self-indulgence-in-fiction

[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

kill the shift manager in your brain

[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

fic recs masterlist

since I was thinking about rereading some of my fav fics, here's a massive list of my favorites include haikyuu, jjk, bsd, etc

Haikyuu!

frankenstein's monster by starbeyy: sakuatsu fic where they both are diagnosed with OCD. this is the fic that is my instant rec, it's my roman empire. "you were the first beautiful thing i couldn't stop thinking about"?????????? this is a MASTERPIECE

the courtship ritual of the hercules beetle by kittebasu: THE iwaoi fic of all time, permanently altered my brain chemistry, my friend made me a gift of an embroidered hercules beetle and a quote from this fic and it's one of my most prized possessions

The Chosen One by moonyfest: one of my all time favorites, it's just so good and I love how their relationship develops, it's one of the fics that I reread every few months, nsfw in later chapters

Miya Atsumu, Adored By All (loved by some) by honest_pebble: the sakuatsu fic of all time, my inner atsumu kinnie came out while reading this and I cried multiple times while reading it but holy FUCK was it amazing, I reread this every few months as well, I have it downloaded on my phone lol

i wanna ruin our friendship by roseknight: highschool iwaoi fic, one of the first hq fics i ever read and it's very close to my heart because of it, make sure to look at tags for trigger warnings

i'm a house with no windows, you're the flowers on the front porch by miracleboysatori: a phenomenal childhood friends to lovers ushiten fic that has not been given the love it deserves, one of my favorite hq fics of all time, nsfw in later chapters

butterfly in the subway by bigspoonnoya: You've Got Mail au daisuga fic, a ton of background ships that are all super cute, I reread it all the time it's one of my favs!!!!!

the spirit of the resolution by starbeyy: this is my fav sunaosa fic of all time, osamu's complicated relationship with his self esteem really hit me especially when they're getting late night take out, i adore this fic and it's one of my favorites

can i be close to you by radian: kuroken fic where they don't know each other at first but slowly become friends and it's all lowercase but it's so good i promise, super fluffy

Vienna Waits For You by Pouler (poulerslashes): asanoya timeskip fic that's sooooo good in talking about what it's like to grow up and feel the pressure of the world on your shoulders and living up to your potential and expectations, nsfw in later chapters

Black and Blue by MTrash: daisuga au fic, i was obsessed with this fic when i first read it, it's really sad but really good, make sure to look at the tags for trigger warnings, nsfw in later chapters

you're the brake lines failing (as my car swerves off the freeway) by ghostpot: kuroken fic where kenma realizes he's in love with kuroo and spends the entire fic freaking out about it

campfire in your chest by deanpendragon: tsukkiyama fic where tsukishima realizes he's in love with tadashi before kagehina realize they're in love with each other and it's super cute, all of this author's tsukkiyama fics are so good

Liebesträume (Dream of Love) by emivance: sakuatsu rivals to lovers musican au, their dynamic this entire fic is so funny and they're obviously intro each other but are in deep denial about it, nsfw in later chapters

surfacing by meeks00: bokuaka au where they find out their bfs have been cheating on them with each other, one of my fav bkak fics they're so precious, nsfw in chapters 2 and 3

daisy rings and frivolous things (i am deliriously in love with you) by gabstar: bokuaka one shot that I am OBSESSED with, the way their relationship speed runs is my favorite aspect of this fic because its exactly what i imagine their relationship doing

Similar Creatures by h_lovely: iwaoi Pretty Woman au that's soooooo good, i really liked how their relationship developed and grew throughout the fic, nsfw all over this fic

Kiss Me (Like You Wanna Be Loved) by kazzydolyn: bokuaka friends w benefits fic where they fall in love with each other at the same time but akaashi doesn't know what to do about it, nsfw

Guiding Stars by daedalust: hiruhoshi fic that y'all will devour once we get more of hoshiumi and hirugami in the anime, they have one of my fav friendships in the series, hirugami is enamored with hoshiumi who asks for dating advice

Behind Bricks by DeathBelle: bokuaka au where akaashi is a sex worker and they become friends but bokuto falls in love with him instantly, a lot of nsfw obviously

Hard Times by mooifyourecows: daisuga au where olympian daichi pays con artist suga to be his fake fiance during a cruise, my FAVORITE daisuga fic ever, i was chomping at the bit for each update, nsfw in later chapters

Valor with Honor, Fealty with Love by radiantradish: daisuga medieval knight au, they slowly fall in love as rivals and it's suuuper cute yet angsty, mild nsfw in later chapters

In the Armpits of Spring by Paintbrushyy_Ducky98: iwaoi au where they meet in high school and oikawa confesses to iwaizumi before they ever really meet, iwaizumi's growing curiosity about oikawa is soooooo cute their relationship is developed really well

The Space Between Stars by leuralo_l: bokuaka fic where everyone but bokuto knows that akaashi is in love with him, I was so impressed with this fic especially since the author said it was their first fic pls give it a read!!!!!!

wait (I'm on my way) by viverella: sunaosa fic where they're both oblivious to each other's affections and are quietly pining, their relationship is super cute and adorable

Close to the Chest by darkmagicalgirl: kyouhaba fic where they bicker but slowly fall for each other during high school along with background iwaoi, i loved this fic it was so good, some mentioned and blatant homophobia

beautiful monsters by gravitates: ushiten fic with slight angst but damn did it make me feel emotional, ushijima is so soft and tender and loving to tendou, another one of my favs

Cool, detached, casual by fluorophoring: kuroken fic where they try to have casual sex but it doesn't really work and they both spiral lol, nsfw

Breakers by ftld: sunaosa 90s au, god I LOVED this fic and how obvious of a simp osamu is, it's sooooo good, some mentioned/blatant homophobia

Special Relativity and Years by buttonstuck: mega angsty iwaoi fics with the second being an alternate ending of the first fic that has a sad, bittersweet ending that made me cry harder than I have in YEARS, some mild nsfw in the first fic

your whole life on your play by emleewrites: kagehina proposal fic that goes exactly how i picture it would go in canon

make up your mind by sketchedsmiles: sunaosa fake dating au where osamu asks suna to be his fake bf in order to one up atsumu who's dating sakusa, i absolutely loved this fic lol

Jujutsu Kaisen

Caesura by cielelyse: suuuuuuch a good rivals to friends to lovers satosugu fic about their first year in jujutsu high together and the mission that made them friends, probably my fav jjk fic ever

And every day, it's changed since then. by BotanicalBites: inuokka college au where yuuta is an artist trying to escape from his growing fame in the country and meets farmer inumaki

What Instinct Can't Teach by kiyokosturtle: chosoyuki and it's sooooo good how to author develops their relationship before the smut lol, nsfw in the last chapter

The Long Con by lyrebirdswrites: an itafushi no curses au that isn't finished yet but is soooooo good, this fic is currently being plagiarized by another author so it's on hiatus for now but I'm hoping the original author gets everything worked out!!!!

Bungo Stray Dogs

where your loyalties lie by writingfromtheshadows: soukoku yakuza au, this is by far the best bsd fic i've read so far, their relationship is just so believable and their characters are wonderful, nsfw

the art of burning bridges by sanguinekitten: soukoku fic from chuuya's perspective about different times in their lives together, it's so good

i think he knows by sanguinekitten: soukoku 5+1 fic where dazai knows that chuuya loves him but the latter refuses to admit it

Threats Made in a Hotel Room by moonrice (moonyeyes): soukoku fic where dazai pisses of chuuya so much they start making out

A Lesson in Thorns by arkastadt: soukoku beast au fic where they're in an arranged marriage and slowly fall in love, similar premise to where your loyalties lie but an entirely different plot, I still have ten chapters left but I'm really enjoying it so far, nsfw

Miscellaneous

i'll be your biggest kept secret and your biggest mistake by sascake: mha tododeku fic that I instantly fell in love with, the way the author writes both of them is so well done, not finished yet, mild nsfw mention

sore must be the storm by Pouler (poulerslashes): mha tododeku fic where they're trapped in a collapsing building and they have a deep talk about their lives

Until my Feet Bleed and My Heart Aches by Reiya: yoi viktuuri au fic that I binged like crazy, yuuri and viktor's first interaction goes differently and yuuri is determined to hate viktor, nsfw in later chapters

seraph's nest by phile: csm akiangel fic where they slowly become friends and fall in love with each other over the course of the manga's plot

#rec of recs

[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

You can lay blame for this second ask at @hoifne 's feet, I saw their comment on the post and had to:

How did folks react to the moon landing?

"You're ready? No Big Regrets?" Renji asks. He always asks. He'd done hundreds of Konso rituals now that he was doing his mandatory tour of duty in the living world, but he never wants them to feel 'routine', so he talks to the ghosts. Hypes them up a bit for the afterlife, tries to keep his heart in it.

Especially when it's a kid.

"Well, it's not really a big deal..." The ghost Suichi considers. He was maybe ten or eleven years old. Thick prescription glasses, face round with puppy fat, very loved. Love won't stop a freak electrical accident though. Young Suichi is handling his sudden departure really well, all things considered, so maybe love does stop despair. "-but its a bit of a shame that if there's no TV in the afterlife, I won't be able to watch the moon landing."

"Yeah, we're a bit behind the times, but I'm sure one of the mad geniuses in the 12th will invent one sooner than late-" Renji grins ruffling the boy's hair before the rest of the sentence registers. "-The What Landing?"

"The Moon Landing!" Suichi lights up with excitement. "They just launched the rocket yesterday! But in just three days, man will walk on the moon!"

"...The Moon?" Renji blinks, bewildered.

"Yeah!"

Renji points up over his shoulder into the sky, gripping the boy's shoulder, eyes wide. "THE MOON IN THE FUCKING SKY?"

---

The lights of the Fifth division offices reflect blankly off of Captain Aizen's glasses as he attempts to process the news. He is entirely still, save for his eyebrows which are writhing like overcaffienated caterpillars, unable to settle on an emotion to convey.

"The Moon?" Lieutenant Ichimaru squints at Renji even harder than usual, pointing up out the window behind him. "The Moon in the fucking sky?"

"Yeah!" Renji spread his hands. "I didn't believe it either but the humans have managed to work out some neat trick with the way the world turns to like, throw the spaceship like a slingshot..?" he tried to explain.

"So, so there's three guys in a boat-" Captain Aizen tried again, reaching up under his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose.

"It's really more like a sealed metal tube, but they call it a Space Ship because it does sorta sail through space..." Renji tried to explain, holding up the newspaper from the living world he'd brought back to substantiate his claims and also provide helpful images to explain what was happening.

"So there's three guys in a metal tube and they... threw it into the sky so hard that instead of falling it started flying instead?" Aizen tried. "How do they even throw something that hard without Kido?"

"So the men are up in this little itty bitty bit at the top that looks like a cap on a vaccine needle-" Renji pointed at the image of the Apollo 11 rocket. "-All the rest of this is the uh. enormous amount of extremely coordinated high explosives they used to launch it. The. The whole thing is like... It's a little over three hundred fifty shaku and only 12 shaku of that is where the humans are. The rest is um. Air they smooshed so hard it became liquid and then they set that on fire and look at the picture you can see the kaboom!" Renji tried to explain, pushing the paper across Aizen's desk for his captain to read.

Aizen certainly pointed his face at the image and accompanying article, but 'read' may have been a bit beyond him at the moment.

"Oh, is that all it took?" Ichimaru hummed with interest. "Well fuck, why haven't we done that?"

"Oh yes, how very silly that the humans have beaten us at the trifling matter of FLINGING OURSELVES INTO SPACE, WHAT THE *HELL* ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT ICHIMARU??" Aizen objected.

"Well like. Idea's sound. Moon goes around the earth, so a smaller thing should too. And we can absolutely make a sealed metal container and kaboom bigger than that." Gin shrugged, as though this were plainly obvious. "Betchya the clown that runs the twelfth has the stuff laying around- we got a meeting with him later today anyway, why not ask?"

"Oh sure, that's a great Idea!" Aizen beamed. "Why hello Kurotsuchi-taicho, curious news from the human world- do you think you could spare a few parts and several tons of explosives to send some guys for a stroll on the moon?"

There was a moment of silence where Renji and Gin shared an awkward glance (or at least, Renji gave meaningful look to the narrow slits where his lieutenant-commander's eyes theoretically were).

"...he'd agree to that in a heartbeat, if he hasn't started work on his own Spaceboat already." Aizen groaned.

---

"No." Grunted Mayuri.

"No? Why not?" Aizen asked, head cocked to the side like a confused spaniel.

"Look, what the old man doesn't know about budget expenditures won't hurt him!" Gin smiled encouragingly. "Think of all the scientific data you'd get to research!"

"What the old man finds out about budget expenditures after the fact can and will hurt me." Mayuri growled. "It's not cookie money, kitting an expedition to the living world to engineer a spaceship with atomic matter instead of Reishi- No, much more efficient to let the humans do it for us and poach the date from them."

"...Why would we need to go to the Living world?" Aizen blinked, confused. "I can see the moon from the window right here?" Aizen pointed out the window of Kurotsuchi's office.

"What? That moon? You can't go to that moon!" The clownish chemical engineer cackled."

Aizen and Ichimaru stared at him blankly.

"Is. Is the moon here different than the one in the living world?" Aizen asked, bewildered.

"Different? It doesn't exist!" Mayuri laughed, waving his hand at them.

Aizen and Ichimaru stared at him, then leaned back in their seats, looking out the window at the moon, which still looked as physical and present as it ever did.

"...Oh don't tell me you didn't know." Mayuri frowned, pouting. "No, spirit world doesn't have a moon. The thing up in the sky is a Tulpa- there's a "moon" because everyone who comes to spirit world thinks there should be one, and there's so much ambient spiritual energy even weak souls can exert some force on the nature of reality and when millions of them are all certain there should be a moon, a moon manifests. Or at least, a thing that looks like a moon. Doesn't act like one, changes size and skips around it's phases all the time and if it really were a round object in space, that's NOT what a crescent moon would look like."

Aizen and Ichimaru looked back out the window at the "Moon", whose crescent arced a full three quarters of the alleged satellite's circumference.

"Seriously? this is some really basic stuff." Mayuri glared at them in disappointment. "You never noticed that the moon is always visible out any random window at night, no matter what time it is? It doesn't even go east-to-west more than half the time!"

"But. But we have a lunar calendar..?" Aizen muttered, an edge of genuine distress in his voice.

"Oh yeah, the moon *used* to be regular as clockwork- everyone literally set their watches to it." Mayuri shrugged. "Then sometime about eh, two and a half, three thousand years ago? Right around the same time the first captain-class spirits started appearing, the moon started doing this 'Full Moon Thrice A Month If it Feels Like It' and 'Visible At Improbable Angles' nonsense."

Aizen's eyes were wide and Gin's very nearly open with alarm.

"That's uh- that's terrifying?" Aizen sputtered, now outright frightened.

"Yeah, anybody know what coulda caused that?" Gin muttered.

"The going theory is that the precipitation of a new class of spiritually hyperpotent souls like us has caused disproportionate tugs on the desired appearence of the the "Moon", but that's only a theory- my predecessor's predecessor once attempted to send a camera to the 'Moon' for a closer look, but it never actually *got* any closer." Mayuri explained, casually inspecting his fingernails- he seemed to be growing out the middle one for some godforsaken reason. "-Your theoretical starboat would likely far worse."

"...Okay but that's worse. You understand how that's worse, right?" Aizen demanded and Mayuri waved him off.

"No, no hit makes sense-" Gin nodded, and Aizen glared at his lieutenant. "Think about it! There's what, three and a half billion human on earth? Millions die every day, but only a couple hundred ever turn up every day at the intake queue in the 7th, and nearly everyone is from just the one part of Japan. We're one afterlife of many- ugh, could you imagine if the missionaries were sent here?- anyway, our world is nowhere NEAR as big at the Living World, so the moon-moon is just a geographical feature in the living world, and there's only a couple million people living here. We got disproportionate swing, so we pull on the collective conciousness more. It's fine!"

"That's AWFUL!" Aizen shouted, dismayed.

"I mean I think we all understand God is an Asshole, but what are you gonna do about it?" Mayuri shrugged before tapping on the crate beside his desk. "-Anyway, do you want these Polio Vaccines for the rukongai outreach program our not?"

"I- yes. Please." Aizen muttered.

"Good man, sign here." Mayuri tapped the sheet on his desk. As Aizen tried to read over the provisions release paperwork, the small "Electronic Mailer" on Mayuri's desk pinged. "Oh, the word got out- Kyoraku-taicho wants to hold another moon-viewing party for the occasion. Do me a favor and attend so you can explain to him why we can't go to our 'moon' for me? I don't want to go, and I really don't want to explain it to him through a hangover either."

"If you don't wanna go Boss I'll stand in for you. Promises to be a real riot." Gin grinned.

"Yes, you have your young friend, don't you? Miss Matsumoto?" Aizen smiled fondly at his second-in-command.

"Oh, she probably already got her invite- she an' Miss Nan- er, lieutenant Ise are real pals from the academy." Gin laughed. "Nah, I was gonna drag old blind bones along."

"...Captain Tousen?" Aizen asked, befuddled. "Whatever for?"

"Stars ain't exactly braille, y'know?" Gin explained, wiggling his fingers. "He knows even less than we do an' I wanna watch Rangiku and Kyoraku try'n 'splain the whole thing to him." Gin grinned.

"Sounds lovely! Take your shit and get out of my office." Mayuri threatened.

---

Renji exhaled, still bewildered, laying on his back on the grassy hill just outside the 2nd division training grounds, staring up at the moon as it rose opposite the sunset behind him. Or, maybe not? There had been some lecture about how the moon in spirit world wasn't a moon back at the academy that he didn't really remember-

"You sound like you're in the throes of a moral conundrum Red." Shuuhei teased, looking up from the strange contraption he was setting up.

"Huh?" Renji blinked. "Oh, no I'm just- Those guys in the Spaceship gotta be somethin' else, going to die thousands of miles from home."

"What? The Astronauts? They'll be fine! -Probably." Shuuhei laughed. "They're definitely insane, getting in that contraption at all, but they still gotta come home with all the rocks and whatever they get from the moon for the lab techs to look at."

"...How the hell are they getting back?" Renji frowned, rolling up onto his elbow to frown at his senpai. "I thought they blew up all the rocket getting off the planet?"

"They got a bitty rocket in the lunar landing craft that will get them between their ship and the lunar surface, and then they will angle the ship a bit and the moon will fling them back to earth the way earth flung them at the moon." Shuuei explained, not looking up from the weird bass-drum looking object he was messing with.

Renji opened his mouth, realized his friend probably understood it way better than he did, closed his mouth, shrugged, and changed topics. "So what is that thing you had me haul up here?"

"It's uhhh... Experimental. Haven't got a name for it yet." Shuuhei muttered, placing a level on top of it and frowning at the bubble before adjusting the legs bolted awkwardly to the side of the drum. "-But with all this excitement about the Lunar Landing, I realized Tousen-Taicho is... I mean he gets left out of a lotta stuff, y'know? But it's not like he can see the stars, or the spirit-moon, and I don't think he really understands orbital mechanics-"

"I sure fuckin' don't." Renji muttered.

"Yeah, because you're the kind of moron who put a ham sandwich in a VCR-" Shuuhei rolled his eyes.

"That was ONE TIME, and Matsumoto Senpai told me it was a Panini Press!" Renji sulked.

"-and then pressed "Fast Forward", but Tousen is actually smart as hell- I'm the one who can't explain it without gestures he can't see." Shuuhei continued. "...but I can use a camera obscura and reiryoku-sensitive film to sort of take an old exposure image of the night sky. I'm hoping that if I treat the exposed film right, that the light and dark parts will turn into different textures for him to read, like a braille sky."

"Oh." Renji muttered. "That's really nice of you actually."

"I mean, we'll see if it works." Shuuhei shugged, examining the level again. "Hand me the allen wrenches- What about your boss?"

"Captain Aizen? Uh- honestly? He seems a little freaked out by all this and I saw him fuckin' slam the newspaper into his wastebasket when he got back from the twelth." Renji winced. "He's weird like that. Sweet as cake most of the time but then there's these weird flashes of anger... and I'm not sure how much longer he's gonna be my boss."

"As in you got ambitions, or you think he's gonna get fired?" Shuuhei asked, staring at the level again.

"As in 'Tetsuzaemon Iba got in another brawl with his mother about him only being fourth seat when she made captain, and Liuetenant Madarame asked me if I'd updated my resume recently." Renji winced.

"Woof. Talk about a lateral promotion." Shuuhei winced. "Still, the pay raise would be nice. You could afford to take your girl Rukia somewhere up to her brother's standards!"

"IT'S NOT LIKE THAT!" Renji snapped, rolling over and jumping to his feet. "-It's -I'm sorry. It's kinda complicated." Renji sighed.

Shuuhei was silent for a minute as Renji sat back down on the grass, face in his hands. After a minute of fine-tuning the drum to keep it level, he spoke up. "You're more than good enough."

"Huh?" Renji jolted. "Oh, yeah- I'd be doing all the eleventh's paperwork but there's no way it's worse than the fucking rice subsidies accounting board-"

"That's not what I meant." Shuuhei glared.

"...I know." Renji groaned. "It's just. It's complicated, okay?"

"If you say so." Shuuhei shrugged. "Alright, hand me the flat box- thanks. It'll be ready for exposure in a minute, and I want to get it done before those clouds roll in." He gestured at the distant thunderheads threatening to bloom into a summer storm on the edge of the city.

The process was quick- the shielded plate went into the gap under the drum, and the light of the night sky was reflected onto it from a pinhole in the top. Once the metal plates were pulled back, it needed a few minutes to pick up enough light, before Shuuhei pushed the metal shutters back in and locked the plate in darkness until it could be developed.

"It's for taking pictures of the stars, right?" Renji asked as Shuuhei started disassembling the camera. "You could call that plate an Astrograph."

"Hah! Futuristic. I like it!" Shuuhei grinned. "C'mon and help me with this thing before the punishment squad turns up to kick my ass for having a camera within a mile of the second."

[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

Can I Stay? (A Baekhyun Story) The Letters

Pairing: You x Baekhyun

Rating: M

Word Count: 2.3k

Author’s note: This is a short accompaniment to the story Can I Stay? This took place before the story began. It is meant as a brief peek into Baekhyun’s life before Manager Noona and will very likely leave you with many questions. This is just the nature of life. Feel free to read into it however you must, to cope.

Can I Stay? - Masterlist

@his-mochi-cheeks

Hi Mom,

It’s me.

I don't know what to say.

Nevermind.

-B

—————————————

Hi Mom,

This is a letter to you. Well, that was a lie. No it isn’t. I want you to know that I am doing this against my will and this letter is not really for you. You are not the “Mom” I am addressing this letter to.

Yes, you are her, but she is not you. This isn’t a letter to you as you exist now. This is a letter to the Mom you should have been.

I’m sorry, was that too honest?

I don't want to be writing this letter. It’s an assignment from my therapist. Mrs. Kim told me to pick someone who I wanted to talk to and because you don't exist, not as “Mom,” not as the kind of mom who I am honest with, I picked the person I wish I could speak to even if she exists only in my fucked up head.

It doesn’t matter.

You won't ever read this.

Whether I send it or not.

This is stupid.

-B

—————————————

Hi Mom,

How are you?

I hope you have been well and all of your hopes and desires and dreams have come true. I hope it has all been worth it. If anyone deserves it, it's you.

Oh, yes. I am fine, thank you for asking. Thank you for always asking about how I am doing. Thank you for being the best mom. Thank you for bringing me into this world. Thank you for calling me. Thank you for answering my calls. Thank you for caring about me. Thank you for always being there for me, especially when I needed you the most. When I needed you today. Thank you for never abandoning me or calling me a disappointment or picking your new family over me.

Thank you for loving me.

Things are going so, so, so, so great and I absolutely don't want to die every single second of every fucking day. No, I haven’t been crying. There is so much pollen today. The lights in here are too bright. This room has so much dust. I have been keeping it together very well. I have done as I was told. I have gotten over it. This is me over it.

I have so much to tell you.

I

have

so

much

to

tell

you.

I have so much to tell you.

I have so much to tell you.

-B

—————————————

Hi Mom,

Today is my birthday.

Chanyeol bought me a cake.

I broke off my engagement.

-B

—————————————

Hi Mom,

Starting work with Dad tomorrow. I feel like I’m going to vomit.

Your assistant called me today.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t miss the call, I watched it ring.

She didn’t leave a voicemail. That means it wasn’t important.

I guess it’s not important.

-B

——————————————

Hi Mom,

Dinner at Dad’s was especially awful tonight.

I won’t marry her.

I will be firm.

I will be strong.

I will be in charge of my own life.

Will you be on my side? Will you listen to me?

Mom, Mrs. Kim says I should write to you and tell you everything that is inside of me. What am I even doing here? What do I feel right now? Everything inside of me feels not enough but also too much.

I am tired. I am hungry. I am a little bit cold, I’ve been shivering. I think I lost too much weight again. My bones hurt. I have a headache. I have a stomachache. I have a heartache. I won't marry her, I don't even know her. Dad says you are mad about it. I guess he answered the call.

Chanyeol is back and we have been going to the gym together. It’s so hard, I am sore all over.

OH.

I saw someone at work today. I’ve seen her before but I saw her again.

That’s all, I guess.

-B

—————————————

Hi Mom,

It’s just a stupid fantasy but sometimes I think about calling you and talking to you about my life and you answer and invite me over for a long weekend and we drink wine together and watch movies and you touch my hair with your hand and tell me it’s time for a haircut with a sweet look in your eyes.

-B

————————————

Hi Mom,

You know what?

You don't have to worry about me. I have Mimi and I have Chanyeol and I have friends at work and friends at the gym and I have someone to talk to. It’s so easy. It’s so easy. Don’t you worry about me. I will be fine.

I’m going to tell you something.

This…this, these words that I say to you right now, this, it doesn’t matter. No one will ever see this. I can just say whatever I want. No one will know except for me. This isn’t even addressed to you. I might as well have just addressed this letter to myself. This is mine. I can say whatever I want to say. I finally got it, Mrs. Kim. I get it, okay? Are you satisfied?

Okay.

So lately I’ve been watching this girl. Maybe I should say woman. I’ve been watching a woman.

Oh god.

I’m a creep.

No. No judgment. Mrs. Kim said to write without judgment.

So yeah, I’ve seen her. You know when you see someone and your eyes just follow them? Like I don't want to be doing this. I am not trying to do this. But it is happening. She is there and I am watching her. For no reason. I don't even work with her. She’s on the other side of the building, doing something important. I am just showing up to work because I have to.

She wants to be there.

She is a 10.

Not just because she is pretty, that is mostly irrelevant. Mostly. At first I noticed that she was pretty, of course. I am human. I saw her get in the elevator and I knew she was pretty, but somehow, she feels more than just pretty, do you know what I mean?

Like, she is a magnet. If she is in the room, I am powerless.

What the hell is this?

-B

————————————

Hi Mom,

I shouldn’t tell you this.

You aren’t really you so It’s okay if I tell you. You aren’t real. I can say whatever I want to say. I can say what I want to say. I can mean it.

I will say it.

-F-u-c-k- -y-o-u-.-

See. I can say whatever I want here. This isn’t even real. Even if it’s real inside of me, it’s not really real. Nothing is real.

I meant that but seeing it makes me feel like shit. I feel like shit. I feel like shit. Fuck you. I feel like shit.

My instinct is to take it back. I don't mean it, Mom, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mom. I was wrong. I won't do it again.

I am writing this letter in a permanent marker. I cannot undo this. I can cross it out and I just went up there and I crossed it out. Both times, I crossed them out. I still know it happened though.

I meant it. I still mean it. But it aches.

-B

———————————

Hi Mom,

I’m sorry I’ve been so quiet lately. It’s been months since I last wrote to you.

So much has happened. I don't even know where to start.

I’ve actually been busy with work. How fucked up is that? I’ve been learning new things and working with other departments and I’ve been insanely busy all the time. It’s actually kind of great. I’m not the worst at some of it. Some things, I enjoy them and I do well. A lot goes into this stuff. I didn’t realize when I was younger just how much goes into the stuff you see on tv. Dad’s kind of… nah, I won't say it.

Also every now and then, I get to see her.

She is everything.

-B

————————————

Hi Mom,

Do you remember when I was little and you picked me up early from school and we went for ice cream and we played at the park and you had on that white dress with the red flowers and you let me hold your hand even though my hand was all dirty from falling on the ground and sticky from the ice cream, you still held my hand anyway, do you remember that?

Was that a dream?

-B

————————————

Hi Mom,

I am so fucked up.

Do you want to know about this girl? The woman from work — she is…she is older than me. She is so calm and collected and put together and she is clean and pretty and she absolutely doesn’t deserve the things I am doing with her face in my mind at night. Sorry that was too much. I am not proud of this part of me. I’m very weak to her. I’ve realized that now.

She doesn’t know I exist.

I really mean that. She looked right into my face today and there was zero recognition. She didn’t even really look at me and I still couldn't breathe. She is much too busy and much too important and she’s spread very thin but she handles it well. What she needs is an assistant. I have no idea why she doesn’t have one. She is a manager, someone important. She is better than all of the rest of them. Even Dad said so. Every single time I am around her I want to rip off my own head and hold it in front of her and beg her to see me.

But God.

It’s bad. I can feel it getting bad. I don’t know what to do about it either. I don't know if there is anything I can do. She’s just working, she just works and works and works and I watch her and she has no idea I am there. I am on fire. I can feel it starting to consume me.

I showed Chanyeol a picture of her. He agreed that she is very pretty but then he asked me how old she is and I think he thinks she’s too old for me to be so interested in her which is hilarious. She is perfect. I am already obsessed. She is real.

None of this is real, but she is real.

-B

——————————

Hi Mom,

We were alone together inside the elevator today for thirty whole seconds.

She came in from the outside with a single cherry blossom petal stuck in her hair. My hands were shaking when I pulled it out.

I have it.

She must have allergies in the springtime. Her eyes and nose were kinda pink and she sounded stuffy.

-B

———————————

Hi Mom,

Something happened.

Something is wrong. Some bastard did something to her.

She changed her phone wallpaper. Her insta is private. She doesn't have allergies to springtime. She was crying.

I can't do anything for her. I am powerless.

-B

———————————

Hi Mom,

I’m going to get good at this job. I’m going to learn everything and I’m going to be the best at it. Not just one job, but all of it. I understand what Dad is doing. He is turning me into him, but I’m going to be better.

Everyone here works so hard. I have to earn my place here.

-B

———————————

Hi Mom,

I’ve started drinking coffee.

Coffee is a must for office workers.

It gets me through the hours.

The hours in between when I see her and when I don't.

You must think I am pathetic.

And I assure you, I am.

-B

———————————

Hi Mom,

There was this thing called a wrap party tonight. It is a big party we throw after a project finishes and everyone dresses up and everyone goes and by everyone, yes I mean everyone and yes, I know what you are asking, and my answer is yes.

Yes.

Yes, she was there.

Jongdae says I stare too much. That’s one of my friends. He says I make it obvious, but what am I supposed to do about that? It is obvious. She is everything.

I didn’t think the party was that much fun. I didn’t really see the point of all of the alcohol and all of the music. People were dancing. I guess they all had fun. I didn’t. There was no point in dancing by myself, or worse, with someone who isn’t her.

She didn’t dance with anybody. There’s this one guy who is obviously trying to get with her, his name is BeomSik but he goes by something dumb like Chad or Chip. I don't remember, but it’s stupid. Him and his stupid face and his stupid hugs. Anyone can see that she isn’t interested. He’s just this big idiot.

I left the party early.

I’m going to sleep.

-B

———————————

Hi Mom!!

Something happened.

Something big happened! I am going to explode.

I knew a transfer was coming. I’ve been moving around all year, but this time. This time, I did something. I went to Grace, the head of HR on Dad’s floor and I did something. I lied to her and — and I told Grace, with absolute certainty and confidence, that the ID Manager had requested an assistant last year and I would like to be placed in that position.

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

She looked into her computer and actually said to me “ID Manager doesn’t have an assistant.” And I said “I will be the assistant, Grace.” And the woman looked at me for an entire minute before she just went back to typing on her computer for the longest time. My heart was inside my asshole. Sorry, that’s...

After she was done typing she said “I sent the request to your father’s secretary, Mr. Byun.”

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I am going to THROW UP.

-B

————————————

Can I Stay? - Masterlist

#this is so beautiful #like a pack of poems #😭 #baekhyun x reader

[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

still working on requests but i suddenly remembered that this post exists and immediately wanted needed to write touch-starved astarion. hope you guys enjoy this as much as i did!

a fervor, a sweet (astarion x gender neutral!reader, baldur’s gate 3)

As thrilled as he is to be free of Cazador’s control, Astarion could do without the constant need for blood.

Deer and boar just aren’t cutting it these days, not when he’s expected to fight goblins or harpies or whatever other damnable creature whose midsts you keep gallivanting into. 

Which is why he’s using all of his roguish tricks to approach your sleeping form without notice, intent on nicking a few mouthfuls from your throat before you wake. Nothing outlandish - just a little nibble, enough to keep him going. Keep him strong. 

Of course you wake just as he’s kneeling down with fangs bared. Of course. Astarion is quick to explain himself, wary of a stake through the ribs, but you’re surprisingly amenable to having a vampire in your midsts. 

You’re surprisingly amenable to many things, actually, including offering him the blood he so desperately needs. 

Are you that trusting, he wonders. Or that naive? 

Either way, Astarion has learned never to look a gift horse in the mouth. He urges you to get comfortable and then dives into his first real meal in centuries, nearly sighing as the sweetness of your blood spills over his tongue.

It’s splendid, the taste of your blood thick in the back of his throat. He’s never tasted anything like it, never felt anything like it, the sheer rapturous joy of giving his body what it needs, and to have your blood be offered so willingly only seems to add to the euphoria of the experience. Gods, but he could spend ages buried in your throat.

He’s lost in a pleasurable half-state, numb to everything but your blood coating his tongue, and so he almost doesn’t notice your arm rising, not until your hand has settled on the back of his head. Disappointment curdles in his gut; you’re about to push him away and that, as they say, will be that. Ah well. It had been generous enough of you to offer this much. 

But you don’t push him off. Your fingers are moving, yes, but not in an attempt to dislodge him. You’re simply… touching him. Pushing wayward curls into place, trying to tame his hair into some semblance of order, no small feat considering how mussed it’s become from his journey through the nautiloid ship and days in the wilderness with you and the motley crew you’ve gathered. 

You’re careful about it, gentle. Astarion - well, he doesn’t quite know what to do in response. Even the sweetness of your blood fails to distract from the soft sensation of your fingers carding through his curls. 

Even as they slow to a stop atop the crown of his head, Astarion can do little but stare blankly at the skin of your throat, nearly forgetting to swallow his mouthful. And then you pat his head, your palm gentle to avoid mussing up the job you’d just completed on his hair, and Astarion is so surprised he lets go immediately. 

“Ah, that will be all, I think,” he murmurs, unable to discern if the warmth in his chest is from the meal he’d just indulged in or the way your fingers had felt combing through his curls. Either way, it would be a good idea to leave, now, lest he do something foolish.

He feels your eyes on his back as he walks - walks, not runs - away. He feels them for even longer after that, a gentle weight across his shoulders that fails to dissipate even as he gorges himself on boar and deer in the dark of the night.  

*

The camp is awash in celebration - Halsin has been rescued, the Druid ritual halted, and the goblin scourge destroyed. Merriment flows in the form of drink and song, and everywhere Astarion looks there is joy to be found on faces both familiar and not. 

He searches for you, certain that this night will allow him the perfect opportunity to strengthen your bond. You’re already charmed by him - but then, who wouldn’t be, with all of his talents? - and a night together would serve to secure his place by your side, secure his safety. His freedom.

He’s stopped multiple times by inebriated tieflings, all eager to give him thanks for his part in the goblin massacre. One pushes a bottle of too-sharp smelling wine into his arms, and bereft of any other choice, Astarion accepts the bounty with a pasted-on smile.

Surely you’re the one they should be fawning over, he thinks, taking a pull of the wine and grimacing at its taste. It should be you in the midst of this celebration, being plied with trinkets and tasteless wine and heralded as the hero you are.

And yet - 

“You do realize you’re the guest of honor, don’t you?” he questions, unable to contain the curl of his lips when you shoot him a startled glance. Apparently you hadn’t expected anyone to find you in this little hidey hole, tucked behind an outcropping of rock with the newest acquisition to your group nestled against your knee. The owlbear has its head resting on your thigh, cooing gently as your fingers stroke along its crown. 

“Are they asking for me?” Your voice is hushed, the faintest hint of a slur to your words, and Astarion huffs a laugh. He wasn’t the only recipient of subpar wine, it seems. 

“Not yet.” He approaches you and your little shadow, grateful that the owlbear cub seems more preoccupied with your fingers than turning those sharp claws onto him. “But they’ll come calling eventually. Why are you hiding?”

“I’m not!” you insist, though your words lack much conviction. “I’m simply - recovering. From the wine.”

Astarion smirks, taking a seat beside you. “From the adoration, you mean.”

You huff a breath, your fingers scratching lightly between the owlbear’s ears. “That, too,” you admit quietly. 

“The life of a hero not quite what you expected?” You’d taken to it like you were born to do so, never failing to offer your aid to any poor soul in need. Yet the grimace that twists your lips speaks of a keen dissatisfaction with the moniker. Interesting. 

“I’m not a hero - “ you start, only to falter at the placid look Astarion gives you. You huff out a breath. “Just because I enjoy helping people doesn’t mean I’m entirely comfortable with all the fanfare that comes with it.”

“Understandable.” Astarion leans back on his palms, idly listening to the tiefling bard’s song as it filters through camp. “Surprising, but understandable.”

Your brows climb. “Why is that surprising?” 

“Oh, come now,” he teases. “Isn’t half the fun of playing hero the praise and accolades that come after?”

You shake your head, a soft laugh bubbling from within your throat. It’s a pleasant sound. “I’d rather be giving the praise than receiving it,” you confess. The owlbear chirps as though in agreement and you take to cupping its plump cheeks in your palms, an affectionate glint in your eye. “Yes, you understand, don’t you, my brave little one?” Your fingers scritch gently through the owlbear’s feathers and the creature purrs, a rumble that Astarion can nearly feel in the soles of his feet.

You shoot a triumphant glance his way. “See? Much better.”

“Well, as long as you’re doling out praise,” he murmurs expectantly, some small part of him wondering why in the hells he’d decided to say such a thing and swiftly laying the blame for his loosened tongue on the awful wine. 

A look of surprise passes over your face before it’s swiftly replaced by an expression that Astarion can only define as fond. He should be thrilled about that - he’d set out to charm you to his side during your first meeting, after all, and here before him was the proof that his machinations were working. He waits for the satisfaction to spill through his veins, the joy of a job well done, but instead all he truly feels is… warmth. 

Warmth and the callused pads of your fingertips settling gently against his cheeks. He blinks in surprise at the unexpected touch, mutely staring as your eyes track his face and your lips tilt into a soft smile.

“You were very brave, too, Astarion,” you croon, in much the same tone as the words you’d cooed to the owlbear, and despite himself, Astarion feels a hot flush work its way down his chest. 

“Really now, darling,” he begins, adopting a lofty tone to distract from the shock of his own body’s reaction to your words. 

“Fierce as well,” you continue undeterred. “Cunning and swift. Utterly brilliant.” Your palms gently squeeze at his cheeks in much the same way you had just been handling the owlbear. That bit should offend him, probably - he isn’t some beast to be swayed by pretty words - but the expression on your face serves to soothe his ego well enough.

You’ve a mind for deception when the situation calls for it, but the wine and general merriment of the evening seem to have stripped you of all but sheer sincerity. You mean what you say. 

“Well, I - “ Astarion struggles for words - a first for him, in all truth. Perhaps the wine has addled his mind, too, for the only thought he seems capable of is how nice it might feel to slump against your hold, allowing you to be all that holds him aloft in the world. 

The owlbear trills between you, the call enough to distract you. Your hands slip from Astarion’s face and for reasons he chooses not to study too closely, it takes a valiant effort for the vampire not to snatch them back up again. 

That, he reasons, is his cue to leave, and with a swift farewell and a promise not to rat out your hiding place to the rest of the revelers, he goes. 

It doesn’t strike Astarion until he’s back within the safety of his own tent that his plans for the evening - to seduce you into his bed and bolster your growing bond - had been completely waylaid. He should be furious with himself, and he waits for the bitter sting of disappointment to settle on his tongue - 

But it doesn’t.

Strange.

*

Camp is mostly silent when Astarion returns from his late night feeding, though you appear to still be awake, nestled on a log by the fire and staring silently into the depths of the flames. 

He debates bypassing you entirely but that feels too much like retreating. The night of the tiefling’s celebration remains fresh in his mind, his body’s increasingly confusing reactions to your touch stalling his feet, but Astarion is no coward. 

In truth, you look so lost in thought that he could have passed you completely uncontested, and he might have tried his luck, if only he weren’t so sure that he himself was the source of your turmoil. 

The Gur hunter had been a nasty little surprise. Astarion had given little thought to the possibility of Cazador sending someone after him, or perhaps he’d always known it was an inevitability and merely elected not to give credence to the thought. A folly on his part, to be sure. He would have to be much more vigilant in future.

“Don’t tell me you were waiting up for me,” he quips, taking no small amount of pleasure in your startled expression as he settles onto the log beside you. 

You open your mouth - perhaps to deny his accusation - but seem to sense the futility of such a claim. 

“We can’t be certain that Gandrel was working alone,” you say, turning your gaze once more to the flames. “I felt better, waiting.”

“Ah,” Astarion murmurs. You were concerned for him, then. He’d known as much - even after dispatching of the hunter and facing down the hag afterward, you had refused to rest until the party was well beyond the borders of the swamp. A blessing, really, considering the stench of the place, but even Lae’zel and Wyll had raised a brow at your haste. 

Silence falls between you for a moment, slightly awkward but also strangely comfortable, heavy with words unsaid. You look fit to bursting, however; Astarion can feel your gaze darting to him when you feel he isn’t aware, and he resists the urge to smile. He has centuries on you - he can be patient. 

“Your arm?” There it is, your voice deceptively light when you finally speak.

Astarion huffs. Was that what had worried you so?

“It was only a flesh wound, pet.” The Gur’s arrow had sliced a furrow into his forearm, leaving behind a stinging, bloody mess, but it was nothing a few mouthfuls of blood couldn’t fix. 

You nod jerkily, brows furrowing. “I know,” you mutter, though you don’t sound entirely convinced.

Astarion sighs, though even he can hear the fond exasperation in it. “See for yourself,” he says, holding his bare arm out for your perusal.

The skin is pale, unmarred, as though the wound had never been inflicted at all. He expects the silent look of awe that passes over your face; he even expects the relief, though the vulnerability of the expression - the proof that you’ve grown to care for him - is enough to make him second guess his earlier decision to approach you.

He’s not expecting your fingers, roughened at the tips with calluses from wielding your weapon, to wrap gingerly around his arm.

Astarion goes still, watching as you study the offending limb with far more intensity than it deserves. Your nails drag lightly over the stretch of skin where the arrow had struck, leaving a tingling sensation behind in their wake. 

He’s rocketed back to the night you’d first offered your blood to him, to the moment during the tiefling’s celebration when you’d gathered his face in your hands and touted him brave. He’s freshly fed and pleasantly full, but the warmth in his belly has little to do with blood.

It’s you.

It’s you and this damnable urge you seem to have to touch him - his hair, his face, his body, all seemingly without thought, without sexual intent, without cruelty.

When had such a touch ever been bestowed upon him? Before his death, certainly. Before Cazador. 

The thought roars through him like a wailing beast. 

Why are you doing this? Why do you care?

Why does Astarion never want you to stop?

“I’m glad there was no lasting damage,” you murmur, your hands curled loosely around his arm. You’ve no intention of letting him go anytime soon, it seems, but that’s alright. That lost, fretful look has vanished from your face, leaving behind sweet relief and a small, lopsided smile.

Astarion wants to taste it, to feel the texture and give of your mouth against his. Not to manipulate, not to coax you into bed, but simply because he wants to.

Gods above, he actually wants.

*

He carries the feeling, for a time. 

The want, the need. The ache.

It builds and it builds, a sweet desperation that he’s never quite felt before, until eventually even Astarion’s centuries-born patience runs reed thin. 

The Elfsong Tavern comes as a welcome respite after spending weeks in the wilderness. The entire upper floor is yours, and even Lae’zel seems more approachable after a few nights spent in the comfort of a real bed - much as she may hiss when Astarion tells her so.

A confrontation with Cazador lies just around the corner, a looming threat that hangs over all of your heads. You’re strong - stronger than Astarion had ever thought possible - but there’s a very real chance that none of you will see the light of day again after you breach his stronghold.  

If this is to be his last night on earth, Astarion reasons as he comes to a halt outside your door and raises a hand to rap at the wood, then he’ll be damned if he spends it without the comfort of your touch. 

You call for him to enter, and at his first glance of you, his resolve firms. You’ve discarded your armor, clad in loose clothing that makes you look soft, open. 

The urge to tease, to pester and charm disappears. Astarion climbs atop your bed, settles himself at your side, and for the first time in recent memory, asks for something he actually wants.

“Touch me?” 

Your brows jump, mouth parting on a slow, sharp breath. You set aside the tome you’d been reading, eyes searching his own. He half-expects you to question him, to gently urge him from your room. 

But you don’t.

Your palms are warm against his jaw, your touch tentative, exploratory, until Astarion sighs and sinks against you. 

You murmur his name, your voice soft, full of surprise, of wonder. 

“Please,” he whispers, and you laugh, a soft, shaky thing, disbelieving, awestruck. Fond. 

You thumb at his cheekbone, drag your nails along his jaw, trace the bow of his lips until he’s gasping for breath, a fire sparking in his blood. Your fingers shift gently through his hair, and then firm within his curls whenever he releases a low, trembling moan. 

Each touch you bestow upon him is a solar flare, blinding, brilliant, hot: your hands stroking over the crown of his head, dragging through the short curls at his nape, scratching lightly over his throat, his shoulders, his waist. 

His chin falls to your shoulder as your palms spread out along his back, dragging a trail of fire down the length of his spine. He presses his lips against your throat and bites out your name, warm and wanting, and you croon against his ear, nonsense words interspersed with his name. The scent of your own desire, your skin, your need is a heady concoction, making his head spin and his fangs ache. Thoughts of the parasite, the Absolute, Cazador - they all fade to the back of his mind, unimportant, insignificant to the heat of your hands upon his skin.

“Don’t stop.” It’s a desperate order, his voice gravel, his blood afire. His buries his hands beneath your tunic, feels your body shake as tremulously as his own, and knows in that moment that he could never let you go. 

“I won’t.” Your voice is a balm, a declaration, a vow. You press your lips to his brow and say it again, the cadence of the words sinking deep, taking hold, stronger than Cazador’s cruelty and the parasite’s hunger and everything else that you’ve yet to face. 

It should be terrifying - it is terrifying, but Astarion has long grown accustomed to fear.

He'll welcome this one with open arms.

#astarion

[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

Buried Alive (Gojo x Geto)

Author's note: Hey lovely readers. This fic is based off of the basement au created by @sadbenedict

Please go checked out their amazing work.

Synopsis: Gojo spares Geto from death, opting for something more infinite.

Warnings: Thoughts of self harm, self harm, unhealthy relationships

“Suguru?” Satoru softly asked.

His ex kept his back turned, staring blankly at the old tv Satoru had found tucked away in storage. The only thing it could play was vhs tapes, mostly old sitcoms. So the silence was occasionally broken by a laugh track. 

“Suguru?” he asked again.

The laugh track played again, no response.

Satoru sighed in defeat. “I’ll be back soon, okay?”

He left without saying another word. 

~

Satoru’s life was a little fucked up at the moment. 

And if he stopped to think about it for more than a few seconds he’d probably go insane. 

For starters, Suguru Geto, his ex, had managed to take out an entire village and put a target on his back by the age of seventeen. Then, he disappeared off the face of the planet, only to reemerge with a new purpose, new loved ones. 

It destroyed Satoru. His first heartbreak. 

He had replayed the events over and over again in his head throughout the years. How could he do this? 

Leave him and the people who had loved him the most. Replacing them all. Replacing him. But Satoru could never replace him, and that adoration would destroy them both. 

~

“How old are you?” 

Satoru looked up at the old man behind the counter. He had been coming to the same secondhand store for the last two weeks to get tapes for Suguru, and had managed to catch the shipowner's curiosity. 

“I’m 27,” he answered.

The shop owner furrowed his brow. “Aren’t you a little young to still be buying tapes? Even the old timers don’t bother with this stuff anymore.”

Satoru chuckled and pulled out his wallet. “I guess I just have a hard time letting go.”

~

“Your arm looks good, Geto,” Shoko murmured as she inspected her handiwork.

After the failed christmas eve attack, Satoru had brought him to her office, desperate to heal his broken body. With the aid of reverse cursed technique and the abilities she’d honed in medical school, he was physically perfected. Mentally, that was another story. 

Her former friend looked withered, weighed down under the massive chains Satoru used to hold him down. He was thin from not eating, dark circles under his eyes from not sleeping. 

“Not bad for someone who cheated her way through med school,” he jested. 

“Better than running a ponzi scheme,” she retorted.

“Which I could get back to doing if you broke these chains and let me go,” Suguru suggested.

“Nice try asshole.”

“It was worth a shot.”

Shoko packed up her medical bag, snapping it shut with more gusto than necessary. 

“How long are you going to ice him out?” she asked.

“For however long I’m stuck in this shit hole,” he mumbled.

She sighed, pulling her cigarettes out of her lab coat pocket. 

“I’d offer you a lighter but I’m a little indisposed at the moment.”

Shoko ignored the quip, fishing a cigarette out of the carton and placing it between her lips, then retrieving her own lighter she always carried on her. 

“That’s alright,” she muttered, her pursed lips balancing the cigarette. “I stopped depending on you a long time ago.”

She left him to ponder that sentiment, it hurt more than he would have liked to admit. 

~

2007

It was scorching outside.

So to alleviate the discomfort from the heat Suguru closed the windows and put his fan on the highest level it could go. 

Satoru later joined him. 

The two of them laid on the floor and stared up at the ceiling while a Weezer cd played. Satoru had ‘borrowed’ it from Ichiji.

“I’ll put it back in his room later,” Satoru lazily assured him.

On an island in the sun

We'll be playing and having fun

And it makes me feel so fine

I can't control my brain

Suguru turned his head to face Satoru, he looked so peaceful at that moment.

It made Suguru feel assured, his feet were firmly on the ground, right here, in this moment, the world was still. 

Satoru smiled. “I know.”

So Suguru closed his eyes, being lulled to sleep from a mixture of heat and music.

But it didn’t matter. 

He was safe here. 

We'll run away together

We'll spend some time forever

We'll never feel bad anymore

“Suguru?”

~

“Suguru?”

Suguru slowly opened his eyes. 

He must have dozed off after Shoko left. 

He couldn’t remember the last time he had a dream that wasn’t a nightmare. But why have one when he was living in some twisted reality that was more eerie than anything his mind could conjure. 

Satoru set some bags down on the ground and approached him.

“I got some more tapes, books, cassettes, and a few things for dinner.”

Suguru just blankly stared at him, although he found the dream he had just had softened his heart a touch with nostalgia, much to his dismay. Still, he wouldn’t give his captor the satisfaction of being vulnerable with him. 

~

Satoru had bought an assortment of convenience store food, takeout, and a box of Kikufuku from that bakery he was always raging about whenever he went to Sendai on business. Suguru should have been grateful but the glutinous setup made him nauseous. It felt orchestrated to create a well balanced facade. Something that Satoru was determined to perform. 

While he set everything up he told him about what was going on in the world beyond his cell. 

“Yuta’s away with Miguel for the time being. And Megumi seems to be doing well so far.”

He pressed a Kikufuku against Suguru’s mouth, but he kept his jaw wired shut, refusing the gift.

So Satoru set it back down on the plate with the other food that remained untouched. 

“Shoko told me you were in excellent health but you’re still underweight.”

The white haired sorcerer took the box and popped a sweet into his mouth, then another.

“I checked up on the twins while I was out,” he said in between chews. 

Suguru’s throat tightened up, but he remained silent. 

Satoru pulled another sweet out of the box, examining it in the dim light of the cell. 

“These are so good. Are you sure you don’t want one?”

Suguru just glared at him.

Satoru sighed and dropped the uneaten sweet back into the box. 

“I should get going. Megumi’s home alone and-”

“You are unbelievable,” Suguru muttered. 

Satoru tilted his head. “What?”

Suguru scoffed. “You brought up Mimiko and Nanako on purpose. So if you're going to deliver some half baked threat at least have the decency to say it to my face. 

Satoru smiled, a fake one that made him look manic. “Don’t worry. If I wanted those things gone I would have taken care of them a long time ago.”

Suguru clenched his jaw. “If you hurt them-”

“You’ll what?” Satoru simply asked. “What will you do?”

Suguru felt his heart drop. All of a sudden things had become alarmingly more clear. Satoru was gone. And in his place was a monster.

He was the strongest. And everyone else was destined to follow him.

Satoru picked up the uneaten kikufuku and held it towards Suguru.

“Now, are you hungry?”

~

The kikufuku had left a bitter taste in Suguru’s mouth, worse than any curse he had been forced to swallow. 

After Satoru had left he found the taste growing stronger and stronger. 

He wanted to shove his fingers down his throat and throw it all up but he couldn’t with these damn chains around his hands, his feet, his neck. So he grew agitated, agitation morphed into anger, until it reached blinding rage. 

The television played some mind numbing sitcom behind him. About some fake perfect family living their fake perfect life. Someone said an unfunny joke and the laugh track dutifully followed. 

It set him off, so he lunged himself towards the television and slammed his fist through the screen. 

Finally, the laughter stopped, but only momentarily, as it started bubbling out of his lips. 

Suguru pulled his fist out of the broken screen and examined his bloodied hand. And he laughed harder. 

He laughed until he cried. 

Then screamed. 

Then cried again, sinking to the ground. 

No one could hear him in the windowless room below ground. He was buried alive, and no matter how loud he screamed, or cried, or laughed, no one heard. No one except the strongest, Satoru Gojo, his first love, who had kept him here in purgatory. 

He was nowhere. 

And here he would stay. 

~

The End. 

#jjk

[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

Astarion talks in his sleep.

Pairing: Astarion x GN!Reader/Tav (Shadowheart is our lovely supporting role though.) Summary/Setting: 6 months post BG3, "good/spawn" Astarion ending, all fluff Rating/Warnings: PG / Very mild if any game spoilers but nothing related to major content or scenes Word Count: 900+ Notes: Inspired by this post here!

-----

Astarion talks in his sleep. It’s something you’ve never mentioned to him, because it’s mostly when he’s having a nightmare about Cazador or some other horrid trauma from his past. You'd quickly determined it not worth bringing up, for fear of embarrassing him. Plus, if you were being honest, part of you found it rather endearing... especially the lighter drabble that would escape his lips. Delighted giggles, little purrs... it could be overwhelmingly adorable, on occasion.

In fact, the first time you ever heard him say he loved you was in his sleep. Then you'd waited weeks… anxiously, impatiently, unbearably for the revelation to come out while he was awake, under his own terms.

But tonight, the talking and tossing isn't cute. The vampire writhing in bed disturbs you, and your eyes flutter open, catching the smallest glimpse of daylight between the thick, tightly drawn curtains and shuttered windows of your bedchamber. You'd just fallen asleep, and you'd be lying if you said you weren't the slightest bit annoyed.

You idly try to figure out the date. Adjusting your schedule to the night life was… difficult; you often lost track of dates nowadays. But somehow you manage to remember that it's been nearly six months since you all saved Baldur's Gate; six months since Astarion had been returned to a creature of the shadows. Six months you've been in the house provided by the city as you two adjust to whatever normalcy you are able to conjure up and figure out your next steps. You were a strong proponent for the Underdark; Astarion was not quite sold.

At first you think the silver-haired elf's tossing and turning is a night terror… it’s been nearly two weeks since the last one. He’s overdue. You ready yourself to pop out of bed and grab your calming herbs to steep a quick sleeping draught. But then you hear him, soft and garbled, laced with thick strings of sleep.

“Will you marry me?”

You turn to stare stupidly at the elf, eyes piercing through the blackness of your room; his face is obscured, you cannot tell if he’s awake. “…what did you say?”

Silence. A long, unbearable stretch of silence where your heart is pounding into your throat, practically rattling around your chest cavity at the sudden shock. And then he’s snoring again, and you’re left with your brow furrowed and robe half pulled onto your shoulder. Well, so much for your sleep.

You meander down the hall to the kitchen, where Shadowheart has several jars and plants strewn across the table. She’s practically taken over the kitchen since Gale left, not that you particularly mind, since she’s also taken over the cooking.

“Aren’t you supposed to be asleep right now?” She asks, spotting you out of the corner of her eye, not lifting her focus from the mortar and pestle in her hand.

“You won’t believe what Astarion just said in his sleep.” You murmur in dazed response, walking over to the cabinets and rummaging through the contents. You grab an old kettle and fill it with water, turning to look at the cleric.

“Gods, what was it? I’m quite thankful to be out of the camp... his night terrors woke all of us up at one point or another. It's no wonder you’re struggling with the schedule adjustment.”

“He said, ‘Will you marry me?’” You respond, almost giggling at how silly that sounds in retrospect, as you place the kettle on the stove.

Shadowheart pauses. One, two, three beats of silence. “Shit… well, I guess the cat is out of the bag now.” She murmurs with a shrug, before returning to grinding her herbs.

“Wh-what?!”

“Oh, come off, don’t be daft! You had to expect it would be coming sooner or later. Gods, your love is almost sickening… it was sickening, having to hear it all the time... once again, so thankful for the separation of these walls.”

You are frozen, your hand still holding onto the kettle as you appraise your friend. Shadowheart is right. You knew a proposal would come sooner or later… you just figured it would be much later. Astarion was still struggling; more often than not you woke to him in tears or in the throes of a sleeping fit. Countless calming elixirs and teas had been drawn up by you and Shadowheart in the last six months. Truly, you hadn’t thought he was thinking that deeply about it... you hadn't been, if at all. Gods, you two still didn't even know where you were headed after leaving this city-supplied house... the lease was up in a few weeks' time.

“I guess… well, I suppose I didn’t think he was ready.” You sigh, lighting the stove and sitting across the table, watching the cleric as she works.

“Oh, trust me, he’s ready. And he's certain. Perhaps not about anything else... but definitely about this. He's been writing to Gale for weeks trying to source a particular ring." Shadowheart responds, now pouring the contents of her grinder into pouches. "Just promise you'll act like it's a surprise when the time comes... he's been talking about it for a while. He's put a lot of thought into things."

"When will it be?"

Shadowheart laughs, the edges of her eyes crinkling as she flicks her gaze toward the ceiling. She’s now cinching the sachets and sorting them all into a nearby basket. "Now that I'm not telling you. I've already given away too much."

You try for a few more minutes to pry the information from your friend, but she remains tight-lipped. You even threaten her with detect thoughts, though you both know you'd never go through with it. Finally, a whistle from the kettle beckons you back to the stovetop, and the conversation is halted as you ready your tea and aim to go back to bed. You might not know when your love is going to pop the question, but you do know that when the time comes, your answer will be a resounding yes.

Click here for Part 2

[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

Boiling Point (1/2)

Astarion x You!

Your party stumble across a hot spring in the wilds and agree to take turns bathing. It turns out, Astarion isn’t very good at taking turns but is more than happy to share…

🌶️mature��️ (fair warning that this chapter is just a little steamy but the next one will be very nsfw!)

You lay on your back in the recently discovered hot spring, eyes closed, basking in the delicious warmth. If this wasn't heaven, you weren't sure what was. The moon lights up the little clearing you’re in, giving everything that it touches a lovely, silvery sheen, and you close your eyes and relax into it, feeling at ease for the first time in weeks.

“Well, hello.”

You almost jump out of your skin.

“Astarion.” You gasp, spluttering up a lungful of water as you quickly sink lower beneath the surface, arms crossing against your chest in a bid to protect your modesty as you twist toward him. The water’s cloudy enough that he wouldn’t be able to see anything, but that knowledge does very little to make you feel less exposed. “What in the nine hells is wrong with you?”

“Nothing that a little dip couldn’t fix.” He quips, lounging against a rock, his face the picture of innocence and your eyes narrow as you notice he’s clutching a crimson towel in one pale hand.

“It’s not your turn.” You warn, narrow eyes meeting his as his carefully blank face looks back at you. You’d all agreed on a schedule for hot spring use and given that he’d already talked you into letting him steal all of your allocated time, it definitely wasn’t his turn.

“Oh, I know that.” He replies, the picture of unaffected grace as he looks at his nails and then back at you. “I just think it’s a little selfish of you to be… indulging yourself with so little regard for other people’s feelings.”

“Is it?” You say, slowly, and his lips quirk up in response. “Or is it a ‘little selfish’ to interrupt someone during the only time they’ve had to themselves in days. Especially when that person in question has already given up every other opportunity to bathe in the hot spring for you.”

“Yes, yes, that was very generous of you darling, but try to look at it from my perspective. You generate your own heat, but what about me? Do you know what it feels like to spend night after night in this frozen and miserable, knowing that there’s something warm and wet that I could sink myself into just meters away?”

His voice is innocent, but as his eyes drop to where your skin disappears beneath the water, the smile he gives you is anything but. It's obvious he’s trying to use your physical response to him to manipulate you, because he's always trying to do that and you flush, desire flooding to your core just as he intends it. But you're not just flushing because of the obscene way he's looking at you. It's because that smile has reminded you of how he looked when he returned from the springs last night. All pink skin and delighted exuberance. He’d been light, playful, exhilarated... Happy. And you knew enough about his past to know that happiness wasn’t something he’d known much of in his long life.

“Why can't you just go and bother someone else for a change.” You grumble, but the delighted shine in his eyes shows you that he knows he's getting his way and you scowl at him. “Gods give me strength. Turn around.”

“Why?” he asks, mouth blooming into a full smile and you can’t help the extra little flip your stomach gives at the sight of it.

“Because I’m naked and I’m not getting out with you staring at me. Turn around.”

“Darling, I’m hurt. Are you really suggesting we can’t share? There’s more than enough room for two.” He pouts, eyes shining as he stares down at you, sparkling with mischief and butterflies flutter to life in your stomach at the suggestion. You know he’s only trying to get a rise out of you but damn it, if it isn’t working. "Besides, I promise to keep my hands to myself.”

You choke back a strangled laugh because it really wasn’t him you were worried about. The butterflies have gone into overdrive just from the suggestion, and you can feel the heat staining your cheeks a darker pink than the warmth of the hot spring. You stare up at him, eyes a little too wide, and he gives you a self-satisfied smile. You can see in his gaze that he expects you to balk. Expects you to surrender the hot spring and slink away with your pink cheeks and pounding heart.

Well fuck him.

You force a sweet smile, feeling a thrum of satisfaction at the slight widening of his eyes as instead of moving toward him you wade to the far edge and turn around. For a long moment there’s nothing and you wonder if he’s even still there.

“Well? Are you getting in or not?” You demand, proud that your voice is only a little shaky, and he lets out a laugh. You swallow, focusing on trying to keep your heart rate level as you hear the sound of rustling fabric and then the water ripples around you as he slips in behind you.

“You can look now, darling, I assure you I’m quite decent.”

You turn around and immediately regret not getting out when you had the chance.

There is nothing decent about the way he looks right now.

The moonlight floods the broad expanse of his naked chest, staining it an ethereal, shining white, and he looks like he was carved from marble. The steam from the water has already tightened the hair at the nape of his neck into little curls. He’s stark and beautiful in the silver moonlight, but it’s not even that, that’s most striking.

It’s his expression.

His eyes are closed, head resting against the grassy bank behind him and the little smile that plays at the edges of his lips is a million miles away from his usual shit-eating grin. It’s small and soft and decidedly content and you swallow. It’s the full force of the little smile you’d seen at camp. It’s true happiness, you realize and it makes your heart pound and ache in equal measure to acknowledge that you’ve never seen that particular smile before.

He shifts, lifting his arms from the water and resting them against the rocky edge of the pool, blinking up at you and that little smile dissolves into something darker. Water streams from his skin, running between the dips and crevices of his muscular biceps and you shrink into yourself a little, sinking into the water until just your chin hovers above it. There’s nothing you can do about your heart now, it’s pounding against your ribs like it wants to escape from your chest and his crimson eyes are fixed on you as you try your best to keep yourself in check.

“Happy now?” you ask, and though your voice is a little breathy you feel like the fact that you’ve even gotten the words out is a feat of heroic proportions.

“Very.” He replies closing his eyes, and you can’t help but smile at that. He looks more content than you’ve ever seen him and that thought triggers a reaction in you that’s so strong that you suddenly realize that you can’t stay here. He doesn’t deserve to be ogled like this, when he’s just trying to relax. From the little snippets he’s given you from his past he’s had enough of that to last several lifetimes.

You clear your throat and he opens his eyes again, one eyebrow raised questioningly you swallow, gesturing at him to swap places with you. He sits up at that, a surprised smile on his lips and you shake your head, not wanting him to get the wrong idea about your intentions.

“I’m going to leave you to it.” You say, your words only catching a little in your throat as he cocks his head to the side, looking at you thoughtfully.

“Leave me to what, exactly?” He asks, voice low and teasing, and heat rises beneath your cheeks as steam curls up in silvery tendrils around his chest.

“This. Warming up.” You manage, trying not to look at him as you edge your way around the to the other side of the spring, nearer to the grassy knoll, but you really need him to move out of the way if you want to make a graceful exit. “I’ll see you back at camp.”

“I can think of better ways to warm up.” He says, voice a little too innocent, and your gaze flicks to him before you can stop yourself. His eyes are fixed on you and the look in them is dark and predatory and you falter, heart in your throat. You’ve seen that look before, and you swallow as his gaze slips to your neck, the hunger in it apparent.

“I-I-“ you start, but your words die in your throat. The way he’s looking at you has melted your insides into a puddle of lust and your really, really need to get yourself under control. You take a breath. Blood. He means blood. You try to distract your pounding heart by thinking through the implications of what he’s asking. You’re no cleric, but surely bloodletting in hot water wasn’t the best of ideas... “Is it safe?”

He frowns at that, cocking his head to the side as if trying to work out your meaning and you swallow and touch your neck.

“Is it safe to feed in the water?” You say, again. He freezes for a second, and then some unreadable expression passes over his face before he quickly looks away. If you didn’t know him better, you’d have said it was disappointment.

“Of course.” He says, seemingly to himself, and when he looks up the expression has been swallowed up by his usual confidence. “Don’t worry, my sweet. I’ll take very good care of you.”

He holds out his hand and you bite your lip, hesitating for a moment. It’s not that you don’t trust him. If he says it’s safe you believe him, but you’re just suddenly very aware of your lack of clothes. You shift uncertainly, edging a tiny bit closer to him and a slow smile spread over his lips.

“I think you’ll find you need to be a little closer than that.” He says in a voice that spreads beneath your skin like treacle, and for the second time in one night you regret not leaving when you had the chance.

You shiver despite the heat as you place your hand in his and he wraps his pale fingers around yours, tugging you gently towards him. For one panicked second you think he's going to pull you onto his lap, but he stops when you're a few inches apart. You put your free hand on the grassy bank to steady yourself as he lifts your hand to his mouth, rotating it so that the soft skin of your wrist presses gently against his lips. He's fed from you before but, other than the very first time when he almost lost himself, he’s been almost clinical in his approach. Careful to only touch as much as he needs to.

This is not that.

You watch, dumbstruck, as his pink tongue slips out from between his lips to swipe a cool stripe across the overheated plane of your wrist. Your breath catches, a small hitch at the back of your throat, but he catches it and drowning crimson orbs flick up to meet your startled gaze. He does it again, staring at you darkly from beneath his eyelashes and licks another tortuously slow line across your aching skin.

You try not to, but you can't help but gasp, hand gripping tightly into the grass, and his pupils dilate with bloodlust as his fingers tighten against your skin. Gods.

“A-Astarion.” Your voice is breathy and tight, barely audible and you feel almost drunk from just this small amount of contact. He closes his eyes at the sound, a pained expression passing over his face as a shudder runs through his body, and then, before you can say anything else, his fangs sink into your wrist.

[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

“c’mon, megumi. tell me what’s botherin’ ya.” satoru pouts at megumi, his arm thrown around the boy’s shoulders. you watch the scene unfold with a tense smile.

megumi was exhausted from school, training and so much more. the teenager’s patience was wearing thin. especially with satoru almost pressuring him into telling you both what’s weighing on his mind. when all he wants is to be left alone at the moment.

the tone satoru’s using to talk to megumi only pisses the high schooler off more and more. it’s fatherly. like he’s still the little child satoru took in and cared for. it pissed megumi off, along with everything else;

“you’re not my dad, so stop fucking acting like you are!”

you freeze. satoru freezes. megumi freezes. time freezes. the silence was deafening. no one was moving. your eyes flicker over to satoru’s and your heart shatters in a million pieces.

satoru’s hurt. so hurt. it’s visible and he’s not hiding it — not hiding it like he usually would behind a wide grin. his blindfold and glasses aren’t there to hide the way his face falls either.

“i know.” satoru whispers. his voice lost its cheery tone, his eyes have lost their spark. the sorcerer slowly distances himself from megumi. a bitter chuckle leaves his lips. a futile attempt to hide his shaky voice, “i know.”

all you could do is stand there in shock. megumi doesn’t know what to do after his little outburst either. and satoru. . . well, satoru is the first one out of the room. you hear his breath hitch as he walks past you. you see his eyes twitch. the strongest, in tears.

[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

cicatrix

|| jing yuan x reader || E/18+ || hurt/comfort, cathartic smut || wc: 21.5k  || ao3 ||

Both you and Jing Yuan are known to put well-being aside for the sake of others. You reckon with it.

minors, antis and ageless blogs dni

notes: i've been COOKING!!!! please enjoy this very cathartic, gooey oneshot 😩💕!!!!! jing yuan is so beloved and getting to chew on him and his character makes me wanna roll around and scream (positive). thank you so much to bee (@suguwu) for talking this piece out w me each step of the way and andy (@andypantsx3) for a so helpful final read through 🥺🩷 read and enjoy loves!!!

CW: reader is referred to with they/them pronouns and afab anatomy, author-created lore & worldbuilding, reader visibly loses weight due to bodily stress, general talk of weight and bodies, reference to pain during intimacy, a single pregnancy joke made entirely in jest

“You should go see him.”

This is not the first time Diviner Fu has told you this. It’s actually the third time. It’s her third time attempting to have this particular conversation with you, one which you are becoming increasingly adept at parrying around. 

“Who?” You lie. You already know who.

“The General?” Fu Xuan sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “He’s awake, you know. Barely. But he has asked for you. Both while he was mostly unconscious and since he’s regained his lucidity. Go see him.”

“I’ll pass.” You shift on your knees with a heavy thump. Bone on metal. “Besides, can’t you, of all people, see I am hard at work here? I don’t exactly have the time for personal visits at the moment.”

That is not a lie. That is a steadfast truth. One both you and Fu Xuan, as the Master Calibrator and the Master Diviner respectively, fully understand.

Fu Xuan has sought you out deep within the Luofu’s inner structure. Far below the sprawl of metal-plated cities and neighborhoods, are the catacomb intestines you’ve been toiling in for... sometime now. Since whenever the Lord Ravager harnessed the Arbor, and the roots of a dead tree powered by an Aeon mutilated the Luofu’s most delicate innards. Innards you need to fix, rather than having frustrating conversations with Lady Fu.

You tap around on the interface on your wrist-bound jade abacus and curse. Your fingers are newly calloused, irritated at the tips from all of the poking and prodding you’ve had to do. You dip your hands into one of the opened buckets fastened to your belt, pulling forth when you’re sticky with iridescent sludge that slowly drips down your wrist like thick syrup. 

Returning to the utility panel you were previously working on before being interrupted, you tinker with a few of its delicate dials. All thrown off by the overabundance of... Abundance and the physical impact of the roots growth, deeper in the Luofu’s structure. You concentrate and thread quantum with the sap on your hands, trying to coax the machines into a more stable stasis. 

“At least consider it.” Fu Xuan says. Technically, she could order you, as she is on some administrative level, your superior and (from what you last heard) the acting General of the Luofu while the Divine Foresight has been indisposed. And yet, she does not force you. 

“Fine. I’ll consider it— if and when the Luofu is running diagnostic assessments with an average above fourty.”

“That’s— somewhat agreeable. But, I do think you’re being entirely—”

“Foolish?” You interrupt her with a laugh.

“Childish.” Fu Xuan taps her foot. The sound bounces around the narrow passageway, rattling into your skull. “Can the two of you not talk like adults and settle things?”

“I’m not sure what there is to ‘settle’ with him, Lady Fu.” You twitch your index and pinky finger at the same time. The internals sing, a hymn you know, the chord is a step or two too low— fucker. “He did something supremely stupid, and I am working.”

“That’s an obtuse way to look at things, and you know it.”

“In what way?” You crack open your eyes. You hadn’t realized you’d shut them. You’re sure they’re bloodshot. “What do you think about the General’s actions in subduing the Lord Ravager, Lady Fu?”

“I do believe he was reckless— as reckless as that man allows himself to be.” Fu Xuan has clearly thought about this before. Frustration pinches in her voice. “But it was not without the results.”

“So calculated recklessness is fine if, in the worst case, you end up as the Luofu’s next Arbiter General?”

“You’re putting words in my mouth.”

“I am.” You say, sighing. Anger prickles under your skin. This is all easier to deal with (read: ignore) if you focus on the ship and its internals. Its stupid, destroyed, obliterated internals. “I apologize.”

“When was the last time you slept?” Fu Xuan asks.

“... Yesterday? Probably?” There’s no daylight. You conserve battery life on your various devices by keeping screens dim, so you don’t know the hour. Time has felt liquid for some time now.

“I could take over.” Fu Xuan suggests.

“You still have a ship to run, I assume. Unless the Divine Foresight was so eager to get back to work already.”

“... Tasks can be delegated accordingly.”

“It’s not necessary.” You shake your head. “I mean this as no slight, but the rate at which you would be able to complete repairs and calibrations would be at the same rate at which the ship’s fail-safes and functions are degrading. It isn’t worth it.”

Perhaps, under different circumstances, Fu Xuan would squawk at you for discounting her skills as a calibrator so quickly. She is trained, not to your degree or expertise, but in a pinch, she can complete repairs, hear the chords, see the quantum maps required to keep the Luofu and its many delicate parts and pieces functioning accordingly. 

However, the Luofu’s current circumstances do not constitute a ‘pinch’ and rather a ‘once-in-an-era disaster that nearly killed the long-lived, beloved General, destroyed the longstanding Creation Furnace, revealed the previous disgraced High Elder of the Vidhaydara, nearly reawoke the Ambrosial Arbor’. And, as Jing Yuan had told you in confidence— “It’s a Stellaron.”

And hence, you and your expertise are best-suited for the task of repairing the insides of the Luofu. 

“... Even still.” She says somewhat gravely. “This is unsustainable.”

“I recognize that.” And you do, childish avoidance of the General aside. “Once the ship’s up to forty percent attuned, the diagnostic algorithms attached to the internal citrine abaci should stabilize and begin to re-establish a self-healing cycle. At which point, my manual diagnostics and repairs will no longer be necessary at the level at which I’m completing them now.”

“What percentage attuned is the Luofu at, as of now?”

“... Twenty-seven.” This is, technically, the truth. 

(However, you have little confidence in that number, as it fluctuates heavily based on time of day and your own location within the tunnels and mechanical catacombs. You imagine this may be due to any number of things— there may be a gamma leak down deeper, where the radiation sponges are not as effective. There could still be creatures and roots of Abundance, alive in the passageways, wreaking havoc on the systems in real time. The diagnostic systems themselves could be failing, or at the very least damaged, which means that prescribing a number at all to the Luofu’s condition is a stupid idea to begin with—)

Fu Xuan says your name sharply.

“Yes?” 

“... I’m worried.”

“That’s probably for the best.” You wish there was more sympathy in your voice, but it sounds cold and outside of your body. 

(You’re so tired.)

Fu Xuan sighs, and drops to her knees next to you, peering in one the copper box you’ve been wrist deep in for the better part of ten minutes. Distractions slow down the process so immensely. 

“Your reasoning is sound, and I understand that this isn’t entirely some ploy to skirt around the General’s requests to see you.” Fu Xuan hands you a small pendant, cut of purple stone and lit from the inside out. “Please, wear this. It will transmit your vital signs and location to a monitor on the surface.”

You blanch, “Is this for you, or the General?”

“For the Divination Commission on paper.” Fu Xuan loops it around your neck. “You’re the only Master Calibrator on the Luofu. To lose track of you, or lose you, would be dire. It will also assuage some of the General’s anxieties and keep him from pestering me about you.

“The general, anxious?” You throw back your head with a laugh and withdraw your hands from the paneling. The sludge has liquified further, more mucus-y now as it drips down your forearms. You wipe away what remains with a well-used rag from your belt. “I’ve never known Jing Yuan to be anxious.”

“He is now.” Fu Xuan says simply. “Or, as much as he allows himself to be. I am not interested in delving into the General’s psychology, but I am interested in keeping you in decent condition. That pendant has an emergency function. If you tap it three times, it’ll send a distress signal with your location.”

You want to say that that’s ‘unnecessary’, but you know that’s your bad mood. There’s a reason why Fu Xuan made this journey, alone, and is speaking to you so frankly. There are bags under her eyes too.

“Thank you, Fu Xuan.” You say, softly, kinder than you have been. 

Despite your grime, perhaps mutual, you wrap your arms around her shoulders and squeeze. She hugs you back and deflates, if only for a moment.

...

The Luofu’s utility organs are built downwards, filling what would be considered the ‘hull’ of the ship, until you hit the Hall of Karma. There’s insulation between the ship’s most vital part and the weary souls of the departed, which provides you some comfort as you must descend deeper and deeper. 

The Luofu is as much a ship as it is a planet— a live ecosystem, adapted to fit the various immortals who call it home. The bowels of the Luofu are truthfully a combination of metal and plant matter— dirt and mechanical roots meant to hold the ground in one piece around you. Much of the organic matter of the ship is covered behind metal plating, lest risking a collapse.

Most of the damage you must tinker to fix occurs in the small, delicate panels that are placed in the walls every ten meters or so. They’re nondescript, mostly. Surrounded by a few various dials— a few circular meters are faded and out of use (relics from when the Luofu left its parent civilization, millenia ago), and a port to sync up a jade abacus to for more detailed readings.

Most of the data is slop to someone without training.

Even with training, your exhaustion is making the various numbers, symbols, and graphs feel like slop. 

The panel can be disconnected with a small, quill-looking tool (there’s only a small amount left on the Luofu, maybe twenty in total. The head of the tool is carved from an old, red stone, burnt in an old fire by a forgemaster long dead. You keep track of your handful diligently, lest you lose them without another smith to make them.) Once the utility panel is pried off, it reveals a suspended layer of liquid, far deeper than it looks. If you really tried, you probably could fit your entire arm in and still have depth.

Suspended in the liquid are the mechanisms that truly run the Luofu. It’s hard to describe how they fit together. It takes an affinity for quantum, a century (or three) of training, to make sense of how to parse together the ship's parts. The parts are various small machines, crystals, living ecosystems bound into balls and sustained by astrosynthesis beyond this world.

You’re used to the awe of it.

Along your waist, you carry several pots of stellar lubricant. The grease provides... some amount of slip when poking around in it yourself. It resonates with the quantum and allows you to see the stretches of energy that allow the ship to run as it does. Tender leylines, woven threads, songs and hymns that are of many familiar beats and melodies. 

Everything slips together as you pull yet another panel from a wall. The mechanisms sing out of tune, in dissonant chords, off-beat in the wrong time signature.

You dunk your hands into the lubricant, ignoring the slowly erupting burns on your forearms from over-exposure.

You shove your hands into the wall. You work. You fix. 

...

Not so long ago, you and Fu Xuan were not the only two Calibrator on the Xianzhou Alliance’s Luofu. There had been an apprentice in the Divination Commission who was studying, seeking mastery, just as you yourself had. They were more skilled than Lady Fu in the arts of calibration. You think they hailed from the Yaoqing. They were soft, gentle-hearted and young by the standards of Xianzhou natives.

So perhaps, this is why they became Marastruck in the mouth of one of the utility tunnels after seeing footage of the Divine Foresight being dragged unconscious and limp into the apothecary. Gingko leaves tearing their skin, an unholy sob turning to a shriek to cut the air. You were lucky the transformation occurred while you were above ground, and a patrol of Cloud Knights was nearby.

You’re probably lucky that you hadn’t (haven’t) succumbed to Mara. If you were a few centuries younger and less trained in the arts of meditation, you might have been swallowed up like the apprentice had been.

Jing Yuan, for all of his many games and schemes and tricks, radiates the air of someone almost infallible. He is not perfect; he has never been one for edges that are too manicured. He’s far more content dozing the afternoon away or taking a stroll through one of his gardens than hosting war-meetings. He prefers to wear plain clothes to the market in hopes he will not be recognized (though, he always is). 

But, he is strong and remarkably difficult to phase or bother in any setting. On more than one occasion, you’ve spent the evening trying to rile him up and get him to pounce, but the General is always content to watch your attempts with a lazy smile on his face. Content to sweetly watch you struggle in getting under his skin. He may be affected, but he is hard to break. If he does, it is with such grace that you wouldn’t have any idea he did break, and it feels as if you’ve somehow slipped, rather than him. He is cunning and sure-footed in a way that you can’t help but admire. 

You’re not the only one to feel that way.

(Though, you’re the only one who shares a bed with him. So.)

The Xianzhou has little place for legends, yet Jing Yuan is old enough and well-thought of enough to have become one. So, you cannot blame the apprentice for falling to Mara. Not when they, and the rest of the Luofu, saw a legend buckle at the knees. 

...

You were right about diagnostics being inaccurate. However, the reason was a mix of your two initial hypotheses. 

Parts of the diagnostic system, deep and low within the Luofu’s internal organs, had been damaged. Radiation leaks from the core of the ship, usually held back by sponges and filters, was drifting upward to damage any number of sensors and organic processes keeping the Luofu operational.

(All useless details really, none of it makes sense anymore. The ship is fucked. You must fix it.)

And you have been fixing it. 

You reek of stellar lubricant, skin stained pearly and glittery under the fluorescent lights that dot the tunnels. Your eyes ache; it’s gotten quite difficult to focus them. You’re lucky that there’s occasional spigots tapped into the walls, with some type of freshwater flowing from them, even if it does take awhile for any liquid to run. They probably haven’t been used in decades— maybe centuries. Most of the internals of the Luofu heal and repair on their own. 

A calibrator would only need to step-in in the case of a calamity.

Time has gotten slippery. Though you send up status reports (of varying quality) through your wrist-bound jade abacus, you can’t say it’s on a schedule. You do them when you have the mental fortitude to craft something acceptable for the Divination Commission to scoff at. 

You’re tired, maybe.

There are some mediary chambers between levels. Old, dust-covered rooms with a cot and some rations. Though you raid the ones you come across for emergency food stores, you don’t stay to sleep. You usually keel over on the metal flooring with your outermost robe thrown over you like a blanket. Your pillow is your own folded hands. 

It’s viciously uncomfortable, but you find sleeping difficult regardless. The offensively bright grow lights are sensitive to flesh life, and will not turn off in your presence. The floor is sometimes searingly warm, sometimes ice cold. If you stop working, your own thoughts threaten to swallow you whole. You only achieve sleep in brief moments, perhaps a few hours at a time, when you’re entirely spent. 

It is unpleasant sleep. A mix of recent horrors and faraway comforts.

(You initially heard from Fu Xuan what Jing Yuan had done.)

(Shortly after, footage was posted of the Divine Foresight, unconscious and being dragged across the Luofu for medical attention. Jing Yuan was entirely unresponsive and cradled in the arms of the Vidharayda’s... reawoken? Returned? (You stay out of Lizard Politics.) (Regardless, it still burns.))

(There’s chaos in the sounds captured on the video, the shocked, disbelieving voices.)

(You had turned off your phone (you have still yet to turn it back on) and dragged the apprentice to the tunnels. You ignored their crumbled expression and all of their disbelief. It would not serve either of you— anyone— in that moment. This was foolish of you.)

(You remember your apprentice and how their panic grew to Mara so quickly. How they looked sick to their stomach, braced against one of the entrances to the tunnels of the catacombs, clutching their skull. You urged them forward, begged them to hurry— that the diagnostics were grave. You could see the gnarled roots of the arbor already having penetrated some of the ancillary walls.)

(They looked so scared as they were swallowed by Mara. Eyes flashing scarlet, gingko leaves spilling from their mouth as they screamed. Flesh tearing to be healed wrong seconds later. Beautiful silk robes torn to shreds, body mutilated from the inside out.)

(They’d lunged at you, howling, and you’d barely side-stepped them. You ran to a patrol of Cloud Knights, overworked and clearly battleworn themselves and exhausted. Regardless, they took down your apprentice. Cut them at the back of the knees, called a Judge, dragged them off to the Hall of Karma.)

You dream of Jing Yuan often.

Sometimes, these dreams are awful.

Lady Fu had told you to visit him, prior to your initial descent into the catacombs. She said he was unconscious and battered. He would certainly recover; the General is particularly hearty. She urged you to see him in the Alchemy Commission. She said this as if Jing Yuan hadn’t just thrown himself in front of a being that rivaled some Aeons. She said this as if the Luofu wasn’t a few mechanical failures away from ceasing function and you were the only one aboard the Luofu able to stop it with any efficiency.

You dream of Jing Yuan being lanced through with his own guandao. You dream of him falling to the stone of Scalegorge Waterscape, eyes blooming red, and ginkgo leaves erupting from his shoulders. You dream of him mutilated beyond belief by beings so much more powerful than either of you. You dream of having to watch a patrol of Cloud Knights pin him to the ground as Mara consumes him.

Sometimes, the dreams are pleasant.

The worst are those where you think you have woken up in bed with him. Mimi purrs at the foot of his stupid, indulgently large bed. Your cheek is pressed to his chest, warm and alive and okay, and he rumbles some laugh when you seem confused. He asks if you’d like breakfast. A bath. You should go to the markets together, shouldn’t you?

You dream of his body next to yours. Well and whole and intertwined.

You prefer to be awake; it allows you to feel like you have some semblance of control over your own mind. 

Horrors crop up into the forefront of your mind without warning often. Staying focused on your repairs helps you. Grounding yourself in the sting of the lubricant over your skin keeps your thoughts closer to the material, rather than the intangible fears that threaten to swallow you whole. 

Leaving only you to your work. Fixing. 

You wipe sweat from your brow, uncaring of the grease that smears across your skin and clumps in your hair. The panel in front of you is being particularly fuzzy. The parts are old. The impact from the Arbors sudden growth had damaged the delicate nature of the mechanisms. 

So, you tinker away.

Quantum threading, weaving, unraveling, trying again. And again, and again.

Your head pounds.

...

At some point, when checking your jade abacus, the diagnostic percentages have stopped going down. They’re actually going up, steadily and on their own.

You don’t believe it at first, but after... a while of keeping an eye on it, it doesn’t appear to be a fluke. Functionality is hovering around thirty-three percent, unfailingly, and rising a percentage every day or so. The panels you check appear to be healing themselves as well, albeit slowly. Thin, vermillion tendrils snake around in the oil to poke and prod as you have. Albeit, it’s not enough, but it provides a kernel of respite nonetheless.

Coincidentally, you run out of stellar lubricant around this same time as well.

The only option (as you’ve already pilfered the stores you’ve come across) is to ascend back to the surface of the Luofu and fetch more from the Artisanship Commission. 

You feel delirious when you rise fully and stretch your arms above your head. Your hands knock into the metal ceiling as your back cracks in at least four different places. Your knees ache. Your legs have long since cramped up. You feel stiff down to your bones, but you separate from the feeling. You must, there’s more important things to worry about. 

Ascending the catacombs is difficult. You hadn’t... realized quite how deep you’d gone for repairs. It takes quite some time to climb the thin utility ladders and weave the correct path upwards. You’re slowed by gravity and your own lethargy. The exertion takes its toll quickly, but you ignore it. You have a task to complete. 

(Your body's slick with sweat. Your vision threatens to tunnel.)

Perhaps you’ll pick up some proper rations as well. The nutritional power you had pilfered from the tunnel’s stores probably isn’t meant to be consumed in the long term. 

You come to surface through a shrouded doorway in a residential neighborhood. It’s warm, temperate as the Luofu usually is. There’s a pleasant breeze and the smell of grass and water in the air. It’s a sharp contrast to the metallic tang of oil and lubricant that you’re slicked with.

You try to think little of it. Artisanship Commission. 

On your way, you get the occasional odd stare. A child points at you. You, perhaps, are covered in grime and attribute any gawking to that. Maybe? You’re due for a bath. Though with all the errands it appears you need to run, do you really have time for one? 

There’s a shop on the edge of the Artisanship Commission you duck into. The shopkeeper is speaking to another customer at the counter, but goes silent when you give him a friendly wave. You’re a regular here, after all. 

You grab as much of the lubricant as you can carry in your arms and place it on the counter, poking around in your pocket for your... phone. It’s probably out of battery.

“Could you put this on the Divination Commission’s tab?” You ask him. “It’s being used for official business.”

The shopkeeper is still looking at you, wide-eyed. Mouth hanging open. He stiffly nods and rings you up. 

Odd.

You think little of it. He slowly loads your jars into an old crate and hands it to you. 

“Be well.” You say on the way out. The shopkeeper does not reply. 

The interaction leaves you with a vague sense of unease. 

That feeling mounts the more you realize that people are looking at you, as you make your way to Aurum Alley for rations. One woman even tries to stop you, but you wave her off. You need to—

Get rations. Maybe take a shower. Descend again because there’s no way the systems can be sustained and heal fast enough on their own. You must work, you must toil.

And you mustn’t visit Jing Yuan.

Not yet. Not until you can forget how he looked, slack and half-dead in the arms of his men. Perhaps you should forget the face of the returned High Elder as well. You’ve— you’ve put together that he and Jing Yuan have some type of history. You know from the whisperings that the man saved Jing Yuan. 

(You can’t ever save him. You are not a fighter. You’re a well-paid mechanic.)

Rations.

You’re stopped before you ever are three steps into Aurum Alley by a group of Cloud Knights.

“Halt.” One of them says, raising her weapon. 

“... Pardon?” You ask, raising an eyebrow. The crate in your arms is too heavy for this. “Can I help you?”

“Please wait,” the tip of her guandao shines, “you are the Divination Commission’s Master Calibrator, correct?”

“... Yes?” You sigh. “I apologize, but I must get past you. I’m on official business. Supply run.” 

The Knight rotates her blade to the butt of it against your chest, applying light pressure. Holding you there, tucked between several buildings and fairly out of sight. Your stomach drops. 

“I can’t allow that.” 

“... Excuse me?”

You’re about ready to snap at the nervous-looking knight once more, but you’re interrupted. The sound of quick feet over stone stops behind you and frigid air begins to spill down your neck. You turn your head painfully over your shoulder. 

Yanqing, the fierce little thing, is poised behind you, spitting steam and frost. His gold eyes are angry, teeth bared. He looks exhausted. 

“You are being detained,” he says, angry and sharp.

“What?” You snap, turning to face him. He looks ready to raise his blade against you, hand twitching at his waist. That’s not your concern at this moment. “Yanqing— what are you—”

Yanqing’s eyes are shiny and wet.

Oh.

“You’re being detained by order of the Divine Foresight.” He says, voice unwavering despite the tears beading against his lower lashes. 

...

Yanqing seems like he’s seething as he leads you to one of Jing Yuan’s personal gardens. It’s on a terrace, high above most of the Luofu, far-away from any of the Commission's that may bother him when he is attempting to relax.

You know this garden well; it’s your favorite spot to relax in with Jing Yuan.

He leads you directly to Jing Yuan who is standing on an overlook, hand behind his back as he stares out over a roiling sea. The waves crash far below, the sound a mere echo. His shoulders are slack. He hardly looks angry. It’s rare that he ever does.

“General.” Yanqing says— he is angry. “I’ve brought them.”

“Oh?” Jing Yuan turns, a pleasant smile stretching across his face. “You found them?”

“Yes, in Aurum Alley.” Yanqing salutes and steps to the side.

You cross your arms and try not to cry.

Jing Yuan looks fine. He’s clearly in one piece. Whole. Whole. No visible injury, no new limp as he steps closer to you, examining you just as intently as you examine him. 

It’s a horrible relief to see him fine— even if you should scold him. If you had the energy, you would. You would rake him over the damn coals for endangering himself as he did. You will, later. Maybe. But for now—

“Am I done being detained?” You ask, malice in your voice. “I have work to do.”

“No hello?”

“Fine. Hello.”

“Hi,” Jing Yuan says more gently, beckoning you to a lovely looking pile of silk pillows and a thick mat. The perfect spot for a midday catnap. “I’m afraid I do intend to keep you for a bit longer. Sit, please.”

You don’t budge.

“Jing Yuan,” You say his name. Your voice doesn’t wobble, and you’re grateful for it. “I do not have time for this.”

He hums, “You do.”

“You must know the Luofu’s internals are shot.” He must, right? You need to get back. You need to keep fixing. “I do not have time for tea and a chat. Be forward with me, please.”

Jing Yuan, who has already sat down on the silks, looks up at you. He’s perfectly poised, relaxed like a big cat, but with sharp, watchful eyes. He’s choosing his words carefully, albeit quickly. 

“Did you know the Matrix of Prescience resumed function earlier today?” He tells you. “Early this morning, it awoke. Diviner Fu says the function is still minimal, but improving by the hour.”

There’s a wave of relief hearing that— at least the Divination Commission can resume somewhat normal activity. Fu Xuan is probably overjoyed. Maybe. You should check— you need to check. There may be calibrations to reconfigure on the surface. Aeons, there probably is and you’re foolish for not addressing those yet. You should. 

Jing Yuan says your name, gentle but unyielding, “Stay with me.”

“I’m— I’m glad the Matrix is working. But, there’s still much that needs to be addressed Jing Yuan. The Luofu’s fail safes— the vitality transmitters— the gamma diffusers—”

You feel overwhelmed and nauseous. You want to lay down and cry. You want to run away to the nearest hidden entrance to the tunnels and work. So badly do you want to flee, hide, and toil and fix this stupid ship.

(Because, you can’t look Jing Yuan in the eye for too long. He’s safe, but the memory of him half-dead is still living in your mind. It’s murky, but there. You need it to die. You need it to stop. You need—)

Jing Yuan takes your hands in his own. It shocks you out of your spiral as his thumbs graze your knuckles. It hurts. You wince without thinking to muffle it. Chemical abrasions and hives litter the skin of your hands. It tracks up your arms to your elbows, you see now. 

You flinch and try to pull away, but Jing Yuan keeps you there. Suspended.

“I had a meeting with the other Arbiter-Generals, just the other day.” Jing Yuan sounds wistful. “I was surprised to find out that every other ship in the Xianzhou Alliance’s fleet has at least four Master Calibrators. They were shocked to find the Luofu only having one.”

“That sounds embarrassing.”

“It was, perhaps,” Jing Yuan laughs in a good-natured way. “The other Generals were quite kind, and have sent a handful of Master Calibrators to the Luofu to assist with repairs. They’ll be here in the next day or so.”

“... Really?”

“Yes.” Jing Yuan sighs. “I’ll owe a favor or two, but it’s more than worth it.”

You don’t know what to think.

“I have to—”

“You’re actually being placed on a somewhat indefinite leave.” Jing Yuan then yanks you down into the pillows, to the thick mat, and into his arms. “I’m afraid I’ve missed you terribly. You’ve been incredibly difficult to track down.”

“I was just in the tunnels.” You try to push away from him. “Fu Xuan gave me this little tracker.” 

You tap the pendant on your chest.

“You went deep enough into the Luofu that this pendant only pinged your location every few days.” Jing Yuan raises you up, so you’re perched in his lap. You steady yourself on his chest. His living, breathing chest. “At one point, it didn’t register your vitals for a week.”

Jing Yuan says this quietly. It’s admission, given the tone of his voice. He sounds a bit stricken, almost pained. His brow is scrunched as he rubs up and down your shoulders.

“... A week?” 

“Indeed. You scared me quite badly, you know.”

Something in you aches. Guilt rises up your throat, but you don’t give yourself much time to examine it. Not yet. 

“You’re one to talk.” You murmur, hitting a fist against his chest angrily. “You threw yourself in front of a Lord Ravager?”

“A necessary blow that ensured victory.” Jing Yuan says simply. As if he is speaking about a feint during a sparring match, or a risky move in a star chess game. “A worthwhile opportunity, really—”

“You could have died.” You snap at him, finally looking at him down your nose, baring your teeth. You are tired and angry. It feels like you could swallow the sun and you would be fine with exploding. 

“I could have.” He hums. There’s more that he wants to say, you can tell. You can imagine what he could wax on about—

(“It would have been worth it if it guaranteed the Luofu’s safety.”

(“Am I not going to die already? I would think it be better to give my life for the safety of the people, rather than be decimated by Mara.”)

(“There are worse ways to die.”)

“You’re so foolish.” You want to cry. Maybe you are. Your head is pounding and your eyes hurt. “You can’t do that.”

“Ideally, I wouldn’t—”

“No, stop, just—” You grab his cheeks in your hands and bring your nose to press against his. You meet his eyes, gold and molten. “You cannot sacrifice yourself in such a way. I beg you to be selfish. If for no other reason than to give me a proper goodbye.”

(Jing Yuan had been distant in the days leading up to the Arbor’s reawakening. He’d been dodging your calls, ignoring pre-scheduled outings, and skimping on sleeping in your bed. When you’d seen the videos of his limp body and heard from Lady Fu that he was still unconscious, there was, perhaps, a moment where you believed that that was it. You wouldn’t get a goodbye. You’d only see a ragdolled corpse to mourn.)

What you’re asking of Jing Yuan is a siren song of Mara. You know this. To yearn is to suffer. To be attached is to suffer. To cling is to suffer. And suffering is to mara. You both know this. You dance with the stars and their weavings often enough to be suspended somewhat above other immortals— such things seem small in avenues of Aeons and destiny. 

Jing Yuan, however, is a master of separation. Meditation. He is quiet about the skills he’s cultivated. You notice them though— the way he measures his breathing, the conscious effort he makes to keep himself loose and slack. The way his memory is diced up, not from incensed Mara sprouts, but from missing pieces. Tragedies that have either been removed or blotted out from his own practice.

To save him from being swallowed by Mara.

And yet, you beg him to remember you. 

You almost retract, recoil, and run. This is too real. You have been in the General’s bed for who knows how long. It doesn’t matter that you have been his partner for the last several decades. You’ve never asked him to keep you in his thoughts— keep you like this. It has always felt too unfair of a thing to ask. 

“You,” You spit through tears, “Cannot leave me so cruelly. Not like that. Let me be precious to you, Jing Yuan, if only for a short time.”

There is no such thing as being endless without consequence, but perhaps the General can spare you his affections, truly, for a brief moment. Maybe it’s a pipedream. Maybe you’re delirious from lack of sleep and hunger and the high of feeling Jing Yuan solid and whole beneath you is simply too much.

Jing Yuan coaxes you to keep your head up when you try to duck into his neck. He buries a hand in your hand that quickly slides down to your nape. He holds a wide, warm palm there to steady you.

“Dear,” Jing Yuan strokes down your cheeks, rubbing away tears you can’t stop from falling. His smile is melancholy, his eyes crinkled at the corners with a broken smile. “I’m quite remissed. Have I not made it clear that I already think of you in such a way?”

You swallow.

“Probably not.”

“I apologize.��

“Don’t apologize— just— say it.” Not on his deathbed, or Mara-struck in chains and gnarled with Ginkgo leaves. 

Jing Yuan pauses, rubbing away tears from under your eyes and squeezing his hand that lingers on the back of your neck. He opens his mouth, flounders, then closes it. Then speaks.

“Beloved,” He begins and you’re already breaking. “I am sorry that I haven’t made it clear to you that you are dear to me. There are certain things that I cannot promise you as they are outside of my control as well as yours. But what I can assure you is that you are so incredibly dear to me. If I must continue to live as I do now, I would like to do so by your side. I apologize for not being forthright.”

“... So, no throwing yourself in front of Lord Ravagers?”

“... Sacrifices must be made.” Jing Yuan says, though his voice is, perhaps, more mournful. 

“You are not a sacrifice.” You swallow, the words burning you as well. “You are much more than just foder. You are— you’re dear to people. Dear to me. You are not to throw yourself in the line of fire as part of a convenient plan.” 

“I will not make you a promise that I cannot keep.” He is too duty-bound; it’s a practiced thing. You’ve heard he was once laze-about oaf who could barely handle a sword. You try to appeal to any remnants of that man.

“Then at least tell me.” You urge, beg. “Maybe there are other options you haven’t thought of. You get stuck in your head, you know.”

“Do I?” His smile turns mischievous and teasing.

“You—!” You headbutt him lightly and he rolls you into the silken blankets. 

The moment your back touches the softness below you, skull cushioned in the palm of Jing Yuan’s hand, you can feel exhaustion catching up with you.

“You must heed your own rules, love,” Jing Yuan tells you, covering your body with his. Silver hair falls in a veil around you. It’s like starlight. The memories of oil and machine parts feel far away. “No more running yourself ragged. Or hiding in the utility tunnels for a month.”

“... A month?” Your words slur. There’s no way you were down there for a month.

“Actually, a month and a week.” Jing Yuan says. His hand smooths over your front with a front. “You’ve lost weight. And as effortlessly radiant as you are, you do look quite poorly. I’m sure it’s nothing an indefinite, relaxing, extended, paid-leave can’t fix, hm?”

“Thas’ so long,” You say, your eyes rolling back into your head. You’re slipping.

“I know.” Jing Yuan kisses your forehead and remains there. “I missed you terribly.”

You want to say more. How desperately do you want to tell him, “I missed you too. I couldn’t stop thinking of you dying. I dreamed of your bed and warmth and wanted nothing more.” But your body is simply too tired. The... month of exhaustion catches up with you within the silks and you have to fight to keep your eyes open.

Jing Yuan hushes you when you whine, grabbing at him to drag him closer.

“Rest now.” He tells you. “You need it. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Jing Yuan holds you in the soft blankets, flush against downy pillows and the plush of his chest. One of his hands finds home around your waist, the other over the crown of your head. 

You are tugged down— not in the bowels of Xianzhou’s Luofu, but into the arms of a lover and the hold of a deep and inexorable sleep.

The next time you’re awake, you’re swathed in buttery linens and pleasantly warm. Your world is fuzzy and unfocused, and at first you think you are dreaming.

It’s simply too pleasant.

Your cheek is pressed against Jing Yuan’s bare chest. You can tell from the softness of your cheek squished against the softness of his pectoral, along with the bit of silver fuzz that tickles your nose. He smells like you remember— notes of cedar oils and herbs, mixing with the scent of his own stale sweat from whatever training he completes with Yanqing. 

It’s comforting and familiar. This is why it must be a dream.

So you cling to Jing Yuan. The arm thrown over his chest constricts. The leg you have loosely thrown over his own tangles and hooks him closer. You shimmy higher to press your nose to the underside of his jaw and inhale. 

Jing Yuan chuckles, a rumbling thing that’s hoarse with sleep, “Good morning to you too.”

You do not open your eyes. Rather, you squeeze them shut, and cling to the dream.

His hand glides up your back, finding home on your waist once more before giving you a squeeze, “You can sleep more, you have quite the deficit to make up for.”

You grumble. You’re practically on top of him, like it would prolong the pleasant illusion your mind is creating. 

Your own palm rests over his chest, and you pause. There’s a texture that’s new. Scar tissue beneath your finger tips that runs little rivers over his flesh. Jing Yuan’s breath hitches as you trace them. You pull away from the safety of his throat to peer down at his chest. New scars litter his chest, all connected webs of damage. The skin is puckered and freshly healed.

This is not a dream.

“Oh,” you say, softly. 

“I apologize. Your favorite canvas has been a bit marked up.” Jing Yuan sighs. 

“Jing Yuan.” You squeak and bat at his chest. “Don’t speak of your body and condition in such a way.”

“Why not? I so have missed your marks on me, you know. It’s been a lonely recovery period—”

“Jing. Yuan.” You tug at his hair playfully. “It is too early for you to be teasing me.”

“I don’t think it’s ever ‘too early’ for such things.” Jing Yuan laughs. “Besides, I think you quite like it.”

“Cruel man.”

“You wound me.” There’s no bite to either of your voices. Just something warm and underused. 

You press a kiss to his cheek and nudge your nose into the pudge of it, “Truly?”

“No.” Jing Yuan pulls you up by your waist, holding you flush to him as he turns to face you. You are chest to chest, nose to nose. “There’s no need to worry about the nips of a kitten, wouldn’t you agree?”

“You awful, awful man—” You say with a burgeoning smile that you can’t help but wear. 

Jing Yuan cups a large, warm palm against your jaw and presses his lips to yours. 

It’s indulgent, just like the ridiculously-sized bed you’re entangled in and the silken sleep pants you can feel him wearing. Your smile into it— you missed this. 

Why did you miss it—?

Oh. 

You pull away, eyes widening, “Jing Yuan, the ship. I have— repairs. I have to—”

He silences you with a quick kiss, racking his nails down your back and you gasp.

“The repairs are being taken care of by a few honored guests from the Xuling and Yuque. Diviner Fu is their point of contact and guide for the duration of their stay. They will be completing the remaining restoration while you enjoy your leave.”

“I mean—” You flounder, panic is bursting in your chest. “They can contact me— I know what needs to be fixed, I can at least make a list—?”

Jing Yuan hums, grip getting tighter around your hips. It’s a shadow of something you’ve seen in him before— it’s a bit possessive. 

“Once again, dear, you are on indefinite leave by order of the Seat of Divine Foresight by the Arbiter General himself.” He reminds you with a glint in his eye. “You needn’t make any lists or instructions for our guests. Diviner Fu is more than capable of directing them as necessary. Actually, I believe she’ll quite like it.”

“You’re pulling rank on me?” 

“As I have every right to do.” Jing Yuan doesn’t relent. More sweetly, he continues. “As your lover, I would also be much happier to see you recovering in bed than anywhere else.”

“… Are the gardens off limits?”

“No, though I’d recommend giving yourself a few days of minimal activity.” Jing Yuan frowns then. “I don’t believe you realize it, but you are quite weak at the moment.”

“... Really?”

“Lady Bailu’s cloudhymns are quite advanced these days.” He rubs a thumb below your eyes, over what must be a dark circle. “But, her skills mostly lie in healing flesh wounds and disease. You are malnourished, dehydrated, and... overall rundown.”

“... The Dragon Lady is going to give me an earful, isn’t she?”

“In time.” Jing Yuan laughs. He brings one of your hands up to his face to press his lips to your knuckles. No longer covered in burns and irritated hives, but still bearing light scarring. 

Neither you nor Jing Yuan escaped unscathed.

“Do I need to prepare?”

“Perhaps not as much as you think.” Jing Yuan hums, pulling the sheets over your heads. “She examined you while you were asleep a few times. She has already scolded you plenty, even if you don’t remember it.”

“Did I wake up at all?”

“Barely. It was almost concerning.” Jing Yuan tugs you closer and tucks your head under his chin. “I did manage to have you sip some water and give you a wipe down though. Admittedly, you do need a proper bath.”

You nearly moan. 

The idea of a bath is downright erotic. Though you don’t feel as greasy and as sticky as you could, given Jing Yuan had kindly gotten the worst of it off of you, the idea of being truly clean sounded pornographic.

Especially, given you were at Jing Yuan’s residence, and in addition to his indulgently large and comfortable bed, he also had an indulgently large and opulent self-heating bath. The idea of having a long soak and scrub has you burying your face into Jing Yuan chest and squeezing around his middle.

“I want it.” 

“A bath?” 

“Yes. And you. And a meal. Lots of things, actually.” Enough to make your head spin. It feels like your slowly waking mind is all out of sorts. 

“Let’s start with a meal and a bath, then.” Jing Yuan offers. “Perhaps after a nap?”

You don’t need to be persuaded. 

It’s a kinder sleep you sink into. Less bottomless and far warmer. Jing Yuan kisses you breathless and a bit stupid as you drift off, chuckling against your lips as you grumble and grouse at him, before being tugged down into sleep once more.

...

“How are you feeling?”

You ask Jing Yuan this as you give yourself a pre-bath rinse behind an ornate screen. The wet cloth clutched in your hands drips fat droplets of water onto the polished, glass tile beneath your feet. Soap clings to your body, falling into little rivulets, taking the worst of your grime down the nearby drain. Watching the iridescent bubbles distracts you from the weight of your own words.

You’ve been wanting to ask Jing Yuan this for—

(Weeks, probably, actually, in the time of the Xianzhou Alliance’s calendar. At least you since you saw him nearly lifeless in the grainy cell phone footage.)

Since you have woken and were sleepily led to Jing Yuan’s opulent, resplendent private baths, at least.

From the other side of the screen, Jing Yuan answers, “I feel fine, dear.”

“Physically?”

“I’ve had more than enough time to recover.” 

“... Mentally? All over, Jing Yuan.”

You hate asking this, but you know it’s necessary. You’re sure Jing Yuan is being monitored for Mara-onset symptoms; there’s no way he couldn’t be. You don’t see any obvious ones. But, Mara is the most extreme of afflictions. 

He laughs again, and you can feel him shaking his head like it can shake off your concern, “I assure you, I’m more than fine. Having to be responsible for so much paperwork again is painful, but doable.”

He’s dodging your question, albeit with less finesse than he normally would. 

“Would you blame me if I doubted that answer?”

“No, not at all.”

You sigh and rinse the last of the suds from your body. It’s tedious, this roundabout game with Jing Yuan, but he is rarely forthcoming with personal information. Whether that’s memories of his life before you entered it, political stratagem, or his own mental state— it’sall veiled. You’ve gotten more adept at playing his games, but you truthfully don’t know if you have the energy to try.

You rub your hand over your face. One thing at a time.

You pluck the robe Jing Yuan had supplied from the top of the screen and wrap yourself in the (thin, wispy, objectively indecent) garment. It’s not doing much to cover you at all, as the light, silken fabric clings to the wet curves of your body. You appreciate the attempt at modesty in the same way you appreciate Jing Yuan idling on the other side of the screen. 

You feel like a doe on uneven ground still. Jing Yuan probably expects this.

He guides you to the bath, steering into more light-hearted chatter. He tells you what Yanqing has been up to since he has resumed his office, once again asking for swords and seemingly training with a new vigor and intensity. He has been begging the General to spar with him all hours of the day. Or, call back his newfound friends from the Astral Express for a round or two. Qingzu will be taking a much-needed vacation in the coming weeks. Jing Yuan’s carmelias and bluebell astrums have begun to bloom. 

You nod along, only half-there. 

Jing Yuan eases your robe off your shoulder as he speaks. His voice is low and a bit rough from his own nap. The broad planes of his palms and fingers smooth over your shoulders and peel the fabric down. His thumb worries the marred skin of your forearms.

“We’ll make sure your next meals are particularly hearty. These should heal up quickly, wouldn’t you say?” He coaxes. 

You nod, staring at the burns. They’ll be nothing but worn-looking scars in a matter of weeks. 

Your robe is slung over a cart, filled with a collection of luxurious bath oils and soaps. Jing Yuan only has a few indulgences— his sprawling, soft bed, his many gardens, and his opulent, resplendent private bath laid with emerald green glass tiles and a sunken tub that could’ve been counted as a pool given its size. You’re grateful for it— though you’ve only used it a handful of times. The General has a habit of taking quick showers, unless he has the better part of the day to lounge in the perfectly-warmed water.

You try not to linger on your own nakedness, though you can feel Jing Yuan surveying you. There must be bruises on your waist from the heavy belt you were wearing. Visible weight loss too. You busy yourself by untying the sash of Jing Yuan’s robe and pulling it from his shoulders. It had already been somewhat open, revealing the marred expanse of his chest. Thin, spidery scars that clearly stretched over most of his body.

Typically, Xianzhou Native bodies heal with little scarring. But, these wounds were carved by a Lord Ravager. You’re unsure if they will follow the same logic. 

You will love Jing Yuan, obviously, regardless of any lasting marks. But the thought still makes you sad— something in you aches. You trace the scars leading down from his chest to his softened tummy to the v of his hips. His cock is soft between his legs. It’s too dark in the bath to tell if the scars extend there as well. 

“You look troubled.” He says, pausing his stories.

“I worry for you, so much.” You tell him. 

Meeting his eyes is difficult. The honey-stone color of them looks darker in the dimly-lit chamber, but you can easily see the crease between his brow. There’s clear concern, perhaps a bit overwritten by his need to conceal his hand.

Perhaps he is too tired himself to be as careful as he usually is.

(Good. If there’s anyone who he can let his guard down around, Aeons, let it be you.)

Jing Yuan helps you into the tub. First, he enters, sliding into the steaming water with a shudder. He extends his hand to you as you take unsure steps onto the slick tiling. The water is the perfect temperature— not too hot, but pleasantly warm in a way that won’t lead to overheating. You hide your body under the water and sink up to your chin and sigh.

It feels heavenly.

Jing Yuan chuckles as you do and smoothes a hand over the top of your head. He’s already reaching for a few bottles on the nearby cart, pouring a few under the steady gurgle of water that flows from a wide tap. It’s entrancing to watch— equally as entrancing is the breadth of Jing Yuan’s shoulder, marred by the scarring. He’s beautiful in a way that makes your stomach knot.

You end up settled with your back pressed to his front, laid in his lap, almost dozing as he massages shampoo into your hair.

“I’m filthy, aren’t I?” You ask.

Jing Yuan hums, “I’ve never seen you this unkempt, no.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” He kisses the back of your soapy skull. “You needn’t apologize for anything. I’m not upset with you.”

“... Okay.” You concede. He goes back to dutifully washing your hair, then follows it with conditioner and securing your hair up and out of the water as necessary. His idle talk has stopped, the space filled by the running water and your own breath.

“May I wash yours?” You ask. 

“You still have your body, love.”

“I know,” You reply sheepishly. “At least let me get your conditioner in?”

Jing Yuan laughs, and coaxes you to turn with his big hands wrapped around your waist under the waist. You spin his lap, straddling him. It’s a precarious position, but you... missed it. Nudging yourself closer, you lean into him, chest to chest, and deflate.

He laughs, something rich and warm that radiates from his body into your own, “It really is hard work, bathing, isn’t it?”

“No,” You muffle your words into his collarbones. “Just give me a minute.”

“Of course,” His arms wrap firmly around your waist, locking you together. He’s hot— he runs like a furnace even when not in a toasty bath. There’s a bit of sweat dripping down his neck and you’re tempted to lick it away.

Maybe later, for now you bask.

You bask in the fact that Jing Yuan is here, warm and alive. You want to commit him to memory— better than you have. If it forsakes you to Mara in a few decades, you do not care. You had forgotten the softness of his chest, the curve of his waist and the point of his nose. The details of Jing Yuan had become so fuzzy in such a short time. You’re sure Lady Bailu would assert it had something to do with your ‘chronic sleep deprivation’, but you’re not sure if you agree with that potential diagnosis.

Spending too much time attuned to immaterial quantum fields erodes your psyche, probably. 

“So deep in thought.” Jing Yuan runs a head down your back. “Take a break to rinse, hm?”

“I haven’t gotten yours in yet, though?”

“We can take our time. Besides, I bathed this morning. This is all for pleasure.”

“... Pleasure, huh?”

Jing Yuan flashes you a grin burgeoning on mischievous, “Yes, pleasure, in whatever form that may come. Is that what’s plaguing you, dear?”

“No, not at all.” You sigh and lean back from him, cupping his cheeks. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Jing Yuan says. His cards are showing— his voice is straining, pitched in a way that indicates he’s sad in his chest. The thing between your ribs aches.

“I was worried.”

“So you have said.” Jing Yuan cajoles you down, slipping your head half in the water to rinse away your conditioner. He suspends you with a single arm. His musculature is obscene. 

“How could I not be?” You clench your jaw. “I saw videos of you being taken to the Alchemy Commission— you— you looked—”

Half-dead. 

Corpse-like. 

Steps from death’s door.

On your way to the grave.

Dead.

Jing Yuan calls your name, rubbing soothing little circles over the small of your waist, “I’m well now, dear.”

“But you almost weren’t.” Your voice breaks. You don’t mean for it to. You tuck yourself into his neck and hide.

You don’t want to cry, but you can feel something welling up from within your guts. It’s the thing you pushed down relentlessly in the bowels of the Luofu. As you tinkered and toiled in the depths of the ship, you never let this ache spill over, lest you drown. Whether that’s in Mara or a less permanent type of suffering, you do not know.

“But I am.” Jing Yuan assures you. “I am here now, aren’t I? Whole and in one piece.”

You know this. You know this. But— You drag your fingernails over his shoulder blades. Jing Yuan shudders as you do.

“It’s hard.”

“I know.” 

The hands around you squeeze hard enough to bruise.

“I thought you were going to keel over in the gardens when Yanqing first brought you to me.” Jing Yuan confesses. “I’d been pestering Lady Fu on the hour for any updates about your whereabouts and communications.”

“... I wasn’t communicating with anyone, though.”

“I know.” Jing Yuan has a thread of... contempt to it. “I wish you would have.”

“What could I have said?”

“I’m not sure,” Jing Yuan tangles a hand in your washed hair and tilts your face to meet his. “But, I’m sure you would’ve found the right words.”

He kisses you. Or you kiss him. Who’s to say.

You don’t have the right words— you may never. Certainly not in your mind or on your tongue now. The thing that rises in your throat is carnal and old and writhing— want. Verging on need. You struggle to keep the kiss chaste, closed lips pressed together after so long apart

Perhaps Jing Yuan has a similar depth that’s clawing at his insides. 

He tilts his head, dragging you closer. Close as can be. He kisses you in a silently desperate way. You accept his advances and tangle your hands in his hair. Tug him closer and closer and closer.

(Don’t go. Please don’t go. Not yet.)

(Not until we’re both split apart by gingko roots and dappled in noontime sunlight.)

You gasp his name as you break apart for breath, smoothing your thumbs down his cheekbones and jaw. His pupils are blown and desperate.

“Can I touch you?” He asks, always so polite.

“Please—” 

Jing Yuan kisses you again, deeper and pulling you into the depths of the bath. His hands trail down to your thighs, squeezing along the way. Calloused and wide, familiar. The feel of them is coming home, you hadn’t realized how much you missed this.

You keen against his lips and Jing Yuan laughs— the gall of that man.

His flips you easily, caging you against the edge of the pool. This way, he has height over you. He looms, casting a flickering shadow in the amber light of the beeswax candles scattered about. You swallow as you watch droplets of water slide down his throat, chest, tummy. His forearms make you feel dizzy.

“May I have you?” He asks, once again. “Not yet— but I don’t want to progress if you’re not feeling fit for it.”

“N-No,” You feel desperate, you sound desperate. Sensitive and clawing, the beast that you buried in the depths of the Luofu crawls out of your throat and wraps itself around you. Tears spring to your eyes. “Please? Just— be slow—”

Jing Yuan must see your eyes water. He softens.

He thumbs over the fragile skin beneath your eyes, as if wiping the stray tear could wipe away the dark circles punched there as well. 

“Of course.” He assures you and presses his lips to your forehead.

...

Jing Yuan takes ‘slow’ both seriously and literally. You are both grateful and horribly frustrated by this. You almost regret not telling Jing Yuan to simply bend you over the lip of the bath and fuck you senseless, though Jing Yuan probably would not have granted you that even if you had asked. He loves to savor when he can. Bedding you is no exception— even under more typical circumstances.

And these aren’t typical circumstances.

Perhaps you should’ve known Jing Yuan intended to break you apart and stitch you back together.

He doesn’t escalate things much further in the bath, despite petting down your sides and seeming to always have his lips on you. You wash his hair as you’d ask to, scratching at his scalp and relishing the almost-purr he lets out as he wraps himself around you. When you start to just barely grind in his lap (squirm, more than anything), he is quick to still you with an iron-like hold on your hips, pinning you down and over his thighs. 

“Not yet,” He tells you, nipping at your jaw. “Be patient.”

You huff. 

Jing Yuan takes charge of finishing washing you, using gentle touch and a soft cloth from your ankles to the crown of your head. His touch lingers, starting some low burning flame low in your gut that you have a feeling won’t be quenched for quite some time. 

It’s tortuous. It’s wonderful.

After you towel each other off, he leads you back to his rooms, only in the damp robes and undergarments he’d dutifully remembered to bring along. The silk clings to Jing Yuan’s bulk as he walks beside you. His hand is on your lower back. Little bugs chirp in the courtyard gardens you pass. There’s the gurgle of a fountain. The soft breeze that Luofu always keeps, even on the most temperate days of summer. It’s all so different from the acrid smell of lubricant and the ambient machine hum you had become so used to.

“I’m only on leave, not house arrest, correct?” You ask as you enter his wing, to his bedroom. 

He locks the door behind you as you step inside. 

“No, no house arrest.” Jing Yuan hums as he strips off his robe. You want to bite him. “You’re free to roam within reason.”

“Does ‘within reason’ include the nursery that outlander keeps in the Exalting Sanctum?” 

“Of course. Though I may assign you a chaperone.”

“Really? Would you send Yanqing with me for a quick run to grab a new shrub or two.”

Jing Yuan laughs, something rich and full that rolls over you like a fleeced quilt, “I figured that I would be your chaperone, dear. If you’d allow.”

“... You’re making this sound like a date, General.”

“Am I?” Jing Yuan smiles so honeyed, it makes something in your chest begin to crack. You lay your hands on his bare chest and hold your ear to his chest. He laughs when you do. “I’d like it if it was. If you’d have me.”

“Of course I would.”

You say it so simply.

You want to crawl into his body and live there, and break any spindly seedlings of Mara away with your own two hands.

Jing Yuan kisses you, walking you back into the door. His lips are soft, a bit chapped in a way that’s familiar and comforting. You run a hand up and down his chest, stopping to squish one of his ample pecs. You muffle a laugh into Jing Yuan’s lips as he stutters out a groan. Sweet, sweet man. 

“I missed you,” You tell him once more, hoping your words seep past the seam of his lips, down his throat and sink into his guts. 

Jing Yuan responds by pressing you into the door, using the warm line of his body to flatten you to the wood. His kiss verges on desperate, tongue insistent at the seam of your lips, hands tugging you close, close, closer. You yield to him, whining as his tongue licks into your mouth, the taste of him so familiar it makes you ache.

You tug at his hair and urge him closer, if that is possible.

His touch is searing as he breaks away, panting, eyes hot. Scalding. His hair is down, drying to a fluffy, untamed mane around his cheeks and shoulders. It’s charming. You thumb over his cheeks with a smile. He leans into your touch while giving you a soft smile.

“The reign you have over me.” He sighs. You don’t get a chance to question him— his thigh slots between your own and your breath catches with the contact.

You haven’t been touched in so long.

You cling to his shoulders and just barely grind on his thigh— as much as his hold on your waist will allow. Jing Yuan’s kisses trail from your lips to over your cheeks and down your throat. He stops at the juncture of your neck and shoulders, nosing into the spot.

“Such a lovely scent,” He hums.

“I-I bet I smelled horrible before, h-huh?” You laugh as he begins to worry a patch of skin. Tender and fragile, perfect for bruising.

“Hm, I wouldn’t say that.” His teeth graze your throat and your head falls back into the door with thud. Jing Yuan shields your skull with his hands a beat later. “You’d be surprised how many times we’ve shared a bed and you’ve reeked of your favorite brand of astral lubricant.”

“Jing Yuan!” You shriek with a laugh and bat at his shoulders. “You’re so cruel.”

“What, do you not like when I tease you?”

“Scoundrel.”

“I think you do like it.”

You missed bantering with him.

“I love you.” You tell him. He knows— you know this. Declarations of love are rare for the long-lived. At least so directly— to care so deeply is to damn yourself to a faster descent into Mara. Though, to live and deprive yourself of companionship and love is to be dead while living. There’s a tender balance between connection and detachment. Both you and Jing Yuan are intimately familiar with it and indulge together.

Jing Yuan bites down on your neck.

It hurts, enough that you jolt and squirm against his body. Jing Yuan holds you into place, sucking on the skin he’d sunk his teeth into. It’s higher on his neck than he’d usually mark you. 

(He’s leaving it to be seen. You are Jing Yuan’s, loved and held.)

(What a wretched man.)

By the time he pulls away, you’re panting. Tears have welled up on your lash line. It hurts and it hurts even more when Jing Yuan runs a high thumb over the quickly rising skin. You gasp and Jing Yuan catches your chin in the wide palm of his hand.

You meet his gaze, intense and lighting-vibrant. You’re panting with an open mouth. 

“How lovely.” And he presses a kiss to a corner of your mouth. 

Jing Yuan guides you to his ridiculously large bed (that could surely fit up to five bodies and a fully grown, white lion.) The sheets have been changed, though you have a feeling they’ll be dirtied again by the morning. 

It’s gentle, the way he hastens you higher up the mattress before giving you a light shove into a mound of pillows. You hook your legs around his waist, drawing him as close as he’ll allow. 

He massages the meat of your thighs. His gaze goes long, and a bit unfocused, though it's trained on you. 

(You wonder what he’s thinking. Jing Yuan is so careful, always so ginger and measured in his steps. Still, there’s a fire in him that you often overlook. It’s the part of him that keeps a lion as a housemate, raised a young boy into a champion, and... you suppose urged him to become the Luofu’s sacrificial lamb in the face of the Destruction.)

You gulp, throat bobbing. Perhaps, you know your General to be a docile, indolent man who prefers naps and board games too much else. Perhaps you have overlooked, or rather forgotten, that you once saw the Divine Foresight as a warlord, given what you’d read about him in the data banks during your studies on the Yuque. 

Jing Yuan’s hand drifts down your front. You’re still wearing your robe. Gentle touch peels it away, leaving you in just a pair of thin panties. They’re a soft, breathable fabric— the kind that will surely show your interest in the General. (You have a feeling Jing Yuan picked them out for that reason expressly.) 

Jing Yuan presses the pad of his thumb over your clit through the fabric. 

You aren’t expecting it, and arch your back with a squeak. His hand lays hot at the innermost part of your thigh, at the fragile skin where it meets your more sensitive parts. 

“I-I thought you said you’d go slow.” You squirm. 

“Of course.” Jing Yuan remains unmoving, applying just enough pressure to be maddening. “I intend to.” 

With how sensitive you are, you need him to be slow. Your body feels tender out of the bath— cooked and raw all at once. Your muscles still ache from your time in the tunnels and you feel... atrophied, if anything. 

Jing Yuan must know this, and you trust him to keep his word. 

He makes his way home between your thighs, laying over your front to kiss you once more. This is slow, every lick and nip thoughtful, every barely-there roll of his hips is intentional. You’re not sure where he finds the restraint. 

You pet through his hair, softening incrementally with each soft touch he gives you.

He pulls away, lips kiss-bruised and cheeks flushed. It’s cute to see the General so disheveled. He’d never look this out of it and starry-eyed outside of this shared bedroom. It makes you giddy. You smother his cheeks with kisses and let him muffle laughter into your skin. 

It’s all soul-splitting.

It’s good. The proximity is warm and inviting. You missed the richness of his bed, the scent of incense and the candles you stock the room with. You missed the roll of his muscles underneath your fingertips and the mirthful glint that flashes in his eyes whenever he thinks he has you on the ropes.

You were so scared of losing this.

It hits you in the chest, caving you in, breaking rib and bone. You were so scared— terrified that this dance you’ve become so adept at sharing with Jing Yuan would end before you were ready for it too. You know that you’ll both fall to Mara, it’s inevitable— but you don’t want it to happen yet. You’re not ready for the final flourish. You weren’t ready for Jing Yuan’s cradled, near lifeless body to be the dying gasp of the partnership you had.

You know it's foolish to think this way. Things— all things, are bigger than mortal minds. Paths cut by the stars, brushstrokes by Gods and Aeons that dictate the lives and destiny of all. You are one mind, one body, one tender spirit. You cannot fight against such forces. You will be crushed.

But, for now, you savor. Take each moment and be grateful even as it slips, honey-warm and molten, between your fingers to be replaced by another in the next instant, equally as lovely. Piled on each other. It is enough. 

You crush Jing Yuan to you, hard and fast enough that the wind is knocked out of him, “Please be more careful with yourself.”

I can’t lose you just yet.

“I will try.” His voice is a comforting curl over you. He strokes over your temples and forehead.

“N-No, you must.” 

You don’t know the words yet for what you want to tell him. The feelings are too large, too unmanageable. Maybe attuning to the Luofu’s quantum fields has rotted your brain. You’ve lost your words. 

With some cajoling, you flip Jing Yuan onto his back. 

Sitting up over his hips, you set upon his neck. First with soft kisses, just as he gave you, then with nips and stronger bites. Then a chomp below his jaw. His hips crest upwards, his hands spasming around your waist as he holds you steady. The sounds that leak from him make you want to crawl down his throat. 

You suck and bite at the mark until you’re satisfied, pulling away to see his pale skin bruising darker by the moment. You admire the popped blood vessels with what must be a dreamy expression on your face.

“Leaving your mark on me?” Jing Yuan asks, breathless and light. 

“It’s only fair.” You kiss his smile, sharing it, “Just as you did to me.”

Running your hands down his chest, you frown at the scars. 

“What if I joined the Cloud Knights?” You ask him. 

Jing Yuan looks a bit... surprised, “Why would you do that? Though, perhaps, giving up your position as Master Calibrator would be reasonable, given recent events.”

“No, no, it’s not that.” You watch the rise and fall of Jing Yuan’s chest with an ache in your own. “If I was stronger, I could protect you, couldn’t I?”

Tears well up in your eyes.

Jing Yuan opens his mouth to speak, you hear his inhale, but you cut him off, “I-If I was a fighter, or just a Diviner, couldn’t I help more? Could I— could I have stopped this? Or stop something horrible from happening in the future? I don’t want to see you hurt like this.”

It should be a bit funny, maybe, that you’re sitting on the waist of the half-hard Divine Foresight, in tears, asking him if you could protect him. A man treated as nearly infallible, a legend amongst people who so rarely have them. He has an eternal spirit gifted by an Aeon tied to his very being. 

And yet you, something of a mechanic and professional tinkerer, beg to protect him.

“Oh, [Name].” He says, mournful. 

You swallow down a sob and tears drip from your eyes to splatter on his chest. Your vision blurs and you rake your nails down his chest. More raised marks— yours struck on him this time. Jing Yuan winds a hand in your hair, strokes down your neck, tries to calm you but it's hard. You can’t catch yourself. 

“I’m s-sorry—” You tell him between gulps of air. You’re supposed to be being bed right now, fucked stupid and more brainless than you already are, but you’re crying and the panic welling up in your chest feels bottomless and vast. 

“No apologies,” Jing Yuan hushes you, rubbing away tears. “You’re alright. I understand.”

“You do?” You snort. It’s blotted out by a proper sob that you hide in Jing Yuan’s chest. 

“How could I not?” He rubs over your dark circles under your eyes, then the bruising around your hips. The softness around your waist that’s not as plump as it was a month ago. “Do you think I didn’t contend with traversing the tunnels myself and pulling you out by your scruff?”

“... You did?” 

He pauses. 

“Everyday.” Jing Yuan admits after a moment. Any admission from him is hard earned. 

“Oh.”

You blink, and cry all over again because you feel silly and foolish all over. He hushes you, petting over your cheeks, back, hips— anywhere he can reach. He’s good at soothing, knowing what strokes to provide and where. 

“Did you think I didn’t worry?”

“I—I don’t know,” You shake your head. “You had more important things to worry about, right? And— and you were recovering.”

“I asked to see you, you know.”

“... I was told.”

“What did you think that meant?”

“... I don’t know.” You don’t. “I just— I was being a coward. I was scared to see the extent of your injuries before the ship was repaired fully. I wanted— I wanted things to be okay. I didn’t want to go to the surface and see that Vidyadhara who saved you.” 

“... Dan Heng?”

“Sure.” Lizard. Fucker. 

“... You’re jealous?”

“No.” Oh, yes. Entirely. “I just— he got to carry you. I have to join the Cloud Knights and get strong enough to do so myself. It’s only fair. You’re mine, not some lizard’s.”

Jing Yuan looks startled, then his expression softens. 

You besmirch the not-quite outlander easily. You do not know him— you’ve heard whispers. Nothing from Jing Yuan, and you do not pry at his past (and he doesn’t pry at yours.) You know they have a connection from before your time on the Luofu. You don’t fully know its nature, but judging by the passing... grief that Jing Yuan wears, if only for a moment, you can guess. Infer.

(Something of lovers. Almost lovers. If nothing else, Jing Yuan cared for him very much.)

“You needn’t worry about Dan Heng, dear,” he gently. says. “Such things are in the past now. He has moved onto a different shore, and is quite happy on the Astral Express.”

“... He’s not coming to steal you?”

“No,” he laughs, looking mournful again. “I’m certain he has no interest in such things.”

He speaks so sadly. Not heartbroken, it’s not that fresh. He speaks through a wound with a type of melancholy that resonates in your chest like a minor chord. You resist the urge to say, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ 

“Do you wish he would?”

Jing Yuan pauses.

“No.” He shakes his head, “Not anymore. We have both grown.”

And he pets over your cheek before kissing you. You know he’s telling you the truth. 

...

Jing Yuan does not allow haste, and neither do you. Perhaps, you both are feeling fragile. You keep breaking each other open, only to help the other reassemble their pieces a moment later. 

Jing Yuan enjoys savoring physical contact, regardless of circumstance or propriety. He steals touches in public in a way that’s indulgent, but never overt. He licks into your mouth with the pace like cooling honey. Each does is meant to brand. You’re meant to feel it, feel him, for as long as the moment will allow. He savors you with hitches of his own breath, a desperation of his own bubbling under his surface. 

You can be a bit shy when he truly gluts himself this way. It’s so overt. It tears something in you, and reveals a squishy, softer center that you’re anxious to show anyone. Even a lover like Jing Yuan who has shown you time and time again there is nothing to fear, other than his own foolhardy decisions. 

Jing Yuan probably likes it when he gets to be this slow. Peeling back layer after layer of you, forcing you to luxuriate in the unfamiliar warmth, and be reminded that he is there and sturdy. 

Jing Yuan is laid between your thighs, your legs over his shoulder. His thick forearm is braced across your navel, your hand held in his. Your fingers are intertwined. His other hand pets at the back of your thighs as you shudder. 

You’re sensitive.

Jing Yuan eats your cunt with the pace of a man who has nothing to lose, no phases of the moon to observe, and something to prove. He laps at your center, squeezing your hand with each jolt of your hips against his mouth.

The stroke of his tongue is slow and unhurried. He’s enjoying himself, savoring your taste, humming and groaning when you inadvertently grind against his mouth. During a more routine fuck, Jing Yuan enjoys when you anchor yourself with a grip in his hair and fuck his face. Any impulse you could have to indulge in such a way tonight is quelled. His grip is unyielding on your hand. Your free hand is tangled in the sheets, occasionally shakily pushing Jing Yuan’s mane away from his forehead so you can watch him tongue fuck you with the pace of the lazy, sunbathing cat.

You drop your head to the nest of pillows behind you with a groan and throw your arm over your eyes.

Jing Yuan chuckles against your cunt and flicks his tongue over your clit. He sucks and you want to sob. He hasn’t let you built up to any release— it’s long form teasing, it’s torture. You can feel how wet you are between your thighs, sticky from your own slick and his saliva. You’re messy.

(This is how Jing Yuan prefers it anyways.)

Jing Yuan had made a point to tease you in your thin panties before putting his mouth on you at all. Stroking over the fabric, barely dipping his fingers under the thin, lace waistband. He kissed your covered pussy until you were almost tearing the sheets in your balled up fists. 

Jing Yuan still hasn’t put anything inside of you. You know it will be— tight. Jing Yuan has large hands and a proportionally large cock (that most Xianzhou Alliance gossip forums still undersize). Part of his slowness is necessary. 

The tip of a finger teases your hole and you kick at his back in surprise.

“F-Finally giving in?”

“I’m not giving in at all,” Jing Yuan pulls away from your cunt to speak, wet and sloppy around his mouth. Eyes half-lidded and so, so content. “I’ve never had anything other than the intention to open you on my tongue and my fingers. What gave you any other impression?”

“Bastard.”

He nips the apex of your thigh and you yip.

“Yours.”

You smile, stupid and a little love drunk, and stroke his hair, “Mine.”

Jing Yuan’s gaze darkens for a moment— something passes there. A thought you can’t read from him or glean anything from. The headiness of the moment temporarily breaks, and for an instant you think that something is wrong. You almost push yourself off the bed in a fit of concern—

But Jing Yuan begins the slow press of his finger into your cunt. 

You gasp and squirm, flinching almost. Jing Yuan bears his weight on your waist and keeps you in place as you do, intently watching your expression and parted, wet lips. You’re flayed. It’s just a finger, but it feels big. His fingers are big— a bit calloused, but softer than you’d think.

As he sinks the digit into you, you pant. He kisses your clit, encouraging you to open up for him, murmuring little words of praise that sit in your brain pleasantly but are hard to make distinct. You go slack into the mound of pillows as his mouth returns to your cunt, the single finger fully inside you, resting as you tremble. 

With a suck to your clit, he crooks the finger up.

It feels good. The spot is tender. Jing Yuan knows just where to apply pressure, the pace and angle are so, so good. He’s memorized this part of you. A month apart isn’t going to remove that knowledge. 

He teases you like this— never letting you rise too close to release. The roiling tendrils of arousal in your gut stay there, like stoked embers without tinder to light anew. You take it— you take what he gives you. You relish each touch, lick, and kiss.

“Jing Yuan—” You gasp his name as he removes the single finger to begin to stretch you with two.

Two is— it’s a lot. Normally, it wouldn’t be. Maybe, you’d beg for more, and beg for more faster. But now, two stings and aches on your insides. You claw at his hair and whine in the back of your throat. Jing Yuan hushes you and spits on his fingers, the extra bit of lubrication helping somewhat, but you’re tight and wound.

“Are you alright?” Jing Yuan asks as he massages the most sensitive spot in your cunt. He asks genuinely, not as a tease.

“‘S tight,” You squeeze out, wiggling your hips. 

“Am I being gentle enough?”

“Uh-huh,” You pet over his forehead. “Thank you?”

“Of course.” Jing Yuan chuckles. “Does it feel good?’

“Y-Yeah,” You whine as Jing Yuan curls his fingers, thumb pressed against your clit and rolling the pearl of itl. “I-It’s unfair.”

“What’s unfair?” 

“That you make me feel s-so good,” You don’t know how else to articulate it. The feral thing in your chest crawls over your body once more, and jerks your hips for more of his touch. You urge his fingers deep, wordlessly beg for more pressure against your cunt.

“You’re so sweet,” Jing Yuan coos, rising to his knees and taking one of your legs with him. Your middle falls open. It feels... vulnerable. You feel exposed and sliced. Your stomach churns for a moment. You nearly ask Jing Yuan to stop.

(Except, Jing Yuan has fucked you enough times to know that you don’t enjoy the physical vulnerability of your sensitive core. It sets you off. He knows that you prefer to cuddle with his massive hand against your belly. He knows you even wear clothes that provide some protection, billowing fabrics and belts. You’re a sensitive thing.)

He slides his broad hand over your belly, and presses down as he leisurely pumps his fingers in and out of your core. The pressure of it burns— scalds you and your arousal feels white hot. He’s prodding you from the inside and the outside, and you feel something bubbling up.

“You’re close,” Jing Yuan says with a catlike smile. “Would you like to come?”

“P-Please—”

Jing Yuan hums, slowing, almost ruining the impending crest, but clicks his tongue and continues. It’s a farce, a little game he’s playing, and much to your (enjoyed) frustration, you’re his other player.

“I would love to hear you beg,” Jing Yuan croons, leaning over your form, bending your leg at an angle that is unfair in all regards. “But, I’d also like to be kind tonight. I think you deserve it— you need it, don’t you?”

“I—” You do. His hand quickens and with his other, he braces behind one of your knees. He ducks down to retake his place between your thighs, eating your cunt with a persistence and vigor that has your eyes roll back in your head. He drills your insides with a deep, steady rhythm that. Maybe could get you pregnant.

Who's to say. 

“I’m—” You gasp, ready to beg regardless of what Jing Yuan wants or expects from you. You want to give him everything. 

“That’s it. Let go.” He beckons you and you break. 

Your orgasm slamsinto you. The teasing and playful edging made you sensitive and like a livewire. When you finally cum, you choke on your own breath, eyes rolling back into your head, and you shove your face into a pillow to muffle the half-sobbed moans that spill from your lips out of your control.

Jing Yuan continues his ministrations through it. Dutifully. Unyielding, even as you twitch with oversensitivity and wisps of exhaustion.

He gently lowers your trembling leg with a sweet smile. He pets you like a cat.

“You’re beautiful.” He says, softened in a way you only get to see. 

“Thank you.” Your words slur as he settles beside you, tucking next to you. 

He’s hard— so hard that there’s a wet patch on his bottoms from pooling pre. You can feel the length of him against your thigh, and you reach for him. You should really grab some oil—

Jing Yuan stops you with a gentle hand on your wrist. 

“Slow, remember?” He reminds you with a grin that is mischievous. “Let’s take a break, just for a moment.”

“Are you sure?” You look down. 

The bulge of him makes your mouth water. 

“Entirely.” He brings your hand to his lips, pressing a reverent kiss to your wrist. “How about a quick snack, hm? I can fetch some fruit to cut.” 

“... That would be nice.”

“Would you like peaches?”

“P-Please.” Your voice is watery and small. Jing Yuan looks smitten to hear the tone. “... Meldberries too? And apples?”

“Of course,” Jing Yuan looks happy. Relieved. Deflated in a way that makes you realize that he had been so tense before. Since you met him in the gardens, haggard and exhausted.

(You’re in his bed, sated and watery and being taken care of.)

“Can I come to the kitchen with you?” 

“Are you sure you can walk?” Jing Yuan teases, thumbing at your trembling inner thigh, littered with fresh bruises.

“I can now—” you huff, playfully indignant. “We should bring some back. For... later. When I can’t walk. Hopefully.”

“Hopefully?” Jing Yuan tilts his head, eyes half-lidded and amused. 

“Oh, don’t act so innocent!” You laugh and headbutt him lightly. If you had more energy, you’d play fight with him and ruffle the sheets up more than they already are. “I’m sure you’d like me immobile by the time you and your ridiculous cock are through with me.”

“... Ridiculous cock?” Jing Yuan can’t hide the laughter in his voice, or the flush on his cheeks. “So cruel.”

“I— I forgot how big it isn’t.”

“I’m still covered, dearest.”

You gesture, panicked, below the covers the bulge and still growing wet spot, “Your dick is close to the size of my forearm, Jing Yuan. I can see it without... seeing it.”

“You’re so complimentary.” He practically giggles. “So sweet. I had forgotten how sweet orgasm makes you. Or, is this your fatigue talking?”

“... Both? I missed you.” You say, using your un-held hand to pat Jing Yuan’s covered cock with a smile. “Missed this too.”

Jing Yuan almost squeaks at the unexpected contact. He apparently is just as sensitive as you. He hides his light blush in your neck, and you can’t help but laugh, and think about how sweet the peaches will be when cut by your lover’s hands and shared from the same plate.

...

Jing Yuan keeps his word. The early evening stretches into late evening, every touch and sensation coaxed and unhurried. Slow-stretched sugar, lest it shatters. 

In the kitchen, Jing Yuan cuts you a plate of peaches while you rest on his lap, watching the hypnotic carving of his knife with half-lidded eyes. He feeds you slices on a small fruit fork while sending off a message or two from his jade abacus. He carries half a dozen other fruits back to his bedroom and prods you for a more substantial meal order at some point. 

You finish off the last few slices while draped in his robe, dazed from your previous high. You feel— out of it. Raw and scraped out. Not much different from how you felt during your time in the utility tunnels, but instead of feverishly working, you’re in the warmly light room of your lover. His warm hand is splayed on the small of your back, rubbing little circles. 

You want to ask him:

“How do you do this?”

And Jing Yuan, mirthful, would say:

“Do what?”

And you would say:

“This.”

This: 

The way your mind resists fullness, empty by familiar nature. You’ve been cored, like the apple Jing Yuan dutifully cut and fed to you. Your thighs continue to shake. You’re bruised, marked, all his, in a way that cows and strokes the feral part of your mind still half-convinced this is all an elaborate illusion.

How could any of this be a fabrication? When Jing Yuan is so warm behind you, happy to bask in your presence while you bask in his. Jing Yuan’s contentment is infectious, it always is— but so quickly, he has stripped you of your ability to parry it. You can’t hold concern. You can barely hold your body upright. You want to fall into him, ask to take more, and hold him until you simply can’t anymore.

You do not ask Jing Yuan how he undoes you. Predicting the conversation seems— easy. Too easy. (Probably because calibrating a machine meant to sustain a civilization for weeks on end does damage that’s yet to be fully healed. Prediction is a symptom of overuse, divination a side effect. A cumbersome one.) You can imagine the way Jing Yuan would dance with his words, effortlessly sparring in a way that you simply couldn’t keep up with. You are already disarmed. You need his candor, and nothing is more honest than the General’s body.

“Come here.” Jing Yuan beckons you into the sheets to lay with him properly.

(It’s uncanny how he can predict your needs like a diviner himself.)

You follow his direction and let him tug you into his side. Your cheek rests over his chest, soft and a little rounder than it was when you first met him. He’s gained weight since then— which is good. He’s always been bulky under his uniform and regalia, toned muscle from centuries of training and sparring. But there wasn’t much else to him— he used to skip meals if it was too inconvenient to eat. If you were sharing a plate, he’d offer you a larger portion.

It was something so slightly self-deprecating. At first, you hadn’t noticed it. Jing Yuan is not a proud man, he is keen and clever in all regards— but his ego has stayed in check for as long as he’s been Arbiter-General. He commits this quiet act of self-harm, so miniscule that most wouldn’t bat an eye. His lack of appetite was a manifestation of some burden— as he will continue to live and slowly waste away, why should his body not as well?

You’d like to think you’d broken him of his destructive eating habits. Or, at least contributed. Warm meals, arm-in-arm snacking on street foods at night. Vendors are always happy to give the Divine Foresight a free treat, even if he offers them strales every time. He eats well around you, and you know it extends farther. He takes lunches with Yanqing at least once a week. There’s a stash of homemade honey oats and dried apricots stowed in his desk. 

You are glad he eats. That he is full. 

You appreciate the feel of him under your fingertips, how he has softened and grown a bit less worn during his own leave. He deserves a vacation. Maybe, you’ll sit on his cock and beg him to fucking retire with the promise you’ll be happy to stay that way for as long as he pleases if he does. Anything to keep him this lax and soft. You want to commit it to memory, but you still feel fuzzy.

“Enjoying yourself?” He laughs as he speaks, busying himself with the tacky skin on the nape of your neck. He pets you there.

“Yes.” You grab his chest, thumbing dangerously close to his nipple. “You feel nice.”

“I’m glad.” Jing Yuan says, tone curling and smitten. You feel drunk with it. He hums. “You seem a bit lost. May I guide you back here?”

“I don’t think I am.” You pout. “I’m here.”

“Are you sure?” 

“... Fairly sure.”

“May I try anyway?” Jing Yuan asks. “It would make me very happy too.”

There’s no harm to it, really.

“I’ll be good.” He adds and holds your wrist so tenderly in his palm. “I’ll be gentle with you.”

Jing Yuan drags the thin skin of your wrist over his lips, kissing the flesh as he does. It’s reverent, slow as he promised. He peeks up at you as he does, a curtain of his silver hair almost obscuring the warm gold of his eyes. There’s want there, so caramelized that it makes you ache. 

Jing Yuan rolls you, so that he’s above you, sitting over your hips. It’s— not too heavy. The weight of him is comforting if nothing else. The heat of him is grounding as he hovers over you, nosing at your jaw, nipping bruised skin. He licks the brutal bite he left earlier and you yip. You don’t have it in you to chastise him for it— you— you maybe like it too much to do so. 

Like this, it’s easier to notice how Jing Yuan wants. How his hand is sliding between over your sternum, between your breasts, down the soft line of your belly and navel, and back up again. It’s slow, radiating a yearning that sinks down into your organs heat from a hearth. He thumbs over the line of your throat and kisses you.

He’s more insistent now, licking into your mouth immediately, keeping his rhythm slow and actions drawn out. 

Jing Yuan pulls back just enough to speak, warm breath over your lips, “You’re doing so well.”

You feel warm in your cheeks and tug him closer. If only you burrow in his flesh bones, flush the marrow out to replace it with yourself. You’d do it if it meant keeping him upright for longer. 

“I’m right here.” Jing Yuan hushes you, gathering your wrists in one hand. You hadn’t realized desperate little keens were leaking from your throat, soaking the room. Jing Yuan doesn’t seem to mind. “No need to fuss. You’re alright.”

“You’re sure?” You ask, you feel out of your body. 

Jing Yuan knows this and he tethers you to him with a kiss and firm touch, “I’m sure. You trust me, don’t you?”

“So much,” you admit. 

Jing Yuan looks down at your softly, expression beginning to shatter. He is a difficult man to work with— he wears many faces, several hats, and speaks in riddles more often than not. To receive his honesty is— a fucking gift. You want to hold it in your hands and swallow it. His hair falls over his face as he peers down at you, thumbing over the lines of your throat.

“You’re so good.” He says gently, quiet. Like it’s a secret for the two of you. “You’d do anything I’d ask you to right now, wouldn’t you?”

You nod, then think about what he asked. You still would. Probably. Maybe give him some grief along the way, “As long as you’re not too mean about it.”

“Oh?” He teases. He teases, even now. Even when your core is exposed and you’re bare and he’s stalling despite being hard against your thigh. “You’re still so sweet when I’m a bit mean. I think you enjoy it.” 

A broken, nearly-pathetic noise drips from your lips. You clutch at his arms and try to bury your face in the sheets. Your face feels so warm, it's making you dizzy.

“No need to be shy,” he sounds smitten, a smile bleeding into his tone. He kisses you with it, again and again until you’re breathless and stupid once more. He pulls back until you’re nose to nose, hand drifting to the apex of your thighs. 

You squirm, bucking your hips, urging him closer. 

“Patience, love, I’ll give you what you need.” He tells you and kisses the corner of your mouth. You believe him.

Jing Yuan settles himself between your thighs, holding them open with his own. He is not a small man, and it leaves you very exposed. More exposed than you would like, and it makes something in you writhe. Jing Yuan hushes you, soothes you as he’s so good at doing as he drenches his fingers in oil.

(The first time you fucked, you did not do this step. Oil and any type of lubricant was skipped, and you paid the price the next morning with a bit of light bleeding and an ache that would send Jing Yuan to the Alchemy Commission to fetch some specialty painkillers. He was very apologetic the morning after, guilt-ridden even. At some point, he started carrying little vials on his person and insisting lubricant be used regardless of how impromptu of a lay it was.)

(That is all to say that Jing Yuan’s cock is huge and has the capability to break you.)

He presses a finger into you— it goes in easily, slides with the aid of lubricant and your own slick.

“Oh,” Jing Yuan breathes, gaze drifting from your parted lips to the finger he sinks into you. “You’re so wet.”

You want to be snarky. Of course you are, he’s already had you on his tongue earlier in the day— now, he’s been teasing you, playing with you, and being sweet with you. How could you not be? It’s the only natural response to your lover treating you in such a way.

However, you do not get a chance to show him any sass as he crooks his finger upwards and rubs the pad of his thumb in a familiar pattern, little circles over your clit. A gasping moan spills from your lips and Jing Yuan holds you down with his free hand on your hips. He pets you when you shake and yearn for more too quickly. 

“‘S okay?” You ask.

“Very.” Jing Yuan smiles, beaming, almost purring. “I’ll tell you if it isn’t.”

“Okay.” You nod, feeling wrung out already. Beads of sweat rise between your breasts and drip down your skin. 

Jing Yuan must notice too, as he ducks forward to lick a firm strip over your tacky skin, groaning as he does before moving to one of your nipples. He kisses around the bud, nips just enough to make you fuss, before wrapping his lips around it. He bites, sucks, and groans into you as he does. 

You pet through his hair, scrapping your nails down his neck and back. Marking him however you can.

Jing Yuan pulls away from you, panting, and kisses you hard on the mouth. It’s a clash, really. Harsher and more desperate than he usually would give you. He’s usually not this messy, but your teeth clack together awkwardly and you swallow around the discomfort. Jing Yuan is quick to correct himself, deepening the kiss more sweetly as if to apologize. 

He slips a second finger inside your cunt, next to the first, drenching your hole in slick and lube. It’s— messy. It is wet. The sound is obscene, even if Jing Yuan is being slow and gentle with your most delicate parts. Arousal pools in your gut, and want makes you feel like a sinking puddle, spreading out over the sheets like you’re going to absorb into Jing Yuan’s lavish mattress. 

You open up for him, relax with the contact and let him take care of you as he wishes.

He presses another finger into you— this one stings, despite the preparation and slick drenching you down your thighs and the sheets below you. He moves slowly, kissing your cheeks and hushing you when you whine. 

“I’ve got you,” He smiles, and drags his lips over your cheeks. It’s reassuring, and something blooms from the base of your spine up to your throat. He gives you playfully chomp over the apple of one and you let out a little laugh. It bubbles up out of you and Jing Yuan shares it with his own deeper one.

He fans out his fingers inside you, slowly, with each thrust. It’s measured, practiced. Despite the time apart. 

Jing Yuan is hard against your leg. You can feel him, though Jing Yuan is still wearing his own robe and silks which simply will not do. Tugging, you drag it off him, and push yourself half up. You attempt to reach for his cock, you want it— him. But Jing Yuan stills his fingers inside you, clicks his tongue, and knocks you back into the mattress with a gentle (albeit firm) shove.

“Not yet.” He scolds, though there’s no bark behind it. 

You frown. “But I want you.”

“And what if I want you too?” Jing Yuan asks.

It’s something he’s never raised directly before.

He’s made such a fact known, however. You know he wants you. Jing Yuan was happy to complete a number of courting gestures, prior to becoming something of an official couple. He keeps you close, he is kind to you, he even tells you a secret or two. He fucks you like he loves you and wants you close. He leaves marks all of you, from your neck, all the way down to even your ankles and calves on occasion. He shares drinks with you in his gardens, offers you a place in his bed and somewhere in his heart, even if you’re still (after decades) understanding where that is.

But, so rarely does he state that he wants you so plainly. 

Want is dangerous. Yearning and all. Yearning must be a passing emotion if one is to resist Mara. If anything, Mara is accumulated and rotting yearning. 

Jing Yuan has lived a long life due to how he copes with yearning. 

To admit to it— it is an act of vulnerability. To admit a weakness, a thing that could tear him full of undying roots and strike him down. It is the danger of the Divine Foresight finding a partner and becoming coupled. It invites such feelings. 

You had assumed Jing Yuan hadn’t entertained such notions directly. To give them time in his mind could bring rumination. Which— could easily go sour.

“... You want me?” 

Jing Yuan tilts his head cutely, “Yes, of course. Was that not obvious?”

“I inferred,” You feel sticky and sloppy as Jing Yuan withdraws his fingers. 

He climbs off the bed, only for a moment. He shucks off the last of his clothing, leaving him bare. Candle light casts shadows over the contours of him. His cock looks— painfully hard. As he climbs back into bed, it bobs, swollen and dark red at the head. Almost purpling. It’s slick with pre that is still beading from his slit.

“... Can I suck you off?” You ask, a bit entranced. “Please?”

“Not now,” He tells you with a laugh. “Later, if you ask me nicely again.”

“Okay.” You can do that. 

Jing Yuan huffs out another laugh with a shake of his head, “Insatiable thing.”

“I missed you.” You tell him. Your voice is watery. Your own admission.

Jing Yuan flips you by your midsection, coaxing you to raise your hips enough to sandwich a few silk pillows between your hips and the bed. His hands linger over the bruises on your hips, then slide down the swell of your ass to the backs of your thighs. He pets you until you’re relaxed, boneless.

He parts from you over for a moment, rummaging through a nearby cupboard for oil. You hear him slick his cock. The sound makes you squeeze your thighs together and bury your face in the sheets. 

Jing Yuan surprises you by pressing a finger into you from behind. A sound rips from your throat as he finds your sweet spots, adding another finger quickly, then a third. You’re drenched between your thighs, so slick you feel drunk. Jing Yuan positions your legs a little wider and settles between them. 

“D-Don’t aggravate your injury,” You remember, beginning to push yourself up. A moment of lucidity as you can sense Jing Yuan lining him up. “Not on my account.”

“I won’t.” He promises, running a hand down your back from tailbone to nape to coax you back against the mattress. He presses a kiss to the base of your spine. “Always so caring and diligent.”

“I—” You cut yourself off as the head of his cock teases your folds. Rubbing. “Jing Yuan—”

“I want you.” Jing Yuan tells you, doubling back, bumping against your clit as you moan. 

“Y-You can have me,” You want to see his face, rub his cheeks. “You do have me. You’re mine and I’m yours.”

Damning yourselves.

Can’t the General be selfish in lieu of his looming retirement? Can’t the Master Calibrator enjoy the company of others, and not the mechanical hum of a God Ship?

“I have you?” Jing Yuan asks, beginning to push into you.

You can’t reply— you can’t. Despite the prep, and oil, and arousal all together, it’s still tight. Jing Yuan is thick enough that it’s outlandish, and you’re feeling every inch of that girth as he enters you. You clutch your balled-up hands in the soft sheets near your head. You try to keep your breathing even but it’s hard. Jing Yuan pets down your sides, leaning over your back, whispering little words of praise and encouragement as you take him. 

“You’re so lovely. Look how well you’re doing.”

“You’re going to take all of me.”

“I’ll be gentle. I’ll be good to you.”

He is, and you don’t mean to cry, you don’t, but you do when he bottoms out, and you can feel him so, so deep, it’s in your throat. The heat of him inside you is searing. You’re changed. You’re being carved out by him anew, and he wants you. 

“You h-have me,” You tell him. You scrambled a hand behind you, shaking as you brace yourself against the bed. You manage to get a handful of his head and drag him down over your back. “Jing Yuan, please have me.”

You’ll beg for it; shame has been lost.

You want to stay here. In his bed. By his side. You want him to want the same with you. Not with old flames. You don’t want Jing Yuan to deny himself pleasure in the face of duty, as if the two cannot exist. As if rules cannot be bent or changed by the hand that rules them or the Calibrator who tweaks the vessel that you both live on. Things change. It is the nature of life and starshine.

Even with the Xianzhou Natives' lifetime, they are bound to grow, endlessly. 

Jing Yuan pauses above you, stills so deep in you. You’re worried for a moment you’ve crossed a line. That your desperation has spurred him away, rather than closer. It terrifies you. It grips you so hard that it feels like your heart could shatter to pieces.

(Your worry is misplaced.)

Jing Yuan lets out a shuddering sigh, pulling out almost completely. You panic (“no, no, no, don’t, ‘M sorry”) and nearly flip over to try and recover the situation. However— you’re mistaken.

He groans as he slams back into you, curling over your back, gathering you up in his arms, and rolling his hips. He’s scraping the insides of you. You’re raw. 

“N-No apologies,” His voice breaks. “You’ve done nothing wrong. Y—You offer me yourself so sweetly. I only feel guilty that—” 

He cuts himself off with another deep thrust that punches a broken sound out of you. Tears begin to drip down your cheeks.

“No guilt—”

“I feel guilty,” Jing Yuan punctuates his words with a cant of his hips that has you going slack in his arms, ragdolled by pleasure, “that you think you must beg to be had. I feel immensely guilty that you could have any doubt toward me as a lover.”

He guides you back down to the bed, steadying himself with a searing palm on the back of your neck and a hand leveraged on your lower back.

You really won’t be able to walk tomorrow. 

“I don’t doubt y-you like that.”

(It’s less about some nebulous insecurity you keep as his lover, and more about the solid knowledge that Jing Yuan is so careful with his connections. You cannot believe yourself to be the exception.)

(Sometimes, you doubt that he has any tether to anyone. Like he’s waiting to die. No matter how fond he is of you, that this will supersede it. It damns his well being. It damns the future. But, how steadfast does it make the present? You’d like to think its enough for him to keep you as company due to legitimate desire and care, rather than balming of some wound as your insecurities tell you it could be.)

In retrospect, you’ll feel foolish for thinking so little of Jing Yuan’s feelings toward you. 

He grabs you by your cheeks in one hand, craning your neck back to face him the best you can on your tummy. He levels his face with yours, nose to nose. Eyes alight. He looks... almost angry. Jaw tight, seated and still inside you to the hilt. You’re full— bursting at the seams, but you have enough lucidity to focus your vision and see how pained he looks. Pained and enraptured, loving and loved. He’s bound up with it, the same way that you are. 

“If I could, I would keep you in this bed. If not this bed, then the gardens I would follow you into your tunnels and learn the harmonies and chords you know, even if I couldn’t keep a tune. I would keep you full like this. I would cut you stone fruit whenever you’d like something sweet.”

It’s a declaration. It might as well be a proposal.

You don’t get a chance to reply. Your breath is knocked out of you, like every thought and fear and insecurity that you’ve been shouldering. Jing Yuan fucks you with the full force of his hips, thighs bracketed with your own. It hurts— barely. Enough that you’ll feel it for days and carry a limp for just as long. 

His pace is quick and deep. He’s not chasing— he’s creating. Marking a spot inside you that’s just for him. Only him. It makes you feel giddy and stupid and you laugh through the tears streaming down your cheeks. It’s— all a lot. Jing Yuan keeps you tucked so close, pressing you into the silks sheets. He breathes through his mouth, panting against the back of your neck , sucking more marks into the skin, darkening the preexisting ones. Claiming, in a way that feels different from the hickeys he had given you in the past. 

You sob as he tilts your hips up. He drills downward, hitting your sweet spot with each thrust. You’re— you’re going to explode. The friction of the pillows below your hips isn’t enough to come,but Jing Yuan drilling your insides is getting you close to something. It feels like a peak you’re not meant to climb, and you sob at the sensation. Like you’re free falling.

Jing Yuan holds you closer, wrapping an arm around your midsection, and the feeling disappears.

He sneaks a hand to your cunt. First he feels where you’re joined. The sticky, sloppy mess of pre, slick and lube that you’ve made. You’ll need another bath. Maybe two. He runs gentle fingers along the seam of your cunt, where he’s slowed his thrusts so he can feel where you’re practically tethered together. 

“Taking me so well,” Jing Yuan is breathless. He rubs your clit, bracing himself over your front, and fucks you so wonderfully that your vision begins to darken at the edges.

It’s unfair how quickly he gets you to your peak, touching you like this. He knows your body, and you squeeze down around him with a cry as you crest. Your cunt clamps down as the knots in your gut unfurl. You jolt back with the sensation, overwhelming and all consuming. Jing Yuan moans behind you, a beautiful sound you want to have so committed to memory so that even when you’re riddled with mara, you’ll remember the sound. 

Jing Yuan doesn’t chase his relief, he lays over your back like a blanket as you shake through the aftershocks of your orgasm and fucks you slow and deep. He only hastens when you let out a warbling little sound, something hurt from your bruised insides making themselves known.

He quiets you with a soft, dragged out whisper of praise. He thrusts harder— faster— and moments later there’s a gush of warmth in your guts that makes your eyes roll back into your head. You want to come again, and you can’t help the temptation to reach down and get off, just once— more.

Jing Yuan nearly growls as you do. He bats your hand away, flips you so you’re belly up. Your hips are raised on the mound of pillows and it hits you what he intends to do.

To have both of you.

He throws your legs over his shoulders. Your thighs shake around his cheeks as he gives them a quick kiss, before diving into his meal. He moans and groans into your cunt, out of breath from fucking you still, but no-less diligent. He fucks his cum back into your with a thick finger for a few thrust, just barely— you’ll be too sore and he knows it. 

He eats his release from your cunt. It’s— debauched. It’s so, so much and you can’t do anything other than writhe and tug at his hair. Your hips hurt, but you still find it in you to grind against his mouth. It’s— one of his favorite things. He likes to be used sometimes. This is one of his favorite flavors, when his tongue is inside of you and you drag him closer by his hair and let the friction bring you to orgasm, however long it takes.

You, truthfully, do not have much left in your body to chase this. 

Jing Yuan must know this, or he is feeling similarly— or both. Probably both. You’re too floaty and gone to tell. You’re still crying as he moves to your clit, licks and sucks until you fall apart on his tongue once more, full and sated with him. 

Both had by each other. 

You fall into the bed sheets as you finish, dragging a sweaty Jing Yuan closer. So close. He keeps you closer still, over his chest, cheek pillows on the swell of his pec (breast) and a dusting of silver hair. You’re shaking from the high— so is he. You feel like you’re going to fall into a million pieces.

(It reminds you, briefly, of how it felt when you first dropped into the utility tunnels, after the calibration apprentice went Mara-Struck. How you felt so— alone— gone. How fragile you felt sprinting through the tunnels with the knowledge that your world was being torn apart by forces beyond your control.)

(You felt small and helpless.)

The feeling is quickly extinguished— or maybe made to feel pleasurable. Jing Yuan practically purrs underneath you, petting you, stroking over your new bruises and marks. You keep a hand buried in his hair, petting over his cheeks. Staying lucid— is hard. The last thing you clearly remember was hopelessly fond, adoring, gold eyes, gazing back at you so lovingly, that they could remake you.

Perhaps, they already have.

It’s sometime later, in one of Jing Yuan’s gardens. This one is nestled, lush, in the large courtyard in the center of his home. A pond gurgles with the bubble of fat fish that swim near the surface of the water. You fed them earlier and they’re still looping, searching for an extra snack.

You lay some distance away from the pond on a blanket that Jing Yuan has designated as your ‘outside blanket’ as it is particularly large (tall enough for him to sprawl out on and more than wide enough to fit the both of you) and thick. Your head is pillowed on Jing Yuan’s arm as he is curled toward you, legs tangled with your own. It’s late afternoon, and the General is taking one of his beloved naps. You’ve taken to combing a hand through his hair, scratching along his scalp and behind his ear and contenting yourself with the little sighs and almost-purrs he lets you. 

It is good to rest.

Your leave has, overall, been quite restful. Mostly. Aside from the times that Jing Yuan cannot keep his hands of you and you end up fucking whereever is convenient before retiring to your (now shared) bedroom. The bouts leave you tired and worn, but in a satisfying way. Jing Yuan has been particularly dutiful and attentive post-fuck, always handing you chilled water to sip and offering a treat. Sometimes a fruit or a candy he has apparently been stashing away. He gives you as many kisses as you can bear, and you return the gesture as much as you’re able.

Jing Yuan has become... handiser. Needier. You’d say clingier, but as much as he tends to cling when he’s around his estate with you, it never feels overbearing. He indulges in closeness with you in a way that feels shameless in the best way. 

It’s the same in public. You’ve gone to the night markets, once or twice to indulge in street foods, and Jing Yuan is equally as touchy, albeit it’s more subtle. A hand on your lower back, standing behind you while he orders with an arm wrapped around your waist. You hold hands when you walk, or you loop an arm through his elbow if it's particularly crowded. He did these things before, but they seem more... necessary. Like he has to keep you close. The contact he shares with you is firmer. Richer, even. He’s always been intentional with you, it's his nature, but now his actions have taken on a different shape. Intentionally showing want, rather than showing closeness.

It creates both a softness and an edge to him that you are thoroughly enjoying.

There’s softness in how lax he is next to you, dozing the afternoon away after completing the bare minimum of work for the day. His cheeks are rounder, and a bit rosy. It’s warm today. It’s the softness of skinship, how you’re both seeking out each other’s barest parts, even if it's only for a moment or two of skin-to-skin contact. It’s how his care is so explicit these days. 

The edge of it is how the General is anxious, perhaps. It’s a possessive flavor that Jing Yuan has, perhaps, always has, but is simply more apparent now. His touches in public flaunt the fact that you’re clearly a couple, nevermind what gossip magazines and street whisperers will say. It’s the consistent marks he leaves on you— those visible hickeys on your neck, down to the dark, sore ones he leaves on your inner thighs and the softness of your stomach. It’s the way he commissioned a set of earrings, one for each of you to wear. 

(He had looked a bit melancholy, just for a moment, when he first presented you with them. Like a memory had surfaced but then was quickly let go and set adrift in favor of the present.)

The set is crafted with gold connected with a flat, rectangle of stone that dangles down from it. The stone is red, inlaid with gold veins. Some alloy that was probably mined on an asteroid— a rarity. They’re beautiful. You hardly know what to say when you receive yours; Jing Yuan had presented you the gift while already wearing his. 

Marking each other as each other’s. 

It’s brazen— and you like it. The beast of feeling that tore you to shreds in the utility tunnels feels far away, lately. Your extended leave has been good and you’re... grateful Jing Yuan has been quite official (and strict) about keeping you away from work.

You run the pad of your thumb under his eye. The skin is delicate, wrinkled just the slightest. It’s a tragedy, for many reasons, that you both are long-lived and cursed with Abundance. You’d like to see the crow’s feet Jing Yuan would have, if his skin did not keep itself so elastic and young.

Apparently awake, Jing Yuan grabs your wrist and brings it to his lip. He sets upon you with a lazy smile. His eyes open, just halfway, and he looks at you, so adoring.

“Are your thoughts entertaining?” Jing Yuan asks, gentle as he holds you closer. “You seem quite lost in them.”

You hum, kissing his jaw with a drag of your lips, “Not lost. Just reflecting.”

Jing Yuan hums himself, nosing into your temple. Then your hairline, where he leaves a line of kisses in his wake. You shudder with the feather-light feeling.

“Would you like to share?” Jing Yuan asks. “Or, perhaps take a rest with me? Though I am very appreciative of the head massage, I do believe you could use a rest. Unless you wish to take a stroll, and turn in early?”

“A stroll sounds lovely in a bit. I don’t mind sharing, though,” you answer. 

Jing Yuan smiles against your skin. You wish it could brand you, “I’m listening, whenever you’d like.”

You gather your words for a moment. It takes— a second. A long one. The Dragon Lady says that you’re experiencing some lasting effects from being attuned to the Quantum fields for too long in the wake of the Stellaron Crisis. She seemed confident your impairments would heal but your mind is that of a mortal. It will take time.

Jing Yuan is ever patient with you.

“I suppose I’m grateful,” You tell him. “I am glad I have a space in your life, and I am grateful that you show it to me in the ways that you do. I would be— very sad, if I was not by your side, I think.”

It is a simple way to put something much larger.

Jing Yuan seems to understand regardless.

He takes a deep breath, then squeezes you to his chest. It forces the air from your lungs in a way that makes you light-headed.

“How kind are you.” Jing Yuan sighs, nuzzling into your hair. “To think of me so sweetly, without prompting. I’m very fortunate to have you as a lover. I hope you know that.”

“I try to remind myself.”

“Do I need to remind you more myself?” Jing Yuan asks, his smile turning a bit mischievous. He rolls himself over you, caging you. “I’m happy to.”

“You’ll spoil me!” You laugh and bat at his chest, slipping your arms over his shoulders, locking your hands behind his neck.

“I quite like having you spoiled.” Jing Yuan contends with a cute tilt of his head. “I should resolve to spoil you more, actually. Do you have any ideas on how to do so? I’m happy to listen.”

“Jing Yuan—” You huff with an uncontainable grin. Your heart is going to burst from your chest. You would let it. You’d let Jing Yuan take its place. You practically already have. 

“I think,” Jing Yuan whispers in your ear, breath warm and sweet. “I ought to keep you in bed for the afternoon, perhaps pause the plan for a stroll until later in the evening. Starfire flies have been gathering in one of the gardens near the Exalting Sanctum— what do you say to a post-coital jaunt?”

“I mean—” You flush and bump your nose into his cheek, like a cat giving ample affection. “I don’t think I’ll be properly spoiled if I can still walk after you’re through with me.”

“So, I’ll carry you? That’s doable.”

“No— I mean— You can—” 

“I’m teasing you,” Jing Yuan murmurs with a tone so sweet and warm, you could melt into the soft blanket and soil below you. “Whatever you’d like. We can decide along the way.”

You smile.

“Yeah,” Your chest feels tight and warm and lovely all at once. Jing Yuan pulls away, and the earring that twins your own dangles, catching the falling sun in its veins of gold. “I’d like to decide along the way with you.”

It means more than this instance, it’s encompassing. To be long-lived and coupled is to tread the shallows of what could be Mara. To wear the mark of another is to dare to swim closer to the roiling beast of Abundance that none of the Xianzhou Natives can truly outrun.

But you think that, perhaps, you and Jing Yuan will be alright until that day, whenever it may be. You will spoil each other, hold each other, and take your steps while extending a patient hand to the other if they’d like to take it. You’ll listen to echoes together and learn to forget them. You’ll harmonize with stardust and Jing Yuan will play his games of many dimensional chess until he (hopefully soon) retires.

The smile that grows on your face is warm like a hearth, honeyed like a spiced tea, and kind. It splits the both of you open, and Jing Yuan kisses you like he can’t help but to do anything else. You don’t lose your grin, and you give it to him against his lips, laughing together as you share breath.

It’s sweet and lovely, you think, as Jing Yuan touches your foreheads together. You have this, and you’ll be happy to have this for as long as Fate and Aeons allow. You think that Jing Yuan will be happy too— with a coveted smile so kind given to you and a bed, shared. 

You bask in it— this. The gardens and the heat of him and the warmth in your chest, for however long you’re given. 

[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

IMPRINT | dan heng x gn!reader

They say that moles are spots where your lover liked to kiss you in your past life. As Dan Heng is your lover in your current life, you can't help but suggest that the previous Yinyue Jun might be responsible for the mole on your inner thigh. (Or: You learn that Dan Heng hates the idea that he might have known you in his past life.)

3k words of fluff, comedy, some nsft. features an established relationship and imbibitor lunae cuddles. past renfeng is mentioned (dh is not a fan of df's choice in spouses). cultural/TL/lore notes at the end. nsft tags: monsterfucking (mostly offscreen), afab reader, onscreen explicit foreplay. dividers by @/cafekitsune. thank you to yyj anon for the hilarious idea!

Dan Heng has, in his true form, a small beauty mark on his throat.

You can see it now, pressed up against him in bed—your head resting on his shoulder, your bare legs tangled up with his, your whole body wrapped up in the furnace-like heat of his form. Azure scales glide along your skin as his tail curls around your waist, settling lazily against your thigh. You can feel a strange vibration coming from his vocal chords, from his chest—quiet, rhythmic, a sign of his complete ease. Whenever you reach over and run your fingers through his hair, he closes his eyes and the thrum from his throat grows stronger.

(Yes—it turns out that the great Imbibitor Lunae can purr. Dan Heng was mortified when the two of you first discovered this fact, but you've since reassured him that it is objectively the best part of his transformation.)

Ordinarily, Dan Heng isn't so clingy. It's only when he decides to couple with you in this form—something he generally avoids, given the… complications relating to his anatomy and stamina—that he ends up entwining himself with you afterwards. His expression always remains as neutral and unbothered as ever, so you think it must not be a conscious behaviour. (In fact, Dan Heng's face is so thin that he'd probably disintegrate if he ever noticed himself doing this.) Possibly it's an instinct that comes with his draconic features, just like his habit of nipping at your throat during intimate moments, or flicking his tail when agitated.

Normally, you'd be happy to bask quietly in his affections, but you're too distracted today. You keep staring at that tiny mole on the smooth, white-jade slope of his neck. It's placed right on the spot where you most like to kiss him, impossible to miss.

It isn't there when he wears his human disguise. You're very sure of this fact, because you're an avid fan of leaving marks on his neck, no matter which form he's in. (This behaviour is much to his chagrin. It's not like anyone will notice, you always need to reassure him. You always wear turtlenecks or high collars. Be careful about that chest window, though…) It's only natural that you'd notice such a detail.

You reason to yourself that there's no significance to this beauty mark. Plenty of Dan Heng's features arbitrarily change between forms—including his height, and even his makeup—but it gets you thinking about what it could mean. Particularly, you keep thinking about that myth claiming that moles mark the spots where your lovers kissed you in your past life.

You wonder about who'd have been kissing him, in his past life as Dan Feng—or who'd have been kissing you, whoever you were in your past life.

Of course, you were probably a total random in your previous lives. You definitely weren't getting kissed up on by any High Elders of the Luofu, nor were you leaving any hickies on their necks—or at least, you weren't doing that to Dan Feng, given that the intergalactic criminal trying to kill your boyfriend is actually the ex-husband of the previous Yinyue Jun. (Ever since this revelation, you have promised Dan Heng that you will never attempt to murder him, no matter how badly your relationship might someday implode.) But you'll take any opportunity to tease Dan Heng, and the perfect opportunity is before you now.

"Gege," you say, trying and failing to hide the mischief in your voice. He opens his eyes. His expression is still calm, but the slight arch to his brow betrays his wariness.

"Hm?"

"I'm curious about something."

"I can tell," he says. "What are you thinking about?"

You hum in a pondering tone. "Well, I know you don't like to think about your past," you begin, and you can feel his tail curling, "but I wonder if we knew each other at all in your previous life?"

Dan Heng studies you carefully. "I don't know. I try not to remember too much of Dan Feng's life, and it's hard to understand what I do recall. But you already know that." He tilts his head. "You've never asked about him before. Why are you suddenly so curious?"

"Well… you know what they say about moles?"

He gives you a blank stare. "That you should monitor them carefully for changes, in case of skin cancer?"

You snort. "No, not that! Or, I mean, that's true, and I hope you're doing that—but it's not what I'm thinking of!"

The corner of his mouth lifts very, very subtly. "Then what are you thinking of?"

"How they say that moles exist wherever your lover kissed you most in your past life. You've heard that, right?"

"Yes—it's an old wives' tale," he dismisses. "My species would have noticed it if there were any truth to that myth."

You frown. "You sure? Because"—you pull back just so you can tap gently at the mark on his neck—"you've got a mole right here when you're in this form. And I love to kiss your neck, Heng'er."

"I've noticed," he says dryly, with a distinctly long-suffering tone, making you grin.

"Then don't you think I could have given this to you?" you try again, but he shakes his head.

"It's not uncommon for Vidyadharas to mate across lifetimes, and in those cases, it's not unusual to record details about their lovers' various incarnations," he explains evenly. "Someone would have noticed it if this saying about moles were true. So I can guarantee that this was not left by any of Dan Feng's lovers."

A sour expression flits across Dan Heng's face. You recognize it as the exact look he wore when he pelted his jade belt piece into the vacuum of space—something he'd done as soon as he realised its origins. (Would you keep a wedding band from a divorced spouse? he'd asked flatly, when you bemoaned its loss. No? Well, it's the same idea with the jade token. If you also happen to have an ex-husband trying to kill you, please be sure to get rid of your ring as well—you are not allowed to wear it.)

Trying not to laugh, you sit up and kiss his temple in an attempt to distract him.

"Okay," you concede. "So the beauty mark thing doesn't apply to Vidyadharas. But what about humans?"

Dan Heng falters. "...I don't know. There's no way for us to tell. Humans on the Luofu far outlive the length of the average Vidyadhara's rebirth cycle. And it is very difficult to identify a human's reincarnation, as your species will change faces and birthplaces between lifetimes." He gives you a long look, strangely unreadable. "...why do you ask?"

"Well," you say smartly, "if you wouldn't recognize me across lifetimes anyway—isn't it true that I could have been one of your past lovers?"

"...the chances are slim, but"—his tail flicks—"yes, I suppose you could have been one of Dan Feng's lovers. In theory."

You pull away from him, careful to let him get a good look at your body laid out on the bed. You catch Dan Heng's eyes wandering, his gaze all over your bare skin. Maybe studying the moles scattered across your body, or maybe he's focusing on the ones on your chest, or maybe he's thinking about the one on your inner thigh.

You point at the one that rests right above your heart.

"Then—if it's possible that I was one of Dan Feng's lovers, and if it's possible that the beauty mark thing is true for humans—isn't it also possible that Dan Feng gave some of these to me?"

"..."

Dan Heng studies you with a complicated expression. You can hear his jaw click before he points out, "That's a lot of ifs."

"I'd believe it," you say. "I mean—you've seen the one on my thigh, right? It makes sense that you'd have given that to me. I'm sure that Gege loved eating pussy in every single li—mmph!"

Dan Heng's thrown his hand over your mouth. 'Tired' doesn't even begin to describe his expression.

"I do not want to think about what Dan Feng's preferences were in bed."

You wrestle his hand away from your face for the express purpose of saying, "Why not? Aren't you curious? Like, do you think Yinyue Jun got as nasty as you do when you're in this form? What do you think he liked to do with his second—"

You lose your speaking privileges again.

Dan Heng ignores your muffled whining as he rolls his eyes. You don't even know why he's so bothered by this joke—he's the one who spent the entire day fucking you in ways you simply didn't even think were possible before you met him! (All thanks to the unique anatomy and stamina of his original form, for which you'll always be grateful to Aeon Long.) You try to convey all this through an indignant stare, but he doesn't relent. Eventually, you give up on struggling.

Curiously, Dan Heng takes this opportunity (i.e., a moment in which you are finally quiet) to study you. His hair curtains around your face as he leans over you, his gleaming eyes heavy with contemplation. Noticing the intensity of his gaze, you give him a questioning look.

When he finally pulls his hand away, you ask, "Is something wrong, Heng'er?"

"Not exactly." He's still watching you. "I only realised—I don't think we knew each other.

You stare blankly. "What?"

"I don't think we knew each other in our past lives."

You raise a brow, giving him a funny look.

"So unromantic," you complain. "What, Gege—you don't think our love is fated?"

Another eyeroll. But this time, rather than putting a palm over your mouth, Dan Heng rests his hand against your cheek instead. You blink at the feeling of his thumb running over your cheekbone.

"It's not that," he says. His voice is gentler now. "I just don't think Dan Feng would have had such a sad ending to his life, had you been in it."

"...oh." You open your mouth, but for once, you have no witty remark. Your face feels a little warm when you ask, "Really?"

"Yes, really." You think you catch a hint of fondness in his otherwise plain, unaffected voice. "And anyway—fate has nothing to do with my feelings for you. I chose you in this lifetime of my own accord, and I will spend this lifetime with you of my own accord. Destiny will never have any bearing on the path I wish to walk with you."

You swallow, staring at his eyes. They're painfully earnest. It's making it hard for you to think, though you can't bring yourself to look away.

"...how can you be so sure?" is all you can ask.

"Because my life until now has been controlled by Dan Feng's sins," he says simply, "but I refuse to let the stain of his karma touch my future with you."

You go quiet at that.

Dan Heng is never one to talk about his own suffering. Even when describing the cruelest of punishments he'd inherited from the former Yinyue Jun, he uses unfeeling terms, not ones of complaint. Control, stain, touch—you've never heard such painful language before.

You wonder, for a second, if you went a little too far with your teasing about his past incarnation, for him to speak in such a way. But by the time you've found the words to apologise, Dan Heng's expression has become wry.

"So please," he adds dryly, "don't make me think of what Dan Feng could or couldn't have been doing in bed with you. I already resent him enough."

"...wait," you realise, "are you jealous when you think about me having sex with Dan Feng?"

He clears his throat, looking away. "Not exactly jealous"—he's definitely jealous—"but I personally feel that he would not have deserved to kiss any part of your body, let alone leave his mark on it." He frowns. "And in any case, I just don't like the idea that he has anything to do with our relationship."

"But…" Your mouth opens and closes. "But why? He was technically just you."

"In theory, perhaps. But in practice, we are still different people." His tail settles down again, wrapping around your thigh. "I intend to be born into my next life holding a jade token I chose with you. Not one chosen by Dan Feng."

You are rendered speechless.

Your reserved boyfriend, who can't even hold your hand in public without feeling embarrassed, is casually professing his intent to love you across lifetimes with lines that sound plagiarized from a Xianzhou period drama. You don't know what to say, and you don't know what to do. Maybe you want to scream. Maybe you want to kiss him. Definitely you want to blow all your credits on a pair of luxury jade tokens tomorrow morning, one for each of you. You'll vow to never throw yours out, even if for some reason his next incarnation should try to murder you. You'll make it work somehow.

But—you also find it insanely funny that he can't stand the idea of Dan Feng fucking you. You definitely want to tease him a little more before running out to get any jewellery for him.

"That's very sweet, Heng'er," you start, "but has it occurred to you that if Dan Feng didn't kiss me in these places, then someone else did?"

Dan Heng freezes.

"Someone else would have kissed me here"—you tap the mole over your heart again—"and also here"—closer to the peak of your breast, now—"and here"—further down, on your waist—"and also…"

Before you can spread your thighs and brush your fingers against the mark there, Dan Heng grabs your wrist. His slit pupils are dilated, his tail is flicking, and his purrs have turned into a sharp huff—one accompanied by an expression of deep annoyance.

"I guess you don't like thinking about that either?" you ask, smiling, and Dan Heng chooses not to respond. He simply narrows his eyes—and lowers his head.

You smile when you feel his fangs on your neck. Too easy, you think. He lingers on your pulse, lips brushing it as much as his teeth are, before moving further down.

He places a kiss over your heart, first. Then a trail of them, his breath tickling the skin of your chest. You blink when you feel his hands running along your sides and lingering on your curves, making you acutely aware of his intentions.

"Wait—are we starting another round because of what I said?" you ask, trying not to laugh. "I had no idea you had such a jealous streak in you, Heng'er."

Dan Heng still doesn't reply. He merely replaces his lips with his tongue—and then your smile fades.

The heat of his mouth on you is distracting. Makes your brows knot as his tongue swirls around a nipple, as his breath fans across it. His teeth graze it, too—teasing and a little mean, with how he doesn't give you a break. You're squirming beneath him soon, tugging at his hair, grasping his horns—Wait, wait, I'm too sensitive—but from the way he inhales sharply at your touch, you know you're only encouraging him.

He moves down to your navel. Presses his lips to your skin—peppers your waist with butterfly kisses. His hands slip to your thighs as his mouth trails its way down, parting your legs as he settles between them. Your breath hitches as his fingers touch your entrance, spreading you open. You're still sensitive from all the things he did to you earlier—from how he had you stretched out and panting underneath him, stuffed so full that you could hardly think as you came. From how he fucked you like that again, and again, and again, until you were on the verge of tears from how many times you'd cum—because Dan Heng finds it impossible to stop whenever he's in this form.

But even as sore as you are, you can feel yourself clenching around nothing right now, eager to have him inside you again. You shiver as his breath blows over your aching clit.

"Don't tease me," you whine.

"After all the teasing you put me through?" He sounds unimpressed. "No, I think I'll take my time. It's only fair."

"Gege, I was only joking. You said it yourself: it's only an old wives' tale! I'm sure no one was kissing me on the—ah…"

Your voice clips off into a whimper. Dan Heng is running a finger along your slit, and you feel yourself his spend from earlier leaking out from you. It's hot and it's thick, a mess running all the way down to the sheets beneath you, and there's so much of it. He just spent the whole day filling you up, after all—and you have no doubt that he wants to spend his night the same way.

(Really, you owe so much to the Aeon of Permanence. You'd worship Long if he were still around—may he rest in peace.)

You watch as he studies you, his eyes keen and pupils blown. His gaze lingers on a particular spot on your thigh—and it suddenly occurs to you that he's been kissing all your moles.

"Dan Heng," you breathe, halfway to a laugh, "what exactly are you trying to do?"

He glances up at you, arching a brow.

"Isn't it obvious? I'm making sure that any marks you have in the future will be from no one but me."

Dan Heng's gleaming eyes are set on your beauty mark. He places a soft kiss on it, and he almost sounds amused when he speaks again:

"I'll especially like looking at this one again in your next life."

END

lost my mind from stress this week so I cranked this out rip I hope you all enjoyed!! please leave a note if you did!!

some notes about lore details:

not sure if everyone is caught up to 1.2 content (I'm not lol), so I'll note here that the "jade tokens" being mentioned = Vidyadhara practice of taking matching jade tokens into their hatching rebirth, so they can find each other in their next lives

the relic lore for the passerby of wandering cloud bracer in chinese heavily implies that yingxing and dan feng were either engaged or married. it makes sense when you consider that dan heng and blade wear matching jade buckles. people theorize that these are jade tokens from their lifetime as lovers – hence that whole bit in this fic about dan heng throwing out his jade token 😭

cultural/TL notes:

gege is a term meaning "older brother", though it is often used for non-familial relationships that are very close; it can come off as either flirty or childish. heng'er is a diminutive of dan heng's name.

chinese language has a few different concepts/words for the idea of fate/destiny. the one that dh and mc discuss in this fic is the notion that your relationship with someone in this lifetime will go on to determine the nature of your relationship with them in the next one (缘分, this idea applies to all relationships but includes romantic ones). I tried my best to convey this idea in the dialogue for those reading without that cultural context, but quite honestly I feel like I failed LMAO and thus... you are getting this note.

I also want to clarify that 缘分 is not affected by karma in the Buddhist sense, even though I used the term "karma" within the discussion about fate/destiny; 缘分 is not a Buddhist concept. (the reason that I had dan heng refer to dan feng's "karma" is simply a play on the chinese term for "sins" used to describe dan feng's crimes, 罪业，which can have Buddhist connotations.)

other notes:

while I left the reader's backstory vague (so that you may interpret them however you want), I wrote this with tanghulu mc in mind, because that's who the original anon ask discussed!

yyj peg anon if you are reading this: I apologize for how deeply I botched your idea LMAOAOA this got heavily derailed from the basic prompt of teasing dan heng 😭 what 1.2 will do to a mf…

thank you to the 80% of people who agreed that danheng IL should purr in this fic. i truly do not think that he would exhibit particularly animalistic behaviours in his original form, but, listen........ I wasn't writing this with my brain.

I'm sorry that there was no tonal cohesion in this fic. we really went from dragon cuddles to bullying danheng to existential discussions of fate to monsterfucking foreplay. as I said above........ I wasn't writing this with my brain

#dan heng

[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

more reader and nanami (who are both like 24 here) friendship bc im so tickled by it rn. reader is in love with gojo, gojo is in love with reader, but they're both silly geese, etc.

“You are the only person I know who fully believes they should be allowed to have their cake and eat it too.”

As badly as you want to argue with your longtime friend, you know it’s futile because he’s correct and Kento’s arched eyebrow reminds you that he knows it. You’ve spent days lamenting in person and via text the fact that Satoru has an upcoming date at the end of the week, something that he was all too eager to tell you while the two of you had lunch together after a mission.

The realization hit you as soon as he finished his sentence that day and it has lingered ever since - he’s seeing other people. 

You haven’t been on a date, shared a bed, or shared even the slightest scrap of emotional intimacy with another person in years because you’ve saved it all for Satoru but since that day, you have considered that perhaps you’ve been reading too much into the situation for all these years. This isn’t serious to him. You aren’t serious to him.

The weight of the possibility of losing him too makes your stomach turn and you sigh, shaking your head and coming back to reality to lift your eyes solemnly and look in the direction of your best friend who watches you with an unreadable squint. 

“The best part of not speaking to you for years was not having to hear your logic when I want to be unreasonable.”

He chuckles at your expected response, primly sipping from his cappuccino as you continuously stab the tines of your fork into the melted whipped cream mess remaining on the plate in front of you. It was a nice thought, the strawberry crepe, but you haven’t been able to properly eat for days, too wracked with anxiety and lovesick misery to do anything but wallow and occasionally choke down some insipid sweet given to you by the man causing your pain. 

“Don’t you suppose it means something if you’re this upset over the prospect of him going on a date?”

Your gentle stabbing grows more earnest as you grit your teeth, knuckles turning white with how tightly your fingers are wrapped around the fork. Of course it means something and you’ve known for years that you love Gojo. Whatever you had with anyone else previously feels small in comparison to the tides he turns inside of you but if you said that aloud? You’d never hear the end of it.

“No.”

Despite your inner turmoil, your voice doesn’t shake when you say it but Nanami still shakes his head with a chuckle.

“Please be realistic for once in your life.”

A defeated whine is your response as you drop the fork and drag your hands across your face, sighing and shutting your eyes tightly. Setting his drink on the table, your friend straightens his posture out and clasps his hands in his lap. You gave him the minimal background on the true situation between yourself and Satoru when your friendship rekindled two years ago - it was complicated, the two of you were still figuring things out. He simply didn’t expect that to still be the case.

“Maybe it’s time to be honest and tell him that your friendship dinners or whatever you are calling them now aren’t just dinners, they’re dates.”

The deadpan way that Nanami says the term you’ve used too loosely to describe the evenings you spend with Gojo makes you giggle but it quickly turns into another sigh. 

“Maybe it’s time to go into hiding and never show my face to the public again so I don’t get embarrassed when he steps out with his new girlfriend or boyfriend or whoever.”

Of course an honest conversation about your feelings would clarify all of this but you don’t know how badly you want to open yourself up knowing that if you take everything out, you’ll never be able to put it back in the same arrangement again. What if he rejects you for good? 

“I don’t know what to do.”

Nanami finishes the last of his drink while you mumble almost inaudibly and wishes he felt less amused at the situation you’ve created for yourself. It’s not that he doesn’t feel bad for you with how blatantly you’re suffering but all of this could be very easily resolved if the two of you would simply say the things you say to him about each other to one another. 

Despite knowing better than to meddle, he feels a strange responsibility to help you out and he sighs, thumbing at his temples for a moment while you continue to poke at your plate with a frown.

“I’ll ask him to come out with me instead of going on the date.”

Immediately, your head shoots up and he watches a grin come across your face. It’s a touching gesture from him given he barely tolerates Gojo on a good day much less after listening to you complain for days but he can’t sit by and watch you suffer. Not you, his oldest friend.

“You’d really do that for me?”

Of course he would.

“Against my better judgment.”

Finally, the weight on your chest feels a little lighter and thank yous spill from your mouth at a pace that makes them almost blur together into an unintelligible string of nothing but babbling.

"Yeah, yeah," he waves your words off but graciously nods and accepts your praises of what a good friend he is.

He's only half listening as he contemplates the uphill battle of getting the two most frustrating people he knows to quit playing an unwinnable game with each other.

[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

erosion

existence can erode you, can scrape away your skin.

you couldn’t have known what was underneath his.

notes: sometimes it’s just villain!nanami brainrot hours. gege did an interview and said nanami was originally going to be a curse user who killed his entire company and i think about that every day.

wc: 1.6k

pairing: nanami kento x f!reader

warnings: villain au, brief allusions to sexism/workplace discrimination, references/vague visuals of the aftermath of mass murder/workplace violence, anxiety/terror, aspects of predator/prey ig, lapslock bc i rlly didn’t think this would be that long, and elevators work how i want them to work. please let me know if i missed anything!

You cannot quite make sense of Nanami Kento.

He’s distant in an eerie way, all watercolor smudges through frosted glass. He’s worn at the edges, eroded by existence, a weathered ruin still breathing. You think he’s seen too much.

(Of what, you don’t know, but you know that it has teeth.)

Keep reading

[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

Evil Queen

paring: Good King Gojo x Evil Queen reader

For @blvckryx

Words: 8,9k

Warnings: deaths, NSFW (Sub Gojo, dom reader, tied to a chair, begging, creampie, tied cock, oversensitive)

Summary: All your fiancés died because you didn't want them as husband. You didn't want that much. After your father died, you were forced into marriage. At your wedding, your hands were handcuffed. You wanted to kill your husband - Gojo Satoru. But you couldn't do it, he's not dying. He let you try it. He's not the same as the others... You don't want to kill him...

"(y/n), you can't keep killing your husbands…"

You looked at your father as you looked at the silver bracelet you got from your prospective husband.

"He was not my husband. And I didn't kill him." You said calmly, watching the white diamonds on the silver.

"Zenin is not someone to play with. Honey, understand that you must have a husband." He said as he sat in his chair across the table in front of you.

"How many times do I have to tell you I didn't do it? He killed himself…" you snapped as you threw the expensive jewelry on the table.

Your father was a little afraid of you. And you were perfectly aware of it.

He didn't have much time left in this world, so he tried to leave his kingdom in good hands. Of course he trusted you.

You were relentless. You were so smart. However, you had no mercy even for the smallest thieves.

The good citizens of your kingdom lived peacefully, avoiding poverty.

You didn't want them to want you dead.

You punished all criminals.

Execution, imprisonment, or simply confiscation of property. Or sometimes irreversible disability.

That's what your father used to do.

Thieves had their hands cut off so that they could no longer steal. Prison escapees or those who were fleeing from justice had their legs cut off.

Adulterers were castrated.

You didn't mind. You gave orders to your hired people and they did it.

You didn't mind seeing death.

Not after you saw your future husband, the son of a scholar who was believed to be a sorcerer, kill your friend who has served you since you were little.

As you entered his chamber, you saw a passage to another room below. And when you went in there, you saw Kenjaku cutting the top of the skull off from the rest, and he started looking for something in your friend's brain.

Were you ever going to marry a murderer like him?

You've seen your father convict someone many times.

Your mother accidentally killed your little brother. However, you know what the truth was. She just miscarried. Your father decided that she didn't want to give him any more children, and that she defied him. She was his wife from an arranged marriage. He had her killed as punishment.

You loved your mother more than your father.

And you were afraid you'd die like her because something your father didn't like.

You tried to obey everything he told you to do. You were the perfect princess. That's why you were supposed to be the future queen.

But you wanted your Father not to have the power over you that he has now.

This is why…

That's why you did everything to be cruel.

You had no mercy for anyone who was like him.

Until it finally became your nature.

You weren't nice. But you tried to be good to your subjects.

In other realms they thought of you as a monster. Even if you weren't that cruel.

You were like that to people you didn't like.

You didn't like your husband candidates, so you did everything you could to annul your wedding.

They were either dying or trying to get rid of you.

Kenjaku died because when you were teenagers he started saying something to you that scared you.

He was a little older than you, and he said he'd like to create the perfect baby with you to help him carry out his plan.

You never wanted to marry him.

He died because he fell under the table and the heaviest knife he ever used to split skulls fell on his forehead.

It was as if you murdered him.

Soon after, your second husband appeared…

Naoya Zenin who died during a fight you practically arranged.

Let's just say, a lot of people didn't like him, so finding a candidate wasn't difficult.

But you still had clean hands.

Your third candidate for a husband is a man almost twice your age who has a teenage son.

Well, your Father seeks power and wealth.

He has almost only power.

This man killed the previous ruler and seized the throne.

Fushiguro Toji ruled over a large army. But he wasn't that rich.

You hated him for being such a terrible womanizer. He had a son, two wives if not more.

You were supposed to be his next wife. Even at a meeting with him, there was a woman next to him!

A direct guy who was too brave.

You want someone direct, but not someone like him who shows he can have anyone and does it right away.

As soon as he started approaching you like it wasn't the first time you'd met, you wanted to do something to him.

You did not want to deprive the child of his father, but you even learned that his son does not live in his kingdom!

When he was too insistent, two months ago you gave him a wound running through his mouth. And now there was a scar in that place.

And it's not like he gave up.

You still had to be his wife…

And he was killed fighting a prince of another kingdom.

You were on your way home at the time. Fight and death have passed you by.

You brazenly led Toji out of the house so he couldn't hide. Even though he was strong, there was no way he could win with that power.

Or so you thought.

And you weren't wrong. You received news some time later that your fiancé, Fushiguro Toji, was killed during the fight between his kingdom and the kingdom ruled by Prince Gojo.

Gojo…

Did you know that name…

Didn't this happen to be on your father's lists once?

Soon after, the same man became a king instead of a prince.

His image was in your father's eyes because he didn't want to get in trouble with the strongest kingdom.

He was a good king. Smiling and cheerful. But also deadly.

You weren't that selfish, but without your father, you would have ruled better.

Could there have been no deaths?

Be that as it may, you are involved in all of them.

Your father's chief servants wanted to drag you by force to the next husband candidate, but they mysteriously disappeared.

And only you knew what happened to them.

You knocked them unconscious with an efficient blow to the head with a rock, and left them in the woods. Where it was most dangerous.

And they never came back.

You have blood on your hands.

Your father thinks you'll be the evil queen.

But you don't want to rule by fear.

You hated being ordered around.

Because you wanted to choose your own path.

You have often thought about killing your father.

To dispel his fear of you.

He was the most feared of all these people.

You planned his death.

You didn't want to get married. Not for someone he chose for you!

You were forcibly dragged to the next candidate by the guards.

Ryomen Sukuna… King - monster. Self-proclaimed king of "curses", because when he cursed a people, they died at his hands.

A man who rules over people with fear…

Was this thing supposed to be just for you?

One thing was for sure, you didn't want to be his wife.

A man who drinks blood mixed with wine because he likes it?

No thanks.

But you agreed to your father's game.

You could have shown him that you wouldn't be as nice as you've always been.

You'll be soulless.

You can kill a monster like him.

Someone who with his bare hands, for fun, rips off women their children, babies, and rips off their heads?

Sick bastard…

Even you winced at the sight.

You could have been a mother once.

But there's no way you're having a baby with that thing…

Out of the candidates you had, Kenjaku would be the quickest to pick… He at least tried to be nice somehow…

But it wasn't ideal anyway…

You could kill as you wanted.

You can even be the evil queen. But you won't be blind to what's going on around you.

You were supposed to stay with Sukuna for a month and then get married…

You were always on guard.

You were like a pet to him.

And when he saw you stabbed one of his servants when they were about to put a collar on you like a dog, he smiled instead of being angry.

"You should get used to it sometime. I have so many. So go ahead and have fun." He said and waved his hand. "My woman has to get used to what she will see in wars and everywhere."

You wanted to go up to him and slit his throat.

You were like a puppy to him.

For him to stroke. You were supposed to be just like them to others.

You don't want innocent people to think you're such a monster.

You've killed some people, but never someone who didn't do anything to you.

You spent a lot of your days throwing knives at the wall. You've learned to always hit with the tip.

When you were told to prepare meals for your "husband" (even if he wasn't that and never would have been…), you put old blood of sick animals into his "wine".

Hoping that pig would eventually die.

You threw a knife at him once, and he pulled it out and threw it at you like it was a ball.

You're okay, but you've had enough.

You won't be with a sick bastard like him!

People will hate you when you become his wife against your will.

He had many enemies.

And you were one of them.

You were angry enough to play with him now.

Pretending to seduce him, you locked him in your bedroom.

A fool sees no trick.

Or is he just a sadist who loves to splash in blood?

You don't like it.

But since you have no choice, you will murder anyone who orders you to do anything.

You will kill every candidate for your husband until the choice is finally over.

You will be king on your own.

Even if your past was covered in blood.

You killed your penultimate candidate in bed.

You never wanted him to touch you.

That's why before he thought you two could have sex, you stabbed him in the throat.

To wait for his red eyes to close.

To his subjects, you came out of there a hero who made their lives easier.

No more monthly human sacrifices.

There will be no annual virgin sacrifice.

Nothing will threaten them anymore.

The bloody city has been abandoned. And people came to your kingdom.

More people meant more money for your father. More workers.

However, when you told him that you were the cause of your fiancé's death, he froze.

You showed him your dress which was bright with huge blood stains.

Blood that belongs to the king - Ryomen Sukuna's.

You never regretted killing someone who was mean.

His people were terrified, but they regarded you as their savior.

You gave them freedom.

you helped them.

But your father didn't like it.

No wonder one time, during your frequent look at what you managed to do as a princess, you were pushed off the balcony by your father.

As someone who cannot rule without killing.

Your reflexes were quick.

You instinctively grabbed whatever you could.

At the bottom of the square stood people who watched what was happening there with screams.

The guards started running up the stairs nearby to help you.

You grabbed your father's collar making him lose his balance.

As you grabbed the balcony wall, you pulled him forward.

And you saw your Father slowly approaching down the square. Until he finally fell.

A pool of blood you've seen more than once.

Were you a regicide?

No…

Rather, it was your Father who tried to kill you.

Your closest servant and friend - Utahime, helped you return to safe land with fear.

The guards dragged your body up as fast as they could, then took you to the medic.

You were not found guilty of killing the king.

Because he wanted to kill you.

And the people, when asked if they wished to convict you, refused.

You were the evil queen.

But you weren't the one for them…

You were the new queen.

However, according to your father's death decree, you must have a husband to rule.

Old boor…

He did it specifically for you to have a problem…

You received your father's letters with someone from the Gojo kingdom…

Even their letters were rich…

What if you get married and then become a widow?

You don't want someone to rule over you…

You want to live the way you want, and provide what is good to everyone who believes in you.

You don't want to marry someone like he probably is…

But you have no choice…

You will become his wife, and you will kill him.

Or maybe you'll at least have a baby so you won't be lonely…

So that no one will accuse you of not having a descendant and successor…

You haven't met your future husband.

The advisers and nobles who were your father's faithful servants prepared you for the wedding.

Your dress was beautiful, as befits a royal wedding.

Your only wish was that it be fast.

They all knew that you killed the kings of other kingdoms.

You didn't look at the face of the tall man who was standing in front of you as the ceremony began.

Your hands were handcuffed in front of your body with white gold handcuffs. They didn't look bad and they also held you back.

You've been searched first.

It was hard for you to take your marriage vows with your hands cuffed.

But your prayers for a quick end have been heard by the gods.

Now just a kiss and it'll be over…

The fabric on your face was pulled back, and you looked up a little higher, still not meeting your now husband.

Now just a sealing kiss.

Feel the disgusting lips of someone you don't even want to know…

You stared at one point, over his shoulder as his finger lifted your chin slightly higher as he bent down lower.

He was really tall.

Your lips were slightly parted, and shiny under the influence of natural, glossy lipstick.

"I know you don't want this…"

You heard him say softly.

You widened your eyes and he placed his lips barely on the corner of yours.

Did he just…

Didn't he just make you do something?

Your kingdoms are now connected.

You have become queen and your husband is Gojo Satoru…

You should be happy like the people.

People were happy when they heard the news that your kingdom will be merged with Gojo's kingdom.

It is said that justice, security and prosperity reign at a very high level in that kingdom.

All thanks to the new king. "Son of the Gods".

According to the priests, he was a prophecy of greatness. And eyes like blue crystals, created by miracles in distant lands, showed wealth.

Apparently, no one was disappointed, because all this happened.

They were more powerful than your kingdom. So much…

Much richer.

Even though your country was also prosperous. There were no neighborhoods where people died every day.

But it was even better there.

You used to live in the capital.

The capital was a royal city in the territory of his kingdom.

His close friends will take care of the new lands because he doesn't have much time to go there.

While your people were delighted, the people of his country were not.

How does a wonder child, a wonder king marry an evil Queen?

A queen who killed the kings of other countries who were her betrothed…

You were their queen now.

You want to fulfill your plan.

You will kill him.

But…

"You want to kill me, don't you?" he asked as he lay on his stomach on your bed, lazily eating some dessert.

Your hands trembled.

He knew you could kill him anytime.

However, he didn't seem to care at all…

How?

"Go ahead. You can try. However, I have promised some people that I will not die so soon." He said calmly.

Is he serious?

You can't listen to him!

You must do it!

You will not listen to someone who will probably hurt you!

Suddenly he looked at you from behind his black glasses.

"Let's play your game. Try to kill me. I will not attack you. You attack me and I won't do anything about it. When you kill me, you win."

"Are you serious-"

He interrupted you.

"I'm serious. I want to prove something to someone. What my wife is like."

Before you could somehow embarrass yourself by his words, you decided to give him back.

It sounded weird when he referred to you as "wife".

He was handsome.

And you even liked him.

But…

But you don't want him to hurt you.

You are the Evil Queen. And everyone hates you…

He also…

He can't prove otherwise.

He married you because he had to.

You were the cruelest queen ever.

And you couldn't change it…

you were like that.

What was he trying to prove?

You walked over to him and smiled slightly.

"It's a shame a man with eyes like that has to cover them with those stupid glasses." You chuckled softly.

"I'll take that as a compliment." He said with a smile.

You sat next to him.

You've been married for a month…

He looked at you scanningly.

You had no desire to kill.

You placed your hand on his back, then ran your finger over his palpable muscles under his white shirt.

"What are you doing?" He asked.

"I spend time with my husband…?" You asked, wanting to ignore it.

"It's weird… You want to seduce me?" He smiled at you.

"Do you want it?" You gave him a mischievous smile.

"If I remember correctly what I heard, you killed Sukuna during sex. What if it happens to me?? This is not a clean game. That's not how I agreed. Only traps and fair attack." He turned to you, laying on his back.

"That's not true… I killed him before he could touch me."

"I thought evil queens used someone before they killed them. So maybe you're not the Evil Queen?"

"Shut up." You muttered, sitting on his stomach. "Just fair game. I don't have any weapons on me…"

"That's good. Because I'd love to be closer to my wife as long as I'm alive."

You leaned in to kiss him.

And for the first time you felt that his lips were soft. Not horrible and disgusting.

You didn't know what to do anymore.

Kill him?

Live with him?

You didn't want a husband. But the longer you're with him, the more you think you're okay with him.

He treats you so well…

He took your people and you too. The killer. Evil Queen…

And now he's telling you that you can try to kill him?

What's wrong with him?

For some moments you didn't want to kill him.

But you decided you'd do it before you changed your mind.

In order not to be hurt by him…

Was your relationship just sex?

You noticed that despite being so powerful, he could be a good boy and let you take control.

But never mind the sex…

You've already tried to kill him twice.

You gave him two poisonous plant decoctions to drink.

For the first time, it turned out that he does not drink wine.

The second time he sniffed his juice, and smelled it…

He just smiled at you and spilled it on the floor saying, "Failed try."

You were even able to pour something in his bath which, when poured over an object, burned the surface.

You're not sure what it is, but you hoped you wouldn't see him die.

The longer you're with him, the more you feel sorry for him…

When he dies, then you can cry.

The more you stick to it…

He got into another tub then…

And he directly told you later that he smelled sulfur in the bathhouse when he went in there.

Sulfuric acid in the water… Would that have any effect on him at all?

It failed with the poison, trying to kill him in the water.

The next time you tried to drown him when you offered to wash his back.

He knew something would happen.

You tried to push his head under the water, but you failed. You didn't even move it.

He just laughed.

Is this man really not afraid of death?

After all, you are the Evil Queen!

You really didn't want to see him die…

Did you notice that…

You don't want him to die in front of your eyes. Because you will feel sorry for him…

You tied the ax to the rope you had attached to the door.

The ax was heavy, but you managed to make the trap work.

When he opens the door, the ax will fall on him.

He entered the room, and then heavy weapons began to fly at him on a rope.

He jumped up, grabbing onto the rope, then landed on the metal embedded in the wall.

"Nice move, baby." He laughed.

"What the fuck…?!" his friend shouted.

"It's just our little game. Mine with my wife!"

Have you had enough of this…

You tried to push him down the stairs, but it came out like you were hugging him…

You're running out of ideas…

You felt worse and worse trying to kill him…

He kept smiling at you and letting you do it.

You have not been convicted of trying to kill the king not once…

There were no consequences for you.

You were lying in bed under the covers when he entered the room with a smile.

"Are you okay? You didn't leave today." He said as he closed the door.

You threw a knife at him.

He only tilted his head slightly as the knife pierced the door next to his head.

The incredible reflexes he had amazed you.

But he wasn't afraid of death at all…

"Leave me… Or else… What do you want, Satoru?" You asked turning away from him.

You felt worse and worse at the thought of killing him.

Was he the same as those?

He cared for you after all…

Is it worth killing him?

That's why you were in bed, sad.

"You know… I thought about our bath last night, and I got a little horny…" he murmured.

You looked at the bulge in his pants.

Admittedly, you've thought about it too, and you're sure you can take that big cock right away. After all, you must have gotten a little wet…

You pulled back the covers to signal him.

He walked over quickly, already pulling the length out of his pants.

You pulled up your nightgown and took off your panties, quickly wrapping your legs around his hips and letting him slide right into you.

You've had enough of this… You've failed…

The longer you look at that smile, your heart tells you that you love that look on his face…

Have you had enough of this…

The last time you try…

You will have blood on your hands…

His blood…

When he came into your bedroom in the evening, you kicked him in the back of his knees, causing him to lose his balance.

He knelt on the floor and looked at you.

Little tears flowed from your eyes.

You were supposed to kill those who hurt you…

And he…

And he never hurt you once…

But you'll kill him anyway…

And you'll probably regret it for the rest of your life.

You expected him to be furious.

But he looked at you with the same eyes as always.

And he smiled very slightly.

You held the knife tighter in your hand.

You were shaking a bit.

You've killed so many times.

He can't be your weakness…

He was supposed to be just like everyone else…

He was supposed to do what you don't want!

…But he didn't…

You walked over to him and tapped his shoulder with your foot.

He fell to the floor, lying on his back.

But he didn't even protest.

You put your foot on his chest and then sat on top of him, pointing the blade of the knife at his throat.

You breathed for the tears to disappear.

But looking at that scene below you, you couldn't stop crying.

The last light of the sun was reflecting off the knife today. It lightly illuminated the room.

You saw his gentle eyes and kind smile.

He didn't even move. Even if he could break free now and throw you off him, call the guards to take you to the dungeon.

But he doesn't…

"Why do you always have to smile like an idiot?!" you shouted. "Do you really want to die?!"

"You're beautiful even now." He said.

"Shut up! Why?!"

"From the beginning, I wanted to prove to you that you are not a cruel person. You don't want to get hurt. I wanted to show you that you can get love too."

You shivered as your heart pounded.

But with tears you brought the knife closer to his throat.

"Shut up! For everyone I'm just a queen that kills! I-"

"You're not an evil queen. You're the perfect queen who wants to take care of those she cares about. I know you may think differently of me than I do. If you think I'm like them, kill me. But I never meant to hurt you. What you do depends on you. I will accept what you give me. That's what you do out of love, right?"

"Y-You–!"

Your hands were shaking.

He still didn't move. He wasn't nervous at all.

"You won our game. Now I won't run away. I can't avoid it. I give you my life. I give it to my wife. Who is not an evil queen."

You squeezed your eyes shut.

Just one hand movement, and it's done.

You moved the blade.

You threw the knife on the floor, jumping off it.

You were kneeling on the floor, covering your face with your hands.

Two meters from him.

You can not do it…

You can't…

You felt something on your shoulder.

You looked over there.

"It's okay… Don't cry…" he said calmly and wrapped his arms around you very gently as he knelt behind you.

"I just wanted to kill you… so why are you now–"

"I love you. Isn't that reason enough? You are my wife. I swore allegiance to you. So I wanted to be true to what I said. I wanted to prove something to someone. What my wife is like. I wanted to prove to you that you have a good heart. If it wasn't, I would have been dead six months ago."

You moved.

He thought you would run away from him.

But you turned away, pressing your head against his chest.

He didn't do anything to you…

You couldn't kill him…

Because he was one of the few people who treated you differently.

Better.

Your husband was a good king…

You were supposed to be the evil queen…

You are not.

To him, you are the most wonderful woman.

He may have been against being with you at first, but he saw you walking around in dark dresses, making no secret of the fact that you were the cause of the deaths of so many important people.

You were nice. You cared about people.

And you didn't care what a cruel, bloody portrait you had in people's eyes.

Those who have listened to you believe that you are a good queen.

Those who don't know you think you're just a heartless murderer who out of selfishness and greed craves power.

However, you did not kill their wonderful king, who is not much different from this portrait.

His smile is on his face, but he has even more terrible scenes than you had.

Killing, torturing. Leaving to fate. Psychological and physical torture.

Cruel deaths.

He, the good king, hid this side from people.

But everyone knew the power in his hands.

You didn't hide the truth about yourself.

And the world shows you that sometimes a sweet lie is better than a bitter truth.

But what was supposed to connect you was never going to lie anymore.

It will be the sweet truth.

He promised you that people would recognize you.

And despite the fact that you have no heart and no mercy for criminals, you are actually a nice person.

As long as no one bothers you.

He got a chance from you. And you let him get as close as you've never been to anyone before.

You failed to kill him, and you no longer wanted to.

Not after everything he's done for you.

He himself could kill you and get rid of you.

But he didn't. He's not afraid that you might kill him in his sleep.

Because he trusts you.

Especially after you let him get so close to your body and heart that he'll never be able to leave again.

The first person you chose to be your husband, and you liked him, was him. Satoru.

Someone who thinks about you and not just about himself.

Even if he didn't want an arranged marriage, he somehow accepted you.

He liked the fact that you had emotions and your own opinion.

That you don't just live by what people think of you.

He only allowed you to try to kill him to prove to you that you are not what people tell you.

You're not cruel.

Even though you have no mercy, you are a loved one for those who are close to you.

Even though there aren't many people in your life who are so nice to you who love you, he was one of those people.

He deserved a place in your heart…

The only man you could love because he didn't see you as just killing anyone who was mean.

He was like that because he killed someone himself. That's the role of the king. Sentence to death, kill in combat.

He wasn't sure if he happened to be more murderous than you.

But your roles were made anyway.

Evil Queen and Good King.

Even if you're on a similar level at murder.

You will be Good, Beautiful Queen by his side.

And people can't say you'll be the same as you were.

Because you are his wife.

And what you decide, you do.

Because you are beautiful, strong and independent.

His great queen.

"It's okay if you still want to kill me." He said, stroking your head reassuringly. "I don't forbid you from trying your best. It was even fun…" he laughed.

You clenched your hands on his sides.

"You can still try to kill me–."

"I don't want to kill you…" you interrupted him, and suddenly you looked at him with a smile. "But don't think I'm going to be a gentle wife."

"And that's something I love." He smiled and placed his lips on your cheek.

"… I thought you didn't want to kill me anymore…" he moaned, feeling the ropes tighten on his body. "So what is it supposed to be?"

You wrapped a red rope around his chest.

He laughed as sweat slowly ran down his face.

He was trying so hard to be calm, but any human can start to panic the moment he can't move.

It was the same with him now.

If you wanted to kill him, you will surely succeed now.

You called him to your chamber. He came.

But then he realized it was quite dark there.

The windows are covered with thick curtains, and the lighting is provided by candles evenly distributed around the room.

There was a chair in the middle.

He called your name several times.

And he expected something perverted from you.

After all, when was it such a climate in the room? Warm light, alluring atmosphere. so good. So perfect for you.

As he walked over to the heavy chair, he wondered where you got it from.

It was definitely from here. Or did you have a carpenter do it?

It was tall and heavy.

Dimples on the legs, at the height of the ankles, and a specific shape of the back. Like it was perfectly made for his body.

It sure was comfortable.

And he could say it right away.

Besides, this height also showed that it was perfect for Him.

The red fabric covering in the middle and back contrasted with the dark wood.

Is this a gift for him from you?

If so, he'll be glad to lean you against the back of that chair and fuck you into oblivion.

But he knew it wasn't that kind of gift.

You are planning something.

As he ran his fingers along the smooth wood of the backrest, he felt someone pushing him.

When he turned around, he saw it was you. You stepped out from behind a large curtain, pushing him into a chair.

"(y/n)–."

"Don't move." You said grabbing his wrists tightly and pulling them back.

If he had tried to break free from your grip, he would have succeeded.

Because he is strong. But curiosity overcame him. He wanted to see what you would do to him.

But when he felt you wrap the string around his wrists, it was different.

He was curious what you would do to him. And there was also a dangerous excitement.

You've wrapped his big wrists many times as you've been training to keep him from breaking free.

His hands were tightly bound and the constriction in the lower part of the chair prevented him from getting up from the chair because his hands were behind his back and the chair was wider at the top of his back.

Even if he tried, his bound hands wouldn't let him get up.

It took some time to plan what this chair should look like…

And the king's carpenter agreed to do it.

As he leaned forward, you grabbed his head, catching his hair lightly, and pulled his head back, tugging on the white strands.

"No, my king. You can't move yet." You whispered in his ear.

As he listened to you with his pupils dilated to catch the light, you saw his ears blush…

You reached around him, passing the red rope from one hand to the other.

You wrapped his chest around it, leaving space where his tits were.

Something like this could be useful.

Later, you also bound his arms, making the bound hands immobile, and tied to the back of the chair.

You tied it with a strong knot, but you didn't tighten it on him so tight that it left marks. You don't want it to take away his blood supply.

"… I thought you didn't want to kill me anymore…" he moaned, feeling the ropes tighten on his body. "So what is it supposed to be?"

"I will not kill you, my king ~. You just said you wanted to play. Besides, I told you I wouldn't be a gentle queen." You laughed and knelt with him, spreading his legs, then tied his ankles to the legs of the chair. Rope fit perfectly into the cut narrowings.

So that's why it's there…

After you finished, he started to move a little. Struggling. But he couldn't move his body.

It wasn't like he was fighting to get out.

It's as if he's only looking at how powerful the ropes are.

And the sight of you in front of him in a dark red dress with lace was wonderful.

You were so different from other princesses and queens.

They all wore bright, clean dresses.

And you often wore darker colors.

Maybe it's also because the light ones get dirty very quickly?

Especially if the dress is long and touches the floor.

He almost completely calmed down.

Only his heart pounded in his chest.

His breathing was heavier.

You are his dangerous pleasure.

You did something unexpected.

And he liked it.

The dangerous excitement he felt now.

The direction of his blood was clearly directed to his crotch, and he slowly felt it begin to harden in his pants.

"A gentle queen would never do such a thing, huh… And my queen finally caught me, heh." He smiled conceitedly.

"That pretty smile won't be there when you beg me, baby." You said and quickly untied the back of your dress,

Taking it off as you tossed the expensive fabric aside onto the floor, leaving your red petticoat with stockings on you.

You were walking on a soft carpet with a heavy chair on it.

You wanted it to be so heavy that he couldn't knock it over very easily.

Two people brought it here, and it was really hard for them to do it, but they made it.

You also had other surprises for him today.

"Beg? What should I beg for, baby?" He asked with the same smile.

You stood up and grabbed his cheeks to make him look up.

"We both know you can moan and beg like a whore. So be a good boy 'cause I make you beg for touch." you kissed his lips before pulling away and knelt down again, resting your cheek against his inner thigh.

You reached your hand to his increasingly visible cock.

"You like it." You smiled harder.

"I like giving attention from my wife. Will you touch me?" His grin appeared.

At what he said you snapped your fingers at his increasing length, causing him to hiss softly.

"Such a big, nice dick… However, if you still think you're driving now, your dick will be in your pants all the time. So cramped and uncomfortable. Without anything to touch." You said. "So be a good boy. Agreement?"

He looked at you with a blush on his cheeks.

He liked it…

"… Yeah… My queen." he said with a small smile and blush.

"Good boy~."

Suddenly you took out a knife.

He looked at you questioningly.

"You didn't say you were going to cut me." He grunted dissatisfied.

"If I didn't say so, then I won't." You laughed and cut the threads holding the buttons on his shirt.

To finally pull both sides of his shirt hard, revealing his chest.

You wanted to laugh softly as his nipples hardened at the feeling of cold around him.

His pants were getting very uncomfortably tight…

Seeing his displeasure, you reached down to his crotch and unzipped his pants.

He lifted his hips slightly to help you take it off him.

And now his pants and underwear were at his ankles, further restricting his movements when he was bound.

Now he won't do anything. He won't run away.

His pink tip rested on his thigh.

His hands were moving because he wanted so much to start massaging his cock.

Seeing you in front of him just made his skin tingle.

But he couldn't do it.

Only you could touch him because his body was immobile.

You threw the knife to the floor with a loud clatter.

You took off your petticoat, leaving you in only stockings in front of him.

"Without underwear? Be brave, baby." He smiled at the sight of your perky nipples and sweet, soft pussy for him to look at now.

You placed your finger on his lips, silencing him.

"Shh… Do not say anything. If you're a good boy who listens, I'll give you a reward."

"What reward?" he smiled.

"If you don't listen, I won't touch you. And you won't be able to touch either."

"Hard Punishment…"

"I know. That's why you promise to be a good boy?" You stroked his cheek.

He nodded at you, looking away with a blush.

"Perfect." You patted his head. "Good boys always get rewards. And if you promise to be a good boy, why shouldn't I reward you?"

He looked at you curiously as you knelt in front of him, stepping between his spread legs.

Kneeling on his pants that gathered at his ankles.

That's the height you were after.

His cock was perfectly level with your tits.

You reached for his semi-hard cock, licking the tip lightly.

He sighed softly, wanting more…

You licked the bottom of his cock then pulled away.

He looked at you questioningly as you spat on your chest and then down his length, smearing your saliva all over him.

And you moved closer, placing his shaft between your breasts, smearing saliva on your skin.

And when it fit perfectly, you cupped your tits with your hands, making you rub his cock.

He made low grunts as the soft mounds brushed hard against him. Because it was so enjoyable.

You smiled as you watched his flushed cheeks as his flushed cock brushed the tip against your skin until his warm, an oblong and large piece of his body gave hot drops of precum onto your skin.

Much to his displeasure, your touch left his cock, leaving him standing at attention in your direction.

Before he could say anything, he stopped himself, remembering that when he's a good boy, you'll give him a reward.

He carefully watched your wet breasts and how you reached into your hair, untying the black ribbon that held your hair.

You kissed his head, and suddenly wrapped a thin ribbon around its base.

You wrapped the fabric strap around it, pulling it tighter before tying a bow over his balls.

You tweaked it a bit to get a nice view.

His cock, standing and shining, hard. A black bow over his balls. And on its base a tightened strip of material that oppresses it.

You sat on his lap, kissing his chest that wasn't covered with rope until you moved your mouth to his nipple, sucking lightly.

His muscles tensed as you bit down slightly.

Pinching his sensitive bumps with your fingers, you stood over his hips, rubbing your clit lightly against the tip of his, giving both you and him pleasure.

While you're kissing.

His tongue swirled in your mouth before you dominated the kiss, pushing your tongue into his mouth, causing him to purr.

But as his cock slid lower, touching your entrance, you pulled away from him completely.

You got off his lap and sat on the bed that was five feet in front of him.

"(y/n)~." he murmured. You could feel his plea for touch in his voice.

"You're such a good boy. But I have to punish you for breaking out in the beginning." You said with a winning smile.

You looked at his cock which turned from bright pink to red through the material that was tightened around it.

He looked so cute with that bow.

A big, pretty dick wrapped in a ribbon that swells and throbs.

He will moan so nicely when you sit on him~.

"When you don't complain, it will be faster for you ~."

You lay down suddenly on your back, dipping your fingers into your soft, wet folds.

Spreading out to show him your pussy.

You knew so well that his hungry eyes stared at your dripping folds.

You like the way he looks fucked up and flushed.

He will be very sensitive when you touch him.

With a small smile, you run your fingers over your clit quickly, widening your legs wide for him so he can watch and drool. What is he definitely doing.

It might be a little embarrassing to lie so open to someone, but it's worth your time. To see his fucked up face later when he wants to come.

To show him more, you inserted two fingers of your other hand into you, still moving quickly over your clit.

God, how he wanted to replace your fingers with his.

How he wanted to replace your fingers with his cock.

But he had to be a good boy because he won't get it at all.

Even if he tries to look away to stop feeling the throbbing in his swollen cock, your wet sounds and grunts will still make him stare at the beautiful scene before him.

Your pussy has always been so soft. He loved hiding inside of you so much. Hitting your soft body.

And now he also couldn't miss how your smaller hands are satisfying you.

He loved to dig his fingers and face into your pussy fat. Feeling soft. Feeling the taste. To feel your soft pussy sucking his hard cock inside.

If just looking could bring him to orgasm, he would have shot thick strings of cum long ago.

Not only was nothing touching him, but the bow on it would probably prevent him from coming. As befits a cock-clamping posture.

His breath quivered as your thighs trembled as well, and your fingers stopped as you came with a hollow groan.

He looked at his cock, red and begging for attention.

Drops of precum flowed from its tip, down its side.

If only he could somehow make anything touch his length…

He wanted so much to touch…

With a red face and hazy eyes, he looked at you as you sat on the mattress of the high bed, adjusting your stockings with labored breathing.

Seeing his almost teary eyes, you smiled slightly.

"what's wrong?"

You gave him a stronger smile.

He looked at you, then at his cock, then at you again.

A silent signal that he wants you to touch him.

"Sorry, I don't know what you mean."

"Come here…" he moaned.

"That's not how you should talk. A good boy doesn't talk like that." You waved your finger at him.

He sighed heavily.

He couldn't stand it…

Tears stung his eyes. He was so sensitive and the material on his penis wasn't helping.

"So? What should you say?" You walked over to him, sitting on his lap but being careful not to touch his cock.

His cock was crying with precum.

"Touch me." he murmured.

"I did not hear."

"Touch me." he said sharper.

"That's not how you should call me." You laughed. "I already told you that you would beg me. Show me your sweet face when you beg me."

Flushing, he watched as your hands massaged his thighs, close to his length, but you still hadn't touched him.

"So?"

"touch me please?"

"Better now. But say it louder."

Your fingers untied the bow, but instead of taking it off, you tightened the fabric a little tighter around his thickness.

He opened his mouth, letting out a trembling groan. His eyes released solitary tears as did his cock, which cried with more precum when squeezed.

"P-please…" he groaned, looking at you with glassy eyes.

Taking advantage of the drops of precum running down his cock, you tugged at the fabric, sliding it lightly over his cock. He hissed as he felt the pressure go higher up his length.

It pulsed. You've seen it so much.

His hips jumped as he tried to pull back, but he couldn't.

His legs moved, but he couldn't move them because of the ropes around his ankles.

"I can't hear you, honey~."

As you said, his smile disappeared from his face. And so red and desperate he looked so cute.

You felt your excitement run down your thigh at the mere sight.

"Please…"

"Say it louder and you'll get it." You ran your fingers across his chest.

"Fuck me… Touch me…"

"What are you saying?"

"Fuck me please!" he said out loud and you laughed.

You slowly removed the slightly wet ribbon from it, tossing it aside.

And to his relief, you grabbed his cock, smearing what was oozing from its tip down its impressive length.

So red and pulsating.

It's so begging to put it inside you, and feel all those veins on it.

When you petted him, he felt like he was about to explode.

He's coming really fast…

He doesn't care… He just wants to be in your pussy.

"Good boy."

You moved closer, aligning his weeping length below you, in straight line.

He was swollen. He was a little bigger than he would have been if you hadn't put that ribbon on him.

Which also makes him very sensitive.

He moaned loudly almost immediately as your entrance widened to accommodate the top of him.

After such torture, he finally got around to receiving your attention.

And it was such a great feeling. Almost overwhelming.

His eyes were still glassy and watery.

In one motion, you pushed it all the way in, waiting for you to get used to it.

But for him, the inside of your pussy was too good…

He had his hands on the ropes.

His eyebrows furrowed.

You wiggled your hips a bit, feeling swollen cock dilate you so much.

You looked at his face and smiled.

His arms were shaking. You felt him pulsating inside you.

It felt so good to have him inside.

So big…

You smiled as you sat motionless on his cock.

You kissed his neck.

"You can come. I know you're sensitive."

You jumped on his thighs, making your tight walls stroke him. he was moaning.

"I'm letting you come. Then do it, my king." You pulled his hair up slightly. "I want your sperm."

At your dirty words, he shuddered.

"Use my permission while you can. You don't want me to stop touching you again, do you?" You kissed his jaw to kiss him later.

You move your hips back and forth.

After no more than a moment, he moaned into your mouth, and you felt large amounts of cum filling you intensely.

You pulled it half way out and then sat on it again. Letting him end up completely inside you.

The feeling of his hot cum filling you inside was very pleasant.

Placing your hands on his lap, you arched your back back, watching as his cum flowed out of you with your movement. Even though his softening length acts like a plug for you to keep his seed from flowing out.

He was sensitive to the heat inside you.

But he knew it would make him hard again.

And ready to let your pussy milk him to the last drop again.

"Why are you still throwing a knife at me?" He asked as he tilted his head to the side as a knife landed next to his head.

"Habit… I'm just more irritable…" you said sitting on the bed.

"The blade never hits, so I know you're not trying to kill me." He laughed.

He walked closer to you and offered you his hand.

"People are waiting. Do you have the strength to get up?" He asked protectively. "Would you like to go there?"

"If the people want it, as their queen, I guess I must." You grabbed his hand and stood next to him. "Maybe they finally want to burn me at the stake as a witch."

"Don't joke like that. They would never want to do that to you."

"That's right. I didn't do anything wrong to them."

"You are a great queen to them. Besides, we have to share this information with them sometime."

"You're right… I'm just not used to that kind of thing. But I wouldn't be surprised if they still hate me."

"It's been so long. After all, everything is so perfect. Nobody's going to want to do that to you." He smiled, placing his hand on your lower back. "Besides, in audiences people asked if you were well, because they hadn't seen you outside for a long time."

"Really?"

"You are a great queen to them. How could it be otherwise. Besides, there are lots of people waiting to see us. Did you know that the ill health of a king or queen makes people sad? When they feel devoted to the ruler like those here, they don't play or anything until the ruler recovers. So everyone wants to know what's going on with you. So many times they asked Shoko when she went to visit you what was going on."

"Even as a medic, she didn't tell anyone?" You asked, grabbing his hand as you walked beside him.

"A secret is a secret. But it's best to finally talk about it." He chuckled softly. "If they ever find out anyway, better sooner than later. To avoid controversy among people. After all, not everyone can accept a secret that is still hidden."

"You won…" You smiled at him.

Your dark blue dress was picked up by him as you walk down the stairs next to him.

"Or maybe they want to burn me at the stake?" You asked laughing as you heard people clapping and shouting as the man said you were leaving.

"Does it sound like they want to do this? I hope you'll eventually get used to this kind of love people show."

You went out with him to the low terrace in front of the courtyard where the people had gathered.

When they saw you, they cheered.

Especially when your husband stood behind you, placing his hands on your belly visible under the dress.

#super cute!

[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

Omega!Narutoverse Future Family Headcanons

This is a compilation of my headcanons about future families for my favourite Naruto boys (excluding Kakashi who is childfree in my headcanons.) 

This is very long, so I’ve put most of it under a cut <3 Enjoy~

Naruto:  : 4 children – Son (omega), adopted daughter (alpha), twin sons (betas). 

Has his son about four years before he becomes Hokage.

His son is a huge daddy’s boy type and clings to Naruto every chance that he gets. 

Naruto never lets his role as Hokage take him away from his son any more than absolutely necessary. Does he take his son into his office? Absolutely. He puts down a little play pen on the floor while he works :’). 

His son loves cuddles so much and he is so gentle. 

He doesn’t like pranks though which makes Naruto a little sad but he would never do anything to make his little one sad. 

Male omegas can be identified from birth, so you both knew he was, but even if you didn’t it’s very obvious. He makes his own little nest next to Naruto’s but ends up crawling into Naruto’s for cuddles every time. 

As he gets older, he attends the academy, but he hates it so much. He reminds me a little of a young Itachi, a pacifist to the core. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone! He begs you and Naruto to let him attend the civilian school, and of course you let him. 

Naruto gets a lot of shit for allowing this from some parties *cough* the council *cough*. The Hokage’s children should be powerful ninjas according to them, but Naruto will always prioritise his children’s happiness. Naruto shields his son from the hate as much as possible, but some slips through.

 The transition is easier if you are a civilian, your son feels a little more secure if that’s the case, and he would consider following your footsteps depending on what you do. If you run a little business, he would definitely want to work with you. If you’re also a ninja he can feel left out and unsure, but he grows into such a quietly confident person, who starts a little business. 

Not being a ninja also means he can be there for his younger siblings. He is a dedicated older brother who is always there for them. He has a room for each other them at his house and loads of medical supplies for when they come back from missions injured and won’t go to the hospital. He always patches them up. 

All his younger siblings respect him so much. He is a very reliable person, and his siblings get so offended if they hear any anti-civilian talk from the ninjas they work with.

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[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

How would the trash quartet react to their significant other calling them "beautiful"? Like in a super serious sort of way.

CHROLLO

Chrollo’s dark eyes slowly rolled to the side, looking at you without moving his head from the bowed position he held it in while lost in serious thought. You almost regretted the careless words, but they certainly weren’t a lie. That was more apparent than ever when he looked at you, the light shining in brightening the dark of his eyes into a beautifully intense gray.

Then he let out a little huff of a laugh, his lips curling into a smirk as he full straightened out. Embarrassment for your thoughtless comment finally caught up to you, but Chrollo spoke before you could try to awkwardly explain it away.

“Are you so starved for my attention you’ll resort to clumsy seduction?” he asked, his voice warm with humor. You opened your mouth to contradict the notion that you were trying to seduce him, but Chrollo continued before you could, “That’s fine,” he held up a hand, motioning for you to go on with a teasing smile, “I’m listening. Please, continue.”

PARISTON

Pariston first looked surprised, and for a moment you believed you’d managed to shock him, but then he laughed. It wasn’t really a mean laugh, but it made you feel embarrassed all the same, stoking a feeling of regret within you for speaking without thinking.

“No, no, you’re too kind,” he finally told you, meeting your eyes with a wide smile, “Besides, isn’t that meant to be my line? Men aren’t usually called beautiful.”

“But you are,” you defended yourself, wholeheartedly believing it. With his messy hair, shiny smile, and coffee warm sparkling eyes, Pariston was indisputably beautiful in your eyes. Besides, you knew that he was aware of it even without you having to point it out, it wasn’t as if he was particularly secret about his special type of charming vanity.

Pariston laughed again at your answer, a short sound that made his eyes flash.

“How sweet,” he cooed, “Should I think of a way to thank you?”

ILLUMI

“Eh? Beautiful?” Illumi asked, his stoic expression giving way to slight surprise. You blinked, taken aback by his energetic response.

“Yes,” you said, your voice softened by hesitance, “Is that okay?” you asked, wondering if you’d somehow managed to offend with your use of that word, “I only meant that you’re… Attractive.”

“I know what you meant,” Illumi told you, falling back into his impassive demeanor, “I was only confused by your choice of word.”

“Beautiful?” you asked, “It’s true.” There were few other words to describe him really. Illumi captured an eerie type of beauty with his impossibly pale skin and glossy dark eyes and hair.

“You think so?” he asked, holding your gaze. Trying to tell if you were being honest? Illumi finally hummed, looking away without any further reaction.  

HISOKA

You were certain that Hisoka’s eyes had blown wide in shock at your compliment, even if he arranged his features into a smile only a second later. It gave you somewhat of a rush to know you’d managed to surprise him with something so simple, especially considering that was usually his thing. Of course, that feeling was ruined as soon as it struck.

“Are you trying to flirt with me?” he asked silkily, “I usually prefer more compelling lines, but in your case I might make an exception.”

You frowned at him, but that only made his smile deepen.

“I wasn’t flirting,” you told him sternly, avoiding his eyes with a flare of embarrassment, “I only meant that I like this shade of red… It suits you.” His freshly dyed hair did, in fact make him,

“You think it makes me… Beautiful,” Hisoka repeated the word, looking all too pleased with the notion. Maybe, just maybe, you saw a bit of actual happiness in that smile. “How sweet of you to say so.”

#Hunter X Hunter

[self-indulgence-in-fiction]

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