warnings/things to look for: witch!reader, magical elements, eventual smut
length: 3.1k
summary: You move to a house in the country and are met by a golem on your first night.
a/n: look at this gorgeous edit that @6v6tmn did of Taehyung for this story! I’m honestly still on the floor.
The dirt squelches under your determined steps. You are waterlogged, wet to the bone, and the rain shows no signs of letting up any time soon. As a general rule, you don’t go outside in storms, in this aspect you are like most people. Normally, you would be inside right now, warm in your home or taking shelter in a shop in town until the storm passes, especially one of this magnitude that seemingly came from nowhere, but “normal” hasn’t been a part of your playbook for a long time. You try not to feel personally attacked by nature’s impromptu deluge. The National Weather Service was scrambling to make sense of it, but the weather alert that had popped up on your phone nearly an hour ago now, said that the storm clouds had settled over your neck of the woods literally and specifically, the heart of the small country town curiously safe from the sepia toned curtain falling in front of the sun.
You’re not exactly Filled with Foreboding, you know what that feels like, paralyzing and ominous, but you’re on edge. You’d been overly cautious all day which had slowly pissed off the movers through the day. You’re positive they were talking shit about you being a micro-managing asshole on the hour drive back to the other side of town, and in a way, it’s totally justified because nothing had come of the uncomfortable hollow feeling in the bottom of your stomach and you’d made their job all the harder for your hovering.
It’s your first day in your new house, and you haven’t believed in coincidence since you were 13 years old, so whatever, or whoever, is channeling the sky is clearly doing it to mess with you. Weather can be tracked and studied, patterns giving people time to plan their lives around nature. This, whatever this is, has a distinctly unnatural feel to it. Like someone conjured storm clouds over your new house to send a message.
Everything had made it inside before the clouds rolled in and you’d waved the movers off before the rain dumped out of them. You’d hoped for a blessing, but this is slightly more aggressive than anything you’ve seen in the past. You’d been expecting an animal blessing. Sort of like the whole bird poo thing that people decided was good luck but was really just shit. (Storks are the only flying creature that deal in luck and they definitely do not roost in the Pacific Northwest.) Rain though, rain means frogs and you’d take a frog over a bird anytime. If the rain brings frogs, then you absolutely know that you chose the right place to practice.
You’d walked through the house after the movers left, getting a feel for it, noting the space and imagining everything in it’s proper place. You ended your self-guided tour in the attic. There are a lot of reasons, good and bad, that you decided to buy this house, but a main one was this attic. It’s big and open; the whole length and width of the two floors below without walls and doors bisecting the house’s inherent energy. A massive window facing the backyard and following along the edges and angles where the pointed roof meets the floor makes you think that the architect added this with the light of the sun and moon pouring through in mind. You’d walked over and fiddled with one of the latches, making sure that it won’t come open with the force of the storm, a faint buzz from the bottom left corner let you know that you don’t have to worry about any damage to the house from outside forces, which is certainly a handy bit of craft.
As if to emphasize that point, a jolt of lightning illuminated the backyard followed closely by a cracking boom of thunder that shook the house. Despite knowing that you were safe inside, your heart picked up speed as a streak light cut across the sky, hitting the fence that borders your property. The wood of the fence didn’t catch fire, rather it crackled to blackness and splintered apart, but that’s not what caught your eye.
An exaggerated bump had developed under the branches of the white oak in the west corner of your yard sometime between the last time you’d looked out some 30 minutes before and that moment. Your fingertips tingled like all the blood ran out of them. A sourness spread through your gut and you know you shouldn’t have, but you headed down the steps pooling your energy, hot and vibrating, into your hands. You opened the door and immediately feel the pull of the wind and the rain, the smell of wet dirt filling your nose as you step away from the fortress that is your house.
There’s a voice in your head telling you to go back inside and another railing over the ruination of your shoes, but louder than all that, was the need to investigate. Playing detective has gotten you in trouble before. “Special circumstances,” you explain to no one, teeth rattling around your skull and sputtering to keep water out of your mouth. The temperature had dropped dramatically since the afternoon and you find yourself wishing that heat were one of your talents.
It’s gotten so dark that you don’t notice the miniature hill that’s taken up residence isn’t covered in grass. Like someone had dumped a load of new dirt, now turned into a black pile of mud. Or, you think, pacing the length of the protrusion, like someone buried something roughly the size of a human. The wind steals the “Fuck,” right out of your mouth.
The wind picks up and changes the angle of the rain so that it’s pelting you from the side. A bright slash of lightning cracks somewhere above you and the pile…it’s writhing. Slowly, torturously, as if it were alive and in pain. Setting your hands on it, you push out of yourself and down into the dirt, feeling for black or blood magic. Instead, you find life, but it’s small and steady, inconsistent with human life and not thrumming with the kind of massive energy it would take to move like this. You help it find its way to the surface anyway and snort when a rather large frog fixes it’s eyes on you.
“Thought one of you might show up,” you sigh in relief, and it croaks in response. The pile is still. One of your eyebrows travels up your forehead and you point a skeptical look at your new friend. It shrugs, an interesting thing for a frog to do to say the least, and launches itself off its perch squelching down into the grass, bunches it’s muscles up again and hops through the air. You don’t think anyone has referred to a frog as majestic before, but the word begs to be used as it glides through the rain, only stopping at your back door to turn its whole body and look at you expectantly.
“Okay, definitely not your garden variety luck frog then.” Thunder booms overhead, reminding you of its presence. You cast one look back at the stationary pile, uneasy with leaving it as is. The frog bellows impatiently. Hesitating, looking from the annoyed amphibian to the pile of dirt, you sigh and head toward the house.
You hold open the door for your first guest, its heavy, wet body slapping against the kitchen tile leaving a trail of mushy chunks of mud.
“Make yourself at home,” you call out to its back as it heads up the back stairs, “I’ll just clean this, I guess.” Trying very hard not to be too sulky about the mess and the fact that cleaning and housework in general are things that must be done manually.
You grab the box that has cleaning supplies in it and fish out paper towels. The sharp, quick noise of the towel tearing along the perforated edge is immensely satisfying. As is the crinkle of the plastic shopping bag you’re using as an on-the-go trash bag to throw the used towels in. You love noise. Not the noise of a city, metal grinding together and people yelling over each other in a crisscross pattern, but personal noise. It’s up to you how quiet or how loud your home will be because it’s your home and you decide what to fill it up with.
You follow the mud trail the frog left to the attic, wiping with less enthusiasm than you started with. It’s sitting in the center of the floor, in fact, you’d say the exact center which is a strange choice. Though, it’s probably good to know. You call for a piece of chalk and draw a circle around the frog.
“Thank you,” you say, and the chalk goes back to whichever box it came from. “Thank you, as well, Frog.” It nods once regally and hops out of the center easily.
“I grant you roam of the house, but I’m for bed,” you say grandly, but Frog stares at you even as you leave the room making you feel ridiculous.
It’s barely 9 o’clock when you flop onto the blow-up mattress in your room, the storm has dissipated to a drizzle. Your thoughts float from Frog and the mysterious unit of dirt currently occupying your backyard to decorating the house. It’s been an eventful evening even for you. You thought that by deciding to move clear across country, basically out in the woods, that life would settle in around you. That by leaving everything, the bad and the good, behind there would be nothing left for you but peace. Perhaps that is a tad too optimistic for the life you lead. Yes, you would have control of your space and only you would dictate how you live but being lonely doesn’t suit you. It’s part of why you let Frog in, aside from the risk of being given bad luck by an ultimate luck dealer if you didn’t, just knowing that Frog is wandering around the rest of the house, full of boxes and the buzzing undercurrent of energy, is a great comfort.
You must have picked a good place if a luck frog is staying with you on your first night; a comforting thought to have as you slip into sleep.
…
You sit straight up in bed, the deepest dark of night surrounding you, wakened by a crash on the floor below. You grab your phone and blind yourself with the screen’s brightness to check the time, knowing before you even look what it is. Three in the morning on the dot. Your stomach twists.
Your fingers tingle, electric pricks of power readying for use.
Barely marking the steps, you fly down the stairs, opting for speed instead of stealth, to confront the perpetrator of the crash.
And there, naked, though covered in clumps of dirt and various bits of nature, stands a man, looking as panicked as you feel.
He takes a step forward, fear overwhelms you, and your hands come up in front of you on instinct, but you’re too late. You feel sluggish, power draining and consciousness slipping. You crumple to your knees, hardly feeling the harsh impact, only being able to tell it was rough by the scrunched concern on the intruder’s face, which is now very close to yours. His mud slicked arms wrap around you for support. A tear falls out of the corner of your eye. He reaches to wipe it only to realize how dirty he is and yank his hand back.
No. No, no, no. How could he have found you already? Your heart thuds, hard and painful inside your chest.
“Sorry! I’m so sorry! You’ll be fine!” His voice is deep. It rattles in his chest, you feel the vibrations against your arm. It’s oddly comforting, considering the danger you’re in. His words and actions are strange considering he just drained your energy like it was nothing.
Your eyelids are getting heavier, harder to force open. His muscles tense under and around you and when you open your eyes again, you understand why. He’s carrying you. A steady rising motion as he carries you directly back to your room. A faint croak comes from directly in front of the both of you; Frog leading the way.
“Traitor,” you croak back, and the man stiffens around you, picking up speed.
He could have dropped you straight from his arms to the mattress, he could do a great many more horrifying things, but he lays you down with utmost care. The moment his arms aren’t around you, the cold creeps in alongside the fear and you try to roll away from your perceived attacker.
“I’m so sorry, but you have to rest now.” He puts a hand on your shoulder, warmth spreads through your body. Your muscles relax, and you drift.
The last thing you see is Frog with its full attention on Tall, Dark, and Muddy.
…
You wake, this time, to a smell. Pancakes. The scent so thick, you can almost taste them on the air.
The sun is shining brightly through the windows, you groan and make a mental note to put the curtains up first. You fight your way out of the deflated middle of the air mattress and sitting cross-legged on the wood floor, test your magic. You cradle your energy inside of yourself and push it out into your hands. It’s there. It’s still there. He didn’t take it.
And then another thought.
He didn’t take your magic and he’s still here.
Idiot. Doesn’t he know what you can do to him?
You fumble down the stairs, head and body aching like the worst hangover you’ve ever had, making as much noise as you like in your own house. You may not be back to one-hundred percent, but you’re damn sure that you won’t be caught off-guard again.
You tread heavily into the kitchen, feet slapping against the tile not unlike Frog last night, hands ready.
You know that he knows you’re there, but he’s pointedly staring a hole into the floor. He’d bathed in the hours since you saw him last and commandeered one of your flat bed sheets, knotted and twisted around him in some places and barely covering anything in others. There’s an involuntary thump of something fragile under your ribs as you watch him avoid your gaze, focus entirely on the rapidly cooking pancake in the hefty cast iron skillet your mother had given you years ago to “help ward off evil.” Which is certainly interesting in this context.
You clear your throat and when he jumps, you raise your fisted hands and flick your fingers out in his direction, freezing him and everything else in the room. Not a witch then or he would still be moving. You must move quickly. Your ability to stop time, while helpful in a number of situations, is brief and confined to the room you’re in.
You cross the kitchen to him and place your hands on his arm, reaching down into him like you’d done with the pile of mud last evening, but all you feel is warmth, but not human heat caused by cells and a metabolism and mitochondria because there is no heartbeat, no trace of blood in him anywhere. Not a warlock or any other human variation. Something made into the form of a human, able to perform human tasks.
A creation of Malachi’s would have had orders to kill you once your powers were harvested, but here you stand, in your kitchen, in a home that’s barely yours with your hands on someone’s creation.
Time unfreezes much faster than you’re used to, an unfortunate side effect of last night, not that you notice. The sound of the cooking pancake barely registering as you’re lost in thought, combing through years of magic lessons to classify the strangely polite, and possibly dangerous, creature in your home. Though, you think, if he’d wanted you dead or to take your powers, he would have done so when he had the upper hand.
A low hum catches your attention and you look up into the face of the creature.
He stares at you, unstartled by your seemingly split-second closeness, with deep brown, almost black, eyes. His equally dark brown hair falls over his forehead, dusting his thick eyebrows, and then, so small that you’re not sure if it’s there, a crack on the outside crease of his right eye.
“Oh,” you drop your hands to your sides and take a step back and fight the urge to apologize.
The corners of his mouth turn up in a small tight smile and he goes back to watching the pancake, waiting a few moments before flipping it carefully.
“I have questions.”
“Okay,” he says and gestures with the spatula to go ahead.
“I guess I’ll go for the obvious one first: who are you?”
“I feel like a Taehyung,” he says thoughtfully, “I know that I’m not human, but that I look like one. I’m not sure what I am though.”
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“Yes!” He looks so pleased to know something and that fragile feeling is back in your chest. “I’m here to protect you.”
“If that’s true, then why did you attack me?”
Discomfort floods his face and he fidgets. “I was scared. I could feel all this energy coming at me and I just knew I would die if I didn’t defend myself, but it was you. I’m supposed to protect you, that’s like, my only job and I’ve already messed up. But the house wouldn’t have let me in if I wanted to do you harm!” He finishes quickly.
“You drained me, took all of my energy, my power. How?”
He whines a ‘sorry’ and shrugs his shoulders.
“Did someone send you?”
Another shrug. “I clawed my way out of the mud in the yard last night. That is my first moment. I don’t know how I know the things I know or how to begin to know the things I don’t. All I know is that I’m here for you. I have to keep you safe.”
The mud. Fuck, you’re so stupid. Of course, he came from the mud.
And of course, he could be only one thing.
You look at him, eyes wide with discovery. “Taehyung, you’re a golem.”
Gold and silver line my bed, Silken pillows to rest my head, Diamonds of the clearest light, None may ever defeat my might. Brightest of flames burn within, Never a fight did I not win. But with you my heart with you my heart shall stay, For fairly you stole it away.
