#by holding out on some points so i can eventually make a third one just like kr is doing with the guidebooks LOL
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ichikuu bangers 2️⃣:
across years and miles apart, despite rings not really being an accessory they both wore in their nb days, they somehow still managed to have matching rings on their hands
same colour palette
their drama track bro 😭😭😭
the running theme in it that kuukou refuses to leave ichiro’s side
the happy quiet giggle ichiro does when kuukou expresses this
speaking of ichiro’s giggles, that really embarrassing happy giggle he does when jyushi tells him he sounds just like kuukou when he’s being a hardass
double barrel, their duet title, has a secondary meaning, ‘to get married’
the nb team colour is gold they’re the golden duo
stage kuukou told ichiro he was his soulmate and we learn this through a very normal song about how much ichiro misses kuukou
when we finally got this duet with the two of them irl, they share a coke and i mean literally, kuukou takes a sip of coke and tosses the bottle to ichiro who then takes a sip himself
sometimes they call that phenomenon an indirect kiss lol 🤭
it’s also uniquely insane that during their final duet, as kuukou didn’t apologise for being late he cupped the back of ichiro’s neck and leaned in close—
bop 2023 was actually their time to shine lol lemme tell you about how ichiro and kuukou happened to meet on some stairs during wiz 6 mics and kuukou ruffled ichiro’s hair
or when kuukou playfully karate chopped ichiro’s head lmao
or how they kuukou’s improv rock paper scissors together where rock meant eternal bond, paper meant hands to praise one another with a scissors to poke your eyes out lmao
tho ichiro likely didn’t know it at the time, when the two of them played rock paper scissors together they tied on rock aka eternal bonds 😌
if you were ever curious about what happened to kuukou’s bandana, the stage’s interpretation of it is that kuukou took it off and dropped it as he bid his hypnosis induced farewell
this interpretation is also highly likely to be the work of hirono-san’s imagination only lol so he Gets It
speaking of kuukou actors who get it, hayama looked at this black bird kite and went ‘this is ichiro kin, i’m naming this ichiro’ and scribbled naughty busters on it and sent it flying lol
since the kite’s meant to be a symbol of strength, that basically means that ichiro is symbol of strength for kuukou
back in that leaders fantasy event in arb ichiro and kuukou wore matching cord belts
rhyme anima has been fun lol they started to get into a fight just for funsies (they clearly didn’t mean it lmao)
you can tell they didn’t mean it because in their following conversation, it’s heavily implied kuukou never really wanted ichiro to contact him ahead of time because ichiro is always welcome to wherever kuukou is and they smile very satisfied with each other lol
there’s a nb flashback scene where kuukou boasts about their street cred and ichiro does one of his embarrassing giggles
the literal next second, some acquaintances show up ichiro immediately turns away to let kuukou handle social interactions since apparently ichiro only wanted to talk and smile at kuukou back in those days lol
rhyme anima said ichiro and kuukou are symbolically the tiger and dragon, two different forces working together for the same goal
#vee queued to fill the void#there’s always more lmao but i’m pulling a kr#by holding out on some points so i can eventually make a third one just like kr is doing with the guidebooks LOL#like forreal i probably could make a third one rn lol i didn’t mention more recent arb events or drama tracks#or official art or stuff hidden in their details THERES SO MUCH#YAY ICHIKUU DAY HERES TO THEIR FRIENDSHIP ❤️💜❤️💜❤️💜❤️💜❤️💜❤️💜❤️💜❤️💜❤️💜
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So many thoughts on the fabulous Barbie film, but especially on how anyone who thinks it’s “hateful towards men” clearly isn’t getting the message.
SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT
[Credit for both gifs goes to their makers!!]
I mean... Ken’s arc is secondary to Barbie’s, and rightly so. This is her film, and her message deserves to be the main takeaway.
That being said, I just find it really sad that the people who could’ve definitely used the point of Ken’s arc just let it go right over their heads. Maybe it’s because they aren’t great at reading subtext, or because they just balk at anything presented as feminist, I don’t know.
Because to me, Ken’s arc is about as far from “hateful towards men” as you can get. It’s a multi-layered depiction of how restrictive, outdated views of masculinity can hold men back and make them susceptible to harmful ideologies that promise easy solutions for all their problems but only make those problems worse and hurt others around them.
The first layer is an allegory for real men don’t show their feelings. In the movie, this is represented by Ken’s need to look tough and cool all the time, and to keep his insecurities and sadness bottled up. Barbieland is a utopia where being happy is a social norm, and the main Barbie also starts to struggle with that. The difference is that she eventually tells her friends, and they all support her. Ken just puts pressure on himself not to look weak - in front of Barbie, or in front of the other Kens.
Which brings us to the second level: a competitive and inherently hostile view of the other Kens, aka. toxic male relationships. Some of them are friends, and all of them work together for a while to build the Patriarchy, but they don’t actually bond for real. Even their boys’ nights are mainly about getting back at the Barbies for all their girls’ nights (which really were about bonding). When push comes to shove, the Kens still see each other as competition, which is one of the reasons why the Barbies are able to play them against each other.
Another reason is the third layer: the idea that Ken only has value if Barbie loves and admires him. It starts out as unrequited love that makes you feel sorry for him...until he turns bitter. He basically starts on the path that could lead him down the incel/mra rabbit hole and into a mindset where Barbie owes him love and admiration and the relationship he wants in exchange for his devotion to her. He decides that everything would be better if Barbies were subservient to Kens, but of course that’s not true. None of the Barbies’ newfound admiration for their Kens is real, and his own Barbie still rejects him.
All this is of course underpinned by the final layer, which is Ken’s lack of self-respect and sense of purpose. He’s got a pointless job, he’s not particularly qualified for anything, and he just feels kind of lost in Barbieland - a society run by successful Barbies who are living up to their full potential. That’s why he gets so caught up in the idea of the Patriarchy, which is supposed to make him successful, get others to respect him, and give him a sense of purpose. (This can be generalised to all kinds of harmful ideologies in the real world, e.g. the alt-right movement.)
However, the success he achieves is superficial and not based on any real passion; he even admits that he wasn’t happy in his new position and already lost interest in the ideology. The (forced) respect of others does feel good for a while, but it only goes so far. At heart, the whole thing is still mostly about his feelings of inferiority and unrequited love for Barbie, and instituting this harmful new system did not resolve those for him.
So what does? In essence, breaking out of all these harmful patterns and internalising the idea that he is enough.
He ends up reflecting on his feelings, finally puts them to words (or rather, song and dance), and manages to connect with the other Kens through those feelings. He even cries in relief and acknowledges that it doesn’t make him weak. He and Barbie finally have a proper talk, he lets go of their (non-)relationship, and he listens when she says he needs to figure out his real self. He starts to see himself not through his job, his girlfriend, or even his competition with the other Kens, but as just Ken, who is enough.
I honestly can’t think of a less hateful message to send men and boys.
#barbie spoilers#barbie movie spoilers#barbie 2023 spoilers#barbie movie#barbie 2023#barbie meta#greta gerwig#barbie#ken#and of course the perfect ken#ryan gosling#he is kenough
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Love your work ♡♡♡
I was thinking about a bull hybrid könig with a cow hybrid reader... (let's be clear not furries lol)
They both live at a farm and könig can't interact with the cute cow girls cause the farmers are worried he'll loose control and breed them all, so he can only look at them from his stable while they frolick in the fields, fisting his cock while he watches them giggle..
But then, good news! The farmers decide they want new calves, so one day könig wakes up and instead of being all alone like usual he finds his dream girl besides him, shyly telling him that she's there to be bred (bonus points if she's a virgin)
CW: my humble attempt at hybrids lol... big chested reader, (forced) breeding, voyeurism/third party watching, dubcon from both sides, fluff if you squint. 18+ MINORS DNI
The first thing König sees is her smile and bright eyes, long lashes that are cast down the second he manages to make her flustered with his stare. They’re both naked – he because he likes to sleep naked, she because… well, he doesn’t have a clue why. But his cock embarrassingly shoots up when he sees her breasts, large enough to provide milk for an entire array of babies if need be.
To his knowledge, no one has been allowed to breed his beautiful cows. He calls them his, even if he’s never seen them close, his lovely, calm women who love to bask in the sun and sometimes chase each other on the field of greenery. He likes to think they play pretend that a bull like him was chasing them, a cattle he’s trying to mount, because they giggle and run as if it was the greatest fun to be chased around in the fields.
And there’s no way they haven’t seen him watching them from his pen. It’s triple fenced to keep him from bursting out and breeding every single cow he gets under him, and they're right to be afraid because his cock is always swollen and leaking, pushing forwards and up to deliver his seed deep inside a waiting womb.
But right now, he doesn’t have to chase or fist his angry cock at the sight of the giggling women clearly in need of a good, hard dicking. Right now, he gets to examine this demure, naked girl right in front of him, clasping her hands in front of her from shyness, round breasts squishing adorably together as she does that.
The conversation that follows is intoxicating and perverse – she asks if she can touch his… that. Nodding to the dangerous sight that is his towering, twitching cock, he’s proud to present it to her fully. It’s leaking and jutting up in all its glory, and it’s only natural that she’s intrigued. He agrees on one condition: she can fondle his cock all she wants if he gets to massage her teats in return...
She looks helpless for a while, but nods eventually, taking a soft step forward. Soon, he feels a soft hand around his girth, running up and down his veined, bumpy length. There comes some hushed, adoring comments about how huge he is, and more precum leaks out, but he can’t even return the compliments, fixated on her breasts as he is. They’re heavy and plump but don’t lactate which means she has never been bred. He even tries to suck them to confirm this is the cause, making her shudder and cry from how fiercely he tries to suck and tug at both her nipples.
This crusade only ends in him spilling too soon, with sudden, thick spurts that make her yelp again from surprise. She’s holding his long pale cock in her hand, staring at the cum shooting out from the tip with wide eyes and a dropped jaw.
These cows are such simple creatures, innocent and a little dumb, soft and carefree in their naivety. But he’s more disappointed with himself, wasting perfectly good seed just from a few licks and sucks at her jugs.
“That was not supposed to happen,” he grunts when she’s still staring at his throbbing cock like it’s the most amazing thing she's ever seen.
“Oh,” she whispers. “What was supposed to happen then…?’
He looks up at his silly, simple cow, and smiles darkly.
“All of that was supposed to go inside you.”
Her big, wide eyes blink, long lashes bat slowly and consistently from horror and awe.
That’s when the master of the farm barges in, stares at the scene for a moment, and then starts to yell at them.
He left them alone for a few minutes and there’s already wasted semen on the floor??
The cow is yanked away from him, her tits swollen, red and heavy from his mouth. His cock never refuses to land, it only stands up, knowing there will be more action soon to come.
The farmer complains about how much money he paid for a big breeding bull like König, only to have his stupid cow milk all the seed on the floor. They both get yelled at, called stupid and useless, and the poor, helpless girl is told to get on her knees for the bull.
He’s presented with something even better than a pair of big, round tits – he can’t even begin to get angry at the nasty pervert of a farmer. He simply can’t because his adorable meek cow is perfect, absolutely perfect, with her throbbing hole up in the air like this. It’s swollen and glossy, making his cock jerk and bounce with urgency, and the mounting happens without him even thinking about it.
The farmer sighs when he sees his bull’s first attempts at breeding. Scoffs and waves his hand in the air as König probes and prods with his cock for far too long, trying to hit the right hole while the girl is whimpering from fear and want under his heavy weight. His already seed-covered cock finally slips in, and the poor thing under him screams and shudders.
He barely remembers anything after that.
It’s both a nightmare and the most beautiful dream he’s ever had, finally getting to mount and breed a wanton cow. The mating is hurried and compulsive, his hips do their best to get another load of seed out as fast as possible. The girl trembles and moans under him, her big breasts bounce and jiggle with every thrust, and at some point something incredible happens.
The farmer is yelling again – he’s supposed to breed the cow, not give her an orgasm! – but he doesn’t care, he just continues to rut and huff and snort and grunt, bellowing loud and hard as his seed shoots forth.
His pretty little cow is shaking, trembling by the time he’s finished with the breeding, all his strong seed safe and plugged deep inside of her. She sniffles and pants under him, whines and sobs, whispers that it feels so good – and then she’s pulled away from him, led out of the pen, forced to leave his cock.
She barely gets to glance back at him with wet, glossy eyes, asking for his help, no, pleading for it. Those big, vulnerable, defenseless depths will haunt him forever, the love and affection in her eyes so vast that a few, tiny drops of cum push out of his cock just from that hopeless look alone.
They don’t even let him cuddle and hold her after, she’s being escorted away like the cattle that she is, and even if they brought him a hundred big breasted cows to breed he would never forget those eyes and that face.
He’s all spent, weak from breeding like his life depended on it, but these people truly underestimate the strength of a bull. He draws air through his nostrils like a tempest, and starts a riot like nothing else.
He destroys the whole pen in the process, nothing left but splinters of wood and some barely intact poles. The farmer is unrecognizable by the time he’s done, and his cow has fled further away, clearly afraid of him and his sudden unleash of power.
But she doesn’t flee when he goes to her.
No: her lips are pressed tightly together, her eyes still wide with awe and wonder, but she doesn’t run away like most scared cattle would do. She’s his now, and she knows it, only awaits for advice on where to go next. She will follow him wherever he goes, like a wild beast who knows her mate will keep her safe and lead her to abundant pastures: somewhere far away where their offspring can live a good, free life.
#tw: hybrid#könig smut#help lmao#not in my element at all i hope this doesn't suck too much!#at least the evil farmer got what he deserved!
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♡ SLEEPING with the HSR men ♡
featuring: dan heng; welt; sampo; gepard; jing yuan
tw: some light cursing from me, sampo's is a bit suggestive
type: fluff, a bit silly
pronouns used: none
a/n: recreating the genshin version of this post which went viral to announce that i'm now writing & accepting requests for HSR.... and not b*ha that was a moment of weakness sorry everyone LOL
utc for length!
DAN HENG
naps all the goddamn time
the astral express will be cruising along and he'll let out this giant yawn and march gives you the side-eye and you know. your boyfriend is about to gently grab your hand and sleepily lead you into his... room (?) for a power nap
these can last anywhere from fifteen minutes, where dan will just barely wrap his arms around you and close his eyes for a bit, to three hours, where his head will hit his unfortunately thin pillow, and he won't even have time to give you a kiss before he's down for the count
he's an incredibly heavy sleeper, which works to his benefit and his detriment
he gets nightmares relatively frequently. while they don't happen every time he gets the chance to rest, it's around a third of the time, and sometimes he'll even wake up in a cold sweat and flail around to make sure you're still with him
even if you don't wake easily, seeing your sleeping form nearby calms him down. he knows he's safe.
actually, just having you sleep next to him makes it less likely for the nightmares to appear, and eventually, he makes such a habit of getting you to come with him every time he goes to bed that he can't actually sleep without some part of his body touching you
if you're on a particular stop or for some reason you have to sleep away from him, dan heng gets little to no sleep. he clutches his pillow as a (not very effective) surrogate, and wakes up with a sore neck and less braincells than usual
he needs his beauty sleep.
if dan is asleep next to you, and you wake up before him while he's holding you, don't bother trying to get up. he won't stop you from leaving, but he'll do something even worse: he'll lightly grab your arm as you get up and look at you through one bleary eye with the haziest expression on his face, and he'll ask you to stay, please?
alright fine. after you use the bathroom. needy ass (affectionate)
WELT YANG
"i don't need sleep, i have coffee"
get into bed old man or i swear to god
welt tries to have a sleep schedule, honestly. he's just not very good at it
he's a chronic caffeine drinker, and while he knows it's not good for him, he's also a slight workaholic and when he gets into the groove of working on something, he needs to stay awake to see it through. unfortunately, this means he's often up until the early hours of the morning, and you're fast asleep in bed before he even realizes what time it is.
he makes it up to you. whenever this happens and he finds you conked out how you were waiting for him, he picks you up and puts you in a more comfortable position, and tucks you into the covers next to him once he joins you
he needs to realize that taking a nap with the love of his life is just as refreshing, if not more, than a mug with four shots of espresso is
(you have seen him go to a coffee shop and order a "quad espresso" with the most tired, deadpan expression and have the baristas look at him in awe and fear)
the type to tuck the both of you in and forget that he has his glasses on. luckily at this point pompom is an experienced glasses mender.
he has lost at least six pairs to this plight.
welt is an average sleeper, and he doesn't move around much, so despite his aversiveness to actually getting into bed, he is a good sleeping partner.
GEPARD LANDAU
gepard enjoys sleeping with you so much that bedtime is his favorite part of the day
well, for multiple reasons, actually. he really likes the intimacy that goes along with washing up together and getting ready for bed
he's one to lie awake with you for a few minutes and read or scroll through your phones or just talk to each other before you go to bed. it's his favorite time to unwind and destress from the duties of being captain.
he tries so hard to let you fall asleep first, but damn if he isn't exhausted. he usually ends up falling asleep before you.
gepard's sleep schedule is very strict and regular. he goes to bed probably between ten and eleven at night and has to wake up for work around five am (rest in peace)
this gives him anywhere between six and seven hours of sleep every night, which is just enough to get him through the day and back to you in the evening.
he's not exactly a light sleeper? he wakes pretty easily but it takes a few buzzes of his alarm before he realizes that he's supposed to be waking up then.
gepard wants so badly to be the partner who stays in bed "five more minutes" with you, or calls in sick from work just to stay in bed for the day. unfortunately, with his position, it just isn't possible, which breaks his heart every morning.
to make up for that, he leaves a note at his spot on the bed -- it's anything from "extra hard day today most likely. i'll miss you <3" to a silly, horrible doodle of him giving you a kiss
and then he's off to smack monsters over the head with his sister's guitar case
SAMPO KOSKI
"sampo koski always goes to bed on time!"
lies. or, well, he tries? i guess?
he means to, anyway... there's just always something to distract him, whether it be you, or social media, or some brand new business opportunity pinging him
being a traveler, the two of you often sleep in hotels or motels across belobog. it's not bad! sampo always reserves rooms in the nicest area nearby -- he likes to treat you to the nicest sheets and the best room service
i mean, you can't really have any fun if you're not comfortable~
smack him with a pillow please. or a brick!
doesn't have the tiniest bit of a bedtime routine. he decides he's tired, he flops on top of you, and he's out
sleeps like the dead. there is no waking sampo koski until it is time for him to wake up
the morning is when you remind him he has to shower and brush his teeth, to which he reluctantly agrees and smiles at you bashfully
which, actually, is kind of cute
this isn't to say he doesn't care about his appearance -- he DEFINITELY DOES. he just oftentimes forgets to wash up before he fals asleep.
he's another one who has to be touching you at all times while he rests. whether it be a hand, a foot, his head on your chest, your head on his chest... it doesn't matter. he likes the security he feels when he knows you're there with him.
JING YUAN
jing yuan always goes to sleep on time!
truth. he actually gets agitated when his sleep schedule is thrown off.
he has it written down in his head; his bodily clock is incredibly regimented. his sleeping times, eating times, and self-hygiene times all have to be the same every day, or his whole day feels off
he doesn't need an alarm clock. he wakes up at the same time every day, give or take a half hour. if he wakes up any earlier or later than his usual waking up zone, he goes into a sour mood as if he just knows the rest of the day will be bad.
he's another heavy sleeper. jing yuan prefers to sleep on his back and have you sleep on his chest. or on some occasions, he'll spoon you.
the lion sleeps at the foot of the bed
another part of his nightly routine is goodnight kisses and bedtime meat. he grabs a little chunk of chicken or beef for the kitty and gives each of you a kiss before he turns out the light and goes to sleep
if you prefer to stay up for a while doing your own things, he has no qualms with that, as long as it doesn't disturb his rest. things like having your phone out or a reading lamp on don't bother him -- he can go to sleep regardless of the lighting conditions.
i'm just imagining how fucked up he gets from jet lag. poor guy. aeons forbid he ever travel to a different planet with a separate passage of time
#hsr#honkai star rail#hsr x reader#honkai star rail x reader#dan heng#dan heng x reader#welt#welt yang#welt x reader#welt yang x reader#gepard#gepard landau#gepard x reader#sampo#sampo koski#sampo x reader#jing yuan#jing yuan x reader#hcs#dan heng hcs#welt hcs#gepard hcs#sampo hcs#jing yuan hcs#sfw#gn!reader#no pronouns
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good girls are bad girls (that haven't been caught) | sub!kuroo tetsurou
wc: 2k+ words | masterlist
dom!fem!reader (however it can be read as gn!reader as no body parts are mentioned), begging, crying, teasing, mean!reader, degrading, insulting, slight hair pulling, marking, slight bondage, clothed touching, praising, mention of the reader fucking/marking other people, kuroo is kinda shitty at first, theres plot and smut isn't until later down
note : this is very loosely based off of 'good girls' by 5sos and oh my god i wrote a lot. also I literally wrote this in 4 different sections and had to write in between in order to get to all 4 parts...
"Kuroo, you're failing all your classes except gym. How's that even possible?!" Kuroo shrugs nonchalantly, not paying attention at all and instead opting to look outside the window.
The teacher sighs, taking off her glasses and rubbing her temples. 5 minutes in and she is already getting a headache dealing with him.
"You're a third year already, you should be focusing on studying to get good grades in order to graduate," she says, grabbing the nearby stack of paper on her desk and organizing it. "Lucky for you, however, someone agreed to help tutor you for your main subjects."
"Yeah sure, whatever. Can I go now?" He's had plenty of tutors already and all of them quit only a few days in due to him being uncooperative whenever they tried to help him. He rather enjoys watching them give up and leave him at the library. She sighs again.
"Her name is, [name]. I think you may know her. After all, she's a third-year like you and is at the top of her class."
Kuroo snaps his attention toward his teacher. Did he hear that right?
You're gonna be his tutor? The school's well-known good girl? The girl who gets nothing but straight A's for every piece of schoolwork? Shit. Sure you may be a good tutor and all but he's heard numerous rumors of how strict you are when you're tutoring and he doesn't feel like dealing with it anytime soon.
"Ah, so you know their name at least." She can't help but smile. Finally, he gives her his attention. "They've agreed to tutor you right after school a few days a week at the back of the library-" He scoffs.
"The back of the library? Obviously, she chooses that spot. She's there every single day!"
His teacher gives him a stern look for cutting her off.
"You should be grateful. Today will be the first day she tutors you. She said she would be there on time so don't be late, I'm sure you'll do just fine."
"Yeah right," he mumbles under his breath.
"I heard that."
---
He's late by over 20 minutes, not that he really cares anyways.
As he strides into the library, he looks around and rolls his eyes. The library was practically empty with only a few students sitting at tables and the librarian quietly typing on her computer.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees some students staring at him though not very subtlety. They're either staring due to just clearly being attracted to him or just surprised that he, the school's infamous fuckboy, was at the library. He likes to think that it's the former.
While walking to the back of the library, he notices that the number of students start to decrease. Eventually, he makes it to the very back and sees you. He sneers in disgust at all the books on the table and the open notebook in front of an unoccupied chair.
As he sits down, the chair scraps against the floor which catches your attention. With a blank face, you acknowledge him with a nod.
"My name is [name]," you say. "It's nice to meet you."
He holds back from rolling his eyes from how formal you're being.
"Yeah whatever, I already knew that. Name's Kuroo." If you're taken aback by his forwardness, you don't show it. Instead, you go to open a book that he notices is a math one and he groans.
"From what I've been told, your math grade is the lowest." Though it's on the tip of your tongue, you hold yourself from mentioning that it was the lowest grade by only a few points.
"Well then, let's begin."
---
"That's incorrect. Here, I'll show you." You write down the problem and answer it so quickly and so effortlessly that it makes Kuroo groan in frustration.
You hold back from rolling your eyes. While you knew he would be a pain in the ass to tutor, you didn't expect him to be this annoying. Every question you've asked him so far, he's got wrong. Additionally, he's barely paying attention. By now, it's past the time that you expected the session to last. You keep checking your watch and you swear time is slowing down. You wish for the library to close already.
Your irritated mood almost makes you punch him in the face but you're keeping yourself from doing that. Unfortunately.
You have to keep a good reputation, [name]. How would everyone react if they found out you punched a dude out of pure annoyance?
However, your reputation is probably the last thing you care about right now.
Wrong question after wrong question makes you even more irritated and you swear you're about to break.
"Are we done?" You shake your head. He still has yet to answer a question right.
"What? We're not? Why?" He stares at you with a confused look that infuriates you even further and you're about to answer back until he cuts you off.
"Whatever, you're going to quit just like all the other stupid tutors anyways. Besides, even if you're the school's good girl, I bet you do all sorts of stuff back here if you know what I mean-"
You abruptly grab him by his tie and force him closer to you with only a few inches between you two.
"Shut the fuck up." You snarl at him. "Holy shit are you so stupid! You can't even answer these basic math questions that even an fucking elementary student can!"
You let go of his tie and watch him back up in shock and trip over his chair, making him fall down onto the floor.
Frustrated, you're about to pack up your stuff until you see something on his pants. A bulge.
You freeze as you gape at it. Holy shit.
Kuroo follows your stare and immediately covers it, face ablaze. "S-stop looking! It's n-not what it seems like!"
As you process the situation, a devilish grin slowly makes its way onto your face. As you make your way closer to him, he backs up into the bookshelf, watching your every step. Nervousness is painted on his face. It looks rather good on him.
"Oh really? From my perspective, however," you start, bending down so that you're face to face with him and his warm face. "It looks like you're hard from me yelling at you." He feels himself getting even harder and he squeezes his eyes shut, not daring to look at you.
"You know, you're actually right." Kuroo flitches, not expecting to hear your voice so close to his ear. "Unlike what people might think, I don't read books back here all the time."
Kuroo is bright red by now, not daring to open his eyes, and instead lowers his head. He swears that if he does, he'll cum right on the spot from seeing you above him looking down with those eyes of yours.
Your warm breath fans his ear and he can't suppress the shiver that runs through his body.
"W-what do you mean?" The question comes out as a cute whisper. You smirk. "Well, who do you think gave all your friends those hickeys, hm?"
You draw back, watching him slowly open his eyes as the cogs in his head turn as he thinks. Fuck. He looks so adorable when he's confused with his eyebrows furrowed and lips forming a small pout.
That's until he realizes and you can't help but grin when it shows upon his face.
"Your friends are all rather adorable, you know? Especially Kenma. They're such good listeners when I tutor that I can't help but give them a little reward. They were even in the same exact position that you're in right now! All teary-eyed as they oh so kindly begged me to touch them."
Tears prickle Kuroo's eyes.
"Aww, are you jealous?" You feign a pout. "Why? Is it because you only want me to do this to you?"
He immediately nods his head, not caring about his reputation anymore. He just wants you to focus on him and forget his friends.
"How cute." You carefully land on your knees in front of him and untie the tie from his neck and instead use it to tie his hands behind his back. You put one of your hands on the bookshelf behind him to stable yourself.
His breath quickens when he feels your hand ghost over his chest. His senses are heightened as he patiently waits for you to do something. Anything!
"You sure you want to continue?" He nods again.
A whimper escapes him as you immediately scrunch his vest and shirt up, exposing his nipples to the cold air. He feels you place your knee between his legs and a hand on his chest.
He can't quiet his noises as you begin stimulating his whole body. A part of him tries to focus on either you teasing and touching his nipples or the knee that keeps on rubbing against his clothed dick but he can't. Only minutes in and he's already hot all over. It's clear that he's enjoying it.
"Shh, be quiet Kuroo. Don't want everyone to know that you're such a whore for me, right?"
Sobs, mewls, and whimpers leave him as he gets used like a toy for you. He doesn't care that others may hear him, he just wants you to keep going. He's so hard that it hurts.
"Look at you," you say with a sneer, "I barely touched you and you're already so hard. Are you always like this with all the other girls you've fucked? A slut?"
"S-stop it," he sobs, "I'm not h-hard- ah ah!" He gasps as your knee drives against his hard-on and your hand tweaks one of his nipples, watching as he throws his head back slightly and bites his lip to keep his noises in.
"Oh really?" You raise an eyebrow at him. "Then what's this obvious tent in your pants then, hm?" You prove your point by sharply thrusting your knee against it again, forcing another muffled whimper to escape him.
He tries hiding his face by turning it to the side but you immediately grab his chin using your free hand and force him to look at you.
"Don't," you start to say, giving him a glare. "Try covering your face. Got it?" He nods obediently and you can't help but smile.
"Good boy," you say, giving him a quick peck on the cheek. He whimpers at that.
"Oh? Who knew the school's fuckboy would love being called a good boy so much? Maybe I should call you that in front of your friends." You shrug casually. "You know, to see their reaction as your face flushes up and dick hardens. Hell, I bet you'll even like that."
He widens his eyes.
"N-no! Pleas- fuck!" He's close and you know it. Another timed squeeze of his nipple and move of your knee against his dick has him crying. It feels too good.
A tug of his hair elicits a mewl from him as he feels you bite a spot on his neck that has his eyes rolling. You continue biting and licking that spot until you're sure that it'll stay purple for a few days.
Licking your lips, you move back slightly, not enough that you have to stop your movements but enough for you to check out your work.
With his legs spread open, head thrown back, neck marked, and face flushed, Kuroo looked absolutely breathtaking.
"I-Im close!" And it looks like Kuroo is about to cum too. You take a quick glance at the clock and grin. You lean towards his ear.
"Time's up, Kuroo."
Your whisper makes him jump but right when he's about to tell you that he's going to cum, a louder voice from far away shakes him out of his headspace.
"Library closes in 5 minutes!" You stop. No no no.
Quickly standing up, you give him a slight shrug. "Guess the tutoring session is over, Kuroo."
"No! Please! D-don't go!" Ignoring his pleas and sobs, you grab your stuff and right as he thinks you're heading back to him, you only just untie his hands and nothing more.
As you're about to walk out of his sight, he sees you aim your phone at him and click the screen. After, you blow him a kiss and a wink.
"Next session is tomorrow! Don't be late!" And then you're gone, leaving Kuroo all sweating and still hard. Fuck.
Let's just say that he got to next the session rather early.
ty for reading to the end! ❤ - chaepink
╰┈➤ masterlist | rules
#[𝖐𝖚𝖗𝖔𝖔 𝖙𝖊𝖙𝖘𝖚𝖗𝖔𝖚]#[ 🏐 ] haikyuu!#chaepink.nsfw#dom!reader#sub!character#dom reader#dom fem reader#sub!haikyuu#haikyuu x reader#haikyuu!!#haikyuu smut#kuroo tetsurou#kuroo x reader#sub!kuroo#haikyuu#sub!hq#hq x reader#hq smut#sub haikyuu#kuroo tetsuro x reader#sub character#kuroo smut#kuroo tetsurou smut#haikyu smut#haikyu x reader#kuroo tetsuro x you#kuroo x female reader#kuroo x y/n#haikyuu x female reader#haikyuu x gn!reader
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This is just a quick rambling i did mostly at like 4am but just a warning for dark content, murder and manipulation 🤞🤞🤞
Heian era sukuna x op reader who isnt equal to his strength, but close enough to it that he pardons your weakness and keeps you at an arm's length distance bc youre not strong enough for him to belong to you, but youre also too precious to kill, or to belong to someone else.
Youre fun. Youre a pretty thing to look at, and to pleasure himself with. Above all that, youre just like him, thinking only of yourself and plainly disregarding everything else... messing around with you comes only second best to dining on human flesh whenever he's in need of some rich entertainment. And he really believed you'd remain the same, strong/unrelenting/selfish, not by his side per se, but around him, forever.
Until he witnesses you showing a strange interest in someone else... a powerless nobody. An insignificant human man.
That's not right. That's not like you. You should be digging your heel into the man's face from above. You should kill him on the spot. Why are you gazing at him like that instead?
He leaves you be. It must be just a temporary infatuation. Everybody needs a new plaything once in a while, right? And he couldn't care less about what you get up to in your spare time, anyway.
Sukuna turns a blind eye to it for a period of time... and he couldn't have made a bigger mistake. Your little boytoy lasts too long for his liking, and he eventually wants to interfere, to question you on it.
He shows up to where you are, and you're sitting next to the man as if he deserves to even meet you eye-to-eye like that, being such a worthless existence.
He doesn't like it. The way you protectively throw a hand over the vermin behind you. He doesn't like it at all. He considers doing the job for you, to kill him without hesitation, but something stops him from doing so. Maybe it's because he doesn't want to see you get emotional over another's death. The slightest sliver of a chance that it could trigger you to fight sukuna in the name of a third party, other than yourself makes him feel disgusted. That's not what he wants.
He'll drag you away from that insect, instead. He'll remind you of your status, of what kind of man suits you better, suits you best. He'll snip off this growing bud before it blooms.
Sukuna will mock you for getting infatuated with such a lowly being. But you seem shameless. And that irks him. As much as he wants to point out that you're changing, he doesn't, because he knows something is changing in him, too. He shouldn't care this much for a woman like you. If you've displeased him, he should've just killed both you and that man on the spot. But here he is, trying to convince you to stray away from your boytoy.
"But i love him. And he belongs wholly to me. I can see that in his eyes, when i speak to him. He wants to belong to me."
Love? A silly thing. Oh, but maybe that's what sukuna himself is doing to you right now. Loving you. This won't do. Now that he's realised, it's only more reason for him to separate you from the lowlife.
He spends months with you, having you attached to his hip at all times. Not letting you get a glimpse of your little plaything for a while. He pulls on your strings, and seduces you, making sure to confuse and muddle up your feelings, on who you should direct your affection towards. There is only one correct answer.
And when he feels like you're ready, just trained enough to act within his predictions, he brings you over to meet that man once again. To make you kill him with your own hands. Press on his windpipe and watch the life drain out his eyes. Cast away whatever interest you had in him prior.
The man is begging you for mercy, your hands wrapped around his throat, sukuna holding his weak, flimsy body up. His other pair of hands are guiding yours, but not applying any extra pressure. He wants you to do it with your own strength, alone. But he sees you hesitating. It pushes sukuna over the edge, and he does something unthinkable, impulsive.
He makes a promise. A binding vow, no less.
"Kill this man, and I'll be yours forever. Suffocate him to death, and I'll belong to you, the way you belong to me."
You want someone to possess-- and have whole to yourself? You want someone to desire it? Desire you? He'll take that spot. He can fulfill that for you. Nobody but him.
And he continues whispering sweet nothings into your ear from behind, leaving a couple of kisses down your neck, every action coaxing you to grip his throat tighter.
Sukuna groans when eventually the man takes his last breath, with tears in his lifeless eyes, regretful of having ever associated with you. Your hands are steady, and you don't show signs of guilt. You've taken countless lives before. But this one has significant meaning. Marking the beginning of something more important between you and sukuna.
The vow is effective immediately. Something in sukuna is stirring up his guts, but in a pleasantly exciting way. Heat gathers in his lower abdomen, and he drops the now useless body to embrace you instead, and take your lips in his.
This feeling is wonderful. To love, and be loved. You strangled someone dear to you for him, because you wanted him more, and sukuna couldn't be happier.
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At First Sight (Homelander Drabble)
(aka: Knock em' off his feet) Homelander x F!Reader (18+)
+ His first time seeing you. Actually, he's seen you in his peripheral a handful of times. This? This is when he gets a good, long, look at you. He's a little stuck to say the least.
Words: 657 (Short & sweet, I just couldn't help making a point.)
A/N: Oh how I LOVE down bad man. You can't watch the show and not know that whoever has his affection HAS him. This is my first fic on this blog, I've written a lot before, deleted my blog, and came back, Maybe this will bring me back in, who knows. (Ask box open).
Warnings: Cursing, Homelander craving you, a little too wanting.
+ + +
Homelander likes you. No, listen, Homelander likes you. These days he’s so brazen with it, and you can hardly walk into the same room as him without buzzing under his stare. However, I wanna start it off a little slow at least. He started it off slow at least. Kind of.
It’s your third week in when he takes a good look at you. A rushed mission brief is called and Ashley, idiot, decides now is the time to try out a new presentation method. Handouts. She’s so fucking proud of herself when she steps to the front of the room and says, “I want to ensure everyone has a thorough analysis of the plan, as well as some facts about the landscape that I think—“
Oh please, he’s so close to asking her if she was shaken as an infant when he notices you. Supe by supe you walk around, placing a sheet of paper in front of everyone, & God the sight of you. You know how hard it is for someone to catch him off guard? You do it instantly, unknowingly, unabashedly. Honestly, it’s your eyes – wait – your lips. He can’t stop looking at your lips. Then you smile at The Deep and he has to sit back in his seat a little bit, scooch down, and lean over, chin in hand just to get a good look at you. You’re just about to reach Noir when Ashley musters up the gumption to ask, “Homelander, how would you feel about starlight leading this mission while you stay as backup?”
He’s almost too slow to take his eyes off you, but he does & laughs incredulously at Ashley. “Why would I do that?”
She actually quick steps towards him, hand extended holding a sheet of paper, & places it in front of him before you can make it. “We’re working to establish your image with our female audience, ages 25 through 45, as a softer protector.” She says softer with a wince, like she can hear how fucked it sounds. He’s annoyed, and has to deep breathe his way out of showing it. What the fuck is he reading? It's a mess of statistics and a – quite honestly –l ameass excuse for a game plan that he’s happy to pass on to StarLight. Ashley finishes with “Currently you’re doing amazing with our male audience, but we’d like to shift towards a team player, lover of women image.”
He’s a lover. Through and through, and sometimes hard to find. It’s there though, eventually you’ll get it.
You walk behind him, and reach beside him to place a sheet down in front of Queen Mauve. You smell good. He tilts his head just enough to catch a sight of you without being too honest about it. You’re a sight. You know that? It’s enough to make his eyes drag down your body, stopping at your ass and then making a slow track down your legs. He’s a dog about it, and internally says fuck it, because then his eyes are back up and locked on yours.
He hears your heart jump a little, but you’re a pro, because you just smile it off —fuck, you’re beautiful — and say “Good morning.” Before walking away.
Fuck off, ‘Good morning’ , he’s salivating.
“Good morning” he says kindly.
He hasn’t been this turned on, this quickly in a long time. For a human at that? You’re a new feeling, one he can’t even tell if he’s comfortable with. So he’s gotta lock his eyes back on Ashley and pretend like he isn’t gonna think about you later. “Yeah, absolutely –” He waves his hand, & smiles, “– let’s show some girl power, huh?”
One last glance at you, and you’re looking right at him. He doesn’t even hide his stares this time. His dick jumps a little at the fact that you don’t look away, and he makes a mental note to get your name after this.
+++
A/N: *Screams in wanting him*
#the boys#Homelander#The boys fic#homelander x reader#homelander fanfiction#homelander x you#the boys series#the boys tv#Kash Writes#fanfic
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How your first kisses with Ghost, Soap, Gaz would feel
Masterlist
Part 2 (Price, Nikolai, König)
Part 3 (Nikto, Gromsko)
Ok, guys, let's go kiss some boys. No warnings here.
Simon Ghost Riley
At the point when you finally kiss, it feels like being able to breathe at last. The longing has been suffocating you, roaring like a forest fire deep inside your mind. When his lips brush against yours - you are exhausted after weeks, maybe months of self-restraining. You've been fighting your own thoughts, pacifying your needs. And Simon is here to finally let you lose yourself in the moment.
Cautious at first, your kiss grows more desperate with each next touch and every smallest caress. It's not the first kiss in your life, but it certainly feels like it. He doesn't just caress your soft lips - he shares his admiration for you, all tenderness, he never showed anyone before.
Eventually he will force himself to stop, cradle your head, let his fingers drown in your hair and switch his attention to peppering your face with little kisses. There is so much, he needs to tell you, but can express only with a touch.
Johnny Soap MacTavish
You still hear distant voices, music, laughs and exclamations, when he lifts you off the ground and spins around. Your dear Johnny, always there to make you laugh. Whispering sweet nothings, coating every word with thick accent, the sound of which makes you fluster sometimes.
You will laugh, barely managing to breathe, until his lips cover yours. No more spinning, ambient sounds fade away - only you being held in his arms so carefully now, only his little breaths echoing softly in your ears. Johnny doesn't let go, making a point: this is not a random whim, not a joke gone too far. He wanted it for so long, he's been dreaming of this very second, imagining how would it feel to hold you this close. But what you both get is a precious silence, that speaks louder than all the words shared.
A kiss, soft and tender. Then another one. Then the third. Each next is harder, deeper, so the last one is full of a fervent urgent need. Just linger in this moment for a little longer, and you won't be able to think of anything else, than him gently nibbling on your lower lip, ravishing in your deepened breaths and accelerating pulse.
Kyle Gaz Garrick
You might have anticipated something very modest and sweet. But somehow you end up clinging to his jacket, not wanting to let go, while he slowly caresses your lips with the most intoxicating touches. But that's Kyle, the sweetest guy out there, what are you even do-
"I should stop."
"Now should you really?"
And he deepens the kiss, bringing you even closer. And who could blame you for forgetting every bit of doubt and losing control, when Kyle is taking your breath away quite literally? Kyle turns out to be an absolute siren: his half-lidded eyes shine with pure joy and darken with desire, his face leans into your touch, his soft groan becomes the end of you.
#cod#cod modern warfare#cod mw2#cod x reader#cod headcanons#141 headcanons#ghost call of duty#ghost cod#ghost x you#ghost simon riley#kyle garrick#gaz mw2#cod gaz#gaz x you#gaz x reader#simon ghost riley#ghost x reader#soap call of duty#soap mactavish#soap mw2#john soap mactavish#soap cod#kyle gaz garrick#gaz imagine#gaz cod#soap mactavish x reader
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Tattooed Steve, pt. 2
Part 1 here
Soooo I ended up writing more tattooed Steve. I couldn’t resist. I also realized that Eddie would be the first person to find out but like…other than Robin. But I didn’t count her because Steve and Robin are the same person honestly at this point. Anyway I hope you like it! Pt. 1 is linked above.
—-
It’s two weeks after Vecna when he gets his first one. It’s unexpected, impulsive even, but Steve needs to feel something. He has just spent the past week and half waiting for Eddie to wake up, staring at his pale form, wishing away the anxiety with every beep, beep, beep that comes from the heart monitor. Begging for this stupid, stupid man to wake up.
He isn’t really sure why he wanted Eddie to wake up. Sure the ruggrats love him, and there is the general sense of not wanting any innocent person to die on his watch, but Steve knows deep down it’s about something else. Or more like the potential of something else. He tries not to think about it too hard.
So during that first week and half of watching a comatose Eddie, Steve takes his time studying the man. Learning every curve, and every scar. And eventually, every visible tattoo he can see. They are interesting, not all of them good, but all very Eddie. It somehow makes them better. Some of them are messed up from the bat bites (ironically the bat tattoos remain untouched), but they add to his aesthetic if Steve is being honest with himself.
When Eddie wakes up after that week and a half, groggy and confused (especially towards the fact that Harrington is practically holding vigil at his bedside), the first thing Steve says to him is “Oh thank god you’re awake.” The second is “What the hell were you thinking?” Before Eddie proceeds to pass out again.
Later, when all of the doctors and family and friends have had their time with him, the third thing Steve says to Eddie is, “Tell me about your tattoos.”
And despite the fact half of them are mangled, Steve doesn’t think he has ever seen anyone light up that bright in his life. And when Eddie starts waving his hands in excitement, Steve can’t help but think that he’s never been so close to the sun before.
So, two weeks after Vecna, Steve makes a decision. Or again, if he’s being honest, an impulse. He finds old books in the library about tattoos (which aren’t very helpful), and finds zines hidden between the pages (much more helpful) on stick and pokes.
Steve shows up with supplies from Melvad’s (for a probably very dangerous tattoo kit) at Robin’s doorstep. “Robs, I need you to give me a tattoo.” Then she proceeds to spit all of her morning tea on him.
After a lot of shouting “Did you hit your head again dingus? Oh my god did you get into another fight? Are you having a break down? SPEAK STEVE.”
And a lot of convincing, “Robin I’m fine. No I’m not having a breakdown. Robs, Robbie, Birdie, I swear nothing happen. I just want to do it.”
The end up on Robin’s bathroom floor (because of course all important things happen on the bathroom floor), with a look of deep concentration on her face. “I can’t believe you’re letting me do this, with only twenty minutes from a zine you smuggled out of Hawkins Library. I can’t believe they even have zines.”
“I don’t think they were aware of it honestly.” Steve snorts. His shirt was off, a patch hair already shaved off right where is heart is placed.
“Do you know what you want?” Robin asks, head tilted.
“No, not really. I was hoping you would help.”
Robin hums, like she’s resisting the urge to point out how impulsive he’s being. Like she knows he needs to do this. “Tell me what made you decide to want one.”
So Steve does. He tell her about waiting for Eddie to wake up. Wondering why Eddie got them. Wanting to own himself again, to actually like something new on his body. Put something there he had control of. His curiosity of if it were painful. His interest behind the stories of Eddies tattoos. How Eddie lit up so bright when asked. Wanting to feel like that. Wanting to be close to the sun again.
Robin mercifully didn’t look too deeply (or at least didn’t push on it) about the interest in Eddie himself. “Okay, I think I got it. Just…hold still.”
Twenty minutes later, after three passes with pen ink and a needle, Robin disinfects his tattoo. Before she covers up, she asks “Do you want to see it?”
Steve nods his head eagerly. The tattoo had painful, more painful than he expected, but he found it sort of grounding. Something to keep him aware of himself, almost as if he was able to grasp parts of himself he wasn’t conscious of before.
When Steve stands up to look in the mirror, there he sees off center on his chest, a wonky little sun. It was something a preschooler could have drawn, but it was one of the most beautiful things Steve had ever seen, and it was made by one of the most important people in his life.
Robin says shyly at Steve’s speechless state, “You said you wanted to be close to the sun again.”
Steve scoops Robin up in an instant, ignoring the stinging both on the outside and inside of his chest. “Thank you Birdie.” Which translates, you are the only person I ever need etched in me forever.
“Always, Stevie.” Which means, you’re never getting rid of me anyway.
They pull away with tearful smiles, and silent promises. Steve can start to feel maybe not much like his old self, but somewhere on the way to who he truly is.
Then Robin says, “Okay, me next.”
————
okay I wasn’t sure if really anyone wanted more, or if I was going to do it but I actually really enjoyed where this ended up. Also I apologize for any tense changes. I quite literally type this on my phone and say screw it, without looking it over. Let me know if you want more maybe? Send me prompts even. Thanks for reading :)
#steddie#Steve and Robin would feed into each other’s impulses#Steve just needs someone to tell him he’s loved and also still pretty#steve harrington#robin buckley#eddie munson#steddie fic#ficlet#platonic soulmates stobin#platonic stobin#stobin headcanons#stranger things#someone draw this#steve x eddie#tattoos#tattooed steve#the party#steddie writing#writing prompt#soft boys
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You Left Me, You Miss Me
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four
@mc-i-r is writing another version of this and tagged me and my brain woke up, so here ya go. This is almost all dialogue, and my new love for Mrs Buckley.
----
"Hey Steve-o! Get in here!" Robin yelled.
"Thought you were talking to your mom?" Steve shouted back.
"I am! That's why you have to come here! The cord won't reach!"
Steve hauled himself up from the corner of the kitchen where he was reorganizing things for the third time since they moved in last week. There was a pile of boxes they really needed to open in the hallway, and his mattress was still against the wall, but he kept going back to the kitchen, trying to make it work despite there being only one pull out drawer. One. They noticed before they signed the lease, but they both assumed they could make it work somehow if they just tried hard enough. But. Third time's the charm.
Flopping onto the thrifted couch next to his best friend, he leaned against her head, and greeted, "Hi Mrs Buckley, how are you?"
"Now why can't you answer the phone so politely, Robin? Who raised you to be so impolite?"
"Yeah, mom, I know you love Steve more than you love me, you tell me every time you talk to him, now can you say it again please?"
"Yes, well, like I was saying, I don't really know why they were all so upset about it, but I didn't want to overstep, so I didn't tell them anything. Not really. Only that you had moved and that you were fine. It's not like that's a secret. Then I noticed that they didn't know about that and so I didn't answer the rest of the questions, which really only made them more upset, but I think they were upset with me, not with the pair of you, so that's perfectly fine, none of them were nearly as vicious as Robin was when she was fifteen and decided she--"
"Mom!"
Steve giggled. Robin's rambling came from her mother, that was certain, and it was worse when they were on the phone. They fed on each other's talking. Like that snake thing.
"Right, yes. Well, Steve, like I told her, those boys, the ones you used to babysit for, they came around to ask if I knew where you were," Mrs Buckley finally said.
Robin grabbed his hand with the one not holding the phone, and pressed her forehead harder against his as they crowded the handset. Steve didn't think he'd reacted, but they didn't need anything as boring as a visible reaction to know each other.
"They said that they went into the video store and saw someone new at the desk, and when they heard that the two of you were no longer working there -- Apparently that manager of yours had some unpleasant words on the subject. You know I never liked him? The first time I stepped in there he asked me if I was still married? Not like that, of course, but it was still very strange. I didn't like it. And according to Robin he was always like that, wasn't he, Steven?"
"Yeah, he was pretty weird," Steve answered numbly.
"Well, that Keith fellow told them you were no longer employed there and that curly haired one demanded to know where you were employed. Since its not like he knew even if he would have told them, those boys went looking for themselves. I guess they went to your house first, Steven, and must have seen the for sale sign. I don't know what your parents are thinking, selling with the market like it is right now, but no one has ever made either of your parents listen to a single word of sense in their lives."
"Mom, the point?"
"Yes, sorry dear, like I told Robin, eventually it must have occurred to them that the two of you would be in the same place and thought to come by. Well. I say come by. First they called, and your father, you know how he is, simply said you were no longer in residence and hung up on them. He thinks he's so funny. Oh! Make sure you remember to call next Tuesday to congratulate him. It's his first day as the lead manager in the office. Oh no, wait, does it count as long distance for you? Never mind, I'll place the call so you don't have to worry about it."
"Mrs Buckley? You were saying something about Dustin?" He was proud that his voice was steady. They left Hawkins eleven days ago. They started packing two weeks before that. His parents put the house on the market around the same time. It wasn't until today that they noticed.
"Yes, that's the one. So Dustin didn't take your father's humor well, and he and his friends came by earlier this evening."
"Wait, evening?" Steve interrupted, "It was dark? They were biking around in the dark? In this weather?"
"Oh goodness no, that young man drove them. The one that was in the papers that the pair of you helped last year. He was much more polite than they were. Well, once I told them that you'd moved, they all started shouting over each other, I was sure that Ms Wickley was going to come over and scold them."
"I'm sorry, ma'am--"
"Oh you don't need to ma'am me Steven, I've told you that."
"Mom, he was just trying to be polite when he asked you to please get to the point, so can you, you know, try to get to the point some time tonight. You're paying for the call, but jeez."
"Oh yes. Well it occurred to me while they were all shouting that if they were your friends like they were saying, they would have known that you were moving. So when they managed to calm down enough I could hear a thing I said, I refused to tell them anything else. It's none of their business if you don't want it to be. And that Dustin boy said that you were his best friend, right in the same sentence he said he hadn't seen you in a month. But, I wasn't entirely sure if I was wrong about it, so I did promise I would ask you if you wanted me to pass on your information."
"Good job, mom, you finally got back to it. This is why I had you come over here, so you could hear that last part. I should have just asked you. Do you want my mom to give them our number or address or anything?" Robin had rolled her eyes over her mom's rambling, completely unaware she was just as terrible. But then she stared at him, concerned and outraged and protective and sad. God, he didn't know what he'd do without her.
"Did they ask?" Steve said.
"Ask? I don't think a single one of them knows how to ask anything. They certainly shouted a lot of demands. If you don't want me to tell them, I have no complaints about being the villain in this story. After everything you've done for my girl, being there for her before she even told me, and now making sure she's safe from any kind of trouble up there, you're such a perfect - what was the - beard? I think that's what I saw in that article in that magazine. Oh, no, the Zine, I ordered. But even without all that, I'll happily shut the door in their faces every day for a year if that's what you want done."
Steve's next breath stuttered, and that was all Robin needed to see.
"Hang on mom, I'm going to put the phone down, don't hang up, we'll be back." She sat the handset on the couch, then dragged a throw blanket over it to muffle their voices completely.
"You okay there or do I need to make a snap decision about which is going to be our household's vomit bowl?" He pushed her shoulder half-heartedly. "Okay, yeah, we both know it's gonna be the one with the cow on it. But you okay there, Stevie?"
"I'm fine."
"No you aren't."
"I'm fine."
She gasped, "You would lie to your soulmate? To her face?"
"I'm not! I'm fine! I just... I don't know, Robs."
Robin watched for a second as all of the muck of emotions bubbled inside him. Then she, as she always did, understood him.
"You want to say no. You want to tell her not to let them know where we are, but you're also freaking out because the brats come find you whenever It's back."
And because for a second, he desperately hoped that they missed him, or wanted to call so they could apologize for the last months. She didn't need to say that part. He half shrugged, sort of nodded, and bobbed his chin towards the throw blanket.
"You sure, Dingus?"
"Yeah."
"Is it gonna be Hopper or Joyce?" she faux wondered as she grabbed the phone from its prison. "Mom? Hi, back. Yeah, thank you. I'm gonna hand the phone to Steve now."
She didn't move away, but she didn't share the earpiece.
"Hi Mrs Buckley. I guess I -- could I ask a couple questions first?"
"Of course dear. What would you like to know?"
"Did any of them say anything weird or really specific?"
"Like what?"
"Like, about the mall, or last spring, or, bats, or uh, did they say anything about their dungeons and dragons game?"
"No. Why would they?"
Steve forced his shoulders to relax. El said it was done, but four years of it coming back meant he'd never fully trust that as true.
"No reason I guess."
"Well. That Munson boy did ask me about a radio right at the end. After the others stomped back to the driveway. He came back and he seemed - well he asked about a radio. And I said you certainly had a radio in your car, but I think he may have been talking about something else. Is that what you meant?"
"Okay, uh. Yeah. Thank you. I guess."
"So what would you like me to tell them next time I see one of them? If you'd like to take your time about it, you can. They were quite worked up about it, but it's a little ridiculous to act like they were owed something if they didn't even notice you two moving. You knocked over a stop sign with that rental truck."
Steve laughed. Couldn't help it. "I really can't wait, ma'am. They'll be back tomorrow morning to bother you." He gave Robin a look she immediately returned. Even without hearing the other half, she understood how true that was.
"Of course they won't, they have school," Mrs Buckley argued.
"Yeah, just means they'll be at your door even earlier."
"Well that's rude."
"Yeah, that's them. So, um. You can be rude back if you want. Don't, uh, you don't need to answer their questions. If you don't mind that they're not going to take it well."
Mrs Buckley laughed, loud and cackling for a moment, making the phone go staticky. "Oh dear, it would be my absolute pleasure to be rude right back to them. I'm much better at it. Anything else?"
"Yeah, you know Jim Hopper?" The resounding silence promised she was giving him the same judgemental look Robin was. "Sorry, that was dumb. But can you give him our number? Not to share with them, just so he has it. And, funny story about radios, but, the one that -- that that guy asked about is in your hall closet. Top shelf, next to the popcorn tin. Give Hopper that too?"
"Certainly, anything I should tell him, or should I ask to return the phone to my ridiculous child that you're generous enough to live with so I can say good night?"
For some reason, it made him think about the returns box at the store. A handle pulled open, the movie dropped inside, and nothing else needed. No one had to explain why they were giving back their copy of Breakfast Club. They had it for a while, hopefully they enjoyed it, and then when it was done, when they didn't need it anymore, or when it was overdue, when they kept it longer than they should have, costing them more money to keep around than it was worth, when they decided they were done with it, they didn't write a letter and explain why they--
"No. But, just. Tell him its for emergencies or something. Thank you, bye, or, goodnight ma'am, Mrs Buckley, uh, here's Robs. Bye."
He climbed off the couch as he shoved the phone at her, and headed for the window in his yet to be unpacked room. Rob would kill him in his sleep if he had a cigarette, but if he had any, he'd have taken the risk.
The glass was so cold it was painful against his forehead when he leaned into it, and he watched the little flurries of snow on the street kicked up by the wind. They didn't even notice for a few weeks. They'd quit Family Video a week before they left, and he knew the kids watched at least a few every weekend. They must have gone in, multiple times, and just, not noticed. Or not cared.
He wasn't sure which of those was worse.
He wasn't sure why it hurt when he made his peace with it weeks and weeks ago. It hadn't ached so vividly since the fall. Worst of all was the shock of concern for them, thinking they were out on their bikes in the dark and the snow. Then the relief that Eddie drove them. The feeling was huge enough to eclipse anything else until he knew they were safe.
Hadn't seen them in a month, barely seen them before that, and his first instinct was still to drop everything and grabs his keys. He was two hours away, and his brain was itchy to go drive by and check on them. They didn't need him to do that. They didn't want him to.
And based on how his stomach lurched when he heard that they didn't know he'd left, he didn't think it would do him any favors to go back. Hop and Joyce knew how to handle them if they started to do anything too risky, and the kids were practically glued to Eddie's side.
They weren't his to look after.
"Stop staring out the window like your lover is lost on the moors," Robin complained, wrapping him in a hug from behind.
"I have no idea what that means, Robs."
"Good, I'll explain it to you. Come on, lets go, we've got a kitchen to reorganize. I already started stuff for popcorn and hot chocolate. Lets gooooo, you're too heavy for me to carry, hup two."
Steve snorted and let her drag him away.
"I thought we were going to get my room set up, so I wouldn't have to share with you again?"
She gave him that look. That one that was fond and frustrated and sassy as shit. The one that said she wasn't going to let him get away with being dumb, but wasn't going to call him on it.
"It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind. You can share with me for a while longer. Now do the hot chocolate, and don't skimp on the whipped cream. We bought that can on sale and its going to go bad any second. Just use all of it. Directly into our mouths if we cant get it balance on the mug. Don't want to waste it, and we deserve it. I'm on popcorn duty, and then we're going to defeat this puzzle, Harrington. We outsmarted the Russians, we can outsmart the dishes!"
Shit. He sniffled as he followed her orders.
He was so damn grateful he still had her.
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Next>>
Still don't do tag lists. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
#You Left Me - You Miss Me#Steve Harrington#Platonic Stobin forever#Steddie eventually#still not making things better#cause that is really not my specialty#and apparently Rob came out before they left
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The Moon will Sing
[SAGAU x Mexican! Creator-Reader]
A/n: I love SAGAU but realistically if I was stuck there I would be so sad I can't eat my culture foods ngl. Also y/n is implied first gen. Sorry lol. Also heavy leaning on y/n x Zhongli. Also title is from the song from The Crane Wives.
Also sorry if this sucks, it's kinda rushed and Idk what to do.
TW// obsessive-ish behavior
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You were transported to Teyvat after staying up all night playing Genshin before eventually passing out Infront of your computer.
When you open your eyes, you weren't in the comfort of your room but instead on gold altar.
People you recognized Infront of you as you sat up in shock. You hand hurting slightly as you looked down at it.
Blood.
In matter of fact, the blood was gold.
You watched as the wound healed itself on its own but your thoughts get interrupted as someone speaks up.
"My Grace, we are honored to have you here. The imposter has been dealt with, we pledge our devote loyalty to you."
You straight up passed out after this revelation.
After that whole fiasco, and you woke up to a bunch of crying acolytes.
Turns out, you were asleep for DAYS.
But you eventually grew accustomed to everything, honestly it wasn't as bad you thought it would be. Besides the weird obsessions and yandere like tendencies But there's one thing you missed dearly.
Home.
You were home sick and even the acolytes can see that. You didn't smile, you look off into the distance.
You miss the parties, music, going to swap meet and family members. Even the novellas your mother watched and eating her cooking.
Hell, you missed the internet.
It was just boring.
Then you got an idea, why not share them with your acolytes?! You get to explain your culture and maybe try to recreate dishes your mom made with ingredients here!
You immediately stood up from your throne excited. You immediately ran out of the temple, with the archons following you panicked.
"Your grace wait!" Zhongli yelled out chasing behind you. " You can't just leave abruptly like this! Please take me with you. "
You stood there, looking at a map you summoned looking at the places. "Sure! Let's go!" You grabbed around his waist and flew to places you needed to go.
He was practically beating his heart against his chest. The Creator was holding him! His ears were burning red in embarrassment.
You literally searched high and low, for ingredients alongside Zhongli. You either found substitutes or you quite literally had to create the ingredients. But once you had everything, you went straight to the kitchen.
The Archons were begging you, that they can someone else do it.
But you declined them, deciding to do it yourself.
You think the easiest recipe to do would be caldo de res. It's the one you seen your mother do countless times. And with your powers it should quicken the pace.... probably
Some of your acolytes were watching you, making sure your safe and do any task you asked.
Venti stood by the door way, along side zhongli and Xiao. Making sure your grace was fine.
At this point your at probably your third attempt at making this but you were really determined to get it right or at least
You took a spoonful and blew on it, taking a sip. And God it tasted like home, you place the utensil down and started to cry.
Venti was first to noticed, and thought you were upset. " Your grace don't cry! We can have some one else do it for you if your tired! "
You shook your head, wiping your tears smile. " I'm not sad, in fact I'm happy. Really happy. Would you like to try? It's a soup my mother always made."
Venti was so honored that the creator would even let him try, let alone a recipe the creators mother made!
Zhongli and Xiao whined, they wanted to try it too!
"Don't worry, you'll try it too!" You smiled, as you got a small spoonful.
Venti blushed, he's truly being rewarded, to be fed by the creator itself. He knows Xiao and Zhongli are practically seething in jealousy over this.
You were oblivious to it, feeding Venti small spoonfuls laughing. " Is it good?" You asked practically shaking in excitement.
He nodded happily, unknowingly teasing the other two in the room.
You made the jealousy even worse when you grabbed a handkerchief and clean up ventis face. Getting to be touched and so close to the creator smelling your perfume/cologne.
The other two pushed Venti aside, practically begging to be fed too.
You stood their dumbfounded but reluctantly agreed as well. Spoon feeding both of them, their faces light up.
They were so happy.
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After that, you started cooking other dishes, your acolytes and followers were always so excited to try it.
They saw how much you emotionally improved so they was no discussion over it.
You also started telling them old folktales and customs from your culture. Scholars started to appear and request to write it down and study it. You even taught them Spanish!
Thought they call it, [y/n's] language. And etc.
Sometimes when doing a task, followers can hear you quietly sing songs in your language.
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Your favorite thing, was reactions. The reactions your acolytes and followers had to your culture. They saw it as sacred, but you saw it as home.
You remembered talking to Zhongli because he remembers all of liyues stories and such.
"Zhongli, would you like to listen to a folktale?" You quietly asked, sitting on your throne. Him standing besides you.
" I'll be honored. " He says with a smile.
"There's different variations of this story depending of the region, but this is how I know it. Usually told to children to scare children into obedience. "
You cleared your voice, " long ago, a beautiful indigenous women fell in love with a man of higher social status. They lived happily together, having two children of their own. One day the man abandoned her, to either marry a more beautiful woman then her or a woman of his status. It depends either way, he leaves her. Her feeling threatened by this, consumed by rage and despair. She drown her children, meeting her own demised along side it. God curses her to wonder as a ghost searching for lost children so she can get into heaven."
Zhongli perks up at the story, " did you curse the woman yourself ?"
"ummm...yes?" You said unsurely.
" I see, a fitting punishment of her. " He says proudly.
" ahem, yes of course. Anyway she's called "la llorona" meaning The weeping woman..forever walking near bodies of water in search of her children so she may enter...umm.. heaven? "
Zhongli, tilts his head " what is heaven? " At this point your hands were sweating. " Ummm it's kinda like Celestia? But instead angels and stuff are there and it's like... Holy. You know? Anyway no more questions."
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Random Head Canons and such
If you have curly hair, best believe the acolytes would be fascinated by it. Especially if they give you baths and pamper you.
You would teach Venti songs you know for example: hijo de la Luna.
Sometimes you sing them if you feel like it. Mostly to little kids.
The Adults are definitely not jealous.
The Archons fight each other over being your dancing partner. This is because you needed someone to show how to dance bachata. And ever since they just fight over that spot.
Same for being food taster, they like eating your food and being the first one to try it is such a big honour. You don't know why? Either way they like being spoon fed your cooking.
They all listen to your stories and take your advice very very seriously. It's annoying lol
You taught them your cultures customs, for example birthday customs. You're absolutely not allowed to have your face smashed into cake. They absolutely refuse to do that to you.
Also if you like spicy food, they probably be amazed at your spice tolerance. You'll probably mess with them by eating a whole chile Infront of them.
There are times where you do get very home sick and won't leave your room. When you do, they try their absolute best to comfort you.
Also you have given some of your followers Spanish nicknames for funsies.
Sometimes you and your acolytes would speak Spanish with you. They think it's like the biggest honor to understand your language and speak it with you. But you just think it's nice. Plus you get to have secret convos with people you don't want to know what your saving.
That's all I can think of , off the top of my head lol.
#genshin impact x reader#genshin x creator reader#genshin x reader#sagau genshin#genshin self aware au#genshin self aware#genshin xiao#genshin x you#sagau cult au#genshin impact sagau x reader#genshin impact sagau#genshin sagau#genshin impact#genshin impact x gender neutral reader#genshin impact self aware#genshin zhongli#zhongli x y/n#zhongli x you#zhongli#zhongli x reader#poc reader
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Love, Love, Love Part 1-ish
A/N : a small fic made from this incorrect quote which I promised a part 2 and here it is just- longer.
Context : Rollo gets transferred to NRC for a few months, The Headmaster decides that he would be staying at Ramshackle Dorm much to Malleus' dismay (along with grim and the first years who are aware of the truth). Yuu doesn't find it nice either but with time they allow the third year to open up to them, eventually growing mutual respect for one another, perhaps some friendship..and a bit more.
Warning(s) : fluff, hints of rollo liking Yuu, this is a continuation of some sort to my joke so pls understand that it isn't from the beginning, Rollo might be OOC he's just scared of Yuu, they/them pronouns for Prefect !
A bit of background..
"I'm back from dealing with the principal's casual destruction ! How are you boys holding up ?" The prefect announced their arrival back at Ramshackle the moment they got in. A smile, half glad it was over while the other half expressed their passive aggressive bitterness from when taking care of other people's jobs. Grim was laying on the couch looking at one of his notebooks to try and study for an upcoming assessment. Rollo flamm, a new temporary resident of the manor was reading a book of his own next to the fiery raccoon, his attention turned to Yuu when he heard their voice.
"Ah. Welcome back Prefect, are you alright ?" He asked, placing his volume on the side and getting up from his seat to take their bag. Yuu thanked him and stretched their arms before walking over to Grim and patting his head. The feline let out a hum as his henchman did so and once the bedroom door closed, the two occupants glared at each other.
"Weasel."
"Simp"
.
.
.
.
Since it was the weekend, most students had the option to rest their minds or do the opposite of relax because of a test. "Hey guys what are you doing ?" This current scene happened a few days after the first, Yuu was once again returning to Ramshackle. Though this time, they stopped at the small gates when they noticed their first year friend group staring at Rollo from a distance.
When the Prefect called out to them, Ace quickly turned around and shushed them. "We're observing the enemy." Deuce explained in a hushed tone, They only chuckled at their antics and Epel attempted to defend their choice of pass-time. "We don't what he could be planning this time ! I mean he's gardening right now, you know what that means.." The way his tone of voice changed towards the end of his sentenced made Deuce frown in remembrance of that incident.
Yuu shook their head with a knowing smile as they approached them and ruffled Epel's hair. "Don't worry, I'm making sure he doesn't make the same mistake. He's getting better, I promise." They didn't buy it but Ace nodded along with a shrug, possibly considering the option since he wasn't there when it all happened.
To reassure them, Yuu continued as they all looked back at Rollo who was watering the plants at the entrance. (he stated that it would look nice because of how dried the yard was, Yuu only agreed as long as he did the work) "I'm sure he'll change into becoming a nice normal man...very normal." then Rollo started to spin around as he watered the flora. The collective all narrowed their eyes, "That's not very normal." Yuu commented.
In a minute he changed his stance completely and went back to his original position. "That's normal." The prefect spoke while pointing at him to prove their judgement, Adeuce and Epel nodded their heads at the same time. However they all scrunched up their faces and tilted their head to the side a second after Rollo sprayed fertilizer in his eyes.
Yuu ignored it and gave Deuce a pat on the shoulder. "Anyways- It's gonna be exciting to have someone new around. Nobody is born bad, I promise you that. I'll get to know him and we can all share our lands...even though I feel like contradicting my own words." they muttered under their breath as they walked away from the group and pass the gates, to go speak to their tenant who was..performing strange water rituals. "Flamm !"
Their voice was firm enough to have the eyebag silver-haired individual look their way the instance they spoke. Mostly because they made it very clear that they were the boss around this area, by using threats that is..brutal ones to say the least.
"Oh hello Prefect, I was just taking care of the plants-" "Yes I know you were performing your bizarre holy water ceremony." They cut him off halfway and right when he was about to say something, the not-so-genuine smile on their face made him change his mind. "Uh Yes..that was it." he accepted their statement, learned a while ago that saying no to someone who could force him to sleep in mud wasn't the best option.
Then Yuu suddendly perked up. "Oh right I came back from Sam's shop to bring you these, just like you requested." Reaching into their satchel, the magicless student handed him a few bags of flower seeds. He offered a small smile as he took them, "Thank you." Rollo responded, they answered with another smile and although they were serious, it was much more for setting something straight rather than intimidating him. "I trust you, Rollo..And I really hope that your brief stay with us helps you with whatever you're..going through I guess." Yuu carried on, Rollo looked at them for a while as he took in their words, he then gave them another small smile.
"Thank you..I appreciate it." They chuckled as he spoke softly. "Just looking out for my non-non magic user !" they joked.
A little further off was the trio of freshman watching the scene unfold in disbelief.
"He has to go."
"Agreed."
hope you liked reading this, part 2/3
#twst rollo#rollo flamm#twistedwonderland#twst#twisted wonderland#twst wonderland#disney twst#disney twisted wonderland#twst yuu#twst grim#twst epel felmier#epel felmier#twst epel#twst ace#twst ace trappola#twst deuce#twst mc#twst x mc#twst x reader#twst deuce spade#deuce spade#ace trappola#night raven college#glorious masquerade
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Hi, can I make a request about Yandere Bucky when he is your therapist and after you tell all your shit he falls in love with you (I would like to have a little jealousy from him for the boys you are with)
Love your work <3
Yandere Therapist!Bucky
This was a very interesting one to write. I’m really starting to love writing AU’s of both Bucky and Klaus
Bucky knew very quickly that he was in love with you.
You sought out a therapist when you started having panic attacks more frequently and you met with 3 before walking into James Barnes office. He was polite, gentle and understanding in a way you had never experienced from any man in your life up to that point and that’s why you decided to come back again, and again, eventually deciding to meet with him once a week.
He was a very kind man. You talked about things with him that you had never told anyone before and he understood that, you appreciated how he would ask a question and change the subject to something lighter when you became overwhelmed, making a note to circle back to it later, never wanting you to become too upset but also pushing you just enough to begin making progress with your mental health.
You looked forward to your time with James, who had insisted on your third visit that you just call him Bucky. He made you so comfortable that you felt like you were talking to a friend and when you expressed that he told you that’s exactly what he wanted, for you to feel comfortable and safe in his office to discuss the painful experiences in your life, of which there were many.
Bucky however, by the end of your first session, he had fallen head over heels in love with you. He ensured you would be coming back to see him, it didn’t feel like work to talk to you, and he wanted to know everything there was to know about you. He could admit to himself he had become a bit obsessed…completely obsessed.
After your third session he made sure he had no other clients that evening and he hopped into his car, following you home to find out where it was you lived with the man you called your boyfriend.
Bucky hated Max.
Max was a physically and emotionally abusive asshole that you couldn’t find your way out from under. He had manipulated you into complete dependency on him and Bucky didn’t just hate him, he was Jealous. He wanted you to look at him like that, as the man to provide for you, as the man to take care of you, as the man for you to love with your whole heart.
He hated every man you had ever spoken with him about. When you and Bucky had started getting into talking about your sex life his jealousy got infinitely worse. He loved how honest you were with him, trusting him with your experiences and fantasies, even trusting him with your painful and scary experiences which he hated that you had been forced to live through. He decided he would make sure that you would never suffer again.
James Barnes was going to be your lover, your boyfriend, your Daddy. He was going to be your everything and you would love every minute of it.
‘I know that it’s scary for you Doll, but this relationship as you’ve described it to me isn’t healthy. You’ve told me about his abuse and his explosive rage, you’re not safe in his house, it’s not a home for you. Men are supposed to be gentle and caring with their women, that doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun in the bedroom however you want but a man should never put their hand on you in anger.’ James explained, placing his notebook down and standing up. ‘May I?’ He asked and you nodded, moving over so that he could sit beside you on the couch. ‘I want you to let me hold you, you need to experience what kind touches from a man are like. I think if you feel them, then you’ll understand a bit better how important they are. If that’s okay, of course. I would never do anything you were uncomfortable with.’
‘I…yeah, it’s okay, um…how do…?’ He smiled at your awkward feelings, holding his arms out.
‘Come here Doll, let me hold you.’ Y/n moved closer to his side, leaning into his chest and sighing as his arms wrapped around her.
‘Now what?’
‘Just enjoy it. Hold on.’ Bucky lifted her up and moved to lay himself back against the couch so she was laying on his chest and he held her firmly, pressing his lips to her forehead. ‘There you go beautiful girl, you’re safe. No one is going to hurt you. I’ll keep you safe.’ His fingers brushed through her soft hair as he fought with his cock in his mind to not get excited no matter how desperate he was to have you ride him like this. It was only about 30 seconds of cuddling before he felt her sobbing into his chest and he immediately held her tighter, rubbing her back and kissing her head. ‘I know. It’s okay Darlin, this is how it’s supposed to feel. You’re supposed to feel safe with your man.’
‘I’ve never felt safe like this…wish I had met you somewhere else.’ She teased and he chuckled along but he knew it didn’t matter where or when they had met, because Y/n was going to be his now.
Bucky kept that up as he began seeing her twice a week, every session went like that from then on. He would spend 30 minutes talking to her before moving to sit beside her and hold her to his chest once again and she never once complained, often being quite unhappy when the hour was up and it was time to go home. He loved that.
A session later he began kissing her head, then her cheek and the week after that he pressed their lips together quickly before ending that session and she was red as a tomato. He loved how sweet and innocent she was even after all of the pain she’s suffered. In their next session he found her burying her face into his neck, nuzzling as close as she could and he tested the waters a bit brushing his hand slowly from her lower back to her butt, caressing her ass gently but she never made any indication she was upset by it. He moved himself a bit and made it seem natural before bending his leg up between hers so his thigh was pressed right against her pussy. She whimpered in his ear as she fidgeted and he enjoyed her reactions quite a bit, trying to suppress his cock as it responded to her hot breath against his neck. He didn’t move again, just allowing her to be comfortable with him touching her like this no matter how difficult it was.
It was that next session that he broke her.
He had maneuvered her into the same position as 3 days ago, face in his neck, straddling his thigh before he pressed his leg more firmly into her, hearing her loud moan though she tried to muffle it. ‘Oh god! I’m sorry, I-‘
‘No, no sorries. Just relax pretty girl.’ He moved the same way once again and her hips rutted down against him as her fingers tightened into his shirt. ‘There you go. Feels good, doesn’t it?’ Y/n nodded into his neck as her body continued moving, grinding down on his leg until she was riding it like a desperate whore and Bucky was living for it. He was in heaven as his girl moved herself on him in ways he only imagined before. ‘That’s it, keep going. Use me Doll, make that pretty pussy feel good, you deserve to feel so good.’ One of his hands held her ass while the other trailed up the back of her shirt to touch her soft skin for the first time. ‘He doesn’t do this for you, does he? Does he make your cunt drip all over him?’ She shook her head frantically, so high on her pleasure he didn’t think anything could shake her out of it right now. ‘Dumbass doesn’t deserve such a pretty pussy, or such a wonderful girl. A good man would never treat you like that.’ He said it in such a way that he knew she would equate that good man to him, she was already half in love with him before, he hoped to push her over the edge today by literally pushing her over the edge. ‘Such a good girl.’ The moan that came out of her mouth was possibly the most desperate and needy sound he had ever heard, coupled with the sound of a sob and he quickly began moving his leg to help her finish faster. ‘It’s okay, just let it out, you cry if you need to precious. You’re a good girl, no matter what that idiot says. You’re so fucking good! No such thing as too needy with a good Daddy, I’m here. You’re safe baby, just…let go. Let go for Daddy.’
‘Oh God!’ She screamed, crying out in completion and desperation as she held tighter to his body. He held her to him and brushed through her hair gently as she came down from her intense orgasm and she was cuddled so close he believed she wanted to become one with his body. It was at that moment that the timer went off, letting him know that their hour was up and he slammed his hand against it to shut it up. ‘Shit!’
‘Don’t worry Y/n, it’s okay. I don’t have another client, just relax for a few minutes and-‘ she pushed herself off of him and quickly jumped up.
‘Im sorry, I should have done that! Oh God! I just assaulted you! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!’ She was frantic, moving to grab her bag as Bucky jumped up after her. ‘Don’t try and tell me it’s okay, that wasn’t okay! I’m a horrible person! You should never want to see me again-‘
‘And yet, I do. Relax Y/n, don’t you think if I didn’t want you to, I would have pushed you off? I’m plenty strong enough-‘
‘You felt sorry for me! Because of course you do! I’m so desperate for some affection that I just jumped my therapist, it’s fucking pathetic! I’m so-‘
‘If you say “sorry” one more time I’m going to take you ever my knee.’ He warned and she just whined, moving for the door. ‘Y/n!’ He caught her arm as she moved out the door and she wouldn’t look at him. ‘Please tell me you’re coming back? You’re scheduled for Tuesday and Friday, just please? Please come back?’ She hesitantly nodded before rushing out the door and leaving him to kick himself for pushing you too hard. He needs to get her back.
Tuesday came and went, she didn’t show up for the appointment and Bucky was worried. He drove passed her apartment and didn’t see any lights on, waiting there for a few hours but not once was there any movement. He called your cell and left a message for you, continuing to look for you after work Wednesday and Thursday just needing to see that you were alright.
When Friday came he was preparing to finish early that day since he assumed you weren’t coming until he heard the soft knock on his door, opening it to see you standing there with your hair covering your face which was odd, it was usually upon a ponytail or at least pinned away from your eyes. ‘Hey. I was getting worried about you, you didn’t call me back, I thought you were gonna skip out on me again.’ He moved and led her to the couch after shutting the door and sitting beside her. ‘Y/n? What’s wrong?’ Bucky moved to tuck her hair behind her ear and saw the purple color on her eye prompting him to tilt her head up. She had bruises around both of her eyes, her jaw was bruised and it looked a lot like finger shaped bruises, along with a split lip in 2 places. ‘Did he do this?’
Y/n nodded. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call you. I…I tried to break up with him on Monday and this happened. I fell down the stairs and ended up in the ER, I stayed with my friend after that. My voice was messed up cause of the bruises on my throat, I didn’t want you to be subjected to that over the phone.’ She teased but his face let her know that he didn’t find it funny before he pulled her into his arms firmly.
‘Don’t you joke about this, this isn’t amusing to me. He could have killed you, I-I could have lost you!’ Bucky knew if there was ever a time to get to her it was now, she was already in love with him, this was the perfect moment to give her that final push. He pulled her onto his lap gently, not knowing where she was bruised and not willing to cause her harm before turning her head and pressing his lips to hers gently, not wanting to harm her split lip. She gasped against him but relaxed none the less into his body and into the kiss. ‘Please tell me you’re done with him? You can come and stay with me, I’ll take care of you! I can’t live without you anymore Princess, I just can’t!’
‘You’re my therapist, I can’t move in with you. That’s all kinds of illegal, you could get in so much trouble-‘
‘I stopped being your therapist the first time we cuddled in your session. I care about you so much Y/n, I can’t spend another minute without you in my arms. Please?’ His hand trailed up her back under her shirt as he kissed her neck over the bruises which he knew she loved.
‘Daddy…’ she whimpered, needy and desperate before Bucky couldn’t hold it in anymore. He spun them around so he pinned her to the couch, wrapping her legs around his waist, Y/n’s hands buried in his hair while his hips ground down against hers, letting her feel his hard cock pressed against her for the first time.
‘That’s right Princess, I’m your Daddy now, and you’re fucking mine!’ He couldn’t control the growl in his voice as he felt her sweet pussy pressed against him through their clothes, desperate to feel her warmth wrapped around him.
‘Oh God, I-‘ He cut her off with his hand around her throat.
‘Mine! You’re done with that fucking idiot, Daddies gonna take care of you now. Starting with taking you home and fucking this little cunt I’ve been desperate for since you sat on this couch your first day! Are you gonna be Daddies good girl?’ She nodded quickly, holding tightly to him, clearly needy for him now. Bucky knew that he wanted more than anything to fuck her in his office, however he also knew that once he felt her he would never pull his cock out of her again, he would be fucking her all night. He needed to get her home so that he could have his way with her and he knew she would do anything he asked of her right now. ‘Good.’ He yanked her up to her feet before bending down and hoisting her over his shoulder causing her to squeal before he slapped his metal hand painfully against her ass. ‘Let’s get you in the car. Daddy needs to feel your hot mouth around my cock.’
Her responding moan was all he needed. Y/n was his now and no one would take her from him, even if he needed to kill that punk asshole to ensure it.
Bucky Barnes Masterlist
#bucky barnes smut#the avengers#the winter soldier#winter soldier#winter soldier fluff#winter soldier smut#the winter soldier imagine#bucky x y/n#bucky x oc#bucky imagine#bucky fluff#bucky barnes x oc#bucky barnes#bucky barnes fluff#bucky barnes imagine#Therapist!Bucky Barnes#yandere bucky barnes#Yandere!Bucky Barnes#bucky barnes x y/n#bucky barnes x reader#bucky barnes fic#james buchanan barnes#james barnes#captain america#marvel fandom#marvel#marvel fic#sebastian stan imagine#mafia!bucky#dark!bucky barnes
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Lavender Sunflower - Inseparable pt.2
a/n: a couple of people asked for a part 2 to Inseparable … sooo yk I had to deliver!! This is short but anyway.. I wanted a happy ending this time
Warnings: none I think!! Just a little bit of fluff
“Rafe.. he’ll be okay.”
You placed a reassuring hand to his thigh as he drove away from Topper’s house.
He nodded, keeping one hand on the steering wheel as his other arm rested against the car door, refusing to make eye contact with you, knowing he’d break down if he did.
Rafe had a soft spot for two things — that was it. You being one and the other being his babies. He hated seeing Nathan like that, and he felt bad for leaving his best friend and girlfriend to deal with it. You and Rafe both knew they didn’t mind it but Rafe didn’t care. He still felt like shit leaving his son.
“Yeah,” he replied softly.
Although he knew he was a better father than his dad ever was to him, he couldn’t stop his mind from wandering — Wondering if maybe he was a shitty dad for not talking to his son longer than he did, for not attempting to soothe Nathan’s mind a little bit more before leaving. Or maybe even just holding him in his arms for a few more minutes just so Nathan knew Rafe truly didn’t want to leave him, just as much as he didn’t want Rafe to leave.
You reframed from replying, you just patted his thigh and gave it a tiny reassuring squeeze to silently let him know he can talk to you when he’s ready.
The doctors appointment went by smoothly, not many questions were asked considering it was your third pregnancy — you felt like a pro at this point.
And on the way to Topper’s house — to pick up the boys, you thought about Nathan and how he probably got over his tantrum fairly quickly after you both left. You could tell Rafe wasn’t thinking the same though.
“We should take the boys to do something later, the park, maybe?” You suggested, hoping Rafe would finally talk in full sentences now that he’s had time to ease his mind a little.
He was quickly pulled out of his thoughts by your suggestion. “Uh, yeah.” He replied. “We should probably get Nathan some ice cream too for the inconvenience.” He joked.
You laughed at that and nodded, but didn’t say anything, you were just happy that he seemed to have stopped beating himself up so much.
He briefly looked away from the road and onto you, taking in your beautiful, pregnant figure — he gave you a slight grin before speaking again. “You’re so beautiful, baby.” He placed his hand on your inner thigh, now looking back at the road.
“You’re so random,” You laughed at his spontaneous words. “..But thank you, baby.” Your arm was now extended as you slowly slid your hand up his arm, eventually reaching around to the back of his neck.
Rafe soon pulled into Topper’s driveway and began to walk around the car to let you out of the passenger seat. You couldn’t lie, you felt a bit rushed, but you knew he was just happy to get inside — curious to see if his son had forgotten all about his meltdown.
Neither of you cared to knock this time, knowing Topper nor Alex cared.
As soon as you made your way inside, there sat Nathan, on the floor, playing with Kai — whilst Alex and Topper sat on the couch, watching them play. Nathan immediately turned his attention over to the front door. His face lit up when he saw you and Rafe — jumping instantly to his feet to run over to you both.
Rafe extended his arms out to his son and bent down, with a big toothy smile. “Hi, buddy. Missed you so much while we were gone.”
Alex and Topper watched from the couch with smiles on their faces. Nathan’s arms wrapped around Rafe’s neck as Rafe’s arms wrapped around Nathan’s waist, lifting him up. “I missed you, daddy.” He rested his head on Rafe’s shoulder.
“Hey! what about me?” You frowned, jokingly, placing your hands on your hips.
He lifted his head up and gave a big grin. “Missed you too, mommy.” He then extended his arms out towards you, taking you a little by surprise, but you instantly pulled him into a hug once Rafe let go of him and made his way over to his other son.
Kai was in his own little world, not caring much about what was going on around him, as per usual.
“We gave Nathan a little talk, yeah?” Topper said with a grin across his face as he stood from the couch and made his way over to you.
Nathan nodded quickly against the crook of your neck. “Uh-huh.” He replied.
Alex finally stood up a few seconds after and began walking towards you and Topper. “Well.. what did we talk about, Nate?”
Rafe was now in Kai’s world, sitting on the living room floor, playing with him — not listening to the conversation going on by the front door.
He removed his head from your neck to look at you before speaking. “That I should be nicer…because…you go through a lot with…” he was struggling to remember the entire conversation so he attempted to stick with the main point. “…The baby…and that I shouldn’t give daddy a hard time when he leaves,”
You looked over to Topper and Alex, silently thanking them for what they had done.
You rubbed Nathan’s back with a small smile, trying to hold back tears. “I love you, buddy.”
If you had said any more to him, the waterworks would have came flooding due to your hormones, so you stuck with those four words.
Rafe finally acknowledged the conversation, picking up Kai and making his way over to everyone. “What’s up?”
“You just missed the cutest thing ever, that’s what’s up.” You reframed from telling him everything, wanting to wait until you got back in the car so you could both talk to Nathan some more about it.
When you and Rafe were on your way out you thanked Alex and Topper once more. They truly had no idea how thankful you were they talked to Nathan. Truthfully if they hadn’t, no one would’ve. Rafe would never admit it, but his biggest fear was becoming his father so leaving the disciplining to you was something he did quite a bit. You loved Rafe for not being anything like his dad, but it came with a downside too. You couldn’t fully blame him for the way he was, but you already planned on having a talk about it when you both got home.
#obx#outerbanks#rafe cameron#rafe x reader#rafecameron#topper thornton#drew starkey#rafe cameron x reader#rafe is so boyfriend#rafe imagine#rafe cameron dad#dad!rafe#dad!rafe cameron
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The Surface
banner by @sailoryooons
Pairing: prince merman!Hoseok x sea witch!reader
Genre: fairytale AU/The Little Mermaid AU, smut
Summary: Prince Hoseok has only ever wanted one thing: to experience life on the Surface. You have only ever wanted Prince Hoseok. When he comes to you, desperate, claiming you are the only one who can help him, you decide to play along. You'll help him achieve his dream and maybe you'll satisfy your own dream, too.
Word count: 20k
Content: unprotected sex, oral sex (m. receiving), Hoseok has sex with someone but he thinks they're someone else, if you're incredibly squeamish, there may be some body/pain stuff that makes you go 😖, potentially a litt yandere-vibed
A/N: Happy my birthday eve to you, dear reader!!!!! This is my very first toe-dip into the world of fantasy/spn!! AND my first collab!!!!! Pleeeeaaassseeee read the warnings (and please!!!! let me know if I'm missing any or any are insufficient). I'm so excited; I struggled with plotting this fic and working out how to get it to do what I wanted and thid is actually v3.0 lmao BUT I'm really happy with it! And happy to be part of the Make Me Your Villain collab!!! Thanks to @daechwitatamic for beta-ng and yelling!!!!
*
Hoseok swam farther than he ever had before. Swam closer. He’d be inching forward and now he was close enough to be spotted; he knew that. He knew that that was too far, but he didn’t really care.
The first time he swam in this direction and saw the shadows of small boats cross over him, he’d bolted in a panic. Merpeople were not to be spotted by humans. Ever. So he’d raced away, not looking back.
But then he had the knowledge that humans sailed there. He knew that that stretch of water played host to life above its surface, too. They were little boats, not the huge ships he usually tailed. These were much smaller, with handfuls of humans sitting in them, pointing in the distance, holding little boxes up to their faces and lowering them again. Visible. Watchable. It was tantalising.
So he went back. Hung around and waited for a while. Did it again. Watched a boat sail over him and eventually drop anchor near the cove. Went back a third time. Saw the humans jump from the side of the boat into the water. Hung back.
The next time, he swam closer. And the time after that, closer still.
That particular day, he had time. Lots of it. There was nothing calling for his attention, nothing tying him to any place, so he edged closer and a little closer, until he could see so clearly their spindly legs kicking ineffectually through the water, their weird feet and tiny toes. He had never seen humans so close before. He wondered if anyone had. They were fascinating. They dived down and kicked back up, their limbs moving in the water to keep them afloat. They turned on to their backs, looking just like seals from below. They squealed and laughed and talked and Hoseok watched it all with rapt attention. What he wouldn’t have given to approach one. To have made contact. To have asked them all his questions.
He wished he had someone to tell. Someone who would receive the information with not even wonder—his hopes were not that high—but interest. He didn’t have anyone to share his discoveries with, his treasures, his excitement. No one else understood. Some people thought he was weird; others thought his interest in the human world was downright wrong.
But his excitement was palpable that day, floating so close to the humans, he could hear their voices. He could even just about make out their words. And then their speech took on a more urgent tone; there was more frantic splashing, some flailing of limbs. He looked around himself and rose until his head bobbed out of the water. He watched the humans spin, searching for something, pointing this way and that way, calling to each other, looking.
He wanted to help but he didn’t know how. He dipped back into the water and skirted around the edge of the group – still unseen—and then it hit him. He had been so focused on the humans that he hadn’t seen it.
The rip tide tugged him sideways with a vicious spinning force. He was lucky, because he lived in the sea and this was far from his first rip. It might have taken him unawares, but he was able to right himself and spiral through to the other side.
That was when he saw what they must have been looking for.
The rip had tossed him out on the other side of a sharp, rocky outcrop on the west side of the cove. It jutted far out into the sea, sheltering the shore from western winds, and he saw a human woman struggling to the surface.
Her limbs were slow and her face kept dipping under the waves until eventually, she just floated, barely moving at all, moving only with the rhythm of the waves. Hoseok watched with dread and fear curdling the excitement in his stomach. She was too still now, her face too low in the water. Something wasn’t right. There was something unnatural about the way she was lying there, suspended in the water.
Hoseok didn’t think before he acted. He kicked his fins and swam to her, wrapping one arm around her torso and hiking her upwards so her face was out of the water. He dragged her, swimming backwards, towards the shore. He was grateful there was a shore; the other side of the cove had nothing but sheer cliffs and sharp rocks.
He didn’t know what he would do when he reached the shingle beach, but being on land had to help, didn’t it? Land was where the humans belonged.
Hoseok dragged her as far out of the water as he could manage—which wasn’t very far because his tail churned the stones and wouldn’t propel him forwards, so he dragged himself, as well as this human woman, until only her legs were splashed by the waves.
He looked down at her, anxiety churning in his gut. How did humans die? Was she already dead? The thought was nauseating. He knew humans had hearts like merpeople did, so he pressed his hand against her chest and felt nothing. He pressed a hand against his own chest. Felt nothing. He pressed his fingers against the large artery he knew ran down his front and felt nothing. He pressed them to his neck and almost felt something, moved them around until he found the spot at which he could feel his blood pushing against them. He immediately transferred his fingers to the same position on the woman and felt the same thing.
He let out a heavy breath. Relief. At least she wasn’t dead.
But she also wasn’t awake.
“Hello?” he called lightly. “Uh, hello? Are you ok?”
She remained unmoved, but he could barely hear himself over the pounding of his frantic heart; maybe he was too quiet? Maybe merpeople couldn’t make noise outside of the water? He tried again but it elicited no response.
He watched her carefully, listening, training his ears towards her, tuning out the roar of the waves and the squawk of seagulls and the distant sound of voices. He concentrated hard, breathing carefully to slow his own heart, to quiet the thump of it against his ribs and the rush of blood through his veins. There was a wet gurgle as her chest rose and fell, coming from her mouth, but sounding from deep inside. Hoseok knew humans breathed through their mouths, not having gills of their own. So he knew she was breathing.
She was both alive and breathing. He sighed with relief. He could let his worry go and lean into his fascination.
He had never seen a human like this. Close enough to touch—he had touched her. Her hair was the colour of the sun, even wet through; the curls stuck to her skin and Hoseok dared to reach out and brush them from her face. As he took his hand back, he noticed he was shaking. Drops of water on her skin sparkled like gems, glinting in the daylight. The sun was hot—far hotter than he’d ever felt it in the water—and bright. The heat of it burnt away the water on her skin almost too quickly to notice. Hoseok didn’t think she looked all that different from a mermaid, not really. The legs made a difference, sure; she had no gills in her ribs; the webbing in her fingers was reduced to nothing, each digit separated down to the palm. But really, what difference did those things make?
He thought her a wonder. He thought her the most beautiful, fascinating thing he’d ever seen. Her rosebud mouth, lips open and plump. Her skin was smooth and dark; he looked stark next to her. Her torso was whole, one expanse of skin stretching around her back and ribs. Hoseok placed a hand to his gills, fingers playing along the edge; they were flapping uselessly in the dry air. He smoothed them down with his hand, imagined his torso like hers, uninterrupted.
He lay with his tail next to her legs. He tried to picture it split in two, tried to picture himself walking on two feet, upright. He wasn’t the longest merman, but how did that compare to humans? The woman by his side seemed long—were all other humans, too? He figured he would probably never know and the rarity of this moment, the precarity of it, dented his enthusiasm a little. But, he reminded himself, for the rest of his life, he would have this. This human woman, lying next to him, seen by him, touched by him. He wondered how many other merpeople had done that.
He’d heard the horror stories, of course, the kind that teachers tell students to scare them away from the surface. He had never believed them, not entirely. There were bad humans, sure, but there were bad merpeople, too. And looking down at this human, this woman, he knew she was good. He felt a fluttering in his chest that made his breathing hitch. Made him feel almost breathless.
He wished she would wake up and see him. That wasn’t allowed, of course. It was absolutely forbidden to make your presence as a merman known to anyone who lived on the surface. But, who had to know? Just this once. Just this once, Hoseok could have his dream come true, couldn’t he?
She blinked once, then twice, and rolled over to cough and splutter, and he panicked. The tranquillity of the moment was gone. He heard the sound of seawater hitting stone as she choked and it spilt from her lips. He didn’t know what that meant. He watched her back heave as she coughed and was gripped by an intense fear. He wasn’t bad; he didn’t break the rules; he didn’t have the stomach for it.
He was diving in the water before she had rolled back, before she had a chance to see him or even notice him. He had disappeared before he’d even made the decision to disappear. Maybe that was close enough. So much for his wishes to be seen. He just wasn’t brave enough.
Back in the water, he shuddered and realised he could breathe again. With his heart rate finally slowing, he swam towards home, his mind pre-occupied with daydreams about coming back to this shore, seeing more humans, learning some more; pre-occupied with the panic and relief and adrenalin of his last ten minutes.
Pre-occupied as he was, he didn’t see that his movements were being tracked. He didn’t see a royal aide, following at a distance, and then moving off towards the royal chambers when they made it back to court.
He didn’t see you either, though you could see him.
* * *
His mother came to see him the following day.
“Hoseok,” she began, in the quiet, stern voice that had always scared him as a child. “Do you think your father and I are stupid?”
He blinked. He hadn’t been expecting that and couldn’t see the reason behind it. That worried him. He was walking into a trap.
“No, of course not,” he answered, honestly.
“Then it will not surprise you if I say that we do know where it is you go in these waters.”
His blood turned to ice.
“We are all very well aware of your... interest in the surface. In humans and all their detritus.”
He opened his mouth to argue back but the expression on his mother’s face stopped him.
“We know you hunt out shipwrecks and follow boats along trade routes, searching the carcasses of their vessels for rubbish, hoping and waiting they might drop something valuable. We know how close you have got, Hoseok, to exposing yourself to the humans.”
He gulped. He knew he was in trouble. Probably a lot of trouble. He didn’t know what his punishment would be.
“We are not going to permit this any longer.”
That rankled. He was almost 21. An adult in any world. Permission? He found his voice.
“I wasn’t aware I needed permission to go anywhere.”
“You’re a prince, Hoseok, of course you need permission. And you no longer have it. So Sebastien will accompany you through your days for the time being, to ensure you do not go where you should not.”
“For the time being? How long is that exactly?”
His mother looked at him, impassive.
“For as long as your father and I tell him to.”
Then she swam away without bothering to say goodbye. Hoseok didn’t have any time to react before Sebastien was by his side.
“Good morning, my prince.”
Hoseok bit back a spiky retort and swam away, with Sebastien following at his fins. His mother couldn’t be serious. He was being chaperoned? It was an indignity. It was infantilising. It was entirely unnecessary. He flexed his hands into fists and out again, balling and stretching as he swam, as he carried on in his head the argument he wished he could have had with his mother. This would not do.
As he realised where he was swimming—with his new bodyguard—he stopped suddenly. He had been inadvertently leading Sebastien to his happy place, his treasure trove, the place where he kept all the so-called ‘human detritus’ he saved. He was sure his parents didn’t know about that and he didn’t want them finding out.
He swam away, ignoring Sebastien chatting idly at his side, and wondered just exactly what his parents knew. Had they seen him save that human woman? Had they seen how close he had come to being discovered? Is that what this was all about?
* * *
Hoseok looked miserable. Oh, he was smiling, and you were sure he was saying all the right things. But you knew. He was not enjoying his birthday party. There was nothing dazzling in his smile, no halo of light around his head. His laughter rang out, hollow and pitchy, not at all like the tumbling bells it usually was.
No, the prince was miserable. You were sure of it. You had noticed that he had been followed—was being followed—by one of the court’s highest-ranking aides; you saw him behind the prince at every turn, like a shadow, like a ghost. Maybe that was the problem.
You had been close as children, you and the prince, for a time. In that period when you were free, when society meant nothing to you, when prejudices and family feuds still hovered above your heads, out of reach. You had been friends and you felt it then, too, his brightness, his warmth. He didn’t care that the adults treated your family poorly; he did care that they treated you poorly. He didn’t know or care about what the adults said; neither did you. You were friends, the two of you, thick as thieves.
Then one day, all that hovered above you came tumbling down, pouring over you both like ice-water. It became more difficult then, to spend time together, to be friends. He never outright said it, broke up with you in a friend kind of way. You just ‘drifted apart’ because he was welcomed in where you were shunned; he was celebrated and everyone did their best to forget you ever existed.
You should have expected it. He was the prince, after all. And you were a sea witch. People said you were evil; the rumour had it that your whole family was. Matriarchal, and that was just the first problem. You had power. Your mother had had it. Your aunt. Their mother. The way you were told, it went back right to the very beginning. You were the latest in a very long line of very powerful witches.
It took you a long time to understand why that was used against you. You had power. Wasn’t that a good thing? You could do magic. You could achieve things no one else could. You could have made the entire sea a better place for everyone and everything living in it. But no one wanted your input; no one wanted to listen, to hear you. They wanted you to stay quiet. They wanted you to hide.
What boiled your blood was that you did. You stayed at the back, hid yourself away in a cave far from where the royal court lived: merpeople in coral towers and you, tangled in seaweed every time you so much as shook your head. You were older now and you knew full-well why they did it.
They were scared of you. They had always been scared of your family, but now, since the ‘tragic’ death of your mother, they were scared of you. Because you had a score to settle. Because you had a reason to hate them. You had vengeance on your mind.
Vengeance and Prince Hoseok.
Because no matter how much you hated it, no matter how much you didn’t want to want him, you did. You looked at him and your chest hurt with longing and your stomach roiled with hatred. How could it be that you could feel two things at once for the same person? You chose not to examine it these days. It had gone on too long and you were used to it. It felt like your natural state of being: hatred and love in equal measure. Fear and power.
No one had ever tested you. Not really. People came to you for silly little things like love potions and spells to make them smarter or charms to ward off hermit crabs from their gardens. No one wanted to see the full extent of your abilities. So you didn’t quite know what they were.
You toiled, testing yourself on little creatures, to see what you could do to them, how much you could transform them, how creative you could get. There had been a lot of failures at first, of course. So many. But then you started to succeed. And now you never failed. Everything you turned your hand to worked. Your mother had always said you were a natural and now you believed it, too.
You thought you could turn yourself into one of them if you wanted. Not that you did want. Never. Ever. You wouldn’t debase yourself, wouldn’t shame your ancestors with an attempt. But you could do it. That much you were confident of.
You were also confident of just how well you knew the prince. Better than he knew, you were sure. He probably didn’t realise quite what an open book he was to you. It was an open secret that he had a thing for life on the surface, but you saw so much more than that. He had never been able to hide from you: his enthusiasm, his wonder, his furtive glances around himself, the swift flick of his tail as he snuck between two large boulders, the fluidity and flexibility of his body the only things enabling him to sneak through. His little collection. Though ‘little’ wasn’t really the word for it, not anymore.
You had been to see it just once before. It was almost enough to impress you. His discoveries, his treasures, were displayed with such care, it almost touched you. These things, this tat, that he had found floating on the surface or buried in the seabed, he loved them. He treated them like something precious, not like the trash it so clearly was to the humans. It made your heart ache a little: his naivety, his innocence, his propensity for flights of fancy, his dreamy insistence on seeing the good in things, in people. In humans.
It was an open secret, this obsession of Hoseok’s, but it concerned his parents. Sure, he was only the youngest of seven sons—he wasn’t the heir—but he was still a prince. That made him valuable and important. It also meant he had to keep up appearances and it simply would not do to have a Prince of the Royal Court enamoured with... up there. So they had instructed one of their aides (a creeping, odious merman whom you avoided like the plague) to follow Hoseok around, to make sure he wasn’t getting himself into trouble.
Yes, you nodded to yourself, that was exactly what had happened.
*
Hoseok was getting sick of being followed around. It wasn’t even just that he couldn’t go to the surface; he couldn’t get a single minute of peace! Sebastien was always there and it was starting to grate quite uncomfortably.
He wasn’t enjoying the party and he was getting tired of pretending to enjoy it, so after taking a quick scan of the room, he turned tail and left. Sebastien followed, but Hoseok chose to ignore him.
“Leaving a party early?” you said lightly, as you caught him leaving the room. “Leaving your own party early? That’s not like you.”
His smile was a little tight when he flashed it your way.
“It’s only my party by technicality. No one will miss me.”
You merely raised your eyebrows slightly and raised one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug.
“I notice that you are also leaving,” he countered.
“Ah, once the host leaves, everyone else is free to go.”
His brow wrinkled a little and he scoffed.
“Don’t call me the host.”
“Careful,” you joked, “Sebastien here might tell your parents you’re being ungrateful. Look at all this opulence they prepared for you.”
He was about to spit something not entirely kind back at you before he realised that you were taking the piss. He rolled his eyes inwardly at himself. Of course you didn’t care. You never went in for this stuff anyway. He was surprised you had even shown up.
“I am being ungrateful. I would like them to stop looking out for me, stop doing things for me, stop-” he said, coming to such a sudden halt that Sebastien crashed into the back of him, “having me chaperoned like a child just because I like to swim a little farther than others.”
“I’m not sure it’s the distance they’re worried about.”
“Whatever. They just don’t get it. They think it’s dangerous.”
“What is?”
“The surface. Humanity. They think my collecting scraps from the seabed is somehow going to threaten all undersea life, trigger an apocalypse or something.”
“Ah.”
“They just don’t get it. They don’t get it. It’s not like I’m going to go up there and act like I’m human-”
“No? You could.”
He scoffed.
“Oh yeah, just go and flop around on the beach with my tail and my gills and everything. Great idea.”
“... You know I’m a fucking witch, right? I literally have the technology.”
Hoseok stopped suddenly again, looking at you, a little aghast, a little trepidatious. Then he laughed.
“Yeah, sure, one human coming right up!”
You laughed along with him, letting the subject drop, letting it be a joke. It had to be a joke with Sebastien listening in. But you were serious and you needed Hoseok to understand that you could do it. If he asked.
* * *
You thought about it more in the following days, as you watched the prince and his tormentor float around in the water. Hoseok couldn’t even blink without Sebastien there to watch him. You could feel his frustration, his impatience; you could see the dullness diminishing his shine; you could see the time it took for his lips to stretch into his signature heart-shaped smile expand—sometimes they barely made it at all. Was it the annoyance and inconvenience of having a chaperone in itself, or was he pining for a little adventure? Itching for a treasure hunt, fingers twitching to dig through sand and find something broken and useless to take back to his cave of wonders?
The whole sea knew. The prince was being monitored. The prince was being kept on a lead. A short one. There were whispers and gossip and speculation. The worst of these rumours was the one that told you his parents were doing this to get him ready for marriage. That he had been betrothed to a princess in the Caspian sea since before he had even existed and now they had both come of age, the marriage negotiations could begin in earnest.
That would not do. You could not have that.
Your own fingers were twitching; you were as frustrated as the prince, trying to work out a way to expedite this whole thing, to get things moving.
Someone’s hand would have to be forced, you realised. But whose? And to do what?
*
It hit you, quite suddenly, as you were drifting off to sleep one night. You had been picturing Hoseok amongst all his ‘objet d’art’: his happy face, his preening and polishing, his voice ringing out in a sweet, little tune—the one you liked to catch in your shells and store for later. It was obvious.
With each day that passed, the prince’s frustration grew. As did his misery and his little, daydreamy desires to experience life on the surface. With each day that passed, his parents were obliviously telling themselves that Hoseok was forgetting about it. He was integrating better with his peers, no longer always off on his own adventure; he was finally getting over this little ‘phase’.
It, actually, you thought to yourself as you caught the fleeting idea with a snatched hand, would work out quite nicely after all. You just had to be careful about tipping the scale.
*
Sebastien wasn’t stupid (you couldn’t get to his position if you were), but he wasn’t exactly sharp. You engaged him in a little idle chat while the prince was dining with his family. Commented on the prince’s interest in life ex-marina. Sebastien had responded a little too eagerly, sharing a little too much (not that he knew he was doing it—not sharp) so it was very easy for you to drop in that you had noticed the prince hadn’t been visiting his little shrine much recently. Sebastien played off his reaction so terribly that, even had you not been so perspicacious, it would have been clear he was bluffing, that you knew far more than he did and he was embarrassed by it. You shrugged, as if the conversation meant nothing to you, and glided away, certain that the seed had been planted.
All you had to do now was wait for it to sprout.
*
It took even less time than you expected. The sea over the next couple of days was a flurry of anxious activity. No official word had gone out, but something was happening and everyone knew it. Aides were everywhere, in every corner, under every rock, in every reef. The king and queen had an awful lot of staff at their disposal, so it wasn’t long before one of them turned up something very interesting indeed.
It was even quicker that the King stormed down to the prince’s little cave of wonders to give Hoseok what for.
You hung back and watched. Watched Hoseok’s face as it moved from dismay to anger, to fury. You had never heard him angry like that. It was thrilling. It was exciting. It was, you hated to admit it, sexy. He swam forward and you heard him confront his parents, heard his outrage.
But how his father roared. How he hovered above Hoseok, his youngest child, with a face like thunder. How his shouting rippled through the water, carrying it farther than you were sure he’d have wanted.
Hoseok put up a good fight, but he had no power. He wasn’t the heir; he had no leverage, not really. So, his father took his trident and destroyed everything. Even the very cave itself. It was rubble by the time he turned his back on his son and swam away. It was sand. Hoseok was left staring at what used to be his most prized possessions, his secret joy.
It almost hurt when you saw his face, his distress and despair. You watched him sink to the seabed and sob, then you turned around and swam away. You didn’t want to watch that. You didn’t need to. You just had to hope that it worked like you intended.
You slunk back to your cave—your presence having never been noticed—and waited for the prince to come to you.
*
Hoseok knew they were just things. He knew they were things most people would consider rubbish, garbage, trash, waste. But they weren’t rubbish to him. They were prizes. They were trophies. They were secrets. They were hints of another life, another way of living. They were like the key to a code. If he collected enough, maybe he would understand what life on the surface was like. Maybe once he had enough human things, he would be able to experience Personhood by proxy.
He had always known he would never go there. Could never go there. It just wasn’t done. Not even for a prince. Especially not for a prince. But his parents couldn’t order him to stop dreaming. So he dreamt and he collected and he treasured. He knew no one approved of what they called his ‘obsession’ with the surface. He didn’t care. They didn’t understand. They didn’t see what he could. They were so entrenched in their own, bigoted ideas that they couldn’t open their minds for a second to the possibility that maybe humans weren’t so bad. Maybe they had their problems, but they also had their wonders.
Even outside of his personal curiosity, he had always thought that some sort of treaty with the humans would be advantageous. They were lucky, in his sea, that the water was kept mostly clear, that oil spills only reached them as news. Their unfavourable interactions with humans were limited, but Hoseok knew that wasn’t the case elsewhere. He thought, if they could communicate with them, that maybe agreements could be reached. A relationship with the world on the surface could be mutually beneficial.
No one else saw it that way.
He sat on the sand and wept, cried, sobbed, for his secret little things that were no more. No longer secret and no longer there. He scooped up fragments of them in his hand and let them drift back down. He sifted through rocks and pebbles and sand to see if anything had been left intact, if anything was salvageable. But his father was thorough. And powerful. And there was nothing left.
* * *
The flurry of activity stopped and was replaced by an awkward tension. No one had seen the prince since the argument with the king. No one dared approach either king or queen, not even the other princes. People moved so slowly through the water, as if they were scared to cause too much of a ripple. The rhythm of everything had been upset.
For no one more than the prince. He lay on the sand next to what used to be his happy place for hours, until the sea grew dark and he should have been back at home with his family. The very thought made him sick. He couldn’t. Wouldn’t. The thought of seeing his parents again made bile rise in his throat. His blood boiled with an anguished kind of anger he had never experienced before.
Once he had stopped crying, he spent some time staring around in disbelief. He couldn’t believe that all his things were gone, but he also couldn’t believe that his father had done it. The royal family was a Happy Family, officially, but they were also usually happy in actual fact. Arguments were few. Discord uncommon. There had been little cause for friction amongst them in his life. He wasn’t used to this. He and his brothers fought as kids, but never seriously; no one ever tried to rebel in any meaningful kind of way. It was a peaceful kingdom and that peace started at the very top.
Or so it had been. Even that had been destroyed now. Peace was the very last thing on the prince’s mind. He was torn between his anger and his despair. He wanted to hurt his father, very badly. He wanted to show his father that he wouldn’t let this stop him, that not even the King could break him. He knew he was right about humans, about humanity. He would show him. He also wanted, with a kind of frenzied desperation, to set off over the oceans and retrieve a new artefact for each and every one that he’d just lost.
As time passed and the sun disappeared from overhead, his whirring mind, his racing heart, began to slow and a tiny spark of hope burst in him. There was a way, he had realised. Or, he thought there might be a way. There was a possibility. There might be a possibility. If anyone would have the answer, it would be you.
*
He called your name and it roused you from a mid-morning nap. You sauntered to the cave mouth and your face pulled into surprise at the sight of him.
“Prince Hoseok, what are you doing here?”
He looked a little hesitant, peering behind you at the darkness of the cave, wondering what lay back there, if all the rumours were true. He knew you. You had been close at one point. He knew you so this was fine. He could trust you; he knew he could. You weren’t going to hurt him. You weren’t like they said. Well, in one way, he hoped you were; he hoped you were every bit as powerful as people said because, lord knew, he was going to need some powerful magic. Powerful magic the likes of which could topple the royal family, people said. What care did he have for the royal family now?
But, the evil part... He hoped that wasn’t true. You’d never given him cause to believe so before.
Still, waiting at the entrance to your home (your ‘lair’ as some called it and Hoseok was never sure if they were joking or not), he felt timid. Small. Not like a royal prince, but like a supplicant. Which, really, he supposed, he was.
“I’m here to ask you to do something for me.”
You couldn’t deny your intrigue. You gestured for him to follow you inside.
He did so slowly, his eyes darting around at all your shelves, full of stuff, fuller even than his own treasure trove had been. He couldn’t imagine what might be in all the containers, what secrets or tonics or poisons they might be holding. He had no idea what it was you did, really. You were the Sea Witch and that was bad enough for most people to never ask anything more... Until they needed you, of course. Hoseok had never needed you, not until now, so he had never paid your work much attention. You flew under the radar for the most part, which was entirely by design.
“Ok,” you said, as you perched yourself on a soft bed of anemones that Hoseok didn’t dare touch. “What can I do for you?”
He took a deep breath, a steeling breath.
“I want to be human.”
You pretended to be surprised, but that was exactly what you had been hoping for. Only an idiot would have been surprised by his request, especially given what had just happened.
“Human, huh? Finally pulling the trigger?”
He looked reluctant to say any more. You raised one eyebrow at him and held his gaze. He looked away.
“My parents don’t understand a thing. They don’t know anything about humans. I want to know. I have to know. They-... My parents can’t control me.”
You shrugged and nodded and caught the look of surprise on Hoseok’s face as you turned to gather some ingredients from the other side of the cave. He hadn’t thought it would be that easy.
It wouldn’t be.
You gathered the necessary items and tipped first one, then another, into the large conch you used for mixing spells.
“You... you can do it?” he asked and you chose not to be offended by the question.
“Of course I can.”
“You... will do it?”
“I will.”
The relieved smile on his face could have lit your cave for weeks. His teeth shone and his eyes sparkled as he laughed and clapped his hands. Victory.
“Thank you! I don’t know how I can repay you.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, sunshine. There are conditions to all this, you know.”
His face settled back into seriousness, his brow knitting above his eyes. He nodded fervently.
“Yes, of course. I understand. What do I need to do?”
You paused, leaning one hand on the edge of your giant shell and looked at him with a firm, fixed stare.
“You get three days,” you told him. “Three days as a human. You’ll be human before lunch, so noon on the third day will see you turning back as you are now.”
“Oh.”
His disappointment was palpable, but that worked to your advantage, too. You forced a light chuckle.
“I’m good, Hoseok, but I’m not that good.”
(You were, in fact, that good, but he didn’t need to know that).
“Of course! Yes, three days. That’s great.”
“There is a way you can stay longer than that, but it’s not in my power.”
“What does that mean?”
You pushed off the ledge and rounded the basin, coming to a stop in front of him. You didn’t miss the two inches that he scooted backwards away from you. At a different time, under different circumstances, this might have offended you, but you had a reputation; you could hardly blame him for his timidity. He had never seen you do anything like this before.
“You have to put down roots.”
“Right... What does that mean?”
“You have to find a human woman and plant a seed.”
Hoseok continued to look at you blankly, until you rolled your eyes.
“Fornicate. Copulate. Mate. Breed. Fuck.”
His eyebrows shot towards his hairline.
“Oh... Within three days?”
“Is that a problem?”
“No!” His answer was too quick and his blushes beetroot. He cleared his throat. “No, it’s fine, but... You said plant a seed. You mean... a child?”
“Mhmm.”
He blinked, his mind reeling. You gave him a second to process.
“How do I guarantee that? It has to be a child? There has to be... it has to...?”
You nodded.
“If you want to stay up there, you need some connection to it. You need a tether. Just how it works.”
“Oh, right...”
He was nodding, but he wasn’t looking at you. You could see his eyes were far away; he was thinking.
He was worrying. Would three days be enough? And bringing a child into this? Could he? Doubt was beginning to creep in at the sides, but he couldn’t let it. He had to see this through. It felt like his only chance. And you’d already said yes. You could do it. He could almost taste it, he was so close. He had to keep going. He could deal with the seed problem later; he could hardly think about putting down roots when he didn’t even have legs to stand on. First things first and the first thing was becoming a human.
“There’s also something else I need from you,” you told him.
“Anything.”
“I just need a little piece of you. In order to make this work, I need a little tether to you.”
“You need to tether to me? But doesn’t that keep me tied here?”
You liked it when they asked questions. You smiled, benignly, but your eyes glinted wickedly.
“It keeps you tethered to me, the one with the magic? The one who’s transforming you? We can skip that step if you like, but then the spell will do absolutely nothing.”
“Oh.”
He blinked and then nodded.
“Ok, makes sense. Yeah, ok, what do you need?”
“Come here.”
You beckoned him to your side and he obeyed quietly. You took his hand in yours and plunged it into the shell; then you placed your other hand on his chest.
“Hold still; this won’t hurt.”
“What are you taking?”
“Just a little bit of soul.”
He flinched and you had to tighten your fingers around his wrist to keep it there.
“Relax, you won’t even notice it missing. And keep still, I need to concentrate.”
You closed your eyes and tapped lightly on his chest with your fingers, looking for a tap. Once you found the spot, you dug your finger in a little harder, focused hard and turned it on. You channelled it through Hoseok’s arm and tipped it into the shell through his fingers.
You were right: it didn’t hurt. He felt a weird pulling sensation in his chest and then it dragged down his arm; it was a little uncomfortable, certainly something he’d never felt before, but it didn’t hurt exactly. He wanted to look and see what his soul looked like, pouring out, but he couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes.
His soul was sweet like nectar and it shimmered as it settled atop the other ingredients. You could feel its pulse, strong in Hoseok’s heart, its rhythm airy and delicate with a stable bass. You liked it. You liked it a lot. You could feel your own shimmer in response to it; you could feel your heart flutter when you let a little of him inside it. You bit your lip to stop a smile. Once you had what you needed for the spell, you siphoned off just a little extra for yourself. Nothing he would notice – you were always careful about that.
You held him there a minute longer, just absorbing, marinating a little. Sometimes this was the worst part of the job. Some people’s souls were vile, horrid, dark, acrid, smoking things; the taste they left in your mouth wouldn’t shift for days. This, though, was delectable. If you’d had another plan in mind, you might have taken more, maybe even all of it; you weren’t sure how you managed to stop yourself.
You shouldn’t have been surprised by its sweetness. It was Hoseok. He was like that. Of course his soul would be pure as sunlight itself. It was the lightest soul you’d ever held. Almost light enough to make you feel bad for doing all this.
Almost.
“Ok,” you began, letting him go and creating a little more space between you. “We’re done.”
Hoseok opened his eyes and looked down at his tail.
“We are?”
You laughed, not unkindly.
“Yes. You might want to start swimming while I finish this off. Surface is a long way up from here.”
“Oh. But... it’ll work? I’ll be...-”
“It’ll work. Trust me. And take this.”
You thrust a little package, wrapped in fisherman’s netting, into his hands.
“Now go on. Get.”
He nodded, first a little uncertainly, but, as if he was convincing himself, each bob of his head grew surer until he was turning around and swimming straight out of your cave and up, up, up.
You gave everything in the shell a swirl, a mix, let it coalesce, then you placed your hands on the bottom and forced heat through them, so much heat that the concoction boiled, the sea water steaming around you. It bubbled and it boiled until there was nothing left in the shell but a pearl. You picked up this pearl and placed it into a clam. You shut the clam over a cord and tied it around your neck. You were going to want to keep this one close.
*
Hoseok was swimming so hard he barely noticed it at first. Then his tail was tingling. Then it began to hurt. Hurt enough to slow him down, to almost stop him completely. It was a wrenching, tearing, searing kind of pain that made him cry out, that made dark spots dance in front of his eyes and his head feel light. He couldn’t quite tell if his tail was moving or not; there was blinding pain and very little else, but he knew he was getting close to the surface. He couldn’t stop now.
In the space of three kicks, his tail became two, and Hoseok was overwhelmed by the agony of saltwater in his wounds. He couldn’t stop, couldn’t look, couldn’t do anything but try not to die. Try not to drown. He kept kicking, kept pulling with his arms, but his fingers were no longer webbed and they didn’t grab the water like before.
Swimming as a human, it turned out, was every bit as inefficient as it looked. He tried to move his legs in tandem, to kick and flick like he did with his tail but they wouldn’t cooperate; they couldn’t bend like his tail could, didn’t have the flexibility. Every movement sent a fresh surge of pain racing through him and he was finding it hard to breathe through it.
And then he stopped being able to breathe at all. He clutched at his ribs with one hand, expecting to feel his gills, but there was nothing. He opened his mouth to gasp and his throat was full of salt water in a way that felt wrong, uncomfortable, painful. In a way that made him panic. His lungs were burning, his throat was burning, his legs were burning; everything, everything, felt like it was on fire.
His heart was humming, beating so fast it vibrated against his ribs. He couldn’t think clearly, coherently, at all. It was all just a screaming panic, shouting and squealing and howling for him to get out, get out, get out of the water.
When he finally broke clear of the sea’s surface, he choked and gasped and coughed up water. It stung in his eyes and the taste of salt was so strong, it made him gag. He looked about himself to find the nearest shore and saw none in sight. He knew where he was; he saw the sea, his underwater kingdom, in his mind and he knew how to find the nearest shore. He just had to get there.
*
He dragged himself out of the waves, spent. There wasn’t a single muscle in his body that wasn’t crying out; he had never found swimming difficult before. It had always been as easy as breathing, but that, too, was difficult as a human. He swallowed seawater that made him sick, accidentally breathed it in and choked, found his breathing growing laboured and heavy when he was still miles from shore.
He lay on the shingle beach for a while, waiting to feel something other than pain. Pain and heaviness. Every movement was an effort. Every movement took active thought, especially his legs. He pushed himself into a sitting position and turned his attention to the package you gave him. He unwrapped it and unfolded fabrics—soaked through, of course. Hoseok had seen people wear clothes in books before but he’d never seen any in real life. He wondered where on earth you got them from. He briefly wondered if he wanted to know.
And despite everything: the pain, the exhaustion, the fear, the dread that was starting to settle in his stomach as the adrenalin faded, Hoseok was excited. He had human garments in his hands. They were his and he was about to wear them. He was human.
Human.
*
The awe and wonder didn’t last long. The friction of the fabric against his skin was almost unbearable. Was his skin sensitive or were the fabrics rough? He couldn’t tell but he could feel each tiny swish, each brush against him as he moved, with every swing of his arm and every step of his feet. It felt like the top layer of his skin was being slowly rubbed away, his soft, supple skin becoming red and raw and oh so sensitive.
The steps hurt, too. The shingle under his feet felt almost pleasant compared to the torching pain he felt in his legs. Like they were being cut open every time, like he was splitting his tail over and over and over again, the torture wouldn’t end.
He felt so heavy. Leaden. Like he barely had the energy to lift his feet at all. He put this down to the swim, the physical trauma, the lack of sleep he’d had that night. But he’d never felt the weight of his body so heavily before. In the water, he floated. The water kept him buoyed; the water supported him, carried him; he moved through it like he weighed nothing at all. On land, he felt no support. On the contrary, he felt as if the air itself were pushing him down, keeping him stuck to the ground, as if it didn’t want him to move anywhere.
It wasn’t at all like he had expected. He wished you had warned him about the pain. He wished he had known a little more before walking into this – literally walking! He was walking! On two feet! It was agony.
Trying to keep his head straight, he knew the first thing he should do was find food. He’d swum so far, he needed something. His stomach was gurgling in an angry, acidic roil that made him feel faint (or maybe that was the pain or the exertion or the atmosphere or or or). He was lucky that this beach was narrow and the town close. The shingle quickly gave way to grass, which was only slightly soothing on Hoseok’s feet, and then the grass gave way to paving.
He followed the path in the only direction it went and it wasn’t long before he found people. Humans. So many of them. He stood, stock still, watching them. It was overwhelming. The sights and sounds and smells of them. There was food grilling, and children laughing, and market hawkers soliciting, and Hoseok had no idea which way to turn. He could barely think at all. He needed-
He didn’t know what. A rest. A break. To sit down? He walked to the nearest chair – a metal frame with metal seat, next to a metal table – and sat; the chair scraped backwards slightly and the scratch of it on the ground brought a man out from the cafe the chair was sitting in front of.
“Hey, you can’t sit there!” the man called, looking none too happy. “Customers only! Those chairs are for customers only!”
“Oh, oh ok,” Hoseok spluttered. “I can be a customer. I can buy, uh-”
“No! We’re not open yet! No service!”
Hoseok thought then that it should be fine for him to sit down if they weren’t open, if there were no customers yet, but the man continued to shout, to shoo him off, so Hoseok stood and moved away. He would just have to try again a little further down the road.
That cafe might not have been open, but there were market stalls with edible wares already cooked and out for consumption. He took a skewer proffered by a weathered old lady and ate it gratefully, even though it was dry and hard to chew. She then held her hand out expectantly and it was at that moment, Hoseok realised he had nothing to trade. What could he offer? He considered the neat, net package that you had provided his clothes in and brought it out of his pocket. He tried to hand it over but the woman started cursing at him in a language he didn’t understand. He backed away from her aggression and this was clearly the wrong move. She grabbed a large metal spoon and came around the side of her table, raising it above her head.
Hoseok ran. He hadn’t known he could run. Would have claimed not to be able to if you’d asked him to at that moment, but the panic set him going and his feet stomped, painful step after painful step, until he was, once more, breathing heavy and laboured, a sharp pain between his ribs stabbing him with every inhale.
This was going to be harder than he thought.
*
He eventually sat at the side of the road, wondering how he was supposed to navigate this world he clearly knew nothing about. He had been arrogant in the sea. He thought he knew everything there was to know about humans. He had learnt about their culture, he thought; he had studied their ways of life, he thought. It was nothing compared to the real experience of being here. Nothing was how he expected. He was woefully unprepared.
Tears pricked in his eyes and he tried to keep them at bay because he had wanted this. He had asked for it. And you had done it for him. Hoseok realised with a shock just exactly what position this had put you in. The prince was nowhere to be found. He hadn’t told anyone what he was doing. The only person who knew was you. If they found that out, lord knew what kind of trouble you’d be in. They’d have your head if they thought you had brought him to any harm.
But you’d been willing. Supportive even. So he had to make this work. He had to make it worth it. For him. For you. He would make it work and he would return to the sea to explain everything: to show what he had achieved on the surface, to prove to everyone that humans weren’t like they all said. To prove that you had been the truest, kindest and most loyal friend he had. That you had given him all of it. That you weren’t like they all said, either.
He blew out a deep breath. There was a lot riding on this.
He knew he would eventually need somewhere to sleep, somewhere safe. He walked back towards the centre of the market and found a nice-looking woman selling necklaces.
“Excuse me,” he began, warily. “I need somewhere to stay.”
Her friendly smile faltered a little, frozen on her face as she tried to parse his words.
“Ok?” she finally returned.
“Can you tell me where I can... Is there somewhere I can sleep?”
“Uh,” she said, her face twisting into a kind of confusion that Hoseok felt he was being judged by. “I mean, you can get a hotel or something?”
“Ok, where do I get one?”
The woman looked around her, to see if anyone else was really hearing this. She shrugged.
“There are kind of a lot around. Take your pick. There’s one right there.”
She pointed over Hoseok’s shoulder at a white, stone building, and Hoseok’s smile was all the bigger for the relief he felt.
“Thank you!” he called, already making his way towards the hotel.
But things continued to be difficult. He didn’t have a ‘credit card’ for the hotel staff to ‘hold’. He didn’t know what that meant. They told him he couldn’t have a room if he had no method of payment. He tried to offer something else; he was a good swimmer, he said; he could dive for pearls? The two staff behind the reception desk gave each other the same look the woman on the stall had given him. They explained that they only took cash or credit. He didn’t have either of those two things.
He left the building and sat by the road, because there was nothing else he could do.
He tried so hard not to let doubt creep in, not to feel despair, not to start desperately wishing he had thought about this a little longer. He tried to remember things he’d learnt about the human world – things that would help him. But it was already so different here from what he had expected.
The stories he had grown up hearing about human interactions with his kind were awful; humans were brutal and cruel and hunted merpeople for sport. That kind of thing. But he thought they were kind to each other. They had a society. They governed each other: elected officials who were entrusted with their cities and countries. They made art and sang songs and raised animals whom they kept for companionship, rather than labour. Humans were resilient and tough and brave, social creatures. They came together in crisis and performed heroic feats to help others out of danger. Those were the humans he had imagined.
The ones he had experienced so far were not like that at all. Maybe they knew, he thought; maybe they could tell already somehow that he wasn’t one of them. He was different. He hadn’t even been a human for a day yet. Maybe he was doing things wrong. He was sure he wasn’t walking right—the pain made it impossible. He had shown up from the beach in clothes that had barely dried, were caked in salt. His hair was stiff and tangled with it, too. His face felt tight and rough. Maybe they were right to mistrust him.
But how could he fix it? What could he do?
He couldn’t stay there, sitting on the ground. People walking past were looking at him; it made him nervous. No one had been able to show him any generosity or kindness and the darkness of night was starting to cover everything. There were artificial lights hanging from every door, a warm glow from every window that served only to bathe the shadows in a dim, greyish light. Nothing was black, as it was in the deep ocean, but it was all muted, hard to make out, indeterminate. Scarier.
He had to get out of sight. He had to find somewhere safe that he could stay for the night. That was the most important thing.
As hot as it had been when he first arrived on the surface, he could feel the chill now. There was something naked about being out in the air, with no water surrounding him, enveloping him. Even through the fabric of his clothes (which still scored his skin with every movement), he felt the air move, felt it stiffen his skin and raise the downy hairs there. He needed shelter. He needed to be far away from people, for now. He needed to be sure that, if what the merpeople said was true, he would not come to harm this night.
It was with a heavy, sinking heart that he made his way back to the beach. He fell upon the shingle and didn’t even have the energy to cry out, to sob like he wanted to. He had never experienced pain or exhaustion like this. He had never felt so out of place—not just in this world, but in this body. Did all humans feel like this? Heavy and sore and stiff, with the world pushing down on you? His legs were still screaming; they were as unblemished and unmarked as they had been when he’d first checked them twelve hours ago, but the pain was so convincing, he thought he would look down and see his tail, mutilated, bloody, split in two just like he’d asked.
He made his way very slowly, very carefully, to the end of the beach and the edge of the shore. With the cliffside to his right, there was protection from wind, at least, and it was deserted of people. He shuffled forward and sat with his legs straight out, letting the waves wash over his feet.
That was when he cried. He cried with abandon, without thought, without hope, with an aching, broken heart. He couldn’t quite believe that it was happening this way, that all of his dreams were crumbling in front of his eyes. He wouldn’t believe it; there was good in this world and he was determined to find it, but he had never felt so out of his depth. He had no idea what to do. He had no one, nowhere, nothing.
He looked at the waves as they splashed over his feet (feet!) and he imagined sinking into them, imagined them encroaching further and further onto the shore until he was swallowed up by them, swimming, drowning. Could he drown? He was human now and humans could drown, but he was really a mermaid... Would the magic revert? He remembered what you had said about keeping a tether to him; would you know if he were drowning? Could you see him now, pathetic and weeping?
You could. With his pearl at the bottom of your basin, you could conjure up his image and watch his drama play out in the rippling water.
But the sight didn’t bring you much joy. You worried that you had overestimated him, overestimated the humans. You had spent time on the surface but it was still a foreign world; you didn’t know everything. Maybe you should have prepared him a little more, lent him a little of your human currency. You had expected his grace and charm to carry him at least through the first night but he was a different person now. Well, he was a person, not a merman anymore. He was literally out of his element. A fish out of water.
You chuckled to yourself at that one. Then you frowned and rested your chin on your palm, pondering ways that you could make this work if he couldn’t do it on his own. You fingered the clamshell on your necklace and an idea started to form.
It could work. It wasn’t how you had envisaged this whole thing going but... It could work.
With a sigh, you placed the pearl safely back in its clam and floated off to your inventory: a powder there, some shellfish here, gathering together everything needed for yet another expensive spell.
If you need something doing, you thought to yourself ruefully, you’ve got to do it yourself.
* * *
Hoseok was starting to shiver on the shore—something that he had never experienced before and something he would be quite happy to not experience again. The way his muscles trembled and his skin hurt, still raw from the fabric, but bumpy now with goosebumps that made the friction all the worse. He took his feet out of the water and asked himself forlornly what on earth he should do, but he had no answer.
He scanned the horizon out to sea and saw nothing but washed-out darkness looking back at him. He scanned the beach and the land and his attention was caught by a light, wobbling in the darkness and growing larger. It was only when the person holding the lantern stepped foot on the beach that he could see there was a person behind it at all. If he had been less tired, less sad, less hungry, he might have worried, or he might have rallied and put his best foot (foot!) forward, or he might have hidden. But he could do none of those things. He sat and watched a young woman approach.
“Goodness, are you alright?” she asked, when he was close enough to see her form but not her face.
She wore the same thin shoes that a lot of people in the town had been wearing, barely covering her feet, and long, flowing fabric danced on the shingle above them. He could just about make out her light hair and her petite height, but the rest of her remained a mystery.
“I’m fine, thank you,” Hoseok replied, knowing that he was lying but not knowing if she would see that.
“Are you sure?” she queried. “It’s not safe to be out on the beach alone at night like this. I saw you sitting here and I thought you might be in trouble.”
A glimmer of hope flicked in Hoseok’s heart. Could it finally be: a human who was like he had always dreamt humans would be? Kind? Generous? Could he tell her? Could he share his woes? Would she ease his mind? Was this what he had been waiting for?
He decided he had no choice because his only other options were to drown in the sea or starve on this beach.
“I am in trouble,” he began. “I have nowhere to stay, no food, no money. I have nothing. I don’t know what to do.”
He tried to stop his voice cracking, but it cracked of its own volition. He didn’t want to be pitied; he just needed to be helped. But beggars can’t be choosers, he reminded himself.
“None at all?”
You took a couple of steps towards him, still not close enough that he could see your features clearly, but enough to suggest trust, to suggest comfort.
He shook his head in return.
“You should come with me.”
You could see the surprise on his face, the hope that lit it, the worry that creased his brow.
“Just for tonight,” you continued. “I can give you a bed so you can rest. You really shouldn’t stay out here all night.”
Hoseok rose to his feet, biting hard on his bottom lip to stop himself crying out as the pain surged once more.
“It’s not far,” you said, before turning back the way you had come.
Hoseok followed your lantern, back up the beach, down the path, and into the town. You led him into a narrow alley with a single door at the end. It was this door that you opened with a quiet creak, then you led him inside and up a single flight of steps.
“It’s not much,” you said, attempting to sound somewhat apologetic as you opened the door to the apartment.
It was sparsely decorated and the linens were grey in a way that suggested they hadn’t always been. The lightbulb in the ceiling was naked and dim. The plant on the windowsill looked crisp and parched.
You lived comfortably underwater, despite your status as social pariah, because people wanted your little potions and spells and you could charge through the nose for them. On land, it was more difficult. Humans weren’t interested in trading for things; they wanted cash and nothing but. That made it more difficult to be comfortable here. But you had shelter and food and that was more than the prince had.
Hoseok was nervous. He hadn’t known what to expect but somehow, this wasn’t it. He had heard of the way humans warred with one another, the way they oppressed and exploited other classes, the way most of them starved whilst the few indulged. This was so much more mundane. Nondescript. Boring. Homely.
He took a look at the woman now that he could see her properly in the cold light of the apartment. She was beautiful. Not unlike the woman he had rescued from the beach, he realised. Dark skin that somehow shimmered, golden hair that almost looked like a halo with the way it reflected light. Her eyes were dark, too, deep and rich and warm. She felt familiar to him, somehow, but he couldn’t pinpoint why. He knew she wasn’t the same woman from the beach, not quite, but there was something about her that he felt he knew, had seen before. It comforted him, quieted his nerves a little.
“I don’t have much to offer,” you interrupted his thoughts with a shy chuckle. “But it’s better than sleeping outside.”
“This is wonderful. I can’t thank you enough for doing this for me. It has been a difficult day and you are the first person who’s shown me any kindness. I don’t know how I can repay you for that.”
You giggled and it sounded like chimes.
“You don’t have to repay me. Pay it forward; if you help someone like I’m helping you, that will be enough.”
Hoseok wondered for a second if he had fallen asleep on the beach and was dreaming this. Because this woman, she was everything he had dreamt; she was what he had been hoping for. The flicker of hope in his chest grew into a flame and he shivered as a warmth rushed through him.
“Would you like something to eat?” you offered and Hoseok jumped at the chance.
You gave him bread and cheese and watched him eat them, at first tentatively, and then with great gusto. Of course, he had never tried these things before, never eaten human food. You placed some fruit on the small coffee table he was eating at and he devoured that, too. His eyes widened as he bit into a pear, ripe and juicy, sticky sweet nectar dribbling down his chin. He hummed with delight and you saw the sparkle return to his eyes.
You knew what you were there to do but you were enjoying this moment. This was the Prince Hoseok you knew; this was how he should be: bright and smiling, his crescent-moon eyes alight with laughter. You sat next to him and picked at some food, too, not really tasting it because the sweetness of the moment was far too strong.
Hoseok only stopped eating when you stopped giving him food, when you only had enough left for a small breakfast in the morning and nothing else. He sat back, resting on his palms, and sighed happily.
“That was the most amazing meal I’ve ever had!” he exclaimed and you laughed.
“You are very easily impressed. There are far more exciting things to eat here; I simply cannot afford them all.”
He shook his head.
“Not at all. That was wonderful. Thank you so much.”
With his stomach finally full, his fatigue hit him full in the face and he yawned widely, a quiet wail escaping his throat.
“You must be exhausted. Please, take the bed. I can sleep on the sofa,” you said, gesturing towards the bed that sat against one wall.
Hoseok thought the bed looked huge and the sofa, small. He thought about what the right thing to do would be. He couldn’t sleep in the bed. It wouldn’t be right, would it? But he was so tired and in so much pain. He looked at the bed longingly, imagining himself stretching out over its surface, letting it take his weight. He imagined it feeling like water, like being carried on the waves, weightless. He looked at the sofa.
“Please,” you repeated. “Take the bed.”
Every manner, every point of order, every etiquette lesson was screaming at him to say no, to refuse, to offer to sleep anywhere but the bed. To not inconvenience you, to not put you out, to not cost you even more than he already had, to not trespass any further onto your kindness. But sleep was calling, louder and more insistent. His wrecked, ravaged body was screaming.
He nodded shyly and offered a quiet thanks before rising and slipping, sore and worn, beneath the sheets. He was asleep before he even had the chance to notice the way the bed fabric, too, brushed rough against his exposed skin.
You watched him. He looked peaceful; his face smoothed of any worries or concerns. He made a fine human, you thought. He was tall and lean and, despite the pain you knew he was suffering, he didn’t let it show: he’d walked straight and held himself high. Royal blood, you assumed.
You wondered how much you would have to engineer this to ensure success. Despite all you knew about the prince (and you knew a lot), this was a blind spot. He had hesitated when you told him of his conditions; the idea of a child had alarmed him. Maybe he would decide he didn’t want to stay human after all.
There were two and a half days left. That was plenty of time, you decided. You wouldn’t push; he was too delicate for that, especially after his first day’s misery. You would cushion his fall, pick him up carefully, and slowly show him both what the human world was really like and what it could be like with you. You would delight him and impress him and he would give himself to you. He would. You were sure of it. He would fall into the world that you would show him and he would give himself to you, body and soul.
You fingered the clamshell still tied around your neck. It held the pearl you created when you turned Hoseok into a human. It now also held the pearl you created when you turned yourself into one.
* * *
The thing about royalty, the thing about the privileged, who’ve never really experienced hardship, for whom doors have always been opened, is that they are resiliently optimistic folk. Everything has always gone their way; naturally, they assume it always will. Even now, after everything that happened to him yesterday, Prince Hoseok was beaming. He was enamoured. He was full of awe and wonder. He was experiencing the human world as he thought it would be.
Because of you.
It was taking a lot out of you, truth be told, because you didn’t have the riches you needed to show him a human experience comparable to his underwater life. He wasn’t a royal here; he wasn’t anyone at all. Doors didn’t open for him and they didn’t open for you. But Hoseok had his charm and you had charms of a very different sort. So you were making it work, but your nerves were rising; with every bit you put in, you told yourself you had better pull this off. You had better seal the deal, make good on this bargain you had made with yourself, see through to the end the promise you swore to your dead mother and her dead mother and all the dead mothers back until time began.
It was your biggest show. It was your hardest work. Your magnum opus.
Or it would be. If—if you could do it.
Hoseok couldn’t let on that this was his first time on the surface; he couldn’t tell you he was really a merman, that a seawitch had transfigured him, that his legs were really a tail. It was too risky, too dangerous. But he kept forgetting that that meant he had to try to hide his enthusiasm, his surprise. Everything here was new to him. Everything here was fascinating and wonderful and intriguing and he could barely contain himself.
He had no backstory. He had no lies to tell. And he hadn’t noticed that you hadn’t asked. But it was dawning on him that, if he were to have a life here, he would have to think of something to tell people about where he came from. But he didn’t have the time, right now, to think of it. There was far too much to attend to. Too much to see, too much to do.
It would have been overwhelming were it not for you. If he’d had to continue doing this alone... well, he wouldn’t have. Couldn’t have. If you hadn’t found him on the beach last night, where would he be? Sinking beneath the waves? Starving on the shore? You had lifted him up and now you were carrying him along, tethering him to the earth, providing him a guiding string to hold. He had never been so grateful for anyone in his life.
Not even the sea witch.
“What do you say?” you asked him, shortly before sunset on that second day.
Hoseok tried to think, but it didn’t really matter to him and he was so overstimulated, he couldn’t have made a decision if he’d wanted to. He shrugged.
“I’m happy to go wherever you like!”
“Hungry yet?”
He shook his head. He had sampled one of everything at the market after lunch and had to spend half an hour sitting quietly so that it wouldn’t make a return journey up his throat. He was still very far from hungry.
That was exactly the answer you were hoping for.
You led him away from town, towards the west where the land rose in a grassy slope, steep and getting steeper, until you reached the top of the cliff. You walked up to the edge and turned to see Hoseok hanging back, looking nervous.
“Scared of heights?”
Hoseok didn’t know. He had never really experienced ‘heights’, wasn’t quite sure what that meant. But the wind was stronger up here and he knew, without having to look, that the sea was a very long way down. It couldn’t be dangerous if you were doing it, he reasoned, but he’d heard too many stories of humans falling to their deaths from cliffs like these – sometimes deliberately, but often not.
You held your hand out to him and his stretched back before he’d even noticed and he inched forward until you could take it and tug him a little further and a little further still. His heart was in his mouth as he craned his neck to peer down into the foaming waves as they crashed and broke against the rock face. You didn’t let go of his hand.
“It’s very high,” he stated unsurely, not knowing if it was really.
It felt high. It looked high to him. But, in a way, everything was high. The sea had depth, not height. It wasn’t the same thing. He might have wagered that it would be, before now, but looking down to the sandy seabed from high above it was very different from looking down at the sea from the cliff edge. Something to do with the environment maybe.
Maybe the fact that he couldn’t fall off the sea and plummet to his death. Maybe that. He’d never been in mortal danger; the sea was a safe place for him and he had all the protection he might have wanted (more than he wanted, actually); he hadn’t really appreciated it until yesterday, when he had nothing and no one.
Now, he had you.
It had occurred to him. The condition of his staying a human. The three days he had to plant a seed. It kept occurring to him. It wouldn’t stop occurring to him. Not when you smiled, not when you showed him yet another wonder, not when you took his hand in your own. He wasn’t sure if he could do it. For a start, he wasn’t completely sure how all that worked with human bodies. For another, he didn’t know if you would want to. He didn’t know what human culture dictated.
You were beautiful. About that, he had no doubt. Was he attracted to you? Yes, he had decided he was. Did he trust you? Yes, as much as he could trust someone he’d just met; as much as he could trust a human. Did you feel the same way? That was a mystery he didn’t know how to solve. You had stretched out your hand to him; you had paid for him to be fed; you had let him sleep in your bed; you had taken him into your home. It suggested something, but he didn’t know what.
Just as it had the day before, his ignorance alarmed him. His recklessness in coming still surprised him. The weight of his deadline pressed down on him and he shuddered, involuntarily.
He looked concerned, you thought, distracted. You could tell he didn’t really like being so high above the sea; you wondered if it were a merman thing or a Hoseok thing. Being neither, you couldn’t know. You took pity on him and led him back down the cliffside, keeping his hand in yours as long as he would let you.
You assumed you would have to lead, that he wouldn’t take charge of the situation—judging by what you had seen so far. You mulled it over as you wandered slowly back into town. He had never really had to work for it, you supposed. He was a prince. And beautiful. And charming. And kind. He had everything going for him, which meant he had the entire sea throwing themselves at his feet, desperate to be picked. He probably didn’t know the first thing about seduction, about attraction—not really, anyway. It struck you then that there was every chance he’d be a really bad lay. There was every chance you would be, having never done it as a human before, but that was besides the point. The idea of Hoseok disappointing you left a sour taste in your mouth but you ignored it; that was not what you were there for. Good or bad didn’t matter. There was one objective and one only. Your own pleasure, your own, secret, little goals were neither here nor there. You had to stay focused.
Because it wasn’t going to be easy. You knew that. That was half the reason you hadn’t planned to do it yourself anyway (or so you told yourself...). It was going to be harder for you than some random stranger. You knew that. It was going to be horrible, you knew, looking into his eyes when he learnt the truth, when he saw you—the real you—for the first time on land. You could picture it: the shock and betrayal, the fear and hurt. It gave you pause. Because you hated him, hated who he was and what he stood for and everything about the systems and society of the place you both lived. But you also loved him, loved his smile and his eyes, his heart and his soul. You wanted him to be yours forever. You wanted him to choose you. He never would. Not really. If he knew you were here, if he knew the human holding his hand was really the sea witch who’d sent him up there, he wouldn’t choose you.
The shocked, betrayed face. The frightened, hurt expression. You sighed heavily, without meaning to.
“Are you ok?” Hoseok asked, his head tilting to the side.
You smiled brightly back at him.
“Of course! Just starting to get a bit peckish. Shall we eat something?”
Hoseok wasn’t really hungry. The market food was still solid in his stomach. But if you wanted to eat, he’d eat. He’d do anything you asked. He owed you everything.
More, in fact, than he knew.
* * *
You’d been distracted through dinner, which had been fine because, without the food to focus on (Hoseok barely ate), he could look around at everything else. He could fire questions at you (questions that were far too revealing—not that he noticed) and comment on his surroundings and commentate with barely any input required. That meant you could contemplate your task. You’d had to rush into this whole thing, take the reins with very little notice at all. This was not how you usually operated.
You were meticulous and organised because you had to be. Always on your guard because you had to be. Everything you did came with its own audit trail because you couldn’t afford to make mistakes. You had seen what that had done to your mother at far too young an age. Not that she actually made the mistake. But when you don’t have the proof of every action you’ve taken and word you’ve said, they can make it look like you did whatever they say you did.
You ate slowly, not really tasting, not really savouring. Your mind was busy, calculating. You had a day and a half left. 36 hours, give or take. There would be another night after this one. You didn’t relish the idea of leaving it until the last minute, but you could spoil the whole thing entirely if you pushed too hard, too fast. So you decided to wait.
*
Hoseok was determined, this time, to do the right thing and let you sleep in your own bed. He was embarrassed at the way he had behaved the night before: how greedily he’d eaten, how quickly he had relegated you to the sofa. It made him cringe. And then you had spent the whole day playing hostess to him: showing him around, paying for everything, keeping him company, and answering his questions.
His debt to you was beyond belief. He knew he should leave. He knew he should make his own way. He knew he could not rely on you – not even for the rest of his three days, if that was all he would have. He had to find a way to survive independently. He knew that. He had to pay you back. He had to make things right.
“I’ll sleep on the sofa tonight,” he announced when you returned back to your shabby apartment.
You pretended to be surprised.
“Oh, no,” you replied, “not at all. Take the bed! It’s fine. I don’t mind.”
“No way. It’s your bed. I slept on it last night when I really shouldn’t have. Please. Take it.”
You shook your head, scrunching your nose and grinning stubbornly at him.
“No. You.”
He sighed, but the corners of his lips twitched anyway.
“We may have reached a stalemate,” he announced, with solemn mock-seriousness.
You hummed, thoughtfully, running a finger along the bottom of the bed as you stepped closer to him.
“A compromise, then,” you said, poking a finger into his chest.
“And what is your compromise?”
“Well…”
You weren’t shy. Not when you were being yourself and not when you were pretending to be a human. But you were good at acting like it. You looked down and then up at him through your lashes, a small, reluctant smile traced on your lips.
“We could… share?”
You raised a hand to your face, covering your mouth, looking at Hoseok and then away and then back to him, eyelashes fluttering.
The genuine surprise on his face gave you butterflies. You could see his hesitation, watch his mind weigh his options, calculate the costs and benefits of each. He knew too little to have anything to guide him. Anything but you. And you had suggested it.
So it had to be ok, right?
“Share?” he asked, buying himself another moment to think it over, to consider what all this might mean in relation to the condition he had to meet.
You nodded, lip trapped between your teeth.
“Ok!” he answered brightly, hoping it was the right response, and inwardly breathing a sigh of relief when you beamed back at him.
It would be easy to love you, he thought and the sentiment caught him off-guard. He had to be realistic about human life. He wasn’t a prince here. He had nothing. But when he looked at you, he felt rich. He felt like his dream was within his grasp. You were everything he had ever hoped for. He could stay here forever with you, couldn’t he?
He wasn’t going to do anything tonight. Ask or proposition or… or god knew what else. It was too soon. Too early. There was still time. He told himself, there was still time. Still time for him to wake up from this dream he’d fallen into when he met you. Still time to commit to it forever.
You took the left side and Hoseok the right. You curled onto your side, facing him, with the covers pulled up to your eyes. He lay on his back, moonlight from the open shutter illuminating his face in a sharp line that crossed him and left you in the dark.
You watched him for a while: not sleeping, though he had his eyes closed.
“Hoseok,” you whispered. “Where are you from?”
His eyes opened and went to the window.
“Somewhere… close but also very far away.”
“You mean like, culturally?”
You saw him nod.
“Yeah. Where I come from is… very different. More different than I thought.”
“How come you came here?”
He shook his head, eyes trained on the ceiling.
“I had to,” was his simple answer and you let it hang there in the darkness, waiting for him to add to it. “I think I could have stayed, but I’d have got old and I would have looked back and I’d have regretted it. I’d have regretted staying there my whole life. I’d have regretted not seeing everything this wo- this place has to offer. I needed to experience it.”
“Do you like it here?”
He let the question go unanswered for some time. So long that he wondered, after he’d spoken, if you’d fallen asleep in the interim.
“I like some of it. I like you.”
It made your stomach swoop. Even if he wasn’t talking about you. Just the human you were pretending to be. You wondered how a real human woman would have responded to that.
You changed the subject.
“I thought I was seeing things when I first noticed you on the beach.”
A slow smile formed itself on Hoseok’s lips.
“You were… You saw me.”
You reached out and poked his arm.
“I didn’t want to go home not knowing you were ok. If I’d woken up in the morning to a news story about… well, I couldn’t have lived with myself. I realised, as I approached, that you weren’t really in danger. You looked like you were waiting for something. Someone.”
His smile turned rueful and his eyes flicked again to the window, outside of which you could hear but not see the waves crashing on the shore.
“I was,” he said, his voice a low whisper. Then he turned his face away from the light to look directly at you. “I was waiting for a miracle.”
* * *
You no longer had any concerns about the success of your plan. You had no doubt that Hoseok would go along with anything you wanted to drag him into. You didn’t know if he knew what his feelings were, but you did.
It was your own feelings that concerned you.
You hadn’t spent time with Hoseok like this since you were much younger. He was addictive. His smiles and his laughter and the way his eyes gleamed bright all the while. You could feel your resolve crumble and you knew it was bad when you realised it didn’t bother you.
You began to try to re-think things. Reformulate. Work out a way that maybe there could be a future, after all.
Originally, this was where it stopped. This was where your scheming—and your life—would end. You felt the guilt of having had no children: no one to pass your powers and your knowledge down to; you also felt free because you had subjected no one else to a life like yours. It was a heavy burden to be who you were down in the water. But it wouldn’t have mattered much once you were dead, which you were certain you would be at the end of all this. You can’t just ‘kidnap’ the prince, ‘mutilate’, and ‘trap’ him and live to tell the tale. Many had died for less. And you were fine with that. You were living to avenge every woman in your family, every witch, every creature under the sea who lived shunted into shadows, left out of the light, less than. Had been for years.
And for years, your only source of light, the single little gemstone glittering in your heart, was Prince Hoseok. Prince Hoseok and his angelic face, his musical laughter, his charm, his lightness, his brightness, his everything you weren’t and could never be.
You would get to destroy it all in one fell swoop. A beautiful, perfect demise.
Now you weren’t so sure. Weren’t so sure you could do it. You could do it; you weren’t sure you could go through with it. These feelings that you thought you were so used to, not controlled by, not swayed by anymore, were threatening to overpower you. You felt the tendrils unfurl, in the deepest pit of your heart, sending out shoots and roots, embedding themselves further into the bitter, twisted muscle. You could feel them growing through your veins, buds springing up like goosebumps on your skin. You felt them every time his hand accidentally brushed yours, every time you fed him some new food and barely grazed his lips with your fingers. Every time he laughed. Every time he looked at you. Every time. All the time.
Hoseok allowed himself to relax. You liked his company. You wanted him around. He hadn’t tried that hard to leave you—because he had no one and nothing and nowhere else, but also because he recognised that you wanted him to stay. He had realised that, whilst so much was different up on the surface, he was the same. And people liked him. Always had. Yes, he was a prince and there was always a contingent of the sycophantic and the boot-licking, but he had always been well-liked, even amongst his brothers, amongst the entire royal court. He was popular. He was fun. He was funny.
And he was enjoying himself.
He had twenty-four hours. That was enough. He’d make a decision. He was confident in that. He would make a decision soon and he would live with it, whatever it ended up being. He wasn’t pushing himself to find the answer just yet.
He was enjoying himself.
You took him dancing. It felt risky, given what you knew about how much pain he must still be in, how uncoordinated he might be on his two feet, but it was an opportunity to get closer, to show him something new, to show him something you could do. Because you loved to dance. Really only came to the surface to do this one thing.
Certain sea creatures danced, but not like humans did. It wasn’t the same without the sound of feet on floorboards, wasn’t the same without the weight of gravity trying to keep you down every time you pushed up. You weren’t exactly a fan of humans (certainly not in the way Hoseok was), but they had got this right.
Your worries had been unfounded. Hoseok’s legs were feeling better already, he thought, or he was just getting used to the pain. Either way, he wasn’t suffering like he had on the first day. He was a terrible dancer, make no mistake. He couldn’t understand the way people moved their legs, the way their feet moved so quickly they were almost blurs. He tripped and stumbled and crashed about but none of that seemed to matter to you, so it didn’t matter to him either. You held him close and pulled him up and around and twisted and turned and skipped and span until his head was dizzy.
He had never experienced a joy like it.
*
You took him on a short carriage ride, because there was somewhere else you wanted him to see. It wasn’t that far, really, but you didn’t want him to have to walk and a carriage was as new an experience to him as everything else was.
You made it drop you just far enough away that it wouldn’t spoil the surprise. You gave Hoseok nothing, answering none of his questions, not saying a word, because you were holding your breath to wait for his reaction.
And there it was.
You saw his eyebrows, first raised and then knitted together, and then softening. His eyes widening. His mouth dropping open slightly, in the way that made it perfectly heart-shaped. Then he turned his eyes on you. Was this it? Was this the thing you wanted him to see?
It was.
Like a sea of green grass with hundreds – no, thousands – of red flowers floating on the waves. Hoseok didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t seen anything like this before. It was as if he were in another new world. The red-headed poppies were so numerous, you almost couldn’t see the grass underneath; there was merely a suggestion of verdant growth propping up the riot of colour. What were these things and how did they grow in such great number?
He had been taught, growing up, that humans had no respect for nature. That they ripped up land plants and built over grasslands; they destroyed forests and valleys and wetlands all for their own ends. They would rather look at glass and concrete and chrome than the kaleidoscopic views the natural world had to offer. He had believed them, because he had heard the true stories of what human activity had done to sea life; he had received the messages of the reefs dying and oil spilling and nets catching up all sorts of things they shouldn’t. He thought, trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, as he was always wont to do, that maybe the nature on land wasn’t like the nature in the sea. Maybe things were different up here. Lots of other things were.
Now he saw that he had been entirely wrong. Acres of land lay before him. Acres of useful land that could have grown crops or laid foundations to buildings were ablaze with the bright, bright red of flowers he’d never seen before. And the humans let it happen.
As his surprise gave way to pure, wide-eyed admiration, he noticed that the humans were experiencing it the same way he was. He saw them with their cameras, taking their images (as you had explained to him that’s what they did), keeping the sight forever more. He saw them smile and laugh and frolic. He saw them and saw himself in them. He saw, also, the goodness he had always known was there. The spirit and love and joy of humanity. It was here, in these fields. It was here, in his heart. It was here, standing next to him; you, watching him expectantly, a nervous smile trying to tug your bottom lip from between your teeth.
“Wow,” was all he managed to say.
* * *
It was his last night. What might have been his last night. What could be his last night. Hoseok felt tense. Nervous. Almost sick.
He had decided. He was going to stay. If he could. If he could make it happen. If you wanted it.
He knew he had a home to go back to, if you didn’t. He would always have these three days. No one could take them away from him. And if that’s all he got, if three days on the surface was all he ever got to experience, then so be it. He was putting himself in your hands: himself, his heart, his dreams. His body.
The problem was that he didn’t know how to tell you that. He didn’t know how any of this happened on land. He didn’t know what he could or could not say, or do, or suggest. Which is why he had to leave it up to you. He’d just get it wrong.
It was Hoseok’s last night and you were wondering if you were just imagining the way he was looking at you, wanting him to be looking like that. You could bend reality, but that didn’t mean you always saw it clearly. The heart had tricks of its own.
But you had the advantage over him, because you knew his secrets. You knew that this would be his last chance; you knew that you were his only option. You knew that he wanted to stay. You couldn’t be sure if he wanted to stay enough to sleep with you.
You had suggested wine at dinner because you knew it was what the humans drank and knew it made them silly and loud and boisterous; you knew it lowered their inhibitions and made them do things they often regretted. You didn’t really know how you would react to it—your body was technically human now but you’d never been drunk before—but it had left you feeling warm and a little giddy. It had, blessedly and as you had hoped, made this whole thing easier to think about.
Because your head was spinning a little too fast to think about the bigger picture: the whys and wherefores of how you got here, how he got here, the purpose of this whole thing. You could really only think about the splendid slope of his nose. The way his shallow philtrum led to the smooth, rounded peaks of his cupid’s bow. The tiny, dark freckle there that waited, begging to be kissed. The perfect symmetry of his dimples as he smiled.
You hadn’t indulged in this since you were small. Hoseok had been your first crush. First, last. Only. As a pre-teen, you’d been silly with infatuation over him. Memorised the maps of his freckles and exact proportions of his body. You’d floated around in the sea, daydreaming about him for hours on end, not realising how far you had strayed until your mother had come screaming after you, pulling you back and warning you about being so unaware of your surroundings.
You remembered those feelings now. The fizziness in your limbs and heavy twisting in your gut. Like old friends. Hoseok, too, was an old friend. Your oldest. Your only. Now and, if you got this right, forevermore.
Hoseok had accepted the first glass of wine but recoiled at its taste, unable to believe he’d found something on the surface he didn’t like. You had then explained to him that it was technically a poison and he had been aghast to see you continue to drink it, to look around and see so many other humans doing the same. Every minute brought him something new.
You took his hand as you walked back from dinner to your apartment. It was warm and soft and you were grateful for it. Hoseok was grateful for it, too. His clothes still rubbed at his skin and so much of him still hurt, but your hand in his did not.
You didn’t let go when you reached the door, didn’t let go when it shut behind you and you let the lock click. You tugged him a little closer to you, took his other hand, kept his eyes on yours as you moved closer still.
You hadn’t done this before.
Hoseok hadn’t done this before.
You’d seen it done. You understood the concept.
Hoseok had no idea what was coming, but he had decided what he wanted. He had decided to trust you. And he’d decided to trust his gut, too. If humans were anything like merpeople (and they were), at least some of what was to happen would be instinctive.
He hoped, anyway.
You didn’t say a word, though you had planned to. You had scripted a kind of shy proposition, an awkward hobble of a speech in which you would say and ask and tell. But you abandoned it. Or rather, it abandoned you. Not a single word of it left in your head. So you stopped using it: your head. Stopped thinking.
You pressed your lips to his like you’d seen humans do.
The candle in Hoseok’s heart roared, its flame reaching up his throat and into his mouth. He didn’t have time to think. His body acted for him. For the first time since he crawled onto the shore, his body was feeling something that wasn’t pain. Was feeling something familiar. Something hot and deep and aching.
He didn’t mind the taste of the wine on your tongue, thought it was sweet, actually, had lost the acidic tang of the alcohol that made it poisonous. This kiss was like every kiss that had come before it, but also, nothing like them. Absent, the tang of salt. Present, the wet heat of your mouth and his. Absent, the way he could breathe through his gills. Present, the breathlessness that made him pull away before you pulled him back. Absent, the modest nudity in which the entire undersea world lived. Present, a kind of shy, self-conscious awareness of his hidden body.
An enormous, embarrassed awareness of the bulge in his trousers, the way it couldn’t be hidden. He had been horrified to see it, when he had washed up on the beach, two-legged and naked. He couldn’t believe that humans just walked around with everything on display like that (he had known this already, would have remembered if he’d been in his right mind); he’d felt awkward and conscious the entire time, sure that everyone could see, that it was obscene, that humans couldn’t really live like this?
But never more than now, as it strained against his trousers, which hadn’t been tight thirty seconds ago and were now constraining him in a way that bordered on painful. He kept his body away from you, more difficult now that your hands were skittering up his arms and down his chest, slipping back up his skin underneath his shirt, trying to pull him closer.
You felt a little bit dizzy. Sure, the wine, but also, this. Hoseok. The sweetness of fruit in his mouth. The heat of his skin. The sensation of a kiss—something you’d never experienced before, that you had seen, that had disgusted you—was nothing like you’d imagined. If you had thought about it, if you’d been thinking rationally, you might still have been disgusted by the way your tongues rolled over each other, swapping saliva, the way you could taste him, taste the fruit he’d just eaten. But you weren’t thinking rationally. You weren’t thinking at all.
You were feeling. And it was like nothing you’d ever felt before.
You gave into it.
Hoseok gave into it.
It was, as the humans say, like riding a bike. Though you hadn’t done that either.
Hoseok stopped thinking about it when you removed his shirt and stepped out of your dress. Legs were new to him. That was true. The human arrangement of body parts was new to him but they weren’t all that different once everything was out in the open. You had lit a fire in him and he was happy to stoke the flames. He was burning again, all over, inside and out, but it wasn’t painful, wasn’t torture. It was exquisite. New and familiar at once. Intoxicating.
You fell to your knees and Hoseok thought you had stumbled, bent down to help you up, but you stopped him, shook your head, and he stood straight.
Then you took his thick, heavy cock into your hand and licked the top. You wrapped your lips around it and pushed yourself forward, gliding your tongue along the underside, hollowing your cheeks and sucking. Hoseok gasped and almost fell to his knees himself. He didn’t know what this was, assumed it was a normal part of human sex, briefly wondered if sex actually was different here, if this was the entire act. Then he felt the head of his cock press against the back of your throat and his mind was wiped clean of thought. Replaced by a kind of urgent static that made him want to buck his hips, fuck into the hot clutch of your throat.
You had seen humans do this. You weren’t sure if you were doing it right. Not at first, anyway, but Hoseok had a pained look on his face, his mouth hanging open, his chest heaving as he panted, and you knew that was the reaction you were supposed to be eliciting. You could feel the twitch of his dick as it hit your throat, as you gagged lightly around it. You could just about hear, over the roaring of blood in your ears, Hoseok moaning, your name tumbling from his mouth like a prayer.
You were aching between your legs. You were hot and sticky and you could feel it dripping from you. You felt your walls clench and had the sudden, immediate need for Hoseok’s cock there, not in your mouth. You let it fall, wiped your eyes and your mouth and Hoseok was pulling you to your feet, crashing his mouth into yours, his hands frantic and grabbing.
Neither of you was thinking a second beyond what was happening. Gone were your concerns with your long-planned acts of vengeance. Gone were Hoseok’s worries about committing to life on the surface, about leaving his marine life behind, bringing a child into the world. Gone was the pressure of your subterfuge. Gone was the pressure of all his lies of omission. Gone was everything outside the four walls of this apartment. Gone was the whole world beyond your body in his hands, his body in yours.
Hoseok found that legs made all this much easier. They probably wouldn’t under water, but here, he saw their benefit. Saw the upsides to having two of them, of having them jointed at two places and not twenty. As he knelt over you on the dingy grey sheets of your bed, he almost laughed at the image of him trying to do this with a tail. Maybe there were some upsides to this human body after all.
He placed the tip of his cock at your entrance and pushed his hips forward, a little experimentally, testing the motion, the movement of his hips. He fell forward onto his hands, eyes closed, a long, gasping moan trapped in his throat.
He hadn’t known that humans had it so much better.
Would’ve done this days ago if he had.
You were hot and tight and wet and it was all Hoseok could do not to come right there and then. He paused, trying to catch a breath, gather himself, not lose it all as soon as he had begun.
It was excruciating for a second and the whine you’d let out wasn’t pleasured but pained. You were grateful when Hoseok stopped, though you didn’t think it was for you. Is this what it was like? You had thought they liked it. That was the point, wasn’t it? Humans mated for fun, not just for procreation. You had to assume fun would follow. It had been fun up to that point. It had been its own exquisite kind of pleasurable torture waiting for something to stuff you full.
But now he was and it was like being split down the middle. You wondered for a second if this was how it had felt for Hoseok when he grew legs. Then he started pushing his hips forward again and it tossed all thought out the window.
“Are you ok?” he asked, looking down at you with a frown of genuine concern.
You nodded. You nodded some more. You couldn’t speak because the pressure in your centre was overwhelming, the pain like nothing you had felt before. But you couldn’t stop. You wanted it. You wanted him. You had never been pushed out of your mind like this, brought into your body so viscerally, so violently, with such care. Hoseok brushed a strand of hair away from your face and tucked it behind your ear.
“Do you want to stop?” he asked.
“No.”
You pulled him down to you, down to his forearms, so you could kiss him, so his chest touched yours, so you could distract yourself from Hoseok with even more Hoseok. With your tongue in his mouth, you allowed yourself to cry out as he pushed further. He swallowed the sound and returned his own. You were trembling, your muscles shaking, your skin sticky with sweat.
So was Hoseok.
The pain wasn’t registering anymore, even though he knew it was still there. All he could feel was your cunt squeezing hard around him; it made him dizzy with pleasure. His stomach was churning, twisting; he was bracing trying to make this last.
Because he’d forgotten the point of it. Forgotten that the ending was the bit that counted. He wanted to feel you, he wanted to touch you and taste you and luxuriate in the human experience of this. He hadn’t imagined it but, if he had, even his wildest dreams wouldn’t have come close. Mermaids? He’d never go back.
He paused, to give you a moment, to give himself a moment, a breather. He kissed you, luxuriating in that, too: the way you tasted like no one else he’d ever kissed, the way your mouth was warm and wet, your tongue soft and supple. He liked the way his breath caught in his throat. He liked the way he found himself panting. He even liked the way his shoulders were starting to ache from holding his body up. Liked the way he could feel every muscle of his posterior chain move when he slowly, tentatively began to draw his hips back, when he tipped them forward again, when he set a slow, smooth motion that he found came easily to him.
Having a human body was exhausting. It was hard work. It was heavy all the time and never supported. It had been torture in the truest sense, with every step Hoseok took stabbing daggers into his legs. But he could see the benefits now. Well, he could feel them. He felt more embodied than he ever had before. Somehow separate from the world in a way that made him feel so much more connected to you. You weren’t two small parts of a larger whole. You were the whole.
He had spent time pondering the ways in which air was so different from water. He often thought water came off the better from the comparison. But this was changing everything. It was exhausting and painful and he was so aware of each and every part of his body. And with that, came a gut-churning pleasure that made his eyes water and his head spin. Water had nothing on air.
You weren’t sure it was pleasurable yet. The sharp pain had subsided and the little grunts and groans that Hoseok left in your mouth were sweet enough, but it wasn’t pleasure. Not yet. You were sure it would come. Didn’t mind entirely if it didn’t tonight. There would be other nights.
You hoped, you prayed, there would be other nights. Because it might have been pain, but it was the sweetest pain you’d ever felt. A pain that you somehow longed for, even as you longed for it to end. A pain that made you feel wanted. A pain that connected you to another living being in a way that you never had been. A pain that, in a moment of intense clarity, you realised connected you to women, human women. All human women who had experienced this since time began. You understood a little about their myths about the origin of man, and sin, and punishment.
You understood it. How this could be punishment. How it could be pleasure, too. How it could be worth it.
Hoseok could feel it coming. He was desperately trying to beat it back, to delay its onset, to make this last and last and last. He never wanted it to end, but he could feel his muscles tightening, feel his cock jumping with every thrust. Pleasure was coiling like a spring inside him, boiling rapidly, boiling over.
You gasped alongside him when he came, when his hips and breath stuttered and he filled you with ropes of hot cum. His body was heavy on top of yours, in a pleasing, crushing kind of way that grounded you. At that very moment, neither one of you was thinking about the consequences of what you had just done. What it could mean. What it meant for your best laid plans. You were lying, listening to the soft rushing of your breath and the hammering of your hearts.
*
It came to you, first, and you didn’t want to think about it. Because you were so full of feeling for Hoseok; feelings that you thought had faded, that had embedded themselves in you in a way that made them fade into the background, made you almost forget they were there, were screaming at you now. In technicolour. Surround sound. Unignorable. Undeniable.
But had you just destroyed him? Destroyed his life? His family?
That had been the intention. Bring down the royal family by having one of their own shun the sea for life on the surface, mate with a human. They’d have known it was you—it couldn’t have been anyone else—and they’d have executed you without trial. But it would’ve been worth it because, forever more, there would be a line of the royal family that ran human, that ran amok on the surface, that no one below the waves would ever be able to forget. It would have been their undoing without doubt. Whatever betrothals lay in wait for the princes would be broken; whatever treaties that were depending on them dashed; the reputation of the family would be in tatters. It would be over for them.
Which was what you had wanted.
But as you lay, absent-mindedly stroking Hoseok’s hair, naked and sweaty and sticky, with a penetrating ache still radiating through your core, you thought about how much that would hurt him. You saw the betrayal on his beatific face and your stomach flipped with fear. Because it wasn’t meant to be you lying here. And that made a difference.
Because you had seen him. You had kissed him. You had had him move inside you. You had loved him your whole life long and now you had to tell him that you had ulterior motives. That you were working against him. That all of this had been the result of your careful manipulations.
There had to be another way. There had been another way. That was how you had designed it. You weren’t supposed to be in this front-row seat. That was the point.
But it was too late now. And you needed a way out.
Maybe he never had to know.
Maybe you could make this work.
*
Hoseok’s eyes were fluttering shut. He could barely keep them open. He didn’t know if he had just secured his existence here or not. He didn’t know how to guarantee a child. Wasn’t clear-headed enough at that moment to know, for sure, if he wanted one.
He wanted to stay. Oh, he wanted to stay. He couldn’t go back now. But a child?
He felt wicked. He thought about what you might say if you ever learnt the truth. The betrayal. The way he used you for this.
He felt like a coward. He was a pampered prince who had achieved nothing on his own. He had turned to a sea witch in the midst of what amounted to a king-sized tantrum. She had risked her entire existence bringing him here. He had barely survived on his own. You had rescued him. Given him food and shelter and company and the greatest pleasure he had ever known.
He knew he couldn’t tell you the truth. Not if he wanted any part of this to continue.
Because he did. He wasn’t just using you. He wasn’t sure he was using you at all. He liked you. He wanted you. He wanted to stay, not just on the surface, but on the surface with you.
It felt too big. Too confusing. Too difficult. He was a coward, after all, so he closed his eyes and decided to see what the morning would bring.
You noticed his breathing slow, grow heavy and deep, his body relaxing further, his weight pressing down on you harder. He was asleep. That gave you time, you thought. To think of something. Some way out of this. Some way to stay in this.
But your own eyelids felt heavy, kept dropping of their own accord, and you kept losing your train of thought. You gave into it; you would wake early, go out and buy something for breakfast, figure it out in the morning.
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The Shadows Desires // Azriel
RATING: 15 / 957 WORDS
Author’s note: I just needed to take this idea out of my mind. I really thought about ending with smut but I think I will eventually write a part 2 for this. Oh btw, english is not my first language, neither it is my second or third language, so I’m sorry for any mistakes. Enjoy! :)
My feet move away from the window, giving him space to enter. Azriel passes through the doorway retracting his wings, landing with elegance in each gesture.
"Did you take a shower?”
"I did. You must need one, since you left early in the morning and only came back now.”
“Are you suggesting I stink?” He raises an eyebrow, forcing an offended expression.
“I’m suggesting that I really want to see you in a bathtub.”
Azriel's eyes widen for a brief moment, but what follows is not astonishment but something darker and more perverse. The chocolate irises become dark, cloudy, the pupils dilated.
“I suppose you will not join me.”
"Not today. I don’t think you deserve it after disappearing all day.”
"Fair."
“Uh-huh.” I walk predatorily towards him, a smile forming at the corner of my lips, as my hands roam Azriel's chest, searching for the buttons to remove the armour.
“How do you take it off?” I whisper.
Azriel doesn't respond. But faster than he can fill his lungs with air, the top part of the armor disappears, as do the blue siphons that decorated it.
Azriel's torso is left bare, rid of any fabric.
My mouth waters at the sight and I don't care to hide it.
My fingers touch the warm, rigid skin, drawing a sigh from the male. Slowly, I look up at him, and he's already staring at me in a way that ignites every pure thought in my mind.
“What about the bottom part?” I ask, biting my lip to keep from laughing.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re not discreet at all?”
"Some. Why? Would you rather I had made up an excuse for wanting to see you without those pants?”
"Oh no. Feel free to see me naked at any time… you came so far just for it, isn't that right pet?”
My blood roared through my veins, begging him to do it at once.
Like the top, Azriel's armored pants disappear in the blink of an eye, leaving only the black fabric of the boxers he wears.
I look at him irritated.
“This is starting to get boring, Azriel. Are you going to take it off piece by piece?”
“I believe you can help me remove this one.”
“I can definitely do so. Come here."
Azriel takes my hand and I drag him into the bathroom, turning the bathtub tap back on.
“Cold, please,” he asks.
"Are you feeling hot?" I look at him amusedly, quickly scanning the way the fabric of his boxers is stretched by the erection.
"A little."
I do as he asks, leaving the water cold, looking at him with my lips stuck in between my teeth. My feet move without needing a command and soon I'm sharing the same breath as him, feeling the heat emanating from his masculine body.
My fingers run along Azriel's chest, making a path downward, never losing eye contact. There, in those almond-shaped orbs, you see everything he is feeling and everything he wants to do. It's ecstatic to see desire dancing and intoxicating all of the male's features.
When my fingers finally find the fabric of the boxers, they dig into the sides, pulling the fabric down. It needs to be stretched to free Azriel's member, that is so hard and bounces as soon as the boxers free it completely.
My knees drop to the floor to completely remove the uncomfortable fabric, and my eyes fixate on the monstrous erection in front of me.
Swallowing hard, I blink a few times, trying to calculate how I would make this work, because there was no way this would fit inside me.
"Is there a problem?" Azriel asks amused.
"It depends."
“Depends on?”
“It depends if you mind carrying me around….”
“Not that I’m complaining, but why would I have to carry you, darling?”
“Because there’s no way I’m going to walk after this” I point to the dick in front of me, which seems to be staring back at me.
Azriel tries to hold back his laughter, but it's a futile struggle. He kicks the fabric of his boxers that were stuck to his feet, and pulls me up, placing his lips next to my ear.
“I promise you, the last thing I will do is hurt you. When I'm inside you, the only thing you'll feel is pleasure. And not just in the traditional way. I want to taste you with my tongue before anything else.”
My spine arches at the lustful, husky voice that reverberates through every nerve ending in my body, gripping the male's biceps as if it could keep me upright.
“You shouldn’t say things like that.”
"Why?"
“Because I’m so tempted not to let you take that shower.”
“Can I confess something to you?” he whispers, as he runs his fingers down my side, increasing the flame that crackles inside my blood.
"You can."
“I love your nightgown. But I will have to destroy it.”
Before I can ask why, Azriel takes me in his arms, stepping into the tub with me, completely drenching the blue silk.
“Azriel!” I shout, slapping his shoulders.
He just laughs, placing me over his lap, his hard member poking me, sending my sanity to hell.
“I warned you I would destroy it”
“Actually, I just need to dry it.”
"No. That won’t do it."
The male's hands go to the neckline of the nightgown and, as if it was made of paper, rips it from top to bottom, revealing the lingerie set of the same colour, his siphons’ colour. My face turns red, but the shame passes away when I notice in Azriel's eyes, a transcendental lust and desire.
#fanfic#azriel#acotar#acowar#azriel spymaster#azriel shadowsinger#suggestive#writing#azriel x reader#azriel x you
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