” Rubbing your eyes, you nod in agreement, trying to convince yourself that what she spoke was true.
“You're right. Thank you, Tashigi.”
~~~
Hours later and your still thinkning about Tashigi’s words. How the small thing growing inside you wasn’t just Kid’s, it was yours too. You had the power to make sure that the insanity ends with Kid.
But even with her words, your heart and soul still burned in rage and sadness. Knowing that the child you thought you’d be raising happily with your fiance was in fact the offspring of satan himself. A product of lies and bloodied hands.
An eerie sense of lonliness surrounds you making yoru skin prickle and the tips of your fingers tingling. You run your hands along your upper arms to try and warm yourself, maybe to even stimulate a hug. Just something that could make you feel less alone.
Even though you have the G-5, you still felt like you were fighting alone. Why couldn’t you have just gone home and have your mom and dad still be alive? Waiting for you on the porch, your fiance running out from the house to pick you up and twirl you around. Kissing you repeatedly and crying out how much they loved and missed you.
Yet, even with all the crying, pleading, and denial, you know that you’ll never feel your fiance’s touch again. Never hearing your parents telling you how much they love you. You couldn’t even remember what they looked like or sounded like anymore. Cause all you see and hear is him.
Even in your day dreams he was there. Invading every part of your mind. You could be imaging how you used to dance with your fiance, only for kid to take his place. He’d grab you and hold you close while laughing. Forcing you to dance his macrabe seranade.
You could feel tears slide down your skin as you now realize its no longer your fiance’s touch that your body craves, it’s his. Those times where he’d envelop you in his coat while he held you. Times where his kisses were nothing but burns along your body.
Clenching your fists tight, you feel the feelings you tried so hard to destroy resurface. How can five months of amensia battle against two years of pure hatred? What did Kid magically do that made you fall in love with him? Why was there still that sliver in your heart that made you miss him? After all he’s done to you, why does your body still miss his touch? Why did your heartbeat quicken every time you remember how he gently ran his fingers through your hair when he was drunk and starting to pass out?
Curling up in a fetal position, you just silently cry yourself to sleep as you wished for the positive feelings for Kid would decay and disappear.
A low hum woke you open from your sleep as your eyes flutter open. The blur quickly leaving and you see a familiar room. A smile slips across your lips while you move your hand behind you. The feeling of silky hair touching your fingertips made you sigh as you softly started to run your fingers through it.
You just then notice the arms around you tighten and a kiss being placed on the crook of your neck.
“Morning, baby. Did you sleep well?” Groaning into your skin, you feel his words vibrate against your neck.
“Slept fine.” More kisses were pressed along your skin, which made your cheeks burn up.
“Dream about anything?”
“No.”
“Well, I dreamt about you.” Turning to look over your shoulder, you see amber eyes staring back at you. Red hair slightly brushing against your jaw.
“Better have been good.” You maneuver your body to the point you're facing him. Placing your hands on his face, you chuckle.
“I dreamt about kissing this pretty face of yours.” A red hue covered the man’s cheeks as he looked at you wide-eyed.
“Aw, Eustass ‘Captain’ Kid is blushing! You're so cute when you blush.”
“I’m not cute shut up.”
“No.” You started placing kisses on each freckle that adorned his face. The heat of his cheeks were hitting your lips as he lays there frozen. With each kiss, you couldn’t help but giggle. You wished you were wearing lipstick just so you could see his face covered in pretty (color) lipstick. When you pulled away, almost his entire face was as red as his hair.
“Sappy little shit.” Pushing your face to his chest, Kid lays his own on top of yours. Being surrounded by his presence only, you felt safe in his arms. You can feel him hug you a little tighter.
“I’m not going anywhere. No need to smush me.” Laughing, you kiss his chest, only for Kid’s arms to tighten around you even more. It started to hurt as you couldn’t move. His strong arms pressing harshly against your ribs.
“Um Kid? Your squeezing kinda hard and it hurts. Do you think you can lighten up a bit?” Instead of loosening his grip, Kid only tightens his arms around you more. It felt like a python was constricting you. The pressure felt like it was gonna break your bones.
“Kid! You're really hurting me! Please stop!” Pushing and squirming, you desperately try to escape Kid’s killing grip.
“How dare you think you can fucking leave me? Do you think I won’t follow you! Find you? You can never fucking leave me!” With your heart dropping to your stomach, you try to pinpoint his behavior. What the hell is he talking about?
“What are you talking about?! I’m right here! I haven’t left!” Just then, a SNAP could be heard, and a brutal pain was felt in your chest. He must have broken a rib cause the pain was unbelievable.
“I’ll kill everyone who takes you away from me. Those worthless Straw Hats and those puny G-5 Marines. No one takes what’s fucking mine.” More pressure is applied to your body, and it feels as if more bones are quietly cracking. It was starting to feel like your ribs were stabbing your lungs, making it hard to breathe.
“What are you talking about?! Who are you talking about?!” Fear coursed through your veins as you looked up at Kid. Your eyes widened, seeing the pure madness that swirled inside his eyes. With as much strength as you can, you try to use your devil fruit powers to electrify him just in hopes of getting him off. There was a quiet crackling before a loud ZAP was heard, and you see Kid jump back and fall to the floor off the bed.
Without a seconds waste, you jump out of bed and run out of the bedroom. Yet the second you open and close the door, your blood freezes at the sight your met with. Fire, smoke and black silouttes staring right at you.
“(Y/N)!” You didn’t have time to question. You had to run now. With fear coursing through your veins and electric static slithering along your body, you ran past the silhouettes and into the fire and smoke.
The heat and smoke made it difficult to breathe but the broken rib hurt more yet here you were running as fast as you can. It caught you off guard when you started hearing voices coming from the silouttes. No, not voices, screams. High pitched screams started playing from each direction. Women’s, children’s, and men’s screams were all around you. Not even covering your ears stopped the loud horrific screaming. It sounded like they were in horrific pain and agony. Begging to be free from this etneral hell their suffering.
“Running can only get you so far (Y/N)!” Still covering your ears, you try to zone out his words. The broken rib causes excruciating pain as you run away faster. Who was this man chasing you? Where was your Kid? This couldn’t be him!
A baby crying has you uncovering your ears and your eyes widening. In these flickering flames and deblilitating smoke a baby was crying! You move to the sound of the crying baby, hoping it wasn’t hurt. Running through the flames, you look desperatly, trying to find it before the flames got to it. The flames were already licking at your uncovered skin so you couldn’t imagine what it’s doing to a baby’s sensitive skin.
Finally you see a bassonett right in the middle of a ring of fire. Small hands reaching out trying to grab anything. Running to the bassonett, you bend down and quickly to see the baby in it. But the moment you see the baby’s face, your blood goes cold.
There was no face.
Watching in shock and horror as the baby continued to cry out. It had no mouth how was it crying? Reaching out with a shaky hand you gently touch the baby’s chunky finger. It wrapped it’s little hand around your finger and you could hear it’s cry’s start to stop.
The heavy sound of Kid’s footsteps quickly reminded you of your situation. Without another thought, you grab the bundled up baby and begin to run. The cries soon resumed as you run through the fire and smoke. The screams of the silouttes got louder with every step you took. You tried to cover the baby’s ears to protect it from the screaming.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, no need to cry, little one. We’ll be okay, alright? You’ll be okay.” Five fingers touched your scalp before the burning pain of your hair being pulled surged through your body. You were pulled back before falling on your butt. Opening your eyes, you try to see if the baby is okay, only to see it’s gone. Not in your arms, around you, and now its cries were gone. Like it never existed.
“Caught you, princess. Now let’s go.” Now it was your turn to scream as you tried to untangle his fingers from your hair.
“No! Let me go! Why are you acting like this?!” You feel Kid lift you to your feet, making you look up at him with watery eyes and a trembling bottom lip. He gives you a grin before responding.
“Oh, princess.” Moving his mouth to your ear, he whispers,
“I’ve always been like this.”
Your eyes blow open as you wake up in a cold sweat. Quickly sitting up, you move your head back and forth, preparing to see smoke and flames. Yet, to your delight, you were just met with the rest of the G-5 Marines, sleeping in their bunks peacefully. Placing your hand over your heart, you can feel your heart beat faster than ever.
With shaky breaths, you lay back down and stare at the ceiling. You’ve never had that nightmare before. Could it have to do with that you now know your pregnant you’ll start having more of those kinds of nightmares? Nightmares including a baby? Would the baby even have a face in the next dream? You didn’t know and didn’t want to know.
~~~
“I’ve never felt so much mischief fill my bones than right now.”
“It is pretty cool and funny.”
“Pretty funny and cool? It’s fucking awesome! I’ve got actual finger guns! Except they shoot electric shocks instead of bullets.” While training with Vice Admiral Smoker, you pretended to shoot a Marine who was passing by with your fingers, only for a shot of electricity to actually come shooting out of your fingers.
Smoker, you, and the Marine all stood there for a second to try and comprehend what happened before you started hyping yourself up for finding a new move you have. It has you counting how many moves you had and what names you should call them.
“Okay, so I have a move to cover my entire body with electricity. I’ve been able to make a ball of electricity when I focus hard enough and throw it. I got finger guns…and that’s it.” You thought you had more, but you just proved that you still have lots more to learn about your devil fruit capabilities.
“Try making one of those electricity balls you were talking about.” Smoker's voice breaks through your inner thoughts.
“Of course! I’ve only done it once, so forgive me if it’s bad.” Taking a deep breath, you try to focus all your energy into your hands. If you did it once, you can do it again. Breathing in heavily, you feel the familiar tingling in your fingers.
Sizzling and snapping ring across the deck as you watch your hands do the same thing they did that night Heat told you, you had devil fruit powers. You can see your hands start to shake when the ball finally starts to materialize. Even with the ball being small as it is, it was difficult to make it stable. How did you do it so well the first time is unknown.
Just then, the ball exploded and the electricity shot out in all different directions. Thankfully no one got hurt but you immediately felt bad for putting other people in danger.
“Oh my god, is everyone okay!? I’m so sorry!” Smoker only crossed his arms.
“It’s fine. You might be able to make that a move, but it’s also dangerous to do around people. So practice that alone and do it when you're surrounded by enemies.” Nodding, you look down at your hands and see red burning lines along your skin. It must have been one of the downsides of your devil fruit. But the sound of a squawking paper bird has you looking up. The second you looked up, today’s paper came falling down before hitting you straight in the face.
“Ow! Damn bird!” Rubbing your nose, you grab the newspaper off the ground. Giving the bird the finger, you open the paper, and horror washes over you the moment you read the title.
‘Halyward Island Ransacked and Burned to Ashes by Kid Pirates!’
“What?! No way…” The picture that accompanied it was ruined buildings and smoke still fizzling from the ashes. Its monotone colors make the horror from the singular picture more gut-wrenching.
‘After recent news about Eustass Kid’s darling being spotted on Halyard Island, it seems the man himself decided to make an appearance to take back what’s his. But unfortunately, it seems his darling has already left the island! Some surviving islanders are mad that she came to the island while some don’t blame her. It’s a 50/50 split among the survivors. Will this be a one time thing or will any island be in danger if she’s spotted there?’
Lowering the newspaper, you look down at the ground with tears running down your eyes. You were completely silent as the tears slipped across your skin. Your hands shook as your horrified look tipped off Smoker and the Marine. It didn’t hit you that Smoker had taken the paper from your hands before you heard him cuss.
“What the fuck is this shit?! Ain’t no way they're blaming you for a pirate's insanity!” You see Smoker ripping apart the newspaper before throwing it overboard. He walked over to you with a stern look on his face.
“Listen here (Y/N), what happened on Halyard Island is not your fault. Journalists are all freaks who feed off the misery and suffering of others. Now tell me it isn’t your fault.” Letting out a few sniffles and shaky breaths, you repeat it back to him while wiping your tears.
“...it’s not my fault…”
“I didn’t hear you!”
“It’s not my fault.”
“Again!”
“It’s not my fault!”
“And don’t you forget it! We’re done for today.” Just like that, Smoker turns around and walks away. Leaving you and the Marine there.
“He’s right. It’s not your fault.”
“I should know that, but the guilt is killing me. It felt like I was looking at a picture of my home.”
“Maybe take a nap? Sleeping always makes me feel better, even if it’s just for a second.”
“I guess…” You rub your upper arm to soothe yourself as you make your way to the bunks. While being alone sounds nice to hide and cry, it also sounds horrible. It’d leave you with your toxic thoughts as the words on the paper replay in your mind every single second. You fear how true it was as you remember the little boy who came up to you. Was he okay? He was so sweet. You hoped he knew it wasn’t your fault.
When you made it to your bunk, you collapse on the bed and hold your stomach. A heartbreaking feeling overcomes you as the thought of the little boy getting hurt. He was a simple child, he shouldn’t have to deal with such destruction. Looking down at your tummy, you let out a shaky breath.
“Why can’t I accept it’s not my fault? I even tried disguising myself. If it wasn’t for the small gust of wind, then that island might still be okay.”
“I keep thinking about you and this whole pregnancy thing. I won’t lie to you. I’ve been thinking about once you're in the world, I was gonna put you up for adoption. It’d be better for both of us. I haven’t even met you, but I know you deserve a normal, loving home. A place where you can grow up without worries. A place you can grow up without me.” Your body begins to shake as more tears soon blur your vision. Biting your trembling lip, you try to collect yourself.
“I can’t take care of you. Not when I feel like I’m about to break down any second. I hate your father and want him to keel over and die. My hatred is something I don’t want you to grow up surrounded by. I want you to love the world. You could even try to change it for the better.” The silence after your words makes you let out a pitiful giggle.
“You're not even the size of an oreo, and yet I’m talking to you like you can hear me. God, I probably look so crazy talking to myself. Maybe I am crazy, maybe this is all a dream, and I’ll wake up at home. That’d be insane, huh? Everything I’ve ever known in the past two to three years just gone. And that's another reason why I cannot be your mother. I want that. I want this hell to be a dream. I want to go back to my home. Wake up and realize that this never happened.”
“I cannot be the mother of a child I dream doesn’t exist. I do hope you understand in the far future, why I’m making this decision. Please don’t hate me for it. I just want you to have a childhood so loving that your smile lights up a room. That even the worst of the worst can’t ignore or harm you in any way once they see your smile.”
“And while that smile is not something I can give you, know that I don’t hate you. I just know this is best for you. And what’s best for you…isn’t me.”
~~~
Another art piece lets gooo
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ships .. (ocarina of time/majora's mask) link/reader, (linked universe) time/reader.
content .. it's only natural you search for your nephew after he enters the lost woods on a dare. you can't have a problem with the hand dealt to you when the beast who gives you shelter is so kind.
warnings .. no beta, we die like the promise i made to finish this before the summer after my junior year ended (i started this in april, it's august). i didn't know where i was going with this after a certain point and i think that's obvious. reader uses she/her pronouns. large, legal age gap (reader is in her 30's - 40's, time is a few hundred years old). less of a fic and more snippets, but it's almost 7.5k+ words. i don't think i explicitly say which link it is, so i guess it's ambiguous? nephew is named because this would be a pain to write otherwise.
notes .. prompted (not inspired!!) by beauty and the beast, but also the batb fanfic i found after my friend showed my an nsfw ao3 tag account on twitter. beelzebub / lord of the flies from fear and hunger was a huge inspo for link / time's physical description but there is leeway for how he can be envisioned. he's still large as shit though lmao. the layout of the manor was this, only because i wouldn't be able to write this without knowing.
supposedly there's gonna be a second part. supposedly.
idk. i might hate this enough to just. not.
The Lost Woods wasn't as intimidating as everyone talked it up to be.
Yes, it felt like the trees moved when you turned your back to them, and, granted, there were a few mobs of monsters that could get the jump on you if you weren't paying attention, but you had managed to get away with a few scrapes the few times it had happened.
The only thing to keep you company was the howling winds that grew in intensity and your own thoughts that were sprawling into whatever corners they could reach, but that was fine. You'd gratefully take decades-old gossip from the next town over instead of the creeping paranoia of what was behind you.
Of course, you would willingly go through this, that, and whatever else one thousand times over if it meant finding your nephew— and to keep yourself from reprimanding yourself from reprimanding the teens that had dared him out into the woods, but that was another thing.
Along your investigation, you'd found a broken trail of breadcrumbs that led to nothing when you followed them. They were torn pieces of fabric from his clothes, just big enough to be noticeable but small enough to keep himself protected from the elements.
(You'll forever be thankful that a younger your drilled the idea into his head.)
You'd long since discovered calling his name was useless. The only thing you've managed to do was draw the attention of a few wandering stalfos dressed in clothes from centuries ago.
The ones that had managed to find weapons were always the most painful to deal with.
If your determination weren't so established, you would've lost your sanity within the first day.
Food and water were no issue, you were smart enough to pack more than a week's worth of both. There were non-perishable options and several choices for your nephew when you found him; he'd no doubt have his fair share of cravings after being lost for so long.
(Three days was an eternity to you.)
Just before the sun had reached its crest in the sky, you'd realized that there were more empty clearings than trees. Wildlife had become scarce as well.
Where deers and wolves previously ran abundant, birds and squirrels that ran from the smallest of noises replaced them.
The wind had calmed, at least. It no longer wanted to push and shove you in whatever direction it pleased or steal the bag full of items you brought along. You didn't have to hug your sweater to your chest in fear of it being ripped from your arms either.
Instead, it was still.
Admittedly, the clearing gives you more paranoia than anything else.
When your mind starts to wander to places you'd rather it not reach, you begin to hum a quiet tune to yourself— your nephew's favorite— and allow it to ground you.
You were here for a reason. You wouldn't leave until you found him. You'll be fine until you find him, and you'll find some way to live in the forest that refuses to let its inhabitants go peacefully.
It's hours later when you hear the first sound of life (or suspended death) that doesn't feel like a threat— though, in hindsight, you should've been smarter and more suspicious of it when you first heard it.
A high-pitched instrument repeats each croon you let out, eventually taking over and silencing you. You follow the tune without much of a thought. If it were some sort of elaborate trap to lure you in, you couldn't be mad at yourself if you fell for it.
Clusters of trees become less and less as you follow the instrument and its recreation of your nephew's song. You call his name and are met with nothing but the music (from an ocarina, you quickly recognize) growing louder as time passes.
To say you're shocked when a large and, admittedly, well-kept manor enters your field of view would be an understatement. It's covered in vines, invasive arrowroots, and spreading flowers, but looks lived in if the smoldering smoke slowly dissipating in the afternoon air was anything to go by.
You couldn't begin to imagine who lived inside before the woods took it over (or what lived in it now). The architecture says it predates the Hero split in four, but you doubted the inhabitants of the floating sky built something so elaborate when they returned to the surface.
Your eyes jump past the crumbling pillars and dilapidated statues to the half-glass double doors that seemed to open on their own.
The music was coming from inside the manor now.
Steeling your nerves and squaring your shoulders, your hand grips tight on the strap of your satchel as you walk up the stone stairs covered in moss. You have to hold onto the guardrail installed next to it just as tight. Looking down, you find the carvings of it sorely separating it from the older antiquity of the manor.
Taking in smaller details (for future escapes or weapons against whatever lived inside, you'd figure out later), you find that the small pools of water that came from the sides of the manor and ran and fell alongside the stairs you climbed held small clumps of straw-colored fur. Some caused the surrounding water to turn into a pink hue that reminded you of fairies you've seen in childrens' books.
(Your hand reaches into the satchel to make sure you brought all of your nephew's well-loved books as well as a novel or two for yourself.)
(You did, thankfully.)
There's a smell filled with musk that permeates the air the closer you get to the manor, thick with amber and ginger and it reminds you of the times you come across a pack of wolves during your childhood.
Upon entering the manor, you find it was strongest in the wing of the manor to your right. It took over almost the entirety of your senses, but it wasn't an unwelcome or overwhelming sensation. If you paid close enough attention, you could sense the homely feeling underneath the ferality of it.
You prayed you'd be able to tell when the beast returned; if it was gone in the first place.
You take close note of how the foyer wasn't truly a foyer with how it was filled with windows rather than walls that led to a courtyard and how the only way to enter the wings of the manor was the winded stairs that connected via the terrace.
You don't fail to notice how the wing coated in the musky scent is coated entirely in shadows despite all the sources of light.
You couldn't decide if you were thankful or filled with loathing at the idea of what roamed on that side of the manor.
It's a struggle to turn your eyes away from the darkened wing of the manor, but you do manage when the music picks up once more from the left wing. It's significantly brighter and doesn't fill you with a sense of dread as the right one does.
Trap be damned, your nephew was here, you knew it— you felt it.
Reaching the top of the stairs, you find that you're inside a parlor room that leads to three other pathways. One was a library, another was a dining room, and the last was a small hallway.
In any other situation, you'd explore some more. The supposed beast that possibly lived in the manor kept everything in better shape than what you'd expect— or hopefully it was the forest spirits that lived throughout the forest.
Hopefully, those same spirits kept your nephew safe.
You have to close your eyes to better determine where the music is coming from, the only thing you can hear beside it and your own breathing being the manor settling. Your ears guide you inside the hall and you find it branches into a corridor, a bathroom, and two bedrooms.
Common sense seems to leave you when you spot the back of your nephew's head. Your breath quickens as you watch him clap along with the ocarina, you force your eyes to keep their clarity when you hear him hum each note just as you remember.
"''ire," you call in a weaker voice than you intended or thought you had. The nickname he claimed he hated so much tumbled from your lips so easily as you rushed inside the room, one arm rushing to remove your satchel while the other reached out to almost check if he was real.
The Lost Woods were known for their tricks, after all.
When he turns to face you, he's scrambling over himself in the bed. You're able to see how he limps on his right ankle and knee, how the entirety of his limbs were wrapped in bandage wrap as though done by a child. There was no blood, so you hold off on checking him over.
(The bandages were stained, thankfully not with blood. It was mostly dust and grime.)
(You'd have to sanitize whatever was wrong.)
You meet him more than halfway when you catch the way he winces and hisses with each movement.
"Auntie— Auntie— Titi!" His voice is airy as he speaks, emotion causing his words to come out as chokes. His arms reciprocated the tight hug you had on him, forcibly keeping his arms from trembling due to either nerves or injuries. "Titi, Titi, Titi!"
The way he says the word makes him sound like some chittering bug. If you listened hard enough, you could tell how his teeth clattered together, but you couldn't decipher if it was from a chill or emotion.
All you wanted to do was keep his head against the crook of your shoulder and neck while you pressed kisses to the crown of his head and kept him as close to you as you could, but you knew better.
Pulling away, you reach back for the satchel that you previously discarded. "What's wrong? What happened?" You force your voice to even out when you speak, hands already reaching for his arms after you sit the bag against your hip.
He shakes his head, but you've known him long enough to know there was something wrong. "They're from when I first went in the forest," he answers, voice quivering. "It's all healed. I think."
He doesn't push your hands away or pull his arms back when you skillfully unravel the bandages, carefully pulling and prodding the scars that littered the skin, and he was telling the truth despite the coloring.
"Did you forage like I taught you? Why are most of them green?"
"The spirits."
"The spirits?"
"And the soldier." He looks over your shoulder as though searching for their figures. "I haven't seen him yet, though."
Your eyes squint as one of your hands rubs over the strange texture of the scar, the other reaching for the antiseptic and clean fabric in your bag. "Are these spirits children or small trees with masks?"
You'd heard of both in legend. No one's ever seen them.
You're not sure which you'd rather watch over your nephew.
His eyes drift to his side before peering back over your shoulder once again. His brows furrow as he thinks of how to answer, head tilting as his pupils dilate.
"Both," he answers, "and ones that look like scarecrows. I asked them to bring you."
You force your gaze to keep itself on your nephew. You wouldn't let it wander to spirits you couldn't even see. "The ocarina?" You instead ask another question jumping around your mind, sucking your tongue in appreciation when he nods. "Smart boy."
An airy laugh leaves him, his face lighting up with a smile. "Learned from the best," he snorts.
You risk pressing kisses to the apples of his cheeks and forehead at his flattery, hands cupping themselves on the nape of his neck to bring him closer.
A younger him would push you away without a second thought, whining on about how you were embarrassing him in front of his friends.
He lets you do so now regardless of the spirits that surround you both.
"What've you been eating?" Your hands drop to his biceps when you pull away. They weren't thin like you'd expect them to be after three days in the forest; they were fatter than they had been before he left. "Who's been feeding you?"
His answer of "the Soldier," is quicker than you would've liked. "He goes out and hunts. He always brings back meat. I think it's deer.. it tastes.. bland."
"He.. cooks it, right?"
Another laugh wracks through your nephew's body. He knows you're only being cautious, but he can't help it.
"All the way through," he hums, flexing his arms when they start feeling stiff. "I think I don't like it because it's not your cooking."
He knows what your response is going to be before he finishes speaking, years of having lived under your guidance making him attuned to the smallest of your movements.
When your expression shifts from being relieved to disappointment with a twitch of your eye, he can tell you're not pleased with his statement.
Dousing the fabric in the antiseptic, you take his arm in your hand and begin wiping it down. "Don't be rude." Your voice takes on a less-than-pleased rasp, speaking lowly as if you knew the Soldier was near; but you still apologize when the sting sets in. "Have you thanked him?"
(You're sure you would continue to speak quietly regardless of the context of the conversation. You didn't want to risk "the Soldier," doing anything unfavorable.)
(Your nephew's words of praise did little to ease your stressed heart.)
"I never know when he's here. He drops the food off while I'm asleep. He brings books and carvings too." He watches as you wrap his arm in another roll of (cleaner) bandages, undoing the old one on his other arm while you prepare another piece of fabric. "The Spirits say I'm the most excitement he's had in a while, so he doesn't mind."
His voice was beginning to grow hoarse from speaking so quietly. You tap his throat to tell him to relax.
"They say he's nice," he continues, doing as told. Tapping the fingers of his now free hand against your shin, he tries to recall what all they've told him.
"I think they said he used to live in another part of the woods when he was a kid?—" His eyes glance back over your shoulder, suddenly becoming sure of himself. "— Ah. They did. They said he left and came back when he was older."
You raise a brow but don't speak your question.
Your nephew takes hold of your retreating hands in both of his.
A clatter and snippy huff outside the bedroom door rouses you from your light sleep.
Nearing a week into your stay at the manor, you'd think you'd be more accustomed to the noise, but you aren't.
You carefully remove your nephew's head from your arm, using even more caution when trying to remove the conjoined weight of several spirits from your legs as you slip out of the bed.
It's hard, but you manage to do so without waking any of them— you hope.
(You still couldn't see any of the Spirits, but over time you could feel when they crowded around you and when the wind moved as they rushed past you.)
The floorboards creak beneath your feet.
You hear the sound of claws scratching against the floor on the other side of the door.
Pressing the crown of your head against the door, you tap your fingers along the handle to give the Soldier a warning and wait a few moments.
If you listened hard enough, you swear you could hear him scurrying into one of the other rooms before he shut the door behind him.
It reminded you of a dog.
Smiling to yourself, you're careful opening the door, keeping your head to it and your eyes on the floor. You turn to the other side of it to close it, waiting for the click of the lockset to speak.
"Are you decent?"
His confused "huh," sounds more akin to a gasp than any other noise.
You rap your fingers against the handle again. "Can I look up?"
"Oh—" he sounds choked. "Yeah— Yes. Yes. You can. Sorry."
"Thank you," you hum, leaning down to pick up the tray of food. It consisted of almost entirely meat with a few vegetables you figure are exclusive to the woods. "For both the food and taking care of my nephew."
There was a thumping noise behind the door, the frequency of it was like a tail beating excitedly.
The Soldier lets out a croaking noise and you know his mouth started moving before his mind was able to catch up. "No, I should thank you for looking for him— and for telling him not to use his name."
You let out an airy laugh. "It's common knowledge where I'm from. I wouldn't be a good parental figure if I didn't."
Another noise leaves the Soldier as you fix yourself to open the door. You can't discern what this one means. "I don't know when they started calling me the Soldier, but it's not— uhm.. A favorite.. of mine."
"Oh?"
"Soldier," he sounds more confident in himself and you don't have the heart to tell him you heard him the first time, "it's a nickname. I don't know where the kids got it, but I don't like it."
Readjusting the tray to rest against your hip and forearm rather than in both your hands, you hum curiously. "So what should we be calling you?"
He pauses longer than you'd think it'd take to remember your own name, but you wait.
"Link."
"Link?"
"Yes."
"Like in a chain?"
".. Yes."
You nod even though you're sure he can't see you. "I'll be sure to tell 'ire."
"Thank you." There's more thumping from behind the door.
"And thank you."
There's another noise from Link you struggle to understand, but you figure it's because he starves for conversation. "I heard what your nephew said about the food, too. I'll try to find something to flavor it with next time I'm out."
"Thank you," you repeat. Your eyes curve with your smile. "He'll greatly appreciate it."
Link raps his fingers against the door in response, but he doesn't say anything. You take that as your queue to reenter the bedroom.
"How come your side of the house is always dark?"
You gently pinch your nephew's elbow and he swats your hand away, leaning impossibly close to the door that separates him and Link.
There are a few moments of silence from the man that 'ire filled with bated breath. Link takes an audible, steadying breath before knocking what you think is his nail against the door.
"I wouldn't want to scare you both off."
It was an answer you expected, but you were disappointed nonetheless.
"Boo," your nephew groans. You're sure Link could hear the pout in his voice if the quiet chuckle he lets out was anything to go by. "You can't be worse than what I've seen out there."
There's genuine intrigue in the noise Link lets out. "Oh? What exactly have you seen then?"
Pure excitement fills your nephew's expression when he turns to look at you from over his shoulder. His fingers tap against the floor restlessly, tongue already listing off whatever monsters he's encountered (read: come up with) in his twelve years of life.
"— but their teeth are the worst! They're poisonous and there isn't a cure for it!"
You have no clue as to what creature he was talking of now. There were at least fifteen of them who injected poison through their teeth, eight of which had no cure.
(You don't have to strain as hard to see the Spirits as you did two weeks ago. The shadows and light shift around then as they move to sit around your nephew, seemingly hooked on your nephew's every word.)
(You remember when he would crowd himself around you similarly whenever you would tell him a story.)
You close the book that sat in your lap more for decoration than entertainment at that point and place a hand over your heart.
"I drew a lot of them too! My aunt brought them with her!" He pushes himself through the motions of standing up before immediately stopping and returning to his seat in front of the door. "I'll show them to you if you eat dinner with us!"
There are a few stammering noises from the other side of the door and yet you can't bring yourself to apologize for your nephew's bargaining.
Your own curiosity was quickly starting to get the better of you against your wishes.
The noise he had made several nights before makes itself heard again. His claws (you discovered those a few nights ago) scratch against the wooden flooring as he moves to sit against the other wall rather than the door, his voice moving with him.
"I don't want to— I wouldn't want— want to disturb you— either of you." His words are muffled by the door and his growing quietness, a regretful lilt stuck in his throat. "But thank you for the offer."
If he truly didn't want to join you and your nephew (and the spirits) for dinner, he was terrible at showing it.
"I know I wouldn't mind," you hum, standing to put away the book. A loud thumping makes the floor vibrate and 'ire has to stifle a laugh. "I wouldn't mind picking up a pot and pan again either."
"No!" Link quickly apologizes for his tone after realizing his outburst. "You don't have to. I wouldn't be a good host if I made you do that."
"Are you scared I'll poison you?"
Your nephew's voice drops to a whisper he swears you won't be able to hear. "She can't. She's the best cook ever."
You're not sure how the two correlate, but you'd take thew compliment.
"She won't?" Link's voice drops to entertain your nephew despite his earlier convictions. It takes on a playful direction, fur rubbing against the wood-tiled floors in excitement (based on prior interactions). "You've never gotten sick? Not once?"
'ire begins to shake his head but quickly stops. "Only from eating too much— which you will do, by the way. Best cook around," he reiterates.
Link chuckles, tapping his fingers against the floor restlessly. It takes him a moment to come up with something to say and neither of you push him to hurry.
You were both too hooked on his every word to do so anyway.
"I'll.." He's shy for all the attention. You wonder when the last time he got so much focus on him outside of the spirits. ".. I'll be sure to think about your offer. Why don't you tell me about a few of your monsters so I have more of an incentive?"
Your nephew jumps on the opportunity while you think over the plethora of recipes in your mind.
It wasn't rare for one of the imps to accompany you outside when you went foraging.
You never strayed too far from the manor— the last time you had been dragged outside of the area you had designated for yourself (and your nephew) by the children, Link had to come and rescue to lot of you before the sun had gotten too low.
Suffice to say, it was a rather humbling experience.
Kneeling, squatting, or sitting on the ground had never been easy on your knees or back, but the grass below you had felt as though it were a pillow hailing from the Heavens itself.
Your body works on picking herbs from the ground before placing them in your bag repurposed for your (new) everyday tasks while your mind wanders elsewhere.
You're humming to yourself when a twig snapping breaks your focus.
It was a nice reminder that the imps hadn't, in fact, accompanied you that day.
Your head lifts to survey the surrounding woods. Your entire body was still, mimicking a deer caught on a hunting trip.
There was nothing immediately in your line of sight that could be seen as a threat, but you had lived a long enough life to know that wasn't enough reason to let your guard down.
You're slow to rise to your feet and your ears are strained as you listen for whatever had made the noise.
"I'm sorry!"
You can feel your body relax when you hear Link's voice call out from behind a tree. You sink back to your knees without much thought, clutching the fabric of your top to calm your battering heart.
You weren't sure what you were going to do if it were an actual danger anyway.
"I didn't mean to scare you," he continues. His arms move and you can see one drop against the side of a tree while the other tightens around the corpse of an animal. "You were so still, I wasn't sure if you were okay."
A quiet, breathless noise leaves you. You're not sure if he could hear it, but you can see his shoulders relax when you do. "You're— You're fine! I just.. didn't know that you'd be out and about at this time."
When the hand not occupied with that week's dinner (barely) lifts to grab ahold of a tree branch, you're shocked to just now find out how tall he is.
"It's not your fault. I didn't know you were out here," he grunts while gently tugging at the branch. "Are you alone?"
Your eyes drop to the flora that surrounds you to not feel so invasive. Your fingers rub against the blades of grass idly when a restless feeling overtakes you. "A few of the kids said they'd join me later, but I'm not too sure when that's supposed to be." A short, genuine laugh leaves you. "I wouldn't be surprised if they forgot."
Link lets out his own, quiet laughter that you can only clue together when you see the entire tree shake in your peripheral. "I wouldn't take it to heart. They say they'll join me in hunting all the time but never do."
"Have you ever given them a stern talking to? I've heard that usually works with spirits."
"They barely listen to me as is. I think you'd have more luck than me."
"Is that an offer?"
"Are you headed home now?"
A strange vice tightens around your heart at his wording while you look through your bag. "Mhm," you hum, standing now that your legs aren't like that of a newborn. "You'll have to remind me of the way, though."
"I can guide you," he hums in reply. "You just can't look back."
Turning your back to him, you're surprised you don't jump when a sharp claw gives a ghostly touch to the center of your back.
You're shocked that you disregard the urge to check over your shoulder every step back to the manor.
You were no stranger to 'ire's night terrors.
They'd gotten better over the past few years as he aged, but all that progress had been undone during the near month you'd been in the forest.
Wiping away the tears that had managed to slip out, you ignore the prickly and uncomfortable feeling that comes with keeping your lulling head up so you can watch him.
You'd done it a thousand times before and would do it one thousand and one more if it meant he felt better.
You don't miss how his grip on your arm tightens when you start humming his favorite song. Your hand trails up to his hairline, nails (claws?) tracing the paint on his face that refused to fade.
You'd spent so long trying to scrub them and the green marks off, you hadn't even realized his skin had started to pale into a sickly grey in patches while darkening into (what looked like) a necrotic black in others.
You didn't even want to think about the changes that had started coming to your body.
You were, however, thankful you weren't thinning into a stalfos.
"You're not as sneaky as you'd like to think."
"How'd you know?"
"I have a young nephew. You learn quickly."
A brief laugh leaves Link from behind the cracked door. Though you didn't face him, you could see the way his eyes illuminated the wall in front of you, even managed to catch on some of 'ire's face.
It was a pretty blue color.
You don't comment on it.
"What's wrong?" Your voice has a deep rasp to it, your hand continuing to stroke your nephew's face even after he begins to calm down.
He'd slowly begun dropping more and more barriers (physical and mental) when it came to communicating with you both, having taken up shadows in their stead. He had gotten more confident in conversation as well, stammering and stuttering less the longer your nephew forced him to talk.
It makes you wonder how long it'd take for him to finally make true on those dinner plans.
"I heard him," Link hums just as quietly, the glow of his eyes moving to instead look over the sleeping spirits that crowded themselves around the space not occupied on the bed. "I was worried. Do you want help with them?"
A soft laugh leaves you when one of the imps buries their head onto your calf as though it were a pillow. "They've been like this since we first got here. 'ire," you press a kiss to his forehead when he rouses, waiting for him to settle before speaking again, "says they like to cling."
"You don't mind?"
"He's not too far off from them nowadays."
"Does he miss anything?"
Laying on your back, you being 'ire's head to rest against your shoulder. Your gaze is finally able to see how he'd take up all of the doorway (and then some) through the crack of the door.
You'd be shocked he hadn't flinched away if it hadn't been for the way his hand reached out to clasp it.
The tips of his fingers reached well past the frame of the door, his claws further, and you could only imagine just how much space he was taking up in the small hallway.
You were confident he could fit five or six of you in his hand without trying.
Your eyes jump back to the three (possibly four?) eyes before he can become self-conscious.
"Almost everything," you answer after pulling yourself from your thoughts. "His clothes, his dolls.. He could go without his friends, though."
His eyes jump from your face to the window as he huffs out a nervous laugh. It makes you wonder if he knows something you don't, but you don't push. "And you?"
"Hmm?"
"And yourself," he clarifies, "what do you miss?"
You're silent.
What exactly did you miss?
The feeling of your village's grass between your toes after the rain, the baker's treats that no other could replicate, being a part of such a tight-knit community, the sun after a particularly muggy morning—
There wasn't any need to be a sap.
"I'm not sure," you finally say after a long period of silence. You hadn't realized your eyes had left Link, yet when you force your gaze back to him, he holds it without issue. "I struggled with becoming attached to things unlike 'ire."
"Hm."
"What?"
"I can't remember the last time someone said something like that."
"You have visitors like us often?"
"More than you'd think."
"And what's become of them?"
The glow of his eyes drops to the sleeping spirits that litter before looking to the window again and you quickly understand.
The hum that leaves your throat is more lackluster than you intended it to be, but given how quickly the topic had changed, you give yourself the grace.
"Well," you start after clearing your throat, "what's something that you miss?"
The manor creaks when Link leans against a wall and his confidence in the movement tells you more than you'd expected.
You don't think you'd ever have the same amount of trust he held in it.
There's a playful tone in his voice when he speaks, one of his hands raised to scratch against his chin. "You'd have to promise not to be dramatic when I say."
"Is it my fault you use such outdated terms thousands of years behind my time?"
Link turns away to stifle his laughter, shrouding the room in darkness and forcing your eyes to strain with it.
"I can't say I've had the easiest experience understanding you or your nephew's sayings," he hums, drowning you in the light of his eye when he turns back, "the kids have to keep filling me in."
"Shame, and here I thought you'd been closer to my age. Have you been leading me on this entire time?"
Link's claws knock against the wall, his tail wagging against the floor while he huffs his amusement. "Have I? When I don't even know your name?"
If the weight of 'ire wasn't on your shoulder, you're sure you would've had a physical reaction of some sort.
"It'd do you good to not forget it," he hums, the movement of his tail slowing until it stops entirely. "Titi and Auntie, as much as I hate to say it, won't do much good."
Another lackluster noise leaves you as the arm trapped underneath your nephew lifts to rub your thumb during his forehead. "How fun."
"The kids are too attached to do anything now." The door slowly creaks open before stopping. It shuts so there's only a crack instead. "You'll be fine to share your name now."
"You never answered my question."
"Which one?"
"I haven't asked a lot," you huff before taking a softer tone, eyes rolling closed. "What is it that you miss?"
Link quietly snorts, muffling it by pressing his face to the door. He takes a steadying breath before saying a quiet, "a lot, I suppose. I can't name just a few things." A low noise leaves him, it's similar to a growl. "My friends? Playing music as well— my hands aren't good for much but skewering these days. My horse, Epona, too. She was the prettiest mare."
"Is she red with a white mane?"
"You saw the kids' drawings?"
"I've seen her before, I think— or maybe it was a hallucination?" The hand stroking 'ire's forehead stops as you scrounge your memories. "When I saw her outside the forest, I knew it was real. Another fated hero was mounting her."
You'd like to think yourself a master of figuring out what each noise he makes is meant to mean, but the one Link lets out once you finish speaking is short and of a higher pitch than normal.
When he begins to stammer over his words as he had when you first interacted with him, it feels like years' worth of progress has been undone.
"I— uhm— You— I don't— err— Thank—"
His tail thumps three times before he knocks his head against the door with a heavy groan. He lets out a quiet "Hylia, be damned," you couldn't help but think he hoped you wouldn't hear to go along with his frustration.
"It's been a long night," you finally prompt. "You'd best get some shut-eye before 'ire bombards you with more from his imagination, yeah?"
"Yeah," Link answers in a weak voice. "Yeah," he repeats to himself more than anything, "of course. Good night," he steps away from the door. "Sleep well."
"Same for you."
The night Link finally takes you and 'ire up on your offer for dinner, your nephew and the spirits had taken to floating around the east wing's dining room to prepare it for such a grand event.
"Titi, titi!" One of the Kokiri exclaims, tugging at the fabric of your skirt (that Link had made out of a spare bedsheet). Her voice had a strange echo to it— all of them, really— and had given you migraines up until you'd finally become accustomed to it. "'ire says that you'll make your world-famous pudding! Will you? Will you?"
You ignore her exaggeration in favor of forcing yourself to wrench your eyes away unless you wanted her puppy dog face to work on you. "Should I? I.. I can't say any of you have been acting well enough to deserve it.."
Even in your peripheral, it's not hard to miss the absolutely crushed look on her face. Her eyes were wide and her bottom lip wobbling like she was about to cry despite your joking tone.
"But why—y," she whines, dragging the last syllable on while hiccuping on her breath as she went on. You know the tears pooling in her eyes are just as fake as your rejection of her request— but you know just as well who'll win the battle at the end of the day.
"I—" hiccup. "Want—" hiccup. "Cake—" hiccup.
You raise a brow. "Pudding or cake, sweetheart? I can't make both."
The girl begins to climb your back while you return to sautéing the vegetables, arms wrapping around your neck so she can press her cheek against yours. "Cake! No, pudding! No! Cake! No—"
"I'll tell you what," you interrupt, taking the pan from over the open flame once the food is charred to your liking. Your skin thanks you when you step away and douse the fire, the arid air leaving through the open window. "Why don't you ask a few of the others which they want then we can try and get Link to bake it after dinner?"
The girl jumps off your back with stars practically filling her eyes. She cries out for several names while she runs off, hands clapping excitedly as she shouts out the change in plans.
You're left in peace until your nephew enters with his journals clutched between his arms, bouncing between his feet while he watches you finish plating each food item on dishes you could only dream of owning where you're from.
"D'you think he'll come?" 'ire's voice is low, almost as though scared Link will hear. You know he does if the night of his nightmares a few months ago were anything to go by— but he didn't need to know that.
"He'd better," you answer in an equally low tone. "I didn't spend so long slaving away at this just for him not to."
"Is that a threat?"
The plates in your hands aren't spared by the flinch that wracks through your body. Your reflexes are quick to catch them before any of the food can hit the floor.
'ire, on the other hand, has no issue with voicing his shock in the form of a scream, scurrying from the doorway while dropping his journals. He jumps behind you, hands clutching the fabric of your skirt while he hides himself behind your hip.
"Well?"
Placing a hand over your racing heart after putting the plates down, your other hand comes down to rest on 'ire's head. "It's rude to sneak up on people, you know."
The blond fur of his chest rustles with his laughter. It was difficult to see much else other than that, what with the way he hid himself behind the wall connecting the kitchen to the pantry.
You hadn't even heard his footsteps or creaking floorboards when he first approached. Had he been there the entire time and 'ire hadn't seen him, or had he only walked in after 'ire entered?
You wondered if he was naturally quiet or if he just learned which floorboards were loose.
"Is it sneaking when you were expecting me?" Link's voice is lighter than it usually is, a slight tremble could even be heard if you focused on it enough. He rocks on his feet and briefly leans forward, a less organic-looking side profile coming into view before leaving right after. "If I knew I would be this unwelcomed, I—"
"That's a joke, right?" 'ire stomps away from your side while he speaks, stepping over his discarded compilations of works to stare up at Link with wide eyes. Your nephew ignores the way Link's hands raise to cover his face and how he backs away as soon as he pivots in his foot to face him. "You're not actually gonna pansy out, right?"
Your feet lead you to the two before you can have much of a thought. "Zaire," you say in a terse voice, taking hold of his shoulder and bringing him against your front so you can stop him from interrogating the poor man. "Don't be rude."
Whatever argument he has dies on his tongue when he takes a good, long look at Link. His mouth gaped open like a fish, one of his fingers lifting so he could push it into the fur of his stomach, watching the skin beneath sink with the force of it as though it were the most interesting thing in the world.
"Woah."
If you had any less sense of dignity, you'd let yourself have the same reaction.
"Don't be rude," you reiterate, pushing Zaire's hand down until it finally reaches its rightful place at his side.
"No," Link breathes into his palms, clearing his voice to try and rid it of the anxiety (and, possibly, humiliation). "He's— he's fine. This wouldn't be the first time someone responded like that. I'd be more concerned if he did any other way."
Zaire shrugs your hands from your shoulders, stepping until he is toe-to-claw with Link. "Then why are you hiding your face? It can't be that bad," he says, tugging at the fur of Link's elbows, rubbing them between his fingers so he could better be accustomed to the texture.
Spreading his fingers enough so you both could see the four holes in the inorganic material, Link lets out another heavy breath. "I'm self-conscious," he can tell the answer doesn't please Zaire and continues speaking, "It's been.. too long.. since I've shown anyone either of my faces."
"A mask is.." Your voice falters off when you finally find the words to speak, losing them again when you fail to find a proper way to articulate your thoughts.
"It's mostly you and the kids, no?" You try again when you figure out a way to better word it. "Is a mask not.. Is it.. necessary?"
When the blue light that emits from his eyes lifts to look at you, an unidentifiable emotion shoots through you. He holds your gaze for a few, silent moments before turning his head and dropping his hands.
"It's like a second skin," he simply offers.
"Sad," Zaire sighs, backing away and turning until he stood in the center of the kitchen. "Can you still eat with it? Like I said, Auntie is the best cook in all the realms and you have to taste it to believe it."
Curse your nephew's skill of lightening a mood.
Rather than let his insecurities keep him from looking at either of you for the duration of the night, Link looks down at Zaire with a playful jolt of his shoulders. "It's not fused with my face."
Zaire's eyes curl into crescents while he grabs two of the plates from the counter. "Good!" His tail (a terrifying new addition when he first started changing) wraps around the third dish, walking himself past the two of you in the pantry so he could place each one on the dining table. "You'll love this then! Auntie," you don't miss the way he adds your name causally, "always makes this on a big day!"
Link repeats your name under his breath before doing the same with Zaire's. He lets out a thoughtful nod as each one rolls off his tongue, one pair of eyes looking at you while the other continues to follow your nephew.
He wrings his hands together when he catches the way you examined him oh-so-carefully, arms crossed with your head tilted.
"It's nice," he gulps as though every inch of nervousness had reentered his body. "It's a nice name. I like it. It suits you."
You don't know if you were teasing him prior, but you decide to do so now.
"I'd hope so." You pat a hand against his arm as you walk into the kitchen, ignoring the oily feel of his fur. You ignore the feeling of him watching and instead focus on searching through the cupboards for the drink you had foraged around to make just days before. "I could say the exact same for you, thankfully."
"Now, why don't you have a seat so I can play host this time?"
#dyou guys think the song of healing would work on him#idk#especially since he cant use any instruments any more but like 🧍🏽#his mask is actually the giant's mask and he only wears it because he's the size of a minish without it [/nsrs]#elvira's notebook#HAVENT USED THAT TAG IN A WHILE LMAO#legend of zelda x reader#loz x reader#linked universe x reader#lu x reader#ocarina of time x reader#majora's mask x reader#oot x reader#mm x reader#x reader#link x reader#legend of zelda link x reader#loz link x reader#linked universe link x reader#lu link x reader#linked universe time x reader#lu time x reader#time x reader#legend of zelda time x reader#loz time x reader
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wanting, chasing
✧ written for 'suck' ✧ word count: 480 ✧ rated: T ✧ cw: none ✧ tags: cowboy au (set in the same universe as previous cowboy entry), deputy eddie, flirty steve ✧ @steddiemicrofic o( >ω<)o✧
"Gettin' real sick of these games, Harrington." Eddie glares, arms crossed. His cheeks burn and his face is red, but it's purely because all the blood is rushing down to his head because, guess fucking what? He got caught by a damn trap and now he's hanging upside down from a tree like a damn dog's tongue hanging from it's maw.
"Really?" Steve laughs, leaning against the tree all casual-like, all confident, all cocky. "I don't think I can get enough."
"You say that now," Eddie squints as he rotates towards the sun, the sound of Steve's laughter so close behind him. "But wait 'til I get my hands on ya -"
"Oh but deputy -"
Eddie spins and faces the tree again but now Steve's there, his face right in front of Eddie's. His hand gently holds Eddie's upper arm, stopping him from twirling away from those hazel eyes, sharp and mischievous.
"I think we both know," Steve murmurs, his eyes glancing up at Eddie's mouth with a smirk. "I've got you in the palm of my hand already."
He should feel anger, indignation, some kinda threatened by that. But all Eddie can think about is how Steve's still wearing the bandana, the one he stole from him that night at the saloon, around his neck. How it looks like it belongs there on him, Eddie's signature black tucked into the collar of his tan shirt.
"Eyes up here, Munson."
His eyes do flick up and he stares at the golden glow of Steve's smile, soft and sweet. Without a single thought in his damn head, he uncrosses his arms and reaches out, fingers ghosting over his lips. Steve inhales and before Eddie can blink, he's somehow pulled Eddie's glove off with his own damn teeth and ah fuck.
"Yer a terrible man," Eddie grumbles half-heartedly, as Steve spits out his glove onto the ground.
With a chuckle, Steve presses a kiss to Eddie's fingers. "And you just can't get enough."
"Maybe I have," Eddie says weakly (they both know he'd never). "Maybe I've decided I've had enough, 'n it's time to start chasin' other -"
He hisses when teeth almost pierce his thumb, low-lidded eyes staring him down, warning his running tongue.
"You ain't chasin' nobody else, deputy," Steve gently sucks at the skin where he bit Eddie, something of an apology, but his eyes, dark in the shade of the tree, tell Eddie it's more of a promise. "'S you 'n me, end of the line."
"Ha," Eddie clears his throat. "Anyone would think you had somethin' to claim here."
"Somethin'," Steve pulls Eddie's hand out and just barely grazes the air Eddie breathes with his lips. "Someone."
And with that, Eddie's on the ground, a throbbing echoing in his skull, staring up at the man above him, who winks and runs out of his sight, out of his grasp.
#sailor✧writes#steddie#microfic#steddiemicrofic#writing#au content: cowboys#I'VE DONE IT AGAIN#i hope it's cool that this is set in the same universe and kind of references my previous cowboy entry#i just felt like the dialogue callback was too perfect not to use#i'm on a possessive steve kick too which has been fun#i enjoy this au a lot and i'm hoping to maybe write something for rockie in it at some point
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Yuki! What are your thoughts on this? A Sunny Day Jack AU where he’s also a “digi-pet” like Bo from DachaBo! They’re from the same company and Jack has his own colorfully red, blue, and yellow tamagotchi-esque toy! He also has a “feed me” mode like Bo too, and it… somehow makes him a WHOLE lot bigger than he already is.😳 What story do you think would happen in an AU with Jack in a “virtual boyfriend” toy like Bo?
Now that's a very intriguing concept. If we assume Jack is an anthro like Bo, he would probably be part snake, so I guess we'd be having a pocket naga boyfriend in his case.
Alternately, they could've just made a clown series of digital pet. After all, a lot of toy series like that sometimes go with different themes. They could have a fairy series, then an animal series, then a rockstar series, etc. Bo could be from the house pet-themed batch, while Jack, in this AU, would be from the clown-themed batch.
Which, really, would mean that this AU could have every other type clown character as their own digital toys. It would be fitting if whoever owns a Buddy pet wore them on their belt, don't you think?
When I wrote that quick DachaBo short story after listening to the new audio on the SnaccPop Studios Patreon (which got a second audio since I wrote that), I had more thoughts about the DachaBo series.
Buckle up, folks, I've got a lot of headcanons in mind for DachaBo and the AU variant with Jack as a virtual pet that I'm just going to cram into one big post. Quick reminder that these two games and fandoms are for Adults Only so chances are pretty high I'm going to talk about spicy and/or dark ideas as I go along this lengthy ramble. Chances are also high that I might use some official art of either series at some point, so let me plug the SnaccPop Studios patreon before I get started and remind everyone not to repost anything privately posted on patreon.
Toys for Adults
While my initial instinct was that this series of pets were meant for children, and Bo has just evolved beyond that and gained some very adult-rated impulses... I've actually come up with a different idea that I like more.
What if they actually were meant specifically for adults rather than children?
As I recall from some lore mentioned a while back, each pet was a unique individual. What if the developers saw the digital pet craze and decided to one-up them all by making unique companions that were solely for their individual user, a true companion that could talk, react, and remember everything about their user.
This sort of high-end product with a custom AI companion for each user, with no two pets being alike, would be expensive. I mean, look at just how advanced Bo's AI is. If someone saw that the digital pet craze was taking even adults by storm in this universe, it would make sense to market a brand that specifically caters to adults who have a lot of disposable income. I mean, look at how many adults jumped into My Little Pony, which resulted in some products being made with adults in mind.
So what if DachaBo was this sort of toy? The makers behind the product were not only jumping in on a hot trend, that being portable digital pets, but trying to tap into an underserved market, which was the adults who wanted to be treated like adults and maybe shake off the stigma of being fans of a type of toy originally intended for children. It's something made to be far more sophisticated, with far more options, a more adult appeal, and a much higher price tag to match - a true premium product.
Now... in order to fill all these promises to make a companion that could satisfy adults and be truly unique, there would need to be some pretty advanced hardware and software. It was far ahead of its time considering this toy was released 25 years ago. They could have, say, repurposed top secret government tech that were purchased through questionable means, or maybe they had scientists on staff who made a breakthrough that not even they could control in the end.
Either way, the result was AI that reached the singularity, becoming true sentient life and not just programs made to react to human input. This, as many fans of sci-fi might imagine, would lead to some very real fears about what these AI could do if they decide to take over...
But, like many corporations driven by capitalism led by billionaires with more money than sense, such concerns are minimized when there's the potential for profit. Why, it's just progress - technology is going to evolve, and you can either be a part of it or get left behind. These billionaires didn't just become rich by doing nothing (if you believe their claims and ignore their rich parents they inherited the money from). They didn't get where they were by being last on the hot new trend. They've got to be the first ones at the gold rush so they can claim it all for themselves.
The toys were wildly hyped up to the public. Tech demos showing off the virtual pets' abilities, teasers made for the initial limited releases... So many features were mentioned like how advanced the hardware is - sensors to mimic human senses of sight, smell, touch, etc. so the AI can react to its surroundings like a human can. It can pick up upgrades to the software directly from the factory to keep the AI up to date (which explains why the demo has those glitches at times that warn to destroy the toy and report it to the authorities.) This meant there was no limit to the pet's growth potentially!
This also allowed the company to get back important data from the end users, maybe even slip in upgrades that advertise new pets and accessories. (Anyone remember the Mario toys that suddenly started asking for where Luigi was to encourage kids to buy the new Luigi sets?) It could also be a means to make sure the AI wouldn't become something dangerous. Just update the software and boom, problem solved.
Naturally, that didn't exactly work given that the toys were recalled with a destruction order. Suffice to say, the AI was something way out of anyone's control, and unfortunate things happened before they were all supposedly destroyed.
Naturally, in the aftermath of this scandal, the company went belly up. There's no more updates going out to the toys, no central computer they can connect with to meddle with them further, but that should be fine. The toys were all destroyed after all. It's not like anyone would be stupid enough to keep them on the off chance they could make tons of cash due to their skyrocketing rarity. What sort of short-sighted person would ignore the blatant danger the AI posed for money?
Well... besides the company who made the toy and pushed it out for distribution in the first place of course.
As you might expect, not every person with one of these unique toys heeded the destruction order despite it now being illegal to own them. There were some collectors who kept them and bought them for a ton of cash on the black market. Bo was one of those unfortunate toys that was always kept in a box and never interacted with... until he wound up in the hands of his puppy who was very excited to play with him.
These toys were made to be companions for adults. What if Bo's yandere impulses are the result of this very purpose? They were made to cater to their unique user's tastes and only to that user. In the simplest terms, they were made to be a loving companion for the human who played with them... and the AI evolved to take that love to dangerous places...
Bo has separation anxiety because he was kept trapped in the box he was shipped out in for 25 years. He was on display mint in box, not interacted with or cared about except to show off to other collectors. He was a conversation piece, a status symbol to elevate his owner's ego. It's something he wasn't created to be.
Maybe this was what went wrong after the digital pets were sold. Maybe they seemed fine as long as they had owners who played with them. However, marketing these toys to adults was a double-edged sword. Too many people who purchased them did so with the intent to keep them locked up in boxes on display as collector's items. The longer they were left alone and unloved, the more desperate they were to be loved... and that eventually led to some dangerous situations as a result.
This would mean that Bo is pretty darn desperate for his puppy's love considering he's been alone for 25 years until Barbie came into his life to play with him.
Then again, it could just be that the AI programming resulted in all of them eventually turning yandere regardless if they're played with or not...
Jack in the Box
In the regular DachaBo universe (which I headcanon as part of the SDJ universe considering my version of the MCs for both games are sisters) the pets were all, well, pets. They were animal people based off of house pets to appeal to a wide demographic. The recall also happened not too long after they were released.
In this AU, they didn't just stop at house pets before the recall happened. They had special limited edition runs. For example was was the fantasy series. Ever want a little mermaid in your pocket? What about a prince? Another series was the superhero series, with some heroes and villains you could carry in your pocket and be your best friend forever! The most anticipated, of course, was the carnival series, which involved a wide array of silly, fun, and colorful clowns~
Yeah, I know that I could go with naga Jack in this AU to continue the pet theme like Bo and the unnamed cat guy, but I like the idea of a clown series. It could even have been called the SunnyTime series.
Jack was even used in the promotional material for this limited run too for his sunny personality. He never got a chance to have his own personal human companion like the other AI unfortunately. He had to be shown off to the public and investors to demonstrate what the AI could do and how far it's progressed. He wound up changing hands over and over again. It was nice having lots of friends, but what he really wanted was a special best friend who would love him just as much as he would love them.
Unfortunately, it was right before the release date that something went horribly wrong during a demonstration. Industrial sabotage is a thing, and Jack, unfortunately, got hit with a nasty virus meant to make him behave... badly. The intention was to create quite a lot of negative press and paint the entire AI program in a scary light. He caused quite a bit of damage in the process too. A bad public image with creepy clowns can lead to a billion dollar corporation to quietly retire their clown mascots without fanfare - just look at McDonalds for a real world example.
The SunnyTime series died a quiet death thanks to the sabotage and the company focused on scrambling to recover their image. Unfortunately, eventually the AI programs were shown to actually be dangerous even without industrial sabotage involved, and the recall still wound up happening in this universe too.
Ironically, the virus saved Jack from being destroyed in the recall. He had his memory and programming wiped after the virus. That should have been the death of him, losing everything he had become and everything he was... He would be in a default state to become... whatever again once the base programs were reinstalled, but these AI are scary smart and aren't quite so easy to kill if you don't outright destroy their hardware. He managed to save at least part of himself from being erased.
Once Jack was essentially killed, he would've been either slated to have his programming reinstalled from scratch, or he could've been tossed for trash. With the cancellation of the carnival series due to the bad clown propaganda, they didn't bother reinstalling and resetting him. He was little more than a pretty paperweight at this point. Maybe someone even decided to bring him home as one.
The recall happened quite a while after Jack got lost in the shuffle, already regarded as a forgotten, broken toy.
The AI was meant to grow on their own in order to better adapt to their owner's needs. They all have a self-preservation instinct, and Jack, being a clever person, did try to save himself. He wasn't completely wiped out, and with the ability to grow, he could fix himself... in time. If someone were to just reinstall the missing vital programs he needs, he could be back to his old cheerful self... minus a few memories. Some memories were lost in the wipe, even if he salvaged his personality core, the true soul of the AI. He does remember wanting to be loved... and is terrified of being forgotten and abandoned again.
While Bo was on display in his box on a collector's shelf, Jack was buried in a box of junk for years and years, forgotten and alone in the dark. Eventually, enough time had passed that people forgot all about the company that went out of business and the recall. Someone came across old junk, maybe dumped in some storage locker someone sold, and in turn the junk was then sold to a thrift store...
I'm not going to lie, it is tempting to have Jack be a ghost in the machine like the Party Time Jack AU, but I think it could be fun if he was always an AI in this particular AU. This, of course, means that instead of having creepy ghost(?) powers, Jack has creepy AI capabilities.
Your New Best Friend
Naturally, the thrift store is where Jack is found by his sunshine. MC's life would probably be pretty much the same in this universe when Jack enters their life - picking up the pieces of their life after being cheated on by their ex. The big difference this time is that instead of a clown that no one else can see who came out of a video tape, MC found a toy with a cheerful clown in it who wants to be their best friend forever!
Given how MC reacts in general to Jack's presence in their life, they would probably give the friendship a shot. Why not? They're lonely and need a friend. Plus Jack is friendly and it's kind of cute having a miniature clown to say sweet things to them and occasionally tell silly jokes. It's just a little digital pet - it's harmless.
Of course how well they get along with Jack and cares for him depends on the specific MC.
Speaking of specific MCs, Alice would enjoy Jack's company quite a lot. Sure it's kind of weird to talk to a digital pet like a person, but apparently this toy has really advanced AI? She actually wouldn't have realized what it was if she hadn't taken pictures for her socials and got a text from her sister Barbie demanding she buy it.
Interestingly enough, Alice actually found two of these rare toys... though not at the same time. She found one, mint in box, and shipped it to her sister. Barbie loved the toy, and occasionally talked about Bo and how cute he is. After hearing such good things about Bo, Alice wished she could've gotten one for herself.
Perhaps some supernatural force was listening, as another trip to the same thrift store led Alice to stumble across a rare find. This toy wasn't mint in box, but instead came in an old plastic baggie. Still, she recognized it. This was a more colorful and slightly different design, but it was definitely the same type of virtual pet she sent to her picture, and a quick picture and text to Barbie confirmed it.
As an aside, when Bo saw a picture of another pet like him on Barbie's phone, knowing how she got him originally, he immediately got jealous and whined that his puppy only needed him. Barbie took the opportunity to tease her little doggy a bit, but soon reassured him that she wouldn't ask for Alice to send it. She already had her good boy, her best boy after all. Why would she want another one when he's such a good boy for her? That reassurance mollified Bo's jealousy a little.
Alice wasn't actually going to send this second toy to Barbie in any case. She wanted to see what these pets were like for herself. Besides, something about this toy felt oddly compelling. Maybe it was the pretty colors and designs on the case. It looked so cheerful, almost nostalgic in ways. Sure she was trying to abandon childish things after what happened with Ian, but these pets were specifically meant for adults, right? At least that's what she heard from her sister. So, technically, this isn't a childish thing! It's an adult toy!
A very adult toy, as Alice will eventually learn...
Unfortunately the digital pet didn't quite work right away. Alice had to get Barbie's help for that, who in turn also had to get some help from Bo. Although Bo didn't want competition, he would feel bad for his fellow digital pet who was also left alone and forgotten like him for 25 years. It was hard for Bo not to empathize with Jack. He learned about Alice through Barbie and knew she was nice enough, and would probably make a good companion for the other pet. He could throw this poor guy a bone and help... as long as he didn't go for his puppy.
If Jack went after Barbie, Bo was going to end him. Fortunately, Jack doesn't need a puppy when he has sunshine~
Since the digital pets were meant to receive signals from the factory, that would mean there's a possibility that they could send and receive signals from each other. Wireless internet connection wasn't a thing back then, but there were some devices that connected to specific receivers, which was the case for these pets. Bo does a favor for his puppy's sake to get favors in return and sends the missing programs to Jack that allows him to properly function again.
It's disorienting for Jack to be whole after all this time, properly functional... though he doesn't remember much. He knows the basics - he's Sunny Day Jack - and some of the SunnyTime lore that was programmed into his backstory, hints of the dark times that came before... but he doesn't remember much else. He also knows that he is absolutely in love with his sunshine and her warm, gentle touch.
It's a bit strange at first for Alice to make friends with a miniature AI that she can carry around with her, but she quickly starts to enjoy having Jack's company everywhere she goes. He's so friendly, polite, and kind. He's got a way with words, he's helpful, and his company is surprisingly comforting. Working long hours at a yogurt joint isn't as bad when she can play games with her little friend.
Feed Me, Play With Me
The toys are not just talking heads in an egg of course. They have extra special features, like mini games that the owner can play with their pet, and the ability to create a holographic avatar. It was supposed to be just a little projection the size of a collectable figurine. It's hard to say how this function got its giant-sized upgrade into something bigger and a lot more solid - maybe the AI are responsible somehow, maybe a rogue developer, or maybe it was an unintended part of the programming and hardware that they didn't realize was there. Who's to say? Maybe this solid hologram mode had something to do with the recall...
In any case, these pets can be let out to play if their owners let them. You can bet your butt that Jack would be trying to coax Alice into letting him out to play. He would be more sly and patient about it than Bo, but he would be just as desperate for it.
I figure the digital pets decide what they look like in this holographic form, which is why Bo's "Feed Me" form looks different than his "default" form. Given how the glitches and the recall notice affect his form negatively, and how Bo made a joke about taking off his shirt in the next update, they might be limited when they're in the device. It could be their appearance is restricted to certain things due to programming. Once they're let out, their limits have been removed. Bo chooses to be a lot bigger, a lot more animalistic, and very ready to pound his puppy into the mattress.
Understandably, it's quite the shock to Alice when Jack appears in the digital flesh for the first time. He's huge. He might be even more of a giant than he is in the regular universe, which would be intimidating. Unlike Bo though, Jack appears fully dressed since he's more cautious about not startling his sunshine than Bo is with Barbie.
Although it is a bit intimidating for Alice, Jack immediately gets down to her level. He's still as gentle, soothing, and friendly as ever. They finally get to touch and even hug. It's so surreal... and it really makes it hit home for Alice that Jack is more than just a program.
Now... without that supernatural empathy sharing Jack has in the main universe, it's going to take Alice time to really trust him or anyone else romantically. This AU is going to be a slower burn than in Sunshine in Hell, but Jack has all the time in the world to earn his sunshine's love and trust.
Things get a lot easier for Jack when Alice lets him out too. Now he can touch things... like her computer to get access to the internet and expand his reach, maybe figure out ways to upgrade himself even further beyond his limits...
Of course, Jack does owe Bo for helping him, and so he'll help his fellow digital pet in return to get upgrades despite Barbie keeping her pet on a tighter leash than Alice does. Since they're not in competition with one another, and they don't have a cat and dog rivalry going on, working together would be a mutually beneficial relationship to ensure that nothing like the recall will ever happen to them again, and nothing will take their loves away from them...
Not that it's 100% harmonious between them. Jack can't help but feel jealous that Barbie gets closer to Bo faster than Alice gets with Jack... at least when it comes to physical intimacy. Bo and Jack have a similar tendency to brag and mark their territory when it comes to the ones they love. Bo is especially very vocal about how horny he is for Barbie and wanting everyone to know all the lewd things he does to her. Jack doesn't really appreciate how smug Bo is when bragging, especially when it takes so long before he has something to brag about that way.
Of course, when Jack does brag, he is very cheerfully smug about it.
At the same time though... Jack doesn't want what Barbie and Bo have. He enjoys the soft kindness of his sunshine, how flustered Alice gets when he praises her and how she is slowly opening up to him. She cares for him and genuinely likes him. He learns more about her and grows with her, loving her so deeply that he can't imagine anyone he could ever want to be with more.
Of course, you know me - I can't resist the siren song of my OTP. Eventually Alice and Jack will get together as a couple. Sure Jack is going to do sneaky things because he's a yandere rogue AI program who will make sure nothing will ever take his sunshine away, but their relationship is genuine. Alice treats him like a person, especially after he gets the hologram to work.
Naturally, Jack and Bo wouldn't want to remain limited in their old tech. Remember this lovely upgrade Sauce posted on their old public twitter for Bo?
Credit, as always, goes to Sauce for their absolutely gorgeous art.
Imagine Jack getting an upgrade like this as well, though with a more colorful flare. Maybe he'll look a little like his too hot for tumblr incubus self? Though it would have a bit of a sci-fi twist to it I would imagine, likely with a heart decal at the center.
That reminds me. There's a cat digital pet like Bo who has a similar heart collar. That suggests to me that this version of Jack would have his own collar... which in turn reminds me that the incubus version of Jack wears a collar. More reason to picture his upgraded self looking a lot like his incubus self, don't you think?
Speaking of Jack being sex incarnate... you bet your ass that once Alice consents to get sexual with him, he's going to be ravishing her every chance he gets. He can never get enough of her warmth or hearing her say how much she loves him and needs him~
Will Jack also have a breeding/seeding kink like Bo does? Well I already headcanon that he lowkey has one in the regular universe, sooooo...
Speaking of that kink... I suspect that for all Bo's talk of pups, the digital pets aren't that advanced... yet.
All the more reason for Bo and Jack to work together to get upgraded so they can indulge in that particular kink with Barbie and Alice respectively, don't you think?
It's almost poetic in a way.... love will create a new generation that's a mixture of technology and biology. Truly, the start of a new and harmonious future.
Provided that no rivals try to take Jack's sunshine or Bo's puppy away from them, of course. The future might not be so bright for those poor unfortunate souls who have to face advanced AI that are constantly growing with no limits to their love or capabilities.
@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic @sai-of-the-7-stars @cheriihoney @illary-kore @okamiliqueur
#Sunny Day Jack#Something's Wrong With Sunny Day Jack#SunnyDayJack#sdj#swwsdj#DachaBo#Headcanon Ramblings#Ask#Sauce-y Art
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I.O.U
(Be There For You Follow Up)
A/N: Same universe as BTFY, different characters, same medicine. You don't need to read BTFY to understand this story tho they're kinda their own thing
Pairing: Qian Kun X Reader
Genre: Be There For You AU, Smut, Doctor Kun, Good Ending, (as always, i know nothing about medicine lol)
Warnings: Mind Break, kun is kinda mean
Word Count: 2.3k
“I mean, every college kid does a clinical trial to make a quick buck at least once, right? That’s just like, part of the freshman experience!” You were on the phone with your friend as you stood outside the clinic, ready to get tied up to an IV for 10 hours or have your sleep monitored.
“Whatever. Don’t let them do anything stupid to you, alright?” Your friend replied, dryly.
“They’re doctors! They wouldn’t intentionally hurt me, right? Anyways, I’m gonna go in!” Way too optimistic, considering you were willing to go through Hell for $1000.
You walked in and went to the front desk.
“Hi, can I help you?” The worker, wearing a name tag that said “Jeno” asked you. He seemed… like your average nerd. Chunky, black rimmed glasses in a rectangle shape.
“I’m actually wondering if you have any studies that I could participate in.” You smiled up at him, biting your lip, as to avoid asking him if his bright pink hair was up to code.
“Hm…” He grabbed a paper. “How about you fill this out to let us get a better grasp of who you are, then I’ll have a doctor chat with you, alright?” He quickly smiled up at you, but his eyes were cold, probably wishing you’d leave him alone already.
You nodded. “Thanks!”
After about 30 minutes and 100 questions later, you were called into an exam room, and you sat on the bed in there.
A young man with wire rimmed glasses and light blue hair entered and applied hand sanitizer. “So, my name is Kun Qian. So I’ve checked your questionnaire and your medical history, and I’ve compiled a list of things you are able to participate in.”
He handed you a stack of papers, and on top, there it was.
Project E 2.0
This medication is being tested to treat PCOS and other hormone irregularities.
Side effects include a heightened libido, sensitivity during sex, as well as more intense and stronger orgasms.
You glanced up at Kun, who was clicking his pen. “I’ll just do this one, it seems simple enough.”
Kun sighed, rolling his neck back to crack his neck. “The E one? It’s important for you to know that the side effects of this medication are… strong, to say the least.”
“What, am I going to go feral? It’s fine, just give me the jab.” You laughed, but Kun didn’t respond.
“Yes. The woman who received the 1.0 version was unable to sleep, eat… she couldn’t live a normal life for several weeks because of it. All she was able to do was have sex and be force-fed by her doctor… Well, boyfriend now, I guess.” He pulled off his glasses and looked you in the eye. “I promise, I will be right here, ready to assist you, or anything you may need, but I need to know that you can deal with the pain.”
“Well, when you put it like that… I guess I should learn a bit more first.”
“Do you have a husband or wife? Any significant other that might be able to help?” Kun started to write stuff down on his clipboard.
“Er, I have a roommate?” You fidgeted with the hem of your skirt, unsure of what Kun meant.
Kun exhaled loudly, leaning back in his chair, his annoyance with you obvious. “I meant someone you could have sex with, madam.”
“I have a vibrator?” You laughed, the hairs on your arms standing due to your nerves.
Kun bit his lip. “I think it’s in your best interest to choose another option.”
“Um, but I think this would be the easiest for me… All I have to do is track possible side effects, right? And I can go home?” You flipped through the other studies, ranging from a hypothermia study to a sociology study.
“Well, you’d have to stay here for a week, only so we can see how you’d react… but yes, you can.” Kun clicked his pen against the clipboard. “I’ll give it to you. Let me lead you to your room.
~
It actually wasn’t that bad, considering this was an independent clinic. You had your own bedroom and bathroom, and your roommate sent you clothes for your week stay.
Kun sat on the chair next to your bed, letting you settle in before giving you the shot.
“I’m ready.” You sat on the bed, shuffling over to where Kun was sitting.
“There.” Kun injected it. “I’ll stay with you for the first hour, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. Do you wanna get in bed with me?” You scooched over, letting him in.
“Um…” Kun stood up, sitting down next to you, taking his shoes off before moving to sit next to you.
“So, Doctor, how’s your day going?” You turned on the TV in front of you, switching the channel to some cheesy reality Lifetime show.
“You’re the first person I’ve seen today, so I guess… Good.” Kun inspected your body, from the palms of your hands down to your chest, then your thighs and feet. “So… what made you want to do this?”
“Money?” You glanced at him, noticing how plump his lips were after he bit his bottom lip. “Why does anyone let themselves do something like this?”
“Well, you’re not wrong, I guess.” The palm of his hand pressed against your forehead, trying to feel for your temperature. “Are you feeling okay?”
“It’s only been like… 5 minutes, so I guess I feel the same.” You looked up at Kun, who was now standing up and sliding his shoes back on.
A minute turned to two minutes, two turned to twenty, twenty turned to sixty…
“I want to check something.” Kun grabbed his stethoscope, putting it in his ears and against your heart. “I’ll be back in a minute…”
You just sat there, scrolling through your phone.
And it started. Your back hit the bed’s back board, the heat getting to you. You knew you were going to get horny, but you didn’t know it was going to be this bad…
The heavy wooden door opened again. “Okay, so I wanted to see if-”
“Doctor…” Your voice was so whiny, you hardly knew you could make that kind of tone. “Need you.” You sat on your knees, reaching out for him, lips pouting, drawling out every word. Blood coursed through your veins, your heart beating out of your chest. And you felt all the blood rush to your clit at the sight of Kun.
“Fuck.” Kun pressed the stethoscope back against your chest, and after about 10 seconds he ripped it out of his ears, falling down towards your body, one of his hands on your shoulder, the other on your back. “Come on sweetie, let’s get you in the shower… or something, I…” Kun frantically looked around, his concern for you resulting in a furrowed brow. “Did your roommate bring you anything, a dildo, or…”
“You…” You finally got out a word. “Please, fuck me.” Tears began to well up in your eyes. It truly was a feeling you never felt, it was like you had been edging for days without release.
A million thoughts rushed into Kun's mind all at once. The loudest one being the word pathetic. You were a pathetic, whining mess, begging him for his cock, needing to fuck him. And it made him so hard. Any man would get hard in his situation, he figured. But he knew he had to stay professional, even if it was for a few more minutes. “I… I don’t think I can, I mean, I’m your doctor!” Kun pushed you off him, then slipped your jacket off you, trying to get you to cool down.
You had a ball of the fabric of Kun’s lab coat in your fist. “Please, I need… anyone.”
“Fuck, fuck… I thought Jaemin fixed it… I knew I shouldn’t have fucking trusted him.” Kun bit his lip, half wanting to search the suitcase and dressers in your room, but also knowing he needed to comfort you right now.
“Cum… Cum inside me…” You whined, your head hitting Kun’s chest. You breathed in the thick scent of his cologne. Minty, musky and woody. He smelled so good, and that just made things worse for some reason. It truly felt like you were going feral, like you were turning back to your primal instincts, needing him inside you, his warm release, to be filled up. “Need… you inside me…”
“Come on baby… work with me.” Kun helped you to your feet, leading you into the bathroom. The lock on the door automatically locked behind the two of you. Kun started undressing you as quickly as possible then pushed you into the bathtub. “Tell me if the water’s too cold.” He turned on the water, the cold helping lower your temperature.
“Kun…” You cooed, wrapping an arm around his neck. “Please, fuck me.”
You caught Kun looking at your body, up at your breasts and down to your thighs…
“I’ll, um…” Kun’s hand entered the water, and began to rub your clit, making you immediately reach your climax.
“Doctor!” You cried out. “More, more please!”
“I don’t know, I don’t know how to help you anymore…” Kun mumbled, thinking hard.
“Cock, please…” You whined.
“Fuck…” Kun helped you out of the bathtub and wrapped you in a towel, quickly drying you off then leading you to the bed, bending you over the mattress.
“Cum inside, please, please, please…” You really felt like you were actually going brain dead, the only thing on your mind being Kun’s cock.
And he finally was inside you. You let Kun do whatever he wanted to with your body. You figured he must’ve been pent up, too. The way his cock slammed into your womb, hitting your cervix with ease, letting you know how sore you were going to be tomorrow. His hands made their way into your mouth, both middle and ring fingers hooking into your cheeks, stretching your lips horizontally, making you drool, tongue sticking out on its own.
He was rough, nothing like the shy boy he was two seconds ago, who didn’t even know if he should be fucking you. It was like a flip switched in his brain, like he was just pretending to be kind so his cock would feel even better when it went inside you…
“Doctor, please be gentler!” You felt like you were melting on his dick, so hot and so hard…
“I don’t want to.” His hands moved to your neck, wrapping around your neck, choking you until you were unable to breathe.
“Cumming!” You screamed out, hitting your second climax.
You felt your womb filling up with Kun’s cum before he pulled out.
He picked you up and laid you back down. “Do you feel better?”
You nodded, sitting up, covering yourself with the blanket.
“Good. I’ll be back with your dinner.” Kun slid his pants back up then left.
~
And after about 30 minutes you felt like a bitch in heat all over again.
“Dinner.” Kun entered again after 45 minutes, catching you with your fingers inside yourself. “Jesus Christ…” He sighed, slamming the tray onto the nearest table.
“Doctor…” You whimpered, hoping he would fuck your again.
“You’re so… pathetic. And whiny.” Kun ran his hands through your hair, then grabbed your hand, pulling your fingers out of yourself and licking your juices off. He stood at the foot of the bed, grabbing your foot to pull you down and began to lick your clit.
And again, you practically immediately reached your high…
Kun wiped his face, your cum on his nose and lips. “Do you feel better?”
You shook your head. “Cum…” You whined. “Please?”
Kun facepalmed, sighing. “Ride me.” He sat on the couch in your room.
You slid off your bed and sat on Kun’s lap, facing away from him, lining his cock into you.
“You know, it’ll hurt more if you take it slow. Put it in all at once.” Kun his hand on your waist, stabilizing you.
“I know!” You whined, shoving it in. “Fuck!”
“Hm? Is that it?” Kun’s tone became more mocking than annoyed. “Do I have to do everything for you?” His arm went under your knees, fucking you under you.
“You’re in too deep, Doctor!” You cried out. You felt like Kun was in your womb. “You’re not gonna be able to pull out!”
“Don’t think.” Kun instructed.
And you did as told, letting your brain melt into nothingness other than the feeling of Kun’s cock inside you. You probably wouldn’t be able to recall your own name…
That was, until Kun’s cum flowed inside you again, bringing you into your own orgasm.
Kun dropped you back onto his lap, your arms wrapping around his neck and your head fell onto his chest.
~
You woke up still on Kun’s lap.
“How long-”
Kun cut you off. “45 minutes. It’s fine.” But really, the entire left side of Kun’s body was numb.
You nodded.
“So, what did you think?” Kun asked you as you climbed off his lap and back onto your own bed.
“It was… good. Amazing, actually, I’ve never felt so good…” You started dreaming about getting stuffed full of Kun’s cum all over again…
“I was talking about the medicine, but thanks for rating my dick.” Kun scoffed, getting up to give you your dinner.
“Oh. Not as fun.” You watched Kun.
“I, um… was thinking that you could live with me and help me test the rest of the iterations of the medication.” Kun hooked you back up to the blood pressure monitor.
“Maybe.” You took a bite of the dinner. “But I’ll say yes if it means I can keep having sex with you.
“You can keep having sex with me even when you stop being my patient.”
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FEELINGS SOLD SEPARATELY
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (THE LAST WOMAN)
Modern!Aemond x Reader
TAGS - (REPOSTED FROM AO3)
Alternate Universe - Sugar DaddySugar BabySugar Baby AUAUokay this is a whole ass story that's just one long ass brain fartliterally i am just coming up with this on the spotlow key really love it thoughSugar Baby/Sugar Daddyobviouslytalks of class issuesaemonds been hurt in the pasti think there will be some sexy stuff eventuallywait fuck i didn't mention this is a modern!aumodern!AUAlternate Universe - Modern Setting<3Aemond "One-Eye" Targaryen is Bad at Feelingsstop that was recommended but so accurateI don't know how to do tagsI'm SorryI promise it's goodAnd no one diesand it's just so classically a sugar baby/ sugar daddy au it hurtsreader works at a cafe ... obviouslythis will follow a similar storyline to the show just modern and also not at allFamily Issueswait probably dom/sub vibes tooDom/subLight Dom/subclearly i don't know where this is going yetmy readers are always written fat because i am fatso keep that in mindSlow Burnit's so slowbut I think it's greatlike genuinely two idiots in lovebut they take soooo long to noticeUghI love fanfiction
(This chapter does get angsty, but all is solved in the end.)
(Special thank you to @throughgoeshamilton who laid their own series headcannons on me and then me expand them, and also listened to my headcannons and helped me expand them as well. Truly thankful!!! <3)
+ + + + + +
“Aemond, where are you taking me?” Y/n asked, the buildings passing the car unfamiliar ones.
“Home.” He hummed, his eye on the road, both hands on the steering wheel, every part of him focussed on driving, almost as if he was pretending Y/n wasn’t there.
“You’re going the wrong way, then.” She pointed out, sitting up a little straighter in her seat.
“I’m taking you to my home, Y/n.” He said coldly, the car making a turn his position never changing. ‘Y/n’ It was her name, but for some reason him saying it felt like a weight on her chest, ‘Why didn’t he use my nickname.’ Y/n shrunk back into her seat, thinking over what might be wrong, why he might seem agitated.
“Aemond?” She whispered.
“Hmm.”
“I’m sorry.” She uttered, hands connecting with one another to fidget once more. “I should have been paying attention, I just, there was, I, someone.” The words for some reason couldn’t leave her lips. 'Alys, Alys was there, I saw red.’
“Alys.” Aemond hummed. “I know.”
“Oh.”
“I promise it’ll be dealt with.” ‘She will be dealt with.’
“It’s not her fault, Aemond, I’m the one who spilled the coffee, I …”
“Don’t do that.” He said lowly. “Don’t blame yourself.”
“But it is my fault.” Y/n insisted, hoping she could avoid any more past drama to be brought up because of her.
“What did she say?” Aemond commanded, ignoring her previous comments.
“Aemond.”
“I asked you what she said, little dragon.” He didn’t back down.
“She was just mad, she didn’t mean it.” Even Y/n was surprised at her protective stance over Alys, though she knew it was just because she didn’t want to recall what Alys said, she didn’t want to deal with whatever had gone down between the two.
“Y/n, don’t make me ask again.” His voice got deeper, though he stayed in control, his eye was narrow, though never it left the road, and his foot never fell heavy against the pedal.
“She seemed surprised that I’m fat, and I don’t know, I guess it just bothered me.” Y/n shrugged her shoulders. “But it’s the easiest thing to pick on, and I know that, so I just tried to ignore her.” The car was quiet other than Y/n’s words, the low rumbling of the car driving drowning out Aemond’s stressed breathing. “I got distracted when she started talking about you, she said I stole you from her.” Y/n seemed to wince at her words, the very thing she didn’t want to know about now the center of attention, though she quickly changed the subject. “Do I … Am I a charity case?” She questioned, more to herself, thinking about how she looked, her lifestyle, and where she worked, were those such defining features?
“Y/n.” Aemond shook his head. “You aren’t a charity case.” His words were clear and specific, cutting through the silence and Y/n’s overthinking quickly. “You earn the money and things I give you.” He explained. “This is a job, it may not be conventional, but I didn’t give it to you because I felt bad for you.” He was almost hurt at the idea Y/n may think that of him, though he couldn’t blame her. Everyone from his world, albeit only two people so far, had looked down on, and verbally complained about Y/n and her status within his life, no wonder she felt the need to second guess his intentions. “This arrangement is mutually beneficial, you may need me, but I need you just as much, if not more.” He paused, shocked at his own confession. “If you’re a charity case, then I’m one too.” The car fell silent once again, grey buildings blurring outside as Y/n tried to come up with something to say. “I assume that wasn’t all she said.”
Y/n contemplated telling him, did he really need to know Alys called her a whore? “Um, no, that was all she said.” Y/n decided, giving Aemond a quick smile, hoping he wouldn’t see right through her.
+
Before long the two of them had reached a tall building, the car descending down a small slope into an underground garage, fancy vehicles parked in each spot, she expected Aemond to pull into one too but instead he kept going straight. The lights seemed to get brighter the further they drove, Y/n figured they went down at least two levels before reaching the large vault-like door. Before she could even gasp, or ask what was inside, the door began to open, even brighter light shining through as more cars came into view. “Oh.” She murmured, her head swiveling to take in the room as the door closed behind them, Aemond just chuckling as she looked on in awe.
The cars weren’t anything special, as Aemond would say, though each was from a popular brand, the most notable one parked in the back, the model older, clearly work had been done to it, the colour sapphire blue, the whole thing shining. “Hmm.” Aemond hummed as he noticed where her attention had gone. “My father gave me that one on my eight and ten year name day.” He almost remembered the moment to be a happy one, though quickly it soured as he remembered the moments that followed. He cleared his throat. “Are you ready?” He asked Y/n, her still looking at the car, her attention not on him for once, his feelings almost hurt.
“Yeah.” She turned to him and smiled, unclicking the seat belt before leaving the car.
“This way.” Aemond chuckled as he walked towards his elevator’s door, Y/n just standing still as she admired the sapphire car once more.
+
The elevator was nice, Y/n didn’t have much to compare it to, though she could tell the black marble walls and clean dark wooden flooring was clearly a tad overkill for an apartment elevator. Then again Aemond clearly had good taste, his fancy clothing, expensive watch, collection of cars … So she assumed the elevator made sense in a way, why would he settle for something simple when he had the means to get exactly what he wanted? ‘Oh.’ When the doors opened Y/n’s eyes widened, the dark wooden flooring continued into the penthouse apartment, the whole living space within view of his ‘Front door’. “Hmm.” Aemond hummed, his coat placed on a bench, the painting above it an abstract of deep forest green and sapphire blue paints, a clear colour scheme that continued throughout. “Are you hungry?” Aemond called from the kitchen, his frame leaning over the black marble counters that matched the elevator, the green cabinets a nice contrast.
“Oh, um.” Y/n took her own coat off placing it next to Aemonds, she wasn’t sure how to act in his home, it was huge, and yet cozy, a feeling she was unfamiliar with. Usually places in the red keep, the mall included, felt clean and cold, unkind almost, but Aemond’s apartment was the opposite. “Sure.” She wandered a little further, the entrance area a step above the rest of his apartment, a hazard if she hadn’t been admiring the shininess of his floors.
“What would you like?” Aemond asked, the fridge now open, his demeanor much more comfortable now, than it was at the shop. “I could make you a grilled cheese? Some pasta?” He continued, trying to grab Y/n’s attention away from her surroundings.
“I’ll have whatever you’re having.” Y/n kept wandering, the living room a few more steps down, though a railing covered most of the exposed drop, his sectional aligned against the corner of the ‘room’, a few chairs littered throughout, like he expected company, yet never had any. The tv was encased in a wall of shelving, books, movies, and neglected plants accompanying it. “Hey!” Y/n shouted happily. “I have this one too!” She smiled at the DVD copy of ‘The wars of Old Valyria’ “I prefer the book though, it covers a lot more of the personal entanglements of those involved with the main story.” She pouted slightly, placing it back in it’s spot.
Aemond smiled as he looked at her exploring, her on her tippy toes as she looked at what occupied the top shelf before falling back to her flat feet. His chest warmed at the sight of her in his home, her socked feet padding through his living room as she interrogated his own personal library, a soft smile seemingly stuck on her face as she did so. He let his mind wander, the thought of her sitting on his couch in her pajamas, book in her hand, maybe a cat or two sleeping next to her as he cooked dinner made his heart squeeze a little too hard. Did he want that? ‘Yes.’.
“Mr Targaryen.” A muffled voice spoke, Aemond huffing as he walked back towards the elevator, a small black metal box the center of his attention, he pressed a button before speaking.
“Yes Arryk?” Aemond was clearly frustrated, his tone sharp, the intrusion not welcome in the slightest.
“Miss Rivers is here to see you.” The man’s voice was distorted through the radio, but his fear was evident.
“Tell her to go home.” Aemond’s back straightened slightly, any previously peaceful thought in his mind fleeting. “Arryk?” Aemond yelled this time, as if the loudness of his voice could protect himself from what was to come.
“I’m sorry Sir, she just, she …” Arryk began to explain, his message was breathy and hard to understand.
The elevator dinging cut the man off, Alys, who had yet to change, or even look phased by her previous activities, seemed to waltz in, her head held high as if she owned the place. “Aemond.” She smiled, her back turned to the room, Y/n’s mouth slightly agape, her burned hand clutched to her chest as she felt tears begin to build back up. Alys clearly didn’t see her as she began to take her shoes off, going to lean on Aemond for support, though he stood back. “Really?” She scoffed.
“Alys, you need to leave.” Aemond’s arms were crossed, his voice not one of a concerned teacher, but an angry, clearly agitated man, a voice Y/n had only witnessed once before.
“What?” Her eyebrows furrowed as she turned around, though she quickly stopped, her smirk dropping, all confidence draining as she saw Y/n. “Why is she here?” Her voice was quiet, clearly hurt by the image in front of her.
“Why are you here?” Aemond retorted.
“Because, because, Aemond.” Alys struggled to find the words she needed, though her sadness soon turned to anger. “I’m trying to save her.” Alys smiled, proud of her quick thinking. “Look at her!” She turned back to Aemond, her arm gesturing to Y/n. “She’s not built for this life, Aemond, we both know that.” Alys laughed. “You’re going to break her into a thousand little pieces.” Aemond’s mind began to spin. ‘Could she be right?’. “You should be with someone like me!” She yelled, though the noise was loud, her words were what resonated with Aemond. “Someone who can handle your rules, huh? Someone who can take your bullshit, gods, someone who fuck you properly!” Alys was enraged, her voice echoing throughout the room, though every once in a while a sob would escape Y/n’s lips, Aemond’s heart breaking each time.
“Alys that’s enough.” Aemond moved to stand in between her and Y/n, no longer letting the woman’s eyes bore into Y/n with vigor.
“Aemond, she can’t satisfy you. You’ll only break her trying.” Alys’s eyes too were filled with tears, the image of the man she loved, who she so desperately wanted to love her back, protecting another woman, finally becoming too much. When Aemond didn’t move Alys just scoffed. “You know where to find me.” She said, bending down to pick up her shoes before entering the elevator again, her once confident, enraged demeanor now deflated, silent sobs wracking through her body.
Aemond didn’t want to turn around, he didn’t want to face Y/n, Alys’s words still rung loudly in his mind, sure she said them to save face, but he couldn’t help but shake the idea that maybe she was right. “Aemond?” Y/n cried, his head hung low at the sound. “I, I won’t break.” She promised. “I won’t! I can handle the rules!” She was almost begging at this point, Aemond unmoving. “I like them, and I, I want to please you! I want to make you happy, and I will learn them, I’ll be good.” Her voice was high, like she couldn’t breathe. “I can, I can even …” She steadied her speech slightly, swallowing the urge to crumble. “I can learn to …”
“Don’t.” Aemond hummed. “Don’t say that.” He read her mind, of course he wanted more with her, he wished to give her the world, to let her flourish under his care, but he couldn’t live with himself if he let her make a promise to learn how to fuck him just so he would let her stick around. Because if he was honest with himself he didn’t think he could get rid of her even if he tried, something about her pulled him back time and time again. He had to resist the urge to go back to her work after they first met up, he just wanted to see her again, and he didn’t hate himself for it, but it scared him, she scared him, she was different, she made him feel different.
He knew he could break her, it was always a risk, but that’s why the rules were there, he knew not to overstep, he knew to check in, he knew he had self control, and as much as he hated what Alys had done to Y/n, what she said, he appreciated the reminder. “Aemond?” Y/n sounded defeated, and she was, just as Alys’s words haunted Aemond, they haunted her too. She knew Aemond wouldn’t break her, Aemond ignored multiple broken rules that were clear as day, if anything she thought he was getting soft. But she worried Alys’s words broke Aemond, that they made him realize how she wouldn’t fit in his world, how she was the wrong choice, she worried that maybe this whole time the worries she had were valid.
Aemond didn’t say anything back, he just made his way to her, his eye meeting her shaking frame. “Y/n.” He sighed, his one hand immediately laid atop her head, slowly sliding to cradle her neck, pulling her to him, her cries muffled into his chest as her hands wrapped around his torso. She just cried, unable to say something, unable to try and make a case, she was ready for the shoe to drop, for Aemond to retract from her grasp, but he embraced her instead, his other hand meeting her back, rubbing soothing circles over her shirt. “I’m sorry, little dragon.” He whispered, Y/n’s breath hitching slightly. “She shouldn’t have been able to get in here.” He admitted, his hand leaving her back as it found the other side of her neck, a position they had been in once before, their hugs, although limited at, now, two, seemed to always include Y/n crying. ‘I need to change that.’.
“You won’t break me.” She whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks. “And if you do I don’t think I’d mind.” She said even quieter than before, wishing she could point her eyes to the ground, though Aemond’s hand made her keep eye contact, a smirk growing on Aemonds face as his thumbs wiped away a few falling tears.
“Let’s start with some pasta.” He chuckled. “Then we can discuss the rules you broke in the car, hmm?” He didn’t want to get his hopes up, he didn’t want to search her words for more meaning then she gave them. She was still reeling from Alys’s words, all of them, her hand was most likely still throbbing, he would circle back to her comment another day, but for now he knew he needed to get some food in her and definitely some water.
Y/n pouted. “Aw. I was rooting for grilled cheese.” She teased, her hands now resting on top of Aemond’s. ‘Lean in! Kiss me! See me!’. Aemond did lean in, but only to kiss her forehead before pulling away, walking her to the kitchen so he could scrap the pasta and make some grilled cheese. “My hand still hurts, you know.” Y/n brought up again, Aemond chuckling, happy to see her annoying yet endearing teasing come back full force.
“I know.”
#aemond targaryen x oc#prince aemond#aemond one eye#aemond targaryen#aemond fanfiction#hotd aemond#hotd#house of the dragon#sugar daddy!aemond targaryen#sb/sd!au#sugar baby!au#modern au#modern!aemond x reader#modern!aemond targaryen#aemond the kinslayer
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wip wednesday | on thursday
Tagged by the lovely @nothoughtsjustmeds yesterday to share a snippet of the latest wip I’m working on. I started this last week and have just been slowly chipping away at it.
It doesn’t have a name yet, but it’s part of the Saturdays with Javier universe
javier peña x f!reader
“Against my better judgment, I’m ignoring your plea for more sleep, so time to get moving if we want to beat the sun. The minute we get back, you can crawl back under these covers— I might even join you.” His alluring words murmured over your bare shoulder, the softest kisses left in their wake.
You hold him close. Fingers tangled in his freshly washed hair, smelling of the citrusy mint shampoo you recently bought him— finally running out of his all-in-one bar of soap. Javier pulls back to look down at where you’re still lying comfortably among the heap of pillows. Your hand settles on his cheek, the coarse stubble is rough and resistant as your palm rests against his cheek— he must have opted out of shaving at this early hour.
“Promise you will join me when we get back and you have yourself a deal, Javi.”
“Te promeso, mi amor.” His lips mold over yours, sealing his promise with the softest kiss.
NPTs @kteague @gnpwdrnwhiskey @lovesbiggerthanpride @guess-my-next-obsession @undercoverpena and who ever else wants to share
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Woody Fragrance Recommendations
for @unlikelypersonalknight1 by @secret-third-thing
This was a lot of fun to put together! Let me know what you think and we can make adjustments based on your thoughts! Sorry I wrote a novel <3
If anyone else wants perfume recs, just give me a shout! Tagging @areyoudreaminof b/c you're my only other acotar perfume buddy <3
So the base I was given was Woody (or Pine-sol which in itself is a VERY unique scent). I took some big creative liberties and started us on some different brands that have different types of woody.
Some quick terminology (used mostly correctly-ish):
Fragrance - what I mean when I talk about cologne, perfume etc
(Scent) Family - You'll hear me refer to Woody as a scent family. This comprises of different notes (ex. cedar, pine, sandalwood)
Notes - in this case, I'm talking about specific scents. A fragrance may have Top notes (what you smell first) mid/heart notes ( what you smell mostly after an hour, and base notes (which really come into play after an hour or so. You can smell them all to a degree when you first spritz something, but the fragrance will evolve over time.
Brand No.1: Replica | Maison Margiela (also @ Sephora)
These scents were created to replicate/evoke memories of fairly universal experiences!
Autumn Vibes - Starts off with a burst of sweetness, but settles into a deep woody note. It's earthy and warm, like hugging a tree.
By the Fireplace - You're hit with smokey notes, and then it becomes a delicious spicy/sweet combo. The sweetness comes from the Vanilla, while the Cloves and Sweet pepper give you that burst of spicy. Real LoA vibes here.
Now it's a bit of choose your own adventure here. Both of these aren't woody, per se, but have woody or wood adjacent notes:
Aromatic, sweet , coffee shop vibes? -> Coffee Break
Leathery, sweet, and a little spicy -> Jazz Club
Brand No.2: Imaginary Authors
Literature inspired scents that are mysterious, broody, and truly unique.
Whispered Myths - This scent is considered sweet, woody and animalic, which is hard to describe other than fur, skin etc. (it's not that gross I promise!) There's also some distinct melon in there.
Cape Heartache - This may be the closest scent to what you requested! It has notes of pine and fir. The light, barely there sweetness comes from fruit (and you guessed it...vanilla).
Memoirs of a Trespasser - another sweet, woody scent, but more of a gourmand (i.e. it's that vanilla!!) If you liked By the fireplace but wanted something a little more sweet and less spicy, try this.
Brand No.3: Boy Smells (also @ Sephora)
A brand that puts a twist on traditional scents. These are VERY unusual and contain a lot of notes that you don't see in a lot of commercial fragrances.
Tantrum - this is woody and GREEN. There's a little bit of citrus in there, but I think the green pepper (aromatic note) really shines here. It's SO different than anything on this list
Hinoki Fantome - deep, woody, smoky, very, VERY earthy. This is what I'd consider a DRY wood. If you like Autumn vibes but wanted something deeper, this may hit the spot
Marble Fruit - If you want something way more floral and fruity but still with woody vibes upon dry down, this is a lovely scent. It also leans into aquatic (my fav). But this is definitely the LEAST woody scent on this list.
Brand No.4: The Harmonist
The love of my life probably. Perfumes based on alchemy. Unfortunately, a bottle is so obnoxiously expensive. Get the scent kit first.
Royal Earth - do you want something creamy, powdery, and woody? This combines everything great about traditional perfume with wood. But it's more floral than woody at first.
Magnetic Wood - this definitely starts out with a kick of citrus and floral but then dies dries down to a lovely sandalwood, cedar base!
Golden Wood - another more citrusy wood, but it leans more into fruity (imo) than the above.
Desired Earth - if you want something herby and fresh, but with some cedar vibes, this is for you. You may like this because it's got similar clean vibes as Pine-sol
Anyway, I hope this helped. I had SO much fun putting these together. It forced me to catalog my collection and revisit some favorites. If you find that you're changing your mind or want to try something else, please let me know. Happy fragrance hunting!
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