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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

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Light on the Door (ao3) (aka WWX in the Nie sect); tumblr: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

Wei Wuxian woke all at once when someone dropped something onto the floor, but he kept his body relaxed and his eyes closed. It was only when the smashing sound was followed by a very familiar muttering – “Shit, shit, shit, da-ge’s going to kill me!” – that he relaxed.

“How expensive is it that you think he would care?” he asked, opening his eyes and frowning when he found himself somewhere unfamiliar.

Nie Huaisang, who had been standing in the middle of the room and looking at the shards of a (admittedly very expensive looking) broken teapot with some dismay, promptly forgot all about the teapot and dashed over to him. “Shixiong! You’re awake!”

“You say that like it’s a surprise,” Wei Wuxian said, reaching up to rub his head. “Am I – wait, is this Jiang sect grounds? How’d we get to the Lotus Pier, of all places?”

The last he remembered, he and Lan Wangji had remained behind in the cave with the Xuanwu of Slaughter, distracting it while the others went out through the underwater exit, which had closed up when the Xuanwu had thrashed around. After a few days, when inedia would no longer help them and they knew their strength would begin to decrease, they had decided to fight it, and then…

“Is Lan Zhan all right?” he asked, abruptly concerned. “What happened to him? Did he –”

“He’s fine, you big baby,” Nie Huaisang said, throwing himself down on the bed next to him and promptly snuggling in for a hug. He had zero grounds to call anyone else a big baby. “He woke up two days ago and already left for the Cloud Recesses. He didn’t want to worry them any longer, and they need him, what with his brother still being missing.”

Wei Wuxian spared a moment’s thought for Lan Xichen, who was very nice and also a good friend of Nie Mingjue’s in addition to being Lan Wangji’s precious older brother, but reminded himself that there was no point in worrying when it wouldn’t do any good. That settled, he complained, “Oh, that’s rude! He left before making sure I woke up?”

“Oh, you woke up yesterday before he headed out,” Nie Huaisang said breezily. “You were sleep-drunk as anything, but you were awake and saying something about musical masterpieces. Possibly you might have started to say something about kissing, but tragically I was forced to gag you for your own health before Lan Wangji disintegrated from embarrassment.”

Wei Wuxian put his head in his hands. “…and so he left.”

“And so he left,” Nie Huaisang agreed. “Don’t worry, he left you a nice long letter to read when you feel up to it – and when I decide to give it to you.”

“Cruel.”

“Caring! You must think of your health, shixiong.”

“Shixiong this, shixiong that,” Wei Wuxian teased. “Were you worried about me?”

Nie Huaisang glared death at him. “Of course I was! Do you know what you put me and Jiang Cheng through?! We left you in a cave with that thing, we got ambushed by the Wen sect the second we emerged –”

“You did? Are you all right?!”

“Shut up, I’m fine, Jiang Cheng handled it,” Nie Huaisang said, which – fair. Wei Wuxian would have to give Jiang Cheng many relieved thank-you-for-saving-my-little-brother hugs. “We then ran for days to get someone to rescue you –”

It make sense. The Lotus Pier was closer than the Unclean Realm, and Jiang Fengmian had always been a little unreasonable about Wei Wuxian; it was a good bet to make.

Still, even if they’d travelled down from the Nightless City, they hadn’t gone that far, and the Lotus Pier was a long way away.

“Are your feet all right?” he asked.

“No! They are not! They are awful! There was blood! But not as much blood as we found all over you when we broke into the cave to find you lying there unconscious!”

Wei Wuxian resigned himself to spending the next shichen calming down Nie Huaisang from (admittedly somewhat reasonable) hysterics.

“So I’m worried about the Jiang sect,” Nie Huaisang said the second they crossed out of the Lotus Pier – by horse, since that required less from his torn-up feet.

Wei Wuxian looked at him sidelong. “And this wasn’t something you could mention while we were there? To them?”

“I’m not so stupid as to start a fight with our allies by implying that they can’t handle themselves,” Nie Huaisang said. “Even if…”

“Even if you don’t think they can?”

Nie Huaisang sighed. “It’s not that!” he protested. “They’re very capable. Extraordinarily capable, even. But Sect Leader Jiang doesn’t take things seriously enough – the way he tried to scold Jiang Cheng for lecturing you..!”

Wei Wuxian winced. He’d managed to head that off at the pass, luckily, but Jiang Cheng’s face had gotten that mulish expression of mixed envy and hurt that he hated to see, and it hadn’t cleared up until Nie Huaisang fainted in order to escape the awkward conversation. It was a trick he pulled often, one that worked on adults virtually all the time and also amused Jiang Cheng every single time.

“And he doesn’t take da-ge seriously, either,” Nie Huaisang said, sounding as if that were the worst possible crime imaginable. Wei Wuxian understood his feelings. “Not even after the indoctrination camp…I just don’t know if he’ll take the steps he needs to in time.”

“You’re right,” Wei Wuxian said regretfully. “Uncle Jiang won’t want to think about it, so he won’t, but that won’t stop the war from coming…Wait, hold up. You think the Wen sect would come here? Why?”

“I mean, it’s the logical next step to quash another one of the Great Sects,” Nie Huaisang said. “Also, remember that time I fainted from the heat and they took me inside the guardroom? I looked at some of their papers; they were definitely planning on a siege.”

“But why here?” Wei Wuxian asked, deciding to reserve comments on Nie Huaisang’s unexpected foray into espionage to a time when he could appropriately lose his mind over it, preferably with Nie Mingjue in the vicinity to add to the effect. “Why the Lotus Pier? Jiang Cheng wasn’t involved with sticking it to Wen Chao; that was Lan Zhan and Jin Zixuan, and then after that it was mostly me. No Jiang sect at all!”

“He helped later,” Nie Huaisang pointed out. “Anyway, where else would they go? They attacked the Cloud Recesses once already, Lanling Jin is so slimy and double-dealing that they might as well count as a Wen ally, and if you had to pick between attacking the Lotus Pier or the Unclean Realm, between wishy-washy old Sect Leader Jiang or da-ge, who’s been preparing for war since before you joined us, which would you pick?”

“Well, shit,” Wei Wuxian said, because Nie Huaisang wasn’t wrong at all. Nor was he wrong to keep this from Jiang Fengmian, who would probably just pat them on the head indulgently before dismissing them. “What’s the plan, then?”

“Shopping,” Nie Huaisang declared.

Wei Wuxian knew his little brother too well. He started grinning. “Just a couple of young masters going on a shopping trip? With a nice, small retinue?”

“We could hardly be expected to travel with anything less,” Nie Huaisang agreed, grinning back. “Especially with there being both of us, heir and spare! It would be disgraceful to send us out with anything less than at least a squad of Nie culivators. We could stay in Yunping, maybe? That’s not far.”

“Yunping? There’s nothing in Yunping.”

“Not recently, no,” Nie Huaisang said, and shrugged when Wei Wuxian shot him an inquisitive glance. “Personnel issue, someone da-ge met recently…not a big deal. I’m just curious about him, that’s all. I’ll tell you about it on the way.”

“I love how you just decide these things and then pretend that I have some input into how things are going to go before doing what you want anyway,” Wei Wuxian remarked. “I take it that you’ve contacted da-ge already, then?”

“Of course! Sent him a letter first thing once we arrived at the Lotus Pier. Are we going?”

“Yes, fine,” Wei Wuxian said, rolling his eyes. “We’re going, we’re going.”

“So, I think we can all agree that that went badly,” Nie Huaisang said. “Can we all agree on that?”

“Shut up,” Jiang Cheng said. His impression of being above it all was somewhat ruined by the tears still streaming down his face and the way he wouldn’t stop hugging them both intermittently.

“Listen, it could have gone worse,” Wei Wuxian said placatingly. “Right? Could have gone much, much worse. At least Uncle Jiang and Madame Yu made it out, and they’ll go crazy trying to find us.”

“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng said, and sniffed, rubbing his nose. “Yeah. That’s true. Thanks.”

Even with the best river-watching intentions in the world, the attack had come so quickly that they’d only shown up midway through the assault on the Lotus Pier, just in time to find Jiang Cheng tied up in Zidian and floating downriver, a sure sign that Madame Yu had given up all hope of maintaining a defense, and naturally they’d grabbed him and rushed in to help her.

A single moment of surprise had been all she’d needed to finish Wen Zhuliu.

Unfortunately, even two full squadrons of Nie sect cultivators – Nie Mingjue hadn’t stinted – couldn’t change the end result, not against the massed forces the Wen sect had brought with them, not even if they sold their lives into the bargain. It was only enough to hold them off for a little while.

At Wei Wuxian’s order, they had gone back in again and again, getting as many Jiang sect disciples out as they could. It’d been a good plan.

Getting captured hadn’t been part of the plan.

Getting thrown into the Burial Mounds was definitely not part of the plan.

Fucking Wen Chao. Just because his smarmy stupid core-melting servant got killed and he didn’t want to risk them returning as ghosts…

“Somehow, the possibility of it being worse doesn’t actually make me feel better,” Nie Huaisang said, scowling. He had the weakest core out of all three of them, so they’d given him the one blanket they’d managed to smuggle along with them – though technically, that had been Wen Ning who’d done the smuggling, actually, a Wen disciple that Wei Wuxian had befriended in the archery contest.

He’d apparently remained very sympathetic despite the war.

It would’ve been pretty funny, if anyone had been in the mood to laugh: Wen Ning had arrived to the Lotus Pier late in a panic, nominally to provide medical services, although Wen Chao had implied in a snarl that it was actually to claim credit for helping. He had stuttered his way through excuses and apologies, offered to go start work right away, and then promptly beelined straight for the room where they’d been trapped, sneaking them a qiankun pouch with a few supplies in hopes that they could use it when they escaped.

He hadn’t known that they were bound for the Burial Mounds at that time, of course.

Maybe he’d have included some weapons they could use to fly out of here if he had.

Wei Wuxian had whispered to him “Find a way to tell Sect Leader Nie,” as they’d been dragged away after hearing Wen Chao declare that he was going to dispose of them where they’d never escape, and he could only hope that between that avenue and the Jiang that they would be found soon.

Ideally very soon.

They were running out of protective talismans, and night was approaching.

“Still could be worse,” Wei Wuxian said, thinking to himself that if Wen Zhuliu hadn’t been garroted by Zidian they might have found their way here without even their golden cores. Definitely worse. “Okay. So. I have – an idea.”

“Oh no,” Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang chorused.

“…you two are so supportive.”

“It’s going to be a dumb idea,” Nie Huaisang said. “We can tell. Your tone of voice tells us.”

“He’s not wrong,” Jiang Cheng said. “It’s going to be dumb and self-sacrificing.”

“Dumb, self-sacrificing and with a less than fifty percent chance of –”

“Must you throw all my past failures in my face?” Wei Wuxian said mournfully.

“Yes,” they both said.

“…fine. I’m still going to do it.”

“We never doubted that for a moment,” Nie Huaisang said. “Now tell us what heart failure we’re going to be dying of today.”

“Well…” Wei Wuxian said.

“I think I’m hallucinating,” Wei Wuxian announced. “It may be the resentful energy going to my head.”

“Nooooo,” Jiang Cheng said. “You think?”

“Could be the reduced rations and extended inedia,” Nie Huaisang said, looking very tragic. “Or maybe these sad excuses for potatoes we’ve been picking.”

“I am never eating wild-grown potatoes ever again in my life,” Wei Wuxian agreed fervently. “But also, no, seriously, I think I’m hallucinating, which we should write down as a possible side-effect of demonic cultivation.”

Jiang Cheng groaned from where he was lying on his back and staring up into the ever-clouded sky above the Burial Mounds. He’d gotten tired of the writing-things-down portion of the experimentation process early on, especially when they’d had to carefully unbind the one book Wen Ning had (rather inexplicably, but helpfully) shoved into the bag for them in order to get enough paper to do it after they’d run out of space on Nie Huaisang’s fans.

“We have to keep notes!” Wei Wuxian insisted.

“Fine, fine,” Nie Huaisang said. “What are you hallucinating?”

“Suibian,” Wei Wuxian said. “Flying right at me. From the northwest, if that’s relevant.”

“It is extremely relevant, actually,” Jiang Cheng said, sitting up. “Because it’s not a hallucination if I see it, too.”

Jiang Cheng was their control group, insofar as they could have a control when they were all stuck here being slowly consumed by the Burial Mounds. He and Wei Wuxian were about evenly matched in cultivation strength, so it only made sense for one of them to try demonic cultivation and the other not, and then Nie Huaisang had also started doing it, over Wei Wuxian’s protests, when they’d realized that they needed two people for some of the arrays Wei Wuxian invented.

So if he was seeing things as well, that either meant that the Burial Mounds were affecting them faster than expected, or else –

“Wait, you can see Suibian too?” Wei Wuxian jumped up to his feet. “Suibian! Suibian! Over here!”

“Wait,” Nie Huaisang said. “We don’t know how Suibian will react to demonic cultivation –”

Oblong meat boy! Suibian shouted in Wei Wuxian’s brain across their bond, familiar and perfect as always, descending like a whistling arrow. You left me alone! With evil people!

Wei Wuxian leapt up as high as he could and wrapped his arms around his saber. “I’m so glad to see you, you jackass of a saber!”

Apology accepted.

“Is he talking to his saber?” Jiang Cheng murmured to Nie Huaisang, who nodded. “I know he told us about the whole Nie sect cultivation thing - which I understand I shouldn’t know about, but whatever - but I’ve got to say, it’s kind of weird to see it happening out loud.”

“You think that’s weird? You should see my brother and Baxia.”

“How did you get out?” Wei Wuxian asked, ignoring them both.

Baxia tore open the wall where we were being kept, Suibian said, which probably meant that the war was going well and also that Nie Mingjue was on the warpath and very likely that Wen Ning had not managed to deliver the intended message, which would explain the delay in anyone finding them. Baxia’s master gave me energy and told me to go find you, while he followed behind.

“Da-ge’s coming!” Wei Wuxian shouted, and Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang dropped their supercilious commentator façade in order to cheer.

Hey, jerkface master. Why do you feel funny?

“…uh, about that…”

#mdzs #wei wuxian #nie huaisang #jiang cheng #my fic #my fics #light on the door

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xpeachesncream · 3 years

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acquainted | four

> series masterlist <

summary: the biggest goal of a grad student is to get through school in one piece - no petty drama involved, no sweating over the little things. however, that plan almost always never follows through. sometimes, you can’t help but fall into the most unthinkable, unexpected traps and learn the hard way. like, exhibit a: being unable to resist your engaged, substitute teacher, kim seokjin.

pairing: (2nd bts member to be revealed) x reader x engaged!teacher!seokjin

genre: grad school au, student life au | fluff, angst, smut (to come)

words: 4.2k

warnings: implied sexual content, your friends are still extra, cussing / mature language, relationship issues, angst, making out, slight dry humping, you actually act on your hoe-ish thoughts because seokjinnie keeps testing you??

notes: 2nd member involved in this love triangle will be revealed next chapter and it’s actually gonna start getting messy. are you with me? 😈

tags: @laurynne5 @yiyi4657 @miinoongi @teamtardis-notdead @bluesharksandfish @photographic-girl (pls msg me if you would like to be added to the taglist!)

A couple of days have passed and you were only getting more giddy as time passes. It sounds stupid as hell, and sometimes you can't help but curse yourself for having a crush on someone so unattainable. The thrill, though, is what excites you, and knowing that there's a possibility Jin may reciprocate the same feelings. Since he had placed his number in your phone, he had sent you random, occasional 'have a good day!' texts and smiley faces. Maybe it didn't help that he was only fueling the fire by sending you texts like this. You couldn't help but ponder on the thought that you had crossed his mind from time to time, and that my friends, was fucking attractive.

"Her head game was on point." Taehyung smirked and leaned back in his chair, making Ryujin roll her eyes at him.

"You're sick, no one asked about your night."

"Why do you sound so mad, sweetie?" He leaned closer to her.

"I'm not mad." She scooted her chair away from him. "Can you believe this right now?" She shot you a look, but you were too busy texting on your phone, responding to the messages you couldn't get to earlier.

[jin] 3:05pm: I hope your day has been treating you well. See you soon?

[y/n] 5:37pm: Been a little busy, but hasn't been bad. :) Excited for class!

You laughed at yourself because who even says 'Excited for class' like that? You were really playing yourself right now.

"Earth to Mr. Kim's mistress?" You shot Taehyung a look and immediately shoved his face away.

"Jeez, you've been glued to your phone so much lately. Did you find new dick, or something?" Ryujin asked as she rested her chin on the palm of her hand.

"No, god. I've just been trying to keep myself occupied." She shrugs and doesn't press any further. Thank god, because you hadn't told any of your friends how Jin comforted you that evening and how he had given you his personal number just to check in every now and then. You didn't plan on telling them anytime soon, only because they'd be dramatic about it and you didn't have the energy to calm the chaos that would ensue.

"Speaking of - have you guys started the assignment due next week for Mr. Kim's class?" Jimin kept his eyes on the work in front of him.

"No. I'll probably do that the day of." Taehyung says as he texts on his phone.

"I was going to ask him for help later."

"Were you now?" Jimin rose his eyebrow, shooting you a look.

"Yes, and it's only because I can't choose which topic to write about."

"Why don't you ask us?"

"Because this always ends up being an open-ended debate and the conversation ultimately ends with no decision made." Jimin nodded in agreement.

"Touché."

"Bat your eyelashes while you're at it, kay?" Ryujin giggles.

"You guys are free to join me."

"Mmm no thanks, I don't think I need any help right now." Jimin responds.

"Same. Besides, I'd rather not cockblock."

"Honestly so sick of you guys." You all end up packing your things to head to Jin's classroom, all four of you entering one by one and taking your seats near the front. Class goes by rather quickly, you and Jin stealing glances from time to time. Ryujin, Jimin and Taehyung offer to wait up for you near the library and you simply nod, letting them know you'll only take a quick minute to talk about the assignment. Once they've disappeared from the hallway corridor, you turn on your heels to make your way over to Jin at the front desk, where he's arranging his things and getting them together.

"Y/N, hey." He smiles at you, tilting his head to look at you from his stance. "What's up?"

"I uh, just wanted to ask for your opinion about the assignment. If.. you aren't busy?" He chuckled and shook his head.

"No, not at all. What's going on?"

"Well, I've just been having trouble deciding on a topic." You placed your things down.

"Alright, try me." He nods towards the whiteboard, signaling for you to scribble your ideas onto the board so he could help you map out your thoughts. You quietly walk over, grabbing the only black whiteboard marker available and start talking through your thoughts. He sits on the desk, arms crossed, watching you scribble on the board. He chimes in every now and then, either agreeing or disagreeing, and providing his honest opinion as to what might work best for the assignment.

"Mm, okay. I think that makes better sense." You step back and take a look at the things you've crossed out and circled, leaving you to finalize the topic for your assignment.

"Yeah, I think so." He stands and nods in agreement. You turn to look at him, only to realize how close in proximity your body was to his. His hands are tucked into his pockets while he looks down at you. Both of you don't move, regardless of how close you two are at the moment. You feel stuck, and the only option that crosses your mind is something you shouldn't even be thinking about. Yet, you still act on it. You find yourself on your tippy-toes laying a kiss on his plump lips, but you quickly pull away and gasp, realizing what you had done.

"I-I'm so sorry, I-" You stutter as you step back to try and quickly grab your things. "I gotta go." You dash out of the room, your heart beating through your chest. As soon as you were far as possible from his room, you slowed your pace to gather your breathing. You facepalmed so hard because what the fuck! You felt dumb as hell for acting the way you did, let alone for thinking his texts and all the attention even meant anything.

Way to fucking go, Y/N. You could feel how embarrassing next class will be already.

As soon as you spot your friends, you try to put on a smile and brush the thoughts out of your head when you see them waving you over. Jimin instantly throws his arm around your shoulder, helping you feel at ease as you momentarily forget about the events that just transpired.

"Ready? We're gonna go grab some pizza before heading home." You smiled at him.

"Yeah, I'm down."

Jin grabbed his things, feeling a little conflicted about what just happened. He knew this was something that shouldn't have happened, nor should it ever happen again. Yet, he wanted more of this feeling you gave him. He longed for it. He couldn't explain the feeling he got when he felt your lips against his, he just knew he was interested in more. It was bad as fuck, but it was the same thrill you felt that peeked his interest.

Jin pulled into the lot of him and Grace's house, seeing he was the first one home yet again. It wasn't a surprise to him anymore, and quite frankly, he was used to being home first all the time. It would have been a surprise if Grace was here before he was. Not gonna lie, after what happened, it makes him feel a little empty inside. He's starting to feel like he wanted more of you and to see you outside of campus grounds. He wanted your company and enjoyed your presence, inside of the classroom and even through simple things like text. It just made him happy, and like he was appreciated. Wanted.

Yeah, that quick. He was starting to crave you.

He kicked off his shoes by the door and changed into comfier clothes. He took some time to work out at their home gym before eating whatever leftovers were left in the fridge. He happily warms up his food and quickly gobbles it up, leaving the dishes in the sink for him to get to later. He hops into a hot, relaxing shower, letting the heat hit his back and relax him from all the stress he had been experiencing lately. It was so relaxing that he didn't even hear Grace shut their front door. He only found out he wasn't alone when he heard dishes being washed and slammed onto the dish rack and cabinet doors being slammed shut. He dried himself off a bit, before wrapping the towel around his waist and heading into the kitchen to see what the commotion was.

"Hey, you're home." He says with a smile on his face, but she continued to place dishes on the rack without looking at him.

"Yeah, and you couldn't even think to wash your dishes and clean up the kitchen?" His smile immediately turned into a frown when he realized Grace was far from being in a good mood. Over what? Dishes that he was eventually going to wash anyways?

"I was going to get to them."

"Jeez, Jin. I've had such a long day, the least you could do is help out and clean up after yourself." She glared at him.

"Woah, hey. I do my part around here. Just because I didn't do my dishes right away doesn't mean I don't do anything at all under this house."

"Hasn't seemed like it." She walked away, brushing him off completely. If it's one thing Jin could point out about his fiancé, it was the fact that she liked to project when she was upset. It was the one thing that drove him crazy, and the one thing he felt like couldn't be fixed. It was just in her nature, no matter how many times they've fought and argued about it. He tries to be patient and understanding. He tries to relate. Yes, I'm sorry you had a bad day. But just because you had a bad day, doesn't mean you bring the negative energy into this house.

"That's not fair, Grace."

"Grow up, Jin." She snapped as she headed upstairs. "I'm going up to pack and head to bed." He continued to watch her, appalled at the attitude she was throwing tonight. He really couldn't understand why this was happening over some dishes. He didn't wanna be here right now, and he wasn't going to deal with this shit. To be honest, he was feeling a little relieved knowing he'd get some space from her when she flies to New York for a week. She had some work to do for the opening of her restaurant down there, plus some related projects for her book.

He heads upstairs to throw on some jeans, a hoodie and a hat before passing Grace in their walk-in closet.

"Off for a drive again, huh?" She says as she keeps her eyes on the luggage laid out in front of her. It's sad that Grace knows what Jin does whenever he doesn't wanna deal with her attitude. But, no matter how many times he's tried to communicate and talk it out, it never mattered to her.

"Yeah, because it doesn't seem like you can communicate properly tonight."

"And how is a drive supposed to help?" She turns to look at him, but he doesn't say anything. She scoffs before returning her attention back to the clothes she was packing into her luggage. "Perfect. Run away from our issues, Jin. It's what you do best." He shook his head and sighed.

"I'm not doing this with you tonight, Grace. Not over some dishes that were eventually going to get washed and fixed." He walked out, but turned back on his heel to finish off his thoughts. "You know, I really wanted to have a nice night with you. Pop some wine and put on a movie, just to enjoy being in each other's presence since it feels like we haven't done that in a really long time. But, so be it." He threw his hands up in defeat and continued to walk out. He really did want to try, though. Part of him felt like he needed to because he was probably just longing for that attention from his fiancé, which is why he had been feeling the way he had been about you. Maybe it would have helped him brush it off like it was a silly, little crush. However, tonight just amplified those feelings he had for you and he wanted nothing more but to just see you and hear your voice.

He lowers the brim of his cap as he walks to his car, instantly starting it up and driving off. At first, he was conflicted. He wasn't sure if he was making the right decision or not, or if his judgment was cloudy. But something in him tweaked and made him say, fuck it. He was tired, and for once, he just wanted to feel wanted.

You sat on your living room floor, putting together a vision board for yourself. A ton of magazine cut outs and printouts laid alongside of you, waiting to be organized onto the small white board. You had been rearranging the layout for quite some time, feeling a little frustrated at the perfectionist in you. This definitely could have been quicker if you hadn't picked at the fine details too much. It was nearing 10:30pm; after you and your friends had ate pizza together, you all went your separate ways, tired from this week's events already. You especially didn't want to linger around, the thought of you kissing Jin in the classroom still haunting you. You felt your phone vibrating off to the side, signaling a call coming in.

Speak of the devil.

You hesitate, afraid that this had to do with what happened earlier and to be frank, you weren't sure if you were ready to deal with the repercussions just yet. The call ends, but a text notification pops up at the top of your screen.

[jin] 10:27pm: Are you free right now?

[y/n] 10:28pm: Sorry, yeah I am. What's up?

[jin] 10:29pm: Can we meet up?

You stare at your phone, unsure if you should take the opportunity to see him. It could mean a lot of things, or it could mean nothing. It could be about the kiss, or it couldn't be. But, you can't help but feel a little guilty that he had been there for you when you needed someone and here you were, contemplating if you should blow him off.

[y/n] 10:32pm: Sure. Is everything okay?

[jin] 10:32pm: I think, kind of just need some good company.

[y/n] 10:33pm: Oh, okay. Yeah, I'll come. Just let me know where.

You watch as he drops his location into the message, and it's not too far from where you live. You actually are quite familiar with the area to know that he's sending you up to a view that overlooks the Bay Bridge. You and your friends used to go there often during undergrad, just to eat edibles and eat hella junk food. Those were the days. You all quickly outgrew it though.

The drive up is a little scary, with only a few street lights posted as you drive up the hill. You catch a glimpse of Jin's car, being that he's already leaning against it, facing the view. You pull up into the empty spot next it, taking a deep breath and recollecting your thoughts before stepping out. Whatever it is, just be honest. That kiss was because you wanted to kiss him, but perhaps you misread the vibe about everything.

Not perhaps. You for sure misread the vibe about everything. He's fucking engaged. There was no way.

"I brought you brownie." Is the first thing you say as you hand him a ziploc with a huge brownie square. "There's no weed in it or anything, I promise it's clean." He chuckles as he takes it from you. "I just figured you could use a picker upper since you seemed like you might've need it."

"Thank you." His trunk had been open, so he takes a seat and invites you to sit next to him. You leave a bit of space just to be sure, since you already crossed your boundaries earlier and you weren't even sure how that was gonna play in to tonight.

"So, what's on your mind?" You dread asking him the question but you knew there was a reason he brought you out here.

"I, uh. Just had a pretty tough day and wanted to surround myself around good company." He turned to look at you.

"Oh, so I made the good company list?" You chuckle.

"Yeah, you did." He looks back out at the view. You examine him, his body language still a little tense from whatever he had just experienced.

"Was it Grace?" You ask softly and he nods in return.

"We've just been having issues. It's no biggie."

"No biggie, huh? Then why are we out here looking at the bay bridge?" He chuckles again. You think it's cute the way his dimples under his eyes pop out when he smiles and laughs.

"Touché. I mean, what if I just wanted to hang out with someone who could cheer me up?"

"Wow, then that's a lot of pressure on me." You laugh. "I can already tell something's wrong. You were there for me, so I just want you to know that I'm all ears." He sighed.

"It's kind of dumb? Maybe not? Me and Grace just haven't been the same for awhile now."

"How so?"

"We're just distant. We haven't done things together like we used to because we're both busy and so wrapped up with work."

"Jin." You smile shyly because this couldn't be a serious excuse. You always need to try and make things work! "You know being busy shouldn't be an excuse, right?"

"I know, I know." He shakes his head. "I'm sorry, it's difficult to explain. I question if we're still in love with each other or if we're just sticking to this because we're comfortable."

"Deep down, I know you still love and care for her."

"I do. It's been hard to show that these past months. I guess.. what I'm trying to say is that it's been easy to focus more on the negatives than the positives. There have been more negatives than positives."

"Why don't you sit her down and talk about this?"

"I can't. I try, but I really can't. She's always coming home in a nasty mood all the time."

"Well, she might have a lot to balance on her plate. Not everyone approaches things the same way and if you know Grace easily shuts people out when she's overwhelmed or stressed, then I think you just need to continue supporting her by simply being there for her."

"I know." He looks down at his hands.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm just thinking. I hear you loud and clear though." He smiles at you toothlessly.

"Try talking to her. Work it out. I know she's important to you."

"She is but," He shakes his head once more. "I can't shake off this feeling."

"What feeling?"

"It's going to sound stupid."

"Nothing is ever stupid." He simply looked at you before responding.

"Earlier, in the classroom—" Fuck, you thought. You thought you had just gotten lucky tonight and that you both had put it past you so that you could move on without ever mentioning it. But half of you knew you'd still have to confront your mistake either way. Nothing was ever that easy.

"Jin, I'm so sorry, I didn't think about—"

"I didn't want you to stop." He spits out, causing you to stop mid-sentence. Your eyes widened after you had just registered what he had said. Was he fucking playing with you right now? This shit really couldn't be real.

"W-what?"

"I can't shake off this feeling because of you and as bad as it sounds, I really don't want that to go away."

"Jin." You say softly. "You should really work this out with Grace. This feeling is just temporary and you know it is because she's your fiancé. What happened earlier was a mistake and it shouldn't have happened." It kind of sucks, but it's true. You don't really know why you did what you did and what you wanted out of it. You knew what this would entail and it would be too messy. People would just end up getting hurt left and right. It would be a domino effect.

"Was it though?"

"I'm not trying to get in between you two." You beat around the bush with your response.

"Then, what did you want out of that earlier?" He stares at you. You can't help but feel yourself melt at the way he's eyeing you and the way he's actually teasing the fuck out of you with his piercing eyes.

"I don't know." He continues to stare, but this time his face is edging closer to yours.

"You can't even tell me straight up that it was nothing." He says, almost at a whisper. Your knees are starting to buckle beneath you and although you knew you needed to stop this, you couldn't see yourself doing it right at this moment.

"We shouldn't be doing this." You whisper, his lips inches away from yours at this point.

"Then why aren't you stopping me, Y/N?" No response. Before you knew it, your eyes were shut as your lips pressed against his. The feeling of his lips sent chills down your spine, his hand now tugging you closer to his body. You waste no time straddling his lap, deepening the kiss as your hands rest on his face and your hips grind against his. God, he was so fucking attractive and everything about him drove your ass crazy. You wanted him.

But you couldn't have him.

"Stop, stop." You edged your head back, reality settling in once his hands start to dip inside your sweats. "We really shouldn't be doing this." You climb off of him and gather your things.

"Y/N, wait."

"Jin." You turn to look at him. "Listen to me. We would never work."

"I wouldn't say never—"

"Look, this is already difficult as is and I'm trying really hard not to make this even more complicated for anyone. At the end of the day, you're still with Grace. You're still engaged to Grace." You emphasized. "I can't get in between you two, and I don't want to hurt her." How in the fuck did things escalate so quickly? How did we get here?

"I know that, and I know you don't. But you can't tell me that you didn't feel anything just now."

"I'm not saying that I didn't. I did, I-I do." You stuttered on your own words. "But I shouldn't be acting on it and neither should you. You should really focus on working things out in your relationship. I know deep down you love her and want to make this work."

"That's the thing, Y/N. I don't know how else I can make this work with her. I've ran out of options."

"Jin, you planned to marry her! You do understand that you can't just give up on someone like that, especially your future wife."

"As much as I appreciate this and understand where you're coming from, you don't know our relationship."

"I just don't want you to give up on her. I want you to try for her, not just because I told you so." He can see how serious things have turned, and he knew you were right. This would be complicated. But damn, was he undeniably attracted to you and he loved the feeling he got from all of this.

"I-" He sighs. "You make me feel things that I haven't felt in a long time."

"You have your life planned out already, and so does Grace. You obviously saw a life and a future with her, and that's what you should continue building. I don't even know how to get from point A to point B in life and I still have shit to learn. Like-like changing car lights or how to do a fucking oil change by myself! I'm a mess. I'm not the one you should be thinking about."

"I don't care about that." He spits out as he gently grabs your wrist and turns you to face him.

"Don't make this harder than it already is." With all this shit going on, you still found yourself wanting him the same way you did earlier. Looking at him made you want to do unspeakable things and it didn't help that he gave you the green light to do so.

The temptations.

"I'm not trying to."

"We should really keep our distance from each other, okay? You need to work things out and I'm going to give you the space to do so."

"Fuck, Y/N. I really don't want that."

"I'm sorry." You whisper as you break free from his grip and get back into your car. You hear him groan, causing you to cry to yourself as you drive off and get back home. One mistake turned everything upside down, and now everything was suddenly 10x more complicated than it ever was in the beginning. You couldn't help but curse yourself and blame yourself for letting this happen the way it did.

But shit is done. The mistake happened. There was no taking it back.

You just needed to give him space to get over it, and that would be the end of it. Easy.

Or so you assume.

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awkward-tension-art · 4 years

Text

Put on a Show

So @weebsinstash has an incredible yandere!erasermic x reader series go read everything they write, its fantastic

I wanted to play around with the idea too, so i asked for permission on anon lol.

enjoy this full 2,090 words

Warning: yandere themes, yandere!erasermic, League of Villains, fear, mentions of past torture, mentions of abuse, mentions of past abusive relationship, implied Spinner x Reader, kissing, Villain origin story, female pronouns used for reader, (if i missed a tag lmk)

You ran. You ran as fast and as far as you could. Your bare feet hit the wet ground, cursing as you stumbled. Your hands hit the mud, but you didn’t stop.

Even when your lungs screamed.

Even when your muscles burned.

You kept going.

With luck, a razor and your own wits you had managed to escape that hell house. You’d managed to escape from the clutches of your obsessed demons.

At the slight thought of your tormentors, the now healed break in your leg aches all over again.

Keep going.

KEEP GOING.

The woods betrayed you before, but hopefully, the downpour may erase your footprints. A branch latched onto your shoulder and you screeched. Memories of Aizawa’s cruel grasp flooded your mind. You slipped on the wet ground, tumbling down a slight incline.

Dazed, confused and hurt, you ignored your pain and kept going. Desperation and adrenaline kept you going.

Do not stop.

You looked down to avoid losing your eyes to another branch, only to embarrassingly run straight into a tree. Your body fell back, landing harshly on the mud.

You heard a groan.

Trees do not groan.

Fear overran your systems as you slowly, shakily looked up.

In front of you was a man covered in green scales. He looked more like a lizard, than an actual human, but you quickly guessed that was his quirk. But, he wasn’t alone.

A scarred man with piercings. A teenage girl with blond hair. Another man with a mask. And lastly…

You recognized him from the news.

Shigaraki.

The League Of Villains

“What the hell,” The lizard-man hissed, rubbing his head, “Where the fuck did you come from?”

You took your chances.

“Please…” you gasped, looking up at the white haired leader, “Help me.”

It took approximately 3 seconds to be taken from the forest. The scarred man, Dabi you learned, pulled out his phone and called Kurogiri, their method of transport.

Spinner, surprisingly like a gentleman, helped you stand and introduced himself.

Not a second later your vision was filled with black and you were out of the rain.

Out of the cold.

Out of the monsters’ clutches.

Instead, you found yourself in a surprisingly comfortable bar scene. It was warm, bright, and quite homey.

Shigaraki continued to stare at you, his red eyes giving away nothing. The blonde however, hovered, as she began to talk. You couldn’t keep up, exhaustion slowing your mind and mental process. All you managed to register is ‘blood’.

A tall woman spoke up first, “oh dear, look at you. You look like a wet rat.” She inspected you before standing straight, “Let me get you something dry.You can call my Big Sis Magne!”

You nodded, managing a small “thank you,” as she rushed out of the room to come back with a dry towel, draping it over you.

‘Huh, it smells nice,’ you thought, wrapping it around your shoulders, taking in the small comfort. Almost like roses and lavender…

The leader finally spoke up, “Who are you?”

That was the question. That one simple question caused the dam to burst. You broke down, telling them everything. The torture, the abuse, the agony, all by the hands of two supposed heroes. You went over every grueling, painful detail, tears pouring down your face.

They knew of your captors and torture before they even knew your name.

With every word, The league members, especially Dabi, became more and more disgusted and angry. You didn’t even finish when Spinner offered a kind hand for you to hold onto.

“P-please,” you finally managed, “D-don’t send me back…”

Shigaraki scoffed, “Heroes think they can just do whatever they want huh? Well fuck ‘em. Eraserhead and Present Mic want their precious treasure back? Well too bad. It’s ours now.”

Big Sis Magne let out a happy laugh, “Oh good! Another girl! If you ask me, only having Toga around was getting to be too much.” She took your other free hand, “We’re gonna be such a good team, those nasty heroes won’t know what hit them.”

“I can’t wait to make them pay with their blood,” Toga smiled, her golden eyes shining with excitement. Dabi remained silent, but Spinner gave you a kind smile. “What a show it will be! You, coming face to face with those demons, and having us at your back!” The one with the mask, Mr.Compress, finally spoke, giving a theatrical hand wave.

With every word, you felt your shoulders get lighter.

“Now,” The leader, your new leader, spoke up, “Tell me all about your quirk, and those pieces of garbage that hurt you.”

When Shouta and Hizashi returned home, they knew something was wrong. The house seemed...cold. You were not in the living room, nor the kitchen.

They assumed this was one of your bad days. Where you’d sleep until it was late at night, only so you can avoid them.

Quickly, that changed.

The closer Shouta got to your door, the more he felt his gut twist. The air seemed wet and almost humid.

“Hey, are you awake in there?” He knocked, concerned, “I’m coming in!”

When he opened the door, the wet air made sense. Your window was open, rain poured in from the storm outside. The carpet and everything else by the window was soaked, giving the hero a clue that you’ve been gone a while.

“HIZASHI!” The black haired male called out, darting into the room. Desperately he looked around, only to look up when he heard his husband cry out.

“She’s gone! Our songbird is gone!!” He panicked, aiding Shouta in his desperate search. The couple tore apart the house, hoping this was something else. Hoping you didn’t leave through the window.

They hoped and prayed, only for their optimism to be dashed when their search turned up empty.

“We need to go after her!” The blonde hero cried, “s-she could be hurt! She doesn’t know how to take care of herself!!”

Shouta was already preparing to venture outside. He was at the door when he turned to look at his severely distressed husband, “stay here. In case she comes back, I’ll go look for her.”

With that, Eraserhead ran out of the front door of the house, hoping to find you in the woods.

Days became weeks became months. With every passing hour, you felt happier and lighter. Your spirit and soul were healing. It will take time, but you knew you were able to recover. You had escaped, and found a family who would ride or die with you.

You’d ride or die with them.

Spinner was especially kind to you. He was a gentleman, always asking before touching. You spent most of your free time with him when he or you weren’t gone collecting information or searching for members.

You still weren't comfortable going on missions by yourself. Most of the them were with Dabi, Big Sis Magne or Jin, who you’d met shortly after your joining. Despite the short time with them, you felt like you belonged. You helped them, they helped you. You became a part of their family.

They’d even gone so far as to get your cat Mochi back. Dabi simply dumped the kitty on your lap and walked away without saying anything. You missed your feline friend, and now in the league, he gets all the love the villains could muster.

They try to keep sudden loud noises to a minimum. Occasionally a surprise yell or sound would happen, but someone was always quick to jump to your defense.

It was mostly Shigaraki, but he’d apologize begrudgingly.

Even he wasn’t so bad. You had gone with Toga to get him a new controller, and he’s tolerated you ever since (maybe even respect you after you managed to beat him to a quick video game match).

This was your life. This was your freedom.

This was what you wanted.

It’s been hell without you. Shouta and Hizashi were in hell. It’s been months since the eraser hero found your footprints surrounded by others. It’s been months of searching. Months of desperation to rescue you from your kidnappers. That’s the only logical reason for your disappearance.

You were kidnapped.

You needed them. You needed your lovers.

But they couldn’t save you.

Some nights Shouta would wake up alone. He’d be cold and lonely. Slowly he’d walk to your room, and find his blonde husband asleep, holding your favorite pillow.

It stopped smelling like you a while ago.

With every passing day their hope waned. With every passing hour their hearts ached.

Shouta finally broke down one night. When he woke up alone again he wandered to your room, finding Hizashi in his usual position. Instead of being asleep, the blonde’s shoulders shook with muffled sobs and cries.

The Eraser hero sat on the bed and held his husband, not bothering to muffle his own weeping.

This isn’t what they wanted.

The view from the roof was both beautiful and hilarious. You orchestrated a nomu attack, remaining hidden. Spinner was accompanying you. The others were scattered around the city, taking in the chaos.

You remembered those roads and streets. You walked them for so long.

Until those bastards stole you.

Now, with your life in the league, you could stroll down the sidewalk again. You could see the sky and feel the sun.

You could punish heroes for abandoning you. For letting you get kidnapped.

A smile graced your lips. The chaos of the nomu was beautiful.

There was a flash of black in the corner of your eye, and you turned your head. Slowly, your smile grew at the sight of Eraserhead struggling to take down the brutish monster.

Only to have your smile fade when Present Mic saves him.

“Ugh, I hate them.” You growled, “I see them and I hate them.”

Spinner looked up from his spot on the roof. He swished his tail once before following your gaze to your distant tormentors.

“You should put on a show,” he put a hand on your shoulder, “drive ‘em even more bat shit.”

You laughed warmly, the idea of breaking their hearts even more gave you infinite joy.

“Mind if I use you?” You asked, preparing to use your quirk.

With the villains you have gotten stronger. Your quirk was a weapon. A strong, powerful, useful weapon.

You’re the opposite of what Shouta and Hizashi said over and over again.

They can’t tell you that you're weak. Not anymore.

There was a tipped over bus, and that’s where you planted the illusion.

You and Spinner, hand in hand.

Oh this is gonna be good.

When they dealt with the Nomu, Hizashi looked to the bus, and even from a distance, you could see his eyes widen.

“S-songbird!”

You gagged, and Spinner laughed softly beside you.

Shouta looked up, meeting the illusions gaze.

You feared he’d use his quirk, destroying your fun, but he didn’t, at least not in that instant.

“G-get away from her!” The black haired male shouted, his black eyes trained on fake-spinner.

“No,” the illusion spoke, “I think your precious songbird belongs to me.”

The illusion of spinner pulled illusion you closer. The illusion of you looking bashful.

Shouta prepared an attack, jumping up in the air to do so. Hizashi prepared his own quirk, apparently ok with sacrificing your well-being to get you.

You cause fake-spinner to dip fake-you into a deep kiss.

That was apparently distracting enough to cause Present Mic to choke on air, and Eraserhead to stumble and miss his attack.

“Come on my sweet,” fake-you cooed, “let’s go.”

You created one more illusion, covering the two fakes in smoke, making them disappear.

As you finished with your quirk, you rubbed your temples.

Spinner laughed beside you, “m-my sweet! Oh my god you killed me.”

You gave a faint smile, that only grew when you heard Hizashi’s mournful howling.

Spinner and you peered over the edge of the roof, and spotted the two of them breaking down. The blonde was wailing. You swear you saw his fat tears from your position.

Shouta just looked broken. He looked absolutely devastated.

Maybe a long time ago that sight would have hurt you.

You made eye contact with your partner next to you.

“My sweet,” you teased, promptly bursting into laughter.

“Let’s go! Before they hear us!” Spinner tried to shush you, failing with his own giggling.

You nodded and grabbed his hand.

“Let’s go then,” you winked, “my sweet.”

The both of you fled, making your way to Jin and Toga.

You smiled at the sight of them, only feeling happier as more of your family of villains got together.

This is exactly where you wanted to be.

A villain, to make those heroes suffer.

#reader insert #yandere!erasermic #yandere #yandere shouta aizawa #yandere hizashi #bnha imagines #bnha x reader #yandere bnha #My writing

519 notes · View notes

cinnabun-faerie · 3 years

Note

Hi! I would love to read more soft, fluffy and romantic scenarios about BTS and their s/o from you and I have this idea: quiet private date, maybe watch a movie in bed with fluffy pillows and snacks. A let's cuddle all night long date! Maybe short scenarios? :O

Seokjin

"Jin, you home?"

"In here, sweetheart!"

You walked into the bathroom to see Jin dropping rose petals everywhere, wearing nothing but a towel that was loosely hanging from his waist. Holy shit. You were beyond aware that your husband was hot as hell, but sometimes, you still couldn't believe it. He was sculpted like a God.

"Stop drooling."

"I'm not drooling!"

You shuffled around to face the sink, looking into the mirror above it, not-so-secretly observing him. You could just stare at him for eternity if he'd let you.

You jumped as you felt his arms wrap around you, head resting on your shoulder. He chuckled and kissed your cheek.

"For our date tonight, we're staying in. Our first destination is the living room where we'll eat pizza and watch a movie. Then, we'll move here for a nice hot bath. And then we'll cuddle in bed."

"I think we should eat in bed, Jin. Bath first."

He knew you too well. When you'd come home from a hard day at work, especially on a date night, you were eager to just cuddle up with him and not move a muscle. And you loved it when he ran a bath for you.

"Alright, get undressed and I'll run the bath water."

You didn't need to be told twice. You undressed quickly and waited patiently as he filled the tub, dropping in a rose scented bath bomb. When it was ready, Jin helped you in, sitting you between his legs. The hot water felt amazing on your skin. You laid your head back and smiled.

"This is so nice."

"It is. Are you gonna wanna get out of the bath?"

"No."

"What if I give you a massage?"

You smirked knowingly. "Alright, Jin, a 'massage' sounds good."

Yoongi

Come to the studio

Your phone rang. You were at the store buying tangerines when your notification alert sounded. Those shopping around you turned their heads and stared at you. Sighing, you pulled it back out and answered it, holding it up to your ear.

"Min Yoongi, what do you want?"

"Are you on your way?"

"No, I'm in the middle of the grocery store-"

"Just leave everything there and come here."

Click

That brat just hung up on you. You couldn't believe it. But you couldn't help but notice how he sounded persistent. While your boyfriend was normally so calm and collected, it was rare to hear any trace of nervousness in his voice.

Worried, you quickly finished your shopping and headed for Yoongi's studio. When you arrived at the studio, you typed in the code and threw open the door, cause it to slam against the wall. Yoongi jumped as his arms were full with pillows.

"Hi honey." He said sheepishly, turning his back to you as he carefully placed the pillows in different places. He was wearing his shooky pyjamas.

Taking in the sight of the room, your jaw dropped. There were fairy lights hanging across the ceiling, blankets covering every inch of the floor except for the space where his work station was. And there was more pillows than you had ever imagined seeing.

"Yoongi, what-"

"Happy anniversary, my love."

He took your grocery bag from you, which didn't even realize you had been holding the entire time, and handing you a matching shooky pajamas set. Not wasting time, you closed his studio door and changed quickly. He laid down among his pillows and started to unpeel one of the tangerines you had bought. From his content position, you just wanted to snuggle him.

"Are you coming love? I prepared a projector so we can watch old movies."

Your heart swelled as you made your way over to him, wrapping your arms around him. He kissed your forehead before stuffing a piece of his beloved tangerine into his mouth.

Hoseok

It was your turn to host yours and Hoseok's date. You had planned lots of board games to play to keep you both occupied. Not that you two really need the extra help, you had each other.

"Babe, I brought food and drinks!"

You heard your boyfriend yell from the kitchen. You rushed down the stairs in your squirrel onesie, holding another one. When he saw you, he started laughing.

"Y/N? Really? A squirrel onesie?"

"Oh, don't you worry. I have one here for you too. It was buy one and get the other free!"

He set down the food and took the onesie and headed off to get changed. When he got back, for found you squirrelling away the bag of cookies into the back of the cupboard that he'd brought for you both to share.

"Y/N?"

"Yes?"

"What are you doing?"

"Nut-thing."

He rolled his eyes and reached out to get a drink of his sprite that he'd brought. "You've been spending too much time with Jin."

~~~~~

After you two had some food, you retired to the living room for some board games. The first of your games was Battleship, but you had won that too easily. He won the second game which was Go-Fish. Your third game was Monopoly and you both ended up forfeiting. Neither of you were going to win as you became broke way too fast. Your last game was twister and you were sure that you weren't going to win. But you didn't really care, you had an ulterior motive. You just wanted to see him blush.

And that's exactly what seemed to happen. Sorta.

"Left hand blue."

There was nowhere for you to go except to lean your body across his torso. Carefully, you made your move, reaching over with your hand and placing it on blue. Now yours and Hoseok's face had been inches from each other's. It was only a matter of time before he'd crack, wrapping an arm around you, causing you both to fall to the floor with a gasp.

"I win." You whispered in triumph.

Namjoon

You and Namjoon couldn't your continuous giggles as you were wrapped up in a large blanket. You had intended to go out to a restaurant for a date night, but instead you decided to stay home. You both weren't ones to just roll around in bed for long periods of time, but today was an exception.

"Marry me."

"What? Are you serious?"

"Completely. Marry me."

You were about to protest when Joon realized that he didn't have the ring in his hand. He actually had to go digging into one of his jackets in the hall closet before coming into the room and jumping back into the bed, practically squashing you. Gosh, you loved this man so much.

"Will you do me the honor of marrying me now?"

"Yes, you goof."

After he'd put the ring on you, he'd kiss your lips softly.

And that's when sweet chaos would ensue.

The two of you managed to roll around the bed so much that somehow you'd be wrapped up in the blankets and couldn't get out. You weren't scared or worried, you thought it was hilarious. You knew that eventually, you and Joon, a pair of clumsy beings would end in up in a tricky situation like this.

"Joon, how are we going to get out?"

"Um," he tried to move, but he couldn't. He looked around the room and saw his Google Home device. "Okay Google, call Yoongi."

"Calling, Yoongi"

Jimin

"Did you get the stash?"

Jimin rolled his eyes at you as you peaked open your front door. He held up a bag full of ice cream toppings. You shrieked happily before swinging open the door. You took the bag from him and made your attempt to dash to the kitchen. But he was quick to grab your hips, pulling you into his chest, kissing your face all over. You started giggling as you know you were in 'trouble'.

"You little minx! I get you what you want and you don't even give me a kiss when I walk in the door."

"I'm sorry Jiminie, but ice cream awaits us!"

"Let it melt, I want a kiss."

You turned in his arms and pecked his lips before escaping from his grip and running to the kitchen. He let out a playful roar and chased after you.

"Y/N!"

"I gave you a kiss! Now we need ice cream!"

You took out a few ice cream containers you'd been saving out of the freezer while Jimin reached above you to get the cones from the cupboard.

"We should just make one big ice cream cone and share it."

You didn't think it was a good idea, but Jimin was looking down at you sweetly. Who were you to say no to your perfect angel boyfriend?

"Alright."

~~~~~

You and Jimin had carefully made created a cone of five scoops of ice cream and he was trying to add one more. From how it looked so far, it was going to topple over. And you warned him, but he merely shook it off. You both decided on three scoops each of you, and his was the final one to go on top.

"Got it!"

As he said that, the ice cream started to fall sideways due to the weight. And just your luck, it fell against you, getting ice cream all over your lips, chin and hands. You glared up at Jimin who was trying very hard to keep a straight face. In the end, he started to giggle, almost falling over.

"Park Jimin!" You shrieked, starting to sound angry. In reality, you thought this was just a funny scenario. "We're gonna put the ice cream in bowls next time."

"Can I eat my sweet treat now?"

Before you could answer him, he leaned in and gave you a long passionate kiss. One that was definitely worth melting for.

Taehyung

You'd been sat in the rocking chair in your baby's nursery, rocking them to sleep when you'd hear the front door close. Taehyung must have come home. You heard the patter of little feet coming closer and saw your 4 year old son peaking into the room. You held up your free hand and motioned him to come in. He did, and came bounding at you, almost squishing your infant daughter.

"Hey buddy, be more careful."

"Sorry mommy! Daddy says that uncle Jimin is going to watch me and cissy."

You looked up to see Taehyung leaning against the door frame with a smile on his face. You raised your eyebrows at him, causing him to give you a wink.

The doorbell rang, causing your energetic son to make an attempt to race for the front door. Taehyung had thwarted his plan, scooping him up with one arm and walking out of the room. You shook your head and giggled softly, standing up carefully and carrying your little one to follow your husband and son.

"Thanks for taking them on such short notice." You heard Taehyung say as he handed Jimin a backpack and diaper bag.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After Jimin had taken the kids for the night, Taehyung had practically swept you off your feet. You both had both been so busy with work and the kids that you hadn't had a proper date. But here he was, dressed in black dress pants, a white button-up and black tie. He'd slipped into it while you'd been standing at the window, waving to your son.

"Shall we, my love?"

He led you to the kitchen where he'd set up the table nicely with a white table cloth, red napkins, fancy plates, silverware and wine glasses. In the middle, the centerpiece was a gorgeous vase (he and your son had gotten for you on mother's day a few years prior) with a single red rose. Tea-lights were placed on every surface gave the room a nice glow.

"Taehyung, this is amazing."

"Not as amazing as Jin's food."

You shook your head as he led you to the table and took off the plastic wrapped that covered the food. Your mouth watered as you realized that Tae had gotten Jin to make all your favorite foods.

"I love Jin." You admitted, completely serious as your eyes never left the plate, which caused your husband to laugh.

"I love him too. Let's hurry and eat."

Jungkook

You come home from shopping only to hear the booming loud music from your living-room. No, there wasn't a party going on, it was just a bored lonely Jungkook. If he was home alone, he tended to liven it up with loud music. The song that was playing (blaring) was Here's To The Zeros by Marianas Trench, a song you two had had recently been addicted to. Setting your bags onto the kitchen counter and chuckling to yourself, you stepped into the room, seeing your goofy boyfriend dancing around in a pair of boxers and a white t-shirt. He was singing his heart out into one of your hairbrushes.

Might as well join him right?

You went to your shared room, stripped down to your own boxers and slipped on one of his shirts. Now you were ready. You slid out of the room in your slippy-socks (when you wore them, the floors in your house seemed to become very slippery), singing along to the song.

"Hey, Oh! Where did all the good go?

Baby this is where you're dead wrong, Alright"

Jungkook finally noticed you, jumping slightly, but not stopping his singing. A good artist doesn't just stop in the middle of a performance. He instead pulled you close to him. The both of you danced around like you were on one hell of a sugar rush.

"Hey, Oh! Here's to all the zeros!

And every misfit, and all my down-and-ups!"

After hours of singing and dancing, you and Jungkook collapsed onto the couch, completely out of breath. He wrapped an arm around you while you laid your head on his chest. Jungkook closed his eyes, smiling. Moments like this were some of his favorites.

"That was fun, Kookie. Let's do it again sometime."

You heard him chuckle softly.

"I thought you wanted a less chaotic date night?"

"This was our kind of chaotic. Not like when we went that attraction restaurant where the animatronics malfunctioned. I can't believe you thought that was a Chuck E Cheese place."

Note: I hope you enjoy these! This took me so long cause I kept changing what I wanted to do for it ^^''

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tanoraqui · 4 years

Text

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]

[now all on AO3!]

Nie Huaisang wakes up from his overexertion-induced sleep after about 14 hours, and about 24 hours before his brother wakes up. He has this time to think

He doesn’t use it to think, because his brother is still unconscious, comatose from a severe qi deviation. Chief Physician Nie Fengji, Wen Qing, Wen Qing’s Uncle Six, and assorted Nie physicians do obscure medical things to him involving spiritual energy, needles, a dash of surgery, and actually more of the poison that nearly killed him, in what Nie Huaisang can only assume is some sort of physician-approved hair of the dog scheme, and Nie Huaisang participates by sitting quietly in the corner until even that is deemed too in-the-way and he’s banished first to the hallway and then, with physician authority, to his own bed

they do search, and find some of the yin-storing grass hidden in Wen Ning’s pillow. Nie Huaisang doesn’t go to bed; he goes down to the third guest room and takes A-Yuan and Granny out for a walk just long enough for a couple disciples to beat Wen Ning enough to look good later - split lip and bruises, etc. In case anyone comes checking the story he gave Jin Qixian

Wen Ning, he hears, bears it with aplomb. Just in case it’s the Wens who are lying, Nie Huaisang doesn’t really give a shit

But on the third day since he collapsed off Baxia into the main courtyard, Nie Mingjue wakes up. He’s groggy and weak, physically and spiritually, but he shoves himself into a sitting position with a glare, catches and holds Nie Huaisang reflexively when he flings himself at his brother with a relieved laugh. Someone pulls him back - “stop putting weight on him!” - but it’s enough. It’s enough.

Wen Qing has three-day bags under her eyes. She says quietly, “That he’s awake - it shouldn’t leave this room. Not until Nie-zhongzhi is more recovered, and has decided what he wishes to do.” She nods toward Nie Mingjue

“What the fuck happened?” he demands, and it’s the weakest snarl Nie Huaisang has ever heard. His brother is already sagging back against his pillows. “Jin Guangshan was actually polite before I left Lanling, but I don’t remember...”

“He poisoned you,” Nie Huaisang says bluntly, because he’s thinking again and that was the last straw he needed to be convinced of how this happened (he never really stopped thinking, deep beneath the anxious terror and anticipation.) “No, this stays here...or can he be moved to his own bedroom?” he asks the Chief Physician. “It’d be more comfortable, and easier to hide his state from any spies Jin Guangyao might have - I mean, I assume he has spies. I’d want to...”

[the mastermind]

A few days later, Nie Huaisang arrives at Lotus Pier and begs his friends to take him out on the town. Distract him with food and wine and cheer from the stresses of home, where his brother is still comatose and everyone is starting to expect him to be responsible instead

Jiang Cheng is busy with Sect Leader duties but Wei Wuxian takes him up on it immediately. There’s nowhere quite like Yunmeng’s piers for goofing around - somewhere around the fourth street theater show and second jug of wine between them, Nie Huaisang leans over and asks, “The next time there’s a cultivational conference at Carp Tower - would you be interested in making a ruckus?”

they’re walking down the street in a crowd. It’s very hard to be overheard on the street in a crowd

“Like tonight?” Wei Wuxian grins and he, too, looks like this night has been a welcome break

“Without me,” Nie Huaisang admits. “Just to have some fun - make a scene! Cause a fun distraction!”

A single jar of wine in Wei Wuxian means he’s still mostly sharp. “A distraction for what?”

“Oh, you know,” Nie Huaisang says airily, hides half his face behind a coy fan and says more quietly. “Helping some of those Wens dying in Jin Guangshan’s work camps.”

Wei Wuxian has never had much head for intrigue, but at least he whispers. “The same Wens who assa- who tried to assassinate your brother?”

“No, silly!” Nie Huaisang baps him with the fan, laughing, and hopes WWX sees in his eyes that he’s serious. “That’s a different thing. This is just to have some fun!”

Wei Wuxian meets his eyes, and his face splits back into a grin. It’s regained the sharp-toothed edge its been carrying since the end of the Sunshot Campaign. “Why not? I could use a little fun myself!”

The next cultivation conference at Carp Tower is in just three weeks, and Nie Huaisang spends them frantic. There’s so much to do, and he can’t let anyone know about any of it. There are plenty of empty houses, empty entire villages - the war was fought in Qinghe only second to Qishan, for Wen Ruohan’s determination to capture the impenetrable fortress clan

he wants to err on the side of making sure people will have shelter, especially with winter coming on, but he needs to err on the side of stealth or they’ll never pull this off -

but how are they (how is he) going to pull it off anyway, honestly; there’s only so many times he can storm in and demand things with a wild combination of pitiful tears and borrowed authority...he can’t exactly get another note for the actual Jin clan -

...though...

they don’t need that many extra roofs, at least, if there won’t be that many people (priority of the Dafan Wens, of course, to repay Wen Qing and because, honestly, they’re the largest group that survived the initial purges, being mostly non-combatants)

he tried and failed to put the distraction out of mind, because there’s really no way to know in advance what Wei Wuxian would do, much less how to handle it. whether it would create a day or a week or several more years of chaos...

and then there was the really difficult part: getting Nie Mingjue to stay the fuck in bed, or at least in his own suite of rooms. Nie Huaisang’s brother was the worst patient possible, which was unfair, because Nie Huaisang himself would’ve loved to have an excuse to lounge in his bedroom doing leisurely, sedentary activities for few weeks. Instead he was out running around organizing things - while letting as few people as possible know what he was organizing or even that he was doing it - and Nie Mingjue was being threatened every other day by Wen Qing and her needles

To make matters more exciting, 10 days out from the cultivation conference, a delegation arrived without from YunmengJiang - Jiang Wanyin himself, and riding with him, Jiang Yanli. Nie Huaisang met them in the courtyard; she stepped gracefully off her brother’s sword and gave him a hug that was, honestly, meltingly comforting and kind

“Nie Huaisang! I’ve been so sorry to hear about Mingjue-gongzi. I would have come sooner, but, you know, we’re only stealing this time from a trip to Lanling for more wedding planning.” She gestured to a pair of disciples who between them hauled a tureen the size of a small child. “I brought some of my best medicinal soup - I don’t know if it will possibly be right, but A-Xian told me how hard it’s been for you, and I just had to try to help.”

offer

“You’re too kind, Jiang-guniang.” He fluttered his fan anxiously. “I’m sure Da-ge would thank you if he could, but...” he blinked away tears. “I can’t even let you in to see him; the physicians even turned away his sworn brothers.”

skeptical outlining of situation

(Jin Guangyao was obviously right out, and the idea of involving earnest, idealistic Zewu-jun in any sort of conspiracy made Nie Huaisang think fondly of breaking out in hives)

“Of course,” Jiang Yanli said sympathetically. She took her brother’s arm back to lean on, and Nie Huaisang took his cue to bow and offer her refreshments and a set - maybe with a view? He knew all the best places. Jiang Yanli, genuinely frail enough to not be expected to do much more than look lovely, accepted

they had a very pleasant conversation about other things - poetry, who was and wasn’t being invited to the wedding, the latest fashions in Lanling (Nie Huaisang sighed wistfully)

eventually Jiang Yanli asked, between one sip of tea and the next, “This event you’re planning with A-Xian - could it be postponed? Say, six months?”

the wedding. Nie Huaisang’s breath caught briefly - now that would be a distraction in its own right, even without anything Wei Wuxian could pull

but he thought about the emaciated, flinching Wens in the Qiongqi Pass camp, and those back in Qishan who weren’t much better off, and shook his head. “Not for those to whom it would matter most.”

and, frankly, he couldn’t ask his brother to stay quiet so long, and he really would prefer than Lanling not know Nie Mingjue had truly survived until they were ready to strike back

Jiang Yanli hummed thoughtfully. “What about...two, two-and-a-half months?”

...there was nothing happening in two months, except the middle of winter. which would make roads more impassible, maybe to their advantage, but only if a couple different things went wrong...

but Jiang Yanli was smiling sweetly, like someone with a plan

“I think that would be wonderful,” he said, and sipped his tea back at her

Jiang Cheng punches him on the shoulder before they go and says he doesn’t seem like he’s doing completely terribly at everything, which is the Jiang Cheng equivalent of a supportive hug and 10-minute earnest pep talk. Nie Huaisang is genuinely warmed

Jiang Yanli, mentally cracking her knuckles as her brother flies her to Carp Tower: time to seduce my fiancee, the third hottest man in the kingdom, into putting a baby in me so we can speedrun our wedding prep - for a good cause! god I love my life

[the grifter]

unfortunately, two-and-a-half months is too long a delay to use the usual “ask for forgiveness, not permission” method, not least because Nie Huaisang has to explain to his brother why he wants him to keep pretending to be comatose, when even his physicians are starting to agree that he needs exercise more than rest

“No,” Nie Mingjue says flatly

“Da-ge,” Nie Huaisang pleads. “It’ll just be so much easier if everyone thinks I’m running around like a terrified rabbit!”

“Why do you insist on being useless at all times?” Nie Mingjue growled, a familiar old song. “If you just applied yourself - ”

“Because it’s easier!” Nie Huaisang cried (a newer tune). “Because I don’t want to be a great warrior, I just want to make pretty things and have friends and have fun - and when I do want something, it’s much easier to get it if no one thinks I’m worth anything - ”

“Of course you’re worth something,” Nie Mingjue snapped. “You’re the heir to QingheNie and you’re my brother!”

Nie Huaisang really did cry easily. He blinked away the tears.

“The Jins tried to kill you, da-ge,” he said quietly. “And they tried to make it look like a qi deviation.” (Like Father, went unsaid. Like my mother and your uncle and three of our cousins, one of whom was only thirteen.) “I want to make clear to them what we think of that.”

Nie Mingjue unclenched his hand from Baxia’s hilt, with whom Nie Fengji and Sixth Uncle had finally agreed to let him reunite. “Then we kill one of them back,” he said. “Not this underhanded, indirect...and with Wen-dogs...”

“If I could kill Jin Guangshan and Jin Guangyao in one stroke, right now, I’d do it. But that would start another war, and we could survive another war, but a lot of our people wouldn’t. Only about seven out of ten survived the last one.” He bit his lip. “And the Wens...not all of them were monsters, we’ve seen that, and the Jins tried to blame the ones we know are alright. This will show them that we can make up our own minds.”

Nie Mingjue was silent for a long moment, and Nie Huaisong resisted the urge to shift from foot to foot. His brother was never impressed with fidgeting.

“Fine,” Nie Mingjue said at last. “Do your scheme. But you’d better prove that you’re right, Huaisang.”

“I will, Nie-zhongzhi.” He stood at parade attention.

“And you won’t use it as excuse that you’re too busy to practice your saber.”

“Da-ge!” he whined instantly. “But I will be busy! We need to tar all the house roofs in Ning Village, and find about fifty spare horses, and weed out any spies in our household - oh, and do you have any letters from Jin Guangyao I can look at? And...”

News came that the wedding of Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan had been moved up to two months rom now and Nie Huaisang whistles under his breath then flinches reflexively, before he realizes there’s no "Twin Prides” around to smack him for disrespecting their sister

But two months somehow passed even faster than that first week had. Homes to quietly repair and no few medical supplies to stock up on, winter snow-ready horses to find and discard with another trip to Yunmeng, social visits to carefully negotiate...

Gossip flowed, as always. Gossip said: Nie Mingjue has survived the dastardly attack on his life; he’s still half-dead or he’s twice the warrior he ever was or he personally executed every Wen in his dungeons. Gossip said: the witch Wen Qing had seduced him and stabbed him with a poisoned blade; the witch Wen Qing had fallen in love with him and saved him from a random qi deviation; the witch Wen Qing was actually the Yiling Patriarch in disguise and both of the above were true. Gossip generally agreed that Nie Huaisang was still wavering between disconsolate over his brother’s brush his death (and his own brush with Sect Leadership) and dragging anyone who would heed him out for drinks and entertainment

Jin Guangyao did have spies in the Unclean Realm, of course; he knew their value. His girl in the kitchen got fired over some mistake with a roast, but the guest cultivator and the chambermaid and assorted people in the nearest towns generally agreed: Nie Mingjue was back on his feet but still rebuilding his strength under the careful eye of his Chief Physician, and didn’t remember anything from the day of his qi deviation. Wen Qing was dead, as were all the other Wens - she and Wen Zhichen had preformed well in healing the damage she’d done in her attempt to poison the sect leader, under threat of their own deaths, but when Nie Mingjue woke up he'd ordered their deaths without even the dignity of public execution. Nie Huaisang was so wracked with guilt over bringing them into the house that he’d actually started practicing saber sometimes, and just a little heartbroken over the death of the child in particular

this last, Jin Guangyao found out himself, as well as confirmed most of the rest when he was allowed to visit his sworn brother and ended up letting Nie Huaisang sob on his shoulder for two straight hours. He had to have the robe steam-cleaned, but it was very informative

“Would you like us to kill the rest of the Wen-dogs?” he asked his sworn brother. “Or you can do it yourself, of course.”

Nie Mingjue snorted dismissively. “I killed the ones who were the biggest problem. Keep working your dogs to death as you like.”

The night before they were supposed to leave for the Jiang-Jin wedding, Nie Huaisang sat in his brother’s chambers (as he had taken to doing many evenings) and absolutely failed to focus on his paints.

“ - I’m sure I can handle the lieutenants left in charge, though really I haven’t talked to them as much so they’re more likely to be suspicious, especially if I didn’t get the calligraphy right - ”

“Huaisang - ”

“ - and the Wens themselves, I mean, this has to go quickly if it’s going to work at all - what if Wen Ning hasn’t gotten word around - we haven’t heard from him since yesterday, what if they found him, he could be- Wen Qing is going to kill me - ”

(the Nie sect wasn’t given to duplicity, but that didn’t mean their fortress of a sect building didn’t have a few spare secret rooms and passageways, in which to hide a handful of Wens for a couple months)

“A-sang - ”

“ - hell, what if the arrays don’t work and we all just die - but it’s the only way; horses wouldn’t be fast enough, especially with the heavy snows this year - ”

“Nie Huaisang!” Nie Mingjue barks in a parade-ground voice.

Nie Huaisang spins around mid-pace to stand at attention, one hand behind his back and the other on his saber hilt. A very few reflexes have been successfully trained into him

His brother scowls at him from the bed, where he sits in lotus position as the world’s grumpiest, most broad-shouldered guru. Nie Huaisang braces himself

“I’m proud of you,” says Nie Mingjue

“I- what?”

Nie Huaisang has spent the last two and a half months careful of every expression he made, but now he isn’t sure what to do at all.

“You’ve actually put effort into this. It’s needlessly elaborate and only just barely honorable, and it’s certainly not saberwork. But it’s...something.” He nods.

“...oh.”

his posture does relax in surprise. but then, the parade-attention was never going to last

“You will pull off this absurd scheme, and you will not be in any way injured in the process, because if you are, we will go to war with LanlingJin.”

“Yes, da-ge”

“Now shut the fuck up, or I’ll call Wen Qing in to put you to sleep, while I do this bullshit boring nightly meditation.”

Nie Huaisang ducks his head. “Yes, da-ge.”

oh, a smile. a smile is the expression he wants to make

The day of the wedding of Jin Zixuan of Langling and Jiang Yanli of Yunmeng dawns auspiciously bright and the ceremony lives up to every portent. Carp Tower is decorated with even more red than gold. The bride is radiant enough to make the sun weep for jealousy; the groom looks pretty good, too; and they only have eyes for one another. Both her brothers cry, Jiang Cheng stoically and Wei Wuxian loudly; Madame Jin looks even happier than the newlyweds; and Nie Huaisang makes sure he’s among the first to offer the happy couple congratulations, so he can equally quickly slip out and set off a teleportation talisman

He appears in the woods near the first town in the Qishan that the spare Wen cultivators and other prisoners of war are being stored in. A dozen Nie cultivators are waiting expectantly, led by Zhao Huandi

Nie Huaisang quickly strips himself of the outer layer of wedding-appropriate finery, leaving his ordinary day’s slightly-nicer-than-most-would-bother-with finery. He tucks the extra beautiful stuff carefully in a qiankun pouch and asks, “Everyone ready?”

nods and salutes and murmurs of agreement

He briefly channels a completely different work of fiction: “Let’s go steal a small populace.”

It’s actually...very easy. “Isn’t the young lord’s wedding today?” asks the man left in charge while Jin Qixian, being a cousin of the family, is at that wedding. “Why aren’t you at that?”

“I didn’t practice my saber for a week and my brother got sooo angry.” Nie Huaisang pouts. “He forbade me from the party of the year, and gave me a job to do instead! It’s not fair - I’d be happy to do a favor for san-ge any other day!”

The lieutenant eyes the orders he’s been handed, in Jin Guangyao’s handwriting with Jin Guangyao’s signature. “Well, it does all seem to be in order.” He waves to the nearest guard. “Hey, start rounding up the prisoners - all of them!”

Nie Huaisang had two months, a lot of correspondence, and a great deal of practice imitating art styles. He’d been able to forge his own brother’s handwriting since was twelve - Jin Guangyao’s was much easier. Much neater

Nie Huaisang spotted the guard who’d been kind enough to let Granny come with A-Yuan, that first time, and pointed at him. “Make sure you get all the old people and babies and stuff, too! Anyone who can’t come on their own!

As Wens start to gather (be gathered) in the main square, most of the Nie cultivators clear a space and sketch out a large array in blood, a little from each cultivator’s hand. It’s wide enough for about forty people to stand in. When it’s done, Nie Huaisang nods to a disciple standing to the side with a bow. She leans back and shoots an arrow with a red ribbon into the sky. It vanishes in a spark of golden light

one of Nie Sect’s messenger arrows. It will land at Wen Qing’s feet in Qinghe to let her know that they’re on their way, and she can be ready with whatever medical care and reassurances she wants

He claps to get the muttering, anxious crowd’s attention, and can’t quite help but grin as he gets it. He gestures to the bloody array, reminiscent of a teleportation talisman on a grand scale. “All right, who wants to leave this terrible place where everyone hates you in exchange for a new terrible place where everyone hates you, travel by serving as the first test subjects of the Yiling Patriarch’s new mass-teleportation array?!”

[the hacker]

(a jest. Wei Wuxian definitely tested it first, on himself and a bunch of rabbits and himself+Jiang Cheng (in that order.) He promised.)

it’s a little out-of-character, but most of the guards who react just laugh meanly. And the Wens, hell yes, have been prepped. A handful protest, beg mercy or insist that this is their home, but for the most part, Nie Huaisang can recognize amateur acting when he sees it

thank goodness - they need a ratio of at least 1 participating cultivator to every 6 civilians to power the array, or the Nie cultivators supporting it from outside will exhaust themselves immediately

as the first group is going, a burst of light bright enough to blind, an arrow falls from the sky to Nie Huaisang’s feet. The note attached is from Liu Lifang: won’t take Lianfang-zun’s orders

aw, hell. He hesitates - another arrow lands, a green ribbon on the end. The first batch of Wens arrived safely in Qinghe

he passes both arrows to Zhao Huandi and murmurs, “I’m going to go sort this out. Make sure everyone gets through, stop it if something goes wrong with the teleportation. If something goes wrong with the Wens or the Jins...try not to kill anyone”

Zhao Huandi bows, turns and immediately starts shouting for the array to be checked for the next batch. Nie Huaisang makes some hasty, whining excuses to the Jin lieutenant, pulls out another teleportation, and-

arrives in the filthy refugee/prisoner city with a bit of the ache of an over-taxed golden core. He rests his hands on his knees for a moment, catching his breath

Still better than sword travel. He’s going to bother Wei Wuxian for these all the time, now

the woman left in charge in Jin Guangchao’s place is engaged in a staring glaring contest with Liu Lifang at their supervisory office. But have their arms crossed and the tension is so thick they’re both clearly itching to slice it with a sword

Nie Huaisang tumbles through the door with a whining, “What? Why did you call me?”

“I actually sent my message to Sect Leader Nie...” says Liu Lifang, with masterful confusion

“Well, he sent me,” Nie Huaisang complains. He turns to the other woman. “What’s the big deal? Da-ge said we should have a note for san-ge - that is, Jin Guangyao, Lianfang-zun - ”

She scowled even more darkly. “My orders come from Jin Guangchao and his from Sect Leader Jin Guangshan, not from Jin-zhongzhi’s bastard son”

[split-second thinking]

“Oh, but Guangyao-ge really knows what he’s doing,” said Nie Huaisang, wide-eyed. “He was so good at organizing everything, before da-ge had to banish him that one time” Bait...

“’So good’?” she challenges. “Then why’d he get banished at all?”

“Oh, you must have heard of my brother’s temper,” Nie Huaisang whines. “He gets so angry when one little thing goes wrong, and then Meng Yao - back then - did a pretty big thing...you’re so lucky Sect Leader Jin is more forgiving.” Hook...

“It would be terrible if Jin Guangyao did something to so anger Sect Leader Jin,” she said thoughtfully.

“I’m glad I doubt he ever would!” He gestured to the forged papers in Liu Lifang’s hand. “And as you can see, we have direct orders from him for you to release these prisoners into Nie Sect’s care - so won’t you do your duty and obey, so I can get back to my party?”

Do your duty, the orders themselves aren’t your responsibility, they’re his. The Jin cultivator nods slowly, then bows sharply, formal and faux-friendly. “Of course, Young Master Nie. How good of you to help your brother like this.”

Sinker.

(also not the worst idea, actually. a little dissension thrown into the Jin clan would be great)

Once again, most of the Wens are almost more willing the queue up than the guards are to make them, though many do blanch at the twenty-foot teleportation array drawn in blood (maximum power for minimal cost, Wei Wuxian had explained). A few are genuinely terrified of leaving; a few are almost certainly just enjoying the drama

a young man, as grubby as the rest and face hidden behind a shy curtain of hair, steps into the array without a flinch, and gives Nie Huaisang a subtle thumbs up. He waves back, just as underhanded, and lets slip a relieved sigh as he mentally crosses out “accidentally got her brother killed and/or captured/tortured/etc” on the list of reasons Wen Qing might kill him one day

[the thief spy]

(it hadn’t been easy to convince her to let him go in the first place. but really, Wen Ning was quick-thinking, trustworthy to all who met him, and good at staying hidden when he needed to. and they needed the Wens helping power the arrays, not to mention just not putting up a fight - everything going much quicker with word spread as to what was really happening. And, Nie Huaisang prided himself, it was just a little bit kinder)

this city’s worth were half gone to Qinghe when another messenger arrow landed at his feet in a burst of golden light. A purple ribbon - First Disciple Han Xiaoshi was done at Qiongqi Pass

she’d taken a much higher percentage of skilled warriors (not that all Nie Sect cultivators weren’t skilled warriors) than the other groups, as well as a “signed” note from Jin Guangyao. The work camp at Qiongqi Pass was the place Nie Huaisang least minded if the rescue of the Wens turned into a fight with the Jins. Sixth Uncle had taken nearly as long to get back into good health as Nie Mingjue, and he hadn’t liked hte way the inspectors smiled

[the hitter]

a few minutes later, a blue-ribboned arrow meant the first Qishan group was all through, too. Nie Huaisang and Liu Lifang’s group was the last to finish

they went with the last batch. One disciple stayed behind to clean it up and fly home - no point in sharing the Yiling Patriarch’s proprietary inventions with Jin Sect if they didn’t have to

the mass teleportation array is much worst than the single-use talisman. Nie Huaisang feels like he’s been turned upside-down and inside-out, and wrung out like a wet cloth besides. Golden core, more like yellowish pith. He does his best to stay standing

he’s knocked flat by the impact of a small mass slamming into his shins at high speed. “Sang-ge! Sang-ge! You didn’t say everyone was going to be at the wedding! Was it fun? Where are your pretty clothes?”

“My extra pretty clothes are in my qiankun bag, A-Yuan.” He pushed himself to sit up, and attempts to distangle the toddler from his legs. “Which is good, because you’re getting my normal pretty clothes all dirty on the ground!”

A-Yuan squeezed him even tighter, to show that nobody was the boss of him, then sprang away with his hands behind his back, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. That, too, lasted for about half a second before the boy was bouncing in place again. “Did you know that Uncle Four is here now, and Auntie Three, and Zhui Li and Mengmeng and Han Yao got a puppy - ”

“A-Yuan, stop harassing the poor man!” Granny hurried up behind him at a much slower pace than a toddler could manage. She bows, over A-Yuan-head, eyes shining. “Young Master Nie has done a great service for us this day. You should be saying thank you.”

“It’s the least I can do,” he says, dreaming briefly of sliding a sword through Jin Guangshan’s throat. He forces himself to stand - the world has mostly stopped swimming - and pulls her upright, and pokes A-Yuan with his foot so he follows suit. “A-Yuan was just giving me a report - yes, we’re the last batch!” he calls to a cultivator approaching with a querulous expression. “You’d better send an arrow to da-ge to tell him that it’s all okay!”

Second Disciple Ling Jiaoshi nods and scribbles out a note, and hands it to a junior trailing behind him with a bow and arrow

behind them, around them, about five hundred Wens and Wen-associated people are milling around a deep valley tucked into Qinghe’s mountains. Most are avoiding the three great arrays painted in blood in the center of a some fields, mirrors to the ones in Qishan and Qiongqi Pass, though the landing sites will be inactive with their pairs destroyed. Many are exclaiming to see family and friends again, or looking around in wary uncertainty, or both. The main source of order is being imposed by the multiple triage tents, sorting out who needs medical attention and who just needs a blanket and hearty meal. Nie Huaisang can hear the Chief Physician yelling at someone in the distance

A-Yuan tugs on his hand and repeats accusatorially, “You didn’t say everyone was going to be at the wedding! That must have been so big! Are we all staying with Sang-ge and Miss Yi now? And Aunt Qing and Uncle Ning and Uncle Nie-Who-Needs-Quiet?” His eyes widen and he tugs even harder. “Did you bring new candy?!”

Nie Huaisang laughs and pulls from one pocket a silk flag in brilliant red, filched from the wedding decorations. “No, but I did get material for a new fan. Do you want to help me paint it?”

To be concluded with a brief epilogue!

#mdzs #the untamed #nie huaisang #wei wuxian #jiang yanli #jin guangyao #nie mingjue #a yuan #UH #THIS WAS...LONGER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE #BY A COUPLE THOUSAND WORDS I'M NOT GONNA LIE #I HAD TO GO TO SLEEP BEFORE FINISHING EVERYTHING #i just wanted...jiang yanli to have fun...and then the nie bros were almost kind of discussing feelings...#and then we still had to pull off the heist...

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ofwolvesandbutterflies · 4 years

Text

sixty seconds

Pairing: Kim Taehyung x Reader

Genre: fluff

Tags: nonidol!au, friendstolovers!au

Warnings: language

A/N: Happy Happy New Year! i just wanted to tell you all i appreciate each and everyone of you for putting up with my sporadic posts and inconsistent writing. I wish you all a very happy new year and yeah have this oneshot blurb thingfor new years

21:23

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

The door opened slowly to reveal the handsome, smiling, familiar face I had been longing to see for so long. The downward curve of my lips lifted and I set my bags down quickly to rush into the outstretched arms of my closest childhood friend.

“Hey, Tae,” I murmured into his chest. As soon as my arms wrapped around his body, the scent of fresh - cut pine with an undertone of vanilla enveloped me in an embrace I didn’t realize I had missed.

“Hey, Y/N,” he whispered against the hair atop my head. “I missed you.”

Tears bit at my eyelids and the haunting of loneliness I had felt in his absence washed over me. The sound of footsteps pounded against the floor, interrupting the rose-colored moment between the two of us and I looked up to see Jimin, Hoseok, and Yoongi. Any presence of bitterness from before washed away in an instant upon seeing my friend’s cheerful housemates.

“Hey, Y/N!” The smile on Jimin’s face was contagious. “You bring more alcohol?”

Pushing myself out of Taehyung’s embrace, I tossed the colorful haired male a teasing grin, not at all oblivious to the fact Taehyung’s hand remained hovering over the curve of my waist.

“What kind of a party would it be without me and the champagne?”

The door opened wider to reveal a couple of their other friends. Yoongi gestured the two of us inside. “The fuck you still doin’ outside in this weather?” An alcohol buzzed - grin decorated the younger male’s jovial face. “We got a bunch of games goin’ on inside and Jin-hyung’s about to give Joon a lap dance.”

Taehyung glanced back towards me, an unnatural gentleness decorating his features.

“Lets get you inside, yeah? We got a shit ton of catching up to do.”

22:06

“So, how was studying abroad?” I prodded, head buzzing with the welcome fizz of alcohol. Here, with my body tucked into Taehyung’s side, our legs tangled together on the couch, the craziness of the festivities going on as white noise in the background, and his sole attention on me, I felt at home. Complete.

“Beautiful,” he mumbled, arm coming around my body to pull my head to rest on his shoulder. “Beautiful, historic, refined after years of struggle, laden with stories and culture as every country is…” Taehyung paused to press a lingering kiss to the side of my head.

I tilted my head to study my friend. A faraway expression dwelt in the dark chocolate that was his eyes. “But?” I questioned.

He turned to look back at me, eyes glittering to reflect the thousands of tiny Christmas lights strung up about the room. “...But it was also lonely.”

A breath caught in my throat. For years I had harbored feelings for my closest friend, my childhood companion. And times like these where my head lay over his heartbeat, his lips pressed against my temple, his fingers dancing over the curve of my body, led me to think… perhaps he… Perhaps Taehyung felt the same way.

“Lonely…?” I frowned. Tousled bangs fell into his eyes and made him look more tired than usual. My hand crawled up his toned chest, stopping to cup his face and smooth the pad of my thumb over the bags under his eyes. He closed his eyes and leaned into my hand.

“Yeah,” he breathed, turning his head to press another kiss against my palm. “So damn lonely. Fuck, Y/N. Did I tell you how much I missed you yet?”

I giggled, brushing his hair out of his face. “I think once or twice already, why?”

He chuckled, both arms coming up to pull me from my spot beside him into his lap. “Was that enough, or do you want to hear me say it again?”

I shrugged. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I smacked a quick kiss to the tip of Taehyung’s nose.

“Whatever makes you happy, love. If it helps anything, I missed you, too. Infinitely so.”

23:58

I sat on the counter, smile playing at my lips as I watched Jungkook beat Jimin at arm wrestling for the third time that evening. The questioning concoction of sodas and liquor swirled around in the bottom of the cup I had been nursing for the last hour. I glanced up at the clock. Almost midnight.

“Hey beautiful,” I glanced up right as Taehyung set his glass down. “You look happy.”

He came to a stop in front of me, hands resting on my knees to make space for himself between them.

“Yeah,” I hummed arms resting around his shoulders. “Well, I’m with you. I can’t seem to stop smiling when you’re around.”

“Hey Y/N, so about that,” he began, an unnatural, giddy lilt in his usually clear voice. “I wanted to ask-”

“OH SHIT Y’ALL,” Jungkook screeched, pushing himself up, mouth agape, finger shaking as he pointed behind us at the clock. Everyone in the room paused in what they were doing to stare at the maknae. “IT’S THE LAST SIXTY SECONDS OF THE DECADE.”

All at once, chaos erupted in the room. As Jin grabbed anxiously for the champagne I had brought, Jimin squealed, jumping over Jungkook to grab a popper. Namjoon stood, frozen in the center of the room, unsure of whether to wake Yoongi or not. Hoseok jumped up from his perch by Jungkook to grab a handful of confetti, tripping over Yoongi’s foot and waking the slumbering male in the process.

“Thirty!” Jimin yelled. “Twenty-nine!”

Taehyung groaned, grabbing my wrist to pull me into the hallway. The chanting of the other men in the house grew louder.

His brown eyes met mine as we came to a stop in the dimly lit hallway. He released one hand to rub his neck with a newfound sheepishness I was unaware he had.

“Look, Y/N. I didn’t know when to do this, but I figured it should be tonight,” he spluttered, thumb caressing the back of my hand, eyes searching everywhere, trying in vain to escape my piercing gaze.

“Do what, Tae?”

20… 19… 18… 17… 16… 15… 14… 13… 12… 11…

Jungkook’s voice raised, making it hard to hear my best friend. I cocked one eyebrow, trying in vain to decipher just what he was trying to say. Taehyung’s lips parted only to close again. His eyebrows furrowed.

“I-I wanted to know if… I mean I-I just... Can we-” he paused, frustration written all over my face when they began to yell even louder.

5… 4… 3… 2…

“One.” I whispered, shooting a smile towards him.

With that, Taehyung squeezed his eyes shut in a quick prayer before cupping my face and eliminating all the space between our lips. Frozen in shock, my brain refused to compute the scene that had - prior to this - only taken place in my wildest fantasies; fortunately for me and the racing of my heart, my body seemed to know what to do.

Tae’s body seemed to relax when I closed my eyes and melted into the kiss. Completely disregarding the questions whirlpool-ing in my mind and the erratic beating of my bothersome heart, I pressed myself closer to his body, fingers creeping up his arms to tangle themselves in his dark hair. My lips parted, breathing in all the pent up emotion he had to offer. Slowly but surely, his hands fell down my figure, smoothing over my arms until they came to rest on the slope of my ass.

He smiled against my lips, craning his neck ever so slightly to capture my lips from a different standpoint. Though reluctant to dash this dream to bits, the lightheaded fogginess of my brain screamed for air.

I pulled away, gazing at the beautiful man before me in awe and wonder. The thick fringe of his eyelashes fluttered for a moment before they finally parted to reveal his golden flecked irises. Taehyung’s cheeks were tinged pink, the same color I imagined most likely decorated the apple of my cheeks as well. Eyes wide, hair tousled, lips shining and hanging agape… I had never seen a more breath-taking sight.

All at once, everything came back to me. The screaming of my friend’s housemates and the confetti raining down around us, the reality of our situation, and how I had just kissed my best friend. I opened my mouth to confront the weight of the situation when Taehyung held up a finger before my lips.

“Please,” he spoke. Desperation seeped from his words and his arms remained firm around my body. “Let me explain.

“I just, I know this is all happening suddenly and I realize this probably wasn’t the best way to tell you how much you mean to me… But Y/N,” Tae paused, reaching up to brush my hair out of my face. “This past semester without you has been crazy, but I’ve been thinking, 2020 is here now… and I’m leaving you in charge of my heart in this very moment I thought I should let you know that yes, while the future is uncertain, I’m certain there is no one I would rather spend it with than you. Is there any way you’d like something similar?”

Incapable of forming coherent sentences, all I could do was nod furiously and pull him down into a kiss once again.

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deliciousscaloppine · 4 years

Text

Don’t be evil anymore.

Don’t be evil anymore, Chapters 1 to 13 (Words: 13283 ), Focused on Nie Huaisang with flashbacks to his relationship with Mingjue and Jin Guangyao. Pairing: Nieyao & Sangyao. Mature for some adult background themes in the story such as sex, prostitution and mentions of pederasty as a social practice, but nothing graphic.

After Jin Guangyao’s death, Nie Huaisang travels to the bustling city of spectacle, Kaifeng in order to grieve privately. He meets various people representing various facets of Jin Guangyao, and slowly works out his issues of guilt,regret and grief.

Chapter 1: Don't be evil anymore.

“Sorrow is an indulgence” Nie Mingjue had said. “An indulgence he taught you!”

He knew when Meng Yao left, that without him to soften Mingjue's edges, the two brothers would descend into daily chaos. Mingjue needed someone to vent all his angered frustration and all Huaisang wanted was to tear everyone above him down, just so he would be free of their control.

“But brother, aren't you also sad?” he had asked.

Mingjue had stopped at this. He had wanted to say things like “I don't sit idle. I shoulder all the burdens. I don't submerge myself in vague worries.” But he had said nothing. He had only sat down and drank.

“Pour yourself a drink” he had said and passed him a cup.

“To your health.” he says now raising his cup to an empty seat. Sorrow is an indulgence, his brother was right. And because he doesn't want his subjects to see him indulge himself with tears, he sometimes flees here, to the bustling night life of Kaifeng. The instruments in the courtyard scream and bellow at him, chasing away the memories, as the many actors surge on the makeshift stage below for some drama.

For over a decade he bided his time, torn between absolute hate and startling sympathy for Meng Yao. And when he finally set in motion his plans, he thought he would be free. Because the worst anguish was not the grief for his brother, but rather his conflicting feelings for Meng Yao.

It's now twice as difficult to release himself from them. He catches himself at the oddest times thinking “This little bauble would have pleased Meng Yao.” As if he doesn't want to forget. So much like his brother he tries to pry Meng Yao from his heart, only to end up empty, bitter and angry.

“I never revealed these things to you, because I knew you had an affection for him. But he took the lives of many people, Huaisang, and he will continue to take. He has a real thirst for blood. If you had only seen how he culled our disciples. He is no longer human, and his evil will only grow as long as no one confronts him.”

No, Huaisang had thought, but very soon he found out himself. That's why his brother had been so distressed. The little handsome soldier he liked to kiss, killed. He took heads with a smile.

A young waitress arrives to clear his table. “Young Master, you've been drinking alone all night. Don't you want to go back to your room and rest?”

He gives her a smile. “I can handle my drinks. Don't worry, young lady, I won't make trouble.”

If he regrets anything, it's the time he lost. How would he love to have been the person he is now when his brother was alive. Perhaps then catastrophe could have been avoided. Perhaps his brother would still live in much better times, and together they could travel the world and laugh and cry at its odd sights. Poor Nie Mingjue lived such a short, such a hard life, and the only pleasure he took, he paid for it dearly with his own life.

He holds his head up to look at the actors below, immersed in their difficult, unrealistic drama. For hours it seems he looks without paying attention. Just trying not to think. His eyes drifting shut from time to time. Don't remember. Don't remember. Don't remember. Like an invocation to oblivion.

“Oh, how I love killing men!” a youthful voice calls from below. “With sword or spear for my father's glory, I take their lives!”

“A blooming peony in blood.” the woeful voice of the narrator laments. “See the little prince, how he claims heads on the battlefield.”

He opens his eyes. A young actor spins in a mock battle amidst fake blades and spears, pretending to be a prince to an evil king who battles the play's noble heroes.

“There is no villainy he will not do, no desecration too unholy. Such a hard heart to go with his youthful face. So many tears shed as many as an ocean.”

“I pierce their bodies with my blade, none who face me live to see the next day. And if the very sun turned against me, with my hands I'll bring it down!”

Huaisang can't help but smile at the boastful declarations of the young soldier who twirls on stage killing his brave foes. There's something about the bend of this one's waist, something in the tone of his voice that brings to mind Meng Yao. His brother's Meng Yao, the one that killed men and smiled.

“Young lady!” he calls to the waitress, who comes ready to scold him. “Who is the master of the troupe?” he asks. “Could you call him to my table, I would like to make a contribution.”

The waitress pleased, runs off and returns later with an elderly gentleman. Before even the first round of treats arrives, he passes to him a pouch full of silver coins.

“Such talented actors.” he remarks. “You must have worked hard to discipline them. If possible I would like to meet them all and congratulate them.”

The old master mutters his thanks, he would like to know where this young master is from and if he has any thoughts about the play they are acting.

“I am rich and I am idle, and I appreciate beauty. I've travelled from afar and I consider Kaifeng to be my home more than any other place on this land. Here one may find as many diversions as the heart desires.”

The old master laughs, and the young soldier below resumes killing.

The next day he sees the array of yesterday's painted faces without their makeup on. Polite and soft-spoken, ordinarily dressed, he has great difficulty recognizing the evil prince among them. There are several young men, all willowy and handsome, but not a face that resembles Meng Yao.

“The evil peony prince? Who is he among you?”

A boy dashes forward with his head kept low in modesty. “It's me.” he mutters with a hint of restlessness about his shoulders.

Huaisang let's himself see this face. A stranger's face, but now that it speaks it's becoming a little more familiar.

“Are you perhaps from Yunmeng?” he asks.

“That's right! How did you know?” the boy exclaims astounded.

“I once knew someone from Yunmeng. You remind me of him. Do you perhaps know the Meng family?”

The boy suddenly laughs. There's a slight rudeness in his smile.

“Where are your manners?” the old master warns. “Answer to this gentleman.”

The boy lowers his face, his handsome eyes still shining with mirth.

“There's no such thing as Meng family. It's a moniker people use there when they have an ugly past. Like criminals and prostitutes. They use this name when they return to society so their families don't face embarassment and humiliation.”

“Ah, I did not know that.” Huaisang says pleasantly, even though for some reason he wants to cry like a child.

He reaches for a pouch full of silver and hands it to the boy.

“You are a good actor.” he says. “From now on ask your master to let you play characters that are good too.”

Chapter 2: The secret

When his brother had vanished, shortly after that Jin Guangyao arrived at Qinghe to manage the various issues of his succession. He had known when he first saw him come and greet him that his brother was now dead. He had made many efforts to find him before Guangyao, but his sworn brother had more men and more power in his disposal and was afraid that his plot would be discovered.

The tears he was shedding at the time were all real. It is a terrible thing to lose family to evil men and know there is no one to award you justice. His heart had broken in two. No matter what was at stake he could not bring himself to defend his position as heir. His thoughts were: Let it all go to hell. I will retreat to some cavern, or mountain peak like some ascetic and there pray for enlightenment. Let them all kill each other, tear themselves apart.

But Guangyao had only taken a single step, casting a single glance, before reverting to old Meng Yao, ready to shield his defenseless prince. It's you that I am afraid, Huaisang had wanted to scream at him.

Meng Yao had asked: “Who is giving you trouble?”

You, you a thousand you. But he couldn't even rage. Only clasp his sleeves and shed tears on his shoulders wordlessly. What a knife Meng Yao was, thrust and twisted in his very guts. But he was crying on him, receiving his consolations. Whatever dissidence there had been vanished in a total of three days. Whoever saw the golden prince of Lanling, fell silent and apologized.

Some uncles from the side of Mingjue's mother, who had wanted a nephew of theirs to take over the Qinghe Nie feared that against the Jin they would lose the very kingdom. They took Huaisang's side willingly after that. The people's shock from seeing this foreign prince manage the fortress reminded him for the first time after his brother's disappearance, that he was not all alone in the world.

There were others who could resent Meng Yao with him. So close your heart and keep shedding tears, he had told himself.

But Meng Yao was no monster at the time. He never had his father's backing, no Lanling Jin would come to wage war with the Qinghe Nie over a useless prince. But all the same, he knew he could get the same results parading alone in his resplendent robes emblazoned with the blooming peony of his Clan. Once that was settled he threw over his golden vestments a grey mantle, so that only Huaisang would shine in his funeral white.

His brother's funeral, a funeral without a body, had been the most notable event of the year. Talked about not only for its splendor and its many mourners, but also for the kindness of the remaining sworn brothers who supported the new king of Hejian. A king! His brother had been a king, much like those of old. Huaisang had no idea what he was.

“Eat a little. It's not doing your brother any good if you are starving.” Meng Yao had said and tried to feed him.

Huaisang looked at the food in the private banquet and had wanted to laugh. If he had been the man his brother was, he would have throttled Meng Yao, or like those kings of old, he would have taken a sword and cut his head off at that very instant. But instead he had taken his chopsticks.

“Thank you, third brother” he had said.

He had fallen asleep directly afterwards from exhaustion and numbness. Meng Yao had led him into his new chambers, he had even set his bed for him. Before he could leave, Huaisang had convinced him to stay. So he had slept soundly in a feeling of encompassing safety, with Meng Yao by his bed like the old days. He remembered that was his brother's killer only after he woke up.

The difficulty of hating people you know is hating the parts of them inside you he found out that day.

“I have a secret.” he had whispered behind his fan a long time ago.

“What secret?” Meng Yao had smiled at him.

“I am in love with you.”

“That's not a secret.” Meng Yao had laughed.

“Why not? I haven't told it.”

“That's not how secrets work. A secret is something you can't say. And besides even if you hadn't told me before, I knew it already.”

“You are so clever, Meng Yao. Pray tell, how did you find out? Or is it because others think you are so handsome you now guess half of them are in love with you.”

Meng Yao had snickered at that behind his hand.

“You love me” he said. “Because we are alike.”

Huaisang had paused at that. Oh, Meng Yao thinks I am smart. He had smiled back then, only to cry bitterly later. Not smart. Soft. He had thought I was soft like him. But at some point in life Meng Yao had stopped being soft. Or he could slip in and out of it regardless of the violence he committed. Meng Yao, violent and dangerous, who would have thought.

“Young Master, you are not even paying attention!” the boy cried falling into his arms.

A small red dot was adorning his forehead. That wouldn't do. He licked his thumb and wiped it out.

“My face!” the boy exclaimed.

“I'll paint you a better one, go get your brushes.”

“You are so strange today, Young Master.” the boy complained setting his tray of things at his side. “Are you perhaps offended because of what I said about the surname Meng?”

“Of course not! Why would I be offended by something like that.” Huaisang said dabbing the boy's smudged forehead with white paint.

“The other actors scolded me. They said I shouldn't have said that because you probably liked that friend of yours from Yunmeng. And now it's as if I have insulted him.”

Huaisang smiled, licking the tip of the brush to smooth it out.

“He was a rascal that friend of mine. It's dishonorable to hold grudges against new acquaintances in order to preserve the memory of old ones”

The boy squinted his eyes in an effort to understand. He wiped the excessive ink and with careful motions he painted a crescent moon on the boy's forehead.

“What mark is that?” the boy asked with half-closed eyes.

“A crescent moon. It's the mark of an upright and just person.” Huaisang said. “You are good now, are you not?”

“Oh, yes, I uphold justice.” the boy said cheekily and run off back to the stage to fight the wicked.

Huaisang hid behind his fan, pretending to admire the mountainous landscape. Something was biting at his heart. It hurt like a venomous snake spitting its venom into his freshest wounds. He had flown all the way to Gusu to maybe laugh at Xichen. He had thought this seclusion of his was only a rumor. Arrving there it had given him some pleasure to find out the rumor had been true.

But now he realizes it was never repentance. Just common sense, the instinct of self-preservation. What person can trust themselves when they've hurt the one they love. I do not love, Huaisang had said to himself. I do not love at all. Not him. Not anyone. But the secret had been that he did.

Chapter 3: When the virtuous are wicked.

When desires become strange, when they turn inside and become tangled like the roots of old dying trees, it's best to pacify the soul with sleep. Or that's what Huaisang had always thought. Whenever something became too difficult he knew the best comfort would be in the embrace of a soft bed. Of course his desires never became so strange as to be avoided until now when he is plagued more and more often by an odd idea.

“I heard about a new play today.” the boy says. “A company in the far north is very fond of it and I think the Young Master should seek them out and ask them to play it for him.”

“Oh, what play is that?” he says catching brief glimpses of his reflection in the water. The boat glides effortlessly on the peaceful waters, floating on the very image of the heavens. It's a bright day, and other boats float around them, each filled with a host of wealthy clients, courtesans and all the divertisements under the sky of Kaifeng.

“I don't know if this will come across as rude.” the boy says. “But it's a love story.”

“Love?” Huaisang asks opening his fan. “What does someone as young as you have to do with love?”

The boy blushes, but can't help smiling mischieviously. “I have ears” he says. “People think I don't, but I do! I can't help but listen what they say.”

“Who talks of love? The other actors?”

“Yes. They say this person from Yunmeng must have been very close to your heart.”

“Why do they say that? I mentioned him but once.”

“It's because I reminded you of him and you have given me silver and watched my shows, and doted on me. They say you must have wanted to dote on him.”

Perhaps he drank too much last night, and now he will be handsomely rewarded with a headache.

“Can you ask the waitress for some water. I hardly slept last night.”

“Did this person you loved, perhaps die?” the boy asks when he returns with water.

“Actually he did.” he answers trying to suppress the violent surge of emotion.

“Then this play is perfect for you. It's about two monks from a temple in the mountains. They fall deeply in love, but their love is forbidden! One of them shunned by the other, made desperate by feelings of unrequited love kills himself. But he is then reborn as a beautiful princess!”

“Let me guess, the other monk falls in love with this princess.”

“Exactly!”

“What a depressing play. No king would wed a beautiful princess to an old monk. I guess they both die in the end.”

“My master says that people like sorrowful endings and powerful feelings. It makes them appreciate the comfort and simplicity of their lives.”

“Ah, I am already very appreciative. I do not need to see a depressing play. Oh, well, it's no good now, you ruined my morning, little delinquent. Just hearing the plot made me depressed.” he says and falls back on the many cushions of his seat.

“I thought you would like it.” the boy mumbles looking down.

“Why would I like such a thing?”

“Because the young man is reborn. He comes back and his friend returns his feelings of affection.”

“You have a point there, but if my friend came back, I would be very old by the time I could show him affection. Nobody likes an old man entertaining thoughts of love for a very young person. Such a thing is distasteful...Besides, my friend will not return.”

“Was he so virtuous?”

“His last name was Meng, wasn't it? You said it...criminals and prostitutes.”

“This person sounds more and more interesting by the moment.” the boy said sitting down and playing with his braided hair.

What an odd notion, he thinks and lies back looking at the sky. Certainly not. Not ever. Not even if it meant some form of happiness.

“Why not?” he had once asked.

“Because it wouldn't be proper.” Meng Yao had said.

He had forgotten Meng Yao was both virtuous and wicked. There was nothing he could pin on him It was tragic. The heir of the Lanling Jin slept and rose early, he didn't drink and didn't gamble, he was pious and filial, he did not letch, he did not embezzle, he protected and strengthened the weak and greeted even those who insulted him with a smile.

And he was a murderer, but the blood of his victims did not stain his blade. It had made Huaisang almost go mad. His victims didn't bleed on him. Mad, mad it had made him.

“Why wouldn't it be proper?” he had pressed.

“Your brother wouldn't approve.”

“My brother isn't here anymore.”

What does one do when the wicked are virtuous? What does one do! he had cried desperately. There was no lure to bait Meng Yao. No trap that would appeal to him. Nothing he could do.

“It's natural to feel this way” Meng Yao had said. “It's because you are grieving.”

“Then help me. Help me forget.”

What does one do when the virtuous are wicked. What does one do?

Chapter 4: A man who tears down the things his friend builds.

“Alright.” Meng Yao had said and his eyes were tired and vulnerable and guilty all at once. “If it would relieve you.”

Meng Yao had managed only to become more beautiful in his eyes. He wondered how long would this beauty last. Would it go on forever? Would Meng Yao become something of a myth. The poor boy that was cheated, beaten and abandoned, and still became king. Huaisang had never known the slightest hardship. How was it to sleep without food? He didn't know. He never had to.

“I am so alone” Huaisang had said and kissed him. He hoped that if he whispered Meng Yao's thoughts back to him that would seduce him. How many beaten children become kings? They must all feel pretty lonely.

At the time he himself couldn't discern what he really wanted as he brushed his own fingers against Meng Yao's hair, his eyes red and swollen with tears. The obvious thing would have been to kill him. He wanted to and it would be easy to wait for him to go to sleep and then smother him with a pillow, or slip poison in his mouth. Or even better sink a knife into his breast.

But if that had happened, and the body had been discovered in his bedroom, then Huaisang would be the mad, deranged prince who killed the heir of Lanling and done things to his body. The kingdom would pale and fall apart before a single soldier arrived to lay siege at it.

So what did he seek when he protested with so many tears? Was he really the spoiled prince demanding love? A love that was bitter just so he could justify to himself the onslaught of cruel emotions?

“You loved my brother, didn't you?” he had asked Meng Yao kissing his shoulder; his arm around his waist, as they both lied on the same bed with their hair sticking to each other's skin. He couldn't help but remark at how perfect, how restful their embrace was. As if there was peace between them.

“I still do.” Meng Yao had said and hidden his face in the crook of his arm.

Huaisang had known Meng Yao was seeking his brother all along. It was Mingjue he missed when he let Huaisang make love to him. It was his name he was trying not to utter when he was pressing his lips. He had loved every gentle moment, keeping his eyes open for it just as Meng Yao refused steadily to see. He couldn't help but blame Meng Yao for this selfish lust.

Of course, it had been Huaisang that hadn't observed the taboo. Huaisang who should have known better. In that moment he was as much his brother's killer, as the Meng Yao he loved.

“He hated you for what you had done in Nightless City. He never recovered from it. He said you loved hurting men, but I did not believe it.” he had whispered to him amidst kisses. “You didn't enjoy hurting my brother, did you, A-Yao?”

“I did.” Meng Yao had said and cried like a child; shedding tears and muffling his sobs behind his hand. It was the closest thing to a confession. Huaisang had loved him all the more for it. He had even kissed his scar. The scar from the blade that should have killed him a long time ago. The blade that had been lodged deep in his chest.

But the next day, all his feelings were gone. One by one they all fled as he watched Meng Yao dress himself, and comb his hair, fastening the straps of his silly hat. The courtesans that don't die with their kings are the most detestable creatures in stories.

He should make a point to ask his young friend for a story where the conniving courtesan lives.

“Does your master let you drink?” he asks.

The boy was looking openly at the expensive wine on their table with some fascination.

“The older actors drink when they think the master won't see them, but the master doesn't approve. If someone drinks excessively and he discovers them, they are kicked out of the troupe.”

“I see, a theatrical company is much like an army.”

The young waitress comes with their large order, bringing excessive dishes and refined delicacies one by one. The boy eyes the large red fish with some greed. Young actors live such disciplined lives, only a rich admirer could supply them with some luxury. The moon is rising from behind the hills, casting its reflection to illuminate the canals. A colorful crowd has been gathering all afternoon beneath their veranda.

Maybe he should have requested a private room, maybe he shouldn't parade his young friend in the same places that prostitutes and courtesans laugh at the bad jokes of their wealthy patrons. But then again maybe in the company of such people, a private room would be even more suspicious.

“Young lady, why don't you bring us also some tea, for my young friend over here.”

The young lady smiles at the actor. “How lucky you are” she says. “This is an expensive place. I would so love it if I had such a wealthy admirer to feed me delicious treats!”

“Ah, this one here is going to be a famous actor one day!” Huaisang says pointing at the young actor with his fan. “And then he'll pay me back every penny! I'll take him to tour all the noblest halls. He'll make so much money, he might even marry a princess!”

The waitress laughs, as the boy hides his face behind his hands. Even the tips of his ears are blushing.

“Are you really so good, young master?” the waitress asks the boy. “Maybe you can play something for us when the moon reaches the middle of the sky.”

“I can play now!” the boy says, getting up excitedly.

“Not now, eat first. Our expensive meal shouldn't get cold before we enjoy it.”

“That's right, young master.” the waitress advises. “Besides, many more customers will arrive later to enjoy the moon. If you play something for them when they are drinking they'll reward you even more handsomely. You will leave this place with a small fortune.” she adds in a confidential tone.

“Is that true?” the boy asks once the waitress departs, digging into the ivory flesh of the fish with his chopsticks.

Huaisang fans himself a little. “My brother was a great man. Far greater than I will ever be. He told me there is no man easier to take advantage than a drunk. Waitresses and great generals think alike. No one knows more about human nature than they.”

“Your brother was a great general?” the boy asks with wonderment. “I thought you were a rich merchant. It didn't cross my mind you came from a noble house. It's even stranger now for you to have known a Yunmeng Meng.”

“Not only have I known such a person, but I was the one to get him drunk first.”

The boy's chopsticks pause at that. “What?” he asks with surprise.

He had a real curiosity about drinking. All the men in the banquets did it. Nie Mingjue did it. In fact it was quite a feat drinking without getting drunk, and everyone who mattered boasted that ability. His brother always said that men who become inebriated while drinking are weak-willed and spineless.

He had acquired a taste for it, because he was allowed to have a little. To build up that fabled tolerance that separated men of destiny from the rest. Meng Yao had been biting his lips and flaring his eyes, saying “I do not know, young master. What if we get caught?”

“If you are smart about it, we won't get caught.” he had said

But the thing is Huaisang was very well prepared to blame everything on Meng Yao if they got caught. They had drunk themselves silly, laughing with tears in the eyes just by looking at each other. “You look so drunk!” Huaisang would snicker. “You look even more drunk!” Meng Yao would reply hiding his face.

They had fallen asleep on the same quilt that night. He had woken up in the middle of the night, next to Meng Yao's perfect face. He saw him sleeping with a faint, drunken blush. And he had kissed that blush.

“I was afraid to get drunk by myself because of my brother, the great general. My friend Meng was more courageous, he snuck the wine for me. But he didn't want to drink the master's wine, because he was only a servant. I cried so much then. I told him he was cruel. That he wanted this crime to be blamed on me...I said I wouldn't love him unless he drank as much as I did.”

“If I was a great general, I would beat you both” the boy says stuffing shrimps in his mouth.

“My brother never found out.” Huaisang says and drinks more wine. It's sweet and it reflects moonlight. There is a fragrance in the air, maybe it's the plum blossoms. His tolerance for alcohol has certainly grown since his childhood days.

“Do you remember perhaps how old you were when you left Yunmeng?” he asks.

“I was seven.” the boy replies moving from the shrimps to the oyster rolls. He picks them apart gracefully with his chopsticks before shoving them greedily in his mouth behind his hand.

“Did you know a famous temple there? It was a temple at Yunping city.”

“Guanyin temple? Everybody knows Guanyin temple! My mother and I had even gone there to pray. I remember the monks did a lot of charity work, they always gave money to people in need, and let travelers stay at the temple, they cooked meals. But there was a storm one night and the roof caved in. Many people died.”

“My friend built that temple.” Huaisang says pouring himself another drink.

“Your friend the servant!? The servant that you got drunk?”

“Yes, his fortune changed, and he became a very rich, a very powerful man. He made many public works and was kind and fair to the common people. His name is all but forgotten now...If you know a play about a man that tears down the things his friend builds, please let me know. I would surely watch it.”

Chapter 5: A passing fancy.

The boy watches the carp fight over the meager crumbs they have tossed them. When he smiles there is a very slight, an almost imperceptible indentation on his cheeks. The waters of the canal are murky, but the carp are glistening in bright colors of orange and red, reminding him of the servants at Carp Tower once upon a time.

“Do you know the poem about the lady comparing herself to a fan?”

“I've never heard about such a thing.” the boy says tossing some more crumbs. The bright reflections from the water play on his bright face.

“It's about a court lady who is very much loved by the emperor. They spend an entire summer together in bliss walking in gardens and drinking wine under the moon. But when the summer passes, he forgets all about her. So she compares herself to a fan one uses to cool themselves in the summer only to be forgotten with the first autumn breeze.”

“That's so sad.”

“It's a warning. About passing fancies. Not forming attachments. Not expecting love for love given.”

“Oh.”

“You will understand when you grow older. Or perhaps you already do, better than me.”

Huaisang fishes the little box out of his sash and gives it to the boy.

“What's this?” the boy asks wiping his hands on his shift.

“Open it.”

The boy unclasps the lid, opening the box. He reaches for the large pearl nestled inside and playfully puts it over one of his eyes.

“Is it a rock?” he asks.

“It's a pearl. A real one.”

The boy rolls it between the balls of his fingers, observing it mystified. “What should I do with it?” he asks.

“One day, when you are very tired and want to stop you can exchange it for money. And then you can build a big mansion and have many servants and you will not want for any thing.”

“It's that expensive?”

“It's a real treasure. It's not a cheap thing like a pearl button. So don't gamble it away, or drink it, or spend it on women. Do not show it to anyone and keep it always close. Don't let anyone cheat you out of it.”

“What if I lose it, or someone steals it from me?”

“Then do not come to Qinghe. And don't ask for Nie Huaisang. I don't know what kind of man he'll be by the time you find him.”

Chapter 6: She became mad.

Do you see that man. I heard he pays an entire fortune to anyone who resembles his lost love. He might not look it, but he is a great lord from Hejian. Really wealthy. I hear he gave a lavish mansion in Tanzhou to a waitress just because her smile reminded him of that man.”

“I never have luck with such things. I have such a plain face. If it were to rain money from the sky, I wouldn't catch a single coin.”

He is not that drunk that he can't hear them. In fact he is not drunk at all, despite all the drinking. This is supposed to be a refined place, but it's just another brothel. He was thinking of Meng Yao's mother lately. Everyone always said how much he looked like her. For years he avoided looking at her face, yet from the very beginning it was the one he loved. Meng Yao looked nothing like Guangshan.

His features had a womanly grace. It was how he seduced others into believing his nature was soft and pliant. When his brother had chosen Meng Yao to put him at his side, it was that supple grace that entranced him. He thought Meng Yao was delicate, loving and pure. What his mother must have been like.

But in a place like this what good did it do to her?

“How was she like?” Huaisang had asked once when he was a child.

“Oh, she was the most beautiful woman in the land.” Meng Yao had said as if he was ready to spin a fairy tale in her memory.

“That's what everyone says about their mother.” Huaisang had said. “If I had known my mother perhaps we would have been able to compare their looks”

“Huaisang is so handsome too. His mother might have been as beautiful as mine.” Meng Yao had conceded.

For many years after his brother died, he cursed Meng Shi for bestowing to her evil son the tools with which he deceived men and women and had surmised that some evil must have been in her heart as well, for kind looks to be twisted this way. But he had seen with his own eyes, from Meng Yao's tortured spirit. The kindness was real. Meng Yao had never deceived him, or his brother, or anyone else who had trusted his kind face.

How else could a person succeed so much, with so little at their disposal and ultimately be happy, unless a terrible balance existed within them. The evil had never been the aberration, it had been the poison to the flower.

“But what was she really like, aside from her looks” he had asked again.

“She was warm.” Meng Yao had said in the softness of candlelight. “She was so warm when she took me in her arms. She always whispered to me what a splendid life would await us once we got away from it all. She worked very hard for this. That's why she became very sad towards the end. It was as if the light was going slowly out of her. But even in madness and despair, she was still very warm.”

“She became mad?”

“Towards the end.”

“What did she do?” Huaisang had asked fearing the answer.

“She drunk a lot in order to go on. And she cried. She cried every day.”

Huaisang had tried many times to imagine the context of the brothel. That's why for his first visit he had chosen a popular, ugly place in a dingy port town. He had gone to take revenge on Meng Yao's mother, but looking at the women there so sickly and frail and mad, it had made his stomach turn. Surely Meng Yao's mother, a queen among whores, never saw a place like that. She could read and write, compose elegant verses and play music.

So tonight he came here, where the ladies are so elegant they might be in another life queens. But it's really the same place. Maybe the clients behave better here, but they still expect the same things.

“Young Master, you haven't said a word all evening. Don't you like me at all?”

“You've heard the stories. You don't really resemble my friend.”

“That's so sad. The mistress hoped she could make a fortune on your back. She promised she would release me from my contract. But I guess I am as unlucky as always.”

“My friend was unlucky. He had a pile of misfortunes on his back.”

“How can anyone love someone who is unlucky, they will only bring them bad luck. You, young master, you were blessed by fortune. You are lucky that friend of yours died.”

“I will drink to that.”

“Young Master, will you just drink? Don't you have any other notion of fun?”

“Not really. I told you, you don't look like my friend.”

“You are a man of poor imagination. Most young lords will just close their eyes and see clearly any face they desire. Perhaps you are not a big friend of women.”

When he sleeps that night, alone back at the inn he curiously dreams of the evil peony prince. He sees him in his costume, feeding the carp at the canal. He would have liked to ask him to come back to Qinghe with him, but then people would believe he had lost his mind.

What would he say? “This is my reincarnated friend. I need to protect him.”

He already knows no such gentle fate awaits Jin Guangyao and aches all the more for not being able to indulge even in harmless fantasy. Maybe the silver is not for the people, but for the thoughts that still plague him. Maybe he can pay them gone. When Guangyao tore his brother limb from limb, what was that about? He cried bitterly before his empty tomb and asked: “Brother, what did you do to enrange him?”

He even cursed his brother's memory for requesting revenge. “How will I do it ?” he had cried. “How?”

When he finally did, putting together his brother, just as he was putting together the final strokes of his plan, he wanted to tear apart everything Guangyao ever put together, and more importantly all that made him. “It's because you conceived him.” he had told her as he scattered her bones to be taken by the birds and the animals of the mountain.

The evil peony prince in his dream turns to him with a smile. “Where are the bones of my mother?” he asks.

“I ground them all to dust to make you this pearl” the Huaisang in his dream answers.

He wakes up in cold sweat. Even if he wanted to, he could never put her back together. Just like Guangyao's spirit. Mother and son are now nothing.

“What happens if a man scatters the bones of his enemy's mother” he asks.

“Young lord, you are all strange ideas tonight” the boatman replies. “Ask a priest. He'll give you an answer.”

Chapter 7: Someone to make you happy.

There was quite a large crowd outside of his room. He hadn't exactly advised the innkeeper to keep them away, but none of them barged through his door. A maid he had tipped to keep him company, would occasionally go outside to let them know the young lord was still unavailable, but neither would she turn them away. Then at about seven, a wonderful hour to have afternoon tea, a lady, pushing and shoving through the crowd, opened the door to his room and got in to the surprise of everyone including himself.

“Young lord, I came as soon as I found out you were in town!” she exclaimed, and taking a napkin out of her bosom, she dabbed the sweat that had collected on her brow.

“Really, for what reason?” he said waving his fan slowly. “Do you have a lookalike of my friend for me to see?”

The lady looked at him with surprise. “I am not such a person that I will make one suffer by reminding them of someone who is long dead!” she said.

“Suffer?” he heard himself say.

The lady scooted over to their table. “Please, bring me some tea as well” she said to the maid giving her a handsome tip. “And take your time.”

The maid looked at him baffled, until he waved her away.

“Don't misunderstand me, young lord.” the lady said. “I am sure some of these encounters soothe your heart, but when they come to an end, does it not bleed anew? I came here because I think it a disgrace that there are people who seek to take advantage of you.”

His mind had gone blank. It was one thing to seek pleasures anonymously in a crowd that had a similar mind, but as he moved back to the real world, such folly could spell a man's doom. Was he suffering so much that he had never taken notice others saw it as well?

“A handsome young gentleman like yourself, who does not let himself become attached, no doubt has been gruesomely betrayed. All these other people do is agitate the memory of betrayal in your heart. They repay your generosity with ingratitude, if you ask me.”

“So you are not here to make me meet somebody?”

The lady smiled. “I am here to bring you someone who won't leave. Someone who will be utterly devoted to your lordship, and entirely in your power to do with him as you see fit.”

“That sounds rather incovenient.”

“You are a rich man. You have dispersed countless treasures, but you won't need to spent as much to procure yourself a servant. And what does a servant need to be loyal to you? A plate of food, some clothes and a place to sleep. These things even I can provide, a wealthy lord like you can keep a servant like a little princeling if your heart so desires.”

“I see...Are you a pimp or a slaver?”

The lady laughed. “Neither! I do not like misery at all! I like to see people pleased and happy. I came here to make you happy, and if you agree your servant will also be happy.”

Huaisang felt utterly confused “Are you a matchmaker?”

The lady blushed and laughed again, hiding her mouth behind her sleeve. “My lord, nothing escapes your attention!” she said.

“It's common knowledge that I am indolent. I will permit you to amuse me.” He reached for his coin purse, but the lady stopped him.

“Please, do not pay me before I complete my work. And furthermore if I don't find someone to please you, then don't pay me at all!”

“It's unlikely that I will take this person with me, you know. Even if you dig up my friend's grave and bring him back to life, I will not. I am only paying to be amused.”

The lady gripped his hand more firmly. “Lord, when your heart opens up, you will pay my weight in gold, that's why I won't accept your change now.”

Chapter 8: Flowers a little wilted

He had cried all through the night. Like when he first realized what it was that Jin Guangyao had done. Because he was weak, and because killing was such a repulsive thing. I love this person, his heart had said. Shouldn't have I?

He counted the years of silence, of appearing as something he was not, and wondered how many people drift through the world like this; descending in some silent madness. It made everything bitter, especially his interactions with other people, which by then fell into two categories; people he could use, and people he'd have to destroy.

Truly no one can ever know another's heart, but when he held Guangyao's gauze cap he had to wonder if he had ever known his own. Whom could he place by his side, and not lie with his silences, not ommit awful truths with shallow pleasantries.

If his brother were to see him now, would he recognize him? Would he think, this is Huaisang. The boy that would once spend hours preparing meticulously the meals for his songbirds, while his study books lay neglected by his side, the boy who knew where each poet of Qinghe resided, who knew what flowers grew in their gardens, and was bothered by the sun of the desert.

Huaisang right now could barely recognize the boy he had once been himself. If he could see again his evil peony prince, when he too was but a boy, he would say “I am sorry.”

If only just to make it a little easier to be with other people again.

“There is something about me that the person you bring me must know” he said as the young maid served them wine. There was a man who would recite some exceptional poetry here tonight. “But I am afraid once you find out yourself, you will no longer want to serve me. So tonight you might lose our little bet.”

The lady laughed, and lifting her winecup she drank behind her sleeve. “I am no lord, I am not afraid of losing.”

He rested his chin on the guard of his fan. “That friend of mine I loved, I was the one who killed him.”

The lady set her winecup on the table a little flustered. “That's depraved!” she said. “You enjoy killing young men?!”

“He had my brother poisoned and killed for some rival lord, so I had no other choice but to do it.”

The lady regarded him cautiously “Well then, if you ask me it was your friend's fault for exceeding his station. When servants meddle in the affairs of their masters they often end up dead. But you needn't worry about the person I'll bring. They'll know their place.”

“He has to be polite.”

“Excuse me?”

“He has to be polite, but not literate. In fact he shouldn't be able to read or write. And if he were to be unlucky, if he had some great misfortune happen to him, I would prefer it.”

“You have a fondness for flowers that are a little wilted, don't you.”

“No relatives, either.”

“I suppose he should be very young and very handsome.”

“No, I don't care about his looks. If it's an ugly or disfigured person I wouldn't mind at all. And I don't want him to be younger than me.”

“But a young, impressionable boy, who will admire you-”

“Young, impressionable boys grow up, and hate the lords that raise them.”

Chapter 9: Meilin

It was drawing to noon and he was thinking about what he should have for lunch, when a missive from the matchmaker came. It read: “I found the one.”

That greatly unsettled him, mostly because he was thinking about leaving after tomorrow and never give a second thought to this affair. He also had an intense dislike for others setting the pace of his day. So instead of strolling out to find some other distraction, he fussed over his looks and had a maid tidy up his chambers. His lunch plans, he also changed. Whereas he would have had a simple meal, now he had to organize a small banquet.

His guests arrived just when he was starting to get annoyed with all the preparations. He fixed his hair and took a seat, and was only reminded that he had not requested some ethereal beauty, when the smiling matchmaker came in, with a small statured young man in tow that was so bowed he could hardly see his face.

“We interrupted your lunch!” she exclaimed. “Please forgive us, my lord! If this one over here was not so slow we would have come at an earlier time. Perhaps we should wait until you are finished and then come to see you. I fear you may lose your appetite when you see whom I brought you.”

“No, sit the both of you. Let's get this over with. Serve them wine.” he said to the maid.

Even though he felt himself exhale impatiently for giving in this folly, his eyes couldn't help but dart curiously to the shrunken form next to the matchmaker. That young man had a beautiful lustrous sheen on his hair, and when he bowed, his nape reminded him of Meng Yao when he was a young servant himself.

Perhaps actually it was not at all like this and he only thought so because that's what he wanted – which irritated him even more.

“Wine?” the matchmaker asked. “You are going to give this fine wine to one such as him? How lucky you are! Bow and drink for the young master.”

Huaisang toyed with his chopstics. “Actually, let's all start eating. I waited for you too long.”

“I certainly will, I am famished running about town to find you a good servant.”

Huaisang noticed that the young man had taken the cup from the maid, but was not drinking.

“What is his name?”

“His mother was a simple woman, she named him Li...she liked plums, I suppose. He is no beauty, but he knows how to make tea, and a bed, and also take care of clothes – which is a nice thing for someone like you, who likes to travel. And hear that, he can also rub your back when you are tired. He is good with his hands.”

“Well, Li, why aren't you drinking your wine?”

The young man didn't lift his face at all at being addressed. “Wine makes me dizzy.” he mumbled.

“My lord, he is a bit of a simpleton, you won't get much conversation out of him. But he is not so incompetent that he can't bring you a meal or wash your clothes. Why don't you try him for a few days, and if he does not please, I'll compensate him for his labor.”

“Can I see his face?” he asked.

Li bowed even more deeply, but he did not say anything. It seemed this request greatly embarassed him.

“My lord, he is ugly! I warn you!”

“I don't mind, show me your face. I'll have to see you if I am to keep you. And if it is so unbearable as you say, I'll give you at least a more pleasant name. How about Meilin? Now there's a whole grove of plum trees, isn't that better?”

The young man peered at him from under his lashes, and hesitantly he lifted his face a little. He had a harelip. The shape of his face was not bad, but what would have been the good side of his face had once been burned, making the eyelids of one eye fuse and droop comically.

“What happened to him?”

“This one has such a sad story, my lord. You must be moved to save him. His mother was a maid at a very noble house, and the lord there treated him well, but after she died, the lady of the house turned on him and beat him every day. She hit his face with a hot kettle when he was but a child, can you believe? The lord died a few days ago of old age and she threw him out and it's not easy for him to be employed with such a face. Do this kindness for me and try him out.”

Chapter 10: A carp carried it in its mouth.

“You have really beautiful hair. So if you let it down and someone sees you from behind, then they will be really surprised when you turn and they see you from the front.” he said picking up his hair, and securing it with a pin.

Meilin bowed his head coyly. For such an ugly person, he sure was proud and hated showing it.

“Most people are repulsed by the surprise, and not the actual ugliness...So which ones do you like?”

“These clothes are too good for someone like me.”

“What are you talking about? The way you look if I have to send you out to do some chores people will laugh and kick you. But if you wear really expensive clothes they'll know you belong to a wealthy master. Instead of kicks, they'll fill your pockets with bribes so that you will arrange meetings with me.”

“I won't take bribes!” Meilin argued.

Huaisang looked at the silk garments folded on the table in front of them. Some of them were too beautiful even for him. He pulled a colorful jacket with a pattern of opened fans. The quality of the weaving was truly exceptional, there were so many different colors and designs on the opened fans.

“How about this one? People will know immediately who is your master.”

Meilin hid his face behind his hands. “Can't I stay inside and serve you, master. I don't like going out.” he said with a shaking voice.

“Too embarassed to be seen by people?”

Meilin nodded bashfully. Huaisang unfolded the garment, it had a pleasing, sturdy feel.

“My brother had a servant once. He was so beautiful that he had him greet and talk with guests. I think everyone with an affection for such a thing was a little in love with him. My greatest joy was playing dress up-with him. I loved the texture of his hair, it was soft and glossy like a woman's. Your hair could be said that it's as fine as his.” he said adjusting the mirror on the table a little, so he could see the pattern of the opened fans on Meilin's shoulders.

“Of course a handsome man like him wouldn't remain a servant forever...Straighten your neck a little, you look like a turtle.”

Meilin complied, by closing his eyes and averting his face. He couldn't even bear his own sight in a hazy mirror.

“He became very rich, fabulously rich. He had even more money than me. That's why, Meilin, you have to accept the bribes, so if I ever fall on hard times I can rely on you, like I did to my old friend. Do you know what was the first gift he brought me, when he became a master of himself?”

Meilin shook his head.

“A collection of dolls, so I could enjoy myself dressing them up and combing their hair. Insolent, don't you think?

“I do not know.” Meilin mumbled.

“Well neither did I at the time. I just enjoyed the gift, like a child. They were made of very fine porcelain, and had clothes made of real silk brocade. They even had things like embroidered kerchiefs and silk gauze caps. And on their head each of them had a set of real human hair. They were extraordinary. But even though their faces were unique and painted by hand, the shape of their heads was the same. They all had come from the same mold. There was no real difference between masters and servants. What do you think about that?”

“I do not know.” Meilin repeated touching absent-mindedly the silk on his shoulders.

“You remind me a little of those dolls...My brother had them smashed and burned in a great fire. To be honest, Meilin, I thought he did it because he was jealous. Jealous people always behave erratically, they break and burn things. You can't really predict their actions.” he said looking at Meilin's burnt side of the face in the mirror.

Meilin hummed a little to fill the silence.

“Why don't you take off your old clothes and put on the new ones?”

Meilin bowed respectfully to him.

“Please, take a look at this” the evil peony prince in his dreams said. It was a misshapen pearl.

“Where did you find this?”

“A carp carried it in its mouth.” the evil peony prince replied with a smile. “Is it not the same as the one you gave me? It might not be perfectly round, but it is the same thing, is it not?”

He leaned in to look at the pearl in the prince's palm. Because of the slight indentations the colors of pink and green shimmered with a golden sheen as the reflections from the carp pond played on it.

“Yes, it's a pearl, but it's even more priceless than my own.”

Chapter 11: The cage.

Once upon a time Meng Yao had been accused of receiving bribes to promote certain individuals to the attention of Nie Mingjue. This was a serious offense in the Unclean Realm. His brother had put him in a cell until the matter could be cleared. He hadn't told anything to Huaisang – he was probably so overwhelmed it hadn't even crossed his mind.

He had just strolled out for a walk in the grounds, happy and blissful for the coming spring, and had accidentally caught glimpse of a familiar form in the cells. “Meng Yao!” he had exclaimed with childish surprise. Meng Yao had looked at him but didn't dare to speak. He bore this silently, dignified but he must have been just as surprised as him to have Mingjue do this to him.

He had brought him a meal, and wine, even though the guard in charge frowned and muttered “I don't know if the young master is allowed to” But Huaisang had been a young master, he could do things like bring wine and food to his friend. He was not some servant one could punish until it was wrong to do so.

When he was young he had thought Meng Yao's ordeal had been so great that he was too stunned to thank him. He wasn't after gratitude or passionate declarations of devotion from his servant anyway. All he had thought was how painful and inconvenient it would be for him to have to stay at a cell. Even if it was clean and adequate, the disgrace of being seen in it alone was an inhumane torture unfit for someone as delicate as Meng Yao.

But when he had been finally released he had privately raged. He hadn't tossed, or broken things, or raised his voice like Mingjue sometimes did. He had drunk himself to bitterness and cried until Huaisang thought his eyes would fall off.

“Who is this person, Meng Yao. It's certainly not you.” he had said is disbelief. He had wanted to paint something for him to congratulate him for his exonoration, but the person in front of him hardly resembled a human. It was as if Huaisang was before a ghost. A memory of a person

It had reminded him of those stories of women, whose love made them nothing, whose love had ground their bones to dust. But even that was the romantic notion of a child. He must really love Nie Mingjue, he had thought. To be in such agony, one must feel the purest form of love.

Meng Yao had fallen asleep on the floor crying inconsolably. He had painted him then, thinking that he was painting a masterpiece. He had a vague interest in painting masterpieces back then. He had thought himself talented. Then he had seen what real masterpieces looked like and lost his courage.

But that portrait of Meng Yao, who had fallen asleep in bitterness and agony, with his eyelashes wet from crying, he had valued it more than any object of art he owned. In the darkness of his room, surrounded by his treasures, he had admired it as if it had been painted by some other hand, until he finally realized this portrait wasn't his to keep. He thought how unfortunate Meng Yao was to have two masters; one who put him in jail and one who stole things from him, and then had decided to give it back to him.

Maybe even as a little lovenote. He had tiptoed over to Meng Yao's room in the early hours of morning. It was raining outside and the whole fortress was surrounded in this deep blue haze, sleeping. He would push the door silently out of the way and leave it on Meng Yao's quilt for him to find in the morning. His heart was beating so fast. “He'll finally know how I am feeling,” was his hope.

But when he pushed the door gently ajar, and peered inside he saw his brother in Meng Yao's bed. It wasn't even a scandalous scene, like those naked couples spied by a jealous maiden in his erotic novels. It was too cold to do without a quilt. They were embraced tenderly nonetheless kissing each other with tears in their eyes.

“I love you so much.” Meng Yao had whispered. “Don't ever leave me.”

He had become so resentful; he had wanted to rattle the door and frighten them with the threat of exposure. At least that's what jealous heroes did in his novels, but could he for a jealousy topple a castle? He had returned to his room and burnt the portrait in the stove of his tea kettle. Until morning came he had been consumed by the grief of injustice.

“I was the one who brought you food and wine, and tried to cheer you up. I was the one to see your pain.” How could you return to the one who treated you cruelly, he had cried until his eyes stung, and then forgot about it the next morning.

He hadn't realized Meng Yao liked being caged up. He liked having someone else holding the tether to his life. His greatest grudge had been for Nie Mingjue who had let him go. It must have confirmed to him some secret scorn, some ingratitude Nie Mingjue harbored against him, rendering his submission to him meaningless.

Meilin stirred in his sleep. After the many hours, he had leaned drowsily against him and slept with little care in the world. The carriage swayed and creaked on the narrow road, but through the blinds he could see the morning sun reflect on the stream that run through the green maples. Roaming in the city, he had missed the clear air of the mountains, the framed views of rivers amidst branches.

He was reminded again of Meng Yao, who during his days of service would never fall asleep, or absently admire a landscape. How properly he would sit across him, chattering like bird , while his attention would be diverted from one detail to another. A bird who feels the outline of its cage with pleasure, but hasn't forgotten the danger outside of it.

“He would have always protected you.” he hears himself whisper and his attention falls on Meilin's sleeping face. “Even when you left. His love, unlike mine, was not a cage.”

Chapter 12: Put your enemy's mother next to your own.

“Young master...your room is ready. Won't you come out?”

“My servant is still sleeping.”

The curious innkeeper peered into the carriage. “I can wake him up if you want.” he offered.

“No, let him sleep. I had a servant who never slept. He was a poor servant for it.”

The innkeeper eyed him with disbelief. He guessed it was a tad eccentric for a master to let his servant sleep on him. Of course if it was a beautiful or graceful person, everyone could understand. Huaisang absently stroked his hair. How funny that nothing could fix this face. All the money in the world could not purchase a fairer fortune for this one person.

“Meilin” he whispered tucking an errant strand behind his ear. “Do you want to have breakfast?”

Meilin stirred, but only slightly. As they lay embraced he thought how nice it was to have someone so utterly trusting again. The matchmaker had chosen well. “Meilin” he touched his face. Meilin gasped and woke up

“Master, I am sorry-” he exclaimed looking around stunned. “I didn't mean to-”

“Enough apologies already. I want to drink the tea you make.” he said and got off the carriage.

Meilin looked around hesitantly. “You are so coquettish! You are no great beauty, hurry up. Give me your hand. Don't you want to see our room?”

Meilin took his hand. It was so soft and tender, the hand of a servant who only folded clothes and made tea. He was so weak from crouching and bowing all his life in some dark mansion that he had to lean heavily on him to get off the carriage.

“I can't see very well, master.” Meilin suddenly said. “I am so sorry for not telling you before.”

“I guessed it already when you told me you didn't like going out. Even if someone is ridiculed for their appearance, they don't dislike going outside unless they can't do it very well...Just hold my hand.” he said and guided him inside tenderly.

“Young master, you sure are a saint.” the maid who led them to their room said.

“Meilin is a good servant, the rest of you can't see.”

The maid giggled. For some reason he disliked her already, at least just for Meilin's sake. “Do you have any pickled plums? I'd like to have them from breakfast.” he said setting Meilin at a low table in their room. “Meilin, what do you like eating? You can have anything.”

“I can just eat your leftovers.” he softly said.

The maid had to clasp her mouth in order not to laugh out loud.

“Was your previous lord so rich that his leftovers were a banquet? Then I would like to think myself as even wealthier, because I can afford two meals. Do you have quail eggs? Meilin will have them.”

He looked around. The room was truly splendid. It was exactly what he was craving. A simple rustic room with a beautiful round window and a view to the maples and the stream. It smelled clean and fresh filled with the scent of pines carried by the mountain breeze.

“Do you perhaps have any ink and some good paper? I would like to draw the view.” he said to the maid.

“I'll see what I can do.” she said and closed the door with a big, amused smile on her face.

“Has anyone ever drawn your portrait before, Meilin?”

Meilin peered at him from beneath his lashes with something that to Huaisang resembled ire. Like a person who couldn't put up with anymore cruelty in his life. “Don't waste paper on me.”

“I don't intend to draw you as you are. Have you seen the pictures of beautiful women? Well, they are not as beautiful in real life as they are in the imagination of the artist that drew them. I will draw you as you should be.”

Meilin lowered his head again to hide his face. “Quail eggs are so slippery” he muttered.

“I will feed them to you.”

“My lord...don't do nice things for me. I do not understand them.”

“Alright, I'll paint and you will air our clothes. How does that sound? And if you want, you can eat after I eat.”

Meilin breathed relieved. “It's what I know.”

“But it makes you a bad servant not to do what I ask. It's as if between us I am the ugly one.”

Meilin didn't answer. It ruined the taste of his tea.

When he picked the brush again that same afternoon it felt heavy and foreign in his hand, as if it was made of iron. Despite the very slight sway of their clothes, hanged from the ceiling, in the breeze, his mind felt utterly empty before the clean paper in front of him.

He had promised Meilin beauty but he had no idea what that looked like even by the sound of a stream and the rustle of the maples. He had reached greater profundity drinking tea in a noisy teashop back in Kaifeng, talking to prostitutes and porters. Yet here in the calm of the country he was devoid of anything, much like the paper waiting for his pen.

Meilin sat beside him and poured wine. He had pretty, doll-like hands. Meng Yao's hands were rough from practicing swordmanship, even when he was young. Despite being quite small in appearance, they were quite strong; they could easily break things.

“Give me your hand.” he asked Meilin. “I want to teach you how to draw. Have you ever held a brush?”

“No.” Meilin mumbled.

“Writing and painting are closely linked to swordmanship, you know. First you have hold the pen from a high point. This gives you a wider range of movement. It takes quite some time to learn to control things like gesture. Just like wielding a sword you have to have a clear intent and go in with a strategy.”

Meilin was uncomfortable, he could feel it on the surface of his skin right underneath his fingertips. “I'll ruin the paper.” he said.

Huaisang felt strangely emboldened by that. “Well, before you ink the brush, you dip it first in water. You dry the excess water, and draw a sketch of the image with the water trail...Let's do a scene with the moon.” he said gesturing at the view from their window. The moon was just rising from behind the mountain, behind a branch of maple leaves.

“When my brother died I had to rely on others, just like you rely on me to draw this picture. No one was telling me of course what picture they drew using me. I had to guess that for myself. But I knew something of painting. ”

Meilin hummed, as he usually did when he didn't know what to say. Huaisang noted how easier it was to paint holding someone else's hand, he thought. Any mistakes could be attributed to the person holding the brush, instead of the one who guided the hand.

Meilin's hand was perfectly limp in his own as he clasped it and moved it above the paper. He didn't know what annoyed him more. The fact that he could see a ghost of Meng Yao's features on his face, or the effect his carefully crafted servility had on him. What would it take for this person to be honest with him? To reveal their true self?

But perhaps like those ghosts of Meng Yao he kept seeing in others' faces, a true self was also some sort of illusion.

“See, it's not that scary. The picture vanishes just as soon as you draw it.” he said. “You try it now with ink. I'll drink wine, and you will draw. The only thing we are missing is some music.”

Meilin put the brush down. The moon on the sky was just shy of four quarters, but it shone so bright, it looked almost golden. Meilin looked at him, asking with his eyes “What is it you want?” He noticed then that his harelip had been extraordinarily treated.

“Your master took you to a surgeon.” he said touching it. “His work is very skilled. He cut up the edges and sutured them with silk thread. He put a paste to prevent infection...He must have loved you very much. Is that why the mistress hated you?

Meilin covered his face as if struck.

“Were you his son, or his lover? I think you were his lover. You put poison in his tea and killed him.”

“I do not know what you are talking about.” Meilin cried. He got up, upturning the cup with the water on the table, and run to the corner of the room, before collapsing in tears. Like a bird that doesn't remember where it came from.

“That matchmaker must have been a fox spirit. Of course, she would find someone as bad as me.”

For a while nothing was heard in the room except for Meilin's wet breathing. Huaisang looked at the water soak the paper and spill from the edges of the desk. He really didn't know what to do with his judgements. They lived now within him, honed like a polished blade. They could only hurt people. And he could never again grasp things like the beauty of the moon, without its glare exposing crimes.

“I didn't mean to upset you.” he said, touching Meilin's shoulder tenderly. “I won't mention such a thing again. Come sit next to me like you did in the carriage.”

Meilin sobbed for a long time, as the moon rose in the sky and the room darkened for it. Then he turned around finally and fell in his arms. His tears soaking through their clothes.

“I love you so much. I will never leave you.” Huaisang said squeezing him tightly, as a lark sang in the night.

The next morning Meilin was gone.

“He run away this morning.” the maid said while sweeping. “They often do. There's a monastery a at the end of the road. That's where he went. The monks take in frequently runaways.”

He dressed, modestly, put on his shoes and walked all the way to the temple. At the hour of his arrival the monks were offering meals. There were quite a few visitors praying, or just generally enjoying themselves out in the yard. An old man separated him from the crowd.

“Are you looking for your servant?” he asked pointing at his fan.

“Actually” he said. “I would like to ask some other thing.”

The man, a temple servant of some sort took him to the monastery's abbot. A very old frail man, who was probably hard of hearing. He was meditating, while his assistant was having tea.

“Very soon, he'll begin fasting for his departure.” the assistant explained. “If you need help with some thing, you better ask me.”

Huaisang sat with them and drank the tea the assistant offered him. It was so strange, but he felt the whole room vibrate with prayers, even if it was utterly silent inside.

“I had an enemy that I killed.” he said. “I desecrated his mother's shrine as well. I took her bones and scattered them. I would like to know what happened to her.”

“You seem to know very well what happened to her.” the assistant said, not a hint of judgement in his voice.

“I mean I would like to know what happened to her soul? Did my actions interfere with her afterlife.”

“What do you think?”

“I do not know. That's why I ask you.”

The monk looked at him mystified. “Do you wish to punish this person further?” he asked with some concern.

“No. I regret what I did. I want to know how to make it better.”

“Better for whom? Your enemy, his mother, or yourself?”

He snorted. Monks were such obstinate minds. “For everyone involved.”

“I think you are confused. If you look at the stars and wish to move them from their place, can you do that? Absolutely not. Actions are fixed and cannot be altered. That's why it's best to detach from things.”

“But there must be something I can do. At least for her.”

“Where do you worship your mother?” the monk asked.

“How do you know my mother is dead?”

“If she were alive she would have better advised you.”

“My family's ancestral hall.” he said confused.

“Then put your enemy's mother next to her, and offer her the same rites. There are some sutras you can transcribe to allow yourself to reflect on things like piety for your elders, and mercy. I can pick them for you.”

He stared at the monk for a long time without having something to say. Then finally the chirps of the birds outside brought him back. “How much do I owe?” he said taking out his money purse. The monk regarded him coolly.

Walking out into the temple's courtyard under the sun he felt utterly lost. There was infinite beauty and grace around him, but it could not penetrate his soul. He noticed then that Meilin stood at the steps behind him. He had already been tonsured. In his hands he held a broom and with it, he swept the steps of the shrine.

“I would have always protected you.” he explained.

Meilin stared at him as if he wanted to say something. He dropped the broom and run back inside.

After a few days he had arrived at Qinghe. “There is a matchmaker in Yiling.” he said to the treasurer. “Go ask her how much she weighs. And then pay her that sum in gold.”

Chapter 13: Treasure.

It was easy enough to avoid a marriage when he was an incompetent boy. Every father in his court fretted at his sight, and every now and then he could hear someone mumble: “I hope he never asks for my daughter.” It had not sounded awfully impertinent to him at the time - he had graver matters on his mind.

But once he had aged a little, different rumors soared under the sky: “Just like his brother, he has little interest in that.”

An aunt became livid, and took it upon herself to procure him a noble spouse for the benefit of the Qinghe Nie. He did then the one thing he could to prove himself an unmarriageable idiot. He took a concubine. Or rather he made it appear so, for truly he had little interest in that.

He found a young girl, recently orphaned, whose family was ruined, and before she was ruined herself, he installed her in luxury at the women's quarters in his home. He left her there with all the appropriate tutors, and a considerable allowance, and remembered her only when he received a guest and needed someone agreeable to make the tea, or sing, or read a difficult poem.

If you asked him to draw precisely the features of her face, he would refuse for he had no idea what those were. As for what thoughts, and feelings inhabited her, those too were to him abstract and vague.

Once when he had returned from his exhausting excursion to Kaifeng, with Meilin's disdain for him in mind, he had finally considered her. He had called her and asked her if she would have been happier to leave the Unclean Realm and go live as a nun in some secluded monastery on the mountains.

He did not realize how this would not appeal to a young woman, who wore fineries, and was bestowed on charming little gifts, perfumed herself lavishly, and had every material need met in excess.

“How did I displease?” she had cried, folding in tears on the floor. “Why do you want to get rid of me?”

He had hurried then to dispel her worries, to soothe and console, and dry tears, and hold close. He did these things naively – naivety being perhaps his most natural instinct. He forgot all about the affair the very next day, and carried on putting it entirely out of his mind. Except that sometimes, he would remember Meng Yao; his tears and his entreaties and felt bitterly guilty somehow.

Not for what happened in the end, but for what had happened in the very beginning.

#the untamed #the untamed fic #nie huaisang #nie mingjue #jin guangyao #nieyao #sangyao

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akatsuki-shin · 4 years

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[REVIEW] The Untamed: The Living Dead

Before anyone asked, for those of you who wanted to watch this movie:

Download iQiyi apps to your phone

Pick the movie and watch it from your phone

If you don't want to continue the membership, remember to cancel it before the date of renewal

WeTV said it will be available in their apps, too, but I'm not sure when they are going to release it, so just keep an eye on it.

If it's really on WeTV, then it means the movie can be watched from web, as well, via WeTV's website.

*** Spoilers ahead! You've been warned. ***

STORY: 7/10

Nothing outstanding, but not that bad either. Let's just say it's like one of those Extra Chapters in Mo Dao Zu Shi, a story of one of their night hunts after the end of the official story. It just happens that this night hunt is a tad bit more difficult than the usual, with a dash of existential crisis for Wen Ning.

So in summary, there was one servant in a prominent family's house who was apparently delusional enough to think that the Young Lady of the family cares deeply for him, and he fell in love with her. He hated the fact that there was a new disciple coming into the family, favored by the family head, became a couple with the Young Lady and they would soon get married.

Sounds like your usual soap opera drama......except this servant got black magic on his hands with a shard of Yin Iron which allows him to control others like a puppet.

Hence when he got found out, he destroyed the whole family and framed that disciple guy. But to his misfortune, he accidentally killed the Young Lady in the process. After that, he started using the disciple like a puppet to terrorize the people of the surrounding village, taking their souls in order to resurrect the Young Lady using his shard of Yin Iron.

Despite the plot being pretty much cliche, for a 90 minutes movie, I think the story itself is pretty solid. The fact that this servant being the actual villain was the big plot twist at the end because since the beginning (heck, even since the promotion of the movie), we were made to believe that the disciple guy was the root of the problem.

Also, since this movie took place after the end of the official story, when Wen Ning decided to go independent and no longer depending on Wei Wuxian, I think it's nice that there is a part of the movie when Wen Ning was trapped in that illusion, having his own self doubting his existence, trying to influence him to berate Wei Wuxian for making him a, well, living dead.

And although it happens inside the illusion, for The Untamed fans, it was a pleasant surprise when Wei Wuxian's figure appeared to save Wen Ning from the trap, ensuring him that he is different from all those controlled puppets ("WU JI" PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND, DAMN BRUH)

Still, there are a few things that - I'm not going to say "bad" - is quite questionable and probably could've been done differently.

I'm not going to ask how Zhao Yi got his hand of Yiling Laozu's manuscript. I'll take it with a grain of salt that probably when the Lanling Jin Sect was in chaos after Jin Guang Yao's dead, maybe someone really did able to snuck out a few things from Fragrant Chamber's Treasure Vault......although even if someone can do that, I don't think it's going to be Zhao Yi since he literally has no connection at all with the characters in The Untamed's main story.

But fine, let's just believe that he was somehow able to get it.

Then comes the next problem. How the heck is this guy able to create a shard of Yin Iron? Mind you, even Wei Wuxian didn't create his own shard of Yin Iron to make the Stygian Tiger Seal. He just happened to stumble across that Yin Iron Sword in the Xuanwu of Slaughter's Cave.

If even the Yiling Patriarch couldn't do it, how could a mere servant create a shard of Yin Iron from nothing?

Three of those shards were with Wen Ruo Han, and were destroyed after his death.

One shard was hidden by Xue Yang. Idk where this one goes, tbh, but I am inclined to believe Jin Guang Yao was the one who kept it in the end (CMIIW).

The last shard was within the sword Wei Wuxian found, then used to create the Stygian Tiger Seal.

Did the shard hidden by Xue Yang actually fell to this Zhao Yi's hand? Did he create it from scratch by following Yiling Patriarch's manuscript?

Either way, none of those sound logical for me, which is the biggest flaw of this movie in my opinion. They could've just said the villain was a sorcerer using black magic/demonic cultivation and it would've been fine. No need to put Yin Iron into the story.

Also it's a bit unclear to me how they handled Zhao Yi at the end. Wen Ning and Sizhui were shown walking in Gusu during the ending, but just before that, we clearly saw Wen Ning seemingly sending Zhao Yi into the same illusion trap that he experienced before.

So they just punished Zhao Yi based on their own judgment? Or did they still at least deliver his physical body to be imprisoned in Gusu?

And how the heck could they just finish the story with Wen Ning being the one who got to hold the Yin Iron, wtf?

Last but not least, this usually happens to most 90 minutes movies that I've watched - which is the pacing problem. Especially in the first half of the movie, the pacing was way too fast, they kept changing from one scene to the other as if they're in a rush. I know it's probably because of duration, but still it made me feel a bit uncomfortable following the flow of the story.

CHARACTERS: 7/10

Again, not bad, but nothing spectacular, as well.

I'm going to start with the 3 new characters: Zhao Yi, Xiao Qing, and Zhou Zishu.

Aside from Zhao Yi who got decent screen time due to him being the villain, I don't think the other two characters even got to do anything except dying after they finished telling the past.

A pity, considering that they were put in all promotional materials since the beginning. At least I had expected them to be a little bit more important.

As for Zhao Yi himself, I guess he did a fine job in the handful of screen time he got for this 90 minutes movie. I think his part is pretty solid despite the fast pacing of the movie. At least his background, his motive, and his way of doing things were all explained without any holes.

Now moving on to Lan Sizhui. I don't mean anything bad by this, but I feel that - despite the heck ton of screen time he got - he is barely any different from the rest of the side characters.

To be blunt, I feel like he's just there so Wen Ning got a friend he could talk to. True, he's matured compared to his self during The Untamed. He fought so much better. Heck, his action is really really REALLY cool.

But that's that. He's just there to be Wen Ning's sidekick. Even if he wasn't there, Wen Ning could've solved the case on his own, really.

Sorry, Sizhui. It ain't your fault. The plot makes you like this. :')

But again, as I said before, this story feels like another Extra Chapter after the main story, just another one of their night hunts. If we think about it from this perspective, it's not strange for Sizhui to simply be Wen Ning's sidekick. It just means that they happened to stumble upon the same case and worked together to solve it. Since Wen Ning is older and more experienced, he's "leading" the investigation while Sizhui is following and learning from him.

Now, Wen Ning.

If there is one thing I was more scared about before watching this movie, it's that I was afraid they would destroy Wen Ning's character. It's pretty clear if we see their promotional materials. Even from the make-up, Wen Ning looks so much cooler compared to his appearance during The Untamed. I was scared that they would destroy the Wen Ning that we know to create a brand new, super cool protagonist for this movie.

Well, in the end they didn't really destroy his character - which is a relief. In some aspects, Wen Ning did still retain some of his original nature. For one, he still listened to Wei Wuxian's words and kept it in his heart, hence why he insisted for Sizhui to start calling him "Senior/Brother" instead of "Uncle Ning" because Wei Wuxian said being called "Uncle" sounds old.

However, his demeanor still feels kinda foreign for me, including his interaction with Sizhui which feels like Wen Ning is being too blunt with him. Granted, we can argue that during the span of idk how many years since the end of the original story to here, Wen Ning must've matured and gained confidence in himself.

But the thing is, we did not see any of those happenings that made him the way he is right now, so it just feels strange to see a Wen Ning who does not stutter, does not doubt, and often speaks bluntly.

ACTION & SPECIAL EFFECTS: 8/10

I'm going to say first hand that during the climax battle, I was actually snickering throughout the whole fight because it feels like one of those Tokusatsu movie where Wen Ning and Sizhui did a henshin and suddenly become super powerful. x'D

But aside of that, the action of this movie is just SUPER DUPER GREAT, at least compared to The Untamed. You can tell that they got high budget for this movie, finally.

The fights no longer feel awkward. You know there are people being hung and flung about by wires, but their movements overall look natural. At least you don't see them forgetting to completely erase the traces of wire from the final product, unlike when Jin Ling was fighting against the Goddess Statue at Dafan Mountain in Episode 2 of The Untamed.

And the CGI/special effects completely support this. First of all, Wen Ning's chains look mighty fabulous and the animation is perfectly in line with his body movement.

Then there's Lan Sizhui. Damn this boy is really killing it. No wonder he is Han Guang Jun's child. The way he fought with the Guqin is just A++++

The only downside is that Gusu CGI at the end which look totally unnatural. Like, man, I can totally imagine them just walking on green screen there.

OVERAL SCORE: 7.3/10

Not exactly spectacular or mind blowing, but it does have some surprising elements and the actions exceeded my expectations.

I don't think non-MDZS/The Untamed fans will be able to fully enjoy this movie, but otherwise it's a good watch. I think they really went all-out for the actions. It's simply the winning element of the entire show.

Bottom line is, I will treat this movie as an Extra Chapter of The Untamed/MDZS. Just our beloved Uncle Ning and his nephew going out on a night hunt and happened to stumble across a difficult case, hence they worked together to put an end to it.

And last but not least:

Wei Wuxian when he saw this translation:

I mean... WHAT THE HECK IS MASTER OF YI TOMBS??? x’DD

#The Untamed #Chen Qing Ling #CQL #The Living Dead #Wen Ning #Lan Sizhui #Yu Bin #Zhen Fan Xing #Wei Wuxian #Review #Movie Review

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heave-hyung · 5 years

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can i request sick kook and yoongi takes care of him? im the softest for yoonkook rn :((

In all of the normal morning chaos that came with Bangtan mornings, it was surprisingly easy to overlook the absence of the group’s youngest member. Jin didn’t realize Jungkook hadn’t been woken up yet until the last minute, when the group was already running late. Having been doing a last round of checks around the rooms for lights and cleanliness, Jin decided to ask Yoongi to check up on the maknae (and nag him about timeliness on his behalf.)

Yoongi obeyed, seeing as he was the only one fully set to walk out the door. He made his way over to Jungkook’s room--he had been lucky enough to draw the one single room--and found the boy seemingly fast asleep, duvet up to his ear. The second eldest sat at the foot of the bed, shaking Jungkook softly by the hip.

“Up, Kook-ah. Come on. We have things to do,” Yoongi tried, though his words seemed to fall on deaf ears. The maknae didn’t budge, even when Yoongi shook him a little harder or spoke louder, closer to his ear. Yoongi stood and yanked the blankets off the younger man. The rapper’s annoyed expression quickly softened into concern when he saw the state Jungkook was actually in; without the blankets to hide under, it was obvious that something was wrong.

“Jungkookie...something up?” Yoongi asked, reaching over to run a hand down the singer’s spine. Jungkook was pale, curled up, arms wrapped around his middle. His bangs were plastered to his forehead with sweat, and he was panting softly. He only groaned in response to Yoongi’s question, curling up tighter. Yoongi sighed heavily, leaning forward even further to test the younger boy’s temperature with the back of his hand.

“Christ, you’re burning up…” Yoongi clucked his tongue, trying to think of a plan. “Alright, let me tell the others that you’re not feeling well.”

Jungkook blinked his eyes open halfway, turning his hazy gaze to Yoongi. He opened his mouth to protest, but all that came out was a sluggish, breathy burp. Jungkook squeezed his eyes back shut, the flush of pink that adorned his cheeks becoming the only hint of color on his pale face. Yoongi stood to do as he’d promised, and after assuring Jin and Namjoon that he was perfectly capable of caring for the youngest himself, he grabbed a glass of water and some antacids to bring to Jungkook’s room.

Not wanting to leave Jungkook alone for too long, he set the glass down on the bedside table and dropped the antacids in, letting them dissolve. He ruffled Jungkook’s hair, mumbling a soft, “what am I gonna do with you, kid?”

Jungkook only moaned in response, curling up tighter. Yoongi lied down beside the singer after a moment, gently prying his arms away from his torso to place a hand on his upset stomach instead, carefully starting to rub circles in hopes that it’ll provide some relief to the pain. He started slow and light, not wanting to make anything worse, but Jungkook placed his hand over the rapper’s and wordlessly suggested he press a bit harder.

They stayed like that for a bit, Yoongi spooning Jungkook and applying pressure, helping Jungkook bring up low belches that he smothered into the pillow. Gradually, though, the once small and quieter burps and soft hiccups started getting deeper, longer, and louder. Almost sick sounding. It occured to Yoongi that he’d never really asked if Jungkook was feeling nauseous or anything; knowing the younger man, he wouldn’t bring it up until it was too late and he suddenly jump off the bed to make a stumbling dash for the bathroom in hopes that he’ll make it in time.

“Kook-ah,” Yoongi mumbled, careful not to speak too loudly in case Jungkook was catching something where a headache was involved. “Are you feeling sick at all?”

The younger boy hesitated, staying still for a moment. He shrugged in response, burying his face in the pillow. Yoongi carded a hand through his hair, asking again. “I’ll get you a bucket if you need one,” he suggested, trying to get a definitive answer from the maknae.

Finally, Jungkook nodded softly. Yoongi didn’t miss a beat, practically running down the hall to find a trash can. Surprisingly, it was a lot harder than he would’ve thought--where the fuck were all the trash cans when he needed one? Just as he managed to find and empty the bathroom trash can, he heard a gag from down the hall. Yoongi mumbled a slew of swears under his breath, hurrying back to try to avoid as much of a mess as possible.

Unfortunately, when the rapper returned, Jungkook was sitting up, teary eyed, bent over the edge of the bed with vomit on his lap (and the floor.) Yoongi’s heart dropped, seeing how obviously guilty Jungkook looked.

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, breathing heavily. He was trying his best to keep everything else down, audibly gulping and gasping.

“It’s okay,” Yoongi reassured. He handed Jungkook the bucket, sitting next to him and running a hand up and down his spine. “It’s not your fault. Let it up, I can clean it all up later.” Yoongi tried his best to sound soothing. Jungkook managed another breath before he was lurching forward with a heave, the sound of vomit hitting plastic far from pleasant. He groaned before retching again, and again, and Yoongi was starting to get concerned.

The younger burped hollowly over the trash bin a few times before Yoongi found it reasonable to ask if he thought he was done. Jungkook nodded, though he seemed unsure of himself. Yoongi surveyed the situation before deciding what to do.

“Alright, I’m gonna grab you some clean clothes...do you want to shower?”

Jungkook shook his head listlessly. Yoongi should’ve probably gotten him in the shower at some point, but at the moment he didn’t look like he could stand, so the rapper figured it could wait. He did as he promised, putting the bucket down for a moment to shuffle through Jungkook’s closet for a loose shirt and some boxers, helping him change. “You wanna lay in my room while I clean this up?”

Jungkook looked up at Yoongi, eyes glassy and unfocused and sad. He shrugged, trying to get up on his own only to fall back down onto the bed.

“Woah, I didn’t mean walk there yourself,” Yoongi chuckled. He wrapped an arm around Jungkook’s waist to help him up and guided him around to avoid the mess. He moved slowly, carefully, not wanting Jungkook to fall. Once he got Jungkook situated, he ran a hand through the singer’s hair before going to clean up.

“Wait,” Jungkook mumbled, voice quiet and a bit raspy from the vomiting.

“I have to clean up, baby,” Yoongi gave, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “I’ll be right back, okay? I promise.”

Jungkook nodded softly, sinking back onto the mattress. Yoongi straightened up as quick as he could, getting the floor spotless and making up the bed, throwing Jungkook’s dirty clothes in the hamper. Once he changed the bag in the trash can, he grabbed the glass of antacids he’d originally brought in as well and headed back to Jungkook.

Expecting a feverish, clingy maknae, Yoongi was surprised to find that Jungkook was already fast asleep, curled up tightly just like he’d found him earlier. After setting down what he’d grabbed, Yoongi sat back next to him, leaning against the headboard and taking out his phone to text the others with an update of sorts. Jungkook rolled over to lay on Yoongi’s lap, exhaling and uncurling himself just a bit. Yoongi played with his hair, smiling fondly.

“What am I gonna do with you, kid?”

#emeto #emetophilia #bts emeto #bts emetophilia #sickfic #bts sickfic #sick!jungkook #caring!yoongi

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honeymoonjin · 5 years

Text

enjoy your stay - chapter fourteen

A/N - I don’t put links in anymore so that this comes up on search, but check my masterlist linked in my bio for links to every previous/future chapter.

Word count 3k. This chapter was really hard to write, but our Y/n could only keep up her path of destruction for so long, now, could she?

ENJOY YOUR STAY ↳Boss!Namjoon, Chef!Jin, Receptionist!Hoseok, Bellboy!Jimin, Bartender!Jungkook, Accountant!Yoongi, Photography student!Taehyung ↳Some inappropriate language and cursing. Later chapters have sexual content.

SUMMARY ↳Working the graveyard shift at a hotel isn’t the most exciting job in the world, but your coworkers are certainly happy to have you here.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN ↳All your mistakes and poor decisions catch up with you.

Jungkook was pissed when he walked in on you. To him, you had been in a weird mood the whole day and he was getting worried about you, only to walk in on you getting your rocks off. He wanted to know why you didn’t come to him if you were in the mood, and you kept insisting you weren’t together, so you shouldn’t sleep with him. As if that had seemed to ever stop you recently.

Your mention of the fact that you were no longer together, however temporarily, reminded Jungkook of his end of the deal, and the argument fizzled when he asked you, shyly, like it was real, if you were ready to go meet his parents.

They had invited him up to stay overnight, and since you had already called in sick to work, there was no decent reason for you to say no. You were certain his parents would be stiff business types who would slowly dish out vague hints to how disappointed they were in his change in career path, and you kind of assumed it would be a quick visit just to prove the existence of Jungkook’s ‘girlfriend.’

Because of after-work traffic, Google suggested it would take over 90 minutes to drive there, but you knew for a fact the train ride was only twenty minutes, as it cut through tunnels instead of taking detours around the hilly regions between the two towns. The tickets were purchased, and small overnight bags were packed, and the two of you got on the train within the space of an hour or so.

You found yourself at Jungkook’s parents’ house earlier than you were prepared for. It wasn’t a long train ride – actually quicker than it would have been if you drove due to the weekend traffic – and before you knew it you were shaking his father’s hand and receiving a tight hug from his mother and sitting down for some tea.

You could see a lot of Jungkook in them; his mother had the same doe eyes and his father shared his delicate bone-structure. Not just in terms of looks, though. Mr. Jeon was every bit the energizer bunny, even in his early fifties, and he wasted no time in dashing to the bookshelf and grabbing a photo album, showing you picture upon picture of chubby baby Jungkook, cheeky toddler Jungkook, and lanky teenager Jungkook.

It made your heart swell to see the clearly strong bond between them. On the way over, you had thought back to when Jungkook first told you about how his parents wanted him to go into business against his interests, and you were concerned they’d be coldhearted, hard-assed people that would passive aggressively insult the two of you for being everything they were not.

But as you blew gently at the too-hot tea and looked over the numerous photos with his father, you were pleasantly surprised. They seemed like lovely, caring people who just wanted the best for their son.

“Ah, there he is at the school fair. Him and his best friend Min Jae came up with a service where they’d change all the wires and the codes of your computer and make it nicer-”

Jungkook groaned and rolled his eyes. “Dad, I’ve told you this a million times, we literally just scanned anti-virus software for people that didn’t know how to do it themselves.”

“Well. That’s what I said, isn’t it?” His father turns to you with a querying look in his eyes, rounding up his lips in the exact mirror image of Jungkook’s confused expression. You smile warmly and just shrug. “Ah, it’s all French to me. Never been good with those things. You know, Jungkook, your mother and I always thought it was your entrepreneurship coming through, but maybe it was just your computer whiz brain, you smarty pants.”

Jungkook whined in embarrassment, but you just grinned at him and wiggled your eyebrows.

“Anyway, my dear, how did you meet my son?”

You glance over to Mrs. Jeon while the men continued talking. “Oh, at work, ma’am.”

She adjusts her glasses and takes another sip of tea. “Mm, and what do you do at the hotel?”

“I’m assistant to the manager.”

“Is my Kookie a good worker?”

For a moment, you don’t know whether to sing his praises to please her or to be honest, but she has a twinkle in her wide eyes that tells you she knows her son isn’t exactly a hotshot.

“If he ever gets the opportunity to actually serve a drink, I’ll be sure to tell you.”

Mrs. Jeon cackles, a laugh completely opposite from Jungkook’s, but it’s so contagious you join her. “Ah, my darling son. You know, when he first started working there, back when he still lived with us,” you can’t help but notice the way her tone flattens and her smile droops slightly on that phrase, “he would always come home and tell us at breakfast time what a hard day’s night he’d had. For a while, we really thought they were overworking him there with the way he’d complain. I even once called Mr. Kim myself.” You burst into a fresh pack of giggles. “He was so confused!”

Eventually the men stop their conversation and stare at the two of you cackling like hyenas. Mr. Jeon turned to Jungkook with a fond grin. “Seems like you found a good one, son. These two are as thick as thieves already.”

Jungkook leans over and gives your hand a squeeze. “I got lucky.”

Your smile strains slightly, and you fight to keep a neutral expression. You weren’t with Jungkook, you had only come here because he apparently wanted to keep his parents off his back, but now he was looking at you like you were the most magical person in the world. If it was obvious to you, you knew his parents would be able to see it too. You were worried that they’d start getting curious. This was a bad idea.

“Jungkook,” you breathe, staring deep into his eyes, “I can’t…” His parents were staring at the two of you questioningly, and you didn’t want to disappoint them or anything, but you were getting cold feet about the whole thing. They were so lovely, and you wouldn’t have agreed had you known they would care this much about their son. And Jungkook certainly wasn’t acting like you were just some girlfriend. “I don’t know if we should keep-”

“We have something to tell you,” Jungkook blurted out, locking your gaze with panicked eyes. “I guess Y/n just can’t wait, hah.” You tip your head to the side, a strange feeling in your chest. What was he doing? “Mum, dad, I know you felt a little strange about me moving in with someone for the first time, let alone a girl. But I hope now that you’ve spent some time with her, you’ll see why I love her so much, and-”

“Jungkook!” you hiss, but he’s not looking at you anymore, just holding tightly onto your hand as he beams at his parents.

“-and you’ll be happy for me when I tell you…we’re getting married.”

If life was a simulation, it just crashed. You feel like your world has frozen completely, like the only cogs still turning are the ones in your brain.

Had he planned this, or had he freaked out when you tried to back out of the whole thing? If you were an outsider, you would believe him. With the dreamy smile and the starry look in his eyes, you would honestly believe that he was hopelessly in love with you. Fuck, maybe he really was. You were really screwed then.

Like moving through treacle, you turn to face his parents, who mirror your dumbfounded expression of shock. Though, unlike you, they don’t seem completely opposed to the idea. Time begins to catch up with itself, and you tune your ears back into the world around you.

“Isn’t it a bit sudden to-”

“-sure about this?”

“I suppose congratulations are in-”

“Have you set a date yet?”

You can barely process what you hear, and you put all the energy in your body into your hands, prying his fingers away from yours and standing up to run down the hall to the entry foyer.

Ignoring the way Jungkook called out to you desperately from the living room, you fumbled with the lock and burst out into the open air, feeling sick to your stomach. Rather than risk sitting on the porch and having one of them follow you, you half-ran down the street, in the general direction of the train station.

Once you ran out of breath, you stopped and collapsed onto a bus stop bench, chest heaving and eyes burning.

You could only imagine the chaos that had broken out at the Jeon family home, and a part of you felt guilty that Jungkook would now have to explain to his parents what was really going on. Or maybe he’d just lie again, dig the two of you into a deeper hole. You were coming to learn that you really couldn’t predict Jungkook, and what he would do under pressure. It was silly of you to ever get involved with him, you knew that, you had always known that, but somehow you could never think straight around him.

You sighed bitterly, about to continue your trek towards the train station, but pausing when you remembered your ticket was for tomorrow morning.

The two of you had meant to stay the night, Jungkook insisting his mom made amazing kimchi stew and wanted you to stay for dinner, and in an effort to save money from your struggling bank account, you had paid a cheaper price for non-exchangeable tickets.

You slumped back onto the cold concrete bench and considered your options. It was freezing outside, being the end of winter, so you needed to find a place to stay. You couldn’t go back to the Jeon home, not after leaving so spectacularly, and you didn’t want to fork out for a hotel.

You bit your lip and pulled out your phone, opening your list of contacts. Maybe someone could come pick you up. Not Jimin, that would be too weird, and things had ended poorly with Yoongi. Hoseok, you recalled, was babysitting his niece again. Taehyung probably didn’t have a license, although it would’ve been nice to spend some more time with him, perfecting your evil plan (a plan that seemed unbelievably childish of you now that you were being confronted by your own poor decisions). It might’ve been weird to call your boss, so that left you with one choice.

He didn’t ask questions until he had arrived an hour or so later and bundled you into his car. The two of you drove in silence for the first forty minutes, until you entered the town and he had to pick a lane. “Am I going back to your apartment?” he asked finally, voice slightly deep from not using it.

You shook your head, then realized he wasn’t looking at you. “No. Jungkook will take the train back tomorrow morning. I don’t know if I can face him.”

Jin just nodded solemnly and flicked on his indicator to switch lanes. “You might not appreciate this, but I’m doing this because I’m concerned about you.”

You don’t understand what he means, assuming he’s taking you to his house, but when he pulls up a driveway to a small, cottage-style house, he knocks on the door rather than using a key.

“Jin, where are we?”

He doesn’t answer. After a short time, you hear some motion inside, and someone come to the door. Your heart skips a beat when it’s your boss that answers, rubbing his eyes like he’s just been woken up, still in some worn-out plaid pajamas and bedhair.

He sees Jin first and blinks. “Jin! Are you…?”

“No, I’m not here for… I think you and Y/n need to have a talk.” He steps aside to reveal you and you wave awkwardly. Namjoon presses his lips together, but nods and lets you in.

Namjoon’s house is cozy, with a fire still smoldering in the hearth and the couch bundled with heavy throws and plump cushions, but you can’t help but feel extremely uncomfortable.

Jin doesn’t look at you, just pats your back a little and stares at the floor. You know he means well, but it feels like being led to the principal’s office. Jin only knows what you told him on the phone, that you needed a ride because you couldn’t stay with Jungkook anymore, so you don’t know what he thinks happened, but somehow he’s had the foresight to recognize the gravity of the situation, and brought you here.

Namjoon’s put on some jeans and pulled a sweater over his pajama shirt, and he sits across from you like a concerned parent. “What happened?”

You blink up at the light in the ceiling, swallowing hard. “Jungkook, ah, we’ve been…dating…for a bit, but we had a disagreement. I just needed some space.”

He takes a deep breath and fixes on his most understanding gaze. “You’ve been dating.” You nod, but still don’t meet his gaze. “So, he was the one you talked to me about, the one you were having a fling with?”

Before you think, your mouth goes. “No, that was-” You break off and squeeze your eyes shut, but it’s too late.

Jin’s hand recoils from your back when you say this, and when Namjoon replies, his voice is cold. “Y/n, I suspect you have a lot to tell me, and I do expect your complete honesty here.”

You nod miserably and take a shaky breath. “Okay.”

Neither Jin nor Namjoon say a word as you explain. You start right from when it all went downhill, Jin, and how Taehyung interfered and exacerbated the situation from there. You told them about Jimin. You told them about Jungkook, then Suga, then Jungkook again. As you told your shameful story to a stone-faced audience, it was all you could do not to cry. Just putting it in words made you realize just how terrible you had been; the countless mistakes you made over and over again.

Once you were done, the room fell into a tense silence. You bit your trembling lip and buried your face in your hands.

After a full minute or so, Namjoon clears his throat with a harsh cough. “I’m extremely disappointed in your, frankly, disgusting behavior.”

You let out a sob but will yourself to hold it together. “I know.”

His voice is flat, with a tremble of some deep-running emotion that you can’t quite decipher. “I don’t think you do know, otherwise you would’ve taken one of the countless opportunities not to do what you did.”

You look up at him, at his stiff stare. “I’m so sorry, Namjoon, I’ll do anything to-”

He cuts you off. “You did do anything and look where that got you.” He scoffs humorlessly and shakes his head. “God, I told you that you could come to me with anything and I wouldn’t judge, but this…this is just unforgiveable. You’ve made a mockery of me, of my business.”

From beside you, Jin speaks up gently. “Sir, it takes two to tango, I think we should also-”

Namjoon turns on Jin. “Did you know about this? You were first in line; did you get her hooked on sexual misconduct or something? Of all people, Jin, I never expected you to encourage that kind of behavior.”

Jin sighs heavily. “I’m as shocked as you are, Namjoon. Really. I’m not agreeing with her, I’m not saying what she did was right, but you and I-”

“What we had was different,” Namjoon spits out. “I thought you would know that.” He lets out a growl and kicks the leg of the coffee table, turning to you with eyes burning. “Fuck! My chef, my bellboy, my accountant, my fucking brother! Has my judgement of character gone so downhill that I would hire someone like you?” He tenses his jaw, returning his voice to a reasonable volume, although somehow his deceptively calm demeanor felt so much worse. “You’re fired. You’re going to go drop off your uniform and key and never come back. You’re lucky I don’t sue.”

“Jesus, Namjoon,” Jin breathes out, “can’t you at least give her the months’ notice in her contract? She still has to get her things in order, get a new job. She was so desperate to get her finances in order she slept with someone, how are you gonna kick her to the curb like that?”

Namjoon laughs bitterly. “Oh, she won’t be getting a new job. The moment I get a call from a potential employer I’ll let them know exactly what they’re in for should they hire her. You should’ve thought about job security before you made your way through my team.”

You shuffle a bit on the couch, feeling the weight of the world crushing you. “I’m so sorry, sir. But please, if it’s not the full month, just two weeks. One week! If I don’t get another source of income, I’ll lose my apartment!”

He stares you down, lips pressed together. Finally, he sighs. “Tonight’s shift is your last shift. I’ll pay you two weeks’ severance, but I don’t want to see your face again.”

You nod. “Thank you, Namjoon,” you say tearfully.

He turns his head to the side. “That starts now,” he replies flatly. “Please leave. Jin, you stay. I need to speak with you in private.”

Jin grumbles a little, but stays put nonetheless. You stand up, feeling your legs wobble unsteadily beneath you. “For what it’s worth,” you say finally, feeling the dam break and your tears come out full throttle, “this was the best job I’ve ever had.”

But Namjoon’s still looking angrily down at the floor. “I’m glad you had fun.”

You sigh in resignation and make your way out the front door.

Tell me what you think Y/n is going to do next now that her past is catching up with her! What will she do without a job? Who can she turn to in her time of need? And whatever happened to Jungkook?

TAGLIST (message me or send an ask to be added, and you’ll get a notification every time I post a new chapter of EYS.)

@xxqueenwxtchxx @fandomarchive00 @cvbachacbitch@echimozart @thisgirlis-shy @sweetcheeksdna @boononx@sweetlittleviper @youngmsfts @kpopfromtheblock

#bts au #bts fic #bts x reader #jungkook x reader #namjoon x reader #bts scenario #bts imagine #bts angst #bts smut #jin x reader

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

Text

Fire and Light (ao3) - on tumblr: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7

- Chapter 8 -

A small group of sects unexpectedly announced that they wanted Wen Ruohan to adjudicate a boundary line dispute – some were affiliated with the Jiang sect, others with the Jin, and they wanted a neutral party. Wen Ruohan was pleased, even smug, that they had chosen him rather than the Lan sect, which with its righteous reputation was more typically called upon to mediate for the other sects.

“Maybe none of them have a good argument,” Nie Huaisang mused. “They’re all awful, and they want someone more self-absorbed than either side to broker something out.”

“Not everyone is awful, Huaisang,” Nie Mingjue said, tucking the blankets around him. “Most people are good. Besides, there are some pretty renowned sects involved, so even if it’s true, you shouldn’t say it.”

Nie Huaisang heaved a sigh. “But da-ge –”

“Time for medicine,” Nie Mingjue said firmly, and lifted the bowl to his lips.

Nie Huaisang had a mild case of food poisoning, causing a stomachache, vomiting and a low-grade fever – Wen Qing had determined that it wasn’t infectious, but also, rather grimly, figured out that the source of the illness was most likely a particular treat that Nie Huaisang had generously shared with both her and Wen Chao, and sure enough they were both bedridden less than a day later. Luckily, Wen Qing had had enough time to boil the base for the medicine they needed, and while he wasn’t at her level, much less the now-absent Wen Ning’s, even Nie Mingjue could follow directions well enough to add the final ingredients right before serving.

(Even Wen Zhuliu, who remained Wen Chao’s bodyguard despite their best efforts, had fallen ill, except his version had been significantly worse – more or less non-stop emissions out both ends, and out of self-preservation Nie Mingjue had insisted that he remain in the servants’ quarters far away from all of them.)

Nie Huaisang finished drinking the medicine, making a face that only went away when Nie Mingjue stuffed something sweet into his mouth to help get rid of the taste. “Will you be all right helping out?”

“Of course I will,” Nie Mingjue said. “I haven’t forgotten how to help host a party.”

“No, I meant…”

Nie Mingjue shrugged. Normally, Wen Ruohan had enough concern for his face to prefer that Nie Mingjue avoid showing his own shortly after he’d been insolent enough to warrant punishment, but due to the food poisoning they were short on young masters to greet all the incoming people – and their guests were too important not to be greeted by someone with status.

“I’ll use some powder, it’ll be fine,” he said. “And anyway, even if someone notices, it’s not like they would be bold enough to comment; they’re here to ask Sect Leader Wen for a favor, after all. Who will even pay attention to me long enough to notice?”

The answer, Nie Mingjue swiftly learned, was Yu Ming, a crotchety old grandmother from Meishan Yu in Sichuan who didn’t like the food (not spicy enough), her chair (the first one was too rickety, the second too soft), her peers (idiots, all of them), her drink (they’d served tea and she wanted wine, and then later on it was the other way around), and, most problematically, was one of the more influential sect leaders on the Jiang sect’s side. Not exactly someone they wanted to offend by providing inferior hospitality.

Nie Mingjue ended up abandoning his now habitual corner in the back of the room to dash back and forth dancing attendance on her, run ragged and breathless by all of her demands.

It wasn’t exactly a surprise when she approached him in his corner during the banquet’s dessert course, and he straightened up at once, saluting politely. “Sect Leader Yu,” he said, suppressing a desire to moan and maybe beg for mercy; his legs were killing him. How this managed to be worse than serious saber training he had no idea, but it was. “Is the dessert not to your liking? I can get you something cool instead –”

“Sit down, boy,” she growled. “The crystal cakes are fine, and I’m tired of looking up at you. How tall are you? Six chi?”

“…five and a half, maybe five and three-quarters,” he confessed, sitting down obediently. At this point, she could tell him to jump out a window and he probably would – she had a very sharp walking stick and no hesitation about waving everywhere. No sympathy for her miserable victims, either.

“And you’re how old?”

“Seventeen.”

“Slowed down yet?”

“…not yet.”

She huffed. “That’s all we need, another Nie giant. I told your father that he was making a mistake, marrying a woman that needed to duck to get through doors…that how you got that black eye?”

“Huh?” Nie Mingjue said unintelligently, still caught by the mental image – he scarcely remembered his mother, having been very young when she left, but it was nice to think that it wasn’t just the perspective of having been a toddler that had made her appear quite so towering. “Oh, I – uh – training accident.”

Yu Ming squinted at him. “Same training accident that dislocated three of your fingers and a kneecap, did a number on your ribs, and cut your back up so bad that you need bandages and –” She inhaled. “– at least two doses of bai mao gen to replenish the blood lost?”

Nie Mingjue opened and closed his mouth wordlessly. Finally, yielding under her glare, he muttered, “I didn’t dislocate my kneecap.”

He might’ve preferred that, actually. Dislocations could be shoved back into place with relatively little issue; he’d sprained it, instead. A bad fall from when he’d shamefully broken and tried to run from the Fire Palace, futilely seeking safety, a place where he neither had to hurt people nor be hurt himself.

Not that such a place existed in the Nightless City, of course. He’d only been dragged back after, as he ought to have expected, and then things had gotten much worse, but he hadn’t really been thinking his actions through at the time.

“Dislocated, not dislocated, whatever. Has to be something, the way you’re dragging that left leg of yours behind you when you trot,” she said practically. “You’re a rotten liar, did anyone ever tell you that?”

“Many people,” Nie Mingjue said with a sigh. Most of them currently in bed with food poisoning, except for lucky Wen Ning away at the Lotus Pier and miserable Wen Xu now stuck standing by his father’s side, pretending to smile. “Does it matter?”

“Matter? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Other than going and applying more powder, there’s not much I can do about it even if it does offend your sight,” Nie Mingjue pointed out, reasonably enough in his view. “And no matter how many times or ways you ask it, the answer’s still going to be ‘training accident’, whether or not you believe me.”

Yu Ming poked his forehead with her finger, then his cheek. “And this is with powder,” she said, scowling and rubbing the remnants of it between her fingertips as if she hadn’t believed him that it was there until she’d verified it for herself. “If you won’t tell me anything other than ‘training accident’, will you at least tell me what you did to deserve this type of training?”

“I don’t remember,” Nie Mingjue said, and he really didn’t. All the thrashings more or less flowed together pretty well after a while, and in the end it didn’t really matter if he’d intervened on Nie Huaisang’s behalf or Wen Chao’s, whether he’d played whipping boy for Wen Xu or distracted attention away from Wen Qing – they were all close enough to be proper family now. What he did was nothing more than what you ought to do for those you loved, and he’d die before he forgot how to do that.

“Rotten liar,” Yu Ming said, maybe because she could tell he wasn’t lying, and spat on the ground. “It’s a filthy business.”

“I’m hardly going to disagree with you,” he said dryly.

“You might look a little less ragged if you did.”

He shrugged. “They say people can’t change their essential nature.”

“And what’s yours?”

“Blunt to the point of stupidity.”

“Say rather that you cut straight to the point,” she said.

“Well, you know, sabers have one blunt edge, one sharp,” he said, unable to resist a smile even if it pulled at the bruises around his eye. “I can be both.”

She was staring at him.

“…what?”

“You have dimples.”

“I’m…aware?”

He didn’t quite understand the calculating look Yu Ming had in her eyes – or, perhaps better said, he didn’t want to understand that look, and he was willing to put in a great deal of effort behind not understanding it if he had to.

“Do you want another crystal cake?” he asked her abruptly before she could say anything else. When she arched her eyebrows, he elaborated: “Sect Leader Wen will undoubtedly ask me whether I was taking good care of you, being as you are after all one of our honored guests.”

Don’t tell me anything, he meant. Even if you pity me – especially if you pity me. He has ways to make me talk. He likes making me talk.

“…fine, then,” Yu Ming said. “You said something about there being something cool?”

Nie Mingjue suppressed a groan as he dragged himself out of his seat and headed to the kitchen to see if they still had any sorbet left over.

“– going to be tricky,” Nie Huaisang was saying to a nodding Wen Xu as Nie Mingjue walked by. “Lanling Jin isn’t fond of making decisions.”

“But they are fond of profit,” Wen Xu pointed out.

“The question will be if there’s a way to strike the right balance without giving too much away –”

Nie Mingjue decided to believe that they were talking about pornography. People said Jin Guangshan was into that sort of thing, didn’t they?

Nie Mingjue trained with Baxia at least once every day, and usually more. He found the repetitive actions calming, like an active form of meditation, and he was happy to sink into the mindlessness of physical exertion and forget his worries.

Baxia was warm under his hand, as always – he thought sometimes that she’d never quite adjusted to the warmer temperatures of the Nightless City, preferring as he did the cooler weather of Qinghe.

Perhaps, in time, she would forget it.

Perhaps, in time, so would he.

Forget the cool air filling his lungs, the crisp snap of an autumn day just about to begin; forget the smell of the forests and the feeling of gravel under his shoes. Forget the strain on his muscles from climbing up a steep cliff, the taste of an early snowfall on his tongue – the metallic tang to the water, the lingering smell of smoke in the air even when there wasn’t anyone around for miles.

It felt unforgettable.

But he knew that it wasn’t. In the face of time, all things were ground down into the dust.

He would be eighteen years old this year. Still a little shy of proper adulthood, an unlucky year, if luck had anything to do with his life any longer. He’d been here for four years, just shy of a quarter of all the years he’d ever lived.

Perhaps that was what made him melancholy.

Or perhaps it was only that he had been unable to light incense on the anniversary of his father’s death yet again this year. Wen Ruohan took particular pleasure in ensuring that he couldn’t – he had spent the first year unconscious, the second year immobilized, the third…he tried not to remember.

It didn’t really matter, he supposed, since he’d always agreed in advance that Nie Huaisang would light the incense on behalf of them both, both on the anniversary and on Qingming – they hadn’t ever been given leave to return to Qinghe to sweep their ancestral graves, not once, not even when some of the other sects had complained about the impropriety of it. No one ever paid attention to Nie Huaisang, underestimating how sneaky he could be, and so he’d managed it just fine. Still, the failure to do it himself tugged at Nie Mingjue’s heart, disappointed him in himself - in his failure to be a good son, just as he so often failed to be a good brother.

He sank back into his training by force of willpower.

His cultivation was increasing at an acceptable rate, he thought – shockingly fast by all metrics, but all of his teachers said that his foundations were good, steady as mountains, and his progression through each stage was smooth and unhindered by bottlenecks. The consequences of genius, they said with a shrug.

It was about the only thing that was going in an acceptable manner.

Ma Liyuan had fallen out of favor, as Wen Xu had predicted – she’d failed to remain pregnant despite repeated efforts, and Wen Ruohan took such pleasure in criticizing her for it that Nie Mingjue suspected he’d dosed her tea with contraceptives specifically to set her up for the failure, since he didn’t actually need more sons – but her usefulness remained, so she was married in with all pomp to Wen Chao’s household as a secondary wife.

(She’d been promised the position of first wife, and threw a fit when she realized the change, but Wen Ruohan had reminded her, sneering, that that had been when she’d been a pure and untouched maiden; she really couldn’t expect them to pay such a high price for secondhand goods, now could she?)

Wen Chao obviously had no interest in her at all – she’d tried, once, to make herself up and smile at him and he’d recoiled as if he’d seen a snake, then stared at her and said, “You’re joking, right?” – so she’d taken the next best option and sent her maid to seduce him in her stead.

Wang Lingjiao was pretty enough, with curves enough to make just about any man stare, and pretty cunning to boot. In a different world, a world where Wen Chao had fallen for his father’s nasty little tricks and become a stupid oversexed princeling, a waste of space that would have been incited into fighting against Wen Xu for the sole purpose of being crushed to prove some imagined point of about the necessity of cruelty, she probably would have been able to crawl into his bed and keep her place there without much difficulty.

Wen Chao was a bit of a romantic, after all, no matter how much he tried to deny it.

As it was, when her first few efforts at flirtation failed – or, well, mostly failed, given that Wen Chao held her hands in his own during a garden stroll in the moonlight and told her, with great earnestness, that she was very beautiful and it was such a pity that he wasn’t allowed to think of women romantically until he was fifteen on pain of utmost humiliation and also was she aware of the dangers of venereal disease – Wang Lingjiao pulled back and recalibrated her approach.

This time, she went for Nie Mingjue.

“You’re joking, right?” he asked her.

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Is that a deliberate reference to what Wen Chao said?”

“No, just the same idea. I’m not interested.”

“That much is obvious enough,” she said, tossing her hair. “I want you to tell me what I need to do to get someone to be interested. I don’t want to be a servant any longer.”

Nie Mingjue was at something of a loss for words.

“There must be something I can provide,” Wang Lingjiao demanded. “Some service, some use…I’m a weak cultivator, but that clearly doesn’t bother you lot – your younger brother is weak, too, though I’m still a bit worse. I’m not as dumb as Ma Liyuan; I know there’s more you can sell in life than sex, even if that’s easier. What do you want? What do any of you want?”

Wang Lingjiao was from the Yingchuan Wang cultivation clan, Nie Mingjue abruptly remembered. A smaller sect, with too many children, but a standalone sect nonetheless; their children were born as gentry, not servants. No, they must have sold Wang Lingjiao into servitude, though whether it was to get an in with Qishan Wen or simply to get rid of a budding problem – and extremely beautiful young women with poor cultivation were often a problem, especially when their beauty suggested how their mothers had gotten themselves selected to be wives, or, more likely, concubines – he did not know.

“Do you mix your own makeup?” he asked, and she stared at him. “It’s very well done.”

“…yes,” she said, giving him a strange look. “I do. None that’ll fit you, though.”

He blinked, then laughed. “No, I don’t want any; the only use I have for powder is to cover up bruises when I need to be presentable. I just meant that it seems you have a steady hand at mixing things and judging proportions – A-Qing appreciates those qualities.”

“Wen Qing?” Wang Lingjiao asked, bewildered. “You want to send me to a woman?”

“She’s expressed before that she would like to have more female company,” Nie Mingjue explained, and Wang Lingjiao’s expression only got more fish-like as she gaped at him. “A fair while back, in fairness, but the numbers really are skewed fairly strongly against her. I thought you might get along. Be friends.”

“I’ve never had a female friend in my life,” Wang Lingjiao told him.

“I thought – you’re always chatting with the other serving girls…?”

Wang Lingjiao rolled her eyes as if he were being stupid. He probably was. Forget Qishan ways, the ways of the teenaged girl were utterly beyond his grasp.

“I don’t see what you have to lose by trying,” Nie Mingjue pointed out. “I’m not interested, Xu-ge’s too paranoid to get within touching distance of anyone he thinks has an ulterior motive, A-Chao isn’t allowed to touch women for a few more years –”

“Why is that?”

“He’s gullible, and has both questionable taste and sibling-inflicted trauma relating to brothels,” Nie Mingjue explained, and Wang Lingjiao wrinkled her nose, looking a little amused despite herself. “A-Ning isn’t the type to womanize, and Huaisang is too young. Also a vicious cutthroat when it comes to interpersonal relations, so who even knows what type of person he’d like, if any.”

“I’d noticed that about him.”

“In sum, A-Qing is your best bet,” he concluded. “And all the more so if you approach her in a business-like fashion: make clear to her what benefits you bring and how you’ll compensate for the drawbacks, be practical and reasonable, and you’ll do fine. Do well, and you won’t ever need to fear being sent back to Ma Liyuan – or to Yingchuan.”

Wang Lingjiao stared at him for a moment – she hadn’t expected him to be able to figure that out, he thought, since she was just clever enough to manage to puzzle out that he was the heart and core of their little group but not quite smart enough to realize why – but in the end she seemed to take his advice to heart, nodding and walking away.

He hoped Wen Qing didn’t kill him for sending her a terrible lab assistant.

#mdzs #nie mingjue #nie huaisang #wen xu #wen chao #wang lingjiao #wen qing #wen ning #my fic #my fics #fire and light

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lilcutieana · 5 years

Text

Safe Haven ~10 ( Hybrid Baby Bangtan/ ot7 )

Words: 2.4K Genre: Fluff with slight Angst, Hybrid! BTS AU Rating: PG-13 Warnings - None Summary: Some days just end up horrible.

Safe Haven ~ || Two || Three || Four || Five || Six || Seven || Eight || Nine

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I checked my watch for the-- most likely-- twelfth time in the past ten minutes I'd been here waiting, all the while tapping my feet to the non-existent music. With a little red-wrapped present sitting idle in front of me, mocking me every time I glance down at it, I bit my lip in consideration.

Was it all even worth it?

Yes. Yes, it was.

He was phenomenal. Everything about him was captivating. From the delicate way, he handled things, to his eye for precision. From the slight hunch to his walk to the mild woody scent he wore. He calmed me, he made me happy and feel like I was more important than just a caregiver. He reminded me that I was more deserving than what I let myself believe. And for that, I was eternally grateful to have met him five years back in a parent-teacher meeting at the Hybrid High for the Gifted.

That is… Until I saw how happy the mated couples, Jin and Hobi were. I had to doubt my own relationship. It wasn't the same, but then again, I was human and incapable of feeling such profound emotions. I wasn't jealous per say. Not of what others in my own home had...or so I have been trying to convince myself. But I know, deep down, in my heart; I've been pining for someone.

Though the kids formed a major part of my world, there's this tiny part of me that longs for someone. Someone more than family, someone more than a friend. Shaking my head from negative thoughts, I looked around the once bustling cafe. A few patrons huddled together like penguins near the window. They looked adorable in their pastel clothes, while I had been constantly wearing mostly black and grey tones for the past few months, reflecting my dark mood.

Guess Monday mornings weren't as busy of an affair as other days. The students and office workers choosing a more commercial setting over the quaint cafe making it harder for the little businesses around in town. The bittersweet aroma of coffee beans helped soothe my jittery nerves yet the mere idea of being stood up eating away what little patience I'd had. But I trusted my instincts.

He seemed good enough. He was good enough. He had a beautiful soul, he was someone I could envision myself spending rest of my life with. And… Yes.

I'd been dating guys. For a while now. But nothing seemed to quite work. For the most part, it was mostly because of me. I was dating guys to distract myself, to tell myself I needed someone. But did I really? Not exactly. I couldn't back then. The boys were of utmost priority to me. I didn't have enough money or time to spend on myself neither did I have the energy to motivate myself enough to actually put an effort in it. For the most part, my heart wasn't truly into it. And I'd decided not to ever do something that my heart didn't want but my brain thought it's a good idea. It probably never is.

Sighing, I shook my head and glared at my watch for moving too slow. And just then I caught a glimpse of bright orange, bordering on neon; pass by the window. Blinking once, twice, thrice… I was flabbergasted. Who'd in this day and age choose to wear something that colorful? Were they trying to replace the traffic signal? Or signal the bears to hunt them?

And then it clicked. It was him. And something was wrong. He wouldn't just be late, neither would he be running across the street, away from me. Letting my half-eaten croissant and a cold cup previously hot cocoa to fend for themselves; I dashed across the checkerboard tiled floor, merely escaping from crashing into strangers and the many trays and cups they carried. Skidding to half with an audible screech from my heels, guaranteeing their demise-- I looked around for a sign of bright orange but couldn't spot anything, anywhere at all.

The door to the cafe shut behind me with a bang. Startled, I yelped and closed my eyes as every eye was staring at me in exasperation and angry frowns. I know, that wasn't quite polite of me in this early of a morning. But I sure had my reasons!

Biting my lips, I looked to my right. As far as I could. And spotted a tiny crowd forming just across the street and sure enough, he was there. With a new purpose, I almost glided across the street. With angry stomps, of course.

I was mad. Not really, I was mostly just concerned, and... I don't even know what I was feeling at the moment. But it was frustrating. He didn't even bother telling me. Was chasing someone and standing in a crowd so important? I waited for about an hour! Or maybe less… It sure felt like an hour to me.

As I reached him. I blinked once, twice, even thrice and proceeded to even wipe my eyes! And yet, the sight before me was no different. He had beautiful snow like ears. And no, it wasn't just the colour, it was in how soft and fluffy the looked. My fingers were trembling from restraining myself, lest I touched him when he clearly hid his ears from the entire world for nearly half a decade. I wondered if he even was aware that his identity was there to see by everyone.

Did it matter? Or was I the only one who didn't know he wasn't completely human.

And his eyes! They were shining like molten silver. Intense and oh so fiery. And the reason was staring him in the eyes, their gaze solemn and defeated as they laid on the ground whimpering.

It reminded me why I had an immense crush on him in the first place. It was those eyes. They demanded attention. They demanded so many things… as soon as they were focused on you. Maybe I spoke to soon. Cause the next thing I knew, those shining eyes were focused right on me. I felt rooted to the spot, unable to even form a smile. I just stared at him as he raised his right eyebrow and slowly blinked-- just like a certain cat I was overly familiar with back at home.

I was about to blink back, smile at him too, that is… Until my eyes focused on the well-manicured ruby red talons on his arm which were showing absolutely no signs of letting go anytime soon. I was… Confused. Did he perhaps… Save her? Was that why she was clinging onto him? There sure was a crowd forming, and a supposed --criminal-- on the streets being glared at. Or was this something else entirely? I just couldn't blame him. He was gorgeous, who wouldn't want to glue themselves onto him.

But… Why today? Why when he was supposed to be with me?

We aren't official the little voice in my head sure knew what I needed to hear. Sure, we weren't. And he was open to dating more people until he knew who the “the one” for him. But At Least, I deserved to know if I was being stood up.

A sharp pang of pain went through my chest. Past insecurities bubbling up on the surface. I couldn't keep the eye contact I'd held with him any longer. Everything around me began to be blurred.

Tears. I was crying over a man who knew me for a little over five years and yet kept silent after making me wait an hour like a fool. Wiping under my eyes, I took a step back. And then another. Watching how his stance changed. Watching how his shoulders sagged. And then, I shook my head. I didn't want him closer. I didn't want his scent on me. I didn't want to hear his voice. My traitorous heart couldn't take it if he made some excuses. I wasn't strong enough. Not now. Not when my mind was absolute chaos. I needed to think. I needed a moment before my thoughts drowned me and I had already taken the dive. I just needed to breathe, I just had to breathe.

“Y/N! Wait…” He screamed. And as if my body was on little strings and he was the puppeteer; my feet stopped on their own accord and I looked him in the eyes once again. The same anguish reflected on his face that probably mirrored mine.

“Why…?”

Did you not come, did you even remember? Did you even care? Did you even want to see me? Do I even matter? A plethora of questions flashed my mind and how I wished I could say out loud, but my lips were tied as he enveloped me in his warm embrace, his caffeine induced sweater a warm welcome to my frantic nerves. His every breath calming my mind and helping me breathe. When he tried letting me go, I shouldn't have held onto him tighter, I should have been the one to let go first. But my arms had a mind of their own and they clutched onto him tighter. My ears didn't want to hear the people gasping around and leaving the scene. I didn't want to hear how the girl right behind his back was cursing at him. I didn't want to see anything. Just a little more, and I can let him go.

“I'm sorry, Y/N. I'd… I...I am...” He whispered in a resigned tone. His voice huskier from holding back tears, perhaps? Was I hurting him that much? Or was he reflecting my emotions?

“Why?” I murmured into his sweater, hoping he would tell me it was nothing but a huge misunderstanding.

“I found her. She's my mate. I...” I couldn't hear anything more. My ears were ringing. My heart drumming inside my head. And just one word and an image flashed across my mind.

Mate. They were mates.

Of course.

He was a hybrid. He'd have one. One that isn't me. I was never a priority. I never would probably be. It was like a splash of ice cold water over my head. I… Couldn’t take it anymore. Stepping back from his embrace as he continued whispering apologies. I hoped they were apologies. I shook my head and somehow managed a smile. Barely. I'm sure it was faker than the mistletoes hanging around every Christmas. Chuckling to myself, at my own luck, I looked up to the sky. How was I supposed to know? How am I supposed to react? Do I just say ‘it's okay, congratulate him, and what? Move on?’

It wasn’t that easy. I wasn't as strong. I'd only started to let myself fall for him. His eyes, his scent, his voice. The way he said my name, the way he always wore mismatched shoes, or how he sometimes ate with his left hand instead of right. How he liked ketchup over scrambled eggs and how he hated fries without seasoning. He was adorable in every way. And yet so strong. So determined. So... Lovely.

And yet… It wasn't me. I wasn't the one he waited for. I wasn't the one he saved. I wasn't the one he loved. “Did you ever…” choking back a sob, I looked to the side. His eyes too intense for me. “love me?”

“I still do. I love you, Y/N!” He shook his head and with a giant step, was towering over me once again. I felt so small. I felt like he was about to swallow my entire being. He shouldn't have said that. He was lying. Why was he lying?

“But I just found her today, and my heart feels confused. I need time to figure things out. Please… I’m just as torn as you are. Believe me.”

“Lies. All lies.” I bit my trembling lips. “I have seen mates. Nothing is instant. You don't even realize until you've spent enough time. You're lying!” I snarled. Panting, I shut my eyes. I didn't want to see him anymore. So what if I wasn't a hybrid. I have seen Jin and hoseok with their mates so often, I know what it's like. It's them and their flaunting of how sweet relations are that I had found a sweet escape. And yet….

“Noona!”

My chaotic mind was finally at rest. And this time, it was because of Namjoon. I was glad somehow. And a bit annoyed. He must have followed me. A kind, gentle hand encircled my shoulder and pulled me into a warm chest. From his scent alone, I could tell it was Jimin. Smiling to myself, I didn't bother turning back.

“I know how much a mate means to a person. Keep her happy.”

◤─────•~❉᯽❉~•─────◥

“Whaf ‘appened?” Jungkook asked with his mouth stuffed with marshmallows. Now I know where they went. It wasn't Jimin. It was kookie who stole it all.

“Bad day. Come here.” Extending my arms, I waited till he came closer and then held him by the ear. Even though it was soft and silky, and I was yearning to pet them, I refrained myself.

“Why did you lie when I asked the other day?” I asked sternly. Trying my best not to smile as I watched him squirm.

“Yeah! It wasn't me, Noona! See…” Jimin piped up from behind.

“I know now.” Smiling, I let go of Jungkook’s now pink flushed ears and ruffled Jimin’s hair until his pout turned to a smile only for it to drop as soon as Yoongi entered the room.

There was always slight tension between the two ever since they entered puberty. I just hoped it didn't last too long.

“So…”

Looking around, I spotted the flier Namjoon had collected a while back and smirked.

“How about we order in today?” A chorus of excited yeses made me smile.

Some things never change. And I couldn't be happier. This was my own safe Haven. Nothing. Absolutely nothing would damage it. I'd always be happy and safe, as long as the boys were with me. They would be. Won't they?

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~Tagged ~

@dreadity @im-emo-motherfuckers @xanny91 @oyasumi7@blackmaylovesfries @catkiecookie @noonaofkookie @thenyousaidhello @silveroccamy @boononx@2seokkyo @s0nh4dorasblog @minyoongi-infiresme @bluebirdphantom @love-yourself-moonchild

#bts #bts hybrid au #min yoongi #kpopwonderlandtag #btswritersguild #armyofwritersnet #park jimin #kim taehyung #kim namjoon #jeon jungkook #kim seokjin #Jung HoSeok #hybrid bts au

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writingsofmyimagination · 5 years

Text

King and Queen |2|

Summary: Jungkook becomes very needy before he goes on tour and becomes even more desperate when he gets back (Part 2 of a 2 Shot)

Jungkook x Reader

Words:2841

Warnings:Smut, Sub/Jungkook, Dom Reader, Switch!Jungkook, Light bondage, Swearing, Copious amounts of teasing.

Happy Reading :) Comment, Reblog :)

For the first time i’m actually happy with my writing, love this one!

-Did you get my present?– 17:49

-Yes, are we going to use it later? ;) – 17:51

-No bunny, you’re going to use it now and wear it at the party for me – 17:53

-What? Are you serious? That’ll be torture! – 17:57

-That’s kind of the point, I want you desperate – 18:00

You smirk was nothing but wicked putting the remote control into your bag.

-Are you really going to be that much of a tease after a whole month apart? – 18:04

- Yes, now do as you’re told and I’ll see you in a bit baby, I’m leaving now – 18:06

You could feel the hum of the bass as you approached the boy’s dorm. The apartment was crowded and the loud music which thumped in your chest was marginally drowned out by the indistinct chatter of the guests. Jin was at the breakfast bar announcing loudly what he was putting in a lethal sounding cocktail; deciding that was a good starting point you made your way over to get a drink. You smiled and waved at some of the familiar staff that greeted you back with warm smiles.

“Hey Y/N good to see you! Here have a Jin special” he passed you a plastic cup of a bluey purple liquid.

“Thanks, good to see you back, where’s Kook?” You took a hesitant sniff of the drink attempting to assess its potency.

“I think he’s playing Mario Kart with Jimin” You raised the cup and took a mouthful, you tilted your head and nodded minimally to yourself; after the burn of the vodka the Chambord and Blue Curacao taste wasn’t so bad. Heading past dashes of groups,

“Wah!” the unmistakeable wail of J-Hope dragged your attention to the centre of the room, a huddle of people surrounding a twister mat. From the looks of the small bundle on the floor V had just collapsed on J-Hope causing a burst of laughter. You contracted the infectious laughter and chuckled, still slowly slipping your way through your drink. Yoongi was observing the chaos seated on the sofa, his left leg tucked under himself while sipping wine. Obviously.

You continued breaking through flurries of people until you heard the high adorable laugh of Jimin to you left, you followed it to the TV area. The two youngest were as Jin said. They were sat shoulder to shoulder nudging each other eyes frozen in front of them, Namjoon was sat on the floor cross legged leaning up against the sofa arm with equal amount of concentration. The boys were too engrossed on their last lap to notice your presence. They looked so relaxed, a surge of warmth and comfort hit your insides at the sight. You made your way behind the sofa and launched your arms over Jungkook’s chest and squeezed, kissing the side of his face with sweetness. He carried on staring at the screen for a few seconds until he finished in 1st.

“Yes!” a triumphant expression smacked on his face as he jumped up clapped and then yanked you into a desperate embrace. You struggled to keep your drink upright as you nuzzled as tightly into his neck as you possible could; drowning yourself in his intoxicating scent.

“I missed you so much” squeezing you even tighter.

“I missed you too Kook, can we go on the balcony? I’ve missed the view” asking cutely as if butter wouldn’t melt.

“Of course baby” he kissed you, but the kiss was laced with that familiar sense of urgency despite his cool appearance; it seeped through his iris’s flooding his eyes. You gripped his hand and followed him onto the balcony. You walked to the further right point of the balcony where the window section was now wall giving you privacy. Placing your bag down onto the glass table as you passed it. You turned and lent against the metal barrier and smirked. You watched with amusement as his expression evolved now he was alone, it transitioned from happy and relaxed to pained and frustrated.

“You look so beautiful when your frustrated Kookie”

“Can I please take it out now I’ve been good for you” his eye grew doe-eyed, the bambi look you called it; there was a pleasant tug between your legs. His arms draped around your shoulders, hands tracing over your neck. His touch sparking heat where his fingers met your skin.

“Not until I say so, and I want you to touch yourself first” He pulled back looking into your eyes flashing wickedly at him.

“What?”

“You heard me bunny, don’t pretend like you haven’t wanted to since putting that in” you grabbed his behind pulling him back into you the throaty groan that escaped from him told you were right.

“But out here?” his eyes flitted around before landing back on you grinning teasing your bottom lip.

“Out here, just for me” you reiterated. The sheepish expression failed to leave his face, you stroked your finger under his chin and leaned within kissing distance

“Don’t worry about anyone else, I’ll use the safe word if someone comes out. You folded your arms, your left pinky finger replaced your lower lip teasing it with your teeth and waited for Jungkook to start. His hand hesitated but eventually slipped beneath the thick waistband of his knee length Puma shorts.

Within moments his eyes closed, his head tilted back with his jaw open slightly. The exhaled breaths perfumed with long relief. You thighs pressed together, your arousal transferring to your lacy underwear.

“Such a good boy, look at you touching yourself on the balcony. So filthy” his hands moved faster, Jungkook never noticed you take the small remote from your bag which was no cocooned in your palm pressed to your waist. You clicked it.

“Ah fuck” he cried as the vibration against his prostate snapped his eyes to you. You held up the remote your lips twisted up.

“Don’t stop bunny.” His hands vigorously continued pumping himself. “God you look so good, I’d even let you fuck me into the mattress with my hands behind my back, but you won’t will you because you’re too much of a slut for me aren’t you”

“My queen, I’m not going to last much longer, I need to cum” he panted out.

“Well I can’t have you cumming yet. Stop!” You clicked the off button. He obeyed instantly his mouth still agape.

“So quick to listen bunny I’m impressed” your hand swept some of his hair free from his moist forehead and planted a delicate kiss. Your hands travelled up your thigh catching his gaze, your fingers laced with your arousal

“You can have a taste, you’ve been a good boy” He greedily sucked at your fingers, his eyes holding yours with a seductive magnetism.

“How about we go inside now I’ve had plenty of the view” You walked past reclaimed your drink and bag and headed inside, leaving him to try and hide his problem. You went to the bathroom unbuckled the thin red belt round your waist, unzipped your navy knee length skirt, pulled off your white and navy stripped shirt. The mirror reflected back what was left, a red corset style lingerie set, sheer floral lace that flatters your bare skin, a triangular bust with a low rise open mesh back. The thong to match was low slung and left my hips exposed. The suspenders were clipped onto black stockings. After a few attempts you got the angle you were happy with and sent it.

-Photo.jpg – 19:37

-You are going to be the death of me – 19:38.

You redressed quickly after taking of the thong and went back to the main room. You wanted to see his face, you knew you were being probably a bit too much of a tease but you wanted to see if you could tease him to switch.

All the boys had come together and were sat across two sofas facing each other. J-Hope was stood up with a large whiteboard attempting to draw a picture for the others to guess, his cheeks were flushed red with intoxication. You scooted past Yoongi and Namjoon and took a seat on Jungkooks lap. You had to snatch up the pillow he’d placed there first. He shuffled uncomfortably but smiled at you that bunny smile regardless. His arm snaked round your waist, his fingertips more firmly planted as an outlet for his frustration.

“Hey Jungkook why you so quiet, do you not want to win anymore?” J-Hope said standing proud of his artwork as the others were frantically guessing around us.

“Yeah, c’mon Kook we’re ahead!” Yoongi scolded. You took a swig of your drink hiding the smirk that was growing upwards.

“Sorry, uh,…”

“Jurassic Park?” you cut in saving him from tumbling over his words.

“Woah! Yes good job!” J Hope said looking astounded. The others huffed and J-Hope sat back down.

“Yoongi you go draw for us this time” you suggested. When he left you didn’t take his seat and remained on Jungkook’s lap. You slid your underwear into his left hand. He shuffled again, he must be getting very uncomfortable now with his erection tucked and compressed away. He whined almost inaudibly.

“No whining, don’t make me use the remote” Anguish blanketed his face, your ground your ass into his tensed thigh

“You have no idea how wet you’ve made me bunny. You’re so good for me” your tone a whisper in his ear.

“Please stop teasing noona, It’s too much” he responded equally as quiet. You had one more idea and if he still didn’t cave you’b be sure to make him suffer until tears streamed from him eyes and he could hardly beg from pure exhaustion. Without saying a word you left and went to Jungkook’s room knowing he wouldn’t follow because that would be too obvious.

Licking your lips you went straight to his bed and made yourself comfortable turning lamps on making the room glow with ambience and once again stripping down to just your lingerie. You ghosted your hand down your body, over the swell of your breast, passed your navel in a delicate motion down to your throbbing bud.

“Aah” You exhaled, rolled your head back into the sheets, shocked at how wet you’d managed to tease yourself to. Every inch of your skin yearned for Jungkook’s attention and touch. Hopefully it wouldn’t be long as you clicked send on the video. You wasn’t going to wait for him either your body ached too much, impatient you got up and went to the chest of draws on your side of the bed near the door and slid open the third draw. Your eyes flurried, scanning over all the toys in front of you, picturing how each of them will make you feel sent your mind into overdrive.

The door clicked open, Jungkook’s face was flushed, and it swirled into a chimera of determination and wildness as his eyes followed to the contents of the draw. You halted all movement, looking up through innocent flutters of your eyelashes, mouth slightly agape; tongue guilty poking out from the corner of your lips.

“You’re not going to want any of that when I’ve fucked you” his words were rushed through a heavy breath, which you caught the end of as his lips met with yours with unbridled starvation. One of his hands pressed gently at your throat, his hips knocking into you forcing you back closing the draw of goodies.

“You’ve pushed me today sweetheart” his other hand aggressive with its grip round my wrist. He manipulated me around, my mid-section pressed roughly against the draw. A hand pulled my ass away from the draw, his foot kicked at my ankle spreading my legs. His shirt was on the ground within seconds, his fist tangled and pulling at hair within a couple more. His free hand travelled down your side, nails nipping into your skin the whole way. His palm followed he curve of your back and over your behind squeezing firm. You rewarded him a moan, your open mouth quickly took the shape of victory. His hand drifted down and felt you from behind.

“You’ve missed me as much as I have you haven’t you?” there was no trace of the sweet Jungkook with that voice and boy did it feed your arousal not to mention your ego. The fact you could rile him up enough to dominate was a challenge you gladly liked to accept sometimes when you needed it. He yanked at your hair again when you didn’t respond.

“Aah fuck, yes!” You curled your fingers atop the drawers where they were keeping you balanced. Your head dropped feeling his tip gliding through your folds before he stopped, hesitating. He leaned and reached for a draw to his right and fumbled with one hand and grabbed a pair of fur-lined leather cuffs. If your body was built of ice it would melt rapidly with the heat rising in your stomach, smiling to yourself like a sly fox as he captured your wrists behind your back. Pulling at the cuffs he more or less launched you onto the bed, you landed on your side with a shallow bounce.

“Ass up kitten, where’s the remote? I don’t want you having that now” you took a breath and realised he was still obeying you and hadn’t taken it out.

“On the side” you mumbled shifting yourself into position, your face half buried into the mattress. His shoulders dropped, happy with your response apparently. He dropped his clothes in such a rush you thought he’d fall. Climbing up behind you, your anticipation at boiling point.

Nothing.

You shuffled trying feebly to ascertain what the fuck he was playing it.

Pulsing vibrations diffused from your core, the power of your vibrating wand undeniable. You turned your head fully into the sheets camouflaging your cry as he alternated the power from off to on continuously.

“Is this what you wanted princess? Or do you want something else?” he already knew the answer.

“I… want you” you panted.

“Oh come on Y/N, that beg would not be good enough you, I’m sure as hell not going to let it be” he was right; and you’d underestimated how much you needed him and you was more than happy in your current state to beg for it.

“Kook… your queen needs your cock… so bad…I need you fucking me so hard…into this mattress… until I’m cumming so hard around your cock…please” your plea couldn’t sound anymore desperate if you tried. He turned off the wand for the final time and launched it on the floor.

“Fucking hell babe, I had no idea you could beg like that” not being able to restrain himself any longer after hearing you beg for him like that he slammed himself into you. The room was filled with both your cries of relief fully culminated. You loved when he came home from tour, the passion, the lust and the rush to just fuck each other. It’s like you both needed it before any of your normal relationship with each other could continue. Both being so needy it never lasted long but in the heat of it, it felt like hours. You were both breathing hot and heavy, you felt the moisture creep in a forming a layer where his hands clenched around your hips. Your shoulders felt the bleeding of ache seep in. Your muscles deep in your abdomen tightened, you were conscious of your cries becoming louder and buried your face again. Jungkook moans, almost rhythmic were slowly becoming deeper and sounded more like grunts. You almost wailed when Jungkook hand grabbed your hair again and pulled your face free from the sheets.

“I want to hear you when you cum” He didn’t have to wait long, your body refused to hold on to the tension anymore.

“Fuck…Jungk…” your body washed over with bliss, he carried on thrusting into you, unrelenting. Overwhelming your core with oversensitivity until his hips jerked into your behind, your walls clenching around him dragging every bit of cum from him. His grunt was so guttural and deep. Your breath had just about steadied when he rolled beside you un-clipping the metal links of the cuffs. You slumped your bottom half down before stretching some life back into your muscles. A weary satisfied smirk rested on your face.

“You cum so hard when you have something up your ass” he responded with an agreeing smile. “You did good bunny better than I ever expected” you rolled onto your front and rested your head on your hands.

“I did good?” he paused “You wound me up on purpose didn’t you? I was never really in control was I”

Your grin gave away everything. His head shook amused with half-hearted betrayal.

“But it was cute that you thought you were” you chuckled in a light breath. You patted his chest sarcastically and stretched and gave him a delicate, love filled kiss on his forehead.

#bts #bts smut #btssmutclub #sub-bts-network #kwritersworldnet #bangtanarmynet #kpopwonderlandtag #jungkook x reader #jungkook smut #sub jungkook #jeon jungkook #reader insert

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prettyboy-jimin · 7 years

Text

Cherry Red II

Pairing: Min Yoongi x Park Jimin

Genre: Smut with plot?

Word count: 5.3k

Summary: Yoongi’s had enough of Jimin playing around, and realizes some things on his own

Note: I am telling y’all now, I have no idea how to write smut, I winged it all, I have no experience, I need references, I had no references but you asked for it so here! You! Go! Ohmygod it’s finally done I’m pretty sure I screamed in relief in the middle of class once I finished. I am so sorry if this sucks, this is my first ever Yoonmin smut, I don’t know how to write smut ohmygod please be gentle (Not proofread btw)

Upon arriving at their shared suite, Yoongi had never seen Jimin dash for his room as fast as he had when they stepped in. Taehyung and Jungkook staring with wide confused eyes as their hyungs merely laughed and teased an exasperated Yoongi.

The presidential suite had three separate bedrooms, all of which contained their own bathroom. Namjoon and Jin one shared without much protest from the other members, Yoongi and Hoseok were paired together which left the maknae to create chaos in a room of their own.

Yoongi sat on his bed as he dug through his bag for something to wear, when Jin said get ready for dinner, it often meant that they were going out for the night and going back to work tomorrow. Yoongi had almost forgotten they were in the middle of a tour. Yoongi reached for his black ripped jeans, throwing a shirt similar to the one he was wearing over his shoulder as he made his way to the bathroom. Upon passing the open door that lead to the living room, Yoongi caught sight of Jimin; in nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist.

Jimin stopped just as Yoongi had, noticing the older boy just the same. Yoongi blinked repeatedly as his mouth hung slightly, trying to make sure he wasn’t imagining things. A smirk made its way to Jimin’s face and he hadn’t tried to control it. His hand gripped one end of the towel that was tucked into his hip as he took slow steps towards the door. Jimin eyed Yoongi with a newfound confidence, and Yoongi wasn’t sure if Jimin was faking it this time or not. Yoongi stared at Jimin’s slow moving figure, the dancer’s fingers leisurely pulling at the white fabric. Yoongi gulped down the saliva that began to gather in his mouth, watering at the idea of seeing what Jimin had been keeping under those tight leather jeans during countless performances.

Jimin tilted his head to the side, water dripping from his still wet hair. He watched as Yoongi gawked at his toned abs, Jimin hadn’t been working out as much anymore but he still made sure to keep his figure in good condition.

The younger boy could feel the towel loosen around him, his V-line coming into delicious view for Yoongi. Jimin thought he saw a drop of sweat roll down Yoongi’s temple but he couldn’t be sure. The ruckus caused by their friends in Namjoon and Seokjin’s shared room didn’t hinder Jimin’s hungry gaze.

With one hand plucking the towel from his skin at an agonizingly slow pace, Jimin’s other made its way to the door handle but Yoongi was in too much of a daze to notice; the growing bulge in his shorts making Jimin smile. The towel fell away from Jimin’s backside; exposing a large portion of his muscular thigh and making Yoongi choke back a breath, the dancer’s front still, disappointingly, very covered. Jimin broke into a full out smile, his eyes turning into little crescents as the hand he had placed on the door slowly pushed it towards its frame. Clicking in place as Jimin locked it to avoid anyone walking in on him changing.

Yoongi stood frozen in his place, still staring at the door with a cold sweat running down his neck even when Hoseok had finally exited his hyungs’ room, Taehyung’s loud yelling slicing through the thick tension Jimin had left Yoongi to bask in.

“Hyung?” Hoseok’s voice came, Yoongi looked at him sharply, breathing laboured as he swallowed down the urge to storm over to Jimin’s room, bang on the door and attack the young dancer as soon as he’d open it. He’d pay for this later. “What’s gotten into you?”

Yoongi was just about to choke out a poor excuse which would’ve been taken for word vomit until he realised how hard Jimin had made him from the sinful show he performed. Gulping nervously, he readjusted his shorts, fidgeting profusely so as to confuse Hoseok even further. “N-Nothing.”

Hoseok was going to ask him what had happened but Yoongi cut him off before he could get a word out, dashing into the bathroom with haste and a death grip on the doorknob as he slammed it close and locked it behind him. The throb in his groin dulling slightly but not lessening any of his discomfort; At least it was his turn to shower.

Yoongi loved alcohol. He loved getting drunk with his friends and laughing at nothing in particular just because everything was so funny.

What Yoongi didn’t like was the crappy music and stench of sweat that radiated off the mosh pit of a place that was known enough to be the talk of the town, but let absolutely anyone in. He understood that everyone was here to have fun, so was he, but he just couldn’t get over his pet peeves. It took too much effort. Young had been to countless clubs and parties, the idol life generously supplying them with contacts and “friends”, but never had he ever sat in their designated VIP booth and scowl at the crowded merriment he found himself in, until now.

Taehyung was already on his third glass of beer, had downed his fifth shot of the night and was just about to order a flaming blowjob when a slightly lesser than drunken Jungkook pulled his arms down and told Taehyung to at least finish his beer before getting a new drink. The maknae was visibly touchy feely with Taehyung, unconsciously snuggling into his neck when the latter would sit back and take a breather and as well as keeping a hand rested on Taehyung’s thigh so as to reassure Taehyung, or himself, that someone was going to take care of him.

Young thought that Jungkook was doing a horrible job of doing keeping Taehyung in check, since he was on the verge of wasted just the same.

Seokjin was the designated driver for the night. Sipping on a strawberry margarita, he sat with a leg folded over the other and watched his dongsaengs enjoy themselves… and humiliate themselves. Namjoon chose to liven up, but not as far as Taehyung took himself. Being the leader of the group required him to be painstakingly presentable at all times, even if they were all out having fun and letting loose; so Namjoon had to sit tight with Seokjin.

Hoseok was the one feeding Taehyung his alcohol, Yoongi observed, and had become the younger’s hype man for the night; shouting and cheering at Taehyung to drink faster and order some more. Why wasn’t Yoongi’s only hung in the group scolding him and nursing the young maknae to sobriety, Young wanted to know as well.

With his arms crossed, glare settled on his face, Yoongi threw a leg over the other and leaned into the cushioned booth. The bass of mainstream song reverberated through his eardrums and Yoongi thought of how he could easily produce a better song, with a sicker beat.

But these people probably wouldn’t know good music even if it hit them in the face. Oh well.

Yoongi sighed, reaching for his rum and coke and taking light sips from it, eyeing the crowd for a subject of any level of interesting.

Jimin had been eyeing Yoongi the entire night, hoping to drag his hyung’s attention onto him so they could get to more fun activities rather than sitting here and being as miserable as they both were, watching Taehyung humiliate himself as well as the rest of them as well as dealing with crappy music. Jimin could see that Yoongi was trying his hardest not to storm over to the DJ and take over. He could see him biting the inside of his cheek, a clear attempt at trying to control himself.

“Hyung” Jimin called, momentarily forgetting that he had four of them. He laughed, apologizing for not being more specific. “Yoongi-hyung”

Seokjin, Hoseok and Namjoon all went back to watching their personal entertainment, Taehyung, as Jimin nodded his head towards the rest rooms of the VIP area. He stood up, not bothering to look back or wait for Yoongi to catch up. Jimin knew he would follow.

Yoongi raised an eyebrow at Jimin, the rest of his friends not noticing the tension that Yoongi was suffocating in, or not saying anything to acknowledge it. He stood up; following behind him with his hands inserted into his the pockets of his skinny jeans.

“Jiminah?” he called, pushing the door to the male’s restroom open and stepping inside cautiously as he kept a keen eye out for where the young dancer was. As Yoongi trekked further into the tiled room, the door behind him slammed shut, with a smug looking Jimin leaning against it whose arms were crossed on his chest.

“Jiminah what is this?” Young asked, tone uninterested and face fallen. “You’re all over the place, but you’re not.”

The dancer cocked his head to the side, a tiny teasing smile on his face as he locked the door behind him and slowly approached Yoongi. Jimin could see the older boy stiffen slightly, his jaw tightening and his shoulders drawing back with every step Jimin took. With no space between them, Jimin’s hard on pressing lightly against Yoongi’s as his hands made their way to rest on Yoongi’s chest.

“Hyung, you didn’t finish something.” Jimin smiled devilishly, leaning forward to brush his lips against the doll-like pair he’s been dying to kiss for a long time. “I want you to finish it.”

With a growl and sharp exhale, Yoongi ripped Jimin’s hands off his clothed skin and pushed him harshly to the door.

“You think you get to play with me like this?” Yoongi questioned, hands slamming against the door beside Jimin’s head, the dancer’s eyes frantic and wide as he stared into Yoongi’s blown pupils. “Are you even ready for me?”

Jimin relaxed, and he scoffed.

“You underestimate me, hyung.” Jimin whispered, biting the rapper’s lower lip teasingly, “Why don’t you undress me and see just how ready I am?”

Yoongi pulled back, withdrawing a hand from where it lay and gripping Jimin’s face harshly with his long fingers. The other making its way south, similarly cupping the tent that had formed in Jimin’s tight jeans.

The younger boy moaned shamelessly, pushing his hips farther into Yoongi’s, begging for more friction, more force, more anything. Jimin was desperate to be touched and he wanted Yoongi to do it. He worried his bottom lip between his teeth, suppressing a smile as Yoongi’s eyes lowered to watch.

Yoongi grabbed Jimin’s shoulders harshly, forcing him to turn around and press the side of his face against the bathroom door. Jimin was thankful Seokjin had agreed to the maknaes pleas to enjoy themselves at a club, or his plan would never have been put into action; not anywhere any quieter than this, if the adjective could apply to the entertainment hub for that matter, which Jimin is also thankful for that it doesn’t.

“I wanted to do this once we got back,” Yoongi whispered, pressing his lips to the skin of Jimin’s neck “knowing the others would be too worn out to wake up when you’d be screaming my name but I guess a little slut like you doesn’t know how to wait, hmm?”

Jimin whimpered at Yoongi’s words, jolts of electricity making their way down his spine to the growing bulge that Yoongi was massaging gently. Shallow breaths and rugged pants drifted through Jimin’s lips, his eyes clenching shut as he tried to withstand the teasing Yoongi was putting him through.

Yoongi didn’t say much thereafter, merely continuing to nip and bite at whatever exposed skin Jimin let him have while the latter continued to non-verbally beg for more.

Yoongi pressed his crotch into Jimin’s ass, the pressure causing a low growl to rise from his throat and a slightly higher pitched whine to escape from Jimin’s. Yoongi realised that he hadn’t even kissed the younger, feeling kind of guilty but unable to do anything about it given their current position. So he tried to make it up to Jimin by leaving a trail of wet kisses down the side of his neck, biting at the bend where Jimin’s neck connected to his shoulders. Yoongi bit and sucked at the tan skin, making sure to leave a mark for everyone to see, not to show them that he was Yoongi’s, but simply that Jimin was taken; and he happened to be taken by Yoongi.

The elder’s name fell in the form of a breathless plea from Jimin’s plump lips, the lower half practically swollen from his biting and worrying of it but as Yoongi squeezed him harder, Jimin only grinded faster and more desperately into his hand, letting Yoongi tug his hair with the other. He wrapped an arm around Jimin’s waist, grinding his own erection into the younger. Groans and grunts falling between them as their pants grew painfully tight.

“Hyung” Jimin whined, his eyes struggling to stay open and his breathing uneven as Yoongi rutted his hips into him. “They’re going to wonder where we are.”

“Let them.” Yoongi growled, biting down particularly hard on Jimin’s shoulder as he unraveled the limb that he’d wrapped around Jimin moments earlier, allowing his hands to fall towards the Jimin’s zipper. Yoongi stepped back slightly, Jimin following suit and supplying the elder with some sort of space to work at his pants.

When Yoongi finally popped Jimin’s button open and practically tore down his zipper, he fell to his knees; bringing the clinging fabric with him and eliciting a gasp from Jimin. Hours upon hours upon hours spent in the gym and practice room over the course of Jimin’s dance life had paid off, Yoongi was convinced of this, as he was face to face with soft skin and firm muscle, kneading the hardworking dancer’s ass cheeks with both his hands. Jimin hummed appreciatively. Yoongi then spread them apart, exposing Jimin’ entrance and then lapping at it with his tongue; he could hear Jimin gasp and moan for more as Yoongi painted a generous amount of saliva onto his skin, kissing and nipping at it as he went.

“So pretty” Yoongi hummed, placing gentle kisses to wherever he could reach “And all mine too, right Minnie?”

As Yoongi punctuated his sentence, he took a significant amount of skin into his mouth and bit down as hard as he could, sending Jimin sliding down the door slightly and further into Yoongi’s face as he moaned loudly and clawed at the wooden door he was set against. He struggle to answer, but gave Yoongi a vigorous nod and pleading “Mhm”

But Yoongi wasn’t satisfied.

“I didn’t hear you Minnie.” He growled, withdrawing to a distance and spanking Jimin as hard as he could from such a restricting position.

“Ah! Yes! Yes, hyung, yes.” Jimin moaned, “All yours. Only yours. Please.”

“That’s more like it”

Yoongi soothed his tongue over the red bite mark he’d left on Jimin’s skin, it wouldn’t bruise, but it was just Yoongi taking the extra step to ensure that Jimin knew he meant no harm and no damage. Soon after inserting his tongue gently into Jimin’s hole, gradually stretching him open for Yoongi’s cock.

Jimin was prepared.

Jimin had been preparing ever since they’d gotten back to the hotel room after Seokjin had interrupted his heated conversation with Yoongi. If Jimin was honest with himself, he’s not at all sure he would have been able to stop himself from throwing himself at Yoongi and devouring him then and there in front of all those people if Seokjin hadn’t cleared his throat of his non-existent phlegm. He was thankful. The evident embarrassment and tent in his pants had given Jimin a sense of reason and control as they all made their way down back to their suite and he had practically locked himself in the maknae’s room.

Jimin would willingly damn himself to the underworld rather than having the other six know that he brings “Stress relievers” wherever they go. No one knows this aside from the airport security guards that conduct the x-ray process of his luggage wherever they fly places. But Jimin’s not stupid enough to keep some in his hand-carry. They’re not drugs or alcohol or things of those kinds but it would still garner Jimin, Bangtan and especially BigHit a lot of unwanted attention from the public. As proven in his current situation with Yoongi; Jimin was prepared.

Well prepared.

His ‘stress relievers’ give and allow him as much. Very gratefully to his rescue earlier in the day, Jimin had the choices between his rabbit vibrator, his reasonably unreasonable sized purple dildo, and a large baby blue butt plug. Jimin was invigorated by the choices that lay before him. His hyungs’ and dongsaengs’ voices drifting through the cracks of the door that separated Jimin from their world, reminding him that this is real, he really is going to—somehow—get Yoongi to fuck him. The thought was exciting and Jimin had managed to make himself come untouched under the warm spray of the hotel shower, the thought of Yoongi pounding into him in a semi-public setting later that night turned Jimin on more than he was proud to admit. So when Jimin had caught Yoongi, rather when they had caught each other, and he had successfully teased the other without so much as batting an eye—Jimin knew that he’d be able to get Yoongi to do exactly what he wanted, maybe even do exactly what Yoongi wanted but suppressed.

With Jimin’s face no pressed against the gradually warming bathroom door, he almost can’t believe that Yoongi is finally, fucking finally, eating his ass out the way Jimin always thought he would. Not only did his rapper tongue send the skilled dancer to Hong Kong, it sent Jimin to all sorts of places, making him fell all sorts of things all at once. When Jimin felt Yoongi’s tongue enter his hole, he wasn’t expecting it so soon, clenching and unclenching with a gasp but soon after relaxing as Yoongi kept thrusting the muscle into him.

“F-fuck, Yoongi-hyung” Jimin swallowed the saliva that had gathered in his mouth, literally watering at the idea of Yoongi finally sinking his cock into Jimin’s hole, whichever one—Jimin didn’t really care. “Ugh, so f-fucking good, h-hyung”

Yoongi hummed against Jimin’s skin, continuing to lap at and distribute the improvised lube generously. He let a cheek go, its warmth pressing against the side of his face as Yoongi reached around to pump Jimin’s length. The younger let out a significantly loud groan, unconsciously bucking his hips into Yoongi’s hand and making the elder’s tongue run deeper than it already was.

“Yoongi!” Jimin gasped “Yoongi fuck me please, I need you to fuck me”

Yoongi grunted, the sheer desperation and need in Jimin’s voice sending jolts of electricity down Yoongi’s spine and even more blood to the head that Yoongi wasn’t supposed to think with. With one hand still wrapped around Jimin’s length, Yoongi stood as he made his other hand move to the younger’s hip, and as Yoongi turned the dancer around, his back now against the door as Yoongi captured Jimin’s lips in an eager, wet kiss.

Jimin moaned into Yoongi’s mouth as the paler of the two sucked on his tongue, biting gently and letting go; repeating the process as their hands found each other and began to grope at whatever patch of clothing or skin they could find. Jimin’s length exposed to the cold air while Yoongi was still fully clad but just as hard.

“Hyung, strip for me” Jimin gasped against Yoongi’s lips, his breathing causing the latter to shiver and, for some reason, obey.

Yoongi pulled himself off, pulling his black t-shirt over his head as Jimin’s hands fly to work at his jeans’ button and zipper. Once those had been delightfully disposed of, the two worked to get Jimin’s clothes off—completely. With the door locked and full confidence that no one would bother looking for them for a while, Yoongi devoured Jimin’s mouth again, the younger’s arms thrown around his neck where his clung to Jimin’s waist and brought themselves over to the counter tops by the sinks. A loud hiss escapes Jimin’s lips through their kiss as his back hits the cold mirror behind him, urinals littered the wall behind Yoongi as opened his eyes in a daze.

Jimin’s cheeks were flushed, his bottom lip swollen and his entire aura radiating sex. Yoongi wondered how long Jimin had wanted this, if he was just doing all this for Yoongi’s sake.

“Wait” he whispered, eyes still on Jimin’s mouth, hands going limp but not loosening their grip on the dancer’s hips.

“Yoongi, what is it?” Jimin raised a hand to cup Yoongi’s cheek in good-natured concern, his eyebrows furrowing slightly and his breathing gradually coming to a leveled pattern. “Do you want to stop? We can stop; we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

“Jimin” he whispered, eyes wide and searching the other’s. “I think”

“What is it?”

“You’re beautiful”

A bashful smile stretched on Jimin’s glowing face, his cheeks tinging a dark red at Yoongi’s sweet, unexpected words.

“Yoongi” Jimin said lowly “You’re literally telling me this right when you’re about to fuck me in the bathroom of a club in Hawaii?”

Yoongi smiled, Jimin following suit as soon as he saw his hyung no longer tense. He brought his hand back to Yoongi’s cheek, the latter cupping the other side and called his name within a whisper, pulling his face up and resting their foreheads against each other with their eyes slightly closed.

“Why don’t you fuck me until everyone in this club knows I’m all yours?”

“Fuck, you don’t have to tell me twice”

Jimin jumped off the counter, tightening his hold around Yoongi’s neck as he captured his lips once again, struggling to control his smile and kiss properly. Yoongi reached his hand down to wrap around Jimin’s length, making the younger gasp into their kiss and giving Yoongi the opportunity to take Jimin’s tongue into his mouth and suck.

“Yoongi,” Jimin panted, pulling away as Yoongi tried to chase after his lips “Yoongi, I can’t take it, just fuck me already.”

“So impatient”

Yoongi turned the dancer around, shoving his upper body down onto the counter top and trailing his hand down the length of his back, finally stopping to squeeze and clutch at Jimin’s ass once again.

“Yoongi I swear to god right now”

“Shut up” Yoongi growled, punctuating his command with a slap to Jimin’s ass, emanating a long groan from the latter. Yoongi spat into his hand, enveloping his hardened length and experimenting with a few strong tugs. He rubbed the head against Jimin’s hole, pushing in slightly to see how easily or how difficult it would be for Jimin to take him in. “You’re going to get what’s coming to you one way or another, you slut.”

Jimin hummed delightfully at the degradation, feeling so erotically filthy for his hyung.

Yoongi spat again and rubbed his hand against his mode of entrance, not usually a fan for this but any lubrication was better than no lubrication. Jimin let out breathy gasps and short moans, enjoying the feeling of Yoongi’s long and gentle fingers.

“Hyung, hurry the fuck—oh fuck!”

Yoongi let out a long groan, throwing his head back as he relished in the feeling of being inside Jimin. Finally. A slight push of resistance forced him to slow down, needing to push harder as he continued. Once buried to the hilt, Yoongi was panting, and finally held his head upright and looked at the gorgeous person bent in front of him. Jimin was resting his forehead against the top of his forearm, his back rising and falling desperately and sweat only beginning to bead on his skin.

It made Yoongi feel proud of his self.

“You need to relax”

“I am”

“Your asshole says otherwise”

“Fuck you”

“Aren’t you already?”

“Fucking bitch, Yoongi I swear to god will you just shut up and—“

Jimin finished with a grunt, with Yoongi already understanding his hilariously eager pleas as the elder retreated until only the head lay inside, and thrust back into Jimin until his hips were pressing against firm flesh. There was still a slight resistance to Yoongi’s advancements; he could see Jimin shutting his eyes tightly through the mirror, breathing through his mouth in short gasps and vivid moans.

“Relax, baby” he cooed, running a hand up and down Jimin’s strong back in attempts to soothe him “You’re doing so good for me, so, so good for hyung”

Jimin bit his lip, eyes still closed but visibly less tense than before. Gradually, Yoongi was able to move smoothly, gaining speed with a sense of neediness, and vigor. His grip on Jimin’s hips tightened; his fingers digging into the dancer’s soft tan skin that he’s sure would leave discoloration. As Yoongi sped up, Jimin became louder; the sound of skin on skin echoing through the tiled walls of the club’s bathroom, the EDM’s bass ringing through the subtly vibrating walls. Yoongi grunted, relishing in the feeling of warmth that surrounded his pride, Jimin tightening himself around Yoongi only made the latter fuck him even more forcefully than before.

Jimin’s upper body was moving back and forth from how hard Yoongi thrust into him, having to brace himself with a sweaty hand on the clear mirror, but becoming too weak to hold it up, eventually having it slide back down onto the counter; leaving a print made of warm sweat.

With a growl and his eyebrows scrunched together, Yoongi reached lower to lift Jimin’s left leg onto the counter. The younger’s flexibility allowed Yoongi better access, and a better angle. With Jimin spread wider than before, Yoongi reached a particular spot inside of Jimin that he was struggling to find earlier; making him scream.

“Yoongi! There! Right there!”

He kept his angle, thrusting harder, faster, and continued rubbing against Jimin’s prostate with fervor. Jimin couldn’t control his moans even if he tried, the feeling of fullness finally enveloping him, the feeling of wholeness as Yoongi was finally inside him overwhelmed the younger.

Yoongi reached for Jimin’s hair, pulling him up to make him watch their sinful act in the now fogging mirror. His back arched at a painful angle, but Yoongi knew that Jimin was enough of a talented dancer to not mind it. The younger’s mouth fell open, grunts and moans mixed in with his inhales and exhales of breath, the occasionally need to swallow down the excess saliva forming in his mouth. Jimin watched as Yoongi bit his lip, concentrating on lasting long and making Jimin come first. He gyrated his hips, trying to touch and rub as much of Jimin’s inner walls as he could reach, the motions earning Yoongi strangled whimpers and choked back profanities.

Jimin could feel the tight knot forming in the pit of his stomach, a fire burning inside his gut as his balls seemed to bear too much of what he had to offer. He told Yoongi this, whining out the words he knew he wouldn’t be able to say properly. Yoongi sped up his pace, the sound of skin slapping skin bouncing off the four corners of the bathroom.

He pulled out of Jimin, eliciting a disappointed and frustrated whine from him but Yoongi only turned him around once more, wordlessly, and set him on the counter top yet again. Yoongi pulled Jimin’s hips towards him, the dancer’s ass hanging off the edge and causing Jimin to lie back on his elbows as Yoongi thrust into him again.

“Hyung,” Jimin gasped, his voice going hoarse and sending shivers up and down Yoongi’s spine. He bit his lip before trying to speak again, “I’m so close, please.”

It was with four curious knocks to the bathroom door that Yoongi unconsciously decided to wreck Jimin, pounding into him with a newfound rashness. Jimin couldn’t shut his mouth even if he tried, he may not have heard the knocks on the door, but from whomever those knocks originated from; they could hear Jimin loud and clear. And they knew who was making Jimin as vocal as he was.

Yoongi grabbed Jimin’s length tightly, trying to tug it along with the rhythm he had established his thrusts to. “Come for me, Jimin. Come for hyung like a good boy.”

Jimin let out a long groan as he twitched in Yoongi’s hold, spurts of hot cum shooting towards him and landing on his chest and along his abs. Yoongi’s thrusts turned sloppy but didn’t decrease in rigidity, Jimin’s legs wrapped around the elder’s waist as he scraped his nails down Yoongi’s chest, making sure to capture his nipples right in the middle of it. Yoongi released what Jimin could only label as an animalistic moan, his dick tightening inside of Jimin before finally going still, spurting his thick cum into Jimin. Yoongi grunted with every release, pressing himself further and harder as he continued to let go.

After a few minutes of heavy breathing and no dialogue exchange, Yoongi pulled out of Jimin, much to the latter’s disappointment and made his way to the tissue dispenser. Jimin lay on the counter top, uncomfortably, with his legs dangling off the edge as Yoongi came back to wipe him off. Muttering an apology as he started to clean the younger, Jimin flinched; still sensitive and sore from how Yoongi handled him.

“In my defense, you’re the one who wanted me to make you scream.”

Jimin’s forearm covered his eyes, his chest rising and falling heavily and rumbling with laughter as Yoongi asked him what had happened to his dancer’s stamina. They redressed in silence, an occasional giggle escaping from Jimin as Yoongi shot him a wink or a smirk. The elder shot a pout as soon as Jimin had pulled up his boxers and zipped up his jeans, earning a playful smack from his visual muse of the moment.

“So what now?” Yoongi asked, clearing his throat in disappointment, he didn’t expect himself to sound so vulnerable. He assumed that because he called Jimin beautiful, the younger might have an idea or some kind of glimpse of what Yoongi felt for him but then again, Jimin’s always been told he’s beautiful; Yoongi was just part of a really long list.

“Hyung,” Jimin muttered, approaching the other slowly “I really like you” Yoongi’s eyes widened to the size of saucers, certainly not expecting that. “But I don’t know if we can do this.”

“Why not?”

“Fans, management, the public eye constantly on us now that we’re going global.” Jimin pursed his lips together; reaching for Yoongi’s hands to wrap his own in. “The list goes on.”

Yoongi nodded his head, a humorless smile stretching on his face. He kissed Jimin once, hard, and a real smile took the place of the one before as he pulled himself away.

“That’s in public Jimin.” He chuckled, pulling his dongsaeng towards the door to finally reunite with the others. “Doesn’t mean we can’t do more of this in private, right?”

Jimin couldn’t wipe the smile off his face.

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