“Is that all you’ve got? No wonder you’re always in second place,” Wooyoung snickered beside you.
His cheeks were flushed red from the race and his hair was sticking to his forehead from how much he was sweating. Yet he still managed to find the energy to be a dickhead.
“Fuck off,” you whispered, letting your body drop down onto the athletic track. Usually this was a perfectly normal thing to do, but thanks to your fever and migraine that had been worsening throughout the day you winced when you hit the ground, a jolt of pain sparking up your spine and into your skull. You drew in a long breath. You just needed to find your water bottle and you’d be fine.
“Seriously, I barely even broke a sweat and you look like you’re about to pass out,” Wooyoung continued to taunt you. You couldn’t even bring yourself to groan at his pestering.
You shouldn’t have gone to athletics for several reasons. The most obvious reason was that the cold you’d started coming down with last night had been absolutely wrecking you all day, making it near impossible to concentrate on any of your classes and one hundred percent impossible to maintain any conversations longer than a minute.
The only slightly less obvious reason was Wooyoung. On the best of days the two of you were already up each other’s asses, training not for competitions or for fitness but rather to beat each other in every category. It wasn’t weird for Wooyoung to bitch at you when you beat him and it wasn’t weird for him to gloat when he beat you. All in all, going to athletics with your body on the verge of collapse when you knew Wooyoung was there was pretty much a death sentence.
“Hey,” Wooyoung called out. You grunted in response, pressing your forehead into your knees as you tried to catch your breath. Apparently Wooyoung wasn’t satisfied with that response because suddenly his trainer kicked into your foot. Hard.
“Wooyoung, fuck off!” you shouted, your voice loud enough to make your head throb in pain. You didn’t really hate Wooyoung outside of races and practice, but with your body on the brink of collapse you didn’t have it in you to bicker with him the way you usually did.
“Hey, slow down,” Wooyoung said, his voice a little quieter this time. His foot nudged against yours once again. “You just didn’t run very far today and I-”
“Wooyoung if you’re going to brag again just shut up,” you tried to yell, only for your voice slowly turn into a whimper. You lifted your head and your teary eyes met his as you tried to fan yourself with one hand. “Just shut up because I really don’t feel well and I don’t need you to give me shit for it right now.”
Wooyoung stared at you as though you’d grown a second head, suddenly looking nervous as he picked at the skin around one of his thumbs.
“I was just going to say you should drink some water and that I have some dextrose tablets if you want one,” he said, his voice so sympathetic that if you hadn’t seen him speaking you wouldn’t have guessed that it was him.
Great. Now you looked like a dickhead.
“I’ll drink water in a second, I just need to find my water bottle,” you told him, pressing the heels of your palms to your eyes and inhaling deeply.
Soft touches, godless hands
Tainted love, holy grin
No one can save me from my sin
❖︎· · ─────── ·❖︎· ─────── · ·❖︎
Genres: Romance, Sci-fi, Fantasy
Rating: Adult
Series?: Yes
Availability: Free
Tropes/Themes: Lovers to enemies to lovers, enemies to lovers, LGBT+, non-binary main character, sapphic main character, Found family, unorthodox relationships, gray morality, magic, angel/demon, angels vs. demons, character exploration, biblically accurate angels, eldritch angels, demons are not evil, Eldritch Horror
TW: Gore, sexual situations
Current Status: WIP
❖︎· · ─────── ·❖︎· ─────── · ·❖︎
SOFT Touches, Godless Hands is primarily a romance story with plenty of fantastical and sci-fi elements thrown in with angels and demons taking the center stage. These angels and demons, however, are not your typical ones. As creatures from a higher plane of existence than our current 3D plane, they are quite inhuman and thus, have inhuman tendencies as well.
God, a being even higher than his flock of angels, has seemingly turned his back on his creations for reasons unknown, becoming distant to Heaven’s needs. The resulting panic has driven many angels away from their sacred duties, leaving the City of Golden Light barren.
Auriel is one of the remaining four Seraphs who work directly beneath the Lord and his Throne. Being in the highest order of angels, the Seraphim have become the guiding light for the remaining angels.
The sudden and strange distance from the Lord doesn’t just affect the angels, however. Demons have a knack for hearing rumors, and with darkness spreading all across the universe in ways unseen, it is up to the remaining angels to do what they can to protect not just themselves but Earth and the rest of the mortal plane as well. But with their forces dwindling, it has forced the angels to work beyond their hierarchy in Heaven and particular talents.
Shouldering part of the burden, Auriel has decided to take the mantle of an archangel and send themselves to Earth on missions to fix the problems plaguing the mortal plane and stop the spreading darkness. But it seems ghosts (and demons) of their past are up to no good as well, and they cast doubt on everything Auriel knows and does.
Teetering between the draw of a mortal body, their own celestial identity, locked memories, and distant temptations, Auriel struggles to determine what’s right, who’s wrong, and whose really the demonic presence sabotaging everything they’ve ever known.
This story is planned to be a series of novellas that tie into one another with multiple different plots that touch upon the worldbuilding and the overarching story in different ways.
As I add more informative posts regarding this story to my blog, I will update this post with the proper links.
scrapped: wooyoung high school friends to lovers ✦ ｡ﾟ･ 🍃⋆
*scrapped: works that will not be completed/posted
Wooyoung had known you for a little while in high school. He’d known a lot of people at the time, the same way he knew a lot of people now. He just happened to be lucky like that, his forwardness landing him more acquaintances and friends than most people his age could boast of having. In high school it hadn’t been as much of a talent - even in a building of a thousand teenagers only so many of them were worth knowing - but it was how he got to know you, and for that Wooyoung would credit it as the best talent he had.
Knowing you was difficult, really. He was used to skipping steps in friendships, always fast forwarding to the parts where he could exchange secrets with people and smother them with affection, but it didn’t work like that with you. The main reason for that was because before he knew you he knew of you. That little preposition made a difference much bigger than Wooyoung could’ve ever imagined.
Beneath the exams and the parties and the copious amounts of caffeine that clogged everyone’s veins now and again, high school was the kind of place that left a bitter taste in Wooyoung’s mouth whenever he went home. He wasn’t sure why at first. He had friends and his grades weren’t awful - at the end of the day weren’t those the only things you needed to get by without any difficulty? It took him a whole year to notice what it was that left that left the quinine-like taste on his tongue.
The class photos for the second year of high school arrived in the mail a few days late for Wooyoung and he almost tore them in his attempt to get into the envelope as quickly as possible, fingertips itching to see not only his photo but his friends and classmates in the class photo. He stood in the hallway, running a fingertip over the students in his class before he landed on… somebody. He frowned. He knew everybody in his class, didn’t he? So why didn’t he recognise this person? Maybe they’d transferred in for second year, he decided, making his way to the hallway to compare the new class photo with the one from first year. It took him an embarrassing three minutes to realise that it was you that he didn’t recognise.
“Oh,” was all he’d managed to say. How had he not recognised you? He thumbed over your face. You looked more tired now than you did in first year but that wasn’t strange considering the rate at which assignments were starting to pile up. What was strange was that Wooyoung didn’t remember seeing you at all since the beginning of first year. The solution was simple in Wooyoung’s head. He’d find you tomorrow at school and ask you how you’d been. It had always been that simple.
Except Wooyoung didn’t find you, not the next day or the day after that. When he caved and asked his friends if they’d seen you the response was stares and furrowed brows.
“Their locker got filled with trash the other day,” one of them had told him, narrowing his eyes incredulously. “You haven’t heard? I thought you were friends with everyone.”
“Not everyone,” Wooyoung mumbled, perhaps more defensively than was necessary. “And you guys didn’t tell anyone? Like a teacher or something?”
“It’s not our business,” was the response he’d gotten.
So Wooyoung went home again with that bitter taste in his mouth and struggled to figure out why he hadn’t known or found out somehow. He felt more determined to find you now, even if he had to scour the school grounds every minute of the school day for the next week. It’d be worth it, he was sure.
He found you a few days later without much search at all, sitting in the canteen at the empty end of a long table. You were pushing around a pile of gross school lunch lasagna and occasionally lifting forkfuls of salad to your mouth, which you chewed slowly. The sight reminded Wooyoung of a goat and he had to bite his lip to stop himself from snorting. He made his way over to you, a plate of lasagna in one hand and a glass of water and cutlery in the other. He kept his smile bright when he spoke to you even though he was sure you wouldn’t return it.
“Hey, can I sit with you?” he asked. You lifted your eyes from a piece of paper set by your plate and looked up to stare at Wooyoung. You were chewing, fork stabbed right in the middle of a pile of cheese and pasta when you opened your mouth to speak.
“Sure,” you’d replied, and the only thought Wooyoung had was that it hadn’t been nearly as difficult as he had thought it would be to earn the seat across from you.
*scrapped: works that will not be completed/posted
You were so focused on wrapping the last of San’s gifts that you almost didn’t hear the gentle knock on your door, but only almost. You paused your movements where you were struggling to tie a purple ribbon into a pretty bow, hoping that you’d misheard and that you’d have enough time to properly finish the gifts, only for a second round of knocking to fill the room.
“Y/N?” San’s voice came. “Do you have a minute?”
You winced, hurriedly tying the bow down and letting go of the gift. Of all the people to arrive right now San was probably the worst option. You’d been trying to orchestrate a surprise for him for what felt like weeks now, with all of the broken communication and disagreements among your friends coming down to you taping wrapping paper and tying bows last minute, only for him to catch you right in the middle of it.
“Coming!” you called out, shifting the presents as carefully as you could to a spot where he might not see them from the doorway, hoping he couldn’t hear your frantic walking back and forth. Only when each gift was set down on your bed and covered by a blanket did you open the door, smiling wide at a rather dejected looking San. “Hey baby.”
“Hey,” he said, finally smiling back when you stepped forward and pressed a soft kiss to his forehead. “I didn’t realise you were busy.”
“No, I’m not busy at all!” you reassured him, waving a dismissive hand.
“Can I come in then?” he asked, already stepping forward.
“No, wait!” you said, your voice louder than was necessary. At the sight of his face falling you frowned, trying to look as casual as you could while you were quite literally blocking him from entering your room. “You can’t go in right now.”
“Why not?” he asked, his voice taking on a pouty tone that you usually only heard when you were out with friends and something had upset him. You didn’t expect to see a pout form on his lips as well, your heart squeezing in your chest.
“It’s not clean,” you said. It was a stupid excuse and you knew it. Quick thinking was not proving to be your strong suit. You didn’t realise just how stupid of an excuse it was until San’s watery eyes met yours. “San?”
“Are you mad at me?” he asked, blinking quickly so that the tears in his eyes were gone just as quickly as they came. It didn’t help when you could still see his wet lashes and the way he was clutching his hands close to himself.
“Baby,” you whispered, reaching out and taking one of his hands into yours. He allowed you to do so without any protest, but didn’t relax at all when you laced your fingers with his. “I’m not mad at you. Why do you think I’m mad?”
“We just haven’t spent any time together, you kept turning every invitation down and it’s so difficult to reach you lately,” he explained, his shoulders slumping more and more as he went on.
incomplete: front row angel au, hongjoong-focused 🎸◌✦ ｡*
Hongjoong has pretty much everything he’s ever wanted. He has the job he’s always wanted most in the world, although he’d hardly call being a rockstar a job, the same way he’d hardly call Redbull and a Mars bar a healthy breakfast even if he sometimes does. He lives with a handful of his friends from high school and tours foreign countries with all of them, bruising his knees on stages his idols have performed on. He has a groupie-turned-girlfriend who he loves to kiss and take to bars and fall asleep with (amongst other things).
Really, there’s very few things he’s ever wanted that he doesn’t have. The only thing he can think of that he’s craving right now, manspreading on Yeosang’s couch while he plays Silent Hill and chews spearmint gum, is French toast. A mundane, meaningless craving.
The only catch is that having everything you’ve ever wanted at the young, dumb age of twenty-three isn’t equivalent to having always had everything you’ve ever wanted. Hongjoong can’t help getting stuck in his head sometimes, the same way he used to do when he was sixteen, then nineteen, then twenty-one and finally twenty-three. Having everything you’ve ever wanted doesn’t seem to change much at all really.
“Dude.”
Hongjoong glances away from the TV screen and finds San looking at him through squinted eyes, hair sticking up every which way. He’s just woken up at the very appropriate hour of two in the afternoon, which is both typical and a little annoying.
“What the fuck are you doing?” San asks, throwing himself on to the sofa and ignoring the way it complains beneath his weight. He also proceeds to ignore the way Hongjoong complains when he presses his face to Hongjoong’s shoulder.
“Silent Hill,” Hongjoong answers. “Get off me.”
“You want to practise at you and Seonghwa’s place later?” San continues, words muffled thanks to his mouth still being pressed against Hongjoong’s shoulder.
“Y/N’s coming over later,” he replies, giving in with a long sigh and letting his head lean against San’s.
“Angel likes watching us play,” San argues. “I think Yeosang wanted to show her some stuff on his keyboard too.”
Hongjoong nods slightly, San’s new borderline-buzzcut haircut rubbing against his cheek as he does so.
“I’ll let her know then,” he hums. His eyes widen slightly as he comes up with a perfect idea. “I’m taking her out for lunch. Then we can play.”
