#this poor person put their heart and soul into this show and got a fucking knife in the back
Note
in a world where the last of us show is able to get away with bill and frank's relationship being as explicit as it was (and will likely do so again with ellie and riley when they get to the left behind content), rwby has no excuse for dragging its feet on bumblebee beyond that miles and kerry just don't give a solitary fuck.
I haven't seen the show yet (too deep in Devil May Cry lol) so I can't say anything concrete, but I did watch playthroughs of it back in the day. In 2013, the most the developers could do for gay rep was a joke via the male model magazine
You know what the bees remind me of? Korrasami. That hand hold in the finale was gay enough to get the 4th season banned to the shadowrealm (streaming only). In 2014. Before gay marriage was legalized. That was revolutionary
Say what you will about Bryke - I sure have and will - but they did care enough about this to fight their bosses. Because of them taking that first step, we have more explicit queer rep like Steven Universe, She Ra, and Owl House
Crwby does not have the excuse of it being 2014. The v6 bees hand hold came in 2018, 3 years after gay marriage was federally approved. They do not have bosses they have to fight tooth and nail against for a kiss or wedding. Some of their members consist of the highest positions of power within the company!
V6 and onward primed the stage for a bees confession or kiss, but neither Blake nor Yang have even admitted they like girls. If crwby wanted bees to be canon, they would make bees canon, but they don't so they haven't
#rwde#honestly im still fucking pissed abt how people treated rebecca sugar during and post show#su isnt perfect and does have its own issues but dammit sugar fought for that rupphire wedding#their show got jerked in so many ways bc their bosses wanted them to tone down the gay#and as a reward the fanbase yells and kicks and screams at her bc the show ended abruptly#this poor person put their heart and soul into this show and got a fucking knife in the back#this happens to queer creators and queer creators only#every problem the studio creates by trying to fuck over queer projects is attributed to the person trying their fucking best#like high guardian spice. its a bad show yeah but lots of the problems came from behind the scenes#also people go after its creator like fucking animals. jfc guys its a cartoon not a hit list#it just sucks that cishets are forgiven time and time again for lackluster at best rep while queer creators are being actively hunted#thanks for asking#anon hours
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I JUST GOT BACK FROM SEEING DUNE PART 2 AND HOLY FUCK OH MY GOD HOLY SHIT HOLY FUUUUCK I NEED TO. I NEED TO. I NEED TO TALK SO BAD HOLY SHIT
below the cut because oh boy do i have a lot to say and i dont want my poor followers to suffer when i post this
oh my god okay okay where do i even start
opening with irulan's narration to mirror her notes in the openings of the chapters of the book. oh yeah baby. i ate that right up
watching paul get close with the fremen,,,,, fucking hell that hurts. dune really is a tragedy at the end of the day huh. they go from reluctant allies to friends but the whole time you know the switch will happen any moment now and they will be devotees and he will be messiah and that gap between them will never be as small as it is out in the sand. huddled in those tents. sharing drinks and laughs. im not doing ok
this especially hurts with chani. their love is so genuine and pure and she wears blue for him (which by the way sticks out so much more with how muted the colors of the rest of the movie are... i could talk about this all day) but she can see what he is becoming and he's trying to avoid it for her so hard but there's no avoiding fate. LORD ABOVE!!!!
i loveeee jessica being the manipulator thats pulling all the strings, urging paul towards becoming messiah. rebecca ferguson is such a talented actress she really understands the character so well. also as a hashtag certified alia atreides enjoyer her scheming with her unborn fetus might be the most unhinged thing ever but thats also so fucking funny aka its as dune as it gets. dune is WEIRD and im glad theyre not shying away from that. thank u denis
arrakis looks so much more beautiful in this movie like theres defo been some changes with how its framed and presented it feels so much grander and idk just ??? what it makes me think is that we're not seeing arrakis, we're finally seeing dune. we're seeing the land as the fremen see it as paul becomes one of them. i might be looking too much into it but who cares. god i love this movie
but yes more on the fremen in the first section of the movie. i like how there's this cluster of non-believers almost?? its a nice breath of fresh air. its hard to believe every single person would be just devoted to the prophecy and it adds some depth.
i will say the one thing i didnt like is the way stilgar is characterized?? i dont think he was so blindly devoted to paul in the books, and definitely not alia and leto ii after him as the atreides line went on. he's always been a source of small doubt towards paul but i think they're moving that element of him onto chani, so i think i can let it slide. i'd like to see him question alia more in the future though.
the scene where paul was named muad'dib and usul??? god it was so cute which made it so heart wrenching. all the fremen coming together and welcoming him into their lives. as a brother. as a friend. only for him to turn around and make them all bow before him. ohhhhh i cant do this
OH BOY THE WORMS THE WORMS AND THE WORM RIDING AND THE AHHHHHHHHH OH LORD
jesus christ. what the fuck. how is this allowed on cinema screens how is something so amazing allowed
the tension. the effects. the sound design. the sand rushing past the wind the worm moving forward paul struggling to hold on the fremen all watching and then cheering him on HOLY FUCKKKK HOLY FUCK I WAS HOLDING MY BREATH
all the worm riding scenes were so intense and so well done like. when i first read that stuff in the books i didnt think anything could ever capture how i imagined it exactly and yet. AND YET. DENIS!!!!!!!!
once more dune hits the idea of scale SO well everything is HUGE and they MAKE YOU FEEL IT. that shows especially with geidi prime but ill talk about that in a bit. but yes this applies to the worms too lord above them WORMSSSS ARE HUGEEEE AND I LOVE THEMMMM
rebecca ferguson put her heart and soul into that water of life scene and we all need to thank her for it
the way jessica is so quick to switch up and go all in on the prophecy. it makes me think of leto's "im not asking his mother, im asking the bene gesserit" like. the bene gesserit really come first for jessica and she takes her opportunity to fulfill her duties. to be the reverend mother. to rub it all in the faces of the other bene gesserit. she is the mother of the messiah and by god will she make everyone well aware of that
okay. okay okay. i think i said my peace on the early fremen stuff. i think. okay fuck okay SHIT fuck SHIT
FEYD FUCKING RAUTHA LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
oh my god okay. okay ill admit it. i doubted austin butler. i saw the cast list and i was unsure(tm). i saw him in the trailers and my faith was restored. and holy fucking shit did he DELIVER
stellan skarsgård's baron harkonnen is already such a threatening figure it feels like it would be impossible to make someone even more terrifying and yet. AND YET
just the way he's introduced. killing servants with zero remorse. LICKING THAT KNIFE THE WAY HE DID??? OKAY WHORE. I SEE YOU. GO RIGHT AHEAD. MAKE IT SLUTTY IN HOUSE HARKONNEN. I RESPECT IT
when the arena doors open and that loud ass fucking music BOOMS. makes the room fucking SHAKE. thats a PRESENCE right there. THATS how you introduce your antagonist.
the music playing as he fights being as fucking deranged as he is. chaotic and weird and unsettling. just. oh my god feyd had such a presence from the moment he showed up and he did not lose it for a single second. you could feel him LOOMING over the movie the whole time just as he looms over the whole book from his very first scene. oh my goddddd oh my godd
GEIDI PRIME. THE ARENA. THAT MASSIVE HARKONNEN PALACE. oh my god. once more. that sense of scale. the harkonnens love to flaunt their wealth so ofc they have huge fuck off arenas and castles where everything and everyone feels so SMALL in comparison.
dont even get me started on the black and white. the way it accents those coal black teeth and mouths. the way it makes everything look so much more inhuman and clinical and PERFECT because harkonnen power is so absolute and ruthless.
and the way the baron sits so so high above watching the fighting. literally impossible to picture his elevation above his people above the rest of the universe. the way feyd looks to him for approval after every movement. even as his uncle is trying to kill him they exchange those little looks and feyd knows hes getting his chance to show off while the baron gives him his "gift" what a fucked up family what the hell
speaking of fucked up family! wow! they are SO fucked up! there is something seriously strange being hinted at with feyd and the baron! feyd making his own brother bow and kiss his boot! those constant threats of death against rabban as if theyre nothing! this family is capital f FUCKED up. they hurt each other as much as they hurt everyone around them. theyre made of violence and blood and they could never show each other kindness because they dont know such a thing
what can i say about the feyd/margot scenes that hasnt been said already. like wow just unpack the boy's trauma like that. use him and then throw him to the wolves. once again the bene gesserit make it so clear this is THEIR empire and THEIR bloodlines and THEIR messiah. too bad jessica doesnt see that collective "ours" and instead settles for "mine" when it comes to the messiah
special shout out to dave bautista before i move on. just cause. his rabban doesnt get enough love. he really sells that balance of ruthless power but also incompetency compared to his brother so well. can you guys tell i REALLY like this cast
WE ACTUALLY GOT TO SEE GURNEY PLAYING THE BALISET WE FUCKING WIN Y'ALL
the paul/gurney reunion being the last shred of the old paul. how he gets so happy "i recognized your footsteps, old man" shoot me in the fucking brain stem it would HURT LESS
a bit off topic and it happened earlier (sorry my thoughts are so all over the place) but i like how they actually showed the process of how the water of life is made. it was actually exactly like how i imagined it when i read the books so thats neat !!
anyway. back to the horrors.
i already talked so much about feyd's presence so just another small note. that scene in sietch tabr. he is a MONSTER and i am EATING IT UP
i cant even begin to explain. how much it fucked me up. when paul took the water of life. i knew thats where we were going. i knew it was unavoidable. and yet still. when chani bent over him and screamed at everyone for making him follow this prophecy. when she was forced to shed tears to save his life. when she got him back only to realize she lost him and he wasnt the person she loved anymore. it broke me
chani's utter hatred for the prophecy and what paul is becoming added to it so much. i know some people are unhappy with how much shes been changed from the books but i think its elevated her character and all these scenes so much. and oh my god does zendaya DELIVER when the spotlight is on her. i never doubted her for a moment but all those changes to chani really allowed to let her shine. thats that euphoria acting coming out baby !!!!
SPEAKING OF GOOD ACTING
TIMOTHEE
FUCKING
CHALAMET
listen i hate the fact that he gets cast in everything these days as much as everyone but hes such a talented actor and i cant deny this anymore. the water of life scene really sold it for me.
he was such a perfect paul already in the first movie but this was the moment it really came out. the way he wakes up so calm and collected. lifeless. monotone. theres nothing theres literally nothing
paul atreides the boy who became duke far too young is dead usul who was the lover of chani is dead muad'dib the fedaykin fighter is dead only the kwisatz haderach remains and thats what the prophecy was always leading us to and yet the moment it happens its so haunting
like i cannot say this enough. that complete switch is so sudden but so subtle at the same time. its still paul technically but hes so different
what makes dune's weird concepts so easy to take in once you get into the book is all that internal monologue that really leads you through these complex concepts slowly. and yet in a few shots and a few lines of dialogue timothee chalamet somehow manages to express the idea of "i just learned the secrets of the fucking universe and im about to start a holy war" ???? HOW DO YOU EVEN DO THIS???? HOW ARE YOU THIS TALENTED???? OH MY GOD!!!!!!!! IT WAS A FEW LOOKS A FEW MOVENTS JUST THE RIGHT TONE OF VOICE AND THATS HIM!!! THATS HIM BABY!!!! THATS THE KWISATZ HADERACH AND THE UNIVERSE IS FUCKED !!!!!!!!!
also. anya taylor joy alia. we only had you for a split second but i cannot wait for you. im sure youre going to completely slay the third movie. give us our beloved tragic meow meow. alia is my fave character so i will be JUDGING HEAVILY. she better bring her a-game istg
when paul storms the war council and just completely takes control of the room so easily. thats the bene gesserit conditioning giving him his pedestal and he is making the most of it. he knows exactly what the fuck hes doing. and once more oh my goddddd all that shouting all that emotion and yet a complete lack of it. timothee spare a crumb of talent for the rest of us
also the way in that scene gurney is hesitant about it all until paul proclaims himself the duke of arrakis. and suddenly gurney has house atreides again and he doesnt care what chani does anymore. hes a follower to paul just as everyone else in that room. nothing changes. fuck me man i cant do this anymore
have i mentioned yet im so excited for chani in the next movie. her arc is so interesting. children of dune is defo not happening with the way chani has been set up so i doubt we'll see leto ii and ghanima but. lets hope we still get all the cool stuff wit alia at least. and maybe chani can be the one who leads the charge against her
okay i need to really fucking. get along with it im dragging this post on im so sorry this movie is eating my brain alive
chani still wearing blue during the final fight. im not saying more than that i might cry if i think about it too much
THAT. FINAL. FIGHT. OH MY GODDD OH MY GOD
IT ALL CAME TOGETHER SO SO WELL
THE WORMS
THE SENSE OF SCALE
THE FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHY
THE MUSIC HOLY FUCK THE MUSIC HANS ZIMMER YOU OUTDO YOURSELF EVERY TIME
THE SOUND
EVERYTHING FLOWING TOGETHER SO WELL
the way the fremen fight for their messiah but still fly the atreides banner. the way paul leads them as their messiah and as a "fremen" but always proclaims himself duke of house atreides first. oh lorddd im unwell
every time paul menacingly emerged from fog/sand/smoke my life was extended by like 10 years thank u denis
gurney killing rabban with as much ease as he did cleared my skin and watered my crops <3
the way the baron was literally dying and still crawling towards the throne.......... the way at the same time feyd ignored him completely and looked towards the doors reveling in the fight ahead..... if that doesnt tell u everything you need to know about house harkonnen idk what will yall
i also love how no one intervenes as paul walks in and kills the baron. not even feyd. feyd looks like he was a little TOO into it as paul killed him tbh. feyd u little freak. austin butler you talented talented man. im unwell
i AM sad we didnt get to see baby alia stab him but ah well. we got a bunch of other weird dune shit so ill let this one slide. the psychic toddler may be too much even for denis and everything he did give us. we'll always have our 1984 alia <3
OHOHOHOHOHOHOH. OH. HERE WE GO
HERE WE GO YALL
THE SCENE IVE BEEN WAITING FOR SINCE READING THE BOOK
THE SCENE THEY SHOWED BITS OF IN THE TRAILER AND THE SCENE IVE BEEN NON STOP YEARNING FOR SINCE!!!
THE DUEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
oh my god oh my god oh my goddddd where do i even start
okay so. the way theres no music. no fancy cuts no slow mo no over the top effects. its just the slashing of the blades and those BEAUTIFUL shadowed shots with the setting sun in the background. this really is the sun setting on the peaceful universe. just pain and suffering ahead marked with the blood spilled from the two who were meant to produce the messiah but who both got thrown off this path by the greed and selfishness of their forefathers. guys im normal about paul and feyd. definitely. i definitely have very normal thoughts about how they are foils and yet two sides of the same coin. yes guys
paul making the emperor kiss his ring is already such an insane fucking scene and it translated to the screen so well. amazing performances all around
i didnt talk much about florence pugh's irulan but she really didnt have much time to shine. im excited to see where she goes next and i definitely think shes a great fit but i need to see more of her to really be able to say more
i will say this. the way chani, irulan and jessica are the only ones who dont kneel for paul. the three most important women in his life who give him his power, everything he has. jessica made him and she made him the messiah. chani opened her life up to him, helped him become and in turn control the fremen, and she shed her tears for him and fulfilled her role in the prophecy against her wishes. irulan is his path to the throne, his key to being emperor. and none of them bow before him because why would they bow before a power they are responsible for, a power they own, a power they gave?
but for chani its different ofc. she also refuses to bow because she despises everything paul stands for.
oh my god i could say so much about the last scene being chani. not paul reveling in his victory. paul leaves for his next bloodshed and chani is left behind crying for the person she loves who she knows is gone. crying for her people, again enslaved. crying those same tears that brought the messiah back into this world.
theres a lot to be said about the role of gender in dune and how it hangs over every facet of this world but thats a whole separate analysis post to be had so ill just throw it down here in this little point
another thing chani does very well in the movies is she really makes paul's villainy explicitly clear. SO many people read dune and completely misunderstand it and walk away from it concluding its a "white savior narrative" and nothing more which. yes!! yes it is!!!! but thats not a good thing!!!! its never stated to be a good thing!!!!
this movie is not gonna let you misunderstand the message of the story no matter how blind you try to be to it. paul is not a good guy. hes never been the good guy. hes the protagonist, but hes not the hero. and chani allows that to translate from book to movie very well. have i mentioned yet i love movie chani
chani fills in the holes left behind by the narration and internal monologues of the book and, bonus points, she holds the people who dont understand what dune is about by the hand and tells them explicitly "PAUL IS A BAD GUY!!! DONT IDOLIZE PAUL!!!! DONT WALK AWAY FROM DUNE THINKING ITS PRAISING PAUL'S ACTIONS!!!"
i think thats pretty much all i had to say. i might reblog with additions as they hit me but yeah i. i enjoyed the movie. so so much. i think i might watch it again sometime soon while its still in cinemas.
sorry for being unhinged hope u enjoyed my rants. kiss kiss night night <3
#dune#dune part two#dune part 2#paul atreides#chani kynes#jessica atreides#feyd rautha#feyd rautha harkonnen#rabban harkonnen#vladimir harkonnen#stilgar#alia atreides#irulan corrino#im so crazy im so feral holy shit#okay im going to bed now#its 1 am lmao#ive been writing these down for like 2 hours since i got back
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Happy Birthday? | Poly!Moonwaterkiller x Fem!Reader
ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 ࣪˖⤷ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ ࣪ ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 ˖ ⤷
Pairing: Remus Lupin x Regulus Black x Barty Crouch Jr x F!Reader
WC: 3,163
CW: swearing, teasing type of relationship, mostly fluff, slight angst at the end, slight talks of Regulus’s childhood, no use of Y/N
Author's Note: This ship is inspired by @ellecdc please send her love. She's so talented and is just straight up amazing.
Also I'm still new to writing so I hope you like it and I'm sorry if it's not good/doesn't make sense.
Summary: It’s regulus birthday so you, Remus and Barty want to make it special but sometimes things don’t go as planned.
I made this ig mood board inspired by the guy idk ive never made one before
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“Bartemius Crouch junior! I swear to all that is holy in this world! If you stick your grubby hands in the frosting one more bloody time!”
“Oh come on Lupin! You can’t blame me, it's just so fucking good!"
Barty yelled, waving his hands around trying to defend himself.
You couldn't help but laugh at hearing two of your boyfriends’ bicker while you put the chicken you just got done seasoning into the oven to cook.
Admittedly it was quite entertaining and it helped distract you a bit from stressing over the cooking that still needed to be done and the small decorations that needed to be put up for today.
It was Regulus's birthday, so you and Remus had gotten Sirius to take Regulus out for the day so you and your partners could try and surprise him with a birthday dinner for just the four of you.
You couldn't help but stress seeing as he should be home sooner than later at this point, and you wanted everything to be as perfect as possible since Regulus wasn't completely comfortable with celebrating his birthday still.
He didn't find the idea of a party and things of that nature to be fun, he found it more stressful and anxiety inducing than anything. (due to his childhood)
So the three of you have always tried to do a little something to make it special for him and to show Regulus that you all love him but never anything too much as to avoid overwhelming or making him uncomfortable.
“Barty, my love, how about you go and set up the ‘Happy Birthday’ banner?”
“Anything for you angel.”
Barty says with a look that he reserved for only you.
It was love sick looks. The kind of look that could show the receiver every emotion the other person was feeling. It showed that you were loved by that person with their whole heart. The type of look that had both parties feeling vulnerable in the best way possible.
Even before you all had started dating, when you all were just friends in your earlier years at Hogwarts, he had always looked at you as if you hung the moon and all the stars in the sky.
He'd look at you as if you were the only good thing left in this world, and to him you were one of the only good things left in this world.
You and two other people that he held closer to his heart than he'd probably be willing to admit most days.
Though that didn’t mean Barty didn't love Remus and Regulus.
It also didn't mean it was a secret of how much Barty loved Remus and Regulus. In fact he loved them with all his heart. He expressed how much he loved them somewhat often in his own ways.
Especially since he could be known for his flair of the dramatics at times, he had expressed many times that he loved the three of you more than anything.
Not that anyone could deny, or question it. More like no one would dare to deny or question it.
Barty has expressed many times how he'd burn down cities, commit unspeakable acts and take on any unforgivable in a heartbeat for Regulus and Remus.
The love Barty held for them two was the kind of love that was teasing and could be chaotic in the best way.
The type of love that could only be described as a ‘I can pick on them but you can't pick on them because they're mine’ in the most loving way Barty could possibly manage. And may the gods help any poor soul that ever tried to mess with someone who he deemed as his.
But the love he had for you was a softer kind of love, it was sweet. The kind of love full of things like love sick looks, soft touches, sweet kisses and even sweeter words.
Along with the promises of burning down cities, committing unspeakable acts and taking on unforgivables’, who would expect anything less from Barty? But I digress.
“Yes please, piss off for fucks sake.”
Remus says in an exasperated tone waving Barty away. Barty then gasps dramatically and clenches his shirt as if he was clutching his ‘pearls’.
“You don't mean that, Remmy.” Barty all but whined.
“Plus you couldnt get rid of me even if you wanted to.”
Barty states sending a smirk and wink at Remus, which Remus just responds with by rolling his eyes and hitting Barty with a dish towel playfully to distract Barty from the light blush that's undoubtedly spread across Remus’s face, as to avoid being teased further by him.
“Barty’s right Rem. Even if we wanted to, we're stuck with him, unfortunately.”
You say with a sarcastic little sigh while trying to suppress a smile that threatened to form due to the two men playful arguing.
Barty then gasps dramatically once more and puts his hand over his heart as if you just stabbed him in the heart as Remus snicker at Bartys reaction and to your comment.
“Not you as well, angel. You should know that words hurt. You've wounded me, you've basically killed me.”
Barty then pretends to sob as you and Remus shake your heads with smiles on your faces due to his behavior.
“Gods you’ve been spending way too much damn time around Sirius.”
Remus says while rubbing his hands over his face trying to hide his smile. You chuckle and walk up to Barty and give him a hug giving him your best ‘I'm sorry’ look.
“I’m sorry Barty, I just couldn't help it. Remus has influenced me far too much.. Blame him.”
You say in fake sincerity with a small nod as you hear Remus huff at your comment.
Barty lets out a chuckle and hugs you back with a smile on his face looking down at you as he holds you.
“It's okay angel, I could never stay upset at you. Lupin on the other hand..”
Barty drags out the end of his sentence with a small smirk on his face as Remus scoffs dramatically at his lovers’ statements.
“Really love? It's my fault is it?”
Remus says with his head tilted to the side and eyebrow raised, as if daring you to continue saying that he should be the one to blame for your ‘cruel’ comment to Barty.
“Actually Lupin, I think it is your fault.” Barty stated apparently agreeing with you.
“And what has brought you to that conclusion Junior?”
Remus says as he walks toward the both of you with a small smirk on his face.
“My angel was just that, an angel. That was until you lot got your Gryffindor hands all over her.”
Barty says with a small shrug, feeling as if his point was valid and made sense. You supposed for Barty it did.
“Is that a fact?” Remus asked while getting closer to you and Barty.
“Yeah, Lupin it is actually.” Barty says, giving Remus a somewhat challenging look.
“You don't seem to complain when I have my Gryffindor hands all over you, Junior.”
Remus then winks at a now blushing and flustered Barty. You then cover your mouth trying to hide your own blush while also trying to suppress a giggle.
Barty tries to say some kind of come back and it just results in him stuttering.
“W-well I- Goddamnit! That’s not fair Lupin!”
“All's fair in love and war Junior.”
Remus says sending another wink at Barty and smirking at you while Barty stares at him with wide eyes in complete silence.
He had managed to make Barty Crouch Jr speechless.
That was actually one of the many things that Remus was good at, especially at the beginning when everything was still new and more unexpected.
When the four of you were in that space where you weren't officially dating but it was clear to you and everyone who'd been around your little group that you four had very strong feelings for each other.
It had taken Remus no time at all to get comfortable with having at least one of you flustered almost all the time, usually to the point of stuttering or speechlessness.
He loved seeing you three like that.
Especially Barty.
Barty wasn't someone you could easily make blush let alone actually fluster, especially with just words so whenever Remus would manage to make Barty speechless he felt like he won a reward.
Barty would never admit it but it was clear as day that Remus was good at making him a flustered stuttering mess.
And Barty hated it.
“Now love. I believe someone owes someone an apology for trying to place blame.”
Remus says, walking up to you now at arms length and giving you a pointed look now waiting for an apology.
While Barty mutters a ‘fucking hell’ under his breath and runs his hand through his hair as he walks towards the kitchen counter still mumbling quietly to himself.
“I'm sorry moony. Truly. Do you forgive me?” You say somewhat sincerely knowing Remus doesn't really care all that much.
“I could never stay mad at you, love.”
Remus says with a small smile he then cups your cheek and gives you a kiss on your forehead, you lean into Remus's kiss taking in the moment and enjoying the affection from your boyfriend.
When suddenly you and Remus feel a cold, grainy substance rain down on you, which you both quickly realize is flour once the shock wore off.
You then hear a familiar giggle, and turn to see none other than a proud looking Barty standing now several feet away, covered in white powder himself. He just stands there proud of himself as if he didn't just cover you both in flour.
As you stare at him wide eyed and mouth a gasp, he just gives you a cheeky little smile.
“You did not just do that Junior.”
“Oh but I think I did, Remmy. That's what you get for teasing and being mean to me.”
Barty then sends a little wink to you and a somewhat apologetic smile.
“Sorry angel. Collateral damage, you understand.”
Barty says with a small shrug and a tone that makes it seem like it's the most reasonable thing that he has ever done.
You simply nod with the most convincing smile you could possibly muster in that moment.
“Of course my love. I understand.”
You say walking near Barty and grabbing a bowl that's filled with whipped cream that you had made earlier. You then walk closer to Barty and with a smile on your face.
“And you'll understand when I do this.”
You say while grabbing a handful of whipped cream and throwing it at Barty just for him to duck in time ending with the cream hitting Remus in the face. You gasp and cover your mouth trying not to laugh as Barty busts out laughing.
“Oh shit Rem! I'm so sorry.”
You say trying hard and failing to suppress your laughter, while Remus wipes his eyes off with his hands.
“It's okay love. All’s forgiven. Just come and give me a kiss.”
“Ummm I would love to, honestly I would… After you clean your face, that is…”
You back away from a now smiling remus while he opens his arms for you and starts walking closer to you.
“No, now would be fine for me.”
Remus proceeds to walk closer to you as you start to back away towards Barty who's starting to calm down from his laughter.
“Why not kiss Barty?! This is all because of him anyway!”
Barty then gasps.
“Angel! I can't believe you'd throw me under the bus like that… Is it bad that I liked it?”
Barty asks the last part more to himself than to anyone else. He was so caught up in his thoughts for a second that he didn't notice you now using him as a human shield, that was until he felt a clump of whipping cream on his head and looked to see a smirking Remus.
“Oh. This means war.”
All of a sudden it was every person for themselves. The kitchen was now a war zone. Flour, whipped cream, sugar, powdered sugar, fruits and berries were being thrown all over the place. It was pure chaos.
The Three you were making a mess out of the kitchen and even bigger messes of yourselves.
Next thing you, you’ve been thrown over Remus’s shoulder while Barty is chasing Remus around the kitchen.
There’s so much going on, so much laughing and screaming that no one heard the door open. Which meant no one heard Regulus make his way to the kitchen, and so no one noticed him standing in the doorway till you heard him speak.
“I leave you alone for a few hours and suddenly the kitchen explodes?”
Regulus in all his stoic glory just stood there not even looking a little surprised.
All three of you stopped running around, suddenly feeling like kids who got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Then all three of you look at eachother then at Regulus.
“Happy Birthday?” You, Remus and Barty said accidentally making it sound more like a question than in an enthusiastic way.
Regulus just points at the oven says.
“The ovens smoking.”
“Oh shit! The chicken!”
You yell as Remus puts you down and he rushes to the oven to take out the now burnt chicken as smoke fills the kitchen.
“Sooo… Chinese?” Said a very uncertain Barty
After opening some windows, having the Chinese food delivered, a few showers and quite a few cleaning spells the four of you ended up on the couch with a movie on not many words being exchanged.
After the movie was finished and the food had all been mostly finished Remus had brought out the cake that he managed to finish decorating while waiting for the food to arrive.
The three of you had sung (or in Bartys case basically screamed) Happy birthday to Regulus while he sat there with a ghost of a smile on his face. After another hour or so the four of you found yourselves in your shared bed.
You couldn't help but feel guilty since Regulus hadn't really expressed any emotion which wasn’t necessarily not normal about his birthday. You felt like maybe you had upset him in some way, maybe you over stepped or maybe he was irritated due to the mess you Remus and Barty made.
You were spiraling.
Till you heard a whisper.
“Thank you..”
It was quiet for a few seconds, you supposed no one really knew what to say.
“For what Black? I feel like we kinda ruined your birthday.” Said a almost half asleep Barty
“It wasn't ruined Junior! It just didn't go.. as planned..'' defend Remus who laid on the other side of you.
You and Regulus laid in the middle of Barty and Remus.
“Would the two of you stop bickering for just a moment please?” You say with a small shake of your head and a small chuckle.
The next second there's a small choir of ‘Sorry angel’ and ‘Sorry love’.
“What are you thanking us for, Reggie?”
You say pushing some of his black curly hair behind his ear looking at him softly, though he probably couldn't tell since it was dark in the room.
The only light coming through the window from the half moon.
“For today.. I know it didn't go how any of you planned or would have wanted it to go, but still. It was nice. I spent most of the day with my brother though he can be insufferable, loud and dramatic most of the time, it was still nice. And then to come home to the three people who mean everything to me laughing and having fun... That was the best part. I know I'm not the easiest when it comes to celebrating my birthday but, your three and Sirius have been the only people who have ever actually cared for my birthday. You've never treated it like how my parents did. Never used it as an excuse to have a big party full of people I didn't know or care about just so it seemed like we were better then them or make it seem like we were the perfect family, even though it was evident that we weren't. You've always made it about me and always respected what I'm comfortable with and well I appreciate that. So.. Thank you.. I love you.. All three of you..”
“We love you too Reg.” You say quietly, giving Regulus a soft kiss.
“Awwww did Regulus Black just say he loves me.” Barty practically squealed.
Barty then pulls Regulus into him so Regulus’s back is to Barty's front and then proceeds to messily kiss Regulus all over the side of his face while Regulus tries and fails to get away from him.
Remus then starts to laugh harder than you had seen in a while, almost falling off the bed as he hears the bickering between the two (mostly on Regulus' part) and sees the shadows of a struggling Regulus and a very determined Barty.
You can't help but start to laugh almost as hard as Remus as you try and get the words out to have Barty let go of poor Regulus.
The night continues for only a few more moments it's filled with more laughing and eventually sleepy good night kisses and I love yous.
To say the four of you had an interesting relationship would be an understatement. It could be messy and chaotic, it could be a fucking headache sometimes.
But there was love. There was always love.
There were mornings where the four of you would wake up and just lay in bed happier than any of you thought you could ever be.
There were tender kisses and loving touches.
Dreams and promisses of the future.
There were smiles and laughing fits that would fuel you for the days when you felt like you couldn't even get out of bed.
Admittedly, it was a lot most of the time.
There were screaming matches and arguing at its worst times but at its best times it was you and three people that you couldn't see your life without. Three people that made life easier most of the time. People who could make you laugh till you cried and that would hold you while you cried and fall apart.
This was a life that none of you ever thought you'd have the opportunity to have, and ever so often one of you would feel like you didn't deserve the life you had.
This was the kind of life that probably wouldn’t exist for you guys in different universes. But here, in this universe? This is the life you have and you wouldn't trade it for the world.
⋆‧⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊☽ ◯ ☾₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆
#Barty Crouch Jr#Regulus Black#Remus Lupin#remus lupin x reader#Regulus Black x reader#barty crouch jr x reader#moonwaterkiller#poly moonwaterkiller#moonwaterkiller x reader#the marauders#marauders#remus x Barty x regulus x reader#hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry#hogwarts#x reader#remus x reader#barty x reader#regulus x reader#regulus x barty#barty x remus#remus x regulus
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Soulmates.
I was in a discord server earlier, and we got to talking about the Yellowjackets as soulmates, and I thought I'd share those thoughts here, just a nice little put together catalogue of all those thoughts put together. I might add to this, too, as more pairings and relationships come to me.
For the record, I want to point out that I think that all of these characters are soulmates, far beyond ship dynamics, far beyond romance. What makes up the insides of one makes up the insides of the others because they are all the same: teenage girls trapped in either growing or decaying bodies. Their souls are all mated to the others in some way or another.
Tai and Van are a pair. Two separate souls that are a part of a matched set, like socks. They can be worn mismatched, certainly, but they really are at their best together. Tai gives Van a purpose. Van calms Tai's "demons." They can exist without each other, live without each other, love without each other, but they just are at their best together.
Lottie and Nat are that sort of star-crossed soulmates, doomed soulmates. There's a red string of fate but its severed somewhere in the middle. They can be good for each other, laugh and smile and hold each other close. They can be the worst of each other, holding knives to each other's throats, laughing in the face of it. They're the epitome of a missed chance. What kind of missed chance? That's up for you to decide.
Misty and Nat are the kind of soulmates that don't seem like they'd match, but they work so good together. The believer and the skeptic (though who is who changes with the circumstance, the belief, the skepticism). Orange and blue. Salt and sweet. Chaotic good and lawful evil. They're diametrically opposed but in a way that makes sense, in a way that works together. They each feed off of what makes the other their opposite. One is running, the other is chasing. Of course one would die at the hand of the other.
Lottie and Laura Lee are the kind of soulmates where each thinks they are the worshipper while the other is the god. A prophet, a believer, a worship under the sun. Souls that just burn brighter around each other (and that pun was unintentional the first time but very intentional with the emphasis). Both want to help the other. Both want to hold the other. They are belief without boundaries personified. Each is Icarus. Each is the sun.
Tai and Shauna are soulmates in a way that recognizes "That is my person." Two people that have so much in common, who understand each other, who both recognize the want in the other. They have an understanding and a care for each other that's fierce. I see you, you see me, ad it might not be pretty, but we will be honest with each other. Especially as the two of them have aged; time has not erased their understanding of one another.
Jackie and Nat are soulmates in a way that isn't explored a lot in the show but has been discussed, from what I've seen, really well. Foils. Two sides of the same coin. Opposites. Rich girl, poor girl. Prude, slut. There are certain stereotypes around both of them that, from a glance, seem to play out. One only needs to look deeper to really see it. Unfortunately, from the show, we never really see the two of them see past their expectations of each other.
Jackie and Shauna. Two heads, one heart. I don't know where you end and I begin and all that. We've been there, we've done that. We know it by heart. They're not a pair because a pair implies separation, and there is none. You can cut out your heart, and you can even replace it, but it's never the same. They're two shattered halves of the same fucked up whole. When one piece is gone, the hole cannot be filled properly ever again. There are some species of worms that, when worm cut in half, can keep living as two separate entities. That does not negate the fact that it was once one whole creature. They're unhealthy together. They're unnatural apart. One did not live long enough to remedy either of these facts.
(If Jackie's heart was still beating, I know it would beat in time with Shauna's. I hope Shauna ate it to feel it beat with hers one last time.)
#yellowjackets#jackie taylor#shauna shipman#taissa turner#van palmer#natalie scatorccio#lottie matthews#misty fucking quigley#misty quigley#laura lee yellowjackets#yellowjackets meta#I'm sure I'll add more to this eventually#jackieshauna#taivan#taishauna#lottienat#lottielee#mistynat#jackienat
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@cherryxblossxms put neighbor!Toji in my brain (with this post specifically) and let's just say he's got squatting rights with the way he's taken over my brain
toji x gn!reader
tw: biting, handjob (reader receiving), no pronouns used/ GN reader, yandere toji, possessive/territorial toji, mentions of reader hearing toji fuck strangers, mentions of reader masturbating
pet names: sweetheart
part ii
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As you entered the empty communal laundry room, your mind wandered to the neighbor who was sure to show up any minute.
Toji Fushiguro. You made the mistake of thinking he'd be a good friend to have around. In your defense, it was a reasonable assumption. One of your first days in your new apartment you saw him fixing his own car in the garage. From the way his eyes lingered on you, you could guess it wouldn't take much to convince him to be your personal handyman.
But that was just your first mistake.
Acting on that thought was your second mistake. You should have known early on from the way he loved to corner you whenever he passed by that he would be aggressive. Not that you minded, it was kind of sexy that he was so confident. But confidence like that is a sign of arrogance. Possessiveness.
And you were just neighbors. Friendly acquaintances at best.
It was hard to avoid him. You were constantly running into him in the hallways, doing laundry, working on his car in the parking spot next to yours. You could even hear him through the paper-thin apartment walls sometimes, often fucking some poor soul senseless before you never hear from them again.
"How's it goin' sweetheart?" Your heart skipped a beat as the man who was on your mind found you in the laundry room. Again.
"Toji," you smiled. "I'd like to ask you a favor."
"Oh?" He grinned at you. You finished starting the washer and turned to him, only just now seeing he was wearing nothing but a pair of loose sweatpants low on his hips.
"Something weird is going on with my sink..." As he filled the washer with his clothes, your eyes trailed down the muscles of his back to his ass, which was peeking out of the top of his pants.
"Do I look like a plumber to you?" He added his soap and hit the start button on the washer.
"You have the crack for it." You stifled your laughter.
"Hmm," Toji's back was still to you but he turned his head and looked at you through the side of his eye. "So you're looking at my ass?"
Your cheeks immediately ran hot and your smile disappeared, not expecting him to acknowledge that minor fact. "It was right in front of me, what was I supposed to do?" You quickly responded.
"I expect a little more modesty from my love interests." He sauntered towards you.
"Yeah right," You scoffed. "I've seen the type of person you bring home at night." You smirked. "And god knows I've heard them."
"It's better than the dildo keeping you company." He quipped. "Have you named it yet?" He leaned closer to you, caging you against the washer as he whispered into your ear. "How about Toji?"
The thought popped into your head that if you could see that much of his ass, Toji was probably not wearing underwear. The heat of his body was mere inches from yours. You tensed up before pushing him away.
"Fuck off." You shuffled to the door in an attempt to remain composed.
"Do you want me to fix your sink or not?" He was leaning on your washer now, although you didn't dare spare him a glance.
"Put a shirt on first." You left the laundry room with him following closely behind, both of you stopping at the doors right next to each other.
"I'll see you in 10 minutes then." Toji went into his apartment and sighed. He hated that he said shit like that to you, what was that dildo comment, anyway?
He thought you were so adorable, he couldn't get you out of his mind. He always wanted to keep an eye on you. To give himself opportunities to see you. That's why he kept showing up and saying stupid shit because even if you pushed him away in the end at least he got to spend some time with you.
God, it was so fucking sappy. He just needed to fuck you and be done with it. Then, he could move on. Then, when he was fucking someone else, maybe he wouldn't be desperate to shout your name, hoping you were listening on the other side of that wall. He knew that having sex with other people wasn't really a good way to get your attention, but if you got even a little jealous it would be worth it.
He found one of his tightest shirts and threw it on, checking himself in the mirror only briefly before making his way to your apartment. He banged on your door recklessly, all thoughts of trying to be less abrasive gone the second he left his apartment.
You opened the door and before you could say anything, he spoke. "Heard you need to get your pipes checked." He grinned.
"Is this a fucking porno?" You rolled your eyes. "It's the kitchen sink. In here." You led him to your kitchen and turned the faucet on, water sputtering out and then slowly trickling, even when it was turned on all the way.
He put his fingers under the water for a moment before flicking water at you.
"Hey!" You pouted at him as he laughed at your reaction. "I'm not going to keep you company if you're going to act like a child." You turned the water off, grabbing the kitchen towel.
"Sorry, sorry." He was still chuckling. "I couldn't resist." He knelt in front of the sink, opened the cabinets, and started moving your things around to get to the piping in the back.
"Don't worry, I won't look at your ass this time." It took all of your self-restraint, but you really weren't looking at his ass. You were distracted by a text from a guy you'd seen a couple of times, a meme about seeing you again.
"Aww, it's right in front of you, what are you supposed to do?" He mocked you from under the sink. He sat up, seeing that you were grinning at something on your phone. "What's funny?" He asked, feeling a pang of envy at whoever just made you smile when you were supposed to be paying attention to him.
"Oh," You quickly put your phone away, meeting Toji's gaze. "It's nothing."
"Do you have a toolbox?" He asked, uncharacteristically serious.
"Sure." You went and grabbed it for him. After bringing it back, your phone rang. It was the guy you were texting. "Oh, I should take this. I'll be right back."
Toji pulled a monkey wrench out of your toolkit and crawled back under the sink. He could still hear you speaking despite being in the other room. Something about a date on Saturday. His heart twisted in his chest. He had half a mind to smash your sink to pieces and insist he needed to fix it on Saturday, but that wouldn't stop you from seeing whoever this guy was. Or even asking him to come fix it instead.
He twisted the loose bolts and fixed up the piping, but remained under the sink as he collected his thoughts. He was absolutely fuming at the way that asshole was making you giggle. Didn't he know that you belonged to him?
Breathe, Toji. He nearly growled at that last thought. He heard you walking back into the kitchen and emerged from under the sink, now standing in front of it. He turned on the faucet and it ran as it should.
"It's fixed." His voice was almost gentle. Almost. He turned the water off again.
"That was so quick!" You marveled, placing a hand on his arm. His heart felt like it was in a battle of tug-of-war. Your touch was so warm, he couldn't hold himself back anymore.
Toji grabbed your wrist, flipping you around only to back you up against the counter.
"Now, let's talk about payment." He grinned and your heart was racing.
"Payment? I thought this was a favor." You were getting a little nervous. Toji regularly pinned you against things like this but he'd never done it in private. In fact, the two of you had never been in private together.
"How about a date? I'm thinking... Saturday." Toji grabbed your chin with his thumb and index finger, directing your gaze at him. He overheard you.
"I'm... busy." You didn't really know how to handle this. Your heart was racing.
"Busy?" His face closed in on yours, his lips brushing against yours as he spoke. "With what?"
You were speechless, your whole body lighting up like it never had before. It was clear to you now that you wanted this. You wanted him. All that time spent ogling his hot body, shoving your emotions aside to attempt to insult him. It was just a ruse to keep him far away. Because you knew this whole time that he was dangerous. A mistake.
Your breath mingled with his as your jaw slackened. You desperately wanted him to kiss you.
"With what, sweetheart?" He repeated, reminding you that he was waiting on an answer.
"N-nothing..." You whimpered.
"You're mine, then." He mumbled, toying with you as he leaned in briefly, pulling himself away just as you tried to kiss him.
"Toji..." you grumbled, your hands trailing up his abs.
"Say it." He slowly moved closer to you again as he waited for your response. He was trying to be intense and manly but there was something soft and vulnerable behind his words. Like he needed you to want him just as desperately as he wanted you.
"I..." You hesitated. He was trouble, you knew it. This was a mistake. That was all you could think. And yet, your brain really wasn't doing the thinking here. Your body was burning with desire. Your sex fluttered with anticipation as his lips brushed against yours again. You pushed your hands up to his shoulders and over the back of his neck. "I'm yours... Toji."
His kisses crashed against you with all the grace of the ocean in a perfect storm, wild and desperate to sink you to the sea floor. He stole your breath moment by moment and you could feel yourself drowning in the lust suddenly trickling through your bones. His hands kneaded into your body, searching for the spots that made you whimper into his mouth. And as his own hunger for you took control, you found yourself returning his desire just as recklessly. Just as violently.
Toji pulled away from your swollen lips with the intention of leaving dark hickeys all over your neck. As he sucked and bit at your sensitive skin, you could feel his eager cock pressed against you. One of his hands floated to your sex, feeling your contours through your clothes.
His lips. His fingers. His teeth. His tongue. All working in tandem to etch themselves in your memory so deeply that you couldn't even come close to forgetting this moment. He needed anything else to be inadequate. After tonight, he needed to be the only one to ever make you cum again.
You were panting for him as he gripped your jeans, hastily unbuttoning them and pushing them down your hips. His teeth didn't leave your collarbone as his hand started rubbing your arousal.
"So needy..." He slurred against your skin, the vibrations of his voice heightening your sensitivity. Your body was so responsive to him as he worked you, greedily corrupting you.
Your whole body shivered with pleasure, waves of desire rolling through you. It was almost too much, but at the same time, you didn't want him to stop. Just as the unforgiving waves of the ocean pulled sailors to their demise, Toji's relentless foreplay pulled you deeper into the bounds of his depravity.
He had you on the edge. "Toji..." You whimpered his name but he didn't stop, so you said it louder. And louder again, this time punctuated by moans.
"Mmh..." He groaned against you. "Cum for me, sweetheart." His motions sped up, the familiar tingle raging in your core had finally broken the barrier, ripping through your body in an earth shattering orgasm. He kept going, even as you came all over his hand. Even as you attempted to squirm out of his grasp. Even as your oversensitive sex sputtered as if shooting blanks.
"Toji, I-" Before you could finish your thought, his soaked fingers plunged into your mouth.
"I don't ever want to hear about another man again." He growled.
-
tagging @bite-sized-devil
#toji fushiguro#toji x reader#jjk toji#me <- no knowledge of plumbing#that's how they fix stuff in the movies which means it's real#might fuck around and write a part two where toji rails you#quite likely actually bc I just Had A Thought
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Alt Scenario: Ghost Bride Event
Yo, after seeing this post I got an idea for a slightly different premise for how Yuu swoops in as the final contingency plan. This could work for an ambiguous Yuu, but imma lean towards a f!Yuu just because it plays into a stupid trope that I like to see in shows or movies with romance subplots. Spoilers for Ghost Bride event
So it's time for the last team of bachelors to go and it's NOT going well. Crowley has no more suitors to throw at Eliza and Yuu is their only hope. He suggests making them a suitor even though "none of this princely shit is working, Crowley!"
Oh, but wait. We got a flickering lightbulb here. "Crowley, use your magic to give me a wedding dress!"
"W-what? Why? What are you planning to do?"
"Just shut up and do it!" Crowley groans but conjures a beautiful wedding dress for Yuu. Yuu slips on the magic ring and books it towards Eliza.
The final bachelor has just been paralyzed and Eliza insists on marrying Idia. Poor boy But Yuu bursts through the door, pretending like they just ran a marathon.
"IDIA! YOU BETTER NOT BE HIDING IN HERE!" All the paralyzed boys are staring in shock as Yuu angrily stomps inside, fully decked in a lavish dress, veil and all. Eliza is confused and dismissive. Why is another bride here?
"Excuse me, who are you? Can't you see I'm trying to start my wedding with my husband to be?" Meanwhile Idia is having a nervous breakdown.
"Excuse me?? Idia is MY fiance!" Yuu shows off the ring and improvises a story of them being engaged for months and Idia promising to marry them. Eliza is outraged and asks Idia if it's all true, but before he can answer, Yuu goes up to him and calls him a Two timing cheater who made them believe he loved them. Idia is SO confused meanwhile Yuu is giving their best crocodile tears.
"But that wasn't enough, you had the AUDACITY TO ROPE ANOTHER WOMAN INTO THIS!? SHE DOESN'T DESERVE TO BE TREATED THIS WAY!" Eliza is almost speechless that Yuu is kind of defending her too, but now is angry her dream prince for "having an affair."
"THATS IT! UNEXCUSEABLE!" Eliza slaps the shit out of Idia and it's taking Yuu and the bachelors every ounce of restraint not to burst out laughing.
Yuu continues on between fake sobs, "and to think that I was your one and only! I bet you never even loved me!" Eliza gasps and slaps Idia again.
"And then you take advantage of this beautiful princess and made HER believe she was special!"
SLAP
This goes on until Idia starts glaring at Yuu who's obviously having way too much fun with this. Yuu turns to Eliza and apologizes to her for all the trouble their "lying groom" put her through. After all, "you seem like such a lovely soul." First Yuu defends Eliza's honor and now feels remorse for hurting her even though it wasn't even Yuu's fault? Huh...
Something's...different about this person.
Yuu then slips in some more compliments while asking Eliza if she's okay since she's been through a lot. Eliza can't help but feel her heart flutter. They start hitting it off and the bachelors can't fucking believe their eyes. Is Yuu actually taking a LIKING to Eliza?
Yuu sighs and says that they should head back. "It was nice meeting you Princess Eliza," Yuu takes Eliza's hand and plants a soft kiss on her knuckles, knowing she's absolutely eating this up. "I wish it were under better circumstances though. Perhaps we can meet again. In another life?" Oh god, Eliza fucking loves the cheese of that line and can't help herself.
"Wait!" Eliza clasps Yuu's hand and asks for their hand in marriage. The boys are losing it in the background.
Yuu agrees and takes the ring off their finger. "Idia gave me this ring, but I don't want to associate it with heartbreak. If it's okay with you, I'd love to give this ring a new meaning, with you." Eliza nods happily and Yuu slips it on, reciting the spell. "I vow to love you for as long as you live."
"Thank you." Eliza smiles and disappears in a myriad of sparkles. Soon after, the ghosts follow and all the paralyzed bachelors slowly regain control of their bodies.
"Oh my god, she ate that shit UP." Yuu breaks out in laughter. "Did you guys see that? I had her wrapped around my finger!" Yuu proceeds to rub it in all their faces that none of them got game.
I'm sorry, I love the two women who were philander-ed by the same guy become friends to lovers trope.
#twisted wonderland#twst yuu#yuu#ghost marriage#twisted wonderland x yuu#twst eliza#being gay saves the day
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Hello,
I'm sorry if this is bothering you, but I've been having a rough time with my family recently; so if you have the time or motivation, could you possibly do another 'Mc goes on a rampage' maybe with Satan.
If not that's totally understandable,
Have a great rest of your day/night
Hello! Of course! 🥰 you're not bothering me at all! I'm so sorry it took me a while to answer! I'm always down to soothe a soul!
I'm not sure whether your family troubles stem from a parent or another relative, so I'm going to use " family member" instead of parent! I hope things turn up for you! I wish we could pick family or at least slap some fucking sense in to them. But fanfics will do for now 💕 I really hope this helps. If you ever need to talk about anything, I'm here! 💕
MC Goes On a Rampage
Satan
Scenario : You are an MC who just got off the phone with a family member in the human world. You don't have the best relationship with them due to their poor choices and never really saw eye to eye with each other. You've had enough of it and you go on a rampage destroying stuff in your room. Satan catches you during your rampage. You decide on what family member MC is talking about.
SatanXmc
You're sitting on the bed in your room, talking with your family member that's in the human world, trying to keep in some contact with them. You thought moving away when you were of age would fix the relationship with them, but of course, it didn't. Your family member is on the phone talking their usual bullshit, lying, putting words in your mouth, guilt tripping, and talking shit about your loved ones.
" You know what?! FUCK YOU!" You shout in to your phone as you hang up. You scream on top of your lungs in anger and throw your phone across the room. As you're scream-crying, you stand up from your bed and go to your dresser. With one clean sweep of the arm you knock over everything that was on it's surface. In a fit of rage, you start punching your closet door, cursing at your family member about how tired you are of their behavior.
Satan just so happened to be walking to your door at the time you screamed and hung up the phone with your family member. He knew you had an exam coming up, so he picked out some books for you and went to bring them to your room. After hearing the commotion, he didn't bother knocking and took it upon himself to open the door.
As he steps in, you're in the middle of throwing your belongings across the room, crying as you scream in frustration. " I can't stand being related to you! Don't fucking bother with me anymore!" You shout, moving to the wall as you smash the picture frames over your knee.
Satan can recognize a fit of wrath when he sees one. He clicks the door behind him and places the book on the table in your room. " MC, darling, I need you to stop." He keeps a calm demeanor. He knows that when he has his episodes, he prefers the person nearby to stay calm.
" I just want a normal fucking family!" You cry, throwing one of your chairs across the room. " I cant fucking take it anymore!" you scream, heading over to your dresser as you throw the individual drawers on the floor, completely trashing your room. Your thoughts swirl frantically as your heart pounds through your chest. You feel pressure building in your fists as the pit of anger grows in your stomach.
Satan starts creeping towards you, one hand stretched in your direction. " Take my hand, darling. Let's talk this out." Satan tries his best to keep a calm voice, but his heart racing. The last thing he wants is for you to hurt yourself. His heart is shattering seeing you like this. He doesn't ever want you to feel the feelings he does. Looking at you currently is reminding him of the bitter reality of his sin, and he can't help but want to weep for you. With glassy eyes, he continues to tread lightly towards your direction.
Ignoring Satan's attempts, you move across the room to your mirror. Your reflection shows an emotionally tired human with tear stained cheeks. You cock your arm back and punch the mirror, causing glass to shatter in to a million pieces. Your knuckles begin to bleed as you continue hitting the mirror.
" MC!!" Satan shouts. In a blink of an eye, he sprints towards you causing the coat draped around his shoulder to fall on the floor. He wraps his arms around you and pulls you close, preventing you from further harming yourself. You thrash around in his arms, screeching blood curdling screams at the top of your lungs. " Let me go! Let me go!" You demand , blind with emotion.
Beel hears your screams from the kitchen and bursts through your door. While holding you, Satan shoots his glare to Beel. His eyes glow an angry green flame, not wanting anyone to see you in a distressed state. "Get out" Satan demands. With wide eyes, Beel shuts the door. Though nervous, Beel knows you have a close bond with Satan. He would never even dream of hurting you in a fit of rage. Satan brings his attention back to you, pressing your head to his chest. "shhhhhh...shhhhh..." he shushes in attempts to soothe you. He runs his slender fingers through your hair, making you relax with every stroke.
You cry in his chest " I cant stand them! They talk to me like absolute garbage!" you sob into his chest, gripping the shirt on his back. Satan has you sit on his lap on the floor, glass scattered around you two. Despite the trashed environment, you feel safe in his arms. You smoosh your face into his neck as you cry, placing your hand on his chest. You feel his heartbeat gently thump against your palm which soothes you. You whimper, " It's like they can never be w-wrong. They make me feel like a fucking idiot."
Satan takes his thumb and pointer finger and gently grabs your chin. He makes you face him and with his other hand, he brushes a stray piece of hair away from your face. " My darling, you are far from idiocracy." He presses a delicate kiss against your forehead and looks you in the eyes. His gaze is soft and understanding. He whispers, " I'm deeply sorry for the troubles your family bestows upon you. I am always here for you, my love. Dont believe a single word they tell you. You are smart, wanted, and the most breathtaking being I've ever laid eyes on." He pets your cheek with the back of his fingers. "If you ever feel you need comfort, a shoulder to cry on, or need an ear to listen, I am always here for you. I will forever be here for you, my darling." He gifts you a soft kiss on the lips and holds you in his arms until you're calm enough to stand.
Satan tends to your wounded hand in the bathroom, peppering soft kisses against your bandaged knuckles. He cleans up your destroyed room as he lets you rest on your bed. He spends the rest of the night glued to your side, keeping a watchful eye on you. He brings a few books to your room to read to you as you sleep, ending the night with you sleeping in his arms.
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time for more long-winded bg3 playthrough thoughts! this time with some musings on my tav elenion's backstory/characterization and his irrationally intense hatred of volo. i'm sure this really only matters to me, but: if something i say about elenion's backstory or personality in this post contradicts what i said in the first post where i talked about them, then whatever i'm saying now is what's correct. i didn't have very many fully formed ideas about them when i first started the game so i've been thinking a lot about them and deciding things as i've been going along.
i got spoiled on a lot of stuff about the companions but i know fuck all about the actual plot of this game outside that--like, before i started i honestly didn't even know the most basic plot element of your party coming together because you all have literal brainworms. so this stuff about true souls and cultists is wild to me.
halsin makes it sound like you have to go through either the underdark or the mountain pass, but i really wanna explore both and i've heard that it is possible to do so in one playthrough. if i can think of how to justify that from a roleplay perspective then i might do it.
oh yeah, i guess we have volo in our camp since we saved him from the goblins. elenion really does not like him! they generally try not to show it when they interact with him, but they were having too much trouble hiding it here:
like, the dude just claimed to be an expert on mind flayers because he knows that they have tentacles. sure, and i'm an expert on cats because i know they have whiskers. and after this he offered to give them eye surgery with an ice pick when there is no way he has the qualifications to do that. get out of here with that lmao. i like volo because i think he's funny, though.
but that's not the main reason elenion dislikes volo. it started when they first met him in the grove and were briefly willing to humor him about the goblin attack before they realized that not only would he actually put falsehoods into the story if he wasn't stopped, but that he was only pretending to understand the bear he was speaking with while drawing the poor thing killing tieflings. he's a liar who fancies himself a bard.
i mean, not that elenion thinks there's anything wrong with writing fiction--he himself enjoys folklore and legends--but he's more of a historian and he thinks it's wrong to mess with actual events and blur the lines between fact and fiction the way volo obviously does. it's also wrong to brag about accomplishments and expertise that you do not actually have, especially when you're trying to claim you can get rid of mind flayer parasites. so yeah, volo makes elenion irrationally angry and if he was a little less reserved or cared a little less about trying to seem calm and collected he'd be ranting to the companions about him after every interaction they have. there's a one-sided rivalry between them going on in his head.
the only good thing that volo could do for elenion would've been to sell them a lyre. but alas, this fool only has flutes and hand drums. what is he even in our camp for? 😔
(i still bought the flute and the hand drums just to try them out anyway. and if you play an instrument in camp while volo is around he starts whistling along, so i guess that's what he's good for!)
i do wonder what would happen if i took the eye surgery though. maybe the next character i make will go for it.
anyway, enough about elenion's hatred of volo! was not expecting gale to kneel down in front of them and had them put their hand over his heart the day after he told them his condition was too volatile for him to be with them. and then nobody acknowledges the absolutely insane connotations of doing that. okay.
and then he reveals a ton of other incredibly insane things! i've gotten shadowheart to give me a lot of info about her backstory as well. but unfortunately i already knew about a lot of both their stories because i let myself get spoiled lol. i thought i wouldn't get around to playing this game for months or even years (and would probably forget about most spoilers i'd heard by then) so i let my friend talk to me about whatever and didn't blacklist anything. i'm still enjoying actually seeing how everything plays out, though!
the fact that i waited as long as i did to go out and progress karlach's personal quest just makes the lie that "yesterday she butchered an entire family" hilarious to me, sorry. like she literally spent the entire day yesterday hanging out with the tiefling refugees from the grove. i know because i was there. also, i'm going to need to look up how this quest goes if you actually bring karlach along because i'm guessing you'd get pretty different dialogue... and i did not think of it until after i was already mid-battle, whoops.
WOW way to perfectly hit elenion with his worst insecurities. like, he has actual backstory reasons to really hate being called all 3 of these things 😭 and then she basically reads him like a book despite him trying so hard to hide all that. this is why he doesn't like her.
it uh, worked out though, i guess! she explained that she was wrong about him and i was so tempted to pick the option to call her a prickly grouch (not because i dislike lae'zel or even because i think my tav would say that out loud, but because it's hilarious). but i did not pick that. instead i had him ask if she was coming onto him and honestly i'm kind of shocked that she is?! i really did not think my approval with her was very high and also... he kind of already turned her down at the tiefling party?? and she said both here and at the tiefling party that she wanted to taste him and that rejecting her was his loss?? seems kind of redundant to get such similar dialogue twice tbh but i guess maybe the game is giving you another chance to be really sure you don't wanna romance lae'zel.
okay, because of this i checked my approval with everyone and somehow it's literally still only on medium with shadowheart but high with lae'zel. that feels backwards to me based on our previous interactions and the types of actions they each approve of so i'm genuinely not sure how that happened? oh well lol.
...well. we've just come across a burning inn with a man shouting for help from the inside! and now i can only imagine elenion freezing up and not knowing wtf to do because, i guess now is as good a time as any to mention what is a significant part of the backstory i imagined for them: their father died when he was performing in a crowded tavern that suddenly caught on fire and elenion tried to use their magic to save him, but they were unable to and now they always blame themself for not acting fast enough, or not being courageous enough or clever enough. so. hm. i guess after the initial shock wears off they're going to be powered by impulse and adrenaline to rush in and try to do something here. i think it's pretty common in general for them to make impulsive decisions in dangerous situations because they don't want a repeat of what happened with their father.
hey what the fuck 😭 why is "pretend the beam is too heavy to lift" an option for bards?!
is it supposed to be like. you're too lazy to do this yourself and you wanna make someone stronger lift the beam for you? or does the man die if you pick that? i might have to go back and check that later just because it's bard-specific.
i picked the investigation option and was so worried about failing the check lol but luckily we succeeded and also saved the counsellor woman, resulting in us getting to learn more about wyll! he's someone whose story i haven't been spoiled on much, so right now he's saying his father made him an exile, and that his pact forbids him to explain why, and i really have no idea what's going on with any of that. i'm so curious about him.
i don't think i like how the saving mayrina quest plays out... i won't go on too much about it but unless i missed something, my only options to complete the quest were to use a wand from ethel's workshop to resurrect her husband, which seems extremely stupid considering everything we just saw that made it way beyond obvious that messing with magic from a hag is going to be a bad idea--or to snap the wand in half right in front of her, which seems pointlessly cruel. i even used speak with dead on ethel's corpse to find out that she was actually going to eat the baby and i have no option to tell mayrina about that, or to just end the quest by comforting her without telling her about the wand. so idk. maybe choosing to bring her husband back will lead to something cool later on.
AND THEN IMMEDIATELY AFTER MAYRINA LEFT I HEARD MY TAV SAY "PERHAPS USING ETHEL'S WAND WASN'T THE BEST IDEA". ALSFDSFJG. NO SHIT. sorry lmao, but i did think that was a really cool and interesting quest for the most part.
anyway--i'm going to go to the mountain pass, even though i've heard people say that's the harder path, because it just makes more sense from a roleplay perspective to me? like i've currently been rejecting nearly every lead on a cure because all of these offers of help are coming from absolutely insane people like volo and auntie ethel and priestess gut. but the githyanki actually know shit about mindflayers and lae'zel seems trustworthy. and if i want to go through it and then double back to the underdark i can say that we were planning to check out the creche based on lae'zel's advice before going and doing what halsin said to do. or if the mountain pass is really too hard i can just ignore the roleplay in this one situation because it's not a real d&d campaign lol.
#nobody cares about these posts except me but i am making them for me anyway#and leaving out a lot of stuff because this game is so huge it's impossible to comment on everything#but i want to have some of my thoughts on my first playthrough documented somewhere!#baldur's gate 3#star plays bg3
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Silent Reading chapter 72 I'm absolutely screaming. 1. Fei du backstory finally! 2. Luo wenzhou saying just ASK me directly dude! I'll answer okay, you don't need to play games! 2. Fei du shocked, "did you think I asked you out... to get answers?" Baby YEAH WHO WOULDNT AT LEAST A LIL BIT. 3. FEI DUS FLIRTY ASS SMILING WHILE ASKING "ARE YOU AFRAID OF ME" (and for the record if you want a real answer, ask if he thinks you'd kill someone and what he'd do - both you know yall both dancing around THAT actual fear). 4. Luo wenzhou NOT RESPONDING lmao. To be fair fei du just put some emotional fears out (are those UR fears fei du babe?) Which just made it sound like fei du absolutely plans to play with Luo wenzhou and break his heart since he Said that shit with a smile. And then Luo wenzhou deftly handling it cause fei du is HIS hot mess so he's just like "nope I'm not responding to this shit" and fei dus like "I'll lay you out so hard you won't be able to leave the bed" and Luo wenzhou save his poor soul just drags fei du out of the car, his mind trying to cope with the fact sexy bitch fei du just really Said "afraid I might break u emotionally and fuck you Too Good" OH MY GOD
QUOTE:
Fei Du paused, then, meaning something by it or not, continued the subject. “It may have been my mistake, but I thought the old fellow was testing my ideas.”
Luo Wenzhou’s expression didn’t change. His eyes calmly turned, passing through the sheltering sunglasses to peek at Fei Du. “What ideas?”
“I don’t know. It sounded like…maybe he thought I was going to pay an assassin to butcher Su Luozhan and that crowd of pedophiles on behalf of the victims’ families.” Fei Du shrugged. “What, does it seem like my sense of justice is that strong?”
For a while, Luo Wenzhou didn’t answer. He changed his previously indolent posture, sitting up and crossing his legs, his body language clearly becoming more business-like.
“He also crossed off some old case files I’d requested for review,” said Fei Du. “I think I more or less understand. By coincidence, those cases all have some flaw. Some failed for lack of evidence, and in some the suspect submitted a diagnosis of mental disorder to show…”
“Fei Du,” said Luo Wenzhou, laughing, “was Chief Lu testing you, or are you try to get something out of me?”
At the sparsely trafficked intersection, the stoplight changed from yellow to red, and Fei Du slowly stopped the car.
“I do actually understand something of this. My shifu got drunk once and let it slip.” Luo Wenzhou was silent for a while, then said, “If I’m not mistaken, all the cases Director Lu crossed off must have been those transferred over during the original Picture Album Project?”
Fei Du hadn’t expected him to be so cooperative. He couldn’t resist giving him a look.
“Aside from the one who said he had a mental disorder, the others were all unresolved cases. At the time, the person leading the Picture Album Project combed through those cases from a different point of view, hoping to be able to find a breakthrough.”
Fei Du listened quietly.
“They were limited by the level of technology and by the passage of time. A lot of the evidence had vanished, and psychological profiling wasn’t suitable to supply evidence in court, whether from the point of view of maturity or from the point of view of credibility. In the end, these unresolved cases could only serve as research material; there was no way to bring the suspects to justice. The elders and experts involved in the Picture Album Project were stymied. Afterwards, one after another, the suspects in those cases met with misfortune.”
“What kind of misfortune?”
“Some had unusual accidents, some disappeared, and one committed suicide, leaving a note confessing to the crime. One by one, the names on their desks faded away. It was too much of a coincidence. If it wasn’t the heavens suddenly opening their eyes and bringing down retribution, then it could only be one circumstance—murder. The killer was highly intelligent and understood the victims even better than they understood themselves; furthermore, he was familiar with the police’s methods for working cases. 100%, it was one of our own people. The Picture Album Project was therefore called to an immediate halt, and everyone involved was suspended and investigated.”
At this point, Fei Du understood why, when Tao Ran had asked about the Picture Album Project at the table, Luo Wenzhou had avoided answering. The people involved in this case must all have been the cream of their profession or experts in related academic fields. If they hadn’t yet retired, by now they had probably become respected and prestigious elders and administrators.
“And after that?”
“After that, the investigation team fixed on a suspect,” said Luo Wenzhou. “I’m not too clear on the details, but there was no evidence to charge him with. This person was the key figure in the Picture Album Project. Many of my elders who participated in the project had been his students.”
Fei Du immediately asked, “Who was he?”
Luo Wenzhou shook his head. “I’m not sure. The Venerable Yang didn’t tell me. I tried investigating afterwards, and his file had been sealed. Though from what my shifu said, I think he’s dead.”
“You’re not sure,” Fei Du said quietly. “Meaning you investigated.”
Luo Wenzhou neither acknowledged it nor shook his head. “I’ve already said this much. It’s your turn to put your cards on the table.—Why did you get into Yan Security Uni? Why did you scheme so hard to be involved in the renewal of the Picture Album Project? Don’t tell me you had nothing better to do and were simply curious.”
Fei Du was silent.
The two of them sat side by side in the narrow front of the car, the distance of only a few fists separating them, but there seemed to be a thick, ice-cold wall between them.
Fei Du’s gaze flickered slightly. Luo Wenzhou seemed to hear the sound of one sluice gate after another opening in his mind as their master coolly weighed which security doors he needed to open, how much he needed to reveal, to obtain what he wanted.
When the car’s GPS showed that they were almost at their destination, Luo Wenzhou finally managed to pry a few words out of Fei Du’s mouth.
“You know I always suspected that my dad had something to do with my mom’s death,” said Fei Du. “Even though you eliminated him from suspicion, I still had that feeling. I couldn’t get rid of it. Theoretically, intuition is connected to a person’s subconscious, and I wanted to know where my deep-rooted suspicion came from, so I tried to think of a way to trace back to when I was little.
“I remember my house had a basement that only my dad had the key to and even my mom couldn’t go in, like Bluebeard’s locked room. I plotted in secret for half a year to get the key and the code, then slipped inside…”
Luo Wenzhou acutely felt his voice stop at some complication.
“…I saw an open folder on his desk, and inside…uh…” At this point, Fei Du seemed to choke on air; he began to cough. He looked outside, closed the car window, and continued somewhat hoarsely, saying, “I’m sorry, I choked.—Inside was a paper. I gave it a rough look. I was little then, I only just knew how to read. I only vaguely remember terms like ‘vicious case’ and ‘psychological trauma.’ The name on the paper was ‘Fan Siyuan.’ I investigated him later, but found that he was a mystery. Aside from his teaching at Yan Security Uni, there were no other leads.”
Luo Wenzhou didn’t reply. He could tell at once that Fei Du was talking nonsense—he’d seen all kinds of papers on his parents’ desks when he was little, and aside from the time he’d gotten hit when he’d torn up his dad’s meeting notes and folded them into an airplane, he couldn’t remember a single punctuation mark of any of them.
“Why would a businessman have that in his secret study? Don’t you think it’s strange?” Fei Du drove the police car into Heng’ai Private Hospital’s parking lot. “After I broke in, my dad stopped using the place and moved everything in it, not leaving anything behind. In all these years I still haven’t found where he put those things.—That mysterious paper is my last memory.”
“Oh,” Luo Wenzhou replied flatly. When the car had come to a stop, he unfastened his seatbelt. It was unclear whether he’d accepted Fei Du’s part true, part false explanation. “If you want to ask about something after this, you can just ask me straight out. I like to say things clearly. If I can tell you, I’ll answer right away. You don’t need to peddle sex appeal. If I can’t say, then even if my brain cells are missing half their chromosomes, I still won’t say a word. You don’t need to use such roundabout tactics against me.”
After a pause, Fei Du finally realized what he meant. “Wait, you think I asked you out because of this?”
Luo Wenzhou ignored him and went to open the door. Fei Du grabbed his shoulder.
“Shixiong.” Not only was Fei Du not angry, he was smiling. “I’ve wanted to ask for a long time, are you a little afraid of me?”
Luo Wenzhou nearly raised his eyebrows past the frames of his sunglasses. “Afraid of you? Why would I be afraid of you?”
“Afraid I’ll squander your emotions, afraid I’m not in earnest, afraid you won’t be able to control yourself with me and won’t be able to end things…” One word at a time, Fei Du said, “Which of my guesses is right?”
Luo Wenzhou’s expression sank. He lifted a hand to shake him off. “You’re overthinking…”
Fei Du said, “Or afraid I’ll make it so you can’t get out of bed?”
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
Never in his life had he seen someone who dared to boast so shamelessly. It really was an enriching experience.
Luo Wenzhou was speechless. He simply shut his mouth and pulled Fei Du out of the car.
#silent reading#lb#if pnly there were More queer murder mysteries with frenemies this deeply emltjonally tied up to Feed me like this ToT#ALSO luo wenxhou thinking fei du would be serious then his expression sinking whrm fei du turned the are you afraid into an emotional#deflection. AND FEI DU TRYING TO TURN SHIXIONG INTO A WORD AS DIRTY AS DADDY DHDHFJJF#fei du again you are conditioning yall to have SUCH specific goddamn kinks down the road
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Kiyoomi receives an unexpected bouquet of sunflowers on his graduation day. It's handed to him by one of the organizers of the event without saying who it's from.
Kiyoomi is confused. Maybe he just got confused for someone else. His anxiety spikes at the thought of some poor soul seeing him holding a bouquet that's supposedly theirs.
There's no note on the flowers nor was there any clue to who the sender might be. He expresses his worries to his cousin Komori who only laughs. "Why is it that your first assumption is that they made a mistake?
Haven't you thought that it might come from a secret admirer?"
Kiyoomi frowns. "Don't be ridiculous. I don't have a secret admirer. I'm me."
Komori merely rolls his eyes at that.
After the ceremony, friends and classmates begin pulling him around for pictures. It's a tiring affair.
And he wouldn't have put up with it if it weren't for Komori's insistence. He's not particularly close to his classmates so he doesn't get their desire to take pictures with him as if they've always been buddies from the start.
Maybe it's just the adrenaline of the event.
He knows graduating college is a big deal. They've all worked so hard to get to this point and there really is a chance they won't see each other in the future anymore.
But Kiyoomi isn't sentimental to those he doesn't feel attached to.
People keep asking him where his bouquet came from which only fuels his irritation.
He doesn't know. And fuck does he hate not knowing.
He's asked Komori plenty of times if this was some sort of prank on him but Komori says he has no idea and is curious himself.
He really feels like he just stole someone else's bouquet and he's starting to panic.
When finally the round of picture taking ends, Kiyoomi rushes out of the venue to see a familiar mop blonde hair waiting outside.
"Miya?" He calls out.
Atsumu turns around and smiles when he sees Kiyoomi, bright and brilliant. His eyes are shining like rays of sunlights. Atsumu reminds him of sunflowers. Like the bouquet in his hands. If anyone deserved a bouquet, it was definitely Atsumu. Not prickly, grumpy Kiyoomi.
There must have been some kind of mistake, truly.
"Hiya, Omi-kun," Atsumu greets.
"What are you doing here?" Kiyoomi asks. He wants to act annoyed but the tug on his lips give away his true feelings about Atsumu's presence.
He's happy that Atsumu is here.
Of course he is. He's been pining for YEARS. He's going to try out for the team he's in despite it being several miles away from home.
He's really got it bad.
"Congratulations on yer graduation," Atsumu says, ignoring Kiyoomi's question. Then his eyes fall on the bouquet of flowers and smirks. "Nice bouquet ya got there. Who's it from?"
Kiyoomi stalks closer to Atsumu, leaning down to whisper dramatically into his ear. "I actually don't know. I think the organizers made a mistake and gave it to the wrong person. I'm scared someone will come to me and say how dare I take their flowers."
At that, Atsumu bursts out laughing, doubling over and hitting his knees.
Kiyoomi glares at him. He doesn't appreciate being laughed at when he's being serious.
Atsumu wipes a tear from his eyes. 'Ya crack me up, Omi-kun."
"Why are you laughing? I don't want to be accused of stealing someone else's flowers."
Atsumu lets out a few more chuckles but ultimately stops himself to give Kiyoomi a reassuring smile. "Ya don't hafta worry about that, Omi-kun. The flowers are yers. So enjoy them."
He gives Atsumu a suspicious look. "How would you know?"
Atsumu's cheeks show the faintest of blush as he scratches the back of his neck. He smiles sheepishly at Kiyoomi. "Ah, well. That's because they're from me."
Kiyoomi's eyes widen in shock. "What?"
"Just a lil gift for yer graduation day." Atsumu smiles softly, looking everywhere but Kiyoomi. "Do ya like it?"
Kiyoomi looks down at the bouquet in his hands with newfound fondness. His heart warms and his smile grows bigger by the second. "I love it. Thank you. But why sunflowers?"
"I don't know what yer favorite flower is," Atsumu admits. "Sunflowers are my favorite. And yer my favorite person. So I thought it fits..."
Kiyoomi's eyes soften. He steps closer to Atsumu, a bouquet's width away. He looks into hazel eyes and thought of bright yellow petals. "You're my favorite person too, Atsu."
Atsumu finally meets Kiyoomi's eyes, a small smile on his face. "Really?"
Kiyoomi nods. "You're my sunflower."
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The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself Rewatch: Episode 6
Spoilers probably:
So Gabriel has been avoiding talking to Nathan…oh right. This is one of my favorite scenes! Nathan tries to talk to Gabriel and Gabriel’s so tight and angry, and then all of a sudden yelling. “I thought you were going to die!” And then he repeats it. Softer, more vulnerable. Like he just doesn’t know what to do with that.
I just love when people don’t have “appropriate” responses to things. Like, he almost died and you’re going to yell at him about it? But it feels very real. People are messy.
Everything Jessica does is so fucked up. Poor Max and Odette. (Side note: I guess Jessica must speak French? I didn’t catch it the first time but she’s only pretending to be Max’s grandfather and she speaks to him in French. Unless the shapeshifting somehow gives her that ability? Seems unlikely.)
And Gabriel has to help Odette die. Which…seems like something he’s done before? I wonder when. How many times?
They give her a flower crown, they put a flower in her hands…I’m gonna cry.
Crying for Ceelia too. That little girl hiding from the wolf. Man, I don’t even like her. I mean she’s a good and interesting character but I can’t really get past the way she treats Nathan in the beginning. It’s clearly abusive, it crosses a line for me, I can’t really like her after knowing she did those things to a helpless kid.
I really love this part where Annalise takes the poison out of Nathan’s body, too. She’s so scared of hurting him. She thinks her power’s all about destruction but it isn’t. It can be used for good. (See also her taking the gun apart.)
And then all three of them clutch each other’s hands...
Nathan thinking it’s his fault the council killed his mom...oh, Nathan. Ceelia does get a great moment here. She’s almost crying at first, she quickly pushes him on from talking about Wolfhagen, she still can’t stand to think about it. And then she’s just so done with Soul and the Fairborns. And Nathan asks her what to do and she asks him that horrible old list of questions but now something’s changed. Because he’s a blood witch and she’s accepted it. And she’s going to help him. Love it.
I feel bad for Kieran, knowing what’s coming. He tries to stand up for what’s right (standing with Bjorn in relieving Soul of command), but then he loses his nerve. This kid is such a tragedy.
Nathan asks Gabriel if he’ll help him die peacefully if he doesn’t get his blood and Gabriel just nods…and then Nathan has to make it a joke, lighten the mood.
God I love this scene. “So how I do I go about getting my name in your dumb book?” “They’re names of people who are important to me.” “What, I ain’t important?” Gabriel gives him the pencil, wordless. “There, now you won’t forget me.” “I wouldn’t”. The long look he gives him. He knows more than Nathan how hard it could be to keep that promise.
And then, “I need a drink.” Lol. Because things got too serious there for a sec.
How much of the heart do heart-eaters have to eat to get the person’s powers? When I first watched I kind of assumed it was just a bite or two because that’s all they really showed. But in fics I’ve seen Nathan have to eat the whole thing. What is the truth???
Oh yeah, and then Gabriel and Annalise dancing on the boat. In the rain. :) Making Nathan laugh. Beautiful little moment.
This show is so fucking good. I will cry if it doesn’t get a second season.
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Just here to show my love for LRHWY Chapter 4 because I woke up and smiled so hard when I saw the update in my inbox 🥰
Ok so here we go:
He wanted Alec to have proof of all the love he had for him. In case Alec didn’t come back.
Yeah I had to put my tablet down and do some breathing exercises because the fact that Magnus even had to think these thoughts broke my poor little heart 😭
It looks exactly the same.” He said tentatively across the room. Magnus’s eyes softened. “Yeah. And it feels complete now.”
I AM SO SOFT FOR THIS. I just think about how many months Magnus has tossed and turned because he didn’t have his cuddle buddy/love of his entire life next to him. How many times he got ready for events and pretended Alec was there by his side. How many mornings he woke up and rolled over to and empty bed. I am sad now.
“Magnus. Hi. Hi, baby.”
Do I even need to continue? You know how I feel about this #weak
“I need you to take me apart piece by piece. And then I need you to put me back together.”
This intimacy of this is outstanding because Magnus Bane does not let people see him bare, raw, completely vulnerable. No one except Alec Lightwood who he will allow into his most vulnerable spaces with complete trust that he will never take advantage of him. Goodbye.
Magnus checking Alec for injuries
The way Magnus said ‘ok sex is over now’. LOL. The man had a mission and he was not to be stopped!!
Alec adjusting his post war routine to accomodate Magnus worrying.
Why is this man just so…ahhhhh. I could only imagine how stressful it is for him to go from a heightened state to being able to completely relax and surrender to his calm. The fact that he’s always thinking about Magnus within all that just shows how much of a beautiful soul he is. I am 1 Alec forever stan.
The reason for Magnus eating takeout all the time.
Fuck this one was so sad? Magnus’ tragic back story always gets to me because the boy deserves so much love that he never received from young. I’m so happy he has Alec to hold him, love him, console him and remind him that there’s nothing wrong with his behaviours, that as long as he is open to healing, he will always be with him.
Magnus feeling secondary to Alec’s duty.
How do you even comprehend this? Like it’s not something either of them can really even change (without Alec leaving the Navy). The fact that we know that they are so in love and then break up too makes this so much sadder 🥲 Some circumstances are just shit and we just have to deal with the harshness of them, even if we don’t want to. Having something good doesn’t mean it isn’t free of consequences and challenges. I hope he knows Alec always sees him as first in his heart,
The way he could easily quieten the world around Magnus.
I fucking love this. It makes me desire a solid person in my life like this so bad. Just that person who’s presence alone can bring calm to your nerves and make you feel like everything is right in the world? Ah, fuck, Malec. Why you do this to me?
Anyway the chapter was fucking amazing as expected. I am not ready for Alec angst next chapter but I am so excited for his POV. The tears will fall, I am not ready but I’m so ready. I hope you are doing okay and staying hydrated/looking after yourself 🌸
hi babes!! I’m doing okay.
My favorite types of comments are where readers highlight their fav parts from the story. It feels so rewarding. And also makes me go all “wait I wrote this shit shsjshsj”
I’m very soft for these bitches too. I think it’s v common amongst military spouses (or any other relationship where one person’s job is considered more imp) to feel secondary to their spouses duty. And Magnus is going to feel this throughout because it’s inevitable. But Alec is obv a bigger simp and makes it worth it.
I can’t wait for you to read the next chapter. It’s not going to be an easy chapter to write (I think). So it’s not going to be easy to read either. Get ready for emotional damage byeeeee
Thank you. And take care of yourself too 🌻
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hurt to comfort: mikey, mitsuya, chifuyu, rindou and sanzu forgetting he asked you out on a date? you were left waiting for him but he didnt come. they only realized when they checked their phone and saw your messages and calls
Hello to you too, honey. I love this idea, hurts my soul a little.
Title: He forgot about your date
Request: yes
Couple: Mikey x reader, Mitsuya x reader, Chifuyu x reader, Rindou x reader, Sanzu x reader
Category: comfort
Content Warning: none
Word Count: 1.427
A/n: sorry, too depressed to do it bigger
MASTERLIST ....... RULES ....... SERIES LIST
Mikey
You and Mikey were supposed to meet at the shrine to watch the first snow together, since there's a belief that if you watch the first snow with the person you like true love will blossom in your hearts. Mikey loved the ideia, so you don't understand why he isn't there yet.
You sitted and waited. You are the only one there. You are the only fool to go out on a cold day like this. Your hands are shivering, but you stayed there anyway. Maybe Mikey was just a little late. You lost all hope when you saw the first snowflake.
"Y/n? What are you doing here?" It's Mitsuya. He's carrying a bag with carrots.
"I am... I was waiting for Mikey. We were supposed to met at the shrine" you try to explain without looking sad.
"It's not good to stay outside in this weather" he gives you a smile. Inside he's screaming at Mikey "come on, I can give you a ride home".
"Thanks" again you try to smile, but there's no use. You end up crying on his back.
Menwhile your beloved boyfriend was taking a big nap. When Mitsuya called Draken was ready to scold his friend. He started kicking Mikey out of the bed with all the violence he could.
"What's that about, Kenchin?" Mikey whines still on the floor.
"The fuck you are doing here, Mikey? Mitsuya saw Y/n waiting for you at the shrine".
"Why?"
"Something about the snow. You are the one who need to know, you are Y/n's boyfriend" Draken looks really angry. That's right, most Toman captains see you as a poor soul tricked by Mikey's cute behavior.
"It's not snowing yet" Mikey growls standing up.
"Then what's that, dipshit?" Draken makes him look through the window.
"Shit. It was sunny when I went to sleep" Mikey doesn't really care if it was sunny before or not. He need to go find you.
His hair is a mess, his face still wrinkled and he's not wearing any shoes. Mikey speeds his bike to your house and hugs you tight as soon as he enters your bedroom by the window. You were angry and sad, but Mikey will be very still in your arms untill you make him let go of you. But you won't do it. Mikey is shivering from the cold.
"I'm sorry" he whisper with his head on your neck. You can feel how cold he is.
"Mikey, what are you thinking? You will be sick!" you pull him to bed with you wrapping both of you on your blankets.
"Thinking about you" he snuggles on your chest "I'm sorry Y/n. I will be a better boyfriend for you".
Mitsuya
Mitsuya is a busy boy. School, club activies, his sisters, Toman and his designs. That's why he wanted to take you on a date: to compensate all those days he couldn't give you proper attention.
But he didn't show up.
You left him some messages before leaving the place you were supposed to meet. Hours later he's calling you. You don't know if you want to pick up. You are so fucking mad. How he could do that to you?
"Y/n, please, hear me out I got carried away by the design I was making and-" you can feel the regret on his voice, but you are still angry. You don't have much time together, yet when you finally do he isn't there. You hang up.
But he called again.
"Y/n, Y/n" it's Luna and Mana. They are taking turns to talk with you. "My brother is sad. Do you hate him?"
"I don't. But tell him it's a low trick making you two talk to me".
"We tell him, but later. Now he's taking a bath. Oh, now he's putting on some smelly thing. It's too strong, don't like it" you hear some noise, screams and giggles "bye bye Y/n, my brother is mad now".
You realize Mitsuya dindn't made his sisters call you, they did it on their own. You also know he's coming to your place to apologize properly.
Chifuyu
Chifuyu was so happy to go on a date with you. You were dating for almost three months now and he still is thrilled about being with you. Knowing you still want to go on a romantic date with him makes his heart so warm. It's just like his shoujo mangas.
"Hey Peke J, do you think Y/n and I will get married someday? Yeah, I agree" he smiles at his cat and they start playing together.
But time runs and soon is too late. Chifuyu only realizes it when he sees your unanswered messages.
"Peke J, I fucked up" Chifuyu whines standing up to leave his home, but he finds you at the door "Y/n?"
"Where were you?" your face is red and you look tired.
"Y/n, do you ran here?" Chifuyu pulls you for a hug "I'm so sorry!".
"Fuyu".
"I don't want to break up, but I did so bad I will understand if you want to".
"Chifuyu!".
" I will never do that again, but if don't want to look at me anymore that's sad but okay too".
"Matsuno Chifuyu! Listen to me!" you hold his head with both your hands "I am angry, but I don't want to break up either!".
Rindou
Rindou was ready for your date, but he got carried away beating someone up. More people arrived, so he kept fighting. When Ran saw his brother's blood stained clothes he mocked.
"Y/n will be mad if you show up like that" Ran laughs and Rindou shivers. He forgot about your date.
Rin doesn't know if he goes home to change his clothes or if he goes to you. Well, you are more important than his clothes. He speeds up to your place, but you weren't there. Are you lost? Did something happen? Are you okay? Alive?
"What are you doing here? Get out of my way and let me go inside" your voice is cold. He can feel how angry you are.
"I am looking for my date".
"Maybe your date is pissed with you. Bad boyfriend" you sigh trying to get in your house.
"Hey, don't be like that" Rindou holds you arm "I'm here now".
You know your boyfriend has a hard time apologizing, but this time you wanted to hear it. You were supposed to have a picnic on the park together. You made the food he likes and were so happy about it. But this is Rindou, he doesn't apologize. Never. He always tries to make up to you, but he never apologized before.
"I am sorry, Y/n" Rindou is being formal and bowing to you. Strange. He doesn't look at you trying to hide his red face, but there's no way you wouldn't see. Even his ears are red.
"I will forgive you today" you smile looking at his embarrassed face. You never saw him like this before. You can't just ignore him now.
Sanzu
Sanzu is a quiet guy. He doesn't like to share about what he does at work. He doesn't like crowded places, yet Haruchiyo will take you to the festival because he knows you like it. Well, at least he said he would.
"Haru, where are you? Did something happen? Are you okay?" your voice is concerned and Sanzu doesn't know why. He then remembers about the festival. You are worried about him and now his heart is filled with guilt.
"I'm fine, don't worry" Haruchiyo starts walking fast "I'm heading to the festival".
"Don't worry about it, Haru. You must be busy and the fireworks are done, so I'm going home now. See you" you hang up before he could answer.
And there's the guilt again. He wasn't busy. The worst part is Sanzu wasn't even high, he just forgot. Simple like that. Haruchiyo knows your sad voice, that's why he's going to the festival anyway. He truly hates all the people crowded there, but he needs to find you. Haru spots your head walking away from the festival. He knows it's you, he's pretty good on finding you anywhere. Even if it was dark he would find you.
Of coure Haruchiyo scared the shit out of you when he held you. You tried to get off his arms, but Sanzu is strong.
"Y/n" he starts and you melt hearing his voice so near your ear "forgive me, I'm late".
#tokyorev#tokyo revengers headcannons#tokyo rev x reader#tokyo revengers imagines#tokyo revengers#tokyo rev x you#tokyorev x reader#bee!writing#mikey imagines#mikey x you#mikey x y/n#mikey x reader#mitsuya x y/n#mitsuya x you#mitsuya x reader#mitsuya scenarios#mitsuya imagines#mikey scenarios#chifuyu x you#chifuyu x y/n#chifuyu x reader#chifuyu scenarios#chifuyu imagines#rindou x you#rindou x reader#rindou x y/n#rindou headcanons#rindou scenarios#sanzu x reader#sanzu x you
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Hey bestie!!! 👋
Can we please be blessed with a Wardlow Smut based on Chains by Nick Jonas?
Maybe MJF had mentioned how "whipped" he his by his girlfriend and he laughs "You have no idea."
a day before the contract signing events; bestie sent me this. im going off what we talked abt in dms and using the lyrics to the song as dialogue (not exactly a songfic) also double gif bc this is my page. this whole segment gonna keep yall wardhoes fed for a while, mama’s gotchu. i tried to do a soft!dom but that idea fell apart faster than a dollar store dinner tray. can we also talk bout the vein in his neck in the gif below? lordt
|remember to leave feedback and i love all you heathens|
‘Chains’ 18+
Wardlow (Michael) x fem!reader
^with their feud heating up, max decided to take assuming cheap shots at michael and reader’s sex life^
- CW: restraints (handcuffs), honorifics (sir) *ooh cheeky switch up*, dom/sub dynamics, hella subspace, mild slapping, degradation/praise, squirting, use of flogger (on body and coochie; taking things literal, aint we donna?), return of ‘puppy’, the fucking word for “good tears” (help me out what is it), sweet af aftercare
- shawn spears (ronnie), max being a cunt
- recycling the title of ‘the vixen’, this series isnt really timelined, just reusing things; also im takin matters into my own hands
- thanks to @unusual-tomorrxw for assistance
3rd Person POV:
Another week, more bullshit from Max. Him and Y/N were once close, some would call them best friends. This week, they had their bogus contract signing; just more nonsense to delay Michael beating the shit out of him. Y/N was in gorilla with her boyfriend and the poor guys stuck bringing him out. She had tried to convince them that if this had to happen, let her take him out. But no, Max had to have these poor souls do it. One of the jobbers said it was time to go so she kissed Michael and he was gone.
Max had been spewing the same stuff he’s been for the past few weeks and Y/N decided she’d go out there. Suddenly, ‘Roundtable Rival’ by Lindsey Stirling blared through the arena and The Vixen went out. Pink heel boots, plaid black skirt and one of her boyfriend’s merch shirt; ready to stand by him. She got up the steps at ringside and Ronnie tried to stop her, “Don’t even try it.” she spat. She walked past Max, making sure to bump his shoulder, and went over to Michael. She picked up the mic that was in front of him, “Don’t let me interrupt boys, you were saying?” she was passive aggressive in her words. Michael had tried to reach for her hand and of course Max had to comment, “Wardlow, you think those handcuffs are an obstruction for you but ah, I thought you’d be used to them by now. Considering how whipped you are for that little lady standing next to you.” “Max, you better shut up while you’re still living-” He knew he struck a nerve. “What? With those wine-stained lips, she’s nothing but trouble. Why not tell the great people of Long Island that you aren’t the sweet, wholesome couple you claim to be? That you two really like some rou-” She grabbed him by the collar, ready to clobber him. “Stop. Talking.” He had a shit-eating grin on his face. Max gripped her face, squishing her cheeks together “Who knew this sweet thing was such a whore-” In a second, Michael was on his feet but Y/N had put her arm out to stop him. “Looks like he really is a bitch for you.” Her fist connected with his jaw and she got him to the ground, putting him in a chinlock. He was slamming the canvas in a tap out as they were both screaming, “Who’s the bitch now Max?! Why you gotta do me wrong?” She was pulled off him and brought back to the locker room.
Once she was alone, she broke down. Embarrassed was an understatement. Her family watched the show and now she was worried they would view her and the man her parents called their son differently. She heard the door knob turning and quickly dried her tears. “Baby? Are you okay?” Michael’s soft voice tugged at her heart. “Yeah, I’m fine.” “No you’re not.” His hands cupped her cheeks. The two spent time talking about what had happened.
“Michael, can we go back to the hotel and you show me who’s really in charge?” she asked meekly, without looking up at him. His thumb tugged at her bottom lip gently, “You know how to ask for what you want.” he stated in a low tone. “Please Sir?” “Louder.” he growled. Her voice raised a bit with a hint of whining behind it, “Please Sir!” “Good girl. I’ll take care of you.”
~at the hotel~
He had her naked on the bed with her hand cuffed to it. He knew she was still in a state so he was easy with her until she gave the word to do more. She savored the gentle, soft, slow touches along her body. Down her cheeks, kneading her breasts, down her tummy and sides. His hands landed on the plush skin of her thighs. She had given him permission to use their mini flogger tonight, one hand left her thigh to pick it up from beside her. “Are you sure you want it tonight? Say the word and I’ll stop, baby.” “I want it Sir.”
He started on her thighs building up how hard he was whipping her, letting her warm up. When he started hitting harder, she bucked her hips up so he landed one hit to her glistening heat; earning a sweet, strangled moan. “You like that, don’t you puppy?” Her brain was already going numb from the use of the flogger alone. Once there were enough light red drags on her gorgeous skin, he stopped and ran his hands over the marks to sooth them. His fingers circled her slit as she whimpered. “You know, Max may think I’m the one who’s whipped. But here you are, cuffed to the bed for me to do whatever I please, letting me decorate your skin with this whip.” His voice is low and authoritative. “You’ve been getting involved in this little feud too often now. Maybe I should cuff you to the bed and leave you there until I get back from the shows. That way you’ll stay out of trouble.” The combination of his hand on her pussy and his filthy words were sending her into a deeper headspace; she didn’t even notice his lips attaching to her clit until she let out a cry. “C’mon, you can take it.” he mocked. Michael held her hips down, his grip enough to leave soft bruises. The lewd sounds of him sucking and licking at her dripping and aching cunt that had the familiar bubbling feeling make its approach. He knows this woman’s body inside and out, so he spoke up, “Cum.” The single word had that knot undone in seconds. Did he stop? No. Not when he was on a mission to rid her mind of the events that took place a few hours ago. When she tried to close her thighs around his head, he pulled away and grabbed the flogger again. He landed a few more blows to her pussy and her thighs until he noticed tears. “Color?” “Green!” she said quickly. Though she said ‘green’, he ceased the whipping and put the toy down. Her hips jolted when he cupped her heat again. “You’re gonna cum for me again, then you’ll get my cock puppy. Got it?” She nodded. “Words.” “Yes, Sir.” Starting with two fingers, he pumped in and out of her cunt, fingertips dragging against her most sensitive spots within her. Another finger was added as his other hand groped at her breasts, tugging at her hardened nipples. Y/N shivered and came on his fingers. His movements only slowed as she rode out her high. When she was down, he pulled his hand away and sucked her juices off his fingers.
Ridding himself of his remaining clothes, he stared down at his lover. Soft, submissive, sweet Y/N; all his. When they first started exploring this aspect of their relationship, let’s just say noise complaints were common. That’s how Max knew what they were up to. Thin hotel room walls and nosy stable-mates. He watched as she desperately started grinding her hips against nothing. He rubbed his tip up and down her slit and slowly pushed in. Her tight cunt welcomed him in greedily, the deep groan he let out at the feeling of her squeezing around him. “You are doing so good for me. Always a good girl for me.” She tugged at the cuffs, feeling the need to claw at his shoulders and back or tug at his hair; just the need to touch him. “Sir~” His eyes met hers, “What puppy?” She struggled to form the words so she gave him one. “Harder.” The word left her lips and he immediately threw her legs over his shoulders, practically folding her in half, and thrusted into her harder and faster. She tried to get out of her restraints but he only laughed, “Trying to break the chains?” Her whimper was only adding fuel to the fire as he fucked into her harder.
After pulling two more orgasms from her body, she was completely dazed. Her brain couldn’t form a full thought so when she spoke, it was just babbles and incoherent mumbles. With her legs still on his broad shoulders, he saw the outline of his cock bulging in her tummy. He gripped her hair to make her look down, “See how deep I am babygirl?” The sight was sending her closer and closer to the edge. Y/N wanted to tell him she wanted to cum but the words wouldn’t come out, he slowed his pace slightly. His hand went up to gently smack her cheek to break her daze, “C’mon puppy. Be a good girl, use your words. Tell me what you want.” She struggled once more. “Aww, did I fuck all the manners out of you? Does my dumb little puppy want to cum?” She nodded as more tears fell. He got close to her ear and told her “I can feel you. Do it.” It felt different this time, “That’s it; make a fucking mess.” The idea that she was so fucked dumb that she squirted for the first time only made him pound into her faster, chasing his own release. She felt him throb inside of her and then felt him paint her walls white. Her eyes fluttered shut as she was so spent, letting out a weak “Sir~” He tapped her tear-stained cheeks lightly, “Hey, hey; it’s okay. Baby, it’s me; it’s Michael. No more Sir.” She whimpered as he pulled out of her and felt their cum spill out of her used hole. As soon as he undid the cuffs, her arms wrapped around him like a koala. “Can you let go of me for one moment so I can run you a bath?” he asked gently. Y/N let go and he gave her a sweet kiss before going to the bathroom.
When he came back, he scooped her up and she immediately clung onto him. Before he could put her in the tub, one word left her lips: “Join.” When she got to this state, her speech was limited. Michael set her in the tub and got in behind her, pulling her back against his chest. He trailed kisses from her neck to her shoulders as he rubbed her sides and her tummy; trying to bring her back to normal.
“You were so good for me, puppy.”
“I’m so proud of you.”
“You took everything so well, princess.”
“I love you so much.”
She listened to his voice and turned her head to face him. Still a little faded, but cohesive enough to form a sentence. “Maybe being ‘whipped’ isn’t so bad.” He smirked at her statement, “You have no idea, sweet girl. You got me in chains; but, I wouldn’t change this love.”
~~~~~~~
lovely taglist babes (dm or comment to be added)
@josiewrites @rubyred1980 @chrisdickinson @xkennyxomegax @night-of-the-living-shred @wwenhlimagines @ecarroll1978 @plentyoffandoms @auburnwrites @heavymetalgirl420
#donna writes#donna's wardlow handcuff chronicles#donna is in love with wardlow#aew#wardlow#michael wardlow#wardaddy#wardlow x reader#wardlow oneshot#wardlow fanfiction#wardlow imagine#wardlow smut#aew x reader#aew smut#aew fanfiction#nick jonas#chains
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love me or we both go down | kth
summary: after going through with an arranged marriage to please his parents and secure his inheritance of the family business, kim taehyung thinks he’s got it all figured out. he doesn’t. apparently just being married to you isn’t enough, not when everybody and their mother can pick up on the fact that the two of you absolutely loathe each other. but taehyung wants his inheritance one way or another, so he decides that desperate times call for desperate measures: the two of you need to fall in love, and you need to fall in love fast.
{enemies to lovers!au, arranged marriage!au, rich kids!au}
pairing: kim taehyung x female reader
genre: fluff, angst, smut (i know, crazy right?)
word count: 32k
warnings: oral sex (m & f receiving), fingering, penetrative sex, multiple unprotected sex scenes (they’re married y’all), fat cock tae, tae has a wife kink, lots of praise, alcohol consumption (but they’re safe), minor character death (not explicit), mentions of heart attack, slow burn like there is no tomorrow
a/n: hello and welcome to the fic everyone, literally everyone, has been waiting for! i am so, so, so excited to share this with you all, especially because none other than rose @kinktae helped me write the smut, and i am literally forever indebted to her. you all better go spam rose with all the love and support you can because this fic would not be here without her and i love her so much.
also, to all my readers who aren’t comfortable reading smut, please know that the smut in this fic is not imperative to the storyline, and you skipping past it will not affect your reading experience., enjoy!
Never in your life have wedding bells felt so ominous.
The sound of them is akin to the sound of strings, of a single piano note in a horror movie, right when the film opens and someone random is about to die on screen for the sake of proving to the audience that this is, in fact, a horror movie. Make no mistake about it; these wedding bells spell doom for you, too. And the most horrific part about them is that just like that poor, helpless soul in the movie, there is no way for you to escape your fate either.
With only seconds left to go before you have no choice but to promise yourself to the man waiting at the other end of the aisle, you desperately try to think of any last-ditch efforts to get out of this. Many, if not all of them, are utterly useless.
Feigning sudden illness won’t work, because then your parents will just reschedule the wedding to a later date. Running away is fruitless. Where will you go? The parking lot?
If only you had a lover out there in the audience somewhere that could object to the marriage when the officiant says, “Speak now, or forever hold your peace.” A knight in shining armor that could whisk you out of the venue and off to a new life, far away from here. Too bad all of the people you’ve dated before hate you now.
Maybe getting married isn’t such a bad thing after all. Instead of having relationships with multiple people who will eventually despise your existence, you only have to have a relationship with one. And the feeling, as has always been, is mutual.
You bristle as your assistants do some last-minute prepping, fixing your sleeve and adjusting your necklace and making sure you don’t trip on your enormous train. They flutter around you like a swarm of well-meaning but ignorant butterflies complicit in the agenda of your family. None of them have said a word to you about the wedding ever since you arrived at the venue, choosing to talk more about things like the weather. Not that you were ever under the impression they had been hired to entertain you. Maybe they were told to not engage you, just in case you try to conspire with them.
As if they could be of any use in your wildly unrealistic escape plans.
The truth is that, unless you were to drop dead on this marble flooring right now, you’re getting married. Whether you like it or not.
The doors open.
You’ve attended red carpets, galas, award shows, and balls. You’ve had hundreds of cameras flashing in your face, the bright light capturing each and every centimeter of you. You’ve had paparazzi waiting outside the restaurants you eat at, the stores you shop at, desperate to catch a picture of you in sweatpants without a drop of makeup on. You’ve been on dates with ex-lovers that looked at you like you were a piece of meat with a credit card. And yet, for some goddamn reason, walking down the aisle in a white dress the size of Pluto, with the rest of your life waiting for you at the other end, makes you feel fucking transparent.
Face resolute, you clutch onto your bouquet so tightly the flowers feel like they’re about to pop right out of your grasp. Determined not to look at anybody in the audience, you stare straight ahead, right into the eyes of your future husband.
Kim Taehyung, for someone you have seen multiple times drunk off his ass with hickies dotting his neck and jawline, cleans up pretty well. For someone getting married, at least. He dons a simple black tuxedo that still probably costs more than the average car, his caramel brown hair is pushed back off his forehead, and his expression is firm and still. He most certainly has had an equally expensive team prepping him, but they haven’t done too bad a job. The silver lining is that he doesn’t look any more thrilled than you are to be doing this, right here, right now. But to his credit, this is definitely the best he’s ever looked, as far as you’re concerned.
When you reach him, he offers his hand out to you, a hand that you only accept for the sake of professionalism. The bouquet in your hands is handed off to one of your bridesmaids, and the two of you take your position at the front. Your train drags along the aisle, draping over the few stairs you had to climb to reach the altar, this satin trail behind you that cements you to the floor. It may as well be a ball-and-chain. It’s about as heavy as one, anyway.
This is the longest you and Taehyung have ever held eye contact. Not that you’re really keeping track of how long the two of you have met each other’s gazes, but if you had to make an educated guess, this would definitely be the victor. Most of the time you end up sneering at each other ten seconds in, but to be fair, those other times you were also not getting married. To one another. In a ceremony attended by hundreds of people. And cameras.
There can be no sneering here.
“Don’t you look nice?” Taehyung whispers, loud enough so only the two of you can hear. He has that drawling, sickly sweet tone to his voice, the one that you hate because it makes him sound like he thinks he’s so much better than everyone else. “Surprised they were able to makeup that scowl off your face.”
This, of course, brings on a hearty scowl only he can see, your backs both facing the rows of attendees. “How much concealer are you wearing to cover up all of the hickies on your neck?” You quip back easily. It’s not like the two of you are going to pretend he doesn’t waltz around at every club or bar or private venue he can find, looking for his next treat.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Taehyung grins, and if you weren’t standing in front of hundreds of people about to get married, there’s no telling what next you would do.
The two of you would probably go on like that for another ten minutes if it’s not for the officiant, who coughs once he’s ready and opens the book in his hands. Next to you, Taehyung straightens, hands clasped together at his front, and lips pressed into a neat line. You do the same. There will be no giggles, no laughter nor smiles, nor any genuine emotion at this wedding. This is a wedding for the sake of politics, for economics, for security, and anyone in attendance would be a fool to think otherwise. Especially you.
“Ladies and gentlemen, family and friends, loved ones, and esteemed guests,” the officiant bellows, listing off as many groups of people as he possibly can in an effort to both include and compliment every person in the audience, “We are gathered here to celebrate the wedding, and future life, of Taehyung and Y/N…”
Taehyung turns to you, grinning in that god-awful way, the way he does when he feels like he’s got something over you. And sure, you can’t think of any punishment quite as bad as this, but what’s Taehyung got to smile about? He’s marrying himself off to a woman he hates, kissing goodbye his days as a free-spirited, heartbreaking bachelor, and promising what may very well be the rest of his life to loving you. That is not cause for celebration.
But perhaps, to him, your suffering is enough to bring a smile to his face.
Your vows are, to put it simply, total bullshit. Your family hired someone to write yours and there’s not a doubt in your mind that his family did the same thing. This nonsense talk, this complete and utter garbage that spews from your perfectly-glossed lips, shit about how you promise to love each other until the end of your days, how you promise to take care of each other when you’re sick and accompany each other at every event, every gala, every ball. Shit about how you promise to look only at each other, promise to uphold your family traditions and become a dependable spouse.
The words don’t belong to you. But the thing is that this marriage was never yours anyway.
When the kiss comes, there’s a part of you that thinks maybe you should have psyched yourself up a little more for this. When Taehyung pulls you in, placing a stiff hand on your lower back as he brings you towards his chest, your stomach turns and shivers run down your spine. The feeling of his hand on your body, the breath from his lips brushing against your own, are enough to keep you frozen in place.
He smiles at you, almost as if to ask, “Are you ready?”
And you squeeze your eyes shut, almost as if to respond, “Let’s do this.”
When his lips meet yours, there is almost nothing. Nothing runs through you, nothing explodes, nothing strikes. But when he pulls away and cheers and applause rings out throughout the room, there is something. A little heat, a remnant of a flame, left on your lips. A little sting, just to remind you it happened.
The entire hall is cheering but nothing about this is worth celebrating. The fact of the matter is that you and Taehyung will never love each other the way that you are supposed to.
“Ugh, finally.”
The elevator doors haven’t even properly opened by the time Taehyung is loosening his tie, tugging it off over his head as he stretches his head back and runs a hand through his perfectly-styled hair. As he rakes his fingers through his caramel locks, the hairspray and gel loosens, strands falling down by the side of his face, framing his temple.
“Don’t sound so relieved,” you huff out, deciding now is as good a time as any to start getting undressed yourself. Reaching down to lift up the hem of your reception dress, you tug off your heels, already feeling lighter on your feet. Who cares if Taehyung is watching you pull off your stilettos like a defeated movie heroine? You don’t think you can walk another step in those shoes. “We still have to live together, you know.”
“Don’t remind me,” Taehyung says gruffly, brushing by you roughly as he stomps out of the elevator. “I’m just glad the fucking night is over. I swear, seeing that fake-ass smile on your face made me want to gouge my eyes out.”
You storm after him, refusing to be the helpless damsel in this situation. “Oh, like you didn’t also have that exact same fake-ass smile on your face. It almost made me think you were actually enjoying yourself tonight.”
“I was only enjoying the fact that I know you hate this just as much as I do.” It’s perhaps the only thing you will ever be able to empathize with him on. Mutually relishing in the other’s destruction. Taehyung fumbles with the keypad to the door to the penthouse for a moment before you hear the lock click, the door sliding open as the entrance lights flicker on.
The reason Taehyung’s penthouse is so clean is because he’s never lived here before. Neither of you have—Taehyung’s parents bought it just for the two of you. And as much as you absolutely despise the idea of having to live with him, at least it was not you who paid for your place of residence.
You can tell Taehyung’s never lived here before because it’s actually quite nicely decorated inside. The ceilings are high and the sleek velvet curtains are pulled open, revealing a shimmering skyline. The furniture is modern and functional, and the whole damn place smells brand new. You’ve had the unfortunate pleasure of entering the place Taehyung lived in before now, and it looked nothing like this. The furniture was worn and stained despite the live-in maid, the house reeked of five hundred different spices that wafted from the kitchen to the living room, and the bookshelves were covered with comics, graphic novels, and old textbooks.
If it weren’t for the fact that you and Taehyung are rich kids in their twenties that hate each other, you might have actually thought the place looked… homey.
You don’t have time to be impressed by the interior design and architecture skills of whoever designed this place. Right now, all you can think about is tugging yourself out of your airtight reception dress and passing out on the nearest bed. Which, hopefully, will be as far away as possible from Taehyung’s bed of choice.
“How many bedrooms does this place have?” You ask, shimmying along the floor so you don’t trip over the hem of your dress. From the looks of it, you can see one giant hallway to your right and a massive, double-sided staircase leading up.
“Enough,” Taehyung grumbles in response. The hazy stupor from all of the fancy champagne is starting to wear off for the both of you, leaving behind two grouchy, begrudgingly-married individuals who want absolutely nothing to do with each other and have no problems making that known. Whatever golden light of the evening that was making Taehyung at least a little bit more attractive than usual has faded, and now you see him for what he really is: an unceremoniously tired man in a suit. “You want upstairs or down?”
You gaze up at the marble staircase in front of you, then back down at your too-long dress. “Down.” The last thing you want is to trip in front of the man you have to see, every day, for the rest of your life.
“Fine by me.” Taehyung’s halfway up the stairs by the time he turns back around to say something else. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess?”
“Yeah.” There’s no point in being hostile now. The both of you are too exhausted to mean anything by it. Besides, what else can you say? Everything to complain about has already been complained about. At least the two of you managed to wrestle out from your parents the stipulation that you would not be going on a honeymoon together. Now that would have been your worst nightmare. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
It’s as good of a goodnight either of you are going to get. Taehyung heads up the stairs and disappears around a corner, and you start wandering down the hallway. All the bedrooms look the exact same other than different colors on the walls and bedsheets, but they all look serviceable to you. Clean. Empty. Far away from wherever Taehyung is.
You pick the one at the very end of the hall just to be as much of a diva as possible, and don’t even bother drawing the curtains before tugging off your dress. It’s past one in the morning, and you’re so high up you don’t think anyone will be able to see you anyway. By the time you’ve stripped naked and are tugging up the too-tight sheets tucked into the mattress, your legs are about to give out beneath you. The bed could be made of rocks for all you care. Anything to lie down on is fine by you.
Sleep comes fairly easily to you tonight. Once your head hits the pillow you can already feel yourself drifting off, eyelids fluttering shut, but you don’t sleep quite yet. Not before you can think about how this is your life now, sleeping in a foreign bed in a foreign place with a foreign husband upstairs. This is what you will be living in now. Now and forever.
Living with Taehyung is, in both the best and worst ways possible, like living with a roommate that doesn’t give a shit about the fact that they live with another person. It’s good, because you and Taehyung hardly see each other and speak even less, which was pretty much the only thing you were asking for when it came to living with him. But it also sucks, because whenever you do happen to cross paths, Taehyung acts like you don’t exist, barely sparing you a hello or even that tight-lipped smile you send to drivers on the road when they let you cross the street.
Not that the two of you ever engaged in energetic conversation before you got married. But at least the two of you would acknowledge each other, even if only to shoot a glare and a scowl the other’s way from opposite sides of a hotel ballroom. Maybe it’s just because it’s him, but you did always find yourself actually relishing in those little interactions with Taehyung. In this strange, twisted way, it seemed to provide some sort of continuity to your ever-changing life. Like no matter what happened, at least you would know that the two of you would always despise each other.
To be frank, right now you’re not sure if Taehyung even remembers he got married at all.
Nights have been a lot more sleepless since your wedding day. After two weeks, the reality of it has finally started to settle in. This is your life now. And ever since you realized that, your bed has felt much less comfortable.
“But the place is nice, right?”
You look around the living room from where you’re sat on the sleek, white suede leather couch, eyes glossing over the bookshelves, the floor-to-ceiling windows, the draping velvet curtains. From here, you can see the entire city skyline, flecks of gold from the windows of skyscrapers against a navy blue background. Slowly, as the moon creeps over the sky and the clock gets later and later, those lights will soon begin to flicker off, one by one.
“Yeah, it’s not bad.” Nothing to write home about. That is, if home were a place other than here.
“That’s good. At least you don’t live in, like, a total dump or anything,” Victoria says on the other end of the line. “How’s Taehyung?”
His name alone elicits this deeply-exhausted sigh from your lips, like it’s been ten years since you married and every day has felt worse than the last. “Fine.” You can’t really complain about anything yet, considering that you hardly ever see the man.
“Just ‘fine’?” Victoria sounds skeptical.
“Yeah,” you draw out the word, as if trying to convince yourself of its truth. “I mean, it’s like he doesn’t even live here. I barely see him. And when I do, we don’t even speak to each other.”
“That’s good though, isn’t it? You hate him.” Victoria says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. And in a sense, it kind of is.
“I mean…”
“I know that your life hasn’t exactly… gone the way you had planned, but isn’t this your best case scenario when considering everything?” She asks. “If Taehyung is as distant as you say he is, isn’t it almost like you never married him in the first place?”
As if on cue, you hear footsteps coming down the stairs, heels clicking on the marble as they make their way to the entrance. You whip your head around to find Taehyung, all dressed up in loose, flowy slacks and a flowery silk button-down, strolling down the staircase as he scrolls through his phone, paying you zero attention whatsoever.
He notices you briefly when he reaches the bottom, meeting your eyes with his own. He offers this measly, unenthused half-smile your way before he grabs his wallet and some house keys from the table by the entrance, opens the door, and vanishes off into the night.
If you hadn’t been in the living room, you probably wouldn’t have even realized he left. Not that you being present as he’s planning on leaving would have stopped him anyway. This is the sixth night he’s done this in the past two weeks. You could stand by the door and stare him down as he emerges from his bedroom, all dressed up for something you’re definitely not invited to, and he would offer you that same goddamn smile and walk out the door without even blinking. Who he was before you got married and who he is now are no different. Not even a ring could change that.
“I guess,” you tell Victoria. At least Taehyung hasn’t turned into a helicopter husband. “I don’t know. Maybe I just wish that I didn’t have to deal with him at all.”
Wish you could turn back time. Wish you could worm your way out of an arranged marriage before it was too late. Wish you could go back to the way things used to be.
You and Victoria talk for another couple of minutes before she regretfully has to end the call, citing both her beauty sleep and an 8AM meeting tomorrow morning as her reasons for hanging up. The moment you put the phone down, you sink back into the couch cushions, staring out the windows at the world below you.
Here’s the deal. What Taehyung does in his free time is none of your business. But also, it’s totally your business, because you are his spouse. A spouse who is an equal amount in the public eye as he is. What he does and does not do has a direct impact on what you do and do not do.
It’s no secret that when you catch Taehyung sauntering down the stairs looking like a Gucci runway model, it’s not because he’s planning on catching a movie with a college friend and then playing video games for four hours on a couch in a basement. He is going out. To clubs, to parties, to exclusive events that he’s been invited to by his equally-rich friends, all of whom are acting like he’s the same bachelor he’s always been.
And maybe that’s the real problem with your whole marriage—other than the glaringly obvious issue that it’s a marriage wholly unwanted by the two parties involved in it. Despite the ring on his finger, Taehyung is going out and pretending that nothing in his life has changed while you’re trapped at home, desperate to save you and your family’s reputation by keeping as low a profile as possible. You would give anything to march around the city all day, flashing middle fingers at paparazzi as you shop at your favorite high-end stores and frequent your favorite clubs. But you can’t, because your family’s fortune and influence is on the line.
And apparently, Taehyung’s isn’t.
It sort of makes you wonder why it was even Taehyung you ended up marrying anyway. His family isn’t any richer or more powerful than yours. Your spheres have always been sufficiently separate. What was it about him, and perhaps more importantly, his family that drew your parent’s eye? And what was it about marrying you that prevented him from saying no? Money? Prestige? Influence?
You suppose you’ll never know. But whatever mystical force that convinced Taehyung to agree to this must not be as important to him as your reasoning is to you, because it’s become exceedingly apparent that Taehyung does not care that he’s married. He doesn’t care about the ring on his finger, he doesn’t care about his public image, and he most certainly doesn’t care about you.
Perhaps you were naive for thinking this, but you actually believed marriage might tone him down a little. Might age him into a real adult with real world obligations. Instead, it’s only given you a firsthand look into who Kim Taehyung has been and always will be: a selfish rich kid.
You don’t bother waiting around in the living room until he gets back, but you are still awake by the time you hear the door creak open. Taehyung makes no efforts to hide his return. You can hear him chattering loudly on the phone as he stumbles up the stairs, can tell from his gait alone that he is most certainly wasted. You don’t want to know what he did tonight. You’ll probably be able to figure it out anyway when you wake up tomorrow morning and check your social media.
What were you thinking, marrying him? That he would change? That he would suddenly become someone that you could rely on? You had no choice when you said, “I do,” but you were at least hoping that maybe one day, one day in a long, long time, the two of you would finally see eye to eye. Maybe there would even come a time when you would genuinely love him. How foolish.
You close your eyes and try to imagine a world where you have married someone you love, someone who loves you back.
Not unlike the many nights preceding it, tonight is sleepless.
Unlike your marital status and general disposition, one thing that hasn’t changed about you is your love for extravagant events. Call you conceited, but there is something so much fun about putting on a fancy, expensive dress that you love and getting your hair and makeup done before going to an exclusive gala and posing in front of five hundred cameras.
Actually, now that you think about it, maybe your wedding could have actually been pretty good, considering it let you do all those things. It’s a real shame there happened to be a storm cloud in the form of Kim Taehyung there to ruin it. Otherwise, you think you would have rather enjoyed that day.
Tonight is the first event since your marriage where you and Taehyung are both required to show up and act like a happy married couple. Which would probably be a lot easier if you and Taehyung had exchanged more than ten words over the past two weeks. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but there was a part of you that thought you could use your arranged marriage to actually cultivate some sort of meaningful relationship between the two of you. So events like these wouldn’t be such a drain on both of you.
When Kim Taehyung comes down the stairs, he actually doesn’t look too bad. You don’t know why this sort of thing keeps catching you off guard—like you don’t expect him to look that good whenever you see him. The problem is that you can’t even chalk up the surprise to him wearing tailored clothes or having his hair done. He just looks… good.
Well, you suppose you do have to look at him every day for the rest of your life. It’s a good thing he’s attractive. At least he’s not sore on the eyes.
Taehyung and his unfortunate attractiveness aside, the two of you don’t say a word to each other as you join up at the entrance, grabbing any last-minute items like house keys, chapstick, and whatever dignity you have left to spare. You send forced smiles and tight nods each other’s way in the elevator, staring straight ahead in the lobby of your building as the car pulls up to the front door.
By the time the two of you sit down in the back of the limousine, the built-up tension between the two of you is so thick you’re almost positive that even the chauffeur can feel it through the closed partition.
If you were any more idyllic, you’d probably spend the drive over to the gala staring out the window and imagining yourself in a different life, on a train to nowhere, flowers in your hair and a journal in your hands. Or perhaps you’d be the CEO of your family’s company instead of having that responsibility passed down to a husband you don’t even want, sitting in an office at the top of a skyscraper overlooking the city. Anything. Anything but this.
But the idyllic part of you died when you realized that fantasies like that are nothing but distractions and that daydreams are for romantics and optimists and losers.
“What’s our plan for tonight?”
Taehyung scoffs. “What do you mean, ‘what’s our plan’?”
You frown. “Well, we’re married, so we at least have to act like it, don’t you think?”
“Isn’t standing there and smiling enough?” Taehyung asks, an unimpressed eyebrow raised.
You bristle. Maybe that sufficed for your wedding, but there was so much going on it was easy to distract yourself from the gravity of it all. But this event is not about you. It’s not even about either of your families. It’s about someone the two of you are, at best, distantly connected to, through work, through fame, through power. Which means that though the focus will not be on you, there will still be eyes looking your way. Eyes watching your every move.
“Do you think it will be?” You challenge. Doesn’t Taehyung realize that things are different now?
Taehyung’s lips curl downwards. “What do you expect us to do, shower each other in kisses? We don’t even sleep on the same fucking floor.”
“Maybe I just expected you to act less like a stranger and more like a husband!”
Taehyung sighs. “Don’t.” The word is clipped, short. “Don’t tell me you actually want to be married.”
“I don’t.” It’s a response that you hardly have to think twice about. “But we are, and nothing can change that.” Unfortunately. But it’s a fact that you and Taehyung have both had to grapple with over the past few weeks, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that you are more aware of it than he is. If Taehyung could have his way, he would ignore you for the rest of his life and keep partying with the rest of his bachelor friends until he keeled over and died.
He huffs next to you, eyes staring straight ahead. You don’t think the two of you have met each other’s eyes in a week. Maybe more. They’re starting to feel as soulless as your marriage itself. “Whatever. What do you want me to do?”
“What do you think?” You cross your arms over your chest. “Just act like you don’t hate me. Can you do that?” The way Taehyung’s behaving right now, you expect that will be a challenge for the both of you.
“Only if you can. I’ll even hold your hand to prove that we love each other.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
The idea of holding Taehyung’s hand makes you want to implode. The mere thought sends shivers down your spine. But it’s better than nothing, and that’s good enough for you. At least you won’t have to kiss.
The rest of the ride there is silent. You drive to this gorgeous mansion just outside the city, bathed in lights hidden amongst the bushes, illuminating both the architecture and the enormous fountain that sits in front of it. In a house this size, you imagine you could probably go your whole life without ever having to come across Taehyung. It actually makes you consider investing in a home that big.
Taehyung helps you out of the back of the limousine, a cold hand clasping your own as you rest your palm against his. You can feel the way his fingers hesitate as yours make to intertwine with his as you walk towards the entrance, smiling at whatever camera flashes you encounter on your way. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think you were holding hands with a ghost.
The moment you step inside and are ushered out of the door’s view, Taehyung’s grip relaxes on yours. For a moment, you think he’ll actually spend the rest of the night like this, a gentle hand wrapped around yours, but then he pulls it away entirely and shoves it back into his pocket. Oh. You frown quietly to yourself. So that’s how tonight’s going to go.
You don’t make an effort to reach out towards him again.
For an event concerning people you don’t know a damn thing about, everyone sure seems to know things about you. Other than greetings, you don’t think anyone’s said anything to you about anything other than your recent marriage to Taehyung. Every conversation is punctuated by a Congratulations! you do not feel that you have at all earned, considering you and Taehyung could barely look at each other on the way here.
Maybe Taehyung was right. All you really can do is stand there and smile.
“Oh, don’t tell me… Y/N, is that you?”
The champagne swirls around in the flute between your fingers as you turn towards the sound of your name, looking up to see a familiar face headed your way.
Kim Seokjin is nice enough. He’s terribly handsome and got a flawless smile, but you know better than to trust those pearly whites of his. The sight of him alone is enough to make your body tense up. There was a reason you had explicitly told your parents not to invite him to your wedding.
“Seokjin, what a surprise to see you here,” you say, forcing a smile. “I thought you were supposed to be in Switzerland right now.”
“Change of plans,” Seokjin grins back in that awful, awful way, the kind of grin that makes you feel like he’s looking right through you. “I came back early. It’s a shame, though, I missed your wedding.”
You shrug. “It was a humble affair.” It wasn’t. And you’re positive that Seokjin knows it wasn’t an accident that you didn’t extend an invitation to him or his family.
“Ah, I see,” Seokjin says, nodding his head. He turns to Taehyung next to you, who is making no effort to hide how wholly uninterested in this conversation he is, and holds out a hand. “You must be Kim Taehyung, then. I’m Kim Seokjin. Congratulations on your wedding.”
Taehyung shakes his hand firmly, the air between the three of you growing unbearably palpable.
“Seokjin’s father is the VP of News Daily,” You explain, eyebrows raised as you try to signal to Taehyung what exactly it means when Seokjin is speaking to the two of you. “And his mother is a popular journalist for the city’s post.”
Seokjin grew up in the world of media, and it seems he’s picked up his parent’s affinity for sticking their noses in places they don’t belong. You know he’s not talking to the both of you out of the goodness of his heart.
Seokjin laughs, his hand waving away the mention of his parents. “Oh, please. That’s them. I’m just a bored socialite like the rest of you.”
You resist the urge to scoff.
“Marriage treating the two of you well?” He changes the subject to what he really wants to talk about: you.
“Of course,” you say quickly, preventing any hesitation on your end. Your empty hand reaches towards Taehyung’s, fingers searching for his between the two of you. But his refusal to join hands does not go unnoticed by you nor Seokjin, who is eyeing the space between your bodies with an eyebrow raised. “It’s just been—well, it’s just been difficult to adjust to a new life. That’s all.”
If you were to describe the face of a non-believer, it would be the exact expression on Seokjin’s face. “Perfectly understandable,” he says, that same toothy smile lacing his features. “But it must be nice, you know, to marry someone you love.”
“I couldn’t be happier,” you say, almost challenging Seokjin to say something even more inflammatory. He must know that all you’re trying to do at this point is save face. Love? Ha! As if.
“And Taehyung?” Seokjin motions to your husband.
You can feel the way Taehyung is stiffening beside you. “I suppose we are both lucky and unlucky in many ways when it comes to who we love.”
It’s enough of an answer to get Seokjin off your tail. For now. He bids the two of you a tense goodbye before sauntering off to go poke his nose in someone else’s business, fish for drama, a thread of a rumor he can pick apart with nimble fingers. You wonder if anybody actually likes him.
The moment he disappears from earshot, you grab Taehyung’s wrist tightly and pull him close to you. “What the hell was that?” You hiss into his ear.
“What?” You can’t tell if he’s playing dumb or if he really is that dense.
“You!” You exclaim. “Kim Seokjin is the one person who could easily expose how fake this marriage is and you pull away from me? Right in front of him? You can’t even hold my hand for two seconds, that’s how much you hate me?”
“Who cares what he thinks?” Taehyung says. “He’s just another media rat. No one will even remember we were here tomorrow.”
“But if you keep acting like this, people will start to notice! Why can’t you just act like you don’t hate me, for one night? Is that so bad? Is it that torturous, to spend one night with me?”
“Do not turn this on me,” Taehyung orders harshly. “You’re making a scene. Come on.”
You don’t have time to shout at him for bossing you around like you’re a toddler throwing a tantrum before he drags you out of the venue, the two of you finding a back door to the building that leads outside. The cold air blows against your body, goosebumps popping up against your skin, but you find that the chilly night provides quite the respite after practically overheating indoors. Taehyung makes fire rush through your veins but at least the air can cool you back down.
Nevertheless, your conversation is not over. It’s just been moved to a more private location.
“You do realize that our marriage isn’t going to suddenly go away, right? That we’re going to have to keep doing this for the rest of our lives?” You remind him, eyebrows raised. There’s a part of you that genuinely thinks he’s completely forgotten that your marriage is permanent.
“Oh, and not holding hands for five minutes for this one event is totally going to change the course of our lives, isn’t it?” Taehyung fights back.
“Don’t act like you did the right thing,” you spit out. “You don’t have to pretend in front of me. I know you don’t give a shit about our marriage.”
“What marriage is there to even give a shit about? Just because we had a wedding and signed some documents does not mean there is a real marriage between us. Look at us,” he motions between the two of you like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “We hate each other. Is this what you would call marriage?”
“But at least I’m trying to get past that!” You exclaim. “You make it seem like being as miserable as possible is some sort of badge of honor. Do you actually want to spend the rest of your life hating the person you married? Or do you want to grow up and try and move on?”
Taehyung frowns. “What I want is for the person I married to stop acting like they’re doing me such a huge favor by pretending to care about us. Especially when all they really care about is their family’s goddamn reputation.”
“No,” you tell him sternly. You are doing him a favor. He just can’t admit that he actually needs help from you. “You are putting zero effort into this. What am I supposed to do?”
“Let it go!” Taehyung shouts. “Maybe one day we’ll actually start getting along, but right now it’s obvious that neither one of us can stand the other. I don’t need you to do favors for me. I can handle it myself.”
You look away, rolling your eyes. “Doesn’t look like it to me,” you mutter to yourself.
Taehyung cracks. “Fine. You want me to pretend that I actually care about us? I will.” Thank God. Maybe now the two of you will finally start seeing eye-to-eye. “But make no mistake about how I feel about you,” he spits. “Getting married to you ruined my life.”
You stare straight at him and his eyes are swirling, so obscured in the darkness of the night that you might even think he doesn’t have a soul at all. His pupils bore into yours and for once, for once in your goddamn life, after so many years of staring each other down at debutante balls, so many years of witty refrains and snarky insults hurled each other’s way, it feels like the two of you might actually snap.
Then, a camera flashes.
Trouble in Paradise! would be a suitable title for the front page of the city’s biggest tabloid… if anything about your life with Taehyung could be considered paradise. Unfortunately for the both of you, that is not the case.
You don’t need to keep reading the rest of the trashy article on the front page of the daily tabloid to know how much trouble you’re in, nor do you even have time to scroll beneath the terrible photo of you and Taehyung literally shouting at each other before you hear your phone ring.
You don’t even bother saying hello to whoever’s on the other end. You know it’ll go in one ear and out the other.
“I assume you know why I’m calling,” your mother’s harsh tone spits from the other end of the phone. There’s no doubt in your mind that she’s standing in the middle of her office, snapping her fingers at her fifteen secretaries as they partake in the worst damage control your family’s had to deal with since your cousin two years ago was caught with a mistress outside a high-profile restaurant.
“Can I take a wild guess?” You’re about to be scolded into the next century, so you might as well enjoy your last few moments.
“Don’t get cheeky with me,” your mother warns. “Care to explain why you and your beloved husband made the front page of the Daily Post today?”
“I know,” you sigh, a hand coming up to rub at your temples. It’s eight in the morning, you’ve barely looked at your phone, and you haven’t even brushed your teeth yet. It feels like you’re still asleep, and most certainly lack the energy to deal with this right now.
Your mother, on the other hand, thinks otherwise. “You know? You know, and you still go out and do this? For everyone to see?”
“We tried to take our argument outside,” you begin to explain, but your mother isn’t having a single word of it.
“The fact that you thought it was even appropriate to have an argument in a public setting at all astounds me, Y/N. We raised you better than that.” There’s no need for you to even see her face. You’ve grown so used to that disappointed frown over the years that it’s burned into your brain.
“Maybe you should have thought about that before marrying me off to a man I barely know so I could be someone else’s problem instead of yours,” you bite.
“We did this for your own good,” she hisses back. “You are married because we love you, and we want you to succeed outside of this family.”
“Then why do you care what the tabloids print about me?”
“Because being married does not mean you are no longer a part of this family,” your mother informs you sternly, lips smacking together. “Your marriage reflects on all of us, and you know that. What will people think of us when they see how terribly behaved you are?”
“Everyone acts like that, and you know it.” How could your mother preach good behavior when everyone, everyone you know, is just as spoiled and entitled as you? There’s no such thing as being altruistic when it comes to people like you. Being genuine, and good, and pure—that will get you ruined.
You can hear her breathing into the phone when your mother responds, “But not in public, and that is the point. We expect better from you.”
“If you were so worried about me behaving so badly, then why did you even marry me off anyway? You knew that I didn’t want to. What did you think would happen?” It’s a question you wouldn’t have dared ask three months ago. Hell, even a year ago, when it was first revealed you were to be engaged, you wouldn’t have dared open your lips. But things are different now. You’re married to a man that hates you just as much as you hate him. He is making no effort to improve your relationship and seems hellbent on despising you forever. There is no way to get out of it. And if your parents really foresaw all of that, then what was the point in the first place?
“Your grandmother.”
Your mouth shuts.
“You know she wanted to see you married before she passed,” your mother says, words clipped and biting and harsh. “She cares about you. She wanted to make sure you’d be taken care of.”
“I don’t need anyone to take care of me,” you mutter to yourself like a petulant child. In a way, you sort of are.
“If you want to stay in her will, I suggest you change that mindset.”
You freeze in your tracks. The will?
“Is that a threat?” You ask, positively dumbfounded. Are you being coerced into staying in this marriage because of your grandmother’s will?
You can hear your mother laugh, that muted, knowing chuckle of hers. “It was the deal all along, remember?”
Vaguely, you do. You remember fighting your parents tooth and nail over getting married until your grandmother revealed it was her dream to see you wed. You remember the look on her old, wrinkled face, that soft, sad smile that said she knew she didn’t have much time left. You remember agreeing, because how could you deny her? You remember her promising to remember what you’re doing for her.
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“But—”
“That’s the end of this conversation, Y/N. You fix things with your husband or you’re out of her will. She’s made that clear. I expect you’ll make the right choice.”
She hangs up.
Well.
There are a lot of ways to describe how you’re currently feeling, and you most certainly had an expensive education that would provide you with plenty of the vocabulary, but you think the most appropriate words for the current situation would be: you’re fucked.
At least the feeling is mutual.
Hardly two minutes after your mother’s brutal phone call, Taehyung comes storming down the stairs, hair still mussed from the night prior, his own phone clenched tightly between is fingers. Even from where you stand in the middle of the living room, you can see the way his eyes are glinting with anger, the veins popping out from his skin.
“I just got off the phone with my parents,” Taehyung begins, not even bothering to spare a ‘good morning’ your way, “and they are fucking furious about last night.”
You shrug. “Join the club,” you mutter, arms crossed in front of you. What, does Taehyung really think you got off scot-free?
“Don’t act like this means nothing to you,” Taehyung says as he approaches you, footsteps calm despite his demeanor being anything but. “You’re the one who’s so obsessed with keeping up their family’s perfect reputation. You’re the reason we’re even in this mess in the first place.”
“What do you mean, ‘I’m the reason’?” You ask, astounded. Like he’s totally absolved of all blame and just an innocent third party. “You are the reason we went outside. You are the reason we had that argument, because you refuse to accept the fact that we’re actually married and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Right, because holding hands is really gonna show all those people how in love we are. I bet your parents are so thrilled right now.” Taehyung drawls.
“It’s a start!” You shriek. “God, you’re just so—so infuriating! You can’t accept that this was your fault, too. You just have to turn everything against me and you always, always have to get the last word. It’s like you think you’ll die if you don’t.”
“Like you’re any better,” Taehyung huffs back. “You think I’m the villain because I don’t want to pretend to be in love with someone I’m not in love with. You act like us not holding hands is going to ruin our lives. It was one event! One! It’s obvious we hate each other, so why even try?”
“What, do you expect me to just sit around and do nothing? To act like everything’s fine? Like I’m happy?” As if. This marriage is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. “While you prance around the city with your rich boy friends, going out to clubs and parties and pretending that I don’t exist? Is that what you expect from me?”
Taehyung laughs, this loud, disbelieving sort of noise, like he’s never heard such nonsense before. “Just because we’re married doesn’t mean the rest of my life has to change. Am I not allowed to enjoy myself with my friends? Or are you determined to keep me chained to your side for the rest of our lives?”
“What I want,” you punctuate every word, “is for you to stop acting like you haven’t got stakes in this, too. You think I don’t know how your family works? What being married to me means for you? Because I do. And I know that if we were to divorce, it would be you who would get the short end of the stick. Make no mistake.”
That’s enough to shut Taehyung up for a good few seconds. And it shuts him up, because he knows it’s true. Taehyung’s family may have a little more money, a little more power than yours, but you’ve got a family intimately more connected with the media. One phone call and Taehyung may have a rather messy, rather public breakup to deal with.
“You wouldn’t,” he says, calling your bluff.
“Are you sure about that?” You say, sticking your ground. You would never really divorce him, of course, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“I am,” Taehyung says firmly. “Don’t think I don’t know what being married to me is in it for you. What is it? Money? Power? Your father’s CEO position?”
“That’s none of your business,” you snap quickly. Maybe you’re more transparent than you thought. Bristling, you straighten your shoulders and turn back to meet his eyes. “Regardless, it seems we both have a reason to stay in this marriage.”
“It seems we do,” Taehyung agrees with a thin, contained smile. “Then I suppose we can reach some sort of agreement.”
“As in…?” Your interest in piqued.
“I’ll stop going out with my friends if you stop picking fights with me all the time,” he says economically, like he’s killing two birds with one stone.
“Only if you agree to also act more like my husband when we’re in public,” you tack on, because you just can’t settle for anything less.
“Public only,” Taehyung specifies.
You scoff. “Like I’d even want to pretend to be your wife when we’re in private.”
“Good. It seems we’ve come to a deal.”
“What’s in this for you, huh?” You prod, just to be annoying. Taehyung’s right. There’s a reason you’re not divorcing him the second you get the chance. But there must be a reason why he’s not doing the same thing.
“Does it matter?” He challenges, a single eyebrow raised. “My life is just as awful as yours.”
Fair enough.
“Do we have a deal?” Taehyung asks, holding out his hand, that sneaky, devilish grin lacing his features.
Taking his hand in yours and grasping it firmly is the easiest decision in the world. His palm presses against your own, hot hand meeting your cold skin, and it feels like the two of you are finally finding some sort of balance. You look up into his eyes, burn your gaze into his pupils, watch them glint in the white ceiling light of the living room.
“Deal.”
For two people raised on the values of reading the fine print and making educated choices when it comes to business deals, you and Taehyung sure haven’t worked out any of the intricacies of the deal the two of you agreed to. Unlike those business deals your parents constantly agreed to, however, knowing all of the stipulations and provisions of your strange, strange agreement with Taehyung may prove more harmful than helpful.
Like right now.
“Wait, we don’t have to be by each other’s side the whole night, do we?” Taehyung asks you, eyebrows furrowed in a knot, as you sit in the back of a big, black van on your way to a mutual friend’s twenty-first birthday bash.
“There are going to be a lot of cameras there,” you respond.
“Yeah, outside the entrance to the damn club. You know they won’t be allowed in, so who cares?” Taehyung rebukes.
You huff out a little sigh, not wanting to get into an argument when you’re literally minutes away from your first public appearance since the whole tabloid debacle from three weeks ago. You and Taehyung could both do with being a bit more relaxed than you normally are when you’re around each other.
“Hasn’t Clarissa invited hundreds of people? They’ll all notice if we aren’t together,” you remind pointedly. The girl whose birthday party you are attending is an heiress who grew up on the money of two people with a monopoly over the current artificial intelligence market and has millions of followers on social media. There will be notable people there. And people will know the two of you, as well.
Taehyung rolls his eyes. “That’s the point, Y/N. There’ll be so many people, no one will even care. It’s her twenty-first birthday. Do you think people are going to be sober?”
You purse your lips together. He’s got a point. “How about when we are together, we hold hands. But if you see a friend or something then feel free to say hi.” Taehyung can be afforded that luxury. Especially because the chances of him not bumping into someone he knows is exceedingly low anyway.
Taehyung nods in agreement. “You too. But I won’t leave you unless I know you’re with someone you’re close with.”
“You don’t have to stay, I’ll be fine,” you say with a small chuckle. What, is Taehyung suddenly worried, or something?
“Yeah, but it would be in bad taste if I left you with someone you didn’t know well. Or alone. Just wanna make sure you’re taken care of.” He shrugs nonchalantly, turning back to look out of the window on his side of the car.
“Okay.”
You don’t really have anything else to say to that. You’re sure you can handle yourself if you’re left alone for a few minutes while Taehyung says hi, but you actually find yourself rather appreciative of his resolve to look after you. Or, at least, make sure someone else is looking after you. It’s quite… chivalrous. Strikingly out of character for the Taehyung you’ve become well-acquainted with over the past couple of months.
By the time you arrive, it’s obvious that Taehyung was right about there being so many people you two practically don’t even exist. Other than the herds of camera crews waiting outside the joint, photographing everyone that steps out of a black car to see what they’re wearing and who they’ve come with, no one seems to be paying you any attention. And in a way, that sort of nonexistence, that anonymity, it’s refreshing. Your entire life you’ve felt like all eyes were on you, like there was constantly a spotlight above your head, but here, the party centers around someone else.
Despite that fact, Taehyung keeps his promise. He keeps himself pressed closely against you when there’s not enough space for you two to stand side by side, and he makes sure to have a hand gently intertwined with your own as you weave your way through the dozens of bodies in the room. He doesn’t say anything, of course, always looking up and forward instead of beside him, where you stand, but you find that you’re actually quite relaxed with his presence. He spots a bit of a clearing near the back of the first floor of the club, where a whole bunch of leather couches are pressed up against the brick walls, where the two of you can take a breather.
“Damn, Clarissa knows a lot of people,” you say when you finally settle down, happily plucking a martini from a tray held by one of the many caterers wandering through the venue.
“I doubt she’s even spoken to half of them,” Taehyung comments. “She and I have maybe spoken once… three years ago.”
“It was enough to get you invited, wasn’t it?” You point out with an eyebrow raised.
Taehyung nods, chuckling a little. “Touché,” he says, clinking his own cocktail glass against yours.
You take a swig of the drink, letting it wash down your throat. You’re not exactly sure how else you’re supposed to survive the night. “You must enjoy this, huh?” You muse, looking up at Taehyung from where you’re seated on the couch. He’s standing next to you, looking around the room with a distant gaze in his eye.
“Enjoy what? The drink? It’s nice,” Taehyung says, having another sip.
“No, I mean this,” you say, motioning toward the crowd. “The clubbing, the dancing, the drinking. I’ll bet that if you could do this every day for the rest of your life, you would.”
“I’m honored that you think so highly of me,” he deadpans.
“Just making an observation,” you say, holding your hand up in surrender. “I mean, isn’t this what you used to do every weekend before we got married? Get wasted and party? Wake up in someone else’s bed the next morning? Muscle your way through the week just so you could do it all over again?”
Taehyung shakes his head, a knowing grin on his face. “Looks like someone keeps up with her tabloids. Let me guess, you would scroll through all of those trashy articles on your phone whenever you woke up so you could see what your future husband was doing?”
“I could have never even met you and I would know that that’s exactly what you do,” you say, even though you definitely did do those things before your engagement was announced to the public. “You’re a heartbreaker, Kim Taehyung. I don’t need to read a tabloid to know that.”
“Well, you must be quite the lucky girl, then,” Taehyung comments. “You seem to be taking up so much of my energy that I don’t have the time for that anymore.”
You place a sarcastic hand on your heart. “I didn’t know you were always thinking about me. I’m touched.”
“Don’t get used to it,” Taehyung huffs out, making the two of you both shake your heads as you chuckle to yourselves. First civil conversation you’ve had with each other in a long while, even if there may have been a few blows exchanged.
The privacy doesn’t last long. Soon after, a huge crowd of people that could honestly still pass for teenagers herds towards the back of the club, all of them wanting to take pictures with each other. You and Taehyung do your best to stay out of the way, but one of the girls recognizes him from the Elle photoshoot he did about a year ago and begins to strike up a conversation with the both of you about your recent marriage. If she was paying attention to anything the tabloids leaked three weeks ago, she doesn’t mention it. Taehyung smiles and happily answers all of her questions, and even offers to take a picture of the group for them. The conversation ends before the two of you even catch her name.
You’re standing by the line of buffet tables laid out against the staircase leading up to the second floor, no doubt as crowded as this one, when the opportunity for you to speak to someone other than Taehyung finally presents itself.
“Y/N!”
You’d recognize that voice anywhere. You turn around to see Victoria barreling towards the both of you, not even caring when she accidentally spills a bit of her piña colada on the floor as she does.
“Hey!” You exclaim excitedly. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“Are you kidding? I’m pretty sure Clarissa invited everyone on her, her best friend’s, her best friend’s cousin, and her best friend’s cousin’s dog’s contact list,” Victoria says with a laugh. “It’s nice to see you. I feel like you’ve been holed up in that big ol’ penthouse for weeks.”
“Damage control,” you remind her succinctly. Victoria knows enough that that’s all the explanation she really needs.
“I don’t know if the two of you have ever met formally,” you say, thinking back to your wedding, where Victoria spent most of her time schmoozing with your parents (who love her) and didn’t even engage with any of the people who Taehyung’s family had invited. “Taehyung, this is Victoria. Victoria, Taehyung.”
“Pleasure,” Victoria says in that loud, unabashedly forward way of hers, holding out a friendly hand. Taehyung smiles back curtly, taking her hand and shaking it gently, so as not to spill any more of her drink.
“Mine as well. I remember you were at our wedding.” Oh? So he does know her?
“That I was. Oh, I miss that day. The food was excellent. Tonight’s isn’t too bad either. Hope you’re doing well, the two of you. It’s nice to see you getting along,” she says, always the observer.
Taehyung’s eyes widen a little when he picks up what Victoria is not-so-subtly putting down, but you place a hand on his upper arm to calm him. “It’s okay,” you tell him. “She won’t say anything.”
“My lips are sealed,” Victoria adds.
“If you wanna go spend time with some of your friends, you can,” you say, giving Taehyung a nudge. He looks positively helpless standing in between the two of you as Victoria out-extroverts him.
“Alright,” he says hesitantly, even though you know he’s already spotted at least ten people you’re sure he’d want to spend time with over you. “I’ll come find you soon, okay? Don’t go too far.”
You nod, and Taehyung disappears off into the crowd. Not two seconds later, you hear someone else call his name in a familiar tone.
“I thought you said you hated him,” Victoria points out as the two of you watch his caramel brown hair makes its way throughout the crowd.
You take another sip of your drink. “I do,” you say.
Victoria looks at you like you’ve just told her you’ve sworn off custard-filled doughnuts.
“What?” You ask, feeling suddenly defensive.
“Nothing,” Victoria singsongs. “It just doesn’t look like that to me.”
“We just need to keep up a good appearance in public, that’s all. You know how mad my parents got when the tabloids leaked all that shit a few weeks ago,” you explain. You’re not sure what all the fuss is about. Taehyung said he would do these things. And he did. That was him upholding his end of the deal. This is you upholding yours.
“If you say so…” Victoria says, not looking at all convinced. “I guess I’m just surprised that—that you two seem to be getting along so well. Maybe you being married isn’t going to be the worst thing after all.”
You stare back out into the crowd, scanning the top of people’s heads for Taehyung’s familiar locks. In the dim light of the club, you have a difficult time finding his, squinting your eyes slightly as you look around, but eventually you spot him, dancing happily with some old friends of his you recognize. He looks like he’s having a good time. And that makes you feel like maybe, just maybe, this might end up alright.
“Yeah,” you say, though with the pounding of the bass and the alcohol already rushing through your veins, it doesn’t really feel like your voice belongs to you. You look back at Taehyung, knowing exactly where he is now, and you smile. Just a little. “I guess he’s not so bad.”
You never do get a chance to meet Taehyung’s friends that night. By the time he joins back up with you and Victoria he’s by himself, a little more drunk than when he left, and ready to go home. And for once, instead of fighting him, instead of insisting you stay an hour more just to make sure you’ve done all of your rounds, you let him take you home.
Taehyung has been spending a lot more time at the penthouse lately. Perhaps his family’s business happenings are slow, or perhaps he’s actually starting to get more comfortable with inhabiting the same space as you, but he has definitely found himself quite the rhythm in that house of yours. He even comes down to the first floor rather regularly.
When he’s home, Taehyung is a lot quieter than you thought he would be. Granted, you don’t exactly know what you were expecting in the first place, but it certainly wasn’t him ruminating in one of the home offices while the Beatles play softly on the stereo, nor was it him reading a book in French in one of those big old grandfather chairs in the living room. If you didn’t know any better, you’d probably think he was still absent in that old way of his, ghostlike and silent, like he was occupying the space instead of truly living in it.
But you do know better, and even though Taehyung is just as noiseless as he used to be, the house already feels a little bit fuller.
Perhaps the reason you’ve become so keenly aware of his presence over the past few days is because of the notable fact that Taehyung has indeed held up his end of the deal, and no longer goes out with his friends in the evening. Or at all, for that matter. Which strikes you as rather odd, because he’s the epitome of a social butterfly, a thousand contacts in his phone and a whole group of friends he regularly spends time with. Maybe his parents told him to tone down the public appearances, too. And that’s understandable, but don’t they know Taehyung? Can’t they see how much he thrives on social interaction? It almost makes you feel… bad for him.
To remedy this, you suggest he invite over his friends. Just for a few hours, you swear you won’t mind.
“Seriously?” Taehyung looks positively shocked when you tell him he can, standing in the doorway of the office he seems to have designated as his own.
“Yeah, why not?” You say with a carefree shrug. Besides, you’ve never met his friends anyway, and now seems as good a chance as any to introduce yourself. You are his wife, after all. “Unless your parents say you can’t. But it’s not a problem for me.”
“You… don’t mind if I have my friends over for a bit? Honest to God, we’re probably just going to play FIFA for three hours straight,” Taehyung says like it’s some sort of warning. Like the idea of him and his buddies from college are going to sit in the living room screaming at the television, leaving you alone to do literally anything else, is somehow bad.
You laugh. “It’s fine, really. Call them. I’d actually quite like to meet them.”
Taehyung picks up his phone almost instantly, as if you’ll change your mind in the next five minutes so he better get them over soon, and already you can see the way his face is lighting up, the way his eyes crinkle as he chats to his friends and the way his lips curl upwards when they crack a joke back. Isn’t it obvious? He feeds off of the energy of others. Who are you to deny him such a simple pleasure?
As it turns out, Taehyung’s friends actually end up being quite nice anyway.
He invites over three, because four people is apparently the perfect number for a hardcore game of FIFA on his Playstation, and they are all very handsome men you have never met before. You suppose like attracts like, after all.
“You must be Y/N,” says the first one you see when you open the door to let them in. He doesn’t look a day over twenty-one—in fact, he could probably still pass as a college student—and has rather long dark hair that drapes over the sides of his face, covering the edges of his big doe eyes. “I’m Jungkook. This is Jimin and Hoseok.”
“Nice to meet you all,” you say, stepping aside so they can enter.
The shortest one, Jimin, grins in response, and Hoseok, behind him, gives you a wave. It’s refreshing enough as is, not having to exchange formal greetings and shake each other’s hands like you do with everyone else. Hoseok even gives you a bit of a nod, too.“You, too,” he says. “We’ve heard so much about you.”
Oh, have they, now? Interesting.
“All good things, I hope,” you say awkwardly, forcing a small smile as Taehyung comes bounding into the room, ears perked up at the sound of his friends’ voices.
“Definitely. Thanks for having us over. We didn’t wanna intrude on the sanctity of your new place,” Jungkook says, gesturing vaguely to the house as a whole. He’s got this excellent, genuine grin on his face, the kind that people who are just happy to be alive always wear.
Already he’s said enough to charm the shit out of you. Who knew Taehyung’s friends could be so… friendly? “Please, you’re welcome any time. I was just thinking Taehyung was getting a little lonely.”
“There he is!” Jimin shouts excitedly when he spots Taehyung behind the two of you, looking a lot more casual than he normally does when he’s alone with you, having abandoned his usual silky button-down and wide-leg slacks for a loose shirt and some sweatpants. You didn’t even know he had those things in his closet.
“Hey, everyone’s here!” Taehyung exclaims, just as happy. He squeezes past you to give the three of them a big hug, and it almost makes you feel like you’re intruding on something you shouldn’t be in. Even though this is literally your house.
“Nice place you got here,” Hoseok comments, eyes drifting around the living room. “Very minimalist, I like it.”
“Sure hope you don’t spill anything on those nice leather couches of yours,” Jungkook says.
“Yeah, unlike Kook, who has spilled tomato soup on every shirt he’s ever owned,” Jimin jokes, earning laughs from Taehyung and Hoseok and a punch from Jungkook.
“Moved after we married,” Taehyung says simply, shrugging his shoulders. It’s an easy enough explanation for why it doesn’t look at all lived in. Here’s hoping none of them realize you sleep in different bedrooms.
“Yeah, congratulations on that, man,” Hoseok says, giving Taehyung a celebratory nudge in the shoulder. “Who’d have thought, out of the four of us, Kim Taehyung would be the first one to settle down.”
The way Taehyung’s body tenses up at that comment does not go unnoticed by you.
“Seriously, I would have never guessed,” Jimin adds on. “You’re showing us a new side of yourself, Tae. But I’m happy for you.”
Normally, you’d probably take offense at such blatant insinuations that your husband was a former playboy, especially from his equally noncommittal friends. But truthfully, it’s not like you were blind to Taehyung’s transgressions either. And what matters most is the fact that since it was announced publicly, you are the only woman he’s been seen with since your engagement.
“Me too. You seem to really like her. I’m glad,” Jungkook pipes up, sending a smile your way. You definitely feel like you don’t belong in this conversation. “I think the two of you will be good for each other.”
“Yeah, I hope so,” Taehyung says with a nervous chuckle. His eyes quickly shoot your way, the two of you meeting gazes, your hesitant expressions matching. At least the two of you are on the same page. “Alright, alright, enough,” Jungkook says. “Who’s ready to get their ass kicked in FIFA?”
“You’re on, Jeon. But when I win, you owe me a five-star dinner,” Hoseok challenges.
“Deal.”
Hoseok, Jimin, and Jungkook immediately crowd towards the couch, and you take that as your cue to leave. But before you can disappear down the hallway, you and Taehyung look awkwardly at each other, hands tied. It’s not like you can say anything to them.
The truth is that, sometimes, it’s easy to forget that not everyone else knows that your marriage is just for business. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that there are still people out there that believe you marry for love.
Isn’t it crazy to think that you used to be one of those people, too?
“Hey,” Taehyung says when you meet up at the bottom of the stairs again.
“Hey,” you respond.
“You look nice.”
You scoff a little to yourself. What, are you exchanging compliments now? “Thanks,” you say, looking him up and down. “You’re not so bad yourself.” Like he ever is.
“I knew you had taste,” Taehyung teases, and it’s the sort of comment that would have earned him a melon ball to the face back when the two of you were teenagers at a debutante ball, but today only earns him a roll of your eyes as you join hands. You don’t have anything big tonight—just a small dinner to celebrate some sort of business accomplishment for your family, which means that all you have to manage is not ending up in some sort of food fight by the end of the night.
“I didn’t have a choice, did I?” You retort easily as you get into the car.
You don’t normally speak a lot on the way to events. Not that you ever did, but even as your relationship has slowly faded from pure hatred to attempts at compromise, you both seem to relish in being able to stare out of your respective backseat windows and into the city that surrounds you. Just out of curiosity, about halfway through the ride you look towards Taehyung to see what he’s up to, and find yourself genuinely surprised to see him leaning against the window with his eyes closed. Is he sleeping? A couple more minutes of gazing at him tells you he is, because his body has gone lax and his breathing has evened out, soft snores leaving his mouth. This ride can’t be longer than twenty minutes. Has he not been sleeping well? Up in that enormous second-floor bedroom of his?
He’s awake by the time the car parks outside the restaurant, this fancy name brand steak place that was chosen solely because the biggest beneficiaries of your family’s new business deal are two sixty-year-old men whose entire diet consists of beef and beer. No cameras tonight, just a small family affair. You and Taehyung hold hands as you enter the restaurant and are led to the private room in the back anyway.
You and him are seated on the far end of the long, rectangular table, alongside all of the other adult children dragged along to celebrate something that has no effect on their lives. But it’s nice, because the space alone prevents your parents from actively speaking with you, and you and Taehyung can stay in your own little bubble, only chiming in for a toast when necessary.
“What are you going to get?” He asks you, the two of you gazing at the menu. No matter how fancy this place is, all the options seem to boil down to steak, steak, steak, steak, and caesar salad. Classic.
“Oh, so you actually care now?” You counter, an eyebrow raised in amusement.
Taehyung laughs. “Aren’t I supposed to?”
You narrow your eyes at him suspiciously, wise to his usual shenanigans. It’s hard to tell if Taehyung really means what he says, or if it’s all for show. But perhaps he’s asking because he’s genuinely curious, since no one else seems to be paying you any attention.
“The choices on this menu are simply overwhelming,” you say, motioning to the six options in front of you.
“I know, I’m so torn,” Taehyung jokes, making you huff out a little giggle. At least he’s still got that same sense of humor.
You both end up going for a pretty classic steak dinner, which neither of the two of you finish because the damn portions are the size of your head. Dinner is, in and of itself, absolutely mindless, all of your parents talking about things that don’t concern you whatsoever, leaving you and Taehyung to your own devices as you desperately try to make the night go by faster.
At one point, you notice Taehyung’s foot brushing up against yours, the leather of his loafers brushing against the toe of your patent heel. Thinking someone of it, you push back, foot nudging his back to his own chair. It’s not a second later that Taehyung retaliates, the two of you dancing around each other underneath the table.
If the two of you were any younger, or perhaps any less resigned to your fate, there’s no doubt in your mind you would be attempting to get Taehyung to fall off his chair in an effort to do the same to you. Footsie means war. But when the both of you know that, at the end of the day, you’ll still be going home to the same place, and waking up the next morning in the same house, it doesn’t feel like this is a battle.
It’s just life.
Eventually, you meet Taehyung’s eyes with a hesitant smile, shoe pressed against his, stuck in ceasefire. And for once, he doesn’t have that devilish look in his eye, that smug little grin on his face that tells you that he’s going to make you regret whatever it is you just did. He’s just smiling back at you, all pink lips, having found real fun in the little things.
And that makes you happy.
The rest of the dinner is uneventful, which, in your book, is about as good as a dinner can go. You cheers to the future of your parents’ relationship with their newfound partners and say a quick goodbye to them both, hurrying out of there before they can ask you any questions on your relationship with your husband. But you don’t spend the car ride in silence on the way back.
Instead, you say, “Have you been sleeping well?”
The question seems to catch Taehyung off guard. He was already getting in position to take a power nap on the ride home, head pressed up against the window of the car.
“What?”
“Have you been sleeping well?” You repeat. “I noticed you fell asleep on the way here.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess,” he says, a hand scratching the nape of his neck. “I mean, it’s been hard adjusting, I suppose. But I’ll get over it.”
Hard adjusting? You’ve been together for nearly three months now. Three months worth of sleeping in the same penthouse bedroom, on the same soft-as-a-cloud mattress, underneath the same weighted blanket. And he’s still having trouble?
“Oh. I mean, I just wanted to ask because you seem really tired lately.”
“I got a lot on my plate, what can I say,” Taehyung says with an empty smile, forcing a chuckle. “I’ll be fine, seriously. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Isn’t that my job?” You remind him. “I am your wife.”
Taehyung doesn’t say anything to that. He just lets out an audible breath, the kind you let out when you’re amused and have something snarky to say, but don’t have the energy to get the words off your tongue.
The rest of the ride is pretty quiet.
When you get home, you place your house keys in the bowl by the entrance and take off your shoes, just about ready to take a hot shower and collapse in bed, when Taehyung’s voice stops you.
“Hey,” he begins, almost hesitantly. You look back at him inquisitively. “I was thinking, maybe, if you wanted, we could start sleeping in the same bed?”
You scrunch your nose up. Not in disgust, but in surprise. In bewilderment. What brought this on, all of a sudden?
“Really?” You ask, because you can’t help yourself. “I thought we liked the separate bed thing. Gives us privacy.”
“Yeah,” Taehyung says with a shrug, “but—I don’t know, it’s stupid. I just thought, you know, since we’re married and all. And it’s been three months.” He looks about two seconds away from backtracking, from shaking his head and going upstairs before you can say anything else.
“Alright,” you say quickly, nodding your assent. Taehyung’s eyes widen when he hears the word, like he had completely expected you to shut him down the moment he made the suggestion. “If that’s what you want. We can try it.”
“You sure?” He asks, that same hesitant smile from earlier lacing his features. It’s strange. He almost looks… sweet. Nervous.
You grin back at him. “Yeah, I am.”
Taehyung lets you grab some of your toiletries and your pajamas from your designated bedroom before you head up the stairs together, towards the bedroom he’s claimed for himself. Funnily enough, this is the first time you’ve been in his room. Three months of living together and you haven’t dared step foot on the second floor.
You don’t know what you were expecting when he opens the door to let you inside. Maybe a room that screamed ‘Taehyung’ a little more than this one does. One that looks like an actual human has been living here. But other than one of his classic silk button-downs draped over a chair, there’s not a shred of evidence someone has actually been sleeping here. You could honestly be fooled rather easily that the shirt, too, is just decoration.
“You can pick a side,” Taehyung says casually. He grabs his own sleepwear—an old t-shirt and some sweats—and heads into the bathroom to change.
You wonder why Taehyung has had such a difficult time adjusting. This room is about as lavish as a bedroom can get. And yet.
Sitting down on the left side of the bed, you begin to remove your own clothes, unzipping tonight’s dress and stepping quickly into your pajamas, hurrying to make sure Taehyung doesn’t catch you half-naked. How funny is that, you think to yourself. You’ve been married for three months and you still can’t bear the thought of Taehyung seeing you without a shirt on.
When Taehyung comes out of the bathroom, hair all messy and clothes all casual, he grins lazily to himself. “I sleep on the right anyway,” he comments mindlessly.
Within twenty minutes the both of you are about as ready to pass out as you have ever been, the only lights still on the ones on your respective nightstands.
“Goodnight,” Taehyung says, reaching an arm over to switch his off.
“Goodnight,” you tell him, turning off yours as well. And all of a sudden, the room is shrouded in darkness.
You fall asleep instantly.
When Taehyung wakes up the next morning, the first thing he says to you is that he hasn’t slept that well in ages.
“You slept together?” Victoria shrieks, so loud you actually have to move your phone away from your ear as you punch in the code inside the elevator for access to your floor.
“We did not sleep together,” you emphasize. “Okay, well, we sleep together, as in, in the same bed. But we are fully clothed. And not the slightest bit interested in doing anything other than sleeping.”
“I thought you said you liked having your own space,” Victoria points out. “When was the first time you—uh…” she pauses to find the right words, “shared a bed?”
“A couple weeks ago. It’s really not so bad, I don’t know why you’re so hung up over it,” you say, lips pursed. You squeeze the phone between the side of your head and your shoulder, hands full of shopping bags, the string of the handles burning your skin. Maybe you should look into getting a personal shopper.
“I’m hung up over it because, for the longest time, you have sworn off Kim Taehyung. Called him dead to you. Insulted him every chance you get.”
You scoff. You don’t need reminding of how much you hated him, how much you can’t believe you have to spend the rest of your life with him. “It’s different now. We’re married. And he said he wasn’t sleeping well. I felt bad.”
“He wasn’t?”
“Enough about him,” you say, shutting her up. You don’t feel like talking about him with Victoria anymore. “Word through the grapevine says that your parents are actually thinking of letting you start your own company?”
It’s enough to distract Victoria. For the rest of the ride in the elevator, she talks animatedly about a new streaming service her parents are considering letting her launch, under their parent business, of course, but it’s her own company nonetheless. And you’re proud of her. Proud she could do something your parents would never dream of letting you do. Proud she could make that happen.
You push open the front door with the side of your hip after entering in the security code, phone still snug between your ear and your shoulder, when you hear Taehyung call out your name.
He comes into view from the kitchen, which surprises you because you have, on multiple occasions, made fun of how much of a disaster chef he is, especially because he’s admitted to you he’s not a very good cook.
“I made brownies,” he says, holding out a plate of the chocolate treats in front of you. Instinct has you dropping your bags on the floor by your feet and reaching out, but you eye him first, suspicious.
“I have to go,” you tell Victoria, hanging up before she even gets a chance to object to your sudden departure. “You made these?”
“Yes, I did,” Taehyung says, rather proud.
“And the kitchen is… still standing?” You ask, skeptical.
Taehyung frowns at you, clearly unimpressed. “How bad of a chef do you think I am?”
“Pretty bad,” you admit with a shrug.
Taehyung pouts sadly to himself for a moment. “These are good, I swear. Nothing weird in them like vegetables or anything either. I used a box mix.”
“No wonder they look so nice,” you comment snidely, hesitant hand reaching out to grab one. They feel like brownies. So that’s good.
“Hey, I was the one who had to crack the eggs and shit. Three eggs! And not one eggshell in the bowl!” Taehyung says, clearly very pleased with himself.
You laugh at his enthusiasm, taking a bite. It’s good. And exactly what you needed after a long day of shopping. “I’m proud of you. They taste good.”
“I knew you wouldn’t doubt me.” Taehyung grins.
“They’re really good, actually,” You amend, genuinely surprised. And the best part is that you can count at least ten brownies left on that plate, which means that you get at least five more. Which, if you had any less self-restraint, you would probably eat all at once within the day.
“I’m glad you like them. They’re all for us, you know. No one else to share them with,” he says.
“Honestly, I’m probably going to finish them by tonight. You’ll have to make more tomorrow,” you say sheepishly.
“We can make some together,” Taehyung suggests.
“I’m looking forward to it,” you respond. The words come off your mouth easily, tumbling from your lips without you having to think about it. You aren’t saying them because you have to. You’re saying them because you want to. Because baking with Taehyung doesn’t actually sound too bad. Especially if it means more brownies.
“You’ve, uh, you’ve got something,” Taehyung says, gesturing vaguely to the side of his lip.
“Oh, I do? Yikes,” you say, a little embarrassed. Your hand comes up to wipe at the left side of your mouth. “Is it gone?”
“Wait, here, let me do it,” Taehyung says, reaching out towards you. He presses his palm against the side of your face, cradling your cheek and jaw in his enormous hands, and all at once it feels like your skin is on fire.
Your body freezes up at the touch, at the way his thumb swipes at the corner of your mouth, right against your lips, wiping away nothing but a goddamn brownie crumb. You look at him, look right at him, how can you look anywhere else when he’s right in front of you like this, and it feels like you are caught in his gaze, a rain droplet trapped on a web, a bee stuck in its own honey. His big, brown eyes sparkle from the ceiling lights, a chocolate sky that mirrors the food he just made for you. He looks at you and his eyes are so soft, so open, so happy to be looking right back at you. God.
“There,” he says, a moment too late.
“Thanks,” you stammer out, speechless otherwise.
You both stand there, looking at each other, wordless expressions drawn all over your faces, no idea what to do next.
After a while, Taehyung breaks the silence. “Do you wanna order takeout tonight?”
“Okay,” you nod, still a little breathless. Taehyung smiles before retreating back to the kitchen, leaving you standing in the entranceway, shopping bags abandoned by your side.
You look over to where he’s vanished. There’s a part of you that wishes he hadn’t left. A part of you that makes you want to see him again.
Phone calls from your mother are never good. The last time she called… well, you know how that went. So when you see her contact information light up your home screen, it’s only instinct that you feel your heart rate spike.
“Hello?” The voice that comes out doesn’t even sound like yours.
There’s no good way to put what comes next. Your grandmother has died. Heart attack. The paramedics got there too late. It was over before it even started.
For a moment, for a split second, it feels like everything is frozen. Like the world has come to standstill. Your mother’s voice echoes in your ears, suspended in time, the words turning into stone as they crash onto the floor. And when they do, it is as if everything comes back to life.
Truth be told, you don’t know how long you stay there, sitting on the edge of the left side of the bed, your phone resting lifelessly in the palm of your hand. It feels at once like an eternity and only a second in time. You spoke to your grandmother two days ago. You had promised that you and Taehyung would visit her soon. How can this be happening?
Your phone buzzes relentlessly in your hands, condolences pouring in from every person in your contacts, sorry’s and heart emoticons and If you need anything, I’m always here’s filling up your screen. There’s a part of you that vaguely registers your mother, alongside some of the other members of your family, trying to call you. But nothing can seem to shake you.
Until—
“Y/N? You still up here?”
You hear Taehyung before you see him. Hear his voice, hear his footsteps, hear the door creak open as he enters your bedroom. Slowly, almost sluggishly, you twist around to look at him, the mere act knocking the wind out of you. Or maybe you were already breathless.
“Hey, you alright?” Taehyung knows instantly that something is wrong.
“My grandmother died.” The words sit heavy on your tongue. There’s no point in not telling him. He’ll find out soon enough. He’s… he’s family, isn’t he?
“What?” Taehyung freezes in place. “I—I’m so sorry to hear that, Y/N. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” you say, voice weak but steady. You blink up at him, once, twice, three times, and then suddenly you feel tears running down your cheeks.
Taehyung doesn’t say anything else. He rushes to your side and sits himself down on the bed next to you, arms wrapping around your body. And you don’t think about the fact that it’s him, about the fact that this is the closest the two of you have ever been. You just let yourself be engulfed in his frame, let yourself be enveloped in his hold as the tears stream down your skin, little hiccups jolting your throat. You close your eyes and press yourself into his arms, head resting against his chest, and wish so desperately that so many things about your life were just a little bit different.
It must be at least five minutes before either one of you dares to move. Your phone begins to rattle incessantly, that familiar and insistent buzz that the both of you are hard-pressed to ignore.
“I think you should answer that,” Taehyung whispers into your skin, lips right by your forehead.
“Yeah,” you sniffle, sitting up next to him and wiping the remnants of wetness by your eyes. Well, Taehyung’s seen you cry. There’s no going back now. “You’re probably right.” You look down at the phone. It’s your father.
“I’ll be downstairs, okay? Unless you want me to stay,” he offers, looking hesitant.
You shake your head. “No, it’s—it’s okay. I’ll be fine.”
“Call me if you need me,” he makes you give him a nod of understanding before he finally gets up, hands slowly removing themselves from your skin, leaving little sparks in their wake. Remnants of warmth. Suddenly, you feel much colder. Hardly a minute later he’s out of the room, and you can hear his distant footsteps as they make their way down the stairs.
Sighing, blinking, and swallowing all at once, you pick up.
The call passes by in a blur. Your father says the will will take at least half a year to be executed, but that the funeral is already being planned. Your grandmother had hoped you would eulogize her. You agree, but you have no idea what you will say. He says Taehyung is invited but does not need to come if he cannot make it. He says a lot of other things too, about your mother, about your cousins, about your aunts and uncles and your poor grandfather, who passed five years ago, but you can’t even remember them moments after he’s said them.
When he hangs up, the tears on your cheeks have dried, patches of them left along your skin. You head to the bathroom, getting off your bed for the first time that day, and try to wash away everything that has stained the morning. A part of you doesn’t even want to bother, just wants to slug downstairs and eat as much sugary cereal as you can get your hands on, but you can’t go down there looking like this. Looking so helpless.
By the time you reach the kitchen, Taehyung is already standing there, on the opposite side of the counter island, a big stack of pancakes in front of him. They look mouth-watering.
“Hey,” he says softly. “Thought you might want something to cheer you up.”
“Did you make these?” You ask, a little endeared. That was thoughtful of him.
“Yeah. They’re still warm,” Taehyung says. He holds out a fork.
You grin.
The funeral is a week later. It sucks in every way that something can suck. But not in the same way your wedding sucked, or even the announcement of your engagement. It sucks because it’s a funeral, because you have to stare down your grandmother’s casket when a part of you still doesn’t even believe that she’s gone. Because everyone there is so sad, so melancholy, dressed in all black and looking down at their feet. Because everyone is so sorry for you, so sorry for your loss, everyone has nothing but condolences to offer you. What will those do? They won’t bring her back. They won’t change things. They won’t make you feel even the slightest bit better.
Taehyung comes. He comes because he offers, and because you want him to. You want someone whose hand to hold. Want someone to smile at you when you’re speaking in front of your entire extended family and trying not to cry. You want someone who is familiar, and warm, and there for you.
And most of all, you want someone who won’t keep the conversation going when you get home.
“Do you wanna order Chinese?” He asks, coming into the living room, where you have been sulking on the couch ever since you stepped foot inside the door.
“That sounds nice,” you force out.
“Okay. Your usual?”
“Yes, please.” You don’t bother asking how Taehyung already remembers what you like to order when you’ve only gotten Chinese twice in the last three months.
“I’ll call them.” He disappears off into the kitchen.
What you do appreciate about Taehyung is how he has defaulted to food as a comfort measure, and how the thought alone genuinely brightens you up a little bit. You don’t know each other very well—still, after three months, you couldn’t even say his favorite color—but he is doing his best, and he is trying his hardest. In some ways, you were unlucky to marry him. To marry someone you didn’t love. To be forced into a union you had no say in, with someone you had so much antagonistic history with.
But in some ways, your luck has changed. In some ways, marrying him was perhaps the best thing that could happen to you. Taehyung is snarky, a little devilish, and absolutely full of himself, but he is not thoughtless. He is not heartless. He has proven that he is willing to put in the work. That he can grow to care. To change. To compromise. And isn’t that the luckiest thing you could have gotten?
“I’m sure you’re probably sick of hearing people tell you they’re sorry for your loss.”
His voice breaks your reverie, carrying throughout the wide open space of your living room. He’s grinning honestly where he stands, slowly making his way over to you.
“Kind of, yeah,” you admit. “It’s not going to bring her back. Most of those people probably don’t even mean it.”
“Don’t say that,” Taehyung says, sitting down next to you. “I’m sure they do.”
You look at him skeptically.
“I mean, they’re sorry for your loss because that loss is causing you pain. And that sucks,” Taehyung explains, albeit a little less eloquently than you thought he would. “I know it sucks for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t like seeing you sad,” Taehyung says honestly, shrugging to himself.
You scoff a little to yourself. “I would have thought my downfall would be the exact thing the great Kim Taehyung would wish for himself.”
“Maybe a couple of years ago.”
You narrow your eyes.
“Okay, maybe even a few months ago,” Taehyung admits with a laugh, making you smile, ever so slightly. “But it’s different now. I like it when you’re happy. When you’re snarky and funny and a little evil. Seeing you like this… I don’t like the way it makes me feel.”
“That’s called empathy,” you point out.
“I’m trying to tell you that seeing you sad makes me sad, stop being a smartass,” Taehyung chides, and that really makes you grin. “There. There’s that smile I was looking for.”
“You’re so annoying,” you say, even though there’s no malice behind it. You give him a little push, palms of your hand pressing lightly against his shoulder as you roll your eyes.
“Only for you,” he promises. He manages to grab a hold of your wrist as your hand meets his torso, pulling you into him as he wraps an arm around your torso. You gasp a little at the sensation, head falling against his body, fitting snugly in the crook of his neck. He gives your side a comforting rub. “I’m sorry today was so shitty.”
“It was,” you agree. “But Chinese food will make it a little bit better.”
Taehyung looks positively scandalized. “What? ‘Chinese food will make it better’? But not your loving, doting husband?”
You pretend to think for a little bit, tilting your head up to the sky as you tap your chin with your finger. “Okay. Maybe that, too,” you cave after a bit of waiting, just to be extra bothersome.
“That’s what I thought,” Taehyung says proudly, looking down at you, eyes sparkling. You can feel his grip tighten as he presses you against his body, letting you rest your head on his side. It feels like the longest hug ever, like you’re wrapped up in a weighted blanket. Only it’s not a blanket. It’s Taehyung. It’s your husband.
He’s your husband.
“Tomorrow will be better,” he says, and it sounds a lot like a promise.
You nod against him, letting your eyes drift shut. Things are pretty awful right now. Your grandmother’s dead. The funeral was the saddest family event you have ever attended. You have no idea what’s supposed to happen next.
But he’s right. He seems to be right a lot these days, actually.
Tomorrow will be better.
Taehyung lets you sleep in for the next few days. Next several days, actually. Every time you wake up it’s close to noon and your husband is nowhere to be seen, the right side of the bed cold to the touch. It’s nothing to be worried about, though, because you can still see the noticeable dip in the bed from where he lies upon it, sinking his weight into the mattress. Taehyung’s an early bird and you’ve been having fitful nights ever since your grandmother passed.
Today, you pull yourself out from underneath the covers around noon, sluggish and still tired, squinting as the near-afternoon light streams through the enormous windows of the bedroom. Taehyung must have thought to keep the curtains open today.
You pull on the first casual clothes you see in your shared closet, some wide-leg sweatpants and a drapey t-shirt, and trudge downstairs like a raccoon to a trash can, hoping to fish through the kitchen cabinets to find something to eat.
Taehyung is, as far as you can tell, nowhere to be seen. You can’t seem to hear him anywhere, and a part of you wonders where he’s at when you stumble upon the note left on the granite counter.
Had a meeting downtown, be back around 1! There should be smoked salmon and some cream cheese and bagels in the fridge.
Taehyung.
You chuckle to yourself as you read his flowy handwriting, amused that he thought to let you know of, of all things, the available breakfast foods in the kitchen. You check the clock. It’s nearly noon. Which means you have just over an hour of the house all to yourself.
Having the house to yourself for five minutes is infrequent enough as it is, let alone for a whole hour. So often is Taehyung around, somewhere, holing himself up in one of the dozens of rooms or mindlessly wandering down the hallways. And for how much Taehyung is present, the funny part is that you still have no idea what he gets up to most of the time. Despite your voluntary abandoning of the separate bedroom rule, the two of you are still firm proponents of the sanctity of your personal spaces. There are rooms in the penthouse Taehyung has never been in, rooms filled with your clothes and makeup and accessories for when stylists come over before an event. A sewing room that you had specifically asked your parents for, because a part of you never let go of that childhood dream of being a fashion designer.
And there are rooms in the penthouse that you have never been in. Rooms with dark wooden doors that have always been kept closed, that you have never stepped foot in. It’s not that you aren’t curious as to what Taehyung gets up to. He could have a goddamn evil lair in one of those rooms and you would be none the wiser. But you don’t go, because he doesn’t go into your rooms. Because you two, despite all the vows you have broken, promised each other you wouldn’t.
An hour to yourself is almost a good enough excuse for you to head back up to the bedroom and take a nap. Not that you don’t get enough sleep on a regular basis, or that you even had a fitful night last night—hell, you woke up near noon today and already you want to go back to sleep—but what else is there to do when he’s not around? What new freedoms have suddenly been given to you?
You head back upstairs, much less groggy after that delicious bagel of yours, when you catch a whiff of what smells like wet paint coming from down the hallway. It’s potent and immediately invades your senses, prompting you to wonder if that has always been there, or just magically appeared. Maybe you were so sleepy earlier, you didn’t notice it.
Well, you notice it now. Unable to help yourself, you start to wander down the hallway, towards the source of the smell. God, it stinks. It takes you back to those days in middle school, when you would spray paint projects inside a tiny little classroom, have to step outside for fifteen minutes while you cracked the windows and aired it out. It gets stronger the further down the corridor you go, like a thick, smelly cloud stationed firmly within the walls of the penthouse. And then you realize where it’s coming from.
It’s an art studio.
A very messy art studio, you amend to yourself, as you peek inside. The door is wide open, and all of the windows are popped too, but the extra air circulation doesn’t seem to have made a dent in the scent. And all over the floor, the walls, and the tables are canvases covered in paint, denim jackets and pants and shirts with these wide, unafraid brushstrokes. Open cans of spray paint lie discarded on the hardwood floor stained with splotches of red, yellow, and green.
Is this what Taehyung does in his free time? Is this where he goes, this bright, sunny room at the end of the second floor hallway? Is this what he is making?
You look down in awe at the clothes resting on the floor, splayed out to maximize dry time. Abstract faces, landscapes, and words are painted onto the backs of jackets, the fronts of old white t-shirts. What hasn’t made it onto the clothes has been put on canvases instead, blurs of color mixed together in this purposeful pattern, confidence emanating from every stroke, every dot. It’s not art in the way that the gorgeous landscapes of Monet, the picture-perfect portraits of Kahlo, the messy, unplanned splatters of Pollock are. It’s art in a different way. In a Taehyung way.
Who knew he loved it so much?
You almost feel like an invader encroaching on his territory when you lean down to start cleaning up some of the mess, throwing out empty spray-paint cans and tossing out grey paint water. You don’t dare touch any of the work, don’t dare try to move it. You do what you can, washing out the brushes resting in the water and cleaning up the wet splotches of paint on the hardwood. Over time, the thick scent of still-wet paint slowly fades, disappearing out the window as the fresh afternoon air seeps in. And you stand there, in a room full of art, in a room full of pieces that Taehyung has undoubtedly poured his heart into creating, and you smile to yourself.
That’s how Taehyung finds you ten minutes later, peering into the room after declaring that his meeting had ended early.
“Thought I’d find you in here,” Taehyung says with a grin as you jump at the sound of his voice, eyes widen when you turn around to see him standing by the door.
“Oh, hey,” you say sheepishly. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Maybe because this is the farthest room in the house from the front door,” Taehyung teases lightly, coming up behind you. “I see you found my studio.”
“I know I’m not allowed in here,” you admit.
Taehyung scoffs. “Who says?”
“Didn’t we both agree on that?”
He shrugs. “Sort of. I think we just reached an unspoken understanding we wouldn’t invade each other’s personal space. But it was not in the fine print, no.”
“The fine print of what?”
“That deal we made.”
Right. That deal you made, four months ago, That deal, where the two of you agreed to pretend to be in love with each other during public appearances so you wouldn’t get burned at the stake by your families. Where the two of you agreed not to interact with each other otherwise because you hated each other so much.
“Oh, yeah,” you say distantly, feeling naive for already forgetting about it. It doesn’t seem to have slipped Taehyung’s mind whatsoever.
“It’s okay, I don’t mind that you’re up here,” Taehyung says, interrupting that piercing little voice in the back of your head that is asking you why on earth you forgot about that deal in the first place.
“Yeah, I—” You scratch at the nape of your neck, trying to find the words to say. “It just smelled like paint, so I wanted to see what you get up too. And it’s this, apparently.” You motion vaguely to the entire room.
“You sound… surprised,” Taehyung muses correctly.
“I guess I am,” you surmise. “I’m rather impressed, too, actually.”
“Really?” It’s Taehyung’s turn to sound surprised.
“Yeah,” you tell him honestly, looking into his eyes. “I—you know, I just came in here because the entire hallway smelled like wet paint and I wanted to know why. But I didn’t know you loved art so much.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Taehyung points out.
You suppose that’s true. You don’t know his favorite color. His favorite song. His favorite book. For a long time, you didn’t know what he got up to on his side of the penthouse. You don’t know how he met his friends. What he studied in university. Who he has loved in the past. Who he loves now. You don’t know why he does the things he does, and why he doesn’t do the things he doesn’t do.
But you do know his Chinese takeout order.
And you do know his hobbies. Well, one of them, at least.
Who’s to say you can’t learn more?
“Well,” you start with a smile. “I’m your wife, aren’t I? Shouldn’t I begin to learn?”
Taehyung picks up what you’re putting down instantly, grinning in response. “Only if you’ll tell me things about you, too,” he requisitions.
“I will,” you promise. It’s the easiest one you’ve ever had to make.
His face is light, bright, bathed in the rays of the afternoon sun. His eyes shimmer as they meet yours, golden flecks more pronounced like this, in this gorgeous, open space, daylight streaming through the windows. Looking at him makes you feel like you are surrounded by warmth, makes you feel like the sun is opening its arms out to you. He has always been gorgeous. Beautiful. But looking at him like this, standing in the middle of a room filled with all the things he loves, a yellow halo surrounding him—he is ethereal.
Taehyung smiles. “Then I will, too.”
The hand-holding comes naturally tonight.
The funny thing is, actually, you don’t need to hold hands at this gathering. It’s not an event. Or a public appearance. It’s not even a business dinner. It’s your aunt’s sixtieth birthday party, reserved exclusively for family. Isn’t that strange? That Taehyung is, technically, family now?
For so long you had vowed to stay as far away from him as possible. Vowed to stick it to him whenever and wherever you could, do anything you could to get on his nerves, rile him up. Vowed that when you, one day, took over your family affairs, you would never, ever invite him. Make it known that he wasn’t to be a part of your life. And yet, here you are. Clinging to him despite being well-acquainted with—loved by, even—every other person in the room. Holding his hand like a goddamn lifeline.
To be fair, Taehyung doesn’t look a hair out of place here. Dressed relatively casually, a smart sweater with a collared shirt underneath it, he smiles warmly at all of your relatives and presents your aunt with a beautiful and very expensive scarf the two of you had commissioned from a designer in Italy, which she absolutely loves. She pinches his cheek and proceeds to wear it for the rest of the night.
“Damn,” you murmur to yourself as you wander around your aunt’s house, hand wrapped around his arm. “This place hasn’t changed a bit.”
“When was the last time you were here?” Taehyung asks.
The question actually makes you think for a moment. “I don’t know, maybe five years ago? Last couple of birthdays I was overseas or in school. Had to send her a card.”
“Bet your parents were real pleased with that,” he jokes, making you both laugh. At least you two will always be able to share your experiences of domineering and influential parents with each other.
“Oh, I’m sure. Just as pleased as they were when they realized how much we hated each other.” You expect that little jest to elicit a laugh out of Taehyung as well, but he just smiles tightly, huffing out a breath of acknowledgement.
“Eh, it’s not like that now, is it?” He offers up.
“I suppose not,” you muse, sitting down together on her ancient grandma couch in the living room. No matter how rich your family gets, she’ll never get rid of this thing, that’s for sure.
One thing you’ve picked up over time is that, for every second Taehyung spends basking in the spotlight, he spends an equal amount of time lingering by the wall, watching the rest of the world turn without him. He’s an observer. He is one by nature, feeling an irresistible pull to understand humans in a way only artists could ever do. He sits down next to you and watches your family in an environment where they can relax, where they can feel comfortable and be casual with one another.
Very seldom have you ever brought friends to events like these. Small family affairs. But Taehyung isn’t a friend, is he? No, he’s your husband. He belongs here just as much as you do.
“My family seems to really like you,” you point out. Not that anybody has ever harbored as much disdain for him as you. Your parents called him respectable and polite when they told you you were to be wed. Your grandmother had said he was a dashing young man. He doesn’t exactly have to reach far to be loved around here.
“That’s my job, isn’t it?” He replies snidely.
“Oh, just take the compliment,” you say with a roll of your eyes. Taehyung always has to be so difficult. “I’m surprised you aren’t nervous as hell. Last boyfriend I brought to meet my parents was shaking in his Louis Vuitton shoes.”
“Last boyfriend, huh?” Taehyung’s interest has been sufficiently piqued. “And, uh, how many of those have you had?”
You narrow your eyes at him suspiciously, smile twitching on your lips. “Wouldn’t you like to know, Mr. Heartbreaker.” Pretty rich of Taehyung to be asking you such a question when he’s probably had more girlfriends than you can count on both hands. “Not as many as you’ve had girlfriends, that’s for sure.”
“Guess I’m a lot different than all those trashy guys you’ve dated, aren’t I?” He asks, an eyebrow raised as he looks at you.
“You are?”
Taehyung nods assertively. “Well, yeah. First of all, I’m your husband. Second of all, your parents love me. Third of all, you love me, too.”
You scoff. “Don’t humble yourself. You don’t know me that well.”
“Speaking of which,” Taehyung says, eyes wide as he points to you knowingly, “how about you tell me a little fact about yourself? It’s my job to learn about you, isn’t it?”
“That is my line, watch it,” you sneer, pointing back at him. You wrack your brain for a fact that you can tell him, something more exciting than your favorite color but less weird than one of those terrible icebreaker exercises you had to do in college seminars. Something that has pertinence to who you are. Who you’ve become. “Alright. I used to want to be a fashion designer when I was little.”
Now that catches Taehyung off guard. “Really?” He says, genuinely intrigued.
You shrug. “Yeah. I learned to sew when I was really little. Been tailoring and hemming clothes all my life. But I always wanted to design my own stuff.”
“Is that what’s in your room?” Taehyung asks. “A sewing machine?”
“Bingo.”
“Wow,” Taehyung says. “I didn’t know that.”
“Isn’t that the whole point of this exercise?” You say, just to be smart.
Taehyung shakes his head, eyes rolling.
“What about you?” You ask. You can’t imagine what he’ll say. Astronaut. Veterinarian. Or, if he really wants to surprise you, a business executive.
“A museum curator.”
It is an answer that simultaneously surprises and doesn’t surprise you at all.
“Fitting,” you muse. “You could have put your own art on display.”
“Pretty sure that’s, like, super unethical,” Taehyung reminds you.
“So? You’re rich. Start your own museum. Put your own art on display. Live your dream,” you amend. “It shouldn’t be holed up in that studio of yours forever. It deserves to be seen.”
Taehyung smiles at you. “You think so?”
You nod. “Of course. You create beautiful things, Tae.” It’s the first time you’ve ever called him that. And that is not lost on Taehyung, either.
“Thank you,” he says softly, blinking as he looks at you. He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t need to.
Later that night, when everyone’s gotten a few drinks into their systems and Bruce Springsteen is playing low on the stereo, Taehyung disappears off towards the bathroom, no doubt because of the excellent soup that was served that night. All by your lonesome, you feel a little stranded, surrounded by your old relatives dancing on the hardwood floor of the dining room, your other cousins too young to actually spend time with.
In the commotion, your mother comes up to you, swirling a rather large glass of red wine in her hand.
“Where’s Taehyung?” She asks.
“Bathroom.”
“No wonder you were alone,” she says with a hearty laugh. “The two of you have been glued to each other’s sides all evening.”
“He’s my husband,” you offer as an explanation.
“I know, I know,” she says, shaking you off with a smile. Your mother is a lot more casual once she’s had her fill of wine, no doubt her favorite, Bordeaux. A lot more loving, too. “You really made your grandmother proud, you know? She loved you so much.”
“I know,” you say, trying not to get choked up at the mere mention of your grandmother.
“She was so happy to see you with Taehyung. It made her feel safe that you would be taken care of,” she continues on, barely paying you and your swimming eyes any attention. “She would be so happy to see you with him now, too. How much you love her.”
“I miss her,” you hiccup out, trying to compose yourself. Nothing kills a birthday party like some sad sack crying over her deceased grandmother.
“I know, darling,” your mother says, calling you by a nickname she has hardly used ever since you turned eighteen. She squeezes you tightly, a small hug of comfort. “I miss her, too.”
Someone calls your mother’s name, distracting her as she wanders off to your uncle, who is asking what the best way to cut the three-tiered cake on the dining room table is. She bids you a goodbye before disappearing towards the kitchen, no doubt ready to make the cutting of the cake an affair all on its own.
Taehyung comes back soon after, spotting you instantly as you stand around in the living room.
“Hey,” he says, noticing the wet shimmer of your eyes. “You alright?”
You nod, feeling better already now that he has returned. Now that he is by your side. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“I hope those tears aren’t because you missed me,” he says, wiping away a stray one that has escaped from your eyes. You close them as his thumb brushes against your upper cheek, your eyelashes, opening them only when you’ve felt his touch vanish from your skin, leaving little sparks in their wake.
“No,” you say. But the night makes you honest, and a couple of drinks, even more so. “But I’m glad you’re here.”
Taehyung smiles. “Me, too.”
For all those days you have spent together, never have you and Taehyung had a night in. Which isn’t necessarily completely surprising, considering how many evening events the two of you have had obligations to attend, considering your differing work schedules and meeting times. Considering that, for a very long time, the two of you had no desire to spend any time with each other at all.
But tonight, there is nothing on your calendar. No galas, no dinners, no meetings, no schedules. There is only Taehyung, who has spent the entire afternoon up in his studio, inhaling spray paint fumes and doing what he loves. And there is only you, who has spent the entire afternoon wondering what the hell you’re going to do tonight when there is nothing else planned.
You knock on the door to his studio, catching him right as he’s finishing up another piece. This one is a single flower, painted in broad, confident strokes, bright green and red and sunflower yellow decorating the canvas.
“Hey, what’s up?” He asks, turning around to face you.
“Wanna order takeout tonight?” You suggest.
Taehyung grins.
Thirty minutes and your favorite Chinese food later, you and Taehyung have settled onto the couch, trays of dumplings and noodles and rice in front of you, an unfunny movie playing in the background.
You can’t remember the last time the two of you sat on this couch together. Maybe that night you had made the deal? Perhaps not even then. It wouldn’t at all surprise you if you found out that this was the very first time you and Taehyung have sat together on your couch, in your living room, in your house. So often is it occupied by others—Victoria, who sometimes comes over to ooh and ahh at your closet, Jimin, Jungkook, and Hoseok, who sit on this couch and play FIFA like it’s their job, your mother, when she wants to make herself at home in a place that doesn’t belong to her—but never you. Never you and him.
“This is kinda nice, isn’t it?” You ask, swallowing a bite of dumpling.
“Chinese food is always nice,” Taehyung responds over a mouthful of cold noodles.
“Not that,” you say with a sigh, “this. Sitting together. Watching this shitty movie.”
“It’s not that shitty,” Taehyung tries to reason. On screen, the main character is getting pied in the face during some weird college fundraiser. “Okay, it’s a little shitty. But it’s good background noise, right?”
You nod halfheartedly. “I guess.” Silence. You take another bite of your dumpling, not really sure how to continue the conversation. “We don’t really get to do this a lot, you know? Sit and eat dinner and watch a movie together. Like a date.”
“We’re on a date now, are we?” Taehyung muses, eyeing you snarkily.
“Isn’t that what this is?” You retort.
He shrugs. “I suppose it is.”
“Tell me another fact about you,” you request, looking over to him where he sits on the opposite side of the couch.
“About what?”
“Anything.”
Taehyung pauses, ponders for a moment. But he could never say anything wrong. Not when there is still so much you don’t know about him. Still so much you want to learn, so much you want to commit to memory. For so long you have stared at the planes of his face, the curve of his nose, the twinkle in those dark brown eyes. Those you will always remember. But what about who he is? What he loves? Those are things you still don’t know.
“The very first time I met you,” Taehyung begins, “I asked Jimin what your name was.”
“When was that?” You ask. Despite you being someone who has spent the better part of the last several years vowing never to give Taehyung the time of day, you sure don’t remember when it all started.
“That debutante ball,” Taehyung remembers fondly, “when we were fifteen. I asked Jimin what your name was because I wanted to ask you to dance.”
“Shut up, no you didn’t,” you say with a scoff.
“It’s true. You were standing there in that poofy white dress and I wanted to ask you to dance,” Taehyung points out. The fact that he even remembers what you were wearing is shocking.
Who knew. Who knew, back then, that you would one day grow up to marry him.
“And what did I say?” You demand more.
Taehyung laughs at the memory. “I came up to you, and I asked you if you wanted to dance, and you said, and I quote, ‘Who are you?’”
“No,” you say, aghast at your own behavior. Were those really the first words you ever said to KIm Taehyung?
“You did. Don’t you remember?”
You think back. Think back to every year you have ever known Taehyung, every year you have spent scowling at him from across ballroom floors, making some snide remark as you pass by each other in the hallway. Every year you have spent cursing his existence, willing him away from you so he could bother someone else. Every year you have listened to rumor after rumor of girlfriend after girlfriend. You think back and somewhere, somewhere in there, in those dusty corners of your brain and cobwebbed boxes of your heart, is that first memory of Taehyung, too.
Of him standing there in some generic black suit, black hair swept over his forehead, shoes too big. Of him coming up to you, trying to be as suave as a fifteen year old could be. Of you saying to him, instead of a hello, or even a what’s your name, “who are you?”
Of him saying—
“And you said, ‘your dream come true’.” Like a dam bursting open, the memories flood back to you all at once. “I remember that.”
Taehyung laughs out loud at the thought of him saying something so cheesy. “Unsurprisingly, you didn’t want to dance with me.”
“You were so—” you begin, but you don’t have the words. Don’t have the words to express how you felt about him that night. Don’t have the words to express how you feel about him now. Thinking about this, talking about it, it is a bridge. A bridge between what was then and what is now. A bridge between who Taehyung was and who you were and who Taehyung is and who you are. “—so unthinkable. I couldn’t believe you had come up to me and said that. I couldn’t believe you had the audacity. But something about that night made me remember you. Made me remember your name.”
“You thought about me after that?” Taehyung asks. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
“There is something about you that is unforgettable,” you say, honest and real and true. What else can you tell him? The truth is that you have always thought about him. Whether you liked him or not.
You finish your dinner and place your trays on the end tables next to you, stacking your empty bowls and plates on top of one another as the movie rumbles on in the background.
“It is kind of a shitty movie,” Taehyung admits after a while of being wholly unenthused.
“Yeah,” you agree. “But it’s good background noise.”
Taehyung laughs at your little mockery, warm and deep and from his belly. You look at him. He feels so far away, on the other side of the couch. Feels like he’s miles apart from you. You have spent countless nights clinging to his harm, hand gripped tight in his. And sitting like this, a full couch cushion of space between the two of you—it isn’t enough anymore. So you inch closer.
And closer.
And a little closer.
Until you’re pressed up against his side, legs touching as they rest neatly in front of you, backs stick straight as you stare at the television.
Taehyung holds his arm up. An open invitation.
Without asking, you lean into him, resting your head in the crook of his shoulder, in the space right underneath his jaw. You pull your feet up onto the couch and curl into his frame, pressing yourself against him. He is warm and firm and inescapable. He smells of coffee and paint and Chinese spices. He wraps his arm around you and pulls you in, as if there were any other place you’d rather be.
You sit like that for a while. Wrapped up in each other. Lazing around on the couch as the stars twinkle above your head. The movie ends and the two of you don’t even bother skipping the credits, letting them and the cheesy 80’s pop song play on, a distant soundtrack.
“I never thought any of this would happen,” you breathe out.
Taehyung looks down at you curiously. “What? This?”
“All of it,” you admit. “Us. Getting married. That stupid tabloid picture. My grandmother. This. It’s all so new.”
“New things will happen all the time,” Taehyung muses aloud. “We can’t help when things change.”
“You don’t have any regrets?” You have plenty. Regrets that you’ll never become the CEO you wanted to be in college. Regrets that you’ll never become the fashion designer you wanted to be as a little girl. Regrets that you will come to resent this marriage, resent Taehyung more than you have in years past, all because you had no choice. Regrets that your grandmother couldn’t see you now. Regrets that there were so many things in your life you could have changed, but didn’t.
“I thought I did,” Taehyung tells you. “I wanted to spend more time with my friends. I wanted to major in art in college. I didn’t want to marry you. I know you didn’t want to marry me.” He looks down and you look up at the same time, eyes locking, inches apart. “But looking back on it, I’m happy where I am. With what I have.”
“I never thought it could ever be like this,” you say, words falling off your tongue before you even ask them to.
“What?”
“Us.”
There’s no need to elaborate. Taehyung understands. He understands that, half a year ago, you both would have thrown yourselves into a volcano before holding hands with each other. He understands that getting over your hatred for each other seemed like an absolutely insurmountable task. He understands that you had never wanted to marry each other, that you couldn’t believe you would have to spend the rest of your lives with each other.
And he understands that now, things are different.
“I’m glad things happened the way they did,” Taehyung begins. “I’m grateful for us.”
You press yourself impossibly closer to him, feel his grip tighten around you. Like this, you can hear his heartbeat. Hear it thump like a drum, steady and firm and unwavering. His heart beats against his chest and you wonder.
You wonder if he can hear the way yours beats for him, too.
There were lots of things that made your night in together special. But one of them is the glaring fact that you don’t get them very often. That their infrequency makes them all the more valuable.
This has become blatantly obvious to you, because right now you are not spending a night in together. Right now you are stuck at a gala that you have to attend for the sake of business, drinking thin flutes of champagne and mingling with people you barely speak to.
The one good thing about nights like these is that Taehyung looks positively gorgeous in suits. He sort of always has, but you’d never admit that to his face. At least not until now. And as his wife, you are lucky enough to have a front-row seat.
“I can feel you staring at me all the way from over here,” Taehyung deadpans as he helps himself to a chocolate-covered strawberry from the buffet table.
You’re too obvious to have any shame about it. “What can I say, I like the view.”
“Hard to believe I was the once the one being shouted at for being inappropriate in public,” Taehyung says with a shake of his head. He bites into the strawberry and eats it all in a single go, tossing the stems into a bin nearby as you join back up in the heart of the crowd.
“It’s only inappropriate if other people hear,” you tease, letting him guide you, hand intertwined with yours, towards an empty corner where the two of you can snuggle up to one another in (relative) peace.
“I don’t think the champagne was very good for your filter, Miss Y/N,” Taehyung hisses into your ear, warm breath tickling your skin.
“Don’t you mean Mrs. Kim?” You pose, an eyebrow raised.
That seems to do something to Taehyung. It’s not very bright in here, with it being nighttime and all, but even still you can see the way his eyes darken. See the way his lips curl upwards, feel the way his grip on you tightens. It sparks something within you. Something deep in the pit of your belly.
Something that makes you want more.
You test the waters. “Mrs. Kim has a nice ring to it, don’t you think, Tae?”
Taehyung looks about a moment away from losing control. But instead of slamming you against the wall in front of all of these people and giving you what you really want, he growls out, low and powerful, “Home. Now.”
He doesn’t need to tell you twice.
You hail your car outside of the venue and it’s all the both of you can do to not jump on each other right then and there, in the backseat of this giant black van, overcome with want, with need, with everything in between. Taehyung’s leg bounces impatiently the entire ride back, and the feeling of your hand pressed against his doesn’t seem to be calming him down. He pulls you close to him in the backseat of the car, a hand resting on your thigh. You eye him carefully, as if challenging him to be any more daring. He grins.
Home cannot come soon enough. The two of you tumble out of the backseat and into the elevators, where you mash the top floor button after entering in the security access code, desperate and shameless. The ride seems to take hours, and the heat that surrounds you practically smothers you, covers you, fills up your lungs and chokes you.
There is nothing left by the time you reach your door. The moment it slams shut behind you Taehyung presses you up against the back of it, pins you against the wood as he hovers over you, eyes tracing your lips.
“Tell me something,” he demands.
“What?”
“A fact. Something I don’t know.”
It doesn’t take much thinking. “I want you,” you breathe out, watch it hit his skin, watch the way his eyes glint in the light of the entranceway. “Please, Tae. I want you.”
It’s enough for him.
This is not the first time you and Taehyung have kissed. The first time was nearly five months ago, in a chapel, at an altar, surrounded by hundreds of people. It was so unfun that you seem to have eradicated the mere thought from your memory. But you remember that feeling from that day. That feeling you got when you pressed your lips against his, cemented your marriage with a kiss. That heat. That sting.
Kissing him now—that feeling has returned tenfold. When his lips meet yours, it feels like fire is rushing through your veins, setting alight every nerve it passes, unforgiving and relentless. His enormous hands come up to cup your jaw, fingers pressing against the skin of your cheeks as they pull you close to him, keep you trapped in his hold. This is not the first time you and Taehyung have kissed but it feels like it is—it feels like there is a lotus blooming on a lilypad in your heart, it feels like you have been struck by lightning, it feels like nothing else you have ever felt before. It feels brand new.
Pressing back against him, he slowly releases you from the cage he has created against the door, spinning around so the two of you can tumble up the stairs and into your bedroom, unable to resist sneaking in pecks here and there as you make your way upstairs. Every step you take you stop, giggle as he presses you against the railing just so he can steal another kiss from you, put his hands all over your body. It’s a wonder the two of you even make it into your bedroom at all.
When you do, however, all bets are off. Taehyung presses you against the still-made bedsheets with a glint in his eye and a growl on his lips, pupils blown wide as he stares down at you, at your body.
"Aren't you a sight? Laid out so pretty for me," he purrs, robbing a breath from you.
It's a tone you have yet to hear from him. You find yourself growing impossibly hot under his stare, burning with an uncharted desire.
You can hardly wrap your brain around it. Here you are, craving the man you had spent the better half of your young adult life loathing. Maybe it’s the champagne; maybe it’s the way his fingers are running slowly up the length of your clothed torso. Whatever it is, your stomach does flips, unfamiliar to the way your body preens under his touch.
"Don't let it go to your head," you tease, simply because you could.
Taehyung hums disapprovingly, pressing kisses into your neck as he grabs one of your thighs and wraps it around his waist, riding your dress up in the process.
You sigh, exposing your neck further for him as he paints bruises into your neck. It feels like just yesterday you had called him out at the altar for his habit of sporting the very same marks you were soon to wear.
Perhaps you should have thought twice about letting the man you had married purely under business pretenses press his hips against your clothed center, but as he rolls his into yours, your mind falls blank, silencing any and all reservations you should have.
Whimpering, you beckon his mouth back onto yours, tongue meeting his wantonly.
You feel his fingers creep up the outside of your bare thigh, thrilling you in the most primal way. Reaching the band of your underwear after what felt like entirely too long, he runs the pad of his thumb against the lacy fabric.
You could scream. He is doing this on purpose. He must be. Surely he knows how badly you were aching for him? For him to fill you– whatever the manner may be.
You let out a whine before you can help yourself, frowning as Taehyung looks pleased with himself, confirming his knowledge of your prolonged pleasure.
"What's that? Did you say something?" he mocks, looking cruel and yet strikingly gorgeous as he smirks above you.
"God, you're irritating,” you huff, hips jerking up against his as he pulls at the band of your underwear, the elastic snapping back into the flesh of your hip. "Just fuck me already."
He tuts, clearly unimpressed by your impatience, "Now, where is the fun in that?"
Your eyes flutter shut as his fingers suddenly snake their way between your thighs. Mouth falling ajar, you grip his shoulders as he runs his middle finger against your clothed slit, trailing up and down your warmth. To think he was still dressed while he was touching you like this...
"No... I think I'll take my time with you," he says.
You mew against his hand, arousal forming against his long digits' ministrations. You have to hand it to him. Taehyung knows what he’s doing. The life of a bachelor has seemingly served him well.
You aren’t usually vocal in bed, but the way he’s purring words of filth to you, breath hot against the shell of your ear as he tells you how hot and slick your pretty pussy felt against his hand, has you gasping and sputtering, your own fingers wrapping around his wrist.
The fabric of your panties provides a friction that toys the line of pleasure and pain, making you thrust up to meet his motions, your humility slipping from you.
Taehyung watches you intently, cock growing hard under the constraints of his dress pants. You look better than he could've imagined, eyes watering and body shivering under his touch, his fingers soaking with your arousal. He can only imagine what you'd feel like with his fingers fully buried into you, rocking them against your velvety walls.
He lets out a groan of his own, turned on by the idea of you fucking yourself onto his fingers, whimpering out his name in ecstasy.
There’s this part of you that faintly recognizes that Taehyung has done this plenty of times before. Plenty of times with plenty of other lovers. But there is a different part of you, that part that bursts with light and hope, that reminds you that he was never married to those other ones. That his allegiance lies with you. And that thought, knowing that deep within you, he is yours, makes your jaw fall slack, pretty noises tumbling from your lips and your thighs clamping around him.
You were close, closer than you care to admit. Every touch against you is careful yet deliberate as he reads the signs of your body, the way it keens and arches into him, offering you words of encouragement as your climax finally hits.
"That's right. Good girl. Let go for me," Taehyung coos, eyes dark and focused on your writhing form.
You cry out into the familiar space of your shared room, head thrown back as you ride out the high, letting it wrack your body, send jolts throughout your veins.
You barely have time to catch your breath when he presses his mouth back onto yours, kiss still as eager as it was when you both first entered your home. You are alight with satisfaction as he pulls away to press a trail of kisses against your jaw.
"I want—f-fuck," you stutter as he finds your already hypersensitive clit once more, rolling his thumb over your now soaked panties in tantalizing circles, "want to make you feel good, too."
Admittedly, this fantasy had crossed your mind once or twice, brought on by the way he carried himself in a suit and the way his large fingers wrapped around the champagne glass; confident, collected, and entirely charming. Who are you to shy away from a man like him? He certainly has always been rather good-looking.
He pauses his motions, pulling his hand back to sit on your waist. Your dress is of the finest, most delicate satin, and after tonight's activities, completely wrinkled. You can almost hear your stylist's cries of dismay. Whatever. You have a steamer. And why focus on the dress when it’s obvious the two of you are focused on what lies underneath it?
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." You nod, skin still burning from your past climax.
Helping you back up, Taehyung stands. You lick your lips as you sit back up on the edge of the bed, watching intently as he unbuckles his belt, audibly hissing as his pants fall to his ankles, cock visibly straining against the fabric of his underwear. Thank God you don’t have to stand. With the way your thighs still felt weak and how your husband looks like a goddamn Adonis towering above you? Your legs surely would give out underneath you if you rose.
Brows furrowed, Taehyung palms over himself briefly before pulling down the waistband of his underwear, his painfully hard member slapping against his torso.
Your eyes widened on instinct. While the last thing you wanted to do was help inflate Taehyung's already large ego, you were certainly impressed at his size; thick and girthy, his tip red and shining with precum.
He couldn't help but smirk, thoroughly pleased by the way you stared at him unabashedly, chest rising and falling heavily.
"Open up for me," he orders.
And who are you to deny a request from your dear husband?
Your pretty lips wrap themselves around his engorged tip, all remnants of lipstick long gone by now. Taehyung hisses, a hand finding the side of your jaw as you run your tongue against the underside of his cock.
"Fuck, you're so pretty," he grunts, fighting off the urge to grip the back of your head and fuck your throat. As much as he'd love your have you choking and drooling all over his cock – and boy would he – he lets you set your own pace, not wanting to overwhelm you.
It doesn't take long for you to sink your mouth further down, however, clearly set on making Taehyung feel as good as you could.
A low moan erupts from his throat, digits pressing into your jaw in request to take more of him in, which you happily oblige.
You had your eyes trained on him, completely obsessed with the way he panted through pink lips, hissing slightly every time your tongue rolled over his sensitive tip.
Lolling his head to a side, his eyes meet yours, gaze primal and wolfish as he watches the way you worked his cock.
"Doing so good, love. Doing so fucking good for me,” he murmurs.
You hum against his skin at the sound of the sudden pet name, an unfamiliar feeling fluttering in your belly. You push aside the feeling, focusing instead on the way he grunts at the new sensation you had just given him.
Giggling, you pull off his cock, opting instead to press a kiss against his leaking tip, making sure to hold his eyes as you run kitten licks against it.
"God, you're such a tease." He shakes his head in disbelief.
He looks so good above you, shivering and cursing out praises on how good your mouth feels, how well you take his cock. Running your tongue along the length of his shaft, you become certain that this is a display you can’t imagine yourself ever getting tired of. But you have all the time in the world, right?
"Y/N,” he gasps suddenly, hips jerking towards your face. "Love, I'm gonna-- gonna cum."
"Cum in my mouth, please." Your voice was pleading and desperate. Taehyung had never heard such words spoken more sweetly.
"Fuck's sake."
You let out a yelp in surprise as his fingers work their way through your hair, bringing your head back down onto his cock. You relax, though, when you feel the hot ropes of his cum hit the back of your throat, your hands finding purchase on his thighs as you do your best to swallow it all down.
Pulling yourself off him, you let out a small cough, eyes watering slightly as you hadn’t managed to prepare yourself with a breath before his release. His large palm runs across the top of your head as you caught your breath, expression flickering with something unfamiliar. Could it be... fondness?
Your heart stammers at the thought as you stand, slowly stepping out of your dress, letting it drape off of your figure. Taehyung looks absolutely gobsmacked, pupils dark as he gazes at you, eyes unabashedly raking your body. He’s shameless.
You both are.
Slowly, you step towards him, fingers reaching out towards his shirt, carefully undoing the buttons as you gaze at each other, expressions unreadable.
"Tae?” You ask innocently, blinking up at him. “Fuck me?"
Your polite request makes Taehyung chuckle.
"Please?" You bring your bottom lip between your teeth, eyes blinking up at him adoringly for good measure. You reach the last button, let his dress shirt drape open. He brushes it off himself, stands there for a few seconds just to let the way you’re ogling his toned chest go to his head. At least he’s good-looking.
He sighs, probably contemplating some clever rebuttal, but eventually decides against it as his cock is already twitching back to life.
"Alright, love. Turn around. On your knees for me," He orders, making your stomach flip.
To your surprise, you are hardly in place when the warmth of his large hands finds the soft of your tummy, pressing you back into his chest as he pressed a peck to the back of your neck.
You squirm in his hold, whining as that same hand of his grabs hold of your breast, long digit rolling your nipple between their tips. You can’t help but press your ass back into him. His cock feels hot and heavy, pressing against the back of your thigh, making your pussy clench in anticipation.
You want him.
You want him so bad that you don't know what to do with yourself, shuddering as his free hand runs along the side of your ass, leaving scorching hot trails on your skin wherever he kneads into your flesh. He's touching you everywhere – everywhere but where you need him the most, and the arousal that drips down your thigh mocks you.
"Dammit, please!" You exclaim, running out of patience.
"Please what?" He says, an eyebrow arched.
You shiver, committing the way his middle finger traced your pelvic bone to memory forever.
You puff out a frustrated breath, nearly at your wit's end. "Please fuck me, Tae."
Taehyung pauses, grip on your breast and hip tightening as he lets out a moan. You let one out yourself as you feel him readjust, cock pressing against your slick entrance.
"Fuck, you sound so pretty when you say my name," He grunts. "Okay, baby. I'll fuck you. Begging so nicely for my cock."
You let out a squeak as you're suddenly pushed down onto your hands, back arching as he pushes his fat cock inside your heavenly cunt. He's thick, so thick, that you instinctively grip the sheet underneath you, fingers curled around them tightly as if it means to hold onto your sanity.
Taehyung lets out a shaky breath, angling your hips up so that you could take more of him.
"You feel—feel so good," he admits above you, and suddenly you wish you could see him. See the way his bangs stick to his damp forehead—see the way his tongue swipes over his bottom lip wickedly.
You let that thought go, however, as he thrust into you, making your jaw fall slack and eyes flutter shut. Profanities roll off your tongue unabashedly, helpless under the way his thick member pulls out of you, only to slam back into you.
You weren't expecting this. The way he stretches you out further than anyone had before. Your pussy clenches around him, reveling in the sweet, sweet burn.
He digs into the flesh of your hips, holding you steady as you mew and cry out, pushing your hips back in time to his, trying your best to meet his movements.
"Tae... fuck, fuck, fuck—"
He was filling you to the brim. Filling you tight and deep.
God, the way he was panting behind you was music to your ears. His cock pulses every time you call out his name, voice muffled and buried as you had your head pressed into the mattress, hair messy and bouncing with every hard thrust.
"S'good! Fuck... so, ah, big..." you cry out.
You feel drunk. Intoxicated off this beautiful man and the way he makes you feel a way only he can.
You nearly let out a sob as the rough pads of Taehyung's fingertips suddenly reach around you and find your neglected clit, rolling light circles on the soft and swollen bundle of nerves skillfully.
You are a mess, whimpering and drooling into your expensive sheets, and he filled every inch of you, leaving no place undiscovered. Your high nears, stewing on low heat somewhere near the pit of your belly, waiting for a chance to erupt and wash all over you. Taehyung must be close to, you realize, as his thrusts began to slow down, slamming into you roughly as if chasing after his high.
"Gonna take this load? Huh? Gonna let me cum inside your pretty little pussy?" His voice is straining, as if trying to breathe evenly but merely moments from falling apart.
If only you could formulate an intelligent response, but instead, you are a blubbering wreck, thighs shaking as they threatened to give out underneath you. But somehow, Taehyung knew. He had you. Quicking his motions against your delicate pearl, he could tell you were close too, and he was going to make sure you got there.
Suddenly, you're crying out and convulsing, tears brimming at the ends of your eyes as you feel Taehyung empty into you, collapsing onto his hands as well.
You feel his hot breath against the back of your neck as he pants, breath growing more and more even as the two of you regain control of your bodies and minds.
Pulling out of you, he plops down beside you, and for a moment, the two of you hold each other's gazes, eyes speaking in ways words never could.
Finally, after what feels both like an eternity and just a moment, you work up the courage to say something, moving closer to him as you place a hand on his chest, cushioning your chin as you rested on top of it.
"Psst," you beckon, voice hushed.
"Yeah?" His voice is husky and tired.
"I’m grateful, too."
"Huh?"
"I’m grateful for us, too."
Taehyung's gaze is soft, and it lingers on you for a second before the sides of his mouth curl up tenderly. He grins down at you, eyes drifting shut. You feel him squeeze you closer, pressing you against his skin. And then, you hear his breathing steady, see his lips part slightly.
You lean into his chest, eyelids fluttering. “Thank you, Tae.”
Not unlike the many other mornings you have awoken in this bed, when you open your eyes as the morning sunlight streams through the windows, Taehyung is nowhere to be found. The sheets on his side of the bed are flipped aside, revealing that soft outline of his body from the night before left imprinted into the sheets, a dip in the mattress where he slept. You had fallen asleep all wrapped up in each other, tangled up like vines, but must have separated sometime during the night. Distantly, you register Taehyung’s voice outside, notice his phone missing from his bedside table. He must be on an early morning call.
You check your phone for the time. Ten o’clock.
A late morning call, then.
Still basking in the afterglow of the night prior, you slowly inch your way out of bed, shivering as you pull the covers off you and scoot your legs around so they hang over the edge of the bed. You rub at your eyes until you faintly remember you did not take your makeup off last night, and when your hand comes away covered with black streaks and flecks of mascara, you wince to yourself. There goes five hundred dollars worth of a skincare routine.
After washing yourself up and applying as many serums as you can to your skin, you wrap yourself up in one of his button-up shirts, the torso so wide that it drapes over you. The tips of your fingers peek out from the ends of the sleeves, and you cross your arms lightly over your chest as you make your way to the door, ready to entice your husband back to bed for round two. What? It’s Saturday.
You peer around the door to find Taehyung standing a few feet away, facing away from you. He’s shirtless, and as his wife you have absolutely no problems ogling him, the toned curves of his back, the muscles in his arms. He’s always been a looker. You just finally have an excuse to look for yourself.
You approach him quietly, not wanting to interrupt nor broadcast your sex life to anybody on the other side who may be listening. Already, the idea of crawling back in bed together sends goosebumps along your skin, makes you giddy with anticipation. You’re just about to tap him on the shoulder, lips curled upwards in suggestion, when he says—
“And my inheritance? That’s secured now, right? Because I said I would pretend to be in love with her in public—?”
And it is as if Medusa herself appeared in this room, turning you to stone as your heart thuds to the floor, a hollow, empty noise.
You don’t hear the rest of Taehyung’s conversation. You don’t even hear the sound of your own heartbeat. This terrible, aching sound rings in your ears, silencing everything in its wake, drowning out even the sighs of your own breath. It is as if you have been frozen solid. As if you have been shot in the stomach. You stand there, feeling absolutely nothing, and all you can do is brace yourself for what is to come. Taehyung’s words were the knife but his next actions will be its removal, leaving in its wake an irreparable wound.
He turns around, casual and cool, voice still hushed. As if you were still asleep. As if you hadn’t heard anything at all. But when he twists his body and sees you standing there, staring back up at him, lips parted in shock.
“I’ll call you back,” he tells whoever was on the other side of the line, looking more panicked by the second. He opens his mouth so he can explain himself, but you don’t need him to. You’ve heard everything already.
“I should have known,” you say, feeling angry and betrayed and sad all at once. “I should have known it was all an act.”
“Y/N, wait, let me explain—”
“What is there to tell me, Taehyung? What are you going to say? That you didn’t mean it? That you thought I wouldn’t find out? That last night was just a one-off?” You demand. The heat from your veins hasn’t left. Still, it simmers through your blood, burning you up from the inside out. “That you didn’t want to lie to me?”
“It’s not like that and you know it,” Taehyung says defensively, brows furrowed. “Just give me a chance to explain myself.”
“Explain yourself? How you pretended, every day and every night, just so you could get some more money in your bank account? So you could make sure you would get your father’s business when he died?”
Taehyung bites back easily. “Don’t act like you weren’t also faking it at some point. I know you were almost removed from your grandmother’s will.”
Your tongue is bitter at the mention of your grandmother. As if Taehyung ever even knew her. “My grandmother has nothing to do with this.”
“Really?” Taehyung challenges. “So you wanting to stay in her will was just a little bonus, right?”
“Don’t,” you say sharply. “It’s different.”
“Different how?” Taehyung spits. “Because right now, to me, it looks pretty similar to what I’ve done.”
“My grandmother died months ago,” you remind him. Her will is no longer the question. It has been written, settled, and executed. There was no reason for you to continue playing along once she took her last breath. No reason—unless you wanted to. “Meanwhile you’ve been keeping your inheritance a secret from me this entire time.”
“We made a deal,” Taehyung says. “A deal that said we would both act happy and pretend to be in love because we both had things we needed to worry about. Family things. Money things. You were a part of this, just like I was. You pretended, too.”
“Well, maybe I stopped pretending!”
You can’t take it anymore. All this anger, all this emptiness, it’s been bubbling up inside you ever since you heard those first words come out of his mouth. It spills out of you all at once, an eruption from your lips, your heart’s doors bursting open. You have held his hand tightly in your own. You have pressed your lips to his. You have laid yourself bare in front of him. What is there left to protect? What part of you has not already been stained by him, by his touch, by the feeling of his fingers against your skin?
The hallway is silent, but you can hear your cry echo down the corridor. Hear the way it bounces along the walls before fading away.
“Maybe I stopped pretending,” you repeat, softer this time. You blink and already can feel the streaks along your skin, the tears falling from your eyes. “Did you ever think about that?”
“Y/N, what are you talking about?” Taehyung looks like he’s in disbelief. Like he cannot believe the words you are saying to him.
Well, that makes two of you.
“Can’t you see, Tae? Can’t you tell?” You ask, the nickname falling from your lips before you can even help it. You must remind yourself to change that, later. “I’m in love with you.”
They are words you have never said to someone before. Not even your old boyfriends. Words that you always knew you would reserve for someone special. Someone who would touch your heart and make it their own, someone who would leave imprints of their fingers against your chest. Someone who would brighten you up from the inside out, leave you bursting with light.
Ironic, that Taehyung has become that someone. When he is the one person you never thought could.
When he has proven, time and time again, that you two just cannot mix. Oil and water. Pastel and acrylic. Satin and silk.
“You don’t have to say anything,” you spit out quickly, before Taehyung has a chance to respond. “I know it doesn’t matter to you.”
“Y/N, yes it does,” Taehyung begins, desperate and pleading. “I know you heard what I said, but I swear, it stopped being an act for me, too. Things are different now, just like you said.”
“Don’t. Please.” You pull away as he reaches out towards you. Faintly, you remember that it is his shirt you are wearing. Remember that no matter what you do, he will always surround you. “Please, Tae.” You have nothing left. You can’t bear to look at him, but where else will you go? You cannot believe the things he’s said, the things he’s done, but where else would you go?
“I love you, too,” Taehyung says, and a part of you wants so badly to believe him.
A part of you wants so badly to ingrain those words into your head, carve them into your heart, let him wrap his arms around you and promise that everything will be alright. But things are different now. Just like you said. You and Taehyung are not the same people you were six months ago. Or six weeks ago. Or even six minutes ago. You are helpless and he has proven that he does not care.
“I have to go,” you say, looking away. You don’t think you could handle turning back to him again. “Please, Tae.”
“I’m sorry,” Taehyung says, and he reaches out once more but you are not there to meet him halfway. Were you ever?
“I know,” you whisper back.
You duck into your bedroom and pack a suitcase of everything you need. Being here is suffocating. Being with him is like setting yourself alight.
Victoria has no questions when you show up at her door later that day, suitcase by your side and this ridiculous bottle of Merlot in your hands. You had picked it up on the way over. You sort of figured you might need it.
“You don’t wanna talk about it, do you?” Victoria asks.
“Tell me about your streaming service,” you hiccup in response.
Victoria is happy to oblige. She even tells you that she still hasn’t picked a CFO, and that the position would be open for you if you ever wished to take it.
Funnily enough, what will become of you once your father retires and passes along the company is the furthest away from your thoughts.
You remember being so worried about that. Being so worried that, once they married you off like every good daughter should be, you would be absorbed into your husband’s life, cut out of your family’s. Your father would choose a cousin, an uncle, or even a friend to take after the business, bestowing upon you a thoughtful inheritance but nothing more than that. All of those years of schooling, finance in college, your MBA soon after, would be wasted, just so you could hang on the arm of your husband for the rest of your life.
It’s thoughtful of Victoria to think of you for the position. She knows just as well as anyone else that you would be an excellent fit. And if things were just a little bit different, you would be jumping at the offer.
But your future career plans are on the backburner, along with the rest of your life.
All you can really do, right now, at this very moment, is wait for things to change. As they always do.
“Don’t you have an event tonight?” Victoria asks about three days into your stay. She’s given you her favorite (her words, not yours) guest bedroom and an enormous closet to match, despite you only coming over with a carry-on’s worth of clothes.
You scoff to yourself. “Like I’d want to go to anything with him.”
“Have you even called your parents?”
“No,” you say, not even caring about the repercussions. There’s no doubt in your mind that they’ll be ringing you soon. And when they do, maybe then you’ll finally work up the courage to tell them what really happened. Tell them that you can’t go back there. Not yet, at least.
“I’m sorry that this happened to you,” Victoria says as she hands you a bowl of vegetable soup, homemade from a couple of days ago. You nod to yourself, sniffling as you curl into the couch cushions and wish they would absorb you whole.
There’s no need to ask her what she means by ‘this’. Everything. From your engagement to the marriage, from those tabloids to the deal, from your grandmother’s death to now. It has all been unfair. Life is unfair. And while you’ve always known that, it has been particularly cruel to you as of late.
Still, when you wake up sometimes, you can still feel him tracing over your skin. Feel his lips hovering over yours, breath fanning out over your cheeks. You turn over and expect to see him lying there, on the right side of the bed, sheets mussed as they cover his figure. You wake up and for a brief moment, for that split, split second, there is peace. And happiness. And love.
And then there is nothing.
“Yeah,” you sigh. “Me, too.”
Maybe he really does love you. Maybe things really did change. But you have always been a pragmatic person, always let your head guide you rather than your heart. The secret’s out. Taehyung had an inheritance he needed to secure. You were his path to doing so. Those things haven’t changed. No matter if his feelings did.
“Hey, look at this,” Victoria says, brows furrowed as she holds out her phone in front of you, revealing a livestreamed interview from the event tonight.
You peer over.
It’s Taehyung.
Of course it’s Taehyung. Who else would she be showing you?
He stands in a clean-cut gray coat, draping over his figure, black dress shirt and slacks underneath, belt wrapped neatly around his hips. He holds his hand up in a wave and smiles politely to the cameras, to the reporters, letting the flashes wash over him like waves in the ocean.
“Mr. Kim! Mr. Kim!” Someone calls. “Where’s your wife?”
Oh, God.
Taehyung grimaces a little, pursing his lips. “My wife won’t be joining me tonight.”
“Can you tell us why?” They shout.
“Sorry, no more questions. Thank you for asking though. She’s well,” he says, quickly ushering himself along, entering the venue so no more reporters can bombard him. When he disappears, the livestream immediately moves on to the next guest, but you hardly pay them any attention.
“Huh,” Victoria says aloud.
Indeed. Taehyung’s response strikes you as rather odd. Why would he tell the public that? Why not make up a lie, say you’re sick, or you’re overseas, or you’re just late? Why simply tell them that you won’t be there? Surely, Taehyung is just as aware of the consequences of arriving at an event without you as you are. There’s no doubt that his parents will be in contact with him soon, too. No doubt that this will leave a stain on his family. His image. It might even threaten his inheritance after all.
So why not lie?
You frown to yourself, nose scrunching up in confusion. You don’t like where this train of thought leads.
“You okay?” Victoria asks when she sees the bewildered expression on your face.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” you say. Just completely befuddled. It escapes you, why Taehyung wouldn’t just make up some sort of excuse as to reasoning behind your absence. Why he would even show up at the event at all. Certainly, going to the event without you is worse than not going at all. It prompts questions. It spreads rumors.
Later that night, you get a call from your parents, demanding to know why you weren’t there with him. You say you got sick. You plead with them not to question anything.
You wonder what happens next. You and Taehyung still have two more events this week. A dinner and a ball. What will you do then?
Taehyung goes solo for the dinner. You suppose you could have predicted that, considering his apparent willingness to arrive alone for the first event, too. He hasn’t made any efforts to contact you and for once, you’re glad for his silence. Not that you even know what he would say to you, anyway, but at least he isn’t begging you to come back to him.
The sad truth is that if he did, if he got down on his knees right in front of you and willed you to come back home, you probably would. He has always been impossible to resist. Even when you first met him, when he sauntered up towards you and told you he was your dream come true. You didn’t know it then. But he was. He was everything you would ever want.
Why would he lie?
Why would he do that?
You can’t wrap your head around it. What is he getting out of it by telling the truth? By admitting to the paparazzi, to the reporters and the cameramen, that you won’t be there with him. That you will not be joining him. Nothing, certainly. His parents must be furious. His inheritance may be on the rocks. His image might tank.
So then, why do it at all?
Could it… could it be?
Is it true?
You have loved Taehyung for a long time. Longer than you probably even care to admit. You have always held your head high at events, spoken loudly and without fear, but being with him made you feel safe. Secure. You would hold his hand and know, know that he was holding yours, too. It grounded you. It soothed your worries.
Does he really love you back?
Taehyung smiles politely and laughs when he needs to at these events, but he doesn’t look the same. Even through the screen you can see those bags under his eyes, that spark that has faded. You hardly recognize him. He looks so lonely, without someone by his side. So distant.
When you know the dinner has ended, you almost pick up the phone and call him.
Almost.
Instead, when the ball rolls around, you ask Victoria if she’s got a spare dress she can lend you.
Kim Taehyung, for someone you have seen covered in paint splotches, wearing old college hoodies, and fresh out of a restless night’s sleep, cleans up pretty well. For a married man, at least.
You wonder what the past few days must have been like for him. If they have been as empty as your own. Wonder what it was like, riding alone in a big black van to this hotel ballroom, no one to tease, no one to laugh with, no one to hold. No one to poke him awake if he accidentally fell asleep. No one to make sure he’s okay.
Taehyung stands right outside of the entrance, waving politely to all of the paparazzi, smiling as the cameras flash, giving them the time of day for a moment before he heads inside and muscles his way through another event without you.
Or so he thinks.
You spot him just as he opens his mouth, ready to repeat those same lines all over again.
My wife won’t be joining me tonight. She’s well, though.
And maybe it’s just because you haven’t seen him in nearly a week. Maybe it’s just because he is about to lie to those reporters once more, ready to face whatever consequences come his way.
Or maybe it’s just because you miss him. Miss him terribly, have been missing him terribly. Being away from him was necessary, but that didn’t make it any less unbearable. Not getting to hold his hand, see his smile, meet his eyes. You and Taehyung may not have always liked each other, but you saw him every day regardless. He became a constant in your life. Not an if, but a when. If everything went to shit, you always knew he would still be there.
And there he is.
“Wait! Taehyung!”
Taehyung’s eyes widen as he hears your voice, gaze darting around wildly, mouth parted in surprise. He looks around desperately, scanning the crowd, meeting the eyes of every single person in front of him until he finally looks to the left, sees you rushing up towards him, hiking up the skirt of your dress as your heels tap against the sidewalk.
And when he spots you, sees you running up to him, his body relaxes, a weight lifted from his shoulders as he beams back at you, relieved and thankful and filled with joy, all at once. And you know, then.
You know that everything will be okay.
“Sorry I’m late,” you say sheepishly, cheeks burning as he looks at you, takes in every inch of you, breathes you in and lets you fill him up.
Taehyung doesn’t respond. You reach out to hold his hand but he grabs your wrist and pulls you in, presses you against his body as he presses his hands against your cheeks, palms burning as they meet your skin, and he kisses you. In front of all these people, he kisses you.
And goddamnit, you will kiss him back.
It feels like lightning, like a thunderstorm, like the waves of the ocean are crashing against your heart. It feels like fire, like flames are licking at your veins, sending sparks through your blood. It feels like home.
You and Taehyung ignore the shouts of reporters, the flashes of cameras, the honks of the cars on the other side of the road. When you part, he presses his forehead against yours and lets the tip of your nose meet his. And you smile.
“Don’t be alone any longer, Mr. Kim,” you whisper, loud enough so only he can hear.
“When I’m with you, I never am, Mrs. Kim,” he murmurs back.
You wonder what those tabloids will be saying about you tomorrow.
The rest of the night finds the two of you pretty much inseparable. You wrap yourself around his arm and for the first time in a long time, he presses his hand against the small of your back, keeping you close. Like he’d ever lose you again.
One of your least favorite parts about attending balls used to be the dancing. As a young and eligible bachelorette, you would always have to lock hands with another, let him awkwardly guide you along to the music as you made the worst small talk imaginable, forcing laughter and smiles whenever he said something he thought was particularly funny.
But, like so many others, things have changed. Things are different now.
The waltz comes on and you and Taehyung are the first to reach the center of the ballroom floor, letting him rest his hand on your waist as you press yours on top of his shoulder. Let him twirl you around the room as the orchestra plays in the background, a soft, sweet, light little melody that carries you along.
“I missed this,” you say softly.
“I missed us,” Taehyung corrects. He pauses for a moment, swallowing hard. “I’m sorry for not telling you about my inheritance.”
“I’m sorry for storming out. I should have listened to you.” you respond easily. You both have plenty to apologize for. But night is darkest right before dawn.
“I should have said something,” Taehyung says with a shake of his head. “But I was just so—so worried that something would go wrong. And I didn’t know how to explain how I felt about you. I acted in the beginning, too, but then things changed.”
“They always do,” you muse with a grin.
“I couldn’t believe I had you,” Taehyung admits. “I mean, look at you. You’re gorgeous. And funny. And true.”
“Go on,” you tease, even though you do nothing to hide the smile inching its way across your face, the heating of your cheeks, the simmering of your skin.
“Oh, shut up. You know what I mean.” Taehyung rolls his eyes. “I just—I felt something for you I couldn’t explain. I still can’t.”
You don’t have to prod any further. You know. Deep within your heart, you know. There is love blossoming in his to match the garden that has bloomed in your own. The flowers that have sprouted in the ashes. He has them, too. And when those petals open and the light streams in, he will know. He will know, too.
“You make me crazy,” you tell him, whispering gently into his skin. “But I’m a better person when I’m with you. I know I am.”
“I meant what I said, that night,” Taehyung says. Makes you wonder which night he’s actually talking about. “That I’m happy that things have changed. That things happened the way they did. I’m grateful for us.”
“I am, too,” you say. And you are.
You rest your head against his chest as you dance together, swaying back and forth to the beat of the drums, to the strums of the violins, all wrapped up together like ivy, like vines. Those, too, sit in that garden of yours. Keep you tethered to his side, keep him close to yours. He holds you in his arms and he smiles, because he knows, too. Knows that that garden in your heart will soon have a matching one in his. A mirror image of who you are. Who you’ve become.
Things change. They always will. But so long as he is by your side, and so long as you are by his, you know. Everything will be okay.
It's different, this time, when Taehyung presses you into the mattress.
There is no rush. Because now you know for certain that all the time in the world is yours. He is yours forever. You are his.
The two of you are a mixture of tangled limbs and shared breaths, the feverish, irrepressible need to give yourself to each other nearly tangible. He breaks the kiss suddenly, and you’re about to break out in protest. That is, until you see him unbuttoning his shirt.
Inspired, you wiggle out of your own clothes, eyes locked on Taehyung's soft torso and the idea that you had married such a beautiful man, inside and out.
Looking back, you wonder if that was always inevitable. If you and Taehyung falling into each other had been written in the stars from day one, sealed as your fate from the moment he came up to you at that ball when you were teenagers. He was going to be a part of your life no matter what. Whether or not you ended up marrying him. But having him like this?
It makes it all worth it.
"Do you like what you see?" That old cocky smirk of his makes an appearance.
You raise a brow, choosing to omit a response as you unclasp your bra, letting it fall from your chest.
Taehyung swallows.
"Do you?" You tease.
His response comes in the form of bites down your necks and licks down your chest, stealing your breath from you.
Your clothes are somewhere dispelled beside your passionate bodies, growing cold beside the way your two hot bodies warmed one another.
"You are so beautiful," Taehyung praises, fingers coming up to cup your breast, bringing it up to his mouth.
You mewl, wrapping an arm around his shoulders as his tongue toys with your pert bud, teeth grazing it ever so often just to hear the broken gasp that'd always follow.
"And so sensitive too," he giggles, making you pout. His hands are gentle as if every touch means something. As if you mean something—no, everything—to him. And the most wonderful part is that he means everything to you, too.
"Shut up." You roll your eyes playfully, gasping as his palm comes down the side of your thigh suddenly in warning. You bite down your swollen bottom lip at the gush of arousal that dampened your underwear in response.
"Watch your tone, love. Of both our positions, you are in the most compromising one." He reminds you. It isn't a threat, and while usually, that kind of tone would thrill you, you couldn't help but want his mouth back on yours already.
"You talk too much." You flop back onto the bed with a sigh. Taehyung watches with interest as your pretty tits bounce in consequence. Extending your hands out towards him, you give him a pouty look. "Just wanna kiss you."
"Is that all I am to you? Just a pair of lips for you to mack on? I've got news for you, sweetheart, there's a brain behind these ravishing good looks." He scoffs in feigned offense, sitting back on his heels.
You giggle.
It seems as though even during the most intimate of moments, Taehyung still found a way to be, well, Taehyung. At least that hasn’t changed.
"Whatever, pretty boy. Why don't you come over here and put that mouth of yours to good use?" You purr, making his eyebrows raise in surprise.
"Oh? I don't remember you being this assertive when I was pounding you into the mattress last time."
“What, I can’t have a little fun as well?” You tease, grinning as you look up at him, raking your eyes over his figure.
"Wanna have fun, love?," He murmurs into your ears, hands gripping either of your plush thighs. "Then spread those pretty legs for me, and I'll show you exactly how much fun you can have."
God, you love this man.
You oblige eagerly, breath quickening as he helped you press your knees by your chest, leaving the wet patch in your underwear on full display.
"My pretty little wife." He sighs dreamily, making heat rush to your core.
Taehyung's cock stood loud and proud, a hot reminder of where the night would eventually lead to. Seriously, how did you get so lucky? You must've been a saint in a previous life, you decide right then. Or at least, the stars have chosen to be rather kind to you in this one.
"Gonna take these off," he mutters, mostly to himself, tugging the ruined fabric over your ass and down your legs, with your help, of course.
Despite your usual display of confidence, lying beneath your husband, spread out like this, has you feeling vulnerable and slightly insecure. But that insecurity vanishes, however, as he lets out a soft moan, fingers moving to spread your glossed lips apart.
"So fucking pretty, baby. Gonna make you feel so fucking good," he groans, leaning down to press his face near your most intimate part.
Pressing a tentatively lick against, his eyes flicker up to yourself, curious to see if you’re okay with him proceeding. And, well, it’s not like you’re going to say no, are you?
Embarrassingly, you rut against him, making him laugh as you drown in your own mortification.
"Need it that bad, huh?" He coos.
"Yes, please."
The rest of your plea is lost in a moan as Taehyung finds your clit, wrapping his pink lips around the sensitive muscle and giving it a generous suck. Your hands are in his hair before you can think to stop yourself, tugging at his scalp deliciously as his mouth makes its way with you.
Thank goodness for this apartment belonging to just the two of you as the noises that tumbled from your lips surely would've left a roommate blushing.
You're panting, begging for more even though you aren't sure how you'd even handle more. It comes as a delight and slight surprise as fingers suddenly slip inside, wasting no time to rub against your velvety smooth walls, curling themselves inside you.
"Fuck, Tae!" you cry out, eyes squeezing shut.
It was pure reflex. Up until now, you had been watching Taehyung intently, completely consumed by the way his mouth moves against you. How his tongue flicks against your needy clit cruelly. It just felt too fucking good.
You're so wet, positively dripping down his chin as he runs his hot muscle up and down the length of your pussy, devouring you like he hadn't eaten in months, and you were his first meal.
Taehyung’s nothing short of addicting, completely and utterly intoxicating, and you slip further and further to your demise with every lick he takes, every press of his tongue against your clit.
He has a hand pressed against the lower half of your torso, feeling the way you jerk and squirm as he makes a mess of you. You’re close and you know it, too, if not by the way you’re calling his name over and over again, then by the way your thighs tremble, hardly even strong enough to stay up.
"Let go for me, love. I've got you." He sounds so sweet, so angelic, despite how filthy what he was doing to you was.
His words are the push you need, and, like a rubber band that has been stretched past its limit, you finally snap, back arching off the bed as you come with a cry. White fills your vision, and your mind goes blank, only sounds of blissful static filling your ears.
His fingers hold up your quivering legs, mouth pressing kisses onto your pussy encouragingly until you simply can't bear it any longer, pushing his mouth away as you stutter out words of sensitivity and overstimulation.
“I’m going to have to request more of that throughout this marriage.” You manage to say once your vision and breath come back to you.
Grabbing one of your hands, Taehyung brings it to his mouth.
“All you need do is ask,” he replies, making you laugh as he presses a kiss to the back of your hand, always a gentleman
Not long after, you find yourself pressed against Taehyung, tongue running against his as he presses his hips into yours. He isn’t coy about his want for you, rolling his cock against your already sensitive center. Warm precum leaks onto your lower abdomen, and suddenly, all you can think about is having him inside you again.
“Taehyung?”
You don’t even need to ask. Hitching your leg around his thigh, he knows exactly what you’re seeking, lining up his leaking cock with your swollen entrance.
Pressing into you, he buries himself to the hilt, groaning out as your warmth envelopes him. You moan out so prettily for him, feeling tight and full with your first orgasm only minutes ago.
“You okay?” he hums, kissing your cheek.
You nod, ears warm at the intimacy of the moment. In many ways, this is nothing like your first time together. You are face to face, eye to eye, heart to heart. Between your bodies could be found more than just desire, but commitment. Devotion. Love.
“I love you, Tae.” You gush, sighing out as he begins to rock into you.
He falters slightly at your confession but recovers quickly, intertwining his hand with yours and pressing it by your head.
Faintly, you realize.
That was the first time you had ever told him that.
You look up at him, expecting some wide eyes or even a bit of a nervous tilt to his lips, but all you are met with is a glow. He beams down at you, and your heart swells.
“I love you, too, Y/N,” he whispers, but you hear the words in your ears loud and clear.
Soft noises fill the room as the two of you become one—hearts synchronizing with one another in silent promise.
It was a promise unlike the one you had made to each other that day at the altar, for this one was real. This one was true.
You shutter with every thrust of his hips, your abused clit finding itself in the crossfire of Taehyung’s passionate motions.
Whimpering, you cling to him, overwhelmed and emotional, like your heart was about to burst. Taehyung lights a fire in you, sends lightning straight through your core. Every word, every smile, every kiss, every touch, they send shivers down your spine, tingles throughout your skin. It’s like you’re falling in love with him all over whenever you see him, whenever his deep brown eyes meet your own.
You remember being so afraid of love that you broke up with all your old boyfriends because of it. Because you couldn’t commit, because you were worried about your career, because they just didn’t give you that spark. But lying here pressed against him, against your husband, you aren’t afraid. Wrapped up around him, tangled up in him, you know.
Between messy kisses and words of adoration, you find yourself growing closer and closer to your release. Brows furrowed and neck flushed, you come with a soft whimper of his name, coaxing his own orgasm out of him. He lets go inside you, painting you with his seed in a way that pleases you to no end.
Hand still in yours, he gives it a squeeze, pressing a kiss onto your damp chest, right over where your heart beats for him.
“I love you,” Taehyung says again when you meet his eyes, firmer this time, louder. Like he’s worried you didn’t believe him the first time.
“I know,” you say with a giggle, the words going straight to your head—and your heart.
Taehyung scowls. “What, no ‘I love you’ back? Is that what I’m hearing?”
“Well, only because you want one so badly,” you tease, pressing a quick kiss to his round button nose. “I love you, too, Tae. Always will.”
“I think I knew, then,” Taehyung says with a fond sigh, nostalgia overcoming his expression. “That first time we met. I knew you would be mine, one day.”
“You got lucky,” you scoff slightly. “But I’m glad things happened the way they did.”
“You’re my dream come true, Y/N,” he says.
“And you are mine,” you murmur.
As the two of you drift off, all twisted up in each other, so mixed up you can’t figure out where you end and he begins, you think back to that night. That ball.
“Who are you?” You ask, nose scrunched up in distaste. Before you stood a boy you had never met before, wearing shoes that were too big for him and a suit that was a touch too small.
He grins at you, running a hand through his perfectly-styled hair fringe swiped neatly over his forehead, and he says, “your dream come true.”
And so it was.
don’t forget to message me! ~ and don’t forget to message rose!
#taehyung smut#v smut#bts smut#taehyung fluff#taehyung angst#bts fluff#bts angst#bts scenario#v fluff#v angst#v scenario#taehyung scenario#bts imagine#taehyung imagine#v imagine#bts au#taehyung au#w: love me or we both go down#ITS FINALLY DONE YOU GUYS HOLY SHIT#this fic honestly has plagued my thoughts and my dreams#since AUGUST
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Take it From Your Hot Neighbor Baby (Virgin!Sub!Midoriya x Reader)
Art credit: Heijiu Comics
Requested by anon: OMGGGGGG I love your writing, I was thinking If I can make a request on a smut with my baby Izuku Midoriya. Where he's so beautiful and innocent and the older neighbor next door from him likes him and basically targets him for sex which is the reader of course, and he likes her too. So then she totally doms him and invites him to her house and basically go at it as Izuku's innocent's self can't handle the pleasure the reader gives him!If you could do that I love your writing, If not it's cool!!!
Warnings: slight dumbification, precious bby izuku is 19, everything that happens here is consensual, unprotected sex, pet names, overstimulation, virgin!sub!izuku (mainly), Aged up!AU, filthy smut, dirty talk, cursing.
18+
A/N: Thank you for the request, I hope you like it!! i loved writing this :D (feel free to send me another to write, i’m already almost done with what i suspect is your other one xD)
Words: 4k
You grinned as the shared wall between you and your neighbor shook, signaling that the boy from next door was finally home.
Midoriya Izuku, a passionate and utterly clueless broccoli-haired boy turned fresh pro-hero, sweet and sensitive, everything you ever wanted in a partner. That, and he was clearly too shy to approach you.
You had been neighbors with him and his mom for forever but only until recently, after his admission into UA did you start to see him in another light besides platonic. And it wasn’t until he graduated that he had completely dominated your interest in another way entirely.
It was no secret that he used to be a scrawny kid but since his high school days, he had bulked up considerably.
Now, with the body of a tank and a soul bursting with positivity, you were completely hooked.
It really was astonishing to you how he continued to maintain that innocent personality after becoming a pro-hero. No one was that optimistic and oblivious all at the same time.
You had started out with smaller hints, bringing him food once a week to make sure he was eating properly, taking care of him when he was sick or injured and just too stubborn to admit it and go to the hospital, you name it and you’ve done it.
What was extremely exciting at first to be interacting with him like this dulled the moment you realized this baby was so innocent that all your signals were completely going over his head.
The dumb baby. Your dumb baby.
He was fast approaching 20 but you were willing to bet he hadn’t even gotten laid yet. With the way he walked, it was as if he was still the same kid you had met ten years ago.
Your parents had long since moved out of the apartment, going closer to where your grandparents were since they were getting older and needed to be taken care of. You had politely declined their invitation to go with, asking if you could take over the lease on the place since they would no longer be living here.
As their only child, they had a soft spot for you and let you do as you pleased now that you were old enough to be living on your own. They even helped you out with the rent even though that was entirely unnecessary.
Your day job paid enough.
An upbeat tune floated throughout your apartment and you danced along to the music in nothing but a thin cami and a pair of scarlet lace panties. Since it was so hot today, you had decided to forgo actual clothes. It was perfect, but you were definitely still sweating.
Tapping a finger to your chin thoughtfully, you recalled how your adorable and hot neighbor’s mom was out working all day and wouldn’t be back until late. Plus, you knew that he had no hero work today, courtesy of the boy telling you himself via text when you checked up on him earlier this week.
Pulling an oversized t-shirt over your head so that it brushed just below your thong clad ass and fell off of your shoulders, you fluffed your hair, giggling to yourself at your reflection in the mirror.
Today was the day you would make Midoriya yours.
Grabbing a few cookies from the kitchen that you had made just last night because you felt like it at that moment, you flung open your front door, knocking on his a second later.
Hopping in place excitedly, you couldn’t contain your enthusiasm. You hadn’t even bothered to message him that you were coming over, knowing that he would prefer it be a surprise.
“Izuku!!” You cheered when the door opened, immediately thrusting the plate of cookies out towards him.
He staggered a couple steps back, unprepared for your sudden attack but rubbed the back of his head with a sheepish smile, emerald eyes shining with gratitude.
Midoriya bowed gratefully. “Thank you, Y/N!!”
It had taken literally years before he was comfortable calling you by your first name without any honorific attached to the end of it. But it was worth the wait as warmth sparked through your heart and a soft smile adorned your features before it was replaced with a mischievous one.
Bounding up to him, you pressed your chest against his purposefully, making it so that you almost lost your balance. You gasped in mock surprise when he instinctively wrapped his arms around your waist to catch you, relishing in how strong his arms felt around you.
Midoriya stuttered as your boobs were practically smushed against his face by how close you were to him. Were they always that big?!
It wasn’t like he masturbated to you everyday or anything. Definitely not.
He groaned, throwing his head back as your body heat encompassed him.
Who was he kidding, he jerked off to you every spare second he got. He couldn’t help it though. Your beautiful smile always beckoning him over, those alluring eyes of yours enticing him closer and closer until he felt as though he could combust merely by standing in your presence alone.
Giggling, your teeth sank down into your bottom lip and you batted your eyes at him. A shudder ran down his spine and you bit back a smile at the blush that sat on his freckled cheeks.
“Do you want to come over for a little while?” You asked softly, feigning shyness and you rubbed your thighs together. “I have something I want to show you.”
The action didn’t go unnoticed and Midoriya’s mouth dried as the swell of your breasts peeked up over the low scoop of your shirt when he glanced down.
“Uh, y-yes?” He uttered, voice shaking with uncertainty as he automatically agreed to what you had asked him without even thinking about it.
You giggled, eyes lighting up in excitement. “Great!!”
He stumbled after you as you dragged him next door to your apartment, losing his balance and falling on the couch as you pushed him inside.
Your eyes shifted from playful to concern as he landed on his back with an ‘oomph’.
You were quick to cup his face, examining him closely. “Oh no, Izuku, are you alright?”
“Y-Y/N!!!” He stammered out, face bright red at your proximity.
“Are you alright?” You repeated, uncharacteristically serious and seeing as how you were asking him more than one question, he nodded to both.
You chuckled, leaning in close. His cheeks burned at your proximity and although you wanted so badly to tease him, you needed to get something straight first.
“You ever been fucked before, baby?” You cooed sweetly and a visible shiver shot down his spine.
He gaped for a moment, not used to you saying something so brazenly but shook his head wordlessly.
You smiled, your tone taking on a gentle lilt as you sensed his nervousness. “Want me to be your first?”
This time he didn’t hesitate.
“Yes.” He whispered, barely breathing as he finally confessed what he had been longing for ever since he turned of age. “Want you so bad.”
You didn’t outwardly show it, but your heart skipped a beat at his admission and the butterflies fluttered uncontrollably.
“Yeah?” You bit your lip to contain the wide smile. “Something tells me that you want to be played with, am I right?”
A whine bubbled past his lips and your smile turned wicked. Oh, you were going to have so much fun with him. You wondered how he would look when you played with his nipples, which you sure would be so sensitive it would have him hard in a heartbeat, or how he looked writhing under you when he was about to cum.
Anticipation thrummed through your veins and you couldn’t believe that after all this time, you finally had the opportunity to give him that kind of pleasure.
“Such a good boy.” You crooned softly and he audibly keened, stretching towards you desperately as you denied him a kiss. “What’s your safeword, baby?”
Midoriya’s head was spinning and his brain was short-circuiting from how unbelievably close you were to him. The sweet smell of your perfume flooded his senses and he swallowed thickly, very much aware of how little clothes you were wearing. You had yet to touch him and he was already a goner.
“S-Safeword?” He stammered out, his eyes shutting automatically as you threaded your fingers through his hair, a small moan breaking through the weighted silence as you scratched his scalp.
You observed his every move, every flutter of his lashes as he fell under your spell without even trying to succumb.
“Mmhm…” You hummed. “A word that you can use at any time and I’ll stop everything.”
A safeword was for both parties but you were fairly sure that you wouldn’t need it, being more experienced than him and aware of your boundaries. But just in case, you whispered that little tidbit of information in his ear so that he wasn’t left out of the loop.
“What if…” Midoriya gulped, restraining himself to keep his hands at his sides no matter how desperately he wanted to kiss you. He wanted to know if they were as soft as they looked. “C-Can’t I just tell you to stop?”
You frowned a tiny bit, not put off by his question but rather how fucked out he looked already. The poor boy was already straining in his pants, the bulge making your mouth water but you kept your head on straight.
“You can.” You agreed. “If that’s what you want, we can do that.”
He glanced away from you, thinking hard. He wasn’t all innocent. He had watched porn before when dared to by Bakugou after one of the class movie nights at Heights Alliance back when they were at UA, and he was embarrassed how quickly he got attached to the videos that had bondage and overstimulation.
It always looked so enticing. He wanted to know what it felt like to be pinned down and overpowered until pleasure rode on every one of his senses.
He wanted you to do that to him.
“W-What about if I just used your name?”
Midoriya cringed as soon as he suggested it and took it back faster than you could react, another idea tumbling out of his mouth in a split second.
“Black?” He whispered, avoiding eye contact with you.
Baby boy blinked so nervously, worried you might refuse or reject him for any reason and you took his chin in between your thumb and forefinger, drawing his face close to yours.
“Alright baby, that’s perfect.” You reassured softly. “Either one of us can use it and then everything stops, okay?”
He nodded, getting more excited as your breath fanned across his lips.
“Need to hear you say it.” You demanded quietly.
His green curly hair bounced as he nodded vigorously. “I understand!!”
Midoriya stiffened for a moment in surprise as you finally pressed your lips against his, sealing his first kiss and he swore his heart stopped beating. Then, he melted into putty as you moved your lips skillfully against his, coaxing him to return it with as much lust and passion as you were igniting within him.
You pulled away to lean in close to his ear, trailing a finger up and down his chest playfully.
“Let me take care of you, Izuku~” You cooed, slyly licking the shell of his ear, savoring in the shiver that shot down his spine as a result of your ministrations.
You continued down, planting hot and wet open-mouthed kisses along his jaw as he whined and wriggled beneath you. Trailing down his neck to his collar bones and then his bare chest as you ripped open his shirt in one swift movement, you pinned his wrists above his head.
A protest ripped from his throat at your display of dominance.
“Y-Y/N!! I wanted to—”
“To what?” You questioned smugly.
Midoriya whimpered pathetically and you smirked.
He blushed, looking away. The boy was built like a bull but was an absolutely softie, innocent pure little bean at heart. He didn’t have what it took to take over.
“You wanted to touch me?” You asked, laving your tongue around one of his sensitive nipples. “You wanted to be on top?”
His face scrunched up at the strange sensation, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out as you bit down on the tender flesh.
You licked your lips seductively, making a show of your tongue grazing over your teeth as you gazed down at him through hooded eyes. “Do you think you deserve to touch me after being such a bad boy?”
You heard him every night. The walls were thin in the cheap apartment complex you lived in. Too thin.
“Don’t touch me until I say so.” You ordered.
You heard every wanton moan that bubbled past his pouty lips, such pretty little sounds that you wanted to hear all for yourself. You were jealous of the others in the vicinity that can undoubtedly hear him as well. The only thing that settled your heart at ease was the luscious cries of your name falling from his lips.
And now, all your neighbors would know just who he belonged to.
Midoriya gulped nervously and you reveled in the adrenaline pumping through your veins at being in control and dominating him. Your shirt rode up as you straddled his hips, and he wriggled beneath you, wanting nothing more than to touch you.
You trailed a finger from his chest all the way to his navel, teasing the waistband of his pants. He whined as you wiggled your ass down to sit comfortably on top of his thighs. Deftly unbuttoning his jeans, your eyes flickered back up to him.
“Oh my, these look so uncomfortable.” You mock pouted, sneakily biting the zipper of his fly and pulling it down. “Do you want me to take them off for you?”
You grinned as he involuntarily bucked his hips up into your feather-light touch, tears collecting at the corner of his eyes in frustration. Slowly pulling down his pants and boxers together, your eyes bugged out as you saw what he was packing.
“Oh…” You mused. “I wasn’t expecting this.”
If you thought he was big, you were dead wrong. This boy was hung as a horse. Well endowed to the max, he was easily packing eight inches and you couldn’t even fit your hands all away around his thick girth.
You stroked him as best as you could but judging by that guttural groan that erupted from his mouth, you’d say you were doing a pretty good job.
“Please!!” Midoriya begged, practically sobbing as you teased him and it was like music to your ears. “Please, Y/N, make me feel good!!”
“Yeah,” You whispered, suckling on the vein that ran on the underside of his stiff member. “You want me to make you cum, baby?”
“Yes, please!!” He cried, fisting the fabric of the sofa, remembering your rule not to touch you yet.
But it was killing him.
The foreplay had made you wet enough to take him and you weren’t keen on waiting another second longer.
Positioning yourself over his leaking head, the tip of his engorged shaft rubbed against your puffy folds as you pushed your thong to the side.
Midoriya’s eyes bulged out of his head as he saw the red lace and he couldn’t stop his hands from shooting to your waist as you threw your shirt up over your head, leaving you in that thin cami that left nothing to the imagination.
“F-Fuck—” You cursed as you sank down on him, thighs trembling from the effort of taking him. “Izuku, baby, you’re so big.”
He was rock hard and pressing against your inner walls just right. It had been so long since someone had filled you up like this and now that you had him, no one even came close to any of those prior.
Midoriya was huffing, moaning uncontrollably as the rush of pleasure he got by being encased in your tight heat so quickly. His hands gripped your hips, kneading the flesh of your ass as he started to rock you back and forth in his lap.
You completely ignored the fact that he disobeyed your order.
“Dumb baby,” You cooed softly. “Does that pussy feel good around your cock? Huh? Tell me.”
“Yes— hhgh, I love it so much, Y/N, you feel so tight, ahh!!” He mewled, unable to think of anything else except how good your cunny felt fluttering around him.
His face was beautifully flushed, unable to tear his gaze off of where his cock had disappeared into you. The sticky wetness smeared against his hip bones made your arousal evident and he was impossibly turned on at the vision in front of him.
You threw your head back as he took over control, gyrating your hips for you before you were even adjusted to his massive length. A breathy moan tumbled out of your lips as his fingers knotted their way into your hair, yanking it back so that your hips canted into him with every thrust.
“I-Izuku!!” You moaned loudly as he roughly and sporadically pounded into you.
You squealed as he pulled you down to his chest to get a better angle, all the breath vanishing from your lungs as he planted his heels and fucked up into you so fast that you would’ve fallen off from the force if he wasn’t holding onto you with an iron grip.
“Sorry, Y/N!!” He broke off with a whine and burrowed his face into your neck as you clenched around him, his hips stuttering. “But I’m about to—”
You shrieked as he released inside of you, painting your walls with his thick, milky white cum. Chest heaving, you pushed him down and straightened up, clicking your tongue.
“Such a selfish baby.” You crooned, controlling your breathing enough to put up a confident front. “I didn’t even get to cum yet.”
His eyes widened in horror at not satisfying you first. “Oh, Y/N, I’m so sorry, I didn’t— Gah!!”
His earnest apology was interrupted as you began bouncing on him again, keen on reaching your high. His spent length twitched inside of you and he whimpered, eyes screwed shut at the pain.
“Y/N!! It… It hurts!!” Midoriya whimpered pitifully, his eyes screwed shut at the overstimulation.
“Aw,” Your smile was sadistic and you threw your ass back into his lap intentionally, causing him to throb within you. “Does it?”
“Yes!!” He cried out. “Fuck, please stop!!”
You pouted sadly, gyrating your hips faster. “But I haven’t even cum yet.”
It was too much. Your words spun with those sinful rocks of your hips was making a lethal mix of pain and pleasure shoot through his system and he whined, pawing at your hips.
“Y/N, please!!” He begged, unsure what he was begging for at this point.
It didn’t take long for him to get hard again. You weren’t sure if his short refractory period was a side effect of his power or the fact that he had just lost his virginity to you and wanted you again, but you were definitely going to oblige him either way.
Midoriya arched into your scalding touch as you leaned down to kiss him once again. Your soft lips and the hot cavern of your mouth distracted him as your tongues danced together and he almost forgot about the fact that he was balls-deep inside of you.
Until you started to move again.
His cry was muffled as you licked it out of his mouth before pulling away.
Your grin widened and you rocked your hips back and forth at a mind-blowing pace, reducing the blubbering boy beneath you into a whimpering mess.
But your confident façade soon vanished as his hands found purchase on your hips and bucked up wildly.
The grin slipped off your face and you whimpered, fingers splaying on his bare chest for balance as he went wild, fucking up into you with abandon.
You could do nothing else other than hold on and pray you wouldn't fall off of him as he took over.
Biting your lip, you desperately tried to regain control. “Izuku—”
He gritted his teeth, ignoring you and your eyes widened as green lightning started to surround his body.
Your eyes widened. “Wait—!”
He didn't.
Your head tipped back and the loudest scream you've ever produced ripped from your throat as he used One for All to completely destroy your pussy. But to your disbelief, he didn’t stop, he didn’t even slow down when you contracted around him.
His hips slammed up into yours at a breaknecking speed and tears blurred your vision as you cried out, sobbing with pleasure as he finally made you cum.
“Y/N, you’re milking my cock so much!!” Midoriya blurted out with a raspy moan as another orgasm spiraled to you and you shrieked, this one hitting harder than the last.
At some point, you blacked out.
When you came to, Midoriya was hovering over you worriedly, his green eyes glistening with concern as he called your name over and over again.
Sitting up with a groan, you realized that he had laid you down on the couch and covered you with a blanket.
“Y/N?” The boy asked, brushing the hair out of your eyes as he sat down by your side.
You offered him a smile, every bone in your body protesting as you sat up. Midoriya was helping you in a second, ignoring your feeble protests that you could do it yourself.
The next minute, he played with his fingers awkwardly.
“Was… Was it good for you?” He asked timidly, blinking his big eyes up at you.
You cracked a smile at how earnest he was. Cutie.
“Of course it was.” You murmured, planting a soft kiss on his forehead before staring straight into his eyes. “You know this means you're mine, right?”
Midoriya blinked his doe eyes, mouth parting slightly. “Eh?!”
You smirked. “Yup.”
“Really?!?!” He asked excitedly, leaning forward to stick his face close to yours and you giggled.
Adorable. Simply adorable.
“Yeah, baby.” You whispered, cupping his face and pecking his freckled cheek. He was so sweet. So pure.
You couldn’t wait to defile him more. Wait until he was exposed to the world of BDSM.
Licking your lips slyly, you smirked. “You’re all mine.”
Taglist: @katsukis-sad-angel
#my hero academia#boku no hero academia#midoriya x reader#midoriya x reader oneshot#smut#midoriya smut#izuku smut#deku smut#deku x reader#izuku x reader#deku x reader smut#izuku x reader smut#midoriya izuku#my hero academia midoriya#deku fanfiction#deku x reader fanfiction#midoriya fanfiction#midoriya oneshot#my hero academia smut#overstimulation#pet names#this is filthy okay xD let me live my life#virigin deku smut#bnhacity#midoriya izuku x reader#midoriya izuku x reader smut#bnha#bnha smut#deku#deku x reader oneshot
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