` airis —

ww's gf

[mnjrosn]

— name's airis she/her a taurus 21

intj eng/malay !

dream ?! Seventeen series.

— DNI !

fit basic DNI criteria. homophobic, islamophobic, racist, pedophile, proshipper etc. if you can't respect other people's opinions and interests please get off my page.

[mybluetea]

Warning: it's my night thoughts after reading too much Thranduil x reader and Haldir x reader, and it's NSFW. MDNI please.

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to have a child with an elf as a human, or to raise a human child in the elf's realm?

Like... with all the biological differences, it would be so hard to get impregnated, or just to make sure that your human child / pregnant human wife has enough nutrition during pregnancy or growing up.

I guess you have to argue with/persuade your husband about letting you eat more meat, or at least something that contains the nutrition that a normal human body requires (I doubt that elves require the same nutritional intake we do). And if, just maybe, if you leave your child with the elf for a short period (about 1 or 2 years) so you could do something, your child might face the risk of developing conditions from lacking necessary vitamins or hormones, or blah blah. You’d have to tell him what a human or half-human child needs, and tell him not to teach the 2-year-old child policy or philosophy.

About the pregnancy. I mean... I wonder how an elf, a different kind of being from humans, could impregnate a human? I do believe that their genitals or biophysiology would be different from ours. I once read a post about what elves' genitals would look like, and I really liked that way of thinking.

Summary: Elves' penises aren’t designed for thrusting, they prefer to be clenched around and inserted into by the tentacles of the female elves’ wombs, so they can exchange the hormone that helps the male elves reach their climax and impregnate the females (imagine the USB and the USB port: the USB goes into the port, but the thing in the port inserts back into the USB). So the thoughts below will be based mostly on that post.

Humans, of course, don’t have tentacles in their wombs and don’t possess the required hormone that helps a male elf orgasm. So if you want to have a child with him? I believe you could use blood as an alternative (eh... well, I don’t know how we could exchange the lymphatic hormone with elves, so it’s the only way I could come up with).

And their way of kissing would be different too. A French kiss includes tongue stroking, thrusting, and lip-sucking—I assume it’s the way we mimic how a normal human makes love? So if I apply that assumption to elves, their kissing style would be more like him sucking your tongue too hard (copying the way your womb clenches around him), but without stroking.

You have to teach him how to please you as a human. And sometimes if you want to use your hands on him, he would be so so so confused as elves don't be turned on by the outside stimulation.

I kinda like the difficulties of sexual things between humans and elves because i believe you both could go through it together as you love and try your best to understand each other better. (And maybe you could find some way to have such intense nights, idk, it depends on how you want your stories :v)

[sh1-n0bu]

bello, not sure if your taking requests so this will be my little thirst😼

was thinking about the elf bf and how intimacy is so foreign to him! How good your touches feel on his heated skin but what was this odd feeling? The coil in his tummy getting tighter with each grind of his hips on your thigh. The feeling felt so weird.. it feels good? is this good? he doesn’t want to disappoint you, or worse, scare you away! so he stops himself, letting his hips slow their grind for a moment. Inadvertently edging himself!

id like to imagine if he touched himself he would stop before cumming as well, he doesn’t know what it is! it feels so odd, makes him feel hot all over!

After he slows his grinds, you would be a bit confused…, does he not want to cum? or does he want to wait til your inside him? it takes a bit before you even think that maybe he hasn’t gotten that far before, the idea that you get to corrupt him making your face heat. Goodness he would be so pretty, teary eyes begging for you to slow down. Hips bruised from how rough you had grabbed him!

and to think, when he finally cums? its so overwhelming. heat spreading through his body, mind numbing as his legs twitch slightly? his pretty cock leaking onto his stomach? GOOD LORD I NEED IT💥💥💥

ty for listening nobu🫶🏼 we love you pls dont die

(low key my first ask, hope you enjoyed as i dont write much)

bellooooo, me is not taking requests for now but im still open for brainrots/thirsts!!!!

good lawdddd y’all gotta stop corrupting me more, my horny level can’t keep up guys. so i haven’t read the history of middle earth and all abt the biologies and cultures of the races tolkien created but i have come across multiple posts or points of people pointing out that sex and intimacy is an extremely important and raw thing. like how a constant friction creates fire over time and how that fire spreads into a wildfire that consumes everything, that’s how it is to elves and their culture. courting is important and it could go for a very long time until they decide to officially tie the knot. yet even after getting married, the consummation won’t happen in a while, first the couple must at least intertwine their fëa (soul) and so, the consummation act is more intense and powerful. its a very draining thing, when elves fuck, they fuck. long and hard, probably all night and into the next morning and even evening perhaps. they’re immortals, they have a monster amount of stamina

so with this info in mind, u gotta realize that elves do have knowledge of sex, how it usually feels etc and how near sacred it is to their kin. love is a fragile thing that will cross their eternal life only once and when they love, boy do they love. yet something tells me that despite having knowledge of sex, masturbation and other fleshly pleasures, they don’t participate in it much. its like they barely have anything that gets them pent up or sexually frustrated until they fall in love. and if it is a mortal? oh boy, they are confused and yearning. it’s like an instant neuron activation for them

the poor elf would barely know what to do with these thoughts and imaginations of you and him in such a compromising position. images of you guiding him through your first times together, holding hands, whispering sweet nothings into his sensitive, pointy ear while he shrivels with embarrassing noises on your lap. oh how those calloused, hardened hands would feel when tightly fisting at his cock, draining him dry and milking every last drop of his cum. how those long, thick fingers would feel when thrusting inside him, scissoring him open and making him squeal. good god, don’t even get him started on the dirty images he thinks of you when he looks at those arms and thighs of yours, he’s imagining himself riding that muscle until he soils his pants or how your hands would push his head down to fully swallow your cock into his throat

would it taste as how it is described in the eroticas? would your precum be salty as your thick cock head pushes past his soft lips with your soothing voice instructing him to “open wide, puppy”? would you be so mean as to fist at his gorgeous locks and fuck into his mouth, use him to your own pleasure? he would be a good puppy for that, taking whatever you had to give him with red cheeks and hands obediently held on his lap. like a good puppy, he would open his mouth, tongue out like an eager little dog waiting for the taste of his favorite snack as you stroke your dick, a low moan falling as he finally taste your load shoot into his awaiting open jaws

and when his dirty thoughts are finally granted and turned into reality? he’s a goner. scrambling on his feet, tripping over his words, mind blanking as he feels your hands grope his ass over the linen of his pants. feeling like a young ellon rather than the full grown elf he is when your hands fiddle with the buckle of your belt, gulping down the saliva in his mouth as he sees your strap spring out of your undergarment

with a shaky hand, he would grip your strap, meagerly stroking his hands up and down with a stuttered “i-is this okay…?” oh dear stars, how badly you wanted to just fuck him dumb right then and there, seeing the cute pouting lips, big eyes staring at you for an approval as he weakly asks for your preference. how fast he is to crumble when he feels your rough hand wrap around both your and his own dicks, stroking them together with a slow pace, occasionally spitting on them. his mind was already blanking, and he was sure that he had already came into your hand the moment you touched him

“w-wait a—annh!! mmh uhnng♡︎ h-hold owwnn♡︎ i ju-ust c-came! i came alreanngh already...♡︎!!” the poor elf weakly cried out, falling back into the sea of soft pillows as his hands shook by his chest, where he held them close to himself. he was sure you could hear the rapid beating of his heart, embarrassed by the noises he kept letting out despite biting down on his lips to shut himself up. poor sweetheart, doesn’t even know that the thing dripping down onto his stomach is his pre-ejaculation and not his cum! “shh shh… it’s alright, darling. i’ll be sure to teach you all about the fleshly pleasures tonight♡︎” and you were going to absolutely ruin him

sweet virgin elf who crumples into a heap of mess after experiencing his first cum. moaning and even squealing as his hands flailed around, unable to choose whether to hold onto your arms or to claw at the blanket beneath himself as you continue to keep going despite his whines of having already came. you were so mean, quickening your pace and even squeezing your dicks together, he was so sure that he blacked out when you first did that or swiped a thumb over his oozing tip. arms covering his face to hide the flush of his cheeks and the drooped ears, crying out to you that he was going to die. so dramatic

“sh-stooohpp..! stop stopstopstop—stop it♡︎♡︎! i came!! i nyaagh ungh guhc—came! i alreaawdyy camee…♥︎!” the elf cried out, already slurring his words together as his hips grind back and forth on the bed until your free hand comes up to keep it down in place with a bruising grip. your sweet boyfriend could only cry out, a broken whine falling as he shook his head, looking down at your hand that held down his hip before shifting to look at where your cocks were touching. held together in a tight fist, your hand already soiled with his cute load of precum as well as his stomach. he never noticed it before but gods, your strap was dwarfing him in size and girth. he would surely die if he takes that big thing inside himself!

but when you don’t seem to hear his pleas and only continue to fuck your strap and his weeping cock together in a faster pace into the tight grip of your fist — even rocking your hips forward too! — the poor elf was sure he was going to see the bright skies of valinor that night. whimpers turning into broken wails, punched out sobs of your name falling out of his now bloodied lips as he covers his face with his hands. he could feel the hot tears that fell from his eyes, wiping them away with cute pathetic sniffles as you tighten your fist just at the heads. another squeeze and one more before he was crying out your name in a shrill scream, his legs around your hips tightening, shaking even, as he finally feels himself cumming alongside you. translucent colored seeds mixing together, dirtying his stomach and even shooting up to his heaving chest

“…s-shoo goowdd… aaanh hhagc—♡︎ c-cum..♥︎ cumming ’gainn hhgaaa♥︎ ughk haahg [n-naawme], [namenamenamena—]♥︎♥︎” the elf sobbed out weakly, a putty in your hands as he feels his cock slowly grow flaccid. if it weren’t for the rough pads of your fingers tracing circles around his clenching rim and the feeling of your clean hand push away his hands from his face, your elf bf would have most definitely been sure that he had died and was re-embodied. yet despite the fuzziness in his brain and the way his blood seemed to circulate too quickly through his veins, his body unconsciously pressed itself against you, against your fingers as if seeking for more pleasure

thats enough thirsting yall, go do yalls assignments

[osarina]

LIFE IS STRANGE

FEATURING: Jacaerys Velaryon x fem!reader

SUMMARY: A prince washes up on the shore outside your cottage, and you must decide whether you’re going to leave him to his fate or save his life. Either way, you know there will be consequences. 

WARNINGS: fem!reader, commoner!reader, eventual dragonseed!reader, jace lives, eventual smut, class differences (jace is obviously a prince and reader is a commoner). Reader is not too fond of him at first because she is from Sharp Point. This is a bit of a mix of show canon and book canon in that Jace went to the Gullet to save his brothers and Rhaena still claimed Sheepstealer

AUTHOR'S NOTES: i HADDDD to do a fic for our beloved boy </3 i miss you jacaerys velaryon, prince of dragonstone, heir to the iron throne. I will truly never move on from this death </3 so we need a world where he does not die. I'm saur excited for this because it's my first time writing a reader who comes from a commoner background, AND I finally get to write the dragons ... originally she was not supposed to be a dragonseed, but I just cannot help myself. If I'm going to be writing a hotd era fic, our girl is going to have a dragon. ANYWAY I hope you guys enjoy! please leave a comment or reblog mwah mwah

You wonder whether it is chance or divine intervention that a Targaryen prince washes ashore beside your cottage.

By the time you get to the edge of the sea after catching a glimpse of the corpse from your porch, it is half buried in the wet sand, lying limp at your feet, and there is a lump in your throat that you cannot seem to swallow away. 

You do not know how you didn’t notice the sigil sooner.

It should have been the first thing that caught your eye, considering it was only a fortnight past that the Prince Aemond brought the great dragon Vhagar over the town you were raised in and razed it to the ground. The green and gold banners have been flying over the area since, and soldiers from the Reach have been constantly patrolling the roads, seeking out rebels and sympathizers.

You know better than to involve yourself in the affairs of any man that dons the three-headed dragon, you tell yourself, trying to will yourself to walk away from the corpse before anyone can catch you standing near it.

Red or gold, black or green—it does not matter to you, the wars of nobles are graves for common folk, and you have no desire to meet an early one. You have done well enough for yourself since your father passed. You refuse to squander the life you’ve built because a prince washed up on the shore near your home.

The boy at your feet is young, you cannot help but notice—your age, perhaps—dark of hair and fair of skin. At a distance, he had looked like any other body the sea had decided to return, and your first instinct had been to rush toward him rather than avert your gaze and pretend you had seen nothing.

Your hands tremble at your sides, and you have to forcibly still them as you take in a deep breath.

This is war, you recall the soldiers saying when the survivors demanded to know the reason for the tragedy that took place at Sharp Point—mothers with tears in their eyes and no bodies to bury, fathers who had lost their livelihood and the children for whom they built it, your neighbors, your friends. They say Lord Bar Emmon sits on the usurper’s council, so all of the commonfolk who were unfortunate enough to be born beneath his banners have been made to pay the price of his loyalties, allies of a queen they have never seen and casualties of a war they never chose.

This is war, they will tell you the same as they cut off your head if they see you kneeling beside this corpse and call mercy treason. Because it is always the burden of the commonfolk, paying the price of noble quarrels. Princes speak of honor and succession, of rights and oaths and stolen crowns, and it is fishermen and farmers who have to bury their dead. They will not care to hear what you have to say if they think you're affiliated with the Black queen and her supporters, just as the Prince Aemond did not care whether the people of Sharp Point had declared for the Blacks or merely happened to be born beneath the wrong lord.

But now, a prince lies dead upon your shore, and you wonder if this is how it begins again. 

You should leave him.

The thought comes immediately, sensible in light of the circumstances, even if it does make your stomach flip. You should turn around and go home, bolt your door, and tell no one what you saw. The sea will reclaim him, or the crabs will pick his bones clean; maybe the patrol will stumble upon the body before the tide rises, and they can parade it through the streets the same way you heard they did to Princess Rhaenys’s dragon.

By the morning, he will be gone one way or another, and you can move on with your life as though you never saw him at all. He will be somebody else’s misfortune, or more hopefully, no one else’s at all. 

It is a corpse, anyway. The boy has not moved since you arrived, and his chest does not seem to be rising and falling. There are two arrows through his shoulder, and a blueness to his lips that you’ve only seen in the dead, so—

As though to mock you, he lets out a wet, ragged cough, water bubbling at his lips, lashes fluttering just enough for you to catch sight of dark, hazy eyes that slip over you once before they slide shut again.

You feel sick to your stomach.

He does not stir again. One side of his face is bruised an ugly purple, his dark hair plastered to his brow with seawater and blood. He cannot be much older than you—the traitorous thought crosses your mind again. There is something terribly young about him, lying there half-drowned in the surf, one hand curled weakly into the sand as though, even unconscious, he is still trying to cling to something.

He does not look like a prince, you think miserably. He looks like a boy who is going to die.

The sea foams around your boots, and his body twitches as it threatens to reclaim him—the only feeble resistance he’s capable of in his state. You do not know how he still breathes—the fires might still burn on the Gullet, but the fighting ended days past. How long has he been floating about, dragged around by vicious currents and tossed by waves? It doesn’t even seem as though it should be possible, as though the Seven themselves intervened and—

—and dropped him on your shore, in your hands, and you are contemplating leaving him to die.

The thought is unpleasant, a heavy stone in your chest in place of your heart.

You are not a cruel person. You have cared for gulls with broken wings, and you leave scraps outside your door for the old orange cat that wanders the area. During the winter three years prior, you spent a fortnight nursing a lamb that did not even belong to you because you could not bear the sound of it crying.

And now there is a boy at your feet—bleeding, drowned, scarcely clinging to life—and because there is a dragon sewn onto his chest, you are trying to convince yourself to let the sea finish what arrows and war could not. 

His lashes are dark against his cheek. Young, you think again, even more traitorous than the last, no older than ten and nine, if even. There is salt crusted at the corners of his mouth and blood soaking through his tunic in sluggish, rusty streams that stain the pale sand beneath him.

He looks cold—traitor, traitor, traitor.

He looks like a prince, you try to insist. A dragon prince, fire and blood and ruin, dangerous. 

Cold. Hurt. Dying.

You need to walk away, you tell yourself again, desperate this time, because the longer you stand there staring at him, the more you fail to convince yourself of the correct path. 

A prince's life is worth more than yours, more than your cottage and your little patch of land and the fishing boat your father left you. It is worth armies and dragons and castles and men willing to kill for a name. 

If this boy lives, others will come looking for him. 

And if the soldiers discover him in your home, they will not ask questions. They will not care that you found him by chance or that you never bent the knee to Queen Rhaenyra—that you could not even tell anyone why one half of House Targaryen wishes the other dead. They will see the three-headed dragon on his breast and the roof over his head, and that will be enough to condemn you.

Worse, the Prince Aemond and the dragon Vhagar could return. You think of Tom, the miller’s son, pulled from the boiling river after dragonfire reached the gristmill. You think of little Grace’s face as she searched the ashes for her mother. You think of all of your neighbors, all of your friends, who hardly survived the first time fire rained from the sky, and you think of all of those who didn’t. 

He is not worth it. He is not worth the risk. A prince is only a man born with a special name, there’s no reason you should save him and condemn countless others—he bleeds the same, he dies the same, and when the Stranger comes for him, he is no more spared than any other man.

Except, he didn’t, did he? 

He should be dead—any other man would be dead.

Two arrows through the shoulder, half-drowned, tossed upon the sea for days on end—there is no surviving that. Yet he breathes still, ragged and shallow though it may be, his fingers twitching every now and then.

The Stranger came for him and left empty-handed.

The Stranger came for him and left him with you. 

Why?

There are no prophecies in your life, no gods whispering in your ear. You are a fisherman's daughter with a cottage by the sea and enough coin to keep yourself fed through winter if the catch is good. You know little of the gods save for the prayers your father taught you as a child and the candles you light for him on his nameday. The Seven did not save your father or your town; they did not save Tom or Grace’s mother or any of the others who screamed as dragonfire turned their homes to ash.

So why? Why this boy? Why this prince? Why should the gods spare a dragon's son when they had not spared children and fishermen and mothers? Why have they left him for you?

You do not have an answer. The only answer before you is a body on the sand, breathing when it ought not to be.

You stare down at him, furious and distressed and so, so unsure. He looks dead again—still as driftwood, cold and pale, stiff. His lips are blue like the dead, and his chest hardly rises and falls. You wonder if you imagined what you saw before. If your guilt conjured a cough where there had been none, if your conscience simply could not bear the thought of walking away even from a corpse.

Slowly, you sink to your knees beside him, damp sand clinging to your knees, the sea foam wetting your trousers. Your hand is still trembling in spite of all efforts to still it. You lift it to his throat, hesitating only for a moment. 

If there is life, you will do what you must.

If there is not, you will turn and walk away. 

You have never prayed for someone to be dead before. 

Please, you think now miserably. Please.

Your fingers brush the skin of his throat—it is cold. He must be cold. So cold, that for a brief, terrible moment, hope flares in your chest, and then—

There is a flutter—it is weak and uneven, so faint that you almost miss it, but it is there.

Your head hangs forward, and you blink away the tears that prick in your eyes, because you know this action will have consequences. You know that there is no going back once you have entangled yourself with dragons. You know that every story told of House Targaryen ends in blood and fire and ruin for everyone foolish enough to stand too close them.

You know that this boy could be the death of you.

The soldiers could discover him. Your neighbors could discover him—as much as they care for you, they fear Vhagar more. If word spreads that a prince of the black faction lives and is hidden beneath your roof, you could hang for it. They could burn your cottage to the ground. They could drag you through the streets and call you traitor.

Worse still, he could recover.

Because then he would not be a half-dead boy on the sand. He would be a prince again. A son of the house of the dragon. He would leave, and the war would continue, and perhaps one day you would hear his name in some tavern and learn that he had mounted a dragon and burned a town much like your own.

The sea rushes forward again, cold water washing over your boots and his legs alike. He does not move. He is so cold.

“Why did you have to wash up here?” you breathe out—frustrated, angry, resigned, because you have never been one to turn your back on someone in need. 

His pulse flutters once more against your fingers, and he does not stir. 

Then, because the gods have a cruel sense of humor and because your heart has always been softer than your head, you slide your arms beneath the prince’s shoulders and knees.

With a soft curse and the sea at your heels, you gather the dragon prince into your arms and carry home your ruin.

—————————

He is Jacaerys Velaryon, son of Queen Rhaenyra, Prince of Dragonstone, Heir to the Iron Throne. 

Three days have passed since you found him on the shore, and he has hardly stirred since you dragged him into your cottage. You have been riddled with anxiety since, jumping at every sound and fearing the worst when someone addresses you. It is only a matter of time—whenever a rider passes on the road beyond the trees or the patrol sweeps down your shore, you think they care coming for him. Coming for you. 

You spend the first day trying to keep him alive. 

You drag him home, soaked to the bone and half-frozen, laying him atop your bed as you get a fire going and wrap him in your blankets. For a while, you can only stand there staring at him, because it is one thing to decide not to leave a boy to die and another entirely to realize you have no idea how to save him.

You have to cut away his tunic to remove it, and it makes it easier to breathe once the three-headed dragon is out of sight, but then you have to address the monstrosity beneath it—bruises darkening one side of his ribs, yellow and purple and black, cuts everywhere, salt crusting his skin and body a ruin of blood. 

You wonder how many rocks the currents slammed him into before he finally washed to shore. The sea around Sharp Point is, well, sharp. Jagged rocks and narrow inlets line the coast, and more than one fisherman has vanished into the sea after his boat drifted too close to reefs beneath the tide.

It is a cruel stretch of sea—crueler still to a boy half-dead and alone. 

And then there were the arrows. 

The shafts protrude from his shoulders at awful angles, the flesh around them angry and swollen. You cry while removing them, because you have never done something like it before, and your hands cannot stop shaking. A part of you wonders if the gods left him for you so that his blood could be on your hands instead, and you cannot fathom what you’ve done to deserve this.

You expect him to wake once you start removing them. At the very least, you expect him to scream. The first shaft pierced cleanly through his shoulder and is easy enough to ease out, but the second lodged itself deep in the flesh, refusing to budge until you brace your foot against the bedframe and pull with both hands. 

It should have been agony—any man would have cried out. 

The prince does not so much as flinch.

You remember staring at him afterward, the arrow clutched in your hand and your own cheeks wet with tears, wondering if he had died while you were removing it. You press your fingers to his throat with a panic that borders on hysteria, and you aren’t sure if you’re relieved or disappointed when you feel the fluttering pulse still there. 

A traitorous part of you wishes that he had died. 

A corpse is a tragedy, but a tragedy can be dumped in the sea and abandoned. A tragedy will not bring more war to your ravaged home.

A living prince, on the other hand, is a catastrophe that you do not know what to do with. Your home has already faced ruin once, and the longer he remains in your care, the more at risk you will be of bringing it upon you all again, because if he is captured in your care, then that means war and blood and fire and more dragons. The whole town, all of the survivors, everyone will be branded traitors to the crown.

But the prince lived, so you can only hope that he will heal quick enough and be gone before you have the chance to regret helping him.

The fever comes on the second day, and the corpse in your bed finally gives to life. 

You notice it when you are wiping the blood from his face, and your hand brushes his forehead. It’s as though all of the cold of the sea had fled his body at once and left only fire behind. It’s what you expect of a Targaryen prince, really—the burning heat, closer to dragon than man— it feels more natural than the cold, but you are scared anyway. 

You do not know much about treating battle wounds, but you do know about fever. 

Your younger brother died of it during a long winter a decade past—no matter how hard your mother worked to keep it at bay, he was dead by nightfall. Your mother passed in the same moon, to the same sickness, as did half of the children in Sharp Point, because fever does not care whether you are young or old, rich or poor, prince or peasant.

His skin is flushed, sweat beading along his brow and soaking the dark hair at his temples as he twists in the sheets violently, threatening to reopen the wounds you just stitched close. His breathing changes too—no longer the slow drags of air, shallow and erratic, like he had spent days at sea only to begin suffocating on dry land.

You fetch water from the well until your shoulders ache. You lay cloths upon his brow and change them whenever they grow warm. You feed the fire, then fear you have made him too hot and let it die down, only to panic that he would grow cold again and build it back up.

Every few minutes, you find yourself pressing your hand to his forehead or his throat, checking for fever and pulse alike. There is never a change—still alive and burning, and you don’t know whether to be grateful or terrified. 

At one point, he begins muttering. You cannot make out most of it—the words are slurred, little more than broken sounds spilling from fevered lips. Names, you think. Places, maybe. Some do not seem to be spoken in the common tongue.

Once, very clearly, he whispers, "Mother.”

You have to change the cloth on his forehead afterward and pretend your eyes are not stinging with tears. You curse the gods throughout that second day—you wish that you’d never left the cottage at all the morning you found him, you wish you’d left him to die, you wish, you wish, you wish, as though any of it matters anymore. 

You sleep little that night, sitting beside your bed and watching him breathe. Terrified every time his breathing slowed, and equally terrified every time it quickened. You count the moments between each breath until dawn creeps through your shutters, and by morning, you feel like you have lived a lifetime in a single night.

The third day—today—you have to make the trek into town.

You have used the last of your willow bark, and there is only a heel of stale bread left, a few onions, and enough drinking water to last another day if you’re careful. You need fruit and vegetables, more barley, and you have a catch that you never got the chance to bring to the market to trade the morning you found the prince. 

You cannot put it off any longer, much as you may wish—the prince needs supplies, and unfortunately, so do you.

You do not like going into town. You have never liked going into town—you have always been fond of your neighbors and your friends, but you were not fond of the way they circle and crowd you whenever you make your weekly appearance for trade. You got overwhelmed too quickly, and you didn’t know how to make an exit without seeming rude, so you ended up staying there for hours when there were many chores you had to get done at home.

Now, it is like a graveyard. The destruction following the Prince Aemond’s attack on Sharp Point has yet to be cleared. The soldiers are too busy with war and patrols, and the survivors are too busy trying to salvage what they can of their ruined lives. 

When you enter the town, you can still smell charred flesh and death. 

The children usually run to you when you arrive, chattering about the games they’ve played and the rumors they’ve heard, if you saw the wild dragon Grey Ghost while you were out on your boat this week, and you smile and nod along with them. But all of the children are dead now, and you are not crowded by friends and neighbors eager to make conversation with you, because most of them are dead now too.

It is in the market when you overhear green-cloaked soldiers talking about the battle that took place in the Gullet, and you finally put a name to the face of the prince in your home. You try to pretend that you’re not eavesdropping, fingers shaking terribly as you sort through the fruits and vegetables that Wylem carted in from his farm, because you need to know if they have figured out what you’ve done, if they know the prince is in your care, under your roof.

But they only laugh as they speak of dead dragons and a mourning pretender queen. They say the Blacks have lost two dragons, and the bastard prince, Jacaerys Velaryon, is dead. Any man who can find his body washed up on the shore to deliver to the King will see unfathomable riches. 

Momentarily, you are angry at yourself because the royals brought this war and have caused all of this suffering, but when your lashes flutter shut, for a split second, you can only picture the haunted look on your mother’s face as she held your dead brother in her arms. You think of Miss Ellyn, who tossed herself into the sea when she found out her son had been killed on the Kingsroad. You think of your friend, Marie, who you found screaming, fisting her infant daughter’s ashes after the burning of the town. You think of them, and then you think of the black queen on her throne, and you feel the same lump in your throat.

Then you remind yourself that this is her doing. 

Her doing, her half-brother’s doing, the other nobles’ doing. They brought this war to Westeros, they brought death and destruction, fire and blood, and you force yourself to shake your head and push it all away, trading some of the fish you caught for fruits and vegetables and barley with a watery smile that you’re sure Wylem took notice of. 

There are more important things to worry about: if there is a bounty on the prince’s body, everybody will be searching for him. Not just soldiers, the people too—your friends, your neighbors, everyone. Many starve, more struggle, so if there is an opportunity for gold, they will all be on the hunt. You need to burn his cloak and tunic when you get back to the cottage, anything that associates him with House Targaryen. 

You nearly trip over your own feet racing back to the cottage, second-guessing every conversation you had in the town. Wylem asked you why you were getting twice as much food as you usually get—you do not remember how you responded. 

Did you imply that you had a visitor? Why can’t you remember? What excuse did you give? Did the soldiers overhear? Are they following you? Do they know? Why can’t you remember? You’re scared—you do not think you’ve ever been so scared in your entire life. 

You look over your shoulder every five steps, worried that they’re going to come charging after you, demanding you to bring them to the Prince Jacaerys before taking your head. You’re not cut out for this—you’re the daughter of a fisherman. There’s no world where you should be worrying whether soldiers are going to hunt you down for saving a prince. 

There are tears in your eyes when you make it back to the cottage, and your fingers are trembling around the bags Wylem packed for you. You shut the door behind you, and it takes you three tries to bolt it properly. When you finally do, you rest your forehead against the wood and let out a trembling sigh.

You—

“Who are you?”

There is a knife to your throat.

You stare at the crack in the wood of your door, breath catching, desperately trying not to move lest you risk the knife slicing through your skin. The crack appeared last winter, you remind yourself, trying not to focus too much on the fact that you can feel the cool edge of the blade. Your friend, Evander, was meant to fix before the next, but Evander is dead now, and you may well be too, if the knife at your throat presses any deeper. 

“Answer me, who are you? Where am I? Wh—” the prince—Jacaerys Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone, Heir to the Iron Throne—falters suddenly, and you can only breathe again when the knife drops from your neck, and you feel the presence at your back disappear. “You—you are a woman.”

You do not turn to look at him immediately, eyes sliding shut as you fight to steady the frantic beating of your heart, drawing one slow breath after another until your shaking eases enough to trust your legs. Your fingers tighten on the bags cradled in your arms before you force yourself to turn around.

Prince Jacaerys Velaryon stands three paces behind you, one hand braced against the edge of your table, pained, pale, barely conscious. He is bare from the waist up, and the stitches you painstakingly worked through his torn skin have pulled loose, fresh blood soaking the bandages and dripping down his chest and back. 

You see more clearly in the light of the afternoon sun just how ruined his body is, bruises and cuts—you think his ribs must be broken, you did not notice just how bad off he was when you had him lying in the dim corner where you keep your bed. 

For a moment, you forget that you are face-to-face with a Targaryen prince—it is only the boy you dragged in from the sea and spent hours trying to keep alive. 

Your lips curve down into a deep frown, brows knitting together. You exhale as you say, “You reopened your wounds. It took me an hour to get them properly closed.”

The prince stares at you. 

As soon as the words fly from your mouth, you remember who it is before you. The son of a queen. The heir to the Iron Throne, if one listens to his mother. A pretender's heir and bastard, if one listens to her enemies. You do not know which of them is right, nor do you particularly care. Such questions belong to lords and knights and people with far too much time to argue over crowns. 

To the likes of you, prince is title enough for you to keep your mouth shut and your head bowed.

He does not immediately respond, gaze flicking around your cottage uncertainly. Your bed, stained with his blood. The dying hearth. The table where you left out the last bits of the bread, just in case he awoke while you were gone and was hungry. The bandages you left at his bedside. The basin of pink water you forgot to empty before leaving for town.

His lips, dry and cracked, part as he stares at you and murmurs more to himself than to you, “You tended my wounds.”

You hesitate, then nod, swallowing once. “I found you on the shore a few days past, my prince—” Your Grace? What is the proper way to address a prince? My Lord does not seem grand enough for the heir to a queen. Prince feels the safest—whatever he may be, no one seems inclined to dispute that part. “—I… you should probably be resting.”

“I need to know what happened,” he says instead, stepping closer to you. He is too pale, sweat beads at his forehead, dark curls matted to his skin. His eyes are wide and wild, pupils dilated the same way you’ve seen in men mad with grief or fear or fury, moments before lashing out at the nearest person. You find yourself tensing instinctively. “What do you know of the battle that took place on the Gullet? Did Baela make it back to Dragonstone? And Rhaena—she was on that wild dragon, and—my brothers, did my brothers make it back? How long has it been? Where are we? How far is it to Dragonstone? I must return immediately, I—”

The prince only just seems to realize how you’ve drawn away, back pressed against the door to your own home, arms tightening around the sack in your arms whenever he comes closer. His tongue darts out to wet his cracked lips, gaze flicking to the knife he dropped onto the floor and the fear in your face. 

Shame crosses his expression instantly.

“I—” His expression twists as he puts space between the two of you again. You wonder whether it’s from pain or from struggling to force out an apology. Both, likely. He continues, “You have helped me—saved my life, most like—and here I am frightening you. I… I thought I’d been captured. I woke in an unfamiliar place. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know if I was a prisoner or if the battle had been lost. I heard the door open and…”

He trails off, and you stand there awkwardly, tension easing slowly from your shoulders. He is still on guard, but he does not seem so inclined to pull a blade on you again. Your lips part to tell him where he is, what little you know of the battle on the Gullet. 

Instead, you ask, “Do most enemy strongholds look like a fisherman’s cottage, my prince?” 

You are mortified the moment the question spills from your lips—he is a Targaryen prince, they are known for blood and fire and madness, dragons and crowns, and you speak to him as though he’s one of your peers. 

Prince Jacaerys stares at you for a long moment, and then, to your astonishment, his gaze flicks around the inside of your home again, and something suspiciously like embarrassment crosses his face. 

“I suppose not.”

The corner of your mouth twitches despite yourself, and you let out a soft puff of air through your nose before making your way across the room to place the sack you’ve carried from town onto the table. You will have to sort all of what you’ve got later; for now, you need to get the prince resettled before he opens up any more of his wounds.

You turn to look at him again, faltering when you see the pained expression that crosses his face, so sudden that it steals all the color from his cheeks. His hand shoots to his side, fingers digging into the bandages wrapped around his ribs.

“My prince?” you ask hesitantly, taking half a step forward, arm only slightly extended. It is one thing to carry him to your cottage and treat his wounds while he’s unconscious; it is different now that he’s awake.

Prince Jacaerys inhales sharply through his teeth. He is swaying on his feet, breath gone shallow—he looks as though he’s moments from collapsing hard onto your wooden floor. Still, his jaw clenches and the muscles in his neck tighten as he draws himself upright through sheer stubbornness.

“I am fine,” he insists.

“You should sit, my prince.”

“I am standing,” he replies with a tight smile, as though a bead of sweat isn’t rolling down his temple from strain to remain upright and his lips aren’t trembling with pain.

“Barely.”

The prince blinks as though caught off guard by the response, casting a look that is partially confused, and mostly offended in your direction. Your lashes flutter shut as you brace yourself for a volatile reaction, because he is a prince and you are a fisherman’s daughter, and you are arguing with him as though he is an equal and not one of those dragon-riding royals people compose songs about. You think you must have lost your wits entirely these past few days. 

Instead, he shoots back, with all the dignity he can muster while visibly swaying, "I have endured worse."

You stare at the blood soaking through the bandages wrapped around his shoulder, uncertain if you believe him. You say with less heat, "That is not the same as being well, my prince."

His jaw tightens, and you fight a sigh. Gods, he actually looks as though he is preparing an argument. 

You wonder, briefly, what your life has become. Three weeks ago, your greatest concern had been whether the currents would ease up enough for you to take the boat out of the shallows to catch some fish. Now, Sharp Point has burned and you are standing in your cottage, arguing with a dragon prince about his injuries. 

The absurdity of it nearly makes you laugh, wondering if perhaps this entire ordeal is some fever dream brought on by bad fish and Leila’s uncle’s dubious ale. 

Then, Prince Jacaerys’s left leg buckles. 

He reaches for the table and misses, injured shoulder slamming into the edge hard enough to wrench a strangled cry from him, and before you can think better of it, you're moving.

You let go of the sack of fruits and vegetables and barley you were keeping steady on your table; it topples over, and all of your pristine apples go rolling across the floor of your cottage, but you barely notice, panicked when you realize that he careening right toward the hardwood floor.  

You catch the prince around the waist just as he starts to fall, but he is heavier than you expect.

You brace yourself, convinced that he is going to take you down with him, but you manage to steer him sideways toward the chair beside the table. He collapses into it heavily, breath hissing through clenched teeth as pain flashes across his face.

Momentum carries you forward with him—far, far too forward.

One hand lands against the uninjured side of his chest to steady yourself, the other gripping the arm of the chair. For a horrifying second, you are practically sprawled across the heir to the Iron Throne’s lap. You jerk away so quickly you nearly trip over one of the escaped apples, face burning and hands shaking.

"Sorry," you blurt, mortified. “Sorry. Sorry, I did not mean—”

“I believe,” Prince Jacaerys begins with a grimace, “that was my fault.”

You do not respond, flustered, trying to put more distance between you to calm yourself down. Your gaze flicks back over to him, but he is too busy grinding his teeth as he glances down at his wounds to pay you any mind. You let out a soft puff of air through your nose before you look at the apples rolling about your floor, and then reach for one still on your table—you might have lost some sense over the past three days with the little sleep you’ve gotten, but you are not about to feed a prince food off your floor.

You make your way back over to him and hold the apple out to him. He blinks once at it before his gaze lifts to yours questioningly.

“I do not know when last you ate—a while, certainly,” you tell him quietly. “You should get something in you while I redress the bandages. I’ll cook some stew once I’m certain you’re not going to bleed out.”

Prince Jacaerys exhales through his nose before he takes the apple from you, rolling it between his fingers. You step past him so that you can move the basin of water closer to where he’s sitting, grabbing a clean rag and the bandages that you left next to your bed. 

You come to stand in front of him again, hesitating before you motion to the wounds on his shoulder. You ask, “May I?”

His dark gaze flicks up to yours briefly before he nods, and your throat tightens as you shift closer, fingers fumbling a bit as you grab for the edge of the bandages to unwind them from around him. It is much more intimidating doing this while he’s awake, inches away from you, and eyes tracking your every move.

“I found you three days ago, my prince,” you tell him at last, trying to remember all of the questions he asked earlier so that you can busy your mind with something other than the fact that you can feel his skin hot against yours. “Before that, the fighting died another three. In truth, my prince, I do not know how you survived so long at sea.”

Prince Jacaerys says nothing in response. His attention remains fixed somewhere beyond the wall behind you, expression distant. You suspect he is counting the days since the battle, the hours his family has believed he is dead, the minutes his mother has spent mourning him. You keep your gaze trained on his shoulder as you unwind the last of the bandages and set them down on the table. 

You press your lips together when you see that the stitches have loosened at the back of his shoulder—where one of the arrows had dug deep, but not deep enough to pass cleanly through. Pulling it free had torn through muscle and flesh alike, leaving a ragged injury that had taken you nearly an hour to clean, stitch, and stop bleeding.

You exhale as you run the pad of your finger briefly over the stitches, trying to figure out if you can salvage what effort you already put in or if you would have to pull them out and redo them entirely. 

“And my family? My younger brothers? Baela and Rhaena? Have you heard what has become of them?” the prince asks, and you glance up just enough to see how his jaw tightens when your finger brushes over the wound. “Did we win the battle?”

“I do not know if anyone can be said to have won that battle, my prince,” you answer quietly, tongue darting out to wet your lips as you finally start to get to work at reclosing the wound. Your gaze slips to the side when he finally starts to eat the apple you passed to him. He makes a noise in the back of his throat, as though he’s only just realized how hungry he is. “Both fleets were decimated. The dead still wash up on the northern shore.”

How did Prince Jacaerys make it to your shore, then? 

Not for the first time, you have to wonder if the gods themselves placed him directly into your hands. 

Most of the rest of the dead have washed up on the northern and western shores of Sharp Point, as it is where the currents run strongest, but the prince somehow made it to where your cottage sits on the eastern shore. If he had washed up anywhere else, the patrol would have certainly found him by now. You've heard they have spent the last several days combing the beaches, hauling bloated corpses from the tide and turning them over with the tips of their spears, searching for the dragon prince they are certain the sea claimed.

Prince Jacaerys’s breath hitches when you tug lightly at the stitches holding the skin of his shoulder together. Already, he’s finished the apple you handed him, absentmindedly turning the core between his fingers while his thoughts remain leagues away. 

It is only when the last bite is gone that he seems to notice, and his gaze drifts toward the table. He hesitates, and you think it is almost comical—this is the heir to the Iron Throne, a dragonrider, a prince who has flown into battle, and he looks as though asking for another apple might be an imposition too great to make when he’s been floating at sea for at least a week. 

You hold the stitches carefully with your right hand so that you can lean forward and grab another apple from your table to pass to him. His cheeks color slightly when he realizes that you noticed.

“I did not mean to stare,” he murmurs, taking the apple from you and cradling it carefully between his hands. He asks again, “Have you heard what has become of my family?” 

You shake your head, focusing on tending to his wounds again. You think that you’ll be able to salvage your work. It is good, you think—you can get him resting and then cook some stew for the two of you. You didn’t eat much yesterday, frazzled by the fever and trying to keep him comfortable, and you’re starting to feel a lightness in your head. 

“I’ve only heard what the soldiers say in town, my prince,” you murmur, trying to figure out how to go about speaking the news he certainly won’t take well. The last thing you need is for grief to send him bolting for Dragonstone before he can so much as walk across your cottage without collapsing. If he does not kill himself by straining his body when it is not ready, then the patrols will certainly catch him and have his head—and then yours. 

You let out a soft sigh as you tie off the stitches on his shoulder blade and lean down to wet the clean rag before lifting it to his bloody skin. You’re careful around the edges of the wound, trying not to disturb the stitches, working slowly at the dried and wet blood from the curve of his shoulder, over the collarbone, down the length of his back. 

You try not to think too hard about what you’re doing. 

If you do, it begins to feel far too intimate. 

It is one thing to drag an unconscious stranger from the sea. It is another to stand so close that you can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, to brush your fingers across the line of his shoulders. You have spent three days tending him without much thought, because there had been no room for embarrassment while the Stranger lingered at his bedside.

Now he is awake and watching you, and every accidental brush of your knuckles against his skin seems to linger a heartbeat too long. He is a prince of the realm, and you are a fisherman’s daughter—people like you are not supposed to touch people like him, and yet—

You exhale through your nose harshly. You busy yourself with the rag, scrubbing a little harder than necessary at a streak of dried blood along his collarbone simply to distract yourself, and his jaw pinches.

“Sorry,” you say quietly.

“It does not hurt,” he replies—a lie, surely, any man would be in agonizing pain. But maybe not; any man also would have died in the sea. Maybe the rumors are true: the Targaryens are closer to god than man; they do not feel pain or have to fear the Stranger the same way people like you ought to. “What have you heard from the soldiers in town? Where are we?”

“Half a league from Sharp Point, my prince,” you answer, still evading the question, which he seems to realize from the way he glances at you over his shoulder, gaze sharp and accusing. He knows you are withholding something. You exhale lightly through your nose and then say hesitantly, “They say two dragons fell over the Gullet. I could not tell you which.”

“Two?!” Prince Jacaerys demands, immediately rising to his feet, so quickly that the chair scrapes against the floor, and you fear he might rip back open the stitches. He whirls on you, eyes wide, pupils large as coins, and you almost flinch. “Two dragons?”

You swallow thickly as you nod. “My prince—”

“One must be—” His voice catches. He cannot finish the thought. For the first time since he awoke, real grief overtakes him completely. It drains his face of what little color had returned, leaves him staring at nothing as though he can already see the answer waiting for him. “I need to know the second. Whose was it? Which dragon fell?”

It unsettles you how close he sounds to pleading when moments before, you had been wondering whether the stories of the Targaryens’ deism held some weight, because gods do not look like this. They do not stand in a stranger’s cottage with fear plain on their face, hands trembling as they wait for an answer they already dread. 

The same lump forms in your throat now that did when you heard the soldiers mocking a grieving queen and couldn’t help your thoughts from turning to your own mother, to Miss Ellyn, to your friend, Marie. For a moment, he is not a Targaryen prince or a dragonlord; you see a son and an older brother. A boy your age who knows there are only a handful of dragons flying over the Gullet, and every one of them belongs to someone he loves.

“I do not—”

“I need to return home,” he says immediately, as though his face isn’t white with pain and his stitches don’t strain every time he moves. His eyes glaze over you as though you’re not even there, and he takes a step toward the door to your small cottage. “Sharp Point—there must be passage to Dragonstone, there—”

Panic flares in your chest when he makes as though to leave. It is noon, and the patrols have become more frequent along the shores outside your cottage. They’ve spent a week carding through the western and northern shores, and they’ve been sending more and more men to the east—you worry they’re becoming desperate. The longer they go without finding a corpse, the more they may fear that there isn’t one.

If they have an inkling that Prince Jacaerys is still alive, they’ll start kicking down doors, and if they start kicking down doors, they will find him, and your life will be forfeit for harboring him. 

“You cannot,” you say before you can think better of it, lunging forward as though to grab his wrist, but you stop yourself before you can make a terrible mistake, stopping a hairsbreadth from brushing his skin. 

What is wrong with you? you think furiously. You need to rest tonight before you do something you cannot take back. Already you have gotten snide with and you have argued with a prince of the realm—now you have commanded him and nearly tried to seize him. You would have been lucky to only lose your hand in any other circumstance. Had he been standing in a hall instead of your cottage, surrounded by knights instead of rough-hewn furniture, you might have lost your head. 

“I cannot?” Prince Jacaerys turns to you, bafflement momentarily eclipsing the fear that had consumed him only seconds before, as though he cannot quite fathom that someone has just told him no. 

“My prince, you can scarcely stand,” you say. His gaze drops to where your hand is still hovering near his arm, head cocking to the side and brows lifting, and you snap it back to your chest immediately, heat flooding your face. “You have lost a lot of blood, you have barely eaten in a week, your wounds have only just been stitched again, and there are patrols searching for you every road between here and the sea.”

He continues to stare at you, disbelief riddling his expression. You have the distinct impression that no one has ever spoken to him this way before—certainly not a fisherman’s daughter. You force yourself to press on while he’s silent, hoping to make your point and rid him of this futile endeavor before he gets you both killed. 

“The Prince Aemond burned Sharp Point’s harbor. There are no ships capable of navigating the currents of the Gullet, and the water still burns besides. I do not have a horse for you to ride to Stonedance. You could not get to Dragonstone even if you were not hurt,” you insist. “I will return to town tomorrow to try to get more information, but please, my prince, you mustn’t leave. You will only be putting us both at risk.”

For a long moment, you think that he will invoke his title or duty and insist upon leaving anyway, or maybe he will simply walk out the door despite everything you have said, and there is nothing you could do to stop him. 

Then, his expression changes, twisting into something pained as he looks away, a shuddered breath escaping his lips. His shoulders, held tense since the moment you uttered the word two, sink ever so slightly. The panic that had driven him to his feet has nowhere left to go, draining from him all at once, leaving only exhaustion behind. 

One hand drops back down to his ribs, pain crossing his face. Whatever strength carried him to his feet abandons him just as quickly as the panic, leaving him swaying where he stands. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he reopens them, the panic has been replaced by a type of defeat that is infinitely more difficult to look at.

You step forward cautiously when you see how his body is trembling, hand hovering uncertainly between the two of you, silently asking permission to help him. Prince Jacaerys stares at your outstretched hand, then at the bed on the far side of the room; you think, for a second, that he will attempt to cross on his own, but then his nostrils flare as he exhales, inclining his head just enough to grant you the permission his pride refuses to voice aloud.

Carefully, you slip beneath his uninjured arm, taking care to avoid the fresh bandages. He is warm—still warmer than he ought to be—and you can’t help but wonder if his fever has returned or if this is just how hot dragon prince’s typically run. 

He leans into you only slightly, weight settling lightly against your shoulder—you suspect he is trying very hard not to. The journey from the door to your bed is scarcely a dozen paces, but it feels much longer. 

“We were supposed to win this victory for her,” Prince Jacaerys says after a moment, voice breaking, the words slip free before he can stop it. You do not think the admission is meant for you, so you stay quiet. His throat works as he swallows. “We were supposed to—”

He cuts himself off, looking away again as you help him ease back down into your bed. As soon as he is seated, something close to relief crosses his face, lashes fluttering; the pain is still there, but not quite as terrible as it was when he was straining on his feet.

“The fact that you are alive at all is a victory, my prince,” you say quietly, even though you do not think the words will be of any reassurance. “You should rest. The sooner you are well, the sooner we can figure out a way to get you home. I’ll cook up a stew and wake you when it’s finished.”

He exhales again, jaw tightening as he looks away with a resigned expression. You turn your back on him to deal with the mess you made of the kitchen area, grimacing slightly at everything spilled across your floorboards and the table. 

“What is your name?” Prince Jacaerys asks you suddenly. “I think I ought to know the name of the woman who saved my life.”

You let a soft breath, glancing over your shoulder at him. He is pained still, but there is an earnest look in his eyes that makes you falter—you remember how close you were to leaving him to his fate, and you have to look away again before he can catch the guilt that crosses over your face.

With a shaky exhale, you give the prince your name, and you cannot help but feel as though your life has irrevocably changed, and you do not think for the better. 

————————————

The sea is on fire.

Jace cannot tell where the flames end and the water begins. Ships burn around him, masts collapsing into the waves with deafening cracks; men scream as they’re consumed by the fire, and dragons let out terrible shrieks as they dive low to bring down another ship full of Myrish mercenaries. 

He tries to focus.

He chases after the rogue dragon, hoping to kill the rider before the dragon can burn any more of the Velayron fleet—or worse, catch Baela and Moondancer. But there is panic clawing at his chest, and smoke and salt clogging his throat and stinging his eyes. He’s screaming at Vermax to fly faster, to kill the rider, and then—then he sees Rhaena. 

He sees Rhaena atop the wild dragon, and she is screaming, crying, desperately trying to get it under control, and Jace is confused, reeling as he yells at Vermax to stop at the last second. He and dragon both diving down away from the chase before Vermax could breathe fire on his cousin.

Rhaena does not have a dragon, he thinks, trying to figure out what is happening, and Rhaena is supposed to be with his brothers, and his brothers are captured by the enemy, and he isn’t sure if Stormcloud and Aegon made it to shore, and there is too much going on, and—

—and Vermax is falling. 

Vermax is banking hard, being dragged down into the sea, and Jace’s stomach lurches. He’s yelling—begging—Vermax to fly, and Vermax is trying, he’s trying so hard, wings beating smoke through the air. He shrieks as another bolt catches him in the wing, and Jace feels the pain himself—he feels the pain, the primal fear, everything that Vermax does, because Vermax is his, and he is Vermax’s, and they are bonded, and Vermax is drowning, and the water is so cold, and Jace cannot feel his legs or his hands or his face.

He fumbles as he tries to unhook himself from the saddle, choking on water and air, maybe a sob, as Vermax sinks into the sea, a stream of bubbles rising to the surface as he cries for Jace, slowly disappearing into the dark waters. Jace desperately tries to dive after him, as if he has the strength to hold them both above the sea, because Jace has already lost Luke, and he—he cannot lose Vermax. 

Not the dragon who had slept beside his cradle before he was old enough to walk, the hatchling he had grown up alongside, whose neck had once fit beneath his arm, whose first uncertain flights had ended with both of them tumbling into the sandy shore of Dragonstone while his mother laughed herself breathless.

Jace does not know a life without him—he does not want to know a life without him. His earliest recollections are not of nursery songs or wooden swords, but of warm green scales beneath tiny hands and the deep, rumbling croon that had lulled him to sleep when he was scarcely more than a babe. 

When Jace learned to walk, Vermax learned to fly; when Jace’s voice deepened, Vermax’s roar had too. 

There has never been a Jacaerys without Vermax.

But Jace’s lungs are burning, and he cannot see the familiar green scales anymore, and his body is reacting, seizing and spasming because there is no air left in him and water all around. He does not know which way is up and which way is down, the water is too dark and too cold, and he cannot think, but—but he sees the bubbles. He sees the bubbles, and he follows them, and even as Vermax sinks to the bottom of the sea, he saves his rider one final time. 

He reaches the surface with a gasp, gulping the smoky air, and everything hurts. His arms ache, his chest is too tight, his eyes burn, and he cannot breathe, because Vermax is gone. He can feel that Vermax is gone; there is a gaping hole in his chest where his dragon used to be, and Jace does not know what to do, he does not know how to live anymore, and he wants—

He wants his mother.

He just wants his mother. 

He hears the cheers before he feels the first arrow, gaze lifting to the sky as he searches for Baela and Moondancer—they are not too far, he thinks, she'll come for him.

And then, there’s a dull throb in his shoulder blade as he pulls himself over a floating piece of driftwood, but he hardly takes note of the pain, because everywhere hurts, because Vermax is gone, because he wants his mother. He turns when he hears the cheering, and he sees the men on the ship, and he sees the crossbows and the bows and the Myrish banners, but he does not see anything at all, really, blinking once, staring.

The second arrow catches him closer to the chest.

And then—then all he remembers is sea. 

White foam and bubbles, vicious currents and sharp rocks. He thinks he is dead more than he thinks he is alive, but there is so much pain. There is pain and emptiness, and Jace just wants—

“... prince, the stew is ready.”

Jace startles awake, breath hitching in the back of his throat. His body tenses immediately, because he does not remember where he is—he remembers the sea and the waves and rocks and pain and Vermax, but he does not remember…

The cottage. Waking up alone. The door opening, the fear—was he captured? Where is he? Where are his brothers? Where is Baela? What was Rhaena doing on the wild dragon? Mother, mother, mother—

You avert your eyes suddenly, an awkward expression on your face, and Jace suddenly remembers. He remembers you, the apple you passed him as you tended to his wounds; how he held a knife to the throat of a woman who is risking her own life to save his. He remembers that he is stuck bedridden in the bed of a commoner while his mother thinks he’s dead and fights for her throne alone.

He opens his mouth to apologize—to tell you that he will leave as soon as he is able, that he will ensure you’re properly compensated for saving his life—but he falters when he feels something hot and wet drip down his face.

He lifts his hand to his cheek and wipes at his face, looking down at the wetness smeared on his fingertips. For a long moment, he does not understand—seawater, maybe? But he is no longer being tossed around by the sea. He is warm in your cottage, the hearth burns low and your blankets are tangled around him. He blinks once, and another fat droplet of water rolls from his eye down his cheek.

Is he crying?

Heat rushes to his face so quickly he thinks it rivals the fever. He wipes away furiously, not sure if it’s more or less humiliating that you’re pretending not to notice for his sake, turning your back to him to ready the table. 

Jace has wept before, more than most ought to—for the father who taught him fishing and sea shanties, and the other who passed before either of them could speak the truth out loud, for the grandfather he never truly knew, for the brother who felt less like a brother and more like his other half—but never, never in front of a stranger. 

Jace promptly clears his throat and pulls himself together. He glances at you, praying that his face does not betray him, an excuse on his lips as takes a deep breath. Then he falters, mouth watering instantly, gaze cutting to the side where you are busy ladling stew into two chipped wooden bowls, back politely turned, as though you never noticed anything at all.

Jace doesn't think he’s ever been this hungry. He has dined in castles all his life—roasted swan, lemon cakes, arbor wines. He has consumed the finest meals Westeros has to offer and found them lacking, but he almost feels dizzy with need and pleasure at the scent of the stew you made.

“It—” Jace’s voice is hoarse from sleep. Embarrassed, he clears his throat again to try to even it out. “It smells good.”

You look at him over your shoulder with a small smile and murmur demurely, “I’m sure nothing compared to what you’re used to, my prince.”

“I do not know that,” he says lightly as he forces himself to his feet, grimacing as pain immediately shoots through his body. 

Everything aches—his chest, his shoulders, his legs, his arms, his head. In truth, all he wants to do is curl up and sleep more; he cannot bear to keep going. Not now. Not after Vermax, after Luke, after making such a terrible mistake that he might have cost his mother her throne. His stomach flips at the thought, and he fights a shuddered breath.

He needs to keep going—there is no other choice. He needs to get back to Dragonstone as soon as possible.

You pause in the middle of setting the bowls on the table at his words to give him a questioning look. “My prince?”

“I have not tasted it yet,” he tells you, forcing levity into his tone, because you have saved his life, tended to his wounds, and now stand over a pot of stew you cooked for him, worrying that it is not good enough to satisfy a prince. The least he can do is ease your mind. "It would seem unfair to compare a meal I have not eaten yet.”

You blink at him once, and then you smile slightly—it’s a genuine one, not like the small one you forced in his direction just before—and Jace tries his best to return it as he crosses the small room. He shuffles the last few steps toward the table with considerably less grace than he would have liked.

“Perhaps” you reply softly, waiting for him to take a seat at the table before you do as well. 

You do not immediately lift your spoon, and Jace hesitates—for a brief moment, an old childhood lesson surfaces. Do not eat until someone else has tasted it. Feasts at King’s Landing and supper at Dragonstone had been meticulous about such things—cups were poured and tasted before his mother, and plates were sampled before any of them took a bite of their food. The paranoia claws at him and disappears as quickly as it comes.

You had dragged him half-dead from the sea, spent days stitching his wounds and breaking his fever, and gave up your bed so he could sleep comfortably. If you wished him dead, you need only have left him on the shore. 

“I never thanked you for what you’ve done for me,” he says at last, fingers grazing the wooden spoon dipped into the broth. “When I return to Dragonstone, I shall speak with my mother. She will see you properly rewarded.”

“There is no need,” you murmur, finally taking a sip of the stew when Jace lifts the spoon to his lips. 

The broth is hot enough to sting his tongue, but he scarcely notices. It is a simple meal—carrots and celery, chunks of what he thinks is rabbit. It is the plainest thing he has eaten in years, and yet somehow, the best meal he can remember.

His stomach twists painfully as warmth settles into it, and before he can stop himself, he takes another spoonful, then another, the hunger of the past week overwhelming whatever restraint court etiquette had once led him. It is only when half the bowl is gone that he realizes how quickly he is eating.

Embarrassed, he forces himself to slow, lowering the spoon.

“My apologies,” he says, clearing his throat. “I fear I may have forgotten my manners.”

“You haven’t had a meal in over a week, my prince. You’re allowed to be hungry,” you say with a faint smile.

Jace lets out a half-hearted huff of amusement through his nose, though his smile fades as quickly as it came, returning to conversation to try to force himself to slow down and show a modicum of etiquette before he embarrasses himself further. 

“There is every need for reward,” he disagrees, leaning forward slightly to look at you. For the first time since he woke in your cottage, he actually observes you—you cannot be much older than he is, beautiful certainly, but there’s a weariness in your expression that Jace cannot help but feel as though is his fault. “You saved the life of the heir to the Iron Throne. You surrendered your bed, tended wounds that would have killed most men, and risked the wrath of the Greens simply by allowing me beneath your roof. I cannot allow that debt to go unanswered.”

You stare at him for a moment, a conflicted expression on your face, and Jace shakes his head slightly as he presses.

“I do not possess enough coin to repay such a debt myself—” nor, he suspects, does anyone “—but my mother will. You needn't live here any longer if you do not wish to. We could see your cottage rebuilt if the fighting has damaged it, or grant you land elsewhere, if that is what you'd prefer. Whatever you ask, so long as it is within my power, I will see it done.”

You are quiet for a long while as Jace finishes off the stew, but he expects hesitation as you mull over what to ask for: gold, land, a better ship, perhaps. Your gaze drifts off to the side, and Jace’s follows it, faltering when he realizes that you’re looking in the direction of what remains of Sharp Point.

That’s right, he remembers—you mentioned your cottage was less than a league away. 

From where he sits, he can just see the destruction through the small window. The town is little more than scorched foundations and splintered timbers now, dragonfire having reduced generations of work to ash in the span of a single afternoon. He cannot look at it for long, stomach twisting so unpleasantly that he fears the stew you just cooked him might come right up. 

You stay silent for so long that Jace wonders if you have not heard him, and his lips part to repeat himself futilely. 

“We used to think they were beautiful, you know?” you say, voice barely over a breath. “We would watch your family fly from King’s Landing and Dragonstone. The children would cheer and call out the names of whatever dragon and royal was passing overhead, even though they knew you could not hear them.” A wistful smile tugs briefly at your lips, and Jace suddenly feels a rock in his stomach, a heaviness that he cannot seem to push away. “There is a wild dragon in these parts—we call him Grey Ghost. He hunts fish along the eastern shore. I see him frequently when I take my father’s boat out. We lived alongside him for years—sometimes he swoops down close when we have a big catch, but he never bothers us. My father always said he was curious—shy, but curious.”

You exhale suddenly as you rise to your feet; Jace wonders if he should ignore the unshed tears in your eyes the same way you politely did for him.

“Then the Prince Aemond and Vhagar came,” you say at last. “The only thing I want, my prince, is for this war to end, but I know you cannot give me that. If you don't mind, I should see to my father's boat before the tide turns. There is more stew in the pot if you would have it. Then you ought to rest. You'll not heal by arguing with your own body.”

Jace opens his mouth.

He does not know what he intends to say, caught between guilt and indignation, because everybody wants the fighting to end—he does, his mother does. Maybe not Daemon, but why do you say it as though he stands opposed to peace? He did not choose this, nor did his mother. It is not his fault that the Greens usurped his mother's throne.  

He desperately tries to formulate an answer, but how is he supposed to respond to that? What were they meant to do? Yield to the usurpers? Stand aside while his mother’s birthright was stolen? Let Luke die for nothing? Should he say that he is sorry for your loss? That his mother would never have done this? That Vermax would never have burned a fishing village? That this was all the Greens? That they fight to avenge what happened here? 

That dragons are not cruel creatures, he feels the need to tell you when he sees the disdain on your face—it is the people who ride them. It is the Greens. It is Aegon and Aemond, Alicent Hightower and her father.

His lips are parted as though to respond, but he only finds himself staring at you helplessly. 

You incline your head politely before slipping out the door, the cool air rushing briefly into the cottage before it shuts behind you once more. Jace remains where he is, staring into the last of his stew until the steam no longer rises from it, the reality of his situation settling over him—Vermax is dead, Luke is dead, and his mother believes them both lost. He does not know whether his brothers and cousins are safe, if his mother still fights for her crown. He is useless, wounded in a fisherman's cottage, alive only because a woman from a town his family failed to protect chose mercy over sense.

He does not think he has ever felt less like the heir to a kingdom.

[tinyshyteacup]

Taglist: @favourites-loved-by-heart @localcoffeeshops-blog @lilsleepybear1029 @machopeach @fluffyassbutt @scarlet-nerded @feral-wildlife-scientist @luna-kait @the1cardsion @findingpeterpan @arya347 @winterklls @antisocial-dogmom @kellynickelsgirl00 @iminyourceiling @msun1c0rn @entishramblings @shadysuitcasedinosaur @shadowfoxx5

Warnings ⚠️: Canon typical violence, author attempts elvish, suggestive content, alcohol consumption, angst, blood, medical care, feelings of despair, themes of hope, found family, multiverse/time travel, cussing, angst, fluff, eventual smut, weapon use, realities of battle, tolkein monster encounters, panic responses,fish out of water, injury to main characters, death of a side character, long fic, slowburn x reader.

Part 2 | Part 3 - Coming Soon

Sundering of Paths - Chapter One

The Raining of Mushrooms & Feet

The evenings were your favourite kind of ordinary. No deadlines, no emails, no obligations beyond the simple, uncomplicated act of putting one foot in front of the other and letting your mind go quiet.

You'd had the same route for two years—left out of the apartment building, down past the corner shop, through the little cut-through beside the old church, and into the park where the trees were currently doing their autumnal thingy, shedding leaves in slow, dramatic spirals like they were performing for an audience.

You pulled the door shut behind you, checked your pockets by habit—keys, iPod, lip balm—and shoved your earbuds in, scrolling through your playlist with half your attention while you started down the path. The evening air had that particular bite to it, cold enough to sharpen your thoughts but not cold enough to be unpleasant. Somewhere behind you, a car alarm went off and then stopped.

The music kicked in just as you turned the corner, and you let yourself sink into it the way you always did, shoulders dropping, pace settling into something comfortable. The trees lining the path were beautiful tonight, amber and copper and a deep, burnt red that seemed to glow in the fading light.

The playlist was a good one. You'd been building it for weeks, and it had finally reached that level where every song led perfectly into the next. You were not paying attention. This, in hindsight, would turn out to be the first of many mistakes.

The pavement was there and then—without any reasonable explanation—it wasn't. There was no warning, no crack of thunder, no swelling of impossible light. One moment you were walking, music in your ears, thinking about whether you had enough milk for tomorrow's cup of tea. The next moment the ground simply ceased to cooperate.

Your foot came down on nothing and then you were falling—genuinely falling, not the brief embarrassing stumble of tripping on a kerb but a stomach-dropping plummet that lasted just long enough for you to think "oh shit" before the ground arrived.

You hit hard, a full-body collision with an uneven surface that drove the air from your lungs and sent you sliding several feet through a carpet of wet leaves. They were everywhere, sticking to your palms and your back and your trainers.

You lay there for a moment, completely still, your brain doing that slow systems-check that follows a significant impact.

"Oh— ow," you managed eloquently, pushing yourself up onto your elbows and blinking at the ground beneath you. Wet leaves. Dark, rich earth. The sharp, green-and-rot smell of deep woodland.

You pushed up further, getting yourself into a sitting position, and became aware of two things simultaneously, the sting of your palms, scraped and dirty, and a pulling sensation at your knee where your jeans had connected with something sharp.

You looked down. A neat, ugly tear in the denim, and a smear of blood showing through beneath.

"Ugh ...Brilliant."

Your earbuds were still in, one dangling loose now, and you pulled them both out, shoving them into your pocket. The music cut off mid-chorus. In its absence, the silence was—Enormous.

Not the city-park kind of silence, that comfortable urban quiet underscored by distant traffic and the far-off sound of someone's television. This was a silence with depth to it, layered and old, full of wind moving through leaves and the distant sound of birdsong you didn't recognise. You looked up slowly.

Trees. Tall, ancient-looking trees stretching in every direction, their canopies interlocking overhead in a lattice of amber and gold that filtered the remaining evening light into something dim and quiet. The path beneath you—if it could be called that—was narrow and unpaved, winding away in both directions through the undergrowth.

This was not the park.

Your iPod was on the ground beside you, face-down. You picked it up and turned it over. The screen had cracked right across the middle, a spiderweb of fractured glass splitting your wallpaper image cleanly in two.

"Oh, come on," you said to no one. "That was a birthday present."

You were still staring at it, trying to decide whether it was still functional, when the world caved in on top of you.

It happened all at once, something— someone— hit you from behind with the approximate weight and enthusiasm of a small, very determined boulder. Then another something hit from the side. Then two more in rapid succession, and suddenly you were flat on the ground again.

"—not the mushrooms!" someone wailed, in a voice of such genuine anguish that it might have been a eulogy.

"Excuse me!" you managed, from somewhere beneath the pile. "Off—could you get off, get off—please."

There was a scrambling untangling and a considerable amount of "sorry" and "beg your pardon" and one very heartfelt "Pippin," delivered in a tone that communicated prior history between the other parties involved. Weight lifted from your legs, your stomach, your shoulders, in stages. You got your elbows under you for a second time and pushed up into a sitting position.

Your knee was definitely bleeding now. Your palms felt like sandpaper. Your cracked iPod was somewhere in the leaves. And sitting around you in various states of dishevelment, surrounded by a scattered collection of vegetables, were four of the strangest-looking kids you'd ever seen in your life.

Except.

The more you looked at them, the less certain you were that they where kids. They were short— shorter than you, and you were not exactly towering—but there was something about them that wasn't childlike at all. They were looking back at you with expressions ranging from open-mouthed astonishment to cautious wariness to one in particular with a expression of delighted curiosity.

Then your eyes drifted down to the feet. Big, round, covered in dense curly hair, bare on the cold earth without seeming to notice the temperature.

You stared at the feet.

The feet's owners stared at you.

"...hello?" you tried.

"Hello!" said the delighted one immediately, grinning with the kind of uncomplicated warmth that makes you like someone before you've even learned their name. He had a cheerful face under a mop of sandy redish curls and looked like he found the whole thing tremendously exciting. He stuck out his hand. "I'm Pippin. Peregrin Took, properly, but nobody calls me that except when I'm in trouble. Which," he added, with cheerful honesty, "is fairly often."

"Right," you said, shaking his hand automatically. "Okay. Hi, Pippin."

"And I'm Merry." The one beside him was a little more composed but no less friendly, brown curls and an easy smile, already beginning to collect the scattered vegetables from the ground around you. "Meriadoc Brandybuck. Are you hurt? That was quite a collision."

"I'm—yeah, I'm fine, I think." You looked down at your knee again. "My jeans are ruined."

"Your—what?"

"My—" You gestured at your legs. "Never mind."

The other two hung slightly further back. One of them—stocky and square-jawed with a serious, earnest face—was watching you with an expression of cautious concern, like you might need help but he wasn't sure yet if you were trustworthy enough to offer it to. The last one stood a little apart from the rest, slender and dark-haired with a quality of quiet watchfulness that was different from the others. He was looking at you, then at the treeline around you, then back at you, as though running calculations.

"I'm Samwise," the serious-faced one said, giving a small, slightly awkward head bob that was almost a bow. "Samwise Gamgee. Are you— if you don't mind my asking— are you quite alright? You came down something awful hard there Miss."

"I'm fine, Samwise, thank you." You managed to get your feet under you, and Merry immediately moved to help you up, taking your arm with a practical competence that was oddly reassuring. You stood, brushed leaves from your jacket, and looked around again at the impossible forest. "Um. Can I ask you guys something?"

"Of course!" Pippin had found your iPod and was turning it over with intense, fascinated curiosity.

"Do any of you know how to get to Adelaide Court? It's—it's on the east side of town, near the Tesco, there's a grey building with a red door—"

Four blank faces.

Not the blank face of people trying to remember directions. The blank face of people hearing words that don't connect to any concept they possess.

"Adelaide Court ?," Merry repeated slowly.

"The... Tesco?" Pippin tried.

"It's a supermarket," you said, then stopped, because the blankness only deepened. "It's a shop. A large shop. With food in it?"

"We know what shops are," said the dark-haired one, speaking for the first time. His voice was quieter than the others, measured. "But I don't know any place by those names. I'm Frodo Baggins." A pause. "This is the East Road. Or it should be. We've come from Farmer Maggot's." He was studying you with that same quiet calculation. "Where have you come from?"

"From—" You gestured vaguely upward, or backward, or wherever your apartment had been. "From home. I was going for a walk. I tripped and then I was—here." You looked around again. The trees were real. The cold was real. The blood on your knee was real. "Where is here, exactly?"

"The Shire," Samwise said, with the tone of someone stating something so fundamental it barely required saying.

"The—" You blinked. "The what?"

More blankness, this time from their side. Four small faces looking up at you with expressions of increasing uncertainty. The Shire apparently needed no explanation, and the fact that it needed one now was clearly concerning.

"Right," you said, mostly to yourself. Your voice sounded steadier than you felt. "Okay. Um. I genuinely have no idea where I am, and I broke my iPod, my knee is bleeding, so." You exhaled. "I'm just going to—stand here for a second."

"Of course, Miss," Samwise said, with great earnestness. He was already holding out a handkerchief— an actual, fabric handkerchief, neatly folded. You took it, mostly out of surprise, and pressed it to your knee.

"Thanks Samwise."

"Think nothing of it, Miss."

Pippin had sidled up next to Merry and the two of them were exchanging a rapid, whispered conversation that you strongly suspected was about you. Frodo had moved a little way back up the path, looking at the road ahead with an expression that had shifted from watchful to something quieter and more private. You got the sense there was something happening here that went beyond four—short people?—tumbling into a stranger in the woods.

You didn't ask. You were too busy cataloguing the ways in which your situation was steadily becoming more alarming. No phone—The iPod was unusable. The forest around you bore no resemblance to anything you recognised. The people in front of you were unfamiliar with the idea of a freaking supermarket.

"So you guys are lost too?" you asked.

"Not exactly lost," Merry said, with the slight evasiveness of someone who isn't technically lying. "We know where the road is. We just need to get to the Bree before—"

"Before it gets dark?" you said, looking up at the dimming sky between the canopy. It was later than you'd realised. The light had that particular quality of impending evening, everything going golden and slow.

"Yes," Frodo said quietly from the path ahead. "Before it gets dark."

It was surprisingly easy to fall into step with them. That was the thing you kept noticing, in between noticing that none of this was possible and that your knee stung every time you bent it. The four of them had a quality of immediate, uncalculated welcome that you hadn't expected. Pippin talked constantly and cheerfully about everything and nothing, switching subjects with the associative logic of a pinball machine, and didn't seem to notice or care that you frequently had no idea what he was referring to. Merry would occasionally translate, or add context, or shoot Pippin a long-suffering look that communicated years of fond tolerance. Samwise walked near you with a slightly anxious protectiveness, and twice caught your elbow when a root threatened to send you down again.

Frodo was quieter. He walked slightly ahead, and you had the sense he was the leader ? Navigator of this small troop.

You were in the middle of trying to explain what a podcast was to Pippin—a sentence you had never expected to say— when you realised something had changed.

The birds had stopped, you didn't notice it at first, the way you don't notice a background noise until it disappears. But the wood had gone very still, and the quality of the light felt different, wrong, like something was pressing down on it from above.

Pippin had gone quiet mid-sentence. Even he felt it.

"Frodo—" Merry started.

"Off the road," Frodo said. His voice was low and urgent in a way that raised every hair on the back of your neck, and he was already moving toward the bank, where the roots of a large oak created a kind of natural hollow. "Now. Get off the road and hide."

You didn't ask questions. Something about the way he said it—the urgency, the fear underneath the control—moved you before your brain had finished processing the instruction. You scrambled after the others, sliding down the bank with way less grace than any of them, landing in a crouch behind the roots and pulling your jacket tighter as if that would help anything.

The sound arrived before the source, and it was the sound that frightened you first. Not a hoofbeat exactly— or not only a hoofbeat— but something layered underneath it, something that pressed against your ears in a way that had nothing to do with volume. It was the sound of a space where warmth wasn't. Of a presence that moved through the air like a wound.

You pressed yourself against the roots, shoulder to shoulder with Sam on one side and Pippin on the other, and you all held absolutely still.

A horse appeared on the road above. It was black. Not the natural, shifting black of a dark horse, but black the way shadows are black, black the way the absence of light is black. The thing riding it was—you couldn't look at it directly. Every time your eyes tried to settle on it, they slid away, like your brain had simply had enough and was refusing to process what it was seeing. A cloak. A hood. And beneath it, nothing you could properly see, but something you could feel, a cold that went past temperature into something older and more final.

It stopped.

Right above you. Right at the edge of the bank.

You stopped breathing. It wasn't a decision. Your body simply stopped.

The thing was—not twenty feet from where you were crouched—it stopped, and it inhaled. The sound of it traveled through the cold air with horrible intimacy, a slow, searching breath like something tasting what was in front of it. Sampling the night. Sampling the dark.

Pippin's hand found yours and gripped it so hard your knuckles ached. You gripped back. You were both staring straight ahead and neither of you were breathing and the hooded thing on the road turned its head—You thought with perfect, crystalline clarity.

"I am going to die here and I don't even know where here is."

And then, slow as it had come, it moved on. The hoofbeats receded. The smell—cold and deep and ancient and wrong, like something opened that had been sealed for centuries—drifted and thinned on the evening wind.

No one moved for a long time.

"Right," you said, when you had located your voice. It was somewhere in the region between a squeak and barely functional. "What—" You stopped. Tried again. "What in the actual fuck was that thing?"

"I don't know," Frodo said. He was standing now, and the steadiness he projected was clearly costing him something. "But we need to move. Quickly."

"I—I'm—Yep" you managed. "Yes—full agreement— absolutely do that."

The ferry was nothing like you expected, which was to say that it was a flat wooden raft with a rope and four determined short people hauling it across a dark river, and you stood in the middle of it with your arms slightly out for balance and your eyes on the far bank and tried to be useful, which after several attempts at being useful just required staying out of the way.

Pippin had recovered his good spirits with impressive speed. By the time you reached the far bank he was already talking about supper. Sam was quiet and thoughtful in the way that suggested he was worrying about several things simultaneously. Frodo looked like he was carrying some kind of invisible weight, and you kept glancing at him not sure if offering anything would help.

Merry appeared at your elbow. "Alright?" he asked, low enough that it was just for you.

"Not really," you said, with honesty, because there didn't seem to be much point in pretending. "But I'll keep up."

He nodded, and that was that. The landscape changed, the comfortable familiar fields giving way to roads that felt more traveled but less civilised, you walked through the night in stages, stopping twice to rest, and you had time to piece together—from Pippin's cheerful stream of information and Merry's more careful answers to your questions—the barest outline of where you were.

The Shire. The East Road. A place called Bree, where they apparently needed to meet someone there ?

You did not ask about the thing on the black horse. They didn't offer, and every fibre of your being was in favour of not revisiting whatever it actually was.

Bree appeared ahead of you eventually a cluster of lights behind a large gate in a wall that seemed designed by someone who had taken the concept of "keeping things out" very seriously. The Gatekeeper opened up for you with the resigned wariness of a man who had seen many strange people arrive at this gate at this hour and had made friends with very few of them.

You walked through into cobblestones and woodsmoke and the smell of something being cooked that made your stomach remind you aggressively that you hadn't eaten since lunch.

The inn was called the Prancing Pony. It was dimly lit, pleasantly loud, and thoroughly full of people minding their own business in the particular way that means they're definitely keeping an eye on things. The innkeeper—was a broad, friendly man with an air of mild overextension, like someone running three tasks simultaneously and fully committed to all of them.

The spot your strange group decided upon was warm, and close enough to a fireplace that it made you realise how cold you'd actually been.

You sat on a bench near the wall on instinct, you always liked to people watch—with a bowl of something thick and savoury in front of you that tasted better than it had any right to given the circumstances. The noise of the room was comfortable around you, voices, laughter, the clunk of pots, someone playing a pipe instrument in the corner.

You were watching Pippin at the bar with the focused attention of someone who hadnt realised they were identifying a problem in motion.

"What is he doing ?" you said.

"Ordering," Merry said, beside you, in the tone of someone who knows exactly what that means and has made his peace with it.

"Ordering what? Were already eating"

"Well, they have ale here" Merry tilted his head. "—in pints!"

You looked at Pippin. Pippin was cheerfully engaged in what appeared to be an extensive conversation with the barkeep, gesturing enthusiastically at what you strongly suspected were the ale barrels. You got up.

"Pippin."

"Hullo!" He turned with the expression of someone who has done nothing wrong and therefore has nothing to worry about. "Are you still hungry? They've got a wonderful selection—"

"Are you ordering a pint?"

"Well, they do several sizes," he began.

"That is not an answer to my question."

"It rather is, for a Took," Merry said from behind you, shit where did he come from.

You looked between them. Pippin was regarding you with bright, unconcerned eyes. "Listen," you said. "I don't know the rules here, I don't know the— customs, or the—I genuinely have no idea what's happening in my life right now. But." You pointed at the barrels. "Is ale really a good solution ?"

Pippin considered this.

"They have a cheese," he said. "And I believe there may be some cold meats, I'll eat and drink"

"Well thats...better," you sighed

"Wonder if they have mushrooms?" he added hopefully.

You sat back down. Leaving Pippin at the bar, and you watched him begin to cheerfully enumerate what appeared to be a four-course supper to the increasingly impressed barkeep.

"Does he always eat this much?" you asked Merry.

"More, usually," Merry said, with deep affection. "You should see him at the Elevensee's!"

Sam appeared with two more bowls, set one in front of Frodo's seat with a polite nod to you, and settled himself with a watchful quiet that you were beginning to recognise as his natural state. He was looking at the room the way Frodo had looked at the road— measuring it, taking inventory.

Time passed. The room was warm. You began to feel, cautiously, that perhaps you might survive this evening, which felt like progress. Frodo was somewhere in the crowd—you could see him near the bar, talking to Merry—

Then the singing started. Pippin, it turned out, was a gifted and enthusiastic performer who had not the slightest trace of self-consciousness. He was up on the bar— on the bar—with a pint in one hand and a crowd gathering. You were laughing despite yourself, watching him with his arms wide and his curls bouncing—

And then you looked for Frodo, and Frodo wasn't where he'd been. One moment Frodo was there, the next he wasn't, and the space where he'd been was just empty and a ripple of wrongness spreading from it. You were on your feet before you'd thought it through.

"Where's Frodo?" You asked, Merry was already scanning the room.

"He was just—" Sam started.

"Stairs." It was instinct, or something like it, or just the fact that the stairs were the only other place that someone could go. "Come on."

You grabbed the nearest available thing as you went, which happened to be the fireplace poker. It was iron and heavy and you didn't know what you were going to do with it, but your hands needed something and this was what was available. Behind you, in your peripheral vision, you saw Pippin descend from the bar and seize a chair—carrying it in a way that communicated he was absolutely prepared to throw it if necessary.

Sam was in front, which seemed right. Sam had the look of someone who would put himself in front of people without being asked and feel that it was the correct thing to do.

You were at the back, which also seemed right, because you were honestly terrified and the back of the group was where you naturally gravitated anyway.

The stairs creaked under your feet. The hallway above was narrow and low-ceilinged, lit by a single wall sconce that turned everything amber and shadow. Doors on either side, all closed. Sam was moving with his jaw set and his small, square hands in fists, and the rest of you kept pace with him, moving as a unit, the poker was in both your hands in a grip that was more 'please for the love of fuck don't let me need this' than any actual combat readiness.

The door at the end was slightly open.

Sam stopped. You all stopped.

From inside— voices. Frodo's, low and uncertain. And another voice, deeper, quiet in the way that very large, very contained things are quiet. You angled past Merry, who had moved to Sam's shoulder, and tried to see through the gap.

The room was small. Frodo stood near the middle of it. And in the corner, occupying rather more of the available space than seemed geometrically reasonable, was a man.

He was— tall. The word wasn't sufficient, but it was where you started. In the low-ceilinged room he seemed to take up the top half of the available air. Broad-shouldered, dressed in dark, worn travelling clothes, with long dark hair and the kind of face that had been weathered past ordinary handsomeness into something more complicated. His boots were crossed at the ankle, his arm resting on his knee. He was smoking a pipe.

He looked, from your angle, approximately the size and shape of a potential catastrophe, even seated he was simply large, large in the unshowy, structural way of something built rather than grown, and the low ceiling did him no favours.

The man's eyes moved to the door as it opened—to Merry, to Sam, to Pippin—and then past them, to where you stood at the back of the group, and they stopped.

You were used to not being the first thing people looked at in a room. You weren't that tall on a good day, quiet by nature, the sort of person who could stand at the back of a group and be comfortably overlooked because you where shorter or at least the height of everyone else in the group. This man looked at you with the same comprehensive attention he'd turned on the rest of the group, and his gaze moved, briefly but unmistakably, to the poker.

Something shifted in his expression. Very small. Very controlled. Gone almost immediately, back behind the even, watchful stillness of his face, but it had been there—some quality that was not quite amusement and was too restrained to be called anything so simple.

"I thought I heard small folk on the stair," he said, and his voice in the enclosed space was quiet and unhurried, and somehow harder to ignore than a loud one. "I was not expecting quite so many." His eyes returned to the chair in Pippin's hands and then back to your poker. "And I was not expecting ...furniture."

"It's a precaution," Pippin said without preamble.

The man looked at you for a moment. You had the sensation of being read—not unpleasantly, not with hostility, but with the thorough, impersonal attention of someone who had learned to assess strangers quickly because not doing so had consequences, before he addressed you all as a group.

"A reasonable one," he said. Simple. Flat. Meaning it.

You blinked. That was not what you'd been braced for. You kept the poker where it was anyway, because you'd carried it up all those stairs and you weren't ready to trust him yet.

"Who are you?" Merry said, stepping forward with the matter-of-fact boldness of someone who considered his height his own business and nobody else's.

"Strider." The name arrived like something worn smooth with use—but the name sounded like it sat on top of something else, which was either reassuring or its opposite. "I am a friend to Gandalf the Grey. And you are all in considerably more danger than you yet understand."

[mnjrosn]

I’ve got realllllyyyyy crazyy idea, about crossover fic with mha x orv x aib. Where the reader are like from mha so more mha focused. Like damn I’m writing drafts alreadyyyy.

[mnjrosn]

Sneak peek

And when their vision returned, they were no longer in their world. They were seated. In a theatre so vast it seemed impossible for it to exist at all.

Rows upon rows stretched endlessly into darkness, tiered like a coliseum built for gods rather than people. The air was cold. Still. Pressurized, as if even breathing too loudly would be punished.

And yet they could not move.

Not a finger. Not a wrist. Not even their heads beyond a certain limit. It was not paralysis. It was permission. And they had not been granted it.

The screen in front of them was larger than any building they had ever known.

A white void stretched across it, flickering faintly like a closed eye waiting to open. Then, a voice. Not coming from speakers. Not coming from anywhere physical at all. It simply arrived.

“Welcome, spectators of Hero Society.”

A pause. Long enough for discomfort to settle in.

“You will observe the consequences of worlds that believe they are stable.”

[mnjrosn]

I’ve got realllllyyyyy crazyy idea, about crossover fic with mha x orv x aib. Where the reader are like from mha so more mha focused. Like damn I’m writing drafts alreadyyyy.

[mnjrosn]

Sorry I was gone for too long, I was still mourning. May my father rest in peace, please pray for him.

And no I havent forgotten abt my fic, I will get back at it soon, just not quickly because my mind and ideas just reset because of what happened. Also feel free to reach me, share your thoughts or ask me anything. Either about the fic or out of topic. I’m friendly I promised <3

[boohorns1136439]

Learning to belong ~ poly!MHA x fem!Reader (12)

I have nothing to say to y’all other than I am sorry 😔

Warning: cursing, a little nsfw but nothing too explicit

Tags: Pack! Izuku Midoriya X Bakugo Katsuki X Shoto Todoroki X Kirishima Eijirou ; Pack! X fem!Reader ; Omega!Izuku Midoriya ; Omega!Bakugo Katsuki ; Omega!Shoto Todoroki ; Omega!Kirishima Eijirou ; technically Beta!Reader ; modern Au ; post-UA ; Reader has a quirk ; non hero!Reader ; smut eventually ; fem!Reader ; afab!Reader

11 -> 12 -> 13

Masterlist

Taglist

The showers blasted heat into the room, steam curling in thick clouds that clung to skin, hair, and the slick tiles. The water stung against Izuku’s body, sharp and hot over fresh bruises, but he didn’t mind. He welcomed it. It was a sharp echo of everything that had just happened. He’d gotten tired of standing on the sidelines with his mates, so he’d jumped in. The fight had been rough, messy, bloody —but God, it had felt good.

Bakugo had started it, of course. Leave it to him to use a right hook instead of words. Izuku still didn’t believe in the “punch your feelings” philosophy, nor that it counted as emotional maturity, especially for Pro Heroes, but he couldn’t deny that it had worked. Kirishima was laughing again.

The sound bounced off the tiled wall like sunlight, loud, bright, and warm and Izuku’s eyes clung to him. His shoulders were looser now, and his jaw unclenched, the heavy weight of guilt washed clean off him. Water coursed down his chest, streaming along the defined ridges of muscle. Every flex of his back sent small ripples down his arms. Every low chuckle, every flick of his red hair felt hypnotic under the white light of the shower room.

Izuku swallowed hard.

He had always been a watcher. Green eyes always lingering longer than they should. And now, his gaze slid shamelessly down the slope of Kirishima’s back, the curve of his waist, where the water slid along the sharp line of his V-cut, before following the length of his—

“Oi, Izuku,” Kirishima said suddenly, voice pitched with amusement.

Izuku jumped like a sheep caught.

Kirishima turned his head, a wicked smirk tugging at his lips. “Like what you see?”

“I—I wasn’t—!” Izuku choked, eyes wide, flushing so hard it hurt. “I was just—!”

Kirishima only laughed again, deep and delighted. “You know, you could always come get a closer look.”

Behind them, a groan broke through the moment.

“Gross,” Bakugo barked suddenly, his presence nearly forgotten until then. “Save your goddamn mating calls for home, shitty hair.”

Kirishima tipped his head back and flicked water at him with a snap of his fingers, which granted him a sharp fuck you from the blonde.

“Aw, c’mon, dude. Jealous or what? Want a little attention too?”

Bakugo rolled his eyes so hard it looked like it hurt. “The only thing I want is peace and quiet without you two eye-fucking in a public shower.”

“It wasn’t me,” Kirishima said, glancing at Izuku with mock innocence. “It was all him.”

Izuku’s attention was on the blonde after his interruption, but when Kirishima stepped in again, close enough for their shoulders to brush, it snapped back to the other. Big hands cupped the back of his neck, rough and familiar as Kirishima's thumbs gently traced behind his ears. The touch made his whole body stutter.

“You always look at me like that,” Kirishima murmured, pressing his lips against Izuku’s cheek. “You’re still that shy, huh?”

He tried to respond, but his words dissolved into a shaky exhale when Kirishima’s mouth dragged lower, kisses trailing from cheek to jaw to the soft, sensitive place behind his ear. He melted under his mate’s hand. A shiver ran down his spine and his heart gave a stupid flutter at the touch. Years together, yet the smallest thing Kirishima did still managed to leave him flustered and breathless. One hand trailed lower and grabbed Izuku’s bruised side, making his whimpers escaped before he could stop them. Pain curled sweet and sharp down his ribs and wired straight to his spine.

“Kiri—mmfg” His voice cracked on a moan.

Kirishima hummed in quiet apology as his lips moved to Izuku’s neck. The red hair scent spiked —mango and syrupy passionfruit— flooding his senses and numbing his thoughts. He swayed into it, into him.Then, just before he closed his eyes, he caught a flash of red, not Kirishima’s hair, but Bakugo’s eyes, watching them from across the mist.

That single glance sent heat straight to Izuku’s gut as the faint traced of chocolate in the air darkened and became richer. It prickled his skin and sent his hips rocking forward before he could think of it, brushing against Kirishima’s thigh as needy sound bubbled up and slipped out of him, high and breathless.

“Ah—” It escaped again when Kirishima sank his teeth gently into his scent gland and sucked, hard. “nngh…pl-please” He trembled.

Everything was too hot, his skin melted against Kirishima’s, nerves strung tight, and his face burned with a flush. If this kept going any longer, slick would start leaking down his freshly scrubbed and washed thighs, a glistening mess that would give everything away: How embarrassingly fast his body was ready to give in. Thankfully, or unfortunately, he wasn’t sure which one to choose, Kirishima pulled back, his lips swollen and wet, satisfaction glowing in his flushed face.

“You good, baby?”

The pet name made his stomach clench and he could only nodded weakly, still panting, with his fingers twitching where they gripped Kirishima’s arm. He wanted to drop to his knees, wanted to show them both just how not-shy he really was, to prove himself with his mouth full of him, of them. But before he could move:

“For fuck’s sake.” Bakugo’s voice cracked. “You two can’t be fucking serious. Public shower? Really? Perverted bastards.”

Izuku blinked, dazed, still half-chasing Kirishima’s closeness.

“Yeah,” Kirishima said easily, “but you love us anyway, don’t you?”

“I barely tolerate it,” Bakugo muttered, but the corner of his mouth twitched, traitorously. Not that his scent wasn’t already betraying him, all heat and spice, too thick with want to match the scowl on his face. “Now hurry the hell up.”

.

.

.

A sharp spray of cold water chased the heat from Izuku’s skin, shocking the flush from his cheeks and dragging his thoughts out of the gutter. Steam clung to the air, drifting out of the shower room into the locker area with them. Towels rasped against damp skin. Locker doors thudded shut, one after the other.

The sound of running water, of Izuku’s breathy whimpers, had faded, replaced by a comfortable quiet. Not strained, nor heavy like it had been these past weeks, but easy. It settled between them in shared glances and smiles. Izuku let himself sink into it. For the first time in too long, his pack felt settled. Solid. Almost whole.

Almost. Todoroki should’ve been there.

He could picture it too clearly: him in the training ring, half a step behind, landing clean jabs with sharp precision, needling Bakugo with that maddening calm until the blonde snapped. Then that smug smirk —subtle and catlike— would tug at the corner of his lips. He could picture him in the shower too. Standing just behind him, or maybe beside Bakugo, water trailing down his flushed skin, and damp hair dripping past his jawline. He’d look composed, like he was unaffected, but they knew better. His gaze always betrayed him. Heavy-lidded, hungry, dragging over their skin like a touch and leaving Izuku breathless, with his every nerves on fire, and heat pooling, curling, tight and low in his belly.

But he wasn’t there. He was at home alone.

Probably curled beneath too many blankets. He had been so tired lately, fatigue clung to him, to his movements, and his eyes had hollowed with exhaustion. And the worst part, the part that turned guilt into something cold and clawing in Izuku’s heart, was that even if he had come with them today, he wouldn’t have been able to keep up. Izuku’s chest twisted at the thought. How could he enjoy this moment when Todoroki was practically bedridden? How could he laugh, feel close, feel good, when one of his mates was so far away, and falling apart, all alone ? How could he stand here, skin still tingling from earlier touches, when—

“I’m done.” Bakugo’s voice cracked through the quiet, cutting into Izuku’s thoughts before they started to spiral.

“D-Done with what?” Izuku asked, startled. His voice pitched higher, words catching in his throat.

The blonde didn’t answer right away. He sat forward, elbows digging into his knees, fists clenched tight on his thighs until his knuckles turned white. His jaw was set, his eyes fixed on the floor.

“Todoroki,” he said finally. “I’m done pretending he’s fine. Done waiting for him to just bounce back.” He yanked his shirt over his head with a rough pull, the seams whining under the strain. “He’s not fine. Hasn’t been. And we just sat around, hoping he'd magically fix himself. That’s fucking stupid.”

Izuku swallowed thickly. “I know,” he confessed, voice tight. His fingers curled at his sides. He felt stupid, ashamed, and like he failed Todoroki, as his mate. “I kept thinking… if it got really bad, he’d say something. But he didn’t. And now it’s worse. So much worse.”

Kirishima, who’d been silent till now, stepped forward. His shirt still clung to his damp skin, and his expression, gentler than Bakugo’s, was no less serious.

“Then we stop waiting,” he said simply. “We go to him.”

The words hit with weight, and something finally slotting into place. Of course they should’ve gone. They’d wasted so much time second-guessing, scared of pushing Todoroki too hard, scared he’d shut down completely. So they avoided it. With work, with tired smiles, with half-hearted words and careful silence. And he thought, not for the first time since this whole situation, that this wasn’t helping at all, and they all knew it.

Kirishima’s gaze stayed steady as he continued, “I know people at a private clinic for heroes. If we ask, they’ll take him tomorrow, I’m sure.”

Silence dropped again, but within it, a silent promise was sworn. Izuku looked between his mates: Kirishima, grounded and resolute; Bakugo, still fuming but burning with something more meaningful than anger, and in that space, they all felt it. The same knot, lodged in each of their chests, finally starting to loosen.

“Tomorrow, then,” Izuku said, voice firm. “We bring him in. Together.”

.

.

.

The night air nipped at their damp skin as they stepped out of the gym. It should’ve felt cold, but it didn’t. Maybe it was the lingering heat in their bones, or maybe just the comfort of walking side by side, together. Kirishima launched into a story about his last patrol, complete with exaggerated sound effects that nearly earned him a smack from Bakugo. Apparently, the highlight had been his sidekick flinging himself in front of a rogue bus to save a blind grandma and her poodle.


“Dude stopped it with his bare hands, like, ka-BAM! Right before the bumper hit her cane!” He mimed the motion, nearly elbowing Izuku in the ribs.

Bakugo grunted. “So he’s not completely useless anymore. Congrats.”

“Come on, he wasn’t useless. Now he is just more manly,” Kirishima shot back proudly.

Izuku, of course, wanted every detail. “Wait— Was it one of those small shuttles or a full-size city bus? What kind of quirk does he have ? Did he shield her with his body or redirect the motion? How—”

Their shoulders bumped as they strolled forward, laughters breaking out between questions and curses. The street to their car stretched ahead with the sounds of the city’s nightlife humming in the background. Beneath it all, in the rhythm of their steps and the comfortable silence that settled between stories, their promise to help their mate, no matter what it took, remained steady in each of their minds.

Okay, I’m honestly embarrassed to deliver such a short chapter after all these months 😭

I’ve been writing and rewriting, there’s an original 4-5k version sitting somewhere, but I’m still not happy with the second half.

That said, I didn’t want to keep y’all waiting any longer, so here’s the 1.8-2k cut version for now. Ragebaiter Todoroki x Fall for the bait everytime Bakugo is so real to me.

Originally, the Izuku and Kirishima scene wasn’t in it, but I really wanted to explore Izuku’s touch-starved, desperate side. It also felt like the perfect opportunity to establish some of their dynamic, and hint at how each of them might be “sexually.” Izuku’s definitely a freak. Bakugo, I see him a bit more reserved/prudish. As for Kirishima, I haven’t decided on where I’m taking him just yet. So far, he’s been caring and a little dominant, but who knows?

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it! It’s not much, but I’ve really been trying to improve my writing, did it show? I know my spicy scenes tend to feel a bit lacking, so I tried to push myself more with this one. I can’t decide if I actually fuck with the written moan or not.

As always, criticisms are welcomed

Big thank you to @cafekitsune who made the beautiful dividers

11 <- 12 -> 13

Taglist: @too-much-gacha ; @electronicexpertshark ; @poopopp ; @cjdjfhfhfufjfdj ; @kimi01985 ; @icycoldbeanieweanies ; @ghostlyworld ; @marsbars09 ; @queenondeezmatatas ; @imnotherw ; @bedheadloser ; @chrisbiniesluvrr ; @fsocs-blog ; @jadeddangel ; @qardasngan ; @goldenglow149 ; @andysteve1311 ; @pinkmelodies ; @hopefulb1ue ; @redkarmakai ; @zukusluvr ; @navezepol221 ; @candiiee ; @aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaq ; @mniya ; @randomhuman112 ; @mintvender r ; @deadendgrim ; @captainswanarcher ; @figbaby ; @midnight-nightmare ; @talilosha ; @bawlangya ; @optimisticprime3 ; @purplescorpi0 ; @astrolovedy ; @desiree-lee ; @okaysxx ; @the-faceless-bride ; @thelameone101 ; @gethexxed ; @lowkeyhottho ; @bvirrious ; @heespretty ; @roxy776699 ; @kamy-thee-egg ; @talia-the-gemini ; @pikachuzhc ; @itsnotjustmyself-blog ; @roxy776699 ; @mystic60 ; @reallysparklychaos ; @sixxze ; @blurryperrtymoonlight ; @1poison-cat1 ; @allyfoxglove ; @mindsbloody ; @jkvolgs ; @haruaikawa ; @k3nmakyan ; @my-anime-garden ; @fto6 ; @hanniesroom ; @readeryn68 ; @queenofsimps001 ; @mai1em ; @demonzgutzz ; @sleepy-x-snake ; @xxang3|zz ; @decadentcrusadefun ; @shhhstar ; @n3ptOnee ; @nxcx|Ixsevens ; @mailem ; @aslos ; @thatone-gayweeb ; @eveylynnn ; @nervoussangel ; @inakyo ; @graythecoffeebean ; @ninabinna ; @3thr3al ; @barrythestrawberry041 ; @omgeyeless-blog ; @primary-022 ; @prettyprojectshq ; @bluepatrolbear ; @literallyjustmyself23 ; @p3n310p3 ; @slayerdiva ; @hw-shorty ; @quixoticcat ; @fluffypuffyfishyswishy ; @thepocgoat ; @heylolmeow ; @00asworld ; @kienhawon ; @acotarshdowandbone ; @barrythestrawberry041 ; @11sp4des ; @maliamaiden ; @puppyminnnie ; @katbug37 ; @the-fandom-ness ; @dabisstapledonballsack ; @ninabinna ; @graythecoffeebean ; @primary-022 ; @nervoussangel ; @p3n310p3 ; @ange0o ; @choupinettte ; @letmebeagreekstatueyoumotherfuck ; @ddb667 ; @piercing-gaze ; @drabby-abby ; @smut02 ; @straykids-2001 ; @blackbeauties102 ; @alexos-stuff ; @mycherryblossomluminary ; @makiszx

[sofiee213]

Taxi Cab (Part 4) 

— k. bakugo x f!reader angst continuation

part 1 | part 2 | part 3

──── ୨୧ ────

What happens when you stop fighting for the past and allow the present to start over?

There is a specific kind of violence in trying to be a living museum for someone else.

For years, you have been the curator of a history he can no longer access. You have walked him through the gallery of your shared life, pointing at photographs, playing specific songs, and cooking meals that should taste like nostalgia. You search his eyes for a flicker of recognition — a spark that says, “Ah, yes. I know you. I love you.”

But the spark doesn’t come. He looks at you with kindness, perhaps, or confusion, but mostly with the polite distance one gives a stranger.

And eventually, you break.

You stop pointing at the pictures. You stop retelling the stories of how you met in the rain, or that trip to the coast, or the inside jokes that used to make him laugh until he couldn’t breathe. You realize that you cannot surgically implant memories back into a mind that has let them go. 

You accept the tragedy: He forgot. And there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

So, you grieve. You mourn the version of him that knew the map of your soul. You sit in the silence of the room, no longer trying to bridge the gap. You just exist. You let the silence stretch out. You decide that if he is going to be a stranger, you will let him be a stranger.

And you ask yourself the question you have been avoiding since the beginning:

If I stop fighting for him to see me, will I finally be able to see myself?

──── ୨୧ ────

For months, you treated his amnesia like a jammed door — something that just needed enough force, enough love, enough proximity to finally click open. You spent the first weeks after the villain attack in a plastic hospital chair, your hand cramping around his unconscious one, whispering the architecture of your shared life into the antiseptic air. The burnt toast. The agency plans. The way he kissed you in the rain after his provisional license exam, tasting like victory and ozone.

You never left his side.

Not until the doctors gently — pityingly — told you his stress levels were climbing, that he needed a “calm environment” for recovery. They asked you to leave. For his sake.

So you obeyed. You stayed away to help him heal.

And while you were being good, being selfless, being gone — he woke up. He recovered. He met someone else.

He got engaged.

So on the flight to Italy, watching clouds bruise purple beneath the wing, you made a decision that felt like self-amputation: Stop. This mission would be the final test. You would look at Katsuki Bakugo and see him not as the missing half of your soul, but as exactly what he was now.

A coworker. A stranger. Someone’s future husband.

Are some things really meant to be? Or are some things just meant to be finished?

──── ୨୧ ────

The battle in the piazza was a cruel reminder of how biological memory works. Your minds were estranged, but your quirks were still in perfect, devastating symphony.

You moved left; he blasted right. You created a shield; he used it as a springboard. It was a dance you had practiced a thousand times in the training grounds of U.A., a rhythm ingrained in your very marrow. For ten minutes, you were Dynamight and his partner again. The world made sense.

But then the dust settled.

In the old days — in the life that apparently only exists in your head now — he would have been rushing toward you before the smoke even cleared. He would be shoving a water bottle into your hands, his eyes scanning your body for injuries, barking, "You moved too slow on that left flank, idiot. You hurt?"

Today, the silence was deafening.

You stood alone near the fountain, wiping soot from your cheek. Ten feet away, Bakugo had his back to you. He wasn't checking on you. He had his phone pressed to his ear, his shoulders relaxed, his voice dropping into that soft, private register you used to think was exclusive to you.

"Yeah, I'm good," he murmured into the receiver. "It's done. I'll call you properly tonight."

He was calling her.

Shoto stepped toward you, his eyes filled with that quiet concern. He reached out, likely to offer water, or just a steadying hand. Shoto had been your gravity when the world started floating away.

But you stepped back.

"I'm okay, Shoto," you said, your voice firmer than it had been in weeks.

He paused, hand hovering. "You’re bleeding."

"I can patch it," you said. You didn't want to be the broken thing anymore. You didn't want to use Shoto as a crutch, because eventually, crutches get taken away, and you needed to know you could stand on your own legs. You couldn't risk leaning on him and breaking him too.

You walked past them both — past the man who forgot you, and the man who remembered too much for you — and headed toward the villa.

"You did good," you whispered to yourself, clutching your side. "You did good."

──── ୨୧ ────

By evening, the heroes had gathered around a massive fire pit in the villa’s courtyard. The air hung thick with woodsmoke, roasted meat, and pine. 

They called it a briefing, but it was really a decompression session.

You came out of your room clutching your notebook. 

Bakugo was already there. He was sitting on a log bench, staring into the fire, the orange light dancing on his face. He looked contemplative. Peaceful.

You made a choice.

You didn't sit opposite him, hoping to catch his eye. You didn't sit near him, hoping to catch his scent. You sat beside Matteo, a boisterous Italian hero with a wind quirk, putting Shoto and Bakugo in your peripheral vision.

They ate and swapped war stories. You ate one skewer out of politeness, but your hands were already reaching for the notebook. You opened to a fresh page, graphite pencil solid and real in your palm.

You began to draw.

Lines. Angles. Reception desks. A training room with reinforced floors.

"What is that?" Matteo asked, leaning over with the lack of boundaries common to his culture. He squinted at the sketch. "Architecture?"

You blinked, pulling back from the trance. "Uh… my agency. I’m building my own. Soon."

Matteo’s eyes widened. He clapped a heavy hand on your shoulder, turning to the group. “Ehi! Look at this! The piccola is becoming a Boss! She builds her own agency!"

Conversations died. Heads turned.

“Congrats!” someone called.

“That’s a huge step,” another hero nodded, genuine respect in their voice.

Heat bloomed in your cheeks — not shame. Pride.

A Japanese hero from your unit leaned forward, skewer still in hand. “That’s brave. Real estate’s brutal right now. Where’s it located?”

Your breath caught for a fraction of a second.

The location. The one you and Katsuki had chosen a year ago, standing on that corner eating convenience store pork buns while he pointed at the dilapidated building and said, “That’s it. That’s where we take over the world.”

You swallowed the memory. It didn't belong to him anymore. It was just a building. Just yours.

"It's in the Musutafu district," you said, voice steady. "Near the old rail line. It has good bones. High ceilings."

You didn't look at Bakugo. You kept your eyes on the paper.

"Tell us about the design," Matteo pressed. "It looks modern."

"I want it to be open," you started, and then, something unlocked.

You began to speak, and for the first time in months, you weren't talking about your grief. 

You were talking about your passion. You pointed to the sketch, explaining the flow of the lobby, the specific materials you wanted for the gym mats to prevent joint injury, the intake system for civilians during emergencies.

"I don't want it to feel like a fortress," you said, hands moving as you spoke, building something in the air between words. “Hero agencies are usually so cold — all glass and metal and distance. I want this to feel like a sanctuary. When people walk in, I don’t want them intimidated by rank or power. I want them to feel safe.”

Shoto watched you from across the flames. He saw it — the way your spine straightened, the way the fog that had clouded your eyes since the hospital burned away, replaced by sharp, clear light. The ease was back. The authority. The you he’d been mourning.

The circle went quiet, just listening to your voice weave a future out of graphite and air.

You were smiling. Small, but real.

"It sounds incredible," Shoto said softly.

"It will be," you answered. And you believed it.

──── ୨୧ ────

The briefing wound down, the fire turning to embers. You closed your notebook — it was full now, the margins crammed with new ideas from the senior heroes and design tips from Matteo. It felt heavy with promise.

You stood up, dusting off your pants. "I'm turning in. Goodnight, everyone."

You turned to the villa doors.

To get there, you had to walk past him.

Bakugo sat right there, close enough to touch. In the past, his gravity would have bent your trajectory. You would have slowed, hoping he’d reach out and catch your wrist. You would have looked at him, silently begging him to remember the girl who designed that agency for him.

But tonight, your mind was full of floor plans and paint swatches. Your heart was full of a quiet, terrifying kind of hope — not for him, but for yourself.

You walked past Katsuki Bakugo.

You didn't look down. Didn’t pause. 

You just walked.

Your room wrapped around you in cool silence. You leaned your head against the door, notebook pressed to your chest. The quiet didn’t feel lonely. It felt like a blank canvas.

Then it hit you — a jolt of clarity so sudden it stole your breath:

You hadn’t checked to see if he was watching you leave.

For months, every step away from him had been performed for an audience of one, hoping he’d look up and remember. Tonight, you’d simply… left. Because you had somewhere to go.

You were starting over. 

And for the first time since your world ended, you knew — bone-deep, blood-certain — that it was actually possible.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

──── ୨୧ ────

Bakugo’s POV

His body was a traitor.

They cleared the stronghold in under twenty minutes — efficient, brutal, flawless. The kind of operation that would make headlines by morning. And the second the last villain hit the pavement, muscle memory hijacked him.

He didn’t think. Didn’t plan. His hand was already moving, snatching the spare water bottle from his belt. His head whipped left — always left, always her blind spot — ready to bark orders, check for blood, shove hydration at someone who never remembered to drink after using her quirk.

Except no one was there.

She stood ten feet away, wiping soot from her cheek. Not even looking at him.

He froze mid-motion, clutching a plastic bottle like some kind of idiot, his heart jackhammering in a rhythm that had nothing to do with the fight. Why did I do that? Why did his quirk settle when she was in range, like his body recognized a missing piece he didn’t know he’d lost?

His fiancée wasn't a hero. She didn't know the smell of ozone and burnt flesh. She didn't know the specific silence that comes after a detonation. So why, for a split second, did he feel like he was exactly where he belonged?

He shoved the water back into his belt, frustration rising like bile.

She’s just an obsessed ex, his fiancée had told him, fingers cool and certain against his temple. She can’t let go, Katsuki. She’s deluded. Just ignore her.

So why was she the one ignoring him?

──── ୨୧ ────

The migraine struck during the briefing.

It started as a dull throb at the base of his skull, then sharpened into a white-hot spike drilling behind his eyes. Always the same. Anytime he pushed too hard at the “Before” — before the hospital, before the ring, before the clean narrative his fiancee fed him — his brain revolted.

Usually the fiancée fixed it. A touch to his forehead, her quirk humming soft and gold, and the pain would melt into pleasant fog. You’re overthinking, she’d murmur. Just trust my memory. Yours is broken.

But she wasn’t here. And the pain was splitting his skull open.

He was staring at the fire, trying to breathe through it, when he heard a voice.

“I want it to be open. Hero agencies are usually so cold… I want people to feel safe there.”

The pain stopped. Not faded — stopped.

He looked up. Across the fire, she was sketching in a worn notebook, face gilded by firelight. The obsessed ex. The stranger who felt like a ghost he couldn’t stop haunting.

Her voice washed over him, and the noise in his skull cleared for the first time all day.

Then the memory hit.

──── ୨୧ ────

Three years ago. He was sitting on a curb, vibrating with rage because the press had torn him apart for "excessive force." He felt like a monster. And then, a voice cut through the noise. Someone sat next to him. Someone handed him a pork bun and started talking about something mundane — the weather, a stray cat — just to ground him. Just to bring him back.

In his head, the face he saw in that memory was his fiancée’s. It was her blonde hair, her soft smile.

But the voice?

He stared at the woman across the fire.

The voice in the memory — the cadence, the soothing drop in pitch, the specific way she hummed at the end of a sentence — it was her. It was the woman with the notebook.

The audio didn't match the video.

His breath caught. The migraine roared back, vicious and defensive, like his brain was fighting to reject the realization. Stop thinking. Look away. It was your fiancée.

Except his fiancée hated pork buns. And she thought his anger was “scary,” not something to be gentled.

The woman across the fire laughed at something the Italian hero said — genuine and unguarded. His chest caved in. Physical. A grief for something he was somehow holding and losing simultaneously.

──── ୨୧ ────

The briefing ended. She stood.

He couldn’t move. Paralyzed on the bench, waging war inside his own skull.

She walked toward the villa. She had to pass him.

Look at me, he thought, desperate and angry. Look at me and tell me why you feel like a missing limb.

She didn’t. She walked right past him.

She didn't slow down. She didn't glance at his hands. She just walked, eyes forward, carrying her own future in that notebook.

But as she passed, the air shifted.

Clean linen. Custom detergent he hadn’t consciously remembered in years.

The scent bypassed logic, bypassed the migraine’s warnings. It slammed into the animal part of his brain that simply knew:

Mine.

The word was so loud he nearly said it aloud.

She disappeared into the villa. The door clicked shut with a finality that felt like amputation.

His phone buzzed.

Fiancée: How’s the mission? Is your head hurting? Do you need me to call and help you sleep?

His thumb hovered over the screen.

One word — yes — and she’d call. She’d use her voice, her quirk. Smooth the jagged edges. Make the face in the memory match again. Make the pain dissolve into sweet, safe fog, and he could go back to being Dynamight, the man who had everything figured out.

He looked at the door where the woman with the notebook had vanished.

The migraine pounded, screaming warnings, begging him to stop digging.

He slid the phone back into his pocket.

Let it hurt.

He needed to know why the pain felt more real than the cure.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

──── ୨୧ ────

a/n: hey guys, sorry for the super late update 😭 I literally had like 5 different versions of part 4 fighting for their lives in my docs… hope you still enjoyed it though. thank you for being patient 💕

[mnjrosn]

Will be going on short hiatus guys, sorry for not updating. My father has been admitted to the hospital and I don’t really have the time to write

[mnjrosn]

Will update soon, been so busy and still busy 🙃

[hanniehaeo]

𐙚⋆°｡⋆♡ ot13 texts when you try to break up with them

synopsis... you try to break up with ot13 but they won't let you...

𐙚⋆°｡⋆♡ pairing... hyung line x reader

𐙚⋆°｡⋆♡ genre... smau, texts, fluff, angst?, crack?

𐙚⋆°｡⋆♡ trigger/content warning... breaking up, swearing, lmk if i missed any

a/n... ooo first time doing an ot13 text! this was really fun yipee! let me know if you liked it and this is an apology for taking down the jeonghan drabble! i also changed up my title to rose quartz and serenity hehe :D

hanniehaeo navi 𝜗𝜚 taglist 𝜗𝜚 kofi

© intellectual property belongs to hanniehaeo 2025

images belong to original owners; the work isn't an accurate representation of reality

divider by: @uzmacchiato

---

૮ ․ ․ ྀིა taglist: @livelaughloveseventeen @coupsarchive @choco-scoups @markoplolo @strawberry-yeo

[woncheolisms]

KINKTOBER 2025 - WEEK 3 - HONG JISOO

theme: SUPERNATURAL ENTITIES

this installation: sirens

pairing: hong jisoo/joshua hong x reader

synopsis: Mere days are left until you must leave your house for another, to marry a man who has been promised your hand. But a song lures you, sickly sweet, and you may just risk your family’s honor, everything you hold dear, just to listen to this melody.

word count: 3.5k

warnings: non modern au, mentions of forced marriage, misogyny, and abuse. smut, nsfw, unprotected sex, fingering, nipple play, dirty talk, corruption and dubcon (!!!!)

a/n: here we go third installation! this one is written differently bec I was going for a different vibe and time period. let me know what y’all think!

kinktober 2025 masterlist

When a woman’s human fate is destined to doom her at the hands of men who wish to control her, a siren will lure her away to greater endings.

………………………

The stomp of your foot on the ground kicks up a very minuscule amount of dust. You stomp two more times, lips pursing when you feel the leather of the shoe scrap painfully at your ankle. It will take a few wears to break it in. You have not had new shoes in a while, and your father is adamant that these are the best that money can buy.

Money is no longer an issue, of course. Not since your promotion.

You call it that, mouth twisted and distaste on your tongue, when you are alone with your mother and sisters. Not your father. Never your father. He would beat all the insolence out of you with his bare hands if he heard you being even slightly disrespectful to your soon-to-be husband and family. You see the reverence in his eyes when he carries his cart down the road their house is on, gaze drawn to the large stone walls the color of obsidian. He talks about your future father in law, one of the village chiefs, like he is writing sonnets for the gods. It irks you, how little his admiration comes from actual respect and how much of it is linked to the family’s riches.

It irks you even more that you are expected to grant them the same worship.

The market is bustling with people, hawkers advertising their goods in loud, clear voices. There’s fresh fruit, you notice, you always notice. The difference is, now you can buy it. Your mother had asked you to get some. Round, green grapes stare at you, apricots ripe and ready for you to sink your teeth into. You feel a wave of nausea boil up in you at the thought of spending your future husband’s money. Any other wife in the world would be proud to do so. She would boast about it, chin high, eyebrow ticked up in the way that says ‘Look how much he spends on me. He loves me.’

But there is no love here. There is only obligation on your end, bribed by riches and the promise of a full stomach every night. And there is only hunger on the other end, a new young thing for their shiny son.

One more nightfall until you are wed. You buy the fruit.

The walk back home is a leisurely one. Your shoes give more way as you use them, and your ankle breathes a little more as the leather stretches. You hold half an apricot in your hand, savoring the taste as its nectar invades your tongue. It’s sweet, the kind of fresh, citrusy sweet that makes you hum, eyelashes fluttering.

There’s a disturbance in the air that makes you pause midstep. Something static and charged, that pricks at your skin. You blink once, twice, frowning as you look around, and then sound hits the shell of your ear. It’s distant, yet it feels like a whisper directly in your skull, reverberating among the bones. You spin in place, trying to pinpoint the direction. And when you do, your feet move on their own accord.

The more you step off the dirt road and into the grass, the clearer the sound becomes. It takes shape as it clears, into less of a sound and more of a melody, a sweet crooning. You can make out words now, steps hurrying through overgrown greens. You hear something about the spring, something about rain and love, as you push through the bushes. You swat at them absently, hyper focused. Apricot juice runs down your fingers when you squeeze a bit too hard at the fruit still gripped in your hand. The shrubbery gives way, and you’re standing in the clearing where the river runs.

On a sharp jut of rock at the bank sits a man, his back to you. His shoulders are broad, hunched over something. You can make out the wood. An instrument of sorts. You are not blessed with the gift of music, but even you can tell how wonderful his song is, the pluck of the stringed instrument adding to his voice. It’s sweet, not the fresh, citrusy sweet of the apricot. It’s denser, like honey, and it runs over your skin like balm.

Your rustling makes him turn around, but he never stops singing. His eyes are brown like hazelnut. His hair catches the afternoon sun, tinged with deep chocolate. It falls in messy waves around his head, framing his porcelain skin. When he smiles, mid song, his lips curl just around the corners, pink and plump.

He takes your breath away.

When the song ends, he leans his instrument carefully against the rock so he can face you fully. His name is Joshua. He says he sings for the birds. You don’t know about that. Because when you ask for another song, he obliges, his beautiful voice filling the air around you, and it feels like he sings for you. His fingers move over the strings like he came out of his mother’s womb with them in his hands. His voice, that sweet sound that thrums in your veins, makes you sway where you sit on the grass, legs tucked under you, head tilted to look up at him where he sits on his rock. You want to ask him where he is from. Is he a nomad traveling through the land? He can’t be from the village. You have never seen him before. You know everyone who lives there.

But your own voice is stuck in your throat as you revel in his. His song is about joy and serenity, about peace and love. You can feel all of it thundering in your chest. A love you have felt only sparingly, in your mother’s embrace, or your siblings’ laughter. A love you can never bring yourself to feel for the man that you have been promised to. A love that seizes your heart tight when Joshua looks at you and smiles.

Your head has been stuffed with cotton, and your limbs feel like they have been weighed down by lead.

After the second song, Joshua eases himself off the rock with a grace that you didn’t think was possible, like his very limbs are fluid. He sits before you, crosslegged, and asks you how the song makes you feel. It’s a strange question, but words leave your mouth like vomit, like you cannot physically stop them from leaving.

“It makes me feel like I’m loved,” you say, “like the passion of a hundred burning suns still exists. Like life is not dull. Like there is still joy and excitement to be found.”

“There is.” He speaks sweet too, just like he sings.

You shake your head. “There is not. My life as I know it is ending.”

“As you know it.” He repeats. “More excitement lies ahead.”

You can’t help your laugh, but it is mirthless and bitter. “The rest of my life is only obedience.”

His eyes, the rich hazelnut, appraise you. You feel a thrill run down your spine, settling like a weight in your stomach.

“Then don’t obey.”

Your mouth feels dry. Tongue like rubber. “But I must.”

“Don’t.”

Your head buzzes. You blink, lazily, like your eyelids are heavy. It feels like what he is saying is the most logical answer. “Okay.”

Joshua smiles. You smile back.

Back in the village, your mother’s eyes train over the setting sun, teeth sinking into her bottom lip again and again, until it is bitten raw, until the danger of drawing blood is impending. She clutches at the rough cotton of her dress, her limbs stiff with anxiety. Her daughters are setting plates for dinner, as if nothing has happened. As if their world isn’t collapsing.

When her husband walks through the door, she nearly wails when she doesn’t see your figure following him. It’s only the man, his shoulders slumped with burden, lips flat in a line that showed tension.

“Nothing?” Her voice trembles.

Her husband’s jaw clenches, and that is answer enough. Her face crumples and she sinks to her knees, fingers clasped together in prayer. She curses herself for sending you to the markets. It was the day before your wedding. She should’ve kept you home. But her love wouldn’t let her. She wanted you to taste the sweet fruit, to feel the wind on your skin and the ground solid under you one more time before your fate was sealed forever.

The man echoes her thoughts. “How dare you let her set foot outside this house?”

She doesn’t reply. Her fingers remain clasped. She rocks back and forth in prayer.

“Maybe the sirens took her.”

She freezes. She doesn’t look at her youngest daughter, sitting on the cot, watching her parents, one praying and desperate, the other with anger seething under his skin. Her husband’s eyes bulge, the anger progressing into rage.

“You shut your mouth.” He grits. “She was to marry one of the most respected men in the village. Sirens do not come for women of her fortune.”

Your mother wants to scream. What fortune? A life where she must serve a man many years her senior, who sees her only as someone to bed, someone to cater to his whims and pleasures? This wasn’t a marriage, it was a transaction meant to benefit your father. There are greater things in this world than endless money. But her husband will never know this. She opens her eyes just enough to give her daughter a warning look, telling her to stay quiet. When she closes them again, her prayer has changed.

If the sirens have taken you, it means you will not be shackled. If any of the old widows in the village are right about the legends of sirens and their mercy for the oppressed, then that means you are now a free spirit. They all say the same things. Sirens are born from pain and violence, so they will hurt the tyrants and they will free the innocents. They will take revenge on all those who inflict pain.

On the outskirts of the village, as the sun sets over the forest, the orange hue hits the river just right, bathing it in a dreamy glow. You stare up at the sky, at its pinks and deep auburns, muscles feeling like liquid. Grass brushes over your cheeks, your calves, cushioning you from the ground. Joshua croons sweetly into your ear, head held up by his hand, laying on his side. Every few seconds, his lips brush over the shell of your ear, and gentle shivers run through your skin.

“Doesn’t this feel nice?” He whispers.

You hum, feeling warm all over.

“It can feel even better.”

You turn your head to look at him. His nose bumps against yours. “It can?”

“Mmhmm.” His voice is flowery. He raises his hand, places his fingertip in the hollow of your neck, then tracks it down. Goosebumps rise in his wake. Your breath stutters. His finger stills as it reaches the neck of your blouse. His eyes never leave you once. They burn into your irises, heated, heavy.

“Do you want to feel the passion of a hundred burning suns? The kind you feel when I sing?”

You nod, entranced, captured by the fire in his eyes. Can you have that fire? Can it replace the dread of your future?

His finger moves again, dips into the collar of your shirt, brushing over the skin where it swells up to form the mound of your breast. Your lips part at the thought of him touching you in a place no man has ever touched. Under the setting sun, long shadows jut over Joshua’s face. He looks otherworldly, ethereal, like you would close your eyes and he would be only a dream. You don’t dare look away from him. You don’t dare shy away from the rarity of his touch.

You break from his stare only when he lowers his head, lips brushing over your ear again. You feel something soft and wet, his tongue, running over the shell, and you try not to tremble under the sensation.

“Will you let me take you? Here? Now?”

You are nodding before he has even finished speaking. You want to feel this more, this anticipation as it expands and takes over. You are already lightheaded at the thought of reaching the highs Joshua has promised. So when he coaxes your legs open, uses soft, uncalloused hands to brush up your skirt so he can run them over your bare thighs, and when he slots his hips between them, you don’t stop him. You don't dare stop him, afraid that he will go away and take this wonderful feeling with him. This feeling that has you arching into him when he undoes your blouse and lets his perfect lips close around your nipple, the gentlest of suckles which makes you whimper. He hums into your skin.

“Such a sweet sound.” He lilts. “The sound of passion. Don’t smother it. Let yourself sing, darling.”

And you do, especially when he pulls away to lap at your other nipple, his hands busy in your nether regions, pushing away the delicate and soaked cloth of your undergarments to thumb at your core. He runs his fingertips through the slit, exploring deeper, running over your core with practiced leisure, like he has nowhere to be. Like his only indulgence is you.

It feels like the worship your elders often demand you give to your fated man.

Your mind goes blank when Joshua rubs gently over the crest of your lower lips, the shiny little nub yearning for more. He seems to know that already, because he applies more pressure, and you moan into the fragrant air. He hums into your nipple, and his teeth nibble just barely at it. Your back arches. Your legs part even more.

“That’s it.” Joshua’s voice has dropped an octave, yet he sounds even sweeter than before. “Beautiful girl. Spread yourself for me. I will give you everything you need.”

Not want. Need. Everything you need. And you don’t doubt it. Not when you feel a finger prod at your entrance, not when it sinks inside till the last knuckle, making your jaw go slack. Another joins it almost immediately, and Joshua pulls off your nipple, now sore and wet, to look up at you. His eyes burn through you, dripping with desire, and you feel like a goddess under his reverence, like he wants you desperately, like looking at you and touching you makes him feel as good as his fingers are making you feel right now, prodding over a spongy part deep inside you that sends something zipping through your stomach, knocking all the air out of you, making you clench hard around them. His thumb finds your clit, rubbing harsher than before, just enough to make you scream into the rapidly darkening sky. The dam inside you breaks. You flood his fingers as you tremble and gasp, nails digging into his shoulder.

He kisses your cheeks through it, deceptively soft as compared to the swift ramming of his fingers into your opening, pushing into you harder and harder like he never wants this high to end. You collapse with harsh breaths, blinking through tears, wondering what the hell this feeling was, why it felt like your soul was leaving your body.

“Good?” He has a smirk on his face, shining with mischief, like he knows that you are already addicted to what he has given you. Maybe you are. You whine when his fingers leave you. You don’t want them to. You feel empty already. You want him back.

He shuffles. There’s rustling of clothes, and something prods again at your entrance. Bigger, thicker than his fingers, rounded, and it breaches, just a little, through the opening. Your lips part, eyes widening. Joshua bites his supple bottom lip, and his eyelashes flutter.

“Will you open up for me, sweetheart? I’ll make you feel so good. I promise.”

His words feel like salve, licking over your anxieties until you feel yourself relax. It’s like your muscles have a mind of their own, relaxing to his command. He pushes further, deeper, but you don’t stiffen again, not when Joshua whispers so beautifully into your ear, telling you how good you feel, how tight you are, snug, like your tiny little pussy was made for his cock. Such filthy, taboo words, but they sound like poetry as they fall from his lips. His thumb finds your clit, rubbing circles into it as he presses his navel finally into your perineum. Tingles zip through you, ignited again after your last high. Joshua sighs into your ear, not even audible sound, just this exhale of air that’s loaded with pleasure. Your eyes roll when he pulls back just enough to push into you again.

His pace is hurried but controlled. No part of him is sloppy or careless. He moves over you, hips undulating, the muscles of his arms suspending him above you straining under his skin. His sweat makes him look more real to you, like he isn’t a deity that will disappear if you close your eyes. Warmth, buzzing bliss consumes you as he moves in and out, rapidly until you feel him brush that one spot insistently, as if coaxing you with his body to come join him on the peak once again. And you have no trouble following him there, toes curling when it swells in your core, egged on by the words he breaths into your mouth.

“There you go. That’s it. Let go. Really feel it, my darling. Let it take you. Cum on my cock. Cum now.”

And you do, the instant his words hit your ears, as if the very force of them pulls your body over the edge. You feel the crest, the all encompassing wave of gratification swallowing you whole. You moan and cry through it, feeling how he thrusts harder, now with a more rushed focus, and you watched him, hazy as you come down, still trembling, your orgasm still blurring your edges, watching as he bites his lip, gives you the most sensual uptick of his mouth that you’ve ever seen, before he bends his head. His face crumbles, and he moans, for the first time, that littlest of sounds that makes his voice crack, and it sounds better than any song you have heard from him so far.

Warmth fills your insides, coating you, and you hum at the feeling. Like a drug burning through your veins, leaving you numb to everything except your own pleasure. Nothing else matters except this moment, the sound of this beautiful man sighing, his breath hitting your face, his hips grinding into the wet mess between your legs, his weight nice and heavy on your body. You never want it to end. You never want to go back to who you were before you knew this kind of passion existed.

Joshua laves his tongue over the skin between your breasts, like he’s trying to lick the salt off it. You push into him, arching, basking in the feeling. He travels up until he has left a trail of thin spit up your neck, to your mouth. His tongue runs languidly against yours. He tastes like sweet wine, leaving you spacey, like you are getting drunk off the taste of his saliva, your skin thrumming softly.

“You want to feel like that every day?” His words are muffled into your mouth, but you hear him clearly, almost like his voice is coming from somewhere inside your own head. You nod immediately.

“Then you will come with me.” It’s not a question.

The next morning, village ladies saunter to the wells to get drinking water. Their pots clink together, their hips sway, and hanging around them is a cloud of whispers and shocked proclamations. The village chief’s son would not be getting a new, young bride. She is free, as all women should be, from this ill-fated union. Your mother does not mourn. No woman does. Only the men who tried to gain something at your expense.

Sirens are born of violent deaths, and so they are merciful to the pain and cries of the anguished.

🏷️: @picheolin-17 , @lovelylonelinesssvt , @scarlettveemin , @shad0wcast , @iluvhosh , @littlebluehellfire , @jimzk , @lucis-noctiana , @hannieweee , @xh01bri , @ilseamamuchoamingyu , @bleudandelion , @huihye , @escoupsue , @jynxonline69 , @monstacheol , @choco-scoups , @scoupscious , @dy-kyeom , @fairwanda , @imhereonlytoreadxoxo , @nidda13 , @coupsarchive , @bleueirene , @cursedwings2005 , @unlikelysublimekryptonite , @emilliereads

[mnjrosn]

wow ive been so busyyy

[ktownshizzle]

Saving Private Jeon | j.ww [1]

✎ ˎˊ˗ Pairing: Jeon Wonwoo x female Reader ✎ ˎˊ˗ Summary: You’re 99.9% sure this idol guy is into you. If he could stop injuring himself every five minutes, maybe this thing could actually go somewhere. ✎ ˎˊ˗ Genre: Fluff, smut, strangers to lovers, idol!au, military!au ✎ ˎˊ˗ Warnings: private jeon wonwoo r u kidding me?, eventual smut ✎ ˎˊ˗ Chapter Warnings: exaggerated injuries though nothing gory, probably wrong ways to treat said injuries bec I don't work in the medical field and have only ever watched one season of grey’s anatomy, second-hand embarrassment cos wonwoo’s a hot mess bruh ✎ ˎˊ˗ Word count: 2.2k ✎ ˎˊ˗ Notes: Hello Wonwoorideuls! Finally unleashing this from the drafts. I wrote this a while back, like around May and kinda just let it fester in the WIP folder. Dusted the cobwebs off it a bit this week and idk this turned out real cute. Enjoy!~ ✎ ˎˊ˗ Notes 2: Thanks to user @sumzysworld's comment for inspiring the title of this story. Not betaread so all mistakes are my own. TAGLIST IS OPEN

Wonwoo Masterlist

There are three short raps on the door before it swings open.

“Private Jeon, reporting for medical,” the officer says behind him.

You don’t look up right away. Mornings are busy, and it’s already been a parade of sprains and stress-induced stomach cramps. You finish logging the last patient’s chart, then turn to see the new arrival.

And… Ah.

The subject of gossip that has made its rounds from the gate to the clinic today. It’s the idol guy. Jeon Wonwoo. Member of Seventeen. Rapper, apparently. Face like he walked out of, well, The Face Shop.

A loud clang shakes you from your thoughts. Dara, the nurse trainee, drops a metal container as she walks in, obviously recognizing the celebrity in the room. Bless her, but she needs to keep it together. There are several more idols and actors coming through, and she can’t be fidgety.

You’re not completely immune to being starstruck, but being in the medical field, you’ve learned some tricks to regulate your breathing, to slow down your heart beat to a normal cadence. So far you’ve only ever had to employ it once in your history of being assigned here in Nonsan Training Center. Just once, when Min Yoongi of BTS came through to get a routinary inspection of his shoulder. That was… yeah. A career highlight. Fuck, he was unreal.

You snap out of your thoughts and glance up at the man you’ve only ever glimpsed through your sister’s photo cards standing there in sweat-soaked camo, skin flushed from drills, sharp jaw tight. 

“Private Jeon,” you say, stepping around the counter. “Tell me what happened.”

“Landed wrong during a leap in obstacle drills,” he replies, voice strained. “My ankle rolled out. I didn’t hear anything snap, but it’s pretty stiff now.”

You nod, already motioning toward the exam table. “Boots off. Sit up here. Can you manage?”

He obeys without complaint, fingers quick on the laces, movements sharp with practiced discipline. But there’s a slight wince as he pulls his right boot off, and when he peels his sock down, the ankle’s already beginning to swell.

You kneel beside the table and reach for his foot gently. “Tell me if this hurts.”

He does, though it’s almost stripped of emotion. His responses are quiet, clipped. You know he’s hurting but trying not to show it with the way he is biting his lip. You don’t exactly know why he’s trying to stay poised, so you just get back to your physical assessment.

The bone isn’t broken. You’re sure of that. The sprain is definitely there, but low grade. He maybe has a week of it if he’s careful. You start prepping the wrap.

“You had this before,” you say casually. “The injury?”

His gaze drops to his hands in his lap. “Yeah.”

You nod, not pressing. Most guys either talk too much or not at all during treatment. Wonwoo doesn’t seem inclined toward either extreme.

“Swelling should go down in a few days,” you tell him, finishing the wrap. “But I’m going to ice it and get your unit commander to scale you down for now.”

Wonwoo sighs, then nods.

“Crutches or limp? It’s your call.”

“I’ll limp.”

“Of course you will,” you mutter under your breath, and he actually cracks a smile at that. These men would rather be caught dead than be seen with crutches on their first day. In some ways, you get it.

You hand him the cold pack. “Use this for twenty minutes every few hours, if you can manage. Come back tomorrow for a follow-up. But if you feel fine, then you can come the day after.”

He nods. Stands, testing his weight carefully. No dramatic flinches, no performative winces. Just a slight hitch in the step and a tightly drawn breath.

You reach for the door, but he pauses before leaving and glances over his shoulder. Your eyes meet again and your lungs betray you. 

“Thanks,” he says, glancing down on your name plate. “Dr. Y/L/N.”

“Just doing my job,” you shrug non-chalantly, even though something you can’t name for now lingers in the air. 

There’s a light tap, barely audible over the sound of your Spotify lo-fi playlist. You look up from your desk to find idol guy already leaning against the doorframe, hair damp from drills, sleeves pushed to his elbows. He seems less rigid today than when he came in pain from his injury. 

“I was told to follow up,” he says. “Didn’t want to get yelled at for skipping medical.”

“You say that like I’d chase you down the field with an ice pack.” You raise your brow, “I am busy. You’re not my only patient, you know.”

He, too, raises his brow, gesturing to the completely empty space before him with open palms. Yeah, you’re not busy now. But it does get packed once the drills get more demanding.

“Oh come on. Just sit.”

He gives the smallest smile–more in his eyes than his mouth—and finally steps inside. The scent of cedar and clean laundry follows him in.

He sits carefully on the exam table and you pull the cart closer and kneel in front of him. Thankfully, the swelling’s gone down. There’s still a hint of bruising around the outer ankle, but the joint moves fine under your fingers.

“You heal fast,” you murmur.

“Tryin’ not to be high maintenance,” he shrugs, chuckling a little, and you can sense a tease is incoming. “I hear the clinic here’s bussin’.”

“Yah!” You glance up. He’s watching you again with a sly grin as you stand and pat down your trousers. “Don’t come crying to me if you can’t walk next week.”

“Don’t miss me if I don’t.”

You huff, feeling your cheeks warm at the insinuation. “Good bye, Private Jeon.”

It’s the third time this week you find yourself in the presence of idol guy. Honestly? This one’s kind of funny, mostly because you saw the whole thing happen with your own two eyes.

You were in the cafeteria, tray in hand, the mackerel and a few banchan already making your mouth water as you headed toward your usual spot by the window. Wonwoo walked in alone and for a second, it looked like he was about to head your way.

And then he slipped. Just like that. Full-on banana peel moment courtesy of an unattended puddle, while the janitor had momentarily left to grab a mop. You were out of your seat as soon as he hit the floor. He was clearly in pain, wincing and clutching his side, and between you and the janitor, you got him back to the clinic quickly.

Which is how he’s here. 

You clear your throat and pull over the cart. “Well, congrats. You’re back in my clinic. Again.”

He blinks, lips twitching into a tired half-smile. “The clinic’s much more cozy than the barracks.”

“You could’ve just said so. Didn’t have to wipe out the linoleum.”

You help him lean on the exam table and crouch to remove his boot and his uniform pants which are damp from the waist down from the mop water.

“Please remove your boots and your trousers,” you instruct evenly, even though you are hoping to god he is wearing boxers, because you do not think you are ready to see idol guy’s dickprint right now.

Boxers! Halleloo.

Stripped and only in a non-descript pair, you see that his knee is scraped lightly, but it’s his hip that took the worst of it. You help him lay back onto the cushioned table. You click your tongue, inspecting the fresh swelling already starting to bloom on his outer thigh where he took the impact.

“You know,” you say, voice casual, “you don’t have to be polite about being in pain. It’s not a competition.”

You hear a gentle grunt.

“I’m not gonna give you a lollipop and tell you you’re a good boy just because you don’t cry. Not a pedia.”

“I still want the lollipop,” he says, smiling a bit, just a flash of teeth, then winces with an audible yow! when you press just a little too hard.

“Okay, now I believe you,” you say, easing off. 

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Fuck, that’s sore.”

“So, why?” You start removing the old bandage securing his ankle.

There’s a pause. You expect him to deflect, but instead, he says, “Because everyone’s watching me all the time. Just because I’m an idol.” He doesn’t look at you when he says it. Just stares straight ahead, jaw ticking slightly.

“I was hoping I’d be anonymous here,” he continues quietly. “I thought maybe for once, I’d just be another guy in a uniform. But it’s still there. The… expectation.”

You nod, slow. “That sounds exhausting.”

“It is.”

“I’m sorry you’re feeling that way.”

“You know they volunteered me to lead the welcome rites. I mean I’m going to do it. I just don’t know if I deserve the honor. Or if I even want it.”

He looks down at you then. Really looks. And something in your chest tugs, not just because he’s beautiful (he is), but because he’s said something so real and heavy and he chose to say it here. To you.

You shift slightly and gesture to the bandage. “You know, wrapped ankles are a great equalizer. No one looks cool limping.”

He huffs. “Not even me?”

“Especially not you. Four eyes with a busted foot? Yeesh.”

That earns a full smile. And then, with perfect comedic timing, he says, “I nearly fell in the shower this morning.”

You’re horrified. “From the ankle?”

“No. From being fuckin’ exhausted. But let’s pretend it was the ankle so I don’t sound as lame.”

You snort. “You’re really selling this tough guy image.”

“Eh. I was never the tough one.”

That line hangs in the air a moment too long.

“I think,” you say, quieter now, “you’re allowed to not be anything in here.” You gesture around your tiny little clinic. “You can just be yourself with me.”

You see something shifting in his expression. He nods, smiles and damn if it isn’t the prettiest you’ve seen in your life.

You finish securing the wrap and tap his heel lightly. “Rest this tonight. Ice again. The hip, too. That one’s gonna have a nasty purple bruise in a day or two. I’m serious.”

“Noted.” He swings his leg down, slower this time. “Guess I should be careful.”

“You think?” You smirk. “Because you’re not getting a fourth visit this week. I will be locking the door.”

He chuckles. You leave momentarily as he gets dressed.

Then, you remember something. On impulse, you dig into your bag, past your power bank, a squashed granola bar, and an old tube of mascara you should definitely throw out and close around the crinkly plastic of your favorite treat. Chupa chups.

“Hey, Private Jeon.”

He pauses, glancing back.

You pass the lollipop at him (strawberries and cream) and his fingers receive it gingerly. Before he can say a single word, you step backward and shut the door in his face.

You hear a cute little laugh from the other side. Smiling like a damn fool, you lean back against the wall as you listen to his footsteps fade down the hall.

No need to check, but in your highly educated guess, your BPM is off the charts. With a beep, your health watch even warns you so.

Dara has the biggest smile when you walk in the clinic the next day. Your brows meet then parts when you see what she is gesturing to.

A tiny bundle of flowers on your desk, nary a note, nary an indication of who or where it came from. You peer at it closely, carefully like it's a dying insect. But honestly it's a simple handful of blooms.

“Happens every batch,” Dara says airily, flipping through the morning chart logs. “Wonder who it is this time, doc.”

You were never the hot chick in high school or med school or hot chick anywhere for that matter. But there's something about being the young, albeit slightly bitchy doctor in the boot camp that's working to your favor.

You really should lean into it more. Still, it always throws you a little when this happens. You keep thinking it’s just some weird fetish these anxious boys are trying to live out while they are in a suspended reality for 18 months.

Dara smiles conspiratorially as she starts reading the recent patient’s names. “...Park Bongjoong. Lee Mingi. Song Dosan. Jeon Wonwoo…”

That makes you pause. And unfortunately, Dara catches that minute reaction.

“Oh?” Her pretty brown eyes glitters.

“Shut up.”

“Wait.”

“Fuck off, Dara.”

“Oh. My. God.”

“He's not. He won't…”

A knock. Both your heads whip to the door.

Lee Mingi.

And you don't know why, but a weird pang of disappointment flashes through you. It's stupid. Poor bloke is just here for a follow-up. It doesn’t mean anything.

You’re on your way to the gate when someone across the field hollers your name. You can’t help the grin that forms on your face when you see idol guy approach. He’s still limping.

“Did you get it?”

“Hmm?”

He shakes his head. “Never mind.”

You blink. “Wait. The flowers?”

He nods once, sheepish.

“They were from you?”

“I guess I should’ve left a note.”

“They’re pretty,” you say, tucking your hands in your pockets. “But… what were they for?”

“Just a thank you.”

“Oh,” you say, heat creeping up your neck. “Okay.”

“Cool,” he says.

“Coooool,” you echo, extending the vowels for no reason at all. “But, thank you for what?”

“For...”

Thunk!

Out of nowhere, a soccer ball slams into the side of his head. His eyes widen, and then he sways, and then?

Lights out.

…and he drops like a sack of laundry.

Not again!

A/N: So, do we want a part 2 or…?

Thanks for reading you lovely, beautiful human xo

P.S. I purposely did not tag the permanent taglist because I know y'all signed up for BTS, and I'm not sure if everyone in the list fucks with SVT. So am erring on the side of caution here. But if any of the permies also wanna get tagged for Wonu content going forth, then just drop me a note! I’m adding a couple of moots too that I know are carats, hope you don’t mind my loves <3

***

Story-requested Taglist:

@tea4sykes @angellekookie @gfgygyverff @sumzysworld @uno4wonwoo

@codeinebelle @wonvsmile @supi-wupi @youre-on-your-ownkid @twixxxpie

@moochii-daisies @backtothebluesideee @kkaetnipjeon @woozuzu

[veloured]

How To Ghost A Perfect Man

—Summary: After a graduation week filled with three spectacularly bad hookups, your lifelong best friend Jeonghan decides to “fix” your love life by introducing you to his perfect, puppy-eyed friend Seungcheol — who seems like the first good man you’ve ever met… until one Instagram post shatters the fantasy and sends you spiraling into the most insane ghosting mission of your life.

Part 1

—Genre: Rom-com, complicated mess, slice of post-grad life with humor and heartbreak(?).

—Warnings: Strong language / swearing, heavy makeout session, mentions of casual hookups, being ghosted, yelling, reader crashes out a lot, light alcohol references, lots of dramatic overreaction, no explicit smut, but suggestive. NOT PROOFREAD.

—Tropes: Childhood best friends, meddling matchmaker bsf, post-grad chaos, “set up with my best friend’s best friend,” clueless crush, plot, comedic ghosting attempt, inner monologue, feral screaming.

—A/N: Heyyyy.....hiiii....its 3 am...its short...........im sorry i could only write this much

The very first memory you have of Yoon Jeonghan is not cute.

It’s not a sweet montage of two angelic kids growing up together.

It’s you, age six, in his family’s backyard on a sticky summer afternoon, fighting over a plastic princess tiara.

He had the gloves. You had the tiara. It should have been perfect — but no. Jeonghan wanted the tiara too.

“I SAID I’M THE PRINCESS!” you shrieked, fists balled, hair sticking to your sweaty forehead.

“NO, I’M THE PRINCESS!” he screeched back, pigtails crooked, crown dreams alive and well.

There was a tug. Then another. Then a full-on wrestling match that could have been televised. The tiara bent, groaned, and — SNAP.

Beat. Two.

Both of you wailed so loud the neighbors probably debated calling child services. His mom came running with a tray of fruit and panic in her eyes; your mom just sighed like, again?

That was you and Jeonghan: natural disasters in matching Crocs.

Middle school didn’t make it better.

Lunch line. Kimchi fried rice day. The two of you had sprinted from math class just to be first. Shoulder to shoulder, elbows flying.

“MOVE.”

“NO, YOU MOVE.”

A shove. A slip. A tray tilt. And then — catastrophe. Kimchi everywhere: uniforms ruined, hair reeking, shoes destroyed. The lunch lady gasped. Some seventh grader screamed. You and Jeonghan looked at each other for one stunned second before unleashing a sound that can only be described as prehistoric. The entire cafeteria turned. Beat. Two. Chaos.

High school? Still feral. Drama club auditions for the school play. There was one good villain role — the Evil Queen — and both of you decided it was destiny.

“I’M MEANER, I SHOULD DO IT.”

“I’M PRETTIER, I SHOULD DO IT.”

It became an all-out shouting match in front of half the theater kids until the exhausted drama teacher finally shrieked, “ENOUGH!” and handed the role to a terrified sophomore no one had ever seen before. Beat. Two. Screaming — yours and Jeonghan’s — echoing off the curtains.

And then, somehow, adulthood arrived.

Except this time you weren’t the one yelling. You were the one getting yelled at.

It was you, on your couch in your tiny post-grad apartment, clutching a melting iced latte under a throw blanket while your lifelong partner-in-chaos, now full-grown and unfairly beautiful, stormed back and forth in his designer slides.

Yoon Jeonghan — your ride-or-die, your co-conspirator, the boy you’d shared beds and secrets and entire childhoods with — was currently glaring like an exasperated parent.

“THREE. MEN. IN. ONE. WEEK.”

You groan from under a blanket. “Can you not yell before 10 a.m.?”

“No. I will yell. I will scream. I will personally alert the HOA about your poor life choices.”

He storms around like an angry runway model — hair half up, half down, in designer sweatpants because of course.

“Finance Bro first,” he says, holding up a finger. “The one who said he was emotionally available and then Venmo-requested you for half a pancake before ghosting.”

You wince. “He paid for the mimosas…”

“Second!” another finger up. “Tattoo artist nose ring man — blocked you because you have AirPods Gen 2. What even IS that?!”

You bury your face. “He’s into tech…”

“Third!” he gasps like a soap villain. “Mr. ‘just vibing.’ Who—remind me—”

“Okay, okay!”

“—LEFT after hooking up AND STOLE YOUR PIZZA.”

You throw a cushion at him. “That was my fault for ordering extra—”

“No. No victim blaming. You’re retired. You’re banned. We are closing the apps and burning your Hinge profile.”

You try to glare but he’s too pretty to look at straight on. “You’re dramatic.”

“I’m right,” he snaps, dropping onto your couch and stealing your iced latte without asking. “You need an intervention. You need… a decent man.”

“A what now?”

“A decent man. One. Singular. Normal. Respectful. House-trained.”

You snort. “Those exist?”

His grin is slow, lethal. “Seungcheol.”

“…gesundheit?”

“Seungcheol. Cheol. My friend. Normal. Loyal. Dad loves him. Mom loves him. Probably puppies love him. You will love him. And you’re meeting him.”

You groan. “No blind dates.”

“You’ve had worse,” he sings, already texting someone. “Dinner at my parents’. Be grateful.”

Being basically family means you can walk straight in, kick your shoes off, and have Mrs. Yoon shove side dishes into your hands before you even greet anyone. The house smells like galbi, garlic, and impending chaos.

Jeonghan’s dad waves. “My third child! Sit, sit, eat.”

You’re halfway through japchae when the door opens behind you and a new voice says, “Evening.”

You look up — and your brain leaves the chat.

“CHEOL! BRING THE DRINKS!”

You turned — and promptly forgot how to breathe.

The man walking toward you had the prettiest brown eyes you had ever seen in your miserable life. Soft but steady. Warm but not weak. Hair pushed back messily, sweatshirt sleeves shoved to his elbows, carrying a case of beer like it weighed nothing.

When he smiled, it was shy. A little crooked. Like he didn’t know if he was allowed to look directly at you.

“Uh… hi,” he said, voice low and warm.

Your brain, eloquent as always: oh no. he’s hot.

No, worse: he’s respectful hot. The kind who probably thanks waiters and calls his mom. The kind that ruins people.

Jeonghan grins like a man who just lit a match. “Cheol, this is Y/N. Y/N, Seungcheol. Be nice.”

You manage something that sounds like “hi” but might be dolphin noise.

He sits across from you and it’s a nightmare. He listens politely to Mr. Yoon, laughs softly when teased, dimples threatening. He reaches for kimchi with those strong hands and you, a rational adult, immediately think wow that’s a hand that can fix Ikea and also probably hold— STOP.

You drop your chopsticks. Jeonghan smirks like he’s watching reality TV.

You text him under the table: he’s cute i hate u.

He glances at his phone, sends back 😏 without looking up.

You kick him. He yelps. Seungcheol glances over, concerned.

“You okay?”

“She kicked me,” Jeonghan tattles.

“I did NOT—” you start, and Seungcheol laughs, low and warm, and oh god it’s worse when he smiles.

Dinner turns into a blur of you trying not to stare while Jeonghan and his dad occasionally throw you knowing looks. Every time Seungcheol says something polite — “thank you, ma’am,” “this is really good” — you die a little more inside.

The next few weeks are… different.

And so it began.

The weeks blurred with small, stupid sweetness. Cheol always offered you rides after group hangouts; if you said no and ordered an Uber, he sulked quietly but still texted “home safe?” an hour later. He fixed your crooked Ikea shelf without you asking. He listened when you talked — really listened. He laughed at your sarcasm like it was his favorite sound. Sometimes you caught him watching you across a table, not creepy, just… soft. Almost surprised.

Conversations were easy, funny, full of little details you didn’t know you wanted someone to remember.

He’s steady. Gentle. Stupidly endearing.

You’re not used to good.

One night he drives you home alone. City lights, music low. You’re laughing until suddenly neither of you are. He glances over — a heartbeat too long. Like maybe he’d lean in.

Then your phone buzzes: Jeonghan.

“DON’T LET HIM SPEED.”

You both laugh; moment gone. But your chest stays warm.

For the first time in forever you think: maybe this one’s different.

Sunday mornings are always the toughest, not Saturdays or Tuesdays, no, exactly Sundays. You’re halfway through a lazy morning scroll when the post hits your explore page.

Seungcheol.

Arm around a girl.

Caption: “2 years, still my everything 🥰 can’t wait to see you again.”

Your brain stops.

Then your whole body follows.

Then the phone flies.

Literally — you yeet it across the room so hard it bounces off a pillow and hits the wall. You’re already upright, pacing, heat flooding your face.

“ARE. YOU. KIDDING. ME?!”

You stomp three full laps across your tiny apartment, hands in your hair.

“TWO YEARS?!”

“MR. PUPPY EYES IKEA FIXER? TWO??”

“YOU TEXTED ME ‘HOME SAFE’ WHILE HAVING A WHOLE GIRLFRIEND?!”

You stop, jab a finger at the air like he’s there.

“May all your hoodies shrink. May your Spotify crash mid-song. May your ramen always be soggy MAY YOUR FUCKING PILLOW ALWAYS BE WARM AND FLAT CHOI SEUNGCHEOL.”

Then you turn on an imaginary Jeonghan.

“AND YOU. YOON JEONGHAN. My so-called best friend. You set me up with a TAKEN MAN?!”

“You know everything. You know what snack I want before I do. You remember my allergies from preschool. TWO YEARS? YOU KNEW.”

You grab a pillow, slam it against the wall, scream into it until you’re dizzy.

When you’re done, you collapse onto the couch like a fainting Victorian widow.

Your phone buzzes from where it landed. Cheol — “hey, lunch today?”

You throw another pillow.

Buzz. “u ok?”

You flip it face down like it’s cursed.

FaceTime lights up — Jeonghan.

You answer, hair a disaster, voice flat. “What.”

“Whoa. Someone’s in a mood,” he says, eyebrows up. “You mad at me? Cheol says you’re mad.”

You inhale through your nose like you’re meditating. “Busy.”

“Busy doing what, hexing us?”

You hang up. Immediately. No explanation.

Then flop back, stare at the ceiling and mutter, “Men are a social experiment and I’m the lab rat.”

That night you decide: fine. If men can ghost, so can you.

Problem: you have never ghosted anyone in your life.

You only know what it’s like to be on the receiving end. Fuck that finance bro.

So, naturally, you open your laptop and type: how to ghost someone site:wikihow.com.

Step 1: Limit contact gradually.

Step 2: Do not engage in future plans.

Step 3: Block if needed.

You nod like a scholar studying an ancient art. You are now an apprentice of ghosting.

Then — because your brain is a traitor — you start mourning. Hard.

You imagine the life you and Seungcheol could have had.

A dog that’s too big for your apartment. Two kids — eldest a girl who looks just like him, youngest a boy who’s basically you but with his dimples. Everyone saying, “oh my god, you two make the perfect family.”

He’d buy you roses every Monday just to make Mondays suck less.

You’d sail on a yacht in Monaco.

You’d—

You sniffle. You are ridiculous. You know this. And yet.

You fall asleep mid–fake yacht daydream, half-buried in tissues and self-pity, WikiHow still open on your laptop like a handbook to your new villain arc, because even if you had it it would be fully reasonable.