Sterling

[alyc712]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapter 9 is live! 

Zoey receives news, and while it’s not what she’s hoping for, she has Mira and Rumi to help her through. And a little help from her friends too. 

[sterlingguardia]

Fic rec!!!! Best A/B/O fic I’ve read for Polytrix!

[whatamidoinghere56]

Looking back, I still find it wild that not only did Kpop Demon Hunters break Netflix, top the US charts multiple times, and win two Oscars, but it somehow managed to make a noncanon, sapphic, poly ship the movie's most popular ship on AO3, including their own canon, het, doomed demon/half-demon hunter ship.

That feels like a violation of fandom physics.

[biancodinera-deactivated2026011]

[wintersoldierfell]

[sterlingguardia]

I feel attacked in the best way.

[yaketysmax]

YAKETYSMAX DRAWS FANFICS! My series where I draw fics I really love. If I know the author's tumblr tag I've included it, so go check em out! Here's the max i can upload to tumblr dot com isle of derangement in one go, so I guess this is PART 1! check my kpdh fic tag for more fic art/recs and eyecrimes, or follow this on 'yaketysmax draws fanfics' on ao3. Go read those fics and send the authors your love! Thanks so much for all the wonderful fics authors! The eyecrimes will continue! will you accept this rose? @erros429 https://archiveofourown.org/works/70039236

The real thing @frenchsoda https://archiveofourown.org/works/69331621

cabin pressure yannie @yanniest https://archiveofourown.org/works/77886121

Tangled as These Sheets @tenderlumberjack https://archiveofourown.org/works/67948306

The Unchanging Polaris arsonide https://archiveofourown.org/works/67836921 The Birds the bees and the demons yeahnoyeah https://archiveofourown.org/works/73574071 Master Of Illusion @erros429 https://archiveofourown.org/works/76796446 Counter Punch by Get_jinxxed13 @thepointofnotexisting https://archiveofourown.org/works/72041061 ink & honey @ghostgrlonfirst https://archiveofourown.org/works/74890661 I practice what I preach (and I’m pretty on my knees) @somethinglikesawyer https://archiveofourown.org/works/79584591 residual flare @unicyclehippo https://archiveofourown.org/works/73211901 on your side (lets go to a wedding) @kayross https://archiveofourown.org/works/67865566 12 days to fall in love (with you) @NORsevvy https://archiveofourown.org/works/75341066 show me (how to love you) @honestground https://archiveofourown.org/works/73090166 who we're born to be @arendellesfirstwinter https://archiveofourown.org/works/80083316 girl could make a mannequin hungry @dreamhardflyfree https://archiveofourown.org/works/68634286 Fast Car Allegorical_Cave_Dweller @theallegoricalcavedweller https://archiveofourown.org/works/72178681 wisteria, you resilient thing @avirxy https://archiveofourown.org/works/72528381 the worst of what i came from @ghostgrlonfirst https://archiveofourown.org/works/73305326 let me be a little less liminal geekchic64 @whatwordsmiss https://archiveofourown.org/works/69030616 these wheels keep turning, but they're running out of steam Counterpunch @counterpunches https://archiveofourown.org/works/73634466 What happens in Vegas… demodemodex https://archiveofourown.org/works/78201971 Paradise @Ghostbitsforkicks https://archiveofourown.org/works/73454161 i left a party for you (i'vе been thinking about you, too) @norsevvy https://archiveofourown.org/works/79556816

paint my frozen heart with fire @arendellesfirstwinter https://archiveofourown.org/works/75274831 on a tight leash cleaver (onthechoppingblock) https://archiveofourown.org/works/68738096 three in the morning, over like that @ghostgrlonfirst https://archiveofourown.org/works/72048051 so we were liars @arendellesfirstwinter https://archiveofourown.org/works/69422271 There are many benefits to being a marine biologist (in training) BiFelicia @deadbiwrites https://archiveofourown.org/works/70287951 gimme that candyfloss arsonide https://archiveofourown.org/works/68994691

[kayr0ss]

layers, like sediment

[kpdh, polytrix, hurt/comfort, light angst, happy ending!, some fluff, Rumi POV, rumi bad with feelings but gets better, they love each other so so so much it makes me ill]

For @chrysa3tos.

Summary: Rumi wrestles with the weight of her love, but only for a little bit.

-

The thing about the stars is that they are as beautiful as they are unreachable.

It's an uncomplicated truth, easy to accept. Rumi folds it up like a piece of paper she can tuck into the pocket of her robes—a pair she is quickly growing out of—a truth that sits alongside the smell of grass out by the shrine, the cool night air, the quietness broken only by crickets and the distant sound of wind chimes.

She's comfortable here.

And they're comfortable out there, in the unimaginable distance.

Her hands stay firmly planted on the ground as she sits—her fingertips feeling along every blade of grass.

What would be the point of reaching out anyway?

--

"Do you think it'll actually make it there?"

Rumi can't imagine that it'll get very far.

But the lantern floats on anyway—the small candle at the bottom burning bright enough to make the thin paper walls glow. It's the only other thing that's warm around her—though not as warm as Celine's hand that covers her smaller one.

"It will," Celine replies. She watches quietly as it keeps floating upwards.

Rumi is startled that it keeps going—at how quickly it's climbing—until the flickering orange glow is just an ever-shrinking pinprick.

"It carries our wishes," Celine continues. "Or prayers. Or love, or hope, or luck."

"To where?"

When the light vanishes, Rumi can't tell if it's because it's because it's made it there—to that impossibly distant place—or if it's because the fire had gone out. There's a tightness that coils in her chest, a light and fleeting panic, a sudden rush where she desperately hopes it's the former.

She looks up at Celine—who is looking up at the stars with a longing in her eyes that makes Rumi wonder what she's wishing for.

Celine gives her hand a light squeeze.

"To anywhere it needs to go."

--

She doesn't know them very well yet.

Meeting Zoey and Mira for the first time was a little underwhelming—especially considering what she's read in her studies.

The historical accounts of previous hunters all used such nebulous, impassioned words: soulmates, or three parts of a whole, or the people you are destined to be with. Even Celine, normally so curt, had spoken about the hunters—hers, she'd always say—with a lingering sense of warmth, or just an ache.

What was that supposed to feel like? There was so much build up and anticipation she'd almost expected fireworks beneath her skin when the day finally came to meet them—but there weren't any. Just two handshakes and a giggle.

But today—a month or so later, a sunny afternoon—she finds them in her little corner of the garden. Mira has dirt up to her elbows and Zoey looks to be befriending an earthworm or two.

"You were sick this morning," Zoey explains when Rumi walks up to them and asks what they're doing.

Mira—who had been gently pulling the weeds around Rumi's newly-blooming tulips—just continues what she's doing, red in the ears.

"We thought you wouldn't be able to tend your flowers today, and you seem to love them a whole lot, so." Zoey just grins, and shrugs. Easy.

Easy.

Rumi's chest feels very warm all of a sudden. Warm and a bit heavy, but not unpleasant.

It isn't fireworks quite yet—but her hands itch as they hang like bricks at her sides.

Like she wants to reach out to them, maybe.

--

Rumi steps out of the building and into the rain, huddling into herself as she waits beneath a small overhang for their chauffer to come around the front.

The door slides open again behind her.

"Unnie."

She isn't alone—and it's a frightful thing, how much better that makes her feel. And how quickly. She knows the voice well by now, is slowly learning its undertones of softness.

"Mira?"

She's still in the hoodie and sweats from after her own shoot. It had ended an hour and a half earlier than Rumi's—she should be home by now. Instead she's here, holding a book, looking a little sleepy.

"What are you still doing here?"

Mira's standing closer now. There's a little pause, then: "I didn't want you to go home alone."

The wind and rain pick up, and Rumi steps in closer towards Mira—instinct—shielding her from the spray and sudden mist. She hears Mira huff out a little laugh, but they both say nothing about it.

When the backs of their hands brush against each other and their knuckles graze, she feels the way Mira's hand uncurls, the slight movement of her tendons, like she might hook their fingers together.

And Rumi waits for it—and she can tell that maybe Mira is waiting too.

And they wait and they wait and they wait—but Rumi can't quite decipher what it is she's meant to do, is a little afraid of the coiling urgency in her chest, the heaviness of it.

Instead, she just turns to look up at Mira. She's still beautiful even when the sky is dull and washed out with gray.

Rumi is good at this part—at staring from a distance.

No one moves. Rumi finds herself feeling disappointed, but what's new? Nothing has ever been hers to just—take.

It's a kindness when things are unreachable—'just a little further' is something far crueler than an impossible distance.

--

"Any luck?" Rumi hums, perfectly content, her eyes closed and her hands folded over her stomach as she sinks into the plush cushions of their ridiculous couch.

Zoey's on her lap, straddling her.

She's wearing fluffy pajamas and running her calloused fingers along Rumi's silken hair. It's undone today, fanning out over her shoulders and the backrest of the sofa, a million-mile-long curtain of purple.

Zoey's apparently searching for the first sign of white—something about it being endlessly amusing that Mira's grays are popping up at twenty-one, and surely Rumi has one or two by now as well.

Rumi opens her eyes—and then her lips part in a small, quiet gasp.

The afternoon sun hits Zoey's face perfectly. Her brows are a little furrowed, her bottom lip caught in her teeth as she pours every bit of her attention into finding Rumi's elusive white hairs.

"None yet," Zoey huffs—but she's undeterred.

Rumi grips her own hands til her knuckles turn white. She wills them to stay still. Zoey is warm where her knees gently rest against Rumi's sides—is warm everywhere, like the sun loves her the most. Her smile is softer for it, her brown eyes glowing into something lighter.

"Maybe I'll try again in a year," Zoey leans back, seemingly resigned, her mouth curled into a silly smile.

And Rumi wants to—

Oh, no.

She wants.

She had never allowed herself that luxury before. And Rumi almost gives in, too, until Zoey braces herself against her arm to get up and the only thing between her hand and a sickly, purple pattern is the thin fabric of her sweater. It almost makes her sick to her stomach—guilt and shame and longing curdling up together into something she doesn't recognize anymore.

Zoey's standing up now—and soon she's faraway again.

--

Of course she loves them.

She doesn't have to have them to love them. If she puts her hands to work—unclasped and giving instead—maybe they will unlearn the vicious urge to grasp and be so greedy.

She brushes Zoey's hair ('I love you'),

And cooks Mira her favorite soup ('I love you'),

And sits by their bedside when they fall sick and frail and feverish ('Please be okay—I love you'),

And keeps an arm around them when they walk through a crowd ('I love you—so deeply'),

And tucks them in as they sleep ('I am falling apart—and I love you'),

And—she's cooking them breakfast now.

It sizzles on the pan while they lean on each other on their couch, half-awake, some silly talkshow playing on their giant TV as the morning settles. Zoey likes runny eggs, Mira prefers hers over-medium. She salts one, but not the other. Chops up some parsley to set to the side.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

She looks up from the chopping board and she catches the moment that Mira presses a kiss onto the crown of Zoey's head.

Rumi nearly drops the knife—and it might as well have lodged itself between her ribs—a sharp and blooming ache grows in her chest, because, there it is—she gets it now.

All the books and the records and the tender ache in Celine's voice every time she had mentioned the previous hunters—the ones who were hers.

Soulmates. Three parts of a whole. The people you are destined to be with.

The fireworks hit with a sting instead of a wonderous crackle—deep within her skin, still, but ringing so thunderously that she wants to cry—she nearly does, almost burns the second set of eggs when her eyes begin to sting, stumbling in the kitchen while the rest of her life sits in the living room none the wiser.

Do you they feel it? That she loves them? That she loves them so much? In every thing she's ever done—these little lanterns of her soul, carrying the wishes of her heart—candles that float upward to the night sky she isn't allowed to reach for—with her love, with her longing.

She's still wishing, just like when she was a child, that they'll make it there.

But today it feels like they've been caught in the cavern of her chest, stuck at the top where they can't float away, until the paper catches fire and she's burning up inside, and it aches and it aches and her ribs are so tired, and—

"I love you."

--

It takes losing them for her to realize that she's been such a fool.

She's reaching out now, to someplace even further away than the night sky—past the moon, past the sun, past that impossible distance—to pull them back, to take them home.

They hear her as she serenades them through the crowd and the towering flames. It's the same song it's always been—I love you—and they start singing back.

They start singing back.

Or have they been singing back the whole time already? Since the beginning—since all they had were two handshakes and a giggle between them?

They crash into each other's arms and the Honmoon flickers into something entirely new—it's made of a million pinpricks of light floating in the sky: made up of their patience, and their longing, and their own little whispers of love—answering all her wayward wishes, returned back a thousand times over, built up over years and years.

And she's been such a fool—but that's okay.

She's theirs now.

--

Rumi kisses Zoey softly along her temple, her cheek, her brow. She lifts up Mira's arm from where it's draped across her middle, presses a kiss to her knuckle and lingers a little as their fingers thread together.

The thing about her stars is that they are beautiful curled up beside her—cradled in her arms, tucked beneath her chin, pressed against her back as she settles in between them.

-

end

-

A/N:

Inspired by 'Arcturus Beaming' by The Crane Wives - I watched their show live, heard this song, ascended, got hit by Rumi feelings, declined a Twilight Movie 3 watchalong to be in my feelings about it, tried and failed to get dumplings as I wrote it - I beg of you, please listen to the song! And now gift this fic to my good friend chrys who showed me some truly brain chemistry changing The Crane Wives music & whose art is a huge inspiration for my writing! (Especially the werewolf one!) I appreciate you! So much! Please check out their art on Tumblr! Thank you so much to @saltypyrotato for beta reading - you are the best, always!

[queerukuleleplayer]

We're Back Baby!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Go throw love and appreciation at @honestground they deserve it for this masterpiece!

[dreampaladin]

author spotlight: @yanniest

happy yannie day to everyone that celebrates! for those of you that don’t know, yannie periodically does author spotlights for writers in the kpdh fandom, primarily as a way of bullying them lovingly, but also as a way to shout out their work. so i’m doing my own little spin on it, featuring some of my favorite yannie fics!

currently on:

lonely lavender bones (M)

The thing about telling one very big lie is that it requires a foundation of hundreds of smaller lies to hold it up, lies such as "I'm fine," and "nothing's broken," and "it doesn't hurt." Rumi finds this out the hard way.

yannie keeps saying that she wants this one to end and selfishly i never want it to. it’s heartwrenching in the best ways possible and i have a whole other post admiring the way pain is described in it because it’s so incredibly visceral, so incredibly real that it almost made me barf at certain points (in the best way possible). and holy shit the loneliness in this fic hits you like a train, hollows out your heart, and asks you to keep moving on. and i’ve thanked yannie for it repeatedly and will continue to do so.

previously on:

okay now for some of my other favorites that aren’t (currently) ripping my heart to shreds!

learn to love around a gap (T)

Celine does love Rumi, she does, but there's not much room for love when she's filled with so much grief.

the way yannie writes this fic is so fascinating, because you don’t hear celine speak for most of it. she’s so deeply analytical and we also get to see where so much of rumi’s tendencies come from; because yannie explores them in such wonderful depth. celine is one of those incredibly complex characters that is hard to do well, and yannie does an EXCEPTIONAL job

cabin pressure (E)

Flight attendant Zoey is outrageously flirty and extremely bored, and she's going to make it the problem of two very attractive and surprisingly receptive passengers.

im gonna be upfront with you. this one is Just Smut. but it’s some of the Best Smut you’ll ever read so just. go for it. yannie typically does character studies through smut (and you can trust and believe that we’re getting there), but this one is just smut. it’s fun and flirty and so in character, so much so that it has inspired at least one person to go and get a flight attendant job. honestly, i’m not really doing this piece justice. go read it

the sky set to burst (the gold and the rust) (E)

Rumi losing her patterns doesn't mean she lost her shame.

this is such a fascinating look at a golden!au, one where rumi gets everything she’s ever wanted—and then it all bites her in the ass. because there is something lovely about yannie fics, where she often gives the characters what they think they want and then make them pay for it in very satisfying ways. yannie has also said that he wrote lonely lavender bones to try to get better at action scenes. and there’s one scene in this fic that always comes to mind when i’m thinking about writing my own because it’s so good! and so true to the movie’s particular brand of action

ouroborous (bite down or let go) (E)

Being angry and protective is all well and good, but it's not always what people need.

yannie, you didn’t think you’d escape without me mentioning the character studies designed as smut, did you? anyway. these fics where yannie explores the girls’ characters, often through sex and the things that surround it, are incredible and really show the depth to which yannie understands every character that they write for. the fact that they can take these characters, say “you wanna see them fuck?” and then do an indiana jones switch so that you’re forced to examine who they are as people, is masterful. every time i read one of these i come away with a better understanding of the characters as a whole and definitely how yannie writes them. this one in particular is really fascinating because it’s got two versions (ish)! the exploration of mira’s anger is so good in both fics (p.s. the other one is see me bare my teeth for you)

darling, are you ready for more? (E)

While Zoey's away Mira learns something new about Rumi.

this was my first yannie fic!! i don’t remember how it came across my dash, but it sounded so intriguing that i clicked into it right away. as always, it is a beautiful character study wrapped up in some of the hottest smut you’ll ever read. i love how yannie explores control (or the lack thereof) in his fics; it fits so wonderfully for these characters and is one of the many, many reasons i will always come back for more yannie fics.

in conclusion: go read yannie fics if you love crystal-clear characterization, amazing dialogue, and some of the best smut in the fandom. happy yannie day!

[honestground]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[sterlingguardia]

Go read it!!!!

[yeah-thats-right]

(pull me up from down below, ‘cause I’m) underneath the undertow

yeah-thats-right

Chapter Eleven: I need you now, I need you most

Rumi’s scars begin to heal

Sometimes Rumi wonders if Zoey and Mira’s love is misplaced, meant for someone else. Not like anyone else would be the object of their affections, but like they see someone else when they look at her - a version of herself that’s capable of being loved, that deserves their love.

Rumi doesn’t want to feel like she doesn’t deserve their love anymore - it’s the opposite. She wants to deserve it, but even more so—

Rumi wants. For the first time in her life she feels like she’s allowed to want.

And all she wants is Mira and Zoey’s love. She wants them.

Read the final chapter here on AO3

[sterlingguardia]

Read it!!!!

[art-the-f-up]

Entirely Self Indulgent video because I read the lyrics and thought 'this is Rumi what if I put her thru all the pain all over again'

[eldergoblin]

@dremenec I tried to lean into the shadows bc of your post thank youuuu

[yeah-thats-right]

(pull me up from down below, ‘cause I’m) underneath the undertow

yeah-thats-right

Chapter Eleven: I need you now, I need you most

Rumi’s scars begin to heal

Sometimes Rumi wonders if Zoey and Mira’s love is misplaced, meant for someone else. Not like anyone else would be the object of their affections, but like they see someone else when they look at her - a version of herself that’s capable of being loved, that deserves their love.

Rumi doesn’t want to feel like she doesn’t deserve their love anymore - it’s the opposite. She wants to deserve it, but even more so—

Rumi wants. For the first time in her life she feels like she’s allowed to want.

And all she wants is Mira and Zoey’s love. She wants them.

Read the final chapter here on AO3

[sterlingguardia]

Read this now! It’s important!